French Study on mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Finds a Drop in Severe COVID—and No Increase in Deaths

A few years before he took over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called COVID-19 shots the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” More recently, various anti-vaccination activists have been claiming that the mRNA vaccines are causing a turbo-cancer epidemic.

A huge new French study in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network deflates those claims and confirms the safety and efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The researchers followed 22.7 million vaccinated individuals and 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals for nearly four years. They found not only that vaccinated people have a 74 percent lower risk of death from severe COVID-19, but also that those individuals have a lower risk of death, period. Specifically, people who received the shots have a 25 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality.

As for the turbo-cancer claims, the researchers report that the incidence of tumors among vaccinated adults is 769 per million. For the unvaccinated, the rate is versus 853 per million. In other words, vaccinated adults were about 15 percent less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than those were unvaccinated.

The researchers sought to control for various confounders, such as a healthy-vaccinee effect, where healthier individuals are more likely to opt for vaccination, or a frailty-related bias, where those in poorer health may avoid it. They also note that vaccinated individuals in their study were generally older and tended to have more co-morbidities, such as obesity and chronic illnesses, which would usually be associated with an increased risk of dying. (The different results, they note, might be partially explained by the fact that vaccinated individuals tend to be more socioeconomically advantaged.)

“This study helps to put an end to the misinformation spread about mRNA vaccines,” the study’s lead author, Mahmoud Zureik, told Le Monde. “Providing data on the absence of long-term risks helps strengthen confidence in these vaccines, which will be developed for other viruses and diseases.”

Their results should indeed strengthen confidence. But Kennedy, who has been shifting research dollars to purportedly “safer” vaccines, will likely ignore it.

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