3 ms·

One quote that stood out from the start: "The [Lancet] study showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two

One quote that stood out from the start: "The [Lancet] study showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals."

codefreeordie 4y ago
This has been known (but not allowed to be said) for at least 12 months at this point.
throwmisinfo388 4y ago
As always when it comes to vaccine fear-mongering, the Lancet study paints a non-alarming picture. The conclusion seems to be that a booster is required after around 9 months, which is what everyone and their mother worth listening to have been saying for the past year. The Lancet article is worth a read. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00089-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- thanatosmin 4y ago
  Super important to note that this is vaccine effectiveness against infection. It does not address the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent hospitalization or death.
- origin_path 4y ago
  The picture it paints is, in fact, alarming. Unfortunately with vaccine studies you can't simply read the last sentences of the abstract and assume that what it says is correct. Vaccine studies simply don't get published if they don't recommend vaccination, which leads to the curious phenomenon of papers that contain data indicating serious problems yet which recommend more shots anyway. You have to discard their advice and just look at the data. This paper is a good case in point. What does their data actually show? Look at figure 2. It shows smoothly and steadily declining effectiveness that drops below zero. There is no change in the trend near the 9 month mark. How far can effectiveness actually fall? This paper stops looking after 9 months, but we know from UK data that it can in fact keep falling for much longer than that. Before they stopped reporting the numbers measured effectiveness in the UK was around -300%: https://dailysceptic.org/archive/vaccine-effectiveness-hits-as-low-as-minus-300-as-ukhsa-announces-it-will-no-longer-publish-the-data/ https://dailysceptic.org/archive/vaccine-effectiveness-hits-... Additionally case rates in the boosted were higher than in unvaccinated at that point, i.e. by March 2022 COVID had become a pandemic of the vaccinated. Boosting had helped for such a short period it hardly mattered and then the problem became even worse. Note that you have to be careful with effectiveness figures reported by public health authorities. Starting with COVID many of them began reporting "adjusted" effectiveness in addition to or entirely instead of case rates, but their adjustment methodology isn't valid. So this is not vaccine "fear mongering". It's what government's own data shows. That makes it a very real problem that needs serious and immediate research to figure out (a) why this is happening, (b) what if anything can be done about it. The vaccines appear to have backfired and we're very lucky that Omicron is so mild. Unfortunately this will not be admitted to in the media, by governments, and not openly by researchers.
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  Yes but how many boosters? For how long?
- owenfi 4y ago
  The original almost implies "immune response" overall, as in, against all other diseases/infections. That's a misinterpretation/misrepresentation, right? From what I could tell the The Lancet article is only talking about waning effectiveness against Covid (as previously known). [Table 1 possibly notwithstanding, but I'm reading this as people with co-morbidities are more likely to get the vaccine, not the other direction...]
kyazawa 4y ago
I am so confused about this. The linked Lancet study seems to make the opposite claim, as far as I can tell. Furthermore, the Lancet study seems to be specifically focused on COVID vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19, whereas the quote makes it sound like the study showed a general decrease in immune function among the vaccinated. Am I missing something here, or is Kenji Yamamoto's paper completely fraudulent?
- origin_path 4y ago
  Look at figure 2 in the Lancet study. Seems to be making that claim indeed. As for immune function, the phrasing isn't as precise as it could be but he's paraphrasing a cited study so does it have to be? There's lots of fraud in science but that word should be reserved for things that justify it, like made up data, misrepresenting your own data, motivated reasoning etc. Assuming the reader will understand what's meant based on context, especially when the cited study can be easily loaded, doesn't rise to the level of fraud.
  - kyazawa 4y ago
    Thank you. That helps me to view the author's paraphrasing in a more charitable light. "Fraudulent" may have been too strong of a word. I still find it misleading to paraphrase a study in a way that is different from its main conclusion. We don't know what data concerns, etc. the study authors may have had such that they did not explicitly reach this conclusion. And the imprecision in Yamamoto's wording seems intended to mislead as well. This is an interesting area of study and I'm sure a different author would make a more persuasive case for/against this effect being real.
    - origin_path 4y ago
      If you aren't familiar with vaccine research then citing a paper whilst contradicting its conclusion may look odd or malicious, but it's not. Vaccine papers are quite "special". The problem is that scientific journals simply will not publish any paper on vaccines that doesn't praise them, regardless of merit or data. This pattern is extremely consistent. So when someone is making an argument that isn't 100% pro-vaccine, and they cite a paper, what they mean is ignore the commentary, look at the data. They may not bother spelling this out explicitly because you get used to it so fast and then can easily forget that many people won't actually read the paper, they'll just look at the abstract and assume it's honest. In this case their argument for boosters is simply that effectiveness keeps dropping, so everyone should take boosters. There isn't anything deeper, and obviously such an argument is facile in the extreme.
fastaguy88 4y ago
And, if you actually read the Lancet study and understand statistical estimates, it is clear that the Lancet study does not say this at all. There is no mention of long-term immune depression in the abstract, because there is no statistically significant support for that conclusion. After 8 months, the line they show does go below zero (suggesting more infections in vaccinated people) but the error bars include zero, supporting the more sensible conclusion that at some point, the vaccine is not effective. But there is no evidence that the vaccine actually raises risk, which is the argument proposed.

codefreeordie 4y ago

This has been known (but not allowed to be said) for at least 12 months at this point.

throwmisinfo388 4y ago

As always when it comes to vaccine fear-mongering, the Lancet study paints a non-alarming picture. The conclusion seems to be that a booster is required after around 9 months, which is what everyone and their mother worth listening to have been saying for the past year. The Lancet article is worth a read. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00089-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

thanatosmin 4y ago
Super important to note that this is vaccine effectiveness against infection. It does not address the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent hospitalization or death.
origin_path 4y ago
The picture it paints is, in fact, alarming. Unfortunately with vaccine studies you can't simply read the last sentences of the abstract and assume that what it says is correct. Vaccine studies simply don't get published if they don't recommend vaccination, which leads to the curious phenomenon of papers that contain data indicating serious problems yet which recommend more shots anyway. You have to discard their advice and just look at the data. This paper is a good case in point. What does their data actually show? Look at figure 2. It shows smoothly and steadily declining effectiveness that drops below zero. There is no change in the trend near the 9 month mark. How far can effectiveness actually fall? This paper stops looking after 9 months, but we know from UK data that it can in fact keep falling for much longer than that. Before they stopped reporting the numbers measured effectiveness in the UK was around -300%: https://dailysceptic.org/archive/vaccine-effectiveness-hits-as-low-as-minus-300-as-ukhsa-announces-it-will-no-longer-publish-the-data/ https://dailysceptic.org/archive/vaccine-effectiveness-hits-... Additionally case rates in the boosted were higher than in unvaccinated at that point, i.e. by March 2022 COVID had become a pandemic of the vaccinated. Boosting had helped for such a short period it hardly mattered and then the problem became even worse. Note that you have to be careful with effectiveness figures reported by public health authorities. Starting with COVID many of them began reporting "adjusted" effectiveness in addition to or entirely instead of case rates, but their adjustment methodology isn't valid. So this is not vaccine "fear mongering". It's what government's own data shows. That makes it a very real problem that needs serious and immediate research to figure out (a) why this is happening, (b) what if anything can be done about it. The vaccines appear to have backfired and we're very lucky that Omicron is so mild. Unfortunately this will not be admitted to in the media, by governments, and not openly by researchers.
TurkishPoptart 4y ago
Yes but how many boosters? For how long?
owenfi 4y ago
The original almost implies "immune response" overall, as in, against all other diseases/infections. That's a misinterpretation/misrepresentation, right? From what I could tell the The Lancet article is only talking about waning effectiveness against Covid (as previously known). [Table 1 possibly notwithstanding, but I'm reading this as people with co-morbidities are more likely to get the vaccine, not the other direction...]

kyazawa 4y ago

I am so confused about this. The linked Lancet study seems to make the opposite claim, as far as I can tell. Furthermore, the Lancet study seems to be specifically focused on COVID vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19, whereas the quote makes it sound like the study showed a general decrease in immune function among the vaccinated. Am I missing something here, or is Kenji Yamamoto's paper completely fraudulent?

origin_path 4y ago
Look at figure 2 in the Lancet study. Seems to be making that claim indeed. As for immune function, the phrasing isn't as precise as it could be but he's paraphrasing a cited study so does it have to be? There's lots of fraud in science but that word should be reserved for things that justify it, like made up data, misrepresenting your own data, motivated reasoning etc. Assuming the reader will understand what's meant based on context, especially when the cited study can be easily loaded, doesn't rise to the level of fraud.
- kyazawa 4y ago
  Thank you. That helps me to view the author's paraphrasing in a more charitable light. "Fraudulent" may have been too strong of a word. I still find it misleading to paraphrase a study in a way that is different from its main conclusion. We don't know what data concerns, etc. the study authors may have had such that they did not explicitly reach this conclusion. And the imprecision in Yamamoto's wording seems intended to mislead as well. This is an interesting area of study and I'm sure a different author would make a more persuasive case for/against this effect being real.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    If you aren't familiar with vaccine research then citing a paper whilst contradicting its conclusion may look odd or malicious, but it's not. Vaccine papers are quite "special". The problem is that scientific journals simply will not publish any paper on vaccines that doesn't praise them, regardless of merit or data. This pattern is extremely consistent. So when someone is making an argument that isn't 100% pro-vaccine, and they cite a paper, what they mean is ignore the commentary, look at the data. They may not bother spelling this out explicitly because you get used to it so fast and then can easily forget that many people won't actually read the paper, they'll just look at the abstract and assume it's honest. In this case their argument for boosters is simply that effectiveness keeps dropping, so everyone should take boosters. There isn't anything deeper, and obviously such an argument is facile in the extreme.

fastaguy88 4y ago

And, if you actually read the Lancet study and understand statistical estimates, it is clear that the Lancet study does not say this at all. There is no mention of long-term immune depression in the abstract, because there is no statistically significant support for that conclusion. After 8 months, the line they show does go below zero (suggesting more infections in vaccinated people) but the error bars include zero, supporting the more sensible conclusion that at some point, the vaccine is not effective. But there is no evidence that the vaccine actually raises risk, which is the argument proposed.