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COVID-19 vaccines fake quote

Viral quote uses baseless claim about vaccines to raise money

A viral quote attributed to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who frequently posts anti-vaccine information, makes an entirely baseless and dangerous claim as a fundraising ploy. Let’s take a look at the facts.

An Instagram post of a quote meme that reads, “In a few short days, the FDA will likely recommend Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 5 — even though according to CDC data, children are 107 times more likely to die from the vaccine, than from COVID.” The quote is attributed to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The News Literacy Project has added a label that says “FALSE.”
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not show that children are “107 times more likely to die” from a COVID-19 vaccine than from the disease itself.
This is a baseless assertion, attributed to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known opponent of vaccines, that was also used in a fundraising campaign for the organization he founded and runs.
In a statement to AFP Fact Check, the CDC confirmed that it “has not detected any unusual or unexpected patterns for deaths following immunization that would indicate that Covid vaccines are causing or contributing to deaths of adults or children.”
Out of the more than 414 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered in the United States as of Oct. 25, 2021, there have been a total of five confirmed adults deaths were linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

NewsLit takeaway

Anti-vaccine rhetoric is highly emotional and often exploits parents’ love and concern for their children’s well-being to plant a seed of doubt about the safety of vaccines. This particular quote doesn’t identify the source of the “CDC data” it purports to cite. However, many false anti-vaccination claims are extrapolated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — or VAERS — database, an open portal that allows anyone to self-report “possible health problems” experienced after a vaccine, even minor ones such as soreness at the injection site. All evidence continues to show that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective.

Featured Fact-Checks

NLP’s viral rumor rundown is a regular feature in The Sift, its weekly email newsletter for educators, and in Get Smart About News, its weekly email newsletter for the general public. You can subscribe to these newsletters here. Send suggestions, questions or feedback on this rumor or on the viral rumor rundown blog to thesift@newslit.org.