Pre-2020, it would have been unarguable that consenting to a medical treatment should always be on the basis that the individual gives fully informed consent.
Fully informed involves describing risks v benefits.
I am not commenting in this thread on risks, only on benefits.
Effects on infection rates and transmissibility have not been demonstrated in these trials - only symptom reduction.
Hence any societal benefit via herd immunity is purely speculative, and ethically unjustifiable as the basis of coercion (which is unjustifiable anyway).
Hence it is the individual which matters, and for them, the benefit side of the ledger is not the relative risk reduction between the 2 groups in the trial.
It is the absolute risk reduction - what is the risk reduction that person is receiving?
From what risk TO what risk?
The relative risk reduction is not relevant as it doesn't take account of background risk, ie in the absence of the procedure / treatment / vaccine, what is my risk anyway?
We could eliminate - that's right, we could achieve a 100% risk reduction - in death from appendicitis by removing everybody's appendix as infants.
Is this sensible?
No, because the risk of dying from appendicitis is incredibly low it's best just to treat it as it arises.
A non-medical example:
The risk from air travel has been declining quite rapidly in recent decades.
(Since the pandemic it has been zero but that's another story....)
Risk of Covid of any severity reduced from 0.74% to 0.04%
Risk of severe Covid reduced from 0.018% to 0.004
Risk of hospitalisation reduced from 0.004 to zero
>99.99% on placebo weren't hospitalised for Covid
Moderna:
Risk of Covid of any severity reduced from 0.64% to 0.04%
Risk of severe Covid reduced from 0.08% to 0.007%
Risk of hospitalisation reduced from 0.02% to zero
99.98% on placebo were not hospitalised for Covid
AstraZeneca:
Risk of Covid of any severity reduced from 2.2% to 1%
Risk of severe Covid (WHO score ≥6) reduced from 0.02% to zero
Risk of hospitalisation reduced from 0.16% to 0.02%
99.84% on placebo were not hospitalised for Covid
It should be stressed that not all the differences between active and placebo groups above reached "statistical significance".
But that's outside the scope of this thread.
I'm just reporting the raw data.
Final point: these were deliberately conducted in countries with high prevalance to accelerate the trials.
Which is more significant:
- the reductions achieved between the groups
or
- how hard - under controlled conditions - it was to find any confirmed Covid, esp severe?
Another way of lookimng at this is to determine the number needed to treat (MMT) to prevent a single case.
My views on "spikeopathy" as illustrated by a Whatsapp conversation I had with @ClareCraigPath, co-chair of @hartgroup_org - who is happy that I post this exchange verbatim (other than the odd spelling howlers!)
We have different views on "spikeopathy" but we both thought you mind find a modicum of interest in this exchange.
Clare brought the tweet below to my attention with this message:
"I know you [Jonathan] aren't a great believer in spike pathology but this evidence of vaccine injury is pretty compelling."
My response was:
"Of course continued production of foreign protein throughout the body is harmful!
But would it matter which weird protein is actually being made?
(And the S1 could be just one of many being made per the frameshift thing - but that’s the one being tested for, ie S1 could just be a marker for a whole lot of proteins.)
When have I ever said that I don’t believe that?
No, what I object to is people extrapolating from a case like this to “spikeopathy” is also a “thing” with “covid” infection when:
- the protein is different in several important ways which likely affect function
- it doesn’t get made in large / equivalent amounts throughout the body after infection for extended periods"
Follow-up question from Clare:
"So do you think spikeopathy is a thing after injection?"
On its live Parliamentary stream today, the BBC saw fit to broadcast a banner containing comments directly contradicting some aspects of @ABridgen's speech today.
It is highly inappropriate for @BBC to display any commentary on speeches being made on this stream.
The stream is meant to be a faithful broadcast of goings on in the House, not a news site or forum for debate (other than by those in the House).
Has the BBC ever displayed commentary before which contradicts speeches being given by MPs?
The wording though - "often essential" - is quite interesting in its equivocation.
Here are all the other banners in this and the next tweet (I think I got them all).
However, from studying the history of science, I did work out that he had been unfairly written out of the history of the elucidation of the theory of evolution.
It always seemed most odd to me, especially since Darwin was certainly open to him… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Hmmm...this sounds vaguely familiar.....
And this sounds rather familiar too:
"there is nothing whatever to show that the increased vaccinations had any effect on the disease, which ran its course and then died out like other epidemics."
It has been noticed already that it is quite surprising that poorer (and low-vaccination) Haiti had minimal covid burden compared to DR, despite sharing the same climate: