False: Children are dying from COVID-19 vaccines in order to protect older generations from the disease.

By: Laura Vitelli
January 31 2022

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There is no evidence to suggest that children are dying from COVID-19 vaccines. In a recent speech at a rally in Washington D.C., the renowned anti-vaccination spokesperson Dr. Robert Malone claimed that children have been dying from COVID-19 vaccines "to protect the older generations from COVID-19." This claim is demonstrably false. It has been repeatedly shown that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe for people of all ages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have conducted thorough clinical trials on the vaccine's safety for children aged five years old and over. Children are much more likely to die from a COVID-19 infection than from the vaccines against it. The vaccines have undergone rigorous testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and continue to be monitored intensely. The World Health Organization has stated that throughout the trials of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the vaccines' efficacy and immunogenicity in children were "similar or higher compared to adults." Misinformation about children dying after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine has been bolstered by articles from websites such as The Daily Expose, which falsely claimed to draw their data from the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The figures published by The Daily Expose were, in fact, drawn from OpenVAERS, which has previously been exposed by Logically as a "website dedicated to the misrepresentation of COVID-19 vaccine data." VAERS was created in 1988 and is co-managed by the CDC and the FDA. The system was created "to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines," according to its website. Anyone can report an adverse event to VAERS. Healthcare professionals are obliged to report certain adverse events, and vaccine manufacturers must report all adverse events that come to their attention. However, it is essential to remember that "VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem" as it can only show that an adverse reaction occurred and not what caused it. The CDC has recently published a summary of data drawn from VAERS concerning the frequency of adverse reactions in children ages 5-11 who have received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The data shows that as of December 10, 2021, there were 3,233 adverse events reported to VAERS out of a total of 41,232 participants in the CDC's 'v-safe' program. V-safe is a voluntary smartphone-based monitoring program for COVID-19 vaccine safety in the U.S., which solicits participants' reports on how they feel after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The summary shows that the majority of adverse reactions reported through v-safe were "mild to moderate in severity" and "transient in nature." These reactions were reported with similar frequency as during the initial clinical trials of the vaccine. It is important to remember that although children are less likely to contract severe cases of COVID-19, they remain at more risk from the disease than from the vaccine against it. The claim that children have been dying from the vaccine is misinformation that aims to further an anti-vaccine narrative.