On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced in a press release that their vaccine candidate was more than 90 percent effective at preventing Covid-19 infection, based on initial results from their ongoing phase 3 clinical trial. The company expects to have applied for emergency use authorization with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the end of November and could have as many as 50 million doses produced by the end of 2020.
This is tremendous news — and misinformation about it is already circulating on social media. According to research from VineSight, a slew of Twitter accounts, including those of Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz, are already questioning the timing of the results’ release just days after the presidential election. By midday, tweets pushing that narrative had racked up more than 20,000 shares. The researchers estimate that Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet alone could have been seen by nearly 7 million people.
The dream of bringing a speedy end to the pandemic is a complicated one. Even when a vaccine does win initial FDA authorization in the United States, we should expect a lengthy period of “chaos and confusion,” one expert recently told the New York Times. Much of that disarray could play out on social media.
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Source: Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine raises questions about social media’s readiness – Vox