Fact-checking COVID-19 vaccine claims

Anti-vaxxers are out in force with more false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine. I'm mystified about what their endgame is - no vaccines, no masks, no technology, no medicine, cowering in caves like Stone Age humanity?

Anyway, today's false claim is that COVID-19 vaccines can cause heart attacks due to potassium chloride. The truth is, potassium chloride is an essential electrolyte, in every food we eat and every drink we drink. It is recommended that we take in 2000mg of potassium per day, which is about 4000mg of potassium chloride. So how much potassium chloride is in the COVID-19 vaccine? 0.01mg. Yep, that is what the anti-vaxxers want you to be petrified of.

0.01mg is about 1% of the amount of potassium chloride present in a glass of tap water. It is about 50,000 times less than the amount of potassium chloride present in a glass of milk or a banana. It is about the same amount of potassium chloride present in the solitary tear that I wept thinking of those poor anti-vaxxers being given the option to have a life-saving vaccine developed at incredible speed.

The fake excuse anti-vaxxers give for their pseudo-concern is that potassium chloride is used in lethal injections. Yes, at one million times the vaccine dose, and without the balancing sodium that is present in alls foods and vaccines. A small amount of sodium and potassium mixed together in a balanced ratio is good. A vast amount of potassium injected straight into the bloodstream is bad. Pretty simple difference, and I'm not giving anti-vaxxers the benefit of the doubt by assuming they are just ignorant. They are evil, deliberately spreading things they know to be false, resulting in people not taking life-saving medication.

Fact-checking COVID-19 claims

More fact-checking for COVID-19. This time for a claim so false it is down-right criminal.

Claim: The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has a strong sequence similarity with syncytin-1, and will cause infertility.

Verdict: False. A complete fabrication. In summary, there is no sequence homology between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and syncytin-1, and there are no associations betwee anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and pregnancy issues. Looking at the history of the people making the claims, their strategy seems to be to throw random mud at any vaccine and hope some of it sticks.

First, on the sequence homology claim. There is essentially no homology between these two proteins. The full protein sequence of both are known. The language of proteins can be considered to be similar to English - there are 20 different amino acids, and each of them is given a letter. In the same way that a paragraph is constructed by 27 letters of the alphabet, a protein is constructed by the 20 "letters" of amino acids. What matters is the order.

Here is the spike protein:

MFVFLVLLPLVSSQCVNLTTRTQLPPAYTNSFTRGVYYPDKVFRSSVLHSTQDLFLPFFSNVTWFHAIHVSGTNGTKRFDNPVLPFNDGVYFASTEKSNIIRGWIFGTTLDSKTQSLLIVNNATNVVIKVCEFQFCNDPFLGVYYHKNNKSWMESEFRVYSSANNCTFEYVSQPFLMDLEGKQGNFKNLREFVFKNIDGYFKIYSKHTPINLVRDLPQGFSALEPLVDLPIGINITRFQTLLALHRSYLTPGDSSSGWTAGAAAYYVGYLQPRTFLLKYNENGTITDAVDCALDPLSETKCTLKSFTVEKGIYQTSNFRVQPTESIVRFPNITNLCPFGEVFNATRFASVYAWNRKRISNCVADYSVLYNSASFSTFKCYGVSPTKLNDLCFTNVYADSFVIRGDEVRQIAPGQTGKIADYNYKLPDDFTGCVIAWNSNNLDSKVGGNYNYLYRLFRKSNLKPFERDISTEIYQAGSTPCNGVEGFNCYFPLQSYGFQPTNGVGYQPYRVVVLSFELLHAPATVCGPKKSTNLVKNKCVNFNFNGLTGTGVLTESNKKFLPFQQFGRDIADTTDAVRDPQTLEILDITPCSFGGVSVITPGTNTSNQVAVLYQDVNCTEVPVAIHADQLTPTWRVYSTGSNVFQTRAGCLIGAEHVNNSYECDIPIGAGICASYQTQTNSPRRARSVASQSIIAYTMSLGAENSVAYSNNSIAIPTNFTISVTTEILPVSMTKTSVDCTMYICGDSTECSNLLLQYGSFCTQLNRALTGIAVEQDKNTQEVFAQVKQIYKTPPIKDFGGFNFSQILPDPSKPSKRSFIEDLLFNKVTLADAGFIKQYGDCLGDIAARDLICAQKFNGLTVLPPLLTDEMIAQYTSALLAGTITSGWTFGAGAALQIPFAMQMAYRFNGIGVTQNVLYENQKLIANQFNSAIGKIQDSLSSTASALGKLQDVVNQNAQALNTLVKQLSSNFGAISSVLNDILSRLDKVEAEVQIDRLITGRLQSLQTYVTQQLIRAAEIRASANLAATKMSECVLGQSKRVDFCGKGYHLMSFPQSAPHGVVFLHVTYVPAQEKNFTTAPAICHDGKAHFPREGVFVSNGTHWFVTQRNFYEPQIITTDNTFVSGNCDVVIGIVNNTVYDPLQPELDSFKEELDKYFKNHTSPDVDLGDISGINASVVNIQKEIDRLNEVAKNLNESLIDLQELGKYEQYIKWPWYIWLGFIAGLIAIVMVTIMLCCMTSCCSCLKGCCSCGSCCKFDEDDSEPVLKGVKLHYT

Here is human syncytin-1:

MALPYHIFLFTVLLPSFTLTAPPPCRCMTSSSPYQEFLWRMQRPGNIDAPSYRSLSKGTPTFTAHTHMPRNCYHSATLCMHANTHYWTGKMINPSCPGGLGVTVCWTYFTQTGMSDGGGVQDQAREKHVKEVISQLTRVHGTSSPYKGLDLSKLHETLRTHTRLVSLFNTTLTGLHEVSAQNPTNCWICLPLNFRPYVSIPVPEQWNNFSTEINTTSVLVGPLVSNLEITHTSNLTCVKFSNTTYTTNSQCIRWVTPPTQIVCLPSGIFFVCGTSAYRCLNGSSESMCFLSFLVPPMTIYTEQDLYSYVISKPRNKRVPILPFVIGAGVLGALGTGIGGITTSTQFYYKLSQELNGDMERVADSLVTLQDQLNSLAAVVLQNRRALDLLTAERGGTCLFLGEECCYYVNQSGIVTEKVKEIRDRIQRRAEELRNTGPWGLLSQWMPWILPFLGPLAAIILLLLFGPCIFNLLVNFVSSRIEAVKLQMEPKMQSKTKIYRRPLDRPASPRSDVNDIKGTPPEEISAAQPLLRPNSAGSS

They both start with "M", like every protein in mammals, but apart from that do you see any similarity? No? Me either. Or any of the protein homology tools that I tested. The closest you get is a run of 2-3 letters being the same. Claiming homology between the two sequences is worse than claiming the US Constitution and Harry Potter are the same, because they both use words like "at" and "the".

How about the second claim? If anti-spike protein antibodies interfered with fertility, you would expect that COVID-19 patients, who almost all make high titres of anti-spike protein antibodies, would have infertility issues. They don't. Multiple studies show no complications with pregnancy or miscarriage in pregnant COVID-19 patients. This is an extreme case - these individuals have an ongoing serious viral infection as well as having the antibody response - and yet there is clear evidence of maintained fertility.

COVID-19 vaccine trial

Today I took part in a COVID-19 vaccine trial (ENSEMBLE2) as a volunteer. It is the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine, an adenovirus-encoded SARS-CoV-2 spike antigen.

Right now, we can use every vaccine we can get. Down the track we can be picky, and use the best ones (if we ever actually find out which are the best! if head-to-head trials aren't done now, they will likely never be done). For now, I'd encourage everyone who is eligible to join a vaccine trial.

As many people possible vaccinated, everyone wearing a mask and eliminate unnecessary contacts. We are so close to beating this virus, every extra death at this stage is an unnecessary trajedy.