Over the course of May, English-language media coverage of vaccines was dominated by the US Food and Drug Administration’s decision to extend use of the Pfizer vaccine to young adolescents, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated guidance on mask-wearing for fully vaccinated people.
The CDC’s new recommendations on mask-wearing resulted in considerable confusion and, to a lesser extent, fringe conspiratorial narratives that framed the rules as being part of a wider plan to implement “health passports.” The FDA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds sparked widespread online criticism on moral and ethical grounds. Many online anti-vaccine sources cited the news to claim that governments are attempting to subject children to an unsafe Covid-19 vaccine “mass experiment.”
Source: Vaccine Misinformation Insights Report: May | First Draft