Signals in Noice

Florida's 2025 All-Cause Mortality Study

Public health is a fragile construct, built on trust and a claim of certainty. The recent preprint from the Florida Department of Health, published on medRxiv highlights what many ‘conspiracy theorists’ have recognized for some time. Titled Twelve-Month All-Cause Mortality after Initial COVID-19 Vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech or mRNA-1273 among Adults Living in Florida, it dares to ask: Are the mRNA vaccines as safe as we’ve been told? The answer isn’t simple, but it’s one we can’t ignore.

The study, authored by Retsef Levi and others, is a matched cohort analysis of 1.47 million noninstitutionalized adult Floridians who received two doses of either Pfizer’s BNT162b2 or Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine between December 2020 and August 2021. Using Florida’s public health databases, the researchers tracked all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, COVID-19 mortality, and non-COVID-19 mortality over 12 months. This is no small dataset—it’s a serious attempt to probe real-world outcomes.

The key finding? Moderna recipients had a slightly lower all-cause mortality rate than those who got Pfizer’s shot, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 0.92 (95% CI: 0.89–0.95). But the real jolt comes elsewhere: both vaccines were linked to higher-than-expected non-COVID-19 mortality, especially in younger adults (18–39 years), where hazard ratios edged above 1.0. Cardiovascular mortality also raised concerns, particularly among older adults. While the vaccines reduced COVID-19 mortality—hazard ratios below 1.0 confirmed their protective effect—the uptick in non-COVID deaths is a puzzle that demands attention.

No, correlation isn’t causation. The study doesn’t prove the vaccines are killing people, but it suggests they might have unintended consequences. Possible culprits? Inflammatory responses from the spike protein, cardiovascular impacts, or immune dysregulation—mechanisms grounded in emerging research on side effects like myocarditis or clotting disorders. These aren’t conspiracy theories; they’re hypotheses that need testing. Ignoring them because they don’t fit the “safe and effective” mantra is not science—it’s dogma.

The mRNA vaccines were hailed as a miracle, rushed out to stop a deadly pandemic. Governments and health agencies sold them hard: get the shot, save lives. Dissent was silenced, labeled misinformation. But as adverse event reports—myocarditis, blood clots—piled up, cracks appeared. The Florida study widens those cracks, forcing us to ask: If the vaccines save lives from COVID, why are we seeing excess non-COVID deaths?

The authors don’t have definitive answers, but they’ve waved a flag we can’t unsee.

Predictably, the study has been met with silence from mainstream outlets. If it praised the vaccines, it’d be front-page news. Instead, it’s a pariah, too inconvenient for the public health establishment, which has bet its credibility on unwavering vaccine advocacy. Meanwhile, the anti-vaccine crowd will pounce, twisting the data to fuel their narrative. Both sides are wrong. The truth lies in the messy middle, where this study lives—not as a smoking gun, but as a signal demanding scrutiny.

Context matters here. Florida, under Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, has been a lightning rod, challenging federal mandates and questioning vaccine orthodoxy. Critics will call this study politically tainted. Maybe there’s truth to that—science isn’t immune to agendas. But dismissing it because of its source is intellectual cowardice. The data is real, the methodology solid. It’s a preprint, not peer-reviewed, but that’s no reason to bury it.

The bigger picture? The vaccines were a gamble, rolled out at warp speed. For the elderly and vulnerable, the benefits likely outweigh the risks. But the one-size-fits-all approach ignored how risks vary by age and health. The Florida study hints that younger adults, already at low COVID risk, might face disproportionate side effects. If true, that’s a policy failure.

So, what now? We need more data—longitudinal studies across diverse populations. We need to stop treating vaccine safety questions as heresy. And we need to rebuild trust by admitting uncertainty. The Florida study doesn’t dismantle the vaccine narrative, but it reminds us that truth is hard-won and often inconvenient.