On July 31, 2021, RFK Jr. traveled to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His goal in the heart of the COVID pandemic was to scare the Amish away from lifesaving vaccines.
“All participants were followed for at least two months after the last dose to make sure that the vaccine was safe.” I’m baffled. This is what you call a “safety study?”
Pfizer lied about a 12 year olds injury during the clinical trial. Maddie de Garay’s adverse event was listed as functional abdominal pain. This young girl still suffers today. She is confined to a wheelchair and is fed through a tube in her nose. She is severely injured and they dismissed it.
The family has done many interviews. The doctors running the study said she had functional abdominal pain caused by the vaccine. They said her symptoms were psychological. Not the correct diagnosis.
Interestingly I came across someone who developed POTS a week after their only COVID vaccination, this has progressed to Conversion Disorder, which as far as I can determine is another name for FND.
But no one has ever reported a medically verified vaccine-induced tumour occurring attributable to that vaccine. The paper you cite talks about the hypotheticals, and measures to avoid them. It doesn’t claim cancers have occurred.
Anyhow, if we waited 10 or 20 years to see if vaccine X caused a few hypothetical cancer cases before we used it, how many millions would die from the disease in the meantime?
Basically, you don’t understand the history of what you write about. The incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome paralysis due to the 1976 Swine flu vaccine was about 1 in 100,000 vaccine recipients (I treated a couple of these patients back then). All these cases arose in about 6-8 weeks after vaccination. None appeared later. In contrast, the Swine flu itself caused GBS 17 times more frequently than the vaccines did. Which would you rather have, the vaccine or the virus?
A couple of years ago, I wrote about long term vaccine effects in my blog. You can read it here. It is not a long article and it has links to my sources. Bottom line, no vaccine has ever shown side effects beyond 8 weeks.
I was thinking the same thing. After 2 months everyone needs to agree they are safe? It took 32 years for them to admit hormone replacement therapy caused breast cancer!
The only things on your list that are related to vaccines are menstrual problems and myocarditis (which is usually mild, and at least 6 times more common after natural Covid). The others are entirely figments of the antivax imagination, which seems to be getting more and more crazy with each passing year.
Yes. The type caused by Covid is fatal in around 30% cases. It’s also 6 times more common that vaccine myocarditis (which is much milder, and seldom fatal).
Dr Offit, I note that you have misrepresented the Pfizer RCT in this article.
How come you've yet to address the fact that the Pfizer RCT tested a different product to the one that was rolled out. Don't you think it would build your credibility to address the fact that the Process 2 product has never been tested at scale in an RCT? Would you agree that the medical establishment's failure to address this sleight of hand has contributed to the public's mistrust in institutions and public figures such as yourself?
Hey Albus, you don't know about the scale up? Oh dear, that's concerning. Dr Offit wrote a book about the Cutter Incident debacle when the polio vaccine was scaled up, but he has been pretty quiet about the Covid mRNA vaccine scale up. You can read more about it here. Don't believe me, click through to the sources, which are regulatory documents and the BMJ.
I do know about scale-up. That means using the same process at a larger scale. Same process and same product.
I did read your links. They changed the source of production for a raw material (plasmid DNA). That is not a change in process. And the testing of the product showed there was no difference.
Just like the claim the vaccines were contaminated with DNA is factually incorrect.
What you have clearly demonstrated is that folks that skip the 11+ years it takes to become scientist make a lot of mistakes. You have massively misunderstood the science.
You couldn't provide the confirmations from EMA or Health Canada....so you are hiding from the fact that the anti-vaccs lied to you and just flat made things up.
1. You didn't post any confirmation from Health Canada or EMA. No surprise because they have not done so.
2. No one will sue and make the claim under oath that the vaccines are contaminated with DNA because that is a flat out lie that doesn't stand up to even the most childish scrutiny.
3. You appear of zero interest understanding even the most basic scientific concepts.
Hi Steve, sure thing. See comments below. I would encourage you to click through to the regulatory docs and BMJ articles linked in the main text, as it's always better to reference primary sources on such important matters.
There were two different processes used, one for the clinical trials and one for the mass production; however, the two processes produced exactly the same product. An analogy would be a person making beer at home and Coors producing the beer on an industrial scale. The two processes are different but produce the same product.
We disagree on the impact of the scale up - I actually side with Dr Offit on this one based on his book and interview comments on the Cutter Incident.
“It shouldn’t have been called the Cutter Incident, it should have been called the ‘scale up incident’, because that was really what the problem was”. We just had trouble scaling up that vaccine.”
Scale-up is the issue. In the Cutter Incident, that led to what Dr Offit called "one of the worst biological disasters" in America's history.
In biologics, 'the process is the product.'
I referenced Dr Offit quite heavily in my article on Pfizer's Bait & Switch, here:
Ah! Jumping to conclusions is rarely a productive conservational tactic Albus. But if I recall from seeing you comment on Gorski’s site, it is your principal mode of discourse 😉
1. I don't think I have ever posted at Gorski's site (skeptical raptor?).
2. I didn't jump to any conclusions, I stated a fact. The differences in our analytics are massive and your argument is without any substance or merit.
Willfully choosing ignorance is just a form of denial and the only possible outcome is for you to remain wrong.
propaganda required repeated statements of falsehoods until there is confusion or suspicion about other sources of information. RFKjr is a master of dysinfo, and has made $$ from this. He is unqualified to run for the highest office in he country, and potentially liable for causing morbidity and mortality with his lies.
Just got done watching Dr. Offit on The Michael Shermer Show [1] to promote his new book “Tell Me Wen it’s Over” (My copy arrived yesterday, haven’t started it yet). I have immense respect for both Dr Offit and Michael Shermer. They have been hugely influential in my approach to science and skepticism the last 20+ years.
Unfortunately, neither appear aware of how much what they think they know about Covid is demonstrably false, as demonstrated by Dr. Offit saying several things which are not true and Michael Shermer failing to challenge his extraordinary claims.
For example, at @18:45, when arguing why GBD was wrong, Dr Offit makes the false claim that Sweden's outcome was in the "middle of Europe, but much worse than her neighbors". [2]
That is incorrect.
In terms of Excess Deaths, Sweden had a better outcome than the entire world - including her neighbors. [3]
Dr Offit must not be aware of the spikes of deaths in 2021-2022 which occurred in Finland, Denmark, and Norway?
Here is the raw mortality deaths for comparison, you can see this claim is false: https://imgur.com/a/aD05YlM
All of this can be replicated from mortality.org which is used by OWID. The Economist has their own methodology for calculating excess deaths which differs from OWID, but even their analysis puts Sweden tied with her neighbors and better than the rest of Europe. [4]
Politely Dr Offit, I know you are extremely busy, but this feels like a fact you should know. Your entire critique of GBD given to Michael Shermer hinged on this false belief. Why didn’t you feel the need to double check this claim?
____________
@23:11 When Michael asks Paul "who got it right", Dr Offit cites South Korea through their test and trace and finding hotspots.
Again, Dr Offit must not be aware South Korea was having high excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 before exploding in 2022, hitting the *highest year-over-year increase in mortality of any country in the world*, in the last 100 years.
Spring 2022 they had all-cause mortality **double* (!!), a feat no other country achieved. Why isn't Dr Offit aware of this?
The claim that South Korea did effective testing is also provably false. South Korea had one of the lowest testing rates in the entire world throughout the pandemic which is probably why they claim to only have 35K Covid deaths but have close to 170K excess deaths (through July 2024).
In last week's discussion with Sandro Gallea, Michael Shermer referenced Michele Gelfand's "Tight and Loose Cultures" as why some of these countries appeared to do so well, and I agree - a tight culture like South Korea appeared to do well because their government was effective at convincing everyone that they had everything under control, so the people didn’t panic.
Despite having one of the worst outcomes of the entire pandemic, very intelligent people like Shermer and Offit bought into South Korea's effective propaganda.
Indeed, South Korea's lauded "contact trace" protocol was built around false assumptions that the virus was not airborne and was only tracking contacts within 6 meters - again, we now know that was pseudoscience after-all, so why does Dr Offit tout this strategy as being effective - when again, it didn't stop excess death?
South Korea was able to claim they had “everything under control” in 2020 because they barely tested for Covid, and no one called them out on rising excess mortality. When they finally started testing at the rates of countries like the US, Germany, and Denmark in early 2022, they found Covid was everywhere all along, deaths skyrocketed, and they had to abandon their lauded “test and trace” program because it didn’t work after all.
Again, for being a leading voice that people like me look up to, why don’t you know any of this? That’s alarming to me.
[2] As an aside, even if it were true that "Sweden did worse than her neighbors" (which was true only up through 2020), Norway, Finland, and Denmark all had among the weakest Covid measures in the world - all had returned children to school Spring 2020 (largely unmasked), the had among the shortest "lockdowns" in the world, and the lowest masking rates worldwide. The fact that all these countries were so successful doing very little should have caused us to rethink our hysteria. Also, why is Sweden only ever allowed to be compared to her neighbors? Why can we compare Florida to California, Delaware to South Dakota, the US to South Korea, but Sweden's success always has to be restricted to a 500 km radius?
[3] Output of STMF from Mortality.org with 2 ways of calculating excess deaths:
Yes. Look at the source data which is used to make the OWID graphs. If you add the area under the curve Sweden has the lowest total excess deaths. Only reply you will get from me Albus, can't waste time on a Flat Earther.
"[3] Output of STMF from Mortality.org with 2 ways of calculating excess deaths:
"If you add the area under the curve Sweden has the lowest total excess deaths. Only reply you will get from me Albus, can't waste time on a Flat Earther."
No surprise, you offer personal attacks--but the fact is your "analysis" isn't just wrong, it is innumerate and just silly.
Good news!
Those pesky scientists have actually done the analysis correctly and Sweden's excess deaths were HIGHER than Norway's--the increase was highly statistically significant.
Hush Albus…don’t you know Michael knows more about these deaths than do the Swedish and Norwegian epidemiologists who have published the mortality analyses?
You should go through it yourself, and see if you can replicate their claim.
Because they are saying 6.5K - 8.8K excess deaths in a population of 5.5 million is much better than 11K - 16K excess deaths in a population 10.7 million. (meanwhile South Korea who Dr Offit believes "did great" has 120-180K excess deaths against population of 52 million)
Remember, Sweden was supposed to have 30K excess deaths in 2020 alone according to the Imperial College Model.
I am sorry you fell for all of this nonsense Albus. I am sorry you believed cloth masks worked, that we should keep children out of school, and all of the rest of the hysteria. And I get you had impressive sounding studies like the "Kansas Mask Study" to justify your buy-in to the hysteria. I feel bad you have been gaslit by people like Dr Offit who now say cloth masks don't work, keeping kids out of school was a mistake after all. That has to be really painful to learn you were duped. It has to be hard.
This study you shared is a good learning example for you on how bullshit gets spread.
I highly encourage you to read a book like Stuart Ritchie's "Science Fictions", or Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". It will help you build immunity to the bullshit that plagues most of social science.
Sweden could have done even better if they had provided more protection for their elderly. Also, curious if they used early treatment protocols. The US had the worse outcomes. We really need acknowledge what we did wrong so we don’t repeat it.
No, Sweden didn't use early protocols. If they did, they didn't work though, did they, seeing how their Covid mortality was so high during the early phase of the pandemic.
If you are interested in what the US did wrong, then the BMJ is running a series about the lessons that should be learned.
"The country’s pandemic response also followed a uniquely American path—fragmented public health responsibilities across federal and state jurisdictions, chronic underinvestment in public health, absence of social safety nets and workplace protections, insufficient legal infrastructure, and long standing social and income inequalities, underpinned by structural racism."
Then you had a politically polarised response; there were deeply partisan attitudes to public health advice which consequently was largely ignored by a large percentage of the population.
In my original post, I provided estimates of Norway having between 6,500 - 8,720 (+7%) excess deaths (2020-2022) and Sweden having excess deaths between 12,000 and 15,600 (+6%).
Your study runs through week 43 of 2022, and estimates 3,600 excess deaths for Norway and 8,100 excess deaths for Sweden.
Now let's say you're right, let us suppose in fact Norway had +2.998% mortality beating Sweden's +3.005% mortality.
Never mind that the end of 2022 which your study ignores was worse for Norway than Sweden, and let's further ignore that 2023 was also worse for Norway than Sweden - I will temporize your study is the better model, and that Norway had .007% absolute less excess mortality.
Paul Offit said though that Sweden was "middle of the pack in Europe" and "did worse than all her neighbors".
You are defending that claim, by clinging to a study showing a .007 absolute difference in mortality between Norway and Sweden (love to hear you explain away Finland!). If we use that data from the study in question, it places Sweden better than every other European country. Much better. Which again, shows that Dr Offit who I hold tremendous respect for, happens to be unaware he is completely wrong on this.
I'm just gonna post all-cause mortality by year since you seem disinterested in trying to replicate the study you are citing:
Detailed weekly mortality data is a 1st world luxury. 2nd/3rd world countries don't reliably provide it in a timely manner, which is why the weekly STMF upload doesn't provide data on Africa, almost all of South America, some of Asia, etc. China is notoriously closed with sharing data, and Russia stopped sharing data in 2020.
So yes, when I say "the entire world", I am talking about countries submit reliable data.
There is a good chance that many countries in Africa had an even better outcome than Sweden of course, and you are welcome to argue how by not participating in Covid Hysteria Sudan or Libya had no excess deaths. Sure, go ahead.
As for notable countries (like Japan) that provide yearly data to the Human Mortality Database which aren't captured in the STMF, you can go through zipped files here and see if I'm wrong:
Offit was talking about Covid deaths, as the video makes pretty clear. Sweden in that regard did really badly, and far worse than its neighbours (who had similar socioeconomic conditions, similar demographics, similar political views etc but which did impose lockdowns). At one point early in the pandemic they had the highest per capita death rate in the world from Covid, and their chief epidemiologist had to publicly apologise for not controlling the spread of virus during the first wave.
They subsequently turned things round, but only by leaving some restrictions in place and by pursuing vaccination very vigorously.
Excess deaths are the metric that matters, you know this. You are smart enough to know that South Korea, with it's 170,000 unexplained excess deaths had far more Covid Deaths than their reported 35K deaths (unless of course your'e a conspiracy theorist who thinks the vaccines caused those extra 125,000 deaths). You are smart enough to know that differences in "mortality accounting" can give different results between countries, states, districts, and that is why all-cause mortality is the metric that matters.
Whether Paul was explicitly talking about "Covid deaths" or "All Cause Mortality" when he says "South Korea did a great job" is irrelevant, because we have the concrete, crystal clear data that no, they did not do well. They had one of the worst increases in all-cause mortality in the world. They did terrible. He only doesn't know this because he apparently never bothered to double check if all the praise heaped on South Korea in 2020 was justified 3 years later.
For Dr Offit to not know this should be very troubling. We may speculate how he could be so misinformed; my guess would be a combination of being insulated with an echo chamber of people who repeat things they have heard without checking them, and the lack of time to do the proper due diligence as he's a physician, author, speaker, committee member, etc.
But it is dangerous to have someone so well respected be so completely misinformed on such an important topic.
Very busy today, so you only get a reply or two, but feel free to go back through our previous discussions Mike S.
MS: "At one point early in the pandemic they had the highest per capita death rate in the world from Covid, and their chief epidemiologist had to publicly apologise for not controlling the spread of virus during the first wave."
Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true. Definition of cherry picking/data drudging.
Tell me, is it fair if I compare New York to Florida using only 2020 data and praise DeSantis for how much better Florida did than New York? Or are you suddenly going to be concerned about confounders? I thought so.
MS: "They subsequently turned things round, but only by leaving some restrictions in place and by pursuing vaccination very vigorously."
Ah yes, it was their "pursuit of rigorous vaccination", that is why Sweden did so well... uh huh...
Remind me then why mass vaccination worked for Sweden, going back to near zero excess deaths 2021-2023, but deaths rose significantly in Denmark, Finland, Norway and exploded in South Korea?
“Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true.”
…..Ahh, yes, like your constant refrain about South Korea’s brief high mortality 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
You had a go at Offit for misleading about excess mortality when he was correctly talking about Covid mortality. You could apologise.
What’s the best metric to see if Covid vaccines “work”?
Is it Covid deaths or all cause mortality (deaths that could be from anything, even completely unconnected to Covid)?
How do you check if measles vaccine works? Or Hep B vaccine, or malaria? Do you look at all cause mortality, or the mortality from the disease?
The answer should be clear to everyone but if you are deliberately looking to hide the benefits of a vaccine you might look at all causes, including things totally unconnected to the vaccine or illness it prevents.
You expressly had a dig at S Korea because in March 2022 they had a death spike from Covid, and this rise was the highest globally.
You then hypocritically attacked me for pointing out that Sweden had the highest global mortality from Covid at one point during the first wave by sarcastically saying this:
"Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true."
When I point out your hypocrisy, and also point out that you laud Sweden for it's pandemic response and ignore that it too had the highest global mortality rate (from Covid) in April 2020, you label me as "ridiculous".
Do you want to walk back on your characterisation of this? Do you want to re-read the Demon-Haunted World again, or revise a bit of Feynman?
Here are the EXCESS mostality charts for Sweden and South Korea. As you see, there isn't really a vast overall difference, with both having spikes, and both running positive to baseline currently (though Sweden seems to be having a bad year so far). An alien from Mars invited to compare the charts and decide which country has done better would be hard pushed to objectively tell any difference. You however seem in absolute no doubt...Sweden is the "best in the world", and S. Korea did woefully, and was the worst in the world in 2022.
...such is the power of partisan bias, confirmation bias, and wishful thinking.
I have always shown excess death as a sum of 2020-2022. Every calculation in all my pinned tables always have a single calculation of the full 3 years.
That South Korea did have the highest increase of mortality for any country in the world *after* vaccination, while masking, without other social changes is a notable event that we should all be curious to understand how this happened. Nevertheless, my excess mortality calculations include all 3 years of South Korea.
The biggest difference between us seems to be you are content at looking at massaged data from OWID or another source, taking it at face value, and not being curious to look at the source data. You don't appear to be interested in replication of ideas, double checking. That's fine.
This is part of what I have to do in the real world (double checking engineers smarter than me and reproducing their claims), and I do it here.
Perfect example, you say "Sweden seems to be having a bad year so far", because you see the massaged projections from OWID using their opaque formula for expected, and take it face value.
You see Sweden being 23% higher than expected in the OWID chart, and take it at face value.
I go to the source data, and see that 2004 deaths is only 9% higher than pre-pandemic 1850 deaths for week 51, and know that the model OWID is using doesn't appear reliable.
I strongly encourage you to learn to reproduce and replicate. It would have saved you the embarrassment of thinking kids should wear masks for example.
And tell us again Michael how great Sweden's pandemic response was compared to South Korea's, would you? Did the fact that they have had nearly four times the number of Covid deaths pro rata slip your mind....?
Yes, Sweden overcounted Covid deaths. They have more covid deaths than excess deaths. It's been discussed before. Even Albus' article comments on this, The Economist, etc.
South Korea undercounted Covid deaths, which was because they barely tested for Covid in 2020 and 2021. Pretty straightforward.
We see other example of overcounting covid deaths, for example there are 0 excess deaths throughout the entire pandemic in all reporting countries (except Canada).
I suggest that comparing the USA, the U.K. or European countries with countries like S. Korea, Japan, China is not valid. This is because of genetic differences that can make some ethnicities more susceptible to severe disease from the same pathogen. A case in point is that people from Japan, S Korea and China are more susceptible to influenza than Caucasians are, due to a specific genetic variation.
In my original post, I provided estimates of Norway having between 6,500 - 8,720 (+7%) excess deaths (2020-2022) and Sweden having excess deaths between 12,000 and 15,600 (+6%).
Your study runs through week 43 of 2022 estimates 3,600 (+2.998%) excess deaths for Norway and 8,100 (+3.005% excess deaths for Sweden. (fig 2, p6)
At this point we are bickering over who was in 1st place, when I am concerned Offit somehow thinks Sweden is "middle of Europe" bad.
Reread my original post footnote - all of the Nordic countries had fantastic outcomes relative to the rest of the world - despite sending kids back to school in spring 2020, largely unmasked; despite having among the lowest mask use; despite very short lockdowns. It's just that after 2020, Sweden ACM started to recede to baseline while Finland, Norway, and Denmark saw ACM rise.
First of all Sweden did not remain fully open. They closed some schools. Their interventions were voluntary, such as keeping 2 metres apart, which most Swedes followed. People worked from home when asked to.
Why does the age of the link make a difference since it dealt with data that occurred before? Your comment is stupid and shows you are unable to read and understand science very well. It and other data I linked to clearly showed that Sweden didn't even have the best data among Nordic countries. Grow up.
Age of a link matters when the information is out of date.
Yes, when that Guardian article was written on June 3rd 2020 it was true Sweden had a bad result.
But the pandemic went far beyond June 3rd 2020.
Now we have a more complete dataset, and Sweden did better than all of Europe, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Finland, etc. I'll let you decide if they did +1% better than Norway or -1% worse, as Albus above alleges by referencing a study going up to Q3 2022.
You provided no data. You provided an essay hyperlinking old articles, one of which was hilariously authored by Nele-"Sweden will have 100,000 deaths by July"-Brusselaers.
Here is the raw data. Look at all cause mortality, by year, going across each country, and see if that matches Dr. Offit's Claim "Sweden was middle of Europe in outcome and much worse than her neighbors"
If you don't like the method I used (original OWID calc before the switch to Karlinksy-Kovach model) to calculate excess deaths, copy the google doc and come up with your own projections. See how much goal seeking you have to go through to find a way to make Sweden look like they had a worse outcome than the rest of Europe or South Korea.
Sweden did have a worse outcome than South Korea. No doubt. Nearly four times their Covid mortality.
I don't know why you keep banging on about Sweden; it has nothing to do with what this article is dealing with, it just seems that at one point during some unrelated hour-long interview Offit mentioned them, you had issues with that and you are quibbling about what he said. But it looks like he's right, not you (see the Covid mortality charts below, though at best you might say there is if you just look at all cause mortality they've done about the same). I'm unsurprised Sweden might have good [non-Covid] all cause mortality, they are a progressive, country with a left leaning Government that has introduced one of the world's best health systems.
RFKjr’s lack of awareness regarding the huge impact Hep B used to have is highly worrisome. For someone who pretends to know about childhood infections he’s incredibly ignorant.
All pregnant mothers are tested for Hep B. If they test negative, there is no reason to give it to the newborn baby. Of all the developed nations the US has the highest rate of death in the first day of life and within the first year of life. We are the only country that gives HepB vaccine right after birth. This vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde.
1. "All pregnant mothers are tested for Hep B. If they test negative, there is no reason to give it to the newborn baby."
Been tried, didn't work--for a number of reasons including the fact that each year 10,000s of US very young children were getting infected with Hep B NOT from their mothers.
You know, the age group when it is most likely to cause liver failure, liver cancer and kill.
2. "Of all the developed nations the US has the highest rate of death in the first day of life and within the first year of life."
And we are the only country that lacks universal health care coverage and the US calculates infant mortality rates differently from other countries. Makes the US look worse.
3. "We are the only country that gives HepB vaccine right after birth."
"Hepatitis B : months 0, 1 and 6 (first dose = month 0) with at least 4 weeks between the first and second dose, at least 2 months between the second and third dose, and at least 4 months between the first and third dose. "
4. "This vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde."
So what? So does breastmilk. Good thing we have toxicologists that have proven the amounts in vaccines are safe.
I didn’t realize Canada was also recommending it for newborns. The Hep B vaccine contains nano particle aluminum. Injected, nano particle aluminum and formaldehyde act very differently in the body than anything that might be found in breastmilk.
FYI Your use of the label antivaxxer is very demeaning. Many people who speak up about vaccine concerns are vaccine injured or have lost a loved one due to a vaccine. They were vaccinated and paid a price for it.
There are clearly a lot of things you don’t realise.
The worst offender in this regard is your idea that children don’t get Hep B because “mothers are tested” in pregnancy. Not all women get tested as antenatal care is extremely poor in large sections of the population. Also, the stats (18,000 children acquiring Hep B) shows that kids do get infected.
Or they were…universal neonatal vaccination has virtually stopped that disaster.
The vaccines start on day 1 and the last shot is given at 3 months.
Most of these Hep B infections in kids occur from inapparent exposures to bodily fluids like saliva. The virus is highly infectious, and the worry is that in kids 90% of exposures go on to chronic Hep B carriage with severe liver disease and cancer later in life.
Exposure can result from as little as a kiss from an infectious relative, or sharing a chew toy another (infected) kid had played with in nursery.
I am glad Dr Offit included a link to the excellent RFK Jr article in the Lancaster Patriot. I encourage everyone to read it. You have to scroll down to read the each page 1,4,21
More than passing strange that a man of “science” with such humbling responsibility and accountability for the health and welfare of millions of Americans would display such hubris and passion publicly by “condemning” so outlandishly a candidate for President. Scary…
Swing and a miss! I'm not even a Kennedy supporter and your comments are irrelevant to Dr Offit's political tone deafness at best and arrogance at worst.
Trust in our healthcare leaders and institutions are nearing the breaking point. And you find it acceptable that one of the key scientific and healthcare leaders (Offit) is engaging in a political hit piece on a Presidential candidate when he should absolutely be at this perilous time seen as an impartial and non-political healthcare leader. One, I might add, who is totally focused and determined to narrow the divide between those scientific leaders and studies that are diametrically opposed to one another. If his understanding of the science is correct he should be able to address the growing issues related to the covic vaccine and not just re-assert the same statements over and over.
I was being informative not ironic. I'm watching it live. It's always important to hear and learn from all sides especially when it's uncomfortable to do so. The truth is usually in the middle and often paradoxical.
My conversation is about waking up to BS and seeing it all around me sometimes even in the places that look prestinely clean. I try to look and smell carefully before I step.
RFK Jr. filed a lawsuit against the NIH in an effort to produce one vaccine safety study wherein a placebo was used. He won the lawsuit, but never got the study. Reason being, the liars didn’t have one.
This time it’s the conjugated pneumococcal vaccine which has replaced the earlier polysaccharide vaccine previously used in most countries.
These studies are done where possible. I’d have said that this one was ethically a bit dubious since you don’t want to test a new product against a placebo if there’s an already available effective product. But they seem to have got away with this because the polysaccharide vaccine isn’t universally used.
It is Scientifically impossible to determine the safety of vaccine if the placebo is anything other than a saline solution.
Efficacy trials using a placebo that is immunologically inert to the target antigen but identical in formulation to the vaccine minus the target antigen can never determine safety.
It can however be used to determine Efficacy which is not the same as safety.
Any “Safety” data collected in an Efficacy clinical trial is irrelevant if the trail used anything other than a saline placebo.
Kennedy specifically asked for SAFETY studies done with saline placebo used for licensure of child hood vaccines.
Not the Efficacy studies used to determine Efficacy.
If you have access to a placebo controlled SAFETY trial (not an Efficacy trial) used for licensure of a child hood vaccine please provide.
Appears everything you posted was done well after the lawsuit I mentioned. How about you show us one that’s on the childhood vaccine schedule. I’m not interested the clot shot or malaria... etc, just vaccines for the children.
The NIH couldn’t produce one, maybe you can show us how incompetent they are, but they openly admitted they didn’t have one, not before they lost the lawsuit though.
“All participants were followed for at least two months after the last dose to make sure that the vaccine was safe.” I’m baffled. This is what you call a “safety study?”
Please go learn about how safety is determined and then it will make sense.
Pfizer lied about a 12 year olds injury during the clinical trial. Maddie de Garay’s adverse event was listed as functional abdominal pain. This young girl still suffers today. She is confined to a wheelchair and is fed through a tube in her nose. She is severely injured and they dismissed it.
Maddie's condition is terrible.
I note that total absence of any actual evidence that her problems were caused by the vaccine.
Please read her diagnosis and then tell us what you think of her parents.
The family has done many interviews. The doctors running the study said she had functional abdominal pain caused by the vaccine. They said her symptoms were psychological. Not the correct diagnosis.
Could it be Mast Cell Activation Syndrome?
According to her parents, her diagnosis is Functional Neurological
Disorder.
Interestingly I came across someone who developed POTS a week after their only COVID vaccination, this has progressed to Conversion Disorder, which as far as I can determine is another name for FND.
Well, virtually all abnormal safety signals following vaccines arise within 6 weeks of the shots, and most of those within the first two weeks.
For example, the primary issue identified with mRNA vaccines is the rare occurrence of myocarditis; this kicks in at around one week post vax.
Cancer and autoimmune diseases do not appear right away.
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/biologics-research-projects/investigating-viruses-cells-used-make-vaccines-and-evaluating-potential-threat-posed-transmission
Cancer will not appear right away, no.
But no one has ever reported a medically verified vaccine-induced tumour occurring attributable to that vaccine. The paper you cite talks about the hypotheticals, and measures to avoid them. It doesn’t claim cancers have occurred.
Anyhow, if we waited 10 or 20 years to see if vaccine X caused a few hypothetical cancer cases before we used it, how many millions would die from the disease in the meantime?
What about cancer and autoimmune diseases that are caused by vaccines. Those don’t occur right away.
What about providing some actual data around cancers and autoimmune disease caused by vaccines?
Cancer can be triggered by certain herpes viruses.
The rare autoimmune reactions attributed to vaccines such as GBS usually start within 6 weeks of vaccination.
So no.
GBS following food poisoning usually develops around 14 days after the initial infection. This corresponds to the peak development of antibodies.
name ONE vaccine that showed any side effect AFTER two months!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/06/21/us-agrees-to-pay-those-paralyzed-by-swine-flu-shots/26c65a54-e3c9-4e4c-a23f-b8a411b563b3/
If you refuse to look, it’s easy to say there is no proof of harm.
No therapeutics have ever been pulled from the market after being deemed “safe?”
Kristie,
Basically, you don’t understand the history of what you write about. The incidence of Guillain-Barré Syndrome paralysis due to the 1976 Swine flu vaccine was about 1 in 100,000 vaccine recipients (I treated a couple of these patients back then). All these cases arose in about 6-8 weeks after vaccination. None appeared later. In contrast, the Swine flu itself caused GBS 17 times more frequently than the vaccines did. Which would you rather have, the vaccine or the virus?
A couple of years ago, I wrote about long term vaccine effects in my blog. You can read it here. It is not a long article and it has links to my sources. Bottom line, no vaccine has ever shown side effects beyond 8 weeks.
https://stevensclark.typepad.com/coronavirus_news_and_view/2021/09/long-term-side-effects-of-covid-vaccines.html
Did you rule out other causes of GBS in the intervening 6-8 weeks? Just curious.
Huh? The GBS all occurred within 6 weeks of vaccination.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/175/11/1129/140385?login=false
Please make your point. You provide some information, but don't tell us why you point it out.
All vaccines on the market have shown safety signals after 6 weeks.
This is an important paper:
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/biologics-research-projects/investigating-viruses-cells-used-make-vaccines-and-evaluating-potential-threat-posed-transmission
Thanks.
Did you read your link? It is about investigations into new cell lines that haven't yet been used.
"Some manufacturers are investigating the use of new cell lines to make vaccines. "
Makes sense to do this work before using the cell lines in vaccine production.
They call that a robust study.
It is extremely robust.
You should get your science from actual scientists.
I was thinking the same thing. After 2 months everyone needs to agree they are safe? It took 32 years for them to admit hormone replacement therapy caused breast cancer!
You got the basic facts of the vaccine science wrong and a basic logic error.
Again, you should get your science from actual scientists.
"Fraud on a giant scale."
Correct! Fortunately, almost everyone can see how stupid the anti-vacc fraud is.
The only things on your list that are related to vaccines are menstrual problems and myocarditis (which is usually mild, and at least 6 times more common after natural Covid). The others are entirely figments of the antivax imagination, which seems to be getting more and more crazy with each passing year.
“Myocarditis” yeah shortening one’s life, that’s just a mild thing.
It is exactly like if you posted the actual numbers everyone would laugh at how stupid the anti-vacc fraud is!
Yes. The type caused by Covid is fatal in around 30% cases. It’s also 6 times more common that vaccine myocarditis (which is much milder, and seldom fatal).
Dr Offit, I note that you have misrepresented the Pfizer RCT in this article.
How come you've yet to address the fact that the Pfizer RCT tested a different product to the one that was rolled out. Don't you think it would build your credibility to address the fact that the Process 2 product has never been tested at scale in an RCT? Would you agree that the medical establishment's failure to address this sleight of hand has contributed to the public's mistrust in institutions and public figures such as yourself?
"How come you've yet to address the fact that the Pfizer RCT tested a different product to the one that was rolled out."
Except that is not true.
Doesn't it bother you that your sources are making such absurd assertions?
Hey Albus, you don't know about the scale up? Oh dear, that's concerning. Dr Offit wrote a book about the Cutter Incident debacle when the polio vaccine was scaled up, but he has been pretty quiet about the Covid mRNA vaccine scale up. You can read more about it here. Don't believe me, click through to the sources, which are regulatory documents and the BMJ.
https://umbrellanews.com.au/health/2023/10/pfizers-bait-and-switch-a-gut-punch-for-informed-consent/
Thanks. This is super helpful.
I do know about scale-up. That means using the same process at a larger scale. Same process and same product.
I did read your links. They changed the source of production for a raw material (plasmid DNA). That is not a change in process. And the testing of the product showed there was no difference.
Just like the claim the vaccines were contaminated with DNA is factually incorrect.
What you have clearly demonstrated is that folks that skip the 11+ years it takes to become scientist make a lot of mistakes. You have massively misunderstood the science.
Wait you’re still denying there’s contaminant DNA in the shots? After the EMA and Health Canada confirmed it? 😂😂 ok.
See how the psychology of denial works?
You couldn't provide the confirmations from EMA or Health Canada....so you are hiding from the fact that the anti-vaccs lied to you and just flat made things up.
Selling contaminating vaccines is illegal.
I am saying three things:
1. You didn't post any confirmation from Health Canada or EMA. No surprise because they have not done so.
2. No one will sue and make the claim under oath that the vaccines are contaminated with DNA because that is a flat out lie that doesn't stand up to even the most childish scrutiny.
3. You appear of zero interest understanding even the most basic scientific concepts.
you don't understand the science, flat and simple
Please back up your claim.
Hi Steve, sure thing. See comments below. I would encourage you to click through to the regulatory docs and BMJ articles linked in the main text, as it's always better to reference primary sources on such important matters.
It really helps if one has the background to understand the primary sources.
There were two different processes used, one for the clinical trials and one for the mass production; however, the two processes produced exactly the same product. An analogy would be a person making beer at home and Coors producing the beer on an industrial scale. The two processes are different but produce the same product.
We disagree on the impact of the scale up - I actually side with Dr Offit on this one based on his book and interview comments on the Cutter Incident.
“It shouldn’t have been called the Cutter Incident, it should have been called the ‘scale up incident’, because that was really what the problem was”. We just had trouble scaling up that vaccine.”
Scale-up is the issue. In the Cutter Incident, that led to what Dr Offit called "one of the worst biological disasters" in America's history.
In biologics, 'the process is the product.'
I referenced Dr Offit quite heavily in my article on Pfizer's Bait & Switch, here:
https://umbrellanews.com.au/health/2023/10/pfizers-bait-and-switch-a-gut-punch-for-informed-consent/
You missed the key point.
Back then we didn't have the analytical tools to correctly/accurately test the polio vaccines.
Things have changed since then.
Ah! Jumping to conclusions is rarely a productive conservational tactic Albus. But if I recall from seeing you comment on Gorski’s site, it is your principal mode of discourse 😉
1. I don't think I have ever posted at Gorski's site (skeptical raptor?).
2. I didn't jump to any conclusions, I stated a fact. The differences in our analytics are massive and your argument is without any substance or merit.
Willfully choosing ignorance is just a form of denial and the only possible outcome is for you to remain wrong.
propaganda required repeated statements of falsehoods until there is confusion or suspicion about other sources of information. RFKjr is a master of dysinfo, and has made $$ from this. He is unqualified to run for the highest office in he country, and potentially liable for causing morbidity and mortality with his lies.
Just got done watching Dr. Offit on The Michael Shermer Show [1] to promote his new book “Tell Me Wen it’s Over” (My copy arrived yesterday, haven’t started it yet). I have immense respect for both Dr Offit and Michael Shermer. They have been hugely influential in my approach to science and skepticism the last 20+ years.
Unfortunately, neither appear aware of how much what they think they know about Covid is demonstrably false, as demonstrated by Dr. Offit saying several things which are not true and Michael Shermer failing to challenge his extraordinary claims.
For example, at @18:45, when arguing why GBD was wrong, Dr Offit makes the false claim that Sweden's outcome was in the "middle of Europe, but much worse than her neighbors". [2]
That is incorrect.
In terms of Excess Deaths, Sweden had a better outcome than the entire world - including her neighbors. [3]
Dr Offit must not be aware of the spikes of deaths in 2021-2022 which occurred in Finland, Denmark, and Norway?
Here is the raw mortality deaths for comparison, you can see this claim is false: https://imgur.com/a/aD05YlM
All of this can be replicated from mortality.org which is used by OWID. The Economist has their own methodology for calculating excess deaths which differs from OWID, but even their analysis puts Sweden tied with her neighbors and better than the rest of Europe. [4]
Politely Dr Offit, I know you are extremely busy, but this feels like a fact you should know. Your entire critique of GBD given to Michael Shermer hinged on this false belief. Why didn’t you feel the need to double check this claim?
____________
@23:11 When Michael asks Paul "who got it right", Dr Offit cites South Korea through their test and trace and finding hotspots.
Again, Dr Offit must not be aware South Korea was having high excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 before exploding in 2022, hitting the *highest year-over-year increase in mortality of any country in the world*, in the last 100 years.
Spring 2022 they had all-cause mortality **double* (!!), a feat no other country achieved. Why isn't Dr Offit aware of this?
The claim that South Korea did effective testing is also provably false. South Korea had one of the lowest testing rates in the entire world throughout the pandemic which is probably why they claim to only have 35K Covid deaths but have close to 170K excess deaths (through July 2024).
Go compare South Korea to any other country and see for yourself: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-cumulative-total-tests-per-thousand?country=KOR~USA
In last week's discussion with Sandro Gallea, Michael Shermer referenced Michele Gelfand's "Tight and Loose Cultures" as why some of these countries appeared to do so well, and I agree - a tight culture like South Korea appeared to do well because their government was effective at convincing everyone that they had everything under control, so the people didn’t panic.
Despite having one of the worst outcomes of the entire pandemic, very intelligent people like Shermer and Offit bought into South Korea's effective propaganda.
Dr Offit, could it be that you read state sponsored propaganda pieces like this: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-exemplar-south-korea
And didn't take the time to evaluate the claim?
Indeed, South Korea's lauded "contact trace" protocol was built around false assumptions that the virus was not airborne and was only tracking contacts within 6 meters - again, we now know that was pseudoscience after-all, so why does Dr Offit tout this strategy as being effective - when again, it didn't stop excess death?
South Korea was able to claim they had “everything under control” in 2020 because they barely tested for Covid, and no one called them out on rising excess mortality. When they finally started testing at the rates of countries like the US, Germany, and Denmark in early 2022, they found Covid was everywhere all along, deaths skyrocketed, and they had to abandon their lauded “test and trace” program because it didn’t work after all.
Again, for being a leading voice that people like me look up to, why don’t you know any of this? That’s alarming to me.
_____________________
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by67kv1_VnA
[2] As an aside, even if it were true that "Sweden did worse than her neighbors" (which was true only up through 2020), Norway, Finland, and Denmark all had among the weakest Covid measures in the world - all had returned children to school Spring 2020 (largely unmasked), the had among the shortest "lockdowns" in the world, and the lowest masking rates worldwide. The fact that all these countries were so successful doing very little should have caused us to rethink our hysteria. Also, why is Sweden only ever allowed to be compared to her neighbors? Why can we compare Florida to California, Delaware to South Dakota, the US to South Korea, but Sweden's success always has to be restricted to a 500 km radius?
[3] Output of STMF from Mortality.org with 2 ways of calculating excess deaths:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1klmb3_vdhClF3Js2RdugsoY83L2moAI-ae2Rgb3F5mw/edit?usp=sharing
[4] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
"That is incorrect.
In terms of Excess Deaths, Sweden had a better outcome than the entire world - including her neighbors. [3]"
You sure about that?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline?country=FIN~SWE~NOR
Yes. Look at the source data which is used to make the OWID graphs. If you add the area under the curve Sweden has the lowest total excess deaths. Only reply you will get from me Albus, can't waste time on a Flat Earther.
"[3] Output of STMF from Mortality.org with 2 ways of calculating excess deaths:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1klmb3_vdhClF3Js2RdugsoY83L2moAI-ae2Rgb3F5mw/edit?usp=sharing"
"If you add the area under the curve Sweden has the lowest total excess deaths. Only reply you will get from me Albus, can't waste time on a Flat Earther."
No surprise, you offer personal attacks--but the fact is your "analysis" isn't just wrong, it is innumerate and just silly.
Good news!
Those pesky scientists have actually done the analysis correctly and Sweden's excess deaths were HIGHER than Norway's--the increase was highly statistically significant.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876034123003714
Hush Albus…don’t you know Michael knows more about these deaths than do the Swedish and Norwegian epidemiologists who have published the mortality analyses?
😉
Some folks think they are entitled to their very own personal facts.
PS I heard a rumor that Kleo got covid and was mortally sick--that is why he hasn't posted in many months.
Doubt it is true.....but who knows?
Lifelong immunity in action?
Here is the raw data used by Zahl et al in your linked study: (weekly deaths 2016-2022, I added what we had of 2023 as well)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KVtbnGW4nw1XY9wQ-BribXuKkMIMbMLQkPIJIVUaXIY/edit?usp=sharing
You should go through it yourself, and see if you can replicate their claim.
Because they are saying 6.5K - 8.8K excess deaths in a population of 5.5 million is much better than 11K - 16K excess deaths in a population 10.7 million. (meanwhile South Korea who Dr Offit believes "did great" has 120-180K excess deaths against population of 52 million)
Remember, Sweden was supposed to have 30K excess deaths in 2020 alone according to the Imperial College Model.
I am sorry you fell for all of this nonsense Albus. I am sorry you believed cloth masks worked, that we should keep children out of school, and all of the rest of the hysteria. And I get you had impressive sounding studies like the "Kansas Mask Study" to justify your buy-in to the hysteria. I feel bad you have been gaslit by people like Dr Offit who now say cloth masks don't work, keeping kids out of school was a mistake after all. That has to be really painful to learn you were duped. It has to be hard.
This study you shared is a good learning example for you on how bullshit gets spread.
I highly encourage you to read a book like Stuart Ritchie's "Science Fictions", or Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". It will help you build immunity to the bullshit that plagues most of social science.
Feynman on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
I provided a link above that explains your errors.
Thank you choose to knowingly do the calculations incorrectly is entirely a reflection on your character.
Why are you strawmanning by claiming people believe things they never said they did?
I am sorry you think the world is flat, and that 9/11 was an inside job, Michael.
...See how this works?
Do you have a link to Imperial's predictions of deaths for Sweden?
"Do you have a link to Imperial's predictions of deaths for Sweden?"
I did make a mistake, it was 96,000 deaths predicted using Imperial Model.
Courtesy of Nele Brusselaers:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf
(Note they removed their code from GitHub)
Thanks for being so thorough with your research.
He is still completely wrong.
Michael doesn't seem to care about getting the facts and analysis correct. Maybe you do:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876034123003714
Sweden could have done even better if they had provided more protection for their elderly. Also, curious if they used early treatment protocols. The US had the worse outcomes. We really need acknowledge what we did wrong so we don’t repeat it.
No, Sweden didn't use early protocols. If they did, they didn't work though, did they, seeing how their Covid mortality was so high during the early phase of the pandemic.
If you are interested in what the US did wrong, then the BMJ is running a series about the lessons that should be learned.
https://www.bmj.com/collections/us-covid-series
A major part of the problem stemmed from this:
"The country’s pandemic response also followed a uniquely American path—fragmented public health responsibilities across federal and state jurisdictions, chronic underinvestment in public health, absence of social safety nets and workplace protections, insufficient legal infrastructure, and long standing social and income inequalities, underpinned by structural racism."
Then you had a politically polarised response; there were deeply partisan attitudes to public health advice which consequently was largely ignored by a large percentage of the population.
total nonsense! Read and learn: https://stevensclark.typepad.com/coronavirus_news_and_view/2023/12/what-we-learned-from-swedens-response-to-covid-.html
Your silly essay with links to 3 year old articles from The Guardian** doesn't change the fact that Sweden had the best outcome in the entire world.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1klmb3_vdhClF3Js2RdugsoY83L2moAI-ae2Rgb3F5mw/edit?usp=sharing
Data > anecdotal stories from the Guardian.
"doesn't change the fact that Sweden had the best outcome in the entire world."
Already proven incorrect.
Apparently, you really just don't care.
Albus: "2 + 2 = 5"
Michael: "23 = 195"
Later Michael: "But my math is actually correct, since I never count any numbers higher than 23...they look a little odd to me".
But 23 base 96 does equal 195 base 10. 🙂
Good thing I posted the actual relevant analysis so everyone can see that Sweden had a greater excess deaths than Norway.
You are just trying to deflect from your errors.
In my original post, I provided estimates of Norway having between 6,500 - 8,720 (+7%) excess deaths (2020-2022) and Sweden having excess deaths between 12,000 and 15,600 (+6%).
Your study runs through week 43 of 2022, and estimates 3,600 excess deaths for Norway and 8,100 excess deaths for Sweden.
Now let's say you're right, let us suppose in fact Norway had +2.998% mortality beating Sweden's +3.005% mortality.
Never mind that the end of 2022 which your study ignores was worse for Norway than Sweden, and let's further ignore that 2023 was also worse for Norway than Sweden - I will temporize your study is the better model, and that Norway had .007% absolute less excess mortality.
Paul Offit said though that Sweden was "middle of the pack in Europe" and "did worse than all her neighbors".
You are defending that claim, by clinging to a study showing a .007 absolute difference in mortality between Norway and Sweden (love to hear you explain away Finland!). If we use that data from the study in question, it places Sweden better than every other European country. Much better. Which again, shows that Dr Offit who I hold tremendous respect for, happens to be unaware he is completely wrong on this.
I'm just gonna post all-cause mortality by year since you seem disinterested in trying to replicate the study you are citing:
Year Sweden Norway
2015 91,025 41,528
2016 91,102 40,436
2017 92,103 40,631
2018 92,302 40,704
2019 88,886 40,458
2020 98,308 41,210
2021 92,079 41,934
2022 94,823 45,585
2023* 88,039 43,488
* provisional
I see 23 countries on your analysis, yet you claim that is "the entire world"?
...I always did think you needed a broader perspective, Michael.
Detailed weekly mortality data is a 1st world luxury. 2nd/3rd world countries don't reliably provide it in a timely manner, which is why the weekly STMF upload doesn't provide data on Africa, almost all of South America, some of Asia, etc. China is notoriously closed with sharing data, and Russia stopped sharing data in 2020.
So yes, when I say "the entire world", I am talking about countries submit reliable data.
There is a good chance that many countries in Africa had an even better outcome than Sweden of course, and you are welcome to argue how by not participating in Covid Hysteria Sudan or Libya had no excess deaths. Sure, go ahead.
As for notable countries (like Japan) that provide yearly data to the Human Mortality Database which aren't captured in the STMF, you can go through zipped files here and see if I'm wrong:
https://www.mortality.org/Data/ZippedDataFiles
Glad you cleared up your misrepresentation there. Try and avoid such misleading sweeping statements in future, maybe?
Offit was talking about Covid deaths, as the video makes pretty clear. Sweden in that regard did really badly, and far worse than its neighbours (who had similar socioeconomic conditions, similar demographics, similar political views etc but which did impose lockdowns). At one point early in the pandemic they had the highest per capita death rate in the world from Covid, and their chief epidemiologist had to publicly apologise for not controlling the spread of virus during the first wave.
They subsequently turned things round, but only by leaving some restrictions in place and by pursuing vaccination very vigorously.
Excess deaths are the metric that matters, you know this. You are smart enough to know that South Korea, with it's 170,000 unexplained excess deaths had far more Covid Deaths than their reported 35K deaths (unless of course your'e a conspiracy theorist who thinks the vaccines caused those extra 125,000 deaths). You are smart enough to know that differences in "mortality accounting" can give different results between countries, states, districts, and that is why all-cause mortality is the metric that matters.
Whether Paul was explicitly talking about "Covid deaths" or "All Cause Mortality" when he says "South Korea did a great job" is irrelevant, because we have the concrete, crystal clear data that no, they did not do well. They had one of the worst increases in all-cause mortality in the world. They did terrible. He only doesn't know this because he apparently never bothered to double check if all the praise heaped on South Korea in 2020 was justified 3 years later.
For Dr Offit to not know this should be very troubling. We may speculate how he could be so misinformed; my guess would be a combination of being insulated with an echo chamber of people who repeat things they have heard without checking them, and the lack of time to do the proper due diligence as he's a physician, author, speaker, committee member, etc.
But it is dangerous to have someone so well respected be so completely misinformed on such an important topic.
Very busy today, so you only get a reply or two, but feel free to go back through our previous discussions Mike S.
MS: "At one point early in the pandemic they had the highest per capita death rate in the world from Covid, and their chief epidemiologist had to publicly apologise for not controlling the spread of virus during the first wave."
Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true. Definition of cherry picking/data drudging.
Tell me, is it fair if I compare New York to Florida using only 2020 data and praise DeSantis for how much better Florida did than New York? Or are you suddenly going to be concerned about confounders? I thought so.
MS: "They subsequently turned things round, but only by leaving some restrictions in place and by pursuing vaccination very vigorously."
Ah yes, it was their "pursuit of rigorous vaccination", that is why Sweden did so well... uh huh...
Remind me then why mass vaccination worked for Sweden, going back to near zero excess deaths 2021-2023, but deaths rose significantly in Denmark, Finland, Norway and exploded in South Korea?
“Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true.”
…..Ahh, yes, like your constant refrain about South Korea’s brief high mortality 🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
You had a go at Offit for misleading about excess mortality when he was correctly talking about Covid mortality. You could apologise.
What’s the best metric to see if Covid vaccines “work”?
Is it Covid deaths or all cause mortality (deaths that could be from anything, even completely unconnected to Covid)?
How do you check if measles vaccine works? Or Hep B vaccine, or malaria? Do you look at all cause mortality, or the mortality from the disease?
The answer should be clear to everyone but if you are deliberately looking to hide the benefits of a vaccine you might look at all causes, including things totally unconnected to the vaccine or illness it prevents.
"Brief high mortality"
10K excess deaths 2020
10K excess deaths 2021
60K excess deaths 2022
40K excess deaths in the first 39 weeks of 2023
"brief"
Ridiculous.
No, no, no, no, no, Michael.
You expressly had a dig at S Korea because in March 2022 they had a death spike from Covid, and this rise was the highest globally.
You then hypocritically attacked me for pointing out that Sweden had the highest global mortality from Covid at one point during the first wave by sarcastically saying this:
"Ah, yes, we only compare a very narrow time window during a multi-year pandemic, that shows us what we want to believe is true."
When I point out your hypocrisy, and also point out that you laud Sweden for it's pandemic response and ignore that it too had the highest global mortality rate (from Covid) in April 2020, you label me as "ridiculous".
Do you want to walk back on your characterisation of this? Do you want to re-read the Demon-Haunted World again, or revise a bit of Feynman?
Here are the EXCESS mostality charts for Sweden and South Korea. As you see, there isn't really a vast overall difference, with both having spikes, and both running positive to baseline currently (though Sweden seems to be having a bad year so far). An alien from Mars invited to compare the charts and decide which country has done better would be hard pushed to objectively tell any difference. You however seem in absolute no doubt...Sweden is the "best in the world", and S. Korea did woefully, and was the worst in the world in 2022.
...such is the power of partisan bias, confirmation bias, and wishful thinking.
https://ibb.co/9G81mkH
Final response. I want to start Paul's book.
I have always shown excess death as a sum of 2020-2022. Every calculation in all my pinned tables always have a single calculation of the full 3 years.
That South Korea did have the highest increase of mortality for any country in the world *after* vaccination, while masking, without other social changes is a notable event that we should all be curious to understand how this happened. Nevertheless, my excess mortality calculations include all 3 years of South Korea.
The biggest difference between us seems to be you are content at looking at massaged data from OWID or another source, taking it at face value, and not being curious to look at the source data. You don't appear to be interested in replication of ideas, double checking. That's fine.
This is part of what I have to do in the real world (double checking engineers smarter than me and reproducing their claims), and I do it here.
Perfect example, you say "Sweden seems to be having a bad year so far", because you see the massaged projections from OWID using their opaque formula for expected, and take it face value.
You see Sweden being 23% higher than expected in the OWID chart, and take it at face value.
I go to the source data, and see that 2004 deaths is only 9% higher than pre-pandemic 1850 deaths for week 51, and know that the model OWID is using doesn't appear reliable.
I strongly encourage you to learn to reproduce and replicate. It would have saved you the embarrassment of thinking kids should wear masks for example.
And tell us again Michael how great Sweden's pandemic response was compared to South Korea's, would you? Did the fact that they have had nearly four times the number of Covid deaths pro rata slip your mind....?
https://ibb.co/rpjPp0p
Yes, Sweden overcounted Covid deaths. They have more covid deaths than excess deaths. It's been discussed before. Even Albus' article comments on this, The Economist, etc.
South Korea undercounted Covid deaths, which was because they barely tested for Covid in 2020 and 2021. Pretty straightforward.
We see other example of overcounting covid deaths, for example there are 0 excess deaths throughout the entire pandemic in all reporting countries (except Canada).
https://imgur.com/a/wIeMkbJ
"Excess deaths are the metric that matters, you know this"
It is also important to have the skills and knowledge to do the analysis correctly--you clearly don't.
Excess mortality calculations are among the simplest statistics to estimate.
Indeed....and even with a primer from actual statisticians.....you still just can't do it correctly.
I suggest that comparing the USA, the U.K. or European countries with countries like S. Korea, Japan, China is not valid. This is because of genetic differences that can make some ethnicities more susceptible to severe disease from the same pathogen. A case in point is that people from Japan, S Korea and China are more susceptible to influenza than Caucasians are, due to a specific genetic variation.
Was Offit talking about Swedish Covid deaths, or all cause mortality?
Great comment as usual.
So you don't care that it is really, really wrong?
In my original post, I provided estimates of Norway having between 6,500 - 8,720 (+7%) excess deaths (2020-2022) and Sweden having excess deaths between 12,000 and 15,600 (+6%).
Your study runs through week 43 of 2022 estimates 3,600 (+2.998%) excess deaths for Norway and 8,100 (+3.005% excess deaths for Sweden. (fig 2, p6)
At this point we are bickering over who was in 1st place, when I am concerned Offit somehow thinks Sweden is "middle of Europe" bad.
Reread my original post footnote - all of the Nordic countries had fantastic outcomes relative to the rest of the world - despite sending kids back to school in spring 2020, largely unmasked; despite having among the lowest mask use; despite very short lockdowns. It's just that after 2020, Sweden ACM started to recede to baseline while Finland, Norway, and Denmark saw ACM rise.
First of all Sweden did not remain fully open. They closed some schools. Their interventions were voluntary, such as keeping 2 metres apart, which most Swedes followed. People worked from home when asked to.
Please tell us your point.
Why does the age of the link make a difference since it dealt with data that occurred before? Your comment is stupid and shows you are unable to read and understand science very well. It and other data I linked to clearly showed that Sweden didn't even have the best data among Nordic countries. Grow up.
Age of a link matters when the information is out of date.
Yes, when that Guardian article was written on June 3rd 2020 it was true Sweden had a bad result.
But the pandemic went far beyond June 3rd 2020.
Now we have a more complete dataset, and Sweden did better than all of Europe, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Finland, etc. I'll let you decide if they did +1% better than Norway or -1% worse, as Albus above alleges by referencing a study going up to Q3 2022.
You provided no data. You provided an essay hyperlinking old articles, one of which was hilariously authored by Nele-"Sweden will have 100,000 deaths by July"-Brusselaers.
Here is the raw data. Look at all cause mortality, by year, going across each country, and see if that matches Dr. Offit's Claim "Sweden was middle of Europe in outcome and much worse than her neighbors"
In picture form (using sum of weekly deaths):
https://imgur.com/Sba79CA
In spreadsheet form (using annual deaths):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1klmb3_vdhClF3Js2RdugsoY83L2moAI-ae2Rgb3F5mw/edit?usp=sharing
If you don't like the method I used (original OWID calc before the switch to Karlinksy-Kovach model) to calculate excess deaths, copy the google doc and come up with your own projections. See how much goal seeking you have to go through to find a way to make Sweden look like they had a worse outcome than the rest of Europe or South Korea.
Sweden did have a worse outcome than South Korea. No doubt. Nearly four times their Covid mortality.
I don't know why you keep banging on about Sweden; it has nothing to do with what this article is dealing with, it just seems that at one point during some unrelated hour-long interview Offit mentioned them, you had issues with that and you are quibbling about what he said. But it looks like he's right, not you (see the Covid mortality charts below, though at best you might say there is if you just look at all cause mortality they've done about the same). I'm unsurprised Sweden might have good [non-Covid] all cause mortality, they are a progressive, country with a left leaning Government that has introduced one of the world's best health systems.
https://ibb.co/rpjPp0p
https://ibb.co/VjSjh42
RFKjr’s lack of awareness regarding the huge impact Hep B used to have is highly worrisome. For someone who pretends to know about childhood infections he’s incredibly ignorant.
All pregnant mothers are tested for Hep B. If they test negative, there is no reason to give it to the newborn baby. Of all the developed nations the US has the highest rate of death in the first day of life and within the first year of life. We are the only country that gives HepB vaccine right after birth. This vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde.
Great, you listened to the anti-vaccs.
1. "All pregnant mothers are tested for Hep B. If they test negative, there is no reason to give it to the newborn baby."
Been tried, didn't work--for a number of reasons including the fact that each year 10,000s of US very young children were getting infected with Hep B NOT from their mothers.
You know, the age group when it is most likely to cause liver failure, liver cancer and kill.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11694691/
2. "Of all the developed nations the US has the highest rate of death in the first day of life and within the first year of life."
And we are the only country that lacks universal health care coverage and the US calculates infant mortality rates differently from other countries. Makes the US look worse.
3. "We are the only country that gives HepB vaccine right after birth."
Simply not true.
For example Canada:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications/healthy-living/canadian-immunization-guide-part-1-key-immunization-information/page-13-recommended-immunization-schedules.html
"Hepatitis B : months 0, 1 and 6 (first dose = month 0) with at least 4 weeks between the first and second dose, at least 2 months between the second and third dose, and at least 4 months between the first and third dose. "
4. "This vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde."
So what? So does breastmilk. Good thing we have toxicologists that have proven the amounts in vaccines are safe.
I didn’t realize Canada was also recommending it for newborns. The Hep B vaccine contains nano particle aluminum. Injected, nano particle aluminum and formaldehyde act very differently in the body than anything that might be found in breastmilk.
FYI Your use of the label antivaxxer is very demeaning. Many people who speak up about vaccine concerns are vaccine injured or have lost a loved one due to a vaccine. They were vaccinated and paid a price for it.
There are clearly a lot of things you don’t realise.
The worst offender in this regard is your idea that children don’t get Hep B because “mothers are tested” in pregnancy. Not all women get tested as antenatal care is extremely poor in large sections of the population. Also, the stats (18,000 children acquiring Hep B) shows that kids do get infected.
Or they were…universal neonatal vaccination has virtually stopped that disaster.
How does a day old baby get hepatitis B, if not from the mother?
The vaccines start on day 1 and the last shot is given at 3 months.
Most of these Hep B infections in kids occur from inapparent exposures to bodily fluids like saliva. The virus is highly infectious, and the worry is that in kids 90% of exposures go on to chronic Hep B carriage with severe liver disease and cancer later in life.
Exposure can result from as little as a kiss from an infectious relative, or sharing a chew toy another (infected) kid had played with in nursery.
Let's hear from parents, all those who share their toothbrushes with their toothless infants.
Paul, your bias is showing with these terribly weak arguments. Hilarious and shameful
Thanks for listing every single weakness in his arguments!
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html
better get that updated booster, albus
You changed the topic!
New topic, and you still can't count.
do your part, for yourself, your loved ones and your community - get that booster!
Of course, I have--like any rational person I get my medical advice from my doctor.
Of course, you continue to change the topic and try and hide the fact that you just couldn't list one weakness.
I am glad Dr Offit included a link to the excellent RFK Jr article in the Lancaster Patriot. I encourage everyone to read it. You have to scroll down to read the each page 1,4,21
https://www.thelancasterpatriot.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/21-210810_TheLancasterPatriot-Final.pdf
It's a puff piece about him. Only "excellent" if you like your info from one side only.
Give it a chance, just listen to the "BS"
https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/psychological-and-cognitive-warfare?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=15g3ru
More than passing strange that a man of “science” with such humbling responsibility and accountability for the health and welfare of millions of Americans would display such hubris and passion publicly by “condemning” so outlandishly a candidate for President. Scary…
Just because you won't look and see RFK jr's decades old grift, doesn't change the facts.
Swing and a miss! I'm not even a Kennedy supporter and your comments are irrelevant to Dr Offit's political tone deafness at best and arrogance at worst.
Did you not read the article you are commenting on?
Do you not understand who the candidate for President is in YOUR response?
Did you not read my comment?
I did....I think your comments about hubris and outlandish condemnation are absurd and now you are just being evasive.
Trust in our healthcare leaders and institutions are nearing the breaking point. And you find it acceptable that one of the key scientific and healthcare leaders (Offit) is engaging in a political hit piece on a Presidential candidate when he should absolutely be at this perilous time seen as an impartial and non-political healthcare leader. One, I might add, who is totally focused and determined to narrow the divide between those scientific leaders and studies that are diametrically opposed to one another. If his understanding of the science is correct he should be able to address the growing issues related to the covic vaccine and not just re-assert the same statements over and over.
Sen. Ron Johnson Roundtable on Feb 26, 2024 | National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) https://www.nvic.org/newsletter/feb-2024/sen-ron-johnson-roundtable-on-feb-26,-2024
Thanks for the irony!
Years ago, Fisher sued Dr. Offit because he publicly pointed out that she lied about vaccines.
And she is still peddling the same old crap.
I was being informative not ironic. I'm watching it live. It's always important to hear and learn from all sides especially when it's uncomfortable to do so. The truth is usually in the middle and often paradoxical.
How is posting nonsense informative?
Did you really not see her many errors?
But hey, apparently, she is pulling in the big bucks with this nonsense.
Intention is not invisible...
Bc we're not having the same conversation or are we?
My conversation is about how your link deceives people with BS.
My conversation is about waking up to BS and seeing it all around me sometimes even in the places that look prestinely clean. I try to look and smell carefully before I step.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/21/tax-records-reveal-lucrative-world-covid-misinformation/
Yes, being a Covid disinformation spreader is a highly lucrative occupation nowadays. Several doctors have fallen for the lure of the filthy lucre.
Pure HOGWASH!!!
Again.....not one single rational thought from an anti-vacc.
RFK Jr. filed a lawsuit against the NIH in an effort to produce one vaccine safety study wherein a placebo was used. He won the lawsuit, but never got the study. Reason being, the liars didn’t have one.
Here’s another one (placebo controlled vaccine study in kids)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19483514/
This time it’s the conjugated pneumococcal vaccine which has replaced the earlier polysaccharide vaccine previously used in most countries.
These studies are done where possible. I’d have said that this one was ethically a bit dubious since you don’t want to test a new product against a placebo if there’s an already available effective product. But they seem to have got away with this because the polysaccharide vaccine isn’t universally used.
It is Scientifically impossible to determine the safety of vaccine if the placebo is anything other than a saline solution.
Efficacy trials using a placebo that is immunologically inert to the target antigen but identical in formulation to the vaccine minus the target antigen can never determine safety.
It can however be used to determine Efficacy which is not the same as safety.
Any “Safety” data collected in an Efficacy clinical trial is irrelevant if the trail used anything other than a saline placebo.
Kennedy specifically asked for SAFETY studies done with saline placebo used for licensure of child hood vaccines.
Not the Efficacy studies used to determine Efficacy.
If you have access to a placebo controlled SAFETY trial (not an Efficacy trial) used for licensure of a child hood vaccine please provide.
What was the placebo in the original Prevnar 7 trial for licensure?
I provided a number of references on what placebos are and how to use them correctly.
Please tell the truth: you refused to read them and learn--right?
There was no placebo in the original Prevnar 7 trails for licensure they used a control vaccine.
(an investigational meningococcal group C conjugate vaccine)
Nope, for more than a decade he has been making money lying to people, counting on them to be too clueless to read:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=vaccine%20saline%20placebo&sort=date
Appears everything you posted was done well after the lawsuit I mentioned. How about you show us one that’s on the childhood vaccine schedule. I’m not interested the clot shot or malaria... etc, just vaccines for the children.
Appears that you really just don't care that the anti-vaccs are liars....
I’m curious, did you get the clot shot?
"Appears everything you posted was done well after the lawsuit I mentioned. "
The list goes back to 1975!
The NIH couldn’t produce one, maybe you can show us how incompetent they are, but they openly admitted they didn’t have one, not before they lost the lawsuit though.
If there is such a study, then how about you produce it, here today.
You want one placebo controlled vaccine study?
OK, here’s one on influenza:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23434387/
For free, I’ll also add that it used saline as the placebo and was in children.
Just curious, how many 1000s of time of the anti-vaccs getting proven to be liars do you need?
PRATTs, all of them!
…Waving the “Pharma shill” flag of surrender, I see.
Hey....you long since gave up the pretense of being interested in the truth.....you just don't care that the anti-vacc lies are killing people.
If only you had a rational thought to offer....you wouldn't have to resort to immoral lies and personal attacks....but just don't have one!