Is it true that more than 10,000 people have died from COVID-19 vaccines in the US?

Information is being spread on social networks that the media are silent about the real danger of vaccination, although the relevant statistics are available. We checked to what extent such conclusions are justified.

Users of social networks give different estimates of the “real” mortality from COVID-19 vaccines, but often their statements boil down to the fact that vaccinations not only do not save against coronavirus, but also pose a danger. For example, in July 2021 on Facebook appeared information about almost 11,000 people who died after the injection in September on VKontakte talked about 13,000. Famous Covid-skeptic and conspiracy theorist, MGIMO professor Valentin Katasonov also in September stated about almost 14,000 deaths due to vaccines.

Most authors of such publications refer to data from VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). She was founded in 1990 in the United States to detect possible problems that vaccine manufacturers missed during clinical trials. The system is jointly administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), both US government agencies.

On the VAERS website it saysthat it "receives and evaluates reports of (possible) side effects following vaccination." Patients can report side effects voluntarily, while health care providers are required to do so in some cases. In turn, vaccine manufacturers must report all their observations in this area to VAERS. At the same time, the website emphasizes that the system serves only to communicate between patients and doctors on the one hand and the CDC and FDA on the other. VAERS does not determine the relationship between a vaccine and an observed health problem, but only forwards reports received to the appropriate authorities.

How report CDC, since December 14, 2020, when in the United States started vaccination, through September 27, 2021, VAERS received 8,164 reports of deaths of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus (this is 0.0021% of the total number of vaccinated people). The agency draws attention to the fact that the FDA obliges doctors to inform VAERS about each such case, even if the death is clearly caused not by a side effect from the vaccine, but by another disease. In other words, these people died after vaccination, but not necessarily because of it.

CDC separately clarifythat modern research, including analysis of documents of deceased vaccinated people and autopsies of their bodies, does not allow establishing a connection between vaccinations and their deaths. Only in the case of the vaccine developed by Janssen, known about a rare side effect - the appearance of blood clots, which led to the death of three patients.

At the end of September 2021, it began to spread "study", the authors of which claimed an even larger scale of the “problem”. According to Jessica Rose and Matthew Crawford, who are members of the initiative group, putting questioning the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, about 150,000 Americans have died due to side effects related to the COVID-19 vaccine. FDA Representatives stated Reuters that these data are incorrect and not supported by statistics: “While under-reporting is a limitation of VAERS, when it comes to monitoring the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, there is currently no evidence to suggest that the system is so under-reporting the number of deaths associated with these vaccines.” Rose and Crawford's findings, as well as similar "study" that appeared two weeks earlier, fact checkers from Reuters evaluate as false.

Thus, at the moment, isolated cases of deaths directly associated with the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine have been confirmed in the United States. The VAERS Adverse Event Surveillance System has received about 8,000 reports of deaths after vaccination, but there is no evidence that the vaccine was the cause of death in patients.

Mostly not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. About VAERS
2. CDC. Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination
3. Reuters. Fact Check-VAERS data does not suggest COVID-19 vaccines killed 150,000 people, as analysis claims
4. Reuters. Fact Check-COVID-19 vaccines do not kill more people than they save; FDA experts did not make this false claim