Pfizer has never tested its vaccine for third-party protection. Right-wing circles speak of a “vaccination lie”. Did the media misinform?
The back and forth about the effectiveness of the vaccination campaign caused uncertainty among the population. View of the booster vaccination center in Zurich Oerlikon in December 2021.
When the vaccination campaign picked up speed in early 2021, there was general hope that a high vaccination rate could soon put an end to the corona pandemic. The pressure on all those who did not want to be vaccinated increased significantly as a result. However, this did not only come from politicians and scientists, but also from the media, such as a report in the German “Tagezeitung” («TAZ») illustrated at the end of August 2021.
At several tourist hotspots, in cinemas and restaurants in the German capital, the authors inspected the admission controls and found that the vaccination certificates were only briefly checked in many places, if at all. Her conclusion: “It is surprising that nobody at the federal and state level is really interested in whether and how the 3G rule is being reviewed. Because it is now practically the only instrument that the federal and state governments rely on in the fight against the rising corona numbers. And they are currently increasing at high speed.”
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At that time, a number of journalists in the local media also insisted on the introduction of stricter measures. «Compulsory vaccination is the lesser evil», it said in a comment in the «Tages-Anzeiger» of November 18, 2021. In it, the author argues: «The question of mandatory vaccination is not about good or bad, and all comparisons to dictatorships and apartheid associations are obscene. It’s about the classic weighing up of costs and benefits, about the dilemma of which of the two evils caused by an emergency is the greater.” A comment in the “Berner Zeitung” was similar: “Now it is mandatory to vaccinate”, it read on December 11, 2021.
On the other hand, the NZZ headlined on November 9, 2021 “Problematic indirect compulsory vaccination due to the Covid certificate”. The accompanying article states: “Vaccination against Covid-19 is a key tool in combating the corona pandemic. From a legal point of view, however, the ‘pressure on the unvaccinated’ deliberately created with the Covid certificate must be questioned.” These examples show that the media was heavily involved in pandemic policy – and many saw vaccination or even compulsory vaccination as the solution to all problems.
Critical reports about the federal government’s corona measures were generally few and far between. This is shown by the analyzes of the Zurich student Clara Goebel, who evaluated 42,000 articles published between January 2020 and April 2022 in 48 Swiss newspapers and online platforms as part of a master’s thesis. The reporting on the question of how far the public was deceived in terms of the vaccination effect is now also strikingly toothless.
The Biontech boss raises high expectations, “Bild” celebrates
Ever since a Pfizer representative confirmed at a hearing in the EU Parliament that the vaccine had not been tested for third-party protection before it was approved, there has been talk of a “vaccination lie” in primarily right-wing and vaccination-critical circles. The vaccine manufacturers Biontech/Pfizer are accused of having fooled the public into believing that their vaccine would prevent the spread of the new corona virus.
Anyone reading the publicly available results of the approval studies can easily see that this does not correspond to the facts. This shows that the external protection was not tested. However, this does not relieve the media and politicians of their responsibility. Especially since the approval studies were obviously hardly read. Instead of questioning their own role when it comes to exaggerated promises of vaccination, some leading media are currently focusing on denying the existence of a “vaccination lie”.
Under the title “Foreign protection was given” For example, the “Faktenfinder” of the German ARD claims on October 19, 2022 that the vaccination initially protected against transmission of the virus – and thus protects all those politicians and journalists who had claimed exactly that. Federal Councilor Alain Berset (SP) justified the obligation to have a certificate with the following (wrong) sentence: “The certificate shows that you are no longer contagious.” The founder and CEO of Biontech, Ugur Sahin, made a similar statement shortly after the start of the vaccination. “The number of people who have a positive corona PCR test and are therefore potentially contagious decreases by 92 percent after vaccination,” he said.Bild» newspaper on February 27, 2021. The journalist from the “Bild” newspaper concluded from this: “Means: vaccinated people are no longer contagious!”
Hopes for herd immunity that never existed
Celebrated by “Bild” as a “vaccination hero”, the Biontech boss did not say the untruth. Because in the interview he does not refer to his own approval study, but to a survey in Israel. However, this only took into account a period of up to seven days after the second vaccination. Like many other studies from the very beginning, it was therefore far too short to clarify whether vaccinated people can pass on the new corona virus or not. Nonetheless, these studies reinforced the belief then widespread that rapid population immunization could eradicate the virus. In July 2020 – and thus long before the corona vaccine was available – the Swiss epidemiologist Marcel Salathé said in the “View”: “Herd immunity will come with the vaccine.”
What many have probably already forgotten: For a long time there was an intense debate about how large the proportion of vaccinated and recovered people in the population must be in order to achieve so-called herd immunity and prevent the virus from spreading. If scientists initially spoke of 60 to 70 percent, they corrected their estimates upwards over time. This is what a German mathematician said in October 2021 in «Focus»: «With the delta mutant, which occurs almost exclusively in our country, we should achieve herd immunity with an immunization rate of 80 percent of the total population.»
Other scientist expressed against it early doubt in the achievability of this goal. The fact that the number of infections keeps increasing massively – and that, although loudly BAG around 97 percent of the Swiss population have now been vaccinated or recovered – shows that the skeptics were right. The constant back and forth with regard to the goals and the effect of the vaccination campaign caused considerable uncertainty among the population.
Despite the reporting, which is not always critical and sometimes confusing, the acceptance of the media does not seem to have suffered during the corona pandemic, quite the opposite. According to Christian Hoffmann from the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig, the traditional media have even gained popularity during the corona pandemic. “As our surveys in Germany show, many people got their information about Corona from daily newspapers, radio and television. On the other hand, they trusted the social networks much less.”