Enormous New Study Finds COVID-19 mRNA Shots Associated With 25 Percent Lower Risk Of Death From Any Cause

A study of almost half the population of France has shown that young and middle-aged people who had been vaccinated against COVID-19 with mRNA vaccines have been 74 percent less likely to subsequently die from COVID-19. More notably, those who had been vaccinated were a quarter less likely to die in the following four years from any cause than those who were not vaccinated. 

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Last month, a leaked memo from the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) – since rejected by 12 former FDA heads – made claims of 10 deaths allegedly caused by mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. The author, CBER head Vinayak Prasad, provided no details to allow others to assess the claim. 

When scientific studies have been done to test the safety of mRNA vaccines, they have consistently refuted Prasad’s claims, instead showing vaccination to be much safer for all ages than infection with the virus. However, the new study, led by French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products researcher Laura Semenzato, stands out in two ways.

Firstly, the sample size is enormous. In countries where individuals need to agree to provide data on their vaccination status and subsequent outcomes, large sample sizes are expensive. Some studies have tried to get around this by using regional statistics, which show death rates were higher where vaccinations were least common, but this approach can’t prove the deaths were among the unvaccinated, logical as that might be.

However, Semenzato and co-authors had access to the entire French health data system, where every resident has a number against which their vaccination status and medical outcomes are recorded. This allowed the team to track the outcomes for 28.7 million people, of whom 22.8 million received the first dose of an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 between May and October 2021. Those who were vaccinated outside this window or received a non-mRNA vaccine (which was rare in France) were excluded from the study.

Secondly, Semenzato and co-authors looked at deaths from all causes, not just COVID-19, over 45 months, rather than six or 12 months, as has been more common.

Some anti-vaccination campaigners have limited their opposition to COVID-19 shots to younger people. Semenzato’s study looked at those aged between 18 and 59 on November 1, 2021, so the findings cannot be dominated by those old enough to be considered most at risk of COVID-19.

In raw terms, those who had been vaccinated with an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine were found to have a 74 percent lower risk of death from COVID-19 in hospital. Turning to overall deaths, the researchers found that 0.4 percent of the vaccinated cohort had died after almost four years had passed, but this rose to 0.6 percent among the unvaccinated.

Although this doesn’t fit well with Prasad’s claims, and certainly contradicts the wild claims found on social media that mRNA vaccines have “killed millions”, on its own, it’s hardly conclusive. If the populations were not identical – for example, if the unvaccinated contained more people with serious pre-existing health conditions – vaccinations might have nothing to do with it.

However, records revealed the opposite. Those who got vaccinated were slightly older (by just under a year) on average, and more likely to be women. At the time vaccinations were occurring, those who got vaccinated were also more likely to have potentially dangerous cardiometabolic conditions (9.3 percent compared to 7.8 percent for unvaccinated individuals).

The French data doesn’t provide data on individual income, but it does indicate people’s approximate residence. Those who lived in the poorest 20 percent of localities were somewhat less likely to get vaccinated, but the difference was fairly modest.

Allowing for all these factors, the team concluded that mRNA vaccination against COVID-19 was associated with 25 percent lower mortality from any cause. Notably, that includes things like car accidents and natural disasters, which are highly unlikely to be affected by vaccination status. In the first six months after vaccination, the gap was even larger, with deaths among the vaccinated 29 percent lower than the unvaccinated.

The size of the mortality gap may not be attributable to the protective effects of the vaccine alone, however.  The reasons why people were not vaccinated during the study period are not known, but it's possible that some of them were swayed by false claims about the vaccine’s dangers. The authors tactfully refer to this and other unknowns, such as education, as residual confounding factors.

Disentangling the effect of the vaccine alone, therefore, will be difficult, but with death rates so low among the vaccinated, claims that the vaccine presents a significant risk to life now appear more implausible than ever.

The study is published in JAMA Open.