COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of death from COVID-19. Social media posts have misused survey data and adverse event reports to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more people than COVID-19. But serious adverse events caused by vaccination, in addition to death, are rare.
No vaccine or medical product is 100 percent safe, but the vaccine’s protection is ensured by rigorous testing in clinical trials prior to authorization or approval, followed by ongoing monitoring of protection once the vaccine is released to the public for potential rare side effects. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration inspects vaccine production facilities and reviews production protocols to ensure that vaccine doses are of the highest quality and free of contaminants.
One of the main ways to track vaccine protection is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which is an early precautionary way monitored through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA. As its online page explains, VAERS “is not designed to determine whether a vaccine has caused an adverse event, but may identify unusual or unanticipated reporting patterns that may implicate conceivable protection issues that require investigation. ” more depth”.
Anyone can submit a report to VAERS about any fitness issues that arise after a vaccine. There is no review or verification of the report or attempt to determine whether the vaccine was to blame for the problem. This data remains valuable because it allows early warnings to a potential vaccine-like protective factor, which can then be tracked by government scientists.
Another surveillance formula is the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, which uses electronic fitness data from nine US fitness organizations to identify vaccine-related adverse events in near real time.
In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, randomized controlled trials involving tens of thousands of people, which have been reviewed by several expert panels, have found no serious protection considerations and have been shown to outweigh the risks.
The CDC and FDA’s vaccine protection tracking systems, which have expanded to include COVID-19 vaccines and also come with a new smartphone-based reporting tool called v-safe, know only a few very rare adverse events.
For more information, see “How Safe Are the Vaccines?” »
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 1. 1 million Americans have died from COVID-19. According to several studies, COVID-19 vaccines have significantly reduced the threat of severe illness and death, even as more transmissible and immune-evasive variants have led to widespread infections.
At the same time, the vaccines have a strong history of protection and have only been linked to serious adverse events and deaths in rare cases. Studies on mortality after vaccination provide reassurance that COVID-19 vaccination increases a person’s risk of death.
Despite those facts, anti-vaxxers continue to baselessly inflate the prevalence of deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines, while downplaying COVID-19 deaths. More recently, publications have falsely claimed that more people have died from COVID-19 vaccines than from COVID-19.
One article shared the name of an article through an infamous disinformation spreader called People’s Voice, which falsely claimed, “New Study Finds Covid mRNA Shots Killed ‘3. 5 Times More Americans Than the Virus Itself. ‘”Sharing incorrect information about COVID-19 and vaccines.
The article referenced a widely shared Substack post by Steve Kirsch, a former tech entrepreneur whose existing company spreads incorrect information about vaccines online. Kirsch founded this new false claim about COVID-19 vaccine deaths in a survey shared on his Substack, in which he asked readers. how many other people in his extended family, in his opinion, had died from COVID-19 vaccines, and that’s with the number of readers who said they had died from COVID-19.
A self-selected survey of readers of a trade publication is irrelevant to assess the safety of vaccines. It’s not even an adequate method for measuring public opinion, according to the American Association for Public Opinion Research. It only highlights the ideals of other people who saw the survey and were motivated to respond.
“I don’t think we can assign any validity to the survey itself,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told us.
He said the survey is not a population-based survey, it does not reflect the perceptions of the general population. What’s more, he added, respondents “can say whatever they want” without wanting to check whether their claims are accurate.
“This is obviously erroneous and misleading and in no way reflects reality,” Schaffner said of Kirsch’s claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause more deaths than COVID-19.
“Kirsch’s survey has many limitations and flaws that prevent it from providing a real-world snapshot of actual death rates in the U. S. “It’s like COVID-19 or vaccines,” Jeffrey S. told us. Morris, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, in an email. It’s not a valid clinical test at all. “
Morris, who in the past blogged about Kirsch’s false claims about vaccine deaths, also noted that there is no confirmation of the deaths reported in the most recent research, nor whether they are related to vaccination or to COVID-19, “not even whether the Americans they refer to were actually vaccinated or not, or inflamed or not.
Another widely shared social media post from a supplement corporation related to Dr. Peter McCullough also made a false claim about vaccine deaths. “The C S ? directly killed more Americans than the C?? itself,” said the publication, which also promoted an unproven investigation. and “detox protocol” for vaccinated people. McCullough has a long history of spreading incorrect health information.
In his post, McCullough falsely claimed that COVID-19 deaths were “highly inflated,” while misusing data from the vaccine’s adverse event reporting formula to particularly inflate COVID-19 vaccine deaths. VAERS, developed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, is an early precautionary formula used to identify potential vaccine protection issues. It encourages unverified reporting of any fitness disorder that occurs after vaccination, regardless of whether or not the cause is known. McCullough’s claims about VAERS stick to unusual patterns of deception and add inappropriately by assuming the deaths are caused by vaccines and making exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims about underreporting.
“He misunderstands and uses VAER in a lot of tactics that I’ve noticed through him and others,” including Kirsch, Morris said.
In addition, Kirsch and McCullough’s conclusions are inconsistent with other available evidence about vaccine safety. “Deaths caused directly by a COVID vaccine are incredibly rare,” Schaffner said.
We reached out to Kirsch and McCullough with questions and got no response.
Morris said Kirsch’s survey only shows “the ideals and perceptions of his employees,” noting that it’s no surprise that “the survey responds to the narrative he’s been advocating since the early summer of 2021. “
Kirsch posted a link to his “reader” or “subscriber” survey in his October 24 Substack newsletter, asking “EVERYONE of this” to respond. Kirsch launched his newsletter two years ago and has been exposing readers to false or unsubstantiated claims about deaths from COVID-19 vaccines ever since.
Before moving on to questions about deaths, readers were asked, “When did you first realize that vaccines were unsafe?”According to survey responses released through Kirsch, only nine other people among more than 10,000 respondents chose the option: “I still think the vaccines are safe. “
“This is a very determined subset with specific perspectives on Covid and the vaccines that lead them to stick to them, whose attitudes and ideals are no doubt influenced by their myriad claims beyond Covid vaccine deaths (many of which have been explicitly debunked). ),” Morris said.
According to his Substack article, Kirsch based his false claim that vaccines caused more deaths than COVID-19 on the first 9,620 reactions to the survey. He counted 804 observed deaths in reaction to the question: “How many other people in your EXTENDED circle of family members have DIED from the COVID virus? Then they let other people speculate and ask, “How many other people in your EXTENDED circle of family members do you think have DIED from the COVID vaccine?” In response to this question, others reported 2,830 deaths, approximately 3. 5 times as many deaths as attributed to COVID-19.
There is no explanation as to why those death counts are accurate. “There’s no documentation,” Schaffner said.
Some other people provided notes explaining their answers or expressing concerns about vaccines. Many other people have shared private stories of other people who were in poor health and died at different times after vaccination, but that doesn’t mean vaccination is to blame.
“Some other people who were vaccinated on Monday will die on Thursday, but that doesn’t mean Monday’s vaccine caused Thursday’s death,” Schaffner said. More studies are wanted “to distinguish between causality,” she said.
Schaffner also noted that older adults have been vaccinated against COVID-19, who are also at higher risk of dying from unrelated causes. Kirsch did not systematically collect data on the age of other people who would have possibly died from COVID. 19 vaccines.
Some respondents offered other conceivable explanations for the deaths of their family members, adding remdesivir (presumably administered for COVID-19) or fentanyl overdoses, but attributed those deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine. And some respondents said unvaccinated household members have died or been injured by vaccines due to “shedding,” a theory that is not supported by any evidence and lacks a credible mechanism.
Kirsch invited fact-checkers to investigate the deaths of members of his family of readers, but he himself has avoided calling the more than 10,000 readers and searching the medical and death records of his most distant relatives. He corroborated his claims with an anecdote about a guy who said 15 of his friends had “died suddenly” after being vaccinated.
The CDC and FDA have programs to track vaccine protection, and percentage researchers update vaccine protection based on knowledge of those systems and other sources.
It is clear that vaccines have not caused mass deaths, contrary to what Kirsch and McCullough claim. “The totality of the evidence suggests that there is no increase in the threat of death after covid vaccination, and that there is a decrease,” Morris said.
“People who receive the COVID-19 vaccine are less likely to die from COVID-19 and its headaches and are not at increased risk of death from non-COVID reasons than unvaccinated people,” the CDC website says. “CDC scientists and partners have conducted detailed testing of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination and made the data available to physical care providers and the public.
One such surveillance formula, Vaccine Safety Datalink, combines electronic fitness insights from physical care organizations in the United States. Researchers use this formula to track adverse events such as vaccination and have not detected adverse events that could lead to large numbers of deaths. McCullough and Kirsch describe it.
Analyses of deaths after vaccination do not imply an increased risk of death. For example, a study that used VOD data on vaccinated or unvaccinated people during the initial COVID-19 vaccine rollout, through June 2021, found that people who received the vaccines had a lower death rate through August 2021 from similar causes unrelated to COVID-19 than those who have not been vaccinated.
The study authors wrote that they did not believe that the significant threat relief they discovered could also be entirely due to “any genuine protective effect” of COVID-19 vaccines against non-COVID-19 deaths. They noted that other people who do think they are about to die may be less likely to get vaccinated, which can also influence the results.
However, the findings are inconsistent with claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause mass deaths. “Against the backdrop of widespread rumors on social media that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, it is reassuring that we have found no evidence of a correlation between COVID-19 vaccination and increased mortality,” the researchers wrote.
Another system, misleadingly used by anti-vaccine groups, is VAERS. Anyone can submit an unverified report of a death or other medical condition to VAERS. It is also necessary for physical care providers to record VAERS reports on deaths after vaccination, “even if it is unclear whether the vaccine is the cause,” the CDC explains on its website.
“It’s like a giant vacuum cleaner,” Schaffner said of VAERS, explaining that it collects “everything that happens after vaccination,” or even reports of events that happened before vaccination. “In VAERS you can’t just count things and draw conclusions. ” “You have to continue your education,” she said.
The CDC and FDA review and investigate reports of adverse events and take action if necessary. For example, as we wrote previously, the FDA halted use of the Johnson vaccine.
VAERS data does not imply an increased risk of death after COVID-19 vaccination. For example, a study of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination reported to VAERS through November 2021 found that the rate of reported deaths is lower than the overall expected mortality rate. population. “These effects do not recommend a combination between vaccination and increased overall mortality,” the authors write.
But anti-vaxxers mistakenly link all VAERS death reports to vaccines. The Instagram post quoting McCullough, for example, said there had been “18,000 deaths from VAERS” and then multiplied that figure using an “underreporting factor” to falsely claim that there have been more than a portion of a million COVID-19 vaccine deaths in the U. S. U. S.
The CDC said there were about 18,000 initial reports of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination in December 2022, according to an earlier Associated Press article. But the social media post did not specify that this data is unverified and that VAERS deaths are not necessarily causally linked to vaccination.
In fact, other people can be expected to die because of the possibility after vaccination. “For example, in the U. S. , if there are 2. 8 million deaths a year, that means > 7,500 a day and 50,000 a week,” Morris said. , if vaccines were given to each and every U. S. resident. If the U. S. Department of Homeland Security were to be vaccinated at a random time and all events that occurred within a week of vaccination were reported to VAER, we would expect >7,500 deaths to be reported to VAERS within one day of vaccination and 50,000 within a week. Therefore, it is not unexpected to see many reports of deaths among VARs, even though vaccines have not contributed to any of them.
McCullough then multiplied the number of initial death reports by an “underreporting factor” of 30. As we have written previously, claiming that underreporting is a common hoax similar to VAERS, and ad hoc estimates of an “underreporting factor” are scientifically flawed. The underreporting rate is easy to determine, and there will be a single underreporting rate that would apply to all types of adverse events or vaccines.
Morris said severe cases, such as death, are known to be reported to VAERS at a higher rate than other adverse events, for example, and that reporting rates are higher for COVID-19 vaccines compared to other vaccines before the pandemic.
Morris went on to say that the UK’s Office for National Statistics was able to link national medical records to death rates and published the body of knowledge. “These insights obviously show that the death rate was lower, not higher, after vaccination,” he said.
The ONS doesn’t accommodate people’s fitness issues, Morris said, limiting the ability to claim that there’s a causal relationship between the prestige of vaccination and declining death rates. But again, knowledge contradicts claims that a giant number of deaths are due to vaccines.
Individual studies from other sources of knowledge, such as nursing home resident registries in the United States and national registries in the Netherlands, have also not found an increased threat of death after COVID-19 vaccination.
“None of these regulations rule out the option that there were vaccine-related deaths,” Morris said, giving the example of the very small number of deaths causally related to the Johnson vaccine.
Editor’s note: SciCheck articles that provide accurate fitness data and correct erroneous fitness data are made imaginable thanks to a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Foundation has no control over FactCheck. org’s editorial decisions, and the perspectives expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.
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