I'm frustrated and unhappy with all the covid lies that I have to fight. In another forum with too many trolls, we have liars who pretend the vaccines were/are more dangerous than the infection.
This is muddled by problems with reporting adverse effects. Some people have tried to bump up the reporting, and some healthcare professionals have tried to cover up some serious adverse effects. It's happening partly because of societal stresses where misinformation goes viral, and people make poor choices based on the misinformation. So rare problems aren't processed as rare, but as red flags meaning the government is lying to you and you need to believe someone like Alex Jones.
A lot of people have made really bad risk assessments when it comes to covid and the vaccines. They've been so concerned about vaccine adverse effects that they didn't consider the possibilities of grave illness or death from covid. Maybe they also wrongly thought they could take ivermectin and that would handle it. Perhaps 2-10 out of each 1000 who thought this way ended up very sick, and therefore suffered a great deal based on a poor decision. (I don't know the numbers, and it would vary a lot by age and somewhat by location.) Vaxxed versus unvaxxed statistics have shown this in many places, and especially in Sept '21 through about March '22.
Still, I've got one very persistent yahoo who claims the vaccines are very dangerous and I'm a horribly lying unethical person. I started look into what this erroneous claim was based on, and here are some of the sources I found:
This conclusion is based on cherry-picking evidence, ignoring vaxxed vs. unvaxxed hospitalization and death rates, and concerns that the data has been censored and/or scrubbed.
It is possible to fool with the data and make it some much more innocuous than it is. Personnel can be encouraged to report or discouraged. Coverups are definitely a known phenomenon. But it's much harder to hide a large trend because there are many more people with the knowledge of the negative outcomes.
So I reject the idea that the numbers are completely cooked. One observation I've had is that no hospital was overwhelmed with vaccine patients, but many were overwhelmed with covid patients.
The yahoo seized on the issue of reporting of myocarditis. This is fair. It was downplayed to prevent people being discouraged or nervous about the vaccines. One report in particular was published and then withdrawn. The explanation is actually a non-explanation. It's claimed that data in the report was removed from VAERS, the US vaccine adverse effect reporting system. I found these sources with original matter from the article: Zenodo with a download; online full article, and another article on the same topic but with a reasonable balanced conclusion. The withdrawal article by Dr. Jessica Rose and the very questionable Dr. Peter McCullough, says this in the conclusion:
It cannot be stressed enough when referring to VAERS data collected in the context of the COVID-19 injectable products that effective antiviral responses against the nCoV-2019 virus in the form of both cellular and humoral immune responses have been reported in peer-reviewed studies [51–56]. Because of the low Infection Fatality Rate, indicating effective and robust immune responses, it remains unclear why multiple experimental mRNA vaccines have been fast-tracked through conventional testing protocols and are also being fast-tracked through production and administration into the public. With repurposed drugs like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin showing extremely positive results in patients [57–68], it is also unclear why these drugs are not being more extensively promoted as effective tools in the fight against this virus. What is clear is that the injectable products are proving unsafe for many individuals and inefficacious in others.....
This conclusion downplayed the fatality rate and the strain on the healthcare systems, and wrongly stated that HCQ and ivermectin were showing extremely positive results. This paper came from antivaxx quack doctors. Sadly, there are quacks and charlatans in every line of work. Covid was been a bonanza for them. The political atmosphere has made it more likely that people take sides based on political affinity rather than sober evaluations of data.
Image: Imperial College London
Extras. Another issue, and this is not a lie so much as a point of disagreement. Are vaccines more dangerous for those 0-39 than covid is? That definitely was and is an issue due to the adverse effects of the vaccines, and the inability to predict who will have a serious adverse effect. It was possible for a while that myocarditis from the vaccine was a bigger danger in that age group than covid itself. It was hard to be sure. One report showed that mortality in this age group briefly went higher for vaxxed vs unvaxxed (closeup here). However, when covid mutated and started infecting more people under 40, probably this question was settled toward vaccination, though perhaps only for certain years/variants. A number of people are probably glad they took the vaccine when the variant appeared. But prediction is difficult.
Were VAERS reports being ignored? Possibly.
Quack doctor Peter McCullough faced the music when a certification board revoked his certification due to his false statements about covid and the vaccines. They gave him quite a spanking.
