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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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Go Reform, go!
If it’s anything like their declared membership. Ignore it.
23% intend to vote Tory. Why?
It’s not clear whether the %s include those who don’t know/don’t intend to vote, but even so there is still a majority that intend to vote for woke socialist globalist “green” parties. How depressing.
Some of them will previously have intended to vote Reform until the leader of that party stood by his expressed opinion that he admired Putin.
Yeah, which gave us possibly the worst government in British history and left us with the Fake conservatives as Her Majesty’s Opposition. Great result.
You cannot seriously believe that Reform could ever have won the last election. Even they admitted that was never going to happen.
A labour victory was written in stone as soon as the lamentable Mr Johnson caved (quite possibly to Mrs Johnson) regarding lockdowns.
Mr Musk knows a thing or two. Mr Farage has many qualities but he is not and never will be Prime Ministerial material.
The only question in town is whether Mrs Badenoch is of the requisite calibre.
We will not know the answer to that for a while yet.
I didn’t “believe” Reform were going to win the election because I saw the opinion polls and I am aware that we have drifted into being a country full of people who think the “government” can/should/will solve all their problems. But why shouldn’t Reform win the election? Why the hell would any conservative vote Tory after 14 years of being lied to and let down?
I don’t get your logic about lockdowns. Labour wanted more of them.
Badenoch is less of a weasel and more conservative than Sunak or Johnson, and she has bigger balls than both of them put together (not hard) but she is an unrepentant covidian and her party is still full of wets so they can go and do one as far as I am concerned.
If you are waiting for a political leader who is “prime ministerial material” who represents a major party, I hope you are a lot younger than I am and live a lot longer.
We are screwed and will remain so until things get a lot worse or maybe never.
Yes.
If you didn’t believe Reform were going to win, who else could have won except the egregious labour party?
The voters put in the labour party based on them not being the conservative party and for no other reason.
Few outside of here had got the hang of the futility of lockdowns or, indeed, vaccines.
Mr Farage nor his Chairman convinces.
Lee Anderson and Rupert Lowe both have something about them but, for the time being, Reform represent a decent protest vote, nothing more.
As for Mrs Badenoch, easy to condemn but silly.
We have not yet been given a clear view of the cut of her jib, nor will we for a couple of years.
Mr Farage looks like a one trick pony.
Mrs Badenoch may very well be better than that, but the jury is still out….
Mrs Doubtfire meets Rab C Nesbitt.
Silly? If you still think the Fake conservative party deserves power, good luck!
None of them “convince” me. Of the mainstream parties and politicians, Reform are the closest to my views and don’t cross any red lines.
Entirely correct.
Badenoch? You are having a laugh.
I thought Scotland might be the only place where men can get away with wearing a skirt and not look like they’re cross-dressing because they still manage to look masculine. That’s not going to cut it in these Woke times, according to Starmer;
https://x.com/beverleyturner/status/1883229905997136073
Bloody hell !
It’s like if Hattie Jacques and Christopher Biggins had a lovechild….
We are all just stooges in a big comedy sketch…
Putin has many admirable qualities. Hard to imagine anyone surviving for 25 years as the President of a Mafia run state unless he did. Of course some of his qualities are much less admirable, and you don’t have to like him on a personal level, far from it. I think that was what Nigel was saying, but the subtlety and nuance is lost in the MSM. Its a bit like saying Gary Lineker was a fine football striker. It is true, but not a complete summation of him and his character.
Kennedy didn’t want missiles on his border in 1961 as Putin didnt want NATO missiles on his border. Yet Kennedy was lauded as a hero. Go figure.
What the heck is an “open-book test”? And who gets to take an exam paper home??
So basically ‘cheating’ then? I can’t imagine Reform tolerating this;
“Yet again, racial minorities are being patronised by the authorities at Oxford and Cambridge.
More racist policies in the name of “progress”…
https://x.com/andrewdoyle_com/status/1883213109277733126
Nice to see the Telegraph omit that just 20% of the electorate voted Labour.
The problem Reform have – other than Farage as leader – is that in trying to grow quick enough to be able to contest the May elections they are recruiting Tories with questionable views. Think RINOs in the US. We need a fresh party not a rehashed Tory one.
Our County Council Norfolk has cancelled our democracy and elections. The senior staff are rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of a bigger authority meaning higher salaries for them.
Reform and Farage may seem the best option but we are being manipulated into voting for them at a future GE. Like at the GE last year, at this rate I will again have to spoil my ballot paper. There is no one fit for purpose (ie true to God and our country) for whom I can currently vote (except perhaps for David Kurten).
Farage and Tice fully supported the Rona Fascism.
They have nothing to say about the Muslimification of this country or its destruction from ‘legal’ invasion. Focusing on the small boats which are 1-10% of the total problem.
Absolutely!
And 45% would still vote for the collection of psychopaths who have brought our formerly great Britain to its present ruinous state.
Then add in the idiots who would vote Lib Dem and Green and the answer to: are we screwed? becomes apparent.