This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
You cite the unadjusted PE RR of 1.54, but after they adjust for the fact that patients receiving the Pfizer vaccine were older and more likely to be in nursing homes than the controls, the RR fell to 1.15. Given the small RR, the fact that they made many comparisons, and the fact that no such increase was observed for the Moderna vaccine, with a similar mechanism of action and higher dose, this is very likely to be either spurious, or possibly related to a Pfizer-specific adjuvant rather than to the mRNA LNPs.
Also, that autopsy paper you're tricking out all over the thread is not the smoking gun you think it is. It's been known and widely acknowledged that the mRNA vaccines are associated with myocarditis and pericarditis mostly in young males at a rate of about 5 per 100k, compared to 150 per 100k in infected patients. If you live in a country with a high chance of infection, such as the US, vaccination greatly reduces risk even when ignoring all the other sequelae of COVID-19 infection and considering only myocarditis risk.
There's been a group of people who clearly have a deep ideological and emotional investment in mRNA vaccines being far more harmful than COVID-19, and who have demonstrated a tendency to grossly misinterpret various data, anecdotes, or urban legends in order to provide support for that claim. After chasing down numerous such claims and finding that they don't hold up, I usually just don't bother. When I do, it's more in the spirit of, "How specifically did was this nonsense rationalized?" rather than out of wanting to see whether it's true. Anti-vaxxers just have no credibility left.
Everyone in the myocarditis study was not a young male. It just proves, that sudden death after vaccination can be downstream from the very "well understood" and "mild" myocarditis that the vaccine is associated with.
You are tricking out old Covid morbidity statistics against your best possible analysis of mRNA. For the right age group, you could see a 1 in 2,000 risk of heart damage.
Anyone who's heart stops after vaccination, could have died from the vaccine. The vaccinators did not study the vaccine long enough to even know this until part-way through the campaign, when it became "a known issue that doesn't hold up."
A lot of people had investment in mRNA stopping transmission, and that was why this rare side effect of "some heart damage to young people" was being hand waved. During the "we are getting herd immunity phase," It seemed like you would accept any risk to young patients to stop community spread. That's concept has collapsed, and you're trying to say that the vaccine is only somewhat as deadly as the disease you are actually trying to vaccinate against!
5 per 100k, 150 in 100k. Think of ALL the unreported covid cases that were mild or asymptomatic. You are showing me the best possible rate of myocarditis, and it holds up next to a disease. That's not great vaccine, even if you think an 85 year old in 2020 should have obviously received it (and then it wore off by mid 2021).
More options
Context Copy link
To me that seems the opposite of what's happening. It's not the anti-mRNA-vaxxers who were arguing for, and implementing various measures to discriminate the vaxxed, and using grossly misinterpreted data, anecdotes, or urban legends to do it.
At best, I guess, you could argue both sides are doing it, but the asymmetry in actually implemented policies seems to point to an asymmetry in who is more emotionally invested.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link