By: Mac Childers and Thomas Knight
Due to the pandemic, the past two years of our lives have been riddled with misinformation and conspiracy theories. From the beginning, people have been saying Covid originated from a lab in China or that the vaccine contains a government microchip. This rampant misinformation has led to America having one of the lowest vaccination rates of any first world country. This is partially due to vaccination becoming a political talking point rather than a medical necessity. While places like Spain, which has reached 79percent vaccination and Italy at 73 percent. The U.S.A. is trailing at 58 percent and gaining very little ground. In part due to a history of vaccine hesitancy.
In 1998, an article was published by The Lancet, a medical institution, linking the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. This claim has been refuted by multiple peer studies and eventually ruled false by Britain’s general medical council. This was due to the subjects of the study being hand selected in the hopes of finding a desired outcome, this outcome was fabricated by large portions of the study’s research being funded by lawyers in lawsuits with vaccine manufacturers. With all that said, the damage was already done. Though the general public’s opinion on the matter has to do with all vaccines leading to autism, The Lancet study only showed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The Lancet retracted this claim in 2010, 12 years after the study was published, though the misinformation spread by this article still greatly affects the world’s perception of vaccination today.
While The Lancet eventually disregarded their previous claims, this did not stop people from believing vaccines cause autism. Though, the fear created by The Lancet’s article has led to people seeking “alternative” treatments for Covid.
In March of 2020, poison control received double the number of daily cases nationwide of people ingesting cleaners and disinfectants. This is due in part to the president at the time, Donald Trump, saying on live television to the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s science and technology division, “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.” Yes, this would cure Covid, but it would do so by curing you of life.
The majority of misinformation surrounding vaccinations and Covid was not primarily spread from news sources and medical journals. Social media gives anyone a platform to voice their beliefs and opinions regardless of facts or basic logic. Anyone with photoshop and enough free time on their hands can play “journalist.” Over the summer of 2021, groups on Facebook began to claim that Sars Covid-19 could be cured by an anti-parasitic drug, Ivermectin. This drug was created to cure livestock of parasites and has no proven effect on Covid. That being said, it has a proven effect on the intestinal tract of the human body. The drug was intended for a 900 lb. (408 kg) horse, however poison control cases pertaining to the drug increased 245 percent in August . It is important to note that these were only the cases reported to poison control, in total the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates 1,143 exposure cases from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31 of 2021.
