Circulate up Threads a narrative shared in anti-vax circles about Roberto Speranza who would admit that he knew that 20% of “adverse effects” linked to Covid vaccines were serious. Let’s see why the story is baseless.
For those in a hurry:
- The AIFA data concern spontaneous reports without verifying a causal link with vaccines, furthermore the Agency never speaks of “very serious adverse events”.
- That 20% of “serious adverse effects” (18.7% to be precise) is related to a general number of reports equal to 0.09% compared to the total number of doses administered.
Analyses
The text of the sharing on “adverse effects” is as follows:
Speranza: «I knew that 20 percent of the adverse effects were very serious».
The former minister admits that, from the first months of the vaccination campaign, AIFA reported to him that one negative reaction in five could even be fatal. Yet he went ahead with the obligations and Open day, reciting the mantra of “safe and effective” drugs.
Hope and the alleged serious “adverse effects”.
The narrative had already been analyzed by colleagues of Fact. The source was an article from The truth dating back to April 10th.
The source of this alleged news, we read in the article, is the lawyer Antonietta Veneziano of Avvocati Liberi, who sued the former Minister of Health Roberto Speranza and the former head of Aifa Nicola Magrini for the management of the campaign vaccination during the Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2024, the Court of Ministers of Rome dismissed the proceedings against the former Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza.
The fact that we are talking about statements made in the context of a closed judicial proceeding is already a first indication of how distorted the narrative has been. The only source is, among other things, the counterpart based on alleged and unconfirmed words attributed to the former minister.
Aifa data
On the merits, do these numbers – which Aifa would have provided – really exist? Not exactly. As usual, we are talking about data taken from the collection of spontaneous reports, where the events that occurred after the vaccine are simply reported, without verifying a causal link. As we have seen in our previous analyses, similar fake news has been produced by distorting the data of the European reporting system: theEudraVigilance; or the American one: the Vaers.
That 18.7% of serious adverse events must also be contextualized within the general set of reports, with respect to the doses administered. From the latest AIFA report we read that these are 0.09%.
«Out of a total of 144,354,770 doses administered in Italy – concludes Facta -, 140,595 reports of suspected adverse reactions have arrived. This is 0.09 percent. The document also states that the majority of adverse events reported are classified as non-serious (81.3 percent) and to a lesser extent as serious (18.7 percent). In absolute terms, the serious reactions reported were approximately 26,291, out of a total of 144,354,770 doses administered, i.e. 0.018 percent. The term “very serious” does not appear in the AIFA classification”.
Conclusions
As usual, the data regarding spontaneous reports of adverse effects – without verifying a real connection with vaccines – were distorted without even taking into account their statistical irrelevance compared to the total reports in relation to the doses administered. In short, if you read the data correctly, even though they cannot demonstrate any causality, the safety of the Covid vaccines is still confirmed.
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