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Vaccine Safety Poll Critique

46:59 recording · AUTO · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Daniel Griffin and Vincent Racaniello review new evidence that vaccines prevent cancer, heart attacks and deaths.

  1. Badly written poll questions manufacture vaccine doubtAsking whether the facts on vaccines are still up for debate tests opinion, not knowledge, while over 90% of parents approve vaccines for their children.
  2. Good vaccine data was held back for politicsThe delayed MMWR report showed COVID vaccination cut emergency visits 50% and hospitalizations 55% — the reason given for review, that it is routine, is not how MMWR works.
  3. Vaccines prevent cancer and cardiac eventsNine-valent HPV vaccination halved HPV-related cancers in males (hazard ratio 0.54), and flu vaccination halved the post-influenza spike in heart attack and stroke.
Executive Summary AI
  • TWIV episode 1314, recorded April 16th, 2026, has Vincent Racaniello hosting Daniel Griffin in person at the Incubator in New York for the weekly clinical update.0:10
  • They tear apart a widely shared poll claiming more Americans doubt vaccine safety than trust it, arguing its questions are biased and noting that over 90% of parents in this country approve of vaccines for their children.3:02
  • A New York Times article by Apoorva Mandavilli reports that the acting CDC head delayed an MMWR study showing COVID vaccination cut COVID emergency visits by 50% and hospitalizations by 55%, which Vincent calls a lie and politically driven, since Bhattacharya is a health economist who would not know how to interpret the statistics.5:33
  • A JAMA Oncology cohort of 615,155 vaccinated and 2,290,623 unvaccinated males aged 9 to 26, matched to 510,260 per group, found a hazard ratio of 0.54 for HPV-related cancers, about a 50% reduction, with the curves separating most by nine years.15:53
  • A Danish Eurosurveillance study of 202,785 first-ever admissions for myocardial infarction or stroke, 4,916 of them in PCR-confirmed influenza cases, found stroke risk almost threefold and heart attack fivefold in the first week after a positive flu test, roughly halved in those vaccinated that season.23:54
Key Quote
“No, because the questions they ask them suck.”
— Vincent Racaniello3:29
Key Quote
“So this guy, Andrew Nixon, just is so smarmy.”
— Vincent Racaniello7:26
Key Quote
“The head of CDC does not review articles for MMWR.”
— Vincent Racaniello7:37