After hearing from residents, Sedgwick County posts: no microchips in COVID vaccines
Sedgwick County wants you to know there are no microchips in the COVID-19 vaccines.
So much so that they felt compelled to post that on Facebook on Tuesday under the heading of “frequently asked questions”:
Q: “Do the COVID-19 vaccines contain a microchip?”
A: “No. The COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any sort of microchip or tracking device. The COVID-19 vaccines contain what your body needs to fight the virus [or to build immunity to the virus] and nothing more.”
So who’s asking frequently?
“We’ve had it asked in community sessions or in presentations,” said county spokeswoman Kate Flavin. “It just comes up in those conversations, in those meetings . . . It’s definitely one of those random questions that people are asking about.”
Dr. Thomas Moore, one of Kansas’ leading specialists on infectious diseases, said nobody’s asked him personally about microchips, but “These days it’s all over social media. Click a button and off it goes to even more people.”
He said he’s not anti-social-media and there’s a lot of good information available on COVID and the coronavirus from reputable sources.
“But it can be used for dissemination of what used to be, you know, crazy people expressing their paranoid delusions to (psychiatric) professionals,” he said. “Now they’re involved in social media and couching it in pseudo-scientific terms so people swallow it whole. It is a testament to the extraordinarily, sadly, depressingly high amount of scientific illiteracy.”
A few commenters on the county’s post tried to divert the discussion to the issue of requiring proof of vaccination for certain activities.
And a few others argued over whether the COVID misinformation came from Q-Anon, a group that believes prominent Democrats are Satanists and pedophiles — or “Blue Anon,” a term right-wing supporters use to deride those who believe reports on things like Russian interference in U.S. elections.
Overall, most people who responded to the county’s post largely agreed with the Moore comment that it was craziness.
One posted a meme of a man at a card table with a sign reading: “You’re not worth microchipping. Change my mind.”
Among the other responses:
“People worried about microchips in vaccine when they carry cell phones, have social media accounts, and use credit and debit cards. Then there is smart TV’s, computers, Siri, Alexa, and Google devices. I’m sure I missed something. I wasn’t worried about the microchip in the vaccine. I figured I was already being tracked. Whoever is tracking me won’t be long. I don’t live that exciting of an existence.”
“What about bigfoot and Roswell? Do we also need to send out notifications that it doesn’t contain Roswell alien DNA or bigfoot DNA? Speaking of Bigfoot...does the vaccine work for him...hmmm.”
“I feel sorry for whoever has to write these posts for the county. Geez.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2021 at 3:44 PM.
