A Democrat judge has spared a Leftist activist jail time after she assaulted US Pardon Attorney Ed Martin and two US Marshals, continuing a trend where far-Left criminals are granted leniency for attacking Republicans.Emily Gabriella Sommer, 33, was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/district-woman-pleads-guilty-assault-spitting-former-interim-us-attorney-edward-r-martin" id="">charged</a> with assault in May after she approached Martin while he was interviewing with a Newsmax correspondent and spat on him. Martin was the interim US Attorney at the time. Sommer then shouted at him, “You are a disgusting man. F*ck&nbsp; you, Ed Martin. My name is Emily Gabriella Sommer, and you are served.”When she was arrested two weeks later, Sommer kicked two Deputy US Marshals and spat on one of them. While awaiting trial, she issued vile threats on social media to Martin and current US Attorney Jeanine Pirro.DOJ prosecutors asked for an 18-month prison sentence, but Biden-appointed Judge Jia Cobb sentenced her to four months’ time served, house arrest, and probation.“It’s clear that if you assault a conservative, the system will protect you,” Martin said in response to the ruling.There is evidence for Martin’s statement.<h2 id="">Patrick Brice</h2>In August, 28-year-old Patrick Brice avoided prison after a 2023 incident where he brutally assaulted two elderly pro-life activists, Dick Schafer (80) and Mark Crosby (73), outside a Planned Parenthood in Baltimore after an argument. Brice attacked 80-year-old Dick Schafer from behind and severely beat 73-year-old Mark Crosby, causing significant injuries, including a shattered orbital bone, blindness in one eye, and photophobia. Convicted in February of reckless endangerment and second-degree assault, Brice faced a possible 10-year prison sentence but was sentenced instead to one year of home detention, three years’ probation, anger management classes, drug and alcohol screening, and therapy.<h2 id="">Robert Hoopes</h2>On June 14th, 24-year-old Robert Jacob Hoopes participated in a riot outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Oregon. Hoopes threw a rock that struck a police officer in the head, causing what the DOJ called&nbsp; a “significant laceration” under the officer’s eye. With the help of two others, Hoopes used a pole as a battering ram to try to break through the facility, causing “significant damage” to the main door.In July, Obama-appointed Judge Youlee Yim You ordered Hoopes released from jail, to be fitted with an ankle monitor instead. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, the judge based her decision partly on the showing of support for Hoopes in the courtroom. Attendees included Hoopes’ father, who said he was proud of his son for defending illegal aliens.<h2 id="">Adam Lansky</h2>Federal judges have also refused to detain Adam Lansky, a transgender-identifying man who attacked a Tesla dealership in January. Lansky firebombed the dealership with Molotov cocktails, aimed a rifle at a witness, and returned the next day to shoot up the building. <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/29/blue-state-judges-refuse-jail-leftists-charged-violent-attacks/" id="">According</a> to the Daily Caller, the DOJ warned the court that Lansky belongs to a militant organization called the Socialist Rifle Association, a group that trains radical Leftists and Marxists across the US in firearms. The DOJ also expressed concern that if released, Lansky could continue to make bombs.“The [improvised explosive devices] used by Lansky were all manufactured by him using everyday items, empty glass bottles, gasoline, fabric, etc., all these items remain easily accessible to Lansky in the community if released,” the DOJ said in a court filing.Nevertheless, Obama-appointed Judge Stacie Beckerman ordered Lansky’s release to a halfway house, calling his behavior an “outlier event.” When the DOJ appealed to Judge Adrienne Nelson, who is celebrated as the first Black woman to serve on Oregon’s District Court, she upheld Beckerman’s decision.<h2 id="">‘Julie’ Winters</h2>Beckerman also ordered the release of another transgender-identifying rioter, “Julie” Winters, to a halfway house. Winters tried to set off a bomb near an ICE building, threw a large knife at a federal officer, which missed, and pulled a knife on officers who tried to restrain him. He had also assaulted a police officer in December. Beckerman released Winters from jail because he was kept in solitary confinement rather than with male or female inmates due to his gender confusion.<h2 id="">Dylan Bryan Adams</h2>In April, a Democratic Minnesota official evaded charges for domestic terrorism. Dylan Bryan Adams, a fiscal policy analyst for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, was arrested after keying six Teslas, causing over $21,000 in damages. Instead of filing charges, Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty—who has been backed by billionaire George Soros—said she will enter Adams into an adult diversion program. Diversion programs are designed to keep criminals out of the justice system and offer activities such as counseling and community service.<h2 id="">Owen McIntire</h2>Owen McIntire, a 19-year-old physics major at the University of Massachusetts Boston, was arrested after throwing two Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Kansas City. The firebombs caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to two cybertrucks and two charging stations.&nbsp;Federal prosecutors sought to keep McIntire in federal custody, arguing that the terrorism-related charges make him a public safety threat. On April 24th, however, Judge Jessica Hedges overruled the prosecutors and granted McIntire release so he could continue to receive “gender-affirming care.” The judge also cited McIntire’s autism and ADHD, for which he takes medication. He was released to the custody of his parents and will remain under house arrest until his trial, which has been delayed a year.‍

Violent Leftist who assaulted US officials avoids jail time

'It’s clear that if you assault a conservative, the system will protect you'

By Dr. Eyal Shahar, Brownstone InstituteIn the years that I served as an associate editor (for The American Journal of Epidemiology), I have seen the entire spectrum of “peer reviews” — from meticulous, thoughtful critiques whose authors evidently invested several hours in the task to sketchy reviews that reflected carelessness and incompetence. I have read friendly reviews by admirers of the authors and hostile reviews by their enemies. (It is not difficult to tell from the tone.) In the practice of science, human beings still behave like human beings.Matters got worse during the pandemic. Studies that praised the Covid vaccines were quickly certified “peer-reviewed,” whereas critical, post-publication peer review was <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/the-censorship-of-covid-science-three-examples/" target="_blank" id="">suppressed</a>. As a result, we now have a historical collection of published poor science. It cannot be erased, but it is time to start correcting the record.Biomedical journals are not the platform. First, there is no formal section for open peer reviews of articles that were published long ago. Second, editors have no interest in exposing falsehoods that were published in their journals. Third, the <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/long-post-vaccination-censorship/" target="_blank" id="">censorship</a> machine is still in place. So far, I was able to break it only <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12449847/" target="_blank" id="">once</a>, and it wasn’t easy.So, how can we try to correct the record, and where?Let me make a suggestion to my colleagues in epidemiology, biostatistics, and related methodological fields who preserved their critical thinking during the pandemic. Choose one article or more about the Covid vaccines and submit your peer review to <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles" target="_blank" id="">Brownstone Journal</a>. If it is interesting and well-written, there is a good chance it will be posted. I advise cherry-picking: find those peer-reviewed articles that irritated you most, either because they were pure <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/lies-damn-lies-and-causality/" target="_blank" id="">nonsense</a> or because the correct inference was <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/how-highly-effective-vaccine-turns-into-mediocre-vaccine-or-worse/" target="_blank" id="">strikingly different</a>. And if you posted short critiques on Twitter (now X) or thorough reviews on other platforms, expand, revise, and submit them to Brownstone. Perhaps we can slowly create an inventory of critical reviews, restoring some trust in the scientific method and in biomedical science.Here is an example.<h3 id="">A Review and a Re-Analysis of a Study in Ontario, Canada</h3>Published in the British Medical Journal in August 2021, the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8377789/" target="_blank" id="">paper</a> reported the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines in early 2021, shortly after their authorization.This research was typical of vaccine studies from that time. Effectiveness was estimated in a “real-world” setting; namely, an observational study during a vaccination campaign. The study period (mid-December 2020 through mid-April 2021) included the peak of a Covid winter wave in early January. We’ll discuss later a strong bias called confounding by background infection risk.The design was a variation of the case-control study, the test-negative design. Eligible subjects underwent a PCR test because of Covid-like symptoms. Cases tested positive; controls tested negative. As usual, odds ratios were computed, and effectiveness was computed as 1 minus the odds ratio (expressed in percent). The sample size was large: 53,270 cases and 270,763 controls.<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image " data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align=""><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/68ecb1165eace4daf9db8760_image-2-800x363.png" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div><figcaption id="">Source: part of figure 1 in the article</figcaption></figure>The authors reported the following key results (my italics):<blockquote id="">“Vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection observed ≥14 days after one dose was 60% (95% confidence interval 57% to 64%), increasing from 48% (41% to 54%) at 14–20 days after one dose to 71% (63% to 78%) at 35–41 days. Vaccine effectiveness observed ≥7 days after two doses was 91% (89% to 93%).”</blockquote>Like almost every study of effectiveness, the authors discarded early events. As explained <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12449847/" target="_blank" id="">elsewhere</a>, this practice introduces a bias called <a href="https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/167/4/492/233064?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank" id="">immortal time</a>, or <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jep.13839" target="_blank" id="">case-counting window bias</a>. Not only does it obscure possible early harmful effects, but it also effectively leads to overestimation of effectiveness. RFK, Jr. alluded to this bias in non-technical terms (see <a href="https://x.com/i/status/1962442350644568123" target="_blank" id="">video clip</a>).The <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12449847/" target="_blank" id="">correct approach</a> is simple. We should estimate effectiveness from the administration of the first dose to later timepoints (built-up immunity). My table below shows the study data and the results of the new analysis. Each row shows the computation of effectiveness by the indicated day.<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image " data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align=""><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/68ecb1165eace4daf9db875d_image-3-800x237.png" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div></figure>Effectiveness was negative by the end of the first two weeks after the first dose and had reached about 30% before a second dose, not 70%. It has reached only about 50% by the time of full immunity, not 90%. Although my estimates are unadjusted, eTable 2 (<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8377789/#notes1" target="_blank" id="">supplementary material</a>) indicates that adjustment has hardly changed the authors’ estimates.My results are still biased, however, by what I called earlier “confounding by background infection risk.”The figure below was taken from the website of <a href="https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/Data-and-Analysis/Infectious-Disease/COVID-19-Data-Surveillance/Archives/Daily-Epi-Summary" target="_blank" id="">Public Health Ontario</a>. The black line shows the 7-day rolling average of new cases. I added red lines that show the study period, divided into two intervals. I also added estimates of the number of vaccinated people in each interval.<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image " data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align=""><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/68ecb1165eace4daf9db8757_image-4-800x427.avif" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div></figure>The first interval, which contained the peak of the winter wave, was a period of slow beginning of the vaccination campaign. At that time, the distribution of vaccination status was skewed toward non-vaccination, which means that non-vaccination status happened to coincide with a high probability of getting infected. In contrast, the background infection rate was lower in much of the second period, when several million people received the first dose. Only in mid-March did the number of new cases cross back the dashed line. In short, the inverse association between vaccination and infection was heavily confounded by time trends in the risk of an infection. Even a placebo injection would have appeared effective.I cannot remove the bias, and it is strong. The true effectiveness, if any, is much smaller than the estimates I computed after the removal of immortal time bias. Whether it is 10% by six weeks or 20% makes no difference. That’s not a vaccine.The authors used another case group: hospitalization or death. This data is subject not only to the previous biases but also to the <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/illusions-in-vaccine-effectiveness/" target="_blank" id="">healthy vaccinee bias</a>. I cannot offer a correction, however. Most of the data for cases was suppressed due to small numbers, and the control group was wrong. They used “the same control group as for the first primary outcome analysis (ie, individuals with symptoms who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2).” That’s a violation of a basic principle of the test-negative design. Controls should have been hospitalized or deceased people who tested negative.The following sentence reflects a misunderstanding of the regression model they fit. They write, “We used multivariable logistic regression models to estimate the odds ratio, comparing the odds of vaccination (my italics) between test positive cases and test negative controls (with unvaccinated people as reference group).” The dependent variable was case-control status (log odds of being a case). Technically, the odds of being a case (versus being a control) are compared, not the odds of vaccination.Strangely, the posted <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8377789/#notes1" target="_blank" id="">supplemental material</a> still carries the heading “CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, 5 AUG 2021.” Only in the Covid era can you find such sloppiness. We observe here biased (careless) handling of a paper that served the narrative.I will end my review with a favorite topic of mine: <a href="https://shahar-26393.medium.com/the-australian-government-analyzed-covid-vaccines-discard-the-results-4d7f7e61cd40" id="">nonsensical results</a>.The figure below displays estimates of effectiveness, as computed by the authors. The arrow points to a result that makes no sense. We do not expect any incremental benefit of the second dose within 6 days of the injection, yet effectiveness increased, almost reaching the estimate for the subsequent interval (7+ days). If the estimate for 0–6 days is clearly biased, why would we trust the next one?<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image " data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align=""><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/68ecb1165eace4daf9db875a_image-5-800x483.avif" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div><figcaption id="">Source: Figure 2 in the article</figcaption></figure><h3 id="">Epilogue</h3>As I wrote at the beginning, we should try to correct the historical record. It’s a long road ahead, but as the proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I am particularly appealing to top-ranked methodologists who used to tear apart poor studies and criticize shaky methods. Most of them kept silent throughout the pandemic, probably fearing the consequences of challenging the “safe and effective” narrative.Let’s start reading fearless reviews of studies that reported the remarkable effectiveness of Covid vaccines, which proved to be false. There is no shortage of problems to detect, highlight, and correct, if possible, with actual data or simulations:<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image " data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align=""><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/68ecb1165eace4daf9db8750_image-6.avif" alt="" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto" id=""></div></figure>If we don’t do this work, we will continue to read <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836434" target="_blank" id="">false, effectiveness-based estimates</a> of lives saved. Was it close to <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836434" target="_blank" id="">2.5 million</a>, as some have claimed, or <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/thousands-of-averted-covid-deaths-in-israel-science-fiction/" target="_blank" id="">undetectable in mortality statistics</a>, or <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/the-mirror-of-erised-the-true-efficacy-of-covid-vaccines/" target="_blank" id="">possibly about zero</a>? And will we ever get some answers from <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/please-show-us-the-trials/" target="_blank" id="">relevant trials</a>?<a href="https://brownstone.org/author/eyal-shahar/" id="">Eyal Shahar</a>Dr. Eyal Shahar is a professor emeritus of public health in epidemiology and biostatistics. His research focuses on epidemiology and methodology. In recent years, Dr. Shahar has also made significant contributions to research methodology, especially in the domain of causal diagrams and biases.<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id="">Published under a</a><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id=""> Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/a-call-for-peer-re-reviews-of-articles-on-covid-vaccines/" id="">previous Brownstone Institute Article </a>and <a href="https://brownstone.org/author/eyal-shahar/">Author</a>. Originally published at <a href="https://shahar-26393.medium.com/a-call-for-peer-re-reviews-of-articles-on-covid-vaccines-1f82fd3ff23a" id="">Medium.</a>

A Call for Peer Re-Reviews of Articles on Covid Vaccines

Studies that praised Covid vaccines were quickly certified “peer reviewed.” Critical, post-publication peer review was suppressed.

By Robert Malone, Brownstone InstituteBuckle in, this is a speech for the history books. Summary quotes and the transcript are below the video.Note that <a href="https://mises.org/wire/libertarian-just-another-word-classical-liberal" id="">“Libertarianism” as used here by Milei is synonymous with the classical liberalism</a> of the US Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson. Life, liberty, property. The term “classical liberalism,” while sometimes used to describe libertarianism, is actually a modern invention. There is a school of political and economic thought which advocates that we should be using the word liberalism (which is very different from what in the US are called “liberals” or left wing) to describe the true philosophy of individualism. Also keep in mind that <a href="https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/anarcho-capitalism-and-dr-javier" id="">Javier Milei self identifies as an anarcho-capitalist</a> in the mold of <a href="https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state" id="">Murray Rothbard</a>, and you can hear echos of Rothbard’s arguments in this speech by <a href="https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/anarcho-capitalism-and-dr-javier" id="">economist/president Milei</a>.<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-video " style="padding-bottom:33.75%" data-rt-type="video" data-rt-align="" data-rt-max-height="33.75%"><div id=""><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pfcd0gWNIog?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></figure><h3 id="">Summary of Javier Milei’s speech in Davos 2024 (in 20 quotes)</h3><ol id=""><li id="">“Today I am here to tell you that the Western world is in danger, and it’s in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty.”</li><li id="">“Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.”</li><li id="">“We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.”</li><li id="">“The problem with neoclassical (economists) is the model they love so much does not match reality, so they attribute their own mistakes to the supposed market failure, rather than reviewing the premises of their model.”</li><li id="">“On the pretext of the supposed market failures, regulations are introduced, which only create distortions in the price system, preventing economic calculation, and therefore, also prevent savings, investment, and growth.”.</li><li id="">“Not even supposedly libertarian economists understand what the market is, because if they did understand it, they would quickly see that it’s impossible for something along the lines of market failure to exist.”</li><li id="">“Talking about market failure is an oxymoron, there are no market failures, if transactions are voluntary the only context where it can be a market failure is coercion, and the only one that is able to coerce is the state.”</li><li id="">“Faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful, and the empirical evidence that it has failed, the solution proposed by the collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation. Greater regulation which creates a downwards spiral until we are all poor, and the life of all of us depend on a bureaucrat sitting somewhere in a luxury office.”</li><li id="">“Given the dismal failure of collectivist models, and the undeniable advances in the free world, socialists were led to change their agenda. They left behind the class struggle based on the economic system, and replaced it with other supposed social conflicts, which are just as harmful to life as a community, and to economic growth.”</li><li id="">“Today’s states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the life of individuals. With tools like printing money, debt, subsidies, control of the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals.”</li><li id="">“They say that capitalism is evil because it’s individualistic and that collectivism is good because it’s altruistic, of course with the money of others.”</li><li id="">“Those who promote social justice, they advocate the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared in better ways, but that pie is not a fixed given, it’s wealth that get generated in what Israel Kirzner for instance calls a Market Discovery Process.”</li><li id="">“If the state punishes the capitalists when they are successful, and gets in the way of the (Market) Discovery Process, they will destroy their incentives and the consequence is that they will produce less, and the pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole.”</li><li id="">“Collectivism, by inhibiting the (Market) Discovery Process and hindering the appropriation of discoveries, ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and preventing them to provide better goods and services at a better price.”</li><li id="">“Thanks to free enterprise capitalism, the world is now living its best moment; never in all of mankind’s or humanity’s history there has been a time of more prosperity than today. Today’s world is more free, more rich, more peaceful, and more prosperous than in any other time of human history. And this is particularly true for those countries that respect economic freedom and the property rights of individuals.”</li><li id="">“The capitalist, the successful entrepreneur, is a social benefactor, who far from appropriating the wealth of others, contributes to the general well-being of all. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.”</li><li id="">“Libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the project of life of others, based on the non-aggression principle, in defense of the right to life, to liberty, and to property. With its fundamental institutions being: Private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, the division of labor, and social cooperation. Where you can only be successful by serving others with goods of better quality at a best price.”</li><li id="">“The impoverishment produced by collectivism is no fantasy, nor it is fatalism, it’s a reality that we in Argentina have known very well for at least 100 years.” “We have lived through it, and we are here to warn you about what can happen if the countries in the Western world – that became rich through the model of freedom – stay on this road to serfdom.”</li><li id="">“We come here today to invite other countries in the Western world to return to the path of prosperity. Economic freedom, limited government, and the unrestricted respect for private property, are essential elements for economic growth.”</li><li id="">“In concluding, I would like to leave a message for all entrepreneurs and business people here, and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world: Do not be intimidated either by the political caste nor by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender yourself to a political class that only wants to perpetuate itself in power and keep their privileges. You are social benefactors, you are heroes, you are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at the best price, thereby contributing to the general well-being. Do not yield to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story. And rest assured that starting today, you can count on Argentina as an unconditional ally. Long Live Freedom, Dammit!”</li></ol>The conclusion is obvious. Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty, and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable. Therefore, since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing DOXA has attacked capitalism alleging matters of morality. Saying, that’s what the detractors claim, that it’s unjust.‍<a href="https://brownstone.org/author/rwmalonemd/" id="">Robert Malone</a>Robert W. Malone is a physician and biochemist. His work focuses on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research.<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id="">Published under a</a><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id=""> Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/javier-mileis-rallying-cry-before-the-wef/" id="">original Brownstone Institute Article </a>and Author. [This article is a republication of a Substack post that was originally published in January 2024.]

Javier Milei’s Rallying Cry before the WEF

Do not be intimidated either by the political class or by parasites who live off the state

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense<div data-rt-embed-type='true'>A <a href="https://zenodo.org/records/17289481">new report by Canadian researchers</a> challenges widely cited claims that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives in the U.S.
The authors of a preprint paper published this week by <a href="https://zenodo.org/records/17289481">Correlation</a>, a Canadian nonprofit research organization, argue that the claims are based on modelling studies that use flawed assumptions resulting in “fantastic and unverifiable” conclusions.
For example, Peter Hotez<a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/peter-hotez-calls-for-police-military-anti-vaxers/">, M.D., Ph.D.</a> — in <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/safety-efficacy-mrna-vaccines-amid-recent-scrutiny/story?id=122068940">interviews</a> and in his 2024 <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Hotez-Final_Redacted.pdf">congressional testimony</a> — cited a 2022 study by Meagan Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., touting <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations">3.2 million lives saved</a> by the vaccines.
Legacy <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/censorship-surveillance/media/">media</a> latched onto Fitzpatrick’s and Hotez’s claims, widely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/health/trump-covid-vaccines.html">repeating</a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/safety-efficacy-mrna-vaccines-amid-recent-scrutiny/story?id=122068940">amplifying</a> them.
But according to <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccine-rollouts-all-cause-mortality/">all-cause mortality</a> experts Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., and Joseph Hickey, Ph.D., Fitzpatrick used a “counterfactual theoretical calculation” that yielded incorrect assumptions about infection fatality rates and vaccine efficacy.
In their new paper, Rancourt and Hickey argue that counterfactual calculations like those used by Fitzpatrick and other researchers can lead to dangerous conclusions and shouldn’t be used to drive policy.
“False claims accepted by government officials and their advisers can have a disastrous effect on public <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/policy/health-policy/">health policy</a> and society,” they said.
They also reassess the claims made in several studies that estimate the number of lives saved by <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/covid/">COVID-19</a> <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/toxic-exposures/vaccines-toxic-exposures/">vaccines</a>, and challenge the validity of the studies’ underlying assumptions.
Researchers relied on ‘contrived, questionable’ clinical trial efficacy rates
Counterfactual models are designed to estimate the outcomes of a given intervention — in this case, the COVID-19 <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/vaccines/">vaccine</a> — if the intervention hadn’t occurred. To do that, researchers project an alternative scenario.
By design, these models are based on a series of assumptions that Rancourt and Hickey say range from tenuous to outright wrong.
When researchers use counterfactual models to estimate lives saved by the vaccine, they must first estimate how many COVID-19 infections would have occurred during the time in question had there been no vaccines, and then how many of these infections would have resulted in death.
To calculate the infection rate over time, researchers use another model, “contagion dynamics modelling,” which has its own complexities and uncertainties, according to Rancourt and Hickey.
To estimate COVID-19 infections and averted deaths, researchers relied on the vaccine efficacy rates from <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/moderna-clinical-trial-documents-injuries/">clinical trials</a>. But those trials claimed extremely high efficacy rates that Rancourt and Hickey called “contrived, questionable and non-transparent.”
Several counterfactual modelers used similar inputs to conclude that vaccines had a tremendous impact, though their estimates of that impact varied.
In her <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations">blog post</a>, Fitzpatrick concluded that COVID-19 vaccines prevented 3.2 million deaths, 18.5 million hospitalizations and 120 million infections, $1.15 trillion in medical costs by the end of November 2022.
Using the same approach, the authors of an article published in September 2022 in <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext">The Lancet</a> found that the vaccines had prevented 14.4 million deaths globally by December 2021.
A study published in July 2025 in <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836434">JAMA Health Forum</a> used <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/seroprevalence">seroprevalence</a> data from positive COVID-19 deaths, rather than the modeling data used by the other authors, to estimate infection rates, but also used data from clinical trials to determine efficacy.
The study’s lead author <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/searchresults?author=John+P.+A.+Ioannidis&amp;q=John+P.+A.+Ioannidis">Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis</a> and colleagues calculated that the vaccines saved 2.5 million lives globally by 2024 — an estimate that is 10 times lower than those of Fitzpatrick or the authors of The Lancet study.
‘No reliable reason to believe that the COVID-19 vaccines saved any lives’ 
<a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/jama-study-claiming-covid-vaccines-saved-millions-fundamentally-flawed/">Rancourt argued</a> in a previous paper that even Ioannidis&#8217; more limited estimates were a severe overestimation based on flawed inputs to the model. After analyzing the JAMA Health Forum paper, Rancourt found “no reason to believe” that the COVID-19 vaccines saved any lives.
“This whole industry of counterfactual calculations is what I would call ‘politics by science,’” Rancourt said.
“It is equivalent to saying, ‘I&#8217;m going to argue that the intervention that we made had a huge benefit without having any empirical evidence to support that claim,’” he said.
According to Rancourt, the researchers are simply plugging <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender_category/big-pharma/">Big Pharma</a>’s data into a formula, which then shows that millions of lives were saved.
He said the counterfactual scenarios benefit from the fact that, in places like the U.S., which collects a lot of public health data, vaccination rates were so high that there is no unvaccinated group to use as a comparison.
“These are contrived studies,” he said.
Models’ certainty depends on belief in ‘incredible coincidences’
Excess mortality data — which is reliable, measured, real data — allow for a more accurate estimate of deaths averted by the COVID-19 vaccines, Rancourt and Hickey said.
The authors of a 2022 study published in The Lancet <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02226-1/fulltext">analyzed mortality data</a> and found results that were far more ambiguous than those produced by counterfactual models. “The magnitude of the impact of vaccination roll-out on deaths was unclear,” the study concluded.
In their paper, Rancourt and Hickey examined the counterfactual models and the claims those models made about deaths averted over time. They discovered that the models display large peaks in lives saved immediately after the vaccine and booster rollouts.
In other words, according to the models, the COVID-19 virus became highly virulent immediately after the vaccines or boosters were rolled out, so the vaccines likely saved many lives.
However, Rancourt said there was no reduction in excess mortality following the rollouts in 2021 and 2022. Empirical data indicate that excess mortality increased in 2020 and then held steady during the following two years.
To believe the models, Rancourt said, “You’d have to believe these incredible coincidences where the pathogen suddenly became more virulent.”
However, there is no evidence of that. “There’s no firm demonstration that the virus became five or 10 times more virulent at a certain time, a year into the declared pandemic, after there was a lot of excess mortality in 2020,” he said.

The models require people to believe that the pathogen was at a very deadly point when the vaccination campaigns occurred, and only at those times.
Researchers who use the counterfactual models are effectively claiming that, without the vaccine, COVID-19 “would have produced death peaks at a rate far beyond anything that is known in recorded history,” Rancourt said.
He said it’s outrageous that such flawed studies are published in top journals, but it proves that the peer review process has been corrupted.
“The medical establishment paid by pharma are just worker bees trying to find ways to please their masters by inventing these back propagation methods called counterfactual calculations or simulations. It&#8217;s garbage science.”
</li>
</ul></div><a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/authors/brenda-baletti/">Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.</a>Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Texas at Austin.This article was <a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/new-report-garbage-science-behind-claims-covid-shots-saved-millions/">originally published by The Defender</a> — Children’s Health Defense’s News &amp; Views Website under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id="">Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0</a>. Please consider<a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/about-us/sign-up/" id=""> subscribing to The Defender</a> or<a href="https://childrenshealthdefense.org/about-us/donate/" id=""> donating to Children’s Health Defense</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Protecting your
Medical Freedom
and Civil Liberties

Stream What is a Doctor? Today!

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - A Good Doctor Speaks with Dr. Gold

Latest Work

Violent Leftist who assaulted US officials avoids jail time

A Call for Peer Re-Reviews of Articles on Covid Vaccines

Javier Milei’s Rallying Cry before the WEF

New Report: ‘Garbage Science’ Behind Claims COVID Shots Saved Millions

Latest Videos

How Much IsYour Freedom Worth?