Did a federal agency document 3,848 deaths due to COVID-19 vaccinations? No, that's not true: The claim exploits the government's rough list of unverified reports collected by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Anyone can submit a report to VAERS.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) monitors incoming items and, if patterns emerge, investigates them. In releasing the list of reports, the CDC makes it clear that one cannot assume deaths listed on the VAERS website are connected to the COVID-19 vaccine, since a chronological correlation does not prove causation. As Lead Stories has previously reported, it is statistically inevitable that some people will get sick and die after getting the shot, but for reasons unrelated to their response to the vaccine. As of May 5, 2021, CDC medical experts had not yet documented a single fatality caused by COVID-19 vaccines among the 107 million Americans who are fully vaccinated.
The deaths claim appeared in an article published by Health Impact News on May 1, 2021, titled "GENOCIDE in the U.S. Continues: 3,848 DEATHS 118,902 Injuries Following COVID Injections - Children Now being Reported as Dying Also" (archived here), which opened:
The mass murder of Americans through the experimental COVID injections continues, as the CDC is now reporting that 3,848 people have died and 118,902 adverse reactions have now been logged into their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
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GENOCIDE in the U.S. Continues: 3,848 DEATHS 118,902 Injuries Following COVID Injections - Children Now being Reported as Dying Also
The mass murder of Americans through the experimental COVID injections continues, as the CDC is now reporting that 3,848 people have died and 118,902 adverse reactions have now been logged into their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Many believe there is solid evidence that the CDC is holding back much of the data, and that the number of deaths and injuries reported is much higher (see below). This is in addition to the fact that many deaths and injuries following the injections are not even reported, because the propaganda put out by the U.S. Government and reinforced through the pharma-funded corporate media, continues to claim that NONE of these deaths are linked to the COVID injections, and are just "coincidences." To give some perspective to these recorded numbers, and show how criminally evil it is to claim that none of these deaths or injuries are caused by the injections, the total deaths now recorded following experimental COVID injections since December, 2020, is more than the recorded deaths following vaccines for the previous 15 and a half years (source) before the experimental COVID shots were unleashed against the public. And now they are targeting the children. Tragically, there are now at least 5 deaths recorded among children following COVID injections, including a 5-month-old baby who was not injected, but was breast feeding from her mother who was.
The article also misstates the "experimental" status of the vaccine, which is an approved medical injection and only experimental in the sense that every medical treatment is subject to changes in approval or adoption as evidence accumulates over time. For example, aspirin, which was launched in 1899, was still the subject of research trials in 2021.
This fact check focuses on the false claim that undergirds the entire article: that the CDC is reporting thousands of vaccine-caused deaths.
Although the CDC co-manages VAERS along with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it is misleading to call VAERS data "CDC reports" of vaccine deaths.
VAERS reports are unverified, can be filed by anyone and, according to the CDC, may include information that is incomplete, inaccurate or coincidental.
VAERS is an early warning system, not a precise instrument of measure. The VAERS database is a hodgepodge of anecdotal information, not a library of fully investigated cases. When it works correctly, it helps the CDC and FDA monitor the rollout of a new vaccine by revealing patterns. The clinical trials drugmakers conduct in advance of licensing involve tens of thousands of patients. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, approved vaccines are then shot into the arms of millions of Americans.
The website for VAERS makes clear the system's uses and limitations, and the editors and writers at Health Impact News would have seen the warnings in order to download VAERS data. The site reads:
When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
And, also:
A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.
The system appears to work.
In April, the FDA found a cluster of six cases of nonfatal but rare blood clots among the 8 million people who had received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine and ordered a pause. After revising the warning data and noting women seem most likely to be affected by the less-than-one-in-a-million adverse reaction, the FDA cleared J&J/Janssen again for use, noting the benefits of protection from COVID-19 outweigh the extremely rare case of a clots for which doctors now know to be alert.
The agency says on its website:
To date, VAERS has not detected patterns in cause of death that would indicate a safety problem with COVID-19 vaccines.
And later:
A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths.
