Open Thread

I keep coming back to the War in Ukraine, always confused by the paucity of reliable information and independent judgment, as the info war for control of the narrative almost seems to loom larger than the fighting and dying in the steppe.

In a superficial way, I glean the pro-Ukraine side these days primarily from the social media influencer, Preston Stewart, who has become practically an official Pentagon flack, and from the online news headlines from the German pseudo-legacy-media outlet, Business Insider. I am getting my daily dose of pro-Russian takes primarily on X-twitter from Military Summary channel, Geroman, and the like, with some flavor from NC blog.

It is a curious business, this daily onslaught of video clips and takes. I do not know what to make of much of it. The North Koreans have come and gone from Kursk allegedly, a mere meme speck in the torrent of narrative; what purpose did that story serve?

The absence of official casualty figures for meat licenses seemingly limitless speculation. Russian use of improvised infantry vehicles prompts speculation that the Russians are running out of suitable armor. Videos of fireballs supports the idea that Ukraine is successfully using long-range drones against Russian gas and oil infrastructure. Ukraine has cut off Slovakia and Hungary and Moldova including Transnistria from Russian supply by other means. Still, the Russians inch forward more-or-less steadily on the ground across a broad front, enveloping villages and breaching an endless series of defensive fortifications.

Back at the war for the control of the narrative front, I have noticed that the elevation of Trump has occasioned Tucker Carlson getting more mileage from labeling Zelensky, “a dictator”. The new regime in Washington is undermining the institutional foundations for the Russiagate hoax, but getting remarkable pushback. Every once in a while, I glance at the Wikipedia entries for Russiagate and what Wikipedia diplomatically terms “the counternarrative” to see if there are any signs of crumbling. (Wikipedia is solidly supportive of the Democratic version of Russiagate on every point, but I figure that will change at some point and when it changes, that will indicate something about the zeitgeist.)

In the HHS confirmation hearing for RFK Jr., Dr and senator Bill Cassidy provided a meta-analysis as undeniable proof that vaccines do not cause autism.

What would you consider to be undeniable proof? Write it down and fall down the rabbit hole with me.

Here is the meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24814559/

You can use this link to get past any paywalls to view every study discussed in its entirety.
https://sci-hub.se/

In the Eligibility criteria section 2.2 it states:
“Studies were included that looked at either MMR vaccination”

That would be 1 out of 14 vaccines currently on the CDC childhood schedule, or 6 out of 74 doses.

The MMR vaccine is first given at 1 year of age. By age 1 children have already received 25 doses.

There were no studies on the 25 vaccine doses before the MMR dose, no studies on the total number of vaccines given, no studies on unvaccinated verse vaccinated children.

There are simply 6 studies looking at highly vaccinated children with the MMR vaccine compared to highly vaccinated children without the MMR vaccination.

Looking at each study:

—
Madsen 2002.
This study was funded by multiple organizations who either own vaccine patents, or make billions of dollars selling vaccines (In the notes section at the end of the study). The authors worked for these organizations.

“children were assigned to the nonvaccinated group until they received the MMR vaccine.”

When a study openly admits they falsely classified the groups, imagine what they did that they won’t tell you.
To make it clear the effects of false classification here’s an example:
Every year 1% of the population develops disease X.
In a 5 year study half the population is given chemical Y 2 years into the study.
The Y group ends with a disease rate of 5.5%
The control group ends with a rate of 5%
However, if you falsely classify the groups –as the above study does– you can find that chemical Y not only doesn’t increase disease X it lowers it.

Even with this false classification, table 1 shows that the MMR vaccinated group had 17% more cases of autism.

The study still manages to find a way to claim the vaccine isn’t associated with autism by using “person-years” instead of autism cases.
“Person-years” adds or subtracts rates depending on when the diagnosis was made. Autism diagnosed at 4 years counts as a lower rate of autism than a case diagnosed at 2 years.

Why would the conflict of interest funded study do this? Might have something to do with one of the authors, Poul Thorsen being on the FBI’s most wanted list for over 20 counts of fraud and stealing a million dollars from the CDC.
—

Uchiyama 2007.
In Japan from 1988 to 1992 the MMR vaccination rate decreased from 70% to 2% because there were reports that the MMR vaccine was causing meningitis.
Japan then introduced a new MMR vaccine and by the mid 90’s vaccination rates surpassed all previous levels.
Obviously we could look at autism rates from the low vaccination years and compare them to the higher years and hopefully glean some useful information.
For what can only be a honest scientific reason that I am too uneducated to grasp the study decided not to do this. Instead it chose to mix the low and high vaccination groups together and compare them with another mixed group.
Sadly they do not provide yearly data so we cannot look at it ourselves.

Have no fear though, here is the data kindly provided. Go ahead and look at table 1 and figure 1 and help me comprehend why they decided not to compare high vaccination years with low ones.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15877763/

—
Destefano 2004.
This study was done by the CDC which owns dozens of vaccine patents and makes billions selling vaccines.
They found:
“Similar proportions of case and control children had been {MMR}vaccinated before 18 or before 24 months”

They also found:
Children who received the MMR vaccine before age 3 had a 1.49 increased rate of autism.
“Using a 36-month cutoff, more case {diagnosed with autism} children than control children were vaccinated before 36 months of age (OR: 1.49; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.04–2.14)”

One of the authors, William W. Thompson later became a whistleblower revealing that while he and the authors in this study were at the CDC they committed fraud and destroyed evidence showing vaccines cause autism.
Did I just hear a jaw slamming into the floor or was that the dog demanding lunch?

—
Mrozek-Budzyn 2010.

“there were 9 children not vaccinated”

Got that? In this study of 288 children there was 9 who did not receive the vaccination in question.

“Cases of autism were considered as vaccinated if vaccination preceded the onset of symptoms.”
“Controls were considered vaccinated if they received their vaccination before age of symptoms onset of their matched case subject”

Children who in fact were MMR vaccinated were purposely classified as non-MMR-vaccinated. Because you know, with such a tiny sample size creating category errors is what quality scientists do.

—–
Uno 2012.
This study did not find a “statistically significant” difference. It did find a that the MMR vaccinated group had a 1.04 increased OD for autism. When confounders were considered this associated increased to 1.1 OD.

Let’s thank this study because beyond a doubt it shows one of the many reasons why cherry picking 1 of 14 vaccines is a teachable rookie mistake.
In table 3 it shows that the mean number of vaccines for each group was 11.4.

Vaccines don’t cause autism because children with 11.4 vaccinations had similar rates of autism as children with 11.4 vaccinations.

There certainty is something undeniable here. Not sure what, but it’s something.
—

Smeeth 2004.
It uses a case control design similar to Mrozek-Budzyn 2010. Like the others it compares highly vaccinated children +MMR against highly vaccinated children -MMR
Like the Uno 2012 study it’s results were not statistically significant though the OR was .86 instead of positive.
—-

Look back at what you thought the medical community would classify as undeniable proof vaccines don’t cause autism.
You nailed the answer didn’t you? Didn’t you? Tell me you did.

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.” ―- Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions” —Disciplined minds, Jeff Schmidt