Interesting thanks for sharing not sure why this is being downvoted but I'd consider myself a layperson on this matter. Could someone help explain why this post above is worthy of downvotes?
It's not worthy of downvotes. But people vote with their emotions, not based on any rational criteria.
The OP also seems to be the submitter - that explains it. People are downvoting because they don't like the article ( and you can't just downvote a submission, strangely.)
1) The chart shown mixes up lipid concentrations for protein spikes from the original cited paper and data
2) R00-R99 coded deaths will always be higher for "new" data. Over time, these are revised and coded differently. So if you look backwards from today, it will always seem like this number has gone way up the last month or so. The author notes this in his post (good), but leaves the original one in its place (also fine, but just be aware).
The author's hypothesis is not supported by data, and the arguments put forth are based on misunderstanding or misinterpreting things.
Also if the fear here is the mRNA vaccines are dangerous, there's always the more traditional Janssen (J&J) vaccine which does not use mRNA.
This page seem to be updated https://austingwalters.com/covid19-vaccine-risks/ with the information about observation of increase in R00-R99 deaths for current time. But the article does not appear to believe that it changes their reading of the data.
I scrolled though a bit wondering that too. Seems that buried in the post is a graph that shows it actually was a dramatic plunge in deaths correlated with the vaccination. I say ‘buried’ because it is surrounded by graphs and text concerned about a relatively much smaller increase in uncategorized deaths. It looks intellectually lazy. Similar stuff has been posted many times and this doesn’t appear to add to the discussion of COVID. The links may confirm anti-COVID biases and confuse laymen, but does not seem likely to withstand rigorous analysis.
And that much smaller increase is because a death may initially be coded as uncategorized and later revised. So at any point in time, the most recent data you look at will show this phenomena - COVID, vaccine or not.
So are vaccinations causing excess deaths? Just remember that correlations to not imply causation. To understand why, imagine repeating this analysis using a sliding window with a width of one year. In the last year, you will see an increase in excess deaths and vaccinations. It does not imply vaccinations cause excess deaths. The causation goes the other way... the excess deaths caused the vaccinations
yep... Lets say someone says bananas help with covid, so when there is an increase in excess deaths, people start eating it, afraid of going bananas. You just cant later see the bananas graph and say "oh bananas!". :)
That’s right. You can’t get at causation by passively looking at data. You need an intervention. One stage of a clinical trial looks at safety by giving some people the vaccine and other people a placebo. You then look for excess deaths in the vaccinated people. The author is ignoring crucial clinical trial interventions and instead using shoddy correlations to passively imply causations that do not exist.
The people that volunteered for the clinical trials took the real risk and this article is a disservice to their altruism
1) The weekly excess death tend to always largely fluctuate as far as I know.
2) If there really is a causation between excess death and vaccination, shouldn't the number of weekly excess death increase when the relative in crease in the amount of vaccinated people is higher (e.g. the steps between the measurement points is larger)?
3) The drop at the end is also easily explainable, it's a statistics over the first vaccination and vaccination takes some time to take effect and increasingly more people over the same time got vaccinated and once a large amount of people are vaccinated the excess death due COVID will notable fall. So not really that surprising.
1) If you have a large enough population sample, excess deaths fluctuate less because of the law of large numbers
The US year-on-year excess death charts are much smoother than those for a small country like Belgium for example for this reason.
So yes, Scotland has too few people for you to see much in this data due to all the noise, humans easily see patterns where there aren't any.
2) This sort of nonsense generally posits some vague association between vaccination and negative outcomes and isn't too interested in trying to imagine an actual mechanism that would inevitably be debunked.
3) It's also noteworthy that over this same period the case rates subsided in the UK considerably. Whether I'm vaccinated against the disease or not, if nobody I meet has the infectious disease I'm not going to catch it from them.
IMNSHO a much more significant effect, which I measured over the whole UK since that's the data I had, was that the ratio between those dying aged 90+ and those dying at my age fell dramatically a few weeks after they were vaccinated - exactly as you'd expect if vaccinations work.
Before the uptick due to the Delta variant, the best overall week for UK COVID deaths seemed to be at the end of May, but if you were a young adult, say age 25, death rates were actually still higher than last summer - the overall rate was low because rates were now far better for the elderly. Because of course they'd been vaccinated. Next week vaccination will be offered to all English adults who have not previously qualified (e.g. because they were too young and had no other vulnerability) so by August the proof will be in whether that arrests further transmission or not.
Countries that pursued elimination (e.g. New Zealand) are still doing better, because, vaccine or no vaccine, if nobody has the virus then nobody can die from it.
I may just be exceptionally stupid, but is this a gag article? I mean that in all seriousness.
Graph of daily vs weekly deaths look completely differently, numbers are present in absence of any context (how are vaccine rates measured? Does it only count it after the two week build up period?), and the article cited for proof of spike protein levels doesn't actually cite spike protein levels, but lipid levels.
It gets worse. Anyone who tracked COVID at all knows that there is a several week gap between getting COVID and when people die from it. So vaccinations today are expected to have zero impact on the death rate over the next month.
The result is that the decline in the death rate starts at about where you'd expect it to start if the vaccine did what it is supposed to do. And the people dying when the vaccine rollout started are people who caught it before the vaccine was available and only then reached the point where the disease killed them.
In a world filled with garbage analyses, this one is exceptionally bad. I flagged it because this isn't the kind of weird garbage that I come to HN to see.
And it may get even worse than that: in a world with dozens of countries vaccinated, statistically one is expected to show correlations where none exists.
I often flag and downvote stories like these, because I do not believe they are consistent with HN's mission to feed intellectual curiosity. It is clear we have a very vocal contingent of vaccine deniers, and I do think it is useful to hear their arguments, but I believe that's best done in the context of source stories that actually convey some new understanding.
From my observations, the best lens for understanding vaccine denial (or other related forms of Covid denial) is religious belief. Articles like these are medium-quality grains of opinion supporting that belief. Outside Covid, such things are obviously not in scope for HN, but the virus has captured our attention.
If I were the mod, I'd have an explicit policy that Covid stories need to come from high quality sources. Dissenting or unusual perspectives are fine, but these "just asking questions" pieces with confusing (at best) statistics aren't. And I'd honestly consider most mainstream press pieces not to clear the bar either. There are some excellent science journalists and bloggers out there (Derek Lowe is one of my favorites of the latter). We should be listening to them, I think.
It’s not vaccine “deniers”, it’s extreme views like yours that paint them as such.
One of my co-workers got covid, recovered just fine and then continued to wear non-N95 masks religiously. He honestly lived in an irrational fear, especially seeing the fear porn on TV.
I asked him why he was still wearing a mask, and why was he scared if he’s already done with it.
“Oh because I’m waiting for the vaccine.”
…
Putting aside all the hysteria and orange-man-bad, when did the relationship between vaccine/natural-response go away? He was seriously confused about my line of questioning pointing out that he’s already got the natural form of a vaccine.
When did we all forget that chicken pox can be a serious thing to older people, but it’s relatively harmless to children? Once you get it, you’re generally inoculated for life.
So when you have the majority of people behaving irrationally, leading scientists lying and playing politics, how is it anything but natural to say:
“You know what? Let’s slow down for a second, and find out what’s what, because for the past year everyone’s been lying”
I'll assume your line of reasoning is in good faith and answer it as such.
To OP's point, leading research actually has answers to the questions you're asking and backs up your friend's behavior. The fundamental difference is that this isn't in the same families of viruses as your typical one and done vaccines of childhood. This is a coronavirus, which are known to have a high mutation and variation rate and tend to be vaccine resistant. This is why you have a flu vaccine every year, but chicken pox once. It's somewhat rare, but it would have been possible for your friend to have gotten a different variant, or act as a carrier for a different variant. He chose to follow expert advise to keep himself and others safe.
I would like to point out also that wearing a face covering is a small price to pay for public safety even if it wasn't needed for every individual. As an example, even fully vaccinated and having had the virus, I wear my own mask constantly. It would be unkind of me to force people to choose if they trust my judgement and my word just to feel safe around me. If we discuss it and they feel safe, often I'll remove the mask for ease of conversation. But the point here is: we should care about other people, we should strive to make the world we all live in as safe and comfortable as possible for everyone around us, and we need to weigh the risk of slight personal discomfort against the benefits of interpersonal relationships, public safety, and the well-being of those around you.
To conflate
“You know what? Let’s slow down for a second, and find out what’s what, because for the past year everyone’s been lying”
With
“Oh because I’m waiting for the vaccine.”
As equally reasonable positions is disingenuous at best, but it's worth checking your motivations.
It is in good faith. But the burden of proof lies on the argument that the vaccine won’t work for this. Not the other way around.
In the US, in theory, it’s supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty”.
For the past century, it’s been assumed “survive infection, you should be good until proven otherwise.”
It’s never been quarantine the healthy.
In the past century+, cloth masks haven’t been shown to help do anything and in Asia, they are typically used by the people who are feeling off or actually have a cold, etc.
For proof on masks, see Fauci’s emails or the plethora of studies and CDC materials prior to 2020.
There is a difference between doing smart and reasonable things, and imposing draconian measures globally with unproven actions.
Lastly, only the rich countries are able to lock down and print funny paper while this lasts. The rest of the world has to face starvation and go to work to provide the rich countries with goods.
You're treating your friend as guilty until proven innocent. Shouldn't you need to clear the burden of proof to tell him he's stupid to do something that doesn't harm you?
I'm afraid you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the "burden of proof" means in this context. Let's clarify a few things:
1) there is adequate and persuasive evidence that adding a barrier across the nose and mouth will impede particulate spray during speech and normal bodily functions like coughing or sneezing. It will not act as a micron level filter. To say that cloth masks "haven't been shown to help do anything" is demonstrably false, but trying to treat masks as a full respirator is equally misleading.
2) Using a mask when you have or suspect you have a cold shouldn't be stigmatized, as you are literally helping to make sure that you are minimizing other people's exposure to whatever is making you ill
3) Social distancing is not the same as quarantine. Asking you to stay home as much as possible during a pandemic is a measure to help slow transmission rates. Stopping all travel into our out of a designated area is quarantine. If you're staying home after travel and unable to leave your home, that's quarantine. If you're avoiding restaurants, that's social distancing.
4) the burden of proof test is a legal test in determining who is responsible for providing evidence to back their claim, and the innocent until proven guilty standard is limited to criminal trials. To conflate that with assuming someone is healthy during a pandemic until they show symptoms shows a gross misunderstanding of how communicable disease transmission works. In many viruses, this included, the incubation period comes without symptoms and is fully communicable. You can be actively infecting other people without symptoms. Surely you can understand the reasonable difference between the two.
5) your claim that the standard in the last century has been "survive infection, you should be good until proven otherwise" is also false. This is true for some diseases but not others. Again, flu comes to mind as an example.
I want to address your last point separately. It is well acknowledged and understood that resource, income, healthcare, and access disparity have played a large role in how this pandemic was handled and mis-handled. We have much to learn from our experience here. That said, you cannot simply hand-wave "funny paper" and say that public health doesn't matter. Sure, the society that we live in is heavily reliant on exploitation. Yes, that's a problem, and not a simple one. Yes, because of that people have to work, and people have to take those risks when it shouldn't be necessary. That's all the more reason to place caution over pride and comfort. They are forced to bear undue risk, why should anyone have the privilege to add to that burden of risk when much of it is easily mitigated by limiting how much time we spend in public spaces and by wearing a face covering?
To note, extremely sucessful lockdowns were executed by Vietnam, which has a GDP per capita of 2700$, a seventh of the global average. That is to say, if they have a competent government, even poor countries did lockdown successfully.
By true sense of the word "quarantine", means locked up in some room while you recover/pass infection. Someone has to come to you, feed you, observe you etc. So this isn't happening.
What is really happening is:
* Keep megastores and large companies open. With the lower classes going to work, and entire cities cramming into specific stores that are open.
* upper-middle and upper classes staying inside, working remote, and ordering take out.
But let's not talk about specifics, of which these I am sure happened in Vietnam as well.
If you really wanted to reduce mortality for this one chosen disease, then you'd address the biggest risk factors which are obesity and age. So if you really wanted to significantly reduce the risk of death from this you would:
* force everyone who is obese to work out 1 hour daily.
* ban high carb and junk foods for the next "2 weeks".
voila! coincidentally those measures would reduce all-cause mortality.
Yes, I did say lockdown and not quarantine though.
Real lockdowns are much more effective than your suggested state mandated diet and workouts though. They, in countries that did it for real, which means not keeping megastores and large companies open but actually locking down everything and using the army and police to deliver food that you then cook to everyone, you can get the mortality rate to basically zero. Which Vietnam did.
> To say that cloth masks "haven't been shown to help do anything" is demonstrably false
From the only RCT I'm aware of having been published during the pandemic[1]:
> the difference observed was not statistically significant
The full quote is:
> Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
But the important part is the difference observed was not statistically significant, not just because statistically significance is counted as significant for good reason, but because there's a possible 23% greater chance of infection. That's quite the swing, and something that's been seen before[2]:
> Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
That's without going into the many statements by leading doctors of the public health response during the pandemic (like Fauci or Jenny Harries).
This helpful Spectator article[3] goes over the damning lack of evidence there's been since long before this pandemic and also lists a few to watch out for. Still not heard any demonstrable falsification coming from an rct yet though. I wonder how long we'll have to wait?
Of course, we could always rely on reviews instead of randomised controlled trials, they give much better results… <cough> <cough> Excuse me while I put on my mask.
I think you raise important points, that are useful more generally in understanding the process of science and scientific review of papers.
However, the correct answer to a non-significant study is not to assume that there is no difference, rather that we have not been able to detect a difference.
The results section:
A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
So, overall there were 95 participants who got a Covid diagnosis, of the 6k enrolled, and the 4.8k who completed the study.
This is basically noise. My personal prior is that had this study taken place in the US or Brazil, we would have been able to detect an effect. However, clearly I don't have any evidence for this.
tl;dr that study gives us very little information, because the baseline prevalance of Covid was so low that we don't have enough power to detect a difference between the two groups. This is consistent with a finding of masks don't work, and masks work (but we can't detect the difference in this study).
> the correct answer to a non-significant study is not to assume that there is no difference, rather that we have not been able to detect a difference.
I completely agree (which might be why I didn't write that there is no difference:) In fact, we don't know if there's a difference, or if there is, what the difference is, and right now the evidence (as a whole) points to a negative difference for the outcome we're hoping for. It's essentially a (fairly) open question at this point (which again leads back to the religiosity on show from some "sides" in this debate).
The statement was:
> To say that cloth masks "haven't been shown to help do anything" is demonstrably false
I just want to cut down statements like that, statements that really are demonstrably false* in their certitude.
Hmm, I disagree. Vietnam was able to lock down. They're below average in GDP per capita. Their lockdowns were more effective than in any rich country and as a result they had a smaller economic impact.
Ultimately wether lockdowns can or can't be done is a question of governmental efficiency. In general, either the population is mostly rural in which case very little social contact is necessary for economic activity to continue, or the have a very urban population which means that they only need a smaller part of the population to work to make the country tick for a month or so.
> This is why you have a flu vaccine every year, but chicken pox once. It's somewhat rare, but it would have been possible for your friend to have gotten a different variant, or act as a carrier for a different variant. He chose to follow expert advise to keep himself and others safe.
There's a couple of things wrong in this statement that circle back to the religious belief statement earlier.
Firstly, the use of keep himself and others safe. That's a specious as talking about computer security in terms of safety instead of risk, which is a far more insightful, nuanced - and most importantly - useful way of looking at this. He could never again drive nor allow his family into or near any kind of motor vehicle and that would make them more "safe" but would it be rational? That would require a discussion of risk and its trade offs.
Next, you'd have to show antigenic escape against natural immunity. There is some, and it's very small[1]:
> Because the data in the system were person-identifiable, the authors were able to determine that 3·27% of those who were uninfected during the first surge had a positive test during the second surge, compared with 0·65% among those who had previously recorded a positive test. Thus, they determined from that, in general, past infection confers 80·5% protection against reinfection, which decreases to 47·1% in those aged 65 years and older.
So, again, we're back to looking at risk instead of safety (and that Lancet article is straining to argue that natural immunity isn't enough, a very poor effort in my view, just look at citation 11).
There's also not much evidence of the high level of mutation seen in other coronaviruses because of the method of replication[2]:
> In contrast to the rapid evolution of other RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 has low genomic variability because of its proofreading function
A good thing because it means the vaccines are showing good efficacy against variants too.
Lastly, because I don't know if you're arguing in good faith (seriously, just respond to comments, starting off with such a slight makes me question you more than anyone else) you'd then need to show what that reinfection could mean in terms of consequence - will you experience symptoms? Will you end up in hospital? Will you end up in ICU? Will you need a respirator? Could you die? Is there a change in transmissability?
Again, a risk assessment. Feel free to provide this and show that the person sat there in a mask, who I assume is of working age and therefore in the cohort with greater protection from reinfection, is not behaving irrationally.
Perhaps they really do never get into a car, never go out in a thunderstorm, and wear a hard hat whenever they leave the house. Still, in the absence of other, competing and compelling data, to sit there believing you're keeping yourself and those around you safe by continuing to wear a mask is irrational and not based on "leading research" at all.
And you're going to tell me he knows any of this? Please.
Btw, both of these are worth a read, and citation 11 of each, too ;-)
There’s a lot to be said for asking everyone to wear a mask so it’s the default behavior. Otherwise a stigma could be attached to mask wearing that would keep people from wearing them when it matters most.
For very controversial topics I would expect high-quality sources to protect their reputational downside by taking conservative stances. In that case I think it’s fine to see some medium-quality outsider sources and use my own noodle. That satisfies my own intellectual curiosity.
I see your point but from my perspective, in most places there's a trickle of good stuff and a flood of junk. I try to offset that by occasionally reading a virology or epidemiology paper myself and listening to TWiV when I get the time. The thing that's striking to me is how different that picture is from middlebrow sources, in which I include a lot of the mainstream press. For example, their scare stories every time a new variant comes out is cookie-cutter journalism (and is basically crying wolf for when something notable does happen, like delta).
I am not, but I can downvote things that I think degrade the quality of discussion, which in my personal opinion includes a great many Covid threads. Others of course can submit and upvote stuff they find is interesting. If you have good stuff that challenges the conventional wisdom, please post it, as I actually seek out that kind of material (for example, Alina Chan's Twitter feed, which in my opinion is the best skeptical source on the lab leak theory).
Another issue with these "just asking questions" posts (some call them JAQing off) is that they often aren't in good faith and even when they are they create the false impression of an even debate on things that really are mostly settled.
I think these subjects that require a lot of care and can have a lot of impact based solely on rhetoric are really not what blogs and rapid response commentary excels at.
I'm happy at least there is enough detachment here for it to be realized, in most other places this would be drowned out in the echo of bickering.
> From my observations, the best lens for understanding vaccine denial (or other related forms of Covid denial) is religious belief.
How about the popular opinion that "vaccines are always good and should never be questioned no matter what"? Do you treat that as religious belief as well?
Sure, if that's the belief that's actually driving decisions. It certainly isn't the way I approach things. I eagerly sought a vaccine (my appointment was 10:20am on the first day I was eligible) because the safety and efficacy was demonstrated by data from trials conducted with a high level of scientific rigor, plus observational studies from places that had gotten there early. It was thrilling to see the early data out of Israel that showed such a strong vaccine effect from their age-stratified rollout.
And to further support my point, I wouldn't recommend anyone get CureVac - from the data we have now, that looks like a dud, even though it is an mRNA vaccine with some similarities to the others.
My guess is that that there is a deeper underlying question: should we trust the scientists and institutions who do these trials. And on that my personal belief is that yes we should, but we should also be skeptical and hold them accountable. They make mistakes - the recent aducanumab decision looks like a big one - so I am definitely not arguing we should uncritically accept everything they do and say. But when they do it right, as has happened with vaccines in the US, we should celebrate, not undermine, that.
I do appreciate that trust in people and institutions is a personal thing and there are reasons for it to vary.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadhttps://drowningindatadotblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/27/linki...
And there is also one from CDC data..
https://austingwalters.com/covid19-vaccine-risks/
The OP also seems to be the submitter - that explains it. People are downvoting because they don't like the article ( and you can't just downvote a submission, strangely.)
I'm not sure that's against the rules.
> If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Seems to pass that.
1) The chart shown mixes up lipid concentrations for protein spikes from the original cited paper and data
2) R00-R99 coded deaths will always be higher for "new" data. Over time, these are revised and coded differently. So if you look backwards from today, it will always seem like this number has gone way up the last month or so. The author notes this in his post (good), but leaves the original one in its place (also fine, but just be aware).
The author's hypothesis is not supported by data, and the arguments put forth are based on misunderstanding or misinterpreting things.
Also if the fear here is the mRNA vaccines are dangerous, there's always the more traditional Janssen (J&J) vaccine which does not use mRNA.
Please share the link to the page and section heading under which this graph is present.
Also this page seem to be updated https://austingwalters.com/covid19-vaccine-risks/ with the information about observation of increase in R00-R99 deaths for current time.
>but does not seem likely to withstand rigorous analysis.
But where is this rigorous analysis?
What happens if we, say, include people who died of covid despite getting the vaccine? Would this still stand?
Edit: read spadez other links. This is basically monty python witch scene plus some graphs and citations to make it look legit.
The people that volunteered for the clinical trials took the real risk and this article is a disservice to their altruism
https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.statwolf.com/does-eating-c...
1) The weekly excess death tend to always largely fluctuate as far as I know.
2) If there really is a causation between excess death and vaccination, shouldn't the number of weekly excess death increase when the relative in crease in the amount of vaccinated people is higher (e.g. the steps between the measurement points is larger)?
3) The drop at the end is also easily explainable, it's a statistics over the first vaccination and vaccination takes some time to take effect and increasingly more people over the same time got vaccinated and once a large amount of people are vaccinated the excess death due COVID will notable fall. So not really that surprising.
Did I miss something?
The US year-on-year excess death charts are much smoother than those for a small country like Belgium for example for this reason.
So yes, Scotland has too few people for you to see much in this data due to all the noise, humans easily see patterns where there aren't any.
2) This sort of nonsense generally posits some vague association between vaccination and negative outcomes and isn't too interested in trying to imagine an actual mechanism that would inevitably be debunked.
3) It's also noteworthy that over this same period the case rates subsided in the UK considerably. Whether I'm vaccinated against the disease or not, if nobody I meet has the infectious disease I'm not going to catch it from them.
IMNSHO a much more significant effect, which I measured over the whole UK since that's the data I had, was that the ratio between those dying aged 90+ and those dying at my age fell dramatically a few weeks after they were vaccinated - exactly as you'd expect if vaccinations work.
Before the uptick due to the Delta variant, the best overall week for UK COVID deaths seemed to be at the end of May, but if you were a young adult, say age 25, death rates were actually still higher than last summer - the overall rate was low because rates were now far better for the elderly. Because of course they'd been vaccinated. Next week vaccination will be offered to all English adults who have not previously qualified (e.g. because they were too young and had no other vulnerability) so by August the proof will be in whether that arrests further transmission or not.
Countries that pursued elimination (e.g. New Zealand) are still doing better, because, vaccine or no vaccine, if nobody has the virus then nobody can die from it.
If we were seeing that it would seem logical to attribute this effect to the vaccination.
Graph of daily vs weekly deaths look completely differently, numbers are present in absence of any context (how are vaccine rates measured? Does it only count it after the two week build up period?), and the article cited for proof of spike protein levels doesn't actually cite spike protein levels, but lipid levels.
The result is that the decline in the death rate starts at about where you'd expect it to start if the vaccine did what it is supposed to do. And the people dying when the vaccine rollout started are people who caught it before the vaccine was available and only then reached the point where the disease killed them.
In a world filled with garbage analyses, this one is exceptionally bad. I flagged it because this isn't the kind of weird garbage that I come to HN to see.
Wouldn't you need to compute the correlation coefficient or at least plot a scatter graph?
From my observations, the best lens for understanding vaccine denial (or other related forms of Covid denial) is religious belief. Articles like these are medium-quality grains of opinion supporting that belief. Outside Covid, such things are obviously not in scope for HN, but the virus has captured our attention.
If I were the mod, I'd have an explicit policy that Covid stories need to come from high quality sources. Dissenting or unusual perspectives are fine, but these "just asking questions" pieces with confusing (at best) statistics aren't. And I'd honestly consider most mainstream press pieces not to clear the bar either. There are some excellent science journalists and bloggers out there (Derek Lowe is one of my favorites of the latter). We should be listening to them, I think.
One of my co-workers got covid, recovered just fine and then continued to wear non-N95 masks religiously. He honestly lived in an irrational fear, especially seeing the fear porn on TV.
I asked him why he was still wearing a mask, and why was he scared if he’s already done with it.
“Oh because I’m waiting for the vaccine.”
…
Putting aside all the hysteria and orange-man-bad, when did the relationship between vaccine/natural-response go away? He was seriously confused about my line of questioning pointing out that he’s already got the natural form of a vaccine.
When did we all forget that chicken pox can be a serious thing to older people, but it’s relatively harmless to children? Once you get it, you’re generally inoculated for life.
So when you have the majority of people behaving irrationally, leading scientists lying and playing politics, how is it anything but natural to say:
“You know what? Let’s slow down for a second, and find out what’s what, because for the past year everyone’s been lying”
To OP's point, leading research actually has answers to the questions you're asking and backs up your friend's behavior. The fundamental difference is that this isn't in the same families of viruses as your typical one and done vaccines of childhood. This is a coronavirus, which are known to have a high mutation and variation rate and tend to be vaccine resistant. This is why you have a flu vaccine every year, but chicken pox once. It's somewhat rare, but it would have been possible for your friend to have gotten a different variant, or act as a carrier for a different variant. He chose to follow expert advise to keep himself and others safe.
I would like to point out also that wearing a face covering is a small price to pay for public safety even if it wasn't needed for every individual. As an example, even fully vaccinated and having had the virus, I wear my own mask constantly. It would be unkind of me to force people to choose if they trust my judgement and my word just to feel safe around me. If we discuss it and they feel safe, often I'll remove the mask for ease of conversation. But the point here is: we should care about other people, we should strive to make the world we all live in as safe and comfortable as possible for everyone around us, and we need to weigh the risk of slight personal discomfort against the benefits of interpersonal relationships, public safety, and the well-being of those around you.
To conflate
With As equally reasonable positions is disingenuous at best, but it's worth checking your motivations.Edits:grammar
In the US, in theory, it’s supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty”.
For the past century, it’s been assumed “survive infection, you should be good until proven otherwise.”
It’s never been quarantine the healthy.
In the past century+, cloth masks haven’t been shown to help do anything and in Asia, they are typically used by the people who are feeling off or actually have a cold, etc.
For proof on masks, see Fauci’s emails or the plethora of studies and CDC materials prior to 2020.
There is a difference between doing smart and reasonable things, and imposing draconian measures globally with unproven actions.
Lastly, only the rich countries are able to lock down and print funny paper while this lasts. The rest of the world has to face starvation and go to work to provide the rich countries with goods.
My mother in law was so freaked out and in constant stress that she developed an infection combined with shingles (first time).
1) there is adequate and persuasive evidence that adding a barrier across the nose and mouth will impede particulate spray during speech and normal bodily functions like coughing or sneezing. It will not act as a micron level filter. To say that cloth masks "haven't been shown to help do anything" is demonstrably false, but trying to treat masks as a full respirator is equally misleading.
2) Using a mask when you have or suspect you have a cold shouldn't be stigmatized, as you are literally helping to make sure that you are minimizing other people's exposure to whatever is making you ill
3) Social distancing is not the same as quarantine. Asking you to stay home as much as possible during a pandemic is a measure to help slow transmission rates. Stopping all travel into our out of a designated area is quarantine. If you're staying home after travel and unable to leave your home, that's quarantine. If you're avoiding restaurants, that's social distancing.
4) the burden of proof test is a legal test in determining who is responsible for providing evidence to back their claim, and the innocent until proven guilty standard is limited to criminal trials. To conflate that with assuming someone is healthy during a pandemic until they show symptoms shows a gross misunderstanding of how communicable disease transmission works. In many viruses, this included, the incubation period comes without symptoms and is fully communicable. You can be actively infecting other people without symptoms. Surely you can understand the reasonable difference between the two.
5) your claim that the standard in the last century has been "survive infection, you should be good until proven otherwise" is also false. This is true for some diseases but not others. Again, flu comes to mind as an example.
I want to address your last point separately. It is well acknowledged and understood that resource, income, healthcare, and access disparity have played a large role in how this pandemic was handled and mis-handled. We have much to learn from our experience here. That said, you cannot simply hand-wave "funny paper" and say that public health doesn't matter. Sure, the society that we live in is heavily reliant on exploitation. Yes, that's a problem, and not a simple one. Yes, because of that people have to work, and people have to take those risks when it shouldn't be necessary. That's all the more reason to place caution over pride and comfort. They are forced to bear undue risk, why should anyone have the privilege to add to that burden of risk when much of it is easily mitigated by limiting how much time we spend in public spaces and by wearing a face covering?
What is really happening is:
* Keep megastores and large companies open. With the lower classes going to work, and entire cities cramming into specific stores that are open.
* upper-middle and upper classes staying inside, working remote, and ordering take out.
But let's not talk about specifics, of which these I am sure happened in Vietnam as well.
If you really wanted to reduce mortality for this one chosen disease, then you'd address the biggest risk factors which are obesity and age. So if you really wanted to significantly reduce the risk of death from this you would:
* force everyone who is obese to work out 1 hour daily. * ban high carb and junk foods for the next "2 weeks".
voila! coincidentally those measures would reduce all-cause mortality.
Real lockdowns are much more effective than your suggested state mandated diet and workouts though. They, in countries that did it for real, which means not keeping megastores and large companies open but actually locking down everything and using the army and police to deliver food that you then cook to everyone, you can get the mortality rate to basically zero. Which Vietnam did.
From the only RCT I'm aware of having been published during the pandemic[1]:
> the difference observed was not statistically significant
The full quote is:
> Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
But the important part is the difference observed was not statistically significant, not just because statistically significance is counted as significant for good reason, but because there's a possible 23% greater chance of infection. That's quite the swing, and something that's been seen before[2]:
> Conclusions This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
That's without going into the many statements by leading doctors of the public health response during the pandemic (like Fauci or Jenny Harries).
This helpful Spectator article[3] goes over the damning lack of evidence there's been since long before this pandemic and also lists a few to watch out for. Still not heard any demonstrable falsification coming from an rct yet though. I wonder how long we'll have to wait?
Of course, we could always rely on reviews instead of randomised controlled trials, they give much better results… <cough> <cough> Excuse me while I put on my mask.
Note: this response was made in good faith ;-)
[1] https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
[2] https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577
[3] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-much-do-face-masks-a...
However, the correct answer to a non-significant study is not to assume that there is no difference, rather that we have not been able to detect a difference.
The results section:
A total of 3030 participants were randomly assigned to the recommendation to wear masks, and 2994 were assigned to control; 4862 completed the study. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The between-group difference was −0.3 percentage point (95% CI, −1.2 to 0.4 percentage point; P = 0.38) (odds ratio, 0.82 [CI, 0.54 to 1.23]; P = 0.33). Multiple imputation accounting for loss to follow-up yielded similar results. Although the difference observed was not statistically significant, the 95% CIs are compatible with a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection.
So, overall there were 95 participants who got a Covid diagnosis, of the 6k enrolled, and the 4.8k who completed the study.
This is basically noise. My personal prior is that had this study taken place in the US or Brazil, we would have been able to detect an effect. However, clearly I don't have any evidence for this.
tl;dr that study gives us very little information, because the baseline prevalance of Covid was so low that we don't have enough power to detect a difference between the two groups. This is consistent with a finding of masks don't work, and masks work (but we can't detect the difference in this study).
I completely agree (which might be why I didn't write that there is no difference:) In fact, we don't know if there's a difference, or if there is, what the difference is, and right now the evidence (as a whole) points to a negative difference for the outcome we're hoping for. It's essentially a (fairly) open question at this point (which again leads back to the religiosity on show from some "sides" in this debate).
The statement was:
> To say that cloth masks "haven't been shown to help do anything" is demonstrably false
I just want to cut down statements like that, statements that really are demonstrably false* in their certitude.
Ultimately wether lockdowns can or can't be done is a question of governmental efficiency. In general, either the population is mostly rural in which case very little social contact is necessary for economic activity to continue, or the have a very urban population which means that they only need a smaller part of the population to work to make the country tick for a month or so.
There's a couple of things wrong in this statement that circle back to the religious belief statement earlier.
Firstly, the use of keep himself and others safe. That's a specious as talking about computer security in terms of safety instead of risk, which is a far more insightful, nuanced - and most importantly - useful way of looking at this. He could never again drive nor allow his family into or near any kind of motor vehicle and that would make them more "safe" but would it be rational? That would require a discussion of risk and its trade offs.
Next, you'd have to show antigenic escape against natural immunity. There is some, and it's very small[1]:
> Because the data in the system were person-identifiable, the authors were able to determine that 3·27% of those who were uninfected during the first surge had a positive test during the second surge, compared with 0·65% among those who had previously recorded a positive test. Thus, they determined from that, in general, past infection confers 80·5% protection against reinfection, which decreases to 47·1% in those aged 65 years and older.
So, again, we're back to looking at risk instead of safety (and that Lancet article is straining to argue that natural immunity isn't enough, a very poor effort in my view, just look at citation 11).
There's also not much evidence of the high level of mutation seen in other coronaviruses because of the method of replication[2]:
> In contrast to the rapid evolution of other RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 has low genomic variability because of its proofreading function
A good thing because it means the vaccines are showing good efficacy against variants too.
Lastly, because I don't know if you're arguing in good faith (seriously, just respond to comments, starting off with such a slight makes me question you more than anyone else) you'd then need to show what that reinfection could mean in terms of consequence - will you experience symptoms? Will you end up in hospital? Will you end up in ICU? Will you need a respirator? Could you die? Is there a change in transmissability?
Again, a risk assessment. Feel free to provide this and show that the person sat there in a mask, who I assume is of working age and therefore in the cohort with greater protection from reinfection, is not behaving irrationally.
Perhaps they really do never get into a car, never go out in a thunderstorm, and wear a hard hat whenever they leave the house. Still, in the absence of other, competing and compelling data, to sit there believing you're keeping yourself and those around you safe by continuing to wear a mask is irrational and not based on "leading research" at all.
And you're going to tell me he knows any of this? Please.
Btw, both of these are worth a read, and citation 11 of each, too ;-)
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01347-0
Let others decide, whatever fills your curiosity is different than mine and that's a good thing. You are not the arbiter of knowledge.
I think these subjects that require a lot of care and can have a lot of impact based solely on rhetoric are really not what blogs and rapid response commentary excels at.
I'm happy at least there is enough detachment here for it to be realized, in most other places this would be drowned out in the echo of bickering.
How about the popular opinion that "vaccines are always good and should never be questioned no matter what"? Do you treat that as religious belief as well?
And to further support my point, I wouldn't recommend anyone get CureVac - from the data we have now, that looks like a dud, even though it is an mRNA vaccine with some similarities to the others.
My guess is that that there is a deeper underlying question: should we trust the scientists and institutions who do these trials. And on that my personal belief is that yes we should, but we should also be skeptical and hold them accountable. They make mistakes - the recent aducanumab decision looks like a big one - so I am definitely not arguing we should uncritically accept everything they do and say. But when they do it right, as has happened with vaccines in the US, we should celebrate, not undermine, that.
I do appreciate that trust in people and institutions is a personal thing and there are reasons for it to vary.