Authors of Cleveland Clinic’s Groundbreaking Study Release Another Finding Which Contradicts CDC Narrative: “Those Not ‘Up-to-Date’ on COVID-19 Vaccination Had a Lower Risk of COVID-19 than Those ‘Up-to-Date’”

Earlier this month, The Gateway Pundit published an article about the study conducted by the renowned Cleveland Clinic, ranked as the second-best hospital in the world, which found that the higher number of COVID-19 vaccine doses one receives, the higher the risk of infection with COVID-19.

The study can be found now in the June 2023 edition of Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 10, Issue 6. The study is published at Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID), wherein the studies are fully peer-reviewed.

The research was conducted with a large sample size within the Cleveland Clinic healthcare system.

Participants in the trial were all Cleveland Clinic Health System employees working at any Cleveland Clinic facility in Ohio on September 12, 2022, the first day the bivalent vaccine was first made accessible to staff and lasted over 180 days.

From the study: “The risk of COVID-19 also varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19.”

The study added: “The multivariable analysis also found that the more recent the last prior COVID-19 episode was, the lower the risk of COVID-19, and the greater the number of vaccine doses previously received, the higher the risk of COVID-19.”

Our report at The Gateway Pundit went viral—with almost 24,000 shares on Instagram alone—to such an extent that it was covered in its entirety by Joe Rogan on his show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he was joined by former Navy SEAL Andy Stumpf.

After it gained so much attention, the Health Feedback organization fact-checked our post almost two weeks later.  The website claimed that the “Cleveland Clinic study didn’t find that taking more COVID-19 vaccine doses causes increased COVID-19 risk; association alone doesn’t imply causation.”

On June 12, these same researchers from the Cleveland Clinic published a new study that further confirmed their earlier findings.

The pre-print study revealed that individuals not “up-to-date” on their COVID-19 vaccinations are at a lower risk of contracting COVID-19 compared to those who are “up-to-date.”

This finding contradicts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) established narrative.

NEW — Authors of the Bombshell Cleveland Clinic Study Have Released Another New Study Which Further Contradicts the CDC Narrative

“Among 48,344 working-aged Cleveland Clinic employees, those NOT ‘up-to-date’ on COVID-19 vaccination had a lower risk of COVID-19 than those… pic.twitter.com/j0zQvvCXtB

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) June 16, 2023

The comprehensive study was conducted over a 100-day period starting from January 29, 2023, and it included 48,344 Cleveland Clinic employees who were in employment when the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine first became available and still employed when the XBB lineages of the virus became dominant.

In this study, researchers examined the risk of COVID-19 infection among individuals based on their vaccination status, specifically whether they were “up-to-date” or “not up-to-date” on their COVID-19 vaccines, according to the definition provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Being “up-to-date” generally refers to having received all recommended doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Of the 48,344 subjects (Cleveland Clinic employees) included in the study, 1,445 (or 3%) of them had their data censored, or cut short, during the course of the study due to termination of their employment.

By the end of the study, 12,841 participants (or 27%) were “up-to-date” on their COVID-19 vaccinations according to the current CDC definition. The majority of these individuals, 11,187 (or 87%) of them, received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while 1,654 (or 13%) of them received the Moderna vaccine.

The study took place during a time when XBB lineages of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were the most common strains circulating in the population. These lineages could refer to specific variants of the virus, but without further context, it’s not possible to say which ones they might be exactly.

The study found that COVID-19 occurred in 1,475 employees (3%) during the study period. Interestingly, the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was lower in the “not up-to-date” group than in the “up-to-date” group.

The results remained consistent when considering only those 65 years and older as “up-to-date” after receiving two doses of the bivalent vaccine.

The current CDC definition, according to the findings of this study, may not provide an accurate classification of COVID-19 risk in the adult population.

According to the conclusion of the study, the results of the study question the current recommendation that every person should be “up-to-date” on their COVID-19 vaccinations, given that in this specific context they found a lower risk of COVID-19 infection among those not fully vaccinated.

From the study:

Table 1 shows the characteristics of subjects included in the study. Notably, this was a relatively young population, with a mean age of 43 years. Among these, 22 407 (46%) had previously had a documented episode of COVID-19 and 16 262 (34%) had previously had an Omicron variant infection. 42 160 subjects (87%) had previously received at least one dose of vaccine and 44 432 (92%) had been previously exposed to SARS-CoV-2 by infection or vaccination. Altogether, 36 490 subjects (76%) were tested for COVID-19 by a NAAT at least once while employed at Cleveland Clinic. The propensity for COVID-19 testing ranged from 0 to 63.5 per year, with a median of 0.64 and interquartile range spanning 0.32 to 1.27 per year.

Risk of COVID-19 Based on Vaccination Status and Prior Infection

The risk of COVID-19 was lower in the “not up-to-date” state than in the “up-to-date” state, with respect to COVID-19 vaccination (Figure 1). When stratified by tertiles of propensity to get tested for COVID-19, the “not up-to-date” state was not associated with a higher risk of COVID-19 than the “up-to-date” state in any tertile (Figure 2).

Discussion

This study found that not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, using the current CDC definition, was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 than being “up-to-date”, while the XBB lineages were the dominant circulating strains of SARS-CoV-2.

This study’s findings question the wisdom of promoting the idea that every person needs to be “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination, as currently defined, at this time. It is often stated that the primary purpose of vaccination is to prevent severe COVID-19 and death. We certainly agree with this, but it should be pointed out that there is not a single study that has shown that the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine protects against severe disease or death caused by the XBB lineages of the Omicron variant.

At least one prior study has failed to find a protective effect of the bivalent vaccine against the XBB lineages of SARS-CoV-2. People may still choose to get the vaccine, but an assumption that the vaccine protects against severe disease and death is not reason enough to unconditionally push a vaccine of questionable effectiveness to all adults.

In conclusion, this study found that not being “up-to-date” on COVID-19 vaccination by the CDC definition was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 than being “up-to-date”.

This study highlights the challenges of counting on protection from a vaccine when the effectiveness of the vaccine decreases over time as new variants emerge that are antigenically very different from those used to develop the vaccine. It also demonstrates the folly of risk classification based solely on receipt of a vaccine of questionable effectiveness while ignoring protection provided by prior infection.