4. The Politics of Health

Science builds on science

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A text submitted anonymously to Montreal Counter-Info, critiquing covid-denialist, conspiracist, and "anti-lockdown" ideas within the anarchist movement.

The headline of the January 12 Bloomberg.com op/ed says it all: “Say Goodbye to Self-Isolating, WFH Mandates, Mass Testing.” The authors boast, “The balance of power between human and virus is shifting. Better armed against a lesser enemy, our species no longer needs to hide in a bunker waiting for a viral wave to pass.

Red thought “natural” remedies were the cure-all for everything. Nurses are heroes. Not the ones who endanger their patients by refusing to vaccinate during a global pandemic that’s killing millions. Definitely not those. But the 99%+ that are still trying to clean up the mess the anti-vaxxers...

The revenue medical journals earn from reprints is a big incentive to publish studies with positive findings.

Poll: 9 in 10 Americans say doctors should be held accountable for COVID-19 disinformation A new report released today urges state medical licensing bodies to investigate doctors who are deliberately spreading misleading or false COVID-19 information. And an overwhelming majority of the public agree: Nine in 10 Americans say doctors who intentionally spread misinformation about […]

US researchers show negative version of placebo effect behind many symptoms such as headaches and fatigue

It’s deadly, malicious and there’s no vaccine. The infodemic is here. But it's not unstoppable.

Scientists have warned wealthy nations to share vaccines with poorer countries or risk the emergence of new mutant variants.

Objective To estimate the real world effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 and Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1-S vaccines against confirmed covid-19 symptoms (including the UK variant of concern B.1.1.7), admissions to hospital, and deaths. Design Test negative case-control study. Setting Community testing for covid-19 in England. Participants 156 930 adults aged 70 years and older who reported symptoms of covid-19 between 8 December 2020 and 19 February 2021 and were successfully linked to vaccination data in the National Immunisation Management System. Interventions Vaccination with BNT162b2 or ChAdOx1-S. Main outcome measures Primary outcomes were polymerase chain reaction confirmed symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, admissions to hospital for covid-19, and deaths with covid-19. Results Participants aged 80 years and older vaccinated with BNT162b2 before 4 January 2021 had a higher odds of testing positive for covid-19 in the first nine days after vaccination (odds ratio up to 1.48, 95% confidence interval 1.23 to 1.77), indicating that those initially targeted had a higher underlying risk of infection. Vaccine effectiveness was therefore compared with the baseline post-vaccination period. Vaccine effects were noted 10 to 13 days after vaccination, reaching a vaccine effectiveness of 70% (95% confidence interval 59% to 78%), then plateauing. From 14 days after the second dose a vaccination effectiveness of 89% (85% to 93%) was found compared with the increased baseline risk. Participants aged 70 years and older vaccinated from 4 January (when ChAdOx1-S delivery commenced) had a similar underlying risk of covid-19 to unvaccinated individuals. With BNT162b2, vaccine effectiveness reached 61% (51% to 69%) from 28 to 34 days after vaccination, then plateaued. With ChAdOx1-S, effects were seen from 14 to 20 days after vaccination, reaching an effectiveness of 60% (41% to 73%) from 28 to 34 days, increasing to 73% (27% to 90%) from day 35 onwards. On top of the protection against symptomatic disease, a further 43% (33% to 52%) reduced risk of emergency hospital admission and 51% (37% to 62%) reduced risk of death was observed in those who had received one dose of BNT162b2. Participants who had received one dose of ChAdOx1-S had a further 37% (3% to 59%) reduced risk of emergency hospital admission. Follow-up was insufficient to assess the effect of ChAdOx1-S on mortality. Combined with the effect against symptomatic disease, a single dose of either vaccine was about 80% effective at preventing admission to hospital with covid-19 and a single dose of BNT162b2 was 85% effective at preventing death with covid-19. Conclusion Vaccination with either one dose of BNT162b2 or ChAdOx1-S was associated with a significant reduction in symptomatic covid-19 in older adults, and with further protection against severe disease. Both vaccines showed similar effects. Protection was maintained for the duration of follow-up (6 weeks). A second dose of BNT162b2 was associated with further protection against symptomatic disease. A clear effect of the vaccines against the B.1.1.7 variant was found.

Anti-vaccine activists are using the side effect reporting system to spread fear and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. But the database could also be used as a gauge for public concerns.

A news interview I did was re-edited and misquoted by online conspiracy theorists. My advice is: get the vaccine, says David LV Bauer of the Francis Crick Institute

More Americans than ever are willing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, but a partisan divide remains.

This analysis is an update to a previous analysis conducted in September 2021. Using county-level data, we analyzed trends in COVID-19 vaccination rates in counties that voted for President Trump in the 2020 election compared to counties that voted for President Biden. We find higher vaccination rates for counties that voted for Biden. However, rates among those fully vaccinated that have received a booster are similar between the two groups.

Objective To estimate the direct and indirect effects of the covid-19 pandemic on mortality in 2020 in 29 high income countries with reliable and complete age and sex disaggregated mortality data. Design Time series study of high income countries. Setting Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, England and Wales, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United States. Participants Mortality data from the Short-term Mortality Fluctuations data series of the Human Mortality Database for 2016-20, harmonised and disaggregated by age and sex. Interventions Covid-19 pandemic and associated policy measures. Main outcome measures Weekly excess deaths (observed deaths versus expected deaths predicted by model) in 2020, by sex and age (0-14, 15-64, 65-74, 75-84, and ≥85 years), estimated using an over-dispersed Poisson regression model that accounts for temporal trends and seasonal variability in mortality. Results An estimated 979 000 (95% confidence interval 954 000 to 1 001 000) excess deaths occurred in 2020 in the 29 high income countries analysed. All countries had excess deaths in 2020, except New Zealand, Norway, and Denmark. The five countries with the highest absolute number of excess deaths were the US (458 000, 454 000 to 461 000), Italy (89 100, 87 500 to 90 700), England and Wales (85 400, 83 900 to 86 800), Spain (84 100, 82 800 to 85 300), and Poland (60 100, 58 800 to 61 300). New Zealand had lower overall mortality than expected (−2500, −2900 to −2100). In many countries, the estimated number of excess deaths substantially exceeded the number of reported deaths from covid-19. The highest excess death rates (per 100 000) in men were in Lithuania (285, 259 to 311), Poland (191, 184 to 197), Spain (179, 174 to 184), Hungary (174, 161 to 188), and Italy (168, 163 to 173); the highest rates in women were in Lithuania (210, 185 to 234), Spain (180, 175 to 185), Hungary (169, 156 to 182), Slovenia (158, 132 to 184), and Belgium (151, 141 to 162). Little evidence was found of subsequent compensatory reductions following excess mortality. Conclusion Approximately one million excess deaths occurred in 2020 in these 29 high income countries. Age standardised excess death rates were higher in men than women in almost all countries. Excess deaths substantially exceeded reported deaths from covid-19 in many countries, indicating that determining the full impact of the pandemic on mortality requires assessment of excess deaths. Many countries had lower deaths than expected in children 15 years. Sex inequality in mortality widened further in most countries in 2020.

Conspiracy theories about covid and vaccines once ran rampant on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But months of purges of accounts that trafficked heavily in misinformation - especially after the baseless QAnon ideology helped fuel the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol - have driven adherents to the less visible but still virulent world of private groups on encrypted chat apps such as Telegram. Some groups have hundreds of thousands of users.

Is former MTV VJ-turned actor, podcaster, and comedian Russell Brand going off the deep end? His recent videos are really something.

A vaccinology expert explains why the number of breakthrough cases in Nova Scotia is a sign of just how effective COVID-19 vaccines are.

Concerns over waning immunity and SARS-CoV-2 variants have convinced some countries to deploy extra vaccine doses — but it’s not clear to scientists whether most people need them.

Massive UK study of COVID-19 cases shows that people who are jabbed have good immunity at first, but quickly become more vulnerable to the fast-spreading Delta variant.

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.

Governments around the world are busily exploiting the coronavirus crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks.

An interview on health and politics – Two physicians discuss the political economy of human well-being.

Researchers use AI – and witchcraft folklore – to map the coronavirus conspiracy theories that have sprung up

A damning new report shows that one of the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers appears to have played a role in restricting access to those very vaccines. The report, “Pfizer’s Power,” published this week by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, examines Pfizer’s contracts with the United States, United Kingdom, European Commission, Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic and Peru. They offer a rare glimpse into the power Pfizer has to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the middle of a public health crisis. We speak with Public Citizen researcher Zain Rizvi, author of the new report.

Prior research has focused on the negative reasons people are drawn to conspiracies, but there’s another side to the story

Recipients of jab while pregnant recall confusing advice and ‘vicious’ social media comments

Organisers of exhibition on history of British fascism say parallels can be drawn with current thinking