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In a recent social media post, a parent describes his experience refusing polio drops for his child. He claims the polio worker returned to his house with police officers who pressured him to vaccinate his child. The post questions why polio workers force parents to vaccinate and accuses the government of ignoring other public health issues. Responses to the post label the incident “state terrorism,” with some calling for a social media protest. Several comments suggested that forced polio vaccinations are part of a global conspiracy to harm Pakistani children.

A video that is trending across multiple social media platforms claims to show a young child who was severely injured by a polio vaccine. The most popular post received over 70,000 engagements, including nearly 5,000 responses. Many comments argued that vaccines are unnecessary because God gave humans “perfect” bodies that can create vaccines. Other posts expressed concern about vaccine safety, claimed that children receive too many vaccines, and boasted about their unvaccinated status.

A forum user asked for help debunking false claims about vaccines, stating that a friend sent them evidence that “most, if not all, vaccines are bad.” The user cited a cVDPV outbreak in Sudan as proof of the claim. The user and several commenters mistakenly believe that the oral polio vaccine is linked to polio outbreaks in people who are vaccinated.

A popular U.S.-based social media account promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that a polio vaccine created by Bill Gates left 496,000 children in India paralyzed. The post has received over 16,000 engagements and was shared by social media users in many countries.

A social media post with nearly 2,000 engagements claims watermelon seeds can cure polio and many other diseases. Several responses suggest that seedless watermelon is promoted to keep people unhealthy.

News sites and social media users worldwide responded with a mix of excitement and frustration to the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the top health official in the U.S. due to Kennedy’s long history of promoting anti-vaccine myths and affiliation with a prominent anti-vaccine organization. Some popular posts expressed concern that Kennedy’s leadership would lead to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like polio. A U.S. congressperson posted about Kennedy’s alleged role in a measles outbreak in Samoa, which she incorrectly called a polio outbreak. Several posts supported Kennedy’s false claims about vaccine development, while others accused physicians and infectious disease experts opposed to the confirmation of “fearmongering” and insinuated that vaccines are more of a threat than the diseases they prevent.

A video on social media discusses an Indonesian Islamic clerical council’s 2018 ruling that vaccines contain ingredients that are not halal (permissible in Islam). The ruling was linked to a decline in vaccination rates and a measles outbreak that killed 72 children. The account sharing the video alleges that the public has been misled about vaccines’ safety and religious permissibility. The post falsely suggests that many vaccines contain monkey cells and that the polio vaccine contains the virus SV40. Responses to the video argue that vaccines’ status in Islam is “unclear” (syubhat) and that vaccines are not “good or pure” (tayyib) due to their alleged “dirty” origin.

On February 3, a police officer was fatally shot while guarding a group of polio workers in the Jamrud district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The attack occurred on the first day of Pakistan’s first national polio vaccination drive of 2025. In response to a social media post condemning the attack, some commenters criticized the World Health Organization and blamed polio workers for using a “poisonous jab” to harm children in Pakistan. In a popular social media post, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative encouraged vaccination. The post received 13 million views and over 1,000 responses, including false claims that polio vaccines are poison and accusations that the polio vaccine is “unsafe” and was designed by the “United States, Britain, and Israel” to harm Muslims. Meanwhile, a video clip with over 72,000 views accused a U.S. international aid organization of corrupting Pakistani religious leaders and politicians. Although some comments supported the agency’s work in Pakistan, others repeated the claim that government workers profit from anti-polio funds.