There are more awful incompetently designed and executed “studies” of unvaccinated populations compared to vaccinated populations carried out by antivaxxers than I can even count. I know. I’ve been shooting them down since at least 2005. (Anyone remember the dumpster-diving in the VAERS database by the not-so-dynamic duo of Geier père et fils?) The problem is that there are far more crappy antivax studies than even this single clear Plexiglass box of colored blinking lights can deal with. The torrent of bad antivax “science” is a veritable firehose—nay, a veritable tsunami—that one person just can’t handle, however fast and verbose he is at blogging and Twitter. Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has supercharged these tendencies, as crappy antivax studies have now morphed into crappy antivax studies about COVID-19 vaccines. Still, even in the midst of a deadly pandemic that in a little more than a year has killed over a half a million people in just the US alone, it’s depressing to see that the same old, same old is still a thing among antivaxxers, namely crappy surveys masquerading as “studies” of the unvaccinated that claim to find that the unvaccinated are oh-so-much “healthier” than the vaccinated. So it was that I came across an article on Vaxxter earlier this week, New survey of vaccine-free group exposes long-term impact of vaccination policies on public health by Greg Glaser and Pat O’Connell. Basically, the survey is called The Control Group Pilot Study, and apparently it was published late last year. Why Vaxxter is only getting around to it now, I don’t know, but let’s take a look:
In 2019, Joy Garner with The Control Group set out to answer that question by conducting a litigation survey of never-vaccinated people. They found that, in every case, the claims we hear from our vaunted government and TV experts about the risks and benefits of vaccines are demonstrably false.
In fact, they learned that the tiny, vaccine-free minority of Americans is far healthier overall than the vaccinated majority.
But did they? Did they really? I think you know the answer to that one. Also, note the gall, the arrogance. To Garner and her enabling attorneys, the unvaccinated are “the control group.” Everyone else is in the experimental group, apparently. It’s a not-so-subtle reiteration of the common antivaccine lie that vaccines are inadequately tested or untested; i.e., still “experimental.” I’m surprised that Vaxxter had the restraint not to drag the Nuremberg Code into it.
Next who the heck are the “architects” of The Control Group Pilot Study? First of all, a little Googling reveals that Greg Glaser is—surprise! surprise!—an attorney. A little more Googling finds his blog Vaccine Freedom Lawyer. Unsurprisingly, it’s chock full of antivaccine disinformation and COVID-19 nonsense, although it hasn’t been updated since May 2020. It does, however, also include links to the usual suspects of antivaccine sites, including the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Physicians for Informed Consent, and the like. (It should not be surprising that Glaser would advertise PIC. He is the general counsel for this particularly pernicious group of antivax physician-grifters.) A little more Googling pulled up a reference from our feathery friend Skeptical Raptor, about how Glaser had been involved in lawsuits against California’s school vaccine mandate. (Yet another surprise!) So, basically, he appears to be a “health freedom” and antivax attorney looking for cases to attack vaccine mandates, and The Control Group appears to be just his latest grift vehicle grift for advancing such lawsuits Why do I say this?
Meet Joy Garner. Oddly enough, I had never heard of her before, either. At least, when I sat down to write this post I didn’t recall having heard of her before. It turns out that last year she filed a lawsuit against then-President Trump with Greg Glaser and Ray Flores as her attorneys that has—shall we say?—not gone well, as this update on the Control Group Litigation website updating the status of Joy Garner v. Trump indicates:
This week the court dismissed our case on the grounds of standing (i.e., saying we can’t sue the President for the constitutional violations alleged, but rather should sue someone else). We are appealing immediately to the 9th Circuit.
The President, as chief executive, manages multiple departments handling vaccines and their distribution (such as HHS, US Military, Department of Education, Department of Commerce, Department of Justice). He is the ultimate wrongdoer with respect to the plaintiffs. Indeed, the President is the only party that can issue the nationwide order we’re requesting for national security to save America from the chronic illness trajectory. The numbers contained in our filings conclusively show vaccines are destroying our country. The President ultimately bears responsibility; there’s just no nice way to put that.Surprisingly, the court dismissed our entire case without the government ever producing a single expert or any evidence whatsoever. The defense simply argued that the President cannot be held responsible for vaccine mandates by States.
I’m sure Dorit Reiss will weigh in somewhere in the comments, but this looks like a really baseless lawsuit to me, even by antivax activist standards. I detested Trump as President as much as the next guy, but it’s true. The federal government doesn’t mandate vaccines for schools. States do. Even I know that. Sure, Glaser and Flores try to justify the Control Group litigation by arguing that the federal government does the following things:
- designing and producing vaccines that are mandated
- approving vaccines that are mandated
- purchasing vaccines that are mandated
- promoting vaccines that are mandated, and promoting the policy of mandates
- distributing vaccines that are mandated
- tracking vaccine injuries from mandated vaccines
- litigating vaccine injury cases from mandated vaccines
- setting regulations for interstate infectious disease control regarding mandated vaccines
- funding health departments to enforce mandates using police powers
- enforcing vaccine mandates on Federal properties and for Federally funded activities
Much of this might well be true, but it’s still ultimately the states that determine which vaccines are mandated for school, not the federal government. The federal government’s role in approving vaccines and recommending vaccines doesn’t mean that states have to agree. Yes, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) does make recommendations for the vaccines that children and adults should receive, but they are just that, recommendations. Physicians decide if and how to implement those recommendations in their practices, and states decide whether to accept ACIP recommendations and incorporate each recommended vaccine into its school mandates. True, most states usually do follow ACIP recommendations, but they don’t have to.
And guess what? The Control Group Pilot Study featured prominently in the plaintiff’s exhibits. For example, I screenshot this:
Yes, it’s the same old nonsense that antivaxxers have been promoting since time immemorial (or at least for 30 years) in which they confuse correlation with causation. I also note that these not-so-brilliant nonscientists use the same old antivax trope of exaggerating the number of vaccines in the CDC recommended vaccine schedule by counting every dose and then counting combination vaccines multiple times by separating out their components, so that DTaP, for instance, counts as three. Then, they only use two sources for the prevalence of chronic disease and two time points, and don’t even get me into the issues of time lag, such that somehow adult chronic disease prevalence in a year is supposed to correlate to the number of vaccines in the vaccine schedule of that same year, even though adults from those years would have had their vaccines according to the recommended vaccine schedule from decades before. I apologize to any statisticians or epidemiologists who see this figure (or any of the figures included in the litigation) for causing your neurons to apoptose in response to such innumerate nonsense. I swear, this “Control Group” disinformation is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “sickest generation” (because of vaccines) nonsense all over again, but only stupider.
But what about the survey itself? Vaxxter trots out a lot of the same old antivaccine tropes in its introduction, including the false claim that the Supreme Court ruled vaccines “unavoidably unsafe” (it didn’t); the risks of diseases vaccinated against don’t outweigh the risk of the vaccines (wrong); the usual tropes about VAERS that ignore other vaccine-safety monitoring systems; and more. The introduction to the survey itself is truly awe-inspiring in its lack of science being proclaimed as science coupled with extreme statistical innumeracy, all presented with maximal hysteria:
When in doubt, we must go back to the instruction manual. And this manual instructs us to actually apply the true scientific method to the problem if we wish to arrive at the correct answers. Because science has been so fully corrupted of late, people lose faith in science. But the scientific method is not to blame. It’s still the logical method for arriving at objective truths. The corruption of science is what has caused the problem. When 99% incorrect numbers are the basis for the math problem, (as seen in the VAERS data) there is no chance of arriving at a correct answer, unless of course, it’s in the context of “Common Core” mathematics. In which case, any answer can be correct, so long as the student obeys the illogical instructions they’re ordered to follow. If they follow the irrational orders correctly, the incorrect answer becomes acceptable. Even with the correct answer, if the orders were not followed, the correct answer is deemed incorrect. Hence, the objective truth is irrelevant and the only thing that matters, is the willingness of the student to blindly follow orders, no matter how irrational those orders are. In the end, the only “correct answer” is to follow orders.
Common Core math is similar to the so-called “science” of vaccine safety. The slogans, i.e., “rare” or (relatively) “safe”, are supported only by numbers that are over 99% incorrect. And this is the “science” we’re told we must blindly “trust”. No matter how irrational the orders, we must follow them and get our “shots”, in order to avoid being attacked as “anti- science” nut jobs. But that’s okay. Nobody needs to be an MD to count the number of the diagnoses doctors have already given. Nor does one require a medical degree to obtain historical data relevant to vaccination exposures which people are keenly aware of in their own lives and perfectly capable of reporting. The numbers our agencies have categorically refused to count, were counted anyway. And the researcher here is quite certain these agencies will be furious this accounting was done without their “approval”, which they would never have granted to anyone, given that this particular accounting exposes the numerically objective truth about the relative “safety” of vaccine exposure.
This gives away the game. First, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database is not, as this not-so-dynamic duo of “control group” lawyers seem to be arguing, the be-all and end-all of vaccine safety monitoring. Far from it! I hate having to repeat this over, but VAERS was always intended as an early warning system. It’s not intended, nor can it provide, the actual prevalence of vaccine adverse events, and it’s been gamed by antivaxxers for a very long time, particularly by greedy lawyers seeking to sue pharmaceutical companies for nonexistent “vaccine injury,” particularly autism. It’s also just plain not true that “only 1%” of adverse events are ever reported to VAERS.
The second paragraph, though, is where the game is truly given away. Forget all those doctors, Garner et al are saying. Science as done by actual scientists is bad, you can only trust the “people’s science”! How did The Control Group Pilot study claim to science? Here you go:
The survey was implemented in April of 2019 ending in June of 2020, with the immediate goal of obtaining raw health data exclusively from entirely unvaccinated subjects of all ages in as many American states as possible. The ultimate goal of this study, and that of a planned larger-scale follow-up study of similar construct, is to fill a major gap in available health data by establishing health outcomes specific to Americans who have not been exposed to vaccines. Data was also gathered to establish health outcomes associated with avoidance of the vitamin K-shot at birth and/or vaccination during pregnancy, in addition to complete avoidance of post-birth vaccination. This population of interest, i.e., the remaining entirely unvaccinated (post-birth) in all ages combined, is calculated at 0.26% (or less) of the entire population in the USA.2
Three methods of data collection were employed; (1) mailed-in surveys (2) on-site, in- person interviews, and (3) follow-up phone interviews. These methods are similar to those implemented in the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) 2017-2018. However, the Control Group survey, covering 48 American states, achieved a substantially higher sampling rate for our population of interest (entirely unvaccinated post-birth) who fell within the ages of 3-17, than did the NSCH study for its population of interest.3
And what did The Control Group Pilot Study claim to find? I’m sure you can guess. In fact, I thought about going through some of the graphs and “statistics” (if you can all them that), but they all show exactly what you think an antivax survey of the unvaccinated would show, that the unvaccinated are so very much healthier than the vaccinated, who are represented by statistics on chronic diseases and the like culled from various sources for the overall population, mainly the CDC. Can any of you tell me why the results of this survey are completely worthless? Yes? No?
I’ll go on. Consider how subjects were recruited for this “study”/survey. Basically, Garner blanketed antivaccine websites, Facebook groups, and social media with recruiting appeals like this and this:
And this is the sort of appeal these legal geniuses made:
We are now conducting the largest-ever epidemiological health study of unvaccinated people in preparation for a federal lawsuit to end all vaccine mandates Nationwide.
We are NOT asking for money. We need ACTION.
Even a few minutes of time WILL make a huge difference.
Over 43% of VACCINATED children in the USA are now suffering chronic, disabling, and even deadly diseases. Our early study responses are already proving that UNvaccinated kids have almost ZERO chronic health problems AND they are far LESS susceptible to serious INFECTIOUS diseases, particularly if they did not receive an aluminum-filled vitamin K shot at birth.
As this large % of vaccine injured kids reach the ages where they would otherwise have been entering the workforce, our Nation’s economy will COLLAPSE.
Many of these children require life-long 24 hour care. This is a NATIONAL EMERGENCY.
The vaccine programs represent an imminent and existential threat to the survival of our Nation. Our study is already definitely proving what the CAUSE of all this disease and destruction is.
We are targeting August 15th, 2019 for completion of this study and then we are headed into federal court. The primary pharma “legal argument” to defend vaccine mandates, which the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld, is that individual rights can be violated in the name of “public health”.
However, our study already proves vaccines are DESTROYING “public health”, also causing more serious INFECTIOUS diseases.
According to the Federal Judge’s Bench Guide, true CONTROL studies are the GOLD STANDARD of evidence for proving CAUSATION, requiring it to be given the most “weight”.
Previous comparative studies (vaccinated vs. unvaccinated) have been too small, and dismissed as “statistically insignificant”.
But with the size of this study, we CAN win this, especially with Trump’s judicial appointments on board now. Our massive and now expanding study will be the most damning evidence big pharma has ever faced in a court of law.
Please consider having a spokesperson from The Control Group write an article for your publications, and/or please help spread the word about the study.
The larger our study, the more responses we get back, the more profound the evidence that vaccines are in fact the primary CAUSE of our Nation’s rapidly declining health.
Right there, the sample is biased beyond hope. Who saw this recruiting pitch? Antivaxxers who frequent antivaccine Facebook pages, other social media, and websites, that’s who.That’s a sample of people who will, by their very antivaccine nature, be biased in the direction of thinking that vaccines cause chronic health problems. Naturally, the “unvaccinated control group” without much, if any, in the way of chronic health problems will be far more likely to respond than those who might have a few chronic health issues. Moreover, the analysis was not done to take into effect potential confounders. Sure, The Control Group claims to have done so, but it didn’t. Not really. The only “confounders” looked for were:
The primary confounding biological factors present in the unvaccinated population today are exposures to the vitamin K-shot and/or maternal vaccines. Our Control Group data of unvaccinated (post-birth) has evidenced that, of those few Americans who have entirely avoided vaccine exposure since birth, more than 31% were exposed to the vitamin K-shot and/or their mothers were vaccinated during the pregnancy. The “vitamin” K-shot contains a powerful immune-system triggering vaccine-adjuvant, i.e., aluminum, (and other known toxins) with the potential to permanently-alter human physiology and cause immune system injury.32
Immediately after all hospital births in the USA today, parents are told by medical staff that the K-shot is just a “vitamin” and heavy pressure is applied to make sure their new baby is injected with it, along with any other injectable pharmaceuticals pushed at these facilities. Parents are falsely told their baby will “bleed to death” without the K-shot and false allegations of “medical neglect” are routinely levelled against parents who refuse. This would tend explain why parents who are concerned about vaccine-safety do not always reject these risky immune-system triggering “vitamin K” injections for their newborns. They are told it’s “just a vitamin” and they are threatened.
For purposes of this study, the maternal vaccines and vitamin K-shots are obvious potential confounders that have been stratified to establish relevant risk factors as compared to those who’ve avoided exposure to both of these pharmaceutical offerings, in addition to avoiding exposure to all post-birth vaccines. Although the unvaccinated (post-birth) who were exposed to the K-shot and/or maternal vaccines represent the minority of those surveyed, the vast majority of health conditions reported in the “unvaccinated” (post-birth) were found in those who were exposed to the K-shot, and/or maternal vaccines.
That’s it. Vitamin K shots and maternal vaccines were the only “confounders” examined. Now look at the actual survey:
That’s it. I kid you not. It’s a single page asking how many chronic diseases you have and what they are. It doesn’t even ask age, weight, race, or anything else. As far as antivaccine surveys go, this is even more utterly worthless than even the “vaxxed/unvaxxed” surveys done by Anthony Mawson and a German homeopath were! It’s a highly biased selection with no verification of answers of people who frequent antivaccine social media.
None of that stops Garner from defending The Control Group Pilot Study thusly:
I see some people think the survey’s not “scientific” enough. But the real point here is: According to WHO’s definition of “science” do you claim this? If you’re looking for The Control Group to fall in lock-step with the sort of “science” pharma has to offer you, we’re not you’re huckleberry.
READ ON, if you DARE;-)
“Scientific”? This is a general product safety survey. It is NOT being conducted for publication in a pharma-funded medical journal.
It IS being conducted based upon the Federal Rules of Evidence for submission under a particular branch of law. The Federal Courts do NOT require us to get the blessings of big pharma before it becomes admissible as evidence.
It is possible that the results could be skewed by some people, but this happens with ALL surveys, and we already have so many participants willing to identify themselves, (and even testify in court) that we will be able to show these affects are only minimal in our study.
Also, we are using PAPER hard-copy documents, and those are REALLY tough to fake.
Unlike the CHEAP and fraudulent online “epidemiological” studies the FDA conducts on their website, (which can ALL be rigged electronically) our survey can’t be “hacked”.
My brain hurt after reading this conglomeration of scientific ignorance. Again, a collection of anecdotes does not science make. At most it might generate hypotheses for study, but it certainly doesn’t “prove” anything. I do love her dismissal of the (very) legitimate criticism that her survey will be skewed with the rebuttal that all surveys are skewed to some extent. That is true, but real epidemiologists, social scientists, and pollsters doing surveys have spend decades developing methodology to try to minimize bias and “skewing” in the results of the polls and surveys that they administer. Garner clearly made zero attempt to do that—quite the opposite, in fact.
In the end, pandemic or no pandemic, antivaxxers continue to do what antivaxxers do, namely mangle science in the cause of their ideology that demands that vaccines be the cause of all sorts of horrible things while being of little or no value to those receiving them. This is just another example. As I like to say, antivaxxers gonna antivax, and conspiracy theorists gonna conspiracy monger. I look forward now to following with great amusement (and likely annoyance) the progress of The Control Group Litigation as Garner, Glaser, and Flores continue their appeals.
271 replies on ““The Control Group”: A litigation-driven antivaccine survey of the “unvaccinated””
I really need to get to write about the legal aspect of this, because this is about as frivolous a lawsuit as you get – literally more frivolous than the Kraken litigation – and Mr. Glaser is actually a competent, smart lawyer. He has to know that.
It’s bad on pretty much any aspect you can think.
Thank you for covering the science aspects.
There is not one bit of “science” in subjective slogans like “rare” when it comes to defining vaccine risks. Nobody presents actual NUMBERS when they say “rare”. Instead, they rely upon the VAERS numbers which the 2011 Harvard study has already proven are over 99% incorrect.
Citation needed. Which 2011 Harvard study? How does it disprove them?
Oh, and nice necromancy.
We addressed actual numbers – drawing on the extensive science published on this – in this article, pp. 782-785. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3450277
(There are, of course, many other source that are more scientific than this, but I remember this one by heart, and it addresses the numbers).
Here is another article that has numbers. https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%252815%252901160-4/abstract
There are many article that address the numbers, and do it based on actual controlled studies.
I could feel myself getting stupid by the minute reading this article.
Obvs no about how the covid jab works as if he was a legitimate doctor he wouldn’t be making these assumptions during a trial since they’re in the trials until 2023
We all know the result of the Kraken litigation too.
It was released.
…………….
Sorry.
needs context: https://youtu.be/7GwGu8QVpLU?t=1
Is there any recourse for these attorneys wasting court time? Will the state bar investigate for possible disbarment if a lawyer makes a habit of filing frivolous lawsuits?
Courts can impose sanctions for frivolous lawsuits and some types of attorney misconduct.
It’s very rarely done. Attorney Lin Wood is now facing some disciplinary action, but it’s unclear how it will end.
I wondered about that during the farce that was the attempt to overthrow the 2020 Presidential elections through the courts.
In some countries that more closely follow the UK legal system than the US, a court can declare someone a “vexations litigant”, and they then require leave from a senior judge to take legal action.
That seems to be an unusual process in the US: Wikipedia mentions only California as having it.
There are also clear avenues for abuse of such a process.
Grrr… “vexatious”, not “vexations”.
Grrr… “vexatious” not “vexations”!
Clearly we’re over the target. What else could explain this level of attention? Fear much Mr. Pharma shill?
In case you missed it, Orac write about a lot of things. Here is another example of a topic he covered.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/10/12/ozone-up-the-bum-to-treat-covid-19/
Sometimes, it’s because it’s important to correct the misinformation. Sometimes, it’s because it’s an easy target for amusement.
I’m sure the legal aspects will make for equally ridiculous reading. However, I think both miss the real point. I’ve no doubt that the real purpose of such lawsuits is to keep the lovely lucre flowing in from the gullible plebs.
Which is to say, a quick dismissal is a huge success! It means more free cash to pocket while telling the suckers that Big Allopathic Law is clearly set against them and please send more so they can try again.
The altmed/antivax grift machine belongs in the same circle of Hell as Televangelists and MLMs. Nothing is easier to scam than True Believers. Just tell them that they’re Special and they’ll empty their pockets for you! #FollowTheMoney
Enjoy your forced CV-19 injections.
Why forced? Millions of people were -understandably – eager to be protected from COVID-19 and contributing towards ending the pandemic.
Not everyone shares the view that protecting children from diseases is bad. In fact, most don’t.
@ Joy:
No one is forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
No one in the USA is forced to get any vaccine.
There may be consequences for choosing to not be vaccinated (like a significantly increased risk of getting sick) but no one is forced to be vaccinated.
“To Garner and her enabling attorneys, the unvaccinated are “the control group.””
So do you have a better idea on how design an actual study looking at rates of chronic disease in the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated? The vaccinated would be the “experimental” group & the unvaccinated are the “control group”. This is not hard. The control group would have to be completely unvaccinated for the study to be valid. The experimental group would have to include anyone who had ever had 1 or more vaccines. Anything else would not be a valid study.
You just don’t agree with it because of the results. If you think you could do a study that would find anything else, maybe you should conduct one. Control group = 0 vaccines; experimental group = any vaccines.
The post actually addressed in detail what’s wrong with the study.
And no. Practically for everything, dose should matter, if there’s a real response. So lower rates of vaccines would actually make a difference, if there was a real impact.
That said, the KIGGS study did look at the rates between completely unvaccinated and vaccinated – and that was a well done, well controlled study. The only difference was that unvaccinated children had higher rates of preventable diseases.
Other studies did look at dose/response – higher rates of vaccines to none, and found no real differences. Here are a few:
Glanz JM, Newcomer SR, Daley MF, DeStefano F, et al. Association between estimated cumulative vaccine antigen exposure through the first 23 months of life and non-vaccine-targeted infections from 24 through 47 months of age. JAMA 2018;319(9):906-913.
The authors determined the relationship between the number of vaccines given in the first two years of life and the occurrence of non-vaccine targeted infections between two and four years of age. They found no difference in either the cumulative number of antigens or the number of antigens received in a single day in children who developed non-vaccine targeted infections.
Sherrid AM, Ruck CE, Sutherland D, et al. Lack of broad functional differences in immunity in fully vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children. Pediatr Res 2017;81(4):601-608.
The authors assessed the immune response to general, non-vaccine specific stimuli in fully vaccinated and entirely unvaccinated children between 3 and 5 years of age. They found that standard childhood vaccines did not cause long-lasting, gross alterations of the immune system.
Taken from the references here. https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/immune-system-and-health
Anti-vaccine activists just don’t like these results.
And if you were doing a real study, a lawyer, an anti-vaccine activist wouldn’t be the people you would have conducting it.
You beat me to it!
Another factor they don’t understand is that in science you have to account for all relevant data, not just your own data.
@ Dorit; “Practically for everything, dose should matter, if there’s a real response.”
No, that’s not true for vaccines. The dose does not matter.
“How can a baby get the same dose of a vaccine as an older child or adult?
Because vaccines do not work like medications, in many cases the same vaccine dose can be given to different age groups; however, in some cases, different versions of vaccines are available for different age groups.”
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/dosing-safety
This does not mean the dose does not matter. Vaccines do have a dose. And when your argument is “vaccines have enough of an effect on the body to cause these disorders”, there should be an implied dose/response relationship.
From lower in the article you linked to:
“The purpose of a vaccine is to introduce the smallest amount of antigens, the components of viruses or bacteria that cause illness, to allow a memory immune response to develop without making a person sick. It takes about seven to 10 days after getting a vaccine for this immunologic memory to develop. That is why when you are planning a trip, you are recommended to see your doctor or a travel clinic well in advance of the trip.”
Dose does matter.
If you want to argue that dose does not matter – that a person that got one vaccine is as likely to develop (insert disorder anti-vaccine activists imagine vaccines cause, in spite of the evidence) as a person that is fully vaccinated – I’d be curious to know your argument. This isn’t it.
@ Dorit:
Funny, I’ve always thought that anti-vaxxers felt that the “amount” of vaccines was very important towards causing ‘damage’ because
— parents were advised to take three separate vaccines instead of MMR and
— were warned to stretch out the schedule because “too many, too soon” and
— they extrapolated that the vaccine ‘damage’ seen in the last 30 years or so was because the schedule/ number of vaccines was vastly increased **
Wanting to have only two groups may be due entirely to lack of sophistication about statistical analyses OR perhaps it was the only way to torture the data into producing significance I imagine that anti-vaxxers will quote this as they do other crap studies
Also: Blaming Trump? Even if this were not as ludicrous as illustrated, were all of the children born after he took office?.
.
** nothing to do with DSM changes re ASD. NO! NEVER!
Besides, they can hardly claim that dose doesn’t matter. If you separate vaccines into the medium and the ‘immunity’ component (not sure what you’d call it but I mean the bit that actually contains the virus in one form or another). The immunity component cannot do any more harm to the body than the actual disease. It’s either a dead version of the virus or a weakened version (ignoring the mRNA stuff). If you’d rather take your or your children’s chances with a wild virus, rather than the weakened or dead version then you really have no concept of reality.
This just leaves the medium. If you want to claim a none dose related response to the medium then we’d all be buggered by now. The amounts of anything you care to mention, in all the scheduled vaccines, are miniscule compared to what we encounter every single day in the air or food or directly into the blood stream via cuts and grazes. In my job I regularly suffer the loss of ‘bark’ on my hands in greasy, dirty environments full of metal dust, including aluminium, steel and copper or brass. One of my co-workers used to have a party trick which involved using a strong magnet to pull at a deeply embedded metal spelk embedded in his hand. I have had steel pins through the length of my femur and tibia for more than fifteen years due to a motorcycle accident.
So far, no sign of any chronic illnesses.
When Christine says things like this: “No, that’s not true for vaccines. The dose does not matter.” I realize that for her, vaccines are a purity thing. If a person has had even one vaccine, they are sullied and impure.
In the instance of this study the “dose” of vaccines could also be talking about the number of vaccines a person has received. But if it is a “purity” issue like how once a female dog has been bred to the “wrong” male none of her subsequent puppies are considered “purebred”, then that wouldn’t matter.
Wonderful response!
Enjoy your forced CV-19 injections.
Try this for starters.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2458-8-196
@ Christine Kincaid
Did you read Orac’s piece? He makes it absolutely clear that the “control group” was not a representative sample of those who didn’t get vaccinated; but only those who follow anti vaccination webpages, social media, etc. Just to make sure you understand, Orac wrote: “Who saw this recruiting pitch? Antivaxxers who frequent antivaccine Facebook pages, other social media, and websites, that’s who.That’s a sample of people who will, by their very antivaccine nature, be biased in the direction of thinking that vaccines cause chronic health problems. Naturally, the “unvaccinated control group” without much, if any, in the way of chronic health problems will be far more likely to respond than those who might have a few chronic health issues.”
He also made clear that the questionnaire didn’t ask for: “age, weight, race, or anything else.” Any of a number of confounding variables.
And as he also explained, besides correlation not equal causation, they correlated current cases with current vaccines. Really? How could a current vaccine cause a current chronic condition? At least, my understanding of chronic means it has been going on for some time, not concurrent with anything! ! !
So, you miss all the points in Orac’s piece, it was NOT a valid control group! ! !
On well, I wouldn’t expect anything else from you, misreading/misunderstanding or simply twisting/intellectual dishonesty to promote your unscientific illogical agenda
In any case, for the umpteenth time, I asked you, given your twins were born “very low birthweight” and “very premature” and you yourself have admitted you have genetic disorders perhaps passed down to them, and the aforementioned have been linked to, among other things, SIDS, can you admit that there is a possibility that the vaccine was just coincidental, did not cause SIDS in one of your twins? I’m not asking to rule it out, just stop pretending you have g-d-like certainty and admit, in science, we look at probabilities. Otherwise, why are you posting on the sister blog to Science-Based Medicine? The two blogs are based on science, not religion, not g-d-like certainty.
@ Joel; “He makes it absolutely clear that the “control group” was not a representative sample of those who didn’t get vaccinated; but only those who follow anti vaccination webpages, social media, etc. ”
As if the results would be any different if the control group did not come from social media.
So do it the right way. Oh wait, you won’t because that’s “unethical”. Well that sucks, guess you’re stuck with how others do it.
@Christine:
The results WOULD be different in a properly selected control group. As Joel pointed out above, when a properly designed vaxxed-unvaxxed study was done, the only difference was that the unvaxxed group had a higher rate of vaccine preventable diseases.
Another problem with this “study” is that the respondents just answered a call. There was no review of medical records to confirm the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the claims of health. Surveys are known to be a highly unreliable way of gathering data. And because these people are antivaxx, the odds are excellent they would underreport medical problems in their unvaccinated children.
@Christine KIncaid KIGGS study asked parents, but it actually asked a sample of them, not only antivaxx ones. Among them were children who did not get vaccines. This way you can really compare vaccinated and unvaccinated.
In Jain et al, ( 2015) a study to examine the rates of autism in both vaccinated and unvaccinated younger brothers of boys with and without autism, she matched the ratio of unvaccinated to vaccinated in the population which meant she had to have a huge number of subjects in order to get enough unvaccinated for a meaningful result. She found no difference in rates of autism in younger siblings whether they were vaccinated or not ( both 1%). The only difference found was whether the older child had autism or not ( 7% if older was autistic, 1% if not).
@Joel
Since the responses were from people already in the antivaccine camp or leaning strongly towards it, there the question of — how shall I put this? — whether or not the respondents were telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Or perhaps I’m just too cynical.
What is your definition of a “control group”? My definition, (and the actual scientific definition) is the group with no exposure to the substance or intervention in question. This “control group” of entirely unvaccinated Americans is presently at close to 832K people of all ages, and this is our “population of interest” for the collection of health data. What is your own definition of a “control group”?
Yes it is hard. Confounders you drooling boob.
IANAS and even I can think of half a dozen other factors that could be wildly different between the two groups (smoking, diet, race, economic status, environment, social contacts). All of which could easily explain any measured difference, assuming those measurements are even done honestly—and for a bunch of religious freaks with an ax to grind it’s a certainty they won’t.
There isn’t even an attempt to control for other factors in this so-called “study”. It’s a scam, run for glory and profit, pure and simple. And you are an enabler of that abuse.
All confounders, errors, and even inaccuracies in reporting were ultimately defined numerically from the nationwide Control Group dataset. The final result was a 99% Confidence level in an “error” (or MOE, or variance, or intervals) of less than 0.04% for the dataset. Multiple experts, including statisticians, have reviewed all methodology, equations, and even the entire raw dataset, and they’ve confirmed the veracity and truthfulness of the study UNDER OATH/ You find a SINGLE pharma-funded “scientist” who will sign under OATH to their “reviews” that are published in the 95% pharma-funded rag-mags they call “medical journals”. The statasticians who’ve reviewed the full raw dataset have run myriad of their own mathematical models and have concluded that it is a mathematical impossibility vaccines are NOT the cause of the disparity in health outcomes. Our courts are fully corrupt, and so are our “health” agencies, but we go seeking a “civil” remedy, praying we can find one somewhere. Godspeed to you.
Looking at your list, your statistics expert appeared to be Dr. Vicki Debold Pebsworth, who works for NVIC and whose academic experience is very limited.
A self-created, non-academic survey isn’t actually going to do very well in court, even if you had better legal claims. I really should get back to finishing your very lengthy petition and analyze why, rightly, the district court rejected it, and why likely the other courts will, too.
A 3rd grader at a decent science-based grade school could come up with a better design than “The Con-Troll Group”. Give it up.
Want to calculate the sample size for that, CK? I’m not in the mood right now, as it’s almost time for Jeopardy! and I have to play string with the cat, make dinner, and put out the trash and recycling. It’s easy. Two-sided, please.
Something tells me that I’m not going to get an answer to this question. Hence, it’s again Prometheus time.
Thanks Christine for trying to speak truth to bigotry.
You are absolutely correct that dosing would actually skew a study designed to answer just the question of causation. In fact, since human experimentation is so limited it would simply ruin it entirely. The part you should probably mention – not that it would persuade bigots – is that autoimmune responses to foreign bodies are host specific. In short, some hosts could be injected with lots of the stuff and experience minimal adverse result while other hosts couldn’t tolerate even a needle that was reused. It isn’t disputed that some hosts actually gain no beneficial result either. The argument being made above is inappropriate for a heterogeneous population. That’s the actual argument at the root of this question. Even the mercury question was still notoriously riddled with host specific exceptions. If this thread were intellectually honest nobody would be trying to exclude the Amish for being too homogeneous while simultaneously ignoring the heterogeneous attributes of the rest of the population. This entire thread is an intellectually dishonest pig wearing makeup and that’s without any mention of the study being targeted by the mob.
I frankly don’t find such a politically charged study to be very useful. Just the basic numbers with no interpretation are what I look for. Unfortunately in this case (and most) the groups tend to be evaluated in uncontrolled ways (due to practical control limitations with human experimentation) degrading credibility and leaving too much room for the bigots to make their claims. It doesn’t take much room for that to happen on either side of a “scientific” debate.
In a perfect world one could hope to have lots of variables to group the results with, but in the real world to answer the one question about vaccine harm, your control group should be completely vaccine free and the experimental everyone else.
Absent any viable study, autoimmune response is Russian roulette. Even if you’re spinning 99 blanks and one live one, for the one that gets the live one, like Hank Aaron, it is unethical to force everyone to play even at .1% even at .01%. An informed and voluntary participation is the only ethical path. Bigots screaming insults at those that choose not to play are a scourge.
Signed,
A Fully Vaccinated Covid19 survivor that councils people to weigh their own priorities and make their own choices. Hank Aaron made his choice, I made mine, you make yours.
If vaccines were bad as such, partially vaccinated would be better off than fully vaccinated, and non vaccinated better off than partially vaccinated. This would be perfect test for dose dependency.
Lots of people have exactly same autoimmune disease, So autoimmune reaction is not specific to individuals.
I especially liked this quote.
They should tell that one to Donald Trump and all the Congressmen who voted to overturn results of the last election.
And then they stick in these two tidbits.
But they ignore the fact that science is an open process. Anyone can participate, but they sort of have to know what they are doing.
And it’s a competitive process. If someone else is doing it wrong, you can do it “right” (whatever you think that means). But you have to present your results and convince other scientists, not just a judge or jury.
I wouldn’t have thought that possible, but this really is worse than Mawson’s survey.
Parental surveys are used a lot, for instance in the KiGGS studies. But in those there was at least the option to cross-check with official medical records. And they made an intentional effort to randomize the survey group to different areas of the country, etc.
And the surveys were a LOT more detailed than this form.
If it helps, the essence of the decision here is:
Maybe plaintiffs can show injury in fact. The court is willing to assume it without deciding, because they clearly fail another element of standing. To show standing they need to show their defendant is the cause of the injury and they expressly say it’s not the case, and they blame whatever injury they think they suffered on state school mandates.
So they don’t show that any harm they may have suffered is related to the President. They can’t sue the President for things they claim independent third parties caused. They also can’t show that the court can order the President to do anything that would help them.
So their lawsuit is dead in the water. They can certainly try and appeal, but they don’t really have anything plausible to argue against this, I suspect.
I will add that this problem is only one of the issues with their legal claims. This is an attempt to get around the fact that constitutional claims against vaccines mandates have consistently failed, but it’s an extremely far-out attempt.
From what I know if you’re trying to have a law declared invalid you’d sue the Attorney General in their official capacity (so the case should have been Joy Garner v. William Barr instead). I’d not think a lawsuit would be filed against a sitting president like that.
I’m delighted that they link(ed?) to the “Death of the Germ Theory video, 2021 version.
I do appreciate WHEN folks let you KNOW they’re idiots by publishing missives WHILE semi-randomly capitalizing SOME words.
Let’s not forget the “scare” quotes.
Quite why we should be scared of “weight” defeats me, though. Perhaps GOLD is in on the conspiracy.
I am grateful you took this on.
Looking back, a pro-science Facebook group I’m in started talking about The Control Group survey back in May, 2019, mostly based on Rowen’s promoting the survey. But nothing came of it.
Those idiots can’t even get this simple fact straight: https://www.medicine-4u.com/meds/rx/v/0409-9157-vitamin-k1-injection1-figure-3-jRL-0654.jpg
“Contains no more than 110 mcg/L of aluminum.” – so that is 110 micrograms PER LITER.
And with a vitamin K shot being a mere 0.5 ml, or, 0.0005 liter, which means that one vitamin K shot contains 55 NANOGRAMS of aluminum. At most.
This is nowhere near the ~700 micrograms that are commonly used as vaccine adjuvant. And these few dozen nanograms of aluminum are also not added deliberately – it is simply what may end up in the vitamin K shot through contact with aluminum seals and containers.
If one dose of 55 nanograms of aluminum can cause this, then we would all be dead now.
A breastfeeding infant ingests some 50 micrograms of aluminum daily – and even if only 0.1% of that would make it into the bloodstream, that would mean that this baby would still get one of those horrible vitamin K aluminum doses every single day. And oh, these figures are even much higher for infants who get baby formula instead of breast milk.
Thanks Richard. That bit about aluminum in vit K shot gave me a double-take.
And I even neglected to mention that the 700 mcg dose of aluminum used as an adjuvant isn’t harmful either.
I think that the most appropriate description of this latest piece of antivaccine propaganda is ‘hysterical nonsense’. Unfortunately, there will still be lots of people who accept it as the gospel truth, simply because it agrees with their preconceived beliefs.
@Richard: “And with a vitamin K shot being a mere 0.5 ml, or, 0.0005 liter, which means that one vitamin K shot contains 55 NANOGRAMS of aluminum. At most.”
Sure there’s more Al in food and water and even housedust. But this is the same sort of bipedal sandwich that knows homeopathy is super powerful medicine. Dose-Response curve has no place in their dojo.
The only substances that I know to be harmful in these amounts are botulin toxin and related bacterial toxins such as tetanospasmin – some 100 ng of which can kill an adult person if administered intravenously.
But hey, it’s 100% natural, and thus far less harmful than, say, a tetanus shot … at least according to those antivaccine fools.
And yes, aluminum is everywhere, in our air, our drinking water, our food … and still all-natural …
@Richard: “And yes, aluminum is everywhere, in our air, our drinking water, our food … and still all-natural …”
Ah, but you forget that putting a tiny little bit of that aluminum in a vaccine causes it to undergo a deadly transmutation, the resultant concoction being responsible for every known evil from haemorrhoids to genocide.
Hey, who you gonna believe: Honest Anti-Vaxxers or Vril Bill Gates?
There were only two Autism cases in our unvaccinated study. They were both in the minority of unvaccinated who were given the K-shot at birth. You do know that the package inserts for this injection actually list death as one of the observed side-effects? Only 30% of the unvaccinated surveyed were exposed to the K-shot, and this is where to the only two Autism cases were found.
Give a link to your study so that we may see for ourselves what it says.
I’m willing to go with “vastly underpowered,” sight unseen. The Web site is hilarious, though. Who knew vaccines could be communists?
Having read this: ” UNvaccinated kids have almost ZERO chronic health problems AND they are far LESS susceptible to serious INFECTIOUS diseases, particularly if they did not receive an aluminum-filled vitamin K shot at birth” I immediately thought – well, especially as the ones that died due to intracranial hemorrhage because they did not get the shot will not be taken into account.
I always like to try to relate small quantities to common things. A grain of table salt has a mass of about 60 000 ng. I’ve noticed many times that antivaxxers generally seem to be completely without any sense of quantity.
I’m curious where “all” that aluminum in the vitamin K preparation comes from. It obviously isn’t added deliberately and the concentration is about four times the maximum usually specified for water for injection (large volume put-up).
@doug: “I’ve noticed many times that antivaxxers generally seem to be completely without any sense of quantity.”
As I’ve often observed, antivaxxers are incapable of counting past One.
“Marshmallows are a reasonable suspect in America’s pandemic of chronic diseases and disorders”
Especially the green ones. I read the test came back significant.
Oh, it was not Marshmallows. Well, never mind. Same stuff. Full of aluminium I’m sure.
@brainmatterz: “Marshmallows are a reasonable suspect in America’s pandemic of chronic diseases and disorders”
Have you seen what antivaxxers’ brains are made of? It all checks out!!!1!11!
If 800K of the population had never been exposed to those particular marshmallows, and these were the only people who did NOT have these diseases, one would have to be a complete moron not to suspect those marshmallows.
I see that your litigation has been failing spectacularly. I suggest you get used to the phrase “cert. denied.”
A. Is your argument that all people who ever got one or more vaccine have a specific disease they all have in common? Which? Because that’s going to run you into a bunch of issues.
B. If these people also never went to doctors who could diagnose the diseases in question or believed marshmallow were the cause of diseases, or were also living differently in other ways, you would be wrong not to control for the many other differences between them and most people.
C. If the disease you are looking to blame on the marshmallows was broken legs, you’re also going to have some explaining to do. And yes, that’s equivalent to many of the things you want to blame one vaccines.
How on earth anyone could take this “survey” seriously I don’t know. There is one line asking how many “serious, infectious” illnesses the child has had since birth. But it doesn’t define serious. Is serious “threw up all night”? Is it “kept out of school for a week”? Is there a specific level of fever? Number of days of vomiting? Is it only “serious” if the child ended up in the PICU?
And someone honestly expects an accurate value out of this? Without defining terms, and assuming that every person filling out the survey has perfect recall?
And of course the survey does nothing to address possible confounders to number of illnesses, such as number of potential exposures.
This is so bad it wouldn’t even be instructive as a bad example for a health survey class.
I don’t think anyone expected to get honest information out of this. That was rather the point of the exercise.
I am more surprised that they thought people would not see through it.
The lack of immune-mediated chronic illnesses (comorbidities) and the vastly superior survival rates seen in the entirely unvaccinated of all ages across 48 states in the USA is really what we were looking at. We already assumed this group was most likely having a higher rate of temporary infections with “vaccine preventable” agents. It was only a side note. The data exposes that in spite of these infections, the survival rates are higher than for people who are vaccinated. I guess maybe it comes down to choosing the manner of life, and/or death? The point is that vaccines are not improving “public health”, not by any measure, even if they are preventing many temporary infections.
has turned out to be nonexistent.
I stand by my position that this study collected no useful data and any results thereof are worthless.
If no hard data was collected on “serious illnesses” then you have learned nothing but recall bias. All I can hope is that the children enrolled in this study will be made aware of their vaccine status so that they, as adults, may get themselves vaccinated before they get sick with a serious disease.
(Side note: that’s not what a comorbidity is.)
@ Christine Kincaid
As for vaccine dose, we have killed vaccines and attenuated live vaccines. So, please explain how a natural infection, that is, non-attenuated, is better than an attenuated one? And don’t say: because the natural one is monovalent and the attenuated is multivalent, e.g., mmr. Why? Because the attenuated is so weakened that each of the three or four can only, at best, multiply a few short times, eliciting a local reaction that alerts the adaptive immune system; whereas, a natural infection spreads exponentially throughout the body before that adaptive immune system, usually 7 – 10 days after initial infection, can eliminate it. So, 7 – 10 days of a natural infection coursing through the body at high levels, damaging tissues, etc. vs a very short time with a very weak local infection. Please explain? And don’t bring up adjuvants and stabilizers because both are at extremely low levels, have been studied separately, and, again, only cause localized reactions.
@ Joel,
Firstly, it’s not the adjuvants by themselves; it’s that the adjuvant is injected simultaneously with a immune response provocateur. You can encounter Aluminum all day long in your environment & it won’t bother you but it’s not like your body ignores it. It still launches a response to get rid of it. When you provoke the immune system by injecting a virus + aluminum, it also reacts to your body recognizing the aluminum. You are immunizing yourself against your own cellular response to aluminum. Just my uneducated thoughts. I think that’s why we have so peanut allergies (thanks Merck), dairy allergies (bovine serum) “gluten” allergies (probably from the yeast) & egg allergies. We trained our bodies to attack the cells when they try to respond to the substance that was injected with a viral particle.
Jenner’s pox blister inoculation method was probably safer than what we have now.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “Just my uneducated thoughts.”
Yep. Aluminum is one of the most ubiquitous substances on Earth. I think 2nd or 3rd. Too lazy to look up. We get aluminum through the air we breath, food and drink, and minor scratches. Also, the amount of aluminum is breast milk is high and even higher in formula. At the same time, our bodies are confronted with up to 3,000 potentially harmful microbes per day, again, through the air we breath, food and drink, and minor scratches. And, of course, from a mother’s breast if breast feeding. The total of aluminum in a day together with full strength multitude of microbes is exponentially higher than from a vaccine, a minuscule amount together with either killed microbes or attenuated (again, incapable of more than a few divisions locally). I have papers that give actual average amount of aluminum we get daily, exponentially more than from vaccines; but I won’t bother looking them up because you will ignore.
As for Jenner’s pox blister inoculation. Smallpox vaccine killed between 1 and 2 per million and caused either generalized vaccinia not life-threatening; but quite unpleasant. Progressive vaccinia, not healing, that could lead to death. However, smallpox killed up to 1/3 of a population and blinded a substantial number. And was a horrible experience that lasted more than a week, literally ones body on fire, including inside mouth, fever, etc. One more example of your ignorance.
CDC (2003 Feb 21). Smallpox Vaccination and Adverse Reactions. MMWR; 52(RR04): 1-28 Scroll down to Table 1. If I give a URL, it takes a lot of time before posted, so you can simply Google.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “I think that’s why we have so peanut allergies (thanks Merck), dairy allergies (bovine serum) “gluten” allergies (probably from the yeast) & egg allergies.”
From Wikipedia. Peanut Allergy
“In 2017, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) published revised guidelines for lowering the risk or preventing peanut allergies by creating separate ways to assess childhood allergies and guide parents with infants at high, moderate or low risk.[13][38][7] The guidelines discussed how to introduce peanut foods to infants as early as 4 to 6 months of age, with the goal of preventing peanut allergy.[6][3][7]
For high-risk children, the guide recommended that an allergy specialist assess a child’s susceptibility, possibly involving peanut allergy testing, followed by gradual introduction of peanut foods under the supervision of an allergy specialist.[6][7] Peanut allergy is confirmed only if there is a history of reactions to peanut consumption and by a positive allergy test.[7] Moderate-risk children – who display an allergic reaction to peanut products with mild to moderate eczema – are typically not assessed in a clinic, but rather have peanut foods gradually provided to them at home by their parents, beginning at around age 6 months.[6][15][7] The Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study supported by NIAID established that early introduction of peanut products into a child’s diet can prevent – rather than only delay – the development of childhood peanut allergies, and that the effect is beneficial and lifelong”
As for dairy allergies, if you mean lactose intolerance, it exists among the vast majority of mankind and has existed for centuries. Yoghurt, Kefir, have bacteria that break lactose, a disaccharide, into glucose and galactose, which, before I became a vegan I consumed a lot of. The enzyme to do this does NOT exist in most adults. Nothing to do with “bovine serum”. Are you really so ignorant???
I won’t bother with gluten allergies because you will ignore what I’ve already written. You live in a world of fantasy, grabbing at anything that confirms your ideology and not doing the necessary research to confirm it and ignoring what contradicts it.
@ Christine Kincaid
I forgot to mention that smallpox vaccine is a very crude vaccine with many impurities, miles away from today’s vaccines.
I have one suggestion. When summer comes, contact your local media to meet you at a nearby lake. Walk across the lake. If you succeed, I will defer to whatever you say, until then I stick with science, not moronic absolutist claims by you and others like you.
As for SIDS, very premature and very low birthweight with inherited genetic disorders, I don’t rule out that there exist a very small possibility that a vaccine could have contributed, maybe some research will show this, highly unlikely but not impossible. But, if the case, then it would mean the timing or combination of vaccines for this rare combination in infants should be changed; but you attack all vaccines. SICK SICK SICK!
@Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH
I was in some kind of immunotherapy as a child and recieved an ‘allergy shot’ every week. Always made me sick as a dog on the ride home. The office even had their own lab and I often waited back in that lab room watching spinning centrifuges which the ‘nurse’ admonished me not to touch. I find it odd that all those records disappeard when Dr. Townsley did.
I don’t know if I’m really allergic to peanuts, but peanut butter does seem to amplify pucky sickness after drinking too much — and a sort of heart burn esophogial discomfort.
I don’t remember being allergic to anything but maybe that is because the shots worked after all?? All I know now is that I’m only allergic to latex and bee stings.
Joel Harrison Aluminum is one of the most ubiquitous substances on Earth. I think 2nd or 3rd. Too lazy to look up.
Third most abundant by mass, after oxygen (1st) and silicon (2nd). Aluminium is ~8% by mass of the earth’s crust.
@Kincaid: “Firstly, it’s not the adjuvants by themselves; it’s that the adjuvant is injected simultaneously with a immune response provocateur.”
Oh fuck off you dumb stump. Adjuvants are the immune response provocateur. That’s literally their job: to cause localized irritation of tissues, increasing local immune activity, which upon swooping in to deal with that detects and responds to the antigens as well.
“Just my uneducated thoughts.”
Lord be praised; at last, a fully evidenced fact!
Now all you need to do is stop pulling shit out your ass and start producing reliable citations to back up the rest of your claims as well.
Joel, you can include up to two URLs without hitting the mod queue.
I am unclear as to where you got the data supporting your claim that repeatedly injecting aluminum oxides will “immunize” a person against aluminum toxicity. All toxicological studies I have seen on this substance state that, the more of it you are exposed to, the more dangerous it is, and that these effects are cumulative. Can you please provide a link to the data which shows that, the more aluminum you inject, the safer it becomes to inject more aluminum. I would appreciate this. Oh, and if you have any evidence the same holds true for injecting mercury, please leave a link.
@Joy Lucette Garner, there are so many logical fallacies in your comment, you are not even wrong. There is more aluminium and aluminium salt in a single banana than in the entire vaccine schedule. And thimerosal is not the same as mercury, just as sodium and chlorine aren’t table salt.
But, CK, we always have aluminium in our bloodstream. Since you’ve already declared that the dose is irrelevant, in your scenario, a wild infection will also change the bodies response to aluminium. So, which is worse? The wild infection AND a problem with aluminium processing or a relatively benign immunological response and a problem with aluminium processing?
Just like homeopathy magically knows what it should and should not retain a memory of, so does our body know the difference between substances when they are and are not part of a vaccine.
Newsflash: 60% of new covid patients have been vaccinated “against” covid;-) Enjoy what’s coming. You’re promoting something terrible. We all know that the medical journals get 95% of their funding directly from pharma. You expect to get the truth about anything there? Good luck with than logic.
It took you two months to come up with that?
Aluminum that has been intentionally oxidized and injected into the body behaves very differently than other forms of aluminum, and direct injection does make a difference when it comes to exposure and how the body will react.. Do a little research on toxicological studies of aluminum in it’s different forms and you will understand the difference. Just because a substance is “common” doesn’t mean that it’s “safe” to alter it and inject it.
Let’s sue Joe Biden! Heh.
^ Right:
So, you were a dual major in law and biochemistry at Sierra College?
@ Christine Kincaid:
You write: “As if the results would be any different if the control group did not come from social media. So do it the right way. Oh wait, you won’t because that’s “unethical”. Well that sucks, guess you’re stuck with how others do it.”
“As if the results would be any different?” What, again, are you some g-d who knows all? There are a number of approaches that one could try. For instance, contact a state, ask them to contact families of children who received vaccine exemptions if they are willing to answer a brief anonymous questionnaire. Of course, the questionnaire would actually ask a number of question, including current health, if chronic problem(s), when did it start, age, gender, comorbities. You might find that, while some exemptions were given for religious reasons, others were given for health reasons, that is, the kid had serious problems, e.g., autoimmune disease, cancer, etc. I can think of other approaches as well.
However, if one ended up incapable of obtaining an unbiased sample, accepting a biased sample is nuts as it doesn’t NOT give a valid answer. Are you totally incapable of understanding this?
And, once again, can you admit that there is a probability that the tragic SIDS death of one of your very premature, very low birthweight twins, may not have been caused by a vaccine? That the vaccine was just coincidental. You really are a DISHONEST person, that is, unless you really think you have some sort of g-d-like level of knowledge. In such case, I suggest seeking psychiatric help for delusions of grandeur.
@ Joel,
No I don’t think I have His knowledge but I do think He is with me. If I end up being wrong, that’s His will but I don’t think that will be the case. There’s something wrong with the vaccines.
No, Christine, there is something wrong with you. Until you get grief counselling and whatever other therapy you need to treat your unresolved issues, you are not competent to assess the health of anything or anyone else.
And I say that as someone who’s been through years of therapy and treatment for distorted thinking and willful self-deception.
Please Seek Professional Help. And I don’t mean from those venal vampires you think are sisters-in-arms, because they’ve only sucked you dry and turned you into a vampire yourself.
So now it’s God’s fault if you are wrong? This must be why anti-vaxxers never run the mental calculation that says ‘if I’m wrong = I am the cause of multiple deaths’. Convenient.
@has, Christine has declared that she’s so super-duper special that not only do vaccines not work for her, but neither does therapy. Now, you know, and I know, that’s because therapy requires a certain amount of self-insight and a desire to change, while Christine is pathologically incapable of admitting she’s ever wrong about even things as simple as the difference between a rate of per 1000 and per 100,000, but that’s not nearly a special enough reason for her.
“There is something wrong with the vaccines…” yeah, that’s a statement supported by science….(not).
@ Christine Kincaid
Just to back my claims on lactose intolerance, from Wikipedia. Lactose Intolerance:
“Most adults (around 65–70% of the world’s population) are lactose intolerant.[5][8] Other mammals normally lose
the ability to digest lactose after weaning and this was the ancestral state of all humans before the recent evolution
of lactase persistence, which extends lactose tolerance. into adulthood.[9] Lactase persistence evolved in several
populations independently, probably as an adaptation to the domestication of dairy animals around 10,000 years ago.[10][11]
Today the prevalence of lactose tolerance varies widely between regions and ethnic groups. . . The medicalization of lactose
intolerance as a disorder has been attributed to biases in research history (most early studies were conducted amongst
populations where tolerance is the norm)[9] as well as the cultural and economic importance of milk in countries such as the United States.”
When I was young they began marketing Lactaid, a milk with lactose partially broken down. As I mentioned yoghurt, kefir, and also aged cheeses the lactose is already broken down. ONE MORE EXAMPLE WHERE YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG!
Baby’s Colic. This isn’t as settled; but there is research, from Wikipedia.Baby Colic: “The cause of colic is generally unknown.
Fewer than 5% of infants who cry excessively turn out to have an underlying organic disease, such as constipation,
gastroesophageal reflux disease, lactose intolerance, anal fissures, subdural hematomas, or infantile migraine.[8]
Babies fed cow’s milk have been shown to develop antibody responses to the bovine protein, causing colic.[11][12]
Studies performed showed conflicting evidence about the role of cow’s milk allergy.[8]”
Note, some studies have found lactose intolerance and also “antibody responses to the bovine protein”.
Given that cows milk is designed for calves, e.g., fat content, protein, vitamins, etc. Human breast milk for human babies, etc. it isn’t surprising that some human babies will have problems with cow’s milk. Obviously, cows milk has protein, calcium, etc., things that humans need and, as stated above, over the millennia some human populations have developed lactase and others dairy products where lactose already broken down; but you got it absolutely backwards in claiming caused by modern vaccines/meds.
Infantile migraine…. Now that’s really interesting. I come from a long line of migraneurs (back to before there were very many vaccines). Obviously, an n of 1 not conclusive but I had horrible colic and my first documented migraine at 8. I’m going to have to do some more reading on the issue.
@ Orac’s minions:
Over the past several weeks, I have tirelessly reiterated studies about the psychology of anti-vaxxers and CT believers in general including synopses of recent work.: because you all are proficient at reading and have commanding recall, I won’t go over the details because you probably know them already by heart plus they’re rather easy to look up.
As you know, RI has lately been besieged by an influx of trolls who scoff at much of what Orac writes concerning vaccines and/ or Covid. Several regulars have refuted their pseudo-science remarkably well ( you know who you are**):
— do you think that the local trolls reflect what the studies have shown us?
— what qualities are especially well illustrated here at RI?
— should we sharpen our talons with sarcasm and insults or become more amenable to the severely affected? Or ignore them entirely?
— what makes them different from other commenters?
— any other observations?
Personally, I have found that the qualities studied seem quite visible here: I am especially struck by less cognitive complexity, dismissal of expertise, value of purity,
less analytical thought as well as the use of anecdotes and misrepresentation/ misquotation of studies that may say the opposite as Orac has often noted. SImilarly, they seem to have an inability to survey entire areas of inquiry and focus instead at whatever suits their fancy, disregarding the rest which may be even more relevant to the question.
** but where is Monsieur F?
“— what makes them different from other commenters?”
I’m built different. https://v.redd.it/avjyi3vfm8j61
@Denise: Local trolls represent the downward spiral of American education regarding science and critical thinking. I mostly just slag them since they are so far down the rabbit hole of stupid that is greased with insane amounts of paranoid distrust experts. They’ve reached the levels of conspiracy theory believers/cult members so I only think about trying to keep others from following them. That and maybe metaphorically hunting bigger game.
I think there’s something to be learned from the very narrow responses given by some people. You can see from this thread, for example, that Christine Kincaid only responds to points where she feels she has something to respond with, even (or perhaps especially) where it’s not the main thrust of the criticism levelled against her previous claims. All other elements are ignored by her.
Therefore one question would be whether that manifestation is a mirror of what happens inside her head, bringing an end to the matter as far as she is concerned, or is she aware that she has no answer and perhaps now feels some need to investigate further. The subsequent question, then, is does she actually do that and how does she go about it.
Actually I try to respond to everything but it might seem like I evade because of time constraints. My posting time is limited on weekends & after 3 pm M-F because I have my hands full taking care of my vaccine-injured child.
@Christine. Bull. You very consistently refuse to address proof that you are wrong. You even lie about lying.
“— any other observations?”
Just that lots of it is “parroting”.
Orac stated “I’m surprised that Vaxxter had the restraint not to drag the Nuremberg Code into it.” And I’ve seen that one lobbed out here a couple times recently.
A local hick, “Marcus”, a ‘regular’, called into the morning right-wing yap-fest to inform all the listeners all about it regarding the ‘experimental’ coronavirus vaccines; And that really grinds my gears.
It wasn’t quite “duckspeak” because the regurgitated phrasing was just so mangled and dumb. But, boy howdy, was that guy all riled up and raring to go.
@ Tim – Why does calling the Covid 19 vaccines experimental bother you? They are experimental, esp Modernas/Pfizers and under EUA. The rollout is now in the 4th phase of trials…under normal circumstance, post-marketing surveillance.
Add on to my earlier reply…from Pfizer:
https://www.pfizer.com/science/clinical-trials/guide-to-clinical-trials/phases
@Natalie,
I could equally well ask why you feel the need to append the adjective “experimental” to refer to these Covid-19 vaccines that have completed Phase 3 efficacy testing and received an EUA?
Your Pfizer link referred to “The process of learning about and developing an investigational medicine” and didn’t use that adjective.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as
That may have been appropriate almost a year ago when this news article was written.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/05/opinion/i-got-an-experimental-covid-19-vaccine-im-willing-put-it-ultimate-test/
And it was certainly appropriate in discussing the ethics of distributing Ebola vaccines during the outbreaks in Africa five years ago.
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/making-emergency-use-experimental-vaccines-safer/2020-01
But the Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines have completed their efficacy testing with good safety results as well. And for the first two we now have over two months of safety and efficacy data on use in millions of people in the U.S. alone.
We are no longer at the stage where we don’t know how well these vaccines will work or how safe they will be.
“Why does calling the Covid 19 vaccines experimental bother you?”
Well, it’s just that the early volunteers were, perhaps, being experimented upon. No, not even that; tested upon as the experimentation was already carried out. Whatever, it had a positive outcome.
Moderna/BioNtech doesn’t even have adjuvants; I thought you guys would be more happy about that.
After the hick called in, there was an arranged interview with a local pediatrician and she was directly challenged with “what do you tell parents who ask if you have been vaccinated?”
She explained that she says “no, because we are the research.” I wish I was in a group to be qualified as “we” {without being so old, perhaps} and that whole segment just made me think of “I live here and these people are why no cannabis and they are proud of that.”
Here in Australia, the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines haven’t been approved using an EUA (or whatever it might be called here). They have been approved using the normal process for vaccine approval in this country.
So are these vaccines “experimental” in the US and “not experimental” in Australia?
Hello Denice, and other commenters, it is really usefull for folks not as highlighted in the appropriate specializations.
Nutters around here are very much illustrative of their beliefs.
Thank you all for your work in fighting those nutty beliefs .
You are judged by the people who you associate with. These are from posts in the last two months, all of them supporters. Some one posted “When you resort to name calling you have lost the argument.”
“Though in your case it might help to wear 2 diapers.
How’s your cat?.
The Washington Times is engaged in exactly the kind of cherry-picking propagandizing you’d expect from a Trumpy right-wing rag infamous for science-denial on just about every topic. (note the article was from MSNBC news)
Do your own homework.
If you sharply launch a plastic straw at approximately 70 degrees at 5 feet or more, so that it sails in front of the cat, he may leap after it which will improve greatly with practic
Which, of course, is why you’re just repeating the same shit with nothing to say about the post itself.
I suppose “multitasking” means being able to troll while having one hand in your pants.
You make the same mistake that most who don’t understand public health, namely, that one variable is explanatory.
(which is SOP in science) was the be-all and end-all of scientific knowledge on the subject.
Polling data? Clap, clap, clappity clap. What are the error bars? Are the data sets commensurable?
Not very scientific, deary.
Here’s the thing, you dissembling jaqoff…..weaponizing it against its propounders in order to advance your own unsubstantiated bullshit as “fact”.
Because your putty brain seems to believe that if the other party’s answer is wrong….You are a malicious, mendacious sack of crap, attempting to put folk here on the backfoot so they’ll make tactical debating errors which you can then attack. So here’s a better proposition for you: how about you piss off
Narcissistic types don’t care about anyone but themselves. I think Gerg’s shitposting here speaks volumes to just how empty and worthless his real life is.
it’s a pile of fetid dingo kidneys
Though, except for “geniuses” like you,
You don’t have a bet with me, shithead.
You are pathetic. And as I’ve written to Natalie White on other exchanges, I could care less about you as an individual; but you represent a large portion of our population; that is, people who really don’t understand the basics of science or critical thinking; but are ready to attack. By the way, were you supporting the January 6 assault on the Capitol? Wouldn’t surprise me.
It’s hard to believe anyone could be as stupid as you seem
Fuck you.… You are just a pathetic asshole who wants to irritate people and there is every reason to be angry with you, simply you ignore reason and continue to spout bullshit.
Do you have self-carnal knowledge of Sophie?
a meat-smoking, sickly-twisted, soulless lying sack of shit deserving of some rough FTC backdoor love
Welcome to JAQing off Sunday
That is the dumbest motherf*cking self-defensive non sequitur that I have seen in all my natural-born days,
You don’t have a bet with me, shithead
You are pathetic
It’s hard to believe anyone could be as stupid as you seem.
Fuck you
Again, a simple question: If a surge develops that kills and causes long COVID in a huge number of people, will you admit you were wrong? Simple question ASSHOLE!
“I really think it was more the Flying Bonobo Squad’s trying very incompetently to start a land war in Asia, Christine.”
“you have the choice of being pointed and laughed at, or told to fuck off all the way home to Fuckoffsville and die in a fire.”
“Just how STUPID are you?”
Of course it it is, you snivelling little rat-faced git.”
Micelle is all like r/dontstickyourdickinthat
I hope he (Tiger Woods) gets amputated
One can’t help but wonder whether the analogy between a needle and a certain male body part applies too closely to Mr. Heckenlively.
Fuck you very much for playing with us.
I suggest seeking psychiatric help for delusions of grandeur.”
And those are just the tip of the iceberg
Add in “phrasing” after every line and some laugh-tracks and that script makes for great television! Possibly relegated to Adult Swim or CBS prime time, though.
“And those are just the tip of the iceberg”
Well, it’s a preview. It is to encourage you to pay up for the rest of the show as I don’t f*ck fossils for free…
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/000/894/wahmbulance.jpg
@ has
Ambulance equipped with straight jackets.?
Could one think he is decompensating???
Ohhh, do you really want to play that game?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/19/health/anti-vax-harassment-eprise/index.html
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/grieving-parents-speak-out-against-anti-vaccination-extremists/news-story/2b0a81b5b3f391f42903bfb52851d7df
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/death-threats-and-bullying-of-vaccine-advocates-prompts-investigation-at-facebook/
https://www.northernstar.com.au/news/anti-vaxxers-abuse-and-threaten-wrong-person-by-mi/3108832/
https://www.danbuzzard.net/journal/the-australian-vaccination-network-abuses-and-vilifies-grieving-families.html
And all this, of course, is between your busy schedule of lying to as many people as possible in order to cripple and kill them and their children in order to feed your messianic power complex.
But, sure, whine to us about how you’re the persecuted ones, after rolling in here to sling your excrement at the regulars day after day after day, then acting surprised and offended that they don’t sit still and take it.
So here’s an idea: you don’t like the language here? Piss off back to your AoA echo chamber where you’ll never have to hear it again. Win-Win for all of us.
Damn, bro; You mad??
let’s not forget abput paul offit-A voicemail was left for him at home. The man mentioned he had young children the same age as Offit’s. “We all want what’s best for our children, I’m sure you want what’s best for your children,” the man said, before going on to name Offit’s kids as well as the school they attended.
source-https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/conspiracy-theories-internet-survivors-truth
damn it,noedit options for comment. anyways,it should be be about.
@Hasibul Ashraf: Yep, and not just intimidation and death threats, but physical assaults as well:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-21/richard-pan-confronted-anti-vaccine-activist
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-10/charges-filed-against-vaccine-protester-accused-of-throwing-blood-onto-california-state-senators
As Pan says, the antivax movement is escalating its tactics:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/03/anti-vaxxers-coronavirus-vaccines-california-richard-pan
Its growing association with far-right white-extremism, another purity cult, comes as little surprise. Throwing in with the #1 source of US terror attacks? I really hope Fauci, Pan, Offit, et al are upping their security details, because anyone can see where the violent radicalization of movement antivaxxers is going to lead.
Oh, and let us not overlook all the autistic children they’ve been torturing and murdering under the guise of “curing” them. Or the 80 dead Samoans they murdered just recently through calculated spread of fear and lies.
All the while being ridden by millionaire megalomaniacs like Kennedy and Wakefield, the trail of money and blood behind them apparent to anyone that isn’t a fully signed up kool-aid drinker. Cult. Cult. Cult. Cult. Cult.
A murderous cult, that will murder many more before it’s done.
scott allen is offended by our rude language? We’re offended that scott allen and his evil chums aren’t all doing time in jail. Harsh language is the absolute least that they’ve earned.
@Hasibul Ashraf
If you are a fan of Paul Offit, I highly recommend This Week in Virology episode 720. Dr. Offit is the guest. Be sure your hearing is turned up its highest speed. That man’s word delivery rate is quite astounding.
Oh, dear, Spottsies’ delicate sensibilities have been so bruised that he’s forgotten how to use quotation marks. It’s too bad that he didn’t work in the part about influenza’s now being a coronavirus.
I think it’s nice that Scott holds the regular posters on a science blog to a higher standard than he does his fellows.
And you could have used your first comment on this thread to try to elevate the general level of discourse by providing an evidence-based discussion of the main topic(s) of the blog post.
I’ve read a lot of comments on this blog that I personally would refrain from making.
But I think my skin is thick enough to withstand reading them.
This site cheered when RFK jr. was taken off the web, as were other sites de platformed that posted contrary opinions to those held by the majority of posters to this site. Name ONE time in human history when the group fighting to ban books and censor speech were the good guys.”The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Herman Goering. Evil always thinks it is doing good.
We thought this site was about enlightened conversation along with interesting research. What we found, was education does not equal maturity or intelligence.
It is interesting that Ms Kincaid (who had lost a newborn) was the object of some of those posts that I quoted (so much for empathy). And I have no problem punishing those violent protester of any kind (has, mentioned).
And once again narads, being the school teacher, claims I didn’t include quote marks, had he looked he would have found the beginning mark and the end quote mark (“Though……..grandeur.”) everything in between those was from this website.
“They raise the possibility that human nature, or more specifically, the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority.” milgram
I think Carl Jung “Shadow” could apply here.
https://www.carl-jung.net/shadow.html
@Scott Allen: What you want isn’t freedom of speech, it’s freedom from consequences.
But when your anti-vax speech crosses the line from being merely vomitous to inciting physical harm to others, I think it’s entirely safe to say #FuckOff; and for the whole damn world to join in and tell you to #FuckOffToo.
It’s a little thing called freedom of association, stupids. Nobody owes you a free soapbox, never mind a spot on their own.
Don’t believe me? Feel free to go post a series of extremely polite, well-evidenced corrections to common antivax lies over on AoA, and see how long it takes them to bounce your ass out of there.
So piss off, you sorry little pants-wetter, and take your pathetic tone trolling with you. I hear Parler’s back up; I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you.
Leaving aside the fact that that’s not how it works, you have the small problem that there aren’t equal numbers of each, blockhead.
I just checked and CHD is still up and running. So much for web censorship.
With regards to censorship, I mourn the recent passing of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56179841
but I don’t shed any tears for RFK, Jr. Where have his books been banned?
A key function of education is to help your students learn how to filter out the signal of verified and tested information from the noise of bad information.
Several of us tried to offer advice and support for CK some time ago. She gave reasons why she couldn’t do those things. Mostly I don’t bother trying to engage in discussions with her.
It is a bit ironic that you complain about this blog’s NOT censoring the comments of posters and then gripe about a major social media service not providing free hosting to RFK, Jr.
And, by way of taking my own advice, I noted the reference to this article on TWiV 719 this morning.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00183-5/fulltext
Some of our commenters try to emphasize the benefits of naturally acquired immunity to help us control the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. But perhaps that is not as helpful as we might have thought.
And yet in January the daily case load surged to double the peak from last spring and they had to impose a second lockdown.
It looks like they could really use the J&J vaccine which showed good results from testing in Brazil.
“Name ONE time in human history when the group fighting to ban books and censor speech were the good guys.”
New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982)
Your prompt Godwin is misplaced. Deplatforming is not a government action.
Not this pretending at reverse sockpuppetry again.
@Terrie: “New York v. Ferber”
Pwnage Achievement Unlocked!
Looking forward now to Scott Allen’s response. I’ve got $10 on “attacks something completely unrelated” and another $10 for “absolute crickets”.
Terrie/has
Nice example, trouble is the persons in the material were below the age of consent. Thus a crime.
I will give an analogy, “reality” shows such as ‘moonshiners’ don’t actual show people making moonshine (i know that will come as a shock to you), because its illegal to make non taxed moonshine, thus the people making the show would have legal jeopardy for allowing it.
I await your detailed legal analysis of how filming such activity would run afoul of the law.
As for Ferber, it had to go all the way to the Supreme Court. You should perhaps read the opinion.
@Scott, sorry, after the fact caveats are not allowed. You said banning books and censoring speech. CP laws apply even when the underlying act is not illegal.You lost, and just like has predicted, you tried to wiggle out of it.
@Terrie: I also had “admits he’s wrong and genuinely apologizes” running at 10,000,000:1. Ol’ Scotty missed a payout there.
I used an analogy to show to the low IQ crowd the comparison of child porn (containing crimes) to a popular TV showing fake crimes
No nards (or no brains) must think the show is real, beside the moral and ethical issues of videoing prearranged crimes, the show would face civil liability (if not criminal liability) if the “moonshine” were to hurt or kill someone.
to terrie and has
I quit playing chess with pigeons because, all they do is knock down the pieces and the strut off claiming they won the game.
Please cite me a criminal case where CP shut down a website or got a book banned, that did not contain a crime.
So I did not attack something unrelated nor did I call on the crickets, most people don’t sit all day in front of a computer screen, waiting to post on a website.
LOL, Scotty, your echolalia is hanging out. Also you might want to get your rude language looked at. Nasty.
Incidentally, while we’re on the topic of “cancel culture” and what a fraud it is, anyone noticed how the mainstream US Conservative movement† is now openly employing Nazi iconography:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/01/cpac-2021-stage-design-nazi-sign-odal-othala-rune-hyatt-hotels-hate-symbol-abhorrent
Somehow I wouldn’t too feel bad if all their books got canceled too. Their only actual value is as testimonial to neo-fascist psychopathology and grift, and it’s not as if the world is running short of material there. Torching everything ever written by L Ron Hubbard would be justice too. I see no reason to reward abusers. Let them publish on Arktos or 8chan, where they belong.
—
† Warning: may not contain real conservatives.
has……I never went off topic.
“Looking forward now to Scott Allen’s response. I’ve got $10 on “attacks something completely unrelated” and another $10 for “absolute crickets”.
but someone else did.
“anyone noticed how the mainstream US Conservative movement† is now openly employing Nazi iconography:”
most people don’t recognize irony in their own posts and can’t maintain a cogent thought.
Oh, Scotty. You scurried off like a whipped bitch.
You: “Name ONE time in human history when the group fighting to ban books and censor speech were the good guys.”
Terrie: “New York v. Ferber”
You: EVADE! EVADE! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! GOING DOWN!!!1!1!!
Perhaps if the good Germans of the Weimar Republic had made a fine bonfire of Mein Kampf, with all the Nazis on top like Guy Fawkes, there wouldn’t have been 12+ million souls murdered in death camps and another 30 million across the killing grounds of Africa, Europe, and Russia?
Oh, and look, Seuss’s own estate just censored six of his books, on account of their reeking with racist shit:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/02/six-dr-seuss-books-cease-publication-racism
Perhaps you Big Brave White Man can go rescue those once you’re done saving Little Black Sambo or whatever?
Hoo boy, you should shop that out to Disney as they can get injunctions on all of that awful hateful words. Ha ha.
Holy hell, if this is supposed to be “the best of” then I really think you sold me out short.
I’m a bit restricted, right now. But, as soon as I’m not, Imma pretty sure I can supply you with better ammunition. Scalper.
Scott, I get the impression that yous guys might have been in aerospace engineering.. the world is moving on away from cost-plus where ya’ll got more doe for fucking up for longer.
It may not be tomorrow, it may not be next month; but as soon as that thing does a “like a glove” your gig is up.
Piss off, Tim, you tedious troll. At least when I go off on CAMsters it’s for cause. You’re just wanking yourself off for attention.
Quite.
I look forward to the day antivaxxers can lose their minds over a malaria vaccine and try to convince us that malaria is not a big deal. https://academictimes.com/first-vaccine-to-fully-immunize-against-malaria-builds-on-pandemic-driven-rna-tech/
Oh wow, malaria vaccine. I really hope that proves successful in trials. It’ll be a life-changer for hundreds of millions of vulnerable people.
@Terrie: If the mosquito bit you then it’s your own fault for not being pure enough.
Mercola has been predicting (and desperately hoping) that malaria vaccines will all prove ineffective, and hyping the idea that “good nutrition, clean drinking water and sanitation” is the way to conquer the disease. Because of course it’s so easy to accomplish those goals in impoverished countries.
Aside from the fear that vaccination will be further vindicated by becoming an important tool in controlling this devastating disease, antivaxers are fueled by panic over genetic modification technology being used in vaccine production and their deep-seated loathing of Bill Gates, whose foundation has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into fighting malaria (including vaccine development).
Because good nutrition prevents mosquito bites?
I’m gonna hazard Ole Honest Joe has never actually had the pleasure of malaria himself. Perhaps he ought to try it before he goes around telling all the little people who aren’t personally worth $100 Million that it’s No Big Deal, you know?
Of course, they’ve already done that–but they could have yet another chance: A SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in which the spike protein gene is cloned into an attenuated measles virus is in Phase 1.
Why couldn’t the resources used for the vaccine have been utilized for treatment? Rwanda has the highest mortality rate from Malaria in the world (505.57), yet only 19% of it’s children ever receive treatment. Uganda’s Malaria mortality rate is 200 & 71% of their children recieve treatment. If there is money to develop a vaccine & launch a mass vaccination campaign, there should have been money to get IVF & artemether-lumefantrine to 100% of the children.
You realize that the need for fluid resuscitation is a marker of severe malaria and comes with risks, right? This is absurd.
Because even with treatment, people die. But you’ve shown you’re not capable of having empathy for people you don’t know, so I guess you don’t care.
Have you never heard that “Prevention is better than cure”?
Seriously for a minute, a lot of people die from malaria despite treatment. Also, several countries with the highest rates of malaria also suffer from poor infrastructure, underdeveloped medical systems and grinding poverty, three things that inhibit the ability to treat disease with complex medical procedures. Resources are given for treatment, but the efficacy is not what it should be.
Your total lack of curiosity about the rest of the world never ceases to surprise me.
ok,i have an interesting topic to talk about.i am going to link to two studies,both claiming water of zamzam well is good for you(i have a bit of nagging feeling over the details,so hope you guys could help me out)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316165402_Nitrate_and_arsenic_concentration_status_in_Zamzam_water_Holly_Mecca_Almocarama_Saudi_Arabia
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319562X16300146
like,the first one claims” however, many studies confirmed that the lithium can decrease the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape.” however,they didn’t give any citations,so i had to check online. i only found one and this is the one-https://academic.oup.com/phe/article-abstract/12/3/274/5316433?redirectedFrom=fulltext
and,it’s a observational study doing casual correlation.
@Christine Kincaid. You say that dose does not matter in the case of vaccines. You said, too, that aluminium provoke immune system. You say that one provocation is same as many provocations ? And why to stop vaccinations after one vaccine ? Dose does not count, damage done.
Aluminium provocation is explained here:
Eisenbarth, S., Colegio, O., O’Connor, W. et al. Crucial role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the immunostimulatory properties of aluminium adjuvants. Nature 453, 1122–1126 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06939
Adjuvant activates innate immune system- Any pathogen does same thing.
@ Aarno,
Inducing that immune response by injecting the adjuvent + viral particle must be bypassing a preliminary immune response that occurs in the lungs, mucous membranes & digestive tract, that is protective against a inflammatory cytokine response. One that we don’t know about yet.
If you are exposed to the virus when somebody coughs & a few minutes later drink water that contains trace aluminum, it’s not going to provoke the same type of immune response as the vaccine.
And for the tens of thousands of years that humans have been exposed to antigens (and elemental aluminum) through cuts, scrapes, cuts, etc?
Are you purposely stupid?
You’re going to have to wave your hands faster if you want to get airborne.
Do you know about IgA ? It is expressed in secretions and mucosal epithelium. Antibodies in milk are IgA, too.
Another thing you should know is class switching. B cells produce all types of antibodies in certain sequence. If there are IgG, there would be IgA. Otherwise, milk antibodies would not protect.
Well, thanks for your responses.
I first got interested in this reading RI’s scoffers ( as well as hearing followers congratulate woo-meisters) and later noted Dr DG ( twitter) ask why even doctors could go woo despite their education and could we tell which ones were susceptible and Dr SN ( SBM) writing about conspiracy theories said psychology might provide answers.
There are other characteristics found in AV/ CT believers in addition to those listed above such as valuing freedom, needing to be “special” or unique, seeing intention or agency where none exists, over-estimation of harm, lack of agreeableness, more Machiavellianism, anti-authority, suspiciousness, anxiety, need for closure, narcissism, paranoid ideas, less education, feelings of powerlessness, political views etc. ( several reviews by K.Douglas, J. Van Prooijen, jointly or alone, easy to find ). These writers examine how CTs occur more frequently when there is a perceived lack of control and how it allows people to boost their self-esteem or that of their group.
If becoming a doctor doesn’t inoculate people against this sort of thinking as we’ve seen here with many anti-vax/ woo providers, what can? I predict that it might even be more prevalent in non-MD/DOs who work in a medical setting which is in line with Steven Barrett’s observation ( Quackwatch) that those with less authority might be more vulnerable to alt med because they have even less control than doctors.
If we learn about conditions involving the virus’ inception, we might learn how to create immunity for it.. .
I had some thoughts about one of your prior posts, so I think I’ll mention them here.
These people, including some of of our frequent commenters, share some characteristics.
1…They lack genuine curiosity. That is, they don’t want to admit that they don’t know the answer and aren’t motivated to do the work to do open-ended learning about a general subject such as cell biology, virology or immunology. So they latch onto a quick answer and stick to it.
2… They lack the humility that is needed to accept that they may not be correct and remain willing to change their idea or opinion based on new evidence. Hence all the hearkening back to statements made in the first couple of months of our response to this pandemic. And the continued references to outdated and superseded studies.
3…They don’t recognize or accept those characteristics in others. Hence, we see a lot of demands for quick and easy answers. Also the tendency to denigrate the expertise of those who have put in the work. And the refusal to accept the tentative and careful qualified language of scientific statements in general.
You are so correct.
One of my profs used to say that if you couldn’t tolerate ambiguity, what the fuck were you doing studying this area? He went on to fame and fortune.
I notice alties – professional or amateur- tossing off arcane terminology from complex science as if to proclaim expertise and then wallow like simpletons because they never put in the time which is painfully obvious to me. I had courses in which I would spend hours every day throughout the semester to manage the material which involved incredible amounts of rote memory to start and then loads of association to integrate new material into the system! Because I did well on tests, other students would take me out for dinner or drinks after class in order to get me to talk about the current lectures which helped me solidify my study as well
Language is a dead giveaway when they mispronounce or misuse important terms from the area in which they claim expertise or they use more definite language rather than the probabilistic perspective of science.
Learning to evaluate your own and others’ degree of expertise or level of ability is a skill that develops during and after adolescence that not all achieve.
. .
Most doctors aren’t scientists though. A good portion of medical education is memorizing reams of existing information; a rote mechanic that’s entirely unrelated to the discovery and testing of new information. If anything, med school probably biases against the enquiring mind: there simply isn’t enough time in the year to review each new assertion from scratch! Just chug your pre-chewed data for the day and open wide for more.
Actions, Origins, Insertions, Innervations… and that’s just Anatomy, where at least you’ve got something physically observable to mentally map all those buttons on to. Now repeat your performance for physiology and biochemistry too. And that’s only the first two years! Recitation, repetition, regurgitation. If you can memorize and recall large amounts of data at will, you will pass your exams. But I have to wonder how many medical students, having practised that very mechanical skill, proceed to synthesize those enormous grab-bags of factoids into a deep, fully integrated and cross-checked mental model of How Everything Works. And still have time for the student bar? (Don’t ask me; I crashed out way before.) Perhaps our more qualified commenters here could provide their thoughts?
(I’m happy to be proved wrong about everything, of course. But hypothesis from observation suggests I’m not.)
It’s only in discovery and synthesis that scientific thinking has to stretch its legs, and your ability to do it effectively is placed under test. Form a hypothesis. How does the existing data fit? Revise the hypothess. Make predictions. Gather more data. Does it fit the predictions? Revise. Discard. Rewrite. Throw everything away from the last ten years and start the whole process again all over from scratch.
We both observe the role of ego as enabler for alt-med and other belief systems. And if there’s one thing egos naturally hate, it’s admitting that they’re wrong. Constantly suppressing that reflexive self-defense is hard work, and a bit of a gut-punch too. At the same time, you need a vigorous ego to power you through that enormous workload; else you’d give up and find something far easier to do instead. How do you achieve a good balance? By trying, and rejecting, the bad ones first.
That first step, it’s a killer.
Scientific thinking requires an absolute, unflinching honesty. That’s something that has to be learned; it doesn’t come naturally. It also fights with lots of other things that are frequently learned first (e.g. religion, status, perception of self) to which we become intimately attached. Once motivated reasoning is entrenched, some pretence of scientific thinking may still be slapped on top. But it’s no more than a paper-thin facade, to be shucked off the instant it embarrasses the ego or interferes in profit. Feynman and Azimov already called it.
Ah, the Human Condition; ’tis a barrel of laughs.
‘has’ you just described every poster to this site as members of “a purity cult”. I thought lawyers were single minded and myopic in their view and regimented in their presentations and research.
All you would have to do is post something on this website that is somewhat critical or even slightly analytical and doesn’t march in lock step with the pro vaxxers and you would think Lucifer him/her self had been released. Now try the same with any other field, like the 97% consensus about man made global warming or chemistry, physic (which now has to conform to Sharia Law) and now mathematics (which now has been labeled ‘racist’) . ‘Modern’ science doesn’t advance because some has an epiphany or has a new discovery that goes against accepted science. ‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it’.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time-study-suggests/3010961.article
or this what do experiments really prove
https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/craig-holdrege/what-do-experiments-prove
Or how many research commit fraud or falsify research?
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
So yes I will trust my doctor who gets paid to keep me healthy over a researcher who gets paid to publish or perish any day.
In fact some of the people who “Excel” in med school are the most incurious. They don’t want to know why something is or works only that it does. Not on Step/Level exams? They couldn’t care less. I’ve worked with a good cross section of specialties and I’ve seen this the most in surgeons and EM docs. It’s also where I’ve heard the most ludicrous theories about covid and other baloney-those two groups (No offense to our surgeon host.)
There are doctors in practice who learned about fewer medicines in training than we now have for just, say, diabetes. Many of them have to be threatened with loss of reimbursement or privileges before they will learn or change. I see these folks more than most because I’m in family/community medicine. Most of them were “grandfathered” into positions after only completing an intern year thirty years ago or something. Several I have to suffer on a regular basis still bemoan how they were “Robbed” of their chance to go into a more lucrative specialty. They have no desire to do what they’re doing let alone learning to do it better.
In short-just because a person survived medical school doesn’t mean he or she isn’t an ignoramus.
Fag. Ohh, shit; That’s pretty inflammatory rhetoric. I’m so perma-banned. Also, do you accept Btc?
Charles Bronski:
How many “opponents” needed to die for Marshall and Warren to get a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?
@Charles Bronski Christine KIncaid said that in the case of vaccine, damage is done, regardless of dose. What this is but a purity cult ? One drop, and you are forever sick.
You cite Max Planck, who spoke about quantum mechanics. This is quite different thing that determining efficiency of a drug. Actually, quantum mechanics was accepted moderately quickly.
I presume that you do trust your health on somebody who cherry pick data (done by publish or perish crowd) to boost supplements he sells.
@Charles Bronski: Cack off, you bigoted hack. The angry grown-ups are talking, and you aren’t worth their attention.
@Aarno Syvänen: I think it’s safe to say Bronski is concern-trolling. And fully knows it.
After all, it’s not as if the anti-vaxxers being engaged here are first-time fence-sitters who naively wandered in here for some breadth of perspective. These are hardcore believers, engaged in their daily acts of Witnessing. And, like their Christian bretheren, are doing it far more to reinforce their sadomasochistic sense of their own Outsider Exceptionalism than to persuade anyone else to embrace their vaunted belief system.
In other words, the dirty little devils like it when we talk harsh to them. It nourishes their specialness.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how we can talk to them.
Employ dispassionate scientific language, and they accuse us of being cold, calculating, heartless monsters, callously indifferent to their pain and obviously in the pay of Big Pharma and the Rothschilds.
Lose your temper at having your open hand shat in every single time you hold it out to them, and they can’t fall down with their attacks of the vapors and get up and fall down again quickly enough; while accusing us of being cruel, irrational, hate-spewing monsters, callously indifferent to their pain and obviously in the pay of Big Pharma and the Rothschilds.
..
And it is always about their pain, never “other people’s pain”. Because anti-vaxxers project like IMAX, and all of this is about them; not about their kids or their families, and certainly not about the other seven billion people who have to share this planet with them. Low on empathy, high on narcissism and paranoia, with a raging persecution complex and bottomless hunger for constructed drama. Their lies are their addiction; and they embrace that addiction above everything—and everyone—else.
Their choice. And it’s that act of choosing, not education or family or anything else, that ultimately differentiates Them from us. They choose to make themselves into monsters. They choose to feed those monsters’ bottomless appetites. And they choose to inflict those monsters on others.
Some of that is legitimately tragic. (I know first-hand how horribly we human beings can twist ourselves up just by chasing pleasing lies over harsh but necessary truth.)
But the moment these screwed-up people cross the line from abusing themselves to abusing others…? Go eat a shotgun, you evil, evil fuckers.
Remember: anti-vaxxers kill other people.
Then whine about us using rude words.
That’s not a loss of perspective. That is them hijacking our language to justify their kills.
..
Thus my policy when engaging anti-vaxxers and their ilk is simple: be honest to myself. Honesty is my one advantage over them. My language may be foul, but with reason: when I see them celebrating the worst traits I reject in myself, yeah, all that rage is legit. ’Cos I know the monster I could’ve made had I followed down that route, and I would not inflict that upon anyone.
pri, in the case of Marshall, it was how many people had to suffer before the consensus of scientist agreed with him? He had to conduct an experiment on himself for pete’s sake, before anyone would even slightly acknowledge he might be correct.
Why when I, posted the same information as “Dr Joel” about the Marshal study you did not criticize Joel. Your selective out rage is telling.
I just find the modern science to be restrictive in its methods and publishing and has little or no value, long term.
So Brown, Trujillo, & Rabinowitz (a really nice guy, BTW) should have kept the discovery of Sedna to themselves? Fantastic.
What in G-d’s name are you babbling about? What do you do for a living?
@Narad: “What in G-d’s name are you babbling about? What do you do for a living?”
Underpants. Kleenex. Mom’s basement. I think that narrows it down.
Bronski’s attempts to fake “science knowledge” doesn’t even reach layman’s standards, equalled only by his cluenessness as to just how stupid he sounds. Hell, I’ve got more intelligent life growing at the back of my fridge. Much better conversationalists too.
@Charles Bronski
That ChemistryWorld article is interesting, thx.
I see how that could lead to a sort of stagnation (didn’t HIV research count as stalled for a while over these kinds of hierarchies?) and appeal to ‘bullies’ such as Didier Raoult who declares a thing and then his students are to find evidence to back it up, as has been pointed out by Orac on this blog.
Then, perhaps, it sometimes is that scientists know, and administrations know but it is nonetheless more politically expediant to promote lies:
— Heliocentrism
— Cannabis prohibition and, until recently, the NIH only allowing research to show harm and only now allowing research on a monoculture garbage crop out of mississippi.
— Halting research {slowly coming back on line as ‘breakthrough treatments’ on substances such as psilocybin, ketamine, and MDMA for conditions like depression, OCD, and PTSD
— Greg Abbot lying about wind and solar and now Texans who had power are paying up to $9000 for 19 days of service. Not much science in that — they shot their infrastructre for greedy oil and gas that didn’t want regulation and then turn around and say, “Why would AOC do this?”
— The despot. Just look at that tool’s grip on the ‘republican’ party and how they coddle up for ‘the base’ of which the most vocal and active just happen to appear to be white nationalists. I guess the science of polling has no place there because they all showed well in advance that Nero was going to be trounced. He needed to physically perish when he had covid — anyone else in his probably would have for lack of bleeding edge treatment. https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2021/03/01/how-hosting-cpac-turned-into-a-massive-hyatt-public-relations-disaster/
—
I had my time as an antivaxxer and that mostly stemmed from being slapped awake about cannabis lies from the 5’th grade DARE program {where I first heard the term ‘marijuana’ (which was born in racism, by the by)} on. My first joint was after having the good sense to run like hell from a Jehovah’s Witness personal invite for dinner and watching how great it is to be sequestered printing out The WatchTower {it was good food, though}. I finished it off while watching that evil NWO HW Bush go into Bagdad.
And other fears over vaccines were that anything that can be done will be; I veiwed the entire world structure as absolutely evil because of the suppression of that one plant.
But, at least I found this site which has dissuaded me from fears of lizzard DNA or microchips in the vaccines. For the time being, anyways.
—
“physic(s?) (which now has to conform to Sharia Law) and now mathematics (which now has been labeled ‘racist’).”
Are you just being hyperbolic, here? That science is a periodic regimented religion of one PhD prophet? Or that the learning of higher-math is granted inequitable access? I suppose in many ways that it is. Point taken.
https://youtu.be/v-pbGAts_Fg?t=1
Charles Bronski:
That’s not the kind of deaths supposedly needed for a new idea to be accepted by the scientific community. The deaths mentioned in the original quote was of the scientists clinging on to the old ideas, not incidental deaths in the population while the scientific controversy continued.
It went from the basic discovery that Helicobacter pylori could exist in the acidic environment in the stomach (1982) to antibiotic treatment being accepted by the NIH as a treatment for most kinds of stomach ulcers (1994) about as fast as any major change can happen in medicine can go from first observation to a recommended treatment.
And the change happened because of experimental evidence (part of which Marshall and Warren conducted on themselves) caused people to change their minds, not because the opponents of the idea had died off.
And my handle is “prl”, not “pri”.
@Charles Bronski Marshal found that H. pylori causes stomach ulcers. There were a treatment to them before him, antacids. Delay was because treatment was already available and problem was kinda theoretical.
You really should check your facts before making statements.
@Aarno Syvänen: To be fair to Charles, his #NotEvenWrong interpretation of the H Pylori story comes to him totally pre-chewed via the human centipede that is the AltMed propaganda machine. Hey, it’s hard to research independently when you’ve got buttocks clamped to your head.
Aarno Syvänen
The time delay from Marshall and Warren noticing that H. pylori could survive in the stomach and an accepted treatment was about the same length of time as from “contaminated Petri dish” (1928) to “usable treatment” (1942) for penicillin.
There, that wasn’t because there was a good readily available alternative treatment – as seen by the fate of Albert Alexander, the first person treated with penicillin by injection.
The time from “Oh, that’s odd!” to Nobel prize was six years shorter for Fleming, Florey and Chain, though.
Again, I don’t think that Fleming, Florey and Chain needed to wait for any of their senior colleagues to die in order for the treatment to be accepted, either 🙂
@pri In case of penicillin, delay was because lack of effort. During WWII, the government decided to invest. All these war wounds needed care.,
@ squirrelelite and has: ( I may have lost a similar comment so forgive me if so)
Tell me about the memory task! Not only was it required many times but I also studied memory ( actually- attention, memory, thought, etc) there were vast stretches of unbelievably, endless necessary rote learning ( at first) that turned into associative, networking of ideas to consolidate the whole learned superstructure that you then had to maintain as though it were a fragile plant in your care! There were courses where I had to devote hours every day throughout the semester/s just to keep up. Purely the volume was intimidating I understood the material but the enormity of the required acquisition! This happened several times in survey courses, undergrad and grad, in bio, physio, etc BUT some of the worst loads were when you had to cover research in separate areas for qualifying exams which involved studies/ researchers/ dates/ results for hundreds upon hundreds of studies in many areas EACH in giant texts. ENDLESS. Other students knew I did well so they took me out for dinner and/ or drinks so I could guide them along.
But I survived. Then I hear some woo-meister/ troll casually tossing about terminology from an arcane source and I just laugh because I can tell from how they use the language that they only understand that tiny, extricated, minute fragment not the WHOLENESS from which it originates! Sometimes, they even mispronounce common terms! Hilarious!, I can tell that they don’t have the background they claim because of how shallowly they recount their “knowledge”. I could write a book about this! But I don’t want to.Sickening!
@Denice Walter: “Then I hear some woo-meister/ troll casually tossing about terminology from an arcane source and I just laugh because I can tell from how they use the language that they only understand that tiny, extricated, minute fragment not the WHOLENESS from which it originates!”
This. A million times This.
I am genuinely not kidding when I say the only thing I learned from a year of pre-med is “It’s a bit more complicated than that!” Which is still enough to detect the stench of these fakers.
Honestly, CAMsters, if you’re going to bullshit me, at least learn how to bullshit competently. It’s hardly a high bar to clear. Otherwise you’re only insulting my meagre intelligence with crap that couldn’t even pass through middle-school biology; and that noise I will find offensive.
@ has:
What alties/ trolls don’t get is that we can catch them in their masquerade because we actually know the material in detail plus some of us can evaluate
their general level of ability through their writing or speech because we studied developmental psych. language skills, testing** so they can’t put on airs of sublime intellectual superiority by tossing out names or concepts they read about for two minutes. Case in point, someone throws out a fine sounding SB dig and one of us actually knew the originator of the concept! It happened..
A prof once commented that if you wanted to know someone’s level of ability/achievement, did their arguments sound like that of schoolmates at age 12, 16, 20 or beyond ( or primary school, secondary, college, graduate).? They may be different levels displaying differing aspects BUT a good rule of thumb
** many people can do this well without the course work..
@Denice, we’re also capable of remembering what they’ve claimed in the past and noticing that they constantly change their claims.
Who needs Covid-19 vaccines, when Ayurvedic medicine works so well against Covid-19?
Or maybe not.
https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/02/22/patanjalis-coronil-gets-another-boost-courtesy-a-dubious-clinical-trial?fbclid=IwAR38EmFM12-TRYkzqecVk23WpVLscA3AkZfnBaqrd5eo_uXNVPjVRpbb6BI
I remain firmly committed to my Ayurvedic treatment of fresh cow dung and garlic. Five hundred grams fresh cow dung combined with 50 grams of crushed garlic applied externally plus 50 g of fresh garlic taken internally twice a day is a very effective treatment.
A short note on the treatment will be at appearing in the Journal of Phantasmagorical Cures soon.
Prior to seeing that I would have been content with a vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India. Now I think I wouldn’t, for fear of contamination. I can picture the scientists of the Institute leaning on bioreactor vessels, crying in the soup in frustration and shame that such nonsense goes on in their country.
@doug: “I can picture the scientists of the Institute leaning on bioreactor vessels, crying in the soup in frustration and shame that such nonsense goes on in their country.”
#FollowTheMoney.
Edzard Ernst also blogged about that paper a week ago: https://edzardernst.com/2021/02/an-rct-on-the-efficacy-of-ayurvedic-treatment-on-asymptomatic-covid-19-patients/
@Kincaid: “One that we don’t know about yet.”
Shorter @Kincaid: “Goddidit.”
I mean, once you’ve decided that the rules of this game is to pull shit out your ass and hold it up claiming This Must Be The Truth, rather than float even the possibility that you might be wrong, then everything is true and nothing is false.
Therefore I’m going to assert that it is, in fact, Kincaid herself that causes Christine-damaged children, and I defy anyone to prove me wrong.
@ has,
What are you gobbling about? Are saying there is no possibility that an important facet of immune response starts in cells in the skin, mucous membranes, lungs or gut; that we are bypassing by injection? Or are you saying that if that was true; that we would already know that by now?
Route of administration matters. I’m pretty sure Insulin isn’t as effective if it’s squirted under the tongue or rubbed into a paper cut.
@Christine: Find a dirt hill and throw yourself down it. The assorted cuts and scratches you acquire on the way down will put all of your vaccine-acquired Al to absolute shame, with the route of administration as near to identical as damnit.
Also, we’ll laugh.
@ Lawrence,
“And for the tens of thousands of years that humans have been exposed to antigens (and elemental aluminum) through cuts, scrapes, cuts, etc?”
Does that work to vaccinate? Can I be accidentally vaccinated if someone coughs on me & then I get trace aluminum from a cut? You are making my point for me.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “Can I be accidentally vaccinated if someone coughs on me & then I get trace aluminum from a cut?”
If they COUGH ON YOU, then the likelihood is almost 100% that you will inhale it, while the trace aluminum will enter the cut. Do you understand this??? The purpose of an adjuvant is to cause a local irritation that alerts the innate immune system that something is going on. And this “something” is the killed, attenuated, or subunit of the microbe being vaccinated for.
And if they cough on you, it isn’t a killed, weakened, or subunit, it is the LIVE FULL STRENGTH MICROBE. So, your innate immune system will be alerted.
Really, are you that STUPID???
@Joel: No need to attribute to stupidity that which is fully explained as oily baiting.
This is just Christine fueling her martyr complex now. Not ignorance, not stupidity; a calculated act to frustrate and anger. All so she can proceed to playing the poor persecuted victim, which she loves. Truly the Mary Sue of her own personal reality.
Personally I wouldn’t give a damn for her antics (you can’t fix those who enjoy being broken), but she drags her kids and other folk down with her—and that IS cruel and shitty behavior.
And, oh dear… Scotty’ll be along now to clutch his pearls at us self-righteously. They’re all frauds, playing an act. Best call them on it and move on, not indulge their dirty games further.
@ dear minions:
Why I have gone to such extravagant lengths detailing characteristics anti-vaxxers/ CT believers exhibit?
Because there are reasons– educational, demographic or based upon personality- that are associated with these beliefs ( although they are not at all reasonable). demonstrated by research **. These beliefs may be a way to diminish anxiety, suspicion or a lack of control or closure, elevate a sense of self-worth, uniqueness or the value of their group.
Anti-vax/ CT thought leaders manipulate vulnerable followers by giving them misinformation that addresses their needs: they are TOLD that they are special, unjustly abused or harmed by the System, Brave Rebels who are superior to their persecutors, future leaders of a mass movement about to change the world for the better. .In return, leaders receive adulation, respect, devotion, publicity and sometimes, monetary rewards.
Notice that believers who scour the internet for any evidence of vaccines causing harm assiduously avoid important research that shows how vaccines are well tested and safe, HOW autism is manifested or why they themselves choose such a path for understanding the world and then reject consensus science on any of these topics
** EASY to find!… . .
Well, I suppose that depends on how you define “Vaccinate.” If you mean “Will I develop immunity?” the answer is possibly yes. Because you will get sick, and your immune system will mount a response, and you might develop immunity, or you might die. Even with treatment.
If you mean “Will I develop immunity without facing the possibility of severe illness?” Nope. Sorry. You just got hit with the full illness. Hope your kid is able to feed himself if you end up in the hospital or unable to get out of bed.
Wow…that’s an idiotic statement, even for you.
You fall down, get a scrape or cut & immediately antigens from the environment now have direct access to your body (bypassing the skin, etc)…
To even think that our bodies haven’t evolved to deal with this over time, well, it’s absolutely moronic.
What happened to you?
@ Lawrence,
Joel said “The purpose of an adjuvant is to cause a local irritation that alerts the innate immune system that something is going on.”
Route of administration matters. Our bodies HAVE evolved to “deal with” environmental Aluminum over time. They never evolved to deal with it being injected with an antigen.
I call “BS” on that….you really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?
@Christine Kincaid: “Our bodies HAVE evolved to “deal with” environmental Aluminum over time. They never evolved to deal with it being injected with an antigen.”
Oh dear, this may be my fault. When I told Kincaid to throw herself down a hill in order to learn, I didn’t mean head first.
I wonder how long till she realizes the other thing that’s got into those cuts and grazes along with environmental Al? And hope for her sake her immune system hasn’t just died of embarrassment.
In other (pseudo)science news, an article on energy medicine has earned an Expression of Concern from the integrative medicine journal that published it*. The article includes gems such as the following:
“Energy medicine (EM), whether human touch or device-based, is the use of known subtle energy fields to therapeutically assess and treat energetic imbalances, bringing the body’s systems back to homeostasis (balance). The future of EM depends on the ability of allopathic medicine to merge physics with biochemistry.”
I can’t understand how this paper could be attacked. It’s…quantum!**
http://retractionwatch.com/2021/03/01/i-absolutely-stand-by-the-validity-of-the-science-says-author-of-energy-field-paper-now-flagged-by-journal/?fbclid=IwAR3CxlB9_fmvZ3RW2vLaW0Es2g9KhjHxDyLs2vdDgq53jTjmyX-uOJV5jXM
I’m gonna have to subscribe to this open-access journal for cutting-edge medical science (one of their latest papers features a study showing that “isometric yoga-like maneuvers” successfully treat idiopathic adolescent scoliosis.
*if _that_ can happen, maybe someday “Medical Hypotheses” _will_ retract a paper.
**The author, Christina Ross, has written a book called “Etiology: How To Detect Disease In Your Energy Field Before It Manifests In Your Body”.
So she’s a dualist.
“There is no ‘subtle body’ (linga-sarira). The phenomenological body is always imaginary. Aloofness from prakrti, kaivalya, or whatever you want to call it, is impossible since distance and the space-time continuum itself are prakrti, and there is no distance between abstracts, at least not where I come from. The monist Vedanta of Badarayana and his ilk is less objectionable than the Vedanta of Samkara or Ramanuja, but much ado about nothing in any case.
“All phenomenology is flux (samtana) and an aggregate lacking self (samghata), as Hume, in effect, says. Instantaneous ‘manifestation’ of capacity instantaneously ‘obliterated,’ so to speak. Not only is there no objective ‘reality’ whatever (sunya-vada), there is no subjective ‘reality’ whatever. The term ‘reality’ is meaningless. Nabokov, a solipsistic nihilist, was right. It is the only word in the English language that should be placed, routinely, between quotation marks (to emphasize its mere idiomatic utility).”
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “Route of administration matters. Our bodies HAVE evolved to “deal with” environmental Aluminum over time. They never evolved to deal with it being injected with an antigen.”
But you earlier asked about someone coughing and aluminum entering through skin, so, how would they interact? Second, during our lifetimes we experience numerous scratches, cuts, puncture wounds, etc. Do you really think our bodies are incapable of dealing with minute quantities of aluminum entering in such manners? As for “environmental” aluminum over time, as I explained earlier, you dishonest moron, we get aluminum daily from the air we breath, food and water we drink, and scratches, etc. And infants get considerable amounts from breast milk and formula. The cells in the, for instance, deltoid muscles that represent the innate immune system, include dendritic cells, macrophages, neutrophils, and the damaged tissues send off cytokines and chemokines, all the same as exist throughout our bodies. Why don’t you try to learn Immunology 101. A good starting place is Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works”. Excellent and only about 150 pages.
There have been several hypotheses regarding why you post, not sure which one or combination explain YOU???
1. Stupid
2. Intellectually dishonest
3. Delusional
4. Extremely unhappy individual whose only moments of satisfaction is irritating others with stupid comments
Probably some combination of the above.
You may have learned something in nursing school; but either forgot it or never really understood it.
@ Christine Kincaid
Just to be clear, you wrote: “They never evolved to deal with it being injected with an antigen.
You do realize that aluminum is, for instance, in dirt, and, so, if one gets a scratch, cut, puncture wound either from falling, playing, etc. in dirt, that one gets both microbes and aluminum. As I wrote a while back, on average, we are exposed via various routes to up to 3,000 potentially harmful microbes every day and some through minor or major breaks in our skin, plus, the same innate type cells exist there as elsewhere in the body.
STUPID STUPID STUPID
Once more, microbes and aluminum, given how ubiquitous it is, often enter together! ! !
@ Joel:
“You do realize that aluminum is, for instance, in dirt, and, so, if one gets a scratch, cut, puncture wound either from falling, playing, etc. in dirt, that one gets both microbes and aluminum.”
Then why do you say the aluminum used as an adjuvant “alerts the innate immune system that something is going on”?
Doesn’t this mean that injecting it is triggering a much more potent immune response than scraping your hand on a dirty rock?
Don’t you know?
Please stop asking asinine questions.
@ Christine Kincaid
I’ve already explained; but once again, if full strength microbes enter the body, the aluminum entering with them does essentially nothing because the full strength microbes are recognized first by the innate immune system and the immune response to them is usually much stronger than to a vaccine, which is partially why some natural diseases confer lifelong immunity. However, the drawback is that they also cause suffering, hospitalizations, disabilities, and deaths, so, despite what you choose to believe, getting a vaccine and, perhaps, needing one or two boosters isn’t a problem.
One other thing that your immense stupidness misses, that is, how does trace amounts of the aluminum in the arm do any of the damage? How? It has to move to other locations and how does it do this? By dendritic cells that “swallow” it and transport it to lymph nodes where B-cells are awaiting or by traversing the lymph or blood system, which are packed full with various immune cells. So, whether from air we breath, food and water we imbibe, breakage in skin, or needle, it is the SAME immune system. And, again, it is a trace amount. And the vaccine contains either a KILLED MICROBE, a ATTENUATED (severely weakened) MICROBE, or some SUBUNIT OF A MICROBE, so all the trace aluminum does is draw attention to the aforementioned that are exponentially weaker or, basically, non-threatening by themselves.
And the aluminum that enters via other routes does cause extremely mild reactions; but we don’t even notice it because the immune system deals with it, just as it deals with many potentially dangerous microbes without our even noticing it. In fact, life-long immunity after, for instance, measles, doesn’t mean that measles doesn’t enter the body later on, just that our immune system is so prepared, that it deals with it so fast and efficiently, that we don’t even notice.
I could cite a number of studies that explain how aluminum adjunct works; but one was already mentioned and I doubt you read it:
Eisenbarth (2008 Jun 19). Crucial role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the immunostimulatory properties of aluminium adjuvants. You can find the link above.
You just keep asking STUPIDER AND STUPIDER QUESTIONS.
@ Denice
re: Your queries on characteristics of anti-vaxxers/ CT believers.
I did look for Douglas and Van Prooijen online, found one of the survey papers I think you referenced, but found the social psych lingo too opaque to get much out of it. So i will refer mainly to characteristics you cited.
My first response is mostly (but not entirely) snark. If AV/CTs are valuing freedom, needing to be “special” or unique, lacking agreeableness, Machiavellian, and narcissistic, why would be surprised to find any number of medical doctors in their ranks? But seriously, the one factor you cited drawn from Douglas and Van Prooijen that rings most true for me is ” CTs occur more frequently when there is a perceived lack of control and [allow] people to boost their self-esteem.” I might hypothesize that a feeling of control is common for people who go into medicine, reinforced by the process of becoming a physician, opening them to a “bigger they are the harder they fall” vulnerability if something goes haywire in their lives. I don’t imagine you could investigate that with the typical methods of social psychology, so I’d be interested in some case studies, especially if a turn toward CT comes in mid-career. Not an AV, afaik, but Orac once wrote about a South Bay homeopath ‘developing’ a smartphone app to cure all sorts of diseases with audio waves, who had received an MD from a good school and done a residence in the ER of Kaiser Oakland. I wonder what might have influenced that turn around, how exactly it happened (i.e. slowly or epiphany).
As for the “doctors aren’t scientists” idea, while MD CTs come up here because it’s a medical science blog, it’s not like a PhD in science is an innoculation either. My partner’s uncle is into several (non-medical) CTs, and he has a PhD in Physics. And IIRC, a number of 9/11 truthers were ‘hard’ scientists. Indeed, most of the longer second list of characteristics — valuing freedom, needing to be “special” or unique, seeing intention or agency, over-estimation of harm, lack of agreeableness, anti-authority, anxiety, need for closure, narcissism, paranoid ideas, feelings of powerlessness, etc. — can be found among folks in pretty much any field, at pretty much any level or type of education.
OTOH, I’m far less persuaded of the relevance of the first list of characteristics you offered: less cognitive complexity, dismissal of expertise, value of purity,
less analytical thought, use of anecdotes and misrepresentation… Especially applying these to the more persistent ‘trolls’ here, I question whether these are cause or effect. That is, I suspect one doesn’t become a CT/AV as a result of having these traits, as much as one displays these traits because one is an AV/CT trolling at RI. That is, I basically agree with has that, “These are hardcore believers, engaged in their daily acts of Witnessing. And, like their Christian brethren, are doing it far more to reinforce their sadomasochistic sense of their own Outsider Exceptionalism than to persuade anyone else to embrace their vaunted belief system.” Which is to say that their posts are examples of ritual, and performance intended for a specific audience. A corollary is that the surface content of the posts don’t really matter. What matters is the tone, the contrary stance, the evasiveness, etc.
I take exception to your assertion “they seem to have an inability to survey entire areas of inquiry”. I don’t think it’s a matter of ability at all, but of willful disregard, instead, as you say they “focus instead at whatever suits their fancy, disregarding the rest which may be even more relevant to the question.” Who cares if it’s relevant to the question when you don’t really have a question? E.g. it would seem that what Christine has, first and foremost, is a “Truth” that the vaccines injured her child. For the CT every “question”, every piece of data, orbits around that focus point. So they offer anecdotes and misrepresentation because that’s the best they can come up with, and they sound good. They dismiss experts, of course, because the so-called experts are all corrupt. They value purity because Truth is pure.
While RI and SBM get hit-and-run trolls who’s posts certainly lack “cognitive complexity”, for the more frequent and dedicated true believers that show up here, like CK, I don’t really see that at all. Perhaps i should qualify by saying I’m not sure what boundaries you intend by the “cognitive” rubric. For sure, I take these contributions to be psychologically complex, and to me that implies a certain degree of cognitive work in translating psychological needs into the surface form of a ‘dialog’ waged on the terrain of science/pseudoscience. I’ll suggest CK is displaying some sot of complexity in whatever aspects of her posts lead the minions to extend threads where she shows up to over a hundred comments, if only in the ability to get minions exasperated (which is, after all, the definition of intent for ‘trolls’).
But then, I’m not sure how typical CK — or any true believer engaged in detailed rituals of Witnessing to the pro-vaxers — is of the populations studied in the social psych research summarized by Douglas and Van Prooijen. My guess might be something significant separates such dedicated and public adherents from the “rank and file”. i mean, they MIGHT be typical in ways that matter, or not. I really don’t know…
@ Sadmar,
That was a very interesting post. To clarify, I don’t actually show up to exasperate minions. I don’t like it when they speak to me like this. I have to just ignore it because this is too important for my feelings to get in the way.
I don’t like to be a regular commenter on places like AoA or other AV forums, because no matter what I say, as long as it implies that “vaccines are bad”; they will agree with me. I don’t want to be blindly agreed with.
I’m not as cognitively sophisticated as most here. I can’t articulate what my thoughts are very well. Usually when people here correct me, they aren’t even addressing what I meant. I assume that’s because I didn’t communicate it well enough. It’s not really witnessing, although I have seen that here too, I just feel like if I keep trying, there will be a moment of clarity, maybe I will say something right & someone will get it. Because I am really not all wrong.
You are not only not right, you are not even wrong.
@ Christine Kincaid
And you continue to refuse to even admit that there is a remote possibility that the vaccine was just coincidental in your infants SIDS, despite the infant was born very prematurely and very low birthweight and you admitted you have genetic disorders that could have been passed on. I have already said several times that based on immunology, epidemiology, etc. that the probability is minuscule that the vaccine could have in any way contributed; but I also said that given the rare combination you infant had, that it is a minuscule but real possibility. However, if later research was shown that this is true, all it would say is that some infants with a rare combination of pre-existing conditions should be given vaccines either later or . . .
The fact that you wrote in a comment some time ago that you are certain the vaccine was the cause, ignoring your infants severe pre-existing conditions, shows that you are not open-minded, that you are not to be reasoned with. And this is why you keep twisting and turning, trying to make the trace amount of aluminum in vaccines somehow different and dangerous.
You claim that you don’t post on Age of Autism, etc. because they just agree with you; but here, despite what people say, you just ignore them and continue, either with a Gish gallup, that is, coming up with something else and/or continuing with the same ole.
@Kincaid: “this is too important for my feelings to get in the way”
Okay.
@Joel: “You claim that you don’t post on Age of Autism, etc. because they just agree with you; but here, despite what people say, you just ignore them and continue, either with a Gish gallup, that is, coming up with something else and/or continuing with the same ole.”
Christine’s persecution complex has a prodigious appetite.
If aluminum is “just something in & around us all the time”, why is it useful as an adjuvant?
Because it IS in & around us all the time; it’s only potent enough to trigger the innate immune system when purified & injected. Something must be happening in my wound (scraped hand), to prevent me from getting even mild symptoms of an immune response (fever, malaise) every time I get a scrape. Maybe it’s something about the wound; the blood being exposed to air, cellular exudate, something that doesn’t get to happen when the aluminum goes in via a tiny, bloodless puncture. Otherwise, the adjuvants wouldn’t work.
You could try abrasion with an vibrio vulnificus-infested oyster dipped in a little AlumAseal. Not that you should, just because you could.
@ Christine Kincaid
Perhaps it’s your fairy g-d mother looking after you. I am much older than you and have had many scrapes, cuts, etc. Some did turn red, swell a bit, etc.; but most barely noticeable. Quite simply I was lucky that the microbes were ones that my immune system recognized and dealt with rapidly and efficiently; but I also remember my mother cleaning the wounds and putting MercuroChrome which burned, then bandages.
Give up. You are an IDIOT!
The air, exudate? Bull shit. People get infections all the time from wounds that are exposed to air, cellular exudate. If this is how you think, nobody should hire you as a nurse. You are completely INCOMPETENT.
And: “Otherwise, the adjuvants wouldn’t work.” Work? They cause a very small local reaction. In fact, for most of my life I have had multiple vaccines and never experience any soreness, etc, except for a mild stick of the needle; yet, I have been tested for antibodies and they were there. And, even as an adult when I get minor cuts and scratches, I still wash them thoroughly and sometimes use alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, or better povidone, iodine base that doesn’t stain or burn; but very effective against bacteria.
“or better povidone, iodine base”
Oops, been restricted since 2011 because Fukushima and my ex-buddy might have made meth out of it.
Also, that + hydrogen peroxide is a touch contact explody.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “f aluminum is “just something in & around us all the time”, why is it useful as an adjuvant?
Because it IS in & around us all the time; it’s only potent enough to trigger the innate immune system when purified & injected.”
NOPE. just that the aluminum alerts the innate immune system, just as it does elsewhere, only in this case, the alerted immune system realizes it hasn’t seen this particular antigen before. If it had, it “relaxes.”
You seem to be just pulling stuff out of your ass, because you can’t possibly be referring to any non-existent scientific literature
“Potent”?
Ohh, god; I’m linking it again. “I think startled is a better word”
https://youtu.be/n_dwXd0U774?t=19
(crosspost from SBM)
In other COVID vaccine news, WaPo reports the Trump told his audience at CPAC to get vaccinated for COVID.
Of course, Trump was bragging about he and he alone was totally responsible for Operation Warp Speed, so of course encouraging people to get the shot is asking for a payoff testament to his Greatness. But I wondered if there would be any conflict for Trumpers in this since defiant anti-science takes on the pandemic were a major theme of the conference, second only to the ‘the election was STOLEN!’ in mention and enthusiastic response from the crowd. Not warnings about the vaccines, that I heard anyway, but attacks on masking, calls to open schools and businesses, insinuations that COVID was being blown out of proportion by the libs and the fake news as an excuse to deny you your freedom and pave the wave for communism-disguised-as-socialism.
The crowd ate this stuff up, and when a staffer went to the mic to ask for mask compliance to meet the rules of the hotel hosting the conference, she was resoundingly booed.
So I wondered about how Trump actually delivered the line WaPo’s Aaron Blake found so significant, and how the crowd reacted to it. The speech went on for over an hour and a half, and I wasn’t about to go hunting for a needle in that haystack, but then I found a transcript with time marks, which let me get straight to the spot, more or less. (29:25 in the YT vid from Reuters). After getting laughs digging Biden, Trump just quickly tosses off the “Go get your shot” line, no vocal emphasis at all, and the crowd has NO REACTION WHATSOEVER…
“The revelation comes after Trump told the audience at CPAC on Sunday that ‘everybody’ should get the vaccine” — DailyFail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9313945/Donald-Melania-Trump-got-COVID-vaccine-leaving-White-House.html
“Earlier on Monday, Axios published a poll finding that a whopping 56 percent of white Republicans are unsure if they’ll get vaccinated against Covid”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-got-covid-vaccine-january-1135185/
Veracity in doubt, of course. But never, ever in public for Nero; He thinks it might have made him look weak.
As I mentioned upthread, OT but very much related:
https://twitter.com/BJacksonWrites/status/1365696825680949251
Nazi or not, it was pretty snazzi. Cutties to the architechs.
sadmar, I appreciate your input!
About cognitive complexity; I think that they’re only referring to a specific test that shows how many constructs/ concepts a person uses to explain things that a therapist, Kelly, created : it usually increases with age in kids and correlates to education.
Also: I hope you understand that I am condensing MANY sets of studies by different researchers over time.
re doctors who go woo:
Steven Barrett writes about doctors who become disenchanted with medicine and change course possibly because they feel less control ( Somewhere on Quackwatch about the attractions of alt med – see early part of index. also para-professionals and doctors with less power).
Regular commenter, Chris, has thoughts about physicists, chemists’ and engineers’ attraction to medico-woo.
Are RI trolls typical AV/ CT believers?
No, but they may be extreme examples of a type..
I sure most of these studies used the general public to get data .BUT the research tell us a little about how believers are different from the average and who is more vulnerable, It’s merely a place to start if we want to understand why people accept CTs and AV instead of everyday reality
..
YET belief in CTs is surprisingly widespread although few dedicate their lives to spreading the word and basing their identity upon a fantasy. .
@ Christine Kincaid
I should also have mentioned that some explanations of how aluminum works as an adjuvant is that it, somehow, keeps the antigen (the killed, attenuated, or subunit) in place a bit longer so that the immune system has a bit more time to react. Otherwise, the antigens are so WEAK, they may just “dissipate.” I could give you references to how various adjuvants work; but I know you won’t try to find them and read them. And the following; but, again, if a full strength microbe enters the body, our immune system recognizes it, either as something already encountered as harmless or a threat. If a threat, then a much stronger response occurs than to a vaccine.
From one article: “alum affects antigen uptake [Dendritic cells], induces danger signals, recruits various types of immune cells and elicits TH2 responses.” Steven G Reed, Mark T Orr & Christopher B Fox (2013 Dec). Key roles of adjuvants in modern vaccines. Nature Medicine; 19(12): 1597 – 1608. [See Box 1 on page 1600].
@ Joel,
I think the aluminum by itself, injected, would not be problematic. The novel antigen WITH the aluminum is causing an atypical immune response somehow. Not ‘weak vs strong’ but … atypical.
Some people will compensate for this atypical reaction but others, based on genetic variants, will not. SIDS is immune-mediated & so is autism & there is probably a complex genetic predisposition for this. The genes loaded the gun but the vaccines pulled the trigger.
@ Christine Kincaid
I am sick and tired of your speculation. First, what do you think would happen if the novel antigen, insteaYou are full of shit whed of being killed, attenuated, or subunit, was the natural microbe? You have made it absolutely clear that you have not learned the basics of immunology, so you just imagine/speculate, and now its an “atypical immune response.”
And again, if you don’t consider yourself a deity, can you admit that, given tons of research that SIDS happens to very low birthweight and/or very premature kids, and adding in your genetic disorder(s) could have been what caused your infants SIDS? But, no, it had to be the vaccine. And even if, as I’ve stated numerous times, further research could show in such a rare combination, why in hell are you so negative towards vaccines in general. You are DESPICABLE.
I sometimes fantasize that I could send someone like you to a parallel universe where everything was the same, e.g., medical technology, etc. except no vaccines had ever been developed. Well, actually wouldn’t be the same because the human population would be less than half of what it is and you would see many kids, later adults, in wheelchairs, deaf, blind, mentally retarded, etc. I’m sure you would prefer such a world and I would bet that SIDS would still occur.
I think you should stop posting on this website which is science-based because you aren’t interested in science, just speculate and speculate and speculate.
“I think you should stop posting on this website which is science-based because you aren’t interested in science”
Whoa there, buddy; It’s better than tindr or grindr and I’m keeping my options open. On second thought, I have 4 slime moulds and a huge jar of 7-year-old psosids I can spread all upon. 1 oat flake to start and 255 to stop. I would invite Christine to join in but I don’t think that the BAUD mutual handshake is going to work out very amicably.
It’s a niche-sexy, nerdy, incel joke, Christine. Laugh, you unreachable, insatiatable clod.
^^Ohh, shit. That was totally all out of place. I think I’m just going to eat the whole sausage, now. #metew
@Christine Kincaid It is not anyway atypical. Remember paper about immflammasome. It reacts to pathogens or damage. Aluminium indicates damage (it is third most common element on earth, and if it is inside body, there must be be wound and body must prepare. Aluminium activation after a vaccine and a scratch are same thing.
@Joel Harrison Christine Kincaid has told before that her child died a day after the external oxygen supply was cut. This is certainly most probable cause of death.
If we’re going to play “massive speculation” maybe Christine’s son is autistic because she had so many kids. Some studies suggest maternal antibodies play a role in autism, altering fetal brain development. We know that increased immune response happens with other fetal mismatches across multiple pregnancies like Rh factor, so why not with the maternal antibodies that play a role in autism? She’s admitted to having something like a dozen kids, so of course her last one was autistic. Her immune system was repeatedly primed to attack a fetus. /s
@ Terrie:
Right. I’ve seen that too : more autism with multiple births and if pregnancies are too close together .Also other characteristics of the mother/ parents or living situation that occur this early.as well as research on early indicators of autism prior to vaccines.,
Why is it though, anti-vaxxers endlessly speculate about events that occur after birth- even to 2 years of age!- but totally disregard studies that show strong evidence for prenatal events like infection, specific drug use, inadequate specific nutrition, genes/ de novo variation associated with autism?
Anti-vaxxers like Wright and Rossi always complain about genetic research or early indicators being ‘wasted money’.
Again, AV/ CT believers search the web for minute, vaguely related studies/ topics so that they can imagine “what if?” to enable their beliefs but blithely disregard consensus science on the causation of autism and safety data on vaccines which comes from many sources and many types of research, not speculation.. .
@ Terrie,
Congrats; you’re halfway there. You have overcame the first hurdle by understanding that autism is immune mediated. Next step is to understand that the microglia cells are not rendered ineffective until the age of 2, when the learning-based synapses are starting to grow. When the microglia stop pruning away the synapses that formed prenatally, there is nowhere for the new growth to attach, so the brain becomes a tangled mass of cross-wired synapses that can cause the total brain volume to enlarge by 10% by the age of 5.
It’s literally impossible for dysfunctional synaptic pruning of learning-based synapses to occur prenatally, before the synapses have even started to grow. There are some genetic disorders that can affect a prenatal brain that can result in ‘autistic-like’ behaviors; that is not the same as classic (regressive) autism. All post-mortem brain studies have indicated that the brain is developing normally & grows at the typical rate until the age of 2. Microglia are the immune cells in the brain; an atypical immune response occurring just prior to that age is disabling them.
Those learning based synapses are sensory; imagine if your auditory sensory synapses overgrew & caused heightened sensitivity to sounds or invaded your visual processing synaptic connections & you could “hear” light or “see” a dogs bark. You would retreat too; you could not communicate your needs. I imagine the autistic brain like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, where the gardeners (microglia) have gone to sleep & the rose briar (synapses) grows unchecked & encases the castle, cutting it off from the rest of the world.
Yes I am Rh -/-, yes I always had Rhogam. Most people with an autistic child do not have more than the average amount of children. I know many families where the first-born children regressed.
You’re aware that “/s” means sarcasm, right?
@ Terrie,
No, I didn’t know that. I do now.
And instead of looking it up or asking, you made assumptions to make the narrative fit your preconceived conclusions. Which is why you will always be wrong.
Perhaps for the next thing you learn, you should study the difference between per 1000 and per 100,000 so you can correct your previous claim that the SIDS death rate is somehow higher than the total infant death rate from all causes.
@Terrie: Aww, too bad. For one shining moment Christine thought she’d earned a new acolyte. And back to the old “autism IS too immune-mediated, because REASONS†” drawing board she goes.
—
† shorthand for “because I believe it really really hard”, natch
Perhaps you would care to define your terms.
@ Narad:
Ozonoff’s later research is extremely important for identifying early indicators of autism which I have discussed many times. Lectures available.
ALSO: any readers wondering about the state of the art developmentally,: Eric Courchesne has a 19 minute long interview about the genesis of autism ( see especially minutes 6-8. Second trimester events). Many other studies, his lectures.
Notice that these researchers are never mentioned by anti-vaxxers although both are well known for decades. Also others’ research about MRI/ EEGs at 3 months and images of prenatal head size whilst controlling for body size; analysis of brain development and facial development ( Aldridge).
EASY to find. Taught in universities. General knowledge. Nothing new.
My RL social circle is probably at least 1/3 on the spectrum (not uncommon in nerdy circles) and one person I know has linguistics as one of their special interests. They’ll point out that loss of language acquisition skills is normal, as we know there’s a critical window for acquiring language and a later window for acquisition of individual sound recognition. (There’s some fascinating debates apparently about the environmental vs genetic aspects of pitch recognition and tone deafness).
So I find it perfectly believable that regression is found in all children, it’s just that we frame is as normal in NT kids, but not in ND kids. There’s also some interesting questions raised by the point that kids develop better in environments that are lower stress and supportive. Anecdotal evidence from autistic parents raising autistic children suggests that many things we think of as symptoms of autism, such as meltdowns, are better framed as autistic responses to trauma.
@ Joel,
Prematurity/low birth weight is a risk factor for SIDS; it’s not causative. Plenty of full term, healthy babies die from SIDS.
@ Aarno; “Aluminium indicates damage (it is third most common element on earth, and if it is inside body, there must be be wound and body must prepare. Aluminium activation after a vaccine and a scratch are same thing.”
Yes exactly! The only difference is that one is injected past the epidermis & is enveloped in the muscle & the other is on the surface & becomes trapped in a scab, that is formed from clotting platelets … Is the answer in the platelets? Are they the first step in a protective immune response that prevents the inflammatory response that the aluminum in the vaccines are causing? You don’t develop a scab from a vaccine administered with a 25g needle.
By definition, SIDS is unexplained. If we knew what caused it, it wouldn’t be SIDS.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-infant-death-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20352800
But vaccines are not a risk factor for SIDS. If anything, they reduce the risk.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “Prematurity/low birth weight is a risk factor for SIDS; it’s not causative.”
Once more you display your absolute STUPIDITY. A risk factor means that it increases the possibility of SIDS. A risk factor for dying in a car crash is alcohol; but people die in car crashes when sober. RISK FACTOR means that much more likely that a kid will die of SIDS and kids born extremely low birthweight and/or premature have masses of various physiological problems. Don’t you understand this? And, even if later research shows that some kids born with very low birthweight and/or very premature, perhaps, also inheriting some genetic disorder(s), that a vaccine would be a risk factor, not causative. And many cases of SIDS are not preceded within a reasonable time frame by vaccinations or not any vaccinations. In fact, there is literature that SIDS existed prior to vaccinations.
Scabs form over puncture wounds, which is basically what a syringe does. And I now totally don’t believe you are a nurse. I have experienced and seen friends who had scabs where there was a bit of swelling, redness, and “heat”. So, scabs don’t stop the immune system from recognizing and reacting from an invader. And, once more, the immune system exists, as elsewhere, in muscles and reacts the same, so NO PLATELETS DO NOT PREVENT AN INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE. Again, your immense stupidness, try to learn Immunology 101.
Please, find a couple of peer-reviewed medical journal articles that find that platelets prevent inflammation.
Do you know the phrase “grasping at straws.”
And as was pointed out above, your infant tragically died after oxygen was turned off!
And just to repeat, I could care less about you, Natalie White, Greg, etc.; but living in a world with people like you, a world where decisions often hurt both the decider and many others, at least I can confront a few disgusting examples. My hometown newspaper prints Letters to the Editor, some supporting Trump claim his economic successes and/or trade with China; yet, the official Stats show that during his first three years in office, job creation was no greater than Obama’s last three years and prior to pandemic, the trade deficit with China was reduced by a whopping 1%; yet, if someone points this out and actually gives URL to official stats, Trump supporters ignore. They choose to believe what they choose to believe and you are no different.
This nation is in trouble because voters vote not based on informed consent of the govern and other factors; but the bottom line is, like you, they believe what they choose to believe and speculate speculate speculate.
Joel, having worked in cat shelters (and stepping on a mamesh rusty nail that went through my shoe), I can assure you that they don’t. That’s what the Augmentin is for.
Growing evidence apparently points to platelets releasing compounds triggering inflammation, so you might as well speculate unicorns in the bloodstream create the results you want.
@ Christine Kincaid
Platelets and Inflammation (note I found more than the two below and took five minutes. I didn’t give URLs because both Open Source and easily found by typing in title)
“Platelets are important players in the development of inflammation. They store multiple inflammatory molecules that, upon release, chemoattract key innate immune cells leukocytes and stimulate endothelium. Platelets interact with leukocytes and support their interaction with vessel wall and egression to tissues. [Arman A et al. (2015 Nov 15). Role of Platelets in Inflammation]
“Platelets recognize pathogenic microorganisms and secrete various immunoregulatory cytokines and chemokines, thus facilitating a variety of immune effects and regulatory functions” (Chen Y et al. (2020). Role of platelet biomarkers in inflammatory response. Biomarket Research; 8).
And you do understand that for the vaccine syringe to reach the deltoid muscles it must go through layers of skin and cells that contain platelets, which, would, of course, notice that a foreign object has entered??? And muscles has blood vessels throughout, which, of course, contain platelets.
Too bad, one more example of your immense stupidity and “grasping at straws”
@ Terrie
Actually, is it possible that a unicorn owns shares in a pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines? Wow, the plot thickens. ?
Everyone knows leprechauns are behind Big Pharma. How else can they afford their pots of gold?
Someone sent me something after Exley’s study a few years ago, but so couldn’t find it. I tried to recreate the basics.
It stated something along the lines of humans are 0.00006% aluminum by mass. That means the typical 180 pound male is 0.05 grams, or 50 milligrams aluminum. How much aluminum is in vaccines?
I believe my math is correct.
PS – this is one of the best comment threads recently. Thanks for the education.
@ ScienceMonkey
From Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Available at: https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine
< 0.33 to < 0.625 mg/dose
Hep A/Hep B vaccine
0.45 mg/dose
I wouldn’t trust Exley. He has had several articles retracted and has attended anti vaccine conferences, seen with Andrew Wakefield. He is an inorganic chemist.
I have several articles; but here is from one:
The human body contains 50-150 mg of aluminum in it. A baby fed by breast milk will get about 8 mg in the milk. And a baby fed formula will get about 40 mg in the milk [given infants body size, more than Exley’s amount for an adult]
Dr. Arthur Lavin (2017 Nov 2). Not Foiled: The Story of Aluminum in Vaccines
Available at: https://www.advancedped.com/not-foiled-story-aluminum-vaccines/
And as I’ve explained to Christine Kincaid and others, who ignore, doesn’t really matter how it enters body, e.g., air, food, water, abrasions, once in body, innate immune system, which is everywhere, responds.
I completely agree. My comment was from when Exley’s waste-of-brain-tissue “study” was released. The “no amount of aluminum is good” argument is a ridiculous one.
@SM: “The “no amount of aluminum is good” argument is a ridiculous one.”
It is also technically true: human physiology does not use aluminum in any of its processes. The sneakiness is in the inference: IF “no aluminum is good” THEN “all aluminum is bad”.
Which is horseshit, of course, as A. one does not automatically follow from the other, and B. ALL elements and compounds are harmful in sufficient quantity. e.g. Water poisoning regularly kills ravers, yet we don’t declare “water ingestion bad” but “too much water ingestion bad”.
The correct hypothesis to form is “X amount of aluminum exposure is bad”, where X may be initially unknown, and then go away and do the hard work to measure what X actually is. (The LD50 sheet is probably a good place to start, and should save you some buckets of mice.)
The other consideration, of course, is prior plausibility. We already know that aluminum is the third-most common element (most common metal) in the Earth’s crust, and that we’re exposed to it in various forms every single day of our lives: in the water we drink, the food we eat, the dust we breathe, the dirt when we scrape our knees. It is reasonable to infer that whatever the harmful level of Al exposure is, it’s going to be more than that level; probably a good bit more since nature doesn’t much care for dancing on a razor’s edge. We evolved in an environment full of Al; it is extremely unlikely we’d have gotten this far if that level of exposure was dangerous.
Of course, there’s still the possibility that mechanism of exposure matters, but I’m confident anyone who’s researched the physiology can detail all the different paths and whether there’s a significant difference. But as I’ve already pointed out, dirt in a cut is going to carry Al along with a whole bunch of other crap, which is hardly any different to a vaccination jab (except dirtier). And any fool can observe how the body cleans up after that, without coming down with teh autisms.
And that’s just me as a layman figuring that out; kicking the tyres, checking the gift horse in the mouth. But that’s because I treat every statement as a query too: “Now have I missed anything out?” (Born of learning the long way: “Yes. Yes, I have.”)
Exley et al’s “no amount of aluminum is good” is possibly rather clever, because as a statement of fact it is undeniably correct; and it is the amateur inference—which they subsequently do nothing to restrain or correct—to an opposing statement which at best is untested (unlikely!) and at worst is known to be false by them, and easily identified as “that looks suspicious” by anyone who hasn’t poisoned themselves on the motivated reasoning Kool-Aid first.
Say what you like about those Wakefield, Exley, and the rest of those venal scum at the top, but they know how to craft a cunning deception. But, they’re sharks: apex predators who are in the end only acting according to their own nature. It is inherent in them to eat others; it is a mistake to anthropomorphize their behavior as “cruel” or “bad”. To understand their purity of purpose is to understand how to cope with them and not be eaten ourselves.
It’s the tiddly minnows, believing themselves to be mighty whales because “all these sharks are my friends”, that are the real problem here. Because there are a lot more of them, enthusiastically evangelizing the Truth they have so proudly [mis-]reasoned, and turning others into fishbait as well.
@ Narad
Yep, you are right that scabs don’t form over small diameter puncture wounds; but larger than a syringe or a nail and they do. But CK’s point focused on platelets and as I clearly “proved”, platelets actually recognize pathogens, alert the innate immune system, and actually contribute to inflammation, the exact opposite of what CK claimed; but, then again, CK just “grasps at straws” and continues with her Gish Gallup.
I recall from my long-ago days at MDC the common assertion that wounds that bleed couldn’t lead to tetanus, because it’s an obligate anaerobe. I must have been shockingly bored while whiling away my severance (bungled, forced contract renegotiation).
@ Narad
Yep, tetanus is an obligate anaerobe. I’m not sure about whether “bleeding” will play a role. If wound deep enough and penetrates tissue, perhaps, still anaerobic???
Maybe Orac can answer this???
Correlation confusion, I think. Puncture wounds tend not to bleed much and their depth results a greater risk of tetanus. But the little boy in Oregon who got tetanus got it from a cut on his head, and head wounds bleed like crazy.
“Yep, you are right that scabs don’t form over small diameter puncture wounds”
I’m pretty sure scabs would grow around large wooden stakes driven into my chest but I keep dying first. But that is ok because the wood granulature lets the air in and kills the virus anyways. In theory. No, I didn’t get better in any timely kind of expected way — I’m coming for you, Todd, you little stabby liar.
p.s. I’ve also always heard and practiced that if a shallow cut can be induced to bleed in a bright red and prolific manner that tetanus shouldn’t be a problem. Source: often gets deeply scratched by barbed wire and didn’t get tetanus yet.
I suspect it’s more a matter of just flushing out (irrigating?) the wound.
Is there any “good” study that compares the general health of vaccinated compared to unvaccinated? If not, why isn’t it done?
There have been lots of them done over the last 20 years or so.
Check out the KIGGS studies for instance.
Taylor did a meta-analysis of several of the best ones a few years ago with over 1 million subjects combined.
The earlier ones had to limit themselves to general health outcomes because they didn’t have enough unvaccinated subjects to get good statistics on Autism.
They show that vaccinated children are just as healthy as unvaccinated children. In addition to that, they don’t get the diseases the vaccines protect against.
Thanks for your response!
I tried using a
KIGGS “Taylor” meta-analysis
search string in Google. But it didn’t seem like it was finding anything containing unvaccinated data (though that might be hidden in the parts you need a subscription to see).
Got any link to the study you were thinking of or a more “popular” version that at least has some of the data?
[…] of the United States by a group that calls itself The Control Group. Our friend Orac already pointed out that the group’s claims are scientifically unsound. This post points out that the lawsuits are […]
If anyone is interested, I finally wrote an analysis of the legal aspects of the lawsuit.
They match the scientific rigor of it.
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/control-group-lawsuit-alternative-facts-and-bad-science-about-vaccines/