Where are the threads going?

[AreYouVeryAnti]

One on Midazolam a few days ago (absolutely nothing new there) and then another one linking to a Daily Mail Article on the rare AZ side effects and broadly making fun of the comments as being not representative.

Have they been taken down?

Why?

It's this kind of thing that fuels conspiracy theories IMO. I first started sniffing around the entrance to rabbit holes when I saw that interviews of people with vaccine side effects were being removed from YouTube. Why? Why not let people see all the information and decide for themselves?

@BeethovenNinth

Because the anti vaxxers are biased, and blown things way out of proportion. And then persuaded others to do the same. We have never seen a pandemic like this, with so many vaccines needed over a short period of time. So of course you will see the RARE side effects but you HAVE to balance this out with lives saved, and our freedom from Covid now with our global hybrid immunity.
From me it’s - thank bloody hell for the vaccine (Mum is just getting a top up today).

And we look to our forward thinking European friends (Sweden) with their 90% vaccination rate. 👍

Yes but the risk/benefit analysis was clearly askew. The people who have lost family or been injured might take issue with your message. Forthem, it’s clear the risk re Covid was negligible. Younger men with myocarditis - again negligible risk from Covid.

it will take years to unpick it but I suspect that in healthy people under a certain age, the benefit was simply not there and the hope it reduced transmission was just that - a hope.

i am middle aged and healthy and didn’t take any and shouted at in the street by friends. The world lost its mind.

this thread is about mumsnet continuing to silence debate. It’s shameful. No doubt I I will be silenced for even saying this. Mumsnet - grow a pair please! Even the mainstream journalists have

@BeethovenNinth

But health misinformation is an online harm. And you do get threads here infiltrated by those linking to extreme political authors, banned hosting platforms etc.

I agree that debate is good, but I believe one of the deleted threads was one of the previously banned posters.

A pregnant woman, seeking advice on Mumsnet - could be persuaded to go against her doctor’s advice based on misinformation. This could cause harm to herself and her baby. That should be recognised as an online harm - yes?

Well what is health information? If I had said the AZ had been pulled in Sweden and younger people might not want to follow NHs advice, I would have been banned!

The risk/benefit wasn’t askew was it? The risk was low. So low that even in younger age groups the risk of clotting from covid was lower than the vaccine. And that was pointed out at the time. The reason that there’s not much point in using AZ and therefore manufacturing it is that the risk is even lower with mRNA vaccines so where storage isn’t an issue Pfizer or Moderna etc is a better option.

Measles vaccination rates have been falling for a decade. We would have had large measles outbreaks here with or without covid vax issues. IIRC we lost our status of having eradicated it in 2018.

@BeethovenNinth
I don’t think you would have been. You were stating a fact. It’s when it all gets misconstrued to support an agenda.

And I’d say health information is the safest advice you can give to a patient at a point in time. So that would be whatever the majority of health professionals advise across the globe.

@Colettee

No. Covid was a global medical intervention. So even if you don’t trust the UK government - you look globally. Sweden for example - who vaccinated 90% of their population. And you can’t use one event to then apply that failing on another event with no logical evidence. That report is from the BBC. If the medical community were constantly ‘covering up’ for financial gain - doesn’t that just prove to you that the medical community do research and ADMIT mistakes in MSM.

And if you don’t trust drug companies, who do you trust? Homeopathy? The stars? Laurence Fox to do your surgery?

@Colettee

But that’s purely focussing on the negative. You’ve got to balance it out with the positive. Nothing is infallible. Proportionally, the amount of lives saved or improved by medical interventions is far, far, far greater than lives lost or compromised.
And medicine attempts to be bias free and without political influence. I cannot fathom the mindset behind ‘they are biased/they are politically motivated’ - only then to link to a Telegraph article or extreme political author who apparently tell ‘the real truth’.

@Colettee

Because you take one quick look at the author, see his views on mammograms, see that : “The Board announced the step on September 26 expelling Gøtzsche because of an "ongoing, consistent pattern of disruptive and inappropriate behaviours ..., taking place over a number of years, which undermined this culture and were detrimental to the charity’s work, reputation and members.”
And you know that you’re dealing with a view far more prone to bias, political influence, controversy than consensus science which aims to eliminate that.

@Colettee

But it’s not about what’s ‘correct’ - it’s about the safest advice at a point in time, with our best knowledge/peer reviewed evidence at that point in time.
With a mammogram : should I go with the consensus advice and get one done? Or with your cited and discredited author Gøtzsche who thinks they are harmful and should be abandoned?
Thank god my Mum went with the consensus opinion on mammograms or she’d no longer be alive.

“Swiss Medical Council , a now-disbanded body, which proposed, 10 years ago, to stop regular mammography examinations . The institution did not represent the Swiss state, but was only a medical research center, and its conclusions were criticized by experts in the field, , who said they were based on wrong, incomplete or misinterpreted data. Today, in Switzerland, mammography is a procedure whose cost is covered by health insurance and is recommended for women between the ages of 40 and 59 every year and for women between the ages of 60 and 75 every two years ”, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health.”

@Colettee

So the solution is to look at sources that are even more prone to corruption??
Sources that frequently have politically biased authors and no peer backing at all?

@Colettee

But this was a global pandemic! It’s a bit of a stretch to think that every government, pharmaceutical company across the globe were ‘in on it’ and advising their citizens to get vaccinated.
Sweden ‘went along with it all’ - vaccine wise didn’t they? Sweden who tend to be the country lauded as getting it right?
They recommend having a mammogram there too…

Risk from the vaccine is lower in all age groups than the risk from Covid. The reason that it’s no longer recommended for those under 65 is that is wasn’t cost effective at a population level.

Essentially if you are weighing up your own risk of mortality/morbidity from Covid vs vaccine, then the vaccine is nearly always the less risky choice. At a population level the number of lives saved by vaccinating everyone wasn’t worth the cost.

As far as I’m aware if you age stratify excess deaths, the highest % increase in excess deaths currently is in the least vaccinated age groups. 5-9 year olds are a particular issue.