“The shots contain scary and/or satanic ingredients.”
A long-time trope of the anti-vaccination movement is to highlight scary-sounding ingredients in vaccines while implying or outright lying about their potential to cause harm. The same has now happened with the covid-19 vaccines. For instance, antivaxxers have been claiming that SM-102—a lipid used to keep the mRNA in the Moderna vaccine stable enough for delivery—isn’t meant for human use, often by pointing to a misleading warning about a different version of SM-102 that’s mixed with chloroform instead.
Sometimes, denialists will even make up hidden vaccine ingredients, as Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson did when she spread the claim that the vaccines contained luciferase, all but arguing that they were Satan incarnate. None of the vaccines have luciferase, nor is the enzyme particularly demonic. It acts as a bioluminescent tracker in medicine and was used early on in the development of the Moderna vaccine, but it’s also naturally found in fireflies and other animals, giving them their characteristic glow. The “lucifer” in the name alludes to the latin term for “light bearer,” which was only later adapted as the name attributed to the fallen angel said to have become the devil in Christianity.
