I think you missed a fourth reason. Pharma is buying their silence. People who speak are targeted for silencing (one way or another). People like you and Marty are the few exceptions.
Vinay, I wish it were regulatory "science". It has become nothing but regulatory politics, first gamed to win an election and then maintained so that those in power can stay that way. They all depend on everyone being sheep to keep up their façade until there will be no need for a façade. The Truth Commission is pretty close to just dropping the façade and telling us all to go pound sand and to obey.
I daily am thankful for people like you that have the "balls" to take them on and make these points. I do it too, but you have greater scope and that has enormous value. Please do not stop. And if you need help from those of us in the Academy willing to fight with you, you need only ask. There are more than you think.
Thanks not only for speaking the truth, but for never getting locked in a rigid position (except vis-à-vis masks...but haven't given up on that yet...lol.)
It is a different point of view, it stems from looking at and analyzing MOLECULES for many years, not at patients, for my luck.... To see crying MD's who can't prescribe medicine people need, is a CATASTROPHE and should be prosecuted.
This is what bothered me so much about lockdowns and holding back on hospital surgeries, etc. The assumption that other ways of dying no longer mattered and only deaths from CoVid were important.
People seemed to just forget about cancer treatments and other problems. It was insane and we’re seeing the consequences of this now two years in.
Vinay, an excellent opinion piece as usual. Not all of our scientists are quiet for the same reason of course, but clearly most are cowed into silence at a time when our society so desperately needs them. Instead, they want to prattle on about any other topic. They are missing in action, and one day hopefully, society will open their eyes and deliver their comeuppance.
Ive been asking myself the same question. Where the hell is everyone that makes a career out of thinking deeply about safety, trial design, and applicability. Weirdly silent while mandates and firings of badly needed healthcare professionals are allowed to continue as if there is just cause and evidence
All good points. The missing number 4 was the brainwashing where the media prejudiced all pliable people to think covid was an existential threat (ELE) of a scale much worse than any other. I mean realistically thinking, if governments around the world all pretend that human rights violations are ok for this plague, then it must be very bad, so most blindly adjusted their thinking to give the disease more weight than one normally should.
I agree there is a problem with EUA and the regulations, but most will say that unlike cancer, children and 20 year-olds may infect an 80 year-old with Covid. Again, I am basically in agreement with you. The flu is a better analogy.
You should proof read your writing. I would like to share it with members of my family, but with so many grammatical errors, it takes away from the very important message you are conveying. It takes away from your authority.
Good question.... I'm sure it has something to do with pharmaceutical industry influence and profits, and the fact that our agencies are captured by different industries, with rotating jobs from the government into industry and back again.
VINAY: You wrote: "And if you can't run the trial because the sample size is too large that tells you something about how marginal the effect size is". Many of us who follow your posts will discern easily "what you probably meant to say", yet I am pretty confident that plenty of readers who are not experienced with, and knowledgable about, statistical hypothesis testing will not be able to read between the lines and decode your meaning (and this, by the way, constitutes another example of why you should proof-read all of your posts word-by-word before publication). What has to be computed pre-trial is a sample size of sufficient magnitude that a statistically significant signal (e.g. p< .05 arbitrarily) would have a suitably high probability of emerging from the trial findings *if the CONCEALED effect size (i.e. the reality in the overall population under study) is at least as large as some value arbitrarily but thoughtfully chosen pre-trial*. Setting the sample size in designing any trial also is contingent on balancing projected Type I and Type II errors and that balancing act is always one part of the "cost of admission". I'm not suggesting here that you were obligated to wax eloquent about the ins and outs of Neyman-Pearson testing, but your hasty wording as it stands now will surely mislead some number of untrained followers in your large readership. What should have been written (in my opinion) is something like this: "The computed sample size needed for a proper randomized trial of Paxlovid impact would probably be so large that such a trial would be essentially impractical on logistical grounds alone unless some truly tiny effect size were assumed operative. Finally, your potent punch line about what might be responsibly intuited here is definitely vivid but it needed a more careful design because its wording can easily mislead the untrained where it puts out these words ". . .tells you something about how marginal the effect size is". HUH ? The fly in the ointment is that present-tense verb "is". The effect size due to using Paxlovid is concealed! It is not known. A putative "effect size" used in computing necessary sample size is an IMAGINED value required for making the computation. The ignorance of Actual Reality is what defines the necessity of doing a randomized study which allows us to only ESTIMATE within certain limits an approximate value of the effect size.
I think you missed a fourth reason. Pharma is buying their silence. People who speak are targeted for silencing (one way or another). People like you and Marty are the few exceptions.
Vinay, I wish it were regulatory "science". It has become nothing but regulatory politics, first gamed to win an election and then maintained so that those in power can stay that way. They all depend on everyone being sheep to keep up their façade until there will be no need for a façade. The Truth Commission is pretty close to just dropping the façade and telling us all to go pound sand and to obey.
I daily am thankful for people like you that have the "balls" to take them on and make these points. I do it too, but you have greater scope and that has enormous value. Please do not stop. And if you need help from those of us in the Academy willing to fight with you, you need only ask. There are more than you think.
Thanks not only for speaking the truth, but for never getting locked in a rigid position (except vis-à-vis masks...but haven't given up on that yet...lol.)
well, the genetically modified injections are the CAUSE OF CANCER. PLEASE READ my most recent summary:
https://mejbcart.substack.com/p/the-lost-neurotransmitters-caused?s=w
It is a different point of view, it stems from looking at and analyzing MOLECULES for many years, not at patients, for my luck.... To see crying MD's who can't prescribe medicine people need, is a CATASTROPHE and should be prosecuted.
This is what bothered me so much about lockdowns and holding back on hospital surgeries, etc. The assumption that other ways of dying no longer mattered and only deaths from CoVid were important.
People seemed to just forget about cancer treatments and other problems. It was insane and we’re seeing the consequences of this now two years in.
Bravo bravo bravo. Thank you for speaking up.
Vinay, an excellent opinion piece as usual. Not all of our scientists are quiet for the same reason of course, but clearly most are cowed into silence at a time when our society so desperately needs them. Instead, they want to prattle on about any other topic. They are missing in action, and one day hopefully, society will open their eyes and deliver their comeuppance.
Ive been asking myself the same question. Where the hell is everyone that makes a career out of thinking deeply about safety, trial design, and applicability. Weirdly silent while mandates and firings of badly needed healthcare professionals are allowed to continue as if there is just cause and evidence
All good points. The missing number 4 was the brainwashing where the media prejudiced all pliable people to think covid was an existential threat (ELE) of a scale much worse than any other. I mean realistically thinking, if governments around the world all pretend that human rights violations are ok for this plague, then it must be very bad, so most blindly adjusted their thinking to give the disease more weight than one normally should.
I agree there is a problem with EUA and the regulations, but most will say that unlike cancer, children and 20 year-olds may infect an 80 year-old with Covid. Again, I am basically in agreement with you. The flu is a better analogy.
You should proof read your writing. I would like to share it with members of my family, but with so many grammatical errors, it takes away from the very important message you are conveying. It takes away from your authority.
Good question.... I'm sure it has something to do with pharmaceutical industry influence and profits, and the fact that our agencies are captured by different industries, with rotating jobs from the government into industry and back again.
VINAY: You wrote: "And if you can't run the trial because the sample size is too large that tells you something about how marginal the effect size is". Many of us who follow your posts will discern easily "what you probably meant to say", yet I am pretty confident that plenty of readers who are not experienced with, and knowledgable about, statistical hypothesis testing will not be able to read between the lines and decode your meaning (and this, by the way, constitutes another example of why you should proof-read all of your posts word-by-word before publication). What has to be computed pre-trial is a sample size of sufficient magnitude that a statistically significant signal (e.g. p< .05 arbitrarily) would have a suitably high probability of emerging from the trial findings *if the CONCEALED effect size (i.e. the reality in the overall population under study) is at least as large as some value arbitrarily but thoughtfully chosen pre-trial*. Setting the sample size in designing any trial also is contingent on balancing projected Type I and Type II errors and that balancing act is always one part of the "cost of admission". I'm not suggesting here that you were obligated to wax eloquent about the ins and outs of Neyman-Pearson testing, but your hasty wording as it stands now will surely mislead some number of untrained followers in your large readership. What should have been written (in my opinion) is something like this: "The computed sample size needed for a proper randomized trial of Paxlovid impact would probably be so large that such a trial would be essentially impractical on logistical grounds alone unless some truly tiny effect size were assumed operative. Finally, your potent punch line about what might be responsibly intuited here is definitely vivid but it needed a more careful design because its wording can easily mislead the untrained where it puts out these words ". . .tells you something about how marginal the effect size is". HUH ? The fly in the ointment is that present-tense verb "is". The effect size due to using Paxlovid is concealed! It is not known. A putative "effect size" used in computing necessary sample size is an IMAGINED value required for making the computation. The ignorance of Actual Reality is what defines the necessity of doing a randomized study which allows us to only ESTIMATE within certain limits an approximate value of the effect size.
Thanks Vinay. Its nice to know there are others who struggle with the ethics of vaccinating children for something that they are not vulnerable to
Follow the $$$
well said
The grammar and spelling need a rewrite on this article