A Stanford University study reveals that covid vaccines saved far fewer people than initially thought

A new study from Stanford University developed in conjunction with Italian researchers revealed that vaccines against covid given between December 2020 and October 2024 saved far fewer lives than initially thought.

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) claimed that more than 14 million people were saved by vaccines. However, the results of the new modeling cast doubt on that judgment, showing that the figure was actually "substantially more conservative": 2.5 million people.

While the number of lives saved is remarkable, the study also revealed that the vast majority of these saved people, nine out of ten, were over the age of 60. In contrast, the statistical model showed that the vaccines saved only 299 people under the age of 20 and 1,808 people between the ages of 20 and 30 worldwide.

That is, taking all ages, the study concluded that 5,400 people needed to be vaccinated to save a single life. However, when only those under 30 years of age are taken, this figure increased to 100,000 doses to save one person.

Thus, the authorsof the study strongly criticized the vaccination mandates implemented by different governments around the world for all ages.

John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford University and first author of the study, threw out several conclusions, including, "Aggressive mandates and the zealotry to vaccinate everyone at all cost were probably a bad idea."

The professor also argued that it would have been more logical to focus mass vaccination on “the populations that would gain the vast majority of the benefit, and set aside those with questionable risk-benefit and cost-benefit ratios.”

Dr. Angelo Maria Pezzullo, a researcher in general and applied hygiene at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, also highlighted the effort made to reach conclusions unpublished to date: "Before ours, several studies tried to estimate lives saved by vaccines with different models and in different periods or parts of the world, but this one is the most comprehensive because it is based on worldwide data. It also covers the omicron period."

Professor Stefania Boccia, of Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, wanted to highlight the contribution of vaccines for a notoriously more vulnerable population.

"Most of the benefits, in terms of lives and life-years saved, have been secured for a portion of the global population who is typically more fragile – the elderly," he said.