Just gotta pick on one line that slapped me harder than the gentle hypocrisy of the whole thing:
> Antivaxxers sure do love their “whistleblower” narratives, don’t they?
OK, then; someone can only claim that title and credibility if they're backed by a PR firm and a press room of their own a la "Facebook whistle blower?"
Or if the media does a complete Streisand effect on them like Eric Ciaramella?
To sum up: Oh no, the BMJ publishes a wide variety of op-eds and investigative pieces not just by Trusted Sources Like Me, but also by Those Quacks Over There.
To be fair if one reads the post, the Post calls out very specific aspects of the article and explains why they are lacking or wrong; it doesn’t look good for the bjm article.
What? He points out multiple specific examples of disingenuity... Did you actually read it? He's not asking you to just trust him, as you accuse. He gives specific info, with citations/links...
What specific errors did he make and what did he get wrong? Can you provide sources?
Every single argument in the post is basically, "well, the whistle-blower (whom probably has an ax to grind!) didn't specify how often/many times this problem/mistake/oversite happened, so, it was probably just a one time thing and isn't actually a real problem. ok
>Again, note the juxtaposition. These 477 patients who reported COVID-19 symptoms but never received nasal swabs were across the entire trial of well over 40,000 subjects, but the way it’s phrased, not put into context of the size of the entire trial, makes this sound like a huge number
477 untested patients is absolutely a huge number in the context of this trial: only 170 symptomatic infection were confirmed over the entire trial (the only endpoint). Even if the missed positives were evenly distributed between the two arms of the trial, the relative efficacy would be skewed by the additional cases.
For example, if we assume all of the untested people were actually positive (not unreasonable, they were symptomatic), the reported efficacy would drop by ~30%: instead of 8 confirmed cases in the vax arm vs 162 in the control arm (95.2%), it would become 218 vs. 429 (66.3%). Not a trivial difference.
> the reported efficacy would drop by ~30%: instead of 8 confirmed cases in the vax arm vs 162 in the control arm (95.2%), it would become 218 vs. 429 (66.3%). Not a trivial difference.
You know the entire study was done over 44,000 people total, right, not just the < 1000 that Ventavia was responsible for?
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 4.3 ms ] thread> Antivaxxers sure do love their “whistleblower” narratives, don’t they?
OK, then; someone can only claim that title and credibility if they're backed by a PR firm and a press room of their own a la "Facebook whistle blower?"
Or if the media does a complete Streisand effect on them like Eric Ciaramella?
"You're using the propaganda handles wrong!"
What specific errors did he make and what did he get wrong? Can you provide sources?
477 untested patients is absolutely a huge number in the context of this trial: only 170 symptomatic infection were confirmed over the entire trial (the only endpoint). Even if the missed positives were evenly distributed between the two arms of the trial, the relative efficacy would be skewed by the additional cases.
For example, if we assume all of the untested people were actually positive (not unreasonable, they were symptomatic), the reported efficacy would drop by ~30%: instead of 8 confirmed cases in the vax arm vs 162 in the control arm (95.2%), it would become 218 vs. 429 (66.3%). Not a trivial difference.
You know the entire study was done over 44,000 people total, right, not just the < 1000 that Ventavia was responsible for?