Ignore old claim that people vaccinated against Covid 'are no more humans'
IN SHORT: Several Facebook posts claim that "all vaccinated persons" are no longer classed as human, according to the United Nations and the US supreme court. But the claim is false and has been around for years.
"Breaking news! All vaccinated persons are no more humans according to UN ... If you took the COVID-19 jab, consider yourself a no human," reads the caption of a video posted on social media.
The video shows a woman speaking from a podium. It is overlaid with the text: "You are now classed as cattle ... MOO."
The speaker cites a "US law, which can be verified" to support the claim that people who have received the Covid jabs are no longer considered human.
"In the United States, the supreme court has ruled that vaccinated people worldwide are products, they're now patented goods ... In essence, this means that those vaccinated are no longer subject to national or international law. Since 2013, all people vaccinated with genetically modified mRNAs are legally transhuman," she says.
The United Nations, or UN, is an international organisation with 193 member states dedicated to maintaining international peace and security, promoting human rights and delivering humanitarian aid.
Covid-19 was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's central Hubei province, and has since claimed millions of lives around the world.
By June 2024, over 5 billion Covid vaccines had been administered worldwide. Many of these were a type of mRNA vaccine.
A messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine works by sending messages that instruct the body to make a specific protein found in the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The protein then triggers an immune response that produces antibodies against the virus.
The uptake of Covid-19 vaccines has been mired in controversy due to safety concerns, mistrust of institutions, political polarisation, and unequal distribution. Misinformation on social media platforms has also fueled scepticism about vaccine safety.
Africa Check has debunked many claims about Covid vaccines here, here, here and here. But is there any truth to the claim that vaccinated people are no longer classified as human? We checked.
Old claim resurfaces
Africa Check searched online and found a 2022 fact-check report by Reuters news agency. According to the report, the claim misinterprets the ruling in a 2013 case - Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics Inc - which had nothing to do with mRNA vaccines or whether a vaccinated person is still human.
The case was a landmark legal dispute that led to the ruling that isolated human genes could not be patented because they were naturally occurring products, not inventions.
The claim was also debunked by AP News in 2021 and USA Today in 2023.
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We took keyframes from the video circulating on social media and ran them through a reverse image search. This led us to a longer version of the video that was posted on the video-sharing site Rumble in 2023.
Here the speaker is identified as Elana Freeland, speaking on 26 April 2022. The clip circulating on social media is taken from the sixth minute of the longer version, in which Freeland reads the claim from a piece of paper.
The post also says: "All vaccinated persons are no more humans according to UN." We searched the UN's website for such a statement and came up empty.
Similar posts making the claim can be found here, here, here and here.
