22 ms·

I was deceived about Covid vaccine safety

• et2o 5y ago
  This is sophisticated intentional misinformation. HN readers are precisely the kind of people who would be deceived by this.
  • arpa 5y ago
    Sophisticated? not really.
  • Gwarzo 5y ago
    This is none of the above. Language like the above is used to defend and employ censorship. Use your big boy brain; this is a persons opinion piece - regardless of whether any of it is evil, good, correct, incorrect you need to employ context. This is not the bible, this is one person publishing their thoughts to the internet. Keep that in mind always when you read someone's dogshit opinion. "intentional misinformation" is laughable.
• nkurz 5y ago
  This was originally submitted by 'slowhand09' with a slightly editorialized title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30059987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30059987. I glanced at it, and it seemed like a reasonable article by a reasonable person. I tried to vouch for it, but it didn't come back alive, so I reposted it. The parts I read seemed coherent, but I haven't actually read the whole thing yet, so it might well misleading somewhere further down. I'm doubly vaccinated and boosted, as is my wife, as are my parents. Despite having somewhat adverse reactions to the shots, I'm pretty sure my wife and I are safer this way, and even more sure my parents are. But I think discussion is a good thing though. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's evidence I haven't seen, maybe others are unconvinced and the rebuttals here will be what convinces them. I mention this to suggest that before flagging this as heretical, please consider what message you are sending by doing so, and what the impacts will be. Do you think those who are currently afraid to be vaccinated will change their mind if only we can prevent them from reading more things that might encourage them? Are you absolutely certain everything you currently believe is true, and the end of the story? Or might something useful come from discussing---and possibly rebutting---this post?
  • lakhim 5y ago
  • COGlory 5y ago
    I'm going to hop on this. I am a structural biologist, I study mainly viruses, admittedly not normally mammalian viruses. Recently, I've been involved in a collaboration for developing a new, Covid vaccine. Full disclosure - not mRNA. As part of that, I've been working directly with Covid-19. I'm not a Covid expert, but I am aware enough of the science to spot many obvious falsehoods. I didn't write this article, nor did I rigorously fact check it. But it struck me as at least, mostly reasonable questions around which to foment a discussion. Most of the points in this article I'd be comfortable asking to a room of PhD scientists with expertise on Covid and vaccines. I'd be disappointed to see this flagged.
    • dekhn 5y ago
      If you're at a university, drop this article into the queue at your grad school journal club. Give folks a week to prepare counterarguments. Attend, and see what you think. prediction: this "article" contains 18 invalidating points in the first three paragraphs.
      • inter_netuser 5y ago
    • nostromo 5y ago
      It's worth noting that the author is a PhD biochemist from Rutgers. I have no idea if her concerns have merit, but I don't believe it should be shot down without consideration either.
      • inter_netuser 5y ago
        BBC: “ Scientists not backing Covid jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds”. Link below. UK’s vaccine top advisory body (that refused to recommend the vaccine for 12-15 age bracket) membership: Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford) Professor Lim Wei Shen, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals) Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford) Dr Kevin Brown (Public Health England) Dr Rebecca Cordery (Public Health England) Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust) Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick) Alison Lawrence (lay member) Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital) Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol) Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands) Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen) Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London) Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol) Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals) Approved government media: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669 What was the risk and is it approved for discussion if the absolute top vaccine experts declined to recommend it and a government funded news media, BBC, reported on that? Is this too fringe to talk about? Is BBC anti-vaxx now? Are these professors anti-vaxxers?
• whoomp12342 5y ago
  This appears to have enough informations and citations that it would be interesting to see refutations of their claims.
  • himinlomax 5y ago
    I see à lot more scare mongering, irrelevant paranoia (the definition of vaccine was updated on a website? Oh my clearly a conspiracy) and statistically insignificant anecdotes than valid citations.
    • thehappypm 5y ago
      Yeah, the dictionary one is baffling. Miriam-Webster dictionary update their definition of vaccine, after seeing probably millions of hits to that page. The author is implying Miriam Webster is a deep state actor now?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • vannevar 5y ago
    The very first citation refutes the article. The table was deliberately cropped and blurred to make the details unclear, but if you look at the original it's obvious the table doesn't say what the author says it does (that Covid deaths were the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups). This is not just an oversight or innocent misinterpretation, this is a deliberate attempt to deceive. Flagged.
    • 389dsf3479 5y ago
      Where does the article say that Covid deaths were the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated groups? What relevant data is missing from the table? As far as I can tell, the point is to show the tiny difference in this particular study between the vaccinated and placebo for both total deaths and Covid deaths. It does that, and looking at the original tables doesn't change anything of note, as far as I can see.
• replwoacause 5y ago
  I'm just going to ask this here because I'm not active elsewhere on social media, I'm curious and it seems germane: I've started experiencing some balance issues recently and am otherwise healthy as far as I know. I am mid-thirties, double vaccinated and boosted, and may have had COVID but don't have a positive test to confirm it even though I had some mild symptoms consistent with the Delta strain. Has anyone else who has either received the vaccine (I got Pfizer) or had COVID experienced a new feeling of instability when walking? Not necessarily a room-spinning vertigo but more akin to feeling like a toddler learning to walk or a little drunk. It seems especially noticeable when I'm walking and turn my head to look to around. I've always felt sure footed and this slightly off kilter sensation began about 2-3 weeks after my booster.
  • zzzbra 5y ago
    ranks pretty high in the realm of psychosomatic symptoms. I had an anxiety disorder that primarily manifested itself that way in my mid-20s. went away when I recognized it as such and took on a meditation practice for handling my panic attacks.
  • COGlory 5y ago
    At the risk of playing internet MD, viral induced labrynthitis is real and could potentially cause those symptoms.
    • yazaddaruvala 5y ago
      +1 Way before COVID, I got vertigo for a weekend, caused by a cold. Apparently viruses can cause the fluid in the ear to change in viscosity. For me that induced vertigo (really bad "spins" for two days), for you it could be less severe but longer lasting. As I understood it, it can be caused by any virus (unclear about COVID's relationship with it) and will likely go away. While it was happening, I drank extra water and any time the spins got out of control, I'd sit down and take some deep breaths. It's easy to cope when it is just for a weekend. Best of luck to you. P.S. Always best to check with a real doctor.
  • _Microft 5y ago
• tracker1 5y ago
  In the end a lot of the specifics don't matter much to me. I'm very liberty minded. I'm simply not in favor of excess restrictive mandates from the government. And I have absolutely every reason to distrust large pharmaceutical companies that aren't even liable for damages. Everyone else in my household is vaccinated. I've been advised to not get the vaccine for medical risks. A few weeks ago my fiance and I both got COVID. She had it worse than I did despite being vaccinated. 19yp daughter no apparent symptoms at all. My own suggestion was to wear face cover of any kind in groups and close event centers and bars. If we would have done that alone from the beginning it would have been better. But no, at first any mention of covid was racist fear mongering. Then anyone who didn't lock themselves inside was killing grandma. Even now people are comparing being unvaccinated to drink driving despite the vaccinated being every bit as risky to others. It's all political bullshit and I'm ready to be done with it.
  • EricE 5y ago
    Yes, that healthcare has been politicized to the degree that it has is beyond disgusting. That so many doctors are afraid or ignorant about treatments for COVID other than the vaccine or hospitalization is beyond frustrating. It's gotten so bad that you have pharmacists now playing the role of doctor - even lecturing a physician about his care directives for his patients - when it comes to the much maligned "horse dewormer", leading to this lawsuit against Walrmart (where the pharmacy in question was) and another local pharmacy that did the same: https://www.scribd.com/document/553842620/Saliers-v-Walmart-Hy-Vee https://www.scribd.com/document/553842620/Saliers-v-Walmart-... This isn't about "fact checking" so called misinformation - this crap has spilled over and almost forced these people into the hospital where just about everyone agrees it's far better to NOT be forced into the hospital in the first place. The Washington Post is puzzled about a drop in COVID cases that doesn't match the rest of the world: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/japan-covid-omicron-falling-cases/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/japan-covid-... Funny; they fail to mention in August that the much maligned horse dewormer was authorized as a COVID treatment - and a few weeks later infection rates dropped dramatically and stayed extremely low until the time of that article. How many people ended up in the hospital that didn't have to all because the horse dewormer and HCQ patents expired and there were cheap, generic forms readily available? Isn't it interesting that now that Pfizer has a new pill that all of the sudden the vaccine isn't the sole path to salvation for the planet? Funny that, eh?
• throw8932894 5y ago
• rangerelf 5y ago
  I read it. I want my time back. This is the worst kind of misinformation, the one that reads "reasonable" instead of foaming at the mouth, and as such can create doubt in peer-validated articles and reports that quote from them. "I was deceived" indeed.
  • pc86 5y ago
    I am immediately skeptical of anything that has to use an analogy like friends stealing stuff from a party just to explain a point, especially when that point is "ignore that none of these pieces of evidence are particularly convincing on their own." But even so I didn't really think of anything in here as "misinformation." What specifically is wrong? Edit because apparently HN's knee-jerk downvoting applies to this instance as well: I'm triple-vaxxed and think everyone's default should be to get the vaccine unless their PCP or a specialist tells them specifically not to get it, I'm just curious what the incorrect info is other than "well it's cropped obv"
    • hraedon 5y ago
      I mean, literally the first chart is so misleadingly cropped that it makes the opposite point in this article than it does in the original study. Edit for the above comment's edit: look, if a deceptively cropped chart doesn't qualify as "misinformation" for your purposes, I guess I'll leave you to do your own research.
• thehappypm 5y ago
  This is a trash article.
  • EricE 5y ago
    Really? Have anything of substance to complain about rather than a blanket ad-hominem assertion? mRNA technology has been under development since the late 80's. If it is so safe and effective why were all the big pharma players just sitting on it and not going through the trial process to bring it to market before they got emergency authorization that absolved them of all liability? Many if not all of the companies have had trials in the past - just curious as to why they didn't complete them since these vaccines are so safe and effective? If they are so safe that NO ONE should be questioning them, then why the blanket - and SUSTAINED - need for immunity for the makers? I can see at the start when they unexpectedly had to ramp up production in a time of crises - but they have been distributing vaccinations for over a year now. Manufacturing these should be beyond stable and old hat at this time, yet they still need blanket immunity? For that matter, why isn't the FDA approved vaccine widely available (or even available at all)? Why aren't the emergency use authorization terminated now that there is an approved vaccine - as required by law? Why is it Moderna happened to turn a profit for the first time in their entire existence last year? I'm sure that's just another crazy coincidence. Yup - nothing to see here. Anyone who has any questions is just a trash conspiracy theorist, right?
    • skuhn 5y ago
      From US Code Title 42 [1]: "(1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings." This is not new. This is not specific to mRNA vaccines. The simple math is that if you prepare a treatment and give it to 300 million people, 300 people with adverse reactions may make the entire endeavor unwise financially. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established to partially resolve this [2]. They state: "[The VICP] was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which could have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases." If you're interested in looking into the reasons why things are done a certain way, I suggest reading the law and understanding how historical events have led us to the (imperfect) system we have today. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22 [2] https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html
• vannevar 5y ago
  The very first reference is deliberately misleading. If you actually look at the original table (https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2113017/suppl_file/nejmoa2113017_appendix.pdf https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2113017/suppl_f... p68), in a form not cropped and blurred to obscure the details, you will see that that particular group had 4 deaths from Covid, three of which occurred among the placebo group. The other deaths were from other causes, including one suicide (in the placebo group). Flagged.
  • whoomp12342 5y ago
    thank you for putting in the effort
  • keewee7 5y ago
    This deliberate misinformation post getting 50+ votes on Hacker News is not surprising. Too many libertarian techbros are only a meme away from pushing pseudoscience.
    • kelnos 5y ago
      I don't really look at it that way. I think it's useful to know about the existence of things like this, and what kind of things they say to try to support their assertions. It was pretty obvious to me after reading barely 10% of it that the conclusions are poorly-supported, but I can easily see why someone might believe an article like that. And I think that's worthy of discussion here.
      • nemothekid 5y ago
        It really isn't. We are reaching a year into vaccine availability, and you'd think by now that the vaccinated would be dropping like flies at this point. In reality most people pushing vaccine hesitancy, if not being contrarian in order to appear wise, are doing so to make money from the people who have been made anxious by vaccine misinfo (it's not a coincidence that this blog is hosted on substack). It's no longer about applying reasoning, but being part of an in-group; like QAnon - almost every retort is met with deflection or claims it's out of context. And while they almost every "theory" anti-vaxxers can come with are built on anecodota or cherry picked statistics, they will require that you have several cited sources and if you trip up once; well that proves it, vaccines are unsafe. Also I get it, some may not like vaccine mandates, and being told to lockdown and told where they can and cannot go, but that does not imply the vaccines are unsafe. It's really worth as much discussion as the theory the JFK will rise from the dead and invalidate the 2020 election.
• csense 5y ago
  I got the original two shots, but I have not and will not get the booster. One factor in this decision is the fact that people who have legitimate questions are answered with "You're dumb and anti-science! If you don't take it, you'll lose your job, and never be able to get on an airplane ever again!" How should a reasonable person respond when honest, good-faith questions are answered by suppressing the questioner with name-calling and government-sanctioned force? I personally choose to: Ignore the names. Resist the force. Assume the people encouraging the name-calling and mandates have bad motives. If they had good motives, they'd lay all the cards on the table, give me honest, good-faith answers (which might be "We don't know" or "Yes, there are some safety issues"), and then let me freely choose whether I accept a medical treatment into my own body.
  • EricE 5y ago
    Insisting people who already have had the virus (and thus have better immunity than that given by the vaccine) should be second class citizens until they comply and get the vaccine, despite not needing it, proves more than anything else that many of the pro-vaccine arguments are NOT being made in good faith. "Follow the Science!" indeed :p
    • mbg721 5y ago
      I believe there were countries that did acknowledge previous infection as contributing to immunity; this is just America doing what America does best--large portion sizes.
      • fergonco 5y ago
        In Spain public health system don't do PCRs anymore (only private, which very few would). Without a PCR you don't have a valid proof of being infected. This is my personal case and the case of many many Spanish people, as Omicron is sweeping the country.
        • sudosysgen 5y ago
          It is the same in Quebec. It's not because they don't want to recognize infections, it's just that they don't have the capacity to do so, which is perfectly understandable, while not recognizing infection as a vaccine does isn't.
• radu_floricica 5y ago
  Speaking about holding two opposed viewpoints in your head at the same time. Which is a skill btw. 1. I believe that Covid media coverage was horribly biased and more than occasionally untruthful, and (extra doses of) vaccine are very likely counter-productive for large segments of the population, possibly all the healthy young. 2. This article grates my reasoning skills like fingernails on a chalkboard. Unfortunately, the opposite of stupid is not Wise. Coverage can be bad or biased on both sides, and we can't really take its quality as a sign on which side is more right. We just have to do it the hard way and keep weighting evidence. But anyways, as far as I'm concerned after this pandemic the emperor is naked for all to see: the authorities and the mainstream media lied, bullied and outright censored things which later turned out to be fact. And "neglected" to do due diligence to a degree that in the proper context could be called criminal.
  • csdvrx 5y ago
    > But anyways, as far as I'm concerned after this pandemic the emperor is naked for all to see: the authorities and the mainstream media lied, bullied and outright censored things which later turned out to be fact. And "neglected" to do due diligence to a degree that in the proper context could be called criminal. Same. While they may have been lucky that the vaccine isn't dangerous, the loss of credibility is strong. We all have to lose when regular people start distrusting science. I tremble to imagine what would have happened if the lies/censoring had been made worse by the vaccine being genuinely dangerous.
    • mbg721 5y ago
      There's still time. In a country full of "Did you take x drug? You may be entitled to compensation," commercials, if there turn out to be unexpected long-term effects to something many people were strong-armed into taking with no legal recourse, there are going to be lots of angry people who think dangerous kooks were right all along.
      • logicchains 5y ago
        > if there turn out to be unexpected long-term effects to something many people were strong-armed into taking with no legal recourse, there are going to be lots of angry people who think dangerous kooks were right all along. Wouldn't that mean the dangerous kooks were the ones unscientifically asserting there were no long-term side effects in spite of it being completely and utterly fucking impossible to know that without conducting longer-term trials?
• varelse 5y ago
  "red pilled" + "Glenn Greenwald" == bozo bit already. Add "Robert Malone" and we have the guy with a clever brainfart unwilling to do the gruntwork to ship that brainfart as a useful product so no, not changing my mind one bit. Downvotes welcomed and expected snowflakes, I am truly aiming for zero karma here as an experiment and a commentary on Sam Altmann's hell site, so you're doing me a favor with your downvotes, have at me. while I hate being part of a flash mob science experiment myself, and while I will not be surprised if there are long-term negative consequences to repeatedly vaccinating, I will be even more surprised if they are worse than the consequences of repeatedly catching variants of this horrible thing because we politicized masks and containment efforts. So I picked the least crappy option according to my doctorate in biochemistry. You do you. I'll do me.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    You know, if you regard HN as a "hell site", you could just... not come here. [Edit to add: Your last paragraph reflects my frustrations with the current situation. We have to guess at the risks and make a choice. The "least crappy option" is the best we can do. I hate it.]
    • varelse 5y ago
      • dang 5y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
        • varelse 5y ago
• djinnandtonic 5y ago
  Yawn. The lack of hard evidence demonstrating injuries from vaccines has led to a lot of this "lower order proof" conversation: "well here's something suspicious and here's something suspicious...". Taken together it feels like someone heavily implying something while waggling their eyebrows and nudging you in the ribs to get you to come to the same conclusion. If the vaccines are injuring people, the evidence should be overwhelming. Despite rigorous review (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/covid-19-vaccination-does-not-reduce-chances-conception-study-suggests https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/covid-19-vacci...) there is no evidence of this.
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    It also very quickly engages in what I call "conspiracy theory epistemology," which is when the fact that someone disagrees with you, especially if that someone is ostensibly an expert or in a position of authority is presented as evidence that you're correct (because clearly they're part of the cover-up!), and the more such people who disagree with you the more obvious that makes it that you're correct (because everyone is in on it!). This isn't to say that there aren't real conspiracies or that any claims that a conspiracy exists is "conspiracy theory epistemology." The problem is this particular mode of epistemology where a claim is presented and then significant time is spent focusing on how the mere fact that experts disagree is somehow evidence of the coverup. The reason it's bad epistemology is that it can be used indiscriminately in defense of literally any claims of conspiracy.
  • logicchains 5y ago
    Have you looked at the US or European vaccine adverse effects databases (VAERS and VigiAccess)? There are literally over an order of magnitude more adverse effects and deaths reported since the rollout of the covid vaccines than for all vaccines in the 20+ years before that (including the flu vaccine that roughly half of Americans take every year). And none of the "vax-is-safe" people have provided any convincing explanation for this other than asserting without evidence that the rate of adverse effect reporting has increased.
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
• perardi 5y ago
  So the bulk of this post is… …anecdotes. Testimonies have an obvious selection bias. …conjecture about myocarditis. Which is discussed in multiple sources, but we’ll go with the Science Based Medicine blog. (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/myocarditis-and-covid-19-a-tale-of-two-articles/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/myocarditis-and-covid-19-a-...) …conjecture that the vaccines don’t prevent death or hospitalization, which is so wrong I don’t even know where to start. (https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination and https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitalizations-vaccination https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitali...) …and attacks on Big Pharma being evil, which, while obviously true in some cases (see Aducanumab for a glaringly recent example), does not mean they were evil here. …also “consilience” in this context sure sounds like a fancy word for “cherry-picking evidence to confirm whatever priors I have.” EDIT: …oh, right the VAERS debacle. (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/as-2021-shambles-to-a-close-the-misuse-of-vaers-by-antivaxxers-continues-apace/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/as-2021-shambles-to-a-close...)
  • MarcoZavala 5y ago
  • andrewclunn 5y ago
    EDIT (The below quote is form the science based medicine blog post linked above). > Dr. Mandrola is right that this trial was not large enough to fully “inform the safety of a vaccine that will be given to many millions”. It was too small to detect rare events, such as myocarditis from the vaccine or serious complications from the virus. However, only the largest trials can detect rare events, and the rarer the event, the larger the trial must be to detect it. The adult vaccine trials, which were about twenty-times larger than the adolescent trials, also did not detect rare events, such as blood clotting with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The inability to detect rare events is a fundamental limitation of clinical trials, not a flaw of this particular trial. Rare events can usually be detected once a vaccine or medication is taken by large numbers of people. This is why post-marketing surveillance, called a phase IV trial, is so crucial. It’s a fact that no serious safety signal emerged during the trial. The authors were not only justified to report this finding, the data from their study required it. They didn’t claim that rare side effects would not emerge once millions of children received the vaccine. All of this makes me wonder. Other than a trial that enrolled hundreds of thousands of adolescents, which would be required to meaningfully detect a rare event such as myocarditis, is there anything a trial could do so Dr. Mandrola wouldn’t feel he had to put “positive” in quotes? Did he make his objections known when the plans for the adolescent vaccine trial were announced or only after it was completed? Has he been similarly critical of other randomized-controlled trials, or is this the only trial he has singled out this way? As he does not feel someone getting COVID-19 is a “clinical outcome”, what would he call it? Why didn’t he inform his readers that the vaccine prevented COVID-19 in adolescents? Would he have been similarly silent had the vaccine been significantly less effective at preventing COVID-19? We can only guess. ... So basically, yeah these clinical trials aren't big enough to catch these side effects, but the motivations of any doctor pointing that out must be suspect!
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  It's reasonable to assume that the numbers for anything that can be interpreted as anti-vax are underreported, but the chance of dying by vaccine is still relatively low. The chance of dying of covid is also pretty low, which is why I would have preferred not to be forced to do 3 shots or be prevented to access a supermarket (and no, testing every day is not viable), but I think vaccinating is overall relatively safe. If the study mentioned says 1/2680 that's 0.03%. It's probably more dangerous to drive everyday somewhere than either getting covid or getting the vaccine.
  • EricE 5y ago
    The disproportionate spike in reports in the VAERS database would suggest that we might want to have a more rational discussion about risk than continuing to take assurances from folks who CONTINUE to have blanket immunity from any side effects. That used to be called a sever conflict of interest instead of settled science. I dunno - I got COVID and while it wasn't pleasant, it wasn't any worse than the worst flu I have had in the past. There is growing evidence that there are multiple side effects from these vaccines, including heart problems for males - particularly 18 and under or over 50. I'm in the latter so I have zero desire to roll the dice with the vaccines, especially as I've already had and recovered and now have as good if not better immunity than what is provided by the vaccine. When you consider the ridiculous political and social pressure put on ANYONE who dares to question the vaccines, I'm frankly amazed the numbers in VAERS are as high as they are. If anything I would expect them to be underreported. Why not - the CDC director recently admitted that at least 40% of COVID hospitalizations were not because of COVID, but from people who went to the hospital for something else and happened to also test positive for COVID - despite being pitched as "COVID Infections" requiring emergency responses. If that can be over reported for almost 2 years before we finally start to get clarification of what many suspected (or saw with their own eyes) why can't VAERS be underreported? That's the real problem - at this point we still don't know, because very few are asking any questions. And those that do get quickly pounced on as being crackpot trash conspiracy theorists. I'm amazed that so many people still seem to be puzzled that not everyone is unquestioning about if there are risks with the vaccines or not. Especially when there is still a blind push/rush to get everyone vaccinated, whether it is needed or not, whether it's medically advisable or not (quite a few people have pre-existing medical conditions where the vaccines are far more of a risk than mitigating COVID other ways). If such people aren't willing to have an inarguably rational discussion about real risk, then why should they expect to be taken seriously? Much of the uncertainty around the vaccines are self-inflicted wounds - and instead of altering their approach the usual suspects double down and just shout louder/more shrilly. If they are so safe as to be unquestionable then why are they STILL operating under emergency use? Over a year later is it really still an an emergency? Isn't it beyond ridiculous to have an emergency for this amount of time - especially when the vast majority of the population has either been vaccinated or had COVID already at this point? Yes, infections are up with the latest variants - how could you miss it with the constant flogging of the infection numbers by the media and some politicians. But notice what has disappeared? The death counters that were oh so prominent, especially before a certain election. More than a little curious, eh?
• dfdz 5y ago
  This article has very poor reasoning. For example, the author states > Everybody knows that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. But if hospitalizations and deaths were almost exclusively occurring in the unvaccinated, why would booster shots be necessary? There is a simple example of how both these “seemingly contradictory” statements can be true. 1. Suppose that being unvaccinated increases chance of death by a factor 10. Then, it would reasonable to call the pandemic a pandemic of unvaccinated 2. Suppose that the booster decreases the chance of death by another factor of 10. Then, many vaccinated individuals may still want the booster. The authors argument is a example of reductio ad absurdum. The author attempts to argue against the vaccine by trying to show that getting the booster leads to a logical contraction by using a poorly reasoned absurd example. I am disappointed to see such a poorly reasoned articles on HN.
  • camel_Snake 5y ago
    Interesting. I've always just assumed that the messaging around prevention like vaccination/masking has always been adjusted to the Western motive - Do THIS thing and it will keep you safe! Whereas I think we all know by now the only way to defeat the virus is to prevent the spread - not to prevent a specific individual from being infected. Vaccination, boosting, masks, social distancing - the goal is all to get that R0 below 1.0, but to convince people to actually practice them we must tell them it will keep them safe.
  • nkurz 5y ago
    > This article has very poor reasoning. For example, the author states I feel you may have misread the article. The author doesn't "state" the lines you quoted, she quotes someone else (Dr Peter Doshi) who used this line in a presentation as an example of something that deserves further investigation. The part of the quote the author highlighted (a couple lines after) was "There’s something to be curious about. There’s something not adding up." She uses this quote to provoke thought, not to claim that (the unspoken) answer is obvious. > The author attempts to argue against the vaccine I don't think this is the argument she's making. The main thrust of her argument is that adverse side-effects of the vaccine are systematically underreported. While this could be used as part of an argument against the vaccine, she doesn't actually try to make that argument. The closest she comes is in the conclusion, where she says "I believe that for someone of my age and health, I was taking on more risk than reward, especially considering the fact that its efficacy wanes relatively quickly." Whether or not she is right, I'd wager this means she believes that many people (older than her or in poorer health) definitely benefit from the vaccine.
• barrelmonkey 5y ago
  "Or why would the statistics be so different in the UK? Where most COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the fully vaccinated…?" Because there's a high vaccine uptake. If 100% of the population were vaccinated every single death from covid would be in the vaccinated.
• kuratkull 5y ago
  The first comic ending with "So why did I do this?" "No idea. I am just following orders" destroys all possible credibility. Did not proceed. Anyone seriously writing about covid vacciness should be able to state the claims, wether the author believes them or not.
  • Edman274 5y ago
    "So this seatbelt will prevent all injuries from car accidents, right?" "No. You can still be killed while wearing a seatbelt." "Will I have to keep driving carefully in hazardous conditions?" "Yes." "If by some freak accident the seatbelt decapitates me instead of saving me, can I sue Toyota?" "No." "So then why am I wearing a seatbelt?" "I don't know. Also, I couldn't answer anyway because I have the intelligence of a 9 year old."
  • Remnant44 5y ago
    Agreed. Nothing easier than setting up a ridiculous straw man to then punch down.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    I had the same reaction. Panel 3 is especially stupid: my understanding is that manufacturers are not liable (in the US at least) for most vaccination-related issues on all vaccines, not just for COVID. The US federal government handles compensating people who are harmed by vaccines. But yeah, it leaves out the obvious benefit: sure, I may still get COVID (though the likelihood is much lower), and I still have to wear a mask, but it's nearly guaranteed that my illness will be relatively minor and I won't need hospitalization or die.
  • tzekid 5y ago
    Don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Germany doctors get paid per vaccine ... which, like any monetary incentive, is a stronger signal than the "good faith" and should be taken into account when thinking about this.
• outside1234 5y ago
  Was this written by Aaron Rodgers and gang? I mean seriously, at this point these vaccines are among some of the most studied drugs ever.
• bairrd 5y ago
  • 389dsf3479 5y ago
    If anyone is going to "get us all killed", it's people like you who are needlessly politicizing the pandemic.
    • bairrd 5y ago
      Needlessly politicizing a refusal to engage with science that doesn’t meet a pre-determined narrative of YOLOing freely to oblivion! How rude of me! Of course healthcare is political!
• iso1631 5y ago
  Yes, hundreds of countries, some of which hate the others, across the world have - in an unprecedented bout of cooperation - conspired together to hide the truth, but a few youtubers are valiantly fighting it. Which one are we talking about again - the moon landing, JFK, 9/11 or covid?
  • cogman10 5y ago
    Hey, JFK and 9/11 at least have somewhat limited numbers of actors (the US government). COVID is at flat earth and global warming denial levels of bonkers. You have to believe that all the major governments and health organizations in the world has decided to go in on a conspiracy to vaccinate people for... reasons... terrible reasons. Political reasons... Because... reasons... The biggest issue I have with these sorts of conspiracies is whenever you try and scratch at the "why" you'll get a bunch of conflicting answers that are completely unsatisfactory. They are trying to kill off half the population. They are trying to install mind control agents. They are trying to persecute more libertarian minded people by targeting those that refuse to vax. They are trying to make money for the vaccine producing companies. None of these reasons make any sense for ALL the major health organizations and governments to go along with. They also fall apart really quickly. One of the conspiracies is that "fauci is making a bunch of money in stocks from his investments in Pfizer and the like". yet, you look at Fauci's financial statements and you see he's invested pretty much entirely into mutual funds and ETFs (poorly I might add). [1] His finances are public record. [1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7014520-Fauci-Disclosure.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7014520-Fauci-Disclo...
  • dlemire 5y ago
    News agencies worldwide suppressed the 'lab leak' theory. Facebook actively censored it. Fact checkers 'disproved it'. Leading scientists called it a conspiracy theory. Yet it appears to be a perfectly valid theory. https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Search-COVID-19-Matt-Ridley/dp/006313912X/ https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Search-COVID-19-Matt-Ridley/dp/... It is not the first time that this has happened. We were told that Irak had weapons of mass destruction. It was announced at the United Nations. All mainstream news agencies reported it. For many, many years, the US was 'winning the war' in Vietnam. All news agencies agreed. The US was not winning. The mere fact that many, even most, people agree with something does not make it true.
• thomassmith65 5y ago
  Yes, we've vaccinated five billion people, but all we have is a bunch of peer-reviewed studies and statistics! What about all the valuable retracted studies and social-media hearsay? /s
• sAbakumoff 5y ago
  Rather than focusing on the side effects of vaccination, one could focus on the recent CDC report[0] from which one can conclude that *Natural immunity with or without vaccine provided robust protection against hospitalization in the age of delta.* and therefore, if one was infected previously, they don't need to be vaccinated to boost their immune protection against the virus. [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm#contribAff https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm#contribA...
  • boucher 5y ago
    Or, one could look at the data suggesting that vaccinating someone, even after they have been infected, can dramatically decrease the risk of long covid. https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Do-vaccinations-protect-against-debilitating-long-16794986.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Do-vaccinations-p...
    • sAbakumoff 5y ago
      sure, a reasonable individual could consider all the available information, weigh risks and make the decision on their own. Vaccine Mandates imposed by the corrupted government are not reasonable, one could argue.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• amykhar 5y ago
  I hate to say it, but I am reluctant to read any 'testimony' from nurses or patients about vaccine harm or issues without knowing their political affiliation. If a bunch of Cheeto loving nurses are claiming it, I will weigh that information differently than reports coming from unbiased sources. I honestly think the vaccines are not nearly as good as they should be - but this article is a hot mess of unsubstantiated garbage.
• fsflover 5y ago
  I'm glad this is in the top of HN. Now, thanks to many commenters here, I know what to reply to people sending this link to me.
  • Gwarzo 5y ago
    It's an opinion piece.. why would you need to copy paste arguments that "DESTROY THIS IDIOTS OPINION!!!!!" It's just a single persons opinion; take it, dismiss it, do whatever you want with it. Why do you need to copy other peoples comments to your shitty friends to defend yourself.
    • fsflover 5y ago
      It's presented as if it was based on scientific data, with references to professors.
    • kelnos 5y ago
      Because if a friend sends you a link to something like this, it's a good idea to be able to tell them that the reasoning in it is garbage, so they hopefully stop spreading it around.
• b0sk 5y ago
  Kinda amazing these articles get pushed to Hacker News By the way this is the magic of vaccines - https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1485695982117425153?s=21 https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1485695982117425153?s=2... For the boosted, it is pretty much back to normal
• bhouston 5y ago
  This is a poorly written blog post on a very important topic. This feels like misinformation. Why is this here on HW?
• pcdoodle 5y ago
  I'm surprised by the amount of frogs that love to participate in the covid comments on HN. The ones who jumped out of the pot don't really waist their time on it because the comments get censored.
• 015a 5y ago
  > (the words “vaccine” or “covid” were partially removed to avoid censorship on Youtube) If nothing else from this beyond-borderline article, take this: Strong science cannot happen in a society which is frightened to speak. Unfortunately, I see the same pattern even in the comments here. Many lack the critical thinking and reading skills necessary to interpret the valid components of this article, versus the invalid ones, and would prefer to just downvote & report. That's bubble-building.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    I didn't downvote or flag, because I do think it's valuable to see this sort of article here and discuss it. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a poorly-written and poorly-reasoned article that sounds "intellectual" but cherry-picks anecdotes and innuendo to make its point.
• itoocode 5y ago
  Humanity has never seen a vaccination campaign like covid. This is first of its kind, to this scale assuring safety would have been the first foremost for all who would have worked on this vaccine. We have to trust.
  • logicchains 5y ago
    >This is first of its kind, to this scale assuring safety would have been the first foremost for all who would have worked on this vaccine. We have to trust. Trust the company that was fined over a billion dollars for criminal behaviour (that cost people their lives)? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-settlement-idUSTRE5813XB20090902 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-settlement-idUSTRE...
• chrisbrandow 5y ago
  This is sloppy, and completely lacking in rigor, most particularly about this claim: "Today we have more data, and you can see that there were similar number of deaths in the vaccine and placebo groups." I don't know if there is some way in which this is technically true, but it is simply not the case that the rates of death from Covid are similar between those with the vaccine and those without. So sloppy, misleading analysis leading to dangerous conclusions == I am flagging this article.
  • logicchains 5y ago
    >but it is simply not the case that the rates of death from Covid are similar between those with the vaccine and those without That's the whole point! What matters is not the number of covid deaths, it's the total number of deaths. If a treatment saves people from covid but kills them for other reasons, it's not an effective treatment. Overall excess mortality is what matters.
• legitster 5y ago
  This is much the same blather I have read a dozen times at this point. The reason myocarditis is underreported is because most cases are incredibly mild. So if you have a choice between a disease you have a 45% chance of catching and a 1% chance of dying of, or a vaccine with a 1 in 10,000 chance of having an adverse reaction to, with a 1 in 20,000 chance that it would be fatal, which would you rather choose? 9 billion doses have been given out! If there were serious safety concerns with vaccines, I would personally know people affected. Of course you are incredibly unlucky if you are one of the 3000 people in the US who are seriously affected by a vaccine, but people telling me my winning lottery ticket is fake isn't an example of oppression - you want a doctor who doesn't jump to weird edge cases at first chance. It's not that these people "don't understand the science", it's that they don't understand probability.
  • logicchains 5y ago
    >The reason myocarditis is underreported is because most cases are incredibly mild. Where is the evidence for this? Everything I've seen suggests 10-20% of vaccine-induced myocarditis cases result in a life-lasting disability.
    • legitster 5y ago
      How do people know? For every previous vaccine, myocarditis inflammation has mostly been temporary. If this one is different, how would people know it's lifelong? It's much, much more likely that reaction to the vaccine is uncovering existing, latent myocarditis than it is causing them. A la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi... Also, nobody who cares about myocarditis seems to be pointing out that you are 16x more likely to get a myocarditis diagnosis from catching Covid than you are for getting vaccinated.
      • dlemire 5y ago
        Commonly used vaccines are known to cause widespread temporary myocarditis?
• sudosysgen 5y ago
  The statistics are different in the UK because the definitions of hospitalizations used by the NHS and the US private healthcare hodge-podge are different. Indeed, the NHS defines hospital admission to include day patients and outpatients (https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/going-into-hospital/going-into-hospital-as-a-patient/ https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/going-into-hospita...), whereas in the US outpatient care generally doesn't qualify as a hospital admission (https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/hospital-admission https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/hospital-admission). You can't compare the two statistics much less claim you were deceived without taking into account the difference in the meaning of the numbers. You have to address all the possible asterisks before you jump to conclusions. It's fine to say "I cannot come to a conclusion because this data is unclear". Especially when you are directly comparing statistics from different sources.
• 389dsf3479 5y ago
  The discourse around the pandemic and the vaccines is extremely counterproductive. The choice to get vaccinated or not have become more about signalling allegiance to one of two political tribes, than about health. As someone who hates both tribes, I start to regret getting vaccinated whenever I read pro-vax arguments (including a lot of these comments), but I can then cure that regret by reading anti-vax arguments. Both are as devoid of relevant information as the other.
• tynpeddler 5y ago
  So I read this article with an open mind, but that very first cartoon[1] is so bad that I really feel it's the only thing I need to respond to. The cartoon makes 4 statements in 4 panels: 1. The Covid vaccines don't prevent you from getting covid. 2. Even vaccinated individuals have to wear masks. 3. Vaccine manufacturers are not financially liable for injuries resulting from vaccines. 4. Because the cartoonist, and the audience, don't know the reason for the first 3 points, there can be no rational reason for the vaccine and people are just mindlessly following order. To start off, the first 3 statements are all true, but the final conclusion does not follow from them. If this cartoon was convincing to you, then you're the sort of person that should be following expert advice. It turns out there are very good explanations for the first 3 points. Let's start there. 1. No vaccine ever developed by human guarantees complete protection. Not MMR, not polio, or tetanus. The extreme infectivity of covid makes this even more true. It's the whole reason behind the concept of herd immunity. An interesting note, the polio vaccine most responsible for wiping out polio in most of the world can actually give people polio. That vaccine is what's called a live, attenuated virus and is very durable which is why it's so widely used. But hey, sometimes it causes the very disease it's meant to stop. So if argument 1 is true of every vaccine, why does the comic author try and use it as an argument against the covid vaccines? 2. Due to mutations in covid, it's extreme infectivity, and especially because of the large amount of anti-vaxxers, we still need to take masking precautions. Before omicron, mask mandates were removed, but the large number of anti-vaxxers (at least in the US) caused a medical crisis. The mask mandate is useful because it's a policy that's easy to enforce. I can see if someone is wearing a mask. Vaccine mandates are more difficult to enforce, have greater friction, and require more infrastructure. 3. This is true of all vaccines going back decades. Because of the usefulness of vaccines, and the extensive trials required to certify one, the federal government made the decision to take on financial liability. So if you're harmed by a vaccine, there's a dedicated government fund for financially compensating you. Again, does the author think this point is unique to the covid vaccines? All of these 3 points are very obvious and very available to anyone who just looks them up, so why didn't the cartoonist know them? Either he's ignorant of the answer, is apathetic and never bothered to look up the answers, or they know the answers and are making arguments in bad faith. None of these speak well to the authors motives. So why believe anything this cartoonist says about the vaccine when they've so clearly demonstrated their own ignorance? Why believe anything about covid from someone who thinks this cartoon makes good arguments? If they are unable to see the clear errors and omissions in a simple cartoon, why should I believe that they understand the rest of their own arguments any better? I could go on about the rest of the article, but it's very long and I don't have all day. Needless to say, it contains a combination of outright false statements, misquoted statistics, people purporting to be experts on topics they are not experts on, and facts stripped of necessary context. If you find this article convincing, there are two questions you need to ask yourself. 1. Why are medical agencies all over the world, from the US to Israel, EU and China all on nearly the same page as far as the efficacy and desirability of the different vaccines? Is there one unified conspiracy uniting tens of thousands of immunologists and researchers across dozens of countries? 2. Why were medical experts all over the world so quick to discover and publicize the blood clotting issue with the J&J vaccine? Why was that vaccine removed or the protocol modified so quickly, while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines encountered no push back? Who did Pfizer and Moderna bribe or extort that J&J failed to lean on? How did Moderna, a newer smaller company than J&J, get on the inside of this conspiracy while the much larger J&J was booted? [1]: Cartoon in question: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F72298a1d-fe3d-4201-83b1-222728632595_1440x1278.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
• keithwhor 5y ago
  What I don't like about posts like these is they "infect" those serially susceptible to misinformation that refuse to look at statistics and raw data. So I did it for y'all. First, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are correlated with myocarditis risk [0]. Pfizer at 1 in 71,400 and Moderna at 1 in 23,800. Alright - maybe scary to a few folks, right? Nobody wants an inflamed heart. Well before we dig in there, let's look at weekly COVID case rates for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated using December 4th, 2021 data from the CDC [1]. There were 1,006.39 / 100k cases of COVID that week in unvaccinated individuals and 443.69 / 100k in vaccinated individuals. This is including the most recent Omicron wave (which you can see in the data). Meaning you have a 2.27x higher chance of being diagnosed with COVID if you're unvaccinated. Okay, so there's some protection - but clearly not 100%! The biggest concern we have is side effects, right? Because if risk of vaccine side effects outweigh the benefit to vaccination, then we shouldn't be vaccinating people. I think everybody can agree on that. So we'll want to look at death rate data... but first, let's tackle myocarditis. Myocarditis has an occurrence rate of 1 in 23,800 post-Moderna vaccination. We can normalize that to 4.20 / 100k. However, did you know that myocarditis is actually a long-term symptom of COVID infection? So if you don't get vaccinated and get COVID, you're risking myocarditis anyway. But what's the rate of myocarditis post-COVID infection? Turns out it's a staggering 150.00 / 100k, about 35.7x the risk of myocarditis after vaccination [2]! If you get vaccinated, you decrease your risk of contracting covid by about 56%. Which means you could still get myocarditis post-infection; but that risk is more than halved. Your risk of getting myocarditis, even if vaccinated, overwhelmingly comes from the risk from COVID itself causing it. There's an argument to be made that maybe you just won't catch COVID at all. Factoring this in takes a lot of work; you can be re-infected, there are new strains emerging constantly. There were estimates that at the end of 2020 up to 1 in 3 Americans had been infected at least once [3]. It's very likely we're looking at a virus that has completely permeated the human biosphere. You can protect against, you can't avoid. Okay: so where we're at is, myocarditis risk? Way higher by simply getting COVID. But that's just myocarditis! What about other post-COVID symptoms? Well, the worst is the terminal symptom: death. Relying on our CDC data from December 4th, 2021 [1] we can see that the weekly death rate for unvaccinated was 9.20 / 100k and the weekly death rate for vaccinated was 0.47 / 100k. Meaning you have a 19.57x higher chance of death from contracting COVID if you're unvaccinated. Also; your chance of dying from COVID if you're unvaccinated is literally 2.19x higher than getting myocarditis from getting vaccinated! I should also note that most bouts of myocarditis are minor and symptoms resolve without issue. So that's where we're at. The numbers are here for anybody to look into and research themselves. These aren't anecdotes; they're hard data. Vaccines work. There's more I have to say on the subject... like I'm excited about the next decade of biomedical research as a result of increase productive capacity of biomedical reagents due to the pandemic -- but this post is long enough. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/moderna-covid-19-shot-more-likely-cause-heart-inflammation-than-pfizers-study-2021-12-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm?fbclid=IwAR0mmOw9baZw-qRerkkpRVvf1Ltq9wK1Zhc-4K74VyiOH61jCco8MFV5NWw https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm?fbclid=I... [3] https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...
• motohagiography 5y ago
  If you are holding out for truth before you make a decision about this topic, I can pretty much guarantee you can be relied on to do nothing. If the author is actively deceptive, they should be recognized for it, and the scheme they're using to mislead people should be recognized as a fairly sophisticated dark pattern that implies a more sophistcated rationale for being deceptive. They claim to be a data scientist and former biologist, which if true implies at least some habit of rigor in forming opinions about these issues. Almost nothing about the shots would be controversial if there were, a) no mandates for shots or masks, b) no vaccine passports, and c) consistency and transparency from pandemic response leadership. The instinct to challenge the official narratives is a good one. Trouble is, a, b and c are not the case, and even if this writer has a skewed view of facts, there is ample reason to litigate the facts one can find against these other factors. If they are being dishonest (as one commenter noted that the author had cropped out some non-vaccine related deaths that formed the top line number in the a table, which is dodgy) I'd be interested in other examples of dishonesty in the article, and then perhaps a concrete motive. I do know that politicians are making their covid policy decisions based on polling data, independent of any biological scientific input at all. I also know that the epidemiologists in public health behind the policies are social scientists with a very specific worldview, and are not held to the standards of competent infectious disease specialists. The motive for authorities to produce crappy strawman opposition to policies is also apparent, it's a pretty standard tactic on political campaigns, so when the objective is merely to neutralize opposition, this would be par for the course on disinformation. The only meaningful policy question with any long term consequence is whether we proceed with vaccine passports as a digital identity or not, and imo, while I don't have most of the facts on biology and vaccines, I am very much aware of the conseqeunces of internal passport systems, and articles challenging the pretexts being used by authorities to implement them should be welcomed. If the writer is actively dishonest, I'd treat them as just more propaganda, and that the authorities are tipping their hand on how vulnerable their passport pretexts are. If the writer is being honest and can address how they represented that table, it's still worth recognizing that the tide of popular opinion has turned on mRNA therapies and mandates.
• uslic001 5y ago
  There is no doubt that the Covid vaccine is not as safe as they initially claimed. That is why Pfizer is hiding the safety data for 75 years. I am a doctor and was one of the first to receive the vaccine. It led to complications of a peripheral neuropathy and a deep venous thrombosis. Only now a year later has the CDC followed up on my complications. The CDC did contact me and asked me to submit a VAERs database report since my primary care doctor failed to file the report as required by law. I know many others with complications from this vaccine.
• mcguire 5y ago
  Here's VAERS: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html It comes with a giant disclaimer that you have to acknowledge. I ran a search, Group Results by Symptoms, Vaccine Characteristics COVID Vaccine, with the default ("All") for all other options. I find 732,883 total events, with 3,145,843 symptoms (starting with "Abdomen crushing"). The 13 most common symptoms (I stopped at itchy skin) account for 944,617 of them and are basically the warnings that come on the tin: headache, fever, chills, fatigue, pain, etc. Death is listed as a symptom only 8,119 times. COVID vaccines have become so politicized that I suspect everyone is creating a VAERS report about everything that happens after getting vaccinated. According to the CDC, 251,000,000 people have received at least one dose (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...). The vaccines have been available for approximately a year; in a normal year, about 3,400,000 people die in the US, or about 1,000 per 100,000 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm). Therefore, for a first-order, back of the envelope estimate, about 2,500,000 people have died after getting at least one vaccination. Maybe I'm wrong about the VAERS data---I would expect a lot more deaths in the VAERS data.
• JohnTHaller 5y ago
  Anecdote + rumor + poorly summarized links to external sources ≠ data. Another day, another misleading substack article trying to push an agenda.
• IvyMike 5y ago
  People are already starting to debunk various bits and pieces of this article. For my part, let's look at Eric Clapton--the article claims that he has "lost the use of his hands almost completely" after getting the AZ vaccine. To be fair, the article does mention that he's had progressive peripheral neuropathy, but it doesn't mention that he's had it at since at least 2013 [0], it had gotten much worse in 2016 [1] and that by 2017 it had gotten so bad that he was bound to a wheelchair [1]. Did the AZ vaccine make his symptoms worse? I don't know; but minimizing the fact that he had a serious and apparently progressively worse symptoms for at least eight years before the vaccine seems a little disingenuous. The article also doesn't mention that Clapton was extremely vocal in his early opposition to Covid restrictions, has released at least three "anti-lockdown" protest songs including ones that compared lockdowns to slavery. [3] He's also repeated the "mass formation hypnosis" conspiracy theory. [4] It really feels like he's gone down a wormhole here. As a bonus, here's an very recent interview of Clapton. [5] While his nerves may be so damaged that he can no longer play guitar, claiming "lost the use of his hands almost completely" seems to mischaracterize things as well, seeing as how he uses his hands throughout the interview. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/13/eric-clapton-reveals-nerve-damage-that-makes-playing-guitar-hard-work/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/1... [1] https://mccannltc.net/news/eric-clapton-peripheral-neuropathy-may-end-career-and-more https://mccannltc.net/news/eric-clapton-peripheral-neuropath... [2] https://globalnews.ca/news/3348047/eric-clapton-seen-in-wheelchair-after-cancelling-shows-due-to-severe-illness/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3348047/eric-clapton-seen-in-whee... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/11/eric-clapton-vaccine-lockdown/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/11... [4] https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/eric-clapton-people-vaccinated-against-covid-under-hypnosis/ https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/eric-clapton-people-vaccinated... [5] https://youtu.be/j1SWen95pkU?t=469 https://youtu.be/j1SWen95pkU?t=469
• BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  In most of the comments there is the assumption that extraordinary claims (that viruses do not work) require extraordinary evidence. Someone mentioned an analogy with creationism. But it does not work that way. I couldn't care less if someone believes in a deity, creationism or homeopathy. I do care very much about people getting vaccinated. It means that either we go the coercive way (like we do in France to settle extend, making non vaccinated people life difficult), or we explain to people that they are wrong. And again. And again. With some it will work and we will gain 1% in the vaccination rate, which saves lives.
• throwaway_58456 5y ago
  While this article has many flaws, my direct personal experience with VAERS gives me very little confidence that incident reporting is working well. I'm in my early 40s. I had a major heart attack (100% obstruction of left anterior descending artery) 21 days after my J&J shot in Q2 2021. I now have a stent and significant and permanent heart damage. My health for the decade leading up to it was impeccable. All my labs are well within normal. I exercise 6 days a week: Olympic and power lifting, running, rowing, cycling. I am careful with my diet and carried <15% body fat at 180 lbs. (male). I worked hard to take care of myself. I have no known genetic factors for increased clotting, and while they were placing the stent, they observed virtually no plaque in my arteries and no evidence of rupture. My cardiologist and a second opinion I sought independently could not identify any risk factor to which to attribute my heart attack. Both were highly suspicious of my vaccination. My cardiologist reported my case to VAERS. I was asked to send a copy of my vaccination card. A month later, I got another e-mail asking to send a copy of my vaccination card. When I called and asked what happened to my first submission, the person had no idea. When I asked whether I could confirm that the current submission worked, they said they had no mechanism for that. My cardiologist, a professor of cardiology at Stanford, got a phone call that was mostly reminding him that it was a crime to make a false report. Neither of our interactions gave us any confidence that the report was taken seriously at all. All in all, I simultaneously think that COVID vaccinations are net positive and strongly suspect that there is significant under-reporting of adverse events. (I imagine that some will think I am a figment of someone's imagination. How I desperately wish that were true.)
  • dekhn 5y ago
    you're saying you had a heart attack 3 weeks after your vaccine shot, ... somehow because you are in good health the vaccine is a likely enough cause to file with VAERS, but your main issue is that the procedure around the reporting seemed incompetent? With regards to the heart attack, probably just base rate fallacy. ostensibly healthy people have heart attacks at a surprisingly high rate (and it's also something easy to detect). With regards to VAERS, I can imagine that they get an absurdly high number of prank calls and so they have to warn people not to break the law.
• throwaway2474 5y ago
  I would be interested if anyone else with lingering myo/pericarditis could offer advice on what treatment has worked. I still have pain and am unable to exercise 6 months after the shot. I’ve tried long term ibuprofen and colchicine but it hasn’t worked.
• lobocinza 5y ago
  I don't know if the arguments are valid or not because I'm not an expert and I have read only the first paragraphs. The red flag to me is the article being structured to convey emotion instead of informing.
• foxes 5y ago
  • dang 5y ago
    You don't have to wonder why this one was posted because nkurz explained why he posted it and he is one of the best-faith users on Hacker News.
    • foxes 5y ago
• mansr 5y ago
  I stopped reading at the part where he spends a full page on semantic games around the precise meaning of the word vaccine, misspelling the name of a famous dictionary in the process. This person is clearly not being honest about his intentions.
• vanusa 5y ago
  Flagged. You want to give this article a shot, but then when you get to the cartoon where it says "Will this make me immune?", "Will I have to keep wearing a mask?" -- with the innuendo that, because the vaccines are are not 100 percent effective, that they are basically useless (and that the entire narrative around them is basically deceptive) -- and then followed by the usual misleading statistical arguments -- You can just feel your intellectual curiosity shutting down.
• FrozenVoid 5y ago
  The official narrative requires enormous amount of suppression, coercion and censorship to remain dominant, That would be a big red flag for anyone with critical thinking.
• notefox 5y ago