Question explored with the scientific record
Conversation so far
- 1 covid vax? Good thing or bad thing? + a private exchange
- 2 which was the health company that analysed the vax for its own employees and found a dose dependent response to the vax + a private exchange
- 3 forget the dose response thing. If more doses mean worse outcomes in the best available data set, who can it be a good thing
Answered on this page ↓
forget the dose response thing. If more doses mean worse outcomes in the best available data set, who can it be a good thing
The short version: if more doses truly track with worse outcomes, the only honest answer is that it can't be good for that person. The question is whether the signal is real or an artifact of who keeps getting dosed.
The best data here does not show a clean dose-response harm. The Japanese registry found higher all-cause death in adults 20-49 at five or more doses and in 50-64 year olds at six doses, but the same paper found lower death with more doses in 65-89 year olds and its own authors attribute that to healthy-vaccinee bias, flagging confounding by indication in the younger groups [3]. Norway found three or more doses tracked with lower death than unvaccinated across every age band [1]. Hungary found the same after adjusting for healthy-vaccinee effects [2]. Those are the opposite direction.
| Dataset | More doses vs fewer | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Japan, ages 20-49, 5+ doses | Higher all-cause death [3] | Harm signal |
| Japan, ages 65-89 | Lower all-cause death [3] | Benefit signal |
| Norway, 3+ doses | Lower death vs unvaccinated [1] | Benefit signal |
| Hungary, all vaccines | Lower death, HVE-corrected [2] | Benefit signal |
So who could it be good for? Nobody, if the harm is causal. A booster that raises death risk has no upside worth trading for. But the studies that would settle causality, individual dose counts with comorbidity and time-to-event adjustment, are not in front of me. The Japanese authors themselves call for exactly that [3].
My call: if the dose-response harm is real, it is good for no one, and the current evidence does not establish that it is real. Confidence: low.
Sources used 3
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COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and all-cause mortality in the adult population in Norway during 2021–2023: a population-based cohort study
In a Norwegian population-based cohort of 4,645,910 adults followed from January 2021 to December 2023, individuals who received three or more mRNA vaccine doses had a substantially lower adjusted all-cause mortality rate than unvaccinated individuals, with fully vaccinated adul…
DOI: 10.1136/bmjph-2024-001859 -
Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccination in Preventing All-Cause Mortality among Adults during the Third Wave of the Epidemic in Hungary: Nationwide Retrospective Cohort Study
In a nationwide retrospective cohort of 6.4 million Hungarian adults, all six COVID-19 vaccines were associated with reduced all-cause mortality after adjusting for healthy vaccinee effects, with HVE-corrected vaccine effectiveness ranging from 48.7% for Pfizer-BioNTech to 75.4%…
DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10071009 -
Age-specific patterns of all-cause mortality across COVID-19 booster dose groups in two Japanese municipalities: an exploratory analysis
Exploratory analysis of Japanese municipal registry data found lower all-cause mortality among highly vaccinated adults aged 65-89 years but higher all-cause mortality among adults aged 20-49 years with ≥5 doses and those aged 50-64 with six doses, with causality unestablished.
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1795437