Review Shows COVID-19 Vaccines ‘Significantly’ More Deadly Than Flu Shots: Sen. Ron Johnson

A woman receives a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in a file photograph. Johanna Geron/Reuters

An analysis of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data indicates that the COVID-19 vaccines are “significantly” more deadly than the flu vaccine, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The review was conducted by the senator’s staff and involved a certain level of assumption given that no publicly available data exist regarding how many flu vaccine doses were administered in the United States over the past 10 years.

Using the number of distributed doses to generate that figure, they found that the number of deaths per million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines (25.5) far exceeded those estimated for the flu vaccine (0.46).

“Using the midpoint assumption that 70 percent of distributed flu vaccines were administered, the 25.5 deaths per million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine represents a 55-fold increase over the flu vaccine deaths per million doses,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a Dec. 21 letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a shocking difference and only adds to the growing evidence of safety signals that are screaming to be taken seriously,” he added.

Mr. Johnson cited the study as part of a request for internal studies, documents, and data surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines’ development and safety.

“When it comes to responding to my data requests on the adverse events associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, your arrogant lack of transparency has been unprecedented, irresponsible, and completely unacceptable,” chided the senator, who serves as the top Republican on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

“Over the course of the last 32 months, I have raised questions, sent formal requests, and conducted oversight on the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“Instead of addressing my legitimate questions and requests for information, you and other public health officials continue to promote the COVID-19 vaccines as safe and effective and often use the number of vaccine doses administered as support for that misleading claim.”

He also requested that the agencies advise whether they were aware of and had acted on another recent study published in Nature that has raised additional concerns about the safety of the Pfizer vaccine—namely, whether it produces “off-target,” or unintended, proteins that could potentially elicit harmful immune responses.

The administration officials have been given until Jan. 18 to produce the requested information.

Mr. Johnson’s letter coincided with a survey published on Dec. 21 by the JAMA Network revealing that Americans are more skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety than that of the flu vaccine.

Conducted between July 7 and July 16, 2023, the survey found that 55 percent of respondents believed the flu vaccine to be “very safe,” while just 41 percent said the same about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Meanwhile, a majority (51 percent) said they were worried about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to only 24 percent who expressed concern about the flu vaccine’s safety.

The results also showed that more people are “not at all likely” to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this year (28 percent) than the flu (22 percent), with 60 percent of respondents saying they wanted more research conducted on the former shot. Just 24 percent said the same about the flu vaccine.

Yet on the question of efficacy, nearly the same percentage of respondents claimed the COVID-19 vaccines (42 percent) and flu vaccines (40 percent) are effective against serious illness and hospitalization.

In a Nov. 22 post, the CDC conceded that “COVID-19 vaccine uptake is lower than we’d like to see.”

As of Nov. 4, only 14 percent of U.S. adults were estimated to have received the updated vaccines.

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.