No, athletes are not 'dropping dead on the field' because of covid vaccines Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for many months has spouted dubious claims about coronavirus vaccines. He caught our attention with the comment that "we've heard story after story. I mean, all these athletes dropping dead on the field, but we're supposed to ignore that." His staff claimed that Johnson is just asking questions, not making factual claims. But when we looked into his sources of information, we uncovered a trail of misinformation that started with mysterious Austrian websites with ties to that country's far-right populist party, the Freedom Party. Those stories were then recycled by right-wing media in the United States and eventually came out of the mouth of a U.S. senator. As is often the case, a kernel of truth — some people have reported an inflammation of the heart muscle known as myocarditis after taking mRNA-based vaccines — has been exploited by purveyors of falsehoods. Medical research shows the risk of getting myocarditis from the coronavirus itself is about 100 times higher than getting it from a vaccine. This depressing saga shows how "just asking questions" is used as a get-out-of-jail card for those peddling falsehoods about the coronavirus vaccines. Any vaccine carries some risk, but these lists of athletes, often assembled by anonymous individuals with no apparent medical credentials, are sketchy and anecdotal; there is no baseline comparison that would put these figures in context. We gave this claim Four Pinocchios. Please click the link to read our comprehensive report. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Claims of 'ghost flights' of 'illegal immigrants' don't add up Ghost flights! Secret flights with "underage migrants" in the dead of night! Buses packed with adult "illegal aliens!" If you are not a regular watcher of Fox News or a reader of the New York Post, Breitbart or the Daily Mail, you might be puzzled by the references above. There's been virtually no coverage of this supposed news by mainstream media outlets. But there's been a constant drumbeat of concern in right-wing media, highlighted often by GOP candidates running for governor in Pennsylvania and New York. So one of our colleagues suggested we try to figure out what's going on. The implication in some of the news coverage is that the Biden administration is quietly dumping undocumented immigrants into various states away from the border. But that's wrong. Many of these flights are managed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which under the law must quickly place unaccompanied children with relatives or a sponsor. As far as we can tell, little new or different is going on under Biden than under the Trump administration, though the pace of such flights may have increased because of the surge of migrants at the border. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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