Yeesh. No wonder Bret wasn’t impressed—I’ve heard the first 45 minutes and they still haven’t talked about any of the misinformation in Bret’s podcast. Will they eventually get around to talking about it? Who knows, I can’t be bothered to sit through the whole thing. At least at the 40 minute mark they implicitly discussed base rates in VAERS, which seems to be a totally invisible concept to anti-vaxxers.
But at the same time, they’re saying “in the clinical trial no one died” and then talk about the “12 thousand VAERS deaths” without discussing the fact that anti-vaxxers dispute these basic facts. For example I see Kirsch saying, in a “Pfizer 6 month trial” that there were 21 deaths in the vaccine group vs. 17 in placebo (no doubt true but irrelevant); Kirsch also claims there is an enormous underreporting factor (42? I forget) for deaths post vaccination in VAERS (ridiculous, but he has an excuse for making the claim). At 47:20 there’s finally a (forceful but weak) rebuttal of something Bret said.
So the podcast is engaging with anti-vax arguments a little, but the Dark Horse podcast I summarized here is 3 hours long and I can be pretty sure, without hearing the rest, that Sam hasn’t addressed most of the claims made there, let alone everywhere else.
It wasn’t really intellectually honest, to the point he received enough criticism from his own wife and granted that much
You can check out the initial few minutes of the following AMA
I don’t feel like dealing with too many specifics here. One criticism I do take to heart if only because it came in one form from my wife is that despite my saying that I wanted to remain non judgmental and try to produce a document that the vaccine averse could actually receive without feeling denigrated in any way. I didn’t try hard enough and certainly my guest Eric didn’t try hard enough there. I would have to say we are guilty as charged and in truth, I’m not even sure it’s the right target. I mean there’s something patronizing about the claim that in order to reach the vaccine hesitant, you have to walk on eggshells. So as to not make them feel judged. Nevertheless, I do see the depressing results of the last podcast all around me. Those who were disposed to agree with me absolutely loved it and we’re grateful. And those are worried about the Covid vaccines and taken in by what they’ve heard on Bret Weinstein’s podcast or tucker Carlson, wherever thought Eric and I were totally clueless about the state of the conversation that’s happening over there. I don’t actually know what the solution is here because some people asked why not just have Brett on the podcast to talk about all this, But I think that would be a bad idea, not because I don’t think they’re adequate answers to the kinds of points he would raise. But like so many debates on fairly fringe topics, classic conspiracy theories, religious fundamentalism, many points can’t be addressed in real time. Many anomalies can’t be fully explained, right?
Yeesh. No wonder Bret wasn’t impressed—I’ve heard the first 45 minutes and they still haven’t talked about any of the misinformation in Bret’s podcast. Will they eventually get around to talking about it? Who knows, I can’t be bothered to sit through the whole thing. At least at the 40 minute mark they implicitly discussed base rates in VAERS, which seems to be a totally invisible concept to anti-vaxxers.
But at the same time, they’re saying “in the clinical trial no one died” and then talk about the “12 thousand VAERS deaths” without discussing the fact that anti-vaxxers dispute these basic facts. For example I see Kirsch saying, in a “Pfizer 6 month trial” that there were 21 deaths in the vaccine group vs. 17 in placebo (no doubt true but irrelevant); Kirsch also claims there is an enormous underreporting factor (42? I forget) for deaths post vaccination in VAERS (ridiculous, but he has an excuse for making the claim). At 47:20 there’s finally a (forceful but weak) rebuttal of something Bret said.
So the podcast is engaging with anti-vax arguments a little, but the Dark Horse podcast I summarized here is 3 hours long and I can be pretty sure, without hearing the rest, that Sam hasn’t addressed most of the claims made there, let alone everywhere else.
It wasn’t really intellectually honest, to the point he received enough criticism from his own wife and granted that much
You can check out the initial few minutes of the following AMA