Why did Prof. Ran Balicer, Head of the Research Institute of Clalit, Isreal’s largest healthcare organization, refuse to reveal the data about mortality among vaccinated and not vaccinated individuals?
We at the Israeli Public Emergency Council for the COVID-19 Crisis (PECC) will continue to do everything to expose the truth, including a petition to court very soon.
The following is written by PECC members Dr. Guy Shinar and Professor Retsef Levi:
Before you go to get vaccinated for the fourth time or to vaccinate your children, you should know that the data that compares mortality in vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals are hidden from the public. Prof. Ren Balicer, Head of the Research Institute of Clalit and Head of the cabinet of Experts advising the Isreali Ministry of Health, has ignored our written request in a letter to receive the data about the total mortality, despite that data being available to him. In addition, a request to obtain the data from Clalit under the Freedom of Information Act was answered with a refusal.
The total mortality is a very important indicator for the desirability of vaccine use in different age groups. Why? Because sometimes the first manifestation of a vaccine side effect is death. For example, inflammation of the heart muscle, whose prevalence has been rising due to vaccination among men in their late teens and early twenties, may result in death prior to being diagnosed. Another example: It is possible that the chance of getting infected with COVID-19 is higher in the first two weeks after vaccination [1,2]; as a result, also mortality from COVID-19, especially in very fragile older people, may rise accordingly.
In the absence of data, it is impossible to determine the effect of the Pfizer vaccine on total mortality. Is the mortality that the vaccine prevents by providing protection against severe illness for a limited time lower than the mortality that it directly or indirectly creates? If so, in which age groups? Pfizer’s random and controlled trial did not reach a decisive conclusion on the matter [3]. Pfizer decided to end the trial after just six months, when there were 21 deaths in the vaccinated group and 17 in the placebo group: a trend that speaks against immunization, but that, due to the small numbers, did not have statistical validity. The choice to end the trial after such a short time—when the total mortality trend was against the vaccine—is puzzling, to say the least.
The key to understanding the effect of Pfizer's vaccine on the total mortality is in the hands of Prof. Balicer. In his paper “Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Setting” published on 25.8.21 in the prestigious medical journal
New England Journal of Medicine, Balicer and his team compared the incidence of possible side effects of the vaccine between a group of about 900,000 vaccinated individuals and 900,000 non-vaccinated individuals [4]. The groups are paired, so that their medical and demographic charactristics are very similar statistically. The comparison was made 42 days following the first dose of the vaccination. It is puzzling that no comparison of total mortality was made between vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals—even though the article clearly stated that that data was known, as it was used to determine the end of the follow-up period of each participant (P. 1083, left column, third paragraph).
These numbers must be transparent to all! And yet despite having contacted Balicer twice to receive the total mortality data for the vaccinated group and the non-vaccinated group in their study, Balicer has not responded to any of our requests. Such behavior is not customary in the world of science, as scientific research is supposed to be open to scrutiny fully and for everyone. In addition, we approached the Clalit Health Service Organization in order to request the data subject to the Freedom of Information Act. They replied that they don't have the resources to supply this information because they are busy day and night fighting COVID-19.
In our estimation, it is relatively easy to read the total mortality data from the Clalit database. In our request to Balicer, we pointed out that in case he could not provide the information we requested, we would be happy to receive the raw data and generate the information ourselves. As mentioned, Balicer did not respond.
When it comes to testing the effectiveness and safety of the Pfizer vaccine, in our opinion, Balicer is experiencing a conflict of interest: on one hand he encourages the widespread use of the vaccine in his role as head of the COVID-19 cabinet, and at the same time he tests the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines as the Head of the Research Institute of Clalit. In addition, Clalit receives grants from Pfizer, and the claim of Balicer and the other authors of the above-mentioned article and other writers of the paper that these grants are not relevant to the subject of the research does not resolve the fundamentally flawed situation of a funded author writing articles that are supposed to critically assess the funder [5]. Balicer's role as Head of the COVID-19 cabinet is not mentioned anywhere in the paper, which gives the impression that Balicer is only a scientist and researcher.
Another article by Clalit examined the effect of the booster on death from COVID-19 [6]. Out of about 840,000 individuals who were included in the study, 202 (with or without a booster) died from COVID-19. There is no direct reference in the study to total morality, but it can be inferred from what was published that the total mortality was 1605 of those tested (with and without a booster)—about eight times the number of deaths from COVID-19 alone. It was not reported how the total mortality was split between those who received a booster and those who did not. As before, Prof. Retsef Levi approached both the writers and Clalit in order to receive the data, and both requests were unanswered.
The refusal of Balicer and of Clalit to reveal the total mortality data is not in accordance with scientific norms and is highly disturbing. Decisions regarding public health should be based on transparent data. This is a fundamental principle that everyone—especially those who are not elderly or are not in a risk group—should take into account.
Sources
1. BMJ 2021;372:n728 (
Why don't Covid-19 vaccine trials report statistics for the first 14 days? | The BMJ...)
2. N Engl J Med 2021; 385:e83 (
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114...) – See Table 2
3.
https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download
4. N Angel J Med 2021; 385:1078-1090
(
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2110475)
5.
https://www.nejm.org/.../nejmoa2110475_disclosures.pdf
6. N Angel J Med 2021; 385:2413-2420 (
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2115624 )
Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
