Việt Kiểm Tin
Claim: Renewable energy was responsible for the recent Texas blackouts, which left more than 4 million Texans without power.
Rating: This claim is FALSE. Texas energy generation is dominated by natural gases. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), who runs the Texas power grid, 88% of the energy outage came from natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities.
Claim: Many Vietnamese Americans believe that the development of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were rushed and are therefore, not safe.
Rating: This claim is FALSE. Developing and testing a new vaccine usually takes years. But the COVID-19 vaccines, from manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, took only 10 months to develop. That is because it’s a new type of vaccine made from messenger RNA (mRNA). It does not contain any live viruses, which makes it faster to develop. Research into mRNA vaccines have been ongoing since 1976, so the COVID-19 vaccines were the results of many years of research.
This year, many of us are unable to go home and gather with our loved ones, making this Tết more melancholy than years past.
Claim: The King Radio, a right-wing Vietnamese YouTube Channel has repeatedly claimed that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration have ties to China, and that China rigged the 2020 Election for Biden.
Rating: Those claims are FALSE. There is no evidence from government officials that China interfered in the 2020 Election. There is also no evidence that anyone in Biden’s administration has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, not Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines nor Secret Service Agent David Cho, who is Korean-American.
What can you do to fight misinformation? You can flag content so that YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook know to remove them. These platforms have a team dedicated to identifying and taking down misinformation or incitement towards violence, but they can always use more eyes.
Claim: Many Vietnamese Americans believe that you can get COVID-19 from the COVID-19 vaccines.
Rating: This claim is FALSE. The COVID-19 vaccine, by the manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, does not contain any live COVID-19 viruses. The COVID-19 vaccine is a type of vaccine called an mRNA vaccine. After getting vaccinated, an mRNA will enter our body and give our cells instructions to make the Covid-19 spike proteins. Then our immune system takes action by learning to fight off these proteins and produce the necessary antibodies. When our body encounters the real COVID-19 virus, our body can take action quickly, with the ready-made antibodies, to prevent the virus from spreading and making us sick.