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Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021

Did the commandant of the Marine Corps declare ‘There will be no mandatory vaccinations for my Marines’?

Sarah Thompson, Lead Stories
no

A made-up story from a satire website was being shared online in August 2021 without any other indication that the story is fake.

The story, from realrawnews.com, claimed that the commandant of the Marine Corps had rebuked the secretary of defense's plans for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for defense personnel.

A spokesperson for the Marine Corps told Lead Stories, "This story is completely fake."

The realrawnews.com site carries a disclaimer on its "About Us" page saying, "This website contains humor, parody, and satire."

Still, some civilian sites and social media pages carried the false article without any indication it was made up.

The article appeared a day after the secretary of defense announced his plan to make vaccinations mandatory for defense personnel by mid-September or when vaccines get full FDA approval, whichever comes first.

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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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