Did RFK Jr prove that vaccines are all bad?

In an interview with a left-leaning podcaster, Presidential candidate RFK Jr. claimed that despite high vaccination rates, the U.S. had a disproportionately high COVID-19 death rate compared to countries with low vaccination rates and that vaccines are associated with serious side effects and deaths, particularly in young people, with clinical trials insufficiently sized to reflect the risks accurately.

In this interview, RFK Jr. makes many claims. Lets just start with the first few.

He claims that the U.S. has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, which corresponds to one of the highest death rates in the world, none of which is true. The United States is 47th on the list of the percentage of its citizens with at least one vaccine. That’s about 25% of the world’s countries more vaccinated than the US.

The US was also 14th on the list of rates of death from COVID. Many of the countries with very high vaccination rates were some of those with the lowest mortality rates, such as Qatar and Vietnam. While some of the countries with the lowest vaccination rates, like Bulgaria, have some of the highest mortality rates.

He mentions Haiti, which has both a very low vaccination rate and a low mortality rate, but he fails to mention that the average age in Haiti is 23, making it a much younger population than most countries. COVID tends to be much less deadly for those who are younger.

He also says that Pfizer claimed that the vaccine was 100% effective because during clinical trials, there were two COVID deaths in the placebo group and only one in the vaccine group, and that “two is 100% of one.” There are several problems with this statement from RFK Jr. First, his math is off, given that 2 is 200% –not 100%– of 1.

More importantly, the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in December 2020 was clear about the available effectiveness data, specifying that the vaccine was 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease. Neither in the EUA authorization nor the final authorization has it ever been claimed that the vaccine was 100% effective. A 100% effective vaccine would entirely eliminate the possibility of contracting a disease–something no vaccine claims to do.

He appears to be wildly misunderstanding or misinterpreting the research and the evidence in these points.