Did Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee order that no one speak in elevators to help slow the spread of coronavirus? No, not quite: His office released guidance that strongly advises no talking in elevators. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on December 7, 2020, with the caption "LOL, look what the Idiot Inslee…

Did the United Kingdom's National Health Service hire a "crisis actor" to play the part of the first person to receive Pfizer's approved COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: A visual comparison of the Irish granny who got a needle in the arm at University Hospital in Coventry, England, on December 8, 2020, and the person conspiracy theorists say was…

Does the COVID-19 RNA, also called mRNA, vaccine change a person's DNA? No, that's not true: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines "do not affect or interact with our DNA in any way." The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is considering the RNA, or messenger RNA (mRNA), vaccines for approval. The claim appeared in…

Is the psychiatrist who leads off a video attack on epidemiology and vaccinology correct in saying there is no SARS-Cov-2 virus, no COVID-19 pandemic, no safe vaccine and no need for one? No, that's not true. Neither Dr. Andrew Kaufman, nor any of the other medical professionals who appear in the video with him offer evidence to support their extraordinary…

Did a COVID-19 vaccine cause terrible sores to erupt on the feet of one of the participants in the vaccine trial? No, that's not really true: While it is true that this woman is dealing with large painful sores on her feet that have been identified by multiple doctors to be a type of adverse reaction called a "fixed drug…

Did the head of Pfizer research say the COVID vaccine is female sterilization? No, that's not true: This clickbait headline doubles up on false claims. The person the claim refers to is Michael Yeadon, who nearly a decade ago held a high position in one of Pfizer's several research departments as vice president and chief scientist for Allergy & Respiratory.…

Is Maine's rise in COVID-19 cases linked to face mask use? No, that is misleading: A social media post showed a newspaper article claiming that the surge in coronavirus cases in Maine were the result of Gov. Janet Mills' mandate for citizens of the New England state to wear face masks. The claim uses statistics from a CDC published study…

Will taking a COVID-19 vaccine kill you or lead to "debilitating" illness? No, that's not true: There is an abundance of evidence to the contrary. For one, between the two farthest along and most robust vaccine trials out of Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, there have already been tens of thousands of people administered the vaccine and not one person has died…

Did the CDC admit 98 million Americans received the polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963 when it was "contaminated with cancer-causing virus 'SV 40'"? No, that mis-states what the public health agency said and over-states the number exposed to SV40. At most, millions of people were given a vaccine that was contaminated with "SV 40" but there is no evidence…

Does Blue Cross Blue Shield pay doctors a bonus based on the number of children they vaccinate? No, that's not true: An official for Blue Cross Blue Shield told Lead Stories that doctors and other providers are offered incentives based on several measures, including vaccinations, which aim to encourage best-practices in disease prevention. The claim appeared in an Instagram post…

Did China recover from COVID-19 without a vaccine, which no one has reported? No, that's not true: China has already administered nearly 1 million doses of experimental COVID-19 vaccines. And that has been reported widely in scientific publications as well as popular media and news sites. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on November 30,…

Did researchers develop a vaccine for COVID-19 in a year, while vaccines for HIV, cancer and the common cold remain elusive? Yes, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. The diseases are different from one another, which means that the challenges around creating vaccines for them are distinct. HIV mutates faster than coronaviruses do; many forms of cancer aren't caused by…

Does the 99% COVID survival rate prove lockdowns are "no longer about health," but instead about government control? No, that's not true: A 1% fatality rate is not low for an infectious disease, public health experts point out. And, because COVID spreads easily from person to person -- even with some Americans wearing masks and following social distancing guidelines --…

Did a Johns Hopkins economics lecturer prove there are no "excess deaths" in 2020 due to COVID-19 and that the official U.S. death toll is misleading? No, that's not true: Her claim is based on lines on an Excel chart she made from CDC data. It is not based on examination of death certificates or medical case files, or interviews…

Was it proven over 100 years ago that vaccines are "hurting mankind"? No, that's not true: This research, which appears in Alfred Wallace's 135-year-old book, "Forty-Five Years of Registration Statistics, Proving Vaccination to be Both Useless and Dangerous," is full of falsehoods, including the title. And more than a century of research data has accumulated since it was written. The…

Did police in Germany arrest YouTuber Dr. Andreas Noack for speaking out against the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic? No, that's not true: Local police in the state of Bavaria confirmed that a raid took place, but said it was not directed at Noack. The chief prosecutor's office, the Generalstaatsanwaltschaft in Berlin, confirmed that the house search was part…

Did the Denver Broncos sign Colin Kaepernick to play quarterback on Sunday, November 29, 2020, after all of the team's quarterbacks were ordered into quarantine for COVID-19 exposure? No, that's not true: The same NFL COVID-19 protocols that benched all four of Denver's quarterbacks would also prevent Kaepernick from suiting up on short notice to play in the Bronco's game…

Do masks, gloves, vaccines, and synthetic handsoaps suppress human immune systems? No, that's not true: Public health experts and medical research say the opposite is the case and the claims were made with no evidence in a meme that spread to hundreds of thousands of Instagram users in the midst of a COVID-19 surge that saw more than 160,000 new…

Does medical research show COVID-19 is not transmitted in the air and that infection risk is unaffected by distance? No, neither claim is true: The claims ignore the accumulating recent evidence that airborne coronavirus is the major mode of infection. The claims ignore scientists' peer-reviewed conclusions -- which are based on what the full universe of study data show --…

Is it true the lethality of COVID-19 is being overblown by government mortality data, and was a Johns Hopkins University student paper censored when it posted a story about that claim? No, that is not true. There is no evidence that official COVID-19 death tallies have hidden some other cause of unexpected deaths in 2020. The student paper's retracted article…