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(I vouched for this post because I think it's important to actually address these issue head on with facts and not just shout people down.) Berenson's numbers

(I vouched for this post because I think it's important to actually address these issue head on with facts and not just shout people down.) Berenson's numbers based on the presentation you shared seem to check out, but the interpretation seems odd. Just looking at how many cases were averted doesn't tell you what types of tail risks were averted. It may be a worthwhile trade off to have 10x as many "severe side effects" in exchange for having many many fewer severe, debilitating, or fatal infections. Also, Berenson is looking at the ratio of severe side effects induced to RSV cases prevented. But the vaccine side effects only happen once, at the time of injection, while the vaccine may continue to confer long term benefits. So this ratio is highly dependent on the time period in question.

breck 3y ago
> But the vaccine side effects only happen once, at the time of injection, while the vaccine may continue to confer long term benefits. So this ratio is highly dependent on the time period in question. One must be extremely skeptical of these kind of claims now, though, given what we just went through as a society. The side effects of the mRNA vaccines seemed to become uncapped (some people I know have now received 4 shots), and the long term benefits went to nil (if not negative), commonly thought due to mutation. So the question is what are the odds that it really will be just "once" and what are the odds that it will really provide protection against RSV, and future mutated strands. It seems to me the vaccine industry should be put in a severe category of "distrusted entities" until we have significant improvements in our symbolic infrastructure to the point where they could be trusted again.
- burnished 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that the limited duration of protection and hence the need for followups (like flu shots) is.. the result of a conspiracy? Its not clear why you think they should be 'distrusted' which calls your judgement into question.
  - stevehawk 3y ago
    the common argument I heard from the anti-vaxxers was that the mRNA COVID vaccine was obviously bad/fake/contrived because it required a booster and "no other vaccine requires a booster!" And if you mention tetanus, hepatitis or meningococcal, or other vaccines that required a booster/multiple shots then you just get ignored. Ignorant gonna ignorant.
    - breck 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - breck 3y ago
    No I am saying that there was no protection and the follow ups provided none either. Yes, with 99% odds I am saying there was a conspiracy to end the randomized placebo control group early to bury any chance that someone could ever conclusively prove these vaccines were ineffective. The claim was they decided it was unethical to withhold a "life-saving" vaccine from control participants and that's why they ended it. I would bet with 99% odds that if there was a funded investigation with subpoena power you would find strong evidence that the primary reason that control group was ended because of extreme financial incentive to end it. If the control group were allowed to continue and it were shown that the vaccines were ineffective (which is what ended up being the case), tens of billions would have been lost. I am counting on someone being sloppy and letting the truth spill somewhere internally. Now if you are saying that I am showing bad judgement for speaking truth to power, for caring about honesty, I could see a valid argument there. But to me truth and honesty is more important than money. There is zero scientific evidence that this thing saved a single life. The only randomized control group experiment showed zero lives saved.
    - burnished 3y ago
      Have you not updated your priors given the difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? It seems odd to be so fixated on a control study that was abandoned for ethical reasons when so much evidence amassed regardless.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  You do know billions of doses of COVID vaccines were delivered and the side effects were overwhelmingly insignificant, right? Skepticism is good, but in the face of data we should be willing to pivot. The COVID vaccines are probably the single most studied and tested vaccine - heck, medical product - of all time. It's like the aspartame or MSG of the medical world. No matter how much data you provide people will never get over the idea that it must somehow be dangerous.
  - breck 3y ago
    I should have used a more precise term than "uncapped". The comment I was responding to used the term "once". I was saying that in most recent vaccine history, the term "twice" was used, then "three times", then "four times", then "up to date". Uncapped was a gross exaggeration. I should instead said that there "once" could not be taken seriously and the range should be "1 to a handful of times", which is a significant factor increase of at least 2x. But anyway, in my dataset of about 1,000 acquaintances, the only one under 50 hospitalized related to Covid was a friend who was a 38 year mother of 2, in top shape, who had a heart attack within a month after her second dose, and to this day is still recovering. I do not think these vaccines are that dangerous—I would say they probably cause as much harm as one night of heavy binge drinking—but I saw zero evidence of any benefit, and yes I saw one very bad case of severe life threatening side effect.
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      > But anyway, in my dataset of about 1,000 acquaintances, the only one under 50 hospitalized related to Covid was a friend who was a 38 year mother of 2, in top shape, who had a heart attack within a month after her second dose, and to this day is still recovering. There's a reason we don't use anecdotes as a substitute for medical research. Not least because they're subject to the post hoc fallacy. Just because one event follows another doesn't mean there's a causal relationship. There's every chance that mother of 2 was going to have a heart attack anyways. It happens. The fact they had a vaccine first likely isn't relevant, clinically speaking. If you give a few billion people vaccines, you will find literally every effect that follows. Car crashes. Broken arms. Death by mauling. Syphilis. Turbo-cancer of the elbow. In that age group, a boundary group, your risk of having a heart attack are somewhere between 17 and 97 per 100,000. [1] The risk of a heart issue from the vaccine is about two orders of magnitude lower than that. > I do not think these vaccines are that dangerous—I would say they probably cause as much harm as one night of heavy binge drinking— ... You have no basis to arrive at that conclusion. > ... but I saw zero evidence of any benefit ... It's in the data. > ... and yes I saw one very bad case of severe life threatening side effect. You saw one anecdotal report of a bad thing that happened to someone after they took a COVID vaccine, without any evidence they were connected. I'm sure more than once someone took a tylenol and got hit by a bus. That doesn't mean taking tylenol causes getting hit by a bus. > The proportions of participants who reported at least 1 serious adverse event were 0.6% in the vaccine group and 0.5% in the placebo group. [2] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32111640/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32111640/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/reactogenicity.html#18-serious-adverse-events https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer...
- gerbilly 3y ago
  > It seems to me the vaccine industry should be put in a severe category of "distrusted entities" It [feels] to me the vaccine industry should be ... FTFY I hate being controlled by 'the man' just as much as anybody, but I think you have to ask yourself why you are so fixated on this issue? What's your position on gun ownership? If you really want to keep mothers of two, or their children for that matter, from dying; then maybe focusing your outrage there would save more lives.
detaro 3y ago
... it's numbers about a different vaccine, how are they relevant here?
fwlr 3y ago
> while the vaccine may continue to confer long term benefits It had better! Otherwise (in my opinion) it has little claim to the label “vaccine”.

breck 3y ago

> But the vaccine side effects only happen once, at the time of injection, while the vaccine may continue to confer long term benefits. So this ratio is highly dependent on the time period in question. One must be extremely skeptical of these kind of claims now, though, given what we just went through as a society. The side effects of the mRNA vaccines seemed to become uncapped (some people I know have now received 4 shots), and the long term benefits went to nil (if not negative), commonly thought due to mutation. So the question is what are the odds that it really will be just "once" and what are the odds that it will really provide protection against RSV, and future mutated strands. It seems to me the vaccine industry should be put in a severe category of "distrusted entities" until we have significant improvements in our symbolic infrastructure to the point where they could be trusted again.

burnished 3y ago
Are you suggesting that the limited duration of protection and hence the need for followups (like flu shots) is.. the result of a conspiracy? Its not clear why you think they should be 'distrusted' which calls your judgement into question.
- stevehawk 3y ago
  the common argument I heard from the anti-vaxxers was that the mRNA COVID vaccine was obviously bad/fake/contrived because it required a booster and "no other vaccine requires a booster!" And if you mention tetanus, hepatitis or meningococcal, or other vaccines that required a booster/multiple shots then you just get ignored. Ignorant gonna ignorant.
  - breck 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- breck 3y ago
  No I am saying that there was no protection and the follow ups provided none either. Yes, with 99% odds I am saying there was a conspiracy to end the randomized placebo control group early to bury any chance that someone could ever conclusively prove these vaccines were ineffective. The claim was they decided it was unethical to withhold a "life-saving" vaccine from control participants and that's why they ended it. I would bet with 99% odds that if there was a funded investigation with subpoena power you would find strong evidence that the primary reason that control group was ended because of extreme financial incentive to end it. If the control group were allowed to continue and it were shown that the vaccines were ineffective (which is what ended up being the case), tens of billions would have been lost. I am counting on someone being sloppy and letting the truth spill somewhere internally. Now if you are saying that I am showing bad judgement for speaking truth to power, for caring about honesty, I could see a valid argument there. But to me truth and honesty is more important than money. There is zero scientific evidence that this thing saved a single life. The only randomized control group experiment showed zero lives saved.
  - burnished 3y ago
    Have you not updated your priors given the difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? It seems odd to be so fixated on a control study that was abandoned for ethical reasons when so much evidence amassed regardless.
arcticbull 3y ago
You do know billions of doses of COVID vaccines were delivered and the side effects were overwhelmingly insignificant, right? Skepticism is good, but in the face of data we should be willing to pivot. The COVID vaccines are probably the single most studied and tested vaccine - heck, medical product - of all time. It's like the aspartame or MSG of the medical world. No matter how much data you provide people will never get over the idea that it must somehow be dangerous.
- breck 3y ago
  I should have used a more precise term than "uncapped". The comment I was responding to used the term "once". I was saying that in most recent vaccine history, the term "twice" was used, then "three times", then "four times", then "up to date". Uncapped was a gross exaggeration. I should instead said that there "once" could not be taken seriously and the range should be "1 to a handful of times", which is a significant factor increase of at least 2x. But anyway, in my dataset of about 1,000 acquaintances, the only one under 50 hospitalized related to Covid was a friend who was a 38 year mother of 2, in top shape, who had a heart attack within a month after her second dose, and to this day is still recovering. I do not think these vaccines are that dangerous—I would say they probably cause as much harm as one night of heavy binge drinking—but I saw zero evidence of any benefit, and yes I saw one very bad case of severe life threatening side effect.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > But anyway, in my dataset of about 1,000 acquaintances, the only one under 50 hospitalized related to Covid was a friend who was a 38 year mother of 2, in top shape, who had a heart attack within a month after her second dose, and to this day is still recovering. There's a reason we don't use anecdotes as a substitute for medical research. Not least because they're subject to the post hoc fallacy. Just because one event follows another doesn't mean there's a causal relationship. There's every chance that mother of 2 was going to have a heart attack anyways. It happens. The fact they had a vaccine first likely isn't relevant, clinically speaking. If you give a few billion people vaccines, you will find literally every effect that follows. Car crashes. Broken arms. Death by mauling. Syphilis. Turbo-cancer of the elbow. In that age group, a boundary group, your risk of having a heart attack are somewhere between 17 and 97 per 100,000. [1] The risk of a heart issue from the vaccine is about two orders of magnitude lower than that. > I do not think these vaccines are that dangerous—I would say they probably cause as much harm as one night of heavy binge drinking— ... You have no basis to arrive at that conclusion. > ... but I saw zero evidence of any benefit ... It's in the data. > ... and yes I saw one very bad case of severe life threatening side effect. You saw one anecdotal report of a bad thing that happened to someone after they took a COVID vaccine, without any evidence they were connected. I'm sure more than once someone took a tylenol and got hit by a bus. That doesn't mean taking tylenol causes getting hit by a bus. > The proportions of participants who reported at least 1 serious adverse event were 0.6% in the vaccine group and 0.5% in the placebo group. [2] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32111640/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32111640/ [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/reactogenicity.html#18-serious-adverse-events https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer...
gerbilly 3y ago
> It seems to me the vaccine industry should be put in a severe category of "distrusted entities" It [feels] to me the vaccine industry should be ... FTFY I hate being controlled by 'the man' just as much as anybody, but I think you have to ask yourself why you are so fixated on this issue? What's your position on gun ownership? If you really want to keep mothers of two, or their children for that matter, from dying; then maybe focusing your outrage there would save more lives.

detaro 3y ago

... it's numbers about a different vaccine, how are they relevant here?

fwlr 3y ago

> while the vaccine may continue to confer long term benefits It had better! Otherwise (in my opinion) it has little claim to the label “vaccine”.