A video that was broadcast live on Facebook and viewed more than 34,000 times features a narrator reviewing reports of adverse events in people who have received vaccines. However, the video does not explain that the reports may not contain complete information and that the medical incidents described are not confirmed to be linked to the vaccine.
The video (here) shows a woman navigating through the VAERS data (vaccines adverse event reporting system) as presented on a website. VAERS data is directly available to download directly from official web pages (here).
The narrator describes the information and says, “Someone who has an unfavorable vaccination submits data into this database.” (0.32) That’s correct, anyone can report a response after vaccination to VAERS (vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html).
However, a disclaimer on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website states: ‘The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, accidental or unfathomable’ and ‘a report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine was caused not the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination ”(here).
An example of the limitations of the data is shown later in the video when the narrator examines reports of patients who died at some point after receiving a vaccine. For example, while reading the details of one patient (time stamp 4.45), an 89-year-old man with dementia, who died five days after COVID-19 vaccination, she came across the following: ‘Due to the proximity of the vaccination, we feel we have to report death, even if it is not related ”.
Later (time stamp 19.50) the narrator describes a woman who died in 1990, more than a week after she was vaccinated against rabies (here). She gives a list of details but does not mention the Diagnostic Lab Data entry which says that the cause of death was anaphylactic shock due to the toxic effects of ‘swallowed food’.
Despite these limitations, the narrator asks why newspapers do not cover the reports in the database.
The CDC explains on its website (here) that ‘VAERS serves as an early warning system to detect potential safety issues with US vaccines by gathering information on side effects (possible side effects or health problems) that occur after vaccination’.
Therefore, these reports are often preceded.
In a section (here) on possible side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC website states: ‘CDC monitors each death report to request additional information and to learn more about what happened and to determine whether the death was due to the vaccine or unrelated. ”
“To date, FATHERS have not detected patterns in the cause of death indicating a safety issue with COVID-19 vaccines.”
The CDC estimated that approximately 1.3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered to residents in long-term care facilities as of January 18, 2021. Given this, the CDC expected to see a background death of 11,440 deaths (slide 36 here).
VERDICT
Missing context. Anyone can report events to VAERS, and its disclaimer states that the information may be “incomplete, inaccurate, accidental or uncontrollable” and does not indicate whether vaccines caused the reaction.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.