Anti-vaxxers have twisted publicly available safety data from Medsafe to falsely argue the Covid-19 vaccine is dangerous, raising questions about whether the data should be public in the first place. Marc Daalder reports.
Only one death in New Zealand has been tentatively linked to the Covid-19 vaccine, but anti-vaxxers are twisting official data to falsely argue that many more people have died after being immunised.
The issue stems from the publicly available safety reports issued each week by Medsafe, the medicines regulator. These reports track adverse events reported by medical professionals or members of the public to have happened after vaccination.
However, they are not themselves evidence of a link between adverse events and vaccination, as the report makes clear: "Reports are sent to [the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring] CARM if the reporter suspects that the vaccine may have caused the event. This does not necessarily mean that the vaccine did cause the event."
The 'reporter' can be a member of the public logging any death, but the headline number on the page of the total for such 'reports' is still presented on the Medsafe page.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health confirmed this to Newsroom.
"You don’t have to be a health professional to submit a report and you don’t need to be certain that the reaction was caused by the vaccine," the spokesperson said.
"This means that not all of the reported events have a causal relationship to the vaccine. For example, death in the days following vaccination can be coincidental.
"When a large number of people are being vaccinated, including elderly people and those with significant long-term health issues, there is a high probability that some people will die by chance after their vaccination."
Whenever a death is reported, it is investigated by CARM and Medsafe. Those investigations led to the confirmation in August that a woman who died of myocarditis likely suffered the event as a result of the vaccine.
However, none of the other deaths reported to Medsafe and CARM thus far have been linked to the vaccine. From the 5.7 million doses of vaccine administered through October 9, 91 deaths have been reported by the public as potentially linked. Of these, 35 have been assessed as not likely to be linked, 33 did not have enough information to be assessed and 22 are still under investigation. Just the one August death has been "likely" linked to the vaccine.
"If there is a death that is linked to a Covid-19 vaccine, we will tell you, just as we report the sad deaths of people who have died from Covid-19," the ministry spokesperson said.
In fact, data from Medsafe shows that people who have been vaccinated are no more likely to die in the three weeks after their shot than others their age in a given three-week period. Based on the usual death rates from between 2008 and 2019, Medsafe has determined for example that 32 people aged between 50 and 59 would normally die of other causes in these three-week periods. Among those who have received their first shot, just nine deaths have been reported in that age group.
This hasn't stopped anti-vaccine activists from misusing the Medsafe data - and sometimes falsely inflating the figures - to argue that numerous people have died in New Zealand from the vaccine.
"We've definitely observed the misuse of Medsafe data. Initially, three to four weeks ago, that was actually doctored data. Then, almost as if that piece of doctored data which was shared quite widely on Telegram and then on Facebook, then drew attention to the Medsafe reporting, which is just a low-key part of the Ministry of Health website," Kate Hannah, a principal investigator at Te Pūnaha Matatini and the head of the Disinformation Project, told Newsroom.
"We actually talked to the ministry and the Unite Against Covid-19 team about how we could see that this was going to go on to be continuously instrumentalised as propaganda, basically, with either a wilful misunderstanding or genuine confusion about what the Medsafe data entails, why it's reported and why it's reported in that manner."
Hannah suggested officials should be more proactive around explaining what the data means when it is updated each week. That could even be in the form of statements from the 1pm Covid-19 updates or separate communications from top officials like Director of Public Health Caroline McElnay.
Chris James, the group manager for Medsafe, told Newsroom he was aware data was being misused.
"It is disappointing that people are misusing information from Medsafe’s safety reports," he said.
"While we try to use easy-to-understand language, our website by necessity is very technical because the purpose is to provide the scientific information that our typical audience relies on. We are frequently asked for this level of technical information to be made available, hence it is provided in the interests of transparency. The technical detail is consistent with what is presented by many medicine regulators around the world."
James said Medsafe is just following its usual practice of publishing details of adverse reaction reports for all medicines.
Jess Berentson-Shaw, a co-director of the Workshop and an expert on the science of communication, including misinformation, agreed with Hanah that more explanatory material needed to be wrapped around the data.
"They need to have a narrative around it. This comes down to, there's a lack of knowledge about how to do that in a way which helps the public understand what it all means," she said.
"The mindset within the public service - and there is a lot of hand-tying going on as well - is that you just put facts out there. But transparent data is not the same as good communicating and it's not the same as explaining. You're simply describing, you're not in any way explaining what does this mean for people."
This is something the Government should have been prepared for already, Berentson-Shaw said. She raised concerns about a lack of a misinformation strategy tailored to the vaccine rollout in November 2020.
"Quite a lot of researchers in the space of misinformation and false information identified early on that this would be an issue," she said on Thursday.
"In a mass vaccination, you would get associations where people by coincidence die at the same time or just after they get vaccinations. Researchers identified that you were going to have to explain to the public, prior to this, what to expect."
While some might want the Medsafe page to be taken down, given it is being misused, Hannah said that would likely only inspire a further set of conspiracy theories alleging a cover-up. Moreover, the information is genuinely important for medical professionals to have access to.
"It's too late. And it wouldn't be helpful," she said.
