Study that claimed millions died from Covid-19 Vaccinations retracted over 'misinformation fears'

A scientific paper that spent two years fueling claims of mass COVID-19 vaccine deaths has been retracted by the journal that published it, after investigators found its central argument was built on misinformation.

BMJ Public Health, an open-access journal, published the study on 3 June 2024.

Its lead author, Saskia Mostert, a Dutch pediatric oncologist, analyzed death records from 47 countries across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand between January 2020 and December 2022.

She and her three co-authors reported more than three million excess deaths, meaning deaths above what historical trends would have predicted.

What the Numbers Actually Showed

The paper never proved that COVID-19 vaccines killed people.

Its own text stopped short of that claim. But its discussion section repeatedly pointed to vaccination and pandemic containment measures as possible explanations for the excess deaths, while giving little attention to other likely causes such as delayed cancer diagnoses, disrupted hospital care, or the virus itself.

That framing was enough. Within days, the study was being cited across social media and conservative media outlets as proof that vaccines had killed millions of people worldwide.

BMJ Public Health issued a statement just three days after publication warning that news coverage had misrepresented the findings.

Two Institutions, Two Investigations

BMJ opened a formal integrity investigation weeks after publication. So did the Princess Máxima Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, a children's hospital where three of the four authors worked at the time. The center later distanced itself from the study altogether.

Separately, Ariel Karlinsky, an economist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and co-creator of the World Mortality Dataset that the study relied on, accused the authors of copying large sections of text, equations and data directly from his earlier published research without proper credit.

He asked BMJ to retract the paper starting in June 2024.

The Máxima Center shared its findings with BMJ in May 2025.

It found no evidence of fabrication, falsification or plagiarism serious enough to constitute misconduct, but concluded the study's explanations for the excess deaths did not reflect scientific consensus and were selectively presented.

A Senate Hearing Raises the Stakes

The controversy reached the United States Congress on 3 June 2026, when Mostert testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Ron Johnson, at a hearing examining possible harms from COVID-19 vaccines.

Mostert told lawmakers she and her co-authors faced what she called "blind and irrational fury" after publication, and said she had resigned from the Máxima Center once its investigation began.

She also said she had offered to revise the paper to address the journal's concerns. BMJ disagreed that this would have been enough.

In its retraction notice, published 11 August 2026, the journal said her proposed edits would have been "insufficient" to fix the underlying problems.

Why the Retraction Matters Beyond One Paper

BMJ's retraction notice was direct about what went wrong: the study's discussion of what caused the excess deaths was "imbalanced, lacks rigour, and includes misinformation."

The journal also cited limited original analysis by the authors, given how much of the underlying data and methodology came from previously published work.

The episode illustrates a wider problem in global health reporting.

A single flawed study, once it enters political debate, can keep circulating long after scientists have raised serious concerns, shaping public understanding of vaccine safety in countries far beyond where it was written or investigated.

BMJ Public Health has not withdrawn the underlying mortality data itself, only the paper's conclusions about what caused it.

The retraction closes a two-year dispute over the study, though the millions of shares and citations it generated while under investigation are not so easily undone.

Source

Kaspers G, Mostert S, Hoogland M, Huibers M. Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: 'Our World in Data' estimates of January 2020 to December 2022. BMJ Public Health. 2024;2(1):e000282. Retracted 11 Aug 2026.*