How to Spot Propaganda Statistics -- COVID Edition

NOTE: This post is also available at randomrantsbykc.blogspot.com as it explains how antivaxxers misuse statistics for propaganda purposes. 

Recently, experts warned that pregnant women are being deliberately targeted with COVID vaccine misinformation. Some claimed that COVID vaccines can affect fertility, while another claimed vaccines cause stillbirths. One even cited a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons" to claim the vaccine is unsafe for pregnant persons. But the study actually shows the opposite of it. So how do you spot such misinformation? By always looking for the context. If a statistic is presented WITHOUT context, you cannot trust it. 

Feel free to read the abstract of the summary above, but I'll include a relevant highlight from the Pubmed link above:

... 13.9% resulted in a pregnancy loss...

While the 13.9% pregnancy loss sounds alarming in itself, you cannot say whether the vaccine is bad or good without knowing the context of such a number. What you should be asking here is "so what is the normal pregnancy loss, i.e. pregnancy loss rate without COVID vaccine?" Or to use a statistics term, what is the base rate or background rate, so we can have a proper comparison? 

Turns out, the answer is not that simple, because, in the US, there are actually TWO terms for pregnancy loss: miscarriage (for fetus before 20 weeks), and stillbirth (fetus at 20 weeks or older), and separate statistics are kept. 

For miscarriage, the answer is between 10-20%, according to the Mayo Clinic, but that's reported cases. The actual rate is higher due to unrecognized pregnancies. As high as 33% according to some estimates. 

"About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage."

Once past 20 weeks, the fetal death rate falls off significantly, down to 1 in 100 to 160 pregnancies, according to CDC. 

As the study used the term "pregnancy loss", which encompasses BOTH stillbirth and miscarriage, and 10-20% vastly overshadows the 1/160 rate, 10-20% is the right number to use as a base rate. 

Thus, the 13.9% number is actually somewhat BELOW the known rate, if we take the median, which is about 15%. And the difference is so small it is probably within statistical error margins. 

Thus, there is no known risk to pregnancy by the mRNA COVID vaccine, since the rate of vaccinated pregnancy loss is almost indistinguishable from the unvaccinated pregnancy loss rate. 

But you wouldn't know that if you ONLY heard the 13.9% figure. It sounds scary. And that's what the people who presented those statistics WANT you to feel: FEAR through propaganda, manipulating your thoughts through misinformation and disinformation. 

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A similar thing happened with the earlier CDC vaccine reaction tracking that there seems to be a few cases of myocarditis among people who got vaccinated, that they temporarily halted the use of one COVID vaccine for a few weeks, out of an abundance of caution, while the study was re-checked and more data was gathered. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscles. CDC later put the odds of such at about 4.8 per million.  

As expected, anti-vaxxers started touting this as "COVID vaccines are unsafe". They even got a study that supposedly proves that myocarditis increased after COVID vaccines were added. But again, should you check the studies, what is the base rate, and what are the alternatives? 

Turns out, Reuters had published a full fact-check article on this. The study that was touted by the anti-vaxxers made a huge error. The original study was done by The University of Ottawa Heart Institute. It stated that odds are 1 in 1000 of developing a heart problem after COVID vaccination. It was put on preview on September 16th, before it was peer-reviewed. Turns out, they used the wrong figure in "doses administered". They used a figure of 32379 over the study period of 2 months. It should be about 25X larger at 845930. Instead of 1/1000, the figure is more like 3.78/100000. The paper was withdrawn from preview on September 24th, and the Heart Institute itself had issued an apology. 

So the evidence is not there. There are also TWO MORE factors to consider... 

a) What is the base rate of myocarditis? i.e. what is the possibility of catching it without the vaccine?  

According to Wikipedia, it's about 22 per 100K people per year. And 20% will die in the first year. 

However, this is the overall rate. The rate is much lower for younger people, about 5 per 100K people. 

b) What is the possibility of COVID-induced myocarditis, if you caught COVID instead of vaccinating, but recovered? 

Existing myocarditis data from 2019 (pre-COVID) was compared to 2020 data (during COVID) and the signs are having had COVID suggests you are "15.7 times more likely" to have a myocarditis event. 

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Another study involving records of 2 million patients from 40 different hospitals specifically looked for incidents in individuals who had received the COVID vaccine. Guess how many cases they found? Twenty, out of Two Million. 1 per 100000. That's lower than the background rate / base rate. It is of no factor. 

But now you have mothers screaming on Twitter that "my teenager caught myocarditis from the vaccine". 

Except, again, there's no proof from temporal association, i.e. correlation is not causation. It's an anecdote, not data. 

CDC has the data, and it's sharing in the full report from June 2021:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-06/05-COVID-Wallace-508.pdf

The results now show more children are getting infected and dying because the vaccine isn't available for them until VERY recently, and the unvaccinated are clogging up the hospital beds so people who need normal hospitalization can't get in, and either transfer to a different state... or die. 

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When the antivaxxers tell you "do your own research", what they actually mean is "please read our propaganda (where we scare you into supporting us and distrust the doctors)" 

What you should do instead, is REALLY do your research... by spotting other people's propaganda for what it is... intention to manipulate you. 

And yes, I am trying to manipulate you... into REALLY thinking for yourself, not just looking up stuff to confirm your own beliefs. 

WTF: Vaccine Hesitancy in COVID times

In January 2021, total deaths due to COVID in the US have passed 400000... that's LESS THAN A YEAR after the FIRST confirmed case (January 21st, 2020, in Seattle). Today, April 2021, it's already past 550000. 

Keep in mind that the US death toll is the world's HIGHEST, even worse than China, where it was first discovered and turned the city of Wuhan into an almost ghost city. 

Just to keep the numbers in perspective... 400000 about the same as the TOTAL US MILITARY CASUALTIES IN the entire World War II! (400103 COVID deaths as of Jan 19, 2021, vs 405000 total casualties as quoted from Dept of Veteran Affairs)

The numbers are sobering as the country reached 200000 deaths in September, 300000 deaths in December, and 400000 deaths in January... 

As of this writing (April 3rd, 2021), the total US COVID deaths is at 554000 (thanks, Google, click to get up to date count)

So how can ANYONE who values their life still be vaccine-hesitant? 

And if they don't value their own lives, can they prevent their almost-adult children from getting vaccinated? 

Turns out the answer is quite a bit more complex, with legal, moral, and medical aspects to consider. 

Please note that it is not my attempt to document the anti-vax movement, but rather, show how anti-vaxxers are known to cherry-pick random bits of study results because it's all they see to fit their own frame of mind, instead of looking at things with the proper scientific mindset. 

But let's start with the legal bits. 

Can Antivax Parents Legally Prohibit Their Children from getting COVID vaccine? 

This cannot be answered at the moment because none of the COVID vaccines are approved for children. Pfizer vaccine is approved for age 16 and over. J&J and Moderna vaccines are only approved for 18 and over. 

But legally speaking, vaccines are a medical treatment, and thus, parents of the minor will be notified, and parents do have the right to refuse. 

The school, of course, can require immunization/vaccination before allowing the students back, unless the student has a specific vaccine exemption on medical, and in some states, religious reasons. California, for example, had been tightening the rules and dropped religious exemptions altogether. This made the various anti-vax parents form networks trying to promote the doctors who will certify vaccine exemptions, but the law made the exemptions subject to review, as prior exemption abuse included non-pediatric doctors writing exemptions. 

Some US states recognize the "mature minor doctrine" which basically is where a mature minor knows enough to recognize the risks and rewards and capable of making up his or her own mind about self-health. Generally, they have to be at least 15 years of age and is generally a way for a minor to seek treatment against the will of his or her parents. The court will often have to appoint someone to test the minor and the judge will have to make a final decision. 

This is different from the full "emancipated minor" where the minor is declared legally his/her own person and no longer considered a minor, and can live by him or herself, and/or sign contracts and stuff that a minor normally would not be allowed to do. It is basically a limited version of emancipation.

It gets more complicated as some states have laws on the books that SOME vaccines require parental notification, while some do not.  

In case I lost you completely, yes, anti-vax parents can prevent their children from getting vaccinated. This is complicated as it intersects public health, privacy rights, and parental rights. But there are legal ways around it... both will involve a judge. 

Practically speaking, most mass vaccination sites barely checks your ID. Are they really going to notify your parents if you do want the vaccine? Doubt it. 

What Mental Gymnastics is Antivaxxers Using to Deny COVID and COVID vaccines? 

Nothing really special, as they have always tried to make mountains out of molehills. 

For example: after getting COVID vaccines, some reported arm lymph nodes swelling. Medical professionals say "normal reaction" of the immune system. Anti-vaxxers say: COVID vaccine causes breast cancer. No, not making this up. 

Then there are the "scientists" who can't get a job in the regular sciences, so they decided to court the anti-vax crowd... by feeding them nonsense. Let's take Vanden Boosche as an example. He circulated an "open letter" to advocate governments around the world to STOP MASS VACCINATIONS. His arguments can be roughly summarized as the old anti-vax trope: vaccination is making MORE DANGEROUS diseases! Which is just a variation on "diseases aren't that awful". 

I'm sure the 554000 people who had DIED from COVID in the US alone, and the millions dead from COVID around the world would disagree. 

Frankly, the logic is backward. The more we immunize, the LESS CHANCE a disease can spread and mutate. This is a virus, NOT a bacteria. Bacteria and natural selection will create more drug-resistant bacteria, but that's because we can't kill all bacteria. Coronavirus is NOT a bacteria. The virus can only replicate when it infects a host. And the more it replicates, the more chances it mutates and becomes a new variant. Immunization means a virus cannot infect the host, cannot replicate, cannot mutate, cannot create new variants. 

Furthermore, modern vaccines usually sequence the whole virus, not just a specific segment of it, and thus the vaccine is effective against multiple variants, not the specific strain. We've seen in the reports that several of the existing COVID vaccines are effective against the new variants. While using the "older" vaccines on the new variants did produce fewer antibodies vs the original virus, medical professionals agree that they should still provide adequate protection to trigger the immune system. Furthermore, being immunized means you cannot be an asymptomatic carrier/spreader. 

And the vaccine makers are not standing still. They are evaluating strategies to create new variants of vaccines to protect against multiple variants, would a third dose help stop the variants, and so on. 

So What Do We Do About It?

So what do we do about vaccine hesitancy? Usually, showing them the facts, and let them PROPERLY weigh the risks vs. reward should be sufficient. 

But if they are the type to treat NaturalNews as "one true news" and laments how Infowars was shut down by "leftie wingnuts" then there's no saving them from themselves. They would describe themselves as "not anti-vax". Indeed, RFK Jr describes himself as pro-vaccine, even though he runs an anti-vax organization. Indeed, a dozen people generated 2/3rds of all antivax messages on Facebook and Twitter. 

When people go to extreme lengths to jump the queue for COVID vaccine (such as a Canadian couple flew to remote village for vaccine meant for locals or Mexican celebrity flew to Florida for COVID vaccine) one can only say "more for the rest of us" should some people choose to not get in line. 

And if they happen to survive, remind them about herd immunity and luck.