5 ms·

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

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.
- TillE 5y ago
  Like I said maybe a year ago, I do think it's genuinely surprising that HN, given its general right-libertarian stance, has gone more or less full anti-vaxxer with COVID-19. It's just not a rational position, and there are no personal political biases which should logically lead there.
  - JSavageOne 5y ago
    Questioning vaccine mandates and the alleged efficacy of rushed out vaccines does not in any way equate to being an anti-vaxxer. What would be more irrational would be the blind questioning of authorities without a particularly convincing track record.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    It's an interesting phenomenon that I've been watching over the past few years. I have my own opinions about what's going on, but I would say that I think generally, the "what positions do people in a political clique take" has changed tremendously over the past few years. In the old days, the NY Times would have simply published an oped by William Buckley that would sum up the position of pro-freedom argument of the mainstream republican elite. and then the world would move on. Except that buckley wouldn't have done that, he would have been for mandates. Context: during the HIV/AIDS crises, Buckley proposed tattooing a big red A on the ass of every gay person with AIDS: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/s...
- tdeck 5y ago
  Aside: why does every substack article on HN seem to from this particular subculture? As far as I can tell substack is just a paid newsletter platform but I feel like I'm seeing a pattern here.
  - IvyMike 5y ago
    Substack is very hands-off with moderation. People and organizations that have been deplatformed elsewhere have realized this. https://www.wired.com/story/substack-future-chris-best/ https://www.wired.com/story/substack-future-chris-best/ https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/anti-vaxxers-qanon-influencers-and-white-nationalists-flocking-to-substack/ https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/anti-vaxxers-qa...
- JSavageOne 5y ago
  What the hell is a "tech bro"?
lkbm 5y ago
Four incidents does seem like a really small number to be finding much significance. I know the overall N is large, but don't you need sample size large enough for the incident count to be large(ish) as well? Obviously, at this point we're seeing very clear divergence in both hospitalizations and deaths wherever we track vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people (e.g., NYC and more recently the CDC), but I'm surprised how small the relevant case numbers are in that study.
- vannevar 5y ago
  If you read the abstract of the study (which the author clearly hoped no one would do), you'll see this: "The efficacy in preventing severe disease was 98.2% (95% CI, 92.8 to 99.6), with 2 cases in the mRNA-1273 group and 106 in the placebo group..." This was in a study that included over 30,000 participants.
  - emtel 5y ago
    You're confusing efficacy against severe disease, which this study proved, and efficacy against death, which this study did not prove.
    - vannevar 5y ago
      No, I'm not. Clinically, severe disease is (and was known to be at the time of the study) a pre-requisite for death. We don't see people with mild covid dropping dead. The study saw only 2 severe cases among the vaccinated and 106 in the unvaccinated. Coupled with the rarity of negative reactions to the vaccine, the researchers were justified in saying that the study proved that the vaccine would prevent death. Experience has proven them correct, as death rates among the unvaccinated are much higher than the vaccinated.
      - lkbm 5y ago
        Ah, that's a good point. The limited death data itself was (I assume) not significant, but we don't need it to be given the size of the effect earlier in the "conversion funnel".
nostromo 5y ago
But this is the reason we have randomized trials. Because the human body is complicated and you can't say with certainty that those "other" deaths were not related to the vaccine in most cases. I'm happily vaccinated, but after seeing these results (thank you for the link), it's not clear to me why the vaccine is recommended for anyone under 65 if they're healthy given the limited benefit and large increase in adverse reactions.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  The default conclusion if someone died of other causes isn't to assign the cause of death to the vaccine else we would conclude any broad preventative action including brushing your teeth was unsafe. The benefit isn't limited its both a very very substantial decrease in mortality and hospitalization and a decreased burden on an already overloaded medical system that if it collapses will vastly increase mortality.
peteradio 5y ago
All-cause deaths is more important metric than Covid deaths. I'm not sure why it should be ok to trade deaths of one form for another and pretend like we've done something obviously positive.
nkurz 5y ago
Upvoted, since although I disagree with the flag, I appreciate the specific criticism. I don't think I agree that it's deliberately misleading. The graphic is used to argue against the statement that "Clinical trials have shown that the vaccines are highly effective ... against death". If these are indeed the trials that are being referred to, I don't think that data shows this. 3 Covid deaths versus 1 out of groups of 16,000 is compatible with being highly effective, but probably isn't statistically significant. Would you argue that this is sufficient evidence to claim that a vaccine is "highly effective"? Personally, I think they are highly effective, but I'd agree with the author that this particular study is not very good evidence of this. I'm doubtful the graphic was intentionally blurred. I'd guess it's a screenshot of a screenshot type problem. The important numbers are visible if you look closely, and (atypically) links to the underlying data are helpfully provided at the bottom. Also, although it might not be immediately apparent, the graphic shows the results of two different trials. The top is Moderna, the bottom (which coincidentally also had about 16 deaths per group) is Pfizer (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345). In that study, there are 2 Covid deaths for the placebo, and 1 for the vaccine. Also, just for a sense of proportion, there were actually 2 suicide deaths in the Moderna study period, one in each group. In the Pfizer study, there don't appear to have been any suicides, but the 29 total deaths include some unhelpful causes of death including "Missing", "Unevaluable Event", and "Death"!
- vannevar 5y ago
  I have to disagree about the intent to deceive here. The author circled the total deaths and indicated that the study showed no advantage of vaccination. No matter how you slice it, that is clearly wrong, and certainly a former biologist would know that. It's also worth noting that the study had 30,000+ participants, and among them, there were only 2 instances of severe Covid in the vaccinated and 106 in the placebo group. Yet the author of the article chose to take a chart from one of the supplemental appendices out of context and deliberately misrepresent even that. This was not accidental, or just sloppy.
  - nkurz 5y ago
    I'm not sure which person you are referring to as "the author", but for clarity, the slide is a screenshot taken from a slide used in a presentation by Peter Doshi: https://rumble.com/vqc2ww-dr.-peter-doshi-of-the-british-medical-journal-argues-the-public-was-lied-t.html https://rumble.com/vqc2ww-dr.-peter-doshi-of-the-british-med... (at 1:41). It's used as it was presented there, and was not altered by the author of the Substack post, Joomi Kim. When I claim that it wasn't intended to deceive, I'm referring to Dr. Kim's use of it. I don't know enough about Dr. Doshi to speak to his intent. I don't think it was Kim's intent to claim that there is "no advantage of vaccination", nor do I think she made this (erroneous) claim. Instead, I think she was using the slide to make the specific legitimate claim that Fauci and Walensky overstepped the conclusions of the study when they claimed that "clinical trials have shown that the vaccines ... are highly effective ... against death". I think this is useful evidence the official sources are willing to tell "noble lies" for what they think is a good cause. Whether that evidence matters in the face of a Covid pandemic seems to be a point of dispute.
emtel 5y ago
Unfortunately in this case the original post is mostly correct. It claims that this vaccine study did not establish that the vaccines were protective against death. This is both true at a glance (the number of deaths are clearly too small to establish statistical significance, i.e. the trial was underpowered to detect efficacy against death), and corroborated by the study you link to which (on page 68) lists the 95% CI of efficacy against death as NE-100%. NE = non-estimable). Now, we do know that vaccines are protective against death from covid-19, but this study did not establish that fact. Why do I bother writing this? I believe the only way to defeat "misinformation" is to rebut it accurately. An inaccurate rebuttal is likely to be interpreted as "my opponents don't even understand the data, therefore I believe my original position even more strongly". I think a better rebuttal to this argument is "yes, the original trials did not prove efficacy against death - because they were underpowered, not because the effect did not exist. Subsequent observations of death rates among vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations are basically impossible to explain unless the vaccines protect against death, even though those observations weren't taken during an RCT."
- vannevar 5y ago
  Your point is well taken, but I doubt the casual reader would make the distinction that you do. And in regard to Covid deaths in the study, the people who ran it were well aware that the small number of deaths were not, by themselves, enough to establish efficacy. But in combination with the numbers for severe illness (2 in the vaccinated vs 106 for the placebo group) and everything we understood about how the disease kills, I would argue that the study does in fact overwhelmingly support the conclusion that the vaccine prevents death, just as we have since confirmed.
  - emtel 5y ago
    I 100% agree that if you have proof of efficacy against severe disease, its reasonable to assume efficacy against death. In fact I think it would be absurd not to. But, the usual rules of the game (and certainly the rules the FDA plays by as I understand it) are that you either reject the null hypothesis with a sufficient degree of statistical significance or you don't, and if you don't, you haven't "proved" anything. So if someone claims that studies proved something according to those rules, its fair to call them out if there was in fact no proof. To your first point: Yes, 99% of the population does not understand statistics, null-hypothesis testing, what "under-powered" means, etc. But, I think we under-estimate the ability of the public to understand good explanations of these topics. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I believe the median reader of a page like the linked article can grasp explanations of these topics even if they are initially somewhat ignorant of them. And, while I can't prove it, I believe that the most epistemically rigorous rebuttals of what we feel are false claims are ultimately going to be the most durable.
bluedays 5y ago
Three deaths doesn't seem statistically significant. 3 deaths would be 0.010544444834979% of 28451. Is there something I am missing?
tasha0663 5y ago
Flagging is doing more harm than good. I wanted to see the discussion and counterpoint when I finished reading the article. Except the thread vanished and I had to count on Google to find it. Thankfully it was easy this time, but if it hadn't been, what am I supposed to assume, especially when the narrative is framed around censorship? The dismissive attitude of many of the commenters (present company excluded) is sickening. I'm weary of the "I don't have to refute this, I declare that it doesn't rise to the level of scientific discussion" argument. Thanks for actually saying something to address one of the claims here.
- throwwy48484 5y ago
  You should subscribe to an HN RSS feed. A lot of articles that make it to the front page are flagged or deleted outright.

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.
TillE 5y ago
Like I said maybe a year ago, I do think it's genuinely surprising that HN, given its general right-libertarian stance, has gone more or less full anti-vaxxer with COVID-19. It's just not a rational position, and there are no personal political biases which should logically lead there.
- JSavageOne 5y ago
  Questioning vaccine mandates and the alleged efficacy of rushed out vaccines does not in any way equate to being an anti-vaxxer. What would be more irrational would be the blind questioning of authorities without a particularly convincing track record.
- dekhn 5y ago
  It's an interesting phenomenon that I've been watching over the past few years. I have my own opinions about what's going on, but I would say that I think generally, the "what positions do people in a political clique take" has changed tremendously over the past few years. In the old days, the NY Times would have simply published an oped by William Buckley that would sum up the position of pro-freedom argument of the mainstream republican elite. and then the world would move on. Except that buckley wouldn't have done that, he would have been for mandates. Context: during the HIV/AIDS crises, Buckley proposed tattooing a big red A on the ass of every gay person with AIDS: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/s...
tdeck 5y ago
Aside: why does every substack article on HN seem to from this particular subculture? As far as I can tell substack is just a paid newsletter platform but I feel like I'm seeing a pattern here.
- IvyMike 5y ago
  Substack is very hands-off with moderation. People and organizations that have been deplatformed elsewhere have realized this. https://www.wired.com/story/substack-future-chris-best/ https://www.wired.com/story/substack-future-chris-best/ https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/anti-vaxxers-qanon-influencers-and-white-nationalists-flocking-to-substack/ https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/anti-vaxxers-qa...
JSavageOne 5y ago
What the hell is a "tech bro"?

lkbm 5y ago

Four incidents does seem like a really small number to be finding much significance. I know the overall N is large, but don't you need sample size large enough for the incident count to be large(ish) as well? Obviously, at this point we're seeing very clear divergence in both hospitalizations and deaths wherever we track vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people (e.g., NYC and more recently the CDC), but I'm surprised how small the relevant case numbers are in that study.

vannevar 5y ago
If you read the abstract of the study (which the author clearly hoped no one would do), you'll see this: "The efficacy in preventing severe disease was 98.2% (95% CI, 92.8 to 99.6), with 2 cases in the mRNA-1273 group and 106 in the placebo group..." This was in a study that included over 30,000 participants.
- emtel 5y ago
  You're confusing efficacy against severe disease, which this study proved, and efficacy against death, which this study did not prove.
  - vannevar 5y ago
    No, I'm not. Clinically, severe disease is (and was known to be at the time of the study) a pre-requisite for death. We don't see people with mild covid dropping dead. The study saw only 2 severe cases among the vaccinated and 106 in the unvaccinated. Coupled with the rarity of negative reactions to the vaccine, the researchers were justified in saying that the study proved that the vaccine would prevent death. Experience has proven them correct, as death rates among the unvaccinated are much higher than the vaccinated.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      Ah, that's a good point. The limited death data itself was (I assume) not significant, but we don't need it to be given the size of the effect earlier in the "conversion funnel".

nostromo 5y ago

But this is the reason we have randomized trials. Because the human body is complicated and you can't say with certainty that those "other" deaths were not related to the vaccine in most cases. I'm happily vaccinated, but after seeing these results (thank you for the link), it's not clear to me why the vaccine is recommended for anyone under 65 if they're healthy given the limited benefit and large increase in adverse reactions.

michaelmrose 5y ago
The default conclusion if someone died of other causes isn't to assign the cause of death to the vaccine else we would conclude any broad preventative action including brushing your teeth was unsafe. The benefit isn't limited its both a very very substantial decrease in mortality and hospitalization and a decreased burden on an already overloaded medical system that if it collapses will vastly increase mortality.

peteradio 5y ago

All-cause deaths is more important metric than Covid deaths. I'm not sure why it should be ok to trade deaths of one form for another and pretend like we've done something obviously positive.

nkurz 5y ago

Upvoted, since although I disagree with the flag, I appreciate the specific criticism. I don't think I agree that it's deliberately misleading. The graphic is used to argue against the statement that "Clinical trials have shown that the vaccines are highly effective ... against death". If these are indeed the trials that are being referred to, I don't think that data shows this. 3 Covid deaths versus 1 out of groups of 16,000 is compatible with being highly effective, but probably isn't statistically significant. Would you argue that this is sufficient evidence to claim that a vaccine is "highly effective"? Personally, I think they are highly effective, but I'd agree with the author that this particular study is not very good evidence of this. I'm doubtful the graphic was intentionally blurred. I'd guess it's a screenshot of a screenshot type problem. The important numbers are visible if you look closely, and (atypically) links to the underlying data are helpfully provided at the bottom. Also, although it might not be immediately apparent, the graphic shows the results of two different trials. The top is Moderna, the bottom (which coincidentally also had about 16 deaths per group) is Pfizer (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345). In that study, there are 2 Covid deaths for the placebo, and 1 for the vaccine. Also, just for a sense of proportion, there were actually 2 suicide deaths in the Moderna study period, one in each group. In the Pfizer study, there don't appear to have been any suicides, but the 29 total deaths include some unhelpful causes of death including "Missing", "Unevaluable Event", and "Death"!

vannevar 5y ago
I have to disagree about the intent to deceive here. The author circled the total deaths and indicated that the study showed no advantage of vaccination. No matter how you slice it, that is clearly wrong, and certainly a former biologist would know that. It's also worth noting that the study had 30,000+ participants, and among them, there were only 2 instances of severe Covid in the vaccinated and 106 in the placebo group. Yet the author of the article chose to take a chart from one of the supplemental appendices out of context and deliberately misrepresent even that. This was not accidental, or just sloppy.
- nkurz 5y ago
  I'm not sure which person you are referring to as "the author", but for clarity, the slide is a screenshot taken from a slide used in a presentation by Peter Doshi: https://rumble.com/vqc2ww-dr.-peter-doshi-of-the-british-medical-journal-argues-the-public-was-lied-t.html https://rumble.com/vqc2ww-dr.-peter-doshi-of-the-british-med... (at 1:41). It's used as it was presented there, and was not altered by the author of the Substack post, Joomi Kim. When I claim that it wasn't intended to deceive, I'm referring to Dr. Kim's use of it. I don't know enough about Dr. Doshi to speak to his intent. I don't think it was Kim's intent to claim that there is "no advantage of vaccination", nor do I think she made this (erroneous) claim. Instead, I think she was using the slide to make the specific legitimate claim that Fauci and Walensky overstepped the conclusions of the study when they claimed that "clinical trials have shown that the vaccines ... are highly effective ... against death". I think this is useful evidence the official sources are willing to tell "noble lies" for what they think is a good cause. Whether that evidence matters in the face of a Covid pandemic seems to be a point of dispute.

emtel 5y ago

Unfortunately in this case the original post is mostly correct. It claims that this vaccine study did not establish that the vaccines were protective against death. This is both true at a glance (the number of deaths are clearly too small to establish statistical significance, i.e. the trial was underpowered to detect efficacy against death), and corroborated by the study you link to which (on page 68) lists the 95% CI of efficacy against death as NE-100%. NE = non-estimable). Now, we do know that vaccines are protective against death from covid-19, but this study did not establish that fact. Why do I bother writing this? I believe the only way to defeat "misinformation" is to rebut it accurately. An inaccurate rebuttal is likely to be interpreted as "my opponents don't even understand the data, therefore I believe my original position even more strongly". I think a better rebuttal to this argument is "yes, the original trials did not prove efficacy against death - because they were underpowered, not because the effect did not exist. Subsequent observations of death rates among vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations are basically impossible to explain unless the vaccines protect against death, even though those observations weren't taken during an RCT."

vannevar 5y ago
Your point is well taken, but I doubt the casual reader would make the distinction that you do. And in regard to Covid deaths in the study, the people who ran it were well aware that the small number of deaths were not, by themselves, enough to establish efficacy. But in combination with the numbers for severe illness (2 in the vaccinated vs 106 for the placebo group) and everything we understood about how the disease kills, I would argue that the study does in fact overwhelmingly support the conclusion that the vaccine prevents death, just as we have since confirmed.
- emtel 5y ago
  I 100% agree that if you have proof of efficacy against severe disease, its reasonable to assume efficacy against death. In fact I think it would be absurd not to. But, the usual rules of the game (and certainly the rules the FDA plays by as I understand it) are that you either reject the null hypothesis with a sufficient degree of statistical significance or you don't, and if you don't, you haven't "proved" anything. So if someone claims that studies proved something according to those rules, its fair to call them out if there was in fact no proof. To your first point: Yes, 99% of the population does not understand statistics, null-hypothesis testing, what "under-powered" means, etc. But, I think we under-estimate the ability of the public to understand good explanations of these topics. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I believe the median reader of a page like the linked article can grasp explanations of these topics even if they are initially somewhat ignorant of them. And, while I can't prove it, I believe that the most epistemically rigorous rebuttals of what we feel are false claims are ultimately going to be the most durable.

bluedays 5y ago

Three deaths doesn't seem statistically significant. 3 deaths would be 0.010544444834979% of 28451. Is there something I am missing?

tasha0663 5y ago

Flagging is doing more harm than good. I wanted to see the discussion and counterpoint when I finished reading the article. Except the thread vanished and I had to count on Google to find it. Thankfully it was easy this time, but if it hadn't been, what am I supposed to assume, especially when the narrative is framed around censorship? The dismissive attitude of many of the commenters (present company excluded) is sickening. I'm weary of the "I don't have to refute this, I declare that it doesn't rise to the level of scientific discussion" argument. Thanks for actually saying something to address one of the claims here.

throwwy48484 5y ago
You should subscribe to an HN RSS feed. A lot of articles that make it to the front page are flagged or deleted outright.