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Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

drrollergator.substack.com

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Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#31

Post by hereforphone »

yadaeno wrote: post #23
hereforphone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard it referred to as a religious debate in the US. When I hear about anti-vaxxers complaining, it's from a perceived freedom (not religion) standpoint. Maybe there are exceptions for some religious minorities, but I have yet to hear them.

The religion in this case is US partisanship, which somehow the vaccine seems to be getting sucked into.

Agree on the US partisanship, disagree on the religious angle (except to agree that religion could potentially be used, on a small scale (e.g. local churches), to disparage the vaccine).

On another note, I enjoy open debate regardless of the subject, and I appreciate that there are arguments against the vaccine (though I am vaccinated myself).

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#32

Post by devwastaken »

jtbayly wrote: post #9

This post was flagged. I just vouched for it. I read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, it is accurate. There is not a single comment pointing out any error or misinformation or lie or damned lie. Unless somebody can show that the data and/or interpretation are wrong, it should not be flagged.

Nobody has to prove it's wrong. Analysis of studies is months of work in very specific domain knowledge. You're not going to find good rebuttals to medical data reviews in a comments section unless there's glaring issues and you happen to attract the attention of someone that knows better. Those people are generally not in comment sections, but working 80 hours a week.

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#33

Post by jtbayly »

yadaeno wrote: post #15

This article fails to mention the BY FAR most significant benefit of the vaccine which is: achieving herd immunity We should be as accurate as possible with when talking about vaccine but throwing around statics(or should we say "Vaccine Statistics") like: > "the death rate among the vaccinated, if infected with COVID, can be 3 to 5.7 times higher than the death rate of the unvaccinated." is not exactly providing the…

Even the NYT is willing to admit that the drop started in January, before vaccination can really be credited for it.

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#34

Post by jtbayly »

devwastaken wrote: post #32
jtbayly wrote: post #9

This post was flagged. I just vouched for it. I read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, it is accurate. There is not a single comment pointing out any error or misinformation or lie or damned lie. Unless somebody can show that the data and/or interpretation are wrong, it should not be flagged.

Nobody has to prove it's wrong. Analysis of studies is months of work in very specific domain knowledge. You're not going to find good rebuttals to medical data reviews in a comments section unless there's glaring issues and you happen to attract the attention of someone that knows better. Those people are generally not in comment sections, but working 80 hours a week.

So, you are rejecting the medical studies done by the UK and Israel on the effectiveness of the vaccines because... why exactly?

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#35

Post by pcrh »

alecst wrote: post #11

I took the bait, I'm ashamed. I try to keep an open mind, so I read some of it. The thrust of the article is that vaccines work well at preventing infection, but that if you do get infected, it is _possible_ that you might die at a higher rate. _Possible_ comes from a big spread in the standard deviation of P(death|infected & vaccinated). I didn't check his calculations, I took his numbers at face value and just look…

Yes. If I read the article correctly, the data in fact say you cannot determine whether the death rate in vaccinated people who become infected is different than in unvaccinated people.

However, 1) it isn't clear if Frieden is working from the same dataset as the author, and 2) a very slight re-wording of the initial statement would make it correct, i.e. "If you are _exposed_ to covid and you've been vaccinated you're about 100 times less likely to die."

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#36

Post by lefrenchy »

In the “ What the numbers really showed” you use the lack of vaccinated sample size to justify something for the unvaccinated, but then immediately use that small number to your advantage to say “if 24 people had died then the vaccinated would have a higher death rate”. It’s disingenuous and doesn’t show anything.

Also if the vaccine prevents contraction then it should be counted as preventing death/hospitalization, but obviously those numbers aren’t obvious. Seems to me the vaccine IS preventing contraction so you would need to account for that wouldn’t you?

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#37

Post by roenxi »

jtbayly wrote: post #9

This post was flagged. I just vouched for it. I read the whole thing. As far as I can tell, it is accurate. There is not a single comment pointing out any error or misinformation or lie or damned lie. Unless somebody can show that the data and/or interpretation are wrong, it should not be flagged.

> There is not a single comment pointing out any error or misinformation or lie or damned lie.

The article was posted 1 hr ago. Assuming some time to notice the article, then something like 30 minutes to read it and write a response, you'd not expect to see many comments pointing out the problems in the first hour.

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#38

Post by wizzwizz4 »

mortehu wrote: post #24
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #13

> The real world data has shown that the death rate among the vaccinated, if infected with COVID, can be 3 to 5.7 times higher1 than the death rate of the unvaccinated. Okay… but how much less likely are you to get “infected”? How are you even defining “infected”, here? If virus gets in your body and then your immune system kills it before it does much damage, were you “infected”? If the answer is no , you've got pre…

The author uses "evidence of infection" as the definition of infection, and labels all other definitions as misinformation, and writes at length about it as if it was not just a difference in definitions. Obviously most of the people the author is criticizing are using "exposure that would cause detectable disease in non-immune individuals" as their definition, and I don't know if we have a better word for that.

> The author uses "evidence of infection" as the definition of infection,

So the author makes the implicit assumption that a successful vaccination doesn't prevent evidence of infection, and uses it to argue that vaccines are dangerous… then accuses everyone else of providing numbers without sufficient context?

Edit: no, actually.

> The reason, hidden in plain sight, is that a large number people who were never going to die, are no longer getting infected.

So the author does know… they were just getting spectacle in before explaining. And I do agree with the author's (eventual) point:

> Without careful control and understanding, one might erroneously conclude the Delta variant is is more lethal if you’ve been vaccinated, the vaccine is losing its efficacy, the vaccination is making people weaker, or some combination. While any of those are possible outcomes in this environment, by not being aware of the infection death rate issue from the start, because one is busy spreading misinformation about extra levels of protection that the data do not support, one misses how to properly control for these effects and analyze new data as it comes in.

But I really don't like the article. The author is the only one making those erroneous conclusions in the first place!

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#39

Post by yadaeno »

joophro wrote: post #28
yadaeno wrote: post #15

This article fails to mention the BY FAR most significant benefit of the vaccine which is: achieving herd immunity We should be as accurate as possible with when talking about vaccine but throwing around statics(or should we say "Vaccine Statistics") like: > "the death rate among the vaccinated, if infected with COVID, can be 3 to 5.7 times higher than the death rate of the unvaccinated." is not exactly providing the…

Herd immunity can be achieved with natural immunity + inoculation + therapeutic/chemo prophylaxis. The only time in history where natural immunity has been considered insufficient for the goal of herd immunity is 2020+. WHO went as far as changing their definition of herd immunity last year to exclude natural immunity (check the way back machine). Leaky vaccines can also cause mutation pressure on viruses, but the on…

If we took your suggestion and let everyone get natural immunity, in the US alone this would cause 2.5 million deaths (not considering new mutations). This is unacceptable to any sane person, and does not require a massive global conspiracy propaganda campaign to convince people of.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify...

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

#40

Post by rantwasp »

> 36 of 84611 in the unvaccinated versus 0 in 1066 in the vaccinated group. 36 in 84611 is roughly 1 in 2350, but we only had 1066 infected in the vaccinated group. There is not enough information to claim the death rate per infection is higher or lower, and that uncertainty is indicated in the graph above. That is worlds away from the relative immortality communicated by the efficacy number 100%.

Okay. But immediately after…

> In fact, if there had been 24 deaths in the vaccinated group the efficacy reported would have been 3%! Because it was looking at rates over time, 24 deaths would have been the death rate over time similar to 36 in the unvaccinated group. But clearly, among those infected, 36 in 84611 is a far lower death rate than 24 in 1066!

If? Now we’re onto hypotheticals. Here is an idea, you have so few because they were vaccinated!

Also the mental gymnastics of saying: “it’s better to not be vaccinated in case you get covid because you are less likely to die” is worthy of a mental gymnastics olympics gold medal.

I understand that the CDC guy may have worded things differently but directionally he is right.

But, again, one cannot just ignore the hypotheticals of Dr. Gator when it provides validation for your anti-vaxx stupid attitude.

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