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Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022

Are COVID-19 vaccines ‘dangerous and ineffective’ and do they ‘need to be withdrawn from the market’?

Ed Payne, Lead Stories

no

Despite unsubstantiated online claims such as the one recently posted on infowars.com declaring vaccines "dangerous and ineffective," vaccine data suggest they offer significant protection and are very unlikely to cause serious harm.

More than 535 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 24, 2022. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received 11,657 reports of death — less than one quarter of one percent (0.0022%) of vaccine recipients. Moreover, these reports only establish correlation: the death may have followed the vaccination, but that does not mean the vaccination caused the death.

COVID-19 vaccines reduce the likelihood of infection and reduce the severity of symptoms when infections do occur. In New South Wales during the week ending on Jan. 8, 2022, 8.9% of cases were hospitalized among the unvaccinated versus 1% among the vaccinated.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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