Fact-checking false claim that vaccinated people are more likely to catch omicron variant

A recent study from Denmark on the Pfizer and Moderna two-dose vaccines showed a sharp and quick decline in their effectiveness against the omicron variant of COVID-19. But some social media posts and articles are misrepresenting what the study shows, its authors said. An Instagram post by Teens Against Mandates shows a headline that reads "Yale study: Vaccinated people more likely to be infected than those without the jab" This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The poster links in the comments to an article in the Rogue Review. That article links to a study posted on medRxiv.org, a site that allows users to post preprints of unpublished manuscripts that have not been peer reviewed.

The headline calling it a "Yale study" is not correct. MedRxiv was founded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Yale University and BMJ, a medical research site for health care providers. The site states that "no endorsement of a manuscript’s methods, assumptions, conclusions, or scientific quality" is implied by the laboratory, Yale or BMJ. The study was conducted by researchers on the Infectious Disease Preparedness Group at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, which states on its website that it’s "responsible for the Danish preparedness against infectious diseases." The headline also misrepresents the study’s findings. Nowhere does it suggest that vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than unvaccinated people. "Interpretation that our research is evidence of anything but a protective vaccine effect is misrepresentative," Astrid Blicher Schelde, one of the study’s authors wrote in an email to PolitiFact.