Rfk drops ball

[probinson]

I've never said that NZ's geography or demographics are comparable to the US.

At the very least, you're not acknowledging the highly beneficial role that your geographic features played in being able to suppressed the disease.

Yes, agreed.

Once we had vaccinated our population and once we stopped with quarantining at the border, and stopped with lockdowns and social distancing and masks, then the disease was reintroduced to the country and quickly spread everywhere, as expected.

Why was that expected? If vaccines reduce the risk of infection as you claim, why did the rate of infections take off like a rocket in NZ? You cannot simultaneously believe that vaccines reduce infections and explain that you "expected" it to "spread everywhere" without employing an astounding amount of cognitive dissonance.

The USA response was a disaster. You had the the Republican lead Pandemic Task force trying to get people wearing masks and distancing, you had the Republican president saying he won't be wearing masks, saying it's just like a flu, that it will miraculously just go away, and eventually inserting himself into the daily taskforce broadcast and contradicting the scientists and contradicting the message that the taskforce was trying to convey. You had Republican governers fighting against masks and social distancing, and you had Democrat governers trying to go with the WHO, CDC and taskforce recommendations.

All of this begins with the assumption that masking and social distancing were beneficial. But as I've handily illustrated all throughout this conversation, that's simply not true. The reason there was so much controversy is because the public health authorities were pushing nonsensical, unscientific, ineffective measures and ignoring decades of sound pandemic preparedness plans. With that in mind, it was perfectly reasonable to question what was being mandated.

Unfortunately your capacity to understand is very limited, and instead you spout out propaganda troupes.

"Tropes". For the umpteenth time.

COVID has symptoms like the flu, but being a novel virus it was much more deadly, many orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu.

While it's almost impossible to calculate the IFR of "the flu" since the "the flu" is basically a catch-all term for respiratory illness, at the beginning of the pandemic, when people were trying to make the case that "the flu" was much more deadly than covid, they threw around the IFR of 0.04% for "seasonal influenza". Of course, this was back when the media was pushing the narrative that the death rate from COVID was 3.4%. That was never true.

Let's compare that to the actual IFRs from COVID.

The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years.​

So for everyone under the age of 40, it was indeed accurate to say that it was very much like the flu. In fact, the flu was MORE deadly than COVID for that age group. Once you got over the age of 40, the IFR was marginally higher. But overall, the media IFR for COVID for anyone under the age of 70 was this:

The IFRs had a median of 0.035% (interquartile range (IQR) 0.013 - 0.056%) for the 0-59 years old population, and 0.095% (IQR 0.036 - 0.125%,) for the 0-69 years old.​

​

Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly informed from pre-vaccination national seroprevalence studies

The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection is important to estimate accurately, since 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years. In systematic searches in SeroTracker and...

www.medrxiv.org

​

​

Given that the IFR for "flu" was stated to be 0.04%, it was indeed accurate to compare the mortality of COVID with the flu.

But you see, they needed to convince you that it was "many orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu". Apparently, the propaganda campaign was successful with you. You seem blissfully unaware of just how low the IFR of COVID actually was, BEFORE there was a vaccine available. Worse, you seem unwilling to look at that data and come to the realization that by posting that COVID was "many orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu", you are guilty of propagating blatant misinformation.

Watch this four-minute video. It's a mashup of the media castigating Trump for questioning the 3.4% number on a "hunch" and experts (like Dr. Fauci and Ionnidis) stating that estimate was WAY too high.

 

[probinson]

When did I say vaccinations stop infections?

You accused me of posting misinformation for simply posting studies that showed that there is a correlation between an increased number of vaccine doses and increased infections. Your country seems to be validating that hypothesis. If vaccines reduced the risk of infection, why do you have so many infections despite a very high vaccination rate?

If USA didn't bother getting people vaccinated, you would have had 2-3 million dead.

You are continually ignoring the actual IFR numbers. These aren't "guesses". These are actual mortality rates. The bottom line is, the overwhelming majority of people under the age of 70 were NEVER at any significant risk from COVID.

 

[probinson]

It's because the whole thing became very political very quick.

"How seriously one takes covid" became a quasi-personality type in the US.

Not just the US. The whole world wanted to make sure everyone knew that they weren't "grandma-killers".

When people start decorating their social media profile pics with banners discussing what medical choices they've made, it's less about them actually taking it seriously, and more about letting everyone else know how much they take it seriously for "cred".

People posting Facebook profile pics of themselves in their car, alone, with a mask with a border that says "Do your part #SaveLives" just screams of "somebody like me please" desperation. Or posting a picture of themselves with a Band-Aid on their shoulder to let everyone know they got vaccinated.

People like to feel like they're "doing something". It gives them a false sense of control in an out-of-control situation. That's why people were buying up toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. Most people didn't really care if what they were doing was beneficial, so long as they were "doing something."

"Do your part" was really nothing more than a coordinated propaganda campaign. Sadly, public health authorities succeeded in convincing the masses that their fellow human beings were nothing more than disease vectors to be avoided at all costs.

 

[stevil]

You accused me of posting misinformation for simply posting studies that showed that there is a correlation between an increased number of vaccine doses and increased infections. Your country seems to be validating that hypothesis. If vaccines reduced the risk of infection, why do you have so many infections despite a very high vaccination rate?

The vaccination reduced the R0 so flattens the curve somewhat, but the R0 is still higher than 1 so numbers infected are increasing and ultimately everybody ends up getting infected at some stage. But so what?
What is actually important is that hospitalisations and deaths reduce.

USA stopped reporting on Covid infections way sooner than NZ did. NZ did a terrific job of tracking the infected.

The bottom line is, the overwhelming majority of people under the age of 70 were NEVER at any significant risk from COVID.

When you have a population of 360 million, a low percentage, adds up to a high number of deaths.
The approach in the prevaccination error for many countries was to flatten the R0 in order to slow the spread of the disease into unvaccinated populations. Once people were vaccinated, countries didn't tend to continue worrying about the spread of the disease so much, they reduced restrictions. Stay at home if you are experiencing symptoms, otherwise come to work or school etc.

 

[stevil]

At the very least, you're not acknowledging the highly beneficial role that your geographic features played in being able to suppressed the disease.

Being an island had no impact on suppressing the disease.
We did lock downs and masks and social distancing which helped suppress the disease and then helped irradicate the disease altogether.

Being an island help us prevent re-introduction of the disease from the rest of the world, as well as, of course, our putting people coming in from overseas into quarantine for 2 weeks.

 

[probinson]

The vaccination reduced the R0 so flattens the curve somewhat,

Here again, you claim that the vaccine REDUCES infections. Yet the data from NZ shows the exact opposite. Infections were not reduced. They increased exponentially, despite high vaccination rates. How do you explain that apparent contradiction in your positions?

but the R0 is still higher than 1 so numbers infected are increasing and ultimately everybody ends up getting infected at some stage. But so what?

"So what?" If giving a vaccine to someone makes them MORE likely to be infected, that's a serious concern. I've posted multiple studies in this thread that have demonstrated that the more doses of COVID vaccine you give someone, the more likely they are to be infected. This is not a new phenomenon. It's called "immune enhancement" and it was a concern when they were developing the vaccine. More studies are showing that this correlation between increased number of vaccine doses and increased infections is not merely a coincidence. No graphic demonstrates this issue more clearly than the Cleveland Clinic study that showed a perfect correlation between increased vaccination doses and increased infections.

If vaccination reduces the R0 as you claim, why did the people in this study with 0 doses (i.e. unvaccinated) experience FEWER infections than the vaccinated with any number of doses?

USA stopped reporting on Covid infections way sooner than NZ did. NZ did a terrific job of tracking the infected.

"Contact tracing" was probably one of the most inane and damaging policies of the pandemic. My son and daughter were both in high school at the time "contact tracing" was en vogue and they were removed from school multiple times not because they had actually been infected with COVID or were exhibiting symptoms of any kind, but because they had been a "close contact" of someone who tested positive. Then they'd have to sit at home for some arbitrary number of days to appease the buffoonery of public health morons that were literally making it up as they went. The disruptions to their educations were incredibly detrimental, and NO ONE was any safer because of this absurd CDC policy.

When you have a population of 360 million, a low percentage, adds up to a high number of deaths.

Yes. Like with the flu, as one example. With the flu having an IFR or 0.04%, that results in deaths each year. Oddly enough, no one ever suggested masking and social distancing, even when hospitals were overrun to the point they had triage tents in the parking lots in California. That's because there was a time when level-headed scientists kept calm and didn't incite panic and fear so they could institute whatever nonsensical measures they felt like.

The approach in the prevaccination error for many countries was to flatten the R0 in order to slow the spread of the disease into unvaccinated populations. Once people were vaccinated, countries didn't tend to continue worrying about the spread of the disease so much, they reduced restrictions. Stay at home if you are experiencing symptoms, otherwise come to work or school etc.

Complete nonsense. As I've already shown, the IFR of COVID was on par with, and in many cases, LOWER than that of seasonal influenza. The idea that everyone needed to be vaccinated to be "safe" was unscientific propaganda that did little more than enrich Pfizer and Moderna.

 

[probinson]

Being an island had no impact on suppressing the disease.

I'm sure you believe that.

We did lock downs and masks and social distancing which helped suppress the disease and then helped irradicate the disease altogether.

Seriously, why do you keep typing "irradicate"? Are you so stubborn that you cannot admit that you're intentionally choosing a word that indicates that the disease was "deeply rooted" in your country? The word you're looking for to inaccurately describe what you've convinced yourself NZ did is "eradicate".

Being an island help us prevent re-introduction of the disease from the rest of the world, as well as, of course, our putting people coming in from overseas into quarantine for 2 weeks.

It really was a shame that the NZ policies dehumanized people as nothing more than disease vectors to be avoided at all costs.

 

[stevil]

Here again, you claim that the vaccine REDUCES infections. Yet the data from NZ shows the exact opposite. Infections were not reduced. They increased exponentially, despite high vaccination rates. How do you explain that apparent contradiction in your positions?

I don't think you know what R0 means. Infections will only reduce if R0 is less than 1, if it's more than 1 then infections increase exponentially.
We would expect that infections increase exponentially in an vaccinated population, and we would expect infections increase exponentially in an unvaccinated population as well.

Have a lower R0, lets say an R0 of 2 rather than an R0 of 3, means that it spreads still, and grows exponentially, but slower than the R0 of 3.
Saying that NZ eventually had everyone infected at some point doesn't at all address whether the vaccinations reduced the spread rate or not.

Do you understand? I don't think you do.

 

[BPPLEE]

Not just the US. The whole world wanted to make sure everyone knew that they weren't "grandma-killers".



People like to feel like they're "doing something". It gives them a false sense of control in an out-of-control situation. That's why people were buying up toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic. Most people didn't really care if what they were doing was beneficial, so long as they were "doing something."

"Do your part" was really nothing more than a coordinated propaganda campaign. Sadly, public health authorities succeeded in convincing the masses that their fellow human beings were nothing more than disease vectors to be avoided at all costs.

The hospital I worked at put security in charge of screening people. We had to take their temperature, ask if they had any symptoms and if they had traveled outside the US. At first, no visitors were allowed but after some time they allowed one visitor. If they were a visitor, having a fever, symptoms or having traveled abroad would prevent them from coming in. If they were there to be treated, nothing prevented them from coming in. Everyone had to wear a mask but people with symptoms were not separated in the waiting room. People who were there for other reasons were exposed to people with Covid symptoms.
They were only isolated after they tested positive, then there was a floor in the hospital for Covid patients only.
There's no telling how many people were exposed in the waiting room.
Coming to the hospital was probably the worst thing you could do unless you already knew you had Covid

 

[probinson]

I don't think you know what R0 means.

So again, look at this data.

Of the 50,000+ people in this study, why did the unvaccinated people (0 doses) have FEWER infections than EVERY group that had been vaccinated regardless of the number of doses they'd had?

Clearly you must know that the number of infections is directly correlated to the R0. If administering a vaccine causes "immune enhancement", whereby people who have take the vaccine are MORE LIKELY to be infected, and if it is observed that the susceptibly of people is INCREASED as they are give more doses of the vaccine, that is a concerning finding that suggests that repeated dosing of COVID vaccines may not be providing the benefit assumed.

Do you understand?

 

[probinson]

The hospital I worked at put security in charge of screening people. We had to take their temperature, ask if they had any symptoms and if they had traveled outside the US. At first, no visitors were allowed but after some time they allowed one visitor. If they were a visitor, having a fever, symptoms or having traveled abroad would prevent them from coming in. If they were there to be treated, nothing prevented them from coming in. Everyone had to wear a mask but people with symptoms were not separated in the waiting room. People who were there for other reasons were exposed to people with Covid symptoms.
They were only isolated after they tested positive, then there was a floor in the hospital for Covid patients only.
There's no telling how many people were exposed in the waiting room.
Coming to the hospital was probably the worst thing you could do unless you already knew you had Covid

Our school district purchased a high end video thermometer. As the students entered the building, they would pass in front of the camera, and it would register their temperature on a computer screen. If it was above the allowable threshold, the person monitoring the screen would stop them from entering the building.

At my office, they took it even further and installed a thermometer controlled door lock. Not only did I have to scan my employee badge, but then I had to stand in front of the sensor with an acceptable body temperature or the door would not unlock.

One of my favorite examples of boneheadedness was when I would go the drive thru of a restaurant. They didn't want us touching each other, so I would have to put my money in a bin, they would take the bin in and take the money out, then put my change in the bin with my food and make me take it out of the bin, and then convince themselves this was somehow "safe" because we didn't actually have any physical contact. It never seemed to dawn on them that now not only did they have my scary germs, but that they had created a whole new vector of transmission with the bin such that EVERYONE that touched it was now effectively making contact with each other.

When I think back on the idiocy that we all allowed, it disturbs me. That anyone thought any of this was in any way scientific or necessary is a testament to the gullibility of the populace, particularly when the government has incited panic and fear. Logical thought and reason went right out the window.

 

[stevil]

"So what?" If giving a vaccine to someone makes them MORE likely to be infected, that's a serious concern. I've posted multiple studies in this thread that have demonstrated that the more doses of COVID vaccine you give someone, the more likely they are to be infected. This is not a new phenomenon. It's called "immune enhancement" and it was a concern when they were developing the vaccine. More studies are showing that this correlation between increased number of vaccine doses and increased infections is not merely a coincidence. No graphic demonstrates this issue more clearly than the Cleveland Clinic study that showed a perfect correlation between increased vaccination doses and increased infections.

View attachment 362997

This "information/misinformation" that you are personally spreading across the internet has been debunked.

Cleveland Clinic Study Did Not Show Vaccines Increase COVID-19 Risk - FactCheck.org

Numerous studies have found that additional COVID-19 shots are generally associated with extra protection against the coronavirus. Many people on social media, however, have shared a preliminary finding from a Cleveland Clinic study and misrepresented it as proving that getting more doses...

www.factcheck.org

Cleveland Clinic Study Did Not Show Vaccines Increase COVID-19 Risk​

Numerous studies have found that additional COVID-19 shots are generally associated with extra protection against the coronavirus. Many people on social media, however, have shared a preliminary finding from a Cleveland Clinic study and misrepresented it as proving that getting more doses increases a person’s risk of infection.

The researchers also noticed that people who got more vaccine doses prior to Sept. 12, 2022 — the day the bivalent booster became available at the Cleveland Clinic — had a higher rate of testing positive in the following months than people who had gotten fewer prior vaccine doses. But the researchers didn’t find that more doses caused a higher risk of infection. Rather, this finding was an association that could be due to multiple other factors. And studies have generally found that each additional vaccine dose reduces COVID-19 risk.

Vaccinated People Not More Susceptible to COVID-19 Than Unvaccinated - FactCheck.org

Q. Are vaccinated and boosted people more susceptible to infection or disease with the omicron variant than unvaccinated people? A. No. Getting vaccinated increases your protection against COVID-19. Sometimes, certain raw data can suggest otherwise, but that information cannot be used to...

www.factcheck.org

Multiple studies indicate the vaccinated or boosted are afforded at least some temporary protection against omicron infection, albeit at a reduced level compared with previous variants.

A study of patients in Southern California, for instance, found that two doses of the Moderna vaccine reduced the risk of omicron infection by 44% in the first three months, compared with 80% for the delta variant, with a further decline over time — to around just a 6% reduction as much as a year out, versus 61% with delta. A booster increased protection against infection with both variants, but protection was not as high against omicron.

Other analyses, including ones from Denmark and the Veterans Health Administration, have found similar results.

“The relative protection with omicron is less compared to prior variants (especially with just 2 doses rather than 3), but that protection still exists,” University of Pennsylvania infectious disease fellow Dr. Aaron Richterman told us in an email. “There is a lot of solid evidence supporting this.”

Misconstruing Raw Data​

The incorrect notion that vaccinated and boosted people are more susceptible to COVID-19 than the unvaccinated often comes from a misunderstanding of raw data, which cannot be used to reach conclusions about vaccine effectiveness.

The Walgreens data that our readers wondered about, for example, related to higher positivity rates in the vaccinated and boosted people who showed up to pharmacies to be tested for COVID-19, compared with those who were unvaccinated.

The Gateway Pundit shared a screenshot of a Walgreens “COVID-19 Index” dashboard with such figures and declared the numbers “shocking.” The site proceeded to inaccurately interpret the data as showing “the vaccines are not working as advertised.”

But as Walgreens had previously explained on its dashboard — and later said in a more detailed report — the positivity rates are unadjusted and can “lead to misinterpretation.”

 

[Hans Blaster]

So, how about this Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior guy?
Where’s he in all the last eight pages?

He's too big wrecking public health to participate.

 

[probinson]

This "information/misinformation" that you are personally spreading across the internet has been debunked.

It has not.

Cleveland Clinic Study Did Not Show Vaccines Increase COVID-19 Risk - FactCheck.org

Numerous studies have found that additional COVID-19 shots are generally associated with extra protection against the coronavirus. Many people on social media, however, have shared a preliminary finding from a Cleveland Clinic study and misrepresented it as proving that getting more doses...

www.factcheck.org

So, you're saying that you think factcheck.org is a more authoritative scientific source than the study itself?

This chart is not "misinformation". It displays the results of the study by number of vaccine doses. As any objective person can see, there is a clear correlation between an increased number of vaccine doses and an increased number of infections. Try to spin it away however you like, this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what should happen with a vaccine that is effective at preventing infections.

The authors of the study said this about this "unexpected finding"

​

The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with more prior vaccine doses was unexpected. A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of participants in this study were young, and all were eligible to have received ≥3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, which they had every opportunity to do. Therefore, those who received <3 doses (46% of individuals in the study) were not ineligible to receive the vaccine but rather chose not to follow the CDC's recommendations on remaining updated with COVID-19 vaccination, and one could reasonably expect these individuals to have been more likely to exhibit risk-taking behavior. Despite this, their risk of acquiring COVID-19 was lower than that that of participants those who received more prior vaccine doses.​

​

Ours is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19. During an Omicron wave in Iceland, individuals who had previously received ≥2 doses were found to have a higher odds of reinfection than those who had received <2 doses, in an unadjusted analysis [21]. A large study found, in an adjusted analysis, that those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving 3 doses of vaccine had a higher risk of reinfection than those who had an Omicron variant infection after previously receiving 2 doses [22]. Another study found, in multivariable analysis, that receipt of 2 or 3 doses of am mRNA vaccine following prior COVID-19 was associated with a higher risk of reinfection than receipt of a single dose [7]. Immune imprinting from prior exposure to different antigens in a prior vaccine [22, 23] and class switch toward noninflammatory spike-specific immunoglobulin G4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination [24] have been suggested as possible mechanisms whereby prior vaccine may provide less protection than expected. We still have a lot to learn about protection from COVID-19 vaccination, and in addition to vaccine effectiveness, it is important to examine whether multiple vaccine doses given over time may not be having the beneficial effect that is generally assumed.​

​

In conclusion, this study found an overall modest protective effect of the bivalent vaccine against COVID-19 while the circulating strains were represented in the vaccine and lower protection when the circulating strains were no longer represented. A significant protective effect was not found when the XBB lineages were dominant. The unexpected finding of increasing risk with increasing number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses needs further study.​

​

Effectiveness of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Bivalent Vaccine

Among 51 017 working-aged Cleveland Clinic employees, the bivalent coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine was 29% and 20% effective in preventing infection while the

academic.oup.com

​

​

Your factcheck.org doesn't even attempt to address these findings. It just basically says, vaccines are good, more is better. But it fails to address the very real concerning findings that the authors discuss here.

While this study shows the clearest picture of a potential link between increased vaccine doses and increased infection, they point out it is not the only study with that finding. There are three other studies listed that had similar findings, that people with more doses had higher odds of infection.

Further, there is a much more recent study, published just a few weeks ago, that again found a concerning link between increased mRNA vaccine doses and increased infections.

Repeated COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations increase SARS-CoV-2 IgG4 antibodies, indicating extensive IgG class switching following the first booster dose. This shift in IgG subclasses raises concerns due to the limited ability of IgG4 to mediate Fc-dependent effector functions.​

...​

Elevated IgG4 levels and higher ratios of non-cytophilic to cytophilic antibodies after booster vaccination were significantly associated with an increased risk of breakthrough infections (IgG4 HR[10-fold increase]=1.8, 95% CI=1.2–2.7; non-cytophilic to cytophilic ratio HR[10-fold increase]=1.5, 95% CI=1.1–1.9). Moreover, an increased non-cytophilic to cytophilic antibody ratio correlated with reduced functionality, including neutralization.​

...​

These findings suggest a potential association between IgG4 induction by mRNA vaccination and a higher risk of breakthrough infection, warranting further investigation into vaccination strategies to ensure sustained protection.​

https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(25)00067-2/fulltext

​

​

You can call these studies "misinformation" and post dismissive "fact-checks" if it makes you feel better. But the reality is that there are multiple studies (I've referenced 5 in this post) that have found a concerning link between increased vaccine doses and increased infections. Ignoring the results of these studies is remarkably foolish.

 

[probinson]

He's too big wrecking public health to participate.

Well, one good thing RFK Jr. has done is get rid of Dr. Peter Marks.

We still have yet to determine the harm caused by Dr. Marks decision to remove the most experienced and trusted vaccine scientists who simply wanted more time to understand the, now proven, risks of the COVID vaccine. But it cannot be overstated how destructive Dr. Mark’s decisions have been to drug development. His uneven application of basic clinical trial data interpretation calls into question the impartiality and credibility of the FDA. This is particularly relevant now as a young patient who could have lived many more years died from an expected toxicity.​

Dr. Marks may try to claim that differences with Secretary Kennedy on vaccines caused his termination, and the legacy media may try to paint Dr. Marks as the FDA hero, but the real reason he was terminated from public service is that he made bad decisions contrary to FDA policies and he ignored professional career staff at FDA. Thanks to Dr. Marks’ terrible decisions, we are left with a gene therapy that has no proven benefit and that just killed a young patient, as well as a COVID-19 vaccine now recommended for children who have no significant risk of harm from the underlying infection.​

​

Dr. Peter Marks Was a Hero to Biotech Investors, Not Patients and Public Health

A series of poor decisons that ignored FDA staff and outside experts marked Dr. Marks for government termination.

disinformationchronicle.substack.com

​

 

[probinson]

For those of you who were bemoaning the cancellation of the FDA's advisory committee meeting to select a flu strain for next year's flu vaccine, you should check out this study by the Cleveland Clinic on the efficacy of the 2024-2025 flu vaccine. Despite 82% of their workforce being vaccinated, the vaccinated group was at a 27% HIGHER risk of infection than the unvaccinated group. That means the efficacy of the 2024-2025 flu vaccine was roughly -27%. Perhaps the advisory committee's selection of a flu strain isn't all that important if these are the results they get.

Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2025/04/04/2025.01.30.25321421.full.pdf

 

[hedrick]

For those of you who were bemoaning the cancellation of the FDA's advisory committee meeting to select a flu strain for next year's flu vaccine, you should check out this study by the Cleveland Clinic on the efficacy of the 2024-2025 flu vaccine. Despite 82% of their workforce being vaccinated, the vaccinated group was at a 27% HIGHER risk of infection than the unvaccinated group. That means the efficacy of the 2024-2025 flu vaccine was roughly -27%. Perhaps the advisory committee's selection of a flu strain isn't all that important if these are the results they get.

View attachment 363257

Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2025/04/04/2025.01.30.25321421.full.pdf

The results in that study are a bit peculiar. The clinic require flu shots, but allows exemptions. they compared the people who got the shot with those with exemptions.

They found a couple of things
1) those who got the shot were tested for flu significantly more
2) If you look at the percent of tests that were positive, starting at day 80 (not sure why they started then, but that's probably whe flu season starts for real) initially the vaccinated have significantly lower positivity. Over time it comes close to the same

Here's my interpretation:

We know that the vaccine is only effective for a few months. The chart showing percent of tests positive (not shown here) pretty much matches that, with a significantly lower number for vaccinated, going to about the same. (Their line goes slightly abvoe zero at the end, but I think that's because theyh were fitting a straight line, which is simple but an approximation.)

The chart shown here seems to be based on total incidence, not fraction of tests, so the lower percent of positive for vaccinated would be balanced by the higher percent of people vaccinated tested from day 80 for a while, but as percent positive became equal, the greater number of tests of those vaccinated would dominate. This explains the shape of the chart shown here.

Interpretation depends upon why you think more vaccinated people got tested. The ratio remains constant over the whole period. Their interpretation is that vaccinated got more cases and so had more tests. But it's very peculiar that the ratio is constant, when we know vaccine effective decays with time, and the course of the epidemic changes as well. If we mostly pay attention to the chart showing the percent of tests positive, then we get a quite typical pattern of moderate effectivness after vaccination, decaying over time.

We really need an epidemiologist to look at the paper.

 

[hedrick]

The previous post could suggest that no flu vaccine has been approved for 25 26. In fact it has. It was approved at a meeting on March 13.

 

[stevil]

Here is a chart posted by the CDC as per the effectiveness of the Flu vaccine over the years.

CDC Seasonal Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Studies

VE estimates vary across studies due to differences in design, outcome(s), and population studied.

www.cdc.gov

I am not clear on what is meant by vaccine effectiveness. You are trying to put a yes effective or no not effective binary call onto something that is a bit more complex than that. As we know there is the aspect of either not getting infected or being asymptomatic, and there is the aspect of severity of infection, does it lead to being bed ridden, or hospital care or death?

I'm assuming effective is in relation to a control group (a.k.a. unvaccinated) so in the chart above 60% effective may mean you are 60% less likely than an unvaccinated person to maybe test positive for having an established infection at some point during the trial?

The chart above shows that it is pretty expected that vaccines are giving a significant advantage over those who don't get vaccinated. And you would expect this, because if there is no advantage then why would they bother doing vaccines? But of course it would also be interesting to see the morbidity rate comparisons as well (hospitalisations and death).

So if it is true that the 24-25 season is showing that those vaccinated feared worse (it seems unlikely, because how can a vaccine make you more susceptable?). People ought to be asking what went wrong with the 24-25 vaccine?
Personally I wouldn't trust a report that says a vaccine makes people more susceptible, I would think a failed vaccine would simply show no improved efficacy. But a negative efficacy is a big deal and would warrant significant investigation.

 

[probinson]

The results in that study are a bit peculiar. The clinic require flu shots, but allows exemptions. they compared the people who got the shot with those with exemptions.

They found a couple of things
1) those who got the shot were tested for flu significantly more

They addressed this in the study. Specifically, they said:

Testing differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated​

​

The ratio of the proportion of the vaccinated who got tested to the proportion of the unvaccinated who got tested for influenza on each day of the study was significantly higher than 1.00 for most of the study (Figure 1), suggesting that the vaccinated were more likely to be tested than the unvaccinated on any given day. After excluding outlier values (> 3 SDs away from the mean), the slope of the regression line was 0.0009 and the slope was not significantly different from zero (P value 0.38), suggesting that the tendency for the vaccinated to be tested more than the unvaccinated did not change significantly over time.​

​

However, the ratio of the proportion of vaccinated persons’ tests that were positive to the proportion of unvaccinated persons’ tests that were positive on each day of the study was not significantly different from 1.00, during the period when most of the infections occurred (Figure 2), suggesting that the additional testing among the vaccinated was not from a higher propensity to get tested but rather from a higher number of infections itself.​

​

Here's my interpretation:

We know that the vaccine is only effective for a few months.

Actually, we don't "know" that at all. What we do know is that this study seems to suggest that flu vaccination for the 2024-2025 flu season was not effective.

This study found that influenza vaccination was associated with a higher risk of influenza among adults in the healthcare workforce in northern Ohio, USA, during the 2024-2025 winter season, suggesting that the vaccine has not been effective in preventing influenza this season.​