Claims Covid-19 shots caused US disability uptick misrepresent data
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 21, 2023 at 21:17
- 6 min read
- By Chloé RABS, AFP France, AFP USA, AFP Canada
- Translation and adaptation Gwen ROLEY
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"Civilian Labor Force with a disability increased by 40% since COVID-19 vaccination started. Coincidence?" asks the caption of a December 9, 2023 photo on X, formerly Twitter, which shows a graph with a sharp ascending trend at the end of its range.
Similar claims also citing labor and disability statistics spread across X, where they were amplified by activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr before appearing on Facebook. The claims also appeared in French and Portuguese.
Many of these posts suggest that the apparent rise in the number of people with disabilities was caused by supposed adverse effects from Covid-19 vaccines.
"There's just no denying with this. The increase of disabilities in the US since Covid-19 vaccine rollout is statistical (sic) significant," a December 10 Facebook post says.
The posts are the latest in a trend of misinformation questioning the proven safety of Covid-19 vaccines. But experts contacted by AFP said changes observed in the workforce are not linked to the shots.
"Connecting the rise of people with disabilities in the US to the Covid-19 vaccine is inaccurate and not true," said Mia Ives-Rublee, the director of the Disability Justice Initiative (archived here) at the Center for American Progress.
Increase of workers with disabilities
The graphics being shared come from an online visualizer published by the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database (archived here and here), using data collected by US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). According to a BLS press release (archived here), the data was collected as part of the Current Population Survey, which gathers statistics on workers and unemployment from a pool of about 60,000 random households each month.
One of the graphs in the posts is looking at data on the proportion of disabled workers by tracking the number of employees with disabilities per 100,000.
"The graphic shows there has been an increase in the number of people with disabilities in the force since around 2020," said Amelia Sandhovel (archived here), a spokeswoman for the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) think tank.
BLS data show that in January 2020, 20.4 percent of workers in the survey reported a disability and by November 2023, 24.8 percent said they were working with a disability (archived here) -- the highest ratio of disabled workers since the US began collecting data on this topic in 2008.
Sandhovel said her organization's research (archived here) indicated that remote work appeared to be boosting the employment rate of Americans with disabilities.
Ives-Rublee of the Disability Justice Initiative also said this rise could be attributed to a greater number of people having the option to work from home -- which allows more accommodation for employees with disabilities.
"We have seen an increase in the number of people with a disability in the civilian labor force and improvements to employment rates for disabled workers," she said.
Ives-Rublee also noted that a tight labor market with more competition had likely increased opportunities for workers with disabilities. But, she said that despite improvements for employees with disabilities, they are still employed at substantially lower rates than people without disabilities.
"Policymakers and workplaces must accommodate the needs of disabled workers by decreasing the barriers that make it difficult for them to apply, obtain, and maintain employment," Ives-Rublee said.
'Long Covid' impact
The other graph is also from BLS, this time showing statistics on the proportion of the disabled people in the general population over age 16 -- not just workers.
According to BLS data, this demographic is on the rise with more than 30.5 million people reporting a disability in January 2020 and 33.9 million people reporting one in November 2023 (archived here and here).
Ives-Rublee said this increase could partially be attributed to the adverse long-term effects of Covid-19 infection -- rather than vaccination.
The Center for American Progress estimated that as many as 1.2 million Americans were likely disabled after being infected with Covid-19 by the end of 2021 (archived here).
A report from the National Center for Health Statistics at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examining data from 2022 found that 6.9 percent of adults had experienced post-Covid-19 symptoms -- or "long Covid" -- and 3.4 percent of adults had long Covid at the time the study was conducted (archive here).
Long Covid can range from mild to debilitating, sometimes preventing people from returning to work, Yale Medicine says online (archived here).
"The spread of the Covid-19 virus was a mass disabling event," Ives-Rublee said. "Because of this, the vaccine likely prevented disability."
Vaccines safe and effective
There are occasional mild side effects to receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, such as flu-like symptoms and fatigue, but these usually resolve after a few days. Rare, more severe reactions to vaccination, such as inflammation of the muscles in and around the heart, usually dissipate within a year.
Physicians have frequently told AFP that the benefits of receiving the Covid-19 shot far outweigh the risks of infection -- which could lead to long Covid. The World Health Organization also highly recommends that people with disabilities are up-to-date on Covid-19 vaccines and boosters as they are a higher risk group when it comes to adverse effects from the virus.
According to the CDC, more than 676 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the US (archived here). The CDC says on its website that it continues to monitor the safety and effectiveness of the shots (archived here).
More of AFP's reporting on misinformation surrounding health topics can be found here.
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