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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Is this “turbo cancer” claim the single dumbest misuse of VAERS that I’ve ever seen?

A Substack writer who goes by the ‘nym “2nd Smartest Guy in the World” misuses VAERS to demonstrate a “143,233 surge in fatal cancers” due to COVID-19 vaccines, thus proving Betteridge’s law of headlines wrong in this case.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Quoth Dr. Prasad: “It would not be difficult” to do an impossible VAERS study

Dr. Vinay Prasad recently attacked an epidemiological study published in JAMA Open Network reporting that people in red states are more likely to report vaccine injuries, claiming that it “would not be difficult” to do a much more rigorous study.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Antivax weaponization of v-safe: Like VAERS on steroids

Misrepresentation of VAERS reports has been a longstanding antivaccine propaganda technique. Now Del Bigtree has gotten his hands on V-Safe, the system created to track adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination. The results are, predictably, disinformation.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

VAERS and plasmid DNA “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines: The nonsense continues

This week, a new preprint made the social media rounds falsely claiming a correlation between “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines with plasmid DNA and VAERS reports of adverse events. How does its methodology stink? Let me count the ways.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

2021: The year the weaponization of VAERS went mainstream

Misuse of the VAERS database to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines has been a favorite technique of antivaxxers for decades. Unfortunately, 2021 was the year when this particular antivax trope was turbocharged. (Note: Orac will be taking a week off after this—see note in post.)