Myths and conspiracy theories on vaccines and COVID-19: Potential effect on global vaccine refusals

Abstract

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is one of the international crises and researchers are working collaboratively to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. The World Health Organization recognizes vaccine hesitancy as the world's top threat to public health safety, particularly in low middle-income countries. Vaccine hesitancy can be due to a lack of knowledge, false religious beliefs, or anti-vaccine misinformation. The current situation regarding anti-vaccine beliefs is pointing towards dreadful outcomes. It raises the concern that will people believe and accept the new COVID-19 vaccines despite all anti-vaccine movements and COVID-19-related myths and conspiracy theories. This review discusses the possible detrimental impacts of myths and conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and vaccine on COVID-19 vaccine refusals as well as other vaccine programs.

Society and the moral semantics of the COVID-19 pandemic: a social systems approach

“…Many other examples of conspiracy-related semantics widely spread in the context of COVID-19 could be mentioned, such as the theory that the virus was intentionally created in a laboratory (see Schaeffer, 2020; The Moscow Times, 2021), the alleged link between infection and 5G technology (see Goodman and Carmichael, 2020), the denial of the very same existence of COVID-19 (see Roth, 2020) and, of course, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (see Ullah et al ., 2021). Although they are usually less elaborated that the chlorine dioxide case, they share the same semantics that deny credit to established scientific knowledge and the same predisposition to generate bitter moral controversies.…”

A Shot of Faith—Analyzing Vaccine Hesitancy in Certain Religious Communities in the United States

“…In some cases, long-studied motives, such as the belief that vaccines can cause psychosocial disorders like autism, appear to be the cause of some of the initial vaccine hesitancy found in these populations. 4,5 However, beyond these well-characterized motives for initial vaccine hesitancy, there also appear to be new trends in religious, political, and ideological beliefs in these religious populations that drove the initial hesitancy of these populations to get vaccinated. 4,5 Many of these trends are recent, having emerged within the past few years.…”

“…4,5 However, beyond these well-characterized motives for initial vaccine hesitancy, there also appear to be new trends in religious, political, and ideological beliefs in these religious populations that drove the initial hesitancy of these populations to get vaccinated. 4,5 Many of these trends are recent, having emerged within the past few years. 5 Nevertheless, despite their recency, these new trends have significant impacts on vaccination efforts in the aforementioned religious populations and thus must be accounted for when discussing the successes and failures of vaccine promotion strategies in these communities.…”

“…4,5 Many of these trends are recent, having emerged within the past few years. 5 Nevertheless, despite their recency, these new trends have significant impacts on vaccination efforts in the aforementioned religious populations and thus must be accounted for when discussing the successes and failures of vaccine promotion strategies in these communities. 4 One trend which appeared to have a disproportionate impact on religious populations is the proliferation of religious misinformation online.…”

“…In some cases, long-studied motives, such as the belief that vaccines can cause psychosocial disorders like autism, appear to be the cause of some of the initial vaccine hesitancy found in these populations. 4,5…”