Pfizer vaccine 96.7% effective at preventing COVID deaths, Israeli data shows

T. Belman. I am confused. How has the vaccine helped. In other words what was the percentage of serious illness without the vaccine, and what was the percentage of infection before the vaccine? Please can someone explain the difference between what was before the vaccine and what was after.

Shots also 97.5% effective against serious illness, and 95.3% effective in preventing infection, according to study published in prestigious medical journal

By NATHAN JEFFAY , TOI       6 May 2021,

In this Jan. 7, 2021, photo, an Israeli military paramedic prepares a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to be administered at a medical center in Ashdod, southern Israel. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
In this Jan. 7, 2021, photo, an Israeli military paramedic prepares a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to be administered at a medical center in Ashdod, southern Israel. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Vaccines are proving 96.7 percent effective at protecting Israelis against COVID-related death, and 97.5% effective against serious illness, new research has shown.\

The study, full of statistics on the vaccine that will generate hope worldwide, was published Wednesday in the leading peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.

“In Israel we can see the reality of what vaccines do all around us, but this research is important in quantifying it and documenting it for others around the world to see, and understand the full benefits of vaccines,” Bar Ilan University epidemiologist Prof. Michael Edelstein told The Times of Israel.

“This puts our new reality in the form of academic research for all to see.”

A student receives the COVID-19 vaccination at the Amal high school in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, March 17, 2021 (Flash90)

The analysis was conducted by Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of public health services at Israel’s Health Ministry, with international collaborators. It found that full vaccination, involving two Pfizer doses, is 95.3% effective in preventing infection. Pfizer’s clinical trials suggested this rate, but doctors were unsure whether it would be so closely replicated in the real world.

It is 97% effective in preventing symptomatic illness and 91.5% in protecting against asymptomatic infection.

The researchers found that vaccines are 97.2% effective against COVID-19-related hospitalization. They stressed that vaccine benefits are felt across all ages, writing: “In all age groups, as vaccine coverage increased, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 outcomes declined.”

Using the full name for Pfizer’s vaccine, they stated: “Two doses of BNT162b2 are highly effective across all age groups in preventing symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19-related hospitalizations, severe disease and death, including those caused by the [British] variant.

“There were marked and sustained declines in SARS-CoV-2 incidence corresponding to increasing vaccine coverage. These findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccination can help to control the pandemic.”

Prof. Jonathan Gershoni, a vaccines expert from Tel Aviv University who was not involved in the study, told The Times of Israel: “Once again, the scientific community has critically evaluated the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel, and have confirmed its exceptional performance.

“Most important of all the statistics is that it doesn’t only reduce the infection rate but, over several months, also significantly decreases the death rate.”

Gershoni said the research comes at an important moment, as the US Food and Drug Administration is expected to declare the Pfizer vaccine safe and effective for 12- to 15-year-olds — a signal to Israel and other countries to start immunizing this age group.

“Parents should realize from this that it’s an important means to protect your children,” he said.

May 7, 2021 | 14 Comments »

Leave a Reply

14 Comments / 14 Comments

  1. We don’t know how many have died or been injured from these vaccines or what medium to long term affects might be. In USA with 3-4,000 listed on VAERS – this could represent anything from 1-10% of real number based on VAERS reporting study. Since none of the official reports ever seem to discuss any death or serious risks many of just do not trust what we are reading. “Nothing happening here – It’s all good”. Amazing. We should maybe add these shots to our drinking water instead of fluoride. The fact that so much doesn’t add up – just really doesn’t matter. “Just shut up and get your shots”

  2. (4 of 4)
    So does the vaccine work or not? The answer to this nagging question came to me while re-reading an essay that Ted, oddly enough reposted today, the same day he asked this question.

    Yet before we dismiss these religions and all others of which the same can be said, we must realize that man has always enshrined basic truths as they understood them in mythology. What counts then is the message and not the facts; or, what counts is not what happened, only what people think happened..

    This is from the Essay Ted wrote 30yrs ago on the Historical Jesus. I have greatly enjoyed reading this essay several times now. But I find that if you replace the word religion with Covid vaccine it fits quite easily here. That is because in point of fact, there is nothing to rely upon its efficacy but faith in this myth that the vaccines work. You either believe and take the shot or you don’t and join the societal outsiders. It’s looking like H.G. Wells’ Morlochs versus the Eloi. We killed science and replaced it with dogma, utilizing a fake test to prove the existence of disease in people without any signs of illness while utilizing cutting edge tech to concoct a dram of questionable safety and unknown efficacy utilizing the toxic myth of lies as cover. Who wouldn’t either believe or fear this ritual based drama that has such serious consequences to lives and property in its wake. And as we find that we are left with no scale or calculus to divine the benefits of these shots, an inkling into the safety concerns has been discovered amid the misery and death that is being suffered by thousands. The potential extent of these crimes are without conception. Pharmaceutical companies have rejoiced about only 1% side effects. Which, if true, might be a welcome thought, that is as long as you are not a member of these miserable 1%, thousands of whom are dead and untold others are left as perpetually tremoring or paralyzed souls who have suffered these terrible first phase consequences for the arrogance displayed along this savage narrative. And none can know if there is a second or third phase of consequence that awaits such hubris.

    So you can grasp the graffiti statistics to calculate your good fortune, but know that is is a new religion that bares your faith and not science that supplies your knowledge in doing so.

    Or at least this is how I have come to an understanding of our great misfortune, though I would be so thankful to be proven wrong in these conclusions. So, my fellow bloggers here on Israpundit, I humbly ask that you don’t hesitate to show me that I am.
    /4

  3. (3 of 4)
    So what does this all mean with regards to the efficacy of the vaccine, i.e. does the shot work or does it not? There is a principle that I have seen expressed across many disciplines and it is never over appreciated enough and has a specific application to this question: garbage in, garbage out. If you don’t have good data, you can’t possibly draw good conclusions. All the data that was accumulated over the world and specifically in the US has been a series of badly applied crap science. How can this be, in the 21st century in the great USA and all her sister democracies across the globe that have thrived and developed such intense insights into the realm of knowledge and medicine, specifically. I alluded to it earlier here and elsewhere and it is still hard to miss it today. We discarded the notion of science and replaced it with dogma. What do I mean by this? Science is the careful and deliberated process of discussion and argument ranging over differing viewpoints on the minutia of life and among people of intense interest in a given field. These men and women have devoted their entire lives to just be able to dispute various opinions about topics that are so remotely understood by the lay person that it actually requires a separate language to discuss them. This deliberative process results in a consensus which leads to progress and a collective understanding. This is science. This has been replaced with the unchallenged dictates cast down from an autocratic regime to conform all dissent as in the days when Gallileo was schooled by the cardinals that ruled and ruined him. But today, these dictates are not from the Pope. They are not from the political elites, or not directly. They arise from the men and women that have been appointed to the highest levels of the medical community itself. Yes, I am speaking of that rotten little Faucci and his scarf bedraggled Birx, among others. They poisoned the process of debate. And they used the tech oligarchs to stifle discussion and ban deliberation. Then the medical community was assaulted with disinformation from within its own written journals(Lancet and others) and from within the greatest medical establishments in the world including Harvard and Stanford. This is how science became dogma. Dogma, that toxic seed of unapproachable dictates that is found in every culture, many religions, many businesses, but never should it have been in science because it is the very antithesis of science.

    So where do we go from here? Vaccines have been produced under cryptically devised stratagems that resulted in thousands of lives lost and many magnitudes more that were destroyed financially, socially, and personally. This terrible undertaking has, as I stated above, changed everything – right down to the establishment of the apparent acceptance of election fraud in the US which seems to have quickly been exported to Israel.
    /3

  4. (2 of 4)
    People who had to undergo multiple tests, back-to-back, last year learned of this resulting variability in their varied test results. There was also an illustrative story that was reported from Tanzania, of all places, that likely is related to these higher cycling thresholds. The president was suspicious of the PCR testing results, so he submitted samples of a goat, a sheep and a pawpaw(a fruit) – and they all tested positive. More recently tap water tested +. The CDC has recently followed the China-run-WHO in declaring that the cycling thresholds used over the past year as too high. It has been known for about 9 months now, but I guess the CDC was too busy supporting riots and plotting for the election theft to be bothered with such routine details. The threshold was reduced to 28 as a high threshold. It is significant because approximately 90% of the COVID+ results of 2020 would have tested negative, and many things would be different today. Different strokes for different presidents, or something. So no one should have any confidence in the conclusion that any PCR testing results are accurate or conclusive – something that, as I stated earlier, was well established prior to 2020.

    So, with this in mind, a great concern was raised about the disease and was it really as devastating as it was claimed. As a remedy to this, a novel approach was proposed to consider the excess mortality rate – the deaths of the previous 5yrs averaged by region to arrive at a rough estimate of the number of deaths that should have been expected in 2020. The excess death rates are largely stable in more industrialized nations with significant healthcare industries. This was found to be helpful to arrive at a guesstimate of the crude disparities between the “normally” expected deaths in 2020 and the actual deaths experienced in 2020. An obvious failing with this methodology is that it is an estimate based upon normality. If Covid alone could be isolated to 2020 as an example of what was different between the previous five years and 2020, it would still just be a guesstimated measure but it would be more meaningful. But in 2020 as we all found, everything changed. Travel stopped, schooling stopped, work stopped, forced home confinement with varying degree of threats was initiated, no dining out, no religious gathers, etc. So, whatever might be gained by looking at this guesstimate of increased deaths in 2020 which did increase significantly in some regions, the cause was anything but conclusive.

    I see Adam has suggested looking at the total deaths, but total deaths are seasonally variable. Combine this with the fact that Israel today has over 80% of the eligible population vaccinated after 4 1/2months, the before and after total deaths is not very helpful. In the US where only about 26% have been vaccinated, a more exaggerated comparison will be observed.
    /2

  5. (1 of 4)

    Please can someone explain the difference between what was before the vaccine and what was after.

    It is a sensible and prudent question. ‘A really smart point’ as Tucker Carlson would say. But as I see it, the answer is neither so quick as to site a study nor so easy as to compare before and after testing results.

    So, I was really hoping someone else would have posted what I’ve written here – not because I am ashamed of it or doubt my conclusions, but because it would be nice if I didn’t hold the unenviable role of being the guy whose questions lead people to consider his sanity. But, oh well, in the land of the mad…

    When these Covid statistics that are bandied about as graffiti in a parade, it should be recalled that their reliability is as questionable as the value of said graffiti. There is no reliable testing modality available to gauge the presence or absence of infection with regards to Covid. The antigen test is quite useless when trying to prove someone does not have the disease while it is less than conclusive when trying to prove someone has it. We can discuss the predictive values for this test at length, but this is the reality. The PCR test, which has been the gold standard of testing for covid, should only be used as a supportive evidence of disease in a person suspected due to signs of illness and not due to possible exposure – which leaves the use of this presumed gold standard tarnished to the point of uselessness. Again, this is pretty well established within scientific practices prior to 2020 when science became something else. But we can not go back to yesteryear to redeem our lives, our ethics or our science. So let us deal with the hypocrisy that has been substituted for our scientific knowledge of those days gone by. The PCR was established as the test of choice and used over the past year and a bit with a great level of variability in its use. The cycle threshold is a critical parameter of the PCR testing. You can think of it as the length of time you let the water boil while boiling an egg. If you let it boil too long the egg can be used as a rubber ball, too short and its pretty messy. PCR tests left cycling too long or too short will not bounce or create a mess, but their results will be just as useless. With regards to the specifics, when the cycling is left too long a false positive(healthy person testing COVID+) will result and too short will result in false negatives(sick person testing COVID-). And yet, there was no standardization between labs regarding this fact. It was later addressed and the CDC issued guidance somewhat, but that the cycling thresholds were all set to over 30. But the labs all acted independently, partly due to various factors including equipment specs.
    /1

  6. I am reprinting this just to underline where the author reveals that vaccinated people die at the same rate as nonvaccinated people. The unvaccinated people die, the cause must be COVID19, while the vaccinated people die of causes unrelated to the vaccine.

    The benefits of getting the COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its risks; there is no increased mortality rate among vaccinated people relative to unvaccinated people
    COVID-19 vaccines killed people; COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”
    DETAILS

    Factually inaccurate: The mortality rate in vaccinated people isn’t higher than in unvaccinated people. [in other words, it isn’tlower than in unvaccinated people] The meme’s suggestion that COVID-19 is less dangerous than the vaccines is false. While the COVID-19 vaccines produce side effects, the most common side effects, like fever and pain at the injection site, are relatively mild and short-lived compared to the risks of actual infection. The risk-benefit profile of the vaccines are better than that of the illness.
    Misleading: There isn’t a blanket COVID-19 “survival rate” for everyone as implied by the meme. Every individual’s likelihood of dying from COVID-19 is different due to factors such as age and certain health conditions, like obesity and pregnancy. Furthermore, citing “survival rate” alone to suggest that COVID-19 is trivial overlooks the fact that the disease can produce persistent health problems in survivors. [but this is true of people who have been vaccinated as well. The likelihood of dying after being vaccinated, without having COVID19 is also determined by the exactly the same risk factors. The point is that the death rate from all causes from people who have been vaccinated is the same as the death rate from all causes as those who contract COVID19.)

    KEY TAKE AWAY

    To date, hundreds of millions of people around the world have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Review of clinical trial data by regulatory agencies, in addition to continued monitoring of safety signals during the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, show that vaccinated people aren’t more likely to die compared to unvaccinated people. While the COVID-19 vaccines are associated with certain side effects, the most common ones, like fever and pain at the injection site, are mild and short-lived. [true of the symptoms of most people people who get COVID19, as well. Over 99% recover after a brief illness]Their benefits outweigh their risks and it is safer to take the vaccine than to get the disease. [this does not follow logically. If you are just as likely to become seriously ill after taking the vaccine than you are if you are not vaccinated, then there is no reason to be vaccinated. Why get vaccinated, and have to endure the “painful” symptoms of vaccination, when your over-all risk of dying remains the same.]

    FULL CLAIM: COVID-19 vaccines killed people; COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”

    Social media posts calling the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines into question commonly point to adverse events occurring after vaccination as evidence that the vaccine is responsible. As shown by this previous Health Feedback review, posts making such claims can be traced back to December 2020, when the safety data from the initial clinical trials for the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went public.
    Vaccine skeptics also commonly point to a proportion of people who died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine as proof that the COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. For example, this meme, published on the Facebook Page Earthley which sells herbal remedies, implied that getting COVID-19 is safer than getting the vaccine, because the disease has a “99.7% survival rate”, while the vaccine had instead caused deaths.

    There are several instances of flawed reasoning that appear in the meme. One of which is the assumption that an event which followed another must have been caused by the earlier event (post hoc ergo propter hoc). While temporality is indeed a necessary criterion for determining causality, it is by no means sufficient (necessity vs. sufficiency). [ however, by this same logic, someone who dies after testing positive for COVID19 may also have died from some unrelated cause. But the “authorities” list the cause of death for anyone who has tested positive for COVID19 as being COVID19. This is a glaring logical inconsistency.]

    In the case of vaccines, we also need to account for the fact that even unvaccinated people die for a variety of reasons. As explained in this commentary in Science Translational Medicine:

    “We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

    But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon.”

    Therefore, it is necessary to compare the rate of the adverse event between the unvaccinated (baseline) and vaccinated groups. Only when the rate is significantly higher in the vaccinated group do researchers have grounds to hypothesize that there is a causal relationship. Indeed, such comparisons are what health authorities and regulatory agencies do when adverse events are reported.

    For example, in the case of deaths, authorities didn’t find that vaccinated people were more likely to die compared to unvaccinated people. With regards to deaths observed during initial clinical trials, page 41 of the FDA Briefing Document for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine stated:

    “A total of six (2 vaccine, 4 placebo) of 43,448 enrolled participants (0.01%) died during the reporting period from April 29, 2020 (first participant, first visit) to November 14, 2020 (cutoff date). […] All deaths represent events that occur in the general population of the age groups where they occurred, at a similar rate.” (emphasis added)

    Likewise for the Moderna vaccine, the FDA Briefing Document stated on page 42:

    “As of December 3, 2020, 13 deaths were reported (6 vaccine, 7 placebo). […] These deaths represent events and rates that occur in the general population of individuals in these age groups.” (emphasis added)

    And following concerns over deaths in nursing home residents who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) COVID-19 Vaccine Safety subcommittee reviewed the reports of these deaths. The GACVS is “a scientific and clinical advisory body to WHO”, which “aims to provide a reliable and independent scientific assessment of vaccine safety issues”. The GACVS is not itself part of the WHO.

    On 22 January 2021, the GACVS subcommittee released the following statement after completing the review:

    “Based on a careful scientific review of the information made available, the subcommittee came to the following conclusions:

    The current reports do not suggest any unexpected or untoward increase in fatalities in frail, elderly individuals or any unusual characteristics of adverse events following administration of BNT162b2. Reports are in line with the expected, all-cause mortality rates and causes of death in the sub-population of frail, elderly individuals, and the available information does not confirm a contributory role for the vaccine in the reported fatal events.” (emphasis added)

    The bottom line is that scientists haven’t observed deaths occurring at a higher rate in vaccinated people as compared to unvaccinated people. Such an observation doesn’t support the claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause death. [However, by the same token, it doesn’t prove that getting COVID19 causes death. As the author points out, and association doesn’t prove causality]. If this had been the case, we would have observed a significantly higher mortality rate among vaccinated people. While the number of deaths reported in some news articles may seem concerning, it is important to place these figures in the context of the hundreds of millions of people who have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines. Chance alone means that a proportion among these hundreds of millions of vaccinated people will die for various reasons. [equally true of people who contract COVID19 and then die. They may have died “for various reasons.”]

    Figure 1. Number of people worldwide who received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine. Data and image from Our World in Data.

    The second instance of flawed reasoning in the meme is the suggestion that getting COVID-19 is safer than the vaccine, since according to the meme, COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”.

    This is false and misleading on multiple counts. Firstly, this implies that the only outcomes of COVID-19 are death and complete recovery. We know that this isn’t true. A certain proportion of COVID-19 survivors continue to suffer from persistent health problems, a condition termed as long COVID. Some of these problems include difficulty breathing, cognitive deficits, joint and muscle pain[1]. Long COVID is unpredictable—it can affect the young as well as the elderly. Even those with a mild case of COVID-19 can eventually develop long COVID. The physical and mental toll of this condition is detrimental to a person’s quality of life. [however, people who have been vaccinated may suffer long-term ill effects from vaccination as well. Many people have sued the U.S. government claiming such ill effects (they have to sue the government, since the manufacturers of vaccines are by law exempt from lawsuits in the United States).

    Secondly, the post implied that there is a single, universal “survival rate” for COVID-19 which is 99.97%. It’s unclear where this figure comes from. This is also a misleading assertion. As explained in this Health Feedback review, the likelihood of dying from COVID-19 varies a great deal at the individual level. For example, a well-known factor associated with a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19 is advanced age.

    In fact, the rise in COVID-19 mortality rate occurs fairly early on, as this table on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website shows. The numbers indicate that those aged 30 to 39 years old are 45 times more likely to die from COVID-19 as compared to those aged between 5 to 17 years old (reference group). Even young adults aged between 18 and 29 years old are already ten times more likely to die compared to the reference group. Hence an increased likelihood of death from COVID-19 isn’t only seen in the elderly.

    Figure 2. Table comparing the risk of infection, hospitalization, and death by age group, published on this CDC webpage. All rates are relative to the 5 to 17-year-old age category. Screenshot taken on 5 May 2021.

    In addition, the presence of certain health conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, as well as pregnancy, can increase a person’s likelihood of dying from COVID-19, regardless of their age.

    Thirdly, the risks associated with the vaccines are considerably smaller than those associated with the disease. Take blood clotting events for example. While much concern has been raised over the increased prevalence of blood clots among people who received certain COVID-19 vaccines, it is important to remember that COVID-19 itself places a person at risk of blood clots. Preliminary findings from a preprint (a study that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed by other scientists) estimated that the risk of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—which is the form of blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines—associated with COVID-19 is between eight to ten times greater than that seen with the vaccines so far[2]. [ interesting that the only study the authors can cite for this conclusion is one that has not been peer reviewed and published in a medical journal. However, the “fact-checkers” always dismiss such unpeerreviewd and unpublished studies as meaningless when they show that hydroxichloriquine is effective for the early treatment of COVID19.]

    As explained in this Health Feedback review, while a person can also develop immunity to COVID-19 by getting the infection, they run the risk of death and disability from the disease. The vaccines, on the other hand, allow a person to develop immunity safely without running the same risks from the infection. And the evidence shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in protecting people from severe disease and death. [absolutely no evidence for this is offered by the “fact-checker.”] Simply put: it is safer to take the vaccine than not to.

    Conclusion

    In summary, such posts oversimplify the complexities involved in drawing causal associations between vaccines and adverse events, downplay the consequences of getting COVID-19, and discourage others from getting vaccinated by suggesting that vaccination is more risky than the disease. The overall effect is to mislead readers into thinking that getting COVID-19 is preferable to getting the vaccine, when the evidence points to the contrary.

    REFERENCES

    1 – Nalbandian et al. (2021) Post-acute COVID-19 syndrome. Nature Medicine.
    2 – Taquet et al. (2021) Cerebral venous thrombosis and portal vein thrombosis: a retrospective cohort study of 537,913 COVID-19 cases. OSF. [Note: This is a pre-print that has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.]

  7. @ Adam Dalgliesh:
    Good find. Thank you for sharing this. I heard about this doubletalk thru an associate who didn’t have the citation earlier last week. Be aware that many, probably all of the fact checkers are associated with in one way or another with the pharmaceutical companies. The fact checkers are likely captured, as are most of our state agencies that are suppose to regulate these members of Big Pharma.

    Side note: I have an acquaintance who is running a vaccine distribution center. They misunderstood something I said and hotly told me that no one is dying from Covid vaccine – that everyone who dies following vaccination is dying from previous infection just prior to being vaccinated. It is a circular self-deceiving realm of logic that protects their newly developed project from self-incrimination. It sounds paranoid, but it does seems almost everyone in the world is either mad or involved in this baked-in corrupt swindle.

    Also,

    One web page (I don’t recall if the author was a physician) claims that there have been 3,000+ vaccine-related deaths since December 2020 when mass vaccinations began.

    This 3000 dead figure is referencing old info. The current death total on VAERS is 3837 dead with 962,137 reported adverse reactions. The deaths are about evenly split between Moderna and Phiser with Moderna edging out in the lead by about 125. This info is up to date as of 4/31/21 so the truth today is even more catastrophic than this. This is madness. How could we allow this to happen – actually encouraging and marshaling the masses towards the madness.

  8. This article from Google’s “fact-checker” health feedback.org is highly significant, because of what the “fact-checker” inadvertently reveals while defending the vaccines. He admit that the over-all death rate from unvaccinated people is not higher than the death rate from unvaccinated people. The only difference is that when unvaccinated people die, COVID19 is more likely to be the cause of death than if the people are vaccinated. In other words, the over-all death rate for both groups is the same! If that is the case, why be vaccinated? He also argues that if someone drops dead immediately after being vaccinated, it probably has nothing to do with the vaccine. But if someone of a similar age group and with similar underlying medical conditions drops dead, it was probably as a result of COVID19. He complains that vaccine skeptics assume a causal relationship between droppping dead after being vaccinated, when the two could be totally unrelated events. But there is an inherent inconsistency in this argument with the claims of vaccine advocates that if someone dies who has tested positive for CV2, the CV2 must be the cause! However, by considtently following the ” fact-checker’s” logic, someone who dies who tested positive for CV2 might also have died from completely unrelated causes.

    The benefits of getting the COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its risks; there is no increased mortality rate among vaccinated people relative to unvaccinated people
    COVID-19 vaccines killed people; COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”
    DETAILS

    Factually inaccurate: The mortality rate in vaccinated people isn’t higher than in unvaccinated people. The meme’s suggestion that COVID-19 is less dangerous than the vaccines is false. While the COVID-19 vaccines produce side effects, the most common side effects, like fever and pain at the injection site, are relatively mild and short-lived compared to the risks of actual infection. The risk-benefit profile of the vaccines are better than that of the illness.
    Misleading: There isn’t a blanket COVID-19 “survival rate” for everyone as implied by the meme. Every individual’s likelihood of dying from COVID-19 is different due to factors such as age and certain health conditions, like obesity and pregnancy. Furthermore, citing “survival rate” alone to suggest that COVID-19 is trivial overlooks the fact that the disease can produce persistent health problems in survivors.

    KEY TAKE AWAY

    To date, hundreds of millions of people around the world have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Review of clinical trial data by regulatory agencies, in addition to continued monitoring of safety signals during the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, show that vaccinated people aren’t more likely to die compared to unvaccinated people. While the COVID-19 vaccines are associated with certain side effects, the most common ones, like fever and pain at the injection site, are mild and short-lived. Their benefits outweigh their risks and it is safer to take the vaccine than to get the disease.

    FULL CLAIM: COVID-19 vaccines killed people; COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”

    Social media posts calling the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines into question commonly point to adverse events occurring after vaccination as evidence that the vaccine is responsible. As shown by this previous Health Feedback review, posts making such claims can be traced back to December 2020, when the safety data from the initial clinical trials for the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went public.
    Vaccine skeptics also commonly point to a proportion of people who died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine as proof that the COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. For example, this meme, published on the Facebook Page Earthley which sells herbal remedies, implied that getting COVID-19 is safer than getting the vaccine, because the disease has a “99.7% survival rate”, while the vaccine had instead caused deaths.

    There are several instances of flawed reasoning that appear in the meme. One of which is the assumption that an event which followed another must have been caused by the earlier event (post hoc ergo propter hoc). While temporality is indeed a necessary criterion for determining causality, it is by no means sufficient (necessity vs. sufficiency).

    In the case of vaccines, we also need to account for the fact that even unvaccinated people die for a variety of reasons. As explained in this commentary in Science Translational Medicine:

    “We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

    But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon.”

    Therefore, it is necessary to compare the rate of the adverse event between the unvaccinated (baseline) and vaccinated groups. Only when the rate is significantly higher in the vaccinated group do researchers have grounds to hypothesize that there is a causal relationship. Indeed, such comparisons are what health authorities and regulatory agencies do when adverse events are reported.

    For example, in the case of deaths, authorities didn’t find that vaccinated people were more likely to die compared to unvaccinated people. With regards to deaths observed during initial clinical trials, page 41 of the FDA Briefing Document for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine stated:

    “A total of six (2 vaccine, 4 placebo) of 43,448 enrolled participants (0.01%) died during the reporting period from April 29, 2020 (first participant, first visit) to November 14, 2020 (cutoff date). […] All deaths represent events that occur in the general population of the age groups where they occurred, at a similar rate.” (emphasis added)

    Likewise for the Moderna vaccine, the FDA Briefing Document stated on page 42:

    “As of December 3, 2020, 13 deaths were reported (6 vaccine, 7 placebo). […] These deaths represent events and rates that occur in the general population of individuals in these age groups.” (emphasis added)

    And following concerns over deaths in nursing home residents who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) COVID-19 Vaccine Safety subcommittee reviewed the reports of these deaths. The GACVS is “a scientific and clinical advisory body to WHO”, which “aims to provide a reliable and independent scientific assessment of vaccine safety issues”. The GACVS is not itself part of the WHO.

    On 22 January 2021, the GACVS subcommittee released the following statement after completing the review:

    “Based on a careful scientific review of the information made available, the subcommittee came to the following conclusions:

    The current reports do not suggest any unexpected or untoward increase in fatalities in frail, elderly individuals or any unusual characteristics of adverse events following administration of BNT162b2. Reports are in line with the expected, all-cause mortality rates and causes of death in the sub-population of frail, elderly individuals, and the available information does not confirm a contributory role for the vaccine in the reported fatal events.” (emphasis added)

    The bottom line is that scientists haven’t observed deaths occurring at a higher rate in vaccinated people as compared to unvaccinated people. Such an observation doesn’t support the claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause death. If this had been the case, we would have observed a significantly higher mortality rate among vaccinated people. While the number of deaths reported in some news articles may seem concerning, it is important to place these figures in the context of the hundreds of millions of people who have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccines. Chance alone means that a proportion among these hundreds of millions of vaccinated people will die for various reasons.

    Figure 1. Number of people worldwide who received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine. Data and image from Our World in Data.

    The second instance of flawed reasoning in the meme is the suggestion that getting COVID-19 is safer than the vaccine, since according to the meme, COVID-19 has a “99.97% survival rate”.

    This is false and misleading on multiple counts. Firstly, this implies that the only outcomes of COVID-19 are death and complete recovery. We know that this isn’t true. A certain proportion of COVID-19 survivors continue to suffer from persistent health problems, a condition termed as long COVID. Some of these problems include difficulty breathing, cognitive deficits, joint and muscle pain[1]. Long COVID is unpredictable—it can affect the young as well as the elderly. Even those with a mild case of COVID-19 can eventually develop long COVID. The physical and mental toll of this condition is detrimental to a person’s quality of life.

    Secondly, the post implied that there is a single, universal “survival rate” for COVID-19 which is 99.97%. It’s unclear where this figure comes from. This is also a misleading assertion. As explained in this Health Feedback review, the likelihood of dying from COVID-19 varies a great deal at the individual level. For example, a well-known factor associated with a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19 is advanced age.

    In fact, the rise in COVID-19 mortality rate occurs fairly early on, as this table on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website shows. The numbers indicate that those aged 30 to 39 years old are 45 times more likely to die from COVID-19 as compared to those aged between 5 to 17 years old (reference group). Even young adults aged between 18 and 29 years old are already ten times more likely to die compared to the reference group. Hence an increased likelihood of death from COVID-19 isn’t only seen in the elderly.

    Figure 2. Table comparing the risk of infection, hospitalization, and death by age group, published on this CDC webpage. All rates are relative to the 5 to 17-year-old age category. Screenshot taken on 5 May 2021.

    In addition, the presence of certain health conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, as well as pregnancy, can increase a person’s likelihood of dying from COVID-19, regardless of their age.

    Thirdly, the risks associated with the vaccines are considerably smaller than those associated with the disease. Take blood clotting events for example. While much concern has been raised over the increased prevalence of blood clots among people who received certain COVID-19 vaccines, it is important to remember that COVID-19 itself places a person at risk of blood clots. Preliminary findings from a preprint (a study that hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed by other scientists) estimated that the risk of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—which is the form of blood clots linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines—associated with COVID-19 is between eight to ten times greater than that seen with the vaccines so far[2].

    As explained in this Health Feedback review, while a person can also develop immunity to COVID-19 by getting the infection, they run the risk of death and disability from the disease. The vaccines, on the other hand, allow a person to develop immunity safely without running the same risks from the infection. And the evidence shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in protecting people from severe disease and death. Simply put: it is safer to take the vaccine than not to.

    Conclusion

    In summary, such posts oversimplify the complexities involved in drawing causal associations between vaccines and adverse events, downplay the consequences of getting COVID-19, and discourage others from getting vaccinated by suggesting that vaccination is more risky than the disease. The overall effect is to mislead readers into thinking that getting COVID-19 is preferable to getting the vaccine, when the evidence points to the contrary.

    REFERENCES

    1 – Nalbandian et al. (2021) Post-acute COVID-19 syndrome. Nature Medicine.
    2 – Taquet et al. (2021) Cerebral venous thrombosis and portal vein thrombosis: a retrospective cohort study of 537,913 COVID-19 cases. OSF. [Note: This is a pre-print that has not yet been peer-reviewed or published.]

  9. The statistic that would be really meaningful is whether the overall death ratehas gone down. Also, how the Israelis determined that CV-19 was th primary cause of death.

    One web page (I don’t recalol if the author was a physician) claims that there have been 3,000+ vaccine-related deaths since December 2020 when mass vaccinations began. This site also claimed that this was a far higher death toll associated with adverse reactions to vaccines than in any previous year, since government agencies started to collect this data about 20 years ago.

    I will check to see how reliable the author of this web site is.

  10. I agree. We are becoming vacci nations. Sorry I couldn’t resist. There’s also an Israeli mask – approved by the FDA – that is the only mask that actually protects from the virus, kills it and is washable and reusable. Sonovia. They keep improving it and the new Sonovia Pro takes into acccount new variants. Amazon also carries it. https://sonoviastore.com/ 99 percent success rate. There have been articles about it in Israeli papers, such as Times of Israel. I have a number of them.

  11. Israel Reports Just 13 New Coronavirus Cases, The Lowest Number In Over A Year (Forbes article)

    Israel clocked just 13 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday—the lowest number of daily cases in 14 months—as the country continues to reap the benefits of its world-leading vaccine rollout.

    The Israeli Health Ministry reported Sunday morning that a record low of the over 9,236 tests carried out Saturday came back positive.

    This brings the country’s overall test positivity rate to just over 0.1%, the lowest since the start of the pandemic last March.

    The U.S., by contrast, saw nearly 4% of its over 1.1 million tests given on Saturday come back positive, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as it continues to report an average of nearly 50,000 new cases each day.

    Israel’s new cases and deaths have been steeply declining since the start of this year, with the country reporting an average of 1.9 deaths and 82 new cases each day over the past week.

    The Health Ministry said 102 patients are currently in serious condition (with 62 intubated), a decrease of roughly 92% from when the pandemic was at its peak.

    Continue full article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/05/02/israel-reports-just-13-new-coronavirus-cases-the-lowest-number-in-14-months/?sh=4cfa1a874acc

  12. Wow! I am convinced, @Bear Klein – even without any data or evidence to back up what you claim. Hopefully, someone will provide fact-based coherent arguments one way or the other. @Ted Belman – very glad to see your comment/question. X% successful has zero meaning in a fact vaccuum. Tell us explicitly what the risks were, before and after our mass “vaccination,” taking age and and co-morbidity factors and especially infection rates into account and then we can have a meaningful discussion.

  13. Ted, it is very simple before the vaccine the disease was spreading rapidly and people were getting ill and dying.

    Now far far far less people are getting sick or catching covid ( very very very few). Hardly anyone is dying from the disease. Israel is much much safer. The Pfzier vaccine is one of the best ever made for any type of vaccine. It is the best of Covid vaccines with the other mRNA vaccine Moderna running a close second.

    The following is a bland understatement:

    “Most important of all the statistics is that it doesn’t only reduce the infection rate but, over several months, also significantly decreases the death rate.”