MAGA Senator Ted Cruz has backpedaled on his egregiously false claims about COVID-19 vaccines after intense online backlash.
Cruz, 55, posted on X on Wednesday in promotion of his latest podcast episode that there was “bombshell data” supporting that COVID-19 vaccines produced an “82% Miscarriage Rate.”
The senator had been referring to texts from January 2021 that were released this week from Dr. Anthony Fauci, where he expressed theoretical concerns about the COVID vaccine’s impact on miscarriage. Safety data was limited at the time, but Fauci had also emphasized that “no issues had arisen” after more than 10,000 pregnant women had been vaccinated.
Subsequent studies found no increased risk of miscarriage associated with the vaccine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged vaccination during pregnancy.
The post immediately drew vehement criticism online, with people calling Cruz’s statement “deeply, dangerously dishonest,” “false,” and “a bald faced lie.”
The Texas Republican’s post even received a community note on the platform, which read: “The post misrepresents a 2021 CDC/NEJM study (Shimabukuro et al.). The 82 percent miscarriage figure excludes ~ 700 of 827 participants with incomplete follow-up; full data shows ~ 12.6 percent rate, within normal background (10-26 percent). Large analyses confirm no increased risk.”
Cruz’s vaccine lie remained on the platform through Thursday evening, when the incendiary post was no longer found on the website.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Cruz for comment.
CNN’s Erin Burnett covered the senator’s retraction, noting that the post reached over 600,000 users in the amount of time that it was on the social media platform.
“If you watched this on social media, the number of people who bought into it, believed it, fed it into preconceived narratives about vaccines, was deeply unsettling,” the network host revealed on OutFront.
“The 82 percent miscarriage number is a misreading of the study’s data,” she explained, “which actually has the miscarriage rate at 12.6 percent, which is in line with the normal rate of miscarriages in the general population in the United States of America. So no added risk due to the COVID vaccine.”
Dr. Kevin Ault, a gynecologist and former member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, told Burnett that Cruz’s claims were “an incoherent story.”
“This is a well-studied area; we knew this in 2021, that there wasn’t an increased risk, and now we have five more years of data,” Ault said. “It’s hard to believe we would miss a factor of eight increase in miscarriages.”
