How social media injects doubt about coronavirus vaccinations

Covid-19 vaccines, now starting to come to Africa, are a shimmer of light at the end of a dark tunnel. This week, Ghana was the first country in Africa to get a vaccine consignment from a consortium led by the World Health Organization.

As Africans anticipate the arrival of vaccines, there is a heightened online search for vaccine information. Unfortunately, much of the information doing rounds is laced with misinformation. Its seeding doubts about vaccine.

Conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines have flooded social media, particularly on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.

Anti-vaccine books now top the search list on Amazon and other online bookstores. Searches about Covid-19 vaccines on Google are growing exponentially.

But as the vaccines become available, so does the anti-vaccine misinformation, fueled by a palette of players. Some people claim that vaccines contain toxins. They peg their theory on the long-debunked conspiracy that vaccines cause autism. Some religious people believe people don’t need vaccines because God made them perfect.

Others claim that Bill Gates, the billionaire businessman who co-founded Microsoft, uses vaccines to plant microchips in people. Another group has gone to town with the narrative that vaccines will turn people into antennas for 5G wireless technology—the list is long.

Once these theories gain steam on social media, they zip around communities and plant seeds of doubt in people’s minds. These seeds grow into apathy against vaccines.

Public health officials have their work cut out for them. They must prepare to counter these hoaxes and answer good-faith questions, fending off deliberate lies. Without it, vaccines will be impotent tools unable to break the back of the virus.

Experts agree that without vaccinating a critical mass of people, no one is fully protected. They warn that public adoption will be crucial to ensure that enough of the population is immunized to stop the spread of the virus.

It is not clear on the exact threshold of people that need to be inoculated to stop the swell of the cases, but some studies suggest between 60 and 75 percent of the population. Without immunizing most of the global population, the virus will keep changing its form and becoming resistant to the available vaccines, essentially giving the virus a free pass to continue to prey on people.

Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube, and TikTok say they are removing debunked claims about Covid-19 vaccines. On its part, the government will have to be transparent about the vaccines.

It should clarify who will be inoculated first: Preference should not go to the powerful or well-connected. Health workers and people with compromised immunity should be first in the line. It should also have a clear campaign strategy on how to combat misinformation and build trust about the vaccine.