It's the phrase that powered Operation Warp Speed: "Safe and effective." Billboards blared it, Fauci preached it, and billions rolled up sleeves under its banner. Fast-forward to November 2025, and a fresh Rasmussen Reports survey – polling 1,292 U.S. adults from November 10-12 – drops a reality check that's equal parts vindication and indictment. Among the 68% who've gotten at least one COVID-19 jab, 36% report side effects: 26% minor (think sore arms, fatigue), 10% major (chest pain, neurological woes). Scale that to America's 258 million adults, and you're staring at 63 million affected souls, including 17 million hammered by the heavy stuff. Worse? Nearly half (46%) of all adults now suspect these shots fuelled "a significant number of unexplained deaths," with 25% calling it "very likely," down from 55% in September 2024, but still a seismic undercurrent of doubt. This isn't fringe chatter; it's mainstream polling from a firm that's nailed election calls when others whiffed. As X user @SovereignSoul blasted: "Nearly half suspect the vaccines killed many patients."
Rasmussen's numbers aren't outliers; they're echoes of earlier surveys. Back in 2022, the firm clocked 7% major and 34% minor side effects, now it's 10% and 26%, a subtle creep that pollster Mark Mitchell calls "significant" for lingering impacts. Unvaccinated folks? They're twice as likely to finger the shots for fatalities, fuelling the divide. Extrapolate: If 46% of adults (119 million) buy the death-link theory, we're talking cultural PTSD, anecdotes of "sudden" collapses, turbo cancers, and heart flutters that no amount of "correlation ≠ causation" can quiet.
X is ablaze with it. @marchinke60784 vents: "I know many people who dropped dead soon after getting the vaccine!!" @photoking63 shares the headline: "SHOCK POLL: Rasmussen Finds Millions Reporting COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects." It's visceral, not abstract, a chorus of "me too" from Substack warriors to soccer moms, amplified by docs like Robert Malone, who calls it a "bombshell" exposing the "massive disconnect." Polls have biases (Rasmussen leans Right, per critics), but the trend? Unignorable. From 49% death-suspicions in 2022 to 55% mid-2024, now 46%, doubt's dipping, but it's entrenched.
Flip to the journals, and "safe and effective" holds firm, with asterisks. An October 2025 NEJM systematic review/meta-analysis of 511 studies (COVID, RSV, flu) pegs XBB.1.5-adapted mRNA jabs at 46-50% effective against adult hospitalization, 37% in immunocompromised folks – "meaningful," per Stanford's Jake Scott, atop hybrid immunity's baseline. Earlier meta-analyses? 94.6% efficacy for mRNA in Phase III trials (2021), 80.2% for adenoviral vectors. Safety? Systematic reviews flag common gripes (fatigue, headache) but rare heavies: Myocarditis (1-10 per 100K doses, mostly mild), GBS (9 excess cases/million for RSVpreF, but similar for COVID).
VAERS? The CDC's canary: 1.66 million reports by August 2025, including 322K serious, 38K deaths, but caveats scream: Voluntary, unverified, no causality proof.
Here's the rub: Polls capture lived experience; science chases signals in noise. VAERS logs 1.7M+ reports by 2023, raw, unfiltered, but can't prove "vax did it" without VSD's controls. Result? A 2025 PMC deep-dive flags associations (age/gender/vax-type) but urges caution: "VAERS isn't causal." Public? They see "sudden deaths" memes, excess mortality spikes (post-2021), and whisper networks of regret. X's @MTRDeplorable blames Dems: "Those responsible... forced it."
Mandates scarred souls – job losses, school closures – breeding resentment. Nobel for mRNA (2023) feels tone-deaf amid lawsuits. Rasmussen's dip from 55% to 46%? Maybe fatigue, or boosters' fade. But as @drWilda shares: "Trend is clear: significant minority believe... harmed them." Disconnect drivers: Underreported long-haul vax injuries? Media echo chambers? Or just human bias – we remember pains, forget saves.
This poll isn't apocalypse; it's alarm.
"Safe and effective" endures, but only if we own the footnotes. The public isn't anti-science; they're pro-truth.
https://www.malone.news/p/bombshell-rasmussen-survey-released