The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Open Thread

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Previous

Palestinian Deaths In the Gaza Conflict Are Probably Close To Half A Million

Next

Culture War Outrage BS At The Olympics

30 Comments

  1. “A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm’s got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.” ― Malcolm X

    “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Dune

    “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”― Malcolm X

    “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. –Albert Einstein
    ——-

    In 2022 there was a retrospective survey in Israel of those who received the Covid vaccine and who had not yet caught Covid.
    The survey found:
    6%, 7%, 9%, 5%, 26%, and 24% of Covid vaccine recipients experienced a worsening of hypertension, lung disease, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety and autoimmune diseases.
    44% had difficulty performing daily activities because of side effects.
    4.5% reported suffering at least one neurological side effect such as Bell’s Palsy, loss of consciousness, seizures, clinical memory impairment etc.
    Depending on the adverse event and excluding local adverse events 13%-47% of people’s adverse events became long term problems.
    3% developed an autoimmune disease

    After lawsuits some CDC V-Safe data was released. The CDC’s V-safe data showed the Covid vaccine caused 8% of people to require medical care on average of 2.7 times.
    For every 5 vaccines given they caused 1 person to need necessary medical care.

    There have been several studies from South Korea from researchers who have compared changes in diseases and adverse events between vaccinated and unvaccinated people before and after vaccination.
    Here is a summary of some of those findings:
    Covid vaccination was associated with increased rates of:
    Tinnitus 20%-102%
    Alopecia 125%-274%
    Shingles 87%-212%
    Menstrual disorder 35%-186%
    Visual impairment 183%-573%
    vitiligo (autoimmune disease) 174%
    Depression 68%
    Anxiety 44%
    Sleep disorders 93%

    Another study compared unvaccinated and vaccinated people who were 65 years or older.
    The study looked at rates of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s and how they changed before Covid vaccination and after. Over time the Covid vaccination group experienced a progressively increasing rate of cognitive impairment and dementia.
    At 3 months Covid vaccine recipients had 23% and 138% higher rates of Alzheimer’s and Mild cognitive impairment respectively.

    Three mechanisms of action for how this happens has been shown experimentally these are:
    Blood clots
    protein misfolding
    Mitochondria dysfunction

    https://substack.com/home/post/p-145790424

    ——-

    “If silence seems to give approval, then remaining silent is cowardly.” –Eleanor Roosevelt

    “What you don’t do can be a destructive force.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

    “They are not mad. They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”― Dune

  2. someofparts

    Great young labor reporter. The longer I follow this guy the better I like his work.

    https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/

  3. Bill H.

    At 3 months Covid vaccine recipients had 138% higher rates of Mild cognitive impairment .”

    That’s not an informative method of reporting, and there’s a lot of it used in the post. It does not indicate what was the risk of incurring the impairment. If there were 12 impairments without vaccine and 24 impairments in 10,000 vaccinated, then there was a 100% increase in the impairment among the vaccinated, but only 0.06% risk of having the impairment due to vaccination.

  4. Willy

    Speaking of selling the evils of vaccinations, by using the strategy of persuading folks that they’re all just a bunch of mindless automatons incapable of thinking for themselves, I think of Operation Warp Speed. I then think of Trump saying something like “that played well before, but we don’t think about that anymore now do we?”

    I then think of our “radical leftists” for Trump, which makes me think of that group of blacks who tried joining the KKK. Did they do so in protest because WEB DuBois had just a bit too much whitey in him? Or he was WEB seen as capitulating too much to the racism aimed at blacks, and so needed to be taught a protest lesson?

    I wonder what happened to those guys. Still laying low after figuring out theirs might not have been the best strategy? Vanished into heaven after being raptured? Or were they just whities in blackface?

    Discuss. Lest I use my voodoo magic and turn you all into vaccinated zombies.

  5. Geoffrey Dewan

    For example, the above article claimed 0.8-1.0% of vaccine recipients required medical care, whereas the raw V-safe data show 7.7% did—on average 2.7 times, which meant that every 4.8 vaccinations caused one medical visit.

    I cannot understand what this is saying: “on average 2.7 times” Of what?

    I don’t see how “7.7% did” means “4.8 vaccinations caused one medical visit.”

    As my grade school math teacher used to say, “Show your work.”

    Can someone explain this to me?

  6. Curt Kastens

    In case you missed this. The title is, The Man Who Accidently Killed the Most People.

    I have an issue with that title. Because if you pay attention to this video you will learn that the people involved with promoting this product were not unaware that they were pedeling poison. The deaths of the people due to lead poisoning was clearly no accident. And the scientist most responsible clearly had more than enough help or at least knowledgable non resistence from the leadership of major govonoring institutions to make plenty of blame to go around.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA

  7. mago

    No matter where one places oneself on the political spectrum or whatever identity one may adopt, or inherit or have ascribed to oneself, there’s no furtherance in this Trump vs Harris emotional debate.
    Let’s get real. To quote once again lyrics from Mrs Robinson, anyway you look at it you lose. Woo woo woo Willy. Don’t know what you’re saying but keep your voodoo going and your mojo working.
    Suerte as they say down south.

  8. @ Geoffrey Dewan
    show 7.7% did—on average 2.7 times, which meant that every 4.8 vaccinations caused one medical visit.

    For example being hospitalized would count as 1 time. Being hospitalized twice counts as 2 times. So each person in the 8% who required medical care required it 2.7 different times.
    8% x 2.7 = 21.6%.
    20% is 1/5.
    Every 5 vaccinations caused 1 case of requiring medical care.

    @Bill
    That is an great point.
    The study did provide the absolute risk which was:
    55 people out of 100,000 were inflicted with MCI.
    30 people out of 100,000 were inflicted with dementia.
    The relative and absolute risk increased overtime.
    This increased risk was of the initial round of vaccinations. It does not include the harm caused by the 1st booster, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, etc.

  9. Dan Kelly

    Speaking of selling the evils of vaccinations, by using the strategy of persuading folks that they’re all just a bunch of mindless automatons incapable of thinking for themselves:

    Covid Vaccine Madness beginning Winter 2020/2021:

    https://invidious.jing.rocks/watch?v=zI3yU5Z2adI

    Summer 2022: OECD Members Just Met in Ibiza to Discuss Creating a Global Vaccine Passport Regime (one of many such meetings

    African oountries just quietly embraced vaccine passports

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/07/21-african-countries-just-quietly-embraced-vaccine-passports.html

    There were more adverse events reported via the seldom-used VAERS system in the US than with all previous vaccines combined. If this were treated like drugs/vaccines were treated prior to complete and unfettered regulatory capture of the industry….say, like in the 80’s or even the 90’s – this ‘vaccine’ would have been pulled immediately.

    There were more deaths in the Pfizer vaccine group than in the control group, It’s unheard of – and very, very criminal – that these shots were ever allowed past that stage.

    Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial (from the bmj)

    https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=RaLxhFiOBYk

    https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=THv33zWykJc

    Remember, these shots were developed, manufactured and sold by private corporations. The development actually occurred under the DOD and its assorted appendages and was then pushed out to industry for profit. All under an EUA which shields companies from any and all liability to this day.

    The criminal Pfizer entity should have been broken up years ago. Vioxx alone should have ended that corporation and sent its CEO and major shareholders to jail. And there were many more egregious felonies committed by Pfizer prior to its sudden hero status due to its manufacture and sale of mRNA concoctions under the tutelage, and with the financial blessing, of the US government – its Department of War specifically.

    Moderna (ModeRNA) was nearly bankrupt because in over a decade of existence it never produced any drugs safe enough for human consumption. Really. Then Trump appoints Moderna’s Moncef Slaoui to Operation Warp Speed in Spring 2020. He’s on board with the plan to vaccinate the entire population.

    The British Medical Journal is one of the few Western publications not entirely destroyed by money. It’s senior editor, Peter Doshi, was very concerned with mRNA shots being called vaccines. He was also quite concerned with the fact that the shots were raising all manner of red flags or ‘signals’ as they call them in the field, not to mention the fact that the efficacy numbers used to approve them were a joke – though a not uncommon one as IM DOC as attested to over at NakedCapitalism.

    The by now completely fraudulent drug approval process and the criminal marketing process are outlined in eminently readable books such as Generation Rx by Greg Critser, White Coat, Black Hat by Carl Elliot, and Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan /Watters, the latter focusing primarily on the horrors of psychiatric drugs – which I have experienced myself.

    Peter Doshi of the bmj on ‘vaccine’ injuries:

    https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=5niH63Z9_tg

    https://odysee.com/@JWild:6/Peter-Doshi-BMJ:d

    Books on pharma and medical fraud in the US:

    https://annas-archive.org/md5/b19105cf0c9f22c14e48a907a2216194

    https://annas-archive.org/md5/0907119946b05cd70bcec759231a3903

    https://annas-archive.org/md5/30ef148d7e05f181cd0ba751feed7ada

  10. Bill H.

    Big difference between “138% increase in the rate of” and “55 people out of 100,000,” which is 0.055%.

    The risk, however is real, and there were so many lies told about the vaccine that I steadfastly refused to allow myself to be jabbed. I do not regret that decision.

  11. Tallifer

    South Korea with 50 million people had far fewer deaths than Canada with 38 million people from the corna virus in 2021 due to diligent tracking and quarantine as well as a conscientious and communally-minded population which for the most part gladly wore masks and practiced safe practices regarding testing, distance and gatherings.

    However in 2022 Canadians started to get vaccinated, and the rate of Canadians dying and being hospitalized decreased dramatically. In the meantime, South Korea was unable to receive vaccines quickly enough, and the rate of deaths and hospitalizations soared (although from a very low base rate, since they had followed the accepted science all along).

    (Speaking anecdotally, I was in Korea in 2021 and our schools and businesses were open because of safe practice. When I returned to Canada, there were regional lock-downs, closed schools and tragedy. When vaccines rolled out however, the situation was reversed (except for the holdouts who continued to die, often tragically young)

  12. Covid was widespread and world wide by the end of 2019.
    The Covid vaccination program began in December 2020.
    Here is excess mortality rates for South Korea:
    2020: 1.02
    2021: 1.06 (Vaccine)
    2022: 1.24
    https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-16546-2

    Here is the excess mortality rate for Canada
    2020: 5.7%
    2021: 7.5% (Vaccine)
    2022: 13.5%
    https://www.clubvita.net/assets/images/general/2310_Canada-excess-mortality-conundrum.pdf

    Around half of countries had no increased mortality until they began Covid vaccinations.
    Every 800 Covid vaccinations was associated with 1 additional death.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccine-rollouts-all-cause-mortality/

    Another study found the same thing and also found that Covid vaccinations increased Covid infections.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356248984_Worldwide_Bayesian_Causal_Impact_Analysis_of_Vaccine_Administration_on_Deaths_and_Cases_Associated_with_COVID-19_A_BigData_Analysis_of_145_Countries

    The highest quality study on the topic found that compared to the non-vaccinated having 1, 2, 3, or 4 doses increased the chance of Covid infections by 1.91, 2.22, 2.69, and 2.94 respectively.
    https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofad209/7131292

  13. different clue

    I always referred to the mRNA “vaccines” as mRNA para-vaccinoids. And yet, given my age and chronic kidney disease and pre-morbid semibesity and so forth, I decided to go ahead and get a 2-course Moderna and then a single Pfizer booster. None since then.
    I did not perceive myself to have any bad effects from the para vaccinoids at the time, and am not aware of any lingering stealth-damage until today. ( But of course, if it is “stealth” damage, I wouldn’t be aware of it, now would I? Unless it manifests in the future as greater vulnerability to some disease or other).

    Very early in 2024 I started getting mildly sick very suddenly. My manager at work gave me a self-administered covid-test. It showed covid-barely-there. So I was sent home for 5 days. Mostly semi-sick the first 4 days, better on day 5, good enough to resume work on day 6. I am not aware of having any creeping stealth covidementia. But then, I wouldn’t be aware of it if I had it, now would I?

    No self-percieved covid otherwise, and no other tests came out positive. I continue to live my normal semi-shut-in existence as from before the covid, plus I usually shun large dense-packed gatherings of people. And I wear a low-grade surgical mask because I have not excercised the active diligence to get any proper N95. I have noticed that ever since covid I am getting extremely fewer colds-sore throats than what I got before covid. So the semi-widespread masking is having that effect, which is worth it to me right there. I read somewhere that the masking has been effective enough that one of the Big Famous strains of flu seems to have gone extinct while no one was looking.

  14. ChucMire

    Ten Great Public Health Achievements — United States, 1900–1999:

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm4812.pdf

    Note: I am over 81 years old and from a career, military family. I have received every vaccine that became available since childhood. “Youngsters” who are alive today are living longer statistically due to the results of vaccines. Many other factors resulting in death are correlated with poor diets, junk food, obesity, lack of exercise, etc. Look at the life expectancy tables from prehistory through the early 20th century :

    https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054

  15. Willy

    So the long-term effectiveness of our current big pharma covid vaccines is poor?

    I’d buy that. Corporate planned obsolescence of products is a well-known well-proven thing. And everybody knows that the power of big pharma is out of control.

    But I won’t buy that vaccination as an entire science, has always been a fail. I know far too many vaccinateds out here in meatspace reality who are quite healthy. And I’d prefer credible studies of control groups which separate out the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. Claiming that sickness rates increased after vaccination could simply be reflecting the inevitably increased dispersion, or all the unleashed lack of protections, or a wide variety of other spurious reasons.

  16. mago

    Interesting that our host usually disqualifies vax/anti vax as an open thread topic yet opened the floodgates this weekend.
    The RNA messenger delivery system is not a legitimate vaccine and was rushed through with only phase two testing, and at taxpayer expense no less.
    People wanted a silver bullet, a quick fix panacea amidst all the hype and fear.
    Everyone I know rushed to get jabbed and double boosted. I abstained despite strong ostracizing.
    I contracted the Delta strain and suffered while maintaining my daily routine, which lies far outside any conventional reckoning of a “routine”.
    Then the next strain came along—Omricon or whatever it was called—and all my vaccinated compañeros fell hard while I cruised.
    After my Delta bout some effects lingered, such as kidney aches and shortness of breath, but they passed after a bit.
    As for that notorious brain fog I’m laughing out loud. All that Covid demonstrated in that regard is how brain fogged and brainwashed people are with or without Covid.
    The problem here is the man behind the curtain and human gullibility.

  17. Ian Welsh

    When I don’t disqualify vax the open thread becomes dominated by it. So I do most times, but occasionally don’t. I think it’s worth discussing, just not every open theread.

  18. Carborundum

    Hezbollah strike on a football pitch on the Golan Saturday appears to have caused significant civilian casualties. Worth watching the response closely. Those killed were Druze meaning, cynically, that the Israelis have more latitude in their response (i.e., it will be more choice driven).

  19. Tallifer

    Change of topic:

    Who do you think is responsible for the attacks on the French TGV the day of the Olympics? One French minister says the far left; Israel says Iran; but I say Russia since who elsse has the expertise in espionage, desperate conflict with the West and lack of shame to do such? I await further factual revelations to reveal the whole story.

  20. different clue

    @Tallifer,

    I heard just recently that someone on the “Far Left” has been arrested. Still and all, one should always consider the possibility of a highly disgruntled former employee.

    @Carborundum,

    The news-theory I heard was that the missile-sender was aiming for a high-value Israeli military facility very near the soccer field and the missile hit the soccer field by mistake.

    A ” druze-ologist” at the American University of Beirut said the Golan Druze have been feeling very neglected and forgotten by the IsGov and are very very angry about this missile strike. To avoid deepening disgruntlement on their part, the IsGov will have to do something ” very significant”.

    In general, the Druze have spent centuries improving their knowledge of how to live on the grinding ice floes of regional empires-in-conflict politics.

  21. somecomputerguy

    @Curt Kastens

    The ‘accidental’ murderer, Thomas Midgley, the inventor of leaded gasoline, is one of history’s genuine monsters.

    But this was 1924, wreaking destruction while making yourself wealthy was practically mandatory. Enlisting the government to help you kill more people, likewise.

    If we are going to mention Midgley we have to mention Clair Patterson, one of history’s heros.

  22. Curt Kastens

    @SomeComputerGuy,
    You Betcha, that he was. In fact I think the United States should abolish either Memorial Day or Veterans Day or Columbus Day as a Federal Holiday and have a Federal Holiday in honor of Clair Patterson instead. He single handedly has done more to protect the American People than all the US political office holders and members of the US military in all of US history combined, if you exclude Abraham Lincoln.
    Clair Patterson deserves to be placed upon a pedestal between the Americans Thomas Paine, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

  23. Curt Kastens

    Was Franklin Roosevelt as great as Abe? Not even close. At a minimum, Roosevelt manuvered to get the US involved in WW2. Even worse I think any historian has to consider the American and UK leadership actually conspired to bring about WW2 in a way that would lead to a German attack on the USSR in which the US and UK could then pick up the pieces and establish an empire over all of Europe.
    Just look at how the US and UK went about liberating Europe. They did not go for the jugular vein against Germany. What they did do is piddle around the edges of the German empire attacking an securing those places where the communist resistence to the Nazis was most powerful first before taking the fight to Germany.
    If the US had been serious about quickly defeating the Nazis they would have gone straight for the throat. What that means exactly is that the western allies would have carried out one of two similar plans. PLAn one would have been to occupy Sweden and then use Sweden rather than the UK as a springboard for liberation of Europe by invading Germany FIRST. The liberation would have begun with the siezure of the harbors of Rostock, Greifwald, and Cuxhaven followed by Hamburg. Plan two would have been to invade the Jutland Penisula followed and use that as a spring board to invade Germany.
    The costs risks and benifits of these two plans from the point of view of regular soldiers was so much better than North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France plan that it is disgusting. Of course for those that were more interested in creating a larger empire than defeating Nazis protecting ones empire was more important therefore from that point of view North Africa Sicily Italy France was the better plan.
    Amen,
    We are screwed!! Hurray!! Hurray!!

  24. Curt Kastens

    Oh I forgot. One clear piece of fallout from the way that the western allies conducted themselves, is that despite the western allies sending some supplies to the USSR the leadership of the USSR did not trust the US and the UK from the get go once the war had ended because the leadership of the western allies were clearly not trying in good faith to end the war with the Nazis with the lowest level of loss of life.

  25. Curt Kastens

    Oh and I should mention. I have said these things before many many times on different websites in addition to private conversations. But apparently no body in US or the UK give a shit about the treachory of our so called (historical) leaders. And nobody with any power gives a shit that the behavior of the leaders never change. We know that their behavior never change because their polcies never change.

  26. different clue

    While scrolling reddit I found this video of a physics teacher demonstrating Bernoulli’s Principle. He ended the video by telling us how we can exploit Bernoulli’s Principle and a fan properly placed to get more hot air out of our house in summer than we thought we could. This could be ” Science you can Use”.

    Here is the link.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1eevpj5/physics_professor_teaching_bernoullis_principle/

  27. Carborundum

    I don’t think this is a near miss. There isn’t a lot in the way of high value military targets near the impact area. Probably the closest thing would be the listening station up on the ridge running up to Mount Hermon, but that’s about five clicks away. I would assess as a likely significant weapons malfunction.

    The unspoken issue here will be why Iron Dome didn’t engage the incoming weapon. The system should have categorized it as not falling into uninhabited areas (in fact, it hit not all that far from the centroid of what I’m pretty sure is the largest population agglomeration up on the Golan).

  28. Curt Kastens

    The conclusion that I draw from the three assassinations that the west has carried out in the last 48 hours in the Middle East is that in the Middle East the West has complete air supiriority and or intellegence gathering supiriority. That means that the air defences of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and probably Turkey are completely obsolete and outclassed by the ability to of the west to strike at will in the middle east.
    By extension these events play badly for the URussia and China. You would think that if the Russians and Chinese had decent Intell agencies they could have at least prevented the killiing of the Hammas political leader.
    Now it could of course be said the the ability to decapitate the leadership of one’s political opponents oveer and over again will not necessarily lead to a military victory over ones opponents- But it is evedince that what can be seen or located can be hit and what can be hit will be killed. If the capabilty can be scaled up enough it pretty well guarrantees victory over one’s human enemies.
    Not climate sytems though.
    OK nuclear weapons change the equation. Well, I am wondering if a supirior intell system can stump an infirior nuclear deterence system. If so the equation would be longer but still end up with the same result. Someone loses a war. Everyone loses a planet, not due to a nuclear winter though. The planet is lost due to the extinction of June Bugs and Maikäfer.

  29. Curt Kastens

    Any negotiations between Russia and the west over Ukriane will not be conducted in good faith, They will strictly be held for public consumption. The US and the west will break any agreement as soon as they think it is to their advantage to do so. Those negotiating for the west will be aware of this. The Russians will be aware of it as well.

  30. ProNewerDeal

    Aug01 link on nakedcapitalism “Victoria’s new ‘clean air’ project could help end the COVID pandemic”

    question for the Covid experts:

    Even in the best scenario, could air filtration/UV light (referred to here as air cleaning devices (ACD)) at indoor public buildings “end the pandemic” in a given nation/subnational region
    or
    be a new & best “piece of swiss cheese with the smallest hole” that would still need to be used in conjuction with other NPI “pieces” to “end the pandemic”?

    I imagine the best case ACD scenario being
    1 consider the regions that to date had the best (or least bad) Covid performance, like China, New Zealand, or Western Australia

    2 The Federal government enacts a CAND (Clean Air New Deal), funding a new FCAA (Federal Clean Air Agency) to install & maintain this ACD at all indoor private & public building establishments, free to the establishment. The equipment would run automatically 24/7 or be programmed by the FCAA. The FCAA would levy SEVERE fines for an establishment manager tampering or disabling the ACD the FCAA had installed.

    Even in this “best case scenario”, would ACD “end the pandemic” by driving the Covid reproduction number R to permanently decrease to below 1.0 in say New Zealand?

    My guesstimate is that for this ACD to actually “end the pandemic”, it would have to be done with
    3 adequate waster testing at the metro area or county level, which if it exceeds the equivalent treshhold of X (50/100K?) current COVID cases, the following would temporary mandatory mitigation measures:

    4 universal N95-type mask mandate at all indoor public establishments

    5 ban on persons crossing international borders.

    What do you think?

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén