Isn’t 0 a very pro vaccine sub and 1 linking to a Twitter called “voices for vaccines”?
I only bring this up because their arguments didn’t really address anything (and it’s an observational study, so there’s not too much to talk about) but they tried really hard to dismiss it anyways.
Last I checked, /r/COVID19 was the most scientifically-minded sub on the matter, with a strict no bullshit and no drama policy. One might make that "pro vaccine", I call it "pro science". Vaccines are not an opinion, though some try very hard to suggest so.
>Vaccines are not an opinion, though some try very hard to suggest so
This rigid, dogmatic, exclusionary point of view is antithetical to the scientific process. No conclusion is beyond skepticism, especially regarding the safety and efficacy of a rushed novel biotechnology. What you're preaching is not science, it's scientism.
Furthermore, skepticism regarding the covid mRNA vaccines does not make one an antivaxxer. That's a lazy rhetorical dismissal, not an actual argument. All vaccines go through trials and most fail either for poor safety, efficacy, or both. mRNA vaccines are no different, except typical protocols were suspended because of a crisis. Skepticism is warranted.
/r/COVID19 typically enforces the same rigid dogma in your post. The kind of rigidness that saw this submission flagged here within 5 minutes of submission. That's a bias that detracts from credibility, to put it mildly.
Ad hominems are not the best place to start if you want to make a valid counterargument; I could just as easily point out that the authors of this paper are linked to anti-vax groups. Their bias could actually be fine if they were performing methodologically sound research in good faith, but they are pretty clearly not.
In either case, regarding these particular ad hominems:
(1) As someone else already said, r/COVID19 is generally a pro-rigorous-science sub, not a pro-vaccine sub. If it looks like they are pro-vaccine, that is because all rigorous, well-designed studies to date support the position that vaccines are safe and effective[0].
(2) The pubpeer for this paper has several independent reviews, so if you want to shoot one of the messengers because you think their pro-vaccine bias automatically invalidates their arguments, just go read one of the other ones instead. They all draw the same conclusion: this study is garbage and its results are nonsense.
I genuinely don’t know how, without motivated reasoning, anyone could say every critical argument “didn’t really address anything”. They describe how the authors appear to be p-hacking; how they appear to have manipulated the data (shifting timelines and age ranges to improve the fit) and graphs (axis manipulation to magnify the appearance of a signal) to lead people to draw false conclusions; how they reported mathematically impossible results; how they used inappropriate statistical methods. Perhaps most importantly, studies that were done using valid data from the same cohort—actual diagnosed cardiovascular events, not ‘volume of calls to EMS for possible cardiovascular events’; actual vaccination records, not ‘well this is around the time that people were getting vaccinated’—found no correlation between vaccinations and cardiovascular events[1][2].
If, after all this, you still think that this study is not garbage, ask yourself: what would need to be true for you to change your position?
[0] Just to head off any dumb arguing about this: yes, there are small risks associated with the COVID vaccines. We know about these risks as a result of rigorous scientific study, and those studies conclude that the risk from COVID infection is still greater than the risk from vaccination for approved groups. When vaccine risk can be minimised—for example, matching different vaccines with different groups—that is what health agencies are doing.
[2] Beyond the increased risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis in some groups, which has already been previously reported, and which is lower than the risk of infection-induced myocarditis.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/uee3cw/increased_e...
[1] https://pubpeer.com/publications/00719D7FACA4E97320711315976...