TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Chinese state media have raised concerns about Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, despite rigorous testing indicating it is safe. A government spokesman has raised the unfounded theory that the coronavirus could have emerged from a U.S. military lab, giving more credibility to China.
As the ruling Communist Party faces growing questions about China’s vaccines and repeats criticism of its first response to COVID-19, it is responding by encouraging conspiracy theories that some experts say could cause harm.
Media and state officials sow doubts about Western vaccines and the origin of the coronavirus in an apparent attempt to deflect attacks. Both issues are in the spotlight due to the launch of vaccines worldwide and the recent arrival of a World Health Organization team in Wuhan (China) to investigate the origins of the virus.
Some of these conspiracy theories find a receptive audience at home. The social media hashtag “American’s Ft. Detrick, ”initiated by the Communist Youth League, was seen at least 1.4 billion times last week after a Foreign Ministry spokesman called for a WHO investigation into the Maryland Biological Weapons Laboratory.
“Its purpose is to shift the blame for mishandling by the Chinese government (the early days of the pandemic) to the U.S. conspiracy,” said Fang Shimin, a U.S.-based writer known for exposing degrees. fakes and other frauds in Chinese science. . “The tactic is quite successful because of the widespread anti-American sentiment in China.”
Yuan Zeng, a Chinese media expert at the University of Leeds in Britain, said the government’s stories spread so widely that even well-educated Chinese friends asked him if they could be true.
The incidence of doubts and the spread of conspiracy theories can add risks to public health as governments try to dispel unease over vaccines, he said, “This is super, super dangerous.”
In the latest publication, state media called for an investigation into the deaths of 23 elderly people in Norway after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. An anchor on CGTN, the English-language state-run CCTV and the Global Times accused the Western media of ignoring the news.
Health experts say non-vaccine-related deaths are possible during mass vaccination campaigns and a WHO group has concluded that the vaccine did not play a “contributing role” in Norway’s deaths.
State media coverage followed a report by researchers in Brazil who found the effectiveness of a Chinese vaccine lower than previously announced. Researchers initially said the Sinovac vaccine is 78% effective, but scientists reviewed it to 50.4% after including slightly symptomatic cases.
After Brazil news, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-backed think tank, reported increased Chinese media misinformation about vaccines.
Dozens of online articles on popular science and health blogs and elsewhere have explored questions about the long-term effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine, based on a publication published this month in the British Medical Journal that raises questions about their clinical trial data.
“It’s very embarrassing” for the government, Fang said in an email. As a result, China is trying to raise doubts about the Pfizer vaccine to save face and promote its vaccines, he said.
Senior Chinese government officials have not been shy in expressing concerns about mRNA vaccines developed by Western pharmaceutical companies. They use newer technology than the more traditional approach of the Chinese vaccines currently in use.
In December, the director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, said he could not rule out the negative side effects of mRNA vaccines. Noting that this is the first time it has been given to healthy people, he said, “there are safety issues.”
The Pfizer mRNA vaccine and one developed by Moderna have passed animal and human trials in which more than 70,000 people were tested.
The arrival of the WHO the mission has returned persistent criticism that China allowed the virus to spread worldwide by reacting too slowly at first, even reprimanding doctors who tried to warn the public. Visiting researchers will begin fieldwork this week after being released from a 14-day quarantine.
The Communist Party sees the WHO investigation as a political risk because it focuses on China’s response, said Jacob Wallis, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Policy in Australia.
The party wants to “distract national and international audiences by preemptively distorting the narrative in which the responsibility for the emergence of COVID-19 lies,” Wallis said.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying rolled the ball last week by reviving previous Chinese requests for a WHO investigation into the U.S. military laboratory.
State media have referred to past scandals in the lab, but China has given no reliable evidence to support coronavirus theory.
“If the United States respects the truth, open Ft. Detrick and make public more information about 200 or more bio-laboratories outside the US, and allow the WHO expert group to go to the US to investigate the origins, ”Hua said.
His comments, advertised by state media, became one of the most popular topics on China’s Sina Weibo, similar to Twitter.
China is not the only government pointing the finger. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who was trying to divert blame for the pandemic’s management by his government, said last year that he had seen evidence that the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan. Although this theory has not been definitively ruled out, many experts think it is unlikely.