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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 19

By September 9, 2021Commentary

Ooops, don’t you just hate those Freedom of Information Acts that allow citizens to see what their government is really up to.  Lookie here, the teachers’ unions basically dictated the content of the latest CDC school masking content.  I am telling you, if I ran the country, teachers’ unions would be forceably disbanded and the leaders jailed.  Thanks to Phil Kerpen for the tweet, I am sure you can find more on the internet until the teachers’ unions get the social media companies to disappear that as well.  (Kerpen Tweet)

More good news about the effect of lockdowns and the terror campaign is the right way to get started today.  People were frightened into avoiding health care that they needed.  This is leading to a surge of more serious illnesses that could have avoided or lessened with earlier diagnosis and intervention.  Cancer is one obvious example of this and researchers continue to find that late diagnosis is occurring more frequently, as shown in this study comparing pre-epidemic and post-epidemic cancer patients.  (JAMA Study)

There has been a lot fear-mongering about side effects associated with CV-19 vaccines.  To understand whether vaccination is really associated with a subsequent medical event requires large studies comparing the background rate with the rate following vaccination and adjusting for a variety of factors.  There were stories spreading about the vaccines being associated with miscarriages, and obviously emotional topic.  This study suggests that there is no greater risk of miscarriage following vaccination.  (NEJM Article)   (In the same issue you will find several letters updating the original research.)

On the other hand the research does suggest that vaccination may be associated with an increase in myocarditis and other heart inflammation, particularly among young males.  This is a comprehensive study attempting to assess the rate following vaccination but oddly it is compared not with the background rate but with the risk of hospitalization from a CV-19 infection.  Kind of hard to say the vaccine is causing excess rates of an event without knowing the rate in the absence of vaccination.  Other research suggests the vaccine does cause over-background cases of myocarditis.  But the reasearch also suggests that CV-19 results in even more cases of myocarditis.  Many of the cases included in this study resulted in hospitalizations, and the authors had that information so why they aren’t comparing the rates of hospitalization from myocarditis after vaccination, instead of comparing the somewhat higher number of all cases, even those not resulting in hospitalization, seems misleading.  The complete absence of any comparison to normal background rates is also misleading.  Having said that, I remain very skeptical about the wisdom of requiring or even recommending vaccination for children until we have far larger studies on safety.  CV-19 very, very rarely results in any serious illness in children and if the vaccines provide only medium-term protection, I don’t see how the harm/benefit calculation tips in favor of vaccination.  (Medrxiv Paper)

More than 20 months into this nonsense and researchers are still struggling to ascertain whether there is substantial pre-existing immune response specifically directed at CV-19, which would largely be in the form of cross-reactive responses from seasonal coronaviruses.  This study says there isn’t any evidence of memory B cell response to CV-19 in pre-epidemic plasma samples, although there was evidence of substantial reactivity to seasonal coronaviruses.  This contrasts to T cell studies which have suggested the presence of such cross-reactive cells.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And here we on go the vaccine effect roller-coaster.  This study again suggests that being infected before vaccination leads to both a stronger and more sustained antibody response than is found in persons who are vaxed but did not have a prior infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This paper found that helper T cells in the lymph nodes remained at strong levels for at least 6 months following vaccination, even as circulating helper T cells lessened.  (Medrxiv Paper)

The study found a strong effectiveness of full vaccination, in the range of 90%, in reducing hospital admissions, ICU use, and ER visits.  (NEJM Article)

This study looked at rates of transmission in the households of Scottish health care workers who were and weren’t vaccinated.  The rates fell substantially in the households after the worker became vaccinated.  (NEJM Article)

 

Join the discussion 11 Comments

  • Corey says:

    Here’s a really good breakdown on UK vaccine data. If you’re not following this substack, I highly recommend it:

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-covid-vaccines-working

    “overall, this paints a pretty grim picture for VE assessment, especially in the high risk over 50 group where VE looks to be 10-13% for medical and death measures and indistinguishable from zero in terms of case prevention.

    the young fared a bit better with 13-35% VE, but also showed no sterilizing immunity gain in terms of case prevention.”

  • Abhijit Bhakshi says:

    A few questions.

    1. RE: “But the reasearch also suggests that CV-19 results in even more cases of myocarditis [than is caused by the spike protein shot].” Are you not performing a classic comparison of apples and oranges? Since symptoms of super scary COVID typically occur among old people, and you stated the vaccine myocarditis is particularly affecting young men, would not an entirely different picture emerge if you compared by age cohort? Would you not then see that the coof shot is merely adding myocarditis to young people and, at best, subtracting some among old people? And if so, isn’t that a horrible and immoral trade off? As you say in other contexts, age structure is everything.

    2. What is the definition of “vaccine effectiveness”? I have my suspicions what the methodology is to arrive at these numbers, but would love to see it laid out precisely, along with the input numbers used to derive it.

    3. At what point do we leave the fantasy land of studies and look at the whole country (or whole state or political unit) picture and say something is horribly off with our research claims? Of course we have Israel, Iceland, Oregon, Australia, etc. And what about excess death figures?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      1. no, the studies are by age group. 2. almost every study of vaccine effectiveness in the methods section details the exact formula used. 3. Not sure what you mean here. I am not aware of any country where the vaccines have not been very effective at reducing hosps and deaths.

  • J. Thomas says:

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/you_are_only_as_good_as_your_last_covid_test.html

    No such thing as bad press, they say ! You’re now an AT celebrity. Keep up the great work.

  • Rob says:

    The social media censorship is the digital equivalent of book burning. It’s especially damning in the internet age where flame wars are a thing. If you don’t like what someone tweets, flame away. Instead, banning a person or a topic is a sign that there isn’t a coherent counter-argument to the responses.

  • Karen says:

    As far as your comment about the vaccine and miscarriages, tell that to my friend who miscarried 2 hours after getting the vaccine at 4 months pregnant and another friend having the same event at 7 months and the the last friend whose baby was healthy and at full term so before delivering got the vaccine to protect her healthy baby and it was stillborn. Also tell the families of the three I know whose family member died within 15 minutes of the vaccine and then tell it to my nephew who, while they had him sit down and wait to make sure all was ok went into convulsions. If you need more I have them.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      I am just going to say that i do not for one second believe these anecdotes, they fly around the internet, people make stuff up and I am not going to just accept that it is true. i think it almost certainly isn’t

  • Abhijit Bhakshi says:

    Thanks.

    1. So to confirm: there are more documented cases of COVID causing severe myocarditis in, say, healthy non-obese males 0-19 than the vaccines causing the same among the same cohort?

    2. I appreciate that the studies do provide it, and I think your subtle dig is justified inasmuch as I haven’t read them and don’t know it. But if they’re all using the same method, then your readers would be well served by a simple explanation (once, in a reference post).

    3. I mean, is it at all concerning that for e.g. the UK is reporting over 150 deaths/day right now given they are over 80% “fully” vaccinated? Or is that just the expected level of death and there’s nothing amiss?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      1. No, I don’t know that this is true, but what does appear to be true is that there are more cases of myocarditis in males in that age group who got infected than who got vaccinated, but I would have to double check on that specific age group as opposed to slightly older male cohorts.
      3. No, not necessarily. We need to know how many are vaxed vs. unvaxed. In the US the vast majority of deaths are in the unvaxed even though nationally we are past 70% of adults being fully vaxed.

  • Abhijit Bhakshi says:

    On point number 1, here’s an article from the Telegraph (paywalled) asserting, effectively, the opposite: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-risk-vaccines-covid/

    The summary claim is that teenage boys are 6X more likely to have heart problems from the “safe and effective and don’t ask questions you murdererer” vaccine than from being hospitalized for COVID. I suspect hospitalization is a good proxy for health complications.

    So in sum, on point number one, I believe that the available data make the claim you are making (don’t worry there’s no more myocarditis) untenable. Maybe on some fantasy net basis yes but it is deeply wrong to force it on a young person whilst claiming that’s equivalent to an 80 year old getting it from a virus).

    And if you want to *reduce* heart problems, wouldn’t the sensible thing be to administer your vaccine to the people who need it and not to the people who don’t? Isn’t less net myocarditis superior to no met increase?

    —–

    I don’t think Israel having its worst ever outbreak of this tedious virus after administering Pfizer to just about everybody is some anecdote flying around the internet.

    Just an example. Many other places have the same.

    In any event the “fact checkers” who identify “misinformation” have been so consistently wrong on everything I’ll take random anecdotes over your claims.

    “You won’t be forced to take the vaccine by your own government! That’s a conspiracy theory.”

  • Abhijit Bhakshi says:

    Corey, there was an update to the article you posted, and the link changed to: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-covid-vaccines-working-take-2

    I think even with the corrections the previous conclusions were roughly true and the new ones are similar.

    One important point for me is how terribly untrustworthy the U.S. data are. The U.K. may be more fascist *in some ways* but they do at least provide comparatively quality data.

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