3 ms·

"Smallpox, which we eliminated" But was it by vaccines? The book "Dissolving Illusions" argues it wasn't, and that smallpox vaccination was a failure similar t

"Smallpox, which we eliminated" But was it by vaccines? The book "Dissolving Illusions" argues it wasn't, and that smallpox vaccination was a failure similar to the one we just witnessed with COVID vaccines (which are unambiguously a failure by the criteria on which they were originally presented to the populace). It builds the case by citing many historical texts and news reports from the time when Jenner had first developed his vaccine, showing how it was at first advertised by him as granting 100% immunity only for many cases to emerge where the vaccine failed or outright gave people full smallpox infections. It also shows how the authorities went into denial and became utterly totalitarian, forcing vaccine mandates on people, refusing to accept that Jenner's invention wasn't perfect and forcing children to take it against the will of the parents, some of whom went to prison rather than allow their child to be vaccinated. It concludes by arguing that smallpox was actually wiped out in the west (along with many other illnesses) by the general improvements in health and sanitation in the 20th century, rather than a vaccine that was very far from being 100% effective. There was a time when I would have ignored this sort of alternate history take on medical consensus. But having just lived through an event exactly like the one the book describes it all sounds extremely plausible. COVID vaccines went from 95% effective and so clearly able to stop transmission that it was ethical to force people to take it, to "it doesn't stop infection or transmission or sickness, but it does reduce severe disease, let's hope that's not because it's inducing tolerance to spike protein in which case it'll actually be creating more serious disease without that being correctly attributed to the shots".

jemmyw 4y ago
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-of-suzanne-humphries-md-and-roman-bystrianyks-dissolving-illusions-part-1-the-long-version/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-... Lots of tables of figures if you'd like to peruse them, although its more concentrating on Polio. Anyway I guess the point is, yes there is an alternative take, but just because you read that in a book doesn't mean you should believe what you read. A significant amount more research would need to be done and um the author makes enough mistakes to take this with something of a grain of salt.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  I haven't actually read the book, I just know some quotes from it and the gist of what it argues about smallpox. Anyway, I flicked through the paper. It has a habit of making what it thinks are rebuttals but which either are agreeing with what the book says, or rebuts arguments she didn't actually make. If this is the highest quality sort of rebuttal that's out there then I guess I should read the book because it must be pretty solid. Example 1. Humphries points out that the vaccine rollout was coincident with a change in how polio was classified, which was guaranteed to significantly reduce the rate at which polio was reported regardless of the vaccine because the prior classification criteria had been very loose. The rebuttal is that yes this is true, but there were still a "significant number" of polio cases being reported after the change. This isn't a real disagreement yet the author uses it to claim that Humphries has callous disregard for polio cases, a nasty ad hominem they constantly repeat. It reduces their own credibility as it's so unlikely to be true. She's a medical doctor, not a profession famous for its callous disregard of disease. Example 2. Humphries points out that "more than half of the cases [in Michigan] were not polio virus related at all" and the rebuttal is that if you restrict to paralytic polio then that statement isn't true any longer, but, again, that wasn't the claim she made. Example 3. Another non-rebuttal is to point out that the author of one of the studies she cites was a vaccine fan. So? She was citing the data, not the author's general opinions. Example 4. The overall thrust of the argument here is that Humphries says the threat of polio was exaggerated, and the author admits this was true (redefinitions, FDR etc), but then claims again that anyone who objects is "callous" and it was OK if FDR was "dramatizing" his illness - which maybe wasn't even polio at all - because it spread awareness. Also that it doesn't matter if polio was actually rare because that's also true of childhood cancer and Americans care about that. Again a non-sequitur of a rebuttal that actually supports the points Humphries was making. What a crap set of counter-arguments. They don't point out any mistakes, it's just a big set of disagreements over emphasis and tone. If anything this seems to reinforce the overall impression formed in the past two years that pro-vaccine people seem systematically unable to accept that tradeoffs exist, accurate data matters and misleading people to win their support is bad. They also radically over-estimate their own rationality.

jemmyw 4y ago

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-of-suzanne-humphries-md-and-roman-bystrianyks-dissolving-illusions-part-1-the-long-version/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-... Lots of tables of figures if you'd like to peruse them, although its more concentrating on Polio. Anyway I guess the point is, yes there is an alternative take, but just because you read that in a book doesn't mean you should believe what you read. A significant amount more research would need to be done and um the author makes enough mistakes to take this with something of a grain of salt.

fidgewidge 4y ago
I haven't actually read the book, I just know some quotes from it and the gist of what it argues about smallpox. Anyway, I flicked through the paper. It has a habit of making what it thinks are rebuttals but which either are agreeing with what the book says, or rebuts arguments she didn't actually make. If this is the highest quality sort of rebuttal that's out there then I guess I should read the book because it must be pretty solid. Example 1. Humphries points out that the vaccine rollout was coincident with a change in how polio was classified, which was guaranteed to significantly reduce the rate at which polio was reported regardless of the vaccine because the prior classification criteria had been very loose. The rebuttal is that yes this is true, but there were still a "significant number" of polio cases being reported after the change. This isn't a real disagreement yet the author uses it to claim that Humphries has callous disregard for polio cases, a nasty ad hominem they constantly repeat. It reduces their own credibility as it's so unlikely to be true. She's a medical doctor, not a profession famous for its callous disregard of disease. Example 2. Humphries points out that "more than half of the cases [in Michigan] were not polio virus related at all" and the rebuttal is that if you restrict to paralytic polio then that statement isn't true any longer, but, again, that wasn't the claim she made. Example 3. Another non-rebuttal is to point out that the author of one of the studies she cites was a vaccine fan. So? She was citing the data, not the author's general opinions. Example 4. The overall thrust of the argument here is that Humphries says the threat of polio was exaggerated, and the author admits this was true (redefinitions, FDR etc), but then claims again that anyone who objects is "callous" and it was OK if FDR was "dramatizing" his illness - which maybe wasn't even polio at all - because it spread awareness. Also that it doesn't matter if polio was actually rare because that's also true of childhood cancer and Americans care about that. Again a non-sequitur of a rebuttal that actually supports the points Humphries was making. What a crap set of counter-arguments. They don't point out any mistakes, it's just a big set of disagreements over emphasis and tone. If anything this seems to reinforce the overall impression formed in the past two years that pro-vaccine people seem systematically unable to accept that tradeoffs exist, accurate data matters and misleading people to win their support is bad. They also radically over-estimate their own rationality.