Anti-vaccine groups are exploiting the suffering and death of people who happen to fall ill after receiving a COVID-19 shot, threatening to undermine the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.
In some cases, anti-vaccine activists are fabricating stories of deaths that never occurred.
“This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist and author of “Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science.”
Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, big business and the media.
Now, the same groups are blaming patients’ coincidental medical problems on COVID shots, even when it’s clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said.
“They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine,” Hotez said.
Read the full story from California Healthline.
—Liz Szabo, California Healthline