"Huge Gaps in Vaccine Data Make It Next to Impossible to Know Who Got the Shots"
The above quote is the title of a Kaiser Family Foundation article from January 28, 2021. The article quotes Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers:
“Every state knows where they’ve sent vaccine, and every provider has to report inventory. But as far as who is being vaccinated, that one is a little more tricky …”
Furthermore, “[Data used by the CDC is] only going to be as good as whatever you can get out of the vaccine registries”, according to a second federal official, Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
The Congressional Research Service shared a similar concern in a report on January 28, 2021:
“Resource constraints may have hindered jurisdictional public health programs’ ability to implement new systems and reporting procedures.”
That was reiterated in a second report from the Congressional Research Service on February 1, 2022. The report makes the following observation:
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the large volume of data collection has reportedly overwhelmed the capabilities of some IISs …”
One consequence of the limited quality of the vaccine registries was the inability to determine if vaccines were equitably distributed, under the assumption that the vaccines offered any benefit. But flaws in the vaccine registries similarly impact the assessment of the vaccine performance; measurement of vaccine efficacy fundamentally relies on documentation of the vaccination status of the studied population.
It is unknown the extent to which flaws in the state immunization registries contributed to bias in measurements of vaccine efficacy. There are, however, growing indications of a large bias. One major indication is the finding from a study published on October 22, 2021 in which CDC found that the vaccine efficacy against all-cause mortality with Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) was 66%. That reduction in all-cause mortality is certainly unrealistic as it far outstripped the COVID component of all-cause mortality.
Stephenson et al studied the related question of how well documented immunization matched self-report of immunization. The two methods for verification of immunization status were found to agree to a level of 95%. However, whereas vaccine efficacy reported by the CDC rely on state immunization registries to define vaccination status, Stephenson et al additionally included vaccination record cards, hospital electronic medical records (EMRs), and vaccine records requested from clinics and pharmacies.
In the study of COVID vaccination, the conclusion that it is effective is poorly supported. Proof of the integrity of the underlying data has never been provided by the CDC. With the reported disarray in the registration of COVID vaccinations, it is increasingly difficult to take seriously measurements of vaccine efficacy produced by the CDC.
Finally, and most importantly: if vaccine efficacy measurements were significantly biased by poor documentation of COVID immunization, this cannot be considered an innocent mistake. The discrepancy between the state immunization registries and the doses administered would be obvious. Such a mistake would be a horrific fraud.