COVID-19 in 2022


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  • #87479 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Half truths:

    It would be unfair were I not to state that at a deeper level I agree and sympathise with these… But now I can’t finish the sentence.

    What term should I use to label this disparate quasi-group, this grouping that is not a group, to enable discussion? They would like to be called ‘sceptics’, but each of them shows minimal scepticism about either their favoured hypotheses, nor those favoured by the others that I am grouping with them. Calling them ‘conspiracy theorists’ angers them. Calling them ‘contrarians’ would imply that there’s a unified narrative they’re contradicting. I’ll call them ‘conspiracy theorists’ because I personally find it most fitting, and…

    Conspiracy theorists, I apologise for the offence my use of the term provokes, but please bear with me for what follows will be supportive at least in part – hopefully more supportive than critical.

    But having struggled through the composition of this opening I find my inspiration depleted; hopefully I’ll write some more soon. For now I’ll just say that I regard your opposition to ‘the system’ as justified and, in the main, well motivated. Opposition is desperately needed. You didn’t contrive humanity’s dire predicament, which indeed results from the system you’re attempting to oppose. The question is, what sort of opposition can be effective?

    #87480 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    First, the conundrum.

    Conspiracy theory is reactive rather than proactive. It’s a reaction against the delusion, corruption, and dishonesty of the toxic system, and therefore a symptom of it. As such it is not separate from the toxic system, but part of it.

    The toxic system is old; indeed, ancient. As such, it has long since adapted to channel dissent in ways that bolster its own power and security.

    #87486 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    If anyone thinks or feels that they can help me with this, please do. I sometimes feel lonely, as if caught in crossfire.

    For instance, I regard covid as serious and the vaccines as reasonably effective, based on publicly available evidence that could not conceivably be faked.

    But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if in years to come, it emerged from a pharmaceutical company’s records that, for instance, they had a potentially sterilising vaccine that they never submitted for trial on a sample of the public, as doing so would jeopardise the profit streams from existing vaccines.

    And I recognise that any influential voice loudly making that claim at the present time would be derided in the mass media as promoting conspiracy theory.

    I hope someone can see why I feel lonely in this.

    #87487 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    What do you mean by a “sterilising vaccine?” I’m going to assume you meant a vaccine that would have completely wiped out Sar-Cov-2 and returned us to a pre-covid world. How likely is that scenario? The four previously circulating coronaviruses in humans causing the “common cold” have been investigated for decades. The evidence appears to be that even if you have been previously infected by one of these coronaviruses you don’t develop long lasting immunity. People can become infected with the same strain multiple times in as little as 6 months apart. Fortunately they are fairly mild illnesses for most people. Sars-Cov-2 is with us forever now. It’s unlikely, in my opinion, there will be a vaccine in the forseeable future that wipes it out. Again, fortunately, it appears to be tending to a less virulant initial disease though I accept we don’t know enough about long term outcomes. Having said that, I note the rise in covid hospital admissions in the UK and elsewhere currently. Please also look at the chart on that page “Patients admitted to hospital by age” to see the numbers of admissions overall in the 18-64 age group.

    I came across this Trial of potential universal flu vaccine opens at NIH Clinical Center today.

    “Our study will examine the safety of BPL-1357 and also will allow us to assess the importance of mucosal immunity against flu and whether a strategy of inducing both the cellular and antibody arms of the immune system can provide broader protection against the ever-changing influenza virus,”

    So, mucosal immunmity? Do they think from pre-clinical trials on mice that they can provoke secretory IgA or do the mean something diferent? I can’t make out what they mean exactly though it may be promising. Perhaps they have been listening to you John 😀

    On your conspiracy theory conjecture Clark. It’s good that people begin to question narratives of anything no matter how they arrive at that point. Theories, conspiracy or otherwise still must have a sound foundation, there must be independently verifiable facts on which to base them. Proactive scepticism applies equally to the “official” narrative as it does to any and all other narratives. Any outlet can use the same propagandising techniques.

    #87490 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, yes, I should have been clearer.

    My example was very much a “for instance”. Neglecting better alternatives, hiding harms, concealing data, manipulating the publishing environment; these are very much the kind of things that pharmaceutical companies do. They do them all the time and have done them over and over again. Some instances get exposed; after a product has been widely administered to the public for considerable time, public trials and surveillance data become available, drug companies get challenged, and it can lead to court cases in which companies are ordered to release their data and internal communications. But there is every reason to suspect that we get to see only the tip of the iceberg. Governments and government regulators are far too soft on the companies.

    What they don’t do is conspire with government to decimate their own consumer base. Thinking that way is conspiracy theory; it betrays a fundamental political naivety about drug companies’ motives.

    Yes, I used “sterilising vaccines” to mean vaccines that virtually eliminate noticeable infection and onward transmission; the sort of vaccines such as MMR that really can achieve herd immunity. I thought that “sterilising vaccines” was the correct medical term for these; I thought I’d encountered it in scientific / medical literature, but during the pandemic I have been reading quite widely outside my usual fields and I may have misremembered what sort of publication I read it in.

    And no, considering the history of attempts to make vaccines against the common cold viruses, and what little I have read of attempted veterinary vaccines against coronaviruses, I don’t consider such vaccines likely. But that of course is a reason that in the unlikely event of a pharmaceutical company stumbling upon such a possibility, they’d feel quite confident about not pursuing it. Remember the early hostility that was projected towards antibiotic treatment of stomach ulcers caused by helico pylori. I note also that that early hostility has been sanitised from Wikipedia, but I remember it described in an early BBC Horizon documentary that is now all but forgotten.

    See, the conspiracy theorists do have a very serious point; in his first comment, John mentioned “the long history of crime and abuse in medicine”. But what conspiracy theory displaces, obscures and distracts from is a mature political consideration of motivation in a capitalist system, as if the profit motive had no systematically corrupting effects and therefore deleterious results could only be the result of a secret conspiracy of well-placed, supremely powerful, and utterly evil madmen.

    The reality is actually far more insidious. A handful of powerful psychopaths could be exposed, punished and replaced, and all would be well. And this seems to be the Great Hope of the conspiracy theorists; “just believe us and it can all be fixed easily”, ie. without systemic, political changes. But this in itself helps explain why conspiracy theory is so often promoted by those who lean towards the right of the political spectrum.

    John?
    – – – – – – – – – – –

    ET, thanks for the link to the “Patients admitted to hospital, by age” chart. It shows that, since the start of the pandemic, over 300,000 people under the age of 65 have been admitted to hospital for covid. That’s over 41% of total admissions were under 65 years old!

    Those who have unquestioningly accepted the minimisation and trivialisation narratives, which only ever compare percentage rates within various defined age ranges, will find that hard to believe.

    #87491 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    “sterilizing immunity ” I think is the term. “Sterilising vaccine” has an unfortunate connotation with one of the falsehoods levelled at the covid vaccines (and other vaccines) causing infertility.

    John and his Canadian friends appear to want to define covid vaccine benefit solely in terms of sterilising immunity and disregard “effective imunity” (ie. reducing disease severity) and unless they achieve sterilising immunity they are useless. Most current vaccines do not achieve sterilising immunity but are nonetheless highly effective.

    For anyone interested enough and with time to read through it, this Nature article is more than enough knowledge for most:
    A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments .

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by degmod.
    #87493 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, thanks. I had misremembered the term. Yes, I see your point about the false scare stories of vaccines causing infertility; hadn’t occurred to me, so thanks for the correction, and I’ll buy you a pint next time I see you down the system sty 😀

    Funnily enough, I part struggled, part scanned and part read through the article you linked a few days ago; I can’t remember where I’d found it linked from. Much of it is well beyond my level of background knowledge, which I’d need in order to effectively understand it, but many other parts I found very interesting.

    I wonder what John would make of an article like that? If he’d have returned I’d have asked him, and still would.

    #87494 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    “…and part read through the article you linked a few days ago”

    Sorry, that was ambiguous. I meant that a few days ago, I read through the Nature article “A guide to vaccinology: from basic principles to new developments” that you linked to today.

    #87508 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    Grist to your mill John. CM tweeted part of an interview from Prof.Jeffery Sachs stating that it took him aback. In the presented clip Prof.Sachs stated:

    “I chaired the commission for the Lancet for 2 years on Covid. I’m pretty convinced it came out of a US lab of biotechnology […] We don’t know for sure but there is enough evidence. [However] it’s not being investigated, not in the US, not anywhere.”

    The full 2 Hr and 21 min video from which that clip is taken is here. The extract starts at 12:24. It’s a question and answer session and he speaks a number of times, not all about covid. You can scrub through the video to find his other answers. He speaks in English but many of the questions are in Spanish.

    Here is another interview where he further discusses the possible lab leak origin (approx 25 mins long). I wonder if part of the future of the pandemic narrative involves more intense scrutiny of this issue. Prof. Sachs is an economist, not a virologist, but nonetheless his chairing of the Lancet commission must have given him some valuable insight.

    #87523 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    John???

    Come on man; ET has posted on the very topic you raised, a possibly synthetic origin for SARS-CoV-2. Having diverted my thread onto your own topics, the least you could do is follow up on the discussion you provoked.

    #87549 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    Back when we were in the beginning of the pandemic people were arguing that the excess deaths were caused by lack of care, lack of access to emergency services etc. I argued that, whilst undoubedly some deaths did occur because of this, it would take time for excess deaths to begin to show up due to missed diagnoses, reduced surgical activity, missed treatment cycles and so on. I argued that it would take time for, say, missed cancer diagnoses to begin to show in the deaths statistics.
    Excess deaths in England and Wales compared to the 5-year average (which includes 2021) are up over 16%. Covid-related deaths account for approx 10% of those (excess deaths). Take a look at table 1 in the following ONS link.

    #87552 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    The excess deaths are a result of the pandemic, which impacts upon society. The trivialisers have consistently and repeatedly stressed the effects upon individuals, to the exclusion of its effects upon society as a whole.

    That’s like looking at an animal badly injured by a shotgun blast, picking out a pellet or two and saying “these pellets are tiny, and most barely penetrate the hide. They couldn’t hurt anything; the animal must be fine. Shotguns cannot be dangerous, so any restrictions must be government hysteria to curtail our civil liberties”.

    #87553 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    I agree broadly with you Clark. Nonetheless, that’s a worrying statistic and it behoves Government and the health care authorities to figure out what the cause/causes of those deaths is/are if they can’t be attributed to covid. It’s not just in the UK.

    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-excess-mortality-p-scores-projected-baseline?tab=chart&country=MEX~USA~ISR~GBR~SWE~ESP~ITA~IRL~FRA~DEU~DNK

    #87575 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, the thing that immediately strikes me from your link is that countries that have done worse at controlling covid also have the worst excess deaths.

    #87734 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    The excess deaths trend continues in the UK and elsewhere with approx half unattributable to covid.
    You can download the latest Office for National Statistics deaths data from here. You’ll have to do some mental arithmetic yourselves but the latest data from the week ending 5 August 2022 (Week 31): 10,698 deaths were registered in England and Wales. This was 14.4% above the five-year average (1,350 excess deaths – which now includes 2021 but not 2020 data).
    Of the deaths registered in Week 31 in England and Wales, 723 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”.

    I stumbled across this guy’s substack today but here is an interesting read: news about elevated death rates is leaking out. Worth checking out the links within this article too, especially the “CG enriched nature of the mRNA vaxxes.” Recently a close family member died from spontaeneous CJD (diagnosed before the pandemic and unrelated to covid, the vaccines or anything covid-related). It’s a horrible disease and the prospect of increased prion disease in the community is horrible.

    Also, Clark, the paediatric cases of hepatitis would seem to be unrelated to covid and more likely related to co-infection with two viruses.

    I realise I may be reviving a dead thread but these excess deaths are happening all over the world.

    #87743 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, that is extremely worrying. I suppose the cause of death statistics will be becoming available in the usual course of things.

    #87744 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    boriquagato at Substack seems to have been relentlessly negative about covid vaccines for quite a long time.

    #87747 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    Here is some more detailed data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities with more breakdown of data.

    #87748 Reply
    Weasel
    Guest

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland

    John was correct all along but it seems the confirmation bias in the ‘highly educated and pious’ never wrong, data analysts such as Clark etc was too strong for their egos to handle. Face it guys – you were duped, you fell for the propaganda campaign and will now likely, sadly expire from Prions or Cancer within 5 years, all thanks to a novel gene-editing ‘vaccine’ (by the way the US CDC knew the mRNA potion didn’t even meet the definition of a vaccine – so they changed it last year.

    This was a US-led global depopulation campaign which you can decry all you like – but look deeper into the likes of Club of Rome, Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, Crown (Temple), and the Masonic Lodge – then tell us the statistical likelihood of there NOT being a highly coordinated attack on humanity, using climate change as a vector for mass formation psychosis, bullying the population into transhumanist dystopia under the Great Reset and UN Agendas 21 and 30??

    The ONS data clearly shows the detrimental effects of the vaccine per 100,000. Lower deaths in all cause unvaccinated than the sum of the vaccinated cohort. Enjoy.

    #87749 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, I’m getting “server not found” on your app.powerbi.com link.

    #87750 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Really Weasel? How are “they” melting the polar ice and causing sea level to rise? You haven’t even read the links; antigenic imprinting has nothing to do with gene editing. You’re just gloating, actually hoping for potentially billions of slow deaths just to prove yourself right, while lecturing me personally about ego?

    #87751 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    ET, boriquagato at Substack doesn’t smell right. Too aggressive, relentlessly negative but doesn’t care how, citations to papers seems highly selective, hundreds of comments under each article. These are merely first impressions; I haven’t looked through every article.

    #87752 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Weasel, at first glance I’m seeing your claim contradicted by the data you linked to. For instance, Sheet 5 of 13 is Table 1. For January 2021, death rate among unvaccinated is 2507.6, vaccinated 1251.8. For February 2021 it’s 5261.5 vs. 905.7. I stopped there; there’s a lot of data and it will become available as graphs in due course.

    Have you actually read any of the data?

    If you have, you should be able to direct us to figures that support your claim.

    #87753 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    And Weasel, goodness knows how many pseudonyms you’ve posted under, but if you’ve been watching this for a while you should recall that I was never keen on mass vaccination. My preferred strategy was suppression of cross-infection through prompt and properly targetted social measures, and reduction of infection risk through ventilation and moving activities outdoors. I supported mass vaccination, rather reluctantly, because (1) it was all that government policy left us with, (2) by short term measures was doing far more good than harm, and (3) because vaccines can’t reproduce within a host whereas viruses can.

    If certain vaccines turn out to have long term dangers, I will continue to argue as I have until now, for legislation to end commercial confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses in employment contracts, and legally mandated full openness and accountability to be imposed upon private companies. I’m not suddenly going to become a conspiracy theorist, posting under multiple pseudonyms to create an illusion of false consensus and clutching at any juicy morsel that superficially appears to support the doctrine.

    #87754 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    I too have been looking at that vaccinated/unvaccinated data. Looking at May 2022, the latest month for which they give data, the ASMR for the unvaccinated is 795.3 and the “ever vaccinated” is 787.1. That to me is more or less equivalent ie. there is no difference between the two groups. Looking at the other data figures it seems to me that if you hadn’t had your 3rd dose of vaccine (booster) more than 21 days before your ASMR is higher than the unvaccinated or ever vaccinated. Am I interpreting that correctly?

    Clark, I have checked the link and it works for me. It uses a microsoft web publishing thingy (powerbi,powerapps), perhaps you have that blocked.

    #87755 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    Weasle:

    “. Face it guys – you were duped, you fell for the propaganda campaign and will now likely, sadly expire from Prions or Cancer within 5 years, […]”

    Sounds positively gleeful! What a freak! Jeez, man, you are one sick puppy.

    #87756 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-and-english-regions
    That link is the first on this page Clark, Excess mortality in England analysis.

    #87757 Reply
    glenn_nl
    Guest

    If this is a worldwide phenomenon, and not just down to our underfunded health system, is this some effect of long covid? Covid wouldn’t be on the death certificate if it was a while after a positive test.

    #87758 Reply
    ET
    Guest

    It’s not just in the UK Glenn. If you look at the ourworldindata link some posts above you can see in many countries it’s the same picture. This guy has put together some charts from USA data.

    #87780 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    I find myself sceptical of the Ethical Skeptic site in general. In that article in particular, accurately inferring an inflection point seems a lot more challenging than simply observing a rise. I may get time to look at it more closely later. However, if there’s any substance to the allegations, I expect they’ll reach relevant scientific and professional literature soon. Meanwhile, many relevant professionals have Twitter streams.

    #87821 Reply
    Weasel
    Guest

    Clark- you are skeptical of ANYTHING that counters your twisted logic and HUGE confirmation bias. You go looking for any glimmer of hope to PROVE you are right. How we must all bow down to your altar of superior wisdom and knowledge!

    Notice how the MSM is PIVOTING away from COVIDIANS such as you? Fauci is going, Dems turning on Trump blame game saying he auth’d the mRNA potions and pressured the FDA LOL

    I standby my original statement. You were duped and your EGO simply can’t comprehend how you got it so wrong. But you did. Have some humility and OWN UP for your own sake man!

    #87822 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    *** MODS ***

    I request that Weasel be given a caution about the August 26, 12:28 comment above, since it contains no evidence and is primarily a personal psychological attack upon myself.

    #87823 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Weasel, both myself and ET looked at the ONS data you posted, and failed to find the effect you claimed.

    Observations about politicians and the corporate media provide no evidence about the cause of increasing excess deaths – though they are often treated as if they do by conspiracy theorists. Personally I have no idea if your observations are accurate because they are things I pay little attention to.

    The most obvious likely explanations of the increase are delayed effects of covid, and the backlog and overload of health services caused by the pandemic. I don’t rule out delayed effects of vaccination, but if that is the case, scientific papers will highlight the issue soon and the vaccines responsible will lose their authorisations for use. We have already seen this process in action when the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine was suspended in various countries due to concerns about detrimental effects.

    #87824 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Weasel, both myself and ET looked at the ONS data you posted, and failed to find the effect you claimed. We posted our findings but rather than respond to them, you PIVOTED to personal attacks upon myself. Enjoy!

    #87825 Reply
    Weasel
    Guest

    Please look at lines 455 and then sum of lines 456-461 – The sum is higher in vaccinated (any dose, aggregated) than the vaccinated per 100,000 person-years. 795 per 100,000 Non-Covid deaths in unvaccinated vs 8,699. What further evidence do you need?

    Have you seen the German Lab studies released this week looking at the ‘vaccines’ under the microscope? Many tube like structures with red-bloody cells clustering around them (Graphene Oxide). Then various toxic metals such as cesium,aluminium and cobalt?

    Have you read any of the papers by Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Rob Malone (mRNA inventor), Dr Ryan Cole (pathologist)? Maybe do some more reading and come to a conclusion other than MSM fed tripe

    #87826 Reply
    Weasel
    Guest

    Clark – Resorting to MODS to save your narrative. How sad!

    #87827 Reply
    mods-cm-org
    Guest

    Weasel, your comment dated August 26, 2022 at 12:28 is a clear example of taunting, which is contrary to the moderation rules for commenters, specifically:

    Fair Play
    Play the ball, not the man. Address arguments, not people … No taunting.

    Your commenting conforms to a pattern that has been witnessed several times before on this forum, so we have a good idea of what to expect. Your contributions will now be automatically placed in the moderation queue.

    #87829 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Weasel, thanks for narrowing down the data you regard as decisive; I’ll look at it later. My immediate observation is that your initial claim concerned “death from all causes”, but you are now citing “Non-Covid deaths in unvaccinated”, ie. possibly you’re not comparing like with like.

    I barely consume what you call “MSM”; I don’t even call it that because it does not represent the interests of the mainstream of people. Who are you letting cherry-pick the “experts” you give such credence to? I’ve seen the latter two names over and over again from the denialists and anti-vaxxers, as if there was no vast scientific community to listen to. Didn’t pathologist Ryan Cole get into the Daily Mail a lot, or was that someone else?

    My request to the mods regards your personally bullying behaviour. If that is what you deem necessary to project your narrative, then that is what’s sad.

    #87830 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Mods, thanks. I hope that Weasel can separate his/her evidential points and reasoning from the personal slurs.

    #87831 Reply
    Clark
    Guest

    Weasel, 15:16

    “…various toxic metals such as cesium, aluminium and cobalt?”

    I just looked up the following. Caesium is very mildly toxic, eg. caesium chloride has about the same lethal dose as table salt – maybe you’re thinking of the radioactive fission product caesium-137? Aluminium is even less toxic than caesium, and you can suffer a deficiency of cobalt. Is graphene oxide so bad? Graphene is just carbon. “Graphene oxides have excellent antibacterial properties. Graphene and its derivatives are beneficial for their wound healing and antiinfective characteristics”, Science Direct.

    Maybe you should be more sceptical of your source; the technical names seem to have been thrown in merely to generate FUD among New Age hippies and other technophobes.

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