Last June, a paper by a team that included the British Medical Journal editor Peter Doshi concluded that data from the Pfizer and Moderna trials indicated their vaccines are more likely to put people in hospital from adverse effects than keep them out by protecting against Covid, by 2.4 and 6.4 people per 10,000, respectively. They concluded:
The excess risk of serious adverse events found in our study points to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses, particularly those that are stratified according to risk of serious Covid-19 outcomes such as hospitalization or death
Another peer-reviewed study, published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics on 5 December, looked at the net benefit-harm ratio of a third vaccine for 18–29 year olds (that is, university students). According to its findings, for every one Covid hospitalisation prevented in this group by an mRNA booster shot over a six-month period, 18.5 serious adverse events would occur, including 1.5-4.6 booster-associated myopericarditis cases in males (typically requiring hospitalisation).
An on-going series by Ramesh Thakur.