Clay Travis Balloons Alex Berenson’s Latest Shaky Covid Claim Into a Full-Blown Whopper

Clay Travis claimed on Twitter this week that mRna Covid vaccines are “a disaster” that could be making those who received them “more sick.”

Travis, the founder of The Outkick, Fox News contributor and successor to Rush Limbaugh, based his claim on a new piece from Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who has amassed a large audience and some notoriety thanks to his relentless criticism of the world’s response to the Covid pandemic and vaccines. His dedication to misunderstanding data earned him the dubious distinction of being labeled “the pandemic’s wrongest man” by The Atlantic.

Berenson’s piece focuses on a peer-reviewed paper examining the effects of multiple mRNA vaccinations. He concludes that the paper “has troubling news for anyone who has received multiple mRNA shots, suggesting the immune system paradoxically weakens a crucial part of its Covid response after the third jab.”

Berenson’s claims are far more strident than the conclusions of those who conducted the study.

One of its authors, Dr. Kilian Schober of the Institute of Microbiology in Erlangen, Germany, wrote that his work is being misconstrued by anti-vaxxers.

“Our preprint had ‘gone viral’ among some anti-vax circles, because it would supposedly show that mRNA vaccines are inducing ‘tolerance’. This view is certainly too simplistic. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives,” he wrote on Twitter.

What does this mean for mRNA vaccination schemes? Our preprint had “gone viral” among some anti-vax circles, because it would supposedly show that mRNA vaccines are inducing “tolerance”. This view is certainly too simplistic. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives. 6/11

— Kilian Schober (@kischober) December 22, 2022

Schober added that they do not “advise against a second booster” shot based on the findings.

The study itself insists: “Further investigations are needed to clarify the precise immunological mechanisms driving this response and to evaluate whether an IgG4-driven antibody response affects subsequent viral infections and booster vaccinations.”

Clay Travis took Berenson’s report a step further. On Twitter, Travis wrote that the Berenson piece showed “The mRNA covid shots are a disaster and may be making everyone who got them more susceptible to illness.”

“If the shots actually worked, explaining why Japan, one of the most covid shotted countries in the world, is presently setting covid death records is virtually impossible,” he added.

If the shots actually worked, explaining why Japan, one of the most covid shotted countries in the world, is presently setting covid death records is virtually impossible.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 27, 2022

It’s almost like the covid shots are worthless. https://t.co/Jvkir2f350

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 27, 2022

Of course, waves of Covid infection don’t demonstrate that vaccines are worthless, no more than flu season demonstrates the flu shot is worthless.

Despite Travis’s claims, the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines at reducing the risk of death and serious illness has been proven time and time again.

I reached out to Dr. Pradheep J. Shanker, a radiologist who writes about health in the National Review and elsewhere, to better understand the claims being made by Berenson and Travis.

“Both Travis and Berenson are making simple mistakes,” he told me.

Berenson, he noted, has repeatedly argued “there is data showing a correlation with low vaccine rates with low excess mortality, suggesting increased use of vaccines is causing the excess mortality.”

“However, if you don’t cherry pick nations, and plot the entire world, you see there is no correlation between the two factors,” Shanker said. “It is just poor logic and scientific reasoning on his part.”

Sweden provides a useful example. The country “has one of the highest rates of vaccination in the world for patients over the age of 16, and has shown no significant increase in excess mortality,” Shanker said. “Berenson frequently makes this type of ‘correlation is causation’ error.”

Travis, Shanker argued, is making a mistake based on the assumption that vaccines are “worthless” because they don’t eliminate the spread of Covid.

“This is partly because of misinformation from our own CDC and government agencies, who in 2021 asserted that the vaccine could stop transmission, but that assertion has now been proven false,” Shanker said. “He is confusing transmission of the virus (which the vaccine is not effective in stopping) versus reduction in mortality (for which the vaccine is effective).”

Japan, it should be noted, is indeed facing a record wave of Covid deaths, with the seven-day average peaking this week at 315 (eclipsing last year’s high of 291). Shanker explained the deaths are a predictable result of a wave of infection.

They are having a wave of disease. Any time you have such a wave, you will see increase in deaths. Japan did a good job securing the country early on, so they never saw the initial waves we saw. So they have a country with a high vaccine rate (but not 100%!), and so the people that aren’t vaccinated have zero immunity. Compound that with the people that will die even with vaccinations (the vaccine isn’t 100% effective), and it explains your surge.

Japan is indeed a peculiar case. The country opened its borders to visitors in October after more than two years of a strict Covid lockdown. Now, as the country faces a surge driven in part by the wave in China, which recently relaxed its zero-Covid policy, Japan has imposed a regulation requiring visitors from China to test negative for the virus on arrival in the country.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.