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week of February 10, 2022

CDC admits that natural immunity is best

The claim:

Yes, we know. The natural immunity claim again. But in this iteration, a video claims the CDC has admitted that natural immunity--that which follows illness--is superior to vaccination.
 

The facts:

The CDC study cited in this video is quite a bit more complex than the "natural immunity is better" talking point suggests. Compared to unvaccinated and never-infected people, case rates (before Omicron) in California were:
  • 20 times lower in vaccinated people who'd never been infected
  • 7 times lower in unvaccinated people who had previously been infected
  • 10 times lower in vaccinated people who had previously been infected
This data suggests that natural immunity is not, in fact, superior at all. Of course, we are still awash in Omicron data, so we have to wait to see what that will look like. But we do know that the vaccine does a fantastic job protecting people against being hospitalized or dying due to Omicron infection.

Doctors versus nurses and research

The claim:

In a hearing before the U.S. Senate, a nurse claims that the research that nurses conduct, which is qualitative and not quantitative, shows that ivermectin is effective and vaccines do not work.  
 

The facts:

Qualitative and quantitative research collect different kinds of data. Qualitative data is descriptive, often collected via interviews or other open-ended methods. Quantitative data is numerical, telling us how often and how much or how many. Qualitative data can be useful for epidemiology because it can help describe community norms and opinions as well as trends.

In Nicole Sirotek's example, people given two or more doses of remdesivir had only a 25% chance of survival. That does sound grim, but we need to keep in mind that her methods were not meant to quantify amounts, so we have no idea how she arrived at that statistic. Meanwhile, in epidemiological studies, remdesivir has shown to be effective when given appropriately.

And Ivermectin has not been shown to be effective against COVID in legitimate studies.

Why don't you just move to Sweden?

The claim:

Sweden has decided against recommending the COVID vaccine for children 5-11 years old. 
 

The facts:

The decision whether or not to recommend a vaccine is a balance between risks and benefits in any given location for a given group of people. Sweden feels that the risks of serious disease with COVID in children are low enough that the risks of the vaccine aren't worth it. 

However, most countries have reached a different conclusion. While severe cases of COVID are less common in children, so are severe side effects from the vaccine. We know that myocarditis, for example, is more likely to follow COVID infection than vaccination. COVID has also killed over 1,000 children in the United States, and we are seeing children land in the hospital due to the virus.

We also vaccinate children to protect other parts of their lives. 200,000 children in the U.S. have become orphans due to a caregiver dying from COVID. Education has also been damaged in places like Texas, where, two-thirds of 3rd graders tested below grade level in math in 2021, compared to half of the 3rd graders in 2019.

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