Israel Clalit HMO - Answers please!

Clalit is Israel's biggest HMO. Its management, riddled with conflicts of interest is leading the world in the never-ending booster Saga.

Why is Israel’s Clalit Health Maintenance Organization (hereinafter "Clalit") not willing to explain why 1,272 people died after participating in the Covid-19 fourth-vaccination-shot ("fourth-shot" or "second booster") study?

🚨 At a puzzling time, a mere few days after the political echelon announced another vaccination campaign and tried to bribe the HMOs with financial incentives, we were informed of yet another study by Clalit allegedly showing the effectiveness of the fourth-shot and serving as a basis for the Health Ministry's new campaign.

🚨 Sadly, Clalit continues to hide critical data from the public. We are appealing to the authors of the study with the following points and questions:

1) You included people who died up to a week after receiving the fourth-shot in the category of those who did not receive a booster. You should report the number of Covid-19 deaths in the first week after receiving the fourth-shot.

2) The data you published shows that out of 563,465 people who were monitored following the shot, 1,596 died, which constitutes 0.28% of the study group. The death toll from Covid-19 was only 324. Why do not you report how the other 1,272 people, who died for reasons other than Covid-19, were divided between the fourth-shot cohort and the unvaccinated cohort?

🚨 This data is in your hands, yet you do not publish it, just as you did not publish similar data which we requested from you for similar research carried out for the third-shot. By what right do you prevent the public in Israel and the international academic community, from having such critical data for understanding the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine? What do you have to hide?

A new Clalit research paper omits the overall mortality data associated with the fourth-shot, and this being despite the fact that such critical data is in Clalit's possession.

Clalit's new research paper purports to examine the effectiveness of the fourth-shot in preventing death among people aged sixty to one hundred. Yet this research paper, like all the others published so far by Clalit researchers, omits the most important thing: the connection between the vaccine and the overall mortality rate (i.e. not deaths from Covid-19 alone). This is despite the fact that it is clear from the paper itself that the data is known to Clalit.

🚨 Failure to publish the overall mortality distribution among vaccinated or boosted and those who are not vaccinated – is scandalous: the matter is set to be heard in the District Court in early June in a petition filed by members of the Israeli Public Emergency Council for the Covid-19 Crisis (PECC), Prof. Retzef Levy and Dr. Guy Shinar in connection with two previous research papers which also omitted the overall mortality distribution, even though such data was clearly known to the authors.

The new research paper, which will certainly serve as a basis for the fourth-shot campaign, included 563,465 Clalit policyholders. The research period was between January 10 and February 20, 2022 - 40 days during the Omicron wave.

🚨 The subjects, who received a first booster (third-shot) at least four months before the start of the study, were divided into two groups: the first booster group, which included the subjects who did not receive a second booster (fourth-shot) during the study (234,868 subjects); and the second booster group, which included the subjects who received a second booster during the study (328,597 subjects).

🚨 The main outcome of the study was death from Covid-19. It should be noted that mortality from Covid-19 within seven days of administration of the second booster (fourth-shot) was attributed to the first booster group, even though the death occurred after the administration of the second booster. The number of Covid-19 deaths during the seven days receiving the second booster has not been published.

🚨 During the study period, 324 subjects died from Covid-19 - 232 in the first booster group and only 92 in the second booster group. Thus, after a statistical correction for differences in demographic, socioeconomic and health characteristics between the two groups, the researchers concluded that a second booster shot reduces the chance of coronary mortality by 78% compared to only one booster shot.

🚨 Thus, so far, all appears favorable for the second booster shot. But things are not so simple:

1. Figures 1 and 2 show that during the study, 1,596 subjects died from all-causes. As mentioned, only 324 – approximately only 20% of the deceased - died from Covid-19.

What happened to the 1,272 who did not die from Covid-19? How was the first booster group and the second booster group divided? Is it possible that the second booster group had more all-cause mortality than the first booster group? Why has this figure not been evaluated and published by the study's authors, when it is clear that it is critical to understanding the relationship between the vaccine effectiveness of the second booster and its safety?

2. Why did the study's editors avoid publishing the number of Covid-19 deaths which occurred within a week of receiving the second booster?

🚨  To the authors of the study: the data is in your hands. Do not omit it, as you did in previous Clalit studies. You have no right to withhold critical information regarding the overall mortality associated with the vaccine, both from the Israeli public and international academic community. Do not hastily use your partial and deficient research paper for propaganda-purposes to encourage the fourth vaccine shot, before you have made a proper assessment of the safety of the second booster shot (fourth-shot), and in particular the overall mortality associated with it. Do not abuse your position - you may regret it for the rest of your life.

Link to the research paper, which is being reviewed by the medical journal "Nature Medicine" and which is published before peer review on the research paper server:

Research Square:

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1478439/v1

Dr. Guy Shinar.

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