Excess mortality data from Europe, Israel, Singapore and Australia suggest that vaccine effectiveness against death has been overestimated. In Europe and Israel, post-vaccination waves were sometimes as or more deadly than pre-vaccination waves. And countries like Singapore and Australia saw sizeable upticks in excess mortality even after vaccinating a very large percentage of the population.
So while the vaccines do offer protection against serious illness and death, their effectiveness is unlikely to be as high as 90%.
Another interesting country to look at in this regard is South Korea. After containing the virus for the first two years of the pandemic, the country experienced a major outbreak in February of this year. By that point, Korea had double vaccinated 86% of its population, and around 90% of over 80s.
Like Singapore, Korea has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates. At the end of 2021, 83% of Koreans were double vaccinated, compared to only 70% of Britons and only 63% of Americans (see chart below).
![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/image-42-1024x723.png)
If vaccine effectiveness against death is as high as 90%, you would not have expected to see a large rise in excess mortality when Korea’s outbreak hit. However, there was a large rise. By the end of March, mortality was 67% higher than normal (see below). This is a greater increase than France saw during the spring of 2020!
![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/image-43-1024x723.png)
On the other hand, if we compare South Korea with Hong Kong – where more than half of over 80s chose not to get vaccinated – we see that excess mortality was even higher (see below). This suggests that while vaccine effectiveness may not be as high as 90%, it is greater than zero. Note that South Korea versus Hong Kong provides a useful comparison, since both are in East Asia, neither had a previous wave, and both got hit at the same time (with the same variant).
![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/image-44-1024x723.png)
Excess mortality data from around the world suggest that vaccine effectiveness has been overestimated. Even countries that achieved very high vaccination rates before the virus got a foothold saw mortality jump once the virus started spreading.
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