COVID NEWS
Journal Rejects Request to Retract Study Suggesting Negative COVID Vaccine Effectiveness
Cureus said there is ‘no basis for retraction.’
Journal Rejects Request to Retract Study Suggesting Negative COVID Vaccine Effectiveness
Pfizer and Moderna bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are readied for use at a clinic in Richmond, Va., in a Nov. 17, 2022, file image. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
9/16/2023
Updated:
9/17/2023
A scientific journal is rejecting a request to retract a study that found people who received a COVID-19 booster were more likely to become infected when compared to unvaccinated people.
Analyzing numbers from California’s prison system, a research group found that those who received one of the bivalent boosters had a higher infection rate than people who have never received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Their study was published by the journal Cureus following peer review.
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Each study has an author who fields questions and comments. They are known as the corresponding author.
Cureus confirmed that the study’s corresponding author has asked the journal to retract the article.
“I can confirm that we were contacted by the corresponding author with a request to retract. However, we have determined that there is no basis for retraction and therefore it will remain published,” Graham Parker-Finger, director of publishing and customer success for Cureus, told The Epoch Times via email.
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The study was listed as beginning to undergo peer review on Aug. 16. Peer review finished on Aug. 23. The paper was published on Sept. 4. The peer review has not been made public.
High School Student
Luke Ko, listed as the study’s corresponding author, said that he’s 17 years old and still in high school.
Mr. Ko told The Epoch Times in an email that while others are listed as co-authors, he was actually the sole author of the paper.
“I initiated this study independently, with dual aims: first, to showcase my analytical skills for college admissions, and second, to emphasize the importance of continuously administering updated vaccines to prisoners,” Mr. Ko said.
Those listed as co-authors “had only given verbal commitments to serve as mentors,” he added. “They were not given the chance to validate the data I entered, particularly the incorrect figures related to COVID-19 cases in prisons. Furthermore, they did not have the opportunity to review the final draft of the paper, which was submitted to Curesus.com without their approval.”
Mr. Ko claimed to have used ChatGPT for analyzing the data used in the study and said he made “significant errors.” He did not specify what the alleged errors were.
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“All mentors mistakenly listed as co-authors share my desire to have the paper retracted,” Mr. Ko said.
Mr. Ko has not responded to follow-up messages.
Investigating
The California Correctional Healthcare Services, for whom several of the listed co-authors work, said that an investigation into the paper is happening.
“We are currently looking into the details of this publication and cannot provide additional comments at this time,” a spokesperson for the agency told The Epoch Times via email.
The agency declined to provide contact information for the authors it employs, Drs. Gary Malet, Huu Nguyen, and Robert Mayes.
A number listed for Dr. Malet was disconnected while a person who answered a number listed for Dr. Nguyen said it was the wrong number.
No contact information could be located for Dr. Mayes or Lisa Chang of Governors State University, the fifth listed co-author.
Study Result
The study’s focus was the rate of COVID-19 infections from January to July among inmates. It divided inmates into three camps: those who received a bivalent shot, those who were vaccinated but had not received a bivalent, and the unvaccinated.
During the time period, there were 2,835 COVID-19 cases. Of those, 1,187 were among inmates who had received a bivalent, and 568 were among the unvaccinated.
Researchers also drew from vaccination records and found 36,609 inmates had received a bivalent, while 20,889 had received no shots.
The bivalent vaccines were introduced in the fall of 2022.
The researchers calculated infection rates for the bivalent vaccinated and the unvaccinated but excluded the third group, inmates who received a vaccine but not a bivalent, for unclear reasons.
The calculations resulted in the finding that the infection rate among the bivalent vaccinated was 3.2 percent, above the 2.7 percent in the never-vaccinated group.
The gap between the groups was the highest among those aged 65 and above, though it was described as not statistically significant.
The study stated that “the bivalent-vaccinated group had a slightly but statistically significantly higher infection rate than the unvaccinated group in the statewide category and the age ≥50 years category.”
The conclusions claimed that the study “supports the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination at a population level, especially in vulnerable, high-density congregate settings.”
Dr. Ray Andrews, a retired doctor, disagreed.
“The results showed the vaccines are not effective,” he told The Epoch Times.
Other papers and observational data have also suggested the effectiveness of the vaccines, which have never had clinical trial efficacy data and were replaced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month, plummets over time.
Cleveland Clinic researchers, for example, found in June that employees at the clinic who were “up to date” with their vaccines, or had received a bivalent dose, had a higher risk of becoming infected when compared to others.
Those of us who were paying attention from the beginning of Covid and checking all sources of information rather than blindly accepting the pronouncements from “the authorities” knew, by March 2020, that we were being lied to.
Covid was/is a scam, a worldwide conspiracy, the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.
And all of
“the authorities” were in on it: governments and their agencies, elected officials, the media, academia, and most sadly of all, nearly the entire medical profession.
Those who did not willingly go along with the scam were coerced into doing so, and the few holdouts who refused were censored, silenced, deplatformed, fired, and decredentialed; in other words, they were destroyed.
And the lies continue to this day, with the pushing of a nonvaccine “vaccine” that not only doesn’t help anyone, but is itself a potent bioweapon, already responsible for millions of deaths worldwide, with many more yet to come since it not only destroys the immune system of the recipients, but is responsible for more than 1,200 confirmed side effects, many of them deadly.
Time for everyone to wake up to reality.
Having worked within both a CA community college and a university (7 years total) as a conservative minded Independent, I can say with all certainty that ‘Academia’ is predominantly left leaning to far left progressive marxist, they fervently believe in all things plandemic: masks and the jab, uninformed consent, mandates, etc. With this said, the young man cheated by using AI, that resulted in a paper that DISPROVES the lie that Academia members (Undergraduate Admissions) fervently believe in and those members control whether this young man – as a university applicant – gets in to the school(s) of which he has applied. IMHO, he just realized that his paper will not endear him to those sheeple who control the admissions process, and he wants the paper retracted, in order to be disassociated with the scarlet letter he just placed on his chest & the target that he is likely now aware is on his back for ‘authoring’ a paper that assaults the sheeple’s belief system.
Zachary Stieber
Author (Reporter)
Zachary Stieber is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times based in Maryland. He covers U.S. and world news.
