COVID-19 misinformation cost at least 2,800 lives and $300M, new report says
Story by Darren Major • CBC
The spread of COVID-19 misinformation in Canada cost at least 2,800 lives and $300 million in hospital expenses over nine months of the pandemic, according to estimates in a new report out Thursday.
The report — released by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), an independent research organization that receives federal funding — examined how misinformation affected COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths between March and November of 2021.
The authors suggest that misinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy for 2.3 million Canadians. Had more people been willing to roll up their sleeves when a vaccine was first available to them, Canada could have seen roughly 200,000 fewer COVID cases and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations, the report says.
Alex Himelfarb, chair of the expert panel that wrote the report, said that its estimates are very conservative because it only examined a nine-month period of the pandemic.
"It's pretty clear that tens of thousands of hospitalizations did occur because of misinformation," Himelfarb told reporters. "We are confident that those are conservative estimates."
Himelfarb also said the $300 million estimate covers only hospital costs — the study didn't include indirect costs associated with factors such as delayed elective surgeries and lost wages.
A number of studies have found that getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of COVID infection and hospitalization. But only 80 per cent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from Health Canada.
The CCA report defines two groups of vaccine-hesitant individuals: those who were reluctant to get a shot and those who refused. It says that reluctant individuals expressed concerns about vaccines in general and questioned the speed with which COVID vaccines were developed.
Vaccine refusers, on the other hand, were more likely to believe that the pandemic is a hoax or greatly exaggerated, the report says.
A COVID-19 vaccine clinic for children age five to 11 at École des Belles-Rives elementary school in Gatineau, Que. on Nov. 29, 2021.© Jacques Corriveau/Radio-Canada
Story by Darren Major • CBC
The spread of COVID-19 misinformation in Canada cost at least 2,800 lives and $300 million in hospital expenses over nine months of the pandemic, according to estimates in a new report out Thursday.
The report — released by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), an independent research organization that receives federal funding — examined how misinformation affected COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths between March and November of 2021.
The authors suggest that misinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy for 2.3 million Canadians. Had more people been willing to roll up their sleeves when a vaccine was first available to them, Canada could have seen roughly 200,000 fewer COVID cases and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations, the report says.
Alex Himelfarb, chair of the expert panel that wrote the report, said that its estimates are very conservative because it only examined a nine-month period of the pandemic.
"It's pretty clear that tens of thousands of hospitalizations did occur because of misinformation," Himelfarb told reporters. "We are confident that those are conservative estimates."
Himelfarb also said the $300 million estimate covers only hospital costs — the study didn't include indirect costs associated with factors such as delayed elective surgeries and lost wages.
A number of studies have found that getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of COVID infection and hospitalization. But only 80 per cent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from Health Canada.
The CCA report defines two groups of vaccine-hesitant individuals: those who were reluctant to get a shot and those who refused. It says that reluctant individuals expressed concerns about vaccines in general and questioned the speed with which COVID vaccines were developed.
Vaccine refusers, on the other hand, were more likely to believe that the pandemic is a hoax or greatly exaggerated, the report says.
A COVID-19 vaccine clinic for children age five to 11 at École des Belles-Rives elementary school in Gatineau, Que. on Nov. 29, 2021.© Jacques Corriveau/Radio-Canada
Related video: Is the COVID-19 pandemic almost over? (cbc.ca) Duration 1:33 View on Watch
Beyond the health impacts, misinformation is depriving people of their right to be informed, said Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor at the University of Bristol's School of Psychological Science in the U.K. and one of the report's authors.
"In a democracy, the public should be able to understand the risks we're facing … and act on that basis," he said. "But if you're drenched in misinformation … then you're distorting the public's ability — and you're denying people the right — to be informed about the risks they're facing."
The report says misinformation relies on simple messages meant to evoke emotional reactions. It says misinformation is often presented as coming from a credible source, such as a scientific publication.
Ideology can play a role: authors
The authors also suggest that misinformation can be driven by someone's personal worldview, ideology or political identity.
"Denial of collective action problems is going to be very [prevalent] among people who don't like collective action," Himelfarb said, noting that misinformation can flow into political messaging.
"When misinformation becomes tied up with identity and ideology, political leaders will often look to misinformation as a means of building their coalition," he said. He did not point to any single politician.
People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, a vocal opponent of COVID-19 public health restrictions and vaccine passports, appeared to unify a portion of the electorate that views pandemic policies as government overreach when he finished with roughly five per cent of the vote in the 2021 election.
Lewandowsky said social media can contribute to the spread of misinformation, but policies to counter such misinformation — such as requiring labels on inaccurate information — could help.
Himelfarb said it's important to balance tackling misinformation with freedom of expression.
"Finding that sweet spot is a challenge," he said.
Lewandowsky said one way to strike a balance would be to make sure reliable information is more widely available and to give people tools to identify misinformation.
"The people who do misinform us have a certain repertoire of rhetorical techniques … and we can identify those," he said.
COVID misinformation may have caused thousands of deaths in Canada: report
Story by Sharon Kirkey • National Post
A protest against COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations in Vancouver on September 1, 2021.
Beliefs that COVID-19 is exaggerated or an outright hoax, that vaccines can alter a person’s DNA or cause other “covered-up problems” cost Canada an estimated 2,800 lives and thousands of hospitalizations over nine months of the pandemic, according to a new report.
The estimates, based on models, are conservative, the authors said, because they don’t capture all the “flow-on consequences” of misinformation, such as postponed surgeries, doctors’ billings, the cost of treating long COVID or “the social unrest and moral injury to healthcare workers.”
“Misinformation is an urgent societal concern that affects us all,” reads the expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies, the latest group to raise alarms over an “infodemic” of falsehoods that spread as widely and rapidly as COVID-19.
According to the far-ranging report, between March and November 2021, misinformation helped sway an estimated 2.4 million people in Canada to delay or refuse to get vaccinated against COVID. Had they been vaccinated as soon as they became eligible, by the end of November 2021, there would have been nearly 200,000 fewer cases of COVID and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations.
Who or what is to blame? A “perfect storm of actors,” Alex Himelfarb, the expert panel’s chair, told a media briefing Wednesday.
They include bad-faith actors on social media; conspiracy theories that offer up something, or someone to blame; the politicization of misinformation; and a “multi-decades long decline in trust,” in one another and institutions that were seen in the past to be reliable sources of information, Himelfarab said.
“Myth and misperception, lies and deception are not new — they’re probably as old as human communication,” said Himelfarb, a former Clerk of the Privy Council and professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick.
“But something different is afoot,” he said. Pundits have labelled ours a “post-truth” era, he said, “where the very idea of truth seems to be under attack, and where misinformation is tied in with ideology and identity and arouses great passions.”
As part of their report, Fault Lines, the 13-member panel set out to estimate the effects of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. How much faster would uptake have been if there was no misinformation? What did it mean for infections and deaths?
They reviewed peer-reviewed publications, government information and statistics and media reports. They also commissioned a model, plugging in “real world” data on the number of vaccinations, cases, ICU visits and deaths between March 1 and Nov. 30, 2021.
The model tracked everyone aged 12 and older over two waves of COVID.
It also drew on data from an Abacus survey at the time that found that 14 per cent of adult Canadians were either vaccine-reluctant (seven per cent) or vaccine-refusers (seven per cent.)
Reluctant people reported lower trust in government, preferred to avoid vaccines in general and questioned how quickly COVID-19 vaccines were produced and approved.
Among the vaccine refusers, 85 per cent believed that vaccine harms are “covered-up” and 73 per cent believed COVID is fake or overblown.
Overall, the survey suggested that 2.1 million Canadians agreed with COVID misinformation beliefs.
The panel then looked at different hypothetical scenarios, including what happens to COVID vaccination rates and case numbers if the proportion of people who believed COVID is a hoax or vaccines caused hidden dangers were vaccinated as soon as they became eligible.
According to their analysis, if those who believed COVID was a hoax had been vaccinated once eligible, over 2.3 million additional people in Canada would have been vaccinated, resulting in roughly 198,000 fewer cases, 13,000 fewer hospitalizations, 3,500 fewer people needing intensive care, $300 million saved in hospital costs and 2,800 fewer deaths.
The report doesn’t contain recommendations. The CCA’s reports don’t, by design. The goal is to inform policy, not to direct government, a spokesperson said.
But misinformation matters, Himelfarb said, because an “abundance of evidence” shows it causes preventable illness, preventable death and makes people “vulnerable to financial exploitation.”
It also holds. “It’s sticky,” he said. An Abacus poll in June 2021 found that 19 per cent of 1,500 adults surveyed, the equivalent of 5.6 million adults, believe “COVID vaccines have killed many people which has been covered up.” Eleven per cent believed the vaccines contain secret chips “designed to monitor and control human behavior.”
But scientific research is also fallible, the panel report notes. “Misinformation can be the product of systemic failures in science and medicine, and in the communication of scientific knowledge and research findings,” it reads. Finding that don’t replicate and weak methodologies are among the reasons why “no one study can be treated as definitive.”
Some claims represented initially as “information,” become “misinformation” as new knowledge emerges, the report said.
Maya Goldenberg, a University of Guleph philosophy professor and expert in vaccine hesitancy, said public institutions that are supposed to keep the public safe have a responsibility to foster and maintain trust. “A lot of people felt abandoned during this pandemic — public outreach did not reach them; their needs were not met — and the response was to turn away and reject all public health communications, and even to respond and protest angrily,” Goldenberg said.
The panel is committed to the freedom of expression, Himelfarb said. But things can be done to combat misinformation, he said.
Media platforms could be more transparent “about the algorithms that may actually promote misinformation,” because misinformation gets traffic. More could be done to help people better “identify and reject” misinformation, he said, and promote digital literacy and critical thinking, starting with young school-age kids. Leaders must learn how to better communicate health and science information, including finding “trusted messengers” who can reach diverse communities and be open about uncertainty.
Like every model, the model is only as good as the data that went into it, Himelfarb said. But he said the estimates are conservative, they only focus on the two waves of COVID before Omicron emerged and they only looked at a narrow range of costs.
“It’s pretty clear that tens of thousands of hospitalizations did occur because of misinformation,” he said.
The non-partisan panel tried deliberately to stay out of politics. But it matters when political leaders “endorse (and) further promote misinformation,” Himelfarb said. “It accelerates the spread, it matters, it makes it harder to correct.”
“When it becomes tied up with identity and ideology, political leaders will often look to misinformation as a mean of building their coalition. It has become a tool in politics,” he said, and a threat to democracy.
Panel member Timothy Caulfield said the “grim data” were disappointing, but not surprising. “Canada has a reputation of being perhaps a little bit more removed from the polarizing discourse that permeates our neighbour to the south,” said Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor of health law and policy.
“But as we’ve seen over the past three years, we’re not immune to the harms that misinformation brings.”
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