Colin Powell’s COVID-19 Death Followed Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment

SciCheck Digest

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell died from complications of COVID-19. Although he was fully vaccinated, he was also 84 years old and was a cancer patient who had undergone treatment for multiple myeloma — factors that put him at higher risk of a serious breakthrough illness. His death does not mean the COVID-19 vaccines don’t work, as many social media posts suggest.

How effective are the COVID-19 vaccines?

---

Full Story

Colin Powell’s family announced his death on Oct. 18 due to “complications from Covid 19.” Few details were immediately given, but the family noted that the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been fully vaccinated. 

Hours later, it emerged that Powell, who was 84 years old, had multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer that weakens the immune system, increases the risk of severe COVID-19 and reduces vaccine effectiveness. 

He also had prostate cancer in 2003 and was being treated for early-stage Parkinson’s disease, according to his longtime assistant Peggy Cifrino.

Many people online nevertheless jumped on the news, erroneously concluding that Powell’s death was evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t work.

“Fully vaccinated, Colin Powell, is dead at 84 from covid. Trust the science!” reads one suggestive Facebook post that was shared more than 500 times.

“Colin Powell died from COVID and he was fully vaccinated. So what’s the point of the vaccine?” another person on Twitter asked.  

Fox News anchor John Roberts also chimed in on the platform, writing in a later-deleted tweet, “The fact that Colin Powell died from a breakthrough COVID infection raises new concerns about how effective vaccines are long-term.”

In a subsequent tweet that is also now deleted, Roberts said he deleted the tweet because “many people interpreted it as anti-vax,” adding that it was not and that he had encouraged people to be vaccinated and planned on getting a booster shot “as soon as possible.”

But rather than showing that COVID-19 vaccination does not work, experts say Powell’s death underscores the need for more people to be vaccinated to help protect not only themselves but also others, especially the most susceptible.

“The continued vulnerability of multiple myeloma patients (and many other immunocompromised patients) to severe COVID19 even after vaccination is one reason why it’s so essential for healthy individuals to get vaccinated,” said Dr. Alfred L. Garfall, a multiple myeloma expert at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center, in a statement to FactCheck.org. “Even a mild infection in a healthy, unvaccinated person can transmit a fatal infection to a vaccinated, immunocompromised patient. The best way to protect our immunocompromised neighbors is for the general population to receive these remarkably safe and effective vaccines.”

Protecting the immunocompromised by getting vaccinated is also in the best interest of everyone, scientists say, because chronic infections in people with weakened immune systems may be one way new variants of the virus evolve.

Powell served as a national security adviser for President Ronald Reagan, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and as secretary of state for George W. Bush. He was the first Black man to hold each position. He was also a four-star general in the U.S. Army. 

COVID-19 Vaccines Are Effective

Any single death from COVID-19 after vaccination — even a high-profile one — is not evidence that the vaccines don’t work. No vaccine is foolproof, and some number of breakthrough infections, even some leading to death, are expected. Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of infection and disease, but cannot eliminate it.

Data show that the vaccines are doing a remarkably good job at protecting people from infection, severe disease and death, including against the highly contagious delta variant.

According to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, in the month of August, during which the delta variant accounted for nearly all infections, unvaccinated people were 6.1 times more likely to test positive for infection with the coronavirus and 11.3 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated.

While there is likely some waning vaccine immunity to infection, the bulk of evidence at this time shows that the vaccines remain highly protective against severe illness.

There is data, however, to suggest that some immunocompromised people — including those in treatment for blood cancers such as multiple myeloma — do not mount an effective immune response following the standard vaccination regimen, and that some fraction of them can benefit from an extra dose.

Based on this evidence, the Food and Drug Administration authorized a third booster shot of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines for these populations.

Powell received his second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in February, but had not yet gotten a booster. Cifrino told multiple news outlets that he was scheduled for one last week, but by that point he had already started to feel sick. 

Powell at Heightened Risk

Experts say Powell, as a multiple myeloma patient, was at higher risk of not responding effectively to the vaccine and of developing severe COVID-19 if infected.

“These patients have two strikes against them,” said Dr. Edward A. Stadtmauer, the section chief of hematologic malignancies at Penn Medicine, in a phone interview.

The cancer affects a particular type of B cell known as a plasma cell, which is a cell in the bone marrow that fights infections by churning out lots of protective antibodies. Multiple myeloma patients are therefore more susceptible to all sorts of infections because the uncontrolled growth of cancerous plasma cells crowds out other plasma cells that would otherwise spring into action once a person is infected.

“This is a disease by definition where patients are immunocompromised because the normal antibody-producing cells are abnormal,” Stadtmauer said.

On top of that, he said, the standard treatments for multiple myeloma suppress the immune system, since they target plasma cells but are not good at discriminating between healthy ones and the cancerous ones.

It is unclear what treatment Powell had received or was receiving, but the Washington Post reported that he “had been successfully treated … for two or three years,” according to Cifrino. 

Kathy Giusti, the founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, has said Powell was diagnosed in 2019 and told the New York Times that he “was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma but seemed to be responding well.”

While not able to comment on Powell’s specific case, Stadtmauer said that even if a multiple myeloma patient is in remission, the likelihood that their immune system would be completely normal is “very low.”