In an interview with Joe Rogan, MMA fighter Israel Adesanya claims that vaccine mandates were driven by profit, while serious side effects and increased deaths are being ignored or covered up by the government and companies to avoid admitting their mistakes.

The conspiracy, according to Rogan Adesanya, consists of several points. The first claim is that vaccine campaigns were only about making money and profit. However, the development and distribution of COVID vaccines were actually part of a worldwide effort to solve a public health crisis. Governments, international organizations, and drug companies worked together to speed up vaccine production. Many vaccines were created with a lot of government funding to make sure they were made quickly and available to everyone.

If we are talking about money, COVID vaccination saved us money. The U.S. campaign alone was estimated to have saved $1.15 trillion by preventing over 3.2 million deaths and 18.5 million hospitalizations through November 2022. This massive financial benefit came from reducing healthcare costs, avoiding losses in productivity, and other societal costs tied to hospitalizations and deaths. Those cost savings benefitted every American.

They also claim that serious vaccine side effects and deaths are ignored or overlooked. Except after a vaccine is approved and widely used, it is continuously monitored for safety. Health agencies like the CDC and the FDA have vaccine safety systems in place, like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), to track any reported side effects. If a potential problem is detected, these agencies investigate it thoroughly. Some vaccines have been associated with very rare side effects (e.g., thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome), but these risks are extremely low compared to the benefits of vaccination.

Defrocked radiologist William Makis highlights a German study to claim children ages 5-11 who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine have a higher risk of cancer due to immune system damage, with no benefit from the vaccine.

These claims get several things wrong about the German study:

First, the study doesn’t mention the words cancer or damage, let alone immune system damage, even once. and Makis himself doesn’t offer up any evidence in support of his claims. The study notes that IgG4 antibodies increased over time, but there is no link made between these antibodies and any negative impact.

Makis claims that high levels of IgG4 are linked to a higher risk of cancer and damage to the immune system, but there aren’t any studies that prove this. While scientific understanding of IgG4 immune cells is still evolving, this paper looked at the issue of IgG4 and offered that they make up only a small part of the antibodies that target the COVID spike protein after vaccination. The paper concluded that, overall, these antibodies are unlikely to weaken the immunity of vaccinated people.

The claim that the paper concludes the vaccine was a failure is inaccurate. In fact, the paper pointed out that vaccinated children who came down with COVID had no or only mild symptoms by the time of study follow-up, suggesting that the vaccine did work.

We already know that the COVID vaccine doesn’t offer 100% immunity but can reduce the risk of long COVID and reduce symptoms and mortality if people catch COVID.  We would call Makis’ take on this disinformation since he purposely skews and distorts the real findings of the study.

Read more of our posts debunking claims about COVID vaccines and cancer.

A new video claims that live vaccines, like mpox vaccines, can cause serious harm through shedding, including death, and that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines also cause shedding, warning parents to be cautious about vaccines approved for kids.

These claims rely on package insert data rather than the many tests showing the vaccines are beneficial. Vaccine inserts are legal documents, not medical or research documents.

Some specific vaccines, such as the mpox vaccine, use live but weakened viruses that usually do not cause illness. These can also shed in very specific ways and usually don’t cause illness in people with functioning immune systems. COVID vaccines, however, aren’t live vaccines and do not shed, as there is no virus to shed.

The mpox vaccine is necessary in places where we see outbreaks. Since 2022, mpox outbreaks have caused over 40,000 cases and 1,500 deaths across 15 countries in Africa. In 2024 alone, there have been over 17,000 cases and 500 deaths, which is a big increase compared to last year. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has the most cases and deaths, with 96% of all the cases happening there.

Live vaccines used in the U.S. are also necessary. Eliminating chickenpox and measles vaccinations in the U.S. would have serious public health consequences.

Before the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine in 1995, the U.S. saw more than 4 million cases of chickenpox annually, leading to approximately 10,500 to 13,500 hospitalizations and 100 to 150 deaths, half of them in children. If vaccination were stopped, these numbers could return, resulting in a resurgence of severe illness and deaths. The vaccine program has reduced cases by 97% and prevented about 100 deaths yearly. In addition, it has saved the U.S. $23 billion in healthcare costs by reducing hospitalizations and lost workdays for caregivers.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses, with each infected person able to spread it to up to 18 others in an unvaccinated population. Before the vaccine became widely available in 1963, around 3 to 4 million people in the U.S. contracted measles annually, leading to 500 deaths, thousands of cases of encephalitis (brain swelling), and serious complications like pneumonia. Today, measles outbreaks occur primarily among unvaccinated people, and eliminating the vaccine would likely result in large outbreaks, particularly among children. Even with modern healthcare, the CDC estimates that 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who contract measles will die from complications.