We have provided numerous explanations (see here, and here) and videos (see here and here) explaining why a vaccine that is actually merely a placebo will inevitably appear to have high efficacy if there is a time delay after vaccination during which the participant is classified as ‘unvaccinated’.
Some people have claimed that the examples – using hypothetical data – are unrealistic and that, with different assumptions about the underlying infection rate, the illusion would not happen. Not true.
This example simulates a vaccine roll-out and efficacy evaluation which is essentially how all the 2021 observational studies of the Covid vaccines were conducted.
Assumptions:
The entire population starts week 1 as unvaccinated and by week 14 about 90% of the population has received a single jab (note that we start with a population of one million but the efficacy results are exactly same irrespective of the starting population).
The vaccination rollout starts with 1% of the unvaccinated population vaccinated in week 1 and peaks at 35% in week 8 falling back to 10% in each of the last three weeks.
There is a constant weekly infection rate throughout the period (in the example below it is 2% but, as the video shows, the ‘efficacy’ numbers are exactly the same no matter what the fixed rate is).
Any vaccinated person who becomes infected within the first two weeks of his or her vaccination is classified as unvaccinated (in fact, as can be seen here, the Office for National Statistics classifies a person as infected within the first three weeks of his or her vaccination as unvaccinated. And also note this is the case in Sweden).
The Excel model can be downloaded from here.
Based on these assumptions, we find that a placebo is 86% ‘effective’ under a 14-day rule.
Here are the results shown in our new video.
Read More: The Scam That Spins ‘95% Vaccine Efficacy’ From a Placebo
