I’ve written about the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database many times, particularly how antivaxxers have weaponized its contents to falsely portray COVID-19 vaccines as deadly and, before the pandemic, to falsely link childhood vaccines with autism, infertility and premature ovarian insufficiency, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and more. It is a longstanding strategy that has been used by the antivaccine movement going back at least two decades. The reason for this is simple. As a passive reporting system into which anyone can enter any adverse event after vaccination (e.g., that a vaccine turned one into the Incredible Hulk), VAERS was never intended to provide an epidemiologically reliable estimate of the frequency of specific adverse reactions to vaccines. Rather it was intended to be a “canary in the coalmine”, a hypothesis-generating system in which increased reports of specific adverse events can raise safety signals that generate hypotheses. These hypotheses are then tested in more rigorous active reporting systems, such as the Vaccine Safety Datalink. Because of its nature, VAERS is subject to serious reporting bias, both under- and over-reporting depending on the specifics, and antivaxxers who incompetently analyze its contents (including sometimes even those who aren’t antivaccine) often fail to consider the underlying baseline rate of the various adverse events in the database. For example, the number of deaths reported after COVID-19 vaccination might seem alarmingly large until one takes into account how many people in the US die each and every day (over 3 million/year, or over 8,000/day), vaccination or no vaccination and estimates how many people would be expected to die sometime soon after a COVID-19 vaccination by random chance alone, particularly taking into account the various age groups.
Given that the shortcomings of VAERS are now much more widely known, I was wondering when the antivaccine movement would try to dumpster dive in a different health database to demonize COVID-19 vaccines. Just such an effort has started going viral on social media as a result of Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wisc) “COVID-19: A Second Opinion” discussion panel, held the day after the antivaccine “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington, DC three weeks ago and featuring a rogues’ gallery of COVID-19 contrarians, cranks, minimizers, and antivaxxers promoting misinformation. During the panel, Ohio attorney Thomas Renz, a man associated with the COVID-19 misinformation group America’s Frontline Doctors and known for spreading antivaccine misinformation before the pandemic (e.g., among the orthodox Jewish community in New York, although Orthodox Jews in Michigan were very pro-vaccine) testified that there has been a dramatic three-fold increase in cancer among military personnel since the COVID-19 vaccines rolled out, citing three Department of Defense (DoD) “whistleblowers” that he represents, Drs. Samuel Sigoloff, Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long, who downloaded what’s characterized as a “massive trove of unclassified data” from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) and provided it in an Excel spreadsheet (because that’s how we love to analyze complex epidemiological data). This was not the only adverse event that the “whistleblowers” claimed to link to COVID-19 vaccines, either. In fact, I think I’ll just post this, which includes Sen. Johnson’s letter to the Secretary of Defense, which has gone viral on all social media platforms:
The specific claims that were made by Renz and his “whistleblowers” include that, since the COVID-19 vaccines have rolled out, there have been increases in these conditions:
- Hypertension – 2,181% increase
- Diseases of the nervous system – 1,048% increase
- Malignant neoplasms of esophagus – 894% increase
- Multiple sclerosis – 680% increase
- Malignant neoplasms of digestive organs – 624% increase
- Guillain-Barré syndrome – 551% increase
- Breast cancer – 487% increase
- Demyelinating – 487% increase
- Malignant neoplasms of thyroid and other endocrine glands – 474% increase
- Female infertility – 472% increase
- Pulmonary embolism – 468% increase
- Migraines – 452% increase
- Ovarian dysfunction – 437% increase
- Testicular cancer – 369% increase
- Tachycardia – 302% increase
Unsurprisingly, the Renz Law website is touting these numbers and, of course, complete with any “whistleblower” complaint, there has to be a “coverup”:
Renz also informed me that some DMED data showing registered diagnoses of myocarditis had been removed from the database. Following the allegation that DMED data had been doctored, I immediately wrote to you on January 24 requesting that you preserve all records referring, relating, or reported to DMED. I have yet to hear whether you have complied with this request.
Unsurprisingly, this narrative is being promoted by those with a history of promoting antivaccine misinformation, such as Mike Adams, Steve Kirsch, and Dr. Robert Malone, as well as the entire COVID-19 conspiracy theory, antimask, and antivaccine media ecosystem, for example by The Blaze, the narrative being:
Three military doctors have presented queried data to Renz that shows a shocking and sudden spike in nearly every ICD code for common vaccine injuries in 2021.
In a declaration under penalty of perjury that Renz plans to use in federal court, Drs. Samuel Sigoloff, Peter Chambers, and Theresa Long — three military doctors — revealed that there has been a 300% increase in DMED codes registered for miscarriages in the military in 2021 over the five-year average. The five-year average was 1,499 codes for miscarriages per year. During the first 10 months of 2021, it was 4,182. As Renz explained to me in an interview with TheBlaze, these doctors queried the numbers for hundreds of codes from 2016 through 2020 to establish a baseline five-year average. These codes were generally for ailments and injuries that medical literature has established as being potential adverse effects of the vaccines.
Renz told me the numbers tended to be remarkably similar in all those preceding years, including in 2020, which was the first year of the pandemic but before the vaccines were distributed. But then in 2021, the numbers skyrocketed, and the 2021 data doesn’t even include the months of November and December. For example, some public health officials speculate that COVID itself places women at higher risk for miscarriages. But the number of miscarriage codes recorded in 2020 was actually slightly below the five-year average (1,477). However, they were not drastically below the average on any one category in a way that one can suggest it reflects lockdown-related decreases in doctor’s visits, which somehow led to an increase in 2021 diagnoses.
The database has all the ICD codes for both military hospital visits and ambulatory visits. The data presented by Renz so far is all from the query of ambulatory diagnosis data.
Let’s take a look. Some of these claims will be easy to deal with as highly unlikely to be related to vaccines. Others are a bit less obvious, but still likely spurious, particularly when you recall that, unlike VAERS, DMED was never even intended to look for adverse reactions to vaccines and that these “whistleblowers” simply looked at a timeline and assumed, as antivaxxers always do, that whatever changes they observed in the frequency of diagnoses must have been due to the vaccines. Never mind that there had been a pandemic raging for a year before these data.
What is DMED?
Having been unfamiliar with DMED, I had to educate myself regarding what this database is, and it wasn’t hard to find the DoD’s DMED factsheet:
The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch’s (AFHSB) Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) is a web-based tool to remotely query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS). A newly released version of the database provides unprecedented access to tri-service epidemiologic data that allows users to query large amounts of data in a timely and efficient manner.
In brief, DMSS provides a health database for military personnel that is available to DoD physicians and healthcare personnel who wish to use it, with DMED providing remote access to a subset of that data:
DMSS contains up-to-date and historical data on diseases and medical events (e.g., hospitalizations, ambulatory visits, reportable diseases, immunizations, HIV tests, etc.) and longitudinal data relevant to personnel characteristics and deployments for all active and reserve component service members. DMED provides remote access to a subset of data contained within the DMSS (only data on active component service members). The DMED application provides a user-friendly interface through which users may perform queries regarding medical health care, including disease and injury rates and relative burdens of disease, for active component service members.
DMED provides access to four types of data: demographic, hospitalization, ambulatory and reportable events data.
DEMOGRAPHIC DATA include service, gender, age category, race, pay grade, and marital status.
HOSPITALIZATION DATA include information from DoD Medical Treatment Facilities (MTFs) and outsourced (non-DoD) hospitalization healthcare provided to active component service members. For each hospitalization of an active component service member, at the time of discharge, up to eight diagnoses are recorded (using standard diagnostic codes, International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 9th and 10th revision).
AMBULATORY DATA include information from MTFs and outsourced (non-DoD) ambulatory healthcare provided to active component service members. A maximum of four diagnoses using ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes are recorded for each ambulatory visit of an active component service member.
REPORTABLE EVENT DATA contain information on medical events that are required as defined in the Armed Forces Reportable Medical Events Guidelines and Case Definitions. These data are a subset of information provided by the Disease Reporting System Internet (DRSi).
In addition, DMSS uses various data sources:
DMSS is a relational database with multiple sources feeding information into tables containing information related to the health of U.S. Military Service members. These data sources include, but are not limited to: Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), Military Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM), Defense Health Services System (DHSS), Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS), Armed Forces Medical Examiner System (AFMES), DRSi, Pharmacy Data Transaction Service (PDTS), Pharmacoeconomic Center (PEC), and Theater Medical Data Store (TMDS). The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Division (AFHSD) uses this system to generate their master line list of COVID-19 cases, which is shared with APHC, USAFSAM, and NMCPHC.
From my reading, DMED, which allows easy access to the subset of deidentified data from DMSS described above, is a rather odd beast, a front end to a larger database that is a hybrid of passive and active reporting systems in the military, such as the DRSi (passive, used for what the military calls “reportable medical events” or RMEs) and hospitalizations, clinic visits, and diagnosis codes (active), restricted only to current active-duty personnel. Also, most RMEs appear to be infectious diseases, as described in the Armed Forces Reportable Medical Events Guidelines and Case Definitions from before the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, though, antivaxxers touting this “whistleblower” describe DMED as the “best epidemiological database in the world.” (It ain’t.)
I’m going to look at the claims of these whistleblowers two ways. First, I’m going to take the observation at face value. Then I’m going to discuss the likelihood of underreporting. The best place to start is with cancer.
Cancer in DMED: A huge red flag for reporting issues
Given that I’m a cancer surgeon and researcher, you might expect that I would immediately focus on the claims about increases in cancer rates since the vaccines rolled out to the military. You’d be right, and this will be where I take the numbers at face value, at least initially. The cancer numbers alone made me seriously question whether there was a problem with the database for two very simple reasons. First, absent other explanations, cancer rates, while they can increase and decrease from year to year, never show incredibly rapid and dramatic changes, such as the increases ranging from 395% (testicular cancer) to 894% (esophageal cancer) reported by the “whistleblowers”. Indeed, the claimed 487% increase in breast cancer from year to year really got my attention, because such an increase can only be accounted for by reporting issues. For example, as I’ve discussed a number of times before, breast cancer has been relatively stable over the last 30 years, as mortality from breast cancer has been steadily falling, trends that continue based on the 2022 cancer statistics reported last month by the American Cancer Society.
That’s why I can’t take these numbers at face value. Even before I learned more, I concluded that something must be wrong with the database. I’ll show you what I mean. Just for comparison, let’s look at the graph for yearly cancer incidence rates from 1975 to 2018:
Notice that the largest spike in incidence for any cancer was for prostate, a 2.5-fold increase that occurred over 15 years due to the implementation of PSA screening and the overdiagnosis that resulted. Overdiagnosis is the discovery through screening of disease that would never have progressed in a patient’s lifetime to threaten their life, and PSA was great at detecting indolent prostate cancer that either doesn’t progress or progresses so slowly that the patient dies of something else before the cancer spreads.
Spikes in cancer incidence in just one year reported by Renz’s “whistleblowers” are, quite simply, completely implausible from a biologic standpoint. Why is that? Cancer is the culmination of a process that, in general, takes years, from the initial insult that resulted in cellular transformation to the development of a cancerous tumor detectable by symptoms, physical exam, or screening tests. Even if there had been a spike in these cancers from roughly four- to ten-fold in just one year (for an overall increase in total cancer diagnoses from 36,050 to 114,645 from 2020 to 2021), it could not possibly have been due to what Mike Adams, Thomas Renz, and his “whistleblowers” are claiming, namely COVID-19 vaccines, which only started rolling out to the military a year ago and were only mandated for all military personnel after the August 24 order by the Secretary of Defense. Of note, the data from the “whistleblowers” only includes 2021 data through October, with the Army, for instance, not reporting a 98% vaccination rate until mid-December. While those promoting this DMED data dump as smoking gun evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are causing an epidemic of cancer in the military love to point out that the numbers included for 2021 are incomplete, in actuality that incompleteness makes them even more improbable as evidence for COVID-19 vaccines causing cancer, at least. A far more probable explanation is some sort of underreporting in the years prior to 2021.
Alternatively, another potentially plausible explanation is this one:
Let’s just put it this way. Say that I was an antivax “whistleblower” who wanted to dumpster dive in a database, say the DMED database, in order to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines cause all sorts of health problems. Let’s say that I was also fortunate enough to come across a situation where there were huge single-year changes in the incidence of a number of diseases, as Renz’s “whistleblowers” were. Knowing cancer as I do, I would have left out the changes in cancer diagnoses, because such huge changes from year to year in cancer diagnoses are so biologically implausible as to bring into question everything else reported. Cancer biologists, doctors, and epidemiologists would immediately recognize that there has to be a reporting issue going on, because such massive increases in cancer incidence in a single year are always due to something like that and not to an environmental exposure, drug, or vaccine, again, because cancer does not develop that fast. If COVID-19 vaccines really did cause cancer, we would not expect to see it for at least a few years; we would not expect to see it in less than a year.
Don’t believe me? Check out this ASCO Post article by Dr. Robert Peter Gale, an oncologist, writing about cancers induced by ionizing radiation:
What do these data show? First, the risk of developing a radiation-induced cancer is dose-related—the higher the dose, the greater the probability a cancer in an A-bomb survivor was caused by radiation exposure. Second, the A-bomb data allow us to determine the briefest interval from radiation exposure to cancer diagnosis. For leukemias, this is about 2 years, and for solid cancers, about 10 years. These increased risks, especially those for solid cancers, were most easily detected after 30 years and remain over a person’s lifetime.
Again, the cancer data reported in the DMED data dump, even leaving aside that there is no correlation shown between COVID-19 vaccination and the diseases attributed to it given that COVID vaccination status was not included in the data downloaded, are the biggest “tell” that something other than a real effect due to COVID-19 vaccines (or anything else) is the explanation for such massive increases in cancer incidence in just one year. To believe that COVID-19 vaccines were responsible for this increase in cancer incidence among military personnel, one would be obligated to believe that COVID-19 vaccines are far more carcinogenic than ionizing radiation from atomic bombs. After all, the DMED data revealed increases in the incidence of solid tumors like esophageal and other GI cancers that were reported less than a year after the vaccines became available. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any mention of hematologic malignancies, like leukemias in this “whistleblower” report. Odd, isn’t it? The cancers that are known to appear the fastest after exposure to a powerful carcinogen like ionizing radiation don’t show up as having increased in incidence in this report. One wonders if there were some cherry picking, one does. After all, I’m sure that the data for hematologic malignancies must be in DMED. Why didn’t the “whistleblowers” download the data? Or maybe they did, and Renz left it off the Excel spreadsheet because was no change in incidence from 2020-2021.
Fortunately, like Dr. Ryan Cole before them (who also tried to link COVID-19 vaccines to increased cancer diagnoses while neglecting cancer biology and as a pathologist really should have known better), neither Renz nor Drs. Sigoloff, Chambers, and Long were smart enough to realize that the cancer numbers alone are huge red flags that something other than the COVID-19 vaccines likely explain the single year increases in all of these conditions. Even Dr. Robert “inventor of mRNA vaccines” Malone, who has gone full antivaccine lately, managed to ignore the extreme implausibility of attributing such a huge increase in cancers to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the military, writing:
Notably, we now have Dr. Pierre Kory warning about censoring of early COVID treatment options, and Dr. Ryan Cole raising alarms about an alarming trends in cancer diagnoses which coincide with the onset of mass COVID-19 geneticvaccination.
So, are there any large data sets supporting Dr. Cole’s concerns about cancer incidence, or for that matter my warning to parents about potential genetic vaccine-associated risks to brain, nervous system, heart, immune system, and reproductive systems in children and healthy young adults? Judging by the amount of invective and targeted character assassination attacks which Pierre, Ryan and I have had to endure, we must be raising completely unfounded concerns and spreading disinformation.
Actually, they all have been doing just that, spreading misinformation, but let’s move on.
Here’s the funny thing. Elsewhere in that same recent post, Dr. Malone wrote something that was—for him, at least—shockingly reasonable, in which he cautioned his readers:
Now these are basically raw data from the Defense Medical Epidemiological Database (DMED). For the detail oriented, this is the scrubbed and de-identified (HIPAA compliant) database derived from the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS), which pulls directly from patient records and other US Department of Defense-related medical record information streams. These data were pulled with full chain-of-custody documentation based on various CPT codes that are related to known genetic COVID-19 vaccine side effects.
As raw data, this information needs to be reviewed with care and considered to be both rough and preliminary. For the uninitiated, there are major risks associated with reliance on large, raw (uncorrected) data sets for retrospective (backwards in time) data analyses. The key technical term here is “confounding variables“, but data entry errors (such as multiple entries for the same diagnostic event) or process changes can also introduce huge sources of bias into large data sets like this. With raw data, it is most useful to consider any data plotting to be sort of a first draft, useful for identifying potential trends or topics that deserve more detailed analysis.
Unfortunately, Dr. Malone couldn’t restrain himself from continuing:
But sometimes, when the observed effect size in the raw data is very large or potentially important, alarm bells start ringing even before full analysis is completed. And that seems to be the case with these data.
Actually, when the effect size is so huge as to be incredibly implausible from a biological standpoint, as the reported DMED data for overall cancer rates and the increases in various specific cancers reported are, such enormous observed effect sizes do cause alarm bells to start ringing, just not for the reasons that Dr. Malone cites. In such a case, alarm bells ring because there’s very likely something “off” or wrong with the dataset and suggest that the observed effect size is due to issues with reporting, rather than a real change in incidence rates.
Amusingly, Dr. Malone cites an observation from another antivaccine doctor that an “instructive test would be to check that we do not see a similar rise for conditions that could not plausibly exhibit a significant association with the vaccines, such as broken legs or burns.” Funny, isn’t it, that Renz’s “whistleblowers” didn’t do even that simple quality test. Come to think of it, why doesn’t Dr. Malone insist that they do this simple test?
If you are so inclined, you too can download the Excel spreadsheet from the Renz Law website. Interestingly, none of the conditions for which the “whistleblowers” downloaded data is a condition like the ones suggested by Dr. Malone as useful to look at as negative controls, and all of the conditions included show massive increases in incidence, which leads me to suspect cherry picking. In any event, as soon as I saw the one-year increases in cancer incidence ranging from 300% to nearly 1,000%, I knew that the explanation had to be either a reporting problem, the DMSS database itself or how it pulls data from the various other databases that feed it, or a bug in the algorithm by which DMED pulls data from the DMSS database in queries—had to be. The true incidence of cancer doesn’t increase so dramatically in less than a year. It had to be underreporting in years before or a bug in how data were pulled over to DMED. A cardinal rule of evaluating results of a database search is that if some of the results are clearly impossible, then you have to assume that the problem is with the database or the algorithm, not that the impossible results are real. Of course, Renz, being an antivax lawyer looking to make a name for himself bringing various dubious lawsuits against vaccine mandates and representing these “whistleblowers,” assumed the clearly highly implausible data were real and, as antivaxxers always do, assumed that the COVID-19 vaccines were the explanation. The “whistleblowing” doctors should have known better, at least about the cancer rates—no, seriously, people, how could you not have realized the utter implausibility of these results?—but I can only assume that they are antivax too.
The “coverup”
In the world of antivaccine conspiracy theories, there must always be some sort of “coverup”. All conspiracy theories involve a “coverup”, particularly antivaccine conspiracy theories. For example, the Simpsonwood conspiracy theory that claimed that the CDC met in 2000 to “cover up” and “massage” data showing that thimerosal in childhood vaccines had resulted in a massive increase in the prevalence of autism, and the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory behind the antivaccine propaganda film disguised as a documentary VAXXED postulated a CDC coverup of data showing that the MMR vaccine had resulted in a four-fold increase in autism among African-American boys. So it is with this conspiracy theory as well, with Steve Kirsch gloating:
The original DMED data appears to be very reliable. It is hard for anyone to make excuses for the increased rates in the DMED database quoted in this letter because the event types with increases are all confirmed in the VAERS database. Unlike VAERS, this database cannot be dismissed using hand-waving arguments. DMED is not a self-reported database where reporting rates are unknown. It is a fully reported database where all the reports are from healthcare providers. In short, if the vaccines are safe, the DMED data is hard to explain. For example, you can’t pin the rise in events in 2021 on COVID since total hospital event rates declined in 2020 (relative to 2019) in both the original and corrected results. Note: The DoD now claims the 2016-2020 data was wrong and issued corrected values (graph on the right):
And here’s the figure:
The Renz Law Firm goes even further, predictably, as these screenshots of its website a week ago show:
And then Kirsch goes on:
The DoD is in a panic about this leaking out. This data wasn’t ever supposed to leak out. The only reason it leaked out is due to the efforts of three whistleblowers inside the DoD. According to an insider I spoke to, the DoD has no idea how they are going to cover it up. The only thing they’ve done is claim the 2016-2020 data is underreported, but this doesn’t match reality as I explain below.
And, of course, the mainstream press is also in on the “coverup”:
Deliberate mainstream press cover-up. There is evidence that mainstream media reporters have been instructed not to cover this story or talk to Tom Renz. I verified this myself searching for articles about Renz in The New York Times and CNN. So you’ll only hear about it from alternative media. Think about it… this is one of the most explosive stories of the year (if not the decade) and the mainstream press isn’t covering it at all? What does that tell you? You don’t have to have a lot of critical thinking skills to figure that one out. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know: there is a massive cover up of adverse events.
And even these enormous increases are an “underestimate” of the true numbers, because of course they are:
It’s important to note that the soldiers are tough and don’t want anything on their medical records that could limit their responsibilities
The coverup is of course why, if you look at the actual Excel spreadsheet, you will see corrected numbers added, and, of course, to Kirsch it’s obviously a plot by the DoD to “cover up” the “injuries” from COVID-19 vaccines in the military. The amusing thing to me, though, is that, even though I don’t trust the military to be truthful any more than anyone else, from a biological, scientific, epidemiological, and medical perspective, underreporting during previous years is in actuality a far more plausible explanation for what is seen in the data downloaded by these “whistleblowers” and now being weaponized by antivaccine lawyers and propagandists than is a real increase in incidence of all these medical conditions due to COVID-19 vaccines.
The “coverup” then proceeds to get even worse and more egregious, with an article published by Politifact, which deemed the “whistleblower” claims to be false:
But Peter Graves, spokesperson for the Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division, told PolitiFact by email that “in response to concerns mentioned in news reports” the division reviewed data in the DMED “and found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020.”
Officials compared numbers in the DMED with source data in the DMSS and found that the total number of medical diagnoses from those years “represented only a small fraction of actual medical diagnoses.” The 2021 numbers, however, were up-to-date, giving the “appearance of significant increased occurrence of all medical diagnoses in 2021 because of the underreported data for 2016-2020,” Graves said.
The DMED system has been taken offline to “identify and correct the root-cause of the data corruption,” Graves said.
Remember, DMED is more or less a subset of the DMSS in which the data have been deidentified; so it is the data in the DMSS that would be the complete dataset, not what’s seen in the DMED. That being said, it is rather disturbing that before 2021 there had apparently been some sort of problem with DMED such that what it pulled from the DMSS was only a fraction of the medical diagnoses there, but somehow whatever glitch caused that underreporting was fixed by 2021 but not for the years before. It’s an unforced error that was custom-made for conspiracy theorists and will likely make it impossible to convince many people that these data were full of underreporting before 2021, even though the cancer rates found were a huge red flag that something like this must have been occurring, leading Dr. Malone to opine:
Now for some reason, although this database has apparently been managed for years by the same NIH subcontractor, and has been included in the CDC datasets including those reviewed by the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical (VaST) Work Group, the geniuses that have been managing it have never identified any issues before the whistleblowers grabbed this download. Does not inspire confidence, no matter what the final “official” explanation becomes.
Unfortunately, a lot of people will find the seeming conspiracy to “cover up” the findings of the “whistleblowers” compelling. Truly, at best this was an unforced error on the part of the DoD.
A teachable moment
I can’t resist relating this DMED kerfuffle back to the primary mission of SBM. Longtime readers will recall that the founders of this blog originally proposed the idea that alternative medicine claims—indeed all medical claims—need to be considered through the lens of prior biological plausibility. That’s why, for example, we can dismiss homeopathy as impossible based on basic science considerations along, regardless of what bias- and error-prone clinical trials show. After all, as we have long pointed out, for homeopathy to be true, not only would huge swaths of what we know about physics, chemistry, and biochemistry have to be wrong, they’d have to be spectacularly wrong. While it is possible (just barely) for this to be true, it is up to homeopathy advocates to provide scientific evidence of sufficient quality and quantity to overthrow all the principles of physics and chemistry that homeopathy violates, not up to scientists to “prove them wrong”.
We can apply the same principle to the DMED data dump, which is marginally only somewhat less implausible than homeopathy. For the observed increases in cancer incidence reported by these feckless “whistleblowers” to be true increases, then not only would what huge swaths of what we know about cancer and carcinogenesis have to be wrong, but they’d have to be spectacularly wrong. You can safely ignore everything else reported in the data dump for the simple reason that what’s reported for cancer is so incredibly implausible that it has to be due to reporting error. That was true before the DoD issued that statement to Politifact and took the DMED offline to investigate, and it’s even more true now.
Add to that the fact that the man orchestrating the “whistleblower” report is a lawyer with a long history of suing for “vaccine injury” and promoting antivaccine misinformation and who filed a lawsuit on behalf of the COVID-19 minimizing group America’s Frontline Doctors alleging that the “true” number of deaths due to the COVID-19 vaccines is being “covered up” and has a history of misusing other databases to misleadingly claim that COVID-19 vaccines are causing tens of thousands of deaths, and you can be quite confident that the claims of these whistleblowers are not supported by any actual science or epidemiological evidence. This is doubly true given that the “whistleblowers” didn’t bother to do checks on their data so simple that even an antivaccine crank like Dr. Robert Malone recognized that they were important.
Thus endeth this week’s teachable moment. I fear that it won’t register among those who most need it.
130 replies on “DMED: Another database abused by antivaxxers”
” The true incidence of cancer doesn’t increase so dramatically in less than a year” said Orac.
Or else, it’s just possible that Covid vaccines are even more deadly than being near an atomic bomb strike. /s
Pierre Kory was interviewed by Del last week on @ highwire talk for an extended period but I only watched snippets.
Sceptics might take this as illustrative of alties’ lack of judgment: if you need to broadcast your latest ideas/ theories/ findings on a website that is known for its conspiracy mongering and histrionics, you have nothing of value to contribute. There are podcasts and substack as well as less discriminating legacy media and
magazines. If you descend to Del’s level, you have abysmal research skills because he only hosts a coterie of loons. Same for NN or prn.live
Isn’t it interesting that so many vaccine denialists are lawyers who can benefit from legal action ? Before the current crop, there was a rogues’ gallery who appeared at anti-vax/ autism events, who wrote books and who advocated for potential clients: RFK jr is one of the most famous/ infamous.
Philip (sp?) Johnson, father of the Intelligent Design Creationism movement, was also a lawyer. Funny how often that happens….
I could imagine something being carcinogenic in a way that would cause diagnosable cancers to manifest quite rapidly .. for instance, if it induced many cells across the body to independently turn cancerous after exposure, that could cause a large number of small tumors that would have noticeable effects much more quickly than a normal cancer with a more limited origin site.
… of course, one would also rather expect that doctors would have noticed the atypical presentations if that was suddenly a thing happening at the kind of frequency implied by the conspiracy theory explanation here, but why let the facts get in the way of a good dose of nonsense, hmm?
It’s been my experience that doctors aren’t in the habit of suspecting let alone blaming vaccines.
@john labarge As explained before, DoD added new data to the database, thus the surge . Rantz did not bother to ask DoD, but fact checke rs did,
Who would have though this ???
“Study: Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Severe COVID”
webmd.com/lung/news/20220208/vitamin-d-deficiency-tied-to-severe-covid?ecd=soc_tw_220214_cons_news_vitamindcovid&linkId=100000109075015
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263069
“Conclusions
Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, pre-infection deficiency of vitamin D was associated with increased disease severity and mortality.”
Everybody and their dog.
We already know that malnutrition leads to worse outcomes. See measles.
Your point?
If you want to advocate for federal/state-run efforts to promote better eating, be my guest.
No, really.
But I should warn you, Michelle Obama tried it already and was called nasty names for it.
We’ve been all over this for over a year. We routinely supplement inpatients. I also mentioned it in a comment thread weeks ago.
Athaic
The study was not about malnutrition. but vitamin D and would explain why dark skinned persons in the US have “more serious illness and death due to COVID-19 than white people.”
hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid19-racial-disparities
“Vitamin D and African Americans”
“Vitamin D insufficiency is more prevalent among African Americans (blacks)……This is primarily due to the fact that pigmentation reduces vitamin D production in the skin.”
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16549493/
Two years ago Trump suggested that sunlight can kill coronavirus. Of course the media and Trump haters derided that. Then the “follow the science” side, closed playgrounds, bike and running trails, and kept everyone (see Australia) locked up inside.
“The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful,” Trump said during a White House press briefing. He raised the possibility of hitting a human body “with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light.”
politico.com/news/2020/04/23/trump-coronavirus-sunlight-205969
Now we find out that vitamin D (sunlight) help reduce the severity of Covid
they knew this last year
“Experiments Show Sunlight Destroys COVID Virus 8 Times Faster Than Scientists Thought”
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8164734/
They knew this almost from the beginning.
“Simulated Sunlight Rapidly Inactivates SARS-CoV-2 on Surfaces”
academic.oup.com/jid/article/222/2/214/5841129
Yet they persisted in closing beaches and parks and arrested surfers and park goers, claiming they ‘followed the science”, how bizarre.
Obviously the answer to severe Covid-19 pneumonia is to crack the patient’s chest and roll them outside for a sunbath.
Trump suggested UV sterilization of air in the lungs. Trump DID NOT suggest people should get more sunlight to increase their vitamin D levels. Get your facts straight.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic, after getting deported from Australia and missing out on the Australian Open, says he won’t play in any Grand Slam events that require Covid-19 vaccination.
“Because the principles of decision-making on my body are more important than any title or anything else,” Djokovic said.
“I’m trying to be in tune with my body as much as I possibly can,” he said, adding that he has always been careful about everything he ingests. “Based on all the information that I got, I decided not to take the vaccine, as of today.”
Hmm, why wouldn’t you want a hit of antifreeze for a match on a cool day?
But don’t get the idea Djokovic is an antivaxer.
“Djokovic, 34, told the BBC he isn’t against vaccinations — “I have never said that I am part of that movement,” he noted — but believes in personal choice. He said that is more important than potentially winning his 21st major trophy.”
Nice tap-dancing, Novak.
So he’s not going to go to places that don’t want him because he’s unvaccinated?
Sounds like a solution that will make everyone happy.
I am sure that will be as effective as the great teen boycott of adult-only establishments in the 1990s was in getting rid of age-based restrictions.
I really hope that this latest post was some kind of drug fuelled aberration, because the idea that it came from a fully compos mentis human being is worrying.
Still, at least we learned that sunbathing will kill the virus on the surface of your skin. Just need to do it naked. Without sun cream. Wouldn’t recommend this in Australia though.
“REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM”
but I would expect no less from you
Therefore, the WHO Regional Office provides workshops on the issue of how to respond to vocal vaccine deniers for spokespersons of health authorities in Member States.
“Indeed, the claimed 487% increase in breast cancer from year to year really got my attention, because such an increase can only be accounted for by reporting issues.” ONLY? That’s what we call an unwarranted assumption. This is the opposite of critical thinking. It could be reporting issues, or it could be something else that was introduced–nay forced–into the population on a massive scale. Or even something else entirely should plausible alternative hypotheses emerge. An actual scientist would not disregard any possibility without evidence. The appropriate response is independent investigation, not hand-waving. Forced injections happened. You can’t get around that simple fact. Deal with it. Instead, as per usual, your strategy is to ridicule and come up with cute epithets like “dumpster diving” in lieu of offering supporting evidence. Maybe exonerating evidence will come to light in litigation. We won’t find it here.
Cancer biology is another fact. Developing cancer takes time.
DoD explained Rentz numbers thusly:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/31/instagram-posts/numbers-were-based-faulty-data-military-spokespers/
More data was added into the database in 2021, thus apparent increase. (You will notice that many numbers are quite similar).
And no, forced injections do not happen.
Here’s what’s happening “on the front line”. I am a pathologist in a medium-sized community hospital, doing mostly surgical pathology. Our local population is fully-vaccinated at about 80%, like most of Canada, so we should expect a huge onslaught of malignancy, if these numbers are correct. In our professional group, any new malignant diagnosis is reviewed with other pathologists daily, before the diagnosis is officially made and released in a report. If there really was a 400 – 900% increase in malignant diagnoses, don’t you think we would have noticed this?
The figures presented are absurd.
Have you considered sending your negative biopsies over to Dr. Ryan Cole in Idaho for review? I’m sure he could come up with a bunch more malignancies.
https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/no-scientific-evidence-for-claim-by-pathologist-ryan-cole-that-covid-19-vaccines-weaken-the-immune-system/
@CI
Geez talk about hand waving. Not unwarranted when explained by relevant comparisons to known and well evaluated scientific natural processes. It is certainly evidence of critical thinking!
You haven’t convinced me that vaccination causes cancer by being histrionic. Hysterics certainly is not critical thinking.
I’m dealing with it. It feels good. Entertain me more!
“An actual scientist would not disregard any possibility without evidence.”
An actual scientist (like me) would know enough about the biology of cancer to know that this is beyond improbable.
While there are always new things to learn about all kinds of cancer, there are some things that are really well understood, and how fast tumors grow is one of them. There is no biological mechanism to create this many cases of cancer this quickly.
Along with hand-waving and cute epithets, there is also barraging people with long rambling diatribes in an attempt to overwhelm, hide, and obfuscate. The bloviating is obvious.
Do you have any substantive criticisms for this post? No? OK, then…
@ Anthony
You write: “The study was not about malnutrition. but vitamin D”
Vitamin D is a NUTRIENT, thus too little is malnutrition. Though sunlight is a major source with a healthy diet one can get adequate amounts of vitamin D. Not just added to foods; but naturally in foods; e.g. egg yolks, orange juice, etc.
And even if vitamin D levels adequate one can still become severely sick with COVID, just probability a bit lower.
Herr Computer decided not to print the comment I left here, probably because it was #1 and his comment architecture is terrible. Or maybe he is just trying some new tactics in his goal to never debate a conspiracy theorist, after watching a couple of his insult comic protégés get destroyed trying to argue that an electron micrograph is a photo.
I won’t relitigate the whole thing, but I pointed out: 1) all cause mortality was higher in Pfizer’s vaccine group than in their control group, and 2) mRNA therapy campaigns are strongly correlated with soaring rates of COVID. I asked Orac a simple question, the same one Joel refuses to answer. How many people do the vaccines kill?
Furthermore, there were stories for months about “Post Pandemic Stress Disorder” in Britain and “Delayed Care Syndrome” and even “Mysterious Disease” and “Resurgent Flu” in the MSM. In other words, the media was reporting that there was significant excess mortality that was not associated with COVID, which they blamed on several ill defined etiologies. The latest stories circulating in the alternative media are about life insurers seeing a 40% rise in prime age claims. Maybe that last bit is fake news, I haven’t rigorously fact checked it. But it gels precisely with what the MSM was trying to say.
Here’s the deal: significant excess mortality not associated with COVID has been occurring. Obviously if this is caused by the vaccines, it is a disaster. But even if not, it is caused by the lockdowns. These are the risks that were not calculated or disclosed when these medical interventions were imposed.
I’m not going to arrest you, or try you, or judge you, or carry out your sentence. But somebody might.
So how about you stop whining about trivia and bring on the real evidence?
Smiley face and good soup FOR YOU!
Of course, the prime-age claims are also higher in counties with lower vaccination percentages, the excess causes of death are largely cardiac and stroke, and getting COVID is known to have a whole lot of implications for those.
But, you know, it’s definitely the vaccines and not the disease the vaccines are trying to prevent. Yup.
“the excess causes of death are largely cardiac and stroke, and getting COVID is known to have a whole lot of implications for those.”
Well yes, because there is this pesky bio engineered cytotoxic spike protein on the surface of COVID that causes microvascular injury. So if COVID “vaccines” teach your cells to manufacture these same pathogenic spike proteins all by themselves, then, um, they can’t possibly cause the same types of injury? Is that what you’re suggesting?
How many spike protein will go to the blood ?
Answer:
Ogata AF, Cheng CA, Desjardins M, Senussi Y, Sherman AC, Powell M, Novack L, Von S, Li X, Baden LR, Walt DR. Circulating SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Antigen Detected in the Plasma of mRNA-1273 Vaccine Recipients. Clin Infect Dis. 2021 May 20:ciab465. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciab465. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34015087; PMCID: PMC8241425.
Picograms,that millionth of milligrams, and even this stays only two weeks. Besides of that spike protein is not cytotoxic. It is part of SARS Cov 2 and claimed that it so benign. Try to keep your stories in order.
Fact checkdf at Politifact actually asked DoD about the numbers. New Data was added to the database, tus the numbers
People be going crazy all killing like. Sad and I hate.
Nothing suggests COVID vaccination causes excess deaths. Would easily propose that there are excess deaths because COVID kills many but from other diagnosis – no. Your not interested in such numbers are you?
Hard yet to judge how many vaccines kill, but the overwhelming evidence so far puts it at about 1 in 10 million — not professional here but the evidence is there. If you have a claim otherwise — put it up.
Just as an aside — thanks Orac for the blog. Good info.
Furlong: “Would easily propose that there are excess deaths because COVID kills many but from other diagnosis – no. Your not interested in such numbers are you?”
That is hilarious considering the entire pandemic narrative has been built on asymptomatic cases and mandatory testing. People dying of causes other than COVID, after a positive COVID test, being listed as COVID. People dying of COVID with five comorbidities. COVID victims having a longer life expectancy than the general population.
You don’t even need a positive COVID test to be counted as a COVID death! It only needs to be suspected of contributing to death. And there has been extra federal renumeration for all COVID cases and deaths (which is a moral hazard). USA has some of the highest per capita COVID death rates in the world. So your thesis that COVID deaths have been undercounted is extremely hard to swallow. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Lies lies lies. I have written death notes and certificates for covid patients. I MUST be the proximate cause or a contributing factor; your talking points are as old as the pandemic itself. Just as tiresome, too.
We had a patient the other day who suffered a massive pulmonary embolism after a car wreck pass away. She was covid positive on admission (Everyone gets swabbed.) Covid was nowhere near her note or certificate.
As to people dying of covid with five comorbid conditions…do you even know why we use that descriptor or what it means? I suppose you think the obese person with type 2 diabetes who dies of acute hypoxia respiratory failure secondary to covid pneumonia died of diabetes or obesity? I bet you also think it’s their fault. Never mind that patient was out working to lose weight with totally normal lungs days before.
I’m really tired of this line of reasoning. It’s as vapid as it is offensive.
I expect PEBCAK virus is more likely here.
Not statistically significant.
That would explain why COVID-19 cases declined between January and April 2021 when vaccinations went from 700,000 per day to 3.5 million per day? The stupidity of this claim is beyond measure.
Soaring rates of COVID are strongly correlated with new, more infective variants – first delta, then omicron.
In the US according to the CDC it currently stands at 9 confirmed deaths.
Pile of disconnected bullshït. The media has not been reporting significant excess mortality not associated with COVID-19. What the media has been reporting is excess deaths not counted in the official COVID-19 figures. These are mostly people who died from COVID-19, but were not tested prior to dying. In some countries, COVID-19 overwhelming medical systems has resulted in deaths due to other conditions.
A conclusion without evidence.
Preston: “That would explain why COVID-19 cases declined between January and April 2021 when vaccinations went from 700,000 per day to 3.5 million per day?”
Although the test positivity rate dropped during this period, so did the per capita testing rate. Therefore the dramatic decline was partly due to less testing. That pre vaccine wave literally peaked when Joe Biden was inaugurated. Here’s a question for you. Why was the testing rate tripled between late summer and the inauguration, then immediately reduced again after Biden was successfully installed? We saw the infection curve on the news every night. No one explained that the testing rate was not constant, and was correlated with the positivity rate. This is yet another example of the way CDC misleads and misinforms with statistics. That election season spike was 3x the magnitude it would have been otherwise if a constant testing rate had been maintained.
By April, what was the vaccine uptake in America, %35? This is when the delta wave began in the US. You say rising rates of COVID are associated with new variants, which is true, we are saying the same thing. The Delta wave is correlated with initial vaccine uptake.
Don’t hurt yourself moving those goalposts.
The peak of the delta wave in the US occurred from August to October 2021. This does not correlate at all with the peak of vaccination, which occurred in August. The relationship with the omicron wave, which peaked in January 2022, is even more tenuous.
It is hard to tell whether you are completely ignorant or just an inveterate liar.
Preston: “not statistically significant.”
Well then you’ll love this next part, because in November 2021, FDA released a report on their Pfizer approval, noting there were actually 21 deaths in the vaccine group vs 17 in the placebo. https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/more-people-died-in-the-key-clinical
Furthermore, in the initial two month study, no COVID deaths had occurred in either the placebo or the control. Isn’t that also not statistically significant? Isn’t part of the problem that Pfizer only had 44,000 trial participants and maintained the control group for less than a year? There were nine hospitalizations among the placebo, and one among the control. The absolute risk reduction offered by the vaccine was what, 1%? But instead of marketing the jab by saying it lowers the average persons overall risk by one percent, and does not prevent infection or guarantee against death from COVID, you chose to only say that it was 95% effective and imply that it would end the pandemic. Who is trading on statistical insignificance here?
@Sue Dunham Do you know what age adjustment means ? Older people die more probably, get it ? If a group have more older people, it will have more deths, get it ? Thus age adjustment is needed
“so did the per capita testing rate”
Does that figure include LF tests? Many people in the UK test regularly using LFT kits but won’t bother reporting negative results. Apart from cross referencing the number of kits ordered with the time between reordering, you can’t really tell how often per week people are testing. You’d probably see an accurate representation of the number of positive tests but not the total number of tests used in any period.
Wang, you can see per capita testing rates graded over time doing back to the beginning of the pandemic, alongside a grain of the positivity rate, if you scroll down almost to the bottom on this page: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/
Look at how wildly inconsistent the testing rate has been, look at the time periods when it was highly correlated with the positivity rate, and think about what that means. Also compare to the case and death rate histories.
Not statistically significant. p=0.36
You also missed the bit from the FDA decision memorandum: “None of the deaths were considered related to vaccination.”
Yes, but the study was measuring incidence of infection as its primary end point, not death from COVID-19. There were enough cases during the follow up period to determine the vaccine reduced infection incidence by 91%.
Cannot you understand age adjustement ? Older people more probably die . Thus,in clinical trials, age adjustment is done. Vaccine group had higher mortality, because people where older. Got it ?
Only the military shows such susceptibility to vaccine-induced increase in all-cause hospitalizations. Civilian hospital admissions data certainly don’t show anything like this. There, hospitalization, bed occupancy, and ICU occupancy closely track COVID infection rates, with a delay of a couple of weeks. Hospitalizations aren’t tracking vaccination rollouts, and states with low vaccination rates have markedly higher hospital bed occupancy than states with higher vaccination rates.
Also, posted at the CDC site, it’s clear that civilian hospitalization rates overall are greater in unvaccinated versus vaccinated people.
see: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#covidnet-hospitalizations-vaccination
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “I pointed out: 1) all cause mortality was higher in Pfizer’s vaccine group than in their control group, and 2) mRNA therapy campaigns are strongly correlated with soaring rates of COVID. I asked Orac a simple question, the same one Joel refuses to answer. How many people do the vaccines kill?”
Do you understand what “all cause mortality” is? A volunteer in a clinical trial could have severe atherosclerosis, a heart attack at any time. If during trial they have a heart attack probability high would have had anyway. Then one looks at the mechanism of the vaccine to see if it could have contributed. When one conducts clinical trials, one randomizes volunteers between groups. Unfortunately, randomization cannot guarantee that both groups are equal on all measurable and unmeasurable variables, so one can get more people in one group who would have died without being volunteers. In addition, we have tons of follow-up data and the vaccines have overwhelmingly significantly reduced COVID deaths. And NOPE, no evidence the vaccines killed anyone. One or two anecdotes where could have; but they were extremely sick before and either would have died period or certainly if exposed to COVID. And one or two compared to 10s of millions vaccinated. However, as quoted below, due to hospitals being overwhelmed with COVID patients, others who might have been saved, died. So, how would you have handled it differently? Not accept in hospitals those severely ill with COVID?
And you continue to ignore that overwhelming stats show that the mRNA vaccines significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID. What you fail to understand is that many nations who have high vaccination rates also maintain high levels of data and this shows both number of cases AND that they are almost always among the unvaccinated.
As for media claims of excess all cause mortality, here are a couple of papers that refute:
PolitiFact (The Poynter Institute). COVID-19 vaccines caused a 40% increase in deaths identified by a life insurance company. [read it, it clearly refutes claim of 40% increase in deaths]
Jeremy Samuel Faust et al ( (2021 Sep 21 MedRxiv Preprint). Absence of Excess Mortality in a Highly Vaccinated Population During the Initial Covid-19 Delta Period
“No one would describe 2020 as normal. The coronavirus disrupted travel, employment and livelihoods. It pushed countries into lockdown, forcing people to change how they lived. And it infected millions of people, resulting in many getting severely ill and dying. The high number of deaths in 2020 was completely abnormal.
“Excess mortality” is how this abnormality is measured. It’s the number of deaths – from all causes – that occur during a crisis that’s beyond what would be expected in typical times. When looking across a sample of 79 high-, middle- and low-income countries, overall there were 3.7 million more deaths in 2020 compared with the average for 2015-19 – an excess of 13%.
This figure reflects not only official COVID deaths, but those caused by the virus yet not recorded as such. It also includes deaths that might have been prevented if the pandemic hadn’t happened – those caused by cancers or strokes going untreated due to healthcare systems being overwhelmed, or by the effects of lockdowns and rising poverty.
What’s really striking is that these deaths have not been spread evenly across the world. COVID deaths have varied greatly across countries, and the geography of excess mortality in 2020 was also significantly uneven. For instance, while excess deaths in Mexico and Nicaragua in 2020 were 50% above the 2015-19 average, Mongolia and Australia recorded negative excess mortality. As I found in my recent research, a number of factors can explain this.” [Nikolaos Kapitsinis (2021 Dec 21). Why excess deaths have varied so greatly around the world during the pandemic. READ THE ENTIRE PAPER]
You can find the above simply by cutting and pasting titles. Complete articles free online. And I could give a dozen more. You just write comments without any references.
And in previous exchange I clearly showed that you didn’t put any time or effort into learning about mRNA, mRNA vaccines, safety websites, etc. while you claimed they aren’t available. And when I gave a list of simple ways to find all of the above and more on the web, you rejected it. Of course, you don’t need any science to back up your opinion, you just know you are right.
If we had NOT implemented mitigation programs and then developed vaccines, the vast overwhelming majority of infectious disease experts predicted at least two million deaths from COVID in U.S. and many more with long covid. And given hospitals overwhelmed, more deaths from other causes. Would you be happier if this were the case???
You are tiresome.
You’re a fool Joel. COVID vaccines cause zero deaths? Is that your answer?
You don’t know exactly how many deaths they cause? Is that your answer?
You have no idea about possible long term consequences of the vaccines because there has been no long term research? How will we know the safety outcomes at two years, five years, ten years down the road? Pfizer eliminated their control group.
Significant excess non COVID mortality coincident with the beginning of the vaccine rollout can be viewed directly on CDC’s website. And as I said, MSM has been pushing nebulous stories about it for months. So don’t try to tell me it isn’t happening.
I am familiar with the benefit of the vaccines: short term efficacy against severe illness. Do they have any other benefits that I am not aware of?
I am trying to understand the risk of the vaccines. You are obfuscating. You claim you know how safe they are. So tell me how many people they kill.
@Sue Dunham Have you noticed that COVID deaths always rise during winter ?
@Aarno: I’ll have to disagree that COVID deaths always rise in winter.
The main peaks in Australia have been in:
Apr 2020 (spring)
Aug-Sep 2020 (late winter/early spring)
Oct-Nov 2021 (mid-late spring)
Jan-Feb 2022 (mid-late summer)
The Feb 2022 deaths dwarf all the rest.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704#deaths (select All from the drop-down list for the time range)
Fourteen deaths in control, fifteen in vaccinated. Two deaths from COVID in unvaccinated, one in vaccinated. 44,000 participants. There was not enough statistical power to evaluate deaths. The endpoint was efficacy against symptomatic illness. Which was spectacular, 86 to 100% across diverse populations.
17 in control, 21 in vaccinated.
None of deaths caised by vaccination
Sue Dunham: “all cause mortality was higher in Pfizer’s vaccine group than in their control group”
This is not correct. In the double-blind trial of the Pfizer vaccine, there were 4 deaths in the placebo group, and 2 deaths in the vaccinated group (the two groups of about equal size), for a non-significant difference.
See table 14 page 33 of this: https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download
You linked to a document from December 2020, which is the initial clinical report from Pfizer. Months later, in July 2021, Pfizer published a report with six months of clinical data. After six months, there were 15 deaths in the jabbed group, versus 14 in the control. Then for some strange reason Pfizer unblinded the trial. Six months of RCT clinical data on a novel medical intervention. That’s all we have. It ain’t exactly pretty. And the FDA wants decades to release all of Pfizer’s clinical data to the public.
@ Sue Dunham
Give the reference. And given total participants. You ignore that total participants were 43,548, a substantial number were senior citizens with comorbidities. So, I’ll have to find the study; but 24 deaths within the time frame not unexpected for any similar group.
You write: “Then for some strange reason Pfizer unblinded the trial. Six months of RCT clinical data on a novel medical intervention”
Just how STUPID IGNORANT ARE YOU? In December 2020 FDA gave Emergency Usage Authorization to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. EUA means simply FDA had enough data; but given they are a bureaucracy, the normal time to review would have meant many more lives lost. So Pfizer and Moderna unblinded because allowing those who received placebo to continue would have been unethical when a pandemic was raging and they would have been vulnerable.. So, you don’t even know why unblinding.
Unblinding was case of ethics, people wanted protection,
You cannot found other source than Berenson ? He did not mention that none of deaths were caused by vaccination (FDA evakluation)
“Or maybe he is just trying some new tactics in his goal to never debate a conspiracy theorist, after watching a couple of his insult comic protégés get destroyed trying to argue that an electron micrograph is a photo.”
Recalling how my renal pathology rotation involved working on the electron microscope service and studying dozens of electron micrograph photos, seeing them routinely referred to as photos by EM professionals, fellow pathologists and scientists, and noting online repositories of thousands of EM photos, I won’t roll on the floor laughing at hapless trolls who think they’ve achieved a major “gotcha” on this issue.
But others might.
Precisely
Look buddy, this argument would have never occurred if Silly Joel had simply said “while you are technically correct, I am colloquially correct and it’s no big deal”. Instead, he chose to argue that it is technically correct to refer to an electron micrograph as a photo. Then he lost the argument because an electron micrograph is not technically a photo. Due to the physics of how the image is created. Words have definitions; when we ignore and or twist the meaning of words, we become unscientific.
@ Sue Dunham
First, a thank you to David. I should have double checked Pfizer’s study; but David proved one more lie on your part: “In the double-blind trial of the Pfizer vaccine, there were 4 deaths in the placebo group, and 2 deaths in the vaccinated group (the two groups of about equal size), for a non-significant difference.”
However, just to be sure I re-read the article: “There were 8 cases of Covid-19 with onset at least 7 days after the second dose among participants assigned to receive BNT162b2 and 162 cases among those assigned to placebo . . Among 10 cases of severe Covid-19 with onset after the first dose, 9 occurred in placebo recipients and 1 in a BNT162b2 recipient. . . Adverse event data through approximately 14 weeks after the second dose are included in this report . . .Two BNT162b2 recipients died (one from arteriosclerosis, one from cardiac arrest), as did four placebo recipients (two from unknown causes, one from hemorrhagic stroke, and one from myocardial infarction). No deaths were considered by the investigators to be related to the vaccine or placebo.” [Fernando P. Polack et al. (2020 Dec 31). Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine; 383(27): 2603-2615]
Note. there were 43,548 participants, including significant number of seniors. So, six deaths out of 43,548 certainly not unexpected and only two received the vaccine.
You write: “You’re a fool Joel. COVID vaccines cause zero deaths? Is that your answer?”
NOPE, never said zero deaths. So, calling me a fool for something I didn’t say, typical of a dishonest lowlife like you.
According to CDC: “Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. FDA requires healthcare providers to report any data after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. More than 543 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through February 3, 2022. During this time, VAERS received 12,122 preliminary reports of death (0.0022%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA clinicians review reports of death to VAERS including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records”. [CDC (2022 Feb 7). Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination]
I have a number of papers estimating how many lives were saved by the vaccine and hospitalizations prevented; but since all stats close to each other, I give one: “In the absence of a vaccination program, there would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November 2021.” [Eric C Schneider et al (2021 Dec 14). The U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Program at One Year: How Many Deaths and Hospitalizations Were Averted? Commonwealth Fund]
So, even if one believed that every single reported death to VAERS was vaccine caused, it would mean 91 lives were saved for every vaccine-caused death. However, despite what you choose to believe a typical logical fallacy called Post Hoc Ergo Prompter Hoc will be found to account for most of the VAERS reported cases. One simple example. On average about 2,300 Americans have a heart attack every day, so if someone gets a vaccine and has a heart attack, doesn’t mean the vaccine caused it. CDC looks at number of heart attacks following vaccinations, compares with number prior to vaccinations, sometimes several years, including same months, etc and also obtains medical records and autopsy reports. And we also know that the excess mortality statistics include COVID deaths and several studies have shown these to be underreported. However, some of the excess deaths were because hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID patients and unfortunately some heart disease, and cancer patients, etc. could not be care for; but it is the pandemic that is to blame. In any case, I NEVER said zero and from my years of following vaccines, I don’t deny rare cases of serious adverse events and even deaths; but I compare them with how many lives saved. And the vaccines also probably prevented many cases of long covid. And I’m confident that when CDC has finished reviewing all the deaths reported to VAERS and finds only a few can be attributed to the vaccine, you won’t believe them. Of course, based on your immense knowledge of immunology, etc. which you don’t seem to want to share with us, we should trust your “judgment.”
You write: “You have no idea about possible long term consequences of the vaccines because there has been no long term research? How will we know the safety outcomes at two years, five years, ten years down the road?”
Just how friggin dishonest are you? I explained several times that the probability of long term adverse events is close to nil unless serious adverse events detected within a few weeks of vaccination. And the first published studies included a minimum of over two months follow-up. The CDC report above gives reported cases of serious adverse events following vaccine above. However, just as with deaths, further review will find a number of them were NOT caused by vaccine. And if one used your report and required up to 10 year follow-ups on vaccines and other medications before FDA approval, we would have a huge number of people suffering, hospitalized, developing disabilities, and dying. Yep, your approach is something almost all sane people would want????
I and others have refuted you with logic, science, and references over and over; but you just continue. So, it is impossible to not see you as:
STUPID, INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST, PERHAPS ALSO MENTALLY DISTURBED. SICK SICK SICK
Oh, by the way, I now have collected a dozen paper on excess deaths during the pandemic and you are wrong about that to; but I am tired and just want to relax and watch some distracting program on Netflix.
You thanked David too soon, dumbass. You are not even familiar with Pfizer’s six month clinical data, which was used to justify FDA approval of the emergency jab, yet you claim to understand the safety of a Pfizer’s product. Absolutely absurd! Enjoy your Netflix.
As I remember the data, there were 14 deaths out of 21,650 receiving the placebo and 15 deaths out of 21,759 receiving the vaccine at 6 months after the second vaccination. The number of deaths is minuscule (in a random selection of US citizens you would expect more than 100 deaths in six months for every 20,000 people) and not different between the treatments.
Well it turns out I remembered the data wrong, because late last year the FDA disclosed 21 deaths in Pfizer’s jab group and only 17 in their control. See my comment above, if Gorski prints it.
@ Sue Dunham
The FDA gave Emergency Usage Authorization in December 2020. The paper I referred to was based on the data supplied to FDA. The paper was published in December 31, 2020. And it was based on minimum of two months follow-up following 2nd shot. And as I’ve written; but you in your MORONIC ignorance ignore, serious adverse reactions occur almost always within a few weeks of a vaccination. I don’t rule out extremely rare events; but look at the benefit to cost ratio, simply how many severe illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths prevented compared to rare serious adverse events.
So, once again you are totally wrong. STUPID STUPID STUPID
There are two set of data, one for EUA, other for approval. In both of sets, none of deaths were caused by vaccination.
@ Sue Dunham
Maybe you started following this blog after I explained something, so:
I am a 75 year old man. Prior to the pandemic I donated whole blood 3 – 4 times a year for over 45 years. When I got the vaccine, the Blood Bank explained that they could use convalescent plasma for COVID patients, so I volunteered. One can only give whole blood every eight weeks; but plasma every four weeks and one can donate two units at a time. So, I lie on a recliner chair with a needle in my arm for over an hour, actually with set-up, etc. in room with 12 other people for 1 1/2 hours. Though I wear a mask and all vaccinated, there is a risk of being infected by an asymptomatic. Also, for a few days, since plasma contains antibodies, my vaccine-derived antibodies lower; yet I still go shopping next day. After about six months, I found out a neighbor had cancer, so I asked blood bank if I could donate one unit of plasma and one unit of platelets (used for cancer patients) and they said yes. Then they told me I could every eighth week add one unit of red cells. So every four weeks I go to blood center. And several times our local newspaper has said we have a shortage of blood donors.
In addition, I have phoned several food banks several times and offered my services; but when I gave my age, they thanked me, and said they would get back to me.
I get nothing for donating blood, except cookies, cup of coffee, and once-in-a-while a t-shirt. Except it makes me feel good to know I can still contribute in a positive way.
So, what have you done during the pandemic to help your fellow man. Keep in mind that donating blood goes to total strangers. However, when I was younger I was also on a volunteer list to donate bone marrow, a painful procedure.
Come on, don’t be shy, tell us what you have done for your fellow human beings during the pandemic
Here’s what I have done. I have refused to wear a mask in public places, to demonstrate to others that it is entirely possible to do so without repercussion.
I have done my best to inform people about the health costs of masking, including airway restriction, increased co2 concentration in the bloodstream, bacterial buildup in the mask, petrochemical micro particles going into your lungs and later, when you toss the mask, into the ground and the ocean. I have warned that mandatory masking is a crime against humanity and the masking of children causes severe emotional and developmental harm. They are also ugly as fuck. I hate seeing these beautiful athletes get off the ice in Beijing and start sucking on a diaper.
I have spoken about the economic devastation caused by the response to COVID and the likelihood that the pandemic response has had ulterior economic motives.
I have repeatedly pointed out that COVID may have leaked out of Fort Detrick in 2019, considering 1) the leak is documented but the identity of the infectious agent or toxin is classified and 2) the leak was followed by an epidemic of novel pneumonia for which no etiology could be described and 3) the novel pneumonia epidemic (EVALI) disappeared without a trace as soon as COVID officially arrived stateside.
And, as you know, I have criticized the experimental mRNA jabs and the flagrant disregard for informed consent that has been used to push them on people.
Your selfless enthusiasm sounds on wonderful; it’s not that I wouldn’t help someone in distress. But I have not seen or heard of anyone distressed by a COVID infection. Not in my family. Not in my community. Only on TV.
We all do what we can.
“Here’s what I have done. I have refused to wear a mask in public places, to demonstrate to others that it is entirely possible to do so without repercussion.”
Except masks recommendations for covid are to reduce the chances of YOU passing covid along. Not to protect you. Have you done a complete follow up of all the random strangers you met to make sure that you didn’t infect them?
“I have done my best to inform people about the health costs of masking, including airway restriction, increased co2 concentration in the bloodstream”
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/doctor-face-mask-oxygen-running-tom-lawton-yorkshire-a9633916.html
Wang, we have not had mask recommendations, we have had mandates. If everyone is required to wear a mask then everyone incurs the health costs I mentioned. It is my belief that the cumulative cost of masking outweighs the cumulative benefit. Remember, masking doesn’t even reduce the number of overall infections, it merely “flattens the curve”, it is literally a strategy for prolonging the pandemic. Therefore it can really only be said to reduce excess deaths due to lack of hospital capacity (if it does in fact reduce the chances of me asymptomatically spreading the virus). I don’t think anyone has died for lack of capacity; we had emergency hospitals that went unused, then we laid off round after round of staff and reduced the number of available beds, while the MSM, using capacity percentages, pretended like critical COVID hospitalizations never abated. So the only reason to wear a mask is to prolong the pandemic; maybe some fat diabetic octogenarian with a history of lung cancer will get a few more months out of life. But at what cost?
@Sue: If, as you claim, your city/town/state has mask “mandates”, and you don’t wear a mask, then can you please tell us what the fine was that you paid for not wearing a mask? How large was the ticket? How long will your probation time be?
If there are not consequences enforced by the government then it’s not a mandate. It’s a request. One that you are choosing to ignore, finding your own bare face to be more important than the health of the people around you.
(And you’ve completely filled another one of my bingo cards, plus extra points for ableist commentary and sexualizing athletes.)
@sue Dunham you mentioned emergency capacity. Thia cannot be cut, obviously, Lots of elective surgeries have been postponed, Do you know what elective surgery means.
“If there are not consequences enforced by the government then it’s not a mandate.”
Then why do they call them mandates? Another noble lie? Both my state and county have had mask “mandates” that were possible to flaunt with total impunity. That was the whole point of my original comment. I showed to other people and my government that they do not enforce their own so called mandates. Most stores have a sign on the door that says “mask required to enter” where I live. I have gone in, done business, come back out, continually maskless, again and again and again and again. Only once was a transaction refused by a Staples employee. Other than that no one has even said a word.
@Sue”I have gone in, done business, come back out, continually maskless, again and again and again and again. Only once was a transaction refused by a Staples employee. Other than that no one has even said a word.”
Sue, are you aware that, at many retail establishments, if someone tries to rob the store employees are instructed to get out of their way, so that they don’t get hurt or killed?
What you have encountered is the same thing. It is very likely that either the management of the stores you entered maskless have told employees to not say anything to un-masked patrons for fear of violence, or individual employees have chosen to say nothing out of fear of a confrontation. People in the US have been murdered for asking someone to put on a mask.
Since it is hard to predict who might be carrying a concealed weapon it is safer for the employees earning minimum wage to just let you go.
All you’ve done by shopping un-masked is add a little bit more fear and misery to those retail employees’ day. You’re not sticking it to The Man. You’re making a cashier wonder if they’ll be able to doge whatever you throw at them. You’re not punching up to authority. You’re (metaphorically) punching down to people with no power in the situation.
Sue Dunham: I am not a virologist (nor even a medic of any kind) but I am not aware of any means whereby vaccines could have any long-term negative effects, given their mode of operation. Could you explain to me how this is possible?
Mr. Simons, I will give a few examples. First and foremost, the Covid vaccines instruct your cells to manufacture spike protein, which is a pathogenic substance.
mRNA is not the only technology that distinguishes the Covid jabs from all approved vaccines. There is the “envelope” for the mRNA, which is composed of nanolipid. The long term toxicology of this substance is not known. Vaccines contain adjuvants which may be toxic. Even if adjuvants are harmless, all vaccines injure and kill people. We would not expect a vaccine based on untested technology to be different.
But we accept inevitable vaccine deaths if we expect to save lives in exchange. However, there are other, more systemic risks associated with the COVID vaccines. One is the risk of antibody dependent enhancement, in which vaccines can actually lead to more pathogenic respiratory infections.
Then there is the risk of using a leaky vaccine that is not sufficient to stop transmission of the virus. Such a scenario has played out over decades in chickens with regard to Marek’s disease. Mandating a leaky vaxx on the chickens created a vicious circle in which the virus became more and more deadly (similar to the way bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics). The vaccine also allowed chickens to carry the deadly virus longer and spread it further. They became a mortal threat to the unvaccinated chickens, who could not withstand the superbug that evolved in response to the leaky vaccines.
‘spike protein is a pathogenic substance’ Really?
What the heck is a nanolipid?
I don’t understand the reference to leaky vaccines as regards the question. In fact, as far as I can tell you mentioned nothing that could cause a delayed long-term effect without manifesting itself as a more or less immediate effect.
@Sue Dunham If you think spike protein is terrible, why do think SARS CoV 2 very benign ? Every virus contains multiple copies of spike protein, Pathogenic is strange word here,
MRNA vaccines does not contain adjuvants, and are tested. You yourself mentioned clinical trials. This is testing.
Leaky vaccine in question was a chicken vaccine. It was actually another virus. very different.ADEs were during trials. This seems to depend on lack of neutralizinf antibodies
I suspect you’ll get a far more cogent response from a magic 8-ball. But go ahead and poke the multi-sock troll. We enjoyz watching it dance.
@ rs:
I know.
But SRSLY guys, especially Joel, you should be flattered that you are singled out for venomous invective. Current scoffers @ RI remind me of alt med proselytisers reacting to Orac, Drs Novella, Hotez and Fauci: seething insults and insubstantial objections.
The four I survey the most intensively, have between them, NO legitimate credentials in medicine, biology or psychology yet they persistently critique their betters often not even getting terminology straight or pronounced correctly telling us how to treat cancer naturally, how hiv/ aids don’t exist, how vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent and how vaccines cause autism by “damaging” the brain.
In addition, they lie about their education, experience and abilities in fantastical ways:
one “aced” standardised tests and displays incredible intelligence in several areas attracting scholarships to revered institutions which he declined , another inflates a correspondence school ‘degree’ into a doctorate from one of the most ‘exclusive universities’ in existence. Two others studied television production and law but pontificate on the minutiae of virology or testing of pharmaceutical products.
Orac attracts people with axes to grind and anger to vent about medicine, politics or the world in general and his commentariat is well known for being avid students of his instruction as well as doing their own researches. Many of his commenters have/ had paying jobs instructing and/ or writing about these topics yet any rando can “tear them apart” because in their own view they are superior and need to illustrate that fact for some deep and as yet undiscerned reason. Psychologists in the US, UK and AUS have studied what personality attributes are associated with these tendencies ( anti-vax and CT belief) and i”ve discussed them many times so you should all be aware of what they entail.
In the case of the professional alties I describe above, they are motivated in the following way: Orac and other sceptics make their pronouncements about life science laughable which in turn may lead to a loss of followers- this not only hurts their pride but cuts into their bottom line because followers believe their woo and buy products to treat themselves, survive the next apocalypse and/ or thank their cherished enlightened gurus for their ‘wisdom”. and service to humanity. They actually say stuff like that in comments and call ins.. Orac’s scoffers directly want to attack/ question him but he is largely unavailable ( because he has a few careers ongoing) so regular commenters who agree with him are stand-ins for their ire. Similar to the pros, they get lots wrong in the basics and portray themselves as superior to standard science and reason itself without justification or evidence.
But anyone can say thsi! You can go on a forum about astronomy and argue about the existence of black holes or discuss the reality of tectonic plates ( real or hoax?) in geology but that doesn’t make it true, likely or anything other than a waste of time.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “But I have not seen or heard of anyone distressed by a COVID infection”
Well, I have friends who are nurses and doctors and during the pandemic they have seen severely ill hospitalized patients and death. Just the other day I was talking with someone who had been hospitalized for two months, including being ventilated and it took three months before he returned to work and 1 1/2 years later he has not gotten back his sense of smell or taste. I also know personally people who have lost parents or grandparents.
Wow! Not surprising that you live in your own world. Yep, everything in the news and on TV is a lie. And the nurses and doctors I know, all are lying to me and on and on it goes.If you don’t personally experience something, then it can’t exist. YIKES!
You write: “I have repeatedly pointed out that COVID may have leaked out of Fort Detrick in 2019, considering 1) the leak is documented but the identity of the infectious agent or toxin is classified and 2) the leak was followed by an epidemic of novel pneumonia for which no etiology could be described and 3) the novel pneumonia epidemic (EVALI) disappeared without a trace as soon as COVID officially arrived stateside.”
Give a valid reference. However, numerous viral leaks of gain-of-function microbes have occurred in the U.S., even from high security labs. I have the references; but won’t bother. But not COVID because we know where it was first experienced. Of course, you know better. Again, give a valid reference.
You write: “I have warned that mandatory masking is a crime against humanity and the masking of children causes severe emotional and developmental harm. They are also ugly as fuck”
Actually, they have produced masks with different pictures/patterns, etc. on them and I’ve seen kids walking in neighborhood who seem to find it fun. I guess you never went trick or treating at Halloween or attended a masquerade ball? “Ugly as fuck” Yep, we should adopt our public health policies based on your sick esthetic opinions. As for being a “crime against humanity”. Wow! The only crime against humanity is STUPID people like you. When I gave several references, you claimed you couldn’t find them. When I gave a list of potential ways of getting more info, you rejected it. Yep, we should all listen to people like you who have NOT done the research; but are certain they are right. Delusions of Grandeur.
And you are wrong about masks, breathing, CO2 levels, etc. In rare cases, people will lung function problems, yep; but otherwise, NO. You do know that during surgery, doctors and nurses wear masks, sometimes for many many hours? You do know that nurses and doctors working in infectious disease wards and elsewhere wear masks for extended hours? And during the current pandemic, all hospital staff wear them. I haven’t heard of anyone collapsing, etc. YOU ARE SICK! For the very few who have lung problems, concessions can be made; but for the rest of us, masks are a minor inconvenience. I wear a seatbelt when driving. Also a minor inconvenience. So what???
So, once again, please explain why we should give you any credibility? Education, achievements, occupation, etc.????
Unfortunately, you represent a large swatch of people. On this blog we have you and, for instance, Kay West. At least Kay West actually sometimes cuts and pastes quotes from papers/articles and gives references. I’m fairly certain she gets them from one or two blogs and/or social media. They are unanimously poor science, even anti-science; but at least she tries to support her illogical, irrational, unscientific positions with something more than just her opinion. You don’t even do that. Pathetic.
Did you want a reference for the classified containment breach at Ft. Detrick’s BSL labs that caused the CDC to fire the facility’s commander and shut down the labs for months? Or the unexplained epidemic of novel pneumonia that began soon after? Or both? 2019 isn’t ancient history.
Most of your comment is a series of straw men, anecdotes, moralizations. And of course your enthusiasm for ad hominem. But I’ll keep replying if you want to continue to get schooled by a layperson.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “Did you want a reference for the classified containment breach at Ft. Detrick’s BSL labs that caused the CDC to fire the facility’s commander and shut down the labs for months? . . Or the unexplained epidemic of novel pneumonia that began soon after? Or both? 2019 isn’t ancient history.”
As I wrote, I am aware and have numerous papers on lab breaches in U.S. First, their major focus of research was anthrax, Ebola and smallpox. Second, please give reference to “epidemic of novel pneumonia.” I found NADA based on a dozen articles I found in web search. So, one more example of you either basing your comment on social media, etc. or just delusional.
So, give a reference.
You made all that bullshit up. Nice try.
What about RFK Jr and the underage girls? Why won’t you answer about that? Are you on his payroll?
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “First and foremost, the Covid vaccines instruct your cells to manufacture spike protein, which is a pathogenic substance. mRNA is not the only technology that distinguishes the Covid jabs from all approved vaccines. There is the “envelope” for the mRNA, which is composed of nanolipid. The long term toxicology of this substance is not known. Vaccines contain adjuvants which may be toxic”
The spike protein is NOT a pathogenic substance. It is simply a protein. I realize you are too STUPID to understand; but imagine I want someone’s fingerprint. I could bring him/her into lab, police station and take fingerprint. However, I could just cut off last finger joint and take fingerprint from it. Since it would not be attached to tendons, muscles, etc. it couldn’t poke me in the eye, pull a trigger, do anything. Basically that is all the Spike protein is, just enough of the COVID-19 virus to allow our immune systems to recognize the virus and stop it from entering our cells since it is the S-Spike Protein that first attaches to our cells; but it can’t do this if it doesn’t function. As for nanolipid envelope. You do know that “lipid” means fat??? Please tell me of any fats in minute quantities that you know of that have adverse effects? And the amount in the envelope is minuscule, breaks down, and is excreted. Yep, when first put in body some people’s immune systems temporarily react; but our immune systems react briefly to lots of harmless substances.
Given you have absolutely no understanding of immunology, no understanding of what the S-Spike Protein is and is NOT and know knowledge of the almost 400 peer-reviewed studies on mRNA vaccine research prior to 2019, you just continue to demonstrate what an IGNORAMUS you are! ! !
I thought I left you a reply here with a link to the Salk study proving that the spike protein causes vascular damage. Gorski didn’t print it, maybe he considers it misinformation. At any rate, if the spike protein is not pathogenic, then how can the mRNA vaccine cause some of the same symptoms as the virus, including myocarditis in young men?
Oh good grief…where to start?
You see, Sue, we have cells in our body. Some of those cells recognize foreign proteins. They present that protein to other cells that make antibodies against said protein. This interplay and about a zillion other things I skipped for the sake of brevity and, for your sake, simplicity is orchestrated by signaling molecules called cytokines. Those molecules have other effects in the body that can be predicted. Namely: fever, aches, etc.
Oh! One other predictable thing? Yeah it’s vascular permeability.
That’s me off the top of my head without even putting a lot of effort into it. Imagine what an infectious disease doctor could do; or a PhD virologist. Do you now see how out of your depth and outclassed you are here?
Orac actually has a post about that Salk Insitute paper, so if you post link to it, he will probably post link to that one.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “Then there is the risk of using a leaky vaccine that is not sufficient to stop transmission of the virus. Such a scenario has played out over decades in chickens with regard to Marek’s disease. Mandating a leaky vaxx on the chickens created a vicious circle in which the virus became more and more deadly (similar to the way bacteria evolve in response to antibiotics). The vaccine also allowed chickens to carry the deadly virus longer and spread it further. They became a mortal threat to the unvaccinated chickens, who could not withstand the superbug that evolved in response to the leaky vaccines.” Give a reference.
“Here, we use transmission experiments involving Marek disease virus (MDV) in chickens to show that vaccination with a leaky vaccine substantially reduces viral load in both vaccinated individuals and unvaccinated contact individuals they infect. Consequently, contact birds are less likely to develop disease symptoms or die, show less severe symptoms, and shed less
infectious virus themselves, when infected by vaccinated birds. These results highlight that even partial vaccination with a leaky vaccine can have unforeseen positive consequences
in controlling the spread and symptoms of disease.” [Richard I Bailey (2020 Mar 5). Pathogen transmission from vaccinated hosts can cause dose-dependent reduction in virulence. PLOS]
You probably base your position, not on researching and reading up-to-date research; but “That post spread through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram until its theory landed on The Joe
Rogan Experience podcast garnering millions of views on YouTube alone.”
Actually, with Marek’s transmission did lead to deadlier variant; but only deadlier to unvaccinated chickens. And studies have found that the Marek vaccine allowed strong large virus transmissions. The mRNA vaccine either no transmission or smaller weaker. And, in your IMMENSE IGNORANCE, you don’t understand that the more people unvaccinated, the more virus, the more variants, so mRNA vaccine significantly reduces chances of variants and the more vaccinated, the lower the number of viruses, the less chance of dangerous variants. Even the researcher who developed Marek’s vaccine is appalled at how his vaccine has been misinterpreted. But, of course, you, in your immense ignorance of immunology, virology, etc. trusts social media. [Chris Hrapsky (2020 Aug 25). Author of 2015 vaccine study ‘terrified’ his work is being misinterpreted. kare11.com]
I guess you refuse to notice that, besides my having the education and training, I actually refer to credible papers. Something you don’t.
STUPID STUPID STUPID
You can’t wait to jump all over me, but what exactly did I say about Marek’s disease that was not correct? Your best argument is that the COVID jabs are not as leaky as the Marek’s jab. So what?
If the vaccines are so effective at transmission, then go ahead and tell me how effective they are at preventing infection and transmission of Omicron.
Most of Omicron’s mutations are on the spike protein. Omicron is exactly the kind of variant we would expect to evolve inside a vaccinated individual. The type of variant that is specifically evolved to evade spike protein antibodies.
Yes, mutations happen in both vaccinated and unvaccinated cases. But in vaccinated cases, there is a new selection pressure created by the vaccine. The virus evolves to evade the immune response. That’s why Marek’s disease became more deadly. The bottom line with Marek’s disease is that a chicken now requires a vaccine in order to survive it. The same thing is not about to happen with COVID. But the fact remains: it is the vaccinated population that adds a selection pressure to new variants. Yet your side of this debate likes to claim unvaccinated people are responsible for new mutations.
Since you asked so nicely for a reference on my comments about Marek’s disease, here it is. You wrote something about Hrapsky being upset that his work is being misrepresented; but who the heck is Hrapsky? This paper was written by Read et al. To quote:
“ the infectious period of unvaccinated birds infected with our two most virulent strains was less than a week because hosts died so rapidly. During that week, barely any virus was shed (Fig 1, middle panels). In contrast, the infectious period of the least virulent strains continued for the entire experiment (almost 2 mo). Thus, the least virulent strain shed several orders of magnitude more virus from unvaccinated birds than did the virulent strains (Fig 1, bottom panels). By preventing death, vaccination greatly increased the infectious period of the most virulent strains, increasing the total amount of virus shed by several orders of magnitude, and increasing it above that of the least virulent strain (Fig 1, bottom panels). Thus, the net effect of vaccination on both host survival rates and daily shedding rates was to vastly increase the amount of virus shed by virulent strains into the environment.”
And:
“we co-housed birds infected with our three most virulent strains with immunologically-naïve sentinel birds (Experiment 2). When unvaccinated birds were infected with the two most lethal strains (Md5 and 675A), they were all dead within 10 days (Fig 2A), before substantial viral shedding had begun (S2 Fig). Consequently, no sentinel birds in those isolators became infected (Fig 2B) and none died (Fig 2C). In contrast, when HVT-vaccinated birds were infected with either of those hyperpathogenic strains, they survived for 30 days or more (Fig 2A), allowing substantial viral shedding (S2 Fig). All co-housed sentinels consequently became infected (Fig 2B) and went on to die as a result of MDV infection (Fig 2C). Thus, in accordance with the imperfect-vaccine hypothesis, vaccination enabled the onward transmission of viruses otherwise too lethal to transmit, putting unvaccinated individuals at great risk of severe disease and death.”
Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens, https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198
Sue: “So the only reason to wear a mask is to prolong the pandemic; maybe some fat diabetic octogenarian with a history of lung cancer will get a few more months out of life…They’re called principles.”
It’s nice to encounter an antivaxer and disease denier with “principles”.
Masking is a medical intervention. Medical intervention is a cost benefit analysis, no? There is no place for feelings in a cost benefit analysis. I don’t see you shedding tears for teenagers dead of myocarditis from the jabs. That’s the thing about principles; they transcend mere emotions. If you want to be unscientific and sentimental about it, find a new outlet. Masks lower quality of life for everyone, they prolong the pandemic, and their benefit is negligible.
So you really think that diabetics should not be protected but teenage girls should. This is called eugenics, not rational analysis.
Marek’s disease is not relevant here Vaccination was actually done with live virus (not same that causes the disease). Follow up studies established effectiviness against transmission.
You can read a paper about vaccine effectiviness against omega transmission:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.10.21267594v2
Another amazing discrepancy: while DMED supposedly “shows” that military personel have a vaccine-related increase in hospitalization, the CDC recently analyzed hospitalization rates by vaccine status in LA county, both before and after the omicron wave. Guess what? Hospitalization is 23x increased among unvaccinated versus vaccinated & boosted.
To me, it’s inconceivable that ONLY military personel would have a >2x increase in hospitalizations due to vaccination, while the opposite direction is clearly evident in civilians.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7105e1.htm?s_cid=mm7105e1_w
Don’t you know the appearance of “evidence” contradicting a conspiracy theory is just PROOF of how deep and wide the conspiracy runs? Who are you going to believe, Biden’s lackeys at the Bill Gates controlled CDC (Controlling Disease Cabal!) and the sort of socialist/fascist/woke sheeple who run LA county, or the fine patriots at the Pentagon (as i have it on good Intel that many troops loyal to General Flynn and Phil Waldron maintain positions there…)?
It will come out soon that COVID was a ploy by Hillary Clinton — that’s right, Hillary Clinton — to infect Donald Trump, undermine the Trump presidency, deprive the population of freedom and subject them to social control, in order to push the US under the boot of COMMUNISM, Hillary being naught but a stooge for George Soros and Hugo Chavez. The signs are all there in the Durham Report!
[that’s parody, of course, though I fear it might actually be slightly less insane than the real thing, not just from fringe social media threads, but from the likes of the wives of Supreme Court Justices who are major figures in “conservative” donor circles…]
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “Here’s what I have done. I have refused to wear a mask in public places, to demonstrate to others that it is entirely possible to do so without repercussion.”
And, of course, you are ABSOLUTELY certain you are right. Not even a remote possibility that you could asymptomatically infect someone, someone who has a weakened immune system. Yep, ABSOLUTELY certain. Well, I prefer to act on the side of caution. If I ever found out that I infected an innocent third party by not, at least, doing my best not to, I would be devastated; but, of course, you will NEVER know and I doubt you would care.
So, once more for the umpteenth time, what do you base your absolute certain knowledge on???
“So, once more for the umpteenth time, what do you base your absolute certain knowledge on???”
They’re called principles, Joel. All you can do is appeal to doubt, to shame, to fear. (In other words, to authority). I can appeal to reason.
This is one of the finest examples of unconscious, unintended self-parody I’ve encountered in years hahahaha
“They’re called principles, ”
Reality determined by social and political programming? Now who’s channelling The Emperor’s New Clothes?
@Sue Dunham I you are for reason, make one good argument. “Pathogenic spike protein” comes to my mind.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “Most of Omicron’s mutations are on the spike protein. Omicron is exactly the kind of variant we would expect to evolve inside a vaccinated individual. The type of variant that is specifically evolved to evade spike protein antibodies”
The S-Spike Protein is not connected to blood vessels, etc. so it is basically, a dead piece of protein and ALL the research finds that it is the natural virus that mutates. Why? Because a mutation is based on a virus reproducing itself, so during this process mutations occur. The S-Spike protein DOES NOT reproduce itself, so mutations can’t develop. I have several journal articles; but this is from a respected website: “One of the key characteristics of the coronavirus is the spike protein that allows it to latch onto a host cell, penetrate it, and cause an infection.
That spike is what vaccines target to block the virus. In the unvaccinated, however, the virus gets in, hijacks the cell, and turns it into a factory. It then makes thousands of copies of itself. If there’s a copying mistake or error, scientists call that a mutation. . . [Roz Plater (2021 Aug 10). Unvaccinated People Are Fueling Coronavirus Variants. Healthline]
So, omicron is NOT the kind of variant we would expect inside a vaccinated individual. Where do you get your STUPID IDEAS from??? You obviously don’t even know the basics of viruses and viral mutations.
You write: “You can’t wait to jump all over me, but what exactly did I say about Marek’s disease that was not correct? Your best argument is that the COVID jabs are not as leaky as the Marek’s jab. So what? If the vaccines are so effective at transmission, then go ahead and tell me how effective they are at preventing infection and transmission of Omicron.”
The point is and you obviously are TOO STUPID to understand is that the “leakage” is weaker and fewer, so if infects others, almost all the time much less of a risk. Second, if they in turn leak the virus it is even weaker and fewer. And, of course, if it leaks and infects someone vaccinated chances of them getting severely sick, etc. close to zero. We don’t live in a perfect world, extremes of black and white; but what we know about the current mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and other COVID-19 vaccines is that those fully vaccinated have a much much lower chance of severe infection, hospitalization, and death. And despite some data that the immunity weakens after time, most studies still find that even six or more months out from vaccinations significantly reduces chances of severe infection, hospitalization, and death.
So, TWO STUPID POINTS IN ONE COMMENT: YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND VIRUSES AND VIRAL MUTATION AND YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE RESEARCH ON COVID-19 LEAKAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. AND YOU DON’T EVEN REALLY UNDERSTAND THE RESULTS OF MUCH HIGHER TRANSMISSION AMONG CHICKENS FOLLOWING VACCINATION FOR MAREK’S DISEASE.
Calling you STUPID is actually giving you the benefit of the doubt. STUPID people, that is, either born with lower intelligence and/or lower level of education can still be open-minded and willing to listen. You have made up your mind and no matter how many times I and other point out just how flawed your comments are, you just continue. So STUPID, not enough, you are STUPID ON STEROIDS.
And once again, for the umpteenth time, why do you think you are right? Education, training, occupational experience, extensive reading, not just RFKs book of lies and, perhaps, a social media or two, what???
I could say you are full of shit; but shit is used for fertilizer which is a positive thing. You, on the other hand, would be the equivalent of dumping some sort of toxin on a crop.
Lol you just want my credentials so you can track me down and beat the shit out of me. Because you are such an epic loser.
Why aren’t you answering about RFK Jr being on Epstein’s island? If he was molesting girls this really damages his credibility! Hard to compare him to Fauci after that…
Yeti, you are conducting a shameless attempt at character assassination, probably because you have no scientific counter argument. You claim RFK was on Epstein’s Island and imply he was molesting girls. Cite your evidence.
Bill Gates was in the exact same company. Is he a probable child molester too? Epstein was far more closely aligned with the technocratic elite than any kind of conspiracy theorists. What about John Glenn? Another kiddy diddler? Check out this blurb from Mother Jones:
“Epstein hosted dinner parties for world-famous scientists and thinkers from around the globe, people like Steve Pinker, Stephen J. Gould, Martin Nowak, Lawrence Kraus, and Marvin Minsky. “Jeffrey didn’t know anything about science,” Pivar said. “He would say, ‘Oh, what is gravity?’ Which of course is an unanswerable thing to present at a dinner to a bunch of scientists. And because he was Jeffrey, why, they would—and as the founder of the feast—they would listen to him and try to give [answers]. He was attempting, somehow, in his ignorant and scientifically naive state, to do something scientifically important. He had no compunctions about inviting people, and since he had money, they would listen.”” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/
I’m not saying it’s not possible. But it sounds to me like you are working with a conspiracy theory that involves some of the biggest names in science and public health. Why single out Jr? And what does it have to do with this debate?
Omicron actually emerged in South Africa, a country with low vaccination ratel How you explain this ?
Sue:
You haven’t done your research! Or maybe you are a Rich-lawyer-turned-scumbag shill!!
Here’s the deal, post the one paper that proves he didn’t molest underage girls. Post the link. Then I’ll believe it.
That’s too easy! I write the article and then link to it to support the claim. Self citation is a commonly used kook tactic.
Yeti, I ask you to prove a positive, and you ask me to prove a negative. Why don’t you just call yourself MedicalTroll?
Aarno, omicron diverged from the main evolutionary branch of SARS 2 very early on. Most of its mutations are on the spike protein. This variant could have evolved for several months inside a single vaccinated individual. The leaky vaccine protects against illness, but the virus can keep reproducing and accumulating mutations on the spike protein that evade the vaccine induced antibodies. It only requires one person to produce a variant.
@Sue Dunham Omicron variant emerged from South Africa, period. If you want to disprove this, gibe a link to an earlier isolation.
Also, the claim that vaccines selected for Omicron is nonsensical, given the relatively low proportion of the South African population that was vaccinated at the time compared to the proportion that would have been needed to place serious selective pressure on the virus.
Orac, are you saying that a single individual cannot place “serious selective pressure” on the virus? That is one of the problems with a LEAKY non sterilizing vaccine. In any individual who can’t quickly clear an infection, the virus can multiply for many generations. If that person is leaky jabbed, they will provide a new selection pressure for the virus to respond to. Do you deny that a variant with most of its mutations on its spike protein is exactly what we should expect from the spike protein vaccination campaign? All you can argue is that it’s less likely to have originated in South Africa. But every variant has a patient zero. And for all you know, it could have been a tourist from Israel or Great Britain.
Guess what’s much worse than a “leaky vaccine” for producing variants? No vaccine at all.??♂️
@Sue Dunham Why do you think that COVID vaccines are leaky ? They are not, they do prevent transmission, too.
No Orac, in general, the variants produced by a leaky vaccine become more virulent (this is what Marek’s proved). The variants produced by no vaccine become less virulent (ie more contagious but less morbid). That’s how natural selection works.
Of course since mRNA jabs are not whole virus vaccines, they may not provoke more virulence. The only part of COVID that is mutating in jabbers is the spike protein. It seems like the jabs are really a way of forcing mutations on the spike protein. Why?
Ah, I was waiting for the “Marek’s disease” gambit. You probably thought I’d never heard of it before, but antivaxxers have been using that gambit for years, including Andrew Wakefield himself:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/09/06/andrew-wakefield-predicts-a-sixth-mass-extinction-due-to-vaccines-in-jpands
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/03/17/geert-vanden-bossche-is-to-covid-19-vaccines-as-andrew-wakefield-is-to-mmr
Are you a chicken, Sue? If not, I don’t think you need to worry about Marek’s disease.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “You wrote something about Hrapsky being upset that his work is being misrepresented; but who the heck is Hrapsky? This paper was written by Read et al”
Oops! I gave the name of Read’s interviewer; but it was Read who stated he was being misrepresented. If you go to article it includes a video of interview with Read. And if you had simply cut and pasted the title you would have discovered it was Read. So, I made a trivial mistake; but, as usual, you don’t bother to do any checking just jump on it.
YOU ARE STUPID ON STEROIDS.
I really wish we could arrange a public debate with an randomly chosen audience. Unless they were brain dead you would be laughed off the stage or booed. I have over and over refuted with logic, science, and references your comments and finally you give one reference, ignore parts of it, and what the author said about its being misinterpreted. And you ignore that I gave reference to a later published research paper that looked specifically at it.
YOU ARE AN EXTREMELY DISHONEST STUPID ON STEROIDS PERSON
@ Sue Dunham
You write: ““So, once more for the umpteenth time, what do you base your absolute certain knowledge on???” They’re called principles, Joel. All you can do is appeal to doubt, to shame, to fear. (In other words, to authority). I can appeal to reason.”
You really are STUPID AND DISHONEST. Is referring to scientific research, not one or two studies; but many, an appeal to doubt, shame, fear, to authority? As for “principles,” based on what, reason? Reason involves the mental ability to weigh and judge things; but to do this one has to be open-minded and minimally look at, in the case of covid and covid vaccines, the science. Nope, you give absolutely NO indication of using reason. As for “principles.” Well, racists have principles. Anti-semites have principles. Climate change deniers have principles. Fundamentalists of all faiths have principles. Principles are basically what anyone “believes” represent fundamental laws or assumptions. In other words, a “belief”. In your case, might as well be QAnon.
I gave you a number of ways to research what is known about COVID and its vaccine and to learn basic principles, in this case, scientific principles, not same as “principles’ in general, of immunology, virology, etc. And you rejected my suggestions. You aren’t interested in really trying to understand as you have made up your STUPID CLOSED BIASED MIND.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “I thought I left you a reply here with a link to the Salk study proving that the spike protein causes vascular damage. Gorski didn’t print it, maybe he considers it misinformation. At any rate, if the spike protein is not pathogenic, then how can the mRNA vaccine cause some of the same symptoms as the virus, including myocarditis in young men?”
The conclusion of the Salk study: “This conclusion suggests that vaccination-generated antibody and/or exogenous antibody against S protein not only protects the host from SARS-CoV-2 infectivity but also inhibits S protein-imposed endothelial injury.” [Yuyang Lei (2021 Apr 30). SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2. Circulation research; 128(9): 1323–1326.
Basically the study found that the S-Spike protein when attached to the live virus can attack the lungs AND endothelial cells; however, stupid and/or intentionally dishonest people claimed it was the S-Spike protein from the vaccine on Facebook, etc. And, as usual, you didn’t even bother to try to find the study online. All I did was type: Salk Study S-Spike Protein and found it.
And back to mutations, though small probability, live-attenuated whole viruses can enter the cell and sometimes the nucleus, in which case, possibility of nucleus churning out more viruses with possibility of mutations. However, even live-attenuated viruses seldom can enter cells because the immune system takes care of them and compared to live viruses which easily enter cells en masse the risk of mutations is quite small; but not zero. But the S-Spike Protein alone from the mRNA vaccines can’t enter nucleus, can’t reproduce, so no mutations.
@ Sue Dunham
MASKS
Actually several studies have found that it isn’t the kids who are making a fuss, its MORONIC PARENTS like you. As I wrote, one can make masks with pictures, designs, fun things for kids, who by the way do wear masks at Halloween and don’t complain, actually have fun doing it. And one more point, even if I didn’t think masks offer much protection, if I were around people who felt vulnerable and thought masks did some good, I would wear a mask out of respect for their feelings. Wearing a mask is at most a minor inconvenience. I am NOT religious; but when I’ve gone to a Mosque with friends I take my shoes off. When I lived in Israel and visited some Palestinian friends from my undergraduate years they all ate from a communal bowl; but offered me a separate plate, I politely refused, though a bit difficult because I am a germ phobic. In Japan when training Aikido public bath houses involved a quick wash sitting on a stool using a faucet, then everyone in a steaming hot bath. When I have gone to synagogue with friends for wedding, etc, I have put on a yarmulka (kipa). I’m fairly certain if I didn’t no one would have said anything. As they say: When in Rome, do as the Romans” You obviously have absolute contempt for the feelings of other people.
@ Sue Dunham
You write: “Lol you just want my credentials so you can track me down and beat the shit out of me. Because you are such an epic loser.”
Really, at 75 with arthritis I am going to travel to where ever you live just to physically assault you? Talk about being a sick paranoid. First, I don’t believe in settling scientific discussions with physical violence or any other, just walk away; but given you do, probably what you would like to do to me if you could. And when have I lost to you? I have refuted with logic, science, and references everything you have claimed in your comments. I guess in your warped sick mind you win regardless of how stupid your positions are.
SICK SICK SICK
I’m going to write a sitcom pilot starring you, and your catch phrase is going to be “SICK SICK SICK”, and you will exclaim it with glee every time some teary eyed mother worried about the psychosocial welfare of her masked young child, or a young athlete concerned the spike is going to stiffen up his heart his muscle, or some businessperson or professional who has had their career destroyed by federal and state edict, shows up and points out that there is a grave price to be paid for the temporary 1% risk reduction offered by the “vaccines”, and then Chuck Lorre will punch the laugh track button and we cut to commercial for some extra special Vioxx ads.
I only worry about the doxxing, because you literally threatened to beat the shit out of me before, when I posted to this misinformation rag under a pseudonym. So don’t tell me you don’t have it in you. I mean, what, you only get violent in discussions about the Bible?
@ MedicalYeti
You write: “Why aren’t you answering about RFK Jr being on Epstein’s island? If he was molesting girls this really damages his credibility! Hard to compare him to Fauci after that…”
Didn’t know that one; but as young man RFK Jr was arrested for possession of heroin. Of course, no serious punishment. Drove 2nd wife to suicide and according to what I’ve read he is an alcoholic, not necessarily currently drinking. And, of course, he inherited between $50 and $60 million, far wealthier than Fauci, who has had to present to Congress his wealth, etc. as public servant. So, “being on Epstein’s island”. And his book on Fauci is an Amazon.com best seller. Don’t we live in a great nation?????????????????
You forget 952,603 deaths. Add thidn to your sitcom
@ MedicalYeti
I did a search of internet, could not find any reference to RFK Jr and Epstein’s island. Can you give me a reference, URL???
Oh it was just me giving ol’ Sue a taste of her own medicine.
You guys certainly know how to make yourselves look bad.
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