Conspiracy theories about first vaccine recipients spread like wildfire
Following the initial UK roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine, various far-fetched falsehoods have been spread on social media about the first recipients.
A WhatsApp post flagged to us by our readers falsely claimed the same nurse was seen giving the jab to the first two recipients, at different clinics 20 miles apart.
But they weren’t 20 miles apart. The first two recipients, Margaret Keenan and William Shakespeare, were both vaccinated at University Hospital Coventry. Neither was vaccinated in Stratford-upon-Avon, as the post claims.
The post goes on to claim that CNN used a photo of Mr Shakespeare getting the vaccine back in October.
This is also false– it was based on a current screenshot of an article dated back in October, which featured a rolling news video next to the article.
Since the screenshot of the article was taken last week, the video featured current news footage of Mr Shakespeare being vaccinated.
This year we saw false rumours about vaccines and bad reporting add to confusion and anxiety. Repeated false claims in parliament only heightened distrust felt by many of us.
Our supporters have helped us debunk hundreds of dangerously false claims about the coronavirus, and protect millions of people from bad information.
But with false claims about vaccines threatening to hamper vaccine uptake in 2021, independent fact checking will be critical to keeping people safe next year.
The Labour leader claimed that only 11% of people self-isolate when asked to do so by NHS Test and Trace, arguing that many fail to self-isolate because they cannot afford to do so.
The 11% figure apparently originates in a government-funded research paper (not yet peer-reviewed) that contains a finding that: “Of [the 405 people] who reported having been alerted by the NHS contact tracing service and told they had been in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case, 10.9% reported that they had not left home at all in the following 14 days.”
This research didn’t actually cover people who needed to self-isolate because they tested positive, or had symptoms themselves—only those who were asked to do so because they had been in close contact with a confirmed case.
The paper observed a slightly higher rate of self-isolation compliance, at 18.2%, among people who actually had Covid symptoms.
While self-isolation may have placed a financial burden on many people, based on the available evidence, this is not a major factor reported by people who do not self-isolate correctly. Just 8.9% said that they broke the rules in order to go to work.
This week we published the second report on our experience of the Third-Party Fact-Checking programme run by Facebook.
We attempt in these reports to create further transparency around the Third-Party Fact-Checking programme, so that people can reach informed judgements and others can learn from it.
Progress has been made by Facebook to address our previous recommendations since our last report in July 2019, and the programme has improved Full Fact’s ability to tackle bad information during the 2019 UK election, and ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
But we also have also raised concerns about transparency and scale, and the need for more information on the impact of the programme to be made available by Facebook.
The report sets out an updated set of recommendations to improve the programme, and also call on the UK government to play its part in responding to misinformation and disinformation.
Over the past few years online misinformation has become a concern for many fact checking organisations. Many have expanded their monitoring to include online platforms and adopted new skill sets and tools.
Full Fact has carried out research into the main challenges faced by fact checkers around the world when finding and checking claims that appear online.
Our report, based on interviews with nineteen fact checkers across the globe, includes ideas for helping to address some of the most common challenges, and how technology and internet companies can help.
