Up to 76 percent of reported side effects reported after the COVID-19 vaccines might not be real.
Harvard University researchers performed a meta-analysis on 12 previous studies that compared reported side effects to the COVID vaccines of those reported by people who instead received the placebo.
They found 35 percent of those who got the placebo reported having an adverse event—such as a headache, fatigue, or other symptoms—after receiving the first dose, and 32 percent did after getting the second dose.
When a person manifests or misassigns symptoms they are feeling to medicine or treatment they recently received, scientists call it the “nocebo” effect.
The researchers say 76 percent of “systemic” adverse events after getting the vaccine, or symptoms that take place in other parts of the body and not at the site of injection, were likely either imagined or a result of something other than the shots.
These are usually symptoms a person is actually feeling, but misattributing to the vaccine, or just a result of anxiety they have over symptoms.