Thread by @dhmontgomery

THREAD: In a speech this weekend at an anti-vaccine-mandate rally at the MN Capitol, #mnleg Sen. @jimabeler said there have been "212 [deaths] in Minnesota, *from* the vaccine."

Let's break down where that figure came from, and what it really means. 1/

2/ First, this ISN'T about "breakthrough" deaths, people got a #COVID19 vaccine but got sick and died anyway.

That figure, as of today, is 80.

Abeler is talking about something else — alleged deaths *because* of the vaccine.

3/ 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."

4/ 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.

5/ To access VAERS you are required to read and agree to this disclaimer, for whatever little that's worth:

6/ Anyway, looking in VAERS for Minnesota deaths following the #COVID19 vaccine, I got a figure of 202 entries. That's a little different from @jimabeler's 212, but let's not split hairs over this. (Maybe we're searching slightly differently.) The bigger Q: what are these 200+?

@jimabeler 7/ As it turns out, there is an available “Adverse Event Description” field you can access with a narrative for each case.

Many, however, just say some variation of "Patient death within 60 days of receiving the COVID vaccine series.”

@jimabeler 8/ If you dive deeper into the ones for which we do have narratives, some of them seem clearly unrelated, like an 80+ year-old with "death due to age and dementia”, but since they had been recently vaccinated, they were included in the database.

@jimabeler 9/ Other deaths are just breakthrough COVID cases that happened within 60 days of vaccination. "COVID symptoms started within 8-9 days of vaccination. No fever, general not feeling, chills. Turned into very difficult breathing, low oxygen levels and pneumonia."

@jimabeler 10/ There ARE entries that involve someone taking a sharp turn for the worse shortly after vaccination: "Approximately 3 hours after vaccine administration, patient experienced the following: Nausea, Vomiting, Abdominal pain, and the following day: Bloody Bowel Movements."

@jimabeler 11/ But again, none of this analysis is *causal*. These are medical deaths that happened to occur within 60 days of vaccination.

@jimabeler 12/ Something else of note: most (though not all) of these deaths in VAERS are among the elderly.

@jimabeler 13/ So, have there been Minnesotans who died specifically as a result of getting vaccinated? Entirely possible. Allergic reactions do happen.

But this 212 (or 202, or whatever) figure @jimabeler used isn’t a reliable or useful count in the slightest.

@jimabeler 14/ Also I’ll note that these entries are filed by a mixture of medical professionals and family members. Some are written in very precise clinical language; others are like, "My mom died Saturday morning - within the 24-hour period of her vaccine.”

@jimabeler 15/ This is a common misconception. If you get hit by a car after testing positive, you’re not recorded as a COVID death. While COVID often kills in concert with other conditions, it’s generally listed only when it was a significant factor in the death.

https://twitter.com/MrMinnesotaMike/status/1432424924514299907

@jimabeler 16/16 I’m not an expert in this at all; people who are might offer further insight.

This is just what I was able to uncover with a half hour fiddling with the VAERS database.

Form whatever opinions you want. Just don’t use crap data to justify them.

@jimabeler 17/16 Credit to @timnelson_mpr for shooting that video of Abeler’s speech that led off this thread.