A viral claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause an 82 percent miscarriage rate exploded across social media and Congress this month, but the number is a statistical mirage, according to NewsGuard’s Reality Check. Mentions of the claim on X jumped from a single post to more than 57,000 in a matter of days, fueled by Senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, and Ted Cruz.
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The figure traces to a 2021 New England Journal of Medicine study of 827 pregnant people vaccinated against COVID-19. Of 104 recorded miscarriages, “82 percent” only emerges if you divide that by the 127 women vaccinated in their first or second trimester—most of whom simply hadn’t finished their pregnancies yet when data were collected.
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“It’s like calculating a school’s dropout rate in October by looking only at students who’ve already left,” said Stanford’s Jake Scott. A corrected NEJM analysis later found miscarriage rates below 15 percent, within the normal range.
