No more cutesy titles, just a very episodic regurgitation of any research on CV-19 that caught my eye over the last few weeks.
The “authorities” used exaggerated CV-19 death totals to whip up fear and instill obedience among the population. A study from Greece shows it wasn’t just the US that used exaggerated attribution of deaths to CV-19. According to the authors, of 530 deaths in hospitals in Athens attributed to CV-19, only 290 actually were caused in any way by CV-19. That is 55%. I would assume that for deaths outside a hospital, the percent is even lower. (Nat. Study)
Guillane-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune condition affecting nerves, is an observed side effect of some vaccines. This multi-study synthesis found that certain CV-19 vax appeared to increase the risk of the syndrome, while others, including Pfizer’s, lessened it. That is a hard result to understand, but different vaxes were constituted via different methods, which must account for the outcome. A CV-19 infection also appeared to increase the risk of GB Syndrome. (MP Article)
Kind of an interesting point during the epidemic was the effect of CV-19 on other viral infections–did it crowd them out, did it make people more susceptible to them; and similarly the effect of CV-19 vax on other viruses. Some vax have been hypothesized to have a general boosting effect on immune responses to pathogens. In this study the reaction to dengue viruses following CV-19 vax was examined. The study found that in some cases, via a mechanism called antibody dependent enhancement, CV-19 vaccination could result in a worse dengue infection than might otherwise occur. (MP Article)
And this study from China along a similar issue finds that Epstein-Barr virus diagnoses dropped during the epidemic and recovered after its end, probably because of the measures, which were very strict in China, to reduce social contacts. (SSRN Study)
Most CV-19 vaccines strain credulity, largely because of poor design. This is a very large one from Denmark which evaluated the effectiveness of the vaccines in use in the fall/winter of 2025 in regard to hospitalization or death among those aged 65 or older who had also had a primary course of vaccination in 2021. There were very low numbers of either event, reflected in very wide confidence intervals, and given the issues associated with determining whether CV-19 actually caused a hospitalization or death, the issues around self-selection in regard to vaccination, particularly among those in poor health, and the lack of adjustment for prior infections (they actually excluded people with a positive test within three months before study start), I question these results as well. But they claim that both the Pfizer and Moderna had high levels of effectiveness against hospitalization or death, and that the protection did not show signs of lessening after four months. (SSRN Paper)
And no set of summaries would be complete without mention of that mythical creature–“long Covid”. A meta-analysis of multiple studies suggest that vaccines may have had some effectiveness in limiting post-acute symptoms, but one look at the width of the confidence intervals told me everything I needed to know. And of course, as usual, most of the studies inadequately adjusted for any number of factors. And since some studies link vaccination to some lingering symptoms, might need to disentangle that effect as well, which would improve apparent effectiveness. But as usual I will just say I consider these effectiveness studies to largely be garbage. (SSRN Paper)
