The Washington Post reported that Trump officials plan to connect 25 child deaths with COVID-19 vaccinations. The findings are expected to be discussed at the meeting on Sept. The Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on 18-19th 2025. This meeting could have implications for future COVID-19 vaccine eligibility.
The CDC and FDA are said to have derived these death reports from Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a database that is jointly managed by both. It was first established in 1990 as a way to detect potential safety issues with vaccines. The anti-vaccine group has misused this database by spreading false information about the COVID-19 vaccine. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a prominent activist who has spread this misinformation via the make America healthy again campaign in an effort to limit access COVID-19 vaccinations.
VAERS is vulnerable to abuse because it relies solely on unverified self-reports. Any person who has received a vaccination can submit a report. Because this information is public, it has been misinterpreted to amplify COVID-19 misinformation via dubious channels on social media, and mass media including one of the most popular shows in cable news.
We are Political Scientists , who study social, political, and psychological underpinnings to vaccine hesitancy. We argue in our research that, despite its limitations VAERS can offer new insights about the origins for vaccine hesitancy.
The purpose of the side effect database
The Department of Health and Human Services’ medical experts are very aware of the limitations of VAERS . Regulators remove reports that are clearly fraudulent, rather than accepting each report as it is. James Laidler, anesthesiologist with autism and autism advocate, used the system once to report that the vaccine had turned him into “The Incredible Hulk.” This was only removed when he agreed for the data to be deleted.
Regulators are also looking for patterns of reporting which can be backed up by other evidence. Reports of Guillain Barre syndrome, for example, should be higher in older adults than younger adults. This can assist researchers in identifying potential adverse events not detected during clinical trials.
They are self-reported and therefore tell us what the public thinks about vaccine safety, rather than what doctors or medical researchers believe. People who believe that a particular vaccine may be responsible for a certain side effect can report this concern to the federal government. This is true whether or not these claims will stand up under rigorous clinical testing.
In turn, the VAERS reports may not only reflect people’s negative vaccination experiences but also their attitudes towards vaccination. Media stories on vaccine safety may encourage people to report side-effects. If VAERS reports increase after these stories, the system could be working like a public poll. This could be a reflection of public concern and attention to potential side effects.
To see whether this is the case, we examined a well-known case of vaccine misinformation: the since-retracted paper that claimed a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) to childhood autism.
A fraudulent study is responsible for MMR vaccine doubts?
Former physician Andrew Wakefield, along with his colleagues in 1998, published a now-retracted article claiming the MMR vaccine can cause autism among children. The study, which was riddled with unreported conflicts of interest and data manipulation in the 1990s, still garnered considerable media attention. Some researchers and journalists have argued since that the paper was a major factor in inspiring MMR vaccination hesitancy.
This argument is plausible but there are no supporting evidence. There was virtually no opinion polling on MMR before Wakefield’s article. Researchers have therefore not been able directly to observe if the study has influenced the way Americans view the MMR vaccination.
However, VAERS data could provide some clues. We examined whether the VAERS report numbers following Wakefield’s publication were significantly higher than expected, based on normal report numbers before its publication. The number of reports of adverse events for MMR increased about 70 per month after publication of the article. This is much higher than we would have expected based on past reporting frequency. We did not observe a similar response for any other childhood vaccines during the same period. This shows how influential this now-debunked MMR study was in influencing public opinion.
We also discovered that the rate of adverse event reports increased in parallel with negative media coverage about the MMR vaccine. After the publication of Wakefield’s paper, print and television news outlets published more stories on MMR. These results indicate that Wakefield’s article affected how attentive Americans became to the MMR vaccination.
The double-edged Sword
The interest in side effects reporting has grown significantly since the COVID-19 epidemic. Google search trends indicate that Americans searched for VAERS more than ever after the emergency use of the first COVID-19 vaccinations was authorized in the U.S. This trend increased until August 2021, when it reached its peak.
This is probably due to the increased attention that VAERS has received in the media, especially from right-leaning outlets. Data from Media Cloud shows that mainstream national news outlets such as CNN and USA Today have published 459 articles between December 2020 to mid-August 2021 mentioning VAERS. Right-wing media outlets like Fox News, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart however saw coverage soar to 3,254 articles – more than seven times mainstream media.
The VAERS data can be viewed as a two-edged blade. One hand, the data has been weaponized to spread doubt and mistrust about COVID-19 vaccines by both the anti-vaccine campaign as well as right-wing political actors. This data can also provide useful information to public health researchers about the ebbs and flows of American vaccine skepticism in response events like the pause on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccination, or changes in media coverage.
VAERS data could even be an advantage to public opinion polls. Unlike weekly vaccination uptake polls which are typically administered less often, VAERS data is collected much more frequently. Our research warns that media coverage of discredited vaccine-related statements may undermine public trust in vaccination.
Avoiding another misinformation wave
Journalists and scientists can work together to ensure VAERS is used correctly. They can also help the public understand new findings. We believe that journalists should contextualize their reporting within the context of a larger body of scientific evidence. Scientists can help journalists accurately depict studies on vaccine side-effects by clearly outlining their methodology and results in an accessible language.
Researchers and journalists can work together to take action against vaccine hesitancy.
This is an updated version of an article that was originally published on August 25, 2021.
Matt Motta received funding from National Science Foundation.
Dominik Stecula has received funding from the National Science Foundation.
