I do take statements from practicing physicians seriously (my sister is one). But there are also plenty of stories about vaccine harm. VAERS data can't just be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It is a crime to submit false reports, and under-reporting is more likely than over-reporting.
To get more clarity, we have randomized trials…
I do take statements from practicing physicians seriously (my sister is one). But there are also plenty of stories about vaccine harm. VAERS data can't just be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It is a crime to submit false reports, and under-reporting is more likely than over-reporting.
To get more clarity, we have randomized trials. Those showed a lot more severe adverse events for the vaccines than cases of severe COVID prevented. That is a definite fact. Many authors here noticed problems like this, and I also wrote about it on my stack. https://norstadt.substack.com/p/severe-adverse-events-vs-severe-covid
The studies I’ve read suggest that the benefit of the vaccines in preventing severe Covid significantly outweighs the risk of severe side effects, aside from the pediatric population where the risks may be relatively equal. I’m not a pediatrician but do have a 15-year-old son and I have my doubts about the value of vaccination in his age group.
As a practicing clinician with nearly 3000 patients on my panel as well as four colleagues with similar panel sizes, our clinical experience suggests pretty strongly that the studies are correct for adult patients.
I guess all of us go from the data we read combined with our own experience, and that may differ from one person to another.
Mike, I appreciate your points, and I believe you are what you say you are. But you say this:
"... aside from the pediatric population where the risks may be relatively equal. I’m not a pediatrician but do have a 15-year-old son and I have my doubts about the value of vaccination in his age group."
According to a lot of the kind of people Matt is talking about, that comment puts you on the side of "irresponsible anti-vax conspiracy nut-jobs" yourself. In fact, some of the people I have seen attacked as "anti-vax" are vaccinated themselves, but question whether everyone, particularly children, need it. And for that they're labelled "dangerous." I have a 6-year-old son, and he's gotten the first shot, but I'm still questioning whether he should have, and whether I should get him the second.
You’re right, questioning the value of pediatric Covid vaccination does put me in a category of people that many on the left label as “dangerous”. I don’t think the left is giving honest information on the true risk-benefit ratio of vaccination in younger age groups, just as it’s obscuring the lack of evidence supporting widespread masking or vaccine mandates ostensibly directed toward interrupting transmission.
The problem I have is that Matt seems to focus exclusively on how the left - mainly the institutional left - makes up, exaggerates, or distorts information on many aspect of the Covid situation while seemingly ignoring huge amounts of misinformation coming from a less institutionalized, freewheeling right. The impression I get is that he implicitly thinks that as long as the misinformation isn’t coming from government or official institutions it does less harm and can be successfully countered in any case simply by promoting more free speech. I’m not really getting that sense in my daily practice, though.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. Kind of awful to say it but I think maybe there isn’t one and we’re just going to have to live with an ever deteriorating level of public discourse as the two sides tear away at each other. Maybe that’s why I really don’t try to debate with those patients who come in with an obviously ideologic opposition to vaccination, even though at this point I’ve had a number of them hospitalized and have heard from colleagues of a few of theirs who’ve died.
I have personally witnessed a normal physician discounting an obvious vaccine reaction (fortunately minor) as something else. Therefore I do not trust normal physicians to carefully weigh vaccine harm vs. benefit.
The randomized studies did show benefit. They also showed harm. Overall, the risk/benefit ratio was upside down for individual patients but hospitals liked the reduction in infectious disease patients. That does not conflict with your observation. Meanwhile, variants (who could have predicted antigenic drift, which was discovered in the 1940s) are reducing the benefit.
Ah well, if you don’t trust my skills or motives as a physician then we’re probably not going to get very far.
Again, the trials I’ve read suggest that for adult patients, benefit clearly outweighs harm. My clinical observation suggests the same. I’ve heard of only one death in our 80-85% vaccinated clinic of an immunized patient, but multiple deaths among the much smaller group of unvaccinated ones. By no means a controlled study, but it seems consonant with the outcomes of the trials I’ve read.
The right seems to take the same attitude toward the vaccines that the left takes toward masking. I’m done with both sides.
You've probably read the study text, dished up by hired guns working for an organizations with a criminal history and vast profit motives.
Outsiders have drawn independent conclusions from actual case numbers that are tucked away in the appendix. What fraction of physicians pores through the supplemental appendix looking for oddities? Is groupthink more likely among people whose career depends on conformance, or among outsiders who are not immune to human error, but whose main interest is truth?
I do take statements from practicing physicians seriously (my sister is one). But there are also plenty of stories about vaccine harm. VAERS data can't just be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It is a crime to submit false reports, and under-reporting is more likely than over-reporting.
To get more clarity, we have randomized trials. Those showed a lot more severe adverse events for the vaccines than cases of severe COVID prevented. That is a definite fact. Many authors here noticed problems like this, and I also wrote about it on my stack. https://norstadt.substack.com/p/severe-adverse-events-vs-severe-covid
The studies I’ve read suggest that the benefit of the vaccines in preventing severe Covid significantly outweighs the risk of severe side effects, aside from the pediatric population where the risks may be relatively equal. I’m not a pediatrician but do have a 15-year-old son and I have my doubts about the value of vaccination in his age group.
As a practicing clinician with nearly 3000 patients on my panel as well as four colleagues with similar panel sizes, our clinical experience suggests pretty strongly that the studies are correct for adult patients.
I guess all of us go from the data we read combined with our own experience, and that may differ from one person to another.
Mike, I appreciate your points, and I believe you are what you say you are. But you say this:
"... aside from the pediatric population where the risks may be relatively equal. I’m not a pediatrician but do have a 15-year-old son and I have my doubts about the value of vaccination in his age group."
According to a lot of the kind of people Matt is talking about, that comment puts you on the side of "irresponsible anti-vax conspiracy nut-jobs" yourself. In fact, some of the people I have seen attacked as "anti-vax" are vaccinated themselves, but question whether everyone, particularly children, need it. And for that they're labelled "dangerous." I have a 6-year-old son, and he's gotten the first shot, but I'm still questioning whether he should have, and whether I should get him the second.
You’re right, questioning the value of pediatric Covid vaccination does put me in a category of people that many on the left label as “dangerous”. I don’t think the left is giving honest information on the true risk-benefit ratio of vaccination in younger age groups, just as it’s obscuring the lack of evidence supporting widespread masking or vaccine mandates ostensibly directed toward interrupting transmission.
The problem I have is that Matt seems to focus exclusively on how the left - mainly the institutional left - makes up, exaggerates, or distorts information on many aspect of the Covid situation while seemingly ignoring huge amounts of misinformation coming from a less institutionalized, freewheeling right. The impression I get is that he implicitly thinks that as long as the misinformation isn’t coming from government or official institutions it does less harm and can be successfully countered in any case simply by promoting more free speech. I’m not really getting that sense in my daily practice, though.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. Kind of awful to say it but I think maybe there isn’t one and we’re just going to have to live with an ever deteriorating level of public discourse as the two sides tear away at each other. Maybe that’s why I really don’t try to debate with those patients who come in with an obviously ideologic opposition to vaccination, even though at this point I’ve had a number of them hospitalized and have heard from colleagues of a few of theirs who’ve died.
I have personally witnessed a normal physician discounting an obvious vaccine reaction (fortunately minor) as something else. Therefore I do not trust normal physicians to carefully weigh vaccine harm vs. benefit.
The randomized studies did show benefit. They also showed harm. Overall, the risk/benefit ratio was upside down for individual patients but hospitals liked the reduction in infectious disease patients. That does not conflict with your observation. Meanwhile, variants (who could have predicted antigenic drift, which was discovered in the 1940s) are reducing the benefit.
Ah well, if you don’t trust my skills or motives as a physician then we’re probably not going to get very far.
Again, the trials I’ve read suggest that for adult patients, benefit clearly outweighs harm. My clinical observation suggests the same. I’ve heard of only one death in our 80-85% vaccinated clinic of an immunized patient, but multiple deaths among the much smaller group of unvaccinated ones. By no means a controlled study, but it seems consonant with the outcomes of the trials I’ve read.
The right seems to take the same attitude toward the vaccines that the left takes toward masking. I’m done with both sides.
You've probably read the study text, dished up by hired guns working for an organizations with a criminal history and vast profit motives.
Outsiders have drawn independent conclusions from actual case numbers that are tucked away in the appendix. What fraction of physicians pores through the supplemental appendix looking for oddities? Is groupthink more likely among people whose career depends on conformance, or among outsiders who are not immune to human error, but whose main interest is truth?