Did study find Long COVID patients all received mRNA vaccine?!

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Did a new study find that Long COVID patients all received the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19?! Take a look at the viral claim, and find out what the facts really are!

 

Claim : Study Found Long COVID Patients All Received mRNA Vaccine!

People are sharing an article (archive) by The People’s Voice (formerly NewsPunch), which claimed or suggested that a new study found that Long COVID patients all received the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19!

Official Study Finds All Patients With Long COVID Had Received mRNA Vaccine

Recommended : Do COVID-19 Vaccines Increase Risk Of Long COVID?!

Do COVID-19 Vaccines Increase Risk Of Long COVID?!

 

Truth : Study Did Not Find Long COVID Patients All Received mRNA Vaccine!

This is yet another example of fake news created / promoted by The People’s Voice, and here are the reasons why…

Fact #1 : mRNA Vaccines Were Not Mentioned In Study

Let me start by pointing out that the study in question never even mentioned mRNA vaccines. In fact, the word “mRNA” does not appear in the paper at all!

You can read the paper in full, and look for yourself – Long-COVID Prevalence and Its Association with Health Outcomes in the Post-Vaccine and Antiviral-Availability Era by Ramida Jangnin et. al.

So why would anyone claim that this study showed that all patients with Long COVID received the mRNA vaccine???

Fact #2 : Thailand Used A Mix Of Vaccines

On top of that, Thailand uses a mix of COVID-19 vaccines – a majority of which were the Oxford-AstraZeneca, and CoronaVac vaccines, both of which are not mRNA vaccines.

So it is more likely that not that the majority of patients in that study did not receive the mRNA vaccine.

Fact #3 : It Was An Observational Study By Telephone

I should also point out that it was an observational study. Observational studies like this cannot prove causality. Perhaps that’s why the study authors themselves pointed out that further prospective research is needed to establish any causality.

However, given the observational nature of our study, further prospective research is needed to establish causal relationships, and longitudinal studies are advised to track the evolution of long-COVID symptoms over time. 

To be clear – you cannot use observational studies like this as evidence of causality. This study does not show that COVID-19 vaccines cannot prevent Long COVID. Neither does it show that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of Long COVID.

You can read more about this in my earlier fact checking of The Epoch Health’s article on the same study.

Recommended : Majority Of Long COVID Patients Were Vaccinated?!

Majority Of Long COVID Patients Were Vaccinated?!

Fact #4 : Study Did Not Look At Vaccine Effect On Long COVID

I should also point out that this Thai study was not actually designed to look at the effect of mRNA COVID-19 vaccination on Long COVID.

Not only did it not have a control group of unvaccinated people, almost all of its participants received both COVID-19 vaccinations and antiviral treatment!

In fact, the study did not mention whether anyone was unvaccinated. So it is highly likely that all its participants were at least either fully-vaccinated, or had antiviral treatment!

The cohort consisted of 390 participants… Among them, 96.7% (n = 377) were vaccinated, and 98.2% (n = 383) underwent antiviral treatment.

So how do we know if the Long COVID was caused by the COVID-19 infection itself, the COVID-19 vaccines, or the antiviral treatment? We don’t, because this observational study was never designed to elicit such information in the first place!

Fact #5 : Almost All Study Participants Were Vaccinated!

I should stress yet again, that almost all of the participants (94.8%) in this Thai study were fully vaccinated:

  • 40.5% received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, while
  • 54.3% received two doses, and a booster dose.

This is important because such a study would inevitably show that people who were vaccinated can suffer from Long COVID. That doesn’t mean that the vaccines cause Long COVID.

If the same study was conducted on only male patients, it would show that only men had Long COVID. Would that mean that only men get Long COVID? Of course, not. That is only the perception that you may get if the study was conducted on only men.

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Are Residual DNA In mRNA Vaccines Dangerous?!

Fact #6 : Studies Do Not Link Long COVID To Vaccines

The People’s Voice article included a list of studies it claimed or suggested show a link between Long COVID and mRNA (or other types of COVID-19) vaccines. That’s not accurate:

The February 2024 report by the CDC did not link Long COVID to vaccination. In fact, the CDC report pointed out that “information about COVID-19 vaccination … is not included in this report“.

The February 2023 study published in the Journal of Medical Virology only looked at levels of spike proteins and viral RNA in COVID-19 patients. It did not mention anything about vaccines, or link Long COVID to vaccination.

The August 2023 study published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases only showed that that the risk of Long COVID was higher with the wild-type SARS-CoV-2, compared to the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants. It did not show a link between COVID-19 vaccines and Long COVID.

The 2023 study in the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences only identified viral spike protein in one COVID-19 patient, and vaccine spike protein in two patients after COVID-19 vaccination, out of 81 Long COVID patients. It did not show a link between the Long COVID and vaccination.

The December 2022 study in PLoS One did not conclude that receiving COVID-19 vaccines was a predictor of long COVID, calling it “an observational paradox” and a “collider bias” due to their study only looking at patients who received hospital care. I wrote an extensive article on this earlier, after The Epoch Times (again?!) covered it as “a new study“.

Recommended : Are Vaccinated People Developing Full Blown AIDS?!

Fact #7 : Studies Have Shown Vaccines Reduce Long COVID Risk

Many prior studies, involving millions of people – both vaccinated and unvaccinated, have concluded that COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of Long COVID.

A March 2024 study published in The Lancet, involving over 20 million people in the UK, Spain and Estonia, concluded that “vaccination against COVID-19 consistently reduced the risk of long COVID symptoms, which highlights the importance of vaccination to prevent persistent COVID-19 symptoms, particularly in adults“.

A February 2024 study published in Nature Communications, involving 1.1 million patients in Hong Kong, provided “real-world evidence supporting the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in reducing the risk of long-term health consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection and its persistence following infection“.

A March 2023 meta-analysis of 17 different studies on the effects of vaccines on Long COVID concluded that:

The evidence presented herein recommends SARS-CoV-2 vaccination for the prevention of long COVID in breakthrough cases. Furthermore, evidence does not support that SARS-CoV-2 vaccination exacerbates long COVID symptoms. Thus, most patients with long COVID should be vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2.

As you can see – much larger studies have already shown that COVID-19 vaccines not only do not increase the risk of Long COVID, getting vaccinated will actually reduce your risk of getting Long COVID should you get infected.

Hence, it is no surprise that the US CDC has pointed out that “Vaccination offers protection against the prolonged effects of #COVID19“.

Recommended : Did France Pass Law To Jail Opposition To mRNA Vaccines?!

Long COVID vaccines CDC advice

Fact #8 : The People’s Voice Is Known For Fake News

The People’s Voice is the current name for NewsPunch, which possibly changed its name because its brand has been so thoroughly discredited after posting numerous shocking but fake stories.

Founded as Your News Wire in 2014, it was rebranded as NewsPunch in November 2018, before becoming The People’s Voice. A 2017 BuzzFeed report identified NewsPunch as the second-largest source of popular fake news on Facebook that year.

Its articles have been regularly debunked as fake news, so you should never share anything from NewsPunch / The People’s Voice.  Here are some of its fake stories that I fact checked earlier:

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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.

He continues to devote countless hours every day writing about tech, medicine and science, in his pursuit of facts in a post-truth world.

 

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