Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

The methodology he used to establish IFR - show us where the same methodology and similar data set was applied to calculating IFR for flu so that a reliable comparison can be made?

And as noted above, IFR is only one piece of the equation. Infection rate is crucial.

Ioannidis's earlier estimates are challenged here.

 Levin and colleagues (December, 2020) estimated that 90% of variation in the IFR among countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was explainable by age. Meyerowitz-Katz and Merone (July, 2020) and Ioannidis (September, 2020) estimated IFRs of 0·68% and 0·27% in their respective samples, but did not account for age structure of the source populations...

The countries with the highest IFR on July 15, 2020, were Portugal (2·085%, 0·946–4·395), Monaco (1·778%, 1·265–2·915), Japan (1·750%, 1·302–2·690), Spain (1·710%, 0·991–2·718), and Greece (1·637%, 1·155–2·678). All-age IFR varied by a factor of more than 30 among 190 countries and territories. After age standardisation, the countries with the highest IFR on July 15, 2020, were Peru (0·911%, 0·636–1·538), Portugal (0·850%, 0·386–1·793), Oman (0·762%, 0·381–1·399), Spain (0·751%, 0·435–1·193), and Mexico (0·717%, 0·426–1·404)... During the pre-vaccine period, the estimated 33% decrease in median IFR over 8 months suggests that treatment for COVID-19 has improved over time.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02867-1/fulltext

Okay, but who was creating the narrative? How were they coerced to, were they paid? How many are we talking here?

I don't recall that narrative in the media, reports and views were divided on what the vaccine would achieve. Some were optimistic, some were cautious.

It really sounds like you are inventing all of this after the fact. You believed the vaccines would do much more, you felt you were "lied" to and have become bitter and fanatical (hundreds of posts here) about it.

Instead of admitting that, you are creating this really vague global conspiracy..

When we look at this Ioannidis guy, who you didn't know until he either turned up in your anti-vax feed or another anti-vaxxer mentioned him, we can be guaranteed of one thing: he'll have controversial/questionable views.

Let's just have a brief look at Wiki:

"In an editorial on STAT published March 17, 2020, Ioannidis wondered whether the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic may be a "once-in-a-century evidence fiasco" and asked for obtaining more reliable data to deal with the pandemic.[7] He estimated that the coronavirus could cause 10,000 U.S. deaths if it infected 1% of the U.S. population, and argued that more data was needed to determine how widely the virus would spread.[129][5][7] The virus in fact eventually became widely disseminated, and would cause more than one million deaths in the U.S.[130][129][5] Ioannidis expressed doubt that vaccines or treatments would be developed and tested in time to affect how the pandemic would unfold.[131] Marc Lipsitch, Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, objected to Ioannidis's characterization of the global response in a reply that was published on STAT the next day after Ioannidis's.[132] Ioannidis later stated that early in 2020 he wrote about needing more data, without that meaning he was mocking those who worried about COVID-19, and that he was elated with the quick development of vaccines and treatments, and the scientific progress made since 2020.[133][third-party source needed]

In March 2020, Ioannidis tried to organize a meeting at the White House where he and colleagues would caution President Donald Trump against "shutting down the country for [a] very long time and jeopardizing so many lives in doing this," according to a proposal he submitted. The meeting did not come to pass, but on March 28, after Trump said he wanted the country reopened by Easter, Ioannidis wrote to his colleagues, "I think our ideas have inflitrated [sic] the White House regardless".[5]

Ioannidis widely promoted a study of which he had been co-author, "COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California", released as a preprint on April 17, 2020. It asserted that Santa Clara County's number of infections was between 50 and 85 times higher than the official count, putting the virus's fatality rate as low as 0.1% to 0.2%.[n 1][135][130] Ioannidis concluded from the study that the coronavirus is "not the apocalyptic problem we thought".[136] The message found favor with right-wing media outlets, but the paper drew criticism from a number of epidemiologists who said its testing was inaccurate and its methods were sloppy.[137][138][139] Writing for Wired, David H. Freedman said that the Santa Clara study compromised Ioannidis's previously excellent reputation and meant that future generations of scientists may remember him as "the fringe scientist who pumped up a bad study that supported a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory in the middle of a massive health crisis."[6] Ioannidis has also promoted the idea that there were financial incentives to put COVID-19 on death certificates and as such, they were unreliable during the pandemic, as well as the idea that doctors killed COVID-19 patients through premature intubations. Both of these beliefs contradict the available evidence.[140][citation needed]

It was later reported that the study received $5,000 in funding from the founder of the JetBlue airline, which led to criticism over a potential conflict of interest.[141][142] In a guest opinion article in Scientific American, former colleagues of Ioannidis wrote that a legal firm had determined he had no financial conflict.[143] A review by the Stanford School of Medicine faulted the study for shortcomings including a public perception of a conflict of interest, but found "no evidence that any of the study funders influenced the design, execution, or reporting of the study".[129]

Amid controversy over his COVID-19 work and his frequent televised interviews, Ioannidis was harassed in memes and emails, including one falsely claiming his mother died of COVID-19. Some scientists and commentators voiced concerns over the backlash and the highly politicized scientific dispute in general.[129][144]

In March 2021 Ioannidis estimated the global infection fatality rate from COVID-19 at 0.15%, in an article in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (EJCI).[145] In an article in Science-Based Medicine, David Gorski said that the EJCI article included ad hominem criticisms against a co-author of a higher estimate who had criticized his work on Twitter.[130]

In February 2022 Ioannidis co-authored a paper examining the role of indoor and outdoor air quality in the spread of SARS-CoV-2, which concluded that environmental health may be a crucial component in the prevention of COVID-19 and suggested preventive measures such as indoor CO2 monitoring and mechanical ventilation.[146]

In 2022, Ioannidis authored a paper in BMJ Open arguing that signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were shunned as a fringe minority by those in favor of the John Snow Memorandum. According to him, the latter used their large numbers of followers on Twitter and other social media and op-eds to shape a scientific groupthink against the former, who had less influence as measured by the Kardashian Index.[147][148] The BMJ published responses to his paper, including a comment by Gavin Yamey, David Gorski, and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz which argued that Ioannidis's paper featured "factual errors, statistical shortcomings, failure to protect the named research subjects from harm, and potentially undeclared conflicts of interest that entirely undermine the analysis presented."[149] In the same exchange of comments on The BMJ, Ioannidis addressed the concerns of Yamey, Gorski and Meyerovitz-Katz in his "Fourth set of replies", additionally stating that his "COVID-19 papers have been cited about 5 thousand times in the scientific literature by tens of thousands of scientists and were discussed by millions of people," and dismissed conflict of interest by asserting that he did not sign the Great Barrington Declaration or any other petition or signature collection on COVID-19, as he is against the notion that scientific matters and evidence could be decided by signature collections and prefers these matters be handled by heavily moderated public debates.[150]

And there it is. Whenever any expert speaks out or is perceived to speak out in any way against masks, lockdowns or vaccines, they immediately become a hero of the anti-vax movement, who laud them as mavericks railing against a cabal of evil scientists and mainstream media narratives.

Prior to his controversial Covid beliefs he seems to have a half decent resume and history. Perhaps he made a mistake (experts do) and has doubled-down on it since, not impossible, this does happen in the world of science, there are many egos.

The last guy you lauded turned out to be a libertarian who was a co-creator of the Great Barrington Declaration.. because of course he was.

There's plenty of bad scientists, or good scientists gone bad, or decent scientists who've made bad decisions in science - but the good thing is they generally get exposed.

I've asked you multiple times to provide details of your conspiracy, it seems you really don't want to do that.

As explained previously, 9/11 truthers trot out lines of experts who believe 9/11 was an inside job and "challenge" people into explaining why those experts are wrong. No one has to. Those experts just have to explain the conspiracy, which they can't do.

Hence I am asking about your conspiracy.

Maybe you could point me to your previous posts on him, and if you can identify those posts, please explain why you are trying to have the same arguments again as would have occurred back then.

Ok, that’s a no then.

I won’t be going to any other site either. It’s weird that you actually want someone to visit another forum.

More misattributing arguments to people.

No one claimed that every scientist agreed with the consensus.

Looks like you're pushing your anti vaxx agenda on multiple forums too. Weird.

Regarding Ioannidis, he said that the virus might only kill 10k to 40k people in the US. In 2020 he dismissed the idea of 20% to 60% of adults catching Covid as "substantially exaggerated".

In April 2020 he said that the virus had probably peaked.

"Acknowledging for the fact that the epidemic is still evolving, and we cannot be sure whether we will hit even higher peaks in the future, although this doesn’t seem to be the case, at least for the European countries, and it seems to be that even in the US, in most states we’re very close to the peak, if not past the peak, the risk is something that should be manageable as opposed to the panic and horror stories that are circulating about."

Then in August 2020 this whopper:

"However, very few hospitals were eventually stressed and only for a couple of weeks. Most hospitals maintained largely empty wards, expecting tsunamis that never came… Tragically, many health systems faced major adverse consequences, not by COVID-19 cases overload, but for very different reasons."

Scientists make mistakes, he even acknowledged it himself, he has since done a large U-turn, but thank god he wasn't in charge of any national policy at the time.

On top of that he strongly supports the vaccines

"John Ioannidis (JI): We know that the vaccines that have been used are very effective, in the range of 95%. However, nothing is 100% in reality. So, this means that one still has to be cautious when there is an active epidemic wave. With the current wave, it’s not possible to tell how it will look even a week down the road. Whatever we have been saying about trying to protect yourself and others during the pandemic still makes sense. It’s not something to panic about, but we just need to hold onto that perspective."

You sure you are hitching your wagon to the right horse here?

All of this is just a deflection from the fact that you very openly do not want to discuss your own conspiracy. on a conspiracy forum. It seems very obvious you want to hint at the conspiracy but never detail it, all the while indulging in endless vaccine contrarianism.

https://www.sgst.com.au/news/dangerous-vaccines-to-blame-for-higher-death-rate-says-broadbent-mp

Australia having huge excess deaths as well. I guess its the heatwave.

There is no conspiracy if it can be proven as false. Which may be impossible after the event. We probably will never know if mRNA have caused the massive excess deaths that we are seeing now where millions are dying above historical norms. There is a reasonable correlation with the rollout of the mRNA injections and the increase in excess deaths. But like climate change we will never have proof but assume certain factors have consequences, We now have a fair guess that CO2 is causing global warming but cannot give proof. The evidence is now mounting that mRNA is causing excess deaths but cannot give proof. I would assume its true but cannot give proof same as CO2 and global warming.