• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The Covid Vaccine Did Not Save “Thousands of Lives” in Israel – and Sweden Proves It

by Dr Eyal Shahar
9 June 2023 11:36 AM

In a paper published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, Haas and his colleagues argued that the Pfizer vaccine averted over 5,000 deaths in Israel in the first quarter of 2021, during the Covid wave that coincided with the first vaccination campaign (Figure 1).

I will show here that their claim is false. If any deaths have been averted at all, the number is far from their estimate — undetectable in mortality statistics.

Figure 1

There is more than one way to show the falsehood of claims about exceptional benefits of Covid vaccines. I will rely on comparative data from Sweden. The country that showed the world the futility of lockdowns and mask mandates will prove helpful again.

Both Israel and Sweden faced a major Covid wave in the winter of 2020-2021, but the timing deferred by about one month (Figure 2). In Sweden, the mortality wave began in November and peaked in late December, whereas in Israel the mortality wave began in December and peaked in late January. Case waves (not shown) are shifted to the left by about two weeks.

To allow for a fair comparison, I will examine mortality in a five-month period that contains the full mortality wave in Sweden: November 2020-March 2021.

Figure 2

Unlike Israel, Sweden experienced the winter wave largely unvaccinated. By the time the mortality waves subsided, at the end of March 2021, only 10% of the population of Sweden received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine as compared with 55% of the population of Israel. At the end of February the numbers were 5% and 50% respectively.

The Sweden population is somewhat larger than that of Israel (10.4 million versus 9.2 million), but as far as mortality is concerned, the key difference is the size of the elderly population (over-65 years old). It is about twice as large in Sweden: two million versus one million. Consequently, all-cause mortality in Sweden has been 2-2.5 times all-cause mortality in Israel (Figure 3). In recent years the ratio has been essentially stable, just above 2. The value of 1.9 in 2019 reflects exceptionally low mortality in Sweden before the pandemic.

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows the cumulative number of reported Covid deaths in each country, at the beginning and the end of the period of interest, along with the percentage of the population that received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine by four time points. The graphs are shown on a log scale, which visually captures changes, or lack of changes, in the ratio of the number of deaths: when the curves look parallel, the ratio is maintained. If Israel fared better than Sweden, the curves should have diverged. They did not.

Figure 4

In early November 2020, the Covid mortality ratio was 2.3 (5,995÷2,569). At the end of March 2021, it was 2.2 (13,583÷6,205). In between, the ratio was 2.1 (7,588 Covid deaths in Sweden versus 3,636 in Israel). That is exactly the typical mortality ratio for Sweden versus Israel in recent years.

Haas et al. claim that Israel should have seen over 8,000 Covid deaths in the absence of vaccination (Figure 1), which implies over 16,000 Covid deaths in unvaccinated Sweden and an expected mortality ratio of about 4. The actual number of deaths in Sweden was 7,588, and the mortality ratio was 2.1, as we just saw. Where is the evidence that 5,000 deaths were averted in vaccinated Israel, but 10,000 deaths were not averted in Sweden (twice as many, proportionally)? There is none here.

Reported Covid deaths have been subject to misclassification. In both Israel and Sweden, many deaths with Covid have been counted as deaths from Covid. So let’s check, next, all-cause mortality in the relevant period. Is there evidence of thousands of averted deaths in Israel, but not in Sweden?

Figure 5 shows the number of all-cause deaths in the two countries between November and March in the past two decades (winter mortality). Again, the ratio has been maintained in recent years: about twice as many deaths in Sweden than in Israel in that five-month period.

Figure 5

As shown in the bar graph on the right, the same ratio (1.9) was maintained between November 2020 and March 2021: 43,954 deaths in Sweden versus 22,830 in Israel. If the vaccination campaign in Israel averted 5,000 deaths, the ratio should have increased from a baseline of 2 to about 2.3, because the number of deaths in unvaccinated Sweden should have been higher by thousands of ‘non-averted deaths’. Where is the evidence, in all-cause mortality, that a highly vaccinated country fared better than a largely unvaccinated country? Again, there is none here.

Lastly, let’s compare excess mortality in that period (Figure 6). Notice, first, that the ratio of expected deaths in Sweden versus Israel is, again, close to 2 (40,000÷21,000), using independent assumptions on expected deaths.

Figure 6

Israel’s Health Ministry has estimated 9.5% excess mortality in a four-month period (November 2020 excluded), similar to my most conservative estimate (8.9%), which included November. If 5,000 deaths were averted, excess mortality in that period — in the absence of vaccination — should have been over 30%! But excess mortality in Sweden was essentially identical to Israel (less than 9%).

Whichever metric is used to compare unvaccinated Sweden with vaccinated Israel — reported Covid deaths or all-cause deaths — there is nothing to indicate any deviation from the usual pattern of comparative mortality in the two countries: twice as many deaths in Sweden. Judging from excess mortality, the death toll of the winter Covid wave was identical. It is impossible to reconcile these data with thousands of averted deaths in Israel by the Pfizer vaccine.

Lockdowns were futile and detrimental, mask mandates were futile, Covid vaccines were marginally beneficial, futile, or worse, and influential studies of vaccine effectiveness contain at least one major flaw, and probably more.

These truths will become common knowledge when contemporary, brainwashed Covid scientists are replaced by a new generation of scientists with inquisitive minds. Then, it will be the job of sociologists to explain how gross falsehoods, like the one discussed here, have reached the pages of medical journals during the Covid era.

Dr. Eyal Shahar is Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the University of Arizona. This article first appeared on Medium.

Tags: COVID-19IsraelLancetPropagandaThe ScienceVaccineVaccine efficacy

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

‘Climate Change’ is a Doomsday Cult That Threatens Us All

Next Post

We Locked Down Because We Could. Thanks, Zoom

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

13 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

I’ve posted this previously when it was disclosed by Jikky ( and covered by Chris Martensen in one of his vids ), but just as a reminder of the non-existent good manufacturing practice standards and regulations on these products ( as if the presence of plasmids wasn’t enough ), people are getting injected with expired vials. Apparently the FDA ( so why not the MHRA and others? ) just slap another expiry date on the batches so that they can get used, presumably, rather than go to incineration.
This begs the questions; 1) What evidence do they base the original expiry date on? 2) How many times are they just extending these already expired batches? 3) What impact, if any, does this have on safety?

https://twitter.com/JTylerHagen/status/1666456703909388290

51
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

The Jikky thread where he dropped the bombshell about extended expiry dates and ‘hot lots’;

”What are the odds?

Of the 382 batches of COVID vaccine on the TGA’s batch log, only 10 had more than 1 death recorded in FOI 4077… [= 2.6%]

Of the 8 batches that were “shelf extended” from Feb 2022 to Nov 2022, 4 were on that list [= 50%]”

https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1608378143978713089

16
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

Thanks for this

27
0
Monro
Monro
1 year ago

Dr. Eyal Shahar, you, sir, are an absolute legend.

Brilliant stuff!

52
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago

Well, yes… aside from the impossibility of the claim from a logical standpoint. It is impossible to be certain that a Possible Outcome X did not occur because of a Performed Action Y.

“The injections saved lives”… What utter tosh, from whatever perspective you choose to examine the statement.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marcus Aurelius knew
58
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

Absolutely agree.

“Lockdowns saved 1700 lives.”

Yeah right, of course they did.

Last edited 1 year ago by huxleypiggles
31
0
JohnK
JohnK
1 year ago

Let’s hope they “become common knowledge”. However, don’t hold your breath. History suggests that infamous pharmaceutical products take a long time before they are found guilty, as it were. Maybe they did the right thing, when the old Common Cold Unit dropped the idea of developing vaccination as a route of defence against the (large) number of viruses found to be the root of common resp infections.

22
0
john1T
john1T
1 year ago

“These truths will become common knowledge when contemporary, brainwashed Covid scientists are replaced by a new generation of scientists with inquisitive minds.” 
I fear inquisitive minds may lose their research budgets.

41
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

I have tried to use my own tools of analysis and I would say that this pathogen was in existence a few years before 2020 and it was building up momentum. You can go back to the huge flu deaths of 2018 and way before. This was and is a cascading event which will result in greater and greater bouts of illness. Before you might’ve got infected twice a year – next year it will be 9 times a year and the year after that almost constant infection. This is something that has been introduced into our environment and we need to ensure that we eradicate it for the sake of prosperity. If we don’t eradicate it then a much greater force will come along which will eradicate most of us as well.

4
-3
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

Itis frankly disgusting don’t try to ratiomise this to me. In my own life people have died at various ages because of this injection. It won’t be long before they are facing serious charges

14
0
DomH75
DomH75
1 year ago
Reply to  Jabby Mcstiff

Yes, my Mum has a vaccine heart injury, a dear family friend with no history of heart trouble died a few weeks back, his heart gunged up with blood clots, our hairdresser’s 50-year-old sister died in agony from blood clots a couple of days after the jab, the sister of a friend’s work colleague dropped dead of a massive heart attack, age 38, no history of heart trouble, a young lady of 19 in our friends of friends circle was left violently ill, developing severe asthma after her first jab. She can’t do anything without becoming exhausted and will require special treatment for the rest of her life. She was told never to have another jab, of course. She subsequently lost her job as a trainee nurse due to being ‘unvaccinated’.

There’s a special place in Hell waiting for a lot of people.

38
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

Where is the new generation of scientists with inquisitive minds going to come from?

They will have been brainwashed from birth by State Education; Adult Indoctrination Centres (used to be known as universities) and – if they manage to emerge with even a small element of inquisitiveness still intact – they will quickly be corrupted by Big Pharma.

The evidence that the lockdowns achieved nothing and were an absolute catastrophe is there for all to see. But those in power refuse to see it.

The evidence that the jabs were, at best, ineffective for most people and positively harmful for many is also clear for all to see. But those in power refuse to see and admit it.

And that’s the way it is going to stay.

17
0
Freddy Boy
Freddy Boy
1 year ago
Reply to  RTSC

I’m afraid you are correct , I watched the Cretinous bunch of moronic EU lackeys licking “King Tedros of WHO”,s chocolate starfish whilst signing various oh so important paperwork to make the world safe in the future !

10
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

The Sceptic EP.37: David Frost on Starmer’s EU Surrender, James Price on Broken Britain and David Shipley on Lucy Connolly’s Failed Appeal

by Richard Eldred
23 May 2025
7

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

28 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

How to Defeat the Westminster ‘Blob’

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Tommy Robinson Released From Prison

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

GB News’s ‘Anti-woke’ Comedy Show Faces Axe After Thousands of Complaints

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

What is ‘The Movement Forward’?

28 May 2025
by Charlotte Gill

News Round-Up

19

Tommy Robinson Released From Prison

32

GB News’s ‘Anti-woke’ Comedy Show Faces Axe After Thousands of Complaints

33

What is ‘The Movement Forward’?

13

Tory MPs to Boris Johnson: Thanks, But no Thanks

22

The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

28 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Alasdair MacIntyre 1929-2025

27 May 2025
by James Alexander

Lies, Damned Lies and Casualty Numbers in Ancient History

26 May 2025
by Guy de la Bédoyère

Lord Frost: “The Boriswave Was a Catastrophic Error”

26 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

The Legal Case Against the AfD Has Collapsed

25 May 2025
by Eugyppius

POSTS BY DATE

June 2023
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May   Jul »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

POSTS BY DATE

June 2023
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May   Jul »

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

28 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

How to Defeat the Westminster ‘Blob’

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Tommy Robinson Released From Prison

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

GB News’s ‘Anti-woke’ Comedy Show Faces Axe After Thousands of Complaints

27 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

What is ‘The Movement Forward’?

28 May 2025
by Charlotte Gill

News Round-Up

19

Tommy Robinson Released From Prison

32

GB News’s ‘Anti-woke’ Comedy Show Faces Axe After Thousands of Complaints

33

What is ‘The Movement Forward’?

13

Tory MPs to Boris Johnson: Thanks, But no Thanks

22

The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

28 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Alasdair MacIntyre 1929-2025

27 May 2025
by James Alexander

Lies, Damned Lies and Casualty Numbers in Ancient History

26 May 2025
by Guy de la Bédoyère

Lord Frost: “The Boriswave Was a Catastrophic Error”

26 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

The Legal Case Against the AfD Has Collapsed

25 May 2025
by Eugyppius

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences