A REVIEW of efficacy and safety data for the Covid-19 vaccines comes to the disturbing conclusion that for every three deaths the vaccines prevent, two people die from an adverse reaction, while another four suffer serious side effects. The authors conclude: ‘This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.’
Here is the abstract of the peer-reviewed article by three scientists published in the journal Vaccines:
Background: Covid-19 vaccines have had expedited reviews without sufficient safety data. We wanted to compare risks and benefits.
Method: We calculated the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV) from a large Israeli field study to prevent one death. We accessed the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) database of the European Medicines Agency and of the Dutch National Register (lareb.nl) to extract the number of cases reporting severe side effects and the number of cases with fatal side effects.
Result: The NNTV is between 200–700 to prevent one case of COVID-19 for the mRNA vaccine marketed by Pfizer, while the NNTV to prevent one death is between 9,000 and 50,000 (95% confidence interval), with 16,000 as a point estimate. The number of cases experiencing adverse reactions has been reported to be 700 per 100,000 vaccinations. Currently, we see 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations, and the number of fatal side effects is at 4.11 per 100,000 vaccinations. For three deaths prevented by vaccination, we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination.
Conclusions: This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.
The authors note that this conclusion is based on the reported adverse reactions, whereas the true number of adverse reactions may be considerably more:
‘Finally, we note that from experience with reporting side effects from other drugs, only a small fraction of side effects is reported to adverse events databases. The median underreporting can be as high as 95 per cent. Given this fact and the high number of serious side effects already reported, the current political trend to vaccinate children who are at very low risk of suffering from Covid-19 in the first place must be reconsidered.’
They note that the ‘risks and benefits’ of the vaccines are ‘on the same order of magnitude’ and suggest: ‘Perhaps it might be necessary to dampen the enthusiasm by sober facts?’
‘The present assessment raises the question whether it would be necessary to rethink policies and use Covid-19 vaccines more sparingly and with some discretion only in those that are willing to accept the risk because they feel more at risk from the true infection than the mock infection. Perhaps it might be necessary to dampen the enthusiasm by sober facts? In our view, the EMA [European Medicines Agency] and national authorities should instigate a safety review into the safety database of Covid-19 vaccines and governments should carefully consider their policies in light of these data. Ideally, independent scientists should carry out thorough case reviews of the very severe cases, so that there can be evidence-based recommendations on who is likely to benefit from a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and who is in danger of suffering from side effects. Currently, our estimates show that we have to accept four fatal and 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations in order to save the lives of 2–11 individuals per 100,000 vaccinations, placing risks and benefits on the same order of magnitude.’
The full study can be found here.
This article first appeared in Lockdown Sceptics on June 24, 2021, updated on June 25, and is republished by kind permission.
