As COVID-19 continues to evolve and mutate, cutting an admittedly destructive path through humanity, a rising tide of vaccine opponents— “anti-vaxxers” as they are sometimes called in the media— are expounding several reasons for their refusal to be vaccinated.

Check the facts

Vaccination opposition is but one of many fraught topics driven by conflicting reports and sometimes flat-out wrong theories spread via social media and the many, many unchecked, unregulated channels that the Internet affords.

Much like politics and religion, whether to get vaccinated is a contentious one, often leading to arguments and divisions among friends and family-members alike. Some anti-vaccination theories—or myths, if you like—have a basis in fact, but have unfortunately been corrupted or exaggerated over time and in the telling and re-telling.

It’s now more important than ever to do as much research as possible to verify and fact-check any doubtful information, and to do it via a wide variety of reliable sources such as the Center for Disease Control, Johns Hopkins Medicine, or an open-minded, multi-faceted news source such as Com-it – A Bunch of Everything.

Here are just three of the most popular theories surrounding vaccine resistance and some factual background and contextualization, as outlined by Johns Hopkins and others, which has a stated mission to “improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care.”

The COVID-19 vaccine was rushed and the technology untested

A common complaint is that the various forms of the vaccine were rushed through testing and to market without the usually rigorous tests and procedures expected with such a high-profile medicine, and that its effectiveness and safety, therefore, cannot be trusted.

This is not the case. Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna, the companies behind the first two initial vaccines, had begun the development of the methods used to create the vaccines years ago—two decades ago, in fact—and were able to start the vaccine development process early on in the pandemic.

Some of the factors which quickened the process when the pandemic struck include the fact that China isolated and shared genetic information about COVID-19 as soon as it took hold in that country, allowing scientists around the world to start working on vaccines immediately.

This massive, worldwide mobilization of resources—involving contributions from governments, corporations, NGOs, and civil society, among many others—brought rapid investment in research and payments for the technology to be created. Vaccine developers did not skip steps in testing, but were able to perform tests on overlapping schedules to gather data faster.

Vaccines can alter your DNA

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has stated that COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with human DNA in any way. The two methods involved—mRNA and viral vector—vaccines work by “giving instructions” to cells, which then build protection against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The substance of the vaccine does not enter the nucleus of the cell, where DNA is stored. The vaccine, therefore, works like many others: by helping the body’s natural immune system to fight the virus.

mRNA—the Johnson & Johnson vaccine—causes cells to produce protein which stimulate the immune system. Once effective, the protein quickly breaks and does not touch DNA, according to Johns Hopkins. Concerns that this protein spike in vaccinated people can have an effect on the non-vaccinated are unfounded.

Vaccines render magnetic body areas

Another prominent vaccine researcher, Dr. Abeer Almajali, infectious disease specialist at OSF HealthCare, has discredited this myth, stating that COVID-19 vaccines do not make the human body “magnetic” at the site of vaccination—usually the arm.

COVID-19 vaccines do not contain metals or any electromagnetic ingredients that can produce such an effect and this theory seems to have emanated from someone in Ohio claiming on social media that metal items stuck to their body after the vaccine was administered, Dr. Armajani has said, according to the CDC.