4. The Politics of Health: Public Health & Misinformation

The COVID pandemic knocked back progress towards improving public health. Without addressing the underlying social and economic causes of ill health, it could completely stall.

Continuing my review and exploration of Conspirituality

Conspiracy theorists have a long history on the far right, from the John Birch Society during the 1950s and 1960s to the rise of "Infowars" founder Alex Jones in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But conservatives of the past were more likely to push back against them.The late William F. Buckley excluded ...

Over the past twenty years, Lyme disease cases have continued to climb, and we are finally tantalizingly close to another vaccine.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DrWilsonDebunksI rarely read YouTube comments these days, so if you want me to see your comment, here is how you can contact...

New mask studies relying on a medical paradigm do not erase decades of engineering and occupational science that show they work

New analysis answers questions about the ongoing effectiveness of COVID vaccines: How well they protect against infection, hospitalization and death months after initial doses or after a booster shot.

Posted in r/onguardforthee by u/Myllicent • 1,125 points and 116 comments

The era of rational, structure-based design of vaccines that's hitting it out of the park.

Conspiracy beliefs have become a topic of increasing interest among behavioural researchers. While holding conspiracy beliefs has been associated with several detrimental social, personal, and health consequences, little research has been dedicated to systematically reviewing the methods that could reduce conspiracy beliefs. We conducted a systematic review to identify and assess interventions that have sought to counter conspiracy beliefs. Out of 25 studies (total N = 7179), we found that while the majority of interventions were ineffective in terms of changing conspiracy beliefs, several interventions were particularly effective. Interventions that fostered an analytical mindset or taught critical thinking skills were found to be the most effective in terms of changing conspiracy beliefs. Our findings are important as we develop future research to combat conspiracy beliefs.

Boys -- but not girls -- born to mothers infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 during pregnancy were more likely to have a neurodevelopmental disorder by age 12 months, but the risk appeared to wane over time.

The flood of patients never materialized. Why?

Many people with long-term Covid symptoms say they've improved with acupuncture, meditation and ancient herbs.

We did a close-reading of the Inquiry’s 2,092 page final report

The therapy has helped veterans struggling with mental illness imagine their future selves.

Research into the disease has focused on plaques in the brain. But some scientists think viruses and bacteria play a role – and their work is gaining ground

A study adds new evidence that SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—could have a lasting impact on the heart.

Randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard when assessing the effectiveness of an intervention. However, this type of study can vary greatly in quality, particularly in complex interventions such as face masks, affecting the reliability of the results. In this context, many scientists consider that randomized controlled trials should…

Beyond overt propaganda outlets, like Russia’s RT, disinformation spread through proxy sites and on social media messaging apps like Telegram, which was widely used by the convoy’s genuine grassroots supporters.

Many pediatricians say they can’t remember seeing so many kids this sick at the same time. There are shortages of the antibiotic amoxicillin, generics of the influenza drug Tamiflu, and children’s Tylenolat a time when pediatric illnesses and respiratory infections surge in a “Tripledemic.” Thes

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this

I often feel like there is a production line somewhere (possibly Florida) where anti-vaccine propaganda documentaries are quickly assembled and released on social media to garner millions of views. The recipe is fairly simple: weave in interviews of the same handful of prominent anti-vaccine activists with emotional appeals from parents whose children were “never the same” after receiving their shots. But I would be hard pressed to name many pro-vaccine documentaries. The movie Virulent: The Vaccine War, written, directed and edited by Tjardus Greidanus, had almost wrapped when COVID-19 happened. Greidanus is no stranger to medical documentaries, having directed a film about the first successful liver transplantation and another one about Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Virulent is about vaccine hesitancy, and while many of us thought this fear had died down substantially in recent years, our current pandemic showed us otherwise. The embers of vaccine hesitancy never die out. New life can easily be breathed into them by the loud proclamations of anti-vaccine activists. Virulent paints an accurate portrait of the modern anti-vaccine movement—vociferous, hot-blooded, and blinded by selfishness—while addressing the biggest problem vaccines have: their success has turned the fiends of polio and measles into mythical creatures many modern parents do not take seriously. Not my problem The documentary relies on physicians, journalists, mothers, and vaccine advocates to illustrate the characteristics of anti-vaxxers in the post-Wakefield era. Pushback against vaccination has existed as long as vaccines have been around: ethicist Arthur Caplan reminds us that when cowpox was used to develop immunity against the much more dangerous smallpox, some people rebelled, worrying that the vaccine would turn them into a cow. But it was Andrew Wakefield’s now-discredited 1998 study that solidified the anti-vaccine movement into its modern incarnation. And what a terrible and fraudulent study it was, with some of the children’s parents having been recruited by a lawyer who wanted to find something wrong with the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in order to sue vaccine makers. Dr. Paul Offit, who helped develop the rotavirus vaccine, makes the following remark in Virulent: “There were 13 authors on that paper and eight study subjects. Just as a tip to future epidemiologists: you should always have more study subjects than authors.” Wakefield’s shoddy work was then given a face in actress and model Jenny McCarthy, who infamously told Oprah Winfrey that her autistic son Evan was “her science,” blaming childhood vaccinations on his condition. This personal story opened the floodgates for a movement now bathed in parental anecdotes. The dual urges for purity and liberty, meanwhile, give sustenance to its activists, who use the appeal to nature to decry the unnaturalness of vaccines and who gleefully tear down their social contract. As Cori Gentry, a birth instructor, summarizes in the movie, some parents think, “Well, I’m not going to expose my child to something that I perceive as harmful because your child has a compromised immune system. That’s your responsibility to limit any kind of exposure.” As warm of an embrace as vaccine hesitant parents can feel in the arms of an anti-vaccine movement that validates their anxieties, the ultimate callousness of a community that sees the vulnerabilities of some children as “not my problem” is becoming hard to ignore. Virulent also spends time at the top of the pyramid, pointing out the de facto leaders of the movement who seem to be making a lot of money on the anti-vaxx circuit. There’s Dr. Bob Sears, whose unscientific vaccine schedule has caused parents to postpone life-saving vaccines out of fear that too many shots would overwhelm their infant’s immune system. There’s Del Bigtree, a filmmaker who famously adopted the yellow Star of David to appropriate persecution from the real victims of the Holocaust. There’s Larry Cook, whose “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” Facebook group trained new anti-vaccine activists. And finally, there is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom the director interviews for the movie. Kennedy says the word “anti-vaccine” is pejorative and is used to discredit or silence his people. Meanwhile, he openly calls Dr. Offit “a charlatan and a crook” in front of the camera, saying “he is Big Pharma, he’s their chief spokesman.” I’m not sure what interviewing him achieves. The movie thankfully does not promote false balance. Kennedy’s few seconds on screen, though, seem unnecessary. I already know how Virulent will be denounced by the very movement it criticizes. Its adherents will say that Kennedy’s important points were cut out in the editing, that he was made to look like a fool on screen. They will blast the editors for giving Dr. Offit too much time to speak and will condemn Offit’s role as medical advisor in the movie. The presence of journalists from “the mainstream media,” like Brandy Zadrozny and Kevin Roose, will likewise be a reason for some to dismiss the film. And the fact that the Jewish Healthcare Foundation generously supported the making of the documentary will raise an anti-Semitic eyebrow or two. These grand conspiracy theories are alive and well, unfortunately. Julie Broida appears on screen as a woman who opposes California vaccination laws. She talks of families who, long ago, figured out a way to control the United States. She clarifies, “a section of Jews, maybe they would fall more into, like, [a] cabal. I don’t think ‘all Jews.’” Virulent is not going to change the minds of people like Broida and Kennedy. Rather, it was made for the vaccine hesitant, and it uses an anti-vaccine trick against that same movement. The power of storytelling Those who oppose vaccines rely almost exclusively on personal testimonials that confuse one thing happening after another—a diagnosis of autism after a childhood vaccine, for example—for evidence of causation. Because vaccines are victims of their own success, Virulent invites parents to tell the stories of their child who died of a vaccine-preventable illness. Jessica Rowlette’s son, Joey, spiked a fever while attending school. His paediatrician said it was just the flu, so Jessica took Joey home to rest and get hydrated. He started projectile-vomiting, then became ice cold. An ambulance arrived in the morning. On the way to the hospital, Joey had a heart attack. He flatlined in the emergency room and died. A title card reminds us that in 2019-2020, a total of 52,000 children were hospitalized with the flu. The vaccine against influenza is not mandated for school attendance. Jessica Rowlette and her children now volunteer at their local flu shot clinic to listen to people and to share Joey’s story with them. Children have died needlessly from diseases against which we already have good protection, while other kids were harmed and died in the attempt to show that those protections were safe and effective. Dr. Offit reminds us in the movie that there is a price for knowledge. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was tested in a randomized controlled trial. 420,000 children were to receive the vaccine, while 200,000 were set to get a placebo. We remember the outcome of this trial—that the vaccine was “safe, potent and effective,” as Dr. Thomas Francis, the trial’s director, proclaimed—but we easily forget what happened to the children in the placebo group. Sixteen of them died from polio and 36 were left permanently paralyzed after catching the virus, all in the placebo group. We know the vaccine works because these children did not receive it. It is phenomenally frustrating to still see so many people hesitant in the face of one of the most effective public health measures ever developed. Hopefully, Virulent can assuage some misplaced anxieties and counteract the anecdotal fearmongering of the anti-vaccine movement with affecting stories of its own. Virulent: The Vaccine War is not currently available for rental. The website Science-Based Medicine recently held an eleven-day virtual screening. Screenings can be requested for conferences, hospital grand rounds, and school courses. I look forward to this science education tool being more widely available. People need to see it. P.S.: The documentary spends some time going over an unprecedented digital attack by anti-vaccine activists on a paediatric practice, overwhelming them with accusations and mass-downvoting their online rating. The practice put together a toolkit on how to prepare for, defend against, and clean up after this kind of organized warfare. It is available here. @CrackedScience

America can’t shake the feeling that vaccination rates are about to plummet. The facts say otherwise.

"As negotiations over a pandemic treaty begin in earnest, governments must look to the greed, nationalism, and profiteering that characterized the world's response to Covid-19 and say: 'never again.'"

Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death. Martin Makary and Michael Daniel assess its contribution to mortality and call for better reporting The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners. However, a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death.1 As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured. The science of safety has matured to describe how communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.2 Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,3 the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning),4 or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient.5 Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events.6 We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement. The role of error can be complex. While …

The spread of COVID-19 misinformation in Canada cost at least 2,800 lives and $300 million in hospital expenses over nine months of the pandemic, according to estimates in a new report out Thursday.