In a viral video, an Indiana physician baselessly claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines, which have been shown to be safe and effective, “fight the virus wrong and let the virus become worse than it would with native infection.” He also incorrectly said no vaccine prevents infection and contended that people previously infected with COVID-19 do not benefit from vaccination, despite studies that suggest otherwise.
Social media posts are misinterpreting the results of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, which found 74% of people in a COVID-19 outbreak were vaccinated, to argue against immunization. But experts say the statistic is misleading without more context — and doesn’t mean that the vaccines don’t work.
Multiple studies show the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccines continue to be effective against the delta variant of the coronavirus, even if the potency of the vaccines is somewhat reduced. But a guest on Fox News falsely claimed the delta variant “really is not responsive at all, or protected at all by the vaccines” and there is “no clinical reason to go get vaccinated.”
In a prime-time town hall aired on CNN, President Joe Biden overstated some facts and misled on others.
At a July 20 Senate hearing, Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, once again had a testy exchange over whether the U.S. funded gain-of-function research in China, with each man accusing the other of “lying.”
Federal vaccine monitoring systems have identified no safety concerns with the COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant people. Preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that miscarriage is not more frequent than expected in vaccinated people. Online posts, however, falsely contend that such data, as reported in a CDC publication, show an 82% miscarriage rate.
Despite increased media attention to the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have escaped from a lab, no credible evidence has emerged to support it and most scientists think the virus likely has a natural origin.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending that members of the public mask up last spring, additional research has backed the use of face masks to combat the coronavirus, but knowledge gaps still remain. Here, we summarize the evidence.
A tweet shared on Instagram baselessly claims that a person is 300 to 900 times more likely to die “after getting the #Covid vaccine than the flu vaccine.” But the comparison is faulty — and there is no proof that people are dying from COVID-19 vaccines.
A video falsely claims that people receiving authorized COVID-19 vaccines are taking part in a deadly clinical trial and that those administering the doses are war criminals under the Nuremberg Code. That’s bogus. People getting the vaccines, which have been shown to be safe and effective, consent to receive them and aren’t participating in research.