Are vaccines as big as a soda bottle?

At a presser last Monday, President Trump claimed that the vaccines a child receives are as large as a bottle of soda.

• One vaccine is tiny: one vaccine dose is about 0.5 mL of liquid.
• Even several vaccines add up to only a few milliliters: The vaccines given in the first two years total about 7 mL.
• The childhood vaccination schedule still takes up little space: up to 31 mL over 18 years, which is only about 5% of a 20-ounce soda bottle.

Pediatrician Dr. Nicole Baldwin responded to the claim that babies get an amount of vaccine liquid as large as a 20-ounce bottle of soda. To show the real amount, she holds up a 20-ounce soda bottle, 8 ounces of water, and a 3 mL syringe. She also shows a list of the vaccines she gives in her clinic.

Each vaccine contains about 0.5 mL of liquid. Using a syringe, you can measure the amount a child would get at different ages. For example, one vaccine is about half a milliliter, two vaccines are about 1 mL, and three vaccines are about 1.5 mL. During the first two years of life, the vaccines add up to about 7 mL of liquid.

But what about the vaccines a child might get through age 18? Add yearly flu vaccines and COVID vaccines, and all of that adds up to 31 mL of liquid over 18 years.

A 20-ounce soda bottle holds about 591 mL of liquid. So 31 mL would fill only about 5% of the bottle, or about 1/19 of it. That would look like just a small amount of liquid at the bottom.

One vaccine dose is a very small amount of liquid, and even many vaccine doses added together over many years would fill only a small part of a 20-ounce soda bottle.