The trick is to be honest about the probabilities and what we know

So, for example, if you are worried about freedom, don't misuse vaccine reporting systems to make up fake concerns. Just talk about the issue you care about
The problem is that most of the time the issues that people care about are not really interesting or realistic. "Oh no they might force kids to get a vaccine" is a tired, tedious line
Instead, people who are against COVID-19 vaccines for whatever reason tend to go with arguments that are a lot less accurate but a lot more emotive, which is where the issues with the discussion come in
I think the other point is that often "asking questions" is used as cover for disingenuous nonsense, because the questions asked are deceptive and misleading

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More from @GidMK

15 Jun
Was reminded of this old blog recently - scare stories about red meat and cancer are still all too common

gidmk.medium.com/red-meat-isnt-…
There's a reasonable basis for arguing that at a population level there might be some reduction in cancer rates if people stopped eating PROCESSED red meat
Less strong is the argument that eating non-processed red meat might impact cancer rates - even if there is some reduction, it would be pretty modest at a population level
Read 4 tweets
13 Jun
The interesting thing to me is the divergence between the two lab leak theories:

1. Reasonably low likelihood that requires investigation
2. Wild conspiracy
In the first scenario, which most scientists espouse, we can't rule out the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab, but it's the least likely explanation by a fair bit

Still needs looking in to!
In the second scenario, people have aggregated bizarre and nonsensical arguments into an impenetrable morass of vague thinking that supposedly means something - this is why I say it's like a conspiracy theory
Read 4 tweets
11 Jun
Remember this problematic study from February?

After questions were raised about the paper, it was pulled by the Lancet and disappeared off the preprint server it was on

This week IT WAS PUBLISHED 👀👀 1/n
2/n The paper is here. The authors and ethics approval are essentially identical, and the text is very similar. There are, however, some really odd differences between the publication and preprint academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-a…
3/n First off, the published version doesn't mention that this study was preprinted then retracted as far as I can tell

That's, um, not great. Less than ideal
Read 17 tweets
9 Jun
Fascinating thread. It's wrong in numerous ways - the methodology is pretty trivially incorrect, many of the statements are wrong based even on a quick google

But it's face-plausible so people jump on board. Very interesting
Taking one basic error in the thread as an example, the tables only work if you assume that the proportions in each age group are identical across these countries, which is very trivially wrong
Another basic mistake - the US had patchy lockdowns that weren't all in place for most of the year, so it's boringly incorrect to compare to Sweden in this way
Read 4 tweets
8 Jun
@jamesheathers and I have an important new piece out in STAT today talking about science during The Plague

Bottom line - academic science has not come out of the pandemic looking good

statnews.com/2021/06/08/sci…
The simple fact is that our current system for generating and correcting evidence has not handled the incredibly tight timeframes of Covid in any reasonable way
I think this story about a paper in Scientific Reports exemplifies the issue

The authors and editors did everything RIGHT as far as traditional academia goes. And yet, it was a massive failure in many ways
Read 6 tweets
8 Jun
Headlines: vegetarian diets prevent severe COVID!

Study: cross-sectional survey-based investigation of an online sample of healthcare workers shows some interesting associations

The headlines are wildly silly 1/n
2/n The study is here, and fun for a quick read. Basically, a group of researchers surveyed healthcare workers in July-Sept 2020 and asked them stuff about their diet and COVID nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/…
3/n This appears to be the 3rd or 4th study published from that survey. The authors basically found that, after controlling for a couple of confounders, there was an association between self-reported diet and risk of severe COVID-19
Read 14 tweets

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