Study on COVID vaccines in elderly should raise alarm, negative effectiveness again?
Pretty much nobody is talking about this recent study on COVID-19 vaccines in the elderly (Rojas-Castro et al.), which I suspect is because jab supporters would be embarrassed by its lukewarm results and jab critics don’t know what to make of it. After all, the multicentre study on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation in European older adults during the 2024-2025 season apparently shows a - modest - benefit. Source. It takes some logical reasoning to see how this paper, published in a prominent respiratory virus journal yet receiving little attention, serves the jab critical - which is where this philosopher comes in. I did send off a (positive!) response to the journal, and it was rejected for the most absurd reasons, with my emailed reply politely tearing apart each one. Nevertheless, my main concerns with the study are listed below.
Firstly, looking at the confidence intervals the effectiveness of the jabs looks absolutely pathetic, perhaps being even 0 or negative. The study looked at various groups of elderly, and the highest lower bound of any 95% confidence interval in the main analysis is 17%. All others were lower, with many (particularly in the 60-79 year age group) extending deeply negative (e.g., -66% at 60-119 days post-vaccination). The authors even acknowledge the wide confidence intervals, with the study providing weak evidence at best of modest and short-term protection in the frailest elderly, and no statistically significant evidence in younger elderly patients. And this is taking the results at face value, before we start being properly critical, bringing to light conflicts of interest with the jab manufacturers and the governments that mandated them, and factoring in biases and issues like case counting dodginess and the healthy vaccinee effect.
Secondly, the study focuses exclusively on effectiveness against hospitalisation, with no mention of the risks. Of course, the known risks, are well documented and highly concerning already. There’s still the issue of the long-term unknown risks, which Pfizer is incredibly still (somewhat, they’re not looking at all potential risks) looking into. Given the benefits being little to nothing (maybe even negative), I wouldn’t be so sure that the jabs are a good idea once the harms are accounted for.
Thirdly, this ridiculously poor result is in the elderly. The people that suffer the most from COVID-19 and thus would presumably stand to benefit the most from the jabs. Imagine what this would look like in the young, partly in healthy children. No wonder governments and even journals are now prepared to accept that the risks of COVID-19 vaccines may outweigh the benefits in healthy children. Oh, and to get back to risks, it is generally acknowledged that the myocarditis risk post-jab is even worse in young males (Oster et al, source), and potentially has a 1.7% mortality rate (as per Ilonze & Guglin, source). I personally think there’s reason to think the risks outweigh the benefits for just about everyone.*
Okay then.
*Extra: My new excess deaths study has now been formerly accepted. It is expected to be published over the coming months. Going a bit harder than the typical excess deaths study, I think it decisively proves that mass COVID-19 vaccination is one of the causes of excess mortality.
We have known for a few years now that covid jabs suck in EVERYONE. I keep wondering about mortality rates in zoo animals (big cats and apes) after being given the covid jabs back in 2021 and 2022. Nothing is talked about but I bet some animals died as well.
Congrats on the acceptance of your study Raphael!
Dr. Rafael, thank you for yet another sharp, evidence-based takedown of the prevailing narrative. Your willingness to apply rigorous philosophical scrutiny to the COVID vaccine saga—especially as a philosopher yourself—is invaluable and far too rare in this space.
In the framework of Imre Lakatos’ "Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes," what we are witnessing is a textbook degenerative research programme. The “hard core” (these injections are safe and highly effective) is being protected by a thickening belt of ad hoc auxiliaries: healthy vaccinee bias, “coincidence,” misattributed causes, and ever-shifting goalposts. As Lakatos observed, in degenerating programmes “theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts” and “where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.”
The anomalies are now overwhelming and cannot be digested. This latest study (Rojas-Castro et al.) is just one more data point showing weak-to-nonexistent or even negative effectiveness against hospitalization in the elderly—the very group supposedly most in need of protection—with confidence intervals that plunge deeply into negative territory.
The standard defense from regulators and bureaucrats—“we acted on the best available evidence at the time”—is no longer credible. They were warned from the outset about the lack of long-term safety data, the risks to low-risk groups, and the foreseeable harms. Those warnings were not heeded; they were censored and derided. The damage was not an unforeseeable accident—it was the predictable consequence of recklessly pushing novel products onto populations that stood to gain little while bearing real risk.
These officials have become the true tinfoil-hat-wearing coincidence theorists, frantically explaining away pattern after pattern as mere coincidence while the body of contrary evidence grows.
Thank you again for your courage and clarity, Dr. Rafael. Your work is essential.