Randomized controlled trial limitations: a case study of vaccine efficacy in COVID-19 epidemiology

Posted on March 24, 2022 by admin

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the “gold standard” in clinical medicine. Perhaps for this reason, health authorities all over the world have assumed the universal validity of RCTs and have not recognized that RCT results may not be valid everywhere or for the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trial as a case study, we illustrate the limitations of the RCT and show that the results may be inappropriate for COVID-19 epidemiology. This critique explains why health authorities have not recognized that the vaccines have failed to stem the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic. This insight has also broader implications for the global pharmaceutical industry. Continue reading →

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Measure of vaccine efficacy relevant for COVID-19 epidemiology in the United Kingdom

Posted on January 31, 2022 by admin

The vaccine efficacy measure relevant for COVID-19 epidemiology, should be based on real-world data, not on clinical data which have data selection biases indicated in this paper.  Recent United Kingdom data suggest that age-dependent asymptomatic breakthrough cases and natural immunity of the unvaccinated, may have led to negative vaccine efficacy where vaccinated infectivity is higher than unvaccinated infectivity among major age groups.  The phenomenon of relative risk enhancement of vaccines among certain cohorts suggests diminishing effectiveness of the vaccination strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Epidemiological impact of COVID-19 fully vaccinated population

Posted on December 30, 2021 by admin

The epidemiological impact of increased vaccination on COVID-19 pandemic is investigated by a study of the long-term cross-sectional correlation of 98 countries using the database of Our World in Data.  Higher percentages of fully vaccinated population are found in 94 countries to be associated with higher increases in infections in 2021 relative to 2020.

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MMT, Helicopter Money and Monetary Socialism

Posted on July 2, 2019 by admin

Previous blog posts on modern monetary theory (MMT) and helicopter money have led to the following interview with John Adams and Martin North of Digital Finance Analytics, shown on the YouTube channel In The Interests of The People:

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Posted in Econoclasm, Economics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Economic Charlatans of Modern Money

Posted on March 9, 2019 by admin

Before the latter parts of the nineteenth century, no one understood the origins and causes of diseases, because the ideas of germs and bacteria were not fully conceived.  Medicine was not science.  There was no systematic account of diseases or records of their failed remedies from the use of all sorts of potions, snake oils and therapies.  Without an empirical foundation and pathology, doctors were quacks and charlatans who recycled the same snake oils for curing illnesses.

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Posted in Econoclasm, Economics | Tagged , | 4 Comments