News & Views — Name the Logical Fallacy: COVID-19 Edition

Misinformation has been circulating as quickly as the SARS-CoV-2 virus over the last year. It can be tough for people to evaluate information that is emotionally charged and shared by trusted friends, such as often occurs on social media. However, critical evaluation of information is essential for making decisions that are based on sound, scientific information, particularly when it comes to COVID-19. One way to evaluate information is to look for “logical fallacies,” which are errors in reasoning that make an argument unsound.

As healthcare providers whose advice is often sought, confronting misinformation may feel uncomfortable. But, when people have questions based on misinformation, you may have an opportunity to not only address the factual information related to the question at hand, but to also discuss these common errors in logic. By addressing both the information and ways to critically evaluate it, you can position patients to look for these types of unsound arguments because we all have to work together to critically assess and diminish the spread of information that is purposely designed to scare and mislead.

With this in mind, try your hand at identifying the logical fallacies in the following COVID-19-based fallacies. Each of which has circulated during the pandemic.

1. Information that I saw online about COVID-19 disease causing sterility in the summer was removed. I heard it’s because of lawsuits related to Bill Gates and the vaccines in Africa. Does this have to do with the COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility?
2. I heard we can’t trust the AstraZeneca vaccine because that company is aligned with the eugenics movement.
3. A vaccine caused my friend’s autoimmune condition, so could the COVID-19 cause me to develop an autoimmune disease?
4. I heard we don’t know about the long-term side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.
5. I heard they want us to get the vaccine now, so they can just keep vaccinating us every year.
6. If the vaccine doesn’t prevent a person from getting infected and spreading SARS-CoV-2, why get vaccinated?

Need a hint?
The types of fallacies used above include ad hominem attack, appeal to ignorance, causal fallacy, false dichotomy, red herring, and slippery slope arguments. Can you match them?

How did you do?

1. Information that I saw online about COVID-19 disease causing sterility in the summer was removed. I heard it’s because of lawsuits related to Bill Gates and the vaccines in Africa. Does this have to do with the COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility?
   This is an example of a red herring. Red herrings are seemingly relevant arguments that serve to distract from the point at hand. In this example, the discussion of removal of information and lawsuits involving Bill Gates distracts from the primary concern related to COVID-19 vaccines causing infertility. In addressing this concern, it is important to focus on the question related to the vaccine’s safety rather than the tangential discussions related to online information and lawsuits.
2. I heard we can’t trust the AstraZeneca vaccine because that company is aligned with the eugenics movement.
   This is an example of an ad hominem attack because it focuses on the company making the vaccine instead of the vaccine’s safety. While it seems like relevant information, it distracts from the point that COVID-19 vaccines were tested in large, well-controlled clinical trials, and they do not cause infertility. Address this argument by focusing on how we know the vaccine is safe rather than the issue brought up about the company.
3. A vaccine caused my friend’s autoimmune condition, so could the COVID-19 cause me to develop an autoimmune disease?
   This is an example of a causal fallacy; specifically, in this case, a type known as false cause. The incorrect conclusion by a friend associating an autoimmune condition with receipt of a vaccine is used to incorrectly assume that the COVID-19 vaccine could also cause an autoimmune condition. To address this argument, focus on why COVID-19 vaccines would not be expected to cause autoimmunity, such as the fact that vaccines cannot typically cause something that the disease itself cannot cause. Because patients with COVID-19 do not develop autoimmune conditions, it would be unlikely that the vaccine could cause autoimmunity. Other examples of causal fallacies are “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (which translates to “after this therefore because of this”), when one thing occurs shortly after another, and “correlational,” when two things are discovered at the same time.
4. I heard we don’t know about the long-term side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.
   This is an example of an appeal to ignorance because it focuses on what is not known. Because COVID-19 vaccines have not been used for years, this idea is used to sow doubt by suggesting that we don’t know what will happen years after getting vaccinated. When addressing appeals to ignorance, it is important to focus on what we do know. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, we know that the vaccines are processed quickly and do not remain in the body for indeterminant amounts of time. We also know that, historically, when vaccines have caused severe adverse events, they have occurred within the first two months after vaccination. Millions of people have been vaccinated longer than two months ago without incident at this point. See more about long-term side effects in this article from our Parents PACK newsletter.
   
   Another common example of this type of argument is pointing out that vaccinated-unvaccinated studies have not been done. Because it would be unethical to subject a random group of people to being unvaccinated for years when we know that vaccines work and because a “self-selected” sample would not be a comparable group, these studies can never be completed. Therefore, the anti-vaccine industry continues to bring up this idea, knowing that this type of study cannot be ethically completed.
5. I heard they want us to get the vaccine now, so they can just keep vaccinating us every year.
   This is an example of a slippery slope argument. Slippery slope arguments take a current situation to an illogical future extreme. In this case the argument suggests that the goal is to vaccinate the entire population, so that everyone can be positioned to need future doses of COVID-19 vaccines. The slippery slope argument in this example is further complicated by an appeal to ignorance argument since we do not yet know whether these vaccines will require annual or booster dosing. If future doses are determined to be necessary, that will likely be viewed as evidence in favor of the slippery slope. Offering examples in which the argument did not end at the illogical conclusion can help diffuse these ideas. For example, although influenza vaccine is recommended annually, and as providers, we feel it is the best medical decision for most people, the majority of individuals are not required to get the influenza vaccine each year.
6. If the vaccine doesn’t prevent a person from getting infected and spreading SARS-CoV-2, why get vaccinated?
   This is an example of false dichotomy because it assumes only two options — the vaccine works or it doesn’t, but most things are not either-or situations. In this case, it is useful to point out that even if the vaccines do not completely prevent infection, they can reduce the severity and duration of illness, decrease an individual’s capacity to spread the virus, and prevent hospitalizations and deaths. For these reasons, getting vaccinated is still of value. Unfortunately, in the current polarized environment, false dichotomy is one of the most commonly employed logical fallacies.

Resources for sharing

Leveraging opportunities to make evaluating information part of the conversation will help not only by addressing the situation at hand but also by providing people with tools to create critical thinking habits. And, as with other skills, the more people practice identifying logical fallacies or evaluating sources of information, the better they will become at it. The Vaccine Education Center offers the following tools that can be shared freely:

• Logical Fallacies and Vaccines: What You Should Know Q&A
• Evaluating Information: What You Should Know Q&A
• Website Evaluation cards — Print | Order

The printable files can be photocopied, linked from your own websites, or shared in newsletters or via social media. If you use the information in newsletters or quote the materials, please cite the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as the source. The Q&A sheets can be ordered as a “special order” by emailing us at vacinfo@email.chop.edu.