Here’s an astonishing story of scientific malpractice, peer-review failure, and journalistic bias. It isn’t a story without consequence but one that affected millions of people and likely led to vast professional suffering and probable vaccine injury. Even now, there is no accountability.
Think back to the largely canceled holiday season of 2021. Masses of people had taken two doses of the COVID vaccine either because of fear, false promises that it would protect them from sickness, or they were flat-out forced to do so under enormous government pressure. Many people assumed that would be the end of it.
But then came the booster. It seemed crazy at the time and many people were reluctant to go there again. Experience with getting the same inoculation again and again has long given rise to concern about immune imprinting: the repeated training of the body to resist one pathogen while making it vulnerable to other infections. Plus, reports on injuries from the first round of shots were pouring in.
But on Dec. 23, 2021, the NEJM came out with a piece that hit the headlines all over the world. It said that tests of the booster had been a fantastic success, while those who didn’t get the booster were vulnerable to death. The conclusion of the study was easily digestible by any journalist:
“Participants who received a booster at least 5 months after a second dose of BNT162b2 had 90 percent lower mortality due to Covid-19 than participants who did not receive a booster.”
It was enough to send millions of people back to Walgreens for yet another injection. The mandates were updated throughout the country. Put aside your misgivings and just get the third shot! Universities across the country imposed them on students. The military had to comply and even nurses and doctors with natural immunity were frog-marched back to the shot-givers.
Looking back now, there were enough clues in the study itself to suggest something odd.
“We obtained data for all members of Clalit Health Services who were 50 years of age or older at the start of the study and had received two doses of BNT162b2 at least 5 months earlier. The mortality due to Covid-19 among participants who received the booster during the study period (booster group) was compared with that among participants who did not receive the booster (nonbooster group).”
Wait just a minute here. Older than 50 includes a vast population with extremely low vulnerability to death from COVID and a large population, say above 75 years and in ill-health, that is more vulnerable to death from anything. A study that tested a COVID booster would absolutely have to adjust for the likelihood of death from any cause. Otherwise, the study would mean absolutely nothing.
In other words, you can’t aggregate these whole populations and throw in some random variable and conclude it was the reason for varied outcomes. You would certainly have to adjust for the outcome even without the variable to make sure your analysis is correct. So far as I understand it, and I’m hardly an expert on how to do these studies, this is essential for a valid result.
Some researchers suspected that something was up. They are Tracy B. Høeg (University of California–San Francisco), Ram Duriseti (Stanford School of Medicine), and Vinay Prasad (University of California–San Francisco). They examined the underlying data very carefully and came up with a remarkable conclusion. As it turns out, the boosted population in the study had a 94.8 percent lower non-COVID mortality than the non-boosted! In other words, the boosted people in the study weren’t as likely to die in any case.
The bias in the study falsifies the results.
Note that this now-obvious problem with the world’s most important study pushing boosters has been revealed a year-and-a-half too late. Many people “trusted the science” but the science itself wasn’t trustworthy. It’s clearly the case that the study was structured to come to the conclusion it did. It wasn’t seeking truth but rather a predetermined result.
Further: “The study published in NEJM we can now see was biased to such an extent, at least I do not think it should have been published. Without a doubt, what is currently written in the article (about a 90 percent lower covid mortality rate among the boosted) is very misleading ... as that was EXPECTED given the underlying differences in health!”
That sounds deeply suspicious. A deeper look shows that Clalit Health Services is a branch of the Clalit Research Institute, which is funded by Pfizer. In other words, the conflict is barely one step removed, just enough to allow the authors to decline to declare it. For all intents and purposes, Pfizer was the sponsor of the study that promoted its product.
I’ve followed this blizzard of fake science from the beginning of this entire disaster. I’ve seen thousands of cases of seeming expertise deployed in fraudulent ways to support state and industry priorities.
This pertains to the original modeling exercises, the ridiculous social distancing guidelines, the preposterous claims about masks, and then to deprecation of early treatment to make room for vaccines that, despite promises, didn’t protect against infection or spread and had no lasting value in any case.
I’m weary of ferreting out cases of fake science and become too cynical to believe any of it. I’m guessing large portions of the general public feel the same way.
This is why we owe a debt of gratitude to careful researchers such as those above who take the time and have the skill to look carefully under the hood. Consider too what this means for their careers. There is no money and no security associated with this sort of debunking. All the power, money, and fame come from manipulating results to conform to regime priorities.
Currently, the correction is the top-performing article in the NEJM so perhaps word is getting out. Still, I’m not anticipating much in the way of correction from The New York Times or anyone else. Even though it isn’t being widely discussed, it’s nothing short of a scandal. And it raises the question: How many other fake studies have disrupted our lives over three years?
