Who knows the people dying from COVID vaccines?

In an interview with Bill Maher, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. claims that 25% of Americans believe they know someone who died from the COVID vaccine, 52% think the shots cause injuries or death, and he claims the clinical trial showed people who got the vaccine had a 23% higher death rate than those who got a placebo.

These claims about what people believe claims are most likely based on laypeople searching the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. As noted on the VAERS website, anyone can report anything to VAERS, regardless of causation.

The most important warning on the website helps put the above claims into context: “VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Reports to VAERS can also be biased. As a result, there are limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind.”

These death claims usually don’t have any proof to back them up. In fact, the life-saving benefits of the COVID vaccine vastly outweigh the rare risks of an adverse event.

As for the claim about the clinical trials and the death rate, he is leaving out some very important data. It does say here that “From Dose 1 through the March 13, 2021 data cutoff date, there were a total of 38 deaths, 21 in the COMIRNATY group and 17 in the placebo group.”, which is indeed 23% higher death rate in the vaccine group. But the very next sentence reads “None of the deaths were considered related to vaccination.”