I’m back. True, I’m back a little later than I had planned, having hoped to have resumed dishing out my usual Respectful—and not-so-Respectful—Insolence on Monday, but let’s just say that my return from hiatus and recharging was…not smooth…and leave it at that. In any event, I found myself greeted soon after resuming my usual monitoring of misinformation and disinformation with hysterical Tweets about mRNA from mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines supposedly having been found in breast milk. In fact, there are a number of topics that bubbled up during my absence vying for my attention, but I decided that this fear mongering about COVID-19 vaccines supposedly contaminating breast milk was the best one to ease my way back into the blogging routine because it lets me look at an actual study and allows me to revisit my expertise in PCR technology. Also, I noticed that antivaxxers kept Tweeting just the main results table from the study without actually citing the study and asking me to tell them what it meant, which is annoying.
But first, let’s see how the antivax crankosphere is spinning the study.:
I could go on and on and on, as there are thousands of Tweets like this, but I do want to include a Tweet by an antivax legislator:
And I’m not even going into the hysterical reactions coming from antivaxxers with Substacks with large readerships, such as Jessica Rose, Byram Bridle, and, of course, Steve Kirsch who titled his reaction The data says you should never breast feed your baby after you’ve been vaccinated. (Unsurprisingly, the data, even if you take this study entirely at face value, say no such thing.) If you really want to see the bonkers, you could also always look at Naomi Wolf’s video about the study, but, to be honest, I couldn’t even make it through the full 12 minutes. You’re welcome to try if you wish, though. If you do, I’ll quote an old Yardbirds song Mr., You’re a Better Man Than I.
I could list even more antivax amplification of this study as slam-dunk evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are killing babies, but, as I like to say, instead let’s go to the tape (I mean the actual study). It’s a Research Letter, which is the shortest form of study, and, unfortunately, this particular study is not open access, which means that I had to use my university access to read it.
I’ll dismiss one thing that I noticed about the study right away that was also pointed out by Kyle Sheldrick in comments; specifically, the study was listed as having been carried out from February to October 2020, which was before any vaccine was available to the general public. True, there were people who received the vaccine as part of a clinical trial, but the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials specifically excluded lactating individuals. Apparently that was an error, and the study was conducted in 2021, which leads me to a second question. Why were there so few subjects recruited during an eight month period. Only eleven subjects were recruited. That’s not exactly a robust accrual. Similarly, why did it take so long to publish the results if accrual ended in October 2021? That was nearly a year ago, and it doesn’t take that long to do RT-PCR on breast milk specimens, analyze the data, and write it up for publication as a research letter.
I was also irritated that the methods section was consigned to a Supplemental Online Content file. I hate that. The methods should be in the paper, and if a research letter is too short a format to include it in the actual paper published in the paper journal then the findings should have been published as an actual paper. Finally, I was annoyed that the actual sequences of all of the primers used to measure both the spike protein mRNA used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and the housekeeping gene controls. There is no excuse for not including the exact sequences or referencing a paper that does if the same primer sequences have already been published.
All the paper said was:
Based on the putative sequences of vaccine BNT162b2 (Pfizer) and mRNA1273 (Moderna) by Dae-Eun Jeong et al.22 two sets of primers targeted two regions of each vaccine mRNA were designed, and the primers and probes were synthesized by Integrated DNA Technologies (Coralville, IA). Expression of RNAse P and beta Actin transcripts were assayed as an internal control to verify the sample quality throughout the RNA isolation, reverse transcription, and PCR processes. Real-time PCR was performed using Lightcycle 480 Probes Master (cat#04707494001, Roche LifeScience, Indianapolis, IN) on the QuantStudio3 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). Cycle threshold (Ct) was calculated with Quantstudio Design and Analysis software version 15.1 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). BNT162b2 (Pfizer) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) leftover vaccines immediately after clinical use in our hospital (that were designated to be discarded) were used to validate the real-time PCR assay. For assay validation, a known amount of vaccine in the range of 100,000 to 0.1 pg/mL was spiked in whole milk collected from individuals prior to June 2019.
It is, of course, reasonable to construct a standard curve using breast milk collected and stored before the pandemic spiked with known amounts of vaccine to cover a concentration range from 1 to 100,000 pg/mL, as the authors did, but, again, as a longtime PCR maven who wrote about misadventures in PCR by antivaxxers long before the pandemic through to the claims about how too-sensitive PCR assays for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, were producing a “casedemic” (although who also, admittedly, hasn’t done a lot of PCR in the last few years but before that had run literally thousands of assays during the preceding couple of decades), I want to know the sequence. True, the authors list a reference (#22), but there are only six references listed in the paper; so I remain puzzled whether the cited reference lists the sequences. Indeed, I’m not the only person irritated by the lack of explicit listing of the primer sequences. In a comment, Kevin McKernan notes that “it would be helpful to know the primer sequences to rule out off-target effects” and that the “vaccines have diff GC content and sequence due to codon optimization but some homology to C19 may still exist.” That first comment refers to effects that are nonspecific to the mRNA sequence being subjected to PCR, and the second refers to the changes in the sequence of the spike protein gene that do not change the protein produced used by Pfizer and Moderna to decrease immunogenicity and increase stability of the mRNAs.
However, let’s assume that the primers were well-designed, that the investigators did all the correct controls to rule out off-target effects and ran the PCR products out on gels to make sure that products of expected size were generated and that there were no primer-dimers (for example). What did the authors do, and what did their study find?
Here’s the study population:
This cohort study was conducted from February to October 2020 and included 11 healthy lactating mothers who received either the BNT162b2 (Pfizer) or mRNA-1273 (Moderna) COVID vaccine within six months after delivery. Demographic data were collected through in- person interviews (Table 1). NYU Institutional Review Board approval was obtained, and all study volunteers signed written informed consent.
Strike 2020, as this study was carried out in 2021. Also, as you can see, this study was carried out at NYU.
And here is Table 1, with the demographics:
As for the breast milk, it was treated thusly:
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) were isolated from 3 ml of BM by sequential ultra-centrifugation method. After removing cell and bulky debris by serial centrifugation at 2,000- and 17,000 x g for 10 min at 4°C, the supernatant was collected and subjected to 100,000 g centrifugation in a TLA 110 rotor for 18 hrs at 4 °C. The EVs pellet was suspended in PBS, and EVs concentration was determined by ZetaView by Particle Metrix ZetaView Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis ((Particle Metrix, Germany).
To translate, the breast milk was subjected to centrifugation to remove “bulky debris” (particulate matter, etc.) and then the supernatant (the layer that didn’t end up at the bottom of the tube) harvested and subjected to a much faster centrifugation for 18 hours at refrigerator temperature, which resulted in pelleting the extracellular vesicles from the breast milk at the bottom of the tube, which was then suspended in phosphate-buffered saline. The whole breast milk and EV pellets were then subjected to PCR, and the following results obtained:
These results were summarized thusly:
Of 11 lactating individuals enrolled, trace amounts of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were detected in 7 samples from 5 different participants at various times up to 45 hours postvaccination (Table 2). The mean (SD) yield of EVs isolated from EBM was 9.110 (5.010) particles/mL, and the mean (SD) particle size was 110.0 (3.0) nm. The vaccine mRNA appears in higher concentrations in the EVs than in whole milk (Table 2). No vaccine mRNA was detected in prevaccination or postvaccination EBM samples beyond 48 hours of collection. Also, no COVID-19 vaccine mRNA was detected in the EBM fat fraction or the EBM cell pellets.
Interestingly, none of the antivaxxers touting the results of this study as proof positive that the vaccine mRNA is finding its way into mothers’ breast milk and causing horrific harm to our innocent babies mention the finding that no vaccine mRNA was detected in the breast milk beyond 48 hours after vaccination, which should tell you that, even if you are frightened by these results, that there’s nothing to be concerned about beyond 48 hours after vaccination. Funny how that message seems to have been lost among those fear mongering about this study. Similarly, nowhere in the study is it shown that the mRNA detected is actually intact and functional. What was detected could easily have been fragments of partially broken down spike mRNA, given that PCR used in this fashion. generally amplifies only relatively short (<200 base pair) fragments, as the longer the fragment amplified, the worse the efficiency of amplification.
The authors themselves state:
The sporadic presence and trace quantities of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA detected in EBM suggest that breastfeeding after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination is safe, particularly beyond 48 hours after vaccination. These data demonstrate for the first time to our knowledge the biodistribution of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA to mammary cells and the potential ability of tissue EVs to package the vaccine mRNA that can be transported to distant cells. Little has been reported on lipid nanoparticle biodistribution and localization in human tissues after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. In rats, up to 3 days following intramuscular administration, low vaccine mRNA levels were detected in the heart, lung, testis, and brain tissues, indicating tissue biodistribution.4 We speculate that, following the vaccine administration, lipid nanoparticles containing the vaccine mRNA are carried to mammary glands via hematogenous and/or lymphatic routes.5,6 Furthermore, we speculate that vaccine mRNA released into mammary cell cytosol can be recruited into developing EVs that are later secreted in EBM.
I’ve discussed that biodistribution study before in depth. If you want the details, here they are, but one key thing to note is that the biodistribution study used a dose of lipid nanoparticle ~18-35x higher by weight than the typical adult human dose from vaccine—as biodistribution studies tend to do in order to map where even the tiniest amount of drug or vaccine go in the body.
I find it rather odd, though, that the authors failed to mention a previous study that failed to find vaccine mRNA in human breast milk, such as one published nearly a year ago in JAMA Pediatrics, which found no vaccine-specific mRNA in the breast milk of individuals vaccinated less than 48 hours before. Similarly, they were not the first to find vaccine mRNA in breast milk. This study from 2021 found vaccine mRNA in the breast milk of a small proportion of subjects:
Five breastmilk samples from 4 mothers had detectable vaccine mRNA, out of 309 samples from 31 mothers tested (Supplemental Table 2 ). All positive samples were collected within 3 days of the vaccine doses – two samples from days 1 and 3 of dose 1 ( Figure 6B ) and another three from days 1 and 3 post dose 2. One mother had detectable vaccine mRNA in both breastmilk and serum samples. The median vaccine mRNA amount in both sample types were comparable: 14ng/100ml (IQR 8-23) in serum compared to 7ng/100ml (IQR 6-7) in breastmilk (p=0.2).
None of the serum samples from the five infants tested had detectable vaccine mRNA. Of the five, one infant was from a mother with detectable vaccine mRNA in the both breastmilk and serum and another three were from mothers with vaccine mRNA in the serum.
In other words, the the findings of the current study are not novel, and they didn’t even do anywhere near the largest study addressing this question, which makes me wonder how this study was worthy of publication in such a high impact factor journal. Sure, it’s worth publishing, if only to document the results given that the concentrations of mRNA detected were in line with the previous study, but in JAMA Pediatrics, even as a Research Letter? I suspect that the editors knew this study would be good clickbait particularly given how they cited it:
I would also mention that the amount of mRNA detected in breast milk was incredibly tiny. I was about to do the calculations, when I saw that an immunologist already did them for me and put them in a form that I now wish I had thought of:
To address the concern that somehow the evil lipid nanoparticles getting into breast milk must be poisoning our babies, there’s this:
Of course, where the rubber really hits the road is whether the finding of COVID-19 mRNA in breast milk is clinically relevant; i.e., whether it does any detectable harm. I found multiple papers in my searches for other studies measuring mRNA levels in human breast milk that looked at this very question, for example this study from Singapore that looked at 88 mother-child dyads and found no evidence of problems. However, one of the more comprehensive reviews can be found here, which notes:
Only a small percentage of milk samples from women who received an mRNA vaccine contained trace amounts of mRNA. Thirty-six of 40 milk samples in one study and 5 of 309 milk samples in another had detectable mRNA levels; the highest concentration found was 2 mcg/L in one study and the median concentration was 70 ng/L in another; mRNA has not been detected in the serum of any breastfed infants.[18–20] mRNA has an estimated serum half-life of 8 to 10 hours.[18,19] The tiny amount of polyethylene glycol-2000 in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is not found in breastmilk or absorbed orally, so breastmilk PEG exposure from maternal immunization is not a concern.[21] Neither of the mRNA vaccines available in the US contains a preservative or adjuvant.
Also, Ed Nirenberg also led me to a large study:
Basically, we have copious evidence that the finding of vaccine-derived mRNA in human breast milk is uncommon, transient, and without evidence of harm, as well as evidence that none of the other components of the vaccines cause harm. This result is, of course, unsurprising, given that we ingest RNA and DNA all the time from our foods. Every cell in every plant and animal contains RNA and DNA. Moreover, RNA is notoriously unstable, even the modified RNAs used in the vaccines, which are only less unstable than unmodified RNAs, not particularly stable. DNA is more stable, but even DNA has a problem tolerating the conditions in the digestive tract. Acids from the stomach will attack the nucleic acids, and there are a number of digestive enzymes such as pepsin and nucleases that will break RNA down very quickly. As Ed Nirenberg also notes, there are exceptions, such as vaccines for viruses that primarily infect the digestive tract (e.g., poliovirus) and are therefore resistant to the harsh conditions there, but COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are not those exceptions.
Finally, one can’t help but be amused at the inconsistency of antivaxxers. Does anyone remember back when they were castigating PCR-based COVID-19 tests because they involved going out to 40 cycles, which, antivaxxers claimed, produced many, many false positives because that many cycles made the test too sensitive? That was the origin of the “casedemic” conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that there really wasn’t a pandemic, just a “casedemic” of diagnosed cases of COVID-19 that were meaningless because there were so many false positives. I just can’t help but point out that antivaxxers hate very sensitive PCR assays and blame them for a “fake pandemic”; that is, until very sensitive PCR assays find tiny, clinically irrelevant amounts of vaccine mRNA (probably fragments of it) in the breast milk of vaccinated mothers that persist no more than at most three days after vaccination. Then they decide that PCR is great because it lets them spread the lie that vaccinating lactating individuals is poisoning or babies with the deadly spike protein.
116 replies on “Fear mongering about mRNA from COVID-19 vaccines in breast milk”
First, thank you for going through this.
Second, I don’t want to try and defend not having methods – I agree that having them in the paper is crucial – but at least with JAMA, we had an experience where they told us to submit a paper submitted as a longer article as a research paper, so the authors here may not have chosen the shorter format themselves.
The point about the PCR inconsistencies is also very poignant.
Sure. My complaint was directed more at journals like the JAMA stable of journals than the authors, who, as you say, probably were told that they could publish their results as a Research Letter. Let’s just put it this way. Other than for preliminary results that they want to disseminate fast, researchers in general rarely choose the Research Letter format as their first choice. They’re usually forced into it.
There’s a whole set of problems that need fixing with academic journals. Sigh.
I listened to the entire 12 minutes of Naomi Wolf’s video!
She’s a feminist who deliberately misleads women about how dangerous mRNA vaccines are: she says they kill infants! Not such a great feminist, I’d say.
I imagine that as a PhD in English, she can read exactly what the research reveals and it’s not what she tells her audience.
She notes that she has 3500 volunteers reviewing medical literature – too bad they haven’t a clue. Wolf is a guest of Steve Bannon, is on PRN.live, Substack and several other woo-fraught/ unrealistic outlets.
I wonder if the pandemic itself contributed to the rapid expansion of altie/ woo/ contrarian sites because people were restricted in their activities and perhaps were also financially strapped. No one AFAIK has ever shown that the financial crisis of 2008/9- when people were similarly confined because of money woes- contributed to the rise of egregious BS sites BUT as an observer, I feel that it helped those I survey gain followers, fame and earn money.
It’s been a common observation by various people paying attention to social behavior patterns that the pandemic contributed to a marked rise in the spread of conspiracy theories — especially QAnon, but perhaps that just gets the most attention because it’s both so out there in belief and yet so close to political power. I, for one, am not at all surprised that a financial crisis was not accompanied by a similar increase in freak-outs. If people weren’t getting out for certain things as much for lack of funds, that would have been nowhere as extensive or extreme as the early months of the pandemic, and more importantly, not as frightening. When it’s just about money, it’s a familiar trouble, and (perversely) something folks are inclined to think of as an act or nature (‘reification’, to put the proper academic term to it), something to ride out. I say ‘perversely’ because financial crises are obviously due to the actions of humankind, where the pandemic — a true bit of natural caprice — was felt to be so unnerving to so many they needed to attach some person to blame for it in order to deal…
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The case of Naomi Wolf is an instructive example of our common misunderstanding of authorship, or perhaps more broadly our misunderstanding of personae. We imagine “Naomi Wolf” is a feminist because she wrote a book that made an important contribution to third wave feminism. We could say that who “Naomi Wolf” was while writing that book was a feminist; i.e. I imagine she was sincere in expressing some part of herself at the time. But it’s not necessarily the case that this subject position, this persona, was some stable essence that was the only possible “Naomi Wolf” that could be manifested by the actual complete human being named Naomi Wolf. People are complicated. Sometimes they appear to change on the surface, and when we look more closely, we see that may just be a peeling back of another layer in the onion, and there was something there all along just hidden from view for awhile. And sometimes life comes at them in a way that just re-arranges the Legos in a completely different way…. IOW, The Beauty Myth does no more to tell us who Naomi Wolf really is than the papers for which John Ioannidis was rightly celebrated tell us who he really is, either.
I suppose you are right on that one. Covid brings out a lot of stuff, people were mostly didn’t show, or things that were just not that clear. I mean, you might know someone is a bit into alternative medicine, but that doesn’t get much attention, because it hardly turns up in conversations, but with Covid, now that is something that is far more talked about, so those who might always have been a bit of the beaten track, are more showing their true colors, like not wanting to vaccinate, promoting stuff that has shown not to work, or minimising the pandemic althogether.
I used to work with a musician, who was a climate change denier, which I just ignored. He didn’t post about it on Facebook, so what should I care. Then he got serious health problems after a stroke and I followed his partner (wife), to keep in touch and to know how things went. But with the pandemic it became clear she was in all kinds of Covid minimising things, so I unfriended them.
Musicians and DJs do seem overrepresented. I have a busker friend who’s dropped down a couple of rabbit holes since Covid hit, and his friends, drawn from the same sphere, would pile on if I engaged. I guess losing your income stream may give one a jaundiced view of the root cause, and a disinclination to believe it necessary.
“Sometimes they appear to change on the surface, and when we look more closely, we see that may just be a peeling back of another layer in the onion”
Three dimensional hand passing through a two dimensional plane.
Personally, the older I get the more I realize that it’s rare to see something emerge in a person that wasn’t always there. For example, if you look back at pre-pandemic Vinay Prasad, you can see the traits that have blossomed since the pandemic. They were always there, just not as prominent. Ditto the case with John Ioannidis.
I take the point that many of the people who became covid-19 misinformers or minimizers have had real warning signs or have not really changed, but I do think the pandemic broke some people that would not otherwise have been involved in these areas – I’m thinking Steve Kirsch and Jessica Rose, for example.
I also agree that the level of staying home was higher with the pandemic than before.
Orac is correct as usual..
e.g. Naomi Wolf has a history of providing dodgy figures ( about deaths from anorexia/ bulimia, other errors) going back to 2002. See Wikipedia. Her woo evolved I suppose.
Education and Medicine are two professions absolutely notorious for attracting narcissists, providing them access to bountiful neverending food supplies; namely, highly vulnerable people.
Thus Prasad’s calling Tony Fauci a “narcissist” is classic IMAX-level projection; his vigorous insta-blocking of all dissenting voices that fail to comprehensively lick his ass the unmistakable tell of a bloated friable ego so enormous it orbits its own gravity well.
Prasad is a huge narcissist, quite possibly fully diagnosable NPD (not that anyone qualified can get close enough to formally diagnose it, for obvious reasons). Recognizing that pathology is the first step towards taking that toxic disease in human skin down. Everything that man says and does is explained by, and secondary to, his personality disorder.
And no, this is not an ad-hominem of Prasad. Because you have already smashed his claims using solid science and diligently continue to do so. This is about understanding why he is making all these claims in the first place: as the critical prequisite to shoving a permanent cork in that enormous asshole, and stopping it up for good. For until you cure the problem at source, for each of his claims you painstakingly debunk with your science, he will happily spew ten more to fuel his own grandiosity and roll right over you. You will old work yourself to death, taking down his claims without taking down the man as well; fooling yourself you’re being effective while achieving nothing of value at all.
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This is why I say y’all want to tag team with clinical psychologists, ’cos the tactics required to engage NPDs effectively are fundamentally different to the tactics for engaging ordinary humans; and using the wrong tactics (as minions here are wont to do) only serves to feed them further.
NPDs can’t be reasoned with. Emotionally, narcs are permanently locked into eternal toddlerhood (hence e.g. the now-infamous phrase, “The Toddler in Chief”). As “fully grown” adults, they are obligate absusers; narcs must feed on available humans. The may differ somewhat in how they hunt—whether overt, covert, or malignant—but the outcome is the same: the narc grows stronger and more dominant while his victims work themselves to exhaustion and despair in servicing his insatiable need.
All this stuff is well documented, and rather than dry clinical literature I direct y’all to r/raisedbynarcissists and r/JustNoMIL and their sidebars. Those are ordinary modest humans down in the trenches fighting these monsters can figure out effective battle tactics for taking down toxic narcs, denying them their food source, stripping them of their power. So educated science folks have absolutely no damned excuse for not reducing Raoult, Prasad, FLCCC, and every other one of these atrocious inhuman predators to tiny piles of impressively thermonuclear’d dust.
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You can’t beat narcs by arguing with them. That’s what the narcs want you to do, any you fall into that role as fools. You beat narcs by making them beat themselves, in full public view. By bringing them to the peak of impotent rage, triggering a full-scale narc thermonuclear meltdown: the narcissistic extinction burst.
Narcs seek to control you, and they are very good and persistent at extracting what they want from ordinary people; people who don’t understand [yet] that narcs are not humans just like us but something fundamentally different and fundamentally dangerous. And yet, their own narcissistic disorder also provides the solution: learn to predict their limited behaviors and instead control them. Their vulnerability is their weakness, which is their vulnerability. Starvation, public humiliation; the two sticks with which to encourage the behavior you want and punish the behavior you don’t. Basic behavioral reinforcement: train a narc exactly as you would a dog and have them performing tricks for treats in no time at all. (Just ask Putin the puppetmaster!) The narcissist’s addiction—insatiable grasping for every, any attention—makes the narc not just dangerous but also fabulously, uniquely, easily pliable. It is the perfect operant conditioning switch. Use that switch, with absolute rigor (i.e. no more feeding under the table, as y’all do!). For good.
The entertainment value alone will attract millions of now-suddenly-interested eyeballs. And while such low blood sport may be distateful to y’all, it is that glorious spectacle which is the key to getting your voices heard above the endless deafening gaslighting firehosing torrent of insecure maladaptive rage that is their way of living. Once you have that attention, and prove your way works, you can hang all the good science you like off the back of that, and get on with teaching everyone else some sorely-needed basic phenomenology, so everyone can better protect themselves against those among us who would game our own human, humane, wiring to use against us.
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“We can’t stop it. The only thing hard enough to penetrate it is itself.”—Mr Incredible
Seeing something that was always there emerge, isn’t the same thing as indicating ‘this is who this person always was’. Of course, that may be the case, but not always. We might consider a persona as something like a stack of old mainframe programming cards, arranged in a certain structure. If you keep most of the same cards, toss a few and substitute some new ones, and shuffle the deck, you have a different program. Maybe a little different. Maybe a lot, but you can still trace certain continuities back through the changes.
One of my high school buddies presented as a kind and generous soul, though if you looked close you could see signs of hurt suggesting he might have felt taken advantage of due to that nature. About a half-dozen years after we graduated, he’d become an Ayn Rand acolyte articulating a “I don’t give a rats ass about anyone else” philosophy. Just because i could see the seeds of that in retrospect, he really wasn’t the same person, at least at a behavioral level.
FWIW, I doubt Ioannidis has changed that much… Prasad maybe a bit more… still not that radical a departure I suppose.
But what Wolf is manifesting these days is worlds beyond winding up with accepting some dodgy stats on anorexia. Having had regular contact with white middle-class college women through that period, I can testify that concern about body-image and eating disorders were near epidemic, yet largely repressed, so it’s hardly surprising an estimated number of deaths that turned out to be quite exaggerated seemed credible. Reading a high-level of kookiness back into The Beauty Myth is overly convenient, and too close to the right-wing “backlash” attacks on the book by the likes of such questionable-credibility sources as Camile Paglia and Christina Hoff Summers. Sure, maybe some of the current stack of computer cards were there 30 years ago, but man, that deck hasn’t just been reshuffled, but tossed into the air like so much confetti.
I think one sign indicating that Prasad has always been narcissistic and prone to this sort of behavior comes from an incident that I recall with his Wikipedia entry, where someone who edited it (who looked suspiciously like him) added that he had graduated at the top of his class in high school. Basically, no one cares about that sort of thing in a bio entry about a scientist, and it came off as bragging. Wikipedia editors, as I recall, removed the mention as irrelevant. I’d have to go back over the history to find out if my memory is correct, but there was definitely an incident where, it was strongly suspected, Prasad burnished his appearance by editing his own Wikipedia entry.
@sadmar: Never underestimate the ability of victims to become abusers too.
And, above them all, those who always were. Just biding their time, till it was right. Hindsight is a helluva thing. Always 100% on point, way too late to do an ounce of good.
The trick is, to get way out in front; to greet them, coming.
has says:
” You can’t beat narcs by arguing with them.. Narcs seek to control you..” etc.
Very good advice. Whether it’s a troll at RI or a person in RL, it’s best to ignore them as much as is possible. You can’t teach them or change them so why feed them ‘tasty treats’? You will inadvertently empower them.
Sceptics at RI sometimes respond to their crappy ideas in order to clarify the material to other readers. It’s possible to talk around them as if they didn’t exist. It is an art but can be effective.
In real life, my SO’s relative seems Narc AF: I’ve gone out of my way to avoid her ( fortunately, she lives FAR away) even on the phone/ e-mail/ mail- my SO wondered why I did. Amongst other things, she diagnoses your ( non-existent) illnesses, tells you where to live, what to buy etc. However, she started diagnosing HIM – she thought he had severe osteoporosis!
But he is not a candidate at all: he’s tall, strong, active and had many xrays because he needed surgery. Oh, and he’s a man.
It’s a way to control someone by supposedly dispensing valuable instruction that will enlighten or save recipients – just like woo-meisters! Or altie know-it-alls.
@Denice: “In real life, my SO’s relative seems Narc AF”
Entirely possible; I’ve seen estimates pegging narcissistic personality disorders around 6% (more than 1 in 20), and it is a spectrum disorder. Being a product of dysfunctional echildraising it also tends to be generational: nParents beget nChildren (the “Golden Child”). I think I’ve mentioned an aunt who was, if not full diagnosable NPD, easily the most selfish and self-centered person I’ve ever known; and her youngest takes right after her too.
So actually very common, and I’d be surprised if most of us don’t encounter at least one relative, friend, colleague, neighbor, etc who is one. Hell, your entire GOP is pretty much gone to narcissism as politicial ethos; fascism being a narc wet dream. Yet while everyone knows about psychopaths from popular culture and appreciates how dangerous those people are, narcissists are frequently underestimated, minimized, even missed altogether.
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I suspect NPDs are, if anything, even more harmful than APDs, for while the APD is an opportunistic abuser who won’t hesitate to screw you if it benefits him to do so, the NPD is an obligate abuser: they need to use other people.
If the APD feels the risk to himself outweighs the benefits, he can wander off to find easier targets; it’s no skin off his nose to do so.
The narcissist, however, interprets any resistance or push-back at all as defiance—a direct affront, and unforgivable injury, to her ego. Thus she will not hesitate to go nuclear to destroy anyone who “attacks” her like this. And she is often very skilled at manipulating people around her—her enablers—into her own personal army. e.g. A covert cries tears and wails with anguish, not because she feels pain herself but because she knows that the normal humans around her are deep-wired to respond to that and rush instinctively to aid her. She points them to a target and off they go, feeling good about themselves for “helping”; not even realizing they are serving as puppets to the abuser, and thus making abusers of themselves too.
It is truly frightening how unprepared and unequipped—even dangerously maladapted—a large percentage of our societies are to this particular threat. Yet there’s all these practical field-proven resources already out there, e.g. domestic violence support, but I think most of us choose to ignore it because it makes us personally uncomfortable to acknowledge it exists. Perhaps in part because understanding and acknowledging these behaviors pushes us to consider our own failings towards ourselves and others?
It is very easy to slip into abusive/enabling behavior ourselves. I know I have. I’ve seen it in others around me too. In our case though (being possessed of empathy and insight, if not always awareness), the danger lies less in the behavior itself than in lying to ourselves about it: a hole in our common defense which abusers, who recognize it, exploit and weaponize against us.
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This is why I say: Education, Education, Education. Look for the commonalities, not the differences. AltMed, antivax, alt-right, fascism, DV, etc, etc, etc ultimately all run on the same basic fuel. A strategy that recognizes that, chains them all together as one and the same in popular public perception, is one that can take them all down at once, instead of chipping away disconsolately at some small highly abstract and specialized problem (vaccination) which 99% of the populace really isn’t qualified to assess, never realizing that’s merely one facet of a far larger and obviously toxic dysfunction.
Don’t go after Vinay Prasad for his antivax lies only. Go after his narcissism twice as hard and as loud. That’s where he’s inescapably vulnerable. Ditto Raoult, Gold, and every other narc riding the unparalleled attention-, money-, and power-grabbing gravy train global COVID suffering provides them. People might not get the science part, but they love a good tasty “human interest” story. Just look at the huge enduring popularity of “scientists are bad guys working against you” narratives as told by abusers themselves!
If you’re lucky, your direct ego assault might even trigger a narcissistic meltdown where the narc publicly soils himself in uncontained fury. Few will want to stand near the impotent screamer who smells of shit in his shorts.
Even if you don’t get that maximally effective outcome, you’re still teaching everyone how to recognize the abnormal behavior and tactics of a narcissist, why their behavior is so toxic and manipulative, and why it does not—cannot—care for anything or anyone except the narcissist himself. Knowledge itself is power. To understand a narcissist is first step to not being made into narc food ourselves.
…
“Sceptics at RI sometimes respond to their crappy ideas in order to clarify the material to other readers. It’s possible to talk around them as if they didn’t exist. It is an art but can be effective.”
Yep. Personally I’d be for tea-and-cake-ing as a community DDoS of their threads. But really, any tactic that doesn’t play their game is good; e.g. just posting a URL to an existing debunk (which may even be to the current page, where they’ve not read it), and moving on. But as soon as we start writing our own original words in response, we give them what they want: evidence that they have successfully pushed our buttons.
—
Apologies for another extended ramble. If I ever get rich enough to afford my own editor, pity the poor bastart that gets hired to it. 😉
Great insight from the trenches:
https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/xsamua/have_you_ever_wondered_why_the_narcissist_sees/
@Orac: “Prasad has always been narcissistic and prone to this sort of behavior comes from an incident that I recall with his Wikipedia entry, where someone who edited it (who looked suspiciously like him) added that he had graduated at the top of his class in high school.”
LOL, what a tube. Did he also add his BSc?
Also, as Vinay proceeds in his Great Unwind I think our world is demanding a big ol’ countdown clock:
Number of Days Until Prasad Goes Full Simoncini
One for you hellsite users, perhaps…
So everyone that disagrees with your analysis has a personality disorder? You don’t see the irony there?
Orac’s regulars always provide excellent responses.
Here is some additional news…
— Dr Oz was trailing his opponent, John Fetterman, by 10 points but he has increased his chances by quite a bit due to adverts/ money from Republican/ Conservative forces. He focused upon JF’s health. However, the two differ greatly on issues such as abortion and Trump which might help JF.
— I would never mismanage Schadenfreude BUT….
yesterday, a well-known woo-meister broadcast his daily woo-fest during a hurricane with 150+ mph winds while having no electrical power ( I have no idea how he did that) at his huge estate in Naples Florida AND ends the show with an offer for his products! ( show is available at prn.live/ shows) He notes that he pre-recorded other shows in case his situation gets worse.
So he can still sell stuff to his enraptured listeners.
Five years ago, his place was hit by another storm- which he minimised for a while but later admitted extensive damage which was not compensated by insurance.
Remember he sells instructional seminars telling followers where to live to avoid global warming events, weather, financial and social distress.
@Denice: “a well-known woo-meister [who sells instructional seminars telling followers where to live to avoid global warming events] broadcast his daily woo-fest during a hurricane with 150+ mph winds while having no electrical power”
I’m assuming this well-known woo-meister is Mikey, Man of One Thousand Grifts? Although it would funny and perfectly on point if it’s Null. (How you ever manage to digest their spew and still stay human, I will never know.)
Hurricanes don’t drop nearly enough houses on people.
@ has:
No, it was Null. HOWEVER Mikey has been in similar straits: he advised listeners to move to Texas for both climate based and political reasons AND his area was hit by massive storms a few times and then by a lack of electricity during a very cold period. Mikey is an AGW denier.
Null also owns an estate in Texas and experienced similar problems.
Both of them ( and Mercola) may have moved because of low taxes and when you’re rolling in cash, that’s often the key issue.
How do I stay human? I thought I was an android.
More seriously, it could be because both my parents’ families were long time business people going back to the 19th Century in different places and my parents were similarly realistic ( at other people’s businesses) and could spot BS from far away. Plus I worked in advertising and studied stuff.
I do think that Naomi Wolf is a new star in the awful woo/ altie BS firmament. How about that? Equal opportunities for women as professional liars for money ( Substack)?
It was? Ah, hahahah! Too rich!
Add it to the list of banana skins that particularly inept goober can’t help but not miss. Mikey I will give credit as he’s a pretty sharp operator. Null though? Hand the man a pair of shoelaces and that dismal dope will probably find some way to string himself up—even without a single rafter in sight.
Which, post-hurricane, I hope is all he’s now got.
@ has:
Mikey has an actual college degree, knows some foreign languages and may be proficient with some tech BUT his knowledge of general bio, medical issues and psych is abysmal.
I can see his limits clearly when he tries to improvise biological mechanisms to explain his woo – why people get “damaged” by vaccines for example. Pathetic.
I imagine that someone who is truly well versed in these areas could concoct better so-called theories to sell altie BS. When I first read Wakefield’s infamous research when it was new, I knew enough to understand that it was hogwash. I even advised a relative with a new baby to not fear vaccines.
A few of the doctors who went woo about Covid construct stealthier lies to entangle their audiences and may be harder to
debunk because they also rely upon what we don’t know now- uncertainty- to scare customers with. ” There may be damage that doesn’t show up for months”.
Mikey makes up for his lack of sophistication with slipperier and more emotionally manipulative lying.
Woo is a function of how much its instigator knows in reality times the cleverness of their lying.
@Denice, on Mikey: “Pathetic.”
Doesn’t matter. Does it sell? That’s the only question that counts. Mikey’s clumsy flim-flam is clearly “Good Enough” for its purpose. That is what requires separated, like head from fondly-held shoulders.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few health issues to focus on with JF and even if there is no lasting damage from his previous stroke, the voters probably aren’t too keen on the risk of a repeat of Woodrow Wilson’s health issues form 1919 on.
So you think people who are worried for JF’s health will vote for the quack Trumper, instead?
Quite possible, especially people who aren’t too familiar with Oz’s history of quack.
So what do you think is worse: partial damage to the brain from a stroke or the whole brain dead.
My dudes, they already voted for Madison Cawthorn; poor bastard, paralysed from the neck up. Fetishing the not yet alive and the already [brain-]dead is just how they roll.
Re: Goodman “can you give an example of mRNA in a chicken or salad?”
Sure. I can go for a Caesar salad right now. Well, granted, if the chicken is well-cooked, its biological macromolecules will be quite scrambled.
Cherry on the top: I’m pretty sure this fearmongering will be echoed by people who swear by “live food”.
You know, veggies and fruits which should be as fresh as possible so to be highly metabolically active.
Back off, man; she’s got a PhD in Science!!!
Yes, my first response was to try and find the primer sequences. Drew a blank. They also make a vague reference to Ct being calculated by software – presumably the reporting Ct – but don’t seem to say what it was nor what the threshold for a positive was, nor if 1 segment or both are required. As with HCQ, IVM and ‘integration into DNA’, AVs love themselves a bit of PCR when they like the answer.
I don’t have access to the internal citations here. https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/where-mrna-vaccines-and-spike-proteins-go But it appears that the cited studies and, like yourself, must be hanging their hat on the definition of ‘most’? Like most of the injection stays near where it was injection but some unknown amount makes its way throughout the body. I sure don’t remember it described like that in the original vaccination campaigns, but thats what these studies in aggregate appear to stand for? Instead they could have said the mRNA will move throughout the body for x amount of time but we don’t believe it is harmful or better yet we’ve tested it and it isn’t harmful. If pro-vax kool-aid folks can’t even make an honest and fair representation of something like this, why should vaccine skeptics trust anything coming out of the pro-vax community? Setting aside that I have issues with pro-vax stance here with this vaccine, anyone think a more, up front representation about the risks even if it depressed demand in the short term may have been better for the medical establishment/pro-vaxer arguments in the long term? I know Vinay seems to think so. It seems to me that stipulating to what is unknown and instead asserting what is later found out to be dubious ( based on at best hedging language) is not good for long term credibility. Hence the problem with mandates – no need to worry about this use the government and force as a work-around to persuasion.
Actually, mRNA stucks inside the cells, in the injection site.
You of course did not read what Orac said, The paper reported picogram and these only for few days.
You should check what picogram means.
What it means? Heck, John already lives it!
Welcome back, Orac. I was feeling that your absence was starting to seem strange. I actually went looking for you at SBM, but even there you are implementing auto-mod spite against me.
Orac, I disappointingly have to bury my ‘antivaxx’ bias and agree that this study is a nothing-burger. On the contrary, I feel the study linked below and that has recently been making the rounds in ‘antivaxx’ blogosphere is indeed a big deal. I am hoping the likes of JT and pathologists such as TBruce will speak to it and specifically describe the mechanism where cancer can form so quickly after vaccination.
Orac, with my continued effort to keep this blog interesting, I am giving you permission to blog about this story.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/did-a-famous-doctor-e2-80-99s-covid-shot-make-his-cancer-worse/ar-AA12bZPH?cvid=4a5bd8ca170f456395c028d37eafb0e5#image=1
Greg, are you familiar with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines?
The Gerg doesn’t care; it just wants fed its sweet, sweet narc attention. Two weeks of starvation has really got it jonesing.
Yeah he even complained on Science Based Medicine.
LOL, I trust the gagging little ankle-biter was greeted by vast tsunamis of silence. It’s the only way to dine out.
Heh. He might be jonesing a bit longer, as I have a grand deadline that will mean that I probably won’t be back to full normal posting frequency until the latter half of next week.😉
Interestingly, the article desperately tried to portray Michael Goldman as a cautious, astute scientist who was deeply concerned that coming forward with his story could have the detrimental effect of leading people to reject mRNA vaccination whose ‘benefits far outweigh their risks’. In truth, Goldman was nothing more than a coward who was more concerned about rocking the boat than carrying out his duty as a scientist to come forward. It wasn’t an option, it was his duty!
With Goldman’s story, how can we be so convinced that the ‘benefits far outweigh the risks’ and it not more being a case of scientists not fessing up to the risks?!
PS: Labarge, above you hit the ball out of the park. The scary part about the breast milk study isn’t that it is necessarily exposing any harm, but the scary part is that it is once again exposing that the scientists are often talking smack with their assurances about mRNA vaccination.
Hey Greggy, you are eating a “nothing burger”.
In case you didn’t read the blog post…
There is no known risk associated with the mRNA vaccines while breastfeeding. No safety signals have appeared in reporting systems like VAERS in the US and the Yellow Card in the UK.
Two studies looking for vaccine mRNA in breast milk have been unable to detect it.
Three studies were able to detect it at very low levels.
– One study found mRNA at 2 parts per billion in 3 out of 10 milk donors.
– Another study found mRNA in 4 out of 31 milk donors at a maximum of 0.17 parts per billion.
– The third study found mRNA in 5 out of 11 milk donors at a maximum of 0.011 parts per billion.
One “part per billion” is roughly equivalent of a single drop in an Olympic pool.
The food we eat contains mRNA
And stomach acid to breaks it down.
On the other hand, a number of studies have shown that antibodies get into breast milk at high concentrations. One of these studies found that antibodies could persist in breast milk for as long as 6 months after vaccination.
There is also some evidence that T cells that respond to COVID-19 get into breast milk which provide some protection against COVID19.
Enjoy your “nothing burger”, Greggy, but be careful it doesn’t stick in your throat.
And yet, you feed it.
Just saying.
He is choking on a “nothing burger”. I just thought I’d help the process along with something solid.
Has, I keep reminding you that your protest is futile. I am too damn powerful; too damn irresistible!
And, as we continue to wait on JT and TBruce weighing in on Pfizer’s vaccine within days giving Goldman cancer, who remembers Ryan Cole? Who remembers him saying, ‘WTF! Why am I seeing so much cancer in my practice since mRNA vaccination?!’? Who remembers Orac blogging about him? I do!
Orac, with Goldman, any chance of modifying that statement?
PS: Re-reading the comments on that thread, I must say I am impressed with my performance. Also noteworthy, it was where I got my first inspiration of Covid vaccines shutting down the TLRs. I have been searching for awhile. Thanks for nothing, Narad!
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=Ryan+cole
Honestly, mate, the narc put out attention bait and you nommed it like a mullet. We really need tactics that don’t treat their effluents as deserving of discussion.
@john labarge ICAN obtain V-Safe Data ? Remember when they raw clinical data from FDA. Still no revelations. Perhpas you are just a stupid conspiracy theorist.
This isn’t the point. The point is it’s dishonest to claim that the mRNA from the vax stays in the deltoid in the face of so much evidence that it does not. Distribution study from Japan, women’s periods now breast milk. At the beginning you all called folks who claimed the mRNA could end up throughout the body conspiracy theorists. So far their theories are winning. And y’all are caught in a group think where you think the ends justify the means. It doesn’t.
“in the face of so much evidence that it does not.”
I’m sorry you lying sack of filth, it was made very clear that the detected material is probably NOT full mRNA, the methodology was missing as well as other key points of evidence that would indicate if it was full mRNA or just broken segments.
Of course you don’t understand what that means.
Well yes, because they made that claim and many other claims that are pure fiction — the type of BS you and the other clowns posting here buy without proof — they are conspiracy mongers.
You left off “among the gullible anti-vaccers and their equally uneducated followers”. However, your comment is an interesting one, as it shows your mindset: the discussion of vaccines isn’t one about science, it’s about selling, by any lie no matter how outrageous, the notion that the vaccines are not only worthless but not safe. You don’t care that both those things are false — I doubt you (or greg, or ci, or ir, are capable of understanding why you’re wrong) — only that your version of the anti-science message comes out on top.
They are less than worthless.
Orac actually analysed a paper about the spike protein in the blood. It was picograms, too, and even then for two weeks.
As I said, check what a picogram is,
In he case of mRNA, not everybody can repeat the obsevation,
Except john, you don’t have any valid evidence for that. Nor do the other liars and conspiracy clowns you hang with and support. Your “evidence” comes from repeated misrepresentations of what the research says about the vaccines, lies about the meaning of “effectiveness” in the research, and crap you make up on your own about what people have said.
There’s nothing in the real data and analysis that shows they are ‘less than worthless’ — that is only in the falsehoods and misinformation you and your cronies deal in.
Educating yourselves could help, but none of you have shown either the inclination to do the hard work nor evidence that you’re capable of it
https://www.icandecide.org/ican_press/breaking-news-ican-obtains-cdc-v-safe-data/
It’s just like antivax misuse of VAERS, just on steroids.
Anecdotal stupidity. Typical for the G-spot.
Greg, I thought your position was that covid vaccines didn’t work? Yet this story is about a doctor who’s theory relies on covid vaccines working so well that the immune system goes into overdrive and creates cancer.
Then again, the author of the story is pushing the idea that mRNA vaccines cause cancer in general. Of course, bushy eyebrows and saying something is unusual is the gold standard for confirmation evidence.
Why do you guys accept the shitest of evidence to support your theories but expect the ‘other side’ to provide a written letter from God supporting theirs?
They don’t and they are more dangerous than is let on. Because Pharma defenders are caught in a group think where lying about it seems justified.
Again, you lying sack of filth, you are NOT a scientist and you don’t get to determine the risk to different populations or tell US that it is greater than “let on”. You’re just an anti-vaxxer with a worthless opinion. The sooner you learn that your opinion is worthless the sooner you’ll be able to find the same level of disgust of yourself that we all have for you.
@Jay Kanta: “The sooner you learn that your opinion is worthless”
And yet, you have just proven it has worth after all!
So much delicious food. No wonder John looks like a beachmaster.
“the sooner you’ll be able to find the same level of disgust of yourself that we all have for you.”
LOL. Don’t wait up!
Now that’s projection. Given that the fanaticism of anti-vaxxers is the opposite of a good science attitude, I firmly believe that anti-vaxxers would lie about their own childs death if it just gave them some imaginary ammunition.
If you stopped believing that your own scientific ramblings had any validity and relied only on actual studies by actual scientists with relevant qualifications, you’d be treated with much more attention and thought. Especially if you stopped playing the conspiracy card every time you’re told that you’re wrong.
@NumberWang: “Given that the fanaticism of anti-vaxxers is the opposite of a good science attitude, I firmly believe that anti-vaxxers would lie about their own childs death if it just gave them some imaginary ammunition.”
Hardcore believers would not even have to lie, being perfectly happy to torture and kill their offspring for real.
All justified. All legitimate. All to serve Self.
See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/
…
Antivaxxers are not the only ones prone to projection. Being empathetic social animals, we naturally interpret others’ behavior viewed through the prism of our own. Herein lies our own error: assigning to them the thoughts and motives that we would feel walking ourselves in their shoes. And they turn this against us. To hurt us. To win.
Your empathy makes you human—your great strength. But it is also very vulnerable to subversion by those who will not hesitate to abuse it, to abuse you.
This goes for antivaxxers, for GOP, for Putin and Xi and their terrible armies. For every spouse beater, work bully, child abuser. Accept them for what they are, not wish for who they are not.
…
Abuse dynamics are all highly documented and there is nothing new under the sun. People who are high on the NPD/APD Cluster B† spectrum in particular may look like us and walk like us, but they are not like us. The sooner you learn when to stow your own empathy, the sooner you will understand those who possess none.
As a rough make-do guard for your own human decency against their endless relentless corrosion, I advise it. You can’t make them be more like you. They are only capable of being true to themselves. But they can make you more like them—toxic and harmful; easily too. And then they win.
—
† And to those who will invariably pique: I do not claim my crude simplistic assessment is correct; only that it is “good enough” to be practically, publicly useful. So piss off.
It’s demonstrated that the vaccine campaign is lie after lie after lie. It started with efficacy numbers, then myocarditis then transmission. Birx knew it and essentially admitted it. It’s been trying to be covered up with boosters, blocking foia requests, not doing autopsies and of course the currency of the corporate fascist: force.
Have you any evidence of dangers. Of course, antivaxxers really show groupthink. Can you make a statement another have not said before ?
[…] And while we’re up: the hysterical claims about mRNA in breast milk are indeed hysterical. […]
Surprise! People who understand absolutely nothing of how our universe works (and are far too vain and lazy to learn) will project ghouls and goblins into every corner. So who they gonna call? Alt-Ghostbuster!!!
Talking of mongering: popcorn time! Courtesy our own mighty @GammonBallsNews, the scrapers. Whatever Putin paid for it, he got royally conned! Rule Britannia!
We had been assured by the authorities that the mRNA would stay in the arm muscle where it was injected. Many of us were skeptical about that. Now we have additional confirmation that they were lying.
Maybe synthetic genetically engineered mRNA won’t harm babies that ingest it. Or maybe after more infants are studied, we will find out that it can. Either way, how many mothers would buy formula for their babies that listed genetically engineered mRNA as an ingredient?
But the point is, we now have more evidence of deliberately misleading covid vaccine propaganda.
I think Orac will have some hard battles ahead, as more mainstream articles are published that question the safety of these vaccines. There was a recent article in The Atlantic by a doctor who believes his cancer was made worse, or caused by, the vaccines. And there was a recent article in Insulin Resistance, by a doctor who began to question their safety after his father died from a heart attack, possibly caused by the vaccines.
These doctors are not fringe nuts. Of course you will label anyone a fringe nut who wonders whether mRNA vaccines are 100% safe.
Eventually, the people you call fringe nuts will outnumber the mRNA vaccine pushing die hards.
Only in your dreams.
Not sure about that. Seems like two-thirds of adults are having the same dream.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/two-thirds-us-adults-do-not-plan-getting-covid-boosters
Yay! Fox News! Everyone drink! They’re just so “credible”.
It is picograms, not everyone is able oberve even that. It is, a best, at the limits of measurabiliy.
Paper is quite old,too, I took very long time before antivaxxers found it.
You left out “who is on the editorial board of this nearly defunct journal-shaped object,” Ms. Chase.
LOL. I do love the smell of sick burn in the morning.
That said, you could have just stopped at “Insulin Resistance”. Dumb rag doesn’t even contain a “v” in its name, never mind anything else related to vaccination.
Publishing topic “A” in journal “Y” is a classic QC evasion tactic and huge screaming alert that both are completely, willfully, knowingly corrupt. That is enough to invalidate it.
Antivaxxers don’t care. Deception is just one more means to winning. All they care for is Power, and they will do whatever it takes to get it.
“These doctors are not fringe nuts. Of course you will label anyone a fringe nut who wonders whether mRNA vaccines are 100% safe.”
Of course nobody here argues vaccines are 100% safe — that’s just another of your false assertions.
On the other hand, you (and greg, labarge, and the rest of your slimy ilk) continue to refer to articles that have phrases that peak your interest but you don’t read, thinking they support your cause, or push anecdotes as though they are valid, in your never ending quest to make yourself seem important in order to pump up your ego. That’s pretty bad by itself, choosing to be serial liars and as dishonest as people can be, but the fact that if any of the assertions you made were true it would mean that you’re willing to use the suffering of others to make your own reputation without really caring about the people shows you’re really beyond contempt.
“really beyond contempt”
I propose color coding comments by trolls:
Green: contemptible
Yellow: almost beyond contempt
Red: beyond contempt
Purple (with blink tags): oh my!
There should be a WordPress plug-in for this.
Serial liars? The irony.
Serial liar would apply to Robert Kennedy Jr. Repeating same false thing is another thing
“Serial liars?”
It’s been said before john: if you don’t like being called out as a serial liar (I would say congenital liar) stop being one.
As you may already know, social media have been S L O W L Y removing anti-vax sites and labelling misinformation so of course, true believers try to circumvent the “ban” by creating alternatives ( Brighteon social, prn.live, CHD) or employing outlets like gab, rumble etc.
But a few try to game the system such as AoA today: their Instagram site is “Autism Ages” and they admit the name change is to evade ” you know who”.
Another attempt ( BBC 16 Sept 22) is using carrot emojis on facebook to represent vaccines. What’s next using egplants/ aubergines to represent…… something?
Most of the altis/ woo-meisters I survey complain about “censorship” although I do see a few of them on twitter ( RFK jr, Katie Wright, Kim Rossi, The Highwire).
Or like John Campbell, they play the ‘Wink Wink Nudge Nudge’ game.
I read all the comments so far, and now I am enlightened. I learned that anyone who is at all skeptical of the covid mRNA vaccines is a narcissist! Who would have guessed? But surely, Vinay Prasad MUST be a narcissist — after all, he is good looking and all good looking people are narcissists, right? And he is confident and outspoken, right? More evidence of severe and incurable malignant narcissism. And he dares to defy the medical authorities! Case closed, anyone with the arrogance to defy the medical authorities must be sick sick sick! Lock them up in mental hospitals. We can’t have outspoken, confident, good looking, authority-defying people running around free!
And I’m afraid the irony will forever be lost on these folks. 🙈🙉🙊
Tell us you have no self-awareness without telling us you have no self-awareness. #Echolalia
Maybe you missed the part where he falsely equates influenza and COVID? Or where he dismisses experts, while not reminding people that HE is not an expert in the topic of infectious disease and public health?
He’s way outside his lane, he uses his charisma to draw in suckers, and then people like you defend him.
Smells like a narcissist, looks like a narcissist (and a cult leader) and here is one of his cultists attempting to deflect from the evidence that he’s getting quite cozy with the entire anti-vax cult.
He is wrong, too, and repeat falsehoods. You forget that one,
Ironically, I too was looking back over the article and subsequent comments yesterday afternoon and wondered at a couple of things.
What started with a very detailed rebuttal of an article on a very important and emotive topic ie breast milk/vaccination was followed by some very articulated and appropriate responses but then descended into a protracted and repeated ‘tutorial’ on narcissism and how to respond to it.
I did wonder at that point how the entire thing would have come across to someone who had never visited the site before with a genuine interest in the original subject. (Given how topical breast feeding is, that might have been more than a few)
What’s more since no one appears to have taken issue with ‘has’ step by step breakdown of what makes someone a narcissist, how to spot it and lastly deal with it, I wondered why it was necessary to labour the instruction. One might interpret that as desperation to reinforce the message and garner/ensure compliance from other posters towards contributors who meet ‘has’ definition of a ‘narc’.
I should say that I agree with many of the traits ‘has’ listed on the subject and it will be that some posters very definitely fit his descriptions but it doesn’t follow that everyone who displays some of the characteristic traits of narcissism when posting on here are narcissists and should be viewed as such.
Among ‘has’ posts ……………………
“You can’t beat narcs by arguing with them. That’s what the narcs want you to do, any you fall into that role as fools.”
“To understand a narcissist is first step to not being made into narc food ourselves.”
“But as soon as we start writing our own original words in response, we give them what they want: evidence that they have successfully pushed our buttons.”
Tempering dialogue, enticing others to do likewise and labelling people with dissenting voices has long been viewed by anti vaxxers as an indication of how they are 100% right in their arguments and how inadequate the opposition is if instead of arguing their case, they resort to closing down the dialogue. They build on situations like that and convince others to think likewise.
As someone who has identified with psychology and has such amazing insight on ‘narcs’ ‘has’ might want to consider that his laboured instructions on narcissism to influence everyone’s perception of it on here might be weaponized not by ‘narcs’ but by anti vaxxers.
It’s interesting that ‘has’ rather than respond to the comments made by Indie Rebel merely posts an accusation of echolalia ……………….it’s called avoidance!
“The problem is not the problem the problem is your attitude about the problem”
Captain Jack Sparrow
This is essentially nothing more than “concern trolling”.
I am forced to second Jay here. Amateur as my armchair psychopathologizing might be, it is not obviously wrong. As a working hypothesis that I’ve arrived at over a decade-plus of seeing their nonsense, “there is little about movement antivaxxers that cannot be adequately explained by a Cluster B diagnosis” does a pretty good job of explaining where much of their toxicity derives, from Wakefield and JFK Jr at the top to the peanut gallery at RI scraping the bottom.
Warning that antivaxxers will weaponize it against us is meaningless.
Antivaxxers already weaponize everything against us, from the color of the sky to their bowel movements of yesterday morning; our claims, our beliefs, our evidence, our silence.
That is the SOP of abusers, of which narcissistic abuse is arguably the most widespread and dangerous because 1. narcissists represent a significant fraction of society (6%), 2. they cluster where there is lots of narc food available, namely vulnerable people (kids are a favorite), and 3. most folks in society are horrendously unprepared to recognize and deal with them effectively.
Yes, parsimony and brevity would be nice, so if you’re kindly offering to copy edit then please have at it! Otherwise, my atrocious long form must suffice. I apologize only for length, not for thickness.
…
Abusive psychopaths (1%) rightly have John Wayne Gacy and Hannibal Lecter as their red-flag bearers. And who do abusive narcissists have to teach us about them? Hyacinth Bucket and Arnold J Rimmer!
Most people think narcissists are weak and comedic! They are not. They are far worse than psychopaths, when they get rolling. And they are legion.
Go spend 24 hours reading r/raisedbynarcissists and r/JustNoMIL—there are stories there that will make you want to kill yourself. And guess what frequently pops up as the driver of those horrendous abusers? Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or hop on Sorry Antivaxxer or Herman Cain Award and view the firehoses of antivax abuse posted by most of these winners: paranoid, narcissistic, bigoted grievance politics, now being weaponized as we speak by the new Fascist Party of America, née Trumpian GOP.
That’s the true size of this problem. Imminent full-fledged fascist takeover of the world’s largest democracy. Jesus Bowel-Emptying Christ. I could never have believed I’d live to see such a thing. Few of us did. Yet here we now are. If the US GOP successfully seize full power over the next two years, you can comfortably kiss our leaky old Airstrip One’s creaky old democracy fond farewell too. Once the GOP join forces with Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Modi’s India, these four global superpowers will carve Europe and the rest of the planet into this. And then it is all already over, before most good folks will even believe it.
You think I’m kidding about this? You and everyone else just keep lying to yourself, and y’all will find out quickly enough.
Antivax—long a pathetic niche comedy side-act shitshow deserving only minor bloggy derision—is now truly involved at the heart of this terror; its ship at last fully come in now the GOP has successfully weaponized the global battle against COVID to end US Democracy itself. I am genuinely impressed; at their audacity, their ambition. At their horrific runaway success, unimpeded. 15 million already globally dead, and the US Right is still only on its warm-up act. And this swathing destruction is being replicated across the world, in every remotely-functioning democracy; our own pale effort included.
Cobalt-Thorium G can hold their fookin’ pint—Just Watch This!
I feel how effusively proud of themselves these people now are, that rush of true power, bubbling in unrestrained delight, creaming at what is to come. And that feeling makes me throw in my throat. I feel where they are going. And I know they have come too far already to halt themselves willingly now.
The psychopath will happily rule over our world, if we allow it; if we let him.
The narcissist will burn the entire planet just to be King of ashes.
I merely seek to Name their monster. For Knowledge Itself is Power, and the first step toward fighting a horror is understanding what—and why—to call it.
…
Now I have been amusingly banging on for a couple years here, trying to get my clumsy message through the more rarified scientific minds who might be able to do something productive about it. Because I can’t (not directly); I’m just a lone crazy person (certified) howling into the wind, a monomanic Don Quixote-meets-Semmelweis of impotence. But maybe it’s because my toxic recognizes their toxic; and in these humans I see all the very worst, cruelest, self-indulgent, self-serving flaws I find in myself—only these chucklefucks actually embrace and celebrate their own evil as wonderfully empowering features, not kerbstomping it with prejudice as I’ve spent the last 30 years doing in myself (it’s an ongoing process…).
Even if I am wrong, and wildly overdiagnosing the disease as the “One True Cause And Cure”, I am definitely not entirely wrong. Nor am I wrong about the Personality Disordered horrors leading the charge—numerous converging sources back me up on this—and I’m absolutely not wrong about the screamingly urgent need for everyone else to wake the fcuk up to this danger now descending on us all.
So sorry, not sorry, if I turn it up to Eleven. You can go watch the news if you need it soft-soaping.
The last time our world joined in its collective shrug, wanting to believe that the gathering inevitable storm would not impact them because they didn’t want to be bothered, sixty million human beings died in consequence. In concentration camps, in city-wide firestorms; in the skies, on the seas, in mud and screaming; all across Europe, much of Asia; in the first and (to-date) last atomic bomb drops onto living breathing populations.
In nearly unimaginable horror, all of it made real by people.
That is the true cost of liars.
…
I am not here to sway antivax True Believers; I am not that stupid. Only they may change themselves, and let’s neither of us pretend that all of them with few exceptions are anything but 100% happy exactly where and who they are now; rejoicing their status, their specialness, their grievance, their Power. This is their Hour; everything they’ve ever fought and waiting for, and they will seize it to them like a throat.
I am also not extrovert, expert, or public speaker. I hate being the one who gets to stand up, to be seen and heard, while everyone else is remaining comfortably seated. Being silent and cowardly is much more my nature. But I do it now, in spite of myself. Because there is one thing even more dangerous than people who are happy to perpetrate evil for their own profit and glory: all the people who are happy to ignore the evil—in each other, in themselves; to let it slide, left unchallenged, just because once again they don’t want to be bothered. So if I choose not to stand, who will?
So as much as I may personally empathize with your own very particular, difficult, unhappy struggles and the personal and societal unfairnesses you encounter, Ms Stephen, and as much as respect the slow and incredibly tough road to self-awareness that you now walk, you don’t ever tell me to sit down and please be quiet any more than I would tell you to do likelise. You are not the only human who knows pain and hurt, who lives it, and our all-too-human ability to be selfish and uncaring to others. But your shades of gray do not interest me one whit right at this moment; only their absolute, searing black and white. The planet-wide thermonuclear glassing of the global narcissistic extinction burst that is rapidly coming.
The only person here who holds the right to tell me to STFU is our gracious host. And thus far he has been tolerant of me even, as I dash his own fine verbosity records into fine diamond dust! So until he pulls my plug—or until someone more talented steps in to do the job, like, proper—I’ll keep on doing what I keep on doing, ringing a seven bell alarm like an absolute maroon, in hopes of waking some others.
—
“You never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.”—Atticus Finch
@has
“you don’t ever tell me to sit down and please be quiet any more than I would tell you to do likelise”
Just to be clear ‘has’ I did not tell you to sit down and be quiet I questioned why you found it necessary to go over and over the material and why you thought it appropriate to take what is a very topical subject off track with excessive coverage of narcissism. I’d wager that the majority of posters on here are very knowledgeable on the subject and equally capable of determining for themselves how to respond to posters who display such qualities without instruction from you.
Anyone thinking that their fellow posters require lengthy, repetative, instructive directions on how to deal with narcissists might be viewed as egotistical.
Not unrelated; but, damn, this is some 4th-degree burn:
https://twitter.com/Natasha_Chandel/status/1577020688329629696
@Wendy Stephen: “It’s interesting that ‘has’ rather than respond to the comments made by Indie Rebel merely posts an accusation of echolalia ……………….it’s called avoidance!”
Actually it’s called brevity, also known as the soul of wit. Or did you miss that the “hashtag” was a hyperlink too? And that clicking said link leads straight to Prasad’s IMAX-level Projection vaporizing IR’s weak-ass trollery for me?
Honestly, I thought it was quite well done (especially for me!), expending no more of my energy than IR has rightfully earned: bugger all.
Way to ruin a joke, Ms S.
—
TL;DR: Argument from Incredulity doesn’t actually work when the claim being protested has already been shown to be true by those who now protest it.
How on the earth a detailed rebuttal is a bad thing ? If you write a paper, you expect it
Here is the case report for Goldman. Unlike the Atlantic article, it stated that Goldman received his primary two doses 5-6months prior to when he first became symptomatic with flu like symptoms and lymphadenopathy cancer subsequently confirmed a few days later by Pet scan. The report also stated he was asymptomatic when he received the primary doses.
The significance of all this is given how rapidly the cancer progressed after the booster and paired with his deteriorating health, the odds are Goldman never had cancer before his primary shots; at least, it likely would never have shown up on a Pet scan five months prior. So, it’s likely not just a case of lymphoma progressing rapidly after the booster, but the cancer popping up quickly after the primary doses.
Also fascinating is what this case says about cancer. With the rapid occurrence and progression of the cancer, I find it hard to believe that the cancerous micro mutations weren’t there before the vaccines. Likely they were vastly exacerbated by the vaccines. Could it be true then that cancerous mutations are ubiquitous within us, and it’s actually our immune system that’s doing a phenomenal job keeping them in check?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.798095/full
You notice that mRNA vaccines has been around more than six months. A epidemic of lymphomas should be noticiable
Another segment of the population adversely affected by COVID-19 is the elderly. A recent study showed that COVID-19 vaccination reduced humoral immunity in the elderly.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.15.21262067v3.full-text
Ironically, MJD published a review article showing how important humoral immunity is to decrease morbidity and mortality from acute infections.
https://orionjournals.com/ijbpru/sites/default/files/IJBPRU-2022-0033.pdf
@ Orac,
Welcome back!
The uproar among antivaxers about Covid-19 vaccine mRNA supposedly being found in breast milk echoes deceptive tactics used by anti-GMOers in claiming that glyphosate has been detected in breast milk (glyphosate being an herbicide used on genetically modified Roundup-Ready crops). The common thread is attempting to scare people by referencing trace amounts of a Scary Chemical in our Precious Infants’ Breast Milk, while ignoring 1) lack of detection of the Scary Chemical in multiple other studies, and 2) zero evidence of ill effects of such tiny amounts even if they’re actually present.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2022/08/16/glyphosate-traces-in-breast-milk-weedkiller-causes-neurological-disorders-how-activists-leverage-social-media-to-distort-science-and-spread-bogus-health-concerns/
WS: “The problem is not the problem the problem is your attitude about the problem”
So, “Captain Jack Sparrow” is now the patron saint of tone trolls?
Why, it’s almost as if their manufactured outrage is the only evidence for their outrage that they have actually got.
I can only wonder who must clean the underside of a toilet seat for such folk…
@Jay: “Of course you don’t understand what that means.”
Irrelevant. Narcissistic Truth is self-evident and absolute. That the narcissist says it is true is already sufficient: ignorance and errors are for all you little people. The narcissist is always the smartest person in the room.
@ldw: “your comment … shows your mindset: the discussion of vaccines isn’t one about science, it’s about selling, by any lie no matter how outrageous, the notion that the vaccines are not only worthless but not safe.”
That is how Power works. Just ask ol’ Joe Goebbels.
Vaccination is simply a tool. As science advocates, your mistake is in assuming this tool has only one use.
“You don’t care that both those things are false … only that your version of the anti-science message comes out on top.”
The power to destroy a thing is Power.
“I doubt you or greg, or ci, or ir, are capable of understanding why you’re wrong”
Once again, your error is in thinking they will care. They can’t. They are neurally hardwired to be incapable of it.
Their goal is absolute power, by any and all means available. All other humanity is expendable.
None of this is very hard to grasp. So how many times must y’all dash yourselves onto their rocks for their terrifyingly simple, straightforward, honest message to sink in? If you can’t even make it past these four sad little abusers, how the hell can you you expect to survive Putin, Xi, Modi, and your own now full-fascist GOP?
—
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”—Maya Angelou
Ok, I will share a personal story on this…
In response to the Covid persecution that we ‘antivaxxers’ face, for around six months now, me and local ‘antivaxxers’ in our area have been meeting bi-weekly at a closeby pub to socialize and unite. It’s a friendly atmosphere of about 30 to 40 of us where we get to know one another and share our ‘persecution stories’ and talk about you guys, the enemy. I enjoy the meetings, and, never mind vaccines, but I just find a better personality match with these folks.
What I am not so keen about is some of the conspiracy theories. I am sorry! – but I don’t think you guys are planning to depopulate the planet by killing billions! You are much too incompetent to hatch such a plot. As I keep saying, ‘antivaxxers’ truly don’t appreciate how profoundly incompetent you guys are. Not to mention, a depopulation agenda involves caring about something other than your immediate material gain, and that’s just not you guys.
What I also take issue with is the group is mainly Putin apologists. They believe Putin was provoked by the Ukraine and the West, and they are now relishing that Putin sticking it to the global elites and their plan for a new world order.
For me, Putin is just a thug, and keeping Russia as a dictatorship where opposition to his rule is not tolerated attests for this. Simarlarly, he invaded his weaker neighbor because he was a bully that believed he could get away with it. Again, he didn’t give a hoot about rights; not the rights of his neighbour or international law, he just does as he pleases.
This to me is more akin to provaxxers conducts. For example, they are willing to throw in in 30 kids under the autism bus or implement draconian Covid measures not because at the end of day they care about public health or the greater good. They do so because of politics and they know they can get away with it.
Shame on ‘antivaxxers’ for not seeing this parallel and not realizing that remaining true to our freedom cause involves us denouncing Putin and not being his apologist. With this, I am curious whether the ‘antivaxxers’ here share this perspective. Labarge, Indie, Wendy, Ginny and others, what do you think?
Suppression of antivaxxers ? They are very noisy. It is just people do not believe them at all, even if they go Senate for support
@Aarno: Ignore the needy little wankstain (I know I do). “Uselessly useful idiot” is about as far as he can ever rise himself, the tiny wobbling peener. It is all the other 70 million who’ll be vigorously voting in November to force-birth the world’s 4th great fascist autocracy y’all need to be taking on now.
@ has … in response to what you wrote yesterday and today:
Observing these wank…alties for decades, I notice that they will use any governmental or financial instability to push their own brand- either to sell product or disseminate their worldview- this is most apparent whenever there is a downturn in the market or social issues such as protests or uprisings, no matter where they happen. Both NN and prn describe Ukraine as a nazi state with corrupt leaders who echo the decadent West. Yesterday, Mikey supported Putin contra the “Luciferian” US and UK: their critiques bleed from healthcare to geopolitics.
Dr Oz may become a US senator: although I agree that altie/ woo/ rightie leaders might be NPD, how many of their supporters are not but accept their MO. What makes them so attractive to followers?
How do they entice enough customers to pay for their estates and huge business sites? I’ve often shown readers how to find photos/ descriptions of their luxurious lifestyles. Oz, -btw- lives in a clifftop palace not far from here. Orac has shown how much charities like CHD or ICAN rake in.
I understand that contrarianism has a long history fueling brave mavericks, righteous reformers and adamant rebels in the ( so-called) West. Research shows that anti-vaxxers identify as being “not of the common herd”, that they are unique and don’t recognise standard hierarchies of expertise, that each is an expert in all, valuing freedom and natural solutions over mandates and “chemicals”. Whether it is a PhD/ MD rabble rouser on Substack, an enraged autism mother on twitter or one of RI’s regular complainers, they are out to prove their superiority like those who ‘own ( pwn?) the Libs’ however, leaders tend to have much higher cash flows- in rather than out, if you catch my drift.
It doesn’t matter if gastric acids from the stomach attack the nucleic acids. Anyone who has nursed might know why. Breast milk pools in their mouth & on their lips & even gets under their fingernails. It literally goes everywhere.
And lipid nano’s remain stable in solutions with pH values as low as 1.2.
The sars-cov2 virus itself does not pass through breast milk but the spike protein from the vaccines are.
Sorry, you’ll want to go back and read what was written about the papers. They can only claim they found fragments of mRNA, they didn’t show they found entire sequences.
What kind of anti-vaxxer are you, a neo-anti-vax or classic cultist where no vaccines are worthwhile?
Assuming mothers breathe, the virus does not need to go through breast milk to get from mom to baby. If the argument is that the virus does not go from mom to baby, that’s a very, very strange argument.
I think even babies nails can handle stray fragments of mRNA.
If the claim is that this is an issue, it would be because a substantial amount of something gets into the baby. The comments about the stomach are directly on point for that.
Why do you think that spike protein in vaccines are different than spike proteins in SARS CoV 2 ? What is the chemical diffference ?
“sars-cov2 virus itself does not pass through breast milk” Citation needed.
Other citations needed: that this mRNA is capable of transiting intact through the skin or mucosal membranes (otherwise your point about milk everywhere isn’t relevant). Baby fingernails are sharp, but they’re still not needles, capable of injecting material.
Also, citation needed that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t transmitted through any mechanism during breastfeeding.
Also, citation needed that the mRNA detected is still inside the lipid nanoparticle (otherwise your point about the stability of the lipid nanoparticles in low pH environments isn’t relevant).
Virologist Geert Vanden Bossche may have reached a terminal stage in his descent from once respected scientist to full-bore antivax loon.
When previously encountered on RI in June, Vanden Bossche was sharing a panel platform with the likes of Del Bigtree, but vainly trying to convince other antivaccine advocates that there just might be some benefits to immunization.
Now it’s been announced that Geert has joined the “faculty” of James Lyons-Weiler’s online pseudo-university, IPAK-EDU*, to teach a course in what’s touted as the biology of epidemics and pandemics, or maybe What I Did On My Summer Vacation. The IPAK course on vaccines is underway, but you could probably slip into class without missing a beat if you have the right amount of $$.
*motto: “Acrem Stultitiam Est Beatitudo”.
I didn’t see Greg’s comment about his friends’ support for Putin when I wrote about Mikey’s despite the time stamp ( Greg’s comments are held back) BUT do I discern a glimmer of concern?
Isn’t it possible that the general quality of thinking that underlies anti-vax may also yield poor results in other areas such as geopolitics? Most reasonable people think that Putin is a bad guy: he invades countries, he has opponents killed, poisoned or jailed, and his policies harm his own people. If he questions their information gathering skills and conclusions about Putin why not about vaccines/ autism? Is that going too far too soon?
When I describe various woo-meisters/ anti-vax advocates, I like to point out atrocious errors they commit in diverse subjects like history, art or even grammar because these creatures assert superior intellectual skills, superlative academic achievement and brilliant insight into the Nature of Things. If they get general information so grievously wrong, should you trust their information, sources and final results about anything? And we can give a hundred examples of how they butcher SBM and psychology.
I immediately spotted errors that revealed anti-vaxxers’ lack of knowledge because of their lack of understanding concerning the development of the brain. The pre-natal origins of ASDs had been established well before Wakefield’s folly. It was common knowledge. A confluence of evidence shows how and WHEN this occurs: there is post mortem evidence, analysis of abortions, imagery pre- and post-natally, genetic studies, physiognomic differences, data about the effects of meds and chemicals during gestation, studies of mothers’ illnesses, animal studies, observation of infants by trained professionals prior to most vaccines and studies about unvaccinated autists. I will spare you the list of most relevant scientists because most readers probably know it by heart since I’ve given it so many times. Another faux pas involves misinformation about the BBB but I won’t address that here.
There are such things as poor judgment, bad sourcing and motivated reasoning.
Speaking of the Dr. Oz John Fetterman Senate Race, I thought everyone would enjoy this.
https://www.comicsands.com/fetterman-oz-simpsons-dr-nick-2658385480.html
Also:
https://secondnexus.com/fetterman-ad-oz-killed-dogs