Journalists Continue Their Valiant Struggle to Make Monkeypox a Thing
eugyppius | a plague chronicle | october 28, 2022
Remember that scary rash-cum-fever from Africa that was going to be The Next Pandemic before it turned out to infect almost exclusively gay men having unprotected sex with other gay men? Well, you’ll be happy to know that there are still a few media outlets out there trying to make somebody care about it:
Monkeypox is causing devastating outcomes for people with severely weakened immune systems, even as new cases continue to decline in the United States, according to a federal report released Wednesday. At least 10 people hospitalized with monkeypox have died.
More than 28,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported since the U.S. outbreak began in May. While the vast majority recover within weeks, some patients with untreated HIV experienced especially dire consequences, such as losing function of their brain or spinal cord, eyes and lungs despite being given antiviral medication.
The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based on the agency’s consultations with clinicians treating 57 U.S. patients hospitalized with monkeypox complications from the outbreak’s peak in mid-August through Oct. 10. It presents the most comprehensive picture of the severe consequences of infection and who is most at risk for serious complications.
You know what other viruses cause “devastating outcomes for people with severely weakened immune systems”? Basically all of them. If you’re sick and dying even the common cold can be dangerous, and here monkeypox is the least of anyone’s worries. Ten deaths (of which seven are still “under investigation” with no officially determined cause) from 28,000 cases works out to a case fatality rate of .036%.
But wait! Monkeypox might still turn out to be bad, somehow, maybe! The outbreak might “accelerate and affect increasingly wider communities,” if it could only be persuaded to circulate among heterosexuals! Or maybe “the virus could get established in an animal host”! Just don’t ask how that could happen! (And who knew the Post would stoop to such unsavoury homophobia?)
It’s funny to laugh at these guys, but sobering to consider how ramped up the pandemic panic machine must be, that even this obvious non-starter got the mileage that it did. This bodes poorly for the future.
EU sticks to lockdowns, masks and vaccine passports
By Will Jones | TCW Defending Freedom | October 27, 2022
The EU has set out its commitment to the continued use of lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports and other restrictions this winter to control the spread of Covid-19, and also to the creation of a ‘legally binding’ global pandemic treaty with a ‘reinforced World Health Organisation at its centre’.
The document, published on September 2 and titled EU response to COVID-19: preparing for autumn and winter 2023, was prepared by the EU Commission (the EU executive) and sent to the EU Parliament. It reveals how much in thrall to the new biosecurity orthodoxy the EU leadership is and bodes ill for the future management of contagious disease in the bloc and globally.
On lockdowns and other restrictions, it proposes a framework of ‘key indicators to assess when deciding on reintroducing non-pharmaceutical measures’. These indicators include severe disease and hospital occupancy data, and importantly are stated to relate not just to Covid-19 but to influenza as well, potentially making this part of normal winter disease management indefinitely.
It suggests mask mandates as a ‘first option to limit community transmission’, giving a preference for FFP2 masks.
The document recommends the pre-emptive imposition of work-from-home and gathering limits before any rise in infections to try to avoid the ‘need for more disruptive ones such as lockdowns, closing businesses and schools, stay-at-home recommendations and travel restrictions’. It stresses the need for ‘political commitment’ to make lockdowns and other measures work.
The one welcome aspect of the document was the clear statement to avoid disrupting children’s education and lives any further, though even here school closures were not ruled out: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of children and adolescents affecting their everyday routines, education, health, development and overall well-being. It is therefore important to keep in mind the negative impacts of school disruptions on the health and development of children. The implementation of measures at schools should be aimed to be kept at a minimum and the further loss of learning should be prevented.’
The document discourages travel restrictions – freedom of travel and the elimination of internal borders being an article of faith for the EU. However, it recommends use of the EU Digital Covid Certificate (i.e., vaccine passport, though it also recognises natural immunity) wherever travel restrictions are necessary’, boasting about how widely it is already used.
‘The EU Digital Covid Certificate has been a major success in providing the public with a tool that is accepted and trusted across the EU (and in several third countries) and in avoiding fragmentation of multiple national systems. As of August 1st 2022, 75 countries and territories from across five continents are connected to the EU Digital Certificate system (30 EU/EEA Member States and 45 non-EU countries and territories), and several more countries have expressed interest in joining the gateway or are already engaged in technical discussions with the Commission. This makes the EU Digital Covid Certificate a global standard.’
What this fails to mention, of course, is any rationale for the passes. What’s the point of restricting the travel of the unvaccinated (or not-sufficiently-vaccinated) when the vaccinated are no less likely to spread the disease? This key question is entirely unaddressed.
On vaccination, the document provides 15 ‘objectives’, ‘priorities’ and ‘actions’ for Covid-19 vaccination strategies. These include the ‘priority’ of encouraging take-up of the original vaccine (that’s right, for the extinct Covid strains) among all eligible children and adolescents, and an action point of making sure GPs are spending enough of their time vaccinating people (don’t they have anything else to do?) It suggests administering boosters as often as every three months, implying they are of little use after six months. It also encourages governments to counter ‘misinformation’ in the media and online to ensure ‘clear, consistent and evidence-based messaging demonstrating the continued safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines’. It links worries about vaccine safety with ‘anti-Western and anti-EU narratives’ and with websites which also go off-narrative on the Ukraine war.
The document also trails a forthcoming ‘EU global health strategy’ which ‘will provide the political framework with priorities, governance and tools, enabling the EU to speak with one influential voice and making the most of Team Europe’s capacity to protect and promote health globally’.
This is a very disturbing document. For those of us who still hold to the evidence-based pandemic strategies of pre-2020, premised only on mitigating impacts by expanding emergency healthcare capacity and finding safe and effective treatments, and not imposing intrusive, harmful and unproven methods of trying to prevent the spread of a disease that is anyway harmless to most people, this bodes ill indeed for the current direction of travel in Europe and globally.
The BBC’s Hurricane Unreality Checked
By Paul Homewood |October 26, 2022
I have collaborated with Net Zero Watch to produce this video on hurricanes.
The MSM’s cancer ‘cure’ stories are bio-firm hype, not hope
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | October 26, 2022
GLOBALISED mainstream media equates not just with a uniform, poorly-informed world, but a manipulated world.
In Britain, the Times runs a story entitled: After centuries of cut, burn and poison, could a jab cure cancer? by Tom Whipple. Eleven thousand miles away in New Zealand, the same story appears in Stuff newspaper.
This is one of those ‘isn’t it wonderful?’ reassuring stories that unfortunately don’t look quite so rosy after close scrutiny, but like bad pennies are turning up everywhere. On the surface informative and exciting, underneath sadly lacking in that investigative depth we were expecting – and certainly over-hyped.
This particular story would not be out of place in a glossy brochure seeking investment funds for BioNTech. According to the Times article, RNA vaccine technology is rather like buying a piece of furniture from Ikea. Each person could very soon have their own personalised cancer vaccine off the shelf. What could possibly go wrong?
The tremendously hopeful note that the story strikes is based on a lot of over-simplified theory and the success (???) of the Pfizer Covid vaccine co-developed with BioNTech. It sounds reassuringly easy to design mRNA vaccines that rush to your aid and eliminate those nasty cancer cells.
Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, founders of BioNTech, are pictured in white coats, and are quoted promising: ‘We stimulate the immune system, do something magic, and the tumour disappears.’
Heady stuff, but the cited evidence is less than thin. A decorated cancer researcher who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2007, then tried all his innovative ideas out on himself, and died in 2011. In 2020, 16 patients with pancreatic cancer were treated by BioNTech. Eighteen months later, eight have died and eight are cancer-free after 18 months. The details are sadly lacking.
What stage were they at and how does that compare with their expected prognosis? The missing piece of the jigsaw is the article’s lack of scrutiny of the safety of BioNTech’s only commercialised mRNA vaccine product – the Pfizer Covid vaccine.
If you want to ask questions and also seek answers, you will need to turn to a completely different kind of journalism. Igor Chudov is a mathematician – like the Times author – but he writes on Substack and is therefore not constrained by any editorial policy or any no-go areas dictated by the newspaper owners, their advertisers, or subtly imposed government guidelines.
Chudov has published a very different cancer story, headlined: Cancer rates are Increasing and may get much worse. Wiped out immune systems take time to manifest.
According to the article, we are seeing the first ripple of a coming storm of cancer deaths. Chudov reports the work of the Ethical Skeptic (another Substack researcher) whose analysis of figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – the public health agency of the US – has shown that the rate of US cancer deaths accelerated in 2021 and 2022, coinciding with the rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA Covid vaccine and other biotech vaccines.
It is the effect size that is surprising – 9 sigma. What does this mean? Well perhaps you can remember from your school maths lessons that for a Bell curve, two-thirds of data points lie within one standard deviation of the mean, that is known as 1 sigma. Ninety-five per cent lie within two standard deviations (2 sigma) and 99.7 per cent lie within 3 sigma.
I’m going to translate for you what the observed 9 sigma deviation from the prior pattern of cancer deaths probably implies in very simple layman terms:
1. A hugely statistically surprising number of people already infected with cancer have suffered a rapid progression of their condition to death. Covid vaccination reduced their likely longevity.
2. Some people who previously had no evidence of cancer, and possibly no lifetime expectation of cancer, are becoming ill and dying in the weeks and months following Covid vaccination. And it is not due to Covid infection – it didn’t happen in 2020.
Read Chudov’s article. It is a long read, but well worth the effort. In addition to the US data, he looks at the official UK cancer mortality data, which shows a similar increase. He also quotes another Substack author, A Midwestern Doctor, who analyses and references in detail what it is about mRNA vaccines that causes cancer. The approach is investigative, as we should expect it.
There are concerning issues that Whipple, author of the fawning Times article, chooses not to address. He failed to discuss questions that constitute the normal substance of scientific debate, but his piece was beamed around the world.
We expect the Times to ask questions, but it is not doing so. It has quietly rolled over and followed the biotech PR line. It is not alone – the mainstream media are collectively failing the sniff test.
We are being manipulated. If you want real journalism, it is flourishing elsewhere. GLOBE (the Campaign for Global Legislation Outlawing Biotechnology Experimentation) and other independents are asking vital questions that few are prepared to countenance.
Biden’s Bivalent Booster Blunder
Vinay Prasad’s Observations and Thoughts | October 26, 2022
The Biden administration has made a fool of themselves with their bivalent vaccine roll out. Pretty much all decisions were errors, and very likely these will hurt them politically. The only way for Biden to save himself from his terrible Covid policy is to fire all his advisors and rehire good ones. Let’s review the facts:
The Biden administration granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer and Moderna for a bivalent booster that targeted Wuhan and BA45. That vaccine received EUA based on mouse data (8-10 mice). There were no human data at the time of approval. (Please don’t confuse the BA4/5 with BA1 bivalent)
Since then, both companies have press released results, but do not specificify the numeric values of antibodies generated in people. No one has clinical data– i.e. is there a reduction in hospitalization? Severe disease? And if so, we don’t know which people (how old) have a further reduction in severe disease or hospitalization from this vaccine.
We also know breakthrough can occur. Rochelle Walensky herself received the vaccine and then had COVID one month later. Ironically, this is probably the peak vaccine efficacy (peak Ab). I don’t know what the vaccine effectiveness is, and neither does she, but my guess is it isn’t terrific.
The Biden administration said that we didn’t have time to wait for clinical trials in people. But each passing day reveals that is a lie. The uptake of this vaccine is abysmal. No one wants it. If no one was going to get it then why not take the time to run the proper studies?
A recent pre-print has shown that the bivalent booster is not better at generating BA45 antibodies than getting the old booster one more time. This is the failure of not generating human trial data.
You could have sorted this out pre-market. *Let’s be clear, these are not clinical data (living longer/better) but without better antibodies, clinical endpoints seem unlikely to be met*
Many universities are now requiring this vaccine for 20-year-old college students who have had three prior doses and Omicron. I think you have to be dropped on your head to actually believe a 20-year-old man in good health who’s gotten three doses and just had Omicron will derive any benefit from this bivalent booster. I have never met even one doctor who thinks that that is true. And yet that is the position of the Biden administration.
They are so hellbent on earning Pfizer money– I mean vaccinating people who just had covid —that they are willing to ignore the mountain of data that suggests that’s not what you should be spending your energy on.
More than a year ago, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause the number one and number two at the US FDA vaccine branch resigned, citing White House pressure to approve boosters for all ages. Their published remarks suggest that they wanted to do it only for the elderly and vulnerable. Their message was repeatedly ignored as the Biden administration rammed booster after booster through the US food and drug administration for ultra low risk populations.
They have actually said a 5-year-old who has had three doses and had covid should get this booster. It’s insane.
Their entire vaccine policy seems to be interested in giving Pfizer and Moderna a perpetual market share for a yearly vaccine. But seems to have no interest in generating credible randomized control trial evidence to inform the public. As such, they fail the American people.
I am concerned that after this White House stint: Ashish Jha, Rochelle Walensky, Vivek Murthy, and Peter Marks (post FDA) will work for or consult for Pfizer and Moderna. That would be devastating.
American people obviously do not want to receive a vaccine every year with non-trivial adverse events without knowing that it gives them some benefit. Benefit to third parties cannot be had because it cannot stop transmission.
Some misguided policy makers argue that even a small reduction in transmission is meaningful. That’s nonsense. The problem is that you can get COVID every single day of your life from now until the end of your life. Even changing the probability modestly won’t change the outcome. Because the probability you will get COVID is one over time. Think of it this way:
You can play Russian roulette with one bullet or three bullets. I would much rather play with one bullet, if I had to. But if you have to play a thousand times in a row, we all know how that game ends.
That’s COVID 19. It’s not going anywhere. You’re going to have to play over and over and over again. And that means you’re all going to get COVID. So the only question is how many doses minimize severe disease? And who needs that to be minimized?
Today in the governor’s debate of New York state, only the Republican candidate was opposed to children’s mandates. It’s amazing that the Democrats are clinging to a failed vaccine policy. Their covid-19 policy is going to lead to catastrophic losses.
They need to fire all their advisors and start new. That’s the only way to fix the situation.
‘Criminal Neglect’: CDC Knew COVID Vaccine Could Cause Myocarditis in Young Males Months Before Telling the Public
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 25, 2022
Two months after COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out to the U.S. public, a statistically significant vaccine safety signal for myocarditis in males ages 8 to 21 appeared in the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — but CDC officials waited another three months before alerting the public, according to a new study.
The study, “Delayed Vigilance: A Comment on Myocarditis in Association with the COVID-19 Injections,” by Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., was published on Oct. 17 in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
In an interview with The Defender, Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said:
“This important paper shows that a strong, statistically significant vaccine adverse event ‘signal’ for myocarditis in males 8 to 21 years of age was seen on the VAERS database as early as Feb. 19, 2021, just two months after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine to the U.S. public.
“Instead of sounding the alarm regarding this signal, CDC officials buried the connection between COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis until May 27, 2021. By this date, over 50% of the eligible U.S. population had received at least one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
“Withholding this type of information is criminal.”
According to researchers at the National Organization for Rare Disorders, myocarditis can result from infections or may result directly from a toxic effect such as a toxin or a virus. “More commonly the myocarditis is a result of the body’s immune reaction to the initial heart damage,” researchers said.
Severe myocarditis can permanently damage the heart muscle, possibly causing heart failure.
In their study, Jablonowski and Hooker recorded and analyzed the increasing incidence of myocarditis as it progressively became a statistically significant “signal” in VAERS, the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
“It [myocarditis] became a discernible measure of harm over time, and here we show when it became statistically significant in the week of February 19, 2021,” the authors explained.
Only two months later, the VAERS data from the week of April 23, 2021, showed that the discerned level of myocarditis in young men following COVID-19 vaccination had increased to an extreme statistical level.
Generally, p-values less than .05 are considered to be statistically significant — meaning the observed result cannot reasonably be attributed to chance — and p-values less than .01 are considered to be very statistically significant.
By the week of April 23, 2021, Jablonowski and Hooker saw a p-value of less than 0.0001 (p<0.0001).
“At that p-level, a contrast as great as the one observed in the VAERS data would be expected to occur fewer than one time in 10,000 similar experimental drug trials,” they said.
“That statistic was obtained when 43.78% of the U.S. population had received at least one [COVID-19] injection — 31.20% had received all of those injections available to them or pressed upon them, and 12.58% had received one or more of the COVID-19 injections but not all of them.”
Despite this safety signal, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 10, 2021, expanded the Emergency Use Authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to individuals as young as 12 years old, and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend that all that persons age 12 or older get the vaccine.
Around the same time, the CDC’s V-safe post-vaccination data collection tool began accepting entries from adolescents ages 12-15 years. A few weeks later, the CDC finally acknowledged publicly that there may be an association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis.
“On May 27, 2021, the CDC published on their website ‘Myocarditis and Pericarditis following mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination,’ (an announcement that is no longer available at the time of this writing; however, see Das et al., 2021),” the authors said.
“However, the important point we want to underscore here is that the general public was apparently coming to the realization of the particular life-threatening dangers of myocarditis at a time after 50.56% of the U.S. population had already received one or more up to the limit of all available COVID-19 injections — 42.25% had received the complete series of shots and 8.31% had received some but not all of them.”
“Why the irreversible delay in vigilance?” they asked.
The CDC’s choice — “whether by intention or neglect of the unfolding evidence” — to not warn the U.S. public of possible widespread harm from the mRNA COVID-19 until May 27, 2021, “when 50.56% of the U.S. population had already been injected, some of them multiple times” could be characterized as “criminal neglect.”
Jablonowski and Hooker concluded:
“From February 19, 2021, the signal in VAERS data was already loud and clear after only 14.23% of the U.S. population had been administered at least one of the injections. Subtracting that group from the 50.56% who had taken the risks associated with the shots by May 27, left 36.33% of the U.S. population (or roughly 120 million people) in the dark about the known adverse outcomes, including the irreversible damage of myocarditis, associated with the COVID-19 injections.”
VAERS data show 24,371 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis between Dec. 14, 2020, and Oct. 14, 2022. Of those cases, 1,333 reports occurred among 12- to 17-year-olds, 47 reports occurred among 5- to 11-year-olds and 5 reports occurred among 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds.
The CDC uses a narrowed case definition of “myocarditis” that excludes cases of cardiac arrest, ischemic strokes and deaths due to heart problems that occur before one has the chance to go to the emergency department.
While reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed, the system has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Pfizer will Charge Two Billion Dollars per Pound of Covid mRNA Nanoparticles
This is a 12,370% Markup
By Igor Chudov | October 23, 2022
We all know that Pfizer likes to “move at the speed of science”.
Nowhere is the “speed of science” more pronounced, than in raising prices for its products. Pfizer used to charge its only customer in the United States — the Federal Government – $19.50 per dose.
Now Pfizer decided to diversify and sell its Covid vaccine through health insurance companies. It plans to charge $130 per dose. Mind you, each dose costs $1.18 to produce.
The business plan here, of course, is to keep as many vaccine mandates as possible and have health insurers cover the cost of increasingly frequent vaccinations, child vaccinations etc.
For example, right now the CDC recommends getting the bivalent booster two months after a previous booster.
People ages 12 years and older: A 2-dose primary series and 1 bivalent mRNA booster dose (Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) is recommended. The primary series doses are separated by 3–8 weeks and the bivalent mRNA booster dose is administered at least 2 months after completion of the primary series (for people who have not received any booster doses), or at least 2 months after the last monovalent booster dose.
If you think that two months is too frequent, consider that CDC’s Rochelle Walensky was bivalent-boosted only a MONTH ago, and is now suffering from Covid — the same variant she was boosted for. Ms. Walensky is, of course, vaxxed to the max and is thankful for all the shots she received:
The Price
Most of each dose of Pfizer’s “Covid vaccine” is cheap stuff like water, polyethylene glycol, and other chemicals. The actual active ingredient is the mRNA nanoparticles, and those are given at 30 micrograms per dose.
Do the math:
Price Per gram = 130/.000030 = $4,333,333
So Pfizer is selling us their gene juice for over $4,333,333 per gram.
A pound (454 grams) of Pfizer’s mRNA nanoparticles would cost TWO BILLION DOLLARS.
The cost of making that two-billion-dollar pound of mRNA juice is under one percent of the price.
A pretty good deal for Pfizer, right?
Thank God I have a free immune system!
Not enough people vaccinated – Biden
Samizdat | October 25, 2022
US President Joe Biden received his fifth Covid-19 vaccine dose on Tuesday, and urged Americans to do the same. While the president is pushing for a yearly vaccine schedule, less than 10% of the eligible population has gotten the latest omicron-specific shot.
“Get vaccinated,” Biden said at a White House event. “It’s incredibly effective, but the truth is, not enough people are getting it. We’ve got to change that so we all can have a safe and healthy holiday season.”
Biden, who caught a recurring case of Covid-19 earlier this summer despite having received a total of four vaccine doses at the time, then rolled up his sleeve and received his fifth dose – this time of Pfizer’s omicron-specific bivalent booster – on camera.
The president said that the coronavirus vaccine is “just like the flu shot,” and added that “for most Americans, one Covid shot each year will be all that they need.”
However, uptake for the latest round of booster shots has been slow. Fewer than 20 million people have taken the updated formulation, or just 8.5% of the eligible population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, the state of Florida has recommended against mRNA booster shots for children under 18 and males under 39, citing the low risk posed by Covid-19 to children and the elevated risk of cardiac arrest in young vaccinated men. Several European countries have issued similar recommendations in recent months, but the CDC still recommends that children as young as five receive bivalent boosters, and has recommended that Covid-19 vaccines be added to children’s routine immunization schedules.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden combined an intense public messaging campaign with legal mandates for federal workers and contractors in a bid to up the US’ vaccination rate. While some municipalities also drafted their own mandates, legal challenges followed. In New York City on Tuesday, the Staten Island Supreme Court ordered the city to lift its mandate and rehire all employees fired for non-compliance with full back pay.
COVID19 vaccination
DR. MALCOLM KENDRICK | OCTOBER 25, 2022
I have been somewhat quiet recently. I have started about ten blogs, then got bogged down …. possibly blogged down? Then stopped, and started again, then tore it all up – metaphorically.
The problem is that I have been looking at COVID19 vaccination.
There is much to say, maybe too much. However, one treads a very fine line here. I liken it to walking along a cliffside, in the dark. At any point you can make a small mis-step and plummet to your doom. Or, perhaps it is more like being in the trenches in World War I, knowing that at any point, a sniper could pick you off.
Yes, it is true that WordPress doesn’t seem to care much what anyone writes. Good for them, I say. So, I can write pretty much whatever I want. But the rest of the world watches, waiting for the slightest mistake. At which point you shall be denounced, then silenced, in all other outlets. If this happens, the vast majority of people stop listening to you. ‘Oh him, he’s one of those anti-vaxx nutters. Don’t listen to a word he says.’
Yes, I know there is a large community out there who do not follow the mainstream narrative. Those who know there are – or certainly may be – some significant issues with the COVID19 vaccines. In particular the mRNA vaccines. Speaking to them is easy, gaining their support is easy. They cheer you on.
However, there is no real point in reaching out to them, enjoyable though it may be. It is preaching to the converted. The people that I would really like to get at are those who firmly and absolutely believe that mRNA vaccines are highly effective, absolutely safe, and that everyone should be happy to be vaccinated. Along with their children.
The people who are also very critical of those who do not get vaccinated [I have had three doses, but I shall not be having a fourth, unless things change dramatically].
How do you reach these people? How can you even begin to get them listening to anything you have to say?
To give one example of the problem of starting a discussion. I posted a link in a discussion forum on the Doctors.net website (a website that can only be accessed by UK registered doctors). This link discussed some issues with vaccines. It didn’t seem, to me, to be hyper-critical.
However, I got a message from the moderators informing me that if I attached links to any information critical of vaccines, again, they would remove me from the site. This was my final warning. No discussion.
More recently, the post below was published on the same site. It was in response to a twitter comment which followed an interview with Dr Aseem Malhotra:
‘This is a disgraceful interview with this self-publicising charlatan and hypocrite. He says that “until proven otherwise, it is likely that Covid mRNA vaccines played a significant or primary role in all unexplained heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, & heart failure since 2021”.
That is so grossly irresponsible and untrue It staggers me to think he can be allowed to say this and remain a registered medical practitioner.’
The post I have duplicated here was published by a doctor who works, full-time, for a pharmaceutical company. Something he, surprisingly, failed to mention as a potential conflict of interest. Others piled on in support of him. Many of them agreeing that Aseem Malhotra should be flung off the GMC register forthwith – which would render him unable to work as a doctor.
I suggested that, perhaps it would be better to engage Dr Malhotra in debate, rather than attacking him as a charlatan. At which point I was attacked. In my opinion, if you find yourself being attacked for suggesting that it would be a good idea to have a debate, it is not difficult to work out which way the wind is blowing.
I have discussed vaccination at my local sports club. At which point, almost everyone takes on that silent, arms crossed look, if you mention you have some concerns about vaccines.
They don’t debate the issue, because they can’t, because they don’t know anything other than what they have been told by mainstream media. But it is clear that some of them now see me as a bloody anti-vaxxer. Even if I say nothing more than, ‘I have some concerns.’
Yes, to ask for debate, or to dare express some concerns, is to be labelled an anti-vaxxer.
This is a very high barrier to overcome. I have tried irony. ‘Oh yes, I am absolutely one hundred per cent in favour of COVID19 vaccines. I think everyone should have them four times a year. Pregnant women, children from the moment they are born. No exceptions at all. Yes, these mRNA vaccines have been fully tested. It is clear that they are one hundred per cent safe and one hundred per cent effective. Yup, I cannot see any problems with them at all.’
Response. You are taking the mickey and you are an anti-vaxxer. I claim my prize.
I have also tried saying absolutely nothing at all. I still got accused of being an anti-vaxxer because I did not enthusiasticly agree with criticising someone who was believed to be an anti-vaxxer.
Maybe I should just attend this meeting ‘The New Frontier of RNA Nanotherapeutic. Monday, October 24, 2022 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Hybrid Conference’:
‘The RNA vaccines against COVID-19 mark the beginning of a technological revolution that will transform the way we treat disease and restore health. “The New Frontier of RNA Nanotherapeutics” presented by the George and Angelina Kostas Research Center for Cardiovascular Nanomedicine, will feature a discussion on the events that led to the RNA vaccine breakthrough and preview emerging RNA Nanotherapeutics. Advances in the design of RNA constructs to improve stability and translational efficiency will be presented along with the leading-edge developments in nanomedicine to improve delivery and tissue specificity. The potential of nanotechnology-enabled RNA therapeutics to enhance health is virtually limitless.’
Any doubts I have will evaporate …. maybe.
Anyway. The answer as to … how can I even start a discussion on mRNA vaccines without being shot, falling of the edge of cliff, or being silenced, continues to elude me. Farewell enlightenment. Hello dark ages.
Science, to me, is debate. Science is attacking ideas from all directions. No exceptions. Those ideas which cannot be destroyed may turn out to be correct. But, if an idea is considered sacrosanct, with anyone questioning it condemned as an unbeliever, then we do not have science. We have religion. So yes, in my opinion, vaccines, and vaccination, have become a religious belief. No evidence needed.
Scary. Anyway. If anyone has any good ideas about how a debate can even get started, without descending into anger and accusation … please let me know. It seems beyond me. The end.
Potsdam Climate Institute Scientists Criticized: “Scouring For Most Alarmist Stories”
By Die kalte Sonne | October 22, 2022
Björn Stevens is the director of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Meteorology in Hamburg and an expert on clouds. In the Zeit (behind paywall), Stevens expresses criticism of colleagues, primarily at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research PIK. The Oldenburger Online Zeitung has taken up the interview and quotes indirectly from it.
Among other things, these had warned of the disappearance of all clouds due to global warming. ‘That’s nonsense,’ Stevens said. The scenario is wrong, he said. ‘It’s based on a paper from our institute taken out of context and on a second paper that has numerous flaws.’
The dramatic behavior of the climate in that simulation is based on a gross simplification of clouds that has nothing to do with reality, he said. You can’t get rid of clouds that easily, said Stevens, whose research group simulates clouds in climate models and on whose expertise in cloud issues the world climate report relies heavily. Why his colleagues claimed otherwise, he said, is a question for them to answer. ‘I can only admire the way colleagues there scour the literature for the most alarmist stories.’”
But the blasphemy goes even further.
‘But the tipping points that my colleague Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and others at PIK emphasize are based on their private, much weaker definition. They reinterpret tipping points to include less abrupt or even reversible climate changes. With this new definition, they find tipping points everywhere. Then it’s permanent alarm.’”
Translation by No Tricks Zone
FLORIDA SURGEON GENERAL ON COVID VAX MANDATE
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 20, 2022
Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, minces no words regarding his State’s stance on Covid Vaccine Mandates, after a CDC committee voted unanimously to recommend Covid vaccines for kids older than 6 months.
A Tale of Two Pills: Media bias in reporting Ivermectin and ensitrelvir
By Guy Gin | Making (Covid) Waves in Japan | October 21, 2022
Last month, Japanese pharma company Kowa put out a press release of the results of its 1030-person double-blind randomised control trial (RCT) of Ivermectin conducted at 54 institutions in Japan and 2 in Thailand.
Here’s how the results were reported in The Japan Times.
Not effective, you hear! I mean, look at the photo. You don’t get Ivermectin from a pharmacy; you get it from a farmer. Anyway, on to the trial.
A clinical trial was unable to prove the efficacy of the antiparasitic medicine ivermectin against coronavirus variants, according to Japanese drugmaker Kowa Co., which has indicated that it will no longer seek approval for the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.
So this means that not only has IVM not been widely used in Japan (despite what many people outside Japan think) but probably never will be. So what happened? Did the people who took the anti-vaxers’ favourite veterinary medicine all get sick?
In the trial, 1,030 patients with mild COVID-19 were orally administered the drug daily for three days and then compared to others given a placebo.
Ivermectin was found to be safe and few people given the drug developed severe symptoms, Kowa said. But both the group given the drug and the one administered a placebo saw improvements in symptoms, meaning the trial did not show the drug’s efficacy over the placebo as a COVID-19 treatment.
So the reason Kowa was “unable to prove the efficacy” wasn’t because IVM is “not effective”; it was because almost everyone in the placebo group got better quickly too. According to Kowa’s press release, “Both intervention and placebo arms showed milder symptoms around 4 days after the start of administration” and “There were no deaths and hardly any severe cases.”
Although Kowa hasn’t released the full trial details or results, the 0% mortality rate among the 500+ participants in the placebo arm suggests they were mostly at very low risk of severe disease. So the results don’t show IVM was ineffective; they show no medication was necessary for these participants to prevent symptoms worsening or for them to recover quickly.
This a not a new issue in studies on early treatments. Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch noted the same thing in RCTs showing non-significant effects for another “controversial” drug, hydroxychloroquine.
The RCT studies proclaimed supposedly as definitively showing no benefit of HCQ use in outpatients have all involved almost entirely low-risk subjects with virtually no hospitalization or mortality events and are uninformative and irrelevant for bearing upon these risks according to HCQ use in high-risk outpatients.
When tested on larger numbers of people for mortality benefit, IVM often performs a bit better.
Next, let’s compare how the JT reported Kowa’s IVM trial press release with how Reuters reported Shionogi’s press release for its 1821-person RCT of its anti-Covid drug ensitrelvir.
Japan’s Shionogi & Co Ltd said on Wednesday its oral treatment for COVID-19 demonstrated a significant reduction in symptoms compared with a placebo in a Phase III trial in Asia.
The drug, a protease inhibitor known as ensitrelvir, met its primary endpoint in a trial conducted among predominantly vaccinated patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, the company said in a statement.
A significant reduction in symptoms! So how many people were kept out of the ICU? Well, the Reuters article didn’t clarify what the main result was, so here it is from Shionogi’s press release.
the median time to resolution of the five COVID-19 symptoms [stuffy or runny nose, sore throat, cough, feeling hot or feverish, and low energy or tiredness] was significantly reduced in those treated with the low dose of ensitrelvir (the dose level submitted for approval in Japan) compared to placebo: 167.9 hours versus 192.2 hours, a statistically significant difference of 24 hours (p=0.04).
Yep, ensitrelvir cleared runny noses 1 day quicker than a placebo. So the media reporting of Shionogi’s results wasn’t dishonest, but it wasn’t exactly candid.
Similar to in Kowa’s IVM trial, no deaths were reported among the 900+ placebo recipients in Shionogi’s trial, which again suggests they were very low risk. So these results give us no idea about whether ensitrelvir will prevent the progression to severe disease in high-risk immunocompromised people, which is what actually matters.
Shionogi also reported that no serious adverse events occurred in the intervention arm. But one problem with not trialing a medication on the type of high-risk people who will actually need it is that the trial probably won’t pick up major safety signals that become clear later.
But as El Gato Malo has said, pharma doesn’t make mistakes in trial design; it makes choices.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Qatar PM calls for Gulf security framework with Iran, says war must be ‘wake-up call’
- China condemns US extortion of Iranian airlines, rejects Washington’s ‘illegal’ sanctions threats
- Italy to move military personnel from Taif base after missile strike
- Finland’s Stubb tells European leaders to calm down
- Defeating Russia on battlefield impossible – Fico
- Finland’s Gender Clinic Reversal
- Massachusetts Wants Mental Health Visits, Why Does Government Use ‘Health’ to Enter Our Homes & Families?
- US lawmaker admits American people footing bill for Trump’s failed aggression against Iran
- Pfizer Gave $500,000 to Groups That Lobbied to End Religious Exemption in Massachusetts
- HE SAVED LIVES. NOW HE FACES PRISON.
- If Americans Knew
- Sanctions are collective punishment: immoral and self-defeating
- Phosphorus Munitions Fired by Israel Burn Groves, Orchards in Southern Lebanon
- Israel Carries Out New Ceasefire Violations Across Gaza
- AI – Emphasis on the ‘I’: Israel Is Funding AI Chatbot Propaganda
- Israel Blocking Hundreds of Wheelchairs for Injured Children From Entering Gaza
- Israel Is Expanding and Upgrading Compounds for Palestinian Militias in Gaza
- The Palestinian-American Residents of This West Bank Town Are Wondering: Where Is Trump?
- Gaza desperately needs tents, wheelchairs, fuel… and everything else (Israel blocks it all) – Daily Update
- Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill at Least Seven Palestinians Over Three Days, including Woman and Child
- Trump’s militarization of Washington DC as he pursues Israel’s war against Iran
- No Tricks Zone
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
- Fear Of Debate: Alarmist German Climate Scientist Calls On Mainstream Media To Discredit Skeptic Voices
