Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines

Antivaxxers have been publicizing reports of myocarditis in young people, mostly male, after COVID-19 vaccination. ACIP will be meeting to discuss these reports to the VAERS database today. Is there a connection between mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

2021: The year the weaponization of VAERS went mainstream

Misuse of the VAERS database to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines has been a favorite technique of antivaxxers for decades. Unfortunately, 2021 was the year when this particular antivax trope was turbocharged. (Note: Orac will be taking a week off after this—see note in post.)

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Is this “turbo cancer” claim the single dumbest misuse of VAERS that I’ve ever seen?

A Substack writer who goes by the ‘nym “2nd Smartest Guy in the World” misuses VAERS to demonstrate a “143,233 surge in fatal cancers” due to COVID-19 vaccines, thus proving Betteridge’s law of headlines wrong in this case.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Antivax weaponization of v-safe: Like VAERS on steroids

Misrepresentation of VAERS reports has been a longstanding antivaccine propaganda technique. Now Del Bigtree has gotten his hands on V-Safe, the system created to track adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination. The results are, predictably, disinformation.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Undermining the childhood vaccine schedule with EBM fundamentalism

“Not antivax” COVID contrarian Dr. Vinay Prasad demonstrates why skepticism is necessary and how evidence-based medicine (EBM) fundamentalism harms childhood health by inadvertently (I hope) echoing a very old antivax trope about randomized clinical trials for the childhood vaccine schedule, you know, to “rebuild confidence.”