Reality check: Researchers did NOT show that vaccine hesitancy is in any way related to driving behaviour
Reality check: Researchers did NOT show that vaccine hesitancy is in any way related to driving behaviour
Do we need to defund "The Science" in order to get a grip on the absurdities published during the COVID era?
Reality check: Researchers did NOT show that vaccine hesitancy is in any way related to driving behaviour
There are more and more re-analyses and outright debunks of COVID-19 mainstream-compliant research studies that were published after peer review, casting growing concerns about the integrity of this critically important aspect of the global science endeavour. In “The Bangladesh Mask Trial is re-analyzed and it falls apart”, Dr. Vinay Prasad summarizes another research team’s September 2022 verification of the lone randomized control trial that showed a benefit from mask-wearing against COVID-19 infection. In “Latest MMWR analysis of bivalent booster is irredeemably flawed”, Prasad critiques a CDC study published in mid-December 2022. Another study that was quickly debunked had previously helped to cement Canada’s travel restrictions for unvaccinated individuals through the summer of 2022, see “Reality check: Researchers did NOT find that unvaccinated people pose a risk to those vaccinated” and links in my comment under the post.
While the article on vaccinated-unvaccinated “mixing” by Dr. David Fisman of the University of Toronto was already highly questionable, one of the most absurd scientific publications of the pandemic must be “Covid19 Vaccines and the Misinterpretation of Perceived Side Effects”, in which Raymond Palmer argues that anti-(COVID-)vaccination movement causes cardio-vascular vaccine injuries. In “Who is Raymond D Palmer?“, Substack writer Rebekah Barnett did some digging centred on the person of the Australian author of the paper published by a Taiwanese university journal. Now, Canada struck back with another low blow, a paper led by Dr. Donald Redelmeier of Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto that suggests a link between “COVID Vaccine Hesitancy and Risk of a Traffic Crash”.
In the study, Redelmeier et al. (2022) aim to test “whether COVID vaccination was associated with the risks of a traffic crash”. For a peer-reviewed paper published in the respectable American Journal of Medicine, which has an impact factor over 10, the research question is oddly imprecise. What the authors do in fact study is whether vaccination was associated with the risk of being involved in a serious traffic collision, not e.g. whether unvaccinated drivers tend to cause more accidents or vaccine hesitancy is associated with crash severity. Based on a non-representative dataset and an opportune time frame, the authors found that unvaccinated Ontarians are prone to be involved in traffic accidents, including on the receiving end. This random result was turned into a series of absurd recommendations by the researchers, including “more COVID vaccination”; that physicians provide traffic safety reminders so their unvaccinated patients “avoid becoming traffic statistics”, “observed risks might also justify changes to driver insurance policies in the future”, and “unvaccinated adults need to be careful indoors with other people and outside with surrounding traffic“.
A number of MDs, statisticians, and other interested and competent parties have completely shredded Redelmeier’s analysis. I refer you to the following detailed critiques:
Dr. William M. Briggs (statistician) calls the study “asinine” and takes exception to the “crash” definition which includes drivers, passengers, and pedestrians alike; the uneven age profile in the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated groups (“They have rediscovered the young crash more often”); the insinuation of causality from a spurious correlation; and the authors’ suggestion that “distrust of government or belief in freedom … contributes to both vaccination preferences and increased traffic risks” or that the correlation is based on “misconceptions of everyday risks, faith in natural protection, antipathy toward regulation”. “Astonishingly stupid”, as Briggs puts it, and derogatory in a way that reminds me of the Toronto Star’s incredibly nasty “Jeff was tall, handsome, accomplished … and a lying anti-vaxxer! Dating Diaries”.
In contrast to Briggs, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) acknowledges that the authors did indeed adjust their data for age. In the raw data, the 16% rate of unvaccinated in the Ontario population in July 2021 is contrasted with 25% unvaccinated individuals involved in serious car accidents for a risk ratio of 1.72, which is somewhat reduced to 1.48 after adjustments (including but not limited to age). However, with reference to Youtuber and Nursing PhD John Campbell, CHD notes that for much of 2021, unvaccinated Canadians “could not use public transportation, which would have compelled them to drive more.” Also, the majority of unvaccinated crash victims were passengers or pedestrians, not drivers! And the vaccination status of the person causing the accident was not examined. Lastly, Campbell/CHD notes that people within 14 days of vaccination were classified as unvaccinated, a significant period of time in a study that span merely one month. As well, “All deaths at the scene were excluded” evoking the scenario that vaccine-injured heart attack victims causing a fatal crash did not count towards the vaccinated risk.
CHD also refers to pathologist and data scientist Dr. Clare Craig’s critique of this “joke of a study”. Craig puts her finger on the authors’ wrong “moral compass” and repeated intimations that the study shows something about “risky driving” despite the fact that they pool driver, passenger, and pedestrian accident injuries. Most importantly, the population dataset and the emergency response dataset may not compatible in terms of the vaccination criterion. Craig speculates many unvaccinated Ontarians only make it into the study if they are hospitalized after an accident, thus artificially reducing the denominator of the unvaccinated group. I am not sure about this, since the results could be even more extreme if this was true. However, there is something fishy about the “patient flow” diagram in the article’s appendix. The authors start with over 20 million “unique individuals”, significantly more than the total population of Ontario. Some 6.5 million are excluded for reasons other than age, including 2.7 million “not alive” (from 2000 to 2022, 80,000 to 120,000 Ontarians passed away annually, making this excluded subset the equivalent of 25 years of mortality!?).
With reference to Dr. Craig and Dr. Normal Fenton, Dr. Campbell’s “Full analysis, vaccines and accidents” highlights the forest plot seen in Dr. Craig’s above tweet. Campbell notes that a cluster of relative risk values occurs between 1.5 and 2.0. Since the unvaccinated are often recorded as a result of subtracting the number of vaccinated people from total population, and the latter is not exactly known, unvaccinated tend to be undercounted in countries with growing populations such as Canada. Placing the equal-risk line at the cluster around a value of 1.75 yields interesting observations. The values for presence and absence of many characteristics are nearly identical, suggesting no difference in accident propensity. Where there are differences, the unvaccinated are “safer” in older age groups, women, and those with alcoholism, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and COVID-19. Unvaccinated younger men of lower socio-economic status are more likely to be involved in a crash. But wait, aren’t younger men of lower socio-economic status more likely to be unvaccinated AND more likely to be in a crash? The study appears to be confirming a platitude.
I also note that in Table 3, one of the highest relative-risk values is associated with nighttime accidents between 8pm and 4am. Again, aren’t unvaccinated younger men of lower socio-economic status more likely required to drive at night for work, and THEREFORE more likely to be in a crash?? Adjusting for mileage, i.e. normalizing accidents as a rate per miles-driven, could have gone a long way towards accounting for the situation of those who continued to serve the “laptop class” or “work-from-homers”. As Igor Chudov notes in “The Unvaccinated Had More Car Crashes... Because they Were the Ones Driving!”, essential workers during the 2021 lockdowns were more likely to drive and be unvaccinated, and unvaccinated Canadians were barred from using public transportation, thus depended on driving. The study authors acknowledge the limitation arising from lack of data on this “driving exposure” and make a faint effort to argue it away.
One aspect I learned first on the Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics email list: The lead author Donald Redelmeier received a $50k grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s (NSERC) 2021 “Encouraging Vaccine Confidence in Canada” program. It seems clear through what lens Dr. Redelmeier is looking at correlates with vaccination. Who wouldn’t want to avoid a detrimental change to their car insurance for remaining unvaccinated, as suggested by the authors and keenly picked up by the legacy media?
The complete list of funded researchers and project titles can be viewed in NSERC’s awards database at https://nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/index_eng.asp by setting the program (just start typing “vaccine” in the program keyword box). In addition to Redelmeier's generic “A Nudge for COVID Vaccine Confidence” project, you will notice a number of projects to encourage vaccination of kids, pregnant/breast-feeding women, indigenous communities, black Canadians, etc. I find “Research-based journalism by vaccine experts” by the editor-in-chief of The Conversation Canada and “Encouraging vaccine confidence in Canadians at risk of anaphylaxis” by the executive director of non-profit Food Allergy Canada to be the most concerning.
A total of $2.2 million of taxpayer funds went to 47 projects in the “Encouraging Vaccine Confidence in Canada” program. I don’t think this was a wise investment. I hold an NSERC discovery grant in the amount of $25,000 per year covering research assistant salaries, travel expenses, and publication costs, and I have reviewed other researchers’ funding proposals. Maybe the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada could mount a complementary program for research into encouraging critical views regarding vaccines and reducing blind trust in public health authorities. At the current rate, we will soon need to talk about defunding science — “The Science” that is.