Some skeptical unvaccinated Americans are refusing life-saving blood transfusions from vaccinated donors.
They fear that the blood from someone who has received a COVID-19 is ‘tainted’ in some way, and could even contain a microchip or ingredients necessary for human cloning, according to a report by Kaiser Health News.
Because of these fears, which are founded on misinformation, some anti-vaxxers are asking physicians to give them blood from an unvaccinated person.
But doctors say this is a request that is often impossible to fulfill because many blood centers do not even keep records of which blood bags are from vaccinated individuals.
With a majority of Americans vaccinated at this point, a majority of the available blood is coming from the vaccinated as well.
Some Americans are turning down life-saving blood infusions using blood from a vaccinated person, fearing the vaccinated blood could place a microchip within them. Pictured: A bag of blood plasma collected from a COVID-19 patient in Seattle
With more than 70 percent of American adults being at least partially vaccinated, a majority of the blood donation centers are receiving is from a vaccinated person. Pictured: A woman in Aberdeen, Maryland, receives a COVID-19 vaccine
A majority of Americans are now vaccinated against COVID-19 with 60 percent of the U.S. population and 72 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
With this, a majority of the blood available is from people who have received the shots.
‘We are definitely aware of patients who have refused blood products from vaccinated donors,’ Dr Julie Katz Karp, director of the blood transfusion program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia, told Kaiser Health News.
‘If for some reason we didn’t want vaccinated people to donate blood, we’d be in a real problem, wouldn’t we? Please believe us when we tell you it’s fine.’
Baseless claims about COVID-19 vaccines being able to alter a persons DNA or containing microchips have often circulated social media in the months since the vaccine became available.
While claims are often easily dismissed by many, both are believed by around ten percent of Americans, a recent study found.
Around 20 percent of Americans believe at least one piece of misinformation about the vaccines, the same study found.
The idea that the vaccine itself is contagious, just like the virus, has also circulated in recent months.
Baseless claims that proteins can shed protein molecules from a vaccinated person to an unvaccinated person – effectively infecting the unvaccinated person with vaccination the same way a person can be infected with a virus – also became common on social media.
The Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, Florida, told vaccinated teachers that they will not be allowed to return to the classroom in April fearing that their vaccine could cause infertility in students by mere proximity.
There was also a swell of previously anti-mask Americans suddenly donning the masks, not to protect from the virus but instead the vaccines.
These fears have presented challenges to blood centers, as many Americans who believe these lies decline blood they need to survive.
‘A lot of people think there’s some kind of microchip or they’re going to be cloned,’ Dr Geeta Paranjape, medical director at Carter BloodCare, told Kaiser Health News.
She said that some parents have become worried about their child receiving needed blood transfusions from vaccinated people.
Neither the COVID-19 virus nor the vaccine can be transmitted by blood.
There have been no reported cases of the virus spreading via blood transfusion, and experts consider to risk to be near-zero.
The vaccine also can not spread via blood, as the components of the vaccine are expelled in the process of the vaccine creating antibodies.
Even antibodies within the blood have no effect on a transfusion recipient, providing no additional protection to the virus, even in unvaccinated people.
There are also not many people left without any COVID-19 antibodies in their blood.
The combination of 70 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated, and more than 36 million Americans having contracted the virus at some point, a vast majority of the U.S.are carrying some antibodies at this point.
‘Less than 10 percent of the blood we collect does not have antibodies,’ Dr Michael Busch, director of the Vitalant Research Institute, told Kaiser Health News about the samples his team has studied.
