From SciCheck

Kate Yandell, Staff Writer, FactCheck.org

Unfounded claims about aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are not new, but they continue to spread on social media. Some posts falsely suggest that aluminum in vaccines exceeds the safe limit, wrongly using Food and Drug Administration recommendations to limit aluminum in nutrition products that are given intravenously. However, this limit does not apply to vaccines. For more, see “Posts Raise Unfounded Concerns About Aluminum in Vaccines.”

Editor’s note: As a reminder, the VEC has a series of resources related to concerns about aluminum in vaccines:

• Aluminum in Vaccines: What You Should Know (Q&A), English | Spanish
• Aluminum & Vaccines: 3 Things to Know (Infographic), PDF | PNG
• Vaccine Ingredients – Aluminum (webpage), includes quantities of aluminum in each vaccine as well as videos addressing common questions about aluminum in vaccines

Published in April 2024 Vaccine Update

By: Kate Yandell, Science Writer, FactCheck.org

Vaccine safety research is often co-opted to raise unfounded concerns about vaccines. Recently, a large, international study from the Global Vaccine Data Network has been shared as supposed evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe or that people should not have received them. In fact, the study primarily confirmed known serious, but rare, side effects of COVID-19 vaccination, while also identifying a possible new safety signal for a very rare event. For more, see "Study Largely Confirms Known, Rare COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects."

Published in March 2024 Vaccine Update

In January 2024, social media was abuzz with unsupported claims that COVID-19 vaccination causes autism. These were based on a Turkish study that gave human-sized doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to pregnant rats and claimed to find negative behavioral effects in some offspring. Outside experts, however, have questioned the results and relevance to humans. For more, see “Viral Posts Misuse Rat Study to Make Unfounded Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines and Autism.

Published in February 2024 Vaccine Update

False claims that COVID-19 vaccines have killed large numbers of people are hardly new, but a bogus estimate of 17 million vaccine deaths went viral again after a podcaster and former evolutionary biologist mentioned it in an interview with Tucker Carlson. The flawed estimate, which first made waves on social media in September 2023, fails to consider excess deaths from COVID-19, among other problems. The podcaster also downplayed the risks of COVID-19 to children, incorrectly claiming that healthy kids “don’t die of COVID.” For more, read the story, “Tucker Carlson Video Spreads Falsehoods on COVID-19 Vaccines, WHO Accord.”

Published in January 2024 Vaccine Update