Anthony Fauci assured that eradicating smallpox or polio would have been impossible with the current misinformation on vaccines

Eradicating diseases like smallpox would have been impossible with the amount of vaccine misinformation currently spreading in the United States.Senior White House adviser on the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, said on Saturday.

“If we had had the rejection of the vaccines that we see in some media, I don’t think it would have been possible to eradicate smallpox,” said the immunologist in a channel interview CNN.

“Probably we would still have smallpox, and we would probably still have polio in this country, if we had had the kind of misinformation that is so prevalent now, ”he added.

Friday, President Joe Biden had accused major social media operators of “killing people” by spreading false information about vaccines, while the United States tries to reactivate a vaccination campaign which has slowed down.

“They kill people. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated “Biden pointed out before boarding the Marine One helicopter to travel to the presidential residence in Camp David, Maryland, United States.

In addition, the spokesperson for the White House, Jen Psaki reiterated the accusation against China and Russia of spreading misinformation on social media about the side effects and effectiveness of vaccines created in the West to promote their own covid-19 sera, and said it was based on in data compiled by the State Department.

Psaki has denied one of the reports that have become popular in the United States in recent weeks, which suggests that the inoculations can cause infertility. “This has been refuted time and time again”he insisted.

Thursday, the highest American health authority, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned of the “urgent threat” posed by misinformation about COVID-19, at a time when cases are on the rise and vaccination rates have stagnated.

The White House has also repeatedly asked Facebook to censor this type of unverified or official information.

Facebook lambasted these criticisms, presuming it had “saved lives”. with measures that allow its users to have better access to the vaccine.

“We will not be distracted by accusations that are not supported by the facts.”Facebook said after Biden’s comments. More than 2 billion people have accessed authorized information on covid-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is way more than any other website, the social network added.

smallpox, which killed around 300 million people in the 20th century, more than armed conflict, it was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980 thanks to the global vaccination effort launched after World War II.

The Polio, officially eradicated since August 2020 from Africa thanks to the vaccine, is resistant in Asia, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where this disease, which causes paralysis in young children, remains endemic.

The failure of vaccination campaigns in these countries can be explained in particular by the mistrust of rural populations and the belief in conspiracy theories against Muslims.

The slowdown in the vaccination rate by The United States has been particularly visible in the 12-15 age group, which CDC data shows has stagnated in recent weeks.

In fact, only 25.8% of this population group is fully vaccinated; compared to more than 47% in people between 25 and 39 years old or 74% between 50 and 64 years old.

” We see the youngest hospitalized at that time compared to what we have seen before, when we did not have the vast majority of the elderly vaccinated ”, White House pandemic response coordinator Jeff Zients said, referring to the 77% of those over 75 vaccinated in the United States.

With information from AFP, EFE

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