As the topic of misleading statistics might be seen as non-significant to the media, however, it has a dramatic effect on the events happening now in the World. One of these events is the misleading claims about vaccination from Covid-19 that dramatically affect viewers/listeners of the content in the media, thus, influencing their decision over whether or not to get vaccinated.
Before we start, I do not want to make this post as somewhat blaming and rebuking, because in this blog we discuss misleading statistics, no more than that. Vaccination is an individual's choice and decision, and people should weigh all of the pros and cons before making one. However, all of the decisions should consider all of the possible, right, and trustworthy information and misleading statistics is not that one.
Right before the UK government have announced an extension of the UK Covid vaccination programme for 12- to 15-year-olds children, there was a controversy about whether the vaccine should be given to healthy youngsters, who are at far lower risk from the virus than older age groups. However, campaigners was gathering outside the schools and handling out what we claimed was "notices of liability" or legal documents to headteachers, warning them not to vaccinate children. This "notices of liability", however, was a fake consent form that claimed that there is a "one in 29,398 chance of dying from the covid vaccine", compared with chances of extremely low risk of death from the virus (one to 166,667). Additionally, this "document" stated that roughly 49 million people had at least one vaccine dose, and there were about 1,600 deaths reported, thus, indicating that there should be a causal relationship between them.
Photo of "notice of liability":
However, it is not in that case. People die from all sorts of causes every day, and at most, the World is getting vaccinated, mostly including adults and elderly people or those with high-risk illnesses. If we will move forward and try to calculate the real estimates based on official data, we will find out that Office for National Statistics (ONS) has reported nine deaths for which vaccine was contributed, from which five had the vaccine as an underlying cause. Thus, this suggests a one in a five million risk of dying, while the risk of dying from Covid is estimated as 0.8%, or 35,000 deaths per five million for all ages.
That example from the UK is not the first or second example of such misleading statistics, as we can suggest counting to 1,000 instances all around the World. People receive misleading and falsified statistics and "facts" about negative and fatal effects and then share them among other people, causing people to reject vaccination.
However, it is important to understand the main reasons for people's hesitancy towards vaccination against Covid-19. That can be achieved by understanding of the main reasons. In the survey of the adults from 18-39 years old who gave select reasons for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States by the groups of "unsure or probably will get vaccinated" or "probably or definitely will not get vaccinated" have claimed this results:
As we can see from them, most of the reasons (or arguments, I would say) were indicating that there is concerns about the vaccines (such as potential allergic reaction, or possible side effects) or ignorance about the problem (disbelief in need of vaccination, Covid-19 ignorance). I suggest that the same arguments and reasons would be applicable for everyone who have a vaccines hesitancy or complete denial of vaccines around the World. These misleading statistics mostly play a role in the Confirmation bias of people who have a hesitance towards the vaccines, i.e., indicating the information they are likely to agree with, excluding the opposing views on that problem. And that is partially a problem of further vaccination of the population. The Covid-19 strains are created by the mutations that happened while the virus spreads across the population, as could be indicated with the variants of Beta, Delta, or most recent, Omicron.
Moreover, these concerns about the vaccines could be solved by getting more trustful answers from respectful organisations and people with the knowledge to answer these questions, as medical workers or scientists. Indeed, a lot of official medical resources have published a Q&A about the concerns and myths regarding the vaccination against Covid-19. One of them is John Hopkins Medicine, one of the most respected medical organisations. I will put the link on their Q&A in the annotations to this post. This information could change your opinion regarding the vaccines (for "anti-vaxxers") or answer your concerns about making your decision (for vaccines hesitancy).
To conclude all of that, the vaccination against Covid-19 has boosted the spread of misleading statistics about the negative effects of it, which dramatically influence the vaccination rate across the media-exposed population. As was seen from the UK example, these statistics are based on misleading and falsified facts that are presented as true information, which then influence people's decisions over getting vaccines. In case you have concerns and hesitance towards Covid vaccines, do not hesitate to contact doctors or read articles from official and trustworthy sources of information. And do not forget to double-check the information that includes numbers, calculations, or statistical reports.
P.S. Also, do not believe in conspiracy theories about Gates's microchips inside the vaccines :)
The link to Q&A with John Hopkins Medicine about Covid vaccines: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines-myth-versus-fact
References:
Schraer. A. , Morrison, N. (2021). COVID:Misleading vaccine claims target children and parents. BBC Health. Retrieved from www.bbc.com
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