TUCSON, Ariz., March 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The current medical narrative for promoting COVID-19 vaccination is to prevent severe illness and death, replacing the earlier claim that it prevents infections. Yaakov Ophir, Ph.D., and colleagues examine the evidence behind this modified narrative in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
The authors rigorously reviewed representative data from: (1) the formal, phase 3 clinical trials by Pfizer and Moderna, which preceded the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization (EUA); (2) the observational studies from Israel (“the world’s lab,” as termed by Pfizer officials); and (3) the publicly available, real-life dashboards of pandemic statistics.
They found that the only study cited in FDA's news release to support its claim that the fourth dose “improves protection against severe COVID-19” actually showed that this second booster “may have only marginal benefits.”
Also, the large study claimed to support efficacy against severe illness examined a time window of only one week. Moreover, the conditional probability of severe illness did not differ between the treatment and the control groups.
The authors conclude that these data do not provide “convincing evidence that the booster doses of the mRNA vaccines can offer longstanding protection against severe illness and deaths that extends significantly beyond the temporary and fragile protection against infections.”
While recognizing that their article cannot replace a comprehensive review of studies on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, they write: “In scientific discourse, a single ‘black swan’ (i.e., negative instance that does not fit in with a given theory) may falsify a universal claim,…and this article presented numerous such black swans.”
Though detailed consideration of vaccine risks is beyond the scope of the paper, they “join previous cautionary calls that emphasize the urgent need to reassess the balance between the benefits and the risks of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
In conclusion, Ophir and coauthors “openly call for an immediate, even if temporary cessation of the vaccination campaign until real evidence is available, especially considering the critical safety signals, which seem to be downplayed unjustifiably in the medical and scientific discourse.”
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
