‘It’s Not Science’: JAMA Study Claiming COVID Vaccines Saved Millions is Fundamentally Flawed

Science & Health | Rights & Freedoms

August 27, 2025

Originally posted by: Children's Health Defense

A report in JAMA Health Forum that estimates COVID-19 vaccines saved between 1.4 million and 4 million lives is false and based on flawed assumptions, according to a preprint paper published this week by Correlation, a Canadian nonprofit research organization.

All-cause mortality expert Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., argued in the preprint that the inputs used by Dr. John Ioannidis and his colleagues for their COVID-19 vaccine calculations were based on incorrect assumptions about infection fatality rates and vaccine efficacy.

The authors of the JAMA paper also didn’t account for harms from vaccines or compare their results to real-world data, Rancourt said.

Rancourt said his critique exposes the “mental game” used by the scientists to build a case for the COVID-19 vaccines’ lifesaving abilities. He said:

“The formula they’re applying is elegant and straightforward — anybody can understand it.

“But look at the components inside the formula. They’re based on nothing. They’re based on something that is nothing, that is based on something else that is nothing, and so on. This is nonsense. It’s not science. It’s just manipulation of concocted data.

“Here’s a smart man applying a formula, but the outcome is garbage. There is no reason to believe that any lives were saved.”

‘Mathematically perfect,’ but fundamentally flawed

The authors of the JAMA study examined the global impact of COVID-19 vaccinations on deaths between 2020-2024. They estimated the number of lives saved by multiplying the number of people who would have died without vaccination — estimated from the infection fatality rate — by vaccine efficacy and vaccine coverage.

According to their calculations, the vaccines “averted 2.5 million deaths,” within a broader range, and “saved 15 million life-years.” The authors concluded the vaccines had a “substantial benefit” on global mortality, primarily for older people.

Rancourt said the formula the researchers used was straightforward and “mathematically perfect,” but the inputs were fundamentally flawed.

“It’s a very simple mathematical formula. It’s very elegant. It’s easy to think about,” Rancourt told The Defender. “But you have to believe the components of the equation, which are very far-fetched.”

The number of people who got the vaccine is the only input to the formula that can be known with relative certainty, he said. The other variables in their equation are “disjunctively and irreparably problematic.”

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Data from manufacturers can’t be trusted

For vaccine efficacy, the researchers used the numbers provided by the vaccine manufacturers from their clinical trials. These data were used despite Ioannidis’ public distrust of medical research and clinical trials.

Manufacturer-sponsored efficacy trials for any vaccine “cannot be trusted whatsoever, given the structural nature of the industry, not to mention the exceptionally politicised and captured institutional context of the declared COVID-19 pandemic,” Rancourt said.

Considering Ioannidis’ documented skepticism, it is hard to believe he would suddenly trust that vaccine makers were “doing good science” and “acting ethically” in reporting their clinical trials, Rancourt said.

Data and reporting have shown that COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers deceptively overstated the efficacy of their vaccines.

It is well-documented that pharmaceutical companies fabricate data, exclude relevant data, keep secrets and manipulate their records, Rancourt said. He cited a 2013 landmark study by Dr. Peter Gøtzsche, along with assessments by editors at leading journals including The Lancet and the BMJ.

To derive the number of deaths that would have occurred without vaccination, Ioannidis and his colleagues used seroprevalence data — which is the proportion of the population affected by a disease at any given time, based on antibody testing. The infection fatality rates also depend on seroprevalence data.

However, antibody tests for COVID-19 are often invalid, Rancourt argued. The COVID-19 tests were not thoroughly calibrated, verified or validated. Like the vaccines, they were produced for profit under an emergency situation, creating conditions for error and fraud.

“I don’t think the seroprevalence data is reliable at all,” he said. To validate a chemical test and confirm that it is identifying a specific disease like SARS-CoV-2, there would have to be laboratory comparisons. However, those were not done.

The authors of the JAMA paper never tied their results to real-world all-cause mortality data. They didn’t doubt their inputs, so they had no reason to check them against such data — data that clearly demonstrate a lack of vaccine effectiveness and serious harm from the vaccines, Rancourt said.

In calculating the lives saved, the paper also ignored deaths caused by COVID-19 vaccines — a fact the authors explicitly acknowledge. They justify this omission by presuming that the lifesaving ability of the vaccine is far greater than any risk associated with it.

Rancourt said verifying published studies is crucial within the scientific field:

“It is important to assess such claims made by leading scientists in the leading scientific literature because they may have a disproportionate influence on global public health practices and may present distorted views of past presumed successes.”

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