26 Comments
Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

This makes so much sense. I work in a hospital operating room and we have 100+ staff and we cannot social distance some of the time. All of 2020 and most of 2021 I was expecting a time where a lot of staff would be out with covid. It finally happened at the end of 2021. At the same EXACT time (about a two week span during the peak of omicron in our city), a large percentage of vaccinated staff was out with a "mysterious serious illness" (that perfectly mimicked covid symptoms) that tested negative for covid, flu, and RSV. So am I to believe tough-as-nails OR staff are calling in sick for days on end with the common cold? Or that the vaccinated individuals are also catching covid along with the rest of the staff?

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Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

This whole house if cards needs to crumble. I saw this phenomena firsthand with my cousin and then my teenage daughter. My cousin was sure she had COVID in February of 2020 but had several negative PCR tests. Then she was tested for antibodies a few months later and had them. In my daughter's case she had a bad cold but tested negative on PCR and continued attending high school. Two months later a vaccinated student in her class got Covid, forcing her into quarantine and testing. At that point she tested positive even though completely asymptomatic. It's like the world has turned upside down on disease prevention

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Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

That last sentence - wow.

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Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

It’s very interesting to read information like this and then witness first-hand these things happening around me. The fact that this is happening so blatantly in front of peoples’ faces with nothing to cover it up but thinly veiled lies, and they still can’t see it…. will prolong this issue and issues like it indefinitely. Thank you for not staying silent.

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Feb 26, 2022·edited Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

About a month ago I had a common cold based on symptoms and duration of illness. Feb 25. fine and no vax!

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Congratulations. You had a cold.

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Remember when a cold WAS a cold and not COVID? So simple.

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Chris, you know that the pcr did not (and still does not) have primers for SARS2 proteins? it says that in the application for EUA. CDC admitted this in June 2021. FDA said future pcr tests have to discriminate between flu and cold. The pcr test was made to be sensitive for flu A&B, strep, adeno virus, strep, and a plant virus medley. If I understand correctly, here they did serology plus symptoms. I can see why the jabbed would not come up with a pcr+ especially with the overwhelming spike production perhaps overwhelming anything that could have made a + test? So, it is interesting that a negative pcr crops up. .

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author

It’s mean to be specific for other viruses. Please provide links to what you’re referring to so I can take a look.

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Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

Curious, because an ER doc friend told me he tested every patient who came in last winter (a year ago) for covid, flu A, and for B. Almost no one tested positive for either flu. Most tested positive for covid.

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Feb 26, 2022Liked by Chris Masterjohn, PhD

That is VERY interesting!

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Chris, your numbers do not make sense. They initially found 314 PCR Confirmed, 58 Probables, 46 Suspects, and 280 Non-Suspects. PCR neg probables + PCR+= 314 + 58 = 372

IgM + in 50% of probables

IgG + in 60% of the probables

Even assuming all of the probables were COVID, probables = 58/372 of the covid cases, which is 15.5% of cases. You state that 79% of those hospitalized with covid are PCR negative. You should state that 15.5% of those hospitalized with COVID are PCR negative. The rest of your analysis therefore is based on a false 79%. As a clinician you has spent most of my career caring for critically ill patients, we know that the ICUs are filled with non-vaccinated patients, >90% of ICU patients. Unfortunately you are misinterpreting data.

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author

No, you are not even getting the two completely separate studies straight.

The 79% figure is totally unrelated to this study and is plainly in the below link, table 3, row 1, second to last column:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e3.htm

The current study was tiny and pre-vaccine and is not used at all to determine the proportion PCR negative. That would be absurd since it has only ~400 hospitalizations vs the study used for this purpose which has ~89,000. Further, since the vaccines actually *cause* the negative test among those with COVID-like illness (this is the central finding of every single vaccine trial) it is totally inappropriate to derive this proportion from this pre-vaccine study.

What this is actually used for is to get a sense of how many of the PCR-negatives have COVID.

If you stipulate that they not have a compelling alternative diagnosis (probable vs suspect) and take the IgM positivity, and assume that 100% of PCR-confirmed have genuine COVID, then you get 50% positive IGM divided by 72.5% positive IGM equals 69%.

That is, is there is a 72.5% chance that someone hospitalized with COVID-like illness that is genuine COVID has positive IGM, then a 50% positivity rate in the group suggests a 69% rate of genuine COVID.

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Thank you for your work. About your calculation, I expect he'll say that we could detect covid so reliably (only missing 15.5%) because they didn't have the vaccine (which he says reduces the chance of a positive test by 95%).

It seems to me this is an interesting hypothesis given the data in this article. I wish I knew more data like the fraction unvaccinated in ICUs and a scientist would seek out any available data like that (and talk to experts) before trying to influence people. I think he's starting from a conclusion and then working backwards to create a semi-intricate hypothesis. That's fine with enough corroborating evidence... However even in the Pfizer data he presents, if the vaccine is just masking covid, then you'd expect an increase in "covid-like illness" equal to the decrease in covid, but in fact, "covid-like illness" also goes down! Not proof that Chris is wrong, but let's not cherry pick data.

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author

No I'm not starting from a conclusion. I'm working with the data available. You are ignoring the fact that this is being systematically obfuscated and held back. This is not disputable. It has been clear since the EUA for the Pfizer trial where this data was leaked, never mentioned again, and never found in any trial report. CDC could disclose the data you ask for and will not. It has to be FOIA requested. It would be unconscionably immoral to withhold this analysis simply because they refuse to be transparent with the data, and it would also be extremely ineffective. The data you ask for is exactly what I want to see and will not surface without either successful court battles or political pressure.

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There has been daily and weekly published data on-line from departments of public health and hospitals across the US and around the world concerning % ICU patients who are vaccinated vs unvaccinated. It has consistently been > 90% unvaccinated. This information is widely available.

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author

How can you read my analysis and then not see the incredibly obvious fatal flaw in that data, that it concerns only those who test positive and totally ignores those who are equally sick and test negative?

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Chris, why do you suppose that no hospitalists are sounding the alarms on the vast number of vaccinated patients with all the symptoms of Covid but no positive test?

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Well we knew back in early 2021 that at least for Pfizer, it reduced the risk of testing positive dramatically, yet there was little difference in covid-like illness between the vaccinated and controls.

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/

"All attention has focused on the dramatic efficacy results: Pfizer reported 170 PCR confirmed covid-19 cases, split 8 to 162 between vaccine and placebo groups. But these numbers were dwarfed by a category of disease called “suspected covid-19”—those with symptomatic covid-19 that were not PCR confirmed. According to FDA’s report on Pfizer’s vaccine, there were “3410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”

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Hi dumb dumb

You conveniently left out that 30% of "probables" were tested outside of the 7-day period when a PCR is most likely to be positive.

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Chris,

What are your thoughts on the rct published in Nejm?

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2113017

Placebo group had significantly more severe disease. No PCR test needed to interpret the results.

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Mar 11, 2022·edited Mar 11, 2022

You know, I think that article is unlikely to convince Chris, because it only reports on cases that have a positive covid test. In the Methods section, I see that they require a positive covid test. (I suspect that the authors would have noticed if the rate of severe covid in the placebo group matched the rate of severe covid-like illness in the vaccine group! Just like hospitals would have noticed. And developers of covid tests.)

On the other hand, many studies show that there's definitely a benefit to testing negative! Like this new study about slightly (but statistically significant) accelerated cognitive decline after testing positive in older folks. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5

It's not precisely the data that Chris is calling for. But it shows at the least that it's better to get the vaccine and test negative because your cognitive decline will be less!

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Could there be any such thing as vaccines causing false-positive PCR swab? I ask on account of people finding apparent acute immunosuppression where covid spikes 2 weeks after vaccines.

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So talk to the Danes. They're supposedly doing the best epidemiology. Or the Israelis. If you don't have your own contacts, get John Campbell to put you in touch.

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author

All of their data does the same thing, zero in on who tests positive. All of it.

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So talk to the Danes. They're supposedly doing the best epidemiology. Or the Israelis. If you don't have your own contacts, get John Campbell to put you in touch.

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