Canadian activist makes inaccurate statements about the safety of Covid-19 vaccine

An Ontario anti-mask activist is making false claims in an Instagram video about the safety of Covid-19 vaccines available in Canada and falsely referring to potential vaccine adverse reactions recorded in the United States. Medical experts said the injections did not change the DNA of recipients or make people infectious, and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they had not detected any safety issues with it. vaccines.

“All the reasons not to take an experimental injection of mRNA never used before on humans,” read the caption of a video from February 21, 2021 that was viewed more than 195,000 times on Instagram on March 5 2021.

More than 878,000 cases of Covid-19 and 22,000 deaths have been recorded in Canada. By early March, nearly four percent of Canadians had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The video was posted by Chris Saccoccia, known on social media as Chris Sky. Saccoccia was charged in October 2020 with breaking the quarantine law, which requires isolation after travel abroad. He has regularly participated in protests against anti-Covid measures in Ontario.

In the video, he makes several false claims, which AFP examines below:

MRNA vaccines reprogram DNA

Saccoccia says: “The Canadian Covid vaccine is the only vaccine in history with mRNA technology. It’s not a vaccine, it’s artificial DNA that they inject into your body to reprogram your own body’s DNA to produce so-called antibodies against the coronavirus. It has never been used before in humans, it has never been tested on animals because it has killed all animals.

Several Covid-19 vaccines are being administered or being tested around the world. In December, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine using mRNA technology was authorized in Canada, followed by Moderna’s mRNA vaccine. Both are 94-95 percent effective.

Although Covid-19 vaccines are the first to use advanced messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology to be approved and distributed worldwide, research into the use of mRNA technology for vaccines has begun in the early 1990s and included promising animal testing.

“MRNA vaccines have elicited potent immunity against infectious disease targets in animal models of influenza virus, Zika virus, rabies virus and others, particularly in recent years,” a published article said. on January 12, 2018 on the Nature website.

Alison Thompson, associate professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto, told AFP in an email that “while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are indeed the first successful mRNA vaccines, the technology has been in use for decades ”.

Thompson also rejected the claim that the shots alter the human genetic makeup, saying, “The technology does not reprogram our DNA.”

An mRNA vaccine does not contain any protein from the virus itself, but rather the genetic instructions for the body to synthesize a viral protein so that the immune system learns to defend itself.

It differs from regular vaccines in that instead of confronting the immune system with part of a virus in a weakened or deactivated form to build antibodies, it introduces a “plane” of the spike protein, part of the virus. that the body can then recognize and fight back when confronted later.

Kelly McNagny, professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, agreed the claim was false.

He added in an email that the product has been subjected to extensive animal testing, “and it is indeed a vaccine. This is not about reprogramming anything, but simply generating an antibody and T cell response to a foreign protein like all vaccines do.

Covid-19 mRNA vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials, according to Matthew Miller, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, who explained that “mRNA is the code for protein. It does not alter the DNA of your cells. This is because your cells naturally make mRNA from DNA. “

He said that “these vaccines have an excellent safety profile, as demonstrated in phase I to III clinical trials in humans.”

Thompson, of the University of Toronto, added that “unprecedented resources” are being spent internationally to monitor any potential concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

“Given the millions of doses that have been administered so far, we would now know if there were any serious safety concerns. It remains to be seen how effective these vaccines are in the long term, ”she said.

To date, more than 279 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide.

AFP previously debunked a similar claim here.

Covid-19 vaccines make people contagious

Saccoccia further states, “They tell you that you are still contagious after you have vaccinated, so you will still need to wear a mask. So are you going to take a vaccine that makes you contagious to your friends and family when you were not otherwise?

Experts say that even if people get vaccinated, they could still contract the disease and infect others, so the mask is a precaution against possible asymptomatic transmission, while also helping to protect the recipient from the vaccine until. that the body’s immune response intervenes.

But Miller of McMaster University said it was wrong to claim that vaccination makes you “more contagious than people who are infected but not vaccinated.”

Miller explained that after vaccination, it takes about two weeks for a person to build up immunity that will protect them from infection.

“So, it’s important to maintain public health precautions, like masking, especially in the first two weeks after a vaccine is administered,” Miller said.

A Johns Hopkins University website answering frequently asked questions about vaccines says masks should still be worn and physical distancing practiced even after inoculation.

“The vaccine is not 100% effective and we still don’t know if a vaccinated person can develop an asymptomatic infection and transmit the virus,” says Johns Hopkins.

McNagny of the University of British Columbia confirmed that part of the recommendation to continue wearing a mask is “to ensure that you have had time to generate a protective response to the vaccine.”

Calling for the claim that the Covid-19 vaccine will make you contagious “totally bogus”, he said it “certainly won’t make you more contagious and likely make you much less contagious if you were to be exposed to the virus. “

Studies are underway to confirm whether Covid-19 vaccines reduce transmission, but experts warn these are more difficult to conduct than research that only looks at the vaccine’s protection against infection.

CDC says Covid-19 vaccines have killed hundreds

Saccoccia refers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to state, “As of February 12, the CDC’s reporting system called VAERS … had over 1,869 hospitalizations and 921 deaths. associated with the Covid vaccine to date. in the United States only. “

The VAERS website accepts reports on a largely voluntary basis from healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers and the public. He says the reports may contain inaccurate or incomplete information and “alone cannot be used to determine whether a vaccine has caused or contributed to an adverse event or disease.”

Contacted by AFP for a previous investigation, CDC spokesman Curtis Gill said: “VAERS is not determining whether reports of deaths were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.”

Some of the reported “adverse events” could be true adverse reactions to the vaccine, while others could be fortuitous and unrelated to the vaccine, Gill noted.

The CDC says on its website that “To date, VAERS has not detected any pattern of cause of death that would indicate a safety issue with Covid-19 vaccines.”

Roderick Slavcev, associate professor at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo, said that when you follow millions of vaccinated people, death is inevitable. But he agreed with the CDC’s conclusion that “these deaths did not in any way indicate a pattern or safety issue with vaccine administration.”

No vaccine is 100% safe and effective, said Thompson of the University of Toronto, who added that Covid-19 injections appear to be as reliable as most other vaccines.

“And most definitely the health risk from Covid-19 is much greater than it is from any vaccine currently approved for use,” Thompson said.

Since the start of the pandemic, AFP Fact Check has debunked many inaccurate claims about the coronavirus, responsible for Covid-19, here.

The pandemic has killed more than 2.5 million people around the world.