Loss of balance over the pandemic crosses continents and political divisions
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In my Times (£) column this week, I wrote about the dangerous irrationality of those implacably opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine.
I wrote that while some concerns about the Covid vaccine were understandable — due to the acceleration of the normal testing regimen, or concerns about civil liberties if vaccination is made a condition of someone’s job or entry into a venue — there had been a significant loss of rationality and any sense of proportion.
You can go online and find people with scientific qualifications saying in terms that the state is actually trying to poison people with the Covid vaccine. But there’s no evidence whatever for this fantastic and paranoid claim. Many who assume that a doctoral or professorial handle confers intellectual authority tend automatically to believe such claims. Under serious and informed scrutiny, however, they fall apart.
Vaccination always involves a balance of harms. But all the available and reputable evidence indicates that the harms resulting from this vaccine are rare and vastly outweighed by its benefits.
It’s claimed, for example, that tens of thousands are suffering serious vaccine side effects. But this is based on statistics showing merely the number of those who subsequently died of other ailments; it doesn’t prove cause and effect. It’s claimed the vaccine may affect women’s fertility; there’s no evidence for that. And so on and on.
Yet anti-vaxers in Britain have even been abusing and intimidating children at their school gates over taking the vaccine. Such an unhinged set of fears is coming from both ends of the political spectrum.
Elements on the right have latched onto every single government response to the pandemic to claim a world-wide conspiracy to enslave and poison people, involving globalists, paedophiles, the “deep state,” Jewish financiers — and Bill Gates working with all of the above to control the world through microchips.
However, vaccine hostility has long roots in liberal “back to nature” movements too which for decades have used homeopathy, eaten only organic food and shunned all vaccinations for their children. The belief that “Big Pharma” drug companies were evil was previously a left-wing mantra. And now, as reported in the Observer, vaccine hostility is associated with the “wellness” industry and alternative lifestyles including ayurvedic healing, meditation and something called “conspirituality”. This turns out to be the intersection of yoga, juice cleanses, New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups controlling the universe.
Now this madness has reached Israel, where the third “booster” shot has brought under control a fourth wave of Covid cases over the summer. This was caused by a combination of waning efficacy from the two-shot vaccination programme, a stubborn residue of people refusing to get vaccinated and the arrival of the mega-infectious Delta variant.
The hospitals started to fill up with mainly young and unvaccinated people suffering serious effects of the virus. Vaccinated people who contracted it mostly suffered far less serious effects than if they had not been vaccinated — in which case many of them would have died.
On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported 236 serious cases of Covid-19 in the country, the lowest figure in ten weeks. Just 12 percent of the seriously ill were fully vaccinated.
Yet the health ministry’s director of public health, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis who has been a prominent advocate of the Covid vaccine, is now under physical threat from anti-vaxers. Ha’aretz reports:
Alroy-Preis’ high threat level designation follows what the police consider credible intelligence about plans to harm her or those around her. She has been a focus of criticism by vaccine opponents, some of whom have even called on social media for her to be physically attacked…Relatives of Alroy-Preis have filed three separate police complaints over the threats against her.
Clearly this is beyond disgraceful. It is also wildly irrational, given the proven success of the vaccine in preventing infection, serious illness and death from Covid-19. Determined to avoid further ruinous lockdowns, Israel’s government has put all its energies into vaccinating as much of its population as possible, including — from this summer — children aged 12-15.
Now that the US Food and Drug Administration has voted overwhelmingly to authorise the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5-11, Israel’s government has signalled that it will start vaccinating this age group too as soon as the US issues final approval.
In Britain, the issue of vaccinating young children with the Covid vaccine induces hysterical opposition, with claims that Covid-19 causes no harm to young children while the vaccine may harm them badly. So it’s worth looking at the evidence from Israel about the relative risks to children from both Covid-19 and the vaccine. Ha’aretz reports:
One of the reasons for the delay in Israel [to vaccinating children] was the appearance of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, as a side effect among some people under 30 who had been vaccinated – mostly males – which required examination.
Since then, it has been found that myocarditis is extremely rare: according to the Health Ministry, there were 12 cases of the disease out of 256,000 people aged 12-15 who received two doses of the vaccine. Most of these cases were mild and did not require hospitalization. Despite the data showing the side effect is rare, the fear of myocarditis became a major argument among parents who did not want their children to be vaccinated.
… While children rarely become seriously ill or die from COVID-19 compared to adults, some develop complications. Infections in unvaccinated kids have also risen due to the easily transmitted Delta variant.
“To me, the question is pretty clear,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, a paediatric vaccine expert at the CDC and a voting member of the panel. “We don’t want children to be dying of COVID-19, even if it is far fewer children than adults, and we don’t want them in the ICU.”
From the beginning of the pandemic until the middle of this month, 2,660 Israeli children were hospitalised with COVID-19. Out of this number, 398 were in moderate, serious or critical condition. The Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child was presented with data this month showing that 31 children aged 5 to 11 had contracted the coronavirus and been in serious or critical condition — and that three had died.
But while most children infected with the virus had mild symptoms, the effects of “long COVID” are also part of the debate. Children who suffer from long COVID experience ongoing symptoms even after recovering, including nerve and lung damage, and problems with their digestive system.
A Health Ministry survey showed that 11 percent of those who had contracted the virus developed long COVID. Among children aged 3 to 6, the percentage of cases who suffered from the symptoms of long COVID six months after they recovered was 1.8 percent. For children aged 6 to 12, the number stood at 2.4 percent. But doctors also say long COVID is under-diagnosed and seems to be more common than the data shows.
Children are also at risk of contracting PIMS, or Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome, after recovering from the coronavirus — a condition which can be serious or even life-threatening. Roughly 120 such cases have been reported in Israel so far, a 16-year-old has died from the syndrome.
To repeat: for vaccination to be ethical — and necessary — the harm it may do has to be vastly outweighed by the harm it will prevent. From the Israeli evidence, it would seem that, even when it comes to children, a Covid vaccination programme meets that requirement.
This from the Guardian. A breaking news story.
I think I get answer #2. If I understand you correctly, the “successful” vaccines such as those for measles, smallpox and polio attack and destroy the entire virus, while the covid vaccines only destroy part of the virus. But I still would like a little more information about how the “successful” vaccines work.
I don’t think that they vaccinate people who actually have measles during a measles outbreak, but only those who are likely to come in contact with those with measles. Yet they also do make use of the vaccine during an outbreak. This does not seem to cause harm or make the measles outbreak worse, as according to your theory that vaccines should be administered during an outbreak, it should.
Also with the other vaccines that seem to give lifetime protection, such as th polio vaccines. It too was first administered during a pretty severe polio epidemic in the early i950s. Yet its administration while the epidemic was still occurring didn’t seem to reduce its effectiveness. I guess my question is, why is it dangerous to administer certain vaccines during an epidemic of the illness, but not necessarily with some other vaccines designed to provide immunity from other diseases?
@peloni. With regard to your anwser (1) to my question. Peloni, I get it that these issues are complicated and difficult for a layman to understand fully. However, I also think I understand at least the jist of your reasons for believing that the Covid vaccines are likely to fail and lead to variants that are completely resistant to it. However, I still don’t understand why some vaccines, such as the measles, polio and smallpox vaccines, were able to give people more or less permanent immunity to their respective diseases. It would seem to my layman’s mind that they would be equally subject to failure for the same reasons that you have outlined with respect to the Covid vaccines.
I don’t understand what a vaccine “leak” means. What is it in the vaccines that leak, and how does that cause harm?
Finally I want to understand why the flu vaccine, which is also said to be a leaky vaccine, nevertheless seems to provide protection for a somewhat longer time than the covid vaccines.
I realize that I am putting a very tall order on your plate. But please bear with me (no pun intended). But please do your best to inform me. Perhaps some other readers with limited scientific-medical backgrounds will also benefit.
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This leads us to the last issue, the focused nature of the vaccine. The issue of conservatism of the genetic code comes into play when examining how long vaccine protection might be maintained. The immunity from either a vaccine or routine infection results in an immune response that does not change. The Tcells and other inflammatory cells have many tricks that can be brought to bear against any infection they recognizes from its established immune memory, but they have to recognize it from their recorded library of immune memory. So as the Spike changes via mutation, the immune memory of everyone inoculated by the Pfizer shot will be mostly identically pointed at the wild type virus, which is no longer a threat anywhere. Think of it like this: In 1942, Singapore had its guns implanted pointing out to sea. The British had the dense jungle behind them and they knew the attack would come from the sea. Only the Japanese knew this was the mentality of the British and instead came thru the dense jungle. The virus is a lifeless thing with no master sense of strategy as the Japanese employed at Singapore, but what the virus does is simply move off target, one mutation at a time, until suddenly, they are no longer approaching from the sea, they are in the middle of the jungle coming fast, as the immune system’s defenses are still pointing out to sea, at the wild type strain. To allow this type of strategy to unfold, the reckless universal deployment to every human on the planet with the same spike protein target renders a similar weakness with each of the Spike vaccines. Hence, billions of people are being used as Petri dishes to develop new strains, while no antiviral therapy or drugs are applied in treatment to limit the SARS-Cov2 from developing new mutations at the tiny Spike protein at which all the Spike vaccines are aimed. It is a perfect storm between these four factors.
Relating this to the measles vaccine, we know that the measles vaccine is sterilizing. The measles vaccine is aimed at the entire measles virus, not a small portion of it. The vaccine is not deployed against everyone in the midst of a viral outbreak of measles. They will treat people who develop measles. So the situation of Covid is very different from Measles at every point I have discussed. If their tactics are left unchanged, I am not sure how any advantage can be gained with just doing the same thing over and over. There are, however, things they can change. They can reformulate the vaccine to be sterilizing, administer it to a focal population, during non-outbreak conditions, while administering treatments. This could solve the problem. Vander Bosshe warned them. He was correct, unfortunately for all those who have suffered the consequences of disease and death. This, of course, ignores the safety issues which are a different topic than included in your question.
It should be noted that Karen Kingston reports that there have been 12 formulations of the Pfizer vaccine deployed under the EUA, per their BLA application. I have not read the document yet, but if this is true, the 3rd jab might not have been the same as the first 2. However, even if this is true, it does not appear to have had a sterilizing effect, as ~2/3 of the vaccinated public have had the 3rd jab and there are still reports of 3rd jab people contracting the disease and dying of it, not withstanding the claims that the vaccines are 90% effective. Just FYI. Let me know if something is unclear.
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@Adam
It sounds like a simple question, and I guess the question, itself, is simple enough. The answer, however, is a bit of a long tale including four weaknesses which have worked in concert to diminish and defeat the benefit of the jab, which if not corrected, will create a circular pattern of failure for the boosters. They include the terribly focused vaccine, the prohibited early treatments, the leaky nature of the vaccines and the universal deployment of the vaccines. These four factors are each associated with and leading to an increased level of mutations and variants which is among the distinctions of these vaccines and the others you referenced such as measles.
The vaccines should have been demonstrated to be protective before the rollout, but the limited testing show us little of the vax affects or safety issues. I have noted before that the Relative Risk Reduction is a pharmaceutical trick to ignore the broader question of how protective it is. If you are unfamiliar with my meaning here let me know and I will explain it again, but I believe I have mentioned it a few times before, and don’t care to make this explanation longer than needed. So, upon the rollout, it was seen that the vaccines lacked the ability to cleanse the viruses completely and quickly as early as the first week in Jan, there were breakthrough cases emerging. This was the point when Vander Bossche declared his warnings about the ultimate failures of the vaccine program.
So we had a unsterilizing vaccine. This would not have been a completely losing potential if recognized early in the vaccine campaign. There were those who needed protection, and the vaccines were not needed by those not at risk. Hence, the early opinion of many of the vax critics including McCullough and Malone each called for the vaccines to be focused around those who had no protection against the virus, ie the at-risk group. At this early stage, no one knew that the greatest harms were to be suffered by these at-risk recipients of the vax, and when this became more clear, these critics have changed their support of the shots even for the at-risk group, but this is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the vaccine as you inquired. Had the vax been restricted to the unhealthy, the obese and the elderly, it would have reduced the level of emerging mutations because it would have limited the exposure of the vaccine-antibodies on the virus.
So we had an ineffective vaccine applied universally across the world. The damage from the reckless universal campaign, however, could have been assuaged if early treatments had been allowed. The refusal to administer antiviral treatments and therapies to patients left them as Petri dishes growing virus with no medical response. This unopposed growth allowed the number of mutations to increase as the mutations are a by-product of viral growth. Using IVM or HCQ cocktails early in the disease, say even at day 3 or 4, would have reduced the viral colony by some fraction, ½ or ¼ or some proportion in every treated Petri dish, and thereby limit the number of variants by limiting the amount of viral growth.
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@Peloni, a question for you. If the immune response to a virus or bacterium tends to fade in time, and mutations of these pathogenic microbes are contantly creating new and sometimes deadly variants, how is it that some vaccines last a lifetime, or at least have continued to offer for protection for many years? The vaccines for polio, measles, smallpox, diphtheria, etc. are examples.
Some vaccines are thought to offer lifetime protection once the individual has received or or three shots. I think that is the case with the polio vaccines. Is it not possible, as some have suggested, that the cv19-2 vaccines will provide lifetime immunity after three shots, or perhaps four or five, thereby more or less eliminating cv19-2 as a threat to humans?
I am not saying that this is the case. I am only asking your expert opinion on the matter. Many thanks.
@Edgar
They pick tomatoes before they ripen, and then ripen them in storage by blowing in some kind of gas (I saw this info many years ago).
@Edgar
Thanks for your fascinating reply.
I never add salt to foods also, although there’s always some in salad dressings and in canned foods, such as mushrooms, tomatoes, etc. (I use dried beans).
I do get a rare craving for something salty, like chips, but the last time I gave in to it it seemed that there was more salt there than chips (same with the hummus I tried), and my ankles did swell soon after eating that stuff, so I am not going to ever eat these things again.
I also used to have a garden but I never had a sizable vegetable patch.
I planted garlic once (you have to plant it in the fall), it turned out great, much better than any at the store.
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Another important source of problems caused by antibodies, which is very related to the Covid shots, lies in what his known as tolerance to something that the body recognizes as foreign(sometimes referred to as high titer tolerance). Recall the innate immune system is first to recognize the foreign compound and program the adaptive immune system. When the adaptive immune system responds with massive antibody production, the high concentration of antibodies creates a dominating effect over the innate immune system. The high antibody production can shut down the innate system. This was a prediction that Dr. Vander Bosshe foretold at the beginning of the year. In his warnings, he noted that it would have been less important if the antibodies produce had actually been able to kill the virus completely, creating a sterilized effect, but unfortunately, the programmed antibodies were not capable of doing so. This is how he predicted, shortly after the vaccine rollout, many things that have come to pass, including the domination of variants, the virus being able to escape from the antibodies via mutation, the resulting breakthrough cases increasing over time and, ultimately, the early failure of the vaccines.
Regarding your observation that
I find it telling that this point struck you, even while it seems to evade the notice of many in the scientific field who should be cognizant of this relationship. In fact, your keen observation here is a very important one, which underlines the importance for ending the viral outbreak as soon as possible. The host-virus interaction is a dynamic interaction, in which nuances of tactics can be detected and responded to by either side. The virus is constantly testing their situation in this dynamic relationship and creating varying mutations depending upon their environment. They will throw whatever develops at the immune system of the host to see what sticks, so to speak. This is why it is vital that the entire battle between the host and virus be shut down as soon as possible. For every infection, their is one host but untold numbers of viruses in which mutations are created at some ratio, some believe as many as 1 or more per infected host(much of this is guess work), but the mutations are how Alpha, Beta, Delta, and their sub-lineage mutants were created. It only takes one of these viruses to be put together in an aberrant way, producing a variant that will be quite lethal to the host and beyond the effective limit of the programmed antibodies. This is among the many reasons why early treatment is immensely important, beyond the obvious reasons of preventing needless suffering and possible death by the infected person. The lack of treating the viral infection early is driving the production of variants. Doing so maintains the need for boosters, more shots, more wealth transfer, but it is a policy pregnant with disaster.
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@Edgar
The process I had described is a bit detailed even as I tried to keep it simple(believe me), so I am happy I did not lose you as evidenced by the fact you caught a couple of slight, though significant errors, in my writing:
Very good catch on your part. You could read that a million times and it would still not make sense as I screwed it up. It should read
“This same toxic environment is not produced against the virus when the Tcells attack an infected cell because the attack on the infected cells destroys the virus factories.
When a virus, or bacteria for that matter, invade a cell, their purpose is to take control of the cell and force it to create a factory, basically, which uses the cell’s network of systems to mass produce millions of daughter viruses. In the immediate moments following the virus invading the cell, the cell responds by sending up a flare or ‘red flag’, so to speak, to alert the immune system that it has been infected and needs to be destroyed. It accomplishes this by placing an actual piece of the foreign invader on the cell’s surface, displaying the fact that it has been hijacked by the specific virus so the immune system knows exactly how to respond. The Tcells float through the body and inspect the body’s cells routinely looking for these ‘red flags’ which is how it detects infected cell and pre-cancer cells which each need to be destroyed. Once the ‘red flag’ is discovered, the immune system calls upon the specifically programmed Tcells related to the specific virus that invaded the cell, and launch a very specific attack and kill the infected cells.
The preference of producing a Tcell response over an antibody response has been well established to approach viral infections adequately, and understanding and acting on this point is important in the field of vaccine development, which is why they try to create remedies of drug treatments and vaccines that favor Tcell responses over antibody production. Dr. Malone alluded to this, though not in any detail when he spoke on the Dark Horse podcast, his first interview. Dr. Harvey Risch also attempted to discuss this in some of his early interviews, but it is a pretty sciencey, deep in the woods, topic and a difficult concept to convey in a short interview without the audience having a basic understanding of the limited details(believe it or not) of what I have shared here, and few audiences outside of those in certain specialized fields have such an understanding.
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READER
Once again you bring up a very interesting (to me) matter. I also read that it had been decided that salt did not affect blood pressure , and doubted that “discovery” as you did. When very young, my dear departed elder brother told me that every item, had it’s own natural salt. I tended towards eating lots of raw vegetables which at that primitive time in Ireland, were grown with no artificial or imported soil aids, but only local animal manure. From that time on, I never used salt, to this very day. In fact my blood tests always show my salt content a point or so below the low norm.
I particularly liked raw cabbage and raw onions which I ate like apples. They were mild and actually sweet tasting, the cabbage stalks actually being stronger than the onions. Turnips too. Carrots not so much; very sweet, and when straight from the garden, delicious, but store bought carrots seem to have developed a “soapy” taste, and as that’s all I can get nowadays, I rarely eat them. ..
I too have noticed that manufactured, and especially canned goods have an unusually high salt content and which over the past 10 years seems to have become higher. I don’t know why, maybe you do, as you research and I don’t. I particularly like all kinds of beans., which I can only buy in cans.
When I had a garden, I would have about 75 or more tomato plants, of the most incomparable taste, compared to the equally handsome but completely tasteless store bought ones. I just don’t know how they can grow these dummy items. How did they get rid of the delicious taste -and why.
I recall one time finding a green tomato in my garden, with a peculiar inside. I had never seen such before.. So intriguing was it that I brought it to a market garden. They told me that it had been grown too close to a potato row. And it had been.
One time I accidentally left a potato in the soil. It might have been 2-3 years later-I’m guessing-when I dug up the most enormous potato I had ever seen. I didn’t know they could grow that big. I had to carry it in both arms . It weighed 32 lbs. .And very eatable, lasted us ( 5 voracious appetites-and my wife) for several days.
you mention swollen ankles. I always understood that oedema was mostly caused by congestive heart failure, also by too much salt. causing fluid retention
I always noticed that after a long air trip my shoes always felt tighter, that I’d loosen the laces. My feet would swell. Not much but enough to cause the described discomfort. I later found that there were several harmless reasons for oedema, and it was not only in the ankles and feet, but other parts of the body. And that gravity carried the fluid to the pedal extremities. .
PELONI
A very deep and detailed post. No need for me to comment other than to say that I enjoyed it immensely and in fact sent it to my two brilliant daughters who also I’m sure will both understand and enjoy. I await their response to me with much anticipation.
(A fond father’s foolishness, perhaps).
One thing struck me, and that was that the way the virus is forced to mutate seems ,at least to me, and from my understanding of your blueprint, very like the way you describe the development of the adaptive immune system.
There was one part which I had to read 3 times , the last two slowly, before I felt I could follow it. That was the text at the end of the 4th paragraph which begins “The same toxic environment is not produced by the virus when the T cells attack….” it was what came after “attack” which needed careful reading..
@Edgar
Good to hear from you. Your question is very insightful. The answer will be found in the manner in which the virus is left to mutate, and that will be determined based on the manner in which the immune system attacks it.
The human body is equipped with many biological systems that make up the entire immune system, but these can be divided into two broad parts, the natural or innate immune system and the acquired or adaptive immune system. The innate immune system is the part of our immune system with which we are each born and is a product of our genetic heritage and maternal antibodies. Contrasting to this is the adaptive immune system, which is based on the body’s adapted response to the realm of bacteria, viruses, fungus and environment that we encounter throughout our our lives during which the adaptive immune system is constantly expanding.
The innate immune system reacts to a foreign invader within minutes to hours, as it employs generalized tools to destroys the invading entity. Following this, the innate immune system will then use the debris from the dead invaders to program the adaptive immune system to specifically target and kill the invaders over the following days and weeks. The adaptive immune system uses two major pathways to accomplish this – it creates antibodies to find foreign invaders and it programs Tcells to seek out and kill cells already infected by the invaders.
These two pathways of the adaptive immune system are part of the answer to your question, but just part. Antibodies induce a hostile environment for invading viruses, for example. A virus has a very short life span, but it can quickly produce millions of copies. The advantage for this short lifespan with huge numbers of progeny lies in its ability to readily adapt when it is placed into a toxic environment. The antibodies produce this toxic environment as it attacks the virus floating in the blood as it has been specifically programmed to do. The result is that the virus is able to mutate towards escaping the toxic elements in its environment. This same toxic environment is not produced by the virus when the Tcells attack on infected cells because the attack on the infected cells destroys the virus factories. Likely this was why, the immune system does not generate antibodies as a primary response to viral re-infections.
So, when producing a vaccine against a virus, it is very useful to create a vaccine that primarily stimulates the production of programmed Tcells rather than a vaccine that primarily stimulates the production of programmed antibodies. The Covid shots all produce immune responses that are primarily based on stimulating programmed antibodies. This is why the variants keep developing and are developing such that they are specifically able to escape the programmed antibodies, almost like the programmed antibodies are programming the virus to escape their programming. But it is worse than this. As viruses are caught in this form of a hostile environment, they react by becoming more aggressive towards their human hosts, making them more lethal. This process is diametrically opposed to the what happens when a virus is left to mutate in a host devoid of such an antibody toxic environment, where it will develop in such a way as to coexist with the host, becoming more ‘attenuated’ ie less lethal. This process is called Mullers wratchet and it is a basic principle of virology. Ultimately, this is the long way of saying, if the vaccines continue and early treatment is not adopted, many more lethal viruses will likely come forward.
@Edgar
Thank you for your response.
About high blood pressure.
Remember how everyone was supposed to cut down on salt to avoid high blood pressure, and then it was decided that salt doesn’t really have anything to do with it?
Well, it does.
Maybe not for everyone BUT there are people (again, I have no idea how many or what proportion of the population) who are very sensitive to salt intake in food and will start to get swollen feet and dangerously high blood pressure (including the real danger of stroke) after a few days of eating salty chips and stuff, believe it or not!
I have noticed that lately the salt content of processed foods went up incredibly which makes me wonder how many people on BP meds are really suffering from higher salt intake than they can tolerate.
So it certainly pays to watch your salt intake and check your blood pressure and your ankles to see if there’s any correlation.
If someone is already taking the BP meds he should be very careful with messing with both salt intake and the meds, to avoid sudden dips in BP which may cause a fall.
READER
I totally agree with your comment about doctors and although I hadn’t thought about it, bordering on malpractice seems to be what it is… Smart to catch that.. Many are good doctors and even more are not. I had a friend once, a very wealthy man whom you would think, could buy the best. He had high blood pressure, and doctor after doctor all were convinced that he’s been given the WRONG medication but= the previous doctor.
He died from a massive stroke, at a comparatively young age, well under 60.
Yes you are quite right about the flu, and I’d actually written it into my post, but then deleted it because of perceived overload. And a couple of potentially -and at one time, certainly- fatal pneumococcal and streptococcal diseases, which germs are supposed to be always with us, congregating on our skins.
Be that as it may, a hypothesis is still only a suggestion formed by certain vague indications of wither this or that,-or maybe the other- and certainly not nailed down in any way.
So, until the hypothesis has been solidified into a visible and scientifically shown item,ebacked up by double blind studies and peer reviewed, it’s just a passing gust of wind.
@Edgar
Guess what, the ”regular” flu STILL hasn’t lost “its sometimes lethal effect”!
Then why should COVID?
What if the hypothesis about shedding prion proteins which cause a kind of “mad cow disease” is correct?
All the “vaccinated” health care workers will suddenly turn into lepers.
As far as the telephone and Web doctor appointments, my surely unwanted opinion is that it is malpractice, just as are the in-person appointments where they don’t even examine the patient (as much as those examinations may be disliked by patients, it is not about comfort).
@Bear. Bear, I agree with you that the vaccines reduce the liklihood that one will get seriously ill from Covid19-2. Numerous studies have tended to confirm this. But there are nevertheless several reasons to be concerned about the vaccines.
The main one is that there is some evidence that has accumulated that the vaccines are themselves dangerous. The number of reports sent to the CDC’s VESID reporting system is much greater than for any other vaccine that is in use today, and any that has been in use for the past twenty years. The social security administration, apparently at the request of the CDC, is reported by one investigator to have collected data to the effect that approximately 53,000 social security recipients, meaning mainly retired or disabled people, have died within three weeks of being vaccinated.
The extreme reluctance of many healthcare workers to be vaccinated is another reason for concern. Many healthcare workers, including nurses, have quit their jobs rather than being vaccinated, even though they are not even able to receive unemployment insurance if they do, and their chances of being hired by another hospital are not great. Such unusual behavior by healthcare workers is difficult to explain unless they have witnessed many patients who have been admitted to hospital after suffering adverse reactions to the vaccines, and that some of these individuals have died.
Also of concern is the large number of union members working occupations that put them in frequent contact with both hospitals and a large part of the general public who do not wish to be vaccinated. As a result, their unions have engaged in hard bargaining to grant them exemptions from being vaccinated. One would think that people in these occupations, such as policemen and truck drivers, would be eager to be vaccinated because their daily contact with so many people means that they are at greater risk of contracting covid diease than most others. The only way to explain thir reluctance is that their work puts them in frequent contact with hospital workers, and that these have told them horror stories about patients who have died of adverse reactions to the vaccines.
There is a member of my shul’s congregation who does in fact work as a truck driver and who makes frequent deliveries of supplies to hospitals. He claims to have been told by nurses and other hospital workers to whom he delivers supplies that their hospitals receive a large number of adverse reactions to the vaccines every day. Hearsay and anecdotal evidence? Yes. But I believe that friend from the shul is an honest and trustworthy man, and is telling the truth about what hospital employees have told him.
Then their is the concern of some physicians with legitimate professional credentials that the vaccines could cause terrible illness years in the future. In particular, several physicians have expressed concern that the vaccines might trigger the horrible prionic diseases, also known as “mad cow disease,” which infect the brain, are nearly always fatal, and cause an agonizing death. Since this disease usually only strikes people only five to twenty years after the person’s body has been exposed to prions, perhaps there is no reason for oldsters such as myself to be overly concerned. But may God forbid that young people, including children, should be infected with this horrible family of diseases and suffer agonizing deaths way before their time.
I don’t find it an exciting prospect to think that the vaccines may protect me from dying of covid, but may cause me to die of some other serious illness, or an allergic reaction of some sort.
“If the covid don’t get you then the vaccine will.”
More later.
Hello Folks.
I have been reading all your comments with great interest and, a poor researcher myself, admire the great lengths which many here have put into this.
I suggest that you watch the ongoing breaking scene in Canada, where many employers are delivering “Mandates” to their employees for forced vaccination. It is
in the purview of the Provinces
This has become a Charter of Rights and Human Rights subject, and we can expect it to end up in the courts. It is particularly sticky with ununionized workers ,as Unions would resist against their members against pushed around.
For Health workers it’s mandatory and I quite understand and agree with this.
TED surely will be watching it closely having close contacts in Canada (Hint Hint TED)
My daughter’s employer had issued a Mandate requiring vaccination. As also the employer of her husband. The whole family has ha d it and recovered so they have natural immunity, for what that’s worth; not much to an employer I expect. But they are very leery about vaccines, especially for their children who hardly felt it. although it was they who brought it home from school.
I know they are waiting for the perfect vaccine, (likely coming from Israel)
I just now, reading Peloni-a wonderful source- I learn that there are “wild strains” and “long” presumably as opposed to “short”, strains.. Different facets keep emerging all the time, and it’s sure that this disease, after the Pandemic status is downgraded, will become endemic, like the flu.
But will it lose it’s sometimes lethal effect, or it’s penchant for leaving long term serious illness?
Last week I had occasion to have aphone doctor appt. and duringnit I casually mentioned that I was not vaccinated and in close isolation. Much to my surprice he ticked me off. Anyway the antibiotic he gave me caused a violent allergy-my first ever-. Maybe Payback????
@Bear
Thanks for the notice there. I haven’t had the time to study it closely yet, but there really is little need to do so, unfortunately. Given the gross level of test subjects of the entire nation, they chose to ignore the opportunity to actually perform a drug trial of 3million, 3000, 300, or even 3 people. Instead they chose to employ the lesser level of comparison to conduct a retrospective study to ‘assess’ their strategy. It is as if everything that is known about knowledge, scientific inquiry and the pitfalls and importance of controlled trials have evaporated from the learned leaders of the medical, scientific and pharmaceutical communities, simultaneously. To evidence what I am referring towards, the use of IVM is opposed because there is just too little research to show evidence of its ‘efficacy’ even as there have been hundreds of actual drug trial, including dozens of randomized trials and twice as many controlled trials. But to prove this booster is effective, they found it necessary to not test it at all. Not before the entire Israeli nation was injected, and not after the entire Israeli nation was injected. They had complete control of the vaccination program, and they used only a retrospective trial, where they could not assess or limit or eliminate multiple biases, to determine effectiveness. This was very unfortunate. For example, let’s consider the case of India. India was a real world challenge where the outcome eviscerated Covid months ago, except where they employed the vaccines. But to evaluate the ‘data’ you would only have the results and what info was collected while the chaos of the ensuing nightmare was actually defeated. But you can’t eliminate the many elements of bias involved by those included in the study – there were millions of cases, as with the Clalit study, and ‘adjustment’ via software calculations will be employed to eliminate what bias they can identify, but this employs the use of judgement, right or wrong, on the part of those who are identifying the bias and ‘correcting’ the study. There just is no explanation why they would not have pursued an actual controlled trial to demonstrate the efficacy of their experiment.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33469615/
@eddie
This is a fair statement. It is a gene therapy employed to create what appears to be a temporary, perhaps very temporary, antibody response to the wild type virus of Covid. Calling it a vaccine defies the reality that vaccines are employed to prevent disease. Having said this, I employ alternating terms including vaccine, vax, jab, shot, simply to discuss these compounds in conversation, but your critique is well stated, which is why they have found it necessary to employ the Alinsky tactic of reinventing the wheel by redefining a host of terms so they can command the dialogue by blurring the distinctions about much of what we talk about.
Eddie de fonzo here ! Too many of you use the word vaccine as gospel !
I need you all to find a definition of vaccine !
What the hell is a vaccine ????????
It is NOT what YOU call a vaccine……..
I’m in for a heck of a lot of flack when i say
THERE IS NO VACCINE FOR A COVID OR WHAT EVER
YOU WANT TO CALL THIS WHATEVER THE HECK IT IS !
Ok fire away,
Eddie
Times of Israel has article which shows booster is 92% effective.
@Adam & Peronist, large Israeli study done by Clalit (largest HMO) shows the booster works really well and guards against infection plus any serious illness.
@Adam
Fascinating study. This is one of four studies released this week that showed poor durability of the vaccines, but this study was brilliantly conducted and collected a great deal or information, including, but not limited to, the data on household transmission. The ZeroHedge article skipped some vital details. They were able to collect data for the wild strain, Alpha and Delta and were able to describe the concentration and rate of growth of the virus as well as describing the various peaks of viral growth between the three strains, and, lastly, the rate of viral decline between the three strains. They showed that the vaccine dose was protective ~2months with breakthroughs concentrating ~3+months. They showed that 39% of the cases spread in vaccinated homes actually originated from vaccinated people. They demonstrated that there was a modest increase in viral peak load with increased age(perhaps significant?). The viral load peak did not differ from between the vaccinate and unvaccinated. The viral load peak also did not differ between the wild, Alpha and Delta strains, surprisingly enough. The vaccinated did display a faster rate of viral load decline than unvaccinated, which may be linked to the limited or reduced display of symptoms following infection. They also found that subjects who had faster initial viral growth demonstrated higher viral peaks and slower viral decline. The most important line in the very elegant study that has greatly expanded key details of the infection process lies in the following line:
This seems obvious, but there has never been any actual data displaying the importance of early treatment beyond the drug trials themselves. This study however, underpowered as it was, displayed supportive data based on viral growth charts that early treatment is key to limiting disease progression, which is why the authors boldly state:
I read several other studies this week, but I have to admit that I glossed over this one, but this paper is quite significant for a number of reasons, but the most pivotal, I believe, is not that Delta breaks through at some rate after 3months nor the similar contagious nature between vaccinated and unvaccinated, though that was important. The more significant finding here was the evidence supporting the need for early treatment(or medical prophylaxis) based on the direct host-virus interactions as displayed in the data. It will be very difficult for the medical community to ignore this going forward. This is not to say they won’t continue to do so, but doing so will display an obvious disregard of their patients care – ie lawsuits. Very big news.
Now we need to see if the drugs that treat unvaccinated patients will be as useful when applied to vaccinated patients, something I have been quite anxious to find out, but on which I have seen no data yet.
From Today’s Zero Hedge. Lancet has published a study that concludes that while the vaccines do reduce the risk of infection from the delta variant somewhat, they are no guarantee against infection. Also, the vaccines’ effectiveness wains after a small period of time–in some cases as little as six months.
Thanks Bear.
@Peloni one can tell who is vaccinated by the proof of vaccination. So having testing if in addition if one wants a safe environment is a good idea in my mind. Also if one has immunity naturally has the same logic.
@Peloni so if one wanted to be near perfectly safe being vaccinated plus getting tested would safest. Some cruise operators require both proof of vaccination plus a test 2 or 3 days prior to the cruise providing maximum safety.
My view is that is quite reasonable in order.
The author says that anti-vaxers are guilty of listening to unqualified people, who just happen to have letters (i.e. PhD. or M.D.) after their names. So, who is Melanie Phillips that we should listen to her? She further accuses anti-vaxers of entertaining conspiracy theories, and of being sympathetic to (pseudo-scientific) homeopathy. She sets up other strawmen to tilt against, while ignoring quite rational and scientific arguments against “the vaccine” and the established treatment protocols.
I’ll make her a deal. I’ll drop my belief in conspiracies, if she will get the government to drop their absolutely irrational opposition to hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. I will also drop my trust in homeopathy, if the powers that be will return full control of medical treatment back to the patient and their doctor, and will lift the unspeakable threat of being “cancelled” leveled against any medical practitioner who dares to challenge the accepted narrative.
These measures are not comprehensive, but would go quite some way toward restoring “sanity” to the stifled debate over this pandemic and how best to address it.
“No one should be dying of COVID right now.”
While reading this twitter exchange, it should be emphasized that Dr. Makary is a vaccine hawk, one who believes in free speech, limiting side effects and limiting costs and the significance of natural immunity, but an absolute believer in the use of vaccines. He is also the editor of Medpage, a major online medical news site which is very supportive of the vaccines.
He is quite correct. This drug has been remarkably effective in spite of it being downplayed for months. This and many others.
@Bear
I have a question for you relating to the weekly testing, if you would indulge my curiosity, if you know. I have never found the rationale behind this, so perhaps you are more informed on the topic. If the Covid recovered need to be tested weekly to demonstrate immunity, or the Covid Naive(unvaccinated and unrecovered) as well, why would the vaccinated not need to be tested as well. The vaccinated are susceptible in some number, and there exists no way to tell who is or isn’t, and the vaccinated are capable of having delayed symptoms after infection which would cause them to be super spreaders. If the goal is to separate the infected from the uninfected, even using the testing as it is, why would they not test everyone who might be infected – even if they are infected less often? On a public health basis, this seems counter-intuitive. So, if I am missing something here, I would appreciate the input. This is a serious question, and not rhetorical in the least.
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Such an undertaking would be best accomplished with an open dialogue with a frightened public in which suspicion and divisions always grows with the lack of transparency. Free access to the collected data(which is currently withheld from public scrutiny) would alleviate a great deal of the conspiracy theories established by such circumstances, and a broader review of the data could result in such safety signals such as those associated with myocarditis, being possibly noticed more quickly and limit the resulting harms from unwarranted and unnecessary preclusions of the data.
The addendum to this is that there really is a serious medical crisis which had not been manufactured, for example, by the avoidance of routine medical practices or the use of obviously useful alternatively well established treatments. When the war is based on a pretense where millions die while safe and well established treatments are withheld, even forbidden, sometimes by penalty of imprisonment, the need is fictitiously based and the war is quite a cardboard edifice. If, however, treatments were employed and they failed to solve the problem(unlike Mexico City, India, Peru,…) the national need would require such matters be solved as described.
Given our current circumstances, we are quite fortunate to have treatments available, we simply don’t have a medical community willing to employ them as the governing authorities have precluded their use with no explanation or excuse. The current standards which employ the use of hidden data, ignoring safety standards, using clever safety interpretations rather than judicious testing, and the testing being completely controlled, managed, and supervised by the shareholders without independent oversight, DMSB or Human Ethics Committees, and biased data collection, could each independently lead to disaster. Taking all of these unfortunate conditions together, …
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@Bear
A very thoughtful question, which should have been discussed long ago, I think. As stated, it is a very open ended question as all diseases are contagious. But I will presume your meaning to imply a seriously contagious and lethal disease such as Smallpox which was highly contagious and terribly lethal, killing over 30 out of every 100 contracting it and limiting the quality and longevity of life beyond this(HIV, for example would not fit this mold, not even remotely so), which is quite distinct from Covid which kills ~3 out of every thousand or less(depending on whose data is employed and which variant is considered dominant).
In times of a medicinal onslaught as I describe above, such standards must be considered contingent upon the circumstances of national needs, so yes. But the drug can not be an experimental product, devoid of safety standards nor with the disregarding of safety signals without investigation and mediation of such harms. The testing substantiating the benefit-risk of the drug would need to be established experimentally including pre-clinical and clinical trials. This would need to employ standard testing regimens for each of the targeted populations subsets(women of child bearing age, pregnant women, children, those recovered from the disease, elderly…) or they would need to be exempt from the treatment.
If the situation was such that routine testing was not possible, as was claimed with Covid, the public would need to be properly informed of the potential risks and given the freedom of choice to join the study or to decline it, without prejudice or victimization or societal preclusions, until the necessary testing as described above was completed. In such a drug study, the basic stratagems employed in any drug trial would, at a minimum, be needed to be meticulously employed when the subjects were to be the entire, or nearly entire, population. Every aspect of the trial would need to be kept from arms length from the shareholder’s and all of their proxies. By doing so it would eliminate the use of such pliable tactics as determining the standards of efficacy based on the use of Relative Risk Reduction, where a handful of 40K subjects are tested. It would also eliminate any suggestion that numerous subjects of the drug trial could be removed without excuse or explanation for nefarious reasons. The standards of testing for oncogenicity(cancer) teratogenicity(birth defects) and mutagenicity(gene mutation) would need to be demonstrated so that these compounds were not associated with such serious harms. The drug would need to be reviewed by human ethics committees, endpoint adjudication committee(to independently assess trial endpoints) and data safety monitoring boards(who would meticulously pursue any safety signal arising), so that the nation doesn’t produce a greater disaster than they are trying to avoid.
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If one is infected with a pathogen and gets sick, he might pass it on to people around him (notice, I said MIGHT, not WILL), and even if he does, not everyone who is infected will develop an illness from the pathogen.
Throughout history, it is the SICK who are quarantined, not the healthy (with some exceptions for cholera because it has to do with water supply).
Vaccines DO NOT prevent infection, they prevent ILLNESS in the vaccinated people.
There is no such thing as an “uninfected” human organism – each human has around 50 different viruses inside him and around 3 pounds of bacteria (sorry, the OCD sufferers).
It is IMPOSSIBLE to protect oneself from a virus just as it is impossible to protect oneself from a speck of dust, and a virus in comparison to a speck of dust is like a mouse in comparison with a mountain range – a virus is a piece of a molecule!
The info that the unvaccinated spread COVID but the vaccinated don’t is miserable propaganda and a trap for fools.
I am curious of those who are opposed to vaccines if you believe a society has the right to protect itself as a whole from those who have a contagious disease?
Does one have a right to pass on a disease to another be it AIDS, Covid-19 or any other contagious potentially deadly diseases?
Testing coercion in lieu of vaccine coercion – NICE!
@adamdalgliesh
Notice how with the successful treatments they scream “correlation is not causation”, “Simply because two events coincide in time doesn’t necessarily mean that one caused the other”.
However, when someone with any number of preexisting conditions, no matter how severe, tests positive for COVID, even after his death, with a discredited PCR test, the reasoning is reversed and he is deemed to be a COVID patient and to have died from COVID (even if he actually suffered and died from the vaccine side effects).
Free Speech certainly is vital to any Free Society. Including the right to disagree with the majorities views. I believe in the mRNA vaccines but certainly am against compulsory vaccination and firing people who refuse to be vaccinated.
In particular if they have had Covid and have immunity. Certainly they should be given the right to be tested weekly to show they do not have Covid, including the at home tests, and submit those in lieu of vaccine coercion.
@GreatWhiteNortherner
Your analysis here is very well described. More than that, though, it displays the simple reality that only by a return to the use of the marketplace of ideas may we actually examine the balance of harms that Melanie describes as both ethical and necessary, for without doing so there really is no debate allowed. The state sanctioned censors monitor and silence all who oppose the official dogma as toxic and beyond the limit of the public tolerance of harm. Censorship has become so commonplace, while coercion has become so routine, that each might easily be overlooked as normal in this altered society in which we find ourselves currently. So, thank you for returning us to a point of center – only by doing so can we actually approach the topic of the balance of harms that Melanie describes as her desire. In truth, every word you have written here, includes the very content of which I would have expected to have read from Melanie, herself. Only by returning to this normal state where words not only have meaning, but are free to be shared among the masses to find their worth based on their merits, rather than on their political acceptance, can we hope to find the true balance of harms. Preventing such a reasonable and routine approach to such vital topics is actually the very purpose upon which the application of censorship was initially adopted.
This is from today’s Gateway Pundit. I recommended it as required reading about ivervectin.
Ted, please publish this this highly informative and well researched article in Israpundit.
What I meant to sum up in my last comment was. I clearly hear a world view of distrust from those opposed to the vaccines. I do not hear or read solid arguments against the backdrop of solid evidence favoring the use of the mRna vaccines.
@Ted, their are multiple independent large studies in Israel on the vaccine that strongly support the use of the Pfizer vaccine, that do not rely on the USA. So one saying they do not trust Dr. Fauci is basically a red-herring or irrelevant argument.
Mixing arguments instead of just looking at what has happen in Israel is simply falling into the trap of distrust of some and not being able to look at solid evidence.
Ted, that is what I keep hearing from thus anti Covid vaccine distrust of governement not a rational.
@Greatwhite
Well said.
One more fact not mentioned by commenters so far that’s also significantly contributed to distrust is the ubiquitous deplatforming and censorship by Big Tech and Big Media of virtually every opinion (not just in the context of therapeutics) that’s contrary to the official narrative whether by highly credentialed and esteemed medical/scientific experts or non experts who in many cases have simply utilized official data/stats to point out contradictions, inconsistencies, etc.
If the official narrative is true why not let contrarians embarrass themselves in the pubic square and sulk away in shame when their views inevitably would presumably be exposed as complete nonsense by the “conventional wisdom”? When did sunlight stop being regarded as “the best disinfectant”? Did I miss that memo?
Once upon a time there was a thing called the marketplace of ideas, at least in what up until recently was the free western world, however for the past 20 months (and probably far longer than most of us realize) that world far more resembles yesterday’s USSR and today’s PRC when it comes to Covid (and increasingly more and more subjects). As history has taught us (or ought to have long ago) there’s never a legitimate reason to forbid the masses from hearing, reading or seeing competing ideas unless of course authoritarianism/totalitarianism/communism is regarded as preferable and superior to a free and democratic form of government where the collective is everything and the individual is nothing.
How a wise woman like Melanie Phillips could fail to see this obvious reality is truly stunning and greatly disappointing. I had a great deal of respect for her. I have less now.
I also think that Melanie minimizes the case against vaccinations. Today, Tierney News emphasizes them.
Human rights as they are currently understood by the so-called free societies were acknowledged and enforced specifically to prevent causing harm to EACH individual, therefore, limiting human rights in any way means causing harm to everyone at the same time by definition.
Truth is truth, and you cannot have a balanced view on whether the Earth is an orb or whether it is flat.
It is clear that the purpose of the “vaccination” campaign has nothing to do with protecting anyone’s health because when you care about someone’s health you do everything possible to heal them and make them well rather then turning them into a lab rat “for their own good”.
The data is so voluminous and so messed up at this point that it would take literally thousands of dedicated specialists to go through all of it, sort it out, and analyze it to come to any kind of valid scientific conclusions.
Dr. Malone, inventor of mRNA technology, spoke before a Hasidic Rabinical Court in NY with great results:
From Oct 26:
From today:
Here is the Hebrew text:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FC1Kae_WYBYiKMO?format=jpg&name=900×900
I get that Covid is real; my whole family got it from age 2-62. I get that the vaccine reduces symptoms. What I don’t get is why there is concerted worldwide attacks on treatments. Effectively, in the USA, after 22 mo. of pandemic, there still is no treatment despite the fact there is overwhelming evidence that inexpensive treatments work!!!!
On the day after I was diagnosed and felt like I had “significant” but not “worst ever” flu, I was able to get Ivermectin, Hydroxycloriquine and azithromyacin and zinc sulfate. I felt 50% better within 24 hrs. Everybody who has done any research on this ( I have done a huge amount) should know by now that the 1st 2 meds are zinc Ionophores that help the body absorb zinc and the zinc kills all virues. ( you can per Dr Zelenko, use Qucertin instead of 1&2 above.
Here is the problem: I had to go to pushhealth dot com to get it. Our regional medical center said only to quarantine and if you cant breathe go to hospital!!!
I asked for monoclonal antibodies: no! I asked arent you going to check my blood for vit. D level as if 50 or higher my chances ICU and death are reduced by 90%: no! Aren’t you going to check my zinc level as zinc kills viruses: no! Well arent you going to prescribe the meds I listed above since a Jewish Doc in NYC has treated 7000 patients successfully with them? No, that is horse medicine.
And you don’t think there is a conspiracy?
I fully agree. We must balance the potential harm against the potential good. That necessity is complicated because there is considerable doubt about the government figures.. A huge number of people do not trust the government for a number of reasons.
1. in many countries, including Israel and the US,. a ban was put on invermectin and hydroxychloroquine for no good reason
2. The complicity of Dr Fauci
3. The influence of Big Pharma.
4. The origin of the disease i.e China
Then there is the personal freedom issue (afterall its my body). But that too is not sancrosanct. If the harm done to others due to your rights is sufficient, the government has the right and the duty to force your compliance.
But this too is a balancing act and the governments are largely at fault for the distrust.
The US government has added fuel to the fire with its support of climate change being man made, the Russian Hoax, the relentless attack on President Trump and the stolen election.
Ted, Thank you posting a balanced article. A close relative of mine who is physician and previously had been involved in numerous medical studies expressed very similar views to this article.