What is the policy of the bodies governing licenced medical doctors here?
There is no jurisdiction in the world I am aware of which legislates against a physician identifying himself or herself as a physician, online or otherwise.
The question is whether a licensed doctor can operate anonymously on-line using licensure as a claim to authority and without a disclaimer about the applicability of the advice given. One would think that most medical associations would frown on their members doing so, but I guess I am wrong about that, eh?
I'm not going to defend the study. It seemed a bit shoddy to me
Then why did you bring it up?
Because in spite of bending over backward to 'conclude' that everyone should take their flu shots, they apperently found it impractical to hide the _significant_ data showing that the vaccine has an unusual interaction with coronavirus specifically. Again, that was back when 'coronavirus' was nothing more than a sniffle so it WAS a rational conclusion from the data they presented that everyone should get their flu vax. Things change.
I read it again fairly carefully and I saw no specific mention of 'coronavirus' being treated any differently in sample selection than any of the other non-influenza viruses.
I never said it was. I think their entire analysis (of all the viruses mentioned) is fundamentally flawed by excluding all non-vaccinated participants who developed more than one infection.
Actually that's about all you said. As such, I asked you where in the study did you get the idea that the study was flawed specific to coronavirus. Apparently you didn't. Apparently it sounded like a good way to bolster a pre-concieved idea (e.g., that all vaccines are always good for everybody and everything.) It would have worked better if there was a specific defect in the paper which you could point to upon which your critique could rest.
In case you missed it, it's the _differential_ between coronavirus and the myriad of other non-influenza viruses which is important when trying to gauge the cost-benefit of taking the flu vaccine when SARS-cov-2 coronavirus is about. If there are no identifiable sample selection defects which impact coronavirus specifically then this differential would seem to exist as a valid concern irrespective or what other flaws the study might contain.
SARS-cov-2 is (supposed to be) super deadly it seems extra important to take all steps to mitigate it.
It seems we have found some common ground.
Lest it be forgotten, my interest in this study was in the unusually high mortality rates quite specific to the older crowd. The question comes up (or should) what is it that's different about older people? One (of many) things is that they get the flu vaccine at a much higher rate.
The season influenza vaccine is also given to all children under 5 in many jurisdictions around the world, and yet we are seeing very few infections and (as far as I am aware) no deaths in this age group.
One of the critiques I had of this study (or I should say, reasons to perform follow-up studies) was that the sample group was associated with active duty military personal. This group has a ton of problems one of them being that they are handy to experiment on (as happened to me when I was in.) One very interesting little tid-bit I took from the study was this:
... The same study did find a significant association between parainfluenza and influenza vaccination, but the association was in opposite directions when comparing children and adults. ...
The differences between an immune system when it is in 'training stage' vs. 'trained stage' is generally of interest to me. Anyway, I do agree with the idea that 'more study is needed'. Hopefully some entities who are not reliant on corp/gov for funding will pick up the ball here though they have only a tiny fraction of the funding of their counterparts.