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Two-thirds of the Great Barrington Declaration aren’t even hiding that they are antivax anymore

Two of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration appeared on a panel with antivaxxer Steve Kirsch, who thinks COVID vaccines have killed 500K. And they keep denying that they are antivax!

While I was…indisposed…writing a grant application that was due yesterday, something came to my attention that I just knew I had to write about to get the blogging circuits firing again after over a week away. Basically, it came in the form of a Tweet thread a couple of days ago featuring two out of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) appearing on a discussion panel with antivax tech bro Steve Kirsch, who has repeatedly—and falsely—claimed that COVID-19 vaccines have killed more people than they have saved and Robert “inventor of mRNA vaccines” Malone. Indeed, as you can see, he claims that COVID-19 vaccines have killed a half a million people!

Don’t believe me? Check out this antivax misinformation panel, which includes Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff:

That’s Jay Bhattacharya on the far left, with Martin Kulldorff sitting next to him. Together, they represent two-thirds of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Why the third author, Sunetra Gupta, couldn’t attend is not disclosed. (They could have Zoomed her in!) How can they deny being antivax when they associate themselves with this sort of misinformation?

Helpfully, The Real Truther provides a link to Steve Kirsch and his antivax livestream:

Only ten people in the audience? That’s hilarious. However, how many people will watch the video saved from the livestream?

The schedule was quite the stacked bill of COVID-19 grifters, deniers, antimaskers, and antivaxxers, too:

Schedule for May 16. All times EST.

8:45 AM – 9:55 AM: Panel 1: Efficacy of Non-Pharmaceutical Public Health Interventions Jay Bhattacharya (moderator), Aaron Kheriaty, Clare Craig, Eran Ben-David

9:55 AM – 10:45 AM: Panel 2: COVID-19’s Impact on Universities and Their Research and Teaching Missions Retsef Levi (moderator), David Shmoys, Chirag Patel

10:45 AM – 11:15 AM: Coffee Break

11:15 AM – 12:25 PM: Panel 3: Vaccine Efficacy, Safety Martin Kulldorff (moderator), Steve Kirsch, Neeraj Sood, Joe Fraiman, Retsef Levi

————————————————————————————————————–

12:30 PM – 1:30 PM: Lunch for participants (Room E62-350 at MIT Sloan)

Wong Auditorium (E51):

1:30 PM – 2:40 PM: Panel 4: The Effect of COVID-19 Policies on Trust in Science and Public Health Scott W. Atlas (moderator), David Katz, Andrew Noymer, Sylvia Fogel

2:40 PM – 3:10 PM: Coffee Break

3:10 PM – 4:15 PM Panel 5: The Way Forward Jay Bhattacharya (moderator), Robert Malone, Alex Washburne, Don Boudreaux

4.15 PM – 4.30 PM: Farewell comments

Just look at that bill! Hilariously, too, apparently both Kulldorff and Bhattacharya moderated panels, and others appearing on the bill included, in addition to Kirsch and Malone, Scott Atlas, Aaron Kheriaty, and many other quacks, grifters, antimaskers, and antivaxxers. Truly, the antivax content must have flowed. I will admit to not watching the entire thing. (I have better things to do with my time than to spend 8 hours watching a “debate” that was not a debate, but rather antivax propaganda.) I did, however, surf the “highlights.” If you really want to subject yourself to the whole thing, here’s the Gettr link (because of course it’s on Gettr), and, yes, it is nearly eight hours long.

Before I move on, I feel, as always, obligated to provide a bit of background for newbies. I include links to posts about specific statements, but try to write the background so that you don’t have to click on the links unless you want more information. As regular readers know, I’m not a fan of the GBD, a document written by three “lockdown” hating scientists recruited for a meet-and-greet with sympathetic journalists at the headquarters of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a right wing “free market” think tank in Great Barrington, MA, the town that gave the declaration its name. The basic idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, which was published in early October 2020, was that “lockdowns” were doing more harm than COVID-19. Based on this premise, the authors (Profs. Martin Kulldorff, then faculty at Harvard University, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University) proposed, in essence, a “let ‘er rip” strategy for COVID-19 in order to reach “natural herd immunity” more rapidly by infecting those least likely to die from the disease. The idea was to lift protections and let the young and “healthy” go back to “normal life,” while using “focused protection” to keep the elderly and those with chronic health conditions who were at much higher risk for severe disease and death from contracting COVID-19. Remember, this was months before effective vaccines were expected to become available.

Over time, GBD proponents (and at least two of the authors, and I bet that you can guess which two) have become more and more antivax and aligned with right-wing politics. AIER communications director Jeffrey Tucker left the AIER to spawn another right wing think tank, the Brownstone Institute, which he lovingly characterized as the “spiritual child” of the Great Barrington Declaration and for which he recruited Martin Kulldorff as scientific director. AIER, Brownstone Institute, and a host of other “free market” anti-regulation astroturf rapidly became the new merchants of doubt about public health and struck back at critics who pointed out the connections between right wing think tanks and anti-public health activities increasingly linked to the far right and its media ecosystem. xplicitly antivaccine and attacking vaccine advocates on social media while portraying vaccine and mask mandates, as well as “lockdowns,” as slaveryreligionfascism, and Communism. Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, plus the founder of the Brownstone Institute, have openly embraced fantasies of retribution against public health advocates very much like the sorts of fantasies of retribution antivaxxers have held for decades, in particular the idea of a “Nuremberg 2.0,” a Nuremberg-style tribunal in which public health advocates will “be held accountable” for their supposed “crimes.” Yet, through it all, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff keep claiming that they are “not antivax” while bemoaning how supposedly “persecuted” and “canceled” they have been.

Apparently, they are now so “canceled” that they willingly take part in antivax confabs, this one apparently held at MIT. You might recall that a few months ago that, as an MIT grad, Kirsch was complaining to high heaven about having been “canceled” because no faculty member there would invite him to hold his panel there. Since then, he’s been harassing the Dean of Science there about his “vaccine safety data.” How he apparently managed to land a venue at MIT now, I don’t know—and didn’t really care enough about to go digging through his copious Substack output to find out—but he did, and somehow he landed Jay Bhattacharya (whom he must have flown in from California) and Martin Kulldorff (who lives in Boston anyway). By agreeing to appear with people promoting the most bonkers conspiracy theories about COVID-19, Kulldorff and Bhattacharya have forfeited any defense against being called “antivax.” Let’s take a look at some of the “highlights” and see why, as these are the “data” that led to Kirsch’s claim at the antivax panel.

I was interested in the claim that COVID-19 vaccines. had killed over 500,000 people. Looking at the slide, I saw that Kirsch linked to what appear to be two of his Substack posts. One of them appears to be this post, entitled Survey shows over 500,000 killed by the COVID vaccines so far. I laughed as I read the opening paragraphs:

simple survey of my readers provided some extremely compelling evidence that 1) the US government has killed over 500,000 previously healthy Americans and 2) that the vaccine actually caused the deaths. 

It took me around 30 minutes to create the survey and 11 hours to wait for highly statistically significant results. 

I was able to accomplish something in less than 12 hours that the CDC has been unable to accomplish in 18 months: prove causality. We see both dose dependency and enormous changes in ACM deaths pre- vs. post-vaccine. We satisfy all five Bradford-Hill criteria applicable to vaccines.

Wow! If only it were so easy to determine adverse reactions up to and including death from vaccines (or any other medication or biological)! Damn! How is it that we stupid egghead scientists, epidemiologists, and clinical trialists didn’t think of something so simple and obvious! Why didn’t we just survey the readers of an antivax Substack?

Let’s take a look at the survey! I took screenshots, too, for your edification:

I’m not a statistician, an expert on designing surveys, an epidemiologist, a social scientist, or anyone who might have a lot of expertise in designing surveys. I have, however, designed some surveys in my time, and I do know that a survey like this publicized on an antivax Substack, is utterly worthless for producing anything resembling reliable information. It is comical just how awful this survey is, so much so that normally I’d think that the only proper response would be to ridicule Steve Kirsch for even thinking that his “survey” proves anything, much less that COVID-19 vaccines killed a half million Americans.

Still, you should enjoy the comedy too. Here, Kirsch tries to argue why his sample is a good one:

We used 400 independent observers. I should note that all follow my Substack so they are correlated: all have excellent judgment, high intelligence, and immunity from mass formation effects. So they have the ability to see what is truly going on.

Kirsch seems oblivious to the definition of “independent” for purposes of a survey like this. How “independent” can these 400 “observers” be if they are all correlated because they are followers of his Substack? I get it! Because they follow Kirsch’s Substack, they must have “excellent judgment.” Of course, from my perspective, their following Kirsch’s sub stack indicates exactly the opposite. Most likely they are antivax (or at least lean antivax) and very prone to confusing correlation with causation.

And then there’s the matter of the extrapolation:

The survey compared the all-cause mortality (ACM) death rates just PRIOR to a vaccine dose to the ACM death rates immediately AFTER the dose. I predicted they would be dramatically higher after the dose and the effect would be dose dependent. It appears I was right. In fact, the survey projects far more deaths than I thought possible.

The number of deaths computed from the reports could be as high as 2M Americans, but the 500,000 number seems more credible, so I’m discounting the result by 4X to account for biases and confounders.

Wait a minute. I thought that there were no biases or confounders. Kirsch told us so! Yet he decided to pull a number out of his nether regions to use to divide the total estimate! You’ll see why when you look at his “back of the envelope” calculation. (Statisticians and mathematicians, please try not to laugh too hard; that is, after you get through scratching your head trying to figure out exactly what Kirsch did.)

Here it is:

So let’s do the math. I’m just going to use round numbers because this is just an estimate. To do it right, we’d stratify by age, but we’re going to use average death rates, etc.

Around 3M people die a year in the US which is roughly a 0.86% death rate.

They don’t die evenly throughout the year, so like I said, this is just a rough estimate just to find the ballpark number. 

According to Google (which uses Our World in Data):

250M got dose 1. The monthly death rate is 250M/12*.0086 = 179K. So if ACM is elevated to 5X normal, we’d expect 4*179K= 716K excess deaths. Just from the dose 1 effect. Whoa! That’s way higher than I expected and higher than the 610K available to us. So I believe our survey is overstating the effect. 

220M got dose 2. So we’d do the same math as before. Our spreadsheet shows a 8X normal death rate in the following month so (8-1)*(220/12*.0086)= 1.1M excess deaths. Whoa! One shot does it all!

100M got booster which shows a 2.3X increase so (2.3-1)*(100/12*.0086)=93K excess deaths.

So 716+1100+93 = 1.9M excess deaths clearly caused by the vaccines.

Is 1.9M excess deaths too high? That’s equivalent to a 40% ACM increase over the entire 18 month period (not just in a few quarters)

Of course, one could ask Mr. Kirsch if he ever considered what else might be contributing to large increases in all cause mortality during the middle of a pandemic?

Kirsch also provides an actual table with a Fisher’s exact test to “prove” how “statistically significant” his results are:

Antivax or not? Kirsch abuses statistics
Wait, what? How did Kirsch even get the numbers in the two rows and columns?

I’m left scratching my head. How did Kirsch go from 400 responses to an estimate of 1.9 million excess deaths? To figure it out, I looked at the spreadsheet, and there were 39 deaths listed within four weeks before getting vaccinated (although how the respondents would know that the person who died planned on getting vaccinated within four weeks is not asked or stated), with 217 deaths recorded within four weeks of the first dose of a vaccine. Now I get it! He just divided 217 by 39 and concluded that the all-cause mortality was 5.6X higher within four weeks after the first dose. He then just used 5X and concluded that the all all-cause mortality after dose one increased by five-fold! He then did the same with the second dose (8.4X). With boosters, he then took 67 deaths of people within four weeks before getting a booster and used it to divide the 156 deaths reported within four weeks of getting a booster to come up with a 2.3-fold increased all-cause mortality rate. He did the same thing with booster #2 (44 deaths before, 56 after) to come up with a 1.3-fold increased death rate. Then he used these estimates to multiply by the regular monthly death rate in the US to come up with his number.

There is only one appropriate reaction to an “analysis” this comically, risibly, stupidly bad.

Godzilla facepalm
Even Godzilla knows why Kirsch’s analysis was wrong, and he’s just a giant radioactive lizard created by a nuclear explosion.

Does anyone want to tell me what’s wrong with this analysis? It’s so obviously wrong that a high school student should easily be able to explain why it’s so wrong it’s not even wrong, and that’s not even counting the fact that Kirsch didn’t ask if any of these people reported to have died turned out to have died of COVID-19. Kirsch spends a lot of time “reality checking” his numbers, and I really don’t see a lot of point in going through that in detail. When the very premise of your data collection is so wrong it’s not even wrong and then you extrapolate from a tiny biased dataset in such a manner, all the “reality checking” in the world isn’t going to make your data more credible. That’s leaving aside the innumeracy, in which somehow the death rate goes up by as much as 67%—all because of vaccines!—and supposedly no one in public health notices.

To bring it all back to the GBD and two of its coauthors, Jay Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, I went back and watched their panel, starting with the introduction. Bhattacharya starts out by saying that there is a “wide range of views” about the vaccines represented by the panel. (I’ll say! As was famously said about the music acts that perform at a bar in The Blues Brothers, “We got both kinds, country and western!” Here, we have both kinds, antivax and utterly loony antivax.) He also notes that this panel would be a “test case” too see if a “civil discussion” is possible about COVID-19 vaccines.

At this point, I note that others on the panel, besides Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, include Neeraj Sood, Joe Fraiman, and Retsef Levi, none of whom I had heard of. Sood has advocated treatment “instead of pushing boosters and tests for everyone” while repeating a lot of the same anti-lockdown talking points favored by Brownstoners. Joseph Fraiman is an emergency medicine doctor with no expertise in vaccines, infectious disease, epidemiology, or pandemics who appeared on an “Urgency of Normal” panel organized by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to argue against vaccinating children. Retsef Levi is MIT faculty and co-author of a widely criticized paper claiming a huge increase in cardiovascular events after vaccination based on cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls. It’s an analysis almost as bad as Kirsch’s that somehow got published in Scientific Reports:

You can read the rest of this thread for the gory details of just how bad Levi’s study was. In the meantime, let’s move on.

Kulldorff kicks off the panel by saying he’s a “huge fan of vaccines” and waxing how they are such a fantastic invention for health. It didn’t take him long, however, to go on about how those who have recovered from COVID-19 have “excellent natural immunity” and don’t need to be vaccinated, likening it to measles, even though we now know that even “natural immunity” (more properly called postinfection immunity) for COVID-19 is not lifelong, as it is for measles. It’s not even that durable, given the rise of COVID-19 variants that can evade immunity from prior strains, as Omicron has for immunity due to infection by the original Wuhan strain and the Delta variant. Basically, he repeated the same old shtick about natural immunity, which, whether he realizes it or not, is a very old antivax trope. He even paraphrased this line that he’d once Tweeted:

I rolled my eyes to see Kulldorff still repeating this nonsense. Kulldorff also claims that cab drivers and chefs (among others) recognize “natural immunity” better than scientists do.

Basically, his message is the same, a conspiracy theory that “they” are “denying” supposed “natural immunity.” He even likened it to the head of NASA denying that the earth is round! No one is doing anything of the sort; they’re just recognizing the limitations of “natural immunity” and the superiority of hybrid immunity from vaccines.

There are only two reasons why people like Kulldorff and Bhattacharya would appear on a panel like this, in which some truly ridiculously bad antivax “science” was presented by Kirsch. One reason is that they were naive and, like so many legitimate scientists, thought that they could counter antivaccine misinformation in a debate format, even though such forums are almost always propaganda for science denial that allow cranks to Gish gallop and obfuscate to their hearts’ content. The other reason is that they are now antivax cranks themselves, whether they can admit it to themselves or not (which Kulldorff obviously cannot). Seriously, to sit next to someone like Kirsch and remain silent as he claims that vaccines have killed 500,000 Americans, don’t save very many lives, and that “they” are keeping that information from you is not a good look. (If I had somehow been duped into appearing on such a panel, as soon as I heard that, I would have stood up, said, “This is utter bullshit!” and left.) The bottom line is that Kulldorff and Bhattacharya are now firmly antivax, no matter how much they try to tell the audience (and themselves) otherwise, as Bhattacharya did on Twitter yesterday:

Notice how cleverly Dr. Bhattacharya says that he supports the use of COVID-19 vaccines for the elderly and the “vulnerable.” I bet he thinks we didn’t notice how pointedly he left out using the vaccine for everyone else!
Note Dr. Bhattacharya’s clever pivot from criticism for not countering antivaccine disinformation being spewed by his panel to using his favorite topic (“lockdowns”), as though antivax disinformation were equivalent to supporting lockdowns.
When you lie down with dogs, you might get fleas. Let’s just say that Drs. Bhattacharya and Kulldorff must be mighty itchy right now. (Also, I apologize for using that adage. I actually love dogs and not infrequently find myself with two of them sleeping next to me on the couch. I don’t get fleas, however, because we keep our dogs protected against them.)

I’ll conclude by saying two things. First, I hope Dr. Bhattacharya reads this post to learn the true origin of Kirsch’s claim of 500K deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines. Second, both Drs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya can deny it all they want to audiences, critics, and themselves, but they have become antivaccine. Nearly every antivaxxer claims he’s “not antivax,” but when their behavior includes appearing on an antivax panel and not countering the antivax disinformation being spread there, they reveal the truth about themselves, no matter how much they try to hide behind their screens:

Dr. Bhattacharya can play with his phone all he likes to pretend what is happening isn’t actually happening, but he is part of this antivax disinformation effort.

Or slouch back to make themselves as small as possible to the audience, all while asking what went wrong in his life to lead him to such a point:

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya at antivax panel
Jay Bhattacharya (far left) looks stunned as Steve Kirsch claims that COVID-19 vaccines have killed a half a million, while Martin Kulldorff (second from left) tries desperately to lean so far back that no one will see that he’s sitting next to one of looniest of antivax loons. What did they expect when they agreed to do this?

Those of us who have been countering antivax misinformation for decades know antivaxxers when we see them, and in this case I see two of them among the authors of the GBD. They can deny it all they like, but they spent the day on panels with some of the worst COVID-19 antivaxxers out there and said nothing.

ADDENDUM 5/19/2022:

Lovely. It’s not enough for Kirsch to have done this atrocity of a “survey” and analyze it in a way that makes epidemiologists either laugh or cry. Oh, no. Now he’s doing two new versions of the same survey, one to ask his readers if they know any children who have died before or after COVID-19 vaccines and another to ask if they know anyone who has had a miscarriage before or after COVID-19 vaccines. And guess what? He has reported the results but they’re only for paying subscribers! I guess he doesn’t want me making fun of these results too. (He always knows when someone writes about him. I suspect that he has a Google Alert set to his name and to anyone linking to his Substack.)

It looks like the birth of a new antivax disinformation franchise!

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

341 replies on “Two-thirds of the Great Barrington Declaration aren’t even hiding that they are antivax anymore”

A. At the very least, they cannot deny that they are anti-vaccine allies, enablers, supporters and helpers.

B. Not only is that survey badly analyzed, but even if we take it on its terms it would not capture the deaths in the people who never intended to get COVID-19 vaccines.

That is true. I was honestly shaking my head in disbelief that anyone with a degree from MIT could think that an analysis this awful could represent a valid estimate of anything.

even if we take it on its terms it would not capture the deaths in the people who never intended to get COVID-19 vaccines

All the double-counting should make up for that.

Pardon the off-topic interruption but I need to ask a meta-question about medical treatment. Not the actual treatment, I’m not asking for that kind of medical advice, but what kind of specialist to see to get the treatment.

The condition is elastofibroma dorsi, a benign soft tissue tumor thing (I think of it as being like one of those mostly-gristle chicken nuggets you get once in a while) below the shoulder blade and set deep in near the chest wall.

“How he apparently managed to land a venue at MIT now, I don’t know—and didn’t really care enough about to go digging through his copious Substack output to find out…”

Well, I was curious, did some Google, and found… virtually nothing at all. The only references to this event that pop up are the social media posts about the ‘livestream’ recording, one of which has the schedule Orac quoted appended. Nothing even shows a name for this event, if there even was one. Finally, I ran into a comment by Kirsch under the post on his Substack announcing the availability of the stream, which appears to explain things, on the surface anyway:

Sorry about the sound. Retsef didn’t want to do livestream initially. i decided to do it at the last minute when nobody showed up in the auditorium. Note: he didn’t want me to publicize it to give priority to students, but only about 10 people in the audience.

A reply comment suggested the low attendance could have been due to MIT being on break, with most students away from campus (as surely many would have just been DYING to hang with Kirsch if they’d been around… ). This sounds consistent with my suspicion: that MIT just rents out the Wong Auditorium* to whoever during breaks. The fee is probably pocket change for Kirsch, and MIT would likely have a hard time turning him down as back in 1998 he gave the school $2.5 million to build another auditorium in it’s computer center.

While my Googling turned up little about the event with the GBDers, it did reveal that Kirsch swims way deeper in the crazy than anything Orac has written about him here might indicate. Orac, by right, focuses on the bad ‘science’ in his claims. Orac also argues, justifiably, that these ‘not even wrong’ arguments Kirsch foists ought to be more than enough for anyone professing to scientific credibility — e.g. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya presumably — to avoid being associated with him. I suppose it’s possible those GBD boys have never Googled Kirsch, and are unaware of how far down the dark conspiracy rabbit hole he lives (willful ignorance maybe?), but I would think any legitimate scientist would avoid this guy and his milieu like the Black Death.

Surely, for this event, the venue should have been renamed the Wrong Auditorium…

When I followed the “harassing” the Dean link to Kirsch’s substack, it said this:

She also knew that Professor Retsef Levi had agreed to sponsor my talk on the MIT campus. But it wasn’t MIT who located Professor Levi. I was the one who found Professor Levi. He subscribes to my Substack and saw my frustration and reached out to me.

So it looks like Retsef provided the needed MIT faculty invite, didn’t want it publicized or livestreamed, couldn’t back out. So Kirsch just bulldogged his way over Levi and did the livestream anyway.

Retsef might be the laughingstock in the MIT lunchroom all for–just reading Kirsch’s substack and let the Kirsch nightmare snowball from there.

Woo-meisters/ anti-vaxxers show may how ‘credible’ they are by renting or showing up at venues that are educational, governmental or well known in other ways ( by way of PRN, ICAN, CHD etc):
— colleges/ universities may rent out a room or an auditorium , alties make it sound as if they are there as guests ( at least two well-known universities in NY hosted hiv/aids denialists and self styled documentary film makers)
— similarly the UN !!
— the Apollo Theatre
— attending a protest at a state house as if invited similarly, “testifying* at public forums

These appearances are then written up and usually, videotaped for self-promotion
The results are often hilarious.

Kirsch also provides an actual table with a Fisher’s exact test

And fails to credit socscistatistics-dot-com in any way. This is simple courtesy. And not pretending to have done somebody else’s coding.

We used 400 independent observers. I should note that all follow my Substack so they are correlated: all have excellent judgment, high intelligence, and immunity from mass formation effects. So they have the ability to see what is truly going on.

I’m glad I wan’t drinking tea when I was reading this. I wouldn’t even buy this if Orac wrote something like this.

And looking at the questions, I wonder what one could really make of it. If 400 people say, they know 1 person, who died after getting the vaccine, this doesn’t need to mean that 400 people died. They might all know the same person.

14,680 deaths have been reported to VAERS from COVID19 vaccines–1 deaths reported for every 39,578 vaccines administered. Incredibly, more than twice as many deaths have been reported to VAERS from the covid shots in the last 18 months than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years.

According to the VAERS website (as well as independent research) only a “small fraction” of vaccine injuries are reported. Although reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury, VAERS is an “early warning system” of vaccine danger. It tracks results in the real world–not in the labs of vaccine researchers. It’s also the only vaccine injury data the public has direct access to.

If we assume for the sake of estimation that none of the deaths reported to VAERS were coincidental, and that “small fraction” means 10% of vaccine injuries were reported, then the COVID19 vaccines have killed 140,680 people. If “small fraction” means 1%, then the vaccines have killed almost 1.5 million.

This is mathematics, not opinion. Where’s your data?

Such hilariously bad analysis. I bet you’re trying to get me to link to you in a refutation, aren’t you?

Sure, you’ve addressed it, Orac–with speculation, assumption, opinion, denigration, and the other usual means pro-vaxxers use to ‘address misinformation.” I asked where your data was.

Nah. You really want me to send traffic your way, but I’m really not sure you’re worth the effort.

The assumption is that not everything that happens after vaccination is caused by vaccination. Hardly a difficult concept.
Reporting is legally mandated in all cases, wihtout consederation of probabilty.

“speculation, assumption, opinion, denigration, and the other usual means pro-vaxxers”

I’m afraid that you aren’t on solid ground yourself there. If you could actually prove any of your assertions then it might be otherwise but, by definition, speculation, opinion and assumption are exactly all you have. As for denigration, I think accusing people of being murderers in the pay of big pharmaceutical companies counts.

You don’t understand. If she calls us pharma shills is The Truth, but if we point out how crappy her analysis is, it’s a vicious ad hominem.?

I’m still waiting for you to point out where my “analysis” (which is actually just a set of calculations with a range of possible answers) is “crappy.” Remember, I already agree with you that using VAERS data to calculate risk is not perfect or even ideal, so let’s see what arguments you have about the math.

Or, better yet, show us risk calculations you like better, based on data you like better. Oh, wait–there aren’t any.

@Ginny Stoner. If you really accept that all deaths reported to VAERS are not caused by vaccines, read next the mortality data. Are there more deaths that one would except ?

I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Dorit–such a transparent attempt to keep people from looking at objective numbers about vaccine risk–which were calculated using CDC data, and exactly the same method the CDC uses. If you come up with anything besides schoolyard insults to defend your precious vaccines, let me know.

Most people wouldn’t consider a detailed post that, among other things, explains the limits of VAERS and the issues with it as schoolyards insults.

People who don’t already know would benefit from learning about VAERS and how it’s misused by anti-vaccine activists. It will protect them from being misled.

Ginny is welcome to present her numbers here and we’ll discuss them.
She could even do a search in CDC Wonder and just link to it.
I was following the VAERS numbers back in the summer and fall of 2021. As I recall, there was a large number of reported deaths in the first 3 months or so when mostly elderly people were being vaccinated. They then declined substantially as younger people started to get vaccinated and then later when vaccination rates declined.

But they were never more than 1% of the average expected deaths for the age group range.

A far better way of looking for such a possible effect is to use the Vaccine Safety Datalink like this study did.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8553028/

After excluding COVID-19–associated deaths, overall SMRs after dose 1 were 0.42 and 0.37 per 100 person-years for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, respectively, and were 0.35 and 0.34, respectively, after dose 2 (Table 2). These rates were lower than the rate of 1.11 per 100 person-years among the unvaccinated mRNA vaccine comparison group (p <0.001). Among Janssen vaccine recipients, the overall SMR was 0.84 per 100 person-years, lower than the rate of 1.47 per 100 person-years among the unvaccinated comparison group (p <0.001). Among persons aged 12–17 years, SMRs were similar among the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine recipients and unvaccinated comparison groups (p = 0.68 after dose 1 and 0.89 after dose 2). SMRs were also similar between Janssen vaccine recipients and unvaccinated comparison groups among Asian persons (p = 0.11). Among other subgroups defined by vaccine received, age, sex, and race and ethnicity, COVID-19 vaccine recipients had lower SMRs than did their unvaccinated counterparts (p <0.05).

So if anything, getting one of the mRNA vaccines reduces your non-Covid-19 mortality rate by 2/3 !!!!

Dorit, I didn’t make any claims about VAERS data at all–I just presented the numbers. If you don’t like the numbers, link us to the numbers you like. Just don’t waste my time with more snarky opinion pieces ‘refuting’ claims I never made.

Ah, the old “I’m just dispassionately presenting the numbers” ploy. Never mind that presentation is never completely dispassionate or unbiased.?

Squirrelelite they aren’t “my” numbers–they are “the” numbers based on VAERS and CDC data. You are welcome to refute them if you can–but you can’t.

Ginny: claiming above that VAERS shows high rates of deaths from vaccines.

Post and comments explain in detail VAERS does not show causation, and that anti-vaccine activists misuse it.

Ginny: “I did not make any claims about VAERS data.”

The view that readers are so incompetent they cannot read a few comments above is.. interesting. Not in any good way, but interesting.

Also, it’s repeatedly shown how antivaxxers misinterpret the numbers and their significance, and they go back to “these are the numbers.”

Where are your risk calculations, Dorit? I don’t mean an opinion piece telling us the vaccines are “safe and effective”–I mean risk calculations based on whatever data you prefer.

Again, the CDC uses VAERS data to calculate risk–look at the screenshot in the main chart at the link I posted. It wasn’t even my idea–I just elaborated on the math.

If you don’t like using VAERS data, show us risk calculations using the data you prefer.

You are welcome to refute them if you can–but you can’t.

Is there such a thing as a Pyrrhic failure? The NWO Reporter must qualify.

I agree with Dorit. The VAERS data exist, but they cannot be used to draw conclusions of causation because of their many limitations. If Ginny won’t state or defend her claims, there is nothing to discuss.

Also, the Vaccine Safety Datalink data are reliable enough to support research on correlations and possibe effects.

But Ginny did not respond to the study I linked to that uses those data and show the mRNA vaccines reduce your chance of dying, not increase it as Ginny tried to claim.

You can et compensation or vaccine injuries, by CICP, <number of death lains is 201, Why do not make claim. if there is an injury? CICcP wants medical which would show actual cause.

First you make a number of (extremely questionable) assumptions, then you say that your conclusions are not opinions…
I don’t see why you should have a problem with ‘speculation, assumption, opinion’, when that describes your whole post.

Details, man, details. Point to details in the original, preferably not isolated from context, and explain your reasoning.

I’m sorry, didn’t you read the original?

How about you start with the part: “If we assume for the sake of estimation that none of the deaths reported to VAERS were coincidental, and that “small fraction” means 10% of vaccine injuries were reported, then the COVID19 vaccines have killed 140,680 people. If “small fraction” means 1%, then the vaccines have killed almost 1.5 million”.

And you want details?

The estimate required certain assumptions. Show us your numbers, David. If you have a better set of data to use to estimate the risk of death or serious injury from the covid shots than VAERS data–especially is it’s miraculously assumption-free–let’s have a look. Or do you just go by feels when it comes to vaccination?

@Ginny Stoner:

The estimate required certain assumptions.

And the assumptions made were, to put it politely, highly questionable. Almost (ok, not almost) as if the people making them were trying to load the deck and make vaccination look dangerous.

And you want details?

You and sirhcton seem to be talking past each other, David; change “your whole post,” which reads as though you’re addressing Orac, to “your whole comment,” and it goes away.

Julian Frost you’re another one who goes by feels when it comes to vaccines. You’ve had nothing but disparagement for VAERS, our nations “early warning system” of vaccine danger, yet you can’t produce any better risk data.

@Ginny Stoner:

You’ve had nothing but disparagement for VAERS…

Wrong. It’s your abuse of VAERS to argue that the vaccines are dangerous that I’ve had nothing but disparagement for.

our nations “early warning system” of vaccine danger

If that’s what you believe VAERS is, then you are more wrong than you realise.

@ginny Stoner VAERS is indeed early warning system. Everythibg is reported, so that signal is not missed. Actually analyze VAERS data.

AGAIN, WHERE IS YOUR RISK DATA, Julian Frost? If you don’t like VAERS data, give us something better.

I didn’t designate VAERS as our nations “early warning system” of vaccine danger–Dr. Shimabukuro from ACIP did. Obviously you didn’t even look at the link I posted, because if you did, you’d see a screenshot showing exactly where he did it, right at the top, Mr. Observant. Since none of the regular commenters here appear to have read my link at all, I’ll go ahead and post it again–because data matters. https://www.virginiastoner.com/cvax-risk

Meanwhile, Aarno Syvänen is yet another among many here who, while repeatedly denigrating the value of VAERS data, cannot provide any better data for calculating risk.

The popular opinion here is: VAERS data is problematic for calculating risk; therefore, the solution is not to calculate risk.

I never realized science types put so much stock in feels rather than numbers, when it comes to determining risk.

AGAIN, WHERE IS YOUR RISK DATA, Julian Frost? If you don’t like VAERS data, give us [sic ] something better.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that there is some sort of demand for amateur “analyses” on topics of your choosing, Ginny.

@Ginny Stoner Perhaps you could use injury compensation claims:
https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/cic
You could use VAERS data, too,if you wish, but then you must understand that all deaths after vaccination are reported. Check for excess mortality.
Of course, Dorit’s link has a nice analysis of VAERS data already.

14,680 deaths have been reported to VAERS from COVID19 vaccines

“The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted or used to reach conclusions about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines.”

One might also break down the results by whether or not they contain the word “resident.” In any event, the CDC WONDER interface will only return 10,000 rows. However, using sex to break things into digestible bits yields 3249 female, 4285 male, and 374 unknown:

Query Criteria:
Sex: [M/F/Unk]
Event Category: Death
Recovered: No
State / Territory: The United States/Territories/Unknown
Symptoms: DEATH
Vaccine Products: COVID19 VACCINE (COVID19)
VAERS ID: All
Group By: VAERS ID
Show Totals: False
Show Zero Values: False

It will also hork up ~15,650 and 10,244. Curious, isn’t it?

The death number is the CDC’s as is the percent risk that a covid shot will result in a death report to VAERS. Look at the main chart at the link for the screenshot.

When I do a VAERS search for “death” the number is around 1000-1500 lower. I’m not sure why–maybe the CDC is including fetal deaths, that’s one possibility, since I think the number of fetal deaths is about that number.

It’s a shame you can’t see reports by political affiliation. Since the vaccination rate among dems is far higher than among repubs, you’d expect that to be reflected in the VAERS data.

Ha, ha, ha, no.

In VAERS deaths in the US are 12,899 as of last Friday (CDC Wonder data).

Almost all deaths following vaccines get reported to VAERS – even when they have nothing to do with the vaccine. Sore arms, not so much. The fraction is because most people could not be bothered reporting they had a sore arm.

I decided to do some of my own dumpster diving in VAERS. I looked at all deaths in the 14 days after vaccination (because after all we do have to keep these nonsense calculations reasonable) and compared that to the number of vaccinations given in the US. The results are sensational.

Between January and April 2021 there were 3002 deaths reported for a death rate of 11.5 deaths per million vaccines given (I really should correct this for age, but for a lunch time analysis when I should be marking assignments, we will take the Brian S Hooker approach).

Between May and August 2021 the rate had dropped to 6.2 deaths per million vaccines given.

Between September and December 2021, the rate had dropped again to 3.5 deaths per million vaccines given.

For the first 4 months of 2022, the rate is the same.

The only conclusion to draw from VAERS is that COVID-19 vaccines have become more then 3 times safer in the past 16 months. At this rate they will be completely safe by 2023.

GIGO, Ginny.

If vaccines had killed 1.5 million people in the US, it would be noticeable in the excess death data.

Check the CDC’s statement on deaths reported to VAERS from covid shots at the bottom of the page. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html

“More than 581 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through May 16, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 14,680 preliminary reports of death (0.0025%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”

A screenshot of this statement is included in the risk analysis I posted. Apparently you didn’t bother to look.

As I said earlier, maybe the CDC is including fetal deaths–which are now somewhere around 1500-2000. What do you think?

Also, you’re well aware that serious events/deaths reported to VAERS from COVID19 vaccines have not declined overall, and in fact remain much higher than ever before in VAERS history. Why are you telling people the shots have gotten safer?

MONTH SERIOUS EVENTS
Dec., 2020 214
Jan., 2021 1,849
Feb., 2021 3,036
Mar., 2021 5,364
Apr., 2021 8,581
May, 2021 6,630
Jun., 2021 5,460
Jul., 2021 4,351
Aug., 2021 5,256
Sep., 2021 5,870
Oct., 2021 5,535
Nov., 2021 4,733
Dec., 2021 5,169
Jan., 2022 6,524
Feb., 2022 4,906
Mar., 2022 4,230
Apr., 2022 2,516
May, 2022 946
Unknown Date 1,936
Total 83,109

What do you think?

I think you’re full of it.
You’ve been notified repeatedly that ANYONE can file a VAERS report so it isn’t proof of anything. Yet you have chosen to treat VAERS reports as factual and the reported deaths as accurate. Each time, we have pointed out to you that that isn’t hard evidence, and each time, you have misused the data in a pathetic attempt to show the vaccines are dangerous.
You are, like all the other antivaxxers, a bad faith actor.

Thanks, Chris.

I had done a similar analysis a few months ago and saw the same trend. But people like Ginny never talk about the vaccines getting “safer”.

I also noticed there are a bit more reports than deaths, probably due to some duplication.

I also did a quick check of about 10 reports. Mainly they were people dying of another, already existing condition. Several people eventual got sick from Covid-19 and died.

So, Julian, what data do you prefer for covid shot risk calculations? Link us to the data you prefer for deaths and serious vaccine injuries–we can calculate the risk numbers right here, on this blog, using the CDC’s vaccine data.

Unless your belief that the covid shots are safe and effective isn’t based on any solid numbers the pubic can find somewhere?

Link us to the data you prefer for deaths and serious vaccine injuries–we can calculate the risk numbers right here, on this blog, using the CDC’s vaccine data.

Enough with the Gollum impersonation, Ginny.

@Ginny Stoner It is impossible to you to understand that a vaccinatted person can have a precondition before vaccination ? I mean, bar exam and all.
CICP compensation claims tell very different story.
Good basis for risk analysis is excess deaths (ones above expected background).

What do you think?

I concur you are full of it. Never crossed your mind that there are duplicate reports submitted to VAERS?

I see you are also in full goalpost moving mode.

I have already pointed out that 1.5 million deaths in the US caused by COVID-19 vaccines would turn up in the excess death data. They don’t, because the number of deaths following COVID-19 vaccination are exactly what would be expected based on age if no vaccines were given. There is no signal to measure.

You are just yet another garden variety anti-vaccine liar, Ginny.

“I have already pointed out that 1.5 million deaths in the US caused by COVID-19 vaccines would turn up in the excess death data. They don’t…”

“Pointing out” is not evidence, Chris Preston. From the data I’ve seen, you’re full of it.

Besides, most deaths reported to VAERS from COVID19 vaccines in the last 9 months involved the “confirmed or presumed” presence of COVID19, and were therefore likely ‘accounted for’ by hiding them in the CDC’s tally of “Deaths involving COVID19”. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/2/26/how-to-hide-thousands-of-vaccine-deaths-in-plain-sight-lj6nf

@NWO Stoner: Two possibilities:

There is a vast conspiracy to murder people with vaaaaccines.
You’re a dumb fucking narcissist.

To date you make a compelling case for one of these. Good luck on the other.

@Ginny Stoner Million COVID deaths are official statistics. Where is the problem here ?
Where you got the idea that most VAERS reports involve COVID deaths ? Have you actually analysed VAERS data ? Read Dorit’s link.

For anyone who’s new here, here’s just one reason why Ginny’s statement is misleading at best:
Ginny has assumed that every single death reported to VAERS at any time after any COVID vaccine is related to and caused by the vaccine.

This is not true.
When researchers are running a clinical trial, every single death of any participant must be reported. Even if that death could not have possibly been caused by the treatment under study (patient died in a plane crash, patient was murdered, patient died of some other disease or condition or trauma).

If a person with terminal cancer got vaccinated against COVID and died 90 days later of their cancer, it would still be reported, for completeness sake. But that doesn’t mean that the COVID vaccine caused their death.

If a person got their first dose of a COVID vaccine and then contracted and died of bacterial pneumonia, that death would still be reported.

(Here’s another misleading part of Ginny’s statement: yes, most vaccine side effects aren’t reported, because they are mild. But more serious side effects are much more likely to be reported because they are serious. So the idea that the same percentage of people are not reporting deaths as are not reporting mild arm soreness is extremely questionable.)

I’ve made no such assumption, so stop making up BS. You have better data for calculating basic risk–i.e., how many deaths and serious injuries compared to the number of vaccines administered–then where is it? That is, if your vaccine beliefs are based on solid numbers, not homilies. Still waiting for someone to provide actual data they like more than VAERS data…

That is indeed what she has assumed, that correlation equals causation in each and every case, even when the correlation is questionable.

What data do you want to use for calculating vaccine risk, Orac? Or do you prefer ignoring the actual numbers and deferring to vague assurances of ‘safe and effective’?

The reason I use VAERS data to calculate risk is that it’s the only vaccine risk data available to the public. Seems like this comment section has verified that, since no one has been able to point me to better data.

If there is better risk data somewhere, why doesn’t the CDC use it? The CDC uses VAERS data.

Of course VAERS data isn’t perfect–it’s not even ideal. It’s just all we have. Prove me wrong.

@Ginny Stoner Try to use excess deaths. Mortality data is avaiable to public.too

David, from your link:

“From time to time, scientists (from outside CDC and outside the VSD network) are interested in using data from the VSD to look differently at vaccine safety questions. When possible, CDC tries to accommodate these requests.”

How generous of them. Where can we find risk calculations using VSD data? I haven’t seen any. You think I would, after ‘applying’, be ‘granted access’ to VSD data? I don’t. But surely someone who loves vaccines as much as you do has done this? (Lol)

If you have an IRB-approved research protocol, you can get access. Mark and David Geiger did. Of course, they tried to go beyond the parameters of their protocol and got caught, but they did get access, and neither of them had a university or industry appointment.

“I’ve made no such assumption.”

You started by mentioning reports numbers and then after hand waving and baselessly claiming the reports are 10% you claimed the vaccines killed over 140,000 people (and apparently nobody noticed, according to you).

That’s exactly assuming – no, claiming – all the reports are caused by vaccines.

@Ginny Stoner There is Vaccine Safety Datalink Research Group. Look or their papers. (I found 118 hits in Google Scholar).

Dorit Reiss, did you use any kind of risk analysis to form your opinions about COVID19 vaccine safety? That is, calculations using the number of vaccines administered and number of vaccine injuries and deaths to estimate risk?

If not, what did you use?

Aarno where are the risk calculations? I’m not going to spend an hour searching because I don’t think it’s even there. You’re saying ACIP calculated the risk of death or serious injury from vaccination? Link it directly.

There is plenty of data showing excess deaths from DOD and from countries with Socialized Medicine – no one needs VAERS – why is no one discussing that?

I’m not going to spend an hour searching because I don’t think it’s even there.

Color me unsurprised that the house sniveling shit gets huffy when someone suggests that she read.

“If we assume for the sake of estimation that none of the deaths reported to VAERS were coincidental” Health care professionals were required to report all coincidental deaths that happened around the time of COVID vaccination. Do you understand that VAERS is intentionally designed to capture large irrelevant data in order to maximize the capture of relevant data? Anyone who uses raw VAERS data simply shows they have no idea what it is.

Terrie, I’d suggest you read my response on the page, and if you have any more questions, let me know. Allow me to copy & paste so you don’t have to actually read the page you’re criticizing:

“The CDC tells us in its risk statement that the FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean all or even most vaccine deaths are reported.

“First, the only deaths vaccine providers will likely know about are the very few that occur during the 15-30 minute monitoring period after the shot. Second, there is no penalty for not reporting. Third, there is no system in place for compensating medical providers for the time required to make VAERS reports. Fourth, there are no indications of improvement in the rate of VAERS reporting, while there are indications it’s as low as ever—such as this law firm letter written on behalf of a Physician Assistant at a regional New York hospital.”
https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Letter-Re-First-Hand-Account-of-Covid-19-Vaccine-Injuries-and-Underreporting-to-VAERS-1.pdf

@Ginny Stoner This 30 minutes thing is riiculous. If someone has vacine injury, he obviously visits doctor, who woul report the injury. If this is right,only injury reported would be anaphylaxis, because this is would appear so fast. Myocarditis would certanly not.
I think would follow regulations, too

“If we assume for the sake of estimation that none of the deaths reported to VAERS were coincidental, and that “small fraction” means 10% of vaccine injuries were reported, then the COVID19 vaccines have killed 140,680 people. If “small fraction” means 1%, then the vaccines have killed almost 1.5 million.”

Of course what Poor Ginny means is that if she makes an assumption that leads to the conclusion she wants, she can get the conclusion she wants. However, whether this is reasonable assumption, in the absence of any data to support the assumption, is entirely an opinion.

Ginny has no other “audience.” This appears to have led her to appropriate ontology as hers to establish, although not without certain nervous tics.

Does anyone want to tell me what’s wrong with this analysis? It’s so obviously wrong that a high school student should easily be able to explain why it’s so wrong it’s not even wrong,

I’m not sure I see what Orac is getting at here. I assume it has something to do with the ‘math’?

I certainly get that posting an opt-in web survey on an anti-vax Substack is not going to yield reliable reports — which even several Kirsch fans point out in the comments under the Substack post, and even he admits near the end. And indeed, I’d say It’s just not credible that out of 400 people, there are 217 deaths of someone they know well enough to know when they got a COVID jab. But I take it that Orac is saying that even if the the numbers were true — that among 400 reporters there were 217 unique deaths within 4 weeks after dose one, and 39 unique deaths in the period four weeks prior — the conclusions and the math are still gonzo. Not that I think those numbers would represent some big revelation, my heads just too fuzzy on the specifics of how Kirsch is “not even wrong” here.

Anyone care to to help me out with a remedial?

He’s starting with an average death rate—say 3 in 1,000–and using a different data set (his friends on Substack) to determine that the death rate post vaccine is five times higher.

From there he decides there were 15 in a thousand deaths (counting the vaccinated only), so that might bump the overall death rate to 8 in 1,000.

Except that the data he started with clearly says there were three.

I suggest that Orac wait a couple days more and then fill us in on his thought.

But here’s my idea. As I recall, a crude estimate for the standard deviation of a simple count measure like Kirsch got from his survey is the square root of the number. And 97% of the distribution is likely to be within 3 standard deviations plus or minus.

So, there were 39 deaths in the pre-vaccine group and 217 in the post-vaccine group.
So the pre- group would likely vary from 39-18.7 = 20.3 up to 57.7.

The post group would vary from 172.8 up to 261.2.

The ratio would vary (high over low up to low over high) from 3 up to 14.

The true average numbers are likely to be different, but that’s a huge range of uncertainty to make that sort of extrapolation from.

And of course there’s the simple ascertainment bias problem. Do you know anyone who told you a specific date in the future they were planning to get vaccinated, especially in the spring of 2021 when we were just learning on a weekly basis who was eligible? My sons who live with me didn’t tell me in advance.

I have 350 Facebook friends. A couple dozen of them posted online when they had received their vaccination. I don’t remember any of them posting a planned date in the future. There were maybe half a dozen deaths in the last year and I have no idea of their vaccination status.

AFAIK, none of them died in the first month after vaccination.

So the numbers reported in his survey seem too high to be plausible based on typical knowledge of personal information. Especially the pre-vaccine group.

Why an Elephant? I’ve seen screwy illustrations used in lectures before, but what does an apparently healthy, happy, wild African Elephant have to do with Covid vaccines? Perhaps the metaphor of “the elephant in the room,” as they imagine that vaccine deaths are being ignored or suppressed? Wishing they could go unvaccinated, as wild Elephants do? Somebody ought to go after them for animal abuse.

Thanks. I didn’t want to destroy any brain cells watching their video.

Lovely. I just noticed something.

It’s not enough for Kirsch to have done this atrocity of a “survey” and analyze it in a way that makes epidemiologists either laugh or cry. Oh, no. Now he’s doing two new versions of the same survey, one to ask his readers if they know any children who have died before or after COVID-19 vaccines and another to ask if they know anyone who has had a miscarriage before or after COVID-19 vaccines. And guess what? He has reported the results but they’re only for paying subscribers! I guess he doesn’t want me making fun of these results too. (He always knows when someone writes about him. I suspect that he has a Google Alert set to his name and to anyone linking to his Substack.)

He also did a survey of his follower for “who had about children dying from covid-19 or the vaccine” and just made a comment to ACIP alleging that because his survey of his followers – obviously an unbiased sample (yes, that’s sarcasm) – could remember more deaths that they attribute to vaccines (themselves) than to covid-19, the vaccines are more dangerous.

I expect he will put his own video up, demonstrating my recommendation to ACIP to consider during away with oral comments while they are used to make anti-vaccine propaganda videos.

I’m reminded of one on the creationist lawyers in the Intelligent Design trial in Pennsylvania (documented in the NOVA video Judgment Day). Before trial, he said “we had to show that ID is a credible theory”. After the trial, he said “we had to show that there are credible scientists who accept ID”. Pathetic.

Now he’s doing two new versions of the same survey, one to ask his readers if they know any children who have died before or after COVID-19 vaccines and another to ask if they know anyone who has had a miscarriage before or after COVID-19 vaccines.

I am an old guy and, with time on my hands for the past few years (remember lockdowns?), have been building a family tree, and have managed to extend several branches to pre-Revolutionary days.

I can provide several (maybe 20 or so) instances of children dying prior to getting the COVID shot, some 200 years or more prior. The number of miscarriages is significantly lower, as few were noted at the time, probably only 2 or 3 if we include those who died at birth.

The number of deaths or miscarriages after the COVID vaccine is zero, while the number of deaths or miscarriages due to COVID is 3 deaths, zero miscarriages.

I await his analysis.

Suppressing Scientific Discourse on Vaccines? Self-perceptions of researchers and practitioners

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10730-022-09479-7

A paper concluding that people who tell lies about vaccines don’t like being called out on it.

I think we should stop the presses at this point.

At least three of the authors of that paper are members of the Professional Ethics Front, Israel’s version of America’s Frontline Doctors*, who also oppose Covid-19 vaccination. The PEF sent a letter to the FDA suggesting that the agency disregard Israeli data on the Pfizer Covid vaccine because (among other things) it supposedly reflects violation of the Nuremberg Code.

They also quote Leviticus in support of their letter.

But do not call them antivaccine.

*the PEF is a motley crew whose ranks also include lawyers.

I had to look after the Happy Criminologists turned to “vaccine victims” and the obstacles to “treatment” thereof. It turns out that Mrs. Orbital Space Lasers has done gone and whomped herself up a bill. It demonstrates a certain failure to grasp how VAERS works.

So you think this study is reassuring?

“Interpretation: Safety data from more than 298 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine administered in the first 6 months of the US vaccination programme show that most reported adverse events were mild and short in duration.”

BFD. More deaths and serious injuries have been reported to VAERS from the COVID19 vaccines that from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years. Who cares if most of the injuries reported were minor?

Reminder to readers: when reading a study, serious, well-intentioned readers read the entire study and try to understand it.

If they don’t understand and are commenting on a blog with multiple scientists, one way to handle it is to ask people around you sincere questions.

Bad faith readers do neither. They do repeat misleading talking points, though.

“Reminder to readers: Arrogance and insults are not substitutes for civil debate about the facts presented.”

The study you posted is just another example of the BS propaganda that substitutes for science these days. They purport to be looking at safety–yet not a single word about the fact that deaths and serious events reported to VAERS are at an unprecedented high from the covid shots.

The study addressed in detail rates of deaths and serious harms from COVID-19 vaccines, putting them in context and addressing causation.

I hope most people actually read it.

I hope people read it too, and note that indeed, the authors made absolutely no mention of the massive increase in VAERS reports from covid shots. Thus, all their rates have no context to compare them to. The omission was not by accident.

Dorit Reiss, can you provide us with any analyses of VAERS data that specifically address the massive increase in VAERS reports from COVID19 vaccines, and why it’s nothing to worry about?

Can you yourself explain why there is no excess mortality ?

Still nothing, Dorit?

I’ve claimed there is a coverup going on of the massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the COVID19 vaccines. People here have claimed I’m wrong–but they haven”t presented any evidence of transparency.

Do you have any evidence of transparency? Or is it being covered up?

@Ginny Stoner CDC publishes mortality reports, like:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e1.htm
Compare VAERS reports to expected deaths, by age group,if you wish.
Have you noticed that you yourself have access to VAERS data ? It is hardly covere up. It is just that people generally know how VAERS works.

I haven’t commented at all on this state of affairs – SMH – BUT let’s just imagine…
if over one half a billion shots were administered in the given time period to perhaps 200+ million people ( assuming 1-3 vaccines each) AND over 14,000 of them died…
we can assume that if this were indeed true that the vaccine were deadly and if we then somehow, somewhere found an equivalent 200 million plus people ( carefully selected to reflect the original groups’ age profile, SES, health status, race. locale etc etc because of confounding) who were not vaccinated at all in the same time period
we might then see no deaths in this second group …
SO over 200 million people of different age groups, health status, SES, etc without any dying over the same protracted time period.
Imagine a country of over 200 million without anyone dying in over a year.

Does that sound like reality?

It’s the base rate fallacy. Its expected when you vaccinate tens of millions of people in a short period of time that by random chance alone some will die because in a population that large there will be a certain number of deaths, vaccine or no vaccine, because people die. Now add to that the fact that the elderly and chronically ill, who are more likely to die during any given time period because they’re elderly and/or chronically ill, were vaccinated first, and you’d expect a certain number of deaths soon after vaccination by chance alone. That’s one reason why a number like the one reported for VAERS is meaningless on its own. You have to compare it to the expected base rate in the population being vaccinated.

Most other vaccines in the US are given mainly to children. The base death rate for children is much lower than the base death rate for 80 and 90 year olds.

This is so patently obvious that I have to doubt the competence of people who need to ask the question.

And in terms of her repeated question about previous vaccines, there are the other simple realities of an unusually large vaccination campaign aimed at the entire population – much larger than even flu vaccines – coupled with extensive efforts by CDC to increase reporting to VAERS and extensive, unprecedented publicity for VAERS (featured, for example, on Tucker Carlson’s show). In other words, we would expect more VAERS reporting now, and it has nothing to do with level of risk.

Orac did address this manipulation in the past. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/02/17/misuse-of-the-vaers-database-by-antivaxxers-continues-cardiac-edition/ she’s not even the first to try to mislead people this way.

By the way, note that there are several sources of data in this thread with actual numbers that she never grappled with.

This is Virginia Stoner you are writing about. Nothing that she writes sounds anything like reality.

There were 3.3 million deaths in the US in 2019. That makes an average of 65,000 a week. If you try and vaccinate the whole population in less than 12 months, there will be a lot of deaths within a short time of vaccination – because an average of 65,000 people die every week.

The data will be exacerbated if you vaccinate the elderly and those with serious underlying health conditions first, because these people are more likely to die anyway. It is why I did the nonsense calculation of splitting the data into 4 month chunks to show the COVID-19 vaccines had supposedly become 3 timers safer since they were first introduced. It shows that there is something else – not related to vaccines – driving the VAERS death reports. That thing is old and sick people dying from what old and sick people die from.

Of course, Ginny ignores this and moves the goalposts, because Ginny is just a garden variety anti-vaccine liar and a not very imaginative one at that.

Nothing is stopping you or anyone from presenting evidence that the massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots is nothing to worry about. No one has presented evidence of anything–just their opinion that the massive increase could be due to some innocuous reason–like you did here. Who cares?

All the CDC and FDA have been able to think of is to cover up the fact that more deaths and serious injuries have been reported to VAERS in the last 18 months from the COVID19 vaccines than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years. I’m sure it’s difficult, considering the massive increase is clearly and provably NOT due to more vaccination.

Of course, Ginny ignores this and moves the goalposts, because Ginny is just a garden variety anti-vaccine liar and a not very imaginative one at that.

Hey, not all antivaccine dimwits have hosted Jon Rappoport on their asinine “satire” site. If he would lie down, Ginny could massage his back and walk to CHD all in one stroke.

more deaths and serious injuries have been reported to VAERS in the last 18 months from the COVID19 vaccines than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years

You’re going to wear out that binky, Ginny.

@Ginny Stoner Both mortality rate of children and publicity campaigns are obvious facts. Try to comment these.

It’s amazing that anti-vaxxers/ Covid denialists fail to understand that when you are describing large groups of people over time that some of them are going to die!
No matter what! With new vaccines. With older vaccines. Without vaccines. If they live in AUS or NZ or the UK or the US or other places.
Also, the population getting vaccinated are probably MORE likely to die as they are older, have health issues etc. And you have to account for those two FACTS: people are mortal and certain groups are more vulnerable- whenever you describe this type of situation.

I see this tendency across the altie BS I survey regularly. It boggles the mind!

Ginny, What do you want? Someone to do your work for you?
You asked about other sets of vaccine data – I provided one for you (I’m not holding my breath for a ‘thank you’).
You’re a big girl, I’m sure you can find the answers to the rest of your questions by your self.

BTW – you don’t need to respond, I’m pretty sure I know what you’ll say.
I’m glad that you find this funny, I find this sad.

In other words, no one has ever calculated risk using VSD data. WTH are you basing your beliefs about COVID19 vaccine risk on? Apparently it is based 100% on feelings and trust–no numbers whatsoever. That’s crazy because calculating the number of vaccine injuries and deaths per vaccine is fundamental to understanding risk.

In other words, you didn’t even look for any papers.
But that would be crazy…

Utter BS–I’ve been looking into this issue a lot longer and deeper than you have. Admit your beliefs about COVID19 vaccine safety aren’t based on any actual risk calculations, just feels.

Virginia Stoner, can you provide us (tinu) with any evidence that you actually care? You showed up sporting for a fight, your chosen weapon being a pig in a poke. How then do you justify to yourself such idiocies as “and why it’s nothing to worry about?” Why would you have anything to worry about? Did you accidentally get vaccinated in your sleep?

Of course not. You’re just an attention-seeking asshole and don’t bother feigning otherwise. Same as it ever was.

My work speaks for itself, Narad.

And them some. Now, perhaps you could get down to answering the question, No. 85.

And I linked to Xu et al who did that calculation using the VSD and published it on the MMWR.

After excluding COVID-19–associated deaths, overall SMRs after dose 1 were 0.42 and 0.37 per 100 person-years for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, respectively, and were 0.35 and 0.34, respectively, after dose 2 (Table 2). These rates were lower than the rate of 1.11 per 100 person-years among the unvaccinated mRNA vaccine comparison group (p <0.001). Among Janssen vaccine recipients, the overall SMR was 0.84 per 100 person-years, lower than the rate of 1.47 per 100 person-years among the unvaccinated comparison group (p <0.001).

But she continues to flip the burden of proof and demand that someone disprove an assertion that she won’t even present a logical case to support on this blog.

If there were a causative mechanism for these vaccines to increase risk of death, one should be able to identify specific VAERS reports that describe that mechanism. But Ginny won’t give us that evidence.

The CDC has identified 9 cases where the Janssen vaccine caused CVST/TTS leading to death, an effect that was already noted in the vaccine trials It led to a major restriction on use of that vaccine. They have also noted an increase in myocarditis, but none of those cases to date have led to death.

The CDC does a similar investigation of all death reports but somehow they have missed whatever Ginny’s remarkable death causation mechanism is.

Squirrel says, “she continues to flip the burden of proof and demand that someone disprove an assertion…”

Lame. I presented the numbers of VAERS reports, along with a range of possible estimates of vaccine-induced deaths and serious injuries.

I’ve asked everyone here criticizing my risk calculations to provide the risk calculations they relied on to form their beliefs about COVID19 vaccine safety, if any. The answer is, there aren’t any.

No one here, including you, has relied on any kind of risk calculations at all. All your opinion is based on is feels. Stop pretending, poser.

Look papers of Vaccine Safety Datalink Research Group. If found 118 hits in Google Scholar.
If you use VAERS data, remember that all all deaths after vaccines are reported. Why ompensation claims (CICP)are much less ?

Lame.

Why do you write like Molly Ringwald spoke in The Breakfast Club?

All your opinion is based on is feels belong to us. Stop pretending, poser.

‘Poseur’, Ginny. The word is poseur.

I’ve presented results (twice) from a study using the Vaccine Safety Datalink showing that people who have completed their 2 dose series of either of the mRNA vaccines are 2/3 less likely to die from non-Covid-19 causes than unvaccinated people. Since Ginny has not presented an argument supported by data to dispute that, it is reasonable to presume that she accepts that claim as proven.

Yes there are a lot of VAERS reports, but so what?

The VAERS system cannot be used to draw statistical inferences such as causality for several reasons which Ginny repeatedly ignores.

Anyone can report anything to VAERS, so the reports cannot be assumed to be accurate. This is compounded by duplicate reports.
The reports are not statistically representative. The total VAERS death reports for the Covid-19 vaccines are less than one week’s average deaths in the U.S. About 60,000 people die every week in the U.S. So if 1% of them received a Covid-19 vaccine the previous week, there should be about 600 VAERS reports every week or over 300,000 VAERS death reports for the Covid-19 vaccines. And since about half the U.S. population received a flu shot last year, there should be about 225,000 VAERS reports for the influenza vaccines. Since the totals are much less, there is obviously some filtering going on for unknown reasons. But it is quite plausible that if grandpa dies the week after receiving a vaccine, the family are less likely to file a report for a vaccine grandpa had been getting every year for the last 10 or more years than they are for a new vaccine he had never received before.
There is no control group. You cannot go into VAERS and get data on non-vaccinate people to compare rates of different effects. So it is useless for doing a case-control study to calculate a hazard ratio.

The VSD has access to the patients’ medical records. This lets researchers look at data for both vaccinated and non-vaccinated patients. They can cross-match on a number of factors like age, race, sex, etc.

So the VSD gives data on all incidents in the medical records regardless of what the family might presume about causality.

But Ginny continues to ignore published research using the VSD and keeps asking a question even she doesn’t want to tell us the answer to.

I think that’s a sufficient response for now, so TTFN Ginny.

What is the risk of death or serious injury from COVID19 vaccination? Your study doesn’t say. If you can’t complete this fundamental sentence, you have no idea what the risk is:

Out of (x) vaccines administered, (x) people died as a result of vaccination, and (x) people were seriously injured.

At least I’ve tried to come up with an answer. It’s more than the CDC or FDA or ACIP has done. All you can do is complain about the work I did–but you are totally fine with the CDC and FDA and ACIP not doing it at all.

@Ginny Stoner:

BTW, why are hundred of deaths involving COVID19 being reported to VAERS each month?

Gee, I dunno. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that we’re vaccinating an entire population against a novel disease? And that we focussed first on high risk groups? You know, the groups most at risk from death?

These are all deaths in people we know are vaccinated.

Um, no. The problems with VAERS have been pointed out to you repeatedly, and yet you act as if VAERS is gospel. To summarise, yet again:
1) There is no verification done on whether the deaths reported even happeed.
2) There have been confirmed instances of duplicate reports entered into VAERS.
3) Even in the cases where the deaths have been confirmed, it doesn’t automatically follow that the death was caused by the vaccine.
To quote the Judge in “Fried Green Tomatoes”, you got a whole load o’ nothin’.

@Ginny Stoner Vaccination requires two shots before it works. Besides of that, no one claims that vaccines are 100% effective. Repeat this milllion times. Perhaps you then get it.

Squirrelelite, how many unconfirmed deaths; how many ruled out? Where is the analysis of the deaths, showing why they were ‘confirmed’ or not?

What percent of vaccine injuries result in a claim being filed?

@Ginny,

We don’t know what we don’t know.

How many angels fell of the head of the pin and died because Yahweh told them they needed to get vaccinated?

Squirrelelite, you don’t know how many deaths were unconfirmed and how many were ruled out? How could the researchers NOT have that basic data? You have no idea where their analysis is…and don’t care, apparently?

And, because you don’t know how many vaccine injuries result in a claim (it is likely a small fraction, just as it is for VAERS reports) — you are more than happy to pretend it’s 100% because it makes the risk look low. That’s called a con job.

Ginny, I don’t have to come up with a superior analysis to show that YOUR analysis is a pile of bovine excrement. All I need to do is point out the problems with it. Your repeated demands that I come up with “a better analysis” is handwaving.

Julian Frost will you be honest and admit there are no vaccine risk calculations available to the public from any source promoting vaccination, based on VAERS data or any other data?

Will you be honest and admit that your opinions on COVID19 vaccine safety are not based on any risk calculations at all?

No problem if you won’t, I guess, since it’s clear from the totality of your comments. Just trying to save readers time so they don’t have to hunt for the answer.

What percent of vaccine injuries result in a claim being filed?

You keep doing this. ‘Percentage’, Ginny. The word is percentage.

All you can do is complain about the work I did–but you are totally fine with the CDC and FDA and ACIP not doing it at all.

Perhaps that should tell you something about your “work,” Ginny.

@Ginny Stoner Squirrelelite did gave you an estimate did you notice ? Try to analyse it. You did not comment CICP claims either.

@Ginny Stoner Do you seriously think people do not want compensation for death ? Much more minor claims has been filed, according to CICP stats. But you must file medical records, which explains difference with VAERS data.

And yet you didn’t know about VSD? What have you been doing with all of your time?

More complete BS–of course I knew about VSD. It’s NOT publicly accessible data, as you tried to claim. I’m not even doing research–I’m just publishing numbers and math.

Strange how you keep accusing people of ignoring your work (and VAERS data), but you ignored other (less available) sources and the publications based on that (better, more reliable) data.
So you just ignored it. I guess that’s one way to go…

You are so full of it. Think you can do a better job of calculating risk–then do it. Think someone else has done a better job–then produce it. You’ve got nothing but derision and insults, and I’m not impressed.

I’m not even doing research

More accurately, you’re trying and failing to “do research.” Perhaps you should switch to trying and failing to draft an FOIA request for VSD data that can’t evade de-identification.

A reference to my most-read blog post of all time– the deadly COVID19 vaccine coverup–awesome! I’ve done a recent update to that paper. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/4/11/the-deadly-covid19-vaccine-coverup-revisted

The coverup of the massive increase in deaths/serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots has continued. To date, no analyses of VAERS data have even acknowledged it or tried to show it’s nothing to worry about. Dorit Reiss can verify this.

This concealment looks like willful misconduct that would forfeit immunity from liability under the PREP act, and a crime against humanity.

“The coverup of the massive increase in deaths/serious injuries reported to VAERS from the covid shots has continued”

Except there hasn’t been a coverup — you found the reports, as have others. The reason nobody pays attention to you, other than to direct well deserved scorn your way, is that the assumptions you make and the conclusions you draw from the numbers aren’t worth a drunk hog on ice.

I did chuckle, though, when you gasped, grabbed your pearl necklace, and electronically screamed my most-read blog post of all time. Fiction is always a big sell, even the poorly written bullshit you post.

Oh great. Now it’s my turn to humiliate your click bait car salesmanship — Stoner retracted number 85 and jerky boy fan.

Hey, I’m just an average guy and I get it. Some people have differing opinions based on any number of things. I look at numbers and luckily have enough education to realize the difference between causality and correlation — not to mention car salesmanship.

Yea, you’re the greatest of all time because you say so and obviously mean it. Me, your’re a bad used car sales person.

You. Just please read my paper or watch this video that makes me laugh.

Notice how your response contained no link to any analysis that acknowledged the massive increase in VAERS reports, and tried to show it was nothing to worry about? I did.

1000 Links to a Furlong are you basing your opinions about COVID19 vaccine safety on risk calculations, or feels and blind trust? If you’re basing it on solid data, link us to it.

Right:

Notice how your response contained no link to any analysis that acknowledged the massive increase in VAERS reports, and tried to show it was nothing to worry about? I did.

You did what?

Anyway, now that I’ve bothered, it’s plain that you’ve gone full Poughkeepsie, as Pubmed will happily spit out plenty of results for what you’re piteously whining about. With a two-word query.

@NWO Stoner: “A reference to my most-read blog post of all time– the deadly COVID19 vaccine coverup–awesome!”

Rub that chub!!!! Rub it good!!!!

But hey, as apparently you’re a fan of reading:

While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness.

VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Reports to VAERS can also be biased.

Why, it’s almost as if VAERS itself loudly warns that qualitative and/or qualitative conclusions cannot be formed from VAERS reports, only hypotheses (“suspicions”) that demand additional in-depth research to confirm/reject.

I mean, bloody hell, you dumb stump! Of course VAERS reports are going to increase in 2021 over previous years, simply because the number of vaccines administered in 2021 has increased by hundreds of millions!

An ethical, educated reporter, upon detecting a possible pattern in VAERS reports, would do the lengthy and tedious legwork to identifiy which of those reports are legitimate and which are not. It might be, for instance, that antivaxxers, in cahoots with the Cult of Trump, Russian disinfo agents, and other fascist scorched earthers, are mass-filing malicious reports in hopes of destroying US COVID vaccination programs and causing chaos in general. Imagine being the reporter who busted that conspiracy wide open—guaranteed both a Pulitzer and a neo-Nazi lynch mob, at the very least!

But if you think incisive expert reporting punching some queries into VAERS and presenting the output as GIANT CONSPIRACEEEE which you can see while all the world’s epidemiologists cannot, then all you prove is your obscenely overinflated ego and incapacity to ask yourself “What have I missed?”

Your unshakeable certainty that you are the smartest person in the room when even the furniture demonstrates more wits than you do is comical. But I get it, that’s just how you’re wired. Grandiosity is your base compulsion; you are no more able help yourself than you would choose to help anyone else. All the same, if you really must auto-fellate, at least have the manners not to spray it on other people’s carpet. Gross.

“Healthcare providers who administer COVID-19 vaccines are required by law to report to VAERS the following after vaccination […] Serious AEs regardless of causality.

https://vaers.hhs.gov/faq.html

Do we need to define “causality” for you?

Two new comments on this sub-thread from Has and Terrie, both of whom raised objections that are already addressed on my page. https://www.virginiastoner.com/cvax-risk

Not surprisingly, both raised these objections as if they were brilliant insights no one has ever thought of before, rather than obvious limitations of VAERS.

And, of course, neither have any better risk calculations–because they’ve based their beliefs about COVID19 vaccine safety on feels and blind trust, not actual data.

I suppose they believe those ideal risk calculations are out there somewhere, and that, unlike VAERS data, the secret data our wise medical overlords used has no limitations whatsoever.

Just another day in Covid Cartoon Land.

“and that, unlike VAERS data, the secret data our wise medical overlords used has no limitations whatsoever.”

Your VAERS data is still rubbish. Whining about ‘other’ data and it’s possible limitations is irrelevant. A pile of shit is a pile of shit, even if you cover it in sprinkles and complain that no one has given you caviar.

“NumberWang what data are you using to calculated risk–if any?”

I’m not. Even if I could be arsed, I’d be thinking that I’d probably missed something or couldn’t justify a particular conclusion because of the POOR data.

It’s been pointed out that the data you are using are unreliable. That situation isn’t changed by the presence or reliability of any other data.

As I said, a pile of shit is a pile of shit. Even if it’s bigger than mine.

Me: “What data are you using to calculated risk–if any?’
NumberWang: “I’m not.”

Kudos for being the only one on this blog with the balls to admit your opinion on COVID19 vaccine safety is based on feels, not data.

@New World Odor: “Two new comments on this sub-thread from Has and Terrie, both of whom raised objections that are already addressed on my page.”

Guess what, none of us have any interest in trawling through your personal latrine. We are not the ones willfully abusing VAERS to fabricate conclusions, you are. You have no case; you never did. Just a big ol’ mound of damp Mary-Sue porn fic.

Stomping your little feet and declaring “I am too right!” only wins an argument in your glorious fantasy world. Out here in harsh reality, the only thing your rancid witterings can ever prove is a Cluster B diagnosis.

In fact there are multiple active and passive monitoring systems for detecting vaccine problems in the US alone, never mind all the other world’s nations. Your fixation on the lowest-quality catchall, loudly insisting that it represents the peak summit of understanding, not just one lowly beginning as every honest observer knows, says everything: you took a predetermined conclusion and have sought solely to confirm, not refute, it. And now your paper tiger demands that we fear its mighty roar.

LOL.

Hey, I get it: for a narcissist, confirmation bias isn’t a character flaw, it’s your entire life’s mission. But it makes you very dull. You genuinely want to impress us? Start by refuting your own arguments so that we don’t have to! (Hint: see the VAERS frontpage where it outright declares you cannot use VAERS data to do exactly what you just did with it.) Once you get skilled at demolishing your own crap arguments, perhaps you will start presenting good solid robust arguments which will force us to do some actual work. Until then, you are just another idiot chew toy to be batted around till fresher entertainment comes along. #BoredNow

Has, you spent longer drafting that comment than it would have taken you to actually read and understand what you are criticizing. If you don’t understand the basic need to do that, I can’t help you. That’s something a typical 8-year-old intuitively understands.

@NWO Moron: Onec more for the terminally hard of learning: I don’t need to read your bilge to discredit you. You already discredited yourself, by doing the very thing that VAERS itself says you cannot do:

VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness.

You have no argument, you needy narc nutjob, just attention-seeking behavior.

This is what happens when you don’t read what you’re critiquing, has:

I have 4 separate advisories about that issue on the page. I state right away (in the second paragraph) that “reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury;” and I restate the concept later with, “The estimates here […] do not account for coincidental injuries and deaths that may have been reported to VAERS.” In addition, there’s a prominent graphic at the end stating “Important note on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS): Never assume that reports to VAERS prove the vaccine caused the injury—they don’t.” There’s also a disclaimer to that effect in one of the charts.

I feel like grade school teacher right now.

@has

If I remember correctly, there’s a computer acronym that describes analysis of raw VAERS data — I believe it’s “GIGO”. ?

“I have 4 separate advisories about that issue on the page. I state right away (in the second paragraph) that “reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury;”

…..but you still use the figures anyway.

You may feel like a teacher but it’s only playschool.

@Ginny Stoner If you has an answer to Terrie and has, give it here, My guess is that it is as your claim that VAERS has reports only up to 30 minutes after vaccinatiom.
No one would spike up your website traffic.

@Nob Wobbling Onanist: “I have 4 separate advisories about that issue on the page. I state right away (in the second paragraph) that “reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury;”

See, now you’re just being obtuse. (Since you lack the talent to rise to sophistry.) Our point is: VAERS data is highly unreliable. You cannot draw ANY conclusions from it. You can only use it to generate hypotheses for further research.

You may repeat the words. But you ignore their meaning, doing exactly what they tell you NOT to do. Therefore I do not need to read your site to debunk you. The moment you declared you drew conclusions from VAERS data, you debunked yourself. No soup clicks for you.

@EmJay: Indeed. “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”

VAERS is basically a customer feedback form. On the internet. Because in amongst all the screaming Karens, occasionally a fragment of genuinely useful information might be found. A responsible researcher, rummaging through the raw crud, will stop, say “Hmmm, that’s odd”, and design tests to discover if there’s a larger pattern to it or it’s just one more meaningless blip of random noise. (Spoiler: probably the latter.)

Protip: these tests do not involve holding up a dB meter and declaring that the Karens are extra outraged today. That’s the “Garbage” data that VAERS warns about; a warning that no doubt made a lovely whoosing sound as it flew miles over the dismal one’s head.

Honestly, there are probably rocks possessing better science skills than Stoner, who seems genuinely incapable of grasping the distinction between “How” and “Why”. I may not know much about it myself, but I know when a bunch of science nerds are rolling their eyes at me the most likely explanation is that I’ve made a right fool of myself. Which is what happens when one executes the How without comprehending the Why—and one does not need to be an expert in science to detect that pattern.

The simple fact is, if COVID vaccines were really triggering a seven-bell alarm on VAERS, they’d be triggering that same alarm on every other vaccine monitoring system in the US and the rest of the world to. So if VAERS is noisy while the others are quiet, it points to a different cause. Funny how the “New World Order” Reporter fails to report on that.

Has, so what do you claim the probability of serious injury or

Somebody’s trying to branch oww-out.

death per vaccine is?

With the usual consequences.

This concealment looks like willful misconduct that would forfeit immunity from liability under the PREP act, and a crime against humanity.

This casual obscenity seems to have more or less flown under the radar. It speaks volumes about Ms. Stoner’s character.

Speaking of Pubmed, this is familiar.

Conclusions: Our study found that the death of a high-profile ethnic minority celebrity led to the spread of misinformation on Twitter. This misinformation directly challenged the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines at a time when ensuring vaccine coverage among minority populations was paramount. Misinformation targeted at minority groups and echoed by other verified Twitter users has the potential to generate unwarranted vaccine hesitancy at the expense of people such as Hank Aaron who sought to promote public health and community immunity.

Naturally, I learned that Roger Angell had died immediately after putting that together.

Ginny, you are a true believer, and I doubt that anything anyone can say will cause you to rethink your basic assumptions. I’m not sure why anyone should continue wasting their time, because you will not be convinced. It’s interesting how you can both acknowledge the problems of the data you have, but don’t let that stop you from thinking that your analysis is the best. Asking questions is the cornerstone of the scientific process, while being sure that you already know the answer is the cornerstone of religion.
I know that you will respond by asking for my analysis, but I don’t have your self belief, so I haven’t spent the time. See, I’ve saved you the effect in responding.

I hope that you have enjoyed the attention, if nothing else

NumberWang just admitted his/her opinion on COVID19 vaccine safety is not based on any risk calculations (solid numbers) of any kind. Will you admit it, too?

NumberWang just admitted his/her opinion on COVID19 vaccine safety is not based on any risk calculations (solid numbers) of any kind.

There must be more than one Rule of Holes. What do yall surmise “solid numbers” to mean, Ginny?

I love your ability to simply ignore the parts that don’t fit with your beliefs, and accuse others of doing the exact same thing. Sometimes people project onto others their own feelings onto others, often as a defensive mechanism. You want people to ‘admit’ to something that you are also (obliviously) guilty of. Are you capable of admitting that your calculations are build on layers of faulty data and broad assumptions? I doubt it. That would need a level of self awareness I have yet to see.

Don’t ever change (even if you could).

My ‘calculations’ are based on infection/hospitalization/death rates of vaccinated/unvaccinated people, in addition to excess death rates (according to vaccination status) and studies of (potential) severe side effects (such as myocarditis) conducted in a number of countries (and the VSD). I also read anti-vax ‘studies’.

David why aren’t you sharing the data you put so much stock in? Since you put ‘calculations’ in sneer quotes, does that mean there actually are none?

“NumberWang just admitted his/her opinion on COVID19 vaccine safety is not based on any risk calculations”

Correction Ginny.

Not based on any calculation THAT I’VE DONE. You have no idea what my opinion of covid is anyway. What I do have strong ‘feels’ about, are people without expertise (or reading comprehension) who claim authority…..like you……for example.

So NumberWang you have some fantastically reliable vaccine risk calculation that ‘someone’ did, but you’re not going to share it here. Yeah, right, sure you do, Mr. Numbers.

You really are challenged aren’t you?

I know it’s flogging a dead horse but, one last time. Your calculations are based on inaccurate data, therefore they are inaccurate.

FIN

My feelings about the risks of covid could be based on the latest figures from my national health service, or they could be based on astrology combined with the entrails of a goat. Neither possibility makes your figures any more reliable.

I’m not sure why anyone should continue wasting their time, because you will not be convinced.

Ginny has been stopping by to make an ass out of herself for the better part of a decade. She’ll trot off with her slobber toy before too long.

Your answer was perfect. I couldn’t demonstrate selective reading any better if I had tried. I probably would have been disappointed your response had been any different.

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a blog post to send you, I guess I don’t have your talent for distilling something as complicated as a pandemic affecting billions of people (and their immune systems) into a single equation like you can. But thank you for expressing interest in my opinion.

David, I didn’t say anything about a “single equation.” The issue is complicated, no doubt. But maybe you should consider that, if you can’t even begin to estimate the mathematical risk of death or serious injury from vaccination, what do you really know about safety?

I think you should also consider that maybe the CDC, ACiP, FDA, etc. have very good reasons for not publishing a vaccine risk analysis.

Maybe it’s the same reason they have for brazenly lying about Spanish Flu vaccines, claiming they didn’t exist, when in fact millions were administered to the public, including military, corporate employees and residents of state institutions. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/3/12/spanish-flu-swine-flu-covid19-and-perpetual-vaccine-lies

Maybe it’s the same reason they have for brazenly lying about Spanish Flu vaccines

Ooh, a new, completely random, traffic-seeking conspiracy. That’s promising.

Now I’m confused – what was the calculation of 14,68010=140,680 (or 14,680100=1.5M)? Are you saying that this isn’t your calculation? Don’t you stand behind your ‘work’ anymore?

But I’m glad to see you (finally) expressing the uncertainty in VAERS data.

Spanish flu vaccines did not exist (it could not, because flu virus was not known). There were vaccines against associated pathogens
As I said, read Vaccine Safety Datalink Researh Group papers, for a start. They are about vaccine safety, you know

David, I have no idea what you’re asking. The numbers are the CDC’s–all I’ve done is calculate estimated deaths based on VAERS underreporting. Of course I stand by it–why not? No one including you has produced any better data or estimates on vaccine death risk.

It’s based on the CDC’s statement on covid shot death risk. The number has since been updated:

“More than 584 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through May 23, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 14,778 preliminary reports of death (0.0025%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”

No one including you has produced any better data or estimates on vaccine death risk.

The hubris is mind-numbing. Did you also manage to repress this one, Ginny?

@Ginny Stoner So you have underreporting number, too. Based you claim that there are no injury report after 30 minutes ?
If you admit that VAERS data does not show causality, why you claim that vaines cause more deaths than VAERS reports ?

Ginny, of course you don’t understand the question. And yet you have no problem supplying an answer…

If (and it’s a big if) I understand your process, you take the number of “preliminary reports of death “, multiply by this ‘underreporting factor’ you have, to get the number of deaths. Am I correct so far?
You take the number reported ‘as is’ (even though we all know that there’s no basis for doing that) and use a factor that is based on the Lazarus study from 2010 (or better yet Steve Kirsch). Did I understand your calculations? I understand the math, I just don’t understand what validity of your numbers (they become yours when you use them in your ‘research’) have.

Sounds similar, but I don’t refer to any ‘underreporting factor’–I’m just basing the calculations on the VAERS website, which indicates only a “small fraction” of vaccine injuries are reported.

Getting past your derogatory snark, please tell us how you think vaccine risk calculations should be done.

BTW, if you want to estimate the % of deaths/serious injuries reported to VAERS from covid shots that were coincidental, I’ll punch those numbers in to get an estimate of risk you like better. Just make the % plausible.

BTW, if you want to estimate the % of deaths/serious injuries reported to VAERS from covid shots that were coincidental, I’ll punch those numbers in to get an estimate of risk you like better.

You’re really the Rudy Giuliani of Self-Declared Epidemiologists, aren’t you?

Ginny,
You calculated based on “VAERS underreporting”.
How did you convert this to a number, to be used in your calculation? Did you just make it up? I’m confused

David,
Estimated actual deaths = deaths reported/% of deaths reported.
Risk ratio = estimated actual/vaccines administered.
1 in X risk = vaccines administered/estimated actual

Somehow in all this demanding of risk calculations, Ginny is completely ignoring the fact that I proffered a risk calculation from VAERS that showed vaccines have become more than 3 times safer over the course of the pandemic.

It is GIGO, but does use the same data set Ginny is using.

To date there have been 9 deaths causally associated with COVID-19 vaccines from more than 585 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines given in the US.

Chris are you actually claiming that dividing 9 by 585,000,000 will yield a fair estimate of the probability of death or serious injury from covid vaccination? That sounds either delusional or deceptive.

That risk would actually be far lower than the risk of death from other vaccines, even according to the CDC. That totally conflicts with the fact that twice as many deaths have been reported to VAERS from the covid shots in the last 18 months than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years.

The data are the data, Ginny. Your beliefs don’t enter into it.

Most deaths reported in VAERS are not causally related to the vaccines. None of the deaths reported following HPV vaccination are, as an example.

You have been informed over and over again that it is not possible to draw causality from VAERS data – yet you continue to do so. This is because you are an anti-vaccine liar and attention seeker. There is no other conclusion to draw from your behaviour.

Chris are you actually claiming that dividing 9 by 585,000,000 will yield a fair estimate of the probability of death or serious injury from covid vaccination? That sounds either delusional or deceptive.

Uh-huh. There’s something you really need to sink into you skull: The magic “death number” that your loins apparently ache for is, in fact, negative.

@Ginny Stoner Do the math. 9 confirmed deaths per reported deaths.

@Ginny Stoner CDC does vaccine safety surveillance:
Hause, A. M., Gee, J., Baggs, J., Abara, W. E., Marquez, P., Thompson, D., Su, J. R., Licata, C., Rosenblum, H. G., Myers, T. R., Shimabukuro, T. T., & Shay, D. K. (2021). COVID-19 Vaccine Safety in Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years – United States, December 14, 2020-July 16, 2021. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 70(31), 1053–1058. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7031e1
VAERS data is used, but authors know what they are doing. Deaths are actually analysed:

I don’t what you think you read, but they don’t analyze any deaths.The authors are participating in the coverup of the massive increase in deaths and serious events reported to VAERS from covid shots, by failing to do a basic historical comparison of VAERS reporting rates.

I don’t what you think you read, but they don’t analyze any deaths.The authors are participating in the coverup of the massive increase in deaths and serious events reported to VAERS from covid shots, by failing to do a basic historical comparison of VAERS reporting rates.

Oh, dear, it’s entered the Yosemite Sam stage. There’s plenty more where this came from, Bitsy:

“Observational data on serious adverse events were reviewed. A rapid cycle analysis from VSD evaluated chart-reviewed cases of myocarditis and pericarditis occurring among persons aged 18–39 years following dose 2 of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine (Table 3e) [34]. The rate of myocarditis and pericarditis was 33.0 cases per million doses in the 0–7-day risk interval. Data from VAERS showed an elevated ratio of observed to expected myocarditis cases in the 7-day interval following vaccination among females aged 18–29 years and among males aged 18–49 years, with higher observed/expected ratios in males than females [34]. A rapid cycle analysis of data from VSD evaluated chart-reviewed cases of anaphylaxis among all vaccinated persons aged ≥18 years. Based on events occurring in a 0–1 day risk interval after vaccination, the estimated incidence of confirmed anaphylaxis was 5.1 (95% CI 3.3–7.6) per million doses [33].”

But you’ve already stated that you won’t read any such nonsense. Does it make you mad, Ginny? You should try to emulate Forthman Murff.

I don’t what you think you read [sic ]

I suppose this miserable attempt at gaslighting should be called out for the record.

I feel like grade school teacher right now.

You’re behaving like a grade school kid, one who’s been caught in multiple lies (as you have been) with fingers stuck in her ears so she can’t hear the adults in the room scold her.

I get you’re here to help conceal the massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the COVID19 vaccines; and to convince people it doesn’t matter, if they do find out. It’s not your fault that the CDC, ACIP, FDA et. al. haven’t provided you with any evidence to make your job easier. .

I don’t what you think you read, but they don’t analyze any deaths.

what

I get you’re here to help conceal the massive increase in deaths and serious injuries reported to VAERS from the COVID19 vaccines; and to convince people it doesn’t matter, if they do find out. It’s not your fault that the CDC, ACIP, FDA et. al. haven’t provided you with any evidence to make your job easier.

a

But it doesn’t excuse your false accusations of lying designed to blackwash my character, scumbag.

fucking idiot you are, in addition to being a liar.

But it doesn’t excuse your false accusations of lying designed to blackwash [sic ] my character, scumbag.

That’s a ship that sailed a long time ago, Gindo.

Did you state multiple times that you do not claim that VAERS data does not prove causality ? But sometimes you contradict yourself.

I’ve said this many times, Aarno–VAERS data is the only vaccine injury data that’s freely available to the public–that’s why I used it, not because it’s a perfect or even ideal way to calculate vaccine risk. Like all databases, it has limitations, which I mention.

No one here, including you, has produced a different calculation along the same lines, that estimates the risk of death or serious injury per vaccine. That’s because the CDC, FDA, et. al. know very well how it would turn out–no one would would get the vax if they knew the numbers. The fact no one has done such a risk analysis is very persuasive evidence of that.

Like all databases, [VAERS] has limitations, which I mention.

Those limitations render VAERS data useless for calculating death and injury rates from vaccines. This has been pointed out to you over and over, and yet you STILL use VAERS data. It’s as bad as the “evidence” used to show Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

no one would would get the vax if they knew the numbers. The fact no one has done such a risk analysis is very persuasive evidence of that.

Conspiracy theorist much? I can think of an alternative explanation. As has been pointed out, if large people were dying shortly after getting vaccinated, there would have been a signal.

If you use VAERS data, you should yake expeted mortality data into account. Tell us are there excess mortality

ACIP data is avaiale to public. There you find your risk analysis.
Perhaps you should try to write a research proposal to get VSD data.

Perhaps you should try to write a research proposal to get VSD data.

Crank-calling CISA seems more like her style.

One of the main objections to using VAERS data to estimate vaccine risk is that reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury—which of course is a perfectly legitimate objection.

The problem is, VAERS is the only vaccine injury data available to the general public. To accommodate this inherent limitation of VAERS, I calculated what the risks of COVID19 vaccination would be if half of all VAERS reports were coincidental (false).

The optimist’s estimate: If half of all VAERS reports were false, and 10% of vaccine injuries were reported, then the risk of death from 4 doses of vaccine is about 1 in 2000, and the risk of serious injury is about 1 in 350.

The pessimist’s estimate: If half of all VAERS reports were false, and 1% of vaccine injuries were reported, then the risk of death from 4 doses of vaccine is about 1 in 200, and the risk of serious injury is about 1 in 35.

Yikes. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/5/26/what-if-half-of-all-vaers-reports-are-false

The uninterested in facts take: make a bunch of unwarranted assumptions and use numbers the way they aren’t intended to be used to make your case, then link to a blog that posts fiction to support your case.

That still doesn’t make any sense. The reactions that DON’T get recorded in VAERS are things like “arm hurt like a sunofabitch for 2 days” or “24 hours later felt terrible”.

Now, I had a case of vertigo 24 hours after my 1st booster. I also had a mild case of pneumonia, treated by antibiotics, 2 weeks before. Was it the booster, a sequel of the pneumonia, or pure chance? If you can tell me with perfect confidence which it was, you’re better than my doctor or the ER doctors and nurses.

ACIP has a better risk calculations, Ghris Preston had one, too. Have you already forgotten ?

Your “estimates” are to epidemiology what the worst fanfic is to literature. Which is to say garbage that should be ignored.

But I can play the same game. I’m going to assume the most of the unreported adverse effects are common but minor (sore arm, flu-like symptoms for an afternoon, etc.). Meanwhile, I’m also going to assume that death is a very rare adverse effect and only 1 in 1000 deaths are not coincidental. So taking your own numbers, that means that 15 cases in VAERS are vaccine-related. I’ll be generous and assume that a full 50 percent of deaths related to the vaccine are unreported to VAERS, so that doubles the number to 30. Note that my assumptions are consistent with the general premise that adverse reactions are underreported.

Since you’re such a math whiz, I’ll let you calculate what the implied risk of death is using the above. I don’t expect anyone to take my estimate seriously. The sole purpose is to illustrate how easy it is for an amateur to cook up an estimate by making random assumptions.

We could keep coming up with guesses using different assumptions, and some of them will be closer to the “truth” than others. But without collecting additional data for cross-validation, we’ll never know which ones those are. As many here have already pointed out, all-cause mortality statistics don’t support your amateur speculation.

Your assumptions might be amusing for a blog comment, but there’s no way you could write a plausible paper about it that didn’t make you sound crazy.

Only 1 in 1000 deaths reported to VAERS were actually vaccine related? Lol. Can’t wait to read you paper in which you make that sound plausible. Gonna be a lot of angry doctors and nurses pissed they wasted their time filing a VAERS report.

Also, let me know if you find any better risk calculations than mine. So far, nada.

I guess your comment might be cute, if you weren’t participating in the coverup of the massive increase in deaths and serious events reported to VAERS from the covid shots.

Also, let me know if you find any better risk calculations than mine. So far, nada.

This is false, and not true, Ginny. You have repeatedly failed Dale Carnegie 101.

Have you ever taken a moment to wonder why this bit of petulant, unsolicited performance art is being received, to a body, as just that?

As usual, Ginny deflects. By “plausible”, she of course means assumptions that are consistent with her own uninformed priors. I’ll wait patiently for her to provide the cross-validation necessary to show her assumptions are better than mine. But all I expect are repeated claims about providing the best estimate and bad-faith accusations that others are part of a cabal covering up deaths.

“Can’t wait to read you paper in which you make that sound plausible. Gonna be a lot of angry doctors and nurses pissed they wasted their time filing a VAERS report”

Not if they are legally obliged to fill one in for any post vaccination event, whether they think it’s vaccine related or not. In which case they are simply fulfilling their obligations as a health care professional.

You really do ignore anything that counters your opinions don’t you? You should stop using web traffic as a substitute for self image. Admitting to yourself that you don’t know what you are doing, is the first step to improvement.

You really do ignore anything that counters your opinions don’t you?

One should be so lucky.

Your assumptions might be amusing for a blog comment, but there’s no way you could write a plausible paper about it that didn’t make you sound crazy.

Only 1 in 1000 deaths reported to VAERS were actually vaccine related? Lol.

∗KOFF∗.

“The reporting requirements for COVID-19 vaccines are the same for those authorized under emergency use or fully approved. Healthcare providers who administer COVID-19 vaccines are required by law to report to VAERS the following after vaccination:”

Above is from the CDCs own VAERS faq page and has been quoted to you before. Required by law = legally required.

Those Joo Janta 200s of yours are at their most sensitive setting for this topic, it seems.

“I’m often reminded that the FDA ‘requires’ healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS. But contrary to surface appearances, that doesn’t mean all or even most vaccine deaths are reported.

“First, the only deaths vaccine providers will usually know about are the very rare ones that occur during the 15-30 minute monitoring period after the shot. Second, there’s no penalty for not reporting. Third, there’s no compensation for the considerable time involved in filing a VAERS report. Fourth, there are indications the rate of VAERS reporting is as low as ever among medical providers, such as this law firm letter written on behalf of a Physician Assistant at a regional New York hospital.” https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Letter-Re-First-Hand-Account-of-Covid-19-Vaccine-Injuries-and-Underreporting-to-VAERS-1.pdf

It’s from the link you didn’t bother to read, Numberwang.

It’s from the link you didn’t bother to read, Numberwang.

Christ, you’re going the failed premastication route?

All you’ve done with that one so far amounts to a failure to curb “your dog.”

@Ginny Stoner VAERS reporting is part of regulation.Not following regulations is a bad thing, let us say.
You forget that reporting is mandatory regardless of causality. VAERS work that way:everything is reported, o that no real signal would be missed,
There are many papers analysing VAERS data like:
Hause, A. M., Gee, J., Baggs, J., Abara, W. E., Marquez, P., Thompson, D., Su, J. R., Licata, C., Rosenblum, H. G., Myers, T. R., Shimabukuro, T. T., & Shay, D. K. (2021). COVID-19 Vaccine Safety in Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years – United States, December 14, 2020-July 16, 2021. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 70(31), 1053–1058. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7031e1
Read this before speaking what is plausible in a paper

“It’s from the link you didn’t bother to read, Numberwang.”

All I did was show that you were talking bollocks with respect to the legality of doctors and nurses reporting to VAERS. It IS a legal requirement, contrary to your statement.

Well done on moving the goal posts though. First you said that the doctors and nurses would be annoyed to have their VAERS reports ignored. Now you are saying that they aren’t making them.

Numberwang so you are claiming the Physician Assistant at the regional NY hospital lied to her lawyers about what was going on re not filing VAERS reports? Did you read the letter? Because the lawyers pointed out the same thing you did–that they are required by law to report. But they aren’t doing it.

Did you read the letter?

It’s really quite damning as far as Conrad is concerned, isn;t it? I wonder what the going rate is for an eight-page self-indictment.

Nope. I’m claiming that you are wrong about it not being a legal obligation to file a VAERS report for any serious AE no matter what the cause (for covid vaccines).

Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. Doesn’t instil confidence when you’re wrong about something that can be verified on less than five minutes. How reliable is anything else you say, now that everyone knows you don’t background check anything?

Numberwang this is not rocket science, and just a few comments above I gave a very complete explanation for why, even though vaccine providers are ‘required by law’ to report on paper, it doesn’t mean all or even most deaths are being reported. You’ve never addressed the issues I raised, at all.

“I gave a very complete explanation for why, even though vaccine providers are ‘required by law’ to report on paper, it doesn’t mean all or even most deaths are being reported”

Which is a totally different issue to whether it’s a legal requirement or not. However, you seem to have grudging admitted that you were wrong. Phew.

Nobody has said that AEs aren’t under reported to VAERS. They’ve just told you, again and again, that VAERS cannot determine causality. If you want to stick a finger in the air and guess at percentage actual causality and percentage under reported, don’t expect to be take seriously because a guess x a guess = a guess squared.

@Ginny Stoner You repeat our ridiculous claim that only side effects happening 30 minutes after vacccination are reported.Somebody is actually contemplating lawsuit because a side effect happened 14 days after vaccination (Reported by Robert Kenney Jr, no less)
If someone has a serious side effect, he or she goes to doctor, who files a report. Only anaphylaxis happens that fast.

@Ginny Stoner You should give a citation about taht PA reporting non compliance. You did not gie any explanation of million missing corpses, either

Aarno I never said what you claimed I said. In fact, I’ve never heard that claim before.

“@Ginny Stoner You repeat our ridiculous claim that only side effects happening 30 minutes after vacccination are reported.”

What??

Aarno okay I realize where you go that. What I said was, most vaccine providers are only going to know about deaths in the first 15-30 minutes after the shot, because that is the length of their monitoring period.

In other words, if someone goes to Walgreens for a covid shot, and they die 3 days later, Walgreens isn’t going to know about that, so they can’t report it even if they wanted to.

This would mean over million corpses. Where are they ?

Some are hidden on the CDC’ tally of “deaths involving COVID19′.

Ginny, is there some reason that you’re doing Kegels rather than answering a direct question?

So you think OVIause COVID vaccines cause COVID ? They actually prevent it.

This would mean over million corpses. Where are they ?

Oh, the answer to this should be good (in a stupid sort of way).

Some are hidden on the CDC’ tally of “deaths involving COVID19′.

That was far more stupid than I anticipated, even having read the bullshit stoner has already posted. You’re implying they digitized the bodies? (The link to the 2nd grade reading level blog was hilarious though.)

All these attacks on my estimates of the risk of death or serious injury from COVID19 vaccination, yet no one can produce better estimates. Apparently no one is curious about why the CDC, ACIP, FDA, et. al. haven’t created a site like mine, where people can go to answer the fundamental question, “What is my (or my child’s) mathematical risk of serious injury or death from COVID19 vaccination?” Or any other kind of vaccination, for that matter.

Gee, do you think it might be because they don’t want people to know? Nah…the vaccine industry and its government partners truly care about us. They would never use sneaky tricks, like hiring hoards of trolls to promote and defend their products online. Sure, it might be the cheapest and most effective form of propaganda available, but the pharmaceutical industry would never stoop so low as to use a sneaky but basically legal means of persuasion.

Maybe the CDC feel that there are enough pseudo-scientific websites presenting calculations based on statistics that lack basis.

As for your martyrdom, It’s funny how people spending their free time trying to show you the many problems with your calculations seem to convince you of your righteousness. It sounds like you really want to be seen as being persecuted, as opposed to simply wrong. And every time someone points out how unscientific your calculations are, it only strengthens your self belief. I guess that your super ability is to learn nothing, so why even try.
I’m not trying to troll you, so please spare me your indignation. You don’t have to answer if that’s all you have to say.

“Maybe the CDC feel that there are enough pseudo-scientific websites presenting calculations based on statistics that lack basis.”

That’s great–not only does the CDC not have any “good” risk calculations–they don’t even have any bad ones.

They would never use sneaky tricks, like hiring hoards of trolls to promote and defend their products online.

“Hordes,” Ginny. The word is hordes.

“Hordes,” Ginny. The word is hordes.

Perhaps the shadow people the uneducated buffoon (the one who repeatedly posts and ignores data) is referring to are saving the trolls for later use.

All these attacks on my estimates of the risk of death or serious injury from COVID19 vaccination, yet no one can produce better estimates.

Repeating this over and over doesn’t make it true, Gindo.

Chris Preston gave you one.ACIP has risk estimates in its website. You just repeat thing endlessly. This does not make your claims true

Chris didn’t provide anything even remotely resembling a page where people can go to answer the fundamental question, “What is my (or my child’s) mathematical risk of serious injury or death from COVID19 vaccination?”

Why aren’t you advertising your work far and wide rather than just stinking up the joint here, Ginny?

Apparently no one is curious about why the CDC, ACIP, FDA, et. al. haven’t created a site like mine,

Perhaps because

a) they understand the issues and see no need to post asinine conspiracy theories
b) they, unlike you, have a sense of dignity

1) Risk estimates are mathematical calculations based on the number of vaccines administered and the number serious injuries/deaths reported. In what sense are they “asinine conspiracy theories”?

2) A “sense of dignity,” IMO, would require them to disclose all relevant risk information to vaccine consumers. VAERS is “our nations early warning system for vaccine safety,” according to ACIP, and is therefore relevant to vaccine risk.

In any case, CDC, ACIP & the FDA could use whatever data they want to to calculate risk, VAERS data or any other data.

To be fair, the CDC does publish the mathematical risk of a VAERS report for death from a covid shot–that’s what I start with on my CVax Risk page.

Risk estimates are mathematical calculations based on the number of vaccines administered and the number serious injuries/deaths reported. In what sense are they “asinine conspiracy theories”?

You aren’t doing risk calculations. You are taking data that is not vetted, making unsupportable assumptions designed to meet your predetermined conclusions, and doing simple arithmetic (which, based on the spittle you post, I can assume is all you’re capable of).

Add to that your habit of ignoring all the people who shown your “work” is worthless and moving your goals when that first gambit of ignoring isn’t enough — you simply continue to show yourself to be another attention seeking hack who wants to be considered “important for bucking the system” despite knowing jack shit.

So, in your opinion, no one has done any satisfactory risk calculations, a page where someone can go to answer the fundamental question, “What is my (or my child’s) mathematical risk of serious injury or death from COVID19 vaccination?” Correct?

It’s NOT a “totally different issue,” it IS the issue. A “legal requirement” is MEANINGLESS here because:

1) Vaccine providers won’t even know about most death;
2) There’s no penalty whatsoever for not reporting to VAERS;
3) Medical providers don’t get compensated for the considerable time required to report; and
4) There’s evidence the reporting rate is very low.

Medical providers don’t get compensated for the considerable time required to report

It’s a single page with prepaid postage on the back.

83,109 serious events reported to VAERS x 20 minutes per report = 27,703 hours of unpaid work. At $150/hour that would be = $4,155,450 lost.

Multiply that by 10 to 100 to account for the fact that only a small fraction of vaccine injuries were reported.

83,109 serious events reported to VAERS

I believe that’s No. 13 on this change-the-subject front.

x 20 minutes per report = 27,703 hours of unpaid work.

Beg pardon?

At $150/hour that would be

This is fun!

= $4,155,450 lost.

By whom?

Multiply that by 10 to 100 to account for the fact that only a small fraction of vaccine injuries were reported.

No, Gindo. The numbers that you pulled out of your taint are simply imbecilic. I can see how this would be a time-saver for the purpose of screeching for attention, but that’s all it does, and poorly at that. Put shortly, you have by default copped to every criticism that has been sent your way.

Go back to your hole.

!) Vaccine proviers are not only doctors. People with SAE will go other doctor, who will report
2)Not following a legal requirement is not a goo thing.Patient may file a complaint.
3)Medical providers do lot of reporting without compensation. It is part of the profession,
4)Where you get your reporting rate ? Acitaion is needed.
Additionally, where are million corpses ?

If the vaccine provider AND the doctor both report the same death, that’s a recipe for over counting and over reporting.

I realize anti-vaccine activists are all for that, but it’s another thing that would make VAERS numbers unreliable, besides the fact that they do not show causation, and are not independently corrected.

I having been reading these back and forth discussions, and I have to agree with Giny. It has long been argued that VAERS should be used as a signal for further research. Knowing then of the signal of excess deaths from Covid vaccination, where is the research to account?

Knowing then of the signal of excess deaths from Covid vaccination, where is the research to account?

Again? Again.

I don’t know if the issue is lack of understanding or intentional misrepresentation, counting on the fact that no one will fact check, but I want to remind everyone that ACIP reviews COVID-19 vaccines safety and provides data about any known or possible risk in every meeting that speaks about COVId-19 vaccines. In other words, saying ACIP does not do those calculation is untrue (though it could, again, be the result of ignorance and not understanding the data).

Here is ACIP’s review of vaccines safety in children 5-11 from the May 19 meeting. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-05-19/03-COVID-Shimabukuro-508.pdf

Of course, you can misrepresent them, ignoring, for example, the question whether reports show causation, but the data is addressed, and claiming we need to go to the misleading blog of an anti-vaccine activist wanting to misrepresent the evidence to get it is another misrepresentation.

There is data at that link, for sure. And they go into a little more detail on heart inflammation.

It did not, however, address the fundamental question, “What is the mathematical risk of serious injury or death for me or my child from COVID19 vaccination?”

And, as usual, ACIP concealed the massive increase in VAERS reports from covid shots. Thus, people remain unaware that more serious injuries and deaths have been reported to VAERS from COVID19 vaccines in the last 18 months, than from all other vaccines combined for the last 31 years.

And, of course, that relieves them from doing any analyses on the reasons for it. To this day, there are none.

I do know if the issue is lack of understanding, or intentional misrepresentation and counting on the fact that no one will fact check.

“Of course, you can misrepresent them, ignoring, for example, the question whether reports show causation…”

In fact, I just added a FIFTH advisory to my CVax Risk page about that issue. Now, I mention it under the title, as well as four other places in text, charts and graphics, starting in the second paragraph. It’s also included in the Notes on every single VAERS search result — I counted 8 of them. That’s a total of 13 statements saying, in one way or another, that reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury.
https://www.virginiastoner.com/cvax-risk

Tell me what more I could do to make this issue clearer to people–I am absolutely willing to listen, as long as your solution is not to do any risk calculations at all.

I’ve provided a HUGE range of estimated vaccine risk–from a 1 in 5900 risk of death to a 1 in 200 risk, and a risk of serious injury from 1 in 1000 up to 1 in 35. What do you think the range or risk should be, and why?

I’ve also done a theoretical analysis of risk, if HALF of all VAERS reports were coincidental (false). That, too, gives a huge range of risk. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/5/26/what-if-half-of-all-vaers-reports-are-false

All my calculations are based on the CDC’s calculation of risk of a VAERS report for death. Do you agree with the CDC’s calculation, or should they stop doing it, too?

Tell me what more I could do to make this issue clearer to people

For a start, meaningfully stratify the data (e.g., all nine deaths were from J&J/Janssen) and provide confidence intervals. By your own description, you’re not providing meaningful information to anybody about anything.

Narad that not only doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t answer the question. The question was, if 13 advisories about VAERS reports not proving the vaccines caused the injury isn’t enough to make it clear to people, then what would be.

Not wanting to derail this post, speaking of hidden vaccine injuries, what is to be made of the relationship between Covid vaccination and monkeypox? Here is an article implicating mRNA vaccination shutting down the toll receptors with the condition.

https://azradale.substack.com/p/monkeypox-and-the-covid-19-vaccine?s=r

Conspiracy theory? Here is an article from scientists suggesting hat Covid might actually be suppressing the immune system and causing monkeypox. So, if the disease can do this, why not the vaccine? An even pressing question is why are we not learning about the Covid vaccination status of monkey pox patients?!

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/curious-way-covid-monkeypox-outbreak-092303956.html?guccounter=1

Side Note: The use of ivermectin to treat COVID has been halted in South Africa.

The use of ivermectin to treat Covid has been terminated by the medicines regulator.

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) announced on Monday that the special dispensation granted for the use of ivermectin has been terminated, after a review of evidence.

SAHPRA states that “there is currently no credible evidence to support a therapeutic role for Ivermectin in Covid”. It cites a surfeit of evidence supporting the opinion that ivermectin is of no clinical use for the prevention or treatment of Covid.

I got a chuckle last night after noticing that Kheriaty hired the same law firm as P.A. Conrad did. It wasn’t pretty (PDF). They’re now appealing to the 9th Circuit.

[…] And now we learn what these priests guilty of. They are guilty of speaking in a tone that Dr. Singer deems indecorous. (I discussed this deflection technique here.) According to Dr. Singer, Dr. Ioannidis was “pilloried by the medical science priesthood and its supporters in the media”, while Dr. Prasad “was subjected to personal attacks by peers.” Dr. Singer was upset that Ioannidis’ work was called a “black mark” and that NIH Director Francis Collins wanted a published “take down” of the “premises” of the Great Barrington Declaration. […]

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