This is the Gazette article link here. And this is the old non peer reviewed version of study Dr Labos mis-interpreted, linked here. This is the new peer reviewed version here.
Article Title: Christopher Labos: Vaccine study that has people worried is being misinterpreted. Published in the Montreal Gazette Feb 7 2023.
The errors starts with the secondary headline under the article title. Says, “The Cleveland study does not say the booster increases the risk of catching covid rather it reduces infection by 30%”. Wrong, it says both.
The “reduces infection by 30%” part is true, the rest is completely untrue. The Cleveland study does say, quote: “The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting covid”, word search for the phrase. And the new version of the study says this 4 times in different ways. See top of page 9 of old version of the study linked to in his article. And the middle of page 9 says it again.
So how can the vaccine reduce infection by 30% and still make you more likely to get covid with more boosters? From the study "The multi-variable analysis also found that, the more recent the last prior COVID-19 episode was the lower the risk of COVID-19, and the greater the number of vaccine doses previously received the higher the risk of COVID-19.”
Also read section at bottom of page 8 and top of page 9 of the older study the article linked to, that explains it, sort of. Page 12 also. It appears that timing is one factor.
Then he spends a third of the article telling us about pre-prints in general, and tries to make the study seem bad just because it was a pre-print, with no actual facts about why the study may or may not be bad. Using innuendo to smear the study. Not all preprints are bad. And by the way, this Cleveland study is no longer a pre-print but peer reviewed, it’s a good study.
He also quote's a NEJM study, where he mix's up vaccine effectiveness at preventing infection with preventing hospitalizations. The NEJM study is talking about preventing Severe Omicron infection or hospitalizations, as it's Title says.
We are talking about whether the boosted are more likely to get “infected”. The NEJM study has no relevance here.
Another third of his article is telling us all about Table 2 and Table 2 fallacy, leading people to believe this was a problem with the study. He said “the study ‘appears’ to fall victim to Table 2 fallacy”. Appears to? What does that mean? He never said what the problem was? Did they really have a problem with Table 2 fallacy? What was it? Or is he just using innuendo again to smear the study?
Article then says “researchers should adjust for prior vaccination”. Researchers should? Is he talking about researchers in general, or saying the Cleveland study did not make the correct adjustments? If so what were they? So more innuendo? Looks to me like they did, see under “Methods and Statistical Analysis”, and also the Supplementary appendix.
His whole article is mis-leading generality’s and innuendo with no actual facts to de-bunk the article.
Is this a good study? I dont know, but I do know the Gazette article never did actually tell us what was specifically wrong with the study, if anything.
Dr. Labos also missed, or ignored the part under the “Discussion” where the Cleveland study mentions a peer reviewed Iceland study in JAMA and two others that also found the same problem, the more boosters you have the more likely to get covid. It references numbers 7, 21, 23 and 24 in the references for these other studies. Curios why he ignored those? This is important, the audience should have been told about those so they can Make “informed choice”.
Iceland study suggests the more boosters the more likely to get covid problem seems to be a few months after getting a shot, not right away.
I also know of more studies that mention also with the same problem. Here3095 and here2139, and here2095 word search for "negative VE". I believe this is a real problem and he's ignoring it.
Perhaps this is why the WHO, Germany, the UK, France and others, are no longer recommending boosters for healthy people under age 65, here and here. Why are we??
To conclude, Dr. Labos never did tell us specifically what was wrong with the study, just used innuendo to smear it. And the start of his article tries to smear study by saying governor Ron DeSantis and "some people" used the study to show problems with the vaccine. Looks like DeSantis and the "some people" may be correct.
What was Dr Labos's, a TV doctor, motivation in writing this article? Was he asked to smear the study? Heaven forbid, we cant have people thinking the vaccine can make you more likely to get covid can we.
Thoughts.
This NBC article describes how some vaccinated people are getting covid five and six times.
European regulators warned us back in Jan 2022 that if we keep boosting we could, "over saturate the immune system", as they put it. Here and here. Are we suffering from "immune imprinting"? Here and here.
Did we really think we could just keep boosting over and over with these "leaky" covid shots with no consequences?
Frank Parker