Exaggerated Claims of CV-19 Vax Efficacy

A new analysis claims that CV-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths globally.  John Ioannidis is one of the authors, so it seems trustworthy to me.  Now that may seem like a big number, but probably billions of people got vaccinated and other studies have give far, far higher estimates related to the impact of the vaccines.  This one effectively debunks all those other exaggerated guesses, and that is all they really were, regarding effectiveness against mortality.  Even this analysis has an extremely large likely outcome range of 1.4 million to 4 million lives.  Some “researchers” were claiming that the CV-19 vax saved over a million lives in the US alone.  Our analysis of Minnesota data suggested that within a relatively short time after introduction, there was little difference in likelihood of death between an unvaxed and a vaxed person.

Ioannidis et al also show that there likely was a very sharp age impact, with almost all the benefit accruing to older persons, 90% of the supposed saved deaths were in those 60 or older.  That is because there was an extremely low risk of death in any event among the younger age cohorts.  That is shown by the total years of life saved, which is only estimated at 15 million or 6 per death averted.  The CV-19 vaccines had about zero effectiveness over time at preventing infection, modest effectiveness at preventing hospitalization and as this study suggests, a limited impact on mortality.  Hardly worth forcing vaccination through mandates and demonizing the unvaxed.   (JAMA Article)