French COVID-19 Vaccine Study: Debunking Claims

Read full article: The major French study on Covid-19 vaccinations really (does not) show this

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Major French research

Recently, a major French study was published into the relationship between mortality and Covid vaccinations. It concerned 28 million French people between the ages of 18 and 59, where mortality rates were monitored over four years. This concerned more than 22 million vaccinated people and 28 million unvaccinated people.

In those almost 4 years, 130,000 of the research group died. After correction procedures, mortality among those with a Covid vaccination would be 25% lower than among those who had not been vaccinated against Covid-19.

The research has been publicly embraced by Marion Koopmans and Marc van Ranst, among others, and defended by Maarten Keulemans.

But if you delve deeper into the report and the results, I came across the same thing as I had observed with the Nivel research and the Utrecht research in 2024: demonstrable problems in the research design, but because the conclusions are satisfactory, it is embraced by prominent figures from the scientific world. (If you want to read back about what’s going on with those two studies, read it here and here).

Before I delve deeper into the problems of French research, I would like to use a simple example to indicate what the problem is with those studies.

Vegetarians are healthier

Please note: this is a fake example.

A large study has been conducted on the possible health benefits of vegetarians. The researchers followed large numbers of vegetarians in 10 countries (more than 5 million) for 30 years. The age of death was compared between vegetarians and meat eaters. And after various statistical corrections, it turned out that vegetarians in those 10 countries lived 2 years longer.

The research is welcomed and spread by vegetarians worldwide, with the additional argument that they should also become vegetarian.

Suppose I dive deep into the data. And I also note that in only two countries there is a real age difference between the time of death of vegetarians and non-vegetarians. And a very big difference. From more than 10 years and these determine the end result of the research in those 10 countries.

Then, as a researcher, you delve into the figures of those two countries with the major differences. What is different there than in the other 8 countries?

You look at the basic data of those two countries and you are astonished to see that no fewer than 50 vegetarians had died at an age of over 130 years.

Then you know for sure that something went wrong during that investigation. Because if you take these 50 130-year-olds out of the study, there appears to be no difference in the average age of death between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in those two countries.

But if you then make that public, it will be ignored by those who have already embraced the research en masse. “It was a study by renowned scientists….” and/or “the results were really in line with the views of 95% of scientists”.

Get this example in your head and realize that this course of events happened very often during the corona period and in relation to the effect of the Covid-19 vaccination. Studies with results that were in line with the dominant narrative are embraced, regardless of how weak those studies often were, and how easy it was to see that something was wrong with the research. Not that an opposite conclusion should have been drawn, but the conclusion should have been (just like with the Nivel research and the Utrecht research) that no conclusion should be drawn. But that is not a conclusion that the researchers want to come out with. Plus, if they come out with desired results, they get support from their colleagues and science journalists, such as Maarten Keulemans.

The French investigation

Back to the French study.

The big problem with all studies trying to investigate the pros or cons of the Covid vaccinations is that there is a clear difference between those who have been vaccinated and those who have not. And therefore it is not easy to determine whether there are differences in results between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, whether this is due to the effect of that vaccination or because of the difference between the two groups.

This can best be illustrated with a remarkable result from Utrecht research by, among others, Prof. Marc Bonten. In the first week after the Covid-19 vaccination, mortality among the vaccinated was 71% lower than among the unvaccinated. The explanation is simple: people who were dying were no longer vaccinated.

But if you want to show that there is no additional mortality due to the vaccination, you ignore this, as in the Utrecht study. Plus, this method of research also leads to extra high protection figures through the vaccination.

This effect is further reinforced by – in the Netherlands – the problem that approximately 7% of vaccinated people are not registered as such. And that choices are made in the research, so that mortality among the vaccinated group is concealed or placed in the unvaccinated group.

It is often not easy to see what really happened during the research and what effect it has on the results.

But the starting point is mainly how plausible the end results of the research are. And don’t you already have strong indications that something went wrong?

The French study has one central table, which should set off alarm bells for any objective data analyst. This is the central overview of the death rates by cause between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. It’s this table.

This concerns the cause of death of the 130,000 French people aged between 18 and 59 who died in the 4-year study period compared to vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Columns 3 and 4 are the deaths per million between vaccinated and unvaccinated. And the last column expresses the degree of difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated (after a weighing procedure).

The last line is the total figures and the 0.73 in the right column, at the very bottom, indicates that mortality among the vaccinated was 27% lower than among the unvaccinated.

If you look at all the figures in the right column, you will see that for every line, i.e. every cause of death, there was a lower mortality among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated. For example, the sixth line from the bottom shows that the vaccinated died 26% less from a traffic accident.

In terms of total cancer, those vaccinated against Covid-19 appeared to have died 11% less than those who were unvaccinated.

And there would also be a 24% lower mortality among vaccinated people in the case of circulatory mortality (cause of death I).

Anyone who can think logically (and especially wants to think logically) understands that there is something special going on with this table. This table does not show the positive effects of the Covid-19 vaccination, but is an artefact of the way the research was conducted.

With such a table as an outcome, responsible researchers would have to dig deep into their research again and if they cannot find the cause, they should not publish the research (let alone a scientific journal should publish the research).

But yes, we immediately see what happens after publication. Marion Koopmans and Marc van Ranst tweet about the results and Maarten Keulemans explains to me that the higher mortality among unvaccinated people in traffic is because the unvaccinated have a lower socio-economic status on average.

This is the standard way of reasoning of people like Keulemans. For results that seem strange, an explanation is provided that could be possible. But results that are in line with what you would like to find, pretend that there are no alternative explanations for them and are then embraced.

Because why wouldn’t the higher Covid-19 mortality of those who were unvaccinated also be due to their lower socio-economic status? For example, because they worked much less in the office, and were therefore more likely to be in places where they could become infected during the Covid-19 period than the vaccinated?

No, because as soon as the results can be used to pass on the blessings of the Covid-19 vaccination, the alternative explanations of the research results are ignored and the results are spread. Because the French large-scale study (it involved no fewer than 28 million people) showed that there was a significantly lower mortality among those who had been vaccinated against Covid-19.

But it is the same as with the Nivel study and the Utrecht study (and many other studies), the results are artifacts of the research design. But when they are useful in the classroom, they are used and not approached critically by fellow scientists. Because if they dare to do that, it will have consequences for your career.

What’s it really like?

Fortunately, I have more to do than spell out this research. Because even when it is clearly demonstrated what went wrong, it is ignored by those who applauded the research and science journalists such as Maarten Keulemans.

I will content myself with the criticism that I have read about it by someone who has investigated the research and in which I recognize the patterns that I have previously encountered in other studies.

There would be a “survivor basis”. Those vaccinated were only included in the study from November 1, 2021, while vaccination of most in that group had started 5 months earlier. All deaths between the vaccination moment and November 1 were ignored.

The “healthy vaccine no effect” also plays a role here. That the health situation of those who were vaccinated was better than that of the unvaccinated. (That would also be an excellent explanation for the favorable figures for vaccinated people for every cause of death related to health).

The researchers conclude that the research shows that there is no increased mortality among Covid-19 vaccinees and that the research supports the conclusion that the mRNA vaccinations are safe in the longer term.

My position is that this research cannot lead to any conclusion, except that this research design is not suitable for drawing conclusions about the safety or not of the vaccinations. (The comparable conclusion I drew with regard to the Nivel research and the Utrecht research).

Partly because this was a study among 18-59 year olds. Of all deaths in that research period in France, this is only 8%.

While in France, for example, there was a significant excess mortality in the year 2022, especially among the 65+ group, as this official graph from Euromomo shows of the 65+ group (more than 85% of mortality in France is in that group). Flu, for example, played a role at the end of 2022.

NB I will not go into the ridiculous argument of the science journalist (Sjamadriaan van Trouw), who raised it on the back page last Saturday in a kind of hate piece about me. Particularly in response to my article about the German research into the relationship between vaccination rates and excess mortality in the German federal states.

It was also an argument from Maarten Keulemans. There was a significant flu wave in Germany at the end of the third Covid-19 pandemic year (end of 2022).

Now the German research and my article were about the remarkable connection between the increase in mortality per German state in the third year and the vaccination rate of that state.

So the flu can at most be a (partial) explanation of the increase in mortality in that third year of the pandemic in Germany. But not an explanation for the differences per German state.

(If you think about it, those science journalists shot in their own feet with their argumentation. There is a clear correlation between the extent to which people are vaccinated against Covid-19 and against influenza. So if there is a higher mortality in Germany mainly due to that group, then it is extra high in the states with a higher vaccination rate (against Covid-19 and against flu)).

But yes, another science journalist, who is both an insult to science and to journalism.