Why does every online discussion about vaccines end up with replies like these?

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Yes you shouldn’t keep doing this.

Posting a study or news article requires some vetting on the poster’s part. This isn’t a site where everyone just says “hey look I found this on the internet”. If you find something you think has not been posted before or is new news on a topic that has been posted then check the sources, the journal, the scientists and see if it is worthy of our time to read. Otherwise it just clutters up the thread and makes this site like every other site. My 2 cents…

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This is about a study done by Marcus Zirvos MD at Ford Medical Center. It is a top notch research medical center that strongly favors the use of vaccines and Dr. Zirvos believes in them too. He was talked into doing the study in order to prove his point, that the vaccinated should require less medical help than the unvaccinated. They had large numbers of both and since the babies born there are also cared for there they had all the records for both. So it was retrospective. He did the study and would not release the numbers or get it published. Now it has come out and in this documentary it is shown to more MD Phd’s and they agree that more should be done to nail this down.

I think it is past time to do actual science on this in an unbiased way to find out the truth. Do vaccines improve the health of kids? I have 5 kids and 13 grandkids and would like to know.

This is some of what the study showed:

Here’s what the study revealed:

• Vaccinated children were 4.29 times more likely to have asthma.

• Three times higher risk for atopic diseases (like eczema).

• Nearly six times higher risk for autoimmune disorders — a category that includes over 80 different diseases.

• 5.5 times higher risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

• 2.9 times more motor disabilities.

• 4.5 times more speech disorders.

• Three times more developmental delays.

• Six times more acute and chronic ear infections.

• In nearly 2,000 unvaccinated children, there were ZERO cases of ADHD, diabetes, behavioral problems, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, tics, or other psychological disorders.

• The study’s conclusion is devastating. It states: “[I]n contrast to our expectations, we found that exposure to vaccination was independently associated with an overall 2.5-fold INCREASE in the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition when compared to children unexposed to vaccination.”

To be fair I will copy the complaints of another researcher who criticised the study:

The unpublished Henry Ford Health study led or co-authored by Dr. Marcus Zervos, which examined correlations between childhood vaccination and chronic disease, has been harshly criticized for its flawed methodology and has been formally disavowed by Henry Ford Health. Below is a structured critical analysis:

Study Methods and Data

• The study compared the health outcomes of approximately 18,500 children, with a subset of about 1,900 unvaccinated children to the rest who received at least one vaccine. [1] [2]

• The main metric was the prevalence of chronic conditions such as asthma, eczema, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopmental disorders, based on medical record review. [2] [3] [4]

• Analysis involved statistical comparisons, but critically, the populations were not demographically or medically comparable. [5] [2]

Major Flaws and Errors

• Unmatched Cohorts: The unvaccinated children differed substantially from vaccinated children—being more likely male, more White, less likely premature, and less likely to have experienced respiratory distress at birth, among other variables. [1] [5] [2]

• Small and Uneven Sample Duration: Unvaccinated children not only formed a small sample, but many were followed for much less time (often only through age 3), before most chronic conditions would even be diagnosed—vs. 6.5 years average follow-up in the vaccinated group. [5] [1]

• Measurement and Comparison Error: The study lumped all vaccines together and failed to account for number, type, or timing of vaccines. It did not adjust for changes in vaccine schedules or medical guidance over time. [1] [5]

• Impossible Claims: The study claimed zero occurrences of several diseases and conditions, which is statistically impossible in a group of that size [1] [5]

• Confounding Factors: Established epidemiological practice demands close matching for socioeconomic status, underlying health conditions, and other major confounders; this was not adequately done. [2] [5] [1]

• Observational Bias: There was selection bias—as families who opt out of vaccines also generally differ in healthcare utilization and record-keeping, potentially suppressing diagnosis rates for chronic conditions in the unvaccinated group. [2] [1]

Discussion and Conclusions

• The study’s results—suggesting higher rates of chronic illness among vaccinated children—are undermined by the unmatched populations and short follow-up in the unvaccinated cohort. [6] [5] [1] [2]

• The usual caveats about correlation vs. causation, and the need for randomized or tightly matched cohort designs, were not sufficient to salvage analytical rigor in this case. [5] [2]

• Reputable biostatistical analysis, such as commentary from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, found the study “severely flawed” and incapable of supporting its conclusions. [1] [5] [2]

• The data and statistical weaknesses mean any implications or policy inferences are unsafe, and Henry Ford Health described the analysis as “not remotely close” to institutional or journal standards. [7] [5]

Reasons for Non-Publication and Institutional Disavowal

• Henry Ford Health’s internal scientific review flagged the draft immediately with major concerns:

• Incomparable groups, inadequate adjustment for confounders

• Insufficient or flawed outcome tracking/time frames

• Improper lumping of vaccines and timeframes [5] [2] [1]

• The health system never submitted the draft for journal review as it was considered “deeply flawed,” and stated publicly that it failed the standards for scientific rigor and safety. [6] [5]

• Henry Ford Health has denounced claims that the study was suppressed due to political or reputational concerns, labeling this claim—spread by activists cited in Senate committee testimony—as “defamatory and troubling”. [8] [7] [5]

• Published statements from the institution indicate that the study was “never considered” for submission or legitimation, and that the draft shared publicly may have been altered outside the institution. [7] [8] [5]

In conclusion, the Henry Ford/Zervos study was never published due to deep and unfixable scientific flaws, was never formally suppressed for political reasons, and has been disavowed by Henry Ford Health as unworthy of public or policy influence. [4] [7] [2] [1] [5]

The biggest complaint I think was that the unvaccinated kids weren’t followed for as long. This could have been because they had no records because they weren’t sick. The vaccinated kids had all kinds of records. This is just me.

I think this is an important thing to think about if you’re going for longevity. It’s also very much in the news. You don’t have to read it, click on. And I think you should be able to get the vaccine even if it looks like a bad idea. You do you.

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I don’t think it’s up to you to decide what can or can’t get shared just because you don’t like the study design or the conclusion

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Speaking of Covid-19 vaccines and cancer:

Cancer patients who got a COVID vaccine lived much longer

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I hope one thing we can all agree on is that it’s incredibly frustrating that we don’t have clear answers to these basic questions by now. Considering the amount of money thrown around on all sorts of things, and the number of brilliant and capable scientists and doctors in the world, it’s a massive failure that we simply haven’t done a good enough study to answer one of the most important questions that we face as a species.

Right now, the soda companies have spent 9 figure sums paying lobbyists, paying social media influencers etc to pressure RFK Jr not to stop people from buying Pepsi with food stamps. That is money being spent to actively harm people, just to protect profits. Imagine how much good that money could have done in terms of running a big, unbiased, well-designed vaccine trial that would satisfy pro- and anti-vax people.

Same for most longevity work really. Something like the dog aging project is so incredibly important. Why does Matt have to sell merch and t-shirts to fund raise for it? Why the need to compromise enrolment numbers and the number of analyses because of money? It’s from sheer greed and short sightedness of the people holding the purse strings.

For this issue, I can’t think of any way that a Covid vaccine can give you cancer. And any comparisons of vaccinated vs non is massively confounded unfortunately, because those who refused to be vaccinated are by their nature outliers in the society and healthcare system. For the study above, zero cases of ADHD etc just means their parents aren’t interacting with medical systems.

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Michael Eades and his wife are medical doctors and authors and he writes a weekly blog. He reads a LOT and always knows what’s up. His opinion is fun to read and I give it a lot of weight. This week he wrote on vaccines and the video we’re talking about here:

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I have no idea who this character is, and I went ahead and read the link. Does that guy ever get to the point? Mostly not, because he prefers to spend endless paragraphs on positioning a huge case for vaccine denialism using emotional arguments, casting aspersions and character assassination. Really, depressingly standard anti-vaxx nutjob.

When he finally gets around to what he claims is the central argument against vaccines, he simply crowbars in a lengthy excerpt from another motivated party. Nonetheless, I went ahead and read that screed.

If you were expecting a cogent argument that showes the logic and evidence, you’ve come to the wrong place. S/he starts with the example of the pneumonia vaccine, and with outrage notes that the safety trial was not against a placebo, but against another experimental vaccine. And other vaccines in turn referenced the last one in a daisy chain. What can me make of it? Well, nothing. Why? Because our distinguished lawyer, whose intellectual acuity Eades praised fullsomely for multiple paragraphs, neglects to tell us whether the “experimental vaccine” in turn was tested against a placebo and if so, what the result was. Without that crucial context the entire case falls apart instantly. What if the “experimental vaccine” was tested against a placebo and was shown to have essentially the same harm level as a placebo (or even better - that can happen statistically!), then using it as a control would be entirely legitimate. Of course what was the reason for that choice (another vaccine vs placebo), is never cited, leaving the reader only with implications of something nefarious going on. Having dealt with scads of such anti-vaxxers, you know that you simply cannot take their good faith on faith, but must double check each and every claim, because lying by commision or omission is SOP for them.

Then there are multiple paragraphes blithly asserting “adverse events” without going into the relevent details - and as we know the devil is exactly in these details, because most often they don’t compare apples to apples, an old trick. And once he’s covered these dishonest supposed “gotchas”, he then spends the rest of the time making more emotional arguments about “tiny babies”, and “evil pharma”.

What have we learned here? I’m afraid nothing. No original arguments, or even novel rhetorical approaches. My bar for the quality of argument from anti-vaxxers has fallen so low, that I don’t even object to the lies. All I ask anymore is for some originality and inventiveness of these lies, so I can at least smile wryly and say, well, it’s BS of course, but points for the effort. In this case, ZERO points. It’s the same old, same old discredited utter nonsense.

And one really wonders about the sense of history of these quacks and scammers. I realize that their audience is the lay public unfamiliar with the ins and outs of medical science and hence super vulnerable to emotional manipulation. But even if you know nothing about medicine, you presumably as someone who has at least completed highschool level courses in history, is aware of certain facts. When these quacks claim that vaccines are a huge net negative, a simple recollection of recent history should completely demolish their BS. What were the outcomes and number of victims before and after vaccines: polio, smallpox, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hep b and the list goes on and on. The outcomes are a direct contradiction to the anti-vaxxer stance. As has been observed, the antivaxxers are only possible when vaccines are actually effective, because the memories of horrible pandemics fade from memory, and some humans fall prey to the “umbrella” fallacy, where they note that it’s dry under the umbrella so an umbrella must be unnecessary. When something horrific like polio strikes, all of a sudden anti-vaxxers vanish and anyone with half a brain begs for the vax. But whatever, vaccines have been too successful for their own good, and Mr. Darwin has to step in as the final arbitrer yet again. So, history is there for all to see, even the layman. And if somehow you missed class on those days, you can always use your fingers or voice to throw in some google terms and get some answers, even very old ones from 2014:

The contribution of vaccination to global health: past, present and future

Of course, arguments never convince these days, which is why we’re sadly back to Mr. Darwin. To Eades their own.

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According to Dr. Simpson in this video and the paper he references, the COVID-19 vaccine may actually help treat some types of cancer.

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neglects to tell us whether the “experimental vaccine” in turn was tested against a placebo

No, to do so would be unethical or immoral or something. This is the point of the book “turtles all the way down”. You can google that phrase to find out what it means.

The article was published a week ago and I’ve been so busy I really can’t argue. We’ve been doing 12 hour days, 7 days a week for about a month with only a few rain days off. I’m late as usual this morning. The corn won’t harvest itself.

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Shingles vaccine tied to significant reductions in risk of dementia, heart disease, and death

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For Covid, I get the Novavax, now called Nuvaxovid. It has much, much lower sides, is a traditional vaccine, and has some indications it may provide more enduring real world protection and better coverage across Covid variants.

My reaction to getting the Nuvaxovid is similar to the flu, pretty mild sides.

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I should look into that. I go to cytokine circus every time I get a mRNA shot. Thermal dysregulation and general unpleasantness. The good thing is I know to expect it, and it resolves reliably by the time I wake up from the second night after the shot.

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