Fact check: Horry County official shares false COVID-19 vaccine news stories

Despite the frustrations with the slow rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, one thing has become clear as people across South Carolina have received their two shots: The vaccine is safe and effective, protecting those who take it from the deadly coronavirus.

But concerns about how quickly pharmaceutical companies developed the vaccines — as well as conspiracy theories — have led some local leaders to publicly question whether the vaccines are safe, with one person falsely suggesting that the vaccine has killed people or could be used for nefarious purposes.

County Council member Al Allen, who represents Aynor and a large swatch of western Horry County, has posted on Facebook several times in recent weeks about the vaccine, and has spread false and conspiracy-theory-laden information about the vaccine in the process.

In one post, from Feb. 2, he shared an article from the website welovetrump.com that falsely interpreted federal health data, and claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine had killed hundreds of people who received it.

“Do your own ‘due diligence’ and remember you alone are the only one that can make the best medical decisions for yourself!” Allen wrote in that post, warning those who follow him on Facebook that they could be harmed if they take the vaccine.

In another post, from Feb. 6, Allen shared an article from the group Global Research, a purported Canadian nonprofit that publishes conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as well as articles claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine is deadly. The article that Allen shared appears to claim that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, is using the coronavirus vaccine to implant microchips into people’s bodies, and that he’ll use 5G cellphone towers to control people via the microchips.

Accompanying the article, Allen shared a bible verse, Revelations 14:11, which is interpreted to mean that anyone who “worships the beast” will be tormented “forever and ever,” seemingly saying that Gates and others wishing to harm people via the coronavirus vaccine will be subject to eternal damnation.

The Sun News attempted to interview Allen about his posts over the course of two weeks so that he could offer his reasons for sharing the two posts on his Facebook page. He didn’t return multiple phone calls, voicemail messages or text messages.

In response to his posts, several people posted comments agreeing with him, saying they won’t get the vaccine.

Experts, though, say the articles Allen shared are not true. The information they claim as fact is not true, and public officials sharing false information about public health matters can be dangerous, they said.

“Public officials sharing anti-vaccine information can be harmful, particularly when it is incorrect, as it is in this case,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease doctor and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. “It is important to be transparent and share correct information. When individuals whom the public trust don’t share correct information, then it undermines the public trust in all the information.”

No, the COVID-19 vaccine won’t hurt or kill you

In the first article that Allen shared, the author asserts that 273 people have died as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccine, and that nearly 10,000 others were hurt in some way by the vaccine.

But the article falsely interprets data on vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collects and publishes. That data, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), is co-managed by the CDC and federal health officials. It has been used since 1990 as an early detection system for safety issues in vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Anyone can file a report to be included in the system, and doctors and vaccine manufacturers are required by law to submit reports to the system.

The VAERS system acts as a first warning for problems with vaccines that might have been missed by scientists or doctors before the vaccine was made available to the public. As an example, if the system shows that several people take a certain vaccine and then all fall asleep behind the wheel while driving home, researchers would be able to use that information to study whether the vaccine causes drowsiness, or if some other factor is at play.

Importantly, the VAERS data does not show a cause and effect between a vaccine and an adverse event. It’s simply a warning system that tells federal officials that something might be worth investigating.

That means while the VAERS database shows 273 people died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, the vaccine didn’t cause those deaths. Rather, those deaths could have been due to other causes. One 75-year-old North Carolina woman, for example, received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, but suffered a stroke two weeks later and died. Her death was recorded in the database because she died so soon after receiving the vaccine, but the vaccine didn’t necessarily cause her death.

“The first thing they teach you in a statistics class is correlation does not imply causation. It does not mean that there is a cause and effect relationship there,” said Lior Rennert, a biostatistics professor at Clemson University. “There’s no evidence that this is due to the vaccine.”

Elsewhere in the VAERS database, researchers noted plainly that they couldn’t draw a cause-and-effect conclusion after an 81-year-old Georgia man died the day after receiving the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

“Based on the limited information available, it is medically not possible to make meaningful causality assessment,” the researcher wrote in a comment accompanying the report of the man’s death. “It is unlikely the vaccine could have contributed to the death of the patient based on the known safety profile.”

The COVID-19 vaccines are believed to be safe, Rennert said, in part because none of the thousands of people who received the vaccines during clinical trials have died. He also said that it’s important to keep in mind that only the highest-risk people are currently receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, a factor that makes deaths more likely.

He said the VAERS data remains highly useful for doctors and researchers, but that the transparency of the data can make it easy for some to misinterpret what they’re seeing — willingly or unwillingly.

“When these sorts of websites and these people want to make these claims, they will find their evidence somewhere,” Rennert said.

No, Bill Gates isn’t trying to implant a microchip in your body

The second article Allen shared appears to claim that Gates, the famous technology titan and philanthropist, is part of an effort to use the COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips into people’s bodies, which will be activated using 5G cellphone towers.

That claim is baldly false, according to both reputable news sources and experts The Sun News interviewed. The conspiracy theory appears to date to early in the pandemic, when Gates, no longer n on Microsoft’s board of directors, participated in an “Ask Me Anything” forum on reddit.com. In the discussion on that forum, which took place in March 2020, a user asked Gates how governments should best determine which businesses should close, and which should be allowed to remain open.

In his response, Gates said it was a complicated matter, but indicated that more robust infrastructure for collecting and reporting health data could help leaders make better decisions.

“Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently, or when we have a vaccine, who has received it,” Gates wrote.

Gates appeared to be referring to technology attached to COVID-19 tests and vaccines that would automatically report a person’s COVID-19 status or vaccine status to a central database. That technology is not in use, but has been studied by Gates’ foundation.

Both Rennert and Kuppalli said there was no truth to the claim that Gates or his foundation was involved in anything related to microchips in vaccines.

“While it’s true that Bill Gates is helping to distribute the vaccine in lower income countries, there is no link between Bill Gates and the development of the vaccine,” Rennert said.

Plus, Kuppalli added, Gates wouldn’t need a microchip to track people if that was indeed one of his goals.

“Honestly,” she said. “If Bill Gates, the government or anyone else wants to monitor us or track us, they can do so with our phones.”