MYTH: The increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths in India between February and May 2021 was caused by COVID-19 vaccinations.

THE FACTS: While the COVID-19 surge in India did begin after the country started administering COVID-19 vaccines on Jan. 16, 2021, the two events are not associated. Only 9.8 percent of the country’s population had received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of May 10, 2021 — and the rate of vaccination was even lower when COVID-19 cases had begun to increase in February 2021, according to a May 2021 fact-checking article from Reuters.

According to Johns Hopkins University, India’s seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases went from a low of 11,145 on Feb. 11, 2021, to a peak of 391,232 on May 8, 2021.

Sumit Chanda, director of the immunity and pathogens program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, California, told USA Today in May 2021, “There’s actually an inverse correlation between those people who got the vaccine and those people are getting sick,” meaning that vaccinated individuals were less likely to get COVID-19.

MYTH: Videos posted on social media show magnets sticking to people’s arms after they received COVID-19 vaccines, proving the vaccines contain magnetic ingredients.

THE FACTS: Dr. Stephen Schrantz, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Chicago, called the videos “a hoax” in a May 2021 article by Agence France-Presse. “There is absolutely no way that a vaccine can lead to the reaction shown in these videos posted to Instagram and/or YouTube,” he said. “It is better explained by 2 sided tape on the metal disk being applied to the skin rather than a magnetic reaction.”

None of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for widespread use in the U.S. and Europe contain magnetic ingredients or microchips. Lisa Morici, an associate professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine who studies vaccines, told FactCheck.org in May 2021 that the ingredients in the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines “are simply RNA/DNA, lipids, proteins, salts, and sugars.”

Dr. Edward Hutchinson, a lecturer at the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow, told Newsweek in a May 2021 article that “you would need to introduce a large lump of magnetic material beneath the skin to get the action through the skin that the videos claim to show — if you want to give this a go, try getting a fridge magnet to pick up anything, particularly tiny bits of metal, through the skin between your thumb and index finger.”

MYTH: The American Red Cross will not accept blood donations from anyone who has received a COVID-19 vaccine because the vaccines wipe out the body’s natural antibodies.

THE FACTS: The American Red Cross accepts blood donations from people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to its website. American Red Cross spokesperson Katie Wilkes told The Associated Press in May 2021, “In most cases, you can donate blood, platelets and plasma after a COVID-19 vaccine as long as you’re feeling healthy and well.”

Regarding the claim that the COVID-19 vaccines wipe out antibodies, Columbia University microbiology and immunology professor Vincent Racaniello told political site The Dispatch in May 2021, “Vaccines do just the opposite, they induce antibodies, not wipe them out. There are no data which would suggest that vaccines reduce antibody levels. Furthermore, if this were true, then there would be no blood supply as many people have received a variety of different vaccines.”

MYTH: Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot caused more deaths than the AstraZeneca vaccine.

THE FACTS: There is no evidence of a causal link between the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and deaths among its recipients. Claims that the Pfizer vaccine is deadlier than other vaccines often cite unverified reports of deaths following vaccination, with no proof that the deaths were caused by the vaccine.

As of May 2021, the CDC said that it has not found any deaths directly related to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Multiple clinical trials and additional studies following emergency authorization have shown that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19.

Several European news organizations, including French tech news site Numerama and German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, reported in May 2021 that a Russian-linked advertising agency attempted to run an anti-Pfizer disinformation campaign on social media, using similar arguments. French and German YouTubers and influencers said that an advertising agency called Fazze offered them money to post social media videos and messages warning against the Pfizer vaccine and claiming that “the death rate among the vaccinated with Pfizer is almost 3x higher than the vaccinated by AstraZeneca,” Numerama reported.

According to a May 2021 Wall Street Journal report, French counterintelligence authorities were investigating whether the Russian government was behind the Fazze emails and the related disinformation campaign. A 2021 report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an advocacy group that studies state disinformation, found that Russian state media outlets have repeatedly drawn unsubstantiated links between the Pfizer vaccine and deaths of vaccine recipients. Although it is not clear why Pfizer received such negative treatment by the Russians, the Alliance for Securing Democracy report notes that the Pfizer vaccine was the first Western vaccine to compete with the Russian state-backed Sputnik V vaccine.

MYTH: SM-102, an ingredient in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, is dangerous and has been listed as not being safe for human or veterinary use by a company that sells the ingredient.

THE FACTS: SM-102 is a lipid, or a fatty molecule that is not soluble in water, which is used in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to protect the messenger RNA that provides instructions to the body’s cells on creating antibodies against the COVID-19 virus, according to a May 2021 FactCheck.org article.

The claim that the ingredient is dangerous relied on misrepresenting a safety fact sheet from Michigan-based Cayman Chemical, which sells a SM-102 product as a “solution in chloroform,” a potentially toxic chemical that is not an ingredient in the Moderna vaccine.

The Cayman Chemical fact sheet does state that its SM-102 product is “not for human or veterinary diagnostic or therapeutic use.” However, its health warnings are related to the chloroform solution that makes up 90 percent of the product, not SM-102 itself. The fact sheet listed chloroform under “dangerous components,” while SM-102 is listed under “other ingredients.”

In a May 2021 press release, Cayman Chemical stated, “Neither the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS), or the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) Classification and Labelling Inventory list any hazards associated with SM-102.”

MYTH: Denmark national soccer team player Christian Eriksen received a COVID-19 vaccine days before he collapsed during a game against Finland.

THE FACTS: Eriksen collapsed on the field during a June 12, 2021, match between Denmark and Finland, and went into cardiac arrest before being resuscitated. However, according to a June 2021 article from Reuters, Giuseppe Marotta, director of Eriksen’s club Inter Milan, told Italian sports TV channel Rai Sport, “He didn’t have COVID and wasn’t vaccinated either.”

PolitiFact reported in a June 2021 article that speculation that Eriksen’s collapse was connected to vaccines was fueled by Luboš Motl, a Czech physicist and blogger who has shared false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. In a June 13, 2021, tweet, Motl claimed, “The chief medic and cardiologist of that Italian team confirmed on an Italian radio station that Eriksen has received the Pfizer vaccine on May 31.”

The official Twitter account for the Italian station, Radio Sportiva, denied that anyone from Inter Milan had confirmed Eriksen had been vaccinated on its station. In a June 13, 2021, tweet, the station said, “We have never reported any opinion from the Inter medical staff regarding Christian Eriksen’s condition. Please remove the content from the tweet author, otherwise we will be forced to take action.”

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly listed the year a Reuters article about Christian Eriksen was published. It was 2021, not 2020. NewsGuard apologizes for the error.

MYTH: Gibraltar saw a surge in deaths since its government began vaccinating the population with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with at least 53 deaths caused by or linked to the COVID-19 vaccine in Gibraltar.

THE FACTS: According to a January 2021 article from British fact-checking organization Full Fact, the figure of 53 deaths matched the total number of COVID-19 deaths reported in Gibraltar as of Jan. 20, 2021 — 10 days after COVID-19 vaccinations began in the British territory. However, there is no evidence linking those deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a Jan. 26, 2021, tweet, Fabian Picardo, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, wrote “Do not believe this nonsense… I can tell you that we have had no deaths registered as arising from the vaccine.”

The Gibraltar government released a statement on its official website in January 2021 explaining that six people appeared to have contracted COVID-19 before they were vaccinated and died of causes unrelated to the vaccine.

“The Gibraltar Health Authority can confirm that there is no evidence that any of those 11,073 who have been vaccinated in Gibraltar have died as a result of any reaction to the vaccine,” the government’s statement said. “Statements to the contrary on social media are entirely untrue.”

MYTH: Four pilots who work for British Airways have died from the COVID-19 vaccine, and now the airline is in “crisis talks” with the British government about whether vaccinated pilots should be allowed to fly.

THE FACTS: According to a June 2021 article from Reuters, British Airways confirmed that four pilots “had recently passed away.” However, the airline also told Reuters that there is no evidence the deaths were related to the COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, the company said it was false that it was involved in any “crisis talks” with the British Government about its pilots.

The U.K. Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which operates the country’s Yellow Card Scheme to track adverse events following vaccinations, told Reuters in a statement, “We have not been made aware of deaths of BA pilots after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine and have not had discussions with BA or other airlines, about preventing pilots from flying after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.”

MYTH: Airlines, particularly in Spain and Russia, have advised people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine to avoid flying because of a risk of developing blood clots.

THE FACTS: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is true that individuals with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) face a risk of blood clots from sitting for long periods of time on long flights. However, those clots are a different type than the rare complication attributed to the Johnson and Johnson or AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines. Blood clots from DVT typically occur in the legs, according to the CDC. Blood clots arising from Vaccine-induced Thrombosis and Thrombocytopenia (VITT) occurred elsewhere, such as in the brain or abdomen, according to an April 2021 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“VITT is an immune reaction to vaccine[s] and is not provoked by flying,” Dr. Sue Pavord, Consultant Haematologist at Oxford University Hospitals and co-chair of the British Society for Hemaetology’s Obstetric Haematology Group, said in an email to Reuters in a June 2021 article. Moreover, Reuters reported that the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association that represents 290 airlines worldwide, or 82 percent of the world’s total air traffic, said it was not aware of any airlines considering advising vaccinated individuals against flying.

MYTH: Secret documents reveal that Moderna had developed a COVID-19 vaccine in December 2019, proving that the pandemic was planned.

THE FACTS: This myth was based on misrepresenting a real December 2019 research transfer agreement between Moderna, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the University of North Carolina.

The document does mention that UNC will receive research material on “mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna.” Six signatures on the document are dated between Dec. 12, 2019, and Dec. 17, 2019, prior to the Dec. 31, 2019, report from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in China on a cluster of pneumonia cases that was the first public message about what would later be called COVID-19.

However, in a June 2021 statement to Agence France-Presse, LeadStories.com, and PolitiFact, a NIAID spokesperson said the agreement was related to a different strain of coronavirus, not the virus that causes COVID-19. “The materials transferred to UNC in December 2019 were vaccine candidates against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and not SARS-CoV-2,” the spokesperson said.

Contradicting the claim that this research transfer agreement was “secret,” both Axios and Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, had published articles about the document in June 2020.

MYTH: COVID-19 vaccines contain luciferase, a substance named after the fallen angel Lucifer.

THE FACTS: Luciferase is an enzyme responsible for bioluminescence in some organisms, such as fireflies, and has been used in medical research for decades because of its ability to help scientists visually track changes to cells, according to a December 2019 article in Smithsonian Magazine.

The Associated Press reported in an April 2021 article that while the enzyme has been used in some COVID-19 research, lucerifase is not an ingredient in any COVID-19 vaccine; it is not listed in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ingredient lists for the three COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the U.S. as of July 2021. The AP also reported that the only connection between luciferase and Lucifer — a figure in the Bible that Christians believe was a fallen angel who became Satan — is the Latin word lucifer, meaning light-bearing.

MYTH: Spike proteins in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are toxic to humans and can spread throughout the body, causing heart problems and neurological damage.

THE FACTS: COVID-19 vaccines do not contain the spike protein, and the protein produced in vaccinated people is harmless.

The apparent original source for this claim was a May 2021 radio interview with Byram Bridle, an associate professor in viral immunology at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College, which ran on Canadian talk radio station CFPL. “We made a big mistake,” Bridle said. “We never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin and was a pathogenic protein. So by vaccinating people, we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin. In some people, this gets into circulation, and when that happens in some people it can cause damage — especially in the cardiovascular system.”

Bridle was referring to the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. These vaccines work by delivering mRNA to the body’s cells, instructing cells to make a piece of the COVID-19 virus called the spike protein. “Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website.

The vaccine itself does not contain the spike protein, and the protein produced in vaccinated people is harmless, vaccine experts said. “In terms of the spike protein itself being pathogenic in some way that’s just simply not true,” Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan, told The Associated Press in a June 2021 fact-checking article.

MYTH: The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is 99 percent graphene oxide, according to a study published by the University of Almeria in Spain.

THE FACTS: Graphene oxide is a material created by oxidizing graphene, which is a single layer of graphite, the soft, flaky substance used in pencil lead. Graphene oxide has potential applications in “electronics, optics, chemistry, energy storage, and biology,” according to a January 2019 article published in the journal Frontiers in Physics.

The Associated Press reported in a July 2021 fact-check that while there has been research on using graphene oxide in some vaccines — in amounts that would not be toxic to humans — the material is not listed as an ingredient in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine or any other COVID-19 vaccine. “It is not in the ingredient list and there is no way it could be present,” Allen Myerson, a professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Associated Press. Pfizer spokesperson Jerica Pitts confirmed to PolitiFact in July 2021 that the company does not use graphene oxide in its COVID-19 vaccine.

According to a July 2021 article by fact-checking site LeadStories.com, the claim about graphene oxide originated with a June 2021 electron microscope analysis of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine conducted by Pablo Campra, a chemical sciences professor at the University of Almeria in Spain. LeadStories.com reported that the study, which was not peer reviewed, had been commissioned by Richard Delgado, a self-described crusader against “this tyranny of COVID-19″ who runs the Spanish language website LaQuintaColumna.net.

In a June 2, 2021 tweet, The University of Almeria denied that it had endorsed or supported Campra’s findings, referring to the study as “an unofficial report by a University professor about an analysis of a sample of unknown origin.”

MYTH: More people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 vaccines than from the virus itself.

THE FACTS: Johns Hopkins University reported that there have been 611,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as of July 28, 2021. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that all deaths that are known to have occurred following a COVID-19 vaccination are investigated, and that as of July 26, 2021, no deaths have been found to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

“A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines,” the CDC said. “However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths.”

While the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System has, as of July 26, 2021, received 6,340 reports of death among people who have received COVID-19 vaccines, reports to VAERS can be made by anyone and do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship with any vaccine. In fact, VAERS reports will include deaths that lack any plausible link to a vaccine, such as a person dying in a car accident on their way home from being vaccinated.

MYTH: The CDC changed its testing parameters for PCR tests in vaccinated people so that authorities would record fewer breakthrough cases of COVID-19.

THE FACTS: Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing is considered the “gold standard” for COVID-19 testing and involves collecting a fluid sample from a patient and analyzing that sample for the presence of coronavirus RNA. If found, the RNA is isolated and duplicated in cycles until traces of the COVID-19 virus become more easily detectable. The number of cycles required to detect the virus in a sample varies and is known as the “cycle threshold,” with a low threshold implying a higher concentration of the COVID-19 virus and a strong positive result and a high threshold implying a lower concentration and a weaker result.

The myth that the CDC shifted its testing parameters to skew data about breakthrough cases — defined by the agency as COVID-19 detected two weeks or more after a person has received all recommended doses of an approved vaccine — emerged after the CDC announced that it was changing the way that it monitored and reported breakthrough infections to focus on the most serious cases.

The new guidance, which PolitiFact reported was first announced on May 14, 2021, stated that “because CDC would like to characterize the SARS-CoV-2 lineages responsible for COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough cases, including variants,” only lab samples with cycle thresholds of 28 or lower should be submitted to the CDC for further testing known as genetic sequencing.

Genetic sequencing is a technique used by scientists to better understand the genetic makeup of the COVID-19 virus, including any variants. The CDC specified a cycle threshold of 28 for genetic sequencing because a stronger positive test will facilitate that process.

The CDC’s guidance does not mean that it has changed its parameters for what counts as a positive COVID-19 PCR test. CDC spokeswoman Jade Fulce told PolitiFact in a May 2021 interview that the cycle threshold of 28 “is not used to define whether a specimen is positive or negative for COVID. It is only used for determining whether a specimen that tests positive could be submitted for SARS-CoV-2 sequencing. It is not specific to vaccine breakthrough cases.”