With the Delta Coronavid variant spreading around, it seems like a particular hard time that could hit many people is Delta Coronavid infection, regardless of being vaccinated or not.
Perhaps a good header for comments at the Hard Times Thread might be home remedies and unofficial treatments ( or even semi-preventatives) for Coronavid infection. People have posted comments here and there, but a whole bunch of comments about use-protocols for ivermectin, zinc, vitamin D, etc. all in that one place for easy finding, might be good.
My beautiful indoor cat slipped away from me two weeks ago as I was starting to leash train her to go outside supervised. I feel such horrible guilt and pain. I’ve been reading Ian’s blog for over a decade now, so I know things in the larger world won’t be good long term and there will be many big tragedies. So I have been focusing on trying to make my immediate surroundings and those closest to me as protected and safe as possible. This is one reason why I don’t have human children and just have animals. But I did want to make life good for these two young kittens who were bonded so closely to each other and who loved living with us so much, and I thought I would still have the time and ability to do that. Now the brother is home with us, but without a playmate or grooming partner, and the sister is dealing with all the risks and dangers of an outdoor life when she’s not accustomed to it.
Some of the meditation exercises Ian has suggested, especially along the “loving-kindness” lines, recommended imagining cuddling a lovable kitten, and it was this cat I would use as a mental template, as the most demonstrative and affectionate cat I’ve ever known. I didn’t get terribly far down that practice yet, but it is terrifically hard even considering it right now.
I’ve been talking to neighbors, calling vets, setting out food and motion cameras and baited live-traps, but her personality in unfamiliar environments is such that really only the live-traps have much chance of success. I had a few close calls where I very nearly got her back, but lately it seems she’s been pushed out of my yard by territorial neighborhood cats and all the raccoons and other wildlife in the area. I’m running out of things I can do to change this situation. I’m also running out of ability to do those few things left, since I’m on very little sleep both due to the heartbreak and being woken regularly all night by camera alarms when an animal is approaching.
Maybe I need to re-read some of the meditation articles to accept reality as it is, not as I wish it was by replaying my past actions and imagining choosing differently. Maybe my efforts to get her back may still pan out. Even if they do, I clearly have work to do mentally on accepting accidents and things I cannot control. And maybe this isn’t the largest tragedy that will happen in the next few decades, but it is one that I did believe I would be able to avoid. I really did think I could care for her for her whole life, and be there with her when the time came to leave it. Not knowing where she is or what is happening to her feels like torture. What eats at my mind is knowing she is probably just fine right now if only I could get her, but that I probably won’t be capable of doing that and instead she will probably eventually have a hard and slow death.
She might make it back. From my experiences most cats have one … and only one … getting lost story … and I wish they could tell it. Once they make it through that one experience being lost from home they never … in my experience … ever get lost again because they’ve learned to appreciate their home more.
I’ve seen cats be lost for over a month and make it back.
But Arise is many other things. For one thing, it’s a pyramid scheme: the people who work for it – disproportionately Black women – are not classed as employees, but as “contractors.” They are paid for recruiting their friends to work for it.
That might sound like a nice way to help a business staff its call-centers, but you need to understand that Arise has no call centers or staff – its workers take calls from their homes.
Those workers aren’t employees – they’re misclassified as “independent contractors.”
If you want to work for Arise, you have to pay them for the privilege. Not only do you have to buy a computer and phone, you have to pay to get trained for each firm whose calls you’ll be taking.
If you quit, you have to pay Arise for “early termination” of your contract.
Believe it or not, those are the best parts of working for Arise. When you are an Arise worker, you can be terminated without notice or cause – forfeiting the money and time you spent for training and equipment. You can get fired by Arise itself, or by any of its customers.
Reps from Arise and its customers listen in on your calls. If your children make noise in the background, you can lose everything. Same if your neighbor’s dog starts barking. Forget about running a fan or air conditioner – the noise is “unprofessional.”
The Arise story prompted outrage from the public – and it sent Propublica’s investigators deeper into the story. They documented how the Department of Labor knew about Arise’s illegal and abusive conduct, and let them get away with it for years.
And here’s the most amazing part: Propublica never stopped reporting on this story. This month, Ariana Tobin, Ken Armstrong and Justin Elliott worked with Brooke Stephenson to tell Arise workers’ stories in their own words.
These stories reveal Arise’s lies about its working conditions, as workers describe how they were unequivocally ordered never to hang up on customers, even in the face of death and rape threats, racist abuse, and sexual harassment.
Arise may tell regulators and reporters that its workers are empowered to hang up the phone if the man on the other end is masturbating, but the women who endure this abuse tell a very different story:
The writers connect Arise’s working conditions with the promises made by temp agencies for generations – companies like “Kelly Girl,” who promised a disposable, attractive, pliable and hardworking woman whom a company could work like a government mule and then discard.
Arise preys on the economically precarious and traps their whole families into literal conspiracies of silence, as spouses and children tiptoe around their homes to spare their mothers the economic catastrophe of being summarily fired.
The powerful words of the women answering these calls are a reminder of the human cost of systemic racism and sexism, and the willingness of the world’s largest companies to exploit it.
While this is a systemic problem, there are ways you can individually help the people you speak to, beyond being courteous and decent and understanding (this being the minimum we all owe one another).
I. Complete the end-of-call survey. Workers can get fired and lose their investment in equipment and training if the people they help don’t do this.
II. After text-based service interactions, reply “No thank you,” after the rep asks “is there anything else I can help you with?” Workers are punished if you close your browser without answering this question.
III. Be organized with all relevant information in hand before you call. Workers are penalized for calls that last too long – even if the reason for the delay is that the caller took forever looking up a key piece of information.
Yes, it’s unfair that workers are penalized if you don’t play along with Arise’s idiotic customer service metrics, but the unfairness accrues disproportionately to workers, and you can shoulder some of that burden.
Speaking of cats, we have some feral cats and kittens in the neighborhood as the result of irresponsible pet owners who just let them loose when they no longer felt like caring for them. The young feral kittens are naively fearless (because humans are feeding them and petting them) and prone to taunting the dogs in the neighborhood.
I let our Husky go after them. She nearly got one a few weeks prior that was using our fence as a highway. Our Husky came within an inch of clasping it in her jaws and Huskies are known to kill cats.
I’m walking our Husky the other day and the same kitten, it’s barely a kitten and more like a young punk adolescent, comes loping out of the bushes with three other kittens and they proceed to taunt our Husky. I’m not going to let them get away with it so I bring our Husky to them. The one that was on our fence climbs a tree immediately. Another one of them sizes the situation up and runs under a car. The third decides it’s going to take on the big bad wolf and our Husky grabs it in her mouth and flings it tumbling down the hill. It gets to its feet and arches its back and hisses and when our Husky comes for it again, it runs for its life into the bushes.
Needless to say, on our walks, we haven’t seen these feral young adolescent cats any longer, so perhaps they learned their lesson. I may have saved their lives with this lesson, but I hope not considering the following.
In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson wrote that “in nature nothing exists alone.” Marra couldn’t agree more. Like Carson, he thinks of life on Earth as a complex tapestry in which each species represents a single thread. Outdoor cats threaten that tapestry. Their crimes include contributing to 33 extinctions around the world and counting, to say nothing of their potential to spread deadly diseases like rabies and Toxoplasmosis. They hold in tooth and claw the power to destroy that delicate web—like, well, a cat unraveling a ball of string.
Americans own about 86 million cats, or one cat for every three households. That makes cats more popular, petwise, than dogs, and we haven’t even gotten to Internet memes yet. But not all pet cats are created equal. The majority of them—about two-thirds to three-fourths, surveys say—are your sweet, harmless, cuddly housecats, which seldom set foot outside. Marra takes no issue with these lap cats. Their instincts may be lethal, but they rarely get the chance to harm more than a house mouse.
The other one-quarter to one-third, though, aren’t so harmless. These are outdoor pet cats, and they are murderers. Equipped with laser-quick paws and razor-tipped claws, these natural born killers are the stuff of every bird and small mammal’s nightmare. Often we love them for just this quality; the hard-working barn cat has nipped many a country mouse infestation in the bud. But sometimes their deadly instincts spell trouble for animals and ecosystems we value—and often, Marra argues, desperately need.
Jemand, sorry for you and your cat. It’s hard. We try to keep them safe and happy, but we can’t always despite our best efforts. My thoughts go with you.
A New Deal Revival Party could run on things like restoring the New Deal Era tax system and schedules in order to spend some of the money on restaffing Department of Labor up to the point where it can enforce all laws against employER misconduct. They could also run on such things as purging and burning all the Reagan-to-today-era moles and embeds and left behinds polluting the Department of Labor and restaffing it with people who support the Department of Labor’s mission.
In the meantime, the only solution to Arise is extermination. Ideally people would find out what companies use Arise for their “customer phone service” and either torturecott those companies into severing links with Arise or extermicott those companies into liquidation so that those companies can no longer exist as a revenue source for Arise.
It sure sounds like Arise is uncorrectable, and it can either be exterminated from existence or it can be utterly submitted to. Those are the two choices that we are given.
Mice are the natural enemies of bumblebees. They love to snack on their babies. If you have a shortage of bees in your area, mice may be the culprit. Cats, OTOH, keep the mouse population in check and thus, protect the bees. Far from being monsters who decimate the ecological balance, country cats have a history of keeping rodent populations under control, to the benefit of farmers and gardeners.
I’m also pleased to say that, far from being a menace to cats, my dog was such a laid back old bear that my cat misses him to this day. She used to follow us on walks because she felt so safe in his presence. Every time I come back from a walk if I had a chance to pet a dog, the cat smells the dogs scent on my hands and purrs and rubs her head against the spots where she smells the dog scent.
One trick I deployed to keep my cats safe back when I worked long hours, was to make sure there were entry points on each side of the house that were available to the cat but not accessible to dogs. All of my little furry buddies (I had three at the time) managed to stay safe for years that way and thrive as indoor/outdoor cats.
I used to work with someone who dressed her little dog up in children’s clothes and walked her in a stroller. I always wondered if the dog enjoyed that. I love my animals and love creating a safe haven for them as much as the next person. I also believe in understanding and respecting an animal’s primal nature and giving them the safest possible space to be themselves.
I think we, as humans, feel most at home in this big fabricated world we have built for ourselves. I do not think our animal companions feel quite the same way about it. I think sometimes they need a break from having to adapt to our world. Sometimes they need a chance to spend at least a little time in a natural world where they feel at home.
Cats are feral creatures which mostly deal with humans out of convenience. They’ve got a ways to go before they’re bred so agreeable and helpless that they’re our fully dependent lap dogs. Every cat I’ve ever ‘owned’ has been a natural born hunter of the creatures they watch through the windows.
I’ve owned many. My current two I inherited from a nephew whose new wife is allergic. In fact, all of my pets have come from family sources where wants and needs suddenly changed, and I wind up with the equivalent of ‘a pet in a basket with a note’ on my front porch.
My current two are indoors-only on strict orders from my sister, the mother of that spoiled nephew. Yet even they want very badly to be outside, so they can kill stuff. I know this because whenever I let them out into our outside-closed attached garage, my living spaces are soon littered with little rodent bodies. I really should be worried about hantavirus, but I’ve never gotten it yet, so it must not actually exist.
They don’t understand why they can’t go out. But I don’t have the ability to tell them tales of previously inherited cats who disappeared. I’ve certainly learned down that path myself. Maybe most people must. It’s like not knowing or caring about neoliberalism, until it ruins you personally.
The way I learned that a cat is outdoor ready, is by observing that the wily ones always pause at the door and use all their senses to discern that it’s safe to commit to going outside. Like the sister of that lost cat who lived a long time. I remember walking outside alongside her geriatric self when she paused briefly, then clawed suddenly into some dense ivy and pulled out a shrew. Wow Cali, you heard that? Animal instincts sure are strong things.
Over the years, a number of our cats have run off. I can think of only one that came back after whatever adventures he’d been on for weeks or months. However, several cats that weren’t part of our household showed up on our doorstep intending to move in. And some did. I don’t know what impels them to go, but once they get it in their minds to take off, it’s nearly impossible to keep them from running away. But some do come back, so don’t give up hope.
We looked after a feral cat colony for a time, and it was really a remarkable learning experience. Cats are very territorial. Somehow they are conscious of how many cats their territory can sustain. They are very social with one another, and they establish definite hierarchies. The lowest status cats will be run off if there are frequent births of kittens. (We did our best to trap, spay, neuter and release the ferals to keep down the numbers.) Kittens are vulnerable and they may not live very long themselves, either caught by predators or killed by males wanting to mate with their mother, or succumbing to diseases that often affect ferals. We’ve seen some ferals live pretty long lives — not as long as domestic cats, though. Most don’t live very long, however (three or four years maybe).
It is hyperbolic nonsense that cats are these monster killing machines, wiping out whole species and ruining entire environments. What we saw was that the ferals lived among vibrant bird life. Yes, they hunted and took some of the birds, but not that many compared to the overall number of birds. Arguably, they kept the bird life healthier and more abundant. As for the small ground living critters, we didn’t see many within the ferals’ territory, and I can’t say whether they were there or not. I once saw a feral run off a skunk. So there was that. They share kills. They form very close friendships within the colony, and they have fights and spats with cats who are not their friends. They’re very selective about letting new cats join the colony.
Dogs and coyotes are probably the main predators on feral cats out where we are. Farmers may not like cats much, but they sure love having them around to keep the rodents in check.
do any of you think we might see a rank-ordering of the covid vaccines emerge, in which some are identified as more effective than others in reducing the virulence of the more contagious variants?
i see the rate of new cases rising — in some places into record territory.
given how the public health establishment, with the assistance of the Biden Administration, has discredited itself repeatedly, is there anything left to us, but to let it all play out, however grimly? and to play monday morning quarterback, trying to evaluate “what worked” — when, at least in the U.S., nothing workable was even tried before the virus had already become endemic. in that respect, how good were the vaccines, and which vaccines, if any, were better than the rest?
diff clue:
your intelligent and constructive input is always refreshing
I am always dazzled by your clever and original insights
your contribution to the conversation is invariably important
it is hard to imagine how anyone could get along without hearing from you
I think the story got noticed because it offers a small hope that the conversation in the mainstream press might start to shift a bit a break the stranglehold of the mRNA vaccines on the pubic conversation.
I don’t know about ranking all of the vaccines on some king of general basis. So many of the sources we should be able to trust have proved unreliable that it is hard for me to imagine where any reliable overarching standard would even come from.
I would be pleased if the PTB stopped banishing ivermectin from the public conversation because I think it may be the best treatment for covid by a decisive margin
Willy, here’s a cat story in response to what you posted. Your cat did not catch the shrew because of her instincts. She caught it because she can hear in registers much higher than the ones we can pick up. So she can catch things like shrews and mice because they are noisy little critters and she can literally hear them making a racket.
So it was intentional? After all my carefully chosen foods, after all the tasty kitty treats and catnips, why did she need to insult me with a disgusting shrew? I even let her lick out the tuna cans!
bruce wilder
“do any of you think we might see a rank-ordering of the covid vaccines emerge”
The most likely to actually work and safest vaccine has not been approved by FDA yet — and that is Novavax NVX-CoV2373:
“A total of 15,187 participants underwent randomization… 27.9% were 65 years of age or older, and 44.6% had coexisting illnesses. Infections were reported in 10 participants in the vaccine group and in 96 in the placebo group … for a vaccine efficacy of 89.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 80.2 to 94.6)” DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2107659
This vaccine is a full-length spike protein expressed and purified from insect cells + an adjuvant. The expression system (i.e., baculovirus/insect cells) has been in use for decades. Baculovirus and insect cells are – well – insect and therefore do not have anything that can affect people. Protein expressed in insect cells can be purified to a very high level of purity. The vaccine does not have any extraneous things, like mRNA, cationic lipids, PEG, adenovirus protein, like the other vaccines do. With the other vaccines, our cells need to express spike protein and then decide whether this protein is our own body’s protein or a foreign protein. Pre-made spike protein is injected in the Novavax vaccine. The adjuvant can cause some toxicity, but otherwise, the vaccine can be injected over and over. Once a production system is set, it is easy to change it from making one type of the spike protein to another variant.
Furthermore, Novavax seems to be deliberate and honest to some degree, or at least that’s the image they project. If I had a choice, I would choose Novavax hands down.
But of course, vaccine is only one method of protection, wearing N95, eye protection, ventilation, distancing are just as – if not more – important…
But you know – in all honesty – even among the unvaccinated few need hospitalization, would be nice have some simple statistics. Last year, when COVID-19 was just a flu and vaccines were far off, everyone was telling each other how the risk of hospitalization and death was so low. And second, let’s just wait a bit. CDC & the propagandists will cough up more info in due time. At this point, it is a race between the vaccinators rushing to impose their will on the rest of us versus the virus demonstrating that the vaccine is ineffective.
I don’t have subscription to WaPo, so I can’t read articles, I only visit it to see headlines and what is the party line of the day is.
Anyway, it is nice to see that some countries begin to depart from the path of obsessive vaccination and look at the problem in its totality:
” Across Belgium public venues from restaurants to swimming pools are being fitted with sensors that display how much air customers are sharing with others in an attempt to combat further surges of Covid-19 into the autumn and winter.
The carbon dioxide monitors, which cost about €70, indicate whether windows or doors should be opened to increase the circulation of fresh air and prevent the transmission of coronavirus.”
What I read from the full second article title is that the vaccinated are still highly vulnerable to infections and of being infectious. That’s an important public health point, when half the population is not yet vaccinated and a proportion of the vaccinated may still be unprotected due to preexisting conditions, defective vaccines, and just dumb luck. “Normalcy” would be a death sentence or possibly life long chronic illness for a lot of vulnerable people.
it is a race between the vaccinators rushing to impose their will on the rest of us versus the virus demonstrating that the vaccine is ineffective.
Yes.
Novavax is a subunit vaccine. And just notice all the verbiage NL needed to use to describe it:
“With the other vaccines, our cells need to express spike protein and then decide whether this protein is our own body’s protein or a foreign protein. Pre-made spike protein is injected in the Novavax vaccine. The adjuvant can cause some toxicity, but otherwise, the vaccine can be injected over and over. Once a production system is set, it is easy to change it from making one type of the spike protein to another variant.
This reads more like salesmanship, as opposed to something that might assuage a layperson concerned about her health.
No traditional dead or live-attenuated vaccine is being developed in the west.
Kind of wild, you think about it, but the delta variant, this new and improved COVID, dropped on us just as the vaccines got rolled out and before they ever had any hope at all towards seriously weakening COVID’s grip. Nope, the vaccines weren’t out for more than a week or so before Hurricane Delta came blowing in the wind.
That’s just the luck of it sometimes though, you know. Just the draw. Sometimes you draw 13s and other times 21s. Just our dumb luck …
NC linked to predictable propaganda in the Atlantic and The New Republic about Cuba and the protests attending the economic crisis there.
“For my mother’s generation, the following things, among others, were forbidden: listening to the Beatles, being openly gay, displaying religious beliefs, and reading certain books.” — the Atlantic
All of which is true and all of which would have to be qualified extensively to be part of an accurate presentation, which the Atlantic is not going to do.
In the meantime, Jonathan Cook writes about the jailing of Craig Murray, based in part on the legal distinction that he is not a “real” journalist, because he does work for a billionaire’s hobbyshop or daily shopper rag.
“613,000 Americans have died from covid per Johns Hopkins.”
can be met with bruce’s salient point:
“All of which is true and all of which would have to be qualified extensively to be part of an accurate presentation, which the Atlantic is not going to do.”
I saw that Jonathan Cook post, and I don’t have the stomach to read what sites like the Atlantic are saying about events in Cuba, but it’s not hard to imagine.
For me the awful part of all of it is dealing with the way all the propaganda and distortion of public information are making interaction with other people in real life so difficult. My own family and the families of friends are literally being damaged and relationships are ending because people are so jacked up and misdirected.
@ anti-empire.com, there’s an article “CDC Study: 74% of Infected and 80% of Hospitalized in Massachusetts Outbreak Were Fully Vaccinated”
At the bottom is a graph, from somebody’s twitter feed, showing incidence per 100K in Barnstable Country, MA, July 2021
The per capita deaths are the same, between vaccinated and unvaccinated – 0.
However, there are bars for symptomatic and hospitalization categories.
Unvaccinated per capita incidence is LOWER, for both sets of bars.
It’s questionable that only 1 county is shown, however….. Main stream media typically lies by omission. (Perhaps exceeded by “lying by innuendo of never-to-be-identified anonymous sources” on outlets like CNN and MSNBC). I’ll guess @USMortality is cherry-picking.
Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of mRNA vaccine technology, was interviewed by Steve Bannon on his Pandemic Warroom show, on July 28. (See “The Vaccine Causes The Virus To Be More Dangerous” @ rumble dot com)
Malone says that indications are the we are IN a worse case scenario, in terms of vaccine ‘efficacy’, in that developments have occurred suggesting Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) is occurring. A whistleblower has leaked info showing that nasal swabs from vaccinated and unvaccinated are the same (I think just delta variant). However, this is suspicious because these are not accurate ways to determine viral load. You need to use blood tests.
So Malone has inferred that the more accurate blood tests (which must have been done) are showing viral titers worse for the vaccinated.
He did distinguish between the Pfizer vaccine and the rest of them, as it appears to offer the shortest-lived protection, thus maximizing (compared to the other vaccines) the opportunity for the virus to survive in it’s vaccinated host, thus creating more opportunity for ADE.
Malone still feels that the mRNA vaccines are appropriate for individuals who are greatly at risk from the virus. I believe he said even some children might be considered appropriate candidates.
What I wrote about the Novavax vaccine is true. It will be the safest vaccine. Whole virus vaccine will be less safe, because of a complicated manufacturing process. In both cases, most toxicity will stem from the adjuvant, which for the Novavax vaccine is some sort of new plant extract. I put a disclaimer on the vaccines in the end of the post.
@Hugh
If you care about the people, then hear what I say, and if you are a vaccine propagandist or an incompetent good wisher, then you will be responsible for the next number of death.
The most annoying part is that last year we hardly got to accomplish anything because of the lockdown. Then people started wearing respiratory protection, and earlier this year we got into a working rhythm. And then, this vaccine campaign came and all of a sudden it is Ok to go without respiratory protection. The approach is to lead by example, always wear a N95 (luckily these are now available from many places, my favorite is Makrite 9500 – a dollar a day, less than a cup of coffee) and N95s are available free to the personnel. Will see if I am right, but I expect most other units to be wiped out once infection goes exponential in our area, we will last the longest and then also shut down, because of either another lockdown or disruption of the supply chains, but at least we will accomplish more before going home to do theoretical work.
Jason can’t even show minimal respect for the dead. If those lives don’t support his view, he will just extensively qualify them into the ground. Except he doesn’t, he just dismisses them. How do progressives think they can convince anyone about anything when they show such casual moral and intellectual cowardice?
Hugh, how do you “respect” hundreds of thousands of dead people?
I haven’t been very respectful lately. I wrote something mean-spirited to Willy the other day. Willy, being Willy, dispensed with me properly.
I’m trying to “respect” loads of information sources in order – as Ian wrote somewhat recently (not a direct analog, but sufficient for illustrative purposes) – in order to not entirely throw out the structure before assimilating any new info into my already overstuffed head.
I do this so that I won’t have to “respect” so many dead, if that makes sense.
We all want the same thing, I think. For the most part, anyway.
I take back my prediction on the NFL season. NFL is sly, the season will go on. The whole ruling is:
“If a vaccinated person tests positive and is asymptomatic, he or she will be isolated and contact tracing will promptly occur. The positive individual will be permitted to return to duty after two negative tests at least 24-hours apart and will thereafter be tested every two weeks or as directed by the medical staffs. Vaccinated individuals will not be subject to quarantine as a result of close contact with an infected person.”
I.e., the vaccinated positives will be subject to ‘isolation before two negative tests’ but not ‘quarantine’ — that is distinction without a difference. I did not pick on this at first…
And with NL, he ducks too. The simplest and most important covid statistic in the US is the 613,000 who have died from it. NL can’t handle it so all those lives become “vaccine propaganda” to him.
Do I wish that the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot but got blown completely out of the water with the appearance of the Delta variant. But the vaccinated are now still far less likely to be hospitalized or to die from it.
We need to follow common sense public health measures, but we still don’t have some of the most important of these, like a national response or sufficient vaccination. Instead we continue to kowtow to freedumb loving Americans who demand their right to infect the rest of us and help the virus spread and mutate.
Hugh,
Moving goalposts? “the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot” — they also get sick, why take the respiratory protection away? And hospitalization and death need to be age-adjusted. Will see how that will turn out and how long it will last.
Bottom line is what I always said, vaccine is only one line of defense, and we need comprehensive measures. I have a post in moderation on Belgium where they begin addressing ventilation and air quality. England has now a test and trace system, how come we don’t? Incompetence kills!
Hugh, please, for the proverbial love of god, reread your last post. You are a smart person and there’s simply no way you can be this confused:
“Do I wish that the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot but got blown completely out of the water with the appearance of the Delta variant. But the vaccinated are now still far less likely to be hospitalized or to die from it. ”
This is classic goalpost moving and an excellent example of an all-out rationalization machine.
People in the know said from the beginning that the vaccines weren’t in any way sterilizing, that they were only designed to prevent severe illness and death. Knowing this simple, basic fact, the vaccines should always have been seen simply as a “tool in the toolbox” (sick of that cutesy phrase yet?)
This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the mRNA covid vaccines had NO previous real-world testing.
Well, Jason, you start by not ignoring them. 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam and it traumatized a generation. We have lost 600,000 in a year and a half, and they are just forgotten.
Hugh isn’t smart. He’s just your typical PMC class educated idiot who can’t process anything outside of his self imposed Dunning Kruger bubble. He talks about respecting the dead but he can’t comprehend that the courses he advocate (doubling down in a failing vaccine policy, hostility against Russia/China/Iran/Syria on fake charges, supporting Jihadis, refusing to “abandon” countries that the US utterly destroyed through its occupations – all of which just happened to be the path advocated by DNC politicos against the wishes of their grassroot and voters) will lead to millions and maybe billions more deaths in the coming decades.
I’d say he’s a parody, except I know too many IRL who are nearly as bad.
Thank you for the kind words. The words were so kind, in fact, that at first I was suspicious. Was this some kind of trick to lure me into some kind of rhetorical guard-let-down killbox? That’s my natural high-suspicion default-setting.
But I will take the kind words as written and merely note that billions of people have gotten along just fine without my comments, and billions of people will keep getting along just fine without them after I am dead. But in the meantime, I try to bring and add whatever hi-valu/hi-info material I can.
I used to read Church of the Subgenius material for a little while long ago, and I think that organization’s clever use of language, coining useful new words, etc., may have helped me improve the quality of my own writing.
Here is a little on-line publication of theirs called Subgenius Pamphlet #1. You may find it interesting and even helpful in learning to write more gooder. http://www.subgenius.com/pam1/pamphlet.html
Hugh how about you start respecting the dead by not using them as propaganda prop to enrich fraudster drug corporations? Oh, right you’re a double standard guy who thinks “common sense” should supersede evidence and logic.
What do you call the below statement?
“The experimental vaccine is effective, but every one needs to get it or it won’t help me. You’re dumb and selfish if you won’t get an experimental vaccine that can kill you in order to appease my fear.”
It’s called cognitive dissonance with a touch of ad hominem projection.
Nice to see all the rats come out of the woodwork. Your silence, denial, complicity in the deaths of so many, that doesn’t bother you a bit. Even when I remind you of them, all you can do is treat them as a minor talking point. Pathetic.
Something else. What Jimmy Dore advocate might be a start. Vote for the best available alternative in your local primaries. Give money and time to alternatives. Vote for the non incumbent in every election until you end up with someone who you can stomach having an adult beverage with. Advocate for non-interventionism and isolationism and nuclear nonproliferation, to give other countries and future generations a fighting chance.
These are all low probability shots. The system is rigged against positive change and it’s very late in the day. It’s likely that nothing anywhere (not China, not Russia, not blessed Cuba, not splendid New Zealand with its springloaded megafaults and volcanoes) will prevent a catastrophic global collapse. But better to try to resist and build something better, than double down on what had failed is for 50 years.
Ah, Hugh’s “respect” in display. And for once he is right, I would certainly prefer to be identified as a tough adaptable rodent than whatever Hugh identifies himself as.
What is the point in vaccinating an entire population with a completely non-sterilizing vaccine? The vaccines should be used to treat the most vulnerable: the aged, obese, diabetic, immunocompromised for whatever reason, etc. But…
It looks more and more like those who were warning about ADE risks from the start have been right all along. Yet…
As metamars noted above, even Dr. Robert Malone – who I believe called for a halt to the vaccination program, based on both the lack of long-term data on mRNA as well as the risk of ADE- has nevertheless maintained that the vaccines should be used where necessary.
This is the most prudent course of action vis a vis vaccines, in my humble opinion.
Below are some excerpts from an article on ADE in Nature, published September of last year. I’ve highlighted some pertinent parts.
Abstract
Antibody-based drugs and vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are being expedited through preclinical and clinical development. Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Previous respiratory syncytial virus and dengue virus vaccine studies revealed human clinical safety risks related to ADE, resulting in failed vaccine trials. Here, we describe key ADE mechanisms and discuss mitigation strategies for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies in development. We also outline recently published data to evaluate the risks and opportunities for antibody-based protection against SARS-CoV-2.
Conclusion
ADE has been observed in SARS, MERS and other human respiratory virus infections including RSV and measles, which suggests a real risk of ADE for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antibody-based interventions. However, clinical data has not yet fully established a role for ADE in human COVID-19 pathology. Steps to reduce the risks of ADE from immunotherapies include the induction or delivery of high doses of potent neutralizing antibodies, rather than lower concentrations of non-neutralizing antibodies that would be more likely to cause ADE.
Going forward, it will be crucial to evaluate animal and clinical datasets for signs of ADE, and to balance ADE-related safety risks against intervention efficacy if clinical ADE is observed. Ongoing animal and human clinical studies will provide important insights into the mechanisms of ADE in COVID-19. Such evidence is sorely needed to ensure product safety in the large-scale medical interventions that are likely required to reduce the global burden of COVID-19.
The highlighted parts are the experiment being conducted now. This is what many people don’t understand. There is a reason these evaluations normally take place over a period of years. Clinical data continues to pour in, and it frankly does not look good.
I imagine the psychology behind the anger that erupts in many – simply by virtue of mentioning elementary facts – is that they know on some level they are in fact part of an ongoing experiment. And even if it’s made okay in their minds as being necessary for the public good, there is nevertheless a tremendous fear of the unknown.
Anyone else see the irony in Hugh calling people rats because they don’t want to be mindless test subjects for a drug corporation that has committed fraud and killed people because of it?
Hugh in 1950, “9 out of 10 doctors smoke camels. A 2 month study from Marlboro showed tobacco is safe and has tons of benefits. You’re a rat for not bowing to Tobacco.”
Jimmy Dore, like practically all professional opiners from the political realm, has gotten his shots. He claimed some side effect issues but I’ve never heard him tell people to not get their shots. Side effects should be noted and counted, of course, but personally, I’d rather have any of the noted vaccine side effects over a bad case of covid any day.
Maybe Jimmy Dore offers low probability shots because the system is rigged against positive change and it’s very late in the day? Attacking fellow progs over nonsense isn’t much of an answer. I saw him on Rogan, wasn’t impressed. Then I saw Vaush’s parsing of that interview and was even less impressed. But at least Jimmy’s there.
If the “fellow progressives” spend all their time apologizing for Biden and Pelosi, and can’t even bother to properly support the M4A marches that happened this weekend, then they deserve to be critized and electorally defeated. This includes Bernie Sanders, Jayapal, Omar, and Tlaib. The occasional progressive sounding tweet changes nothing. They’re worthless and need to be exposed as such. If they want to stop getting criticized from the left, then they need to do their damn job and uphold their campaign promises.
If you and Hugh and all those Trump hating Democrats with the “Hate has no place…” yard signs actually cared about increasing vaccinations, the federal government could offer $250 gift cards (given immediately after the second shot), mandate employers to provide up to 5 days of leave for adverse vaccine effects (allow employer to claim it as a credit in their corporate taxes if you like), and allow people with more adverse effects to qualify for compensation as they would for adverse effects to actually mandatory vaccinations. This would give people confidence that the federal government is actually interested in protecting them if something goes wrong and will compensate them for doing their part in trying to contain a public health crisis.
None of you mentioned this. You’re all happy to shame and blame stupid “others” for not letting you go back to your normal, nevermind that evidence is showing that even 100% vaccination won’t get us back to normal. You and Hugh harp on casualties caused by a terrible public health policy advanced by national politicians, including ones that you shame the rest of us for not voting for, as though we who don’t support them are the ones responsible for the predicament that we’re in.
You’re a lot better than Hugh and Plague Species, but you can’t seem to get past that we’re no longer in 5th grade and punching a bully a couple times won’t make everything right in the world again. Terrible people like your BiL have won and the rest of us (and eventually him) are paying the price. But feel free to punch him in the face next time if it makes you feel better. Heck, it might even momentarily make me feel better.
you can’t seem to get past that we’re no longer in 5th grade and punching a bully a couple times won’t make everything right in the world again.
Self-awareness is a good thing, Astrid. You do realize that your buddy S. Brennan used to accuse me of all manner of nonsense as well every chance he got, just because I didn’t worship Trump? And you called me the bully. Would you like me to review all the times you yourself have tried to punch people you disagreed with? Happens more than you seem to know.
Actually, I hate Trumps lies, personality, narcissism, insurrection, incompetence and grifts. But not his quasi-achievements, like Operation Warp Speed:
I’m all in favor of the vaccine. It’s one of the great achievements, a true miracle, and not only for the United States. We’re saving tens of millions of lives throughout the world. We’re saving entire countries. DJ Trump
I’m not a Democrat. And I don’t think everything Trump did was hateful. And since I hate as well as anybody, no yard signs.
$250 gift cards
Think it’ll pass, even with Trump’s endorsement?
The odds of M4A becoming an actual reality anytime soon are even less than climate change becoming the centerpiece of a multi trillion dollar infrastructure bill. Far less. Sorry to sound all ‘Obama political realities’ and all, but a public option seems more realistic, and I’d be very happy to see such as a stepping stone towards M4A. You can boil that down to my being a total Obama supporter if your brain starts to smoke, but I wasn’t one of those either.
You do realize that growing numbers of progs are trying to figure out if Jimmy Dore is either evil, or just plain stupid? He might want to tighten up his game a bit.
“If the “fellow progressives” spend all their time apologizing for Biden and Pelosi, and can’t even bother to properly support the M4A marches that happened this weekend, then they deserve to be critized and electorally defeated.”
That is pretty much what seems to be happening. I think they expect to lose their Congressional majorities in the mid-terms and I will be surprised if they hang on to the Presidency.
Dr. Mobeen Syed interviews Dr. Darrell DeMello for 1 1/2 hours on the nuances of treating and prophylaxing patients for covid, and talk about “vaccine” only occurs for about 1 minute.
See “Dr. Darrell DeMello Discusses COVID Outpatient Management” on youtube, on the “Drbeen Medical Lectures” – still not censored on youtube at 2:30 am EST, Aug 2!
By way of contrast, a clip from CNN called “Ex-Fox reporter reveals why Tucker Carlson is lying about vaccines” starts out with a 20 seconds clip of Tucker Carlson asking why vaccine takers are being asked to wear masks, if the vaccines are effective, suggesting that the vaccines may not work.
In my reality, the vaccines are hugely problematic, potentially catastrophic, and generally unnecessary given their lack of vetting and the availability of therapeutics and prophylactics; though there is short term benefit, at least for adults. They are not sterilizing vaccines, and (following Malone, and data out of places like Israel) will start failing (Pfizer) after about 6 months (requiring boosters); and furthermore lead to a possible nightmare scenario of ADE. (I think it’s fair to say that we are just at the beginning of the ADE phenomenon.)
Tucker Carlson isn’t known for his deep dives into drug treatments; or even as something as simple as Vitamin D. Furthermore, his comments casting shade on vaccines are simplistic, which is only partly justified given his format (when does he do deep dives into anything? ditto CNN) and the general dumbed down nature of American TV audiences.
As for CNN, they are farther from the truth than Tucker Carlson. And no, the fact that their concern troll interviewee is formerly from Fox doesn’t make his ‘helpful analysis’ as Tucker being all about the money any more credible. Tucker Carlson has interviewed Dr. Robert Malone in the recent past. I don’t think it will be the last time.
When I duckduckgo “CNN interviews Robert Malone”, I get no promising hits, based on the 1st page summaries. However, when I click on what looks like the most promising hit, viz, “Dr. Robert Malone Interview – Inventor Of mRNA Technology Censored For Speaking Out On Vaccine Risks”, I find Malone saying the following, at the 16:22 mark
16:10
i find it stunning and i find it
16:14
stunning that the only media that’s
16:16
reaching out to me
16:17
almost exclusively is conservative media
16:21
and so i find myself on you know back
16:24
in and tucker and in these things
16:28
and i gotta tell you the last time i had
16:29
the call with my buddies at the fda
16:31
one of them was just limit he was like
16:34
how could you possibly be going on
16:37
tucker carlson
16:38
all tucker wants to do is destroy the
16:40
administration and he just went on and
16:41
on and on
16:42
and i’m like these are the only guys
16:45
that want to talk
16:48
the other ones want to talk to me let’s
I assume he meant that the “other guys” only want to talk at him.
So, it’s pretty clear the CNN concern trolls are complete asses, who, in fact, are killing Americans by duping them into diverting attention away from drug treatments, and furthermore into believing that mass vaccinations (with the current crop of vaccines) are somehow necessary. While the trio of concern trolls may, in fact, be ignorant of drug options, their apparent ignorance is being reinforced by their salaries. I.e., their motivation for doing what they do, and not educating themselves, is financial.
Or, they know the truth, and choose to lie through their teeth.
Hence, their level of hypocrisy is stunning. I don’t understand how such people can live with themselves. Why don’t they feel sick, every time they look at themselves in a mirror?
Dore and the tiny actual left in this country realize that Democrats and “progressives”never tried. The “Progressives” just kept apologizing for inaction and evil on the right and keeps punching left. Compared to the evil that will never be anything other than evil, trying anything else, no matter the low probability of success, is less stupid.
And I’m not the one who keeps bragging on how Trump is like 5th grade bully that he beat up and how terrible his MAGA rich BiL is. You’re the one who fixate on it so much you’re overlooking the Democrats robbing us blind on their “infrastructure” bill and doing nothing for the most popular idea in a generation. If they can’t successfully pass it, then they’re absolutely evil or incompetent. They like to pretend it’s incompetence but I think their consistently horrible anti people record points toward evil.
Meanwhile, you probably agree with the washed up hack Keith Olbermann that Dore should be censured for doing actual journalism and activism. Look in the mirror, you’re the evil one here.
The same thing happened to Dr Pierre Kory. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul were the only congress critters who would agree to hear his testimony before Congress. No Democrats would engage with him. He later revealed that he has always been a democrat and he doesn’t agree with most of Johnson or Paul’s politics. He then said the most important thing: He didn’t say anything about his politics at the time – and he won’t going forward – BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER, or at least it’s not supposed to.
I didn’t know the extent of lack of (overt?) Republican support for Kory, but that’s pretty disgusting if only 2 congress critters supported Kory. BTW, Democrats actually walked out of Kory’s testimony.
I am going to try to put my re-imagined Voter’s Revenge app out to bid, this week, after I spec it out. I just can’t take time to work on it. It’s for both left and right populists. A “posse” can exert political pressure over any issue (at least in a mature version); but initial version could or should include an issue or issues related to medical tyranny. Especially medical tyranny that makes no sense, at all, from a medical perspective, even if bureaucrats SAY that they are “following the science”.
I still see a gross imbalance between the whining that does occur, and the organizing and “action, action, action”* which should occur, in commentary sections in right wing media. It’s probably the same in left wing media.
At least there are reputable reform organizations on left and right, at least one of which is surely getting traction. One the right, the Precinct Project (precinctstrategy.com) is all about getting populists into positions of (non-official office holding) power inside the Republican Party. More on the left, I think (though should be supported by everybody) is Naomi Wolf’s organization, dailyclout.io. I actually don’t know how effective it’s been; giving it a quick eyeball, it doesn’t seem to boast of any victories (unlike Pam Popper’s legal and organization efforts, working against the medical tyranny). My sense of things, though, is that a Pam Popper’ian strategy could more quickly gain adherents and thus, strength, though dailyclout.io.
I supported the Justice Democrats, even on right wing outlets, but as a Jimmy Dore fan, I can’t support them in good faith, anymore. So, dailyclout.io is the best that I can do, even short of a track record. At least Wolf’s intentions and honesty are impeccable; and she can evolve her organization in a more effective direction, perhaps as she, herself, evolves.
Left leaners should also check out teachings of Benjamin Yee, a Democratic reformer from NY. From him, I found out that NYC borough Democratic Parties used to hide their meeting locations from other Democrats, to maintain their old boy’s club collective control.
I think both left and right leaners should support 3rd parties, but mostly as an alternative vehicle to cast protest votes, and bring about losses of incumbents, in general elections. The emphasis should be on their respective bases taking over the Democratic or Republican party apparatuses.
On the right, there’s also a relatively large (I think 45K +) group of activists working for election audits in all 50 states. The Republican activist base isn’t having it; and they’re just as angry at Republicans who betrayed them as they are at Democrats. I don’t remember the name of the principal, but I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten segments on Warroom Pandemic within the last 3 weeks.
* “action, action, action” is a favorite saying of Steve Bannon
Who the hell are you to judge? You can’t even read my stories right. You completely missed the point about my BIL. He’s actually in person, a very nice guy. Born and raised from very nice wholesome decent working class Christian people. It’s the culture he’s immersed in is that all fucked up. He’s oblivious to his behaviors because he’s all about traditional values, whatever the PTB tell him they should be.
When a handful of sociopathic libertarians at the top own his traditional values, able to successfully tell everyone how they must be, how they must think, what constitutes actual “success”, then traditional behaviors become fucked up and totally rationalized.
Get it yet?
The handful of sociopathic libertarians also own your “progressives”, who then themselves, buy fancy new homes in leafy parts of Studio City. They regularly attack AOC as being insufficient, oblivious to the fact that she has to work every day surrounded by people who measure their success not by any integrity towards their constituency, but by their own wealth.
Unlike you, I worked immersed in a culture like that. Nobody around me cared about my integrity, in our company in a competitive business which we all gained sustenance from. All they cared about was their own connections, their own status within that business. In our current culture, integrity is a fools game.
You yourself, introduced yourself here as being “successful” within that context, while attacking fellow progressives who I see as having much higher integrity than you. You like Dore, are in no position to judge anybody.
I’ve given up being a “progressive” years ago. The movement failed me and millions of others, enough times and in terrible enough ways, that I know they’re incapable of doing better. I don’t owe you or them anything. Neither do millions of others who woke up to this and decided to pitch out gaslighting old garbage.
As for your BiL. By your own admission he destroyed a once great clinic for his personal gain. The facts are bad. Your narratives go round and round on the same few stories, I’m just repeating them back to you.
I’ll go on trusting and supporting Dore until I catch him lying about something important. If he does, he’ll be as worthless as Democrats and your BiL.
Dore isn’t the one peddling the There Is No Alternative narrative that tells me I have to suck up lies and inaction. You are. Hugh is.
You could do something, however small, to support positive change. Instead you rather wallow in your morally bankrupt cul-de-sac and name call anybody who doesn’t buy into Uniparty consensus of more wars, more sanctions, more corporate giveaways, and sorry no money for M4A/$15 minimum wage/student loan debt relief/stop prosecuting Assange…
As much as Astrid has written about other commenters here, she shouldn’t mind being written about in turn. That would be hypocritical and she would never be hypocritical. She calls out hypocrisy in others and she keeps reminding us about it to be sure we know.
I first got a funny feeling about ‘Astrid’ from a comment under the ‘Astrid’ name in the “Canadian economy under U S hegemony and neo-liberalism” thread. While most of Astrid’s comments are written in American English, this comment seems more like English-as-a-second-language used by a highly fluent Chinese speaker/writer of English. “You linked to an Obama produced hit piece on China, so it really no more valuable than MSM coverage on China. Even if all the conditions in that factory is exactly as described. . ” I see two “Chinese accent” mismatches in the grammar there . . . “so it( sic) really no more valuable” . . . and “Even if all the conditions in that factory is(sic) as described” . . . “their(sic) looking out for themselves” . . . “But the Chinese state appear(sic) capable of” . . . was this comment written by Astrid or by a Chinese hasbarist borrowing the Astrid name? That stylistic anomaly caught my attention.
A film about some Chinese factory re-openers in Ohio was being discussed. ‘Astrid’ offered a fast Gish gallop of reasons to disregard the film. Its an Obama hit piece or . . . even if factory is as described ( implying it isn’t but not daring to openly say so) China is too big and we are too dumm to understand, and one film is too snapshot to convey information and etc. and so forth and so on.
Astrid likes to accuse others of harassment and bullying and namecalling, even while harassing and bullying and namecalling other commenters multiple times. She wonders why Hugh “keeps showing up” after she has smacked him down. This is the language of bullying and abuse, and makes me wonder if she is a violent bullying abuser in real life. It is also transparent projection on her part.
She has also stated her wish that certain commenters disappear, revealing her desire to exert power over others and determine who gets to comment here. She will keep discovering that she has no such power, of course.,
She has a bag of tricks, traps, tropes and triggers which she sometimes resorts to using on other commenters in hopes of triggering them into reacting to her on her terms. For example, she will use personal insults to try and get people to engage with her various velcro decoy tarbabies which she mounts by the side of the road to try and get attention with. For example . . . “And if I link your provided info to ETIM, I think I’m well within my right to call you a terrorist supporter. . .” That is an insult-based accusation designed to trigger an emotional reaction. She clearly wants attention from people and will use classical troll methods to try getting it.
Life is too short to hunt for other illustrations of Astrid’s inner self on display in order to quote them here, but they exist in her comments. Fellow commenters might want to consider the possibility that she is merely seeking the attention-high of provoking an emotional reaction response, and they might want to step back and analyse the Astrid and its apparent psychological motivations before committing time and energy to engaging with it.
As another example of her projection, she accuses Hugh multiple times of “White man’s burden” complex and etc., and yet when commenter Aniibishan explains to her from his position of genuine actual knowledge what the relative severity of Indian conditions is in America versus Canada, she immediately patronises him with a White Superior Knowledge attitude and begins Whitesplaining to him about what the facts of Indian existence in America are. Transparent projection on display once again.
She also parades her self-assumed moral superiority by bragging about how ashamed she is of being a “USian”. The Amish call this “pride in humility”.
Yup. When you can’t argue on facts, start pounding the table and slinging mud at the other side.
If you can’t comprehended imperialism and racism of the terminal capitalist USian regime that Hugh advocates for, that says a lot more about your mental limitations than mine. The very fact that your paranoid about my racial origins as being something other than what I represent them to be, as if it would change the validity of my arguments in anyway, says something about YOUR racism.
Anyhow. Thank you for your interest in my comment. I am always happy to hear from you. Please let me know if you have any other concerns.
The mRNA ones don’t work and make your outcomes worse.
Thomas is back with his usual lies I see. There is ample data on the mRNA vaccines showing that not only do they not make outcomes worse, they in fact work very well. At this point I don’t think Thomas even knows how to tell the truth about anything.
Chris Martenson, @ the Peak Prosperity youtube channel, has a new video “Pfizer Jab: Here’s what you need to know!” I listened to about 5 minutes of it. The gist I got is that Pfizer is protective against death.
From other sources I’ve discussed, the Pfizer starts to lose it’s potency at the 6-8 month mark. My guess is that without boosters, it’ll be useless in 11 months. Keep your eye on the Israeli data; and also Iceland, and other early, aggressive vaccinating countries.
As per mRNA vaccine technology creator, Dr. Robert Malone, signs of ADE have started to appear. Malone says we cannot vaccinate our way into herd immunity, against covid, at least with the current crop of vaccines. Trying to do so favors ADE, which is potentially catastrophic.
In this vein, here is quote from a recent nakedcapitalism contributor, in the “Links 7/24/2021” diary:
IM Doc
July 24, 2021 at 8:18 am
About the French Guyana paper from the CDC
This is how science – the actual process – not the Fauci version – should be working.
I have repeatedly stated that I am seeing much much more vaccinated positives than one would ever have expected. As I have stated, they seem to be much sicker (though not critically so) and they tend to happen in clusters. For the past two months, this has stuck out from the dominant media narrative. I have never had to fight the cognitive dissonance between the media and my own eyeballs in my life.
I belong to a large non-public alumni group of my residency program that has literally thousands of IM docs all over America. The first thing a scientist does is to confirm that your observations are general or something you are just seeing. It was quickly obvious from that group that I was far from alone despite the “minimal breakthrough cases” media narrative.
So, then you do everything you can to hypothesize reasons why you are seeing what you are. I have been a physician for 30 years and that experience plays a huge role as well. Having this gigantic number of breakthrough cases just simply does not happen. I continue to see more than half the cases in vaccinated patients and so do many others. UNHEARD OF IN VACCINES BEFORE NOW.
Part of hypothesizing why is looking to the literature for evidence. Seldom is this found in RCT at this stage. Case reports and series like this paper are critical. They are seeing the same breakthrough ratio. And they have done a lot more viral research than you can. This is a gold mine for my own questions.
Is there anything in the paper that could possibly explain what I am seeing. Lots of times, it is not in the headline part but in all the test results and discussion. And yes, there is a very important finding deep in the results.
Why would clustering and sicker patients be so much more common in the breakthrough patients – there must be a reason for that?
If you look at the brief discussion of cT or cycle threshold you will see that the vaccinated patients have a SIGNIFICANTLY lower cT than the unvaccinated. That is the way the PCR test works. It basically means the vaccinated have a much higher amount of viral active particles than the unvaccinated. That would account for the breakthroughs I and my colleagues are seeing being a bit more ill. And it would explain the clustering. THe vaccinated breakthroughs have much higher viral load so they are much more contagious and the higher viral load makes them more symptomatic.
So we now have a suggestion and strong evidence that the vaccinated population may be spreading much more virus than the unvaccinated. I would say that is a critical public health issue and must be further researched immediately.
This Certainly needs much more work. THis is not confirmatory of any conclusions. But it is consistent with observation on the ground – unlike most of what the media has been spewing to the American people. But this is how science works. This paper is about the gamma variant but a conference yesterday with experts discussed that similar findings were being found in delta and lambda. The suggestion in this paper is now on the front of my mind. I am even now thinking of ways to confirm or falsify these conclusions going forward. This is science.
Another issue. The writers make the point that the breakthrough rate is extremely divergent from the expected rate. The difference is this paper documents what is happening in REAL LIFE. So much of what we are hearing on our media about vaccine efficacy is research being done in vitro. It is presented as gospel truth. I just want to scream.
I am doing great and thanks for all the kind words. More about my week later. The commenters here are the best in the internet and I so appreciate my time here.
Also, I’ve posted a calculation – twice – suggesting that if we extrapolate American CDC whistleblower data regarding deaths from the vaccines, themselves, onto Israel, and add that to recent vaccinated deaths from covid, the vaccinated deaths exceed the unvaccinated covid deaths, by a very slight amount.
I’m thinking: this is a no-brainer, that general vaccination is not worth it. Better to follow Malone’s advice and just do selective targeting of vaccination candidates (e.g., immuno-suppressed), together with prophylactic and therapeutic drugs, and stop BEGGING for the development of catastrophic ADE.
metamars, thank you for posting the IM Doc comment. Another of his that bears watching:
“I know nothing about this county. But this is exactly the kind of data that will need to be really evaluated.
I would like to point out something very important though. They report the collection time was from JUL 12-25.
If this county is anything like my own, the reason there are so many more unvaccinated samples in the cohort is not because “they are more at risk of getting COVID”. That may be the case – but we can not know that in my county because no one was even acknowledging these breakthrough cases at all. That did not even begin in earnest until about JULY 25th or so.
Since that time, there has been a marked change in that process. Every single positive, vaccinated or not, is now being thoroughly evaluated. The datasets in huge swaths of this country are completely worthless for case counting from mid May until about last week because of this.
I do not know if that is the case for your county. They may have not been following guidance from the CDC and actually counting the cases.”
I suspect this is in fact the case for the vast majority of the country. The datasets – sans the “breakthrough cases” which weren’t being counted – are essentially meaningless.
The datasets from the end of July going forward – provided they keep an at least somewhat honest, accurate count – will be more useful.
But the virus is way ahead of the silly datasets we rely on in hindsight.
You remind me of certain fellow little-kids I remember from elementary school . . . the teachers pets and the tattletales and such. Did you become a hall monitor? Did you enjoy reporting other kids to the principal for this and that?
Did you used to eat your boogers when you were a little girl? You strike me as the type who did.
Anyway, thank you for your interest in my comment. I am always happy to hear from you. Please let me know if you have any other concerns.
different clue
With the Delta Coronavid variant spreading around, it seems like a particular hard time that could hit many people is Delta Coronavid infection, regardless of being vaccinated or not.
Perhaps a good header for comments at the Hard Times Thread might be home remedies and unofficial treatments ( or even semi-preventatives) for Coronavid infection. People have posted comments here and there, but a whole bunch of comments about use-protocols for ivermectin, zinc, vitamin D, etc. all in that one place for easy finding, might be good.
jemand
My beautiful indoor cat slipped away from me two weeks ago as I was starting to leash train her to go outside supervised. I feel such horrible guilt and pain. I’ve been reading Ian’s blog for over a decade now, so I know things in the larger world won’t be good long term and there will be many big tragedies. So I have been focusing on trying to make my immediate surroundings and those closest to me as protected and safe as possible. This is one reason why I don’t have human children and just have animals. But I did want to make life good for these two young kittens who were bonded so closely to each other and who loved living with us so much, and I thought I would still have the time and ability to do that. Now the brother is home with us, but without a playmate or grooming partner, and the sister is dealing with all the risks and dangers of an outdoor life when she’s not accustomed to it.
Some of the meditation exercises Ian has suggested, especially along the “loving-kindness” lines, recommended imagining cuddling a lovable kitten, and it was this cat I would use as a mental template, as the most demonstrative and affectionate cat I’ve ever known. I didn’t get terribly far down that practice yet, but it is terrifically hard even considering it right now.
I’ve been talking to neighbors, calling vets, setting out food and motion cameras and baited live-traps, but her personality in unfamiliar environments is such that really only the live-traps have much chance of success. I had a few close calls where I very nearly got her back, but lately it seems she’s been pushed out of my yard by territorial neighborhood cats and all the raccoons and other wildlife in the area. I’m running out of things I can do to change this situation. I’m also running out of ability to do those few things left, since I’m on very little sleep both due to the heartbreak and being woken regularly all night by camera alarms when an animal is approaching.
Maybe I need to re-read some of the meditation articles to accept reality as it is, not as I wish it was by replaying my past actions and imagining choosing differently. Maybe my efforts to get her back may still pan out. Even if they do, I clearly have work to do mentally on accepting accidents and things I cannot control. And maybe this isn’t the largest tragedy that will happen in the next few decades, but it is one that I did believe I would be able to avoid. I really did think I could care for her for her whole life, and be there with her when the time came to leave it. Not knowing where she is or what is happening to her feels like torture. What eats at my mind is knowing she is probably just fine right now if only I could get her, but that I probably won’t be capable of doing that and instead she will probably eventually have a hard and slow death.
Astrid
Jemand,
Thank you for sharing and I hope you will reunite with your temporarily strayed kitty soon! Sending positive thoughts!
Z
Jemand,
She might make it back. From my experiences most cats have one … and only one … getting lost story … and I wish they could tell it. Once they make it through that one experience being lost from home they never … in my experience … ever get lost again because they’ve learned to appreciate their home more.
I’ve seen cats be lost for over a month and make it back.
Good luck,
Z
someofparts
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners
But Arise is many other things. For one thing, it’s a pyramid scheme: the people who work for it – disproportionately Black women – are not classed as employees, but as “contractors.” They are paid for recruiting their friends to work for it.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#arise
That might sound like a nice way to help a business staff its call-centers, but you need to understand that Arise has no call centers or staff – its workers take calls from their homes.
Those workers aren’t employees – they’re misclassified as “independent contractors.”
If you want to work for Arise, you have to pay them for the privilege. Not only do you have to buy a computer and phone, you have to pay to get trained for each firm whose calls you’ll be taking.
If you quit, you have to pay Arise for “early termination” of your contract.
Believe it or not, those are the best parts of working for Arise. When you are an Arise worker, you can be terminated without notice or cause – forfeiting the money and time you spent for training and equipment. You can get fired by Arise itself, or by any of its customers.
Reps from Arise and its customers listen in on your calls. If your children make noise in the background, you can lose everything. Same if your neighbor’s dog starts barking. Forget about running a fan or air conditioner – the noise is “unprofessional.”
The Arise story prompted outrage from the public – and it sent Propublica’s investigators deeper into the story. They documented how the Department of Labor knew about Arise’s illegal and abusive conduct, and let them get away with it for years.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless
And here’s the most amazing part: Propublica never stopped reporting on this story. This month, Ariana Tobin, Ken Armstrong and Justin Elliott worked with Brooke Stephenson to tell Arise workers’ stories in their own words.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-women-on-the-other-end-of-the-phone
These stories reveal Arise’s lies about its working conditions, as workers describe how they were unequivocally ordered never to hang up on customers, even in the face of death and rape threats, racist abuse, and sexual harassment.
Arise may tell regulators and reporters that its workers are empowered to hang up the phone if the man on the other end is masturbating, but the women who endure this abuse tell a very different story:
https://www.propublica.org/article/not-allowed-to-hang-up-the-harsh-reality-of-working-in-customer-service
The writers connect Arise’s working conditions with the promises made by temp agencies for generations – companies like “Kelly Girl,” who promised a disposable, attractive, pliable and hardworking woman whom a company could work like a government mule and then discard.
Arise preys on the economically precarious and traps their whole families into literal conspiracies of silence, as spouses and children tiptoe around their homes to spare their mothers the economic catastrophe of being summarily fired.
The powerful words of the women answering these calls are a reminder of the human cost of systemic racism and sexism, and the willingness of the world’s largest companies to exploit it.
While this is a systemic problem, there are ways you can individually help the people you speak to, beyond being courteous and decent and understanding (this being the minimum we all owe one another).
I. Complete the end-of-call survey. Workers can get fired and lose their investment in equipment and training if the people they help don’t do this.
II. After text-based service interactions, reply “No thank you,” after the rep asks “is there anything else I can help you with?” Workers are punished if you close your browser without answering this question.
III. Be organized with all relevant information in hand before you call. Workers are penalized for calls that last too long – even if the reason for the delay is that the caller took forever looking up a key piece of information.
Yes, it’s unfair that workers are penalized if you don’t play along with Arise’s idiotic customer service metrics, but the unfairness accrues disproportionately to workers, and you can shoulder some of that burden.
Plague Species
Speaking of cats, we have some feral cats and kittens in the neighborhood as the result of irresponsible pet owners who just let them loose when they no longer felt like caring for them. The young feral kittens are naively fearless (because humans are feeding them and petting them) and prone to taunting the dogs in the neighborhood.
I let our Husky go after them. She nearly got one a few weeks prior that was using our fence as a highway. Our Husky came within an inch of clasping it in her jaws and Huskies are known to kill cats.
I’m walking our Husky the other day and the same kitten, it’s barely a kitten and more like a young punk adolescent, comes loping out of the bushes with three other kittens and they proceed to taunt our Husky. I’m not going to let them get away with it so I bring our Husky to them. The one that was on our fence climbs a tree immediately. Another one of them sizes the situation up and runs under a car. The third decides it’s going to take on the big bad wolf and our Husky grabs it in her mouth and flings it tumbling down the hill. It gets to its feet and arches its back and hisses and when our Husky comes for it again, it runs for its life into the bushes.
Needless to say, on our walks, we haven’t seen these feral young adolescent cats any longer, so perhaps they learned their lesson. I may have saved their lives with this lesson, but I hope not considering the following.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/
Hugh
Jemand, sorry for you and your cat. It’s hard. We try to keep them safe and happy, but we can’t always despite our best efforts. My thoughts go with you.
different clue
@someofparts,
A New Deal Revival Party could run on things like restoring the New Deal Era tax system and schedules in order to spend some of the money on restaffing Department of Labor up to the point where it can enforce all laws against employER misconduct. They could also run on such things as purging and burning all the Reagan-to-today-era moles and embeds and left behinds polluting the Department of Labor and restaffing it with people who support the Department of Labor’s mission.
In the meantime, the only solution to Arise is extermination. Ideally people would find out what companies use Arise for their “customer phone service” and either torturecott those companies into severing links with Arise or extermicott those companies into liquidation so that those companies can no longer exist as a revenue source for Arise.
It sure sounds like Arise is uncorrectable, and it can either be exterminated from existence or it can be utterly submitted to. Those are the two choices that we are given.
someofparts
Mice are the natural enemies of bumblebees. They love to snack on their babies. If you have a shortage of bees in your area, mice may be the culprit. Cats, OTOH, keep the mouse population in check and thus, protect the bees. Far from being monsters who decimate the ecological balance, country cats have a history of keeping rodent populations under control, to the benefit of farmers and gardeners.
I’m also pleased to say that, far from being a menace to cats, my dog was such a laid back old bear that my cat misses him to this day. She used to follow us on walks because she felt so safe in his presence. Every time I come back from a walk if I had a chance to pet a dog, the cat smells the dogs scent on my hands and purrs and rubs her head against the spots where she smells the dog scent.
One trick I deployed to keep my cats safe back when I worked long hours, was to make sure there were entry points on each side of the house that were available to the cat but not accessible to dogs. All of my little furry buddies (I had three at the time) managed to stay safe for years that way and thrive as indoor/outdoor cats.
I used to work with someone who dressed her little dog up in children’s clothes and walked her in a stroller. I always wondered if the dog enjoyed that. I love my animals and love creating a safe haven for them as much as the next person. I also believe in understanding and respecting an animal’s primal nature and giving them the safest possible space to be themselves.
I think we, as humans, feel most at home in this big fabricated world we have built for ourselves. I do not think our animal companions feel quite the same way about it. I think sometimes they need a break from having to adapt to our world. Sometimes they need a chance to spend at least a little time in a natural world where they feel at home.
Willy
Cats are feral creatures which mostly deal with humans out of convenience. They’ve got a ways to go before they’re bred so agreeable and helpless that they’re our fully dependent lap dogs. Every cat I’ve ever ‘owned’ has been a natural born hunter of the creatures they watch through the windows.
I’ve owned many. My current two I inherited from a nephew whose new wife is allergic. In fact, all of my pets have come from family sources where wants and needs suddenly changed, and I wind up with the equivalent of ‘a pet in a basket with a note’ on my front porch.
My current two are indoors-only on strict orders from my sister, the mother of that spoiled nephew. Yet even they want very badly to be outside, so they can kill stuff. I know this because whenever I let them out into our outside-closed attached garage, my living spaces are soon littered with little rodent bodies. I really should be worried about hantavirus, but I’ve never gotten it yet, so it must not actually exist.
They don’t understand why they can’t go out. But I don’t have the ability to tell them tales of previously inherited cats who disappeared. I’ve certainly learned down that path myself. Maybe most people must. It’s like not knowing or caring about neoliberalism, until it ruins you personally.
The way I learned that a cat is outdoor ready, is by observing that the wily ones always pause at the door and use all their senses to discern that it’s safe to commit to going outside. Like the sister of that lost cat who lived a long time. I remember walking outside alongside her geriatric self when she paused briefly, then clawed suddenly into some dense ivy and pulled out a shrew. Wow Cali, you heard that? Animal instincts sure are strong things.
Ché Pasa
Over the years, a number of our cats have run off. I can think of only one that came back after whatever adventures he’d been on for weeks or months. However, several cats that weren’t part of our household showed up on our doorstep intending to move in. And some did. I don’t know what impels them to go, but once they get it in their minds to take off, it’s nearly impossible to keep them from running away. But some do come back, so don’t give up hope.
We looked after a feral cat colony for a time, and it was really a remarkable learning experience. Cats are very territorial. Somehow they are conscious of how many cats their territory can sustain. They are very social with one another, and they establish definite hierarchies. The lowest status cats will be run off if there are frequent births of kittens. (We did our best to trap, spay, neuter and release the ferals to keep down the numbers.) Kittens are vulnerable and they may not live very long themselves, either caught by predators or killed by males wanting to mate with their mother, or succumbing to diseases that often affect ferals. We’ve seen some ferals live pretty long lives — not as long as domestic cats, though. Most don’t live very long, however (three or four years maybe).
It is hyperbolic nonsense that cats are these monster killing machines, wiping out whole species and ruining entire environments. What we saw was that the ferals lived among vibrant bird life. Yes, they hunted and took some of the birds, but not that many compared to the overall number of birds. Arguably, they kept the bird life healthier and more abundant. As for the small ground living critters, we didn’t see many within the ferals’ territory, and I can’t say whether they were there or not. I once saw a feral run off a skunk. So there was that. They share kills. They form very close friendships within the colony, and they have fights and spats with cats who are not their friends. They’re very selective about letting new cats join the colony.
Dogs and coyotes are probably the main predators on feral cats out where we are. Farmers may not like cats much, but they sure love having them around to keep the rodents in check.
bruce wilder
do any of you think we might see a rank-ordering of the covid vaccines emerge, in which some are identified as more effective than others in reducing the virulence of the more contagious variants?
i see the rate of new cases rising — in some places into record territory.
given how the public health establishment, with the assistance of the Biden Administration, has discredited itself repeatedly, is there anything left to us, but to let it all play out, however grimly? and to play monday morning quarterback, trying to evaluate “what worked” — when, at least in the U.S., nothing workable was even tried before the virus had already become endemic. in that respect, how good were the vaccines, and which vaccines, if any, were better than the rest?
Willy
bruce, are you trying to get out of telling your cat story?
Thomas B Golladay
https://twitter.com/herulerna/status/1421600141421723657
Well they sure know how to rub it in.
@Bruce Wilder
Just watch Dr. Chris Martenson, the US health authorities are thoroughly discredited along with their shill NR.
As for the vaccines, if you must, stick to the adenovirus ones, like J&J. The mRNA ones don’t work and make your outcomes worse.
Otherwise find a doctor who is willing to put you on HCQ or Ivermectin regimen.
someofparts
diff clue:
your intelligent and constructive input is always refreshing
I am always dazzled by your clever and original insights
your contribution to the conversation is invariably important
it is hard to imagine how anyone could get along without hearing from you
someofparts
bruce wilder-
This story has gotten a fair amount of attention this weekend –
https://wallstreetjournal-ny-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=1411ea368_1345e4d
I think the story got noticed because it offers a small hope that the conversation in the mainstream press might start to shift a bit a break the stranglehold of the mRNA vaccines on the pubic conversation.
I don’t know about ranking all of the vaccines on some king of general basis. So many of the sources we should be able to trust have proved unreliable that it is hard for me to imagine where any reliable overarching standard would even come from.
I would be pleased if the PTB stopped banishing ivermectin from the public conversation because I think it may be the best treatment for covid by a decisive margin
someofparts
Willy, here’s a cat story in response to what you posted. Your cat did not catch the shrew because of her instincts. She caught it because she can hear in registers much higher than the ones we can pick up. So she can catch things like shrews and mice because they are noisy little critters and she can literally hear them making a racket.
Willy
So it was intentional? After all my carefully chosen foods, after all the tasty kitty treats and catnips, why did she need to insult me with a disgusting shrew? I even let her lick out the tuna cans!
NL
WaPo this morning:
Vaccinated people are ready for normalcy — and angry at the unvaccinated getting in their way
By Marisa Iati
scroll a bit lower and…
Mass. outbreak mostly infected the vaccinated, CDC study finds
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joel Achenbach
Haha…
NL
Here’s my prediction for the football season…
… there will be no football season this year, because NFL changed its tried and true policy from last year:
“Vaccinated individuals will not be subject to quarantine as a result of close contact with an infected person.”
KT Chong
NL deceptively posted:
>Mass. outbreak mostly infected the vaccinated, CDC study finds
>By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joel Achenbach
Leaving out the article’s full title, which is:
CDC study shows three-fourths of people infected in Massachusetts coronavirus outbreak were vaccinated BUT FEW REQUIRED HOSPITALIZATION
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/30/provincetown-covid-outbreak-vaccinated/
KT Chong
Here, the full title:
Mass. COVID-19 outbreak mostly infected the vaccinated, CDC finds; FEW NEED HOSPITALIZATION
Link: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/cdc-study-shows-three-fourths-of-people-infected-in-massachusetts-covid-19-outbreak-were-vaccinated/
NL
bruce wilder
“do any of you think we might see a rank-ordering of the covid vaccines emerge”
The most likely to actually work and safest vaccine has not been approved by FDA yet — and that is Novavax NVX-CoV2373:
“A total of 15,187 participants underwent randomization… 27.9% were 65 years of age or older, and 44.6% had coexisting illnesses. Infections were reported in 10 participants in the vaccine group and in 96 in the placebo group … for a vaccine efficacy of 89.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 80.2 to 94.6)” DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2107659
This vaccine is a full-length spike protein expressed and purified from insect cells + an adjuvant. The expression system (i.e., baculovirus/insect cells) has been in use for decades. Baculovirus and insect cells are – well – insect and therefore do not have anything that can affect people. Protein expressed in insect cells can be purified to a very high level of purity. The vaccine does not have any extraneous things, like mRNA, cationic lipids, PEG, adenovirus protein, like the other vaccines do. With the other vaccines, our cells need to express spike protein and then decide whether this protein is our own body’s protein or a foreign protein. Pre-made spike protein is injected in the Novavax vaccine. The adjuvant can cause some toxicity, but otherwise, the vaccine can be injected over and over. Once a production system is set, it is easy to change it from making one type of the spike protein to another variant.
Furthermore, Novavax seems to be deliberate and honest to some degree, or at least that’s the image they project. If I had a choice, I would choose Novavax hands down.
But of course, vaccine is only one method of protection, wearing N95, eye protection, ventilation, distancing are just as – if not more – important…
NL
@KT Chong
I posted what was on the front page.
But you know – in all honesty – even among the unvaccinated few need hospitalization, would be nice have some simple statistics. Last year, when COVID-19 was just a flu and vaccines were far off, everyone was telling each other how the risk of hospitalization and death was so low. And second, let’s just wait a bit. CDC & the propagandists will cough up more info in due time. At this point, it is a race between the vaccinators rushing to impose their will on the rest of us versus the virus demonstrating that the vaccine is ineffective.
NL
I don’t have subscription to WaPo, so I can’t read articles, I only visit it to see headlines and what is the party line of the day is.
Anyway, it is nice to see that some countries begin to depart from the path of obsessive vaccination and look at the problem in its totality:
” Across Belgium public venues from restaurants to swimming pools are being fitted with sensors that display how much air customers are sharing with others in an attempt to combat further surges of Covid-19 into the autumn and winter.
The carbon dioxide monitors, which cost about €70, indicate whether windows or doors should be opened to increase the circulation of fresh air and prevent the transmission of coronavirus.”
Astrid
What I read from the full second article title is that the vaccinated are still highly vulnerable to infections and of being infectious. That’s an important public health point, when half the population is not yet vaccinated and a proportion of the vaccinated may still be unprotected due to preexisting conditions, defective vaccines, and just dumb luck. “Normalcy” would be a death sentence or possibly life long chronic illness for a lot of vulnerable people.
Jason
it is a race between the vaccinators rushing to impose their will on the rest of us versus the virus demonstrating that the vaccine is ineffective.
Yes.
Novavax is a subunit vaccine. And just notice all the verbiage NL needed to use to describe it:
“With the other vaccines, our cells need to express spike protein and then decide whether this protein is our own body’s protein or a foreign protein. Pre-made spike protein is injected in the Novavax vaccine. The adjuvant can cause some toxicity, but otherwise, the vaccine can be injected over and over. Once a production system is set, it is easy to change it from making one type of the spike protein to another variant.
This reads more like salesmanship, as opposed to something that might assuage a layperson concerned about her health.
No traditional dead or live-attenuated vaccine is being developed in the west.
Z
Kind of wild, you think about it, but the delta variant, this new and improved COVID, dropped on us just as the vaccines got rolled out and before they ever had any hope at all towards seriously weakening COVID’s grip. Nope, the vaccines weren’t out for more than a week or so before Hurricane Delta came blowing in the wind.
That’s just the luck of it sometimes though, you know. Just the draw. Sometimes you draw 13s and other times 21s. Just our dumb luck …
Z
bruce wilder
NC linked to predictable propaganda in the Atlantic and The New Republic about Cuba and the protests attending the economic crisis there.
“For my mother’s generation, the following things, among others, were forbidden: listening to the Beatles, being openly gay, displaying religious beliefs, and reading certain books.” — the Atlantic
All of which is true and all of which would have to be qualified extensively to be part of an accurate presentation, which the Atlantic is not going to do.
In the meantime, Jonathan Cook writes about the jailing of Craig Murray, based in part on the legal distinction that he is not a “real” journalist, because he does work for a billionaire’s hobbyshop or daily shopper rag.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-07-30/craig-murrays-jailing-is-the-latest-move-in-the-battle-to-snuff-out-independent-journalism/
Hugh
NL, 613,000 Americans have died from covid per Johns Hopkins. Is that a simple enough statistic for you?
someofparts
Willy – Sometimes in the past you posted things that were worth reading, so I was understandably confused. Thanks for clearing things up.
Jason
Hugh’s most recent point:
“613,000 Americans have died from covid per Johns Hopkins.”
can be met with bruce’s salient point:
“All of which is true and all of which would have to be qualified extensively to be part of an accurate presentation, which the Atlantic is not going to do.”
Nor is Hugh.
Jason
This epitomizes the world we live in:
Novavax seems to be deliberate and honest to some degree, or at least that’s the image they project.
someofparts
I saw that Jonathan Cook post, and I don’t have the stomach to read what sites like the Atlantic are saying about events in Cuba, but it’s not hard to imagine.
For me the awful part of all of it is dealing with the way all the propaganda and distortion of public information are making interaction with other people in real life so difficult. My own family and the families of friends are literally being damaged and relationships are ending because people are so jacked up and misdirected.
metamars
@ anti-empire.com, there’s an article “CDC Study: 74% of Infected and 80% of Hospitalized in Massachusetts Outbreak Were Fully Vaccinated”
At the bottom is a graph, from somebody’s twitter feed, showing incidence per 100K in Barnstable Country, MA, July 2021
The per capita deaths are the same, between vaccinated and unvaccinated – 0.
However, there are bars for symptomatic and hospitalization categories.
Unvaccinated per capita incidence is LOWER, for both sets of bars.
It’s questionable that only 1 county is shown, however….. Main stream media typically lies by omission. (Perhaps exceeded by “lying by innuendo of never-to-be-identified anonymous sources” on outlets like CNN and MSNBC). I’ll guess @USMortality is cherry-picking.
However, see my next comment.
metamars
Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of mRNA vaccine technology, was interviewed by Steve Bannon on his Pandemic Warroom show, on July 28. (See “The Vaccine Causes The Virus To Be More Dangerous” @ rumble dot com)
Malone says that indications are the we are IN a worse case scenario, in terms of vaccine ‘efficacy’, in that developments have occurred suggesting Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) is occurring. A whistleblower has leaked info showing that nasal swabs from vaccinated and unvaccinated are the same (I think just delta variant). However, this is suspicious because these are not accurate ways to determine viral load. You need to use blood tests.
So Malone has inferred that the more accurate blood tests (which must have been done) are showing viral titers worse for the vaccinated.
He did distinguish between the Pfizer vaccine and the rest of them, as it appears to offer the shortest-lived protection, thus maximizing (compared to the other vaccines) the opportunity for the virus to survive in it’s vaccinated host, thus creating more opportunity for ADE.
Malone still feels that the mRNA vaccines are appropriate for individuals who are greatly at risk from the virus. I believe he said even some children might be considered appropriate candidates.
NL
@Jason
What I wrote about the Novavax vaccine is true. It will be the safest vaccine. Whole virus vaccine will be less safe, because of a complicated manufacturing process. In both cases, most toxicity will stem from the adjuvant, which for the Novavax vaccine is some sort of new plant extract. I put a disclaimer on the vaccines in the end of the post.
@Hugh
If you care about the people, then hear what I say, and if you are a vaccine propagandist or an incompetent good wisher, then you will be responsible for the next number of death.
The most annoying part is that last year we hardly got to accomplish anything because of the lockdown. Then people started wearing respiratory protection, and earlier this year we got into a working rhythm. And then, this vaccine campaign came and all of a sudden it is Ok to go without respiratory protection. The approach is to lead by example, always wear a N95 (luckily these are now available from many places, my favorite is Makrite 9500 – a dollar a day, less than a cup of coffee) and N95s are available free to the personnel. Will see if I am right, but I expect most other units to be wiped out once infection goes exponential in our area, we will last the longest and then also shut down, because of either another lockdown or disruption of the supply chains, but at least we will accomplish more before going home to do theoretical work.
Hugh
Jason can’t even show minimal respect for the dead. If those lives don’t support his view, he will just extensively qualify them into the ground. Except he doesn’t, he just dismisses them. How do progressives think they can convince anyone about anything when they show such casual moral and intellectual cowardice?
Jason
Hugh, how do you “respect” hundreds of thousands of dead people?
I haven’t been very respectful lately. I wrote something mean-spirited to Willy the other day. Willy, being Willy, dispensed with me properly.
I’m trying to “respect” loads of information sources in order – as Ian wrote somewhat recently (not a direct analog, but sufficient for illustrative purposes) – in order to not entirely throw out the structure before assimilating any new info into my already overstuffed head.
I do this so that I won’t have to “respect” so many dead, if that makes sense.
We all want the same thing, I think. For the most part, anyway.
NL
I take back my prediction on the NFL season. NFL is sly, the season will go on. The whole ruling is:
“If a vaccinated person tests positive and is asymptomatic, he or she will be isolated and contact tracing will promptly occur. The positive individual will be permitted to return to duty after two negative tests at least 24-hours apart and will thereafter be tested every two weeks or as directed by the medical staffs. Vaccinated individuals will not be subject to quarantine as a result of close contact with an infected person.”
I.e., the vaccinated positives will be subject to ‘isolation before two negative tests’ but not ‘quarantine’ — that is distinction without a difference. I did not pick on this at first…
Hugh
And with NL, he ducks too. The simplest and most important covid statistic in the US is the 613,000 who have died from it. NL can’t handle it so all those lives become “vaccine propaganda” to him.
Do I wish that the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot but got blown completely out of the water with the appearance of the Delta variant. But the vaccinated are now still far less likely to be hospitalized or to die from it.
We need to follow common sense public health measures, but we still don’t have some of the most important of these, like a national response or sufficient vaccination. Instead we continue to kowtow to freedumb loving Americans who demand their right to infect the rest of us and help the virus spread and mutate.
NL
Hugh,
Moving goalposts? “the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot” — they also get sick, why take the respiratory protection away? And hospitalization and death need to be age-adjusted. Will see how that will turn out and how long it will last.
Bottom line is what I always said, vaccine is only one line of defense, and we need comprehensive measures. I have a post in moderation on Belgium where they begin addressing ventilation and air quality. England has now a test and trace system, how come we don’t? Incompetence kills!
Jason
Hugh, please, for the proverbial love of god, reread your last post. You are a smart person and there’s simply no way you can be this confused:
“Do I wish that the vaccinated on exposure couldn’t transmit covid? That was always something of a long shot but got blown completely out of the water with the appearance of the Delta variant. But the vaccinated are now still far less likely to be hospitalized or to die from it. ”
This is classic goalpost moving and an excellent example of an all-out rationalization machine.
People in the know said from the beginning that the vaccines weren’t in any way sterilizing, that they were only designed to prevent severe illness and death. Knowing this simple, basic fact, the vaccines should always have been seen simply as a “tool in the toolbox” (sick of that cutesy phrase yet?)
This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the mRNA covid vaccines had NO previous real-world testing.
Hugh
Well, Jason, you start by not ignoring them. 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam and it traumatized a generation. We have lost 600,000 in a year and a half, and they are just forgotten.
Paul Anderson
Ian had a post a while back on coping with wildfire smoke at home. Interested video on DIY (really easy) high-volume MERV 13 box filter.
https://youtu.be/aw7fUMhNov8
Astrid
Hugh isn’t smart. He’s just your typical PMC class educated idiot who can’t process anything outside of his self imposed Dunning Kruger bubble. He talks about respecting the dead but he can’t comprehend that the courses he advocate (doubling down in a failing vaccine policy, hostility against Russia/China/Iran/Syria on fake charges, supporting Jihadis, refusing to “abandon” countries that the US utterly destroyed through its occupations – all of which just happened to be the path advocated by DNC politicos against the wishes of their grassroot and voters) will lead to millions and maybe billions more deaths in the coming decades.
I’d say he’s a parody, except I know too many IRL who are nearly as bad.
different clue
@someofparts,
Thank you for the kind words. The words were so kind, in fact, that at first I was suspicious. Was this some kind of trick to lure me into some kind of rhetorical guard-let-down killbox? That’s my natural high-suspicion default-setting.
But I will take the kind words as written and merely note that billions of people have gotten along just fine without my comments, and billions of people will keep getting along just fine without them after I am dead. But in the meantime, I try to bring and add whatever hi-valu/hi-info material I can.
I used to read Church of the Subgenius material for a little while long ago, and I think that organization’s clever use of language, coining useful new words, etc., may have helped me improve the quality of my own writing.
Here is a little on-line publication of theirs called Subgenius Pamphlet #1. You may find it interesting and even helpful in learning to write more gooder.
http://www.subgenius.com/pam1/pamphlet.html
Oakchair
Hugh how about you start respecting the dead by not using them as propaganda prop to enrich fraudster drug corporations? Oh, right you’re a double standard guy who thinks “common sense” should supersede evidence and logic.
What do you call the below statement?
“The experimental vaccine is effective, but every one needs to get it or it won’t help me. You’re dumb and selfish if you won’t get an experimental vaccine that can kill you in order to appease my fear.”
It’s called cognitive dissonance with a touch of ad hominem projection.
Willy
Astrid, who do you envision replacing the DNC politicos with?
Willy
Oakchair, how do you propose replacing fraudster drug corporations?
Hugh
Nice to see all the rats come out of the woodwork. Your silence, denial, complicity in the deaths of so many, that doesn’t bother you a bit. Even when I remind you of them, all you can do is treat them as a minor talking point. Pathetic.
Astrid
Willy,
Something else. What Jimmy Dore advocate might be a start. Vote for the best available alternative in your local primaries. Give money and time to alternatives. Vote for the non incumbent in every election until you end up with someone who you can stomach having an adult beverage with. Advocate for non-interventionism and isolationism and nuclear nonproliferation, to give other countries and future generations a fighting chance.
These are all low probability shots. The system is rigged against positive change and it’s very late in the day. It’s likely that nothing anywhere (not China, not Russia, not blessed Cuba, not splendid New Zealand with its springloaded megafaults and volcanoes) will prevent a catastrophic global collapse. But better to try to resist and build something better, than double down on what had failed is for 50 years.
NL
Willy
Oakchair, how do you propose replacing fraudster drug corporations?
We don’t, we live with them like with the virus… reforms are impossible, as I opined here on a different thread.
Astrid
Ah, Hugh’s “respect” in display. And for once he is right, I would certainly prefer to be identified as a tough adaptable rodent than whatever Hugh identifies himself as.
Jason
What is the point in vaccinating an entire population with a completely non-sterilizing vaccine? The vaccines should be used to treat the most vulnerable: the aged, obese, diabetic, immunocompromised for whatever reason, etc. But…
It looks more and more like those who were warning about ADE risks from the start have been right all along. Yet…
As metamars noted above, even Dr. Robert Malone – who I believe called for a halt to the vaccination program, based on both the lack of long-term data on mRNA as well as the risk of ADE- has nevertheless maintained that the vaccines should be used where necessary.
This is the most prudent course of action vis a vis vaccines, in my humble opinion.
Jason
Below are some excerpts from an article on ADE in Nature, published September of last year. I’ve highlighted some pertinent parts.
Abstract
Antibody-based drugs and vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are being expedited through preclinical and clinical development. Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Previous respiratory syncytial virus and dengue virus vaccine studies revealed human clinical safety risks related to ADE, resulting in failed vaccine trials. Here, we describe key ADE mechanisms and discuss mitigation strategies for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies in development. We also outline recently published data to evaluate the risks and opportunities for antibody-based protection against SARS-CoV-2.
Conclusion
ADE has been observed in SARS, MERS and other human respiratory virus infections including RSV and measles, which suggests a real risk of ADE for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antibody-based interventions. However, clinical data has not yet fully established a role for ADE in human COVID-19 pathology. Steps to reduce the risks of ADE from immunotherapies include the induction or delivery of high doses of potent neutralizing antibodies, rather than lower concentrations of non-neutralizing antibodies that would be more likely to cause ADE.
Going forward, it will be crucial to evaluate animal and clinical datasets for signs of ADE, and to balance ADE-related safety risks against intervention efficacy if clinical ADE is observed. Ongoing animal and human clinical studies will provide important insights into the mechanisms of ADE in COVID-19. Such evidence is sorely needed to ensure product safety in the large-scale medical interventions that are likely required to reduce the global burden of COVID-19.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5
The highlighted parts are the experiment being conducted now. This is what many people don’t understand. There is a reason these evaluations normally take place over a period of years. Clinical data continues to pour in, and it frankly does not look good.
I imagine the psychology behind the anger that erupts in many – simply by virtue of mentioning elementary facts – is that they know on some level they are in fact part of an ongoing experiment. And even if it’s made okay in their minds as being necessary for the public good, there is nevertheless a tremendous fear of the unknown.
But then who the hell wants to be psychoanalyzed.
Jason
The part under the link (my all-important commentary) is obviously not supposed to be in italics. Sorry. Looks bad.
Oakchair
Anyone else see the irony in Hugh calling people rats because they don’t want to be mindless test subjects for a drug corporation that has committed fraud and killed people because of it?
Hugh in 1950, “9 out of 10 doctors smoke camels. A 2 month study from Marlboro showed tobacco is safe and has tons of benefits. You’re a rat for not bowing to Tobacco.”
Willy
Jimmy Dore, like practically all professional opiners from the political realm, has gotten his shots. He claimed some side effect issues but I’ve never heard him tell people to not get their shots. Side effects should be noted and counted, of course, but personally, I’d rather have any of the noted vaccine side effects over a bad case of covid any day.
Maybe Jimmy Dore offers low probability shots because the system is rigged against positive change and it’s very late in the day? Attacking fellow progs over nonsense isn’t much of an answer. I saw him on Rogan, wasn’t impressed. Then I saw Vaush’s parsing of that interview and was even less impressed. But at least Jimmy’s there.
Astrid
If the “fellow progressives” spend all their time apologizing for Biden and Pelosi, and can’t even bother to properly support the M4A marches that happened this weekend, then they deserve to be critized and electorally defeated. This includes Bernie Sanders, Jayapal, Omar, and Tlaib. The occasional progressive sounding tweet changes nothing. They’re worthless and need to be exposed as such. If they want to stop getting criticized from the left, then they need to do their damn job and uphold their campaign promises.
Astrid
Willy,
If you and Hugh and all those Trump hating Democrats with the “Hate has no place…” yard signs actually cared about increasing vaccinations, the federal government could offer $250 gift cards (given immediately after the second shot), mandate employers to provide up to 5 days of leave for adverse vaccine effects (allow employer to claim it as a credit in their corporate taxes if you like), and allow people with more adverse effects to qualify for compensation as they would for adverse effects to actually mandatory vaccinations. This would give people confidence that the federal government is actually interested in protecting them if something goes wrong and will compensate them for doing their part in trying to contain a public health crisis.
None of you mentioned this. You’re all happy to shame and blame stupid “others” for not letting you go back to your normal, nevermind that evidence is showing that even 100% vaccination won’t get us back to normal. You and Hugh harp on casualties caused by a terrible public health policy advanced by national politicians, including ones that you shame the rest of us for not voting for, as though we who don’t support them are the ones responsible for the predicament that we’re in.
You’re a lot better than Hugh and Plague Species, but you can’t seem to get past that we’re no longer in 5th grade and punching a bully a couple times won’t make everything right in the world again. Terrible people like your BiL have won and the rest of us (and eventually him) are paying the price. But feel free to punch him in the face next time if it makes you feel better. Heck, it might even momentarily make me feel better.
Willy
you can’t seem to get past that we’re no longer in 5th grade and punching a bully a couple times won’t make everything right in the world again.
Self-awareness is a good thing, Astrid. You do realize that your buddy S. Brennan used to accuse me of all manner of nonsense as well every chance he got, just because I didn’t worship Trump? And you called me the bully. Would you like me to review all the times you yourself have tried to punch people you disagreed with? Happens more than you seem to know.
Actually, I hate Trumps lies, personality, narcissism, insurrection, incompetence and grifts. But not his quasi-achievements, like Operation Warp Speed:
I’m all in favor of the vaccine. It’s one of the great achievements, a true miracle, and not only for the United States. We’re saving tens of millions of lives throughout the world. We’re saving entire countries. DJ Trump
I’m not a Democrat. And I don’t think everything Trump did was hateful. And since I hate as well as anybody, no yard signs.
$250 gift cards
Think it’ll pass, even with Trump’s endorsement?
The odds of M4A becoming an actual reality anytime soon are even less than climate change becoming the centerpiece of a multi trillion dollar infrastructure bill. Far less. Sorry to sound all ‘Obama political realities’ and all, but a public option seems more realistic, and I’d be very happy to see such as a stepping stone towards M4A. You can boil that down to my being a total Obama supporter if your brain starts to smoke, but I wasn’t one of those either.
Willy
You do realize that growing numbers of progs are trying to figure out if Jimmy Dore is either evil, or just plain stupid? He might want to tighten up his game a bit.
someofparts
Astrid –
“If the “fellow progressives” spend all their time apologizing for Biden and Pelosi, and can’t even bother to properly support the M4A marches that happened this weekend, then they deserve to be critized and electorally defeated.”
That is pretty much what seems to be happening. I think they expect to lose their Congressional majorities in the mid-terms and I will be surprised if they hang on to the Presidency.
metamars
Dr. Mobeen Syed interviews Dr. Darrell DeMello for 1 1/2 hours on the nuances of treating and prophylaxing patients for covid, and talk about “vaccine” only occurs for about 1 minute.
See “Dr. Darrell DeMello Discusses COVID Outpatient Management” on youtube, on the “Drbeen Medical Lectures” – still not censored on youtube at 2:30 am EST, Aug 2!
By way of contrast, a clip from CNN called “Ex-Fox reporter reveals why Tucker Carlson is lying about vaccines” starts out with a 20 seconds clip of Tucker Carlson asking why vaccine takers are being asked to wear masks, if the vaccines are effective, suggesting that the vaccines may not work.
In my reality, the vaccines are hugely problematic, potentially catastrophic, and generally unnecessary given their lack of vetting and the availability of therapeutics and prophylactics; though there is short term benefit, at least for adults. They are not sterilizing vaccines, and (following Malone, and data out of places like Israel) will start failing (Pfizer) after about 6 months (requiring boosters); and furthermore lead to a possible nightmare scenario of ADE. (I think it’s fair to say that we are just at the beginning of the ADE phenomenon.)
Tucker Carlson isn’t known for his deep dives into drug treatments; or even as something as simple as Vitamin D. Furthermore, his comments casting shade on vaccines are simplistic, which is only partly justified given his format (when does he do deep dives into anything? ditto CNN) and the general dumbed down nature of American TV audiences.
As for CNN, they are farther from the truth than Tucker Carlson. And no, the fact that their concern troll interviewee is formerly from Fox doesn’t make his ‘helpful analysis’ as Tucker being all about the money any more credible. Tucker Carlson has interviewed Dr. Robert Malone in the recent past. I don’t think it will be the last time.
When I duckduckgo “CNN interviews Robert Malone”, I get no promising hits, based on the 1st page summaries. However, when I click on what looks like the most promising hit, viz, “Dr. Robert Malone Interview – Inventor Of mRNA Technology Censored For Speaking Out On Vaccine Risks”, I find Malone saying the following, at the 16:22 mark
16:10
i find it stunning and i find it
16:14
stunning that the only media that’s
16:16
reaching out to me
16:17
almost exclusively is conservative media
16:21
and so i find myself on you know back
16:24
in and tucker and in these things
16:28
and i gotta tell you the last time i had
16:29
the call with my buddies at the fda
16:31
one of them was just limit he was like
16:34
how could you possibly be going on
16:37
tucker carlson
16:38
all tucker wants to do is destroy the
16:40
administration and he just went on and
16:41
on and on
16:42
and i’m like these are the only guys
16:45
that want to talk
16:48
the other ones want to talk to me let’s
I assume he meant that the “other guys” only want to talk at him.
So, it’s pretty clear the CNN concern trolls are complete asses, who, in fact, are killing Americans by duping them into diverting attention away from drug treatments, and furthermore into believing that mass vaccinations (with the current crop of vaccines) are somehow necessary. While the trio of concern trolls may, in fact, be ignorant of drug options, their apparent ignorance is being reinforced by their salaries. I.e., their motivation for doing what they do, and not educating themselves, is financial.
Or, they know the truth, and choose to lie through their teeth.
Hence, their level of hypocrisy is stunning. I don’t understand how such people can live with themselves. Why don’t they feel sick, every time they look at themselves in a mirror?
Astrid
Willy,
Dore and the tiny actual left in this country realize that Democrats and “progressives”never tried. The “Progressives” just kept apologizing for inaction and evil on the right and keeps punching left. Compared to the evil that will never be anything other than evil, trying anything else, no matter the low probability of success, is less stupid.
And I’m not the one who keeps bragging on how Trump is like 5th grade bully that he beat up and how terrible his MAGA rich BiL is. You’re the one who fixate on it so much you’re overlooking the Democrats robbing us blind on their “infrastructure” bill and doing nothing for the most popular idea in a generation. If they can’t successfully pass it, then they’re absolutely evil or incompetent. They like to pretend it’s incompetence but I think their consistently horrible anti people record points toward evil.
Meanwhile, you probably agree with the washed up hack Keith Olbermann that Dore should be censured for doing actual journalism and activism. Look in the mirror, you’re the evil one here.
Jason
metamars,
The same thing happened to Dr Pierre Kory. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul were the only congress critters who would agree to hear his testimony before Congress. No Democrats would engage with him. He later revealed that he has always been a democrat and he doesn’t agree with most of Johnson or Paul’s politics. He then said the most important thing: He didn’t say anything about his politics at the time – and he won’t going forward – BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MATTER, or at least it’s not supposed to.
metamars
I didn’t know the extent of lack of (overt?) Republican support for Kory, but that’s pretty disgusting if only 2 congress critters supported Kory. BTW, Democrats actually walked out of Kory’s testimony.
I am going to try to put my re-imagined Voter’s Revenge app out to bid, this week, after I spec it out. I just can’t take time to work on it. It’s for both left and right populists. A “posse” can exert political pressure over any issue (at least in a mature version); but initial version could or should include an issue or issues related to medical tyranny. Especially medical tyranny that makes no sense, at all, from a medical perspective, even if bureaucrats SAY that they are “following the science”.
I still see a gross imbalance between the whining that does occur, and the organizing and “action, action, action”* which should occur, in commentary sections in right wing media. It’s probably the same in left wing media.
At least there are reputable reform organizations on left and right, at least one of which is surely getting traction. One the right, the Precinct Project (precinctstrategy.com) is all about getting populists into positions of (non-official office holding) power inside the Republican Party. More on the left, I think (though should be supported by everybody) is Naomi Wolf’s organization, dailyclout.io. I actually don’t know how effective it’s been; giving it a quick eyeball, it doesn’t seem to boast of any victories (unlike Pam Popper’s legal and organization efforts, working against the medical tyranny). My sense of things, though, is that a Pam Popper’ian strategy could more quickly gain adherents and thus, strength, though dailyclout.io.
I supported the Justice Democrats, even on right wing outlets, but as a Jimmy Dore fan, I can’t support them in good faith, anymore. So, dailyclout.io is the best that I can do, even short of a track record. At least Wolf’s intentions and honesty are impeccable; and she can evolve her organization in a more effective direction, perhaps as she, herself, evolves.
Left leaners should also check out teachings of Benjamin Yee, a Democratic reformer from NY. From him, I found out that NYC borough Democratic Parties used to hide their meeting locations from other Democrats, to maintain their old boy’s club collective control.
I think both left and right leaners should support 3rd parties, but mostly as an alternative vehicle to cast protest votes, and bring about losses of incumbents, in general elections. The emphasis should be on their respective bases taking over the Democratic or Republican party apparatuses.
On the right, there’s also a relatively large (I think 45K +) group of activists working for election audits in all 50 states. The Republican activist base isn’t having it; and they’re just as angry at Republicans who betrayed them as they are at Democrats. I don’t remember the name of the principal, but I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten segments on Warroom Pandemic within the last 3 weeks.
* “action, action, action” is a favorite saying of Steve Bannon
Willy
Look in the mirror, you’re the evil one here.
Who the hell are you to judge? You can’t even read my stories right. You completely missed the point about my BIL. He’s actually in person, a very nice guy. Born and raised from very nice wholesome decent working class Christian people. It’s the culture he’s immersed in is that all fucked up. He’s oblivious to his behaviors because he’s all about traditional values, whatever the PTB tell him they should be.
When a handful of sociopathic libertarians at the top own his traditional values, able to successfully tell everyone how they must be, how they must think, what constitutes actual “success”, then traditional behaviors become fucked up and totally rationalized.
Get it yet?
The handful of sociopathic libertarians also own your “progressives”, who then themselves, buy fancy new homes in leafy parts of Studio City. They regularly attack AOC as being insufficient, oblivious to the fact that she has to work every day surrounded by people who measure their success not by any integrity towards their constituency, but by their own wealth.
Unlike you, I worked immersed in a culture like that. Nobody around me cared about my integrity, in our company in a competitive business which we all gained sustenance from. All they cared about was their own connections, their own status within that business. In our current culture, integrity is a fools game.
You yourself, introduced yourself here as being “successful” within that context, while attacking fellow progressives who I see as having much higher integrity than you. You like Dore, are in no position to judge anybody.
Astrid
Willy,
I’ve given up being a “progressive” years ago. The movement failed me and millions of others, enough times and in terrible enough ways, that I know they’re incapable of doing better. I don’t owe you or them anything. Neither do millions of others who woke up to this and decided to pitch out gaslighting old garbage.
As for your BiL. By your own admission he destroyed a once great clinic for his personal gain. The facts are bad. Your narratives go round and round on the same few stories, I’m just repeating them back to you.
I’ll go on trusting and supporting Dore until I catch him lying about something important. If he does, he’ll be as worthless as Democrats and your BiL.
Astrid
Dore isn’t the one peddling the There Is No Alternative narrative that tells me I have to suck up lies and inaction. You are. Hugh is.
You could do something, however small, to support positive change. Instead you rather wallow in your morally bankrupt cul-de-sac and name call anybody who doesn’t buy into Uniparty consensus of more wars, more sanctions, more corporate giveaways, and sorry no money for M4A/$15 minimum wage/student loan debt relief/stop prosecuting Assange…
Jason
Maybe I wasn’t so mean to Willy after all. Upon reflection, I felt bad about what I wrote. Now, reading Astrid, she’s making the same point I made.
Sorry. I’m such a waste of column space.
different clue
As much as Astrid has written about other commenters here, she shouldn’t mind being written about in turn. That would be hypocritical and she would never be hypocritical. She calls out hypocrisy in others and she keeps reminding us about it to be sure we know.
I first got a funny feeling about ‘Astrid’ from a comment under the ‘Astrid’ name in the “Canadian economy under U S hegemony and neo-liberalism” thread. While most of Astrid’s comments are written in American English, this comment seems more like English-as-a-second-language used by a highly fluent Chinese speaker/writer of English. “You linked to an Obama produced hit piece on China, so it really no more valuable than MSM coverage on China. Even if all the conditions in that factory is exactly as described. . ” I see two “Chinese accent” mismatches in the grammar there . . . “so it( sic) really no more valuable” . . . and “Even if all the conditions in that factory is(sic) as described” . . . “their(sic) looking out for themselves” . . . “But the Chinese state appear(sic) capable of” . . . was this comment written by Astrid or by a Chinese hasbarist borrowing the Astrid name? That stylistic anomaly caught my attention.
A film about some Chinese factory re-openers in Ohio was being discussed. ‘Astrid’ offered a fast Gish gallop of reasons to disregard the film. Its an Obama hit piece or . . . even if factory is as described ( implying it isn’t but not daring to openly say so) China is too big and we are too dumm to understand, and one film is too snapshot to convey information and etc. and so forth and so on.
Astrid likes to accuse others of harassment and bullying and namecalling, even while harassing and bullying and namecalling other commenters multiple times. She wonders why Hugh “keeps showing up” after she has smacked him down. This is the language of bullying and abuse, and makes me wonder if she is a violent bullying abuser in real life. It is also transparent projection on her part.
She has also stated her wish that certain commenters disappear, revealing her desire to exert power over others and determine who gets to comment here. She will keep discovering that she has no such power, of course.,
She has a bag of tricks, traps, tropes and triggers which she sometimes resorts to using on other commenters in hopes of triggering them into reacting to her on her terms. For example, she will use personal insults to try and get people to engage with her various velcro decoy tarbabies which she mounts by the side of the road to try and get attention with. For example . . . “And if I link your provided info to ETIM, I think I’m well within my right to call you a terrorist supporter. . .” That is an insult-based accusation designed to trigger an emotional reaction. She clearly wants attention from people and will use classical troll methods to try getting it.
Life is too short to hunt for other illustrations of Astrid’s inner self on display in order to quote them here, but they exist in her comments. Fellow commenters might want to consider the possibility that she is merely seeking the attention-high of provoking an emotional reaction response, and they might want to step back and analyse the Astrid and its apparent psychological motivations before committing time and energy to engaging with it.
As another example of her projection, she accuses Hugh multiple times of “White man’s burden” complex and etc., and yet when commenter Aniibishan explains to her from his position of genuine actual knowledge what the relative severity of Indian conditions is in America versus Canada, she immediately patronises him with a White Superior Knowledge attitude and begins Whitesplaining to him about what the facts of Indian existence in America are. Transparent projection on display once again.
She also parades her self-assumed moral superiority by bragging about how ashamed she is of being a “USian”. The Amish call this “pride in humility”.
Astrid
DC,
Yup. When you can’t argue on facts, start pounding the table and slinging mud at the other side.
If you can’t comprehended imperialism and racism of the terminal capitalist USian regime that Hugh advocates for, that says a lot more about your mental limitations than mine. The very fact that your paranoid about my racial origins as being something other than what I represent them to be, as if it would change the validity of my arguments in anyway, says something about YOUR racism.
Anyhow. Thank you for your interest in my comment. I am always happy to hear from you. Please let me know if you have any other concerns.
NR
Thomas is back with his usual lies I see. There is ample data on the mRNA vaccines showing that not only do they not make outcomes worse, they in fact work very well. At this point I don’t think Thomas even knows how to tell the truth about anything.
metamars
Chris Martenson, @ the Peak Prosperity youtube channel, has a new video “Pfizer Jab: Here’s what you need to know!” I listened to about 5 minutes of it. The gist I got is that Pfizer is protective against death.
From other sources I’ve discussed, the Pfizer starts to lose it’s potency at the 6-8 month mark. My guess is that without boosters, it’ll be useless in 11 months. Keep your eye on the Israeli data; and also Iceland, and other early, aggressive vaccinating countries.
As per mRNA vaccine technology creator, Dr. Robert Malone, signs of ADE have started to appear. Malone says we cannot vaccinate our way into herd immunity, against covid, at least with the current crop of vaccines. Trying to do so favors ADE, which is potentially catastrophic.
In this vein, here is quote from a recent nakedcapitalism contributor, in the “Links 7/24/2021” diary:
IM Doc
July 24, 2021 at 8:18 am
About the French Guyana paper from the CDC
This is how science – the actual process – not the Fauci version – should be working.
I have repeatedly stated that I am seeing much much more vaccinated positives than one would ever have expected. As I have stated, they seem to be much sicker (though not critically so) and they tend to happen in clusters. For the past two months, this has stuck out from the dominant media narrative. I have never had to fight the cognitive dissonance between the media and my own eyeballs in my life.
I belong to a large non-public alumni group of my residency program that has literally thousands of IM docs all over America. The first thing a scientist does is to confirm that your observations are general or something you are just seeing. It was quickly obvious from that group that I was far from alone despite the “minimal breakthrough cases” media narrative.
So, then you do everything you can to hypothesize reasons why you are seeing what you are. I have been a physician for 30 years and that experience plays a huge role as well. Having this gigantic number of breakthrough cases just simply does not happen. I continue to see more than half the cases in vaccinated patients and so do many others. UNHEARD OF IN VACCINES BEFORE NOW.
Part of hypothesizing why is looking to the literature for evidence. Seldom is this found in RCT at this stage. Case reports and series like this paper are critical. They are seeing the same breakthrough ratio. And they have done a lot more viral research than you can. This is a gold mine for my own questions.
Is there anything in the paper that could possibly explain what I am seeing. Lots of times, it is not in the headline part but in all the test results and discussion. And yes, there is a very important finding deep in the results.
Why would clustering and sicker patients be so much more common in the breakthrough patients – there must be a reason for that?
If you look at the brief discussion of cT or cycle threshold you will see that the vaccinated patients have a SIGNIFICANTLY lower cT than the unvaccinated. That is the way the PCR test works. It basically means the vaccinated have a much higher amount of viral active particles than the unvaccinated. That would account for the breakthroughs I and my colleagues are seeing being a bit more ill. And it would explain the clustering. THe vaccinated breakthroughs have much higher viral load so they are much more contagious and the higher viral load makes them more symptomatic.
So we now have a suggestion and strong evidence that the vaccinated population may be spreading much more virus than the unvaccinated. I would say that is a critical public health issue and must be further researched immediately.
This Certainly needs much more work. THis is not confirmatory of any conclusions. But it is consistent with observation on the ground – unlike most of what the media has been spewing to the American people. But this is how science works. This paper is about the gamma variant but a conference yesterday with experts discussed that similar findings were being found in delta and lambda. The suggestion in this paper is now on the front of my mind. I am even now thinking of ways to confirm or falsify these conclusions going forward. This is science.
Another issue. The writers make the point that the breakthrough rate is extremely divergent from the expected rate. The difference is this paper documents what is happening in REAL LIFE. So much of what we are hearing on our media about vaccine efficacy is research being done in vitro. It is presented as gospel truth. I just want to scream.
I am doing great and thanks for all the kind words. More about my week later. The commenters here are the best in the internet and I so appreciate my time here.
Also, I’ve posted a calculation – twice – suggesting that if we extrapolate American CDC whistleblower data regarding deaths from the vaccines, themselves, onto Israel, and add that to recent vaccinated deaths from covid, the vaccinated deaths exceed the unvaccinated covid deaths, by a very slight amount.
I’m thinking: this is a no-brainer, that general vaccination is not worth it. Better to follow Malone’s advice and just do selective targeting of vaccination candidates (e.g., immuno-suppressed), together with prophylactic and therapeutic drugs, and stop BEGGING for the development of catastrophic ADE.
Ah, but that’s just me.
Jason
metamars, thank you for posting the IM Doc comment. Another of his that bears watching:
“I know nothing about this county. But this is exactly the kind of data that will need to be really evaluated.
I would like to point out something very important though. They report the collection time was from JUL 12-25.
If this county is anything like my own, the reason there are so many more unvaccinated samples in the cohort is not because “they are more at risk of getting COVID”. That may be the case – but we can not know that in my county because no one was even acknowledging these breakthrough cases at all. That did not even begin in earnest until about JULY 25th or so.
Since that time, there has been a marked change in that process. Every single positive, vaccinated or not, is now being thoroughly evaluated. The datasets in huge swaths of this country are completely worthless for case counting from mid May until about last week because of this.
I do not know if that is the case for your county. They may have not been following guidance from the CDC and actually counting the cases.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/links-8-1-2021.html#comment-3582908
I suspect this is in fact the case for the vast majority of the country. The datasets – sans the “breakthrough cases” which weren’t being counted – are essentially meaningless.
The datasets from the end of July going forward – provided they keep an at least somewhat honest, accurate count – will be more useful.
But the virus is way ahead of the silly datasets we rely on in hindsight.
different clue
@Astrid,
You remind me of certain fellow little-kids I remember from elementary school . . . the teachers pets and the tattletales and such. Did you become a hall monitor? Did you enjoy reporting other kids to the principal for this and that?
Did you used to eat your boogers when you were a little girl? You strike me as the type who did.
Anyway, thank you for your interest in my comment. I am always happy to hear from you. Please let me know if you have any other concerns.
Astrid
Classy!
different clue
As befits the subject.