Thread by @dr_jon_l

McCullough recently had a preprint retracted - I have found the supplementary table of how they judged the causation, and it is as bad as I thought. The bias of the authors is clear.

For example, in this case series - they judged 105 cases as "due to the vaccine" and 16 "not due to the vaccine".
Now remember - they claimed 240 deaths were related to the vaccine to get their 74% claim

This case series does NOT have enough information of the authors to make a causal determination. The vast majority received the sinovac vaccine (a vaccine that does not produce spike protein in your body, which is their proposed mechanism)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

This study does not discuss the timing of vaccination, which would be important to consider in causation. The mean age was 84 years old with an age range of 66-103. Most patients had typical comorbidities for the cause of death. It also does not break the deaths down by age

53 of the patients died from myocardial infarction (heart attack), which is not a complication associated with COVID vaccines and is a leading cause of death worldwide. 45 of the 69 sudden cardiac deaths were due to coronary artery disease (not associated with vaccines)

So it is clear that they applied the Makis/McCullough standard to determining death from the vaccine: they assumed, without evidence, that any cardiac death after vaccination was due to the vaccine. The authors of the case series disagree with McCullough et al:

So, I will be generous and give them the 6 deaths with no specific cause found (although there is no way to determine for sure). That would remove 99 cases, dropping their count to 141 (and this is just ONE study I'm reviewing). It drops to 43% with this one error they made

Another example is this study where a person had signs of active and old multiple sclerosis lesions 182 days after vaccination. This would be extremely unlikely to be caused by the vaccine.

Especially since the patient had been diagnosed with optic neuritis (a common presentation of multiple sclerosis) 4 YEARS before this event. This case was also complicated by a recent COVID-19 infection. Notice all 3 authors labelled it a "Vaccine death"

Here, they appear to have determined the wrong cause of death. A 90-year-old with an aortic dissection resulting in blood in the sac around the heart (haemoperitoneum). The dissection would cause death (or tamponade from the blood), not pericarditis.

@threadreaderapp please unroll