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Investigating the Florida mRNA vaccine study

October 12, 2022 - 3:00pm

“Today, we released an analysis on Covid-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth.”

So went the announcement by the Florida Surgeon General, Joseph A. Ladapo, less than a week ago. The analysis he posted in PDF form listed no authors and was not attached to any publication or university, but made a claim that made headlines around the world: that young men were 84% more likely to die of heart problems in the 28 days after having had an mRNA-based Covid vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna.

This claim, unsurprisingly, sparked a huge reaction. Within hours experts had lined up to defend or attack the study: was it irresponsible flame-throwing by an under-qualified political appointee that was designed to help Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rather than save lives? Or was it a brave and long overdue public acknowledgement by an official of a danger we had all known about for too long?

Finding credible independent voices on a topic like vaccines is not easy. Many establishment experts would rather avoid the topic altogether, as they don’t want to be accused of casting doubt on the sacred shibboleth of vaccine safety. Meanwhile many anti-establishment critics have become activists, determined to uncover wrongdoing, and prove conspiracies far beyond the plausible evidence. Unsurprisingly, we found the sanest voices come from the Nordic countries.

First we spoke to Professor Anders Hviid, Senior Investigator in the Department of Epidemiology Research at the Danish Health Agency SSI. The Danes have been among the most evidence-led health officials in the world, and it is his agency that recently stopped offering vaccination to healthy under-50 year olds.

“If I had to phrase it nicely, this is an incomplete presentation,” says Professor Hviid. As well as the absence of authors and normal transparency, he is unconvinced by the method.

The so-called “self-controlled case series” method which the Florida study uses is unusual: instead of comparing one group against a control group, it looks at timings of events within the same group. The problem he raises is that when the “event” under examination is death, those individuals are obviously not present in the subsequent time period. “That’s a red flag for me,” Professor Hviid says. “I would have liked to see them discuss it and see if it is an important violation of the method.” He doesn’t stop there:

I can’t use this study to substantiate anything. I could talk all afternoon about all the different criticisms I have. For example, the fact that when you are using cause of death, these are delayed; in the study period which they have used this delay would influence the younger people to a larger extent because they are more likely to have been vaccinated at the end of the period and still have incomplete death registration. That’s another obvious source of bias here.
- Professor Anders Hviid

Professor Hviid prefers to point to his own pan-Nordic study investigating the link between myocarditis and mRNA vaccines. His study looked at the health records of all people across Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and did not shy away from controversy:

We have shown ourselves that yes, there is an association between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis, in particular after the second dose, and this is strongest in younger males. But what we’ve also observed that, at least if you look at the 28 days after you have received your diagnosis of myocarditis… in 23 million people in the Nordic countries there were no deaths among young males. That lends support for the idea that although myocarditis after vaccination is a thing, it is much milder than classical myocarditis.
- Professor Anders Hviid

In summary, the Danish view is that while myocarditis is a genuine side effect of mRNA vaccines, it is very rare and does not cause deaths. It is serious for the small minority who suffer from it, and it factors into the agency’s decision to discontinue Covid vaccination for healthy under-50s, but it is not the cause of deaths in any significant number.

Next I spoke to Dr Tracy Hoeg. In theory, she belongs firmly in the anti-establishment corner: she is a consultant epidemiologist for the Florida Health Agency (reporting to none other than Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo) and she has been a vocal critic of lockdowns, school closures and vaccine mandates.

Although she is at pains to avoid criticising her “good friend” Mr Ladapo, even she is not fully convinced by the Florida study. She doesn’t know who the authors are, and she works in the same department: “It’s one finding, it’s one study… It’s interesting that it would only affect 18-39 year old males and not the other groups, so I don’t think it should be dismissed,” she said. But she acknowledges the very small sample size:

It’s really important for people to consider that context: the number of deaths is very small. And I agree that if it were just a couple fewer it wouldn’t have been statistically significant. If we’re seeing deaths following the vaccine in this age group, it’s not in high numbers. That’s important to state.
- Dr Tracy Hoeg

She also finds the evidence of the earlier Nordic study powerful:

They didn’t have deaths in that study… I will say that in the New England Journal of Medicine from Israel, there was a death reported related to myocarditis in a young male. And there have been some deaths reported due to myocarditis in the peer reviewed literature, but to my knowledge they are less than 10.
- Dr Tracy Hoeg

She is against vaccinating children, against continued vaccine mandates on university campuses, and supports the Danish government’s decision to cease vaccinations for healthy under-50s: “If you’re healthy and you’re not high risk under 50, I think that that is a fair cut off.”

But she does not think that vaccines are the underlying cause of the excess deaths that we are continuing to observe around the world, which remains a popular theory on the internet:

I have been looking to Sweden again, the great control group, to figure out what’s been going on with the excess deaths. Up until recently they really didn’t have excess deaths following the vaccination campaign — in my mind that speaks very strongly to the excess deaths being seen in Europe and the US being related to the harms of the lockdowns predominantly rather than the vaccines. I am not saying there are no deaths being caused by the vaccines — that’s really difficult to rule out… but I do think that we shouldn’t be jumping to the conclusion that this is due to vaccines.
- Dr Tracy Hoeg

Although they diverge in emphasis, it seems these experts are both approaching a position that we might call vaccine-centrism. This involves acknowledging that vaccine injury is real, that side-effects such as myocarditis are real, and for groups like younger men make the risk-reward calculus of taking further Covid mRNA boosters highly questionable. However, it rejects the idea that the vaccines have been causing large numbers of deaths and that there is any global conspiracy to cause or cover-up harms for malevolent ends.


Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.

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Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago

The author somehow brings talk of conspiracy theories into the otherwise reasonable scientific discussion of a study. It’s time to put away the insults. I will remind him that it was not so long ago that talk of ANY severe vaccine adverse effects was met with that same derision.

Last edited 2 years ago by Peter J. Yim
Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

I do not understand your post – are you saying the conspiracy theories are right or wrong?

This Danish guy is Danish Health Agency SSI, which is neck deep in the UN, and is about like asking the CDC or FDA to discuss this study.

All charts and tables below reflect the data release on 7/29/2022 from the VAERS website, which includes U.S. and foreign data, and is updated through: 7/22/2022
High-Level SummaryCOVID19 vaccines (Dec’2020 – present)All other vaccines 1990-present US Data Only
COVID19 vaccines (Dec’2020 – present) US Data Only
All other vaccines 1990-present Number of Adverse Reactions1,357,940889,073848,094772,338Number of Life-Threatening Events33,12414,62612,91810,013Number of Hospitalizations170,15184,88065,97039,412Number of Deaths29,790*9,885*13,8055,394# of Permanent Disabilities after vaccination55,71921,23614,48513,116Number of Office Visits200,58052,385167,29249,983

The Highlighted number is covid vax adverse effects, the next fallowing is All other vaccines combined adverse effects since 1990, the third and fourth the same but excludes non-USA who entered data on the USA VAERS report.

So there you go – VAERS reports – which are serious reporting, not just casual, adverse = 1,357,940 covid vax adverse effects up to death and complete disability likely under reported 10x to 100x

Watch Senator Ron Johnson’s Senate 5 hour senate conference on covid – meet the actual Vax injured – hear the actual doctors – this is USA Senate Hearing – watch is, and a Lot more is now known,, it starts at minute 43 so scroll forward

Ron Johnson – Senate Hearing – COVID-19: A Second Opinion – January 24, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asw_FBipVpg

Last edited 2 years ago by Aaron James
Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago
Reply to  Aaron James

My comment was in the spirit of finding common ground. Let’s agree to the ground rules of the debate. No more name calling. I think the jury is still out on Ladapo but this article has a reasonable perspective. To address your points though – the VAERS reports are the smoking gun of smoking guns in my view of vaccine injury and death.

Last edited 2 years ago by Peter J. Yim
Ari Asulin
Ari Asulin
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

WHY PRESIDENT TRUMP MUST ENDORSE THE COVID VAX:
1) He is part of a military operation against the CCP medical coup of America.
2) Globalists’ plan involved starting Covid once HRC won. When she didn’t, they waited until the last year of DJT’s term to roll it out for several reasons:
    A) Cover for election fraud
    B) Start the depopulation
    C) Begin fear/control
    D) Not give him enough time to make a vaccine so they could present one that could be approved by the FDA and MANDATED FOR ALL.
3) DJT had to countermove… to get rid of Covid/Fear/Control, expose big pharma, and ensure a quick vaccine would have to be labeled experimental, NOT be mandated.
4) He had to weigh both options:
    A) Tell America the vaccines are a big pharma / globalist plan to depopulate the world.
    B) Endorse it.
CONSEQUENCES OF EACH:
    A) If he warned, the media would mock him, call him a failure, hype Covid all the more, demand a real vaccine, and then he wouldn’t be able to expose election fraud, make thousands of arrests, expose the deep state plan, and turn things around naturally with the public waking up. He would have had to stop the election fraud before it could be seen, taken office for the second term, and forced his hand resulting in chaos and a certain civil war with MSM stoking the flames and increasing public terror or let it play out for election fraud and a Biden takeover which would let the deep state to create an approved, MANDATED vaccine, killing millions more.
    B) By endorsing it but placing truthful info in alternative news sites, the deep state’s vaccine HAD to remain experimental and not mandatory, which was NOT part of their plan.  

This plan worked to turn this around, stop the momentum, have WAY less deaths, and get the vaccinated sheep to med beds. Those who got the vax under Operation Warp Speed will not be injured. Those who got the Boosters under Biden will be.

In war, sometimes you have to choose between two bad options. Given the globalists’ strategy, DJT and the military chose the path with the fewest casualties, and that is to keep going with the facade of endorsing the toxic but NOT MANDATORY vaccine publicly. The alternative would have been FAR more deadly for all of us in so many ways.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
2 years ago

This is why I don’t trusts ‘scientists’ or ‘studies’ anymore. It’s well beyond the average layperson, including myself, to understand what even constitutes good research, let alone decide what conclusions can be drawn from that research. As the author notes, good objective scientists fear political repercussions for research that doesn’t support the narratives of their backers, so they just avoid politically fractious topics, and what we get on topics like vaccines, masks, and climate, are politically driven research from one side or the other, where the results are influenced by the bias of whoever funded the study, and often even by the scientists themselves, who are human beings who are just as partisan and political as anybody else and just as susceptible to the effects of political polarization in media.

Last edited 2 years ago by Steve Jolly
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Scientists are generally not all geniuses or angels, and they are all fallible. But it is not hopeless. Most try to find something true and try to listen to arguments. And even outsiders can at least identify some things that are bad research. Check if it sounds plausible. Hear some arguments from both sides, and see how they answer each other. Do they sound like they are trying to identify and solve problems, or are they just fighting for a preconceived opinion? Do they have data, and is it credible that their data could support their conclusion? Do they dismiss a lot of available information, maybe because they fear a conspiracy? OK, I am in the business myself, which helps, but you do not need to be a professional to get some idea what is off-the-wall, plausible, somewhat likely, or almost certain.

Last edited 2 years ago by Rasmus Fogh
Colin K
Colin K
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Most try to find something true and try to listen to arguments.

The last two and a half years have shown that simply not to be the case. “Vaccines” are treated as a religion to most and the fact that mRNA shots were labelled as vaccines meant that few even bothered to think anything beyond normal vaccines are safe these must be too.
I know a lot of scientists and they have been the worst for parroting the official narrative unquestioningly in the last two and a half years (only one actually spoke out). On the other hand my friends who work in outdoor ed have been far quicker to see through the covid scam.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Colin K

Have you considered the possibility that they did listen to your arguments, but decided they were worthless? Or let people they trusted do it for them?

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
2 years ago
Reply to  Colin K

Just as vaccine denial is treated as a religion by others

Glyn R
Glyn R
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

The MRNA jabs are not vaccines.

Fran Martinez
Fran Martinez
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

This neglects the fact that most scientists careers depend on publishing in high impact journals and obtaining funding. Things that infinitely easier to do if your research does not run against the status quo (I’m also in the business myself ).

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Fran Martinez

Up to a point, prime minister. Everybody’s big dream is to come up with something that is different or even contrary to the status quo, and prove it is true. That is how you get Nobel prizes. That pushes in the opposite direction, even though there are fashions, yes, and there is a filter against ideas that are so contrary to known results that nobody thinks they could possibly be true. Scientists are reluctant to disregard what they already know unless there good evidence that the alternative will be an improvement, but with patience and enough data you can get there.

J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Agree about expert opinion. With respect to the current article, I’m persuaded by the Danish professor, but this whole incident reeks of politics and raises more questions than it answers.
Why did the Florida surgeon general release this study (or pseudo study)? Was it a political stunt on behalf of Ron DeSantis?
Why did the epidemiologist from the Florida Dept. of Health agree to this interview in which she walked back the report from her state’s surgeon general? Was this done at the behest of the Dept. of Health? Are they trying to distance themselves from a political surgeon general? Did the surgeon general authorize this interview to walk back his own comments? Was Dr. Hoeg rather foolishly freelancing?
At the end of the day, we all have to identify a source of covid-related information we think we can trust and read their analysis. Then we apply our own common sense. There’s not much else we can do.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I agree, the Danish professor seems on face to be the most credible. Then again, that probably reflects my own personal biases, as I’ve come to think of the Scandinavian countries as refuges of sanity and civility in an increasingly cutthroat Tom and Jerry world.

David Barnett
David Barnett
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

“This is why I don’t trusts ‘scientists’ or ‘studies’ anymore”
The fundamental problem is that most people (including some people with scientific credentials, apparently) do not know what science is about. They see the remarkable things science has uncovered and think science is about “truth”. It is not.
Science is about mapping falsehood. “Truth” may lie in a region not yet shown to be false. Thus, the results of scientific studies should not be presented as “proving” an hypothesis, but rather that the hypothesis has not been excluded by the result, while the null hypothesis is either ruled out or in trouble. A bit pedantic, perhaps but absolutely crucial.
=================
P.S. Anyone using expressions like “follow the science” is not talking science but dogma.

Last edited 2 years ago by David Barnett
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  David Barnett

That is the Popper view – but AFAIAC it is not correct. If it was, then any rubbish idea someone dreams up and no one can find time to disprove would be as reliable as the theory of relativity, which has stood against attacks for over a century. Science is about truth, as I see it, but what it can actually determine is the *probability* that something is true (the technical term is ‘Bayesian’). Instead of a simple choice between ‘unknown’ and ‘wrong’ we have all possible probabilities. And we can actually find results tha prove some theory is more probable, even if different people have different ideas of exactly how probable..

David Barnett
David Barnett
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

That is the Popper view – but AFAIAC it is not correct. If it was, then any rubbish idea someone dreams up and no one can find time to disprove would be as reliable as the theory of relativity, which has stood against attacks for over a century”
…….
Your relativity example refutes your proposition. It’s survival of more than a century of serious attempts to refute relativity experimentally, that gives us confidence it is close to reality. But as Einstein said, “Nature never says ‘yes”. The best you can hope for is ‘maybe'”.
………………..
If a theory is incapable of disproof, it is not going to have anything useful to say scientifically, because it provides no boundaries to bracket the truth.
……….
I stand by the proposition that the scientifically correct way to present a scientific study is by an estimate of the likelihood of its data disproving the hypothesis in question.

David Barnett
David Barnett
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

P.S. to my reply of a few minutes ago.
———————–
One must not be mislead into thinking that an experimental refutation of one theory automatically proves the correctness of what you think is the only viable alternative theory. For example: In 1802, Young performed his famous double-slit experiment which seemed to “prove” Huygen’s wave theory of light and “disprove” Newton’s particle theory. During the whole of the 19th century, more and more evidence stacked up in favour of the wave theory, until Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect. The latter was an important indication of the need for quantum theory, one of whose features can be interpreted as wave-particle duality.

Edward De Beukelaer
Edward De Beukelaer
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

it is to be noted that the editor of the lance wrote in 2015 that he now realises that 80% of peer reviewed studies published are either wrong or useless to medicine. This ties in with Aseem Malhotra’s description of the state of medicine (based on articles published in the BMJ) that a majority of people in the medical community do not know that they do not know that the medicine we know has been mainly the results of investment decisions by the illness (health?) industry. Once you become aware of this it becomes an issue knowing who gets the story as accurate as can be possible…

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago

You know why they have ‘Secret Ballots” retribution. And that is the mechanism of this Plandemic – your scientific or medical career is destroyed if you stick your head over the parapet. I Australia your medical license pulled if you sign exemptions, proscribe medications for covid – suggest to not vax! Same in Canada, and almost everywhere in the West. That is why the people on the study would not list their names – or they were unemployable. The Pharma is a crime syndicate.

Then Fauci holds all the strings to show’s university or research gets funded – and Pharma has a list you do not want to get on…All the Bio-Pharma top dogs do time in Regulation first – to get the inside contacts – then go to pharma and make their millions – Corrupt! Pharma pays for its own regulation!

Try getting some Mexican beat cop on TV and demand he reveal the real truth on the Cartels – that’s how it is with these guys.

SNITCHES GET STITCHES.

These two are likely shill – note how nervous the last one looked when Freddy asked the hard questions? How evasive her answers?

”Latest VAERS Data Show: 5,165 Deaths Reported Following COVID Vaccines
I guess the one death they admitted to is in there (and that number is 10X to 100X under reported.)

Just go on ‘Rumble’ the uncensored Youtube platform and search recent Drs

McCullough, Kory, Malone, Wolf…..

or Senator Ron Johnson for USA Senate hearings with Real Vaccine injured – real scientists who have the fortitude to snitch on the evil Bio-Pharma Industrial Complex.

Freddy – why did you not ask these two why early treatment was forbidden? That is the crime against humanity.

Circular Point
Circular Point
2 years ago

Freddie you say in your opinion the vax program was not a deliberate attempt to harm, which I can basically agree with too. Instead you say vaxing may have become an almost religious ideal, however don’t you think finance may have had played just a little role here (especially given the outcomes)?

Last edited 2 years ago by Circular Point
Keith Dudleston
Keith Dudleston
2 years ago

No “cover-up”?
So what are we to make of recent claims that Pfizer didn’t show a reduction in virus transmission before it took the drug to market? The Pfizer vaccine does cause myocarditis; the AstraZeneca vaccine does cause rare, dangerous blood clots. The use of both types of vaccines is restricted in some jurisdictions.  
But still, information is blocked on many platforms, and now the US government faces legal action because of claims it encourages this censorship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6VbI8gOnUM
https://www.science.org/content/article/hard-choices-emerge-link-between-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-rare-clotting-disorder-becomes
 

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
2 years ago

The problem he raises is that when the “event” under examination is death, those individuals are obviously not present in the subsequent time period. ‘That’s a red flag for me,’ Professor Hviid says. ‘I would have liked to see them discuss it and see if it is an important violation of the method.'”
Haw? Call it “survival analysis” or analysis of “duration”. Analysis of death processes has a long history. It applies to questions like “How long does a light bulb last?” Or, “How long did people live after getting open-heart surgery?”
This is very standard stuff, replete with canned programs.

pete wright
pete wright
2 years ago

Dr Hoeg seems to be wanting to sit firmly on the fence, she’s against vaccinating children and in fact everyone under 50 but refuses to see a warning sign in the Florida study. But regarding whether the vaccines are causing the excess deaths I believe deaths won’t be directly attributable to the jabs, but they’re affecting immune systems so that problems previously held in check are suddenly reappearing, sometimes with serious consequences. How long can lockdowns be the cause of excess deaths, a year, two, five? There must be a cut off.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 years ago
Reply to  pete wright

Couldn’t the lingering effects of Covid-19 infections be responsible for the excess deaths? That seems more likely a cause than the mRNA vaccines.

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

why? young healthy people don’t die from covid 19.

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago

Freddie, to conclude that you have not seen a massive cover up by big pharma is astounding. We just learned that phizer did not study transmission reduction before role out. We just heard from two experts that young folks where safe all along. We knew this all along, but millions where forced to lock down, take the jab and shut up. My wife still has no doctor because she was denied care for not getting the vaccine. I respect you as a person but I can’t express how wrong I think you are. I now view big pharma as greedy, self serving, opportunist.

Last edited 2 years ago by si mclardy
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago

I seldom see any discussion of the comparative risks involved. When this report came out I tried to do a sanity check calculation. It was crude – but such calculations serve to bound a problem or rule it out. The headline someone forwarded me was that the Florida study found “an 84% increase in cardiac related deaths” in the 18-39 male age group among those who were vaccinated. I wanted to know: if this is true, is it significant?
First I tried to estimate how many deaths we’re talking about. According to https://healthhearty.com/heart-attack-statistics-by-age it’s less than 7/10,000 for 35-39 and 3/100,000 in 0-34. For all people, not just men. Since most of the 18-39 group is below 35 I’m going to make a WAG and say the cardiac related deaths in 18-39 men is 1/10000, which is 3 times higher than the group missing the top four years of the one claims are being made about.
So an 84% increase in that number is going to be 8.4/10000. How many men are in that age group? There are roughly 160M men in the U.S. Restricting to that age range, as near as I can tell we’re talking about about 98M men (census website). So multiply those two numbers and it looks like before covid 9800 could be expected to die of cardiac problems. Multiplying by 1.084 it’s 18,159. So a rough estimate of the number of males that could be expected to die of cardiac complications if ALL OF THEM were vaccinated is about an additional 8300. Sounds awful.
But – comparative risk – to what? If all of them got covid how many would we expect to die? CDC says the death rate among the infected unvaccinated in the 35-39 age group is 0.056. So if all 98M men were in that age group, unvaccinated, and caught it, we’d expect 5,488,000 of them to die. They’re not all in that age group. The 20-24 death rate is 0.008. That’s still 784,000 deaths. The first is an upper bound. The second is a lower bound. Somewhere between 800,000 and 5,000,000 deaths presumably would have been averted at the risk of killing maybe 8300 of them from vaccine side-effects. That’s a 100-fold difference in risk.
My assumptions were, of course, that all were vaccinated or all caught covid. In fact, reality is somewhere between in both cases. So maybe the risk difference is really only 50-fold. Or even going way out there – 10-fold. It’s still a huge difference.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

This is the right way to go about making an estimate. I suspect you have got some numbers wrong though – This link gives 94640 COVID-associated deaths out of 6812040 COVID cases for unvaccinated people *of all age groups* in 2021, which is a rate of 0.014. That number is not calculated properly and has all kinds of uncertainties (I am not going to defend it), but a death rate of 0.056 – 5.6% – for people aged 35-39 cannot be right (you would need to link to the page where you got it). Still, I suspect that a more correct calculation would still lead to the same conclusion.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

I was using rates from this table (after deciding not to spend the time it would take wading through the CDC site for data):
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/11/18/covid-infection-fatality-rates-sex-and-age-15163

Last edited 2 years ago by Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
2 years ago

Ahh. I just looked again at what you were saying. I dropped the “%”. It should have been 0.056%. Which of course makes that number 100 times smaller. So 54880. Not nearly so dramatic, but still the kind of result I was expecting. Thanks.
Note that it also makes their current advice for this age group entirely reasonable: something like “you should consider it, but there are risks so it’s up to you”.
We’d all be better off if this wasn’t such a political football.

Arkadian X
Arkadian X
2 years ago

There is (at least) one mistake (that I can see) in your calculations. An 84% increase from 1/10000 is 1.84/10000, NOT 8.4/10000 which would be an increase of 740%.

Cheryl Cheston
Cheryl Cheston
2 years ago

As others have mentioned, your math is way off.

Colin K
Colin K
2 years ago

Except the “vaccine” doesn’t stop them catching covid, and I have yet to see any convincing evidence that it will reduce their chance of side effects.
Euromomo tracks all cause mortality and you can see that in the two groups under 45, excess deaths are increasing since the vaccine roll out.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#excess-mortality
If all cause mortality isn’t reduced in those groups, why the hell is this crap being pushed for them?

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
2 years ago

I gather that “self-control” approach amounts to alternative language for “fixed effects” analysis. Nothing wrong with that, per se. Indeed, such an analysis could be entirely appropriate when analyzing non-experimental data.
I can imagine the analysis amounted to an off-the-shelf analysis of individualized “hazard rates”. Basically, the likelihood of an individual expiring on a given day may be very, very small, but vaccine status is a individual attribute. If the data show that hazard rates increase with vaccination, then there we go; we have evidence that the vax increased the likelihood of expiring.
Controlled experiments are all very nice, but running a big experimental study takes time and resources. Meanwhile, there is a lot of observational data laying around. There is information in those data. So, go ahead and run a standard “survival analysis” (that would yield individualized hazard rates). You know, do something like fit a semi-parametric Cox (proportional hazards) model to the data. That could make for a very compelling analysis. Is that what our friends in Florida did?

Last edited 2 years ago by Chauncey Gardiner
Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 years ago

“There is information in those data.”
Often that is not true, and mining data gives one a false belief. That is what one author calls The Phantom Pattern Problem: The Mirage of Big Data. Data can only give you an association or correlation, and not causation. Too many people ignore that limitation. 
Models of complex systems can mislead, as models are always simpler than the system they model. As George Box put it, “models are always wrong”. Although as he later added, “but some are helpful”, it’s best to use models only to develop a hypothesis, and to never think that a model can be proof.

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago

at the 24 minute mark she states that the study finds no increase in deaths in the other age groups. Joe Ledapo stated that they did see a rise in deaths in all ages but it is more pronounced in the young. Then she states that only a few young people died Joe Ledapo stated that 77 young people died…… not a big deal?! all we heard for 2 years is how bad covid was. But do you care to tell everyone how many children died out of 50 million?
Lets not forget Joe Ledapo has a PHD in medicine from Harvard. The elites love to prattle on about their credentials until they don’t like the narrative.

Last edited 2 years ago by si mclardy
Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago

“The problem he [Hviid] raises is that when the ‘event’ under examination is death, those individuals are obviously not present in the subsequent time period.”
That is essentially the issue of bias in applying Self-Controlled Case Series to “non-recurrent” events. That issue is addressed by Whitaker et al:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30284323/
If findings from that group are correct/applicable, that type of bias is small to negligible bias in the Ladapo study.

Last edited 2 years ago by Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago

Hoeg misstates/misunderstands the findings:
“It’s really important for people to consider that context: the number of deaths is very small. And I agree that if it were just a couple fewer it wouldn’t have been statistically significant.”
Hoeg seems to be referring to the results for the <40 age group. In fact, the main finding of the study was the statistically significant increased risk of cardiac death in the 60 group.

Keith Dudleston
Keith Dudleston
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

In the over 60s group? I’m surprised. Are you sure?
It would help a lot if you could set out the numbers. How many cardiac deaths were in the vaccinated group? How many deaths might we have expected in a similar-sized non-vaccinated group?
If true, this is an important twist.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

If you follow the links to the report, you will find that the authors do *not* say anything about risks to the over-60 in their conclusions. They do say, under ‘Limitations‘:

Confounding by age may be present in the 60 years or older age group, which may explain the slight elevated risk for cardiac-related deaths following vaccination.

If you go into the table, you find that the ratio of cardiac-related deaths vaccinated / baseline is 1.05 (1.01 – 1.10), that is a 1-10% increase. On the other hand the ratio of total deaths is 0.97 (0.94 – 0.99), that is a 1-6% decrease on vaccination. The authors clearly conclude that neither change is significant enough to worry about.

To a casual observer this seems to be a decent study – the one, huge, warning flag is that it is anonymous (and not peer-reviewed). But it is not unusual to see effects in one study (or particle physics experiment) that are not born out by other studies. The overall conclusion will come when you consider this in combination with other studies – and some very big studies in the UK and scandinavia seem to not have found effects anywhere near that big.

Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

If the older/larger group is excluded that would make the study less impressive. I do wonder though – I would think confounding by age would work in the opposite direction – towards masking a potential vaccination risk.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

If (unlike the authors) you believe it is significant with a 1-10% increase in cardiac-related deaths, should you not also believe that it is significant with a 1-6% decrease in overall deaths? You cannot get it both ways.

Anyway, you always need to consider alternative studies and counter-arguments before coming to a conclusion – even correctly executed studies can give results that do not stand up on repetition, particluarly if the signal is weak (we are talking 10-15 extra deaths here in a particular age group). Frank McCuskers post gives a good link for the counter-argument. Their main argument is that the study design is not invalid but has various weaknesses – and that the data look very much like someone analysed in ever more detail until they found a subgroup that gave the results they wanted. Which is a common enough practice that it has its own name ‘p-hacking’.

Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

The possibility that the study was a fishing expedition – that tests were done until a positive result was found – is concerning – although cardiac death/mRNA/males grouping is supported by the literature.
The Mole concern about use of SCCS with mortality study is probably not an issue – others have addressed bias in SCCS trials of “non-recurrent events” – probably small scale in this case.
My reasoning on age confounding: All study subjects are slightly older during the SCCS baseline period as compared with the risk period. As a result, the risk of cardiac or all-cause death would tend to be slightly increased in the baseline period. For that reason, both cardiac and all-cause vaccine mortality risks may have been underestimated.

Last edited 2 years ago by Peter J. Yim
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

Sounds like we do not disagree that much. I would certainly not agree with Mole’s choice of adjectives, they seem over the top, but Prof. Hviid seems to be missing a lot of extra information before he could rely on this. I might include this study in a literature analysis (were I to make one), but weigh it down relative to some others. It certainly does not sound strong enough to carry its conclusion without support from other papers (unless you think the prior probability of it being right is particularly high). But then few studies are

I do think there are reasons to suspect that someone deliberately might have tried to produce something that could be used against vaccines. Why no letterhead, and no authors, for instance? Could it be that no one could be found who both would appear credible and was willing to defend these conclusions? Why did they exclude people who got COVID from the study, it would be easy enough to keep them in? Afraid of finding that the vaccine helped? Why did they combine the 18-24 and 25-39 year groups for male cardiac fatalities, but not for both-sexes cardiac fatalities? Necessary for statistical significance? These are all points that peer reviewers might have raised and gotten answers to. But this pdf was never reviewed.

Last edited 2 years ago by Rasmus Fogh
Peter J. Yim
Peter J. Yim
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

I would just add that a lot of the commentary is just related to seeing how the sausage is made – metaphorically. Clinical trials are inherently messy affairs – even the so-called gold-standard pharma trials – or especially the gold-standard pharma trials – have loose ends/biases etc. In the end, there is always some residual uncertainty. In my view, on balance, this is a respectable trial.
Regarding possible rigging of the study/data – who knows – although I don’t see the motive – it would be somewhat contradictory for a true believer.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter J. Yim

I do see the motive. If you believe strongly that vaccinations are bad then 1) you will tend to believe the evidence that supports you and think evidence that disproves you has to be wrong or fake, 2) You will want to promote convincing evidence of what you know was true, and if it does not come naturally you will make it. That is before we even come to the selfish interest of de Sanctis in supporting his policies and making his followers happy.

John Doe
John Doe
2 years ago

Freddie, if you really want to get closer to the truth, please interview Dr Aseem Malhotra. The silence from UnHerd about Dr Malhotra’s peer-reviewed papers on the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines is deafening.

For more information, see:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=253&v=MtE0I5FqHPs&feature=emb_logo

https://insulinresistance.org/index.php/jir/article/view/71

https://insulinresistance.org/index.php/jir/article/view/72

https://rumble.com/v1ojedq-freeman-interviews-dr-aseem-malhotra.html

Thank you.

Last edited 2 years ago by John Doe
Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
2 years ago

Freddie – I have to tell you that there is conclusive evidence for a ‘conspiracy’ to impose vaccines on the world and I’ll explain it to you quite simply:

  1. If there is a new ‘illness’, the first thing you do as a doctor is to look around to see if there are any licensed drugs which might be ‘repurposed’ for use against this new illness.
  2. When scientists find not one but over half a dozen such modalities, the absolute ethical requirement of pharma, governments etc is to pursue the use of such options in controlled trials to see if cheap effective treatment modalities are already available.
  3. Only when and if such studies prove to be useless should the untested vaccine approach be the ‘last port of call’.

The evidence is indisputable that both in the UK, the USA and much of the EU that semar campaigns, government corruption occurred to prevent such drugs being tested and, when proven in ‘less developed geographies’ to have been entirely efficacious (from places as far away as Peru and Brazil, Egypt and India etc etc), to see such studies replicated in rigorous trials in the UK/EU/USA.
Absolutely everything in this country was geared to Bill Gates’ vaccine mandates and, blow me down, Bill Gates made 20:1 on his Moderna investment. Bill Gates had no right to have any investments in any vaccine companies if he was trying to influence global policy. He did and that is criminally negligent malfeasance in terms of global governance behaviour.
Our non-government caused a minimum of £500bn damage to the UK economy courtesy of lockdowns, corrupt supply contracts for useless products like masks, PCR tests and the like and in doing so, goes down as by far the most corrupt government in UK history since Charles I.
And now, the Goldman Sachs globalist billionaire, Rishi Sunak, unwanted by the Tory Party members, has been foisted on the country by the bankers, the globalists and the billionaires.
Now I know your employment may not be compatible with airing what I have just written, but your statement at the end of this video merely says that you have made sure not to look where you might find the evidence…..

Last edited 2 years ago by Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
2 years ago

Freddie – I have to tell you that there is conclusive evidence for a ‘conspiracy’ to impose vaccines on the world and I’ll explain it to you quite simply:

  1. If there is a new ‘illness’, the first thing you do as a doctor is to look around to see if there are any licensed drugs which might be ‘repurposed’ for use against this new illness.
  2. When scientists find not one but over half a dozen such modalities, the absolute ethical requirement of pharma, governments etc is to pursue the use of such options in controlled trials to see if cheap effective treatment modalities are already available.
  3. Only when and if such studies prove to be useless should the untested vaccine approach be the ‘last port of call’.

The evidence is indisputable that both in the UK, the USA and much of the EU that semar campaigns, government corruption occurred to prevent such drugs being tested and, when proven in ‘less developed geographies’ to have been entirely efficacious (from places as far away as Peru and Brazil, Egypt and India etc etc), to see such studies replicated in rigorous trials in the UK/EU/USA.
Absolutely everything in this country was geared to Bill Gates’ vaccine mandates and, blow me down, Bill Gates made 20:1 on his Moderna investment. Bill Gates had no right to have any investments in any vaccine companies if he was trying to influence global policy. He did and that is criminally negligent malfeasance in terms of global governance behaviour.
Our non-government caused a minimum of £500bn damage to the UK economy courtesy of lockdowns, corrupt supply contracts for useless products like masks, PCR tests and the like and in doing so, goes down as by far the most corrupt government in UK history since Charles I.
And now, the Goldman Sachs globalist billionaire, Rishi Sunak, unwanted by the Tory Party members, has been foisted on the country by the bankers, the globalists and the billionaires.
Now I know your employment may not be compatible with airing what I have just written, but your statement at the end of this video merely says that you have made sure not to look where you might find the evidence…..

Last edited 2 years ago by Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
2 years ago

When you look at the ‘science’ you should do so totally blind to who did it and where it was published. That means you evaluate the science, not the reputation of the scientists and the journal.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
2 years ago

When you look at the ‘science’ you should do so totally blind to who did it and where it was published. That means you evaluate the science, not the reputation of the scientists and the journal.

Ari Asulin
Ari Asulin
2 years ago

The #GRAPHENEOXIDE (i.e. “Black Goo”) in the vaccines (which remains in the corpse after death) reacts to 5G TOWERS recently installed all over the planet. Every 5 months after a new vax is introduced, the 5G TOWERS hit the population with high amplitude EM waves during their sleep between 3am and 6am. During this time, babies are aborted, life spans are shortened, and trouble makers in our society fall chronically ill. The 5 month delay prevents **any** western doctors from establishing causality. The goal was population control and 100% remote control of our bodies, and we let them have it. But that’s not all. These TOWERS are capable of reanimating dead human corpses containing GO. This feature of GO has been widely demonstrated, especially in meat products.

Now think about this……

We’ve been hit by an increasing amount of #Zombie media in the last 20 years. This REVELATION OF THE METHOD technique prepared our society for the real thing. If you think zombies aren’t scary or real, it’s because the movies make it seem that way. Find a real video of the real thing (i.e. bath salts controversy). They are hands down the scariest creature you would ever encounter – a human without their soul desperate to rip you apart and drink your blood (as they can no longer generate blood of their own). After we’ve dealt with the actual horrific reality of a deadly zombie out-break, we will END ALL #PROTEST, keep the masks on forever, give up our rights, and allow their agenda. We’ll say “SORRY WE DIDNT BELIEVE YOU ABOUT COVID”. Future generations will look back at Zombie movies and assume 1. We knew about the threat and 2. Those BILLIONS who died did so as a result of not being compliant enough with masks and mandates.

STILL REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT?  
1. Open Google
2. Type in “CDC Zombies”
3. Hit Enter

sal b dyer
sal b dyer
2 years ago

For most of the past 2 years I’ve been part of the Covid vaccination teams in rural and remote Australia, roaming the outback drumming up business for the cause of preventing yet another western disease from devastating a “vulnerable” population. At first people were reluctant and we held our sausage sizzles and education campaigns mainly for the benefit of the local clinic staff. Gradually locals came forward and we managed vaccination rates comparable to the rest of Australia- 60-70%. I’m now back to the usual role of providing chronic disease care in the same communities, and the locals are coming in for their Covid boosters voluntarily without inducements or campaigns. In the process I’ve had access to hundreds if not thousands of patient records and verbal reports from other clinicians, and have to say I’ve yet to come across a genuine complication or side effect of the MRNA vaccine. 2 people came forward with minor symptoms they were convinced were due to the vaccine- for instance palpitations, fatigue, fevers- both white, middle aged, 1 male 1 female, who were duly reported to the therapeutic drugs agency. They had full cardiac work ups including MRI scans looking for signs of myocarditis, which were concluded as normal. This is anecdotal and not a large enough sample to be representative. Meanwhile back in the world of usual primary care, rates of smoking, alcohol and poor diet related diseases are rampant, with variable but often serious side effects to statins, anticoagulants, antibiotics etc. But no one bothers too much, we all just accept that juggling risk benefit ratios of our dodgy lifestyles and their medical treatments are part of everyday life. We probably went overboard with lockdowns, school closures, mandatory vaccinations and so forth, but in the scale of things the vaccines themselves appear to be a relatively successful addition to the management of a potentially nasty and unpredictable novel virus.

Colin K
Colin K
2 years ago
Reply to  sal b dyer

Covid was massively overhyped and not a problem for anyone in good health. You should be ashamed of yourself for playing your part in this scam.
All cause mortality is up in Europe, despite covid being down since the “vaccine” rollout, so I fail to se that as successful, especially as the deaths have moved to younger age groups.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality

Last edited 2 years ago by Colin K
Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
2 years ago
Reply to  Colin K

I beg to differ. I was in good health – non-smoker, light drinker, eat well and regular boxercise. It floored me and my health has been poor ever since. Enough of the gaslighting that chronic fatigue, double pneumonia, and severe heart arrhythmias – all of which occurred in my first covid bout, long before i had any vaccine – are somehow “hyped”. I had covid again, after being vaccinated, and it was much milder. Go figure.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 years ago

A very helpful program. There’s too much noise about the vaccines and their safety, none of based on science. It is hard to do science when it comes to human health, so speculation and surmise is helpful too. But we need to recognize how limited we are in doing that.
The scientific evidence shows that the mRNA vaccines are safe and effective. That does not mean that they don’t cause death or injury. That does not mean they are effective against all variants. So we should be open to later-found evidence that they are more dangerous to use in some age groups or that they are ineffective against the variants circulating now.
But we need to be careful that we have scientific evidence, not just statistics, before we throw out our prior beliefs for new ones.

Last edited 2 years ago by Carlos Danger
Colin K
Colin K
2 years ago
Reply to  Carlos Danger

The all cause mortality data says otherwise. Especially for younger groups.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality

keep on boosting!

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
2 years ago
Reply to  Colin K

No one has any scientific evidence that the vaccines have caused the increase in all-cause mortality. The only evidence is statistical, and that’s not scientific. That’s correlation, not causation.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
2 years ago

Clickbait. There’s only one question relevant here – has this been peer reviewed? If not, it’s cranksville territory. And Ladapo, a well-known crank, is deeply partisan on the issue:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/that-florida-analysis-on-covid-vaccines-is-you-guessed-it-total-garbage/

si mclardy
si mclardy
2 years ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

Ledapo has a PhD in medicine from Harvard. I don’t know if he is right but I would like to hear both sides. not this bull # censorship coming from the white house.
ps. I include Trump in that comment.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
2 years ago

All very convincing (apart from the original Ladapo announcement, apparently).

One might add that if both vaccine damage and COVID risk is quite low in the young, then both vaccination and non-vaccination could be reasonable choices. No strong reason *not* to vaccinate either.

Last edited 2 years ago by Rasmus Fogh
Paul Hendricks
Paul Hendricks
2 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Young people I talk to say they got (and some, continue to get) the Wuhan flu shot because they think it’s selfish not to, since they might get the virus and kill some elderly or immunocompromised (whatever that means) people; or else they just want to go school, fit in, travel etc without hassles. Then of course what few say outright but many make plain in so many words, because if they didn’t, they’d be taken for a “Trump supporter,” bigot, “science denier,” “anti-vaxxer,” “climate denier,” Christian, transphobe, homophobe, and/or Republican; or else their parents won’t let them stay at home and keep mooching.

Which all sounds very reasonable I’m sure.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
2 years ago

I think that All Good People can agree that anything out of the State of Florida government is tainted with DeSantitis and the “threat actor” Gov. DeSantis who is probably behind this MDM. (Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation).
No, experts agree that anything from DeSantis is sick and wrong.

Aaron James
Aaron James
2 years ago

You are a Pfizer research Scientits, arn’t you? I think I saw exactly your statements in some data they released to convince New York people to quadruple vax, and to mask 2 year olds.