Irish Times censor strikes again!

 The following comment was deactivated by the Irish Times today for "violating community standards"! 

 

 It seems unlikely (but possible?) they are objecting to my reporting HSE data that contradicts the hysterical  scapegoating if the unvaxxed.

here is the link to the Vaccination Status Report:

https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/vaccinationstatusreports/

More likely, it is my closing remark though I am mystifyed how it could be considered to violate the so-called community standards.

Here they are, compare my remark to them and judge for yourself:

The Community Standards are:

"The following activities are not acceptable.

* Personal abuse of our authors, of commenters, members or of any other individuals.

* Posts which contain incitement to hatred of groups or individuals, or foul or profane language.

* Posts which promote or provide instructional information about illegal activities, promote physical harm or injury against any group or individual, or promote any act of cruelty to animals.

* Contributions which may put The Irish Times in legal jeopardy, because they are unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable

* Comments which are not relevant to the topic in question

* Posts which appear to be promoting commercial products or acting in a spam-like fashion.

* Posts whose purpose is to promote propaganda or external links, rather than adding to the particular discussion taking place on irishtimes.com.

* Posts which create a false identity for the purpose of misleading others.

* Posts which "stalk" another."

Idealist vs. Realist Views of Science

 

The naive idealist, or a bluffer, says:

Science follows the truth.

 

The practical realist knows:

Science follows the money.

No research grants, no money, no science.

Wrong results in science papers, no more research grants, no more money.

No money, no science.

Money first, then science.

Science follows the money.

Money doesn’t care about truth.

Money cares about power.

Money enables power.

Power cares about money

Power does not care about truth.

Power will do what money says.

Science cares about power.

Science cares about money.

Truth has no money.

Truth has no power.

Science will do what money and power says.

Six Month Safety and Efficacy Paper on the Pfizer Vaccine Omits Evaluation of Efficacy against Death: Buried Data Suggests Only 50%

 

This is quite confusing. 

From the paper Six Month Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v1.full-text:

While in the Abstract the Results paragraph the paper claims Vaccine Efficacy of 86%-100% overall and 97% against severe disease, and 100% against the beta variant in South Africa, it doesn’t actually make any reference whatsoever to any assessment or measure of efficacy in protection against death from Covid.

In the Results section of the paper, under the heading Safety – Adverse Effects, there is this statement:

“During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo recipients died; during the open-label period, 3 BNT162b2 and 2 original placebo recipients who received BNT162b2 after unblinding died. None of these deaths were considered related to BNT162b2 by investigators. Causes of death were balanced between BNT162b2 and placebo groups (Table S4).”

This is the only instance of the word “death” in the entire paper. There is no discussion of results of efficacy in prevention of death at all.

Referring to Table S4  (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf?download=true) to see the reported causes of death, it appears there were two deaths from COVID-19 in the Placebo group, and one death from COVID-19 pneumonia in the vaccinated group.

 

 

This is very, very confusing.

We were promised vaccines that would prevent infection and transmission. The paper notes vaccine efficacy declines at a rate of 6% per two months up to four months. Recent Israeli information suggests the efficacy against infection declines much more rapidly after four months but it remains effective against severe illness. https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/bytq34n0u  OK, partial, not total success.

But, regarding protection against death, this is where it gets confusing. Since the vaccines were rolled out, everybody in Government and the public health agencies has been telling us the vaccines give almost 100% protection against death. Yet, in this six month Safety and Efficacy report, the matter of efficacy against death is not assessed or reported on at all, and buried in the Supplementary material is the information that of three persons in the trial who died with COVID-19 as a reported cause of death, one was in the vaccinated group and two in the placebo.

Does this mean the Pfizer vaccine is only 50% effective at preventing death from COVID?

The number of deaths, three, is very small, perhaps too small for assessment of efficacy. But if so, this should have been addressed in the paper. Why was the efficacy at preventing death not addressed in the paper? Simple. The Clinical Protocol for Pfizer's Phase 1/2/3 studies did NOT include efficacy against death as an objective https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2020-11/C4591001_Clinical_Protocol_Nov2020.pdf, pages 31 to 35.

What is the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing death? In the absence of any explicit assessment by Pfizer, it seems most have simply extrapolated efficacy against serious illness and assumed the same efficacy against death. The information in Table S4 does not support this extrapolation.

Has Pfizer stood by silently while governments and public health authorities misinterpreted its trial results and inappropriately extrapolated its efficacy against serious illness to efficacy against death from Covid?