Article: Do Childhood Vaccines Cause Tornadoes? It hasn’t been ruled out. (The Atlantic)

[ahimsa]

Article in The Atlantic (paywall):

Do Childhood Vaccines Cause Tornadoes? It hasn’t been ruled out.

Let me make a small concession on behalf of the medical community: The CDC is technically correct when it asserts, as it did this week in a surprise update to its website, that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

But the underlying logic of this change clearly goes beyond the wispy double negative. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already said that he believes in the affirmative: Vaccines do cause autism. And because he is now secretary of Health and Human Services, he can order his bureaucracy to lean ever further toward that same belief. A causal link hasn’t not been found, the CDC is saying now—at least not completely, not quite yet.

If this pretzel logic is confusing, that’s the point. Bewilderment and doubt are among the anti-vaccine movement’s most powerful weapons.

It’s true that doctors cannot say with absolute certainty that some ingredient in some vaccine, or combination of vaccines, does not contribute in some way, however small or large, to the rise in autism diagnoses.

We also can’t rule out the possibility that infant vaccines cause tornadoes or bad movies. Uncertainty is inseparable from science.

Link to same article on MSN (no paywall):

https://www.msn.com/en-us/science/general/do-childhood-vaccines-cause-tornadoes/ar-AA1QV10w

 

[rvallee]

Stares pointedly at the exact same argument for psychological something-or-whatever where that reasoning is conveniently ignored

Ah, well, nevertheless. It's good for an entire profession of experts to have blatant double standards. Nothing bad whatsoever ever comes out of that and it's totally not a major driver of the massive influence and widespread beliefs about alternative medicine and pseudoscience in general.

 

[Chandelier]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/health/fda-children-deaths-covid-vaccines.html

(Paywall)

AI Summary:

F.D.A. Attributes 10 Children’s Deaths to Covid Vaccines

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed data suggesting that at least 10 children may have died "because of" receiving a Covid vaccination, possibly due to myocarditis, a condition involving heart inflammation.
This was disclosed in a memo by Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s vaccine division director. The memo, which was not publicly released, did not include details on the children's ages, health conditions, or vaccine manufacturers involved.
This revelation comes amid ongoing debates on vaccine safety, with critics, including vaccine skeptic Dr. Prasad, urging more scrutiny of vaccine approval processes. Public health experts, however, remain concerned about the lack of context, such as the death rates from Covid itself, which has killed over 2,100 children in the U.S. Since the start of the pandemic.
The findings have not been peer-reviewed, and experts like Dr. Paul Offit emphasize that vaccine-related myocarditis is rare, and hospitalizations for vaccine-related cases are generally less severe than those caused by the virus itself.
The memo has sparked controversy, especially ahead of an upcoming meeting of the CDC's vaccine committee, where vaccine schedules will be reviewed.