Picture this: You are in the leadership of the federal organization tasked with public health response to a global pandemic that has descended upon the world, sickening first tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then many millions worldwide, overwhelming hospitals and leading to the deaths of over a million people in the US alone in around two years, at one point killing ~4,000 people a day. Now imagine that not one, but two vaccines, against the virus that caused this illness were developed in record time, going from concept to validation in large phase 3 clinical trials in a matter of months rather than years, helped by a fortuitous history that had led the technology to make them to be sufficiently mature when the pandemic hit that it could be quickly repurposed to produce these vaccines. Finally, imagine that the FDA gave emergency use authorization (EUA) to allow the distribution of these vaccines by the end of the same year in which the new plague first hit the US and that the vaccines were shown to be highly effective in preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death from the new disease. You’d think this was a good thing, wouldn’t you? You’d want to encourage everyone possible to get vaccinated, wouldn’t you? You’d want to get a provaccine campaign going as fast as you could to share the provaccine message and get people protected as soon as you could.
That’s because you’re not an antivaxxer like Mike Adams, who seems to think that provaccine messaging from the government is a bad thing and yesterday portrayed it that way with a headline that read Shocking trove of HHS records reveals most aggressive vaccine propaganda campaign EVER: Screenwriters, comedians, church leaders, black doctors and influencers all PAID OFF to pimp the vax. The first thing that struck me about the headline (other than its usual Mike Adams-level bonkers) was that it’s a bad look to refer to black doctors and influencers “pimping” the vaccine. Racist, much? I mean, if I were an antivaxxer trying to spin this story the way Mike Adams did, I’d have just been content to use the word “shill” or “shilling” or something like that. But, then, I’m not Mike Adams, who’s been flirting with fascist-adjacent conspiracy theories for quite some time, consistent with the general bent of the antivaccine movement these days.
According to Adams, the results of a recent FOIA request revealed that, soon after Joe Biden was inaugurated as President, his administration immediately worked to encourage vaccination against COVID-19, a marked contrast to the obsessions with the previous administration. Of course, that’s not the way Adams portrays it:
Judicial Watch has nailed it yet again, suing HHS to acquire a treasure trove of documents that reveal the world’s most exhaustive, heavily funded and wide-ranging propaganda campaign to try to convince the oblivious masses to be injected with an experimental mRNA concoction that isn’t even a “vaccine.”
“Judicial Watch Uncovers Biden Administration Propaganda Plan to Push COVID Vaccine,” reads the Judicial Watch press release:
Judicial Watch announced today that it received 249 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing the extensive media plans for a propaganda campaign to push the COVID-19 vaccine.
And, of course, there’s Judicial Watch itself:
This is, of course, Judicial Watch’s MO. It’s a right wing activist agitprop propaganda organization whose speciality is to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in order to uncover what it claims to be misconduct. Amusingly, its founder Larry Klayman was in the news recently for having had his law license suspended by the Washington DC bar for his handling of a case of sexual harassment a decade ago. Let’s just say that Judicial Watch’s antics are no more reputable than those of his founder.
So what did the federal government do that was supposedly so nefarious? Based on a document, “PEC (Public Education Campaign) Plan April 19 – May 31 2021,” Adams rants about proposals made for provaccine public messaging:
- Vaccine engagement package to all entertainment talent and management agencies
- Vaccine engagement package to all media companies and show producers
- Outreach to major culture event producers
- Produce HHS question-and-answer videos featuring local Black doctors discussing the vaccines, how they work, and why the public should get vaccinated
- Request that Tom Brady create a video with his parents encouraging vaccination
- Create custom partnerships with the social media platforms with algorithms to hit the audience
- Launch Hollywood comedy writers video content
- Work with YouTube on an original special about vaccinations targeted to young people
- Work with Instagram to produce a series about vaccines for @Instagram (the largest social media account in the world, 387 million followers)
- Request major TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram influences to create videos of themselves being vaccinated
- Request a vaccination special on Christian Broadcast Network featur[ing] Evangelical leaders
- Request that the major live TV entertainment shows feature hosts being vaccinated on air (ex: the hosts of The Voice)
- Request that the TV morning and daytime talk shows feature special vaccination reunion moments with everyday Americans
- Convene an editorial meeting with the publishers of Catholic newspapers and newsletters across the country
- Place a trusted messenger on the Joe Rogan Show and Barstool Sports to promote vaccination
- Work with the NFL, NASCAR, MLB, CMA to request they create content with their talent and release through their broadcast and social channels
The first thing that I noticed looking at the document as provided on the Judicial Watch website was that it only encompassed a few pages of a much larger document. Naturally, I wondered why that was; that is, before I found the link to (apparently) the entire 249-page document which was apparently obtained last month. The entire document starts out rather blandly:
What is the COVID-19 Community Corps?
The COVlD-19 Community Corps is a program through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to share science-based information directly with community organizations and Americans across tbe country to empower them to deliver messages in the fight against COVlD-19 and share the importance of vaccinations in their community.The mission of Community Corps
COVID-19 Community Corps will be an effort to galvanize trusted messengers in local communities to encourage people to get vaccinated. The program will provide toolkits and resources for Community Corps members to organize within their networks, communities, and more to help build vaccine confidence throughout the country. Community Corps members will receive weekly updates on the latest scientific and medical) updates, FAQs about the vaccine, social media suggestions, infographics, factsheets with timely and accurate infom1ation, and tools on ways to help people get registered and vaccinated.
If you scroll down to pages 30-34 of the document, you will find the bullet points quoted by Mike Adams and Judicial Watch. Similarly, contrary to the claims made by Adams and Judicial Watch that portray the program as paying media, influencers, and celebrities to be provaccine “pimps,” in actuality the paid media program was intended to be only a small part of the program. For instance, here is one image from the document:
The paid campaign was to involve:
Other slides show examples of targeted campaigns to various groups, such as Hispanics, Blacks, and other groups, plus examples of the sorts of trusted messengers that the CDC wanted to cultivate, such as:
My first reaction was: This is just Public Relations 101. Seriously, these are the first people I’d want to get on our side, although I must admit that as a physician I was rather surprised not to see them on this slide. On the other hand, people tend to see the four groups above more than they do physicians.
After this slide set come the five pages that Mike Adams and Judicial Watch apparently consider the most “damning,” which include the proposals (and more) listed above. Reading it, I had a hard time seeing anything nefarious, but then I’m not Mike Adams or the right-wing loons at Judicial Watch. The first couple of pages are just a list of scheduled media appearances by various government and medical officials, as well as celebrities and trusted influencers, including President Obama and Michelle Obama, Anthony Fauci, Black physicians and healthcare workers, celebrities like Eva Longoria, and others. Most of the bullet points cited by Adams and Judicial Watch fall under a section entitled “Ideas to be considered,” which suggests that they were exactly that, rather than policy.
Where Mike Adams and Judicial Watch see a “disturbing and massive campaign by the Biden administration to propagandize and politicize the controversial COVID vaccine,” I saw basic public health messaging taken to the level that it should have been taken under the previous administration.
Adams makes another claim:
These documents confirm what I’ve been reporting for over a year: That HHS and CDC paid stand-up comedians to mock anti-vaxxers in their comedy routines. Screen writers and video production companies were also bribed to push vaccine propaganda in their episodes, and social media influencers were paid off to pimp the vax jabs.
Part of the covid-19 stimulus push included over $1 billion to the CDC for propaganda payoffs and bribes. They used this money to flood tech platforms, Hollywood writers and influencers with cash, making sure they all promoted the mRNA jabs in return. This confirms that Hollywood has always been in on the depopulation agenda, which is no surprise when you remember how much Hollywood leftists also promote abortion violence (serial murder).
This was all taxpayer money, used to brainwash Americans with a massive, coordinated vaccine disinformation campaign run by HHS and the CDC. (At the same time, Big Tech then targeted anyone who disagreed with the propaganda, calling them the Disinformation Dozen even though they were telling the truth.)
The media was in on it the whole time, of course, and they refuse to report on this bombshell HHS document even now. They’ve been complicit the entire time.
I perused all 249 pages of the document and couldn’t find evidence of Hollywood or TV writers being paid to do anything. Indeed, I found only two mentions of comedy or comedians, first one of the bullet points above, “Launch Hollywood comedy writers video content,” and second:
African American: We’ll target African Americans of all ages with differing strategies. However, we’ ll focus on creators, tiktokers, meme pages, and communities, leveraging the equity angle of our work and the safety of each of our three authorized vaccines.
Some examples:
- Rickey Thompson (a multi-channel comedian and actor)
- Tabitha Brown (a weliness influencer with wide reach)
- The Shade Room (a celebrity gossip Instagram with 22 million followers)
- Jackie Aina (a beauty blogger with 4 million subscribers on YouTube)
Similarly, I looked for outreach to writers and found only a couple of examples, including the Hollywood Writers’ Guild. And, again, most of these were under the heading of “ideas to be considered.” In any case, it makes a lot of sense from a public health standpoint to target disadvantaged minorities with provaccine messaging, given that they were the ones suffering the worst under the pandemic. Similarly, I find it rather amusing that conspicuously absent from Mike Adams screed is one group in particular that the Biden Administration wanted to target, “white conservatives (young and old).” (See page 222.)
There, the document mentions:
White Conservatives: To reach this community, we will target Facebook communities, faith leaders, and sports figures.
Some examples:
- NASCAR drivers
- Faith Leaders
- Franklin Grabrun
- Joyce Meyer
- Joel Osteen
- Country music singers
- NFL players
To be honest, I must say that this part of the document, although clearly well-meaning, struck me as painfully naive. On the other hand, this was early 2021, and, although antimask and anti-“lockdown” beliefs had hardened into signifiers of right-wing identity and ideology, antivaccine ideology had not as yet reached that point. Unfortunately, antivax ideology was certainly moving rapidly in that direction by that time.
I’ll conclude by noting that Mike Adams can’t resist going full Mike Adams. If he had just stopped his article at the end of the excerpt that I quoted above, his insinuation of government propaganda would have come across as more convincing, at least to people susceptible to it, who distrust government but have not yet gone completely down the QAnon conspiracy rabbit hole. Fortunately (at least in terms of entertainment value), Mike Adams can never resist turning up the bonkers to 11:
When you realize the extent of this propaganda push, it becomes obvious that this was never about immunization or public health. There has been a far larger motivation behind the mRNA jabs which, it turns out, “install” an operating system in your body.
The amount of money and pressure behind this massive push reveals that the real goal was to make sure every human being on planet Earth was injected with a transhumanism operating system that many experts say consists of self-assembling synthetic biostructures and 5G-influenced nanoparticles. (See the full podcast below, featuring Karen Kingston who explains it all and reveals the patents.)
Clearly, the real motivation here is something far more conspiratorial and nefarious than public health. This is something on the scale of planetary genocide or even scenarios ripped right out of sci-fi world such as using billions of human bodies as biological hosts to grow AI-controlled biosynthetic parasitic structures of some kind.
I’ve written a number of times about antivax claims that vaccines (especially the mRNA-based vaccines, which are falsely portrayed as “hacking the software of life“) are “transhumanism,” going back over a decade. I’ve also written more recently about Mike Adams incompetence with microscopy and mass spectrometry that has led him to spin false fantastical tales of “self-assembling” biostructures in the vaccines causing a massive epidemic deadly clotting. However, even those conspiracist claims pale in comparison to previous claims by Mike Adams that, pre-pandemic, vaccines represented a “Holocaust” but now during the pandemic an “oblivion agenda.” The idea is that the global “elite” have teamed up with aliens—yes, aliens—to develop a two-stage “bioweapon” that will depopulate the world so that both parties can share in its bounty and profit. I kid you not.
As I said at the beginning, it’s entirely understandable that public health officials, faced with a disease that was killing thousands of Americans daily and granted a new vaccine that could potentially stop that carnage, would want to pull out all the stops to persuade people to get vaccinated. Some of the ideas in the document touted by Judicial Watch and Mike Adams might seem hackneyed and/or naive, but they were completely understandable responses to the situation at hand given what was happening a year and a half ago. Although any antivax propagandist could spin such a document into a claim that the government was paying Hollywood (and seemingly the entire social media ecosystem) to shill for bipharma and scll vaccines, only Mike Adams could link such claims to a conspiracy involving 5G, transhumanism, and aliens.
66 replies on “Mike Adams rants about provaccine messaging by the CDC as though it were a BAD thing”
” .. Mike Adams can’t resist going full Mike Adams.”
Unfortunately, I had to stay home most of this week for repair workers so I listened to his recent spiels as well as Null’s and Del’s last broadcast. Self-replicating nanostructures that resemble ” calamari ” are common themes as well as lab leaks, transhumanism and 5G. Vaccinated people are shown acting bizarrely and then collapsing ( on an attached video, prn today) as if they were ” fending off invisible attackers”.
I venture that these loons sound desperate because the pandemic has become ‘less’ frightening ( although it’s still killing people) and most people are now vaccinated. They have to grab attention somehow when many followers might be strapped for funds. It’s possible that these prevaricators are like Alex Jones: they “inform” followers with news “you can’t get anywhere else ” ** and then sell overpriced products to their grateful thralls.
-btw- Null also uses words like “pimping” and “ghetto-fication”
** because it’s not real
The idea is that the global “elite” have teamed up with aliens—yes, aliens—to develop a two-stage “bioweapon” that will depopulate the world so that both parties can share in its bounty and profit.
Of course I look at it as a lay person, but would have thought it a bad business model to kill all your customers. Short term growth, maybe. Long term growth suicidal.
Yeah. Surely the development of brain parasites that turn the working class into mindless, sterile, drones would be a much better policy than depopulation. That way the new pyramids can still get built.
It’s those Alien accountants and their Alien spreadsheets. They use Alien math to contrast the long term profit potential of human filets versus human drones: product or service. In the latter case, you don’t want them sterile because the drones wear out and replacements are needed. I’m not sure how they manage the conversion between Pharma lucre and Alien lucre. I expect they have endless interstellar video conferences to debate how designer brain parasites fit into their strategy for galactic domination.
I’m pretty sure I saw Designer Brain Parasites supporting Hawkwind in about 1993.
Kinda weird that people who espouse a right wing, freedom from governmental oversight position want to prevent an organisation advertising a product. Almost like they support CENSORSHIP (you have to imagine the base reverb at this point).
Orac focuses most of his posts on folks who have some apparent claim to scientific credibility — e.g. Vinay Prasad, Jay Bhattacharya, Andy Wakefield back in the day, etc. — whose offerings create an opportunity for more detailed debunking, as befits his knowledge and expertise. Mike Adams is one of the few truly outre loonies getting regular attention here at RI, perhaps because he has lab equipment he misuses. But it seems to me that the more wacko conspiracy theorists take a back seat because they are so outrageously wrong they’re just not interesting from a scientific perspective (Orac’s version of the 7 foot hoop??) and they’re out there on the fringe where they have limited effect, compared, say, to the policy influence of the GBD/Brownstine crowd.
For COVID vaccination “the real goal was to make sure every human being on planet Earth was injected with a transhumanism operating system.”?? LOL. We know anyone outside the lunatic fringe will just point and laugh at such nonsense, right?
The problem is that the lunatics aren’t just out on the fringe with Adams or other supplement hucksters anymore…
This week the YouTube show Weekly Skews — featuring “Liberal Redneck” comedian Trae Crowder and his buddy “Smart Mark” Agee commenting on the news of the day — saw the hosts addressing two clips at least in line with Adams’ kookery if not over it.
The first one, from some wing-nut channel I was not familiar with, employed a very professional-looking “public affairs commentary show” style with high production values. The host was explaining — and this is apparently real, not an Onion- style parody — that the Deep State created Hurricane Ian to harm Ron DeSantis. Why else, she asked, did hurricanes only hit Red States, and conveniently right in the run up to an election? She then averred “We know they have the technology!” and then brought on another talking-head lady “expert” to emphasize that point by making dark vague references to DARPA, and (you may have guessed it already) noting “they’re willing to change your DNA with so-called vaccines, so of course they’d attack Red States with hurricanes.”
After Crowder and Agee offered their incredulous reaction to the “dumbassery”, Agee dropped the disturbing fact that both women had been Republican candidates for Congress in 2020. (Unsuccessful, granted, but still…)
The second clip, coming a bit later in the show, was of an older gentleman giving a PowerPoint presentation in a hotel conference room. His subject: how COVID vaccination was an insidious plot to connect recipients to “the internet of things” thus placing them under the total control of a powerful Artificial Intelligence.
Again Agee dropped the depressing hammer. The speaker was not some random nut-job speaking at a shorebound cousin of the Conspiracy Cruise, but an influential religious-right activist in Texas, also an MD btw, with strong ties to the leaders of the state GOP administration (Abbott, Paxton, et al) some of whom were apparently in the audience….
Today, in the WaPo, Dana Milbank reviewed the I-would-say-crazy positions of a whole bunch of GOP endorsed candidates for Congress or statewide offices… Anti-vax didn’t make the list, but we do get “the alleged ‘existential threat of climate change’ is a manufactured crisis by the Democrat Party,” claims of Satanic rituals within the Hilary Clinton campaign, “belief that alien lizards control the government,” plus, of course, calls for executions of everyone involved in stealing the last election from Donald Trump. And a lot of the races such folks are in are considered competitive. The price of gas, or something…
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand…. what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Hmmm. I like Trae Crowder and not infrequently watch his videoson FB or YouTube (at least his shorter ones, given that I rarely watch long YouTube videos). Somehow I missed this one…
The Skews is a weekly one-hour podcast, with the YT version showing split-screen poor-webcam-video headshots of the two hosts, supplemented with a few video clips on which they comment, played right from the Web which results in halts, lags, stutters and audio never being in sync with video. The subject matter isn’t much different from other more-or-less humorous political media, so the appeal here is the authentic ‘Liberal Redneck’ personae that stands apart from other punditry. Trae is much more relaxed and modest here, in a kind of endearing way, than in his comic performance rants from the front seat of his car, which are more focused on entertainment value and have a lot more jokes, in addition to being a lot shorter.
We all have bandwidth limits. At this point, the Skews is the only podcast-ish thing I’m following…
I might have to check it out. Basically, I don’t really listen to podcasts much anymore and am very selective about the vlogs and YouTube content that I watch, though.
Why would anyone give credence to the idea that, not only can someone create a hurricane but also target it at particular areas as well?
Here in MI the republican candidate for Secretary of State, Kristina Karamo,
— believes the 2020 election was stolen from trump (that’s almost a “must have” position for republican candidates, so not surprising)
— has undergraduate degrees from Oakland University [a good school] and Biola University [I know nothing about it], studying communication and media studies and Christian apologetics
— likens abortion to child sacrifice
— says LGBT people in same-sex relationships reflect society’s “sexual brokenness”
Here’s where it gets weird: as she was talking about people getting abortions in order to gain prosperity in their lives she
It’s no longer unusual for republican candidates to be completely unqualified for any job more complex than scraping gum off the bottom of picnic tables in parks, it seems to be a requirement. Our republican candidate for governor is as bad as this woman.
And this is why Adams and his ilk amp up the crazy. It’s the only way to be noticed when everyone else dials it up to 11. He dials it up to 12. They spin the dial to 13. Then it’s up to 14, ad nauseum. It’s a contagion in which everybody loses.
It almost sounds you might be batshit crazy and still be a Republican candidate.
It’s a prerequisite.
TBruce, that’s all from you and having lurked so long?! Well, in case you haven’t noticed (and I am sure you have), your attention was called to more pressing matters. We desire that you address the science behind Pfizer’s vaccine causing Michael Goldman’s cancer and leading to it progressing so quickly. Ditto, JT.
Where’s your proof that the vaccine caused his cancer?
Even Goldman didn’t claim that the vaccine caused his cancer.
Why it’s right under your narc chum bucket, of course!
There you go—just lift it up and tip it a little…
I’m so not interested in feeding the hungry troll, however I would like to state one thing:
Goldman’s cancer is a high-grade malignant lymphoma. Its progress was rapid and unusual but not unheard of. I’m thinking coincidence is much more likely.
Excuse me, Greg? Did you just tell me and TBruce that we need to do something for you?
Are you offering to pay us as consultants to research your question (knowing you’ll ignore our answers)? Normally my consulting rate is $500/hr, but you’ve earned the special rate of $1,000/hr just for being you.
I don’t see you offering to pay up, so I won’t speak for TBruce, but here’s my answer: no.
@TBruce: “I’m thinking coincidence is much more likely.”
Well, yes, fair to say that’s a given.
Unless you’re a paranoid autofellating baboon for whom every coincidence is yet further confirmation of conspiracy, because…reasons.
Like, I appreciate human brains are simply fancypants pattern-matching machines for sorting zebra from lion out on the savannah, just long and well enough to send some of our personal DNA into the future.
Sadly, this genetic postal office seems to have inordinate trouble handling Return To Sender.
JT, that truly saddens me. A scientist of your status bragging about money?! Isn’t about the science, the thirst for knowledge, and money is just the mere cherry on top? Does this craving not itch you to converse with this layperson who can somewhat speak your language and even if I am a ‘vile, rephensible antivaxxer’? JT, hear me out and listen to this:
So with Goldman, his Pfizer’s mRNA vaccination led to the spike proteins triggering the DCs and they signaled to the T-helpers to ramp up production. That would also involve boosting Goldman’s preexisting malignant T-follicular cells which are aggressive cells in themselves that were already prone to go turbo. I am assuming the malignant cells were preexisting because I can’t see those cells forming in mere days; progressing is another story.
On top of this, what part did the mRNA vaccines shutting down the TLRs that led to diminished TNF-alpha play in this? With Goldman’s case, was it a perfect storm of factors converging and all caused by the vaccines? Is Goldman’s case a harbinger of things to come and where every second visit to a doctor will be one to an oncologist?
So, JT, what do you say about all this? What about you, TBruce. C’mon, TBruce! Don’t you get bored with writing about ‘sheets of neoplastic cells with vesicular nuclei and hypercromatin’?! Rap with me, man.
Orac, I didn’t read that from the Atlantic article or his case report. I suppose the best test for that is what Goldman will do now that he is in remission. Will he ‘reduce the risks’ of serious outcomes from Covid by keeping up with his boosters, or will he do the antivaxx thing and forego further shots?
Orac, I am willing to wager you big-time that Goldman will opt for the latter. Betraying your cause is a lot easier when your ass is on the line!
@Greg Actually mRNA vaccines upregulate some TLRs and downregulate some. These are no relate to cancer.
You diagnose Goldman quite well, given taht you have never seen him.. MRNA vaccines have been arounf quie a long time. where is he cancer epidemic ?
I got to hand it to Aarno; he continues to demonstrate that he is most willing to break free of his leash and rap with me.
Whatever! What’s important is Föhse et al found that, overall, TNF-alpha was diminished after mRNA vaccination.
See it this way: Goldman started with the most fertile cancer seeds(aggressive malignant T-follicular cells), they were planted in the best soil (mRNA targeting and triggering the T-helpers), and they were watered well (mRNA leading to diminished TNF-alpha and immune surveillance).
Others with less fertile seeds and soil will see their cancer emerge in a longer period. Yet, even some such as Ryan Cole are noticing growth. Considering also that the vaccines are not exactly being monitored for carcinogenicy, we might well be on the cusp of an overlooked epidemic.
Taken from Goldman’s case report…
What?! Cancerous lymph nodes in possibly 20% of the sample? What was Aarno saying about no epidemic of cancer with mRNA?
What?! The role of mRNA potentially causing the malignant nodes was not investigated. Wait — who was saying mRNA vaccines are not being investigated for carcinogenicy? Yes! That was me.
Actually, it is TLRs that are pathogen specific, TNF alpha is not
AITL is very much caused by Epstein Barr virus, and that is why Goldman did not claim that vaccines caused his cancer,
So perhaps vaccine activated EBV ? It is a DNA virus, and vaccine upregulates TLRs recognizing thee.
As for TNF, here is a paper
Woldemeskel BA, Garliss CC, Blankson JN. SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines induce broad CD4+ T cell responses that recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants and HCoV-NL63. J Clin Invest. 2021 May 17;131(10):e149335. doi: 10.1172/JCI149335. PMID: 33822770; PMCID: PMC8121504.
Go to Figure 2
So, the vaccines re-activated a latent EBV infection, and the EBV caused the cancer? That would take time. The rapid progression of the cancer doesn’t support this.
Then there is also this from the Alantic article….
First, notice that the pattern of the cancer growing at the specific site of the injection. How does EBV causing the cancer explain this? Second, did sheep red-blood cells re-activate EBV in the mice?
PS: See that JT and TBruce?! Aarno is not shy about rapping with me, and he is not asking for money to do so. He finds me a worthy apprentice who shares his thirst for knowledge!
And, JT, as the foremost immunology expert around here, I am sure Aarno commands more than $500 hrly consultation rate. Isn’t that true, Aarno?
$500 hrly consultation rate! Get over yourself, JT!
“Mike Adams is one of the few truly outre loonies”
Adams is no loony; he’s a very adept salesman, very good at selling product to the most profitable rubes, always keeping pace with the market. As for the product he sells: it’s whatever sells best at this moment! If foamy paranoid fantasies are this month’s hot product, brilliant! Even cheaper than bath salts (both kinds) to manufacture and distribute.
Never mind the quality; feel the markup!
So don’t be fooled by the OTT act. Mike Adams is absolutely minting it. There’s a man who knows exactly what he’s worth, and easily leaves all of our own earning power in his dust. Adams might not be in quite up (yet) in the same tax band as the Sackler family, but they’re certainly made of the same stuff. Of course, so were the Sawney Bean clan.
…
As for the others you mention, some may be genuinely hysterical paranoid nuts. Others, like Adams, will know it’s all bull and don’t care as long as the suckers are desperate to buy it.
Some may even be intentionally firehosing, a classic Soviet technique that’s reich back in fashion: its goal not to convince its marks that X is true and Y is false, but that nothing can be trusted at all. Epistemology itself strangled and drowned in a bathtub, Grover Norquist style. Hot ticket for all your feudalist theocrats, as Truth becomes the word of whoever shouts loudest. And they are very, very loud.
That the rest of you are feeling dismayed, drained, and directionless in the wash of their crafted insanity is probably not a coincidence either. So it goes.
—
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”—Voltaire
has: ” .. that nothing can be trusted at all ”
Surely. Alties even tell us that all media is wrong, all education is propaganda, all experts are corrupt.The government lies always
Then they zoom in with “solutions” to problems.
Much of their rants include reasons why audiences should listen to THEM instead:
they come from fine, hardworking, religious backgrounds, not rich families from coastal cities but from interior locales with links to farming. They didn’t attend elite universities etc.
Audiences should identify with them as they both demonise the ‘elites’.
I do differ a little about their beliefs although I venture that you are generally correct: the political/ social speculation is just a lure to get right wing followers and/ or Naturalistas
BUT I think that they do- mostly- buy into altie health BS and mostly avoid commercial products and SBM. Even Mercola -who is probably the smartest and most mercenary of the lot- : they believe and utilise their own woo. They believe their information is superior to standard medicine. Their braggadocio reflects what they believe about their own abilities as well.
About money:
because Mike has links to Taiwan, some of his business information is hard to find but he earns millions ( see HealthWyze article; also Wikipedia Natural News). He brags that his “Ranger Buckets” storable food sell out in a few hours ( at a thousand items a shipment for 300+USD each for 17 pounds of rice, beans and quinoa!). He owns a 15 acre ranch outside of Austin and a warehouse/ packaging facility as well as tech. His wife is an acupuncturist and studied TCM.
@ has
Well, Vonnegut said, “We are what we pretend to be,” but to be precise i should have said ‘Adams is one of the few sources of truly outre looniness Orac has engaged on a regular basis.’ Whether or not any of these sources believe what they’re spewing is irrelevant, the point is that these once very-fringey discourses save captured seats of power, and this appears to have made no significant impression on still-sane sectors of the masses.
One can indeed make quite a lot of money grifting out on the fringe. Adams may always have been a highly successful salesman, but his shtick didn’t have — and still doesn’t have— a position that amounts to a near apocalyptic threat to democracy and public health.
Interesting. Maybe I wouldn’t have categorized “still sane” as “sitting on all your asses with your thumbs firmly wedged up as millions of yahoos set fire to your pants” but, okay, maybe let it run awhile and see how that plays out…?
As a fine upstanding† citizen of Airstrip One myself, it’s not like we can talk. At least the good ol’ HMS Hood had the common decency to kill everyone on it. Our rusty bathtub sunk instantly without even a shot. That was just humiliating.
—
† Brits, being terminal morons, can’t even do scuttling competently; thus my toes can mostly touch the bottom while holding my nose just above water. All I need is a nice cup of tea and I’m golden.
I would beg to differ. Adams has ensconced himself within the same QAnon/election denying/fascist online conspiracy ecosystem as Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, etc. He’s now pushing prepper conspiracy theories (and selling lots of prepper gear). He might not be as major a player representing an apocalyptic threat to democracy as Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and his acolytes, and the Republican Party, but he’s not an insignificant player either.
Adams runs loads of websites that reinforce each other and link up to other pseudo-science AND political sites/ writers manufacturing a web of misinformation that firmly contradicts SBM sites, governmental
institutions, experts and universities as well as standard reliable news sites. Being tossed off of twitter. facebook, YouTube etc has led him to create his own site, Brighteon, and post his material on rumble, gab, parler, gettr and altie video sites and point to Substack, RT and Chinese based “news sites” .
Incorporating educated anti-vaxxers ( like Malone, McCollough, Rose, GBD partisans etc), he can point to a “confluence” of evidence for his anti-vax horror stories and to the unsophisticated, it might look like he has actual grounds because who can untangle the imbroglio of lies and half-truths he has assembled over time? In fact, Null accompanies every broadcast ( see prn.live) with a list of “research” to support ( supposedly) every thing he says on air. Of course, if you look in depth, it is nothig of the sort: studies about meditation or that show blueberries combat dementia, celery stops cancer etc. He is based in ‘true science’ and encourages ‘critical thinking’.
Indeed. Many hands make light work[ of democracy].
What is difficult for me to comprehend is that although Mike spews the most egregious nonsense/ bad sci fi tropes/ proofs of his own inadequacy, he STILL has people watching and applauding him!
His worst episodes get 20, 30 or 40K views. I realise that some of his audience might be hate-watchers like me ( a recent poll about Fox had 30% or more of opponents watching certain shows).
AND he leaves his old stuff- including outlandish predictions- clearly visible at a side bar!
Listening closely to him, I learned that he wanted to be an entertainer: he created music for university shows ( bio at Health Ranger site), studied improv and comedy as an adult, thinks he can do “clever” voices. ( He can’t) and write “songs” ( raps?). Del started out as an actor/ singer but “graduated” to television show production prior to altie BS. So perhaps they’ll say anything to grow their audiences. Null is another hungry for adulation who believes that he was wrongfully deprived of his rightful place in society- leading it as he shifts paradigms .
How can people accept their obvious BS as shown here but still follow their health advice and buy their products?
It’s not hard. As every good con artist already knows: the best marks are the ones who want to lie to themselves. They sell it to themselves for you!
Try a few hours on r/antiMLM if you’re still struggling to despair for humanity.
And then go start an MLM selling “eyeball bleach”—I can guarantee there you’ll be onto a winner!
For me, the other side of this is that government has the right idea here – people need messengers they can trust, and for many, government isn’t it – but is also not really prepared to support and help those people.
Aside from the concerns about trust in government, government just isn’t very good at debunking and the kind of messaging we need. Providing information to the messengers is helpful, and needed since they can’t do the work, but providing support – funding – for community based organizations and focusing your efforts on the question of “how do I identify legitimate community based organizations that can actually do messaging work” is probably the most important contribution the federal government can do. This document goes in the right direction, but here, too, the government seems a lot less competent than CDC is, for example, in analyzing science.
As you point out, it’s exactly what they should do – nothing nefarious. It’s the right direction.
Want an example of the federal government (e.g., FDA) failing to protect child health? Here’s a review paper titled, “Natural Rubber Latex Precautions for Children.” Notice the FDA’s response to Citizen Petition Docket No. FDA-2007-P-0243. Hmm…
https://www.jscimedcentral.com/Pediatrics/pediatrics-10-1281.pdf
@ Orac,
Unless Orac’s minions want to rumble, I think I’m done talking about NRL.
This ($2200) is a bit on the pricey side for having your random thoughts hosted on the internet, MJD. Have you considered a blog instead?
@ Chris P.
You silly penny-pincher, Orac has been the greatest advocate for child safety at RI and the artificial intelligence associated with ‘Orac’ secretly encourages my effort here.
As much as I doubt you know anything about “the artificial intelligence” I guess there is a chance since you don’t demonstrate any natural intelligence.
@ Idw56old,
MJD wrote a scholarly book on artificial intelligence (AI).
https://www.worldcat.org/title/patents-and-artificial-intelligence-thinking-computers/oclc/1019995532
@ Orac,
MJD offers $2,201 to write a guest post for RI; willing to pay to play. Please advise.
“Natural Rubber Latex Precautions for Children”
A condom.
A bit unfair to MJD’s mum, who wasn’t to know at the time.
NN bleating: “Any doctor who remains a member of the AMA is now aligned with the for-profit mutilations of children in the name of “wokeism”
Actually, Mike, I rejoined the A.M.A. on a cheap rate for free CME credits. Mutilating innocent kiddies is just a side benefit.
*most probably don’t realize it, but A.M.A. leadership has moved considerably to the left in recent years. It’s not your grandpa’s A.M.A. any more, though protection of docs’ income remains a core goal.
When fighting this verbal war, it’s easy to focus on the lunatic fringe of the other tribe. Much more challenging to fight the intelligent and rational experts who don’t agree with you. Or to simply focus on the valid points the lunatic fringe might have made.
Adams was correct in saying there has been an all-out public relations campaign to sell the mRNA covid vaccines. Of course, Orac thinks that’s a good thing, and the vaccine makers would certainly agree. Look at all that free advertising! Well, not exactly free, since the vaccine makers pay the CDC a fortune in bribes. But still, they did come out WAY ahead.
The vaccines were given emergency use authorization based on trials lasting only 6 months. And although the vaccines looked extremely effective, in terms of relative risk reduction, they were not so impressive when considering absolute risk reduction (old drug industry trick). But even worse, there was NO improvement in all cause mortality with the vaccines.
When a drug is tested and it does not improve all cause mortality, you have to wonder how safe that drug really is. Maybe it effectively prevents one disease while causing others.
Lots or smart people were not reassured by those trials. Orac was, of course, but he is just another cheerleader for the drug industry. An industry that is KNOWN to be sleazy and corrupt. An industry that stood to make gigantic fortunes from mRNA technology. And it will continue to gain wealth and power, until the public finally starts to wake up to the fact that this technology is not safe. And not very effective either.
So keep on bashing loonies like Mike Adams, it gives your devoted followers something to laugh about.
Of course, one notes that I don’t just take on the loonies but do go after what Indie Rebel would consider “intelligent and rational experts” who don’t agree with me, although when you look at them closely they are usually arguably not particularly “rationale” and rarely “experts.”
” intelligent and rational experts” like Dr Ladapo? SBM, today. Heh.
Mikey and other alties are frequently merely extreme examples of more educated contrarians like those who signed the GBD and who appear on prn, CHD or The Highwire. They all oppose regulation, mandates and centralised agencies that monitor physicians, educators.
Even today, Mike ( NN, 25-30 minutes in) actually welcomes the on-coming “total collapse of society” because it will obliterate governmental regulation, “fiat” currency, central control, pharma rule and servitude: people will be free to re-build a new system which embraces natural medicine, local organic farming, barter, precious metal-based currency, “educational reforms” and other “innovations” guided by the Lord.
He calls people who cling to our present day “outdated ideas”, the “gullible class”.
I’m running out of quotations and italics so I’ll stop.
I’m guessing Mikey elided the bit where we somehow go from 8Bn people squashed on a rock down to the 100 million or thereabouts that his retro-future feudalist paradise will actually support.
But, that’s okay: Mikey’s a Big Ideas man, after all, and such niggly implementation details are for little people to figure out.
…
6/10, technically true for some definitions of “free”
@Indie Rebel:
Give some examples (with proof) of the “intelligent and rational experts” that are opposed to COVID-19 vaccination.
“Only” six months? Let me guess. You’re one of those antivaxxxers who insist tht vaccines go throuh ever longer trials in the hope that adverse reactions show up, regardless of whether or not the vaccines caused them.
Also, citation needed for the rest of your guff.
@Julian Frost: ‘Give some examples (with proof) of the “intelligent and rational experts” that are opposed to COVID-19 vaccination.’
Nae problem!
First, there’s Dr Vinay Prasad… no wait, he’s an overt narcissist, an amoral asshole who says whatever awards him the greatest attention, regardless of whether it helps or harms other people.
OK, what about not-a-dr Steve Kirsch… oh wait, again. Sounding funky, probably psychotic; fast circling the rabbit hole of his own delusional ideation.
David Icke… hahaha. Nope, just kidding y’all! That one’s like Kirsch OD’d on speedballs, bad acid, and meth for the last 30 years solid. Unmedicated, non-compliant paranoid schizophrenic with a diagnosis. Famously unmoored from reality. Something. Something. Something. Reptilians.
Mike Adams… 100% psychopath, 100% grifter. Whip-smart though. That’ll be why he’s got all of your money now and you do not. QED.
Ol’ Honest Doc “Joe” Ladapo… also psychopathic, also grifter. Probably a bit stupid as the “Dr” contingent goes, though as we’ve seen that’s no barrier at all. Happily balls-deep with GOP for Dictator 2024, just to spice the ol’ COI with something a little different.
Dr Stella Immanuel… wait, didn’t we just cover this one a minute ago?
Didier Raoult… hmm, now under investigation for fraud inbetween suing his critics. Very science, that. I guess even his nation’s famously French scientific bureaucracy and reactionary status quo have a “now you’re taking the piss” cut-off point after all.
Judy Mikovits? Stole shit. Busted. Oops.
Dr. Flavio Cadegiani? Crime against humanity. Indicted. Ooh-err, missus.
…
Need we go on?
But, never fear, stout RI-ians! I’m certain IR and the rest of her rocket scientists here who absolutely are not personality disordered, or otherwise venal or deranged in any way whatsoever, are already fully prepper-ed and prepared to dismiss with prejudice every and all charges against every single one of the above, and then immediately and summarily reinstate every one those charges against the known demon Fauci, the propagandist Gorski, the demented Dorit, and every other one of their already-proved-guilty-by-existing bête noires on whom those charges righteously belong—in between eagerly lining up their considerable lube and kleenex collections for their evening’s Glorious Marathon of Nuremberg 3.0 Porn—because.
Just mind how you go, o Noble Warriors For Truth, lest that puddle of drool shorts out your IMAX projectors!
Good grief IR, you’re almost as good at pitching manure as greg and labarge.
Being a sheep you’re clearly just jealous of IR’s prodigious bovine flow.
“But even worse, there was NO improvement in all cause mortality with the vaccines.”
One would like to assume that IR took into account the population characteristics of the trial subjects…….
@NumberWang: “One would like to assume that IR took into account…”
Assume what you like, mate; you already know that the only thing IR took into account is the texture, shape, and taste of her own delicious asshole.
It must be Indigenous Antivax Sheeples Day.
“When fighting this verbal war, it’s easy to focus on the lunatic fringe of the other tribe.”
Problem is, it’s gotten increasingly difficult to separate the lunatic fringe of antivax-dom from supposedly reasonable antivaxers. James Lyons-Weiler shares your frustration, as he has become exasperated with the antivax contingent who are also germ theory deniers. Or at least what he calls “virus deniers” like Thomas Cowan, who L-W attacks in a current Substack article. L-W thinks such folk have forfeited all right to be taken seriously. Of course, Loon-Weiler himself, while claiming to be pro-vaccine, has described vaccines as “filthy, nasty vials of toxic sludge” among other things, and thus forfeited the right to be taken seriously long ago.
Arguing that a drug whose use is not correlated with a reduction in all-cause mortality must be suspected of causing dire outcomes is not quite on the level of typical Mike Adams crazy, but it’s bizarrely nutty in its own right.
Maybe we should ban Pepto-Bismol, as recent sales in the U.S. parallel a rise in all-cause mortality. There’s even a not-so-subtle campaign to get us to take this undoubtedly dangerous drug. Fauci is lining his pockets as we speak.
Obligatory.
Where did you an idea vaccines do not educe mortality among vaccinated (unvaccinated are another thing).There is data from Europe:
Chapman LAC, Barnard RC, Russell TW, Abbott S, van Zandvoort K, Davies NG, Kucharski AJ. Unexposed populations and potential COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths in European countries as per data up to 21 November 2021. Euro Surveill. 2022 Jan;27(1):2101038. doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2022.27.1.2101038. PMID: 34991776; PMCID: PMC8739340.
Oldish, but we are speaking about clinical trials.
There were, too, lot of follow up studies after the clinical trials. Result were very similar.
Probably still cruising on the fact that back when vaccination was just getting started, the people who were recently vaccinated were dying at a noticeably higher rate than [pre-COVID] average!
Which was both entirely true and to miss entirely a subtle but critical point: that the people who were first to receive vaccines were the elderly, medically vulnerable, and high-risk frontline workers; i.e. all groups who already die at a noticeably higher rate than [pre-COVID] average.
This error is not so much a transient brain fart caused by honest ignorance of cohorts and bias as willful, motivated, calculated decision to confirm the already-decreed conclusion “Vaccine Bad” with no concern for the obvious next question: Why?
…
At this point anyone with more than an ounce of braincell would notice a pattern: the newly vaccinated who are dying are frequently the elderly; i.e. not an average [sub-]population, not by a long shot. Thus the next step would be compare the death rate of that cohort to the current death rate of old people who aren’t vaccinated and the historical death rate of old people pre-COVID.
Compensating for any remaining inconsistencies in ages and lifestyles so that the only variable under test is death rate after vax to death rate without vax, as long as the first is noticeably lower than the second then the vaccine is effective at reducing death. And if that lower rate is also close to/same as the death rate pre-COVID then deaths due to vaccination are few or zero—meaning the vaccine is pretty darn safe too (perhaps not 100% perfectly safe but certainly way, waaaay safer than COVID).
…
Antivaxxers do not do this last bit, of course.
They have already gotten the answer they want and will defend it to the death, quite literally: of truth, of others, of even themselves.
And still they can’t figure why they earn the respect of shit on a shoe. The knowledge is true, after all; even we don’t deny it!
Probably quite proud of themselves too, knowing we’re too dumb to spot their crafty lie of omission.
Truth or Lies; to them there’s no difference. Neither has innate worth, only use as a weapon.
A prominent antivax pediatrician, Paul Thomas M.D. won’t be practicing in Oregon much longer. From the Oregon Medical Board:
“On October 6, 2022, Licensee entered into a Stipulated Order with the Board for unprofessional or dishonorable conduct; making false or misleading statements regarding the efficacy of Licensee’s treatments; repeated and gross negligence in the practice of medicine; willfully violating a provision of ORS chapter 677; failing to comply with a Board request; and failing to report an adverse action. With this Order Licensee surrenders his Oregon medical license while under investigation, effective 60 days from the date of the Order, and agrees to never reapply for a license to practice medicine in Oregon.”
Maybe Thomas can find a spiritual home in a more antivaccine-friendly state like Florida. Or he can follow the example of others who’ve relinquished a medical career, maintaining a comfortable income through unofficial “consultations”, writing books, paid speaking engagements, selling supplements and being a headliner at antivax conferences and on Woo Boat cruises.
Good start.
Of course, that fucker will land on his feet no problem. The suckers all love a good martyr, as they sharpen the knives to make lots more.
I had heard something about this over the weekend. I might have to look into it.
Sadly, my blog output is lagging again due to another real life grant deadline.
Another candidate for martyrdom?
Dr Mercola reports that he has experienced a cyberattack** which shut his site down ( and other on-line activities) and then, his headquarters were damaged by the recent hurricane: it seems they were near the landfall ***. He relates how his workers suffered loss of homes and vehicles and needed to shelter in place at his facilities. He asks for help because his store is now up and running and you can buy stuff to support his efforts- rebuilding, helping employees and the community at large.
He is probably worth about 100 million USD.
Mercola is both an altie prevaricator and an actual physician ( who doesn’t see patients). Married to Erin Elizabeth of Health Nut News.
Other alties living nearby include Gary Null, who claims no ill effects from the storm and Sayer Ji who lives in a town that was devastated.
I hate to invoke Schadenfreude because many people were terribly harmed by the storm but, OK for these guys especially ones that tell followers to relocate to these locales..
** frequent cyberattacks at prn as well
*** he must have re-located to the west coast of Florida, he used to be on the east coast
Of course he does! This is Business 101:
Q. What is a product worth?
A. Whatever a customer is willing to pay for it.
Mercola’s product, same as all these grifters, is not the packet or the potion. It is the ego stroke.
And now here he is: honest, decent, heroic Joe, struggling mightily to save his poor, desperate fellow humans from dreadful natural calamity—and he needs your help to do it!
That product will clear the shelves. It sells itself, and he knows it.