Claim: Covid Shots Pose 1,119 Times Higher Risk of Brain Clots Than Flu Shots

Question

Covid Shots Pose 1,119 Times Higher Risk of Brain Clots Than Flu Shots — Study

https://www.infowars.com/posts/covid-shots-poses-1119-times-higher-risk-of-brain-clots-than-flu-shots-study 

Comments

I would provide more information in order to back up your claim.

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I would try to find almost any other source that claims this, as almost any other site is more credible than Info Wars. Within this same article, they also claim that Covid shots "are known to" "make people retarded", "contain self-assembling nanotechnology", "attack basically everything in the body" and "erases the immune system" just to name a few.

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The claim that COVID-19 vaccines carry a dramatically higher risk of brain clots is misleading. While rare cases of blood clots have been associated with some COVID-19 vaccines, the risk remains extremely low—about 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 250,000 with certain vaccines, such as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Meanwhile, the risk of blood clots from COVID-19 infection is significantly higher, especially in severe cases. Research overwhelmingly supports that the benefits of vaccination in preventing severe COVID-19 far outweigh the minimal risk of clotting.

Here’s a source: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/coronavirus-vaccine-blood-clots

Answer 1

This claim is exaggerated/misleading, if not entirely false. The claim that the Covid-19 vaccine poses a 1,119 times higher risk of brain clots than the flu shot originated from a study the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science (IJIRMS). This study is the only one I can find that includes this exact number, while many other studies report only a slight increased risk of blood clots and a few cases of unusual side effects, like cerebral venous sinus thrombosis or thrombotic thrombocytopenic syndrome, after the Covid-19 vaccines that are considered "worth" the risk considering the increased and more likely risk of blood clots from Covid-19 itself. Many studies state opinions like, "the prevailing opinion of most experts is that the risk of developing Covid-19 disease, including thrombosis, far exceeds the extremely low risk of TTS associated with highly efficacious vaccines." (National Library of Medicine)

Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis Following COVID-19 Vaccination: A Systematic Review - PMC

Study Largely Confirms Known, Rare COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects - FactCheck.org

Covid-19: Risk of cerebral blood clots from disease is …

An Update on COVID-19 Vaccine Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia Syndrome and Some Management Recommendations - PubMed

Study: COVID much more likely than vaccines to cause blood clots | CIDRAP

Comments

This is an excellent fact check, as it was structured well, in a way that gave all the necessary info to counter the original claim while also adding some extra details. There were also many sources to back up the check. One thing I might change is your tag, as I think you've proven in your fact check that the number provided in the claim is wrong.

Answer 2

This claim is a bit complicated to verify. To start, I looked into the original website of the information: InfoWars. The website initially looked pretty credible but the further down I scrolled the less professional it looked, including an increasing frequency of advertisements. A quick Google search of the website revealed that it is viewed as a “fake news site” and not ranked as credible, so trusting the initial article is no longer an option. They have a link to the study in the article, but only to part of it, which furthers a lack of trust. I went to a preprint article through the National Library of Medicine (meaning it is not yet peer reviewed) for verification purposes. Though it hasn’t been peer reviewed, it reads very professionally and is in direct response to the study the original article was referencing with additional research to back up what they are saying. Here it was verified that there is a link between the covid-19 vaccine and increased brain clots, but that “the likelihood of experiencing a thromboembolic event after COVID-19 infection is much higher than after vaccination,” meaning that the vaccine is still preventing more harm than it is causing. Though it was hard to find a lot of information on this topic, I think the lack of credibility of the original source as well as the nuance that National Library of Medicine added to the picture is enough to say that the original claim is not trustworthy and is almost certainly misleading. 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11177983/#:~:text=One%20study%20confirmed%20an%20increased,after%20any%20mRNA%2Dbased%20vaccination.

Answer 3

This post is incredibly exaggerated and very misleading.

Firstly, you are citing InfoWars as a source- InfoWars is well-known to be a far-right conspiracy theory site, and skews very low for bias and reliability on the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart (https://adfontesmedia.com/alex-jones-show-bias-and-reliability/). On top of this, though, your source continuously refers to a study in which these "risk rates" were discovered, yet no studies are actually linked and no sources are provided anywhere in the article; The text where a hyperlink to these sources should supposedly be is simply changed to the color blue to suggest that there is a citation, in hopes readers won't search for information further than the article.

The reason this claim is not in its entirety false, though, is because there have been studies of a potential heightened risk of blood clots after receiving a Covid-19 shot, though even with these studies in mind these conditions are considered extremely rare. According to an article posted by UK Research and Innovation, the risk rate is "around 10 people develop this condition for every million of AZ vaccine doses given. That’s 0.001%," and the article links to additional information after making this claim, which I will provide as well. The NIH has also been conducting extensive research on these risks, and has made the determination that becoming infected with Covid-19 itself poses a substantially higher blood clot risk than its vaccine does.

https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/how-we-are-doing/research-outcomes-and-impact/mrc/studying-the-link-between-covid-19-vaccines-and-rare-blood-clots/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-and-blood-clotting/covid-19-vaccination-and-blood-clotting

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11177983/

Answer 4

The claim that Covid shots pose 1,119 times higher risk of brain clots than flu shots is false. First of all the source you posted to try to back up your claim is from infowars and that is known to produce false news. According to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11177983/ which is a government website the claim that covid shots have a higher risk of brain clots than flu shots is not true.

Answer 5

According to the InfoWars article written by Sean Miller, the Covid 19 vaccination poses almost  1,200 times higher risk to developing brain clots and causing stroke. Their claim is based on the numbers that after the COVID-19 shot, over 5000 new cases of individuals with cerebral thrombotic syndrome (blood clots in the brain) had been documented. However, with the influenza vaccine, there has only been less than 40 CT documentations

According to the National Institute of Health, this claim is not technically false. Because of the rush to get the mRNA vaccine out to the public to slow the spread of the virus, long term effects couldn't properly be tested and studied. However, the cases where people have developed CT’s strictly due to the vaccine and no other lifestyle or inheritable reasons, are extremely rare, and should be no cause for genuine concern or as an excuse to not take the vaccine. 

In the Yale Medical article “The Link Between J&J’s COVID Vaccine and Blood Clots: What You Need to Know”, they similarly explain how rare of a side effect it is to have these forms of blood clots from the vaccine. However, they also stress that this type of clotting is seen with those who have the Johnson and Johnson variant of the vaccine. They also share that the company has noticed these issues, and have addressed them by updating the CDC website information on their vaccine, as well as having a series of steps to go through and criteria to meet before a patient can receive any more doses. 

In a Gavi.org article, the writers argue that those who get sick with COVID-19 pose more of a threat of getting blood clots than getting the vaccine against it does. In Sweden, 5 million people's health documents were studied after testing positive for the virus. It was found that the individuals who had tested positive and had no vaccination records had a 33-fold higher risk for blood clots in the lungs. In contrast, risks from getting the vaccine before infection greatly lowers the risk of any sort of blood clotting, making it a rare occurrence for COVID-19 vaccine to cause blood clotting in the body. 

 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9874395/ 

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/coronavirus-vaccine-blood-clots 

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/covid-19-infection-linked-high-risk-blood-clots-months-afterwards?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=12319817265&gbraid=0AAAAADibICPvMGXyXSRa81yaEyif9UEv5&gclid=CjwKCAjwr8LHBhBKEiwAy47uUsXe_rS8y_FcVGTx6ADCCQee249Iz0qzaDqIzavC6x-Tur3R3OxpUBoCgsAQAvD_BwE