I do wonder how many unknown side effects less researched vaccines have! And at this point, there is probably a huge research gap between the covid vaccines and all other vaccines.
PS: I am not an anti vaxxer. I paid 500€ to get the damn HPV vaccines and next week I am gonna get my second meningococcal vaccination (one of the most painful vaccinations), because it also provides limited protection against gonorrhea and I want to minimize the chance of me having to take fluoroquinolone antibiotics again despite being sex addicted. Everyone should do their own risk assessment.
How many deaths were prevented in <25, <30, <35, <40 year olds?
What about 18 year olds? Those that had to take the vaccination to be allowed to attend university? How many of those were saved by it?
This puts a dubious amount of faith in the average person’s understanding of probability and statistics.
In general, I think scientists did the best with the knowledge they had, trying to save as many people as possible. Of course they could have done better with 10 to 20 years of testing, but that wasn’t an option.
This paper still says you are better taking the vaccine than not taking it.
So the vaccinated population in any such research might have higher exposure rates to sars-cov-2 than unvaccinated. Especially to earlier, more harmful strains. And since we know that even asymptomatic covid can have rare severe long term harmful effects on human body it's entirely possible that vaccination harmed us not through some biological mechanism but by making us more foolhardy and lockdown and mask less.
1. The risk is all concentrated in the first weeks after vaccination and consistently so over time. That's what you'd expect from a biological cause, not a change in behavior.
2. The biological pathways that cause it are known. This isn't a random correlation that leaves people scratching around for a causal explanation. The spike protein is thrombogenic. Note that the authors (who are doctors) don't have much difficulty admitting the relationship is causal, except in the conclusions, where they have to make the usual disclaimers that the vaccines are wonderful and everyone should have five for breakfast each morning, whilst readily stating that SARS-CoV-2 itself can cause blood clots. Recall that AstraZeneca was pulled from the market it yielded so many clots.
3. The idea that unvaccinated people were all cowering at home terrified of the virus whilst the vaccinated skipped around carefree is nonsense on its face. People who didn't take the shot weren't taking it because they saw no reason to do so. They weren't scared of the virus to begin with! That's why the authorities had to become so totalitarian to keep the unvaccinated out of places - they'd happily turn up and mingle if allowed to.
> it's entirely possible that vaccination harmed us not through some biological mechanism but by making us more foolhardy and lockdown and mask less
Sadly, that is wishful thinking. The data on this is unambiguous. Vaccines are drugs and drugs sometimes have side effects. This isn't news, it has always been that way, which is why governments are so keen to tell you all about their bulldog regulators who make sure Big Pharma doesn't skimp on safety trials (except that they did, because it was considered to be an emergency).
But, both are hypotheses. I don’t see real signals favouring either.
Given how easily this virus infects people, you expect people who changed their behavior after vaccination to be infected almost immediately after it.
> The vaccinated group were older (52.6) and generally unhealthier. They had an average of 1.27 comorbidities per person and were taking 1.31 medications per person.
> The unvaccinated group was younger (46.7) and had an average of 0.48 comorbidities per person and were taking 0.6 medications per person.
> 15.2% vaccinated had T1DM vs 5.5% unvaccinated.
Paper assessment: not bad work overall. The usual problems such papers acquire in the process of getting past the gatekeepers are present, as expected, but can be ignored when you know what to look for.
The good: Very large sample size, cohorts aligned according to many important variables. Goes well beyond just age/gender matching and includes comorbidities, medications.
The bad: They do a lot of exclusions. Is it reasonable to exclude everyone with a history of RVO from the analysis? You'd imagine that people prone to it already might be affected worse and that this would matter for real world outcomes. Also, the paper shows signs of pre-publication tampering by someone other than the authors. The conclusions are dishonest and full with logical fallacies. But it's hard to blame the authors for this. If you don't include the usual bromides and deceptive comparisons then you can't get this sort of paper published. People who Follow The Science will draw the wrong conclusions as intended, the rest of us can incorporate it into our priors for future decision making purposes (when we're allowed).
