Elon Musk factchecked after ‘misleading’ post on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. Know more | Mint – Mint

Micro-blogging site 'X' CEO Elon Musk has shared a video stitching screenshots of headlines that appeared to show declining estimates of protection from COVID-19 vaccines.

The clips stitched together are a combination of missing context, headlines presented out of order, using incomparable data, and while the jabs do not completely protect against infection, physicians and epidemiologists say they are effective in reducing the risk of severe illness and death, reported news agency AFP.

Musk wrote X, "Have you heard dis information?". He wrote this in a play on words captioning a video he shared on September 26, 2023.

As per details, the clip was a montage of 111 screenshots of headlines, scientific article titles, and websites that purport to show diminishing levels of protection over time from vaccines against COVID-19.

Apart from this, this also highlights percentages in the text on the screen in red, giving the impression as the video progresses that confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccine has degraded throughout the rollout of the shots, said the report.

Details say, the video was not created by Musk and was already circulated on social media in November 2022. However, interest in the clip following the post of the tech billionaire who bought Twitter in 2022 generated more than 635,800 likes and 197,300 reposts as of October 18.

The video spread in posts in languages including French and German and to other social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

Recently, the video was also posted to YouTube and the Canadian video-sharing site Rumble, where it was viewed more than 11,700 times.

The claim spread by Musk is a recent example of a long trend of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

Meanwhile, AFP found the succession of images in the video does not follow the chronology of when each article was published. Also, the article uses incomparable data by looking at results for different vaccines and reactions to different variants of the disease.

On 3 October, University of Texas professor of immunology Jeffrey Cirillo referred to this as false. He said, as quoted by AFP, "The argument that the effectiveness or efficiency of vaccines has declined based on the available data is false."

According to AFP, the 111 screenshots in the montage reference articles published mostly between September 2020 and October 2021, that had nothing to do with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Also, the article headlines begin with one touting 100 percent efficacy of the vaccine and then progressively passes to 85 percent, then 50 percent, before shifting to headlines with no statistics, but discussing 'vaccine disasters', added the report.

In the video, posted by Musk, the juxtaposed articles' headlines discuss COVID-19 inoculations' effectiveness at different points during the pandemic, which witnessed the development of variants of the virus that were more resistant to previous formulas of the vaccine.

University of Texas' Cirillo said, as quoted by AFP, "A vaccine against one virus (variant) provides different levels of protection against a different virus (variant)."

With agency inputs.

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Elon Musk factchecked after 'misleading' post on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. Know more | Mint - Mint