Fact Check

No, the Israeli Health Ministry Didn't Say the Pfizer Vaccine 'Killed 40 Times More Elderly' Than COVID-19

Israel has undertaken an aggressive push to get its population vaccinated against COVID-19.

Published March 5, 2021

 (Ian Hitchcock/QLD Health)
Image Via Ian Hitchcock/QLD Health
Claim:
The Israeli Ministry of Health said that the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer has "killed 40 times more elderly" people than the virus itself.

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In early March 2021, Snopes readers asked about various social media and internet posts claiming that the Ministry of Health in Israel said the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine had "killed 40 times more elderly" people than the COVID-19 coronavirus itself. Here's an example of one such post circulating on Facebook, with the user's name cropped out for privacy purposes:


The link included in this post and others like it leads to a now-deleted story that was posted to the anti-vaccine activist website Children's Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Robert F. Kennedy and an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.

The Israeli Health Ministry did not say that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine kills a whopping 40 times more elderly people than the pandemic virus. On the contrary, on Jan. 27, 2021, the ministry released a report that stated most vaccine side effects were "mild and transient." Some occurrences of more severe reactions have occurred, including allergic reactions, but no vaccine-recipient fatalities had been reported in Israel.

As of March 5, 2021, Israel had vaccinated more than half of its population with at least one dose of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine. The country's aggressive vaccination campaign has been effective, with Israeli data showing the vaccine had been nearly 99 percent effective in preventing deaths from COVID-19.

Bethania Palma is a journalist from the Los Angeles area who started her career as a daily newspaper reporter and has covered everything from crime to government to national politics. She has written for ... read more

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