President Joe Biden recently addressed the United Auto Workers, praising the union for its gains after last year’s strike against the Detroit Three automakers. Biden also touted the auto industry’s job gains on his watch, comparing them with those under his predecessor, Donald Trump.
“Tens of thousands of auto jobs were lost nationwide during Trump’s presidency,” Biden told the UAW conference Jan. 24 in Washington. Biden said during his presidency, “We’ve created more than 250,000 auto jobs all across America.”
Biden mentioned “factories” twice in the lead-in to his comments about job gains and losses, but didn’t mention dealerships. His audience, the UAW, represents manufacturing workers, not workers in the significantly larger dealerships sector.
Statistics show that Biden’s numbers are accurate for both Trump’s and Biden’s presidencies, but only if including jobs in auto and parts dealerships, not just auto and parts manufacturing.
When contacted for comment, the White House pointed to a webpage of the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the federal government’s official agency for employment statistics — that includes both categories in its definition of the “automotive industry.”
President Joe Biden speaks during a United Auto Workers’ political convention on Jan. 24, 2024. (AP)
What the statistics show
Looking at only auto and parts manufacturing employment shows that those jobs declined under Trump, but not by “tens of thousands.” According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 8,800 of those jobs were lost during Trump’s tenure.
And that doesn’t account for the COVID-19 pandemic, which cast a pall over all employment statistics for the last 10 months of Trump’s presidency. Before the pandemic’s March 2020 onset, auto and parts manufacturing employment rose by 27,900 jobs under Trump.
During Biden’s presidency, employment in auto and parts manufacturing rose by 127,800 jobs through December 2023, or about half of the 250,000 jobs Biden claimed in his UAW speech.
However, it’s possible to reach the number Biden cited by adding in a related employment category: auto and parts dealers.
During Trump’s presidency, the number of manufacturing and dealer jobs collectively declined by 86,600, which qualifies as “tens of thousands.” Before the pandemic, the number of jobs under Trump grew by 67,100.
So far for the Biden presidency, the combined job gains in these two categories has been 259,200, close to what Biden told the UAW.
Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said that however the auto industry is defined, Biden has a positive story to tell.
“According to nearly every notable statistic, the U.S. economy is doing well and has been doing well since the beginning of the recovery,” Burtless said. “That’s true for the auto industry, whether or not we include employment in ‘auto and parts dealers’ in the auto industry.”
Our ruling
Biden said, “Tens of thousands of auto jobs were lost nationwide during Trump’s presidency,” but during Biden’s presidency, “we’ve created more than 250,000 auto jobs all across America.”
Biden is correct if counting both jobs in automotive manufacturing and in automotive dealerships.
If counting only auto manufacturing jobs, though, Biden’s numbers fall short.
Biden’s assessment of Trump’s record doesn’t account for the coronavirus pandemic’s unprecedented economic wallop.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
A man wearing rainbow-colored suspenders and a “Hillary for President” T-shirt took the lectern at a Plano, Texas, City Council meeting.
Delivering an emotional speech, he said, “I am offended that our children are not receiving affordable gender-reassignment surgery along with hormone blockers and access to abortions. This alone is a threat to our democracy.”
He continued, “It just shows that you people do not care about our children.” His speech was shared in a Jan. 13 Instagram video that was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
(Screenshot from Instagram)
The city council appearance happened nearly two years ago; the city of Plano uploaded a video from that meeting on March 28, 2022. But the man’s public comments are being recirculated on social media without context: he’s a YouTube prankster with a history of trolling Texas city council meetings.
American Voices, affiliated with The Daily Caller, a conservative-leaning news outlet, identified the man in 2022 as YouTuber Cassady Campbell when he spoke on a different occasion at a Plano City Council meeting. On both occasions, he introduced himself as “Marty Epstein,” who is neither an activist nor a real person but a character Campbell created.
In the March 28, 2022, meeting, Campbell described himself as a Buzzfeed editor and a former New York Times writer who works part-time as a Starbucks barista. But PolitiFact found no proof that either publication had a staff member, present or former, named Marty Epstein or Cassady Campbell.
Campbell’s YouTube channel features videos of him speaking at other Texas city council meetings including Allen (“Wanksta tells City Council the Feds are after him”) and Dallas (“Wanksta Trolls Dallas City Council”).
In 2023, Campbell joined other influencers in a prank for a video entitled, “We acted LGBT at LGBT Church.” The video has since been removed from YouTube. But according to reports from NBC News and The Dallas Morning News, Campbell and YouTuber Bo Alford said they were “pretending to be LGBTQ” to test the church’s theology, and acted out “stereotypical caricatures of gay men.”
We rate claims that an activist spoke about LGBTQ+ issues at a Plano city council meeting False.
FactCheck.org Managing Editor Lori Robertson was a guest on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Jan. 28. She talked about debunking misinformation in the 2024 election cycle and, more broadly, explained how we do our work.
Tia Mitchell, a Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a host of the “Washington Journal,” interviewed Lori about recent false and misleading claims we have fact-checked, the use of artificial intelligence in election messaging, and more. Lori also responded to several questions from viewers and listeners.
The full segment is available on C-SPAN’s website.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce celebrated a touchdown in a Jan. 21 NFL playoff game by forming a heart with his hands — which many Swifties saw as a nod to his pop star girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
But some social media users drew a sinister connection.
A Jan. 22 Instagram post shared a photo of Kelce making a heart gesture with text above it that read, “Mr. Pfizer showing you which organ the vaccine shuts off.”
The post’s caption said, “He’s telling you loud and clear! Remember to protect your HEART and say NO (to) the clot shots!”
Another Instagram post made a similar claim that Kelce was showing Swift “which organ the Pfizer vaccine shuts off.”
(Screengrab from Instagram)
These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The COVID-19 vaccine is not causing widespread heart failure. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health authorities have found the vaccine to be safe and effective. Adverse effects from the vaccine are rare.
The CDC reported that as of May, more than 676 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered in the United States. (Because of the end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency, the CDC has limited ability to maintain updated data on vaccinations.)
Some critics of the COVID-19 vaccine point to deaths reported in the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. But with VAERS, anyone can report health effects that occur after a vaccination, whether or not those effects are caused by the vaccine, the CDC said. And unlike other government data sources, these reports aren’t screened before they’re made public, making VAERS fertile ground for vaccine misinformation.
In rare instances, myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, has been linked to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC said. These cases were more common among adolescent and young men within a week of receiving a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Most patients had mild cases of myocarditis and recovered quickly.
In September, Kelce appeared in a Pfizer advertisement encouraging people to get both the flu and updated COVID-19 shots. Since then, Kelce has been the subject of anti-vaccinerhetoric online.
The photo of Kelce making a heart with his hands is authentic. It was taken during the Chiefs’ Jan. 21 divisional round playoff victory over the Buffalo Bills. Kelce told his brother Jason during a Jan. 24 episode of their “New Heights” podcast that the heart-hand gesture was meant to “spread the love” to Bills fans.
The Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers on Feb. 11 in Super Bowl LVIII.
We rate the claim that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine “shuts off” recipients’ hearts False.
Measles is a highly contagious disease that can be serious and even fatal. Fortunately, it can safely be prevented by vaccination. But in the wake of outbreaks in the U.S. and elsewhere — likely in large part due to low vaccination coverage — social media posts have downplayed the risks of measles and falsely claimed the vaccine “is more dangerous than the actual illness.”
Full Story
Measles is a viral disease that causes a high fever, rash, cough, runny nose, and red and watery eyes. While often mild, the disease can lead to serious complications, including pneumonia and encephalitis, or brain swelling, which can cause deafness and brain damage.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about a fifth of unvaccinated people who contract measles are hospitalized. As many as 1 in 20 kids with measles develop pneumonia; about 1 in 1,000 develop encephalitis, and nearly 1 to 3 in 1,000 die.
Vaccination, in contrast, is almost always effective in preventing measles and typically causes only mild side effects. With the advent of widespread vaccination, measles has become rare in the U.S., usually spreading only when an unvaccinated traveler brings it into the country and encounters enough people who are also unvaccinated or not previously infected.
That appears to be what happened beginning in December in Philadelphia, when an infant infected overseas was hospitalized and proceeded to infect three other people at the hospital: a baby too young to be vaccinated and an older child and their parent, both of whom were unvaccinated. One child then didn’t isolate and attended a daycare while sick, ultimately leading to infections in five other people. As of mid-January, a total of nine cases have been confirmed in the outbreak, at least six of whom were hospitalized and later released.
Measles cases have also recently popped up in other states, including Georgia and Washington. On Jan. 25, the CDC issued an alert to the nation’s doctors, warning them to be on the lookout for measles symptoms, as a total of 23 confirmed measles cases were reported to the agency between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23. “Most” cases, the CDC said, were “among children and adolescents who had not received a measles-containing vaccine.”
In other parts of the world, the situation is worse. In mid-December, the World Health Organization issued an alert warning of an “alarming” rise in measles cases in the European region in 2023. The latest figures show more than 42,000 measles cases in that region in 2023 — a nearly 45-fold increase over 2022 — including at least five deaths and nearly 21,000 hospitalizations.
As of Jan. 18, an outbreak in a central part of England has grown to 216 confirmed and 103 probable cases, leading U.K. health officials to declare a “national incident” and urge vaccination to stanch the spread.
Health officials and other experts attribute the surge in measles cases to falling vaccination rates, in part due to missed doses during the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with increased travel and fewer public health protections since the pandemic has declined. Because measles is so infectious, the vaccination rate needs to be very high — 95% — to prevent an outbreak in a community.
And yet, in response to news of the recent outbreaks, posts on social media have been rife with misinformation about measles and the main vaccine used to prevent the disease, the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine.
“As the news tries to fear-monger about the measles ‘outbreak’ of 9 whole people, remember that the vaccine is more dangerous than the actual illness,” one Jan. 20 Instagram post incorrectly claimed, likely referring to the Philadelphia outbreak and showing a list of scary-looking adverse reactions pulled from the vaccine’s package insert. “Not to mention, you can actually get measles from the vaccine.”
Another Instagram post focused on the fact that the measles vaccine is a live attenuated vaccine, which uses a weakened virus, to inaccurately suggest the vaccine is an important source of spread of the virus. “The unvaccinated are not the ones you should be concerned with,” the post read, before shifting to minimizing the risks of the disease. “Either way, the measles isn’t something to freak out about.”
Yet another post, accompanied by a clip from “The Brady Bunch,” emphasized the low risk of death from measles in the U.S., while baselessly claiming the MMR vaccine was responsible for the deaths of 450 babies in 2018.
“No one is dying of the measles in the US!!!!!!!” it read, adding, “1 person died from measles in the last 10 years and that person was vaccinated.”
As we’ll explain, there’s nothing to support the 450 number, and it’s unclear what the vaccination status was for the last person who died of measles in the U.S. In any case, focusing just on the lack of measles deaths in America is misleading, since it reflects the success of the vaccine — and fails to account for what would happen if more people forgo the vaccine and outbreaks become more common.
“Get to 1,000 cases a year, and we’ll start to see measles deaths again,” Dr. Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told us.
Measles Is Concerning
As we said, contrary to many of the posts that downplay the seriousness of measles, the viral illness can be severe, even if previous generations accepted it as a normal childhood illness.
“Measles is not just ‘a rash,’” a CDC spokesperson told us. According to the agency, before 1963, when the first measles vaccine became available, around 3 million to 4 million Americans were infected each year, 48,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 developed encephalitis and 400 to 500 died.
Most of those deaths, Offit noted, were in previously healthy people. Now, that burden of disease is preventable through vaccination.
The three big things that landed children in the hospital, Offit said, were dehydration, pneumonia and encephalitis. “If you got chest X-rays on everybody with measles, half would have abnormal chest X-rays,” he added.
“I remember how sick measles could make you back then,” Offit said. “In fact, today, when they ask old people like me to come down to the emergency department to see whether someone has measles, I can usually tell in 30 seconds because they’re sick.”
Very rarely, measles can also cause subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, a fatal neurodegenerative condition that typically manifests some six to eight years after an infection.
Research has also shown that measles can actually wipe out much of the preexisting immunity a person has developed to other germs, which makes them susceptible to other infections for as long as several years after a bout of measles. This does not occur after measles vaccination.
A little girl with measles. Photo by Getty/gdinMika.
Moreover, the reason why even a few cases of measles make the news, and why health officials spring into action to prevent further spread, is because the disease is one of the most contagious diseases — far more so than flu or COVID-19.
Some 90% of non-immune people will get measles if exposed to an infected person. And direct exposure is not even necessary, since the virus can contaminate surfaces and can linger in the air.
Speaking of a hospital room after someone with measles has been in it, Offit said, “No one can go in that room for two hours. You have to wait for those small droplets which hang in the air like a ghost to settle.”
It’s worth noting that even today, there are no measles-specific treatments. Doctors can treat the symptoms and provide supportive care, but there are no antivirals that will help someone fight off the virus. The WHO recommends that all people with measles receive vitamin A supplements, as this “restores low vitamin A levels that occur even in well-nourished children,” and can help prevent blindness and possibly death.
Several of the social media posts cast the MMR vaccine as dangerous by pointing to the long list of adverse reactions in the product insert sheet.
Offit told us, however, that product inserts really should be viewed as legal documents, not medical communication documents. Just because a reaction is listed doesn’t necessarily mean it has been shown to be definitively caused by a vaccine. The list also doesn’t say how likely a reaction is after vaccination, how severe it might be, or how the risk compares with a measles infection.
For example, SSPE is listed on the MMR sheet, but it’s doubtful that the MMR vaccine can actually cause SSPE. Offit does not think so, and evidence suggests that the few cases reported in people with only a history of vaccination actually reflect instances of unrecognized measles infection. In any case, rates of SSPE have fallen in countries with widespread vaccination, and vaccination is the only way to actually prevent SSPE.
As with any medical product, the MMR vaccine is not 100% safe, but it is remarkably so — and the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. Most people experience no or only mild and expected side effects, such as a sore arm and low-grade fever. About 5% of people will develop a rash, according to the CDC’s Pink Book on vaccines.
More rarely, other side effects can occur, including febrile seizures, which do not cause long-term harm, and a brief decrease in platelets, which has never been fatal. (The rubella component of the MMR vaccine can also cause joint pain and swelling, primarily in adults, but this is also temporary.)
The rash and fever can be viewed as a very mild form of measles, Offit said. But contrary to social media posts that equate this with a natural measles infection, these symptoms are far more mild and do not pose the same risk of complications or viral transmission.
The weakened measles virus in the MMR vaccine is only capable of giving someone a dangerous infection if a person is severely immunocompromised. For this reason, the CDC told us, these people should not be vaccinated.
As we’ve explained before, people vaccinated with live viral vaccines can shed, or release small amounts of the weakened viruses outside of their bodies, but this is expected and not cause for alarm.
Children who develop a rash after a measles vaccine are not considered contagious, and no precautions are necessary, even if they are around immunocompromised people. In fact, to better protect immunocompromised people, who may not be able to be vaccinated, or may not respond fully if they are, the MMR vaccine is explicitly recommended for household contacts of such individuals.
The CDC told us that transmission of the weakened measles virus from someone who received the MMR or MMRV vaccine, which adds a component to protect against chickenpox, “has never been proven,” and cited a 2016 systematic review that included 773 scientific articles. “No evidence of human-to-human transmission of the measles vaccine virus has been reported amongst the thousands of clinical samples genotyped during outbreaks or endemic transmission and individual case studies worldwide,” it concluded.
The agency also said there is “no history” of a measles outbreak ever occurring as a result of the vaccine.
As for the claim that 450 babies died of the MMR vaccine in 2018, the CDC told us there “is no evidence from any of CDC’s vaccine safety monitoring systems to support this claim.” We also could not find any evidence to support this.
In the U.S., the MMR is given in two doses, at 12 to 15 months, and then at 4 to 6 years old. A single dose is about 93% effective in preventing the disease, according to the CDC, while two are about 97% effective. In the unlikely scenario that a vaccinated person does contract measles, the disease is usually milder and less contagious to others than in someone who has not been vaccinated.
Last Measles Death in U.S. Reinforces Need for Vaccination
A post arguing against vaccination pointed to the rarity of measles deaths in America and misleadingly claimed that the single person to die of measles in the U.S. in the last decade was vaccinated.
The CDC confirmed that the last measles death in the U.S. occurred in 2015, but said the person’s vaccination status was unknown. The Seattle Times reported in 2016 that the woman who died “may have been” vaccinated as a kid, but the family did not have evidence of this. So her status was listed as unknown. Regardless, the example is missing important context, because experts said the case underscores the need for more vaccination, not less.
The woman who died was a Washington state resident who had other health conditions and was taking medications that suppressed her immune system. She died of pneumonia, and it was not apparent the pneumonia was due to measles until an autopsy was performed, as she did not have a rash or other symptoms. Immunocompromised patients are known to sometimes lack a rash with measles.
Particularly because the woman had a suppressed immune system, even if she was vaccinated, this is not evidence that vaccination doesn’t work. As multiple experts explained to USA Today in 2015, the death is a prime example of why it’s vitally important for everyone who can get vaccinated to do so, to prevent measles from circulating and posing a risk to vulnerable people who either can’t get vaccinated or for whom vaccination is less likely to be effective.
“This tragic situation illustrates the importance of immunizing as many people as possible to provide a high level of community protection against measles,” the Washington health department said at the time in a statement.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.
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“Measles Cases and Outbreaks.” Measles (Rubeola) page. CDC. Accessed 29 Jan 2024.
Gutman, Abraham. “Health department warns of measles cluster among unvaccinated residents that originated with CHOP patient.” Philadelphia Inquirer. 4 Jan 2024.
“Health Department Reports Additional Measles Exposures.” Press release. Philadelphia Department of Public Health. 4 Jan 2024.
McDevitt, Charles. “Health department cautions Philadelphians about recent measles cases.” Philadelphia Department of Public Health. Updated 17 Jan 2024.
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“DPH Confirms Measles Case in Metro Atlanta.” Press release. Georgia Department of Public Health. 18 Jan 2024.
“Health Advisory: Measles Outbreak in Southwest Washington.” Press release. Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. 19 Jan 2024.
“Stay Alert for Measles Cases.” CDC Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity. 25 Jan 2024.
“A 30-fold rise of measles cases in 2023 in the WHO European Region warrants urgent action.” Press release. WHO. 14 Dec 2023.
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Offit, Paul A. Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 24 Jan 2024.
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Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus and Joe Biden — they’re now all common write-in candidates after this year’s New Hampshire Democratic primary, which President Biden won with more than 79,000 write-in votes.
But it didn’t take long for social media accounts to allege that his win was a result of election fraud.
“SOURCE: Rep. Dean Phillips received almost twice as many votes as Biden did in the New Hampshire primary,” read a Jan. 24 post on X. “The Democrat Party, in an effort not to embarrass the president, ‘found’ 50,000+ write in votes for Biden to give him the ‘win’.”
A day later, the post had been reshared by X users 7,100 times and viewed more than 4 million times.
The unsubstantiated claim was first shared by the popular X account @amuse. With its stormtrooper profile pic and almost 300,000 followers, the account claims to support “independent journalists” and deliver “conservative takes on liberal talking points.”
The account owner also writes “Politique Republic,” a Substack blog; the author description reads “a political dissident, pundit, author, and artist.”
(Screenshot of X post)
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who announced his candidacy in October 2023, did not get more votes than Joe Biden nor win the primary election. Results posted on the New Hampshire secretary of state’s website as of Jan. 26 show that Phillips received about 24,000 votes while President Biden got over 79,000.
A few hours after the account shared its unsourced claim, Phillips himself debunked it. “This is shameful and absolutely untrue,” wrote Phillips on X. “The State of New Hampshire manages its elections with great integrity and efficiency, and Joe Biden won the NH Democratic primary election last evening fair and square.”
(Screenshot of X post)
New Hampshire’s secretary of state, Republican David Scanlan, administers Granite State elections. Political parties are allowed observers in polling places, but those observers do not count ballots, said Bradford E. Cook, attorney and chairman of the state’s Ballot Law Commission, a bipartisan body established by the Legislature. Election officials and volunteers count votes and relay results to the secretary of state.
Separately, New Hampshire’s attorney general sends observers to polling places “to observe and assure the vote is being done according to law.” Cook said.
Anna Sventek, Scanlan’s communications director, confirmed that the results reported on the website were “the accurate results of the election.”
Amuse’s claim mimics other false claims that large numbers of votes were “found” in the 2020 election.
Why Biden wasn’t on the ballot
The New Hampshire Democratic primary was unique this year because the presumptive nominee, Biden, did not appear on the ballot. This was because of a disagreement between the state and national party after the Democratic National Committee reordered the primary schedule to make South Carolina the first primary state instead of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire state law dictates that its primary must be first in the nation, so the state went ahead with its Jan. 23 primary, despite the DNC’s change. As a result, no Democratic delegates from the state will be awarded at the convention later this year.
Because of the change, Biden did not campaign in New Hampshire, leading his supporters to organize a write-in campaign on his behalf.
Write-in votes can take longer to be reported because they must be hand-counted. Many precincts prepared for the large number of write-in ballots from Biden supporters.
Because of this, the secretary of state and attorney general said in January that “to the extent that counting the write-in votes takes longer than expected, the moderator may release the Republican results earlier than the Democratic results provided the results are complete.”
Votes were not found, said Cook, “but added to the total as they were reported to the secretary of state.”
Our ruling
An X post claimed Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., received twice as many votes as Joe Biden in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. But official results from the secretary of state show President Joe Biden won the election with a large number of write-in votes.
Could COVID-19 vaccines force men to forgo fatherhood? A Facebook post suggests as much, saying the shots make sperm disappear. The Jan. 20 post claims, with a video of a slideshow presentation by Dr. Arne Burkhardt, a German pathologist, that the “spike protein from the covid vaccine has entirely replaced their sperm.”
The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
Burkhardt died May 30, 2023, according to the Mediziner und Wissenschaftler für Gesundheit, Freiheit und Demokratie, or Doctors and Scientists for Health, Freedom and Democracy, a group of researchers and physicians that have criticized COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and the vaccine.
In the presentation, Burkhardt, whose past comments about COVID-19 vaccines have been widely debunked in fact checks by several news outlets, shows slides that he says show how a vaccinated male’s sperm is replaced by the spike protein. The spike protein sits on the coronavirus’s molecular surface and is targeted by the immune response prompted by the vaccine.
“Here you see a case where we show the testes, and you can see that in this 28-year-old man who had a healthy son and who died 140 days after injection, the spike protein is strongly expressed in the spermatogenic organ in the testes. And you can see there are almost no spermatocytes in here, but, and, it’s strongly expression of spike protein in the spermatogenic tissue,” Burkhardt says in the presentation, mangling the grammar.
Afterward, he adds: “If I may make a personal comment, this is not a scientific comment. If I were a woman in fertile age, I would not plan a motherhood from a person, from a man who has been vaccinated.”
The video was published Feb 20, 2023, on Rumble, a conservative-leaning video-sharing platform, and has appeared on Twitter and Instagram routinely since then.
Infectious disease experts say there is no evidence that the vaccine affects sperm or other elements of fertility for men or women.
According to a 2022 analysis of global scientific research published in Vaccine, a peer-reviewed journal, “There is no scientific proof of any association between Covid-19 vaccines and fertility impairment in men or women.”
A separate 2022 National Institutes of Health study showed that the “COVID-19 vaccination does not affect the chances of conceiving a child.” The study, which involved more than 2,000 couples, “found no differences in the chances of conception if either male or female partner had been vaccinated, compared with unvaccinated couples.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends the COVID-19 vaccine for people trying to become pregnant and their partners.
We rate the claim that in vaccinated males, the spike protein from the COVID-19 vaccine has entirely replaced their sperm Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
In a recent speech touting his economic policies, President Joe Biden took the opportunity to take aim at the tax rates of the wealthiest Americans.
During the president’s Jan. 25 stop in Superior, he said, “There are a thousand billionaires now and you know what their average tax rate is? 8%.”
Biden has used this figure before, but it’s inaccurate because it uses a hypothetical calculation and isn’t a reference to the current tax code.
In fact, a PolitiFact rating from 2022 fact-checked the same claim and found it false. Here is what we previously found.
What is the average federal income tax for the richest Americans?
When we asked the White House back in 2022 about the 8% figure, it told PolitiFact that it comes from a White House report that looked at what would happen if the United States were to tax unrealized gains on stocks.
Currently, if someone sees their stock shares rise in value over time, those gains are not taxed unless and until the shares are sold. If the shares are never sold, then they are never taxed, and under current law, they may be passed on to the next generation with little or no taxation.
The White House report found that if you include unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families, then their taxes paid would account for just 8.2% of their income.
Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound like 8% was the standard rate today, not what would happen under a potential future proposal.
IRS data from 2020 shows that the top 1% of taxpayers paid an average federal income tax rate of 25.99% — about three times more than the White House’s estimate.
Our ruling
Biden said “There are a thousand billionaires now and you know what their average tax rate is? 8%.”
The wealthiest Americans currently pay an effective tax rate of more than 20% of their income, not 8%.
Should we panic? Social media users might after seeing online claims that researchers in China are concocting a disease that’s deadlier than COVID-19.
Chinese scientists “created (a) new COVID-19 strain (with) 100% fatality,” a Jan. 21 Instagram post’s caption read. “It’s not like biological (warfare) is real, so nothing to see here folks.”
The Instagram post showed a report from conservative news outlets NTD News and The Epoch Times that claimed the coronavirus strain was “biologically lab made.” The report said all the mice tested in the study died from the infection and suggested this “mutant coronavirus strain” could also kill humans.
Another Instagram post, shared Jan. 22, made a similar claim about Chinese scientists creating a “mutant covid strain (with a) 100% death rate.”
“When they injected this new strain into humanized mice, all of them died within eight days,” the person in the video said. “They created an even more deadly variant.”
The post then linked this study to discussions by the World Economic Forum, a frequent target of conspiracy theories, about preparation for Disease X. But the two aren’t related. Disease X refers to any undiscovered human disease that could lead to an international epidemic. It’s not proof world leaders are planning a new pandemic.
(Screengrab from Instagram)
These Instagram posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
Some news outlets, including the New York Post, NewsNation and GB News, also ran headlines about the study that warned of a new fatal COVID-19 “strain.”
But virology experts — both involved in and independent of the study — said social media posts and news headlines have misconstrued the findings.
Dan Wilson, a molecular biologist and science communicator not involved in the study, said the panic the social media posts incited is unfounded. Wilson hosts “Debunk the Funk with Dr. Wilson,” a YouTube show that covers science misinformation.
“This is important research that simply highlights the threats that already exist in nature and attempts to learn about them before they become an immediate problem,” said Wilson, who is also a senior associate scientist at Janssen, one of the pharmaceutical companies that developed a COVID-19 vaccine.
Animal study of virus similar to SARS-CoV-2 is “not applicable” to humans
In the preprint study, published Jan. 4, 10 researchers in Beijing and Nanjing, China, tested a type of coronavirus to see whether it could cause disease in laboratory mice. As a preprint, this study has not undergone peer-review, in which other scientists with expertise comparable to the researchers read the research and evaluate its methodology and validity.
The study’s researchers did not “create a new COVID-19 strain,” as social media posts and news articles claimed. They were working with a different coronavirus called GX_P2V, which the study said was discovered in 2017 in pangolins, sometimes known as scaly anteaters.
GX_P2V is similar to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19; both belong to the large coronavirus family. But experts said GX_P2V is not a COVID-19 strain, variant or mutation.
Coronaviruses are known to mutate rapidly, producing viral variants. Since its discovery, GX_P2V has adapted over many generations in cell culture, the study said.
For this study, the researchers cloned a cell-adapted variant of GX_P2V.
Scientists often use “humanized” mice, or mice engrafted with something from humans, in experiments because they can act as models for research on human diseases. In this case, the study said, the humanized mice were genetically modified to express ACE2, the protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells in the human body. Without this mutation, the mice can’t become infected, experts said.
Beijing University of Chemical Technology professor and researcher Lihua Song, who was involved with the study, told PolitiFact the research originally intended to test the mice’s immune responses to the virus, “not to mimic human infection.”
All four mice infected with GX_P2V unexpectedly died within eight days, likely because of severe brain infection, the study said.
Typical mice and human brains have low levels of the ACE2 protein, Song said.
But the humanized mice used in this experiment, which Beijing SpePharm Biotechnology Co. developed, had a “high expression” of ACE2 in their brain and lung tissues, which made them more susceptible to infection, Song said.
“The experimental results obtained with this model cannot be extrapolated to suggest similar infections in humans,” Song said.
Some of the misinformation around this study seems to have come from the study itself. The preprint study’s first version incorrectly stated there is a “spillover risk” of GX_P2V into humans, Song said.
“We have no data to support this,” he said.
After misinterpretations of the study spread online, Song posted Jan. 17 on the research forum Science Cast to clarify the findings. On Jan. 21, Song and his colleagues released an updated version of the study that was, Song told PolitiFact, “revised fundamentally to state the fact that these animal results are not applicable to humans.”
The updated study said GX_P2V could help determine whether vaccines and drugs can effectively protect against COVID-19 and its future variants. For example, researchers could vaccinate the humanized mice for COVID-19 and then infect them with GX_P2V to evaluate whether a COVID-19 vaccine could protect against other coronaviruses, Song said.
Our ruling
Instagram posts claimed Chinese scientists “created (a) new COVID-19 strain (with) 100% fatality.”
Researchers in China cloned and tested a cell-adapted variant of GX_P2V, a coronavirus that was discovered in 2017, on humanized mice. The researchers did not “create” GX_P2V and it did not originate from SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
All four mice infected with the virus died in the experiment, but researchers said the findings don’t apply to humans.
A global pandemic treaty to better prepare for and respond to a future pandemic has attracted conspiracy theories since it was announced in December 2021.
PolitiFact and other fact-checkers have debunked numerous claims that the global accord the World Health Organization is shepherding will let the agency mandate lockdowns and vaccinations in the U.S. or other countries.
These baseless claims continue spreading on social media after the WHO’s December meeting to negotiate the accord.
A Jan. 24 Instagram post that misspelled “forcibly” claimed the deal’s passage would yield several bad outcomes, including that “UN troops can be deployed on your soil to round up and forceably vaccinate the population.” (The WHO is a United Nations agency.)
The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The post misleads about what the accord — which is incomplete — would do. The WHO lacks the power to force a nation to do anything against its will, and this agreement will not change that, the WHO, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and experts said.
(Instagram screenshot)
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO’s 194 member states began planning a global accord to better prepare the world for future pandemics. The deal’s main focuses are ensuring equity in access to technology such as vaccines and information, and ensuring access to health care, the WHO said in a Q&A on its website.
In February 2023, the WHO published a “zero draft” of the accord, a framework for member states to begin negotiations. Member states, as part of the WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, have met several times to negotiate the accord.
Those talks have yielded two updated versions of the deal:
All three documents contain language affirming the nations’ sovereignty to apply their own health policies. None mention vaccine mandates or lockdowns.
The WHO in July published a YouTube video debunking misconceptions about what the treaty could do. In the video, Steven Solomon, the WHO’s principal legal officer, said the treaty “isn’t going to give WHO power to dictate vaccine mandates. The treaty won’t give WHO as an organization, as a staff, the power to dictate anything.”
Recommendations from the WHO “are for countries a tool, if they want to use it, to help their response,” Solomon said.
All member states are negotiating the accord and each state eventually must decide whether to sign onto the deal when it’s complete. A final draft will be presented in May 2024, the WHO’s website said. It’s unclear whether the U.S. will sign onto a final version of the agreement, or if joining would require congressional approval.
A news release after December’s meeting detailed how the WHO’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus discussed the challenge of dealing with misinformation about the accord, “including on the false claim that any agreement would result in countries ceding sovereignty to WHO.” The release said the draft pandemic agreement text, “reaffirms the principle of sovereignty” in nations addressing public health matters.
A December research briefing published by the U.K. House of Commons Library also rejected the notion that the accord will give the WHO the authority to implement lockdowns, vaccine mandates or mandatory quarantines.
The claim that the WHO’s proposed global pandemic preparedness accord could result in U.N. troops entering countries and forcibly vaccinating people is False.
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