If COVID Vaccine Deaths Were Probable ‘We'd Have Hundreds Of Thousands,’ Experts Say

Three medical experts are sounding off about the death myths they claim are going around about the COVID vaccine.

The COVID vaccine has been linked to a series of deaths in people that received vaccinations just days prior, which these medical experts say are unfounded.

In one case, the wife of a Miami doctor, who died from a brain hemorrhage 16 days after receiving the COVID vaccine, claims the shot caused his death. In Norway, 23 elderly people, who were frail, died after receiving their first dose of the vaccine, and in California, a resident died just hours after being inoculated with the vaccine, opening an investigation.

One death rumor, in particular, has run rampant, causing concern about misinformation regarding the COVID vaccine death link. Legendary baseball player Hank Aaron’s death has been rumored to have been caused by the Moderna vaccine, but the civil rights activist died on Jan. 22 from natural causes, despite getting his shot two weeks earlier.

To date, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has administered over 35.2 million doses of the COVID vaccine to over 27.9 million people, which medical experts say if the vaccine was deadly, it would have been “immediately” clear.

Dr. Gregory Poland, an immunologist and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, told Yahoo Life, “If [the COVID-19 vaccine] had even a 1% chance of causing death, we’d have hundreds of thousands of deaths — it would be noticed immediately. We’re just not seeing any difference in background [death] rates and that’s what’s important.”

The experts also point to the COVID vaccine’s safety, saying that it was tested longer and on more people than most other typical vaccine studies.

In addition, the Food and Drug Administration conducted its own analysis of the drug’s safety, Susan Ellenberg, professor of biostatistics, medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, pointed out to Yahoo Life.

Currently, the CDC has confirmed that there are side effects to the COVID vaccine that can include muscle aches, fever, and fatigue. There are instances when severe allergic reactions can occur, but the chance of this happening is 10 cases in over 4 million first doses, the agency said.

“Most serious events from vaccines are going to occur within 15 minutes or 30 minutes,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease expert and professor at the University of Southern California, told Yahoo.

The rise in COVID vaccine death connection may, in part, be linked to the way that humans want to make sense out of a situation.

Poland explained to Yahoo, “Humans are wired to think this way, and it misleads them — temporality is not causality. In other words, just because the event happened in association with another event doesn’t mean it was caused by it.”

Ellenberg agrees, saying that she understands the human need to explain a tragedy. “It’s the most natural thing in the world. So I don’t fault people for being suspicious.

“Some people will experience bad things and, by chance, some of them will happen shortly after a vaccine,” she told the news outlet. “Even though it seems hard to think it’s a coincidence when you’ve got millions and millions of people, coincidences are going to happen.”

Klausner urges that “People should feel confident in this vaccine. Both in the safety and that it works.”