A large cohort study in France found that the COVID mRNA vaccines were associated with a lower risk of death. This goes against some of the outlandish claims by anti-vaccine activists that the COVID mRNA vaccines kill people.

Anti-vaxxers love to point to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) database, which cannot establish causality between vaccines and any supposed adverse reaction, including death, as “proof” that COVID vaccines are dangerous.

This new research is a cohort study, a type of observational study that follows a group of participants over time to examine how certain factors, such as exposure to a risk factor, affect their health outcomes. Outside of a clinical trial, a cohort study is one of the best methods in biomedical science to determine a correlation between a risk factor and a health outcome.

This article will review this new study, which clearly shows there is no correlation, let alone causation, between COVID mRNA vaccines and death from all causes.

COVID mRNA vaccines and death paper

In a paper published on 1 December 2025 in JAMA Network Open, Mahmoud Zureik, MD, PhD, French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products, Saint-Denis, and colleagues analyzed national health data covering over 68 million residents of France. The study cohort included all people ages 18 to 59 years in France as of Nov. 1, 2021, resulting in 22,767,546 people vaccinated with a first dose of mRNA vaccine between May 1 and Oct. 31, 2021, and 5,932,443 individuals still unvaccinated by Nov. 1. Follow-up began 6 months after one dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine or a randomly assigned index date for unvaccinated people within those time periods.

Below are the key results:

• The incidence of all-cause deaths among those who received a first dose of an mRNA COVID vaccine was 0.4% after a median follow-up of 45 months, compared with 0.6% of those who were unvaccinated. In other words, the incidence of all-cause deaths was 50% higher in unvaccinated groups.
• After standardizing characteristics between the two groups, all-cause mortality was 25% lower in those who had received a COVID mRNA vaccine.
• Vaccinated individuals had a 74% lower risk of dying from COVID in a hospital compared with those who were unvaccinated.
• After excluding COVID-related hospital deaths, people were 24% less likely to die of any cause.

The authors concluded:

In this national cohort study of 28 million individuals, the results found no increased risk of 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are widely used worldwide.

Summary

This huge study shows that there is no increased risk of all-cause deaths in individuals who received the COVID mRNA vaccines. These results support what has been shown in other studies.

There are some limitations to this study. First, it followed 28 million individuals in one country, France. We could find different results in other countries.

Second, it is an observational study, and there might be some unknown confounding variable that biases the results.

Also, one should not conclude that those who received a COVID mRNA vaccine had a lower risk of death. Individuals who got the vaccine generally are healthier and more willing to seek medical care.

Studies like this one are perfect examples of why a system like VAERS is flawed. VAERS can’t tell if a death is related to the vaccine or not; it can only say that an adverse event happened, without any relationship to the vaccine. Large cohort studies like this one can examine adverse events over a large population and determine if there is a difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.

This study clearly demonstrates that you are not going to die from the COVID mRNA vaccines.

Citations

• Semenzato L, Le Vu S, Botton J, Bertrand M, Jabagi MJ, Drouin J, Cuenot F, Olié V, Dray-Spira R, Weill A, Zureik M. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality Among Adults Aged 18 to 59 Years in France. JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Dec 1;8(12):e2546822. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.46822. PMID: 41343214; PMCID: PMC12679329.

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