We found that 73.9% of deaths were directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.
Our data suggest a high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and death.
"On 5 July 2023,
a manuscript titled “A systematic review of autopsy findings in deaths after COVID-19 vaccination” was uploaded to the
Social Science Research Network (SSRN), a preprint server associated with The Lancet. The review analyzed autopsy reports of people vaccinated against COVID-19, concluding that 73.9% of those deaths were “directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination”.
The authors’ list included several names well-known for having spread COVID-19 misinformation in the past, including Harvey Risch, Roger Hodkinson, and William Makis. The last author is cardiologist Peter McCullough, whose
false claims about COVID-19 vaccines eventually led The American Board of Internal Medicine to recommend
revoking his board certification in October 2022.
It is noteworthy that six of the nine authors of the review are affiliated with The Wellness Company. McCullough is the
chief scientific officer of this company, which
markets supplements that allegedly protect against “vaccine injury”. ...
...
The review is a preprint, not a published study as claimed
Contrary to online claims, the review isn’t a published study but a preprint, which is a scientific manuscript that hasn’t been evaluated by other experts (
peer review).
Since 2018, the Lancet group has collaborated with the SSRN preprint server as a platform for scientific advance and discussion of unpublished research. But a disclaimer on the group’s website
warns that preprints “are not Lancet publications or necessarily under review with a Lancet journal”. Therefore, presenting this preprint as “a Lancet article” is inaccurate.
The SSRN website also
clarifies that
preprints “should not be used for clinical decision making or reporting of research to a lay audience without highlighting that they are preliminary research and have not been peer-reviewed”.
Indeed, peer review is a
crucial step in scientific publication because it helps ensure that the methodology used in a study is adequate and the conclusions well-supported by the data presented. In contrast, preprints like the one published in SSRN lack this quality control. ...
... The methodology of the preprint is flawed, leading to poorly-founded conclusions
The fact that a person dies after COVID-19 vaccination isn’t sufficient in itself to draw conclusions about the safety of the vaccines. The reason for this is that, while a temporal association between vaccination and death is necessary to demonstrate causality,
it isn’t sufficient on its own.
That is why case reports are generally inadequate for assessing causal associations, as
Mitchell Levine, a professor of medicine and health research methods at McMaster University,
explained to Logically Facts. Levine said that, to draw any meaningful conclusions,
the preprint would at least need to compare the findings in the autopsies of vaccinated people to a control, unvaccinated group. However, the preprint showed no attempt to do so.
Instead, it proceeded to
speculate on the supposed mechanisms by which COVID-19 vaccines cause harm, focusing on the alleged “deleterious effects” of the spike protein induced by vaccination.
Health Feedback
evaluated earlier claims by McCullough linking the spike protein induced by vaccination with
long COVID, other medical conditions, and deaths and found them to be inaccurate and incorrect. McCullough even proposed a way to counter these alleged harmful effects from vaccination. This consisted of using a supplement with
no proven effectiveness that his company sells to “detoxify” from the spike protein.
Some evidence suggests that the spike protein produced during SARS-CoV-2 infection
can be toxic to organs like the heart. However, this effect
can’t be directly extrapolated to the spike protein induced by COVID-19 vaccines, which is different from that of the virus and produced in much smaller amounts. In fact, the evidence available indicates that the spike protein produced through vaccination is
generally safe.
While certain COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with some
serious side effects, including heart inflammation and blood clotting, these are very rare. This argues against a generalized toxic effect of vaccination. That said, the biological mechanisms by which the vaccine might cause these side effects remain under investigation[1], and our current understanding about the effects of the spike protein might evolve with emerging research. ...
... Studies show that COVID-19 vaccination doesn’t increase risk of death
The preprint’s discussion went on claiming that “The large number of COVID-19 vaccine induced deaths evaluated in this review is consistent with multiple papers that report excess mortality after vaccination”.
In support of this claim, the
authors cited a retracted study and a preprint (again, not peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal) by Pantazatos and Seligmann that has also been criticized for its methodological flaws.
Contrary to what the autopsy preprint suggested, reports of death following vaccination are scarce, as the CDC website
explains. Furthermore, the
hypothesis that COVID-19 vaccines cause or increase the risk of death is inconsistent with the results from peer-reviewed studies showing that vaccinated people don’t die at a higher rate than unvaccinated people[2,3].
Many factors other than vaccination can influence a person’s risk of death. For example, the mean age of death in the autopsies evaluated in the preprint was 70.4 years. Being of older age and underlying health conditions increase a person’s risk of death regardless of vaccination status. However, neither of these potential
confounding factors was taken into account in the analysis.
Older adults also have the highest vaccine coverage in many countries, including
the U.S. and many
European countries, with rates close to or over 90%. In this scenario, it is expected that most deaths occur among vaccinated people. But this fact doesn’t imply that the vaccines were the cause.
In short, the preprint’s narrative directly contradicts the large body of evidence showing that
COVID-19 vaccines are safe and only rarely cause serious side effects. This potential risk is very small and doesn’t outweigh the
benefits of vaccination."
Studies show that COVID-19 vaccines don’t increase the risk of death. On the contrary, they reduce it by protecting people against severe illness and death, particularly among populations at a higher risk of severe COVID-19. While COVID-19 vaccines are associated with some serious side effects...
healthfeedback.org
