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Do COVID Shots Increase Your Risk of Getting COVID?

Why do some people think that COVID shots increase your risk of getting COVID?

Data from Santa Clara County doesn't actually show that COVID shots increase your risk of getting COVID. Whoops!
Data from Santa Clara County doesn’t actually show that COVID shots increase your risk of getting COVID. Whoops!

The usual suspects…

Do COVID Shots Increase Your Risk of Getting COVID?

Instead of his usual survey shenanigans, this time, Steve Kirsch demonstrates how anti-vaccine folks can abuse FOIA requests

Apparently, Steve Kirsch sent an FOIA request to the Santa Clara County Health Department and received information about folks diagnosed with COVID, including whether or not they were “vaccinated.”

To figure out if COVID shots increase your risk of getting COVID, don't you need some data about the vaccinated people who didn't get COVID?
To figure out if COVID shots increase your risk of getting COVID, don’t you need some data about the whole population, including the vaccinated people who didn’t get COVID?

After looking at this data, Steve Kirsch concluded that “So the percentage of people who were diagnosed with COVID (98% or more) was higher than the percentage of people who got the vaccine (under 95%). In other words, the vaccine made you more likely to get COVID instead of 10X less likely that they claimed in the clinical trials.”

What’s the real explanation?

The monovalent booster dose was introduced in Sept 2021 "to enhance or restore protection which might have waned over time after primary series vaccination." Not all of the folks who are considered "vaccinated" had a booster dose though.
The monovalent booster dose was introduced in Sept 2021 “to enhance or restore protection which might have waned over time after primary series vaccination.” Not all of the folks who are considered “vaccinated” had a booster dose though.

If you look through the extensive data available in the Santa Clara County Health Department COVID dashboards, you will see that while most folks got the primary series, far fewer got the booster doses or updated COVID vaccine.

So if more vaccinated people got COVID, it was simply because there were more vaccinated people than unvaccinated people to get COVID – “vaccinated people” who were not necessarily up-to-date with the latest COVID vaccines.

Looking even more closely at the data from Santa Clara County though, despite how Kirschanalyzed” the data, you can easily see that unvaccinated people were more likely to get sick with COVID.

The average case rates are highest in those who are unvaccinated in Santa Clara County - and everywhere else. Thanks to René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH for help creating this data visualization!
The average case rates are highest in those who are unvaccinated in Santa Clara County – and everywhere else. Thanks to René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH for help creating this data visualization!

Not surprisingly, that COVID vaccines don’t increase your risk of developing COVID has been fact checked plenty of times already:

Whoops indeed!

And no, the exact same thing didn’t happen in Australia, as Steve Kirsch claims. Something that has also been fact checked extensively.

Are these folks even trying anymore?

“A growing body of research indicates that these vaccines not only reduce the incidence of infection but also significantly decrease all-cause mortality among vaccinated individuals compared to those who are unvaccinated.”

Vaccine Victory: How COVID-19 shots slash all-cause mortality and outshine misinformation

I mean, besides trying to keep folks from getting vaccinated and protected?

More on the Effectiveness of COVID Vaccines

Last Updated on March 31, 2024

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