Over the weekend, a vaccine brawl took place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—presidential candidate and longtime spreader of old, tired vaccine rumors— had a conversation with Joe Rogan on his podcast. The conversation bled onto social media in which Rogan ultimately
Excellent post. Reading it, I'm reminded of Brandolini's Law: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
Professor Hotez is right not to waste his energy. I can't imagine anything more frustrating that arguing with the medically ignorant. And the "I'll donate $100,000...." is laughably juvenile, a carry-over from the playground taunt of "I dare you". Then again, that pretty much sums up the Rogan crowd.
Full disclosure: I had the Moderna primary series and every booster since then for my age group.
But, the truth is, the CDC and FDA aren't telling us everything about the vaccines:
1) No formal explanation of the Cleveland Clinic study which found that the more a person was vaccinated, the more they got covid;
2) Vaccines are pushed on ALL age groups. Many other first world countries do not recommend covid shots for younger age groups;
3) Calling mRNA shots "vaccines" even though they do little to prevent infection and transmission;
4) Giving Americans only two choices (Pfizer and Moderna) for vaccines and boosters - other countries offer a wide variety of shots and technologies (including choices other than mRNA);
5) Reasonable questions from the public when things don't add up are silenced with the "misinformation" label
Add to that, the lid is about to get blown off the "virus lab leak" theory during the Presidential elections, which will shatter any remaining vestiges of trust Americans had in Public Health and their elected officials.
Did the bivalent booster actually increase reinfections, consistent with the Cleveland Clinic study?
Here's a passage from Dr Jeremy Faust's substack (link to full post below), in response to last week's FDA meeting on vaccines. I'm not saying he's right, but it certainly explains why 90+% of the people I know who got the bivalent booster also got covid, often within only a month of their shot, even if they had already been infected.
"That said, I continue to believe that the value-add for additional boosters for the young and healthy people boosting is not apparent, other than a short-term decrease in infections. In my work with epidemiologists in Qatar, we showed that people without high risk did not get any added protection against severe Covid from even a 3rd dose (that’s how good the two-dose series was for the young and healthy!), and that eventually the rate of reinfection in the boosted began to exceed that of the unboosted (a phenomenon called immune imprinting)."
Yes, you read that right: "the rate of reinfection in the boosted began to exceed that of the unboosted."
Will we ever hear a similar explanation from CDC, or will they continue to keep their mouthes shut? What does that say about data transparency when the American taxpayer has to turn to Qatar to get reliable information?
This is so sadly true. i developed some memory issues after a concussion suffered in the OR. Since it has not resolved after a year, my neurologist is concerned that i might have an underlying issue such as early Alzheimers. i am SHOCKED at the number of people who are convinced this is from the vaccine (of which i have been an active proponent) even though i have had some memory issues prior to the pandemic, the concussion resulted in an immediate noticeable change and none of my boosters have in anyway affected my memory. You cannot reason with these people. The ones i love, i hold my tongue; the others get blocked or frozen out.
Science and facts have taken it on the chin. Allowing people the freedom to hear both sides of a story is now relegated to the history books.
The problem we have today, is to ask, who is making the call to stifle or inspire debate. Debate used to be the keystone of our society and now it is relegated to a select group or arbiters.
Issues like climate change is not allowed to be debated.
Issues like who is a women is not allowed to be debated.
Issues like racial inequality is not allowed to be debated.
Science has taken a back seat to the culture wars.
3 years from COVID - the US Government now admits a lab in Wuhan... that was restricted speech not that long ago.
You make some good points about the futility of a debate, especially if it is not moderated well. However many vaccine proponents fall into the same classifications that you attribute to the "antivax" crowd. How flexible are you with idea that you may be wrong about some things? Or even one thing?
I am a physician. My children have received all of their vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule. I had doubts about the Covid mRNA vaccines so I hesitated until I could know more. It led to a three year education about many things that I never learned in medical school. I was so convinced that we were making a mistake with mandates for all that I left my practice to work for Childrens Health Defense as their science editor for The Defender.
Over the last few months I have left comments on some of your articles that I thought were very fair and worthy of some consideration in hopes that a reasonable dialogue would ensue. Apparently you and Katelyn didn't think it was worthwhile to even engage here, on your own terms, in front of what would be largely a hostile audience towards me, not you.
Without going into the weeds or using a "Gish gallop" approach, I will offer three undeniable facts that should, in a rational world, necessitate an open discussion.
1) All Cause Mortality in the Pfizer trial was higher in the vaccine group. That should have been a hard stop. One cannot say that the deaths in the vaccinated cohort were "unrelated" to the vaccine any more than one can say that the single Covid death prevented was due to the vaccine. A trial only demonstrates correlation. If you wish to grant the vaccine a Covid mortality benefit, you must also acknowledge that it was associated with more deaths from all causes. This is why there has never been any drug, therapy or vaccine that demonstrated more mortality than placebo in a phase III trial that received any kind of approval/authorization. We somehow threw basic logic out the window two and a half years ago.
2) Pfizer only tested 170 out of the 3,410 participants that developed symptoms of Covid-19. Prevention of symptomatic Covid was the primary endpoint of the trial that launched the vaccine campaign. The public was told it was 95% effective. Pfizer had no basis for making that claim by only testing 1 in 20 symptomatic people. Why didn't the FDA ask any questions? If we were to take it on faith that the 95% efficacy would have applied to the other 3,240 people who were symptomatic, that would mean that there were a huge number of vaccinated people in the trial that became susceptible to something that was "like" Covid at a significantly higher incidence than placebo recipients.
3) The recent Cleveland Clinic study that showed that the incidence of Covid was directly correlated with the number of shots was not aberrant. That is precisely what the UKHSA had been reporting beginning in September 2021 across their commonwealth. Infection rates were higher and getting higher in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated. By the time they stopped reporting this metric six months later infection rates in the vaccinated were 3-5 times higher than the unvaccinated. We can all accept that the protective benefit of a vaccine can wane but negative efficacy? Surely that demands an open conversation about what is going on.
There are a lot of people that think the Covid mRNA vaccines aren't necessary anymore. There are others that think they weren't any good to begin with. This is evidenced by the public's uptake of the bivalent booster which is hovering around 17% right now.
I think this is tragic. The tragedy is in the fact that the pubic is quickly losing faith in the mRNA platform. I think the current products are doing exactly what the trials predicted they would do. If we were being rational we should have demanded another trial or another vaccine. Instead the medical establishment forced these products down people's throats while denigrating anyone, physician or not, who had doubts. It is very possible that in the future the mRNA platform will generate a therapy that is, in fact, safe and effective by reasonable standards, but what good will that be if half the population feel lied to and manipulated and choose never to believe lofty promises again?
At this point vaccine proponents have absolutely nothing to lose by allowing the biggest and most noteworthy proponent (Hotez) to come forward and make his case rationally. He is a big boy. He can call out the BS and rhetorical techniques if they occur. Foregoing the 2.6 million dollars that could be used for more research or charity that would be gained not for "winning" but simply showing up is inexcusable.
Why would anyone who is on the fence about these products have any faith in the medical orthodoxy at this point? His refusal to appear is going to drive an enormous wave of skepticism. He's doing far more damage to the future of public health by not engaging in good faith with a man who is running for the highest office in the land.
It pains me to see that Hotez, a man who proudly boasts his affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine, my own alma mater, will not come forward and defend his position.
Debating with trolls “I did my own Research” RobertFKennedy Jr., ElonMusk and JoeRogan is not going to clarify the vaccine issue. Scientific discussion by the experts will. Getting into a mudslinging fight wtih these idiots would be foolhardy. They just want the clicks and publicity and could care less about facts! Can’t wait till they go to Mars!
A great way to start would be to stop screaming "misinformation" and trying to censor the ever-loving shit out of anything that doesn't agree with the narrative of a certain political party or administration.
There have of course been a number of genuine public debates about vaccines held by the FDA and CDC, at which FDA experts, outside scientists, advocacy groups, and advisory committees discussed various aspects of vaccines, including their safety, efficacy, and distribution. Before each meeting detailed briefing materials from both the Agency and other organizations were made available.
An important research question, which I am not qualified to address precisely because my perspective on Virology and Biotech is that of an insider, is why so many people distrust these vaccines when they could have watched one or more of these meetings had they chosen to do so, or at least asked whoever they know who has general knowledge of Biosciences.
Throughout this pandemic MANY friends and relatives have been asking me questions and I have answered.
I think Dr. Jetelina’s and Dr. Panthaghani’s reasoning is sound and useful to many situations beyond the Rogan “challenge.” We do, though, need desperately for government officials and media commentators to confront and speak honestly to the public about inconvenient truths. I despair, for one, of honest and open discussion about pediatric gender-related medical and surgical interventions. I know many families, none of them bad actors, just trying to do the best and loving thing for their troubled children, simply wanting help and support so that their children are not rushed into interventions with life-long consequences before they can really know their own minds. My Democratic side of the aisle needs desperately to acknowledge the severe limitations on these interventjons, including pushing back on the science-denying language that surrounds this discussion, starting with excising from medical usage phrases like “assigned at birth” and “pregnant people.” We simply cannot leave it to bad actors to continue to weaponize these terribly fraught issues. I agree with Dr. Jetelina and her colleague that debating bad actors would not be fruitful, but let us just please remember that desperate families like the ones I describe are not bad actors, and their very valid concerns deserve to be heard and addressed. Here is an example of what I am writing about: https://substack.com/notes/post/p-128851555
Agree strongly with the "address concerns without being condescending" point. My 19 year old son was concerned about getting a booster. (He got the J&J originally.) He did a bunch of reading about the companies producing the vaccines and came away very concerned about many of their past actions. People (not necessarily the medical community) would just tell him things like "this is different," but his concerns were very real about real not-so-great stuff the companies have done in the past.
Well written and excellent observations. My day job is applied math - analytics without borders. For many years I was an active media person as a side job and worked extensively with my folks in this field. Rogan was just chasing ratings and his environment would be anything but conducive to finding true north.
“It can create a false sense of equivalence.” This one is especially important and dangerous. Brilliantly illustrated (in the context of climate change) by John Oliver: https://youtu.be/cjuGCJJUGsg
A good post. I liked the recitation of commonly used "evasive tactics" that are usually encountered in "debate" opponents' armamentaria. An excellent reference, by the way, that should be studied closely by every person engaging in the Vaccine Debates (or any other kind of debate involving science work products) should be the tidy little book "On Bullshit" by Dr. Harry Frankfurt at Yale (2005). This is not some joke publication but in fact is a serious philosophical text that provides at least one-dozen illuminating, explanatory passages. It is also highly entertaining writing of the highest caliber. I most highly recommend as well that any person contemplating a "debate" about (for example) COVID vaccine safety should be absolutely required to study most carefully -- as part of the "foreplay" -- the famous green teapot analogy of Bertrand Russell. And I am not bullshitting about this either.
Excellent post. Reading it, I'm reminded of Brandolini's Law: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
Professor Hotez is right not to waste his energy. I can't imagine anything more frustrating that arguing with the medically ignorant. And the "I'll donate $100,000...." is laughably juvenile, a carry-over from the playground taunt of "I dare you". Then again, that pretty much sums up the Rogan crowd.
Full disclosure: I had the Moderna primary series and every booster since then for my age group.
But, the truth is, the CDC and FDA aren't telling us everything about the vaccines:
1) No formal explanation of the Cleveland Clinic study which found that the more a person was vaccinated, the more they got covid;
2) Vaccines are pushed on ALL age groups. Many other first world countries do not recommend covid shots for younger age groups;
3) Calling mRNA shots "vaccines" even though they do little to prevent infection and transmission;
4) Giving Americans only two choices (Pfizer and Moderna) for vaccines and boosters - other countries offer a wide variety of shots and technologies (including choices other than mRNA);
5) Reasonable questions from the public when things don't add up are silenced with the "misinformation" label
Add to that, the lid is about to get blown off the "virus lab leak" theory during the Presidential elections, which will shatter any remaining vestiges of trust Americans had in Public Health and their elected officials.
Did the bivalent booster actually increase reinfections, consistent with the Cleveland Clinic study?
Here's a passage from Dr Jeremy Faust's substack (link to full post below), in response to last week's FDA meeting on vaccines. I'm not saying he's right, but it certainly explains why 90+% of the people I know who got the bivalent booster also got covid, often within only a month of their shot, even if they had already been infected.
"That said, I continue to believe that the value-add for additional boosters for the young and healthy people boosting is not apparent, other than a short-term decrease in infections. In my work with epidemiologists in Qatar, we showed that people without high risk did not get any added protection against severe Covid from even a 3rd dose (that’s how good the two-dose series was for the young and healthy!), and that eventually the rate of reinfection in the boosted began to exceed that of the unboosted (a phenomenon called immune imprinting)."
Yes, you read that right: "the rate of reinfection in the boosted began to exceed that of the unboosted."
Will we ever hear a similar explanation from CDC, or will they continue to keep their mouthes shut? What does that say about data transparency when the American taxpayer has to turn to Qatar to get reliable information?
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/fda-moves-towards-monovalent-covid
This is so sadly true. i developed some memory issues after a concussion suffered in the OR. Since it has not resolved after a year, my neurologist is concerned that i might have an underlying issue such as early Alzheimers. i am SHOCKED at the number of people who are convinced this is from the vaccine (of which i have been an active proponent) even though i have had some memory issues prior to the pandemic, the concussion resulted in an immediate noticeable change and none of my boosters have in anyway affected my memory. You cannot reason with these people. The ones i love, i hold my tongue; the others get blocked or frozen out.
Thanks for sharing this challenging issue.
Science and facts have taken it on the chin. Allowing people the freedom to hear both sides of a story is now relegated to the history books.
The problem we have today, is to ask, who is making the call to stifle or inspire debate. Debate used to be the keystone of our society and now it is relegated to a select group or arbiters.
Issues like climate change is not allowed to be debated.
Issues like who is a women is not allowed to be debated.
Issues like racial inequality is not allowed to be debated.
Science has taken a back seat to the culture wars.
3 years from COVID - the US Government now admits a lab in Wuhan... that was restricted speech not that long ago.
We are treading on thin ice
Interesting as always. My father once said "if you fight a skunk no one will care who won". Let those without sin cast the first stone.
Dear Dr. Panthagani,
You make some good points about the futility of a debate, especially if it is not moderated well. However many vaccine proponents fall into the same classifications that you attribute to the "antivax" crowd. How flexible are you with idea that you may be wrong about some things? Or even one thing?
I am a physician. My children have received all of their vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule. I had doubts about the Covid mRNA vaccines so I hesitated until I could know more. It led to a three year education about many things that I never learned in medical school. I was so convinced that we were making a mistake with mandates for all that I left my practice to work for Childrens Health Defense as their science editor for The Defender.
Over the last few months I have left comments on some of your articles that I thought were very fair and worthy of some consideration in hopes that a reasonable dialogue would ensue. Apparently you and Katelyn didn't think it was worthwhile to even engage here, on your own terms, in front of what would be largely a hostile audience towards me, not you.
Without going into the weeds or using a "Gish gallop" approach, I will offer three undeniable facts that should, in a rational world, necessitate an open discussion.
1) All Cause Mortality in the Pfizer trial was higher in the vaccine group. That should have been a hard stop. One cannot say that the deaths in the vaccinated cohort were "unrelated" to the vaccine any more than one can say that the single Covid death prevented was due to the vaccine. A trial only demonstrates correlation. If you wish to grant the vaccine a Covid mortality benefit, you must also acknowledge that it was associated with more deaths from all causes. This is why there has never been any drug, therapy or vaccine that demonstrated more mortality than placebo in a phase III trial that received any kind of approval/authorization. We somehow threw basic logic out the window two and a half years ago.
2) Pfizer only tested 170 out of the 3,410 participants that developed symptoms of Covid-19. Prevention of symptomatic Covid was the primary endpoint of the trial that launched the vaccine campaign. The public was told it was 95% effective. Pfizer had no basis for making that claim by only testing 1 in 20 symptomatic people. Why didn't the FDA ask any questions? If we were to take it on faith that the 95% efficacy would have applied to the other 3,240 people who were symptomatic, that would mean that there were a huge number of vaccinated people in the trial that became susceptible to something that was "like" Covid at a significantly higher incidence than placebo recipients.
3) The recent Cleveland Clinic study that showed that the incidence of Covid was directly correlated with the number of shots was not aberrant. That is precisely what the UKHSA had been reporting beginning in September 2021 across their commonwealth. Infection rates were higher and getting higher in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated. By the time they stopped reporting this metric six months later infection rates in the vaccinated were 3-5 times higher than the unvaccinated. We can all accept that the protective benefit of a vaccine can wane but negative efficacy? Surely that demands an open conversation about what is going on.
There are a lot of people that think the Covid mRNA vaccines aren't necessary anymore. There are others that think they weren't any good to begin with. This is evidenced by the public's uptake of the bivalent booster which is hovering around 17% right now.
I think this is tragic. The tragedy is in the fact that the pubic is quickly losing faith in the mRNA platform. I think the current products are doing exactly what the trials predicted they would do. If we were being rational we should have demanded another trial or another vaccine. Instead the medical establishment forced these products down people's throats while denigrating anyone, physician or not, who had doubts. It is very possible that in the future the mRNA platform will generate a therapy that is, in fact, safe and effective by reasonable standards, but what good will that be if half the population feel lied to and manipulated and choose never to believe lofty promises again?
At this point vaccine proponents have absolutely nothing to lose by allowing the biggest and most noteworthy proponent (Hotez) to come forward and make his case rationally. He is a big boy. He can call out the BS and rhetorical techniques if they occur. Foregoing the 2.6 million dollars that could be used for more research or charity that would be gained not for "winning" but simply showing up is inexcusable.
Why would anyone who is on the fence about these products have any faith in the medical orthodoxy at this point? His refusal to appear is going to drive an enormous wave of skepticism. He's doing far more damage to the future of public health by not engaging in good faith with a man who is running for the highest office in the land.
It pains me to see that Hotez, a man who proudly boasts his affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine, my own alma mater, will not come forward and defend his position.
Debating with trolls “I did my own Research” RobertFKennedy Jr., ElonMusk and JoeRogan is not going to clarify the vaccine issue. Scientific discussion by the experts will. Getting into a mudslinging fight wtih these idiots would be foolhardy. They just want the clicks and publicity and could care less about facts! Can’t wait till they go to Mars!
If Dr. Hotez's time is too valuable to waste it educating the public in a debate, why does he continually waste it with MSM interviews?
A great way to start would be to stop screaming "misinformation" and trying to censor the ever-loving shit out of anything that doesn't agree with the narrative of a certain political party or administration.
There have of course been a number of genuine public debates about vaccines held by the FDA and CDC, at which FDA experts, outside scientists, advocacy groups, and advisory committees discussed various aspects of vaccines, including their safety, efficacy, and distribution. Before each meeting detailed briefing materials from both the Agency and other organizations were made available.
An important research question, which I am not qualified to address precisely because my perspective on Virology and Biotech is that of an insider, is why so many people distrust these vaccines when they could have watched one or more of these meetings had they chosen to do so, or at least asked whoever they know who has general knowledge of Biosciences.
Throughout this pandemic MANY friends and relatives have been asking me questions and I have answered.
I think Dr. Jetelina’s and Dr. Panthaghani’s reasoning is sound and useful to many situations beyond the Rogan “challenge.” We do, though, need desperately for government officials and media commentators to confront and speak honestly to the public about inconvenient truths. I despair, for one, of honest and open discussion about pediatric gender-related medical and surgical interventions. I know many families, none of them bad actors, just trying to do the best and loving thing for their troubled children, simply wanting help and support so that their children are not rushed into interventions with life-long consequences before they can really know their own minds. My Democratic side of the aisle needs desperately to acknowledge the severe limitations on these interventjons, including pushing back on the science-denying language that surrounds this discussion, starting with excising from medical usage phrases like “assigned at birth” and “pregnant people.” We simply cannot leave it to bad actors to continue to weaponize these terribly fraught issues. I agree with Dr. Jetelina and her colleague that debating bad actors would not be fruitful, but let us just please remember that desperate families like the ones I describe are not bad actors, and their very valid concerns deserve to be heard and addressed. Here is an example of what I am writing about: https://substack.com/notes/post/p-128851555
Agree strongly with the "address concerns without being condescending" point. My 19 year old son was concerned about getting a booster. (He got the J&J originally.) He did a bunch of reading about the companies producing the vaccines and came away very concerned about many of their past actions. People (not necessarily the medical community) would just tell him things like "this is different," but his concerns were very real about real not-so-great stuff the companies have done in the past.
Well written and excellent observations. My day job is applied math - analytics without borders. For many years I was an active media person as a side job and worked extensively with my folks in this field. Rogan was just chasing ratings and his environment would be anything but conducive to finding true north.
For those who cite the Cleveland Clinic study as saying that vaccines increase COVID risk
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/06/scicheck-cleveland-clinic-study-did-not-show-vaccines-increase-covid-19-risk/
“It can create a false sense of equivalence.” This one is especially important and dangerous. Brilliantly illustrated (in the context of climate change) by John Oliver: https://youtu.be/cjuGCJJUGsg
A good post. I liked the recitation of commonly used "evasive tactics" that are usually encountered in "debate" opponents' armamentaria. An excellent reference, by the way, that should be studied closely by every person engaging in the Vaccine Debates (or any other kind of debate involving science work products) should be the tidy little book "On Bullshit" by Dr. Harry Frankfurt at Yale (2005). This is not some joke publication but in fact is a serious philosophical text that provides at least one-dozen illuminating, explanatory passages. It is also highly entertaining writing of the highest caliber. I most highly recommend as well that any person contemplating a "debate" about (for example) COVID vaccine safety should be absolutely required to study most carefully -- as part of the "foreplay" -- the famous green teapot analogy of Bertrand Russell. And I am not bullshitting about this either.