COVID-19 vaccine could save many lives, despite rampant myths

Most people know by now that Bill Gates is not going to give you money or a free computer if you respond to a Facebook post.

He’s also not going to give you a secret microchip in a COVID-19 vaccine. This is one of the many myths madly circulating about a COVID-19 vaccine that have prompted about a quarter of Americans to say that they would decline a vaccine when it becomes available.

The Gates myth started in March 2020, when a widely shared article announced, incorrectly, “Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus.” Gates actually said in an interview that digital certificates could be used to show who has recovered, who has been tested, and who received the vaccine. According to the BBC, one study, funded by The Gates Foundation, suggested that a special invisible tattoo mark could be used to show who has been vaccinated. Like a smallpox vaccination scar, it would not be tracked and personal information would not be entered into a database.

Even so, Microsoft billionaire does not control public health policy in the U.S.

Another myth in high circulation is that a DNA-based vaccine will genetically modify humans.

According to Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, no vaccine can genetically modify human DNA.

In an interview with Reuters, Lynas said that the DNA in DNA vaccines does not integrate into the cell nucleus, so there is no genetic modification. When cells divide, they will only include your natural DNA. But DNA-based vaccines are promising for COVID-19 because DNA sequences could match the required bits of genetic code in the virus.

The number of Americans willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 may be as low as 50 percent, according to Science Magazine, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Another poll, released in July, suggested that only about a third of Americans say they would be “very likely” to get a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, according to USA Today.

Experts say that the threshold for population immunity against COVID-19 may require between 50 and 82 percent of the population to receive a vaccine, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A COVID-19 vaccine may be months or years away from availability to the public as researchers race to develop and test viable options. While the public waits for breakthroughs, communications experts advocate that public health officials should start educating the public now to combat misinformation campaigns and promote vaccine acceptance, according to Science Magazine.

Peter Pitts, who oversaw public outreach efforts for the Food and Drug Administration during the George W. Bush administration, expressed his concern that no organized government strategy appears to exist to educate the public about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to USA Today.

According to Science Magazine, medical misinformation regarding COVID-19 and vaccines has proliferated on social media since the start of the pandemic. Damon Centola, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the publication that social media posts can mislead people into believing that doing nothing to protect themselves against the novel coronavirus is a safer course of action.

Vaccine skepticism has grown increasingly widespread. In a 2020 study, researchers found that some people may believe vaccines are risky because they overestimate the likelihood of rare adverse side effects, according to Science Daily.