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Does Pfizer admit in documents that its COVID-19 vaccine may cause vaccine-associated enhanced disease?

By Ed Payne
NO

Pfizer's documents list "vaccine-associated enhanced disease," or VAED, under "Important Potential Risk," but also note, "No post-authorized [adverse event] reports have been identified as cases of VAED. Therefore, there is no observed data at this time."

VAED occurs when a vaccinated person develops a more severe illness than they would have if they had not been vaccinated. VAED is also known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).

Nebraska Medicine infectious diseases expert and physician Nada Fadul tells Lead Stories there's no evidence to support the claim of vaccine-associated enhanced disease:

"Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is something researchers watch for very carefully and is extremely rare." He added:

"If COVID-19 vaccines caused ADE, people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 would have more severe disease. This is not happening. On the contrary, people who are vaccinated typically have very mild disease or none at all."

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Melbourne Vaccine Education Center Vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED)
US Department of Health and Human Services Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
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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