VERY URGENT: Pfizer’s mRNA flu shot failed its pivotal clinical trial in adults 65 and older

Guest Post by Alex Berenson

Pfizer has never announced the results, sitting on them for years. They show older adults who received mRNA had MORE flu infections, deaths, and side effects than those who got a standard flu shot.

Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for influenza failed when tested against the standard flu shot in a 27,000-person trial of older adults — a failure Pfizer has not announced for years.

Almost three times as many people who received the mRNA shot suffered acute respiratory failure or major kidney problems. More died, too. Overall, mRNA patients were much more likely to report side effects than those who got the standard flu shot.

But mRNA shots did not protect patients from the flu better than standard shots.

mRNA Covid jab sales have already cratered. This new failure may effectively end development of mRNA shots for respiratory viruses — and many other viruses too.

Pfizer has never publicly announced the failure of the trial.

In a statement on Halloween 2023, the company promised to release the results by the end of 20231. It did not.

Instead, in May 2025, long after its self-imposed deadline, Pfizer quietly updated the “study results” page for the trial on the clinicaltrials.gov Website with trial’s results.

They reveal across-the-board failure on both safety and efficacy for the mRNA influenza shot. (I am suing Pfizer chairman Dr. Albert Bourla and director Dr. Scott Gottlieb for conspiring to violate my Constitutional rights and forcing Twitter to ban me in 2021.)

The trial included about 45,000 people, about 27,000 over 65 and 18,000 under 65. Patients were randomly chosen to receive either the standard flu shot or Pfizer’s mRNA jab.2 There was no placebo arm in the trial, though there probably should have been, since many epidemiologists doubt the value of standard flu shots and a placebo arm would have shown potential safety risks even more clearly.

Older people who got mRNA shots were about 6 percent more likely to get the flu than those who got standard shots. And 49 older people who received the mRNA shot died, compared to 46 who received the flu shot.

The study also revealed a significant safety signal for the mRNAs on kidney damage. Twenty-two older patients who received the mRNA shot were diagnosed with acute kidney injury, chronic kidney disease, or end-stage renal disease, compared to nine who received the standard shot.

In another worrisome finding, 17 older people who received mRNA suffered “acute respiratory failure,” compared to only six who received the standard flu shot.

mRNA patients were also much more likely to have less serious side effects. For example, about 69 percent reported injection-site swelling or other local side effects after the jab, compared to 26 percent who received the flu shot.

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(Dial F for failure. RVE stands for “relative vaccine effectiveness” — in other words, how much the mRNA shot reduced the chances that a person who got it would get the flu compared to someone who got the normal vaccine.

But the mRNA shot had NEGATIVE effectiveness – in other words, it raised the risks of getting the flu.)

(SOURCE)

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These results are so bad that it is not clear whether the Food and Drug Administration could or would possibly approve an mRNA shot based on this data.

Even if the FDA did, the shot’s commercial prospects would be effectively nil. Doctors have no reason to give patients a newer, more expensive jab that has far more side effects but is less effective.

Pfizer appears to know very well that these results are disastrous.

In its most recent discussion of its “pipeline” of future drugs, Pfizer oddly referred to the mRNA flu vaccine as being in “Phase 2” development.

Companies put most potential new drugs and vaccines through three phases of human trials before submitting them to the FDA for approval. Phase 3 is the final phase, and consists of large trials — like the 45,000 patient trial Pfizer has already run.

In other words, Pfizer has already put its flu shot through Phase 3 but it seems to be pretending it did not.

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Instead of coming clean about the failure, Pfizer has instead chosen to publish results from the part of the trial that covers younger adults, the 18-to-64 group.

In that group, the mRNA vaccine slightly reduced the risk of flu, though at the cost of much higher side effects.

In absolute terms, the shot prevented 30 cases of flu among 9,000 younger people — while causing an extra 174 adverse events. Yes, you read that right. For every flu infection they stopped in young and middle-aged adults (for whom the flu is unlikely to be serious), mRNA jabs caused SIX cases of side effects.

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(Nope, not making that up.)

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Somehow, Pfizer’s scientists spun that finding as positive in a New England Journal of Medicine article last week, and the usual legacy media bootlickers ran with it.

“Pfizer’s mRNA flu shot outperforms standard flu vaccine in late-stage trial,” NBC reported.

Sure, if you don’t count the six-fold increase in side effects.

But the findings in older adults are even worse — so bad that Pfizer decided to break its 2023 promise to investors to disclose them and simply stick them in the virtual filing cabinet that is clinicaltrials.gov.

Once again, when proper trials are run, they show mRNA-based vaccines for healthy people are not ready for prime time and will likely never be.

Too bad we didn’t run those trials on Covid shots in 2020. Or 2021. Or ever.