alt Hacker NewsTo be clarify for everyone: both of the cited articles argue in favor of HPV vaccination. I assumed they would be arguing against since the comment is arguing against, but that is not the case.
In particular, you've mistaken the result of the second study.
> The vaccinated patients were even older, which makes it even worse, because those are older women who have had more time to be pregnant.
^ this is incorrect. Indeed according to the study, the vaccinated patients are younger (33.1) than the unvaccinated patients (37.4), which could easily explain the difference in gravidity. The authors do not report having controlled for age when computing the gravidity effect.
Note also that the entire study was conducted with a population of patients seeking fertility care, so the study can't support the general claim "gravidity is halved for the HPV vaccinated" even were the significance level to survive age-controlling statistics (which it likely would not).
Controlling for age would bias the sample.
Here's an a pair of articles on the mental model called inversion, which is about avoiding stupidity. [2] [3]
An example of inversion "If going down Route A in the dark in the rain is correlated with traffic accidents, take Route B, regardless of the fact that one's super tires or eagle eyesight might supposedly negate causation."
The same reality holds up at scale, and not just at the one university clinic, but they retracted it for political reasons. [4]
That is a very serious math situation if one wants more babies. Most parents would simply tell the young driver to stay off Route A in the dark or rain.
I did misread the ages between the two, and I have removed the age references.
2. https://fs.blog/inversion/
3. https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/invert-always-i...
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29889622/