Pfizer’s honesty has been called into question after whistleblowers involved in the original trial came forward with a series of concerns about how the trial was managed as published in the BMJ.
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Omicron: Not Ebola
For reader’s of last week’s HART bulletin article describing the media’s role in promulgating government propaganda, the ‘Omicron escalation’ over the weekend will come as no great surprise.
What’s in a name?
One of the casualties of the pandemic, has been the loss of dialogue and scientific debate. Both sides have been guilty, with terms like ‘sheeple’ and ‘covidiots’, traded with ‘tin-foil hat brigade’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’.
Why hide what happens in the first two weeks after vaccination?
There have been numerous papers that have shown how well the vaccines protect people after the second dose. Some of this effect is a mirage. The effect happens as a result of inaccurate measuring and a phenomenon called survivorship bias.
It gets worse before it gets better
Vaccination results in a rise in covid infection rates for the first week or two before there is a fall. HART was attacked in March for stating that questions should be asked about the correlation between vaccine rollouts and increased covid mortality.
From news and entertainment to Government propaganda
Since the emergence of the SARS-COV-2 virus in early 2020, TV has morphed into a government transmitter of covert ‘nudges’ and propaganda to persuade us all to behave in ways that the state deems to be for the greater good.
What is real-world vaccine effectiveness?
When studying the effect of vaccination or even the proportion of the population who have been vaccinated it is critical to know the size of the total population. Measuring an entire country’s population is a hugely difficult undertaking.
Who exactly are the ‘unvaccinated’?
The media continues to push a hate campaign towards the unvaccinated – but who are they? Every unvaccinated person will have their own reasons for making this decision about their health. Only they can understand what is best for their individual circumstances and that is how it should be.
‘Long covid’ or ‘long lockdown’?
The concern is that the huge focus on covid-19 may mean symptoms due to other diseases or indeed due to loneliness and anxiety, are being wrong
Hang on a minute…
On 15 November Boris Johnson gave a press conference urging everyone to get their booster shots. This has caused much confusion in the minds of the thus far ‘fully vaccinated’.
FULL ARTICLE: What is real-world vaccine effectiveness?
There are places where measuring the population is much easier than the UK. For example, it is much easier to measure the size of a smaller population especially in a confined space such as on an island like Gibraltar. That is why soaring case rates in Gibraltar, which claims to have vaccinated almost every adult, is causing such concern.
Can we rely on NIMS (National Immunisation Management Service) figures?
Changing the total population estimate results in large swings in the estimate of ‘case’ rates in the unvaccinated. Given the inability to be accurate within a few percentage points, and the uncertainty about whether the inaccuracies are overestimating or underestimating the total, the differences between populations is not as informative as the trend in rates within each of the populations.
FULL ARTICLE: One in 20 people vaccinated since April had to be added to the NIMS database
To understand case, hospitalisations and death rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations it is essential to know how many people there are in each.
Why do those on the political left enthusiastically support the COVID-19 restrictions?
The musician Billy Bragg recently disclosed his reason for wearing a mask: ‘I don’t want anyone here to think that I’m a Tory’.
Government review of care home winter plan based on terrible error or deliberate lie about successes last year
Government has published a winter plan for care homes with plans for interventions for this winter in care homes including ipads as a proposal to replace human contact. The entire document is based on the premise that interventions in winter prevented deaths in care homes based on claims made in a review of last year’s winter plan. No data supports this notion. The Government report is either based on a terrible error or a deliberate lie.
FULL ARTICLE: Claims of success in protecting the vulnerable in care homes are based on deceptive data
Government has published a winter plan for care homes with plans for interventions for this winter in care homes including ipads as a proposal to replace human contact. The entire document is based on the premise that interventions in winter prevented deaths in care homes based on claims made in a review of last year’s winter plan. No data supports this notion.
A Grandee Exits Stage Left
It is now two weeks since Sir Jeremy Farrar quit the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Judging by numerous comments from the readership of a recent article in the Telegraph, many are not sad to see him go.
Should children be vaccinated against COVID-19?
HART would contest that it is unethical to ask children to take a vaccine to boost herd immunity or to offset political decisions such as school closures, at a stage when the drug trials have still to be completed. Policy makers would do well to re-read the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and to follow the authors’ guidance to ‘weigh up the risks and benefits with caution and to proceed with care’.
