More on Excess Hospitalizations

Post #502

Excess hospitalizations are the number of extra people which get put into the hospital because of engaging in a behavior, such as playing Chicken with cars on the freeway, or smoking 3 packs of cigarettes per day, or what-have-you.

In a re-analysis of the original phase III clinical trial data for mRNA shots, Fraiman et al. obtained a central estimate of the number of people put into the hospital with serious adverse events of special interest, for each 20,000 doses given out (each 10,000 fully-dosed).

But a core principle of Public Health is to err on the side of caution, applying either moderate or strong precautionary measures and safeguards.

In its strong form, the principle is called The Precautionary Principle, requiring sufficient certainty about the potential for net harm before allowing a procedure or protocol to be implemented by health care professionals.

No sufficient certainty regarding harm; no permission to use the treatment.

Because most FDA-approved pharmaceutical products would be retroactively pulled from the market if this strong version of the principle were to be applied to healthcare, a moderate form exists and remains relevant.

The moderate form, The Preventive Principle, requires applying uncertainty factors to known data. In practice, this means using the worst-case scenario which is still consistent with data:

The upper bound of an uncertainty interval around the central estimate of harm.

To extend analysis of a prior report using a central estimate of harm from COVID jabs, this installment uses the worst-case scenario which had been consistent with phase III clinical trial data, applied to CDC’s estimate of benefit from booster shots:

Applying the more moderate safeguard, The Preventive Principle, to the CDC estimates of prevented hospitalizations per million doses of booster shots, reveals that no one under age 50 should be given a booster shot.

When booster shots are given to kids under 12, then 1,145 kids could be put into the hospital with serious adverse events per million shots given out, when those same million booster shots, themselves, might prevent just 16 hospitalizations in total.

That’s more than 70 kids harmed for every kid which benefits. It’s unconscionable.

Reference

[upper bound estimate of harm (22.9 hospitalizations per 10,000 double-dosed) is equivalent to 1,145 hospitalizations per million doses] — Fraiman J, Erviti J, Jones M, Greenland S, Whelan P, Kaplan RM, Doshi P. Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults. Vaccine. 2022 Sep 22;40(40):5798-5805. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036. Epub 2022 Aug 31. PMID: 36055877; PMCID: PMC9428332. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055877/

[Preventive Principle vs. Precautionary Principle] — Lila Antonopoulou, Philip van Meurs, The precautionary principle within European Union public health policy: The implementation of the principle under conditions of supranationality and citizenship, Health Policy, Volume 66, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 179-197, ISSN 0168-8510, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-8510(03)00049-6

[CDC page showing only 75 hospitalizations prevented from a million doses in those under age 59] — CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/whats-new/covid-vaccine-recommendations-9-12-2023.html