COVID Variants Existed Before the Rollout of Vaccines
The Claim
Variants of COVID-19 were brought on only after the approval of vaccinations against the coronavirus.
News posted on
Emerging story
On July 19th, George Papadapoulos, ex-aide to former President Donald Trump, tweeted that “a whole Greek alphabet of ‘variants’ appeared” after the rollout of vaccinations. Numerous Facebook users over the course of a few days afterward shared screenshots of the original tweet. Twitter users also retweeted his original post more than 5,000 times.
Misbar’s Analysis
Variants of the coronavirus are not caused by vaccines. Scientists and health researchers detected various strands and variants of the disease even before vaccines began to roll out. At least seven strands, for example, had been detected just days before Pfizer received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, becoming the first company to market a COVID-19 vaccine for mass use in the United States.
In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a briefing that many variants emerged throughout 2020, meaning scientists identified these other strands long before any U.S. vaccine received authorization from the FDA.
Notably, Papadapoulos, the person who originally tweeted the claim, did not mention or link to any sources to back it up on Twitter.
Papadapoulos has a contentious history that makes him a questionable source of information. He, for example, received a prison sentence for lying to the FBI during Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. At the time of his arrest, he admitted to having “made a terrible mistake” and said he was “terribly ashamed.” Then, in a book that came out months after his sentencing, Papadapoulos reversed course, saying he “misspoke” and that the lie “certainly wasn’t intentional.”
While there are many variants of the COVID-19 disease, posts from Papadapoulos and others are misleading because they suggest in part that mutations are abnormal. Viruses mutate all the time. To keep track of the mutations and to make it easier for the public to speak about them, the World Health Organization began to identify them using letters of the Greek Alphabet.
