Last night, and unfortunately right before bed, I managed to land on Paul Offit’s Substack 🤨 (your fault, Dr Reid Sheftall 😅)…
This post is not intended to try and influence (or even interact with) anyone in Covidian Offit-Land. I don’t think that this would be a good use of time and energy at this point, although I did drop a VAERS link in a weak moment.
My point is to look at how this fuckery sausage is made.
A lot of it happens in spaces like Twitter and various social media comment threads. Studies get thrown around in condescending ways and are never read by anyone. Then somewhere along the way they become accepted as fact and proof of some bullshit.
Today we will look at a “gold standard” meta-analysis that was used to “debunk” the myocarditis association with the herd culling murder shots. It was published in 2022, but the studies comprising it obviously predate the meta-analysis…many of which were used as a “compelling” reason to inject a lot of kids (and adults) with a bioweapon.
Let me first say that Offit’s post had nothing to do with myocarditis…I’ll get to the myocarditis part in a moment.
Offit was addressing the terrible misinformation that came along with the “pandemic”. Let’s see what he had to say. He is an expert after all...
Paul opined the terrible, dangerous anti-vaccine movement, infested with misinformation spreaders who reject The Science™ and brilliance of the herd culling murder shots beautiful vaccines.
At the start of the COVID pandemic, by embracing the power and influence of social media, the anti-vaccine movement was thriving, spreading misinformation at an alarming rate.
Ultimately his post was about folks in the alternative treatment arena that happen to be making bank pushing their supplements and advice.
Paul concludes…
Anti-vaccine activists are quick to call anyone who promotes the science of vaccines and vaccine safety as shills for the pharmaceutical industry. But who is really doing the shilling?
The truth is that it’s happening on both sides, as I’ve covered in past posts here, here, and here. So I actually don’t disagree with him. However, considering his well known affiliation with Merck and the patent he holds for the Rotateq® vaccine, it seems odd to cast stones here. You know, seeing as how he has made millions of dollars hocking injectable products and all.
I read Paul’s post in its entirety and, ever a glutton for punishment, continued on into the comment section, which is where I will get to my actual point.
Paul is not interested in discussing the money he has made (I’m sorry I didn’t screen shot this exchange last night, before the comments were removed). Props to Phil B for standing strong along this entire thread.
At any rate, Paul’s board has some Big Smart commenters that love to say “shame on you”, which is a super helpful discourse technique. Everyone knows that.
In addition to shame based commenting, a meta-analysis from 2022 is still being tossed around as “proof” that the injectable bioweapon (that inconveniently doesn’t prevent anything “anymore”) is less dangerous than “infection”.
After my VAERS link fell on deaf ears, I decided to take a look at Mike’s myocarditis meta-analysis, which he so confidently linked. And here is where I hope to make a point.
This is what I found:
Identified studies
The study selection process is shown in Figure 1. A total of 763 studies were screened. The exclusion process yielded 22 studies conducted in eight countries and three WHO regions. The baseline characteristics of the studies included in the meta-analysis are presented in Table 1. Included studies consisted of 58 million persons, with 55.5 million in the vaccination cohort and 2.5 million in the infection cohort (Table 1). Overall, median age was 49 years (interquartile range (IQR): 38–56), and 49% (IQR: 43–52%) were men. Then, 10 studies were assessed for myocarditis rates from infection and 12 studies from COVID-19 vaccines. Of the vaccine studies, eight assessed mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), one study Novavax, one study adenovirus vectors (AstraZeneca), and one study combined mRNA and J and J vaccine. Of patients diagnosed with myocarditis (in both vaccination and COVID-19 cohort) 1.07% were hospitalized and 0.015% died. Of patients who developed myocarditis after receiving the vaccine or having the infection, 61% (IQR: 39–87%) were men. Of patients diagnosed with myocarditis (in both vaccination and COVID-19 cohort) 1.07% were hospitalized and 0.015% died. The median follow-up time from infection or vaccine to myocarditis was 28 days (IQR: 28–30 days). The median study quality score among the observational studies was 8 (range: 7–9) and was deemed as having a low risk of bias. Similarly, RCTs also had a low risk of bias.
763 studies were screened, but only 22 studies were used in this meta analysis. That is roughly 2.88%.
FULL STOP.
Why were 97% of the studies that they screened excluded? What was the exclusion process??? We will just have to wonder because they didn’t provide that info.
A total of 58 million people were included in this analysis.
55.5 million were in the vaccine group
2.5 million in the infection group
Gosh, that’s pretty even. AND AWESOME that a bunch of Big Smarts are quoting this “gold standard meta-analysis” to discourage “vaccine hesitancy” based on myocarditis fears.
Considering everyone on the planet has had whatever Covid is…it seems like we could do some better studying on myocarditis risks. But what do I know…
Some quick questions…
Was the infection cohort also vaccinated? I didn’t see that important detail addressed.
How were Covid infections diagnosed? PCR? Because we know that’s fucked.
What about myocarditis? How was that diagnosed?
Oh look! They did give some info on that myocarditis part:
The findings of this meta-analysis should be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, studies varied in their methods of diagnosing myocarditis: Although myocarditis is suspected by clinical diagnosis, cardiac biomarkers and ECG changes, confirmation is made by performing an endomyocardial biopsy or with a Cardiac MRI (CMR). However, not all medical centers had the facilities to perform CMR or endomyocardial biopsies. Only two studies included three patients who underwent endomyocardial biopsy with no diagnostic evidence of myocarditis on biopsy (4, 17).
And here’s what they said about bias:
Publication bias was assessed only for the vaccine cohort studies. Due to the small number of studies in the infection cohort, we did not assess publication bias for these studies. Visual inspection of a funnel plot of the included studies did indicate a slight asymmetry indicative of mild publication bias. Egger's test for publication bias was significant (p=0.01) but Begg's test was non-significant (p = 0.14). Consequently, we conducted Duval and Tweedie's trim and fill test to balance the funnel plot and adjust for potential publication bias (16). The results indicated that if publication bias existed, three additional studies would be needed to eliminate bias, and the overall effect of vaccines on myocarditis would change from 2 (95% CI: 1.44–2.65) to 1.5 (95% CI: 1.11–1.26, Supplementary Figure S1). To identify outlier studies, we further performed influence sensitivity analyses by excluding and replacing one study at a time (Leave-One-Out method) from the meta-analysis and calculated the RR for the remaining studies (35). No substantial change from any of the pooled RR was observed when other studies were removed in turn indicating that no individual study had a considerable influence on the pooled estimate. The plots for the analysis estimates are provided in Supplementary Figure S2.
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material. R code and data to reproduce the results in this article are archived at GitHub. The link to GitHub is: https://github.com/ssentongojeddy/Myocarditis_COVID19. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Here’s where the GitHub link ends:
This study was funded by Penn State. I don’t know who donates to Penn State, but I know they broke some records in 2020, which makes me wonder...
And there’s a biotech company donating up in there….
Mary Lavin, President, Sartorius North America, added, "We believe Penn State will make the most of this donation and partnership to inspire the next generation of pharma-biotech employees with innovative tools and solutions. We are investing in this new laboratory and expanding our partnership with PSU to ensure that students are prepared to meet the needs of our customers and the industry to produce safe and affordable medicines."
Friends…
My long winded point is this:
You do not need to have any letters in front of or behind your name to call out their bullshit.
IT IS OBVIOUS.
AND EGREGIOUS.
They are not stopping. And it behooves all of us to get fluent in it.
Fuck them. Call it out.
https://ko-fi.com/conspiracysarah
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Great post. I'm just a retired former tech guy who has questioned some of the studies that "proved" that HCQ and Ivermectin don't work. I dug deep into the one that was quoted by the press in 2021, demonstrating that HCQ does not work. The protocol advocated by HCQ proponents was this: at initial exposure or first sign of symptoms, take the recommended doses of HCQ, zinc, and azithromycin.
The study used a sample and control group of people already hospitalized for at least three days and then they were given two times the recommended dose of HCQ. No zinc or azithromycin. And - imagine that! - a double dose of HCQ to an already-hospitalized person didn't help much. Imagine if I made you a gin and tonic (gin + tonic + a lime wedge) and only put in the tonic water. It certainly wouldn't taste right and it certainly wouldn't have the salubrious effect of a proper G&T.
Dig deep and you'll find that most of the "studies" that show the vaxxes are super-good are funded by Pharma and their flaws are baked in from the beginning.
Wow Sarah, your ability to keep wading through the BS is astounding. Or do you use scuba gear at this point?!
I couldn’t do it. So thank you for being so relentless. Truly admirable! 💖