Has Melania Trump banned White House staff from taking flu shot? Fact Check

Claims that First Lady Melania Trump has banned White House staff from taking the flu shot come from a notoriously unreliable site that constantly publishes spoof news.

The claims comes from the website YourNewsWire.com, a site that deals almost exclusively in spoof news or baseless conspiracy theories. It has published several nonsense stories recently regarding the flu vaccination. The article reads in part –

First Lady Melania Trump has banned White House staff from receiving the flu shot after learning of the adverse health effects associated with the controversial vaccine, according to reports.
While public debate rages about the safety of this season’s flu shot, Melania Trump says that as far as she is concerned, she won’t have people endangering her son with their “dangerous” flu shot diseases.
“I will not allow incubators of dangerous viruses to come anywhere near my son,” the First Lady said.

The article is completely false. While it is difficult to determine whether the website YouNewsWire.com actually takes an anti-vaccination stance, what is clear is that the stories it publishes attacking the flu shot are blatantly faked.

Of course if Melania Trump had actually tried to ban White House staff from taking the flu shot (of course in reality she would not have that authority) then this is something that would naturally be headline news across the world. Alas, the only article purporting the nonsense derives from this spoof news website.

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The only grain of truth in the article is that the flu shot has been particularly ineffective this year, against an unusually robust and diverse flu strain that has infected thousands of people in the UK, Australia, United States and elsewhere. Many experts to predict that the flu shot is only around 10% effective during the 2017/2018 flu season.

Of course this doesn’t mean the shot is dangerous, or that Melania Trump has banned (or tried to ban) anyone from taking it.

The story is fake and should not be shared.