Discussion on answer by DJClayworth: Are unusually many people dying after being vaccinated for COVID-19?

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18:38

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A: Are unusually many people dying after being vaccinated for COVID-19?

This has been fact-checked extensively: The Washington Post: It may be a stunning picture, but it’s also a highly misleading and cherry-picked one. The most crucial thing to note at the outset is that just because someone died after getting the vaccine doesn’t mean they died because of it. So w...

Paul Draper

Aren't all these points (except COVID deaths) applicable to the flu vaccine as well?

DJClayworth

Absolutely. Which proves that the flu vaccine isn't killing people either.

Paul Draper

WaPo's article is just so oblique to the actual cited claim. Claim: "Something is different between COVID-19 and flu vaccines by an order of magnitude." Rebuttal: "A list of information, all of which applies to both COVID-19 and flu." ??

DJClayworth

Any difference is entire due to Carlson's massively wrong figures for deaths after flu vaccine. Let's move on.

Paul Draper

"massively wrong figures for deaths after flu vaccine" Interesting, what's the correct number? Or is it just completely unknown?

DJClayworth

18:38

It's at least 2000.

Fizz

@PaulDraper: it's unknown because it's not collected (by VAERS or anything else). What is known is that EUA for Covid-19 vaccines has specific reporting VAERS reporting requirements (all deaths) that don't exist for the influenza vaccines, so such VAERS-based comparisons between vaccines are flawed.

user76284

@DJClayworth Source?

Moo

@user76284 i think DJClayworth is referring to expected deaths, teying to be amusing 😉 The statistic you are looking for is excess deaths - the deaths beyond those expected in the population. That tells you if theres an uptick for some reason.

user76284

@Moo I'm asking DJClayworth for a source for what he said.

user2316602

This answer seems to imply that the data for deaths from covid vaccines are much more pessimistic than those for flu vaccines without giving any evidence or even arguments why that might be the case!

Peter - Reinstate Monica

18:38

Funny enough, the vaccine defenders use the same argument the Covid deniers used: Correlation is not causation.

DJClayworth

My source is the Washington Post article plus elementary math. Of 135 million Americans with the Covid vaccine, you expect 3000 of them to die each day. Of 100 million people with the flu vaccine you expect about 3000*100/135=2222 deaths. This is basic stuff.

@Moo I'm not trying to be amusing. I'm using Tucker Carlson's measure. He talks about "the number of people who die after getting the vaccine". He specifically never talks about "the number of people who die because of the vaccine". It's one of the big reasons his argument is so wrong. If you read any of the fact checking articles they say that explicitly, and the quotes I give say that explicitly.

In other shock news: more than 7000 people a day die after eating food.

user76284

@DJClayworth You made 2 statements: "Carlson's figures for deaths after flu vaccine are massively wrong", and "it's at least 2000". Do you have a source for both of these statements?

DJClayworth

@user76284 Please actually read the comments above, and the answer, where I give you exactly the source for that figure.

user76284

@DJClayworth Which Washington Post article and paragraph are you referring to?

DJClayworth

@user76284 There is a link to the article in the answer. I quote the paragraph in my answer. I source the calculation in my answer.

user76284

18:38

@DJClayworth Which paragraph of the article are you referring to? The paragraph in your answer does not support that statement.

DJClayworth

@user76284 It's beginning to seem like you are deliberately trying to disrupt this site. Please stop.

user76284

@DJClayworth You said that at least 2000 people died from (which is what the Carlson quote refers to, not "after") the flu shot every year. Please provide a source for that statement.

DJClayworth

No, I didn't. Read it again.

user76284

@DJClayworth Yes you did. You said Carlson's figures are "massively wrong". Carlson's figures are about deaths from the flu shot, not after the flu shot. Ergo, you're referring to deaths from the flu shot.

Therefore, please provide a source for your claim that at least 2000 people died from the flu shot every year. That's all I'm asking.

DJClayworth

Carlson says "Every flu season, we give influenza shots to more than 160 million Americans. Every year, a relatively small number of people seem to die AFTER getting those shots. To be precise, in 2019, that number was 203 people. " He is wrong the number is about 2000.

That's 2000 per day.

user76284

18:53

@DJClayworth Why did you deliberately skip the very next 2 sentences? "The year before, it was 119. In 2017, a total of 85 people died from the flu shot." Clearly he's referring to deaths from the flu shot.

DJClayworth

If Carlson can't be consistent in his statistics that's not my problem.

user76284

I see you're not interested in being honest.

DJClayworth

Frankly you seem to be intent on disrupting this site. If you can't understand my posts, after I've tried to explain them several times, then I can't really help that.

user76284

He also says the data comes from VAERS, so it's clear that those figures refer to deaths believed to be from the flu shot, not just any death "after" a flu shot.

So again, please provide a source for your claim that at least 2000 people died from the flu shot every year.

user76284

19:07

Furthermore, you said: "So when Tucker Carlson says "a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccines in the United States" that can include people who died in a car crash, or who already had a terminal illness."

But the 3,362 figure comes from VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). So you're also deceiving your readers there.

fyrepenguin

19:23

The thing is, there's a difference in reporting requirements for the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine. With the former, only adverse events attributable to the vaccine itself, specifically:

A. Anaphylaxis or anaphylactic shock (7 days)
B. Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration
(7 days)
C. Vasovagal syncope (7 days)

For the COVID vaccine, *any* of the following:
- Vaccine administration errors, whether or not associated with an adverse event (AE)
- Serious AEs regardless of causality. Serious AEs per FDA are defined as:

vaers.hhs.gov/docs/…

vaers.hhs.gov/faq.html

Specifically from the CDC: "Reports to VAERS of death following vaccination do not necessarily mean the vaccine caused the death."

@user76284 What @DJClayworth is claiming is that, given similar reporting requirements, VAERS should have on the order of 2,000 reports related to the flu shot, simply due to normal mortality events. He isn't claiming, as far as I can tell, that the flue vaccine causes those deaths any more than the COVID vaccine causes the 3,000 or so you're seeing in the VAERS database

It's the difference in phrasing and reporting for "deaths after vaccination" and "deaths due to vaccination". The former includes unrelated events, the latter does not. And since the flu and COVID vaccine have different levels of stringency regarding the reports to VAERS, the numbers are in no way directly comparable

Fizz goes into that in his answer skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/50696/31920

user76284

20:23

@fyrepenguin I understand that there are systematic differences that make a direct comparison problematic. My question was about a more narrow matter. But thank you for the information.

I also don't think VAERS-reportable events include dying from a car crash. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

fyrepenguin

23:58

@user76284 As best as I can tell, it says all death, but they follow up to check whether the death is actually COVID-related. That way they don't throw out potentially informative data too early in the process. VAERS also doesn't disallow normal people from adding spurious reports, which is why some care does have to be taken when perusing the information in the database.

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