HerrWerner
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I think I’d take enormous hope if I saw just a single glimmer of doubt within the MSM/PMC/”expert” axis. If I heard a single public “health” figure talk about VAERS and confess that well [cough cough] yes, the vaccines do have side effects, even if rare, and here’s the risk profile… If I heard a single “expert” from the PMC mention the cautionary tale of Israel’s ongoing experiment in mass vaccination with a leaky vaccine. Or mention that the smug and overconfident double-jabbed can be spreaders. Alas, I’ve never experienced such a fever-pitch of unified propaganda since the Iraq invasion. In 2003 it was hard to be a peacenik and hold your head high. In 2021 it’s hard to hold the tattered bits of the scientific method – that hard-won secular achievement of humankind – and not grieve.
I hope that the Archdruid and Martenson are right, that in a few short months we’ll be able to talk about these things. Right now, just seems hopeless to prevail against unified and ceaseless propaganda from the MSM and every layer of politics. No way out of this but through it. No shortage of useful idiots, low-information Dunning-Kruger know-it-alls who act as the verbal and physical footsoldiers to TPTB. Everything I believe is dismissed as misinformation by those useful idiots. To what end? Cui bono? I think what started off as a money grab then a power-grab has morphed into a doubling-down and tripling down since there’s no way out. Anybody who’s paying attention to Israel (and I’m quite sure TPTB get briefed on this) with its near-perfect vaccination rate has got to be horrified that there’s no way down from this altitude. If a CNN talking head – to use an example – expressed a single doubt in the narrative they’ve been Goebbeling since last year they’d be curb-stomped in the figurative sense. And not by just one group in particular – the useful idiots and true believers are a capricious lot, NPR and PBS fanatics would join (there’s a Life of Brian reference there I can’t quite recall.)
Thoughts and prayers out to Dr. John Day. His predicament w/his work has weighed on me a lot of late. Thank you again for your analysis and support and your many contributions here. (Also I’d be remiss not to thank Doc Robinson for analysis and contributions as well.) I’ve been thinking about what you said about your Buddhist group last week – and Caleb Wallace’s death. Schadenfreude is an emotion corrosive to the soul. It’s painful and disconcerting to observe when otherwise good-hearted people indulge in it. Responding with positive energy and love is the proper response to that, though it is a test of will of its own. I’m trying to catch up on my own meditation practice, my mind rarely rests easy these days.
@Mr-House yesterday – I had the antibody test (38 bucks out-of-pocket.) I wanted to find out if I had antibodies from a covid exposure (and the “bad cold???” I had) over a year ago. Looking back I probably would have saved my cash but it was a learning experience. It didn’t shed much light, food for thought –
A good friend got tested at the same place. Nurse was surprised his test came back negative, since he’s had the jab. He’s kind of pissed, after all the fanfare and risk of side-effects he doesn’t show antibodies, what the actual WTF? His regular doctor is hemming and hawing about how welllll it doesn’t mean you’re not immune but tests and specificity and antigens and hand-waving stuff.
Mine came back negative. Now I don’t even know if it means anything TBTH. Maybe it’s just a cheapshit medical test that’s unreliable. The only thing I know for sure is that it emptied 38 bucks from my wallet.
Afterward I looked up the test I took – a smaller biotech company, they just import the test in sealed foil packets from China. The tests are not approved, but authorized under an EUA, like the jabs (curious that antibody tests are not reimbursed by health insurance, but the EUA covid-jab is?) Some cursory efficacy testing is performed here. I count 86 other, nearly identical test kits. Lots of caveats in the test report. With all them ifs and buts, seems like the real motive of these tests is an income stream.
FDA posts test data for them here you can look them up by brand name.
The Lark went over well yesterday, thanks Raúl. That is one of my favorite paintings. My grandma had a print of it hanging downstairs. I spent much time as a kid trying to figure it out. There’s so much to interpret. Sunset or Sunrise? beginning of a hardscrabble farm girl’s day, or the blessed end of a long day of chores? I could never read the young woman’s expression. Happy? Sad? Was she relieved that the harvest was good? Was she angry with the capriciousness of the world, of Nature?
Maybe Grandma had the original, hanging downstairs and the one hanging in AIC is a forgery…we’ll never know 😀
Add me to the list. My employer is now requiring the jab. And soon. Large international engineering/technical company. I expected it was coming, but not so fast. Matter of weeks, get the jab or GTFO. Comes right from the top.
I think they think they are doing the right thing. They are True Believers up at the top. They think with their weight and influence they can change the world for the better. They think they are the very opposite of authoritarians. So this is not out of character. My betters have bit of a God complex perhaps – if we all do this thing, we will beat the ‘rona. and also fix all the other social problems with race and class that have troubled us for 10000 years. Seems like hubris mixed with a slice of Dunning-Kruger to me.
Their announcement tells us to trust the science. Being a TAE reader I have a lot of scientific questions that have gone unanswered about the jabs, about covid, scientific questions that no authority will address, that get batted aside as irrelevant by the media. We know the largest risk factors now. 2/3 of USA is overweight, 1/3 is morbidly obese. No directives to take care of yourself, get better sleep, take some vitamin D. ‘Rona was going to kick our ass no matter what, and that was baked in starting 30 years ago.
Trying to process things right now. At the moment I’m a little euphoric which is a strange feeling. Kind of glad its over and the decision made. Maybe this is our chance, the Universe opening up an opportunity to collapse now and avoid the rush.
-HWThanks @polder-dweller for the JMG link. I don’t check out his Dreamwidth channel much and would have missed it. I agree that his is a rational and plausible prediction.
from JMG: “Stage Five: The Pushback Begins The problem is that a great many Americans do not trust the medical industry. There’s good reason for their mistrust…” And some people trust the medical industry, including the drug-lords in big pharma even as they are screwed by that same industry. With some people you can’t shake their confidence that the US has the Best Medical Care in the World and they will double down even when their lived experience (or a loved one’s) is the opposite and they see it with their own eyeballs. I’ve been in the jaws of Modern Medicine just a couple of times, thankfully. I’ve been there to watch treatment and terminal conditions of loved ones. As a system, the indifference, the many layers of apparatchiks and processes, the obvious, OBVIOUS profit drive…
My gripe is with the system and the profiteers and other top-level predators of course, not the ppl at the sharp-end, who mostly got into medicine for the best of reasons. They have my best wishes but those ppl are getting ground down, in my view. One commenter said she was a nurse and saw lots of nurses retire or GTFO last year. My observations support that, my dad is in the hospital for a few days of observation and I’ve yet to see a nurse over 30. A few of these young nurses are quite smart and capable too, but obviously short-staffed. His attending physician seems pretty good (we have yet to see her in person) and sounds harried and rushed on the phone.
It is a beautiful spacious, modern, clean, impressive hospital. Even the complicated tech that runs it seems to work pretty well. I hate to think how much $$$ it takes to run the place. As a collapsnik my brain screams “not sustainable!” and “profiteering!” and I feel guilty about it but I’m secretly glad he’s there and not at the last hospital I was in.
madamski’s comment reminded me of what Moe Sizlack thought of Homer:
“I’m more of a well-wisher. Meaning that I don’t wish you any specific harm.”
😀Something I’m up to – off-topic but germane to what Raúl covers in TAE – I thought the TAE audience might find my dabbles with “solar power” interesting. Last year when the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ were raging in the US, the Ms. FrauWerner and I took our prepper planning into high gear. Among preps like the garden and pantry, I invested in some solar panels and related kit. It’s been highly educational for me, doing this hands-on and not paying somebody to build it. It’s also been instructive of shifts in the greater economy – the US losing its manufacturing base and being dependent on 8,000 mile supply chains – that modern commerce which to my newly-opened eyes seem operated for the benefit of swindler-billionaires.
The solar panels are a fun thing to tinker with, but also part of my SHTF plan. It is a modest system; enough to provide some lights and pump water and keep devices charged. Refrigeration would be limited to a few days w/o sun (haven’t tried that yet). It is just enough to run some modern conveniences, so we can lose our sanity with a glass of wine and the lights on, like civilized ppl. Heat or A/C is out of the question (but that is true even of most rooftop systems.) The woodpile and other preps are there to address that. My goal is to spread risk and have several paths that can be called up as things fail. Resilience, rather than clinging to 1st world levels of power.
I am at once in awe of solar panels – and in awe of their limits, and fragility of the system. The panels are a wonder of technology and industry – a hundred times better than the ones my dad and I dabbled with decades ago, and a fraction of the cost. At the same time I have a clunky lead-acid battery, a tech barely changed for 100 years, yet still competitive with state-of-the-art LiPO batteries. The environmental impact of both is quite bad; I have no illusions about green-spraypaint Saving the Planet™ with my efforts. Scale my tiny system up a million times and you have the same problems a millionfold. It’s great when the sun shines, and everything is new and the subsidy checks don’t bounce. Add 10 years of weather, lightning strikes, hail, MTBF, stork poop, not so much.
Sourcing the components has been instructive. There are a number of components: panels, a charge controller, a battery, and an inverter to convert to useful AC power. All of this stuff – even the wires and connectors and baubles and bits – comes from far-eastern factories, mostly China. Quality is all over the map.
I bought the panels through Amazon. It took ordering 10 panels in order to get six good ones. One arrived damaged but still usable, I tried to finagle a discount or freebie, but they wanted it back to credit my acct (I’m sure it’s in a landfill now, though still usable, too complex to repair. but WOOHOO free returns!) Three others had crappy performance that didn’t meet their published specs and were returned. “Free” shipping both ways. 80 pounds of bulky, fragile gear that someone has to wrangle back to the warehouse. The guy at the UPS store seemed kind of pissed when I dropped them off. I’m sure UPSFEDEX loses money both ways. Amazon is so big it can screw over even a company as large as UPS. But, we’ll make it up in volume.
The charge controller is a specialty item. There are companies that know what they are doing and many that just sell crap. I paid premium for a good one – designed in Europe by a company that’s been in the biz for decades. I bought it through a small alt-energy dealer and paid a bit extra (Amazon woulda saved a few bucks) to keep them in business, and maybe benefit from their customer service.
After research, I bought the inverter through Amazon. The inverter is a consumer-grade item, a hundred companies you never heard of make them. I wanted to buy a good one from a reputable outlet like the place I bought the controller. But they are selling the same cheap crap as Amazon and Ebay. Look at the reviews for a good-ish one on Amazon and they are bimodal – lots of 4-5 star reviews, lots of 1-stars. The 1-stars are for ones that arrive DOA, or die early in the bathtub curve. The 1-star reviews usually gripe about contacting customer service (ha! far east, got their money.) QC is expensive and simply not done. Repairs are not cost-effective over 8,000 miles. The brand name will be something else in 5 yrs, so no skin in the game. They’ve never set up service centers, there are no repairmen, there are no service manuals to work from. And there never will be.
So it’s running, converting sunshine and storing electrons for us. An engineering marvel. Dunno if this stuff will work out. Like any preps, it’s a roll of the dice. The high-technology stuff is the highest-performing, and also the most delicate. My fancy-shmancy charge controller might be running 30 years from now. It could also get zapped by a lightning surge next week. If it dies, especially 5-10 years from now, I don’t know if I will have the money to replace it, if a replacement can even be had. But I can cobble things together, farm-engineer style. I can still run lights with an old car battery. I can build a rudimentary charge-controller from junkyard parts if I have to. Time will tell! 🙂
@oxymoron I’ll give that Brand interview a listen. It’s a good observation – TAKING CARE OF THEMSELVES (and family/tribe) cuts through ideological differences and gives common cause between quinoa eaters and don’t tread on me-ers.
A blogger I read – Granola Shotgun – is one of the best preppers I can think of. He’s integrated prepping right into his daily lifestyle – actually makes it look fun, simple, and more interesting than my life 😀 He has layers of preps, different tactics for different scenarios and durations. I’ve patterned some of my preps after his.
He pointed out that some of his prepper skills he learned from Mormons – as a gay man he doesn’t have a lot of commonality there, but he pointed out that the Mormons are skilled preppers and delightfully happy to share their knowledge!
Vax Ambassadors will need more than a pamphlet and a peppy clean-cut appearance
they’ll need a catchy tune@Mister-roboto I think you’re right about Chris Martenson’s thought trajectory. My thinking did about about the same as you describe, tho I’m not near as smart. As bad as covid is, it ain’t the Spanish Flu by a factor of 20-50 or more. I think Chris Martenson’s reaction was a good one – he was an early-adopter on getting your household ready for covid, being safe and bracing for impact. And then he was an early-adopter on extracting out of the lockdown mindset and calling BS when the evidence started coming in. He is unique in being collapse-aware and scientifically literate. I think he hits the right note – the truth alone is bad enough, no need to wander into fringe-theory la-la land unless the evidence points that way. Much like TAE 🙂
Without Chris Martenson and TAE I would be far unhappier and far dumber (plus thoughtful commenters too numerous to name s/a Doc Robinson, Dr. John Day, Polder, M Quest, Germ, madamski, oxy, noirette, galore, upstate, roboto, Dr.D, and of course Illargi’s tireless efforts) There are times where *days* go by and I’m still on the same TAE webpage, still processing articles and comments 😀
@maxwell-quest Your pal from the coffee shop reminded me of my close family members. They can’t just let it go, just get the shot and move on with life and mind your own business, pre-2020 style. They’re in a belief system, but they don’t realize it. What they think is Fact and Truth is in reality just a belief system, a mixed bag like any other, and they have to proselytize. They have to be on the right side of history. To them, masks worked. Lockdowns worked. Fauci is science. Science good, ergo vaxxes good. QED, self-evident. HCQ and IVM are hokum. Like a fish can’t be aware of water, they are immersed in their facts’ version of truth. The “facts” they hold onto as truths are mostly fall into the fallacy of Appeal to Authority. The well-spoken talking heads on teevee are the truth. Dr. “Rochelle, Rochelle!” telling ppl to vax their kids when her CDC’s own website is suggesting the opposite. Well she seems so earnest, she must be correct. Thinking is hard. It uses so much ATP. And it hurts to go against the grain.
Your pal saying “good luck with dying” (nice!) is an attitude I’m having to get used to. I’ve been able to agree-to-disagree w/my closest ppl and call a truce – but they still think I’m irresponsible, if not careless or actually evil. (On a side note – I used to think liberals were overall more reasoned and reasonable than others – ha! – the pre-2020 HerrWerner was so naïve. ha! :-D) Couple of weeks ago we visited our pro-vax friends for the first time in over a year. Both FrauWerner and I had some trepidation about it but it turned out gobs of fun. We had *plenty* to talk about, music, food, work, vacations – covid or vaxxines never even came up.
I was ready for it tho – i can go either way – with the fact-based, scientifical discussion or the raw-emotional route, I have talking points for both. Pleasantly, it never came up. (No one yet has ever engaged with my scientific/factual route BTW)
And then I realized is there’s a HUGE obstacle in talking honestly about the vaccines as a society – lotsa believers already got the vax. With that act they are fully committed to their belief system. They emphatically DO NOT WANT TO HEAR about any risks, side-effects, possibility of ADE, PCR tests are BS, etc. etc. The result is understandable but unfortunate in the extreme as a society. That’s why we can’t talk about what to do next, can’t discuss the risks for kids, we can’t talk about why for some people it’s not “vaccine hesitancy” it’s “vaccine GFY”
It’s been a heckuva journey from Milan to Minsk…
@oxy – I sympathize. Trying to find my center too, I have to work at it every day. I’m disgusted by your treatment at the doc. Your doctor simply failed their duty, not coming out to check your sick 3yr old. F*ing pantywaist, f*ing coward. I bet he still gets paid though. No skin in the game. Like the health officials that shut down a county and kill jobs and commerce based on (and I’m being generous here) questionable science™. They still get paid, what’s the problem? They turn into petty tyrants and they wonder why they get called mean names in public meetings. So sad for them. I thank my lucky charms we’re in good health for our age and don’t need much intervention from “experts” and God-willing that continues.
I’m open-mouth-appalled by what 2020 taught me about the medical apparatus. At the level of the local doc, some are clearly better and more caring than others. I never expected such variation in approaches. Some docs have simply turned off their mental faculties – not covid thing, either. I wrote to my Dr back in December to ask him what he thought about IVM and the state-of-the-art if me or FrauWerner come down with covid. He dismissed it all. I thought maybe he just didn’t want to talk over the company’s email, but when I met him in person months later he was the same. No nuance. Completely incurious. Solution: get a “vaccine.” Click, whirr.
FFS, our *veterinarian* spends hours researching meds and approaches when our dog gets sick. I don’t see that in my own GP. I don’t want to paint with a broad brush – I’ve had great, thoughtful interactions with other docs. Our own Doc Robinson and Dr John Day “represent.” But I’m on the search for a new GP now.
Contamination in of batches of J&J vaccine (again?!?!) seems non-coincidental to me. Seems like dirty pool. Industrial sabotage? Making sure the mRNA makers pfizer and moderna rake in 100% of the proceeds?
If I was J&J and a contractor company screwed up my product, I’d be in there with my own people 24/7, fixing their processes and triple-checking the QC side. Better yet, pull the contract and go somewhere more competent. It sure as hell wouldn’t happen twice. The FDA has taken up residence inside companies for less than that.@WES Speaking for a friend who is a USA’n, it’s still possible to get ivermectin from India. Some vendors still accept Paypal which makes it easier since zhe’s USA credit cards won’t be accepted. IndiaMART is like Craigslist on steroids but once my friend made contact with an individual vendor and figured price and shipping by email, it was all good. My USA’n friend had sort of an agonizing wait, package went to India Post, then the trail went cold for about 4 weeks. Showed up intact and unmolested by the kind offices of the customs service. I presume you can count on a long delay, not many flights right now to USA to carry mail and goods, and the Indians are dealing with their covid crisis.
I’m speaking for a friend, of course, on that silly eye-ver-mek-tin thing (because like my GP I follow the Science™!) Though frankly my friend wouldn’t shy from using the horse-paste option if it came to it. 😉
Thanks, @madamski. Yes you’re correct about the DGAFs 🙂 To be fair I should have added this:
There are a lot of reasons people perform the Getting the Jab rite – personal choice, to alleviate fears of family and friends, health issues that put them more at risk for covid, and other reasons. The rite is not specific to the Faucists; it is observed in several of the religions with the requirement varying somewhat according to personal choice and local custom.
Importantly however, performing the Getting the Jab ceremony in public is a test of virtue for the Faucists; a required, openly-shared rite they believe establishes their moral superiority over everyone else. Because of their aggressive proselytizing and their high level of influence in the media, this is one of the Faucists’ extremist views that outsiders find most alarming. -H.W.I ran into an ideological wall this past week talking to my parents about all things covid. It struck me that these belief-systems we’ve built up in the last 15 months are religions of sorts – each with a unique canon, authorities, and hierarchy (or lack of). I started writing the below as a serious effort to recognize overlaps in the belief systems and where they diverge, so that I can interact with the different groups. My writing rapidly devolved into snark (apologies) but still I see this as a useful mental model for navigating the coming months.
The Faucists – Generally considered the strictest and most doctrinaire of the covid faiths. Followers are identified by layers of cloth worn about the face, especially in absurd places like driving alone in your car or outside on a sunny day. Their canon is an inflexible belief system; the mentioning of new data or questioning core beliefs is interpreted as a personal attack punishable by death or a sanctimonious tweet. Followers are formally confirmed in a public ceremony known as Getting the Jab. The group proselytizes aggressively. The teachings of its living prophet, known for his capricious and often self-inconsistent decrees, are handed down daily through US media outlets. Faucists are sometimes confused with other related sects with overlapping beliefs, among them Covidians, Maskholes and Karens, who look upon each other (and everybody else) with mutual hatred.
The Ceedeeceeists – Perhaps the most secular of the modern covid faiths, is favored by CEOs, governors, local officials, and health ministries. It is a half-assed faith, partly drawn from the same canonical teachings as the Faucists, but without any real conviction and mostly followed in order to CYA. Rote memorization and passing along diktats from above without much thought is an expectation for the faithful. Depressingly hierarchical, most of its canon is merely baggage and inertia carried forward from previous bad decisions. The proclamations of its high-caste priests are often harsh on the populace but generally ineffective at stopping or treating covid.
The WHOists – This faith shares its lineage with the Ceedeeceeists, but on an international scale. Its leadership is considered by many to be an ossified bureaucracy; its procedures and the need to diplomatically “go along to get along” render it slow to react to new findings. Fun fact: uttering their forbidden word – pronounced “woo-hahn” – can trigger the faithful and could result in death or (even worse!) cancelling your grant funding.
The Greatbarringtons – an amorphous faith encompassing a wide subset of belief systems; there is no strict hierarchy or belief requirement; self-education, personal study and questioning are valued in this Lattitudinarian and pantheistic faith. Perhaps the most scientific-minded of any of the modern covid faiths, followers’ beliefs, though wide-ranging, clash in almost every aspect with the Faucists. In stark contrast to many of the other faiths, its core tenets are non-canonical; they are ever-changing as new data becomes available and scientists do their fucking jobs. As an example, they believe that lockdowns might have been justified at first but have harsh downsides and deserve a societal discussion of pros and cons, rather than slavish acceptance. They also accept the use of medical treatments considered heretical particularly by Faucists; favoring cheap off-patent substances in their ceremonies. While Greatbarringtons appear to be one of the smaller faiths, its numbers are growing and they are getting pretty pissed.
The Dgafs – (pronounced de-GAFFs) as their name suggests, do not think covid is a huge threat. Followers often see societal reactions to covid as overreaching, even fascistic. Some began their faith-journey as DGAFs, others left stricter Faucism or Maskholeism after harsh reality caused a personal crisis of faith. Many of its followers are wage-earners, small business owners, restaurateurs and other groups. Many were praised as “essential workers” but never got a raise in return for their heightened risk, and never got bailed out by big-guvmint check or had the luxury of that “work from home” bullshit. Many of its followers came down with covid, had to suffer through it, and get on with life because they have bills to pay and lives to lead. Note that young, attractive “party people inna house” make up another large but unrelated constituency of followers.
As recently as a few years ago, two of these headlines would have triggered mass outrage from the press and the public (jabs for kids, skipping 2 year approval process for vaccines) Now, meh. Looks like this is the new normal.
Control of information outlets is so well consolidated they have nothing to fear from bad news. If these vaccines go tits-up in large numbers after we start jabbing kids, they will just suppress the info and reframe it. Experts™ will say it’s because of those nasty unvaxxed unwashed heathen, and the public will dutifully turn their rage against them. They have perfected the machine the last few years. Narrative can be maintained indefinitely, doubt becomes crimethink. Beat peoples’ psyche down with nonstop fear-porn. Could be wrong, but I don’t think this could have happened even ten years ago.
I had a bitter personal reminder of that this weekend, talking to my parents about the vaccines and covid. They were taken aback that there are vax side effects, that they they don’t work as advertised, that covid poses almost no danger to children, that treatments DO exist (treatments other than suffocating to an expensive death in an ICU). I was taken aback at how low-information they are – two educated, introspective thoughtful people. They used to be well-informed and still think of themselves that way. Their ignorance comes from following news outlets that were reliable just a few short years ago.
@madamski many thanks for your thoughts the other day on responding people on the “vaccines.” I am having that difficult discussion with my parents now. I used some of your post almost verbatim 🙂 I was hoping to avoid it but they just brought it up again since the JnJ one is back.
They are the only people I would consider getting any covid “vaccine” for at this point. I have strong reservations about it, both on scientific and philosophical grounds. Frankly I don’t see how it benefits any of us, since they already got the jab and are immune (if the media hype and marketing is to be believed.)
Your response hit just the right chord (“here’s our shared concern, here’s why I think what I do, don’t bully me”, end of discussion.)
I won’t hafta use this part with my parents, but this part is important w/many ppl: “It’s not an argument you win. It’s an argument you end…like ending a fight: FU, I don’t care, you’re stupid and your mama smells funny…But smile as you do it. It’s not only powerful psyop but it’s good for your soul..” YES! Pure gold, LOL
thanks again -W@absolute-galore “I am already under not so subtle pressure to get vaccinated.”
Yep. I think we all are feeling not-so-subtle pressure. Certainly the pop-media spends all day every day normalizing it. I hear it from my MD surgeon cousin and his MD wife, who want to hang out with us but not until we get shots. Never mind that we hung out in the summer and fall when Covid was raging, because Science(tm) and because they got the shot, being good consumers and All the Cool Kids Are Doing It and did I mention Science(tm).I will share with them my research on mRNA vaccines and how no science exists on long-term safety. I will share easily found knowledge of unknown risks from new “vaccines” and how most mRNA vaccines have had severe side effects in animal trials.
I doubt it will have effect. The Dr and Mrs Dr are emotionally bought-in. In their wildest dreams I don’t think they can picture malfeasance coming from Big Pharma and its equivalent in govt and every other industry.
It’s worrisome when genuinely smart people have such blind spots. It makes me worry about my own state and keeps me constantly wondering what *my* blind spots are. David Collum again – “As happens so frequently now, however, there are also no open minds left to change.”
@sumac-carol
On variants getting more deadly, it does happen. In 1918 it happened, where the 2nd wave (likely a new variant) was much more deadly than the first. 25 to 50x more deadly than Covid. If you survived the first wave in early 1918 it usually conferred some immunity to the second wave. Statistically speaking viruses like to find a sweet spot of transmissibility/virulence that preserves the virus.Mutations are random. Some will make virulence worse, some make it more transmissible, some are just conjured up the by media in order to scare the populace and gather clickbait. Other mutations make it less transmissible and less deadly. The virus isn’t trying to get deadlier, its interaction with the host species is what determines whether a mutation is “better” for the virus. That feedback loop usually makes it “revert to the mean” as Crosby’s book calls it. The “sweet spot” of virulence for the flu and colds is making people sick, making more carriers, but not killing many. That’s the level of virulence that most benefits the flu.
Ebola is on the other end of the scale. Ebola spreads like wildfire. It’s so deadly and so transmissible that it usually craters the entire population in a local area – a town, a state, a region. Ebola only has one trick, “explosive amplification” and turning the host into moar virus. It kills too many hosts, it’s too deadly to sustain itself for the long haul, it does not seem to be able to turn itself into a kinder, gentler Ebola. Whatever mutations occur in Ebola (probably) make it disappear – either doesn’t infect humans or doesn’t cause symptoms.
[Well written Raúl, glad you are keeping this at the forefront]
Add to the list of motivations to keep the covid fear amped up to 11: imagine how much Fauci hates to lose his media-darling status
– No more utterly inappropriate speculation outside his (narrow) area of expertise
– Not more deference and cooing on CNN
– No more softball questions by willfully ignorant talking heads on the Today show et alYou don’t survive 5 administrations by being competent, you do it by being a political creature. Imagine when covid fades into memory this year and the Media Darling of the NIAID has to go back to his day job and his $400k salary. Like the last scene in Goodfellas.
Ray Liotta would make a good movie Fauci. Fauci: “Have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. I’m an average nobody…get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
@doly it depends on the virus. If it’s the common cold, a lot of the seasonal flus, there’s no point in chasing after it with a vaccine because it will be gone or evolve into something else quicker than you can jab tens of millions in the arm with a vaccine. The examples you give, measles, polio, etc. respond to vaccines because you can get ahead of them. For an assortment of reasons, some scientific-ish and some to do with human behaviour, society can suppress and with luck and fortitude even eradicate them.
It’s not a binary. Chasing after covid-19 with a vaccine, which is free to mutate and still stay virulent within the bounds of its basic design, is a bigger challenge. Like a really bad bad flu it’s airborne and everywhere and picks its victims with seeming randomness (other than BMI.) The seasonal flus we roll the dice and the experts pick the four strains they think MIGHT be the big ones next year, because it takes the better part of a year to manufacture and distribute them. Some years we cut the flu’s effects in half, sometimes we have no effect at all. If you do the sensible things, taking care of your basic health (including vitamins fresh air excercise get enough sleep protect the vulnerable blah blah blah) you can cut your personal (and societal) risk substantially.
I’m not against vaccines. Not one bit. I’m against selling vaccines as the only solution for what seems to be an unusually bad round of the flu. Worse than the seasonal flu by a factor of 10, better than the 1918 flu by a factor of 25. I’m about informed consent. Conducting large-scale “science” experiments on unwitting and uninformed participants is what the mRNA vaccines amount to.@maxwell-quest I’m catching up as it were on some back-issues of TAE that I missed, lol. Wanted to give you props for the reply above, thanks. *Somehow* that tied together some (seemingly disparate) topics I’ve had difficulty trying to get across to my parents re: the events of the last year and what ties them together.
I think perhaps this is the core misunderstanding between me and my ppl. They seem to have unshakeable faith in “experts” and institutions that have not earned it. “People tend to believe that everyone is just like them: that they have the same priorities, principles, needs, and feelings…” And I can come up with many examples. Now that it’s a bit clearer in my own mind, maybe just maybe I can convey that.@a-kullervo you wrote “The jab ploy is being pushed relentlessly. Obviously, this is not about money; what, then?”
I’ve wondered about that a lot.
I do think a lot is about the money (for the manufacturers of course, and to make up lost $$$ for the hospitals after all of the revenue loss, the cancelled and postponed surgeries and procedures from last year)
And yes for those that lean more sociopathic among the TPTB – yes, it’s simply power – they like the submission, the granting the promise of normalcy after months of fear
And I’d add a couple more – the vaccine manufacturers can swoop in like the Second Coming and save humanity, a boost to their ego, prestige, and influence
And my best guess is that the mRNA vaccines are an end-run around the regulatory process, so the tech can be deployed more broadly and with even less oversight from our milquetoast already-captured regulatory bodies. I wrote in comments a couple of weeks ago how little data is available for (long-term) effects of mRNA vaccines@kultsommer I’ve had the same experience with family and friends with the vax. I’ve had to literally walk away, it’s like talking to a freshly-minted religious zealot. Nobody reads the fine print when they got the jab, which gave me pause. They just hear “safe and effective” repeated 1000 times, shouted from the rooftops by the media and turn their brains off. Not that the fine print would have deterred them. It never concerns them that the manufacturers all sought and received protection from legal action. That the WHO says it’s still not totally sure the mRNA vaccines prevent the spread, but my MD cousin says it does, because he heard it from a guy in youtubes or hallway and because Science™. Never enters their minds that we pursued half-assed lockdowns and face-panties and the hail-Mary of vaccines, at the expense of anything else. They jumped on the bandwagon, and demonized any other response other than half-assed, economy-shattering, capricious lockdowns. They marginalized any other medical preventative or treatment as quackery, as they were instructed by the media and Experts™.
When I bring any of these concerns up, eyes glaze over. Like a religious zealot, they are stuck with their sunk costs. They already got the jab, or they have their eyes on the prize, getting the jab will make everything go back to normal. Emotionally and intellectually, they can’t listen to any other view because it’s too painful to revisit earlier bad personal decisions. They react with contempt, anger, nonchalance. Double down, triple down quintuple-down, whatever it takes to ignore that friend/brother/cousin who dissents. Like many here I count my lucky stars that I re-found TAE this year or I may have lost my f*ing marbles in 2020.
We’re stuck in binary thinking here in the USA, you are either a good citizen or a moron. A double-masking, vaccine-queuing groupie who believes everything parroted in the MSM, or a stupid misinformed anti-vaxxer misanthrope. No middle ground, no nuance is permitted. Because NYT and The Atlantic and Science™, as long as Science™ bends to support my viewpoint.
My best guess is that the mRNA vaccines are an end-run around the regulatory process, so the tech can be deployed more broadly and with even less oversight from our milquetoast already-captured regulatory bodies. Nothing is known of mRNA long-term effects. Before the covid-19 vaccines, there were fewer than 2000 persons tested in such a way that might indicate long-term effects. There’s no science there. We’ve extrapolated that tiny practically non-existent base of data and assumed that it’s “safe” enough for 100 million people. In quality systems (any industry) extrapolation is a no-no. If ran this study at work I’d get hounded back to intern status if not tossed out of the building. As it is, we’re running the largest non-informed-consent clinical trial in history. Good luck to us all.
I thought about making a cartoon character named Mr. Na, who introduces the wonders of the mRNA tech to a new generation
@john-day you struck a chord, on the positives of getting done of small tasks. I think for both the FrauWerner and I – often the minutiae of our day is the most rewarding, and brings peace – morning walk w/the dogs, starting to dig up the vegetable beds, making food for each other. At work, for both of us, me corporate and she working for a nonprofit on a shoestring budget – much is the identical, with an onerous layer of technology that we have to support, zoom meetings, budget calculations, clicking through what passes for “training” these days, I just feel my value being extracted to no good end.
Apropos of nothing – lately at work I’ve taken up my old habit, sketching – just hand sketches, literally with pencil and paper – no CAD, no PC, no cloud or powerpoint, like I did 25 years ago when I was a real engineer, and I think I’ve been more creative in the last month than in years. 😀
@Doc Robinson – thanks for the correction, holy crap. That was careless on my part, I glossed over/misinterpreted details of the study.
Those words are mine actually, hers are that it was “well tolerated with a good safety profile.” Which pretty much puts credibility of the article in tatters. Funny that my mistake supports my case, and casts hers in further doubt.
Then I wonder at motive, when a source contradicts the very point they are trying to support with a reference. It’s almost like they’re relying on nobody checking the references. Common practice these days for once-venerable media outlets like NYT. -HWI have had a very straightforward question to ask about the safety of covid vaccines, in particular the mRNA ones. The question has nagged me for months, and I spent time this week working on it. It was a difficult question to answer. I wrote this up with the idea of talking within my circle of ppl, I thought the TAE community might find it of interest. Kind of long, apologies –
As I write this, over 200MM people have received covid vaccine doses. While there is more than one vaccine out there, the two available in the West currently are the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. (The JnJ vaccine – based on a more conventional technology – will likely be available in early March, but going forward if you show up for the shot, you are not likely to know ahead of time which one you’ll get.) Both Pfizer and Moderna’s are based on mRNA, a topic of much study but little widespread deployment. In the US both are released on an Emergency Use Authorization or its equivalent in other nations, and full approval is not expected until early 2023. Nevertheless the media, the CDC, and political and medical “authorities” are unanimous and incessant in the message that it is “safe and effective.” Dissenting views on safety are relegated to the fringes, and the existence of vaccines other than just the two mRNA ones (with different, more conventional modes of action) is never mentioned in the Western media. There are several promising aspects to mRNA technology, and still more unknowns about it, particularly long-term effects which most likely would manifest as autoimmune disorders. Being a new technology, early animal studies were often plagued with unexpected negative results as the methods and delivery agents were refined. So where are we in our knowledge and expertise as a species with mRNA, now that we are jabbing tens of millions of people with these vaccines?
The straightforward questions I have are, “How do we know how safe mRNA vaccines are? How well-studied are their long-term effects?”
Those two questions do not yield to an interwebs search. Even an in-depth search mostly returns mostly self-referential information, or secondhand info repackaged and parroted by an authority figure whose motives are unclear (or simply dubious.) Specifically for the covid mRNA vaccines, no long-term data exist, as even the earliest human trials began only in late 2020. At best, we can only infer from other studies done using mRNA technology. A strong case for safety of mRNA could be made if there is a large base of data – say 200 studies, ending over 5 or (better yet) 10 years ago, and a total of a few million people involved in the trials. Even with a large database, there are unknown unknowns once you move outside the confines of clinical study and enter the real world with its long (statistical) tails. Still, large studies with years of follow-up would suggest confidence in their safety.
On the other hand, if there turned out to be just a few studies, or they don’t cover much time history, or include only a small sample of people, that would not support a strong case for mRNA safety. If the latter is the case, then – being generous here – it would be “risky” at best to be giving millions of people a vaccine with this new technology. Severity matters too in the risk/reward calculation: if a disease like Ebola or Lhasa takes hold, they are so deadly and the situation so dire that greater risks are worth taking – including a vaccine with side-effects or other measures that cause harm.
My approach was to answer 3 questions that follow from the first ones –
1) HOW LONG have mRNA interventions been tested on humans?
2) HOW MANY people have been tested (thousands? millions, tens of millions?)
3) …and from 1 and 2, do THOSE numbers suggest that vaccinating large numbers of people with an unapproved mRNA product is safe?For a starting point I used a Forbes article “What Are The Long-Term Safety Risks Of The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 Vaccines?” It was published in Dec 2020 and, unsurprisingly, concludes that they are safe. (In fact the article leads off with a strawman, perhaps an attempt at humor, the author’s husband asking if these vaccines are going to turn us into zombies.) The author is Ellen Matloff, in her bio a certified genetic counselor, and she also runs a company that “specializes in scalable, updating, digital genetic counseling.” She is coauthor of several papers in genetics, including subjects related to gene therapy and patient advocacy. It is safe to say she knows what she’s talking about on the topic. Like many authorizes it is equally safe to assume she has a vested interest – both financially and as a personal belief system – in promoting genetic technology.
Spoiler alert: If you want to skip the rest, here’s the answer: about 1,675. That’s the number of people enrolled in (completed) mRNA clinical trials (32 of them) that ended before 2017. Keep in mind the number that received the mRNA treatment-under-study is about half that; most of these are blinded studies and half of them got a placebo. Of those, only 8 studies were conducted on an mRNA treatment against an infectious agent (HIV, rabies) a more realistic comparison which brings the number down to 985 persons. So the size of the database (hundreds) relative to the number of people now receiving doses of the technology (tens of millions) is quite small.
Matloff first discusses the Pfizer vaccine trial and its ability to identify short-term effects “Pfizer vaccine clinical trial study explain[s] that their data show a greater than 83% likelihood of finding at least one adverse, or undesirable, event, if the true incidence of that event is 1 in 10,000. However, the study does not include enough participants, nor has it followed them for enough time, to reliably detect adverse events that are rarer than 1 in 10,000.” That refers to the clinical trials conducted and self-reported by the producer of the vaccine. Assuming their studies are honest and well-run, that covers short-term risks. And it seems to be borne out thus far in the frenzy of arm-jabbing between the end of 2020 and now. We seem to be “in the clear” on short-term effects – safety seems to be on par with any other vaccine, if not a bit better. Though it does suck to be one of those few hundred (?) worldwide that reacted severely and died after the first or second jab, or someone close to them.
On long term risks, the article suggests ‘safe and effective’ though both the article and scientific evidence become decidedly hazy. In Forbes she writes “Of course, the only way to know what, if any, long-term side effects result from the use of these mRNA vaccines is to follow the participants of the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials, vaccinate and study many more people, and then follow all of them for several years. That effort is well underway.” By way of supporting the long-term knowledge, she mentions “mRNA vaccines are not as new as you may think. In fact, mRNA vaccines have been studied over the past two decades and have shown great promise for both infectious disease and cancer.” She links to several sources and particularly calls out an mRNA rabies vaccine trial to support her case. No adverse events are noted in the study. This trial involved 101 participants and ended in 2017. It is neither a large study (many participants to extrapolate the lessons out to millions of people) nor an old study (completed just four years ago.)
The rest of this analysis looks only at numbers; the number people enrolled in mRNA studies and when. This research was performed with data from the on the the US gov’t clinical trials database. One unknown about mRNA or any vaccine is the length of time for long-term effects, if any, become evident. Pulling a number out of the air, let’s look at three years of follow up. That should be enough time for side effects, such as exposure to the infectious agent that the vaccine targets. Let’s round that up to four, that allows for lag of ending the study and publishing out results. This is Feb 2021 so I looked at studies ending before Jan 2017.
Searching on mRNA returns 103 studies. This includes all studies most of which (like the 20 Covid-related ones) are ongoing. All of those studies in total have 90,000 participants. Filtering out incomplete or terminated studies, and ones newer than that arbitrary point in time, gives 32 studies and 1,675 persons. As I mentioned above the number that received the mRNA treatment-under-study is about half that; most of these are blinded studies and half of them got a placebo. Of those, only 8 studies were conducted on an mRNA treatment against an infectious agent (HIV, rabies) a more realistic comparison which brings the number down to 985 persons. Quite a small population to draw conclusions of long-term safety from – that entails extrapolating to a population four orders of magnitude larger.
BTW my approach is admittedly coarse. And I want to emphasize, it does *not* suggest that mRNA technology is dangerous. The approach simply looks at how large the database is that supports how “safe and effective” mRNA vaccines are. Questions such as long-term follow-up, adverse events, and other factors from the individual studies are outside my area of expertise, and unlikely to be found in publicly available sources. We are vaccinating large numbers of people (tens of millions) based on an experience of small size (hundreds) and not much history (going back 1-5 years in most cases.) Again, it does not suggest that mRNA technology is dangerous – it suggests that we do not have enough data. I find insufficient evidence to support the assertion that mRNA technology is “safe and effective” – we SIMPLY DO NOT KNOW.
@MaxwellQuest great line of Morpheus’. I didn’t understand it in 199x when the movie came out. And none other than Jung “people cannot handle too much reality…” Ppl become committed to their internal narrative they can’t identify when the belief systems and institutions have turned on them.
I am not an anti-vaxxer and it infuriates me that I have to explain that disclaimer IRL. I’m all for medical intervention WHEN there’s informed consent and a reason to believe that no harm or even the lower bar of “less-harm” will be done.
A friend’s friend has her kids signed up for mRNA vax trials. Moderna is hungry for kids to complete its trials, and – surprise – is having trouble getting people to sign them up. This task gets outsourced to those places that advertise on TeeVee for filling up clinical trials you’ve probably seen the adverts with the sonorous voice: “If you’re a healthy nonsmoker and like hot meals and a lot of doting attention from people wearing lab coats and maybe have low ego-boundaries and waaaayyy more faith in the medical industry than it’s actually earned…” You can get $1500 per head for signing your kid up for a pharmaceutical made using a new manufacturing technique with essentially no long-term track record of safety that could (probably not, but just a chance, nobody really knows) impact their health for the rest of their lives. Not just good data or data suggesting no concerns – simply no data. (well ok a little data but “NO DATA” sounds punchier.)
The first human mRNA vax trial only ended in 2017 (rabies, PMID #28754494). And it was – wait for it – conducted on all of 101 people. Any long-term reaction, anything that might happen in the “tails” of the distribution of the human health condition, outside a cohort of generally healthy 18-40 year olds would be missed by such a tiny trial. Any long-term (years) effects – even serious ones, and especially ones with a low rate of occurrence – would be missed. Human trials of mRNA have all been quite small – nothing like the throngs of fear-addled, lockdown-weary, low-information folks now lining up by the millions for the jab. This research took me all of about 5 minutes. I try to explain all this to people – you know that informed-consent idea that makes me so old fashioned and out of touch and (gasp) paranoid. Our modern miracle media medical complex seems uninterested so I’ll do my part for the people I care about, All I’m asking for is informed consent – a pretty low bar – but I can’t do people’s thinking for them I can barely do my own
[clickbait picture of Morpheus] [have to imagine it, copypasta of images doesn’t work :-P]
I am struggling today.
I pinned hopes on Assange being pardoned. I didn’t realize I had invested that much into it. And I knew odds were against it. Nobody in my circle (my meatspace circle) understands it. Nobody has time to think about the implications of it. What his purposely brutal incarceration means for truthtelling, for *actual* journalism (RIP), for the Machiavellian full-press, carte-blanche it implies for bureaucrats and elected officials and the Grima Wormtongues that inform them. The name barely registers with any of my circle. That’s just one topic – I’ve had discussions with two people in the last 24 hours about the mRNA “vaccines.” People read the marketing materials as amplified through the mainstream media. Proven safe and effective. 95%. Full stop, that’s all they needed to hear. wow, new tech! sign me up! then moar teevee and FB and OOOOH LOOK WHAT’S ON AMAZON I NEED ONE. Can’t be bothered to wedge the Overton window wider, just for a moment, and maybe just glimpse the motives behind the marketing. It’s terrifying yes but it’s part of being a good citizen/father/mother/sibling/friend.I’m struggling. What do I do next, how do I even process, how do I absorb all this so I can cling to my raft of semi-sanity. So I explained it all to my dog. I don’t think he understands either TBTH, he’s smart but doesn’t speak English, doesn’t keep up on current events. But he’s empathic and he can tell when I’m low. He’s a good listener and that’s what I really needed. It helped.
I don’t know where this leads. I feel like like I am a minority of one, and not for the first time.
@Glennda – yes
Long-Covid is my lingering concern about catching it as well. Impossible to know what the factors are – who will suffer long covid and who shrugs it off (sure would be nice to know that, sure would be nice to have some “research” by “experts” on that after 10 months) The drug that starts with an “I” that shall not be named and sort of rhymes with pectin appears to help people recover from it. But little or no research is being done in the industrialized west. “We” picked (well, our betters did) the Hail-Mary of a vaccine, and downplayed the need for developing treatments and preventatives as a way to buy time to get to herd-immunity. Fortunately some effective treatments and preventatives have been studied, mostly by heretical physicians and by nations which can’t afford the Big Pharma option.I’ve found it <<oddly>> comforting to read about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. I’m finishing the second of the two popular English-language books. There are many, many parallels between that pandemic and the present one, including the steady stream of lies and official missteps and fcukups. 1918 had its own variety of long-Covid. Many patients recovered the acute phase of the disease, only to suffer continuing symptoms like fatigue, foggy brain, loss of physical dexterity. Puzzling to scientists at the time, seeing effects linked to a disease that primarily attacked the respiratory system. Autopsies revealed that the immune system had attacked the disease not just in the lungs but chased it into circulatory and even the nervous system.
The time course of the 1918 bug was astonishing, especially in its second wave. Some patients went from mildly symptomatic to dead in 12 hours. In a few documented cases people keeled over in the street as they were speaking, literally dropping dead. Studying 1918 has given me perspective on the disease itself and the societal and personal reactions to it.
So many other parallels:
– ineffective “vaccines” that targeted the wrong bug
– the Great Mask Debate – 101 years ago, argued strenuously from both sides particularly in San Francisco – based on imperfect evidence with too many random variables to count
– the great Lockdown Debate – again argued strenuously from both sides
– gradual fading of the 1918 flu-bug into the background noise as a)herd immunity is achieved and b) bug “reverts to the mean” and mutates to become less deadly – which is in the virus’ and the host’s best interestOf all the troubling articles here today…which is all of them…the one that troubles me the most is the World Health Organization changing the definition of herd immunity. The current WHO verbiage states that herd immunity can only be achieved by a vaccine. Only months ago it was in line with the definition used everywhere for decades (by vaccine or by previous infection) There are a number of logical fallacies in their current page. They artfully dodge questioning the unknown effectiveness of the current 2 experimental jabs making the rounds now, while discrediting any other path to immunity.
By itself, meh, I’m not surprised at a change in definition, the WHO has changed their tune to fit a variety of narratives blowing in the wind. I fully expect WHO and similar institutions to be compromised. Grain of salt. Goodbye sister disco. Still, the internet archive has no record of the switch. This change literally went down the memory-hole, WHY?, what’s the big deal? In the industrialized world the average joe’s attention span is 3 seconds anyway. Nobody would care or notice if the glaring evidence of the switch was on the Wayback Machine archive except a few huddling around the dim light of truth. Did “They” really go to that much trouble to wipe it?
Echoing others above, thank you Ilargi for your significant work here at TAE esp in 2020.
And a tip-o’-the-hat to the commentariat here at TAE in 2020, for opening my mind up – even when it hurts.TAE is a phenomenon I wish I could introduce to my IRL circle in meatspace. Alas, too many of their minds are made up already; they fall for the boolean – the Narrative, Hobson’s choice, or a false dichotomy instead of a whole spectrum of opinion. TL:DR. Thinking and introspection is hard work 😀
@Doc Robinson
I always thought Vitamin-D would be a good name for a rap artist. He could flow about the evils of processed foods and spread the word to young impressionable minds about nutrition and inequity of food deserts, and how to take care of your microbiome.I asked my GP about the MATH+ treatment in case I or the FrauWerner come down with covid. He turned it down, was not open to ivermectin. I found his reply disconcerting. His practice got assimilated by large regional system and he may not have much wiggle room outside the conventional corporate approach. Sticking to my Vitamin-D for now and worrying a bit. I’ve been helpless in the jaws of the Medical Establishment just one time myself, and prefer to stay out of it especially since it’s cranked up to 11 this year.
Over at John Michael Greer’s blog (the Dreamwidth one) JMG describes a “delineation” (astrological interpretation) of the chart he created for the upcoming presidential inauguration. “”Grim” isn’t the half of it” he writes “…This is far and away the most malefic mundane chart I have ever studied.”
A bit off-topic, apologies. The mind wandered, I was going to write about the first article and contrast it with the happy/puff-piece/media-misdirection on it, but it became mentally exhausting and I ran out of steam.
I don’t pretend to understand the usefulness and/or limitations of astrology – but I do get a titter of delight when my intuition aligns with a prediction. Even if it is rather apparent to anyone paying attention (IMHO I am agnostic on the subject, I have no reason to dismiss astrology out of hand, though astrology is strictly discredited debunked and verboten in my scientifical engineering field and religious cohort)
“I have no idea if Donald Trump or anyone in his inner circle pays the least attention to astrology, but if so, I hope he has the great good sense to button up his ego, let his legal challenges slide, prepare to depart the White House with whatever theatrics he considers appropriate, and thank his lucky stars that he can sit out the next four years…Whoever is inaugurated this coming January will be walking face first into a buzzsaw…”
Wickedly delightful bit of schadenfreude and worth a read https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/111369.html
@Mister Roboto – Martenson’s latest video – about COVID treatment – got pulled by YouTube. Can still see it on his site. Frankly I’m surprised the Tubes of You let him stay up this long. His explanations are detailed, thorough, reasonable and acknowledge that his interpretation and the science could be imperfect. Oh well, down the memory hole with you, Chris. Totally expected. Googles became an entrenched establishment mouthpiece slowly at first, but it’s race to the bottom now.
@Polder Dweller – I have worried about that as well, that masks could indeed make a virus spread faster. Wearing a mask wrong (even a gold-standard N95) can be more dangerous than not wearing one, an N95 must be fitted leak-free and handled properly and thrown out after a few hours’ use so it can be replaced with a fresh one (as if you could get one that often.) For us laypersons, a cloth mask with pores that barely stop a visible droplet, that gets worn wrong and tugged and touched and tucked into a pocket because they’re inconvenient and uncomfortable – well that’s an infection route for the cooties and the common cold, let alone a raging ‘ronavirus. (edit: scroll up a bit, Dr D says it better than I did :D)
Really top-notch article, and commentary today in this entry. I’m sharing an article on accuracy of diagnostic tests I refer to often. These terms are specific to the medical profession, but statistics behind them are quite simple and this article explains it well: http://michaelandjudystouffer.com/judy/articles/specsen.htm
The TL;DR –
A test that is 97% accurate (which sounds terrific! and it is, high-90’s % represents the upper-bound of the best of medical tests) still results in significant false positives. In other words, your world sucks if you’re one of those 3% with a false positive. On top of that – and here’s the hard part – the accuracy of a test is specific to the population it applies to…The author explains this way: have a theoretical AIDS test with 99% accuracy – which is a very accurate test. Take 10,000 random people and test them with it.
* 99 people will really have AIDS and get a correct (positive) test results.
* One unlucky bloke will have it but get an incorrect (negative) test result.
Now the uninfected people?
* 9,801 will get a correct (negative) test result. Cool.
* 99 people will get an incorrect (false positive!) test result. Well, shit.
99 false positives, 99 people in the general population will be told they have AIDS when they don’t. And that’s with an unusually accurate test, with 99% specificity and sensitivity. I did a cursory search on the Interwebs and for the PCR test it has to be minimum 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity in the USA. UK is a bit higher. Not great compared to our theoretical 99% accurate test. And those figures are end-to-end performance of the test in ideal conditions, not the real-world of goofs, human errors, barely trained and tired HCP’s.Throwing a test like that at the general population with a (relatively) rare condition is foolish policy. The rarer the condition, the less accurate the test. That’s why before administering and AIDS test, other risk factors are considered (lifestyle, possible exposures, etc etc) These diagnostic tests deal with probabilities. You have to get to that subset of the population that is at risk before you roll the (fairly accurate) dice of the diagnostic test.
With COVID? The PCR test? Forget it. At least the way it is currently being used. You cannot estimate those risk factors like you can for that theoretical AIDS test. 11 months in, with the ‘Rona there are hardly any “risk factors” for exposure for the general public – it is ubiquitous in the population now. And still, as a percentage of population, relatively “rare.”
I go back and forth on whether the shitty election system in the USA is an unintended “bug” or a desired “feature”. And by “System” I mean the whole apparatus – the machines, the processes, the rules for having observers and running the show on the big day. Something as simple as tabulating ballots – done for 10,000+ years, even before the invention of the stylus or (clay) tablet – just ain’t that difficult. USA system originally ran in the days of horseback and quill pens.
On the one hand many among The Powers That Be (TPTB) would prefer an opaque, easily compromised system that could obscure results or tip a close race to their preferred outcome. (this is the “Feature” category)
On the other hand there’s the “Bug” category. Many among the TPTB simply want to use money to make a sticky problem go away. In the first 10,000 years of tabulating votes you had to rely on people – with pencils and math skills and stuff. And they want food and bathroom and smoke breaks. Let’s give money to the slick salescritter from [Diebold, Dominion, fill in the blank.] Automation and millions of lines of code? Problem solved.
Ask any Secretary of State – “how does all this tech work? how do you prevent fraud? how do you make sure Every Vote Counts(tm) but preferably only once?” It IS their f*ing job, after all. Blank stare or a sales pitch, I guarantee. Which supports both “bug” and “feature” theories
Huge change in the media here in flyover country
Calm voices, soothing colors, innocuous stories. Even Chuck Todd, insufferable hyperbolic twit that he is, looks refreshed and unconstipated for the first time in five years. The election was clean and clear, a Mandate from the people with positively no foreign interference this time.
They truly believe it’s all over. They have buried Trump and Trumpism. And anyone who supported him for any reason is an outcast, banished into the wilderness, humiliated and chastened.
I’m realizing maybe for the first time just how closed-minded and ingenuous leftists/liberals can be. Having spent most of my years being one and living among them, this is a rude shock. The narrative they tell themselves (about themsleves) is of open-mindedness and compassion. I’ve been cast into the wilderness by three of them so far, ones I care about – a close friend and two family members. FOr expressing doubts about their constellation of beliefs – doubts about a vaccine, the harm of extended lockdowns, that the “SCIENCE!!!” they believe in is compromised, that this election is far from clean – I’ve spent many an hour trying to patch things up so we can talk about puppies and rainbows and innocuous things.
