118 Comments
Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023

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.

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@Janet,

The truth is worth fighting for much like freedom is worth fighting for.

The alternative is restricted speech.

The extremists usually end up looking stupid when facts come out in a head to head debate. Usually the extremists end up not attending confrontation.

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You're right, the truth is worth fighting for, but we don't have to fight in ways that are ineffective and resource/energy wasting. Dr. Jetelina clearly defined why fighting in every opportunity can be ineffective at best, harmful at worst. Are you saying you think engaging in every opportunity is necessary or worth it?

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This dovetails with the energy transfer theory of accident causation:

All accidents are caused by rapid energy transfer

A hazard is an energy imbalance between two nearby systems

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It always take infinitely more work to remember the lies than to tell the truth, which never changes.

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Sadly, this doesn't hold true in the case of career grifters like RFKjr. He's memorized the lies he tells because they are the basis of his grift. Every lie he tells is in service to driving more gullible people to donate to Children's Health Defense. It's not that RFKjr can't be swayed by data and facts. He's impervious to them. He doesn't care what the facts are. He won't embrace them because at even the slightest appearance that he's changed his mind about vaccine safety his entire edifice of grift tumbles to dust. And the money dries up. And nobody pays him any attention, ever again. Until they read his obituary, and they they go "what a shame..."

To some extent Rogan is exactly the same

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Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023

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

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Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023

BayDog, I agree with you 100%! I had the first three Moderna, and I do not plan to get another vaccine. In fact, at my yearly physical last week, my doctor, at a major medical center, discouraged it saying the benefits don’t outweigh the risks for me. There is no nuance in the messaging. I have become so skeptical over the course of the pandemic, and I was public health’s most rabid follower when this began. I wore a mask any time I left my house until the Fall of 2022. I got a vaccine the second I was eligible and my children did too. But, there are so many unanswered questions. When voices like Paul Offitt and the hosts of TWIV start asking them too, it is a disgrace not to answer them.

And, I think Jeremy Faust will be right. Just about everyone I know who got the omicron booster got Covid irrespective of their masking behaviors. Just about everyone I know who did not get the booster did not get Covid, also irrespective of masking behaviors.

I am disappointed that the epidemiologists I trusted in those early days seem to be locked into a narrative.

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founding

I, too, have had every vaccine and booster for my age group, most recently the current booster. I was interested to observe in myself, for the first time, a great deal of hesitancy about getting the most recent booster. When I read Dr. Faust’s piece, my concern was increased by his statement: “Second, dropping the Wuhan portion of the vaccine will decrease the immune imprinting that we’ve seen crop up, in which we accepted short-term protection in exchanged for longterm higher rates of reinfection.” Despite doing my best to make well-informed decisions, I could find nothing that helped me understand the significance of imprinting, why and who made this “trade-off” decision, or anything, at least anything clear to a layperson, until you noted it just now, about the Cleveland Study. I did ultimately get the current booster, and am grateful to a commenter here who walked through some of the variables, as well as opinions offered by Drs. Jetelina and Topol. I remain concerned whether I did the right thing.

Your point about the virus lab leak theory is also salient. Jeffrey Sachs has persuasively argued that the possibility that there was a lab leak is not being addressed honestly, and I think the lid is about to be blown off that, too. These are very dangerous times for the truth.

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Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023

Wonderful comment. My guess is FDA underestimated the possibility of imprinting when it decided to include the Wuhan strain in the bivalent, and the “trade off” was understood only in hindsight.

In other words, they are now spinning things to make it sound like an intentional trade off was made to pursue greater protection at the expense of higher reinfection.

In other words, we screwed up - but we'll never admit it.

I am not an anti-vaxer, but I am done with mRNA vaccines. I hope I'm not once again restricted from taking the Novavax booster this Fall.

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Another resource I've found helpful if you don't already is Dr. Michael Osterholm, (CIDRAP/University of Minnesota).

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founding

He’s very good. Thank you for the reminder.

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I very definitely wish that some of our Biggest Cigars in the field of Epidemiology would formally take on the task of looking hard and in depth at this *latest report* regarding the data from Cleveland Clinic. There MUST be some rational explanatory mechanism for the observed data pattern. An exegesis by experts is overdue. Way overdue.

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Cleveland Clinic is a reputable medical organization. They were as surprised by the results of their study as anyone.

I suppose none of the bigwigs in epidemiology are refuting this study because they can’t without resorting to tactics that can easily be debunked. Instead, it’s much easier to wave one’s hand and call the study “misinformation.”

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Jun 20, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023

Thanks for sharing this, yet I already read it. Sorry, I'm not impressed. These are the typical arguments that are used to discredit anything that doesn't fit The Narrative. Briefly:

1) Correlation doesn't imply causation - findings weren't replicated

OK, what about the data from Qatar? Why does CDC hoard data?

2) Behavioral differences

OK, why aren't "behavioral differences" ever relevant on the CDC's charts which supposedly prove that vaccines reduce infections, hospitalizations and deaths by a factor of 10+ times?

3) People who didn't vaccinate are less likely to test (or test at home)

OK, I seem to call that since these people worked at a medical facility, they were all regularly tested at the facility as part of the study (or as part of their job)

4) People who didn't vaccinate were more recently infected and therefore had superior immunity

OK, wait - I thought natural immunity was a myth, or at best, on a par with immunity from vaccines. Now you're saying natural immunity is superior

5) Zero mention of "imprinting"

OK, isn't it odd that this rebuttal, which has apparently been "fact checked," completely ignores the number one explanation for why vaccinated people got infected at a higher rate than the unvaccinated?

6) MISINFORMATION, and I quote: "SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation."

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"....number one explanation for why vaccinated people got infected at a higher rate than the unvaccinated"

Just a thought:

Likely because the vaccinated ignored risks as a matter of total faith in thevaccine. The unvaccinated took more contact precautions.

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The unvaccinated people I know treated the entire pandemic like a game of "floor is lava" they weren't participating in. I can't imagine there were many people who simultaneously didn't trust the vaccine, but diligently masked and avoided social interactions.

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You're relying on Gateway Pundit and Jimmy Dore for vaccine information. Tell us how you feel about RFKjr and Barbara Loe Fisher. Are you sure the vaccines didn't magnetize you, as Sherri Tenpenny claimed in testimony before the Ohio legislature. The sad, simple truth is that your poor choice of sources means your opinions should be dismissed, with prejudice.

I'm just pointing this out for the edification of others with genuine questions. You can reply if you want, but I'm done here - I've found that it's pointless to try to debate people whose online brand is rooted in alternate realities.

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Recurring theme of the pandemic is to only become concerned with confounders and study design when the study doesn't match expectations (I see this on both "sides").

In this case, yes, there are numerous limitations to the CC study, but it does match most of our personal experiences - repeat covid infections after vaccination. That's not what you saw in your circle?

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Yes. Another wrinkle from the CC study, about 90% of those boosted got Pfizer. So this is really a "Pfizer booster vs no booster" study.

If you look at Figure 1 from this NEJM article, based on a study from Qatar, clearly Moderna is the superior vaccine.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2117933

Why aren't Americans explicitly told about the relative vaccine effectiveness - i.e., Moderna is better? If similar studies are being done in the US with taxpayer money, why aren't they being published?

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Yes. There’s an explanation but we will never be able to know what it is if we cannot openly debate it. The Cleveland clinic’s findings are not isolated. The UKHSA was showing the same thing way back in September 2021. Infection rates in the vaccinated were exceeding those in the unvaccinated month by month. Six months later when they exceeded those of the unvaccinated by a factor of 3 to 5, they stopped reporting this metric without discussion. The UKHSA surveys a population of over 35 million people. The fact that this couldn’t be discussed is mind blowing.

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That sad thing, is that prior to 2020, we already knew that our attempts to make SARS vaccines just lead to the target becoming more prone to minor variants. This was stated in the very pro Covid vaccine book "The Invisible Siege", where Dan Werb meticulously interviewed "Coronavirus Titan" Ralph Baric. That covid vaccines lead to more covid was a problem he had been unable to solve. This book was written during that euphoric window where we thought the vaccines worked, which is probably why passages like this made it in:

https://twitter.com/MichaelDAmbro17/status/1670901225506721796

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"variants that Baric had artificially created in his lab..."

Yikes, is this how Omicron originated?

"the negative reaction was severer."

Yikes, somebody needs an editor: "more severe."

Please tell me this is just another one of your Sci-Fi books!?

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Real book. I highly suspect Ralph Baric ghostwrote it. I'm working on a review, I'll tag you somehow when I finish it.

https://a.co/d/c1f3eMn

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Jun 21, 2023·edited Jun 21, 2023

Baric appears to be an expert in many fields. One thing I've tried to do throughout the pandemic is take whatever information is presented to me and filter it through "does this mesh with my own experience?"

For instance, it's possible Baric was able to tweak his virus in a way that made his vaccinated mice even more sick ("severer"). Yet in the real world, it does not seem to be the case that vaccinated people who are infected by a mutated strain are getting sicker (although, who knows, we now have therapeutics that didn't exist back in 2020).

Also, I hear people in the anti-vaxer camp (such as Elon Musk) talk about the huuuge numbers of vaccine injuries occurring among family and friends. And I just haven't observed this - and nearly everyone I know is vaccinated. It's hard to know which way is True North anymore, we must think for ourselves.

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Regarding Baric, it's important to understand that in academia and non-profit science your livelihood, reputation, and career is directly tied to how much grant money you can secure.

And securing grant money means you have to convince those holding the purse that your area of research is super important.

In the case of Ralph Baric, during the 80's, when all the virologists were making their careers on the back of the AIDS epidemic, Baric pursued studying the recently (<30 years) discovered family of Coronaviruses which were known to cause the common cold.

After nearly a decade of research Baric proposed a theory that Coronaviruses could someday mutate into super-deadly viruses far worse than the ones we lived without unknowingly for 3 million years.

[At this point I think the rationale skeptic would push back to Baric and ask him why now after 300 million years would Coronaviruses suddenly mutate from Common Cold to global killers - is there any chance he is catastrophizing and falling for the "snake in the tree" fallacy - like Adam and Eve, he is becoming afraid of things which were always there he just didn't know it until he had the knowledge?]

In any case, he successfully scared the people holding the purse strings, Baric was able to secure funding for his pet projects. And why wouldn't that be what he does? Was there any chance after devoting a decade of his life to his research he would come out and say "turns out they are in fact just a nuisance, I don't need any more funding". No.

He then spawned a whole cottage industry of virologists who shared his theory and they started developing surveillance tools and programs to catch one.

In 2003, shortly after they started looking, they found SARS '03. They rang the alarm and warned it would spread across the world and kill millions. Instead, it burned out just as fast as it appeared with zero human intervention.

Baric pointed out it did kill 500 people by causing them to get pneumonia, but globally there are 4,000,000 pneumonia deaths anyway. All cause mortality in 2003 was no different than any other year.

Baric warned "we got lucky - next time we won't be so lucky".

And this is where he developed Gain of Function techniques to create worse strains of Influenza and Coronaviruses in his labs. He felt we needed to be on offense. Sure, Coronaviruses had 300 million years to mutate to kill us, but it was going to happen ANY DAY NOW.

Baric convinced Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins [1] and this caused a rift in the virology community, as some thought this was too dangerous - pointing out to repeated lab leaks of SARS and dormant Flu strains already happening regularly [2] - how could we contain variants which we purposely made more contagious?

When MERS hit and then faded, he once again said we just got lucky. He successfully campaigned with Anthony Fauci to get the moratorium lifted enacted during the Obama administration.

Then Covid 19 happens.

Total coincidence though, and of course it is completely racist to suggest that Covid 19 came from scientists using techniques developed by an American, partly funded by American taxdollars, in a high tech lab who's mission is to create and modify new Coronaviruses. That's racist.

We all know it was the result of unsanitary cultural and dietary practices of ordinary Chinese people that lead to the pandemic, which is *checks notes*... not racist.

________

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-flu-virus-risk-worth-taking/2011/12/30/gIQAM9sNRP_story.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents

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Elon aside, there are lots of people in social media groups who *claim* long-term negative health effects after a Covid jab (at least after mRNA). (I know a few personally) Some of them presented at the Jan FDA meeting and were sort-of-politely brushed off. Even if most of their problems had nothing to do with vaccines, the fact they don't seem to be taken seriously (or even compassionately) bothers me. What if some of their experiences are pointing the way to a deeper understanding of how biology works?

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PS: I'm totally embarrassed that I didn't remember that Vietnam is STILL a communist county. Thank you for pointing out that any covid data coming out of that country is not to be relied upon.

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You shouldn't be embarrassed. I'm disappointed Katelyn (and many others) keep falling for obvious nonsense.

Their skepticism is always one-directional - any claim that backs "the narrative" gets repeated without vetting it.

Anyone hearing that a country had low deaths from Covid should *immediately* have their bullshit detector triggered and do some fact checking. It took me under 2 minutes to see that Vietnam had double the excess deaths in a single year than total recorded Covid deaths.

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90% agree - I agree she should vet things more - yet I also think she listens and learns

Or maybe we're just old and cynical 🤨

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The Cleveland clinic study authors admitted that they didn't even bother to control for who was immunocompromised, thereby creating a collider.

Another way to think about it - they should have stratified by inherent risk, to avoid an obvious Simpsons paradox. You could probably use similar sloppiness to show that overall, motorists who wear helmets when they drive are more likely to die in car crashes.

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"Our study of healthcare personnel included no children and few elderly subjects, and the majority would not have been immunocompromised."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.17.22283625v1.full

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They didn't *control* for it, meaning they didn't bother to check who was or wasn't immunocompromised. You sort of have to do that to get rid of any potential colliders. They even admitted that. I really don't have the time of day for a study that doesn't bother with that. At least they had the integrity to admit that as a study limitation.

Cleveland Clinic stuff is easy to get, for free, and well...quality costs.

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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.

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Gosh, I am so sorry you have to deal with this on top of your medical issues. I wish people would just ask what they could do to help and leave their diagnoses to themselves.

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Well, it's really not a big medical issue as i have better memory than anyone i know but it has changed since the concussion and to have this included in the diagnosis was a shock to the psyche. Now i need some second and third opinions as to how to proceed to rule in or out the diagnosis.

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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

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👆 Exactly

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@Larry what makes/causes a debate relegated to select groups or arbiters? How would you define a good or effective debate? I've had amicable, helpful, in depth debates/conversationa about nearly every topic you noted. I previously did not like to debate, because I found it stressful, overwhelming, and relationship harming. In time, I've learned how it can be respectfully done and how debates can be good and beneficial, but also see and understand that every debate and every opportunity to debate is not good or helpful.

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Oh, I agree that between peers without a digital platform have exchanged ideas. Its in the "digital town square" that is the issue.

We have learned that the US Government has stifled debate and restricted the free speech of Americans.

The arbiters are the social media companies, and the legacy media companies. Interactions, as of now, are free flowing.

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founding

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.

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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.

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"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." The problem is that the man who is running for the highest office in the land and Joe Rogan are not engaging in good faith at all. I agree with the concern that the debate would create a false equivalence and could backfire, mostly because of who he would be debating and the platform, neither of which give me any confidence that all parties would be acting in "good faith."

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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!

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The label "idiots" seems properly used here.

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so you think ad hominem attacks ARE the way to go?

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founding

sometimes, when appropriate - like in this case.

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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?

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Don’t forget TMZ

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Did you read this commentary at all? If you don't agree with what Dr. Hotez says or does, stop watching him or reading about him. Don't get the vaccine.

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Sure am glad Copernicus, Gallello, Columbus, Pasteur and Einstein didn't accept "settled science".

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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.

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No one is screaming but misinformation is disinformation. Where is the censorship? I see this everywhere in podcast, you tube, Twitter, TV and more.

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Our government worked with big tech to censor dissenting views. See for example Facebook censoring the lab leak despite it being credible.

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Really?

I find plenty of "lab leaks" on FB.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-was-man-made

Credible? Not very:

https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1017/

Keep in mind, I have reviewed many credible sources and not rabbit holes. If something with robust evidence from a credible source, then this is a different story.

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Are you suggesting that The Guardian was lying? That Facebook wasn't censoring lab leak discussion on behalf of the government?

Facebook was also censoring claims the vaccine wasn't sterilizing, that cloth masks didn't work. Twitter had similar issues I am told - don't use it much so can't speak from experience, but Alex Berenson was notoriously banned from Twitter for saying you could still get Covid after being vaccinated.

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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.

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By the numbers, almost everyone trusted the vaccines - at first.

Then people started getting sick anyway, and they felt gaslit when suddenly the claims of “you’re a dead end to the virus” where forgotten.

You can see the dwindling participation in future boosters, or even vaccinating their children, evidence that public support waned.

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founding

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

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===Off Topic ===

A 'thousand years ago' in the 1960s I served in the US army, had a friend named Dave Scheid. Tall, spare fellow.

Any connection?

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founding

Not that I know of. My Dad serve in the US army (air force) in WWII, a reconnaissance pilot but that’s even more than a thousand years ago!

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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.

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Well, and did/does he even need a booster? Paul Offitt would say no. So would many other reputable clinicians.

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He ended up having to get one to enroll in college.

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That is super frustrating because we are still shooting blindly.

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founding

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.

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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/

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Did the studies which found the vaccines prevented infection and were cited as evidence people should lose their jobs if refusing consider the same confounders? Where’s the “Fact Check” on being told the vaccinated are “dead ends” to the virus?

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If they had considered the exact same confounders, then they'd probably have discovered that the vaccines were even more effective.

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You... you think that had they done better studies they would have found the Vaccine prevented infection even higher than 95%? Are you serious?

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Yes. If we are talking about the same confounders here (immunocompromised status, testing frequency, exposure) then they would have amplified the earlier studies showing effectiveness. That's how they work. At the time (fall of 2020) there wasn't really a pressing need for this. If you want to show that those earlier studies were confounded you'll need to posit different confounders.

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You are aware that in every single highly vaccinated country in the world Covid cases exploded after vaccination, right? You are aware that in roughly half of these countries all-cause mortality increased (e.g., South Korea, Norway, New Zealand, Australia) or remained elevated (US, Germany, Israel) with only a handful of countries actually seeing mortality decrease? (Italy, Spain).

You know this right?

And you think that somehow the studies showing vaccine efficacy *underestimated* the benefit?

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Yup. If anything. Also, you're providing zero verifiable sources to support extraordinary claims so I don't really care about anything you write.

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“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

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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.

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