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Florida Scientists and Journalists Cling to a Favorite Covid Fallacy
For the too-long-didn’t-read folks: Click here to jump down to a 123-word summary at the end of this article.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Surgeon General of Florida, has since October of 2022 been recommending that young men not get a Covid vaccination. The Tampa Bay Times, on April 8, published an article criticizing Ladapo. The TBT:
The surgeon general’s guidance against the vaccine for young men ignored results showing infection was a greater risk for cardiac-related deaths.
The TBT, you see, got its hands on five earlier drafts of the Florida government’s recommendations–available here in PDF form, or in a little thingamajig embedded in the TBT story–which had said much more about the risks Covid itself poses to heart health for young men. TBT:
It [earlier versions of the Florida recommendation] showed that catching COVID-19 could increase the chances of a cardiac-related death much more than getting the vaccine.
It may seem, at first glance, like Ladapo made a big mistake: The rates of Covid-associated heart problems were higher than the rates of vax-associated heart problems, but he recommended against the vax anyway! Here’s TBT making that case:
. . . catching COVID presents a far greater risk for that same age group.
For Floridians ages 18 to 24, the incidence of cardiac-related deaths from infection was more than 10 times higher than from the vaccine and more than five times higher for ages 25 to 39. . . .
“The risk associated with COVID-19 infection clearly outweighs any potential risks associated with mRNA vaccination,” one version states.
“The small risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be balanced against the much larger risk associated with COVID-19 infection,” another version says. A similar sentence appeared in the published conclusion but the “much larger” modifier had been removed.
Could it be that Ladapo is such a jerk, such an egregious science denier–in a word, such a Republican–that he removed from the state’s recommendation this crucial information about the greater risks from Covid infection? Could it be that, as one notable scientist suggests, Ladapo was just pushing a narrative?
Matt Hitchings, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, said it seems that sections of the analysis were omitted because they did not fit the narrative the surgeon general wanted to push.
And again:
Four epidemiologists who reviewed the drafts said the omission is inexplicable and flawed from a scientific standpoint. They said that, based on the missing data, Ladapo’s recommendation should be rescinded.
Fortunately, however, a moment’s reflection on the source of this stunning information reveals the egregious mistake of these conclusions. The six versions of the document all say the same thing about where the data come from:
Data from Florida’s reportable disease repository (Merlin), Florida State Health Online Tracking System (FLSHOTS), and death records data from vital statistics were linked.
So now the fallacy of these criticisms of Ladapo becomes plain:
They’re basing their assessment of the risk from the virus only on people who had such a bad case of the disease that their information was entered into the medical system.
I’ve explained this fallacy before, and I still think Spock says it best:
The final report from Florida (and one of the earlier drafts) notes some important things about what we do not know and about other things we do know. In fact, it politely understates them:
Both COVID-19 mortality due to infection or risk of mortality associated with vaccination have likely changed over time. In the fall of 2022, most people have either been vaccinated or have natural immunity to COVID-19. Many have had multiple vaccine doses, multiple infections or both. Research to assess the current risks and benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine to help update vaccine recommendations should be studied in this context.
One thing we do know is that Omicron spreads amazingly fast, and that very nearly the entire population of Earth has been exposed to it. Another thing we know is that natural immunity is a real thing, and tends to be a lot better than vaccine-based immunity.
For all I know, it might be true that the risk to young men of heart problems from getting very sick with Covid is worse than the risk of heart problems from taking Covid jabs, but that tells us very little about the decision whether to get a Covid jab. If a young man doesn’t get a jab (or a second, or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth), he can’t assume he’s going to get very sick with Covid. He can’t even assume he’ll get sick at all, and it’s a darn good bet he already has some level of natural immunity. These days, having Omicron in your nose is only slightly less inevitable than death, and much more so than taxes.
The article might have gotten some things right–e.g., the claim that the sample size of vax-related deaths was too small. I don’t know. What the article gets wrong is, above all, the fallacy noted above.
It’s also a mistake to push this claim that Ladapo is pushing a narrative instead of following the science. It looks to me like this is just wrong, and in fact, the TBT is pushing a narrative. I’d present a better narrative about the narrative (about the narrative) myself, but at this point, maybe we should just stick to the basic facts:
Ladapo’s final report removed a logical fallacy that was present in earlier drafts, and his critics are stubbornly clinging to that fallacy.
Published in Science & Technology
Summary:
Florida is recommending that young men not get Covid vaccinations.
The Tampa Bay Times got its hands on earlier versions of Florida’s recommendations, and claims that some of them indicated that the risks of Covid infection were greater than the risks of vaccine side-effects.
The problem is that the evidence for this claim is based on information about people who were sick enough with Covid that their records made it into the medical system. It ignores all the people who were exposed to the virus but never infected, as well as all those who had mild cases that were never reported in the medical system.
In other words, these criticisms of the government of Florida are based on a big, fat logical fallacy.
You say: “The article might have gotten some things right–e.g., the claim that the sample size of vax-related deaths was too small. I don’t know. What the article gets wrong is, above all, the fallacy noted above.”
The notion that this or that study has no merit because its sample size was too small to be meaningful is a ridiculous one, as it usually is brought up by the people at pharmaceutical or pesticide industries.
Both these industries have a surplus of monies by which their scientists could go ahead and replicate the study which they have suggested might have more worth if it were to be done on a larger scale.
Rarely have they gone and done that. Logical minds are puzzled as to what would stop them from attempting real science for a change.
Not to mention that liberals would deem 20 deaths associated with anything they don’t like to be quite a large enough sample size for their recommended policies.
@saintaugustine, thank you for this post. I saw the report and thought that there had to be more to the story. Joseph Lapado seems like one of the good guys.
I’ll take Ignorant Fools, Not Scientists for $1,000. Or should I stick with Paid (Racist) Grifters with Bad Intentions for $200? At this point I’m on the side of No One Should Take Any Medications Ever Again. @caroljoy, I wonder if there will be actual science ever again. It all seems to be about as serious as a Take Your kids to Work day at a lab.
Overlooked is the criticism by the epidemiologists that Lapado committed a couple of mistakes (that have nothing to do with the frequency of asymptomatic COVID infection):
– he essentially attributed all cardiac arrests on a death certificates after a COVID vaccine in men under 40 to the vaccine without examining the medical records to ascertain the cause of the cardiac arrest (and had a small sample size-20 deaths). Additionally, they excluded all COVID deaths from the analysis-which is what we are trying to prevent. The Surgeon General would have access to such records and should have used them.
-he included each vaccine as a separate interval-thereby lengthening the time period only for those vaccinated-for an explanation see:
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/10/scicheck-floridas-covid-19-vaccination-analysis-is-flawed-experts-say/
I doubt Lapado did any of that. I am not however surprised that the Tampa Bay News states that he did.
My eight short years in alt journalism, 1997 to 2005, taught me this – the PTB control almost every newspaper and media outlet. If an official narrative that they need to hold on to is starting to be found out as a Big Lie, then they incorrectly frame a situation.
Or else they out and out lie.
Most people do not even read entire news articles.
So when a headline purports this or that, the public is subliminally influenced.
Some of us have had to delve deeper. Then we find out that the news articles that are churned out to prop up an official narrative facing its death throes are usually fairy tales for Big Industry.
The COVID saga and the COV vaccine saga follow the same pattern that those of us in Calif saw with MTBE the toxic gas additive back in the 1990’s: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/06/22/540267/-The-TRUTH-Versus-the-Mainstream-Media
If you don’t want to read it all the way through, skip to the end, when I confront the top scientist, John Froines, on the MTBE issue, who by Spring of 1999 was being declared the patron saint of MTBE safety and benefits.
Except Froines was not a believer in either of those things. He had little that was good to say about MTBE, so the news media just made up entire quotes in which he was supposed to have been denouncing his own scientific findings.
The only thing that has changed regarding the media’s portrayal of any official narrative is that now the media has ample funding from Big Pharma, investment and donation monies from Bill Gates’ various foundations, and 1.2 billion bucks from the Omnibus Budget of Dec 2022, to keep the news editors excited about spinning the needed falsehoods.
the case controlled series they created did just that-it isn’t the Tampa Bay News that outlined the deficiencies in the report- it was by a number of epidemiologists who have reviewed his report shortly after he released it-none of the critique of the “study” is new-what is new is the discovery of the re-writing of early drafts that led to omissions.
I never claimed to be covering every possible angle; in fact, I specifically mentioned that the critics may be correct on some things, even mentioning the sample size as an example.
And yes, the article mentions that “The scientists also noted that Ladapo’s finding was not backed up with clinical data proving that the cause of deaths fits the criteria.” That does make for less clarity on the cause of death for sure. This is why we need more science looking into that link. (Not that we don’t already have more–this ain’t exactly a weird-sounding internet theory anymore.)
Now here is where you err: You say that the removal of Covid deaths from the final version has “nothing to do with the frequency of asymptomatic COVID infection.” But it plainly does–we are trying to prevent Covid deaths without causing vaccine deaths. To be more precise:
The question is whether a young male would be better advised to face Covid in the future with or without a vaccine. So we need to know which of two rates is bigger: the rate of young males with heart problems from a vaccine, or the rate with heart problems from Covid in the early days.
That means we need two numerators:
–the number of young males who had heart problems after getting a vaccine,
–and the number who had heart problems after being exposed to Covid in the early days.
And we need two denominators:
–the number of young males who were vaccinated,
–and the number who were exposed to Covid in the early days.
How many of those numbers do you have, MM?
Continued:
Now, supposing that you had all four numbers, and supposing that we actually ended up with a higher Covid-heart-problem than vax-heart-problem rate, these rates would still be outdated.
This is the prudence of the politely understated bit of the final report: We are not in the early days. At this point, the number of young males in Florida who have had the virus in their noses is almost certainly more than 99% of the young males in Florida.
One of the few things we do know is that a young male’s next bit of Omicron is exceedingly unlikely seriously to harm his heart, and another thing we do know is that the mRNA vaxxes will harm some of the hearts of young males. Let’s not do known harms to prevent unknown harms. Hippocrates was right. (Of course, JJ, Novovax, Sinovac, etc. have a different cost-benefit analysis.)
From what little I can gather (or guess), the point which the fact-check (so-called) is trying to make is this:
Some deaths in Florida might have been double-counted. Florida counted each vaccine dose individually, watching for a death up to four weeks after; but some people may have received a second dose in week three and died in week four, resulting in their deaths being counted twice, once for each dose.
That fact-check is very badly written. Nevertheless, if I have properly understood it, and if its unclearly written claims are correct, then that very well may be a real flaw in the Florida analysis.
The deaths “counted” weren’t known to be from the vaccine- (in essence, if you had a cardiac arrest on your death certificate within 28 days of getting a COVID vaccine, you were counted as a death from the vaccine for the purpose of the series). They lumped in all deaths that were listed under a preselected group of cardiac disease under billing codes- (but not all forms of heart disease). Some of the codes included are hard to understand- why valvular disease & endocarditis (for the young those are often associated with IV drug abuse). The authors even stated “This study cannot determine the causative nature of a participant’s death. We used death certificate data and not medical records. COVID testing status was unknown for those who did not die of/with COVID. Cardiac-related deaths were ascertained if an ACME code of I3-I52 were on their death certificate, thus, the underlying cause of death may not be cardiac-related“. Even Dr Jerome Adams (Trump’s Surgeon General) noted the problems with the study.
Additionally, COVID vaccines are preferentially given to people with significant underlying disease (cancer, organ transplants, etc)-who would be much more likely to suffer a cardiac arrest from their pre-existing healthcare issues- this is especially problematic since they didn’t delve into the cause of the cardiac arrest. If just a couple of the cardiac arrests were from pre-existing underlying disease, the significance of Dr Lapados claims disappears because of the limited power of the study (just 20 deaths during the “risk” period.)
A further oddity in the series reported was that it excluded any deaths from COVID- so they specifically excluded the main therapeutic goal of the vaccine. It is hard to do a good risk:benefit analysis if you exclude all the benefit. A similar study done in the UK (but that included COVID deaths) found:
“There was a large increase in the incidence of cardiac and all-cause death in the overall risk period after SARS-CoV-2 infection among the unvaccinated.
Conclusion There is no evidence of an association between COVID-19 vaccination and an increased risk of death in young people. By contrast, SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with substantially higher risk of cardiac related death and all-cause death.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272775v1
a good overview:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-state-of-florida-spreads-antivaccine-disinformation-disguised-as-an-epidemiological-study/
If the corporate-controlled science favorable to the official narrative was “ignored” by Lapado, it was “ignored” for a reason.
Like Saint Augustine has pointed out, that were numerous drafts and when a revised draft does not reflect some data points of the analysis, it often is because it doesn’t seem to be data trustworthy by the architect of the report.
Also it is irrelevant if what you are foisting your beliefs upon are the made up scenarios created by reporters and their editors, or if it is slanted data created by “numbers of epidemiologists.” Right now, “science” is Fauci, “science” is news media, and it is “epidemiologists,” “virologists” and others feeding on the teats of Big Corporate and Big Governmental “research” monies.
Stay tuned, as I am sure that Jon Rappaport will be weighing in on this new attempt to shove support for The Big Lie down into America’s psyche with regards to this now viral article out of Tampa Bay.
There didn’t seem to be much preference. Indianapolis was handing out shots at the Speedway to anyone who showed up. This was April, 2020.
And the usual fallacy emerges, once again:
I notice that no one said that was known.
Yes, that is definitely one reason to not conclude too much from the Florida study about what causes what.
Btw, traditionally, a death within 28 days of a vaccine can often be considered, and should often be considered, a death from vaccine. Also the fact that people collapse within the month after their vaccine means that they – and others – are dying in traffic accidents caused by such a collapse. Hard to determine the ultimately fairest way of parsing the fatality data. It is quite telling that paramedics now use a new term “Vaxidents.”
Also the entire scenario has extremely muddy waters. All the top people, VandenBossche, Malone, Fleming, Ryan Cole etc knew for a fact early in 2020 that healthy young people would have little risk of getting COVID, & an even more astronomically impossible odds of dying from COVID if they were infected.
So when a conclusion reads as the emboldened text of the conclusion reads above, it is suggesting that SARS COV 2 is a big bad culprit killing off numerous young people thru heart problems for those youths who are unvaxxed & who get COVID. As that is how the casual reader would process those statements.
But in reality land, since young people who aren’t vaxxed are mostly not going to get COVID, the fact that more of them might die from heart problems after experiencing the rare event of having a COV infection than those who get vaxxed could be a true but very misleading statement, unless the full and necessary explanation is offered up and emphasized.
The truth is: those who die from a heart attack after a bout with COVID are a tragic but rather insignificant subset of humanity.
There was no vaccine in April 2020.
That should have been 2021. I wasn’t in Indianapolis in 2020.