[Will Hunt]

I’d been raising an eyebrow from day dot when everyone was panic buying bog paper and watching videos of people face planting in Wuhan.

This says as much as needs to be said. Before there was any real information to go on you suspected that something sinister was happening. No amount of evidence that stacks up to the contrary is going to convince you. You'll continue to reject anything that challenges your assumptions and keep latching onto any hokum that might support your view.

As an exploration of ‘conspiracy theories’ around covid it was complete junk alone. Clearly the journalists making it had limited time, money, imagination and a particular brief of defending the desired narrative. Pretty shite all round

And here is the example. You'll notice that where people have debunked the "stats" blogs that you've linked to they've explained, in statistical terms, why the narrative presented there is false. You could, and I suspect would, say the exact same thing about anything you didn't agree with, neatly avoiding the need to take apart and refute any of the arguments made.

[Oldmanmatt]

As an aside, I just came across this quote from George Horn, a 16th century academic, on the “Brandolini” Wikipedia page* written in 1786:

“ Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.”

So, “Dan” has been around for while or six.



*Every now and then, I have to double check that I’m not going senile and misremembering concepts, usually after making some sweeping comment, that I’m suddenly unsure of. It’s like going back to check the gas is off. These days, I’m up to check the oven four times and the front door twice…

[Offwidth]

Gotcha! Because it was propaganda  which set out to paint a particular picture from a very narrow perspective. The intended result being that anyone asking questions about the safety of said current pharmaceuticals would be thought of in the vision laid out by the documentary makers. I’d been raising an eyebrow from day dot when everyone was panic buying bog paper and watching videos of people face planting in Wuhan. I’d never even heard of Wakefield or thought of Piers Corbyn as anything other than an eccentric chap, suddenly they’re the vanguard of a new anti vax movement. As an exploration of ‘conspiracy theories’ around covid it was complete junk alone. Clearly the journalists making it had limited time, money, imagination and a particular brief of defending the desired narrative. Pretty shite all round

Edit: I’ve seen lots of interviews with public health professionals, Dr’s, scientists, vaccine manufacturers etc etc all raising concerns. Non of which have been Wakefield or Piers Corbyn, they were chosen by the film makers with a particular journalistic agenda in mind. (Propaganda)

That's interesting but it's not what I cane away with I thought it started by looking at the troubled and dishonest anti-vax UK history and then shifted to how things in the pandemic became linked with various neferious powerful US political movements funded by dirty money. People like Wakefield exploited the vaccine hesitant as part of a deliberate larger scale effort linked into other foci of that dirty money.

The irony in your position is those US corporates have been guilty of clear evidenced problematic behaviour in the US, especially some lobbying scandals and the horrendous national pain medication scandal.  Whereas much of the vaccine conspiracy is unevidenced. It's obvious US vaccine companies have been part of such bad behaviour before and are not always good organisations in governance terms.  They do make a lot of money from vaccines and other covid medications and lobby on that; and against say free public licence that could really help the developing world in what still is a worldwide emergency.

[Fiend]

Got a new drinking game for you chaps to quench the likely thirst from all this debating.

Any time an anti-vaxxer posts a link to an article / post / tweet / video that supports their view, go to the main website behind that posted page. Every time you look past the single article / tweet and see the main website or person is very clearly an extremely biased single-issue-focused fanatic pushing their specific agenda (rather than a general website neutrally looking at all perspectives or a range of issues), take a drink. And take a bonus sip if the website is called something convincingly generic and sensible like "statisticsandmedicine.wordpress.com" or "@generalhealthscience", instead of what they really mean which is "38iratearticlesragingagainstvaccinepassports.wordpress.com" or "@fuckcovidmeasures".

   

Pretty soon you'll be pissed as a fucking newt and it will wash over you....

[Offwidth]

Got a new drinking game for you chaps to quench the likely thirst from all this debating.

Any time an anti-vaxxer posts a link to an article / post / tweet / video that supports their view, go to the main website behind that posted page. Every time you look past the single article / tweet and see the main website or person is very clearly an extremely biased single-issue-focused fanatic pushing their specific agenda (rather than a general website neutrally looking at all perspectives or a range of issues), take a drink. And take a bonus sip if the website is called something convincingly generic and sensible like "statisticsandmedicine.wordpress.com" or "@generalhealthscience", instead of what they really mean which is "38iratearticlesragingagainstvaccinepassports.wordpress.com" or "@fuckcovidmeasures".

   

Pretty soon you'll be pissed as a fucking newt and it will wash over you....

That might be fun if only we didn't have, in a Centre for Evidence Based Medicine and the department of Zoology in Oxford,University, two prestigious UK Profs (Heneghan and Gupta) who convinced our PM Boris of herd immunity in September 2020 and that directly led to ten thousand extra unnecessary deaths ... and yet right now they are still in their day job. Money seems to beat ethics in a top UK University so we don't need to look at cranks.

[Will Hunt]

That’s pretty funny Will, so I’m stood there in Tesco chatting to the pharmacist about dodgy footage of people peeling over in the streets of Wuhan, whilst there is a bog roll horde* stampeding down the middle aisle.... and raising an eyebrow to it is evidence of my insanity.

It depends what you mean by raising an eyebrow. If you mean you looked at what was going on and thought "Good gracious, what a hullaballoo, I wonder what it could all mean", then that is perfectly normal; if you thought "Aha! Just as I predicted, the global 5G elites have released a deadly crypto-biological pseudo-virus upon the world to drive up sales of an ineffective and deadly vaccine and also bog roll", and then as events unfolded and contrary evidence from multiple sources piled up you searched further and wider for any near-respectable blog post that sounded like it challenged the evidenced narrative and posted links to a rock climbing bulletin board under a series of puzzling pseudonyms, each more unconvincing than the last, desperately trying to convince your fellow climbers that it was all a great con dreamt up by Captain Tom to score a free holiday to the Bahamas then I'd politely suggest that you're absolutely fucking raving.


I don't mind questioning policy about whether we should enforce mask wearing or vaccines - they're good questions with loads of room for reasonable differences of opinion. What I'm quite tired of is the constant questioning of the fundamentals like "Does the vaccine work?" or "Is the vaccine safe?". We know, more or less, the answers to these questions. Yes, the vaccine works most of the time and reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of death, serious illness, and transmission, but there are questions about the value/ethics of giving the vaccine to younger cohorts who face a smaller risk from the disease than their older counterparts. Yes, the vaccine is relatively safe for most cohorts, especially when compared with the risks that come with getting COVID.

So raise your eyebrows as high as they will go about whether you want the police to be fining people for going to Almscliff or whether NHS staff should be compelled to have the jab, but don't base your arguments on dodgy interpretations of data which you yourself admit to not understanding.

[Oldmanmatt]

Glad to see YouTube being responsible, for once.

And, duhhh!

[abarro81]

Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential

https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/

What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.

[Oldmanmatt]

Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential

https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/

What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.

I believe he thinks the 50 odd million vaccinated people in the UK alone are “human vectors for disease” (obviously, it didn’t exist before the vaccines).

This is getting a bit silly now.

[AJM]

Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential

https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/

What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.

The fact that 35% of hospitalisations are still from unvaccinated people, given how small the unvaccinated pool of people at the high risk end of the spectrum is, is a pretty big marker for how risky being unvaccinated is!

Vaccination rates in the oldest age groups are what, 90% plus, so that sub 10% remaining is driving a third of admissions....

[SA Chris]

I'd rather go through another lockdown watching Dave Mac videos about keto diets than wade through the shit Dan spouts again.

6 pages later I stand by this. Silly to even give him fuel.

[teestub]

Re 'antivax circles' it's good to see the propaganda machine in action there Tim, don't worry though I'll feed it back to the 3 people I know personally who are skeptical all of which have either had or have close contact with covid vaccine injuries.

Well where do you find this stuff in the first place and how would you characterise those spaces?

Yes, telling those three people (if you have shared these links with them) that the interpretation of the statistics in the two links is nonsense in both cases would seem be a great start.

I’m dipping out of responding to anything further here as it just doesn’t feel constructive.

[Nigel]

An interesting post from Prof Norman Fenton, one for those stats boffins to get stuck into.

https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html?m=1

I have no interest in getting involved in the general argument, but I really can't help being a stats pedant!

The blog is premised on creating a "statistical illusion of vaccine efficiacy". This is supposedly created via a one week delay in reporting time. This is meant to be demonstrated by simply shifting the deaths column down one row by copy pasting the data, shifted down a row, into an *identical* excel table.

My issue - the tables are not identical.

Quite simply the formula for calculating the figures in the "Mortality Rate" column is obviously not the same in tables 1 and 2. How does the constant answer "15" (table 1), become a whole range of figures (table 2) if the formula is the same? Thoughts?

In addition the formula in table 2 clearly has an (inconsistent) error in it as for e.g. 1 death per 9999 people is not a mortality rate of 7.5 per 100K.

I haven't got past the start of the blog, but on that evidence there may be other errors.

[AJM]

If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.
What strikes me as odd is that I’m the only one commenting on this when I know for absolute sure there are others on here or reading this aware of some of the problems occurring and feel as strongly about the authoritarian measures as I do.

There's many reasons that I could be concerned about mandatory vaccination and social segregation and all that, but "because the vaccine doesn't work" isn't part of any reasoned argument to that end. They have a great risk:reward balance for anyone aged 40-50 upwards versus catching covid directly and at younger ages it becomes a fine balance of small numbers game.

"Because the vaccines don't work" is only part of the argument about the associated control measures for idiots, put bluntly.

[mrjonathanr]

Disturbing times

Very true. The welter of vaccine disinformation is costing people their lives. Literally dying of ignorance - except the ignorance is peddled by self appointed pundits.

Currently, the pandemic is hitting the global south far more than the north because of the difference in availability of vaccination. Shocking that people are deterred from the single greatest good available to them in the pandemic through pseudoscientific nonsense peddled by fools.

It’s pernicious. I have no time for this rubbish when it costs people their health. The posts you make refer to a series of weak and superficial sources of evidence. You seem to think this is worthy of our time, but do not have the courage or respect to engage with other people’s arguments.

I previously thought you were a bit lost and harmless. I don’t think so now. Taking these posts as a whole, I’m appalled.

[andy popp]

Dan, given your apparent interest in the topic of vaccines, it strains all credulity that you'd never heard of Andrew Wakefield until recently. And if you really hadn't then it just goes to show how ill-informed you are. There is no plausible defence of Wakefield, he is utterly discredited. And far from being "suddenly ... the vanguard of a new anti vax movement," he's been busily seeding anti-vaccine falsehoods for the last twenty plus years.

[AJM]

If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.
What strikes me as odd is that I’m the only one commenting on this when I know for absolute sure there are others on here or reading this aware of some of the problems occurring and feel as strongly about the authoritarian measures as I do.

There's many reasons that I could be concerned about mandatory vaccination and social segregation and all that, but "because the vaccine doesn't work" isn't part of any reasoned argument to that end. They have a great risk:reward balance for anyone aged 40-50 upwards versus catching covid directly and at younger ages it becomes a fine balance of small numbers game.

"Because the vaccines don't work" is only part of the argument about the associated control measures for idiots, put bluntly.

Sorry I meant to quote, it would be great to hear more reasoned arguments against mandates and segregation from a respected poster. Quite a relief in fact

I'm not sure anyone has called me that before. Given your posting history, I'm not certain it's a good thing!

If I was going to put forward the argument against making the vaccine compulsory, one of the more compelling arguments to me is that it encourages the kind of antivax nonsense you've been indulging in. People will say - even if they could never have been persuaded by any evidence under the sun - that the state couldn't make the argument on the merits of the vaccine so has had to go all Big Brother to force it. It risks pushing disengagement with the system. In a similar vein, in those age groups where the vaccine has little medical benefits (the young, where the risks of covid are fairly low) the argument relies on the wider but more indirect benefits to society and a sense of social solidarity, then compulsion has the potential to backfire.

Extra restrictions for the unvaccinated is a great carrot/stick to encourage vaccination, but has the obvious societal downside of creating a group of "other" on which to blame the problems, which rarely ends well (although a lockdown for everyone because of healthcare overload caused primarily by the unvaccinated is likely to be just as detrimental to social cohesion). Also, the higher the vaccination % the less effective it is anyway, in that since vaccine take-up isn't perfect and vaccine protection fades in time at a certain point (probably about where the UK finds itself) enough of the cases will come from weakening protection amongst the vaccinated that extra restrictions for the unvaccinated won't be a particularly effective tool anyway. Looking at where we are now, we probably need more boosters (and first jabs, but thankfully voluntary take-up has been high) in older people than chasing down more first jabs for people in their 20s or 30s.

I guess more widely the virus seems to thrive on the inequalities in society - it benefits from people who aren't able to self isolate because of a poor social security net or who otherwise can't afford not to work, it thrives when people distrust the system and refuse medical care or peddle conspiracy theories to others, it thrives in cramped and poorly ventilated homes and workplaces..... A risk of mandates and compulsion is of damaging the sort of social cohesion which can help act as some sort of counter to these things. However, there are obviously opposite risks if control measures have to be placed on everyone as a result of the choices of a sub group. Not obvious or easy choices.

[abarro81]

If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.

Everything you've said there sounds quite reasonable. You're getting shit for posting an endless tide of shit, not for wanting a sensible discussion about this stuff. Maybe make some arguments about why you don't like mandates (more than 1 line soundbite pls)! Instead you're just endlessly posting links with some slightly vague words from you that you can fall back on - "oh, I never said vaccines weren't effective I just posted 300 links to things seeming to say that" (I still have zero clue why you posted that FullFact link for example - really, what was your point?)... and then disappearing onto a new link/tangent when that gets critiqued.

Like I said a million posts ago, I feel like I should care and think they're bad, but don't so maybe expressing why you really dislike them would help me formulate my thoughts. (The "divisive" argument is rather ironic, the method and content of your communication on here is part of why people get pissy with/divided from your "side" of the argument, which could instead be perfectly sensible)

EDIT: Andy did it for you. Can't really argue with that. Definitely agree that a general lockdown would make me much more anti-unvaccinated than anything else ever could!

Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.

However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.

This is meant to be demonstrated by simply shifting the deaths column down one row by copy pasting the data, shifted down a row, into an *identical* excel table.

My issue - the tables are not identical.

Quite simply the formula for calculating the figures in the "Mortality Rate" column is obviously not the same in tables 1 and 2. How does the constant answer "15" (table 1), become a whole range of figures (table 2) if the formula is the same? Thoughts?

In addition the formula in table 2 clearly has an (inconsistent) error in it as for e.g. 1 death per 9999 people is not a mortality rate of 7.5 per 100K.

I haven't got past the start of the blog, but on that evidence there may be other errors.

The first table runs from a fixed mortality rate and calculates deaths, but he only shows to 1 sig fig so "1" isn't 1.0. The second table runs the other way round (i.e. deaths is fixed and shifted and rate is calculated). As far as I can tell it runs ok.

[andy popp]

The only people I ever hear going on about ‘Wakefield’ are the mob.

What is this even meant to mean? Who are the mob? Do you mean effectively the entire medical-scientific community, because that's the reality? People "go on" about Wakefield because he has been working assiduously for two decades to sow as much doubt as possible about vaccines, with results we are now all witness to. Whatever your naivety he's not some blameless victim of a faceless mob. Try informing yourself.

[mrjonathanr]

The only people I ever hear going on about ‘Wakefield’ are the mob.

What is this even meant to mean? Who are the mob?

It must mean the General Medical Council, because it was they who struck him off the register in 2010 finding it
the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him.

[AJM]

Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.

However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.

I think the spike in the graph is partly driven by the very uneven speed of vaccination in the example - in the weeks in the middle then 15%+ of the sample population are moving state each week which means the delay becomes hugely significant in the deaths versus the baseline population. I don't think that's a terribly realistic example, plus obviously the real world has non identical populations w.r.t. age and so on.

I also think the date of death reporting screws him over. It's not like people haven't been working out how to do this sort of comparison right for decades if not centuries!

Edit: in the ONS data, I assume the problem is potentially the size of the error bars around the unvaccinated pool as it gets smaller - the problem discussed many times that we can guess how many people there are with estimated error bars and are taking from that a number of almost equal size that is known precisely. The error bars on the residual are proportionately huge.

[Oldmanmatt]

I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.

From where I’m typing the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult.

Aaaaand we’re back to “Covid is a myth”.

I admire your determination, guys, but the phrase “Pissing in the wind” springs to mind. Thirty pages or reasoned rebuttal, same unfounded claim regurgitated.

[andy popp]

I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.

From where I’m typing the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult.

You said you weren't, but consistency clearly isn't a priority.

"the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult" = people who recognise that Wakefield is a dangerous individual.

You seem to be completely uninterested in making any kind of a coherent argument.

[Oldmanmatt]

Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.

However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.

I think the spike in the graph is partly driven by the very uneven speed of vaccination in the example - in the weeks in the middle then 15%+ of the sample population are moving state each week which means the delay becomes hugely significant in the deaths versus the baseline population. I don't think that's a terribly realistic example, plus obviously the real world has non identical populations w.r.t. age and so on.

I also think the date of death reporting screws him over. It's not like people haven't been working out how to do this sort of comparison right for decades of not centuries!

The media blaring out the “The UK reported X number of deaths today!” Where X was date registered and usually on a Monday, has been irritating me for months. It’s always instantly obvious that it’s entirely misleading bollocks, that left people wondering around thinking the UK has a much higher daily death rate than it actually has.

[petejh]

This is exhausting. You're at least two characters Dan.

Two examples,

I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.

Dan:
''I’d never even heard of Wakefield or thought of Piers Corbyn as anything other than an eccentric chap, suddenly they’re the vanguard of a new anti vax movement.''

You’re right Andy I am ill informed about vaccines. In fact I couldn’t have given a toss until the past few months.

Bullshit. I suggest to anyone that they go and take a skim read of the last 8 or so pages of you describing your seemingly quite in-depth knowledge of vaccine research and counter-argument against its efficacy.


Endless bullshit, endless suggestions of a narrative counter to the mainstream, before weaselling out (quite wisely) of committing to a position that isn't supported by any sound evidence. Interspersed with snippets of reasonable-sounding waffle ''we should have a discussion about this serious issue etc.''.

Run for parliament you could do well.