I was deceived about Covid vaccine safety

I didn't write this article, nor did I rigorously fact check it. But it struck me as at least, mostly reasonable questions around which to foment a discussion. Most of the points in this article I'd be comfortable asking to a room of PhD scientists with expertise on Covid and vaccines. I'd be disappointed to see this flagged.

I glanced over it and it’s clear the author has no idea about statistics or rates. Oh at a time when a few hundred million vaccines were administered there was an uptick in absolute numbers of reported vaccine side effects? Wow! And that happened in the context of a large portion of the population being deathly afraid of the vaccine and anxious about it?

If one wants to present an unpopular and not viewed as credible point of view, it’s pretty important not to look completely ignore simple alternative explanations that are unquestionably causing part of the effects one is talking about

The group who are in good health, who had the Delta variant and can prove it via antigen test results and Dr. letter of recovery, may not be afraid of the jabs. Instead, maybe they think their sterilizing immunity is the logical progression for those in good health and better than non-sterilizing jabs.

Given the ppl I've spoken with, this is slightly off target assumption. It's not the jab they fear per se. It's the sources (gov + pharma) and the context (heavyhanded hyperbolic data / stats manipulation), and as of late the authoritarian efforts to force the jabs on anyone (above 5 yo) with a pulse.

If these people have a fear, it's that given the facts too few others have no fear at all.

Now if you instead had read the entire thing and believe his points are substantially correct I couldn't fault you for vouching for it even if I personally don't agree. I do not suggest you can't have your own opinion. Instead i suggest you form it and THEN vouch for what is actually worth reading. Things are mostly flagged for a reason.

A data scientist who is an ex-biologist who is quoting line doctors and cobbling bits of social media isn't some powerful truth-finder. They're just muddying the waters and making it harder for the public health establishment reduce mistrust.

I also don't think there is any interesting rational discussion that's going to come from posts like this since they don't rise to the level of scientific discussion.

No, they're full of shit. They use small to moderate descripencies to argue that everything is wrong. The two that I saw before closing it:

(1). The vaccine is less effective than advertised but that doesn't mean it's ineffective. Two doses still provides good protection while two doses plus boosters provides excellent.

(2). It's still primarily an epidemic of the unvaccinated. The ~15% of unvaccinated turn into 70-80% of hospitalizations. If the hold outs got vaccinated (and everyone got boosted) we could cut hospitalizations 75-95%

Like, if you see a creationist proof against evolution that follows the scientific form superficially, do you post it to HN because it deserves to be discussed? I sure as hell hope not.

What happened with the AZ vaccine in the Nordic countries is pretty good at showing how tiny effects would be detected by the public health authorities once the vaccines were rolled out to prod, and how the authorities would react to it (hint: not by covering it up to boost foreign big pharma profits, or whatever the conspiracy theory of this week is). The safety of these vaccines, as well as the relative benefits, has been intensly studied by the people who have to make the actual calls. Those are the people we should be listening to, not engaging in a dialogue with malicious crackpots.

There's nothing wrong with seeking to make "heretical" arguments, but these should call for more caution and striving for accuracy, not less. This article does not usefully contribute to the debate.

This article even includes using Facebook responses of people claiming to be part of the "consilience" of vaccine data being incorrect as one of the most egregious examples of proof of "consilience".

Some people are saying: "this person is a biologist we should trust them". Please check out their Linkedin, Linkedin posts/resposts, and Twitter and understand this persons background and where this information is coming from.

> Dr. Mandrola is right that this trial was not large enough to fully “inform the safety of a vaccine that will be given to many millions”. It was too small to detect rare events, such as myocarditis from the vaccine or serious complications from the virus. However, only the largest trials can detect rare events, and the rarer the event, the larger the trial must be to detect it. The adult vaccine trials, which were about twenty-times larger than the adolescent trials, also did not detect rare events, such as blood clotting with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The inability to detect rare events is a fundamental limitation of clinical trials, not a flaw of this particular trial.

Rare events can usually be detected once a vaccine or medication is taken by large numbers of people. This is why post-marketing surveillance, called a phase IV trial, is so crucial. It’s a fact that no serious safety signal emerged during the trial. The authors were not only justified to report this finding, the data from their study required it. They didn’t claim that rare side effects would not emerge once millions of children received the vaccine.

All of this makes me wonder. Other than a trial that enrolled hundreds of thousands of adolescents, which would be required to meaningfully detect a rare event such as myocarditis, is there anything a trial could do so Dr. Mandrola wouldn’t feel he had to put “positive” in quotes? Did he make his objections known when the plans for the adolescent vaccine trial were announced or only after it was completed? Has he been similarly critical of other randomized-controlled trials, or is this the only trial he has singled out this way? As he does not feel someone getting COVID-19 is a “clinical outcome”, what would he call it? Why didn’t he inform his readers that the vaccine prevented COVID-19 in adolescents? Would he have been similarly silent had the vaccine been significantly less effective at preventing COVID-19? We can only guess.

...

So basically, yeah these clinical trials aren't big enough to catch these side effects, but the motivations of any doctor pointing that out must be suspect!

I read the entire linked article. This is not a neutral summary, and one should not "just go with it". The author is a psychiatrist, and he has a pretty clear bias: most of the words in the article are spent equivocating on severity, despite the author saying that he doesn't have the necessary background to judge:

> As a neurologist and psychiatrist, I view the heart as a pump to deliver blood to the brain, so I am a bit out of my territory when discussing whether or not myocarditis can be “mild”.

This is the medical version of "IANAL" (which is always followed by legal advice...)

For a balanced view on this issue, I like Walid Gelad, who is a professor of medicine at Pitt, an expert in drug regulatory process, and has been vocal on the topic of regulatory approval of booster doses for children:

https://twitter.com/walidgellad

Big Pharma may be evil, but they sure like cash, and they get a lot more cash from developing a safe vaccine than an unsafe one. Look at the J&J vaccine that the CDC is specifically saying to not get if you have Pfizer/Moderna available due to the risk of blood clots.

Dangerous vaccines don't sell.

The provided data is just raw numbers, not proper statistics. What is being compared is the mortality in those who chose to be vaccinated vs those who didn't. There is no control for confounding factors like if the first group are generally more health conscious, or if there are disproportionately more young healthy people in the vaccinated group, or even if hospitals are admitting more unvaccinated people under the impression they're more at risk.

Obviously, at this point we're seeing very clear divergence in both hospitalizations and deaths wherever we track vaccinated vs. non-vaccinated people (e.g., NYC and more recently the CDC), but I'm surprised how small the relevant case numbers are in that study.

I'm happily vaccinated, but after seeing these results (thank you for the link), it's not clear to me why the vaccine is recommended for anyone under 65 if they're healthy given the limited benefit and large increase in adverse reactions.

I don't think I agree that it's deliberately misleading. The graphic is used to argue against the statement that "Clinical trials have shown that the vaccines are highly effective ... against death". If these are indeed the trials that are being referred to, I don't think that data shows this. 3 Covid deaths versus 1 out of groups of 16,000 is compatible with being highly effective, but probably isn't statistically significant. Would you argue that this is sufficient evidence to claim that a vaccine is "highly effective"? Personally, I think they are highly effective, but I'd agree with the author that this particular study is not very good evidence of this.

I'm doubtful the graphic was intentionally blurred. I'd guess it's a screenshot of a screenshot type problem. The important numbers are visible if you look closely, and (atypically) links to the underlying data are helpfully provided at the bottom. Also, although it might not be immediately apparent, the graphic shows the results of two different trials. The top is Moderna, the bottom (which coincidentally also had about 16 deaths per group) is Pfizer (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345). In that study, there are 2 Covid deaths for the placebo, and 1 for the vaccine.

Also, just for a sense of proportion, there were actually 2 suicide deaths in the Moderna study period, one in each group. In the Pfizer study, there don't appear to have been any suicides, but the 29 total deaths include some unhelpful causes of death including "Missing", "Unevaluable Event", and "Death"!

This is both true at a glance (the number of deaths are clearly too small to establish statistical significance, i.e. the trial was underpowered to detect efficacy against death), and corroborated by the study you link to which (on page 68) lists the 95% CI of efficacy against death as NE-100%. NE = non-estimable).

Now, we do know that vaccines are protective against death from covid-19, but this study did not establish that fact.

Why do I bother writing this? I believe the only way to defeat "misinformation" is to rebut it accurately. An inaccurate rebuttal is likely to be interpreted as "my opponents don't even understand the data, therefore I believe my original position even more strongly".

I think a better rebuttal to this argument is "yes, the original trials did not prove efficacy against death - because they were underpowered, not because the effect did not exist. Subsequent observations of death rates among vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations are basically impossible to explain unless the vaccines protect against death, even though those observations weren't taken during an RCT."

The dismissive attitude of many of the commenters (present company excluded) is sickening. I'm weary of the "I don't have to refute this, I declare that it doesn't rise to the level of scientific discussion" argument. Thanks for actually saying something to address one of the claims here.

This isn't to say that there aren't real conspiracies or that any claims that a conspiracy exists is "conspiracy theory epistemology." The problem is this particular mode of epistemology where a claim is presented and then significant time is spent focusing on how the mere fact that experts disagree is somehow evidence of the coverup. The reason it's bad epistemology is that it can be used indiscriminately in defense of literally any claims of conspiracy.

There is a reason vaccines take a long time to develop. Let’s not pretend that this straight to market approach does not come at a potential bigger negative down the road.

I would like to have a long term phase 4 follow up. And yes I got two doses of Pfizer and I had COVID as well.

If the harm is acute then sure evidence should be overwhelming but we should continually look for evidence of injury as it could be subtle.

We should also keep in mind that even if we do find a rate of injury higher than originally thought, the overall benefit of the vaccine may still be positive as Covid itself has a higher rate of injury.

But even so I didn't really think of anything in here as "misinformation." What specifically is wrong?

Edit because apparently HN's knee-jerk downvoting applies to this instance as well: I'm triple-vaxxed and think everyone's default should be to get the vaccine unless their PCP or a specialist tells them specifically not to get it, I'm just curious what the incorrect info is other than "well it's cropped obv"

I feel you may have misread the article. The author doesn't "state" the lines you quoted, she quotes someone else (Dr Peter Doshi) who used this line in a presentation as an example of something that deserves further investigation. The part of the quote the author highlighted (a couple lines after) was "There’s something to be curious about. There’s something not adding up." She uses this quote to provoke thought, not to claim that (the unspoken) answer is obvious.

> The author attempts to argue against the vaccine

I don't think this is the argument she's making. The main thrust of her argument is that adverse side-effects of the vaccine are systematically underreported. While this could be used as part of an argument against the vaccine, she doesn't actually try to make that argument. The closest she comes is in the conclusion, where she says "I believe that for someone of my age and health, I was taking on more risk than reward, especially considering the fact that its efficacy wanes relatively quickly." Whether or not she is right, I'd wager this means she believes that many people (older than her or in poorer health) definitely benefit from the vaccine.

Same. While they may have been lucky that the vaccine isn't dangerous, the loss of credibility is strong. We all have to lose when regular people start distrusting science.

I tremble to imagine what would have happened if the lies/censoring had been made worse by the vaccine being genuinely dangerous.

"Follow the Science!" indeed :p

The perpetual boosters and social pressure is a play right into the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies who want annual flu vaccine 2.0.

I don't think public health officials really want to be in the position of explaining their lack of certainty (combined with a set of previously established good practices that are likely to lead to good outcomes) about nearly anything, since we have a long history of noncompliance in patients and lack of certainly just leads to additional noncompliance.

I don't want to sound completely unsympathetic, as I've lived through multiple paradigm changes and I know well that scientists get defensive when you challenge their territory. but remember, we have to deal with the jenny mccarthy effect.

(Yes, it's death rate and may not apply to you. it's a similar effect for infections)

"No. You can still be killed while wearing a seatbelt."

"Will I have to keep driving carefully in hazardous conditions?"

"Yes."

"If by some freak accident the seatbelt decapitates me instead of saving me, can I sue Toyota?"

"No."

"So then why am I wearing a seatbelt?"

"I don't know. Also, I couldn't answer anyway because I have the intelligence of a 9 year old."

But yeah, it leaves out the obvious benefit: sure, I may still get COVID (though the likelihood is much lower), and I still have to wear a mask, but it's nearly guaranteed that my illness will be relatively minor and I won't need hospitalization or die.

Where is the evidence for this? Everything I've seen suggests 10-20% of vaccine-induced myocarditis cases result in a life-lasting disability.

The biggest issue I have with these sorts of conspiracies is whenever you try and scratch at the "why" you'll get a bunch of conflicting answers that are completely unsatisfactory. They are trying to kill off half the population. They are trying to install mind control agents. They are trying to persecute more libertarian minded people by targeting those that refuse to vax. They are trying to make money for the vaccine producing companies.

None of these reasons make any sense for ALL the major health organizations and governments to go along with.

They also fall apart really quickly. One of the conspiracies is that "fauci is making a bunch of money in stocks from his investments in Pfizer and the like". yet, you look at Fauci's financial statements and you see he's invested pretty much entirely into mutual funds and ETFs (poorly I might add). [1] His finances are public record.

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7014520-Fauci-Disclo...

Yet it appears to be a perfectly valid theory. https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Search-COVID-19-Matt-Ridley/dp/...

It is not the first time that this has happened. We were told that Irak had weapons of mass destruction. It was announced at the United Nations. All mainstream news agencies reported it.

For many, many years, the US was 'winning the war' in Vietnam. All news agencies agreed. The US was not winning.

The mere fact that many, even most, people agree with something does not make it true.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Do-vaccinations-p...

I dunno - I got COVID and while it wasn't pleasant, it wasn't any worse than the worst flu I have had in the past. There is growing evidence that there are multiple side effects from these vaccines, including heart problems for males - particularly 18 and under or over 50. I'm in the latter so I have zero desire to roll the dice with the vaccines, especially as I've already had and recovered and now have as good if not better immunity than what is provided by the vaccine.

When you consider the ridiculous political and social pressure put on ANYONE who dares to question the vaccines, I'm frankly amazed the numbers in VAERS are as high as they are. If anything I would expect them to be underreported. Why not - the CDC director recently admitted that at least 40% of COVID hospitalizations were not because of COVID, but from people who went to the hospital for something else and happened to also test positive for COVID - despite being pitched as "COVID Infections" requiring emergency responses.

If that can be over reported for almost 2 years before we finally start to get clarification of what many suspected (or saw with their own eyes) why can't VAERS be underreported?

That's the real problem - at this point we still don't know, because very few are asking any questions. And those that do get quickly pounced on as being crackpot trash conspiracy theorists.

I'm amazed that so many people still seem to be puzzled that not everyone is unquestioning about if there are risks with the vaccines or not. Especially when there is still a blind push/rush to get everyone vaccinated, whether it is needed or not, whether it's medically advisable or not (quite a few people have pre-existing medical conditions where the vaccines are far more of a risk than mitigating COVID other ways). If such people aren't willing to have an inarguably rational discussion about real risk, then why should they expect to be taken seriously? Much of the uncertainty around the vaccines are self-inflicted wounds - and instead of altering their approach the usual suspects double down and just shout louder/more shrilly.

If they are so safe as to be unquestionable then why are they STILL operating under emergency use? Over a year later is it really still an an emergency? Isn't it beyond ridiculous to have an emergency for this amount of time - especially when the vast majority of the population has either been vaccinated or had COVID already at this point? Yes, infections are up with the latest variants - how could you miss it with the constant flogging of the infection numbers by the media and some politicians. But notice what has disappeared? The death counters that were oh so prominent, especially before a certain election. More than a little curious, eh?

It's gotten so bad that you have pharmacists now playing the role of doctor - even lecturing a physician about his care directives for his patients - when it comes to the much maligned "horse dewormer", leading to this lawsuit against Walrmart (where the pharmacy in question was) and another local pharmacy that did the same: https://www.scribd.com/document/553842620/Saliers-v-Walmart-...

This isn't about "fact checking" so called misinformation - this crap has spilled over and almost forced these people into the hospital where just about everyone agrees it's far better to NOT be forced into the hospital in the first place.

The Washington Post is puzzled about a drop in COVID cases that doesn't match the rest of the world: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/22/japan-covid-...

Funny; they fail to mention in August that the much maligned horse dewormer was authorized as a COVID treatment - and a few weeks later infection rates dropped dramatically and stayed extremely low until the time of that article.

How many people ended up in the hospital that didn't have to all because the horse dewormer and HCQ patents expired and there were cheap, generic forms readily available? Isn't it interesting that now that Pfizer has a new pill that all of the sudden the vaccine isn't the sole path to salvation for the planet? Funny that, eh?

No, they are not. Any basic statistical analysis shows this. They are still far less likely to catch a disease, and when they do they fight it off better and catch it less severely. This means fewer virus replications, fewer mutations, and fewer chances to spread.

This bothered me back when we had to hear about "death panels" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel and nearly everybody ignored that fact that since we have finite funds, we have to make difficult medical decisions that lead to patient deaths.

It’s a strange illness.

I had pretty much the exact same symptoms you are describing. I am also in my mid-thirties. It was extremely uncomfortable. It was disorienting enough that whenever I experienced it (which was daily) I would start to spiral out and have a near panic attack, i.e. it was extremely anxiety inducing. It was so uncomfortable, sometimes when I stand up (1 year later) I still brace myself for it.

I wish you a quick recovery.

For me on the other hand there were no particular issues after the virus, though I certainly don't have the same strength I had before. Haven't yet vaccinated, as I've been instructed by my GP not to yet (still have ~600 bau), my next test is in 10 days. Still researching which vaccine is safest.

That's the whole point! What matters is not the number of covid deaths, it's the total number of deaths. If a treatment saves people from covid but kills them for other reasons, it's not an effective treatment. Overall excess mortality is what matters.

With regards to the heart attack, probably just base rate fallacy. ostensibly healthy people have heart attacks at a surprisingly high rate (and it's also something easy to detect).

With regards to VAERS, I can imagine that they get an absurdly high number of prank calls and so they have to warn people not to break the law.

mRNA technology has been under development since the late 80's. If it is so safe and effective why were all the big pharma players just sitting on it and not going through the trial process to bring it to market before they got emergency authorization that absolved them of all liability? Many if not all of the companies have had trials in the past - just curious as to why they didn't complete them since these vaccines are so safe and effective?

If they are so safe that NO ONE should be questioning them, then why the blanket - and SUSTAINED - need for immunity for the makers? I can see at the start when they unexpectedly had to ramp up production in a time of crises - but they have been distributing vaccinations for over a year now. Manufacturing these should be beyond stable and old hat at this time, yet they still need blanket immunity?

For that matter, why isn't the FDA approved vaccine widely available (or even available at all)? Why aren't the emergency use authorization terminated now that there is an approved vaccine - as required by law?

Why is it Moderna happened to turn a profit for the first time in their entire existence last year? I'm sure that's just another crazy coincidence.

Yup - nothing to see here. Anyone who has any questions is just a trash conspiracy theorist, right?

It's just a single persons opinion; take it, dismiss it, do whatever you want with it.

Why do you need to copy other peoples comments to your shitty friends to defend yourself.

Use your big boy brain; this is a persons opinion piece - regardless of whether any of it is evil, good, correct, incorrect you need to employ context.

This is not the bible, this is one person publishing their thoughts to the internet. Keep that in mind always when you read someone's dogshit opinion. "intentional misinformation" is laughable.

Trust the company that was fined over a billion dollars for criminal behaviour (that cost people their lives)? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pfizer-settlement-idUSTRE...

[Edit to add: Your last paragraph reflects my frustrations with the current situation. We have to guess at the risks and make a choice. The "least crappy option" is the best we can do. I hate it.]