Bio Labs

Did Irish Health Service officials "admit" COVID-19 does not exist? No, that's not true: The claim rests on a purported Irish Health Service (HSE) letter the agency says does not exist. The person based her claim on a bit of sophistry: She declares that since she demanded and did not receive HSE documentation of lab isolation of the novel coronavirus,…

Are chemical mixtures made at home comparable to vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? No, that's not true: Vaccines, which mostly consist of weakened or killed viruses or bacteria to boost the body's immune response, may include chemicals that stabilize the mixture, preserve it or boost the body's immune response. Few -- if any -- home…

Was the COVID-19 pandemic pre-planned with help from billionaire Bill Gates and have the illnesses associated with it been spread by 5G technology? No, that's not true: The claims made in the "Covid-19 Genocide of 2020" video are a rehash of conspiracy myths previously debunked by Lead Stories and other fact checkers. The claims originated in a video of an…

Is the U.S. pushing an under-tested, dangerous coronavirus vaccine on unwilling people as part of a depopulation agenda? And was the virus man-made and weaponized in U.S. and Chinese labs? No, these claims are untrue. There are no plans to force people to be vaccinated, no vaccine has been approved, and there is no evidence the virus was created in…

Were embryonic stem cells used in the development of Regeneron, the antibody treatment given to President Donald Trump? No, that's not true: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the company behind the antibody cocktail, told Lead Stories that it did not use such cells in the development of its therapy. However, the treatment was tested using cells that were originally derived from an aborted…

Did Crip gang members volunteer to fight wildfires because they turn the sky red? No, that's not true: The claim was apparently intended as a joke at a time when serious wildfires were devastating millions of acres, forcing massive evacuations and killing people in western states. It used elements from a real CNN story about Russia to make a meme…

Did TIME Magazine feature a cover of Barack Obama in an electric chair? No, that's not true: This is a fake cover that never actually appeared on any issue of the magazine. Since Donald Trump's election to office, the TIME Magazine archives do not feature this image on the cover. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) where…

Is there an "irrefutable paper trail" that shows COVID-19 was manufactured in a laboratory? No, that's not true: Screenshots taken from the rapid-fire display of documents in the video making that claim show only that a number of scientists have in the past worried that lab tests on a coronavirus could lead to an outbreak, that the U.S. Centers for…

Is it true that the World Health Organization's test for COVID-19 contains a flaw that "should" deliver a false positive on every test, skewing data about the pandemic? No, that's not true. The claim, made by a conservation blogger with no apparent virology expertise, misunderstands the science of gene-based testing, according to WHO officials. Plus, the blogger's hypothesis fails to…

Did Kamala Harris buy her California home with money inherited from an ancestor who owned slaves -- one of whom was apparently her own great-great-great-great-grandmother? No, that's not true: It is a bizarre claim used to argue that the Democratic vice presidential nominee is now living off the profits of slavery. Harris shares the same family history of an estimated…