Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118520775#Comment_118520775

All the red flags I posted were taken from recent editorial in that well known conspiracy theory rag the British Medical Journal.

Covid-19 vaccines and treatments: we must have raw data, now

generic_throwaway

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521181#Comment_118521181

But wait, the conspiracy thickens!

Footnotes

Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that The BMJ is a co-founder of the AllTrials campaign. PD was one of the Cochrane reviewers studying influenza antivirals beginning in 2009, who campaigned for access to data. He also helped organise the Coalition Advocating for Adequately Licensed Medicines (CAALM), which formally petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year (docket FDA-2021-P-0786). PD is also a member of Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, which has sued the FDA to obtain the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine data. The views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Maryland.

This guy is a medical industry insider!!

Isn't this exactly the sort of scepticism and critisism from inside the world of medical science that fantasy conspiracy theorists tell us does not exist?? and look how it has been hushed up...inside the pages of the BMJ!?

Again, a person with good critical thinking skills would take a step back and reassess their beliefs at this point. But we know that will not happen with a certain cohort here.

shillyshilly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521260#Comment_118521260

that's why you don't rely on the raw data from manufacturer... not from a case that it will be doctored, it's sensitive intellectual property and will never be released until it has to be....

you setup independent clinical trials to verify what has been claimed...

there is most definitely an ethical argument there to be made, but from a safety stand point, all that will happen in 2022/23 when the data is released by manufacturer, is that it will be compared to independent safety testing which already exists and will be produced on an ongoing basis through studies

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521181#Comment_118521181

I don't see any mention of your "appeal to motive" about profits, I don't see a cherry-picked selection of issues Pfizer has had during it's lifetime, and as above, it's an editorialized opinion, wanting the release of information now instead of later this year. I support that, but I also am aware it's hundreds of thousands of pages of data that needs to be prepped and written up, and these things can't be done instantly.

I believe you wrote you reluctantly have had only one dose, why are you partially vaccinated? 94% of the adult population here is, a much higher amount of medical professionals and experts are, I am quite sure the authors of this article are, do you know something they don't?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521719#Comment_118521719

I don't see any mention of your "appeal to motive" about profits, I don't see a cherry-picked selection of issues Pfizer has had during it's lifetime.

😂 😂 😂

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521803#Comment_118521803

Smiley faces the cornerstone of every reputable response. It's pretty simple, to repeat:

I believe you wrote you reluctantly have had only one dose, why are you partially vaccinated? 94% of the adult population here is, a much higher amount of medical professionals and experts are, I am quite sure the authors of this article are, do you know something they don't?

Dohnjoe

Relevant

https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/clinical-services/news/the-psychology-of-anti-vaxxers-1104287281

"Psychologists have shed light on why seemingly intelligent people ignore the evidence base supporting vaccines and label them unsafe, despite having little to no expertise on scientific methodology.

They believe anti-vaxxers may be falling prey to a cognitive bias known as the Dunning Kruger effect, in which people overestimate their knowledge about a subject and underestimate how much they don’t know.

Cognitive biases are a natural human tendency resulting from the mental shortcuts (‘heuristics’) we use subconsciously to process information and fill in blind spots in our knowledge.

The Dunning–Kruger effect — often referred to as ‘ignorance of one’s own ignorance’ — is a well-documented bias that has been known to psychologists since 1999."

And the related study

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027795361830340X

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521879#Comment_118521879

I don't see any mention of your "appeal to motive" about profits, I don't see a cherry-picked selection of issues Pfizer has had during it's lifetime

The post of mine you took issue with was copied and pasted from the BMJ. So it is strange that whatever red flags, "appeals to motive" and cherry picked selections you saw in my post you were unable to see in the BMJ article.

shillyshilly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521181#Comment_118521181

full transparency about this article...

It is an opinion piece on the claimed efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521958#Comment_118521958

Its an editorial.

Pay attention to the footnote

• Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that The BMJ is a co-founder of the AllTrials campaign. PD was one of the Cochrane reviewers studying influenza antivirals beginning in 2009, who campaigned for access to data. He also helped organise the Coalition Advocating for Adequately Licensed Medicines (CAALM), which formally petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year (docket FDA-2021-P-0786). PD is also a member of Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, which has sued the FDA to obtain the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine data. The views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Maryland.

It's an opinion piece. People in the industry can have differing or even extreme opinions, it's interesting that you highlight this one.

Here's an opinion piece responding to Doshi's views on ""trustworthiness & meaningfulness" of COVID vaccine results"

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/refuting-peter-doshi-s-claims-doubting-trustworthiness-meaningfulness-of-covid-vaccine-results

Here's another opinion piece on one of Doshi's editorials

http://hildabastian.net/index.php/covid-19/103-unpacking-doshi-take

And here's a response carried in the Lancet

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2821%2900437-2.pdf

Here's a piece questioning what's going on at the BMJ, and why it's being embraced by anti-vaxxers

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-the-bmj/

Interesting.

Is there a reason you are avoiding my question?

You are partially vaccinated correct?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522130#Comment_118522130

None of the above explains how you managed to see red flags, "appeals to motive" and cherry picked selections in my post that you were unable to see in the BMJ article.

I'm happy to answer the question re being partially vaccinated if you can explain the above?

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522152#Comment_118522152

You read all those links in 6 minutes? Wow, impressive.

Interesting how I picked up red flags that other people have also picked up on, and if we look further we find:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/11/03/shocking-report-on-flu-vaccine-is-neither-shocking-nor-correct/?sh=455405a878a7

"So I was surprised to stumble upon an article titled “Johns Hopkins Scientist Reveals Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines,” which popped up on an anti-vaccine website two weeks ago. Johns Hopkins University is my own institution, and I hadn’t heard any shocking new findings. I soon discovered that this article contained only a tiny seed of truth, surrounded by a mountain of anti-vaccine misinformation. Most of it focused on a report published in early 2013 by Peter Doshi, a former postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins.

First, as Snopes.com has already pointed out, Doshi is not a virologist or an epidemiologist, but rather an anthropologist who studies comparative effectiveness research. He never conducted influenza research at Hopkins. (He’s now an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy.) Second, Doshi’s 2013 article was an opinion piece (a “feature”), not an original research article, and it did not report any new findings. Third, it is highly misleading to suggest (as the anti-vax article’s title does) that Doshi somehow represents Johns Hopkins University. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, the flu vaccine is required of all personnel who have contact with patients, as a good-practices effort to minimize the risk that a patient will catch the flu from a caregiver."

Since I suspect you aren't reading these, to highlight from a piece I previously provided:

"Since then, Peter Doshi somehow managed to become an associate editor of The BMJ. How this happened, I have no idea, but periodically he publishes posts for The BMJ that are—to put it kindly—far below the standards that a medical journal with the history of The BMJ should ever associate itself with. Early this year, for instance, he published one more such blog post entitled, Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data. It was a post custom designed to try to claim that Pfizer and Moderna had exaggerated the efficacy of their vaccines through some statistical prestidigitation. He also called for the “raw data,” echoing a Thacker technique of cloaking dubious claims in issues that almost everyone can agree on, such as transparency in clinical trials. (John Skylar and Skeptical Raptor also discussed the deception behind his articles.) Doshi once also bought into a truly risible conspiracy theory about the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) that I hadn’t even seen from antivaxxers. There was much mockery. More recently, Doshi published more misinformation in The BMJ about COVID-19 vaccines, claiming that there was “no biodistribution data” (even though there was and biodistribution data aren’t required for vaccines anyway) and insinuating that the trials had been unblinded earlier this year not out of ethical concerns about leaving the subjects in the placebo group susceptible to a potentially deadly pandemic disease, but rather to hide differences in adverse events between the groups and to facilitate the ability of businesses and local governments to mandate COVID-19 vaccines not yet approved by the FDA but only available under an EUA. (I wrote about the issue of unblinding the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials in April. Suffice to say that it’s a complex issue of clinical trial ethics and science, far more so than what Doshi implies.)"

As mentioned by others, I have zero idea how this guy is still an editor at the BMJ. But thanks to you, I now know why I've been seeing so many BMJ articles in anti-vax threads, they are all this one guy, Peter Doshi.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522279#Comment_118522279

None of the above explains how you managed to see red flags, "appeals to motive" and cherry picked selections in my post that was word for word the same as the BMJ article yet you were unable to see them in the BMJ article.

Fighting Tao

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522357#Comment_118522357

I refuse to answer your questions until you answer mine is a well worn anti-vaxxer path. Usually followed by a comical stomping of feet and storming out of the thread. Why do you dodge?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522389#Comment_118522389

Not dodging, just wondering if Dohnjoe would explain why he saw “appeals to motive” in one section of text but not another even though they were the same text. But it looks like he cannot explain that.

the short answer on my vaccination status is yes I am partially vaxxed, because by the time it came round for me to committing to the second shot, it was blatantly obvious that the vaccine was doing very little to prevent infection/transmission so the argument for getting vaccinated was a lot weaker than it was 6 months earlier.

there were a few other influencing factors but that was the main one.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522357#Comment_118522357

You paraphrased Peter Doshi directly in your post:

You wrote: "Big pharma does not have a stellar track record. At least three of the companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars. One pleaded guilty to fraud. Now the covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue."

He wrote: "Big pharma is the least trusted industry.30 At least three of the many companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars.31 One pleaded guilty to fraud.31 Other companies have no pre-covid track record. Now the covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue.32"

I replied that your post, effectively his words, demonstrated anti-vaxx red flags. Lo and behold turns out others have pointed out that the guy you were lifting almost verbatim has displayed all sorts of anti-vaccine red flags going back years. So yes, I was bang on.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522575#Comment_118522575

But you replied to my post pointing out that my words were the words of a BMJ editorial:

I don't see any mention of your "appeal to motive" about profits, I don't see a cherry-picked selection of issues Pfizer has had during it's lifetime.

So the question I keep asking you and you keep dodging/deflecting is:

what “appeal to motive about profits” and “cherry picked selection” of Pfizer issues did you see in my post that you did not see in the BMJ article?

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522529#Comment_118522529

That's a changed story from previously about why you didn't get the second shot.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118354906#Comment_118354906

Had first shot without much drama, and turned up for second appointment. Standing in queue, I read the do you have any of these symptoms - cough etc. Yes I had two or three of them, and told the person who asked me when booking in. She didn't really know what to do, and asked me did I want to go ahead to which I replied I had no idea, was it safe to do so? She summoned a doctor who basically said the same thing, did I want to have the vaccine despite having the symptoms? Again I said I had no idea, is it safe to do so? He was pretty non committal and was not able to give me any info or advice, other than saying it was up to me. Eventually I said I would do whatever he specifically recommended, at which point he said not to get second shot, go away get a PCR and set up another appointment. None of it inspired confidence.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522717#Comment_118522717

As I said, there were other issues, and if you can navigate the boards search to pull up the long answer posted previously by all means quote me and happy to discuss the other issues further.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522741#Comment_118522741

It's posted above, looking at the rest of the thread it's clear you didn't really know what you were talking about then (comments re: immunity especially). You seem to have spun quickly down the rabbit hole since then, at least the certs aren't needed now.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522760#Comment_118522760

Apologies, your quoting of me did not show up when I loaded the page.

in the short answer I deliberately said “ because by the time it came round for me to committing to the second shot” oN account of the fact that it was quite late in the day due to not getting the second shot at the first appointment.

astrofool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522790#Comment_118522790

It sounds like you would have got the shot if you hadn't been showing some symptoms of COVID and then spun out when a doctor told you to get a PCR test.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522845#Comment_118522845

Yes, I was ready to get the second shot on that day of the second appointment. A little hesitant for sure, but on balance I believed the right thing to do was go ahead with it.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118522629#Comment_118522629

Yeah my bad I didn't read the entire piece, AND I missed that crucial footnote. I also made the mistake of assuming this guy was in a related field.

Do you have a habit of reading the BMJ on a regular basis? Because these sort of blog posts don't usually show up in the news, but they do feature heavily on anti-vaxx and crank sites/feeds..

I am still trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you seem to be pulling a bit of a Peter Doshi on us here..

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523046#Comment_118523046

Thanks, not reading the entire piece makes sense, but I must say I have no idea why missing the footnote or the assumption that the author of the piece was in a related field would explain why you failed to notice exactly the same things you objected to when you thought they were my words.

Unless of course there was an element of cognitive bias involved in your reading of the the article - cognitive biases being a natural human tendency resulting from the mental shortcuts (‘heuristics’) we use subconsciously to process information.

To answer your question, I'm interested in the detail of Covid rather than the headlines, so yes I do read the BMJ website Covid section on a regular basis, as I do the Lancet, our own HSE/HSPC releases and data, as well of those of the UK government.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523104#Comment_118523104

Right, cognitive bias, says the poster who picks a very juicy outlier from the consensus to side with

What is the consensus of the Lancet, HSE, UK gov, experts, etc on the safety of Covid vaccines?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523169#Comment_118523169

What is the consensus of the Lancet, HSE, UK gov, experts, etc on the safety of Covid vaccines?

Unquestionably and indisputably safe.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523207#Comment_118523207

Okay, and you disagree with that?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523211#Comment_118523211

I don't know if they are safe for sure, I'm not convinced anybody does. I am pretty sure they are not unquestionably safe.

My issue with the vaccines is that the blind faith in their efficacy at preventing infection and transmission in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary calls into question the blind faith in their safety.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118523282#Comment_118523282

So all of those experts who disagree with you are all lying? Are they just not as good at medicine as you?