Pfizer documents do not show that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines will lead to mass depopulation

 

Screenshot of the Facebook post.

(*Click to view larger image)

 

The Claim and Our Verdict

• The claim: A Facebook post shares an article from the website “Natural News” and claims Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA COVID-19 vaccine will lead to mass depopulation.
• Fact-checking:
  • The “Pfizer documents” mentioned in the claim are in fact analysis reports of the post-authorization adverse events of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (hereinafter referred to as “the adverse event report”). The full text of the reports does not mention “population reduction” or “depopulation,” nor does it mention that “the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will result in mass depopulation.”
  • The claim that “the mRNA COVID vaccines will lead to mass depopulation” is a mere speculation on the data of spontaneous abortion following COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy presented in the adverse event report. However, the report has pointed out the limitations of its data and stated that the adverse events may not necessarily be related to COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, it cannot be concluded from the adverse event report that COVID-19 vaccination causes miscarriage. No support can be found for inferences based on this claim.
  • The Facebook post makes a false interpretation, as the claim that “Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will result in mass depopulation” is based on Pfizer’s disclosure of the adverse event report.
  • The claim was originally published on the website “The Exposé.” The Exposé article was quoted by “Natural News” as “Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA COVID vaccines will result in mass depopulation.” Other articles published by the websites have been debunked by international fact-checking organizations. They are not reliable sources of information.
• Our verdict: The claim that “Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will lead to mass depopulation” is a false interpretation of data.

News Brief

A Facebook post published June 14, 2022 claims Pfizer documents admit that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine will lead to mass depopulation. The post contains an image and a link to an article. The original English-language text in the image reads, “BOMBSHELL: Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA COVID vaccine will result in mass depopulation.” The post also shares a link to an article published by Citizen News. As of the publication of this report, the post had been shared 117 times, and had received 93 comments and 244 likes or reactions.

Afterwards, the post was shared to a public Facebook group, with the caption “Don’t know why this is admitted so soon.” As of the publication of this report, the post published in the Facebook group had been shared 32 times, and had received 41 comments and 213 likes or reaction.

Fact-checking

 
1. The “Pfizer documents” do not admit that “mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will lead to mass depopulation.”
 
Based on the information shown in the Facebook image, it is found that the article was originally published on the website Natural News, titled “BOMBSHELL: Pfizer’s own documents admit that mRNA covid vaccines will result in mass depopulation.” The source of the information comes from another article published on the website The Exposé. The Exposé article includes a link to the alleged “Pfizer documents.”

The “Pfizer documents” is actually a report analyzing the cumulative post authorization safety data of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including U.S. and foreign post-authorization adverse event reports received through Feb. 28, 2021. The report is titled “Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports of PF-07302048(BNT162B2) Received through 28-Feb-2021” (hereinafter referred to as “the adverse event report”).

After conducting keyword searches in the adverse event report, there is no exact wording or description of “depopulation.” In the adverse event report, no content can be found on Pfizer’s disclosure of “mRNA COVID-19 vaccines leading to mass depopulation.”
 
2. The claim is a false interpretation of the report data.
 
The Exposé article states, “COVID-19 vaccination is going to lead to mass depopulation. This is a pretty bold claim to make… But unfortunately, these bold claims are now backed up with a mountain of evidence, and most of that evidence can be found in the confidential Pfizer documents that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has been forced to publish by court order.” At the end of the article, The Exposé writes, “It looks like we already have more than enough evidence to make the claim that COVID-19 vaccination is going to lead to depopulation.” Therefore, the claim that “COVID-19 vaccination will cause depopulation” is not made by Pfizer. It is just The Exposé’s speculation based on the data in the adverse event report.
 
3. How to interpret the data in the adverse event report?
 
The adverse event report is about the post-authorization adverse events following vaccination received from the U.S. and other countries by Feb. 28, 2021. According to the definition by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), any health problems that occur after vaccination are considered adverse events after immunization. Adverse events include coincidental events and vaccine-related adverse reactions that occur after vaccination. Adverse reactions are also known as side effects. Therefore, the adverse events mentioned in the Pfizer documents may include many health problems that are not related to the vaccines or those without sufficient evidence to show that they are caused by the vaccines.

A claim related to the adverse event report has been debunked by HKBU Fact Check. It has been found that Pfizer’s safety database used in the report includes adverse events reported spontaneously to Pfizer by the public, cases reported by the health authorities, cases published in the medical literature, cases from Pfizer-sponsored marketing programs, non-interventional studies, and cases of serious adverse events reported from clinical studies. All those cases have been included in the report regardless of causality assessment.

In addition, the Methodology section of the adverse event report explicitly states the limitations of the data used, including:
 

1. Reports are submitted voluntarily, and the magnitude of underreporting is unknown. Some of the factors that may influence whether an event is reported include: length of time since marketing, market share of the drug, publicity about a drug or an adverse event, seriousness of the reaction, regulatory actions, awareness by health professionals and consumers of adverse drug event reporting, and litigation.
2. Because many external factors influence whether or not an adverse event is reported, the spontaneous reporting system yields reporting proportions not incidence rates. As a result, it is generally not appropriate to make between-drug comparisons using these proportions; the spontaneous reporting system should be used for signal detection rather than hypothesis testing.
3. In some reports, clinical information (such as medical history, validation of diagnosis, time from drug use to onset of illness, dose, and use of concomitant drugs) is missing or incomplete, and follow-up information may not be available.
4. An accumulation of adverse event reports does not necessarily indicate that a particular adverse event was caused by the drug; rather, the event may be due to an underlying disease or some other factor(s) such as past medical history or concomitant medication.

 
4. Misinterpretation on the adverse event report
 
The Exposé article claims that the relevant data of adverse events on page 12 of the adverse event report (Table 6) reported by pregnant and lactating women after receiving the Pfizer vaccine is the evidence that “the COVID-19 vaccines cause depopulation.”

However, as mentioned above, it is uncertain whether vaccination has caused these miscarriages, and a causal relationship has not yet been established. Therefore, the data in the adverse event report cannot be used to prove the claim that “the vaccines will cause miscarriages.”

Furthermore, the conclusion of Table 6 on page 13 of the report states, “There were no safety signals that emerged from the review of these cases of use in pregnancy and while breast feeding.”

Similar claims have also been debunked by Reuters. The Reuters fact check points out that the adverse event report does not provide the total number of pregnant women who have received vaccination during its statistical period, therefore, it is impossible to use the report’s data to calculate the percentage of pregnant women who have experienced adverse events or had a spontaneous abortion following vaccination out of the total number of pregnant women who have been vaccinated.

To sum up, there are limitations of the data collected through the adverse event reporting systems. For example, the reported cases do not prove that all adverse reactions are caused by vaccination, and the data cannot be used to calculate the incidence rate of adverse events. Therefore, the data of the adverse event report cannot support the inference that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines will cause certain adverse events, or the inference that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine will cause mass depopulation.
 
5. The source of the claim is not reliable.
 
The articles published by The Exposé have been repeatedly debunked by the fact-checking organization PolitiFact. An article published May 30, 2020 by NBC News claims that because Natural News frequently published coronavirus disinformation, Facebook had permanently blocked its Facebook page and banned all users from posting links to the website and its sister sites.

As shown on the Natural News website, a sharing link to “Citizens News” is attached to the article to bypass censorship. Since Facebook has prohibited users from posting content containing the links to Natural News, the site has repeatedly used different domain names to establish affiliate sites to post and share its content, such as “Trump.news”, “Banned.News” and so on.
 

The sharing link used by the Natural News website to bypass censorship.

(*Click to view larger image)

 
The Exposé website is also not a reliable source, and its articles have been repeatedly debunked by international fact-checking organizations, such as this one and this one.

In summary, the content of the Facebook post can be traced back to the three websites, Natural News, Citizens News and The Exposé, none of which is a reliable source.