This appeared last week.
Pregnancy apps become a battleground of vaccine misinformation
By Ashley Fetters Maloy and Will Oremus
December 26, 2021 — 7.53pm
For generations of parents, Heidi Murkoff’s 1984 pregnancy guide What to Expect When You’re Expecting has been a trusty companion, offering calm, scientifically informed advice for a nerve-wracking nine months.
These days, of course, there’s an app for that: What to Expect’s “Pregnancy & Baby Tracker,” which offers personalised articles, videos, graphics of your baby’s development, and other features based on your due date.
But parents who’ve used What To Expect’s app say they also offered something they weren’t expecting: a “community” section rife with scare stories, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods about the safety of vaccines, posted by other users and surfaced by the app’s search functions and email notifications.
Mashaya Engel, 26, who gave birth to a daughter in August, said she encountered multiple posts expressing scepticism about the safety of getting vaccinated against the coronavirus during pregnancy. “I searched in the group discussions for vaccines, and it popped up – some moms having discussions about not vaccinating your children, or getting delayed vaccines,” Engel said. Other users noted a similar phenomenon: “Most antivax and microchip conspiracy comments I’ve ever seen,” one tweeted in May.
While social media giants like Facebook and YouTube have faced heavy pressure to crack down on misinformation during the pandemic, smaller apps have also struggled to police their platforms and rein in falsehoods. Apps aimed at first-time parents, who often face an overwhelming volume of new decisions, have proven particularly vulnerable to users looking to promote all manner of vaccine hesitancy.
On Glow, for example, which helps users track their ovulation patterns, a search for “vaccine” turns up numerous posts in which parents discourage each other from vaccinating their kids. There’s also a review of a children’s book called Vaccine-Free Me: A Trip to the Doctor with a link to purchase the book on Amazon. (“Charlie is excited to go to his yearly doctor appointment ... Can he explain to the doctor why he will NOT be getting vaccinated?”)
And on the parent-connecting app Peanut, named one of the Best Apps of 2021 by Apple, lists of books and resources about the purported dangers of vaccines have circulated in the discussion forums.
Sites including What to Expect and Peanut have for years had policies against misinformation about vaccines. But for a long time, they didn’t strictly police it – until falsehoods and fear-mongering about the COVID vaccines brought into stark relief the impact of allowing it to percolate. Widespread misinformation linking the COVID vaccine to infertility and pregnancy complications has been blamed for low vaccination rates among pregnant individuals. Only 35 per cent of pregnant people between 18 and 49 had been fully vaccinated as of December 4, nearly four months after the CDC released new data supporting a recommendation for pregnant people to be vaccinated.
Vastly more here:
Given that the evidence is utterly clear cut that COVID is especially dangerous to Mum and Child in pregnancy and that vaccination really is safe and effective in reducing the risks any thing that discourages their use during pregnancy borders on the criminal IMVHO.
Social Media moderation really needs to be improved in areas like this – but sadly I really do not know how that can be achieved! Suggestions – other than not using any social media – welcome!
David.
4 comments:
I had a mail drop yesterday. The pamphlet was calling out unproven dangers to children through vaccination. The closing line was - you cannot get in actions Ted but you can always get vaccinated later. Seemed a misguided set of short-term assumptions based around TGA and other international regulatory bodies to test medicines.
The long-term effects of Covid-19 are still being learned but it does not look rosy, more ring a ring a rosary
"...you can always get vaccinated later"
Tell that to the people dying in ICU and pleading to be vaccinated.
Quite agree 5:59 PM. An apologies for the predictive text - should have been unvaccinated not “in action ted”
Healthy children have a statistical risk of dying from Covid of near zero and young males have at least a 1 in 3000 risk of myocarditis from mRNA vaccines. The trials in children were very short lived and small and even the editor of the NEJM said "We won't know the risks in children until we start using them" You only get risk, not a chance of benefit in children so why would you do it, its crazy.
BTW the UK figures now show a negative efficacy against OMECRON. You need to stop listening to the news and start looking at actual data, its not good.
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