Vaccine Harm Analysis Finds $148 Billion in Economic Damage, Tens of Millions Injured

Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines in Denmark in a 2021 file image. Claus Fisker/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

A new report estimates that COVID-19 vaccine damages in the United States in 2022 led to over 26 million people being injured at a cost of nearly $150 billion to the economy.

The stark figures come in a report from Phinance Technologies, a global macro investment firm co-founded by former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd.

“Numbers conservative,” Dowd said in a tweet, adding that the economic damage estimates exclude knock-on effects like lost productivity due to people being present at their jobs but working at reduced capacity.

Also not captured in the projection is the impact of burnout on workers taking up the slack from vaccine-injured employees, nor any effects on supply chains related to harmful vaccine side effects on workers.

Called the Vaccine Damage Project, the study sought to gauge both the economic impact and human cost of COVID-19 vaccine damage.

Data used to estimate the economic and human impacts came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations, and studies, including a scientific peer-reviewed paper on serious adverse events following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, per the project’s website.

Human Cost

The human cost of vaccine damage was estimated at 26.6 million injuries, 1.36 million disabilities, and around 310,000 excess deaths.

It is not clear from the report—which relies on correlation-based evidence—whether the injuries, disabilities, and excess deaths were caused by vaccines or other factors, such as the COVID-19 disease itself.

In explaining impacts such as an increase in disabilities, for example, the report explains the use of regression analysis to compare the number of people in the civilian labor force with a disability and the cumulative percentage of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered.

“The regression R2 is close to 90% which is evidence for a strong relationship,” the report states. “We must always consider other external factors that might explain the rise in disabilities and which are also correlated to the vaccination data. This is usually stated as ‘correlation is not causation.’”

“However, in the absence of other explanatory factors, and strong medical evidence of the vaccines causing injuries and deaths, one must consider the relationship seriously,” it adds.

Other notes in the study relating to methodology are in much the same vein, noting in some cases “strong” correlation between vaccine rollout and various harms.

Dowd last year sparked controversy for making the claim that there was an 84 percent increase in excess mortality in 2021 among people aged 25 to 44 in the United States due to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

“Starting in the summer into the fall, with the mandates and the boosters, there were 61,000 excess millennial deaths. Basically, millennials experienced a Vietnam War in the second half of 2021,” Dowd told Steve Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic” in March 2022.

While excess deaths indeed were up by over 60,000 that year, some experts have disputed linking them to vaccines.

“I don’t disagree with the fact that the pandemic has been responsible for an enormous number of excess deaths in the U.S. and that adults age 25-44 were deeply affected,“ Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, told The Associated Press at the time. ”But it’s ridiculous to attribute this catastrophe to vaccine mandates and boosters.”

In order to prove that the excess deaths were caused by vaccines, the data would have to show that the spikes in excess deaths came specifically among vaccinated people while unvaccinated individuals were spared.

“But absent such evidence, their assertion is as ridiculous as saying that water causes house fires because you are more likely to see house fires when firemen are spraying water on them,” Woolf said.

Yet there have been studies that suggest a stronger causal link than just a correlation between COVID-19 vaccines and excess deaths.

An Australian study proposes that excess deaths were caused by the COVID-19 vaccine, based on a nine-factor criterion set meant to establish whether an observed epidemiological association is causal.

Another recent study of excess deaths found that the direct effects of COVID-19 illness caused 84 percent of the overall excess deaths but that the excess mortality among people aged 45 and younger could not be attributed to the disease.

The authors found that just 30 percent of the total excess deaths among people aged 25-44 were tied to COVID-19, with the researchers suggesting that public health interventions such as lockdowns best explained the excess deaths.

Still, the researchers said that, as an ecological study, it was not possible to prove causality.

Economic Cost

The Vaccine Damage Project estimated that the economic cost of COVID-19 vaccine damages totaled $147.8 billion, which was broken down into injuries ($89.9 billion), disabilities ($52.2 billion), and excess deaths ($5.6 billion).

The highest economic cost was associated with milder vaccine damage as this affected a bigger portion of the population, the report said.

“The multiplier effects are massive,” Dowd said in a tweet, suggesting that the true impact could be much higher.

To further highlight the economic impact, Dowd noted that Pfizer and Moderna, the leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, reported combined COVID-19 vaccine revenues in 2022 of around $11.5 billion.

“For every $1 dollar they made it cost the US economy $13 dollars,” Dowd said in a tweet.

“Quite the negative societal ROI,” he added, using the acronym for return on investment.

The report called for monitoring the longer-term impact of vaccine damage as this amounts to an “important” economic cost.