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Radical COVID-19 antivax sentiment is metastasizing to childhood vaccines

COVID-19 has radicalized the antivaccine movement. Unfortunately, that radicalization is metastasizing to encompass all vaccines.

Ever since the antivaccine movement rose to previously unattained prominence as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, resistance to COVID-19 vaccine mandates (not to mention to all public health mandates to slow the spread of the coronavirus, such as masks and “lockdowns”), and the increasing affinity between antivaxxers and fascists, those of us who have been following the antivaccine movement have become increasingly concerned that anti-COVID-19 vaccination has been metastasizing to cover all vaccines. Unsurprisingly, it’s been doing exactly that. The endgame of the antivaccine movement has always been the elimination of all vaccine mandates of any kind, and increasingly right wing politicians are pushing for laws and policies that bring us closer to such a world.

Even as one who has been warning about the increasing alliance between the far right and antivaxxers for years (which has become increasingly part of the Republican mainstream), I must admit that the speed and scope with which even the most bonkers antivax conspiracy theories and pseudoscience have become mainstreamed shocked me, with even old-time antivax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. cozying up to Republicans, the far right, and even fascists. I feared the metastasis of antivax views from COVID-19 to all vaccine and underestimated the power of social media and astroturf groups to get us here. Basically, the pandemic turbocharged a trend that had been going on for at least a decade before.

It’s gotten so bad that the mainstream press has been starting to notice. The latest example of this is a Wednesday New York Times article by Moises Velasquez-Manoff, The Anti-Vaccine Movement’s New Frontier, which notes in its blurb, “A wave of parents has been radicalized by Covid-era misinformation to reject ordinary childhood immunizations — with potentially lethal consequences.” Again, it was ever thus, and COVID-19 era antivax misinformation was going to metastasize, but the scope has been disturbing. Overall, this story is a very good overview, but, me being me, you know that won’t stop me from pointing out little tropes in it that have annoyed me for years and years whenever I read articles about the antivaccine movement in the mainstream press.

The first on the list of annoying tropes is impossible to miss, although it can’t be blamed on Velasquez-Manoff. It’s a trope that mainstream news outlets can’t seem to resist any time they publish an article about vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, or the antivaccine movement. Specifically, the image that accompanies the story is a disturbing and dangerous cliché, a stereotypical photo of a baby and a syringe, but arranged in such a way that the syringe looks huge compared to real vaccine syringes and needle. Bad NYT graphics department! This, too, is such a hack move that serves to inadvertently amplify the fear of vaccines, even when the story is lamenting how antivax views are metastasizing from COVID-19 vaccines to childhood vaccines.

The story starts, as many of these stories do, with an anecdote. In this case, the anecdote comes from a pediatrician and is clearly intended to illustrate how much worse antivaccine sentiment has become. Before the pandemic, I used to write about how antivaxxers targeted pediatricians and nurses all the time and attacked them as “bullies” for trying to persuade them to vaccinate their children. The pediatrician is Dr. Robert Froehlke, and the anecdote goes like this:

The mother of four brought her children, ranging in age from grade school to high school, to the doctor’s office last summer for their annual checkup. When their pediatrician, Robert Froehlke, said that it was time for shots and several boosters and then mentioned the Covid vaccine, her reaction stunned him. “I’m not going to kill my children,” Froehlke recalls her saying, as she began to shake and weep. He ushered her out of the examination room, away from her children, and tried to calm her. “We’re just trying to help your kids be healthy,” he told her. But he didn’t press the issue; he sensed that she wasn’t persuadable at that moment. And he didn’t want to drive her away from his practice altogether. “That really shook me up,” he says.

In his 14 years of practicing medicine in Littleton, a Denver suburb, Froehlke had seen parents decline their children’s vaccines for the sake of a more “natural” lifestyle. He had also seen parents, worried about overstressing their children’s bodies, request that vaccinations be given on different schedules. But until the past nine months or so, he had rarely seen parents with already vaccinated children refuse additional vaccines. Some of these parents were even rejecting boosters of the same shots they unquestioningly accepted for their children just a few years earlier.

So far, the story notes, the number has been relatively small; so one has to take it with a grain of salt. Confirmation bias could well be at play here:

Froehlke estimates that he has faced around 20 such parents, maybe more: a father who said he had done his own research and sent Froehlke a ream of printouts from right-wing and anti-vaccine websites to prove it; a mother (who is a nurse) who adamantly refused routine boosters for a kindergarten-age daughter — and then later, when the child got sick with Covid-19, asked Froehlke without success to give the deworming drug ivermectin to her. The overall number of these new doubters in his practice hasn’t been large, he says, but considering it was almost zero before the pandemic, the trend is both notable and worrisome.

Or maybe not.

Velasquez-Manoff goes on to note how these parents are not uneducated and some of them are even literally rocket scientists at a nearby Lockheed Martin facility. (As an aside here, I tend to get very tired of throwaway bits in news stories and pop culture holding up rocket scientists as examples of people who are so very much smarter than everyone else. Ditto brain surgeons. It’s such hack. But then I am a cancer surgeon and researcher. I’ve also come across some very, very scientifically ignorant brain surgeons before.)

Apparently antivax views haven’t just been metastasizing in Colorado, either:

Southern California; Savannah, Ga.; rural Alabama; Houston — pediatricians in all these places told me about similar experiences with parents pushing back against routine vaccines. Jason Terk, a pediatrician in Keller, Texas, called the phenomenon “the other contagion” — a new hesitation or refusal by patients to take vaccines they previously accepted. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County, Calif., said the number of children in his practice who were fully vaccinated had declined by 5 percent, compared with before the pandemic. He has been hearing more questions about established childhood vaccines — How long has it been around? Why give it? — from parents who vaccinated older children without much hesitation but are now confronted with the prospect of vaccinating babies born during the pandemic. Some of these parents end up holding off, he says, telling him they want to do more research. “There’s a lot of misinformation about the Covid vaccines, and it just bleeds into everything,” he says. “These fake stories and bad information get stuck in people’s heads, and they understandably get confused.”

After this launching off point, Velasquez-Manoff goes on to discuss how childhood vaccinations have fallen 1% since the pandemic began, which might not seem like a lot, but in areas where vaccine uptake had fallen to the point of endangering herd immunity that could matter, particularly if the trend continues. He also notes, as have many, the politicization of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Unfortunately, he falls into a trap that a lot of journalists do. Citing the “infodemic” around COVID-19, he suggests:

Now the pandemic has given anti-vaccine advocates an opportunity to field-test a variety of messages and find new recruits. And one message in particular seems to be resonating widely: Vaccines and vaccine mandates are an attack on freedom.

Unfortunately, antivaxxers have been “field testing” the message that vaccine mandates are an attack on “freedom” and “parental rights” at least since antivaxxers teamed up with the East Bay Tea Party back around 2012 to promote that very message. As a reminder, let me quote yet again Sen. Rand Paul (who is very much antivax and has been for a long time):

“The state doesn’t own the children. Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom.”

— Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), February 2, 2015

This message first really started resonating in 2015 in response to the drive to pass SB 277, the California law that banned nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. That was when antivaxxers pivoted from messaging that was primarily about “toxins” in vaccines and the false claim that vaccines caused autism, autoimmune disorders, sterility, and death to messaging that primarily emphasized “vaccine choice,” “freedom,” “parental rights,” and resistance to government mandates. It was a winning message that rapidly started metastasizing to attract those of a conservative/libertarian bent, and many of the groups formed in the wake of that political struggle were clearly conservative, such as Texans for Vaccine Choice, Empower Texans, Michigan for Vaccine Choice, and others. By 2018, I was personally observing this rightward shift and infiltration of conservatism, including the Republican Party, in my neck of the woods, when a candidate for the Republican nomination for my district’s Congressional seat held an antivaccine “vaccine choice roundtable” that I attended incognito and documented, and openly antivax candidates were running for state governor and other offices. By 2019, Republicans in Oregon were openly opposing anything resembling tightening school vaccine mandates, and the Ohio Statehouse was rife with antivax legislators, to the point that antivaxxers were bragging about them. Also, to bring it around, antivaxxers in California were openly marching with the California State Militia, specifically the California State Militia, First Regiment, California Valley Patriots and the State of Jefferson.

No forced vaccinations metastasizing
Guess the year! (Actually, it was 2008 at Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey’s “Green Our Vaccines” rally.)

In fairness, Velasquez-Manoff is certainly not wrong that the pandemic provided an even larger, wider, and more amplified platform to use to promote the message that vaccines and vaccine mandates are an unacceptable assault on “freedom” and “parental rights.” He just seems to think that SB 277 was when this shift in messaging happened. It wasn’t, although the shift certainly accelerated during the battle over SB 277. Vaccines and vaccine mandates have long been attacked as assaults on “freedom” going back at least the 19th century. Indeed, the antivaccine movement is but a subset of the larger “health freedom” movement, a movement that has opposed any sort of pesky regulation that stands between people and their quackery. Personally, I started noticing a marked shift from antivaxxers portraying vaccines are toxic and the cause of autism as their primary message to appeals to freedom and parental rights around 2012, which means that it was probably happening before that. Similarly, the “crossover” between antivaxxers and Tea Party activists predates SB 277 by at least a few years.

Another part of the article that irritated me was the common trope that I see in such articles that the “modern iteration” of the antivaccine movement began with Andrew Wakefield. It is, of course, a convenient narrative that provides a neat starting point to the modern antivax movement of 1998, with a single bad study and charismatic personality. (As much as I hate to admit it, a lot of people find Andrew Wakefield charismatic.) Anyone who’s read Paul Offit’s book Deadly Choices: How the Anti-vaccine Movement Threatens Us All knows that the modern iteration of the antivaccine movement didn’t start in 1998 with Wakefield, but rather at least 16 years earlier with the airing of a television “investigation” called DPT: Vaccine Roulette. That documentary ignited the scare over the DPT vaccine containing the cellular pertussis vaccine, led to the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 that produced the Vaccine Court, and launched the antivax career of a woman whom I like to call the grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the Orwellian-named antivax group National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). Let’s just say that Fisher was known for invoking Nuremberg and the Nazis before COVID-19 made that gambit cool. I could go on and say that arguably the modern antivax movement originated in the UK in the 1970s, which is where the DPT fear mongering that metastasized to produce Vaccine Roulette began, but I’ll stop.

On the good side, Velasquez-Manoff does correctly note that RFK Jr.’s narrative in 2005 started with an obvious conspiracy theory:

Seven years after the notorious Lancet paper, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the assassinated senator, jumped into the vaccine-autism fray. In 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon, an online publication, co-published an article by Kennedy in which he argued that thimerosal, the mercury-laden preservative used in some vaccines, was damaging children’s brains and could be driving what many had come to call the “autism epidemic.” Kennedy has said that his exploration of vaccine science that led to the article was spurred by a conversation with a mother of an autistic boy who, armed with stacks of scientific papers, persuaded him that the onset of her son’s autism coincided with his early-childhood vaccinations. He was already familiar with mercury’s toxicity from his work as an environmental lawyer.

Kennedy’s article, which opens with a description of a secretive government meeting supposedly convened by the C.D.C. where the use of mercury compounds in vaccines was discussed, had all the makings of a thriller about government malfeasance. But soon after it appeared, the article, which had been fact checked by Rolling Stone, required several corrections. Kennedy got numbers wrong. He took quotes out of context, making them seem more sinister than they really were. In 2011, after the journalist Seth Mnookin brought more attention to the article’s flaws in his book “The Panic Virus,” Salon removed the article from its site entirely.

He also lists Joe Mercola, a doctor who no longer practices but has become what I like to call a “quack tycoon” (he’s worth ~$110 million) selling supplements and quackery with antivaccine activism and conspiracy theories of all stripes. Unsurprisingly he’s moved into COVID-19 denial and conspiracy theories. He’s also been a major funder of Fisher’s NVIC for at least a decade. Other sources of funding for antivaccine groups are listed as well, such as those funding Del Bigtree, and the article correctly points out that a lot of people are grifting off of antivaccine propaganda. Even more importantly, just because they make money off of it doesn’t mean that they don’t believe it, something I’ve long pointed out. Indeed, from my experience, I’d argue that the the most effective profiteers are the true believers, rather than those who are just in it for the grift.Then there’s a whole section on the social media contribution to the spread of antivax disinformation.

My quibbles aside, here’s the message that people really need to see about the antivax movement, about how it’s becoming more violent and how conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines are metastasizing back on old antivax conspiracy theories that inspired them:

On the ground, violence related to vaccines appears to be escalating. In December, an enraged man attacked workers at a mobile vaccine clinic in Tustin, in Orange County, calling them “murderers.” It took seven police officers with tasers, aided by workers and patients, to subdue him. Late last year, another man used his car to strike a vaccine worker in Los Angeles. In Colorado, unknown assailants have tossed firecrackers into mobile vaccine tents, forcing the companies in charge to hire security. Last spring, a woman plowed her minivan through a vaccine tent in Tennessee as she shouted, “No vaccine!”

Perhaps most ominous, from a public-health perspective, is that school mandates have started to come under attack in state legislatures. Numerous states have already passed laws restricting or prohibiting mandates for the Covid-19 vaccine. And in a few, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, bills have been proposed that would weaken school vaccine mandates or even prohibit them altogether. “I’m not sure that the people fighting for these bills truly believe in them, but they’re doing it because it’s politically expedient,” Jason Terk, the pediatrician in Keller, Texas, told me. “It matters not to them that there might be consequences to these bills passing.”

None of these legislative efforts have succeeded in becoming law yet, but they highlight a broader development that’s easy to overlook. “During the pandemic, the antivax movement was able to springboard to the mainstream,” Koltai says. “I don’t think it’s that taboo anymore to be vaccine-hesitant.”

That last part reminds me of Ben Carson. You might remember that Ben Carson was a strong supporter of school vaccine mandates; that is, until in 2015 Donald Trump became a serious contender for the Republican nomination and other GOP candidates started cynically pandering to the antivaccine movement, which at the time was fighting SB 277 with messages of “freedom” and “parental rights.” By the GOP debates in the fall of 2015, Carson had abandoned his previous strong support of school vaccine mandates and joined the rest in pandering.

It’s important to remember that the endgame of the antivaccine movement was always the elimination of all vaccine mandates of any kind. Before the pandemic, such a goal appeared to be impossible Since the pandemic has fueled the metastasis of antivax misinformation and conspiracy theories back onto childhood vaccines, the possibility of school vaccine mandates being repealed in some states looks terrifyingly possible.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

125 replies on “Radical COVID-19 antivax sentiment is metastasizing to childhood vaccines”

There is some opposition to anti-vax though: On Monday, SCOTUS upheld a 2019 NY law that prohibits all non-medical exemptions for school vaccines : its author, Jeffrey Dinowitz also wants to oppose vaccine/ Covid misinformation. ( Norwood News).

I know, I know: anti-vaxxers will say, “What would you expect? It’s NY.”

Just to nit pick, the Supreme Court did not uphold the law; the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case (it only hears a small percentage of cases). Why is this distinction important? Because we do not currently have a strong statement from the Supreme Court that a vaccine mandate without a religious exemption is constitutional, though they have been avoiding confronting the issue, and given the current Supreme Court’s rulings on other issues, I am concerned that at some point they will move away from the over hundred years of jurisprudence upholding vaccines mandates’ constitutionality.

I should have just quoted the article saying that they didn’t hear the case challenging the no religious exemption law.
Your explication makes me feel that this was more ominous than I formerly believed.

Vaccine mandates are an unacceptable assault on “freedom” and “parental rights.”

End of story…

I knew from this stupid comment you were nothing but an uneducated anti-vaxxer.

Dr. Eric Ball, in the past, correctly pointed out that Dr. “Bob” Sears (and the whole Sear Family Medicine practice which promotes the “Sears Schedule”) screwed up vaccination rates in his community in Orange County CA. This was back in 2014-2015 on Facebook and ahead of the 2015 measles outbreak there. His practice stopped taking these electively non-vaccinating families who’d bought the lies of Sears. For Dr. Ball to be noting this drop in vaccination rates now is alarming given that California has SB277 firmly in place. I suspect the forged vaccine card/registry cottage industry is quietly thriving in California.

In my state of Arizona, vaccination rates for measles for incoming Kindergartners is at 91%, down from 93% just before the pandemic. I suspect it will fall a lot more before it starts to recover, if ever. I say “if ever” because while measles vaccination rates in the UK–which plummeted into the low 80 % range after Wakefield’s MMR-autism lies–did recover after some severe outbreaks of measles in the UK, I fear the current desensitization of parents to COVID-19 deaths in children will spill over into apathy over any measles infection injury/hospitalizations/deaths as well. There is a good 30-40% of America that just doesn’t care about children getting hurt from preventable infections…and as we’ve seen this week, being murdered in schools by someone with a weapon that should only be used on a battlefield.

Slightly tangential to this, Paul Thomas on an interview with a Canadian podcaster attributed the Uvalde murders to vaccines causing the killer’s brain to be “on fire”. Yes, he went there. Thomas also stated that he is supporting the ongoing establishment of a parallel health care system in the US for people whose eyes have been opened by COVID. Thomas already has a second clinic (the “Turtle Healing Band Clinic NW”) established under the “First Nations Medical Board”. Thomas is in essence exploiting sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples to start a scammy fall-back clinic should he lose his medical license in Oregon.

Expect other quacks (FLCCC, AFLDS) to do this as well.

Metastasis…and also cloning an evil twin to the current US healthcare and public health system. You can thank US anti-vaxxers for all this.

It appears mass shootings provide reality-denialist conspiracy theorists with an opportunity to project their bets noir boogieman obsessions onto the killer. The one circulating I’ve read about with Uvalde is that he was transgender. But yeah, let’s not contradict that by blaming vaccines. See the vaccines burned his brain, making him trans, and that made him a mass murderer. Just ask Ted Cruz: the problem isn’t guns it’s “cultural sickness giving birth to unspeakable acts of evil.” [Yes, if anyone still has a functioning irony meter that should break it…]

I mean what else could account for the exponential increase in kids declaring themselves LGBQT+ but the vaccines? [I jest of course, but won’t be surprised if this becomes a thing in the fever swamps, or already is…]

You’re behind the times. Antivaxxers have been blaming vaccines for turning kids trans for quite a while now and, before that, used to blame them for turning kids gay going back decades.

It’s pretty universal among the Christian Right. Parents have the right to punish their children as they see fit, withhold medical treatment or use quackery, throw them out of the house if they’re LGBTQIA, and restrict what they can and cannot read/learn.

“punish their children as they see fit”

Isn’t it punishment enough to have them for parents?

“withhold medical treatment or use quackery…restrict what they can and cannot read/learn”

Freedom!!!!

“throw them out of the house”

Too late. They’ve already run away to escape all that freedom.

That’s only after they are born. Before birth, the fetus and the woman are owned by the state, so she can be forced to carry the child to term, even if her pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, and even if she is 13 years old.

Some of the anti-vaxxers I survey actually admit that opposition to Covid vaccines and mandates by the general public is paving the way for the eventual dismantling of most vaccine requirements by schools and for employment. They take any loosening of current rules as evidence that they’re gaining support. IIRC Del, AoA and Katie Wright have all said this. They forecast that their numbers are growing and that rules will thereby become meaningless if few people follow them. They sponsor events like Del’s ( DC, LA) and RFK jr’s walkouts.
They cheered when mask rules for planes were dismissed recently. They think that they’re winning.
It might seem so until the next pandemic or resurgence of this one.

Some of the anti-vaxxers I survey actually admit that opposition to Covid vaccines and mandates by the general public is paving the way for the eventual dismantling of most vaccine requirements by schools and for employment. They take any loosening of current rules as evidence that they’re gaining support.

That parallels the current right-wing view that once Roe is overturned the next dominoes are same-sex marriage and interracial marriage (and possibly legal birth control, as several republican candidates for various offices here in MI have said they’d vote to make illegal).

I’m less and less sure I want Homo sapiens to survive. Maybe there’s an alternate timeline in which Homo floresienses is the last human species and they’ve turned the planet into the Shire.

I wonder whether there’s a negative feedback loop going on because the planet is so over populated, and we’ve passed the point of human development so it’s downhill all the way.
I wouldn’t want us on me if I was a planet.

Maybe there’s an alternate timeline in which Homo floresienses is the last human species and they’ve turned the planet into the Shire.
In “The Invisible Library” universe, somewhere, there probably is.

I guess Doctor Roger Marshall is as pro-vaccine as Doctor Rand Paul.

From the cadet appointee handbook

Immunizations are a mandatory requirement for military duty. All Appointees must get the necessary
immunizations PRIOR to arrival at the Academy. Waivers for immunizations, in accordance with DoDI 6130.03,
WILL NOT be accepted. You will be able to upload your immunization record on your portal, however, we ask
that you also hand carry a hard copy of your immunizations records from your physician/physician’s office
with you on in-processing day. If verification of your immunization status is not available, you will receive
the compliment of required immunizations even if immunized previously.

Required vaccines include polio, flu, TDaP, MMR, and Hep A & B.

But I guess these “aspiring heroes” have the courage and fortitude of the average Texas policeman.

“I’m willing to charge the enemy and take a bullet in the chest to defend my country but God forbid that I should let someone stick a needle in my arm to protect me and my fellow cadets from a contagious deadly disease!” /s

Younts successfully argued that the order for military members to receive a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine was not a lawful order, according to the release.

Younts also reportedly demonstrated the military has not made the FDA-approved version of the COVID vaccine available.

https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/navy-lieutenant-who-refused-vaccine-cleared-of-misconduct-will-remain-in-service-administrative-davis-younts-bill-moseley-coronavirus-vaccinated-military?fbclid=IwAR1IQTs2sm21M195TfzU74mQl5b5ubfhr7fcQ6ukY7aDB3YeJ_JNS43fZwY

@Xam Nargon Demonstrating that FDA approved vaccines are not available is quite a tall order, Just the label is different.

Reading this I’ve been thinking of the comparable situation of medication in psychiatry, specifically the way many patients don’t want medication, mainly because of their illness itself. Then there is the whole anti psychiatry lobby who see it as violence, medication as dangerous and lobby against legal powers to force medication.
The mother in the paediatrician office sounded like many a mental health service user’s family, terrified for their relative and so the professionals have the often difficult task of turning this whole thing round for the best for the patient.

The similarity is striking and I expect elements of ‘compliance therapy’ will be part of the paediatricians armour in the future. Alternatively, people’s principles fly out of the window very quickly when you pay them, and as said the safety of their children really isn’t the concern to these parents, so there may be mileage in paying parents to get children vaccinated. That even works in psychiatry!

I don’t see any comparison here. The reason most psych patients who stop taking their meds do so is the side-effects – or in the case of mood stabilizers the ‘effects’ themselves – absolutely suck. There are very real, tangible, disruptive, present and on-going downsides, while the downsides of vaccines are either temporary and minor and/or imaginary. OTOH, the reason psych patients start the meds and continue to take them is that the very real, tangible, disruptive, present and ongoing downsides of NOT taking them are worse, again very different from vaccines which are about protection in the future.

Yeah if you read my comment you find I don’t mention the reasons. ?

It’s far more complicated than that, and if mental health was a priority in America then we’d see more meetings between psychiatrist and patient which would have significant effects on maintaining medications over longer terms, as well as other factors.

if mental health was a priority in America then we’d see more meetings between psychiatrist and patient

I don’t think “priorities in America” are somehow going to cause psychiatrists to spring up near outpatients, who are more likely than not to be relying on Medicare and Medicaid in the first place.

I think there are parallels in John’s comment. I’ve certainly seen it with my own family. I was pilloried (at best) for putting my kiids on Adderall–and one on a complicated trial of various cocktails. You could just fill in the blanks for it. I can’t believe you would medicate (vaccinate) your kid for some made up problem–ADHD/bipolar (Covid).

Just wish the anti-vax movement was truthful and science based. They aren’t. Pretty much propaganda IMHO. Sad but true.
No way to reason with them as they don’t care what reality shows.

https://antivaxwatch.org/

Just as an FYI, everyone, the reason there’s been no new post yesterday or today is because Orac actually went on a brief weekend trip for the holiday weekend. Blogging will resume shortly.

@Aarno

It means that this Navy Lieutenant can have the same freedom millions and millions of others are exercising; as illustrated below by Moderna’s CEO :

“It’s sad to say, I’m in the process of throwing 30 million doses in the garbage because nobody wants them. We have a big demand problem,” Stéphane Bancel told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“We right now have governments – we tried to contact … through the embassies in Washington. Every country, and nobody wants to take them,” Bancel said. “The issue in many countries is that people don’t want vaccines.”

BRAVO! There are millions and millions of people with more brains than those that comprise the small ORAC cult.

I think you got it wrong. There are alas more idiots that are buying into the false information anti-vaxxers are spreading.
Anti-vaxxers are a danger to public health.
But well, anti-vaxxers don’t believe in public health. They are best of on some isolated island, with no contact to the outside world.

@Renate

Yeah, they tried the opposite experiment of what you suggest (and more) in Gibraltar and had to cancel all their Christmas celebrations due to a massive Covid outbreak.

More than 118% of Gibraltar’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19. This figure exceeds 100% due to the doses received by Spaniards who cross the border to work or visit the territory every day. The entire adult population of Gibraltar has been fully vaccinated, and masks are still required in stores and on public transport.

The Cult of ORAC denies reality…

@Renate

…required masks prior to and during the outbreak that is…

What an utterly ridiculous comment. Why are you trying to troll here?

@Jay

It is ridiculous that the vaccine is such a failure that millions of doses are destined for the landfill.

What a waste of money taxpayer money; especially on the propaganda.

Fooled some people I guess though. At least the tiny minority in the ORAC cult.

Xam, you’re an utter failure, you have no evidence. What you brought is called an anecdote and is not supported by scientific research.

Stay off science pages, you uneducated anti-vaxxer.

@Jay

Oh, there are many examples of this :

Covid outbreak in 2/3rds of fully vaxxed, (at least one boosted) workers in a completely isolated Antarctic research station one of the most remote places on earth – the Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica.

Before arriving in South Africa from their country of origin, the workers were required to have a negative PCR test at least 72 hours prior to the flight. The employees then had to quarantine in South Africa for 10 days and take another PCR test five days into the quarantine period.

Once the quarantine period was over, each person was required to take another test 48 hours before their flight to Antarctica and five days after arrival.

It was on the sixth day after arrival that the first worker tested positive followed by two more workers.

The three patients were evacuated on Dec. 23 but, following their departure, an additional eight people were confirmed to have the virus.

The workers had all been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one having received a booster shot.

@Julian

Source?

Le Soir, BBC, ABC, SkyNews, CNN, RNZ, NY Post, Wedmed, ABC, etc., etc., etc.

It is easy to find…

Again, arguments by anecdote are stupid, as are your comments, Max.

There is lots of vaccine issinformaion,this is the problem.
Sout Africa is actually first country to have an omicron wave. So here it originated.
Of course,mutatiion happens where lots of viruses circulate.nSimple, is i not ?

Only millions and millions? Thank you. I feel it’s unearned but thank you anyway.

@Xam Nagron Can you spot idiocy of claiming that that vaccination rate is over 100% ? Number is obviously false and an includes outsiers.
Soldiers actually has much less rights than civilians and it would be quite disaster if army would e incapacitated by a virus.

@Aarno

The boosted are also more than 100% vaccinated.

Can you spot sarcasm?

Vaccinatiion rate refers to unvaccinated People having boosters had three doses

“It means that this Navy Lieutenant can have the same freedom millions and millions of others are exercising”

It’s certainly a good thing that military members are not required to get any vaccinations, so this does fall in line with that.

Oh wait — vaccinations are mandatory for the military. This ass-clown lieutenant’s play is purely political, not based on religion or anything else. It’s as stupid as the decision and you.

For your entertainment….

If you want to ascertain how much Del Bigtree truly understands about vaccines, epidemics, research etc.**: he was MC at a Covid Denialist forum in Bath ( -btw- that’s where Andy comes from). During a panel discussion, he challenges participants- Malone, McCollough, Weinstein, Geert vanden Bossche and several women about the need for any standard childhood disease vaccines at all.
Only one of them, Geert, really addresses the problems with Del’s questions/ ideas. I can’t say that Geert v B is the best of the group, he is only the least awful of them.
Still, worth a few minutes ( about 15-25 minutes in/ The Highwire last show, 269, from Thursday, last)

** I’ve looked into Del’s education – homeschooled from third grade, no records of any secondary school, college or university completion and attendance at a film school in Vancouver.
Sounds about right.

Of course. I’ve always said that once you dip your toe into the antivax bath for one vaccine, eventually you’ll go full antivax. Exceptions have been rare.

@Denice Walter – Vanden Bossche has looked into Gorski’s education…

‘Gorski is also largely scientifically illiterate in the fields of virology, immunology, vaccines, and evolutionary biology.

Gorski possesses no understanding of the workings of innate immunity, i.e., innate oligospecific antibodies or natural killer cells. He does not know the difference between innate (i.e., polyreactive) and naturally-acquired (i.e., antigen-specific) antibodies. This is clearly reflected by Gorski’s list of ‘factors proposed to explain the difference in severity of COVID-19 in children and adults’.

Vaccine efficacy versus vaccine effectiveness

Regardless of the fact that Gorski does not understand the difference between vaccine efficacy and vaccine effectiveness, he doesn’t even realize that the main issue is not whether or not the vaccine protects 100% or less; the real issue is that imperfect vaccines will enhance propagation of naturally selected immune escape variants, especially if high infectious pressure is combined with widespread immune pressure (due to mass vaccination).


He doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand the difference between naturally acquired immunity’s sterilizing cell-mediated immunity (CMI) and the S-based vaccines’ lack of CMI.

He doesn’t seem to realize that only a minor fraction of the population acquires protective immunity against COVID-19, whereas the vast majority are naturally protected by their first line of innate immune defense (a notion, he obviously didn’t even hear about).

Gorski doesn’t really understand what herd immunity is about, but it suffices to remind him that it relates to the observation that unimmunized people can be protected provided the vaccine coverage rate in the population is high enough to prevent viral transmission. Gorski is trying to make people believe that herd immunity would imply vaccination of the total population, which is almost a contradictio in terminis.
By going to ridiculous extremes to make his case, Gorki is basically just making himself ridiculous‘

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/virologist-geert-vanden-bossche-responds-to-attacks-from-dr-david-gorski

It amuses me that Max, who has no scientific training that I’ve been able to find (and I know who he is) would lecture me about my lack of scientific training. It amuses me even more that he cites Geert Vanden Bossche’s straw manning of my position about herd immunity. I’ve never claimed that vaccination is the be-all and end-all of herd immunity or that “natural immunity” doesn’t matter for herd immunity.

Dr. Gorski has written debunking antivaccine misinformation since 2005. He has earned the respect of vaccinologists over the years by providing careful, well founded responses to antivaccine claims.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche has lost the respect of the same group by joining antivaccine activists to promote extreme claims that, expert point out, are unfounded. He also misrepresented Dr. Gorski’s position here.

I think at this point, it’s people Dr. Bossche speaks highly of that should be concerned, not the ones he criticizes.

“the real issue is that imperfect vaccines will enhance propagation of naturally selected immune escape variants, especially if high infectious pressure is combined with widespread immune pressure (due to mass vaccination).”

This is completely unsupported by any research, and you’re an anti-vaxxer.

Maybe Geert thinks that going on podcasts is the same as publishing credible research to back up his opinions?

There are no vaccines base solely on innate immunity, though vaccines activates it. Bossche could of our produce one, but I do not hold my breath.

@Jay

These types of events are covered in Basic Evolutionary Biology courses many times focusing on antibiotic resistance but also including vaccines.

Example :

In this article it was shown that the move from WCV’s to ACV’s was responsible for selective mutations which supports Bossche’s point highlighted by you.

‘our work provides evidence that B. pertussis has adapted by the accumulation of small mutations.

The distribution of ATs in the tree indicated that new genotypes emerged “de novo” rather than being selected from ancient reservoirs, implying a recent change in the B. pertussis niche, most likely caused by the introduction of vaccination.

ACVs may exert selective pressures that are qualitatively and quantitatively different from WCVs.

WCVs induce a broad immune response, with relatively low titers against individual antigens, while ACVs induce an immune response against only a few antigens, but with higher titers. Therefore, the introduction of ACVs may eventually result in new adaptations in the B. pertussis population. Indeed, after the introduction of ACVs, in France, Japan and in the Netherlands, strains have been found that do not express pertactin, FHA or pertussis toxin, three components of the currently used ACVs’

Small Mutations in Bordetella pertussis Are Associated with Selective Sweeps

PLoS One. 2012; 7(9): e46407.
Published online 2012 Sep 28. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0046407

PMCID: PMC3460923
PMID: 23029513
Marjolein van Gent, Marieke J. Bart, Han G. J. van der Heide, Kees J. Heuvelman, and Frits R. Mooi *

If you want an example of SARS-COV-2 mutation in response to vaccination look at the emergence of the Lambda variation in Peru.

So you failed to actually show a virus doing the same.

You’re a recipe spewing troll, Max. You get all your info from anti-vax blogs, this is an old tactic.

Also, there is no vaccine for B-Pertusis, it responded to the lack of A-Pertusis in a population with increased infection rates allowing increased evolutionary drift and adaption.

“If you want an example of SARS-COV-2 mutation in response to vaccination look at the emergence of the Lambda variation in Peru.”

STFU if you have no research evidence.

Oh, Max, please stop pretending you’ve ever taken any University level courses, I’m fairly sure that’s completely false.

@Jay

These types of events are covered in Basic Evolutionary Biology courses many times focusing on antibiotic resistance but also including vaccines.

Example :

In this article it was shown that the move from WCV’s to ACV’s was responsible for selective mutations which supports Bossche’s point highlighted by you.

‘our work provides evidence that B. pertussis has adapted by the accumulation of small mutations.

The distribution of ATs in the tree indicated that new genotypes emerged “de novo” rather than being selected from ancient reservoirs, implying a recent change in the B. pertussis niche, most likely caused by the introduction of vaccination.

ACVs may exert selective pressures that are qualitatively and quantitatively different from WCVs…

…WCVs induce a broad immune response, with relatively low titers against individual antigens, while ACVs induce an immune response against only a few antigens, but with higher titers. Therefore, the introduction of ACVs may eventually result in new adaptations in the B. pertussis population. Indeed, after the introduction of ACVs, in France, Japan and in the Netherlands, strains have been found that do not express pertactin, FHA or pertussis toxin, three components of the currently used ACVs

Small Mutations in Bordetella pertussis Are Associated with Selective Sweeps

PLoS One. 2012; 7(9): e46407.
Published online 2012 Sep 28. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0046407

PMCID: PMC3460923
PMID: 23029513
Marjolein van Gent, Marieke J. Bart, Han G. J. van der Heide, Kees J. Heuvelman, and Frits R. Mooi *

If you want an example of SARS-COV-2 mutation in response to vaccination look at the emergence of the Lambda variation in Peru.

@Xam Nargon You yourself failed to understand basic biology. Number of mutations depends on number organisms capable to mutation. Quite trivial, is it not ?
If there is few people vaccinated, there is no seletion pressure, obiously.

@Xam Nargon Do you yourself know Marek’s disease ? It causes tumors, and vaccine (actually inection with other virus) prevens them. HPV vaccine is here relevant. It, of course does not work by preventin tumorigenesis

What Orac and Dorit said.

How often amongst the alties I survey, do I hear variants of the same complaint:
Orac ( or Drs Novella, Hotez, Offit, Jha, FAUCI etc) just don’t have the *background” or the EDUCATION! to understand the nature or details of the problem!

Yet when the aforesaid present multiple relevant studies realistically and delineate their thoughts, alties shriek something else:
” You can’t trust the experts or governmental agencies or universities! They’re all corrupt- bought and paid for by Pharma”.

Why I chose Del to criticise is because he, like several other altie fan faves, has no relevant education that would allow him to even understand the basics. Other alties have unrelated or suspect degrees. And yes, as Orac often mentions, there are a few actual physicians or scientists who go woo and disregard their SB education and training. They are outliers and often, liars, as well.

Alties, whether they have no/ some relevant education/ experience or a great deal, rely upon their audiences’ suspicions about and dislike of institutions and thus, provoke their inner rebellious/ contrarian leanings. A few psychologists have studied the personality qualities of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists such as believing that they are ‘not of the common herd’, are ‘ahead of the curve’ or special in some way as well as being suspicious in general. ( Hornsey, Douglas, others).

Do you need an advanced degree in immunology or vaccine science to understand the basics? No, I think that Orac’s commenters demonstrate that: people without degrees in these areas can understand and work with information presented honestly and succinctly. Altie “education” usually distorts, edits or cherry picks SBM to present an altered reality in which the basics are disguised or omitted entirely. They demand that their followers dismiss most of what academia, government or the media presents and instead, accept their fictions. Often, they strongly oppose standard information in other areas such as economics, politics and social science. These objections “go together” because perhaps a personality characteristic underlies their chocies.

I am not surprised he is still around. He essentially retired from surgery over twenty years ago, and pushed much of his nonsense in Usenet newsgroups. His website then claimed a link to a university, but there was nothing anywhere on its website with his name. He threatened sue when that little detail was pointed out (then he removed the “association” from his website).

Ginny is still too busy demanding people give her a number that she likes.

@Jay

These types of events are covered in Basic Evolutionary Biology courses many times focusing on antibiotic resistance but also including vaccines.

Example :

In this article it was shown that the move from WCV’s to ACV’s was responsible for selective mutations which supports Bossche’s point highlighted by you.

‘our work provides evidence that B. pertussis has adapted by the accumulation of small mutations.

ACVs may exert selective pressures that are qualitatively and quantitatively different from WCVs…

…WCVs induce a broad immune response, with relatively low titers against individual antigens, while ACVs induce an immune response against only a few antigens, but with higher titers. Therefore, the introduction of ACVs may eventually result in new adaptations in the B. pertussis population. Indeed, after the introduction of ACVs, in France, Japan and in the Netherlands, strains have been found that do not express pertactin, FHA or pertussis toxin, three components of the currently used ACVs

The distribution of ATs in the tree indicated that new genotypes emerged “de novo” rather than being selected from ancient reservoirs, implying a recent change in the B. pertussis niche, most likely caused by the introduction of vaccination.’

Small Mutations in Bordetella pertussis Are Associated with Selective Sweeps

PLoS One. 2012; 7(9): e46407.
Published online 2012 Sep 28. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0046407

PMCID: PMC3460923
PMID: 23029513
Marjolein van Gent, Marieke J. Bart, Han G. J. van der Heide, Kees J. Heuvelman, and Frits R. Mooi *

If you want an example of SARS-COV-2 mutation in response to vaccination look at the emergence of the Lambda variation in Peru.

Exactly. He doesn’t even know the difference between strains of BACTERIA.

@ORAC

Apparently more of an understanding than you have.

@Jay

Yes, these entities who funded the research are certainly anti-vax groups. Aren’t they?

This work was funded by the Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health (R01GM105244) and by UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the joint NSF-NIH-USDA Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program.

Christophe Fraser also pulled the plug on the submission as editor as well; didn’t he?

@Xam Nargon. Point is not fundin point is that you do not unersan anything.

Stop spamming the same copy/pasta nonsense you don’t understand.

Also, the “imperfect vaccine” paper is an anti-vax piece of trash with no actual evidence supporting it. You’d know that if you knew how to read the paper.

Do you often use appeals to authority? Again, it’s obvious to the scientists here that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Why the lack of education, Max?

Excuse me for interrupting again! Given the peculiarities surrounding the current worlwide monkeypox outbreak, it’s sudden emergence in non-endemic, highly Covid vaxxed nations, why are we not learning about the Covid vaccination status of monkeypox patients? Wouldn’t this be the best way to quell all the ‘unfounded’ rumours?

https://www.businessinsider.in/science/health/news/monkeypox-caseload-rises-over-550-from-30-countries-who/articleshow/91957393.cms

No. Monkeypox is still endemic to the world and outbreaks have been documented throughout modern history. It’s barely even a rational hypothesis.

This is hilarious. You think ha COVID vacines spread monkeypox ? It is very differeen virus.

This is hilarious. You think ha COVID vacines spread monkeypox ? It is very different virus.

Actually Aarno, I am more contemplating the theory that Covid vaccination might indeed be weakening immunity and leading to these strange outbreaks. I linked an article a few days ago that argued that mRNA vaccination’s suppression of the toll-like receptors was the culprit. Anyway Aarno, we are learning that the outbreak is occurring mainly in young gay males or men that have sex with men; we are hearing other details such as the outbreak might be due from the gathering at festivals. Aarno, why to date has not a single health body updated us on the Covid vaccination status of the monkeypox victims so we can put the ‘rediculous’ notion that Covid vaccination might be in some way responsible to rest?

@Greg

You don’t have a “theory”. You have an opinion.

Keep in mind you’re not a scientist.

Hey Greg, you keep talking about Toll-like receptors. Which TLRs are you talking about, specifically? TLR3? TLR9?

Also, I know for a fact that you can completely knock out a TLR and not have that animal drop dead. That’s because the immune system has a lot of redundancies.

But you have to be specific Greg, which TLR is being suppressed?

(And while we’re at it, why don’t you find out the COVID vaccination status of the people who’ve died of monkeypox this year?)

Hey Greg, you keep talking about Toll-like receptors. Which TLRs are you talking about, specifically? TLR3? TLR9?

JT, maybe this will help……

In Stabilising the Code, we learned that:

In 2005, Drs. Weissman and Kariko discovered a way to protect foreign mRNA from the body’s immune system. That scientific milestone would be key to the advancement of the mRNA vaccines in 2020.

Specifically, they altered the genetic code of RNA.

Their key discovery, that modifying the RNA code (modifying the nucleoside uridine) resulted in ablating the innate immune response, involved toll-like receptors (TLR).

This discovery was adopted in the mRNA technology used in Covid vaccines, in order that the foreign vaccine mRNA could enter cells without being destroyed.

The RNA alteration results in the body’s immune defences—specifically, toll-like receptors (TLR)—not recognising foreign invaders like viruses. As I continued to set out in Stabilising the Code:

The key TLRs affected are TLR 3, TLR 7 and TLR 8. They act as sentries, whose job is to recognise foreign invaders by way of their form or patterns […]

That technology—altering RNA—was adopted for the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines.

Dominguez-Andres et al. discovered that not only had that technology worked well, but it appeared to have induced long term immune tolerance in the vaccinated:

The response of innate immune cells to TLR4 and TLR7/8 ligands was lower after BNT162b2 vaccination[.]

Toll-like receptors were found not to work as well after vaccination as before. That was not supposed to happen. Obviously, you need your TLRs to be working in order to fend off viruses like monkeypox.

https://azradale.substack.com/p/monkeypox-and-the-covid-19-vaccine?s=r

Hey JT, don’t get me wrong. Again, this and all other ‘conspiracy theories’ where Covid vaccines and monkeypox is concerned could just prove to be water under the bridge if the data shows that the unvaxxed are equally as likely to come down with monkeypox as the vaxxed. JT, I ask again, where is the data?! JT, if I were to even show up to my walk-in with a stubbed toe they will ask if I am Covid vaccinated. (I am not!) So, are we to believe that public health officials are really forgetting to ask people reeling with monkeypox whether they have been vaccinated against Covid?!

For goodness sake Greg, that isn’t a scientific paper, that’s a substack.

But just in case anyone else is interested: TLR3 is involved in sensing double-stranded RNA, and TLR7 is involved in sensing single-stranded RNA.

Monkey pox is a double-stranded DNA virus. That means that TLR3 and TLR7 are completely irrelevant to the immune response to monkey pox (that would be maybe TLR9, or maybe none of the Toll-like receptors at all).

And again, why don’t you look at the people who have died of monkey pox this year, and their demographics and probability of having had any vaccine against COVID, let alone one of the mRNA vaccines. But you won’t, because it would blow your “theory” out of the water.

And again, why don’t you look at the people who have died of monkey pox this year, and their demographics and probability of having had any vaccine against COVID, let alone one of the mRNA vaccines. But you won’t, because it would blow your “theory” out of the water.

Actually, not as much as the actual data proving that monkeypox victims are equally likely to be unvaxxed or vaxxed for Covid!

And again, why don’t you look at the people who have died of monkey pox this year, and their demographics and probability of having had any vaccine against COVID, let alone one of the mRNA vaccines. But you won’t, because it would blow your “theory” out of the water.

Gays have higher Covid vaxxed rates? Not actually blowing my ‘theory’ out the water, JT!

I won’t seize on this as victory though. I have set the bar much higher. Again, show me the data that monkeypox victims are equally likely to be vaxxed or unvaxxed against Covid.

https://www.self.com/story/gay-lesbian-adults-covid-vaccination

In addition, purpose of alteration of mRNA in mRNA vaccines is not protect it from immune system,but stalibilize it.MRNA hydrolyses very fast.a

Hey Greg, you keep talking about Toll-like receptors.

Last year, it was to claim that mRNA vaccines would be tumor promoters. He learns a phrase and just jumps straight to the painfully stupid.

I love how the same bozos who wax-intellectual about HIV fail to notice that, if the covid vaccine was causing immune suppression, we would know.

SCID, HIV, the list goes on and on and the organisms and diseases that take advantage are predictable. Odd we have yet to see any of these things manifest.

Last year, it was to claim that mRNA vaccines would be tumor promoters.

Amd, now I am even more on that bandwagon. Narad, thanks anyway for finding that passage; let the reader decide if I wasn’t prophetic with this…..

Suppose you meant ‘liposome’. Yeah – but it stounds like there was lots of frustration there. Could see Biontech peers throwing their hands in the air in frustration and exclaiming, ‘To hell with this! We will knock out the toll-receptors and let her rip. Seriously — how much cancer will we cause with such a brief shutdown!”

Or, pus filled scabs all over the body!

Greg:

Again, show me the data that monkeypox victims are equally likely to be vaxxed or unvaxxed against Covid.

That is, of course, the wrong question to ask.

@Greg Monkeypox started in Africa, where monkeys live. No high COVID vaccination rate here.

Still musing….

Health Canada is reporting we have 77 monkeypox cases. Invariably, all these people followed up with health officials and their Covid vaccination status was obtained.

So, with a 90/10 vaxxed/unvaxxed rate, we should expect 7 unvaxxed monkeypox cases if monkeypox does not correlate with Covid vaccination. For the vaxxed monkeypox cases, we should expect a 50/50 spilt amongst the just double vaxxed and the boosted. Where are these figures Health Canada? Ditto Health UK and Health Spain!

With the current monkeypox outbreak being such a ‘head-scratching’ mystery to scientists, it’s incredible the basic information that is not being reported. Why?!

https://globalnews.ca/news/8892065/monkeypox-canada-cases-tam/

Why has the organic food industry never addressed the obvious correlation between organic food sales and diagnoses of autism? What does Big Organic have to hide?

https://userswww.pd.infn.it/~dorigo/autism_organic_foods.jpg

Similarly, the American Dairy Association doesn’t want you to know that per capita consumption of cheese correlates with the number of people who die by becoming tangled in their bedsheets.

http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

It’s a scandal.

Stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense, Greg. You won’t be treated well if you continue to do that.

Monkeypox is known to spread with body fluids, so yes, it will be more likely to be passed in homosexual males due to the factors involved. Would you like to wag your finger about it and tell us all about how they are going to hell or something?

How do you know for sure health authorities haven’t spoken about the lack of any real correlation? Because YOU are the one implying correlation without evidence.

Stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense, Greg. You won’t be treated well if you continue to do that.

Jay, I fully agree that with the monkeypox outbreak we should not peddle in conspiracy theories. To this end, do you not agree that it would be extremely helpful if we start seeing actual data that Covid vaccinated people are just as likely to come down with monkeypox as unvaxxed individuals?

How do you know for sure health authorities haven’t spoken about the lack of any real correlation?

Actually, I have read reports of them dismissing the theory of a correlation as a conspiracy theory, but, again, I have searched and searched and haven’t found of smidgen of data burying such a ‘conspiracy’. Have you? If so, kindly provide.

Oh, yay, Gerg is trotting out his Pink Flamingos routine yet again.

Why has the organic food industry never addressed the obvious correlation between organic food sales and diagnoses of autism?

I did miss that from the Dangerous One. Is he implicitly conceding there might be a correlation between monkeypox and Covid vaccination?

Now I am wondering what shape the cover-up will take. Will they blast people like me as abliest monsters for always putting down people with scab filled pus all over their bodies? Will there be calls to end the stigmatization of monkeypox? Will we have a Celebrate Monkeypox Day?

We’d better take a look at the vaccination status of all the school shooters while we’re at it, right, Greg? Could be a correlation.

Just Asking Questions, right?

Why haven’t health authorities dealt with that Elephant in the room?

Oh, hey, Greg, what was the COVID vaccination status of the folks who got monkey pox from prairie dogs back in 2003?

Oh, that’s right, it had to be “totally unvaccinated” because COVID didn’t exist in 2003.

In other news…..

— I just received my second Covid booster; I requested a Moderna but they had just run out so I got a Pfizer and therefore mixed all three – J&J, Moderna and Pfizer. So far, not dead.

— ( especially for Narad) AoA has revived Adriana Gamondes’ baroque and tortured series, Frau Koma, from 2013-on: her entire set of contributions ( compleat with “artwork” ) are available at AoA in the sidebar under her name Kim notes that ” no one can get in touch with her” which I imagine makes sense: if I produced such opera, I wouldn’t be reachable either.

I’ve gotten all Pfizer so far but am thinking of getting Moderna for my second booster, just to mix it up. As far as Frau Koma…ugh. That’s a blast from the past I didn’t need or want.

I wanted to to the same, but the pharmacy said I had to go all Pfizer, so I took her word for it and just went ahead -with my 4th Pfizer. I honestly didn’t know that we could mix-and-match here in the USA.

The pharmacy I went to asked me if I knew that they only stocked Moderna there. I said yes and that that was my intention and why I picked that Walgreens store. (Apparently roughly half of Walgreens stores in our area stock Moderna, the other half Pfizer.) They didn’t question it.

her entire set of contributions ( compleat with “artwork” ) are available at AoA in the sidebar

Couldn’t wait until Thanksgiving, eh? They must be pretty short on content.

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