At some point, when the potential for conflicts of interest are high and the point of failure is fundamental to the task of those doing the job, incompetence should no longer be differentiated from criminal intent. Mathematicians and statisticians worthy of the title do not miss the kind of scale invariance or mean-reversion we see embedded in the PRR—particularly not when working in a dedicated group on a serious problem. There is a pride among geeks in identifying subtle mathematical or logical flaws in a system, and this is not subtle at all. Given that even psychologists have a need to pay attention to scale invariance, this is not an easily excused mistake. In fact, a computational check of the PRR function against past data likely would have clued in a middling programmer without the fundamental mathematical training. And we’re not done, yet…

…Calling this a safety system is decidedly unsafe. Even worse—given that numerous academics, including statisticians, reviewed this document, it is hard to believe that the scale invariance embedded in the definition of PRR, or the logic that includes meeting multiple criteria at the same time, went unnoticed. It certainly appears that the CDC’s goal was to establish an illusion of safety, and a reason to ignore the true signs of danger. At best, they unfathomably hired nobody whose job it was to remain independently-minded who could clue them in?

If my understanding of this situation is correct, the mass vaccination program should be immediately halted until the safety data is gathered, cleaned, and examined. We cannot tolerate a misleading statement of “vaccines are safe and effective” in the face of regulatory agencies defining away the responsibility of performing the risk analysis needed to verify safety. The CDC leadership should be immediately replaced and investigated, and independent analysts should reformulate the task of tracking vaccine safety results.

Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals

Scientists and mathematicians, please read this paper. This is an intellectual smoking gun! Ordinary readers, it is not hard to follow this analysis. Well worth reading. Here is Crawford’s spicy rebuttal to critics: Defining Away Vaccine Safety Signals Part 2. ABN