1120 CoViD Vacc Wrongs
Introduction:
This blog exists for a particular reason (not that I haven't got enough CoViD blogs, see more at the bottom) but I received a CoViD email that warrants a response ... since I am very aware of vaccine hesitancy.
1109 Why not vaccinate?
This is the conundrum of our times:
Why would one want to not get vaccinated?
I introduce my response with a reference to the teachings of
J. Krishnamurti.
One of my favourite books by K is "Freedom from the Known" ... the gist of the book is this: If you want to know the truth, to begin with, you must disabuse yourself of everything you know, all you have learnt, any beliefs you hold ... while that may sound dramatic, the application of that advice is simple:
When considering an issue that is contrary to your beliefs and you want to find out the truth, approach it with an open - indeed an empty - mind; i.e. disregard everything you know about it ... and immerse yourself in the contrary view.
Once you have thoroughly informed yourself thus, you are in the position to compare the two takes on the issue ... your old one - and the alternate one.
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Foreword:
The email I've received contains mis-interpretations of the data it is referring to ...
The vaccines don’t work. The writer - let's call him X - abundantly states research, but when analysing it, he draws the wrong conclusion: They don’t fucking work!
X is falling victim to a very common issue with people who, as he says, "our minds clearly are made up" (mine isn’t ... I just follow the government recommendations): He does vigorous research … but only to the point when he finds information, numbers, statistics that confirm his bias. Then he stops.
The two main points in X's email are:
1) more vaccinated than un-vaccinated people are diagnosed with CoViD
2) there are more deaths among the vaccinated than the un-vaccinated
Both points are dealt with in a mis-leading, indeed superficial manner. In short:
1) true, there are more people with CoViD who are vaccinated; however...
as population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of Covid cases
2) true (for the same reason as 1), but tendentious: just looking at the numbers is not enough, the actual causes of deaths need to be taken into consideration, since many of the deaths among the vaccinated are not due to CoViD
Obviously there is much more to these headlines ... hence this blog; but the bottom line is that X's conclusion: The vaccines don’t work is not just flawed, but - if it prevents him from getting vaccinated - potentially dangerous.
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If you had read as many medical papers, scientific literature and did your own research I would respect what you have to say.
Herein lies your problem, X: You may indeed know a lot due to all your research, but - with all due respect - you don’t know enough to make an educated decision about getting vaccinated, as a lot of what you refer to is mis-interpreted.
This is because you’re not educated in the fields that count: public health, viral diseases, infectious diseases, virus infections, communicable diseases, immunology and epidemiology. For an educated decision you would be best advised to refer to specialists in those fields, like the NSW Chief Health Officer doctor Kerry Chant, who have studied these fields professionally all their lives.
It's all well and good to do your own research (I do a lot of it), but what counts is how you evaluate & interpret the data you find; after all “doing my own research” can lead you down rabbit holes of half-analysed, mis-interpreted, indeed fake info.
Yup. I know. For most of the non-vaccers, “do your research” translates to:
“I don’t care that Nobel Prize winners, epidemiologists, immunologists, doctors and governments worldwide are united on the need for vaccinations ... I saw a YouTube video that convinced me I am right and they are wrong."
Before I go into the mis-interpretation aspect, let me say this: Other than falling for mis-information, this is another aspect of this discussion: Not to vaccinate is a selfish decision; it is inconsiderate. We do not just vaccinate not to get CoViD, we also vaccinate to keep everyone in the community safe … it’s easy to say, “oh, I’ll just wait and see,” and of course, the longer one waits the safer one will be, because eventually everybody else is vaccinated.
Besides, the stance “I'll wait" disregards the fact that life will be hard when the signs NO VACCINE - NO SERVICE are up; (go to my blog 1105).
1105 NO VACCINE - NO SERVICE
Finally: The authorities may wise up
Furthermore, the longer people wait, the longer it will take for the economy to recover. You know, the greater good versus ones own egoism. I know, I know … you want the best for your family (fuck the greater good), but you probably - unwittingly - are not doing your family a good service.
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On to the main issue now: Mis-information and flawed analyses.
1) more vaccinated than un-vaccinated people are diagnosed with CoViD
An example is X's selective quote from the FAIR WORK COMMISSION [2021] FWCFB 6015 Decision. It says quite rightly, "[134] There is nothing controversial in stating that vaccines do not eliminate the risk of COVID, given that those who are vaccinated can catch and transmit COVID.” This is common knowledge.
Another part-quote from that section [134]: "By way of one example, a report issued by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States on 6 August 2021 looked at an outbreak of COVID in Massachusetts during July 2021. Of the 469 COVID cases identified, 74% were fully vaccinated.”
Now we get to the crux of the matter: This is incomplete information ...
(hence mis-leading); the full information ... referring to the same study in another medium (CNBC): health officials say ... The agency noted that as population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of Covid cases.
The CDC also said the data has limitations ... The CDC also said the report is “insufficient” to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the ... vaccines against Covid.
(The vaccines) are still highly effective, especially in protecting against severe illness and death. Roughly 97% of new hospitalizations and 99.5% of deaths in the U.S. are among unvaccinated individuals, U.S. health officials repeated.
The paragraph [134] concludes saying, "What is clear ... is that the vaccine is not an effective control measure to deal with transmission of COVID by itself.” Doh!
Of course that is true too ... nobody in their right mind would claim that the vaccine prevents the transmission of CoViD (anyone vaccinated may carry as many Corona Viruses in their nose as anyone not vaccinated); again, nothing controversial here.
But wait, there's more:
Your unvaccinated friend is roughly 20 times more likely to give you COVID. THE CONVERSATION
Many vaccinated people are concerned about the prospect of mixing with unvaccinated people ... at family gatherings, or, in NSW at least, at pubs and restaurants when restrictions ease further, slated for December 1.
Some people are wondering, why would a vaccinated person care about the vaccine status of another person? Briefly, it’s because vaccines reduce the probability of getting infected, which reduces the probability of a vaccinated person infecting someone else.
And, despite vaccination providing excellent protection against severe disease, a small proportion of vaccinated people still require ICU care. Therefore, some vaccinated people may have a strong preference to mix primarily with other vaccinated people.
The key point here is: From now on, due to the large up-take of vaccinations,
the majority of people getting CoViD will have been vaccinated; however ...
97% of hospitalizations and 99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated.
SMH: Vaccine hesitancy collapses as most voters back reopening rollout
SMH: Unvaccinated 16 times more likely to enter ICU during Delta peak
So, among those who get CoViD, the vaccinated will have much milder symptoms ... the unvaccinated may get seriously sick. Soon of 100 CoViD cases some 95 will be people who are vaccinated and who will get mild - if any - symptoms. But about 5 will be unvaccinated ... and they will form the pool of hospital admittances, ICU bed occupants, respirator users and the dying.
Furthermore, what about the next point in the FAIR WORK COMMISSION [2021] FWCFB 6015 Decision: “[135] In order for an employer to meet its duties under health and safety laws, it will need to minimise the risk of exposure to COVID in the workplace, which will require employers to apply all reasonably practicable COVID control measures."
"all reasonably practicable COVID control measures". Methinks that indeed includes mandates for employees to getting fully vaccinated.
Please note, the Decision by the Fair Work Commission X is referring to, is by Vice President Hatcher, Deputy President Dean and Commissioner Riordan ... three non-medical, legal professionals; the Decision is opinionated, with a slant toward non-vaccination, loaded with tendentious quotes. It is by no means a medical study on which to base a decision as to whether to vaccinate or not.
Furthermore, to deduct from the decision by the Fair Work Commission that it is better not to get vaccinated, is not borne out by the legal circumstances.
Can vaccinations be mandatory? Yes.
"Where the Fair Work Commission has considered cases involving a lawful and reasonable direction by an employer that employees must be vaccinated, it has been clear that you require strong medical evidence to successfully get an exemption."
NSW workers’ appeal against vax mandates fails
An appeal against a court order validating laws requiring some workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 has been dismissed. In September, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard’s public health orders were challenged; it was argued the rights to bodily integrity and freedom of movement were being impinged.
But Justice Robert Beech-Jones in October rejected the claim, saying the legislation underpinning the orders did not violate bodily integrity, as the orders didn’t authorise the involuntary vaccination of anyone. Ms Henry said she believed she had “basic human right in Australia” to bodily integrity. But the judge found evidence of NSW infectious diseases specialist Professor Kristie Macartney and other experts more compelling.
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One key concern for anti-vaccers is that the vaccines are not safe, an insidious conspiracy; the truth is ... they save lives, and don't cause deaths: Reuters
The VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) page clearly states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, “under the most intense safety monitoring in United States history,” and recommends receiving the vaccine as soon as possible.
"The risk of serious adverse reactions has remained extraordinarily low for all modern vaccines” Our World in Data - Coronavirus Vaccinations
History of Vaccines: Since WWII many viral diseases had vaccines invented for their prevention, like Polio, Measels, Influenza, Chickenpocks, Mumps, Wooping Cough, Cholera, Typhoid, Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Meningococcal, Hepatitis A, Pertussis etc …
Our World in Data: Reasonable estimates of lives saved due to vaccinations are in the range of around 5 million lives per year, which implies that between 1980 and 2018 around 150 to 200 million lives have been saved.
To be clear: Vaccination has been the most successful medical procedure ever introduced. It has saved more lives than any other intervention. “The risk of serious adverse reactions has remained extraordinarily low for all modern vaccines;” again: ... COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, “under the most intense safety monitoring in United States history,”
CNN: Covid-19 vaccines saved nearly 280,000 lives in the US
Google search: "How many Deaths from CoViD?" There have been about 219m cases of CoViD 19, and approx. 4.55m deaths.
It is reasonable to suggest that millions of deaths have been prevented by the CoViD vaccines administered. However, there is the possibility of injury from a vaccination, and CoViD vaccinations are no exception:
SMH: More than 10k Australians filed coronavirus vaccine injury claims
The Therapeutic Goods Administration recorded 78,880 adverse events linked to COVID-19 vaccination, representing a small minority (0.21 per cent) of the 37.8 million doses administered to 18.4 million people, by November 7. The vast majority of those 78,000 adverse events were mild side effects, including headache, nausea and sore arms.
2) there are more deaths among the vaccinated than the un-vaccinated
... the number of people who died with 2 jabs from covid was actually much higher than those who were unjabbed
This is tendentious use of facts; I am quite sure that X's interpretation of the data is incorrect. The document just says that people died even though they were vaccinated, but not what the actual cause of death was.
CDC: Vaccine breakthrough cases are expected.
COVID-19 vaccines are effective and are a critical tool to bring the pandemic under control; however, no vaccine is 100% effective at preventing illness. Some fully vaccinated people will get sick, and some will even be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. However, there is evidence that vaccination may make illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.
The risk of infection, hospitalisation and death are all much lower in vaccinated people compared to unvaccinated.
I enclose an example from social media: It was claimed that 456 people died who had CoViD while vaccinated against it. That's true.
What was not said was that most of them had secondary health issue; very few of those deaths were attributed to complications due to the vaccination ... "Of these [456], the TGA found nine were linked to immunisation." Australian vaccine death claims are a data dupe. AAP
A spokeswoman for the TGA told AAP FactCheck the medicines regulator reviewed all reported deaths in people who had received the vaccinations.
“Reporting and publication of an adverse event report in the DAEN, including death, does not necessarily mean that it is related to the medicine or vaccine,” she said in an email.
The spokeswoman added that as the number of vaccinated people increased, so did reporting of adverse events and deaths with a coincidental association with vaccination.
THE VERDICT:
The posts falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines have caused more than 400 deaths in Australia. Rather, the figures cited are for all reported deaths following vaccination, the vast majority of which had been assessed as being unconnected with the injections.
‘Dangerous and incorrect’: TGA boss blasts One Nation senator’s vaccine death claims ... The NewDaily:
Therapeutic Goods Administration boss John Skerritt confirmed on Wednesday there had been nine deaths linked to vaccines in Australia during the rollout.
More than 34.6 million doses have been administered nationwide.
Professor Skerritt told One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts he was factually wrong to claim more than 500 people died from COVID vaccines.
See also the screen shots below, the second of which shows that the post on Instagram was removed, as it was deemed False Information.
(I think it’s funny that the person publishing that mis-information - excusethetruth - says: "Statistics Don’t Lie”, as a response to his post getting fact checked and deleted. Yeah, right; any dunce* will agree.) *dunce | noun, a person who's slow at learning
X uses these two figures to confirm his bias against vaccinations:
Back to the excerpt above; X’s conclusion is: ... it’s true. The vaccines don’t work. But these are facts. The numbers aren’t lying. Mainstream media is not reporting the whole truth.
It is a tragic inference that: The vaccines don’t work. Let us hope X's mis-interpretations of the science does not end in tragedy ... and remember always:
97% of hospitalizations and 99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated.
The numbers aren’t lying; oh yes, they (sometimes) are ... (Lies, damned lies, and statistics … is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments) ... when they're mis-interpreted, mis-quoted or taken out of context. Any astute researcher knows that.
Mainstream media is not reporting the whole truth. That is correct … nobody can report the whole truth; it is not available to anybody; it’s naïve to believe otherwise.
But the point is, what the media reports is (largely) true (except for FOX and SKY)
On August 1, 2021, YouTube barred Sky News Australia from uploading new content onto their channel for a week for breaking YouTube's rules on spreading COVID-19 misinformation.
… of course it cannot all be true, everybody makes mistakes, but - and this is the difference to the sources X uses - quality mainstream media (ABC, SBS as well as The Conversation, Reuters, AAP) have formidable fact-checking resources and the best analysts and commentators. To believe that conspiracy theory - the media is lying to us - is ignorant and delusional ... in fact it is lazy thinking.
X would be well advised to read the Factcheck report from AAP; another article, Alternative methods’ to treat COVID-19 lack clear evidence would be interesting for him too. In fact, reading this probably would help him to disabuse himself of that conspiracy that our mainstream media are not trustworthy.
This process is akin to "taking the red pill" ... a concept from the movie The Matrix, where Neo is given the choice: Take the red pill, inform yourself and learn the truth; or take the blue pill and remain in the world of delusions ...
(the world of conspiracies).
Frankly, X's statistics-reading ability is flawed. He tries to make judgements about issues based on selective information that confirms his biases and that may or may not be correct, but that often is incomplete and/or taken out of context … and which - in the first place - is about science he doesn’t understand, science which none of us can understand, since we are not studied, graduated specialists in those fields.
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And since we're talking about mis-information:
Here is a document from the UK government. A country where they are currently discussing 3rd doses right now for people because why?!? They don’t fucking work! (You can also research countries such as Israel on their 3rd jabs)
Yes, many countries are considering 3rd jabs, for you to deduct from that fact that, "they don’t fucking work!" is tragically wrong. Israel.
A good source of information is The Conversation (academic rigour, journalistic flair); they know how to analyse science and statistics.
Why are we seeing more COVID cases in fully vaccinated people? "Vaccines are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do - protecting us from severe disease and death."
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What is the take-away with all this?
We have no idea how much we don’t know (famously, there are known unknowns, but the real problem are the unknown unknowns). How do we overcome this lack of knowledge? By not doing our own research … because - in a complex case like CoViD - we just don’t know what we are looking at and instead should listen to those who do.
I’ve said it before: I feel terribly, terribly sorry for anyone who lives in a country where they can’t trust their government. Of course we always question what they’re doing (that’s what we have the Fourth Estate for, the independent media) … and by just turning on the evening news (SBS World News), we can see how lucky we are with the government we have, in comparison to most other countries.
What is the bottom line? Where to now? (I’m glad you got this far.) Are you still sitting on the fence? Stop it! And do not do any more research. Just turn on the news and listen to the government health officials, who have studied this stuff all their lives; who - as part of their work - listen to an untold amount of specialists (specialists in the fields of epidemiology, immunology and public health) and who are in the position to analyse and interpret the science.
Get vaccinated; it’s safe and the right thing to do. If this goes against what you've been talking about with your friends, don’t tell them; just do it. Set yourself free.
Says Kerri Sackville in the Herald: "Reject the anti-vacc rot ...
"As the uncontroversial evidence grows that vaccines save lives, as doctors plead for people to get vaccinated, as COVID-19 becomes a pandemic of the unvaccinated, anti-vax sentiment is indefensible. Tolerance and kindness do have limits. When we extend tolerance to everyone, even those doing harm, we end up undermining our own freedoms and wellbeing. We cannot tolerate intolerance ... and we cannot tolerate anti-vax sentiment, as this leads directly and incontrovertibly to disease and death."
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