# Proof Narrative: COVID-19 vaccines killed 20,000 to 60,000 people in Germany (as claimed in Dr. Helmut Sterz's March 19, 2026 parliamentary testimony and amplified by Elon Musk on April 12).

## Verdict

**Verdict: DISPROVED**

The claim that COVID-19 vaccines killed tens of thousands of people in Germany is not supported by scientific evidence — and is actively contradicted by the very data source it relies on.

## What Was Claimed?

In March 2026, Dr. Helmut Sterz — a retired toxicologist who last worked for Pfizer in 2007 — told the German parliament that COVID-19 vaccines may have killed between 20,000 and 60,000 people in Germany. On April 12, Elon Musk amplified these claims to tens of millions of followers on X, sharing his own account of feeling severely ill after vaccination. The claims went viral, reigniting public debate about vaccine safety.

## What Did We Find?

First, the events themselves are well-documented. Three independent news sources confirm that Sterz did testify before the Bundestag on March 19, 2026, and that Musk amplified the claims on April 12. There is no dispute that these events occurred.

The critical question is whether the claim itself is true — whether vaccines actually caused 20,000 to 60,000 deaths in Germany. Here, the evidence decisively says no.

Sterz arrived at his figures through a simple multiplication: he took 2,133 death reports filed with Germany's Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) after Pfizer vaccination and multiplied by 30 — an "underreporting factor" he borrowed from U.S. adverse event reporting practices. This produced his headline number of roughly 60,000.

The problems with this arithmetic are fundamental. The 2,133 reports document deaths that occurred *after* vaccination, not deaths *caused by* vaccination. When PEI conducted its own causal review of these reports, it assessed only 28 as having a "possible or probable" causal relationship with Pfizer vaccination — and 74 across all COVID vaccines combined. That is roughly 350 to 800 times fewer than the claimed figure.

Multiple independent experts rejected the methodology. Epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik noted it is "not valid to presume the 2000 reported deaths were caused by vaccines, much less to presume that there were 30x this number." Biostatistician Jeffrey Morris pointed out that applying a fixed underreporting factor "ignores the possibility of reporting inflation." And the U.S. system that inspired the multiplier — VAERS — explicitly warns on its own website that its reports cannot establish causation.

Large-scale studies tell a consistent story in the opposite direction. A French study of 28 million adults found vaccinated people were less likely to die. Data published in The Lancet showed high vaccination rates correlated with lower mortality across Western Europe.

## What Should You Keep In Mind?

This proof evaluates the specific claim of 20,000–60,000 vaccine-caused deaths in Germany. It does not claim vaccines have zero risks — all medical interventions carry some risk, and rare serious adverse events from COVID vaccines are documented. The PEI's own assessment of 28–74 possibly-related deaths reflects this reality. The issue is the orders-of-magnitude gap between documented evidence and the claimed figure.

The ecological correlation between vaccination rates and excess mortality found in one German study deserves further investigation, but that study's own authors explicitly disclaimed causal inference and did not support the specific death count claimed by Sterz.

## How Was This Verified?

This analysis used a structured proof methodology that decomposes the claim into independently verifiable parts, verifies every cited source by fetching its content, and conducts adversarial searches for counter-evidence. The full reasoning chain is available in [the structured proof report](proof.md), detailed verification records in [the full verification audit](proof_audit.md), and the underlying code can be inspected or re-run via [the proof script](proof.py).
