Analyse: de eerste 4 maanden van de coronavaccinaties

From the start of vaccinations in January 2021, the claim was that vaccines performed better than expected and hospitals were full of unvaccinated people. The news was that those who refused to take responsibility should be excluded by society. Exiles to penal camps or uninhabited islands were even mentioned.

Any information that conflicted with the government's views was labeled as disinformation. But what was the reality of? In hindsight, what was actually disinformation? A reconstruction based on the latest figures from Statistics Netherlands from that period.

The epidemiological situation

First, let's look at the epidemiological situation at the time the first jab was administered. The British variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus had arrived in the Netherlands at the end of 2020 and was in the process of becoming dominant. There was a lot of scare, but what about excess mortality, partly in light of this new, more contagious variant?

On the left, we see the excess mortality during the first wave, with the proportion of them indicated in red that would have died of corona. The excess mortality is entirely explained by mortality from corona. We see the same thing with the second wave. However, from February onwards we will see more corona deaths than can be explained by excess mortality, which is already strange.

From this epidemiological situation, we are going to go through a number of propositions that were presented to us, everything else was labeled as disinformation.

Claim 1: The vaccine ended the second wave

We can already see in the graph that the peak of excess mortality is near at the end of December. The summit was reached on January 4, 2021, a few days before the first shot was given on January 8. Now, you might think that vaccination would have accelerated this process. However, on 23 February 2024, the CBS figures published, from which the efficacy of the vaccines can be calculated. We published this first article: CBS has revealed vaccine efficacy, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.

The green line is the percentage of "all causes" deaths of everyone who has had exactly 1 shot and is therefore in the first 4 weeks after the first vaccination. The blue line is the percentage within the same group that dies from corona. The difference is around 25%, which means that the vaccine gave negative protection in the first 4 weeks. Follows directly from the CBS figures!

This may also explain why the decline in mortality in January/February was less steep than after the peak in November. What is certain is that this shows that the claim that vaccination has put an end to the second wave is simply based on disinformation. The excess mortality had already disappeared by the time the period of negative protection was over.

Claim 2: The vaccine prevents hospitalizations

That may have been an equally important claim. Once vaccinated, you would not be able to end up in the hospital. We also have official figures for this that NICE has kept for us. Here we see how the course of hospital admissions has been:

The same graph with the number of hospital admissions (the orange line). Of course, this is somewhat ahead of the number of deaths.

From mid-January 2021, we see something strange. While the number of deaths continued to fall and vaccination rates continued to rise, an initial decline in admissions turned into an increase to near the level seen in January. So the fewer people there were UNvaccinated, the more hospitalizations there were and that is suspicious. But who were all those hospitalized corona patients who did not die of corona?

The media reports were that the hospitals were full of unvaccinated people because of covid-19. If that were true, your chance of becoming seriously ill from corona would be greatly increased by vaccinated neighbors. So this claim must be based on disinformation!

Claim 3: The vaccine provides 95% protection against severe illness

To be able to say something about this, we look at the VE value (= Vaccination Effectiveness), which you can calculate by relating the number of deaths from corona to the vaccination coverage. Read e.g. this post about this as an explanation. We were now able to calculate this thanks to the publication of the CBS on February 23, including the text of this article, also as a Dutch version.

We see here the average VE for the vaccinated part of the population. That includes the first 4 weeks of vaccination, which is why the graph also starts with a negative value. It was not until March that the VE exceeded 0%, when excess mortality had just disappeared and turned into under-mortality.

In April we arrived at a VE of 50% and that means that the vaccine protected 10X as little as we were promised. If we also include the first few months (even then you would actually want to be protected, especially because corona was not completely gone at the time), we arrive at around 20%.

CBS has not taken into account factors that influence the result, such as the Healthy Vaccinee Effect.

An effective vaccine should provide at least 80% protection. So the claim that the vaccine would be effective is also based on disinformation.

Claim 4: The vaccine is safe

Proving that a vaccine is safe or unsafe is very difficult. In the event of a suspicious death, you have to perform an autopsy and then determine that the vaccine has led to death. Or you work with control groups, but that was not done sufficiently when testing the safety of the vaccines: the control groups were eventually vaccinated as well. Although autopsies have found strong indications that vaccination was the cause of death in a number of cases, this cannot be directly translated into a risk of death for the entire population.

However, there are strong indications to be found in the aforementioned CBS figures. Look at this chart:

Same graph as shown earlier, but now with two extra lines. The black line is the "under-mortality after excess mortality". This is the phenomenon that epidemics bring forward the moment of death for the weakest ("Old man's friend").

In terms of figures, this means that most of the excess mortality is spread over the following 12 months as under-mortality. We see this phenomenon perfectly after the first wave. The excess mortality has turned into the predicted under-mortality and lasted until the start of the second wave (the peak in August was the heat wave).

After the second wave, you expect the baseline (the black line) to fall further. By March 2021, we should have a higher under-mortality rate. The course of excess mortality should then have followed roughly the dotted line. But that didn't happen. From April onwards, there was excess mortality again, which remained around 40/day. A phenomenon that has been occurring since vaccination was introduced. It is not yet proof that vaccination is the cause of this, although we can't think of anything better.

As long as vaccination has not been ruled out as a contributory or even main cause of the persistent excess mortality since the start of the first vaccination campaign, the claim that vaccination is safe is disinformation.

Claim 5: The vaccine is effective

The effectiveness of a vaccine can be measured by how many vaccines you need to administer to save one life. And that, in turn, depends on two factors: what is the chance of dying from the disease (given the age of the person) and what is the protection that the vaccine gives you. In this article I have shown that the effectiveness is very disappointing. I showed this graph:

The red and blue lines drawn are the calculated numbers of vaccines needed to save one life. The dashed lines are the trend lines. We see here that in order to save an average of one life of an 80-year-old in 2021, about 1000 vaccinations had to be administered. That still seems acceptable. But in 2022, that has already increased by a factor of 10, because a) the protection of the vaccine has decreased and b) corona circulated much less.

In addition, we still have the unexplained excess mortality, whereby we have to take into account that the risk could come down to around 1:1200 per vaccination. If we stick to that limit for safety reasons, then in 2022 vaccination was only recommended for the elderly over the age of 95.

If we look at younger people, tens of thousands of jabs are needed to potentially save one life. And if we are going to express this in monetary terms, then a single life saved has quickly cost tens of millions of euros for the younger generation. As a society, a rule of thumb applies here that a QALY may cost €20,000, so healthcare has gone far beyond its remit here. The fact that vaccination is an effective tool is therefore also disinformation.

Conclusions

Various claims have been made by the government regarding the vaccines:

1. The vaccine put an end to the second wave
2. The vaccine provides a high level of protection
3. The vaccine prevents hospitalization
4. The vaccine is safe
5. The vaccine is effective

Figures have shown that there is no substantiation for any claim to prove it. In other words, the government has constantly spread disinformation about how the vaccine works. Looking at the statistics, it is increasingly unlikely that new independent research will be able to substantiate these claims.