Posted on 10/23/2020 4:58:43 AM PDT by gattaca
The Washington Post posted an article to Twitter on Wednesday claiming that a “Volunteer in Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial dies.”
While the Twitter caption for the article is jarring and reads as a major cause for concern, once clicked on, the full headline reveals that this abbreviated spin is misleading.
“Volunteer in Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial dies, reportedly did not receive experimental vaccine,” the headline on the WaPo website reads.
The article goes on to note that the volunteer referred to in the tweet was reportedly in a control group in the trial that did not receive the vaccine. The Brazilian died after contracting COVID-19.
This important fact, however, doesn’t appear in the article until the third paragraph. The first two paragraphs, including the hook for the story, purposefully avoid this key fact.
“A Brazilian who participated in the clinical trial of an experimental coronavirus vaccine has died, officials here said Wednesday,” the article reads.
“Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency, which is overseeing multiple vaccine trials in a country suffering one of the world’s worst outbreaks, said the individual volunteered to receive the vaccine candidate developed by Oxford University and produced by AstraZeneca,” it continues.
Many Twitter users noted that this spin by the Post is misleading to readers, irresponsible, and injured the integrity of the story.........
Wow! The vaccine is so dangerous that even those who don't take it can die.
So, fake news.
But I am Soooo sick of any news about this stupid virus.
Are these volunteers being paid? You either are brave and courageous or you need the money.
WP=Pure Evil. I’m getting sooo tired of their efforts to bring down this great country. I served for 32 years to afford these people the rights that the Constitution guarantees them, so they can spew this garbage. Every day I went to work, I was faced with this moral dilemma. God help them.
So control guy who probably recieved placebo died of covid? Or did he get hit by a truck?
People die. It happens all the time. It even happens to those who volunteer for vaccine trials. In this case it was a volunteer receiving the placebo, so obviously it had nothing to do with the vaccine. The next time maybe it will be a person in the experimental group. A single death of someone taking the vaccine is NOT evidence that the vaccine is unsafe, though. That’s why there are large trials with large control and experimental groups. The comparative rate of death between the two groups is what is critical. Only if there’s a significantly higher death rate in the experimental group would there be cause for concern. In a large enough group of humans, some nonzero number of deaths is to be expected. Only if that number is higher than expected can we conclude anything about the safety of a vaccine.
Agree entirely.
Precisely
I have mixed feelings about the way testing has to be done in order to prove a vaccine’s worth beyond the placebo effect. Perhaps the poor volunteer might have been saved had he really gotten the real test vaccine. I hope his family got some sort of compensation or special award. This person gave his life for the rest of us...I trust God will count that for something!
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