The Covid-19 Vaccines are not Approved

Since Facebook, Twitter, and the other big tech monopolies are banning what they consider coronavirus misinformation, I looked at what Facebook official says about it:

Facts About COVID-19
These facts come from the World Health Organization. They correct common, untrue rumors about coronavirus (COVID-19).

Vaccines are thoroughly tested for safety before they're approved

COVID-19 vaccine development was accelerated without impacting safety

Vaccine side effects are usually mild

No, they do not correct false rumors.

It is true that vaccine side effects are usually mild, and vaccines are thoroughly tested for safety before they're approved. However, the notice is extremely misleading, because the covid vaccines have not been approved.

Here is the official FDA list of Approved Vaccine Products, and there is no covid-19 vaccine on the list.

Here is the FDA explanation:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives. ...

FDA also expects manufacturers who receive an EUA to continue their clinical trials to obtain additional safety and effectiveness information and pursue licensure (approval).

In other words, the covid-19 vaccines have not yet met the standards for approval, but have been authorized for emergency use.

Thus the Facebook statement that "development was accelerated without impacting safety" is also false. The whole point of the FDA EUA program is to accelerate development, at the cost of safety. They are still doing the tests required for regular vaccine approval. The FDA is planning to approve the vaccines, once the safety standards have been met.

Consider how much Facebook is being scrutinized for its censorship policies, the above vaccine statement was probably one of the most carefully vetted statements that has ever been published. They had to know that these statements are false and misleading, but apparently decided that the greater good was to encourage more people to get vaccinated. They probably A/B tested these against true statements, and decided that the false statements are more effective.

I wonder if some of the vacine hesitancy is based on observing that our authorities are lying to us.

USA Today reports:

The nation's leading social media companies pledged to put warning labels on COVID-19 and COVID vaccines posts to stop the spread of falsehoods, conspiracy theories and hoaxes that are fueling vaccine hesitancy in the USA.

With the exception of Facebook, nearly all of them are losing the war against COVID disinformation. That’s the conclusion of a new report shared exclusively with USA TODAY. ...

Facebook told USA TODAY it has removed more than 16 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram for violating its COVID and vaccine policies since the beginning of the pandemic.

Facebook is promoting COVID misinformation.

Update: From a CDC official in a press conference, as reported in the NY Times:

DR. WALENSKY: … There’s increasing data that suggests that most of transmission is happening indoors rather than outdoors; less than 10 percent of documented transmission, in many studies, have occurred outdoors.

The paper goes on to explain that the true number is more like 0.1%. Yes, that is less than 10%, but appears to be a distortion attempting to justify outside mask requirements.

Update: I see that Facebook has corrected these statements, a week later, and now saya:

Vaccines are thoroughly tested for safety before they’re made available to the public
COVID-19 vaccines were developed quickly while maintaining the highest safety standard possible
Vaccine side effects are usually mild

I guess I was not the only one complaining about the accuracy.