Crazy COVIDiocy: Antivaxxers Lie About Death to Discredit Vaccine, Enraging Surviving Family

 A 17-year old beautician died in her sleep due to unknown causes on September 14th, in Sudbury, Suffolk, England. The grieving family is horrified that many antivaxxers, desperate to discredit the vaccine any way they can, started to claim that the death was due to the COVID vaccine. 

Maddy Campbel is a beautician with a promising future, but her life was cut short, and a postmortem was unable to establish a definite cause of death. Yet after the limited release of news on Instagram, antivaxxer trolls started to inundate the announcement and the inbox with claims that "COVID vaccine killed her", probably accompanied by "it's a government cover-up". 

What the trolls don't know is that Maddy had NOT received any COVID vaccine. Not even a single dose. So her death has NOTHING to do with the COVID vaccine. 

Her father called out the antivaxxer trolls, "Anybody spreading such rumours should hang their heads in shame." 

Her place of employment also issued a statement: "We are horrified to hear that people are trying to sue Maddy's death as an 'anti vaccine' news story. Maddy would not wish to have her name used to dissuade people against having the vaccine. I would like to confirm that Maddy had neither doses of the COVID vaccine, her unexpected death was in no way linked."

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Unfortunately, this sort of vaccine-blaming happens QUITE OFTEN online. Any time there's a death, antivaxxers assess the death, and see if it can be blamed on vaccines somehow. Baby deaths are most often blamed, because a lot of children receive vaccines when they are young. Some grieving families are harassed into quitting social media, then the antivaxxers claim "cover-up". 

For example, Ashley Spivey, one-time contestant on The Bachelor back in about 2010 or so, suffered a stillbirth, at 30 weeks. It appears that the cord has twisted around the fetus's neck. Such things happen. What Ashley did NOT expect, however, are the antivaxxers who insisted that the flu shot she got a week earlier was what killed her fetus. And given that Ashley had announced that she's getting her flu shot to protect the herself and the baby, the antivaxxers claimed they "tried to warn you [Ashley]". 

It's a bit perverse when a mom's story about the death of a child/fetus, or even the struggles of her child with a medical condition was targeted by the antivaxxers for harassment. And Ashley is hardly alone in that. 

Don't be a COVIDiot or antivaxxers. Don't join a group so eager to prove a falsehood they are willing to harass grieving mothers and families. 

COVIDIocy Misinformation: How People Use Statistics To Mislead

NOTE: This post is also available at amlmskeptic.blogspot.com as it illustrates an important misinformation tactic: presenting a scary statistic, without verifying it, and without context or base rate (aka background rate). 

Recently, experts warned that pregnant women are being deliberately targeted with COVID vaccine misinformation. Some claimed that vaccine can affect fertility, while another claimed vaccines cause stillbirths. One even cited a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons" to claim the vaccine is unsafe for pregnant persons. But the study actually shows the opposite of it. So how do you spot such misinformation? By always looking for the context. If a statistic is presented WITHOUT context, you cannot trust it. 

Feel free to read the abstract of the summary above, but I'll include a relevant highlight from the Pubmed link above:

... 13.9% resulted in a pregnancy loss...

While the 13.9% pregnancy loss sounds alarming in itself, you cannot say whether the vaccine is bad or good without knowing the context of such a number. What you should be asking here is "so what is the normal pregnancy loss, i.e. pregnancy loss rate without COVID vaccine?" Or to use a statistics term, what is the base rate or background rate, so we can have a proper comparison? 

Turns out, the answer is not that simple, because in the US, there are actually TWO terms for pregnancy loss: miscarriage (for fetus before 20 weeks), and stillbirth (fetus at 20 weeks or older), and separate statistics are kept. 

For miscarriage, the answer is between 10-20%, according to the Mayo Clinic, but that's reported cases. The actual rate is higher due to unrecognized pregnancies. As high as 33% according to some estimates. 

"About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage."

Once past 20 weeks, the fetal death rate falls off significantly, down to 1 in 100 to 160 pregnancies, according to CDC. 

As the study used the term "pregnancy loss", which encompasses BOTH stillbirth and miscarriage, and 10-20% vastly overshadows the 1/160 rate, 10-20% is the right number to use as a base rate. 

Thus, the 13.9% number is actually somewhat BELOW the known rate, if we take the median, which is about 15%. And the difference is so small it is probably within statistical error margins. 

Thus, there is no known risk to pregnancy by the mRNA COVID vaccine, since the rate of vaccinated pregnancy loss is almost indistinguishable from the unvaccinated pregnancy loss rate. 

But you wouldn't know that if you ONLY heard the 13.9% figure. It sounds scary. And that's what the people who presented those statistics WANT you to feel: FEAR through propaganda, manipulating your thoughts through misinformation and disinformation. 

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A similar thing happened with the earlier CDC vaccine reaction tracking that there seems to be a few cases of myocarditis among people who got vaccinated, that they temporarily halted the use of one COVID vaccine for a few weeks, out of an abundance of caution, while the study was re-checked and more data was gathered. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscles. CDC later put the odds of such at about 4.8 per million.  

As expected, anti-vaxxers started touting this as "COVID vaccines are unsafe". They even got a study that supposedly proves that myocarditis increased after COVID vaccines were added. But again, should you check the studies, what is the base rate, and what are the alternatives? 

Turns out, Reuters had published a full fact-check article on this. The study that was touted by the anti-vaxxers made a huge error. The original study was done by The University of Ottawa Heart Institute. It stated that odds are 1 in 1000 of developing a heart problem after COVID vaccination. It was put on preview on September 16th, before it was peer-reviewed. Turns out, they used the wrong figure in "doses administered". They used a figure of 32379 over the study period of 2 months. It should be about 25X larger at 845930. Instead of 1/1000, the figure is more like 3.78/100000. The paper was withdrawn from preview on September 24th, and the Heart Institute itself had issued an apology. 

So the evidence is not there. There are also TWO MORE factors to consider... 

a) What is the base rate of myocarditis? i.e. what is the possibility of catching it without the vaccine?  

According to Wikipedia, it's about 22 per 100K people per year. And 20% will die in the first year. 

However, this is the overall rate. The rate is much lower for younger people, about 5 per 100K people. 

b) What is the possibility of COVID-induced myocarditis, if you caught COVID instead of vaccinating, but recovered? 

Existing myocarditis data from 2019 (pre-COVID) was compared to 2020 data (during COVID) and the signs are having had COVID suggests you are "15.7 times more likely" to have a myocarditis event. 

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Another study involving records of 2 million patients from 40 different hospitals specifically looked for incidents in individuals who had received the COVID vaccine. Guess how many cases they found? Twenty, out of Two Million. 1 per 100000. That's lower than the background rate / base rate. It is of no factor. 

But now you have mothers screaming on Twitter that "my teenager caught myocarditis from the vaccine". 

Except, again, there's no proof from temporal association, i.e. correlation is not causation. It's an anecdote, not data. 

CDC has the data, and it's sharing in the full report from June 2021:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-06/05-COVID-Wallace-508.pdf

The results now show more children are getting infected and dying because the vaccine isn't available for them until VERY recently, and the unvaccinated are clogging up the hospital beds so people who need normal hospitalization can't get in, and either transfer to a different state... or die. 

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When the antivaxxers tell you "do your own research", what they actually mean is "please read our propaganda (where we scare you into supporting us and distrust the doctors)" 

What you should do instead, is REALLY do your research... by spotting other people's propaganda for what it is... intention to manipulate you. 

And yes, I am trying to manipulate you... into REALLY thinking for yourself, not just looking up stuff to confirm your own beliefs. 

COVIDiocy Collateral Damage: Heartbreaking Story from Summer Brennan on Twitter

 You can read the original tweets here: https://twitter.com/summerbrennan/status/1442806675325476867?s=20

But I will just summarize it for you. 

Her father, in his 80's, is living fine in rural New Mexico, alone, healthy, and active. And yes, he is vaccinated against COVID. 

Then he fell, and had to be hospitalized for about a week, in the physical rehab area, not ICU. 

But during the stay, he picked up viral pneumonia that wasn't noticed by the staff, who were too busy treating the unvaxxed folks, now infected with COVID, in the ICU. 

He fell in his room and was not found for six hours, and almost died. He had to be put on a ventilator... and put in a storage room, because there is no room in ICU. 

He woke up in 24 hours... But the hospital had to put him on ventilator AGAIN, because they don't have the staff to check up on him, give him tests, or get consulting pulmonologists or cardiologists. Again, full of unvaxxed COVID patients. And there, his condition deteriorated. 

And the hospital did not even try to transfer him to a larger hospital because ALL nearby hospitals are full. In fact, the entire state's ICUs are full. And the doctor said they also tried ICUs in Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Utah, and California. No luck. 

In short, her father will DIE without a cardiac ICU bed, maybe within 24 hours. Confirmed by both nurse and doctor. So she got on the phone and called basically EVERY hospital in a few hundred miles, for FIVE HOURS continuously. And she finally found a cardiac ICU bed in Albuquerque, still within the state. 

And the transfer is made. And according to the doctor there, it was a VERY close call. But her father is now stable. Her father spent 10 days there, slowly healing his heart, but he was on ventilator all the time. They tried to wean him off of it, but his lungs are too weak. 

They have to perform a tracheostomy, to open a hole in his windpipe, and give his lungs a chance to heal. 

And it was VERY VERY CLEAR that if the hospitals were NOT clogged up by the "vaccine-hesitant" he would have NEVER gotten this bad. 

But he seems to be recovering for now. 

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Her father was collateral damage to all the vaccine hesitants' decisions to NOT vaccinate for COVID. 

To the vaccine-hesitant... your actions have far-reaching consequences than your own body. We've already seen sad story about a man turned away by 43 hospitals, and so on. 

Don't be a vaccine-hesitant entitled selfish COVIDiot. 

COVIDiocy Regret: Virginia Dad Barely Survived COVID, Recorded Regret from Hospital Bed

Travis Campbell of Bristol Virginia barely survived COVID. He was diagnosed of COVID on July 22nd, and went into the hospital two days later. Doctors told him any later and he may not have made it, as his lungs were being damaged, and he was admitted to pulmonary ICU right away. In early August, he was telling his wife and his Facebook viewers that he "truly regrets not getting the vaccine", and were making final arrangement just in case. 

But we're happy to say he has recovered sufficiently to go home after battling COVID for three weeks. 

Travis blames what he saw on social media for his misfortune. He is now pro-vaccine. 

Do NOT be like Travis WAS. Get vaccinated ASAP. 

Sad COVIDiocy: 20-year Old Man Believed Himself Immune from COVID. He died.

An family is mourning the loss of a young 20-year old man who resisted getting the COVID vaccine for months. 

Tyler Gilreath told his mother Tamra Demello that he's healthy, and he has no pre-existing conditions, therefore he does not need the COVID vaccine, despite frequent reminders by his mother. Finally, he agreed that he will get the vaccine by August 30th, which is his mom's birthday. He would never get the chance. Not long after arrival at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where Tyler was about the start his sophomore year, he was diagnosed with COVID on August 20th. He seems to have recovered initially but picked up a sinus infection and a staph infection by mid-September. The infection entered his brain and caused swelling that started to destroy his brain. He was admitted to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain, but his condition worsened. The doctors determined there was no hope on 25th... and took him off life support on 27th. 

His mother had no doubt that had he gotten vaccinated, he would not have died. 

Don't be a COVIDiot like Tyler. Do NOT delay in getting the vaccine. You may catch it BEFORE you have a chance to vaccinate. 

Sad COVIOdiocy: Antivax Nurse who Told Family Not to Vaccinate Has Died from COVID

An Idaho registered nurse with special-needs twins has died from COVID. Normally this is just sad news, but this is extra sad because she actually told her own family NOT to vaccinate, while her own mother was in the hospital in a coma from COVID. 

Idaho was a hotbed for antivax misinformation, so much so only 40.8% of residents are fully vaccinated in Idaho, compared to 54.7% in the whole US. 

And Natalie Rise fell for the misinformation so hard, she actually told her family that there were no studies done on the vaccine, even though the vaccine went through trials on thousands of people, and then was administered to millions of people with minimal side effects. Apparently, her own professional education cannot defeat misinformation. 

Her family members have no doubt that she was killed by those bloggers and Youtubers peddling misinformation. 

And it is these unvaxxed Idahoans that are clogging up hospitals and ICUs in Idaho, that Idaho has started rationing care to only the most essential and those that can be saved. 

In fact, Rise was transferred to nearby Spokane, Washington for ICU treatment, and died there. And the flood of the Idaho COVID cases is filling up ICUs in nearby Spokane, Washington as well. One hospital director said that they normally accept 90% of transfers, but in the past two weeks, they have to turn away HALF of requested transfers. They are trying to expand ICU, but they fear they will be forced to ration care soon like Idaho. 

Her brother Daryl got the shot the day after she died. He had to quit his job to take care of the twins she left behind. 

COVIDiocy Conspiracy: Ivermectin Doctors are Making Big Bucks Off Antivaxxers

The Intercept, a sort of journalistic Wikileaks, has obtained data that shows right-wing doctors are making big bucks out of the right-wingers who were fed anti-vax disinformation. 

According to The Intercept, the group known as AFLDS (America's Frontline Doctors), best known for COVID-19 disinformation since the summer of 2020, referred many people to SpeakWithAnMD.com, a telemed platform based on Cadence Health. Each consultation is $90 for a call, where doctors "trained by AFLDS" prescribe non-sense meds like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and if they got a prescription, they are delivered by Ravkoo. However, many patients paid but never got a callback. 

The data from Cadence Health and Ravkoo was obtained by an anonymous hacker who gave the data to the Intercept. 

The Intercept contacted Cadence Health, and it shut down quickly, claiming unwillingness to be profiting off COVID "quackery". 

It is worth noting that the head of AFLDS, Dr. Simone Gold, was arrested and charged for the January 6th Capitol Insurrection. Gold was well known for stating that COVID is not very deadly, and the COVID vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. Given that over 700000 Americans have DIED from COVID, and unvaccinated are 99% of the recent deaths, this is clearly wrong. 

According to the hacked data given to The Intercept, about 281K people paid 6.7 MILLION dollars in TWO MONTHS (between July and September 2021) for consultations with SpeakWithAnMD.com's "AFLDS trained doctors", and when shown this data, Cadence Health's CEO was flabbergasted, and terminated the contract with SpeakWithAnMD.com immediately. 

The same data also indicated that 340000 prescriptions were filled by Ravkoo between November 2020 and September 2021, worth about 8.5 MILLION dollars. Out of that, 46% were for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. NEITHER are valid treatments for COVID, as both are antiparasitic, not antiviral. Another 30% are for zinc or azithromycin, neither of which have an effect on COVID. That's more than 3/4 of all orders. When shown this data, Ravkoo CEO claimed he stopped doing business with AFLDS and SpeakwithAnMD.com at the end of August. When shown data that there are prescriptions from AFLDS in September, the Ravkoo CEO surmised that they are probably refills. 

The Intercept goes into details on the origins of AFLDS (it's funded by pro-Trump ultra-right Tea Party Patriots Foundation to counter FDA's cautious response to COVID), and into more details about how both AFLDS and SpeakWithAnMD's parent company reacted to the leak (by gathering a team of over a dozen lawyers). 

You can read the whole Intercept article here: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-hacked/

My thoughts: I was wondering WHY would AFLDS, and its fellow misinformers like FLCCC and BIRD misinform people like that. Turns out, there is a FINANCIAL incentive after all. 

I first encountered FLCCC when one of their doctors prescribed ivermectin to a COVID patient in an Ohio hospital OVER THE PHONE, where he doesn't even have privileges. The hospital refused to fill it, and the patient's wife sued, and a judge actually gave the wife a win, until another judge blocked it. 

What's interesting is FLCCC is NOT willing to stand behind its recommendations. Look at their own disclaimer:

Disclaimer can be summarized as you can't
blame FLCCC if you got sick and/or died

And AFLDS was reported by Time of taking the money and not even giving consultations, in an investigation that predated the hack given to Intercept. 

These people are essentially selling snake oil to fearful people, and using a doctor's white coat to do it. 

Don't be a COVIDiot and get swindled by these crooked quacks. 

Get vaxxed. It's that simple.