However, recent claims alleging that women’s menstrual cycles were changing if the women were in the presence of others who’d recently gotten the shot, are novel. Many of the tropes about efficacy, ingredients, safety, and others are quite old. One of the overarching dynamics of online misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines is that very little of it is new. The larger impact of this dynamic is that it opens the door for those with large platforms to talk about women’s health and vaccines generally- a large potential interested audience - and to introduce others to more sensationalized narratives. These narratives have gained traction within the anti-vaccine communities where they originate, but also within the QAnon and “health and wellness” community, whose audience base may not have been exposed to the “vaccine shedding” trope in its prior incarnations. Anti-vaccine activists and influencers have previously used the story of a doctor’s miscarriage and false claims about infertility to prey on fears. This is not the first misleading narrative that attempts to link women’s health issues and COVID-19 vaccines.

Nevertheless, anti-vaccine activists are applying this trope as a vector for misinformation about the effects of COVID-19 vaccines on women’s health. While vaccine shedding is documented in certain types of vaccines, it’s impossible for US-administered COVID-19 vaccines to shed. Last week, Virality Project analysts tracked the spread of an old anti-vaccine trope applied in a novel way to COVID-19 vaccines: “vaccine shedding”, or the claim that vaccinated people spread the disease for which they have been recently immunized. Moran, Nicole Buckley, Divya Suresh Kumar, and Connor Klentschy ( University of Washington, Center for an Informed Public) Kyle Weiss and Erin McAweeney (Graphika) Emma Dolan, Jennifer John, Ashwin Ramaswami, Carly Miller (Stanford Internet Observatory)

Naomi wolf vaccine passports