Vaccines can not alter the shape of blood cells

An entry published on Telegraph, a kind of blog created by Telegram in which anybody can make an anonymous post, shares the images of alleged blood samples seen at the microscope to claim that “the blood cells [of vaccinated people] drastically changed in the following days'' after receiving the injection, and that “many strange nanoparticles appear in the blood just after the injection”. This is FALSE. Vaccines do not have the ability to alter the shape of blood cells, nor do they contain nanoparticles other than the lipid pockets in which the messenger RNA in some types of vials.

"The blood cells drastically changed in the days following [the vaccine injection]. […] Countless strange nanoparticles (white specks) appear in the blood right after the injection. Your body will NEVER be able to detoxify itself of this and these nanoparticles will eventually enter into every cell in your body"

The message comes with four photographs, three of which supposedly correspond to blood from people that have been vaccinated against covid-19, and a fourth one in which it is supposed that the person has not yet received the vaccines, analysed in a microscope to try to illustrate how the injections affects the blood cells.

“The images seem to be manipulated, they are not equivalent to those we analysed in the laboratory”, Anna Merino, senior consultant at the Haematology Unit of the CORE Laboratory, an analysis centre that is part of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, told Verificat.

In one of the photographs, the cells in the blood supposedly tested are lumpy and blotchy. The blog post states that they "changed drastically in the days following" the vaccination, but this is actually "blood that has been at room temperature for a while", out of the fridge, the doctor interprets. "A vaccine cannot alter the shape" of red blood cells, she adds. Nor does the Undergraduate Haematology book [page 44] list vaccines as a cause of any of the possible changes in the shape of blood cells described in it. These alterations are mostly the result of diseases, such as various several types of anaemia.

Nanoparticles

About the alleged nanoparticles mentioned in the text, the doctor reiterates that the image illustrating them on the globules has been manipulated: "It is so exaggerated that, in the hypothetical case that what they say is true, you would never see them (nanoparticles) in this quantity. 

To compare with a realistic situation, the doctor mentioned infections, where the germs that cause them reproduce rapidly inside us: "To see a germ in your blood, you have to have sepsis [an extreme response of the body to an infection with a mortality rate of around 30%]," she says. In other words, even in contexts where there is a very widespread and life-threatening infection (very extreme cases) you would not see that amount of particles in the blood. 

Another aspect of the analysis that raises concerns is the presence of so few blood cells: "You can't take a picture showing 7 or 8 red blood cells to make an assessment," she insists, given that there are millions of these cells in the body. The right thing to do is to use "several photos, and in each one of them you have a thousand red blood cells" to properly assess the extent of a pathology.

Lipid capsules for mRNA protection

As we have already explained in a previous verification, the only approved vaccines containing nanoparticles are those of Pfizer and Moderna, which are of the mRNA type. These injections contain the piece of the virus genetic message, very fragile by definition, that codes for the spike protein (or S protein). To protect it during the its travel towards the cell, the mRNA is enveloped with a lipid capsule (a “small fatty ball”), which constitutes the only nanoparticle present in the vaccines, and and which, once inside the cell, fuses with the cell membrane and releases its contents, as detailed by Lluís Montoliu, biotechnologist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC in Spanish), in his blog.

Other expert agencies in disinformation from the International Fact Checking Network such as AFP Factual have already denied this message.