On June 23, 2022, the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases published an article by Watson et al. entitled Global Impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study.[1] The authors of this paper “estimated that vaccinations prevented 14.4 million deaths from COVID-19 in 185 countries and territories between Dec 8, 2020 and Dec 8, 2021.” This estimate is so impossibly high that this article should be retracted by The Lancet. The obvious impossibility of their estimate may be demonstrated by any of the following five relatively simple calculations.