Why does EAG "recommend attendees to be double-vaccinated"?

By gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T16:28 (–28)

I see data that concludes it's better to NOT get double-vaccinated (in 2023), at least for large demographics:

  1. What (counterfactual-inclusive) data leads EA to recommend that all attendees should now get double vaccinated in 2023? 
    [EDIT: it seems EA changed the wording on their page today, perhaps as a result of me posting this. See older version here if interested.]

     
  2. If the benefit does exist, and is slight in one direction... for the population as a whole... is that enough for EA to make such a recommendation for all individual attendees? 

    If the benefit was slight in the opposite direction (which I personally think it is), would EA then publicly recommend all attendees who have not yet been vaccinated, to continue to NOT get vaccinated?

     
  3. Out of curiosity -- does CEA, or any orgs which it supports or is affiliated with, receive donations from pharmaceutical companies?


 

This may not seem like a big deal. 

To me, it is a (potential) example of EA being wrong, about something which is both... fairly basic; and within an area of their expertise (pandemics). 

Side thought: 

These kinds of (potential) errors, from up on high and elsewhere, may happen less often, if EA was even slightly diverse, in terms of diversity of thought, class… anything… 

And these kinds of errors, (which I can name more of), may persist, so long as EA, largely purposefully, remains one of the most exclusive and least-diverse orgs on the planet… while rationalizing that’s good because they are “smarter” than the average person.

At least in my primarily non-EA world, which does include plenty of people who never got the vaccine… the idea that people should be getting double vaccinated now in 2023… sounds out of touch. Because it is.

 

 

- PS I am double vaccinated -

More related info and links here.

Jason @ 2023-01-26T17:48 (+2)

The statement says "we recommend attendees to be up to date with WHO-approved vaccines."

Given the indefiniteness of up-to-date, that's a statement of deference to public health authorities in my book. I think that is appropriate, and would question CEA's judgment if it felt conducting a deep enough dive on vaccine efficacy to make a more specific statement potentially contradicting public health authorities was a good use of resources. The statement doesnt say that people should get a certain number of boosters, or get Moderna, or whatever.

Finally, I don't think a reasonable reader would take CEA's statement here as individualized medical advice.

I strong downvoted this for the somewhat combative tone at the end.

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T18:26 (+2)

Bro they just changed that statement now, seemingly from me posting this? Idk.

Look:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221222171814/https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global/events/ea-global-london-2023

"we recommend attendees to be double-vaccinated with WHO-approved vaccines."

Eli_Nathan @ 2023-01-26T20:18 (+3)

Hi — I can confirm we did update the website now as a result of you posting this, so thanks for flagging this!

Eli_Nathan @ 2023-01-26T20:30 (+3)

The previous recommendation for attendees to be double vaccinated was just written a while ago, and we hadn't updated it until now.

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T20:30 (+1)

That's cool. Thanks for letting me know Eli.

I think it's better in the less specific wording you changed it to. 

On the other hand, I think the updated statement would be best interpreted as, a recommendation to get double-vaccinated AND boosted. Which I don't think there is evidence for, personally.

But what do I know, I'm not a particularly well-educated EA. And I could certainly be wrong.

In other words: I do think the wording now is better; but you probably shouldn't care too much what I think anyways :P

(Fwiw, I did also just mention in separate comment, I was a little too combative ((especially at the end)) in tone. I need to do a separate post on these "side thoughts" with much more nuance and evidence.  And with the overarching theme being that I love EA / CEA, EA people, etc.)

Jason @ 2023-01-26T19:44 (+3)

Does the change affect your criticism of the statement?

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T20:20 (+1)

I first thought it's a slight improvement, as it's a little less specific.

On the other hand, I believe being "up to date with WHO-approved vaccines" probably is best interpreted as being double-vaccinated AND boosted. Which I disagree with more than the original phrasing.

I don't see even slight evidence that this is a good recommendation, certainly not for healthy young men... but even for other demographics as well. (keeping in mind natural immunity backdrop, and recent vs old strains backdrop... and then comparing slight risks both ways)

(Also, I agree with you, that my "side thoughts" at the end were a little combative, and need further exploration and evidence, and thus may have been better suited for a separate post. Good point.)

gogreatergood @ 2023-04-22T02:53 (+1)

If anyone happens to ever read this post in the distant future... I'd like to say, my "side point" at the end of this, was poorly thought out / poorly written / unkind.

Also, this post as a whole could have been framed a little better. I see some 'background' ideas that I could have included for better context, for one.

But in general I think it's better to leave up eh writings than delete it, so I'm not going to edit or delete this.

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T16:43 (+1)

As expected, this is getting more downvotes overall, at least for now.

I hope to get some feedback as to what specific nuances anyone thinks I am missing.

Jeroen De Ryck @ 2023-01-26T17:53 (+4)

At the risk of wasting my time on this.

 1 ("the risk of myocarditis was higher after vaccination than SARS-CoV-2 infection"); 

The quote is incomplete, you omitted an important part. This is the full quote: "Associations were stronger in younger men <40 years for all vaccines and after a second dose of mRNA-1273 vaccine, where the risk of myocarditis was higher after vaccination than SARS-CoV-2 infection." You also ignore the overall conclusion of the paper which says "Overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination". 

 2 ("In boys with prior infection and no comorbidities, even one dose carried more risk than benefit").

The second study you link there is also only about male adolescents. This study has a general conclusion as well: "Our findings strongly support individualized paediatric COVID-19 vaccination strategies which weigh protection against severe disease vs. risks of vaccine-associated myo/pericarditis." I don't know about the other study, but this one uses VAERS data, which has been abused due to its unverifiability.

Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway recommend to NOT get double vaccinated (moderna), for large demographics (and these recommendations came when the covid risk was higher than it is now).

Indeed, as did Belgium. Important to note here is that these restrictions were only for a specific subset of the population, and only for non-mRNA vaccines. mRNA vaccines are fine. This is not a reason to not get vaccinated at all. 

the vaccine does not stop transmission

It doesn't have to in order to be effective. It slows down transmission and reduces the number of hospitalized people and deaths. It also reduces severity of symptoms for those who are vaccinated and go get the virus.

side point: boosters are not recommended for large demographics, by various studies due to harm they cause;

Have you read even the abstract of this paper? You are purposely framing it in such a way that supports your argument. The paper talks specifically about mandates, not recommendations, as EAG does. The study also mentions in its limitations that many adverse effects may be due to the nocebo effect or anxiety. The data from this study comes in part from the Wellcome Trust, which is known for having financial stakes in pharmaceutical companies which remains unreported in its conflict of interest and that it gains financially from the pandemic.   The WHO has recommended the vaccine anyway.

The reason for your downvotes is that you seem to believe vaccines, at least at this point in the pandemic, are harmful, but most of your evidence supports the opposite of what you say. 

Monica @ 2023-01-26T17:45 (+3)

Very strange to me that you call a disease that killed roughly 267k people in the U.S. in 2022 "not particularly dangerous." 2022 deaths were almost all omicron variants.

Few if any attendees at EAG are children, so it is hard to see the relevance of vaccine risk-benefit calculation for  young boys.

You raise some valid points but I think you post got so downvoted because it is hard to take your overall concern seriously when you link to wildly unscientific and frankly loony-sounding articles like the free press one (It could have been written about literally anything: "have you noticed that ever since the Seattle Seahawks won the super bowl, the rate of gun violence in the U.S. has skyrocketed?? I'm just asking questions!")

I say this as someone who is generally opposed to vaccine mandates and thinks these sorts of decision are best left to individuals outside of very extreme situations.

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-26T18:22 (+1)
  •  I linked to a variety of studies, which show that basic risk-benefit calculation says: for large demographics, do NOT get double vaccinated in current times. 

    Please be specific about what I am posting that is "wildly unscientific."

     
  • Yes one of my linked studies was specific to teenage boys. My other links include men 30 and under etc. In either case, we're talking about large demographics of millions of people that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, and which certainly cover EAG attendees. I'm not sure why you would zoom to just one of my sources on teenage boys, although I did think that was important to note as well. 

    I would like to see these risk-benefit frameworks for other age groups as well, for current times. And which include basic background info like natural immunity.

    If you have links to any info like this I'm interested. These are just the good risk-benefit studies I could find personally.

     
  • The Free Press link at the end, I included only as a concise thru-way to a variety of other studies.

    I don't think you read it; you seem to believe it has the exact opposite conclusion of what you are implying it does. At least, I have no idea what you are getting at with your analogy.

     
  • We may have different definitions of "not particularly dangerous," but this is my least important point and I'm happy to let it go.
Monica @ 2023-01-26T21:24 (+2)

 I linked to a variety of studies, which show that basic risk-benefit calculation says: for large demographics, do NOT get double vaccinated in current times. 

Please be specific about what I am posting that is "wildly unscientific."

I was specifically referring to the free press article that you linked to at the end . I understand that the authors are not explicitly saying that covid vaccines caused sudden deaths, and for the record I take seriously both the failure of the public health establishment to be transparent (about many different covid-related issues) and also the risk of myocarditis associated with vaccines. The article has terrible reasoning throughout, but just as an example, it reads

The second study, from Germany, reported autopsy findings from 25 people who died unexpectedly within 20 days of receiving a Covid-19 vaccination. In four, acute myocarditis appeared to be the cause of death. Notably, the four affected persons were older adults. These results are not definitive, but the authors called for more detailed studies exploring the possibility of fatal adverse events from the vaccine. 

There is never any mention (in the linked article--did not read the original study) of how many people were in the population of vaccinated individuals that the study looked at nor the incidence of myocarditis in the unvaccinated or even pre-covid population. These kind of cherry-picked and context-free statistics are present throughout the article and it has a completely disingenuous tone of "we're just asking questions" when in fact it seems clear to me that the goal is to intentionally mislead the reader about the risks of vaccination.

 With that said, I fully believe that it should be up to individuals to weigh these risk for themselves. Which is consistent with EAG "recommending" vaccination--I personally don't really care if they "recommend" daily handstand practice--there are bigger credibility fish to free.

gogreatergood @ 2023-01-27T05:35 (+1)
  • If you are not liking that one study, because it doesn't do a risk-benefit for both sides... then just refer to the other studies I link more prominently to, which do.
     
  • If you think it is "terrible reasoning" to not do a risk-benefit of both sides, before making explicit or implicit statements... we are certainly on the same page... This is my issue with EAG's recommendation. 
     
  • Handstands are not in the same ballpark as hospitalization for permanent heart damage. Perhaps I take this more seriously because I know people this happened to. Just like I also know people who died from covid. -- Let's keep on top of the available risk-benefit basics, and realize that the situation today is much different than 1, 2, and 3 years ago. 

    Also, yes, this is just a little fine-print statement from EAG, but I see the same statements and logic elsewhere, it seems embedded.
     
  • Thank you Monica for taking some time out of your day to engage with me and my ideas and links, and for keeping an eye on the viewpoints we have in common, our similarities. I appreciate you. And I think you are making good points.