The most commonly cited statistic among anti-vaccine groups is death following vaccination. Graphics from anti-vaccine proponents frequently tick off the number of deaths directly reported in VAERS — without noting that the reports there have not been investigated or verified as causally linked to an immunization. Those numbers even made it on to the show of Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson last month. In a segment on the supposed dangers of COVID-19 vaccines, Carlson incorrectly claimed the system had recorded thousands of unexplained deaths. "It's clear that what is happening now is not even close to normal," he told his audience. The problem, says Saad Omer, director of Yale's Institute for Global Health, is that many of those deaths in the VAERS database were caused by other illnesses that happened around the same time as the immunization and had nothing to do with a vaccine: "Vaccines decrease your risk of COVID-19," Omer notes, "they don't make you immortal." In fact, COVID-19 vaccines were given first to some of the oldest and sickest people in America. Their risk of dying from COVID was high, but "their risk of mortality due to other causes was also high. In fact, very high," Omer says.