Social media users have made claims, contrary to expert medical advice, that eating a healthy diet and doing regular exercise will enable the human immune system to fight off COVID-19 alone and without the need of vaccination. In reality, otherwise healthy people have contracted COVID-19 and some have experienced severe cases. Vaccination greatly reduces the
Following a leaked internal report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA that suggested that vaccinated people can still transmit COVID-19, social media users and anti-vaccination activists have spread misinformation attempting to undermine public trust in vaccine effectiveness. In some cases, they are falsely claiming that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections
A tweet from an emergency room doctor expressing dismay at the increase in hospitalisations due to the Delta variant of COVID-19 in the USA went viral. However, social media users with a history of spreading COVID-19 misinformation copied and pasted the message across multiple accounts to make the tweet seem like a coordinated effort at
A digitally-altered image of a box for the AstraZeneca vaccine purports to show a manufacture date in 2018, more than a year before the outbreak of COVID-19. Conspiracy theorists are using the doctored image to bolster their claims of a so-called ‘plandemic’. However, the photo is a fake and AstraZeneca did not begin manufacturing its
False controversy has been generated online with claims that PCR tests are being revoked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. The rumours falsely claim that PCR tests have been proven to be unreliable and confuse SARS-CoV-2 with influenza. In reality, PCR tests are the ‘gold standard’ for detecting COVID-19,
Posts on social media have been advocating for registering with a website that purports to be collecting data on unvaccinated people to serve a control group for vaccine studies. Those joining the site and submitting data are promised an ID card that displays their status as unvaccinated and are encouraged to buy merchandise and make
Posts shared on social media contend that the children of unmarried parents could receive mandated vaccinations from the government due to the way family is defined in the Irish Constitution. This is allegedly proved in conjunction with a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 which concerned parents disagreeing over childhood vaccinations. In reality, this is a
Social media users are contending that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is caused by the vaccines themselves as part of a money-making scam to create a problem and sell a solution. Mutations such as the Delta variant occur within live hosts who have contracted the virus. They result from errors made during virus replication. The
Stemming from a misstatement made by a health official in the UK, social media users have been spreading a false statistic that 60% of hospital admissions for COVID-19 have received two vaccination doses. The official corrected his misstatement after the fact. The actual figure is the opposite: 60% of the COVID-19 hospitalisations in the UK
Rumours online state that the New England Journal of Medicine has found that pregnant women who received the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines had an 82% rate of miscarrying. The data in the study is misrepresented; in reality, the rate of spontaneous miscarriages in the study is 12.6% and the authors of the report state that there