Tucker Carlson’s misleading claim about deaths after COVID-19 vaccine

Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that thousands of Americans have died since December because of the COVID-19 vaccines, citing an unverified federal database that has become a breeding ground for anti-vaccine misinformation.

The comments were the latest in a series of controversial remarks by Carlson raising doubts about the vaccines, which clinical trials and real-world studies have shown are both safe and effective. 

"Between late December of 2020 and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccine in the United States — 3,362," Carlson told millions of viewers during his primetime TV show May 5. "That’s an average of roughly 30 people every day."

"The actual number is almost certainly higher than that, perhaps vastly higher than that," he added. "It’s clear that what is happening now, for whatever reason, is not even close to normal."

Carlson said he was citing numbers from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, an open-source database often misused by anti-vaccine activists to make false claims about vaccine safety. Experts rejected Carlson’s claim as misleading.

That’s because VAERS data is considered unreliable for drawing causal conclusions. And dying after a vaccine is not the same thing as dying because of the vaccine.

"It is exceptionally irresponsible for this man to claim that all these are causal associations. It’s wrong," said Dr. Paul Offit, the chair of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. "He puts people’s lives at risk with bad information during a pandemic."

Unlike other official government sources, which flow through consistent reporting channels and get screened by statisticians and analysts before they are made available to the public, VAERS is an open-access system. The reports submitted are not verified before they become public.

"Anybody can report to it," Offit said. "If I get a vaccine, or I give my child a vaccine, and I believe that they have turned into the ‘Incredible Hulk,’ then I can write up a one-page report online and submit it, and that then is included. And that’s been done."

A disclaimer on the VAERS website says the "reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness," in part because they "may include incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental and unverified information." People accessing the database must click an option that says that they’ve read and understand the disclaimer.

Offit said VAERS works best as "a hypothesis-generating mechanism" that can tip scientists off to issues for further study, such as the rare cases of blood clots that prompted the agency to recommend a temporary pause on use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

In this case, the CDC has analyzed all the reports of death among COVID-19 vaccine recipients that were submitted to VAERS between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 3. 

"A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines," the agency concluded.

To establish causation, scientists need to find proof that an adverse event is significantly more common among vaccinated people than unvaccinated people. VAERS doesn’t provide enough data to do that.

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As of May 5, nearly 150 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and many of the early shots went to older and more vulnerable people.

"When you’re giving a COVID-19 vaccine to elderly adults, there are going to be people who die shortly after vaccination because they would have died anyway," Dr. William Moss, executive director of Johns Hopkins’s International Vaccine Access Center, previously told PolitiFact.

An estimated 8,000 Americans die every day of all causes, according to the CDC.

Offit cited the case of baseball legend Hank Aaron, who died of natural causes — likely a stroke — weeks after getting his shot. Social media posts falsely claimed the vaccine killed him.

"You can get the vaccine and still die from other reasons," Offit said.

After his segment baselessly linking the COVID-19 vaccines to "roughly 30" deaths per day, Carlson interviewed Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Kulldorff told Carlson that VAERS is "not a very useful system," in part because it doesn’t take into account "what is expected by chance" in terms of adverse reactions.

Carlson has questioned the vaccines and U.S. vaccination efforts on several occasions. In April, we rated Pants on Fire his claim that, "Maybe it doesn’t work, and they’re simply not telling you that." Fox News defended that statement by pointing to other instances where Carlson claimed to support vaccines, such as when he said he is "pretty pro-vaccine."

Elsewhere in his May 5 segment, Carlson similarly said the "vaccines aren’t dangerous" based on "the official numbers."

But his claim about thousands of deaths is wrong. On Facebook, a video of the claim was viewed more than 155,000 times, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. 

The video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Carlson said, "Between late December of 2020 and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccine in the United States … The actual number is almost certainly higher."

That’s highly misleading. The source of Carlson’s numbers is the VAERS database, which is often exploited by anti-vaccine activists to make false vaccine claims. The CDC analyzed the VAERS death reports and concluded that there’s no "causal link to COVID-19 vaccines." 

People can die after getting vaccinated for any number of reasons unrelated to the vaccine.

We rate Carlson’s statement False.