The 2022 Lancet report reported that fatal adverse event reports had reached 4,471 by 14 June 2021, when 299 million doses of COVID shots had been doled out. Using 3 cut-off values for the capture rate of underlying adverse events, I ran 99% confidence intervals around all the figures — to check if 6 deaths per M doses is feasible.
Here are the implied (underlying) deaths along with 99% confidence limits at each of the three plausible rates of capture:
As you can see, none of the bars — even the one assuming that 18% of all events get captured by VAERS — gets close to 6 deaths per million. To check for the probability that the 6 deaths per million figure is correct, assuming the 99% lower bound on the lowest plausible rate above, I got the probability using the Poisson distribution:
NOTE: Note how a minimum of 23,892 deaths occurred by 14 Jun 2021 (cell C10).
Cell G11 is clicked, so the formula that was used in order to get the probability shows up at top. When I tried running it the other way — “Chance of 80 when 6 is correct:” — the probability was zero (a zero chance that the claim is true that COVID shots kill just 6 per million doses).
The probability in scientific notation has E-27 tacked onto it (shift decimal 27 places to the left). To give perspective on the chance that the claim of 6 or less deaths per M doses is true, you are approximately 100 times more likely to be hit by lightning 4 times in the next 12 months (cell B18 below), than it is likely for that claim to be true:
Reference
[15 fatal adverse event reports per million mRNA doses] — Rosenblum HG, Gee J, Liu R, Marquez PL, Zhang B, Strid P, Abara WE, McNeil MM, Myers TR, Hause AM, Su JR, Markowitz LE, Shimabukuro TT, Shay DK. Safety of mRNA vaccines administered during the initial 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme: an observational study of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe. Lancet Infect Dis. 2022 Jun;22(6):802-812. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00054-8. Epub 2022 Mar 7. PMID: 35271805; PMCID: PMC8901181. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901181/
[The most plausible capture rates for passive surveillance run from 2% up to 18%] —Hazell L, Shakir SA. Under-reporting of adverse drug reactions : a systematic review. Drug Saf. 2006;29(5):385-96. doi: 10.2165/00002018-200629050-00003. PMID: 16689555. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16689555/