The CEO of Pfizer posted a photo of himself getting the second shot of the COVID-19 vaccine on March 10. But an Aug. 5 tweet from Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson misleadingly suggested he isn’t vaccinated. She updated the tweet hours later, acknowledging the CEO’s post — but after her claim had spread, uncorrected, on other social media.
Researchers use genomic sequencing — not the clinical tests used to diagnose patients with COVID-19 — to identify and track specific variants of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, including the highly contagious delta variant. But viral posts try to deny the existence of the variant by misleadingly claiming there is “no ‘Delta Variant’ test.”
The Biden administration hasn’t introduced COVID-19 travel restrictions on Americans going to Mexico since the delta variant became dominant in the U.S., and it is enforcing immigration laws at the border. But a meme falsely claiming the opposite is circulating online.
A conspiracy theory online baselessly suggests that the World Health Organization and other groups preplanned the variants of the novel coronavirus — citing a dubious timeline. But the timeline doesn’t square with the reality of when variants have been identified and designated thus far.
An epidemiologist recommended that people get the COVID-19 vaccine because some evidence suggests an unvaccinated person who gets the delta variant is “twice as likely to require hospital treatment” than someone infected with the alpha variant. But a Facebook video twists that advice to claim that he said vaccinated people would be twice as likely to be hospitalized.
Scientists consider polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests a highly reliable tool for diagnosing COVID-19. But social media posts are misrepresenting a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement regarding the eventual discontinuation of its own test, falsely claiming the government has conceded that PCR tests aren’t reliable.
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.”
A satire site a month ago published a joke about the Biden administration creating “quarantine camps” for the unvaccinated. Now that fabricated story is circulating online, presented as if it’s real.
A businessman’s post on Instagram and Facebook wrongly claims that the U.S. government “changed the definition of pandemic” in 2004, suggesting that COVID-19 would not have qualified under the old definition. There’s no evidence for those claims — and COVID-19 is by all means a pandemic.
Actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik has expressed skepticism about vaccines in the past, but she says she and her two teenage children have received the COVID-19 vaccine. A Facebook post says Bialik “refuses to vaccinate,” leaving the false impression that she opposes COVID-19 vaccines.