This roundup of claims has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
Mpox has nothing to do with the Covid vaccines
An increase in the number of cases of mpox in several African countries was recently declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation.
We wrote several articles about the disease during an earlier outbreak in 2022. And as before we’re seeing unsubstantiated claims about mpox circulating online.
Several social media posts claim mpox is actually a side effect of the Covid-19 vaccines, but this is false.
In simple terms, mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) is a disease caused by an infection with the monkeypox virus, a variety of orthopoxvirus. It’s related to viruses such as cowpox and smallpox, and can be caught through contact with an infected person or animal. It is thought to be more common among small rodents than among monkeys.
Although mpox may be mistaken for chickenpox or shingles, these are different diseases caused by a completely different virus—varicella zoster.
Other posts claim that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine contains mpox. They show the vaccine’s package leaflet listing its ingredients, including “recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus vector encoding the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein”.
But this claim is also false.
This Covid-19 vaccine does contain a modified virus that usually infects chimpanzees, but it isn’t the one that causes mpox, and can’t lead to humans developing mpox or any other disease.
The virus it does contain is an adenovirus, which are common and usually cause a mild cold or flu-like illness. The mpox virus belongs to an entirely separate family of diseases.
The chimpanzee virus in the AstraZeneca vaccine is used because it generates a strong immune response, and humans are less likely to have antibodies against it, compared to a ‘human’ strain of the virus. The ingredient carries the genetic information that allows an immune response in the body to recognise and attack a protein on the surface of the virus which causes Covid-19.
Are the majority of British people ‘settled’ on leaving the ECHR?
In an interview last weekend, Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice suggested he thought “the majority of the British people” were “settled” on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The ECHR is an international agreement that has been in force since 1953 and is overseen by the European Court of Human Rights. All European countries, with the exception of Belarus and Russia, are members of the Convention.
It was reported last year that a poll found a majority of people were in favour of leaving the ECHR, but the poll in question didn’t explicitly reference the Convention.
Respondents were instead asked to what extent they’d support a policy to “replace the current European system of human rights laws applied in Britain with new British laws that protect rights like free speech but enable the Government to promptly deport illegal migrants”. Fifty-four percent of respondents expressed support for this policy.
Recent polls which did directly ask about the ECHR found a small majority of respondents said the UK should remain a member.
In June, a YouGov poll found that 54% of respondents said the UK “should remain a member” of the ECHR, while a poll in November 2023 found 51% said the UK should remain a member.
