People Aren’t Stupid: They’re Wary of False Information About COVID-19
Published in General & Internal Medicine and Arts & Humanities
In 2021, I traveled to six West African countries to conduct a study on COVID-19 perceptions and lead training sessions on public awareness. COVID-19 vaccination, which began in March or April depending on the country, was a clear failure—very few people were showing up to get vaccinated. Since February 2020, the WHO had been repeating that an “infodemic” of false information about COVID-19 was “just as dangerous” as the pandemic itself, in the words of its Director-General. This infodemic was often said to explain the low vaccine uptake.
However, the discussions I had and the interviews I conducted did not suggest that people were particularly distrustful of COVID-19 vaccines. A large portion of the population didn’t see themselves at risk from COVID-19. Many believed it was a “white people’s disease” and thought Africans were protected either by the climate or by some kind of natural immunity. Misinformation about vaccines didn’t seem to play a role in the low uptake, even though African countries had the lowest vaccination coverage in the world.
In 2023, I conducted a study on COVID-19 vaccination in Niger, where only 22% of the population was vaccinated. The study confirmed my previous observations (https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.23-0708). A high 73.3% of the population believed that COVID-19 vaccines were “a good thing,” and 83% of those who had heard vaccine promotion messages supported them. This clearly showed that, at least in Niger, low vaccine uptake wasn’t due to mistrust of vaccines.
Since 2021, it had also become clear that the alarmist narratives and articles from 2020 predicting that a wave of misinformation would prevent adequate vaccine coverage had been wrong. In industrialized countries, people rushed to get vaccinated as soon as the vaccines became available. The pessimistic forecasts proved completely off base.
That led me to compare the intention to get vaccinated expressed in 2020 with actual uptake, and to evaluate whether exposure to false information had influenced the gap between intent and uptake. In other words, to see if misinformation had dissuaded some people from getting vaccinated. The results of this study, conducted in 46 countries and published in Discover Public Health, were unequivocal: there is no connection between exposure to misinformation online or on social media and the difference between stated vaccination intentions and actual uptake.
The internet and social media carry far more accurate health information than false information. Studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, this is even more true for COVID-19 than for other health topics. You’d have to hold the public in pretty low regard to believe they’re more influenced by false information than by accurate information.
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