Elon Musk Promotes Unsubstantiated COVID-19 Vaccine Theory

Elon Musk Amplifies Unfounded COVID-19 Vaccine Death Claims on Social Media

Elon Musk has shared an unsubstantiated claim that COVID-19 vaccines caused tens of thousands of deaths in Germany, giving the misleading information massive reach on his social media platform X.

On April 12, Musk amplified a post from far-right Swedish influencer Peter Imanuelsen, who claimed that a “Pfizer insider” had revealed that 20,000 to 60,000 people in Germany died from COVID-19 vaccines. The post, which Musk shared without verification, received nearly 60 million views, while Imanuelsen’s original post garnered 64 million views.

The claim stems from testimony given at a German parliamentary hearing by Dr. Helmut Sterz, a toxicologist and veterinarian who reportedly worked for Pfizer over a decade before the pandemic. Sterz appeared at the invitation of a far-right party and made his claims by misrepresenting German vaccine safety monitoring data.

Public health experts have thoroughly debunked the methodology behind these numbers. Dr. Mahmoud Zureik, professor of epidemiology at University of Paris-Saclay, explained that Sterz “confuses coincidence with causation, misuses passive surveillance data, and is not supported by the best available scientific evidence.”

Pfizer responded to the claims by noting that its COVID-19 vaccine “continues to demonstrate a favorable safety and efficacy profile supported by extensive real-world evidence.” A company spokesperson clarified that Sterz “was not working at Pfizer during the pandemic or during the decade preceding it, and consequently had no involvement in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

The misleading claim follows a pattern common among vaccine skeptics: misinterpreting passive surveillance systems that collect reports of health issues following vaccination. In Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) operates such a system, similar to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

While PEI did record 2,133 reports of deaths following administration of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the institute assessed only 28 as having a “possible or probable” causal relationship with vaccination. This is out of more than 138 million doses administered.

Sterz compounded his misinterpretation by applying an arbitrary “underreporting factor” of 30 to arrive at his inflated death estimate. Experts point out this approach is fundamentally flawed, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when there may have actually been overreporting of events following vaccination due to heightened public attention.

Jeffrey S. Morris, director of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, noted that more rigorous studies have consistently found no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines increase mortality risk. A 2022 U.S. study of nearly 7 million people found that vaccinated individuals were actually less likely to die than unvaccinated people.

Similar findings emerged from a French study of 28 million adults followed over four years, which again found lower mortality rates among vaccinated populations. While these studies don’t necessarily mean vaccines reduce non-COVID mortality, they strongly contradict claims about vaccines causing widespread deaths.

Public concerns have particularly focused on myocarditis, a rare but known side effect primarily affecting young males after their second vaccine dose. However, studies show that vaccine-related myocarditis is typically less severe than COVID-19-induced myocarditis and resolves quickly in most cases.

A March 2023 Canadian study specifically investigated whether COVID-19 vaccination was associated with sudden cardiac death in young adults without documented heart disease. The researchers found that vaccinated individuals actually had lower rates of sudden cardiac death than the unvaccinated, contradicting theories about vaccines causing fatal heart conditions.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting vaccine safety, misinformation continues to spread on social media platforms, particularly when amplified by influential figures like Musk, who owns X and leads Tesla and SpaceX.