A Jan. 18 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shares a screenshot of an apparent news headline.
“German Gov’t Claims Investigating Covid Vaccines Would Be ‘Dangerous For Democracy,’” reads the headline.
The screenshot shows a Jan. 5 article from News Punch, a website USA TODAY has frequently flagged for spreading misinformation.
The post was liked more than 3,000 times in two days.
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The article the headline came from is built around an incorrect translation of a German-language interview. A medical ethicist, who is not a government official, was discussing the danger posed by people’s unresolved anger over the losses experienced during the pandemic. She wasn't talking about COVID-19 vaccines.
The claim twists the words of Alena Buyx, the head of the German Ethics Council, an independent group of medical ethicists, according to two German-language experts who reviewed her comments and the purported translation of them.
Buyx spoke of the danger of unresolved anger over losses during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Jan. 1 article (updated Jan. 4) in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, according to Dietram A. Scheufele, a life sciences communication professor at the University of Wisconsin. Scheufele’s research and...
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