No evidence of exponential increase in ‘AIDS-associated diseases and cancers’ after COVID-19 vaccine

PolitiFact has repeatedly debunked claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause HIV and AIDS. But the rumor persists, with online posts now claiming a spike in cases since the vaccines were rolled out in late 2020. 

"AIDS-associated diseases and cancers have increased by 338x since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, according to the CDC and foreign government bodies," a May 22 Instagram post said.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The "338x" figure referenced in the post appeared to have originated from a May 11 blog post from "The Expose," a website that has spread COVID-19 misinformation. The blog posted an identical article in October 2022 with the same figures but with a slightly different headline. 

In its first paragraph, the blog post claims that "official data made available by the U.S. Government and Centers for Disease Control strongly suggests that fully vaccinated Americans may be developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or a similar disease that is decimating the innate immune system." 

That is inaccurate, according to the CDC. 

"To date, CDC has not detected any unusual or unexpected patterns for HIV or AIDS-associated diseases and cancers following immunization that would indicate that COVID vaccines are causing or contributing to these conditions," the agency’s immunization safety office told PolitiFact in an emailed statement. 

The agency also says on its website that there is no association between COVID-19 vaccines and a person’s risk for HIV infection. And medical experts again told us that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause HIV or AIDS. 

The blog’s figures, which it calls "official," are from the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System, or VAERS, and an equivalent system called Yellow Card in the United Kingdom.

VAERS, which is overseen by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is designed as an open system so that any person can report an adverse event that occurs after a vaccination, and anyone can scour the reports. The database helps researchers collect data on vaccine after-effects and to detect patterns that may warrant a closer look. 

But the reports are not verified, and incomplete data from the reports is often used in conjunction with false claims about vaccine safety — such as this one. The CDC cautions that VAERS results alone do not determine whether a vaccine is the cause of a particular adverse event or health problem.

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"I have heard of no such increase (or any notable increase at all) in AIDS, AIDS-associated diseases, or cancers in recent times," said Mel Symeonides, a faculty scientist at the University of Vermont, who studies cell-to-cell transmission of HIV, "I know of no evidence or reasonable suggestion that vaccines of any kind can cause anything like that." 

AIDS, which stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, is caused by human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. The COVID-19 vaccines do not introduce HIV into the body or cause AIDS. 

"These claims are false and the assertions are not backed by any reference to official reports or announcements from CDC or public health authorities from other nations," said Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease expert and professor specializing in HIV research at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "There is no scientific basis for any vaccine-mediated effect that would increase the risk of these conditions in people with advanced HIV or other immunocompromising diseases."

In fact, the vaccines have protected many people with HIV from becoming ill with COVID-19 and from developing long COVID, he said. 

A recent rebound in HIV positive test rates, after pandemic-related declines, "can make it look like there has been a dramatic increase in new HIV diagnoses but this is ignoring the steep drop in testing early in the pandemic," Wohl said.

Globally, the number of new HIV infections dropped 3.6% between 2020 and 2021, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS. The decline from 2020 to 2021 represented the smallest annual decline in infections since 2016, and prompted the organization to call on world leaders to get efforts to combat the epidemic back on track. But this pandemic-related slowdown mirrored similar declines in general health care, Wohl said.

"People put off cancer screenings and an increase in new diagnoses of all screened cancers can be expected now that mammograms, PAP smears, and colonoscopies are being done again," he said.

An Instagram post claims the CDC said there’s been a "338x" increase in "AIDS-associated diseases and cancers" since the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out.

The CDC made no such statement and said it has not detected any unusual or unexpected patterns for HIV or AIDS-associated diseases and cancers following COVID-19 immunization.

There is no association between the COVID-19 vaccines and a person’s risk for HIV infection, medical experts said.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Federal VAERS database is a critical tool for researchers, but a breeding ground for misinformation