Republican lawmaker slammed after falsely claiming hundreds of Minnesotans died of COVID vax

On Monday, Minnesota Public Radio's David Montgomery dove into a claim by Republican state Sen. Jim Abeler that there have been 212 deaths in Minnesota from the COVID-19 vaccine — a claim he made at a Minnesota anti-vaccine rally over the weekend.

"The ultimate source of his figure appears to be the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a database of 'information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines,'" wrote Montgomery. "Note the wording there. These are not cases where a vaccine *caused* a health problem. These are cases where someone had a health problem after getting a vaccine. The vaccine could be the cause, or it could be unrelated."

Montgomery acknowledged that there were some cases reported to VAERS of people who grew seriously ill and died after vaccines — but that there is no evidence the vaccine was the cause.

Notably, he added, "most (though not all) of these deaths in VAERS are among the elderly," the same group that is naturally most vulnerable to COVID-19.

Several right-wing politicians and media figures have made similar false claims, citing the number of adverse events reported to VAERS as numbers of actual vaccine injuries or deaths. Fox News' Tucker Carlson was a big promoter of this — and even blamed Joe Biden for confusion over how VAERS works when called out on his false claim.

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