Logic Check: The "Fact Check" by Health Feedback against Daniel Horowitz on the Subject of Vaccines and Pregnancy Complications
Debunking the absurd fact check by Health Feedback "COVID-19 vaccines aren’t associated with a higher risk of pregnancy complication, contrary to claim by Daniel Horowitz"
I wrote this relying on the readers to read Horowitz’s article and the fact check (both pretty short) to fully understand the context of the arguments presented herein. I couldn’t deal with every single point, it would have made this considerably longer than it already is.
Original Article:
Why did Scotland experience a spike in infant deaths?
Author:
Daniel Horowitz
Fact Check:
Fact Checker:
Health Feedback (healthfeedback.org)
Specific Claims Being Fact Checked:
“The shots were not studied in pregnant women”
“we have seen 50 times the rate of reporting [in VAERS] per month of miscarriages for this vaccine than the other vaccines put together.”
“there were 3,511 miscarriages reported to VAERS”
Quick Take:
All of the statements being fact checked are objectively true as stated and intended:
The vaccine trials specifically and deliberately excluded pregnant women. (For some context, consider that in order to exclude a subpopulation from a Phase III Trial of a novel therapeutic, there must be a plausible basis to suspect that the novel therapeutic poses an additional unique risk for that specific subpopulation. Furthermore, pregnant women are always presumed to be at increased risk from everything under the sun literally until definitively proven otherwise.)
& 3. The VAERS data is accurately depicted, as the raw number of reports (as of the date the article was written) & the comparison made to the combined total from all other vaccines over the history of VAERS are true.
Therefore, there is no justification for a fact check, since there is no specific claim asserted by Horowitz that the fact checkers can identify as objectively false.
Rebutting Some of the Specific Statements or Arguments of the Fact Check
Quote
Key thesis / assertion of article: "We have no idea what caused this spike, but here’s why any logical person would commence an inquiry around the shots."
Analysis
Although this sentence from the fact check is simply quoting a line from Horowitz’s article to summarize Horowitz’s primary thesis, it is worthwhile to point out exactly what the fact check is attempting to debunk here.
As the fact check admits through this quote, the central contention of the article is merely that there exists sufficient basis or evidence to justify investigating whether the covid vaccines are causing infant mortality to rise. The article is not claiming that the evidence definitively proves that the vaccines are causing infant mortality.
To establish that there *might* be infants dying because of pregnancy complications caused by the covid vaccines, you would need to demonstrate two things:
There is a plausible case that there are infants dying who would not necessarily be expected to die.
The nature and character of the potentially excess infant deaths are consistent with a plausible scenario whereby the vaccines can be the cause of these deaths. (If a bus carrying a bunch of mothers with newborn infants swerved off a bridge into a river and all the infants drowned, these “excess infant deaths” would obviously not be attributable to the vaccination of the mothers prior to or during pregnancy.)
This means that in order to demonstrate that this article is promoting an objectively false thesis, you would have to prove that either premise #1 or premise #2 is categorically unreasonable.
Let’s see how close the fact check came to meeting this threshold.
The Fact Check’s Central Arguments:
The fact check at the beginning summarizes their problems with Horowitz’s article:
Inaccurate: Data from several countries show that COVID-19 vaccines are safe during pregnancy. No increase in pregnancy complications or newborn deaths have been observed among vaccinated women.
Inadequate support: Reports in the U.S. VAERS database cannot be used as evidence that vaccines caused a specific medical condition. It contains unverified information that would first need to go through a medical investigation to demonstrate a causal relationship between vaccines and pregnancy complications.
The first central claim made by the fact check is that there is affirmative evidence that the vaccines do not cause any complications in pregnancy and therefore any conjecture or even arguments to the contrary are necessarily factually incorrect.
Regarding the second point, the fact check is arguing as follows:
Horowitz wants to infer from the VAERS data showing 3,511 miscarriages, which reflects a dramatically higher rate of reporting for the covid vaccines than for all other vaccines in VAERS combined over the past 30 years, that this is an indication that the covid vaccines are possibly causing pregnancy complications that lead to the loss of the pregnancy or the demise of the newborn shortly after birth.
In response to Horowitz’s argument, the fact check asserts that VAERS data does not even constitute evidence of any sort that the vaccines caused the adverse event reported in VAERS, because it contains “unverified information”. The explanation given why “unverified information” has zero evidentiary value is that it lacks adequate “medical investigation” that would be able to demonstrate causality of the vaccines to any specific VAERS reported adverse event.
Keep these in mind as we explore the substance of the fact check’s explanation for these arguments.
What is Evidence?
It is necessary to address this before rebutting the fact check argument. So what makes something “evidence”? Put differently, how or why can fact “A” (the evidence) prove the truth of “B” (the assertion that the evidence is trying to prove is true or correct)?***Evidence is quite simply the measure of how unlikely or unreasonable it is for “A” to be true if “B” is not true. The more unlikely it is for “A” to be true without “B” also being true, the stronger the evidence value or reliability of “A” to convince us that that “B” is true.***Let’s illustrate this: Suppose that we have on video (super high-def & unhackable for the purposes of this hypothetical scenario) Bob pulling out a gun and shooting Harry in the head, killing him. Why is this such powerful evidence that Bob killed Harry? Because it is basically impossible for Bob to be on video shooting Harry in the head if Bob did not in fact shoot Harry in the head. In other words, it is altogether unlikely and unreasonable for there to be a video of Bob shooting Harry if Bob did not actually shoot Harry.
Alternatively, if instead of the video we had a taped confession by Bob that he killed Harry, where he made his confession after 17 hours in a police interrogation room. This would be far less reliable evidence (if at all), because it is not necessarily that unlikely for someone to make a false confession under sufficient duress, which 17 consecutive hours in an interrogation room may well be.Fact Check Claim #1:
Quote:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as well as medical associations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend the vaccination of “pregnant and lactating individuals” against COVID-19. In particular, they warned that pregnant women are more at risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19, which makes vaccination all the more beneficial.
What the fact check is arguing
This is an argument by authority, the opinion of an expert or experts is a reliable indicator that what they are saying is correct. This argument must assume that it is unlikely that the expert or authority being cited would say what he said if it weren’t true.
What they are trying to argue however is not entirely clear. Probably what they mean to argue is that since the CDC & ACOG recommend vaccination for pregnant women, vaccination must not be able to itself cause pregnancy complications, because they wouldn’t advise a medical intervention that carried such risks.
Debunked
An argument from authority requires making two assumptions:
The authority possesses the necessary expertise to avoid making a mistake plus the requisite knowledge to avoid committing an error as a result of ignorance.
The authority is honest.
Regarding government and public health agencies, both of these assumptions are at minimum hotly contested. Think of it this way: is it unlikely that the CDC or ACOG would make false claims? If the answer is no, then they do not possess any authority that can be relied upon to make an argument. Those who argue against establishment positions, such as Horowitz, typically hold that the government and medical institutions or agencies are corrupt and that key officials to some degree lack credible subject matter expertise — in other words, it is not at all unlikely for the CDC or ACOG to put out false information. Therefore, this argument fails outright.
A separate issue with the fact checker’s argument here is that the second position attributed to the CDC/ACOG - “pregnant women are more at risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19” - is completely irrelevant to assessing the claims made by Horowitz regarding potential risks that the covid vaccines pose for pregnant women. (It also undercuts what the fact check seems to be trying to prove from the first assertion of the CDC/ACOG, because if covid poses such a pronounced risk to pregnant women, then it stands to reason that there is a higher tolerability for at least potential less significant safety risks from the vaccines to pregnant women.)
Fact Check Claim #2:
Quote:
In early 2022, The Blaze published an article by Daniel Horowitz, which claimed that an increase in perinatal mortality in Scotland could be linked to vaccination against COVID-19. Horowitz has spread health misinformation in the past.
This claim initially stemmed from reports that Scotland experienced an unusually high perinatal mortality rate in September 2021, with a rate of 4.9 deaths of newborns under four weeks for 1,000 births. The average mortality rate is 2 per 1,000. The high rate observed in September therefore triggered an investigation by Public Health Scotland (PHS).
To Horowitz, this suggested that this increase in perinatal mortality could be linked to COVID-19 vaccines and backed his hypothesis by saying that “the shots were not studied in pregnant women” and that “there were 3,511 miscarriages reported to VAERS”. He also claimed that “we [had] seen 50 times the rate of reporting [in VAERS] per month of miscarriages for this vaccine than the other vaccines put together”
As we explain below, these claims are inaccurate. They are inconsistent with available scientific observations and misuse public health databases such as VAERS.
What the fact check is arguing
The fact check is dealing with two distinct points made by Horowitz (we will analyze Horowitz’s arguments shortly):
Horowitz highlights increased incidence of reported pregnancy or newborn mortality from Scotland and from VAERS reports.
Horowitz argues that these datapoints provide a plausible basis to suspect that the vaccines might be the reason for the highlighted mortality data, because the vaccines might be causing pregnancy complications.
Although you have to read onwards a bit to figure this out, the fact check is raising two issues with Horowitz’s contention:
Horowitz is misrepresenting the quality or character of the VAERS data (“misuse public health databases”).
Regardless of #1, Horowitz’s extrapolation from the cited Scotland and VAERS data that the vaccine might be causing pregnancy complications is so definitively refuted by the “available scientific observations” that it can be characterized as objectively false.
Debunked
VAERS Reports
The fact check wishes to claim that the VAERS data do not even constitute evidence so much so that Horowitz is literally “misusing” the VAERS data.
This boils down to one very simple question: How unlikely is it, if at all, for VAERS to contain 3,511 reports of miscarriages in the span of 10+ months of the covid vaccine’s availability if the vaccines did not actually cause pregnancy complications?
In order for the fact check to argue that VAERS is rubbish, it would have to demonstrate that there is no rational basis to suspect that the VAERS reports are in any way suggestive that the vaccine caused any of them. As we shall see in a bit, the fact check abjectly failed to even come close.
Scotland Infant Mortality Data
Although we will deal with the details later when the fact check brings their specific arguments, there is one thing worth pointing out now.
As Horowitz explained at length, Scotland experienced an unexpected dramatic rise in the mortality rate of newborns which a government investigation could not explain but was able to definitively rule out covid as a potential cause.
Whatever the cause, it must be something that was not present prior to about 2021, because otherwise there should have been a corresponding rise in infant mortality before now. This by itself highlights the potential for the vaccines to be the cause, as the covid vaccines are something that is a new development that did not exist in previous years. In other words, it is a legitimate observation to make.
Fact Check Claim #3:
Quote:
If COVID-19 caused pregnancy complications, increases in preterm births, and perinatal mortality—either stillbirths or newborn deaths—should have been detected in several highly vaccinated countries, not just during a single month in a single country.
What the fact check is arguing
For once, the fact check clearly articulates a point. Not only that, but this argument in a vacuum is actually a fair point. However, it is not a legitimate argument for a fact check.
What the fact check is arguing is that it is unlikely that the vaccines can cause the types of pregnancy complications that would manifest in increased infant mortality, without there being widespread visible or apparent increases in infant mortality data of countries with a sufficient degree of vaccination in pregnant women. The logic here is internally coherent - if vaccination causes infant mortality as seen in one month of Scottish data, then vaccination caused infant mortality should be happening elsewhere too, as there isn’t a difference between Scotland and France or Canada etc. that could explain only Scottish pregnant women suffering pregnancy complications from the vaccine but not French or Canadian pregnant women.
Debunked
This argument rests upon the premise that the publicly published data would definitely show a rise in infant mortality if it were occurring. So the question that we must ask is, “Is there any reason to think that published data might not reflect something even if it is happening in reality?”
The simplest rebuttal of this is that the claimed Scotland data is certainly not infallible. In fact, the existence of an unexplained phenomenon of infant mortality itself suggests the distinct possibility that the population data is missing something significant, whether or not it is the vaccines, because the government using the same data was unable to figure out what was causing the increase in mortality.
As it turns out, there is an independently legitimate basis to suspect that government and hospital system published data might not be reliable: fraud/corruption. One of the undeniable disasters of covid has been the corruption of major databases and data curation methods and safeguards. There is no reason to exclude the possibility of major data corruption for data in any way related to the vaccines, including infant mortality data. As long as there is a real incentive to corrupt or manipulate published data, which there assuredly is for anything that can cast the vaccines as flawed or unsafe in any way, there is the automatic suspicion of corruption of the published data.
To give one quick illustration of this, there have been more cases of myocarditis documented in case reports than many of the massive dataset analyses have found, which proves that most of the myocarditis events that occur subsequent to vaccination are not showing up in hospital datasets. In any event, the fact check provides no argument why we should not suspect the possibility of corrupted or manipulated data.
Fact Check Claim #4:
Quote:
There is no increased risk of perinatal mortality or pregnancy complications linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
In fact, contrary to Horowitz’s article, scientific data about vaccination of pregnant women do exist and they all show that COVID-19 vaccination doesn’t affect the pregnancy outcome.
Researchers from Scotland monitored the health of women who became pregnant in the country after March 2020 and assessed the outcomes of their pregnancies. They found no increase in perinatal mortality among vaccinated persons compared to the background perinatal mortality rate[1] (Figure 1). This finding directly contradicts the idea that the surge of perinatal mortality in September 2021 in Scotland could be linked to vaccines.
The absence of an association between pregnancy complications and COVID-19 vaccination has also been observed in other countries. Researchers in the U.S. led a retrospective study on more than 40,000 pregnant women who either were unvaccinated or got vaccinated during pregnancy, usually during the second or third trimester. They found that vaccination wasn’t associated with an increase of preterm births[4]. In an interview with the BBC, Sarah Stock, an expert in maternal and fetal health at University of Edinburgh, said that “Preterm delivery is the biggest driver of neonatal mortality”, so it is directly tied to perinatal mortality.
Likewise, a study from Israel found no difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated pregnant women regarding pregnancy outcomes[5]. Similar results were also obtained from a study among vaccinated and unvaccinated pregnant women in the U.K[6].
Therefore, contrary to what is suggested by Daniel Horowitz, there is a lot of data on pregnancy outcomes after COVID-19 vaccination and they all point toward the fact that these vaccines are safe for pregnant women and their unborn child.
What the fact check is arguing
The fact check is arguing as follows:
Horowitz claimed that there is no “scientific” data regarding vaccination of pregnant women.
The factual claim espoused in #1 that is being attributed to Horowitz is not true, as there is indeed multiple data that show that vaccination does not adversely affect pregnancy.
Not only does data exist supporting the contention that the vaccines do not adversely affect pregnancy, *ALL* available data show this. Therefore, Horowitz’s entire thesis that there is sufficient indication that the vaccines might be causing adverse pregnancy outcomes to warrant a robust investigation is factually false.
Example #1 of such data is a CDC MMWR study.
Example #2 is the cited study from Israel.
Example #3 of such data is the cited study from Scotland.
(The sentence in italics we will deal with individually in the next claim.)
In a nutshell, this is arguing that the evidence showing that the vaccines do not cause pregnancy issues are so overwhelming that it is basically impossible that the vaccines can be causing any pregnancy issues. Therefore, Horowitz even proposing that maybe the vaccines are causing pregnancy issues is advancing an objectively false or misleading claim.
Debunked
Before getting to the rebuttal, what exactly is meant by “scientific data” as opposed to just “data”? That’s a good question, and there is nowhere in the fact check where we can find the definition of “scientific data” they are using. Their are many types and forms of data, of widely varying quality and reliability. Is the fact check claiming that the studies they cite are “scientific data” but VAERS is not? What about the McLachlan et al study of VAERS data, is that “scientific data” because it is an official study? Indeterminate and unfounded vagaries such as this are imprecise gibberish that do not convey coherent information.
In any event, this argument is comically absurd. There is no sane or rational person who can honestly say that the available data is so airtight that it is literally impossible that the vaccines are causing pregnancy issues. For some perspective, the current “gold standard” of scientific evidence is a double blind placebo-controlled randomized control trial (what the vaccine trials allegedly were). There has not been an RCT conducted on the covid vaccines in pregnant women. So the fact check is trying to claim that even without the “gold standard” level of evidence, the available data is so overwhelming that the vaccines do not cause pregnancy complications that it is impossible for it to be wrong.
On to the specific claims of this argument:
Horowitz never claimed that there was *no* data or evidence suggesting that the vaccines were not causing adverse pregnancy outcomes. When Horowitz said that the vaccines were “unstudied in pregnant women”, that was a clear and obvious reference to the exclusion of pregnant women from the vaccine trials, a point that the fact check itself acknowledged when it conceded that pregnant women were indeed excluded from the trials. So claim #1 is a fraudulent misrepresentation of what Horowitz wrote or meant.
This claim is not actually contested by Horowitz in the article, so it is a moot point. Ironically, as stated above, per the standards of the mainstream medical community that only RCT’s are proper evidence of something that is sufficient to rely upon, there is not yet “reliable” “scientific” evidence from an RCT showing that the vaccines are safe in pregnant women altogether.
This claim is incredibly unclear - what is the definition of “all scientific data” that includes the two studies they cite but excludes all the data that suggests that vaccines are affecting pregnancy outcomes? My best guess is that what they mean by “all the data show that there is no adverse affect on pregnancy” is official government data or hospital system data on pregnancy outcomes as analyzed by an official study. In other words, the fact check is claiming that only official population clinical outcomes data verified by a study has any evidentiary value, but nothing else counts at all. This is absurd on its face:
The contention that the only evidence that has any scientific or evidentiary worth is official population outcomes data verified by an official scientific study is asinine and emphatically false. For such an argument to work - only “X” counts as evidence at all (in our case, X = “official population outcomes data verified by an official scientific study”) - it would require either that “X” be literally infallible or that at least “X” be demonstrated historically to always be correct when in conflict with the type of evidence that is being brought in contradiction to “X” (or that it be logically impossible for “X” to be wrong if the proposed evidence to the contrary of “X” is correct). There is no sane argument that studies or datasets are functionally infallible, and nor is there any historical record that studies of population data are always correct against anecdotally reported data or passive reporting pharmacovigilance systems - among other sources of evidence indicating that the vaccines are causing pregnancy complications - so this contention is nonsensical. It is worthwhile to point out that often, anecdotes are the “leading edge” of a phenomenon that leads to researchers unearthing the rest of the evidence.
As mentioned earlier, there is a valid basis to suspect systematic corruption of such data.
There is definitely other data that exist also pointing to potential vaccine effects on pregnancy outcomes. Firstly, as stated before, VAERS is data, and VAERS shows an unprecedented and enormous increase in miscarriages and other pregnancy complications. There have been additional observations regarding infant mortality. Waterloo, Ontario had 86 cases of stillbirths have been reported in six months, compared to typically five to six per year. Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, British Columbia was alleged to have suffered 13 stillbirths in a 24-hour span. And data from Rambam hospital in Haifa reveal a stillbirth, miscarriage and abortion (SBMA) rate of 6% among women who never received a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 8% among women who were vaccinated with at least one dose (and never had a SARS-Cov-2 infection).
What is important is that you won’t find evidence that nobody looks for. The lack of publicized population outcomes data suggesting potential adverse vaccine effects on pregnancy outcomes does not mean that such data does not exist, because this can be readily and plausibly explained as a lack of willingness (whether due to bias in favor of the vaccines or fear for their careers and social lives if they publish anything negative about the vaccines) on the part of researchers equipped to carry out such analyses to actually do so.
Furthermore, what the fact check claims increased infant mortality or pregnancy complications "hasn't been observed", that isn't true. There have been plenty of clinicians who have stated that they were witnessing an unusual or even unprecedented increase in pregnancy complications, including the claim that the fact check itself links to by Dr. Scott McLachlan of exactly that.
This is quoting the MMWR, a non-peer reviewed publication of the CDC. The MMWR has been proven in numerous instances to have been peddling outright lies and distortions (eg, the Arizona school facemask study, or the Kansas natural vs vax immunity study, or the early February 2021 facemask study).
Even if we grant the study shows what the fact check claims, it is not relevant to the fact check. Studies and analyses are not remotely infallible, so ultimately, all they are at best is conflicting evidence with what Horowitz cites. Conflicting evidence does not establish that it is categorically false to suggest that we may want superior data to resolve an issue, especially in a situation where even per the formal scientific standards, we do not actually have any “gold standard” evidence or data - an RCT - on the effects or lack thereof of the covid vaccines on pregnancy.
Ditto.
Ultimately, the fact check lies to attribute an argument to Horowitz that he never made. The actual substantive argument proffered by the fact check - that “all scientific data” show that the vaccines do not cause any pregnancy complications so decisively that to even offer contrary evidence to suggest that this is at least not fully resolved and should be better investigated - is absurd, if only for the mere fact that nothing they offer is close to infallible, so there is definitely room to argue, especially with genuinely valid indications, that the vaccines might actually be causing pregnancy issues.
Fact Check Claim #5:
Quote
In an interview with the BBC, Sarah Stock, an expert in maternal and fetal health at University of Edinburgh, said that “Preterm delivery is the biggest driver of neonatal mortality”, so it is directly tied to perinatal mortality.
What the fact check is arguing
The point here is that preterm delivery is the real cause of the increase in Scotland infant mortality. This quote is brought to be combined with the cited MMWR study claiming that the vaccines do not cause preterm deliveries -- if preterm delivery is the direct cause of the increase in infant mortality in Scotland and vaccines do not cause preterm delivery, then vaccines are not the cause of the infant mortality in Scotland.
Debunked
I am taking issue with this because this is representative of a typical underhanded gaslighting tactic often deployed by fact checkers, as we shall explain.
From Horowitz’s article:
"Preliminary information on prematurity suggests that the number of babies born at less than 32 weeks gestation in September 2021 was at the upper end of monthly numbers seen in 2021 to date. This may contribute to the neonatal mortality rate, as prematurity is associated with an increased risk of neonatal death." But why would that cause neonatal deaths not seen since the 1980s, and why would there be more prematurely born babies?"
Clearly, Horowitz acknowledged the role of preterm delivery in infant mortality. So why does the fact check need to find an outside expert to confirm a fact that is explicitly agreed to by Horowitz - the fact check can just as easily written instead “as Horowitz himself acknowledges, etc.”?
What the fact check gains is that there is a subtle implication in quoting an external source to verify a fact that Horowitz is claiming otherwise. This is because a regular person reading a fact check typically will assume that the reason a fact check will cite an outside source to demonstrate something is that the person being fact checked claimed otherwise and the fact check therefore needs to prove them wrong on this claim.
Furthermore, by presenting this information as from an external source, the fact check obfuscates Horowitz’s argument, which was that the unexplained increase in preterm deliveries itself is indicative that perhaps the vaccines are implicated. An average person reading this fact check will almost definitely assume that Horowitz only made his argument that the Scotland increase in infant mortality is indicative of potential vaccine causation on the premise that the increased preterm deliveries is an alternate explanation that is not true competing with vaccines as a potential cause.
This is deceptive and manipulative.
Fact Check Claim #6:
Quote
The sole use of pharmacosurveillance databases like VAERS cannot on their own provide evidence of COVID-19 side effects
However, the database alone cannot be used to suggest that a vaccine is dangerous, as Health Feedback explained in previous reviews.
First, because anyone can submit a report to VAERS, the information in the report isn’t verified. VAERS clearly warns users relying on the database about this caveat: “Some reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Most reports to VAERS are voluntary, which means they are subject to biases”.
Second, VAERS data alone can’t show whether an adverse event is the consequence of a given medical intervention such as vaccination. Indeed, the sole fact that event A occurs before event B doesn’t mean that the first one caused the second. Suggesting otherwise, as Horowitz did in his article, is known as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Further investigation into VAERS reports are required in order to determine whether there is a causal association.
Lastly, the number of adverse events such as deaths or miscarriages reported into VAERS is influenced by people’s propensity to file such reports. There is no data indicating that the reporting rate among people who received a COVID-19 vaccination is similar to other types of vaccines. Therefore, directly comparing the number of VAERS reports between different vaccines without analysing the impact of confounding factors, like reporting rate, is uninformative.
What the fact check is arguing
The main assertion of the fact check here is that we have no indication or way of assessing the quality or reliability of VAERS data, and it is very likely just “noise” and not an indication of actual vaccine caused adverse events, so therefore VAERS data does not constitute evidence at all.
They bring 3 justifications for this:
Since anyone can file a VAERS report, the information contained in a report is not presumptively accurate. This is attested to by the disclaimer of the VARS website itself. (We’ll get to the details of this.)
VAERS reports are only documentation of an adverse event that occurred after someone got vaccinated — in other words, a timing correlation between vaccination and an adverse event. As such, it does not indicate whether the vaccine actually caused the reported adverse events, because of the famous rule “correlation by itself does not equal causation”.
It is unclear what their intended argument is here with this incoherent word salad. My best guess is that what they mean to argue is that people might be more inclined to report adverse events simply because there is more awareness and controversy about the covid vaccines than there has been for any other vaccine historically. Regardless of what their specific argument is, they conclude “Therefore, directly comparing the number of VAERS reports between different vaccines without analysing the impact of confounding factors, like reporting rate, is *uninformative*” - or in other words, useless - meaning that since we have (allegedly) no firm idea of potential factors that might be unique to the covid vaccines that might be causing people to overreport adverse events relative to other vaccines, we can’t make any inferences from the VAERS data. (emphasis mine)
Debunked
In order to have a valid argument that VAERS is a worthless collection of meaningless reports, the fact check has to demonstrate that there is literally zero basis to think that the VAERS reports are not so. Put differently, that it is not unlikely whatsoever that VAERS would contain the number of reports of adverse events with the details reported in these adverse events even if the vaccines did not cause these types of adverse events.
Before addressing their 3 “proofs” for this, let’s first analyze their general argument about VAERS.
The central premise of the fact check’s assertion of that the VAERS data is inadequate to be evidence (for all of their stated reasons) is that the VAERS data is unverified, and is therefore unusable.
This is committing a basic logical fallacy: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Just because something is “unverified” does not mean or even suggest that it is untrue. Just because the CDC/FDA are negligently opting to not investigate the VAERS reports properly does not indicate that the VAERS reports are deficient or inaccurate. In fact, there are plenty of characteristics that can be used to independently ascertain with varying degrees of confidence the quality of data. The best example of this regarding the VAERS data is the work of Dr. Jessica Rose, who has done a number of different types of statistical analyses of other characteristics of the VAERS reports/data that indicate the VAERS data is fairly reliable and representative of what is occurring in real life. Unfortunately, to provide a minimally sufficient explanation for the purposes of this article is not practical.
However, there are plenty of other characteristics of VAERS that we can use to assess its usefulness or general reliability. Consider the following points:
VAERS was created to be a safety surveillance system that would reveal potential safety issues with vaccines - a sort of “tripwire” that would alert us that there *might* be a safety issue with a particular vaccine product. It is rational to believe that the government set up the system in a way that it actually would be able to do that at least to some degree - in other words, not a total pile of garbage.
Pfizer in an FDA filing asserted that VAERS was sufficiently adequate that Pfizer should not have to set up their own safety surveillance system to monitor vaccine safety once the vaccine was approved for use.
VAERS successfully revealed genuine safety concerns with the rotavirus vaccine through the same reporting scheme still in effect today.
The landmark Harvard Pilgrim study estimated that only 1-10% of relevant adverse events (in other words, they met the criteria for being reported to VAERS) were actually reported to VAERS.
Regarding the covid vaccines specifically:
Somewhere between 60-80% of covid vaccine VAERS reports are filed by a medical professional. Medical professionals are presumably filing a VAERS report because their professional opinion is that the adverse event/s being reported are at least plausibly if not probably related to the vaccine.
Although medical professionals are legally obligated to report any adverse event subsequent to vaccination to VAERS, there is tremendous pressure from government, medical/healthcare institutions/corporations, and from peers not to report adverse events because doing so would promote vaccine hesitancy. This indicates that the number of VAERS reports for the covid vaccines is a substantial undercount from the true number of relevant adverse events. (Relevant does not mean definitively caused by the vaccines.)
Many of the reports relate a clinical progression of events that conventional medical wisdom assumes by default prima facie can be causally attributed to the vaccine. To illustrate, if someone takes a medicine and five hours later drops dead or suddenly starts suffering unexpected and difficult to explain symptoms, a normal rational person would correctly assume that the default explanation is that the medicine is the cause for the adverse event.
VAERS reports for myocarditis have been verified as both factually accurate regarding the described adverse event and likely caused by the vaccines. In fact, JAMA published a study that analyzed the myocarditis case reports in VAERS that verified the accuracy of the vast majority of myocarditis reports in VAERS outright, and concluded that VAERS was probably significantly underreporting the incidence of myocarditis subsequent to vaccination.
(It is worth emphasizing the above disclaimer: I cannot engage in a thorough overview and analysis of VAERS here, that is way beyond the scope of this article. These are meant as straightforward observations, not self-evident truths.)
These points are clearly suggestive that VAERS is not a meaningless collection of random reports that are unrelated to the covid vaccines. In other words, these points depict that it would be very unlikely for VAERS to contain the quantity and quality of reported adverse events from the covid vaccines if the covid vaccines did not in fact cause these types of adverse events. Ergo, VAERS reports constitute evidence indicating that the covid vaccines are causing adverse events. Thus, Horowitz’s argument that the 3,511 miscarriage reports in VAERS are suggestive that the vaccines might be the cause of some or most of these reports is adequately predicated.
Fact Check Anti-VAERS Proof #1
The fact check asserts that because anyone can file a VAERS report, therefore we have no indication that a significant percentage of them are accurately reporting the details.
Unsurprisingly, the logic of this argument is incoherent. The mere fact that there is no restriction barring non-medical professionals from filing a report does not mean that therefore there are masses of illiterate people filing wild conjecture or inaccurately described adverse events. This by itself is sufficient to refute this silly contention.
Fortunately for us, in this case, we actually have actual evidence that the conjectured throngs of confused and biased people filing VAERS reports is a fantasy that has not occurred in significant numbers.
VAERS reports are extremely difficult and cumbersome to fill out. VAERS requests a huge amount of details regarding every single patient that even their treating physician is unlikely to know all offhand. Furthermore, the VAERS data entry portal often glitches in the middle and they have to start from scratch. I have heard from numerous medical professionals who have actually filed VAERS reports that it typically takes them at least half an hour to complete just one report, and oftentimes takes them much longer.
Another feature of VAERS that disincentivizes reporting in general, and reporting by laypeople especially, is the threat of Federal prosecution for filing a report that contains false information that comes up every time you advance to the next webpage.
And at the end of the day, as stated above, despite the theoretical ability of anyone to file a VAERS report somewhere between 70-80% were filed by medical professionals.
One final point: the disclaimer on the VAERS website is meaningless, and not at all indicative of the actual quality of real-world reports submitted. Disclaimers are not suggestive of anything, especially disclaimers by biased and conflicted parties (like the CDC & FDA who run the VAERS database and are heavily invested in the vaccines turning out to be as safe and effective as they have been claiming vociferously for more than a year now).
Fact Check Anti-VAERS Proof #2
There are two fatal flaws with this argument: Firstly, it is logically incoherent; secondly, they are straight up lying about what Horowitz argued.
Logically Incoherent
The fact check is attempting to argue that since VAERS is merely correlation, and does not by definition prove causation, therefore VAERS cannot even indicate that the vaccines might be causing any of the adverse events reported about.
This is shockingly unintelligent and vapid. A 10-year-old kid can readily intuit that if there is persistent correlation between two things, they are more likely than not causally related in some way. (I suspect that what happened here is that the clown who wrote this fact check was feeling excited to invoke a fancy Latin-named concept - “the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy" - that he therefore failed to actually consider whether the application actually made any sense.)
Deliberately lying about how Horowitz represented the VAERS data
The fact check is alleging that Horowitz claimed that the VAERS data demonstrated causation.
From Horowtiz’s article: (emphasis mine)
Does any of this mean we can conclusively say the shots are causing reproductive issues? No. But there certainly are a lot of safety signals that should be followed up on rather than dismissed.
This is a profound lack of self-awareness: Horowitz literally pointed out that he is not conflating correlation with causation. Yet the fact check proceeded to lie and say that Horowitz claimed that the correlation of VAERS reports to vaccination proves that the vaccines caused them.
Fact Check Anti-VAERS Proof #3
What the fact check is trying to insinuate here - at least as best as I can guess - is that so long as there are potential unidentified or uncharacterized factors that might be affecting who reports adverse events, the type of adverse events reported, and/or how the adverse events are reported, the VAERS data is wholly unusable.
This argument is absurd. If we used such a standard, than there would be almost nothing in the world that we can use as evidence of anything, since there are practically always things we don’t know that might be affecting whatever it is that we are observing. Imagine, for instance, applying the fact check’s standard to the following: "since we don't know all of the potentially confounding factors, the number of police shootings of blacks is 'uninformative'".
This is also rank hypocrisy on the part of the fact check. The studies that the fact check cites have plenty of potentially confounding factors that we similarly do not have a good idea about.
Ultimately, the fact check does not provide any justification why specifically for the VAERS data, the potential unknown confounding factors are so profoundly impactful that we must disregard VAERS from any discussion regarding vaccine safety. All it does is toss around unquantified “bumper sticker” lines - anyone can file a VAERS report & we don’t know what biases or incentives are in play affecting who files reports and what they include - without providing any measure of how relevant or impactful these are.
Ironically, the precise argument that the factcheck is making against VAERS - we don’t know enough about the VAERS data to use it - is a far more potent and accurate refutation against the fact check’s own argument against VAERS: We definitely don’t know enough about the alleged confounding factors to draw any inferences from them regarding the quality of VAERS reports!!
Specifically as applied to VAERS, it all comes down to one simple question: Is it unlikely - even taking into account that there are factors involved that we don’t have a good understanding of - for VAERS to contain the reports that it does if the covid vaccines were not causing these types of adverse events? Nothing the fact check provides us demonstrates that it is not unlikely. Ergo, their arguments that VAERS is not evidence whatsoever objectively fail.
The argument Horowitz made from the VAERS data is that the simplest (and arguably most likely) explanation for the increased reports of fertility issues in VAERS is that the vaccine is responsible for at least a significant portion of those reports, not that it is definitively proving the causality. The VAERS database does not contain masses of "unverified information". Every entry that receives a permanent number designation is supposed to have been confirmed at least insofar that the details provided describing the adverse event and patient medical history are accurate. The only thing not "verified" (yet) is whether the events described - that did occur - were the result of the vaccine or not.
Fact Check Claim #11:
Conclusion
In summary, the scientific evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for pregnant and lactating women. While pregnant women were excluded from the initial vaccine clinical trials, later studies showed that vaccination against COVID-19 had no impact on pregnancy outcomes, including in Scotland. In fact, COVID-19 vaccines are particularly beneficial during pregnancy, as pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19, which in turn comes with a higher risk of perinatal mortality.
The 'scientific' evidence in totality does not show any such thing, nor has any genuine case been put forward by the fact check that actually takes into account all of the evidence and attempts to adjudicate the various evidence points. And even were this so, there is certainly no self-evidently obvious conclusion that the totality of evidence shows that the vaccines are safe. The later studies referred to have all been challenged as inept or corrupt. Moreover, there has not been a single 'gold-standard' RCT. So the fact check’s conclusion that the covid vaccines are safe as a factual matter is wholly unsupported.
Miscellaneous Observations
This fact checker, Health Feedback, has published multiple “fact checks” alleging that Daniel Horowitz is a purveyor of medical misinformation.
Daniel Horowitz has probably saved more lives in the past year+ than almost every doctor in the US. For many months he was deluged by an unceasing stream of people who desperately needed treatment for covid and were at prohibitive risk of morbidity or mortality, whom he managed to hook up with one of the sparse handful of doctors in the country who were treating covid. Furthermore, many thousands more survived because they learned about basic elementary ways to prophylax or treat covid before it became serious, such as Vitamin D, Ivermectin, oral/nasal rinses, and a host of others.
Dr. Pierre Kory, perhaps the most visible expert worldwide on the treatment of covid, said about Horowitz:
If Horowitz is guilty of spreading medical misinformation, than I daresay that we would benefit markedly by the increased dissemination of such medical ‘misinformation’.
Another important point to raise is that the fact check neglected to mention the rest of Horowitz’s points showing the possibility that the vaccines are causing harm to the reproductive system, such as the >140,000 responses to a University of Chicago survey asking for women who suffered a menstrual dysregulation post-vaccination.
What Is Science?
One final point is in order. Scientific study and research is predicated upon challenging everything. Every revolutionary discovery was - by definition - successfully challenging the prevailing “available evidence” that was held by conventional wisdom to be unimpeachable.
On the other hand, the fact check wants us to believe that we possess unimpeachable overwhelming evidence for the following proposition:
A novel product, using novel technology, producing a protein never before used in a therapeutic product, in a society that is politically polarized so much so that political considerations often trump all else to many people, where the scientific establishment - especially the manufacturers of pharmaceutical products =- are renowned for their corruption; where there is massive amounts of ongoing excess death and medical issues since the vaccines were deployed, where there are thousands of medical professionals attesting to vaccine injuries they are personally witnessing, where the sheer volume of anecdotal reports is so staggering that they are practically ubiquitous around the whole world; where there is tremendous political incentive for many political and social powerful or influential people to lie about vaccine shortcomings, and where the relevant medical and regulatory authorities collectively have the most powerful conflict of interest ever seen in modern times as they have staked every ounce of their credibility and sense of personal morality upon the vaccines being “safe and effective” as advertised…. is perfectly safe.
The notion that we somehow possess unimpeachable overwhelming evidence for this is cultist dogma, not science.
Thank you for this. It’s exhausting constantly going through these arguments with people. Would you be interested in guest authoring something in this vein for OpenVAERS?
Remember seeing this.