Vaccine Fallacies

[Chedney Honks]

Good article here which foresees the likely false conclusions of the shit munchers once the vaccine is rolled out:

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects

Get Ready for False Side Effects
By Derek Lowe 4 December, 2020

We're in the beginning of the vaccine endgame now: regulatory approval and actual distribution/rollout into the population. The data for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines continue to look good (here's a new report on the longevity of immune response after the Moderna one), with the J&J and Novavax efforts still to report. The AZ/Oxford candidate is more of a puzzle, thanks to some very poor communication about their clinical work (which suffered from some fundamental problems itself).

Now we have to get people to take them. Surveys continue to show a good number of people who are (at the very least) in the "why don't you take it first" category. I tend to think that as vaccine dosing becomes reality that more people will get in line for a shot, but that remains to be seen. I wanted to highlight something that we'll all need to keep in mind, though.

Bob Wachter of UCSF had a very good thread on Twitter about vaccine rollouts the other day, and one of the good points he made was this one. We're talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you're going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That's how many people die and get sick anyway.

But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there's a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn't* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person's friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we're not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated.

No such safety signals have appeared for the first vaccines to roll out (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech). In fact, we should be seeing the exact opposite effects on mortality and morbidity as more and more people get vaccinated. The excess-death figures so far in the coronavirus pandemic have been appalling (well over 300,000 in the US), and I certainly think mass vaccination is the most powerful method we have to knock that back down to normal.

That's going to be harder to do, though, if we get screaming headlines about people falling over due to heart attacks after getting their vaccine shots. Be braced.

[BlodwynPig]

Very liberal piece. I'm not anti-vaxxer at all, but I do think it's correct to be cautious. The analogue is Trump as the virus and Biden as the vaccine.

[Zetetic]

The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance.

Going to enjoy seeing how well this will be handled.

[falafel]

Very liberal piece. I'm not anti-vaxxer at all, but I do think it's correct to be cautious. The analogue is Trump as the virus and Biden as the vaccine.

What do you mean by 'very liberal' in this context?

[BlodwynPig]

What do you mean by 'very liberal' in this context?

Putting faith in the human spirit. Starry-eyed abandon at the expense of cold pragmatism. Smiling man in suit is good man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbtjpZM48dc

[ASFTSN]

I'm not anti-vaxxer at all, but I do think it's correct to be cautious. The analogue is Trump as the virus and Biden as the vaccine.

Could you elaborate on this? Beyond 'hope is bad and stupid' I mean.

I don't think your analogue works because it equates the corporate political status quo with a scientific effort to deal with the pandemic. Yes it is wrong to talk about vaccines bringing a return to 'normality' as if that's unequivocally a good thing, but being able to go outside without worrying about contracting heart/lung damage from someone else's airborne spittle is a pretty good base line for me personally if I'm ever going to be able to free up headspace to think about other ways in which society could be improved.

[BlodwynPig]

Could you elaborate on this? Beyond 'hope is bad and stupid' I mean.

I don't think your analogue works because it equates the corporate political status quo with a scientific effort to deal with the pandemic. Yes it is wrong to talk about vaccines bringing a return to 'normality' as if that's unequivocally a good thing, but being able to go outside without worrying about contracting heart/lung damage from someone else's airborne spittle is a pretty good base line for me personally if I'm ever going to be able to free up headspace to think about other ways in which society could be improved.

I think you've elaborated it quite well. As I said, happy for the vaccine to work and everyone to be immunised. Just want a rethink of what normalcy looks like, particularly for those who can afford to take the brunt of a reimagining - won't be possible for everyone, of course. But I don't believe in homogeneity.

[Non Stop Dancer]

I think this is going to be a tough one. Last year I had the flu vaccine for the first time ever and subsequently got a virus the like of which I've never experienced before. I'm all about fact-based decision making and intellectually I know there's no relationship between the two things, but the irrational part of me can't shake the fact that there might be. I'm not saying that would stop me taking the covid vaccine, but it backs up the article and people will take a lot of convincing if they get ill or worse in the months after taking it.

[bgmnts]

This feels like corporate science to me. A businesslike vaccine.

[chveik]

Bob Wachter of UCSF had a very good thread on Twitter...

oh fuck off

[falafel]

Putting faith in the human spirit. Starry-eyed abandon at the expense of cold pragmatism. Smiling man in suit is good man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbtjpZM48dc

I understand how those are all attributes that have been co-opted into the ideologies of a host of ineffectual, do-nothing politicians but I don't get the connection with the article. I'm not sure it's about 'returning to normal'. I read it as more to do with the notion that, from a public health perspective, any real negative effects would only be seen at a statistical level after thousands of people have been dosed, and are in themselves very unlikely, whereas people tend to base their views on anecdotal and personal experiences, plus bad news travels fast. Right, so the idea of 'normal' in terms of how a society functions is contentious but I dont see that being asserted in the article; I would think reversion to the mean in terms of public health is a RELATIVELY apolitical question because most other causes of death are unlikely to have been hugely nudged despite a disruptive year. I don't really know what to engage with in your reasoning though because I can't quite see the connection. Maybe I'm just brainwashed?

[Cuellar]

Do any of these vaccines actually stop you getting covid tho

[falafel]

yes*

[GMTV]

Irony is that article was originally written about thalidomide and they just changed the references. Makes you think.

[Head Gardener]

https://twitter.com/lyne_ian/status/1335197467143356416