What’s the story with this Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine? It’s literally carpet bombed the American (and corporate European) media. It promises 90% effectiveness as if it’s a triumph. But there’s a mismatch between what is being reported and what is actually in the study results. Something fishy is going on here.

Headlines proclaiming the big success of this vaccine are ubiquitous. Write-ups virtually cut and paste across all corporate media. It’s the same angle repeated a thousand times: 90% effective – what a triumph, millions of doses ready before year’s end, billions of dollars next year, awaiting FDA fast track approval, Pfizer and BioNTech stock up 20% Friday morning, Trump trumpets Operation Warp Speed, Biden biding adeptly in the binal benefaction of election and injection…

Leaving aside questions of vaccine announcement timing or insider trading or global news media circle jerks, NOT A SINGLE article of the 200+ I read addressed ANY the following:

  • Study involved 43,538 participants, 42% non-white, all “healthy” between 18 and 83 years old. Annoucnement making headlines says it’s 90% effective. 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19 from the 43,538 initial participants and 38,955 who made it to the end-point of this interim study (November 9th 2020). Clinical trial continues until final analysis at 164 confirmed cases.
  • Reading the published study and data, the interim study published eventually reveals the sample size reported on was only “healthy” people under the age of 55 with no severe risk of complications or immuno-compromisation. No old folks. No unhealthy folks.
  • The study didn’t measure T-cells before vaccination (i.e. so people could’ve been already post-COVID immune) or be in other ways atypical. This matters with such a tiny sample size.
  • Given the vaccine’s first dose was given only to people with NO COVID-19, 90% of participants had no COVID-19 by the end of the interim study, therefore 10% had COVID-19 at the end-point but didn’t have it at the start.
  • Surely the natural immune system per the millions across the world who’ve contracted Coronavirus has itself a better than 90% cure rate, within a month? Wouldn’t the vaccine need to show it’s beating the natural ‘recovery rate’ for the vaccinated demographic? It’s no better than placebo otherwise.
  • If this is a vaccine against coronavirus, doesn’t this study also suggest it wasn’t effective at blocking COVID-19 for at least 10% of the participants? Isn’t that a terrible ratio?
  • The sample size is small – only a few dozen in each country – but if the study people in the US or Germany were catching coronavirus at a rate consistent with the normal rates of their local community, what benefit has the vaccine provided?
  • This is an interim study. The full study won’t be out for another month or two.
  • Is 94 people a credible study size, especially given the above results, to base spending billions of dollars and circulating millions of vaccine doses?

I’m not a medical professional so I could be reading the data incorrectly. But none of the articles even began to answer these questions; or touched on what the numbers quoted did or didn’t mean. It’s all very suspect far as I’m concerned.

PDF

Press Release @​ https://investors.biontech.de/node/8686/pdf

Published Study Results @ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2814-7.pdf

NOTES

Announcement BioNTech / Pfizer interim results @​ https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-vaccine-candidate-against-covid-19

World Health Organisation – Vaccine Progress Report @​ https://www.who.int/news/item/24-08-2020-172-countries-and-multiple-candidate-vaccines-engaged-in-covid-19-vaccine-global-access-facility

Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society Summary @https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Germany funds BioNTech research @​ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/biontech-gets-445-million-in-german-funding-for-covid-vaccine

US and Europe advance purchasing Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine @​ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/u-s-and-europe-first-in-line-to-get-pfizer-covid-vaccine-doses

Operation Warp Speed blueprintg @​ https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/05/15/trump-administration-announces-framework-and-leadership-for-operation-warp-speed.html

American centralized vaccine study/distribution nexus @​ https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trials-network-test-covid-19-vaccines-other-prevention-tools

World Health Organization vaccine study/distribution nexus @​ https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax

OWS has selected three vaccine candidates to fund for Phase 3 trials: Moderna’s mRNA-1273, AstraZeneca/University of Oxford, Pfizer/BioNTech’s BNT162.

Advanced candidates from companies: Inovio, Moderna, CureVac, Institut Pasteur/Merck/Themis, AstraZeneca/University of Oxford, Novavax, University of Hong Kong, Clover Biopharmaceuticals, and University of Queensland/CSL are part of the COVAX initiative.​