Major COVID study that fueled vaccine skepticism retracted over ‘misinformation’

August 12, 2026

A controversial 2024 study that some vaccine skeptics used to argue that millions of people likely died as a result of COVID vaccines has been retracted over misinformation and issues with the research.

The article was originally published in the BMJ Public Health in May 2024. It analyzed data from 47 Western countries and concluded that there had been more than three million excess deaths between 2020 and 2022, a statistic known as excess mortality.

Read more in Scientific American.

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