Online Nurses’ Groups Are Rife With Vaccine Disinformation
This could help explain why so many health care workers are refusing shots.
KIERA BUTLER FEBRUARY 2, 2021
motherjones.com
Nicole Bennett, a critical care nurse practitioner in Massachusetts, had always found humor and camaraderie in her Facebook group for nurses. She joined the group, called Nurses, in 2019, right after a Washington state senator had publicly suggested that nurses “probably play cards for a considerable amount of the day.” In the group, Bennett, whose name I’ve changed to protect her privacy, found nearly a million other nurses just as outraged as she was about the politician’s perception of their profession. The posts varied—from funny nurse memes to touching stories from busy shifts—but the comments were almost always supportive. When the pandemic hit, the group came together, cheering each other on as the worst of the first wave of cases came crashing over hospitals across the country. “It was a place of solidarity,” she recalls.
But this fall, Bennett noticed the tone slowly began to change. Members started posting about the US rollout of coronavirus vaccines, noting that health care workers would be first in line. While some in the group cheered this news, others railed against it. On December 11, a group administrator posted an article announcing the emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine. “My husband read an article to me from a physician who works for one of the big pharms (I wish I could remember which one) that stated there’s evidence that one of the vaccines can and had caused sterility in women,” one commenter said.
Another commenter added: “Just keep this in mind—taking the vaccine will not release you from the perils of face masks and social distancing. The torture will continue, while your DNA is being genetically modified by design.”
Bennett knew that these claims weren’t supported by science—the mRNA vaccine can’t change DNA, and there is no evidence that it can cause infertility. So she politely pointed members to evidence of the vaccine’s safety. But over the coming weeks, vaccine myths took over the group—and they seemed to be swaying members’ decisions of whether or not to get vaccinated. A December 19 post by an administrator linked to an article about supposedly dangerous side effects. “After 50 years working full time as a nurse, I will retire rather than be forced to get it,” one commenter said. Bennett couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m embarrassed that other nurses think and feel this because they represent us,” she says. “I finally just left, because I can’t do this.”
Bennett was surprised to see fellow nurses falling for unscientific rumors about the vaccine. The nurses she knew kept up with medical journals and were proud of their expertise. Yet the vaccine skepticism in her Facebook group is emblematic of a larger trend. In a December survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 29 percent of health care workers expressed doubt about the COVID-19 vaccines. In some hospital systems, the number is much higher. The LA Times reported that half of health care workers in California’s Riverside County refused the vaccine. Some reasons for their hesitance are understandable: Many worry that the vaccine was hastily developed; others resent overbearing hospital administrators forcing them to get a shot on top of increasingly impossible pandemic workloads. For some health care workers of color, wariness is rooted in their history of trauma at the hands of the medical establishment.
Thus far, there’s been no unified effort on the part of the government to address these valid concerns. As a result, in the absence of clear and easily accessible information, many health care workers turn to social media, where rumors can take hold and spread. Indeed, I found vaccine misinformation in every nurse social media group I visited. On the Facebook group of Nurseup.com, a community for nurses with more than 4,000 members, administrator Andrew Lopez regularly posts memes touting the supposed dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines. Members of the Facebook group Funny Nurses, with more than 1.7 million followers, have shared memes likening vaccination programs to Nazi concentration camps.
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