“COVID-19 vaccines have killed 676,000 Americans.”
— Steve Kirsch in an Aug. 6, 2023, blog post
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A blog post shared on Facebook claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have killed some 676,000 Americans.
The post was written by anti-vaccine activist Steve Kirsch, who has made other vaccine claims debunked by PolitiFact and other fact-checkers.
Kirsch’s Aug. 6 post referred to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a federal database.
“VAERS data is crystal clear,” the headline read. “The COVID vaccines are killing an estimated 1 person per 1,000 doses (676,000 dead Americans).”
The blog post was shared on social media and flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The data Kirsch used is from an anti-vaccine group’s alternative gateway to VAERS. VAERS, which includes unverified reports, cannot be used to determine whether a vaccine caused death. Kirsch did not reply to our request for information.
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“Statements that imply that reports of deaths to VAERS following vaccination equate to deaths caused by vaccination are scientifically inaccurate, misleading and irresponsible,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which co-manages the database with the FDA, told PolitiFact.
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