Original article (in Serbian) was published on 7/1/2024; Author: Ivan Subotić
“I’m just interested in whether this news is true?” – a reader asked us, drawing attention to an article published on the web portal Srbin.info, titled “Former Pfizer Director: COVID Vaccinations Are Designed to Reduce Population…”. The article aims to portray COVID-19 vaccines as a kind of biological weapon for depopulation. Of course, this is nonsense, which marginal domestic web portals have picked up from similar foreign media.
The article claims that “former Pfizer Vice President Dr. Mike Yeadon warned that the COVID vaccine is specifically designed to reduce the world’s population, not only by causing death but also by blocking men’s ability to reproduce”. These statements come from a video Yeadon recorded for a conference organized last autumn in Vienna by the so-called “Association of Vaccine Victims”.
Who is Mike Yeadon?
Michael Yeadon was Vice President of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, where he spent 16 years researching allergies and respiratory diseases, according to Reuters. He gained fame among vaccine skeptics after co-authoring a petition to the European Medicines Agency in late 2020, calling for the suspension of COVID-19 vaccine trials. The petition claimed that the vaccines could cause infertility in women. During and after the coronavirus pandemic, Yeadon spread numerous disinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines and the pandemic (1, 2, 3…).
Are Yeadon’s new claims based on facts?
Of course not. Multiple scientific studies (1, 2, 3…), as well as meta-analyses of similar studies, have proven that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause infertility. They also do not cause death (except in extremely rare cases of severe side effects). If these vaccines were causing widespread deaths, countries with 100% vaccination coverage, such as the United Arab Emirates or Puerto Rico, would be experiencing drastic “excess death” rates compared to countries with low vaccination coverage.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to state that “data indicate that people vaccinated against COVID-19 are less likely to die from COVID-19 or COVID-19-related complications” and that vaccination does not increase the risk of death from non-COVID-related causes. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that COVID-19 vaccines have saved approximately 1.4 million lives in the European region alone.
This is not the first time that Srbin.info has spread disinformation about vaccines and COVID-19 vaccination. The absurd claims of the former Pfizer Vice President have also been shared by other Serbian media, including Nauka i kultura, Sedma sila, and Borba za very.