podcast 123 (covid vaccine)

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
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Dr. Baraki - on your suggestion, I listened.

A couple reactions:

A. The podcast’s content clearly assumes that the medical, scientific & regulatory communities are almost wholly on the up-and-up, that you can trust the wholesome & careful things that you see in the scientific papers & journals or hear from your fellow doctors and scientists, etc. Also that the mRNA degrades quickly (vanishes) in the body.

I’m not objecting to those assumptions. Only noting them. It’s a bit touchy to share the content with other people who don’t make the same assumptions (possibly for good reasons: maybe past harm from the doctors/scientists of an evil dictatorship or dishonest corporation; maybe familiarity with past instances of scientific fraud or groupthink; maybe reflection on the various lies about covid that have been told at various times by various leadership elements; etc.)

B. I liked the careful explanations; the acknowledgement that the vaccines only had FDA Emergency Use Authorization (not FDA approval); the mention of past metals (Al, Hg) in vaccine formulations and their removal from current vaccines, the discussion of how vaccine trials work, etc.

Now for a few questions:

  1. Have you seen any updates on Stage 4 trials? or on any covid vacc getting actual (statutory) approval?

  2. If someone isn’t persuadable on the mRNA vaccines, would you go with an adenovirus vaccine like maybe the J&J?

You mentioned a study of 44K people where the placebo arm had 162 covid cases with 4 deaths unrelated to covid (e.g. heart issues), and the vaccinated arm had 6 covid cases with 2 deaths unrelated to covid (e.g., heart issues).

  1. So… that study showed a decline in covid cases, but not 100% elimination (still 6 cases). Correct?

  2. That study didn’t actually show a decline in covid deaths, did it? (Covid death count went from 0 to 0) - Are most of the covid vaccine studies like that? Or do we now have studies showing major declines in death?

  3. Antibody Dependent Enhancement - can you say anything about that issue? I didn’t catch it in the podcast.

(For other readers: ADE is where past vaccines on the coronavirus family were attempted and considered failures, because although they developed good antibodies against the current coronavirus, they increased your vulnerability to the next one that came along later.)

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It is fine to be skeptical, however when you have multiple converging lines of evidence, the room for this skepticism shrinks over time. The urgency of a global pandemic shifts this calculus for some individuals as well, particularly those who are at especially high risk.

If your interest is in the realm of changing people’s minds on the topic, see the You Are Not So Smart podcast, episodes 189 and 174.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have now applied for full FDA approval. See the FDA website: COVID-19 Vaccines | FDA , where you can also read their prior applications for EUA including all the supporting data that the ACIP committee had when reviewing these vaccines early on.

I might, although this depends on multiple factors such as the individual’s demographic and the surrounding context of covid rates in their community, among others. See here: We're Allowed to Say that Some COVID-19 Vaccines Are Better than Others, Right? - HIV and ID Observations HIV and ID Observations

You are free to read the trial yourself: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

That was the initial phase 3 trial of that particular vaccine. Fortunately, that is no longer the only data we have on the matter (as discussed in the Journal Watch link above), with multiple subsequent lines of evidence (including real-world studies) showing similar benefits to those that were observed in the trials on a larger scale – this consistency/convergence is reassuring.

If ADE were an issue with these vaccines, we 100% assuredly would have detected it by now, both in the trials themselves, as well as in the real-world, where hundreds of millions of doses have been administered, and individuals with vaccine-mediated immunity have certainly been exposed to virus (and variants) in the wild without evidence of worse disease outcomes. This is because the vaccines produce an effective neutralizing antibody response (compared to non-neutralizing responses that were historically seen in the ADE situations, among other reasons). Additionally, early on in the pandemic individuals were receiving convalescent plasma (i.e., IV infusions of antibodies from other patients who had recovered from covid), and these patients did not experience ADE from this either. Consider that there was a worldwide pause on J&J vaccine administration after just 6 (SIX) cases of unusual thrombosis; the safety monitoring systems for these sorts of adverse effects works exceptionally well.

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“If your interest is in the realm of changing people’s minds on the topic, see the You Are Not So Smart podcast, episodes 189 and 174.” - Will do. I have the same interest on every hot issue: ask fair questions, get accurate answers, figure out what’s what, help others adjust.

“there was a worldwide pause on J&J vaccine administration after just 6 (SIX) cases of unusual thrombosis; the safety monitoring systems for these sorts of adverse effects works exceptionally well.” - Yes… except I’ve heard the point spun in the opposite way: the mRNA vacc have caused problems (variously stated to be miscarriages or other women’s health issues) yet were never halted like the J&J was; proving that “they” (cough) are pushing the mRNA for (sketchy reason X - Fauci self-dealing with his patents, intentional seeds of ADE toward a future bioweapons threat, yadda yadda).

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People will spin things however they want. The same way they try to spin the absence of quality evidence for HCQ as doctors “suppressing” evidence for cheap, generic medications … while we simultaneously have robust randomized, controlled trial data supporting the use of dexamethasone, a cheap, generic steroid in the treatment of covid that everyone is using and no one is making big money off of.

To view this as a “both sides” situation is a ridiculous false equivalence, but people have been behaving this way for centuries, and will continue to do so in the future.

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“… while we simultaneously have robust randomized, controlled trial data supporting the use of dexamethasone, a cheap, generic steroid” - Oh, but dexamethasone doesn’t threaten the EUA.

From fda.gov [with my additions]: “FDA may authorize unapproved medical products [read: vaccines or other patented treatments] or unapproved uses of approved medical products [read: off-label cheap generics] to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions [read: covid]…when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”

Dexamethasone treats inflammatory symptoms, not covid’s cell entry or replication. If studies find it valid, EUAs for the patented products are untouched. But if studies find something to treat covid cell entry or replication, the patented products are then threatened. It might not be a huge point; I’m just noting it for completeness.

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It’s not a huge point. Dexamethasone reduces mortality from severe covid. The point is that if these conspiracy theories are correct, we should have “suppressed” the evidence on dexamethasone in order to promote the use of remdesivir (a far more expensive therapeutic treatment), when in reality the evidence for dexamethasone is strong, whereas the evidence for remdesivir is weak (in terms of effect size, not quality). As a result, I (and many others) have stopped using remdesivir in our hospitalized patients with covid.

If hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or any other repurposed drug exhibited anywhere near the effect size that the vaccines do (which again, demonstrate extremely high efficacy), this effect would have certainly become apparent in the existing randomized, controlled trials that have been performed so far. This has not been the case. Until/unless it is shown, opinions on this matter will be unlikely to change among clinicians.

Anyway, hopefully you have found the discussion helpful in your interactions with others.

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The remdesivir thing shows that the studies are usually honest. Fraud is not impossible but it’s rare. And now here’s what I really think. (Me, as opposed to others I’m arguing with or trying to bring along.)

A company will put flagship-level resources into studying its flagship, high-margin products. Concurrently, and because you can’t make everything number 1, a company will do somewhat crappier studies on its low-margin products.

That’s Business 101. Not a conspiracy, just natural behavior. The flagship products are “where the action is”. If one survives a study (again, the remdesivir thing shows it might not)… then we hear “and see how impressive that study was!”

In this way, confirmation bias (toward what top execs are subtly signaling that they want) seeps into the system, even though field-level doctors and scientists are good and honest and checking each other. No conspiracy; only human nature.

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Rather than speaking in these sorts of generalities, it would be more more productive to level specific criticisms against a particular study.

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The confusion for us normals, is that we see a growing sector of what appears to be a well established and qualified medical community as the ones raising alarms over all of this.
The FLCCC has made claims that they were front and center in setting the new protocols of using dexamehasone (not mentioned by name but category) and they are the ones advocating for Ivermectin specifically and listing all of the data from other countries where trials have been done or larger, population wide results of its use can be observed.

Additional specific criticism would be found in the link below that discussed such lacking systems of control of all of this with Robert Malone who is already somewhat accepted as the creator of mRNA vaccine technology on

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It’s really like whack-a-mole here, though a few important points:

  1. The people “raising alarms” have consistently been non-experts in the relevant fields with a history of quackery and have been telling falsehoods over and over again under the guise of “just asking questions.” The FLCCC exudes this in spades.
  2. Neither Ivermectin or Dexamethasone seem to have positive effects with respect to reducing risk of infection or symptoms of infection. There isn’t data from “other countries” showing benefit that have been excluded in the rigorous meta-analyses addressing these questions.

Malone didn’t “invent” mRNA vaccines (see Kariko et al) and, along with Steve Kirsch, have a financial stake in the public believing this nonsense so you buy their product. Having met Steve in person, I am sad to see him take this path, but it is what it is. Grifters gonna grift.

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Surprised to see this thread still going, but…

“2) Neither Ivermectin or Dexamethasone seem to have positive effects with respect to reducing risk of infection or symptoms of infection”

New from June 17 I believe, American Journal of Therapeutics

It says “Low-certainty evidence found that ivermectin prophylaxis reduced COVID-19 infection by an average 86%… Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin.”

I noticed the “low certainty” part, yes.

But think about what that means. I discussed it in a comment on June 11. In practical / bottom-line terms, it means that people are doing low-budget with second-rate methods…because they can’t get a better budget…because the patented new products (higher-margin) are more fun & more where companies would rather go. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s natural behavior & Business 101.

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P.S. Jordan I am curious (as in: I am truly asking) whether you would put Peter McCulloch and his colleagues at Baylor in the category of “non-experts…with a history of quackery [who] …grift”.

They been pushing the ivermectin + hcq + zinc combo, for early at-home treatment to prevent progression & hospitalization, since at least Oct 2020.

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The majority of data cited in this paper was deemed low to very-low quality by GRADE criteria (see table 2A). Contrast this with very high quality RCT evidence of vaccines providing even higher efficacy for preventing infection. I stand by my comment in the other thread here:

The higher quality trials of these drugs (those that are prospective, randomized, controlled trials in human subjects) so far have not shown convincing efficacy. Should a sufficiently powered trial of this nature demonstrate clinically relevant benefits, opinions would be more likely to change.

If we end up seeing high quality RCT data indicating that ivermectin has similar (or superior) efficacy/risk profile vs. the best current vaccines, opinions and recommendations will be much more likely to change.

The RECOVERY trials are addressing numerous potential therapeutics in a high-quality format, including several cheap repurposed drugs like Azithromycin and Hydroxychloroquine (which, at this point, appear to be ineffective).

We’re now talking in circles here, so I think that’s enough for now. Appreciate the cordial discussion.