Do COVID-19 Vaccines Reduce Risk of Death?

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is groundbreaking.

Background

Following the rollout of the various COVID-19 vaccines, many people have attempted to assess the associated harms and benefits.

However, these assessments have relied on either: COVID-specific data that is riddled with flaws, biases, and uncertainties; the voluntary Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) which also has unknown accuracy; or anecdotal or small-scale observations.

Since January 2021, I have remained sceptical of claims on all sides because I wanted to see mortality rates from all causes between comparable vaccinated and unvaccinated age groups. Such data would bypass the flaws associated with the sources described above, and would provide an overview of the impacts that the COVID vaccines are having on our population’s mortality rate, giving us a macroscopic understanding of their risk profile for different age groups.

On 20th December 2021, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published this data:

Deaths by vaccination status, England - Office for National Statistics

Findings

Here is a screenshot of the data, specifically from Table 7 in the “Deaths occurring between 1 January and 31 October 2021” edition of this dataset:

Figure 1: Screenshot of ONS data.

From this, we can calculate the age-standardised mortality rate from all causes per 100,000 person-years for each age group, averaged across each month, comparing the vaccinated with the unvaccinated.

The graph below shows the number of vaccinated deaths for every unvaccinated death, for each age group:

Figure 2: Graph showing the vaccinated deaths as a proportion of unvaccinated deaths, per age group.

This data suggests that, in general, the COVID vaccines may increase the risk of death from all causes for people below the age of 37 (approx.), but are beneficial for older age groups.

However, it is possible that the data is either still normalising over time, or being influenced by some other factor such as booster jabs, because the ratio of vaccinated deaths per unvaccinated death is trending towards 1 across all age groups:

Figure 3: Graph showing the vaccinated deaths as a proportion of unvaccinated deaths, over time, per age group.

The effect that seasons are likely to have is also unclear at this moment in time.

Subsequently, it is worth keeping an eye on this data to see how it changes over a longer period of time.

Other considerations

Comorbidities

People younger than 37 years old who have comorbidities that are linked to more severe COVID-19 infection (e.g. hypertension, obesity, respiratory or circulatory conditions) may benefit overall from the vaccine, while older people in good health may still find the vaccine to be detrimental.

Natural immunity

So far, studies have shown that natural immunity is long-lasting in the vast majority of people. In contrast, the efficacy of the vaccines has been shown to wane quickly over time, in terms of reducing both the probability and severity of infection.

In addition, many immunologists and evidence-based medical experts (including those involved in the development of some of the COVID vaccines) have confirmed that the vaccine is unlikely to provide significant immunological benefits if the patient already has natural immunity.

This seems to be a controversial topic, so it may be useful for me to acknowledge that I am aware of anecdotal cases of people testing positive for COVID on two distinct spells of illness. This includes both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.

Boosters

The data explored above does not consider the impacts of booster doses. Given that patients are expected to get a booster every 3–6 months, this may turn out to be a significant influencing factor regarding the risk profile of these vaccines.

Protecting others

Some argue that we should all be vaccinated since, in theory, these vaccines reduce the amount that COVID-19 can spread through a population. However, real world data shows no such reduction in regions or settings with an extremely high vaccination rate versus those with lower rates. The risk profile associated with these vaccines appears to be almost entirely linked to the patient, and not close contacts.

My thoughts

• This data provides a good indication of the risk profile associated with the vaccines, and it should be used alongside the other considerations that I touched on. Generally, it seems that young (under 40s), healthy people have little to benefit from getting the vaccine; the same can be said for those with natural immunity.
• The government and the mainstream media have done an appalling job in educating the general public on all things COVID, and in many cases have suppressed certain sides of the discussion in order to propagate outright lies with little consequence.
• Information should be presented as transparently and honestly as possible, so that people are empowered to make their own decisions.
• As I have already insinuated above, personal health choices should be based on the needs of specific individuals, guided by an informed risk-benefit analysis. Vaccine mandates violate this fundamental principle of modern healthcare.

A quick note on references

I haven’t provided references because they are mostly already included in previous research posts that I have published.

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Original picture by Anna Shvets via Pexels