Setting the record straight: Ad repeated lies about safety of COVID-19 vaccine – Record Searchlight

US COVID deaths reach 675,000, matching death toll of 1918 Spanish flu

The U.S. has surpassed 675,000 COVID-19 deaths. That's roughly the same amount of Americans killed by the 1918-19 Spanish flu.

Staff Video, USA TODAY

Three times in the past week and a half, Record Searchlight print editions included an ad rife with dangerous disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines and our local public health department.

This ad should never have been published. It relies on a mischaracterization of the national Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and a variety of false and unsupported statements.

Most importantly, the ad turns the truth on its head. Let me start there: Vaccines are saving lives. COVID-19 is killing people in our community every week. Every credible source of information shows this. Shasta County Public Health employees go to work every day trying to protect the local community and have been straight-up heroic in their resilience over the course of this pandemic.

Since the ads author relied heavily on references to VAERS, I spoke with Dr. John Suat the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Immunization Safety Office. Su is the lead for the VAERS safety monitoring system. I asked him to review the claims and set the record straight.

I think this (ad) is a good example of how VAERS data can be misunderstood, or worse, misrepresented, Su told me. VAERS is designed to detect potential problems. It is not designed to determine if the vaccine is the cause of the adverse event.

A series of things went wrong. Our company has a process for ads like this and this ad rightly was flagged. Even so, human error allowed it to reach the page. Then, after running twice and being flagged a second time, it ran a third and final time.

What publishes in the Record Searchlight is ultimately my responsibility. I pledge to do what I can to set this right.

First, as Su noted, it misuses VAERS data by claiming it shows a cause and effect. Its just a surveillance system meant to pick up as many signals as possible so the real science of interpretation can begin.

In addition, the ad gets the VAERS data wrong. It claims 14,000 deaths have been documented in the system. In actuality, the VAERS database includes 7,899 reports of death in the U.S. (the 14,000 figure likely came from the CDC briefly and mistakenly including foreign cases at one point in July an error that was quickly corrected).

Anyone can report an adverse event to VAERS. And, as Su pointed out, I could go in for my vaccine and then walk across the street and be hit by a bus. The death would qualify for inclusion because it occurred after my shot. Its a bit of a stretch to say the vaccine killed me.

In fact, of those 7,899 reported deaths, only three have been fully studied and found to be the direct result of vaccine injection. Those were extremely rare reactions to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The ad builds on the 14,000 error by multiplying it claiming without basis that only 1% to 5% of adverse vaccine events are reported to VAERS. That statement may come from an outdated study on the rate at which rashes were reported after vaccination, but more recent research has shown a much higher rate of reporting for more serious events.

Kerri Schuette of Shasta County Public Health has written a lengthy point-by-point response to the ad that we are publishing in full in the Sunday edition of the Record Searchlight as well as online. I urge you to read it.

In short, the ad accused local officials of failing to investigate and report injuries and deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines. As Schuette notes, there has not been evidence of even a single Shasta County death from these vaccines. And the public health department reports everything it is supposed to. The ads author seems to misunderstand the agencys role.

As for COVID-19 itself, it has caused 290 deaths in Shasta County.

To compound all of this, the ad was what we refer to as issue-based. Our policies require that even if they are acceptable for publication (which this wasnt), issue-based and political ads must be clearly labeled so they cannot be confused with news content. That did not happen in this case.

First, write this column. I want to personally say Im sorry this happened and urge our readers to examine critically any claims they encounter especially those that contradict the vast body of expertise that has developed around this pandemic. If youre interested in tracking actual VAERS data on these vaccines, go to the source: bit.ly/3kDDv4w.

Second, we are running the response from public health in its entirety.

Related: A recent Record Searchlight ad contained disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. These are the facts.

Finally, we will donate the amount of money received from that ad toward the COVID-19 response in our community.

This pandemic is a life and death situation and falsehoods about it are killing people. Too many have been lured by the dark corners of the internet and some authoritative-sounding YouTube and Instagram videos into believing conspiracy theories. Our best chance of getting through this is sticking to the truth and to verified facts from actual experts and scientists.

These vaccines have been under the greatest scrutiny of any vaccine in history, arguably, Su said. You can see that these vaccines are very safe from all the data weve been able to accumulate.

I couldnt be prouder of the work our local news team has done to cover the pandemic. It has been timely, accurate and informative. The publication of this ad pains me because it distracts from that work. But our mission is, and will always be, to tell you the truth.

Silas Lyons is executive editor for USA TODAY Network newsrooms in Northern and Central California and Nevada. He supports dedicated teams of reporters that investigate wrongdoing, swarm breaking news and tell stories of triumph and human kindness. If you believe in this work, please consider a subscription.

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Setting the record straight: Ad repeated lies about safety of COVID-19 vaccine - Record Searchlight