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COVID-19 vaccination safety data mischaracterized
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V-safe participants self-report adverse health impacts after COVID-19 vaccination, but v-safe data does not show whether COVID-19 vaccination caused those symptoms.
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The self-reported data has not been verified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Learn more about PolitiFact’s fact-checking process and rating system.
A collection of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data is being characterized as if it proves COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous.
"Covid vaccine injuries exposed in newly uncovered data," declared multiple April 5 Facebook posts that linked to an article by American Military News, a publication about the U.S. military and foreign affairs, published the same day. That article cited information from an Epoch Times story that said data released by the CDC shows 780,000 vaccine injury reports were made after individuals were vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Epoch Times, a news outlet tied to China’s religious movement, Falun Gong, has a history of sharing misinformation; PolitiFact has rated some of its past claims about COVID-19 vaccines False and Pants on Fire.
These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
The data these posts refer to is from v-safe, a CDC COVID-19 monitoring system that lets people self-report health symptoms weekly for six weeks following COVID-19 vaccination.
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In 2022, the Informed Consent Action Network, a Texas-based anti-vaccine group, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, seeking public release of CDC data from more than 10 million people who used the system to self-report symptoms from December 2020 to September 2022.
After the CDC released the data, the group created an interactive visualization of this data on its website showing that more than 780,000 people said they required medical care after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
But public health officials said it’s inaccurate to characterize the data as proof of causation.
Martha Sharan, a CDC spokesperson, told PolitiFact that the adverse events reported in v-safe have not been verified by the CDC as having been caused byCOVID-19 vaccines. To verify the symptoms’ causes, an individual’s medical histories and records would have to be reviewed.
CDC spokesperson Nick Spinelli said his agency called v-safe participants who reported receiving medical care after vaccination and encouraged them to submit a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System report.
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The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, also called VAERS, is another CDC safety monitoring system that allows anyone to submit reports about post-vaccination health effects. Researchers use it as a means of detecting possible trends that could merit a closer look. But none of the reports themselves constitute verified cases of vaccine-related symptoms or injury.
"V-safe is not designed to capture reports of unusual events, but more common symptoms like fevers, chills, or sore throats," Kawsar Talaat, a co-director of clinical research for the Institute of Vaccine Safety said in a story published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "You cannot take the material from one of these systems and expand it beyond the limitations of the data collection."
A 2022 peer-reviewed study of COVID-19 vaccines using v-safe data published in The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, found that individuals seeking medical care after an mRNA vaccine were rare. V-safe surveys also did not ask participants which symptoms led them to seek medical care.
Studies of COVID-19 vaccines have found them to be safe and effective by public health officials around the world. Adverse effects are rare, and the World Health Organization estimated that COVID-19 vaccines saved about 14.4 million lives worldwide in 2021 alone.
We rate the claim that COVID-19 vaccine injuries were exposed in newly uncovered data False.
Our Sources
Facebook post (archived), April 5, 2024
Facebook post, April 5, 2024
Facebook post, April 5, 2024
American Military News, Covid vaccine injuries exposed in newly uncovered data, April 5, 2024
The Epoch Times, CDC Releases Hidden COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Reports, April 3, 2024
PolitiFact, No, the COVID-19 vaccines don’t contain ‘monkey virus DNA’, June 1, 2023
PolitiFact, Experts say mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have saved millions of lives, not caused mass deaths, Feb. 9, 2024
PolitiFact, No, the Food and Drug Administration didn’t say that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines causes blood clots, Dec. 20, 2022
Civil action lawsuit, Informed Consent Action Network v. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services, Sep. 8, 2022
Informed Consent Action Network, V-safe data, accessed April 12, 2024
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, v-safe COVID-19, Nov. 25, 2022
Phone interview, Martha Sharan, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson, April 15, 2024
Email interview, Nick Spinelli, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson, April 16, 2024
PolitiFact, V-safe: How everyday people help the CDC track COVID-19 vaccine safety with their phones, Aug. 26, 2021
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, What VAERS IS (And Isn’t), May 3, 2022
The Lancet, Safety of mRNA vaccines administered during the initial 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme: an observational study of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe, June 2022
PolitiFact, Federal VAERS database is a critical tool for researchers, but a breeding ground for misinformation, May 3, 2021
European Medicines Agency, Safety of COVID-19 vaccines, accessed April 16, 2024
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines, accessed April 16, 2024
World Health Organization, Vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and protection, July 14, 2021
Reviews in Medical Virology: Volume 34, Issue 1, Safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines: A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled and randomized clinical trials, Dec. 29, 2023
Indian Journal of Medical Research, Safety & effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines: A narrative review, January 2022
Cochrane Library, Efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, Dec. 7, 2022
Science Direct, A comprehensive analysis of the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, Sep. 1, 2021
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination, Sep. 12, 2023
World Health Organization, COVID-19 advice for the public: Getting vaccinated, accessed April 16, 2024
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), accessed April 16, 2024
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