Share this page!

Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
Twitter logo
11 Mar, 5 tweets, 3 min read
⚠️ Not a joke.

Australians (including me) risk fines for sharing information about vaccines on social media.

Advertising medications direct to consumers was already prohibited in Australia (for good reason), but recent guidance about COVID-19 vaccines approaches censorship.
It seems social media posts comparing the efficacy of different vaccines may be considered advertising by Australia’s regulator (the TGA), because they could lead people to seek out a particular vaccine.

The TGA doesn’t muck about when it comes to fines.
tga.gov.au/infringement-n…
Additionally, pharmacies, doctors, and organisations that are part of the COVID-19 vaccination programme are banned from advertising whether they are using the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine, and must instead use official government materials.
smh.com.au/business/compa…
It’s likely the regulator wants to crack down on anti-vaccination misinformation (a good thing), but this is also taking place in the context of debate about whether Australia has the right vaccine strategy.
In any case, the consequences for free speech are serious.

Doctors have been deleting posts that they think might breach the rules, while others are contemplating deleting their social media accounts entirely.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Dr Zoë Hyde

Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @DrZoeHyde

Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
13 Mar
(1/4) More evidence SARS-CoV-2 is airborne. In this report of 3 cases, proven by sequencing, ordinary surgical masks and face shields were not able to prevent aerosol transmission.

But don’t panic. There are ways to hack your mask!
academic.oup.com/cid/advance-ar… Image
(2/4) It’s important to remember that this does not mean that surgical masks are completely ineffective.

They do prevent transmission much of the time, but they are not foolproof.

Partial protection is better than no protection, and there are ways to improve mask effectiveness.
(3/4) The authors recommend the following:

➡️ Improving mask fit by using ties, rather than ear loops
➡️ Adding mask filters
➡️ Switching to a P2/FFP2/N95 mask if available (although this may be more appropriate for doctors caring for patients, or in regions with high incidence)
Read 4 tweets
Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
4 Mar
🧵 New work from me: I rebut scientific criticism & re-analyse school data from Victoria, Australia.

What did I find? Primary school children were a bit less likely to cause outbreaks than high school children, but this wasn't statistically significant.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.5694/mj…
The proportion of events resulting in an outbreak was as follows:

Child, primary school (6-12 years): 31%
Adolescent, high school (13-15 years): 41%
Adolescent, high school (16-18 years): 40%
Adult (primary and high school): 39%

But note large, overlapping confidence intervals.
These data also have some important limitations.

First, not all contacts were tested, and so transmission may be underestimated.

This may particularly affect the data for primary school children, who might have been tested least.
Read 12 tweets
Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
3 Mar
(1/5) Serious allegations have been made concerning a paper which suggested keeping schools open in Sweden was low risk.

It is alleged the authors deliberately left out data showing excess mortality rose by 68% in school-aged children.

Read on...
sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/c…
(2/5) The main author of the original paper, Jonas Ludvigsson, is a signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration.

The Declaration suggests that the virus should be allowed to spread in people at low risk of dying from COVID-19, in order to build herd immunity.
(3/5) The emails between Jonas Ludvigsson and Anders Tegnell (the architect of Sweden’s pandemic strategy) that the article refers to, appear to be these ones:
Read 5 tweets
Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
26 Feb
(1/22) Here's a new paper from me about some of the biases affecting research on children and COVID-19, and more importantly, some solutions.

It hasn't been typeset yet (the PDF might be hard for non-English speakers to read?), so I'll do a quick summary.
academic.oup.com/cid/advance-ar…
(2/22) First, "bias" has a different meaning in epidemiology compared to everyday life.

It doesn't mean someone's done something wrong. It just means there's a methodological issue that affects the results.

This article explains some of the common types.
jech.bmj.com/content/58/8/6…
(3/22) Now, on to the paper. It's been argued that children are less susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2 than adults and play only a minor role in transmission.

This conclusion is likely premature, because it's often difficult to detect infections in children.
Read 22 tweets
Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
23 Feb
I don't like to dwell on negatives, but something important happened recently that I'd like to make public.

Shortly before Christmas, @mugecevik made a complaint to my university about me. When asked for details, she didn't provide any. My employer took a dim view of the matter.
I thought that was pretty strange, but laughed the matter off. After all, the complaint didn't go anywhere and I was supported by my university.

But last week, she made a complaint to a publisher about an article I recently wrote. It was this article:
theconversation.com/herd-immunity-…
She listed an astonishing 12 complaints (yes, 12!), said the article was grossly inaccurate, and asked for the article to be retracted.

However, no errors of fact were identified, so the article has not been retracted.
Read 8 tweets
Dr Zoë Hyde Profile picture
22 Feb
Historically, I’ve not been a big user of social media. It never really appealed to me.

But in early 2020, I was pretty sure we were facing a pandemic and so started this account to share my thoughts with friends and family.

It got a bit bigger than I expected.
But as this account has grown, it’s taken up more of my time than it did in the beginning.

I don’t plan to stop tweeting any time soon, but I’m going to have to spend a bit less time on here. For one thing, it’s grant-writing season now, and that’s going to occupy me for a bit.
I’ve also begun to see how social media can be quite an addictive medium and I don’t want to get sucked into that. So I’m going to pull back a little in terms of the amount of time I spend on here.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @DrZoeHyde has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @DrZoeHyde!

Read all threads by @DrZoeHyde