COVID-19 in 2022


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  • #87219 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    There hasn’t been much covid denial/trivialisation on this site recently – because, I suspect, influence campaigns sponsored by businesses were active only during lockdowns or when a lockdown was likely. During those times I put a lot of time and very stressful effort into countering the prevalent disinformation – my attempt to reduce suffering, damage and death, my evidence-based alternative to the crude censorship of the major social media platforms, whose approach, I believe, actually strengthens conspiracy theory by seeming to validate it.

    However, covid is still with us and still doing damage and, if a suitable variant were to arise, could again break out into major waves. Against that background, I post the following information.

    As I repeatedly warned, covid can do long-term damage to survivors. Covid causes delayed hepatitis in children – Epidemiologist & biostatistician Dr Zoë Hyde on Twitter.

    The danger is not over – new variants are still arising, and some of them are on the increase – physician and scientist Eric Topol, also on Twitter.

    Repeated reinfection with covid is certain, and damage may be cumulative – Staff writer Katherine J Wu interviews multiple experts for The Atlantic. (I had to switch Firefox into “Reader View” to get this article to scroll.) Note carefully:

    – The outlooks of the experts I spoke with spanned the range from optimism to pessimism, though all agreed that uncertainty loomed. Until we know more, none were keen to gamble with the virus — or with their own health. Any reinfection will likely still pose a threat, “even if it’s not the worst-case scenario,” Abdool Karim told me. “I wouldn’t want to put myself in that position.”

    I know that bad news is unpopular and I apologise for being the bringer of it. But forewarned is forearmed; best wishes to all.

    #87223 Reply
    Squonk
    Guest

    Latest from Professor Oliver Johnson

    #87225 Reply
    john
    Guest

    Very informative video symposium posted by Catherine Austin Fitts on her Solari website, where a distinguished list of doctors, pharmacologists, economists, epidemiologists discuss the following aspects of Covid and the vaccines:

    – How and why mRNA vaccines are a serious threat to mankind
    – The long history of crime and abuse in medicine
    – The centralisation of power and threats to democracy and sovereignty

    Concluding with:

    Beyond medical tactics: What is the solution: Observing the wide variety of excuses for central control further to faked health concerns, solutions and actions must continue to gain ground by fostering Faith in the failure of totalitarianism.

    #87226 Reply
    john
    Guest

    Here is a link to the Solari page posting the Covid symposium I referenced earlier:

    Doctors for Covid Ethics – Live Symposium – recorded video hosted on rumble (7hr 4m 7s)

    #87227 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    John:

    Very informative video symposium posted by Catherine Austin Fitts…

    Very informative if you like being ‘informed’ by complete lunatics, sure. You can be ‘informed’ that vaccines contain microchips, that Covid-19 was a ‘plandemic’. Shame nobody caught wind of this MASSIVE, WORLD-WIDE plot involving every single government and agency on Earth ahead of time, eh? But not to worry. The faithful can overlook little stuff like that.

    The fact that Fitts has no background in science, medicine or public health is not a problem either.

    Covid-19 vaccine modifies your DNA and makes you infertile too, despite no evidence for it at all.

    And so on.

    Sorry John, this BS is just so tedious. No offence, but are you stupid, lazy, or just having a laugh here?

    #87228 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Good grief John! I used to think that hour long YouTubes were a bit much, but seven hours? Are you serious? Including the likes of Mike “there can be no second wave, so please don’t mention the nebulisers I’m selling for when it arrives” Yeadon, Andrew “I refuse to admit I was promoting an alternative vaccine to MMR” Wakefield, all organised by an investment banker who previously worked for George “of course we’re not after Iraq’s oil” Bush.

    No way will I wade through a hassle barrier so wide, least of all one infested with people so utterly discredited and unscrupulous. So if you’re actually vicariously claiming that covid is a hoax, as seems likely, please supply some convincing alternative explanation for the huge surges in the death rates over the last couple of years. Something has been killing all those people, but what, if not covid? I wasn’t born yesterday 🙂

    And mind how you answer as I might get offended. A friend of mine was working in a care home over the second wave in the UK, and watched the number of residents drop from about sixty to forty over the course of a month, as covid rapidly killed them off. Two people I knew personally died of it, plus a close friend’s mum. I’ve had it myself and am very glad that vaccines including an mRNA vaccine had primed my immune system in advance.

    #87229 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, rather than an appeal to authority, as in “a distinguished list of doctors, pharmacologists, economists, epidemiologists…” (why economists?), try posting a handful of the claims made, so that we can examine them against the available evidence. For instance, if “mRNA vaccines are a serious threat to mankind” as you wrote, show me the graphs of the overall death rates rocketing up as they were deployed, as opposed to it returning to more like normal after the covid waves, as it did in every country I’ve examined.

    #87230 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Wish I’d noticed this earlier, I wouldn’t have bothered looking up this Fitts freak. Note the OP’s concluding point:

    J: “… solutions and actions must continue to gain ground by fostering Faith in the failure of totalitarianism.

    Note the highlighted word. A lot of cynical hucksters talk about “faith” while shaking down the gullible, peddling conspiracy theories all the while (such as Fitts’ good friend, convicted fraudster Alex Jones of Prison Planet infamy).

    There are plenty of crazed pastors who will denounce any attendees in the congregation for wearing a mask, saying the ‘Rona “hoax” is a trick of the devil, vaccines are Satan’s spittle, and so on. A sizeable proportion have actually been killed by the ‘Rona, but it doesn’t stop them.

    Tennessee pastor threatens to boot mask-wearers from church – The Hill (26 July 2021)

    https://www.christianpost.com/news/3-pastors-killed-by-coronavirus-one-thought-god-allowed-infection-so-he-could-get-a-little-rest.html

    #87248 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Glenn_nl, an hour long podcast you might find interesting; the first of a series.

    #1: The biology of the right-left divide pt. 1: Why political arguments don’t change people’s minds, by Arnold Schroder:

    Link.

    #87249 Reply
    john
    Guest

    The retired engineer’s story.
    The following summarizes my personal covid experience from a health perspective.

    I became aware of covid in the early months of 2020, and cancelled my bi-annual trip at the end of March from home in Norway to visit my 94 year old mother in Scotland, due mostly to concerns over infecting her or my wife, who has a cancer diagnosis. At age 69, I did have a personal health concern due to the evaluation of (virologist and Nobel Prize winner) Luc Montagnier that the covid pathogen contained an HIV sequence which could not have occurred in nature and therefore indicated an engineered virus, i.e. a bioweapon.

    It took a year for the (Pfizer mRNA) vaccine to become available to me, so I had plenty of time to do due diligence on it, and identify any other measures I might take to protect myself and my wife from infection. Like most people I do not have medical knowledge, and had to evaluate the experts’ advice.

    Dr Robert Malone indicated two major types of antibody – (1) those which protect the blood, and (2) those which protect the respiratory system. He argued that since the mRNA vaccine induces the body to produce type (1) antibodies, it could not be effective against a pathogen like covid which infects the respiratory system. He further cited animal tests that were performed with mRNA vaccines on an earlier SARS pathogen, in which all of the animals died due to antibody dependent enhancement (ADE). The Pfizer vaccine was not even tested with animals; it was barely tested on humans prior to mass inoculation of the world population.
    These were the main reasons I judged that the vaccine presented a greater risk to me than the pathogen, and I declined the vaccine when it became available.

    I steered clear of people who were coughing and clearly sick, following the advice of Dr Mike Yeadon, who had debunked the mainstream claims of asymptomatic transmission and the efficacy of masks. Dr John Campbell had discovered an arithmetic correlation between vitamin D intake and hospitalisation due to covid infection; accordingly I doubled the dose of fish oil that I had been taking to keep arthritis at bay.

    In February this year I had a sore throat and tested positive for covid. I had caught it from one of my 70-something mates at the boat club who were all triple jabbed. My only other symptom was fatigue. I had no fever and it was all over in a week. My wife caught it from me. She is triple jabbed, but she was sick with a fever for 8 weeks and nearly died.

    My mother, who had been successfully taking care of herself in her apartment at the age of 95, took the vaccine on doctor’s advice and within a few months developed breast cancer and had to have home care three times a day due to general deterioration of her health. By mid-February this year she could no longer walk and was admitted to a care home.

    When the Scottish government finally dropped their quarantine rules towards the end of March I was able to visit my mother. Physically she was a shadow of the woman I had seen 30 months earlier, and she soberly told me she prayed to god every night to take her, her life was so miserable. The pores of her legs were weeping fluid for unknown reasons. She had her wish on 13th May.

    During the past two years I have lived to see vindication of the experts in whom I entrusted my health.

    If you care to view 10 minutes of the video I posted from the 56:25 mark, you will see:

    • the infection mortality rate for covid is <0.05% for under 70, and 0.00% for children; general inoculation of the population is not clinically justified
    • the clinical mRNA trials showed absolute risk reduction of < 1% only (this and other fraudulent aspects of the Pfizer trials are analysed in the link below)
    • all cause mortality data in Israel, one of the most “protected” populations, show steep increases following the 1st/2nd jab, the 1st booster, AND the 2nd booster. The last peak is just as high as the first, even though it coincides with the less-virulent omicron variant. This indicates onset of ADE, and should result in immediate withdrawal of the emergency authorization for the vaccines.
    • the VAERS system in the US shows more than 13000 deaths due to the vaccines. It is estimated that VAERS under-reports by a factor of between 40 and 100. (This may explain why insurance underwriters in the US have reported deaths in the 18-64 age group in 2021 were around 40% higher than average)

    https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021.pdf

    #87250 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, I’m sorry about your mother, and that your wife suffered such prolonged symptoms.

    Hopefully I will find time to address the various points you have mentioned when it isn’t so late at night. Thanks for posting matters that can actually be examined against evidence.

    #87269 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, relating our personal experiences to a global context is a highly challenging task, and I have an awful lot of practical matters to catch up with at home over the next few days (among other things, the pandemic has run me down considerably), so I suggest that we examine individual points one at a time. If it’s OK with you I’d like to start with a point you quoted:

    “the infection mortality rate for covid is <0.05% for under 70, and 0.00% for children; general inoculation of the population is not clinically justified.”

    Assuming that the figures are accurate, I propose that the conclusion is not supported by the premises. From a personal perspective, 0.05% sounds like a small risk. But consider the UK’s entire population of 67 million. I don’t know how many are younger than 70, but if I guestimate 40 million, of whom, without social infection rate reduction, 80% would become infected, that would translate to 0.8 x 0.0005 x 40,000,000 = 16,000 people. That’s a lot of extra people to die over the course of a month or two, before we even include the context of several times that number of over 70s being killed.

    But there’s another problem in the quote too:

    “the infection mortality rate for covid is <0.05% for under 70”.

    Infection fatality rate is frequently taken like this, as if it were a constant pertaining a given virus, but it isn’t a constant, it’s a social outcome. As an analogy, say we considered various models of cars produced in the 1990s over the course of their service lifetimes. Would we be justified in saying something like “the occupant fatality rate of a Ford Focus is x fatalities per million occupant.miles”, as if we had determined a physical constant for the Ford Focus? Certainly we would find that some models would be less, or more, dangerous than others, but other factors would be orders of magnitude more significant, for instance comparing rural driving versus urban driving versus motorway driving, or countries with varying standards of driver proficiency and road furniture design.

    Likewise covid. From memory, covid infection makes about 3% ill enough to require hospitalisation. Of those, the majority require simple oxygen enrichment; not mechanical ventilation, just a tube up the nose metered by a blood oxygen monitor. But if they don’t get it they deteriorate rapidly, internal organs becoming compromised, and they become far more likely to die. But the health service has a limited capacity – only so many beds, doctors, nurses and oxygen enrichment kits, all of which can be overwhelmed. So the IFR can’t be stated as a constant; the faster covid spreads through the population, the larger proportion of the infected it kills.

    Does that seem reasonable so far?

    #87274 Reply
    john
    Guest

    Clark,

    “Does this seem reasonable so far”

    Actually no it does not.

    Covid deaths have been defined by CDC/WHO-compliant government health authorities as “deceased for whatever cause within 28 days of a positive PCR test”, and that is the basis for the IFRs quoted.

    This basis therefore includes those who die concurrently with perennial mortal diseases such as cancer and heart disease. “Covid deaths” may also include those who died from the mRNA inoculation itself, as illustrated by the experience of the poor folk in Israel.

    Another problem is the PCR test which is not appropriate as a diagnostic tool, as stated by its developer, Nobel prize winner Karry Mullis, because due to its sensitivity it detects all kinds of viral material living and dead.

    Health authorities guided by CDC/WHO have therefore vastly overstated covid deaths, additionally using an inappropriate test.

    #87275 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, you’ve changed the subject, ie. moved the goalposts. I raised two points; one about 0.05% for the under 70s being a highly significant death rate, the other about IFR being a societal outcome rather than a constant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Do those two points seem reasonable so far?

    If you dispute the 0.05% figure, why did you cite it?

    And I repeat my earlier point (June 16,22:42, comment #87228), if covid wasn’t responsible for the huge surges in the death rate before vaccines had been fully deployed, what was?

    It is looking depressingly likely that we’re to traipse through all the usual hackneyed canards of the covid denial influence campaigns. Oh well, at least it shouldn’t take long; there must be less than a dozen.

    #87276 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    0.05% is one in two thousand. Would that be an acceptable death rate for, say, car journeys?

    #87277 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    …even if the occupants did have cancer or heart disease?

    #87279 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “Dr Robert Malone indicated two major types of antibody – (1) those which protect the blood, and (2) those which protect the respiratory system. He argued that since the mRNA vaccine induces the body to produce type (1) antibodies, it could not be effective against a pathogen like covid which infects the respiratory system.”

    John, this is not how it works. This distinction between “respiratory” anti-bodies and “blood” anti-bodies is nonsense. Your body is a holistic machine with layers of defense intimately bound to each other. The “respiratory system” is not just your lungs nor is it just the inhalation and exhalation of air. Every single cell in your body respires in that oxygen is taken up from arterial blood and CO2 given up to venous blood (a simplification but for now suffices) and in turn that CO2 is transferred from blood to the air in the tiny lung spaces whilst at the same time oxygen is absorbed into the blood from the air in the tiny lung spaces. Literally, your blood bathes every single cell lining your tiny lung spaces (alveoli). ALL of your blood gets circulated via your lungs. Two chambers of your heart are dedicated to that purpose whilst the other two supply the rest of your body. Your lungs are one of the first lines of defense as is your skin and mucous membranes. Whatever might be in the air we breath is presented to the lungs and the cells lining the alveoli be that a virus, bacteria, fungi or foreign body (dust etc). Every secretion your body makes, sweat, saliva, mucous contains some antibodies. They are first line defense.

    So you breath in a virus and it attatches to a cell lining an alveolar space (tiny lung space where gaseous exchange (respiration) happens). What happens? That virus injects its mRNA code into that cell and that cell’s manufacturing apparatus replicates that viral code. That viral code is then released into the blood so that it can circulate and reach other cells. It’s now in your blood. That is when second, third and fourth line defenses kick in. If you have had that virus before and you have anti-bodies circulating (in the blood) that virus will be attacked. If you don’t have large amounts of that specific anti-body but retain a “memory” of having seen it before relevant anti-bodies will be quickly manufactured and that virus is dealt with. If you have never met it before it will infiltrate more cells and replicate and be released into your blood which is why you get a temperature and may feel unwell etc etc. Eventually other cells will innovate (a complex process but for now lets keep it simple) an anti-body which will be ramped up and fight off the virus.

    What is my point? This attempt to distinguish the life cycle of a virus that enters your body via the “respiratory” system (ie. Your lungs) from a virus that say enters via a scratch in your skin or a needle stick injury or whatever is bunk. No matter what the attack vector of a virus is thay will all be presented to your blood. Every cell in your body is in constant contact with your blood, if it isn’t, it’s a dead cell.

    If I remember correctly, Mr.Yeadon is a former Pfizer employee but now has his own pharma company and is currently attempting to develop drug delivery based on inhalation of pharmacological agents similar to how say nebulisers or asthma inhalers work SO THAT THEY WORK SYSTEMICALLY.

    John, everything in your body (that is alive) is intimately and very connected to your blood all the time. Your hair and your nails may not be but everything else is.

    #87280 Reply
    john
    Guest

    Clark,

    Death is unavoidable, without exception; to make an analogy with car travel is therefore absurd.

    The CDC’s influenza data for the 2019-20 flu season in the US for the 50 – 64 cohort estimates 8,125,732 symptomatic cases, resulting in 5,727 deaths, which represents a mortality rate of 0.07%.

    I am not disputing the 0.05% covid mortality figure for the 70+ cohort that I quoted; I am highlighting the doubly dishonest ways that the health authorities are inflating the mortality rate.

    In the context of the mortality rate of endemic respiratory illnesses, the dishonesty of the health authorities is creating unwarranted hysteria.

    #87292 Reply
    john
    Guest

    ET,

    Thanks for your response and please forgive my uneducated attempt at explaining why the covid vaccines can not be effective against covid.

    The paper linked below provides the following argument as to why they can not be effective, and goes on to present clinical evidence showing that while no positive effects can be expected from the vaccines, they can trigger self-destructive processes that lead to debilitating illness and death. The authors call for an immediate stop of use.

    “Why the vaccines cannot protect against infection

    A fundamental mistake underlying the development of the COVID-19 vaccines was to neglect the functional distinction between the two major categories of antibodies which the body produces in order to protect itself from pathogenic microbes.

    The first category (secretory IgA) is produced by immune cells (lymphocytes) which are located directly underneath the mucous membranes that line the respiratory and intestinal tract. The antibodies produced by these lymphocytes are secreted through and to the surface of the mucous membranes. These antibodies are thus on site to meet air-borne viruses, and they may be able to prevent viral binding and infection of the cells.

    The second category of antibodies (IgG and circulating IgA) occur in the bloodstream. These antibodies protect the internal organs of the body from infectious agents that try to spread via the bloodstream.

    Vaccines that are injected into the muscle – i.e., the interior of the body – will only induce IgG and circulating IgA, not secretory IgA. Such antibodies cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes from infection by SARS-CoV-2. Thus, the currently observed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated individuals merely confirm the fundamental design flaws of the vaccines. Measurements of antibodies in the blood can never yield any information on the true status of immunity against infection of the respiratory tract.

    The inability of vaccine-induced antibodies to prevent coronavirus infections has been reported in recent scientific publications.”

    On COVID vaccines: why they cannot work, and irrefutable evidence of their causative role in deaths after vaccination – by Sucharit Bhakdi, MD and Arne Burkhardt, MD

    #87295 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, your sentence:

    “I am not disputing the 0.05% covid mortality figure for the 70+ cohort that I quoted; I am highlighting the doubly dishonest ways that the health authorities are inflating the mortality rate.”

    contradicts your earlier claim and, more importantly, contradicts itself. You cited a figure of 1 in 2000 (0.05%) for the under 70 age group, not “70+”. I assume you merely made a mistake. But if you’re not disputing the figure, then the health authorities are not “dishonestly inflating the mortality rate”, because that is their own figure, based on their own method of attributing cause of death.

    Please try to make some sense, or discussion is simply pointless.

    I reiterate yet again – if, as you claim, covid was not the cause of the huge surges in the general mortality rate pre-vaccination, what was?

    #87297 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Clark – Thanks for the link.

    John – Your long post above is quite amazing. You decide to take the advice of among others Mike Yeadon, who thinks that lockdowns and masks are ineffective, despite all evidence to the contrary (for instance : https://fullfact.org/online/yeadon-covid-vaccine/ ).

    You also ‘decline’ the vaccine based on evidence you feel qualified to evaluate, from a bunch of hucksters, denialists and lunatics who also know nothing about actual medicine.

    This sagely advice – including apparently “knowing” that asymptomatic transmission is all apparently nonsense – causes you to give your wife Covid from which she nearly died. You must be really proud of yourself. A good thing she had more sense than you, and got vaccinated, or she would undoubtedly be dead.

    I wonder how many people you actually have managed to kill, through your own recklessness and spreading of disinformation, like you’re trying to do here?

    #87298 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Glenn_nl, it does make me wonder where our retired engineer used to go for engineering reference materials; marktaliano dot net, solari dot com or the Rumble video hosting service perhaps. Presumably not to the standard engineering journals or textbooks, which are full of government lies, of course.

    #87301 Reply
    john
    Guest

    Clark/Glenn,

    “When you have no evidence, resort to ad-hominem.”

    Well, your man Abbas Panjwani at Full Fact, has BA in English Language and Literature and his salary is paid by Facebook and Google, who have jointly and in lockstep with .gov vigorously suppressed any debate on covid and its treatment, up to and including career destruction. The effect of this is to destroy informed consent, which is one of the basic principles of public medicine, and surely is crucial when proposing an experimental treatment to patients. For me that means his credibility lies between zero and negative on the covid topic, and I find it very surprising that anyone with a pair of brain cells could find otherwise.

    The webhosters you mention are just that, hosts, who do not speak on topics they are not qualified to, and have provided a platform for highly qualified and experienced health professionals such as Dr Mike Yeadon, Dr Robert Malone, and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi and Dr Arne Burkhardt, whom I quote above in 87292.

    On the topic of lockdowns, the WHO published a study in Q4 2019 which concluded that such measures are not effective in limiting disease transmission. Why then, 6 months later, did governments institute coordinated lockdowns across European countries, north America and Australasia, which devastated the economy and health of their citizens?

    And why did these same governments coerce their citizens into injecting an experimental gene therapy when they were all aware that Pfizer’s own 6 month test results showed that it does more harm than good?

    https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021.pdf

    #87302 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “When you have no evidence….”

    There is clear evidence, and I keep asking you about it, but you haven’t replied so far. Early in 2020, something started making lots of people very ill with similar symptoms, in region after region internationally, before any covid vaccines had even been developed let alone deployed, and before lockdowns had been imposed anywhere but China, just as if some deadly disease was spreading very rapidly.

    Yet here you are, attributing increased death rates to vaccines and lockdowns and, I note, citing economists and talking about damage to economies.

    China, Hong Kong, Diamond Princess, Iran, Italy, Spain… I remember watching reports of rapidly rising illness followed by rapidly rising mortality.

    What was causing this effect? Can we get this one, fundamental issue straight before introducing any further complexities?

    #87303 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Doctors and nurses were hit particularly hard by this new illness. There was outcry that insufficient Personal Protective Equipment (PPE ie. masks etc.) was available. A young doctor in China, one of the first to raise the alarm in defiance of the local authorities, died of the illness. Doctors all over the world began exchanging their observations on symptoms and treatment. The medical preprint servers began to be overwhelmed with papers about the new illness…

    Or was I imagining all this?

    #87304 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Maybe this is somewhat unfair, but I am reminded of this Chinese propaganda cartoon.

    #87309 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, this is interesting. From John’s quote of Bhakdi and Burkhardt, June 19, 15:53, comment #87292, penultimate paragraph:

    “Vaccines that are injected into the muscle – i.e., the interior of the body – will only induce IgG and circulating IgA, not secretory IgA. Such antibodies cannot and will not effectively protect the mucous membranes from infection by SARS-CoV-2.”

    ET, can you confirm this? They seem to be criticising the method of administration rather than the vaccines themselves. It could help explain why the vaccines have reduced severity of disease far more than they have reduced transmission. Though if this is the crux of their argument, their criticism of the vaccines themselves rather than the method of administration is not supported by it.

    I was re-reading the comments and that paragraph suddenly ‘clicked’ with something I’d read months ago. A remark by a doctor or immunologist on Twitter, I think, saying that they had a lot of left over AstraZeneca vaccine, and that what they should be doing with it was administering it as a spray up the nose – and that he was very tempted to take a nebuliser down to the vaccine refrigerator and administer some to himself.

    #87310 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John, just because I’ve asked a technical question of ET doesn’t mean I’m letting you off the hook. Before you raise any new issues or cite any more contrarian experts, what’s your explanation for the sudden rise in in novel pneumonia and consequent death prior to imposition of lockdowns and deployment of vaccines? And when you’ve answered that, there are quite a few other idiosyncrasies, inconsistencies and apparent contradictions in your remarks that I’d like to go over with you.

    #87312 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    https://teachmephysiology.com/immune-system/adaptive-immune-system/antibodies/

    As a quick pointer I post the above link. To answer your question fully Clark I’ll have to give it some proper study. I’ve been mulling it in my head for a day or two. However, it is correct to say that only IgA anti-bodies are in the secretions. My understanding is that whilst IgA is broadly effective against a host of viruses and resistant to enzymatic breakdown they are not strain specific, by which I mean you don’t get specific IgA anti-bodies against a particular strain of say influenza virus like H5N1. My understanding is based on student days and anything I have subsequently picked up along the way, so I could be mistaken and unaware of new knowledge relating to that.

    My issue with the statement you quoted from that piece is that it relates to virus infecting from the luminal side of the respiratory tract where there is no blood. Once that cell or few cells are infected and start replicating virus, the virus will be released into the blood (and also the luminal side). At that point blood borne anti-bodies have their effect on the course of the disease generally reducing the severity of disease or preventing it from taking hold. In time those infected cells will be dealt with by blood-borne anti-bodies and other immune responses. In terms of the covid vaccines the stated major beneficial effect was to reduce the likelihood of severe disease and thus mortality and it was not promoted to reduce infection or transmission.

    Immunology is damned complicated.

    #87337 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “Immunology is damned complicated.”

    Indeed. Which is why it’s always possible to find a handful of experts diverging from the majority position in their field.

    And thank goodness for that, for this is one of the ways in which scientific progress occurs. But what it does NOT indicate is that the majority in a field are merely “brainwashed by the MSM” or “saying what they’re paid to by the government” – John, please note.

    It is also important to note that the dissenting experts’ proposals often contradict each other, or are incompatible. The proper venue for such disagreements to be debated is the scientific literature, the technical journals and forums, where they will be scrutinised and questioned by people with appropriate experience and background knowledge. These are the people best equipped to devise tests of the various proposals, to see how well they fit the evidence.

    The proper venue is NOT Facebook and YouTube (ie. Google) etc., where noise from the ignorant will drown out the signal from the experienced.
    – – – – – – – –

    Of course, if you’re a political actor opposed to, say, lockdowns, because of their economic consequences or even their effects upon your own business, it’s perfectly possible to collect ie. cherry-pick such minority expert opinions from various fields and cobble them together into an argument that looks coherent enough to sway public opinion, and then present that directly to the public, via Facebook, YouTube, and indeed the corporate “MSM” media. But to make it look convincing you’ll have to bang on about how well qualified your chosen experts are, and avoid any discussion of the actual evidence.

    To make sense of the resulting furore, those who can see things only in black-and-white / goodies-vs-baddies will either have to follow the mainstream, or resort to conspiracy theory.

    #87338 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    So:

    • From ONE of the developers of PCR we have “PCR is unsuitable for diagnosis”.
    • From ONE of the developers of mRNA vaccines we have “mRNA vaccines are unsuitable for covid”.
    • From a HANDFUL of epidemiologists we have – well, various dissent, often incompatible, and most of it discredited when the second wave actually did arrive.
    • From a TINY MINORITY of GPs and other medical workers we have, again, various and diverse dissent, about vaccines, or treatments, or prevalence, or whatever.

    And so on. These are four separate fields, each consisting of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people.

    But who rounds up all these snippets, cobbles them into a superficially coherent “anti-mainstream” narrative such that they all seem to support each other, and then publishes the entire edifice directly to the public instead of going through the scientific journals and forums? Oh, a right-wing investment banker, various right-wing newspapers, and others of that ilk. Yeadon, for instance, was popularised by Delingpole of the Telegraph (most famous for his climate change denial), you’d never have heard of him otherwise. Wakefield would be entirely obscure if his case series of eight cherry-picked children hadn’t sparked about 3000 MSM articles around 20 years ago. Had you heard of the PCR developer before covid? I hadn’t.

    #87346 Reply
    john
    Guest

    ET,

    The text which I have quoted is a written summary of Dr. Bhakdi’s and Dr. Burkhardt’s presentations at the Doctors for COVID Ethics symposium that was live-streamed by UKColumn on December 10th, 2021.

    Here we are 6 months later, and not a single medical professional has publicly challenged their analysis or their conclusions.

    Maybe you could allow the possibility that they are entirely correct?

    #87347 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “Here we are 6 months later, and not a single medical professional has publicly challenged their analysis or their conclusions.”

    Yet nearly every medical professional recommends covid vaccination.

    Maybe you could allow the possibility that you’re entirely and indeed wilfully missing every point put to you?

    #87349 Reply
    Dawg
    Guest

    Here’s a succinct summary of Bhakdi’s and Burkhardt’s claims, with the audacious title “On COVID vaccines: why they cannot work, and irrefutable evidence of their causative role in deaths after vaccination”

    https://doctors4covidethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/end-covax.pdf

    This is the methodology. Dr Bhakdi performed histopathologic analyses on the organs (heart, lungs, liver, brain, glands, etc.) of 15 people who were vaccinated some time before they died, and concluded:

    Histopathologic analysis show [sic] clear evidence of vaccine-induced autoimmune-like pathology in multiple organs. That myriad adverse events deriving from such auto-attack processes must be expected to very frequently occur in all individuals, particularly following booster injections, is self-evident.
    Beyond any doubt, injection of gene-based COVID-19 vaccines places lives under threat of illness and death. We note that both mRNA and vector-based vaccines are represented among these cases, as are all four major manufacturers.

    So there you have it: “myriad adverse events … must be expected to occur very frequently in all individuals, particularly following booster injections”. (Can’t say I noticed any personally, nor did I hear of any amongst the blue-rinse brigade at the bingo in my local club – although I note there were a few pre-vaccination covid deaths.)

    A Reuters fact-check of Bhakdi and Burkhardt’s claims, which highlighted serious methodological flaws, can be found here: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-vaccines-idUSL1N2TN1PP

    john, you claim:

    “Here we are 6 months later, and not a single medical professional has publicly challenged their analysis or their conclusions.”

    Not so fast. That Reuters fack-check cites Professor Neil Mabbott (personal chair in immunopathology at the University of Edinburgh), Professor Kevin McConway (emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University), and Dr Rosie Cornish (research fellow in Population Health Sciences at Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol). Among the criticisms, McConway points out that

    the 15 cases were not a representative sample of people who have died after being vaccinated. This is due to the autopsies being carried out for specific reasons such as family preferences or the refusal to accept a decision from a previous pathologist or coroner.
    So, what we have is that 14 out of 15 people, not typical of those who died after vaccination, had, in the opinion of one pathologist, signs that indicated that the vaccine may have had a role in their death, even though a previous pathologist or coroner did not agree with that conclusion,” he said.

    It’s also worth knowing that Bhakdi, the pathologist who found this alleged ‘smoking gun’, was pushing his auto-immune theory long before conducting this “study” (USA Today, Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines don’t cause death, won’t decimate world’s population – 30 April 2021), as well as promoting other pseudo-statistical anti-vaxx tropes (Teyit Turkiye: Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi’s multiple coronavirus allegations, 2 January 2021 – in Turkish), and opposing mask mandates (Correctiv Germany: Members of the “Pathology Conference” spread unsubstantiated claims about Covid-19 vaccinations and deaths, 25 September 2021 – in German).

    So fifteen bodies were selected for histopathological examination by a maverick pathologist intent on finding evidence to support his idiosyncratic anti-vaccine theory, and yet he asserted his findings as “irrefutable evidence” for “an immediate stop of the use of gene-based COVID-19 vaccines”, because “myriad adverse events deriving from such auto-attack processes must be expected to very frequently occur in all individuals, particularly following booster injections”. I’m not sure what statistical method he’s using to generalise from his selective sample of 15 cases to the entire population of the world, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be found in any credible textbook of quantitative research methods.

    I get the impression this is going to be another tail-chasing exercise.

    #87360 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “Maybe you could allow the possibility that they are entirely correct?”

    What exactly is it they are entirely correct about? They are stating that blood borne anti-bodies induced by the vaccines will not affect the step where a virus that has evaded the secretory IgA anti-bodies in the musous enters a cell. So far as it goes that is correct. They affirm that as this is the case “Thus, the currently observed “breakthrough infections” among vaccinated individuals merely confirm the fundamental design flaws of the vaccines.” They then make the leap that because of this the vaccines are useless and because they may cause adverse reactions they ought to be prohibited.

    There is no attempt to account for what happens after the cell has been infected, begins to replicate virus, and release new copies of the virus into the blood. At that point in the disease pathogenesis, blood-borne anti-bodies to a virus will bind to the virus, allowing other immune mechanisms to render that particular virus (as in that individual viral particle/entity) inactive and preventing it from infecting another cell in the body. Also, the original infected cell will also be subject to blood-borne anti-bodies marking it out for attention from immune mechanisms such as phagocytosis. Thus circulating anti-bodies can and do have an effect on the evolution of a viral disease and can modify the course/severity of the disease. As far as covid vaccines are concerned, that was what their proposed benefit is: to modify the course of the infection such that severe disease was reduced. They didn’t say initially that it prevented infection or transmission.

    Let’s say that I have developed innate immunity from a flu virus like H5N1 from previous infection. In my immunological anti-body database will be how to make anti H5N1 anti-bodies which will be circulating in my blood in small numbers. Again, let’s say I inhale some H5N1 virus and a few get past the secretory IgA and latch onto and infect a few cells. My anti-bodies won’t have prevented that step but as soon as H5N1 copies of virus get released into my blood some of my previously learned anti H5N1 anti-bodies will bind with them and trigger a cascade mechanism which ramps up production of that anti H5N1 anti-body and modify the course of the disease such that I probably will never know I had it in the first place. If I hadn’t had that prior learned innate immunity, my immune system would have had to recognise that an infection was happening, learn how to manufacture anti H5N1 anti-bodies, make them and eliminate the infection. That would have taken time during which initially the virus would have had party time infecting numerous cells, replicating more virus and I’d probably have been symptomatic.

    As I said in a previous post, as far as I am aware, secretory IgA is not strain-specific to viruses – though I admit I could be wrong about that and I’ll post a link to a paper below that seems to suggest “recent studies found it (secretory IgA) also played an important role in the specific immunity and immunoregulation.”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970489/

    I am not aware that any vaccine yet purports to induce pathogen-specific sceretory IgA anti-bodies but there is definitely a lot of research in that area.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5719502/

    In summary John, whilst they are technically correct to say that blood anti-bodies cannot prevent the initial step of an airborne virus attaching to and infecting a cell they don’t address how circulating blood anti-bodies can have an effect on the evolution of a disease thereafter. To me, that is arbitrarily limiting the discussion. I don’t think as yet anyone has produced to market a vaccine that induces pathogen-specific secretory IgA anti-bodies, so we are kind of stuck with the current technology we have available to us. Most vaccines are given via injection and most viral pathogens enter the body via mucous membranes, so the same could be said of most successful vaccines.

    On a different note John, you said above:

    “The CDC’s influenza data for the 2019-20 flu season in the US for the 50 – 64 cohort estimates 8,125,732 symptomatic cases, resulting in 5,727 deaths, which represents a mortality rate of 0.07%”

    I cannot find the CDC page you got that information from, can you post a link? I am surprised that there are so few estimated deaths from flu with a population of 330 million.

    Strictly speaking the Case Fatality Rate should include all diagnosed patients not just those symptomatic. However, the crude mortality rate from those figures is 0.0017%, 5727 divided by total population (330 million). The infection mortality rate you quote for under 70s is an estimate (deaths/cases) as we probably won’t ever get a true case number. You haven’t given the same estimate for flu in USA (ie.under 70s).

    https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid discusses the different metrics used and their pros and cons.

    #87366 Reply
    Dawg
    Guest

    It’s helpful to understand the position that Dr Sucharit Bhakdi was starting from, before evaluating the “findings” of his histopathological studies. Interestingly, he co-authored the 2020 book Coronavirus: False Alarm – Facts and Figures, which can be found online:

    Coronavirus: False Alarm – Facts and Figures, by Dr Karina Reiss & Dr Sucharit Bhakdi (2020, Chelsea Green Publishing) – pdf at archive.org

    A quick skim shows that it ticks the majority of Covid Denialist boxes: e.g. covid cases and deaths were vastly overcounted; the PCR test is unreliable; covid is no more dangerous than the flu; lockdowns are pointless; masks don’t offer protection; there’s no such thing as asymptomatic transmission; there was no “Covid wave” at all; the increased death rate was actually due to disrupted medical care (postponement of routine treatments, elective surgeries and check-ups), as well as domestic violence and suicides; the higher death rates in Italy and the UK were largely due to their inefficient health systems; artificial ventilation killed people … and so on, in a tiresome stream of dubious claims and debunked conclusions. The book could be used for a fun game of ‘Spot the Fallacy’.

    Despite the subtitle “facts and figures”, the latter half of the book is a libertarian call for resistance against authoritarian governments and controlled organisations.

    It was published well before Dr Bhakdi started pushing his idea that millions of people have been killed by the mRNA vaccines, and then finding what he claimed was “irrefutable evidence” (contradicted by the other pathologists) to support it. Politics -> conclusion -> evidence. The poor chap’s got his thinking the wrong way round.

    #87381 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Dawg, 14:46, #87349:

    “Can’t say I noticed any personally, nor did I hear of any amongst the blue-rinse brigade at the bingo in my local club”

    One, in my case. Commenter Fred, whom I spent some time with in 2013, said that an elderly friend of his got blood clots in his brain after the AstraZeneca vaccine and never recovered – though that’s not an mRNA vaccine. Compared with two people I knew personally who died of covid, and around 27 known to people I know.

    John, how many potentially vaccine-induced deaths have you personally encountered?

    #87382 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Clark : You fail to consider that Fred lies all the time. It is unwise to quote anecdotal evidence when it comes from a mischief-making known liar, who constantly posted in bad faith.

    John : Far from just making ad hominems, posts directed your way have been very much on point. If you’re anything like the other Covid denialists, we’ll hear very little from you again, and nothing whatsoever about the rebuffs to the evidence you thought you had.

    Which is a shame, because it would be nice to think that denialists, while wrong, were actually acting in good faith. When they just run off and/or ignore evidence they don’t like and cannot refute, it doesn’t speak highly of their honesty.

    Bear in mind, there are ‘experts’ in any number of fields who can be wheeled in to supposedly discredit established scientific understanding.

    There are ‘young earth’/creationists claiming to be creditable and supposedly showing how evolutionary biologists have got it all wrong, or they were fooled, or they ignore the ‘real’ evidence, or they refuse to accept Creation out of their own arrogance.

    Then there are climate denialists, brought in to throw doubt around on the established fact of man-made climate change.

    There were champions of the tobacco industry, who for years held up legislation while continually calling for “more research!” and claiming links between smoking and disease was yet to be established.

    These biostitutes are paid very well. Monied interests love them, for quite understable reasons. Conspiracy minded people love them too, it’s just what they want to hear.

    A Radio-4 podcast called “Death by conspiracy” recently was quite good.

    So John – what is your motivation for bringing all this to our attention? I can guess at some, but would rather hear it from you. Thanks.

    #87383 Reply
    john
    Guest

    —–and yet the evidence of egregious harm caused by these experimental gene therapies is right out there in front us all in the VAERS system, and in Pfizer’s own 6 month trial data, which shows that their vaccine does more harm than good.

    #87387 Reply
    Squonk
    Guest

    —–and yet the evidence of egregious harm caused by these experimental gene therapies is right out there in front us all in the VAERS system, and in Pfizer’s own 6 month trial data, which shows that their vaccine does more harm than good.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Adverse_Event_Reporting_System

    As it is based on submissions by the public, VAERS is susceptible to unverified reports, misattribution, underreporting, and inconsistent data quality.[3] Raw, unverified data from VAERS has often been used by the anti-vaccine community to justify misinformation regarding the safety of vaccines; it is generally not possible to find out from VAERS data if a vaccine caused an adverse event, or how common the event might be.[4]

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