Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
"What do you *want*?"
"I want #antivaxers to live just long enough to learn what actual research is. And when they realize what idiots they've been, I will wave at them ... like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"
The rescue of the #astronauts stranded on the #Tiangong space station was a smooth, well-conducted, low-drama operation. Predictably, it's bringing out a bunch of #nationalist crap from #Russian and #American #fanboys. "Chinese-made garbage" etc.
I'm still enough of an idealist to cheer *any* successful human #spaceflight. If #China turns out to have built a better and longer-lasting space station than the increasingly rickety ISS, or gets humans back to the #Moon before the #US, or is first on #Mars ... well, maybe I'd rather see the Stars and Stripes than the Five-Star Red, but mainly I'll just be glad it's happening at all.
Every spacefaring nation has had accidents, some fatal. The test is in how they react. It looks to me like China passed this one with flying colors. That's all that matters.
"Surrender, then negotiate" is not how #negotiations work.
#Covid causes what we in the biz call "#cardiovascular events," among its other nasty effects. #Heart attack, #stroke, pulmonary #embolism, deep vein #thrombosis. All things you should try to avoid.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49634-x
The covid #vaccine—any of the currently approved vaccines—helps protect against such events. A #mechanism isn't yet clear: the obvious hypothesis is that it works by reducing the incidence and sincerity of covid, and therefore reduces the effects of the disease. Say it with me now: further research is needed. Send me a pile of cash and I'll be happy to get on that, BTW.
(It also helps protect against #cancer, by an entirely different mechanism. I can natter about that if anyone wants.)
But the effect itself is clear. Has been from the start of the #mRNA vaccine era, really. Now a very large-scale study has confirmed it. There will be more studies, as there should be. They will show the same result. I'd bet my fortune on that, if I had a fortune, because then I'd have an even bigger fortune. Have I mentioned lately that #scientists need to eat?
As it is, all I have to pledge is my life and my sacred honor. I take both of those pretty seriously.
Of course this runs directly counter to the #antivax narrative. Based on a transitory and maybe illusory increase in clotting risk from an early vaccine that's no longer on the market (Johnson & Johnson) they've built an entire mythology about "the #clot shot." Lately they've added "#turbo cancer," which is not a thing that exists, to the canon.
So when dedicated antivaxers see any of the large and ever-growing number of studies showing protective effects against more than the #infection itself, especially against the exact same problems they claim the vaccine causes, they react with mockery and/or rage. It's all they know how to do.
Years of bitter experience have taught me there's no point in trying to reason with them. I still hold out hope that at least some antivax sentiment isn't that dedicated, that a lot of people are scared of getting vaccinated out of the general unease brought on by ignorance.
Oh yeah: the Methods section in the linked article provides details on data collection and analysis. It looks good to me, and I have a whole lot of experience in study design. Note that no vaccine manufacturers provided #funding. For a full list of funding sources, see the Acknowledgements.
I don't suppose I have many if any antivaxers left in my audience. If I do, well, I guess there's a reason you're still here. And if you like me or trust me or respect me at all, please pay attention to my words.
For everyone else, if what I've written here is useful, please do with it what you can.
Middle-aged white people on #BadBunny and the #SuperBowl halftime show. One calls him "so famous no one has ever heard of him." I reply, "Don't equate 'no one' with 'no one I know'."
Yes, I am also middle-aged white people. Bast save me from ever being *that kind* of middle-aged white people, okay?
The #KPg is probably the only mass #extinction in Earth's history that conforms to the popular stereotype, and it's our mental model for such events just because #dinosaurs are so charismatic. But yeah. We're in the middle of a sixth great extinction event right now, and the pace makes it frighteningly easy for people to pretend otherwise.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/lorraine-daston/kaboom
I laughed. But more and more people believe this dangerous nonsense. Our ability to prevent and treat #disease is under full-scale attack, and millions—tens or hundreds of millions—will die because of it.
Nobody deserves to die of an easily preventable disease. If anyone did, though, the people pushing this insanity would be at the top of the list.
Checklist time!
Good food: #France ✅ #OlympusMons ❌
Good beer: France ❌ Olympus Mons ❌
The Louvre: France ✅ (kind of) Olympus Mons ❌
High peaks: France ✅ Olympus Mons ✅
Highest peak in Solar System: France ❌ Olympus Mons ✅
Cool fossils: France ✅ Olympus Mons ❌ (probably)
Hard decision, really.
That meme going around about how #rattlesnakes are evolving to lose their rattles because humans keep killing the ones that rattle? It's a just-so story. I get why those are often satisfying, but they're just as often nonsense. And for all its sins, Google is still your friend when it comes to this kind of thing.
[climbs out of acid bath] You mean I've been doing this wrong the whole time?
"Making fun of #antivaxers isn't the best way to educate them."
"It is very difficult to educate mass murderers as to why mass murder is bad."
Because this keeps coming up, and it's good to have a reference: there was never, ever a time when #climatologists were predicting #globalcooling on a human scale.
There was a brief time in the '70s when it looked like we might be headed into another #glacial period of the current ice age (yes) a little faster than expected, which got a lot of media attention. If this had actually happened, it would have been over centuries rather than the usual millennia, but of course that wasn't sensationalist enough, so there was considerable hype.
Meanwhile, researchers in the then-young science of #climatology accurately predicted continued #warming and the accompanying #climatechange: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml
"Scientists used to warn us about global cooling, now they say it's #globalwarming! Make up your minds, stupid scientists!"
Of course, even if there had been legitimate fears about global cooling fifty years ago, that wouldn't invalidate modern concerns about warming. One of the most fundamental principles of science is updating your knowledge base when new information comes along.
As it happens, this isn't even an example of that. Just another lie from the anti-#science loons. You won't convince them with the above link, but the lurkers might take note.
There's a line I've used in many contexts, but particularly enjoy when responding to people who express contempt for #academic #credentials and those who have worked hard to get them:
"It's really impressive how wrong you manage to be about so many things. Like you have a #PhD in wrongology."
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
