Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce Fact Briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
No.
COVID-19 vaccines have not been linked to as many as 3.9 million deaths.
Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said on May 9, 2026, on “Real America’s Voice” that the 39,000 deaths reported on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System could be low and the real number could be 100 times higher because most people don’t report to the system.
VAERS, run by U.S. health agencies, is an early warning system for vaccine problems, but its data isn’t evidence that vaccines caused deaths.
VAERS says submitting a report does not mean the vaccine caused an adverse event. Reports are not analyzed for accuracy.
A 2022 review found potential links in 38 deaths out of 8 billion doses of vaccine administered. A 2026 analysis from the National Institutes of Health found no evidence COVID vaccines increased sudden cardiac death in healthy young adults.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- CDC Wonder: Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: What VAERS Is (And Isn’t)
- Poynter: Claims that millions of people have died from the COVID-19 vaccine are unfounded
- National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine: Scientific literature review
- National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine: Association between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death in apparently healthy younger individuals: A population-based case-control study
- NBC News: No child deaths definitively linked to Covid shots, FDA says
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