Covid vsccine

At first glance this looks like a very flawed study.  Did you read it?  Did you read any third party analysis of it?

First, they chose to include data from the Dutch database which reports the highest incidents of all European countries by a significant margin.  701 reports per 100k doses vs Germany, which reports 38 per 100k and has administered 5 times as many doses.   Weird.  What could account for that discrepancy? 

Well, when you go to the Dutch website the authors used for their data, you learn that it gathers data from self-reporting individuals as well as healthcare provider sources.  Absolutely unscientific evidence.  The wesbsite clearly states that reported side effects may not be related to the vaccine at all.

The site also states that a single report may involve several side effects.  Thus, the number of side effects does not equal the number of individuals.

I have no idea how they determine that the cited deaths were the result of vaccines.  Do you?

None of this is surprising. I thought the same thing when I read that they used the Dutch numbers. Even if those Dutch numbers weren't suspect, which they are, the authors of this paper couldn't be bothered to either throw out the extreme values (outliers) on either end and/or otherwise even do a simple weighted average of data from ALL of the countries? Instead, they cherry picked the Dutch data that fit their narrative.


The idea that the vaccine kills two people for every three it saves is clearly ludicrous, without even having to dig deeper to find out where those numbers come from. But dig a little deeper?

This "study", is just political hucksterism from anti-vaxxers trying to masquerade as science.

Utterly absurd on its face. This is why so many of us can be so dismissive of some of the “arguments” being made in this area. 

The most interesting part to me is who shared it…Dr. Malone. Not sure what to make of it yet, but he seems to have really soured on the covid vaccines over the past 2-3 weeks. He has mentioned speaking to several colleagues at the FDA in regards to vaers and the internal side of those numbers that we aren’t seeing. He has mentioned a few times how they are saying they are overwhelmed and have never seen this number of reports and haven’t been able to process them in a timely fashion. It’s interesting to me and is something I’m keeping an eye on.

When I post something I’m just passing on interesting pieces I come across. And yes, I read/watch everything I share so you don’t need to ask that again. It’s not hard to google and find pros/cons for everything and every person that has been brought up here. So when I post, It’s not necessarily an endorsement(especially if it’s a video that includes multiple guests.). It is interesting though(to me at least).

In regards to any criticisms of how adverse events are reported, it is a felony in the US to file a false vaers report.  Not sure about other countries, but I think it would be reasonable for them to have similar policies in place.  The main known issue with these types of systems is under reporting, not false claims.  If you haven't seen a vaers form, you should look it up.  It is thorough and would take around 30 minutes to complete.  Not something you could flippantly do for a prank.  So, the fact that any individual can make a claim tightens up a bit when you realize if they do file a false one it would be a federal crime.  Dr. Malone is one of the few that has given any insight into how things may be going behind the scenes right now.  That is the most interesting part to me.  He could be full of 💩 but we'll see.  

But that’s how all these databases work. Flawed as they may or may not be, they are all we have. It doesn’t mean any info that comes from them isn’t reliable, it just means there are known limitations we should keep in mind. Dr. Malone’s credibility will play out in the coming months. The most interesting part is that he is claiming to be speaking to people at the FDA. As he has done that his attitude towards the vaccines has changed. That is very interesting to me.

I know there are some that consider this conspiracy theory. That’s fine. I’m past worrying about that honestly. Not trying to piss any particular sector of this forum off but I consider Dr. Malone to be a very interesting player in this. The more he has claimed to speak to people at the FDA, the more his message has been, the government isn’t being honest about the risk. He’s one of the very few people that would be in a position to make such a claim. As with everything, we’ll see.

I'm not sure why they chose the dutch database(if you take their word for it, it's because they thought it had the best reporting standards), maybe as questions are posed on twitter some things will become more clear. Dr. Malone, along with some of the others involved in the report have been pretty responsive in the comments so I'm hopeful some more insight will be gained there.

I think if you're going to criticize using the dutch database because their number of incidents reported were higher, then it's also fair to point out that these databases are estimated to only represent somewhere between 1-10% of actual adverse events. So, it wouldn't be hard to make the case that these numbers could be way higher. We don't know that as of now, but again, it's the only system we have so unless the CDC let's people look behind the curtain at their internal V-Safe numbers then it's the best anyone can do at this point.

The guy that replied on twitter questioning their math already had to correct something he said. It has also been pointed out that one of the editors that quit has some questionable ties to a vaccine investment. Wikipedia is open to input from the public the same way vaers is(although not under legal penalty for stating something false) so it could be dismissed easily.. It's the reason I don't like to get into this tit for tat...start with a conclusion in your mind and you can google your way to supporting it no matter what road you're trying to go down.

Don't get me wrong, if someone has been convicted of a past crime, then by all means be skeptical. The problem I have is there are very credible people now speaking out that have earned the right to have an opinion in this debate and there's still this knee jerk reaction to call them hucksters. If these guys are way off in this report then let them be challenged and let them reap the consequences of it after.  That would be scientific debate playing out and I think that would be a good thing. 

The people speaking out now are doing so at a great risk to their reputations and probably even their ability to work in their profession going forward. Why would they do that if they weren't genuinely concerned? If what Dr. Malone is saying in this short clip here is true, then I think we all need to ask why this is the case?

Umm..he lost me on 10:

I asked him for clarification to be sure, but in #11 he acknowledges and describes how #10 is misleading, and I think you might be missing the point.  The NNTV number changes dramatically depending on the length of time in question.  The authors used data from an exceedingly small window of time for their paper, especially given that the data was taken when the number of infections in the population was very low. 

In other words, they're using risk of death estimates from a 6 week period when only 3% of the population was infected (the number rose over time to 30%), and comparing that to the most recent reported total death data from the Dutch agency.  Even if the deaths in the Dutch data were 100% verified vaccine-related (which they absolutely aren't), this comparison makes no sense.  

 

Then what they published — and what Dr Malone is amplifying — is editorial, not science, and it should be treated as such. 

All fair points, but ignores the fact that the initial entry point to this discussion was the tweet you shared from Dr Malone, which states in no uncertain terms that two deaths are caused for every three prevented by vaccine. Which circles back to MY broader point about Dr Malone and many of his ilk: despite their credentials and obvious expertise, there is a rather obvious agenda for which they're willing to forgo usual scientific means. Which casts doubt over whatever legitimate points they may raise in the face of the mountain of opposing evidence.  In short: tweets like the one you shared undermines their own credibility on this stuff, and only sows further division, obfuscation, and misunderstanding.

On a macro scale, for public policy, maybe yes.  But I see it differently.  My perspective is as a front line worker.   We in the hospital have known, for a rather long time, how to treat droplet spread respiratory viruses.  We thoroughly understand the different types of isolation required  for different transmission methods (droplet vs aerosolized vs airborne etc).  We have a long history of effective infection control (hand washing, masking, n95's, PAPR/CAPR's etc).  And we're generally pretty good at implementing lung protective strategies for viral pneumonia's of this nature.  

All that got turned on its head from the very beginning.  The "fear of covid" spread faster than actual covid and that seemed enough to ensure that almost no one in power could make logical decisions.  The rules that were handed down to us from the State Health Department, CDC, and WHO were impractical, at times impossible to follow, changed constantly (several times a day for several weeks), and at times were ineffective or worse. 

We were told not to use BiPAP or High Flow Oxygen delivery systems because we would aerosolize the virus and everyone would get it...never mind the fact that we treat aerosolizing pathogens all the time and don't have those issues.  Why? Because COVID is "different", its new and scary, so why use what we know has always worked in the past?  Lets throw out the playbook and try this totally differently.  Not being able to use BiPAP and High Flow Oxygen severely hurt our first wave of patients.  Now its the standard treatment.  

And masks?  We went from only wearing masks when patients are in specific isolation protocols to being forbidden to wear masks unless it was a COVID patient, to being required to wear masks for all patients to being required to wear masks at all times, in all places (break rooms etc).  

And here we are 1 1/2 years into it and the rules keep changing.  If we'd been left to treat this how we'd normally treat every long disease we'd have faired a lot better.  And while some of these policies could be forgiven at the beginning, it was very obvious that the people making the rules had never worked in a hospital, or treated an actual patient before.  Thankfully our clinical practice self corrected and now we're pretty damn good at treating COVID. 


To you're point however, my personal opinion is that everyone either overreacted or underreacted.  It was so bizarre to live through.  One side calling for impossible infection control measures and the other calling the whole thing a hoax.  Turns out everyone was wrong.    


Edit: thanks for listening to me rant!