Snopes staff members combed our 2021 archives to select fact checks or news stories that stood out to them — whether because they required robust reporting or were simply bizarre.
We grouped the selections by category, ranging from pieces that debunked scaremongering rumors about COVID vaccines to ones with "true" ratings that even surprised us.
This page shows the former: our staff's selection of pieces that exclusively addressed dubious claims about vaccinations in 2021 (in no particular order). All of our picks are listed by category here.
[Also, here are Snopes news stories that attracted the most web traffic in 2021, and here's a list of the year's most popular fact checks.]
Do COVID-19 Vaccines Make You Infertile?
False. We unpacked claims of impotency, placenta issues, and swollen testicles supposedly due to the inoculations.
Does This Chart Show When COVID-19 Variants Will Be ‘Released’?
False. If credible scientists faced an uphill challenge to try to predict COVID-19 mutations, it was unlikely this unsourced meme did it first.
What the ‘Choosing Your COVID-19 Vaccine’ Meme Gets Wrong
Does Ivermectin Cause Sterility in Men?
Unproven. One study purportedly found that 85% of men who were given the anti-parasitic were sterile following the research period.