People claiming to have been vaccinated film themselves with magnets on their arms. – TikTok Screenshots / 20 Minute Montage
- Internet users presenting themselves as vaccinated against Covid-19 film themselves with magnets or smartphones affixed to their arm.
- These videos accumulate views on social networks.
- Vaccination, however, has nothing to do with these spectacular gestures … the tips of which we are revealing to you!
“I was sent the video this morning, I did not believe it, and here I am experiencing it myself”, spear a man in a viral video. The experience in question? A smartphone that would be magnetized to his arm because of the Covid-19 vaccination. The man explains that he is 70 years old and warns people who would like to be vaccinated. To keep the phone on his arm, the man does it twice. He does not specify what vaccine he would have received.
This video is the latest in a long series where Internet users claim that vaccination allows them to stick magnets to their arms. It is even a challenge on TikTok.
FAKE OFF
The vaccines against Covid-19 validated in France, those from Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, do not allow any object to be magnetized on an arm. Quite simply because even if they contained an atom of iron, cobalt or nickel, the quantity injected would be infinitesimal, underlines with 20 minutes Hélène Fischer, teacher-researcher at the Jean Lamour Institute, a research unit of the CNRS and the University of Lorraine. However, it takes a certain number of atoms to be able to constitute a magnet. Moreover, “we all have iron ions in our body and we are not magnetic,” she recalls.
In any case, these vaccines do not contain magnetic elements, such as underlined it our American colleagues from Health Feedback. The
composition from each of
these vaccines is
available online
on the site of the European Medicines Agency.
No magnetism, double-sided tape
But is a cell phone magnetic? Hélène Fischer tried the experiment with a small magnet. “When you pass it on the phone, you can clearly see that there are areas where you immediately feel that there is a ‘hook’. ” The reason ? Some parts of the phone are traversed by currents, which creates a magnetic field. There may also be alloy parts that contain iron, cobalt, or nickel.
However, to hold a phone upright on a stand, “you need a much stronger magnet.” A manipulation that the specialist advises against: “This will overwrite all the data because it is stored magnetically. The same goes for a computer.
So how do you explain these videos? Hélène Fischer leans in favor of double-sided adhesive tape.
What about videos where we see Internet users sticking magnets similar to those sold in souvenir shops on the arm? Emily, an internet user who first took part in the challenge as a joke, found the “trick” with the BBC: a little liquid on a magnet and it will stay, for a few moments, on your skin. The scientific explanation is very simple: it is the phenomenon of surface tension that plays a role here, reminds Hélène Fischer.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Internet users associate magnetism and vaccination, observes the researcher: “Magnetism has been a subject of fantasy for millennia. “Its mechanisms are also little taught, even in high school, regrets the specialist.