• The “89×” figure comes from a single 2025 paper (Cosgrove et al.) in the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, which compares raw adverse-event reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccines with those after influenza vaccines¹².
• The paper is authored by McCullough, Hulscher, Thorp, and Hatfill, who have repeatedly made misleading vaccine claims and have been flagged by independent fact-checkers as sources of vaccine misinformation³⁴.
• CDC and FDA explicitly state that VAERS is a passive, voluntary system subject to underreporting, reporting bias, and lack of unvaccinated comparison groups; they warn that “the number of reports alone cannot be interpreted as evidence of a causal association” or used to calculate incidence or compare risk between vaccines⁵⁶⁷.
• No rigorous epidemiological study (cohort, case-control, or active surveillance) has confirmed an 89-fold increased risk of spinal cord abscess from COVID-19 vaccines versus flu shots.
• Spinal cord abscess is typically a bacterial infection (e.g., Staphylococcus aureus), not a mechanism caused by vaccines; the isolated case report of cervical infection post-vaccination described it as a coincidental event unrelated to the vaccine itself⁸.

Overall validity: 5%

1. BREAKING: Peer-Reviewed Study Finds COVID-19 "Vaccines ...
2. COVID-19 mRNA vaccination: implications for the central nervous ...
3. Doctor's misleading vaccine claims spread online
4. McCullough's testimony
5. VAERS - Guide to Interpreting VAERS Data
6. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) Help
7. COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Surveillance
8. Cervical Staphylococcus aureus Infection after Receiving the Third Dose of COVID-19 Vaccination: A Case Report