Which vaccine? You can't just say "the vaccine". Which one? Pfizer, AstraZeneca, ??

@LukeShadwell Fair point. Let's name the five manufactuers:

• Pfizer-BioNTech

• Moderna

• Johnson & Johnson

• Novavax

• AstraZeneca

Banning or pausing some but not all of these will result in a partial resolution.

@JeffBerman ty!

"The scientific community has mixed views"? What is the evidence for this statement?

Regardless, the Trump administration doesn't seem to know or care very much about what the expert opinion on any topic is.

@equinoxhq Yes, mixed views. If you think the scientific community has one united view on this in either direction (the COVID vaccine is an unmitigated good / the COVID vaccine is an unmitigated bad), you may want to explore some news sources beyond those that support what you already believe.

@JeffBerman I'm quite certain if I google "Scientists think X is good", and then "Scientists think X is bad", I will get a nonzero number of results each time, for any X. Likely the number of results for each search will be tens of thousands. Such is the nature of the Internet.

For many Xes, one search will return a bunch of scientific papers and consensus statements by groups of scientists pushing back against misinformation, and the other search will return results where the sources are a few people quoted in all the news articles, each with some scientific or professional background but not typically in the field in question, claiming that the scientific consensus is wrong. For example, in relation to Covid vaccines, back when they were first rolling out it tended to be a handful of osteopaths, geologists, and doctors with nonmedical doctorates or who had lost their medical licenses due to fraud on one side, and virologists and practising medical doctors, or statements on behalf of entire relevant university departments or associations of the same, the other. Journalists who write for various publications will quote either in their articles, and the stronger a consensus is, the more of a market there often is for someone to come forward willing to say the opposite, and a journalist to write an article about it.

What I was asking was not "will you tell me to read different things than I have read without checking what I have read?", but "what evidence do you have for this statement?" Normally journalists who are good at their job will indicate where they got their information, and if it was a scientific paper or statement made on behalf of a group of scientists which the journalist is interpreting, you can go look up the original source. My current understanding is that Covid vaccines are generally thought to be much more beneficial than harmful, and that there is a scientific consensus about this fact. Is there a group of scientists with relevant backgrounds who think otherwise? If so, please provide references to their papers or statements, as that would be genuinely interesting. Which is why I asked.

@equinoxhq Here’s the Great Barrington Declaration, for starters:

https://gbdeclaration.org/

@equinoxhq Safety & effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines: A narrative review

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9552389/

@equinoxhq

https://idpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40249-021-00915-3

Effectiveness and safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in real-world studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis

@equinoxhq

There are many more peer-reviewed studies by leading scientists. I'm confident you're capable of finding these without my help.

• A study published in "Science, Public Health Policy and the Law" reported 19,028 American deaths related to the COVID vaccine as of September 6, 2024, according to data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This study suggested that these numbers might be underreported by a significant factor, estimating real potential deaths could be much higher.

• A publication by the Doctors for Covid Ethics summarized four scientific findings critical to the vaccination program, suggesting that the vaccines might not be as beneficial as initially thought due to concerns like antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) and the natural immune system's response to the virus.

• Another paper discussed by researchers like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff pointed out significant design flaws in the clinical trials of the vaccines, notably a mismatch between trial endpoints and actual public health outcomes, which might affect perceived efficacy.

• A meta-analysis on the efficacy and safety of different vaccine platforms from controlled and randomized clinical trials highlighted varying degrees of effectiveness among different vaccines, with some showing lower efficacy rates against certain variants or in specific demographics, thus casting doubt on the uniform efficacy across all groups.

• A systematic review and meta-analysis on the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines suggested that mRNA vaccines might be linked with higher rates of serious adverse events compared to other platforms, though no direct causality was confirmed. This review also noted that serious adverse events were rare but existent.

@JeffBerman First and foremost, I want to express appreciation to you for providing sources to which I can respond. Thank you. That took effort on your part, and the fact that I'm going to respond from a different viewpoint than yours and may poke holes in some of them, doesn't mean you wasted your time in providing them.

I've got a busy day tomorrow, and will likely get back to this conversation on Friday or over the weekend.

A few questions about the different outcomes:

• If it gets announced at paused and the government days they'll "reevaluate", does that count as "retest"?

• If it gets announced add"paused" and "retested" but we don't hear anything about actual tests, does that count as "retest"?

@AlexanderTheGreater Good question. If the vaccine is paused, that satisfies the "paused and retested" option.

@JeffBerman you could edit the answer to say pause and (optionally) retested if you want, that's possible under the three dot menu

@ian Good suggestion. For the sake of clarity, I removed "retested".