Your immune system on vaccines

While it can be impressive to be published, this paper has no evidence, and it is not a study but simply a hypothesis. There is some suggestion that the journal that published it is predatory. The paper also cites another that claims countries with higher vaccine uptake had higher all-cause mortality, but fact-checking and more thorough analysis has shown those claims to be unsupported.

The main assertion in the paper concerns IgG4 antibodies. Scientific understanding of these immune cells is still evolving. Another paper looked at the issue of IgG4 and offered that they make up only a small part of the total antibodies that target the COVID spike protein after vaccination. The paper concluded that overall, they are unlikely to weaken the immunity of vaccinated people.

Since the main paper in question makes extraordinary claims about the role of vaccination in causing immune system problems, it should bring extraordinary evidence to back it up. Alas, it does not.

For example, the paper makes a claim about the UK Office of National Statistics. The claim is that between April and mid-November 2021, more people who hadn’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine died compared to those who had received two doses. But later, from the end of November 2021 to December 2022, things changed: more people who had received a third vaccine dose died compared to those who hadn’t gotten vaccinated at all.

The error here is confounding by indication, neglecting to take into account that, at that time, the third dose was reserved only for the sickest and most vulnerable people. As it turns out, those people are also the most likely to die. The claim is extraordinary, and the evidence fails to account for such variables.