FOX PEDDLING ANTI-VAX CONSPIRACY THEORIES VS ISRAEL: HAARETZ

As Israel draws international attention as a COVID vaccine success story, and as the country’s ability to document inoculation with vaccine passports has allowed for something resembling a return to normal life, anti-vaccine activists have taken notice, analyst Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote for Haaretz.

One new strategy is to pepper the internet with false information regarding the results of Israel’s vaccine campaign and the rollout of the Green Pass, as the vaccine passport program launched on February 21 is known.

The green passport allows vaccinated Israelis to access indoor dining, cultural and sporting events, nightclubs, gyms and more. Israel is also increasingly being incorporated into existing COVID conspiracy theories.

Some implicate the country in a global vaccine conspiracy designed to exaggerate efficacy and cover up vaccine injury and death. While the attacks are mainly limited to online activity, some have made their way into mainstream media.

Prominent among skeptics is author Alex Berenson. A popular guest on prominent Fox News shows like “The Tucker Carlson Show,” the “Unreported Truths on COVID-19 and Lockdowns” writer has repeatedly asserted that vaccines are not as effective or as safe as Israel reports.

In the first few months of Israel’s vaccine rollout, Berenson took to Twitter to claim that that large-scale vaccination campaign did not seem to be having an effect on infection and serious illness. As coronavirus infection rates began to dramatically drop as the percentage of vaccinated Israelis grew, Berenson changed his focus from efficacy to safety.

He implied while providing no evidence, that illness and death resulting from COVID vaccination were being covered up by Israeli authorities. Berenson has taken these claims beyond Twitter, to the Fox News airwaves.

On Laura Ingraham’s program “The Ingraham Angle,” Berenson asserted that vaccines “are not 95 percent effective, that’s pretty clear from the data coming out of Israel.” On Carlson’s show last month, Berenson said he believed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “is very afraid that there will be cases of people getting vaccinated and sick or dying, as has happened in Israel. We know that’s happened in Israel.”

Carlson agreed. Prof. Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, has been closely tracking the pandemic and says Berenson’s claims are baseless. “The evidence regarding effectiveness is overwhelming. There is zero possibility for any other explanation for what is happening in Israel besides vaccination,” he says.

WEEKLY FEATURE : TRUEMONEY PHILIPPINES BUCKS THE COVID-19 CHALLENGE