Vaccine Feedback
Most anti-vaxxers will survive COVID even if they badly miscalculate the risks of getting vaccinated
"Feedback" by giulia.forsythe is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
One of the most significant themes in the Sharpen Your Axe project is the importance of feedback loops. Politicians can easily get stuck in groupthink; so feedback from a free press and fair elections helps democracies achieve better results than dictatorships.
Meanwhile, capitalism works better than other economic systems because consumers provide feedback to businesses as they take everyday decisions. We have also seen how small bets can help all of us keep our worldviews up to date by providing uncomfortable feedback when our opinions are wrong.
The raw data on COVID-19 has been very clear on the benefits of vaccination. For example, this research paper from Washington State shows that the death rate of unvaccinated over-65s is 7x higher than the rate for the vaccinated (305.2 deaths per 100,000 vs 44) - a staggering result.
Unfortunately, many people who don’t understand statistics (particularly the base-rate fallacy) have tried to research the alleged risks of COVID-19 vaccines by themselves. The number crunching is often at a low level. What is particularly dangerous is the lack of a sensible feedback loop.
Let’s turn around the data from the research paper mentioned above. The vast majority of unvaccinated over-65s (99,695 out of 100,000) won’t actually die of COVID. “See, I told you I didn’t need to get vaxxed!” On the other hand, it will be too late for those who actually die to change their minds.
Of course, people who participate in anti-vaxxer communities will probably have friends or acquaintances who get very sick or die. Sadly, motivated reasoning means dogmatic anti-vaxxers will be able to explain away any hospitalizations or deaths. Maybe they were overweight? Or had health issues? Or would have been at risk of the flu anyway?
Statistics geeks give this lack of a feedback loop a formal name: Survivorship bias. The classic example comes from statistician Abraham Wald during World War II. He was part of a team that studied damage to aircraft that managed to return to base. The team recommended reinforcing the areas with bullet holes. Wald famously proposed reinforcing the areas that were unscathed, since aircraft that were hit in these areas were unlikely to return to base.
Luckily, most people have been responsible and received vaccines. One group of people that has failed the public badly is health gurus who sell supplements on their websites. While there are some honourable exceptions, many of these gurus realized there is no angle to being responsible: There are no premium vaccines for rich suckers; you don’t need to take special vitamins before or after getting vaccinated; and nobody needs a vaccination bootcamp.
Spreading anti-vax narratives, on the other side, has upside for the unscrupulous: If you sow seeds of doubt about vaccines, you can get paid by selling unproven alternatives. Of course, conspiracy theories often act as the bodyguards of this scam.
I would like to wind up this week’s column with some homework. If you know any anti-vaxxers on social media, scroll over to their feed and look for some sciency-looking research that warns of the alleged dangers of COVID vaccines. Copy the name of the first author listed on the paper and stick it in Google. Does he or she have relevant credentials? Now put the name of the journal in Google. Is it credible? The comments are open. See you next week!
Further Reading
Sharpen Your Axe is a project to develop a community who want to think critically about the media, conspiracy theories and current affairs without getting conned by gurus selling fringe views. Please subscribe to get this content in your inbox every week. Shares on social media are appreciated! If this is the first post you have seen, I recommend starting with the first-anniversary post, which includes links to a free book.
Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.
What is your response to this, Rupert?
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/uk-bans-covid-vaccines-for-all-kids
"If you know any anti-vaxxers on social media, scroll over to their feed and look for some sciency-looking research that warns of the alleged dangers of COVID vaccines. Copy the name of the first author listed on the paper and stick it in Google. Does he or she have relevant credentials?"
Information comes to us from many sources, it doesn't just exist in statistics and scientific papers. When we work out the truth of something we need to take into consideration all the information we have access to. When we were first told of an alleged covid pandemic, I didn't know a jab was coming but had I known I would have decided against getting it then and there on account of the images against reality we were shown of people falling flat on their faces and lying on the ground and on hospital floors https://twitter.com/rachadchahine/status/1220785179146563585. These were clear signs of a psyop followed by a few others.
I have very little interest in people's credentials these days as I know they mean so little, what I'm interested in is their argument and the argument against what they say if there is one and then what their argument is against the argument against theirs. I knew there would be no special virus before a number of doctors and scientists came out and said there wasn't so I wasn't going to get the jab regardless of safety and efficacy because I knew it wasn't a matter of safety or efficacy it was a matter of requirement - there simply is no requirement for the jab regardless of anything else.
Two fundamental rules of critical thinking:
1. Aim to prove your hypothesis wrong - this does not mean blindly accepting what is said in scientific papers. This means engaging with material that comes out against the mainstream narrative with a reasonable degree of rigour
2. Confine your analysis to the most unarguable-with data
Here are two pieces of very common sense unarguable-with data:
1. If we weren't told about a pandemic 24/7 by goverment and media we'd have zero clue there was one.
2. As covid doesn't have a distinctive set of symptoms and there is no gold standard test (thus it is not a clinically diagnosed condition), if testing stopped tomorrow there would be no way of knowing if someone had covid or nothing at all or a cold, flu, pneumonia whatever.
Testing stops, covid effectively disappears.