The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) passed misinformation to Facebook as partners worked to combat disinformation, according to newly released emails, in the latest example of CDC officials making false or misleading claims.
In a June 3 message, a Facebook official said the CDC had helped the company “detect claims about vaccines and children” and asked for help addressing claims about vaccines for infants and toddlers, including the claim that the vaccines were not effective.
A few weeks later, after US regulators authorized the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for young children and the CDC recommended them, a CDC official responded by offering unsupported information.
“Claims that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective for children ages 6 months to 4 years are false, and belief in such claims may lead to vaccine hesitancy,” the CDC official wrote. The names of all officials mentioned in this story were redacted in the emails, which were released as part of the ongoing lawsuit against the US government.
“The COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are effective in protecting people, including children ages 6 months to 4 years, from severe illness, hospitalization, and even death,” the CDC official added.
There is no evidence that vaccines are effective against serious illness and death in young children.
Lack of information
Zero cases of severe COVID-19 were reported in Moderna’s trial of children aged 6 months to 5 years, including none in the placebo group. In Pfizer’s trial of children ages 6 months to 4 years, six of seven cases of COVID-19 occurred in children who received a vaccine.
“Clinical studies were not powered to detect efficacy against severe disease in young children,” said Dr. Sara Oliver, a CDC official, during a meeting before the agency recommended vaccines for young children.
Additionally, the endpoint of the trials was a certain level of antibodies, which are believed but not proven to be a way to protect against COVID-19. The level was based on the level of adults in the original trials, which were completed in 2020.
Efficacy estimates for protection against infection showed low efficacy for the Moderna vaccine; Pfizer’s was higher but was considered unreliable.
“The studies do nothing to inform us about the symptomatic risk of infection after Pfizer and tell us that efficacy is weak after Moderna, and we don’t know how long any protection might last,” told The Epoch Times Dr. Tracy Hoeg, an epidemiologist in California. via email, adding that the evidence “did not give us information about the reduction of severe disease.”
The CDC, which bills itself as “the nation’s health protection agency,” says on its website that it is committed to basing all of its decisions “on the highest quality scientific data that flows openly and objectively “. Its officials have repeatedly said during the pandemic that the agency makes decisions backed by science.
The CDC was more cautious earlier in 2022, the emails show. When asked to judge whether the claims were false, an official said the agency “can’t talk about that until the pharmaceutical companies have reported data on the vaccine’s effectiveness against serious illness or death in children under 5.”
“Important Partnership”
“Thank you so much again for getting the team together to meet with us earlier this week, it was extremely helpful. Your partnership is critical for us to ensure we can remove false and harmful claims about COVID-19 and vaccines on our platform,” a Facebook official wrote to the CDC in February.
“In continuation of our meeting, I am sharing below the long list of claims that we currently remove it regarding the COVID vaccine because public health authorities such as the CDC have confirmed that they are false and could contribute to imminent physical harm if believed.”
Facebook still removes content that says COVID-19 vaccines are not effective against serious illness or death, even though the effectiveness of vaccines against infection and serious illness has decreased since Omicron appeared in late 2021, especially amid newer subvariants of Omicron.
“When we say we will drop claims that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, we are specifically referring to claims that vaccines generally do not protect against serious illness or death from COVID-19 or that they offer no protection at all. contracting. COVID-19,” says Facebook on its website. “However, we will allow claims that someone can still contract COVID-19 even though they are fully vaccinated.”
Facebook does not cite the CDC on its site. He identifies several organizations whose advice he takes as fact, including the United Nations World Health Organization. It also says it uses “government health authorities” in setting rules around COVID-19 content.
The CDC has been the source for reviewing many of the claims listed on the Facebook page, according to the emails.
On November 8, 2021, for example, a CDC official reviewed seven claims and found them all false. All seven are currently listed as fake by Facebook.
This includes the claim that COVID-19 vaccines alter the immune system, which some experts say is true. It also includes the claim that COVID-19 vaccines change people’s blood. At least one study has found that many vaccinated patients have abnormal blood, while blood clots are a known side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Facebook is “relying on your expertise” about whether certain side effects, including blood clots and Bell’s palsy, could be caused by the COVID-19 vaccines, a Facebook official told the agency on Oct. 28, 2021, in an email. other.
“taken out of context”
Facebook wasn’t the only Big Tech company to rely on the CDC.
Twitter and Google asked the CDC to weigh in on claims about COVID-19 and vaccines, emails show.
On April 16, 2021, for example, a Twitter official said that his team “has been looking for examples of problematic content so we can examine trends,” adding, “All examples of misinformation are useful, but in particular , if you have any examples of fraud – such as fraudulent Covid cures, fraudulent vaccine cards, etc. that would be very helpful.”
The CDC responded with a chart with four fields, including two related to vaccines.
One was the claim that the vaccines were not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Regulators had not approved any of the vaccines at the time; all were available under emergency use authorization. Another dealt with the Adverse Vaccine Event Reporting System, which is managed by the CDC and regulators. The spreadsheet, which has not been released, explained how data from the reporting system was being “taken out of context,” the CDC said.
“Thank you very much for this; we have acted (tagging or removing) Tweets in violation of our Rules,” the Twitter official said.
Meanwhile, Google asked for help with claims about COVID-19 vaccines in spring 2020, the emails show.
An earlier email from a Freedom of Information Act request showed how the CDC regularly met with Big Tech companies as part of efforts to get them to crack down on disinformation.
Officials at Facebook, Twitter, Google and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.
The misinformation model
The CDC has relentlessly promoted vaccination during the pandemic and provided misinformation on a number of occasions while doing so.
Three top officials, including the agency’s director, incorrectly said in June, while calling for the vaccines to be authorized for young children, that COVID-19 was one of the five leading causes of death for the age group. None have yet provided an update after the study they cited — which failed to accurately report the CDC data — was corrected.
The agency has also provided false information on vaccine safety monitoring and vaccine side effects, updated its vaccine definition, and changed other websites, in some cases drastically changing its definitions and advice.
In a key update in August, the CDC dropped recommendations to treat unvaccinated people differently and acknowledged the protection a person gets from recovering from COVID-19.
“Yesterday’s disinformation is today’s public health guideline, which is an illustration of the fact that science and censorship are completely incompatible, and that censorship can only stop the progress of science and can stop the testing of new hypotheses and ideas by tried to rule out prematurely. these questions,” Aaron Kheriaty, chief medical ethics officer at The Unity Project and a plaintiff in the lawsuit that sparked the new emails, told The Epoch Times. “And that’s just not how science works.”
In another email released in the case, the CDC labeled some claims as misinformation, despite a large body of evidence supporting them.
For example, the claim that “children who are healthy do not need to get the vaccine against COVID-19” was considered misinformation even though some experts have said as much, noting the decline in vaccine effectiveness, the reduced potency of the variants younger and the fact that children without comorbidities have never been at great risk from COVID-19.
In the message, which was sent to more than 100 officials with colleges, nonprofits and other institutions, the CDC also said it was misinformation to say that vaccines are ineffective and not required for children.
Dr. Todd Porter, a pediatrician in Illinois, said he relied on the CDC and other groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which have been closely aligned with the CDC during the pandemic, and didn’t necessarily have time to vet all of their recommendations.
“That trust and support has been shattered during this pandemic and perhaps what saved me is my recognition of the importance of First Do No Harm, the balance of risk versus harm and a willingness to question and be an independent thinker, even when it happens it doesn’t fit the narrative,” he told The Epoch Times via email. “I only pray that many of the thousands of pediatricians out there will do the same, but which organization can we turn to now?”
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Zachary Stieber covers US and world news. He is based in Maryland.
