FACT CHECK: Busting popular myths about Covid-19 vaccines
- By Hunain Ameen -
- Jun 03, 2021
Some people just never cease to surprise you with their parlous assertiveness even as they claim something far from their scope of the field. The clichéd axiom that the idiots are full of confidence holds readily true in their case.
The same has been happening with vaccination drives, being carried out against the global pandemic that has quite literally taken the world hostage for over a year now, causing about 3.6 million deaths and 171 million infections globally.
However, People, regardless of their race, region and religion have been divided upon what may be the right approach to the Covid vaccine. While some welcome it, others decry it.
Those who disparage the vaccines, see Covid ravaging the world right before their eyes. Yet, as the dexterity of frontline workers in the medical and biotechnology fields has come to fruition in the form of Covid vaccines, the former’s vulgar mischief has ripened to a new stage: concocting conspiracy theories and myths about it so credulous people simply fall for it.
To discredit them, it’s enough that they use doctored images, out-of-context clips, phishing and propaganda-driven WhatsApp forward messages as tools to support their theories. Though these theories fall flat in the face of facts, people have little time to research on their own and are hoodwinked easily by how swiftly the fear-centric propaganda spreads.
One such instance is an abundantly over-shared screenshot of Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier’s interview to a French media channel in which some false claims are being attributed to him. For example, people who jab themselves against the virus will die in two years. This only discourages people from getting their vaccination to God-knows-what end.
Fact Check: Will COVID-19 vaccines kill people by causing ADE?
However, the claims of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) and that the death surge followed vaccination drives, which were in fact floated by Montagnier (who also alleged the novel coronavirus is man-made in Wuhan lab) were unequivocally disputed by even his peers and other scientists.
Remember, WHO has said that the only way to put an end to the menace of this pandemic for good is timely vaccination of about 70 per cent of the global population.
FACT CHECK
International and independent organizations of indisputable repute and even social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have vehemently termed such myths as false news and have maintained their standard to rule out any information of Covid that cannot be traced to a genuine and credible source.
Reuters and AFP both have rendered misattributions to Luc Montagnier’s fake news upon their findings and contested claims made by him, as well.