Tucker: How many Americans have died after taking COVID vaccines?
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host takes a look at the potential risks that come with taking vaccines
How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccines? Not Americans who’ve been killed by the virus, that’s a huge number, but how many Americans have died after getting the vaccines designed to prevent the virus? Do you know the answer to that question? Do you know anything about the downside? We know a lot about the upside of the vaccine. We’ve been completely in favor of vulnerable people taking vaccines.
But what about the potential risks? You’d think you would know more about that than you do. We talk about vaccines constantly, not just on this show, but in this country. Joe Biden was on TV yesterday talking about vaccines. He wants you to get one. Everyone in authority wants you to get one. In fact, you’ve probably already had your shot, and good for you. If you haven’t had your shot, you’re under enormous pressure to get your shot. You understand that soon you may not be able to fly on commercial airplanes or go to work at the office or send your children to school if you don’t have the shot. Meanwhile, the social pressure is enormous. Friends may have already informed you that you’re not welcome at their parties or weddings if you haven’t been vaccinated. There is a lot of pressure to comply. At some point, you probably will comply. It’s just too difficult not be to vaccinated in this country.
But before you make the appointment: do you know anything about the potential risks? Probably you don’t know much. We all assume the risks are negligible. Vaccines aren’t dangerous. That’s not a guess, we know that pretty conclusively from the official numbers. Every flu season, we give influenza shots to more than 160 million Americans. Every year, a relatively small number of people seem to die after getting those shots. To be precise, in 2019, that number was 203 people. The year before, it was 119. In 2017, a total of 85 people died from the flu shot.
Every death is tragic, but big picture, we don’t consider those numbers disqualifying. We keep giving flu shots, and very few people complain about it. So the question is how do those numbers compare to the death rate from the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed across the country? That’s worth knowing.
We checked today. Here’s the answer, which comes from the same set of government numbers that we just listed: Between late December of 2020, and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccines in the United States. Three thousand, three hundred and sixty-two — that’s an average of 30 people every day. So, what does that add up to? By the way, that reporting period ended on April 23. We don’t have numbers past that, we’re not quite up to date. But we can assume that another 360 people have died in the 12 days since. That is a total of 3,722 deaths. Almost four thousand people died after getting the COVID vaccines. The actual number is almost certainly much higher than that — perhaps vastly higher.
The data we just cited come from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System — VAERS — which is managed by the CDC and the FDA. VARES has received a lot of criticism over the years, some of it founded. Some critics have argued for a long time that VARES undercounts vaccine injuries. A report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that "fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported" by the VARES system. Fewer than one percent. So what is the real number of people who apparently have been killed or injured by the vaccine? Well, we don’t know that number. Nobody does, and we’re not going to speculate about it. But it’s clear that what is happening now, for whatever reason, is not even close to normal. It’s not even close to what we’ve seen in previous years with previous vaccines.
Most vaccines are not accused of killing large numbers of people. The Menveo vaccine, for example, is given to people around the world, often children, to prevent bacterial meningitis. In this country, only one person died from that vaccine in the entire period between 2010 and 2015. One. So, compare that to what’s happening now. In just the first four months of this year, the U.S. government has recorded more deaths after COVID vaccinations than from all other vaccines administered in the United States between mid-1997 and the end of 2013. That’s a period of fifteen and a half years. Again, more people, according to VAERS, have died after getting the shot in four months during a single vaccination campaign than from all other vaccines combined over more than a decade and a half. Chart that out. It’s a stunning picture. Now, the debate is over what it means. Again, there’s a lot of criticism of the reporting system. Some people say "well, it’s just a coincidence that someone gets the shot and then dies, possibly from other causes." No one really knows, is the truth. We spoke to one physician today who actively treats COVID patients. He described what we’re seeing now as the single deadliest mass-vaccination event in modern history. Whatever is causing it, it is happening as we speak. So you’d think someone in authority might want to know what’s going on.
If the vaccine injury reporting system is flawed — and it clearly is flawed — why hasn’t it been fixed? And more to the point, why has there not been an independent vaccine safety board to assess what’s happening. And reassure people who stumble across official government numbers on the internet. But amazingly, none of that has been done. No one even mentions the numbers. And in fact, you’re not allowed to. You’ll be pulled off the internet if you do. The people in charge do not acknowledge them. Instead, they warn us about what might happen if we don’t take the vaccine. Like Joe Biden.
JOE BIDEN: You know, there's a lot of misinformation out there, but there's one fact I want every American to know. People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from covid-19…This is your choice. It's life and death.
"People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from COVID -19," Biden said. As a factual matter, that is true. But it’s also misleading. Not all Americans are at a similar risk of dying from COVID-19. Some are at relatively high risk: the old and the sick. They might want to get vaccinated, and most do. Some are at very low risk of dying: the young and the healthy. Others appear to be at essentially no risk at all: anyone who’s had COVID and recovered. Virtually all of those people are immune. That’s true for many viruses. Those second two categories — the young and healthy, and the previously infected — may add up to hundreds of millions of people in this country. The funny thing is, the White House – the official policy-makers who are designing the vaccine rollout – do not acknowledge that those categories even exist.
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Health Authorities are pretending that everyone’s health and risk potential is exactly the same as everyone else’s. That’s why Joe Biden has demanded that 70 percent of all American adults — regardless of age, regardless of health condition, regardless of pre-existing antibodies — get the COVID shot by the Fourth of July two months from now, or else.
This might be an acceptable policy – it would never be an ethical policy – but it might be acceptable to the country if COVID vaccines we could show conclusively came with no risk, and if we truly understood the long-term effects of those vaccines. But neither one of those things is true. We know that according to the government reporting system, thousands of people have died after getting the shot. That is true in this country, where it’s hotly debated when it’s talked about at all, but it’s also true in European countries, whose record-keeping is, if anything, more reliable than ours. Many thousands of other people appear to have been injured after getting the vaccine. VAERS records nearly 900 non-fatal heart attacks in people who just received the shot. 2,700 people reported unexplained chest pain. In all, the vaccine, according to the government reporting system, appears to have contributed to at least 8,000 hospitalizations.
Some of the side effects defy explanation. Researcher Alex Berenson has noted that coronavirus vaccines now account for almost one-third of all tinnitus reports in the VAERS database. That’s the ringing in your ears. The American Tinnitus Association says it's received "many questions" on the link.
Researchers at Oxford and UCLA have begun tracking coronavirus vaccine side effects across eight separate countries. They found, that "Women aged 18 to 34 years had a higher rate of deep vein thrombosis than men of the same age." They also found that heart attacks were "common" in people aged 85 and older who had taken the vaccine. They found serious potential side effects in some children, "anaphylaxis [and] appendicitis were more common in young people."
Vaccines are complicated medicines, and as with any drug, it can take a long time to get it precisely right. The dosage, for example. And this is not the first time people have been hurt during a vaccination campaign. That is bound to happen. What’s different this time, and so striking, is the reaction to these numbers. Here’s a contrast for you: in 1976, the U.S. government vaccinated 45 million people with a vaccine for the swine flu. Fifty-three people reportedly died after getting that shot. The U.S. government immediately halted the vaccination program. Authorities decided it was too risky, it wasn’t worth it.
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Contrast that with what is happening now. This time, our health authorities have reserved their energy for anyone who dares to question vaccines.
LifeSiteNews, a nonprofit news organization, just found itself permanently banned from Facebook. Why? Because it reported government numbers from the VAERS database.
Famously, when podcaster Joe Rogan asked whether healthy young people ought to get the COVID vaccine, the media treated him like a criminal:
CNN’s JOHN AVLON: We know the anti-vaxxers conspiracy theories have been proliferating online but it doesn’t help when people with major platforms feed the beast-like Spotify’s $100 man Joe Rogan
MSNBC’s YASMIN VOSSOUGHIAN: Dr. Fauci, before you go I want you to weigh in on Joe Rogan…How frustrating is it for you for this misinformation to continue to spread about COVID especially when there are folks out there still saying it’s a hoax.
MSNBC’s STEPHANIE RUHLE: It’s disappointing before Joe Rogan is a hugely influential person with a massive audience. It’s mystifying why he’d give people such bad information that puts them in harm’s way.
CNN’S BRIANNA KEILAR: Joe Rogan, one of the world's highest-paid and most popular podcast hosts, is giving air to anti-vaccine narratives.
Anti-vaccine narratives. He did nothing of the sort. Almost everything they said was a lie that obscured a very simple and potentially relevant question that he asked, which is: should healthy young people receive the vaccine? We’re not precisely sure what the risks are. It is a lie to say there are no risks. There are risks in everything, including in getting a vaccine. So why not rationally weigh the risk/reward ratio, as we do with every decision we make. For that, he was denounced as an anti-vaxxer kook. A danger to public safety.
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Yahoo News published a piece entitled, "Joe Rogan, who's not a doctor, gives terrible vaccine advice." That's the same Yahoo News that published this piece: "5 things Bill Gates wants you to know about COVID-19 variants."
One of the very few elected officials in the country who has said a word about any of this, who has asked the obvious questions, not attacking vaccines, wondering about their effects, is Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Last week, Johnson asked Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, why so many Americans seem to be dying after the shot.
Maybe there’s a good answer for that, Collins wouldn’t even acknowledge that was happening. Instead, Collins fretted that if the population focused too much on the potential harm from vaccines, people might be hesitant to get them.
"I challenged his use of the term ‘Vaccine Hesitancy,’" Ron Johnson told us in a conversation today. "I told him that based on the VAERS deaths, and my conversations with people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, a better description would be: ‘People who are hesitant to be coerced into participating in the largest drug trial in history.’"
Exactly. There’s a reason many states have more vaccine doses than they can use. Some people just don’t want the vaccine. That’s their right. Period. Not all of them are crazy. Health decisions used to be considered personal choices. We didn’t ask about them. They were considered personal as recently as last fall. In September of 2020, at the height of the presidential campaign, a CNN reporter asked Kamala Harris whether she'd be willing to take the coronavirus vaccine once it became available.
"Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us," Harris responded. "I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump." A month later, at the vice presidential debate, Harris was if anything more emphatic on the subject. "If Donald Trump tells us we should take" the vaccine, she declared, "I'm not going to take it."
Kamala Harris has, of course, since changed her mind. She’s no longer skeptical of the vaccine, nor does she tolerate the skepticism of others. Instead, she’s an enthusiastic participant in COVID theater. And that’s really the only name for it.
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Just today, Harris and her husband made a point of kissing each other in front of photographers while wearing masks. They did this despite the fact they’re married, that they live together, that they were standing outside at the time and despite the fact that they both have been vaccinated.
A number of crude jokes come to mind, but for once we’ll pass. It is the crudest kind of propaganda, designed by the cynical for the benefit of a population they consider stupid and weak and malleable. It’s not just Kamala Harris. Everyone is in on it, even the corporate comedians.
Comic buffoons even do what we assume is an unpaid ad for Moderna.
DOCTOR: Oh, you read something on Facebook?
NURSE: Oh your friend from high school who sells jewelry posted it?
NURSE: To one who’s 53 and still builds dollhouses?
DOCTOR: You heard what? On whose podcast?
DOCTOR: Is he a doctor? No? A scientist? No?
NURSE: Can he name one of the ingredients in the vaccine?
NURSE: Can he point to his glabella?
DOCTOR: Then tell him to shut the f--- up. The glabella is right here by the way (gives the finger)
NURSE: Get the vaccine
DOCTOR: Get the vaccine
DOCTOR: Grow the f--- up and get the vaccine
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It doesn’t make you laugh. It makes you nervous. Why are they talking to you that way? Why are they giving you the finger on TV? No matter how many fingers they give you, it doesn’t change what remains true for the country: If American citizens are going to be forced to take this vaccine or any other medicine, they have an absolute right to know what the effects of it might be. And they have an absolute right to ask that question. Without being silenced or censored or mocked or given the finger. No amount of happy talk or coercion or appeals to false patriotism can change that. Period.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the May 5, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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