Robert Malone on covid: what the evidence says · JRE #1757
SUBJECT: COVID
The short answer
Malone claims an Israeli study of ~2.5 million people found prior COVID infection (natural immunity) is 6-13x (and elsewhere 27x) more effective than vaccination at preventing hospitalized COVID. Malone is referencing Gazit et al., a retrospective cohort study from Israel's Maccabi Healthcare Services (posted as a preprint in August 2021 and later peer-reviewed and published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2022), which compared previously infected, unvaccinated people to vaccinated, previously uninfected people during a Delta-variant period in mid-2021.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
that study in Israel, which is like, what, 2.5 million people, I think, they said that it's between six and 13 times more effective than the vaccine. That is six or 13 times more effective in preventing hospitalized COVID.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Malone is referencing Gazit et al., a retrospective cohort study from Israel's Maccabi Healthcare Services (posted as a preprint in August 2021 and later peer-reviewed and published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2022), which compared previously infected, unvaccinated people to vaccinated, previously uninfected people during a Delta-variant period in mid-2021. The study's own abstract states its population as 124,500 persons, not 2.5 million as Malone states. The 13.06-fold, 5.96-fold, and 27.02-fold figures reported in the study measured the risk of breakthrough infection or symptomatic disease, not hospitalization; the study explicitly reports that COVID-19-related hospitalizations were too few in number (single digits to low teens in each comparison arm) to allow a statistically significant comparison, and it does not report a '6-13x' or '27-fold' figure for hospitalization prevention specifically. As an observational study, it was also subject to confounders such as differing timing of infection versus vaccination and differential healthcare-seeking or testing behavior between groups, which the authors partially addressed with sensitivity analyses. A CDC-led case-control analysis from Kentucky published the same month found that vaccination provided added protection against reinfection even among the previously infected, indicating the relative-protection picture is more mixed than a single large multiplier implies. The specific hospitalization-effectiveness figures Malone cites are not supported by the cited study's actual reported results.