Did the New Mexico National Guard "terrorize" schoolchildren? No, that's not true: An official representative of the Estancia School District told Lead Stories, "this event never happened." A New Mexico National Guardsman tells Lead Stories this information is," false." Also, this claim was made on a self-described satirical website whose disclaimer says it publishes articles like this one for "entertainment…

Did the death rate of working-age Americans rise 40 percent from the summer of 2019 to the summer of 2021? Yes, there has been a sharp rise. Is the COVID-19 pandemic not the cause? There is no basis to blame it on anything other than the pandemic. The simple comparison of summer 2019 to summer 2021 does not account for…

Did Public Health Scotland (PHS) stop publishing weekly COVID-19 data to hide that fully vaccinated people are developing AIDS? No, that's not true: The agency said it's because of an "increasing risk of misinterpretation." COVID skeptics and anti-vaccine activists have used PHS numbers out of context to mislead. COVID vaccines boost the ability of our bodies to fight coronavirus. AIDS…

Is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collecting DNA through COVID-19 test samples? No, that's not true: The CDC published a tweet on February 16, 2022, that stated that if a person took a COVID nose swab test there was "a 10% chance that it ended up in a lab for genomic sequencing analysis." The following day, February 17,…

Did a news report accidentally reveal that doctors are giving a "banned" COVID-19 treatment to Queen Elizabeth? No, that's not true: Due to an editing error, the Australian program "A Current Affair" featured a clip showing a bottle of Stromectol, a brand name for ivermectin, along with the intended clip of Sotrovimab. The error was acknowledged and clarified on the…

Do healthy children "never ever" get severe COVID-19 and do mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 undermine children's immune systems, putting them at risk for other infectious diseases? No, that's not true: Pediatric infectious disease researchers have documented multiple cases of previously healthy children infected with COVID-19 and hospitalized in intensive care units, says a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Johns…

Are COVID-19 vaccines to blame for "urgent warnings" about blood clots from Pfizer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? No, that's not true: Both the CDC and Pfizer have promoted such campaigns since 2015. Blood clots are not uncommon, even for the healthiest athletes. The CDC says "approximately 5% to 8% of the U.S. population has one…

Does this article provide a correct comparison between the severity of myocarditis cases caused by COVID vaccines and those resulting from COVID-19 illness? No, that's not true: It gets the comparison backward. Myocarditis experts say cases of inflammation of the heart muscle caused by COVID infection are significantly worse and far more common. A founder of the Myocarditis Foundation, Mayo…

Did scientists fraudulently claim that they had isolated and sequenced viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19? No, that's not true: The SARS-CoV-2 virus has been independently isolated and sequenced by multiple scientists around the world since January 7, 2020. Claims that the virus has never been isolated have circulated since vaccines for COVID-19 were introduced in early 2020, including in…

Were there empty ATMs and locked funds at all of the "Big Five" Canadian banks on February 17, 2022? No, that's not true: The claims are "baseless," the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) told Lead Stories. The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) confirmed it was experiencing trouble with online banking services on February 16, 2022, but there is no evidence that…

Did a grand jury charge Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with murder? No, that's not true: No legally recognized grand jury has been convened to indict Fauci on any charges. The fake court proceeding previously identified itself as the "Grand Jury of the World Criminal Court." No government recognizes the "World…

Does Canada discriminate against the phoneless by requiring proof of vaccinations with a printed QR code? No, that's not true: Paper copies of the proof of vaccination QR code are acceptable; they do not have to be on a phone to show proof of vaccination. The claim appeared in a video from a Facebook post (archived here) on February 8,…

Was the on-air spell suffered by German reporter Clara Pfeffer caused by the COVID-19 vaccine, as some social media posts suggest? No, that's not true: Pfeffer became disoriented during a live broadcast of the RTL News morning show, "ntv-Frühstart" ("Early Start"). She recovered soon after. Later that day she wrote in a tweet that in the future she would have…

Did The Lancet publish a medical professor's warning that natural immunity has made vaccine mandates irrelevant? No, that's not true: The professor cited never uses the word "irrelevant" in his letter to the British medical journal but he does say there are "compelling arguments against such unilateral mandates." It's important to note that the professor is specifically talking about health…

Does everyone who got a COVID-19 vaccine need to be tested for HIV? No, that's not true: A COVID vaccine that produced false-positive results for the virus that causes AIDS was used during clinical trials in Australia but later discontinued because of the "risk to vaccine confidence" those test results generated. The vaccine used harmless HIV fragments that produced the…

Is there HIV and "foreign bacteria" in COVID vaccines or booster shots?? No, that's not true: The mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer deliver biological blueprint material that causes your cells to generate spike proteins, which train your immune system in case you are exposed to spike protein-bearing SARS-CoV-2. Like many other vaccines long in use, the Janssen/J&J vaccine…

Did Canada invoke its Emergencies Act for the first time ever? Yes, that's true, but Canada has had a similar law in place since Parliament adopted the War Measures Act in August 1914, shortly after the beginning of World War I. The War Measures Act was last used by then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1970 during the October Crisis,…

Does the U.S. State Department forbid U.S. citizens from smiling in their passport photos? No, that's not true: The State Department's webpage on passport photos features multiple photos marked "acceptable" showing smiling faces. In the section on expressions in passport photos, the U.S. government says passport photos should "Have a neutral facial expression or a natural smile, with both eyes…

Do these photos prove someone found nanotechnology in Pfizer Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: The claim is based on use of a home microscope that could not see nanoscale items, which are one-billionth of a meter across. The claim provides none of the customary scientific reporting that would prove the origin of the material in the photos, that…

Was 2022 the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention talked about blood clots ahead of the Super Bowl? No, that's not true: The CDC also publicized blood clots in connection with the NFL championship on Twitter before the 2020 game. The agency has regularly posted about the condition on social media for more than a decade. The…