Safe and Effective?

It was exactly two years ago---March 16, 2020---that public health authorities and President Trump announced that the United States was embarking on various lockdown restrictions for "15 Days to Stop the Spread" of Covid.

Source: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/articles/15-days-slow-spread/

Let's take a look at what has transpired over the last two years with particular emphasis on how "safe and effective" the Covid vaccines have been in stopping the spread of Covid and limiting severe illness and death.

The vaccines were introduced in December, 2020 about nine months into the pandemic. At this point they have been in use for approximately 15 months.

Have the vaccines been "safe and effective" as we have been told?

Let's first take a global view by comparing the year before the vaccines were widely available (March 16, 2019 to March 15, 2021) with the year after they were were widely used.

Let's first look at cumulative confirmed Covid cases worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic.

(For this purpose I am actually using March 2, 2020 as the start date for this purpose as this is when Our World in Data starting tracking Covid cases).

Confirmed Covid cases globally in the second year of the pandemic (after vaccines were available) have actually been 1.82x higher than in the first year.

Let's look at the United States.

Confirmed cases have been 68% higher in year 2 of the pandemic compared to year 1.

So much for "15 Days to Slow the Spread".

This clearly shows that the vaccines have been a total failure at preventing infection and transmission which is supposed to be the primary objective of any vaccine.

Of course, vaccine advocates say that we should ignore the failure of the vaccines to prevent disease ("No one ever said the vaccines would prevent anyone from getting Covid") but argue they are highly effective in preventing serious illness and death.

So what about deaths?

Have the vaccines prevented deaths globally?

What are the global numbers comparing Year 1 and Year 2 of the pandemic?

There have been more Covid deaths worldwide in Year 2 than Year 1.

There were about 20% more deaths in Year 2 than Year 1.

We have seen a small amount of improvement in the rate of deaths in the United States in Year 2 compared to Year 1.

However, deaths are still only down about 20% compared to Year 1 despite 80% of adults in the United States having been vaccinated and with 100 million booster doses administered.

This may prove that the vaccines were somewhat effective but it also may be due to improved Covid treatment protocols as doctors learned more about the disease.

It certainly does not suggest that they have been "highly effective".

For more evidence of that consider countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, Iceland, Australia and Hong Kong which hardly had any Covid deaths in Year 1. All of these countries also have higher vaccination rates than the United States.

Year 2 has been a different story despite the introduction of the vaccines.

Deaths are 9x higher in the past year in these five nations than they were in the first year of the pandemic.

How does this support a claim that the Covid vaccines are "highly effective"?

What about the claim that the vaccines are "safe"?

"Safe" compared to what?

You would think the measure of safety would be in comparison with other vaccines we have used.

For example, in the Swine Flu epidemic of 1976 a national mass vaccination program was instituted to prevent spread of the disease. In the Fall of 1976, public health authorities began widespread vaccinations.

I was one of the individuals who took that vaccine.

Within weeks there were reports of adverse effects. The most common was Guillian-Barre syndrome which involves temporary paralysis. By January, 1977, 362 cases of GBS had been identified out of 45 million persons who had received the vaccine. The incidence of GBS in vaccinated people was judged by the CDC to be four times more likely in vaccinated as in unvaccinated people.

In the 1970's that was enough for the vaccine program to be suspended.

362 reports of adverse events resulted in the vaccine being pulled from the market. 

The definition of "safe" seems to have changed in the intervening years.

At this point, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) which is the primary system in use in the United States to look for signals involving adverse events in vaccines, has received over 1 million reports about the Covid vaccines.

Through March 4, 2022 there had been almost 1.2 million adverse events related to the Covid vaccines reported to VAERS.

It is generally understood that actual adverse events are many times higher than what is reported to VAERS. I have seen estimates of an underreported factor as low as 10x and as high as 100x.

25,158 deaths had also been reported as possibly being linked to the vaccines as of March 4.

Source: https://openvaers.com/covid-data

How do the 25,158 deaths reported to VAERS associated with the Covid vaccines compare to deaths in other years from all other vaccines?

Source: https://openvaers.com/covid-data

This is considered "safe"?

Some argue that there is no "proof" that a report to VAERS means that there was a direct causal relationship between the vaccine and death or injury. It might just be a coincidence.

Yes, that is possible.

However, consider that most of the deaths reported to VAERS associated with the Covid vaccines were just a few days after the jab.

Source: https://openvaers.com/covid-data

That would seem to be a whole lot of coincidences in the VAERS data.

Are the vaccines safe?

As I have written before, there is no medical intervention that is completely safe.

Any medical intervention requires you to balance risk with the expected benefit.

I stated from the time that the vaccines were first deployed that the risk/benefit equation was different for everyone. The vaccines probably made sense for an 80 year old nursing home resident. They made no sense at all for a healthy 5-year old.

When the vaccines were first being extensively rolled out in January, 2021 I wrote a blog post "Are You Going To Get The Vaccine" in which I wrote.

The only thing I know for sure is that the media and the "experts" have painted the most negative and dangerous narrative they could involving Covid-19. They are also portraying the vaccines in the most positive light they can.

Neither narrative should be trusted. The risks of Covid to most people is a much smaller than most are led to believe. At the same time, the benefits of the vaccine are much less and there also can be real risks attached to these vaccines that should not be overlooked.

The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere in the middle but it is next to impossible for the average person to decipher what it is. 

My advice to anybody is to do as much research as you can. Don't take anything you are told at face value. Make sure you understand the risks and benefits of the vaccines. 

I still believe this is accurate.

However, 15 months later we have a lot more information and data in order for each person to be able to determine if the vaccines are safe and effective and to make an informed choice should they be asked to take a fourth shot.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-fourth-dose-booster-pfizer-ceo-albert-bourla/

There is only one thing that I believe to be absolutely true.

More people who chose not to be vaccinated are comfortable with that decision now than of those who took the vaccines.

That in itself may speak volumes of how "safe and effective" the vaccines are judged to be two years after "15 days to slow the spread" was first uttered in Washington.