A lack of COVID-19 vaccination does not mean a person is immune to blood clots, strokes and heart issues such as myocarditis and pericarditis, despite contrary claims on Facebook. Nor is there any evidence the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is a planned coverup of vaccine-induced injuries.
Social media users have claimed to uncover the “biggest elephant the room” by suggesting there are no reported deaths or serious illnesses among those who are unvaccinated (here, here and here).
One Facebook user, who referred to the unvaccinated as “the purebloods”, wrote: “The elephant in the room? The Purebloods are not getting myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots, strokes, or heart attacks, Weird!” (here).
Another user suggested the Omicron variant, first detected in southern Africa and Hong Kong, was a ruse to hide vaccine-related injuries (here).
The post reads: “What are the chances the new B1.1.529 variant causes: Blood clots, DVT, heart attacks, strokes, myocarditis, pericarditis, organ failure, blood disorders, menstrual issues, neuro disorders and, of course, death? Watch this space.”
UNVACCINATED STILL DEVELOPING ILLNESSES
Reuters presented the posts to experts at the Meedan Digital Health Lab (meedan.com/digital-health-lab), a group of public health scientists working to tackle medical misinformation online, who said the unvaccinated are being affected by the listed health issues “just as they were before the pandemic began” (here).
The experts added that contracting COVID-19 also increases the likelihood of developing of health issues, such blood clots, meaning people who don’t get vaccinated face much higher risks than those who are fully inoculated.
“Simply put, being unvaccinated greatly increases your risk of acquiring the virus and severe symptoms caused by it, hospitalisation, and even death,” they said.
Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London (here), told Reuters that there are “very large, peer-reviewed studies” which show “the overwhelming statistical case is that myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots, strokes or heart attacks and death is massively skewed to those who are unvaccinated and become infected.”
Similarly, citing an original paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) (here), Professor Jeffrey Morris, the director of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania (here), said it was “absurd for people to say [these ailments] are not happening”, as there “is a background rate of all of these things that occur in general population, at different rates by age/sex.”
However, he added: “Myocarditis/pericarditis was one [example] that was higher in vaccinated people than unvaccinated people, by three times, but it was 18 times higher in viral-infected people.”
Reuters has also addressed claims about COVID-19, vaccines and myocarditis in a previous check here.
“The fact that nearly all of the oldest members of society at high risk for these things are vaccinated, and the vast majority of those unvaccinated are very young and at low risk of these things, creates the misimpression of causation by vaccination in many people,” Morris concluded.
OMICRON IS NOT A COVER-UP FOR VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS
Discussing the idea of Omicron being a cover-up for side effects caused by the vaccines, the team at Meedan said: “Given that the Omicron was first identified outside of the U.S. (where Meedan experts said cover-up claims are ‘particularly’ prominent) and the fact that people infected with COVID-19 have a much higher risk of virus-related heart issues, the idea that this variant is a cover-up is inaccurate.”
Prof. Altmann echoed this message, saying he “does not understand the nature” of the theory that Omicron is a cover-up for vaccine-induced injuries.
VERDICT
False. Unvaccinated people have a higher risk of developing serious illness as a result of COVID-19 than vaccinated people.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.