I don’t enjoy writing articles about controversial topics. As most of my subscribers and regular readers know, my primary goal for writing health articles here at Naturally at Home is to help people struggling with autoimmune disease and chronic illness. Not to start fires among people with differing schools of thought.

However, I have felt the need to write a post about the COVID-19 vaccine for a few months. Very few people are looking at the objective data about the COVID-19 vaccine, and instead, heated opinions are flying about the internet like shrapnel on a war-torn battlefield.

Every commentary I have seen resembles one of the following:

“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, and there are virtually no instances of anyone being harmed by it.”

or

“The COVID-19 vaccine is a conspiracy from Big Pharma to wipe out the world’s population and is the mark of the beast. People who get it are sheep who don’t do their research and are part of the antichrist system that is overtaking the US.”

Nobody – government organizations or individuals – is taking the objective data we have and presenting it in a neutral way so people can make an informed decision about whether or not to take the vaccine.

Many people who oppose the COVID-19 vaccine share memes instead of citing credible sources in their posts and aren’t doing their cause any favors.

So, the COVID-19 vaccine. Let’s talk about it.

First, let’s establish that this is a different scenario than ordinary pro-vaccine vs. anti-vaccine arguments.

Normally, anti-vaccine people believe that the additives in most vaccines are toxic because they enter the body in a way that the detoxification organs can’t rid the body of them effectively, and for that reason, vaccines cause more health problems than they cure. Or, anti-vaccine people have a religious objection to injecting the additives (such as non-kosher or non-halal animal products or aborted fetal cells) in their body. Often, anti-vaccine people have personally experienced a severe vaccine injury or have a close relative who has. They tend to believe that there are better ways to gain immunity from and protect against severe cases of disease, such as proper hygiene and supporting the body’s own immune system through a healthy lifestyle and targeted supplementation.

Pro-vaccine people typically believe that the additives in vaccines assist in the delivery mechanism of the inactivated viruses and are easily detoxified by the body. They believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated are a threat to public health, and that it’s important for the majority of people to be vaccinated to preserve herd immunity and protect the people with compromised immune systems who can’t get vaccinated. Pro-vaccine people also feel that good hygiene and a healthy lifestyle are important, but they believe that vaccination is the reason for the decrease in the spread of disease in the US.

The COVID-19 vaccine is another story. People who are ordinarily pro-vaccine are declining the COVID-19 vaccine, so we should take time to explore the reasons why. Let’s take a look at some data.

All numbers are referenced from the data available when this post was most recently updated – May 8, 2023.

Let’s start with the COVID-19 infection fatality rate.

I’m going to give the disclaimer here that all of the data below is subject to error and should be taken with a grain of salt. There may be people who contracted COVID-19 who weren’t tested, tested at home and didn’t report their positive result, or received a false negative result, as the rapid test has been shown to only have 63.5% sensitivity, and so they weren’t counted as cases. On the other hand, there may be people who were counted as cases who didn’t have COVID-19, but another virus or disease instead. There may be people who died from COVID-19 and weren’t reported, and people who were reported as dying from COVID-19 who actually died from something else. I know firsthand that it happens. My grandmother died from MRSA she contracted in the hospital and the hospital wrote the cause of her death as “unknown” on the paperwork. There may be people who reported mild adverse vaccine reactions to VAERS, and people who experienced severe vaccine reactions who did not report to VAERS at all. The infection mortality rate and vaccine injury rate vary based on age and preexisting health conditions, too. But. This is the data we have, so this is the data we’re going to analyze. Errors likely happen in both directions, which helps balance out the discrepancies.

Currently, the median infection fatality rate for COVID-19 is estimated at 0.27% (Ionadis, 2021). This means that out of a group of people infected with COVID-19, a median of 0.27% will die from the disease. Infection fatality rate is different from case fatality rate, which is the number of people who have died out of the government-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in a given location. However, infection fatality rate is most commonly associated with the mortality of an infectious disease, so that’s the most important figure to remember here.

1,099,264 people in the US have died from COVID-19 to date (USA Facts, 2023).

Let’s compare both of the above figures to the rate of severe vaccine injury.

1,014,086 people in the US have had a vaccine injury severe enough to prompt them to report it to VAERS, to date (CDC Wonder, 2023). If we divide that number by the 270,129,677 people in the US who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 (USA Facts, 2023), we get a 0.4% risk of severe vaccine injury.

According to that objective data, the overall risk of severe injury from the COVID-19 vaccine is nearly equal to and slightly greater than the risk of death from COVID-19. Both are low risks, but given the high volume of people who have contracted COVID-19 and received the vaccine, have adversely effected scores of individuals and families.

This is not to say by any means that a COVID-19 death is the same thing as a severe reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine. However, people are horrified by the number of COVID-19 deaths that have occurred in the US, and rightly so. Yet, the media on most platforms is promoting the message that there are virtually no instances of adverse reactions to the COVID-19, when in reality the number of such instances is nearly equal to that of COVID-19 deaths. Based on the data, the message the media is generally promoting cannot be true.

Next, let’s go over rates of infection in the US.

99,074,662 people in the US have been reported as having contracted COVID-19, to date (USA Facts, 2023). Compared to the current population of 334,727,740 and counting (United States Census Bureau, 2023), approximately 30% of people in the US have contracted COVID-19. This number may be skewed, however, because at home tests are widely available and positive results may not be reported to the CDC.

Prior to the surge of the Omicron variant, government news sources claimed that under 1% of people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine are still contracting COVID-19 (VanCleave, 2021).

Given the data we have gathered on COVID-19 breakthrough cases since then, there appears to be a slight reduction in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among vaccinated individuals compared to the unvaccinated, but it is nowhere the reduction that was initially hoped for or believed (MN Department of Health, 2023).

Instead of claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine prevents infection, health authorities now claim vaccinated people experience milder cases and fewer hospitalizations. However, they don’t tend to back these claims with concrete data, because there isn’t clear data to present.

Given the data above, it appears the COVID-19 vaccine may reduce the rate and severity of infection in the US. However, this has to be taken with the disclaimer that most COVID-19 cases are already mild and only a median of 0.27% lead to death (Ionadis, 2021).

Next, let’s talk about how quickly the COVID-19 vaccines were produced and released.

According to The History of Vaccines (2018), vaccine development is a lengthy and complicated process that takes 10-15 years. In contrast, the COVID-19 vaccines were produced and released in a matter of months due to acceleration through Operation Warp Speed and emergency authorization by the FDA (Caldwell, 2021). To date, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are FDA approved (Billingsley, 2022) and all of them, including Pfizer and Moderna, are still undergoing clinical or pre-clinical trials (Lai et al., 2021).

By court order, the FDA must now release 55k pages of COVID-19 vaccine data each month until all of the data has been released. Some of the data has presented new concerns about vaccine safety to the public (Daily Briefing, 2022).

Regardless of whether or not you think this is problematic, the outcome is that we don’t know what the (positive or negative) effects of the COVID-19 vaccines will be years or decades from now. This is a huge factor in why a lot of pro-vaccine people are not getting the COVID-19 vaccine at this time.

Next, let’s look at the COVID-19 vaccine data available for people with compromised immune systems.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021) states that people with autoimmune disease, a weakened immune system, and inflammatory immune system disease should be aware that no data is currently available on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for people with a compromised immune system. *In October, 2021 the CDC removed this warning, though there are still no published study results on the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine on people with compromised immune systems.

Most clinical trials for people with compromised immune systems are still in the early stages and many are still inactive and accepting volunteers (Clinical Trials, 2023). *May 8, 2023 update: There are now fifteen completed studies on the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine on people with chronic illness and autoimmune disease, but the results are not included in the listings as of now. The rest of the studies (currently 34) are still inactive and recruiting or in the early stages.

It’s also important to know that national vaccine injuries and failures have occurred before in the US.

According to Smith (2020), the LYMErix Lyme Disease vaccine was found to initiate autoimmune reactions because it was made from the Outer Surface Protein (OSP) A of the Borrelia Burgdorferi bacteria. Studies showed that OSPA can cross react with the gene HLA-DR4 gene, which 20-30% of the population has. This causes the immune system to attack the body’s own HLA-DR4 protein, assuming it is an infectious bacteria. A significant percentage of people who received the Lyme Disease vaccine complained that they developed symptoms of Lyme Disease after getting vaccinated. The Lyme Disease vaccine was subsequently withdrawn from the market (Smith, 2020).

The first polio vaccine caused 40,000 cases of Polio and left a significant number of children paralyzed and dead (Fitzpatrick, 2006).

This doesn’t mean the COVID-19 vaccine is failing or will fail, but it does mean that vaccine failures have occurred in history and it is not out of the realm of possibilities for a vaccine failure to happen again.

Finally, let’s talk about the criminal history of two of the largest COVID-19 vaccine producers in the US, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson.

In 2009, Pfizer plead guilty to the crime of misrepresenting several of their drugs and paying compliant physicians to prescribe those drugs to their patients. They paid the largest health care fraud settlement in US history as punishment, $2.3 billion (Department 0f Justice: Office of Public Affairs, 2014).

In 2013, Johnson and Johnson was punished with a fine of $2.2 billion for committing the same type of crime as Pfizer (Department of Justice: Office of Public Affairs, 2014).

Now, I don’t think this is indicative of a “Big Pharma” conspiracy. We live in a society where nearly everyone is motivated by making a profit. Nobody would start a company or have a job if they weren’t being paid for their work. Most people, however, realize they must conform to a set of legal, ethical, and moral standards if they want to succeed in their business or job and continue to make a profit. Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson did not.

The key takeaway here is that drug companies like Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson don’t have your best interest in mind. Their primary motivation is to make a profit on their products without much concern for ethics, and they have proven that with their criminal history.

If you think about it, the government allowing Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson to continue producing drugs is akin to a bank allowing a convicted robber to work as a bank teller or an elementary school allowing a convicted sex offender to teach third grade. Either scenario would be horribly corrupt.

So, should you get the COVID-19 vaccine?

The answer to that question is, I can’t tell you and neither should you try to tell anyone else.

Based on the data I shared above, it’s apparent that the COVID-19 vaccine is not a black and white issue. The data does show that it may be reducing the COVID-19 infection rate, but there are also numerous valid reasons not to get the vaccine.

A person without a history of vaccine injury or compromised immune system who has loved ones who were hospitalized or died from COVID-19 may make a very different decision from a person with a history of vaccine injury or compromised immune system who does not have loved ones who were hospitalized or died from COVID-19.

Some people have a healthy immune system and don’t know anybody who has suffered complications or death from COVID-19. Other people have compromised immune systems, a history of vaccine injury, and have personally experienced a severe case of COVID-19 or have loved ones who did. It’s important to keep in mind that not everyone has the same background as you.

For me, the main takeaway of the COVID-19 vaccine is to make an informed decision based on the available data and to have compassion on people who did not make the same decision.

The potential complications of COVID-19 are frightening. I’ve experienced hospitalization and long Covid myself (you can read more here). Because of COVID-19, I now have POTS, Autoimmune Encephalitis/PANS, and a weakened immune system – chronic conditions I didn’t have before.

The data shows that the potential complications of the COVID-19 vaccine are frightening, too.

It is true that we can still support our immune function with a healthy lifestyle and targeted supplementation, and that we can practice good hygiene, social distancing, and wear N95 respirators. For some, though, the unknown is terrifying even with the protection measures available to us.

I would encourage everyone reading this to treat others with kindness during this trying time. Everyone is having to make a difficult decision, and many are having to make the most difficult decision of their lives because no choice has benefits that outweigh the risks.

I’ll leave you with a link to this YouTube video, where Dr. Zubin Damania discusses COVID-19 topics with Dr. Mike – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVjLT3pinW0. I like Dr. Damania’s point that rather than focusing on who does or doesn’t take the vaccine, we should focus on improving treatment options for people who do get COVID-19, to reduce the rates of complication and death.

References

Ionadis, J. (2021). “Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data”. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 99(1), 19-33 F.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/

USA Facts. (2023, May 8). US COVID-19 cases and deaths by state. USA Facts.
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map

MN Department of Health. (2023, May 4). COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough data. MN Department of Health. https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html

United States Census Bureau. (2023, May 8). US and world population clock. United States Census Bureau.
https://www.census.gov/popclock/

USA Facts. (2023, May 8). US Coronavirus vaccine tracker. USA Facts.
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/

CDC Wonder. (2023, May 8). The vaccine adverse event reporting system results. CDC Wonder.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

The History of Vaccines (2018, January 17). Vaccine development, testing, and regulation. The History of Vaccines.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation

Caldwell, A. (2021, February 3). How were researchers able to develop COVID-19 vaccines so quickly? University of Chicago Medicine.
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-were-researchers-able-develop-covid-19-vaccines-so-quickly

Lai, C. C., Chen, I. T., Chao, C. M., Lee, P. I., Ko, W. C., & Hsueh, P. R. (2021). COVID-19 vaccines: concerns beyond protective efficacy and safety. Expert review of vaccines, 20(8), 1013–1025.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34180347/

Billingsley, A. (2022, July 14). FDA COVID-19 Vaccine Approval: Live Updates on Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and More. GoodRx Health. https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/covid-19/fda-covid-19-vaccine-approval-updates

Daily Briefing. (2022, March 9). Why FDA is releasing 55K pages of Covid-19 vaccine data every month. Advisory Board. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2022/03/09/fda-data

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021, September 1). COVID-19 vaccines for people with underlying medical conditions. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/underlying-conditions.html

Clinical Trials. (2023, May 8). Vaccine, Autoimmune | COVID-19. U.S. National Library of Medicine.
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=COVID-19&term=Vaccine%2C+Autoimmune&cntry=&state=&city=&dist=&Search=Search

VanCleave, K. (2021, August 2). Breakthrough COVID-19 cases, how common are they? WPTA21.
https://wpta21.com/2021/08/02/breakthrough-covid-19-cases-how-common-are-they/

Department of Justice: Office of Public Affairs. (2014, September 15). Justice department announces largest health care fraud settlement in its history. The United States Department of Justice.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history

Department of Justice: Office of Public Affairs. (2014, October 22). Johnson & Johnson to pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil investigations. The United States Department of Justice.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/johnson-johnson-pay-more-22-billion-resolve-criminal-and-civil-investigations

Smith, P. (2020). How the LYMErix Lyme Disease vaccine was pulled from the market. Lyme Times.
https://www.lymedisease.org/members/lyme-times/special-issues/tick-borne-disease/lymerix-lyme-disease-vaccine/

Fitzpatrick, M. (2006). The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to a Growing Vaccine Crisis. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 99(3), 156.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/