Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 190

So much craziness in the world and in my home state of Minnesota, which I hereby officially disclaim any responsibility for.  And the research continues.  I am trying to catch up enough to take a bigger picture look at the wonderful work Dave Dixon has been doing on excess deaths.  I hope to do that this week.  Meanwhile here are a few of the pieces of research from recent days.

One of the stupidest assertions during the epidemic has been that CV-19 is dangerous to children and is causing lots of pediatric deaths.  That is a complete lie.  You may recall that I looked at every death certificate in Minnesota that had CV-19 on it in a death of a person 30 and under.  For ages 20 and under, not one was actually related to CV-19, and several were things like drug overdoses.  There is a study on JAMA, which was debunked when it was a preprint, claiming substantial pediatric deaths.  The author of this substack does a much better job than I could of destroying the claims in the study, which simply have to be regarded as lies.  CV-19 presents very low risk to children, and no risk to healthy children, which is one reason why vax are unnecessary for children.  (Substack Article)

I try to cover everything and satisfy all readers including the VSNs, so a few studies today related to the grossly over-hyped adverse events allegedly attributed to CV-19 vax, which so far have apparently killed over half the world’s population, with the rest to die soon.  This study looked at Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been reported with vaccines for other diseases.  It found that excess cases of the syndrome were not associated with the mRNA vaxes, but were with the seldom-used AstraZeneca one.  Oh, and the syndrome is more likely to occur after infection than after vax.  (JAMA Study)

One clear adverse event is heart inflammation, particularly among young men, and it is yet another reason why there is no reason to vax them.  But the risk has been wildly exaggerated by the VSNs, while they ignore the risk stemming from actual infections.  This study from the Scandanavian countries was very large.  It found a fair number of cases, although a very low percent, among those vaccinated and those infected.  Outcomes in terms of disease seriousness were far low for those who had vax-associated myocarditis than those who had CV-19 infection associated heart inflammation.    (BMJ Article)

One of the most despicable lies told by the VSNs is that the vax were causing fertility issues.  Alex Berenson used this for a while to sell books until it was pointed out to him repeatedly that there was absolutely no evidence to support it.  Births did dip during the epidemic, but multiple surveys show this was due to voluntary decisions to defer pregnancy, and in the US, because foreign women stopped having babies here.  You may recall that one part of our absurd immigration policy says that anyone born in the US is a citizen, regardless of citizenship of their parents.  So before the epidemic restricted travel, many women came to the US, usually illegally, to give birth so their children were citizens.  This data from the CDC shows that births have since rebounded, during the period when vax were supposedly interfering with fertility.  What you see if you look at the data is that births and birth rates were declining steadily for many years before the epidemic, turned down somewhat more sharply during it, and have since rebounded, a sign of pent-up demand if you will.  No evidence anywhere of a vax effect and particularly no evidence of any increase in fertility treatments.  And a piece of really good news from the report is the very substantial decline in births among teenagers.  (CDC Data)

Another issue grotesquely hyped by the VSNs was a heart issue called postural orthostatic tachycardia.  This article discusses studies on the issue, including a large one using EHRs.  While there was a somewhat greater risk of such a diagnosis 90 days after vaccination, there was a five times greater risk of this diagnosis after a CV-19 infection than after getting the CV-19 vax.  So in terms of risk benefit analysis, the VSNs might want to consider that.  And it isn’t surprising that a vaccine based on the pathogen in question might elicit some of the same issues as an infection by the actual pathogen.  (JAMA Study)

Home testing has radically altered the completeness of official data on CV-19 infections.  This study covered March to August of 2022 and found that by June of that time over 80% of all tests were home tests, with a somewhat lower positivity rate than that for official tests toward the end of the study period.  The implication is that people were primarily relying on home testing and likely going to get an official test or treatment only if they had really serious symptoms.  If you extrapolate official positivity rates to home testing, you would conclude that there were massively more numbers of cases and breakthrough infections than have been reported.  (JAMA Study)

There was some suggestion earlier in the epidemic that some vaccinations might be protective against CV-19, including the vax for tuberculosis.  This study, a randomized trial, finds no evidence that the BCG vaccine limits risk of CV-19 infection or hospitalization or other serious respiratory infection.  (BCG Study)

Vaccine effectiveness studies with short follow-ups are pretty useless.  This one from Hong Kong suggests high effectiveness in the 4 to 6 months after vax against death and hospitalization, but fails to assess effect of prior infection, and is assessed in regard to Omicron, which results in milder disease in any event.  Presumable effectiveness against infection was very low, since it wasn’t reported on.  The authors somewhat ludicrously make the usual assertion that the quick decline in protection means we should all just keep taking boosters.  (JAMA Study)