I think my biggest issue with the whole thing is lack of data collection at the national level about adults who face cardiovascular issues and their vaccination/covid status. If I was rolling out a new vaccine at the national level, this is the first thing I could collect to be able to make conclusions either way. And it's not a complicated thing to collect too.

Blood clots have gone up significantly for younger people in last two years. Is that due to covid or due to vaccination? We can't answer this simple enough question because we refuse to collect data. This is directly from my hematologist btw who is an expert in blood clots at a famous hospital. That itself suggests either bias or complacency to me.

Would you be against data collection? It's not implying anything.

> I think my biggest issue with the whole thing is lack of data collection at the national level about adults who face cardiovascular issues and their vaccination/covid status.

What is your evidence that there is zero data being collected on this? What is your evidence that we refuse to collect this data?

I can prove that the issue is being considered along with every other side effect experienced by people taking these vaccines. Research on the subject already exists, how is that possible if no one is collecting data? VAERS continues to collect data on the side effects experienced by people who have taken the vaccine, which is then being evaluated by researchers. What evidence you do you have that this isn't happening?

1. My doctor(s) (in USA) told me so. They were not aware of any data collection around this and my condition. I did explicitly ask them.

2. Where is this data? If it's being collected, we should be able to see it or clear conclusions from it? It's a very simple data set too. I have not seen any clear national level data or any discussion around it for vaccination status/blood clots in any media.

> I have not seen any clear national level data or any discussion around it for vaccination status/blood clots in any media.

In research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35582622/

In media: https://nypost.com/2022/05/05/fda-restricts-jjs-covid-19-vac...

I'll be generous and suggest that your doctor misunderstood your question. VAERS is a nationwide data collection program being used to collect evidence for the adverse effects of these vaccines, including heart problems and blood clots. Your doctor is certainly aware of this program and if they are dealing with covid patients they are most likely involved in collecting and sharing their own observations and data as well.

> blood clots became a concern starting in April 2021, when the government put a pause on the J&J shot after six women who received it developed rare blood clots—and one died. All of these cases were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a national early reporting warning system to detect safety problems with U.S.-licensed vaccines. (https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/coronavirus-vaccine-blood-...)

Data on the problems the vaccines might be causing is continuously being collected and evaluated. Researchers all over the globe are exchanging data on every facet of this novel virus and the new vaccines we've developed. The possible risks of these vaccines are not being ignored and research is not forbidden. If people are telling you otherwise, you might want to ask them to clarity their position or you may want to reevaluate where you've been getting your information.

The problem is that if the front line medical staff don't collect the data the existence of collections organizations and publications is effectively irrelevant because they end up totally blind to this potential data. "Blind man reports on sky color" is pretty meaningless.

Generously we may call this an oversight that so many in front line medical believe there is no collection method. Negatively, it provides plausible deniability to high minded academics while the process is intentionally shortcutted at the ground level in a massive fraud and cover up.

For myself, I've personally seen this lack of reporting for years, even before COVID, by nurses and doctors at various hospitals. There is a very pervasive attitude of, the vaccines are safe therefore your problem immediately following is total coincidence and we will report nothing.

Given it's existence for years and the lack of general training in this regard I can't help but lose trust in the entirety of the system as, at best, extremely dysfunctional.

To the down voters.

Because there exists a backend and reporting system that is extolled for it's beauty and elegance doesn't mean the users reporting front end issues are wrong. And such front end issues prevent all the data from getting to that backend and thus the reports are inaccurate.

For the system to function properly every step must operate well. Not just the ones you might like best. Otherwise it is broken. It only takes one bad line of code to break a system.

Ignoring user reports of it's brokenness is so common because those users have effectively worn out their welcome with the constant complaints.

There are better ways than blame the user though :P

> The possible risks of these vaccines are not being ignored

At this point a couple years later, I wonder if continuation of the emergency use authorization can really be justified, or if it continues because it allows the medical establishment to not be liable for realized risks.

The observed risk of naive infection continues to outweigh the possible risks of the vaccine. The long-term effects of both are still being studied. In fact, several treatments that were granted emergency use authorization have been revoked [1], because on the balance, they were not effective enough to justify the authorization.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Use_Authorization#Us...

What do you mean by "continuation of emergency use authentication??". They're all fully approved by the FDA by now [0]:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...

As I understand, Pfizer got Comirnaty approved, but virtually no one has been administered Comirnaty still.

FDA continues to re-issue EUA, first issued under Trump, which shields liability and allows use without studies of effectiveness.

Scroll down this URL and read some of the EUAs. https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-...

"On October 19, 2022, having concluded that revising this EUA is appropriate to protect the public health or safety under section 564(g)(2) of the Act, FDA is reissuing the September 12, 2022 letter of authorization in its entirety to authorize the use of Novavax COVID‑19 Vaccine"

I think you provide a good link that's a basic start.

Here is my central issue: I still can't find basic cohort level information about blood clot incidences at the cohort level: covid/vaccinated/not vaccinated. I think this is pretty basic stuff. Since you seem to be knee or chest deep into this, any idea why this information is so hard to find? It's a pretty obvious question that I think someone like you would be curious too I assume?

I remember the study you provided. It was from the early days. What happened since then? Millions of people have been vaccinated repeatedly in the US itself, so where is the follow up for clots and other issues?

My cousin who works with a healthcare provider mentioned casually to me that health insurance claims around blood clots have gone up rapidly in the last 2 years. I am all for believing its purely covid related, but why not just dispel any myth and release the cohort information as I mentioned above. It's pretty basic stuff as a data scientist myself.

There is a bit of "trust me bro" vibe going on around any kind of large scale cohort analysis for vaccines that makes me very uncomfortable.

If I am completely misguided about my last sentence, would love to see concrete numbers at a population scale (from a credible source), not just a study among some participants. It would be make me pretty happy to see real population level vaccine cohort data, which so far seems to have been evasive for me (any my doctors).

----

Independently, I am going to share something else. My doc was VERY uncomfortable even implying that vaccine could be a possible culprit behind my issues, even though there was such a clear temporal link and I'm young/healthy otherwise. I guess there is a lot of pressure on docs to not be considered Anti Vax or even have their credibility be tarnished. But I think you can see how that can bias data and reporting one way or the other.

A cousin mentioning something and a bunch of inductive DYOR googling are both far weaker than the data provided. The main pressure on doctors is to remain scientific, which is currently incompatible with claims linking clots to the rigorously tested, surveilled, and proven vaccine. There is also a hard bias against doctors saying that spiritual possession causes epilepsy or that smoking is secretly healthy —and I’m glad.

The CDC continuously updates its surveillance of the vaccine via VAERS. Via VAERS, if any of those early warning signals reached significant levels, they would follow up with deeper studies. To date, that is not the case.

There are many questions worth asking yourself before you attribute your health issue to a vaccine:

Did I ever get COVID-19?

The risk of blood clots increases for at least 6 months after the virus.

Regardless of current fitness, have I ever had years of sedentary employment?

A computer heavy job (for instance coding) or lifestyle (say, one where you write long replies online or play videogames often) can be a major cause of cardiovascular issues for years.

Will another answer than the one you’re searching for satisfy you? Or is this truly a search for confirmation?

Nobody is saying that a link between your clots and the vaccine is impossible. They are gently reminding you that a massive body of evidence suggests it is as likely as a forest fire being caused by rain.

There is no data that I've seen that shows blood clots for vaccinated vs covid vs unvaccinated. Everyone keeps saying there's full transparency while not linking a single source. It's quite paradoxical.

If all this data is so well connected, how come my heamtologist has no clue about this? He is a pretty senior doctor.

If data is being collected, how come my doctor didn't report this potentially adverse event?

If people are being careful about this, why did the doctor outright reject any connection between vaccination and clots, even if they happened next to each other. How is that scientific if you reject observations that don't meet your theories.

I'll believe it when I see an actual study or data on this topic. The lack of transparency around vaccinated cohorts is very evident.

If you disagree strongly, I'd love for you to link me to anything. Just saying "trust me" isn't very scientific.

Just to be clear, did you or did you not have COVID-19 prior to getting your blood clots? Not for the convenience of argument, but in reality.

It sounds like you’re requesting a study that nobody will conduct. Conducting a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated cohort study on blood clots before VAERS identifies blood clots as a statistically significant potential adverse effect is like conducting a study on why it’s raining when there’s not a cloud in the sky. VAERS identified ischemic stroke as a potential risk for those over 65. That was ultimately rejected as a risk by subsequent study(https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/bi...). The effect of getting COVID-19 on the same cohort is well established. You can’t Google “ischemic stroke covid” without running into a handful of studies.

If you are unable to see VAERS and the early warning apparatus for what it is, nothing will help you.

And no, nobody is publishing raw data for underpowered minds to wildly misinterpret and recast into a HIPAA violating database match.

You keep referring to things as “not scientific” but it’s you. If anyone here is saying “trust me bro” it’s the guy pitting his anecdote against millions of reports into VAERS, a body of data which contradicts the notion that clotting is even in the ballpark.

You also mention there's a massive body of evidence in this regard. Where is it? I'm genuinely curious as I've wanted to dig into it.

This type of data is being collected at large academic institutions who are doing longitudinal analyses of their patient population.

>1. My doctor(s) (in USA) told me so.

Looking at general condition of healthcare systems around the world, I would never put 100% confidence into what one or a few doctors say. They are just people with ordinary motivations and beliefs, not always committed to stay informed about the progress in their fields, not always having time etc. Their observation probably comes not from reading scientific papers, but from experience of working with the healthcare system bureaucracy that may distribute information or collect data, or may not. This won't be any evidence of nothing happening.

I did look at https://vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html btw. It seems to have great intentions. I have no idea about the level of compliance since it's purely voluntary it seems. I would love to see the data around clots, which btw that page doesn't seem to list as a condition to be reported.

As you note, the VAERS database is voluntary and probably misses many conditions that aren't associated with a vaccine when undergoing treatment.

I accept that taking medicine, any medicine, imposes risk for adverse events. What's crazy to me is we just underwent widespread inoculation of a brand new type of vaccine technology that has never been used in humans before, meant to inoculate us against a disease that never existed before, and it _feels_ like the powers that be just don't want to ask certain questions.

Let's say the vaccine is great, it causes no one harm (this is true if no vaccine, but I pose it for the sake of argument). It would still increase confidence and dispel paranoia if it and its possible harms were studied in a much more direct way than having to look at secondary metrics, like voluntary vaers data, all cause mortality, this state vs that state, etc, when the confounding factors make it impossible to be certain of anything.

COVID was never very dangerous for young people. Many didn't even want to take the vaccine. Even if the patient wasn't blinded, why couldn't we have at least kept control groups and monitored them and been fully transparent about the outcomes?

For me I can't help but conclude that an agenda was pushed here; I think it was well intentioned. The people pushing it may have even been right, but I'll never be able to trust them like I did before.

Nit: mRNA vaccines were used in human trials for cancer immunotherapy starting in 2001, rabies in 2013, ebola, zika, influenza, cytamegalovirus, etc followed. It's not accurate to say the technology had "never been used in humans before" COVID19; but the US FDA had never approved widespread use of it until then.

This raises the question of why, despite being trialed for twenty years, the technology never was deemed ready for primetime until the emergence of COVID. Part of the reason is safety issues.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/

We assumed that the vaccine doses are low enough to not cause any unacceptable health risks, but after finding these vaccines do cause cardiac complications, particularly in youth, we are hesitant to consider that these vaccines may in fact do more harm than good in some cases.

You linked to an article wherein the company itself deemed its own research into a different mRNA-type vaccine for a separate disease as not yet safe for human trials. This sounds like the type of caution you want to see from a vaccine research company.

Personally I would speculate the much larger "part of the issue" was that there was never any real need to seek authorization for mRNA vaccines in the US before COVID19, as alternatives for their targets existed. I would also speculate cardiovascular issues in mRNA COVID19 vaccines (which are real certainly) have something to do with spikey proteins in your bloodstream, and one can imagine what a more prevalent spikey virus might do to the same person. But I am not a doctor or medical researcher, just some guy on the internet who reads things; so I would not really put any stock into my speculations.

edit: my point is: it's good to be skeptical of things. Yes. It's not good to share inaccurate information, as the post above yours did.

> I would also speculate cardiovascular issues in mRNA COVID19 vaccines (which are real certainly) have something to do with spikey proteins in your bloodstream...

All COVID vaccines deliver spike proteins into your bloodstream, but not all of them substantially raise the risk of Myocarditis.

> ...and one can imagine what a more prevalent spikey virus might do to the same person.

Imagination is not enough, we're going to need some hard data. COVID vaccines don't prevent infection. Is there a net risk reduction? This is further complicated by underestimating the number of COVID infections. Many studies presume to have found a higher risk of Myocarditis with COVID infection, but these cases tend to be biased towards health care settings. For comparison, the difference between infection fatality rate and case fatality rate may be an order of magnitude. In this study, COVID was not associated with an increased risk of Myocarditis in the unvaccinated:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35456309/

> Imagination is not enough, we're going to need some hard data

Yes and I literally agree with you in my post. The problem is, as you admit, that data exists to point toward either conclusion; then you immediately speculate that the difference must be because:

> these cases tend to be biased towards health care settings

Unless you get 100% of infections tracked, the risk from COVID will always be measured to be higher than the true risk. That part is not speculation.

Also, if a large study measured no effect, there likely is no effect, even if troves of smaller studies disagree. Publication bias.

I’m confused by your link. It describes Moderna trying to use a drug to produce a liver enzyme and that was never safe, so Moderna ended up lowering their expectations with the safer and less profitable vaccines. If anything it shoes vaccines are the way to go with mRNA and the primary issue is profit.

Again, it was just an assumption that vaccines would be "safe enough", despite no mRNA vaccine having ever been rolled out at scale. The "profit" issue disappeared with COVID vaccines. You now have the FDA proposing annual COVID boosters and combined mRNA-COVID/Influenza shots for everyone, whereas European countries are age-restricting COVID boosters. If that doesn't smell like regulatory capture to you, you might suffer from COVID-induced anosmia.

You’re saying a lot to dodge the fact you made a claim using a source that doesn’t actually back your claim. You claimed this article showed mrna vaccines weren’t widely distributed because they weren’t considered safe. But this article isn’t saying that and all, and you’re misrepresenting it.

I never made this claim. I said the technology had safety issues, which the article supports. In the following paragraph, I claim that mRNA vaccines were assumed to be safe enough due to the lower dosage. Again, the article supports this.

> Again, it was just an assumption that vaccines would be "safe enough", despite no mRNA vaccine having ever been rolled out at scale.

Why is this a criterium we should pay attention to? If you never roll anything out, you'll never have data about a roll out. So instead we do studies and statistical analyses. Are you aware of any studies that "normal"/previous vaccines had to go through, which mRNA COVID vaccines did not? If so, could you please share them?

I'm not aware of any approved vaccine where the observation period was a mere four months and the control group was vaccinated thereafter. If there is another such vaccine, I would be hesitant to take that one as well.

There's no controlled experiment to suggest that mRNA vaccines provide a survival advantage to a healthy individual. The brief RCTs certainly don't support it. The increased cardiac risk, small as it may be, may well put the vaccine into negative benefit territory for some, but we'll probably never know for sure, because none of our data is robust enough to draw such conclusions.

> approved widespread use

This conflates 'approved' with the ongoing emergency use authorization. Long term studies will help determine if it can be approved for normal use and effectiveness is part of that determination.

good point

Fair enough, I overstated my case, thanks. I hope the intention, that they are an untested technology compared to traditional vaccination, is not lost though.

This vax technology is super impressive and promising. I would like to see it succeed, hopefully in a way that some of the loss in public trust can be restored.

> is we just underwent widespread inoculation of a brand new type of vaccine technology that has never been used in humans before

If you're referring to mRNA vaccines here, then this simply isn't true. They had been used in humans before. For example they were given to humans in trials of a rabies vaccine in 2013. (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w)

mRNA vaccines are a recent and evolving tool, but not something that is untested or has never been used before.

> and it _feels_ like the powers that be just don't want to ask certain questions.

Is it worth asking yourself why it feels that way when readily available evidence shows otherwise?

> It would still increase confidence and dispel paranoia if it and its possible harms were studied in a much more direct way than having to look at secondary metrics, like voluntary vaers data,

Not all the research looking into the safety of these vaccines is dependent on VAERS data. Research on the safety of these vaccines has been going on starting long before they were ever used on a human, and even before the release of covid vaccines trials with controls and monitoring were done to look for safety issues. The very article we're commenting under is about research that didn't depend on voluntary vaers data or all cause mortality stats. This is how science detects problems with medications and vaccines. By doing research and trials for years, then following all of the data we have available to reach the most likely conclusions.

> COVID was never very dangerous for young people.

That is very much unclear. The fact remains that we're still learning about the risk that getting infected has on everyone, young and old alike. This takes time. We already have evidence to suggest there may be long term or even permanent damage from prior infection even in cases where the symptoms were mild or even undetected.

Lots of people didn't want the vaccine, but there were many many reasons for that and not all of them held up to facts and reason. At least here in the US, people were strongly encouraged to take it, but ultimately still had the choice and there are many who are not vaccinated to this day. According to the best data we have right now, it appears that those people are dying and getting seriously ill at a rate not seen in the vaccinated population.

> For me I can't help but conclude that an agenda was pushed here;

this is very broad, and speculative, but I'm inclined to agree with you. I think that agenda was most likely promoting what the best information we have the time indicated was the best available tools we had at the time to combat a new virus that devastated our economy and our way to life. Of course governments and those in power wanted people to take them. Wouldn't they all be hoping it would help things return to normal as quickly as possible?

> The people pushing it may have even been right, but I'll never be able to trust them like I did before.

This I also agree with although probably for different reasons. I've lost a great deal of faith in the CDC to be honest with the public and in our government to make sure that the American people are well cared for in times of crisis.

It may still turn out that the vaccines were a terrible mistake and that everyone who took it will suddenly drop dead in 20 years time, but today there's no evidence to suggest that might be the case. I try to make the best choices I can with the information I have currently available. I accept that I may have screwed myself, but I'm putting my money on avoiding getting infected at all if I can avoid it, and using the best medications and vaccines available to minimize the harm that an infection would cause me if I fail at that.

I appreciate the correction mRNA vaccine use. I was imprecise, I meant to say something like, '...never approved for widespread use.' Never emerging from trials successfully is relatively speaking an untested medicine compared to more traditional methods of vaccination.

The problem with this whole situation is we were/are in inherently uncharted waters here. I suspect people above a certain age or in certain circumstances should be vaccinated and probably get boosted at some frequency and people below a certain age who are otherwise healthy do not receive enough of a benefit for this to be a blanket recommendation. I am confident that the benefit to the patient and others (vis a vis transmission) is too low to mandate vaccination for young people.

What has happened is the authorities and public health officials generally marched out there in a very authoritative and confident way, asserted things they could not assert, and then mandated censorship and vaccination in a very cavalier way. There's been a lot of lying, or more charitably, just getting ahead of their skis and asserting things as truth that were just unknowable. This puts everyone in a situation of having to evaluate a lot of murky data on their own.

I was a microbiology major in college long enough to have taken immunology, virology, etc courses. I'm not totally ill-equipped, but I have no interest or frankly time and ability to read and digest these studies and make the best possible decisions for myself. Lacking some central authority I can trust now, I don't think I have a choice though.

I very much hope mRNA vaccines turn out to be revolutionary. There's a lot of promise there, and maybe we've even realized it. If there are issues, maybe they are minor and can be resolved, but the damage to public trust is almost irreparable.

I think they were saying from a statistics standpoint not a one off anecdote. You can find these stories with the the flu too. Any virus you get from a toddler to your 20's to your 70's is no joke and should be taken seriously.

> got Covid very early in 2020

Was that determined by a blood test for developed antibodies, or by swabbing around and amplifying whatever was picked up?

There are many types of thrombosis being registered to VAERS. While VAERS is fully voluntary, it is not for healthcare workers, so any healthcare facility will report these.

Do note that VAERS registers any adverse effect post-vaccination, someone dying from a bullet wound is registered in VAERS as a post-vaccination adverse effect. I've seen a lot of people reading into VAERS as causation.

Don't bother doing full statistical analyses with VAERS, dig around on PubMed and you'll find some. Either way, excess deaths are getting a lot of attention so expect more analyses to pop up in the coming months.

--

Edited out some confusing phrasing.

Vaccine Safety Datalink has this data. It's not nationwide, but covers a decent chunk of the country [1] There are about 9 million people whose medical records are included in the dataset.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/...

> Blood clots have gone up significantly for younger people in last two years. Is that due to covid or due to vaccination?

You can look at countries with young populations with low rates of vaccination before the first infection, say South Africa.

The data points to it being due to covid.

> That itself suggests either bias or complacency to me. > Would you be against data collection? It's not implying anything.

The data is being collected. In countries like the UK and Israel where government knows the vaccination status of 100% of the population, you can do very precise studies.

You ARE implying something.

> boogeyman conspiracy theorists tell each other

Says all I need to know about your perspective on this issue. There are some well established & respected scientists who fall into this group but calling them names completely invalidates their analysis</sarc>

>boogeyman conspiracy theorists

Opinion dismissed.

It's just my opinion, so dismissing it fair enough, but people should take care not to ignore facts because an unrelated opinion is stated in way that makes them uncomfortable. That seems like a recipe for willful ignorance.

It's sensible to argue against or ignore an opinion you disagree with. It's not sensible to dismiss facts presented because the person presenting them holds an opinion you disagree with, or even to ignore them because of indications of bias. Suspected bias is a reason for caution, not for the outright rejection or avoidance of facts.

If someone can't argue against the evidence presented, I suppose it may make them feel more comfortable to simply dismiss it by using any excuse they can find, but I encourage people to embrace any cognitive dissonance they might be feeling. That feeling of discomfort is often our brain trying tell us that something is wrong with our worldview or at the very least that our currently held position is worth reexamining.

> I think that's a boogeyman conspiracy theorists tell each other "The possible risks from vaccines are forbidden from being considered or talked about!". I

Funny that Youtube systematically removes any video that suggests that, even when backed by actual publications. When the action is widely visible in front of you, is that still a conspiracy or are you just blind?

> Funny that Youtube systematically removes any video that suggests that,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB80U-FSieI

Why would you even make a claim that like? This took literally seconds to disprove. That video has been up for over a year! Youtube does not "remove any video" that talks about possible health risks being caused by vaccines. It probably does remove videos that are spreading lies and FUD though, even if those videos also happen to mention things that are also backed by "actual publications"

Not that what youtube removes is any indication of some big conspiracy anyway. Youtube removes a lot of things it shouldn't. Frankly, google isn't very good at moderation on their platform and there is plenty of evidence for that.

>> backed by actual publications.

Where are these actual publications coming from if it's forbidden to consider or talk about?

What world have you been living in to miss all the documented reality of the government and co censoring, deplatforming and manipulating social/traditional media to reduce that. You're painting a very rosy picture of reality here.

Unless you believe that all those censored, shadow-banned and deplatformed people are just the conspiracy nuts with lies and fake data?

> Unless you believe that all those censored, shadow-banned and deplatformed people are just the conspiracy nuts with lies and fake data?

It'd be impossible to make that claim. I couldn't possibly be aware of all of the people who have been censored/shadow-banned/deplatformed for talking about the risks of vaccinations, but I do suspect that the vast majority of them really were (intentionally or otherwise) spreading FUD and disinformation, making claims not supposed by evidence, and misrepresenting facts. Why would I think that? Here's my reasoning:

Is it possible that in some situations social media platforms have been too heavy handed? I'm sure of it.

Does the likely existence of inappropriate actions taken by social media companies mean that the "government and co" (whatever that's supposed to be) is involved in a conspiracy to silence everyone who dares to mention that there are or could be risks? No, it doesn't.

Does it mean that researchers aren't allowed to look into the risks of the vaccines and that no data about those risks has been being collected and studied? No, it doesn't.

Does it mean that mass media refuses to inform the public about any possible risks? No, it doesn't.

Are there many many examples of people talking about the health risks of the vaccines on social media, in mass media, and in the literature without being censored and is that information easily found and accessible? Yes, there are and yes it is.

That tells me that if there is some global conspiracy to silence such talk, that it isn't doing a very good job. When countless people are talking about those risks, researching those risks, collecting data on those risks, and reporting those risks to the public, and they've been doing it in plain sight for years without being censored, it's then pretty unlikely that there's some hidden conspiracy to make sure those risks are never expressed or explored.

If you look at the twitter files released by Matt Taibi it indeed confirms there is collusion among former twitter and numerous government entities. It’s no conspiracy, there’s straight emails of the government asking for XYZ list of accounts to be suppressed.

https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/14/editorial-t...

You further had the suppression of the Hunter biden laptop in DMs and tweets, because government entities stated it was Russian disinformation, while after the convenient time of election cycle, they admit it’s real. What’s the consequence of the intelligence community signing a document stating that it was truly some subversion campaign by Russia, when it was actually a lie to get social media companies to remove politically damning evidence?

https://nypost.com/2022/11/21/cbs-confirms-hunter-biden-lapt...

I fully hear the balanced argument you’re proposing, and to some extent agree, but both sides currently have different sets of blinders on as to what’s reality, and that to me is a scary scenario

The fact that governments do actually engage in censorship doesn't mean that everyone who posts about the real or possible risks of the covid vaccines get their posts censored or that people whose posts about the risks of covid vaccines were removed, were removed because of goverment censorship.

Even in the case of twitter. Here: https://twitter.com/reuters/status/1536697529454272512

There's a tweet about the risks of covid vaccinations. If the government, twitter, or both were censoring discussion of the risks of covid vaccinations how does that exist? How do the countless other uncensored and easily searchable posts that do the same thing exist?

Isn't it more likely that if a post about the risks of covid vaccinations does get removed that it's for a reason other than because of an attempt to hide information about, and prevent discussion of, the risks of covid vaccinations?

Who do you think is telling people they can't talk about the risks? We're doing it. It's talked about all the time everywhere. It's researched every day. The media reports on it to the public. Nobody thinks that there aren't any risks. Whatever oppression exists in the world, "preventing people from talking about or learning about the risks of covid vaccines" is not an example of it.

Particularly at the time of the vaccine rollout, there absolutely was a huge effort across many platforms to mock, silence and ultimately censor individuals. Whether or not there was government collusion, I obviously can't say, but I'd hardly be surprised given the close relationships between media outlets and government officials.

Clearly everyone wasn't being banned, some things were being allowed, but personally I think the conversation was being steered/herded in a way that made one particular point of view more prominent and minimised exposure to alternatives.

For example, I was banned from Reddit world news for simply sharing a science.org article about some of the potential vaccination side effects:

https://www.science.org/content/article/rare-cases-coronavir...

You have been banned for posting content that downplays or mocks necessary public health measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, such as taking vaccines or wearing masks in the comments section. Such comments violate this subreddit's rule against offensive content and reddit's guideline against harmful content:

Note that health misinformation, namely falsifiable health information that encourages or poses a significant risk of physical harm to the reader, also violates the Rule.

I can't contest this ban and it's permanent.

> There's a tweet about the risks of covid vaccinations. If the government, twitter, or both were censoring discussion of the risks of covid vaccinations how does that exist? How do the countless other uncensored and easily searchable posts that do the same thing exist?

Censorship doesn't have to be perfect to be real and to have real effects.

Still waiting for Giuliani to release that hunter Biden laptop evidence he's been claiming in his possession

I guess one question that comes up is that, has there ever been a time in history when the US government hadn’t lied to the American people and had an alternative agenda from the mainstream narrative / propaganda campaign.

And why should I believe now is any different?

I’ve already seen evidence of intentional misleading in the name of public health around Covid.

Not to mention just the incompetency of leadership.

Between incompetency and lack of integrity, I’m not very inspired to follow the leader.

Let's pretend for the moment that there isn't a single person in all of government who has integrity and every one of them would lie to you if it served their own ends. This is a global pandemic. Is every government everywhere corrupt? Actually, probably to some extent, yeah, but corrupt in the same way? Much less likely. Yet even if they are that's actually okay, because you don't have to trust them. You can instead listen to the the doctors, researchers, and experts who by overwhelming majority agree with each other.

You already know, because you've seen with your own eyes, that it isn't forbidden to talk about the risks of these vaccines. You're doing it right now. So are countless others and those endless examples don't all come from the lips of politicians and government workers.

You really are living in a rose-tinted reality, or being deliberately disingenuous. Of course we can talk about it now, the evidence is piling up enough that it can't be censored without it being obvious.

We're at the point now where all the 'smart' people are saying the 'stupid' conspiracy theorists and 'anti-vaxxers' got a lucky guess or were right by coincidence, because of course such smart people couldn't be fooled or have missed the evidence. So they defend their egos.

I do wonder if the professionals that had their reputations and credibility trashed earlier on when they were 'guessing it right' or 'fluking it' will get any apologies and be allowed to serve some humble pie... I doubt it, being wrong is a powerful thing to face, especially with the righteousness that came from 'being right.'

> Right now, all the evidence we have says getting a covid vaccine is the smart choice, but nobody actually thinks that there's zero chance of unexpected side effects from these vaccines […]

Or any vaccine in general. The question is always do the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits.

There are folks who are allergic to the ingredients of some vaccines, so one of the side effects for them in particular is death. So they absolutely should not / cannot take one. But that doesn't necessarily me you shouldn't.

This is an excellent reply