Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) took to the right-wing network Real America’s Voice on Saturday to lob a series of unsubstantiated claims regarding COVID-19 vaccines, claims that left several onlookers taken aback.
For “years,” Johnson – a close ally to President Donald Trump – has spread “conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines,” per reporting from ProPublica. On Saturday, he engaged in a similar pattern by suggesting, with misleading evidence, that COVID-19 vaccines killed as many as 3.9 million Americans.
“Today, worldwide, we have 39,000 [COVID-19 vaccine-related] deaths,” Johnson claimed. “We know from a CDC-commissioned study at Harvard called the Pilgrim study that less than 1% of deaths are actually reported, so take that 39,000, multiply it by as much as 100 times, that could be 3.9 million deaths!”
Johnson’s claim of there being 39,000 deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines appears to be a reference to information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a government database that collects user-submitted reports on the potential side effects of vaccines. What Johnson didn’t mention, however, is that the data is completely user generated and unverified.
Johnson’s reference to the “Pilgrim study” is a likely reference to a study conducted by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care that found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” What Johnson failed to mention, however, was that the study was published in 2010, around a decade before COVID-19 vaccines entered the market.
“Dumbest person in the Senate,” wrote former legal journalist and editor-in-chief for National Law Journal Rex Bossert in a social media post on X.
“The ill-informed always believe the ignorant,” wrote another, New York City educator and political commentator Jeff Storobinsky to their more than 52,000 followers on X.
Sen. Ron Johnson claims preposterously that as many as 3.9 MILLION (!!!) Americans died as a result of the covid vaccine Complete insanity pic.twitter.com/PDCx0oBALU — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 9, 2026
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