Did South Korea issue a warning about mRNA vaccines, saying "6 billion people now have VAIDS" as a viral article claimed? No, that's not true: VAIDS is not a real condition and the story making originated on a notoriously unreliable website that did not cite any source to back up the claim in the headline. The only study cited in the article concluded "mRNA-based vaccinations are not associated with an increased risk" for certain conditions and did not mention the figure of six billion people at all.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published by The People's Voice on March 5, 2025 titled 'South Korea Issues Emergency mRNA Warning: "6 Billion People Now Have VAIDS"' which opened:
Far from delivering lasting protection, the vaccines are systematically dismantling immune systems, triggering a devastating called VAIDS: Vaccine-Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
Other than the headline, the article did not mention the "6 billion" figure.
VAIDS
Lead Stories reported earlier about claims made by The People's Voice about VAIDS. In a September 8, 2023, email to Lead Stories, CDC press officer Scott Pauley provided the agency's response to the claim made on The People's Voice website. It said, "Vaccine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is not a known medical condition." It continued:
Further, CDC has found no unusual or unexpected patterns of autoimmune disorders or immunodeficiency linked to COVID-19 vaccination by our vaccine safety monitoring systems, after more than 676 million doses administered, with 81% of the US population receiving at least one dose, and with the most intensive safety monitoring in US history.
The cited study
The People's Voice linked to an article (archived here) titled "Long-term risk of autoimmune diseases after mRNA-based SARS-CoV2 vaccination in a Korean, nationwide, population-based cohort study". However, when Lead Stories reviewed it the text of the article did not contain the words "VAIDS", "billion", "AIDS" or "HIV". The abstract said the research was about "autoimmune connective tissue diseases (AI-CTDs)" and the conclusion was:
Overall, we conclude that mRNA-based vaccinations are not associated with an increased risk of most AI-CTDs, although further research is needed regarding its potential association with certain conditions.
That's a far cry from issuing dire warnings about six billion people, which would be about 75 percent of all 8 billion human inhabitants of earth.
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.
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You can find previous Lead Stories fact checks about VAIDS and The People's Voice here and here.
