Surprise, surprise…NOT!

From Coffee & Covid today:

Last week, a significant new peer-reviewed vaccine study published in the well-regarded journal BMC Infectious Diseases, titled, “Real world effectiveness of antipneumococcal vaccination against pneumonia in adults: a population-based cohort study, Catalonia, 2019.” Teaser: they found negative efficacy of minus eighty percent, meaning older adults given pneumonia jabs were 80% more likely to get pneumonia. Thanks a lot, doc.

The global market for pneumococcal vaccines is valued between $8 - $10 billion in 2024–2025. And it’s growing fast. Over the next ten years, forecasters project the market will nearly double, expecting a total market of $15–$17 billion. Unsurprisingly, Pfizer is the big gorilla, hogging nearly all of the pneumonia jab market (80%).

The study researchers reviewed the 2019 health records of over 2.23 million ‘senior’ (50+) patients in Catalonia— a largely autonomous mini-country within Spain that has its own government. It even has its own president. The region includes Barcelona and has a distinct language (Catalan). The study’s scientists work for the Catalonian Health Institute, one of Spain’s largest healthcare systems.

The study was pretty simple and hard to argue with. They compared electronic vaccination records (jabbed versus unjabbed) against subsequent admissions for pneumonia as well as death records. They found: (1) people given the jabs were +80% more likely to wind up hospitalized for pneumonia, and (2) there was no measurable improvement in risk of either hospitalization or death among the vaccinated group, which you would hope to see if the stupid shots worked.

The researchers explained they did the study because they couldn’t find where anyone had ever tested the shots for real-world efficacy. “Several randomised-controlled trials and observational studies have demonstrated vaccines’ immunogenicity,” the researchers wrote, “but vaccination effectiveness and impact to prevent pneumonia among adults was uncertain.”

“Immunogenicity” is the great trick, the way big pharma has pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes for decades. In vaccines, “immunogenicity” means having the ability to stimulate an immune response, usually in the form of measurable antibodies to a particular undesirable bug like Streptococcus pneumoniae. Somehow, pharma convinced regulators to allow them to test for “immunogenicity” (antibody levels) rather than testing whether the jabs actually prevent the intended disease.

So this study is much more than just a hit on the pneumonia jab. The Catalonian study (and others) are cementing concerns that antibody response might not after all translate into meaningful protection against common and deadly outcomes. Sometimes they might not translate at all, or as here, show antibodies but still produce negative effectiveness. (Immunogenicity was how they tested the covid jabs, too.)

If regulators were ever finally convinced to reject antibody evidence without broad clinical effectiveness, it would change the whole game.

This study is shocking, but don’t expect anything terrific. Pharma has entire teams, departments, staffed with ex-regulators who are dedicated to damage control, and they’ve probably been working on a response to these results since well before the study finished peer review. Indeed, the study noted that this year, new versions of the vaccines are expected, giving Pfizer cover to issue a vague statement of regret over the inefficiencies of past years, and then keep right on pushing the newest generation of pneumonia shots on vulnerable patients.

In other words, it’s whack-a-mole. While scientists wait for data and conduct studies, jabmakers keep tweaking their formulae to evade scrutiny and provide plausible deniability. The only permanent solution is to stop letting them use surrogate markers of response rather than provable results, and to restore legal liability for ineffective and harmful products.

💉 But there is some good news. This study feels different. Major research groups (like this big hospital system) usually avoid tackling massive pharma profit centers like pneumonia jabs— but Catalonia did it anyway. These particular scientists, at least, are obviously growing skeptical about using antibody levels to intuit efficacy. And then, it was actually prominently published: Historically, even when negative results about major vaccines have been published, they usually pop up in lower-impact journals, are hidden behind paywalls, or are published as brief “Technical Notes.”

But this study was big, population-based, peer-reviewed, open access, well-written, and from a reputable European institution.

I can’t escape feeling like the tide might be going out on the vaccine industry’s salad years. There might be a sea change swelling in vaccine skepticism (don’t call it ‘hesitancy’) from institutions and researchers around the world. People are getting sick and tired of the vaccine shell game.

Maybe we should just pull the plug on the whole damnable thing. What do you say?