ASTRAZENECA’S WOES IN EUROPE CONTINUE: A SMALL VICTORY FOR THE ANTI-VACCINATION MOVEMENT?
By the 16th of March, 24 countries globally, although predominantly in Europe, had stopped, or halted the use of the AstraZeneca Vaccine. Reports from Danish, Italian, Austrian and Norwegian regulators flagged the occurrence of blood clotting in a small number of patients who had recently been exposed to the AstraZeneca vaccine. From the outset, the medical community stressed the temporary nature of this pause in administering the vaccine. Organisations like the European Medicines Agency (EMA) were quick to downplay any notion of danger surrounding the vaccine; insisting that, “The number of [blood clots]… is no higher than the number seen in the general population”.
Whilst medical authorities were quick to reinstate support and use of the vaccine on the 18th March, the blistering pace of coverage through media outlets had already started to sow digital seeds of doubt. This was reflected in the drop in AstraZeneca’s share price to a weekly low of 6,951p, a fall of 3.35% from its weekly high. Yet, what was most startling for authorities globally was the potential cataclysmic effect negative press could have on efforts to mobilise and win-over large portions of the global population, who are already sceptical of the vaccination movement.
AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, has found itself in the middle of a politically charged European battleground. As a former senior employee put it, AstraZeneca feels like “they are martyr-heroes coming to try and save the world”, yet their efforts are stuck in a “battle between the UK and the EU”. Indeed, the global vaccination effort, much like an Olympic track and field event, has shone a light on both winners and losers, as well as questions around those that may not start or finish the race. Statistics from Politico highlight that it is the United Kingdom, 46.79 vaccinations per 100 people, who is enjoying a considerable lead over its continental neighbours, the European Union, who have recorded 14.35 vaccinations per 100 people. European officials like Philippe Lamberts, co-leader of the Green group in the European Parliament, have been damning of AstraZeneca, blaming a “culture of unreliability”, which has led them to shoot “themselves in the foot permanently”. Whether AstraZeneca’s mismanagement of vaccine deliveries has been justly scapegoated by European authorities is highly doubtful, yet, the impact of a top-down critique of vaccination effort has a much more concerning effect.
In recently published findings from YouGov, public perception of vaccine safety in Europe has been significantly damaged as a result of politically charged efforts to negatively portray AstraZeneca’s vaccine efforts. Specifically, the number of those who consider the AstraZeneca vaccine to be safe has fallen across Europe, and most significantly in both Germany (43% to 32%) and France (33% to 23%). These statistics are cause for concern not only in efforts to neutralise the impacts of Covid-19, but, also in the link between the spread of misinformation in both countries over the past few months. Reports from an anonymous source in a German newspaper raised doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness in citizens over the age of 65. To compound the spread of this inaccurate and unfounded misinformation, Emmanuel Macron suggested that the vaccine was indeed “quasi-ineffective” for the elderly population. Furthermore, a 2020 report by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford concluded, that ‘three-quarters of respondents trust national or international public health organisations.’ Whilst this report gave timely evidence of a general swing towards trust in experts, it highlighted that the biggest threat to civil trust was high-level politician’s public criticism of companies, authorities, and experts. Recent examples of the mishandling of information by those in positions of significant influence and power has damaged pro-vaccination efforts globally. In this light, the words of WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, spoken in February last year, resonate ever more eerily today: “We’re not fighting an epidemic, we’re fighting an infodemic”.
Over the past year, the battle against Covid-19 has been fought primarily in the wards of hospitals across the globe. However, a growing digital ecosystem on social media platforms of misinformation and disinformation has become an interesting, but often overlooked battleground. Echoing concerns expressed by the WHO Director-General, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) emphasised the quick, wide and inexpensive ‘outbreak of disinformation’ across digital platforms. This disinformation ranged from subtle pages championing alternative medicines, to conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines and Covid-19: infertility, Bill Gates and 5G networks, to name just a few.
The importance of quashing damaging and exploitative misinformation has put tech giants, like Facebook and Twitter, at the forefront of this battle. An intriguing report by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), estimated that anti-vaccination groups had reached a total of 59.2 million members (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), with some accounts growing by 19% from 2019. Yet, as the CCDH report alluded, these networks are not just vast, but also hugely lucrative, as social media companies make around a billion dollars a year off the industry. This may be part of the reason why the CCDH reported that of the ‘912 posts flagged and reported… fewer than 1 in 20 posts containing misinformation were dealt with.’ Censorship of accounts poses an uncomfortable question from social media platforms that intend to facilitate freedom of speech. As Vish Viswanath a Professor of Health Communications at Harvard said, “De-platforming makes me nervous… This is an issue of freedom of speech”.
Indeed, power structures that look to censor anti-vaxx rhetoric fall into the unfortunate paradox of re-authenticating anti-vaccinators fears about governmental control and curtailing civil liberties. This can fuel a cyclical pattern where ‘pejorative labels and negative attitudes’ promote feelings of alterity within communities, a phenomenon common within cult’s. Interestingly, research has shown that anti-vaxx communities rely significantly on a small number of profiles or significant individuals. Specifically, from research using the web-monitoring tool CrowdTangle, it was found that only ‘seven anti-vax pages generated nearly 20% of the top 10,000 vaccination posts from 2016 to 2019. High profile anti-vaxxers like Robert F Kennedy Jr have become central to the dissemination of anti-vaccination propaganda. Recent controversy surrounding his online presence has focused upon Facebook and Twitter’s resistance to banning his accounts; after the production of his most recent documentary, Medical Racism, which critics have lambasted for targeting American minority groups. In the United Kingdom, videos such as Ask the Experts, a video depicting numerous ‘trustworthy’ healthcare professionals denounce vaccinations, have unnerved vulnerable pockets of the demography that may already be unsure about vaccinations. Whilst social media platforms have removed the video, platforms like WhatsApp have enabled damaging disinformation to spread like wildfire.
The temporary suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine offers a small window for anti-vaxxers to capitalise on anxieties surrounding Covid-19 vaccinations. Anti-vaccination tactics of disseminating highly emotive content enmeshed with, at times, confusingalternative authorities, which has proved as effective now, as it was in the 18th century. The challenge combating this dangerous rhetoric is multi-faceted. Moving forward, it is important that media platforms as well as politicians, institutions and, authorities are tactile, precise and subtle in their use and dissemination of power, politics, and information. AsHausman pointed out, “people don’t experience vaccine injury at the population level, they experience it personally”. If governments are going to succeed in deterring abstainers from the vaccination programmes more emphasis needs to be placed on a bottom-up approach which addresses individuals’ anxieties and concerns. As politicians have famously noted, emotion trumps logic. If governments, institutions and the medical authority are going to quash anti-vaccination sentiment, they’d be wise to heed to this, traditionally bureaucratic electoral wisdom.
