People vaccinated with the COVID-19 boosters in 2023-2024 were more likely to get COVID-19 than their unvaccinated counterparts, according to a study published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n People vaccinated with the COVID-19 boosters in 2023-2024 were more likely to get COVID-19 than their unvaccinated counterparts, according to a study published last week in the\u00a0Annals of Internal Medicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n The study, conducted through the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA), analyzed data from VHA\u2019s comprehensive electronic health record system to compare outcomes between people who had received the booster and those who hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The researchers found that\u00a0vaccine<\/a>\u00a0efficacy against\u00a0COVID-19<\/a>\u00a0infection was -3.26%, indicating \u201ca statistically significant higher infection rate in vaccinated individuals compared to the unvaccinated control group,\u201d according to\u00a0Nicolas Hulscher<\/a>, who first reported the study on Substack.<\/p>\n They also found low and rapidly waning efficacy against hospitalization and death among those who had taken the vaccine.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings call for accelerated efforts to develop new vaccination strategies that could provide higher and more sustained protection in the current era of COVID-19,\u201d the researchers concluded.<\/p>\n The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the boosters before clinical trials for efficacy were conducted The researchers said it is \u201cimpossible to conduct such trials and still make the vaccine available\u201d in time for respiratory virus season when cases are likely to surge.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was, therefore, uncertain how much additional protection the vaccine would provide in a population which by then had substantial levels of natural immunity due to prior infections and vaccine-induced immunity due to prior vaccinations and potential immune imprinting,\u201d and in the context of evolving vaccine variants, they wrote.<\/p>\n Real-world studies of vaccine efficacy are needed to understand if the boosters are effective.<\/p>\n The authors analyzed the VHA electronic health record data system, which has data on over 9 million veterans, most of whom are older and have \u201ca high burden of underlying medical conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n They identified people in the database who had taken the boosters and compared their outcomes with similar people who had not. They analyzed data collected between Oct. 2, 2023, and Jan. 3, 2024.<\/p>\n The authors identified approximately 590,000 people out of the 9 million records who took the XBB.1.5 booster. The researchers then used a statistical algorithm to choose the same number of people from the unvaccinated cohort who they thought best matched the vaccinated cohort according to measured variables using a statistical algorithm.<\/p>\n Those who chose to get vaccinated were older and chronically sicker. On average, they were 7.1 years older, 46.8% more likely to have chronic kidney disease, 41.9% more likely to have diabetes, 45.1% more likely to have chronic heart disease, 65.3% more likely to have chronic heart failure, 38.3% more likely to have chronic lung disease, 36.0% more likely to suffer from dementia.<\/p>\n They had more comorbidities, a higher\u00a0Care Assessment Need score<\/a>\u00a0for mortality, more primary care encounters in the last two years, more recent COVID-19 vaccinations, more recent COVID-19 infections, and were 74.1% more likely to have received an immunosuppressive or cancer treatment within the last year.<\/p>\n Commenting on the methodology,\u00a0Children\u2019s Health Defense<\/a>\u00a0Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said, \u201cI would not cry foul, but it would certainly have strengthened their paper with trivial effort to also include the\u00a0health<\/a>\u00a0outcomes for the unmatched group\u201d \u2014 meaning the rest of the unvaccinated cohort in the records.<\/p>\n Jablonowski said it also would have strengthened the paper if the authors had included the rate of non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infections, hospitalizations and deaths among the groups studied.<\/p>\n \u201cThe authors would argue that such measurements are outside the scope of vaccine effectiveness, and they would be correct,\u201d Jablonowski said. \u201cThe measurements are however squarely within the scope of vaccine safety.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors found that over a mean follow-up of 176 days, vaccine efficacy was -3.26 against SARS-CoV-2 infection, 16.64% against SARS-CoV-2-associated hospitalization and 26.61% against SARS-CoV-2-associated death. They noted the \u201crelatively low\u201d efficacy against hospitalization and death \u201cdeclined rapidly over time.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors did not explain why efficacy may have been negative.<\/p>\n There are two reasons vaccine efficacy turns negative, according to Jablonowski. He said:<\/p>\n \u201cEither the vaccinated group is getting more unhealthy, or the unvaccinated group is getting healthier. The vaccine could diminish the immune system, allowing for an infection to take hold of the host more than in an unvaccinated person. The unvaccinated comparator group acquires the infection and gains natural immunity, which, in every known instance, is more protective than vaccine-induced immunity.<\/p>\n \u201cIn either scenario, it is preposterous to recommend any medical intervention that will leave a person worse off. That is the opposite of medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n Hulscher noted the paper\u2019s findings corroborate five other peer-reviewed studies demonstrating negative efficacy of the COVID-19\u00a0vaccines<\/a>.<\/p>\n A paper published in\u00a0Cureus<\/a>\u00a0in December 2024 found that vaccinated people had an 85% greater chance of developing COVID-19 infection relative to their unvaccinated peers. Another study of people in Iceland during the Omicron wave published in\u00a0JAMA Network Open<\/a>\u00a0in 2022 the odds of reinfection were 42% higher for those who received two or more doses compared to those with one dose or less.<\/p>\n A paper published in\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a>\u00a0in June 2022 reported that the effectiveness of both Pfizer and Moderna against Omicron strains waned to negative efficacy after one to three months, Hulscher wrote.<\/p>\n A\u00a02023 Cleveland Clinic study<\/a>\u00a0found the risk of COVID-19 infection increased with the number of vaccine doses, and a\u00a0Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study<\/a>\u00a0found that vaccinated children without prior infection were more likely to get infected and to develop symptomatic COVID-19 than their unvaccinated counterparts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time for these infection-promoting genetic injections to be immediately removed from global markets,\u201d Hulscher wrote.<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n![\"covid](\"https:\/\/childrenshealthdefense.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/covid-vaccine-boosters-infection-feature-800x417.jpg\")
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