dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

https://www1.racgp.org.au/ajgp/2024/july/letters

Should we now discuss possible COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness?

Commendations are due to AJGP and Professor Robert Tindle for their recent article published in the April 2024 issue, including the bold statement: ‘Because COVID-19 vaccines were approved without long-term safety data and might cause immune dysfunction, it is perhaps premature to assume that past SARS-CoV-2 infection is the sole common factor in long COVID’.1 The possibility that long COVID could be related to the vaccines is important, but the focus here is on the notion that the vaccines could cause some sort of immunosuppression, especially, as noted by Professor Tindle, since the spike protein ‘exhibits pathogenic characteristics’ – to say nothing of the ‘class switch to IgG4 antibodies’, which Professor Tindle thinks could lead to autoimmunity and cancer. I have speculated as much, noticing many data sets indicating that not only does COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness appear to decline very rapidly (varyingly for infections, hospitalisations and even deaths), it can reach zero (no effectiveness), and beyond (negative effectiveness).

For example, a recent The Lancet Regional Health paper states: ‘Compared to a waned third dose, fourth dose VE [vaccine effectiveness] was 13.1% (95% CI 0.9 to 23.8) overall; 24.0% (95% CI 8.5 to 36.8) in the first two months post-vaccination, reducing to 10.3% (95% CI −11.4 to 27.8) and 1.7% (95% CI −17.0 to 17.4) at two to four and four to six months, respectively’.2 Given the wide confidence intervals, these latter figures could be negative. A study by Shrestha et al found each vaccine dose was associated with a higher number of infections, with those on zero doses faring best.3 A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found vaccine effectiveness dropping dramatically, including for severe COVID, with the previously infected and unvaccinated having lower infection rates than the never-infected double dosed.4 And a British study revealed the effectiveness of one to two doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines dropping to zero, and turning negative, after only two to three months.5 There is much more in the literature; word count prevents me from listing all such evidence.

Relatively few articles dare to explicitly discuss the phenomenon of perceived COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness, though Monge et al at least acknowledged it and tried to explain it away with a hypothesis around some selection bias.6 A British Medical Journal (BMJ) rapid response listed some of the evidence for this disturbing phenomenon, and called for further research.7 Furthermore, an unofficial ‘series’ of four articles, involving Peter Doshi, in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, the last of which was published this year, indicates that issues with counting windows have likely led to exaggerations of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and safety estimates, for both the clinical trials and later observational studies.8 Finally, in contrast to Monge et al, a new Czech study by Fürst et al found strong evidence for the healthy vaccinee effect;9 this also seems to be evident in the recent and much-publicised Australian study promoting booster shots, which revealed an uncharacteristically high unvaccinated rate in elderly Australian aged care residents.10

All this makes it plausible that the COVID-19 vaccines have always had an effectiveness that was very low, zero, or even negative, with inadequate methods allowing for a highly exaggerated effectiveness initially – an exaggeration that is lessened with time. It is, as Professor Tindle noted, possible that the vaccines could be causing immunosuppression. With the ubiquitousness of the vaccines, and the fact that some vaccine mandates are still in place, to say nothing of the upcoming Senate inquiry into excess mortality,11 I suggest we investigate this further.

Author

Raphael Lataster BPharm, PhD, Associate Lecturer, FASS, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW