Has nothing to do with what I wrote.
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He's Alive!
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Oh sorry — were you talking to someone else
Sometimes I fall asleep in my chair and think someone is talking to me — when they're not.
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Here's another great example of how the anti-vaxxer science breaks down and misrepresents data and misleads people with it. The explanation is lengthy but it's factual. The gullible and the believers subscribe to the authority of this video without getting a breakdown of the facts. I'm only going to do this once more to help demonstrate why this COVID propaganda crap is total BS.Oh it worked alright — with less than 1% actual efficacy and a list of side-effects ( including death ).
Fortunately for you, you're a tough old goat. You've survived everything — even the vax ( lol ).
Glad you did
"The theory falls apart because it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how medical statistics work."
The Statistical Trick: RRR vs. ARR
The primary difference between the two metrics depends entirely on how much virus is actively circulating during the brief window of a clinical trial. This has nothing to do with real world implications with a lot of disease circulating around - which is why we get vaccines in the first place.
Absolutely Maybe
Relative Risk Reduction (RRR): This measures how well a vaccine performs by comparing the infected group directly to the uninfected group, independent of the total population size. In the initial Pfizer trial, about 162 people in the placebo group got sick compared to only 8 in the vaccine group. Because 8 is roughly 95% less than 162, the vaccine proved to be 95% effective at stopping infection under those conditions.
Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR): This measures the risk reduction across the entire trial population. Because tens of thousands of people volunteered for the trials over just a few months, and most people—even in the unvaccinated placebo group—never crossed paths with the virus during that short period, the baseline risk for everyone was low.
A Simple Mathematical Analogy
Imagine a trial with 20,000 people: 10,000 get a placebo and 10,000 get the vaccine.
In the placebo group, 100 people catch the virus (a 1% absolute baseline risk).
In the vaccinated group, only 5 people catch the virus (a 0.05% absolute risk).
Calculating the metrics reveals two vastly different looking numbers for the exact same data:
The ARR is small (≈ 1%) simply because the baseline chance of catching COVID-19 during that short trial period was low for everyone.
Why the 1% Claim is Misleading
Conspiracy theorists weaponized the ARR by pretending it represents a static, lifetime cap on vaccine protection.
Absolutely Maybe
Trial windows are brief: The 1% ARR only reflected a participant's risk of catching COVID-19 over a span of a few weeks during the trial. It does not dictate protection over a year, or a lifetime of exposure.
Real-world exposure changes: If you live in an environment where your actual real-world risk of exposure climbs to 50%, a vaccine with 95% relative efficacy will lower your absolute risk by roughly 47.5%.
Authors debunked the conspiracy: The scientists who wrote the original commentary in The Lancet Microbe publicly spoke out to clarify that their work was heavily twisted. They noted that ARR is a tool meant to help public health officials allocate resources based on regional disease prevalence, and that using it to argue that vaccines do not work is scientifically illiterate.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
The "conspiracy theory" trope is now transparent to those everyone but the gullible.
You need a new smear to discredit the actual evidence.
When caught — the vaxxers call their own data e.g. VAERS "weaponized" or a "conspiracy theory".
Those aren't valid criticisms of the evidence — and you know it. So why parrot Fauci?
Better you just take the Fifth. You sound like you shilled your way into some vax influencer cult.
Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is considered a more realistic measure of treatment efficacy compared to Relative Risk Reduction (RRR).
ARR provides a clearer picture of the treatment's benefit in absolute terms by accounting for the baseline risk. In contrast, RRR can be misleading because it does not consider the baseline risk and can present more impressive numbers that do not reflect the actual benefit.
What is the preferred measure to evaluate the efficacy of a new treatment, Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) or Relative Risk Reduction (RRR), in determining the usefulness of a drug?
Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is the preferred measure to evaluate the efficacy of a new treatment, as it provides a more realistic picture of a treatment's ...
www.droracle.ai
They would be right except for one thing — the argument isn't using ARR to argue that vaccines do not work. The argument is that it's a more realistic measurement of how well they work in the real world — as recognized by credentialed researcheres.
You see — one of the favorite strategies of the vax cult is to misquote or quote out of context a claim that was never actually made by credentialed professionals on the topic — then debunk it and claim a win. It's a variation of the straw man fallacy.
You'd know that if you actually went a level or two deeper into the evidence. They did the same thing with Ivermectin and other early intervention protocols — debunking the claim that it "Cured COVID", when I haven't found a single clinician who claimed it was a "cure" rather than an early intervention strategy that could help reduce hospitalization. On top of that, they mocked patients, comparing them to farmyard animals with worms. If you ever want to escape the vax cult mentality — you need to try harder.
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
You are not addressing the fundamental issue that is measuring vaccine efficacy in a trial vs. the real world. Trials limit the exposure and in the real world where exposure is higher we get different math altogether and that's what people need to understand - not a manipulated piece of junk that is in fact not a real world measurement at all.The "conspiracy theory" trope is now transparent to those everyone but the gullible.
You need a new smear to discredit the actual evidence.
When caught — the vaxxers call their own data e.g. VAERS "weaponized" or a "conspiracy theory".
Those aren't valid criticisms of the evidence — and you know it. So why parrot Fauci?
Better you just take the Fifth. You sound like you shilled your way into some vax influencer cult.
Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is considered a more realistic measure of treatment efficacy compared to Relative Risk Reduction (RRR).
ARR provides a clearer picture of the treatment's benefit in absolute terms by accounting for the baseline risk. In contrast, RRR can be misleading because it does not consider the baseline risk and can present more impressive numbers that do not reflect the actual benefit.
What is the preferred measure to evaluate the efficacy of a new treatment, Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) or Relative Risk Reduction (RRR), in determining the usefulness of a drug?
Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) is the preferred measure to evaluate the efficacy of a new treatment, as it provides a more realistic picture of a treatment's ...www.droracle.ai
They would be right except for one thing — the argument isn't using ARR to argue that vaccines do not work. The argument is that it's a more realistic measurement of how well they work in the real world — as recognized by credentialed researcheres.
You see — one of the favorite strategies of the vax cult is to misquote or quote out of context a claim that was never actually made by credentialed professionals on the topic — then debunk it and claim a win. It's a variation of the straw man fallacy.
You'd know that if you actually went a level or two deeper into the evidence. They did the same thing with Ivermectin and other early intervention protocols — debunking the claim that it "Cured COVID", when I haven't found a single clinician who claimed it was a "cure" rather than an early intervention strategy that could help reduce hospitalization. On top of that, they mocked patients, comparing them to farmyard animals with worms. If you ever want to escape the vax cult mentality — you need to try harder.
We want a metric that helps people to recognize vaccine efficacy in the real world and not across the risk of limited exposure in a trial. So your hogwash supporting this pseudo science demonstrates what a schill you've become for anti vaccine propaganda. You're not even reading the scientific rebuttal properly.
You subscribe to a narrow band group of anti vaxxer funded folk that never gets substantiated across wider medical or scientific platforms. Ivermectin has been explored through many extensive global clinical trials and it does nothing for COVID. And if COVID is no big deal in the first place why even bother pointing at alternatives that are scientifically baseless and have no credit in the wider medical community?
What you are arguing for is anti vaxxer propaganda and you need to look more closely at the facts and math of it all. Ask yourself more deeply why you distrust vaccines when medically they are the single biggest indicator of human mortality in the history of human science? That's a real fact, not some cooked up manipulated set of numbers used to promote fear and distrust.
Where is the science regarding evil vaccines that is corroborated across wider global medical bodies. Are you saying everyone else is in on it? That phizar and moderna are going around shutting down every single independent scientific body on the planet? Come on now. Look at this more critically and ask yourself these bigger questions.
BombPopCaper
Skilled Investigator
So glad to hear this!
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Don't argue the rationale with me — argue it with those professionals who have no conflict of interest with big pharma and plainly say that RRR is used to give the impression of high efficacy because the numbers are bigger, which to the general public who they want to promote their product to, makes it look more effective than it actually is.
Still want more — Here's another one from the NIH ( National Library Of Medicine )
Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy
"The absolute risk reduction is shown to be a more precise and reliable measure of treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical research studies. The absolute risk reduction reciprocal also measures the number needed to treat or vaccinate, and is a more accurate measure than the relative risk reduction for comparing risk reductions of clinical studies."
"Relative risk does not measure ‘risk’ at all, because risk has dimensions, such as observed deaths per 100 or 1000 people. However, a risk ratio has no dimensions because they cancel in calculating the ratio”
"Although RRRs were reported in the media and scientific journals by vaccine manufacturers and the FDA Advisory Committee that authorized and approved the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, ARRs were not reported, denying the public important information needed before consenting to vaccination."
Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy - PMC
Treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials are often reported in the media and medical journals as the relative risk reduction. The present article explains why the relative risk reduction is a misinformative measure that promotes ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Given the huge numbers of vax injuries ( and deaths ) — mandating the vax while misleading the public was not simply unethical, but IMO criminally negligent. If somneone is lame-brained enough to volunteer for it — that's their choice. Otherwise keep that poison away from those who know better and don't want it. FFS — Coercing people to get unwanted pharmaceutical injections — really? People fought and died in two World wars to prevent that sort of totalitarian BS from happening here.
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Again, you're not understanding the clear facts of the huge difference between exposure in a clinical trial vs. real world exposure where the disease is rampant. You're just parroting the anti vaxxer literature that keeps trying to make a baseless argument. And yes, you are trying to weaponize it.Don't argue the rationale with me — argue it with those professionals who have no conflict of interest with big pharma and plainly say that RRR is used to give the impression of high efficacy because the numbers are bigger, which to the general public who they want to promote their product to, makes it look more effective than it actually is.
Still want more — Here's another one from the NIH ( National Library Of Medicine )
Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy
"The absolute risk reduction is shown to be a more precise and reliable measure of treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical research studies. The absolute risk reduction reciprocal also measures the number needed to treat or vaccinate, and is a more accurate measure than the relative risk reduction for comparing risk reductions of clinical studies."
"Relative risk does not measure ‘risk’ at all, because risk has dimensions, such as observed deaths per 100 or 1000 people. However, a risk ratio has no dimensions because they cancel in calculating the ratio”
"Although RRRs were reported in the media and scientific journals by vaccine manufacturers and the FDA Advisory Committee that authorized and approved the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, ARRs were not reported, denying the public important information needed before consenting to vaccination."
Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy - PMC
Treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials are often reported in the media and medical journals as the relative risk reduction. The present article explains why the relative risk reduction is a misinformative measure that promotes ...
Given the huge numbers of vax injuries ( and deaths ) — mandating the vax while misleading the public was not simply unethical, but IMO criminally negligent. If somneone is lame-brained enough to volunteer for it — that's their choice. Otherwise keep that poison away from those who know better and don't want it. FFS — Coercing people to get unwanted pharmaceutical injections — really? People fought and died in two World wars to prevent that sort of totalitarian BS from happening here.
Whoever said there was a cure for COVID - there's no cure. There's only the ability to minimize your impact and to possibly even be immune if the cocktail in the needle matches the current variant, which can't always be the case because flu viruses are unpredictable.
You are not looking at real world issues and factual history. The fact is people die less from diseases because of vaccines - polio, measles mumps, rubella etc.... We've gone over this before.... And please don't go on with that junk that people don't die from measles but die from conditions, that are in fact caused by measles and is the number one reason why people die from measles. Your resistance in avoiding critical thinking makes zero sense.
Anyone in the military today must be up to date with their immunization record or they can't be in the military. So it looks to me like they are still fighting for the right to have real science protect them. Because that is the real world where soldiers need to be effective and to do so they need to be vaccinated.
Apparently testosterone wasn't enough to stop the flu in Lackland so even Hegseth had to reverse his position as all positions were reversed to support proper vaccination as the means to keep troop readiness at proper levels.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I understand better than you think. None of the evidence I gave you is false or misleading, unlike big pharma's misleading promotional tactic of using the higher number — which as the article I posted says does not measure ‘risk’ at all.
Big vs. Small Numbers: RRR often sounds very large (e.g., a 95% reduction). This large percentage describes the proportional drop, not the absolute chance of you personally getting sick.
Baseline Risk: RRR does not show how common the disease was to begin with. If a disease is very rare in the first place, a high RRR translates to a very tiny absolute risk reduction.
Argue it with AI:
Q. Without knowing how much a given region is exposed to a virus, are relative risk reduction numbers reliable"
A. No. Relative risk reduction (RRR) numbers alone are not reliable for understanding your actual real-world risk without knowing the baseline exposure or infection rate in a population — and with COVID, it wasn't known because it was a new virus in a previously unexposed population.
Why RRR is Incomplete:
RRR only tells you how much a risk is reduced compared to an unvaccinated or unexposed group, but it hides the absolute baseline risk. [1]
- The Illusion: A treatment with a 90% RRR sounds highly impactful.
- The Reality: If your baseline chance of catching the virus in your region is only 1 in 10,000 (0.01%), a 90% RRR only drops your risk to 1 in 100,000 (0.001%).
To make informed personal health decisions, you must look at Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) and Number Needed to Treat (NNT):
- Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR): The actual difference between the two risks. In the example above, the ARR is a tiny 0.009%.
- Number Needed to Treat (NNT): How many people must receive the intervention for one person to benefit.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
So again you've gone into wonky thinking land and allowing the supposed rational logic of the propagandists to have a measure of reality when it's all smoke and mirrors and selectively ignoring facts. Besides now we can measure viral loads in our society right at the toilet.
Your baseline exposure across years with an infectious disease is like 100% so these trials are not that applicable to reality but whatever..... here we go:
The primary flaw in this thinking is that it treats dynamic, highly contagious infectious diseases like static, non-communicable conditions (such as a rare genetic disease or a specific cancer).
While the mathematical definitions of Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) and Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) are accurate, applying standard ARR logic to a pandemic leads to flawed conclusions.
Here are the flaws in your logic
Ignoring Exponential Growth: Baseline risk in a pandemic is not a fixed number like 0.01%. Infectious diseases spread exponentially. A low baseline risk today can become an incredibly high risk in two weeks if left unchecked.
The "Prevention Paradox": The reason the baseline risk might have appeared "low" at any given moment was often due to active interventions like lockdowns, masking, and early vaccination. Evaluating a vaccine's worth based on a temporarily suppressed baseline risk is a logical fallacy. You're not going to remove sprinkler systems from buildings that have never had a fire.
Underestimating Lifetime Exposure: ARR typically measures risk over a short, specific window (e.g., a 2-month clinical trial). However, during a multi-year pandemic, your lifetime probability of exposure approaches 100%. Over a long enough timeline, your personalized ARR converges with the RRR.
Overlooking Public Health Dynamics: ARR and Number Needed to Treat (NNT) are designed for individual patient care, not public health. If a vaccine stops transmission or reduces viral load, vaccinating a population drastically drops the baseline risk for everyone, including the unvaccinated.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Like I said . . . go have it out with an AI.
A.I. passed the Turing Test back in 2014,
So by now, it must be even smarter — maybe smarter than the both of us combined.
But I did corner it into admitting bias in its training.
Interestingly, an A.I. geek and I did that exact thing not too long ago.
It was an eye-opener for him.
Anyway — We've reached the level of discussion here that requires a small working group to separate the signal from the noise on a much finer scale, and all my people are currently on holidays.
RustyShackleford
Skilled Investigator
Glad to hear you're back, Gene. I'm looking forward to new paracast episodes!