A video of a CDC official appearing before the vaccine committee during its January meeting is being shared widely online to falsely claim the official admitted that the COVID-19 vaccines are causing “debilitating” complications.
** Bullshit Alert:
Shimabukuro, the deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, was discussing reports of illnesses that people have filed after COVID-19 vaccination, but he never says the vaccines were proven to have caused the events.
And nowhere in his remarks does Shimabukuro say that the vaccines have been found to be the cause of the alleged “debilitating illnesses.” He simply says that the CDC acknowledges there are reports of such instances.
“Currently, there are no epidemiologic data from safety monitoring to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines are causing these types of health problems,” the CDC wrote in a statement to the AP.
Right before making the comments about reports of long-term illnesses allegedly caused by the vaccines, Shimabukuro cautioned that VAERS data does not prove causality.
“That is a spontaneous reporting system,” he said. “Anyone can report — a patient, a parent, a healthcare provider — and we accept all of those reports without judging the clinical seriousness or how plausible the adverse event may be with respect to causation.”