> Indeed, the paper initially came onto my radar from a concerned tipster who worried an unscrupulous Harvard researcher was working to leverage the university’s name in the service of right-wing political aims.<p>Well good for them! We must always be on guard against servicing "right wing political aims".<p>I have heard some right wingers are recommending the use of Water for pleasure and medical benefit; how can we convince the public that Dihydrogen Monoxide is a new poison that will kill everyone? We certainly can't let the "right" have this victory unfought, can we?
My problem with the paper is the data used and the implicit assumption of what the data represents: the covid incidence data is from test results. It does not distinguish between symptomatic and asymptomatic infection. Covid is the first time ever that widespread antigenic testing of large numbers of the population has been carried out. For all we know, if there was a similar testing of flu, we would also see no correlation between incidence of positivity and vaccination status. Or indeed the multitude of organisms that infect us but produce no symptoms.
> S.V. Subramanian, the Harvard professor of population health and geography behind the paper [Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States], says the vaccine doubters are completely wrong.<p>> “That conclusion is misleading and inaccurate,” Subramanian told me of Horowitz’s Blaze column over email. “This paper supports vaccination as an important strategy for reducing infection and transmission, along with hand-washing, mask-wearing, and physical distancing.”