I’m wondering what the details of your friends reporting attempts are. Who exactly did they talk to? VAERS is the official U.S. reporting system, what were their experiences with that? If there is an underreporting problem, we need as many specifics as we can get to combat it. Given that some vaccines do have well-known side effects among certain demographics, lots of people have been able to report their side effects successfully. We would need to figure out why your friend group has been far less successful to correct the issue.
Without an explicit probability calculation, how exactly are we supposed to determine what the levels of side effects in reality are, vs what the medical data that has been collected and reported suggests, vs what the average person thinks is true? Perhaps all are biased and/or untrustworthy. I’m not sure where we can go from there. Has personal testimony from our own social groups become the best we can do?
Has personal testimony from our own social groups become the best we can do?
Sadly yes, at least on my side.
I think your questions are very sane. Sadly I’m not the person to do this kind of data collection. The way some people have the opposite of a green thumb when it comes to plants, I have something like that for putting together numerically focused models. As soon as I move away from geometry or contact with physical reality, errors like 2+3=6 dominate and my models’ output becomes gobbledegook. I was astoundingly good at geometry and utter garbage at algebra in math grad school.
I think most of the people I’m referring to were pointed at VAERS. This was from months ago, buried in old Facebook threads, so it’d take quite a bit of digging to find and I’m not sure I could. So this is based on a fuzzy impression of seeing that acronym in that context. But I do recall many of them were given a hotline number to call if they got side effects, and in calling the number they got the “Well, the vaccines are safe, so these must be from something else” line.
Without an explicit probability calculation, how exactly are we supposed to determine what the levels of side effects in reality are, vs what the medical data that has been collected and reported suggests, vs what the average person thinks is true?
Yep. This has been part of my problem. I’m living in a sea of vastly deeper uncertainty than the people around me seem to think they’re in. I’m hoping to do slightly better than either of “No one knows anything and anyone who claims otherwise is deluded” or “My tribe is right.” I’ve just been having a lot of trouble finding that alternative.
I have a hypothesis that seems to fit the data. These numbers are not given out for the purpose of collecting data on vaccine side effects (that’s what VAERS is for). They are intended to provide specialized medical care directed at those who have recently gotten vaccines.
Evidence: One commenter reported calling a Walgreens number. If this is representative, these are local pharmacy/medical practice numbers that people are calling, not some national reporting service.
Reassurance is one of the jobs of a anyone providing medical care. “Even though you aren’t feeling well after the treatment, you have nothing to worry about, the treatment is safe.” is exactly what I would want someone to say if there was nothing either of us could do to help matters, especially if I was worried enough to call. You are especially likely to do so if you personally believe the vaccine is save (which is very likely for someone responding to such a number). If I was simply recording side effects, I wouldn’t bother with that. Y
If you already believe the side effect is caused by the vaccine and think it’s a very big deal, and then during the call they try to give the reassurance, you will instead distrust them, and also want to report their untrustworthiness to friends.
If you never call the number because you are not worried, or you do trust them, you have nothing notable to report. This would explain why every report looks like a reassurance that fell flat. Your sample is biased strongly towards looking exactly that way, regardless of how common side effects or the “there are no side effects” line actually is.
And all that assumes that this game of telephone, chaining between the medical establishment, the people taking the calls, your friends reporting the call, and then your fuzzy recollection, didn’t distort any of the data.
Currently, this “explains” your data for me. As in, I am no longer confused about your reports about your friends. I understand what happened, I think. There is no data collection rejection involved, at least not related to these calls.
Do you doubt this hypothesis? If so, what evidence could you provide against it? What evidence would we need to collect to figure out whether the hypothesis is true?
I would expect that if one called such a number, one could confirm that the other person is doing no data collection about the likelihood of side effects, that the line in context is intended for reassurance if it comes up, and the entire call will otherwise be completely in line with providing post-vaccine medical care. Averaging across multiple calls, of course.
If I’m wrong, I would expect that getting a full description of an entire call would show that the line in question is used as a shutdown, side effects are not being recorded (but they are supposed to be recorded every time according to the rules of the job), there is no reasonable medical triage going on, and the numbers in question are intended purely to advocate for vaccine safety. Also averaging across multiple calls.
I’m wondering what the details of your friends reporting attempts are. Who exactly did they talk to? VAERS is the official U.S. reporting system, what were their experiences with that? If there is an underreporting problem, we need as many specifics as we can get to combat it. Given that some vaccines do have well-known side effects among certain demographics, lots of people have been able to report their side effects successfully. We would need to figure out why your friend group has been far less successful to correct the issue.
Without an explicit probability calculation, how exactly are we supposed to determine what the levels of side effects in reality are, vs what the medical data that has been collected and reported suggests, vs what the average person thinks is true? Perhaps all are biased and/or untrustworthy. I’m not sure where we can go from there. Has personal testimony from our own social groups become the best we can do?
Sadly yes, at least on my side.
I think your questions are very sane. Sadly I’m not the person to do this kind of data collection. The way some people have the opposite of a green thumb when it comes to plants, I have something like that for putting together numerically focused models. As soon as I move away from geometry or contact with physical reality, errors like 2+3=6 dominate and my models’ output becomes gobbledegook. I was astoundingly good at geometry and utter garbage at algebra in math grad school.
I think most of the people I’m referring to were pointed at VAERS. This was from months ago, buried in old Facebook threads, so it’d take quite a bit of digging to find and I’m not sure I could. So this is based on a fuzzy impression of seeing that acronym in that context. But I do recall many of them were given a hotline number to call if they got side effects, and in calling the number they got the “Well, the vaccines are safe, so these must be from something else” line.
Yep. This has been part of my problem. I’m living in a sea of vastly deeper uncertainty than the people around me seem to think they’re in. I’m hoping to do slightly better than either of “No one knows anything and anyone who claims otherwise is deluded” or “My tribe is right.” I’ve just been having a lot of trouble finding that alternative.
(…and this discussion is helping.)
I have a hypothesis that seems to fit the data. These numbers are not given out for the purpose of collecting data on vaccine side effects (that’s what VAERS is for). They are intended to provide specialized medical care directed at those who have recently gotten vaccines.
Evidence:
One commenter reported calling a Walgreens number. If this is representative, these are local pharmacy/medical practice numbers that people are calling, not some national reporting service.
Reassurance is one of the jobs of a anyone providing medical care. “Even though you aren’t feeling well after the treatment, you have nothing to worry about, the treatment is safe.” is exactly what I would want someone to say if there was nothing either of us could do to help matters, especially if I was worried enough to call. You are especially likely to do so if you personally believe the vaccine is save (which is very likely for someone responding to such a number). If I was simply recording side effects, I wouldn’t bother with that. Y
If you already believe the side effect is caused by the vaccine and think it’s a very big deal, and then during the call they try to give the reassurance, you will instead distrust them, and also want to report their untrustworthiness to friends.
If you never call the number because you are not worried, or you do trust them, you have nothing notable to report. This would explain why every report looks like a reassurance that fell flat. Your sample is biased strongly towards looking exactly that way, regardless of how common side effects or the “there are no side effects” line actually is.
And all that assumes that this game of telephone, chaining between the medical establishment, the people taking the calls, your friends reporting the call, and then your fuzzy recollection, didn’t distort any of the data.
Currently, this “explains” your data for me. As in, I am no longer confused about your reports about your friends. I understand what happened, I think. There is no data collection rejection involved, at least not related to these calls.
Do you doubt this hypothesis? If so, what evidence could you provide against it? What evidence would we need to collect to figure out whether the hypothesis is true?
I would expect that if one called such a number, one could confirm that the other person is doing no data collection about the likelihood of side effects, that the line in context is intended for reassurance if it comes up, and the entire call will otherwise be completely in line with providing post-vaccine medical care. Averaging across multiple calls, of course.
If I’m wrong, I would expect that getting a full description of an entire call would show that the line in question is used as a shutdown, side effects are not being recorded (but they are supposed to be recorded every time according to the rules of the job), there is no reasonable medical triage going on, and the numbers in question are intended purely to advocate for vaccine safety. Also averaging across multiple calls.