Connect with us

COVID-19

‘Highly improbable’: New study exposes flaws in Lancet paper claiming COVID vaccines saved millions of lives

Published

14 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.,

A new study by all-cause mortality researchers Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., and Joseph Hickey, Ph.D., re-examined the mathematical model behind a paper published in The Lancet claiming the COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. The Lancet paper, cited more than 700 times, was partially funded by the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.

When two University of Pennsylvania scientists earlier this month won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in developing “effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19,” the Nobel Committee and legacy media organizations celebrated the COVID-19 vaccines for saving “millions of lives.”

But a new study re-examining the mathematical model behind the life-saving claims – a model that was laid out in a study published in 2022 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases – concluded the model was deeply flawed and the resulting characterization of the COVID-19 vaccines “must be invalid.”

The Lancet paper, funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, has been cited more than 700 times.

All-cause mortality researchers Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., and Joseph Hickey, Ph.D., calculated and graphed the mortality rates that would have occurred without the vaccines, as projected by Waston et al. in The Lancet study, and compared those projections to the actual all-cause mortality rates.

Rancourt and Hickey tested the assertions in The Lancet paper that the vaccines averted tens of millions of excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths from all causes that exceeds the expected number of deaths under normal conditions.

If The Lancet paper model were accurate, Rancourt and Hickey wrote, without the vaccines the global mortality rates would have spiked to historically unprecedented and unimaginable levels suddenly, a year into the pandemic, at precisely the moment the vaccines rolled out.

And the vaccines would have nearly perfectly reduced those unimaginable levels of mortality back to baseline mortality rates.

They concluded that Watson et al.’s “results and the associated fantastic claims of millions of lives saved are highly improbable,” and that their theoretical claims have “no connection to actual mortality,” but instead are based on “wild” assumptions.

‘So improbable it should be qualified as impossible’

According to Rancourt and Hickey, given there is no known controlled randomized clinical trial showing the COVID-19 vaccines caused death to be averted, the primary basis for such claims comes from Watson et al., who concluded:

“[Findings] Based on official reported COVID-19 deaths, we estimated that vaccinations prevented 14·4 million (95% credible interval [Crl] 13·7–15·9) deaths from COVID-19 in 185 countries and territories between Dec 8, 2020, and Dec 8, 2021.

“This estimate rose to 19·8 million (95% Crl 19·1– 20·4) deaths from COVID-19 averted when we used excess deaths as an estimate of the true extent of the pandemic …

“[Interpretation] COVID-19 vaccination has substantially altered the course of the pandemic, saving tens of millions of lives globally.”

To test the validity of the model’s projections, Rancourt and Hickey used Watson et al.’s data to calculate what the all-cause mortality would have been over time for 95 countries if the researchers’ claims were true and no COVID-19 vaccines were administered.

To compare the implications of those claims to actual all-cause mortality, they distributed the paper’s most conservative estimate of “14.4 million deaths averted” globally, calculating the number of deaths averted per country as a mathematical combination over time of vaccines administered and vaccine effectiveness.

They created graphs to show how Watson et al.’s theoretical all-cause mortality rates without the vaccine compared to actual all-cause mortality rates.

The graphs also show all-cause mortality rates prior to the pandemic and note the date the WHO declared the global pandemic and the date of the vaccine rollouts for each country.

In the U.S., for example (Figure 1), there were unprecedented peaks in all-cause mortality in 2020, 2021 and 2022 that the researchers have tied, in other papers, to pandemic measures such as the widespread use of ventilators, and to mortality associated with the vaccine itself.

Those peaks can be seen in the blue line on the graph, which shows the actual all-cause mortality. The projected scenario from Watson et al’.s paper is plotted in red.

Figure 1. United States (USA): (top panel) All-cause mortality by week, 2018-2022, measured (blue), calculated following Watson et al. (2022) (red-solid), continued (red-dashed); (bottom panel) same, expressed as excess all-cause mortalities, and with 1σ uncertainty (shaded blue). In both panels, cumulative COVID-19 vaccine administration (all-doses) (dark grey), March 11, 2020 date, (vertical grey line). Credit: Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., and Joseph Hickey, Ph.D.

If their numbers are correct, the graph shows, a “massive and more-than-unprecedented” national excess mortality would have occurred if the COVID-19 vaccines had not been rolled out, and that spike would have coincidentally happened at precisely the moment when the rollout happened to occur, but not before.

“This would be a remarkable coincidence,” Rancourt and Hickey wrote, especially given this spike would have happened suddenly after several waves of infection and one year after the pandemic was declared.

It is also notable, they said, that the vaccines supposedly lowered all-cause mortality rates to precisely the pre-pandemic numbers, rather than to some intermediary number.

A similar phenomenon would have happened, they said, in Canada according to Watson et al.’s calculations. Unlike the U.S., Canada had very minimal changes in all-cause mortality through the entire pandemic period.

However, the calculations by Watson et al. predict that Canada would have seen a tripling in all-cause mortality by week for approximately a year if the vaccines had not been rolled out, the authors wrote.

Figure 2. Canada (CAN): (top panel) All-cause mortality by week, 2018-2022, measured (blue), calculated following Watson et al. (2022) (red-solid), continued (red-dashed); (bottom panel) same, expressed as excess all-cause mortalities, and with 1σ uncertainty (shaded blue). In both panels, cumulative COVID-19 vaccine administration (all-doses) (dark grey), March 11, 2020, date (vertical grey line). Credit: Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., and Joseph Hickey, Ph.D.

In Canada, there is also “no visible decrease in actual all-cause mortality” temporally associated with the roll-outs, which one might expect if the roll-outs affected mortality. Rather, they wrote, “the opposite is apparent, with excess mortality proportionately accompanying rollouts.”

They also presented data from 31 European countries, whose situation was analogous to the U.S. “This extraordinary coincidence” they wrote, “essentially occurs in most of 95 countries [they analyzed].”

“In fact, the said coincidence is palpably so improbable that it should, without hesitation, be qualified as impossible,” Rancourt and Hickey wrote. “A single such example in a single country is sufficient to invalidate the exercise of Watson et al. (2022), and the example is repeated for 95 countries.”

‘The opposite of good science’

Rancourt, former physics professor and lead scientist for 23 years at the University of Ottawa, told Children’s Health Defense Staff Scientist J. Jay Couey, Ph.D., on a recent episode of Couey’s Gigaohm Biological livestream, that the Nobel Prize is a powerful political instrument.

Although there are some exceptions where Nobel has recognized authentically important scientific achievements, he said, “Generally speaking the Nobel Prize is an instrument of the establishment for propaganda, to convince people of what things they need to consider to be absolutely true, absolute advancements of human knowledge.”

“It impacts not only the general public but also scientists themselves,” in terms of what they believe and what they research, Rancourt said.

When the 2023 Nobel Prizes were announced, and the legacy media universally made claims about tens of millions of lives saved, Rancourt and Hickey decided to investigate the publication behind the claims: the Waston 2022 paper.

He said they found the paper was “the opposite of good science.”

That was not, Rancourt noted, because the mathematical calculations were wrong, but because the authors made no attempt to examine whether the assumptions behind their model inputs were logical, or whether their predictions were “reasonable and realistic,” meaning they could occur in the real world.

Rancourt told Couey after doing their analysis, he and his colleagues found the claims in the paper were so “stunning” it led them to question:

How did this get through peer review? … Who were these reviewers? How could they be so blind and incompetent and unquestioning of what some authors are doing, which is completely novel and completely fabricated? … Are they not able to see it?

And on the other hand, what about the editors? How do the editors pick these reviewers? Did the editors go with only the reviewers that thought it was okay and ignore the reviewers that were critical of it? Are they themselves so scientifically illiterate [they cannot] do a theoretical calculation?

Scientists, he said, particularly when one is doing theoretical projections, must constantly critically interrogate their own results.

“They have to be critical of their own ideas, not just rub their hands because they get something that Gates will like,” he said.

Worse, he said, “the Nobel Prize Committee itself had to be clueless, had to be unscientific, had to be unquestioning, had to look for something, a prize they wanted to give, and not bother thinking for themselves about whether or not this made any sense. And then they repeated this ‘millions of lives saved’ thing, which is nonsense.”

As a result, a “horrendous product that should never have been injected into people’s bodies, is now something that we’re going to celebrate. It’s going to be an achievement of human science, of the science created by humans.”

“There is no scientific basis for saying that whatsoever,” Rancourt said. “No clinical trials have ever demonstrated that. And it’s based on a garbage simulation funded by the industry, where the authors didn’t even double check if their results made any kind of sense.”

“This is the absurdity that we are now experiencing,” he said.

This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Business

Trudeau gov’t threatens to punish tech companies that fail to censor ‘disinformation’

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A report from the House of Commons Heritage Committee claimed that ‘some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money.’

A report from a Canadian federal committee said MPs should enact laws to penalize social media and tech companies that don’t take action to quell so-called “undesirable or questionable” content on the internet.

MPs from the ruling Liberal, New Democratic Party (NDP), and separatists Bloc Québécois party on the House of Commons Heritage Committee summarized their opinions in a report.

“The Government of Canada notes some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money,” reads the report titled Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.

“Disinformation creates ‘doubt and confusion’ and can be particularly harmful when it involves health information,” it continues.

The report notes how such “disinformation” can cause “financial harms as well as political polarization and distrust in key institutions,” adding, “The prevalence of disinformation can be difficult to determine.”

As noted in Blacklock’s Reporter, the report claims that many of Canada’s “major societal harms” have come from “unregulated social media platforms relying on algorithms to amplify content, among them disinformation and conspiracy theories.”

Of note is the committee failed to define what “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories” meant.

Most of the MPs on the committee made the recommendation that Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms, which ironically have at one point or another clamped down on free speech themselves, “put mechanisms in place to detect undesirable or questionable content that may be the product of disinformation or foreign interference and that these platforms be required to promptly identify such content and report it to users.”

“Failure to do so should result in penalties,” the report stated.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian legal group The Democracy Fund (TDF) warned that the Liberal government’s Bill C-63 seeks to further clamp down on online speech and will “weaponize” the nation’s courts to favor the ruling federal party and do nothing but create an atmosphere of “fear.”

Bill C-63 was introduced by Liberal Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome.

Jordan Peterson, one of Canada’s most prominent psychologists, recently accused the bill of attempting to create a pathway to allow for “Orwellian Thought Crime” to become the norm in the nation.

Conservative MPs fight back: ‘A government bureaucracy should not regulate content’

Conservative MPs fought back the Heritage Committee’s majority findings and in a Dissenting Report said the committee did not understand what the role of the internet is in society, which is that it should be free from regulation.

“The main report failed to adequately explore the state of censorship in Canada and the role played by tech giants and the current federal government,” the Conservatives wrote in their dissenting report, adding, “Canadians are increasingly being censored by the government and tech giants as to what they can see, hear and say online.”

The Conservative MPs noted that when it comes to the internet, it is “boundless,” and that “Anyone who wants to have a presence on the internet can have one.”

“A government bureaucracy should not regulate which content should be prioritized and which should be demoted,” it noted, adding, “There is space for all.”

LifeSiteNews reported how the Conservative Party has warned that Trudeau’s Bill C-63 is so flawed that it will never be able to be enforced or become known before the next election.

The law calls for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content.

The bill’s “hate speech” section is accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying pre-emptive judgments against people if they are feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future.

Details of the new legislation also show the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories.

Continue Reading

COVID-19

Blue Cross Blue Shield forced to pay $12 million to Catholic worker fired for refusing COVID shots

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

A jury ruled that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan committed religious discrimination against 30-year IT specialist and Catholic Lisa Domski when it denied her a religious accommodation from the company’s COVID shot mandate.

A former IT specialist for Blue Cross Blue Shield has been awarded $12 million in damages and lost wages for her lawsuit over being fired for refusing the COVID-19 shot, in a major victory for religious liberty.

Newsweek reports that the insurance company fired 30-year employee Lisa Domski in 2021 after she sought a religious exemption to their jab mandate and was turned down. The insurer reportedly questioned the sincerity of her religious objections as a Catholic, but denied religious discrimination in the trial. 

Domski further maintained that the rationale behind mandating the shot didn’t apply in her case, as 75% of her work was remote before the pandemic and had shifted to fully remote during it, meaning she could not possibly have endangered others even if the shot did prevent transmission, which has since been admitted to not be the case.

“Our forefathers fought and died for the freedom for each American to practice his or her own religion,” declared her attorney Jon Marko. “Neither the government nor a corporation has a right to force an individual to choose between his or her career and conscience. Lisa refused to renounce her faith and beliefs and was wrongfully terminated from the only job she had ever known. The jury’s verdict today tells [Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan] that religious discrimination has no place in America and affirms each person’s right to religious freedom.”

In response, the company said it was “disappointed” in the jury verdict and would be “reviewing its legal options and will determine its path forward in the coming days.”

Many religious and pro-life Americans like Lisa Domski have a moral objection to using medical products whose existence is owed in some way to abortion.

According to a detailed overview by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson all used aborted fetal cells during their vaccines’ testing phase; and Johnson & Johnson also used the cells during the design and development and production phases. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science has admitted the same, and even the left-wing fact-checking outlet Snopes acknowledges the statement “that such cell lines were used in the development of COVID-19 vaccines is accurate.”

Moral qualms are just one of the reasons for the ongoing controversy, next to a large body of evidence identifying significant risks to the COVID shots, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,068 deaths, 218,646 hospitalizations, 22,002 heart attacks, and 28,706 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of October 25, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

All eyes are currently on former President Donald Trump, who last week won his campaign to return to the White House and whose team has given mixed signals as to the prospects of reconsidering the shots for which he has long taken credit. At the very least, Trump has consistently opposed mandating them and is expected to fill more federal judicial vacancies with jurists favorably inclined to the rights of employees in similar lawsuits.

Meanwhile, some hope that legal action can succeed in bringing accountability on the issue by legally targeting the companies for misrepresentation rather than their products directly. In Florida, an ongoing grand jury investigation into the shots’ manufacturers is slated to release a highly anticipated report on the injections, and a lawsuit by the state of Kansas has been filed accusing Pfizer of fraud for calling the shots “safe and effective.”

Continue Reading

Trending

X