Good (paywalled) article by Tom Whipple addressing claims made by antivaxxers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-to-argue-with-a-covid-antivaxxer-rdvwfs8gt
Summary:
Claim: Vaccines have caused mass deaths and disability.
Response: Vaccinate (almost) whole population and report anything that happens in the days afterwards, then there are going to be a whole lot of things reported (including a man's claim that his penis grew). Statisticians have identified a very slight extra risk of clotting with the AstraZeneca vaccine, with 75 reported fatal cases in the UK, and a slight risk of non-fatal heart problems with Pfizer. Nothing more.
Claim: Fit young footballers have died after vaccination.
Response: Last month a statistic was shared widely that claimed 108 footballers and coaches have died in 2021. If true, this is just another correlation: previous research backed by FIFA looked at 16 countries’ “sudden death registries”. In a normal year, across the world, it found 150 entries for players dying during football games alone.
Claim: Pharmaceutical companies are suppressing treatments, especially ivermectin, that would stop the pandemic.
Response: No evidence ivermectin is effective against Covid. The widely quoted Egyptian study was fraudulent. The first drug proven to treat Covid was a 60-year old steroid called dexamethasone that costs pennies, so hardly in the interests of 'Big Pharma'.
Claim: Data shows vaccines increase your chances of dying.
Response: Simpson's paradox. The average age of the vaccinated group is a lot higher than that of the unvaccinated one. Almost all children under ten are in the unvaccinated group. Almost all adults over 40 are in the vaccinated group. What the statistic really shows is that older people are more likely to die.
Claim: The figures for Covid deaths include people who died “with Covid” not just those who died “from Covid”.
Response: One set of figures does indeed record those who died within 28 days of a Covid diagnosis, 148,000. However, there is also a record taken of deaths in which Covid is mentioned on the death certificate. Currently, it stands at 173,000, which is 25,000 higher than the 28-day figure. It turns out the number of Covid cases who lived 28 days before dying more than offsets the number run over by buses.
Claim: Covid is no worse than a bad flu.
Response: In a normal year, it would not be unusual to have fewer than 10,000 flu deaths. In the past two years we have had the most stringent public health mitigations in history — enough that flu disappeared. And we have seen more than 150,000 Covid deaths. Covid isn’t flu.
Claim: Vaccines aren't effective against the omicron variant anyway.
Response: It is true the variant has blunted the effectiveness to a degree, but while two doses of AstraZeneca seem to have almost no effect against infection, a booster brought it back to almost 50%. And the vaccines hold out better at their primary job — stopping severe disease. According to the best estimates of the UK Health Security Agency, two doses still make you more than 50% less likely to end up in hospital. Three brings that up to almost 90%. There is a simpler way of understanding the effectiveness of vaccines. Last winter, 50,000 cases of Covid led to about 1,000 deaths. This autumn they led to 100.
