The misleading reporting of medical risk

The public relies on honest and transparent science reporting in the media to make informed choices about the risks they take with medical interventions. For patients seeking to reduce their risk of contracting or developing a disease, accurate reporting of how much the risk is reduced by various screening or drug treatment options is essential, given that many of those medical interventions come with risks of their own. Pharmaceutical corporations, working with the mainstream media, routinely mislead the public in their reporting of the risks and benefits of medical treatments. When the public becomes aware of that manipulation, they use the same power of persuasion to paint anyone who questions them as spreading misinformation.

Gerd Gigerenzer is an expert in the communication of risk who works at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development. In a 2010 editorial for the British Medical Journal, he examines how the misleading communication of risk is used to promote medical interventions. One example he looks at is mammography screening. He refers to advertising promoting mammography as reducing breast cancer mortality risk by at least 20%. In reality, the reduction in breast cancer mortality risk from this intervention corresponds to reducing the number of deaths from about five women in every 1000 to about four women in every 1000, a reduction of only 0.1%. Surveys of women showed that 92% of them overestimated the reduction in their risk of dying from breast cancer by up to 100 times. These statistical tricks don't only mislead patients; 31% of gynaecologists also vastly overestimated the reduction in risk of death from mammography based on those numbers.

The perception of medical risk is manipulated through the misleading use of statistical measures. For example, if five people out of 100 in a treatment group get sick while ten people out of 100 in the control group get sick, they can say, according to a statistic called relative risk reduction (RRR,) that the treatment is 50% effective (five infected compared to ten infected.) But according to another type of statistic, absolute risk reduction (ARR,) the risk is only reduced by 5% (five infected out of 100 in the control group,) because there was only a certain amount of risk to begin with. In this case, quoting RRR in isolation, it can be made to appear that the treatment halves the risk, but in reality, it only gives you a 5% benefit over not taking the treatment. 

It is only with ARR that a real risk-benefit analysis can be made, because to make informed consent we need to compare the risk of adverse events from the treatment against the risk of getting infected without the treatment. This cannot be accurately assessed using only RRR because it does not reflect the baseline risk. But this is the only measure being reported by many medical and pharmaceutical companies and their media partners.

Doctor A K Kobang, also of the British Medical Journal, writes:

'Relative risk measures have the advantage of being stable across populations with different baseline risks... However, they have the major disadvantage of not reflecting the baseline risk of the individuals with regard to the outcome being measured.'

‘… relative risk measures do not take into account the individuals’ risk of achieving the intended outcome without the intervention. Therefore, they do not give a true reflection of how much benefit the individual would derive from the intervention...'

'They usually tend to overestimate the benefits of an intervention and, for this reason, drug companies and the popular media love relative risk measures!'

This type of misleading reporting of risk reduction was used to promote the Covid-19 vaccines. One study, reported on in Forbes, compares the effectiveness of three Covid vaccines and claims effectiveness of between 71% and 93%. These numbers are based on RRR. If ARR is calculated from the data in the study, the effectiveness drops down to between 5% and 28%. When a person’s risk of being hospitalised or dying of Covid 19 is already extremely low, as it is for anyone under 60, reducing that risk amount by another 5% - 28% makes almost no difference in the overall risk.

Considering the experimental nature of these new vaccines and the lack of long-term safety data they obviously carry risks of their own. With a reduction in risk of severe illness as low as 5% and only as high as 28%, many well informed people would decide to reject the vaccine based on the competing risks and benefits. A person who only had access to the reporting in the media, and believing the vaccines were up to 93% effective, might make a different decision, thinking the reduction in risk is enough to outweigh the risks of the vaccine. In this way RRR was used in isolation to create the perception of high efficacy in the public's mind, making them more likely to accept the vaccines despite the risks. It also gave governments the necessary ‘scientific’ justification for the mandates they introduced.

With the expansion of alternative media sources, public awareness of this type of manipulation began to spread. Information regarding the difference between ARR and RRR and the use of RRR in isolation to make the vaccines look more effective was quickly labelled 'misinformation' by the mainstream media and big tech corporations, and a 'fact check' was published by Reuters news service.

In their fact check, titled 'Why Relative Risk Reduction, not Absolute Risk Reduction, is most often used in calculating vaccine efficacy,' the media giant tries to justify the use of RRR over ARR by claiming that the two numbers do not contradict but complement each other. If that is the case, why is ARR not quoted alongside RRR in reporting on vaccine trials for full transparency? Why is RRR the only statistic given by the drug companies?

We are also told RRR is 'more meaningful' without any explanation of why that is. No analysis is made comparing the numbers to illustrate why RRR is more meaningful than ARR. Probably because such an analysis, as we have done here, would reveal the opposite. What is not disclosed in this 'fact check' is that the Chief executive officer and director of the Thomas Reuters Corporation, parent company of Reuters news service, is also on the board of pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer, meaning there is a financial conflict of interest when Reuters reports on the effectiveness of vaccines or 'fact checks' people who question the way it is reported in the media.

On the one hand we have an established understanding within the medical community that RRR, reported in isolation is a common way for drug companies and the media to promote vaccines and other interventions. On the other hand, we have a drug company, with financial ties to the media that is reporting on their product, quoting RRR in isolation and calling it ‘effectiveness’ in relation to the covid vaccines. It would seem a clear-cut case of what the British medical Journal warned of – a drug company working with the media to not only mislead the public by the misreporting of the competing risks of a medical treatment but also using that same corporate power to cover it up with an equally misleading ‘fact check’ once the truth started to come out.

As non-experts in medical science, we expect accepted experts to report their results transparently; to provide all the information we require to make an informed choice in the risks we take with medical screenings, treatments, and vaccines. We also expect the press to hold corporations to account when their scientists abuse this trust with the misleading use of statistics to manipulate public perception. The misleading use of statistics in the promotion of the Covid vaccines is only the most recent example of this type of manipulation, and subsequent ‘fact-check’ cover-up.

References

Dr A K Akobeng (2005) Understanding measures of treatment effect in clinical trials, British Medical Journal, accessed 23 May 2022.
https://adc.bmj.com/content/90/1/54

Gerd Gigerenzer (2010) Misleading communication of risk, British Medical Journal, accessed 23 May 2022.
https://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4830.full

Joe Walsh (2021) Moderna Covid Vaccine More Effective Than Others In Preventing Hospitalization, CDC Finds, Forbes, accessed 23 May 2022.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/09/17/moderna-covid-vaccine-more-effective-than-others-in-preventing-hospitalization-cdc-finds/?sh=5d02fc2a7bc5

Reuters Fact Check (2021) Why Relative Risk Reduction, not Absolute Risk Reduction, is most often used in calculating vaccine efficacy, Reuters, accessed 23 May 2022.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-thelancet-riskreduction/fact-check-why-relative-risk-reduction-not-absolute-risk-reduction-is-most-often-used-in-calculating-vaccine-efficacy-idUSL2N2NK1XA

Satellites

Did some satellite watching tonight, saw eight in forty minutes, an average of one every five minutes, the first four or five clustered in the first 10 - 15 minutes. I checked some of their appearance times and trajectories against the 'Heavens Above' app and identified at least four: Sitch 1, Cosmos 1461, ERBS and a Starlink one, all agreeing with the app for appearance and trajectory. The others didn’t fail to accord with it, I just didn’t check the app for them so they may or may not have. I will conduct futher, more stringent tests, and possibly ask others I know in differnt parts of the world to make similar observations so we can compare our results.

If there is one every five minutes on average that gives 72 possible sightings per night if we allow three hours after sunset and three hours before dawn, when they are visible. In 1956 the first satellites, the Sputniks, were tracked by citizens. That means we have gone from two per night to 72 per night in 65 years.

Among those who claim space travel is impossible I have heard three explanations for these objects: Airships – Way too fast for airships I would say. And where are they going when they leave our sky? They can’t land until they have covered the whole sky that is dark for the tracking app but then they would enter a zone in the day and be visible, but we never hear of those sightings. Lasers – What then is the laser light shining on? NEOs – Why the sudden appearance in the last 65 years, increasing every year, and why were no NEOs orbiting the Earth recorded by astronomers before 1965?

These fast-moving lights now occupy the night sky when they didn’t historically, beginning with the era of space travel. Their movement across the sky describes an orbit around a globe earth as indicated by the app ‘Heavens Above.’ What are they, and how are they getting up there, if they are not man-made objects launched into space by rockets? It still seems to me to be the most likely explanation.

World map of satellites above Earth

https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php

This Side of Mars

 

He took two deep breaths and knocked on the door. The response was immediate.

‘Come in please!’

He entered the small, sparse, windowless room. Directly ahead was a desk, behind which sat two men, dressed in business suits. The one on the left spoke first.

‘Welcome, welcome! It’s always a pleasure to meet our agents in the flesh, please sit down.’

The man on the right smiled and indicated the single chair in front of the desk. He sat down.

The first man looked down at some documents and shuffled them, searching for the right one.

‘Ah, Stanton is it? Mr Gerald Stanton?’

‘That’s right sir.’ He replied.

‘Agent three, four, eight, is that correct?’

‘Yes, correct.’

‘I’m Agent Cole.’ He looked to his left, ‘And this is Agent Masters. He was recently promoted and is still in training. His role here is merely as an observer.’ Masters smiled again and nodded slightly. Stanton nodded and smiled back, then turned his attention back to Agent Cole, who spoke again: ‘You’re working on the covert infiltration of Earth by sentient shape-shifting Martian slugs, is that right?’

‘Well, technically they’re not Martian because they’re not really from Mars, its more that they’re hidden on the other side of Mars above the planet in an orbiting spacecraft. They’re actually from…’

‘That’s fine, we’re familiar with the back story, after all, we wrote it. Martian slugs will do.’

‘Yes sir, of course.’

“You have been doing splendidly with your content; we are all very impressed. Your last video, on the physiology of the alien slugs, was excellent. I liked the way you linked the shape-shifting ability to the optical properties of terrestrial slug skin; that dash of actual science is always very effective, it lends an aura of real credibility to your presentation. My favourite part though, was the third set of eyelids when taking human form. Not just a second set, but a third! It’s absurd little details like that that will really hook your audience. So far you are progressing nicely.’

‘I'm not sure, the most I’ve ever got is just over 47,000 views. It doesn't seem like much, not compared to the big channels like Truth Now Media or The Norbett Report, and I'm getting a lot of ridicule, even from my own subscribers. I’m not sure enough people are going to buy it.’

‘Don’t get too hung up on whether or not people believe you Stanton. That is secondary to our concerns. The main thing is that they are aware of you. Modern cognitive infiltration is not about convincing the viewer but overwhelming him with possibilities that all seem feasible enough, without ever being completely confirmed as true. Our experts in psychology assure us that a large part of our audience is there purely for entertainment purposes. And don’t forget the subscribers you have gained from the debunking of your works by Agent 236, SciGirlShirl and Agent 324, Mr Rational. They must be at least a fifth of your subscribers, and the most likely source of the ridicule. They will come back for more content, they all will, regardless of whether or not they believe it.

'And in regard to the size of your outlet Gerald, it takes a lot of trees to obscure a forest, and every tree, as insignificant as it may seem, plays it's part. Anyway, we hope to grow your channel through a crossover with the Pleiadean Collective, Agent 185’s team. They’re doing tremendous work in the neopagan and UFO communities and it's time we introduced that audience to their secret slug overlords.’

‘But wont that conflict with their established lore? Do they really have room for more aliens? And they already have shapeshifters running the planet, the reptilians.’

‘I’m not really sure you fully understand what it is we're trying to do here Mr Stanton. But that’s understandable, logic is a hard habit to break, especially for someone as intelligent as you. What we try to provide is an illusory journey of discovery, and It’s not really a rabbit hole if it has any kind of bottom. None of what we produce in this division can be found to be free of contradictions, or it would eventually satisfy on an intellectual level, and our audience would lose interest. We must keep them permanently engaged in the worlds we create, or they may seek others, over which we have no control.

'In addition, we cannot have the normies comparing their worldviews to anything coherent or they would never completely settle into a false sense of self-satisfied intellectual superiority. The conspiracist must be a fool, or the people would be inspired by his example and begin to really think, instead of just uncritically consuming a counter-agents narrative. You are part of an integrated whole, and you must realise that your part in all this has to complement every other part, even if it is through contradictions.’

‘Ok, I understand. It’s just… its hard… as a writer… to create something that ultimately doesn’t make sense.’

‘We all have to make sacrifices for our art Mr Stanton. You are no exception. Just know that your work is greatly valued by the authorities and you will continue to be handsomely rewarded for your efforts. That will be all for now. We will meet again in three weeks to brief you on your appearance at the upcoming Awakened Minds conference.’

‘Thank you, Agent Cole, Agent Masters.’ He looked at them in turn as he spoke, stood up from the chair, and exited the room.

As the door closed behind him the agents turned to each other.

‘Everything is going exceptionally well Agent Cole, exactly as we had hoped. Better even.’

‘Indeed, Agent Masters, indeed’

They nodded at each other, blinking their third eyelids in excitement.

Thoughts on the 'History Hoax'

There are some in the conspiracy scene who hold that time has been added to, or deleted from, the chronological record of human experience. Some claim that less time has passed than has been recorded, some claim more. Some even claim that the calendar itself has been deceptively started up at some point in the past and that the vast majority of the calendar count has been falsified. Does this point of view hold up to logical scrutiny? 

The day, date and year constitute one of the fundamental forms of human knowledge, if not the fundamental form. Even the most brainwashed and idiotic person knows what year it is, and this is surely universal throughout time and space. What would it take to falsify such knowledge and introduce a new and different date and year to a population and how could this be done without any evidence of the fraud?

Without resorting to magical or science fictional means, is there any way to explain how the very year we live in could be altered? Even with the level of  technological prowess and mass brainwashing achieved by the current controllers, is there any conceivable way the population of even a single nation could be convinced that the year they are living in had changed, without future generations being aware of the change that had taken place? I can think of none. It would require a form of mass hypnosis that is simply impossible to conceive. Convincing people there is a deadly virus at loose or that terrorists flew planes into buildings is one thing, convincing them it's literally a different year today than it was yesterday is another thing entirely.

Some might say: ‘But in the past people were less educated, so they could be tricked more easily.’ But knowing the date and year is not a matter of education, it is fundamental to human experience regardless of education or even level of intelligence. A person would have to be severely intellectually disabled to not be aware of what year it is. This objection is also based on a misconception regarding the people who lived in the past. They were not dumber than us by virtue of being further back in history, they would have had their geniuses and their sceptics just like we do. And the idea that the common people were illiterate (even if that were true) and therefore had no awareness of the year they were living in does not stand up. Knowing what year it is does not require any form of literacy or education, it only requires that you live amongst other people who know what year it is and have the ability to communicate verbally. It is a form of knowledge that would be almost impossible to avoid.

Some will say: ‘But the dark ages! It would be easy to deceive people during such a period.’ Even if there was a ‘dark age’ in Europe (and this in dispute,) as long as there was some semblance of society and community (and I don’t think anyone is denying that) the calendar count, in particular the year, would have been maintained by the common people. Bear in mind also that our ancestors were much more connected to their own ancestors than we are today. They would remember well who had lived and died, and when. The same would go for their line of monarchs and the history of their diplomacy, conflicts and trade with neighboring countries. These things would not be easily forgotten the way things go down the memory hole in today’s world, and there would always have been those merchants, traders and explorers that kept records of their dealings and adventures in other lands, including dates and times. 

Anyway, how could one region of the world falsify its own history without other regions noticing? In my view this would be impossible. Europe was not setting the calendar count for the rest of the world, they were only half of Christendom. The other half, the East Roman, or Byzantine Empire experienced no dark age and the people were highly educated for their time. They passed their sacred Church calendar and chronology, which they shared with the west, onto the Russian empire before being overcome by the muslims, and so even without Europe and its so-called dark ages, our calendar was maintained throughout time by the eastern Christians. Unless the calendar fakery was a worldwide phenomenon perpetrated against all peoples everywhere at the same time, it simply could not be pulled off without someone noticing.

Another objection to my contention that calendar fakery is impossible is to point to the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1752. Some people say: ‘See! They changed the calendar, it is possible.’ Of course, our awareness of the change refutes the idea that this was analogous to a deceptive insertion or deletion of time. The reality is, it would have been impossible for that change to have taken place without the people of the time, and future generations, being aware of it.

So, I will end with a question; a challenge to those who hold to a calendar fakery view of history: 

‘By what means was the population, even of a particular region on the earth, tricked into thinking the year had changed, and how was this deception kept from the people who lived subsequently?’

Please comment below if you have an answer to this question or wish to add to the discussion in any other way.