Those Who Had Boosters More Likely To Get Covid Than The Unjabbed

Those who had the Covid-19 booster jabs in 2023-2024 were more likely to get covid than those who were unvaccinated, according to a new study.

The study published by the Annals of Internal Medicine, was conducted through the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Data from VHA’s comprehensive electronic health record system was analyzed to compare outcomes between people who had received the booster and those who hadn’t.

The Defender reports: The researchers found that vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 infection was -3.26%, indicating “a statistically significant higher infection rate in vaccinated individuals compared to the unvaccinated control group,” according to Nicolas Hulscher, who first reported the study on Substack.

They also found low and rapidly waning efficacy against hospitalization and death among those who had taken the vaccine.

“Our 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,” the researchers concluded.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the boosters before clinical trials for efficacy were conducted The researchers said it is “impossible to conduct such trials and still make the vaccine available” in time for respiratory virus season when cases are likely to surge.

“It 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,” and in the context of evolving vaccine variants, they wrote.

Real-world studies of vaccine efficacy are needed to understand if the boosters are effective.

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 “a high burden of underlying medical conditions.”

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.

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.

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.

They had more comorbidities, a higher Care Assessment Need score for 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.

Commenting on the methodology, Children’s Health Defense Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said, “I would not cry foul, but it would certainly have strengthened their paper with trivial effort to also include the health outcomes for the unmatched group” — meaning the rest of the unvaccinated cohort in the records.

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.

“The authors would argue that such measurements are outside the scope of vaccine effectiveness, and they would be correct,” Jablonowski said. “The measurements are however squarely within the scope of vaccine safety.”

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 “relatively low” efficacy against hospitalization and death “declined rapidly over time.”

The authors did not explain why efficacy may have been negative.