Does this meme paint an accurate picture of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines? No, that's not true: Although what we know about the virus and the vaccines has changed over time, scientists and public health experts continue to say that vaccines work, especially with respect to the risk of severe illness and death. Various factors, including age, the emergence of…

Will the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) newly begin in January 2022 to provide data on how many U.S. deaths are "from" COVID and how many are "with" COVID? No, that's not true: The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the CDC has always separated out cases where COVID-19 was the immediate cause of death. The person…

Is Ronald McDonald House "evicting" all unvaccinated children from its facilities? No, that's not true: Although it's true that Ronald McDonald House (RMH) British Columbia (BC) & Yukon mandates vaccinations for everyone working, visiting or staying there, child patients unable to be vaccinated because they are undergoing treatment are exempt. Additionally, the children's charity says no family will be evicted…

In a video made to encourage COVID-19 vaccines in aboriginal communities, did Mark McGowan, the premier of Western Australia, make a patronizing and insensitive blunder by having an Indigenous interpreter stand beside him and simply repeat what he said in accented English? No, that's not true: The interpreter, in a video that has gone viral, is translating McGowan's message into…

Did a CDC whistleblower say "vaccines were never meant to stop COVID-19"? No, that's not true: The purported whistleblower claim was published on a website with a disclaimer warning readers not to take its content at face value.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website says getting vaccinated against COVID can lower your risk of getting and spreading the virus…

Did the CEO of Pfizer say that two doses of the vaccine offer very little protection against COVID-19? No, that's not true: He was speaking specifically about the omicron variant, not about other variants of the coronavirus. Clipping the quote in this way robs it of context that makes clear what he meant. The claim appeared in an Instagram post…

Does a video show New York Times editor Carlos Tejada, who died of a heart attack in December 2021, bragging after getting his COVID-19 booster? No, that's not true: The man in the video is a Canadian comedian named Stewart Reynolds. The video has been edited into an anti-vaccination clip that is circulating widely on social media and is being…

Are "all the soccer players getting heart attacks"? And can the recent cluster of cardiac events suffered by athletes be attributed to any one cause? No, that's not true: Several of the recent incidents are clearly unrelated to the COVID-19 vaccine, and others do not point to the vaccine as a cause, but this has not prevented anti-vaccine activists from…

Did scientists prove that 93% of the people who died after being vaccinated for COVID-19 were killed by the vaccine? No, that's not true: The non-peer-reviewed paper by two scientists, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi and Dr. Arne Burkhardt, provides no proof for its claims and uses a tiny sample size of just 15 people to draw its conclusions. A professional peer…

Are COVID-19 vaccines full of exclusive nanotechnology to create a "slave species"? No, that's not true: Anti-vaccination group La Quinta Columna (The Fifth Column) provides no proof for its claims that COVID vaccines contain nanotechnology. Patents and ingredient lists for the vaccines do not show any of the "NanoRouters ... Nano-Antennas and Plasmonic Antennas" alleged to be in them. The…

Is a lethal drug included in over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits? Yes, but that is misleading. In the Abbott Laboratories home kit, the drug sodium azide is in the liquid in a dropper bottle, with the liquid placed on the paper test card where the swab is inserted after being used to gather a specimen. The small amount of sodium azide…

Did Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "confess" that over 75% of COVID deaths occurred in people with at least four comorbidities? No, that's not true: The percentage is correct but extremely important context is missing. All of the 1.2 million people in the study from December 2020 to October 2021 were fully vaccinated.…

Are vaccine makers violating federal law when they point out there are duplicate reports, mistaken claims of causality and other flaws in the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)? No, that's not true: The law cited by the person making the claim includes no such penalty provision. VAERS, set up by Congress to help improve vaccine safety by…

Did Albert Bourla, the CEO of biopharmaceutical company Pfizer, say that the company's COVID-19 treatment pill will contain a microchip that transmits information once swallowed? No, that's not true: A Pfizer spokesperson told Lead Stories that the claim is false. Additionally, a 2018 clip of Bourla discussing ingestible technology is unrelated to Paxlovid, Pfizer's COVID treatment pill. The claim appeared…

Are over 100,000 children in serious condition because of COVID-19? No, that's not true: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor overstated the pandemic's toll on children 17 and under during Supreme Court oral arguments on January 7, 2022. As of that date, fewer than 85,000 people ages 0 to 17 had been admitted to the hospital during the whole pandemic because…

Does a CDC rule concerning chimeric viruses confirm that COVID-19 is man-made? No, that's not true: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the rule cited by the Hal Turner Radio Show has nothing to do with the origin of SARS-CoV-2. The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by the Hal Turner Radio Show website on January…

Are COVID-19 tests that are labeled "positive control swab" and "negative control swab" manipulated to deliver predetermined results? No, that's not true: The SARS-CoV-2 test packaging shown in a photograph on social media are included in the kits for quality control and not used for patients, per the instructions in the kits. The claim appeared as an Instagram post on…

Did the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) vaccinate autistic children at the Rockland Institute for Special Education (RISE), a special education school in New York, without their parents' consent? No, that's not true: Both RISE and FEMA denied this claim. RISE sent a letter to Real Raw News threatening litigation against them because of this article., and a FEMA spokesperson…

Are people who get two or three shots of the polio vaccine 100% protected, with no breakthrough cases ever? No, that's not true: The statement that someone would "have questions" if they had gotten two or three polio vaccines and still got polio is missing context. The polio vaccine does not offer absolute and complete protection against the disease. "Two…

Is "flurona" a new cross-breed virus resulting from combination of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and seasonal influenza? No, that's not true: Flu and SARS-CoV-2 can't combine their DNA to create a new virus, according to a professor of microbiology at the University of Washington. "Flurona" is not a medical term. It's shorthand for a rare condition called co-infection, in which a…