The Claim:
Dr. Paul Thomas’ claims that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent are again going around.
The Facts:
The post lists death rates for different diseases and the vaccines that prevent them. It says the risk of dying from polio is “1 in 1 trillion,” which sounds right today but leaves out an important detail. The reason the risk is so low is that almost everyone gets vaccinated. If someone actually catches polio, about 1 in 200 people become paralyzed, and 5 to 10 percent of those people die.
Even though polio is almost gone, we still give the polio vaccine. That’s because diseases can travel fast. For example, in 2022, there was a polio outbreak in New York, showing that the virus can return if people aren’t protected.
The numbers about vaccine dangers probably come from VAERS, but that’s not solid proof that vaccines are unsafe. VAERS is a public system where anyone can report a side effect, and the CDC only stores the information. It doesn’t check if each report is true. The VAERS website even says that some reports might be wrong, incomplete, or not caused by the vaccine at all. That’s why scientists have to study the data carefully before deciding if a vaccine actually caused a problem.