Pfizer

Were 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines recalled after giving people AIDS? No, that's not true: These vaccines were from a trial in Australia, where a plan to manufacture 50 million doses was suspended in December 2020 after the vaccine gave some patients false positive results for HIV. AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The claim appeared…

Does a newly released dataset show that COVID-19 is a deadly "experimental toxin"? And does Dr. Anthony Fauci's resignation have anything to do with it? No, neither are true: the claims recycle old falsehoods based on a distortion of publicly available information, and new reports do not support it. Fauci, 81, the country's top virologist, started talking about stepping down…

Did the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) admit in a series of email exchanges that COVID-19 is man-made and that COVID vaccines were created with computer-generated DNA? No, that's not true: The MHRA told Lead Stories that the correspondence cited in a claim did take place, but the assertions made from those emails aren't correct. The claim…

Do Comirnaty (Pfizer) COVID-19 vaccines contain parasites? No, that's not true: Claims made on social media that COVID vaccines contain parasites provided no laboratory or independent evidence to support the allegations, and a medical examiner told Lead Stories she has never seen any "parasites with tentacles" during autopsies she's conducted on people who had received the vaccine. In a statement…

Are snake and starfish venom found in COVID-19 vaccines? No, that's not true: The claim is based on the false belief that one component of venom is the same as venom, not just a component in the whole. In fact, this component can be naturally produced by other organisms, such as the human body. There is no evidence that COVID…

Does a New Zealand funeral director's statement that 95 percent of the corpses he sees had been vaccinated against COVID-19 prove that vaccines are causing mass death? No, that's not true. This claim was drawn from anecdotal observations that did not account for consequential variables, nor were these observations independently confirmed or corroborated by published or official data. With more…

Does a social media video show a "transhuman" baby from parents who received the COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: The mother of the baby shown in the video post told Lead Stories that her daughter was born in August 2020, before the COVID vaccines were available. The Pfizer shot was first approved under emergency use authorization on December 11,…

Is the Pfizer COVID vaccine responsible for hospitalizing 1 out of 500 small children under the age of 5? No, that's not true: There's no evidence to support that claim. The study used to back it says 10 children out of its 7,806 juvenile participants were hospitalized. But only the kids who received doses of the Pfizer shot (BNT162b2) above…

Do Pfizer documents reveal that 90 percent of pregnant women vaccinated against COVID lost their babies, and that COVID vaccination is going to lead to "mass depopulation"? No, that's not true: There's no evidence to support that claim. Extrapolations from a small data subset don't warrant application of non-professional assumptions about effects of vaccines in the absence of data. The…

Did Kaiser Permanente, a major American non-profit healthcare provider, admit that the risk of COVID-19 infection "increases with each [vaccine] shot"? No, that's not true. Lead Stories spoke with the lead author of the study, an assessment of the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine, that this claim targeted. He said that online commentators cherry-picked the study's findings and twisted the results to…