Some of my readers may be aware that Nelson lawyer Sue Grey is taking a case to the NZ High Court in an attempt to stop the roll-out of the Pfizer vaccine. I don’t agree with her stance, but she has every right to do this.
However, I was more than a little surprised to see that one of the academics promoting “Plan B” as an alternative to the government’s current means of controlling the spread of SARS-Cov-2 in this country has provided an affidavit supporting this action. You can find this document on the public kti.org.nz website; (I used a ‘read-only’ plugin to access it as my antiviral software didn’t like the page. I found this … amusing.)
Dr Thornley’s PhD research was into the statistical prediction of cardiovascular disease, and many of his recent publications look at issues relating to diet and obesity; very few relate to the epidemiology of infectious respiratory disease. However, since the advent of SARS-Cov-2 and covid-19 he has produced a number of publications on this subject (in addition to forming the lobby group Plan BA and writing for its blog). More recently, not only has he given support to Voices for Freedom (an antivaccine group with a strong conspiracy bent and – claims to the contrary notwithstanding – a certain reluctance to really engage with the science), but also provided that affidavit supporting Grey’s case against the rollout of the Pfizer vaccineB. This is truly perplexing, given that he works in the field of public health.
After discussing his expertise, Dr Thornley mentions the swine flu (H1N1 influenza virus) epidemic, which caused illnesses & deaths in NZ in 2009. He states that it was later found to be “ubiquitous” in this country; a seroprevalence study from 2010 found that the “overall community seroprevalence was 26.7% for the study population.” It’s worth noting that seroprevalence varied by age (highest in the 5-19 age group) & ethnicity: much higher in Pacific Island peoples and Māori. Both those groups were also hospitalised, and admitted to ICU care, at a much higher rate than other ethnicities. The H1N1 epidemic faded away relatively quickly, but it’s a false equivalence for him to imply that the same would be true for SARS-Cov-2, which is a different type of virus and, as the news from India shows, is not going anywhere soon.
Plan B has been “Questioning the evidence for the use of masks to prevent Covid-19 infection, based on randomised trial evidence” – this refers to this Danish study. This study had a number of limitationsC – identified by the authors – but still showed some indication of a reduction in the risk of infection for those wearing masks. It was hardly evidence that masks definitively don’t work. In addition, there is plenty of evidence, published in similarly good-quality journals, showing the positive impact of mask use to reduce the spread of the virus from infected individuals. For example, research from Germany, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found a roughly 45% reduction in infections following the introduction of a mask mandate. Another paper in the same journal found that “mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts.”
Dr Thornley also repeats the statement – made frequently by others claiming the virus isn’t that bad – that “many of those deaths were ‘with’ covid-19 not ‘from’ covid-19”. It’s worth sharing this commentary from the BMJ that addresses such claims directly, and which includes this statement:
In 90% of certificates where covid-19 is recorded, it does so in part 1 [of the death certificate] as the cause contributing directly to death.
That is, for those patients covid-19 was the direct cause of death. Had they not acquired the infection, they might not have died. This Reuters article makes exactly the same point, as do the doctors quoted here.
The citation for his claim that SARS-Cov-2 infections were “widespread” in Italy in September 2019 is to a blog post on the Plan B webpageD, which in turn is based on this article, which discusses the results of antibody tests for the spike protein. (This paper, describing the findings of wastewater surveillance, provides evidence that the virus was present in northern Italy in December 2019). It does seem unusual that there was apparently no uptick in unusual pneumonia cases along with those positive antibody tests in September. After all, in the case of Spain over the 2020 summer considerably less than 10% of the population had returned a positive antibody test, even though the country had recorded 28,000 deaths from covid-19 by then.
Italy locked down northern parts of the country in February 2020 (the first deaths there were on Feb 22), with a nationwide lockdown starting in early March. By then excess mortality had already reached its first peak in Italy, which doesn’t seem to match the suggestion that policy measures (eg lockdowns) rather than the virus caused many of the deaths.
There’s a comment that “The age distribution of death from covid-19 is no different from the age distribution of background death, indicating that the virus is not especially virulent or deadly.” It would be interesting to see his take on that in light of the global excess mortality in 2020.
From there, the affidavit moves on to setting out reasons to halt the vaccine rollout in New Zealand.
One is his perception that the roll-out of the mRNA vaccines is “rushed”. This is something I addressed in an earlier post. As I said there, animal testing & Phase I, II, & III trials were all completed, and the results published. The delivery mechanism (the lipid “bubbles”) had already been developed; once the viral genome had been published, developing the vaccine took very little time. And, “while it’s true that most clinical trials last several years, much of this time is actually occupied in finding funding for each phase, and in enrolling participants – it can take a couple of years just to enlist enough volunteers to obtain statistically reliable data. Neither of those posed a problem this time round: the RCT enrolled those 43,000 people in a matter of a few months.”
Another is the “very low fatality rate of covid-19 in people under the age of 65 years.” Yet this paper in the Lancet gives an approximately 1% infection-fatality risk for those aged 45-64 (see also the Our World in Data webpage). That’s one in a hundred. And here are the risk ratios for infection, hospitalisation, & death, updated in February this year, from the CDC. The majority of those who died had one or more underlying conditions, but that should not be used to dismiss the deaths. In fact, in the NZ context, it’s worth remembering that a reasonably large number of Kiwis have comorbidities that put them at risk from covid-19, and not only in those older age groupsE. There are also marked ethnic disparities, with “substantial disparities for Māori and Pacific peoples … for the vast majority of commonly-diagnosed comorbidities”; in addition, prevalence of those conditions shows up at earlier ages for those two groups. (The quote is from the linked paper.) Thus vaccinating all those who wish to be vaccinated, regardless of age group, can protect a large number of others.
Thus, because of those ethnic & demographic features, it’s not really helpful to look at Iceland & extrapolate to New Zealand (as the affidavit does). And to say that “only” 5% of those infected were hospitalised there, and “only” 1% required ICU care, is to trivialise what that translates to across the population.
The risk of antibody-dependent enhancement in relation to the Pfizer vaccine has been raised by a number of those opposed to the vaccination program. But those designing the vaccines took a lot of care to minimise this risk, and with hundreds of millions of doses administered to date, we still have no evidence that this is actually a concern.
The clinical trials for the vaccine did not begin only “late last year”, as Dr Thornley states in his affidavit. Phase III trials (large-scale trials that involved 43,000 volunteers) began on July 27 2020, early in the second half of the year. Phase III concluded in mid-November of that year, with all individual participants having been closely monitored for 42 days from the date of first vaccination (pretty much a standard time-frame for vaccine studies). And the Phase III results were published in late December in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Similarly the effects of this vaccine on hospitalisation & death from covid-19 have been reported multiple times: from Israel, where more than 53% of the population is now fully vaccinated; from the US (here, & here, for example); and the UK (note that the last one is a preprint only at this point). Both the Israeli & UK data show high efficacy (in terms of reduced risk of hospitalisation, ICU admission, & death for the especially-vulnerable older age groups).
Yes, hospital fatality rates are falling in some parts of the world, as the disease and its treatment become better-understood. But since we also know that the outcomes from this virus are not a simple died/fully-recovered dichotomy (see here, and here, and this very recent paper. for example), that is also no good reason to oppose vaccination.
As for advocating for ivermectin & vitamin D supplementation… While several studies have found that vitamin D was depleted in patients hospitalised with covid-19 infection, the nature of that relationship is unclear. We know, for example, that vitamin levels are depleted by illness. So, was the deficit a cause, or a result? While supplementation has been recommended in some patients (see here as an example), we have yet to see the results of properly randomised, blinded, controlled trials. And the US National Institutes of Health recently had this to say about ivermectin.
A Voices claim to be about choice when it comes to vaccines. However, while they have always had a choice, their activities seem designed to prevent others also having one, as does Grey’s High Court case.
B Plan B’s post on “vaccine spin” begins thus: “We are usually supporters of vaccines, and our children are all immunized. Yet…” When I blogged about it a week or so back, I decided not to include the observation that those who say something like “we support vaccines, but…” often turn out to be opposed. Perhaps I should have done so anyway.
C Among those limitations were problems with participants’ adherence to the recommendation (not requirement) to wear a mask when outside the home.
D It’s noticeable that many of the citations in the affidavit are to his own papers, and content on the Plan B blog.
E Plan B has repeatedly called for “focused protection” for this older demographic (see also the Great Barrington Declaration), without really explaining what that would look like in practice, and apparently ignoring the economic & social impact of removing a large cohort from active participation in society.
Karen Elizabeth says:
Tena koe Alison
There is no choice for thousands of workers in the land of the long white cloud. Given the decree by the Public Service Commission under direction from a politician that quotes ” there is an expectation that ALL employees in the public service SHOULD be vaccinated. What you fail to communicate, in a most fundamental way, is that this novel medicinal product that you refer to as a “vaccine”, has not completed its trials. There is zero medium to long term safety data with very little robust short-term safety data either.The lessons of history on forced medical treatment was played out in the Nuremberg trials.
As a scientist you are supporting medical experimentation without consent.There are good reasons for Sue Grey’s High Court case, where you criticize medical professionals for observing their hypocratic oath to have a “duty of care”. Your rhetorical, negative opinions about these medical professionals may amount to breaches of your Code of Professional Standards and Ethics – “To not harass, bully or knowingly act with malice towards, individuals or groups of people.” You insult the intelligence of many open minded people such as myself and other professionals above, alongside your throw away antivax conspiracy branding for the many who support proper medically trialed products.
tena katoa mo tenei wa
Alison says:
Kia ora
“should be” =/= “must be”.
You don’t need the scare quotes around the word vaccine; the Pfizer product elicits an immune response to an antigen without exposure to the pathogen, so it’s a vaccine.
It’s not a “novel medical product”, given both the active component & the delivery mechanism have been in development for years (decades, in the case of the mRNA).
If you think that data from 43,000 participants doesn’t constitute robust short-term safety data, then you should have a look at how clinical trials are run. You’re also glossing over the fact that the safety checks that you don’t seem to believe exist are exactly what picked up potential issues with the AstraZeneca vaccine (as one example).
Your rhetoric about the Nuremberg trials is just that.
The experimental phase of the vaccine’s development ended last November, with the completion of the Phase III trials. If you actually check the original RCT documents, you’ll see that Phase !V monitoring is to determine the longevity of the immune response & the protection it offers. No-one’s being experimented on, & no-one is forcing you to get vaccinated (although those you support seem awfully keen on preventing others from exercising the choice to take it).
The judgement in the High Court case was not exactly overwhelmingly in Sue Grey’s favour, was it?
And your mis-spelling of “Hippocratic” seems both ironic & apt.
Richard. says:
Hi Alison. Are you sure?
“A vaccine is legally defined as any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of one or more diseases [5]. For example, a January 2000 patent application that defined vaccines as “compositions or mixtures that when introduced into the circulatory system of an animal will evoke a protective response to a pathogen.” was rejected by the U.S. Patent Office because “The immune response produced by a vaccine must be more than merely some immune response but must be protective. As noted in the previous Office Action, the art recognizes the term “vaccine” to be a compound which prevents infection” [6]. In the remainder of this article, we use the term ‘inoculated’ rather than vaccinated, because the injected material in the present COVID-19 inoculations prevents neither viral infection nor transmission. Since its main function in practice appears to be symptom suppression, it is operationally a “treatment”.”
Source.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002100161X#bib0030
Richard.
Alison says:
Yes. I’ll go with ERMA (https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty & every other regulatory authority that I checked) over a single paper by 2 people who appear to be misusing VAERS.
Richard says:
Hi Alison
Even in the link you provided it still states ‘Can Comirnaty reduce transmission of the virus from one person to another?
The impact of vaccination with Comirnaty on the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the community is not yet known. It is not yet known how much vaccinated people may still be able to carry and spread the virus.’
Some vaccine!
Alison says:
We know it does a good job at reducing morbidity & mortality, Richard. Vaccinated people also have a reduced viral load after the first few days & so are less likely to transmit to others. That’s a pretty good vaccine.
You appear to be commenting in an attempt to spread some standard anti-vaccine tropes, & I am losing patience with commenters who do that. And with Gish Galloping too.
Henry Balfour says:
Of course you will, my dear. Of course. You will present your orthodoxy in exactly the way that best suits your unshakeable faith. Here you are, being wrong again – “as the news from India shows, is not going anywhere soon.” As news from India shows, the rapid deployment of a very affordable ‘kit’ to assist communities in their exposure to the Indian Variant…. reduced infections and deaths by (gasp) around 90 per cent…. but you don’t want that to sully your orthodoxy, do you. As with so many religiously devout followers of dogma, you are educated beyond your intelligence. Try harder.
Alison says:
Covid cases in Uttar Pradesh declined because of a series of public health measures. Your “very affordable ‘kit’ wasn’t one of them.
“scaling up the stringent testing mechanism as per the Chief Minister’s instruction of ‘trace, test and treat’, aided control over the pandemic virus. This was supported with partial covid-19 curfew and aggressive vaccination.”
Maybe do a little checking before putting your silly “I’m patronising” hat on next time. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/uttar-pradesh-covid-cases-down-by-99-since-peak/articleshow/86500849.cms
Dylan Rima says:
Kia Ora Karen
I believe the right that you refer to which is the right to refuse medical experimentation without consent has been upheld. There is a misconception around the idea that pfizer vaccine as an mRna vaccine has somehow been illegitimately tested, yes the vaccine was brought around faster than most other vaccines and seems to have been improperly tested. However mRna Vaccine has been in development for a decade now giving it time to be thoroughly understood and tested. In reference to the fact that that everyone has the right to refuse medical treatment without consent, it is indeed written in the 1975 New Zealand Bill of Rights. However a fundamental Human right is the right to life which the government must strive to uphold for all its citizens. The Health Ministry may make a legitimate change and limit the exercise of some rights. Any restrictions must be justified under section five of the New Zealand Bill Of Rights Act. This means that as long as there is evidence that limiting the right is legal, proportionate and necessary it’s possible to exercise limits on rights. So in reference to your statement that “there is no choice for thousands of workers in the land of the long white cloud” there should not be a choice if these workers think it’s more important to exercise their right to not take a tested and proven safe Vaccine the government would potentially be letting down everybody else’s fundamental right to life by allowing them to continue work on the front Line.
I’m not writing to insult the intelligence of open minded people like yourself neither Do I belive you should be marked as an “antivaxer”, freedom of speech after all is another fundamental human right, however, I’m Writing in an effort to help educate open minded people on the truth about the matter.
Kia Kaha
Dylan
Richard says:
Hi Alison
‘Vaccinated people also have a reduced viral load after the first few days & so are less likely to transmit to others.’
Data please?
Alison says:
Very easy to find, Richard.
https://www.news-medical.net/amp/news/20210906/Israeli-study-on-viral-load-Delta-infections-vaccinations-and-boosters.aspx
Henry Balfour says:
oh, yes – one more thing: Too often scientists act like a bunch of lemmings reaching for consensus rather than trying to answer the toughest questions. Kary Mullis kept everyone on their toes and the world is a better place because of him.
Alison says:
suuuure they do.
And if you’re referring to his PCR work, it probably wouldn’t have happened without the team of researchers he worked with.
Sue P says:
I’m feeling the need to inject a little hard science into this discussion ….
The government repeatedly tells us that the Pfizer Comirnaty shots are safe and effective. Let’s look first at the effective and then the safe claims.
The effectiveness claim originates with Pfizer’s report on their clinical trial of the injections then known as “the BNT162b2 vaccine candidate” which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 31st December 2020 (Polack et al 2020). This report says “A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo; BNT162b2 was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19”.
This means that the “95% effective” figure quoted is a relative risk reduction (RRR) figure. RRR is calculated as follows:
RRR = [Percent Placebo cases – Percent Vaxx cases] / [Percent Placebo cases]
Plugging in the figures above, this = [(162/21,728 x 100) i.e. 0.74% – (8/21,720 x 100) i.e. 0.04%] all divided by [(162/21,728 x 100) i.e. 0.74%]
= 0.70% / 0.74% = 94.6%
This 95% figure has been widely interpretted as suggesting that if everyone would just do the right thing and accept an injection of what is now called Comirnaty, 95% of us would be protected from contracting Covid-19, and only 5% of people would get the disease. Simple. Why is anyone complaining?
But, wait a minute – this interpretation assumes that if nothing is done, 100% of people will get the disease. And in fact, the very figures produced by Pfizer (as above) show that when nothing WAS done — in other words, when people were injected with saline solution instead of Comirnaty — ONLY 0.74% OF PEOPLE CAUGHT THE DISEASE. (And a smaller but unknown percentage of those who caught the disease got very sick. And another smaller but unknown percentage of those who got very sick actually died of it. We have no information about either of those endpoints).
So a more applicable – one is tempted to say more honest – conclusion from the trial data above is that the Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) conferred by these injections is minimal:
ARR = Percent Placebo Cases – Percent Vxx Cases
= 0.74% – 0.04% = 0.70%
Or to put it in words, the absolute risk reduction here is certainly less than one percent – and according to more recent data, probably considerably less than one percent.
OK, perhaps this seems to you like some sort of meaningless mathematical sleight of hand. If so, please consider the following two statements:
(1) “If I buy two lottery tickets I double my chances of winning – my chances are increased by 100%.”
(2) “If I buy two lottery tickets, my chance of winning goes up from 1 in 20 million to 2 in 20 million – the absolute increase in my chances of winning is 0.0001%”
Both of these statements are true. However, the first statement tends to make one considerably more likely to spend money buying lottery tickets. Which is why Big Pharma concentrates on the relative risk reduction conferred by their products and directs attention away from the absolute risk reduction.
In fact, if the figures produced by Pfizer above are correct — in the absence of any intervention only 0.74% of the population even CATCHES this virus (let alone is hospitalized, LET ALONE dies of it) – it is extremely hard to argue that this is any sort of “public health emergency” at all. That figure really IS in the same ballpark as the seasonal flu, which comes around every winter. And nobody has ever insisted that every citizen in the country should be bullied and shamed into waiving their fundamental right to refuse medical treatment — which right is explicitly conferred by Section 11 of the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 — because of the seasonal flu.
And on top of this, there’s the safety claim. The government keeps telling us that the vaccine is safe. Yet the Medsafe CARM website shows that nearly a thousand SERIOUS adverse effects of the Comirnaty injections have already been reported to them, including 80-odd deaths. That’s already 3 times the number of deaths EVER claimed for the virus in this country — and it is widely accepted that such voluntary reporting rarely catches more than 1% of actual adverse effects. And even apart from the deaths, there is major cardiac and neurological damage which is going to severely impact even quite young people for the rest of their lives.
It is very reasonable to ask “how many serious adverse effects would have to be reported to Medsafe before the ‘public health experts’ in this country (none of whom has never seen a patient in their lives, but all of whom apparently have the ear of the government) would decide that Comirnaty is UNsafe”?
The long and short of it is that this IS NOT and NEVER WAS a medical emergency. So why all the draconian lockdowns and mask mandates that are destroying the social and economic fabric of the country? And why ON EARTH do apparently intelligent people allow themselves to be frightened into accepting medically unjustified, totalitarian diktats which whisk away their fundamental rights and freedoms, apparently on a whim??
Enough is enough. This has to stop.
Reference:
Polack FP et al (2020) Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine 383(27): 2603-2615.
Alison says:
I’m feeling the need to inject a little hard science into this discussion – oh, the irony of someone commenting on a science blog and claiming to be adding science to the discussion, when in fact a lot of what you have to say is thinly-disguised anti-vaccination rhetoric.
ONLY 0.74% OF PEOPLE CAUGHT THE DISEASE. There’s no need to shout. What you’re carefully ignoring here is that at the point where the RCT was running, the majority of USAians had not yet been exposed to SARS-Cov-2. We know this because of the continued rise in case numbers (and deaths) over their 2020-21 winter.
That figure really IS in the same ballpark as the seasonal flu, which comes around every winter. No, it emphatically is not. In a “bad” flu year the global death toll from seasonal influenza can approach 600,000 people. In the first year of the pandemic, covid-19 killed more than 3 million.
should be bullied and shamed into waiving their fundamental right to refuse medical treatment – you have every right to refuse to be vaccinated. The problem appears to be that you are unwilling to accept that your choice comes with consequences for yourself, as indeed it does for others. In the same way, rights come with responsibilities (& are conferred by societies).
And on top of this, there’s the safety claim. Your claims here are incorrect. Anyone can report anything to CARM. Like VAERS in the US, it acts as a canary in a goldmine: an early warning system that there may be an issue that needs to be followed up. Your error lies in assuming a causal relationship for all of them. From the latest Medsafe report:
I draw your attention to the final sentence of the quote.
The long and short of it is that this IS NOT and NEVER WAS a medical emergency. – all the evidence from overseas shows what would have happened here had the government not taken sensible steps to avoid it.
mask mandates that are destroying the social and economic fabric of the country Oh please. Mask use has been commonplace in Asian countries & the fabric of their society hasn’t ripped apart. As for economic impacts: no-one would deny that lockdowns can have an economic impact, but you might pause to consider the likely economic impacts of unconstrained infections. Here’s an examination of this in the context of the 1918 influenza pandemic: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340257000_Pandemics_Depress_the_Economy_Public_Health_Interventions_Do_Not_Evidence_from_the_1918_Flu
And here’s a link to a discussion based on UCLA research: https://news.yahoo.com/lockdown-states-like-california-did-better-economically-than-looser-states-like-florida-new-covid-data-shows-153025163.html
totalitarian diktats which whisk away their fundamental rights and freedoms – we don’t live in a totalitarian state. You wouldn’t be able to express any of this, if we did.