In a committee hearing, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green claimed that COVID vaccines were rushed without proper testing, that safer treatments like ivermectin were ignored, and that vaccinated people still get and spread COVID while those with natural immunity do not.

The COVID vaccines came to be much faster than usual for lots of reasons. Researchers had already spent more than a decade working on and refining mRNA vaccine technology. Once they figured out the genetic code of the virus that causes COVID, they were able to quickly create a vaccine by putting the spike protein’s instructions into that mRNA system. Plus, this method had already been tested for other possible vaccines.

Because the pandemic was such a serious emergency, a lot of time and money across the globe poured into creating these vaccines. Vaccine trials, which usually happen one after the other, were done at the same time. And the FDA dramatically accelerated the review timeline by having teams work on different parts at the same time to review the data. This helped shave years off the approvals process.

Using VAERS is also not helpful in Rep. Green’s arguments. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a tool that anyone can use to report a health problem after getting a vaccine, regardless of causation, as is noted on the VAERS website.

The most pertinent 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.”

One doctor famously submitted a report that the flu shot turned him into the Incredible Hulk. VAERS is helpful for keeping track of vaccine safety, but just because something is reported doesn’t mean the vaccine caused it. Even if they’re not sure, doctors should report any important health problems that happen after vaccination.

After reports are collected, scientists do careful studies to find out if the vaccine really caused the problem. With COVID vaccines, those studies showed that the vaccines helped protect people from getting sick, going to the hospital, or dying.

Lastly, Rep. Greeen advocates for treatments we know do not work. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitical medicine, but studies show little benefit for COVID. Early on, there were small lab studies that made people hopeful, but study after study in humans didn’t show any real benefit. Also, using the version of ivermectin made for animals is dangerous for humans. That’s why health officials warned people not to take it. Doctors and scientists don’t call it “horse paste” to be mean. They want people to understand that not all versions of a drug are safe for people.

In a widely-circulated video, former Dr. Paul Thomas claims that vaccines cause more harm than good by leading to sudden infant death, higher death rates in babies, and more health problems like autism, asthma, and learning disabilities in kids.

Vaccines are not linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). In fact, studies show that babies who get their shots on time are less likely to die from SIDS. The timing of most infant vaccines happens to match the age when SIDS is most likely to occur, which can make it seem like the two are related—but they are not.

Infant mortality is affected by many factors, including access to quality health care, maternal health, and social conditions like poverty—not by the number of vaccines. The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than some other developed nations, but that’s due to issues like racial health disparities and access to care, not vaccines. In fact, countries with strong vaccination programs tend to have healthier children and fewer deaths from preventable diseases.

Vaccines do not cause autism, learning disabilities, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental conditions. The idea that vaccines cause autism started with a fraudulent study in 1998, which has been completely discredited and retracted.

Similarly, vaccines do not cause allergies, asthma, or autoimmune conditions. These conditions are more common today for many reasons—including genetics, environmental changes, and better diagnosis—but vaccines are not to blame. On the contrary, vaccines can help prevent infections that might trigger autoimmune responses in some cases. Vaccines keep our immune systems strong and prepared, not overloaded.

In short, the claim that “the more we vaccinate, the sicker our kids are” is completely false. Vaccines have been tested more than almost any other medical product. They are safe, they save lives, and they help kids grow up healthy. As Voices for Vaccines puts it, vaccines give parents the power to protect their children from dangerous diseases—and that’s a power worth trusting.

In a CBS news interview, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. claims that immunity from the MMR vaccine wanes quickly in order to explain why the measles outbreaks are spreading farther and longer than they might otherwise.

The claim that the MMR wanes quickly is untrue. Even if the antibodies your body makes from the vaccines lessen over time, your immune system still remembers the virus using special memory cells. These memory cells usually remain in your body for your entire life, able to respond quickly and protect you from measles if you’re ever exposed.

Also, measles is so contagious that if a person susceptible to measles walks into a room where someone with measles had been two hours prior and left, 90% of those people would still get measles. Before the vaccine was available, nearly everyone got measles.

If the measles vaccine were waning quickly, as Kennedy claims, leaving a large number of people susceptible, we would see a huge number of vaccinated people getting measles. But that’s not what we are seeing. Of 561 cases identified, 550 of them are unvaccinated, while only 11 have had only one or two vaccine doses. We know that one dose of MMR protects up to 93% of people while two doses protect up to 97% of people, and these numbers track what we’d expect if the vaccine was working as expected.