How vaccine misinformation keeps growing in India

Using multiple platforms and tricks to beat moderators, anti-vaxxers are spreading rumours about people turning impotent or magnetic after jabs

- Sonam Joshi

On June 9, Nashik resident Jayant Sonar saw the video of a man in Delhi who claimed to have acquired magnetic powers after getting vaccinated. Sonar stuck some coins, steel spoons and plates on his 72-year-old father Arvind, who had got his second jab a week earlier, though the same trick didn’t work on his vaccinated mother. The video went viral even though several experts pointed out that it was simple surface tension on moist skin that was causing some objects to stick.

In many ways, Sonar’s case is a classic example of how misinformation can grow around a kernel of truth and spawn a whole tide of untruths that finds its way into people’s minds through social media videos and forwards. According to recent research by BBC Monitoring, anti-vaccination pages in India grew by 50% in 2020, faster than 2018 and 2019.

TOI found a Google document, Twitter handle and Telegram channel counting ‘Covid-19 vaccine deaths in India’ from anecdotal and unverified sources. Vaccine-related misinformation is often closely intertwined with a range of conspiracy theories about “a new world order” and hidden “agenda”. It can vary from claims that vaccines don’t work to fear-provoking videos about vaccines containing tracking devices or altering our DNA. “Negative social media posts about vaccines have brought a troubling escalation of the anti-vaccine movement,” says Syed Nazakat, founder, Health Analytics Asia. He points out that the problem is not just that people believe these false claims. “It’s also making them less likely to accept truthful information,” he says.