A new video and blog post claim that routine childhood vaccines have very few benefits.

The blog post has too much information to debunk all of it, which is a poor faith rhetorical device known as the Gish Gallop. So we’ll take a couple and address those.

First, under the heading “Disease Risk,” they claim that “very few of the diseases in [the childhood schedule] have both a significant likelihood that you will get them and a significant likelihood that they will develop into a severe condition. Many of the diseases believed to fall into this category are no longer an issue in the United States (e.g., polio or smallpox).”

Of course, smallpox was eradicated and polio was eliminated because of vaccines. But that doesn’t mean that diseases that we have forgotten cannot crop up, as recent measles outbreaks and even polio in the U.S. prove.

It also claims that “childhood infections are often critical for helping the immune system develop,” which is untrue. Some diseases, such as influenza and mononucleosis, can weaken your immune system, and measles can cause immune amnesia. Additionally, vaccines work by stimulating your immune system, much like pathogens do, but without causing illness.

Another claim is that vaccine makers cut corners to save money because they aren’t liable for their products. This claim is a misunderstanding of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which protects vaccine makers from being sued if a vaccine causes injuries or death as long as the side effects are unavoidable *and the vaccine is made and labeled correctly.” People could still sue vaccine makers for injuries that happen because of cut corners.

It’s important to remember that we protect children against these illnesses because they are terrible, and children deserve protection. Just as this recent article about what it is like to survive a measles infection shows us.

Learn more about common social media debate tactics like the Gish Gallop in our Family Advocacy toolkit and get the facts on childhood vaccines in the Vaccines section of our website.

A video with Steve Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse, touts a new study, saying it claims that people vaccinated with two or more doses of COVID vaccines are 37% more likely to die from any cause.

In any study, we need to look at how the study was done and its limitations, not just the results. The methods and limitations help us understand how well the results apply to the general population.

The study does not say, as claimed, that people vaccinated against COVID have a 37% higher chance of dying from any cause. Instead, it looks at how many people died from any cause in groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated people while trying to correct for certain biases that can affect the results.

The study tries to fix a common mistake in other studies called immortal time bias, which can make it look like vaccinated people are less likely to die just because of the way the study is set up. They did this by making sure they compared people fairly from the same starting point. The problem with this setup is that confounding factors were not considered, such as age, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer. In the sample, the youngest people were in the one-dose group, while the age increased with each subsequent dose. The rates of COVID infection increased as the number of doses increased because older people are at more risk for infection.

Also, COVID-related deaths were not considered.

One conclusion from the paper was that vaccinated people with at least one other health condition have a higher risk of dying from any cause compared to vaccinated people without other health conditions. The video misrepresents the study by making claims outside of the conclusion.

A tweet from a prolific anti-vaccine account claims that no health children have died from COVID, and children who are vaccinated against COVID are 50 times more likely to die.

The tweet is based on statements by Mike Yeadon, an ex-Pfizer employee with previous anti-vaccine claims, who also thinks respiratory viruses do not exist. In 2021, he petitioned European medical regulators to stop COVID vaccine clinical trials, claiming the vaccines could cause infertility in women. That claim has since shown to be false.

Yeadon made the claim that healthy children don’t die and are more likely to die from the vaccine on an episode of Steve Bannon’s internet show. Like his other claims, he provides no evidence to support it. He does mention VAERS, but as we’ve mentioned many times before, VAERS analyzes reports of adverse events that happen after vaccination. Anyone can submit a report to VAERS, and submissions do not mean that a vaccine definitely caused the event.

One doctor famously submitted a report that the flu shot turned him into the Incredible Hulk. VAERS is helpful for keeping track of vaccine safety, but just because something is reported doesn’t mean the vaccine caused it. Even if they’re not sure, doctors should report any important health problems that happen after vaccination.

The claims he makes about vaccine injuries are unsubstantiated because they were lifted without analysis from a database of unverified reports. As for the idea that healthy children do not die from COVID? It is true that children are at a much lower risk compared to older people. However, low risk does not mean no risk. Healthy children can still die from or suffer MIS-C and other complications from COVID.