“People who skipped their COVID vaccine are at higher risk of traffic accidents, according to a new study”
It doesn’t protect against infection, transmission, hospitalization, or death, but the vaccine makes you a better driver. Don’t argue, it’s SCIENCE.
One of many takedowns of that silly vaccine/accident article:
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/the-unvaccinated-had-more-car-crashes
I started this topic in anticipation of the political left starting to disavow the COVID vaccine, gaslighting us regarding their prior strong support for the jabs and mandates, and shifting the blame to Trump in particular and the right in general. That’s the “turning point”. I still think it’s not only coming but also inevitable, because I believe a fair assessment of current and future evidence will indicate that the vaccination campaign was a mistake and the left does not admit to mistakes.
The turn is going to require a further accumulation of evidence of vaccine ineffectiveness and harm, and that’s coming despite continued resistance in certain quarters. One of the latest pieces is the Cleveland Clinic study you can find [here].(https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1.full). Eugyppius’ take on this is here.
The Cleveland Clinic has over 50,000 employees who were surveyed and monitored for COVID and vax/booster status. Of interest to me are these two figures, both of which represent cumulative changes since 12 September 2022, when the Clinic’s bivalent booster campaign began. The first
Seems to me this is a proverbial nail in the coffin. A big one.
Full disclosure – I have not read the paper, and do not intend to. However, there is one point about which I wonder: what is the definition of “got COVID”?
Is the definition – hospitalized with a severe infection which tested positive for covid? Or tested positive for covid with no symptoms? Or something in between?
A related question is whether people who have taken the shot test positive for covid? And if not, why not? For example, Brits always test positive for TUBERCULOSIS (I guess it is now de rigeur to capitalize diseases) because they have been vaccinated against the disease as children.
Interestingly enough, my circle has been looking at this paper:
Shortly after the initial two mRNA vaccine doses, the IgG response mainly consists of the pro-inflammatory subclasses IgG1 and IgG3. Here, we report that several months after the second vaccination, SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies were increasingly composed of non-inflammatory IgG4, which were further boosted by a third mRNA vaccination and/or SARS-CoV-2 variant breakthrough infections. IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose on average from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% late after the third vaccination. This induction of IgG4 antibodies was not observed after homologous or heterologous SARS-CoV-2 vaccination with adenoviral vectors.
Importantly, this class switch was associated with a reduced capacity of the spike-specific antibodies to mediate antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis and complement deposition.
Lots still to learn about mRNA vaccines. In part, that’s why many insiders are taking NovaVax instead of mRNA.
Full disclosure – I have not read the paper, and do not intend to. However, there is one point about which I wonder: what is the definition of “got COVID”?
Is the definition – hospitalized with a severe infection which tested positive for covid? Or tested positive for covid with no symptoms? Or something in between?
Paper: “The study outcome was time to COVID-19, the latter defined as a positive NAAT for SARS-CoV- 2 any time after the study start date.” So, a PCR test, not a rapid test, but also not hospitalization or severe disease.
The paper also states: “Since the health system never had a requirement for systematic asymptomatic employee test screening, most of the positive tests during the study period would have been tests done to evaluate suspicious symptoms. Some would have been to evaluate known exposures. A small proportion could have been tests done as part of pre-operative or pre-procedural screening.” So, they claim most of the testing was done in response to symptoms, not fishing for asymptomatic infections.
A related question is whether people who have taken the shot test positive for covid? And if not, why not?
I certainly hope that TB-vaccinated persons test positive on a TB antibody test. But PCR is looking for pieces of viral genetic material, not antibodies. FWIW, this article addresses this question, stating that the amount of material in the vaccine is too small to be detected via PCR. I’m not a biologist, tho funnily enough I know what a woman is.
Now it is not intended to deny here that some amount of central planning of this kind will always be necessary. There are unquestionably fields, like the fight against contagious diseases, where the price mechanism is not applicable, either because some services cannot be priced, or because a clear object desired by an overwhelming majority can only be achieved if a small dissenting minority is coerced.
Socialism and War: Essays, Documents, Reviews
By F. A. Hayek
The evidence against the vaccines seems to be coming thick and fast now. In addition to the Cleveland Clinic study I cited above, there’s now a few new papers, each with their own brand of bad news. The executive summary appears to be: pandemic of the mRNA boosted. Some links discussing the new papers, mainly in lay terms, below.
Two concerning images. First, as annotated for the first link:
IgG = Immunoglobulin type G is a a type of antibody. IgG3 is associated with long-term immunity. IgG4 mediates response to chronic threats, like allergens. You want your vaccine to give you IgG3 and not IgG4. That’s not what the plot shows, especially after boosting.
The second plot comes from the second link. PD-L1 is a protein that stops T-cells from attacking tumors. Some modern medications help suppress cancers by deactivating PD-L1, letting the T-cells do their thing The plot shows vaccines boosting PD-L1 relative to the control group. If this is causative and not just coincidence, this might have implications for vaccine-exacerbated cancers.
Maybe this is all garbage. Maybe these scientists are crackpots. Maybe these writers are misinterpreting the data. I’m a doctor, but not the kind who helps people.
But I’m more than a wee bit worried. Fasten your seat belt, the turning point will be very sharp.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-covid-vaccines-causing-persistent
https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/philadelphia-2023
https://jessicar.substack.com/p/the-immunological-mechanism-of-action
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-wrong-antibody-monday-december
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that (49%) of American Adults believe it is likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, including 28% who think it’s Very Likely. Thirty-seven percent (37%) don’t say a significant number of deaths have been caused by vaccine side effects, including 17% who believe it’s Not At All Likely. Another 14% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Twenty-eight percent (28%) of adults say they personally know someone whose death they think may have been caused by side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, while 61% don’t and another 10% are not sure.
The documentary Died Suddenly has been criticized as promoting “debunked” anti-vaccine conspiracy theories but has been seen by some 15 million people.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of Americans believe there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, while 37% think people who worry about vaccine safety are spreading conspiracy theories. Another 15% are not sure.
Our passing of the turning point is made inevitable by the accumulating evidence that the vaccine is harmful but yet is slowed by the deep, unshakable, and intrinsically insane nature of the belief system of the Covidian, as exemplified by this tweet below. Read it carefully. Do you know anyone like this? Please commit them soon. They need our best wishes and also professional assistance.
It will come to pass that the Covidian will turn 180 degrees and announce that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. But it’s taking more time than I thought.
NB: I came across this somewhere but cannot independently verify this is true as Dr. Natalia has protected her tweets. It is possible this is parody. I earnestly hope that it is parody. My intuition is it is not parody.
Very depressing to see an entire profession (medical doctors) largely going along with a corruption of very terms that underpin infectious disease control. Remember this story?
Thank you George Lakoff! (link)
To put a positive spin on the situation, we certainly made progress in shrinking the size of modern-day versions of the amulets and talismans meant to protect oneself against the plague… “Safe and effective” is definitely more concise than 17th century state of the art invocations (source)
My PhD student daughter that’s now interviewing for tenure track positions would endorse this. We get constant pressure to get the booster of the week. She’s declared that her university is full of people who are paid to sit around and think. They’re much smarter than we are so we should obey them. That seems to be what it takes to succeed in academia these days, any departure from the dictated groupthink means instant blacklisting.
The best approach is to just nod my head and say Sure, OK.
I had Covid over the summer, mild symptoms, and received the shortly afterwards removed from market monoclonal antibody beetle juice (bebtelovimab) since the pill interacted with my meds and I’m high risk due to arrhythmia issues. I caved, double vaxxed and single boosted due to family pressure. Perhaps coincidentally I have non-ischemic (not from an MI) heart scaring that wasn’t there on my MRI 5 years ago. No way to tell if that’s from the vax, my theory is it’s from one of the many viral infections our day care attending grandchildren have spread on our occasional visits.
Can you explain or give a link to what that chart means?
Hazard ratio gives the increase in risk:
The chart comes from this study:
@Mooselake: in a nutshell, the risk of bad outcomes increases with subsequent COVID infections.
By now it’s generally accepted “safe and effective” mRNA shots do not prevent infection or transmission. So the data in the Al-Aly paper implies mRNA jab recipients will cumulate whatever risk increase is driven by repeated infection with the pathogen with the additional risks carried by receiving the shot.
It’s sad that one chooses to relinquish civility and make ad-hominem remarks.
A few links to get additional information, if interested
Figure 2 in the paper stratifies the hazard ratio in people with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection versus no reinfection by vaccination status before reinfection. This challenges the “effective” part of the “safe and effective” mantra because no apparent reduction in risk can be observed with increased vaccination across the data.
Whether or not the “safe” part is supported by the data can be visually determined by rearranging the all-cause mortality graphs. Unfortunately, it looks like there is a significant (CIs do not overlap) increase in all-cause mortality for one or two vaccinations.
Here is the raw data from the supplemental portion of the paper. I’ve bolded the non-overlapping confidence intervals. Sadly, it seems that the mRNA shot is neither safe nor effective.
| Supplementary Table 4 Risk and 6-month burden of death, hospitalization, at least one sequela, and sequelae by organ system in SARS-CoV-2 reinfection compared to no SARS-CoV-2 reinfection by vaccination status at time of reinfection. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Outcome | No vaccination (N=202,404) |
1 vaccination (N=56,986) |
2 or more vaccinations (N=225,145) |
| HR (95% CI) | HR (95% CI) | HR (95% CI) | |
| All cause mortality | 1.67 (1.50, 1.87) | 2.25 (1.96, 2.58) | 1.97 (1.71, 2.26) |
| Hospitalization | 2.26 (2.11, 2.42) | 2.37 (2.22, 2.52) | 2.35 (2.19, 2.51) |
| At least one post-acute sequela | 1.88 (1.82, 1.94) | 1.89 (1.83, 1.95) | 1.87 (1.81, 1.94) |
Are there any silver linings? One could argue that extrapolating to the general population ought to be caveated by the fact the chart shared by our correspondent comes from an analysis of the Veteran Affairs population.
Figures 3 and 4 show the hazard risk increase is much higher for the first 30 days post-infection. The 6-month average exaggerates to some extent the magnitude of the risk increase, which is concentrated in the first month post-infection (or reinfection).
The older you are (for <85), the more vaccinated you are. It also turns out that the older you are, the worse the infection outcomes.
An analysis that churns out the number of vaccine shots as a risk factor is about as proper as an analysis that states that wearing a helmet increases the risk of death in an automobile accident.
Both helmets and vaccine shots are used by high-risk individuals to improve their chances.
To anyone attempting to engage in statistics without skill, here’s a good starting point
But for information hygiene purposes, get a PhD first.
Sadly, this individual is emblematic of the caliber of person admitted to medical school nowadays - so the rot goes from the roots clear out to the last green leaf. This particular virtue screeching on-the-cheap, a mélange of straw man arguments topped off with a medley of self-pity is revolting on its face. If we had any journalists left, years ago they would have put an end to this astoundingly abused leftist argument - i.e. anyone not in my righteous tribe is an evil hater. She is also seriously out of touch with reality. It is those who chose to not be vaccinated who have been officially disparaged, fired, discriminated against and hated. Those who decline vaccination (for rational reasons, BTW) could care less if others choose to exposee themselves to experimental gene therapy. Do you think it has occurred to her that her ova may not be unharmed? While the immortal words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes proclaim “Three generations of idiots is enough”, here, it is apparent, one suffices nicely.
Really great comments by all.
All I hear is Richard Feynman ringing in my ears: he said if there was only one thing he could teach posterity—it would be the ‘Scientific Method’. I.e., “…state a hypothesis and find evidence supporting…or not….”
Abandoning the Scientific Method was the root failure.
Oops—actually the Root Cause was Men, who knew better, not standing up to the insanity. (Yeah I know—shades of the 19th Amendment thread…. 
)
Ultimately, if there’s substance to the allegations against Pfizer, this is what the scavengers look like these days:
