Anvisa did not withdraw warning about Pfizer vaccine to harm Bolsonaro – 06/10/2023 – Health

A video on Instagram misleads by saying that an alert by Anvisa regarding side effects associated with Pfizer’s vaccine against Covid-19 was removed from the air to jeopardize the re-election of then-President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in 2022. During the period of electoral closure, a measure foreseen by law since 1997 to prevent those in power from using the public communication machine to campaign, the agency withdrew from the air the news that talked about case records of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccinated with immunizations of the type mRNA, but the technical document on the subject, dated July 2, 2021, was still published.

In 2022, the electoral closure was from July 2 to October 30, due to the second round, and was applied to all government communication channels, including profiles on social networks.

The Anvisa website, as verified by the Comprova Project, even published a note on July 1, 2022 warning that the texts would be off the air during that period, even those published before the closed season. The text about Pfizer’s vaccine was hidden at that time, but returned to the site on August 8, by “decision of the technical area”, according to the agency.

The report found 12 records of the page in question in the Wayback Machine tool between August 8 and October 30, that is, within the electoral closed period, including within the campaign period. The tool captures and stores website pages as they are on a given date.

The author of the misleading video misinterprets an update made to the agency’s note. On December 7, 2022, Anvisa added an explanation about the electoral closure to the 2021 text about Pfizer, clarifying why it was taken off the air. Therefore, the “update date” that appears at the top of the text was changed to December 7, implying that it only returned to the air on this date.

Misleading, for Comprova, is all content removed from the original context and used in another so that its meaning undergoes changes; that uses inaccurate data or that induces an interpretation different from the author’s intention; content that is confusing, with or without the deliberate intent to cause harm.

Reach

Comprova investigates suspicious content with greater reach on social networks. A user who recorded himself watching the video with the misleading claims got from the day the post was posted, on April 25, to June 8, 526,000 views. Comprova did not find the original video on the author’s profile.

How do we check

The team contacted Anvisa to find out if the content had been removed from the site during the electoral closure period, searched for versions of the note archived over time on the Wayback Machine site and contacted the people who appear in the piece of misinformation. The author of the content was recognized, because other content published by her had already been checked by Comprova.

The video

Digital content creator Cristiane Luz alleges that Anvisa’s warning about the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis by Pfizer, published on July 9, 2021, “was removed from the website and republished on December 7, 2022, after the result of the second round of elections”. She arrives at this conclusion because she reads a report that was added to the note on December 7 about the electoral closure period.

Later, the author of the video concludes: “they withdrew very important information for the population so as not to benefit candidate Jair Messias Bolsonaro. In other words, they politicized the pandemic. They politicized medications.”

On the Wayback Machine, there are records of the note during the electoral closure, which proves that the content was available to the public during that period.

What is the Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is a website that allows you to archive web pages. This is especially useful when you want to check different versions of the same content over time. For example, you can see what YouTube’s main page looked like when the site first appeared in 2005, and the changes that have taken place since then. As a curiosity, from April 28, 2005 to June 8, 2023, the URL www.youtube.com was saved over 17 million times.

The creators of the Wayback Machine explain that the objective is to build a digital library. They estimate they have 735 billion pages archived. Of this total, 103 files are screenshots of Anvisa’s note.

Up in the air

Anvisa’s note was published on July 9, 2021. From that day to April 11, 2023, the Wayback Machine website recorded 103 screenshots of the note, 12 of which took place during the electoral closure period, from July 2 to September 30. October. This means that the content of the note was available to the public in the days leading up to the elections.

The image above shows that there are no records of the note between July 2nd and August 8th, when Anvisa claims to have removed the content from the air. But there are later accessions, on the 12th, 13th, 14th and 19th of August, 10th and 26th of September and 23rd and 28th of October. This belies the allegation of the author of the video that the content would only have returned to the air in December.

The filings of the note made from December 8, 2022 onwards differ from the previous ones in one aspect: the insertion of the explanation about the electoral closure period. Comparing, for example, the capture taken on October 28th with that of December 8th, it can be seen that the content of the alert has not changed and that the difference between the two versions lies in the gray warning inserted between the title and the text.

Covid-19 and myocarditis

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is inflammation of the outer lining of the heart. In both cases, the body’s immune system causes inflammation in response to an infection or some other factor. Symptoms may include chest pain, shortness of breath or palpitations.

Both of these conditions can occur as rare side effects in people who have had messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, such as those from Pfizer and Moderna.

According to data from the PNI (National Immunization Program), available on the Anvisa website, by December 31, 2022, 501,573,962 doses of vaccines against Covid-19 were administered in the country. During this period, 154 cases of myocarditis were reported, defined according to criteria of the Brighton Collaboration (global non-profit vaccine safety research network for health professionals), occurring after vaccines. This corresponds to an incidence of 3 in every 1 million doses applied.

Anvisa points out, however, that the protection of the vaccine against Covid-19 outweighs the possible risk. The rate of myocarditis in people affected by the coronavirus is 30 cases per million for the general population.

What the person responsible for the publication says

A private message was sent to the Instagram profile of the author of the content and the user who shared the video. Until the 8th of June, the Comprova team had not received a response.

What can we learn from this check

The distortion of true information or the omission of important details about a given fact are tactics used by many disinformers and also a common practice in publications that do not use journalistic criteria to investigate information. Therefore, it is important to be wary of people who make conspiracy claims, seek the original source of the information and research the subject on reliable websites.

why do we investigate

Comprova monitors suspicious content published on social networks and messaging apps about public policies and elections at the federal level and opens investigations for those publications that have achieved greater reach and engagement. You can also suggest checks via WhatsApp +55 11 97045-4984. Suggestions and questions related to questionable content can also be sent to Sheet via WhatsApp 11 99486-0293.

Other checks on the topic

Covid and myocarditis have already been the target of other checks by Comprova, such as the one that showed that a Bayern Munich player did not have the heart disease due to the vaccine and that the protection offered by the vaccine outweighs the risk of myocarditis, unlike than a website and a doctor said.