Fake News: No, vaccines and swabs do not infect people with graphene

A specialist in public health, geriatrics and aging, Astrid Stuckelberger is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a doctor in the media. According to an investigation by Heidi.news , although it does on its website  As a researcher and professor at the University of Geneva, Ms. Stuckelberger has not worked there since the summer of 2016 due to an  ongoing procedure,the details of which remain confidential. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Lausanne, where she teaches a course on elderly care. She has also participated in or led public health projects at the UN, WHO and the European Commission.

In the past year, Dr. Stuckelberger has become best known for her covid-skeptical positions, her tendency to spread disinformation  about the pandemic and his participation in the conspiracy documentary Hold-Up . She is also a recurring guest in the online broadcasts of the Foundation for the Defense of the Rights and Freedoms of the People, a Quebec group that challenges health measures and describes the current governance of the province as  a dictatorship.

Vaccines do not contain graphene

Stuckelberger’s main point in the video is that COVID-19 vaccines make vaccinated people sick and contagious (more on that later, but that’s not true). His point is based on the theory that vaccines contain graphene, and that an unidentified Belgian doctor reported to him  a case of graphene in the blood of a woman who lives with a vaccinated person.

The unvaccinated woman reportedly experienced SYMPTOMS SIMILAR TO COVID-19, and the vaccinated person who transmitted the disease to her was infected with her graphene vaccine, According to Stuckelberger.  I have another theory: it’s that graphene is transmitted to others,” she says in the video.

This story could not be validated by the Decryptors,and we were not able to find similar anecdotes on theweb. We contacted Ms Stuckelberger for more details and to know the identity of the Belgian doctor, without getting a response.

However, this idea that COVID-19 vaccines contain graphene has been refuted by numerous media of verification having scrutinized the ingredient lists of the main vaccines available on the market. It should be noted that these vaccines are tested, analyzed and audited by various health agencies around the world, including Health Canada.

The graphene vaccinator swab theory

Stuckelberger goes on to theorize that rods used for COVID-19 testing could also be used to inject graphene.

 PCR is a vaccine,she says.  In animals, rods are used to vaccinate animals, ask veterinarians. 

 Why do we do so much PCR? Hypothesis A: it’s really that PCR is a vaccinator too. Since graphene is at the end of PCRs, PCRs are used to deliver a dose. Hypothesis B is that the real vaccine may be graphene,she continues.

It should first be noted that the rod itself is not a PCR: the latter is rather the type of test that is done in the laboratory to analyze the sample taken by the rod, which is only a sampling device.

Dr. Eric Troncy, Director of the Groupe de recherche en pharmacologie animale du Québec at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Université de Montréal, also confirms that the rods are not used to vaccinate animals.

 Veterinarians do not vaccinate with rods but with needles, if and only if the vaccine is administered by hypodermic injection,he confirms by email, adding that there are several other modes of vaccine administration for animals, including oral or intranasal nebulization.

That said, it would hypothetically be possible to use these rods to inject a substance into a human, explains Dr. Simon Lévesque, a clinical specialist in medical biology at the CIUSSS de l’Estrie. But Dr. Lévesque assures that the stems that are used for samples are sterile.

 I checked, and for the rods we use in our laboratory – but also in all the laboratories in Quebec and Canada – the components are either polyester, nylon, rayon or even cotton,he says.

Ms Stuckelberger does not provide any evidence to support her claims about graphene on rods, but  mentions reports from Slovakia which […] have shown that in the PCR there is lithium and hydrogel, as if by chance.

Verification done: the only Slovak  report  we have been able to find on this subject is in fact a document without author, linked to no known institution , which began circulating on the Russian social network Vkontakte (VK) a few months ago. He argues that the hydrogel and lithium supposedly found on the stems are used to turn  people into controllable biorobots. In other words, this report has no scientific value, as explained by the verification media Vox Ukraine at the end of May .

Vaccines don’t make people sick or contagious

In the video, Stuckelberger argues that COVID-19 vaccines infect the people who receive them, and that these people then transmit the virus to others. It justifies itself by arguing that this is a known phenomenon with vaccines against poliomyelitis (polio) and the dengue virus.

There are two types of polio vaccines, and one of the two is given as oral droplets. Since it is a live attenuated virus vaccine, it can indeed make people infectious and contagious. The symptoms experienced are almost never very severe since it is an attenuated virus, but in rare cases (1 in 2.4 million, according to the WHO , people can get vaccine-associated paralytic polio (PPAV) – that is, be paralyzed. Note that the proportion of cases of paralysis among people who contract wild polio is 12,000 times higher, i.e. 1 in 200, according to the WHO .

The subtypes of the dengue virus are sufficiently different from one another for this phenomenon to exist. At the moment, COVID variants are a few mutations here and there: it’s not comparable. I can’t tell you absolutely that it’s not going to happen, but right now, there’s no big clue that it’s going to happen,”says Benoit Barbeau.

Other false claims

Astrid Stuckelberger spreads several other false information that has already been denied in the viral video.

The researcher says in particular that the WHO has admitted that PCR tests are not effective (this is false, Le Soleil explains why here (new window)). She says the same thing about the CDC, which is also false (the Decryptors article about this can be read about it). here (new window)).

Stuckelberger also argues that COVID-19 has never been isolated, which would prove that it  does not exist in scientific terms. This is wrong, and the Decryptors have it denial last october (new window).

Finally, she insists that the current vaccination campaign is  an experimental research  and a therapeutic  trial,saying not  antivax, but today, yes. This argument often comes up among anti-vaccine activists, and Benoit Barbeau believes it is important to qualify this type of statement.

 There have been preclinical and clinical studies, tens of thousands of individuals have been tested, we have done a close follow-up that continues, and at the moment in the field we are at millions of given doses. I think at some point, with the data coming out and a fairly high yield, you have to come to the conclusion that at least for the efficacy and the level of safety, the data is extremely convincing,says the virologist.

 We also often hear about the famous medium- or long-term effects. We have almost no vaccine that we have used recently for which we can boast of having done medium- or long-term analyses. I mean, we won’t wait 20 or 25 years to make sure a vaccine is safe. The chances of something happening are extremely low because the side effects are usually short-term,he adds.

Recall that Pfizer’s vaccine was fully licensed in the U.S. on August 23 , although he had been granted an emergency authorisation since December.

It is especially in populations with poor vaccination coverage that PPAV is a major problem, explains Benoit Barbeau, a professor in UQAM’s Department of Biological Sciences and a specialist in virology.  It is an extremely transmissible virus and it is for this reason that we must insist and ensure that the entire population is protected from the virus,he says.

The problem with Stuckelberger’s reasoning is that messenger RNA vaccines currently on the market (Pfizer and Moderna) do not contain an attenuated or even inactive virus, making infection with the vaccine impossible, barbeau says.  The only possible equivalent is AstraZeneca or COVISHIELD, where an infectious adenovirus is used, but it is non-replicative,this meaning that it has been genetically modified so as not to reproduce and not cause disease he adds. This is also false information that has been denied to several  times .

When it comes to dengue, the situation is more complicated and has nothing to do with COVID-19 vaccines. There are four different subtypes of the virus with immunity specific to each subtype. This means that one can be infected with one subtype, develop immunity to it, but still be infected with the other subtypes.

In addition, a second infection may have much more severe symptoms than the first , a phenomenon known by the acronym ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement in English).

It is for these reasons, among other reasons, that a vaccination campaign against dengue fever was suspended in the Philippines in 2017 , while a dozen children who received the vaccine died.

he subtypes of the dengue virus are sufficiently different from one another for this phenomenon to exist. At the moment, COVID variants are a few mutations here and there: it’s not comparable. I can’t tell you absolutely that it’s not going to happen, but right now, there’s no big clue that it’s going to happen,”says Benoit Barbeau.

Other false claims

Astrid Stuckelberger spreads several other false information that has already been denied in the viral video.

The researcher says in particular that the WHO has admitted that PCR tests are not effective (this is false, Le Soleil explains why here (new window)). She says the same thing about the CDC, which is also false (the Decryptors article about this can be read about it). here (new window)).

Stuckelberger also argues that COVID-19 has never been isolated, which would prove that it  does not exist in scientific terms. This is wrong, and the Decryptors have it denial last october (new window).

Finally, she insists that the current vaccination campaign is  an experimental research  and a therapeutic  trial,saying not  antivax, but today, yes. This argument often comes up among anti-vaccine activists, and Benoit Barbeau believes it is important to qualify this type of statement.

 There have been preclinical and clinical studies, tens of thousands of individuals have been tested, we have done a close follow-up that continues, and at the moment in the field we are at millions of given doses. I think at some point, with the data coming out and a fairly high yield, you have to come to the conclusion that at least for the efficacy and the level of safety, the data is extremely convincing,says the virologist.

 We also often hear about the famous medium- or long-term effects. We have almost no vaccine that we have used recently for which we can boast of having done medium- or long-term analyses. I mean, we won’t wait 20 or 25 years to make sure a vaccine is safe. The chances of something happening are extremely low because the side effects are usually short-term,he adds.

Recall that Pfizer’s vaccine was fully licensed in the U.S. on August 23 (new window), although he had been granted an emergency authorisation since December.

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Nicholas De Rosa- RCI