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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The issue with VAERS is both that it doesn't vet data, had massive signal boosting, and more importantly, was signal boosted heavily in the vaccine-skeptical crowd. I expect a great deal more spurious claims, both because of intentional and disingenuous reporting, as well as people being on edge and willing to attribute a natural death or one from COVID itself to the vaccine that preceded it.

I mean, it's both possible for people to be irrationally averse to vaccination in general or the COVID one in particular and the vaccine to be dangerous (or at least worse than the disease), it's just unlikely.

Yes, you can pick apart any of these studies. They are all limited at least by being fairly small given the relative rarity of these events. None of them are proper clinical trials. But that's because these studies are the only ones that have been done.

I'm not against better studies, but until they happen, I reserve judgement, or at least hold the null hypothesis. There's publication bias both from the vaccine manufacturers and their pharma affiliates who would prefer not to demonstrate harm and hundreds or thousands of small-time researchers who would love to make a name by demonstrating clear and obvious harm. The latter aren't deplatformed, you did link to multiple weak/inconclusive studies after all.

But we do now know that vaccines remain active for 60+ days and that they produce random proteins they are not supposed to (these are lab studies on how the vax works)

"Random proteins" aren't really that big a deal. The human body handles probably quadrillions of misfolded proteins or even those produced by point/frameshift mutations every day. When the original study you cited makes no claim that it causes harm, I expect more evidence to back up that claim, including obvious increases in all cause mortality that can be retroactively attributed to mRNA vaccines.

In the specific case of children, my point is that the CFR for them is so minuscule that it wouldn't be worth vaccinating them even if the vaccine was perfectly safe. Certainly not when vaccine stocks were short of requirements in the early/middle pandemic.