At a glance
The news that "unvaccinated sperm get 400% price increase in sperm bank" is untrue, and its screenshot comes from the memes made by netizens.
Scientific studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccine does not have a significant negative impact on male fertility, and that infection with COVID-19 will weaken male fertility to some extent.
Event background
Recently, some netizens posted a screenshot of a news website on Twitter, titled "Unvaccinated sperm get 400% price increase in sperm bank". The "report" in the screenshot says, "In an industry dominated by the subjective preferences of female consumers, the price of unvaccinated male sperm is not too high." In the accompanying picture, the staff of a hospital in Hefei City, Anhui Province, uses a microscope to observe sperm samples. The image is signed by Reuters Stringer.
However, the screenshot of the story does not indicate when it was published and author's signature, nor does it have any identification indicating which media platform it was published on.
Mingcha
Where did the claim come from?
Using Google to reverse search for this screenshot of the news, it is known by comparing the time of publication that the image was first published on a platform called iFunny.
iFunny has been reported by several media outlets. In 2019, CNN called it "a community for meme lovers and viral memes around the Internet."
The publisher ID is "@2old2meme". Below the original picture, he also accompanied an emoji in the cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants" in which the crab boss lay on a hill made of money.
Clicking on the homepage of the @2old2meme, you can find that this "big meme" has published a large number of ridiculous and ironic memes.
"CNN 1980-2021, choked to death by his own shit"
"Those third world countries that struggle for fundamental rights are crying at the sight of Americans calling people pronouns"
The picture was subsequently carried by other netizens to platforms such as Twitter and reddit, and was widely discussed.
A Google search for the headline of the report, other than the iFunny post above, did not find any relevant media coverage. However, a closer look at this news screenshot reveals that its "Listen to this article now" button uses the half-cut "Trinity Audio" trademark.
On the official website of Sany Audio, you can find a series of media platforms to cooperate with it. Through comparison and typography and page color, it can be seen that the style of the screenshot of the report is very similar to that of the Jerusalem Post.
Searching for the keyword "sperm" on the Jerusalem Post website, I could only find a report with this head image of a hospital worker in Hefei. However, the article, published on January 31, 2021, has nothing to do with vaccines.
"Due to the low sperm supply, women have created an underground supply network"
It is not difficult to see from the headlines and introductions that the report is about the impact of the new crown epidemic, lockdowns and social distancing initiatives have prevented sperm donors from going to sperm banks to donate, and women staying at home also "provides a good greenhouse for egg freezing". While the report does mention the problem of a shortage of sperm, it does not involve price increases.
In addition, comparing the two reports, it can be found that although the two have similarities, there are also differences in key elements: the screenshots of the online reports lack attribution, publication time and sharing functions.
Comparison of the original report and the screenshots of the webcast
In summary, the screenshot of the report entitled "Unvaccinated sperm get 400% price increase in sperm bank" comes from the memes made by netizens, and the typography style imitates the Jerusalem Post, but the page lacks key information such as signature and time, which is actually a fake news.
Do vaccines affect sperm quality?
The correlation between COVID-19 vaccines and sperm activity is often a cause for reverie.
As early as September this year, there was a rumor circulating on social networks that the price of sperm in unvaccinated men rose 210 times, catching up with Bitcoin.
The so-called "qualified letter" posted by the above netizens indicates the name, age, education, sperm donation time and other information of the so-called donor, and shows that "donation subsidies of 16500 yuan and additional subsidies of 1300 yuan" can be obtained.
However, scanning the QR code below shows that this so-called "sperm donation certificate" is only synthesized by netizens and has a spoof nature.
Chinese fact-checking platform "Evidence Verification" has also previously verified the above claims, and found that the relevant news came from An American satirical website The Sodom Sun, and the sperm bank mentioned in the article is also fictional.
Multiple scientific studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccine does not have a significant negative impact on male fertility.
In June 2021, a team from the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) saying that observational data from 45 healthy men of childbearing age showed no significant decrease in sperm parameters before and after mRNA vaccination.
A joint statement issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) in February 2021 noted that there is no evidence that vaccines cause loss of fertility.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated the notice on Nov. 11, "Recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for people who are trying to conceive or may become pregnant in the future, as well as partners." There is currently no evidence that any vaccine, including the COVID-19 vaccine, causes fertility problems in women or men. ”
Instead, scientific studies have shown that the new crown virus will weaken male fertility to a certain extent.
In March 2021, Iranian scientists published a paper in the journal Reproduction. Based on a semen analysis of 84 male patients of childbearing age at Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran, the paper notes that COVID-19 infection has a negative impact on sperm quality.
In May 2021, Indian scientists published a paper in the Oxford publishing house QJM: An International Journal of Medicine saying that covid-19 can damage male fertility by altering sperm morphology and the integrity of inherited DNA.
In summary, the news that "unvaccinated sperm get 400% price increase in sperm bank" is untrue, and its screenshot comes from the memes made by netizens. Scientific studies have shown that the new crown vaccine does not have a significant negative impact on male fertility, and infection with the new crown will weaken male fertility to a certain extent.