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They use 95% as the maximum vaccination rate and call the resulting estimates for efficacy "conservative". Meanwhile, they have no idea if the true rate is 75%. For all we know, vaccine clinics are injecting thin air for profit.

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According to data from Pfizer’s ‘trial’, infection was 0.88% in the placebo group and 0.04% in the active ingredient group. This is a Relative Risk Reduction of 95% but only a 0.84% Absolute Risk Reduction - which is negligible. And this was for a cohort of 16 to 45 age and fit, healthy people. It is a puzzle how any vaccine could become more significantly more effective in use than in trial. Of course it cannot. The claims of effectiveness are artefacts of data manipulation and not allowing for confounding factors.

Interestingly once the data had cleaned up and confounding factors not present, that is with Omicron, where the baseline was double vaccinated, in the early exponential phase of the variant epidemic, no seasonal or Gompertz trajectory confounders, the pseudo-vaccines were soon to be seen in negative effectiveness territory where in my opinion they had been all along.

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Yes, 0.84% Absolute Risk Reduction sounds small. But how do we decide if it's negligible? I'm playing the devil's advocate, but hospitals seem to think that it will keep them from being overrun with infectious patients.

The only way to argue against that is by also considering vaccine harm.

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Because 0.84% is negligible! It is risk of infection, not risk of developing disease.

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But didn't they have pretty fast and loose rules with the vaccine cohort on actually testing them ? So, even the 0.84% number is bogus.

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Even when NYC sped up its curve by infecting all the at-risk at once, the hospitals weren't overrun. The only way they will be overrun today -- 2 years later -- is if the vaccine does more harm than good.

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Or if the hospitals are cutting capacity. Which they have been, deliberately or inadvertently.

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Exactly! If your numbers are saying over 100% of the population is vaxxed, your numbers cannot be trusted for anything :/ They mess up even the most basic shit.

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Or maybe public health officials, who have embraced the "noble lie", want the unvaxxed to seem like a smaller minority. They did it before when they said 99% of hospital staff were fully vaxxed but neglected to mention the many exemptions. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/mt-sinais-long-beach-site-to-temporarily-close-due-to-vax-related-staff-shortages/3415030/

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Alternately, people are coming in from the neighboring counties to get vaccinated in King County. We saw a bit of this in hospitalization rates in March/April 2020 when it was clear that nursing home residents from Snohomish were being hospitalized in King.

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Everyone has an incentive to push up the vax numbers. Clinics probably get paid per dose. Local officials and governors want high numbers to make them look good. Meanwhile, around here they're telling people to get vaxxed, no ID needed. I'm surprised we haven't reached 200 %.

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