Double standards in COVID-19 vaccine science

The prestigious American Journal of Epidemiology kindly published a response from me, entitled “Critical analyses concerning COVID-19 vaccines need to be consistently critical and informed”, on what seem to be double standards concerning a recent article on the “need to be critical of the claims made by both COVID-19 vaccine proponents and critics”. Source. The original article was written by Jeffrey S. Morris, who has been critical of the work of my fellow ‘COVID skeptic’ Steve Kirsch and one of my intellectual heroes, BMJ senior editor Peter Doshi, who loves holding Big Pharma to account. Highlights from my brief article:

• Despite Morris stating that we should be looking at the clinical trials and observational studies critically, which we absolutely should, I note that he concludes from such that the jabs were initially very effective for infection and death, without actually providing a shred of criticism about any of them. I also pointed to the “lack of a demonstrated mortality benefit in the mRNA vaccine clinical trials”.

• I note that some scholars have actually been critical of the studies, like Doshi and myself finding likely exaggerations in efficacy and safety, and pointed to a critique of a US study I published in this very journal.

• Morris admitted that vaccine effectiveness declined sharply but still maintained that they were very successful against death, citing studies and again displaying no criticism. It’s almost like he’s just pretending to be a real scholar… So I further pointed him towards “the vast observational evidence indicating that even effectiveness against severe or fatal disease could be gone within months, published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine”.

• I was surprised to see him bringing up the issue of perceived negative effectiveness but he quickly dismissed it, leading to me again informing him that there is a lot more available on this topic - and evidence for a a healthy vaccinee bias makes all of this worse.

• While it is nice to hear someone saying that they’re going to be critical of ‘both sides’ it really does seem disingenuous when they really only go after ‘COVID skeptics’ and just parrot the same (Big Pharma approved) mainstream narratives without any criticism or curiosity. And while it may make some feel big to ‘demolish’ the claims made in blog posts, it would be ideal if they also would engage with the vast and increasing evidence, published in peer-reviewed medical journals, that we were right all along, about pretty much all of it.* And this, which includes evidence of adverse effects, is vitally important if we really want to know whether taking the jab is/was worth it, for all groups. But of course, not everyone wants to know.

Okay then.

*Extra: More on this soon, I promise.

Extra: AJE also published Morris’ response to my response, which doesn’t seem to add much. Source. For example, he brings up the same tired defence of the trials not showing a mortality benefit, bizarrely citing his own blog post in support: ‘they were not powered to do so’. Firstly, that doesn’t negate the point. Are we doing logic here or what? Secondly, there were actually more deaths in the mRNA jabbed, in their own freaking trials. We gonna look into that more or nah? Thirdly, maybe they should have demonstrated a death benefit if that was the whole point and that was the basis for approval, mandates, etc. Fair enough? I was fired over this shit, and it turned my life upside down, so I would think so… Morris also is quite good at simply ignoring the studies I cite, and on negative effectiveness he cites a study merely discussing a hypothesis to explain it away - which I pointed out was just a hypothesis in my response to that study (both in the BMJ), which I cited, and Morris simply ignored. Sigh. So selection bias is totes cool when they do it. Double standards much?