Antivax crimes against data science

We’ve hit a dangerous tipping point this week with the Tories having to suspend @ABridgen on the charge of antisemitism, rather than allowing someone like the CMO to make a public statement taking him down a peg or two by pointing out how badly the research @Abridgen has been seduced by misuses data science to achieve its ends.

The antivax rhetoric all boils down to some sleight of hand over how our immune systems have changed with exposure to things that look like C19.

i.e. I’m 47, so was 45 when I had the initial 2 doses, but since I’ve not had the booster, why? Basically as my relative risk now means it simply isn’t worth it.

Back in March 2020, before our immune systems had seen anything like C19, our memory B and T cells (the bits we keep for our lives that know how to make antibodies) were so far away from what we needed to mount a response to C19, that on average we had a 0.7% chance of death.

Sure, skewed heavily to the old, my risk was 0.1%.

The elevated likelihood came from the damage the virus could do to our bodies whilst our immune system’s B and T cells divided and mutated performing the random walk needed to evolve to the point they could generate antibodies that would fit the spike proteins.

In some this happened fast, meaning they had no symptoms, in others they died in hosptial never managing to achieve it. All immune systems are not the same, a small percentage sadly were always going to struggle.

All the vaccine really did was burn the time needed for your immune system to perform that search in the relative safety of a pathogen (the vaccine) that was 1000x less likely to kill you.

This means having had the virus, or the vaccine, you immune system has permanently extended its memory B and T cells to have clusters that are far more in the ball park of this strain.

This is why despite Omicron being enough of variant to reduce vaccine efficacy from 90% to 50%, it only took a mild infection for our immune systems to tune B cells from our first exposure so that they could generate the right antibodies.

It was not the virus that mutated to be weaker, our immune systems mutated far more, kettling the virus, and its variants. The fatality rate in Hong Kong in Feb 2022 of those who were unvaxxed and had not had the virus was about 3.5%. Yes, an outbreak in those older, but it showed Omicron would have been just as lethal as the original Wuhan strain had it landed on our naive immune systems in 2020.

It is this that is at the core of the antivaxxer grift.

They deny this process happened. They pretend the virus got milder, and that had we waited unvaxxed we would not have needed it.

It’s fantasy.

Without rather than most getting to adapt their immune systems through 2021, we’d have seen a similar mortality rate to that in 2020, and lockdowns through most of 2022 as everyone had their first exposure.

Bear in mind by Mar 2021 with no vax protection yet in place just 25% had been infected, with 180k deaths, and that was vertically across society, as in 90% of carehomes had kept outbreaks at bay.

As it is, the vaccine accelerated initial exposure, and by Dec 2021 pretty much everyone in the UK had adapted their immune systems, with 45.6% still only having had the vaccine. This is why Omicon was so mild, it was basically the first endemic variant.

What’s daft about their sleight of hand is they can’t mount sensible arguments for why booster programs now shouldn’t be mandatory to the general population. If they admitted they had value, they could then make a relative argument about the work having been done. It would make their narrative far more believable.

i.e. most <50, or whom aren’t vulnerable, after the initial 2 doses the relative need for, and benefit, from a booster becomes far smaller.

If anything keeping exposed to the latest variants in the real world will maintain your antibodies, keeping them continually adapting, and make you a more useful part of the herd immunity that now protects the vulnerable.

Basically you only need to wear a mask to visit the vulnerable, and boosters are really only of benefit to those >50, or vulnerable, who need a rolling start to face winter. Antibodies tuned and ready to neutralise the virus without it even taking hold.

Worse they’ve added excess deaths to their statistical innumeracy

They claim all the excess deaths now are down the vaccine always having been a danger. So on top of us “pointlessly taking a vaccine as the virus has mutated to be milder” the vaccine is now killing us.

This is just madness.

Excess deaths are in fact higher in those younger. A cohort that actually vaxxed less. If the vaccine was the danger we’d be seeing the opposite.

More so, they completely deny (per the pie chart above that just plots UKHSA and ONS data) that 47%, skewed towards the young, had the virus before and vaccine.

Which leaves the question, how dangerous is having the virus?

Well we know the rhetoric of long covid, but what does that boil down to if we look at some real studies.

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London analysed UK Biobank data (in this study) of 17,871 who caught Covid-19 between March 2020–21 (so before anyone had been vaxxed) and concluded that heart failure was 21.6x more likely in those discharged from hospital, stroke 17.5x, and that those not admitted with milder infections were 10.23x more likely to suffer from sudden death.

Yet these absolute grifting antivax fraudsters won’t even include this in their narrative. The only one I’ve seen address it is the chief snake-oil salesman himself @DrAseemMalhotra. I’m rendered a speechless gesticulating mess by what he does with this data.

In this tweet he entirely stawmans the study. He tries to look clever by claiming it shows those not hospitalised by their C19 infections are less likely to have heart attacks, but this is utter stats fraud.

Those likely to have heart attacks, were likely hospitalised by C19 before going on to have their heart attack. So the not hospitalised group contains all those in the general population not at risk from heart attacks, even when under attack from C19.

It’s called selection bias.

As the study makes very clear, this doesn’t save those not hospitalised, they still die unexpectedly at 10.23x the rate. We used to call that something, oh yeah, that’s right, excess deaths.

I mean Jesus, this man swore to “do no harm”, he should be struck off. He certainly should not be in a position to seduce @ABridgen, which is what he has done.

The reality is nearly half the population are in this elevated risk boat, yet they think all excess deaths are from the vaccine, despite vaccine trials showing nothing like that mortality rate.

I’m a huge believer in free speech, but at what point does it become possible to hold alternative journalism like @toadmeister’s Daily Sceptic to account for fraud? How do we police this sort of misinformation in a free speech society? We need an independent tribunal that can judge, that relative to all good data science, they are talking bollocks.

Rishi Sunak should be actively exploring legislation for a true free speech union, an independent body that can protect the integrity of free speech by balancing these two priorities. Free speech is about speaking truth to power, not allowing entitled wealthy white middle class urban elites to use social media tech to spout utter bollocks to disaffected populist leaning working class voters so that they make donations to pay for the elite’s kids school fees.

That isn’t what free speech is about to me.

I’m sure Martin Luther King is turning in his grave.