Comment on Are mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 helpful or harmful? by Sean Pitman.
The following commentary by organic chemist Derek Lowe is also helpful in understanding this question (December 4, 2020):
Bob Wachter of UCSF had a very good thread on Twitter about vaccine rollouts the other day, and one of the good points he made was this one. We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.
But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated.
No such safety signals have appeared for the first vaccines to roll out (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech). In fact, we should be seeing the exact opposite effects on mortality and morbidity as more and more people get vaccinated. The excess-death figures so far in the coronavirus pandemic have been appalling (well over 300,000 in the US), and I certainly think mass vaccination is the most powerful method we have to knock that back down to normal.
That’s going to be harder to do, though, if we get screaming headlines about people falling over due to heart attacks after getting their vaccine shots. Be braced.
Sean Pitman Also Commented
Are mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 helpful or harmful?
I don’t know about Dr. Botha, in particular, but others have made similar claims. Of course, I see no credible evidence to support such sensational claims…
Are mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 helpful or harmful?
Just because the effectiveness of vaccines may wane over time doesn’t mean that they aren’t working. They are working, very well. The vast majority of those who are being hospitalized right now with severe COVID-19 infections are the unvaccinated – by a ratio of more than 10:1 over the vaccinated.
Here’s an explanation from Shane Crotty, Ph.D. (Immune system and vaccine scientist. Professor, La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), a non-profit research institute): Link
Are mRNA Vaccines for COVID-19 helpful or harmful?
As of June 11, 2021, approximately 296 million doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in the United States, with 52 million administered to persons aged 12–29 years; of these, 30 million were first and 22 million were second doses. Within the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) (4), the national vaccine safety passive monitoring system, 1,226 reports of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination were received during December 29, 2020–June 11, 2021. Among persons with reported myocarditis after mRNA vaccination, the median age was 26 years (range = 12–94 years), with median symptom onset interval of 3 days after vaccination (range = 0–179). Among 1,194 reports for which patient age was known, 687 were among persons aged <30 years and 507 were among persons aged ≥30 years; of 1,212 with sex reported, 923 were male, and 289 were female.§§ Among 1,094 patients with number of vaccine doses received reported, 76% occurred after receipt of dose 2 of mRNA vaccine; cases were reported after both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Informed by early reports, CDC prioritized rapid review of myocarditis in persons aged <30 years reported during May 1–June 11, 2021; the 484 patient records in this subset were evaluated by physicians at CDC, and several reports were also reviewed with Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Project investigators,¶¶ including cardiologists. At the time of this report, 323 of these 484 cases were determined to meet criteria in CDC’s case definitions for myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis by provider interview or medical record review (Table 1). The median age of the 323 patients meeting CDC’s case definitions was 19 years (range = 12−29 years); 291 were male, and 32 were female. The median interval from vaccination to symptom onset was 2 days (range = 0−40 days); 92% of patients experienced onset of symptoms within 7 days of vaccination. Of the 323 persons meeting CDC’s case definitions, 309 (96%) were hospitalized. Acute clinical courses were generally mild; among 304 hospitalized patients with known clinical outcomes, 95% had been discharged at time of review, and none had died. Treatment data in VAERS are preliminary and incomplete; however, many patients have experienced resolution of symptoms with conservative treatment, such as receipt of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs. Follow-up is ongoing to identify and understand longer-term outcomes after myocarditis occurring after COVID-19 vaccination. (Link)
In comparison, those who are infected with COVID-19 have a much higher rate of myocarditis as well as a much MUCH higher rate of long-term injuries and death. Up to a third of otherwise young healthy people, including athletes and even children, end up with myocarditis following even mild infections with COVID-19.
Recent Comments by Sean Pitman
After the Flood
Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!
The Flood
Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…
The Flood
Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…
Pacific Union College Encouraging Homosexual Marriage?
Where did I “gloss over it”?
Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.
Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).
Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.
