"I never doubted the vaccination against Covid-19… until now."
Jerome doesn't regularly follow the news on Twitter, and mostly uses this site to tweet about sports and books he liked.
The XNUMX-year-old bus driver from the Canadian province of Quebec has mostly supported local restrictions due to covid so far, although he admits that he has already "had enough", two years since the start of the pandemic.
On his social media pages, you can read him mildly complaining about homeschooling, among posts about favorite writers and Canada's national football team.
But casually scrolling through the site of this social network, one Monday at the beginning of the new year, he came across a video in which the head of Pfizer can apparently be heard saying that his vaccine does not provide any protection against the omicron strain virus.
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A serious illness
Albert Burla can be seen saying, "We know that two doses of the vaccine offer very limited protection, if any."
Jerome tweeted: "If this video is real, then he's got to be ringing an alarm bell somewhere, right?".
But the insert was taken out of context from a longer interview for Jaha financije (Yahoo Finance), in which Burla talks about the high rate of omicron infection.
A Pfizer representative clarified that he was talking about research which suggests that, "although two doses of Pfizer-Biontech's covid vaccine may not be enough to protect against infection with the omicron strain," those vaccinated are still considered protected against severe forms of the disease.
Several studies indicate that vaccines, even when they do not protect against infection, reduce the effects of the omicron strain, first identified in South Africa, and significantly reduce the chances of hospitalization or death.
Jerome told BBC News that he generally doesn't believe things he sees online and when he further researched the video, he realized that the insert was "just a fragment of a larger interview".
"It was immediately obvious to me that this little insert probably shouldn't be taken into account when drawing larger conclusions," he said.
But he says he "almost allowed himself to be manipulated".
"I was really surprised and shocked, you know, I just almost couldn't believe my ears," says Jerome.
And based on that brief window during which he expressed doubts about vaccination, his account was flooded with comments from people he characterized as the "anti-vaccine community."
"I've never had so many Twitter notifications," he says.
"People said things to me like, 'Well, you know what, it's about time you woke up.'
Watch video: Pfizer boss on fake news - "No, my wife did not die after the vaccination"
Big jumps
Jerome also received countless links to additional misinformation, "claiming that vaccines cause incredible side effects."
As is common on the Internet, people have taken valid points - such as that the vaccine is not very successful at protecting against omicron infection or that it carries a very small risk of extremely rare side effects - and made great leaps to much more explicit claims - that the vaccine unsafe or completely ineffective - for which there is no evidence.
Those announcements also left out key information - those vaccinated have much milder infections or the virus poses a much greater health risk than vaccine side effects, such as blood clots, inflammation of the heart muscle and death.
"That's how I realized how easy it is to manipulate people through false sources of information," says Jerome.
Casting doubt
In an online newsletter, journalist Jordan Shacktel quoted part of Burla's comments to suggest that two doses of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine now offer "only very limited protection, if any" against the coronavirus.
The tweet that Jerome initially saw casting doubt on the vaccine appeared to refer to this very newsletter.
Other posts, videos and podcasts on social media also referenced Shaktel's newsletter directly, but went a step further, suggesting that Burla's comments cast doubt on whether the vaccine is even "safe and effective."
Several posts also referred to Burla's other comments, made on US news channel CNBC, that vaccines "do not yet have the safety profile that we hope to achieve with mRNA technology".
However, on that occasion he did not speak at all about covid vaccines.
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"No" protection
Full interview transcript apparently shows that Burla was talking about an entirely different vaccine - against the herpes zoster virus - that Pfizer plans to update.
Shacttel's newsletter initially made the mistake and later corrected himself - but not before his comments were picked up by former US Congressman Ron Paul, who has more than two million followers on social media.
In a YouTube video, Paul made an explicit reference to Shaktel's newsletter when he repeated claims that Burla had said the Covid vaccine was unsafe and did not protect against Omicron.
Claims that Pfizer "admitted ... current vaccines 'don't work'" or "offer 'no' protection against covid-19, referring to Paul's YouTube video, then spread across numerous online platforms.
Fewer deaths
Research by independent scientists and public health experts has shown that vaccination has a positive effect on preventing severe forms of disease - especially against the omicron strain.
One study suggested that three months after the second dose of the vaccine, people were 70 percent less likely to develop severe disease from omicron infection, and that figure dropped to 50 percent after six months.
According to another study, dually vaccinated people are 65 percent less likely to end up in the hospital with omicron than those who are not vaccinated.
Also, many countries with high vaccination rates have experienced very high levels of covid infections, but much fewer deaths than during previous waves.
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