Canadian activist makes inaccurate claims about the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine

An Ontario anti-mask activist makes false claims in an Instagram video about the safety of Covid-19 vaccines available in Canada and wrongly refers to possible adverse reactions to the vaccine recorded in the United States. Medical experts said the injections did not alter the recipients’ DNA or make people infectious, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had detected no safety problems with the vaccines.

“All the reasons for not taking an experimental injection of mRNA that has never been used in humans before,” says the caption for a video on February 21, 2021 that was seen more than 195,000 times on Instagram on March 5, 2021.

More than 878,000 cases of Covid-19 and 22,000 deaths have been reported in Canada. In early March, almost four percent of Canadians received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The video was posted by Chris Saccoccia, known on social media as Chris Sky. Saccoccia was accused in October 2020 of violating the Quarantine Law, which requires isolation after a trip abroad. He regularly participates in protests against anti-Covid measures in Ontario.

In the video, he makes several false claims, which AFP examines below:

MRNA vaccines reprogram DNA

Saccoccia says: “The Canadian Covid vaccine is the only vaccine in history with mRNA technology. This is not a vaccine, it is artificial DNA that they inject into your body to reprogram your own body’s DNA to produce so-called antibodies against the coronavirus. It has never been used on humans before, it has never passed animal testing because it killed all animals. “

Several Covid-19 vaccines are being administered or being tested worldwide. In December, the injection of Pfizer-BioNTech with mRNA technology was authorized in Canada, followed by Moderna’s mRNA vaccine. Both are 94-95 percent effective.

Although Covid-19 vaccines are the first to use cutting-edge messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology to be approved and distributed globally, research on the use of mRNA technology for vaccines began in the early 1990s and included promising tests in animals.

“MRNA vaccines have produced potent immunity against infectious disease targets in animal models of influenza viruses, Zika viruses, rabies viruses and others, especially in recent years,” said an article published on January 12, 2018 on the Nature website.

Alison Thompson, associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan School of Pharmacy, told AFP in an email that “although the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are in fact the first successful mRNA vaccines, the technology has been in use for a long time. decades “.

Thompson also rejected the claim that injections alter human genetic makeup, saying, “Technology does not reprogram our DNA.”

An mRNA vaccine does not contain any proteins from the virus itself, but rather the genetic instructions for the body to synthesize a viral protein so that the immune system learns to defend itself.

It is different from normal vaccines because, instead of confronting the immune system with part of a virus in a weakened or deactivated way to build antibodies, it introduces a “design” of the spike protein, part of the virus that the body can then recognize and fight when you are confronted by him later.

Kelly McNagny, a professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, agreed that the statement is false.

He added in an e-mail that the product has been subjected to many tests on animals, “and is in fact a vaccine. It is not reprogramming anything, but just generating an antibody and a T cell response to a foreign protein, as all vaccines do. “

Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials, according to Matthew Miller, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, who explained that “mRNA is the code for proteins. It does not alter the DNA of your cells. In fact, your cells naturally produce mRNA from DNA. “

He said that “these vaccines have an excellent safety profile, as demonstrated by Phase I to III clinical trials in humans”.

Thompson, of the University of Toronto, added that “there are unprecedented resources” being spent internationally to monitor any potential concerns about vaccine safety and effectiveness.

“Considering the many millions of doses that have been administered so far, we would already know if there were serious safety problems. What remains to be seen is the long-term effectiveness of these vaccines, ”she said.

More than 279 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide so far.

AFP has already debunked a similar claim here.

Covid-19 vaccines make people contagious

Saccoccia further states: “They say that you are still contagious after vaccinating, so you will still have to wear a mask. So, are you going to get a vaccine that makes it contagious to your friends and family when you otherwise wouldn’t? “

Experts say that even if people get the vaccine, they will still be able to contract the disease and infect others, so the mask is a precaution against possible asymptomatic transmission, while helping to protect the vaccine recipient until the immune response of the vaccine. body is activated.

But Miller, at McMaster University, said it is false to say that vaccination makes you “more contagious than individuals who have been infected but have not been vaccinated”.

Miller explained that after vaccination, it takes about two weeks for a person to generate immunity that will protect against infection.

“Therefore, it is important to maintain public health care, such as masking, especially in the first few weeks after the vaccine is administered,” said Miller.

A Johns Hopkins University website, answering frequently asked questions about vaccines, says that the masks still need to be used and the physical detachment practiced even after inoculation.

“The vaccine is not 100 percent effective and we still don’t know whether someone who has been vaccinated can develop asymptomatic infection and transmit the virus,” says Johns Hopkins.

McNagny of the University of British Columbia confirmed that the recommendation to continue wearing a mask is, in part, “to ensure that you have had time to generate a protective response to the vaccine.”

Calling the claim that the Covid-19 vaccine will make you contagious, he said, “it definitely won’t make you more contagious and probably make you a lot less contagious if you happen to be exposed to the virus. “

Studies are underway to confirm whether Covid-19 vaccines reduce transmission, but experts warn that they are more difficult to conduct than research that only assesses whether the vaccine protects against infection.

The CDC said that Covid-19 vaccines killed hundreds of people

Saccoccia makes reference to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the Vaccine Adverse Event Notification System (VAERS) to state: “On February 12, the CDC report called VAERS … had more than 1869 hospitalizations and 921 deaths associated with the Covid vaccine so far only in the United States. “

The VAERS website accepts reports largely voluntarily from healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers and the public. He says the reports may contain inaccurate or incomplete information and “alone cannot be used to determine whether a vaccine has caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness.”

Contacted by AFP for an earlier investigation, CDC spokesman Curtis Gill said: “VAERS does not determine whether reports of death were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.”

Some of the “adverse events” reported may be true adverse reactions to the vaccine, while others may be coincidental and unrelated to the injection, Gill noted.

The CDC states on its website that “so far, VAERS has not detected patterns in the cause of death that would indicate a safety problem with the Covid-19 vaccines”.

Roderick Slavcev, associate professor at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo, said that when you track millions of vaccinated individuals, deaths are inevitable. But he agreed with the CDC’s conclusion that “these deaths did not in any way indicate a pattern or safety concern linked to the administration of the vaccine.”

No vaccine is 100 percent safe and effective, said Thompson, of the University of Toronto, who added that Covid-19 vaccines appear to be as reliable as most other vaccines.

“And certainly the health risk for Covid-19 is far greater than that of any vaccine currently approved for use,” said Thompson.

Since the start of the pandemic, AFP Fact Check has debunked several inaccurate claims about the coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, here.

The pandemic has killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide.