Misinformation has repeatedly undermined America’s response to Covid-19, encouraging people to view the disease as trivial and to ignore measures meant to minimize the risk posed by the coronavirus.
But even as a national vaccination campaign led by the White House seeks to end the pandemic, those spreading falsehoods are still one step ahead.
Covid-19 vaccine skeptics are exploiting official data to undermine confidence in the shots, misrepresenting statistics from a US government-run database as evidence that the doses are routinely killing Americans.
In an especially egregious case, a report submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) said that a two-year-old girl died in the state of Virginia less than a week after receiving a Pfizer-BioNTech shot.
The report spread on social media, and an article claimed the death came during “vaccine experiments on children.”
But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told AFP the report was “completely made up,” with a professional athlete listed as the patient and a world leader’s name used for the person who reported the incident.
www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210520-us-government-database-exploited-by-covid-19-vaccine-critics
NEW YORK — People who get vaccinated at select state-run vaccination sites in New York next week will receive a lottery scratch ticket as the state tries to boost slowing vaccination rates.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the pilot program at 10 state-run sites will offer prizes from $20 up to $5 million and run from Monday to May 28.
The governor says there’s a one in nine chance of winning a scratch ticket prize in New York, which is joining states like Ohio that have similar lottery incentives. About 43% of New York state residents are fully vaccinated.