Covid vaccination has side effects, but monkey pox is not one of them

by time news

Allegation

Monkeypox is actually shingles and a side effect of covid vaccination

Judgement

Source of claim

An English-language video on Twitter makes it seem like monkey pox is a side effect of corona vaccination. The video tells in thirty seconds what it would be like with the rise of monkey pox. An older, much less slick version of this video made the rounds in June.

With two posts on Twitter and a half dozen retweets and almost four hundred views, the first video doesn’t have an overly large reach. A search on Facebook and Youtube with a large string of search terms yields no results, but the video may have been removed there due to copyright infringement. However, on the virtually unmoderated alt-tech video platform Bitchute, the video also does not appear in the search results.

Tweet met fake video. Bron: screenhot Twitter

Finally, this also applies to an extensive reverse image search with stills from the video via the analysis tool of the InVid plugin. In particular, the search engine Yandex delivers a lot of similar images, but no matches. A close-up of a face on a dark background is therefore not very specific.

As a result, the origin of the video remains shrouded in mystery for the time being. The voiceover sounds American, but is probably computer generated, given the monotonous diction in one pauseless sentence. Still, this is more than a rushed video edit; someone has spent time and the necessary attention to make the disinformation appear credible. The video may have been copied from another forum, private or not, such as Telegram.

Why is this false?

Reports have been circulating on social media for some time claiming that the rise of monkey pox is due to corona vaccinations. It is linked to shingles, a revival of a slumbering herpes zoster infection, a virus that almost all people over fifty carry with them.

When this herpes virus becomes active and rears its head again, a painful red rash develops. The symptoms only superficially resemble an infection with monkey pox. Still, for some, that’s enough to blame covid vaccination. In those kinds of conspiracy stories, skin rashes are a side effect of covid vaccination, and not monkey pox but shingles. Only that would be concealed by the medical community and governments.

This video adds to the deception and misinformation by editing a shingles education video with additional text and a new voiceover. The original video comes from knowshingles.com.au, a site that GlaxoSmithKline launched in 2021 to promote awareness of shingles risk and treatment. Such public campaigns are not about promoting a medicine, but can stimulate doctor visits, and thus treatment and prescription of drugs.

Fake voice-over

The edited version of the video has been given a disinformation makeover in word and image, creating the impression that covid vaccination is the cause of monkey pox. The word ‘monkeypox’ has been added in a number of scenes, showing side-by-side comparison of the original and edited video. At the end of the video is the logo of Pfizer, one of the main producers of covid vaccines.

clip1 side by side

On the left the original video about shingles, on the right the edited version with added text

The fake voice-over reinforces the image message with the following text.

“Did you take part in a phase 3 Covid vaccination trial? Thought you were benefitting yourself and your community? And you wanted your freedom back, while a side effect has come to light called shingles, which is rebranded monkeypox. It is just another side effect added to the list including blood clots and myocarditis. Seek medical advice at the earliest signs.”

clip2 side by side

On the left the original video, on the right the edited version in which it seems that vaccinated people have a one in three chance of getting shingles. That risk is at most 1 in 100,000

Vaccination and Shingles

The video follows two storylines: the causal relationship between covid vaccination and the occurrence of shingles, and the confusion or “rebranding” of shingles and monkey pox.

As for the former, there have been a number of scientific papers pointing to a rare reactivation of herpes virus after vaccination. In 2021, a group of Dutch researchers suggested this possibility on the basis of a small number of observations in patients.

An almost simultaneously published meta-analysis of the occurrence of shingles after Covid vaccination comes to a different conclusion: “To date there is no evidence of a link between Covid-19 vaccination and herpes zoster.”

1 op 100.000

A second 2022 meta-analysis, based on the large-scale VAERS database in the United States, estimates the probability slightly higher, but still calls the risk negligible at 0.7 cases per 100,000 vaccinated, with virtually all cases having mild symptoms. Other researchers point out that the risk is probably less than 0.7 per 100,000 because the study didn’t look at the co-occurrence of other conditions.

In any case, analysis of data from millions of vaccinees shows that the risk of shingles after vaccination is very small in the worst case.

Confusion with monkey pox

The idea that shingles is mistaken for monkey pox has been circulating since May 2022, when the media focused on this infectious disease. In one case, the confusion arose simply from using a wrong illustration.

Other reports took off with the shingles figures from VAERS, but that analysis has been refuted in a fact check. This Reuters check disproves several misconceptions about similarities between shingles and monkey pox.

Blood clots during embalming

The voice-over in the Australian video about shingles and monkey pox connects in the end to other stories about side effects of corona vaccinations: blood clots and pericarditis.

Some conspiracy sites have been promoting the wildest stories about blood clots in the dead who had had a covid vaccination for some time. Funeral directors would see clots if they replaced someone’s blood with a preservative liquid. New variants of such blood-curdling stories also regularly circulate on Twitter.

In a recent twitter video, which is also shared by Dutch accounts, funeral director John O’Looney speaks. He holds up a jar with stringy material – according to him it comes from the heart vessels of a vaccinated deceased

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John O’Looney shows blood clots. Source screenshot Twitter

O’Looney is a well-known figure from the world of conspiracies and untruths about the effect of vaccination and the risks of covid infections. He appeared in a video by the conspiracy site InfoWars, Politifact writes in this extensive fact check of reports about blood clots.

There is anecdotal evidence that blood clots are found during the embalming of bodies, but the most plausible explanation for this is that the deceased contracted the disease despite vaccination. And in a serious, fatal corona infection, blood clots are indeed seen more often. When embalming Covid victims, abnormal clots were found long before vaccinations became available, says one of the funeral directors interviewed.

Covid Vaccination vs Covid Infection

Still, the relationship between Covid vaccination and the risk of blood clots, and for example cerebral thrombosis as a result, is not out of the blue. Indeed, analysis of medical records from millions of British vaccinees shows an increased risk of blood clots, some of which lead to hospitalization and death.

The researchers make an important caveat: “The risk of most of these events was significantly higher and longer lasting after infection with SARS-CoV-2 than after vaccination in the same population.” That is about a factor of ten: in people with a covid infection, brain thrombosis was seen in 39 per million people, after Covid vaccination at 4.1 per million.

Inflamed heart (pouch)

The second and final side effect mentioned by the voice-over in the Australian video is pericarditis, or an inflamed sac of the heart. Such stories have also been circulating for some time, whether or not supported by shocking statistics about mortality among young people.

The related condition is often referred to as myocarditis. The chaos in aviation would be partly caused by this. A relationship is further established on social media with heart failure in athletes. A number of such videos have been checked and the verdict is: false.

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Example of tweet with video showing athletes suddenly falling down. Source screenshot Twitter

In this phenomenon too, the side effect after Covid vaccination can indeed occur in rare cases. Inflammation of the pericardium (pericarditis) or the heart muscle (myocarditis) is estimated to occur in 0.5 to 1.7 per 100,000 vaccinees. This often requires short-term hospitalization, and young men are more likely to be affected than the elderly and women.

A more recent analysis of medical records of more than a hundred million people arrives at similar numbers. In men aged 18-25, the risk of myocarditis or pericarditis after a second vaccination dose is approximately 2 per 100,000.

Conclusion

The monkey pox video contains various forms of misinformation. Text and a misleading voice-over have been deliberately added to a bona fide information video. In the edited video, evident untruths are proclaimed, for example about the occurrence of shingles after Covid vaccination and the fact that monkey pox is actually shingles. Furthermore, comments are made about other side effects after Covid vaccination, such as blood clots and inflammation of the heart muscle. Those complications have indeed been signaled in medical records of millions of covid vaccinees, but the video does not mention that these side effects are very rare.

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