Skip to content

Thursday, Apr. 8, 2021

Are people who received a COVID-19 vaccine ‘walking biological time bombs’?

Dana Ford, Lead Stories
no

Contrary to what a video post claims, early studies suggest that the current COVID-19 vaccines provide at least some protection against new virus variants. The video's argument assumes that vaccinations will result in more dangerous and deadly variants. There's no publicly available evidence that's true, and there's a good bit of evidence it's not, since variants arise in populations of un-vaccinated virus-susceptible people.

Viruses change over time — with or without a vaccine — that's normal.

A February 2020 article in Nature Microbiology on virus evolution argued that "predicting how virulence might evolve is an extremely difficult and perhaps futile task," and warned against "rampant speculation."

The CDC strongly recommends people get vaccinated, which it says is an "essential tool to protect people against COVID-19, including against new variants."

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

See all fact briefs

Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.