Trust the Science or Trust the Scientific Method?

“Trust the science” is a phrase that we have heard ad nauseam over the last year.  What this actually means is: “we don’t understand how these vaccines work, but we should take them anyway because they are going to save humanity.” We are told to “do our part” or “stop the spread,” often by people that have little knowledge about disease transmission or how vaccine intervention effects disease propagation within a population.  There are several characteristics that need to be considered before an intervention is made, especially when it comes to infectious diseases within a global population.  Currently, we are being told that EVERYONE needs to be vaccinated to control this disease, but this is not how vaccines work. I think this messaging has led to large-scale confusion and social strife between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.  Vaccination science is presented in terms of “number needed to treat” (NNT).  An NNT is the number of people that are needed to receive a vaccine to prevent one illness.  It is an intrinsic property of a drug, not the disease.  Below are the NNTs for the three vaccines approved in the United States for Emergency Use:

Pfizer: 119 vaccines needed to be administered to prevent 1 illness

Moderna: 81 vaccines needed to be administered to prevent 1 illness

Johnson & Johnson: 84 vaccines needed to be administered to prevent 1 illness

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8057721/

When trying to understand infectious disease within a population, it is important to: know the reproductive (or transmissibility) rate (R_O) of the pathogen; discern mortality/morbidity associated with the disease;  appreciate the severity (or lack thereof) or threat of disease within the population, identify high-risk subpopulations, understand long-term sequela of people that are infected by the pathogen; and recognize consequences of vaccine administration.  Unfortunately, in medicine, occasionally the “cure” is worse than the disease.  When we harm people in an attempt to help them, we call this “iatrogenic.” It should also be acknowledged that disease is on a continuum, in all cases, and disease severity is variable between individuals.  The COVID-19 situation has created major confusion and hysteria, promulgated by the CDC, some would argue by design.

Manifestation of symptoms is paramount, not only to seek treatment, but to be administered treatment, only by informed consent from a practitioner.  With COVID-19, we abandoned the idea of symptomatology as the basis of disease and we began believing every positive test WAS disease.  This is not how pathophysiology works.  As an example, for total hips and knees, we screen patients for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization in an attempt to prevent post-operative infections.  If the patient’s nasal mucosa is colonized with MRSA and has a positive test, we consider the patient to be colonized, not infected.  Just because MRSA is present, doesn’t mean that the person is manifesting disease.  Same with a positive COVID-19 test.  Colonization does not equal pathophysiological disease, nor can the patient spread the virus at such a concentration that will cause disease in another person.  Because the data collected by the Health Department and CDC decided that any positive test meant the presence of disease, our data has been grossly contaminated with bad, irresponsible science. It has been so poorly collected at such a massive scale, we will never get the true results of the percentage of people that have symptomatic disease.  Our public officials pushed treatment (quarantine, masking, social distancing, etc.) even in the absence of disease (symptoms). The public was trained to assume everyone was infected until proven otherwise.  This is not science.

The scientific method was developed in the 17th Century; it is a method of answering a question by objectively testing a hypothesis to get accurate results by controlling for certain variables and manipulating one variable at the time.  It is a way to get to accurate results and establish how certain variables are associated with one another.  Throughout the years, there have been design parameters and policies put in place for specific reasons to prevent injury to humans.  There are eight phases of a vaccine trial to achieve FDA approval: Exploratory Stage, Pre-Clinical Stage, Investigational New Drug (IND) Application, Phase I Trials, Phase II Trials, Phase III Trials, Post-Licensure Monitoring, and Phase IV Trials.  Here is a brief description of all of the trial phases and typical duration in each phase:

Exploratory Stage: Basic laboratory research (2-4 years); they claim that the mRNA science has been tested for a couple of decades.

Pre-Clinical Stage: Animal trials (1-2 years)

IND Application: Submitted to the FDA and has to be approved by the institutional review board, it must include description of manufacturing methods and testing processes (30 days).

Phase I Trials: Initial adult testing with 20-80 individuals to test for safety and efficacy in a small group (variable length, but at least 6 months)

Phase II Trials: Larger human subjects with several hundred individuals to determine vaccine safety, immunogenicity, proposed doses, schedule of immunizations and method of delivery. (6 months – 2 years)

Phase III Trials:  Larger groups containing several thousands to tens of thousands of subjects, monitoring for safety, efficacy and immunogenicity on a large-scale. These are double-blind (gold standard), placebo controlled studies (1-4 years).

Post-Licensure Monitoring: Vaccine adverse reaction reporting system (VAERS) data

Phase IV Trials: Manufacturer continues to monitor drug (1-4 years)

The COVID-19 vaccine was released from four different companies in less than a year (with more on the horizon): Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.  AstraZeneca is not approved for Emergency Use Authorization in the United States. Historically, even with familiar vaccine technology, the fastest a vaccine could get to market would normally be 5 years (to ensure safety and efficacy to a human population).  The technology that we have chosen to use, not only was approved for use much faster than any other vaccine in history, it is a technology we have NEVER used for vaccines, or treatment of any disease for that matter.  Here is the most current United States VAERS data from the COVID-19 vaccine that we have as of July 23, 2021 (adverse events CAUSED by the vaccine):

Deaths: 11,940

Hospitalization: 40,991

Urgent Care Visits: 65,067

Office Visits: 88,920

Anaphylactic Reactions: 4,110

Bell’s Palsy (facial paralysis): 3,714

Miscarriages: 1,272

Heart Attacks: 4,799

Myocarditis/Pericarditis: 3,201

Permanently Disabled: 12,808

Thrombocytopenia: 1,932

Life-Threatening Reactions: 11,199

Severe Allergic Reactions: 22,286

Tinnitus (ringing in the ears): 6,123

https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data

I do not consider, from this data, that these “vaccines” are safe and effective.

So, to answer the question, I trust the scientific method far more than I “trust the science.”  The scientific method was subverted, in this case, for a virus that is characterized as disease by a positive PCR test.  PCR testing to “diagnose” a disease is shameful and wrong.  There is a very high false-positivity rate to this type of testing, which has enabled the CDC to manipulate public hysteria at their discretion.  Fauci and his underlings have been wildly inconsistent with their messaging throughout the pandemic.  This is the largest bastardization of science and the scientific method in history.