There's a bit of funny business going on with the counts. Much like death counts are 'with covid' not 'because of covid' even though they're widely accepted as covid deaths (and the 3 most prevalent comorbidities are the three largest causes of death - each individually surpassing covid, including old age which has a 100% success rate...). What's happening with breakthrough is they aren't asking patients with symptoms if they are vaccinated.
It's gotten so bad in Israel they're now 'reclassifying' everyone with < 3 jabs as unvaccinated. I assure you that's not because the vaccines are wildly effective, or just happen to only last the summer when all caronavirusses recede as they have for the last century we've been studying them. Some more info:
Here's pfizer's phase 3 trial results: Trial results
Here's the FDA approval letter: Approval Letter
In data science there's a concept of statistical significance - when you have a lot of it you use it to prove your case. In December we'd just completed a trial with 44,000 people, 21,700 roughly in the control group and vaccinated group. Both had a 99%+ success rate. Again, the placebo group was '99% effective' against covid infection too - wasn't reported, it's rawly shared in both documents. 170 total cases - no statistical significance against a population of 380 million. The FDA approval last week uses the exact same data, although > 150M Americans have been vaccinated. I assure you, that's not because the data we're getting on vaccinated Americans is overwhelmingly positive, that'd be a much easier way to win public support.
Instead, we have an FDA approval letter - celebrated wall to wall as an indication of vaccine efficacy - that lists a handful of serious side effects that need 2-3 years to be studied before the drug can be mas marketed. Emergency authorization is still in effect, explicitly written because there IS NOT an FDA approved treatment available at this time. Again, FDA approval for Pfizer = Moderna, J&J, Astrazenica off the shelf - that hasn't happened.
Again - if it works, say it works, show the data. What's actually happening is things are getting worse, they're showing no data, and misleading the public about why things are getting worse. In reality, this is new tech, that wasn't approved for the last 15 years because it was so dangerous. And if it were about saving lives we'd be talking about natural immunity - which has worked for the last 4 billion years, and other treatments. Instead we only talk about vaccines - more effective if your primary focus is making a buck. We don't have good data to support success rate, which is why we get tortured language from the higher ups and media, and reliably the goal posts for 'success' move about every 3-4 months, in time for the next flu season.
Try to find an RCT study (either now or at any time over the last 5 years) that:
- Masks work
- mRNA vaccines are more effective than natural immunity
- mRNA vaccines are safe for pregnant women (NIH started their study last month, to be completed in 2024 - good thing we haven't been mass vaccinating pregnant women)
- mRNA vaccines are safe to administer: no other vaccine in history has been approved or left on the shelf with > 1000 deaths attributed to it, even in an emergency. Check out the numbers these two are posting
Disclaimer: I'm clearly a nut and read too much about this stuff. I'm also fanatical about my health, I got into all this because they asked us to wear masks while exercising in the Gym where I live, which, like above, there's 0 evidence that young healthy people transmit the virus in the gym. And I got COVID. One of the worst sicknesses of my life. So by no means do I think it's not real. It's just grossly exaggerated, and these vaccines are not what they're sold as. It's much easier to show your solution works than what these guys are doing, please start asking questions, esp if you're thinking about shot 3.
I don't think there is some mass conspiracy going on with death counts. Hospitals reported deaths "with" COVID because hospitals (at least in the U.S.) got extra funding for patients "with" COVID, regardless of cause of death. How the media reports this is another story. I don't think hospitals themselves were doing anything nefarious (unless they were lying about the patients actually having COVID).
I can only speak with confidence on numbers where I live. Hospitalized COVID patients are 90+% unvaccinated (presumably that means not fully vaccinated but that would be 2 doses of Moderna, 2 doses of Pfizer or 1 dose of Johnson and Johnson the way things are currently counted here). In Israel, even though hospitalizations and breakthrough cases have gone up, fewer vaccinated people are dying on a percentage basis.
Regarding the vaccine study, I'm not sure you are quoting things correctly or drawing the correct conclusions (though I could be wrong too). Here is the key paragraph from study you linked:
"Among 36,523 participants who had no evidence of existing or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection by the time of the immunizations, there were 170 cases of COVID-19 observed with onset at least 7 days after the second dose; 8 cases occurred in vaccine recipients, and 162 in placebo recipients, corresponding to 95.0% vaccine efficacy (95% credible interval [CI, 90.3, 97.6]). Among participants with and without evidence of prior SARS CoV-2 infection, there were 9 cases of COVID-19 among vaccine recipients and 169 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 94.6% vaccine efficacy (95% CI [89.9, 97.3])."
The percentage of people who didn't contract COVID is not the same as the efficacy. Efficacy isn't just about how many people get COVID vs. how many don't. It's by what percent the vaccine eliminates the risk of contracting COVID. To figure that out, you have to compare against the placebo. An efficacy of 95% is akin to saying you have a 95% less of a chance of contracting COVID with the vaccine than with placebo. There is also another efficacy number that is by what percent the vaccine prevents serious outcomes (things like hospitalization and death). I'm not sure that was included in this study but typically this number is higher. I would have to refresh my memory on p values, etc. and know a bit more about the study to say for certain, but the difference looks statistically significant to me. It really comes down to what the confidence interval is (which I believe is +/- 5% if I am reading things correctly). To say the placebo had a 95% efficacy too would be incorrect. It's efficacy would be negative (approximately -95%) vs. vaccinated and 0 vs. those outside the group (estimated of course, give or take the margin of error). Having said all this, the efficacy is probably less against the delta variant and probably drops over time (hence boosters). But efficacy against serious outcomes seems to be quite a bit higher. Also keep in mind that this study is over a particular slice of time. As more time goes by, more people will be infected with the vaccine presumably preventing 95% of those infections among the vaccinated (with the caveats of protection possibly fading some degree over time and unknown effectiveness against new variants).
The above is my understanding of the study anyway, not saying I couldn't be wrong.
My guess is at the end of the day, the various COVID vaccines are more or less like the flu vaccine in that they are more effective against whatever variant(s) they were designed for and you will likely need one on a yearly basis (give or take). You have to weigh the risk of COVID vs. the risk of the vaccine. Right now, my opinion is that the risk of COVID is higher unless there are significant long term effects of the vaccine we just don't know about.
Regarding the RCT studies, I agree there is none that say masks work, at least in real world situations...at least none that I know of. However, I think the reason masks don't work is in large part because people don't use them correctly and don't engage in other preventative behavior. Using a mask won't help if you don't wash your hands regularly, if you touch your face frequently, if you don't wear it right, if you reuse it, if you take it on and off, if you wear it below your nose, if you have facial hair, etc. Also, I think the common surgical and other disposable paper masks and cloth coverings people wear are probably not sufficient. They may not block enough and don't fit well. N95 (or others that are close like non-counterfeit KN95 masks) probably work a whole lot better because they typically fit better and filter better but even then, other personal habits are a big, big factor.
I don't think mRNA vaccines are more effective than natural immunity but I don't think that is the point. The point is that acquiring natural immunity may have a higher than acceptable risk of killing you or putting you in the hospital, or having other serious effects...and it seems likely at this point that both immunities fade, at least to some degree, with time. So even if you have had natural immunity, it doesn't mean that the vaccine is not beneficial.
I don't know if mRNA vaccines are safe for pregnant women but in the U.S. they have been recommending them and the data says that the antibodies are conferred to the fetus. I haven't heard of anything particularly negative coming from vaccinating pregnant women yet.
Death due to anaphylaxis alone is around 2-5 per million on average for an average vaccine. 173 million people have been vaccinated for COVID in the U.S. putting the expected deaths due to anaphylaxis (by my calculation) at up to 865. The other question is which vaccines are those deaths attributed to? There are three different ones used in the U.S. (Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson). Not all are even mRNA. VAERS reports nearly 7,000 deaths but it is unlikely ALL of those deaths were caused by a vaccine though it is probably reasonable to assume that most were. I didn't see a breakdown on the CDC page about which vaccine these were reported against but they did make a special note about the J&J vaccine so I got the impression that one was the worst...ironically, i don't believe that one is an mRNA vaccine but based on the same principle as the flu shot. In any case, the worst case scenario right now is that the vaccines collectively kill 0.0019% of their recipients whereas COVID kills 1.9% of recipients. That's somewhat misleading as I assume that is 1.9% of reported cases. The best study I found (based on random testing) indicated that 60% of cases went unreported. So using some math, the number I come up with is that COVID kills 0.65% of those it infects (but note that the number hospitalized and/or having serious or permanent side effects would be higher). 0.0019% sounds a lot better than 0.65% even before considering hospitalizations, etc. Even if you say that CDC reported deaths are exaggerated and cut them by half or even to 1/10th, the vaccine STILL looks pretty good.
One of the reasons vaccines are being pushed so hard is because of what the hospitals can handle. I know a couple of hospital workers and things are pretty bad. In one of them, the pre-op area was turned into a COVID ICU ward. Beds, ventilators, other equipment and even personnel are in short supply in many places. Hospitals aren't overwhelmed yet but they have been on edge for a long time now. Hospitals may be (for example) able to handle 0.1% of COVID contractors being hospitalized if there are 10 million cases but completely overwhelmed if there are 20 million cases, etc. This hasn't happened yet but there is still a real risk. No politician wants a disaster on their watch and I believe this is the biggest thing motivating the push for vaccination. As far as other nefarious motivations, I'm not sure they make sense to me. A tracking device? Everybody already carries a cell phone...even the homeless in most cases (and I checked...my arm was not magnetic after the first dose). To make money for Pfizer, etc.? Well, maybe, but this seems like a bad way to go about doing it. And they are already rich beyond belief...it's hard for me to see that as that much of a motivation to instigate all of this though I have no doubt they will make what money they can off of it. Population control? Well, it seems, really, really, really ineffective at that. What else? Now was the vaccine rushed out of fear? Maybe... but the best evidence so far indicates it is very safe and very effective (which isn't to say they are perfect).