BioNTech’ Karikó thinks the government’s table is not correct

On Sunday, the Hungarian government published a table showing the morbidity and mortality rates of those who were vaccinated against the coronavirus. The table suggests that the Eastern vaccines, including Sputnik and Sinopharm, are more effective than the Western ones, such as the one made by Pfizer. According to biochemist Katalin Karikó and the mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, the table is manipulative and false.

According to Gergely Gulyás, who created a ranking of the vaccines, Sputnik ended up as the best, followed by Sinopharm, while Pfizer landed in the 3rd place. Until the table was uploaded on Sunday, it was unclear what his rank was based on. According to telex.hu, the published table further strengthened the government’s position that suggests that anyone who questions the authenticity of the Eastern vaccines supports the “anti-vaccinationists of the left-wing”.

“Believe the scientist, the facts, and not those who may not even know when they told the truth last time!”

said Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, on his Facebook page. “Before I began my career in politics, among many things as a university professor, I taught at my classes why creating a table like the government did about the vaccines is professionally unacceptable, manipulative and fake regarding how it presents the correlation between the different vaccines and mortality rates. I usually started these lecture by stating that even though a village might have lots of kids as well as storks, it does not mean that the storks brought the babies,” explains Karácsony. The mayor of Budapest believes that the

Hungarian government spreads false propaganda, tries to manipulate the Hungarian people, and weakens the confidence in the western vaccine.

Katalin Karikó, vice president of BioNTech, which develops a joint vaccine with Pfizer, also criticised the government’s misleading table. Karikó said that “you don’t have to be a scientist to realise that you can only compare these date with proper or historical control.” To make the table more accurate, Karikó supplemented the table with the necessary information, writes 444.hu.

The positive figure is that per 100,000 vaccinated people, only 0.4 per cent became ill, and only 0.2 per cent died.

The government’s table shows the number of people becoming sick after getting each vaccine per 100,000 people. Respectively, it shows the number of deaths and the number of deaths per 100,000 vaccinated people. However, Pfizer has been used for four months, Sputnik for two and a half months, and Sinopharm for two months in Hungary, so the sampling is not accurate.

It is also important to highlight that they began vaccination with Pfizer, meaning those who were vaccinated firstly, mainly people with chronic illnesses and the elderly, received Pfizer. In contrast, Sinopharm and Sputnik should not be given to a person with a chronic illness. It further nuances the picture that it is not indicated whether the data used is taken after both doses and the appropriate time necessary for the immunity after the second dose.

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Source: telex.hu, 444.hu