When the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was established in 1990, its creators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would have scarcely imagined the government program would become a leading vector for vaccine misinformation amidst a global pandemic.
The VAERS dataset was created to manage reports of vaccine-associated side effects. With the authority of the CDC, whose official seal adorns the webpage, VAERS packs a shock. As of today, the online database alleges 1349 U.S. deaths attributable to COVID-19 vaccines. The database makes for gruesome reading, with side-effects of the vaccine appearing to include brain death, herpes and even one case of a gunshot wound. Quite the vaccine.
These statistics are, of course, patently false. Claims made by the VAERS database now form the foundation of a global online misinformation campaign which to-date has garnered little attention. The startling statistics are being shared far and wide by anti-vaccination activists and concerned readers alike. And the CDC’s role in the dissemination of vaccine misinformation, unwilling though it may be, is attracting increasing scrutiny as it jeopardises what President Biden calls his administration’s “most important battle”: the global coronavirus vaccine rollout.
How does VAERS work?
The CDC describes VAERS as a “passive reporting system.” Pre-dating the internet, the VAERS database has virtually no guards against its potential role as a source of “fake news” and is credulous of even the most fanciful claims of COVID-19 vaccine side-effects. VAERS reports “can be submitted voluntarily by anyone, including healthcare providers, patients, or family members.” The CDC acknowledges the “quality and completeness” of reports “often lack details and sometimes can have information that contains errors.” Beyond that disclaimer, the CDC tries to ensure its readers know the data is inaccurate by offering users terms and conditions, which are presumably mostly unread, and a checkbox to acknowledge their contents. A federal agency seeking to disabuse citizens of the expectation that government health databases are accurate should be an indicator for the CDC that VAERS has a serious problem.
With reported deaths linked to the COVID-19 vaccine on this database at such high levels, the CDC must confront the likely prospect that anti-vaccine activists are purposely submitting false reports to inflate mortality numbers and heighten community fears over the coronavirus vaccine. A cursory search of social media shows those who are spreading the VAERS data have paid little heed to the agency’s disclaimers. Indeed, Facebook posts seen by the HPR with hundreds of engagements include the same verbatim instructions, copy and pasted, for users to disregard disclaimers.
Misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine abounds on the web, but no site established by an anti-vaccine activist could hope to have the reach and recognisability of the CDC website. And yet, publicly hosted on a CDC web server are claims that COVID-19 vaccines have caused gunshot wounds, with the CDC helpfully listing shareable buttons at the top of the page for your vaccine misinformation platform of choice: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and email for those wanting to mass-email their office colleagues. In the time since the CDC was approached for comment by the HPR, the shareable buttons have been removed from the site.
Disinformation Spreading Fast
It is not just social media actors who have sought to capitalise on the CDC’s implicit endorsement of VAERS content, with a Keyhole media analysis showing the biggest boosters of the VAERS site to be the notorious 4chan forums and the Russia Today state media organization. The 4chan forums rose to prominence in the Trump era as the original source of widespread conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, which alleged a satanic child-exploitation run by the Democratic Party, and QAnon, the pretext for the January 6 insurrection — and now serves as a hotbed of anti-vaccine misinformation.
The global reach of the CDC VAERS misinformation should not be underestimated, with print copies of the data having been placed into letterboxes as far away as Brisbane, Australia. Local Australian health authorities blasted the spreading of the false reports – telling residents to ‘take-off their tin-foil hats.’
A spokesperson for the Australian government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration told the HPR that the Australian TGA is aware that CDC VAERS data is being used to promulgate anti-vaccination views and noted that the Australian reporting system employs a 90-day delay to allow authorities to verify information before it becomes public. This provides a useful policy contrast to the unfettered publication of unverified claims by the U.S. CDC and FDA.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to HPR requests for comment. Although the CDC claims to make attempts to verify the data, it is difficult to see how publishing reports of gunshot wounds related to the COVID-19 vaccine is tenable for an organization so reliant on public trust.
An HPR Keyhole analysis of social media indicates that over a 24-hour period in March, an expected 350,000 people had viewed or interacted with anti-vaccine information originating from the VAERS database. The true figure is likely to be significantly higher as Keyhole excludes Instagram and private Facebook groups from its analytics. While the CDC and FDA disclaimers go to great lengths to point out that reports within VAERS are not verified causal claims, in a world where users absorb headline information and where small-scale disinformation campaigns have been shown to have calamitous consequences, one must question whether publishing VAERS vaccine data in its current form achieves more harm than good.
Facebook and Instagram announced earlier this year they would take steps to ban the spreading of vaccine misinformation on their platforms. Facebook has further sought to stem the spread of misinformation by providing public health agencies with free advertising space and by directing users to their local health authorities. Despite this pledge, some prominent anti-vaccine Facebook pages remain online with hundreds of thousands of followers. The VAERS dataset also appears to be immune from Facebook’s anti-misinformation protocols and remains a prominent feature of the anti-vaccine campaigning repertoire.
Increased scrutiny on the VAERS dataset comes as the Director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, fought back tears warning of an “impending doom.” The United States’ rolling 7-day average for new infections has increased 15% over the span of just two weeks and hospitalizations caused by the virus have jumped by 5% in that same period. The newly installed CDC Director urged Americans to not let down their guard, saying she is “scared” a fourth wave of the coronavirus may batter the country before vaccinations can reach a critical mass.
To reach such a critical mass, the federal government is in a race against time. At present, demand for the vaccine is high and supply is constrained, but as the U.S. hurtles toward President Biden’s May 1 deadline for universal vaccine eligibility, supply may begin to outpace demand for the injection. Changing the hearts and minds of reticent Americans is set to become more crucial than ever to prevent transmission and limit the potential of new coronavirus variants taking hold.
As the spread of coronavirus variants potentially jeopardises the efficacy of the vaccine rollout, so too does the spread of misinformation. It is a near certainty that scurrilous and outlandish claims around the COVID-19 vaccines will be shared online in any case, but for now, malign actors transmit this information with a veneer of credibility offered by the CDC VAERS database.
Image by Mat Napo is licensed under the Unsplash License.
