The Covid-19 vaccines were tested before rollout

A video on Facebook shared nearly 1,000 times makes several false claims about the Covid-19 vaccines, including that they were not tested, that they’ve done nothing but harm, and that they make people more likely to catch and die from Covid.

None of this is true.

We’ve seen many posts on social media making false claims about the Covid vaccines, and about the pandemic in general. This could lead people to harm their health by making decisions based on incorrect information.

The claims in the video

The video begins with a man talking to the camera, who says: “When the jabs were released, they were not tested. Any pharmaceutical drug before it's released has to go through a wealth of tests, even down to human testing, where they will give 50 people a placebo and 50 people the drug to see any side effects. They did not do that for the Covid jab.”

This is false.

The Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen Covid vaccines approved in the UK all underwent placebo-controlled phase three trials, the results of which have been published.

The man goes on to say: “The jabs have caused nothing but harm. Simple as that.”

This is also false. Although serious side effects occur on rare occasions, and a small number of people have died as a result of a Covid vaccination, there is abundant evidence that the vaccines have saved many thousands more lives.

Work by the UK Health Security Agency and the University of Cambridge Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit suggests that roughly 127,500 deaths were prevented by the Covid vaccination programme in England, up to 24 September 2021. Covid vaccines were mentioned as a cause of death on 77 death certificates in the UK, when Full Fact last wrote about this data, on 31 May.

The second clip within the video then begins, showing a doctor taking part in an unofficial Covid inquiry in Canada. A caption on the video says: “Canadian Doctor testifies under oath that the vaccinated are more likely to get Covid and die from Covid and all other causes compared.”

Problems with the evidence

The doctor appears to be Dr Charles Hoffe, from British Columbia, Canada.

Dr Hoffe introduces two charts in the video.

The first chart comes from a study on the effectiveness of the bivalent Covid vaccine published earlier this year. (The bivalent vaccine is designed with protective components against two different Covid variants.) Dr Hoffe describes the chart, saying: “The top line, the brown one, were the people that had had the bivalent booster... They were getting Covid more than anyone else.”

This isn’t right, because the chart in question does not distinguish between those who did or didn’t get the booster.

The study itself says the chart shows: “Cumulative incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for study participants stratified by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received” [our italics].

In other words, the brown line shows the incidence of Covid among those people who had received more than three doses before being offered the bivalent vaccine, not those who necessarily received the bivalent vaccine itself.

A different chart, which compares those who received the bivalent vaccine with those who didn’t, shows that people who received it were less likely to catch Covid, when the data was adjusted to account for some other differences between the groups.

In fact, the study says its findings suggest that the bivalent vaccine was effective to some extent against two strains of Covid, although it did not demonstrate effectiveness against a third.

Correlation is not causation

Dr Hoffe says in the video that the vaccine has “increased people’s risk”.

He adds: “It increases your chance of getting Covid, it increases your chance of spreading Covid, and it damages your immune system to such a degree that you have a higher risk of hospitalisation and death.”

But this claim isn’t supported by the evidence shown.

Although the chart implies a correlation between past vaccine doses and Covid infection during the study period, the study authors have warned that the explanation for these numbers is not clear, as reported by the fact checking site Logically.

Even if the correlation is real, that doesn’t necessarily mean the doses caused people to have a higher chance of catching Covid. As we’ve written before, vaccinated people might be more likely to take Covid tests, or report Covid infections. Knowing they are more protected, they might even be more likely to risk catching the disease.

Speaking to Full Fact via the Science Media Centre, Dr Lance Turtle, Reader and Honorary Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases Clinical Infection, Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Liverpool, told us that it was not plausible that more vaccine doses would lead to a higher chance of catching Covid.

Dr Turtle said: “There is no biological basis whatsoever for thinking that the vaccine could result in a state where you were more likely to become infected. To me it seems pretty obvious that [this apparent association] would either be down to exposure, or testing behaviour.

“People who get vaccinated are much more likely to be concerned about Covid and therefore more likely to get tested.”

Evidence from the UK Health Security Agency’s vaccine surveillance report suggests that the Covid vaccines offer some limited protection against infection with more recent variants of the virus for a short period of time.

The report says: “Effectiveness of all COVID-19 vaccines, including after first booster doses, against symptomatic disease with Omicron BA.1 and subsequent sub-lineages of the Omicron variant is low (starting at about 50 to 60%) and wanes rapidly to near 0 by 6 months”.

The second chart

A second chart discussed by Dr Hoffe shows data from New South Wales, Australia. It contains two bar graphs, with headings saying that they relate to the number of general hospital and ICU admissions by vaccination status at the end of 2022. Dr Hoffe talks about the ICU chart.

While the data in this chart could appear to show some correlation between vaccination status and the numbers of people admitted to ICU, it doesn’t show us what we need in order to know how likely people with different vaccination statuses are to be admitted. 

The vast majority of people in New South Wales have been vaccinated, so in order to see how likely vaccinated and unvaccinated people were to be admitted to ICU, you’d have to look at the proportion of the people in each group who were admitted. The chart doesn’t show this. It shows the absolute numbers instead.

And again, even if there is some correlation between vaccination status and the likelihood of being admitted, that doesn’t prove there is causation, because there could be other differences between the groups. Older people could be more likely to be vaccinated, and also much more likely to be admitted to ICU, for example.

The government of New South Wales, which produces this data, warns specifically against misinterpreting the numbers in this way.

In a note on the publication, it says: “COVID-19 vaccines are very effective in preventing the severe impacts of infections with the virus. Over 95 per cent of people aged 16 and over in NSW have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while more than 70 per cent of people eligible for their third dose have received it.

“With such high vaccination coverage in the community, a high proportion of people admitted to hospital or intensive care unit (ICU) with COVID-19 are now vaccinated with two or three doses. However, people who are not vaccinated remain more likely to suffer severe COVID-19.”

In the UK, data from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre suggests that people who were not vaccinated were far more likely to be admitted to ICU, compared with those who were.

Full Fact approached Dr Hoffe for comment.

Image courtesy of CDC