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It is truly depressing to see straw men arguments like this from academics. This is a straw man so massive that, were it to be set on fire, the crew of the ISS could see it easily. NO ONE is "ignoring" #CovidVaccine adverse events. NO ONE is *advocating* that we "ignore" AEs. 1/ https://twitter.com/walidgellad/status/1390260528988270592
I don't know if Dr. Gellad realizes it or not, but the accusation that @CDCgov, @US_FDA, and vaccine advocates are somehow "ignoring" or "covering up" adverse events caused by vaccines is a very old antivaccine trope that I've been dealing with for nearly two decades. 2/
Pre-pandemic, antivaxxers claimed that we were "ignoring," "downplaying," or "covering up" cases of death, autism, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's, etc., reported to #VAERS. These claims about #CovidVaccine are nothing new. 3/
I don't know if Dr. Gellad realizes it, but weaponizing #VAERS reports of death and everything else is a tactic being used by the antivaccine movement that I (and several other pro-vaccine advocates) were warning about before there was a #CovidVaccine being distributed. 4/
The misuse of #VAERS by antivaxxers is not a surprise, including their assuming causation for all adverse reactions before they are studied or their portraying public health/science communicators as "ignoring" all the death and destruction they attribute to #CovidVaccine. 5/
The combination of weaponizing #VAERS reports plus accusing those who try to put those reports into context of "minimizing" or "ignoring" those reports, instead of what we are doing, putting them into context and showing why many (but not all) are not indicative of causation. 6/
I'll list examples. Around the time I got my first dose of #Pfizer #CovidVaccine, there were reports of Bell's palsy and syncope being weaponized by antivaxxers, with no evidence of causation. 7/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/syncope-and-bells-palsy-telling-correlation-from-causation-for-adverse-events-observed-after-covid-19-vaccination/
By February, antivaxxers were weaponizing reports of death to #VAERS without consideration of baseline mortality rates, exactly as I (and others) had predicted that they would. 8/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-vaccines-as-dangerous-continue-apace-vaers-edition/
This effort to assume causation for all #VAERS reports continued apace, with the added feature that antivaxxers love to use raw numbers without normalizing to population or doses of vaccine administered, the better to make the numbers seem scarier. 9/ https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/02/17/misuse-of-the-vaers-database-by-antivaxxers-continues-cardiac-edition/
The weaponization of #VAERS is particularly odd, given that CDC and FDA noted a one-in-a-million (at the time) adverse event associated with the J&J vaccine in a month and a half of its use, and then paused its distribution. Some "ignoring." 10/ https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/14/covid-19-vaccine-safety-monitoring-the-jj-vaccine-and-blood-clots/
So Dr. Gellad is correct. It IS a difficult time to discuss vaccine adverse events, but not for the reasons he apparently believes. The press sensationalizes and antivaxxers weaponize any dramatic report, whether causation is likely or not. 11/
Dr. Gellad portrays this as "ignoring" adverse events and appears to defend @thackerpd (who is NOT an honest broker). It is not, and I hope this brief thread helps educate WHY discussing #CovidVaccine adverse events is difficult. It's not because we're "ignoring" them. 12/12
Forgot to mention: In addition to my two blogs, @AboutPediatrics is an excellent resource for the discussion of how antivaxxers have traditionally weaponized #VAERS to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines. 13/13 https://vaxopedia.org
Welp, this is not encouraging. Clearly the good doctor doesn’t want to hear criticism. 14/14
And…who’s imputing malign intent? I emphasized that I was assuming that he didn’t know he was using an antivax talking point. Anyway, One block deserves another; so, sadly, I blocked him back.
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Context. He was responding to Thacker and basically amplifying his message. 16/16
