Did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admit that COVID-19 vaccines cause more instances of carditis, or heart inflammation, than the agency has previously stated? No, that's not true: Such a claim pulls numbers from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Conditions reported to VAERS after a vaccination do not automatically prove a causal relationship between the…

Did Japanese health ministry panels of experts add myocarditis to warning labels for COVID-19 vaccines? Yes, that's true, but they are not in "stark contrast" to the rest of the world. The addition of warnings about myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) to the Pfizer and Moderna labels in Japan on…

Will the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine kill 117 children ages 5 to 11 to save one child from dying of the virus? No, that's not true: There is no evidence to support that claim, which was made using data reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), an unverified alert system. The accuracy and significance of VAERS reports is unclear…

Is myocarditis, a rare disease that causes the swelling of the heart muscle, "irreversible"? Not exactly: Many patients fully recover from myocarditis, although the damage done by the disease varies based on its severity. The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on November 11, 2021. The post has what appears to be a screenshot of text that reads:…

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci admit that COVID vaccines did not work as advertised and that the vaccinated are in great danger? No, that's not true. The director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Biden administration's chief medical adviser strongly and consistently endorses the vaccination effort and has never suggested the vaccinated are at risk.…

Does Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine attack human blood and cause dangerous clots? No, there's no publicly available evidence to support the claim. There is no website at the address the video maker sends viewers to for details on the blood exam. The Food & Drug Administration in 2009 barred this video's maker, Dr. Richard Fleming, from working with anyone seeking FDA…

Are vaccinated pilots dropping dead midflight? No, that's not true: "There is no truth to the claims about these two pilots," American Airlines told Lead Stories. The claims appear on a website known for farcical stories regarding political figures and other famous people, which Lead Stories has debunked multiple times. A message on the site notes that it "contains humor,…

Does suramin or pine needle tea cure autism and serve as an antidote to people's adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines? No, that's not true: There is no evidence pine needle tea contains suramin, a drug invented by Bayer in the 20th century. The claims about suramin are made without evidence by a leading propagator of COVID and vaccine misinformation. While…

Did a study conducted at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, which was posted as a preprint on medRxiv.org, show the incidence of myocarditis after a COVID-19 vaccination was one in a thousand -- a much higher incidence than other studies had found? The answer is both yes and no. That finding was erroneously reported in the original preprint --…

Did a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee say, "We are killing more people than we are saving with the shots"? No, that's not true: A member of the public said this. The comment was made during the public testimony portion of the advisory committee meeting. The person who said that, Steve…