Some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week include this one. It is not legitimate, although it has been widely shared on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
CLAIM: People may be more susceptible to severe COVID-19 disease after being vaccinated.
THE FACTS: A post on Instagram with more than 4,000 likes falsely claims that people who receive the COVID-19 vaccine may experience more severe symptoms if they are exposed to the virus.
“Studies warn that COVID-19 vaccines can result in more serious illnesses when exposed to the virus through pathogenic priming and an increased immune system,” says the post, shared by Joseph Mercola, a doctor who runs a natural health website.
But the scientists told the Associated Press that such effects simply did not appear in the data. Research has shown that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have proven to be 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease. It is true that some vaccines can, on rare occasions, cause more serious illnesses later, but scientists say the effect – known as antibody-dependent increase – has not been seen with the COVID-19 vaccines.
This increase occurred with older vaccines and, more recently, with a vaccine against the dengue virus. There is “abundant evidence” that the disease boosted by immunization “will not be a problem” with COVID-19 injections, wrote Dr. Paul Offit, director of a vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, in a report for the National Institutes of Health.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were tested on thousands of people, some of whom were later likely to be exposed to the virus. The effect was not seen in the trials.
The AP asked to see the studies mentioned in Mercola’s complaint, and her organization responded with links. All of the studies were published before Pfizer and Moderna released data from their final stage tests, and some of the studies specifically contradicted their claim.
Dr. Timothy Cardozo, an associate professor at NYU Langone Health, was the author of one of the studies cited by Mercola.
The Pfizer and Moderna data that appeared after he published his study greatly reduced his concern about the antibody-dependent increase, he told the AP in a statement. He also noted that his article made no statement as to whether COVID-19 vaccines should be taken or avoided.
Mercola did not respond to a request for a response. If Mercola’s post was correct, vaccinated people would have more infections than unvaccinated ones, said Dr. Matthew Woodruff, an immunologist at Emory University. That was not the case.
“We are now six months without vaccinating these people, with continued exposure and no emerging evidence of increased disease,” said Woodruff.