People get ready
believe in magic
and why not?
the alternative is what?
reífied caca?
caca de vaca
where the hongos mágicos grow.
homage to our mothers and all those who work for the welfare of others.
fathers, too since the 16th is their designated day in the US of A
“Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discuss intellectual matters is a beer party.” –Richard Feynman
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.” ― Richard Feynman
———
Ask yourself what percentage decrease in infectious disease deaths would you estimate vaccines can at most be responsible for?
Write it down.
America and the UK introduced the measles vaccine in 1963 and 1968 respectively.
It took decades for their use to become widespread.
Measles deaths fell 96% before vaccines were even developed. Mathematically they could be responsible for at the very most 4% of the fall in infectious disease deaths.
How close was your estimate?
The book “Turtles all the way down” details –what the FDA/HHS/CDC admitted under oath in 2017-2018 when they were sued by Aaron Siri, Del Bigtrree and RFK Jr– how there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing any childhood vaccine is safe or effective. Likewise, there is none on the accumulative effects of the 70+ childhood vaccine injections. In FDA documents, supplementary materials and trial designs all randomized clinical trials define “placebo” as another vaccine, or the vaccine minus the antigen. This is the equivalent of saying tobacco is safe because Camel cigarettes were just as safe as Marlboro. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/community-forum/chd-book-club-turtles-all-the-way-down-vaccine-science-and-myth/
——
“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Truth is a pathless land –the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” ― Richard Feynman
————–
“This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
Before reading on ask what would you consider “strong evidence MMR vaccines do not cause autism”?
The study was funded by multiple organizations who either own vaccine patents, or sell vaccines (Notes section at the end). The authors worked for these organizations. One of the authors, Poul Thorsen stole over a million dollars from the CDC and was indicted for over 20 counts of fraud. He is an author of another half dozen studies of a similar nature.
Table 1 shows the number of children in each group (MMR vaccinated and MMR un-vaccinated).
Compared to the non-MMR-vaccinated children the MMR-vaccinated children had a statistically significant 17% higher rate of autism.
Recall your earlier idea of what you would consider “strong evidence MMR vaccines don’t cause autism.” Was it anywhere close to “study with massive pro-vaccine conflicts of interest finds MMR vaccinated children have 17% higher rates of autism?”
——————–
In Japan “due to a high frequency of reports of aseptic meningitis, a suspected side effect of the mumps vaccine” MMR vaccination rates plummeted.
As the authors state:
“If results showed a decline in ASD frequency in Japan after termination of the program, this would strongly suggest that MMR vaccination is causally related to the increase in ASD frequency.”
Go to table 1 and figure 1. It shows autism rates for years of birth.
Autism rates increased for those born in 1988-1990
Those born in 1991-1992 saw decreased rates
Here are the rates of MMR vaccination for each period
70%, 43%, 34%: 1988-1990
24%, 2%: 1991, 1992
The authors conclude: “The significance of this finding is that MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD”
Because:
“ASD rose progressively from 47.6 per 10,000 for children born in 1988 to 117.2 for those born in 1996”
Notice how instead of using the low vaccinate cohorts they instead used the 1996 ones which received the newly introduced MMR vaccine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15877763/
—————
“This cross-sectional study… was used to estimate the odds for autism diagnosis associated with neonatal hepatitis B vaccination”
“Boys vaccinated as neonates had threefold greater odds for autism diagnosis compared to boys never vaccinated or vaccinated after the first month of life.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058170/
—————–
“This study investigated the association between vaccination with the Hepatitis B triple series vaccine prior to 2000 and developmental disability”
“The odds of receiving EIS were approximately nine times as great for vaccinated boys” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02772240701806501
———–
“Using data from three medical practices in the United States with children born between November 2005 and June 2015, vaccinated children were compared to unvaccinated children”
“Vaccination before 1 year of age was associated with increased
developmental delays OR = 2.18
asthma OR = 4.49
ear infections OR = 2.13”
“Higher odds ratios were observed in Quartiles 3 and 4 (where more vaccine doses were received)” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7268563/
—————-
“Vaccinated children were significantly more likely than the unvaccinated to have
allergic rhinitis 10.4% vs. 0.4%
other allergies 22.2% vs. 6.9%
eczema/atopic dermatitis 9.5% vs. 3.6%
a learning disability 5.7% vs. 1.2%
neurodevelopmental disorder 10.5% vs. 3.1%
chronic illness 44.0% vs. 25.0%”
“Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD, and still be an idiot.” ― Richard Feynman
“People demand free speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use” –Soren Kierkegaard.
“Truth always rest with the minority because the minority is formed by those who really have an opinion, while the majority is formed by gangs with no opinion.” –Soren Kierkegaard
His lead article recounts the corruption of the medical literature — deception-based medicine in place of evidence-based medicine — that facilitated the opioid crisis that provides a useful corollary to Oakchair’s thesis.
But, that’s not what interested me most about the encounter: it was the “Recommended” list helpfully provided by Substack alongside Bivens:
Matt Taibbi, John Meersheimer, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate (also Bari Weiss which sounded a discordant note for me).
I pay some regular attention to all four of those authors — not Bari Weiss — but it made me wonder if i trapped in an echo chamber.
I made a new Tiktok, which I successfully associated with an email-not-really-associated-with-me, a trick which I am quite proud of having pulled off. I know I was successful because my old Tiktok account wanted me to follow practically every person I have known personally or professionally over the last 30 years, but this new Tiktok account suggests as contacts people I have never heard of and don’t recognize.
It has been an education. I can confirm that the Tiktok algorithm uses certain posts as keyframes — that is, stereotyped clips of uncertain vintage run to pigeon-hole users based on the user’s reaction. Not surprising really.
I am still me, of course, so I get a lot of golden retrievers in my “For you” feed. I also get Nigel Farage, who is on fire on TikTok with a great persona for that app. He’s the Matt Rife of U.K. politics at the moment.
I also get cheerleaders for Ukraine in the Ukraine war, which makes me wonder about the limits of my echo chamber vs other people’s echo chambers. In my NC-compatible world of Alex and Alex at The Duran and Scott Ritter and John Meersheimer and so on, Russia is winning (for some definition of “winning” not fully disclosed) while in my new Tiktok world, Ukraine is getting in its licks and Russia is corrupt and often incompetent and laboring under terrible handicaps, military and economic. Economic handicaps that have seen the gas station with nukes sail past Japan in global economic rankings of PPP GDP, but never mind.
I suppose this is just how it is, in our post-fact, narrative-driven politics.
I don’t like not-knowing-anything and being left to fall back on moral instincts to sort out the fictions (I was going to write, sort out “fact from fiction” but there’s often very little fact available).
I also wonder about my fellow human beings. It seems like only yesterday that Democrats on teevee were pointing out Trump’s mental debility while Biden was donning his signature sunglasses to take a spin in his Corvette. Nothing inspires hope in the redemptive potential of the Democratic Party and its seriousness like running a senile old man for President to head off the Orange Bad Man at the pass. (And, yes, I think Trump was a bad President and is a bad candidate for President and won’t vote for him, not that voting matters a whit)
Seriously though, can any democratic consensus form, built around a common appreciation of a shared reality?
Another open thread, another Gish Gallop from Oakchair.
Debunking all of his constant propaganda would be a full-time job, and it’s one that I don’t care to take on, so I’ll just address the book “Turtles All the Way Down.” There is a very thorough debunking of that book here:
I agree with the Europeans. Discussing intellectual matters at beer parties is more effective than trying to do so at dope parties.
If a discussion has gone off the rails at a beer party, to where a sloppy brawl or some other irrational nonsense happens, then the beer can be blamed. But at a dope party, irrational nonsense is expected. And in those very rare situations where an actual brawl does happen, they tend to be of the “I love you man” variety. Not very impactful, not very memorable.
As far as health solutions go, my current personal preference is to go all natural. The body does usually want to heal itself after all. At least mine does, still so far, fingers crossed. And in other cases, you can aid the body’s self-fixit mechanisms. For example, I recently got an inguinal hernia and think I might be fixing it myself by using various targeted muscle exercises. I mean, who wants to keep paying off our gangster MBA extortionists and their MD henchmen?
But I was recently reminded by one of their kind that millions of aboriginals tried all natural solutions but still died in very large numbers after being infected by conquistadors, because they didn’t have vaccines. I then responded that most aboriginals would’ve given them out for free, had they had them available, but not the conquistadors. They accused me of trying to dodge the subject, that technology happens best when cash is involved with the science. And so a brawl ensued. But then, we were both pretty drunk at the time.
After I came to the next morning, I decided to write an app which would calculate the odds and costs of getting vaccinated, pro and con. Side effects, going all natural, and so on. Now I need some experts to help so I can gain a bit of street cred.
from the Grand Debunk of “Turtles all the way down”:
There still are times where it is medically necessary to be strict in giving out medical interventions – a classic example of this is a heart attack. A person actively having a heart attack is actively putting their life in danger if they were to reach for their Arizona homeopath instead of an actual interventional cardiologist trained and ready to help fix the heart artery blockage. Extreme paternalism is required to save a life in this case. At other times, it is medically necessary to give the patient a full explanation of what is going on, plus the risks and benefits of each type of treatment. After the explanation, a shared decision can be made.
This isn’t an argument — it’s a cartoon.
Actual diagnosis and treatment of a heart attack is . . . well, complicated. And, in the hands of a competent team of medical professionals, a patient will experience lots of “full explanations” and shared decision-making, because there are many, many choices and alternatives, each a gamble with difficult-to-anticipate consequences.
Even physicians don’t get respect straight out of the box – those who go into vaccine research start out as nobodies, and have to prove their worth. Our professions are, from a certain perspective, kind of paternalistic to us as students/ junior physicians. Physician respect towards junior physicians is earned, bit by bit, from senior physicians. Mainstream physicians may seem paternalistic from the CHD’s perspective, but the requirement for vaccine debate is the same for everybody – the consistent application of the scientific method.
Again, the Grand Debunker presents . . . not a cartoon this time, but a fairy tale. This is not even recognizable as human behavior. Where did the pharmaceutical companies developing and marketing vaccines disappear to? Why make them disappear from your account of “the system”? Oh, wait, the Pharma giants are coming.
The truth of the matter is that clinical trials – even for a well off “Big Pharma company” – require lots of laboratory, clinical, and financial resources to run. For the foreseeable future, probably all licensed vaccines will have side effects revealed that did not occur during the initial clinical trials submitted for FDA approval. This is absolutely not because any physician is “secretly smiling in a back room wishing for side effects”. Rather, there will always be side effects too rare to detect in the initial clinical trials. To detect a very rare event, a large number of people must be enrolled – and this is not always practically achievable by the chief investigator conducting a clinical trial for initial vaccine approval.
Just gaze at that stupid bit of sarcastic flotsam: “This is absolutely not because any physician is “secretly smiling in a back room wishing for side effects”. This moron can not imagine that a “well-off” Pharma giant might bend some ethical rules to make a profit. Side-effects are just so “rare” that no one can be expected to detect them. jeebus.
The Grand Debunk just goes on in this vein, striking a pose but never confronting the sad reality of incompetence, complacency and corruption that leaves those of us without sufficient expertise or time to “do our own research” in serious doubt about who or what institutions we can trust. (None of them is pretty good bet, but doesn’t get us very far.)
Frank Han is a pediatrician and cardiologist, with no ties to Big Pharma, according to his bio at the foot of the article. In other words, he knows next to nothing about vaccine development, as a scientific enterprise or a business. He’s just airing his reactionary political sentiments. Big whoop.
It might be interesting to introduce pediatrician Frank Han to the whistleblower Frank Han, the former Pfizer compliance manager, who sued Pfizer over corrupt practices. Different world views I will bet.
Just look at NR’s response. Did he read or respond to any of the science? No. He just copy and pasted a link. Ironically NR exemplified the points of the Jiddu K. and Soren K. quotes.
Now compare my response to his link with how he responded.
Each number pertains to a section of the link.
1- Does not even discuss any content in the book “Turtles all the way down.”
2- The second section vaguely mentions some of the content but then digress into making excuses about how Pharma companies lack the resources to properly test their products.
One interesting thing in this section is that they mention VAERS is used to “search for side effects”. The medical establishment has spent the last 4 years claiming VAERS is worthless and can be ignored because VAERS data shows the Covid vaccines caused unprecedented numbers of illnesses, medical problems and deaths. The FDA commissioned a study done by Harvard on how much VAERS undercounts vaccine side effects. If we use their estimates the Covid vaccines have killed over a million Americans.
3- Doesn’t discuss any content of the book but doesn’t hurl a bunch of personal attacks at various people and groups.
4- The first paragraph states that there have been a few placebo randomized studies. I’ll detail two of those studies and let you decided why they didn’t source these studies.
The small corporate HPV study showed the vaccine increased hospitalizations, and caused at least 2% of people to develop a chronic autoimmune disease.
The Flu one showed the Flu vaccine increases the net chance of getting an infection by 70%. This study showed flu vaccines increase the chance of catching coronavirus and a wide range of other viruses.
The rest of the 6 paragraphs in this section consist of a personal attacks against various groups and people.
On one side we have sourced scientific studies, and civil discussion on the other we have paragraphs of personal attacks, emotional appeals and literally not a single study sourced. What does that tell you?
Actual diagnosis and treatment of a heart attack is . . . well, complicated. And, in the hands of a competent team of medical professionals, a patient will experience lots of “full explanations” and shared decision-making, because there are many, many choices and alternatives, each a gamble with difficult-to-anticipate consequences.
Actually Bruce, this is absolutely not always the case. While with milder heart attacks, the patient can be actively involved in the treatment, if you’re talking about severe heart attacks, sometimes treatment needs to happen immediately and it can’t always involve the patient. Sometimes the patient may not even be conscious–in fact, sometimes loss of consciousness can be the first symptom of a heart attack.
If you ever suffer a severe heart attack, Bruce, I hope the doctors at the ER you are taken to don’t just shrug their shoulders and say “well, we have to wait until he’s conscious and coherent so he can take part in decisions about his treatment.”
Now it is important to state that over the past few decades, the general trend in medicine has been toward providing people with more information and greater involvement in decisions about their medical care. This is unquestionably a good thing. But there are still times when that isn’t possible.
This moron can not imagine that a “well-off” Pharma giant might bend some ethical rules to make a profit.
This statement is a lie. The following is a direct quote from the page I linked to:
“I am well aware of Big Pharma misconduct, and join all members of the public in celebrating each time a pharmaceutical company is penalized for such misconduct.”
Frank Han is a pediatrician and cardiologist, with no ties to Big Pharma, according to his bio at the foot of the article. In other words, he knows next to nothing about vaccine development, as a scientific enterprise or a business.
Are you serious? Are you really saying that pediatricians know nothing about vaccines? I would venture a guess that vaccines are probably one of the most common things they get asked about. They have to be able to have conversations with parents about them. I would bet they know more about them than a lot of medical specialties, and they certainly know more about them than Oakchair’s social media feed.
Complaints about copy and pasting are rich coming from you, Oakchair, considering all you do is copy and paste from your social media feed into these comments. But let’s just address a couple of your criticisms:
1- Does not even discuss any content in the book “Turtles all the way down.”
This statement is a lie. The quote that makes up the title of that section is a quote from the book, as the author of this article pointed out at the beginning.
Doesn’t discuss any content of the book but doesn’t hurl a bunch of personal attacks at various people and groups.
This statement is also a lie. Again, it is responding to a quote from the book where the book’s authors claim that vaccines generate a handsome profit for their manufacturers. He correctly points out that vaccines (with the exception of COVID vaccines, and this should be addressed by reducing the price of the vaccines) are not particularly profitable for their manufacturers.
As we can see from the data, even with COVID vaccines added in, vaccines accounted for only 8% of worldwide pharmaceutical revenue. $88 billion from a $1.05 trillion industry. The real money is in treatments for diseases, not vaccines.
By way of comparison, sales of the Sovaldi drug for Hepatitis C at one point reached over $10 billion. Revenue from one treatment from one pharmaceutical company for one disease that was sold only in the United States and a very few other places was over 10% of the revenue from all vaccine sales from all companies worldwide.
So his reply was very much on-point, and the fact that you mischaracterize it as consisting of nothing but personal attacks should tell us quite a bit indeed.
Willy mentioned how a medical person said something along the lines of “millions of aboriginals died… because they didn’t have vaccines”
In the above statement the premise is that “vaccines” save millions of lives.
What evidence is there that vaccines save lives?
The only randomized placebo studies show vaccines worsen health.
Infectious disease deaths fell by 96% before vaccines were even around.
Chronic illness has skyrocketed from 10% to 60% in the vaccine age.
A 2011 study found that among developed nations vaccines were associated with higher infant mortality.
Pharma funded critics tried to manipulate that finding away by comparing developed nations with undeveloped nations, but even they still found vaccines were associated with more deaths.
The data done again in 2019 with more countries again found vaccines associated with more deaths. https://www.cureus.com/articles/134233-reaffirming-a-positive-correlation-between-number-of-vaccine-doses-and-infant-mortality-rates-a-response-to-critics#!/
When does the inability to provide evidence or engage in a civil logical discussion become an admission of guilt?
What NR has NOT done:
-Respond to any of the science
-Post a single study
What NR has done:
-Post paragraphs calling people liars
-Make personal remarks about others
-Appeal to authority
-Post a half page about Hep C drug sales
“The real money is in treatments for diseases, not vaccines.”
I think people should go back and read my first post in order to fully appreciate the above comment.
It’s been well-proven that most modern health problems are a direct result of our corporate diets (mostly), and sedentary lifestyle (somewhat). Other unnatural factors such as pollution, overpopulation, stress and many others would seem to top “vaccines” in my mind.
I could’ve spent a significant chunk of my precious Sunday looking into the pros and cons of vaccines, but reasoned that I’ve got better things to do. But I will admit to being a bit biased. I’ve never become aware of any side effects caused by any of my many childhood vaccines, (myself or extended family) and thus my emotional impetus of having “better things to do”.
An aside, but I once asked a self-designated reactionary “Christian conservative” psychiatrist for a bit of objective insight into why he’d abandoned his former leftism. Had there been a traumatic event which caused his current emotional impetus to be so locked in on being arrogantly ad hominem hostile to anybody who thought differently from the many (IMO conflicting, easily debunked, often nonsensical) strictures of his new tribe, that now “accusations are confessions” behaviors were running rampant?
Nope. There was no traumatic epiphany-causing event. I could only guess that he’d been converted by his new wife to leave his self-imposed “not-a-joiner” isolation, to join her religious-political cult. Objectivity had given way to encouraging the idea that his New Testament needed to be rewritten to reflect his own new superior views. It seemed to me that he now believed that the foundation of his current magical reasoning abilities, was that The Almighty had given him superpowers.
But I knew better. His was cult thinking. He was unconsciously defending the material status which his new cult had given him (I wont go into his nefarious occupation, but it did involve taking cash from impious corporations). And now he was easily being misled in whatever direction his cult leadership wished to go. But all that might be a discussion for another time.
Anyways, maybe Oakchair can provide me a list of vaccine side-effects of which I may not be aware? I’ve never had Covid for example, not since my J&J vaccine. I did have shingles once. And I’m currently obsessed with gardening. Am I missing something here?
” there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing ” that tomatoes are edible. What terrible health risks are a billion people around the world running by eating tomatoes when ” there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing any” tomatoes are safely edible without negative consequences to human health?
In the absence of rigorous scientific studies, how can we even know?
( By the way, death is not the only consequence of infectious diseases. A lifetime of bad health short of death itself can also be a consequence. How many people per year were getting lifetime bad health from polio before polio vaccines? How many people were getting bad health from polio after polio vaccines? I am one of the people not getting after-polio bad health from polio, because I got the polio vaccine. Have I gotten other bad health outcomes just as bad as the outcomes I would have gotten from polio itself? My subjective impression is . . . no. And the same with smallpox. I prefer having gotten the smallpox vaccine to having gotten smallpox. Silly scientismic superstition on my part? People are free to think so.)
I said Oakchair lied because he lied. He said that multiple sections of the website I linked to did not address any content from the book “Turtles All the Way Down,” when they did in fact directly address content from the book. Pretty simple. My comment about the relative profitability of vaccines also addressed that same content.
“For example, I recently got an inguinal hernia and think I might be fixing it myself by using various targeted muscle exercises.”
Yes, strengthen one’s core muscles. People do resolve them without surgery. I’ve been living with one for years. I lift heavy stuff all the time. It’s the hateful jobs and stressful situations that can limit healing, as can acquired movement patterns.
In some medical systems, hernias are partly treated as a GI tract issue – if some part of the tract is inflamed or swollen it can contribute.
Re surgery, problems with the mesh. Supposedly the best place in N.A. is in Ontario, they only do hernias, and only the old way. It’s a days long program, with lead-up and recovery time. Ralph Nader went there and wrote a piece about it.
I stand by my characterization of Frank Han’s book review: he doesn’t engage seriously with his readers let alone the book he is reviewing. A vaccine is not a heart attack. At least it shouldn’t be. Hello?
What is the point of bringing up such a ridiculous analogy?
NR posted a study.
Let’s review it to see if it 1) shows the vaccine does not worsen health outcomes 2) uses a true placebo and and 3) is of a vaccine approved and in use.
1) It fails the first condition. The study was a month long with 152 patients total. The study did not test or look at differences in deaths, hospitalizations, chronic illnesses, or medical conditions.
2) The study states: “the control group, patients received once-daily placebo pill made of same excipients as V7,”
“Both arms received conventional 1st or 2nd line TB drugs co-administered”
Second condition failed.
3) The CDC does not have this on its vaccine schedule. The CDC does not recommend this pill vaccine. It doesn’t even list it as a treatment option for TB.
Third condition failed.
Other notes:
The study was of a pill given to people currently infected with TB.
The study as stated in the conflicts of interest section was done by the drug corporation.
—
“How many people per year were getting lifetime bad health from polio before polio vaccines?”
—
The book “Turtles all the way down” has an entire section on polio.
Here is an extremely short summary
1- The spread of Polio (as in the paralysis etc) does not resemble the standard spread of an infectious disease.
2- The spread of Polio is associated with heavy metal poisoning specifically from heavy metal based pesticides.
3- Polio paralysis cases began falling when heavy metal based pesticides use began falling, which was before the Polio vaccine was invented.
4- Countries saw Polio cases fall by over 75% before they even approved let alone began using the vaccine widely.
5- In India in the late 90’s and early 200’s cases of paralysis increased by over 6 times after they began heavily using the Polio vaccine.
6- The topic of Polio suffers from changes in definitions. The definition of Polio has changed from past definitions.
For example: Paralysis in the past was considered Polio today it would be labeled as another medical conditions.
In the same vein we can eliminate all heart attacks if we decided to label them as something else.
We used to have a global warming denier in these threads whose name I forget. His method of operation was to set up a velcro decoy tarbaby by the side of the road and invite people to waste hours or days or lifetimes engaging with it. I learned not to be bothered.
I take the same approach to any velcro decoy tarbaby which someone sets up by the side of the road whatever the subject might be. I just don’t bother to waste my precious time engaging with it.
“no adverse side effects attributable to orally administered V7 were seen during the entire study duration. No reactivation of TB, malaise, intolerance or allergic reactions were evident at any time during the study period nor after a decade of commercial use for TB and unrelated clinical indications, e.g., asthma, allergy, COPD, lung cancer, etc. After one month, self-reported and physician-observed clinical symptoms appeared to improve among V7 recipients, while the proportion of patients with satisfactory results was considerably smaller in placebo arm.”
“Oral M. vaccae is safe, can overcome TB-associated weight loss and inflammation, reduce hepatotoxicity of TB drugs, improve sputum conversion three-fold OR 3.15; 95%CI (2.3,4.6), and cut treatment length by at least six-fold. ”
This should hopefully provide an example of what Oakchair and people like him are like. There is no study showing that a vaccine is safe and effective that Oakchair will accept. He does not care about facts and science, he only cares about pushing his agenda.
A vaccine is not a heart attack. At least it shouldn’t be. Hello?
What is the point of bringing up such a ridiculous analogy?
He was making a point about paternalistic tendencies in medicine (complaints about which can certainly be valid in some cases, to be clear), and how some situations offer patients less agency. He was not literally saying “a vaccine is the same thing as a heart attack.”
mago
People get ready
believe in magic
and why not?
the alternative is what?
reífied caca?
caca de vaca
where the hongos mágicos grow.
homage to our mothers and all those who work for the welfare of others.
fathers, too since the 16th is their designated day in the US of A
Oakchair
“Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discuss intellectual matters is a beer party.” –Richard Feynman
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.” ― Richard Feynman
———
Ask yourself what percentage decrease in infectious disease deaths would you estimate vaccines can at most be responsible for?
Write it down.
America and the UK introduced the measles vaccine in 1963 and 1968 respectively.
It took decades for their use to become widespread.
Measles deaths fell 96% before vaccines were even developed. Mathematically they could be responsible for at the very most 4% of the fall in infectious disease deaths.
How close was your estimate?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/measles-cases-and-death-rate
—————-
The book “Turtles all the way down” details –what the FDA/HHS/CDC admitted under oath in 2017-2018 when they were sued by Aaron Siri, Del Bigtrree and RFK Jr– how there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing any childhood vaccine is safe or effective. Likewise, there is none on the accumulative effects of the 70+ childhood vaccine injections. In FDA documents, supplementary materials and trial designs all randomized clinical trials define “placebo” as another vaccine, or the vaccine minus the antigen. This is the equivalent of saying tobacco is safe because Camel cigarettes were just as safe as Marlboro.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/community-forum/chd-book-club-turtles-all-the-way-down-vaccine-science-and-myth/
——
“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Truth is a pathless land –the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” ― Richard Feynman
————–
“This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
Before reading on ask what would you consider “strong evidence MMR vaccines do not cause autism”?
The study was funded by multiple organizations who either own vaccine patents, or sell vaccines (Notes section at the end). The authors worked for these organizations. One of the authors, Poul Thorsen stole over a million dollars from the CDC and was indicted for over 20 counts of fraud. He is an author of another half dozen studies of a similar nature.
Table 1 shows the number of children in each group (MMR vaccinated and MMR un-vaccinated).
Compared to the non-MMR-vaccinated children the MMR-vaccinated children had a statistically significant 17% higher rate of autism.
Recall your earlier idea of what you would consider “strong evidence MMR vaccines don’t cause autism.” Was it anywhere close to “study with massive pro-vaccine conflicts of interest finds MMR vaccinated children have 17% higher rates of autism?”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa021134
——————–
In Japan “due to a high frequency of reports of aseptic meningitis, a suspected side effect of the mumps vaccine” MMR vaccination rates plummeted.
As the authors state:
“If results showed a decline in ASD frequency in Japan after termination of the program, this would strongly suggest that MMR vaccination is causally related to the increase in ASD frequency.”
Go to table 1 and figure 1. It shows autism rates for years of birth.
Autism rates increased for those born in 1988-1990
Those born in 1991-1992 saw decreased rates
Here are the rates of MMR vaccination for each period
70%, 43%, 34%: 1988-1990
24%, 2%: 1991, 1992
The authors conclude: “The significance of this finding is that MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD”
Because:
“ASD rose progressively from 47.6 per 10,000 for children born in 1988 to 117.2 for those born in 1996”
Notice how instead of using the low vaccinate cohorts they instead used the 1996 ones which received the newly introduced MMR vaccine.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15877763/
—————
“This cross-sectional study… was used to estimate the odds for autism diagnosis associated with neonatal hepatitis B vaccination”
“Boys vaccinated as neonates had threefold greater odds for autism diagnosis compared to boys never vaccinated or vaccinated after the first month of life.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058170/
—————–
“This study investigated the association between vaccination with the Hepatitis B triple series vaccine prior to 2000 and developmental disability”
“The odds of receiving EIS were approximately nine times as great for vaccinated boys”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02772240701806501
———–
“Using data from three medical practices in the United States with children born between November 2005 and June 2015, vaccinated children were compared to unvaccinated children”
“Vaccination before 1 year of age was associated with increased
developmental delays OR = 2.18
asthma OR = 4.49
ear infections OR = 2.13”
“Higher odds ratios were observed in Quartiles 3 and 4 (where more vaccine doses were received)”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7268563/
—————-
“Vaccinated children were significantly more likely than the unvaccinated to have
allergic rhinitis 10.4% vs. 0.4%
other allergies 22.2% vs. 6.9%
eczema/atopic dermatitis 9.5% vs. 3.6%
a learning disability 5.7% vs. 1.2%
neurodevelopmental disorder 10.5% vs. 3.1%
chronic illness 44.0% vs. 25.0%”
https://www.oatext.com/Pilot-comparative-study-on-the-health-of-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-6-to-12-year-old-U-S-children.php#gsc.tab=0
——————
“Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD, and still be an idiot.” ― Richard Feynman
“People demand free speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use” –Soren Kierkegaard.
“Truth always rest with the minority because the minority is formed by those who really have an opinion, while the majority is formed by gangs with no opinion.” –Soren Kierkegaard
———————–
bruce wilder
I was just discovering Matt Bivens this morning. https://mattbivens.substack.com/
His lead article recounts the corruption of the medical literature — deception-based medicine in place of evidence-based medicine — that facilitated the opioid crisis that provides a useful corollary to Oakchair’s thesis.
But, that’s not what interested me most about the encounter: it was the “Recommended” list helpfully provided by Substack alongside Bivens:
Matt Taibbi, John Meersheimer, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate (also Bari Weiss which sounded a discordant note for me).
I pay some regular attention to all four of those authors — not Bari Weiss — but it made me wonder if i trapped in an echo chamber.
I made a new Tiktok, which I successfully associated with an email-not-really-associated-with-me, a trick which I am quite proud of having pulled off. I know I was successful because my old Tiktok account wanted me to follow practically every person I have known personally or professionally over the last 30 years, but this new Tiktok account suggests as contacts people I have never heard of and don’t recognize.
It has been an education. I can confirm that the Tiktok algorithm uses certain posts as keyframes — that is, stereotyped clips of uncertain vintage run to pigeon-hole users based on the user’s reaction. Not surprising really.
I am still me, of course, so I get a lot of golden retrievers in my “For you” feed. I also get Nigel Farage, who is on fire on TikTok with a great persona for that app. He’s the Matt Rife of U.K. politics at the moment.
I also get cheerleaders for Ukraine in the Ukraine war, which makes me wonder about the limits of my echo chamber vs other people’s echo chambers. In my NC-compatible world of Alex and Alex at The Duran and Scott Ritter and John Meersheimer and so on, Russia is winning (for some definition of “winning” not fully disclosed) while in my new Tiktok world, Ukraine is getting in its licks and Russia is corrupt and often incompetent and laboring under terrible handicaps, military and economic. Economic handicaps that have seen the gas station with nukes sail past Japan in global economic rankings of PPP GDP, but never mind.
I suppose this is just how it is, in our post-fact, narrative-driven politics.
I don’t like not-knowing-anything and being left to fall back on moral instincts to sort out the fictions (I was going to write, sort out “fact from fiction” but there’s often very little fact available).
I also wonder about my fellow human beings. It seems like only yesterday that Democrats on teevee were pointing out Trump’s mental debility while Biden was donning his signature sunglasses to take a spin in his Corvette. Nothing inspires hope in the redemptive potential of the Democratic Party and its seriousness like running a senile old man for President to head off the Orange Bad Man at the pass. (And, yes, I think Trump was a bad President and is a bad candidate for President and won’t vote for him, not that voting matters a whit)
Seriously though, can any democratic consensus form, built around a common appreciation of a shared reality?
NR
Another open thread, another Gish Gallop from Oakchair.
Debunking all of his constant propaganda would be a full-time job, and it’s one that I don’t care to take on, so I’ll just address the book “Turtles All the Way Down.” There is a very thorough debunking of that book here:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/part-1-10-the-grand-debunk-of-the-antivaxxer-book-turtles-all-the-way-down/
Enjoy.
Willy
I agree with the Europeans. Discussing intellectual matters at beer parties is more effective than trying to do so at dope parties.
If a discussion has gone off the rails at a beer party, to where a sloppy brawl or some other irrational nonsense happens, then the beer can be blamed. But at a dope party, irrational nonsense is expected. And in those very rare situations where an actual brawl does happen, they tend to be of the “I love you man” variety. Not very impactful, not very memorable.
As far as health solutions go, my current personal preference is to go all natural. The body does usually want to heal itself after all. At least mine does, still so far, fingers crossed. And in other cases, you can aid the body’s self-fixit mechanisms. For example, I recently got an inguinal hernia and think I might be fixing it myself by using various targeted muscle exercises. I mean, who wants to keep paying off our gangster MBA extortionists and their MD henchmen?
But I was recently reminded by one of their kind that millions of aboriginals tried all natural solutions but still died in very large numbers after being infected by conquistadors, because they didn’t have vaccines. I then responded that most aboriginals would’ve given them out for free, had they had them available, but not the conquistadors. They accused me of trying to dodge the subject, that technology happens best when cash is involved with the science. And so a brawl ensued. But then, we were both pretty drunk at the time.
After I came to the next morning, I decided to write an app which would calculate the odds and costs of getting vaccinated, pro and con. Side effects, going all natural, and so on. Now I need some experts to help so I can gain a bit of street cred.
bruce wilder
from the Grand Debunk of “Turtles all the way down”:
This isn’t an argument — it’s a cartoon.
Actual diagnosis and treatment of a heart attack is . . . well, complicated. And, in the hands of a competent team of medical professionals, a patient will experience lots of “full explanations” and shared decision-making, because there are many, many choices and alternatives, each a gamble with difficult-to-anticipate consequences.
Again, the Grand Debunker presents . . . not a cartoon this time, but a fairy tale. This is not even recognizable as human behavior. Where did the pharmaceutical companies developing and marketing vaccines disappear to? Why make them disappear from your account of “the system”? Oh, wait, the Pharma giants are coming.
Just gaze at that stupid bit of sarcastic flotsam: “This is absolutely not because any physician is “secretly smiling in a back room wishing for side effects”. This moron can not imagine that a “well-off” Pharma giant might bend some ethical rules to make a profit. Side-effects are just so “rare” that no one can be expected to detect them. jeebus.
The Grand Debunk just goes on in this vein, striking a pose but never confronting the sad reality of incompetence, complacency and corruption that leaves those of us without sufficient expertise or time to “do our own research” in serious doubt about who or what institutions we can trust. (None of them is pretty good bet, but doesn’t get us very far.)
Frank Han is a pediatrician and cardiologist, with no ties to Big Pharma, according to his bio at the foot of the article. In other words, he knows next to nothing about vaccine development, as a scientific enterprise or a business. He’s just airing his reactionary political sentiments. Big whoop.
It might be interesting to introduce pediatrician Frank Han to the whistleblower Frank Han, the former Pfizer compliance manager, who sued Pfizer over corrupt practices. Different world views I will bet.
Oakchair
Just look at NR’s response. Did he read or respond to any of the science? No. He just copy and pasted a link. Ironically NR exemplified the points of the Jiddu K. and Soren K. quotes.
Now compare my response to his link with how he responded.
Each number pertains to a section of the link.
1- Does not even discuss any content in the book “Turtles all the way down.”
2- The second section vaguely mentions some of the content but then digress into making excuses about how Pharma companies lack the resources to properly test their products.
One interesting thing in this section is that they mention VAERS is used to “search for side effects”. The medical establishment has spent the last 4 years claiming VAERS is worthless and can be ignored because VAERS data shows the Covid vaccines caused unprecedented numbers of illnesses, medical problems and deaths. The FDA commissioned a study done by Harvard on how much VAERS undercounts vaccine side effects. If we use their estimates the Covid vaccines have killed over a million Americans.
3- Doesn’t discuss any content of the book but doesn’t hurl a bunch of personal attacks at various people and groups.
4- The first paragraph states that there have been a few placebo randomized studies. I’ll detail two of those studies and let you decided why they didn’t source these studies.
The small corporate HPV study showed the vaccine increased hospitalizations, and caused at least 2% of people to develop a chronic autoimmune disease.
The Flu one showed the Flu vaccine increases the net chance of getting an infection by 70%. This study showed flu vaccines increase the chance of catching coronavirus and a wide range of other viruses.
The rest of the 6 paragraphs in this section consist of a personal attacks against various groups and people.
On one side we have sourced scientific studies, and civil discussion on the other we have paragraphs of personal attacks, emotional appeals and literally not a single study sourced. What does that tell you?
NR
Actually Bruce, this is absolutely not always the case. While with milder heart attacks, the patient can be actively involved in the treatment, if you’re talking about severe heart attacks, sometimes treatment needs to happen immediately and it can’t always involve the patient. Sometimes the patient may not even be conscious–in fact, sometimes loss of consciousness can be the first symptom of a heart attack.
https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/h/heart-attack-myocardial-infarction.html
If you ever suffer a severe heart attack, Bruce, I hope the doctors at the ER you are taken to don’t just shrug their shoulders and say “well, we have to wait until he’s conscious and coherent so he can take part in decisions about his treatment.”
Now it is important to state that over the past few decades, the general trend in medicine has been toward providing people with more information and greater involvement in decisions about their medical care. This is unquestionably a good thing. But there are still times when that isn’t possible.
This statement is a lie. The following is a direct quote from the page I linked to:
“I am well aware of Big Pharma misconduct, and join all members of the public in celebrating each time a pharmaceutical company is penalized for such misconduct.”
Are you serious? Are you really saying that pediatricians know nothing about vaccines? I would venture a guess that vaccines are probably one of the most common things they get asked about. They have to be able to have conversations with parents about them. I would bet they know more about them than a lot of medical specialties, and they certainly know more about them than Oakchair’s social media feed.
NR
Complaints about copy and pasting are rich coming from you, Oakchair, considering all you do is copy and paste from your social media feed into these comments. But let’s just address a couple of your criticisms:
This statement is a lie. The quote that makes up the title of that section is a quote from the book, as the author of this article pointed out at the beginning.
This statement is also a lie. Again, it is responding to a quote from the book where the book’s authors claim that vaccines generate a handsome profit for their manufacturers. He correctly points out that vaccines (with the exception of COVID vaccines, and this should be addressed by reducing the price of the vaccines) are not particularly profitable for their manufacturers.
https://www.statista.com/chart/26350/vaccine-sales-as-a-share-of-global-pharmaceutical-sales/
As we can see from the data, even with COVID vaccines added in, vaccines accounted for only 8% of worldwide pharmaceutical revenue. $88 billion from a $1.05 trillion industry. The real money is in treatments for diseases, not vaccines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/business/sales-of-sovaldi-new-gilead-hepatitis-c-drug-soar-to-10-3-billion.html
By way of comparison, sales of the Sovaldi drug for Hepatitis C at one point reached over $10 billion. Revenue from one treatment from one pharmaceutical company for one disease that was sold only in the United States and a very few other places was over 10% of the revenue from all vaccine sales from all companies worldwide.
So his reply was very much on-point, and the fact that you mischaracterize it as consisting of nothing but personal attacks should tell us quite a bit indeed.
Ian Welsh
Getting close to ad-hom territory on both sides. Please be careful, so I don’t have to trash your comments.
Oakchair
Willy mentioned how a medical person said something along the lines of “millions of aboriginals died… because they didn’t have vaccines”
In the above statement the premise is that “vaccines” save millions of lives.
What evidence is there that vaccines save lives?
The only randomized placebo studies show vaccines worsen health.
Infectious disease deaths fell by 96% before vaccines were even around.
Chronic illness has skyrocketed from 10% to 60% in the vaccine age.
A 2011 study found that among developed nations vaccines were associated with higher infant mortality.
Pharma funded critics tried to manipulate that finding away by comparing developed nations with undeveloped nations, but even they still found vaccines were associated with more deaths.
The data done again in 2019 with more countries again found vaccines associated with more deaths.
https://www.cureus.com/articles/134233-reaffirming-a-positive-correlation-between-number-of-vaccine-doses-and-infant-mortality-rates-a-response-to-critics#!/
When does the inability to provide evidence or engage in a civil logical discussion become an admission of guilt?
Oakchair
What NR has NOT done:
-Respond to any of the science
-Post a single study
What NR has done:
-Post paragraphs calling people liars
-Make personal remarks about others
-Appeal to authority
-Post a half page about Hep C drug sales
“The real money is in treatments for diseases, not vaccines.”
I think people should go back and read my first post in order to fully appreciate the above comment.
Willy
It’s been well-proven that most modern health problems are a direct result of our corporate diets (mostly), and sedentary lifestyle (somewhat). Other unnatural factors such as pollution, overpopulation, stress and many others would seem to top “vaccines” in my mind.
I could’ve spent a significant chunk of my precious Sunday looking into the pros and cons of vaccines, but reasoned that I’ve got better things to do. But I will admit to being a bit biased. I’ve never become aware of any side effects caused by any of my many childhood vaccines, (myself or extended family) and thus my emotional impetus of having “better things to do”.
An aside, but I once asked a self-designated reactionary “Christian conservative” psychiatrist for a bit of objective insight into why he’d abandoned his former leftism. Had there been a traumatic event which caused his current emotional impetus to be so locked in on being arrogantly ad hominem hostile to anybody who thought differently from the many (IMO conflicting, easily debunked, often nonsensical) strictures of his new tribe, that now “accusations are confessions” behaviors were running rampant?
Nope. There was no traumatic epiphany-causing event. I could only guess that he’d been converted by his new wife to leave his self-imposed “not-a-joiner” isolation, to join her religious-political cult. Objectivity had given way to encouraging the idea that his New Testament needed to be rewritten to reflect his own new superior views. It seemed to me that he now believed that the foundation of his current magical reasoning abilities, was that The Almighty had given him superpowers.
But I knew better. His was cult thinking. He was unconsciously defending the material status which his new cult had given him (I wont go into his nefarious occupation, but it did involve taking cash from impious corporations). And now he was easily being misled in whatever direction his cult leadership wished to go. But all that might be a discussion for another time.
Anyways, maybe Oakchair can provide me a list of vaccine side-effects of which I may not be aware? I’ve never had Covid for example, not since my J&J vaccine. I did have shingles once. And I’m currently obsessed with gardening. Am I missing something here?
different clue
” there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing ” that tomatoes are edible. What terrible health risks are a billion people around the world running by eating tomatoes when ” there is not a single double-blind randomized controlled placebo study showing any” tomatoes are safely edible without negative consequences to human health?
In the absence of rigorous scientific studies, how can we even know?
( By the way, death is not the only consequence of infectious diseases. A lifetime of bad health short of death itself can also be a consequence. How many people per year were getting lifetime bad health from polio before polio vaccines? How many people were getting bad health from polio after polio vaccines? I am one of the people not getting after-polio bad health from polio, because I got the polio vaccine. Have I gotten other bad health outcomes just as bad as the outcomes I would have gotten from polio itself? My subjective impression is . . . no. And the same with smallpox. I prefer having gotten the smallpox vaccine to having gotten smallpox. Silly scientismic superstition on my part? People are free to think so.)
NR
I said Oakchair lied because he lied. He said that multiple sections of the website I linked to did not address any content from the book “Turtles All the Way Down,” when they did in fact directly address content from the book. Pretty simple. My comment about the relative profitability of vaccines also addressed that same content.
Post a single study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405579419300841#sec0009
I can’t wait for Oakchair to say “no wait that doesn’t count!”
capelin
Thanks Oakchair and wilder.
@ Willy
“For example, I recently got an inguinal hernia and think I might be fixing it myself by using various targeted muscle exercises.”
Yes, strengthen one’s core muscles. People do resolve them without surgery. I’ve been living with one for years. I lift heavy stuff all the time. It’s the hateful jobs and stressful situations that can limit healing, as can acquired movement patterns.
In some medical systems, hernias are partly treated as a GI tract issue – if some part of the tract is inflamed or swollen it can contribute.
Re surgery, problems with the mesh. Supposedly the best place in N.A. is in Ontario, they only do hernias, and only the old way. It’s a days long program, with lead-up and recovery time. Ralph Nader went there and wrote a piece about it.
bruce wilder
@NR
I stand by my characterization of Frank Han’s book review: he doesn’t engage seriously with his readers let alone the book he is reviewing. A vaccine is not a heart attack. At least it shouldn’t be. Hello?
What is the point of bringing up such a ridiculous analogy?
Han is a bag of authoritarian hot air.
Oakchair
NR posted a study.
Let’s review it to see if it 1) shows the vaccine does not worsen health outcomes 2) uses a true placebo and and 3) is of a vaccine approved and in use.
1) It fails the first condition. The study was a month long with 152 patients total. The study did not test or look at differences in deaths, hospitalizations, chronic illnesses, or medical conditions.
2) The study states: “the control group, patients received once-daily placebo pill made of same excipients as V7,”
“Both arms received conventional 1st or 2nd line TB drugs co-administered”
Second condition failed.
3) The CDC does not have this on its vaccine schedule. The CDC does not recommend this pill vaccine. It doesn’t even list it as a treatment option for TB.
Third condition failed.
Other notes:
The study was of a pill given to people currently infected with TB.
The study as stated in the conflicts of interest section was done by the drug corporation.
Oakchair
—
“How many people per year were getting lifetime bad health from polio before polio vaccines?”
—
The book “Turtles all the way down” has an entire section on polio.
Here is an extremely short summary
1- The spread of Polio (as in the paralysis etc) does not resemble the standard spread of an infectious disease.
2- The spread of Polio is associated with heavy metal poisoning specifically from heavy metal based pesticides.
3- Polio paralysis cases began falling when heavy metal based pesticides use began falling, which was before the Polio vaccine was invented.
4- Countries saw Polio cases fall by over 75% before they even approved let alone began using the vaccine widely.
5- In India in the late 90’s and early 200’s cases of paralysis increased by over 6 times after they began heavily using the Polio vaccine.
6- The topic of Polio suffers from changes in definitions. The definition of Polio has changed from past definitions.
For example: Paralysis in the past was considered Polio today it would be labeled as another medical conditions.
In the same vein we can eliminate all heart attacks if we decided to label them as something else.
different clue
We used to have a global warming denier in these threads whose name I forget. His method of operation was to set up a velcro decoy tarbaby by the side of the road and invite people to waste hours or days or lifetimes engaging with it. I learned not to be bothered.
I take the same approach to any velcro decoy tarbaby which someone sets up by the side of the road whatever the subject might be. I just don’t bother to waste my precious time engaging with it.
NR
Oakchair says:
The study says:
“no adverse side effects attributable to orally administered V7 were seen during the entire study duration. No reactivation of TB, malaise, intolerance or allergic reactions were evident at any time during the study period nor after a decade of commercial use for TB and unrelated clinical indications, e.g., asthma, allergy, COPD, lung cancer, etc. After one month, self-reported and physician-observed clinical symptoms appeared to improve among V7 recipients, while the proportion of patients with satisfactory results was considerably smaller in placebo arm.”
“Oral M. vaccae is safe, can overcome TB-associated weight loss and inflammation, reduce hepatotoxicity of TB drugs, improve sputum conversion three-fold OR 3.15; 95%CI (2.3,4.6), and cut treatment length by at least six-fold. ”
This should hopefully provide an example of what Oakchair and people like him are like. There is no study showing that a vaccine is safe and effective that Oakchair will accept. He does not care about facts and science, he only cares about pushing his agenda.
NR
He was making a point about paternalistic tendencies in medicine (complaints about which can certainly be valid in some cases, to be clear), and how some situations offer patients less agency. He was not literally saying “a vaccine is the same thing as a heart attack.”