The Claim:
A viral tweet claims that a new study proves the mRNA vaccines against COVID are sending spike proteins into people’s brains and causing long-term damage. The tweet cites this preprint.
The Facts:
This viral tweet is making a claim about the preprint’s conclusion that simply isn’t true. The author claims that the “study has concluded that COVID-19 vaccines are causing ‘Long-term brain damage’.”
The preprint is actually talking about long-term neurological damage after COVID infection, not vaccines. In fact, the word vaccine shows up exactly once in the entire paper and makes no claims about the results of vaccination. All results showing accumulation and damage from spike protein in the human brain were taken from people who had experienced COVID infection, not people who had been vaccinated. Vaccines were not studied at all in this paper.
Spike protein was injected into mice and found to accumulate in the brain as well, but again, those findings don’t necessarily translate to vaccines or humans. Previous bioaccumulation studies have shown that although mRNA did enter various tissues, including the brain, it was at very low levels for a very limited amount of time. Likewise, other studies have also documented the long-term neurological impact of COVID infection.
While over 70% of the world’s population has received at least one vaccine, we are not seeing what would be the obvious societal ills were it causing long-term brain damage.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved since this was originally posted. Browse the latest information posted in Just the Facts Topics.
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