Army physician Lt. Colonel Theresa Long has stated that she is going to investigate 2,544 deaths in the US military that she attributes to the COVID vaccine. Defense Secretary (no, I am not going to call him the Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth appointed Long as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s senior medical military adviser while still also reporting to the Defense Department.

Predictably, Long has no background in vaccines, viruses, or other fields relevant to vaccinology. This inquiry is based on unverified reports, no better than anecdotes.

This post will examine Long’s claims about the COVID vaccine causing deaths and adverse events in the US military.

Claims about COVID vaccine and US Army deaths

Long is claiming that she has reviewed approximately 55,000 adverse events and 2,544 deaths involving the US military that were submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). She hopes to complete the review within a year.

Long also made two claims that go further than the reports themselves. She said she had personal knowledge of 28 service members whose deaths resulted from the COVID-19 vaccination. Long also stated that the COVID vaccine caused an 82% pregnancy loss among military members.

As I have written before, VAERS is one of the systems employed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to monitor vaccine safety. VAERS is a post-marketing surveillance program, collecting information about adverse events (including death) that occur after the administration of vaccines to ascertain whether the risk-benefit ratio is high enough to justify the continued use of any particular vaccine.

However, VAERS cannot establish causation between a vaccine and the adverse event reported to the VAERS database. Frankly, it can be gamed by those with nefarious intentions, which can limit the value of the VAERS data.

VAERS is a feel-good system for those who think that there’s a link between vaccines and something terrible. However, without an active investigation, the data cannot show a causal link between the vaccine and an adverse event. Most epidemiologists place little value on its data. The CDC itself states that the VAERS system cannot differentiate between coincidence and true causality:

VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Reports to VAERS can also be biased. As a result, there are limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind.

VAERS is primarily used as a safety signal or early warning system that prompts scientists to examine causality between a vaccine and an adverse event.

Basically, Lt. Col. Long is using a flawed database to push old COVID vaccine tropes that have been debunked many times.

With respect to Long’s claims about the COVID vaccine and pregnancy, in a March 2026 report to Congress, the Defense Department stated that its own analysis found no links between the vaccine and adverse pregnancy outcomes such as stillbirth, preterm labor, pre-eclampsia, and premature rupture of membranes. Research shows the COVID vaccine is safe for the mother and developing fetus, and it protects both from negative outcomes.

The Defense Department has not produced evidence supporting claims of widespread COVID vaccine harm among military members. In fact, if there really were 2,544 deaths from the COVID vaccine, we would have heard about it publicly.

Given the weakness of VAERS, it will be difficult to link even a few of those 2,544 deaths or 55,000 adverse events to the vaccine. The Pentagon issued a report that found no evidence of a link between the vaccine and the incidence of 17 medical conditions among active-duty troops. The only link they found was between the vaccine and myocarditis or pericarditis, a well-known adverse event from the COVID vaccine.

However, research has shown that the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis is 14 times as likely to happen after a COVID infection compared to vaccination.

Summary

Without any strong evidence, Lt. Colonel Theresa Long, RFK Jr., and Hegseth are pushing their narratives about vaccines to put our troops at risk of deadly diseases.

Hegseth has already done this once by making flu vaccines “optional,” which may have led to a flu outbreak at a large army base.

Unfortunately, this news goes beyond the military, since anti-vaxxers will use it as their “evidence” that the COVID vaccine is killing people. This “study” from Theresa Long is just a waste of time, but I don’t doubt she will invent some conclusion not supported by the scientific facts. This is so frustrating.

COVID vaccines are safe and effective; the vast majority of scientific evidence supports this fact.

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