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This video, which was not created through Musk, already circulated on social media in November 2022; however, interest in the clip that followed the post by the tech billionaire who bought Twitter in 2022 generated more than 635,800 likes and 197,300 reposts as of Oct. 18.
The video will be published in languages such as French and German and on other social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
The video was also recently posted on YouTube and Canadian video-sharing site Rumble, where it has been viewed more than 11,700 times.
Musk’s claim is an example of a long-standing trend of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.
However, AFP found that the sequence of photographs in the video does not fit the chronology of each article’s publication and uses unparalleled knowledge about the effects of other vaccines and reactions to other variants of the disease.
“The argument that the efficacy or potency of vaccines has declined based on the knowledge that was available is absolutely false,” Jeffrey Cirillo, a professor of immunology at the University of Texas, said Oct. 3.
The 111 screenshots in the montage refer to articles published most frequently between September 2020 and October 2021, with the exception of one article from 2011 (archived here), which had nothing to do with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The article’s headlines start by touting 100 percent vaccine efficacy, then rise to 85 percent, then up to 50 percent, before moving on to headlines with no statistics, but discussing “vaccine disasters. “
A closer look at the articles in the photo above shows that their submission is chronological to the date of publication.
The first article in the video, titled “AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine 100 Percent Effective in Preventing Deaths and Hospitalizations: U. S. Study:”The U. S. Census Bureau,” refers to a March 2021 study (archived here).
It is followed by the headline: “Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine 85% Effective After Single Dose, Israeli Researchers Find,” from a February 2021 Fox News article (archived here).
Seconds after the Fox News headline, the video includes the headline: “A COVID-19 Vaccine Would Possibly Be Only 50% Effective. “Is this enough? Excerpt from a September 2020 NPR article (archived here), before the first Covid-19 photographs. They were publicly released.
Near the end of the clip, the viewer sees a headline that reads, “Officials say Pfizer vaccine is 39% effective against Delta variant in Israel,” published in July 2021 (archived here).
The name with which the video concludes – “Mistakes made with past vaccines show why rushing now to get a coronavirus vaccine would be ‘colossally stupid'” – is the name of an article from September 2020 (archived here).
The titles of the videos also juxtapose articles discussing the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine in other aspects of the pandemic, which has seen the progression of variants of the virus that are more resistant to previous formulations of the vaccine.
“A vaccine against one virus (variant) provides other degrees of coverage against the virus (variant),” said Cirillo of the University of Texas.
He went on to say that as the virus evolves over time, the formula used in a vaccine will become less effective. That’s why it was necessary to develop new vaccines.
“New variant-based vaccines are now available, and those vaccines have higher levels of coverage > 95% compared to the variants they were designed for. “
The misleading video also conflates the effects of clinical studies with the effects of so-called “real-world” studies, which read about effects outdoors in a controlled laboratory setting.
For example, the first study presented in the montage shared by Musk found that the AstraZeneca vaccine is 100 percent effective against death and the risk of hospitalization in a Phase III clinical trial, the last step before advertising production.
Another Axios article published in May 2021 (archived here) that is included in the video refers to the effects of a “real-world” examination conducted through the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, which examined U. S. health care personnel, conducted a survey of U. S. health care personnel. The U. S. Department of Homeland Security is used to detect the virus. after you have been vaccinated with at least two doses of the vaccine.
“Real-world” studies are conducted using information collected in vaccination campaigns about a random pattern of other people who can therefore influence the results.
Cirillo also pointed out that all the vaccines featured in the video are others. The clip mixes effects from other corporations and other technologies, such as Pfizer’s messenger RNA vaccines and Johnson’s adenovirus vaccine.
Yves Buisson, an epidemiologist and member of the National Academy of Medicine, told AFP on October 3, 2023 that “epidemiologists distinguish several efficacy. “
The first, determined in clinical trials, “is the ability of a vaccine to elicit an immune response, known as immunogenicity,” measured through the concentration of antibodies in the blood, he explained.
The focus is on clinical efficacy. When a vaccinated user comes into contact with the virus, “they can become inflamed without becoming inflamed, or they can become inflamed without worsening health, or they can get sick and even die. “
Christian Bogdan, a professor of infection immunology at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg and a member of the Robert Koch Institute’s Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) in Germany, told AFP that the coverage provided by Covid-19 vaccines as opposed to severe illness had been improved. It has been shown in studies conducted before and after the release of the images.
“The vaccines primarily oppose severe Covid-19 infections (e. g. , pneumonia) and not mild upper respiratory tract infections,” Bogdan wrote in an Oct. 7 email.
A handful of headlines at the end of the video mention the concept of boosters, such as an October 2021 Daily Mail article (archived here) that expressed fears of waning immunity several months after the shot.
Buisson noted that while some vaccines will offer lifetime coverage against infection, such as hepatitis B and measles, others will offer only short-term immunity, such as diphtheria and tetanus, which will need to be repeated every 10 years. .
“Not all vaccines are equivalent because they don’t activate the same parts of our immune system,” he said.
Some vaccines cause “sterilizing” immunity, where the reaction generated by the injection blocks the virus absolutely, as is the case with the smallpox vaccine, which eliminated the disease in 1980.
According to Hartmut Hengel, director of the Institute of Virology at the University Hospital Freiburg in Germany, the Covid-19 vaccine confers “effective immunity”, which does not prevent the body from becoming inflamed but does prevent the progression of major diseases. He noted that immunological memory will decline further over time.
“mRNA vaccines are effective, SARS-CoV-2 variants decrease efficacy due to escape mutations” and decreased immune memory, he said.
The video also discusses the potential side effects of the vaccine. Doctors have told AFP in the past that some side effects, such as swelling and fever, should go away within days of receiving the vaccine. Health agencies are also tracking rare but serious effects. Side effects, in addition to pericarditis and myocarditis, affect the heart, but doctors told AFP patients would return to general activity in less than a year.
Medical professionals have consistently claimed that the benefits of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine outweigh the dangers of adverse effects.
More AFP reports on misinformation about the pandemic can be found here.