School COVIDiocy: Are School Reopening Based on Garbage Data Entered By Antivaxxers?

School opening, mask mandate in schools, and vaccine mandate are the current hot topics, and while the path forward is obvious: mask those who can't get vaccinated yet, and vaccinate everyone who can be vaccinated like we did for most childhood diseases, many states are attempting to OUTLAWING vaccine mandates... Even for schools. 

Then there are parents who complain... It's easier to show you the tweet.  

STOP TESTING YOUR CHILDREN WITH MILD COLD SYMPTOMS. Every time you do, you lock other perfectly healthy children out of the classroom in blue areas. My kids need school. I work, I need them in school. Testing and notifying the school makes you an ASSHOLE, not a hero.

— Jenny Erikson (@JennyErikson) January 26, 2022

Translation: How DARE you care about your children's symptoms and care about your community and report possible signs of COVID! My going back to work is more important than the community! It's must be the mild sniffles even though I've never seen your child and I'm definitely not a doctor! 

So who'd advocate for going back to school? One Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who sometimes presents herself as a researcher at UC Davis. She claims that COVID vaccines actually hurt more kids than it helped due to myocarditis side effect with a paper written back in 2021. 

Unfortunately, the paper is a demonstration of VAERS dumpster diving which we've previously discussed. it's so bad, I'm going to let SkepticalRaptor explain it in more detail than I could. 

It should also be noted that Dr. Tracy Hoeg has done no work in epidemiology UNTIL COVID, despite a PhD degree in epidemiology from the University of Copenhagen. Her residency is in sports medicine and physical therapy. 

This is a clarification from the UC Davis PA office:

Please keep in mind that VAERS is not the only system monitoring vaccine safety. As pointed out by SkepticalRaptor, VSD (vaccine safety datalink) did not show myocarditis incidence rates like VAERS. As an MD, surely Hoeg and her co-writers have access to VSD data. So why did they choose to cite VAERS alone, when they know the numbers in there cannot be relied upon for cause and effect? 

Some cherry-picking indeed. 

But there's something else you did not know. VAERS data was probably polluted by TENS OF THOUSANDS of false submissions. 

Here's example of VAERS bullcrap

CDC saw 23,713 reports of Myocarditis in kids

A team of CDC Physicians and Pediatric Cardiologists investigated every one

Only 303 were valid. The other 23,410 were FALSE REPORTS

6792 came from same IP addresshttps://t.co/PN7SRpRjxO

— Patti Cakes, DNSc, MSN, RN, PhD, CRNP (@PLHartungRN) January 17, 2022

Yep, you read it right. Out of 23713 reports of myocarditis in kids, only 303 are real and verified. In later tweets, she replied that many of these reports did not even include proper information such as COVID symptoms, what grade is the child in, or what ethnicity the child is. 

We tried to ask Patti Cakes how did she know 6792 came from the same IP address, she later replied that Pfizer's IT team went through the log with CDC and determined that. Unfortunately, we have no log to inspect ourselves, but I don't really have any reason to doubt her. 

So basically, Hoeg was testifying to Congress something based on bogus information... entered by probably antivaxxers. (who else would make up myocarditis kids and submit them to VAERS?) Given that as an MD, she should know about double-checking VAERS unreliable data with VSD and other sources, one wonders whether she's complicit in the bogosity, or simply turning a blind eye and enjoying her time in the limelight. 

To put it frankly, it is VERY likely that any rationale to get kids back into school is based on flawed and bad data. 

And sending the children back WITHOUT masks or vaccine is frankly, gambling with public lives, betting "symptoms will be mild and manageable", never mind the Hippocratic Oath... "do no harm".

Don't be a COVIDiot... or worse, an entitled COVIDiot. 

Astroturfing COVIDiocy: Seems Antivaxxers Submitted 23410 FAKE cases of Myocarditis from COVID vaccines in kids to VAERS

As of December 31st, 2021, there were supposedly 23713 reports of myocarditis in children / young adult after Pfizer vaccines were reported to VAERS. It's interesting that in a majority of cases, no race or ethnicity was listed. 

So a team of pediatricians both in and out of CDC checked every single case. 

Turns out only 303 are real (265 12-15yr old) out of over 27 MILLION doses given out to those age groups during that time. 

Basically, there is no risk at all. Myocarditis occurs at or above this rate without COVID or vaccination. 

You can read their report here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-01-05/02-COVID-Su-508.pdf

Which sort of begs the question... who, besides anti-vaxxers, have time to flood VAERS with 23410 FAKE reports of myocarditis in kids as a side effect of COVID vaccine? 

And did they really think that real doctors would not want to follow up, if there are indeed that many reported problems? 

Who did they think they were fooling? 

AntiScience COVIDiocy: How to Pretend to Care About Science While Spewing Anti-Science Misinformation

One of the ways antivaxxers catch the attention of sheeple is pretending to care, and one of the ways they pretend to care is by portraying their antivax attitude as "concerns about vaccine safety". Indeed, if you ask RFK jr, he would say he's not antivax, he's pro vax safety. 

And one of the most frequent sources antivaxxers like to cite is VAERS, or Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. They love to "dumpster dive" into VAERS data and claim VAERS numbers are proof that vaccine caused injuries or even deaths, even though VAERS itself CLEARLY states that VAERS does NOT establish "cause-and-effect" relationship between the vaccine and the reported adverse event. 

Here's an example of an adverse event reported to VAERS. Patient had Pfizer COVID shot on Jan 9, 2021. Patient had a single car accident on Jan 23rd, 2021. She spun out into a snowbank. She was transported to ER, treated, and released. She was found unresponsive on Feb 1, 2021 and pronounced dead. An autopsy revealed she had a brain bleed. 

Yes, that's a genuine VAERS entry, 1004811-1, of which a screenshot is included below. I can't link it because VAERS doesn't allow direct linking. You will have to zoom in the see the details. 

The death and the vaccination are clearly unrelated, but as per proper procedure, it's included in VAERS, and the report was submitted on Feb 5th, 2021. In fact, CDC instructions to health care providers were to include the data in VAERS, "regardless if the reporter thinks the vaccine caused the AE (adverse event)". The reason is simple: CDC needs a way to know if there's a side effect they never considered or expected, and the only way to know is to report EVERYTHING, so the data can be mined later for commonalities. 

So if you search for "COVID vaccine" and "death", you would probably end up counting this one, and probably dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands like it, where if you look at the details, there's just no way they could be linked. 

Not that it stopped antivaxxers and pundits like Tucker Carlson from claiming "vaccines killed thousands" when the data they cited does NOT indicate such a thing, and organizations across the country had to put out FAQs debunking such fearmongering. 

When confronted, most antivaxxers will reply with "but I just want a safe vaccine" or variations thereof, often with emphasis "but even one adverse event is one too many". 

Some antivaxxers will then trot out the "COVID isn't that dangerous" trope, esp. with the "children tend to have milder symptoms" bit. 

So you remind them "so you are comparing a KNOWN risk of COVID such as death, long COVID, and MIS-C, vs a POTENTIAL unknown risk of vaccine adverse reaction that has so far not been observed?"

Some may be smart enough to admit defeat, but some will segue into VAERS dumpster diving. 

That's when you remind them that they're processing garbage data and drawing bogus conclusions, as we had discussed above. 

And what's when they block you because they can't beat you with the truth.