Is the COVID-19 vaccine 50 times more likely to kill young people than COVID-19 itself?

Question

Michael Yeadon, a former vice president at Pfizer and lately known as, e.g., making unsubstantiated claims about COVID vaccinations, has made the claim in question in a video interview (archived version available here). Specifically, in the interview he says that

Young people are not susceptible to COVID-19. If they acquire the virus they usually have no symptoms and they shrug it off very easily so they are not at risk. It's a crazy thing then to vaccinate them with something that is actually 50 times more likely to kill them than the virus itself.

This claim has recently started circulating in social media, e.g., in the form of the picture below. It should be pointed out that the girl in the picture is almost certainly completely unrelated to the claim since the same girl appears, e.g., in the thumbnail of this YouTube video posted in the beginning of May, 2019.

Is there any evidence supporting the claim that for young people, vaccinating against COVID-19 is substantially more dangerous than the virus?

The text of the image (translated from Spanish) is:

Children have 50 TIMES more probability of dying from the Covid vaccine than from the virus.

Dr. Michael Yeadon, Former vice president of Pfizer

Obtain more information on Defending The Republic.org/Covid

Our principal responsibility as parents is protecting the children.

I wonder where the mortality figure for the vaccine comes from. The US might have vaccinated enough teenagers by now to have some data for them but as far as I know very few children (ie under 12) have been vaccinated against COVID19 anywhere in the world. — quarague, Aug 23 '21 at 07:43
@WeatherVane I changed the link to a non-archived version where the video can be viewed. — Kiro, Aug 23 '21 at 08:05
@fredsbend The screenshot seems to come from a Telegram group (deduction from the background pattern), the 3.4K means that at the moment of the screenshot 3.4K people on the group have seen the image. — Genorme, Aug 23 '21 at 08:37
I think the claim is well-debunked in the accepted answer, but another balancing fact to consider is the health impact on a child of the death of a parent. Especially, I would have thought, if the child knows that they brought the fatal infection into the household. I don't know how this might be quantified, but it is very much in an average child's interests to keep their parents healthy. — nigel222, Aug 25 '21 at 10:36

score 133 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 03 '21 at 20:07

As per context from the Bannon-hosted interview, the claim was made in the context of the US FDA approval for vaccinating the 12-15 y.o., so I'll address it [only] in that regard.

The claims is unsubstantiated from what I/we know so far, simply because there were zero deaths in the vaccinated group in the clinical trial that led to this (provisional) approval.

No thromboses or hypersensitivity adverse events or vaccine-related anaphylaxis was seen. Few participants in any cohort (≤0.4% through 1 month after dose 2) had serious adverse events, and none were considered by the investigators to have been vaccine-related. No deaths were reported.

Now in the video, immediately after the quoted claim he goes on to talk about VAERS data, but this is not directly in support of his previous claim (on youth) but to make another one comparing VAERS data with that from previous years (i.e. on other vaccines), which is another anti-vaxxer meme by now.

Entertaining that he might have done a quick calculation based on VAERS data in youth... that still doesn't pan out for me to anywhere near his 50x claim. In a recent CDC report "8.9 million U.S. adolescents aged 12–17 years had received Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine" and the "CDC reviewed 14 reports of death after vaccination". The usual anti-vaxxer method (from the previously linked question) is to assume all are caused by the vaccine, which would give 14 / 8.9M = 1.57 deaths per million vaccines. On the other hand, again from CDC data (warning: it's a dynamic page, numbers may change in the future--see footnote below for what data was used) in the same 12-17 age group there are 125+102 = 227 deaths from Covid-19... out of (approx.) 1.136M + 0.773M = 1.909M infections in the same age group, so that's 227 / 1.909M = 118.9 deaths per million infections. So instead of 50:1, as Yeadon claims, the ratio I came up with is 1:75, in the opposite direction, even using anti-vaxxer methodology.

The CDC insofar could not attribute any of those VAERS deaths as being caused by the vaccine; the report additionally says:

Impressions regarding cause of death did not indicate a pattern suggestive of a causal relationship with vaccination; however, cause of death for some decedents is pending receipt of additional information.

Despite his credentials, Yeadon has made quite a few other unsubstantiated claims about the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccines and generally downplayed the risk from the virus. Some of his more recent claims have been so improbable... that there was fact checking that he even said that... e.g. he prognosticated that vaccine booster recipients will die in two years and that it's part of a "mass depopulation" programme amounting to "deliberate execution potentially of billions of people".

Screenshots of the (dynamic) CDC data used "Data as of: Sunday, August 22, 2021 1:18 PM ET. Posted: Sunday, August 22, 2021 3:03 PM ET":

As a comment on the other answers, the mortality rate for a given disease (unlike the case or infection fatality rate) is obviously very dependant on the prevalence of the disease, meaning the mortality rate goes to zero as prevalence goes to zero, because the denominator for the mortality rate is the whole population, not just those infected (or showing symptoms). And surely enough, disease prevalence is a considered a factor in deciding whether to vaccinate a population, even if IFR/CFR for that disease is (or would be) high in case of an outbreak, e.g. there's no campaign or general recommendation to vaccinate Americans against Ebola, but there is one for those who work in specific areas. But it's a textbook case of faulty generalization to say something like "Americans don't get vaccinated against Ebola, therefore Ebola is not dangerous/deadly".

Even in the case of Covid-19 vaccination, some countries, e.g. Germany progressed from a recommendation (in June) to vaccinate just the adolescents who had additional risk factors to vaccinating everyone over 12 (in August). I haven't found a direct quote from STIKO (my German sucks), but they've been paraphrased as taking prevalence into account:

The advisory board to the German government said the U-turn had been made due to an evaluation of new scientific observations and data that showed young people face a high risk of getting Covid due to the more transmissible Delta variant.

and also the US rollout having had few problems in terms of side effects in children, plus the delta variant spreading...

STIKO said that they adjusted their recommendations based on new data about the potential side effects of the currently-available coronavirus vaccines, particularly after the large-scale vaccination rollout across adolescent populations in the USA. According to the committee, almost 10 million young people have already been vaccinated in the US. [...]

In addition, now that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is the dominant strain in Germany, STIKO said that mathematical modelling shows there is a significantly higher risk of young people getting infected in the event of a possible fourth wave in the autumn.

So, yeah, disease prevalence matters in such decisions, but it's not clear at all [to me] from the Bannon interview that Yeadon is talking about this issue.

Prior Q here on another claim by Yeadon https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/49958/do-the-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-risk-inducing-infertility-in-women — Fizz, Aug 23 '21 at 09:48
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/128873/discussion-on-answer-by-fizz-is-the-covid-19-vaccine-50-times-more-likely-to-kil). Comment if you are trying to improve the answer. Make your own answer if it's a fundamental problem. Air your issues with moderation on [meta]. — , Aug 23 '21 at 21:29
The best link to the STIKO decision for Germany is this (primary source for the final decision): https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/EpidBull/Archiv/2021/Ausgaben/33_21.pdf?__blob=publicationFile . STIKO is purely science based and independent from any political or executive organization in Germany. The document is long (there are 33 pages handling the children, with all the scientifical details, number crunching etc. etc.), and I did not read it, but at a quick glance I see some of the points you made in your answer reflected there. — AnoE, Aug 24 '21 at 15:14
Not death, but serious injury in the clinical trials. Ignored by Pfizer. https://spaceworms.substack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-maddie-de-garay — wobbily_col, Apr 17 '23 at 10:48

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 24 '21 at 03:43

-1

It is possible that his claim is less wrong than other answers suggest(1:5, 1:75), if you are very creative with defining what young people are.

In other words you would need to define young people to mean healthy young white people. And probably you could also add other factors like BMI, to further narrow down your definition.

Consider this data:

Researchers estimate that 25 deaths in a population of some 12 million children in England gives a broad, overall mortality rate of 2 per million children.

They checked England's public health data and found most of the young people who had died of Covid-19 had underlying health conditions:

Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities

Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years - though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed

Though the overall risks were still low, children and young people who died were more likely to be over the age of 10 and of Black and Asian ethnicity.

tl;dr he is wrong, but not less than math in other answers says if you consider only healthy kids.

edited Aug 24 '21 at 03:43

Fizz

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answered Aug 23 '21 at 19:27

NoSenseEtAl

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I understand different people adopting different age ranges as "young" (0-5? 0-12? 0-17?). I can understand people implicitly implying (for example) American children because the target audience of the "Real America's Voice" is only Americans. But I can't see any reasonable justification in defining "young people" to only include white children or healthy children. That definition seems hopelessly racist and ableist. Can you find an example of someone using it that way? If not, this answer seems like it is pushing the steelman technique too far. – Oddthinking Aug 24 '21 at 00:09
If one only considers healthy kids one can reduce the already very low death rate for COVID-19 even further. But I don't see any fugding that is not simply wrong that produces a non zero death rate for the vaccine. – quarague Aug 24 '21 at 05:37
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Ah the mixture of the old standbys "Vaccines are responsible for every death that even remotely happened in their vincinity" and "Most Covid deaths are actually caused by other things" - that is one way to make the numbers give you the result you want. – CharonX Aug 24 '21 at 07:04
@Oddthinking the relevance of health of children likely comes from the implicit question of "who should we vaccinate?" Most vaccine programs have prioritised vaccinating the groups most at risk, which includes people with existing health conditions. Race is an even more complex issue, but I suspect that for the people sharing memes, the question is "should I vaccinate my child?", and regardless of whether it makes sense to do so, there are people who would factor their child's race into such a decision. – James_pic Aug 24 '21 at 12:32
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You can *really* disturb the ratios if you define "healthy" as demonstrated by "surviving COVID-19" - wow suddenly that group is completely invulnerable! – Bryan Krause Aug 24 '21 at 13:26
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-1 Skeptics is most here to avoid "being very creative with definitions". – DJClayworth Aug 24 '21 at 14:22
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@DJClayworth the point of the answer is that **Michael Yeadon** and his cronies are "being very creative with definitions" – RonJohn Aug 24 '21 at 17:11
@RonJohn: Well, it's not too clear to me that he is. He also says e.g. that 75% of VAERS Covid-19 cases/reports are "thrombo-embolic events", which is almost certainly not literally true either. So, alternatively, he's just making up numbers... At no point he argued (at least in the linked clip) that VAERS is using wrong definitions. – Fizz Aug 24 '21 at 17:16
@Fizz we seem to be referring to different things. – RonJohn Aug 24 '21 at 17:19
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This website is for determining whether someone's claim is defensible from an outside view, not for understanding that person's inside-view thought process. – Karl Knechtel Aug 24 '21 at 19:25
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What are you comparing the 2 in a million figure to? Compared to the clinical trial that Fizz referenced that's still 2 more than in the vaccine group (although the low numbers make these comparisons fairly meaningless). – thelem Aug 24 '21 at 21:07
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I think this answer and many of the comments are doing a disservice to the original claimant by assuming that the words have been twisted in a very specific and unreasonable way, without evidence. Answers of the form "By normal definitions, the claim is false", or "By the definitions explicitly given by the OP it is true, even if by normal definitions it is false" are reasonable. Answers of the form "If we assume without evidence that the claimant is using racist and ableist definitions, then their claim is still false" are not reasonable. – Oddthinking Aug 25 '21 at 02:29
@thelem: yeah, this quote from the BBC is on PHE (England) data and would need some England (or at least UK) data on (alleged) deaths from/after the vaccine for some comparison. Comparing absolute risks across samples (i.e. with US VAERS) isn't an additional "stretch". But it looks like the UK is just [starting](https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/all-16-17-year-olds-england-be-offered-first-covid-vaccine-dose-by-aug-23-2021-08-14/) to vaccinate the 16-17 y.o., so such data is [probably] unavailable. – Fizz Aug 25 '21 at 07:50
@Oddthinking it seems to me that you are arguing that Skeptics should not 'steel man' arguments under analysis, or should do so in limited circumstances. To me, that seems like a disservice to the community, who would benefit from understanding if a claim has validity in a very narrow scope. Users have the ability to separate truth from scope, and so to judge for themselves whether a claimant was unreasonable by stating something as if it had wide scope, when in fact it has narrow scope. – Carl G Apr 15 '22 at 15:12
@CarlG: I feel your argument is, itself, a strawman. I did not argue against all steelman techniques. I did not even argue it should only be used in a particularly limited circumstance. I argued that redefining the terms in such a perverted way, without any evidence that this was the intention of the claimant, is taking the technique too far. It clouds rather than illuminates. Users may or may not be able to pull out the truth, but they can registered their judgement with a downvote, which I endorse on this answer. – Oddthinking Apr 15 '22 at 18:12
@Oddthinking I said "you are arguing that Skeptics should not 'steel man' arguments under analysis, or **should do so in limited circumstances**". That contradicts your misunderstanding of what I said ("[you said that I] argue[d] against ALL steelman techniques") And your biased word choice ("perverted") indicates to me that you don't intend to sincerely evaluate the merits of the discussion. You're entitled to your opinion, but I think you are discouraging useful understanding of viewpoints. – Carl G Apr 19 '22 at 05:12
@CarlG: You offered two choices: (1) that I argued that we should neve use steelman arguments. False. (2) that we should do so in **limited** circumstances. Misleading. I am saying we should steelman, regularly. But not to such an extreme level that the meanings of the words are completely perverted. ["(of a thing) having been corrupted or distorted from its original course, meaning, or state."] This answer doesn't open our eyes to what the original claimant meant. It just shifts the definitions beyond stretching point to act as an unneeded Devil's Advocate. – Oddthinking Apr 19 '22 at 05:24

Is the COVID-19 vaccine 50 times more likely to kill young people than COVID-19 itself?

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