Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

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Ok, forget the CDC. Let's look at health Canada's site[1]:

> A total of 56,151,862 vaccine doses have been administered in Canada as of October 1, 2021. Adverse events (side effects) have been reported by 17,982 people. That’s about 3 people out of every 10,000 people vaccinated who have reported 1 or more adverse events.

> Of the 17,982 individual reports, 13,307 were considered non-serious (0.024% of all doses administered) and 4,675 were considered serious (0.008% of all doses administered).

> Most adverse events are mild and include soreness at the site of injection or a slight fever.

> Serious adverse events are rare, but do occur. They include anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction), which has been reported 307 times for all COVID-19 vaccines across Canada. That’s why you need to wait for a period of time after you receive a vaccination so that you can receive treatment in case of an allergic reaction.

And[2]:

> Up to and including October 1, 2021, a total of 195 reports with an outcome of death were reported following vaccination. Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine. Based on the medical case review using the WHO-UMC causality assessment categories, it has been determined that:

> 73 of these deaths are unlikely linked to a COVID-19 vaccine

> 75 deaths could not be assessed due to insufficient information > 41 deaths are still under investigation

> 6 deaths followed a diagnosis of TTS (refer to the TTS bullet above)

So serious side effects in 4,675/55e6 doses. That's something like a 0.01% incidence rate. And 195/55e6 deaths - 1 in 282,000.

If you don't want to trust any national health service I think we're at an impasse. Your problem is then fundamentally with the government (or even government as a concept) and not with the COVID vaccine.

[1] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/su...

[2] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#d...

Looks like Canada is playing this game with “number of doses administered” instead of “number of people actually vaccinated” too. I just don’t understand the propensity to try to mislead people, at least in such obvious ways. Most of these vaccines require two doses. Reporting adverse events on a per-dose basis effectively cuts the actual adverse reaction rate per person, which is all anyone cares about, in half.

FYI I am vaccinated. The statistics lean toward the benefits outweighing the risks for many groups of adults. I just wish these official agencies wouldn’t lie/mislead. They should lay out the actual facts and let people decide on their own. They undermine their own message and cause more of the very problem they are trying to solve.

> Reporting adverse events on a per-dose basis effectively cuts the actual adverse reaction rate per person, which is all anyone cares about, in half.

Cutting it in half doesn't really undermine the conclusion that the vaccine is safe. I'm not really sure if the average person would go "1 adverse reaction in 282,000, that seems safe. But 1 adverse reaction in 141,000? That's too risky!" Arguably the "per dose" incident rate is also most useful for answering the question: "If I go get vaccinated today, what are the chances I'm going to have a very bad day?" Reporting per person would also obscure cases like a person getting both doses and having a serious adverse reaction both times and we might instead be arguing about how they're underreporting those cases.

I think this would be a more pertinent point if the adverse event rate was higher - e.g. 20% vs 10% is a much more significant difference from doubling. Basically, if they wanted to mislead they did a really poor job. To me this points to bad design or some kind of data collection related requirements/restrictions we're not aware of (perhaps it's a problem of correlating reports to a person if you also need to keep this data anonymous for privacy reasons - but I'm just speculating).

I think this would be a more pertinent point if the adverse event rate was higher

The point is that they are intentionally doing something to water down the stats. In the minds of the vaccine hesitant, it destroys their credibility on everything else they say, even when those other things are entirely factual. Just seems like a terrible strategy to me. They are giving their critics both the gun and the ammunition with which to shoot them.

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