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Ewan2, hello, good to see you again and thanks for the link, which I regard as very important.
This is why I try to base my arguments on the most reliable facts, such as death from all causes, or the polar icecaps melting away, combined with critical thinking. Things that would be extremely difficult to fake or distort.
I read Goldacre’s Bad Science some years ago, and Bad Pharma shortly afterwards; this is how I knew there was a big problem. I’m yet to read I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that, but you know, time; lots of commenting, trying to counter the spread of bad (sometimes lethal) information, lots of reading, following links, trying to work out what’s trustworthy and what’s not, and back to commenting again.
We all need the skills taught by Bad Science; Google, YouTube and Facebook tweaking their algorithms to favour “mainstream” sources just makes matters worse, digging the distrust deeper in.
It is in the interests of big (and small) business that we all become stupid, so that we can’t tell treasure from turds and will pay as much for shit as for gems. Don’t let them get away with it. But the corrupting power of business doesn’t turn “alternative” turds into treasure either.
“If you take a barrel of sewage and add a teaspoon of fine wine, you end up with sewage.
If you take a barrel of fine wine and add a teaspoon of sewage, you still end up with sewage”So it’s hard work, and if you’ll join me I’ll welcome you aboard.
Ewan2, what you’ve called the “‘vaccines'” certainly appear to be vaccines, as shown by the deaths from all causes during infection peaks plummeting as the {vaccines or whatever they really are} were deployed. I really don’t see how that could be faked – the national mortality statistics had already been collected for decades before the pandemic, and the national statistics are compiled from regional statistics, compiled from local statistics and individual hospital statistics, country after country, all over the world. The number of conspirators needed to seriously distort such figures would be huge; we’d end up suspecting our friends and neighbours, rather than pharmaceutical companies, Men In Black or shadowy elites.
We now have a problem with excess deaths increasing. I don’t rule out the vaccines being the cause, but it seems highly unlikely for both theoretical and practical reasons:
Theory – a vaccine is a based on a subunit of the virus it vaccinates against, in the case of covid the infamous spike protein. But a spike protein can’t reproduce within the host whereas a whole virus can, and does, passing from organ to organ, potentially damaging each as it goes. So I’d expect a virus to be capable of far more damage than a vaccine. So the excess deaths are most likely being caused by nearly everyone having had covid at some point.
Practical – 6% to 10% of various populations remain entirely unvaccinated, so if the excess deaths don’t apply to them, this will soon be entirely obvious.
Thanks E.T.
I have been contemplating an answer on the same line as you but you did it better.
The problem also applies to climate change when the big energy companies falsified or held back data and evidence. But all of this is traced back to capitalism, the need for increased consumption and economic growth irrespective to consequences and for enrichment of the 1%.HI Clark,
I tend not to think of it as a vaccine as it doesn’t prevent people from getting the disease. This lowering symptoms idea seem BS to me. I don’t expect to have lower symptoms of Tuberculosis or cholera, I expect no symptoms.
As far as ‘conspirators’ there is need. It’s business as usual.
As far as taking a Pfizer vaccine take a look at their criminal and deadly behaviour in the Meningitis outbreak in Nigeria in 1996. And their actions taken to get out of it. They went after state prosecutors and whistleblowers, which is why you don’t need a conspiracy – people know to keep their mouth firmly shut.
All the statistics are fairly meaningless to me and seem to be able to prove almost anything – I look around my community as that is my ‘reality’.
‘Difficult to distort’ – but not impossible. In the 60s John Lilly MD found that it was remarkably easy to programme people with thoughts that were not theirs. It’s in his book ‘ Centre of the Cyclone’.
‘Science in the Public Square: Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents‘ by Richard S. Lindzen, explores ‘scientific renting ‘ in the search for the filthy lucre.
Ewan2:
– “I don’t expect to have lower symptoms of Tuberculosis or cholera, I expect no symptoms.”
Do you apply this thinking to naturally acquired immunity as well?
– ” – people know to keep their mouth firmly shut.”
So how do you know of this?
– “In the 60s John Lilly MD found that it was remarkably easy to programme people with thoughts that were not theirs”
In the context of what you were replying to, are you seriously suggesting that thousands of doctors, nurses and local council officers had been “programmed” to declare living people dead? And what of the living people? Did they just go along with this?
Immunity means one is immune, so no symptoms.
Whistleblowers, who tend to go round in ones, implies that the majority of the workforce either know nothing or are keeping their mouth shut.
Clark, now now, there’s nowhere I suggested that millions of medical personnel ‘declare living people dead’.
Nevertheless I do know one doctor who declared someone dead at a traffic accident – he was struck off.Now, now now, Ewan2. I wrote:
– “This is why I try to base my arguments on the most reliable facts, such as death from all causes… Things that would be extremely difficult to fake or distort”
And you replied:
– “but not impossible. In the 60s John Lilly MD found that it was remarkably easy to programme people with thoughts that were not theirs.”
I think you’d better clarify, as you seem to have contradicted yourself.
– “Immunity means one is immune, so no symptoms.”
This binary distinction is too simplistic (or, “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that”). You catch a cold visiting friends and take it into your workplace. It’s unpleasant but not serious enough to stay off work. Your colleagues start coming down with it; they keep working too. You start getting better even though you’re surrounded by infected people; your body has been building immunity. Soon all sorts of people in your town are coming down with it, but your work colleagues are getting better, despite being in an infected town. Eventually everyone recovers, yet two years later the same thing happens again.
We see this with the norovirus vomiting bug, that does the rounds every few years.
Immunity wanes; ask a virologist. Unless you think the virologists make it all up for Pfizer. If you don’t think that, you can’t simply dismiss every claim made by science, on the basis of some corrupted science; you have to apply discernment.
@Clark, I’m sorry to use this thread to turn to you for help.
September 5-9 there was a meeting in Geneva, Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention countries met and Russia reported on US bio labs. I can find nothing on the meeting. If you could help with something to read or watch? There are some statements in our media, I wish I could see the source itself and check if they are reporting true facts.
Thank you!“I tend not to think of it as a vaccine as it doesn’t prevent people from getting the disease. This lowering symptoms idea seem BS to me. I don’t expect to have lower symptoms of Tuberculosis or cholera, I expect no symptoms.”
It is a misconception that all vaccines produce “sterilizing immunity.” The majority of vaccines, including cholera and BCG vaccines that you mentioned do not produce “sterilizing immunity.” Instead, they alter the disease course once you have become infected. Very few vaccines actually act like a coat of armour preventing infection, HPV vaccine being an example of such a vaccine. You might think it’s bullshit but the immunological and vaccinologist community would disagree with you.
If you were hospitalised with for example, a pneumonia, would you refuse antibiotics on the basis that they only modify the disease course this time and don’t prevent you catching it again?
I posted a this link in another thread. You might want to brush up on vaccines and how they work.
A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments.@Tatyana
I looked here and if you click on the BWC meetings links you’ll find this statement:“The Meeting will be closed and only open to representatives of States Parties and Signatory States. It will be an in-person meeting and will not be publicly broadcast. Summary records will not be prepared.”
Also, in the “digital recordings” if you search for those meetings they have “private” beside them. I suspect you won’t get information on what went on at the actual meetings.
I searched the term ” Article V Consultative Meeting Under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention” and came up with a number of statements from UK, USA, Russia and others. Needless to say, the USA and UK statements are very dismissive.
Thank you, ET.
I searched at the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and there’s no sign of the event there.Well, Igor Kyrillov, the representative for MoD said in his briefing:
“… regarding the export of strains and biomaterials of Ukrainian citizens, compliance with ethical standards when conducting research on military personnel, low-income citizens, as well as on the patients in psychiatric hospitals, who are one of the most vulnerable categories of the population – the explanations of the United States and Ukraine looked extremely unconvincing. In discussing this issue, the US delegation acknowledged such facts, while noting that the transfer of samples of pathogenic biomaterials to the US “has been infrequent”
“The Ukrainian side also refused to explain the emergency destruction of documents on the military biological program, saying that they are not in the court.”
https://ria.ru/20220919/issledovaniya-1817898249.html
I see the structure of the phrases; it admits for different interpretations. Hoped to see the source.
Thank you anyway, perhaps we will know more soon.Tatyana, sorry for my delay, and sorry but I haven’t found anything of substance about the discussions. All I have found is this joint statement of the Chinese and Russian governments from late last year, on the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Here are some excerpts:
– Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the People’s Republic of China and the Russia Federation on Strengthening the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction
– 2021-10-07 22:53Second paragraph:
– The Russian Federation and China reiterate the need that the BWC should be fully complied with and further strengthened, including through its institutionalization and the adoption of a legally binding protocol to the Convention with effective verification mechanism, as well as through regular consultations and cooperation in resolving any issues related to the implementation of the Convention.
Fourth paragraph:
– The Russian Federation and China note with concern that over the past two decades the BWC States Parties, despite the wishes of the overwhelming majority, have failed to reach an agreement on resuming the multilateral negotiations on the Protocol to the Convention, suspended in 2001 when the United States unilaterally withdrew from this process despite the fact that the consensus was almost reached. Consequently, and also in the light of rapid advances in the field of science and technology with dual-use capabilities, the risk of biological agents being used as weapons has increased.
My emphasis.
I am completely unsurprised that at the UN talks in March this year, all the Western politicians claimed that Russia was being completely dishonest and hypocritical. They simply always say that, despite being, repeatedly and verifiably, utterly dishonest and hypocritical themselves.
I can explain a bit on how things are done in the West. We have the “public sector” ie. local, national and supranational government organisations, and the “private sector” ie. companies that operate for profit. Typically, the public sector decide upon things that should be done, and then contract private sector companies to actually implement them.
The public sector is subject to Freedom of Information laws whereas the private sector isn’t; it enjoys the privilege of “commercial confidentiality” – it isn’t called the private sector for nothing! Companies often contract their employees and subcontractors under Non-Disclosure Agreements, NDAs for short. Typically, these NDAs are draconian, prohibiting those subject to them from revealing even the existence of the NDA. This is, for instance, how pharmaceutical companies distort medical data. The company has maybe five trials done. Two show a positive result, so the company publish those vigorously. One shows no effect and two show more harm than good, so the company simply doesn’t publish those three, and the employees daren’t say anything or they risk being sued in the civil, not criminal courts. The public can’t get private company information unless a court orders the company to open its records.
But this arrangement is also very useful to governmental organisations when they wish to hide things; they can simply contract the private sector to do them, and apart from the contract, how it is actually done will all be secret.
I know little of biological facilities in Ukraine, but I can understand the Russian government’s suspicion. The western governments will simply say “but this is merely commercial work, in the public interest, nothing to be afraid of”, but there doesn’t seem to be a process to fully verify this.
I can only affirm that in my country (Spain) there is an excess of mortality in all age groups that cannot be explained neither by heat nor by covid. Said in serious media and by professionals. This significant excess mortality coincides in time with the inoculations. The significant excess mortality and new pathologies are officially recognised, but the cause is “unknown”.
In Portugal, which led in the number of inoculations in young people, in the last year mortality has also shot up in this group (and in others, but it is more significant in adolescents). So much so that it has been in the news… but it is an unexplained fact, they say.
A couple of weeks ago I read an editorial in an influential newspaper here. It said there was a taboo running through society and even health professionals. It acknowledged the facts, and said that there is no explanation, while ignoring what has happened in the last year and a bit…
I wish I had time to sort through the hard evidence of everything that has been going on over the last three years. Others have done it for me, but they are not taken seriously no matter how well documented they are. I hope I don’t suffer the same fate when, hopefully, I publish a book in a year’s time.
Let’s not let the taboo win.
Cheers.
Oscar, I strongly urge you to read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science before attributing excess deaths to vaccination programmes.
See, we have been through something very similar just twenty years ago, when the corporate media caused a resurgence in measles and mumps by hugely amplifying some very speculative work by Andrew Wakefield. You need to understand the background of just how bad the “news” media is at presenting scientific and medical issues.
Meanwhile, the place to look is in the scientific literature.
Thank you, Clark.
Oscar, if we are scrutinising delayed effects from vaccination, we must scrutinise delayed effects from covid at least as vigorously.
Covid is more likely to cause delayed effects, because since early in the pandemic the covid virus SARS-CoV-2 has been found reproducing and thus persisting in various human tissue types, whereas the vaccines are designed to be incapable of reproduction, by lacking the entire reproductive apparatus of the virus.
– “In Portugal, which led in the number of inoculations in young people, in the last year mortality has also shot up in this group (and in others, but it is more significant in adolescents).”
In the UK, the second big covid wave coincided with the start of the vaccination programme; I expect similar was true in Portugal. I remember seeing “heat maps” of the progression of infection through the age groups of the UK population; infection was proliferating primarily in younger people, through schools and colleges, and working its way up through the older demographics, presumably through family connections. Go look at curves of infection, vaccination and excess deaths, which are available for countries all over the world, at sites such as Worldometers and Our World in Data, and always consider both possibilities.
– “Let’s not let the taboo win.”
And let’s not let rumours of taboos win either, whether circulated by the ‘mainstream’ or social media.
There is public research based on public health service records; time and again such public-sector science has eventually discredited the sort of private-sector work I referred to above (Sept 20, 16:55, comment #88706) in my reply to Tatyana. Seek out work in the scientific journals, which is where it receives the expert scrutiny so lacking in advertisement-funded media (whether ‘mainstream’ or social), which for obvious commercial reasons profit by promoting sensationalism and ‘controversy’.
The best known and most respectable scientific publications have long been prostituting themselves, which has become clear throughout the pandemic, and also by analysing the mails to which I already referred in the thread on the origins of the virus.
Likewise, most of the scientific community, while privately harbouring doubts on many issues, publicly kept quiet as whores.
True scientific debate has been vetoed both in specialised journals and in the media and even in social networks. What has been happening since 11 March 2020 has been anything but good science.
And the worst thing is that the facts are there for all to see, for the time being….
In the meantime we have another disruptive event, the war and the energy crisis, and the machinery is getting tighter and tighter.
And meanwhile the conspiracists debate with the sceptics. And every well-documented voice is silenced by one or the other. And those at the top laugh their asses off.
You see, I was brought up with the scientific method. I know the difference between correlation and causation. I am a psychologist and I know the cognitive biases involved in both conspiratorial and self-described skeptical thinking.
By the way, I recommend the website cognitive-liberty.online
If with all the threads that have been opened on this forum and all the potential sources of reflection and argumentation that have been given, you don’t have a grasp of what is going on, I fear the debate is sterile.
Often the attempt to be logical and use reason is a trap behind which various biases manifest themselves. And that obscures the possibilities of what is possible, and therefore of our perception and thought processes.
There are also professional misinformers. I myself could be one of them.
“It acknowledged the facts, and said that there is no explanation, while ignoring what has happened in the last year and a bit…”
Oscar, I’m not sure of the implications of that statement. Definitely the UK and other countries’ deaths statistics show a continued excess deaths rate when compared to previous five year averages. Of note, in the UK for 2022, this began from late April 2022 to now. From January to then the weekly deaths were actually mostly lower than the 5 year (weekly) averages. I don’t know if this is true for other countries. Oscar, can you link to your data source for deaths in Spain similar to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS)? This is a confounding factor in attributing the cause to vaccinations.
What do you mean by “while ignoring what has happened in the last year and a bit?” I’d be looking at the last three years. The vaccination roll out was a big event in that time frame. However, so was the actual pandemic with billions of people by now having had covid. Perhaps it’s an, as yet, unidentified long term covid complication. There were also lockdowns and restricted access to “normal” health care facilities. Perhaps missed diagnoses and treatment cycles account for some of the excess deaths (cancers, chronic illnesses and many other conditions). There is change to demographics with a higher proportion of older people which will lead to higher deaths. There is the “cost of living” crisis which preceded the Ukraine war. There were lifestyle changes during lockdowns, less exercise, more alcohol etc etc. My point is there are a host of factors besides vaccinations that may be relevant. To be clear, I’m not suggesting ruling out that vaccination needs to be considered as a partial contributing factor and (much less likely) the main or only contributing factor. I think the causes are likely to be multifactorial.
“This significant excess mortality coincides in time with the inoculations.”
Yes and no, as pointed out above. For 2020, there were no vaccinations until December 2020 and a number of months later for most countries. No deaths in 2020 could be attributable to the vaccinations. The timings look suspicious sometimes but not others (specifically, the first 4 months of 2022 in UK). Also, confoundingly, there were ongoing covid peaks during 2021 and 2022.
For what it’s worth, my concerns about the vaccinations are this. The Sars-Cov-2 virus (and other coronaviruses) evolved spike proteins that bind to Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors within cell membranes. This means that the 3D molecular shape of the spike protein “fits” into the receptor. Antibodies that bind to spike proteins have a similar 3D molecular configuration (to the receptor) so that they can bind to the spike proteins. However, that means those same antibodies may bind to what is supposed to bind to ACE2 receptors.
It’s all very complex. I do agree that it’s strange that the excess deaths are not more widely reported. According to Joe Biden the pandemic is over.
I started this post before the last three replies on this thread.
@Oscar
Don’t you think usage of terms such as “prostituting,” “whore,” are a little, erm, flamboyant?“Often the attempt to be logical and use reason is a trap behind which various biases manifest themselves”
Perhaps, but that is a manisfestation of incorrect use of logic and reasoning. Someone stating something is the logical conclusion doesn’t necessarily mean they have rigorously applied logic. We are all subject to biases, conscious and unconscious, but we can try to use rigorous logic to overcome them.
Oscar, you seem to be encouraging the readership to disregard discussions in the scientific literature (today, 13:37 comment #88764 above).
Conversely, you’re promoting “an influential newspaper” in Portugal, which claims that there is “a taboo running through society and even health professionals” (today, 11:08 comment #88749 above).
So this is your advice to readers, is it? Reject discussion in the scientific literature, and accept the ‘MSM’ instead?
Well, clearly I have explained myself very badly. I said I didn’t have time to put certain facts on the table here. So I should have kept quiet. After all, perhaps this is not the right place to discuss certain issues.
If I could, I would delete my two previous comments, but I cannot. So I apologise for having explained myself so badly (so badly that at some point the opposite of what I meant was understood). I take responsibility for the misunderstanding.
I definitely consider my coarse language appropriate in some contexts. I don’t know if this is one of those contexts, so I also apologise if I have offended anyone. Most journalists are intellectual prostitutes. That is a fact. And other, much more serious, facts that are happening need to be exposed without any whitewashing. Language is a tool of communication, I assume that in my last two posts I have misused that tool, but definitely, in a context of lies, you have to put black on white with a forceful voice.
Forget my last two comments. I take back everything I said in them, if that’s any good.
Finally, I hope you manage to find some truth among you all, here in these forums.
I am sorry if I have broken the harmony at any point. As I said, if I can’t cite sources I have to keep quiet (it’s also the practice I’m used to). And besides, maybe this is not the place to elucidate certain questions.
Cheers and truth.
Oscar
Oscar, conspiracists usually accuse those they’re arguing against of being “brainwashed by the MSM” while treating the scientific literature and the discussion therein as if it didn’t exist. Conspiracist argument almost always narrows and polarises any debate into a binary consisting of “the mainstream” represented as “governments and the MSM”, versus whatever “alternative” these particular conspiracists happen to be promoting.
I promote a view that it’s a bit more complicated, and indeed a bit more hopeful than that – that the so-called “MSM” is sensationalist by nature and worse than useless for evaluating technical matters, but that there is genuine technical discussion available in the journals dedicated to specific technical fields, which can be used to gain insight and apply discernment to the polarised and remarkably uninformative arguments that develop over “conspiracist” and “official” positions.
But you stomped on that idea pretty damn vigorously; according to your comments above, it seemed to me that you advise that the technical journals are an even worse place to look than the ‘MSM’.
There’s really no need to apologise and withdraw; simply clarify 🙂
Oscar, this again makes me wonder where you think genuine science is done. Genuine science must be getting done somewhere, as the myriad technological achievements around us testify. And to achieve genuine scientific advances, scientists must present and discuss their ideas somewhere. If this isn’t happening in the technical journals which, you say, have long been “prostituting themselves”, then where is it happening?
When I speak of true science, I am referring to the scientific attitude towards reality which, oversimplifying a lot, consists of posing hypotheses and demonstrating them, never with 100% certainty. Anyone can be a scientist as long as he approaches reality with that mentality. And that mentality implies not embracing any dogma or discarding anything a priori.
The basic science that allows the technological or medical advances, for example, that we know takes place in universities, public and/or private research centers…
And yes, through the exchange of articles in specialized journals or popularization books.
But if we follow the money trail we will see that the big publishing houses, as well as the big scientific publications, are kidnapped by whoever has the money.
Then there are the hierarchies based on supposed scientific authorities. And there are the emails published by U.S. Right to Know that show how behind-the-scenes maneuvering goes on to ensure that only certain hypotheses are published and others defamed (e.g., “lancetgate”, but there are many more).
Let’s go to the social sciences, scientific method adapted to social reality, the thing is not about electrons and test tubes.
The sociology of science has much to contribute here. From Thomas Kuhn to other exponents of the sociology of knowledge.
Let’s go on… I do not consider it a conspiracy that there are individuals and formal and/or formal groups that have shared interests and money and power, and exercise it in a more or less coordinated way for their own interests. That is history. That’s how the world works. That’s sociology of power. And in this respect I recommend C. Wright Mills, William I. Robinson, Leslie Sklair, Van der Pijl, Peter Phillips (from Project Censored), David Rothkopf…
I am not a sociologist so I don’t care about theoretical debates about whether there is a transnational capitalist class or it is better to call it a power elite or whatever. The bottom line is that these individuals and groups exist and it is well documented. They control most of the information flows not by conspiracy, but by money and influence peddling. I repeat, the social sciences have it well studied.
And the issue here is that they not only control the dominant discourses at the cultural, economic, geopolitical… but also at the scientific level.
And if you have a family to feed and you make your living from doing science, you better align yourself with the “official” lines, or say goodbye (literally).
So if you are at home in front of a computer researching whatever it is with an open mind and proving what you say, if you are driven by the search for truth, if you know how to search and use the right sources in the right way, you are already scientifically minded. Therefore, you can do science under certain conditions.
True science is the one that interrogates reality without imposing limits to the answers, and always demonstrating the assertions with solvent sources.
And what I denounce is that what should be science is hijacked by power. Besides, the sociology of knowledge shows that even sacrosanct science has its biases in every age.
For me true science is the sincere attitude with which we approach reality.
And what I am saying is that during the pandemic certain lines of research have been deliberately silenced, and more things that I don’t want to say because I don’t want to polemicize further. And all the evidence is available to the sincere seeker. PCR, its inventor was cool until he said things against the grain. Malone, his molecular technology is cool and still cool until he started questioning things. Montagnier, another one who started to crack up, just like Van der Pijl. Great intellects that suddenly become conspiracy theorists… And all sincere researchers who dig deep enough always come up with the same thing… But we’ve already discussed that in another thread.
I can’t go on any longer, Clark. I think you are scientifically minded, I really do. Go ahead with it.
Oscar, I’d really rather you didn’t drop out of debate at this point. Readers have decisions to make about their health. I think these decisions should be based on reliable data and sound reasoning, not vague suspicions that the elite dictate false science to fool the masses into getting lethal injections.
“Lancetgate” is the famous retraction of a paper about treating covid with Hydroxychloroquine. What do you regard as the significance of this matter?
– “And all the evidence is available to the sincere seeker. PCR, its inventor was cool until he said things against the grain. Malone, his molecular technology is cool and still cool until he started questioning things”
Sorry, whether a researcher is “cool” or not, presumably according to the social media platforms, counts as evidence only to conspiracists. What readers need to know is whether PCR is being used appropriately, which is a very different matter to how Google etc. happened to treat one of its developers.
Malone contributed to the development of PCR. During the pandemic he proclaimed that PCR was unsuitable for diagnosis. This got repeated ad nauseam by conspiracists claiming that covid is essentially harmless, that there were no peaks of deaths, just normal deaths being wrongly attributed to covid by the misuse of PCR tests. So the big tech platforms censored Malone, making matters worse by appearing to confirm the conspiracists’ claims of a cover-up. Now you seem to be making the same mistake, though I find your wording a little vague.
PCR was being used to sample infection prevalence in the population, because infection prevalence predicts demand for hospital. That’s not the same as diagnosis, so Malone’s oft-repeated remark is irrelevant. People were being admitted to hospital because their blood oxygen saturation was measured to be low, not because they had a positive PCR result.
What is absolutely crap is that it’s down to the likes of me, a nobody on the internet, to make these points.
The ‘mainstream’ media, with all its resources, funding, editorial policies, regulatory bodies and hierarchical structures and thousands of staff, had about half a dozen key facts the public needed to know, but – well, I won’t say it failed to make these important points, probably it did occasionally, but it completely buried them under a deluge of irrelevant, sensationalist, political bullshit. I saw and heard the infection figures on every single news bulletin I failed to avoid, but never once heard the significance of this figure explained. Instead the media interviewed irrelevant politician after irrelevant politician, it time and again interviewed random and irrelevant members of the public, told human interest story after horrendous human interest story, wall to wall coverage all steeped in unbearably theatrical gravitas and media self importance, just a total shit show, I had to leave people’s rooms to escape their damn telly.
Frankly, I don’t think I can contribute much more to the debate at this stage. The best service I can render is to continue the research that will eventually be published.
I have already said that others have joined some points before me… but either take phrases from the back cover of a book out of context or veto them. I recommended Van der Pijl’s recent book, for example. A brilliant political scientist who went mad and believed in conspiracy.
The same with other scientists I have quoted. Brilliant until they go mad and become conspiracists – and almost all the information we have of their “intellectual drift” is from the usual media.
People have to make health decisions and I am confident that almost all of us have the capacity to inform ourselves and think for ourselves. And if we don’t, it won’t be because of conspiratorial disinformation, but because of institutional propaganda.
I and others have put enough resources into these forums to see much of the bigger picture.
But any input in certain directions is automatically dismissed. I can’t afford to keep recommending sources that everyone has to read and digest, without judging them a priori, only to keep running up against a strange wall whose function I’m not quite sure what it is.
So my advice “to readers” is to form their own judgement. Go to the source of the source of the source. Don’t take my word for it, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Think for yourselves and make your own health decisions. And a priori, of course, trust your doctor unless there is good cause.
And yes, I think Wikispooks can help. But since it has also gone crazy according to you when dealing with certain topics….
Apparently great brilliant minds go mad. Long-running websites too. And if something is said here even if it is recommending a serious book it gets picked up and the whole thing gets even more muddied up without much coherence as happened with the book I recommended by Van der Pijl… Vetoed without giving it a chance just by reading a back cover and interpreting it very biasedly.
So it’s time for me to shut up. Because anything I say or any evidence I provide will be turned around, and that will cause more confusion than anything else among those who read us. And I will have wasted time that I don’t have to spare.
Thanks for the debates and thanks for making me understand that what is obvious to me may not be obvious to others, and vice versa. And while that fact may seem obvious, for me it was not. So thank you.
When I have put all the pieces of the puzzle in order, it will be the moment of truth. I suppose that no matter how much solid reference I provide, my work will be judged by the back cover, by my personality, or by anecdotal issues. At 34 years old, I must have gone mad like everyone else, and I will be labelled a conspiracy theorist…
Defend your cognitive freedom.
Cheers and truth.
Oscar
Yes, Wikispooks has suffered some rather crazy additions regarding covid. Here’s the start of their covid-19 page:
– COVID-19 is a structural deep event unparalleled in its ambition to change society. It began for most people in early 2020, when they heard that a severe respiratory disease had emerged near a wet market in Wuhan, China, caused by a virus labelled “SARS-CoV-2”. There followed around 2 months of tense reports from China and fearporn about the disease.
– History
– On 11 March 2020, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated in a press conference in Geneva, that the case fatality rate, “globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died”, and that the disease was officially a “pandemic”. This acted as a trigger for COVID Panic,[2] Governments around the world enacted remarkably similar sets of dictatorial COVID legislation, greatly limiting freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of speech.
– Only a few leaders publicly dissented from the whole WHO COVID official narrative.[3] Some countries dissented from parts of it (Sweden did not make use of COVID lockdowns) but almost all countries declared a de facto state of emergency and enacted a “COVID response” at the core of which were measures explicitly advised against by traditional pandemic policy, which hugely shifted towards totalitarianism.
– The hands of The Deep State were plain to see for those who resisted the mass hypnosis…
– – – – – – – – – – – –
It’s such bilge that I don’t know what to say about it. If you regard this as useful information, Oscar, you haven’t understood covid as a societal problem.
In a supposedly civilised society, should people have a decent, reasonably comfortable death? Or should hundreds of thousands of them be left with no hospital treatment and no pain relief, to suffer slow oxygen starvation, their internal organs progressively failing, over the course of a week or three?
“Cognitive freedom” seems in this case to be the freedom to abdicate from cognition, regardless of the death and suffering such irresponsibility would cause.
I don’t want to look like a propagandised sheeple, so here’s what I’m changing my opinion to.
Covid should have been allowed to run unrestricted through the entire UK population. Troops should have been stationed around hospitals to keep out the hordes of ordinary people desperate to get treatment for the severely ill among them, thus preserving hospital facilities for those rich enough to buy at auction one of the limited number of beds. The ordinary folk should have taken their friends and relatives home and nursed them through their slow, painful deaths, if they could get the time off work and didn’t feel too ill from covid themselves. Rinse and repeat for subsequent variants.
Gotta be better than vaccination, eh?
I don’t see the relation between the copy-paste you make from Wikispooks and everything you say afterwards, sorry. Nor between what I said at the time recommending “States of Emergency” by Van der Pijl and the response I received then.
You always resort to the same purely emotional arguments and that nobody denies its seriousness nor its existence (at least not Van der Pijl, nor me, nor many Wikispooks pages on the subject).
We have two ways of processing information, a fast emotional one that is useful for survival, and a slow rational one that is the result of many years of evolution. The power of the instrumentalization of fear as a government technique lies in the fact that it automatically turns on the first one, while the second one is “deactivated” for evolutionary reasons. It is the dual-process theory.
I recommend the book A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, by Laura Dodsworth. Some members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) recognized their discomfort in using fear as a weapon and as a technique of social control.
Yes, I think the traumatic nature of that event prevents a serious and rational debate here and now.
I am sorry I cannot be of more help. As I said, any intervention I make is doomed to be used to further muddy everything, which is counterproductive for everyone. So I will remain silent.
I hope that soon we will all find some time perspective from which to analyze everything that has happened. But I fear that by the time that usually happens – if it happens – it is too late. For the time being we are already into other “deep structural events”… while we debate the previous one.
Let’s do the best we can.
Best regards.
Another useful concept to understand the situation may be that of the “spiral of silence“, proposed by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. This and other well-studied phenomena in social psychology can explain how certain lies are maintained over time.
But anyway…
Take care.
Oscar
Just for the record:
- In my answer #88772 I have abjured any conspiratorial interpretation of reality. Instead, I have given concepts and authors that allow us to investigate power in a serious and rigorous way.
- I have also given concepts that explain how what we consider science can become dogmas with no room for real science. I have referred to the U.S. Right to Know website and the emails published by them, which show how things are managed to direct certain lines of research and block others. Lancetgate is famous precisely because it demonstrates potentially serious vulnerabilities in scientific journals. When a vulnerability is found in a piece of software, you don’t discard the whole software, you simply fix what is wrong.
- I have repeatedly and ironically criticised in this thread and in others how the work and minds of great intellects are praised until they all happen to go mad and catch the conspiracy virus.
- Since you seemed concerned that readers might make bad health decisions by sowing doubt (I call it free thinking), I recommended trusting the doctor, who is a doctor for a reason.
- At no point did I claim causality between inoculations and mortality or new conditions. I suspect that it is a causal factor, yes; but I cannot affirm it yet. I am only criticising that it is dismissed so a priori.
- I have recommended Wikispooks but have not qualified it, so I will do so now. I think the key to reaching more or less solid conclusions in a post-truth world saturated with meaningless data is to use two types of sources: “thinking” sources and “arguing” sources. The “thinking” soul es must be open to everything; that does not mean looking only at fringe or conspiratorial places, but they should definitely be contemplated. Argumentative sources are solvent primary sources or sources that no one questions for their solvency (peer-reviewed scientific articles with a good impact index, non-cheating statistics, serious media reports that do not admit of questioning – i.e. facts made news, not opinions made news; etc). Wikispooks – and Wikipedia – would be among the sources for reflection.
- Finally, I have criticised that anything I say here will be used against I don’t quite know what for I don’t quite know what ends. According to you the mass media are not to be trusted, the great intellects are to be trusted until they contradict your point of view, then you dismiss them without even approaching their arguments. Wikispooks used to be trustworthy but after covid its contributors also went crazy. “Seek but don’t find” seems to be your maxim. And you complain that “what is absolutely crap is that it’s down to the likes of me, a nobody on the internet, to make these point”. Maybe you’re the one who’s wrong about something, I don’t know.
See if cognitive liberty is so curtailed that in another thread when I recommended Van der Pijl in his criticism of the instrumentalisation of the pandemic, you automatically assumed that I was denying the pandemic and told me personal anecdotes that proved that there really was a virus. Or after a post where I recommend trusting the doctor a priori and criticise closed-mindedness, you keep saying that I recommend Wikispooks and that I recommend exercising cognitive freedom (I strongly recommend informing yourself about that human rights issue) and you say that this is equivalent to stop thinking and you start rambling nonsensically about letting people die and all that…
Freedom of mind does not consist in debating within A, B and C, which are the terms of debate within which it seems legitimate to debate. Often we choose A, B, C or a mixture and think we are free. True freedom of mind consists in conceiving that there is life beyond C… and we happen to have a whole alphabet… Let us not let the terms of debate be imposed on us. I told her what the true scientific attitude was for me.
My only commitment is to the truth, not even to my ego.
So go ahead and twist my words or put things in my mouth that I did not say. Point out my contradictions that seem that way due to hasty use of language on an internet forum.
Meanwhile, as I said in another post, those above are laughing. And the truth continues to be shipwrecked.
Oscar, Clark will have you running around in circles, read this book, read this scientific paper etc etc. REally a good idea to ignore him.
Science is a mode of inquiry but Clark will have it that it’s the truth.
The reason we are beholden to go to these scientific papers etc is because it is only comprehensible to a tiny part of the population, thus negating many from the discussion.I’ve got to agree with Ewan here.
Oscar, you’re off your chump, with all due respect. Scientists are silent prostitutes, those “at the top” are laughing their arses off, the medical community has deep fears and suspicions but it’s all ‘taboo’ – and your proof of all this is an opinion piece in the leader of some rag in Portugal. What utter rot.
I seem to recall people in India dragging their dying elderly relatives to hospitals, begging for treatment. Were they all hoaxed into it by some ‘elite’ who’d conned them with fake PCR tests which they never had?
Were these same Indians burning bodies in mass pyres because they were duped by an actually harmless disease, or killed by vaccines they’d never had?
Of course, the ‘elite’ would want to completely up-end the same global system which was making them record amounts of wealth. Makes sense! They loved lockdowns, which brought business to a crashing halt. My, they must have laughed at all these people unnecessarily being put on ventilators by clueless medics.
The entire medical community, of whom there are millions, are too stupid and/or cowardly to speak up (apart from a few who gain quite a following as ‘dissidents’, although their expertise rarely lives up to the billing, and their frequent connections to far-right movements is surely coincidental).
I could go on, but all this is just such monumental BS I’m surprised anyone is still promoting it, instead of quietly hoping that nobody remembers what nonsense they were saying.
WTF? LOL!
Glenn, I refer you to the social scientists cited in answer #88772. You are oversimplifying as much or more than the conspiracy theorists. I repeat, I refer you to that answer. You may find that you don’t need to resort to conspiracies to explain history or how the world works, because all those issues are well studied and documented. But you guys are on your own, of course you are.
On the other hand, you do the same as Clark, you respond to things I didn’t say and take for granted that I deny things (which I don’t deny) and add a touch of emotion to it. So I refer you to the paragraph in my reply #88786 regarding cognitive liberty. And in general reread that reply, come on.
Keep muddying the waters. I don’t know if you’re here to liven up the forum and don’t give a shit about the truth or what.
So “cada loco con su tema”. But don’t exclude yourselves.
In a world where madness passes for sanity, it’s a pleasure to be mad, guys.
By the way, if you want to better contextualise why someone would want to demolish PART of the economy, it is simple: what has fallen had already fallen or was destined to fall. Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. All indicators told us that we were heading for an unprecedented civilisational crisis for that reason. It has been known since the 1970s or earlier. It started before the pandemic and before the war. I would cite scientific authors that I have already quoted in other threads, but what for….
I’ve got more important things to do than to keep getting involved in deaf and dumb dialogues. One of those things will delight you: serious and rigorous social scientific research.
Luckily the truth always comes out. And it doesn’t depend on people like you and me. But I suspect you are not interested in the truth.
So I refer you to the last two paragraphs of my previous reply.
Sometimes I wonder if it is worth working in research and outreach when I come across people like you. Fortunately not everyone is like you.
Good luck with this disorganised and sectarian thinking that responds to things I haven’t said and assumes I think things I don’t think. I’m a psychologist and I know something about madness… ehem!
Have a nice day. “Que os vaya bonito”.
I’m going back to the madhouse, gentlemen. 😉
Goodbye.
The truth is that I had never considered the content of vaccines as stated in the title of this thread (apart from the issue of adverse effects).
– – – Sarcasm mode on – – –
After analysing your nonsensical responses and the lack of coherence with what I have said in my messages, one wonders if you have not been given a faulty chip with the vaccines or what. OMG!
– – – Sarcasm mode off – – –
Oscar, you wrote, referring to me:
– “According to you the mass media are not to be trusted, the great intellects are to be trusted until they contradict your point of view, then you dismiss them without even approaching their arguments.”
No, I have never argued that certain people should be trusted. I have consistently argued that the accuracy of claims be judged by evidence. For instance, the Wikispooks page I referred to above makes the following claim in its section “The not fit for purpose PCR-test”…
– “To inflate the crisis, a testing method was used, the PCR test, that had a number of false positive results that could be tweaked (by adjusting the cycle threshold), allowing control of the official case count”
…but I or anyone else can test this assertion by using publicly available data, and it proves to be false. This is not a matter of opinion, or “cognitive freedom”; it is a matter of fact. PCR sampling of the general population reliably predicted hospital admissions a week later, and an increase in the overall death rate reliably occurred a week after that.
This is an argument from evidence, not from “great intellects”. I recommend looking to scientific and technical journals, because these are where evidence is presented. Most papers in such journals list many contributing authors, and usually I’ve never heard of any of them.
Why should I primarily consider the philosophy of the political exploitation of fear, when I wish to understand the real dangers of covid? I have a very simple practice that protects my cognition from such political interference – I don’t watch telly or read ‘news’papers – they’re both also a massive waste of time.
– – – – – – – – –Oscar, you wrote:
– “those above are laughing. And the truth continues to be shipwrecked.”
So what might you consider to be “the truth”? Well, you repeatedly recommend Cognitive Liberty Online, so I went and had a look at that. It makes a big fuss about its founder’s qualifications and academic publications, ie. it attempts to establish the author’s scientific authority – but preaching from authority seems the opposite of “cognitive liberty” to me. The author is a psychologist and neuroscientist – not an epidemiologist, virologist or immunologist, so pandemics really aren’t within his field. There is much philosophy on the site, with quotes from famous thinkers.
But on covid it supports the well-trodden denialist path. On the front page it suggests to the gullible that PCR is unsuitable for testing for covid infection, again making a big deal of scientific authority, this time that of Kary Mullis. Then it presents a negative scientific authority argument, about Anthony Fauci; this time, of course, the scientific credentials are absent. Gee, this “cognitive freedom” site is really keen on telling who we should and shouldn’t believe! Then, the cherry on the cake, some fear porn! An old video of Bill Gates, with a repeat of the scariest and most emotive few words – a bogeyman to fear.
Oscar, take back your cognitive freedom by seeing through this manipulative bullshit!
Ewan2, your comment – about me, for some peculiar reason – seems dishonest. I routinely recommend just two books, Bad Science and Bad Pharma, both by Ben Goldacre. I can’t think of a time that I referred either you or Oscar to a scientific paper.
Science is indeed a mode of enquiry, but when I suggested that you employ it, you dismissed numerical evidence as “able to prove anything”. Well there we go then; if we’re giving up on observation, measurement and counting, we’re giving up on science altogether, and we’d better believe whatever feels best when we read random commenters on obscure websites 😀
You are right, guys. I was wrong in everything I said. I will actively work on regaining my cognitive freedom and getting rid of all the denialist disinformation that has infiltrated my mind.
If you have any other suggestions on what to do or what to read to navigate in these turbulent times I will be happy to read them.
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