NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

Overview of some of the week’s most popular, but totally untrue, stories and pictures. None of these are legitimate, despite having been widespread on social media. The Associated Press checked it out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: Newly leaked emails among Pfizer employees reveal the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal cells.

THE FACTS: A widespread video by the Project Veritas group has led to a false claim online that alleged emails among Pfizer officials reveal that the drug company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains aborted fetal cells. But the video – an interview between Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and a self-identified Pfizer employee who claims to show internal company emails – does not support this erroneous conclusion. Instead, it shows that the company used a fetal cell line to test the effectiveness of its vaccine. Cell lines, critical to medical research, are cloned copies of cells from the same source that have been adapted for continued growth in the laboratory. Even so, users spread the falsehood about the vaccine’s content on social media widely. “You have an obligation to inject dead babies into your body,” falsely claimed a Twitter account that shared the video. “However, fetal cells in the vaccines deny people religious exemptions.” At the heart of the widespread video fueling the false claims are alleged emails from Pfizer officials in early 2021. The messages displayed show an alleged conversation about the company’s reluctance to make public that when its vaccine is being tested – not in production – a cell line originally derived from fetal tissue was used. One of the most important e-mails cited states: “No human fetal cell lines are used in the manufacture of our investigational vaccine, which consists of synthetic and enzymatically produced components.” fetal tissue traceable have been used in laboratory tests related to the vaccine program. ” The video also shows an email referencing the HEK293T cell line – or Human Embryonic Kidney 293 – which was first established in the early 1970s using cells from a kidney of a fetus. What is not made clear in the video is that it is already publicly known that Pfizer’s vaccine has been tested on such cells. In a paper published in September 2020 detailing the vaccine’s development and success in mice and monkeys, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists said the vaccine was tested using the HEK293T cell line. And the United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference stated in a January document on COVID-19 vaccines: “Neither Pfizer nor Moderna used an abortion-derived cell line in either the development or manufacture of the vaccine. However, such a cell line was used to test the effectiveness of both vaccines. ”The conference recommended that in the absence of a vaccine without any association with such a cell line, vaccines that they use“ for testing only ”are preferable to those that use such cell lines use for ongoing production. Dr. Saahir Khan, a clinical assistant professor of infectious diseases at the University of Southern California, said of the Pfizer vaccination, “The vaccine does not contain any fetal cell components or is used in manufacture.” Khan said it is very common to have such Cell lines somewhere in the research or development of vaccines and other drugs for human use. He said that such cell lines, which began decades ago, are grown in laboratories – so the cells used for research are not the original cells. A Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine used in the United States is made using an adenovirus grown with retinal cells derived from a fetus in 1985, according to the Vaccine Education Center at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. Vaccines for chickenpox and other diseases also use this type of procedure. But none of these vaccines contain fetal cells. Pfizer didn’t respond to questions about the Project Veritas video, but a spokesperson pointed out that information about the tests was publicly disclosed through a number of sources and news reports.

– Associated Press Writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

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ELIGIBILITY: Under the proposed Infrastructure Act, farmers will be taxed for every cow, including $ 6,500 per year for dairy cows.

THE FACTS: The Infrastructure Bill, a $ 1 trillion package approved by the Senate in August, doesn’t include such a provision. However, in a tweet shared by thousands and shared on Facebook, a conservative commenter falsely claimed that the legislation would impose taxes on cows that would cripple American agriculture. “Just one example: cattle breeders have to pay $ 2,600 per COW a year,” wrote Melissa Tate. “Dairy cows $ 6,500 a year. This will put millions of ranchers out of business. ”Tate did not respond to a request for comment. The erroneous claim follows a congressman’s false claim about a separate $ 3.5 trillion reconciliation bill known as the Build Back Better Act, which is endorsed by many Democrats. In a statement criticizing the bill, Oklahoma MP Markwayne Mullin said that the law would “impose a ‘fee’ on all methane emissions, including in our agricultural industry. … The tax is estimated at $ 6,500 per dairy cow, $ 2,600 per cattle, and $ 500 per pig each year. ” and gas production – not from livestock. A Mullin spokesman admitted that the bill does not currently include these provisions. “That could happen if the methane fee were levied on agriculture,” Meredith Blanford said in an email. She said that while the text of the bill only specifies the oil and gas industry, it also refers to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas inventory “and leaves too much room for the EPA to expand its regulatory reach”. Blanford said the numbers were derived from analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation, a lobby group. The organization’s vice president of public affairs Sam Kieffer said in a statement on Sept. 30 that the group’s economists conducted an analysis of potential costs to agriculture based on proposals for methane taxes on oil and gas over the summer. “To clear up any ambiguity, I would like to make it clear that the current language of the Reconciliation Act does not impose a methane tax on agriculture,” said Kieffer.

– Angelo Fichera

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CLAIM: Adam Ali, a high school student from Solihull, a town in West Midlands, England, has died from the COVID-19 vaccine.

THE FACTS: Ali, a 17-year-old student who died in September, had not been vaccinated against COVID-19. His death was misrepresented on the internet. The actual cause of Ali’s death is unknown, according to a spokesman for the University Hospital Birmingham NHS. A false tweet claimed, “Adam Ali, 17 years old from Alderbrook School, had his first vaccination, had immediate side effects, cramps, blood clots,” adding, “He died recently within two weeks and not a word from the media. “Ali, an Alderbrook Sixth Form student in Solihull, died on September 19th at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. “We can confirm that Adam did not have a COVID-19 vaccination; The cause of his tragic death is currently unknown, “a Birmingham and Solihull Vaccination Program spokesman for the Birmingham NHS University Hospital said in a statement emailed.

– Arieta Laika

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CLAIM: Sex offenders do not need to carry ID cards that identify them as sex offenders, as this is an invasion of their privacy.

THE FACT: Several states require registered sex offenders to carry special identification, and if states have rejected such laws it is based on the First Amendment, not privacy. Social media users are misrepresenting the laws against sex offenders by criticizing the requirements for proof of COVID-19 vaccination and incorrectly comparing the two. “So we need a vaccination card to have a beer in a bar, but sex offenders don’t have to carry anything with them?” reads the text of a popular TikTok video. “There are over 750,000 registered sex offenders in the US and NONE of them are required to have a passport with them because it violates their privacy,” another video said. These claims are based on the false premise that privacy protection prevents sex offenders from having to carry special identification. Sex criminal law experts, however, confirmed that sex offenders are required to carry a state ID with a special label in at least nine states. “In some states it says sex offender, while in others the name is a code known to law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor and psychologist at John Jay College in New York who specializes in preventing sexual violence. Courts in some states have overturned laws that expel sex offenders in this way, but judges have not cited privacy concerns. Instead, they have referred to the Forced Speech Doctrine of the First Amendment, which states that the government cannot force a person or group to deliver a specific message. The claims circulated online this week also fail to recognize that registered sex offenders have limited access to privacy, according to Alissa Ackerman, assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University in Fullerton. When sex offenders are required to register, they must upload their full name, demographic information, alias, birthday, address, and other information to a public database, Ackerman said. “So they don’t have a lot of privacy,” she said. “That claim being made online is just silly.”

– Associated Press writes Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.