- Health
Claim that COVID-19 vaccines killed 3.5 times more Americans than COVID-19 is based on a highly flawed online survey; inconsistent with excess mortality data
Key takeaway
To date, there have been more than 1.1 million COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of severe disease and deathWhile the COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to potentially serious side effects, such as a particular blood clotting disorder and myocarditis, the risk of blood clots and heart inflammation is higher after COVID-19 than after the vaccines. Overall, the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines outweigh their risks.
Reviewed content
Verdict:
Claim:
Vaccine killed 3.5X more Americans than COVID virus
Verdict detail
Conflates factual statement and opinion: The claim is based on an online survey that asked Internet users if they believed someone in their household died of the COVID-19 vaccine. These answers weren’t independently verified, for example by examining medical records and deaths certificates of those who died.
Flawed reasoning: Excess mortality data indicates that there were roughly 1.2 million excess deaths in the U.S. between the beginning of 2020 to the end of August 2023. The claim that the vaccine killed 3.5 times more people than COVID-19 isn’t compatible with the data, given that the CDC already reported roughly 1.1 million COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. to date, which are counted among the excess deaths.
Full Claim
“New Study Reveals Covid mRNA Jabs Killed ‘3.5X More Americans Than Virus Itself’”; ‘“Vaccine” killed 3.5X more Americans than COVID virus’; “Analysis of the first 9,620 responses found 804 deaths from COVID and 2,830 deaths from the COVID vaccine [...] No fancy math is needed to calculate the ratio: 2830/804=3.5X”
Review
On 27 October 2023, entrepreneur Tony Delgado, who has more than a million followers on Instagram, posted a screenshot of an article with the headline “New Study Reveals Covid mRNA Jabs Killed ‘3.5X More Americans Than Virus Itself’”. The article was published by the website The People’s Voice (formerly Newspunch and YourNewsWire), whose owners have a long history of publishing inaccurate claims and conspiracy theories.
The article stated that this claim originated from tech entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, whose opposition to vaccination is well-known. Kirsch published a Substack post whose headline was highly similar to that of The People’s Voice.
The headline from The People’s Voice is false right off the bat, given that Kirsch didn’t publish a study. Instead, his figures came from a survey that he disseminated to his Substack subscribers.
In the survey, Kirsch asked respondents how many people in their household and extended family they believed had died from the COVID-19 vaccine.
Based on the responses he received, he concluded that the COVID-19 vaccines had killed 3.5 times more Americans than COVID-19 did: “Analysis of the first 9,620 responses found 804 deaths from COVID and 2,830 deaths from the COVID vaccine. Those results were generated from a minimum of 108,000 people covered by the survey […] No fancy math is needed to calculate the ratio: 2830/804=3.5X.”
Anomalies in survey responses suggest anti-vaccine bias
One of the main problems with the survey is its sample population. Kirsch’s well-known opposition to vaccination means that many of those who follow and subscribe to him on Substack are likely to be anti-vaccine themselves. This tendency could motivate them to give answers that support the narrative that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous.
This didn’t seem to deter Kirsch however, as he stated he had collected the contact information of the respondents and claimed this would enable him to independently verify their answers.
But it’s unclear how this method would enable him to independently ensure that the responses were accurate, as this would involve validating the answers with the respondent, who is likely to be anti-vaccine in the first place. A better way of validating the answers would have been to examine the medical records and death certificates of those who died.
The survey’s lack of rigor and reliability is evident in the responses that gave answers that are inconsistent with each other. For example, 33 records indicate no one in the respondent’s household had gotten vaccinated against COVID-19, but the same respondents also answered that at least one person in their household died from the COVID-19 vaccine (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Screenshot of the survey responses collected by Kirsch on Airtable, filtered by “% vaxxed” (the proportion of people in the household who received a COVID-19 vaccine) and “Died vax” (the number of people the respondent believes died from the vaccine). “% vaxxed” was set to “None”, and “Died vax” was set to “is any of: 1, 2, 3, 4 or more”. Data retrieved on 31 October 2023.
Similarly, 31 records indicated no household members received the vaccine, but the same respondents also reported that one or more members of their household had been injured by the COVID-19 vaccine (see Figure 2 below).
Figure 2. Screenshot of the survey responses collected by Kirsch on Airtable, filtered by “% vaxxed” (the proportion of people in the household who received a COVID-19 vaccine) and “Injured vax” (the number of people the respondent believes was injured by the vaccine). “% vaxxed” was set to “None”, and “Injured vax” was set to “is any of: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more”. Data retrieved on 31 October 2023.
Excess mortality data refutes the claim that 3.5 times more Americans died from the COVID-19 vaccines than from COVID-19
Deaths from serious known side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, such as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS), have been recorded. A CDC presentation in December 2021 reported nine deaths linked to TTS after receiving the J & J COVID-19 vaccine. A March 2023 article by pediatric cardiologists Frank Han and Jennifer Huang reported that “up to four potentially mRNA vaccine-related deaths from myocarditis in adults have been reported worldwide”. For context, more than 270 million people have received at least one dose of vaccine in the U.S.; worldwide, this number has exceeded five billion.
But Kirsch’s claim that 3.5 times more Americans died from the COVID-19 vaccine than from COVID-19 is simply incompatible with mortality data.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that roughly 1.1 million people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. to date (see Figure 3 below). If we multiplied this figure by 3.5, based on Kirsch’s claim, then roughly 3.8 million people died from COVID-19 vaccines.
Figure 3. The CDC’s COVID-19 Data Tracker. Total deaths are reported at the bottom-right corner. Data retrieved on 31 October 2023. Source: CDC.
For reference, Our World in Data has compiled data on excess mortality from all causes in the U.S., which can be found here, although definitive estimates for 2023 aren’t available as the data is still incomplete.
Figure 4. Excess mortality in the U.S. from the beginning of 2020 until the end of August 2023. Retrieved on 31 October 2023. According to this data, there have been approximately 1.2 million excess deaths in the U.S. Source: Our World in Data.
If Kirsch’s claim were true, it would mean that excess deaths from 2020 up until now are roughly 4.9 million (the sum of all COVID-19 deaths so far and alleged vaccine deaths). This figure outstrips actual excess mortality data so far (Figure 4) by about four times. Kirsch’s assertion that the COVID-19 vaccines “killed 3.5X more Americans than COVID virus”, when carried to its logical conclusion, has no basis in reality.
The claim that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of death isn’t substantiated by the data and scientific studies. For example, economist Philip Schellekens put together graphs correlating the level of vaccine coverage and excess mortality in various countries (see one example in Figure 5 below). These show that excess mortality wasn’t higher in countries with greater vaccine coverage compared to countries with lower vaccine coverage.
Figure 5. A correlation of excess mortality per 100,000 people with the level of vaccine coverage, including primary vaccine doses and booster doses (as a proportion of the population). Source: Philip Schellekens.
And published studies so far haven’t found a higher risk of all-cause mortality in vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated people. A study that looked at excess mortality in the U.S. and other peer countries between June 2021 and March 2022 found that excess all-cause mortality was greater in the ten least-vaccinated states than in the ten most-vaccinated states[1]. A CDC study examining the period between December 2020 and July 2021[2] found that COVID-19 vaccine recipients had lower rates of non-COVID-19 mortality.
REFERENCES
- 1 – Bilinski et al. (2023) COVID-19 and Excess All-Cause Mortality in the US and 20 Comparison Countries, June 2021-March 2022. JAMA Network.
- 2 – Xu et al. (2021) COVID-19 Vaccination and Non–COVID-19 Mortality Risk — Seven Integrated Health Care Organizations, United States, December 14, 2020–July 31, 2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
