Fact check: New COVID-19 variants continue to be discovered The claim: COVID-19 variants are no longer being found https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-variants-still-found-frequently/11615416002/ An April 7 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) poses a question about the virus that causes COVID-19. “Anyone else find it odd that we stopped having new variants all of a sudden?” reads the post. The post was liked more than 10,000 times in less than a week. A similar claim was shared on Twitter. Our rating: False New variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 continue to be reported by health officials around the globe, according to public trackers. Virus causing COVID-19 continues to mutate Multiple sources show that new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 have been found in recent months. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a new variant as a viral genome with at least one mutation from a previous version. A database maintained by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, an international effort to make virus data quickly accessible, listed new variants in more than 80 countries since the start of April. The World Health Organization, which also tracks variants, added XBB.1.16 to its list of variants under monitoring in March. It was discovered in January and is responsible for a growing number of cases in India. The CDC offers its own tracker. XBB.1.5, a subvariant of the omicron strain, is the most common variant in the U.S. and represents nearly 88% of cases at the start of April, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The WHO groups certain variants into categories based on the level of concern and risk they pose to public health. A variant that has genetic mutations that could “affect virus characteristics” and early signs of “growth advantage relative to other circulating variants” is considered a variant under monitoring by the WHO. It isn’t clear how variants in this category would affect a person’s health, and they can move to other categories that signify greater or imminent risk as they are better understood. The WHO and the SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group, a group within the Department of Health and Human Services, are responsible for assigning a Greek letter to variants that are significantly different from earlier variants, said Lisa George, a spokesperson for the CDC. That last happened when the omicron variant was named in November 2021. Most variants circulating now are subvariants of omicron. The risk posed by future variants is significant enough that the White House on April 10 announced a $5 billion effort to develop vaccines and therapeutics that can have broader efficacy against them. “We need vaccines that are more durable," Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus coordinator, said at a July 2022 White House coronavirus vaccine summit. "Vaccines that offer broader and longer-lasting protection. Vaccines that can stand up to multiple variants. Vaccines that can handle whatever Mother Nature throws at us." USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment. The Associated Press, PolitiFact and Lead Stories also debunked versions of the claim. Our fact-check sources: Lisa George, April 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY GISAID, accessed April 13, Tracking of hCoV-19 Variants CDC, updated April 7, Variant Proportions CDC updated March 20, SARS-CoV-2 Variant Classifications and Definitions CDC, updated Feb. 6, Variants of the Virus WHO, updated March 30, Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants WHO, March 30, Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 30 March University of Nebraska Medical Center, April 1, What COVID-19 variants are going around in April 2023? Washington Post, April 10, White House launching $5 billion program to speed coronavirus vaccines ABC News, April 6, What to know about the XBB.1.16 COVID variant causing concern in India
Fact Check: No, Swiss govt Did NOT order 'immediate halt' to Covid-19 vaccination The country has 98% of its populace vaccinated for Covid-19. In light of this situation, the government has not recommended vaccination for spring/summer 2023. https://www.indiatoday.in/fact-chec...lt-to-covid-19-vaccination-2359235-2023-04-12
It is amazing the bullshiat that anti-vaxxers keep coming up with. No, farmers aren’t required to vaccinate livestock with mRNA vaccines https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-mrna-vaccine-livestock-mandate-covid-564035224253
Remember when we heard that removing mask mandates on planes would be a disaster? And then...well, nothing.
Demented anti-vaxxers and their organizations continue to push complete nonsense. At some point these anti-vax clowns should be held accountable for their misinformation and crimes. No Evidence Excess Deaths Linked to Vaccines, Contrary to Claims Online https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/s...linked-to-vaccines-contrary-to-claims-online/ COVID-19 vaccines substantially reduce the risk of dying from COVID-19, and serious side effects are very rare. Excess deaths among working-age adults in 2021 and 2022 were driven by COVID-19 and other factors, not vaccination. Faulty logic underlies claims that vaccines caused mass disability and economic harm. Full Story COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of death from the disease, including in young adults. Despite overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have mitigated the effects of the pandemic, a report called the Vaccine Damage Project, or V-Damage Project, claims that they led to 310,000 excess deaths among Americans ages 25 through 64 in 2021 and 2022. It also baselessly claims the vaccines had a “significant impact” on the number of Americans with disabilities and that COVID-19 vaccines were the “most likely cause” for a large increase in work absences. The report, which uses the faulty estimates of excess deaths, disabilities and injuries to calculate economic damages, appears on the website of Phinance Technologies — a firm that offers subscriptions to financial reports and consulting services. Phinance says it plans to launch an investment fund. The alleged findings of the V-Damage Project have been shared widely on social media. Edward Dowd, a founding partner of Phinance Technologies, baselessly tweeted that the “estimated human cost” of the vaccines was 26.6 million injuries, 1.36 million disabilities and 300,000 excess deaths. Dowd has repeatedly said that COVID-19 vaccines are causing large numbers of deaths, claims that have been debunked by other fact-checkers. Excess deaths associated with the pandemic did continue in 2021 and 2022, but there is no evidence COVID-19 vaccines caused this phenomenon. COVID-19 continued to kill hundreds of thousands of American adults, including nearly 200,000 under age 65 during those two years. Deaths due to drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents and alcohol also rose in adults ages 25 to 44 in 2020 and again in 2021, according to Ellen Meara, a professor of health economics and policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. (She told us in an email that the available data don’t yet provide a complete picture of 2022.) “COVID-19 vaccines are the best tool to prevent and reduce complications due to COVID-19,” Lisa George, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public affairs specialist, told us in an email. “These vaccines are safe and effective and have undergone the most extensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.” The number of Americans with disabilities also increased in 2021 and 2022, but negative effects from vaccines are unlikely to explain this rise, given the vaccines’ good safety profile. Finally, sickness-related workplace absences began to rise in 2020, before vaccines were available. A spike in absences in early 2022 coincided with the omicron wave. Excess Deaths Have a Variety of Causes Since early in the pandemic, the CDC has been tallying excess deaths — a measure that compares the number of expected deaths in a time period to the actual number of deaths that occur. The CDC calculates expected deaths assuming the pandemic had not happened, although it notes that “it is increasingly difficult to predict what trends in mortality would have looked like had the pandemic not occurred.” There have been more than 1.3 million excess deaths in the U.S. since Feb. 1, 2020, according to CDC’s calculation. Many of these are known to be directly the result of COVID-19. Other deaths, the agency explains, could “represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” These could include, for example, deaths occurring because of overburdened hospitals, or because of upticks in car crashes or drug overdoses. Especially early in the pandemic, many COVID-19 deaths were missed because of a lack of testing. According to CDC data, there have been more than 300,000 excess deaths since the beginning of the pandemic if those listing COVID-19 as a cause are excluded. Again, some of these deaths could still be due to COVID-19, but the disease was not listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death. The V-Damage Project calculates excess deaths due to vaccination using faulty logic. The report first reasonably states that it’s difficult to distinguish causes of death at the population level. It goes on to incorrectly say: “Starting in the summer of 2021, however, with the introduction of mass vaccinations, the rise in natural immunity by exposure to the virus, and the emergence of milder and more contagious virus strains such as Omicron, it is difficult to argue if Covid-19 had a significant role in excess mortality. Therefore, we can use the total excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 as an estimate for vaccine-related deaths, or at least an estimated upper limit for the vaccine damage.” There are several things wrong with this statement. First, a substantial number of people died from COVID-19 in the second half of 2021 and in 2022. By the start of summer 2021, there had been a little more than 600,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. The death toll had risen to nearly 1.1 million by the end of 2022. And while the proportion of COVID-19 deaths in older versus younger adults increased over this time period, COVID-19 continued to kill people under age 65. As noted in a HealthFeedback article discussing a prior claim from Dowd about excess deaths, the timing of excess deaths during the pandemic indicates they are closely tied to COVID-19 deaths, not vaccination. An article from the Associated Press further notes that to show a relationship between vaccines and deaths, one would need to show that vaccinated people — and not unvaccinated people — died at elevated rates. The V-Damage Project doesn’t provide information on deaths in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people. Second, omicron has been far from benign. Research shows that per infection, omicron has been less severe than earlier variants, in large part because more people have some immunity, either from infection, vaccination or both. There is also some evidence that omicron is naturally less virulent than the delta variant that directly preceded it, although omicron appears to be about as virulent as the original virus. But omicron spreads more readily to close contacts than delta, and vaccination is less effective at blocking transmission. This all added up to a record-breaking wave of COVID-19 cases in late 2021 and early 2022, which came with significant deaths. Third, the effects of the pandemic have been complex, and excess deaths related to the pandemic likely have multiple causes. Deaths due to drug overdoses, cardiometabolic disorders and other diseases were already increasing in younger Americans in the decade leading up to the pandemic. The pandemic “accentuated the pre-existing mid-life mortality crisis” in the U.S., researchers wrote in a 2022 study published in Nature Human Behavior. As we’ve mentioned, deaths due to drug overdoses, alcohol and motor vehicle accidents all increased in young adults in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021. A recent CDC report also shows an increase in suicides in 2021, including in young adult males. Finally, there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have killed large numbers of people. The Food and Drug Administration and CDC have multiple systems for monitoring vaccine safety, and they have detected very few deaths caused by the vaccines. According to a CDC web page updated last month, nine deaths have been linked to a rare clotting disorder caused by the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. “CDC and FDA continue to review reports of death following COVID-19 vaccination and update information as it becomes available,” the web page says. In fact, the evidence shows that the vaccines have saved lives. Meara pointed to a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that compared death rates in June 2021 through March 2022 in the 10 states with the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates with the primary series versus the 10 states with the lowest rates. Per 100,000 people, there were 75 COVID-19 deaths in the most vaccinated states versus 146 in the least vaccinated states. Excess deaths from all causes were also lower in states with a high proportion of vaccinated individuals. Serious Adverse Events from COVID-19 Vaccines Are Very Rare It is unlikely that serious and severe adverse events from COVID-19 vaccines led to rising numbers of people with disabilities in 2021 and 2022, contrary to claims in the V-Damage report. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly carries out a nationally representative survey, called the Current Population Survey, of around 60,000 U.S. households. The survey data do show an increase in people reporting disabilities in 2021 and 2022. But Sean Smith, an economist with the Current Population Survey at the BLS, told us in an email that the survey data cannot be used to identify specific disabilities. “We cannot determine from the questions asked if the disability is related to COVID or to an adverse reaction to a vaccine,” he said. A November 2022 working paper from the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research pointed out that, beginning in the second quarter of 2021, the initial rise in the disability rate likely occurred because some people missed earlier interviews and were asked questions about disability in subsequent surveys. “However, since then the rising prevalence of Long COVID and other new sources of disability signal that the increase may reflect an actual increase in the number of [people with disability],” the researchers wrote. There is extensive data available on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, and these data indicate it is unlikely that they caused a significant number of disabilities. The vast majority of side effects following vaccination — like fever and pain at the injection site — are temporary and are not serious. The V-Damage Report also relies on a paper written by emergency medicine physician Dr. Joseph Fraiman and colleagues to argue that vaccine damages led to the rise in disabilities. As we’ve previously explained, the paper makes an unsubstantiated claim about adverse events based on a flawed reanalysis of the clinical trials of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines. In reality, serious adverse events were uncommon in large, randomized mRNA vaccine trials and occurred at a similar rate among people who got the vaccines and those who got the placebos. Finally, the V-Damage report makes unsubstantiated claims that data from v-safe — a text messaging-based system that prompts people to report on their health after vaccination — show a concerning pattern of hospitalization. “Our analysis shows that during the vaccine rollout process, the CDC had live real world data that corroborated the safety signals observed in the clinical trials,” the report says. In fact, a 2022 analysis of data from v-safe and another vaccine monitoring system called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System showed that most reported adverse events from mRNA vaccines during the first six months of the vaccination program were “mild and short in duration.” As we’ve previously explained, less than 1% of people enrolled in v-safe sought medical care in the week after each vaccine dose. An even smaller number, less than 0.1%, were hospitalized in the week after receiving each dose. Further, v-safe prompts participants to report any health event or hospitalization, not just ones they believe are related to vaccination. Similarly, VAERS accepts reports of any post-vaccination event, regardless of the cause. Work Absences Part of Larger Pandemic Trend Many people take time off from work temporarily due to minor side effects from COVID-19 vaccines, but these absences do not explain a larger pattern of increasing absences since 2020. The V-Damage Project uses data on side effects from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to claim that full-time workers experienced injuries from COVID-19 vaccines and that the vaccines caused “a degradation of individuals’ immune systems.” But as we’ve noted, very few side effects were serious or lasting, and there is no evidence the vaccines harm the immune system. The report goes on to cite data from the BLS to claim that these vaccine “injuries” led to absences from work. But work absences due to “own illness, injury, or medical problems” increased at the start of the pandemic, according to Smith, the BLS economist. When counting absences that lasted the entire week, absences due to sickness reached 1.3 million in March 2020 and 2 million in April 2020 — then a record-high number. The V-Damage Project acknowledges this early-pandemic increase — prior to the arrival of vaccines — but says that the “largest rise in absence rates was in 2022” and that this “occurred after the main impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.” However, the unusually large number of sickness-related absences in 2022 can be attributed to a spike at the beginning of the year. Sickness-related absences “further increased to a series high of 3.6 million in January 2022, however this measure dropped to 1.6 million in February 2022 and since then has been similar to the average levels seen in 2020 and 2021,” Smith told us in an email. As before with disabilities, Smith said that BLS does not have information on the type of illness that caused people to miss work. But it is worth noting that omicron cases peaked in the U.S. in early 2022, breaking prior records for weekly COVID-19 cases. The BLS data on absences appear more closely tied to COVID-19 cases than vaccinations. Emma Xiaolu Zang, an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University, who has done research on illness-related work absences early in the pandemic, told us via email that absences in 2022 were likely part of a longer-term pattern of COVID-19-related absences. “COVID vaccines were unlikely to be the reason for the spike in [sickness-related absences], which started in early 2020,” Zang said. Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. Sources “Impact of Vaccination on Risk of COVID-19–Related Mortality.” CDC website. Updated 16 Nov 2022. “Evidence Shows That COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Increase the Risk of Death, Contrary to Claim by Financier Edward Dowd.” Health Feedback. 11 Jan 2023. “COVID-19 Vaccines Did Not Cause Excess Deaths among Millennials.” AP News. 26 Mar 2022. “Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19.” CDC website. Updated 12 Apr 2023. “COVID-19 Death Data and Resources: Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics.” CDC website. Updated 12 Apr 2023. Meara, Ellen. “Excess Deaths In A Time Of Dual Public Health Crises: Parsing The Effects Of The Pandemic, Drug Overdoses, And Recession: Study Examines Excess Deaths from COVID-19, Drug Overdoses, and Recession in the US.” Health Affairs. Nov 2022. Meara, Ellen. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 6 Apr 2023. George, Lisa. CDC. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 6. Apr 2023. “(unadj) Population – With a disability, Women.” Bureau of Labor Statistics Data. Accessed 13 Apr 2023. “(unadj Population – With a disability, Men.” Bureau of Labor Statistics Data. Accessed 13 Apr. 2023. “How Safe Are the Vaccines?” FactCheck.org. Updated 17 May 2022. Lyttelton, Thomas and Zang, Emma. “Occupations and Sickness-Related Absences during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 31 Jan 2022. “(Unadj) Employed – With a job, not at work, Own illness.” Bureau of Labor Statistics Data. Accessed 13 Apr. 2023. “Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19.” CDC website. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine. Archived 30 Apr 2020. “Trends in Number of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in the US Reported to CDC, by State/Territory.” CDC COVID Data Tracker. 13 Apr 2023. 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Let's take a look at the latest nonsense being pushed by demented anti-vaxxers this past week. Fact check: CDC says COVID-19 vaccines safe, no proof of deadly batches sent to red states https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...tates-got-deadly-vaccine-batches/11713011002/ The claim: CDC admits sending deadly batches of COVID-19 vaccines to red states An April 17 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shares a screenshot of an article that includes a photo of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Wallensky. “CDC Admits Red States Got ‘Rapid Kill’ COVID Vaccine Batches,” reads the article’s headline. The post was liked more than 1,000 times in one week. Our rating: False The CDC has not made such an admission, and no such thing happened. The article misrepresents data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, a database where anyone can report what they think are vaccine side effects. Claim relies on unproven, anecdotal data Ann Hardie, a CDC spokesperson, told USA TODAY the claim is baseless. "The claim is false," said Hardie. "Moreover, it is harmful and irresponsible because it could discourage people from getting vaccinated against COVID-19." Hardie said data continues to show COVID-19 vaccination can help protect against severe illness, hospitalization and death There is no mention of a deadly batch of COVID-19 vaccines on the CDC's website. There are likewise no credible news reports about any such admission from the public health agency or any deadly batches of COVID-19 vaccines in any location. The CDC website states that everyone over the age of 6 months should be vaccinated against COVID-19. The article, which was published by The People's Voice, claims data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System supports the claim. It also claims the assertion is proven out in "private leaked documents from the CDC," but it doesn't quote the documents or provide any proof such documents exist. The People’s Voice was formerly known as News Punch, which USA TODAY has repeatedly debunked after it published fabricated stories about COVID-19 and other health-related topics. VAERS is a database of unverified reports of adverse effects possibly related to vaccines that is operated by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration. Hardie emphasized that VAERS is designed to be an "early warning system" of potential safety issues, not a tool for determining if a vaccine caused the reported adverse events. It looks for unusual patterns and alerts CDC experts to potential vaccine safety concerns for further investigation. The VAERS website includes a disclaimer that states, “VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental or unverifiable. Reports to VAERS can also be biased. As a result, there are limitations on how the data can be used scientifically." Despite those warnings, VAERS data is frequently cited as proof of safety issues with COVID-19 vaccines. Hardie noted that verified deaths connected to the more than 674 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in the U.S. are exceedingly rare. VAERS has received more than 19,000 preliminary reports of deaths occurring after someone received a shot. Of those deaths, CDC is aware of nine directly attributable to COVID-19 vaccines, all connected to side effects from the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim and The People’s Voice for comment. The Associated Press also debunked the claim. Our fact-check sources: Ann Hardie, April 21, Email exchange with USA TODAY Department of Health and Human Services, accessed April 21, VAERS – Data CDC, accessed April 21, About VAERS