New England Journal of Medicine Puts Lipstick on a [CDC] Pig, Again
NEJM published a CDC study last week claiming to show efficacy of Pfizer vax in youths. But the authors arbitrarily excluded more than ten percent of the original sample, enough to skew the results.
The headline in The Washington Post was all too familiar:
The study, published online January 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine, claimed to show that two doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine were highly effective against Covid-19-related hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
The authors described their study as “a multicenter evaluation conducted in 31 hospitals across 23 states.” Investigators compared 445 case patients between 12 and 18 years of age who were hospitalized with Covid-19 to 777 control patients who were hospitalized for other illnesses.[1]
From the study: [Reminder: Case patients are those who were hospitalized with Covid. Controls are those who were hospitalized with other illnesses.]
“Overall, 17 case patients (4%) and 282 controls (36%) had been fully vaccinated. Of the case patients, 180 (40%) were admitted to the ICU, and 127 (29%) required life support; only 2 patients in the ICU had been fully vaccinated.” Seven adolescents who were hospitalized with Covid died. All seven were unvaccinated.
The authors concluded that the overall effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 was 94 percent for preventing Covid-related hospitalizations and 98 percent for preventing Covid-related ICU admissions.
At first glance, the data look compelling. Youths who were not vaccinated seemed to be at much greater risk of being hospitalized with Covid-19 than those who were vaccinated.
However, as is now routinely the case with these industry-sponsored storybooks masquerading as major medical journals, the devil is in the details.
So, let’s take a look at some of those details.
First, since death is the outcome most feared by parents, the fact that seven children in this relatively small sample of youths who were hospitalized with Covid actually died is certain to set off alarm bells. The authors provided no details about any of these deaths in the write-up of their study. The children were all unvaccinated. The children contracted Covid. The children are now dead. That’s all readers were told.
Tucked away in the study’s Supplementary Appendix, where far fewer people look, the authors listed the underlying comorbidities of those seven adolescents, along with nine others (six Cases and three Controls) who required an advanced form of life support called ECMO. All 16 had multiple serious comorbidities, including respiratory and endocrine disorders, heart problems, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and autoimmune disease.
Did the seven youths in the Case group, who passed away while hospitalized, die from Covid or with Covid? The authors do not tell us. All we can say for certain is that if death is the outcome parents are attempting to avoid for their adolescents, this study provides no data to support the need for vaccinating healthy youths against Covid, because no healthy youths in this study died, either from or with Covid.
What we also know for certain, based on the CDC’s own data, is that two years into this pandemic, Covid continues to barely register as a cause of death for youths, with or without comorbidities. From Jan. 1, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2022, a total of 67,439 children ages 0 to 17 in the U.S. died from all causes. Of these, just 710 (1%) listed Covid as a cause of death.[2]
Cherry-Picking Your Subjects
Now let’s take a look at the Characteristics of Participants. Here is where the study gets really sketchy. The authors write:
“Between May 30 and October 25, 2021, a total of 1376 eligible case patients and controls underwent screening; of these patients, 154 were excluded.”
Since the number of adolescents excluded is large enough to affect the results, why were they excluded? The authors tell us that eight adolescents were dropped because this study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine – the only Covid shot that had been authorized for this age group. These eight youths had been injected [illegally] with a Moderna or Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.
Two other adolescents were excluded because their vaccination status could not be determined.
Fair enough. That still leaves 144 adolescents – more than 10 percent of the total number of hospitalized youths – who had been screened for this study but were dropped. Why?
The authors describe each type of exclusion:
· 35 adolescents who had received their first dose of Pfizer vaccine fewer than 14 days before illness onset were excluded from the study
My Take: This one is a major red flag. It says that 35 adolescents who were screened for the study had been admitted to the hospital within 14 days of their first shot. All 35 were completely excluded from the final study results. These adolescents by any fair definition were all partially vaccinated, and the study includes an analysis of a subset of adolescents who were partially vaccinated. However, for this study the authors arbitrarily defined “partially vaccinated” as having received only one dose of vaccine more than 14 days before illness onset or having received a second dose fewer than 14 days before illness onset. “Patients who had received only one dose less than 14 days before illness onset were excluded from the analysis.”
The authors’ excuse for dropping these adolescents is that Pfizer and the CDC do not count individuals as being even partially vaccinated during the two-week period following their first dose. Yet, we know that this two-week period has been demonstrated in adults to be precisely the period in which vaccinated individuals are not only highly vulnerable to contracting severe Covid (due to temporary immune suppression from the vaccine) but also most likely to suffer a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine. The CDC and vaccine makers obviously have a strong desire to hide any health problems that occur during this vulnerable period.
Did any of these 35 adolescents who were hospitalized within 14 days of their first shot contract Covid and become seriously ill? Were any of them hospitalized due to a serious adverse reaction, such as myocarditis, from the vaccine? We don’t know, and the authors don’t tell us.
Any study of the safety or efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines that excludes patients who are hospitalized within 14 days of the first dose must necessarily be considered FATALLY FLAWED. When drug companies are testing a new drug, they don’t get to arbitrarily exclude from their analysis all health events that occur in the two weeks following the first dose.
Based on this single flaw alone, this study should never have been published. Unfortunately, since this is a strategy that the government and the vaccine makers are using to deliberately obscure both vaccine failure and vaccine injuries, we can expect to see much more of it.
· 23 adolescents were excluded who had received a diagnosis of MIS-C
My Take: This is another major red flag. According to the Mayo Clinic:
“Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious condition that appears to be linked to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Most children who become infected with the COVID-19 virus have only a mild illness. But in children who go on to develop MIS-C, some organs and tissues — such as the heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin or eyes — become severely inflamed.” [3]
Why would the authors deliberately exclude from a study purporting to show the effectiveness of a Covid-19 vaccine all adolescents who developed a serious condition that has been linked to Covid-19? No explanation for this decision was offered. Are vaccinated adolescents more susceptible to MIS-C than the unvaccinated? This study might have shed light on that critically important question, but it seems the authors did not want us to know. They included a chart in the Supplementary Appendix that appears deliberately designed to obscure the percentage of adolescents with MIS-C who, sometime during the four weeks preceding their hospitalization, may have received one dose of the Pfizer vax.
· 37 adolescents were excluded who had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test but were admitted for reasons other than Covid-19 symptoms
My Take: Regardless of their reason for admission, these adolescents had a positive Covid test result while hospitalized. They either developed Covid symptoms in the hospital, or they didn’t. If they did, they should have been included among the Covid cases. If they didn’t, the authors could have counted them as part of their “syndrome negative” control group. That group already included some adolescents who had a positive Covid test but did not have symptoms of Covid.
Why were none of these youths included in the results? Did some who were vaccinated contract Covid while hospitalized for other reasons? This is not the story that the CDC would have wanted to tell, which may help explain why the authors decided to exclude the entire group.
· 41 hospitalized adolescents were excluded because they were admitted to the hospital in May or June “when vaccination coverage was low.”
My Take: The authors acknowledge that vaccine uptake for this age group had only reached an average of 20 percent nationwide by July 1, the date they selected for the official start of their study. The vast majority – 76 percent – of hospitalized teens (Cases and Controls) in their final sample were not fully vaccinated. There was no reason to exclude any adolescents who had been hospitalized and screened for the study in May or June, regardless of their vaccination status, unless excluding them somehow helped to support the story that the authors were trying to tell. Did some of the vaccinated adolescents in this group contract Covid? Did they suffer poor health outcomes? We don’t know.
· 8 were excluded who had undergone SARS-CoV-2 testing more than 10 days after illness onset or more than 72 hours after hospitalization
My Take: While the chances of getting a false negative on a PCR test could be considered excessively high ten days after illness onset, a test administered more than 72 hours after hospitalization actually might fall within the optimal window for getting an accurate test result. It depends on how many days following illness onset the adolescent was hospitalized. Once again, this exclusionary criterion seems arbitrary. It may have been adopted as a way to omit the data from some vaccinated youths who became sick with Covid.
The exclusion of these 144 hospitalized adolescents, leaving us with no information about their vaccination status (beyond the 35 who we are told received one dose) or health outcomes, renders this entire study invalid. The authors simply dropped too many youths for arbitrary reasons. Omitting their data could have skewed the results in favor of the story the CDC-sponsored authors likely wanted to tell – that the Pfizer vaccine prevents adolescents from becoming seriously ill with Covid.
Other Sins of Omission
Beyond the arbitrary exclusion of so many hospitalized youths, the study omitted other key data:
336 adolescents in this sample were fully or partially vaccinated and were hospitalized for an illness other than Covid. No further information is available about any of these youths. Were some of them hospitalized due to vaccine injuries, including myocarditis? This critical question was not answered, presumably because the stated purpose of this study was only to assess the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine at preventing hospitalization for Covid. However, if adolescents who are vaccinated are more likely to survive Covid but are also more likely to succumb to illnesses from other causes, the public has a right to know. Parents in particular must be informed of the tradeoffs they are making when they allow their children to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, just as they have a right to know that many children today who receive the MMR and DTaP vaccines may be trading a few weeks of measles and whooping cough for a lifetime of autism.
At least 70 percent of the Cases (youths sick with Covid) and Controls (youths sick with other illnesses) in this sample suffered from underlying illnesses. Among the 126 unvaccinated youths who required some form of life support and had a positive Covid test plus Covid symptoms, how many required life support because of Covid and how many required life support for their underlying illness? Even CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted in a recent interview that multiple comorbidities are the norm among the vaccinated who die from Covid.[4] The same is true for the unvaccinated, although for obvious reasons she couldn’t say that.[5] The authors of this study acknowledged that comorbidities were common among youths in this sample but then conveniently avoided any data analysis that could have helped shed light on how those comorbidities affected the course of their illnesses.
In conclusion, this study as published is fatally flawed. Parents should not rely upon it in deciding whether to vaccinate their adolescents. Too many hospitalized youths were arbitrarily excluded. The published study also omitted other key data.
The exclusion of youths who were hospitalized within 14 days of their first dose of Pfizer vaccine is a tell-tale sign of a coverup. There was no reason for the authors to exclude these youths from their analysis of the “partially vaccinated,” since by definition they were partially vaccinated.
Alex Berenson is among those who have pointed to a mountain of evidence from the U.S. and other countries showing a dramatic increase in Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths following the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.[6] Belgium virologist Geert Vanden Bossche, an outspoken critic of the Covid mass vaccination campaigns, addressed this very issue in an interview last spring. He said that the risk of contracting Covid following the first dose of a Covid vaccine is elevated because vaccinal antibodies at this stage are suboptimal but are nonetheless able to outcompete your body’s Natural Killer cells. For this reason, he argued, if we’re going to use these vaccines, everyone should be placed in strict quarantine between their first and second doses.
Many government and white-collar workers might have welcomed such a requirement as yet another opportunity to take paid vacation during the pandemic. However, it would have been a non-starter for most working-class people, which may be why the CDC and vaccine makers have never mentioned it.
The Study They Will Never Allow
Obviously, this is not the type of study that any true scientist would design to evaluate the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine. That study would follow a large number (i.e. millions) of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated adolescents over a period of many months and would document all significant heath events.
Such as study most certainly could be done, combining basic research techniques to determine vaccination status with claims data from Medicaid or any major insurance company. However, if the government, the vaccine makers, and the medical establishment have their way, we are unlikely ever to see a real Covid-19 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study, just as we have yet to see a large-scale study comparing health and developmental outcomes in children who do and do not receive the CDC-recommended childhood vaccines. One need not be a rocket scientist to guess the reason for that. Even a lowly elementary school teacher like myself can figure that one out.
The Fall of a Giant
Finally, one cannot ignore the role of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in agreeing to publish this flawed study. For decades NEJM was viewed as one of the world’s leading medical journals. However, like so much of the American medical establishment, NEJM ripped off its mask during this pandemic and revealed itself to be little more than paid propaganda for the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies.
Among NEJM’s most noteworthy Covid debacles has been the publication of a study last spring on Covid-related heart risks. That study relied upon a large patient database from a company called Surgisphere that apparently no one had ever heard of.[7] The data subsequently were unable to be validated, and the study was retracted. [8]
NEJM also published a study last summer claiming to show that the Covid vaccines were safe for use in pregnant women. That study, sponsored by the FDA and CDC, actually revealed just the opposite. A vague correction was issued, but the article was never retracted.[9] [10]
The Editor-in-Chief of NEJM is Dr. Eric Rubin, who sits on the FDA committee that voted to authorize the use of the Pfizer vaccine in children. He is the doctor who famously said during that hearing, “We're never going to learn how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” [11]
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[1] Effectiveness of BNT162b2 Vaccine against Critical Covid-19 in Adolescents | NEJM
[2] Provisional COVID-19 Deaths by Sex and Age | Data | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov)
[3] Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and COVID-19 - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
[4] CDC admits COVID-19 isn’t a threat to the vast majority of people | Washington Examiner
[5] Walensky Dodges on How Many U.S. Covid Deaths Are Actually Caused by Covid (yahoo.com)
[6] The government of Alberta says you are not allowed to see dis information (substack.com)
[7] Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19 | NEJM
[8] Retraction: Cardiovascular Disease, Drug Therapy, and Mortality in Covid-19. N Engl J Med. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2007621. | NEJM
[9] Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons | NEJM
[10] Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons | NEJM
[11] Drug Companies Hide Covid-19 Vaccine Injuries, Scientist Tells FDA (substack.com)
Fantastic work here! 🙌
Wonderful, thorough analysis. Will share. Thank you. Unfortunately, many of these studies seem to exist only for the memorable, statistical soundbite that will end up being echoed by journalists and their readers who never even looked at the original study.