Fact Checker: Iowa senator’s COVID-19 vaccine claims lack key context

More than 1 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Iowa, but as the rollout continues some may be hesitant to take the shot.

State senators have advanced a bill that would bar Iowa businesses from requiring their employees to get vaccinated against the disease. The Iowa Senate Human Resources Committee approved the legislation and it was introduced to the full Senate on March 4 as Senate File 555.

It was during that committee meeting that one Republican, Sen. Jim Carlin of Sioux City, raised concerns about the risk of these shots.

The Fact Checker is checking three claims made by Carlin during that discussion. Carlin, who has announced he'll run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by fellow Republican Chuck Grassley, did not respond to the Fact Checker's request for his sourcing.

Analysis

Claim 1: 'There's a $2 billion vaccination injury fund, for the reason that people do get injured when vaccinations are administered. Sometimes seriously.”

There is a Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, created in the 1980s and managed by the U.S. Human Resources and Services Administration, to resolve vaccine injury petitions outside the courts.

Though these cases are 'very rare,” the agency's website does state vaccines can cause serious problems, including severe allergic reactions. In order to win compensation, the petitioner must show a connection between the injury and the vaccine.

Since its inception in 1988, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has awarded more than $4 billion in compensation to 7,826 petitioners, according to a report on the program's website. In fiscal 2020, 251 settlements totaling over $103 million were awarded.

More than 3.7 billion vaccines were administered between 2006 and 2018. During that period, 5,376 petitions received some form compensation. The program pays attorney fees related to the petition, even if compensation isn't awarded.

Total funds awarded from the program reached more than $4.5 billion as of March 1, data show.

Carlin understated the cost of the program by more than half. He was correct that serious adverse reactions can occur as a result of vaccines, but he omitted the important context that these instances occur rarely when considering the total doses distributed. For that, this claim earns a C.

Claim 2: 'There's some statistical data out there that says 908 people in the first two months of this calendar year have died shortly after being administered with the COVID-19 (vaccine), with the VAERS database.”

VAERS refers to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a database maintained by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration as an early-warning system for potential vaccine safety concerns.

Anyone can report an adverse reaction to the database. Officials have placed a disclaimer on the database stating that VAERS can't be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event, as reports may contain 'incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental or unverifiable” information.

According to the database, 1,182 people in the United States were reported to have died after receiving COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech in January and February.

The numbers likely don't match up to Carlin's claim because more reports were submitted after the Senate committee meeting.

Officials released a vaccine safety monitoring report in the first month of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Dec. 14 to Jan. 21, and found 113 deaths had been reported to the VAERS database. However, available information on those cases via death certificates, autopsy reports, medical records and clinical descriptions from health care providers did not suggest a relationship between the shot and those deaths, the report stated.

The report does note there have been cases of vaccine recipients going into anaphylactic shock immediately after injection, but that has occurred in 4.5 cases per 1 million doses administered. These rates 'are comparable with those reported after receipt of other vaccines.” In addition, those reactions have occurred only in individuals with a medical history of the severe allergic reaction.

'No unexpected patterns of reactions or other safety concerns have been identified during early monitoring,” officials stated in the report.

While Carlin is correct hundreds of people were reported to have died shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccines in January and February, it's important to remember correlation does not equal causation. Early data from federal health officials indicate the vaccines have not directly led to any deaths so far and pose no more risk than other common immunizations. For lacking that context, this claim earns an F.

Claim 3: 'By some estimates, 40 percent of health care workers do not want to be forced to take the (vaccine).”

Because he didn't respond to the Fact Checker, it's unknown what data Carlin relied on when making this claim.

The state public health department does not collect occupational data on COVID-19 vaccine administration, so it was unable to make a determination how many of the approximately 160,000 licensed health care providers in the state got the shot, a department spokeswoman said in an email.

The state's largest hospital system, the University of Iowa Health Care, has a nearly 83 percent vaccine acceptance rate as of this week. Other hospitals, however, likely vary in their rates.

While not exact, some national polling aligns with Carlin's claim.

A new survey released this week by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found only 52 percent of U.S. health care workers had received at least one dose of the vaccine. The poll was conducted Feb. 11 to March 7.

Of the remaining unvaccinated health care workers, 18 percent said they don't plan on getting the vaccine and an additional 12 percent hadn't decided.

The Kaiser survey was released after Carlin made his claims.

Another poll conducted by Gallup Panel in September 2020 asked respondents about their attitude toward COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Thirty-eight percent found employer-enforced vaccine mandates as unacceptable. However, this survey was not targeted to health care workers.

Carlin's claim is plausible, per some national polling, but because the Fact Checker could not find data available at the time the claim was made to support it, we must give him a D.

Conclusion

Carlin seems to have relied on misinformation or misinterpreted data that was available at the time to make his point. With a C, a D and an F, he earns an D overall.

Criteria

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/officeholder or a national candidate/officeholder about Iowa, or in ads that appear in our market.

Claims must be independently verifiable.

We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at factchecker@thegazette.com.

This Fact Checker was researched and written by Michaela Ramm of The Gazette.