I may not have time to read through all of that, but thanks for the links. I quickly learned some new things by following a few links there + googling around.
Most notably, some key evidence presented by Steve K that took center stage in the video, both evidence of the dangers of “the vaccines” and evidence of the effectiveness of ivermectin, comes from groups led by the same person, Theresa Lawrie.
Lawrie apparently founded a web site for ivermectin advocacy (registered March 7, 2021) after presenting evidence on Ivermectin’s efficacy on January 13 (to “13 clinicians” and 7 others)
Lawrie is the director of a group of 4 people calling itself “The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy” that called for “an immediate halt to the [Covid] vaccination programme” on June 9
Lawrie published the meta-analysis Steve was raving about (with 6 co-authors), which found “Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin” (published June 17 but, obviously, completed earlier)
Now, is Lawrie just one of those productivity superheroes vying for a Nobel prize? Or is there something suspicious about too much evidence and advocacy coming from the same person?
What makes me the most suspicious is that
the anti-vaccine document performs no cost/benefit analysis before concluding that all three vaccines are too dangerous to use.
it includes no analysis of base rates (the number of adverse health events that would normally occur in a large population in the absence of any vaccines).
Edit 1: seriously, what are the chances that all three vaccines are both dangerous and equally so? Has that ever happened in history? I think not. (4 different vaccines are implicitly demonized by the video since it talks about US and UK data, but this document is UK-specific; the UK and US have used 3 vaccine brands each)
Edit 2: I don’t say this enough, but one must also consider the reaction of other experts. Large numbers of other experts think the vaccines are safe (safe enough to deploy widely, anyway) and that ivermectin is an interesting treatment but unproven. When experts in high places thought there was a risk of rare blood clots, they were often willing to halt the use of a vaccine even when doing so would lead to a larger number of overall Covid deaths. And of course, while regulatory agencies were understandably in a hurry, separate phase-3 trials were completed on each vaccine (in multiple countries) and showed adequate safety as usual. So the idea that these same experts and agencies are ignoring a wide variety of side-effects, including death, seems preposterous. The only argument I’ve seen against these numerous other visible experts comes from my father, who claimed the media is hiding information because they are controlled by George Soros, and from this video, which explains it as groupthink & social norms. As if scientists but not conservatives do groupthink & social norms.
I only skimmed the document, but I don’t see any lip service paid to any of these issues or objections. And these are obvious objections, aren’t they? So why wouldn’t they be considered?
In the absence of other information, I assume that the lack of care demonstrated in this document is typical for Lawrie.
Unfortunately, my post ended up doing something I disapprove of: it listens to a handful of outspoken scientists (one in particular, it turns out) while utterly ignoring the majority who disagree. I hoped other LessWrong users would tell me how other scientists/experts are arguing the other side, but I got less of that than I hoped.
seriously, what are the chances that all three vaccines are both dangerous and equally so?
Malone/Weinstein say they seem to have minor differences, at least in mechanism/effect. Their point being that if you get the S p circulating you’re in trouble. All the three seem to produce that effect.
One must also consider the reaction of other experts [...] When experts in high places thought there was a risk of rare blood clots, they were often willing to halt [...]
Well done, this is a very well put and good point.
I don’t know what drove the craze on blood clot (very few instances too?) against AZ and J&J.
It’s weirdly inconsistent with the reaction on myocarditis for mRNA vaccines, they only (reasonably?) halted on young population? It looks like a different standard than for AZ/J&J.
Well, Moderna and Pfizer’s are both mRNA-based, but presumably different in some ways because they were made by different teams (and I thought I saw Bret or Dr. Malone say he would have preferred Pfizer over Moderna, though it’s not in my summary). But AstraZeneca and J&J are “adenovirus vector vaccines”, using chimpanzee adenovirus ChAdOx1 and serotype 26 (HAdV-D26) respectively; the latter was “under investigation as [a] protective platform against HIV, Zika, RSV infections and are in Phase-III clinical trials for Ebola” in early 2019. Now, adenovirus vector technology is pretty new. Even so, it would be an impressive coincidence if the risks were both substantial and the same for a ChAdOx1-based vaccine, a HAdV-D26-based vaccine and both RNA vaccines. Sure, they all use the spike protein in some way — probably it’s necessary for the immune system to recognize the spike protein — but (i) eventually our bodies will encounter the spikes, either via SARS-Cov-2 or via vaccine, and I’ve seen no one make a case that a live, replicating virus is safer, and (ii) the evidence/argument for the protein itself being dangerous hasn’t been made clear in any of the stuff I’ve seen.
But my main point is the seeming lack of interest from Lawrie, Dowswell, Kirsch et al. in the question of relative safety, because this is a known failure mode of anti-vaxxers all the way back to the Wakefield study. That infamous paper apparently linked the MMR vaccine to autism, yet many anti-vaxxers acted like there was some fully general link between all vaccines and autism.
I may not have time to read through all of that, but thanks for the links. I quickly learned some new things by following a few links there + googling around.
Most notably, some key evidence presented by Steve K that took center stage in the video, both evidence of the dangers of “the vaccines” and evidence of the effectiveness of ivermectin, comes from groups led by the same person, Theresa Lawrie.
Lawrie apparently founded a web site for ivermectin advocacy (registered March 7, 2021) after presenting evidence on Ivermectin’s efficacy on January 13 (to “13 clinicians” and 7 others)
Lawrie is the director of a group of 4 people calling itself “The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy” that called for “an immediate halt to the [Covid] vaccination programme” on June 9
Lawrie published the meta-analysis Steve was raving about (with 6 co-authors), which found “Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin” (published June 17 but, obviously, completed earlier)
Now, is Lawrie just one of those productivity superheroes vying for a Nobel prize? Or is there something suspicious about too much evidence and advocacy coming from the same person?
What makes me the most suspicious is that
the anti-vaccine document performs no cost/benefit analysis before concluding that all three vaccines are too dangerous to use.
it includes no analysis of base rates (the number of adverse health events that would normally occur in a large population in the absence of any vaccines).
Edit 1: seriously, what are the chances that all three vaccines are both dangerous and equally so? Has that ever happened in history? I think not. (4 different vaccines are implicitly demonized by the video since it talks about US and UK data, but this document is UK-specific; the UK and US have used 3 vaccine brands each)
Edit 2: I don’t say this enough, but one must also consider the reaction of other experts. Large numbers of other experts think the vaccines are safe (safe enough to deploy widely, anyway) and that ivermectin is an interesting treatment but unproven. When experts in high places thought there was a risk of rare blood clots, they were often willing to halt the use of a vaccine even when doing so would lead to a larger number of overall Covid deaths. And of course, while regulatory agencies were understandably in a hurry, separate phase-3 trials were completed on each vaccine (in multiple countries) and showed adequate safety as usual. So the idea that these same experts and agencies are ignoring a wide variety of side-effects, including death, seems preposterous. The only argument I’ve seen against these numerous other visible experts comes from my father, who claimed the media is hiding information because they are controlled by George Soros, and from this video, which explains it as groupthink & social norms. As if scientists but not conservatives do groupthink & social norms.
I only skimmed the document, but I don’t see any lip service paid to any of these issues or objections. And these are obvious objections, aren’t they? So why wouldn’t they be considered?
In the absence of other information, I assume that the lack of care demonstrated in this document is typical for Lawrie.
Unfortunately, my post ended up doing something I disapprove of: it listens to a handful of outspoken scientists (one in particular, it turns out) while utterly ignoring the majority who disagree. I hoped other LessWrong users would tell me how other scientists/experts are arguing the other side, but I got less of that than I hoped.
Malone/Weinstein say they seem to have minor differences, at least in mechanism/effect. Their point being that if you get the S p circulating you’re in trouble. All the three seem to produce that effect.
Well done, this is a very well put and good point. I don’t know what drove the craze on blood clot (very few instances too?) against AZ and J&J. It’s weirdly inconsistent with the reaction on myocarditis for mRNA vaccines, they only (reasonably?) halted on young population? It looks like a different standard than for AZ/J&J.
Well, Moderna and Pfizer’s are both mRNA-based, but presumably different in some ways because they were made by different teams (and I thought I saw Bret or Dr. Malone say he would have preferred Pfizer over Moderna, though it’s not in my summary). But AstraZeneca and J&J are “adenovirus vector vaccines”, using chimpanzee adenovirus ChAdOx1 and serotype 26 (HAdV-D26) respectively; the latter was “under investigation as [a] protective platform against HIV, Zika, RSV infections and are in Phase-III clinical trials for Ebola” in early 2019. Now, adenovirus vector technology is pretty new. Even so, it would be an impressive coincidence if the risks were both substantial and the same for a ChAdOx1-based vaccine, a HAdV-D26-based vaccine and both RNA vaccines. Sure, they all use the spike protein in some way — probably it’s necessary for the immune system to recognize the spike protein — but (i) eventually our bodies will encounter the spikes, either via SARS-Cov-2 or via vaccine, and I’ve seen no one make a case that a live, replicating virus is safer, and (ii) the evidence/argument for the protein itself being dangerous hasn’t been made clear in any of the stuff I’ve seen.
But my main point is the seeming lack of interest from Lawrie, Dowswell, Kirsch et al. in the question of relative safety, because this is a known failure mode of anti-vaxxers all the way back to the Wakefield study. That infamous paper apparently linked the MMR vaccine to autism, yet many anti-vaxxers acted like there was some fully general link between all vaccines and autism.