Afghanistan has implemented a COVID-19 vaccination program and, although administration of vaccines has slowed due to internal armed conflicts, the program is still underway. But some prominent conservative purveyors of misinformation in the U.S. have made false claims about vaccination efforts and the impact of the pandemic in Afghanistan.
An Instagram post highlighted a headline about a non-peer-reviewed study from Israel that found that unvaccinated people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 had greater immunity against the delta variant than never-infected people fully vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. But the social media post omitted the study’s other finding that one dose of the vaccine enhanced protection for infection survivors.
The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, though an emergency use authorization also remains in place. Dr. Robert Malone misleadingly said Americans are being offered the shot only under the latter and that it carried different liability ramifications. The liability protections, afforded under a public health law, are the same for the two.
In this video, FactCheck.org and Univision Noticias teamed up to debunk false claims made by a doctor in Idaho about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and treatments. It is available in both English and Spanish.
A digital device company is developing gel sensors that would monitor the wearer’s health and could potentially help to detect future outbreaks of disease. But conspiracy theorists are falsely claiming that the sensors are actually COVID-19-detecting microchips that will be used to track people’s movements.
The delta variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is more transmissible than previous forms of the virus, and has helped spur an increase in cases, including in children. But a chiropractor in a Facebook video wrongly claims that “it is not showing more of a problem.” That’s one of several misleading and false claims he makes about COVID-19.
Federal employees — including at the White House — must attest to being vaccinated against COVID-19, or else comply with routine testing and mitigation measures. But conservative commentator Charlie Kirk claims that the “White House staff is not required to be vaccinated,” baselessly questioning if undisclosed concerns about the vaccines are at play.
The secretary of defense announced that COVID-19 vaccination will be mandatory for all service members by mid-September. But social media posts have shared an article from a dubious website that falsely claimed that the leader of the Marines “rebuked” the vaccine mandate. A Marine Corps spokesperson told us “there is no truth” to the claim.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document reviews the challenges of using a “shielding” approach to protect high-risk people living in places such as refugee camps from COVID-19. But conservative commentator Candace Owens misinterpreted it to mean the agency was proposing putting high-risk Americans into camps.
A growing body of evidence supports the use of masks to slow the spread of COVID-19. But the effectiveness of masks is now being challenged again. Here we summarize some of our work over the past 16 months, based on categories of misinformation about masking.