Retracted: The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations-We Should Rethink the Policy
Authors: Rainer J Klement
Wouter Aukema
Harald Walach
Journal: Vaccines (2021)
Discipline: IMMUNOLOGY
Keywords: COVID-19; EMA; SARS-CoV2; adverse drug reaction; fatal side effects
Affiliations: Poznan University of the Medical Sciences, Pediatric Hospital, 60-572 Poznan, Poland., Department of Psychology, University of Witten/Herdecke, 58448 Witten, Germany., Change Health Science Institute, 10178 Berlin, Germany., Department of Radiation Oncology, Leopoldina Hospital, 97422 Schweinfurt, Germany., Independent Data and Pattern Scientist, Brinkenbergweg 1, 7351 BD Hoenderloo, The Netherlands.

Abstract:  Background: COVID-19 vaccines have had expedited reviews without sufficient safety data. We wanted to compare risks and benefits. Method: We calculated the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV) from a large Israeli field study to prevent one death. We accessed the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) database of the European Medicines Agency and of the Dutch National Register (lareb.nl) to extract the number of cases reporting severe side effects and the number of cases with fatal side effects. Result: The NNTV is between 200-700 to prevent one case of COVID-19 for the mRNA vaccine marketed by Pfizer, while the NNTV to prevent one death is between 9000 and 50,000 (95% confidence interval), with 16,000 as a point estimate. The number of cases experiencing adverse reactions has been reported to be 700 per 100,000 vaccinations. Currently, we see 16 serious side effects per 100,000 vaccinations, and the number of fatal side effects is at 4.11/100,000 vaccinations. For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination. Conclusions: This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
 2020 retraction. https: www.dovepress.com retraction-castlemans-disease-in-the-hiv-ende-peer-reviewed-article-CMAR Castlemanu2019s Disease in the HIV-Endemic Setting [Retraction] Authors Mahroug E, Sher-Locketz C, Desmirean M, Abayomi EA, Tomuleasa C, Grewal R Received 10 August 2020 Accepted for publication 10 August 2020 Published 20 August 2020 Volume 2020:12 Pages 7465u20147466 DOI https: doi.org 10.2147 CMAR.S276366 Mahroug E, Sher-Locketz C, Desmirean M, et al. Cancer Manag Res. 2018;10:4553u2014 4563. The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Cancer Management and Research wish to retract the published article. We were notified of discrepancies in the published article where some references did not appear related to the data they were being used to cite. For example, reference 8 (Fetica et al) reports 6 cases of Castleman disease in Romania, however the text in the published article refers to a study in South Africa. References 9 to 12 (Tomuleasa et al, Berce et al, Frinc et al and Messinger et al) were also found to describe studies not relevant to the published paper. Similarly, reference 13 (Naresh et al) was used to cite a study reporting a retrospective study conducted at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital (CHBAH) in Johannesburg, South Africa, over a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014. However, reference 13 does not report that study. It was determined that following peer review several of the original references had been replaced without an explanation from the authors and these discrepancies had been introduced. The authors could not provide a satisfactory explanation for this. The editor determined the validity of the paper had been compromised and requested for the article to be retracted. The authors wish to apologise for this error. Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as u201cRetractedu201d. ,