Dr. Nass: I wrote him an email after the first Substack telling him I was anxiously awaiting his response to your comments about his erroneous claims. I told him that as a practicing physician I had never found you to be providing any “misinformation”. I reminded him that you had expertise int he area of Infectious Disease, and in fact, had been called to give testimony in Congress several times, was an expert in Anthrax, which had harmed our military and was once called by the Cuban government to assist in a rare tropical disease. I ended by telling him the next time he wanted to jump in the ring with an expert, he needed that second cup of coffee. 😄
John Gregory may have a tough time understanding Dr. Nass' replies, and writer Upton Sinclair offered an explanation in the 1930s for this kind of persistence:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
That quote has always had the ring of truth to me, and never more so than during the COVID era.
John may be bound to the notion that the FDA is an infallible fount of medical truth. Or if he otherwise writes in good faith, he may be headed for a major shakeup in his worldview over the coming months and years.
It is reportedly from "I, Candidate for Governor: and How I Got Licked" (1935), which I never read. Last year, I did finally get around to reading perhaps his most famous novel, "The Jungle" (1906), which now that I think about it, had much to do with the ultimate creation of the USDA and FDA. But I knew of the quote long before I read that book.
Exactly. Presumptions or presuppositions inherent in how they approach their science. IOW, how they form their questions shapes their answers. The outside coercions might include prestige, acceptance, money, and power.
Your response was thorough and logical. This would be helpful if you were dealing with someone who was thorough and logical.
The problem is that fact-checking is about identifying things that run counter to the authority's opinion. Misinformation means disagreement with the authority.
Why does the burden of proof lie with you and not the investigator? Why does the FDA allow them to exclude bad outcomes but claim efficacy based on statistical comparisons? What are the chances that Mr. Gregory understands any of this?
I really hope Mr. Gregory and his "agency" eventually show some recognition for all your clarifications ...🤣🤣🤣🤣
BEST action the public, tax-paid evil-doers ever did, was revoking your medical license which enabled you to finally unleash your full potential for counter-attack and educate wider swaths of the lay-public.
John Gregory, the NewsGuard employee that keeps pestering Dr. Nass, has previously worked as a sports reporter, a tourism reporter, covered state and government politics...yeah, a real brain surgeon.
For Pfizer's BNT162b2, the efficacy rate stated by the FDA,CDC,Pfizer is 95%, measured as the relative efficacy rate (RRR), but the absolute efficacy rate (ARR) calculated by myself from the clinical trial report (which is quite forged) was 0.726%.
Many relatively ignorant general physicians and ordinary people are being fooled by this numerical expression.
They believe that there is an RRR chance that they will not get the disease.
For individuals, it is the ARR that is meaningful.
I believe this is a fraud by the pharmaceutical industry and public health officials.
To put it in extreme terms, if 1,000 out of 1 million people are infected, and if all 1 million people are vaccinated and the number drops to 100, then the RRR is 90%. However, since 999,000 people are not infected in the first place, the ARR is only 0.1%.
It has come to my attention that you are investigating claims made about the Audenz vaccine made by a Dr. Meryl Nass. I am a physician and am also very interested in ensuring the public is being adequately informed about medical interventions, especially preventive measures that are offered to healthy people. Thank you for the work your organization does in educating the public.
The FDA stands behind the fact that 11 (0.5% of the vaccinated cohort) died in the observational period whereas only 1 (0.1% of the control group) died. Because both groups were matched with respect to age and comorbidity, 0.1% can be taken as the baseline rate of death in a population that was not exposed to the vaccine.
This should be a very strong safety signal that warrants further explanation from the sponsor (vaccine manufacturer). By accepting the sponsor's opinion that the deaths in those vaccinated were not due to their product the FDA, the regulatory body in this case, is inexplicably applying a dangerous double standard with regard to how risk and benefit is being calculated.
In other words, the FDA is accepting that the vaccine had some efficacy in protecting subjects from H1N1 based merely on the incidence of infection in that group. How do they know that the vaccine was responsible for the benefit? They don't know and they cannot know. Trials such as these can only identify correlations. The vaccine is correlated with a benefit with regard to the target disease. Similarly, the vaccine is correlated with a 5 times greater risk of death than the control group.
Trials do not and cannot prove causation, only correlation. In order to grant the vaccine its demonstrated benefit the FDA must also attribute a significant risk of death to it as well. That is the whole point of doing a trial.
Thank you for your efforts to help the public. I trust that you will use this opportunity to educate your readership around the obvious double standards being used by the FDA in this very important matter.
Why bother being so polite? (although I bow to due decorum). The guy is an obvious fraud, or an idiot, or both. I will quote you "trials do not and cannot prove causation, only correlation." Thanks
It is an appeal to his sensibilities. I hope to plant a seed in his mind so that someday he may wake up to the fact that he is not fullfilling his mission as a journalist. He is being paid to tell a story.
Denigrating him from the jump won't ever change his mind. In order to change things we first have to change minds.
When the goal is to get a drug marketed and have a return on investment we seem to allow fudging without regard to the damaged done to the patient! I have seen it done over and over in my 60 year career in the drug delivery system! And the push to inject without regard to the great harm done is moving forward at warp speed. It’s all about return on investment and not good health!
Dr. Nass: I wrote him an email after the first Substack telling him I was anxiously awaiting his response to your comments about his erroneous claims. I told him that as a practicing physician I had never found you to be providing any “misinformation”. I reminded him that you had expertise int he area of Infectious Disease, and in fact, had been called to give testimony in Congress several times, was an expert in Anthrax, which had harmed our military and was once called by the Cuban government to assist in a rare tropical disease. I ended by telling him the next time he wanted to jump in the ring with an expert, he needed that second cup of coffee. 😄
Excellent. I will write him too.
John Gregory may have a tough time understanding Dr. Nass' replies, and writer Upton Sinclair offered an explanation in the 1930s for this kind of persistence:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
That quote has always had the ring of truth to me, and never more so than during the COVID era.
John may be bound to the notion that the FDA is an infallible fount of medical truth. Or if he otherwise writes in good faith, he may be headed for a major shakeup in his worldview over the coming months and years.
A quote of tremendous wisdom and impact. I gotta go read some Sinclair!
It is reportedly from "I, Candidate for Governor: and How I Got Licked" (1935), which I never read. Last year, I did finally get around to reading perhaps his most famous novel, "The Jungle" (1906), which now that I think about it, had much to do with the ultimate creation of the USDA and FDA. But I knew of the quote long before I read that book.
Holy Cow! Sad to think that we apparently got worse than when his quote was coined! Thanks muchly for the tip. Off to the library tomorrow…
Brilliant!
good for you, Mary!
So who decides that a death in the treatment group is unrelated to the treatment?
Those who would share in the potential profits?
Therein lies the problem.
🎯
Exactly. Presumptions or presuppositions inherent in how they approach their science. IOW, how they form their questions shapes their answers. The outside coercions might include prestige, acceptance, money, and power.
The people that care only about making money not about human life.
Your response was thorough and logical. This would be helpful if you were dealing with someone who was thorough and logical.
The problem is that fact-checking is about identifying things that run counter to the authority's opinion. Misinformation means disagreement with the authority.
Why does the burden of proof lie with you and not the investigator? Why does the FDA allow them to exclude bad outcomes but claim efficacy based on statistical comparisons? What are the chances that Mr. Gregory understands any of this?
I’m gonna go with… zero.
this is the only way to deal with dishonest brokers. keep smacking ‘em down ✊
👍👍👍
I really hope Mr. Gregory and his "agency" eventually show some recognition for all your clarifications ...🤣🤣🤣🤣
BEST action the public, tax-paid evil-doers ever did, was revoking your medical license which enabled you to finally unleash your full potential for counter-attack and educate wider swaths of the lay-public.
BANZAI on all fronts !!!!
Thank you so much !!!💪💪👍👍🌹🌹❤❤
How dare you suggest anyone from pharma or the FDA would ever lie! It’s not like they are constantly on trial for fraud and misconduct… oh wait.
How long do you expect us to wait ??? ...🤔🤔🤔
🤣🤣🤣
Is 75 years okay? It takes them while to go through those pesky papers they looked at for EUA.
IM WAITING
You will have to be very patient. (75 years if the FDA has any say in it)
John Gregory, the NewsGuard employee that keeps pestering Dr. Nass, has previously worked as a sports reporter, a tourism reporter, covered state and government politics...yeah, a real brain surgeon.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/john-gregory/
Ok, now you are officially Ms Sherlock!
Fantastic replies.
For Pfizer's BNT162b2, the efficacy rate stated by the FDA,CDC,Pfizer is 95%, measured as the relative efficacy rate (RRR), but the absolute efficacy rate (ARR) calculated by myself from the clinical trial report (which is quite forged) was 0.726%.
Many relatively ignorant general physicians and ordinary people are being fooled by this numerical expression.
They believe that there is an RRR chance that they will not get the disease.
For individuals, it is the ARR that is meaningful.
I believe this is a fraud by the pharmaceutical industry and public health officials.
To put it in extreme terms, if 1,000 out of 1 million people are infected, and if all 1 million people are vaccinated and the number drops to 100, then the RRR is 90%. However, since 999,000 people are not infected in the first place, the ARR is only 0.1%.
https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/learn-ebm/how-to-calculate-risk/
GSK-Zooster (Shingrix) ARR = 0.9%, RRR 94.2%
Meiji Replicon ARR = 0.5%, RRR = 95.5%
Flucelvax® Quad ARR = 17.5%, RRR = 51.9%
GSK's Arexvy ARR = 0.26%, RRR = 82.5%
Moderna's RSV mRNA-1345 ARR = 0.53%, RRR = 68.4%
Gardasil: not yet uninfected: ARR = 0.7%, RRR ≒ 50%
Gardasil: already infected: ARR = 3.07%, RRR ≒ 70%
July 5 Addition::
According to the investigation, Sequirus' Flucelvax injects Placebo with ACWY for meningococcal infection, not with saline.
Therefore, the higher ARR is probably due to this effect. In short, I think this is a fraudulent clinical trial.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2024848
Thank you 🙏
Thank you!
What better way to demonstrate, figures don’t lie but liars always figure Liars!
Nass 2. Gregory 0.
Another nitwit pseudo fact check fool. There seems to be a never end to these buffoons.
I wrote Mr. Gregory:
Dear Mr. Gregory,
It has come to my attention that you are investigating claims made about the Audenz vaccine made by a Dr. Meryl Nass. I am a physician and am also very interested in ensuring the public is being adequately informed about medical interventions, especially preventive measures that are offered to healthy people. Thank you for the work your organization does in educating the public.
The FDA stands behind the fact that 11 (0.5% of the vaccinated cohort) died in the observational period whereas only 1 (0.1% of the control group) died. Because both groups were matched with respect to age and comorbidity, 0.1% can be taken as the baseline rate of death in a population that was not exposed to the vaccine.
This should be a very strong safety signal that warrants further explanation from the sponsor (vaccine manufacturer). By accepting the sponsor's opinion that the deaths in those vaccinated were not due to their product the FDA, the regulatory body in this case, is inexplicably applying a dangerous double standard with regard to how risk and benefit is being calculated.
In other words, the FDA is accepting that the vaccine had some efficacy in protecting subjects from H1N1 based merely on the incidence of infection in that group. How do they know that the vaccine was responsible for the benefit? They don't know and they cannot know. Trials such as these can only identify correlations. The vaccine is correlated with a benefit with regard to the target disease. Similarly, the vaccine is correlated with a 5 times greater risk of death than the control group.
Trials do not and cannot prove causation, only correlation. In order to grant the vaccine its demonstrated benefit the FDA must also attribute a significant risk of death to it as well. That is the whole point of doing a trial.
Thank you for your efforts to help the public. I trust that you will use this opportunity to educate your readership around the obvious double standards being used by the FDA in this very important matter.
Sincerely,
Madhava K. Setty, MD
This is great!
Why bother being so polite? (although I bow to due decorum). The guy is an obvious fraud, or an idiot, or both. I will quote you "trials do not and cannot prove causation, only correlation." Thanks
It is an appeal to his sensibilities. I hope to plant a seed in his mind so that someday he may wake up to the fact that he is not fullfilling his mission as a journalist. He is being paid to tell a story.
Denigrating him from the jump won't ever change his mind. In order to change things we first have to change minds.
You are right, of course.
Nailed it Meryl!!
Splendid!!! What is "Health Editor John Gregory" gonna do NOW, one wonders! I almost feel sorry for the guy :-) :-) :-)
Looks at his bio. I was especially impressed that he was a tourism reporter.
https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/team/john-gregory/
And a sports reporter and a local government reporter! Nothing even vaguely medical ;-) Thanks, I no longer feel sorry for him!
He is just of the intel agencies attack dogs.
And not even a threatening attack dog. More like a weak little bitch.
...with 3 legs and one good eye.
😂🤣😂🤣
Reporters are the standard ingredient of fact check organizations. The rare university degree amongst them is usually in journalism.
When the goal is to get a drug marketed and have a return on investment we seem to allow fudging without regard to the damaged done to the patient! I have seen it done over and over in my 60 year career in the drug delivery system! And the push to inject without regard to the great harm done is moving forward at warp speed. It’s all about return on investment and not good health!
Doctor…. I love your chutzpah!! My one regret, was that you were never my treating physician, as I live in a Orono.