How stupid do they think we are? 3 million lives saved through vaccine

I am not the only one who will write about the “study” showing the vaccines saved 3 million lives in the US.

See El Gato:

our covid model says "X saves lives"

or Alex Berenson:

The dumbest, most dishonest argument for Covid jabs yet

Perhaps, however, I can add a visual that shows just how obviously nonsensical such an estimate is.

Ok, so here’s how I did this. The US reported a cumulative number of COVID deaths of ~1,060,000 by the 1st week of December 2022. Let’s suppose the vaccine started having an effect on January 1, 2021, at which point there had been roughly 360,000 COVID deaths in the US. So, essentially 700,000 deaths have been added since 1/1/21. Now, let’s suppose without the vaccine, we would be at 4,060,000 deaths by 1st week of Dec 2022. In order to get to that number, I will assume deaths would have been added at the same “rate” as actually happened, but increased to reach the new hypothetical endpoint. What this means is that if a certain week contributed 1% of the 700K actual deaths from 1/1/21 - 12/7/22, then in the hypothetical is will contribute 1% of the 3.7million deaths. With this methodology, here is what the “study” might suggest would be the comparison of actual cumulative COVID deaths vs. predicted COVID deaths had there been no vaccine:

How effing dumb do they think people are?

Oh.

p.s. Before anyone criticizes, yes I know a better hypothetical line to represent what this model predicts would take into account the vaccine ramp up instead of just acting as though it had equal effect starting Jan 1, 2021. Doing that would take a lot more effort on my part & would result in an equally absurd looking graph. What you would see is the blue and orange lines staying closer together for a few months, and then the orange line rising at an even sharper slope. It still has to get to that 4 million figure by the end.