A video showing protesters arguing anti-vaccination arguments repeats numerous false and misleading allegations about COVID-19 vaccines. These include the false allegations that the vaccines cause women to become infertile, that it has been confirmed that deaths are caused by the vaccines, and that the vaccines contain microchips.
SUBJECT REACTIONS
In the video, which has been viewed more than 51,000 times on Facebook (here), protesters describe COVID-19 vaccines as ‘toxic’ and ‘poison’ (timestamps 7.06 and 9.57). At one point a protester said: ‘Many people have had adverse reactions, even just on the CDC, I think there were 900 people who suffered from severe to critical reactions, you know, where they died and, yes, they were seriously harmed. . ”(Timestamp 5.11)
Later, protesters can be heard saying that the death toll due to the vaccine is hidden and one says: ‘It is on the CDC website, I saw it myself. The number of deaths that occurred is reported. ”(Timestamp 19.28)
The claim of 900 responses is likely based on an update from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on COVID-19 vaccine safety, which looked at adverse effects after vaccination until the 18th of January on the Vaccine Advers Event Reporting System ( VAERS) has been reported. that 979 serious adverse events were reported after vaccination (slide 13 here: here).
A Disclaimer on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website states: ‘The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, accidental or unfathomable’ and ‘a report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine is the adverse cause has no event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination ”(here).
Updated safety reports, including data up to 16 February, show that for the Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech vaccines 6,081 serious side effects were recorded in vaccine recipients (p.6 here). However, more than 55 million people then received at least one dose (p.6). The Oxford Vaccine Group’s Vaccine Knowledge Project states: ‘When a vaccine is given to a very large number of people in a population, it’s probably just a coincidence that some of them will develop some sort of medical problem. around the vaccination, but it does not prove ’cause and effect’.
Similarly, while the CDC says that while 1,637 deaths have been reported to VAERS, to date, VAERS has not detected patterns in the cause of death that would indicate a safety issue with COVID-19 vaccines (here).
According to the Yellow Card, the UK’s Medicinal Products Regulatory Agency’s monitoring system for unwanted vaccines according to the yellow card “until 28 February“ the expected benefits of both COVID-19 vaccines to prevent COVID-19 and their serious complications far outweigh any known lace. While a small number of vaccines later died, a review of these cases ‘did not suggest that the vaccine played a role in the deaths’ (pp. 20, 21, 38). (here).
Infertility
Allegations that the vaccines cause infertility are also made several times in the video.
One protester says: “It can directly affect female fertility”, and says twice the phrase: “The vaccine is likely to cause infertility in women” (timestamps 3.40, 8.15 and 11.08), with Michael Yeadon, a former Pfizer researcher ( each time (here and here), which suggested that vaccines may cause the production of antibodies to Syncytin-1, a protein essential for successful pregnancy (here).
Reuters wrote earlier (here) about this claim.
Syncytin-1 is not contained in the SARS-CoV-2 ear protein, and experts have said that the SARS-CoV-2 ear protein and syncytin-1 do not match sufficiently to justify this problem.
Pfizer spokeswoman Dervila Keane told Reuters in an email that the protein targeted by their vaccine shared only a series of four amino acids with syncytin-1, making it too short to have autoimmune problems to cause. Syncytin-1 consists of 538 amino acids (here).
Numerous experts have said that there are few similarities between the COVID-19 ear protein and syncytin-1 and that it was not significant enough to confuse the immune system between the two (here and here and here and here and here).
NANOCHIPS
A protester can be heard in the video saying, “Some vaccines may contain nanochips” (timestamp 8.34).
Reuters has uncovered similar claims in the past (here and here and here and here).
There is no credible evidence that the vaccines contain COVID-19 microchips.
VERDICT
Untrue. Neither the UK nor the US health authorities have seen evidence of a safety hazard posed by COVID-19 vaccines. Experts believe that there is no reason to believe that the vaccines will harm fertility, and claim that the vaccines contain microchips are unfounded.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.