Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
May 23, 2021 10 tweets 9 min read Read on X
1/V

Quick thread on another reason why I don't trust Vinay Prasad.



I'm an immunologist, and one of the main reasons I first came to Twitter 4 years ago was to debunk vaccine denialism.



2/V

To be blunt, I know more about immunology and vaccines than Prasad. This is not his field of expertise.

The study he cites does not support the claim he made:
science.sciencemag.org/content/371/65…

And the John Snow memo is pretty good:



3/V

There were good reasons for thinking COVID-19 vaccines would induce a better immune response than infection.

I was not the first to point this out (h/t @drjenndowd).




4/V

So I responded to Prasad's thread by going over some of the reasons he was wrong.

In reply, he blocked me, without addressing what I said. He's fairly notorious for blocking to evade criticism.





5/V

So let's check some recent evidence on immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines vs. infection.




page 32:
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

page 24:
fda.gov/media/144246/d…
6/V

More evidence on immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines vs. infection:



figure 1C, and:
"[...] post-vaccination neutralization titers were equal to or exceeded the titers found in the high responder convalescent group"
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
7/V

FYI:

Neutralizing antibodies bind to SARS-CoV-2 to prevent it from infecting cells.
Vaccines can not only increase them more initially without infection, but also increase them after infection.



biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

science.sciencemag.org/content/early/…
8/V

So @VPrasadMDMPH's claim on vaccines failed.

Maybe he should spend more time honestly listening to criticism, as opposed:
- to running from it
- sub-tweeting his critics
- messing up more on COVID-19 vaccines for kids?



9/V

FYI:

Saying 'infection is better than vaccination' is a standard trope of vaccine denialism, as is peddling anti-vaxxers' misleading/false tropes while claiming to be pro-vaccine.
Let's not fall for it.


10/V

Twitter's blocking part 6/V for some reason.

So here's the information in it:



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More from @AtomsksSanakan

Feb 23
71/J

I recently got a copy of Dr. Judith Curry's book without buying it myself.

Looking over it confirmed to me that it's largely misinformation.

I'll illustrate that by assessing its claims on COVID-19.



"11.3.1 COVID-19"

amazon.com/Climate-Uncert…
Image
72/J

To reiterate: Curry draws parallels between COVID-19 + climate change.

But some of the sources she cites suggest an ideologically convenient narrative misinformed her.

That becomes clearer when assessing her claims.




Image
73/J

No mention of the misinformation she + other contrarians promoted, and which conflicted with knowledge advances by experts.

(8/J - 12/J, 32J - 36/J, 44/J, 45/J, 63/J, etc.)








Image
Read 32 tweets
Feb 17
1/J

Dr. Judith Curry recommends people read at least the 45-page preview of her new book.

I did.

It's bad enough I wouldn't recommend buying the book.
It's largely contrarian conspiracist misinformation.




amazon.com/Climate-Uncert…
Image
Read 72 tweets
Aug 30, 2023
PapersOfTheDay

"Executive Summary to the Royal Society report “COVID-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions”"


"Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2: [...]"
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
Jefferson + Heneghan don't like the papers.

Makes sense they wouldn't given their track record, especially Jefferson on the Cochrane mask review he led.







brownstone.org/articles/royal…



cochrane.org/news/statement…
Image
Read 5 tweets
Mar 13, 2023
69/E

A reminder, since there's a resurgence in Musk + right-wing politicians trying to score political points by saying they want Fauci prosecuted:

Musk's dislike of Fauci drove him to post an easily debunked lie (57/E, 56/, 41/)


Image
70/E

Still no apology from Musk for falsely smearing Grady based on untrue things he was told, or that he made up.

"Elon Musk calls British diver in Thai cave rescue 'pedo' in baseless attack"
theguardian.com/technology/201…



thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-mock… Image
71/E

Another good example of the willful ignorance + baseless paranoia underlying Musk's lab leak conspiracism and his criticisms of Fauci.




archive.is/GZ6er#selectio…
archive.is/ughZK#selectio…
archive.is/WWKtc#selectio… ImageImageImage
Read 11 tweets
Dec 12, 2022
1/E

Some illustrations of the pseudoskepticism that overtakes many crypto / tech bros, using the example of Elon Musk's COVID-19 claims.

"My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci"


onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… Image
2/E

No, neither chloroquine nor hydroxychloroquine worked for SARS-CoV-2.

Fortunately, Fauci recommended neither in March 2020.

9:12 - 14:41 :



Image
Read 29 tweets
Jun 8, 2022
1/B

Thread on a myth Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) continues to peddle to undermine confidence in public health agencies and to suit his policy agenda.

The myth may undermine responses to future public health emergencies.




stanfordreview.org/the-review-int…
Image
2/B

Some background:

The infection fatality rate (IFR) states the proportion of *SARS-CoV-2-infected* people who die of the disease COVID-19.

The case fatality rate (CFR) states the proportion of *reported cases* who die of COVID-19.

institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an…
Image
3/B

Reporting systems are not perfect, so they sometimes miss infected people. That makes reported cases less than total infections, and thus CFR is higher than IFR.

The WHO was open about this since the early stages of the pandemic:

March 17, 2020:
web.archive.org/web/2020102205…
Image
Read 26 tweets

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