Hahahaha the "nonpartisan fact-checkers" are at it again

This time "NewsGuard" wrote me, trying to poke holes in last Thursday's piece about Moderna's absurdly bad mRNA flu shot. It didn't go well for them.

On Thursday, I explained how Moderna’s own clinical trial for its mRNA flu jab showed it caused hundreds of severe side effects to prevent one flu hospitalization.

Today, the mRNA fanatics nonpartisan fact-checkers at NewsGuard, the umm, Global Leader in Information Reliability, struck back by finding massive holes in my piece!

They tried to, anyway. Lolcatz, as the kids say.¹

The following exchange speaks for itself, so I’ll just present it without comment (aside from two figures I added in brackets).

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(Fact-checking the fact-checkers, with your help)

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Good afternoon Mr. Berenson,

This is John Gregory, health editor at the news organization NewsGuard.

I had a question about your May 7 article about Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine trial. You said that the vaccine trial showed "a comically bad risk-benefit ratio" based on Table S4 in the trial's appendix, from which you calculated that, " the mRNA jab caused severe after-injection side effects such as vomiting or a 102- to 104-degree fever in an extra 1 out of 18 people. In other words, Moderna’s own data show that about 270 people will suffer severe vaccine side effects from its shot to stop a single flu hospitalization."

Your calculation of that "1 in 18" severe side effect rate appears to have been based on dividing 192 reported events in that chart by 3,015 -- which is the number of solicited adverse reactions reported among mRNA-1010 recipients in the trial. However, the mRNA-1010 cohort in the trial included 20,350 trial participants.

We spoke to outside experts and they said the correct calculation would then be severe side effects were reported in 1 out of every 106 vaccine recipients, not 1 in 18.

Moreover, your article does not appear to explain that the "grade 3" events are distinct from "serious," or "grade 4" adverse events that would be considered life-threatening. As defined by the FDA and explained by the Association of Health Care Journalists, grade 3 events are "severe, something that substantially interferes with daily activities and prevents you from being able to do normal activities, such as going to work or school. Severe adverse events might include a fever of 102ºF-104ºF, frequent vomiting that requires rehydration or pain that requires pain relievers. Importantly, however, grade 3 does not require someone to go to the hospital."

As outside experts told us, Grade 3 events would generally not be the basis for a risk/benefit analysis on preventing symptomatic flu.

We want to make sure we're not missing some caveats here, so here are my questions:

1) Could you explain why you calculated the rate of side effects based only on Table S4, and not by including all 20,350 people in the mRNA-1010 cohort?

2) Is there a reason why your article did not explain the difference between grade 3 and grade 4 adverse events?

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My answer:

1: The solicited events are calculated out of that 3,000-person subset, the other trial participants [17,000 additional participants in each arm] are not asked. The 6.4 percent figure [192 out of 3,000] is correct. If your experts are not able to understand this, they are not very good experts. Maybe ask them again.

2: Grade 5 is death. Grade 4 is life-threatening and requiring hospitalization. Grade 3 is generally requiring medical attention - a call to the doctor, a trip to the ER, but not life-threatening.

For most people, Grade 3 events are likely to be more severe than an average case of the flu, and the average person in the trial was more than twice as likely to have them after getting the Moderna shot as have ANY type of flu after NOT getting the shot (6.4% vs 2.8% flu incidence for standard shot recipients).

I’m sorry mRNA respiratory virus shots are a failed biotechnology. I’m even sorrier people like you are burning the last embers of your credibility trying to defend them.

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(See, the NewsGuard logo has a fingerprint, so you know they’re telling the truth!)

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Sigh.

The only question now: will John Gregory take his ball and go home, or write something that isn’t even half-true (figure maybe 15%) to salve his pride?

I’m guessing the latter. “Fact-checkers” gonna “fact-check,” and the man’s gotta eat.

We’ll find out.

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Funny story, NewsGuard was co-founded by Publicis Groupe, the world’s largest advertising agency — which works for Pfizer, among many other Big Pharma companies.

Me? I work for you.

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Thursday’s article:

1. I don’t think the kids actually say this anymore, if they ever did.