Some social media users are criticizing Texas pediatric clinics over their purported vaccination policies for children.
A Dec. 13 Instagram post showed a screenshot of a headline reading, “Texas Children’s Hospital pediatric clinics announce they will no longer treat unvaccinated children.” In a second screenshot, the post shows a supposed announcement from Texas Children’s Hospital about this policy.
This 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.)
(Screengrab from Instagram)
The headline in the Instagram post comes from The Houston Comical, a newsletter that in its Dec. 6 issue shared screenshots of an X post and headlines about Texas Children’s Hospital.
The X post quotes the supposed announcement about Texas Children’s Hospital’s pediatric clinic vaccination policy: “We respect parents’ right to make medical decisions for their children. If you do not consent to having your child vaccinated against these diseases, we respectfully ask that you establish care with another provider who is comfortable caring for an unvaccinated or partially-vaccinated child within the next sixty (60) days.”
This post was shared Dec. 6 by Mary Talley Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist who Houston Methodist hospital officials said was suspended in 2021 from her job for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and refusing to treat vaccinated patients.
In April, the Texas Medical Board filed a formal complaint against Bowden for violating the standard of care and acting unprofessionally in 2021 when she prescribed medication to a hospitalized COVID-19 patient who was not under her care.
A Texas Children’s Hospital spokesperson told PolitiFact this claim about a vaccination policy is untrue.
The hospital’s website does not say patients must be vaccinated against certain diseases. Neither do news articles nor announcements about a vaccination policy at Texas Children’s Hospital’s pediatric clinics.
We found a Jan. 22, 2022, X post that claimed to show a Texas Children’s Hospital letter about a vaccination policy at two of its pediatric clinics in Houston. The letter appears to have been signed by physicians and nurse practitioners at the Humble-Atascocita and Humble-Kingwood pediatric clinics. (Bowden’s X post used language similar to what was written in this letter.)
Lead Stories reported that it asked Bowden about the email referred to in the X post. Bowden told the fact-checking organization that she had seen the email but she declined to provide evidence to corroborate it. PolitiFact also asked Bowden to verify her X post’s source, but did not hear back before publication.
When asked whether the letter is authentic, a Texas Children’s Hospital spokesperson said all Texas Children’s Pediatrics clinics accept patients regardless of vaccination status.
Including the Humble-Atascocita and Humble-Kingwood locations, there are 68 Texas Children’s Pediatrics clinics in the Houston and Austin areas.
Texas lawmakers have recently restricted the scope of vaccine mandates in health care settings. As of September, Texas physicians who care for patients enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program are prohibited from refusing care based on the patient’s vaccination status. And in November, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a broad ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employees of private businesses, including hospitals, in Texas.
We rate the claim that Texas Children’s Hospital pediatric clinics announced “they will no longer treat unvaccinated children” False.
Mark Lamb, sheriff of Arizona’s Pinal County, has campaigned for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination on the promise to “secure the border.” He’s posted short videos on X about what he calls “truth bombs,” mostly about immigration.
When migrants cross the U.S. border illegally, “They’re being given a cellphone, a plane ticket to wherever they wanna go in this country … and a $5,000 visa card,” Lamb said in a Dec. 5 video. “We have our government giving people who came into this country illegally $5,000 gift cards. That’s the truth, folks.”
Lamb tweaked his message when he repeated the claim during a Dec. 7 interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“The way that they’re keeping this away from the American people is they are giving money to nongovernmental organizations who swoop in as soon as they’re processed, and they’re sending them off on an airplane to wherever they wanna go, giving them a phone and giving them Visa cards up to $5,000,” Lamb said. He added later that the migrants “go directly to the ATMs after that and start pulling money out.”
We’ve previously fact-checked claims about immigrants getting cellphones and free flights. We’ve also checked claims about migrants getting debit cards or monthly checks from the government.
We asked Lamb for his evidence that migrants are getting $5,000 gift cards from the government or nonprofit organizations, but he did not respond.
On Fox News, Lamb said his information “comes from very solid sources, from multiple sources.”
When Watters asked Lamb to name these sources, Lamb said, “I get this information from sources that are right inside of there. Including guys that work with Border Patrol who are fed up with what their government is doing.”
Both the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection told PolitiFact they do not financially assist people who cross the border illegally. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which gives money to nonprofit organizations that support immigrants, said that money cannot be used to purchase gift cards or prepaid debit cards.
We reached out to nonprofit organizations aiding immigrants that have received government funding, and representatives from five of them said the organizations do not provide $5,000 gift cards to migrants.
Two FEMA programs provide federal funding to nonprofit organizations supporting immigrants: the Emergency Food and Shelter Program – Humanitarian Relief, and the Shelter and Services Program. Funding also goes to local governments.
In fiscal year 2019, Congress authorized funding from the Emergency Food and Shelter Program for nonprofit organizations supporting migrants encountered by the Department of Homeland Security. A national board, which awards funding to organizations, gave around $400 million in fiscal year 2023.
The Shelter and Services Program began in fiscal year 2023 and awarded around $380 million in funding.
Both programs list allowable expenses for which nonprofits can receive funding or reimbursement. Beds, linens, food and first-aid supplies are listed; gift cards and prepaid debit cards are not.
“Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston does not provide Visa gift cards in this amount to immigrants,” said Betsy Ballard, the organization’s communications director.
Ballard said the organization sometimes provides $25 gift cards to clients, including migrants, to cover “immediate needs often related to a crisis situation, such as gas or food,” but private donations fund those cards.
Kate Clark, senior director of immigration services for Jewish Family Service of San Diego, which manages the San Diego Rapid Response Network Fund, said asylum seekers might get “travel cash assistance through private funders,” but not from government funding. And the cash assistance is neither $5,000 nor delivered as a gift card. How much people get depends on how long they’ve traveled and how big their families are, Clark said. One person might get $10 for an eight-hour travel day; a four-person family might get $100.
Our ruling
Lamb said, “We have our government giving people who came into this country illegally $5,000 gift cards.”
Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection said they do not financially assist people who illegally cross the U.S. border.
Lamb also said the gift cards come from government-funded nonprofit organizations. FEMA, which directs the two federal funding programs for nonprofits that assist migrants, said grant funding cannot be spent on gift cards or prepaid debit cards. And five migrant-aiding nonprofit organizations said they do not provide $5,000 gift cards.
At PolitiFact, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Lamb didn’t provide evidence to back up his statement, either when questioned publicly or when asked by PolitiFact.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus, an ethnically divided island in the Mediterranean, is like any other nation: It’s been hit by a wave of misinformation, and residents are trying to keep up.
The former British colony — smaller in area than Puerto Rico — is split by a United Nations buffer zone that separates the predominantly Greek south and the predominantly Turkish north. The southern portion, known as the Republic of Cyprus, is in the European Union; the northern portion, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, is recognized only by Turkey. International-led unification efforts failed in 2004 and 2017, although free passage across the buffer zone has been allowed since 2003 and tensions are generally low.
“With increasing clickbait journalism and fake news, there’s a growing need for fact-checking on the island,” said Anil Isik, a freelance journalist and member of the Association of European Journalists Cyprus. The coronavirus pandemic, Isik said, “highlighted the need for credible news and the importance of fact-checkers” in both communities.
Hasan Kahvecioglu, a longtime journalist in Cyprus’ Turkish north, agreed with Isik.
“Because of the divide, we need fact-check journalists even more than other countries,” he said. “Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot journalists are not using common terminology.”
The pandemic inspired Fact Check Cyprus, a Greek-language website and the most comprehensive effort to date to combat misinformation on the island.
Fact Check Cyprus began as a loose coalition of journalists and academics, focusing on coronavirus-related misinformation. In early 2023, Thanos Sitistas, a Greek-born journalist with experience at the Greek fact-checking site Ellinika Hoaxes, formalized the project, working with Loukia Taxitari, a psychology professor at Neapolis University Pafos; Michael Sirivianos, an engineering and technology professor at the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol; and several Cypriot expat freelancers in London. It now addresses claims about immigration, LGBTQ+ policy and other issues.
“People here read the same websites as they do in Greece,” Sitistas said. “They are subject to the same disinformation channels.” These include Russian disinformation, such as claims about the war in Ukraine. Increasingly, Cyprus has been a magnet for Russian transplants and wealth. Sometimes, claims generated or amplified by Iran come to the site’s attention, too, Sitistas said.
Sitistas describes Fact Check Cyprus as more of a “network, not a newsroom.” Sitistas added that he and his colleagues plan to apply for accreditation with the International Fact-Checking Network, a division of the Poynter Institute, in early 2024.
Within the EU, Sitistas said, “Cyprus has the same vote as Germany, but it hasn’t gotten enough attention when it comes to fact-checking.”
Sitistas and his colleagues say they aren’t seeing that much misinformation focused specifically on Greek Cypriot-Turkish Cypriot tensions, but the island’s physical and linguistic division has posed challenges for fighting off misinformation, journalists, academics and officials said.during a reporter’s weeklong visit to the island.
Linguist Stavroulla Hadjiconstantinou of the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol, Republic of Cyprus. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)
Stavroulla Hadjiconstantinou, a linguist at the Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol in the Republic of Cyprus, said the island’s division makes people on either side of the buffer zone susceptible to biases. They are “less open to objective or critical evaluation of the information circulated by the media,” she said, adding that she works to educate her students on how to detect and counter fake and misleading information online.
Nicholas Nicoli, an associate communications professor at the University of Nicosia in the Republic of Cyprus and co-author of “Digital Democracy, Social Media and Disinformation,” agreed. “There are lots of cracks below our society’s surface, and they are not hard to find and accentuate across the digital landscape,” Nicoli said.
In Cyprus, “people are not aware of the existence of tools and sites” to fact-check what they see on social media, added Eleni Kyza, a professor of communication and internet studies at the Cyprus University of Technology.
Meanwhile, keeping up with misrepresentations has challenged local journalists, multiple observers said.
Journalists’ salaries are so low that there’s a well-trodden path from journalism into government jobs, often after only a few years, observers say.
“There’s a joke that’s not a joke — that there are more former journalists in the presidential palace than in any newsroom in Cyprus,” said Nicholas Karides, director of the Institute for Mass Media, which promotes investigative reporting and media literacy.
Sertac Sonan, an international relations professor at Cyprus International University, at the House of Jade coffee house in northern Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)
Meanwhile, especially in the Turkish north, businesses and elites with economic interests at stake have been taking over media outlets.
“We still have many independent media outlets, but this is a global problem,” said Sertac Sonan, a political scientist at Cyprus International University in northern Nicosia, the predominantly Turkish Cypriot portion of the divided capital. “You don’t have enough funding for independent media.”
Kyriakos Pierides, a longtime journalist in the Republic of Cyprus, added that “the mainstream media tends to follow the official narratives. They’re not working toward objective journalism. It’s a very serious situation — it’s producing news without a critical voice.”
The island’s small size is another complicating factor, said Shemaine Bushnell, an editor with the Cyprus edition of the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. The two communities in Cyprus have a combined population about the size of Maine’s in the United States.
Cypriots “are reluctant to voice complaints due to the close-knit nature of the community,” Bushnell said. “Residents are fearful of needing a favor or engaging in business where the concept of nepotism prevails, so they hesitate to speak out. Whether it’s disinformation, misinformation or a lack of information, the core problem lies not in these factors but in the citizens’ tendency to remain silent.”
Perhaps the biggest obstacle in Cyprus is the linguistic divide.
“In Cyprus, the fact that there are two languages poses a problem for fact-checking,” said Sami Ozuslu, who worked for three decades as a journalist before winning election to parliament in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Trilingual media coverage — in English, Turkish, and Greek — is needed in Cyprus, said Huri Yontucu, an assistant professor of new media and communication at Arkin University of Creative Arts and Design in northern Cyprus.
“People don’t know what’s going on on the other side,” Yontucu said. “In divided and conflicted societies, one of the important things is collaborating with and learning about others. Media is one of the significant tools that play a common role in increasing and decreasing the tensions among conflicted societies by informing them about the ‘other.’”
Media studies professor Huri Yontucu at the Büyük Han in northern Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)
A rare “bicommunal” media effort spanning the Greek and Cypriot communities is “Mazi/Birlikte” (“Together”), a TV show that airs for an hour once a week on the Cyprus Broadcasting Corp., a public broadcaster. “We want to show people sharing the same experience — it doesn’t matter their ethnicity,” said Vasvi Çiftçioğlu, one of the show’s journalists.
Even so, the current version of the show has been downsized. From 2004 to 2018, its predecessor show aired daily.
Television journalist Vasvi Çiftçioğlu at the Rüstem Kitabevi used book store and cafe in northern Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)
On the upside, there seems to be a growing demand for expanding residents’ media literacy, and several efforts to improve it are underway.
A fact-checking and misinformation presentation by the author at the Pedagogical Institute, an arm of the Republic of Cyprus’ education ministry in the Nicosia suburb of Latsia, drew roughly two dozen middle- and secondary school teachers during the school day. Many of the teachers said they are eager to learn what they can do to improve their students’ social media habits.
Yontucu, who teaches media literacy to her college students, welcomes such interest. Media literacy, she said, “should be started from primary school.” Other academics and journalists echoed this.
Kathimerini Cyprus newspaper journalist and analyst Ioannis Ioannou at the Daily Roast in Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)
“To deal with all this, we need to work on media literacy,” said Ioannis Ioannou, a journalist and foreign policy analyst with the Cyprus edition of the newspaper Kathimerini. “We need a strategy to win that.”
At Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ biggest city other than northern Nicosia, media literacy is a required course for journalism students, said Hanife Aliefendioğlu, the chair of the new media and journalism department. The course description says it “encourages a critical, creative, and questioning attitude and orientation toward the media in all its various forms.”
Journalists, academics and other officials said money, technical expertise and training will all be key to improving media literacy in Cyprus.
“It’s an arms race,” said Sirivianos, the professor and Fact Check Cyprus contributor.
During a whirlwind budget and legislative season, some of what lawmakers work on can get lost in the sauce.
For instance, you may have forgotten there were multiple failed proposals this year to cut middle-class taxes, even if taxes were clearly on voters’ minds when they headed to the polls last November.
In polling before the fall 2022 election, when Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, was on the ballot, around half of registered voters said they were “very concerned” about taxes.
State Sen. Julian Bradley, R-Franklin, reminded constituents of politicians’ proposed tax cuts this year in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Dec. 8.
“Wisconsin Republicans have passed multiple billion dollar middle-class tax cuts this year, but each time we have, Governor Tony Evers has vetoed the relief,” Bradley said.
His claim caught our attention, especially as we look back on the state budget and major legislative efforts at the end of 2023.
Has Evers vetoed multiple billion dollar middle-class tax cuts this year?
Yes, but there’s more to the picture.
Cut for middle-class bracket was vetoed in special session rewrite, state budget
When PolitiFact Wisconsin reached out to Bradley’s office, Communications Director Alex Walker pointed to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel articles that detailed the two times Evers vetoed a middle-class tax cut.
Twice this year, Republicans proposed cutting taxes for a broad group of middle-income earners that make between $27,630 and $304,170 as individuals and $36,840 to $405,550 as a married couple.
The income tax rate for that group would have been reduced by about 17%, from 5.3% to 4.4%, amounting to a more than $2 billion reduction over two years, a state fiscal analysis shows.
Republicans included that cut in a workforce and child care special session bill they rewrote that significantly changed Evers’ original plan.
Democrats called the rewrite “veto bait” for containing provisions the governor previously vetoed, like tightening unemployment rules.
Evers vetoed the plan in November; in his veto message, he said the cut was too steep and would drain the state’s rainy day fund.
It might be a bit of a stretch to say Evers vetoed the tax cut by citing that bill, because he couldn’t sign only that part and remove provisions he doesn’t like. But that wasn’t the case for the earlier veto Bradley’s office cited. When signing the state budget this summer, Evers used a line-item veto to specifically remove the cut for that bracket.
Along with the 17% reduction for the second-highest bracket, Evers removed a 15% cut for the highest earners — those making $405,550 or more as a couple. He kept in place reductions for the two lowest brackets.
In that veto message, Evers cited concerns that the move would reduce funding for schools, local governments and other budget priorities. He criticized the plan for focusing the most relief on the wealthiest residents.
So, it’s even fairer to say Evers vetoed the cut in the state budget, because he can use partial vetoes to remove language.
Evers said he would not sign stand-alone tax cut, stands by own plan
Evers has also said he would not sign stand-alone legislation that included only the tax cuts he vetoed from the state budget.
“(If) their concern now is that there isn’t a big enough tax cut for the middle class, all they had to do was adopt mine to begin with,” Evers said after Republicans said they’d introduce tax cuts again after his veto.
Evers was referring to his initial budget proposal, which would have provided about $1.2 billion in tax relief to low- and middle-income residents. Republicans who control the Legislature typically scrap Evers’ budget plan and write their own.
So, it isn’t that Evers is opposed to a billion dollar tax cut for the middle class, but he has so far rejected Republicans’ ideas on how to do that.
Two other pieces of legislation — a bill and an amendment — also included Republicans’ proposed cut for that middle-class bracket. But those have failed to reach Evers for his signature or veto.
It’s also worth noting that all groups of earners, including the wide middle-class bracket, will still see some relief, just not the billions that Republicans wanted.
Under Evers’ signed budget, taxpayers will see an average decrease of $36 in 2023, compared to $573 under the GOP plan. That totals $82.9 million for 2.3 million filers, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
And Evers often notes he’s enacted income tax reductions that total $1.5 billion annually since taking office — but that might be a PolitiFact for another time.
Our ruling
Bradley said “Wisconsin Republicans have passed multiple billion dollar middle-class tax cuts this year, but each time we have, Governor Tony Evers has vetoed the relief.”
Republicans have repeatedly pitched a 17% reduction for a wide group of earners, totaling about $2 billion over two years.
Evers vetoed a bill that contained that and other provisions, and he also removed it as an individual piece from the state budget.
Evers has, however, supported a different way to cut middle-class taxes to the tune of a billion dollars. He and Republicans just haven’t agreed on how to deliver the relief.
Bradley’s statement is accurate, but requires some additional explanation to give a full picture of what happened with tax cuts this year. We rate it Mostly True.
Un aumento en casos de neumonía en niños de Estados Unidos ha llevado a usuarios en las redes sociales a decir falsamente que están relacionados a unos casos similares en China.
“Neumonia misteriosa ya está golpeando” a niños en Estados Unidos, dice la publicación en Facebook del 30 de noviembre. “Lo mismo que está pasando en China”.
Está añade que se han confirmado 142 casos en Ohio y que en Massachusetts y Maryland también hay casos.
La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).
Un video en TikTok del 1 de diciembre dice algo similar.
(Screenshot de Publicación en Facebook)
Aunque los casos de neumonía son similares — ya que provienen de patógenos respiratorios típicos — los brotes en Estados Unidos y China no están conectados. Y los brotes son causados por patógenos conocidos, no nuevos, dicen autoridades de salud y expertos.
A pesar de preocupaciones de políticos estadounidenses sobre el brote “misterioso” en China, expertos dicen que el hecho de que es causado por un patógeno conocido no lo hace misterioso.
¿Qué está pasando en China?
En China han aumentado las enfermedades respiratorias, principalmente entre niños. La Organización Mundial de la Salud dijo el 22 de noviembre que solicitó a China más información.
La OMS dijo el 23 de noviembre, luego de hablar con las autoridades Chinas, que datos mostraron que múltiples patógenos conocidos causaron el aumento. Casos desde mayo han sido vinculados a Mycoplasma pneumoniae, una infección bacteriana común; y casos desde octubre han sido vinculados a una infección por el virus respiratorio sincitial, Adenovirus, e influenza. No ha sido detectado un patógeno nuevo en China, dijo la OMS.
Mandy Cohen, la directora de los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades de Estados Unidos (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés), también comunicó el 30 de noviembre en una audiencia ante el congreso que el brote de neumonía en China no involucra un patógeno nuevo.
El número de casos en Ohio no es inusual
Michaela Sumner, una portavoz del departamento de salud de Ohio, le dijo a PolitiFact que Ohio no tiene un número inusual de brotes de enfermedades respiratorias para este tiempo del año.
“No tenemos evidencia de y ninguna razón de sospechar una conexión a China”, Sumner añadió.
El 30 de noviembre el distrito de salud del condado Warren en Ohio dijo que desde agosto habían 145 casos de neumonía pediátrica. Pero no había muertes reportadas y la severidad de los casos es similar a la de años pasados, según el condado.
Los casos en Massachusetts
Ann Scales, portavoz del departamento de salud pública de Massachusetts, le dijo a PolitiFact que aunque han visto un “modesto” incremento en casos de neumonía pediátrica, eso es esperado en este tiempo del año.
Scales dijo que estos casos son probablemente relacionados a una combinación de virus respiratorios, incluyendo el virus respiratorio sincitial, el cual normalmente incrementa en invierno.
“No hay evidencia de que los incrementos normales y esperados en casos de neumonía que estamos viendo en Massachusetts están relacionados a mycoplasma”, dijo Scales, refiriéndose a uno de los virus circulando en China.
No hay un casos de neumonía en niños de Maryland
Chase Cook, un portavoz del departamento de salud de Maryland, le dijo a PolitiFact que no han tenido reportes de patógenos nuevos, viruses inusuales o de neumonía bacteriana en niños de Maryland.
PolitiFact tampoco encontró reportes recientes de medios de comunicación sobre un brote de neumonía en niños de Maryland.
No hay una conexión entre los casos en China y Estados Unidos
Los CDC dijeron el 8 de diciembre que las enfermedades respiratorias en niños de los Estados Unidos, “no parecen ser por un nuevo virus o patógeno, sino por varias causas virales o bacterianas” que son comunes durante la temporada de enfermedades respiratorias.
Una portavoz de los CDC, Jasmine Reed, le dijo a PolitiFact el 7 de diciembre que el brote de casos de enfermedades respiratorias en Estados Unidos es normal para esta temporada.
La Dra. Shira Doron, directora de control de infecciones y profesora asociada en la escuela de medicina de Tufts University, también le dijo a PolitiFact el 7 de diciembre que si el brote de neumonía fuera por un nuevo patógeno, no se esperaría ver una infección predominante en niños. Doron dijo que ver la infección afectando a los niños más que a los adultos significa que los niños no han sido expuestos a los patógenos a los cuales los adultos ya han sido expuestos.
La publicación en Facebook también menciona que los niños en Estados Unidos están infectados con el “síndrome del pulmón blanco”, pero la doctora Céline Gounder, una especialista en enfermedades infecciosas y editora de salud pública en el KFF Health News, le dijo a PolitiFact el 7 de diciembre que ese no es un término médico.
Gounder explicó que cuando alguien tiene el síndrome de dificultad respiratoria aguda (ARDS, por sus siglas en inglés), los pulmones en rayos x del pecho se ven blanco. Pero el ARDS es un síndrome, no una enfermedad y este no es el causante de los brotes en Ohio, China u otros lugares.
Nuestro veredicto
Un video en Facebook dice que una “neumonia misteriosa ya está golpeando” a niños en Estados Unidos “lo mismo que está pasando en China”.
Ha habido incrementos similares en casos de neumonía pediátrica en China y en algunos estados de Estados Unidos, pero los brotes no están conectados. Ambos brotes son causados por patógenos conocidos que comúnmente circulan durante esta temporada del año.
Calificamos la publicación como Falsa.
Una versión de este artículo fue escrita en inglés.
Read a version of this fact-check in English.
Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.
Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said parents who seek gender-affirming care for their children subject those children to abuse — so much so that other nations have sought to ban it.
During the fourth Republican presidential primary debate Dec. 6 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, DeSantis cited Sweden as an example.
“As a parent, you do not have the right to abuse your kids,” DeSantis said. “This is cutting off their genitals, this is mutilating these minors, these are irreversible procedures. And this is something that other countries in Europe like Sweden, once they started doing it, they saw it did incalculable damage. They’ve shut it down.”
It is hard for transgender minors to get gender-affirming surgical care in Sweden. But much of that stems from a 1970s law that is unrelated to DeSantis’ point.
In 2022, health officials updated guidance for people younger than 18, advising chest surgery only in “exceptional cases.” However, the new guidance is a recommendation — and is not comparable to the legal bans in some U.S. states.
What is gender-affirming care, and where does surgery fit in?
Gender-affirming care is an individualized approach to health care that supports transgender and nonbinary people’s gender identity and it can go beyond medical interventions. For the small population of transgender youth, this mainly involves support through social transition, puberty blockers and hormones as children become adolescents.
The gender-affirming surgery DeSantis cited is rarely performed on minors, said Dr. Marci Bowers, a gynecological surgeon and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Surgeries on minors happen “only under the most severe conditions of gender dysphoria,” she said. Gender dysphoria is the experience of distress that results when people’s sex assigned at birth does not match their gender identity.
“Top surgeries,” or mastectomies, are more common than surgeries that alter genitalia.
In Europe more broadly, gender-affirming care availability is more often dictated by health policy or guidelines, not legal prohibitions.
U.S. lawmakers have taken a different approach, with states in some cases banning certain procedures. DeSantis signed a law in May that banned all gender-affirming medical care —– including puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.
Sweden has long restricted genital surgery
A 1975 Swedish law, which ended a decadeslong eugenics and forced sterilization program, says that people younger than 18 cannot have genital surgeries. But the law doesn’t explicitly ban transgender care.
People seeking genital surgery must apply and be approved by the Legal Council at the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare. People younger than 23 seeking this surgery need “special circumstances” to get their applications approved, according to the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights, also known as RFSL.
Sweden’s new guidance on ‘top’ surgery and puberty blockers
In national guidelines updated in 2022, Swedish health officials cautioned that “the risks of puberty blockers and gender-affirming treatment are likely to outweigh the expected benefits.” The guidelines recommended limiting use of puberty blockers, hormones and mastectomies to “exceptional cases.”
“The guidelines are recommendations, and it’s up to the physicians to interpret them and make a judgement in each specific case,” said Jêran Rostam, an expert in trangender issues at RFSL.
The guidelines don’t “ban” top surgeries, but do signal shrinking access to the procedure.
Our ruling
Speaking about gender-affirming surgical care for minors, DeSantis said Sweden “shut it down.”
A 1970s law on sterilization requires people in Sweden to be 18 or older to qualify for genital surgeries. The law does not explicitly ban transgender care. Citing potential risks, Swedish health officials in 2022 advised that mastectomies for minors be reserved for “exceptional cases.” But it is not a legal prohibition.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important information. We rate it Half True.
Editor’s Note: Google Translate was used throughout the research of this story to translate websites and documents into English. We corroborated our understanding of translated documents with expert sources.
Social media posts are claiming the United States is sending everyone a big check ahead of the new year. But like most free money promises, this is a scam.
A Dec. 2 Facebook post said, “It’s time to cash out for all Americans. The U.S. is sending everyone (a) FREE $16,800 right now.” The post claimed that this money was available through a “new U.S. subsidy program” and could be used for rent, food, groceries, gasoline and other personal expenses.
The post’s caption read, “Exposing the secret $16,800 benefit they’re hiding from you.”
This 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.)
(Screengrab from Facebook)
Misleading posts promising free and fast money are common on social media. PolitiFact has debunked many similar claims.
The Facebook post says to receive the free $16,800, people can click the link, answer two questions and talk on the phone with a representative. To qualify for the cash, the post claims, people must earn less than $50,000 and not be on Medicare or Medicaid.
However, the link leads to a webpage with the URL “morehealthbenefits.com” that’s unaffiliated with the U.S. government. When we typed in another URL from the post, “premiumsubsidyplans.com,” we were redirected to morehealthbenefits.com.
The website advertises free health insurance under the Affordable Care Act; it does not mention a $16,800 giveaway.
The site also prompts people to answer questions about their incomes and whether they’re on Medicare or Medicaid. If a person answers that their income is less than $50,000 and they’re not on Medicare or Medicaid, the site says, “Congratulations!” and shows a phone number to call to sign up.
We called the number and a representative “with CHA” asked if we were calling about the “$0 premium health benefit plans.” We were then asked whether we had health insurance coverage through an employer, a veterans program, Medicare or Medicaid.
When asked for our ZIP code, we gave one in Washington, D.C., and the representative said there are no plans available in that area and to check healthcare.gov.
Although some Americans can qualify for subsidies to offset health insurance costs, this is not the way we would recommend finding out.
The federal government warns that offers of free money or grants from the government are often scams. Government-funded financial assistance programs are offered only through official government websites. The Federal Trade Commission’s website offers tips for avoiding these scams and where to report them.
We searched and found no news articles or U.S. government announcements about a $16,800 giveaway.
A preprint on a Yale-based study described chronic symptoms self-reported after COVID-19 vaccination by 241 members of an online group. The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed, did not show how common these symptoms are in the general population, nor whether vaccinations caused them — limitations popular online posts did not make clear.
How safe are the COVID-19 vaccines?
How safe are the COVID-19 vaccines?
More than half a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in the U.S. and only a few, very rare, safety concerns have emerged. The vast majority of people experience only minor, temporary side effects such as pain at the injection site, fatigue, headache, or muscle pain — or no side effects at all. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said, these vaccines “have undergone and will continue to undergo the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.”
A small number of severe allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis, which are expected with any vaccine, have occurred with the authorized and approved COVID-19 vaccines. Fortunately, these reactions are rare, typically occur within minutes of inoculation and can be treated. Approximately 5 per million people vaccinated have experienced anaphylaxis after a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
To make sure serious allergic reactions can be identified and treated, all people receiving a vaccine should be observed for 15 minutes after getting a shot, and anyone who has experienced anaphylaxis or had any kind of immediate allergic reaction to any vaccine or injection in the past should be monitored for a half hour. People who have had a serious allergic reaction to a previous dose or one of the vaccine ingredients should not be immunized. Also, those who shouldn’t receive one type of COVID-19 vaccine should be monitored for 30 minutes after receiving a different type of vaccine.
There is evidence that the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines may rarely cause inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) or of the surrounding lining (pericarditis), particularly in male adolescents and young adults.
Based on data collected through August 2021, the reporting rates of either condition in the U.S. are highest in males 16 to 17 years old after the second dose (105.9 cases per million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine), followed by 12- to 15-year-old males (70.7 cases per million). The rate for 18- to 24-year-old males was 52.4 cases and 56.3 cases per million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, respectively.
Health officials have emphasized that vaccine-related myocarditis and pericarditis cases are rare and the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks. Early evidence suggeststhese myocarditis cases are less severe than typical ones. The CDC has also noted that most patients who were treated “responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been linked to an increased risk of rare blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets, especially in women ages 30 to 49. Early symptoms of the condition, which is known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, can appear as late as three weeks after vaccination and include severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision, leg swelling, and easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin outside of the injection site.
According to the CDC, TTS has occurred in around 4 people per million doses administered. As of early April, the syndrome has been confirmed in 60 cases, including nine deaths, after more than 18.6 million doses of the J&J vaccine. Although TTS remains rare, because of the availability of mRNA vaccines, which are not associated with this serious side effect, the FDA on May 5 limited authorized use of the J&J vaccine to adults who either couldn’t get one of the other authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines because of medical or access reasons, or only wanted a J&J vaccine for protection against the disease. Several months earlier, on Dec. 16, 2021, the CDC had recommended the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots over J&J’s.
The J&J vaccine has also been linked to an increased risk of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks nerve cells. Most people who develop GBS fully recover, although some have permanent nerve damage and the condition can be fatal.
Safety surveillance data suggest that compared with the mRNA vaccines, which have not been linked to GBS, the J&J vaccine is associated with 15.5 additional GBS cases per million doses of vaccine in the three weeks following vaccination. Most reported cases following J&J vaccination have occurred in men 50 years old and older.
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Some people experience side effects following COVID-19 vaccination, but they are generally short-lived. There are well-established serious side effects that can occur due to COVID-19 vaccination, such as myocarditis, but these are rare.
COVID-19 vaccination lowers the risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19. Among people who get COVID-19, those who are vaccinated may have a reduced risk of developing long COVID.
A preprint of a study posted online Nov. 10 described symptoms and other characteristics of 241 members of an online group who reported that they “thought the vaccine had injured them,” referring to COVID-19 vaccines. The authors described this group of patients as having reported “post-vaccination syndrome.” Preprints are drafts of papers posted online that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in scientific journals.
As we’ve written previously, a voluntary survey cannot be used to determine whether vaccines are safe, nor can it provide a representative look at people’s experiences, positive or negative, after vaccination.
“In the study, we are describing the experience of people who have a chronic syndrome that begins soon after the COVID-19 vaccination,” co-author Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University, told us via email. “Since we do not know the cause, we labeled it a post-vaccination syndrome. We described it like that because that’s the timing of it.”
The participants, who were predominantly white women, reported various symptoms that they believed resulted from vaccine injury, most commonly exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog and neuropathy. They said their symptoms started a median of three days after getting vaccinated, and they filled out the survey a median of 595 days after vaccination.
Online posts may give the misleading impression that researchers have determined that the COVID-19 vaccines caused a new syndrome. “It’s Called ‘Post-Vaccine Syndrome’ And It’s Real!” reads the text accompanying an episode of the Jimmy Dore Show posted on Facebook by the show’s account. Jimmy Dore, who hosts the eponymous web show, has a history of making misleading or false statements about vaccination and other topics.
To be clear, the preprint assigns the label “post-vaccination syndrome” to patients’ self-reported symptoms, but it does not establish the causes of the symptoms or their prevalence among vaccinated people.
In the episode, Dore replayed a popular video previously posted on YouTube by nurse educator John Campbell, who also has a history of spreading misinformation about vaccines. Campbell opened his video by welcoming his audience and saying, “Researchers from Yale in the United States have identified a post-vaccine syndrome occurring after the COVID vaccinations.” He did not clarify that the syndrome is a collection of symptoms that were not necessarily caused by the vaccines.
Campbell went on to give AIDS as another example of a syndrome, without stating that AIDS is now a well-characterized disease with a clear cause, while “post-vaccination syndrome” is a loosely defined phenomenon whose cause or causes are unclear.
He then listed percentages of participants in the study who reported each symptom, without making clear that these numbers did not mean a high proportion of all vaccinated people would experience the symptoms.
Physician-scientists who were not involved in the study emphasized what it cannot show.
“We cannot draw conclusions about the causation of the symptoms reported in this study based on the study design,” Dr. Linda Geng, an internal medicine doctor and co-director of the Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Center at Stanford University, told us in an email. “Vaccines can be life-saving and it is important that we remember their benefits for public health and the broader population as we continue to research and better understand their potential complex effects in subsets of individuals.”
“The results of the preprint would only potentially (if peer-reviewed and published) be applicable to patients who self-identify as having post-vaccination syndrome,” Dr. Alan Kwan, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai, told us in an email. “It should not be extrapolated to any other groups including all vaccination patients, and does not address any questions of mechanism, or causality.”
Dr. Jennifer Frontera, a neurocritical care specialist at NYU Langone Health, expressed doubt that COVID-19 vaccinations caused the symptoms described in the preprint. She described the results of her own research into neurological events after vaccination, which only showed rare links between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and neurological conditions. “People’s symptoms are real, right? But they are probably related to something else,” she said.
Study Describes Symptoms of an Online Patient Group
The study participants were all members of an online support and research community for people affected by COVID-19, called Kindred. Krumholz co-founded a company that developed software used in the Kindred platform to help people share their medical records.
The first users of the platform were people with long COVID, Krumholz explained, and the community subsequently “was expanded to include those who were reporting a chronic syndrome that they associated with vaccination.” He added that the two groups of patients “were experiencing very similar symptoms, and the challenges that they were facing were also similar.” The LISTEN study, some of which was described in the preprint, includes both of these groups of patients.
Photo by LStockStudio / stock.adobe.com
Survey questions prompted the participants to consider whether they had around 100 different health conditions “as a result of vaccine injury.” The most common problems attributed to vaccination — reported in half or more of the participants — were exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, neuropathy, insomnia, palpitations, muscle or body aches, tinnitus or humming in ears, headache, burning sensations, and dizziness.
“In this study, individuals who reported [post-vaccination syndrome] after covid-19 vaccination had low health status, high symptom burden, and high psychosocial stress despite trying many treatments,” the researchers concluded in the preprint. “There is a need for continued investigation to understand and treat this condition.”
The researchers ultimately plan to analyze not only data on symptoms and medical history, but also some blood and saliva samples.
“We are planning studies that will correlate what people are experiencing with biological signals that may indicate some underlying cause,” Krumholz said. “There are so many questions. Many of these people have been dismissed by the healthcare system. We are continuing to try to find answers.”
Definition and Causes of ‘Post-Vaccination Syndrome’ Are Unclear
Krumholz indicated that the definition of the syndrome is a work in progress. “If I were to put forth the definition, I would say that it should be a syndrome that begins within a week of the vaccination and persists for over a month. But it would be important to bring people together, including those who were affected, to develop a definition that is useful and acceptable to those affected.”
“The definition of post-vaccine syndrome is murky and not yet a formal clinical diagnosis, and it is challenging to know who may fall into this category as the scientific knowledge about post-COVID and post-vaccine effects evolves,” Geng said.
“As the authors point out, a causal link between vaccination and what is called PVS cannot be established from these data, although the reported temporal relationship between vaccination and symptom onset is suggestive,” Katherine Yih, an epidemiologist at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, told us in an email. However, she added that the lengthy period between vaccination and filling out the survey “might make recall and the timing of symptom onset uncertain.”
“I just don’t like people calling something a syndrome, post-vaccination syndrome,” Frontera said. “I feel like that’s unfortunate, because it really kind of implies causality.”
Frontera said that the symptoms described in the paper are often associated with treatable mood disorders, like depression or anxiety. She added that the group reported many preexisting health problems and social stressors, including loneliness and isolation.
Frontera referenced her own work on long-term outcomes after severe COVID-19, which involved conducting phone interviews with patients one year after hospitalization. She found that life stressors within the month prior to the phone interview were associated with prolonged COVID-19 symptoms and generally poor outcomes, such as worse depression, fatigue and sleep.
Geng said that the symptoms reported in the study “highly overlap with Long COVID.” The researchers excluded people from the study who reported that they had long COVID, Geng said, but “it is not always easy to know if the self-categorization is correct.”
There is no diagnostic test to determine if someone has long COVID, she explained, and people may get COVID-19 and be unaware of it. Around a third of the study participants reported having had COVID-19 at least once. “Depending on the extent of their medical evaluation, it is also possible there are other medical conditions that are causing these symptoms that may be missed or not yet diagnosed,” Geng said.
Vaccine Safety Studies Indicate Serious Adverse Events Are Rare
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have not thus far found evidence of a cluster of chronic symptoms after vaccination similar to those described in the preprint.
The two agencies “are aware of reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and in the media of a wide range of long-lasting symptoms following COVID-19 vaccination (such as fatigue, headache, and difficulty concentrating),” a CDC spokesperson told us in an email, adding that these symptoms have also been reported with long COVID.
“However, to date, no unusual or unexpected patterns of long-lasting symptoms or health problems following vaccination have been linked to vaccination by COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring systems,” the spokesperson said.
While some of the symptoms described in the preprint — such as fatigue, muscle aches and headache — overlap with symptoms commonly experienced shortly after vaccination, it is not common for these symptoms to become chronic. Data from the clinical trials for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines indicate that common post-vaccination symptoms resolved within days on average. Safety monitoring after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continued to indicate that vaccine side effects were generally short-lived.
Still, some researchers left open the possibility that there are yet-undetected vaccine adverse events.
“I don’t want to impugn the surveillance systems used by the CDC but it is possible that they are missing this syndrome,” Krumholz said. “What I can say for sure is that there are many people who are suffering from a chronic syndrome that is very debilitating and began after the vaccination. It is possible that it is a coincidence – but it is important that we follow the science and discover the cause, wherever that leads us, so we can develop strategies to help these people.”
Kwan said in an interview that vaccine safety monitoring databases, such as VAERS, “are more easily set up to measure things like myocarditis and less set up to measure symptoms like fatigue or the things that were asked in this survey.”
He co-authored a study based on medical records indicating a possible link between COVID-19 vaccination and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. POTS symptoms, such as dizziness and palpitations, overlap with those reported in the preprint. Kwan’s study found that people were more likely to be diagnosed with POTS in the 90 days after vaccination than in the 90 days before vaccination. But it also found a much more pronounced link between POTS and COVID-19, indicating that vaccination could still ultimately reduce the risk of POTS even if the link between vaccination and POTS proved to be causal.
“I personally believe there are patients out there who had adverse reactions to the vaccine and were likely injured by the vaccine and likely suffer long-term medical symptoms from it,” Kwan said. ”I think it’s unlikely that it’s a significant number of patients. It would not discourage me from encouraging people to receive their vaccinations.”
Yih co-authored a study using another vaccine safety monitoring system, Vaccine Safety Datalink, to attempt to detect unexpected COVID-19 vaccine adverse events. She said that the study detected a link between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and conditions such as muscle aches, headache, malaise, fatigue and palpitations — but that it’s difficult to differentiate known, common short-term side effects from long-term problems.
“Specially designed studies focusing on [post-vaccination syndrome] will be needed to more fully characterize and understand this outcome and its relationship with vaccination,” she said.
The Impact of Vaccine Information and Misinformation
The widespread dissemination of vaccine information, misinformation and disinformation can influence people’s experiences of vaccine side effects, complicating the study of people’s experiences after vaccination.
Much as the placebo effect can cause someone to experience improvements simply due to the belief they are receiving a medical intervention, a related phenomenon called the nocebo effect can cause people to experience side effects when they have only received a placebo.
Geng pointed to studies that indicate vaccine hesitancy, negative expectations or negative prior experiences with vaccination can influence the COVID-19 vaccine side effects people have, which she said “may be of interest and have some relevance to this topic at hand.”
She also cited a study exploring vaccine side effects in the placebo arms of the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials that found that about a third of participants experienced systemic side effects after each dose. The most common side effects were headache and fatigue.
This was a lower rate of side effects than reported in the people who got a vaccine, but nonetheless indicates a substantial nocebo response, the researchers said. They wrote that headache, fatigue, malaise and joint pain “seem to have been particularly associated with nocebo.”
On the other side of the coin, narratives about vaccines and the prevalence of anti-vaccine sentiments may also marginalize people who experience health problems following vaccination. These people may be “lumped into this general anti-vax sentiment, which I don’t think a lot of them are,” Kwan said.
Kwan added that it’s important to acknowledge that there are people who may have “symptoms or injuries related to vaccine administration, and that there needs to be a space for them within the medical community to receive meaningful and effective care and to be heard.”
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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Yandell, Kate. “COVID-19 Vaccines Save Lives, Are Not More Lethal Than COVID-19.” FactCheck.org. 6 Nov 2023.
Krumholz, Harlan. Email to FactCheck.org. 10 Dec 2023.
The Jimmy Dore Show. “It’s Called ‘Post-Vaccine Syndrome’ And It’s Real!” Facebook. 29 Nov 2023.
Fichera, Angelo. “Video Doesn’t Show Biden Hosting ‘Black Face Skit.’” FactCheck.org. 17 Jul 2020.
Jones, Brea. “FDA-Approved ‘Electronic Pill’ Isn’t Evidence That COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Microchip’ Conspiracy Is ‘Proven.’” FactCheck.org. 26 May 2022.
Jones, Brea. “‘Liberal World Order’ Is Decades-Old Term Misinterpreted by Social Media Posts.” FactCheck.org. 8 Jul 2022.
Jones, Brea. “Posts Distort Chinese Research Creating Fragment of Monkeypox Viral Genome.” FactCheck.org. 29 Jul 2022.
Dr. John Campbell. “New syndrome.” YouTube. 19 Nov 2023.
Geng, Linda. Email to FactCheck.org. 6 Dec 2023.
Kwan, Alan. Interview and email with FactCheck.org. 5 and 13 Dec 2023.
Frontera, Jennifer. Interview with FactCheck.org. 6 Dec 2023.
Frontera, Jennifer A. et al. “Neurological Events Reported after COVID‐19 Vaccines: An Analysis of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.” Annals of Neurology. 2 Mar 2022.
“The LISTEN Study.” Hugo Health Kindred website. Accessed 15 Dec 2023.
Yih, Katherine. Email with FactCheck.org. 13 Dec 2023.
Frontera, Jennifer A. et al. “Life Stressors Significantly Impact Long-Term Outcomes and Post-Acute Symptoms 12-Months after COVID-19 Hospitalization.” Journal of the Neurological Sciences. 5 Nov 2022.
“Caring for People with Long COVID.” CDC website. Updated 28 Sep 2023.
Polack, Fernando P. et al. “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine.” New England Journal of Medicine. 31 Dec 2020.
Baden, Lindsey R. et al. “Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine.” New England Journal of Medicine. 4 Feb 2021.
Rosenblum, Hannah G. et al. “Safety of mRNA Vaccines Administered during the Initial 6 Months of the US COVID-19 Vaccination Programme: An Observational Study of Reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-Safe.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 7 Mar 2022.
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On TikTok, a claim that an Israeli army commander admitted to trapping two couples in a building and then wrecking it is going viral.
“Israeli Army Commander admits they handcuffed 2 couples inside a house then used tanks to destroy the building. 15 civilians were burned to death including 8 babies. Openly admitting crimes,” read the text on a Dec. 8 TikTok video.
The TikTok shows a clip from Anadolu Agency, a state-run Turkish news agency, with Col. Golan Vach, commander of the Israeli national rescue unit, speaking in English. “Two couples, two men, two women handcuffed. Inside this house were another 15 burned people, among them eight babies. In this corner. They were concentrated them, and they killed them and they burned them,” he said.
The exchange continued:
Vach: “Our tanks attacked.”
Reporter: “Fired on them?”
Vach: “Yeah, yeah. Because they were blocked in these houses and we need to conquer back the whole settlement, and it couldn’t be happened without the tanks.”
A TikTok user spoke over the video, saying, “They have no shame.”
(Screenshot from TikTok)
TikTok identified this video as part of its efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)
In an emailed statement to PolitiFact, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said Vach was explaining the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Holit kibbutz in southwestern Israel. A longer version of the same footage makes it clear that Vach is referring to the scene the Israeli military encountered.
Anadolu Agency published the longer version of the footage Dec. 6 on its website, saying it was from Vach’s Oct. 14 statement to international press members. Anadolu also posted on X Dec. 7 the shorter version of the video that’s shared in the TikTok, with a caption that said, “Military official’s remarks raise more questions about role of Israeli tanks in deaths of Israeli civilians.”
The full exchange, from the longer version of the footage, was as follows:
Reporter 1: “Is this place where you found the couple?”
Vach: “Where you stand exactly were lying two couples — two men, two women — handcuffed. Inside this house were another 15 burned people, among them eight babies. In this corner. They were concentrated them, and they killed them and they burned them.”
Reporter 1: “Did you see?”
Vach: “I evacuated them.”
Reporter 2: “But why is there destruction then, I’m sorry, why is there destruction —”
Vach: “This destruction was a cause of our tanks’ attack.”
Reporter 2: “Fired on them?”
Vach: “Yeah, yeah. Because they were blocked in these houses and we need to conquer back the whole settlement and it couldn’t be happened without the tanks.”
Reporter 3: “So, how many were here and then how many survived?”
Vach: “No one survived from this house. From other buildings, we rescued many, but from this house, 19 people died, among them eight children.”
Vach was also quoted in an Oct. 15 Global News report, which said that like other sites attacked by Hamas, “bodies were grouped together and set on fire.”
Vach said the building was destroyed by Israeli tanks, but he did not say the Israeli military handcuffed the couples in the building before destroying the building, as the claim implies. We rate that False.
DURHAM, N.H. — With 38 days to go until New Hampshire voters cast their first-in-the-nation ballots in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, former President Donald Trump told an arena full of his Granite State supporters why they should put him back in the White House.
In a 90-minute address, Trump regaled an arena full of supporters at University of New Hamshire’s Whittemore Center Arena, offering promises and painting a picture of a U.S. that he says has fallen into disrepair with high inflation, war and dirty airports.
Trump touched on many topics we’ve checked before, including falsely asserting the 2020 election was “rigged,” exaggerating his administration’s actions on MS-13 gang members, and reminding supporters about his efforts to eliminate the estate tax.
Here are five claims we heard that stood out:
Claim: President Joe Biden has an “electric vehicle mandate.”
Trump railed against what he called the Biden administration’s “insane, very expensive … electric vehicle mandate.”
This is a mischaracterization.
The Biden administration has set a goal — not a mandate — to have electric vehicles comprise half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.
To accomplish this, his administration has pushed for incentives and loans to encourage their manufacture and use. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, included tax credits up to $7,500 to encourage people to buy EVs. And Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law includes $7.5 billion in EV charging investments; $7 billion for EV battery components, critical minerals and materials; and $10 billion for other “clean transportation” initiatives.
Experts told PolitiFact that although any transition will likely be complex, there is strategic benefit to offering such incentives.
“If the (Biden) administration does not incentivize an electric transition, it means the U.S. will cede EV leadership to China,” said Tod Rutherford, a professor in Syracuse University’s Geography and the Environment Department and a car industry specialist. “The Europeans are very alarmed by this and especially the German manufacturers are scrambling to catch up. In other words, there is not only an environmental issue here but an economic one.”
Claim: When Trump is in the White House, “We’ll go to paper ballots.”
Trump’s presidential primary challenger Vivek Ramaswamy has repeatedly made a similar promise to employ “paper ballots” in future elections.
But these statements ignore that most Americans already vote this way.
Verified Voting, a nonpartisan source of voting machines information, found that in 2024, about 69% of registered voters will be living in jurisdictions that use hand-marked paper ballots.
Also whether states or local jurisdictions use paper ballots is left up to those states and local jurisdictions. For the past two decades, states have trended toward choosing to use paper ballots and the number using them will increase in 2024 compared with 2022.
Experts say paper ballots provide the most security. Using pen and paper lets voters check over their choices and the paper trail lets officials recount elections. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race had the paper record, and Georgia counted the 2020 ballots three times.
Claim: Under the Trump administration, “we built 561 miles of border wall.”
Trump made a similar claim at a Pennsylvania rally in July that we rated that Half True. That’s because it depends on how it’s counted.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data puts the total number of border wall miles built during his administration at 458 miles. But the majority of those additions replaced existing smaller, dilapidated barriers and did not add to the total miles of barriers along the southern border.
If you’re looking only at new construction, federal data shows that Trump’s administration built 52 miles of new primary border barriers where there were none before. These barriers are the first impediment people encounter if they’re trying to cross the southern border with Mexico and they can block access for people who are walking or driving.
Nevertheless, experts say Trump’s replacement barriers shouldn’t be discounted because in many cases the new barriers are superior to the old ones.
Claim: “I rebuilt our entire military.”
This is an exaggeration.
The Trump administration increased military spending, but rebuilding the military would have required new equipment that takes years to build and develop.
His administration’s spending helped make troops and equipment more ready for combat, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told us in 2020 as Trump boasted of a military rebuild toward the end of his term. But overall, O’Hanlon said, Trump’s claim of a total rebuild is “hyperbole.”
“Most weapons are the same as before,” O’Hanlon said then. “There is more continuity than change in defense policy from Obama to Trump.”
Claim: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis supported a 23% national sales tax
Trump attacked presidential primary opponent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, calling him “DeSanctimonious” and saying DeSantis’ congressional record hints at what he would do if he were in the White House: “New Hampshire does not want politicians who support higher gas taxes, a 23% national sales tax like DeSanctimonious did.”
When we saw this same claim in a Pro-Trump political action committee’s ad in May, we rated it Half True.
DeSantis co-sponsored the Fair Tax Act that included a proposal for a 23% federal sales tax. But Trump’s claim omits a key detail: the proposed tax would have eliminated other federal taxes, including income, estate, payroll and gift taxes and would have eliminated the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump has floated the idea himself, but never committed to it. Other times, he was more critical of the proposal. The Fair Tax Act has been introduced repeatedly in Congress since 1999, and DeSantis co-sponsored it in 2013, 2015, and 2017 along with other Republicans.
DeSantis did not push the national sales tax plan as a gubernatorial candidate, and there is no evidence that DeSantis has called for it in his bid for president.
