Dr. Simone Gold, who made a name for herself rallying against public health measures during the pandemic, is now asserting that children receive too many vaccines, especially in comparison to past years.

There have been many fantastic rebuttals to the “exploding vaccine schedule” claims over the years. Mainly, we are grateful that we can prevent more diseases now than before.

But even these rebuttals gloss over the fact that the vaccination schedule has grown very, very slowly. One vaccine was dropped from the schedule in the 1970s, two were added in the 1980s, two were added in the 1990s, one was added in the 2000s, and two were added in the 2010s. And, of course, the 2020s brought us COVID and RSV vaccines. Over the decades, age recommendation changes were made, and some vaccines were replaced with newer counterparts.

Overall, the vaccine schedule has expanded by 1-2 vaccines per decade since the 1980s. This slow, methodical, scientific advance of immunization recommendations stands in stark contrast to concerns that vaccines are constantly being capriciously added to the schedule.

Besides, who wants to go back to the days when babies died from Hib epiglottis?

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is once again advising Floridians not to get vaccinated against COVID using mRNA vaccines, claiming that they carry risks such as heart problems, autoimmune diseases, reduced effectiveness over time, persistent spike protein levels, possible effects on DNA, and unknown long-term impacts with repeated doses.

Using the office of Surgeon General is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy relying on a person’s position rather than facts. Joseph Ladapo is both a physician and, more importantly, the Florida Surgeon General. On the outside, that should mean that his words lend some credibility to his statements, but his comments are offered without evidence and even against scientific consensus built from actual evidence.

It’s also ironic that Dr. Ladapo questions the evidence provided by CDC and FDA. He was caught manipulating findings in a COVID vaccine safety study to exaggerate risks of cardiac death for young men. In science, it is important to follow the science where it takes us, not to take the science where we want to go.

What of his particular COVID vaccine concerns? 

1. The risks of myocarditis are much lower after vaccination than the risks of myocarditis from COVID itself.
2. The guidance cites a paper as evidence that vaccines cause autoimmune disease, but the authors say “we conclude that mRNA-based vaccinations are not associated with an increased risk of most AI-CTDs”
3. The vaccine protection does wane, which is why boosters are recommended to increase protection against COVID disease.
4. mRNA integration into DNA cannot and does not happen. DNA is the whole of the genetic instructions for the development, functioning, and growth of every system in your body. It is housed in the cell’s nucleus (and in almost every cell in your body) which is surrounded by a nuclear membrane, separating the DNA from the rest of the cellSince DNA is kept separate, messenger RNA (mRNA) is produced to bring individual instructions to the rest of the cell. The mRNA can cross the nuclear membrane through the pores that allow for selective transport into and out of the nucleus. Generally, mRNA can exit but cannot re-enter the nucleus. Before it exits the nucleus, it is essentially given a one-way ticket that allows it through the membrane, and as it passes through, that ticket is removed, so it cannot re-enter the nucleus.The mRNA vaccine does not have a ticket to enter any cell’s nucleus. Without a ticket, it isn’t getting to anyone’s DNA and it certainly isn’t changing it.

This topic comes up a lot. See other false and misleading claims about COVID vaccines and mRNA we have debunked.

A video circulating again features cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough discussing a paper in which he examined autopsies and found that 73.9% of those deaths were due in whole or in part to COVID vaccines.

This paper was initially uploaded as a preprint in the Lancet in July 2023 and subsequently removed because “the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology.”

The authors, who include famed anti-vaxxers William Makis and Peter McCullough, identified 134 studies, of which 44 met their inclusion criterion. Then, three physicians reviewed all the cases and determined that 240 cases (about 74%) were directly or significantly attributed to COVID vaccination.

Their conclusion about the deaths, most of them occurring within one week following vaccination, “were attributable to fatal vaccine injury syndrome,” even though this study was a review of other published studies. One study, from which a majority of the data was taken, concluded that “no relation between the cause of death and vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was found.”

One death that all three physicians said was caused by the vaccine was that of an 83-year-old man who had been diagnosed with COVID 18 days prior to his death. Similarly, a 19-year-old man’s death was attributed to the vaccine he received 6 months prior to his death and not the COVID infection he had 17 days prior to his death. In the days leading up to his death, this young man also had seizures due to suspected multiple sclerosis that was confirmed in his autopsy but not diagnosed.

The study claims that “circulating Spike protein is likely the harmful mechanism through which COVID-19 vaccines cause side effects.” However, it also says the most commonly used COVID-19 vaccine was Sinovax, which is an inactivated virus. This means there was no free circulating Spike protein, unlike mRNA vaccines. What circulates in the body is similar to the COVID virus but inactive and unable to infect cells.

In the end, more than half of the nine authors are affiliated with The Wellness Company, which sells supplements it claims combat vaccine injury. This paper isn’t research; it’s a marketing scheme.