re: UK All Cause Mortality Data by Vax Status

"In the Pfizer Phase 3 trial, there was a 40% increase in ACM in the vaccinated group. They killed an estimated 7 people for every person they saved from COVID!
In the Pfizer Phase 3 trial, there were a total of 21 deaths in the vaccine group and 15 deaths in the placebo group.

This 40% increase in the all-cause mortality in the trial (21/15=1.4) was of course dismissed as not statistically significant. While that is true, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to the number.

But now, based on the UK data, we know that the result in the Phase 3 trial wasn’t a statistical fluke. Not at all.

In fact, if we look at the risk benefit, we see that we saved 1 life from dying from COVID (1 COVID death in the treatment group vs. 2 COVID deaths in the placebo group= 1 life saved), but there were 7 excess non-COVID deaths (20 - 13).

So the Pfizer trial showed that for every person we saved from COVID, we killed 7 people. However the numbers were too small to place a high confidence in this point estimate.

However, I’d argue that Pfizer trial was a best case because:

The trial enrolled abnormally healthy people who died at a 10X lower rate than the population (there is a 1% US average death rate per year, yet there were just 15 deaths in the 22,000 placebo arm in 6 months which is a .1% death rate)

They were able to get rid of anyone who had a reaction to the first dose without counting them

The most important point though is that the Pfizer trial killed:save ratio of 7:1 and the ACM ratio of 1.4 is consistent with the hypothesis that the vaccine kills more people than it saves."