SciCheck Digest The COVID-19 vaccines available in the U.S. were found to be safe and effective in clinical trials and real-world conditions. Dr. Anthony Fauci did not admit that “Covid Vaccines May Actually Make People ‘Worse,’” as a viral headline misleadingly claims. Fauci’s March 2020 remarks about testing future vaccines […]
Facts Check
Article Makes Unfounded Claims Linking Athletes’ Injuries, Deaths to Vaccines
SciCheck Digest Many U.S. athletes have been vaccinated against COVID-19 without any adverse effects. But a conservative outlet has cited a list of supposedly vaccine-injured athletes to claim “there may be something wrong with the vaccine.” There’s no proof that the listed athletes — most of them are actually retired […]
The Whoppers of 2021
Summary Mass rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines has been the defining story of 2021, yet for all its success, vaccination rates remain stubbornly low in some populations. As with all things in American life these days, partisanship has played an outsized roll: an estimated four in 10 Republicans, for example, […]
Doctor Makes False Claim About Stillbirths in Canadian Hospitals
SciCheck Digest The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant people, and the World Health Organization says the vaccines are safe for them. Yet online articles cite a Canadian doctor who falsely claims that the vaccines have caused an unusually high number of stillbirths in Canadian […]
No Credible Evidence COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines ‘Dramatically Increase’ Heart Attack Risk, Contrary to Flawed Abstract
SciCheck Digest The COVID-19 vaccines administered in the U.S. are not known to increase the risk of heart attack. But social media posts are misinterpreting an abstract in an American Heart Association journal as proof that the vaccine kills. The publisher later issued an “expression of concern” about the abstract […]
Pope Francis Continues to be Active, Despite Unsupported Report of Declining Health
Q: Is Pope Francis dying? A: There is no credible evidence that he is terminally ill. The viral claim is based on a single news story published Dec. 6 by Newsmax, a conservative news outlet, which attributed the information to an unidentified Vatican source. No other publication has reported it. […]
Biden’s Wage Claims: Mostly Malarkey
President Joe Biden has been saying “wages are up” and rising “faster than inflation.” “Even after accounting for rising prices, the typical American family has more money in their pockets than they did last year,” the president said Dec. 3. Well, not so fast. While weekly paychecks have indeed gotten […]
Post Comes to Premature Conclusions About COVID-19 Omicron Variant Severity
SciCheck Digest It’s not known yet whether the omicron variant causes more or less severe COVID-19 than the delta variant, although some preliminary indications suggest omicron infections might be milder. A Facebook post nevertheless claims, without evidence, that the “toxicity” of omicron is 5 times higher than delta and that […]
Researchers Studying Whether Mouthwashes Can Reduce Viral Load, COVID-19 Transmission
In a Dec. 8 town hall meeting, Sen. Ron Johnson may have left a misleading impression in saying “standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus.” In the laboratory, some mouthwashes have been shown to block infectivity or suppress SARS-CoV-2, but studies involving people using mouthwash are not […]
Post Makes Unfounded Claims About Omicron ‘Symptoms’ and COVID-19 Vaccines
SciCheck Digest Scientists are still learning about the omicron variant’s ability to spread or cause severe illness and the effectiveness of the current COVID-19 vaccines in fighting it. But a Facebook post misleadingly claims to list seven “symptoms” of the new variant, then suggests they are caused by the vaccines. […]