Context: This is the fourteenth time he's asked this question on twitter. Pretty clear it's not a good faith question, but a COVID dog whistle for those who think that flu cases and deaths are being fraudulently marked as COVID.
Good faith answer: it turns out that mitigation used against COVID is even more effective against less infectious flu. (Like reduced travel, WFH, masks, avoiding groups, handwashing, etc.) We're still testing for the flu, and it's really at low levels.
Context: The answer is that vaccinating the 20% of the population that's least mobile would not necessarily have as dramatic effect on cases. And in fact, it seems to be working well for the >60 year-old population that's now mostly vaccinated.
Alex responded to this by disregarding it; complaining that the overall rates don't drop as fast.
But the fact that those getting vaccinated are less sick is evidence they have effect. In the last 3 weeks >60 have fewer cases, while cases among the unvaccinated rise. Suggestive.
Everyone in Israel belongs to one of four HMOs, and Maccabi is the second-largest. The study covers 50,777 members who got the vaccine among 480k age 60+. It's not a "small HMO"; the sample is huge and robust.
The problem for this theory is not a problem at all.
In most states, cases are down, hospitalizations are improving. These places are removing restrictions (that they previously removed and only re-imposed when cases shot up in November).
Context: There’s nothing suspicious about an 86 year-old man dying in his sleep. We knew garbage like this was coming. Antivaxxers always seize unrelated events that inevitably occur when large numbers of vaccines are administered.
For example, here’s Alex Berenson spreading panic porn that 148 people have been reported to have died sometime after taking one of the vaccines. Doesn’t mean vaccines had any role. As of last week 11.3 million doses had been administered!
I wrote an article about this. The WHO didn't say anything about false positives, doesn't suggest cycles be reduced, and not much changed from old guidance.