Vinay, So glad to see you writing again...your level-headed analysis has been deeply missed. This entire arc on dementia is so prima facie absurd it is difficult to know what to say when people bring it up. Thanks for fighting the good fight once again.
Thank you for presenting reality quickly. I have dementia in close family and it is cruel to see fantastic headlines that even prompt some sense of hope. I know better than blindly believe headlines but want to always think - there is some hope. Not this time.
I could write a similar research paper. I have cold sores. It's very very painful depending on the location in the mouth. When Ambesol came out, the commercial tag line was "pain is gone before you can say Ambesol!!" With beautiful model smiling, of course. So out of shear curiosity, I decided to say "ambesol" out loud while I placed a drop on my sore. I got to AM.....AH!!!! SHI%%%%TTTT F'CKKKKKKKKKKK" It worked impossibly fast, but they left out the extreme pain. Sometimes, impossibly fast outcome is possible. But probably not in this magical shingles vaccine.
Or creating other issues to confound the problem, TerriM. Will anyone study the negative consequences of getting a shingles vaccine? Vinay is the best at these takedowns of garbage studies. I wonder if he sends copies of his newsletter to journalists and study authors?
Good Grief! (I'm getting images of Charlie Brown getting ready to kick the football Lucy is 'holding' ready for him.) People are desperate to have something good to say about dementia - I recall the hopes for vitamin E, statins, and aspirin. On the other hand shingles is nasty - so I've had my HZ shots.
So many types of analysis that try to create a synthetic comparison group on the basis of "administrative" data (i.e., billing) are just stupid - with no ability at all to model either the complexities of personality or the processes of persuasion by healthcare professionals. Its as if biomedicine doesn't want to believe that anything beyond molecules mater. For example, almost all of the CMMI models are compared to synthetic cohorts matched on admin data but that don't control for anything else associated with either the person agreeing to participate or the professionals choosing to offer the model of care.
However, in the JAMA paper (from Australia), they would seem to have a more reasonable instrumental variable? in the introduction of a vaccine recommendation dependent upon age-cohort. The policy change implemented at an arbitrary date meant that just slightly older people missed their chance at a free shot whereas the rate of vaccination (at some point) rose to 17% among the slightly younger people. And the effect of HZ vaccination did not predict other vaccinations as would be the case if they were driven by an underlying conscientiousness/hypochondrial difference. Although I do have to admit getting a bit lost in the supplements and technical aspects of the analysis - I still don't understand how a 20 year birth cohort range can be refer to as "these groups born *immediately* on either side of the date of birth-based eligibility threshold"
But more importantly, since we are talking about Australia, has everyone watched "Mr. In-between"? available on Prime (highly recommend).
Vinay, So glad to see you writing again...your level-headed analysis has been deeply missed. This entire arc on dementia is so prima facie absurd it is difficult to know what to say when people bring it up. Thanks for fighting the good fight once again.
Not a doctor, but I love your analysis, skepticism, and cheekiness.
And the best line: “Show me a healthy person, and I will show you someone who hasn’t gotten enough tests.”
How about "The earth is flat because it looks flat when you look around in every direction." I howled att that one.
Vinay, this post made me laugh. Pretty rare for a medical paper!
Thank you for presenting reality quickly. I have dementia in close family and it is cruel to see fantastic headlines that even prompt some sense of hope. I know better than blindly believe headlines but want to always think - there is some hope. Not this time.
I could write a similar research paper. I have cold sores. It's very very painful depending on the location in the mouth. When Ambesol came out, the commercial tag line was "pain is gone before you can say Ambesol!!" With beautiful model smiling, of course. So out of shear curiosity, I decided to say "ambesol" out loud while I placed a drop on my sore. I got to AM.....AH!!!! SHI%%%%TTTT F'CKKKKKKKKKKK" It worked impossibly fast, but they left out the extreme pain. Sometimes, impossibly fast outcome is possible. But probably not in this magical shingles vaccine.
Thanks for covering this. The fast turnaround time makes me very much wonder if the vaccines are killing people who were developing dementia.
Or creating other issues to confound the problem, TerriM. Will anyone study the negative consequences of getting a shingles vaccine? Vinay is the best at these takedowns of garbage studies. I wonder if he sends copies of his newsletter to journalists and study authors?
Good Grief! (I'm getting images of Charlie Brown getting ready to kick the football Lucy is 'holding' ready for him.) People are desperate to have something good to say about dementia - I recall the hopes for vitamin E, statins, and aspirin. On the other hand shingles is nasty - so I've had my HZ shots.
So many types of analysis that try to create a synthetic comparison group on the basis of "administrative" data (i.e., billing) are just stupid - with no ability at all to model either the complexities of personality or the processes of persuasion by healthcare professionals. Its as if biomedicine doesn't want to believe that anything beyond molecules mater. For example, almost all of the CMMI models are compared to synthetic cohorts matched on admin data but that don't control for anything else associated with either the person agreeing to participate or the professionals choosing to offer the model of care.
However, in the JAMA paper (from Australia), they would seem to have a more reasonable instrumental variable? in the introduction of a vaccine recommendation dependent upon age-cohort. The policy change implemented at an arbitrary date meant that just slightly older people missed their chance at a free shot whereas the rate of vaccination (at some point) rose to 17% among the slightly younger people. And the effect of HZ vaccination did not predict other vaccinations as would be the case if they were driven by an underlying conscientiousness/hypochondrial difference. Although I do have to admit getting a bit lost in the supplements and technical aspects of the analysis - I still don't understand how a 20 year birth cohort range can be refer to as "these groups born *immediately* on either side of the date of birth-based eligibility threshold"
But more importantly, since we are talking about Australia, has everyone watched "Mr. In-between"? available on Prime (highly recommend).