In a system where science is being bludgeoned to death and those who are witness to the crime either yell about it and are shoved into a corner, or remain silent and continue to collect their paychecks, where the only “evidence” necessary to make scientific or medical claims is to refer to the recommendations of organizations (e.g. FDA, AHA) and publications (e.g. Science, Nature), in an era when those same organizations and publications are strapped for cash and looking for new ways to stay afloat, those organizations and publications will absolutely get gamed. They will become corrupt. They will get captured. And so they will remain in existence, sort of. Still draped in the aura and gravitas of their former reputations, they may look like the august sheep of old, but are very much wolves on the inside. – Heather Heying, Natural Selections substack, 10/3/21
With that encouragement, I begin this week’s Tuesday Topics treasure trove on a host of Covid fallacies and farces. This stuff is far from encouraging, but I share it in earnest.
Speaking for myself, I am decidedly against any mRNA shots for any purpose. I think the technology is deplorably dangerously ill-considered at best. I am even more adamantly against mRNA Covid shots for healthy persons and/or for those who have already had Covid and fought it off. (That is presumably about 98% of the population.) But those who are more balanced in their views than I might consider this critique of the most recent booster, from the eminently, rightly critical Dr. Prasad:
NY Times (a “former newspaper,” according to writer/humorist Andrew Klavan) science editor Apoorva Mandavilli writes,
But that just isn’t true. This study does not apply to current variants and the 5th or 6th dose.
Apoorva only talks to experts who support her bizarre worldview: pro masking kids, pro school closures, and pro boosting people with unproven drug products for diseases they already had.
She is not a journalist. She is an opinionated person with no medical training, and a threat to public understanding of science. – “Vinay Prasad’s Observations and Thoughts“
I (bc) posted the material below on Facebook on 9/27 and am reposting it here, with a few emendations. It draws on Prasad and others and is about the new booster and much more, all Covid-related.
1. The new Covid booster has been recommended in this country for individuals as young as 6 months old. When will this country learn to avoid untested, nonsense recommendations? Some countries across the pond are doing much better at making sense than the U.S. is. The U.K. and Australia have approved this booster for those 65 and up. https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/…/the-fall…
2. The new booster has not been tested as much as the prior ones, and Randomized Control Trials should have been established for all of them. Previous shots (not vaccines in the traditional sense) have also been proven beyond doubt to injure a notable number—at a rate that should have shut production down during early 2021. These “vaccines” are not of the same species as other, time-tested vaccines. Become familiar with the VAERS database, which, because it is a voluntary-reporting scenario, would significantly under-represent the actual number of adverse events.
**3. Specifically at-risk people might legitimately be led to consider the new booster, but the new booster (like all the prior ones, and like any flu vaccine)
cannot be fully effective. New strains appear regularly, and no monovalent, bivalent, trivalent (or octivalent!) serum can, to date, be developed and administered quickly enough to target new strains. No test has been accomplished for any drug for
current strains of COVID.
https://sensiblemed.substack.com/…/covid19-therapeutics…
Although I disagree with some of Dr. Marty Makary’s (Johns Hopkins) historical emphases and opinions, I would point to him as a professional who modified and altered his opinions over a period of time, based on emerging evidence. Makary is basically pro-vaccine but seems to understand that the Covid situation and the so-called “vaccines” are different animals. In December 2021 he was heard arguing against vaccine boosters, referring to himself as an “unboosted male” and saying that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant was “nature’s vaccine.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Makary#COVID-19_pandemic
4. If memory serves, I believe Dr. Walensky herself once tested positive for Covid within a month after having received a booster. This should not be surprising; we should all remember that *=the shots do not keep people from either contracting or carrying the infection. Based on what I have read, it does seem that symptoms are sometimes more moderate for people who have had a shot that targets the specific viral strain they came into contact with. My personal feeling is that I don’t want medicine I don’t need, and I firmly believe most of us, including myself, do not need a Covid shot.
Three factors seem more important for 99% of the population, going forward:
- The individual’s immune system
- Prior infection and natural immunity gained from that infection
- Treating any symptoms properly (For me, this would tend to exclude Paxlovid, because it “only has positive data in unvaccinated high risk people who have not had COVID,” and also because it advertises on commercial media. I am quite open to alternative medical treatments and feel that the Covid death rates would be massively lower if (1) Covid were not listed as a primary cause when it was merely present in an other-cause death, and (2) if ventilators had not been used so much because the wrong medical treatments had been given.
5. The mass positive effect of masking was
presumed in 2020 and has never been proven—for Covid or other upper-respiratory infections. The fact that some people persist in wearing masks, or in believing they helped, might be courteous and/or self-protective in their minds, but that doesn’t mean it’s scientific or even based on common sense. Case in point: no N95 mask was studied for children, yet a school in Maryland mandated such a thing this year. A friend pointed out that there is a KN95 (China standard) for children, but I still suspect that it has not been tested for efficacy. The famed
Cochrane report said masks in general had inconclusive data. That study in itself (which does not mention KN95 masks) should keep people from returning to any sort of mask mandates, but for the fabrications, exaggerations, and lies of key personnel such as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky. “Clearly, community masking does not work— that was the conclusion of the 2020 Cochrane report and my conclusion, when my colleagues and
I reviewed the evidence in 2020.” – Vinay Prasad
6. No school lockdowns should ever again occur for Covid or anything like it. Even CA Governor Newsom, who enacted some of the worst measures in the country, and whose state is suffering from many poor judgments, has admitted that hindsight allows him to reevaluate what he did in 2020-2021.
https://www.politico.com/…/newsom-covid-california…
7. Speaking of hindsight . . . Dr. Fauci equivocated. That’s about the best thing that can be said about him at this point. Many of his past statements should now be ignored, and his overall influence should now be countered. Despite the reality that he for a time represented science, he did not represent it well. Real science has disproved things he and Dr. Walensky and Dr. Jha have alleged.
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/…/ashish-jha-has…
Countless ethical medical professionals, including some I know personally, have assumed they could trust what they were reading from established sources, or hearing from the likes of the CDC, but the info later proved to be false. Trusted town physicians went on record and turned out to have misled their publics. (My own PA displayed a very balanced, honest approach, I must say.) No one I know intended to be misleading, but agencies and the executive branch of our government knowingly falsified and suppressed important research and facts, and the whole ball of wax compromised relationships with doctors and devastated trust in the whole system.
It must be acknowledged by the general public that certain information/opinion once alleged to have been “dis”information has later been proven correct. In the process of big-brothering the whole pandemic, highly credentialed people were censored for thinking and challenging (which is what science is supposed to do!). Later, what many of them had said was found to have been correct. Read here about Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an epidemiologist from Stanford, for instance.
https://www.thefp.com/…/i-fought-government-censorship…
POSTSCRIPT
I had first shared two or three facts and perhaps an opinion on another person’s Facebook post and was censored by that acquaintance. I took that personally for a while, then I tried to move on. I realize that if someone doesn’t want me to share an opposing viewpoint in a friendly way, it’s not fully that person’s fault, nor is anyone required to let me comment at all. He appeals to the number of deaths, and I of course care about each and every loss. On the other hand, I’m convinced that the number of Covid deaths in this country has been greatly exaggerated, with Covid shown as the cause when it was merely present (or not, depending on the testing circumstances).
Further, I’m even more concerned with the devastating effect of the (and here, I draw back, because I don’t want to overuse or repeat an incendiary word, but the word “draconian” is more apt than “Naziistic” or “horrific”) draconian measures taken by most states at first, and by the country, and by employers. We began to live in fear, and we began to distrust any dissenting viewpoints, many of which in large measure turned out to be correct. The devastation on the psychologies of so many, and notably the students in school, will be felt for years, and maybe decades. It is for this that Dr. Fauci and others must be held accountable.
I find that it’s almost impossible for many people to be open on this topic. It’s partly a result of where they live. If you’re in the middle of NYC or Boston or San Francisco, you’ll be influenced by your surroundings. If you ride in elevators in crowded office buildings, or if you think the federal government was right to censor speech and determine the public sharing of information, or if you’ve lost or are worried about a loved one, you’re naturally likely to have a perspective influenced by those things. That is completely understandable.
It’s not wrong to be careful or to try to get others to be careful. It’s not wrong to be afraid or concerned about yourself or those you love because of health factors. It’s a bad idea, though, to ignore good information, acting as though it doesn’t exist, or to suppress thought and speech in order to favor the official stance. This is precisely what the CDC and FDA are guilty of during the last three years or so–even when they knew what was being said was true, or at least worthy of investigation and consideration.
Earnestly Speaking 