Tag Archives: covid

Vaccines are tested against placebos

Lately, my Facebook page has been flooded with people insisting that  “no vaccine is tested against a placebo” (sometimes stated with additional qualifiers like “double-blind” or “saline placebo”). This claim, like so many anti-vaccer claims, is blatantly false. Nevertheless, I … Continue reading

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Masks and COVID vaccines were huge successes; ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were not

COVID19 presented an unprecedented challenge for modern science/medicine. Faced with a novel infectious disease, doctors, scientists, and health officials rose to the challenge in remarkable speed. That rate at which we went from never having heard of COVID19 to having … Continue reading

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Debunking 30 bad arguments about COVID/vaccines

The COVID era has been a golden age of misinformation. It has seen the development of innumerable false claims and shoddy arguments, and it has breathed new life into ancient anti-vaccine tropes. Indeed, I find it impossible to make any … Continue reading

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The “99% survive COVID” argument is deceptive and completely misses the point

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the argument that “99% of COVID patients survive” has been repeatedly used as an excuse to oppose public health measures including mask mandates, lockdowns, and, more recently, vaccines. It asserts that because COVID has a ~99% … Continue reading

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The problems with anti-vaccers’ precautionary principle arguments

Invoking the precautionary principle is a favorite tactic of anti-vaccers, anti-GMO activists, and various other groups that are prone to opposing scientific advances, but there are numerous issues with this strategy. The exact definition of the precautionary principle is a … Continue reading

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