Did Japan declare a state of emergency in August 2024 after "nanobots" were found in 96 million citizens? No, that's not true: A state of emergency in Japan would be major news worldwide and yet there have been no stories about it. The "news" came from a website with a reputation for making things up. The journal article the website said is the evidence for "bots" in COVID-19 vaccines has been described by experts as "amateurish gibberish" published in something that was "not a real journal" by authors that "do not appear to have any legitimate expertise in the field".
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by The People's Voice on August 10, 2024, titled "Japan Declares State of Emergency After 'Nanobots' Found in 96 Million Citizens." The story began:
Japan has issued an apology to its citizens for the disastrous consequences of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and has launched far-reaching scientific inquiries and criminal investigations to establish the truth and punish the perpetrators.
The globalist elite and Big Pharma are panicking, terrified of what the Japanese are finding, and they are doing everything they can to discredit these investigations, including ordering the mainstream media to initiate a total media blackout of any news coming out of Japan.
This is what the post looked like on The People's Voice (TPV) website at the time of writing:
(Source: The People's Voice screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 15:15:49 2024 UTC)
The People's Voice also shared the article in a post and video (archived here) on X, formerly Twitter, on August 10, 2024, under the same title.
This is what it looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 15:28:30 2024 UTC)
State of emergency
Lead Stories searched using keywords on Google News, visible here (archived here), and found no credible reporting as of August 15, 2024, to support the claim that the Japanese government had declared any kind of state of emergency over "nanobots." Such a declaration would draw widespread news coverage, and none was found by our internet search.
A screenshot of the search appears below:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Thu Aug 15 21:48:47 2024 UTC)
The study
The People's Voice article cited a paper (archived here) published on July 18, 2024, in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, written by Dr. Young Mi Lee, an obstetrician and gynecologist in South Korea, and Daniel Broudy, an applied linguistics professor at Okinawa Christian University in Japan.
The "Abstract" section of their paper concluded:
Our observations suggest the presence of some kind of nanotechnology in the COVID-19 injectables.
It should be noted that while The People's Voice article used the term "nanobots," the paper by Young and Broudy never went that far, instead referring to what they observed as "nanobot-like" structures or spirals.
Experts
Two infectious disease experts contacted by Lead Stories cast doubt on the paper. Dr. James Lawler with the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center told Lead Stories in an August 15, 2024, email that the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, where the paper was published, is "not a real journal." He continued:
The paper cited in these sensationalistic reports should be a case study on how to spot disinformation. The content is scientific gibberish with no basis in actual biology or the scientific method. It is relatively amateurish gibberish, to be honest, that a reasonable person with a high-school level biology education should be able to easily debunk. ...
The methods and results sections are extensive, reflecting a common practice in disinformation and propaganda to overwhelm readers with a large volume of sciency-sounding prose. But, as I mentioned, the overall quality is amateurish. It's not every day you see crayon drawings in a science journal [page 1186].
In an August 15, 2024, phone interview with Lead Stories, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, echoed Lawler's comments, calling into question the paper's veracity. He said:
This is an article that is written in a rather somewhat informal fashion, in a not-very-prominent journal. If this were truly a revolutionary finding validated by others, who would be referees, who are molecular virologists, for example ... I think it would be published in a mainstream journal. So I'm very skeptical.
Lawler agreed, citing "clues," he said suggest this paper is "made-up propaganda." He continued:
These include the fact that the 'International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research' is not a real journal. A quick search of the US National Library of Medicine database confirms that this journal is not catalogued among peer-reviewed scientific journals.
The second clue is that the authors do not appear to have any legitimate expertise in the field. One is an OB-GYN who appears to have his own clinic in Korea, hardly a qualification to be an expert on vaccines, toxicology, or 'nanobots' (whatever those are).
The other author is a 'professor of applied linguistics' at Okinawa Christian University. Again, hard to understand how that gives him any applicable expertise. A quick visit to the school's website confirms that they have no listed department or faculty in life-sciences, or any sciences for that matter.
Schaffner noted that countries around the world have vaccine safety surveillance systems in place that would flag something like what The People's Voice article suggests, that "nanobots" were found in 96 million people:
There have been no safety concerns regarding, I'm putting quotes, 'nanobots' in vaccines.
And of course, the Food and Drug Administration and other comparable agencies in other countries have not been able to ... determine that so-called 'nanobots' are in either persons or vaccines related to these mRNA vaccines.
Lawler pointed out other flaws he saw in the paper:
The experimental design (I use this term lightly) discussed in the paper is not scientifically sound, and is honestly bizarre.
Materials they described being used in their 'experiments' included beer, soju (a Korean distilled spirit), semen, and a cordless cell phone charger. I am not making that up.
While that sounds like a crazy night in Seoul, it doesn't really sound like good science. Because it isn't.
Pfizer
As it has previously, Pfizer dismissed the notion of "nanobots" in its products. In an August 15, 2024, email to Lead Stories, the company's media relations team said:
There are no nanobots in Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine.
However, the Pfizer vaccines do include lipid nanoparticles, microscopic particles made from lipids, which are fatty molecules, in their COVID shot. An article on the Pfizer website explains how they work to deliver mRNA molecules into our cells after injection.
Nano in this case is a general measurement of size of something that is less than 100 nanometers across. So, something that size would be a nano-something (nanoparticle, nanobot, etc.). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
In the conclusion of his email, Lawler added this about the claims in The People's Voice article. He said:
There are no nanobots or other nefarious and mysterious additives in the FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines.
The quality control, documentation requirements, and independent laboratory validation requirements of the US FDA are the strictest in the world.
Our COVID-19 vaccines have excellent safety profiles, have been administered to billions of people across the globe, and have saved tens-of-millions of lives.
We should celebrate the amazing achievement in American science they represent.
The People's Voice
The People's Voice is among the most prolific online publishers of fake news. Articles on the site often link to and extensively quote stories from other sites to give an appearance of legitimacy but the main claim in the headline and/or the first paragraph of each article is almost never supported by the sources that are offered. The site routinely makes up quotes from people or misrepresents scientific study results.
It originally started as YourNewsWire in 2014 and rebranded as NewsPunch in 2017. In 2023 it rebranded itself again to The People's Voice. The People's Voice/NewsPunch/YourNewsWire has published numerous fake news articles in the past, so anything that appears on the site should be taken with a large grain of salt. Its Facebook page, The People's Voice, lost its verification checkmark, according to a 2018 report from Media Matters For America.
Read more
At the time this was written, Vaxopedia had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about vaccines and nanobots can be found here and here.
