So, this is a good thing. As is often the case with monopoly-related issues, the best explanation comes from Matt Stoller, and let’s start with why Pfizer and Moderna don’t want this to happen.
On an investor call last month, the CEO of Pfizer, Frank D’Amelio, discussed what would happen to revenue from his vaccine product as the Covid pandemic ends, what he called the “durability of the franchise.” He told analysts not to worry. People in rich countries will need annual booster shots, and that is where Pfizer will make real money.
For these annual treatments, Pfizer will be able to charge much more than it does now. The current price for a covid vaccine, D’Amelio noted, is $19.50 per dose. He told analysts of his hope that Pfizer could get to a more “normal” price, “$150, $175 per dose,” instead of what he called “pandemic pricing.”
This is to say, that if Covid is not defeated, then Pfizer and Moderna can charge everyone who can afford it $150/year (and maybe twice a year) for the rest of history.
Nice money, if you can get it, and based on simple pharma economics, which I’ve long pointed out, that selling a palliative which patients have to keep buying is a lot more profitable than selling a cure. Pharma doesn’t want cures: They want you on their pills or shots for the rest of your life.
Fortunately, as Stoller points out, Pharma’s out-gunned this time:
- No other industry wants more Covid shutdowns, so they’re up against every other economically powerful lobby
- The US diplomatic and military centers are livid that China and Russia are getting credit for sending vaccines that aren’t as good, while the US looks like the bad guy. So the generals are arguing for breaking the patents.
Because it comes up every time I write about this, let us note that Moderna’s former director of Chemistry said that with help, “a modern factory should be able to get vaccine production going in, at most, three to four months.”
Let us assume that the number is double that, and remember that many countries aren’t expecting to be able to start mass vaccination until 2023. Let us remember that if we had just broken the patents six or seven months ago, the first ones from new factories would be starting up now.
mRNA is a moderately difficult technology. There are real supply chain issues. There are also huge countries, technologically advanced enough, who have every incentive to move heaven and earth to solve those issues if they know how.
Anyway, Biden is doing the right thing here, presuming this doesn’t turn into a “make promises then drag the process out” situation.
We’re gong to discuss IP more, because it’s at the heart of the way that modern supply chains mostly return more profits to rich people in the Western world, which is at the heart of why the US and China are hustling towards the next Cold War.
The Chinese are real neoliberals who believe in supply chain fragmentation. They just think they should be ones reaping the profits at the center, not the West.
Meanwhile, let’s hope that mRNA is released, and Covid ends. I don’t know about you, but I’m damn sick of seeing people die who didn’t need to.
(The more people subscribe or donate the more I write.)
Jeremy
Sick of seeing people die who didn’t need to?
Indeed.
https://ivmmeta.com/
In the US it takes a judge to order it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/after-court-order-hospital-says-it-e2-80-99s-allowing-covid-19-patient-to-receive-controversial-drug/ar-BB1go43e
Dr. Paul Alexander, former HHS adviser says that kids should not get Covid vaccine.
https://mobile.twitter.com/conspiracyguy8/status/1391620696112041985
Listen carefully to that last one – Dr. Alexander states that the Absolute Risk Reduction afforded by the vaccine is just 0.8%. That’s right folks – 0.8%.
They’re not much better than useless.
The vaccines would actually kill more kids than would be saved.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4347/rr-4
You’ve been had. Totally.
Jeremy
If you’re not sure what the difference between Absolute Risk Reduction and Relative Risk Reduction is, then get your learning on.
You need to understand this to see how Pharma has conned you with statistics.
https://youtu.be/RG7n1ZbDTww
The ‘cases’, deaths and infections are going down because this is a seasonal illness – not because of the vaccine.
Just wait until Antibody Dependent Enhancement kicks in this winter.
If you’ve had the jab then you’d better stay masked up, stay indoors and be very, very cautious.
You will be at serious risk.
Dan Lynch
Just as the first cold war forced capitalists to make some concessions to the working class, perhaps cold war 2.0 will, too?
Sputnik V Claims 97.6% Efficacy
Sputnik supposedly has fewer side effects than either the mRNA vaccines or the other viral vector vaccines like Astra-Zeneca (the 2nd dose of Moderna made me feel like I had been run over by a truck). Sputnik is cheap to produce and cheap to distribute. Russia has been willing to transfer Sputnik technology to any country that asks for it (not the same as waiving the patent but perhaps more useful).
Sputnik is the elephant in the living room that Western media is not talking about. If the U.S. does not share it vaccines with the world, Russia will. It’s already happening.
Stoller gets a lot of things right but he is a cold warrior who can’t acknowledge that Russia or China sometimes do good things.
Jeremy
Smart Indians!
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/ivermectin-to-all-above-18-goa-approves-new-covid-19-treatment-protocol/755160
Solideco
Cory Doctorow references a journal article* that looks at the cost and logistics of manufacturing mRNA vaccines. See:
https://coronavirus.medium.com/manufacturing-mrna-vaccines-is-surprisingly-straightforward-despite-what-bill-gates-thinks-222cffb686ee
There has been a fair amount written about how mRNA technology allows a new vaccine to be developed quickly and effectively. What is new is how easy and inexpensive they are to manufacture once developed. The numbers are just stupid.
Doctorow highlights:
* New facilities will be 99–99.9% smaller than conventional vaccine facilities
* They will be 95–99.7% cheaper than conventional vaccine facilities
* You could use a single room in a conventional vaccine factory to make more vaccine doses of mRNA vaccines than the entire output of the rest of the factory
* New vaccines can be made 1,000% faster than previous vaccines
The public health potential of this is rather amazing. And given the rapacious patent lock-up by big Pharma, their profits will be unheard of.
The first Covid mRNA vaccine to be released patent free will decimate the market for the patent protected vaccines. Little wonder that Gates convinced Oxford to license their vaccine to AstraZeneca. And watch how the global North countries resist approving any patent free vaccine.
—
* Rapid development and deployment of high‐volume vaccines for pandemic response
https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060
GM
Huge numbers of people will be dying even with vaccines if this is not eliminated.
Vaccines are a way for politicians to push the problem to the background, but that will still result in a tremendous amount of suffering.
If vaccines are 95% effective against serious disease, and you need to take annual boosters, and you are exposed to the pathogen regularly because transmission has not been stopped, you can expect to have on average one serious episode every 20 years, or 4 of them within a life time. But that means a third of people will have more than four.
Keep in mind that everyone getting infected last year just once would have cut life expectancy by a decade. Instead it was 15% of people infected and it decreased by a year and a half.
So please do not fall for the “we are solving this with vaccines” scam.
ballgame
I watched the first Dr. Reid Sheftall video, Jeremy. He’s an extremely biased and unreliable evaluator. He notes that the absolute rate reduction (ARR) of COVID in the test trials was less than 1%, then flails away at this fact as if it means the vaccines don’t really do anything for people 99% of the time. He fails to take into account that the vaccine trials were of necessity limited to a specific (and relatively short) time period, and that the ARR would certainly increase the longer you would be able to extend the study. For that reason, the relative rate reduction — roughly 95% — becomes much more salient.
There are other points that could be made about his analysis — some good, some bad — but the above error is so fundamental there’s no reason to delve any deeper. I didn’t waste my time watching his other videos.
Plague Species
The way I understand it, soon enough this first round of vaccines focusing on the spike protein will be obsolete within a year. New and improved vaccines are in the pipeline so protecting or not protecting the patents on this first round of vaccines may be irrelevant. It’s the next round that should be the focus and the next round after that and then the one after that round as well, unless of course this gesture by Biden covers all vaccines current and to come.
Also, let’s not forget, vaccines are not the panacea many believe they are. The Seychelles is proving this as we type. Over 60% of the population has been vaccinated and yet it is in the midst of a substantial COVFEFE-45 surge that is affecting any and all, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. They opened up in early March when only 30% of the population was vaccinated just as America is doing now. Coming to a theater near us, I’d say.
All that being said, I don’t consider this a victory. Yes, patent protection is a problem. One problem amidst so many problems and so many things wrong about this system. We’ll see how this latest Biden gesture plays out. I will say this, Biden has a great PR department. They have him saying and doing all the right things to mollify the swelling ranks of the discontented, but time will tell if they are empty caveated gestures or not. My bet is on the latter.
anon
I recommend listening to Michael Moore’s interview with writer Laurie Garrett on why it isn’t as easy as releasing the mRNA and getting shots into every arm in the developing world by next year.
https://radiopublic.com/rumble-with-michael-moore-6p2vzJ/s1!598a6
Biden’s decision is a good thing but the situation and supply chain issues are much more complicated. Let’s hope this is resolved before the virus mutates into a variant strain that renders vaccines ineffective. The longer we wait to get the entire world vaccinated the more the chances of that happening increases.
Astrid
I think it’s too early to unquestioningly swallow the mRNA vaccines are better narrative. It’s possible that they will be better in an annual booster shot scenario, but we don’t know. The sort of efficacy and side effects tracking currently done may be comparing apples to oranges. Fauci’s constantly shifting vaccination goals are not confidence inspiring for anyone paying attention, even if they decided to take the jabs as I did (Moderna). I would encourage people, vaccinated or not, to continue wearing n95 masks indoors for the foreseeable fitter.
We do know the non-Moderna/Pfizer options are easier to make and distribute, and that’s very meaningful in the global south.
There was a period of about a year when I took some seriously. But he has since gotten on the pro-Biden, pro cold War 2.0 narrative. So…meh
RobotPliers
Jeremy: Israel’s cases and deaths data.
Jeremy
Robot – Israel indeed:
Israeli People Committee’s Report – “Never has a vaccine injured so many.”
https://4a1b9d73-4c47-4f3b-bb08-e515be8958ca.filesusr.com/ugd/3db409_3c4b29f97a7b4e2fb1d8d178ab138b91.pdf
Jeremy
Harvey Risch, Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University:
“Clinicians have been telling me that more than half of the new COVID cases that they’re treating are people who have been vaccinated,”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/yale-public-health-professor-suggests-60-of-new-covid-19-patients-have-received-vaccine
bruce wilder
could vaccination setup the evolutionary conditions to produce a more lethal variant?
Hugh
The nuttiness continues. We get a post about patent waivers to ramp up production of the mRNA vaccines. Rather than discussing more how to overcome bottlenecks in the process, the anti-vaxxer brigade shows up and rails against vaccines with, of course, astrid who doesn’t like mRNA vaccines because apparently China doesn’t have one.
Oh, and Harvey Risch? Just shows that even the mighty and rich Yale hires quacks. Epidemiology is statistical. When an epidemiologist says, some folks tell me….and attaches a number to it, you know you are being BS’ed.
Plague Species
Fyi, I am no anti-vaxxer. My wife, two children and I have all been vaccinated. But unlike many who have been vaccinated, my wife and I at least still observe the precautions that were in effect prior to the vaccine unlike most who have been vaccinated who now think they are immune and have relaxed those standards. I stand by what I have said. Speaking of anti-vaxxers, India has its share of them.
In the early 20th century we had gunboat diplomacy. In the early 21st century, we have vaccine diplomacy.
Does anyone really believe the world is going to be vaccinated even with patent waivers? Jesus, America cannot even vaccinate the majority of its population and we’re to believe the majority of the planet’s nearly 8 billion people will be vaccinated regardless of patents?
Jason
astrid who doesn’t like mRNA vaccines because apparently China doesn’t have one.
???
She doesn’t like them or China so much that she…decided to get one.
Please re-read Astrid’s post, Hugh. It’s a thoughtful account of what she thinks and how she acted and it doesn’t fall into a neat binary. I should be so nuanced.
Jeremy
“My wife, two children and I have all been vaccinated. But unlike many who have been vaccinated, my wife and I at least still observe the precautions that were in effect prior to the vaccine … ”
Oh dear …..
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vaccinating-children-is-a-crime-against-humanity/
1. Current vaccines that are authorised for emergency use, approved or in development, do not have a safety or immunogenicity profile in children.
2. Vaccinating children cannot be justified if it is to give direct protection despite minimal burden of disease or to help to block transmission if children do not constitute a substantial reservoir for transmission.
3. Third, from an ethical perspective, there is a balance between risk and benefit in offering a COVID-19 vaccine to children that will offer minimal or no direct benefit to the recipient, no benefit to the public, and as yet, unknown medium-term and long-term risks to the recipient.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00212-7/fulltext
“93 Israeli doctors: Do not use Covid-19 vaccine on children”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304124
Mark Pontin
Ian W: “mRNA is a moderately difficult technology”
mRNA is not a technology, first of all.
The basis of life on Earth is that genetic information in biological cells flows from DNA to messenger RNA — mRNA stands for messenger RNA — to create proteins.
This was restated by James Watson as “DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein” — the so-called “central dogma” of molecular biology, which is so simplistic that it’s arguably wrong.
Still, it’s a framework for understanding the transfer of sequence information between information-carrying biopolymers.
There are three major classes of these biopolymers: DNA and RNA (both polynucleotides, or covalently bonded together collections of nucleotide building blocks), and protein. There are 3 × 3 = 9 conceivable direct transfers of information that can occur between these. Also, retroviruses exist — like AIDS — that can reverse transcribe their RNA genome into DNA, which is then integrated into a host genome.
You _could_ talk about mRNA-based technology, or mRNA technology. We’re _using_ mRNA as a technology in the mRNA vaccines, just as we’re using DNA as a technology.
A hot field of development right now, for example, is DNA data storage technology. In theory, all the world’s current data storage needs for a year could be met by a cube of DNA measuring about one meter per side.
‘Technology alliance boosts efforts to store data in DNA’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00534-w
Mark Pontin
Jeremy wrote: “Vaccinating children cannot be justified if it is to give direct protection despite minimal burden of disease or to help to block transmission if children do not constitute a substantial reservoir for transmission.”
That’s why you never had a polio vaccination when you were a kid, of course.
You’re funny, I’ll give you that.
Jason
Polio is not a coronavirus.
Symptomatic people of any age carry a viral load (obviously) and shed virus. So, even though the mRNA coronavirus vaccine trials weren’t designed to measure how they affect levels of infection or transmission, it is a safe, rational assumption, based on all previous knowledge to date, that if you are symptomatic (which means you’re infected, obviously), then you are shedding virus and can spread the virus.
Data on degrees of asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus is needed. Data on infected and recovered persons’ antibodies – strength and duration – is also needed. This will vary widely from person to person, given each individual’s makeup and current health status. Having said that, this is also true for vaccinated individuals.
Jeremy
Covid is not Polio.
Sheesh.
Jeremy
Here’s another funny:
Dr Mike Yeadon has a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research-based PhD in respiratory pharmacology. He has spent over 30 years leading new medicines research in some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, leaving Pfizer in 2011 as Vice President & Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory. That was the most senior research position in this field in Pfizer. Since leaving Pfizer, Dr Yeadon has founded his own biotech company, Ziarco, which was sold to the worlds biggest drug company, Novartis, in 2017.
What would he know.
Yeah, absolutely notheing.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-are-we-being-lied-to-about-covid-theres-no-good-reason/
Jeremy
The Polio vaccine provides complete Sterilising Immunity.
These mRNA and DNA gene therapies most certainly do not.
NR
The absolute avalanche of right-wing insanity Jeremy has been heaping upon this blog recently is certainly something to behold.
Jason
There are a lot of truths stated on all sides of the issue. We crave absolute assurance. Our brains want THE TRUTH. I tell people I’m okay living with cognitive dissonance – it’s the price of intelligence (stop laughing). But it’s harder than I let on.
More will be revealed…
Astrid
I am amuse by the links to Conservative Woman (did it used to DBA as Milady’s Boudoir)? Would the North American version be edited by the Pioneer Woman?
Hugh
Plague Species, sorry, I was not referring to you.
I favor a national lab with lots of excess capacity and trained people to produce generics, orphans, vaccines and whatever other components are needed for their production and delivery.
Covid is a respiratory infection. It is fairly transmissible. Once it jumped species to us, it had a huge virgin population to spread through. Viruses are all about the numbers. The more infections, the more virus. And the more virus, the more mutations. And some of those mutations can increase the infectivity of that variant.
Polio is a terrible disease but it’s mode of transmission oral uptake of fecal material as with contaminated water limited its transmission, numbers, and hence mutation. The Sabin vaccine was a live virus, which replicated well in the gut producing immunity while not creating the devastating effects in the nervous system.
Different viruses, different solutions.
Jason
The polio vaccine doesn’t provide sterilizing immunity. The human papillomavirus does.
It seems dubious given the nature of both coronaviruses and flu viruses that one could ever produce a vaccine that would provide sterilizing immunity. Vaccination in general for these viruses will only ever provide a certain level of protection, given how they replicate variants.
Every year I meet people who get the flu shot and end up with the flu anyway. If someone gets the shot and doesn’t get it, they of course will give credit to the shot, even though it would take much more in-depth investigation to determine why someone does or does not get the flu after the shot. Were they exposed to a variant of the flu that wasn’t in the vaccine mix (the scientific authorities attempt to determine what the most prevalent strains will be each year, but given the nature of nature, we know that will only work so far). Or, were they exposed to a variant that they were vaccinated against, but succumbed anyway? This does happen.
Why did someone who didn’t get the flu shot – and was exposed to all manner of flu variants in a given season – not get the flu?
Jason
Once it jumped species to us, it had a huge virgin population to spread through.
I think this virus was created in a lab through gain of function research. Many scientists have remarked on how it doesn’t look natural under a microscope. I do not know if it “leaked” on accident or was let out intentionally. One can look into the shenanigans surrounding Ft Detrick and the US military ops near Wuhan in the fall of 2019, I believe. That’s another area of inquiry, and it will inevitably lead to a bunch of dead-ends intentionally set up to misdirect.
But the virus was almost certainly human-created. Luc Montagnier and a couple prominent scientists out of one of the Nordic countries, IIRC, posited this right from the start. More have followed suit in the year-plus since, and now a paper has been produced by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists arguing same:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
Hugh
Luck, genetics, age, comorbidities, partial immunity from exposure to a similar strain, number and size of exposures, environment where exposures occur–why people get the disease or don’t is usually for a mix of reasons.
Willy
Our brains want THE TRUTH.
You’ve gotta be kidding me. Ever talk to an evangelical Pope hater?
Jason
Ever talk to an evangelical Pope hater?
I don’t think so. If I did, it wasn’t a memorable conversation.
The evangelical Pope hater proves the point, no? That’s his definitive truth. No cognitive dissonance there.
metamars
Does anybody have a good, if not great, information source for (recent) HISTORICAL use of ivermectin (and hydroxychloroquine) in India, over the course of the pandemic? Kim Iverson discussed a process wherein household members of people with covid (and/or tested positive with covid?) would be given hydroxychloroquine, though in some states they graduated to ivermectin, finding that that works better. I was skeptical about the “trace” part of the “test, trace and treat” protocol she described, but India’s 2nd wave has me wondering if they even treated households of symptomatic indiduals with anything approaching “thoroughness”.
For her troubles, youtube threatened her on this particular video, such that she removed it.
Of course, it makes a huge difference if India applied this approach to 60% of it’s population, or 80% of it’s population or 95% of it’s population. It also makes a huge difference if they only did this for 4 months, or 6 months, or 8 months.
So, what exactly happened in India, country-wide, and when? Does anybody even know?
As I recently commented, the 20 or so youtube videos I’ve consumed of Indian media coverage of their crisis is as hopeless as the US media coverage of the covid crisis in the US. A naive person watching the same Indian media would come to the same conclusion as a naive American watching US media (with Laura Ingraham a notable exception.) And that is, the only chess pieces on the public policy board are mask mandates, social distancing, lockdown, and vaccines. The is a BIG LIE, and both the US and Indian media are guilty of lying by omission.
One logical explanation for a worse 2nd wave is that the variant is somewhat “immune”, if you would, to ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine. By analogy, anti-biotics lose their effectiveness as bacterial mutants develop which are robust against the pathogen. An Indian virologist expressed this general opinion about a variant being guilty, though he made no reference to robustness of the variant with respect to ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. I.e., he was basically (I think) blaming the higher rate of transmissibility of the variant, for the 2nd wave surge in India, more than any other factor.
OTOH, about a week ago, Steve Bannon had on a guy named Dave Ramaswamy who CLAIMED that India downshifted on ivermectin, etc., as they turned to vaccines. He offered not a shred of proof for this claim; and, furthermore, it seems dubious on it’s face, as India is known to have a relatively poor vaccination rate. Any dummy could have figured out that you phase out ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine usage commensurate with vaccine coverage.
This brings us back to what Chris Martenson, who did largely stellar work covering covid from a scientific analytical viewpoint, said early on in the pandemic. And that is, there is a lack of data available. (At least on a publicly-available basis.) That, of course, makes it easier for governments, politicians, and bad actors in the “health” industry and media to push their fear porn, and control the public narrative.
The Indian catastrophe may be a blessing in disguise, if it leads to a widespread acknowledgement that prostituting public health to greedy companies must no longer be tolerated. This is far bigger than just breaking a vaccines patent, or two, which most countries probably can’t make on their own, anyway. Hydrogen peroxide treatment (which can be applied at home via a nebulizer, reportedly with almost as much efficacy as intravenous use) is probably more effective than ivermectin in later stages of the disease; and at least as effective in earlier stages (though I can’t see taking it as a prophylactic). Dr. Mercola declared it to be the early intervention of choice.
Ah, but you probably can’t find this information on his website, anymore, since he was personally threatened so much so that he’s removed it. See his article: “Why I’m Removing All Articles Related to Vitamins D, C, Zinc and COVID-19”
ihaveeffyoumoneyyoudon't
@plaguespecies
“Also, let’s not forget, vaccines are not the panacea many believe they are.”
No shit, Sherlock.
Jeremy
“Pfizer vaccine authorised by US FDA for adolescents”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57066286
“The decision follows a clinical trial by Pfizer and BioNTech involving 2,260 children aged 12-15.”
Just 2,260 !?
Hahahaha – pull the other one.
Oooops.
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/healthy-utah-highschool-athlete-develops-blood-clots-in-his-brain-following-covid-injection/
Jeremy
“93 (Right Wing) Israeli doctors: Do not use Covid-19 vaccine on children.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304124
“The letter includes the signatures of Dr. Amir Shachar, director of the emergency room at Laniado Hospital, Dr. Yoav Yehezkeli, an expert in internal medicine and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Avi Mizrahi, director of the intensive care unit at Kaplan Hospital.”
All ‘Right Wing’ Lunatics.
Hahaha.
Jeremy
Dr. Paul Alexander, former HHS adviser, says that kids should NOT get Covid vaccine!
https://mobile.twitter.com/conspiracyguy8/status/1391620696112041985
Another ‘Right Wing’ lunatic.
Hahah.
Jeremy
‘Ivermectin to all above 18’: Goa approves new COVID-19 treatment protocol”
” …all residents above the age of 18 are recommended to take five tablets of the Ivermectin drug.”
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/ivermectin-to-all-above-18-goa-approves-new-covid-19-treatment-protocol/755160
Right Wing lunatic Indians.
Hahaha.
Jeremy
During the pandemic:
• UK Billionaire wealth grew 35%
• UK Foodbank use grew 33%
Right Wing is winning!
Hahaha.
Jeremy
Hey NR – make sure you carry your Right Wing “Special Rock”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1390318826445758467
Hahaha.
metamars
@Jeremy
I used to listen to Gary Null, a lot, who often has programs debunking vaccine claims. One factoid he repeated more than once has to do with the motivation of the pediatric professionals to give vaccines during the very earliest part of the vaccination schedule. It is claimed that infants’ immune systems are too undeveloped to actually be able to profit from at least one of the early inoculations. (I don’t remember the details).
So, why was a useless vaccine being given? BECAUSE IT TRAINED THE PARENTS TO BRING THEIR CHILDREN TO THE PEDIATRICIAN, was the answer.
I predict you will see no widescale rejection of covid vaccines by US pediatricians. I doubt you’ll even see 93 US pediatricians sign a letter like the Israeli one. Since there are over 90,000 pediatricians in the US, I’m predicting that less than 1 out of 1,000 will sign such a letter.
Ivor Cummins, an engineer by trade, talks about using “root cause analysis” to evaluate medical claims, as extremely useful. I think we need engineers to expand their activities to evaluate claims about vaccines, mask, ivermectin, etc.
I trust the engineers more than I trust physicists and mathematicians. (And I say that as somebody with a degree in math and physics.) The physicists and mathematicians will generally have higher IQ’s than engineers, but their mental disciplines are just not as compatible with practical problem solving.
Consider a cousin, who is a professor of applied mathematics. One of his investigations (I think his Ph.D. thesis) involved the effect of radiation on a human body, which he modeled as a SPHERE. I’m sure it made the math easier, maybe even tractable, but a more heuristic approach probably would have been more useful to society….
Hugh
This Paul Alexander? From wiki:
“Paul Elias Alexander is a Canadian health researcher and a former Trump administration official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He attracted attention in 2020 when, as an aide to HHS assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, he pressured federal scientists and public health agencies to suppress and edit their COVID-19 reports to make them consistent with President Trump’s rhetoric on COVID-19.
Within the administration, Alexander advocated for a strategy of mass infection of the public with COVID-19 to build herd immunity.”
NR
It’s pretty funny how Jeremy claims he isn’t just quoting a bunch of right-wing nutjobs, but when you do just a little basic research, you come up with stuff like this.
Remember folks: if a right-winger tells you something, it’s practically a guarantee that the opposite is true.
Soredemos
@Hugh
Astrid didn’t even mention China. And in fact she’s completely right to be skeptical of the vaccines. There is no precedent in history for vaccines in general being developed this quickly, and mRNA in particular has never been deployed this widely before.
Astrid
What do you expect of someone who cares so much that he spends all his time talking about thoroughly debunked, NED funded stories about oppression of Uighurs (championed by racialist terrorists who have killed thousands mostly in Xinjiang and are on record stating they want to exterminate Han Chinese… Doesn’t that remind you of Ukrainian Benderites?), but not yet a peep about what’s undeniably happening right now against Palestinians?
The amount of bile against me for simply stating that the peoples in China, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere are far better off under their current government than anything the USUKIS regime is dreaming up… is telling.
metamars
Almost real-time censorship?
I caught the very end of a live Jimmy Dore program, which had “Fauci” and “weasel” in the title. I waited for it to end, then for a minute or two, and started watching the recorded version.
I fast-forwarded about an hour, to get to the takedown of Fauci. About 5 minutes into that, the video was disabled. (9:15 EST) Supposedly, it is now “private”. If it’s standard procedure to leave a recorded version of a live, 2hr youtube up for all of 15 minutes, that news to me.
For those who don’t know, Rand Paul pushed back on Fauci’s denial about funding “gain of function” research in Wuhan, in the Senate 2 days, ago. At msnbc, they are pretending that questioning Fauci about his role in covid chimeric virus production, involving spike proteins, is Q-anon stuff.
Say, now, there’s a stellar journalistic claim! Rand Paul is a Q-Anon dupe, and gain-of-function research, isn’t gain-of-function research. Got that?
I don’t know if anybody’s ever noticed this, but Rand Paul looks kind of Russian, if you catch my drift. We best keep an eye on him, before he foments another “insurrection”, like Trump did, on Jan 6.
Yeti
I currently have a prescription from my doctor for ivermectin, 5 days at 12mg/day. There isn’t a pharmacy in B.C. That can fill it. I wrote my MP Cathy McLeod and gave her the links to the FLCCC, Dr. Tess Lawrie and asked her to go over the available information. In her reply she acknowledged that there seemed to be some promising data on the effectiveness of ivermectin but said she is not willing to promote a specific therapy, yet she stands up in parliament trying to get clarification on vaccines. She said Health Canada is looking into treatments for Covid-19. I searched the Hansard for any mention of ivermectin in last 6 months and only Derek Sloan has brought the issue before the House. I also search the database of past and ongoing trials for new therapies and not one includes ivermectin. It has become clear to me that our leaders are either fully corrupted or completely inept. Or both. The data I believe now is clear and Big Pharma is doing its best to corrupt our healthcare system