Faulty Logic Compares Declaration of Death By COVID to Declaration of Death By Vaccine
The Claim
If vaccine deaths were counted in the same way as coronavirus deaths, the vaccine death toll would be huge.
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Emerging story
Shortly after the approval of the coronavirus vaccines in 2020, a number of users began to claim that if vaccine deaths were counted in the same way as coronavirus deaths, the toll would be monumental. This claim relies on the assumption that a coronavirus death is counted as any death that occurs after a person tested positive for coronavirus, even if other factors caused the death.
Social media posts making this claim have managed to gain thousands of interactions and keep on appearing frequently. One recent post managed to gain over 3,300 likes and 1,300 reposts within 12 hours.
Misbar’s Analysis
That the logic of the “count vaccine deaths like coronavirus deaths” argument is incorrect, at least according to how cases are counted in the U.S. In April 2020, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told medical professionals that coronavirus should be listed as a cause of death as the result of “an informed medical opinion that should be based on sound medical judgment.” Under this guidance, therefore, anyone who recovers from COVID-19 and dies at a later time would not be considered as dying of coronavirus. The CDC also recommends the usage of laboratory testing to confirm that a death was the result of coronavirus.
Additionally, the Association of American Medical Colleges highlights how coronavirus is not attributed to a cause of death if an individual clearly died of another means. “Whether or not you have COVID isn’t going to change your cause of death when you get hit by a car,” said Ali Raja, Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He later added, “I put a lot of thought into [death certificates.] These are not things I do on the fly.”
Raja said that if anything, the true number of coronavirus deaths had been undercounted, as some people have died of the disease away from a medical setting and as there were few coronavirus tests in Spring 2020. Scientific American also agrees that the true number of coronavirus deaths in America is undercounted.
Coronavirus vaccines, however, are intensely monitored for safety by the CDC. In fact, safety monitoring of the vaccine rollout has been the most intense in U.S. history. Also, the FDA requires healthcare workers to report deaths after a coronavirus vaccine. By July 2021, 339 million coronavirus vaccines had been administered. The vaccines may have contributed to three deaths in the U.S. These deaths all involved the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been linked to zero deaths.
