Chapter 1: A Small Mystery
Before diving into the plethora of research revolving around the covid vaccines, and becoming hopelessly entrenched in a world view, lets approach the question from 50,000 feet. What is the probability that the Pfizer vaccine (specifically) and others would have worked, if we don’t know anything about them. And, what is the probability that the vaccine would work, given the 6 month Pfizer trial.
To address the first question, I was able to find to two studies, one from 2013, stating that generally speaking vaccines have only have a 6% chance of passing all of their trials and getting approved. The other was from 2020 and found that vaccines only have a 10% chance of passing all trials and getting approved.
Of course there are other competing factors to consider: MRNA is a technology that had never been commercialized before / on the other hand, covid vaccines probably had better funding than most (and other factors out of the scope of this essay). But, it is hard to quantify the effects of these factors. The most simplistic and data based answer is 6-10% chance that a vaccine would work. Therefore, the chance that every single different vaccine developed would in fact be safe and effective — AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna — is low. Note: analyzing Johnson and Johnson is out of the scope of these essays since it is not MRNA, and because it is losing to the other vaccines.
On a side note, this leads is my thesis about vaccines in general: vaccines are really hard to make. Some vaccines are good for humanity, but most end up failing for some reason or another.
To address the second question regarding Pfizer’s 6 month trial: According to the abstract, Pfizer’s vaccine was 91.3% effective. But was it safe? According to the FDA’s document reviewing this study on page 23, paragraph 2, there were 38 deaths (all cause) in the trial; 21 were in the experimental group, while 17 were in the placebo group (experimental group was 24% higher).
To go into more detail, according to the supplemental appendix of the study, on page 12, there were 4 deaths from cardiac arrest among the vaccinated group, compared to one the placebo; also, there were three deaths from sepsis in the vaccinated group, compared to none in the placebo (sepsis is the body’s extreme response to an infection). According to page 11 of the supplemental appendix, there were 6,617 adverse effects in the experimental group compared to 3,048 in the placebo. Among these, 262 were classified as severe in the experimental group compared to 150 in the placebo.
Finally, in the placebo, two people died of covid, whereas in the experimental group, only one person died of covid. So, to recap: the experimental group had one less Covid related death compared to the placebo, but had five more non Covid related deaths compared to the placebo.
Which leads to a small mystery:
Firstly: does the vaccine actually cause more deaths than it prevents? The numbers suggest this, but they are too small to be significant…
Secondly: what were these “severe adverse events”. There appears to be a statistically significant higher rate of those among the experimental group, but the document never details what they are, and whether we should be worried about them.
Thirdly: if the vaccine does cause “serious adverse events”, by what mechanism does it cause these? What types of adverse events (such as heart attacks or sepsis) can we realistically expect to be the result of a vaccine?