Rick Nicholls is a Rebel with a cause.

The newly independent MPP, who was booted from the Progressive Conservative caucus after refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, appeared on far-right media outlet Rebel News to elaborate on his decision.

In the process, he revealed his reasons for distrusting the vaccine, which appear to be based on a misunderstanding, ignorance or dismissal of the available data.

Here are his false or misleading claims, along with what the science says.

Nicholls did not respond to a request for an interview with QP Briefing. Nicholls also did not take questions from the Queen's Park Press Gallery on Thursday in a press conference where he announced he would not get vaccinated.

The vaccine is not a vaccine

Nicholls used the phrase "experimental drug" multiple times when referring to the COVID vaccines.

"I'm hesitant to call it a vaccine, because I don't believe it is," he said.

The approved vaccines are, by definition, vaccines, since they are proven to help prevent infection and severe health outcomes in people who receive them.

It's unclear what the ingredients are

"I don't know what's in that drug," Nicholls said.

The ingredients to the approved vaccines are widely available. Here is one list which includes the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson ingredients. Here are the ingredients of the AstraZeneca shot.

More study is needed

Many who are hesitant to take the vaccine point to the relatively fast turnaround time between the beginning of the pandemic and the development of the vaccine. The worry is that it was rushed, and there hasn't been enough time to study its effects.

The development was so fast this time around thanks to a worldwide focus on developing the vaccine; a decades-long institutional knowledge of other coronaviruses; and a decade of research in mRNA vaccines — the main type of inoculation used to fight COVID.

It's been a massive scientific success, and experts are now pushing for a similar approach to other vaccines.

Vaccines in general carry very low risks of long-term effects. And the vaccines have now been studied for over a year. If there were long-term effects, experts say it's very likely we'd know about them by now.

The vaccine carries health risks

"If it's good to go, why are so many people having such adverse effects?" Nicholls asked.

Many people feel ill after they receive a COVID-19 vaccine. That's normal, and actually a good sign — it means one's immune system is responding to the shot, which is working as intended.

The vaccines carry a very small risk of other, more serious adverse effects. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has a good rundown. In summary:

Anaphylaxis is very rare and can happen after any vaccine.
Heart inflammation is very rare but is a possibility.
People have died after taking the COVID vaccine, but there is no causal link between death and the vaccines.

Other rare adverse effects, including blood clots, have been reported after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which Canada is not using.

The risk of more serious adverse effects from the vaccines is dwarfed by the risk the virus poses. The numbers speak for themselves: the CDC has received 6,968 reports of death (0.0019 per cent) in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine — which, again, does not mean that those people died because of the vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19, and recent studies show unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized and 48 times more likely to end up in intensive care due to the virus.

Recently, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer vaccine, further underlining its overall safety.

Kids are immune to COVID, and too young to be vaccinated

David Menzies, the Rebel interviewer, said, "We know from the statistics that children are virtually invulnerable to this virus."

That's not true. The elderly are much more at risk of negative health outcomes from COVID-19 than kids, but some children have gotten severely ill, and even died. They can also pass the virus along to more at-risk populations.

Experts have underlined the importance of "cocooning" kids under 12, who are currently too young to get vaccinated, with inoculated adults, to protect them from the virus.

Nicholls' opposition to vaccinating children seemed to be based on a distaste for the idea, rather than facts.

"Don't we think that's a little too young?" he said of inoculating kids 12 to 17. "What testing has been done to ensure the safety and safeguarding of the children's health?"

As was the case with adults, the COVID-19 vaccines were tested extensively in children before they were approved.

Clinical trials are now underway for younger children.

MPP shares vaccine misinformation in interview after being turfed from PCs

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