It’s one thing to know, in the abstract sense, that misinformation is being spread around your community. It’s another to hear it for yourself.
In the past week, we’ve heard a couple of rumors about the COVID-19 vaccine being peddled as if they were fact, when the facts clearly illustrate the contrary. So why is misinformation so persistent?
Because the most insidious lies are the ones that are built around a single grain of truth.
One rumor we heard is the COVID-19 vaccine causes people to have a stroke and die. One medical study identified three people who had an ischaemic stroke after receiving the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. This specific vaccine was also linked to various types of thrombosis (blood clots). Note that this is not just any vaccine — this is the unique identifier for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which is not authorized or approved in the United States. So unless you got your hands on a black market AstraZeneca shot, you have no reason to fear having a stroke from your vaccine.
It is also true that a very small percentage of people (0.9 per 1 million, or 0.00009%) who received the Johnson and Johnson vaccine experienced blood clots. This is no secret. As soon as it was realized that potentially serious blood clots were possible with the J&J shot, distribution was halted until it was determined who was most at risk (young women). It was then publicly recommended that demographic receive a different vaccine.
According to the American College of Cardiology, there have been no reports of blood clots or stroke caused by the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. However, being infected with COVID-19 increases the risk of a stroke: 1.4% of COVID patients had a stroke and tended to be younger than people who had non-COVID-related strokes.
The other rumor we’ve heard recently is that the COVID-19 vaccine is causing young people (specifically athletes) to have heart attacks and die.
Several videos and articles circulating on social media proclaim to show healthy athletes collapsing with heart problems after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. One particular video features 17-year-old Jake West, depicting him as having a heart attack on the football field after being vaccinated. Tragic — but West died in 2013 from an undiagnosed heart condition.
Such videos also show a slew of athletes who aren’t dead, collapsed before the vaccine was available, had known (or unknown) heart conditions or collapsed after the vaccine was available but who hadn’t been vaccinated. Some clips were confirmed to have come from previous years, before the pandemic, and some articles named retired athletes such as Hank Aaron, who was 86 when he died last year.
There is a miniscule chance that the mRNA could lead to myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). Even then, instances of myocarditis in young men — the highest risk group — are 70 per 1 million second doses (0.007%) caused by the vaccine, according to Dr. Saurabh Rajpal, cardiologist and assistant professor in the division of cardiovascular medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Compare that to 5%-25% of people and 2.3% of athletes who developed myocarditis after having COVID-19.
This, too, is known information the FDA has already publicized, so there is no conspiracy to hide it from the public. In addition, myocarditis can be treated with medicine and rest. In the multiple studies following myocarditis in young men after having COVID-19 or after vaccination, none have reported any deaths.
Just like these rumors, those who insist everyone should “do their own research” aren’t 100% wrong — but they are 99% not right. If you’d like to do your own research, stick to neutral and verified sources, such as the Associated Press, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and Snopes and cross-check across multiple sites to make sure the information agrees. Just because it’s on social media doesn’t mean it’s true.
When possible, read studies and interviews published in peer-reviewed scientific or medical journals. Scientific studies can be difficult to read and understand, so you may have to do additional searching to comprehend what you’re reading. Most of the information in this editorial comes from the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and the American College of Cardiology.
You can do your own research — but make sure you do it right.
