ICYMI… new (possibly suppressed) findings about COVID-19
From my feed and reading pile!
Since my stack of articles to read really piled up, I thought I’d summarize them all for my substack audience. This took me a while, so maybe this isn’t as earth shattering now as it was a couple weeks ago. Summary (TL; DR):
European Union says a side effect warning should come on Novovax
Former CDC director believes COVID-19 virus was developed in Wuhan lab, and he does not believe “The Story” that is being pushed by Fauci et al.
High rate of cardiac adverse effects seen in safety study… and medical experts repeat their call to re-evaluate the mass vaccination approach.
Large study comparing school districts with and without mask mandates found no difference in the incidence rates of COVID-19.
Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals clear infection at the same rate.
Icelandic study shows reinfection rates higher in double vaccinated vs those with 0-1 doses of vaccine.
A call for inquiry into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 by the leader of the Lancet commission on COVID-19
Higher rate of serious adverse reactions in vaccinated vs placebo groups in Moderna and Pfizer clinical trials!
Several weeks ago, a story came out saying that many military personnel have been traveling abroad to try to obtain the Novovax vaccine instead of the mRNA vaccines because Novovax is more like a “normal vaccine” and because it reportedly didn’t include aborted fetal cells in development. However, recent data from Charlotte Lozier institute, which tracks this data across all vaccines, points out that Novovax does use aborted fetal cells in testing, but that’s besides the point here. Now, the EU is saying it should carry a warning about possible myocarditis and pericarditis side effects. Oddly, the FDA flagged this EUA application for data on these side effects, but FDA recently granted Emergency Use Authorization anyway?
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202208.0151/v1
Dr. Vinay Prasad has written an outstanding commentary on the recent study of vaccine side effects conducted in Thailand. I refer the reader to it, because it is well-written as usual. His most significant point: “The story are rates of cardiac biomarkers and how often they are elevated. 3 patients had chest pain and biomarker elevation; 4 patients had no chest pain but elevated cardiac biomarkers. These were all in boys. 7/202 boys had overt or subclinical myocarditis (3.5%) or roughly 2 orders of magnitude more common than prior reports from passive adverse event reporting of myocarditis.” In English? These cardiac events are too severe to ignore and should have never been ignored.
Side note: in the comments section of the primary article online, another substack is cited, declaring that Denmark at least admitted giving the vaccine to kids was wrong. That’s the cool thing about substack. The days of “letters to the editor” that are largely ignored are over.
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC, does not believe “The Story” pushed by Fauci and others that the SARS-COV-2 virus naturally evolved in the wild, and expressed his frustration that the NIH refuses to lead an independent, objective investigation. He believes it was developed in the Wuhan lab. Why? Some of his points include that “it was educated how to infect human tissue” and that “the same Wuhan lab was the subject of a report in 2014 when it claimed to have trained bat-borne viruses to bind to humans' receptors.”
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1773983/v1
This large study (>23,000 students) compared two neighboring school districts, one with a mask mandate and one without, and then the district with the mask mandate went to mask-optional. Ideal design. First, when one district had a mandate and the other did not, there was no significant difference in COVID-19 incidence. Second, when the district with a mandate dropped the mandate and made masks optional, there was still no significant difference in the COVID-19 incidence rate between districts. There was definitely sufficient statistical power to observe a difference if there was one. Very nice discussion of the extant literature on masks contained in this paper. Yet another great study from Dr. Tracy Hoeg to show the ineffectiveness of masks.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2202092
This article came across my feed because two commentaries cited it, saying “Study shows unvaccinated individuals clear infection faster!” If you read the actual study, the point estimate for the unvaccinated group is indeed lower, but the confidence intervals overlap. In English, that means there is no significant difference between groups. That is actually just as important a finding as what the commentaries were claiming. The lack of significant difference between groups is probably do to low sample size (low power), which is what it is. Honestly, it is just as important to say that unvaccinated have similar times to conversion as vaccinated, and that vaccinated are not significantly better. And yes, this paper does add to those other ones that show that vaccination does not offer a significant benefit when it comes to plain old infection. Frankly, I’m disappointed in the commentaries that didn’t bother to read the statistics or look at the figures.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2793024
This analysis of reinfection in the Omicron wave in Iceland showed that individuals with 2 doses of vaccine were at a higher risk of re-infection than individuals with 1 or fewer doses. The analysis did not split out unvaccinated individuals.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35588448/
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, chair of the Lancet journal’s commission on COVID-19, wrote a commentary in Proc Natl Acad Sci (not exactly a journal you sneeze at), calling for an independent inquiry into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The PNAS article summarizes relevant literature and other documents (such as emails) that show that the NIH quickly pushed the zoonotic (wet market) origin theory, and quickly poo-pooed the lab origin theory, without any data to support that shift. However, a separate interview with Dr. Sachs is much more explicit, citing heavily redacted documents obtained from the NIH via FOIA leaving no actual information, the complete lack of transparency in ongoing investigations, not considering data that might support the lab origin theory, frank denial that the research was done just because NIH didn’t fund a specific grant, withholding of information about conflicts of interest… it goes on. Honestly, the interview is an excellent read, and quite overwhelming with the evidence that leads one to distrust of the NIH.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283
Peer-reviewed study in a good scientific journal shows the risk of adverse reactions was HIGHER in the vaccinated vs. placebo group.
"The Pfizer trial exhibited a 36 % higher risk of serious adverse events in vaccinated participants in comparison to placebo recipients" (95% confidence interval showed this was statistically significant)
People might argue that this doesn't matter as long as the risk of COVID-19 was reduced. This study shows that didn't happen either. "In the Moderna trial, the excess risk of serious AESIs (15.1 per 10,000 participants) was higher than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group (6.4 per 10,000 participants). In the Pfizer trial, the excess risk of serious AESIs (10.1 per 10,000) was higher than the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization relative to the placebo group (2.3 per 10,000 participants)."
"mRNA vaccines are associated with more harm than initially estimated at the time of emergency authorization."
By the way, the authors of this paper are not exactly slouches. Greenland is one of the authors of the most respected epidemiology texts out there.
PS - if you want to learn how to read the literature like this, I highly encourage signing up for classes through IPAK-edu. In the registration box, if it asks who sent you, type “STEIN”.
Thank you for your summaries. I am short on time and appreciate the quick rundown, with linked sources. You have a gift of boiling things down for the lay person. Bravo!