a new study
found that people vaccinated against the covid-19 virus are less likely to die of not only the virus, but also non-covid causes compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.
the study, done by the us centres for disease prevention and control, found that during december 2020 to july 2021, recipients of the pfizer-biontech, moderna, and janssen/johnson&johnson vaccine had lower rates of non-covid mortality than unvaccinated persons after adjusting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, and study site. (astra-zeneca is not approved for use in the united states.)
researchers compared 6.4 million people who were vaccinated and 4.6 million who were “demographically similar” and unvaccinated, and found that those who had received the moderna vaccine were 31 per cent as likely to die as a similar unvaccinated person. the rate was 34 per cent for people who had received the pfizer vaccine, and 54 per cent for those vaccinated with janssen/j&j.
the report noted that four limitations to the study, the first being that it “was observational, and individual-level confounders that were not adjusted for might affect mortality risk, including baseline health status, underlying conditions, health care utilization, and socioeconomic status.” it was also noted that lower non-covid mortality rates in vaccinated groups suggest that those people are “inherently healthier or engage in fewer risk behaviours,” that causes of death were not recorded, and finally, that findings may not be applicable to the general population.