Disinformation: The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines cause 58% and 41% of mortality in the USA, respectively.
Verdict: FAKE NEWS
On 13 March 2021, Demur Giorkhelidze made a publication on his personal Facebook account, speaking about the mortality caused by the COVID-19 vaccine. As claimed by Mr Giorkhelidze, the Pfizer vaccine was behind 58% of deaths in the USA and the Moderna vaccine caused 41% of deaths based on the VAERS lists. The information in Mr Giorkhelidze’s publication is untrue and is FAKE NEWS.
Claim: The Pfizer vaccine has a 58% mortality rate and the Moderna vaccine has a 41% mortality rate.
Verdict: LIE
Demur Giorkhelidze speaks about mortality related to the COVID vaccines. Of note is his mentioning the 15,293 adverse reactions reported in the VAERS database as of 12 February 2021, including 929 cases of death. After that, Mr Giorkhelidze claims that 58% of the mortality in the US was caused by the Pfizer vaccine and 41% by the Moderna vaccine. In fact, according to up-to-date official reports, no Pfizer and Moderna vaccine-related deaths have been reported either in the USA or in EU member states and other countries. More precisely, over 189 million shots of the vaccines were administered in the USA from 14 December 2020 to 15 April 2021. Of these, 3,005 instances (0.00158%) of the death of vaccinated people are included in the VAERS database according to USA Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, of note is that the CDC’s reporting of the number of deaths included in the VAERS database does not mean that these cases were caused by COVID vaccines. In order to determine immediate and direct links between deaths and the COVID vaccines, CDC and FDA specialists need to review a patient’s clinical records as well as study death certificates, autopsy results and medical history.
Official data as of 15 April 2021
VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is something similar to an early warning system for vaccine-related side effects and is run by the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS reports can be filed by anyone, including healthcare providers, patients or family members. Therefore, the VAERS, as an early warning system, can indicate important data in the database, although this data requires additional research and processing. According to health professionals, it is generally not possible to find out if a vaccine caused an adverse event through using VAERS data. Therefore, it is inappropriate to determine a cause-effect relationship between the cases of death and vaccine based on VAERS data. Hence, Demur Giorkhelidze’s claim that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are linked to the death of people is a lie.
In order to corroborate his arguments about the vaccine, Demur Giorkhelidze added at the end of his Facebook publication: “Take a look what top class specialist are talking about! And compare that to the propaganda of the Georgian ‘specialists!’” He then attached a video link to the publication. In fact, the video (entitled “COVID Positive after Two Vaccine Doses? What it Means?”) and the transcript of the video are about the potential causes of infection with the coronavirus after two doses of the vaccine.
FactCheck has written multiple times about deaths from COVID-19 vaccines, including fake news and disinformation based on VAERS and CDC data. The respective articles can be accessed here (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5 and link 6).
Claim: Vaccine causes infertility.
Verdict: FAKE NEWS
Another claim that Demur Giorkhelidze made in his publication is that the COVID vaccine causes infertility. This claim is untrue and is fake news. Until recently, plenty of disinformation has been promoted on vaccines and human infertility which FactCheck actively sought to debunk (link 1, link 2 and link 3). Given the massive scale of disinformation sparked in the public on possible infertility among men and women after vaccination, the British Fertility Society and the Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists offered their commentary on the issue. According to the report published by these organisations, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that any of the COVID-19 vaccines can affect the fertility of women or men.
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