Recently, antivaxxers were all over social media after Tucker Carlson touted a “revelation” that the phase 3 clinical trial used to support licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine didn’t examine its ability to block transmission as meaning that its inability to block transmission had been “covered up”. It wasn’t, and antivaxxers are ignoring everything we’ve learned over the last two years to make the claim that vaccines “don’t prevent transmission”.
Recently, a claim that Pfizer’s own documents demonstrate that the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine was only 12% went viral. This is a slasher stat, so-named because like the killers in slasher movie series, even when it appears to be dead it always reappears to kill again. This particular myth originated in The BMJ in 2021.
On Monday the FDA granted full approval to Comirnaty, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. By Tuesday, antivaxxers had a propaganda line that the vaccine is still “experimental.”
