Anti-vaxxers (anti-vaccination activists) will often try to tell you that the Covid-19 vaccine has killed thousands of people. In the most recent case, an antivaxxer tried to tell me that over 9,000 people in the US have died after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine and the truth (?) can be found in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The antivaxxers tend not to specify which vaccine nor any other details. In this case, they made the mistake of referring to the CDC, and if you go to that site, you can see that 9,367 reports were received of deaths among people who had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. In the US, it is a legal requirement to report the death of anyone after Covid-19 vaccination. What the CDC makes clear is that reports of deaths following vaccination do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused the death. Indeed, review of available clinical information, autopsy results and medical records reveals that a very small number of deaths can be attributed to a vaccine1.
In the US, it has been discovered that the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine has led to some deaths from Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS). This involves blood clots together with low levels of blood platelets*. In the US, by April 2021, nearly 8 million doses of the Janssen vaccine had been administered, and 97% of adverse reactions were not serious (tiredness, mild headaches, injection site pain, etc.). Of the remainder, there were 17 cases of TTS, three of which were fatal2.
The Janssen vaccine is an adenovirus-vector vaccine3 like the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has also given rise to cases of TTS.
In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) reviews all deaths reported in people who have been recently vaccinated. As the number of people being vaccinated has increased, so has reporting of fatal events subsequent to vaccination. Their review suggest that the vaccines played no role in the vast majority of these deaths. Up to the end of October, 2021, about 35.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered. There were 642 reports of deaths subsequent to vaccination and of these, only 9 could be attributed to vaccination. All were linked to first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Eight were TTS cases and one was a case of the related immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)4.
So, when antivaxxers tell you thousands have died from Covid-19 vaccination, they are intentionally lying, or are so gullible they would believe anything such a liar tells them.
*Blood platelets: Platelets are cells (shaped like a plate) in our blood that bind together to form clots when they recognise damaged blood vessels. There’s an evolutionary reason why they’re there; it’s to stop us from bleeding. A normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microlitre of blood. Having more than 450,000 platelets is a condition called thrombocytosis; having less than 150,000 is known as thrombocytopenia.