In a CNN town hall, President Joe Biden exaggerated the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines by assuring listeners that they would not get the virus if they were vaccinated. There are instances of fully vaccinated people who have tested positive for the virus, although the cases are rare and usually mild, and vaccination dramatically reduces the risk of infection, serious illness, and death. Getting vaccinated remains the best way to protect against COVID-19.

Recommendation: Passive Response Read More +

Last week, a guest on a popular political talk show falsely claimed that the effectiveness of COVID vaccines is rapidly declining and suggested that masks are “simply symbolic.” These claims are based on reports of breakthrough COVID-19 infections in vaccinated people. Vaccines are not 100 percent effective, which means that some vaccinated people will still get COVID-19. These cases are rare and usually quite mild. The vaccines have been remarkably effective at preventing serious illness, hospitalization, and death: For the past few months, only a tiny percentage of the COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. have been in vaccinated people.   

Efforts to discourage vaccination have only served to allow the virus to continue spreading and mutating, which could potentially result in a variant that is more effective against the vaccine. Think of the vaccine as a bulletproof vest, rather than a forcefield, against COVID-19. Masks offer another layer of protection, which is why public health officials promote vaccination along with other safety measures to control the spread of the virus.

Recommendation: Passive Response Read More +

After claiming that the Biden administration’s proposed door-to-door COVID-19 vaccination outreach campaign means that the federal government is tracking vaccination status and will mandate vaccines, people online are using a training course from the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium as further evidence to support this debunked conspiracy theory. The training course, "MGT 433 Isolation and Quarantine for Rural Communities," is designed to "provide general knowledge necessary to begin planning for situations requiring the isolation and quarantine of a large portion of a local, rural population." Several social media users and websites that have previously been shown to share misinformation are falsely suggesting that the course is foreshadowing "quarantine camps," with some going so far as to compare it to slavery. The training course has existed for years and there is no evidence to suggest that it is in any way related to COVID-19 or the vaccine outreach campaign. Furthermore, training for public health emergencies, such as pandemics, is routine and a core function of public health.

Recommendation: Passive Response Read More +

Manipulated data from the preliminary findings of a CDC study investigating  COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy outcomes are being used to claim that the vaccines are harmful to pregnant women. The study enrolled 3,958 women around three months after vaccination. Of the 827 pregnancies evaluated, the researchers found a miscarriage rate of 12.6 percent (104 pregnancies) which is comparable to the average miscarriage rate of 10 to 20 percent. Importantly, this data only includes data from completed pregnancies, which means more data is available for people who were vaccinated later in their pregnancy than for people vaccinated earlier in their pregnancy. Following the publication of the results in the New England Journal of Medicine, social media users noted that 700 of the pregnancies included in the analysis were vaccinated after 20 weeks when the risk of miscarriage is lower. They then re-calculated the rate to include only pregnancies with vaccination during the first trimester, concluding that the real miscarriage rate is 82 percent. This is a gross misrepresentation of the study’s data, as it fails to include complete data from the people who were vaccinated prior to 20 weeks, most of whom are still pregnant. In fact, the study explicitly states that “whereas some pregnancies with vaccination in the first and early second trimester have been completed, the majority are ongoing.”  By only including data from those who were vaccinated early in their pregnancy, the results were primarily from pregnancies that ended early, due to premature birth or miscarriage. The results presented in the study are preliminary and data is still being collected. At this time, the results suggest that there is no increased risk of miscarriage following COVID-19 vaccination.

Recommendation: Direct Response Read More +

A social media post claims that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is far less deadly than the mainstream media reports. The user backs up the claim with data from a June 25 report from Public Health England that indicates the Delta variant’s case fatality rate is 0.1 percent compared to 1.9 percent for the original strain. A spokesperson for the agency cautions that there is not sufficient evidence to determine if the Delta variant is less dangerous than the original strain. Experts added that a reduced case fatality for the Delta variant is expected given the higher vaccination rate compared to the start of the pandemic or when earlier variants were identified. A study from April found that the Delta variant in the UK is 43 percent to 90 percent more transmissible than the original, but found "no clear evidence for a change in disease severity."

Recommendation: Direct Response Read More +