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  • 2018-01-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Melania Trump Ban White House Staff from Taking Flu Shots? (en)
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  • In January 2018, at the height of a severe flu season in the United States, reports emerged that First Lady Melania Trump had supposedly banned members of the White House staff from receiving flu vaccinations. She allegedly issued the order after learning of the adverse health effects of flu shots. These claims turned up on a number of disreputable web sites, but their point of origin was a consistent purveyor of fake news and political disinformation, Your News Wire (now News Punch), who reported on 22 January that: If Melania Trump actually imposed such a ban or expressed such views, it went entirely unnoticed by legitimate news outlets, who would have reported on these alleged actions if they had taken place, especially given the controversial subject matter. We doubt, moreover, that the first lady has the power to order hundreds of White House employees to forego a preventative medical treatment that the U.S. government recommends that every American six months of age or older receive. Far from being pushed so hard by the media as the article alleges, the recommendation that everyone should get a flu shot is the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal health agency run by Brenda Fitzgerald, a Trump appointee. According to the CDC web site: Among the many other tidbits of flu vaccine misinformation the article trumpeted were the claims that the 2018 variant of the vaccine was only 10 percent effective (false: the CDC said that figure came from Australia and was an interim estimate of its effectiveness against one flu strain only) and that it may be responsible for spreading serious cases of influenza (false: the CDC says flu vaccines cannot cause or spread influenza). In short, like most YourNewsWire articles, this one is entirely fictitious and aimed not at informing the public, but rather at attracting traffic and advertising revenue to the web site. Previous examples in this vein include Melania Trump Bans Monsanto Products From the White House and Bill Gates Admits Vaccinations Are Designed So Governments Can Depopulate the World. (en)
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