COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of death from COVID-19. Social media posts have misused survey data and adverse events reports to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more people than COVID-19. But serious adverse events resulting from vaccination, including deaths, are rare.
Small amounts of DNA from the manufacturing process may remain in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Purification and quality control steps ensure any leftover DNA is present within regulatory limits. There isn’t reason to think that this residual DNA would alter a person’s DNA or cause cancer, contrary to claims made online.
Some research indicates possible negative effects from aspartame, but there’s no definitive evidence linking it to health problems in the general population. Aspartame is safe when consumed within certain limits, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The daily limit is above the amount people typically ingest.
Serious side effects after COVID-19 vaccination are rare, and there isn’t evidence people need to undergo a “spike protein detoxification” regimen after getting vaccinated, contrary to claims made online. Nor has such a regimen been shown to help people recover from long COVID, or long-term health problems after having COVID-19.
People with cancer are particularly vulnerable to severe disease and death from COVID-19. Vaccines provide needed protection. It has not been shown that COVID-19 vaccines cause or accelerate cancer. Nor does a recent paper about a mouse that died of lymphoma “prove” that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine induced “turbo cancer,” contrary to social media claims.
Each year, respiratory syncytial virus hospitalizes 58,000 to 80,000 children under age 5 in the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved an antibody injection for babies to protect them during the RSV season. There isn’t evidence the shots have killed any babies, contrary to social media claims.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s battle against vaccines — and against the institutions that promote them — goes back to at least the mid-2000s, as we explain in the first article of this series. But the arrival of COVID-19 gave the environmental attorney fresh grounds to intensify his attacks and a timely platform to gain new followers and revenue.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. makes a variety of incorrect or misleading claims about vaccines, COVID-19 and other health-related topics. But his views on vaccines rose to prominence when he began to advance the thoroughly debunked idea that they cause autism.
In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Economic Forum proposed an initiative to reform economic and social systems, called the “Great Reset.” But a 2020 video of WEF’s Nicole Schwab discussing this initiative never showed her saying that “permanent climate lockdowns” were coming, contrary to claims in a widely shared article.
Breast cancer in younger women has been increasing gradually in recent decades. But a social media post misrepresents case number projections for 2022 and 2023 to falsely claim they show a dramatic rise in early-onset breast cancer — and then baselessly ties its faulty comparisons to COVID-19 vaccines.