Do you know the difference between relative risk and absolute risk? Most people don’t. But big pharma, health agencies and regulators do. They lied about Covid “vaccine” efficacy by failing to tell us the difference.
By Robin Davis, December 8, 2025
How can anyone lie while telling the truth?
Stay with me.
Imagine you’re at the Carnival. There’s a booth with a tub of 5000 jellybeans. In the tub are all the colours, but just one black jellybean. If you close your eyes, reach in and find the black jellybean, you win a prize. Your chance of winning is one in 5000. (0.02%)
Next to that booth is another with the same game. But in that tub of 5000 coloured jellybeans are two black ones.
The spruiker calls out, “Play here! Double your chances! Play here for 100% more chance of winning!”
He’s telling the truth. If you play his game your relative chance of winning will double. What he hopes you won’t realise is that your real or absolute chance of finding the black jelly bean is still just one chance in 2500 (0.04%)
Either way, you have almost no chance at all of winning.
Now, let’s change the jellybeans for people.
Pfizer said that 162 of 22,000 (0.74%) of volunteers in their unvaccinated (placebo) group developed Covid-19 but only 8 of about 22,000 volunteers in their vaccinated group did. (0.04%)
So for the unvaccinated group (and the overall population) the real or absolute risk was 0.74%. The vaccine reduced it by 0.04% to 0.7%
0.7/ 0.74 = 0.945
Viola! The vaccine is 95% effective!
But wait a minute. That’s just the relative risk reduction.
Remember the jellybean game?
What they failed to tell us is that the absolute or real risk of anyone contracting Covid-19 was just 0.74% anyway, and the vaccine reduced it to 0.7% — a real risk reduction of just 0.04%
That’s a far cry from 95%
And that’s how they lied about Covid while telling the truth.
It wasn’t an accident. They lied by omission, knowing that most people don’t know the difference between relative and absolute risk. But big pharma, health agencies and regulators do. Doctors and other health professionals should too.
Next time anyone tells you a medication or vaccine is “safe and xx% effective,” remember the jellybean game. Ask if they mean relative or absolute risk reduction.
If they don’t know the answer or don’t know what you’re talking about, you’d be wise to decline whatever they’re offering.
* Featured image by Amit Lahav on Unsplash* For more about how they lied about Covid see: COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness — the elephant (not) in the room
Also see Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines — let’s be cautious and first see the full data
What Does 95% Effective Mean? Teaching the Math of Vaccine Efficacy