The tweet displays two pictures of a woman, one before and one a year after she received the COVID vaccine. The tweet does not offer any explanation of diagnosis or symptoms.

By her own admission, the first picture was taken after she spent a day getting ready for a wedding, and you can see she’s wearing makeup, and the photo looks as if it was taken with warm lighting. In contrast, the after picture was taken after a day at the hospital, under cool lighting, and she appears to be without makeup.

Misinformation grows where people are allowed to fill in gaps in stories with their own fears and concerns. It is always our job to fill in these gaps with reminders that we should always approach personal anecdotes with our rational brain, remembering that we never have all the facts in these cases as we would with scientific study.The tweet displays two pictures of a woman, one before and one a year after she received the COVID vaccine. The tweet does not offer any explanation of diagnosis or symptoms.

By her own admission, the first picture was taken after she spent a day getting ready for a wedding, and you can see she’s wearing makeup, and the photo looks as if it was taken with warm lighting. In contrast, the after picture was taken after a day at the hospital, under cool lighting, and she appears to be without makeup.

Misinformation grows where people are allowed to fill in gaps in stories with their own fears and concerns. It is always our job to fill in these gaps with reminders that we should always approach personal anecdotes with our rational brain, remembering that we never have all the facts in these cases as we would with scientific study.

The first 100 studies listed all discussed the same topic: myocarditis/pericarditis after COVID vaccination. We already know that myocarditis and pericarditis are rare side effects of the mRNA COVID vaccines, but we also know that myocarditis caused by the vaccine tends to be mild and self-limiting, and the risks of myocarditis are actually much higher after COVID infection itself.

If we dig further into these lists, one link shows that out of 2.8 million vaccines administered by the military, a total of 23 instances of myocarditis were reported. The article notes: “Vigilance for rare adverse events, including myocarditis, after COVID-19 vaccination is warranted but should not diminish overall confidence in vaccination during the current pandemic.”

The technique of simply listing papers is a form of Gish Gallop. After all, who in their right mind is going to read through 1,000 scientific papers to see if they truly support the claims against vaccines? And that’s really the point.

Those of us who have been around for a while remember the case of the mother who kept adding to her very long list of articles she said proved that vaccines cause autism. The length of the list never made her argument any less incorrect.

Excess deaths during the COVID pandemic have far eclipsed those in the years prior to the pandemic. The tweet suggests several causes, including vaccines and the effects of lockdowns, without considering the possibility that maybe, just maybe, these excess deaths could be contributed to COVID itself. In the United States alone, there have been over 1 million deaths attributed to COVID, with the vast majority being in unvaccinated people.

This tweet offers no evidence that the vaccine is causing these deaths, conversely, studies show that people who received the COVID-19 vaccine actually had lower rates of non–COVID-19 mortality than unvaccinated people did. So in the end, the vaccine appears to be protective against death both from COVID and non-COVID causes.