Do Canadian researchers propose to mass-vaccinate people with crop duster-style spraying of the populace, as a social media post implies? No, that's not true: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) have paid researchers to develop a needle-free inhaler to inoculate people one at a time against the virus that causes COVID-19. The post that pushes the crop duster idea includes a direct link to the research lab press release that shows an individual using an experimental in-mouth inhaler, not being aerial-bombed from the sky.
The claim appeared in an August 3, 2025 X post (archived here) on the @toobaffled account under the title "Canada Advances Plan to 'Vaccinate' Public with Bill Gates-Funded Covid mRNA Aerosols 💀". It opened:
Canada's liberal government is advancing plans to roll out a new Covid mRNA "vaccine" to "vaccinate" the general public using aerosols. ✈️
The Canadian government is ramping up testing for a disturbing new Covid mRNA "AeroVax."
The new AeroVax seeks to overcome "vaccine hesitancy" by using aerosols to "vaccinate" the general public
This is what the post looked like on X at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of X post on @toobaffled account.)
The post is illustrated with a photo of an agricultural spray plane, also known as a crop duster, trailing a fog behind it, clearly implying the Canadian government proposes to mass-spray Canadians with vaccines.
This fact check does not address Gates' involvement, which is beside the point of whether Canada intends to mass its population with vaccine.
The X post includes a link to Slay News' article, (archived here) which makes the same mass spraying implication. That article, however, links directly to McMaster University's press release (archived here) that shows the needle-free vaccine would be a one-at-a-time inhaler:
(Source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of McMaster University press release.)
McMaster scientists said that inhaler delivery of COVID-19 vaccine has the advantage of focusing directly where the virus first strikes: the lungs and upper airways. Nowhere in the McMaster report is there mention of the words spray, plane, mass vaccination, crop duster, or aerial.
Similarly, there is no mention of spray planes, mass vaccination, crop dusters or aerial vaccination on the Canadian Government's web page devoted to the AeroVax vaccine trial (archived here.)
Lead Stories used the key phrases to search for credible reporting of a spray plane vaccine using both the Google News and Yahoo! News indexes and found none. Google's index of thousands of news pages showed no evidence-based reporting of a Canadian plan to spray vaccine from planes regardless of consent from those being sprayed. Similarly, no fact-based reporting corroborated the claim about mass-spraying was found on the Yahoo! News index of its partner organizations and news services.
