Coronamonomania Lives Forever (at least until 2024), Part 235 (Vax Edition)

My numbering is all screwed up on the posts, so I have gone back and hopefully fixed that.

Companies keep making new versions of vaccines and hoping they make any difference.  They don’t and no one should care.  Except in rare instances, there is nothing threatening about any of the ongoing new CV-19 variants that are going to crop up.  And imagining that another version of the vax makes any difference is delusional, especially since most people have been infected and/or vaxed multiple times.  And researchers keep publishing studies that are similarly meaningless, like this one.  The study is pimped by Pfizer and has the usual woefully inadequate design to capture likely recent infection.  It shows a very low level of effectiveness as is, but if it were properly designed I think effectiveness would basically be zero.  Look at the study at the end of this post on flu vaccines to see the likely impact of constantly giving people different versions of the same vax.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And another study looked at effectiveness in regard to hospitalization of the updated vax in those 60 and over in the Netherlands.  The claimed efficacy is 70%, but once more the methodology is completely flawed, with no adjustment for prior infections, no attempt to ascertain the actual cause of admission, and so on and so on.  I don’t believe it.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This review meta-analysis looked at a wide set of trials of the vax in children.  It found no increased risk of serious adverse events, but an elevated risk of severe events in older children and an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infection in younger ones.  I see little evidence of any benefit of vax to children so any increased risk would strongly suggest they shouldn’t be vaxed.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study from Norway examined adverse vax events in 12-19 year olds, a group in which males had clear evidence of heart inflammation issues.  There were no adverse events after one dose.  After two doses, in a 14 day window there was evidence of a low rate of swollen lymph glands, heart inflammation, and anaphylactic reactions.  With longer follow-up there was a potential association with appendicitis.  Again, the rate was very low, but given the minimal benefits, I don’t see any reason to vax adolescents.  (Medrxiv Paper)

All the hubbub about continuing to get CV-19 vax has prompted relooks at the flu vaccines, which are typically recommended every year.  The reality is that flu vax is pretty ineffective and there are suggestions that taking them constantly may be part of the issue.  This study looked at the effect of a repeat vaccination in the year after a prior vaccination.  It appears that even after adjusting for various possible confounders, those who get vaxed in the subsequent year have a slightly higher risk of infection, at least from some variants.  There is some interesting discussion about the effect of vaccinations in blocking infections, which might prevent more fulsome natural immune responses, or of prior infections in appearing to make vax less effective.  And behavioral responses like not getting vaxed if you got the flu anyway after a prior vax also have to be considered.  But the bottom line is that getting repeated vaccinations does not appear to increase your protection, it seems to lower it.  (NHI Study)

And no discussion of the vax would be complete without mention of the vax safety nuts, who continue to literally make stuff up to justify their paranoid lunacy.  They are led by true quacks like Dr. Malone, who makes money selling vax detox formula, also known as snake oil.   I saw a recent post by a VSN knucklehead who wanted to make a big deal about NYC’s ambulance providers being alerted to the potential for emergencies during the initial vax campaign.  I have news for this clown, that is standard for mass vaccination campaigns, where there is always a risk of severe allergic type reactions.  Steve Kirsch weighs in with an analysis of Medicare data that is simply laughable in its claim to find tons of deaths caused by the vax in that population, and contrary to a formal study by the BEST group.  And then there is the tactic of picking out some little part of a bigger study and trying to exaggerate it.  In this example, it is a study from India of factors which might be associated with long CV-19, a largely mythical condition, which found that severity of disease and number of symptoms during the acute phase were the greatest predictors for long CV-19.  There was a small association with being vaxed, but only at the short follow-up period, no data reported for the longer followup.  This was a small study, based on self-reported responses to a survey, and a quarter of respondents were lost in the longer follow-up.  The authors themselves note that this finding is likely to result from bias, but that doesn’t stop the VSNs.  (NHI Study)