Study does not determine COVID vaccines kill 2 for every 3 they save

"A peer reviewed, scientific study showed that the COVID-19 vaccine causes two deaths for every three lives it saves.”  This claim was made on "The Liz Wheeler Show" (video here), a Facebook video with over 1.4 million Facebook followers, which was first posted on June 30th. It refers to a study that was published in the journal Vaccines on June 24. Four days later, (and 2 days before the first Wheeler show post) the journal appended a note to the study, expressing concerns about the study and calling its main conclusion incorrect. The claim is misleading because it is a misrepresentation of the data, as expressed by the staff of the journal and the European Medicines Agency which runs the database used to record adverse reactions to the vaccines. The study was ultimately retracted on July 2.

The study, "The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations — We Should Rethink the Policy," was done by three European researchers, led by Harald Walach, professor at Poznan University of Medical Sciences in Poland. The study used data from an Israeli field study which calculates the number of people who needed to be vaccinated to prevent one death. The study authors then used that number to contrast with a number they calculated from the Adverse Drug Reactions database. The data on adverse reactions can’t be used on its own to conclude whether a vaccine caused death. The Adverse Drug Reactions database explicitly says the data counts "suspected side effects" and they are not necessarily related to or caused by the medicine. Even the European Medicines Agency, which manages the Adverse Drug Reactions database, warns that its data on adverse reactions can’t be used on its own to conclude whether a vaccine caused death.

As reported by By Tom Kertscher on Politifact...

A board member of the journal, University of Oxford immunologist Katie Ewer, tweeted that she resigned the board post because of the publication. She said the study "is grossly negligent and I can't believe it passed peer-review. I hope it will be retracted."

The journal’s associate editor, Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, also tweeted that he resigned because of the study.