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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31626 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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What's the base rate, what are the criteria for reporting?

So what we have is this: CDC did additional investigation, found nothing. Two conclusions:

(1) There is nothing there, the initial system that triggered the investigation was just picking up usual numbers

(2) There is something there, and the CDC, Pfizer, and other countries are all lying and covering up

Original post is trying to incline us to number (2). I want to know what is the base rate and how was it exceeded, if it was exceeded, before I throw ni with "it's all a cover-up".

Even if it is a real risk, how many of us are over 65? OP is using "risk of strokes in over 65" as an argument not to get any boosters, on the grounds that "if this is happening to them, what is happening to younger people?" and that's where the link needs to be demonstrated.

For instance, stroke is increasing among younger adults. Down to the vaccine? No, this is the conclusion of a 29 year study looking at data from 1990-2019:

Overall, in 2019 in the U.S., there were an estimated 460,000 strokes (of those, two-thirds were ischemic), 190,000 stroke-related deaths and 3.83 million stroke disability-adjusted life years.

From 1990 to 2019, the change in the prevalence of stroke in the general population increased by about 60%. Incidence, death and disability-adjusted life years also increased by about 20%.

However, the age-standardized rates of stroke incidence, death and disability-adjusted life years declined by 20% to-30% in that same period, and the prevalence of stroke did not change. These decreases have plateaued in the last 10 years of the study period.

Since 1990, stroke incidence among older adults (age 50 and older) decreased nationwide, yet increased in younger adults (ages 15 to 49) in some geographic areas, including certain states in the South (Alabama, Arkansas) and the Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota).

So the reporting system may well be picking up something to do with strokes, but that it's down to the Covid vaccine alone has not been proven. Apparently, globally the incidence of stroke is going up, due to increased risk factors like obesity, high blood pressure, smoking, etc. And the rate of brain hemorrhage amongst younger adults, due to uncontrolled high blood pressure, is also increasing:

In the new study, lead researcher Abdulaziz Bako, a postdoctoral fellow at Houston Methodist Hospital, and colleagues used aggregated nationwide data from 803,230 ICH hospitalizations. They calculated the rate of ICH over five consecutive three-year periods from 2004 to 2018. People were divided into four age groups: 18-44 years; 45-64 years; 65-74 years; and 75 years and older.

Overall, researchers found an 11% increase in the rate of ICH among U.S. adults over the 15-year study period. ICH increased at a faster rate for adults under age 65 compared to those 75 and older. The rate of increase also varied by region, climbing faster in the South, West and Midwest than it did in the Northeast. ICH stroke rates were 43% higher for men than women.

Among those who had ICH strokes, the percentage of people who had high blood pressure also rose, from 74.5% to 86.4% over the study period.

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