Misinformation

Trending Misinformation about Vaccines & COVID-19

• Similar to the previous week, posts across social media, news, and blogs are reporting that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips that will be used to track those who receive the vaccine. This misinformation is a distortion of the fact that vaccine containers will contain barcodes in order to track their distribution.
• Facebook and Twitter posts claim that the picture of the 90 year old woman who received the UK’s first COVID-19 vaccine outside clinical trials were false, and taken months before the vaccine was approved.
• Facebook and Instagram posts claim that vaccines cause childhood leukemia, due to exposure to formaldehyde in vaccines. Formaldehyde is found in trace amounts in vaccines as a preservative, and has found to be safe.
• False claims are circulating on social media that the head of Pfizer’s research department revealed their COVID-19 vaccine cause sterilization in females due to its inclusion of a protein called syncytin-1. The protein syncytin-1 is important in the creation of a woman’s placenta. The actual Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine does not contain the protein, nor has the vaccine been associated with infertility. Claims around female sterilization from COVID-19 vaccines have persisted since vaccine trials first began.
• Two people in the UK have had severe anaphylactic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. These people had a history of allergic reactions to vaccines. The CDC recently stated that people who have experienced severe reactions to prior vaccines can still get the Pfizer vaccine but should talk with their doctors beforehand, and be monitored for 30 mins after injection.

Trending Misinformation about Vaccines & COVID-19

• False claims are circulating on social media that the head of Pfizer’s research department revealed their COVID-19 vaccine cause sterilization in females due to its inclusion of a protein called syncytin-1. The protein syncytin-1 is important in the creation of a woman’s placenta. The actual Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine does not contain the protein, nor has the vaccine been associated with infertility. Claims around female sterilization from COVID-19 vaccines have persisted since vaccine trials first began.
• Similar to the previous week, posts across social media, news, and blogs are reporting that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips that will be used to track those who receive the vaccine. This misinformation is a distortion of the fact that vaccine containers will contain barcodes in order to track their distribution.
• Facebook and Twitter posts claim that the picture of the 90-year-old woman who received the UK’s first COVID-19 vaccine outside clinical trials was false, and taken months before the vaccine was approved.
• Facebook and Instagram posts claim that vaccines cause childhood leukemia, due to exposure to formaldehyde in vaccines. Formaldehyde is found in trace amounts in vaccines as a preservative, and has found to be safe.

Trending Misinformation about Vaccines & COVID-19

• A photo of a doctor standing in an empty auxiliary care site for COVID-19 patients is being misrepresented as evidence that the pandemic is fake, despite cases surging across the country. The photo was taken the day the site was opened and shared by a physician on Twitter to demonstrate the gravity of the situation, but has since been shared by people to share falsehoods about the site and the ongoing pandemic. 
• Comparisons have been made in recent weeks between the severity of COVID-19 and the flu, in an effort to downplay the severity of COVID-19. COVID-19 is not just a “bad flu,” and is caused by a different virus than the flu. While hundreds of thousands of people worldwide die from the flu each year, there have been over 1.5 million COVID-deaths reported worldwide to date. 
• Videos on Facebook made from altered and out-of-context clips are perpetuating the myth that the COVID-19 vaccine will contain a tracking microchip that will be inserted into vaccine recipients. An optional RFID chip could be included on a syringe’s label to confirm information about the vaccine (comparable to a bar code), but will not be part of the injected substance itself.