Fact Check: Did 3.9 Million Americans Really Die From Covid Vaccines According to Sen. Ron Johnson's Claims?

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin claimed on 9 May 2026 that COVID-19 vaccines may have killed 3.9 million people, a figure built on a chain of flawed arithmetic, a misapplied study, and a fundamental misreading of what the federal vaccine surveillance system actually measures.

Johnson made the assertion during an appearance on Real America's Voice, the right-wing network where he was interviewed by James O'Keefe. The claim spread rapidly on social media, captured in a widely shared video clip verified by journalist Aaron Rupar.

The remarks came days after Johnson published a 38-page Senate report titled Unmasked, alleging that health officials in the Biden administration deliberately suppressed Covid-19 vaccine safety signals detected through the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, known as VAERS.

How Johnson Arrived at 3.9 Million Deaths

Johnson's arithmetic proceeded in two steps. He cited a worldwide VAERS total of 39,000 deaths reported following COVID-19 vaccination. He then multiplied that number by 100, citing what he described as a Harvard study establishing that fewer than 1% of adverse events are ever reported to VAERS. 'Take that 39,000, multiply it by as much as 100 times,' he told the programme. 'That could be 3.9 million deaths.'

The first problem is the starting figure itself. The 39,000 deaths Johnson cited represent a worldwide VAERS total, covering reports submitted from across the globe, not a US figure. Presenting a global dataset as the basis for a claim about American casualties is a categorical error. The US population represents roughly 4% of the world's population, and VAERS is a US-run system that primarily captures domestic reports, so the gap between what Johnson implied and what the numbers actually show is substantial.

The second problem is what VAERS reports actually mean. The CDC is explicit on its website that a VAERS report of death does not indicate the vaccine caused the death. Healthcare providers are required by law to report any death occurring after vaccination, regardless of cause.

A person who received a vaccine and died in a car accident three days later would appear in VAERS. The CDC and FDA investigate each such report; as of the programme's most recent data, no causal link has been established between the COVID-19 vaccines and any of the reported deaths beyond extremely rare, documented side effects.

The Harvard Pilgrim Study

The study Johnson referenced was conducted by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. and was submitted to the US Department of Health and Human Services. The original report, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, stated that 'fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported' to VAERS. That line has since been widely quoted across anti-vaccine circles.

What Johnson did not mention is that the study's preliminary data were collected between June 2006 and October 2009, covering 45 different vaccines administered across a Massachusetts health network. Those vaccines had nothing to do with COVID-19. No COVID-19 vaccine existed until late 2020, more than a decade after the study's data collection ended. Applying a pre-COVID underreporting rate, drawn from a completely different vaccine context, to COVID-19 VAERS data is not a valid extrapolation.

The study's own scope further undermines Johnson's use of it. It counted all possible reactions, including mild and transient ones such as a sore arm or a low-grade fever, not just deaths. The CDC and HHS both acknowledge that underreporting in VAERS varies significantly by severity. Serious events, particularly deaths, are far more likely to be reported than minor ones, which makes applying a blanket 1% multiplier to death figures particularly misleading. FactCheck.org noted that the HHS itself states that underreporting rates 'vary widely depending on the severity of the symptoms.'

Johnson Senate Report and FDA Algorithm Claim

The 3.9 million figure arrived days after Johnson held a Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on 29 April 2026. In that hearing, he released what he called his Unmasked report, which alleged that Biden-era FDA officials were alerted to a more advanced data-mining method for detecting vaccine safety signals through VAERS but refused to adopt it. The report claims that FDA medical officer Dr. Ana Szarfman repeatedly warned colleagues that the agency's existing approach could miss signals due to a statistical problem called 'masking,' where risks tied to one vaccine are obscured by data from other vaccines.

The allegation about suppressed safety signals is a separate factual claim from the 3.9 million figure and carries its own set of disputes. What the report does not establish is the death toll Johnson asserted days later on television. The report's own language focuses on signal detection methodology, not a confirmed body count. Johnson conflated the two in public remarks, presenting an unverified and arithmetically compromised statistic as though it followed logically from his Senate investigation.

Johnson has a documented history of citing VAERS figures in misleading ways. A 2021 CNN fact-check found that he mischaracterised over 3,000 VAERS death reports as vaccine-caused fatalities at a time when the CDC had investigated each report and found no causal link. His own communications adviser at the time told CNN that Johnson 'is not suggesting the deaths were directly caused by the covid-19 vaccine.' Four years later, his public statements no longer carry that caveat.

What the Evidence Shows on Vaccine Safety

COVID-19 vaccines are not without any documented risks. The CDC has confirmed that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine carries a rare risk of a blood-clotting condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, which resulted in a very small number of confirmed deaths before that vaccine was withdrawn from routine use in the United States. Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, has been identified as a rare risk, primarily in young males after the mRNA vaccines, and is typically mild and self-resolving.

These risks exist and the CDC documents them. They bear no relationship to a death toll in the millions. Global COVID-19 vaccination programmes administered more than 13 billion doses worldwide. If 3.9 million Americans alone had died from vaccination, it would represent a public health catastrophe visible in national mortality data. The US saw a significant drop in overall excess mortality as vaccination rates rose in 2021, the opposite pattern to what Johnson's figure would predict.

The VAERS system is an early warning tool, not a causation database. Its own homepage states that it 'is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem' and that reports 'may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.' Johnson has cited that system's raw numbers for years without applying the contextual limitations its creators built into the system by design.

The 3.9 million figure is FALSE: it misidentifies the source data as American when it is global, applies an inapplicable pre-COVID multiplier to deaths rather than all adverse events, and treats a surveillance reporting tool as a confirmed death registry.