There have been many theories about the Covid-19 vaccines floating around on the internet and with 76.7 million Americans currently being vaccinated, it raises some eyebrows to the rest of America about whether getting vaccinated is worth it. With the online media misconstruing the effects of the vaccines there has been some serious debunking needing to happen. There are three vaccines currently being distributed to Americans right now which are Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. 

MYTH: The government put a microchip in the vaccine 

There is no microchip in any of the vaccines that are currently being distributed to Americans. This conspiracy was actually coined by the Co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates after putting out a statement saying “we will have some digital certificates.” He talked about having the technology to see if someone has been vaccinated or not. He didn’t mention anything about a microchip, but that didn’t stop people from spreading false information.

Interview with USA TODAY Bill Gates had stated, “It doesn’t pass the plausibility test in terms of what technology are they talking about?” 

“You know why would I be involved in that…your example is where somebody’s afraid of the vaccine because of this craziness and that means they’re not going to be protecting others. They’re going to be a potential source of transmission and make it harder for us to get to the 70 to 80% vaccination coverage that we want to have globally” 

MYTH: The vaccine was developed too fast therefore it’s not safe

The reason the vaccine was able to be developed so quickly was because of the amount of pharmaceutical companies that invested in the vaccine. Since there was a worldwide pandemic, it called for an emergency research and response to be conducted into Covid-19. The federal government put nine billion dollars to develop and make candidate vaccines. The technology used to develop the vaccine was called mRNA, which is decades old and has been used for other research like cancer. 

“Scientific integrity was not compromised and I think people need to understand that the speed was related completely to the breathtaking scientific advances that had been made over the previous 10 or more years,” said Dr. Fauci in an interview with The Try guys.

“Where you can get the genetic sequence of the virus, which then takes that sequence and inserts the appropriate gene into these very new and unbelievably efficient vaccine platforms, and that didn’t sacrifice any safety at all. That was purely a technological advance. Then the Moderna trial was 30,000 people. The Pfizer trial was 44,000 people, and it happened to be taking place in the middle of a ferocious outbreak. So when you’re trying to prove a vaccine works, and there are just a few infections here and there in society, it could take seven years to get a vaccine. There were so many infections that we went from sequence to getting the vaccine in people’s arms in less than a year.”

MYTH: I don’t have to wear a mask after I’m vaccinated 

You still have to wear your mask after getting the vaccine, since the vaccine prevents you from getting seriously ill. There is still research being conducted on whether you are able to spread the virus if you are vaccinated. It’s better to be safe than sorry in these situations, so people who are vaccinated should still follow Covid protocols. 

“It is still conceivable that you could get infected and be asymptomatic, and even though the vaccine protected you from getting sick, it didn’t protect you from getting infected,” said Dr. Fauci in an interview with The Try Guys.  

“So you may not even know that you’re infected and be completely asymptomatic, and then spread it to somebody else. We can pull back on masks when we get such an overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated  that there’s herd immunity, which means that the level of virus is so low that it’s not a threat.” 

MYTH: The vaccine will cause women to have a miscarriage 

There has been no scientific evidence showing that the vaccine can lead women to have a miscarriage. This myth came from the concern that since the vaccine would attack the spike protein in Covid-19 that it will attack syncytin-1, which is a protein that helps in the development of the placenta. Researchers have debunked this claim by saying that both the Covid-19 spike proteins and syncytin-1 have no similarities, so there’s no way that the vaccine will attack syncytin-1. Although no pregnant women were included in the earlier clinical trial for the vaccine, it is safe for pregnant women to get the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine. 

“Approximately 20,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated with no reg flags as we say,” said Dr. Fauci in an interview with POLITICO “ and this is being monitored by the CDC and FDA with regards to children and pregnant women.” 

MYTH: If I’m underage, I can’t get the vaccine 

If you are 16 or 17 you are eligible to get vaccinated. Although there is no vaccine currently available for kids under 16, Pfizer- Biotech has asked the FDA for approval to expand their vaccine to kids as young as 12. After their phase, 3 clinical trial results came out that the vaccine was safe and 100 % effective in kids from the age of 12- 15. Trials are also starting in children from the age of six months.