Propaganda from the National Vaccine Information Center About MMR Deaths
Barbara Loe Fisher abuses VAERS reports, includes foreign reports and goes back to 1980, and then compares the total to yearly measles deaths to make you think MMR vaccine deaths are common.
The National Vaccine Information Center has a lot to say about measles. Not surprisingly, it is mostly about how measles isn’t that bad and about how horrible they think measles vaccines are…
The especially like to post about MMR vaccine deaths.
Propaganda from the National Vaccine Information Center About MMR Deaths
Is that true?
Has the MMR vaccine resulted in many deaths?
Of course not!
“As of March 28, 2025, there have been 116,255 reports of measles-vaccine reactions, hospitalizations, injuries, and deaths following measles vaccinations made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), including 572 related deaths, 9,046 hospitalizations, and 2,217 related disabilities.”
NVIC Measles disease & vaccine quick facts
The National Vaccine Information Center, headed by Barbara Loe Fisher, is simply citing statistics from VAERS.
And, as everyone knows, VAERS is a passive reporting system and doesn’t prove that a vaccine caused an adverse event.
“In 1960, three years before the first measles vaccine became available in the U.S., there were approximately 442,000 reported measles cases and 380 related deaths, among the 3.5 to 5 million Americans who were likely infected with measles.”
NVIC Measles disease & vaccine quick facts
Anti-vaccine influencers don’t tell you this, but only 3% of the adverse events following immunization in VAERS “were classified as definitely causally related to vaccine received!”
Abusing VAERS Reports
But not only is Barbara Loe Fisher’s National Vaccine Information Center misusing VAERS reports, they are actually abusing them!
How?
To get to 572 measles vaccine deaths, which are since at least 1980, you have to include all locations, which includes foreign reports!
As a comparison, know that the measles vaccine has prevented about 57 million deaths worldwide since 2000!
What happens if you only include “vaccine deaths” in VAERS from within the United States and it’s territories?
The deaths drop by more than half — to 256, but note that this is still going all the way back to 1980.
And although most aren’t true vaccine deaths, even if they were, that would be 256 deaths over 45 years, or about 5–6 deaths a year.
Now, how many kids died from measles in the pre-vaccine era?
While Barbara Loe Fisher said 380, note that she picked a year with a relatively low death count, and that there were over 500 measles deaths in many years at that time!
And unlike her VAERS stats, she is careful to only include measles deaths from within the United States. Those 380 deaths don’t include measles deaths in US territories or foreign countries…
So she is combining 45 years of vaccine deaths and comparing it to one year of measles deaths. And even then, again, she is abusing the VAERS stats by including foreign vaccine deaths, but leaving out foreign measles deaths.
Do you see how this kind of propaganda works now?
Hopefully you can see through it.
I mean, even if you want to believe that all the reports in VAERS are accurate and represent true vaccine deaths (they aren’t, as you can see in the cases I have posted), these “vaccine deaths” would be much less than the deaths from measles.
But what about the anti-vaccine talking point that fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries are reported to VAERS?
That’s not true. It is based on an unfinished report of all possible vaccine reactions, including minor reactions. And anyway, we know that serious vaccine reactions are reported to VAERS much more commonly. For example, when the oral polio vaccine was causing polio, over 70% of the cases were reported.
Not to mention that millions of doses of the MMR vaccine are given each year!
How many millions?
Over 10 million doses of the MMR and/or MMR/Varicella vaccine are given in the United States each year!
Are you really worried about a risk of death of 1 in 2 million from getting vaccinated (5-6 VAERS deaths per 10 million doses), when the risk of death if you get measles is between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000?
It is clearly much more risky to skip or delay getting vaccinated, especially with measles outbreaks on the rise.
If you are still thinking about autism, know that Japan stopped using an MMR vaccine back in 1993 and all it got them was a lot of mumps and its complications, including deafness, orchitis, pancreatitis, encephalitis, and meningitis. Not using the MMR vaccine didn’t keep kids in Japan from becoming autistic…
References
Loughlin AM, Marchant CD, Adams W, Barnett E, Baxter R, Black S, Casey C, Dekker C, Edwards KM, Klein J, Klein NP, LaRussa P, Sparks R, Jakob K. Causality assessment of adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Vaccine. 2012 Nov 26;30(50):7253-9. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.09.074. Epub 2012 Oct 9. PMID: 23063829.
United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Public Health Service (PHS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) / Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) 1990 - 03/28/2025, CDC WONDER On-line Database. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html on Apr 8, 2025 1:42:43 AM
Great post. Thanks! I just wonder if Fischer believes all this crap!
Loe-Fisher has an extensive rap sheet for lying about VAERS.
One anomaly about vaccine “reactions” on VAERS is the double counting (well often treble/quadruple or more) that goes on.
This means that a death in a soldier (who died of a drug overdose) can appear under multiple vaccine listings if all their prior or concurrent vaccines are mentioned in the report.
Hence this example you cite appearing as a death “due to MMR” in Lie-Fisher’s (sorry, Loe-Fisher’s) listing of VAERS deaths. The case was clearly flagged because of the smallpox vaccine 5 days earlier, but this case will appear as a death on listings not just for smallpox vax, but MMR, Anthrax, Hep A, Hep B, DT, and polio vaccines.
…Crazy.