Jacksonville, Florida. – A post circulated on social media, saying that three of four volunteers contracted Bell’s palsy after “being vaccinated with the experimental Pfizer vaccine for the Corona virus.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, the exact cause of the disease – also known as peripheral facial nerve palsy – is unknown and can occur at any age. The condition causes temporary weakness or paralysis of the facial muscles.
Chad Nielsen, director of infectious diseases at UF Health Jacksonville, said misleading posts like this are common.
“This is a common thing spreading on social media, especially with the anti-vaccination crowd,” he said.
It reminds the audience that not everything that is posted on social media is true.
He said: “There is no evidence for that with this vaccine yet.” “Certainly, when Pfizer released its clinical trial information, adverse effects were reported and they weren’t serious. I will continue to say that the experience has had deaths and there are none associated with the vaccine.”
To illustrate, four participants in the Pfizer vaccine trial and four participants in the Moderna trial developed Bell’s palsy.
In the Pfizer experiment, all four participants who had Bell’s palsy received the vaccine. In Moderna’s trial, three participants who had Bell’s palsy got the vaccine, and one got a placebo.
Dr Elizabeth Ransom, of Baptist Health, says that shouldn’t stop anyone getting vaccinated.
She said, “Just as there were some cases of appendicitis in the vaccine arm and in the placebo as well.” “These things will happen naturally.”
The Food and Drug Administration recognized these cases of facial paralysis prior to approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, but says there is no evidence linking the two. It is important to note that the reaction did not occur immediately after administration of the vaccine but in all cases after weeks.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now recommends that cases of Bell’s palsy be monitored as more people get the vaccine. Since there is nothing scientifically connecting them directly, we will mark this claim as “incorrect” in the trust index.
For the image above accompanying the post, we will mark this as “incorrect”.
This image appears in an article on Bell’s palsy dated November 20, 2019, long before the first documented cases of COVID-19 in the United States.
Copyright 2020 by WJXT News4Jax – All rights reserved.
“Explorer. Devoted travel specialist. Web expert. Organizer. Social media geek. Coffee enthusiast. Extreme troublemaker. Food trailblazer. Total bacon buff.”
