As the ACT government heads toward resuming Term 1 of the new school year and accelerating its vaccination program for teachers, pamphlets promoting some of the more prominent anti-vaccination views, and skewed with messages to parents, landed in letterboxes in Canberra's inner north on Monday.
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The pamphlets appear to be leveraging the start of the school year and the vaccination program by highlighting the "risks" for vaccinating children, the "experimental" nature of COVID vaccines, and reporting US-based data which claims that "COVID vaccine injury reports for 12-17 year olds ... quadrupled from May 14 to May 21 [2021]".
It also claims that "teenagers are experiencing blood clots and Gullain-Barre syndrome", the latter being a rare disorder where the body's immune system damages nerve tissue causing muscle weakness and in very rare cases, paralysis.
The pamphlet appears to be the product of the "Australia chapter" of the Children's Health Defense, a US-based activist group which has been identified as one of the main sources of misinformation on vaccines.
The chairman and founder of the organisation is 68-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr, one of the US's highest-profile conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine advocate and the son of US senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Last year an analysis of Twitter and Facebook anti-vaccine content found Kennedy's to be one of 12 individual and organisation accounts producing up to 65 per cent of all anti-vaccine content on the platforms.
The content language used is consistent with that of the US organisation, with emphasis on "experimental vaccines" and the long-term effects of COVID vaccines, including reproductive effects.
It also selectively quotes from an April 2021 study in the New England Journal of Medicine which studied the pregnancy outcomes from over 35,000 "v-safe" women in the US.
The brochure makes claims of pregnancy losses, pre-term births and "major congenital abnormalities" however, the preliminary findings of the study found it "did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines".
"Calculated proportions of adverse pregnancy and neonatal outcomes in persons vaccinated against COVID-19 who had a completed pregnancy were similar to incidences reported in studies involving pregnant women that were conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic," the researchers found.
Anti-vaccination brochures and pamphlets have circulated in the ACT community at various times during the COVID pandemic but this particular one has been produced to feed distrust at time when the ACT is leading the country in the take-up of vaccinations for five- to 11-year-olds, and which is growing at the rate of one per cent per day.
Similarly, eligible education staff - including teachers, early childhood education and care staff and school-based staff who work with children - have been given priority access to appointments at the Canberra Airport vaccination clinic.
A final decision on the return of students to government schools is expected to be made some time this week, with education authorities hoping the Omicron wave of COVID-19 infections in the ACT will have peaked by the scheduled start of first term.
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