PolitiFact | Debunking the anti-vaccine hoax about ‘vaccine shedding’
Debunking the anti-vaccine hoax about ‘vaccine shedding’
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- Medical experts and the CDC said it’s not biologically possible for the COVID-19 vaccine to “shed” or affect unvaccinated people, despite what anti-vaccine activists claim.
- The misinformation about “vaccine shedding” has had a real-world impact. One Miami private school recently instructed immunized teachers to stay away from students, citing the baseless claim that unvaccinated people can experience menstrual irregularities and other reproductive harm simply from interacting with vaccinated people.
- There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines cause fertility or menstruation problems in people who get them, let alone in their close contacts, experts said.
In April, faculty and staff at a small Miami private school
received a letter telling them that if they chose to get the COVID-19 vaccine, they would have to keep their distance from the students. A week later, one fifth-grade student
sent an email home to her parents from the school.
The teacher "is telling us to stay away from you guys," the student wrote,
according to reports.
The episode at the Centner Academy is the latest example of online misinformation seeping into the real world. School co-founder Leila Centner framed the policy as a matter of protecting the unvaccinated people from "being negatively impacted" by those who got their COVID-19 shots.
"We have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person," Centner said.
The notion that the COVID-19 vaccines can be "shed" like the coronavirus itself "is a conspiracy that has been created to weaken trust" in the vaccines, said Christopher Zahn, vice president of practice activities at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The script-flipping narrative not only dissuades people from getting the vaccine, but also seeks to isolate or punish those who have.
The misinformation has taken a hold anyway — well beyond one school in Miami.
Businesses in Canada asked vaccinated customers to stick to curbside pickup. And on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, users shared warnings that serious side effects, including menstrual irregularities and infertility, can come from contact with vaccinated people.
PolitiFact talked to medical experts about what emerged in April as a prevailing narrative within the anti-vaccine community. The claims about "vaccine shedding" are not only false, but also biologically impossible given the construction of the COVID-19 vaccines.
"There is absolutely no biological mechanism for any COVID-19 vaccine side effects or vaccine components to shed to others," said Dr. Shruti Gohil, the associate medical director for epidemiology and infection prevention at the University of California, Irvine.
COVID-19 vaccines do not ‘shed’
The notice sent out at Centner Academy stirred so much controversy that a reporter asked about it
during a White House press briefing. But the facts aren’t up for debate.
None of the three COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the U.S. "can possibly affect a person who has not been vaccinated, and this includes their menstruation, fertility, and pregnancy," said Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a gynecologist who has written about the vaccines, in
a blog post. "Let me be very clear. The COVID-19 vaccines cannot affect anyone by proxy."
"In fact, the opposite is true," added John Grabenstein, the associate director for scientific communications at the Immunization Action Coalition. "By being vaccinated, one avoids being infected and so does not become a COVID-19 virus factory."
The vaccines use different technologies to instruct cells to make versions of one spike protein found on the coronavirus, so the immune system can mount a response to it, said Dr. Paul A. Offit, chair of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.