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Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021

Did a leading medical journal declare that stigmatizing the unvaccinated is ‘unjustified’?

Dean Miller, Lead Stories
no

Online articles and social media posts are misattributing statements that the unvaccinated are being unjustly stigmatized, and that public health officials are engaging in bullying by "suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19," to The Lancet, an internationally respected medical journal.

Those statements are the opinion of one reader, expressed in a letter to The Lancet. A correct description would be that the statements were made in a letter to the editor of The Lancet.

Written by a German professor of hygiene and environmental health, the letter to The Lancet is not a peer-reviewed study or research report and is not the official position of The Lancet.

The Lancet explains the types of items it publishes to help readers understand the distinction between what letter writers say and what The Lancet says as an institution.

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

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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 Gigafact contributor publications.

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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.

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