8. COVID-19 vaccines causes HIV. Fake or not?
False online claims have suggested an unfounded link between COVID-19 vaccines and HIV, the virus that causes AIDs. There were the posts that claim that coronavirus jabs are creating new variants of the unrelated virus to emerge. Many online users have falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are creating a new disease, so-called “vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” or “VAIDS”. Posts referencing the term have widely circulated on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, while Google search terms for “VAIDS” have also risen.
“Do NOT take the vaccine #Vaids,” one user wrote on Facebook, while others kept their posts vague, asking, “What is VAIDS?”
HOW CAN WE VERIFY THIS?
Neither the WHO nor the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has documented any such disease known as “VAIDS”. A WHO spokesperson told Euronews that no “reputable source” has published the claims about “VAIDS” and labelled the reports as “misinformation”. The human immunodeficiency virus causes HIV and AIDS. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain this virus. Some COVID-19 vaccines called viral vectors use a modified, harmless type of virus with instructions about how to defend against COVID-19. It’s not possible to get COVID-19 or HIV from these viruses. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the only viral vector vaccine approved in the United States. It uses the shell of adenoviruses. Some adenoviruses cause respiratory infections, but the viruses used in the vaccine can’t multiply or cause infection. There’s no evidence that COVID-19 vaccination increases your risk of HIV infection.
Some people who claim a link point to a letter to the editor published by a group of researchers in The Lancet in 2020. In this letter, the researchers expressed concerns about developing COVID-19 vaccines that use a specific virus vector called adenovirus type-5.
In previous studies, researchers found that some types of HIV vaccines that used adenovirus type-5 increased the chances of HIV in uncircumcised men who contracted the virus.
The researchers in the letter raised the point that COVID-19 vaccines using this technology could raise the risk too. But the link remains theoretical.
WHAT ARE OTHER SOURCES SAYING?
Claims that there are cases of AIDS caused by vaccination, or “VAIDS” as online users claim, however, are unfounded. “There is no phenomenon that I know of ‘Vaccine-induced immunodeficiency syndrome.’ It is not a real syndrome,” Donna Farber, chief of the Division of Surgical Sciences and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University, told Reuters via email. Likewise, Stephen Gluckman, MD, a professor of Infectious Diseases in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the medical director of Penn Global Medicine, told Reuters “VAIDS” is “absolutely not” a real condition. Furthermore, Gluckman said there is no evidence of immunodeficiency being related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Farber explained why vaccines do not cause immunodeficiency. “They don’t deplete any immune cells,” she said, on the contrary, “they stimulate immune cells to be activated, divide and produce molecules like antibodies and soluble factors to recognize a pathogen and rid the body of it.” “There is no truth at all that vaccines weaken the immune system and that this causes death. This suggestion goes against every scientific principle of vaccination,” a spokesperson for the University of Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine team told Reuters in December 2021.
Speaking to Reuters, Peter Nordstrom, from the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation in the Unit of Geriatric Medicine at Umeå University and one of the authors of the study, dismissed the claims made about their research and confirmed the article misrepresented the study. “No. Our study (shows) that protection against more severe disease is sustained, which is in sharp contrast to any claims that our results would support any claims that VAIDS exists.”
KEYWORD SEARCH
Though the keyword search leads to the Lancet article and information that has been spread around the web, VAIDS does not exist.
FAKE OR NOT?
Fake! There is no such thing as a “vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” or “VAIDS,” as claimed online, and COVID-19 vaccination does not hurt the immune system.
