So why not take 15 in Poland instead of 700 in the Netherlands? Any indication the Poles are less trustworthy than Dutch?
Further, get base death rates from fatal causes attributed to vaccine in unvaccinated population. It's rather crucial to do so, because unvaccinated people sitting at homes (not moving enough) can develop clots more often too. Or the opposite.
If that data is insufficient, you can also employ base rates pre-pandemic.
I have three problems with this statement:
(a) I always thought COVID anti-measures including vaccinations are not about death rates but mainly about the "flattening the curve" and protecting our health systems from collapsing, which would result in many more deaths.
(b) Deaths vs. "inflicted": How is this a good comparison? The consequence of death is clear, what does inflicted mean here?
(c) Deaths vs. "inflicted": Are those who barely survived or who have long COVID not inflicted? What's the ratio then?
Last but not least: It is always easy to say this is bad without giving an alternative solution. What's the alternative to vaccinations? Having COVID spread without controlling it? Or having masks and contact reductions forever?
What do you mean? In the absence of vaccines or any reason to believe that a vastly more effective treatment would arrive, masks and lockdowns “flatten the curve” in the sense that they primarily defer disease, not prevent it. (Major exception: if lockdowns actually eradicated COVID, it would be all over. A few countries pulled this off, but this is only a long term solution if it worked everywhere.)
Vaccines, however, assuming they work as well as the measles vaccine, prevent deaths outright. Vaccinate 5% of the population and you will reduce the eventual number of severe disease cases and deaths (and long COVID?) by something around 5%. (Maybe more like 2.5% if efficacy is on the low end.). Vaccinate 95% of the population and COVID will resemble measles: a few localized outbreaks will still occur, but most people will never be exposed, let alone get sick.
I just wanted to note that COVID cannot be eradicated unless we also eradicate it from all animal populations that can carry it, such as cats, dogs, ferrets, fruit bats, gorillas, hamsters, minks, sea otters, pumas, snow leopards, tigers, and tree shrews [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemi...
What I’m saying is different though. I’m arguing that even if COVID had a 0 death rate but the same hospitalization rate and severity, we’d still be vaccinating everyone. Because we decided to protect our health care system.
It's not like there is no effective treatment in case you are infected. After all, we did quite a few clinical trials in the past year, and it's kind of surprising the answer is "let's just do mass vaccinations and nothing else"
That's like saying seatbelts are an alternative to traffic laws.
Many states and health institutions behave as this was the case.
Foremost: If someone had cancer, that does not mean he would have died immediately. Heck, he could have "survived" it, or at least lived for several more years.
Second: This does not explain the huge numbers of deaths. You can easily compare how many people died of/with lung cancer from 2019 to 2020 and then for 2020 to 2021 and clearly see that COVID made a difference here (called Übersterblichkeit in German, and visible in all COVID-affected countries).
And AFAIK most countries do actually not report a death with COVID, e.g. a car accident, as being caused by COVID.
In other words, this is a common myth from the skeptics department and only serves in undermining COVID-related efforts, even if well intended.
Random German state (Bavaria) for example [0]: Cause of death known for 98% of all COVID-19 deaths, 87% of these died from the disease, 13% from other causes. I just don't really see how it's misattribution when that data is available (which I assume it would be in any country not completely overwhelmed by the pandemic).
[0] https://www.lgl.bayern.de/gesundheit/infektionsschutz/infekt...
It's just a matter of timeliness in some cases and up to the consumer of such data to decide which is suitable for which analysis (and honestly a moot point, no country tests enough to warrant the assumption that the odd accidental death that is later corrected would be worse than the effects of undercounting).
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
Dude is also a known antivax: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpxwx/how-france-became-the...
Not too surprising when you see where he works ;-).
- "I don't think this is true" - "And AFAIK most countries do actually [...]" - "In other words, this is a common myth [...]"
You present your thoughts, a theoretical anecdote and things you might have read. And based on that you conclude that it is a "common myth"?
If now you have something to add to the points made after "Foremost:" and "Second:" your post could have added something to the discussion as well, instead of just attacking my form.
Your first point depicts a fictional anecdote that tries to prove that terminally-ill patients with a positive COVID-19 test could have lived longer. It's like saying "If someone has stage IV cancer and tests positive for COVID-19, that does not mean he died due to COVID-19. Heck, he could have even died due to multidrug-resistant bacteria"
What's your source? What's mine? What does it add to the discussion to bring up fictional scenarios?
Regarding your second point: Source? How closely does excess mortality correlate with COVID-19? Could there be other causes? We are talking about highly complex situations that need to be thoroughly analyzed.
If you do not have anything to add about the subject, please don't waste anyone's time complaining about form.
Good investigators have always been aware of the limitations inherent in the assumption, but initially other measures based on the official death certificates were simply not available (and in any case have their own complications when interpreting), so people used what was available and cautioned about the limitations the first four times they said anything.
[1] https://archpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...
> ... For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination. Conclusions: This lack of clear benefit should cause governments to rethink their vaccination policy.
Besides the flaws pointed out by the article, the paper also linearizes the effects of vaccines, i.e. they estimate "how many people need to be vaccinated in order to avoid one death on average". This estimate, multiplied with "how many people died after being vaccinated", is how they arrived at their main result cited above. But we also know that the effects of herd immunity and spread are not linear when a significant percentage of the population is immune.
TFA:
> [The paper] makes the (incorrect) assumption that all deaths occurring post vaccination are caused by vaccination
> None of the paper’s authors is trained in vaccinology, virology, or epidemiology. They are: ... a clinical psychologist and science historian by training who describes himself as a health researcher ... ; a physicist who studies ketogenic diets ... ; ... an independent data scientist
> The three peer reviewers on the paper, two of them anonymous, did not offer any substantial criticism of the authors’ methodology in these brief reviews. One of them ... wrote that the authors’ analysis “is performed responsibly … and without methodological flaws … and the results were interpreted with the necessary caveats.”
> One of the anonymous reviewers wrote that the manuscript “is very important and should be published urgently,”