Correcting this week’s misinformation: week of August 20, 2026

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.

The old “too many” trope has come for the adult schedule. Now, anti-vaxxers claim that older adults get so many vaccines that it is the equivalent of a vaccine every 3-4 months for two decades.

• The study these claims are based on found a 12.6% miscarriage rate, not 82%.
• The 82% figure came from removing 700 live births from the calculation.
• That 82% does not represent the miscarriage risk after first-trimester vaccination.

Much of the total comes from vaccines that are given on a regular schedule, such as flu and COVID vaccines. Over many years, those doses can add up. Let’s count vaccines that protect against six other diseases: RSV, shingles, pneumococcal disease, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis.

When all of these vaccines are counted together, the schedule may average out to about one vaccine every few months. However, vaccines are not usually spaced out evenly. Some may be given at the same visit, while others are given months or years apart.

These vaccines are recommended to lower the risk of serious illness. Shingles is one example. Shingles is a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. About 1 in 3 people will develop shingles during their lifetime, and the risk goes up with age.

There is no cure for shingles, but treatment may include antiviral medicine, prescription pain medicine, and over-the-counter medicine. The shingles vaccine is given in two doses and can lower the chance of getting shingles and its complications.

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) shares the recommended vaccine schedule for adults aged 19 and older here.

Donald Trump said the combined MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal,” and now anti-vaxxers are out saying that the MMR are killing children. One video from Peter McCullough’s group claims that hundreds of children died after vaccination, often within two weeks, and the vaccines have caused far more deaths than measles.

• The tweet added words that Dr. Soon-Shiong did not say.
• He was discussing viruses and cancer, not vaccines causing cancer.
• He has also supported research on COVID and cancer vaccines.

The study is posted on Zenodo, an open research website where researchers can upload their work. Zenodo warns that papers posted there may not have been peer reviewed and should be treated as early research, not as proven findings. In other words, the study may still need to be reviewed by other experts before its claims can be trusted.

The study also uses data from VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Doctors, patients, and family members can report health problems that happen after a vaccine. These reports can help experts spot possible safety concerns.

However, a VAERS report does not prove that a vaccine caused a health problem. It only shows that the problem happened sometime after vaccination. Reports may be incomplete, incorrect, caused by something else, or difficult to confirm. Researchers need stronger studies to find out whether a vaccine actually caused an event.

For example, this VAERS report describes a child who died five days after vaccination. The report says the doctor and autopsy technician did not believe the vaccine caused the death. However, a study that counts deaths only because they happened after vaccination could still include a case like this as being linked with the MMR vaccine.

For these reasons, readers should be careful when interpreting the study. The website says the paper is not yet established science, and the VAERS data it uses cannot by itself show that vaccines caused the reported health problems.