The Nytimes 'Science' reporter keeps getting it wrong

A journalist without curiosity is a PR agent

The New York Times Science Reporter continues to mis-frame articles. Consider the latest. Here is what she gets wrong.

Yes, COVID vaccines make some people feel terrible. Some take a day or two off work. Some have high fevers and rigors and spend time under the blanket. So the question naturally is: Is the benefit of the Nth dose big enough to justify the negative side effects?

And this may vary by dose and age and prior covid! The first dose for an 85 year old (who never had COVID) in Jan 2021 had a large benefit, likely offsetting any harms. The 6th dose for a 20 year old who had covid in 2023 is likely small, and side effects almost certainly offset any gain.

Apoorva doesn’t even understand that framing. Instead she blindly accepts the narrative that feeling shitty from vax = more Ab = better health. A daisy chain of assumptions. She writes:

But antibody titers are not the question. The question is whether there is a reduction in severe disease, hospitalization and death. This was shown to be the case in randomized trials for the first 2 doses in late 2020 and early 2021. No one has shown this to be the case for the 6th dose in late 2023.

Two things can be true. The side effects of dose 1 might have been worth it for many people who had not had COVID in Q1 2021, but as people have had and recovered from COVID, as the virus has evolved into less lethal variants, the side effects of the 6th dose may actually be net harmful to many groups (particularly young men).

I do not understand why this reporter cannot consider the fact that a medical intervention can have diminishing positive returns over time with sustained harms. This is literally true for nearly all medications.

Take a aspirin after a heart attack. You prevent platelets from clumping and improve survival. Take 100000, and you die. Do you not get it?

Finally, none of this research has anything to do with the fall booster. This is all old news.

Yet Apoorva writes

But that just isn’t true. This study does not apply to current variants and the 5th or 6th dose.

Apoorva only talks to experts who support her bizarre worldview: Pro masking kids, pro school closures, and pro boosting people with unproven drug products for diseases they already had.

She is not a journalist. She is an opinionated person with no medical training, and a threat to public understanding of science.

** Tomorrows post also on NYTimes and will be devastating **