Tag: COVID-19 vaccine

The Toll of COVID

We can't take our eyes off the ball just yet - what's the state of the pandemic?

/ May 11, 2022
Slashers

The “12% efficacy” myth from the “Pfizer data dump”: The latest slasher stat about COVID-19 vaccines

Last week, a claim that Pfizer's own documents demonstrate that the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine was only 12% (not the 95% reported) went viral. This is a slasher stat, so-named because it is not new and, like the killers in slasher movie series, even when it appears to be dead it always appears in another installment of the misinformation franchise to...

/ May 9, 2022

Pediatric Hepatitis, A Medical Rorschach Test

Because they are from an old, established cause, pediatric deaths from COVID have receded into the background, overshadowed by pediatric hepatitis.

/ May 6, 2022
Graphical Abstract

Scientific review articles as antivaccine disinformation

Antivaxxers have always written dubious scientific review articles to try to make their wild speculations about vaccine science seem credible. Usually such articles wind up in bottom-feeding journals. Unfortunately a recent pseudo-review article was published by an Elsevier journal, making it seem more credible when it isn't.

/ April 25, 2022
Dr Andrew Wakefield

Why is anyone surprised that there are so many antivax physicians?

A new survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren't paying attention before the pandemic and assured themselves that the problem was just Andrew Wakefield. The question is:...

/ April 18, 2022
Recycling old antivax arguments as "bioethics"

Recycling old antivax tropes as “bioethics”-based arguments against COVID-19 vaccination for children

A recently published article in Bioethics makes ethical arguments against vaccinating children against COVID-19. If you change the word "COVID-19" to measles, chickenpox, or rotavirus (or others), this article could have been published on one of the higher-brow antivax websites in 2010. Antivax arguments never change; they're just continually recycled.

/ March 28, 2022

Science Fiction at the Wall Street Journal

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts". It's my opinion that no child should die for lack of a vaccine. The editors of The Wall Street Journal disagree

/ March 27, 2022

COVID and Our Warped Sense of Normal

Children are not supposed to die. This didn't used to be controversial.

/ March 25, 2022
Ivermectin repurposing

Ivermectin: The acupuncture of COVID-19 treatments

As high-quality evidence increasingly and resoundingly shows that ivermectin does not work against COVID-19, advocates are doing what acupuncture advocates do: Turning to lower quality "positive" studies to claim incorrectly that their favorite ineffective treatment actually does "work".

/ March 21, 2022
Florida "COVID theater"

Old antivax tropes never die: “COVID theater,” “Urgency of Normal,” and the Great Barrington Declaration

Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable calling to "end COVID-19 theater" that brought together the Great Barrington Declaration and "Urgency of Normal," a movement to end mask mandates and other COVID-19 mitigations in schools. The arguments used long predate the pandemic and echo a dark side of the history of American medicine.

/ March 14, 2022