A detailed science paper with 94 references & lots of detail was promoted on Twitter although it was published some time ago in Sept 2022. It claims that the vaccines are killing huge numbers and also makes many other claims against the vaccines & official policies.
Some parts of what is wrong with this paper made me laugh, and maybe you will chuckle too.
The Publisher
It was published online in The Journal of Clinical & Experimental Immunology with an ISSN code of 2475-6296. The publisher’s own site claims an impact factor of 0.7.
A website that rates the impact factor of journals has no entry for this journal by name or by ISSN.
Checking on two websites that claim to encourage quality publication, gave no results for the publishers opast or for the ISSN.
https://publicationethics.org/about/our-organisation
A nice feature of this journal is that you can apply to become an editor, and this quote shows that they could benefit from having an editor:
“If you feel like to be part of Journal of Clinical & Experimental Immunology“
Publishing in this journal costs $3,019 as listed on the description page, but on clicking to submit the price displayed was $2,019.
Coverage of COVID immunology
Being about immunology means that the period of 2020 to now we would expect the publication to be filled with important studies & reviews of COVID.
Here is a brief list of how many articles were published in each year and of the total articles how many mentioned Covid or Corona Virus in the title.
2020 34 articles, 4 covid
2021 26 articles, 6 covid
2022 15 articles, 2 covid (which includes the Australian paper)
The 2020 COVID articles included an author referring to himself as “He” while describing what he did to avoid catching covid, a review of stem cells which mentions COVID, a description of how COVID spread and who is susceptible, and a review of mechanical lung ventilation.
The 2021 COVID articles included dentists perception of COVID, what we learned from the pandemic, and a description of cytokines, plus a zoologist explaining the range of Corona viruses.
The 2022 COVID articles included one submitted in May of 2022 which includes this poorly worded phrase:
While several drug trials and vaccine trails going on in different countries for treatment of pandemic disease, but till now no clinical proof for any medicine or treatment.
That paper seems to have been more than a year out of date when submitted. By May 2022 there were several vaccines & treatments in use.
Peer review
The other COVID article in 2022 is the Australian paper. Which is stated as
Submitted: 10 Sep 2022; Accepted: 12 Sep 2022; Published: 21 Sep 2022
The Journal claims to be peer reviewed. It would seems that the review took 2 days. That is impressive. My own reading and writing this blog has also taken 2 days, so it is possible if the reviewers devote 2 full days work to the task.
The two authors
The corresponding author Conny Turni is described as being at Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, the University of Queensland, and appears to have co-authored several papers on pig & Koala bacteria and genomic tests according to a search at PubMed
The other author, Astrid Lefringhausen , is not described as affiliated to any organisation & does not appear in a PubMed search.
They don’t appear to be experts in immunology or vaccinology
Nitpicking or gross errors?
Here are some observations about the wording used and some of the claims made
Page 1
The government continues to push particularly the mRNA vaccinations
This is unusual wording for a serious document. Wouldn’t encourage or promote or policy is to encourage be more appropriate wording instead of push?
Page 1 - describing the Australian authority
The TGA is currently getting rolling data and safety and effectiveness are still being assessed (https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccines-undergoingevaluation).
The way this statement is quoted from the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (part of the Department of Health) incorrectly implies that the vaccine does not yet have safety data. Here is what the TGA says about this stage of the provisional approval process (stage 4)
the safety, quality and effectiveness of the vaccine has been satisfactorily established for its intended use
Page 1
During an autopsy of a vaccinated person that had died after mRNA vaccination it was found that the vaccine disperses rapidly from the injection site and can be found in nearly all parts of the body
Let’s imagine this. A person is vaccinated. Some time later that person died. Some time later an autopsy was done and somehow during that autopsy it was possible to determine that the vaccine dispersed rapidly. How?
Page 2
“so called “vaccine
Didn’t they mean “so called vaccine” rather than “so called” vaccine ?, and although this may be a mere typo this is not normal language in a science paper. The authors had not explained why it should be referred to as “so called” vaccine. If they had established that it is not a vaccine the normal way to refer to it would be the “vaccine,” but they offered no support for their claim.
Page 2 we learn the opinion of a well known dissident
Prominent cardiologist Dr Peter McCullough stated that the spike protein - a cytotoxin solely responsible for the severity of the respiratory infection - makes the use of it as immunizing agent dangerous.
Page 2
It is an amazing fact that natural immunity is completely disregarded by health authorities around the world
Not often that “amazing” is used in a science paper or an absolute claim such as “completely disregarded”.
It should only take a quick search to find at least one health authority who makes some kind of reference to natural immunity and so here’s my quick search:
I found that the CDC wrote about natural immunity in 2021
This brief provides an overview of the current scientific evidence regarding infection-induced and vaccine-induced immunity,
So, not “completely disregarded.”
The paper spends a lot of time supporting the idea that natural immunity exists. All immunologists and most related scientists always knew this, therefore it is odd that the paper is written as if this is news.
Politicians, TV announcers & administrators of vaccines may have acted as if they didn’t know this, but mostly I expect that it was just a complication they wanted to avoid having to bother with. There was a lot of argument over how dependable, powerful and durable it was. Also, there was a lot of anger over the issue, but it wasn’t completely disregarded.
Page 3 of the study has this amusing wording
A study by Kirsch (2021) from Denmark
Kirsch? Denmark? Is this a researcher in Denmark called Kirsch who has done a study?
No. This is a blog by Steve Kirsch writing his interpretation of some study done in Denmark. Bizarre to cite an unqualified blogger rather than the actual study.
Page 3
a later study by Kirsch (2022a)
If a blog by Steve Kirsch is a study, then this blog is a study. (No! Neither are studies, they are blogs. Steve and I are equally unqualified to do studies.)
Page 3
…the small risk of dying from COVID-19
Oh, dear. Okay, very few Australians died, and Australia is a long way from where people died in large numbers, and maybe they don’t have TV, newspapers or internet in Queensland.
Page 3
It is estimated that children are seven times more at risk to die from influenza than from COVID-19.
Oh, dear. Let’s check that claim with a chart from 2021 based on CDC wonder database. Definitely not what the deaths data says in that year.
Page 4 - the smoking gun
In a study by Shimabukuro et al. [48] following 3,958 pregnant participants in the v-safe pregnancy registry only 827 (20.89%) women enrolled in the study completed pregnancy. In the v-safe table the number of pregnant women registered as pregnant was 30,887 and the number registered as pregnant after vaccination with either Moderna or Pfizer vaccine was 4,804, which suggests loss of pregnancy and stillbirths in 84.45% of the pregnant women [48].
Wow! That is horrible. 84.45% loss of pregnancy!
Need to read that study, because it is a real smoking gun. There is no link given, but a search for
found it and so I nervously read the key conclusion. Wait for it:
Preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
What? But, the Australian paper says 84.45% loss of pregnancy. Um, could it be that the authors of the Australian paper got a bit mixed up here?
Page 4
Children under 18 are 51 times more likely to die from the mRNA vaccines than from COVID-19 if unvaccinated.
What? Kids are 51 times more likely to be killed by the Vax than by COVID? It goes on to say nearly everyone of any age is more likely to die from Vax than COVID.
Wow!
No link to the paper, and a search at pubmed found nothing, but an internet search found it on
That well-known source of obscure Hopeomathic COVID papers
The method sounds valid. They compared deaths within 28 days of COVID to a similar period from vaccination. Or at least that is what they say they did. To actually do that they would need medical records.
What I don’t understand is why they didn’t stop there.
They seem to have had UK stats although those were not very accurate at that time because the census was 10 years out of date and the other source NIMS is known to have duplicate records, dead people & missing people.
The problem for the authors is that the data showed that people who didn’t get vaxxed died more. Can’t have that mess up a good scary narrative, can we?
They didn’t just accept that data, they decided to do something very very complicated.
They decided to estimate how many people are killed by the Vax using an estimate produced on US data and a weird method that is straining my brain. It uses this equation
log (year 2020 deaths) = Bo +B1*log(year 2021 deaths) +B2 log(vax) + e
The methods does not explain Bo B1 or e. The only bit I see is that it uses deaths in 2020 and 2021 to somehow decide how many died from vaccine. The numbers they produced are huge. I mean bigger than COVID deaths huge. Huge! Death! Panic!
With those huge numbers it turns out that vaccines kill far more people than COVID.
The problem with that is that actual total all cause deaths in Australia when everyone was vaccinated were about average.
I am not bothering to delve further into that math, because the results are contradicted by real world data & so the paper is just hopeomathic.
Page 6
UK data from 1 January 2021 to the 31 May 2022
The overall death rate for the unvaccinated was 17% while for the vaccinated it was 83%
This is presented in the Australian paper without mention that it isn’t adjusted for size of populations. This is either sloppy or deliberate propaganda.
Page 7 - the usual VAERS dumpster dive
According to the VAERS database over 22,000 deaths have been associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.
The authors don’t just do the usual assumption that everyone who dies was killed by the vaccine, but go on to say
…underreported by an unknown factor which could be between 10 and 100, so the actual number of deaths is likely much higher and could be over a million.
Sure, everyone who died was definitely killed by the vax and people don’t bother reporting 8 out 10 suspicious deaths, because if your son died a week after a vaccine you really don’t want to make a fuss or bother using the internet.
Page 13
Hasan et al. [80] analysed data from the National Health Service published by Public Health England and showed that the death rate due to the Delta variant infection was eight times higher in fully vaccinated than in unvaccinated infected people.
Another important finding? Here is the start of the abstract from this Hasan paper
Current vaccines, which induce a B-cell-mediated antibody response against the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, have markedly reduced infection rates.
That seems like an odd start to a paper that has the above revelation somewhere inside. Page 2 of the PDF however does say that 2 doses of vaccine drastically lowered the infection rate of Delta compared to the unvaccinated BUT the subsequent death rate of those that were infected was 8 times higher. The graphs and text do not specify if these numbers are age standardised or not. Therefore, I don’t know what it means. Whatever it was the authors didn’t feature it in their abstract.
Page 15
Pfizer never planned to reveal its clinical trial data and had to be ordered by a judge in the USA to release the data to the public.
I am not aware of such a court case. The one I do know about was that there had been a Freedom of Information Act request to the FDA. The FDA said it would take years to process the pages. A court ordered them to hire more staff to do it faster.
Perhaps there is another court case, but the authors give no link or reference, and may simply be poorly informed, writing from faulty memory. Whatever the reason this is a poor sign in a science paper.
The paper ends with
No discussion of new knowledge disputing the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines is allowed.
Social media is full of claims that the vaccines are not safe. This also appears on some broadcast TV and in some newspapers plus countless blogs that are easily found. This also appears online in low impact or low quality science journals.
These claims are widely denounced & social media seem to have limited their spread.
Where they tend not to appear is in high impact science journals. Is that because it is not allowed or because the submitted papers tend to be of low quality?
Conclusion
This Australian paper contains 94 referenced citations & a number of others alluded to in the text without citation. What I have concentrated on are the obvious faults in the paper rather than checking every reference.
We have data from many large studies claiming the vaccines have been very effective at reducing deaths. Those studies find lower deaths in the vaccinated.
Those who think that the vaccines are massive killers, still have a lot to prove.
Notes:
(There is a similarly named publication from Oxford Academic with an impact factor of 5.7)
The paper is at:
https://www.opastpublishers.com/open-access-articles/covid19-vaccinesan-australian-review.pdf
COVID-19 vaccines – an Australian review. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Immunology 7 (3) 491-508
The paper quotes a European study of serious adverse events after vaccination at about 0.2% ( 1 in 500), but there is no estimate of what placebo would have produced.
There is a study comparing adverse events (not serious) between covid vax and persons given placebo. This suggests the real effect of the vaccine is about 1 quarter of the reports because a placebo produced 3/4 as many reports.
“…proportion of placebo recipients reporting at least 1 systemic AE after the first dose was 35.2% … (Table 2). In comparison, patients treated with vaccines reported higher AE rates, with 46.3% …”
If applicable that would suggest serious adverse events of about 1 in 2,000 for the COVID vaccine.