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Please do not use the term "anti-vaxxer". There are countless vaccines with varying safety profiles, unknowns, and underlying risks for the diseases they preve

Please do not use the term "anti-vaxxer". There are countless vaccines with varying safety profiles, unknowns, and underlying risks for the diseases they prevent. People who make informed decisions about specific vaccines based on the risk/reward (and unknowns) are not "anti-vaxxers". It is not an all-or-nothing proposition.

michaelmrose 5y ago
In theory this is true but in reality half of the US population just isn't smart enough to evaluate such a question and those who are hesitant are virtually exclusively drawn from this portion. This is well highlighted by the fact that the societal and individual risks of avoiding vaccination are so insanely high while the risk of vaccination is virtually insignificant. If I offered you a chance to skip rope or play Russian roulette with revolver with a bullet in one chamber and you opined about the danger of breaking your hip while skipping rope I would strong suspect you didn't understand the question.
- willmadden 5y ago
  >those who are hesitant are virtually exclusively drawn from this portion. Well, that's complete BS. The list of people expressing concerns about the mRNA / spike protein based injections includes the inventor of the PCR test (Nobel Prize winner), the guy who invented Ivermectin (Nobel Prize winner), the guy credited with inventing mRNA vaccines, the guy who discovered that HIV causes AIDS (another Nobel Prize winner), and countless other famous researchers. These people are typically pro-vaccine in general, but have reservations about the new spike protein based mRNA vaccines. They are anything but "not smart enough to evaluate such a question". Here, give this a read: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Links to scientific research by those fellows or research cited by them. Virtually doesn't mean entirely. You can find strict creationist biologists too if you ask enough despite it being a crank view that inherently discredits it's holder. It doesn't mean biologists give substantial credence to creationism. 99.9% of vaccine hesitant are intellectually limited or letting their politics overrule their intellect. 0.1% are people with relevant expertise who are wrong. If you want to know what experts of a particular stripe think about a technical topic you identify the most qualified via their peers and accomplishments and synthesize a theory of how the world appears to work from the points of contention and consensus. What you do not do is cherry pick from the minority who support your pre chosen view and declare your prior bias justified. You might as well have skipped a step and just patted yourself on the back and put in earplugs as it would leave you more time to recline in the shade.
  - raphlinus 5y ago
    I'll quote the expression of concern, in case people don't click through your link and see it: The journal is issuing this expression of concern to alert readers to significant concerns regarding the paper cited above [1]. Serious concerns have been raised about misinterpretation of the data and the conclusions. The major concern is the misrepresentation of the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and misrepresentation of the data, e.g., Abstract: “For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination”. Stating that these deaths linked to vaccination efforts is incorrect and distorted. We will provide an update following the conclusion of our investigation. The authors have been notified about this Expression of Concern.
    - willmadden 5y ago
      I'm not sure why it's worth quoting that "expression of concern" rather than addressing the study directly. I'll list my "expression of concern" about their "expression of concern": their "expression of concern" contains no evidence refuting the study. In fact, it contains no substance at all, other than being a political statement. View the full text here and see for yourself: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/705/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/705/htm "The journal is issuing this expression of concern to alert readers to significant concerns regarding the paper cited above [1]. Serious concerns have been raised about misinterpretation of the data and the conclusions. The major concern is the misrepresentation of the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and misrepresentation of the data, e.g., Abstract: “For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination”. Stating that these deaths linked to vaccination efforts is incorrect and distorted. We will provide an update following the conclusion of our investigation. The authors have been notified about this Expression of Concern."
      - raphlinus 5y ago
        The paper has now been retracted.
        willmadden 5y ago
        Their justification for this retraction is a joke: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/729/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/729/htm The major claim of the study was based on data from a 1m+ person field study in Israel, but the retraction was based on a technicality in the Netherlands. Yet they let the completely fraudulent Surgisphere study go into the Lancet for months and change world health policy discouraging therapeutics? Big pharma narrative control and censorship in action, folks.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    I'm unsure how they get the number of people needed to vaccinate to save one life as 16000. They themselves say that 1 in 200 infected will die if infected. One should assume that like the seasonal flu that nearly everyone including those that have been infected will eventually get it with a fatality rate that cannot reasonably be fully predicted by looking at prior data because the virus will mutate and get better or worse and treatments may get better as well. This also doesn't fully cover the decrease in lifespan from damage sustained by people who aren't immediately killed. It's entirely possible that we can vaccinate and eradicate or suffer from multiple waves that ultimately kill a few million in the shorter term and potentially a lot more over the next few decades. In the long run considering the cost of not destroying covid now might only require 100 vaccinations per life saved.
    - willmadden 5y ago
      >I'm unsure how they get the number of people needed to vaccinate to save one life as 16000. It's statistics. They calculated the NNTV (number needed to vaccinate) to save one life as between 9,000 and 50,000 with a 95% confidence interval. The point estimate (or best guess) between those two numbers based on the data set is 16,000. >One should assume that like the seasonal flu that nearly everyone including those that have been infected will eventually get it with a fatality rate that cannot reasonably be fully predicted by looking at prior data because the virus will mutate and get better or worse and treatments may get better as well. The point of the study is NOT to make assumptions like this. There are studies hinting that a large percentage of the population may be immune to COVID because of previous infection with unrelated coronaviruses. There are too many unknowns to make broad assumptions like "everyone will be infected". The study is based on real-world data and absolute risk reduction, not relative risk reduction. This same relative risk reduction fallacy is how we arrived at the highly marketed "95% efficacy rate", which is turning out to be false. There are many problems with the real-world data itself... not surprisingly problems that erroneously favor vaccination over therapeutics, but it's the best we have to work with. >This also doesn't fully cover the decrease in lifespan from damage sustained by people who aren't immediately killed. Nor does it address the decrease in lifespan from dosing 100% of the population with pathogenic spike proteins from the original Wuhan strain from the injections, versus letting the virus naturally become less lethal and more contagious. Nor does it address the very real risk of pathogenic priming/ADE, or that the mass vaccinations during an ongoing pandemic could force dangerous mutations in COVID that would not have occurred naturally. >It's entirely possible that we can vaccinate and eradicate or suffer from multiple waves that ultimately kill a few million in the shorter term and potentially a lot more over the next few decades. In the long run considering the cost of not destroying covid now might only require 100 vaccinations per life saved. There's no data I'm aware of that suggest these mRNA vaccinations will "eradicate" COVID. They are incredibly leaky. From the study: "In the Israeli field study, 4460 persons in the vaccination group became infected during the study period and nine persons died, translating into an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.2% in the vaccination group. In the control group, 6100 became infected and 32 died, resulting in an IFR of 0.5%, which is within the range found by a review [11]." If you read the source Israeli study on google scholar, the control and vaccinated groups were equal, at a little over 500k people each, yet the number infected in each group was roughly the same. The fatality rate was reduced by a bit more than half in the vaccinated group. These vaccines aren't going to "eradicate" COVID based on this data, not by a long shot. What the data does show is that 41 people died of COVID out of over 1 million people in the study, vaccinated or unvaccinated. What that indicates is that we are epically overreacting. There is evidence to suggest that the virus is mutating around the Wuhan strain vaccinations, however. When you prime the immune system of the majority of people exactly the same way with a leaky vaccine, the chances of a new strain emerging that escapes immunity is far higher than if you let peoples' natural immunity deal with different strains of the virus as they emerge. This is a well known fact in virology and epidemiological circles that we ignore at our own peril. What we are doing with vaccines is, in fact, extremely dangerous, and when you factor in that the real-world threat of COVID is mild based on the data, it's lunacy.

michaelmrose 5y ago

In theory this is true but in reality half of the US population just isn't smart enough to evaluate such a question and those who are hesitant are virtually exclusively drawn from this portion. This is well highlighted by the fact that the societal and individual risks of avoiding vaccination are so insanely high while the risk of vaccination is virtually insignificant. If I offered you a chance to skip rope or play Russian roulette with revolver with a bullet in one chamber and you opined about the danger of breaking your hip while skipping rope I would strong suspect you didn't understand the question.

willmadden 5y ago
>those who are hesitant are virtually exclusively drawn from this portion. Well, that's complete BS. The list of people expressing concerns about the mRNA / spike protein based injections includes the inventor of the PCR test (Nobel Prize winner), the guy who invented Ivermectin (Nobel Prize winner), the guy credited with inventing mRNA vaccines, the guy who discovered that HIV causes AIDS (another Nobel Prize winner), and countless other famous researchers. These people are typically pro-vaccine in general, but have reservations about the new spike protein based mRNA vaccines. They are anything but "not smart enough to evaluate such a question". Here, give this a read: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/693/htm
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Links to scientific research by those fellows or research cited by them. Virtually doesn't mean entirely. You can find strict creationist biologists too if you ask enough despite it being a crank view that inherently discredits it's holder. It doesn't mean biologists give substantial credence to creationism. 99.9% of vaccine hesitant are intellectually limited or letting their politics overrule their intellect. 0.1% are people with relevant expertise who are wrong. If you want to know what experts of a particular stripe think about a technical topic you identify the most qualified via their peers and accomplishments and synthesize a theory of how the world appears to work from the points of contention and consensus. What you do not do is cherry pick from the minority who support your pre chosen view and declare your prior bias justified. You might as well have skipped a step and just patted yourself on the back and put in earplugs as it would leave you more time to recline in the shade.
- raphlinus 5y ago
  I'll quote the expression of concern, in case people don't click through your link and see it: The journal is issuing this expression of concern to alert readers to significant concerns regarding the paper cited above [1]. Serious concerns have been raised about misinterpretation of the data and the conclusions. The major concern is the misrepresentation of the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and misrepresentation of the data, e.g., Abstract: “For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination”. Stating that these deaths linked to vaccination efforts is incorrect and distorted. We will provide an update following the conclusion of our investigation. The authors have been notified about this Expression of Concern.
  - willmadden 5y ago
    I'm not sure why it's worth quoting that "expression of concern" rather than addressing the study directly. I'll list my "expression of concern" about their "expression of concern": their "expression of concern" contains no evidence refuting the study. In fact, it contains no substance at all, other than being a political statement. View the full text here and see for yourself: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/705/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/705/htm "The journal is issuing this expression of concern to alert readers to significant concerns regarding the paper cited above [1]. Serious concerns have been raised about misinterpretation of the data and the conclusions. The major concern is the misrepresentation of the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and misrepresentation of the data, e.g., Abstract: “For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination”. Stating that these deaths linked to vaccination efforts is incorrect and distorted. We will provide an update following the conclusion of our investigation. The authors have been notified about this Expression of Concern."
    - raphlinus 5y ago
      The paper has now been retracted.
      - willmadden 5y ago
        Their justification for this retraction is a joke: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/729/htm https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/729/htm The major claim of the study was based on data from a 1m+ person field study in Israel, but the retraction was based on a technicality in the Netherlands. Yet they let the completely fraudulent Surgisphere study go into the Lancet for months and change world health policy discouraging therapeutics? Big pharma narrative control and censorship in action, folks.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  I'm unsure how they get the number of people needed to vaccinate to save one life as 16000. They themselves say that 1 in 200 infected will die if infected. One should assume that like the seasonal flu that nearly everyone including those that have been infected will eventually get it with a fatality rate that cannot reasonably be fully predicted by looking at prior data because the virus will mutate and get better or worse and treatments may get better as well. This also doesn't fully cover the decrease in lifespan from damage sustained by people who aren't immediately killed. It's entirely possible that we can vaccinate and eradicate or suffer from multiple waves that ultimately kill a few million in the shorter term and potentially a lot more over the next few decades. In the long run considering the cost of not destroying covid now might only require 100 vaccinations per life saved.
  - willmadden 5y ago
    >I'm unsure how they get the number of people needed to vaccinate to save one life as 16000. It's statistics. They calculated the NNTV (number needed to vaccinate) to save one life as between 9,000 and 50,000 with a 95% confidence interval. The point estimate (or best guess) between those two numbers based on the data set is 16,000. >One should assume that like the seasonal flu that nearly everyone including those that have been infected will eventually get it with a fatality rate that cannot reasonably be fully predicted by looking at prior data because the virus will mutate and get better or worse and treatments may get better as well. The point of the study is NOT to make assumptions like this. There are studies hinting that a large percentage of the population may be immune to COVID because of previous infection with unrelated coronaviruses. There are too many unknowns to make broad assumptions like "everyone will be infected". The study is based on real-world data and absolute risk reduction, not relative risk reduction. This same relative risk reduction fallacy is how we arrived at the highly marketed "95% efficacy rate", which is turning out to be false. There are many problems with the real-world data itself... not surprisingly problems that erroneously favor vaccination over therapeutics, but it's the best we have to work with. >This also doesn't fully cover the decrease in lifespan from damage sustained by people who aren't immediately killed. Nor does it address the decrease in lifespan from dosing 100% of the population with pathogenic spike proteins from the original Wuhan strain from the injections, versus letting the virus naturally become less lethal and more contagious. Nor does it address the very real risk of pathogenic priming/ADE, or that the mass vaccinations during an ongoing pandemic could force dangerous mutations in COVID that would not have occurred naturally. >It's entirely possible that we can vaccinate and eradicate or suffer from multiple waves that ultimately kill a few million in the shorter term and potentially a lot more over the next few decades. In the long run considering the cost of not destroying covid now might only require 100 vaccinations per life saved. There's no data I'm aware of that suggest these mRNA vaccinations will "eradicate" COVID. They are incredibly leaky. From the study: "In the Israeli field study, 4460 persons in the vaccination group became infected during the study period and nine persons died, translating into an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.2% in the vaccination group. In the control group, 6100 became infected and 32 died, resulting in an IFR of 0.5%, which is within the range found by a review [11]." If you read the source Israeli study on google scholar, the control and vaccinated groups were equal, at a little over 500k people each, yet the number infected in each group was roughly the same. The fatality rate was reduced by a bit more than half in the vaccinated group. These vaccines aren't going to "eradicate" COVID based on this data, not by a long shot. What the data does show is that 41 people died of COVID out of over 1 million people in the study, vaccinated or unvaccinated. What that indicates is that we are epically overreacting. There is evidence to suggest that the virus is mutating around the Wuhan strain vaccinations, however. When you prime the immune system of the majority of people exactly the same way with a leaky vaccine, the chances of a new strain emerging that escapes immunity is far higher than if you let peoples' natural immunity deal with different strains of the virus as they emerge. This is a well known fact in virology and epidemiological circles that we ignore at our own peril. What we are doing with vaccines is, in fact, extremely dangerous, and when you factor in that the real-world threat of COVID is mild based on the data, it's lunacy.