This is my first blog post back after taking a break for a month or so. I decided to take some time for me to get back to a place where I had enough time to invest into my blog posts and research as I wasn’t happy with the standard of my past few posts. Lockdown has really gotten to me in regards to creativity- I feel like all I hear about is covid and it blocks my vision to other things. With things opening up last week, I have had a brilliant time in sunny pub gardens, bouncing ideas off of my very fun and interesting friends and I feel refreshed and ready to come back.
Something I feel I need to address on my blog is the way that media and social media twist truths to make them scary. Too many times I have been scrolling through my feed and stumbled across an article or a screenshot of some information that has deliberately been painted in a specific light to scare people. This pandemic has really opened my eyes to the influence that the media has over everyone and how it can warp the reality of things.
A particular post I saw circulating on Facebook claimed that there has been 460 deaths and 244,612 injuries due to Covid-19 vaccines in the UK. Whilst these figures were not plucked from thin air, we must take this with a pinch of salt- doing your own research is essential.
Although deaths and injuries may have occurred after an individual has had the vaccine, this does not mean that the vaccine caused the said death or injury. Let's look at it using a breakfast metaphor. Let's say that half of the population don’t eat breakfast and half do- that's approximately 4 billion people worldwide that eat breakfast. Every single day, approximately 150,000 die. If we are assuming 50% of the population eat breakfast and 50% don’t, that's 75,000 people who have died after eating breakfast, does that mean that breakfast is the reason that they have died? It is as ridiculous to assume this as it is ridiculous to pinpoint the vaccine as the reason why people are dying or injured.
Furthermore, so many more people have died as a result of Covid-19 than have died from the vaccine. The vaccine will prevent these deaths, and therefore is nothing to be scared of.
Doing your own research and questioning the reliability of the source is vital in a world where we are consumed by social media. 50% of people said that they would whole-heartedly believe something they read on Facebook, which is an extremely alarming statistic.
Next time you are scrolling through Facebook, take your time to carefully consider the information provided!