Veria - Claim Fact Check

The claim appears in social-media posts citing a recent study by Hulscher, McCullough, et al. that reported a proportional reporting ratio (PRR) of 120 for “brain abscess” after COVID-19 vaccination versus influenza vaccination, based on VAERS data¹².
The CDC, FDA, and independent fact-checkers have repeatedly warned that VAERS is a passive, self-reporting system; its raw counts cannot be used to calculate actual incidence rates, compare risk between vaccines, or establish causation³⁴⁵. A report to VAERS does not mean a vaccine caused the event⁴.
The AAP FactCheck and Public Health Communications Collaborative have already debunked virtually identical claims from the same authors using the same VAERS methodology for other conditions (e.g., brain clots), noting the lack of a true denominator, severe reporting biases, and the absence of an unvaccinated control group³⁴.
Randomized clinical-trial data from the FDA’s Pfizer-BioNTech VRBPAC briefing document showed zero brain-abscess cases in the vaccine group (n = 18 801) and one case in the placebo group (n = 18 785), directly contradicting the notion that COVID-19 vaccines increase brain-abscess risk⁶.
Because the claim rests on a known misuse of unverified pharmacovigilance reports and is flatly contradicted by controlled trial data, it is false.

Overall validity: 0%