Misinformation spreading in Croatia about people getting worse after receiving Covid vaccine

Photo: Tanjug/AP

Disinformation about the numbers of people whose health deteriorated or who died from the Covid vaccine is spreading on social networks in Croatia.

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According to Index.hr, this is fake news the sources of which are, among others, the sites "Istinom protiv lazi" i "Dokumentarac" ("Truth Against Lies" and "Documentary").

The key theses of the articles published on these sites are that the four vaccines that can be received in Croatia (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson) are experimental, that they do more harm than the virus itself, that even the Norwegian healthcare system has acknowledged that vaccines have so far caused over 10,000 deaths and over 400,000 cases of deteriorated health in Europe.

To illustrate, the title of one text on the "Truth Against Lies" portal reads, "European database: 10,570 DEAD and 405,259 sick after vaccination!"

The authors then say that Covid-19 "is not a virus but a satanic project of depopulation of the world's population," that even the scary figures they present are only a small percentage of the real ones, and that in every country where a vaccination campaign is conducted, "mortality increased immediately after the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine."

The authors of anti-vaxxer pamphlets are obviously aware that any conspiracy theory must contain some amount of truth in order to make it viral and credible to a layperson.

Therefore, both sites avoid writing that these are people who died from the vaccine and correctly write that they died after vaccination, as is stated in the EudraVigilance database.

However, from the context of the articles, as well as from the comments on the Facebook pages of the same sources, it is clear that the authors want readers to conclude that there is a confirmed causal relationship between vaccination and death, and not just a temporal correlation, and that they are succeeding.

There is no doubt that thousands of people who shared these texts are convinced of that, writes Index.hr.

(Telegraf.rs)