"While the primary narrative focused on the proclaimed excellent ability of the novel mRNA vaccines to prevent infections and (therefore) to attenuate the spread of the pandemic, policymakers today (March 2023) acknowledge the poor vaccine efficacy (VE) of contemporary booster doses against infections but insist that the boosters are still capable of providing long-term protection against severe illness and deaths (as if the two types of protection do not depend on each other).
We examine the evidence behind this modified narrative through an in-depth evaluation of representative and high profile data from: (1) the formal, phase 3 clinical trials by Pfizer and Moderna, which preceded the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA); (2) the observational studies from Israel ('the world’s lab,' as termed by Pfizer officials), which examined the efficacy of the fourth dose at about the time the FDA authorized this second booster; and (3) the publicly available, real-life dashboards of pandemic statistics...
[M]ost importantly, the documented, conditional probability of death and severe illness (i.e., the percentage of severe illness and death cases among those infected with the virus) did not differ between the treatment and the control groups of the various clinical and observational efficacy studies."
Open Access Journal