In December, a Wisconsin man who goes by the username the_alpha_k9 on TikTok uploaded a testimonial-style video to the platform, telling his thousands of followers that he wouldn’t be taking a Covid-19 vaccine. 

“You’re telling me in 40 years of research there is no vaccine for HIV … for cancer, no vaccine ... the common cold, no vaccine,” he said. “Yet in one year we’ve developed a vaccine for COVID-19 and you want me to take that … thanks, but no thanks.”

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has subpoenaed Facebook for records related to the platform’s handling of coronavirus misinformation as part of a previously undisclosed investigation into whether the tech giant is violating consumer protection laws.

What he is demanding: Racine, a Democrat, is calling on Facebook to release by the end of next week an internal study it conducted looking into vaccine hesitancy among its users, as first revealed by news reports in March.

A World Health Organization advisory group has concluded that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine “is suitable for use by people aged 12 years and above,” and is specifically recommending it for children ages 12 to 15 who are at high risk of severe COVID-19. The WHO did not say “stop giving kids the vaxx immediately,” as some have claimed online.

An image shared on Facebook claims Christian Eriksen, a Danish soccer player who collapsed during a match over the weekend, recently received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Verdict: False

Eriksen was not recently vaccinated for COVID-19, according to the director of Inter Milan and a spokesperson for Denmark’s men’s national soccer team.

Fact Check:

Getting vaccinated against the coronavirus makes your body magnetic, one post warned. Another, citing the “World Hoax Organization,” claimed the COVID-19 vaccines have gone through “fuck all tests for safety and effectiveness.” A third suggested Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci tried to “kill everyone with a Plandemic.” Others pushed similarly baseless nonsense.

Lots of people still have questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. What’s in them? Who developed them? Do they have legal liability? Are they effective?

These are some of the questions we came across in a recent Instagram post that lists things "critical thinkers" are asking about the vaccines. It also disparages the reasons why other people have followed public-health advice and gotten vaccinated.

Widely shared social media posts claim that the Pfizer vaccine causes viral shedding that leads to a disruption of menstrual cycles and possible miscarriages. One viral Instagram video, in particular, includes the following caption: “Pfizer document confirms ‘Covid Vaccine Shedding’ leading to ‘Menstrual Cycle Disruption’ and ‘Miscarriage’ is possible via ‘skin-to-skin contact’ and ‘breathing the same air’.”

The rollout of children’s COVID vaccines has begun: On Monday, the FDA approved the Pfizer shot for 12- to 15-year-olds. That’s just the beginning—last week, the New York Times reported that children as young as 2 could be eligible as soon as September. The mass vaccination of children could herald the end of the most catastrophic social costs from the pandemic in the United States: Schools and day care facilities will be able to resume normal operations, which means parents will no longer have to perform the nearly impossible act of juggling simultaneous work demands and child care.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson says so many outrageous things that it’s probably better off to ignore much of it. If I wanted, I could probably write a Carlson item every day.

But this week, Carlson said something so irresponsible that even the normally measured Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN blasted him. This week, Carlson started his primetime show saying, “How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccines?”

For the same reasons that the busiest bodies on the left despise Substack and other platforms for independent content producers — envy of financial success and of more interesting people, fear of the wrong zany ideas (the kind not welcome on the New York Times opinion page or Joy Reid’s cable show) — they now would like to make a villain out of comedian, Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator, and podcasting pioneer Joe Rogan.