These are false claims by a doctor who treats Covid vaccination in children as ‘mass murder’

It is false that vaccinating children against Covid-19 is “mass murder”, as the doctor and candidate for federal deputy Maria Emilia Gadelha Serra says in a video shared on social networks.

In the content, verified by the Comprova Project, she complains about a document from the SBP (Brazilian Society of Pediatrics), published on July 25 and available on the institution’s website about the importance of childhood vaccination. The entity’s text warns about the increase in cases of the coronavirus with the spread of the ômicron variant and its sublines in Brazil.

When talking about the immunization of children under 18, Gadelha says that people must be “prepared to go to the funeral” of their children and that “people are dying of sudden illness, myocardial infarction, stroke, stroke, autoimmune diseases and now starting a never-before-seen cancer epidemic” after getting vaccinated.

Sought, Anvisa stated that “so far, vaccine monitoring data indicate that the benefit-risk relationship of vaccines is positive” and that their adverse events are described in the package insert of these products. These documents, in turn, do not record serious reactions to vaccines, deaths, or relationship between immunizers and the diseases mentioned by Gadelha.

Also for the report, the Ministry of Health stated that “there is no recorded case of death of children or adolescents as a result of the vaccine” in the country.

“At the beginning of vaccination, we could even have this kind of doubt, but after 2020, 2021 and now in 2022, we see that nothing happened”, says doctor José Davi Urbaez, president of the Society of Infectious Diseases of the Federal District, also consulted by the report. .

In a statement, the SBP repudiated Gadelha’s accusations and statements and stated that she “promoted disinformation through ‘fake news'”. The association also reported that measures were taken in relation to the lies told by the doctor.

False, for Comprova, is content invented or edited to change its original meaning and deliberately disseminated to spread a falsehood.

Scope of publication

On Telegram, the fake content had, until August 13, 2022, 32,300 views. Originally also shared on Instagram, the video had, as of July 27, about 600 interactions, but was removed from the platform at the end of the month.

what the author says

Sought by the report, Maria Gadelha did not return the contact.

How do we check

First, we contacted, via WhatsApp, with the communication advisors of the doctors mentioned by Gadelha in order to obtain their positions regarding the content. Renato de Ávila and Melissa Palmieri, both from the SBP, were cited by Gadelha as responsible for the document, but preferred not to comment.

We sought, via email, the SBI (Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases) and the SBP.

At the same time, we contacted Anvisa, by email, seeking information about serious adverse events associated with vaccination in children and the possibility of a “cancer epidemic” due to immunization.

The report also interviewed doctor José Davi Urbaez, from SBI, to check if there is scientific evidence that associates the vaccine with deaths and diseases mentioned by the doctor in the video.

We also requested a position from the Ministry of Health, but there was no response. Finally, we tried to contact the doctor Maria Emilia Gadelha Serra by phone and email, but there was no response either.

Child vaccination data

According to the Covid-19 Vacinometer, a platform of the Ministry of Health, until this Tuesday (16), the 1st dose of the coronavirus vaccine was administered to 13,852,980 children aged 5 to 11 years in Brazil, and the 2nd to 9,248. .823 people in this age group. In turn, 16,648,874 of young people aged 12 to 17 took the 1st dose; 13,860,848 received the 2nd dose; and 3,529,848, the booster dose, according to the paste.

A study published in May this year by The New England Journal of Medicine showed that vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 has reduced hospitalizations by more than two-thirds since Covid-19 emerged.

The survey, carried out in the United States, showed that approximately 92% of children aged 5 to 11 years who were hospitalized for complications of the disease were not immunized with any doses of the vaccine. The study involved 267 children aged 5 to 11 years and 918 adolescents aged 12 to 18 years.

The researchers concluded that the Pfizer vaccine was 68% effective against hospitalizations of children aged 5 to 11 years. The study was carried out between July 2021 and February 17 this year. Regarding the age group from 5 to 11 years old, data were evaluated between December 19, 2021 and February 17 of this year, a period in which the Pfizer immunizer was the only one released for this public in the United States.

On July 13 this year, Anvisa approved the emergency use of Coronavac for children between 3 and 5 years old. As shown by G1, the agency’s technicians confirmed that there was no record of any death of people between 6 and 17 years of age as a result of the application of the vaccine, as well as of adults over 18 years of age.

In the age group from 2 to 17 years, according to a document released on July 13 by Anvisa’s Pharmacovigilance Management, 79% of notifications of post-vaccination adverse events were classified as non-serious. Still saccording to the Agency, serious adverse events observed after the administration of more than 103 million doses of Coronavac in Brazil are considered rare or very rare in this group (page 18 of the document).

Childhood vaccination x deaths

Doctor José Davi Urbaez, president of the Sociedade de Infectologia do Distrito Federal, denies the claim that there is scientific evidence that associates the vaccine against Covid-19 with deaths from the diseases mentioned by the doctor in the video. According to him, if these findings were true, “this would be a scandal.”

“At the beginning of vaccination, we could even have this kind of doubt, but after 2020, 2021 and now in 2022 we see that nothing happened”, he says.

In addition, he claims that the author of the video does not present data that corroborate her thesis and that information about any deaths in the country can be obtained from the Mortality Information System, a platform of the Ministry of Health.

What does Anvisa say?

We contacted the National Health Surveillance Agency, which is the regulatory agency linked to the Ministry of Health responsible for analyzing and releasing vaccines applied in Brazil. In a note, Anvisa highlighted that “all known adverse events of vaccines and drugs in use in Brazil are described in their package inserts, as well as new events that can be identified from the investigation and monitoring of use.”

The Agency reinforced that pharmacovigilance monitoring seeks to constantly assess the benefit-risk ratio of vaccines and that, so far, pandemic data and immunization monitoring data indicate that the benefit-risk ratio of vaccination is positive. In other words, the benefits of vaccines outweigh possible risks.

vaccine package inserts

The vaccines given to children in Brazil and mentioned in the SBP document are Coronavac, which can be given to children from 3 years old, and Pfizer, for children from 5 to 11 years old. Regarding adverse effects, both the Butantan Institute’s and Pfizer’s immunizer leaflet describe from very common to rare reactions.

Among the very common reactions, those that can occur in more than 10% of patients, is pain at the application site, an effect recorded in both immunizers. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine, headache, diarrhea, joint pain, tiredness, chills, fever, swelling at the injection site and muscle pain are also highlighted. These last three reactions appear in the Coronavac package insert as common, which can occur between 1% and 10% of patients. Headache, cough, runny nose, sore throat, decreased appetite and muscle pain are also in this relationship.

Regarding the rarest reactions, Pfizer presents acute facial paralysis as recorded between 0.01% and 0.1% of patients who took the immunizer. Myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart) are indicated as very rare effects by the manufacturer, being presented in less than 0.01% of patients who used the immunizer. According to the document, these cases were reported mainly in adolescents, between 12 and 17 years old, after taking the second dose of the vaccine and within 14 days after vaccination. Symptoms were mild and subjects recovered within a short time after rest.

According to the package inserts for both vaccines, all adverse reactions to the products were not severe, only mild and moderate. At no time is there a record of the diseases mentioned in the verified video or cases of death as a result of the application of the vaccine.

Brazilian Society of Pediatrics

Responsible for the document criticized in the investigated video, the SBP manifested itself in a note. The institution reported that it “strongly repudiates the accusations and statements made by Ms. Maria Emilia Gadelha in a video of obscure objectives that circulates on social networks”. The society highlighted that the video promotes disinformation and fosters the anti-vaccine movement, “which has been extremely harmful to public health, especially in times of a pandemic”.

According to the SBP, the situation was reported to the Regional Council of Medicine of the State of São Paulo, as the doctor’s statements, which were considered by society as “unfair, intentional, untrue, dangerous and defamatory aggressions”, represent violations of the Code of Medical Ethics (CEM). In addition, the SBP informed that it forwarded the complaint to the civil and criminal spheres, so that the person responsible for the video can clarify the statements before the Special Criminal Court and the Prosecutor’s Office for Children and Youth of the Public Ministry.

Who is the doctor in the video?

Maria Emilia Gadelha Serra is a doctor accredited by the Regional Council of Medicine of the State of São Paulo (Cremesp). According to the entity’s website, her specialty is otolaryngology, under CRM 63451.

On her Instagram, she uses a photo in which it is written in English “We do not consent – ​​Say no to vaccines passports”. In the same network, she calls herself a “hardcore detective doctor with Viking blood” and president of the Alpha Group and the Brazilian Society of Medical Ozone Therapy. Ozone therapy is a form of alternative medicine that claims to increase the amount of oxygen in the body by introducing ozone. This technique is not allowed by the Federal Council of Medicine and can only be applied in clinical trials.

On August 24, 2021, Comprova classified another statement by the doctor as misleading: in a live, she said that most serious cases of covid-19 in Brazil occur in people already vaccinated. We have also shown that there was no basis for saying that vaccines caused stroke, as she did during a lecture.

Why do we investigate?

Comprova investigates suspicious content about the pandemic, public policies and elections that have gone viral on social media. Together, the content investigated here had more than 32,000 interactions on Instagram (before it was removed) and Telegram.

When the content deals with the pandemic, verification is even more necessary, because misinformation can lead people to fail to protect themselves and expose themselves to risks of infection. This is even more evident by the fact that the video talks specifically about childhood vaccination, which is still immunizing children aged 3 to 5 with the first dose.

Previous Comprova checks show that the same doctor even disseminated misleading information to discourage vaccination against covid-19, such as the video in which she claims that immunizers are experimental and that evidence about Pfizer’s vaccine is lacking.

Comprova made this verification based on information available on August 16, 2022.