“The dog feels sorry for me because I receive so much mail; that’s why he tries to bite the mailman.” –Albert Einstein
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
Kid: My Mommy says Mercury and Aluminum kills.
Nick Naylor: Oh, is your Mommy a doctor?
Kid: No.
Nick Naylor: A scientific researcher of some kind?
Kid: No.
Nick Naylor: Well, then she’s hardly a credible expert, is she?
—Thank you for smoking
————
—“Covid-19 Vaccine Trials Were Robust When Compared with Other Vaccine Trials”
The Hep-B vaccine had 5 days of follow-up, with 147 people and no control group
The IPV vaccine had 3 days follow-up, with 1,300 people and no control group.
The Hib vaccine had 3 days follow-up, with 903 people and a Hib vaccinated control group.
The DTaP vaccine had 28 days follow up with 33,921 people and used a DTP vaccinated control group.
And so on for all childhood vaccinations.
The FDA, CDC and HHS admitted this in 2018 under oath. This is also admitted to on the FDA’s website. If one is a conspiracy loon determined to do the unthinkable they can simply read it in the trials themselves.
—“(All) Vaccine Trials are Anemic When Compared to Drug Trials”
Drugs are approved after placebo controlled studies unlike. They have safety follow up that can last years. While all vaccines on the childhood schedule have a no control group, and next to no safety data.
—“Economic Interest to Assure Safety in Drug Trials Absent in Vaccine Trials”
Every vaccine and drug is approved based on studies designed, performed, and selectively released by the pharmaceutical company which have hundreds of billions of dollars in conflicts of interests.
For drugs corporations can be sued for injuries the drugs cause, however because of the Childhood Vaccine injury act of 1986 vaccine manufactures have immunity, and cannot be sued period.
The 1986 act was passed because the cost of paying for even a fraction of vaccine injuries was so high vaccine manufactures said they would not be able to
stay in business unless they were granted immunity. Let the implications of that sink in.
Before 1986 there were 7 injections given to children. Currently there are 84 injections. 84 injections containing heavy metals such as Aluminum or Mercury. A child’s 3rd vaccine visit causes them to receive 45-50 times more Aluminum then what the FDA considers to be safe.
Before 1986 less than 10% of children had a chronic illness now over 50% do.
Before 1986 1 in 10,000 children had autism, now 1 in 30 do.
—“HHS’s Promotion and Defense of Vaccines Conflicts with Regulatory Duties to Identify and Disclose Safety and Efficacy Issues”
“Vaccines are the only consumer product where the government defends industry against consumers”
“conflicts may explain why HHS has failed to perform its basic safety duties pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-27”
HHS is legally required to submit a biannual report but has never submitted a single one.
A Report from Congress found “[t]he overwhelming majority of members, both voting members and consultants, have substantial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.”
This report was collaborated by a later investigation by the Inspector General.
—“Examples of Structural Conflicts Impacting Covid-19 Vaccine Trials”
The Pfizer Covid vaccine was originally approved based on 170 Covid cases total in the study. The study did not include 3,410 suspected Covid cases that the pharma corporation choose not to test for.
Originally Pfizer said there was 15 and 14 deaths in the Vaccine and control group respectively.
The FDA later corrected this as there was actually 21 and 17 deaths in the Vaccine and control group respectively.
“Pfizer Fails to Disclose Serious Adverse Events”
“The data submitted to FDA is also unreliable as seen from the case of Maddie de Garay”
“Maddie’s injuries left her wheelchair-bound and reliant upon a feeding tube, yet Pfizer classified her severe injuries as mere “functional abdominal pain””
One would think that fraud would be punished, but Pfizer faced no consequences for fraud.
“a CDC study, dated August 6, 2021, found vaccinated individuals had a higher rate of infection and more viral carriage in their nasopharynx than the unvaccinated[48].”
—-FDA and CDC Hide Concerning Post-Licensure Safety Data from Public
The CDC tried to hide its PRR safety data, but had to release some of it due to losing in court after being sued.
This safety data revealed that according to the CDC’s own definitions and data the Covid vaccines caused a long list of diseases and health conditions.
Some of those include:
Cerebral thrombosis
Ventricular dysfunction
Stroke
Suspected Covid-19
Myocardial strain
Lymphopenia
Colon cancer
Acute cardiac event
hepatic mass
anosmia (loss of smell)
anticoagulant
cardiovascular symptoms
What is interesting is that according to the CDC’s data, the Covid vaccine can cause not only suspected Covid-19, but many of the symptoms that Covid-19 causes. The implications being that harms caused by the vaccines can be plausibly denied as being caused by Covid.
“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles” –Dune
Joe: What are these Aluminum and mercury metals? Do you even know?
Pharma: They’re… what they use to make Vaccines!
Joe: But why do they use them to make Vaccines?
Pharma: Because Vaccines got antigens.
Joe: For the last time, I’m pretty sure what’s giving children chronic illnesses is this aluminum and mercury stuff.
Pharma: But Vaccines got what kids crave. It’s got antigens.
Joe: Okay, look. The kids aren’t healthy, so I’m pretty sure that the aluminum and mercury’s not working. Now. I’m no biologist but I do know that if you don’t inject heavy metals into kids they grow.
Pharma: Well, I’ve never seen no healthy kids grow without heavy metals.
—Idiocracy
Walz shares his taco recipe with Harris. This is actual internet news today—as if what one overweight corporate canned food diet pol shares with another matters.
It bears no weight. Should we ponder what brand of air freshener they use in their respective ‘rest stations ‘?
It’s said that the elite eat clean—no high fructose corn syrup for those noble ones. No no no.
But ice cream cones and crème brûlée are okay.
I examine the physiognomies of these Western politicos and with few exceptions they exude toxicity, despite the cut of their expensive suits.
Their shit stinks, too, and they expect the rest of us to eat it.
Hey, if kale smelled like bacon everyone would eat their greens.
(That’s a thing I came up with long ago. Just tossing it into this salad to sound clever or something.)
I get these upper respiratory illnesses. I seem to be susceptible to them since childhood. Usually they don’t get too serious (walking pneumonia is the worst I’ve had) but they often floor me for weeks. I’ve had cases where I got sick in early November and stayed sick until January of the next year. I will add that I don’t have any obviously bad health habits (never smoked, etc) and otherwise my health metrics are pretty good.
The usual medical advice is “you just have to endure it and gut it out”. However, I’ve noted a difference. When I’ve in Asia, and gotten sick, and gone to a doctor, I get 4-5 medications and presto!!….in like four days I’m over it. Similarly, in 2006 I was in a rehab hospital with 9 broken ribs (plus other broken bones; bicycle wreck) and I got the crud. I told the therapists there “ugh, I’ll be sick for at least two weeks and won’t be able to do therapy” but lo and behold, they too gave me multiple medications and I was over it in just three days.
When I mention my experience in Asia with doctors here, they laugh and say “Yep, over there they believe you should hit it with a sledgehammer”. So why do they undertreat here? I should add often when I’m sick the people around me get either just slightly sick (over it in a few days) or not sick at all, so I seem to be especially susceptible as I said. So I may be a special case. But why then just shrug their shoulders and let patients suffer if it’s not necessary? (The rehab hospital case makes sense, as I know they didn’t want a patient with 9 broken ribs suffering uncontrolable hacking coughs).
This has economic consequences. Where I used to work the company had excellent sick-leave benefits, on paper (up to a full year’s full pay). However, if you used it, you could get into trouble, fast, depending on who your supervision was…and it wouldn’t take much, say, out for colds/flu or something for 10-15 days in two or three illnesses could trigger it. For hourly employees generally, “dependability” (i.e., “don’t get sick”) became an evaluation metric, despite the fact that from a purely medical consideration, getting 2-3 colds/flu a year and being out sick 10-15 is pretty much ‘normal’. Nurses would ask me “What’s going on at your company?” at times because people like me who were vulnerable were desperately doing what they could to keep from even getting sick the “normal” amount of time.
As I said, this was highly supervision-dependent; once I got rose high up enough in the ranks to have people who quasi- ‘under me’, I never complained to higher-ups about any sick leave they took, and they never got into any trouble, which opened my eyes about some of my past bosses (i.e., ***holes. especially as it was friggin’ obvious that I was sick….sometimes they would say “Oh I had it too but I still came into work” but I knew that they never were as in bad a shape as I was, as, insofar as I could see, they didn’t seem to be sick at all, their symptoms were so mild).
It sucks being sick and it is impossible to know your situation, the drugs and their specific benefits/risks for you as an individual. My comment is in general.
Every drug has negative effects which potentially can be long term in nature.
What are the long term effects of say taking those 3-5 drugs multiple times a year every year for several decades? Do they outweigh the benefits, keeping in mind there is also an active placebo effect?
Sadly I doubt there is a very accurate answer because society doesn’t care about determining negative effects of drugs.
The opioid crisis which killed so many people is the most well known example. Opioids do have short term benefits, though those are overrated due to active placebo effects. These benefits made live much better for a short period. Long term however they have negative efficacy, cause massive harm, are costly, and are addicting. They caused so much damage they reduced the nations life expectancy.
Just because people would feel better after taking those 3-5 drugs doesn’t mean that doing so will be safe or effective long or even medium term. Hell, it doesn’t even mean they have short term benefits because of the active placebo effect.
My current favourite board games to enjoy with friends and escape the stress of the world’s problems for an evening:
1. Ark Nova — building a zoo with conservation projects, entertaining exhibits, university research projects etc: actually quite fun and plenty of beautiful animal pictures on the cards.
2. Stupor Mundi — a somewhat abstract game based on the feudal era of the Holy Roman Emperor and KIng of Sicily Frederick II.
3 & 4. Through the Ages , and Tapestry– two very abstract and mechanically-complicated yet fun games based on the progress of civilization.
5. Wingspan — relatively fast-moving game of collecting birds in their habitats. The best part is that each card has a beautiful painting, accurate description and a fun fact.
I came from a board game family. They were usually life lesson games like Monopoly. Today everybody retreats to phones and ball game naps. I’d forgotten they were even still a thing.
There could be a Kardashians game where you all you do is shop for clothes. Instead of “Go directly to jail do not pass go” you’d have to spend a couple turns shopping for blouses with Bruce Jenner. Or a game called “Trump” where the best bullshitter wins
Do they outweigh the benefits, keeping in mind there is also an active placebo effect?
In my case, I doubt there was any placebo affect (in Asia, or in the rebab hospital). For one thing, in Asia (at first) I expected the same outcome that I got in the US–“I’ll be sick for at two weeks” so the results most definitely surprised me, and the first time I put it down as an odd case. But when it repeated, I said “Hmmm” and later I asked the doctors here.
The rehab hospital happened before I had ever traveled to Asia, so the same rule applies. I didn’t expect any thing different than the usual. I included the rehab hospital setting example as it showed that this ‘quick recovery’ was not anything related to my being in Asia (i.e., doctors over here can pull off the same trick).
Mind you, the typical slow recovery includes the usual decongestants, cough repression and other pallatives, home treatments like Vitamin C and zinc, but sometimes also prescription meds like inhalers, nasal treatments, and antibiotics (if the doctor suspects mycoplasmad or a bacterial infection). Even then, ‘undertreatment’ is common—one time I was sick nearly all of December, and in January, as I got mycoplasma pneumonia and the doctor gave me only a five-day supply of amoxicillin. It cleared up just before Christmas, but after I returned home I fell sick again, and worse than before. That infection too was mycoplasma because the doctor didn’t give a long enough treatment of antibiotics (he needed to give me a 10- or 12-day supply instead of just 5 days). Doctors lecture patients on not taking all their antibiotics to prevent the breeding of resistant bacteria, which is certainly a concern, but undertreating the patient does the same thing! (And besides, as most antibiotics are given to livestock in subtheraputic doses to produce profit, in a way GUARANTEED to produce resistant, in-the-wild bacterial strains, patient usage isn’t really as great a point as it’s made out to be….we have to stop giving antibiotics to livestock just to make them fatter).
Sure, drugs can have bad effects. But being sick also causes bad effects, and prolonged sickness has bad consequences (for one thing, once you get sick with pathogen 1 it’s much easier for pathogen 2 to move in) and I very much doubt you can see any negative effects of the Asian practice in their populations. Most Asian countries have at least the same, or longer lifespans than we, though I would admit that metric is conflated with many variables; the #1 cause of death in East Asia is stroke and not cardiovascular disease as in the West, and both causes are probably diet-related (them eating lots of seafood and saltier foods; us eating lots of fatty meat). They’re also thinner than we are, also probably lifestyle and diet related (Asians who move to the West and eat our foods often get fatter—a Chinese coworker told me “I gained 10 pounds the first year of living in the US”–and their diets, filled with carbs (rice, noodles, breads, etc) make me take a very dim view of the keto and Adkins’ diet fads and their insistence that ‘carbs make you gain weight’).
Was there any procedural differences between the doctors? Did the ones who successfully treated you do more tests? Ask more questions about your condition in order to narrow down causative agents and issues?
My thought is that perhaps the problem started with the doctors failing to understand the problem adequately, and get an accurate diagnosis.
—-
as I got mycoplasma pneumonia and the doctor gave me only a five-day supply of amoxicillin.
—–
I’m sorry that’s horrible. Undertreated pneumonia is bad medicine. It’s revealing how the system will pass out all kinds of deadly ineffective drugs, but skimp on antibiotics in a severe bacteria infection.
Regarding unhealthy diets I’m of the opinion that it is both a cause and an effect. Poor health and harmful chemical exposures increases the odds of developing unhealthy lifestyle habits.
There was some internet forums where non-Americans who traveled to America would report eating the same amount as usual, but still gained weight rapidly. Likewise the reverse was reported for Americans traveling abroad. This suggest that the problem with American food is less the calories and more all the chemicals we allow to be put in them.
Maybe there could be a game called Old Life, where you’ll get sick and all diagnosis and treatments are a complete crap shoot, because they depend entirely on the business models of the health company and region you’ve gotten sick in?
The placebo effect is often sneered at as being ” not real”, even though it is a real brain-mind-body reaction to received information about something taken or done which leads to real bio-physiological effects within the brain-body system.
I once read an example of a “reverse-placebo” effect which killed someone in less than a day. ( I am assuming this really happened rather than being just made up). In Brazil one time, some people caught and killed a bushmaster while a friend of theirs was sleeping. They made two little marks on some part of his body “like” bushmaster fang marks and then woke him up and told him he had been bitten by a bushmaster which they had then killed. It was going to be their little practical joke to let him believe it and get panicky for just a little while. So after they thought he had panicked himself enough they told him about the joke. He refused to believe them and thought they were just trying to offer him false comfort. They couldn’t convince him otherwise and he died the next morning. That placebo effect had a real effect and a real outcome.
I sometimes wonder whether when the patient knows about the brute-force bio-chemical action of a drug within the body and accepts the fact of it, that his brain-mind-body system also generates its own placebo effect working in the same direction as the drug. Do the drug and the drug-information-related placebo effect force-multiply eachother’s effect in the patient?
I have gardened very amateurly on a small or very small scale for about 30 years cumulative total, about 25 years in the co-op where I currently live at. Some years I start on time and some years I start late or very late because reasons ( sometimes good and sometimes unavoidable.).
One thing I have been growing is a SoutherMountain variety of corn called Hickory Cane. ( The history I have read on Hickory Cane is that it was first invented by the Choctaw Nation in the Deepest South and later made its way to the Appalachian Mountain People. It became so popular there that it came to be associated with Appalachia). https://www.southernexposure.com/products/hickory-cane-dent-corn/
I first heard of it from living in Knoxville, Tennessee decades ago. After leaving moving North I never heard of it again until about 15 years ago I ran across some Appalachian immigrant farmers selling mature dry ears of it at the Farmers Market. I reasoned that if they had been growing it in SouthEast Michigan, that they had already begun the work of Michigan-adapting it. So I bought some to continue the work in my own amateur way.
The last few years I have gotten it planted late or very late, which becomes an accidental selection filter for shorter-growing-season tolerance in those plants who can set ears in less than a full season. Still, maybe some year nothing bad will happen and I will plant it “on time”.
Anyway, I would notice that some of the strongest-growing plants would start growing prop roots from a stalk-joint or two ( “nodes”) above ground level. And a few of those beginning prop roots would be thinly covered with a layer of firm snotty gel. I assumed that was a dry-out preventer to keep the prop-root tips moist and alive till they could reach the soil or till they gave up and dried out.
Recently, i read about a certain corn grown by the Indigeneous MexIndians of a certain village in Oaxaca State which during the rainy season would grow prop roots which secreted huge runny-nose loads of this prop root snot. And it was discovered that this prop root snot was sugar rich and harbored bacteria which bio-fixed Nitrogen wrenched from the air right around them, allowing the corn to grow with sufficient bio-Nitrogen without the application of any fertilizer. Here is an image of those snotty prop roots and an article about them. https://grainswest.com/2018/12/nitrogen-fixing-corn-may-hold-implications-for-grains-and-other-crops/
So it occurs to me that when some of my hickory cane corn plants produced tiny amounts of root snot around the tips of newly emerging prop root tips, that maybe it is not to keep the tips dry. Maybe it is a very small expression of this same talent for producing sugar-rich prop-root snot to harbor bacteria for bio-fixing Nitrogen out of the surrounding air.
So this year so far I have 3 corn plants who are producing a little bit of this root snot around the tips of emerging prop roots. I have tied bright yarn around their stalks so I can recognize them in case they can actually set and mature ears of corn in the little time I have given them. And of course if I get this corn planted on time in some years, I will tie bright yarn around the stalk of any plant producing this root snot. I can then plant strictly root-snot corn seeds next to eachother to try to emphasize and step up the expression of this feature and try selecting for snot-dripping runny-nose prop roots. ( Along with the other features I watch for and select for).
There was some internet forums where non-Americans who traveled to America would report eating the same amount as usual, but still gained weight rapidly. Likewise the reverse was reported for Americans traveling abroad.
I know also when I traveled to Asia, I lost weight. If the excursion was 2 weeks, it would be 2-3 pounds less; if it was longer (two months last year) it was about 6 pounds less. That’s despite my Taiwanese and Vietnamese friends pushing food into my mouth and me eating more than I ordinarily eat here.
Was there any procedural differences between the doctors? Did the ones who successfully treated you do more tests?
Nope. No procedural differences. No more testing or labwork between the two. If anything (mycoplasma testing) the US doctors did more.
Moreover, in Vietnam, you don’t need a doctor’s prescription to get most medicines. Sometimes it was a friend just going to the pharmacy, describing my symptoms, and then coming back with a package of medications.
I also think that there’s a cultural difference, which we saw in CoVID. As Asians often live in closely-packed homes with multiple people per house, much moreso than the West, infectious diseases are treated more seriously over there. The doctors here didn’t describe what exactly “hitting it with a sledgehammer” meant medicinally, but if there is a difference it probably relates to the fact that Asian doctors realize that,
given their living quarters situation, a problematic strain can wreak all sorts of havoc, So it’s best to “hit it with the sledgehammer” from the start and ask questions later. 🙂
I’ve read that while in the US our circulatory problems are caused by a fatty diet that clogs our arteries, in Japan they have just as many circulatory problems, but they are caused by a lack of fat in their diets which makes the lining of the arteries become so thin that they break like paper. The same article where I read about this explained that the ideal diet, which they seem to have in Okinawa, adds pork to the typical Asian diet, which makes it healthier.
In our garden, we have recently learned to lay down old newspapers between the rows and hills and then on top of that put old damp straw from the winter’s banking around our neighbour’s house. Keeps down most of the weeds marvelously.
We also till into the soil plenty of compost made from mink ranch manure, spent hen carcasses and sawdust.
Open Thread might be a good place and time for different people to write in about what they are doing in their different gardens if they feel like it.
@ Mago,
Here’s a couple of different food ideas, one which I have tried and one which I have just thought about.
1: I once mixed a little crumbled blue cheese in with a bunch of crumbled feta cheese. The blue mold took hold and grew fast. At best blue stage, it had a strongly blue cheese taste with a feta undertaste still remaining. Shortly after that the mold grew so fast as to leave a mess of mycelia all over the cheese crumbles. If I try it again, I will try freezing it when it is at peak fetablue and see if it retains its peak blue feta taste and flavor when thawed.
2: I have thought about mixing hummus and miso together in different proportions to see which proportional blend would taste best. I call it ” hummiso”. I haven’t yet actually tried it.
From the ” Damnthatsinteresting” subreddit, here is a little video titled . . .
” At 91 years old, this grandmother started her own Youtube cooking channel, showcasing meals from the Great Depression. ”
Video
( The comments thread from that video offered a link to the series of You Tube casts this video came from, but that link said ” no longer exists”. Further down was a link to a eulogy about Clara ( the woman in the video) and I found that link still exists and going down the right side of the page where the ” more You Tube video choices” exist, there are a few other Clara’s Kitchen videos. So they can be found that way.)
No one left living on this planet by 2050 is going to be happy to be living on planet earth.
No one left living in the middle east by 2035 especially Palestine-Israel will be glad to be living there.
The reason that the Uhited States is bankrolling the genocide in Gaza is the same reason that the Nazis continued killing Jews near the end of the Second World War. Killing Jews was the only thing theft that the Nazis could do well. In the case of the American elites and their clueless followers perfecting stupidity is the only thing left that they can do well.
I wonder how many people are pretending that we are going to have a multi polar world in the future rather than a no polar world because they would rather destroy the truth rather than destroy hope. Keeping hope alive does seem to make sense from a normal perspective. If all hope is lost BAU will collapse even faster than it would otherwise. Not many people want to move the collapse forward.
This video about electric cars cheats somewhat. It lists 5 hazards. But the hazards are repeated. There are basically 3 hazards. None the less I found this video infomative.
It is a reminder that there is nothing sustainable abouit an industrial civilization. Hell, even an Amish society is not sustainable, if to much wood is used for cooking and heating. Do not forget that the use of metal tools is not sustainable either. One might think that if we live like the Amish but use an iron plow and steel kitchen knives we could continue on for a very long time. But that is bullshit because we would not have the ability to strip mine or even do deep underground mining. Therefore these metal would actaully be unaccessable.
Humanity is for the most part super duper delusional when it considers what courses of action are avialable to it.
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JOwW-sUGds
Oakchair
“The dog feels sorry for me because I receive so much mail; that’s why he tries to bite the mailman.” –Albert Einstein
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
Kid: My Mommy says Mercury and Aluminum kills.
Nick Naylor: Oh, is your Mommy a doctor?
Kid: No.
Nick Naylor: A scientific researcher of some kind?
Kid: No.
Nick Naylor: Well, then she’s hardly a credible expert, is she?
—Thank you for smoking
————
—“Covid-19 Vaccine Trials Were Robust When Compared with Other Vaccine Trials”
The Hep-B vaccine had 5 days of follow-up, with 147 people and no control group
The IPV vaccine had 3 days follow-up, with 1,300 people and no control group.
The Hib vaccine had 3 days follow-up, with 903 people and a Hib vaccinated control group.
The DTaP vaccine had 28 days follow up with 33,921 people and used a DTP vaccinated control group.
And so on for all childhood vaccinations.
The FDA, CDC and HHS admitted this in 2018 under oath. This is also admitted to on the FDA’s website. If one is a conspiracy loon determined to do the unthinkable they can simply read it in the trials themselves.
—“(All) Vaccine Trials are Anemic When Compared to Drug Trials”
Drugs are approved after placebo controlled studies unlike. They have safety follow up that can last years. While all vaccines on the childhood schedule have a no control group, and next to no safety data.
—“Economic Interest to Assure Safety in Drug Trials Absent in Vaccine Trials”
Every vaccine and drug is approved based on studies designed, performed, and selectively released by the pharmaceutical company which have hundreds of billions of dollars in conflicts of interests.
For drugs corporations can be sued for injuries the drugs cause, however because of the Childhood Vaccine injury act of 1986 vaccine manufactures have immunity, and cannot be sued period.
The 1986 act was passed because the cost of paying for even a fraction of vaccine injuries was so high vaccine manufactures said they would not be able to
stay in business unless they were granted immunity. Let the implications of that sink in.
Before 1986 there were 7 injections given to children. Currently there are 84 injections. 84 injections containing heavy metals such as Aluminum or Mercury. A child’s 3rd vaccine visit causes them to receive 45-50 times more Aluminum then what the FDA considers to be safe.
Before 1986 less than 10% of children had a chronic illness now over 50% do.
Before 1986 1 in 10,000 children had autism, now 1 in 30 do.
—“HHS’s Promotion and Defense of Vaccines Conflicts with Regulatory Duties to Identify and Disclose Safety and Efficacy Issues”
“Vaccines are the only consumer product where the government defends industry against consumers”
“conflicts may explain why HHS has failed to perform its basic safety duties pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 300aa-27”
HHS is legally required to submit a biannual report but has never submitted a single one.
A Report from Congress found “[t]he overwhelming majority of members, both voting members and consultants, have substantial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.”
This report was collaborated by a later investigation by the Inspector General.
—“Examples of Structural Conflicts Impacting Covid-19 Vaccine Trials”
The Pfizer Covid vaccine was originally approved based on 170 Covid cases total in the study. The study did not include 3,410 suspected Covid cases that the pharma corporation choose not to test for.
Originally Pfizer said there was 15 and 14 deaths in the Vaccine and control group respectively.
The FDA later corrected this as there was actually 21 and 17 deaths in the Vaccine and control group respectively.
“Pfizer Fails to Disclose Serious Adverse Events”
“The data submitted to FDA is also unreliable as seen from the case of Maddie de Garay”
“Maddie’s injuries left her wheelchair-bound and reliant upon a feeding tube, yet Pfizer classified her severe injuries as mere “functional abdominal pain””
One would think that fraud would be punished, but Pfizer faced no consequences for fraud.
“a CDC study, dated August 6, 2021, found vaccinated individuals had a higher rate of infection and more viral carriage in their nasopharynx than the unvaccinated[48].”
—-FDA and CDC Hide Concerning Post-Licensure Safety Data from Public
The CDC tried to hide its PRR safety data, but had to release some of it due to losing in court after being sued.
This safety data revealed that according to the CDC’s own definitions and data the Covid vaccines caused a long list of diseases and health conditions.
Some of those include:
Cerebral thrombosis
Ventricular dysfunction
Stroke
Suspected Covid-19
Myocardial strain
Lymphopenia
Colon cancer
Acute cardiac event
hepatic mass
anosmia (loss of smell)
anticoagulant
cardiovascular symptoms
What is interesting is that according to the CDC’s data, the Covid vaccine can cause not only suspected Covid-19, but many of the symptoms that Covid-19 causes. The implications being that harms caused by the vaccines can be plausibly denied as being caused by Covid.
https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/my-congressional-testimony-why-covid
—————-
“When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles” –Dune
Joe: What are these Aluminum and mercury metals? Do you even know?
Pharma: They’re… what they use to make Vaccines!
Joe: But why do they use them to make Vaccines?
Pharma: Because Vaccines got antigens.
Joe: For the last time, I’m pretty sure what’s giving children chronic illnesses is this aluminum and mercury stuff.
Pharma: But Vaccines got what kids crave. It’s got antigens.
Joe: Okay, look. The kids aren’t healthy, so I’m pretty sure that the aluminum and mercury’s not working. Now. I’m no biologist but I do know that if you don’t inject heavy metals into kids they grow.
Pharma: Well, I’ve never seen no healthy kids grow without heavy metals.
—Idiocracy
mago
Walz shares his taco recipe with Harris. This is actual internet news today—as if what one overweight corporate canned food diet pol shares with another matters.
It bears no weight. Should we ponder what brand of air freshener they use in their respective ‘rest stations ‘?
It’s said that the elite eat clean—no high fructose corn syrup for those noble ones. No no no.
But ice cream cones and crème brûlée are okay.
I examine the physiognomies of these Western politicos and with few exceptions they exude toxicity, despite the cut of their expensive suits.
Their shit stinks, too, and they expect the rest of us to eat it.
Hey, if kale smelled like bacon everyone would eat their greens.
(That’s a thing I came up with long ago. Just tossing it into this salad to sound clever or something.)
StewartM
Thoughts on (and while) being sick…
I get these upper respiratory illnesses. I seem to be susceptible to them since childhood. Usually they don’t get too serious (walking pneumonia is the worst I’ve had) but they often floor me for weeks. I’ve had cases where I got sick in early November and stayed sick until January of the next year. I will add that I don’t have any obviously bad health habits (never smoked, etc) and otherwise my health metrics are pretty good.
The usual medical advice is “you just have to endure it and gut it out”. However, I’ve noted a difference. When I’ve in Asia, and gotten sick, and gone to a doctor, I get 4-5 medications and presto!!….in like four days I’m over it. Similarly, in 2006 I was in a rehab hospital with 9 broken ribs (plus other broken bones; bicycle wreck) and I got the crud. I told the therapists there “ugh, I’ll be sick for at least two weeks and won’t be able to do therapy” but lo and behold, they too gave me multiple medications and I was over it in just three days.
When I mention my experience in Asia with doctors here, they laugh and say “Yep, over there they believe you should hit it with a sledgehammer”. So why do they undertreat here? I should add often when I’m sick the people around me get either just slightly sick (over it in a few days) or not sick at all, so I seem to be especially susceptible as I said. So I may be a special case. But why then just shrug their shoulders and let patients suffer if it’s not necessary? (The rehab hospital case makes sense, as I know they didn’t want a patient with 9 broken ribs suffering uncontrolable hacking coughs).
This has economic consequences. Where I used to work the company had excellent sick-leave benefits, on paper (up to a full year’s full pay). However, if you used it, you could get into trouble, fast, depending on who your supervision was…and it wouldn’t take much, say, out for colds/flu or something for 10-15 days in two or three illnesses could trigger it. For hourly employees generally, “dependability” (i.e., “don’t get sick”) became an evaluation metric, despite the fact that from a purely medical consideration, getting 2-3 colds/flu a year and being out sick 10-15 is pretty much ‘normal’. Nurses would ask me “What’s going on at your company?” at times because people like me who were vulnerable were desperately doing what they could to keep from even getting sick the “normal” amount of time.
As I said, this was highly supervision-dependent; once I got rose high up enough in the ranks to have people who quasi- ‘under me’, I never complained to higher-ups about any sick leave they took, and they never got into any trouble, which opened my eyes about some of my past bosses (i.e., ***holes. especially as it was friggin’ obvious that I was sick….sometimes they would say “Oh I had it too but I still came into work” but I knew that they never were as in bad a shape as I was, as, insofar as I could see, they didn’t seem to be sick at all, their symptoms were so mild).
Oakchair
@StewartM
It sucks being sick and it is impossible to know your situation, the drugs and their specific benefits/risks for you as an individual. My comment is in general.
Every drug has negative effects which potentially can be long term in nature.
What are the long term effects of say taking those 3-5 drugs multiple times a year every year for several decades? Do they outweigh the benefits, keeping in mind there is also an active placebo effect?
Sadly I doubt there is a very accurate answer because society doesn’t care about determining negative effects of drugs.
The opioid crisis which killed so many people is the most well known example. Opioids do have short term benefits, though those are overrated due to active placebo effects. These benefits made live much better for a short period. Long term however they have negative efficacy, cause massive harm, are costly, and are addicting. They caused so much damage they reduced the nations life expectancy.
Just because people would feel better after taking those 3-5 drugs doesn’t mean that doing so will be safe or effective long or even medium term. Hell, it doesn’t even mean they have short term benefits because of the active placebo effect.
Tallifer
My current favourite board games to enjoy with friends and escape the stress of the world’s problems for an evening:
1. Ark Nova — building a zoo with conservation projects, entertaining exhibits, university research projects etc: actually quite fun and plenty of beautiful animal pictures on the cards.
2. Stupor Mundi — a somewhat abstract game based on the feudal era of the Holy Roman Emperor and KIng of Sicily Frederick II.
3 & 4. Through the Ages , and Tapestry– two very abstract and mechanically-complicated yet fun games based on the progress of civilization.
5. Wingspan — relatively fast-moving game of collecting birds in their habitats. The best part is that each card has a beautiful painting, accurate description and a fun fact.
Willy
I came from a board game family. They were usually life lesson games like Monopoly. Today everybody retreats to phones and ball game naps. I’d forgotten they were even still a thing.
There could be a Kardashians game where you all you do is shop for clothes. Instead of “Go directly to jail do not pass go” you’d have to spend a couple turns shopping for blouses with Bruce Jenner. Or a game called “Trump” where the best bullshitter wins
StewartM
Oakchair
Do they outweigh the benefits, keeping in mind there is also an active placebo effect?
In my case, I doubt there was any placebo affect (in Asia, or in the rebab hospital). For one thing, in Asia (at first) I expected the same outcome that I got in the US–“I’ll be sick for at two weeks” so the results most definitely surprised me, and the first time I put it down as an odd case. But when it repeated, I said “Hmmm” and later I asked the doctors here.
The rehab hospital happened before I had ever traveled to Asia, so the same rule applies. I didn’t expect any thing different than the usual. I included the rehab hospital setting example as it showed that this ‘quick recovery’ was not anything related to my being in Asia (i.e., doctors over here can pull off the same trick).
Mind you, the typical slow recovery includes the usual decongestants, cough repression and other pallatives, home treatments like Vitamin C and zinc, but sometimes also prescription meds like inhalers, nasal treatments, and antibiotics (if the doctor suspects mycoplasmad or a bacterial infection). Even then, ‘undertreatment’ is common—one time I was sick nearly all of December, and in January, as I got mycoplasma pneumonia and the doctor gave me only a five-day supply of amoxicillin. It cleared up just before Christmas, but after I returned home I fell sick again, and worse than before. That infection too was mycoplasma because the doctor didn’t give a long enough treatment of antibiotics (he needed to give me a 10- or 12-day supply instead of just 5 days). Doctors lecture patients on not taking all their antibiotics to prevent the breeding of resistant bacteria, which is certainly a concern, but undertreating the patient does the same thing! (And besides, as most antibiotics are given to livestock in subtheraputic doses to produce profit, in a way GUARANTEED to produce resistant, in-the-wild bacterial strains, patient usage isn’t really as great a point as it’s made out to be….we have to stop giving antibiotics to livestock just to make them fatter).
Sure, drugs can have bad effects. But being sick also causes bad effects, and prolonged sickness has bad consequences (for one thing, once you get sick with pathogen 1 it’s much easier for pathogen 2 to move in) and I very much doubt you can see any negative effects of the Asian practice in their populations. Most Asian countries have at least the same, or longer lifespans than we, though I would admit that metric is conflated with many variables; the #1 cause of death in East Asia is stroke and not cardiovascular disease as in the West, and both causes are probably diet-related (them eating lots of seafood and saltier foods; us eating lots of fatty meat). They’re also thinner than we are, also probably lifestyle and diet related (Asians who move to the West and eat our foods often get fatter—a Chinese coworker told me “I gained 10 pounds the first year of living in the US”–and their diets, filled with carbs (rice, noodles, breads, etc) make me take a very dim view of the keto and Adkins’ diet fads and their insistence that ‘carbs make you gain weight’).
Oakchair
@ StewartM
Was there any procedural differences between the doctors? Did the ones who successfully treated you do more tests? Ask more questions about your condition in order to narrow down causative agents and issues?
My thought is that perhaps the problem started with the doctors failing to understand the problem adequately, and get an accurate diagnosis.
—-
as I got mycoplasma pneumonia and the doctor gave me only a five-day supply of amoxicillin.
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I’m sorry that’s horrible. Undertreated pneumonia is bad medicine. It’s revealing how the system will pass out all kinds of deadly ineffective drugs, but skimp on antibiotics in a severe bacteria infection.
Regarding unhealthy diets I’m of the opinion that it is both a cause and an effect. Poor health and harmful chemical exposures increases the odds of developing unhealthy lifestyle habits.
There was some internet forums where non-Americans who traveled to America would report eating the same amount as usual, but still gained weight rapidly. Likewise the reverse was reported for Americans traveling abroad. This suggest that the problem with American food is less the calories and more all the chemicals we allow to be put in them.
Willy
Maybe there could be a game called Old Life, where you’ll get sick and all diagnosis and treatments are a complete crap shoot, because they depend entirely on the business models of the health company and region you’ve gotten sick in?
different clue
The placebo effect is often sneered at as being ” not real”, even though it is a real brain-mind-body reaction to received information about something taken or done which leads to real bio-physiological effects within the brain-body system.
I once read an example of a “reverse-placebo” effect which killed someone in less than a day. ( I am assuming this really happened rather than being just made up). In Brazil one time, some people caught and killed a bushmaster while a friend of theirs was sleeping. They made two little marks on some part of his body “like” bushmaster fang marks and then woke him up and told him he had been bitten by a bushmaster which they had then killed. It was going to be their little practical joke to let him believe it and get panicky for just a little while. So after they thought he had panicked himself enough they told him about the joke. He refused to believe them and thought they were just trying to offer him false comfort. They couldn’t convince him otherwise and he died the next morning. That placebo effect had a real effect and a real outcome.
I sometimes wonder whether when the patient knows about the brute-force bio-chemical action of a drug within the body and accepts the fact of it, that his brain-mind-body system also generates its own placebo effect working in the same direction as the drug. Do the drug and the drug-information-related placebo effect force-multiply eachother’s effect in the patient?
different clue
report from my little garden . . .
I have gardened very amateurly on a small or very small scale for about 30 years cumulative total, about 25 years in the co-op where I currently live at. Some years I start on time and some years I start late or very late because reasons ( sometimes good and sometimes unavoidable.).
One thing I have been growing is a SoutherMountain variety of corn called Hickory Cane. ( The history I have read on Hickory Cane is that it was first invented by the Choctaw Nation in the Deepest South and later made its way to the Appalachian Mountain People. It became so popular there that it came to be associated with Appalachia).
https://www.southernexposure.com/products/hickory-cane-dent-corn/
I first heard of it from living in Knoxville, Tennessee decades ago. After leaving moving North I never heard of it again until about 15 years ago I ran across some Appalachian immigrant farmers selling mature dry ears of it at the Farmers Market. I reasoned that if they had been growing it in SouthEast Michigan, that they had already begun the work of Michigan-adapting it. So I bought some to continue the work in my own amateur way.
The last few years I have gotten it planted late or very late, which becomes an accidental selection filter for shorter-growing-season tolerance in those plants who can set ears in less than a full season. Still, maybe some year nothing bad will happen and I will plant it “on time”.
Anyway, I would notice that some of the strongest-growing plants would start growing prop roots from a stalk-joint or two ( “nodes”) above ground level. And a few of those beginning prop roots would be thinly covered with a layer of firm snotty gel. I assumed that was a dry-out preventer to keep the prop-root tips moist and alive till they could reach the soil or till they gave up and dried out.
Recently, i read about a certain corn grown by the Indigeneous MexIndians of a certain village in Oaxaca State which during the rainy season would grow prop roots which secreted huge runny-nose loads of this prop root snot. And it was discovered that this prop root snot was sugar rich and harbored bacteria which bio-fixed Nitrogen wrenched from the air right around them, allowing the corn to grow with sufficient bio-Nitrogen without the application of any fertilizer. Here is an image of those snotty prop roots and an article about them.
https://grainswest.com/2018/12/nitrogen-fixing-corn-may-hold-implications-for-grains-and-other-crops/
So it occurs to me that when some of my hickory cane corn plants produced tiny amounts of root snot around the tips of newly emerging prop root tips, that maybe it is not to keep the tips dry. Maybe it is a very small expression of this same talent for producing sugar-rich prop-root snot to harbor bacteria for bio-fixing Nitrogen out of the surrounding air.
So this year so far I have 3 corn plants who are producing a little bit of this root snot around the tips of emerging prop roots. I have tied bright yarn around their stalks so I can recognize them in case they can actually set and mature ears of corn in the little time I have given them. And of course if I get this corn planted on time in some years, I will tie bright yarn around the stalk of any plant producing this root snot. I can then plant strictly root-snot corn seeds next to eachother to try to emphasize and step up the expression of this feature and try selecting for snot-dripping runny-nose prop roots. ( Along with the other features I watch for and select for).
mago
Tres cool different clue. Keep it going.
Such efforts send rays of light in dark times.
StewartM
Oakchair
There was some internet forums where non-Americans who traveled to America would report eating the same amount as usual, but still gained weight rapidly. Likewise the reverse was reported for Americans traveling abroad.
I know also when I traveled to Asia, I lost weight. If the excursion was 2 weeks, it would be 2-3 pounds less; if it was longer (two months last year) it was about 6 pounds less. That’s despite my Taiwanese and Vietnamese friends pushing food into my mouth and me eating more than I ordinarily eat here.
Was there any procedural differences between the doctors? Did the ones who successfully treated you do more tests?
Nope. No procedural differences. No more testing or labwork between the two. If anything (mycoplasma testing) the US doctors did more.
Moreover, in Vietnam, you don’t need a doctor’s prescription to get most medicines. Sometimes it was a friend just going to the pharmacy, describing my symptoms, and then coming back with a package of medications.
I also think that there’s a cultural difference, which we saw in CoVID. As Asians often live in closely-packed homes with multiple people per house, much moreso than the West, infectious diseases are treated more seriously over there. The doctors here didn’t describe what exactly “hitting it with a sledgehammer” meant medicinally, but if there is a difference it probably relates to the fact that Asian doctors realize that,
given their living quarters situation, a problematic strain can wreak all sorts of havoc, So it’s best to “hit it with the sledgehammer” from the start and ask questions later. 🙂
someofparts
I’ve read that while in the US our circulatory problems are caused by a fatty diet that clogs our arteries, in Japan they have just as many circulatory problems, but they are caused by a lack of fat in their diets which makes the lining of the arteries become so thin that they break like paper. The same article where I read about this explained that the ideal diet, which they seem to have in Okinawa, adds pork to the typical Asian diet, which makes it healthier.
Tallifer
In our garden, we have recently learned to lay down old newspapers between the rows and hills and then on top of that put old damp straw from the winter’s banking around our neighbour’s house. Keeps down most of the weeds marvelously.
We also till into the soil plenty of compost made from mink ranch manure, spent hen carcasses and sawdust.
different clue
Open Thread might be a good place and time for different people to write in about what they are doing in their different gardens if they feel like it.
@ Mago,
Here’s a couple of different food ideas, one which I have tried and one which I have just thought about.
1: I once mixed a little crumbled blue cheese in with a bunch of crumbled feta cheese. The blue mold took hold and grew fast. At best blue stage, it had a strongly blue cheese taste with a feta undertaste still remaining. Shortly after that the mold grew so fast as to leave a mess of mycelia all over the cheese crumbles. If I try it again, I will try freezing it when it is at peak fetablue and see if it retains its peak blue feta taste and flavor when thawed.
2: I have thought about mixing hummus and miso together in different proportions to see which proportional blend would taste best. I call it ” hummiso”. I haven’t yet actually tried it.
different clue
From the ” Damnthatsinteresting” subreddit, here is a little video titled . . .
” At 91 years old, this grandmother started her own Youtube cooking channel, showcasing meals from the Great Depression. ”
Video
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1ewxai4/at_91_years_old_this_grandmother_started_her_own/
different clue
( The comments thread from that video offered a link to the series of You Tube casts this video came from, but that link said ” no longer exists”. Further down was a link to a eulogy about Clara ( the woman in the video) and I found that link still exists and going down the right side of the page where the ” more You Tube video choices” exist, there are a few other Clara’s Kitchen videos. So they can be found that way.)
Here is the “initial way in” link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMF7_V5oeJM
Curt Kastens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idT4XNiq1N0
No one left living on this planet by 2050 is going to be happy to be living on planet earth.
No one left living in the middle east by 2035 especially Palestine-Israel will be glad to be living there.
The reason that the Uhited States is bankrolling the genocide in Gaza is the same reason that the Nazis continued killing Jews near the end of the Second World War. Killing Jews was the only thing theft that the Nazis could do well. In the case of the American elites and their clueless followers perfecting stupidity is the only thing left that they can do well.
I wonder how many people are pretending that we are going to have a multi polar world in the future rather than a no polar world because they would rather destroy the truth rather than destroy hope. Keeping hope alive does seem to make sense from a normal perspective. If all hope is lost BAU will collapse even faster than it would otherwise. Not many people want to move the collapse forward.
Curt Kastens
I wonder if this is a credible report.
https://us.yahoo.com/news/scientists-closely-watching-3-disastrous-090526116.html
Curt Kastens
This video about electric cars cheats somewhat. It lists 5 hazards. But the hazards are repeated. There are basically 3 hazards. None the less I found this video infomative.
It is a reminder that there is nothing sustainable abouit an industrial civilization. Hell, even an Amish society is not sustainable, if to much wood is used for cooking and heating. Do not forget that the use of metal tools is not sustainable either. One might think that if we live like the Amish but use an iron plow and steel kitchen knives we could continue on for a very long time. But that is bullshit because we would not have the ability to strip mine or even do deep underground mining. Therefore these metal would actaully be unaccessable.
Humanity is for the most part super duper delusional when it considers what courses of action are avialable to it.
Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JOwW-sUGds