Measles: Causes, symptoms, and treatment
Posts Falsely Claim Pfizer Published List Of Covid-19 Vaccine Side Effects
Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine is considered by healthcare authorities to be safe and effective, with data gathered from billions of shots delivered around the world. In February 2025, social media users started sharing what they claimed was a list released by Pfizer showing the vaccine's dangerous side effects. But this is false; the conditions and illnesses in the list differ from the noted possible side effects compiled by regulators. European medicines agencies told AFP Fact Check that the vaccine's safety is constantly monitored and information is regularly updated with expert findings. Pfizer denied releasing the list and said it did not reflect the vaccine's established efficacy and safety."Pfizer has just released its list of side effects of its 'Covid-19 vaccine'," reads an X post published on February 7, 2025.
Among the purported side effects listed are several life-threatening conditions and diseases such as heart failure, liver damage and stroke.
Screenshot of the false X post, taken on March 5, 2025
The claim appeared on Facebook and elsewhere on X, including in a post by Stella Immanuel, a Houston-based physician born in Cameroon who championed discredited treatments for Covid-19 throughout the pandemic.
However, AFP Fact Check found no evidence that Pfizer publicly released any such list of vaccine side effects.
Additionally, the purported Pfizer list does not match the official schedule of possible side effects compiled by health authorities worldwide.
AFP Fact Check first debunked the claim in Croatian.
Fabricated listLimiting an internet search to Pfizer's website returned an August 2024 press release — a year after the World Health Organization announced the pandemic was over.
The company wrote that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had authorised the use of its Cominarty vaccine adapted specifically for the Omicron KP.2 variant (archived here).
Some of the false posts link to this statement as proof of their claims.
The most recent press release on Pfizer's website mentioning the Comirnaty vaccine was posted on September 20, 2024, and it reports that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) gave a positive opinion for the Omicron KP.2-adapted Covid-19 vaccine in the European Union (archived here)
Only three side effects are common to official records and the false posts: facial paralysis ("rare", according to the European Medicines Agency or EMA), and myocarditis and pericarditis (both considered "very rare" by health authorities) (archived here).
The false posts, on the other hand, claim there are several fatal and serious side effects, including cardiac arrest, sudden death, neonatal death, stroke, diabetes and epileptic psychosis — none of which have been certified by regulatory bodies.
Up to dateThe Agency for Medicinal Products and Medical Devices of Croatia (HALMED) told AFP Fact Check on February 21, 2025, that drug manufacturers generally do not publish a "list of side effects". Rather, they inform the regulatory agencies of any new information regarding approved medicines.
"Marketing authorisation holders have a legal obligation to continuously monitor the safety profile of a medicine, including vaccines, for as long as the medicine or vaccine is on the market," a HALMED spokesman said.
"Accordingly, they are required to submit all new information and findings related to the medicine's safety to the competent regulatory authorities for review and evaluation. In addition, regulatory authorities also receive reports of suspected side effects directly from patients and healthcare professionals."
HALMED noted that drug manufacturers are also compelled to periodically submit all collected data on the safety of medicines and vaccines in the so-called PSUR, or Periodic Safety Update Report.
The most recent PSUR for Comirnaty – the brand name for Pfizer's Covid vaccine – covered the second half of 2023, and the EMA issued its recommendations based on this document in July 2024 (archived here).
EMA found that the risk-benefit balance remained unchanged and kept the authorisation for the vaccine. The next PSUR review procedure is expected to start this month.
The EMA press office told AFP Fact Check that the most recent safety update to the product information took place in November 2024, to include further information on the safety of vaccines in infants born to people vaccinated during pregnancy and immunocompromised participants (archived here). The update added data from three scientific studies that found no new dangers or side effects.
The EMA also noted that the agency, together with national healthcare authorities and manufacturers, is responsible for detecting and managing safety signals, which is any information on possible side effects that warrants further investigation (archived here).
Once a signal is investigated, the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) issues a recommendation on what to do if it suspects it might be a side effect (archived here and here). All signals are publicly available (archived here), and the process of recognising new side effects, as was the case with myocarditis and pericarditis, can be tracked in the table.
According to the EMA, and as evidenced in the available data, the most recent safety signal reviewed was "postmenopausal haemorrhage", which was considered in March 2024, but PRAC did not find sufficient evidence that it was linked to the Cominarty vaccine (archived here).
The most recent safety information on Covid-19 vaccines, including Comirnaty, states that all vaccines authorised for use in the EU are safe and effective (archived here).
"Since December 2020, people in the EU and EEA received almost 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines, making it the largest vaccination programme in history," the EMA says on its website.
"Regulators have an unprecedented amount of data to confirm the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines."
Pfizer also denied publishing the list circulating on social media.
"Pfizer did not publish this list, which does not reflect the established efficacy and safety profile of the vaccine," a spokesperson for the company told AFP Fact Check in an email.
"With billions of doses of the vaccine administered around the world, the safety profile for the vaccine for all authorised groups continues to be favourable."
Misinterpreted adverse effectsThe purported side effects found in the false Facebook posts do correspond to a list from a 2021 Pfizer document (archived here).
The document listed all adverse effects reported and recorded after vaccination in addition to a list of pre-specified medical problems that could theoretically be attributed to the vaccination.
This list of adverse effects has previously been misinterpreted to be a list of confirmed side effects, which AFP Fact Check has already debunked here in Croatian and here in Serbian.
In September 2023, HALMED told AFP Fact Check that any incident following a vaccination does not necessarily mean it was caused by the jab.
"Information about reports of suspected side effects does not mean that the medicine or active substance causes the observed effect or that it is unsafe for use," the agency said. "Only a thorough review and scientific assessment of all available data allows for conclusions to be drawn about the benefits and risks of a medicine."
More AFP fact checks on the topic of vaccines can be found here, and on Covid-19 can be found here.
March 14, 2025 Updated with link to Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use and its positive opinion for Omicron KP.2-adapted Covid-19 vaccine in the EU
Still 'no Red Flags' For COVID Vaccine After Years Of Monitoring Their Safety
Dr. Peter Gulick filled out a V-safe questionnaire on his smartphone after his first COVID-19 vaccine and each subsequent booster shot.
He indicated which side effects, if any, he experienced, and if he needed any medical attention in the days after the jab. It was more follow up than the typical flu shot or any other vaccine he could recall.
That level of surveillance, repeated for millions of people worldwide, has only strengthened his confidence in the safety of the vaccines developed more than four years ago to combat the virus that causes the disease — SARS-CoV-2. Five years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
RELATED: Lockdowns, masks and death: Looking back on 5 years of COVID
"Vaccines aren't perfect," said Gulick, a professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Michigan State University. "There are side effects, but with the COVID vaccine, there haven't been any red flags."
The COVID pandemic created an environment for increased vaccine hesitance as Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna developed new vaccine technology at record pace, and public health measures reached a new level of politicization.
Since the first COVID-19 vaccines were approved by regulators in 2020, more than 13.6 billion doses have been administered throughout the world, according to the World Health Organization.
By May 2023, the organization and the U.S. Declared COVID-19 no longer constituted a public health emergency. About 82% of Americans had gotten at least one dose of vaccine, accounting for more than 984 million doses collectively. In Michigan alone, there have been more than 20.3 million doses administered to more than 6.36 million residents.
Related: Detroiters once hesitant to get vaccinated did follow through on COVID shots, survey says
COVID-19 vaccines "underwent the most intensive safety analysis in U.S. History," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 10 million people participated in V-safe vaccine safety monitoring, completing more than 150 million surveys about their post-vaccine experience.
"With all these years of constant surveillance and follow up, if there was a real problem or something causing some real horrible symptoms, we would have seen it by now," said Gulick, who has been involved with infectious disease care and vaccinations for 40 years.
The most common side effects include injection side soreness, fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, chills, fever, and nausea, lasting one to four days.
Adverse events like inflammation of the heart, known as myocarditis or pericarditis, have been associated with mRNA vaccines, though incidences are rare and don't rise to the level of outweighing benefits of the shot.
Regarding the rare adverse event, Gulick noted it's no more common than a standard vaccine. In most cases, it's a reduced risk than COVID itself, which is also associated with an increased risk of myocarditis and organ damage.
In February, a research letter published by the American Medical Association indicated concerns regarding sudden cardiac arrest among athletes after the pandemic were overblown.
Researchers identified 387 events of sudden cardiac arrest from youth to professional athletics from 2017 to 2022, of which 203 occurred in the three years before COVID and 184 the three years after the start of the pandemic.
"Reports asserting otherwise were overestimating the cardiovascular risk of COVID-19 infection, vaccination, and myocarditis," wrote the authors. "Many athlete cases shown in social media video montages occurred before the pandemic yet claimed COVID-19 infection or vaccination raised the risk of (sudden cardiac arrest/death)."
On the other hand, the COVID vaccines have been associated with a reduced risk of a serious illness, post-COVID infection that can result in chronic conditions requiring comprehensive care and may cause disability, known as long COVID.
RELATED: They got COVID-19 five years ago, and they don't know why they're still sick
"People can reduce their risk of developing long COVID if they've been vaccinated because it can reduce risk of getting sick in the first place, and reduce severity of illness," said Nancy Fleischer, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan.
Michigan's confirmed COVID-19 death toll over five years is more than 39,760, according to state health records. There have been more than 7.1 million deaths worldwide, including 1.2 million Americans, according to the WHO.
Once vaccines were widely available, physicians began noting a shift in emergency rooms and on death records, with unvaccinated people more commonly experiencing worse outcomes with COVID-19.
The newness of mRNA vaccines was a common point of contention for people who declined to get the shot.
Developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, the vaccines utilized a new technology using messenger RNA (mRNA). Researchers considered its use in vaccines for decades before COVID-19, but needed advancements in nanotechnology to develop a successful vaccine.
With mRNA vaccines, molecules enter the cell wrapped in lipid nanoparticles. Once inside, it instructs the cell to create a specific protein, triggering an immune response and preparing the body to fight off a future infection from a similar-looking protein.
More traditional COVID vaccines (vector viral) like the one developed by Johnson & Johnson and Oxford-AstraZeneca were associated with more statistically significant increases in rare adverse reactions, according to a multinational study published in April 2024, in the Journal "Vaccine."
Not only are mRNA vaccines not likely to go away any time soon, they're likely to be the future of vaccination.
Dr. Erica Michiels, medical director of the emergency department at Corewell's Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, said mRNA technology was crucial for getting a cost-effective vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) approved last spring.
"I firmly believe COVID got us an RSV vaccination and it's far more effective than we've had available to us previously," Michiels said. "We have high hopes the RSV vaccine can start changing the landscape of what infant bronchiolitis looks like."
And while the current public health risk for the avian flu remains low, according to the CDC, Dr. Gulick said he'd expect an mRNA vaccine be developed if the H5N1 virus were to mutate and begin spreading from human to human.
"They're trying to develop a vaccine just in case, to be prepared," he said. "That mRNA technology is going to continue on; it's not going to go away."
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Measles Vaccine Availability In Oklahoma: Where To Get Vaccinated
The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is widely available through several healthcare options in Oklahoma. Some Oklahomans are experiencing long wait times, here's where you can check for availability.Wednesday, March 12th 2025, 11:14 am
By: Bella Roddy
OKLAHOMA -The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is widely available through several healthcare options in Oklahoma.
Something to note: Some Oklahomans are experiencing longer-than-usual wait times for the MMR vaccine due to high demand.
Here's where you can get your MMR vaccine:
1. Primary Care ProvidersMost doctors' offices offer the MMR vaccine. If you already have a primary care physician, call their office to ask about scheduling an appointment for the vaccine. It's especially important to get vaccinated if you haven't received both recommended doses.
If you're unsure whether you've been vaccinated, your doctor can review your vaccination records and determine if you need the vaccine.
Local health departments are excellent resources for getting the MMR vaccine, and they often offer vaccination clinics with flexible hours. For example, the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) works with county health departments to provide access to immunizations.
The Tulsa Health Department and Oklahoma City-County Health Department are just two examples of local agencies that provide vaccines. It's always a good idea to call ahead or visit their website to confirm availability and hours.
3. PharmaciesMany pharmacies, including major chains like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, offer vaccines, including the MMR vaccine. Pharmacies are a convenient option for many people since they often allow walk-ins and may be open evenings or weekends.
Be sure to check with the pharmacy beforehand to make sure they offer the MMR vaccine, as not all locations may have it available.
4. Community Health ClinicsCommunity health clinics often provide immunizations, including the MMR vaccine, at affordable rates. These clinics serve uninsured and underinsured individuals, offering sliding scale fees based on income.
You can contact local community health centers in your area to inquire about MMR vaccination availability. These clinics may also offer outreach services and events for mass vaccination efforts.
5. Travel Health ClinicsIf you're planning to travel internationally, particularly to areas where measles outbreaks are more common, you can visit a travel health clinic. These clinics specialize in providing vaccines for travelers and will often administer the MMR vaccine if needed.
These clinics can also provide additional travel-related health information, such as advice on other vaccinations or precautions to take during your trip.
Some schools and universities may offer vaccinations as part of their health services, especially if there is a public health initiative or outbreak. If you are a student, faculty member, or parent of a child attending school, check with the school nurse or student health center for vaccine availability.
Additionally, schools may provide vaccines for children who are behind on their immunization schedule, ensuring all students are protected before returning to school.
7. Public Health Vaccination CampaignsIn times of increased measles cases or during public health efforts, public health organizations may hold vaccination events in various locations. These campaigns aim to boost vaccination rates and protect the broader community, especially during an outbreak.
Keep an eye out for announcements from the Oklahoma State Department of Health or local health departments about pop-up vaccination clinics or special events offering free or discounted vaccines.
What to ExpectThe MMR vaccine is usually given as an injection in the upper arm. It typically requires two doses for full effectiveness, with the second dose generally administered between 4-6 years of age, although adults who have not been vaccinated or are unsure of their vaccination history may also receive the vaccine.
Side effects are generally mild and can include soreness at the injection site, mild fever, or a rash a week or two after receiving the vaccine. Serious reactions are rare, with severe side effects occurring in only about one in a million doses.
ConclusionVaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles and protect vulnerable populations from the disease. Whether through your primary care provider, local health department, pharmacy, or community clinic, there are multiple convenient ways to get vaccinated in Oklahoma. If you're unsure about your vaccination status or need a vaccine, don't hesitate to reach out to one of these options to ensure you're protected from measles and other preventable diseases.
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