corona? :(

[Mad Vader]

Delta is getting more dangerous for vaccinated people, especially for those who took low efficacy vaccines like AZ and Sinovac. We'll know more once more people get infected lol.

If you suspected that miracle cures peddled by clowns do not really work, you'll be happy to know that the biggest Ivermectin study (Egypt) was discovered to be faked. Why some medical researchers think they could get away with this is baffling.

Edit: Another comment on this from a scientist, the conclusion is that science is not self-correcting quickly enough, therefore any new research loses some credibility even if reviewed by competent scientists. If they missed something obvious as this, what else are they missing.
If individual scientists can't or can't be assed to detect fraud, they need a science fraud police that would investigate important or suspicious studies and their methodology.

The scientific enterprise likes to ride high on the idea that science is “self-correcting” — that faults, mistakes, and errors are found out through the process of science itself. But this wasn’t a mistake. Credentialed experts read this trial and rated it as having a LOW risk of bias. Not once, but over and over again. Doctors looked at it and saw a miracle cure despite the endless issues that the research has even at fact value.

I don’t know for sure that this study is fraudulent, and perhaps we never will. But we do know that no one should ever have used it as evidence for anything regardless. We will have to reckon with the fact that a truly woeful piece of research, which may turn out to be fraud, was put online and used to drive treatment to millions of people around the world.

And no one noticed until it was far, far too late.

 

[Adorno]

Other 'fun' bogus

Feds arrest CA homeopath for selling COVID pellets, fake CDC vaccine cards

Homeopath: "It is like an energy medicine... made from the disease particles themselves."

arstechnica.com

[t]his is from the COVID-19... It is made from the disease particles themselves. I do not know the exact process for that... As long as they can extract germs of the virus, they can make the remedy. With this method, we are tapping into what is known as the innate-immune system. That is like our higher intelligence part of the immune system.

?

 

[dijiTurk]

Last weeks, i watched a turkish discussion about covid19 at TV by chance. I can just share this covid-related discussion's extraordinary expressions right now(thx to the valuable focused turkish moderation team).

Before sharing expressions ( & asking some questions ) . I would like to talk about channel/participants/my sharing point..
I rarely check this channel at channel list if i want to watch discussion about live topics. And, by chance, i came across this channel at right time. I can say that this channel is not a popular channel in turkey, but it can have some famous participants at its broadcasts. And, at covid related video (that i focus) below* ; it has one known participant that as i know as a bit speculative person(ramazan kurtoğlu). I dont know others, including the doctor. However, the topic(covid19) is good, and expressions are interesting to hear.
*
Finally, the things i'm gonna share here is about what the doctor(serhat fındık) said. Not the speculative one, or others. I just focus on doctor. I wanted to review doc's interesting expressions here.

So, here the things:

Spoiler: covid 19

( I watched whole discussion, and i'll try to sum what doc said at important parts. Between " ( ) " symbols're my words, not docs' . Dont forget my low-level-grammer; these expressions can be not exact things the doc said) :





>There is virus, and i believe its a lab virus. It's also harmful but, there is also misdiagnosis. And, misdiagnosis make studies also wrong. Resonance start with diagnosis. (PCR) (i dont write details here, but he expressed wrong this that he saw )

>No vaccines or drugs that have not completed phase 3 studies cannot be forced to use.



###########################
>Doubt and research are always essential in medicine, even for the most prestigious journal's articles:

the article here** is very suspicious because:

**https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 (i think this is what the doc referanced. i may found the wrong one)

-article's some authors are the developer of the vaccine( biontech/pfizer ) .

-article funded by biontech/pfizer (sponsor)

-(doc says that he ll look at material/method as other suspicious thing)
44 820 person screened
~21,7k took biontech & ~21,7 took placebo, but then the 44,8 decreasing to 37,7k . And, article doesn't say why these 6-7k person eliminated. It should have write.

-article tells that the safety of biontech is %95 . But, lets see how they find this %95 :

l~18k took biontech & ~18k took placebo /as they decreased number to 37,7k /

covid19 seen at only 8 person from ~18k person that took biontech.
covid19 seen at only 162 person from ~18k person that took placebo.

Now, as normally, if u want to use statistic; you proportion 18k to 8 person. And, 18k to 162 person. Then, you take both results to reach safety(risk reduction value) ratio. But, in this article, they directly proportioned 8 to 162, and said it has %95 safety. This is not statistic.


-Article tells that the work is at phase2/3.. Not even phase3.

-At most subjective part, discussion part, article tells that they had to finish works at 2 months because world is(pandemic) at emercancy situation. But, this aproach(finishing study in 2 months) is contrary to basic principles. Article must show that vaccine is effective/useful/reliable within works that can be made at least in 2-3 years.

-There is a lot of uncertainty about the study for future effects of vaccine.


> ****https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download Doc shows FDA study(link****) that tells Biontech is not approved. It's unlicensed as fda says.Doc says Bioantech has only emerceny use permit. And, its not finished phase3. It has many uncertain things., and also many possible side effects.


##################### @eddiemccandless could you please check what doc said about article [ between " ## ## " ], and tell us if he points out true things. Or, he is just a speculative one?





> mRNA enters to core. Core has cromosomes. cromosomes have genes. Dna is there. And, founder of mRNA & one also one person that work on mRNA have doubts on mRNA. ( i couldnt find the names & news about this names' doubt. as i hear, one name is like: robert allen ) . These scientists say that mRNA contained in the vaccine has the potential to target DNA.







> covid19 is preventable and killable virus.

- doc says ivermectin kills covid19, and FDA has approve in vitro study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32251768/

-doc says https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famotidin also kills covid19, but ivermectin is more powerful.

-doc says ivermectin improves patient in 5 days (1 does each day? DO NOT USE ANY WITHOUT TALKING WITH UR OWN DOCTOR )
-doc says ivermectin also efficent at HIV.





> (participants talked about some uncertain things about with possible connection between HIV particules, mRNA & vaccines, with including Luc Mantagnier some words. I found one contra news about Montagnier's speech: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-variants-idUSL2N2NL1M2 i couldnt find his full speech, this news is first step if u want to find full speech.)

Doc says that luc montaigner said covid19 has particulars of HIV.

> Doc says that instead of using/relying on uncertain vaccine(study). People should use these to prevent covid19 or kill it:

-Drink water enough
-Walk
-Take vitamin C each day (idk dose)
-Take vitamin D each month (idk dose)
-Take 1 famotidin each day (idk dose exactly)

@Adorno did u hear ivermektin or famotidin aganist covid btw?

I prepared this post at few hours. But, its very useful for all to talk about, so i think it worths. Even if doc's pure spekulative one.

 

[Mad Vader]

Your post is a list of debunked conspiracy theories AGAIN wasting everyone's time.
This is not interesting, it's like posting arguments for a flat Earth and then asking others to prove you wrong. This is all you do here all the time because you lack judgment.
It would be better if you find yourself a forum with conspiracy theories and talk about your favorites there.

 

[dijiTurk]

Being suspicious is not a bad thing in a right dose. There is an article & numbers. If Eddiem knows how to check (idk), we can easly see if the turkish doctor is a liar or not. I just wondered things like this @MadVader . And, i do care all lives as some EU countries.

 

[Mad Vader]

Being suspicious is not a bad thing in a right dose.

The problem is that you have the wrong dose and look for information in all the wrong places.
Why is it important what some Turkish doctor on a random Turkish channel thinks? Why do you think this will be interesting to anyone??
This thread should be about legitimate, real information about Covid - NOT DISINFORMATION you keep posting.

Edit: Here's what's REALLY going on in the world, as Ancalimon liked to say:
- The UK opening up too fast due to politics will keep spreading delta around the world, as it is a major travel hub.
- We will have more lockdowns once the infection rates rise enough among the unvaccinated and young - the kids at school in September will also do their own spreading. Ironically the unvaccinated are by now only people like dijiTurk who don't trust vaccines and are anti-lockdown/anti-mask, but their foolishness will be the cause of more lockdowns and mask mandates. Returning Olympians from Tokyo may do their bit too.
- The more infections we have, the more likely we'll have new mutations that will be deadlier and more infectious (see also: how to get Plague Inc mutation points.)
- The vaccines are mostly holding infection at bay, but we'll need booster shots soon.
- Turks will keep believing in conspiracy theories and post them on a forum about a Turkish game.

 

[eddiemccandless]

@dijiTurk I honestly have a hard time understanding what you are trying to say in that post. What is the question here?

As a general rule it is not exactly easy to have a conversation based on Turkish sources when I can't understand the language. Especially when the language is so different from English and there seems to be quite a bit that is lost in translation.

Also, it's not like I am in a position of particular authority in all things covid. I work in academia but I am not an MD or an infectious disease expert. @Adorno is likely to be more knowledgeable than me, although I don't know that he'll have better luck making sense of all that ?

Edit: yeah I was gonna try to watch the video with the autotranslate feature, but it is more than 2 hours long. @dijiTurk I think you are obsessing a bit with this kind of thing, and I don't think it's very healthy.

 

[Adorno]

I don't know of any studies on famotidin for either Covid treatment or prevention.
I can say it's not something we use where I work.
(At the start of the pandemic a lot of drugs for treatment were studied. It might have been one of those that fell through. Just like Ivermectin proved useless).
Regardless, you should completely ignore that video and everything they say.

> Doc says that instead of using/relying on uncertain vaccine(study). People should use these to prevent covid19 or kill it:

-Drink water enough
-Walk
-Take vitamin C each day (idk dose)
-Take vitamin D each month (idk dose)
-Take 1 famotidin each day (idk dose exactly)

I hope that man is not a "Doc". It sounds like he's suggesting to ignore vaccines and rely on preventive measures, including... walks (?)
That is absolutely not advised. You can still contract the disease and potentially spread it.
There's no harm in following those common health advice, but it's not a substitute for hygiene and getting vaccinated.
Vitamin C is water soluble so there's no danger in getting too much (you just pee it out). But if you eat a varied diet you are not lilely to lack it.
Vitamin D deficiency is common, so overdoses are rarely seen. More and more places Vitamin D supplement is adviced to the general public during winter, or if you get little sun.

Covid-19: India excess deaths cross four million, says study

Excess deaths - those above expected levels - are a measure of the overall impact of the pandemic.

www.bbc.com

 

[eddiemccandless]

Ok, I had some time on my bus commute this morning and I read @dijiTurk's post more in detail. I can tell you that this part is said in bad faith:

Now, as normally, if u want to use statistic; you proportion 18k to 8 person. And, 18k to 162 person. Then, you take both results to reach safety(risk reduction value) ratio. But, in this article, they directly proportioned 8 to 162, and said it has %95 safety. This is not statistic.

He is talking about relative vs absolute risk reduction. The absolute metric, which he wants to use, is misleading. Imagine that you have a vaccine that offers absolute immunity from the virus, you test it on two groups of 20k people. 200 in the control group get sick, 0 in the vaccine group get sick. If you use the absolute metric to evaluate it you would get an absolute risk reduction of 1%, which is nonsensical given that this imaginary vaccine offers complete immunity.

 

[Lusitani 5th Empire]

Last weeks, i watched a turkish discussion about covid19 at TV by chance. I can just share this covid-related discussion's extraordinary expressions right now(thx to the valuable focused turkish moderation team).

Before sharing expressions ( & asking some questions ) . I would like to talk about channel/participants/my sharing point..
I rarely check this channel at channel list if i want to watch discussion about live topics. And, by chance, i came across this channel at right time. I can say that this channel is not a popular channel in turkey, but it can have some famous participants at its broadcasts. And, at covid related video (that i focus) below* ; it has one known participant that as i know as a bit speculative person(ramazan kurtoğlu). I dont know others, including the doctor. However, the topic(covid19) is good, and expressions are interesting to hear.
*
Finally, the things i'm gonna share here is about what the doctor(serhat fındık) said. Not the speculative one, or others. I just focus on doctor. I wanted to review doc's interesting expressions here.

So, here the things:

Spoiler: covid 19

( I watched whole discussion, and i'll try to sum what doc said at important parts. Between " ( ) " symbols're my words, not docs' . Dont forget my low-level-grammer; these expressions can be not exact things the doc said) :





>There is virus, and i believe its a lab virus. It's also harmful but, there is also misdiagnosis. And, misdiagnosis make studies also wrong. Resonance start with diagnosis. (PCR) (i dont write details here, but he expressed wrong this that he saw )

>No vaccines or drugs that have not completed phase 3 studies cannot be forced to use.



###########################
>Doubt and research are always essential in medicine, even for the most prestigious journal's articles:

the article here** is very suspicious because:

**https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 (i think this is what the doc referanced. i may found the wrong one)

-article's some authors are the developer of the vaccine( biontech/pfizer ) .

-article funded by biontech/pfizer (sponsor)

-(doc says that he ll look at material/method as other suspicious thing)
44 820 person screened
~21,7k took biontech & ~21,7 took placebo, but then the 44,8 decreasing to 37,7k . And, article doesn't say why these 6-7k person eliminated. It should have write.

-article tells that the safety of biontech is %95 . But, lets see how they find this %95 :

l~18k took biontech & ~18k took placebo /as they decreased number to 37,7k /

covid19 seen at only 8 person from ~18k person that took biontech.
covid19 seen at only 162 person from ~18k person that took placebo.

Now, as normally, if u want to use statistic; you proportion 18k to 8 person. And, 18k to 162 person. Then, you take both results to reach safety(risk reduction value) ratio. But, in this article, they directly proportioned 8 to 162, and said it has %95 safety. This is not statistic.


-Article tells that the work is at phase2/3.. Not even phase3.

-At most subjective part, discussion part, article tells that they had to finish works at 2 months because world is(pandemic) at emercancy situation. But, this aproach(finishing study in 2 months) is contrary to basic principles. Article must show that vaccine is effective/useful/reliable within works that can be made at least in 2-3 years.

-There is a lot of uncertainty about the study for future effects of vaccine.


> ****https://www.fda.gov/media/144414/download Doc shows FDA study(link****) that tells Biontech is not approved. It's unlicensed as fda says.Doc says Bioantech has only emerceny use permit. And, its not finished phase3. It has many uncertain things., and also many possible side effects.


##################### @eddiemccandless could you please check what doc said about article [ between " ## ## " ], and tell us if he points out true things. Or, he is just a speculative one?





> mRNA enters to core. Core has cromosomes. cromosomes have genes. Dna is there. And, founder of mRNA & one also one person that work on mRNA have doubts on mRNA. ( i couldnt find the names & news about this names' doubt. as i hear, one name is like: robert allen ) . These scientists say that mRNA contained in the vaccine has the potential to target DNA.







> covid19 is preventable and killable virus.

- doc says ivermectin kills covid19, and FDA has approve in vitro study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32251768/

-doc says https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famotidin also kills covid19, but ivermectin is more powerful.

-doc says ivermectin improves patient in 5 days (1 does each day? DO NOT USE ANY WITHOUT TALKING WITH UR OWN DOCTOR )
-doc says ivermectin also efficent at HIV.





> (participants talked about some uncertain things about with possible connection between HIV particules, mRNA & vaccines, with including Luc Mantagnier some words. I found one contra news about Montagnier's speech: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-variants-idUSL2N2NL1M2 i couldnt find his full speech, this news is first step if u want to find full speech.)

Doc says that luc montaigner said covid19 has particulars of HIV.

> Doc says that instead of using/relying on uncertain vaccine(study). People should use these to prevent covid19 or kill it:

-Drink water enough
-Walk
-Take vitamin C each day (idk dose)
-Take vitamin D each month (idk dose)
-Take 1 famotidin each day (idk dose exactly)

@Adorno did u hear ivermektin or famotidin aganist covid btw?

I prepared this post at few hours. But, its very useful for all to talk about, so i think it worths. Even if doc's pure spekulative one.

Since you are interested and no one seems to care I will drop a few links that explain what you are looking for.
And this is only regarding vaccine efficacy, effectiveness, relative risk reduction (RRR) and absolute risk reduction (ARR).

Relative risk, relative and absolute risk reduction, number needed to treat and confidence intervals - Smart Health Choices - NCBI Bookshelf

Covid-19 vaccine – Efficacy versus effectiveness

The Covid-19 vaccine is a fast-moving topic at the moment – All over the world people are trying to understand the scientific discussions surrounding the current pandemic, the way the virus spreads, and the mechanism...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials

Relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction measures in the evaluation of clinical trial data are poorly understood by health professionals and the public. The absence of reported absolute risk reduction in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials can lead to outcome reporting bias that affects...

www.mdpi.com

Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data - The BMJ

On 5 February 2021 we published a clarification to this piece. It is available here. Five weeks ago, when I raised questions about the results of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s covid-19 [...]More...

blogs.bmj.com

COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room

Approximately 96 COVID-19 vaccines are at various stages of clinical development.1 At present, we have the interim results of four studies published in scientific journals (on the Pfizer–BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine,2 the Moderna–US National Institutes of Health [NIH] mRNA-1273 vaccine,3 the...

www.thelancet.com

COVID-19 vaccines: effectiveness and number needed to treat

In a Lancet Microbe Comment, Piero Olliaro and colleagues1 suggest that reporting relative risk reduction (RRR) for vaccination does not reflect entirely its therapeutic performance and consider the solw use of RRR a reporting bias. In addition, they propose that absolute risk reduction (ARR)...

www.thelancet.com

Relative risk rather than absolute risk reduction should be preferred to sensitise the public to preventive actions | Gut

 

[Mad Vader]

Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data - The BMJ

On 5 February 2021 we published a clarification to this piece. It is available here. Five weeks ago, when I raised questions about the results of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s covid-19 [...]More...

blogs.bmj.com

This is one very misleading opinion piece, treating all people with some symptoms as having false negative PCR tests?? The bias is obvious and PCR tests have little false negatives when symptoms start to show.
Here's another opinion piece on this opinion piece, for balance:

To be honest, I was hoping to avoid spending time on this. But claims by Peter Doshi in a January 4 BMJ op-ed headlined Pfizer and Moderna's "95% effective" vaccines seem to be embedding themselves into Covid vaccine skepticism lore. It's still topping BMJ Opinions "most read" list as I'm writing over 2 weeks later, and it's been reproduced in full on at least one of the major anti-vaccine websites (the one founded by Robert Kennedy Jr – but I don't want to link to it to show you). People keep asking me my opinion about it. So here it is. (Disclosure up front: Doshi and I were on opposite sides on the issue of evidence about HPV vaccines, too.)

And I bet you got it here

major anti-vaccine websites

 

[eddiemccandless]

Since you are interested and no one seems to care I will drop a few links that explain what you are looking for.
And this is only regarding vaccine efficacy, effectiveness, relative risk reduction (RRR) and absolute risk reduction (ARR).

Relative risk, relative and absolute risk reduction, number needed to treat and confidence intervals - Smart Health Choices - NCBI Bookshelf

Covid-19 vaccine – Efficacy versus effectiveness

The Covid-19 vaccine is a fast-moving topic at the moment – All over the world people are trying to understand the scientific discussions surrounding the current pandemic, the way the virus spreads, and the mechanism...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials

Relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction measures in the evaluation of clinical trial data are poorly understood by health professionals and the public. The absence of reported absolute risk reduction in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials can lead to outcome reporting bias that affects...

www.mdpi.com

Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data - The BMJ

On 5 February 2021 we published a clarification to this piece. It is available here. Five weeks ago, when I raised questions about the results of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s covid-19 [...]More...

blogs.bmj.com

COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room

Approximately 96 COVID-19 vaccines are at various stages of clinical development.1 At present, we have the interim results of four studies published in scientific journals (on the Pfizer–BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine,2 the Moderna–US National Institutes of Health [NIH] mRNA-1273 vaccine,3 the...

www.thelancet.com

COVID-19 vaccines: effectiveness and number needed to treat

In a Lancet Microbe Comment, Piero Olliaro and colleagues1 suggest that reporting relative risk reduction (RRR) for vaccination does not reflect entirely its therapeutic performance and consider the solw use of RRR a reporting bias. In addition, they propose that absolute risk reduction (ARR)...

www.thelancet.com

Relative risk rather than absolute risk reduction should be preferred to sensitise the public to preventive actions | Gut

I love how you just posted all of this and completely ignored what I just wrote about that very same topic ?.

The nih link is talking about treatment for people who have a disease. ALL people in those group are sick, and the treatment that they are talking about is an intervention aimed to cure them in that case. The case with vaccines is a different situation.

MDPI is a publisher that has a lot of predatory journals (I am still a postdoc and I routinely get emails from them to be a guest editor on topics outside of my area of expertise). Their article that you linked is garbage.

So no, those links do not "explain" anything. They are just more disinformation.

 

[Lusitani 5th Empire]

And I bet you got it here

major anti-vaccine websites

Oh noo you got me gud..
Sorry to inform you but I some these saved from some time now. And "major anti-vaccine websites" are just as good as "major pro-vaccine websites" both of them have conflicting interests.
And I do often participate in discussions that you might consider conspiratory and anti-vax. If you don't look at both sides arguments you cannot have an informed perspective.

I took a brief look at the article you linked, from a blogger which apparently has already some disagreements with the author he's criticizing (view disclaimer)... which is fine, as long as the arguments are reasonable, but you constantly attack the source of the info you don't agree with, so I'm pointing out your bias here.

I'm not going to argue over the veracity of all claims on both articles (the one I posted and the one you posted), simply because I haven't looked enough into this topics, specially on the vaccine efficacy claims because that would involve taking a deep look at the vaccine protocols, and now I just don't know enough.

And when I posted this links I didn't say "here is the truth", I linked articles that address some of the supposed issues with the vaccine efficacy, RRR and ARR. The two last links are counter arguments to the previous ones on the use of ARR instead of RRR, you can look at those.

What I will simply state that my view on the reported vaccine efficiencies and effectiveness is that their aren't as reliable as generally portrayed, the links I posted address some of this problems. For instance afaik, no one has access to the raw data, there is lack of transparency, some of the methodology used is dubious and there is an obvious conflict of interest from the companies that produce this results, which by the way some have an history of data manipulation.

On the ARR vs RRR, this is the topic I'm most familiar with.
(from the link you posted)

Argument 2:
Let’s put this in perspective. First, a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%.

Swipe left on this argument, too. What Doshi's done here isn't putting the vaccine in perspective. This relative versus absolute risk issue is a common manipulative device – used both by people who want to magnify or trivialize benefits. In this case, it's the latter.

It looks like he's the one in bad faith here. It's true that ARR is being used to "trivialize the benefits", but not disclosing the absolute risk reduction along with the relative risk reduction was the manipulative devise because it is a metric used to "help your decision-making".
(first link I posted)
Relative risk, relative and absolute risk reduction, number needed to treat and confidence intervals - Smart Health Choices - NCBI Bookshelf

How do you interpret the results of a randomised controlled trial? A common measure of a treatment is to look at the frequency of bad outcomes of a disease in the group being treated compared with those who were not treated. For instance, supposing that a well-designed randomised controlled trial in children with a particular disease found that 20 per cent of the control group developed bad outcomes, compared with only 12 per cent of those receiving treatment. Should you agree to give this treatment to your child? Without knowing more about the adverse effects of the therapy, it appears to reduce some of the bad outcomes of the disease. But is its effect meaningful?
This is where you need to consider the risk of treatment versus no treatment. In healthcare, risk refers to the probability of a bad outcome in people with the disease.
Absolute risk reduction (ARR) – also called risk difference (RD) – is the most useful way of presenting research results to help your decision-making. In this example, the ARR is 8 per cent (20 per cent - 12 per cent = 8 per cent). This means that, if 100 children were treated, 8 would be prevented from developing bad outcomes. Another way of expressing this is the number needed to treat (NNT). If 8 children out of 100 benefit from treatment, the NNT for one child to benefit is about 13 (100 ÷ 8 = 12.5).

----------

Take me, for example. I live in the country, in Victoria, Australia. The total people from my area who have tested positive for Covid-19 in the whole pandemic so far is 11 – and the last of those was months ago. My risk of getting infected in my part of the country is basically 0. So no matter how effective a vaccine was, the absolute risk reduction I would have from it at this rate would be 0. However, if I got on a plane, flew into a hot zone where every third person was infected, and pitched in on a Covid ward without any PPE, the absolute risk reduction I could gain from a highly effective vaccine would shoot up. It's all relative.

True. ARR is representative of both the chance of getting infected and chance of developing disease which are the variables you are exposed to in the real world, which are averaged and vary from place to place. Relative risk assumes everyone got infected.

Our societies need community risk to be way, way down everywhere. Even if I personally have little to gain from getting vaccinated, I have a huge stake in contributing to the community gaining enough immunity to function freely and fully again. We are all affected by pandemic restrictions and their socioeconomic impacts, and vaccination can reduce those harms: Covid-19 doesn't just cause a ghastly respiratory disease that causes deaths and long-haul consequences for perhaps 10% of the people who survive symptomatic disease.

Delta variant already seem to be escaping vaccine induced immunity.

Pfizer Shot Much Less Effective Against Delta, Israel Study Shows — Here’s What You Need To Know About Variants And Vaccines

Data from Israel suggests two doses of the Pfizer shot are 64% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 compared to around 95% in clinical trials.

www.forbes.com

Long-haul consequences for perhaps 10% of the people who survive symptomatic disease.

Some people are at higher risk than others this is true to long covid and to develop severe symptoms. Risk-benefit varies from person to person. We don't know the full extent of the vaccines adverse effects. There are other options available to treat prevent serious symptoms.

I love how you just posted all of this and completely ignored what I just wrote about that very same topic

He is talking about relative vs absolute risk reduction. The absolute metric, which he wants to use, is misleading. Imagine that you have a vaccine that offers absolute immunity from the virus, you test it on two groups of 20k people. 200 in the control group get sick, 0 in the vaccine group get sick. If you use the absolute metric to evaluate it you would get an absolute risk reduction of 1%, which is nonsensical given that this imaginary vaccine offers complete immunity.

He was not only talking about ARR and RRR. If you have 0 people who got sick why do you need a vaccine? I think I expressed myself above.
For example, children and young adults have very little risk of being severely sick or dying, RRR and ARR would drop if considering only this group.

The case with vaccines is a different situation.

I think it's fairly the same.

MDPI is a publisher that has a lot of predatory journals (I am still a postdoc and I routinely get emails from them to be a guest editor on topics outside of my area of expertise). Their article that you linked is garbage.

So no, those links do not "explain" anything. They are just more disinformation.

The article isn't the publisher.
"So those links"... seriously?
it's one link and that's no justification to say that's disinformation

I don't see benefit continuing this "discussion". Waste of time for all of us really...

 

[Mad Vader]

I saw the Israel delta data used by local anti-vaxxers, as it shows vaccines in the worst light.
They certainly don't want you to know this (source).

And what they/you have to offer instead? Random fears about unknown long-term side effects and probably some quirky diet and a miracle cure like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine?

We don't know the full extent of the vaccines adverse effects. There are other options available to treat prevent serious symptoms.

Which other options are these?

 

[eddiemccandless]

Alright, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are actually trying to figure things out.

Oh noo you got me gud..
Sorry to inform you but I some these saved from some time now. And "major anti-vaccine websites" are just as good as "major pro-vaccine websites" both of them have conflicting interests.
And I do often participate in discussions that you might consider conspiratory and anti-vax. If you don't look at both sides arguments you cannot have an informed perspective.

That isn't always true. If you take part in a discussion between people who think that pigs are talking gods and people who disagree with that statement, there's nothing to be gained from the ramblings of pig worshippers.

I used to try and calmly reason with anti vaxxers, but every time I went to look at the arguments they bring forward, it all turned out to be completed nonsense. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes they are more sophisticated and it takes a bit longer to unravel, but the result is always the same. And since I can not spend all my time debunking any piece of conspiracy theory I see on the internet, these days I am not as willing to waste it on that.

I took a brief look at the article you linked, from a blogger which apparently has already some disagreements with the author he's criticizing (view disclaimer)... which is fine, as long as the arguments are reasonable, but you constantly attack the source of the info you don't agree with, so I'm pointing out your bias here.

I'm not going to argue over the veracity of all claims on both articles (the one I posted and the one you posted), simply because I haven't looked enough into this topics, specially on the vaccine efficacy claims because that would involve taking a deep look at the vaccine protocols, and now I just don't know enough.

And when I posted this links I didn't say "here is the truth", I linked articles that address some of the supposed issues with the vaccine efficacy, RRR and ARR. The two last links are counter arguments to the previous ones on the use of ARR instead of RRR, you can look at those.

Cool.

What I will simply state that my view on the reported vaccine efficiencies and effectiveness is that their aren't as reliable as generally portrayed, the links I posted address some of this problems. For instance afaik, no one has access to the raw data, there is lack of transparency, some of the methodology used is dubious and there is an obvious conflict of interest from the companies that produce this results, which by the way some have an history of data manipulation.

Pfizer applies a data sharing policy to all its products. They seem to be pretty open about how it works.

Data & Results | Pfizer

www.pfizer.com

I am also not sure what data you would like to have. They tested the vaccine on X people, the placebo on Y and reported the outcome in a paper. What else do you need?

Their results have also been reviewed by experts and confirmed by independent studies.

Methodological Analysis: Randomized Controlled Trials for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines

Critical appraisal of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) determines rigor, quality, and whether the findings are applicable to the populations served…

www.sciencedirect.com

Effectiveness of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Vaccines Against COVID-19

In U.S. hospitals during January–March 2021, receipt of...

www.cdc.gov

On the ARR vs RRR, this is the topic I'm most familiar with.
(from the link you posted)


It looks like he's the one in bad faith here. It's true that ARR is being used to "trivialize the benefits", but not disclosing the absolute risk reduction along with the relative risk reduction was the manipulative devise because it is a metric used to "help your decision-making".
(first link I posted)
Relative risk, relative and absolute risk reduction, number needed to treat and confidence intervals - Smart Health Choices - NCBI Bookshelf

----------

True. ARR is representative of both the chance of getting infected and chance of developing disease which are the variables you are exposed to in the real world, which are averaged and vary from place to place. Relative risk assumes everyone got infected.

Delta variant already seem to be escaping vaccine induced immunity.

Pfizer Shot Much Less Effective Against Delta, Israel Study Shows — Here’s What You Need To Know About Variants And Vaccines

Data from Israel suggests two doses of the Pfizer shot are 64% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 compared to around 95% in clinical trials.

www.forbes.com

Some people are at higher risk than others this is true to long covid and to develop severe symptoms. Risk-benefit varies from person to person. We don't know the full extent of the vaccines adverse effects. There are other options available to treat prevent serious symptoms.




He was not only talking about ARR and RRR. If you have 0 people who got sick why do you need a vaccine? I think I expressed myself above.
For example, children and young adults have very little risk of being severely sick or dying, RRR and ARR would drop if considering only this group.

I think it's fairly the same.

Here you mixing different things together and making a mess of it. The mentioned numbers from the Pfizer trials were for the number of infections. What you say about people being at higher or lower risk is true, but it is irrelevant to the ARR vs RRR discussion. To be specific:

For example, children and young adults have very little risk of being severely sick or dying, RRR and ARR would drop if considering only this group.

In reference to the Pfizer trials, this is false, because the numbers we are talking about are the number of people who contracted covid at all. They actually have a table that describes ages of participants in the paper (in the results section).

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

Most importantly, these are just indicators that show different aspects of the same thing. The cold hard truth is that in the group of people who had the vaccine 8 got sick, vs 162 in the group who didn't. This is a significant difference that is explained by the presence of the vaccine. Which means that the vaccine works. End of the story, the efficacy of the vaccine is not up for debate.

I hope this helps. And I apologize if I come across as harsh, but I am sick and tired of people doing fear mongering for who knows what reason. This has gone on too long, and is doing very real damage to people lives, including mine and lives of people I care about. So you will excuse me if I don't take kindly to conspiracy theory nonsense. If you want to engage in that go meet with flat earthers, at least they are harmless.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

Ultimately what it comes down to is we now live in a world where everyone's opinion has been given undue weight. I've witnessed people who I had previously thought to be somewhat reasonable and lucid go on an anti-vax crusade because they "did research". Said "research" was trawling the internet and cherry picking every hick and moron who was saying anything which confirmed what they wanted to hear, that the gubmint was trying to put harmful chemicals in our bodies and all sorts of other bull****.

I am personally acquainted with one individual who puts out a podcast where they regularly tell people not to give their children any vaccines, let alone the COVID-19 vaccines, and they represent themselves on this podcast as a doctor. I am as much a doctor as this person when it comes to this area of expertise, because their "degree" is in chiropractic "medicine" and they didn't even know what mRNA was before the pandemic, and yet they now feel qualified to give their opinion on it to a (meagre) public audience because they read a few bias-confirming articles, again, representing themselves as a "doctor". I can only imagine how much misinformation and straight-up lies have been spread by this unholy game of broken telephone.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding that merely because the information is public, that means the public can draw their own conclusions about it. One of the first things which stymies students in most good university programs is research, and it's a skill which is difficult to learn if the fundamentals are not present already. It's a process which takes at least two academic years to fully instill in the average novice. Yet, I have blue-collar relatives who have mocked academia their whole lives now talking as if they were experts, being spoonfed the same crap by malicious or ignorant talking heads on Youtube. I doubt a single one of them has cracked open the actual research conclusions on the vaccines that they speak of, or if they're even capable of reading them in the first place.

I am sick to death of people thinking their opinion matters in these situations. Medical professionals study for years to understand the fundamentals of issues like this. I've studied enough to know that I am more than willing to trust them.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Also the very idea that you need to consider "both sides" of an argument is overly simplistic. Antivaxxers are part of a broad modern cultural movement of conspiracy theories whose main purpose is to legitimise and empower the believer, not to make any sense of the world. Any theory that needs to grasp around for scraps of evidence is just copium.

 

[Nodice83]

Also the very idea that you need to consider "both sides" of an argument is overly simplistic. Antivaxxers are part of a broad modern cultural movement of conspiracy theories whose main purpose is to legitimise and empower the believer, not to make any sense of the world. Any theory that needs to grasp around for scraps of evidence is just copium.

I am sick to death of people thinking their opinion matters in these situations. Medical professionals study for years to understand the fundamentals of issues like this. I've studied enough to know that I am more than willing to trust them.

They feel this is their time to "shine" and hardly any of them thinks about the consequences of spreading disinformation. And that is when natural selection knocks on the door. Unfortunately, it seems to be completely random in this case and even you tried hard to protect yourself and your relatives it can still affect you.

This is what I came across recently. 40% of the people polled by 3M think they would do equally well if there would be no science. 32% are skeptical of science and 20% of the world's population do not trust scientists.

Global Study from 3M Reveals – Science is Underappreciated

Science needs a champion. This is the conclusion 3M has come to following analysis from its first annual State of Science Index (SOSI), a global study

www.businesswire.com

This is all troubling.

 

[eddiemccandless]

almost 40 percent believe everyday life would not be much different if science did not exist

I had no idea so many people still used candle light and rode on horses. Good for them.

 

[Mad Vader]

I had no idea so many people still used candle light and rode on horses. Good for them.

We are missing some context here, this can't be right in literal terms.
Having seen other study results, they are also quite favorable to science, like most people would like their kids to pursue a science career or half of them wish they themselves pursued a science career, 78% are hopeful of science in 2021 (to deliver vaccines?)... 3M are claiming they are choosing demographic samples from several countries, but they must have an agenda impacting the samples.