Elon Musk Amplifies Baseless Claim About COVID-19 Vaccine

Elon Musk this week amplified an unfounded claim, based on a distortion of vaccine safety monitoring data, that COVID-19 vaccines killed tens of thousands of people in Germany. The vaccines saved millions of lives worldwide during a deadly pandemic, and serious side effects or deaths from vaccination are rare.

Despite this well-established safety record, Musk questioned COVID-19 vaccine safety on X on April 12 while sharing a post from far-right Swedish influencer Peter Imanuelsen, who also goes by PeterSweden. Musk, a former Trump adviser who is CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owns X, has previously amplified and interacted with Imanuelsen's posts on multiple occasions. Musk's post had nearly 60 million views as of this story's publication, and Imanuelsen's had 64 million.

"A Pfizer insider who was former head of toxicology in Europe has just come out and said something that many 'conspiracy theorists' suspected," Imanuelsen wrote in his April 12 post. "He estimates that 20 000 to 60 000 people in Germany have died from the c*vid vaccine," he continued, adding that it "should be headline news EVERYWHERE."