When Facebook friends ‘share’ questionable things

Everyone has at least one friend on Facebook who has ‘shared’ something questionable to your News Feed. Sometimes it’s a girl from high school sharing a link about how essential oils are the to cure cancer and sometimes its a distant relative posting an article making outlandish claims about a politician.

Facebook is often a social media platform where misinformation is easily spread. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.  

What always shocked me was just how little the people posting this content knew about the subject.  Recently, a Facebook friend shared a picture that caught my attention. It showed someone holding up an information sheet about the flu vaccine and it read,

Here are some things in the insert not on the store’s sheet:
1. The single dose vial contains mercury at ≤1mcg (This is called a “trace amount” by the industry.) (The multi-vial contains 25 mcg.)
2. People with egg allergies are contraindicated.
3. “Safety and effectiveness have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under four. There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. This vaccine should be used during pregnancy only if clearly needed. It is not known whether fluvarin is excreted in human milk.”
4. “Fluvarin has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility.”
5. “Antibody response is low in the geriatric population.”
6. “Serious reactions, including anaphylactic shock, have been observed.”
7. “There are no data to assess the concomitant administration of flu vaccine with other vaccines.”
8. “The vaccine has been associated with an increased frequency of Guillain-Barre syndrome.”
9. “In some studies, fluvarin protected up to 50% of subjects.”

Now obviously the woman who originally made this post chose those points because she thought they highlighted some ugly hidden facts about vaccines that “Big Pharma” wouldn’t like people to know. I’m not an expert in vaccines, but a few years of school and the little bit of common sense I have made a few of those points seem ridiculously obvious.

A commonly discussed topic on Facebook is the efficacy and possible side effects of vaccines, too often without any scientific evidence referenced. Image courtesy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Unfortunately, many people don’t seem to care to fact check what they share and a lot of misinformation ends up being spread like wildfire. I wanted to see just how easy it would be to find out more about each of the points made in her post. Turns out, it was really easy. Much to my chagrin I must admit, I became a bit of a keyboard warrior.

Now I should point out that this post is by far one of the tamer ones I’ve seen get passed around. No one is claiming that our government is deliberately giving us cancer by infecting our water sources or that global warming is a conspiracy fabricated by the Chinese (yes I’m referring to Drumpf supporters). It’s not even outright stating vaccines are bad. It is however, trying to shine a negative light on vaccines without any scientific research to back it up.

So Facebook friends, PLEASE don’t believe everything you read, and DO fact check before spreading what could be falsehoods. Google is an amazing tool and the world wide web is at your fingertips, so you don’t have any excuses. In the meantime, please feel free to forward this video to any Facebook friends who insist on sharing anti-vaccine posts.