A photo of a microchip, created by engineers at Columbia University, is circulating on social media these days, claiming to be linked to the conspiracy of the microchip placed in vaccines against COVID-19. This microchip, however, is still being tested, is not yet for human use and has no connection to vaccines.
The posts show a photo of a microchip inside the tip of a needle, with captions and comments suggesting a connection to the COVID-19 vaccine. The fake descriptions of these posts read: “Make sure you get your vaccine!!”; “Now you all know why the magnet sticks”; “I will not take any stupid covid-19 vaccine”; and “I heard that if a person has taken the modern vaccine, then there will be a chance that the magnet will remain in the arm where it was injected.”
Post links:
https://www.facebook.com/brandon.cox.5494/posts/10218640604796185
https://www.facebook.com/allen.frioux/posts/247107600521502
https://www.facebook.com/karl.ike.5/posts/4081183398594084
https://www.facebook.com/jeff.mohney/posts/10219684977183004
Some of these posts refer to the “magnet challenge,” where social media users began posting videos claiming to be able to place magnets on the injected hand. By doing so, these people claimed that by sticking the magnet, they were proving that the vaccine contained a microchip. However, such a claim has been debunked by many fact-checkers.
Meanwhile, in the posted photo (Columbia University study), users attempt to distort and misuse the American university study, to treat it as a conspiracy theory, in service of the anti-vaccine cause.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/19/eabf6312
The microchip made by researchers at Columbia Engineering has a total volume of less than 0.1 mm3 and uses ultrasound to measure vital signs (currently only temperature, but the team is working on more options) for diagnostic and therapeutic medical procedures, as explained. here.
"This research has nothing to do with Covid-19 and vaccinations. It's about improving wound healing one day and potentially treating the disease," Holly Evarts, Director of Strategic Communications and Media Relations at Columbia Engineering, told Reuters.
"It has only been tested in rodents, not in humans - human testing won't happen for a while," she added.
Addressing concerns about the chip’s claim that it works with “wireless” technology, Ken Shepard, a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at Columbia University and a researcher on the project (here), told Reuters by email that the device does not use electromagnetics, “a component that is typically used in wireless technology.” Instead, he explained, the chip uses ultrasound, which means “you have to interact with an ultrasound imaging device for the chip to work or communicate.”
https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/faculty/ken-shepard
Analyze:
False. The microchip in the photo was created by researchers at Columbia Engineering to measure vital signs for the treatment and diagnosis of medical conditions and is not related to COVID-19 vaccines. It has not yet been tested in humans, let alone approved for human use.