A new study found that cancer patients who took the COVID vaccine lived longer than cancer patients who did not. Sounds like a miracle, right? Hold the phone. The study showed that people with either lung or skin cancer who took the vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived longer than people in the same group that did not. Note, these were patients on immunotherapy, which is NOT the same as chemotherapy. A cancer patient that is on immunotherapy is, by definition, in a stronger position and has a healthier outlook than one on chemotherapy. That means they were healthier, stronger patients, already pre-selected for good immune function. More specifically, the study found that the vaccinated lung cancer patients lived about 16–17 months longer than the unvaccinated ones. But because this was not a randomized trial, researchers cannot attribute that difference to the COVID vaccine. It could just as easily reflect a healthier baseline — meaning the vaccinated group started out stronger, with better immune function and access to care. As for the skin cancer patients, there’s no clear metric for how long the vaccinated group lived because their median survival hadn’t yet been reached at the time of publication. In other words, too many of them were still alive for the researchers to calculate an average. That sounds promising on paper, but again, without randomization or control for health status, it’s impossible to separate vaccine effect from selection bias. The media is dressing this up as a miraculous “vaccine enhances cancer survival” story, when in reality it’s a self-selecting, immune-healthy group outperforming the immunocompromised one. It’s like saying “people who were well enough to get the vaccine lived longer.” Yeah, no kidding. This study did not show any benefit to anyone who did not take the vaccine outside of that 100-day window. The post Good News! The Healthier People Lived Longer appeared first on Redacted.