Widespread vaccine myth that most frustrates Dr Karl

That’s the opinion of renowned science author Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, who has revealed the COVID myths that do the rounds on social media that he finds most frustrating to rebut.

The Triple J host told news.com.au that misinformation about everything from the pandemic to climate change was spread chiefly because misunderstanding and lies were simple to grasp.

In contrast, the truth is complex, sometimes imperfect, and takes longer to explain.

Dr Kruszelnicki will appear at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Friday in a science-themed panel session entitled The Rise of the Armchair Epidemiologist.

Since the pandemic began, epidemiology has gone from being discussed mainly on university campuses to being debated between people, as the name of the session suggests, sitting on armchairs at home.

But Dr Kruszelnicki, who has just published his 47th book called the Little Book of Climate Change Science, said too many of those discussions were being fuelled by rumour and misinformation.

“Fake news travels so much faster thanks to the internet. You can end up just following a series of lies, over and over and over again and going down the rabbit hole,” he said.

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Conspiracy theories and misinformation is easy to spread

Conspiracy theories swirling around 5G towers and Bill Gates were the barmiest claims some uninformed armchair epidemiologists came out with, said Dr Kruszelnicki.

But there were other claims he said he’d heard time and time again that continually exasperated him.

One of those was chatter that vaccines weren’t effective. Dr Kruszelnicki said some people had pointed to the Auckland Airport worker who recently contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated with the Pfizer jab as proof.

But this was no more than cherry picking one event to back up a dubious claim.

“No, not all vaccines are perfect, and their effectiveness depends on the person but to explain that you have to explain the concept of seroconversion and the complexity of the human body,” he said.

In a small number of cases, vaccines can take longer to work on some people or they might need more shots, Dr Kruszelnicki said. He had to have four jabs of the hepatitis B vaccine, he said, before he stated producing antibodies.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a crucial jab that was highly effective.

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Truth takes longer to explain than lies

The complexity of the truth was also an issue. And in unfolding situations like a pandemic, advice on the best way to handle health can change.

“We run up against this factor which is called the ‘bulls**t asymmetry factor’ or ‘BAF’,” he said.

“It’s the realisation that it can take 10 times longer to debunk something.

“So I could say ‘climate change isn’t real, the climate has always been changing and besides all it will mean is you have to wear one less jumper in winter’.

“They took me seven seconds to say that. But to debunk it I’d have to talk about the Milankovitch cycle and the orbit of the sun and that takes 15 minutes which is an ABF of 260.

“So it’s really easy to spew out a whole bunch of lies. And then when you’re dealing with something that’s really complicated like a vaccine you end up with people getting confused when they hear these lies.”

Another issue was fear, which meant we often pay more heed to outlandish information.

“If something is weird and novel it really gets your attention because people worry that what you don’t know could kill you,” he explained.

Dr Karl’s most frustrating vaccine myth

There was another inoculation misunderstanding that Dr Kruszelnicki said had got far too much traction.

“It’s the straight out, anti-vax claim which is that vaccines weaken your immune system,” he said.

Again, the problem was the lie is simple, but the truth is imperfect and takes more time to delve into.

“You don’t know where to start. Many people don’t know that your immune system can be different to the person next to you.

“But if you look at the cold equations you’re so much better off being vaccinated.”

Indeed, data coming out of nations with high rates of vaccinations, such as Israel and the UK, has shown huge drops in both cases and hospitalisations in those people that have contracted the virus.

Dr Kruszelnicki said there were an “infinity of lies, but only one truth” that meant untruths could spread more quickly than they could be debunked.

Yet to combat misinformation, the best weapon was the truth, he said.

“Tell the truth but if the truth changes, then be quick to open up to that as well.”

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki will appear alongside UNSW infectious diseases expert Professor Raina MacIntyre and University of Sydney science communicator Associate Professor Alice Motion on Friday 30 April at the Sydney Writers Festival at the panel discussionScience Class: The Rise of the Armchair Epidemiologist.