The COVID science files
Recent studies of interest and independent responses to biased mainstream research
Concerned academics, alternative journalists, and citizen-activists are grieving for transparent, unbiased science as we knew it. The pandemic has uncovered — to those previously unaware, like myself — the extent to which big pharma is controlling the health sciences literature; the vanity of some researchers vying for TV time; and the ridiculous lengths to which scholarly authors will go in order to comply with a dominant narrative.
Despite having experienced a cancellation myself, I must note that critical research has continued throughout the pandemic and has been disseminated, albeit with publication delays and dilution of critical outcomes. It’s been a drop in an ocean of scientific groupthink, but dissenting views were there, ready to be found and noticed. I blame the legacy and social media for actively suppressing scholarly publications that did not fit in — using the “misinformation” label and pointing to fabricated consensus.
This situation may be improving further. I started collecting keywords for this post in late February, when Dr. Marty Makary tweeted a short list of recent high-profile publications that all but confirmed the skeptics. They include the updated Cochrane review confirming the lack of efficacy of masks and other interventions; a Lancet paper favourably comparing natural to vaccine-induced immunity; and a report suggesting a failure of city-level vaccination mandates. The last study included in the above tweet appears to be from one year ago, finding a five- to 14-times increased risk of myocarditis among vaccinated 16 to 24 year old males compared to their unvaccinated counterparts. The confidence interval in this study goes up to 27.72 excess events per 100,000, or one in about 3,600.
Another recent study that I find illuminating comes from none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci and colleagues. In “Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses”, “Fauci confesses that Covid vaccines could never have worked as claimed”, as the HARTgroup put it. The Brownstone Institute followed with its own take-down, “Dr. Fauci Comes Clean on Vaccines and Respiratory Viruses”. And my humble self wanted to make sure that the study gets a mention in the legacy media, so with support from three dear colleagues, we asked via Troy Media, what had led “the world’s chief mRNA vaccine-monger” to turn vaccine-skeptic and co-author “an article that calls the public health agenda of the last three years into question”?
Colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic (also on the other side of “The Atlantic”?) managed to complete two challenging peer-reviewed publications on face mask harms in March and April 2023. In “Possible toxicity of chronic carbon dioxide exposure associated with face mask use, particularly in pregnant women, children and adolescents”, Kisielinski and colleagues present a scoping review focusing on “possible negative impact risk by imposing extended mask mandates especially for vulnerable subgroups” with respect to CO2 re-inhalation from the space between your mask and face. In a fittingly dramatic headline, the Daily Mail reports “EXCLUSIVE: Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline due to build-up of carbon dioxide, study warns”.
A second study by the same German researchers with additional co-authors was published a few weeks later. In “Physio-metabolic and clinical consequences of wearing face masks”, Kisielinski and colleagues conduct a “Systematic review with meta-analysis and comprehensive evaluation” and conclude:
Face mask side-effects must be assessed (risk-benefit) against the available evidence of their effectiveness against viral transmissions. In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.
In an extraordinary turn of events, the authors note that “several mask related symptoms may have been misinterpreted as long COVID-19 symptoms”. The Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey Tucker translates (and simplifies ever so slightly), for those sitting in the back rows: “Absolutely stunning: long Covid is really mask-induced exhaustion-syndrome (MIES).” This refers to the MIES that Kisielinski’s team had posited in a preliminary literature review, as outlined towards the end of my earlier post on mask mandates.
To be sure, a lot of uncritical, often dubious science continues to pass the peer review process and get published. An example is a paper titled “Counterfactuals of effects of vaccination and public health measures on COVID-19 cases in Canada: What could have happened?” by a team from the Public Health Agency of Canada, including Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, published in the agency’s own scholarly journal, the Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR). The authors claim that without pandemic response measures, Canada could have experienced up to 800,000 deaths instead of less than 40,000 (as of April 2022). Dr. Vinay Prasad recently wrote that “Mask studies reach a new scientific low point”, criticizing in particular the CDC’s “pet” journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report as being “no longer … in the science business”, and the Canadian equivalent, CCDR, appears to follow in their footsteps.
A response to the “Counterfactuals” article, written by Drs. Jennifer Grant, Martha Fulford, and Richard Schabas and published two CCDR issues later, outlines how “Circular logic and flawed modelling compromises non-pharmaceutical intervention article’s conclusions”. They call the original article “superficial, deeply flawed and … a disservice to the evaluation of … important issues,” briefly highlighting seven different areas of concern. This letter is accompanied by an immediate response from the journal’s editor refuting the letter writers’ allegation of a “Failure to disclose important conflict of interest” by the original authors. In the then-following CCDR issue, the authors themselves respond to the letter. I can’t go into details on the arguments on both sides, but at a minimum, some debate is happening which is positive.
Another response to the questionable Tam paper is provided by a group of independent health scientist and practitioners as an “opinion” piece in another journal, Frontiers in Public Health. Dr. David Vickers and colleagues correct the original authors’ mis-representation of pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2; confusion about case-fatality rate vs. infection-fatality rate; and disregard for the highly age-dependent impact of COVID-19. They also argue that the upper estimate of 800,000 deaths would correspond to a per-capita death rate exceeding Canada’s combined toll of both world wars and the 1918 influenza pandemic, and that the model outcome is also inconsistent with observed all-cause mortality levels during the pandemic.
Led by Dr. John Hardie, the same group also wrote a compelling piece for public consumption on the Troy Media news site, asking whether Dr. Tam’s “Pandemic performance study [was a] blatant attempt to justify fed’s actions?” We all know where this is going, but the article’s subtitle does not leave any room for doubts: “The Public Health Agency of Canada study’s conclusions are a fantasy, quite divorced from reality.”
To conclude this post, I am happy to announce that yours truly has entered the letter-writing contest and just published a response to another mainstream misinformation manifesto, ironically co-authored by Canada’s anti-misinformation pope, Mr. Timothy Caulfield. You can find my response “RE: Strawman argument or proto-factual revisionism?“ together with the original article on the Canadian Medical Association Journal’s web site. The above image shows my full submission.
The journal responded to my submission within a quick three days stating they were “interested in posting an edited version” upon my approval. It turned out that they deleted my defense of the Great Barrington Declaration along with references to three peer-reviewed articles and a report, all countering claims made by Murdoch & Caulfield about the facts of the pandemic. Using these references, I accuse the authors of engaging in revisionism by suppressing the ongoing scientific debate. They attempt to re-tell the COVID-19 pandemic before the facts are firmly established, thus the “proto-factual” neologism in my title.
After some deliberation, I decided to agree with the publication of the shortened e-letter, which came out yesterday afternoon (with the original submission date of April 17). I have to admit that the deletion makes the letter more concise and perhaps more convincing, in particular to an unsuspecting CMAJ audience.
While some colleagues reject the peer review system and even work on developing alternatives, I am not ready to give up on the existing system. I believe the response mechanism available at many scholarly journals, particularly in the health sciences, can be used — as intended — to ensure that the most offensive COVID science does not stand uncorrected. In fact, I am involved in another response, currently under review, in which we debunk the infamous “unvaccinated traffic crash risk” study from a few months ago. Maybe, us independent, ethical academics should set up a Critical Response Taskforce (CRT;-) to distribute the burden of setting the scientific record straight.