The Claim:
Twitter is a-twitter with claims that COVID vaccines cause serious adverse events at a rate of 1 in 800 and increase your risk of death.
The Facts:
The British cardiologist makes these claims by citing a paper authored by
The paper claims that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines lead to an excess risk of serious adverse events. But Table 2 of the paper shows that in almost every category for both risk difference and risk ratio, the confidence interval was 0, essentially stating that statistically, “no difference was observed.” Multiple peer-reviewed studies have shown that serious adverse events from the COVID vaccine are rare, and the benefits of vaccination outweigh its risks.
While wildly overstating the number of serious adverse events from the COVID vaccine, the cardiologist also falsely conflates the COVID vaccine with the 1976 swine flu and RotaShield vaccines and their withdrawal from the market. The decision to withdraw these vaccines was not exclusively based on adverse events.
These decisions also weigh vaccine benefits versus risks. In the two cases of withdrawn vaccines, the vaccine’s benefits did not outweigh the risks. Conversely, the life-saving benefits of the COVID vaccine vastly outweigh the rare risks of an adverse event.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved since this was originally posted. Browse the latest information posted in Just the Facts Topics.
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