A meme shared on social media suggesting that mRNA vaccines mislead the body into creating virus proteins ‘nonstop forever and ever’ contains false information. It shows a lack of understanding of how these vaccines work.
The claim was included in a Facebook post shared on March 8 among a group describing its members as ‘freedom fighters’ who ‘want to stop the new normal’. The report reads: “What happens when your body’s own cells are programmed to make the protein of an invader, uninterrupted, forever and ever, without a programmed end date?
“What happens if your immune system is constantly too hard, to believe that there is a pathogen that never disappears?” (here)
The report itself does not specifically mention mRNA; however, it describes the main part of the process that these vaccines undertake, i.e .: instruction to a cell to create a protein (here). Comments written on this also show that other Facebook users understand that the post refers to mRNA vaccines, such as those developed by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna.
While it is true to say that these vaccines stimulate cells in the body to create the protein that surrounds COVID-19, it is not true to say that it is a process that happens repeatedly, affecting the immune system in ‘ an “eternal transmission” pressure.
The mRNA that instructs the cells to create the vein protein is broken down by the cell shortly after the protein is synthesized (here). The protein itself, meanwhile, is broken down as it leaves the cell and is met by the immune response (here, here). As explained by Pfizer, this approach leads the immune system to recognize and respond appropriately if encountered by the virus in the future (here).
VERDICT
Untrue. COVID vaccines that use mRNA do not program cells to repeatedly produce peak proteins. The mRNA instructs cells to make the protein and is broken down by the body shortly thereafter.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work here to check out social media posts.