Jessica McDonald, Science Editor, FactCheck.org

Last month, the surgeon general in the state of Florida advised against the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines due to ill-founded concerns about the safety of these vaccines. For more, see “Florida’s 2024-2025 COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance Misunderstands, Distorts Existing Science.” 

Published in October 2024 Vaccine Update

Jessica McDonald, Science Editor, FactCheck.org

With a resurgence of mpox in Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern on Aug. 14. The renewed attention has led to an outpouring of misinformation about mpox online — often involving COVID-19 vaccines. Social media posts, for example, have falsely claimed that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine causes mpox because it uses a chimpanzee adenoviral vector. Other posts have falsely suggested mpox is a cover-up for a side effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. For more, see “Posts Sharing Mpox Misinformation Recycle Claims from Prior Viral Outbreaks.”

Published in September 2024 Vaccine Update

Jessica McDonald, Science Editor, FactCheck.org

A major focus of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign is children’s health. But in the process, he’s misled the public about the magnitude of the problem and the likely causes. Kennedy, for example, has claimed that chronic diseases are “debilitating 60% of our kids” — up from 6% in the 1960s — and that the cause “has to be” an environmental toxin. Diagnoses of a variety of chronic conditions in children have increased in recent decades, but likely not to the extent that Kennedy claims or for the reasons he gives. For more, see “RFK Jr.’s Exaggerations on Chronic Disease in Children.”

Published in August 2024 Vaccine Update

Jessica McDonald, Science Editor, FactCheck.org

 FactCheck.org Social media posts are once again claiming that “74% of sudden deaths are shown to be due to the COVID-19 vaccine.” The claim first circulated last summer after known misinformation spreaders posted a preprint to a server hosted by The Lancet. Although the preprint server quickly removed the manuscript for its unsupported conclusions, a low-impact journal has now published the paper — and its claims are back. For more, see “Flawed Autopsy ‘Review’ Revives Unsupported Claims of COVID-19 Vaccine Harm, Censorship.” Published in July 2024 Vaccine Update

Published in July 2024 Vaccine Update

Kate Yandell, Science Writer, FactCheck.org

News that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine will no longer be sold globally has been used to distort the vaccine’s history and cast doubts on COVID-19 vaccines generally. While the vaccine was never authorized in the U.S., it is estimated worldwide to have saved millions of lives. Since 2021, the vaccine has been known to be associated with rare but occasionally serious blood clots. Social media posts have misleadingly suggested that the vaccine was withdrawn due to new revelations about the known side effects or that the mRNA vaccines are unsafe. For more, see “Misleading Claims on Well-Known Rare Risk of AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine.”

Published in June 2024 Vaccine Update

Kate Yandell, Staff Writer, FactCheck.org

Unsupported claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer continue to metastasize (so to speak). Recently, a review paper used flawed logic to suggest that modified mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines could suppress the immune system and help cancer develop. This faulty conclusion was primarily based on misinterpretation of a study of mRNA cancer vaccines in mice, which “did not show, suggest or indicate that modified mRNA promotes tumor growth/metastasis,” according to its corresponding author. For more, see “Still No Evidence COVID-19 Vaccination Increases Cancer Risk, Despite Posts.”

Published in May 2024 Vaccine Update

Kate Yandell, Staff Writer, FactCheck.org

Unfounded claims about aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are not new, but they continue to spread on social media. Some posts falsely suggest that aluminum in vaccines exceeds the safe limit, wrongly using Food and Drug Administration recommendations to limit aluminum in nutrition products that are given intravenously. However, this limit does not apply to vaccines. For more, see “Posts Raise Unfounded Concerns About Aluminum in Vaccines.”

Editor’s note: As a reminder, the VEC has a series of resources related to concerns about aluminum in vaccines:

• Aluminum in Vaccines: What You Should Know (Q&A), English | Spanish
• Aluminum & Vaccines: 3 Things to Know (Infographic), PDF | PNG
• Vaccine Ingredients – Aluminum (webpage), includes quantities of aluminum in each vaccine as well as videos addressing common questions about aluminum in vaccines

Published in April 2024 Vaccine Update

By: Kate Yandell, Science Writer, FactCheck.org

Vaccine safety research is often co-opted to raise unfounded concerns about vaccines. Recently, a large, international study from the Global Vaccine Data Network has been shared as supposed evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe or that people should not have received them. In fact, the study primarily confirmed known serious, but rare, side effects of COVID-19 vaccination, while also identifying a possible new safety signal for a very rare event. For more, see "Study Largely Confirms Known, Rare COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects."

Published in March 2024 Vaccine Update

In January 2024, social media was abuzz with unsupported claims that COVID-19 vaccination causes autism. These were based on a Turkish study that gave human-sized doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to pregnant rats and claimed to find negative behavioral effects in some offspring. Outside experts, however, have questioned the results and relevance to humans. For more, see “Viral Posts Misuse Rat Study to Make Unfounded Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines and Autism.

Published in February 2024 Vaccine Update

False claims that COVID-19 vaccines have killed large numbers of people are hardly new, but a bogus estimate of 17 million vaccine deaths went viral again after a podcaster and former evolutionary biologist mentioned it in an interview with Tucker Carlson. The flawed estimate, which first made waves on social media in September 2023, fails to consider excess deaths from COVID-19, among other problems. The podcaster also downplayed the risks of COVID-19 to children, incorrectly claiming that healthy kids “don’t die of COVID.” For more, read the story, “Tucker Carlson Video Spreads Falsehoods on COVID-19 Vaccines, WHO Accord.”

Published in January 2024 Vaccine Update