FALSE stories that vaccines are responsible for creating the new SARS-CoV-2 variants began rapidly spreading online after French virologist Luc Montagnier was reported to have made the claim in a recent interview for a documentary called “Hold-Up.”
In a video clip of the interview circulating on sites like Facebook, Mont-agnier claims that the novel coronavirus does not die when faced with the antibodies that are produced by the vaccines. Instead, it finds “another solution,” and that solution is the variants.
Montagnier, who co-won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for identifying HIV, expanded on his claim further, saying, “You see it in each country; it’s the same: The curve of vaccinations is followed by the curve of deaths.”
However, other medical experts say Montagnier is wrong and that the science shows the opposite to be true.
How we know claims that vaccines cause SARS-CoV-2 variants are false
Peter Stoilov, PhD, an associate professor of biochemistry who is leading the SARS-CoV-2 variant sequencing efforts in West Virginia, described Montagnier’s argument as “completely bonkers.”
“The fact on which he bases his argument is that mutations can change epitopes that the immune system has learned from the vaccination, and this gives some selective advantage to the virus. Consequently, in his mind, this would ‘create’ new, more dangerous variants,” he said.
However, Stoilov pointed out that “selection does not cause new variants to emerge; it merely selects some of them.”
“Mutations and variants occur randomly and independently of vaccination or any other selection process. In fact, they may precede selection by years or millennia,” Stoilov said.
He further explained that the mutations defining the current SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern emerged before vaccines were created or became widely available.
He added that they emerged in multiple independent unvaccinated individuals from across the globe, and they continue to reoccur randomly in unrelated lineages of the virus.
Stoilov said it’s a well-established fact that selection does not cause mutations.
