Were the deceased people vaccinated against Covid?
Impossible to know, for lack of data, replied the Ministry of Health to the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (Cada).
This decision has been widely relayed on social networks by personalities opposed to the management of health crisis or even antivax and by elected representatives of the National Rally, who accuse the government of wanting to hide this information and of having lied in the past.
But the reality is very different.
We take stock.
What you may have read or heard
The epidemiologist Laurent Toubiana, very critical of the management of the Covid pandemic by the authorities, seized the Cada within the framework of the SurViVax study carried out by his team.
He wanted to obtain, in particular, the “weekly statistics of deaths, all causes combined, (…) according to the anti-Covid-19 vaccination status”.
However, the organization informed him in a notice dated September 22 that there "were no statistics relating to the vaccination status of all the deceased persons, nor any statistics relating to hospitalizations according to the vaccination status", according to the response sent by the Ministry of Health and Prevention.
The CADA (at the request of M Toubiana) provides us with proof that the shot of "vaccinated 12 times less contaminating" was a gross fake, since the CADA tells us that the vaccination statuses are not known...
So calculations impossible.
Or are we still kidding ourselves?
pic.twitter.com/5YvUftCljC
— MEUNIER Patrick (@MEUNIERPatric11) November 20, 2022
Why does this answer make people react?
To promote the interest of vaccination against Covid-19, the government has however on several occasions used hospitalization rates according to the number of doses received.
“If a person is vaccinated, the risk of infection decreases by 85%.
With regard to the risk of hospitalization, it decreases by 95%, including with Omicron”, indicated for example on January 5 last the Minister of Health at the time, Olivier Véran.
The latter then relied on the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees).
This body of the Ministry of Health has published every week since the summer of 2021 (and now every two weeks) indicators based on the vaccination status of people who tested positive, hospitalized, admitted to critical care, or even died as a result of a Covid infection.
For opponents, the response made by the Ministry of Health to Cada constitutes proof that these figures “were bogus because… non-existent!
“Said MEP RN Mathilde Androuët.
⚠️ We only learn today that all the "official" figures related to hospitalizations and deaths during the #COVID19 period were bogus because... non-existent!
Figures that have nevertheless led to the worst excesses.
❌ The Macron government will have lied about EVERYTHING!
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— Mathilde Androuët (@MAndrouet) November 21, 2022
“Either the statistics (…) do not exist and the conclusions in terms of public health policies (…) are purely and simply false and scientifically unfounded, or such statistics do exist, but
(the ministry)
refuses to communication to a researcher whose work is part of public research", is moved by Professor Christian Perronne - excluded from the Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) following controversial remarks - in a text co-signed and published in France Soir.
Why isn't this “scandal” one?
In reality, we are not talking about the same thing.
Laurent Toubiana clearly specified that he wanted to have statistics of deaths or hospitalizations "all causes combined".
However, there is no database in which is informed, each time a patient is hospitalized or dies from whatever cause, his vaccination status against Covid.
The Drees crosses the databases dedicated to Covid and supplied by Public Health France (SI-DEP for tests, SI-VIC for hospitalizations and VAC-SI for the doses of vaccine received).
Personal information is systematically transformed into a "string of characters" in order to anonymize each patient diagnosed with Covid.
This “pseudonym” is then used to match information from each of the databases.
“The request related to the existence of data on all-cause hospitalizations by vaccination status, and the DREES replied that this data did not routinely exist.
On the other hand, the DREEs does have data on deaths in hospital and on hospitalizations of patients with Covid by vaccination status, which has made it possible to demonstrate the effectiveness of vaccination against severe forms in particular”, indicated at AFP the Statistics Department of the Ministry of Health.
Read alsoPositive cases and hospitalizations by vaccination status: why the DREEs data have been corrected
Not stopping there, the authors of the text published in France Soir believe that the State could "cross" the file of deaths from all causes in France, kept by INSEE, with vaccination data against Covid-19 contained in VAC-SI.
“If the documents requested by the applicant do not exist as they stand, it is up to the administration to gather the necessary elements by simply extracting them from the databases available to them, as this cannot impose on them a burden of unreasonable work,” they wrote.
The judgment of the Council of State on which they rely specifically stipulates: "if this does not impose an unreasonable workload on her".
In other words, if the administration considers that such a mission would be too difficult to carry out in practice, it has no obligation to comply with it.
The subject we are talking about could fall into this scenario, not to mention the legal pitfalls and respect for privacy.
