Fake News and Murder Charges: How Italy Became Ground Zero for AstraZeneca’s Disastrous Rollout
ROME—Nothing kills faith in a vaccine quite like manslaughter charges implying that it’s lethal. It helps little when the same drug maker is accused of fudging data and hiding millions of vials in a warehouse inside Italy—a country experiencing massive vaccine shortages.
But such is the story of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine curse. Once hoped to be the workhorse of the European Union’s vaccine program, meant to offer an escape route out of the pandemic, now people are rolling their sleeves back down at the thought of getting an AZ jab.
But for all the bad press, little of it is actually true.