Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines are safe for people in their 20s – USA TODAY
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As the omicron variantspreads across the country, some online claim young adults are more at risk from COVID-19 vaccines than the virus itself.
"People in Their Twenties Have 7 Times Higher Risk of Death After Vaccination Than From COVID,"reads the headline on a Dec. 3 article from RAIR Foundation USA,a right-wingactivist organization that has previously made false claims about COVID-19 vaccines.
The article accumulated about 200 shares on Facebook within two weeks, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool. Similar claims have been promoted on other conservative websites.
Due to a small number of rare but dangerous blood clots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended American adults get vaccinated with shots from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna instead of Johnson & Johnson.But that doesn't mean any of the vaccines are more dangerous for 20-somethingsthan COVID-19 itself.
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"This 'article'is a click-bait opinion news piece and not an article grounded in actual science," Aimee Bernard, an assistant professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, said in an email.
USA TODAY reached out to RAIR Foundation USA for comment.
While COVID-19 can kill people in their 20s, there is no evidence showing vaccines have caused deaths in that age group.
Young adults are less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, but they can still develop severe symptoms. Data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statisticsshows nearly 5,000 Americans ages 18-29 have died from the virus since the pandemic began.
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Meanwhile, as USA TODAY has previously reported, there is no evidence the COVID-19 vaccines cause death.
"There is no evidence to support the vaccine being more dangerous than COVID for 20-year-olds,"Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at theJohns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email."While it is true that 20-year-olds have a very low risk of death from COVID-19, they also have a very low risk of vaccine complications."
As evidence, RAIR Foundation USAcitedan articlefrom the Non-Profit Organization Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance, agroup based in Osaka. The article, published in the organization's English-language Med Check bulletin, claims the "mortality risk of vaccination is 7 times higher than that of COVID-19 in 20s."
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"It is a ridiculous (sic) to consider vaccination for school children," the article concludes.
To back up its claim, Med Check listed three "reported death cases" purportedly involving COVID-19 vaccination.
Two cases involved 26-year-olds who reportedly died a few days after receiving the vaccine. The other case involved a 24-year-old who initially was thought to have committed suicide, but actually "accidentally died following abnormal behavior" after vaccination,according to the bulletin.
Med Check used those cases, as well as age data from preliminary vaccination surveysin Japan, to estimate a COVID-19 vaccine mortality rate for people in their 20s. But that approach is flawed.
Similar tothe U.S., Japankeeps track of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination. As USA TODAY has previously reported, such tracking does not prove causality. An adverse event occurring after vaccination doesn't prove vaccination caused it.
Adverse event reports published by Japan'sMinistry of Health, Labor and Welfare in May, and translated to English using Google Translate,do show the deaths listed in the bulletin. However, in each case, the ministry wrote that a causal relationship to the vaccine was "unevaluable."
COVID-19 vaccines from three companies Pfizer, Takeda/Moderna and AstraZenecaare authorized in Japan. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has said serious side effects are rare, and that the"effectiveness and safety of vaccines for COVID-19 has been verified based on clinical trials and scientific findings."
In the U.S., the same can be said for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
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"If you look at the clinical trial data for children and adolescents, there have been no deaths due to the vaccine. Zero," Bernard said."The scientific community also knows that the risk of cardiovascular issues and death is much higher in the unvaccinated compared to the vaccinated."
USA TODAY reached out to theNon-Profit Organization Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilance for comment.
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that people in their 20s have a"7 times higher risk of death after vaccination than from COVID." The COVID-19 vaccines have not been proven to cause death. While young adults are less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, thousands have died due to the virus.
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Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines are safe for people in their 20s - USA TODAY
