Facebook users aren't reading the article. They're reading the title, and saying "aha, I knew it. The vaccine was unsafe all along." That's literally all the fact checkers said, "potential to mislead".
I can't find that expression anywhere in the Lead Stories article. Facebook outright labelled the BMJ article "false" and containing "false information".
Beyond that, should fact-checkers really become an "optics police"? For every single news story, you will have (wild) misinterpretations on social media. It becomes too convenient if a fact-checker can point to those, and then have Facebook limit the spread of the original story. This is a question of poor FDA oversight. There have been several instances throughout this pandemic: see the recent FDA resignations, and the GAO report[0]. Oversight is not about pro vs anti vaccine, this is about people's health[1]. Oversight should always be robust, even in emergency situations.
[0]: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2021/11...
[1]: story from Japan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/07/third-person-d...
As far as whether Facebook should become "optics police" I think it's obviously a difficult decision, but with life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" I have to go with yes, facebook shouldn't let itself propagandize people who decide to read headlines instead of articles.
Is that not a misleading thing to say yourself? Plenty of vaccinated have died. And for those unjabbed but with permanent acquired immunity, the jab may be safe yet at the same time have no material effect to save their life.
For example in Texas, from Jan-Oct of this year 8 percent of covid deaths were fully vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/texas-unvac...
Most of that time period was before Delta or Omicron were dominant, not to mention the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes greatly over a ~6 month period, so the situation today is likely higher than 8 percent.
Unvaccinated are more likely to contract the virus from a family member. [0]
> According to the analysis, 25 percent of vaccinated contacts exposed to a household member with an infection contracted one themselves.
> In contrast, 38 percent of unvaccinated contacts got an infection.
> The study results suggest that because the viral load of vaccinated people drops off more quickly, their infection may be infectious for a shorter time than for unvaccinated people.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccinated-people-can...
From the vaccine?!?
You literally just made this up.