Guest post by Ken McLeod
On 31 March 2020, the Chiropractic Board of Australia issued a statement1 to all Australian chiropractors that they:
“should not make advertising claims on preventing or protecting patients and health consumers from contracting COVID-19 or accelerating recovery from COVID-19. To do so involves risk to public safety and may be unlawful advertising. For example, we are seeing some advertising claims that spinal adjustment/manipulation, acupuncture and some products confer or boost immunity or enhance recovery from COVID-19 when there is no acceptable evidence in support.
“Advertisers must be able to provide acceptable evidence of any claims made about treatments that benefit patients/health consumers. We will consider taking action against anyone found to be making false or misleading claims about COVID-19 in advertising. If the advertiser is a registered health practitioner, breaching advertising obligations is also a professional conduct matter which may result in disciplinary action, especially where advertising is clearly false, misleading or exploitative.”
What could be clearer than that?
So what was published by a registered chiropractor on 16 March 2020, two weeks before the Board’s warning, and is still on his website 10 months later? You guessed it, a video on the website of chiropractor Morgan Weber, a video ‘Coronavirus – Balancing the hysteria…’, 2 in which he says:
– the COVID-19 19 pandemic is all ‘hysteria’ and ‘what have we got to worry about’, because ‘Our body, (has) 51 trillion cells’ vs ‘A one single-cell virus,’ (sic.) ‘51 trillion cells that orchestrate our immune system, every function. Yet we seem to have more faith and trust in ‘medicine’ than we do in this amazing body we call home. Crazy, right? Crazy.’
Weber further downplays the crisis by saying ‘Enough of this nonsense about the big bad bug and all the worry about washing your hands.’
Weber, after denigrating evidence-based medicine, recommends instead:
– ‘Keep up with your chiropractic adjustments….’
Weber is a registered chiropractor practicing at Wave Chiropractic, Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia. His AHPRA registration is CHI0001601286. Weber’s webpage home site is at https://www.wavechiropractic.com.au/index.php
WEBER’S VIDEO:
Since 16 March 2020 Weber has posted a video on his website a video ‘Coronavirus – Balancing the hysteria…’. 3
Weber says:
BEGINS TRANSCRIPT
00:00. Hi everyone. Hasn’t it been fascinating lately? The news, the hysteria. Everything has gone almost upside-down. Crazy. I found it so fascinating.
00:12. So today we thought we would have a bit of a chat and sort of balance the scales and the story getting told out there in the mass media. I hope you’ve got your toilet paper stockpiled and sorted ha ha ha ha. It’s hilarious to see people coming and going with huge amounts under their arms as they come out of the grocery store. Crazy isn’t it, crazy times.
00:42. So let’s think about if for a second, and if we bypass all that hysteria and noise and just think a little bit about this. Our body, 51 trillion cells. A one single-cell virus. My gosh. What have we got to worry about? We have this amazing system. 51 trillion cells that orchestrate our immune system, every function. Yet we seem to have more faith and trust in ‘medicine’ than we do in this amazing body we call home. Crazy, right? Crazy.
01:20 ‘The other story, the other sort of facts behind what we do, and I (unintelligible) told a fair few of you of this already, how the immune system works. So, across the road from Waves, we have a really kind of bare patch of grass, just before you go onto the beach. Now if I took a handful of seeds. Now this is an analogy for how our system works, and how amazing our body’s immune system is. If I took a bunch of seeds and dropped them onto the ground, some grass seeds, not all of those seeds would take. There needs to be a hospitable environment, a moist warm sunlit area for those seeds to take, then root and grow into a fully mature grass and perpetuate on and on and on. However that area across the road is barren rocky sandy and yuck. You drop those seeds, most of those are going to blow off and away because that area is a no-go, it’s got a strong resistance, a barrier, a non-hospitable environment.
02:18. Now that is how our immune system works. Now the story I feel that should be out there, is what are you doing to nurture your body to do the best it can be, to have the strongest barrier it can be.
02: 30. Enough of this nonsense about the big bad bug and all the worry about washing your hands. ‘Cause I tell you what, if you are neglecting to nurture your body and the 51 trillion cells to be the best they can be, watch out, that may not be enough, washing your hands.
02:47. So let’s talk about that. How do we orchestrate a healthy system that has a strong immune barrier to anything that’s out there? And really guys, this should be a day-to-day forte (?) for everyone who just wants to be their best.
03:00. So let’s go through it. Boosting your barriers. You need to trust your body. First and foremost, the 51 trillion cells are remarkable. Trust in that.
03: 12. You’ve gotta eat well. Eat well with nutrient-dense, mineral-dense foods. Stay well hydrated. Move. You’ve gotta move well. Exercise your body regularly, moving all parts in all directions. Enjoy healthy sunlight exposure. You’ve gotta think well. Follow your passions and purpose. Think positively. Perhaps switch off the TV.
03:41. Keep up with your chiropractic adjustments. An optimal brain and body communication via the nervous system is vital so ensuring your body is in a surviving state. Do all these things guys. Up the ante of them. Go in harder with your (unintelligible) exercises, your hydration etcetera, and trust in your body. It’s amazing. It’s built with this in-built protective mechanism. Foster it. Help to balance that story out there, and help people to take on a more useful interpretation of this current crisis out there.
04:19. I hope this was of value and you guys enjoy.
END TRANSCRIPT
The regulator has been informed. As the world’s death toll rockets past 2 million, we wait to see if they really meant what they said about disciplinary action.
90 Responses to AUSTRALIAN CHIROPRACTOR SAYS COVID-19 IS JUST “HYSTERIA”
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The video is at https://www.dropbox.com/s/5a79oeob6qwfdjd/Balancing%20The%20Hysteria.mp4?dl=0
Ken McLeod, I am seriously unimpressed with this article. You spent hours scouring the internet to find one chiropractor who is making dangerous comments. This can be dealt with by the APRHA system of complaints. In your search for this, you must have passed so many articles about other health care providers who are even worse.
Such as:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-most-common-pain-relief-drug-in-the-world-has-been-linked-to-risk-taking-behaviour
https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/88918?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2020-10-03&eun=g528268d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202020-10-03&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition
and of course, this:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/89081
You could have included this, but did not:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90536#:~:text=America's%20Frontline%20Doctors%2C%20an%20organization,of%20masks%20to%20claims%20that
This is not a case of “what-aboutism”, but merely pointing out to you that you are being inconsistent with your posting, to the extent that it is cherry-picking to the extreme. Like Prof. Ernst, you get a mark of “E” for effort, but an “A” for pseudo-academic underarm bowling.
@GibleyGibley
Wow, so many criticisms. Let me address them at leisure.
‘You spent hours scouring the internet to find one chiropractor who is making dangerous comments. ‘
Wrong. I found this by accident while looking for something else entirely unrelated. It took about one second.
‘This can be dealt with by the APRHA system of complaints.’
Which is why I reported it to the appropriate State regulator, as I have said elsewhere in this page. In this case it is the Queensland Office of the Health Ombudsman, not AHPRA.
‘In your search for this, you must have passed so many articles about other health care providers who are even worse.’
As I said, I was not searching for this chiropractor. But so what? Should Weber be ignored because other people do it as well? I can’t see that working as a defense in Court: “Your Honour, I admit I did rob that bank, but lots of other people have robbed banks as well, and they stole more money than I did””.”
‘This is not a case of “what-aboutism”,
It sure does look like it. If you are concerned about the conduct of other practitioners you are welcome to submit your own complaints. It’s not my responsibility.
‘but merely pointing out to you that you are being inconsistent with your posting, to the extent that it is cherry-picking to the extreme.’
Not inconsistent at all. You should get your facts right before you criticize.
Cudos for replying;
I rarely can bring myself to respond to transparently daft stuff like this.
Thanks Professor. GibleyGibley seems to be locked into the same daft logic that has got Weber into such trouble.
This is Prof Ernst’s personal blog where he chooses to discuss CAM’s malfeasance. Rest assured incompetent and malicious medical “professionals” such as “America’s Frontline Doctors” are thoroughly excoriated elsewhere.
And yes, what you’re doing is totally “whataboutism”. But you already know that, being just another Liar for the Cause.
It looks like the video (and a follow-up) has been taken down, but a record of its existence still sits on the Wave Chiropractic blog page.
Disturbingly, it is rumoured that Macquarie University’s Chiropractic degree programs are being moved out of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, into its Faculty of Medicine Health and Human Sciences. This is causing a great deal of distress for those in the latter faculty who would rather not be associated with them.
Looking up Weber’s life story and credentials, one finds the usual pattern: a few personal experiences leading up to a firm belief in quackery with ditto ‘education’.
The only remaining question is what exactly studying ‘science’ at the University of Queensland entails in his case. When this refers to real science, then Weber must have flunked all his classes, given his unshakeable belief in pseudoscience.
Richard Rasker wrote: “Looking up Weber’s life story and credentials, one finds the usual pattern: a few personal experiences leading up to a firm belief in quackery with ditto ‘education’.”
Interestingly, Chiropractic Economics magazine, in 2019, surveyed chiropractors in the U.S. and the results showed that more than 94% of them came to chiropractic either through a referral from a DC (31.4%) or from a personal experience with chiropractic (62.9%).
Ref: https://www.chiroeco.com/best-chiropractic-colleges/
It seems to be confirmation that most chiropractors have very poor critical thinking skills.
years of working and discussing with SCAM providers taught me that most have had an epiphany-type of experience.
https://edzardernst.com/2013/12/the-homeopathic-epiphany-and-its-role-in-creating-true-believers/
Edzard said:
“years of working and discussing with SCAM providers taught me that most have had an epiphany-type of experience.”
this would accord with the religious like mania with which most SCAM acolytes avow their belief in their particular SCAM and their immunity to any rational argument or scientific evidence to the contrary.
It always seems to be about deep “faith” and unshakeable “belief” and they seem to take this as a matter of pride and honour. It is rare to get “apostates” or any who have seen through the SCAM and become unbelievers. So it is never about critical or rational thinking or about science or evidence – it is more about conspiracy theories and cults.
I suspect it also has to do with self-awareness and the ability to accept that one can make mistakes and change one’s position on a subject in the light of new information.
Also the ability to avoid “black and white” thinking and accept that someone who you have perhaps admired may have been wrong and or say dishonest or immoral rather than insisting upon their saintly status in the light of new evidence.
Personally I have always had the greatest admiration for anyone who has had the grace and wisdom to change their opinion in the face of new evidence and explain why.
It is disturbing that anyone who thinks so poorly and is so badly educated, should be messing with people’s health.
The comments from 00:42 about 1 virus particle (woeful lack of understanding, surely, in referring to a “single-cell virus” – virus particles are not cells) in the body’s 51 trilion cells seem particularly disingenouos.
One can only suggest that he injects a millionth of a gram of pure Clostridium botulinum toxin – a truly tiny tiny quantity – and see what happens. By his reasoning, that tiny amount compared with the weight of his body, should do nothing.
Worldometers places Australia 163rd in “total cases / 1,000,000 population”
With maximum deaths around 20 per day peaking last August,with 2 deaths October 28th and 1 death November 30 and 1 death December 28th:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
do you have a point?
@EE
“The regulator has been informed. As the world’s death toll rockets past 2 million”
Correction;
Some part of 2 million people died with Covid-19, not from Covid-19.
Oh cute, RG’s a COVID denier too.
@has
denier ??
I suppose so, if denying that people that have died by auto accident, gun shot, and other various obvious accidents are being included in the count because they died WITH the virus. Does this pass the smell test ?
“The intent is … if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that,” she added.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/birx-says-government-is-classifying-all-deaths-of-patients-with-coronavirus-as-covid-19-deaths-regardless-of-cause
Prove me wrong … has
why prove you wrong?
you have to prove that your notions are right!
A nine month-old Trump-hump on the official GOP propaganda channel? You must be joking.
@has
I do not understand what your link is intended to support.
But, you are wrong…sir
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/death-certificate-data-covid-19-as-the-underlying-cause-of-death/
1 in 13!
@EE
The point is, why would anybody do that ? Is that “SCIENTIFIC” ?
It would appear there is another agenda at play.
This is why there are skeptics.
Except that link doesn’t say what you said. That page describes how to fill out a death certificate correctly: where COVID is the cause it appears in part 1; where something else is the cause and COVID is a comorbidity it appears in part 2. It does not say that the 2M official COVID deaths are based on incorrectly-filled death certificates where COVID wrongly appears in part 1 instead of part 2. Nor does it say that correctly-filled death certificates where COVID appears in part 2 are included in that 2M number.
I get that epidemiology is complicated and often not explained in terms readily accessible to laypeople (or, for that matter, non-medical/yellow journalists), but really. If I can dismantle your arguments for you then you’ve no excuse for not dismantling them yourself, preferably before you inflict them on anyone else.
@ has
I agree with you – but you are arguing with someone whose source of “facts” is an April 7 2020 “Fox News” story about the Trump administration which he evidently believes verbatim………
I suspect that the link describing how to complete a death certificate was well beyond his reading comprehension skills (likely somewhere south of the average Sun reader) so you may well be wasting your time.
It’s all part of the conspiracy you see – to manufacture as many deaths as possible from a harmless hoax virus that’s really just an excuse to lock up all the people and make millions for the vaccine manufacturers and enable Bill Gates to fit us with trackers.
I just wish somebody would explain to me WHY they want us all locked up, and why Big Pharma didn’t think up a much more profitable plague that required a daily drug rather than a one-off vaccine? Very poor planning in my book.
Also killing all those people – dead people can’t have vaccines so they’re literally a dead loss.
Also……why does Bill Gates want to know where we all are and what is he going to do with all that data?
Try to sell us all copies of Windows !!?
ANd how do you keep a conspiracy that big quiet all this time? I mean it involves all the governments in all the countries in all the world, the UN, the WHO & & & & &…..surely SOMEONE would have leaked it by now?
As my granny used to say – they’re not all locked up yet.
@has
We can keep going as long as you want to deny.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/questions-over-the-accuracy-of-how-the-state-tracks-covid-deaths/283-0b1b7b6c-695e-4313-92cf-a4cfd7510721
“Deaths in which a patient hospitalized for any reason within 14 days of a positive COVID-19 test result dies in the hospital or within the 60 days following discharge.
Deaths in which COVID-19 is listed as a primary or contributing cause of death on a death certificate.
We count COVID-19 deaths this way because the virus can often have effects on an individual’s health that may complicate their recovery from other diseases and conditions, even injuries, and indirectly contribute to their death. Another reason is because OHA is using this data to track the spread of the disease, and to create actionable steps for stopping its spread.”
@RG
the link you provided comes up as inaccessible – what is it supposed to be?
you have had the most common definitions laid out for you several times quite clearly – what more do you want?
most authorities actually agree that the count of 2 million + is in fact likely an underestimate for a variety of reasons.
aside from unreliable sources like Fox News etc there is no evidence that road traffic accidents and such are being reported as Covid related deaths which is just silly and another form of Covid denialism.
this is simply another form of conspiracy theory related thinking – what purpose do you suppose is served by making out that more people are dying of Covid than of other illnesses? what great scheme is being hatched?
have a read of this instead:
https://www.covidfaq.co/Claim-People-are-dying-with-Covid-but-not-of-Covid-e9d5af56419a438bb626bb08271b3b69
RG,
In order to understand how covid-19 is behaving and in particular what effect various public health measures are having it is essential to be able to make comparisons between different places (whether it is cities, states or countries) and different times. In order to do this there needs to be a straightforward, unambiguous and cultrue-independent definition of a covid death so that if we compare, say, Italy in May last year with Northern England in December we know that everybody is talking about the same thing. The definition used is therefore death where there has been a positive PCR test for the presence of the coronavirus within the previous 28 days.
This will inevitably include individuals whose death was quite clearly due to something else, and it means that nobody needs to worry about how to classify those falling into a grey area such as whether or not impaired judgement due to illness may have contributed to a road traffic accident.
It will also exclude all those who died from covid-19 who did not have a positive test for it, such as sudden cardiac deaths in the community caused by covid myocarditis, deaths at home in those who never sought medical help or deaths in hospital in those where the diagnosis was made on the basis of history and clinical findings in the absence of a positive test (very often the sickest patients have the virus deep in their lungs, in their hearts or in other internal organs and not in any site readily amenable to swabbing).
When the number of confirmed covid deaths is compared with the excess of all deaths over what is expected, it is clear that this figure is an underestimate. In other words the number of people who die of covid-19 without the diagnosis being confirmed microbiologically is greater than the number of people who have a confirmed infection but coincidentally die of something else.
The point is not to get a true figure, which is impossible, but to have something simple which everyone can agree on, and more importantly, which can be used to inform public health policy.
Isn’t that obvious? Apple, Facebook and Amazon already have this information from our smartphone use and he wants to remain competitive.
John Travis,
If they are not being reported as Covid deaths then they should be. As soon as you start making the definition more complicated, and requiring somebody to make a judgement on whether a particular death was caused by Covid or not, then the numbers become subjective and are much less useful for comparison.
@RG: Link is geoblocked, alas. But I’ll assume it wasn’t complete garbage for sake of further argument.
However, as Dr Money-Kyrle has pointed out, your entire argument is spurious anyway, because science doesn’t reach conclusions based on a single thread of data but on comparing and combining all of the available threads into one:
If hospital-reported numbers were greater than excess deaths then, yes, it’d wise to revise down to avoid making things look worse than they are. But as it is, hospital reporting make the numbers look good. Meantime, as Dr JMK points out, standardizing the reporting criteria allows the pandemic’s progress to be reliably gauged over geography and time, providing useful answers to useful questions: which states are doing significantly worse than others; is the three-month trend going up or down; and so on.
In other words, the goal here is to measure relative numbers reliably, not absolute numbers. Meanwhile, you’re holding up a single absolute error bar in isolation and crying “Conspiracee!” But the truth is, the 2M figure is low. Precisely how far off it is we won’t know till well after this pandemic is ended and all the numbers are finally in. But right now knowing the exact death toll is less important than knowing if the rate of deaths is increasing (bad) or decreasing (good), which is what the real purpose of these numbers is. And thanks to Dr JMK for pointing that out, as I missed it myself. (See? I can learn, and admit that I’m still learning.)
Thus your original attempt to belittle the science and downplay the seriousness of the pandemic fails however you try to present it, because you don’t understand why things are being done the way they’re being done, and have no interest in learning either. You see something you don’t understand, and because it doesn’t conform to your naive expectation you immediately conclude that it is in the wrong. You don’t even contemplate the possibility that perhaps you might be missing something. Climate deniers (“it’s snowing!”) and moon hoaxers (“no stars!”) do the same thing. You’re not an honest actor, and neither are Fox. Your motivated reasoning is hanging out for all to see.
@john travis: “aside from unreliable sources like Fox News etc there is no evidence that road traffic accidents and such are being reported as Covid related deaths which is just silly and another form of Covid denialism.”
Also shooting deaths, which is a hilarious claim. Whereas the actual criteria are closer to what the NVICP uses: 1. is it proximal, and 2. is it plausible? Or “50% and a feather”. I mean, it’s possible the victim stepped to one side to evade a dangerous floating Coronavirus particle only to put themselves in front of a deadly case of lead poisoning instead, but it isn’t very likely.
But then, see: Firehosing. The goal here is not to convince people of one particular lie, but to flood the facts under a torrent of blatant lies until people no longer trust anything any more. (a.k.a. Russian Disinformation Loves This One Weird Trick!)
From here:
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/static-reports/mortality-surveillance/excess-mortality-in-england-latest.html
“Cumulative deaths since the 1st March, by date of registration, England”
Show that “excess deaths” by 8th Jan 2021 are 76,220, (over and above the 386,021 “expected deaths”), while the reported-with-covid number is 82,180.
@Bob: Worse: England is currently clocking around 10K new deaths each week, so since those stats were collated it’s already passed 100K and all our garbage Tory “leadership” can say is “it’s not our fault”. Yes, yes it totally is.
I think the 100,000 figure is for the whole of the UK, not England on its own.
correct
has on Wednesday 27 January 2021 at 10:27 said:
“…and all our garbage Tory “leadership” can say is “it’s not our fault”. Yes, yes it totally is.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide
@RG.
Cause of death attributable to COVID-19 19 is defined by the World Health Organisation in their document “INTERNATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR CERTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION (CODING) OF COVID-19 AS CAUSE OF DEATH, Based on ICD International Statistical Classification of Diseases (16 April 2020)”
They say “DEFINITION FOR DEATHS DUE TO COVID-19
A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death.
“A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer) and should be counted independently of pre-existing conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19.”
So the definition used by Johns Hopkins University for their statistics allows for comorbidities, but the recorded deaths must be directly attributable to COVID-19 19. Many COVID-19 – deniers claim that the numbers have been exaggerated by ignoring comorbidities but that is not the case.
As a postscript, as of today, the number of recorded deaths attributable to Covid19 is now 2,136,248.
I never provided any numbers of how many people, or what percentage died from the Wuhan virus.
My point was simply that the current number being reported…. is suspect. Again, many deaths attributed to covid-19 virus, are actually people that died with the virus, not from the virus. Furthermore, this is happening in many different countries.
https://theconversation.com/died-from-or-died-with-covid-19-we-need-a-transparent-approach-to-counting-coronavirus-deaths-145438
I don’t think you have understood what Dr M-K explained.
Out of interest, do you have an opinon on how many have died from COvid-19? Three? A million?
@David B
I have no opinion on how many patients have died from the Wuhan virus…. that was never my focus.
My only point is that whatever death count number we are given on any day is not accurate. This is because the authorities have included the patients that have died WITH the virus, rather than ONLY those patients that have died FROM the virus.
THAT’S IT !!
Nothing more to add.
Since the coining of the more formal names SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 words like Wuhan flu, Wuhan virus, China virus and Chinese virus are sometimes considered offensive and tend to be associated with political conservatism in America. Other informal names that do not associate the virus with China, like Coronavirus and Covid, are considered acceptable.
The scientific name Wuhanvirus refers to an unrelated virus which does not infect humans.
Wuhan virus was used in 1996 to describe a strain of H3N2 influenza more formally known as “A/Wuhan/359/95”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wuhan_virus
@ RG
your point has already been answered numerous times in several different ways and still you do not understand it.
it is rather evident that you do not wish to understand it or that your powers of comprehension must be incredibly diminished – one or the other.
there is no great conspiracy – the way deaths are being recorded is all proper and above board.
if you choose to see some grand hoax then that is your own private delusion which you may wish to share with other Fox news devotees but I doubt there are many others on this forum. Try Breitbart or Alex Jones.
Since you state unequivocally that the daily figure is not accurate, you clearly DO have an opinion.
You have ignored Dr M-K’s gracious explanation. You fail to condsider also the Fermi dictum that errors cancel out, leading to fairly accurate results.
That you have nothing more to add, may be considered a blessing for this Forum.
(And in respect of Profesor Ernst’s comment above, I do indeed consider the use of the term “Wuhan Virus” offensive, and deliberately provocative).
@EE
First of all, I couldn’t care less about what is offensive to somebody, I speak what is true in my opinion. Please don’t attempt to suppress me in your speech and thought control….are you associated with the Ministry of Truth ?
The term Wuhan virus was used my nearly all mainstream media worldwide for the first five or six weeks of the pandemic. You can not change history, even though you try.
Just because the WHO stepped in to change the name to something other than what was originally used to refer to the Wuhan virus, does not change the fact that the pandemic started in Wuhan China.
BRAVO!
almost without mistake in your English – except that after ‘first of all’ there sound be a ‘secondly’. but your writing is slowly getting there. time now to brush up on your thinking!
@ RG
“First of all, I couldn’t care less about what is offensive to somebody, I speak what is true in my opinion. Please don’t attempt to suppress me in your speech and thought control…”
spoken like a true sociopath! most of us at least try to avoid giving offence to innocent by-standers needlessly.
people can be offended by a great many things – part of being a member of a polite society, and being a decent person, is at least attempting to avoid giving offence unnecessarily to innocent people.
arguing that being reminded of that fact is in some way Orwellian is both a misunderstanding of Orwell and a typical response of sociopaths and fascists. It is also incredibly narcissistic – “I can say whatever the hell I like to whomever the hell I like!”
Are you a graduate of the Donald Trump school of “How to win friends and influence people” by any chance?
@EE
You are so predictable. When you don’t have a valid response, you change the subject.
what ‘valid response’?
you ousted yourself as a ‘conservative American’ who does not care who he offends.
I don’t think that requires a response.
@EE
lol…. another BS excuse
I’ve already stated here, with regard to the very same subject, that I have no offense to the Chinese people of Wuhan, or any part of China.
My problem is with the oppressive communist government of china. A government that offers it’s citizens no real individual rights as we enjoy in the free world. A government that has lied to us about the Wuhan virus. A government that pollutes the world with more waste and pollution than the rest of the world, but still gets a pass. A government that is practicing slavery. A government that does not offer freedom of religion. A government that steals products from other countries. If time allowed, I could go on longer, I think you get the point.
I have found that I can find common ground with peoples from all over the world. Furthermore I enjoy learning from foreign citizens how they live in their respective cultures. That said, there are a few Nation States that I take issue with, and they all oppress their citizens.
China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran….. are the main ones that I will identify, though Africa has some issues also. I speak against these offenders every opportunity I get. If you have a problem with that, I don’t care. You’re too busy applying labels to people (conservatives) to be concerned about REAL life matters.
I could not care less as to what might or might not be your problem. I do care however about offensive language, particularly if it relates to borderline racist language.
Only to paranoid minds engaged in motivated reasoning and bad faith arguments.
AGW liars pull the same nonsense when directly observing evidence—It’s snowing!—that flies in the face their naive, incorrect assumptions about how AGW works (they think everything gets equally warm): rather than review their own understanding to see if they might’ve missed something (umm…chaotic systems), they declare “Vast Scientific Conspiracy”, thus allowing them to defend their self-serving beliefs (“climate change is a lie so I have no obligation to do anything about it”) and feel superior to everyone else (“LOL, sheeple”).
In other words, the reported numbers are fine. They count all deaths where there COVID is a credible or confirmed cause, and any positive bias in the first is more than offset by COVID deaths they didn’t pick up; as confirmed by comparing excess deaths. They aren’t perfectly precise†, but they are predictable and repeatable, which is all that’s needed to gauge the pandemics progress from state to state and month to month.
Plus while they are imprecise, they are imprecise within a reasonable error margin and biased low, not high, which instantly demolishes the COVID deniers’ malicious claim of hospitals deliberately inflating the death toll. Which deniers only claim because they want to evade responsibility not only for protecting others against this disease but all for their own words and actions making that death toll far, far higher than it ever had to be.
And after all this you still go out of your way to maintain your lie, throwing up known propaganda sources and racist evasions, refusing to acknowledge other parties’ patient good-faith corrections, hiding behind nirvana and other logical fallacies, and generally engaging in well-recognized and well-worn denier tactics, familiar to anyone who has been following politics vs science for the last year.
You are a COVID denier. No because I claim it, but because multiple threads of evidence, which are all out in the open for anyone to check, all point to that conclusion, whereas evidence to the contrary is non-existent.
That’s how science works. Because it knows it’s imprecise and imperfect, acknowledges those limitations and compensates for them itself.
—
† Which is impossible while we’re still in the middle of it. The full death toll won’t be known for at least another year, once all the numbers are in and the epidemiologists are done collating and cross-checking, and drawing the error bars‡ onto the final result.
‡ And which won’t be done in Sharpie, unlike a certain malicious incompetent fraud who takes no responsibility at all.
@EE
Well mister
Did you notify the worldwide mainstream media that they are racist also for referring to for many weeks the flu that has been identified as beginning in Wuhan, that they are all racist also ? ….. hmmm
Furthermore, if it is in fact racist to refer to a pandemic by city or country. I’m sure I’m in good company with you, because I’m sure you have called the pandemic of 1917…. the Spanish flu. In fact, it continues today by that name, but I don’t hear the cries of racism.
Sometimes the folks pointing the finger are the true racist.
@has
I’m a covid denier ? … you’re funny
I got some symptoms, tested positive, took the Ivermectin(anti-viral treatment) and got over it in three days.
Now the red cross is asking me to donate plasma…. which I will do. I have not denied anything…. except the lies.
did I notify the world media?
no, but I might if they were trying to post stuff on my blog.
@ RG
since when is ivermectin an anti-viral? and whoever recommended it for Covid-19 was having a laugh – or are you yet again exhibiting your scientific illiteracy?
if you genuinely had Covid and recovered in three days it was most certainly nothing to do with ivermectin.
Well at least he won’t catch river blindness……
@ john travis
I dunno John
Evidently the Red Cross Blood donation believes I had the virus because I tested positive, so they seem to believe I had it. However, we all know that the test are not accurate, can we agree on that ? So that pretty much puts the whole survival rates into question …. huh ?
You seem to be an expert on my specific health record….. wow. I guess you know more about me than I know.
My symptoms, mild cough, mild fever, loss of smell for three days. I never claimed it was a tough disease to defeat, but plenty of others seem to think so. I took the Ivermectin as a precautionary measure, knowing that combating the virus in the early stages is important. In truth, I’ve had much worse head colds.
What makes Ivermectin an anti-viral remedy ?
The evidence I would argue. All thirteen people in my family that got the symptoms and tested positive used the Ivermectin as a first line of defense (since there really isn’t much available without being administered to and ICU). All recovered after using the Ivermectin…. including my 88 year old step-father and his wife. That equates to a 100% success rate.
So, either the Ivermectin might just be a remedy for a virus, or perhaps the virus is not more deadly than other viruses.
@ RG
so much nonsense here to decipher – you don’t seem to have a clue do you?
so you had a positive test at the Red Cross Blood donation but you don’t say what temporal relationship this has to your symptomatology or what kind of test it was. Of course we know you don’t really do science so it’s really all the same to you. so from this it’s impossible to say whether your symptoms were Covid-19 or not.
.” However, we all know that the test are not accurate, can we agree on that ? So that pretty much puts the whole survival rates into question …. huh ?”
er not, we cannot. I do not agree the tests are not accurate. Depending upon which tests you are talking about they are accurate within certain defined parameters which have been explained in this forum before. Some of these are remarkably accurate. Repeat testing makes them even more accurate. Denying that is just silly.
you also commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in presuming that because everyone got better after taking ivermectin that they must have gotten better BECAUSE of the ivermectin
how do you know they wouldn’t have got better anyway?
.”So, either the Ivermectin might just be a remedy for a virus, or perhaps the virus is not more deadly than other viruses”
you are drawing a definite conclusion from incomplete premises and insufficient evidence.
there was no control group – they might have gotten better anyway.
the group is far too small to draw any conclusions – you would need a far greater number of people
you would need to have a double blind randomized and matched controlled trial to decide whether this treatment has any merit – what you have here is an ANECDOTE.
Like I say – you have no concept of science.
The fact the some people may recover more easily from Covid-19 than others has no bearing of the “deadliness” of the virus overall. Once again you betray your scientific ignorance.
For one thing there are differing mutations of the virus – some of which appear to be more virulent than others.
Another is viral load – if a person only receives a tiny dose of virus they may suffer a much more minor infection than someone who receives a much more hefty dose.
People themselves react differently to the virus – this can be due to their own health or be idiosyncratic.
There are many other possible factors.
For ivermectin to have any real clinical effect it would likely have to be administered at 100 x the standard dosage. This is likely to prove a bar to its practical use due to side-effects!
The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel’s Statement on the Use of Ivermectin for the Treatment of COVID-19
Last Updated: January 14, 2021
Recommendation
The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) has determined that currently there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19. Results from adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted clinical trials are needed to provide more specific, evidence-based guidance on the role of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19.
Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell culture. However, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that ivermectin doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans would be required to achieve the plasma concentrations necessary to duplicate the drug’s antiviral efficacy in vitro.4,5 Even though ivermectin appears to accumulate in lung tissue, with the doses used in most clinical trials, predicted systemic plasma and lung tissue concentrations are much lower than 2 µM, the half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.6,7
It is therefore highly unlikely that ivermectin had any role in your family’s recovery from Covid, if it was Covid.
@EE
Professor
Are you familiar with the pandemic named “Asian flu”, that occurred in 1957 ? Yes, a global pandemic that killed between one and four million people.
Are you familiar with the pandemic named “Hong Kong flu” that occurred in 1968 ? Yes another global pandemic that also killed between one and four million people.
I suppose the would mush not have been woke enough at this time to keep their “racism” from naming pandemics. Yet, we continue to refer to them as such today…. no name changes.
“Here are 17 other diseases named after populations or places:
West Nile Virus
Named after the West Nile District of Uganda discovered in 1937.
Guinea Worm
Named by European explorers for the Guinea coast of West Africa in the 1600s.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Named after the mountain range spreading across western North America first recognized first in 1896 in Idaho.
Lyme Disease
Named after a large outbreak of the disease occurred in Lyme and Old Lyme, Connecticut in the 1970s.
Ross River Fever
Named after a mosquito found to cause the disease in the Ross River of Queensland, Australia by the 1960s. The first major outbreak occurred in 1928.
Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever
Named after its 1940s discovery in Omsk, Russia.
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever
Named in 1976 for the Ebola River in Zaire located in central Africa.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)
Also known as “camel flu,” MERS was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and all cases are linked to those who traveled to the Middle Eastern peninsula.
Valley Fever
Valley Fever earned its nickname from a 1930s outbreak San Joaquin Valley of California, though its first case came from Argentina.
Marburg Virus Disease
Named after Marburg, Germany in 1967.
Norovirus
Named after Norwalk, Ohio after an outbreak in 1968.
Zika Fever
First discovered in 1947 and named after the Zika Forest in Uganda.
Japanese Encephalitis
Named after its first case in Japan in 1871.
German Measles
Named after the German doctors who first described it in the 18th century. The disease is also sometimes referred to as “Rubella.”
Spanish Flu
While the true origins of the Spanish Flu remain unknown, the disease earned its name after Spain began to report deaths from the flu in its newspapers.
Lassa Fever
Named after the being found in Lassa, Nigeria in 1969.
Legionnaire’s Disease
Named in 1976 following an outbreak of people contracting the lung infection after attending an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/17-diseases-named-after-places-or-people/
I rest my case…. next.
I rest my case….
no, you don’t have one!
@EE
You haven’t responded with any evidence as yet. Just virtue signaling, and finger pointing accusations. I’ve given you the evidence.
You’re nothing but a quack.
thank you for the compliment.
what evidence do you want to demonstrate that the terminology you used repeatedly for COVID-19 is considered offensive by many?
[what further evidence do I need to ban you from this blog? I think none]
RG,
Thank-you for your interesting list of disease names and their origins. I wasn’t aware of all of them, though one I particularly like is Christmas disease which was named after the patient in whom it was first identified.
The names you have listed are all officially accepted, rightly or wrongly. However, Wuhan virus is the official name of a different infection altogether so it is incorrect to use it to refer to SARS-CoV-2.
I don’t know who is likely to be offended by the use of the term – you can always find somebody who is offended by something. However, Donald Trump used it deliberately to stir up racist feelings, or at least that is how it appears to those of us who have been entertained by American politics from a safe distance for the past four years (I am sure there are many Europeans who feel a similar mixture of horrow, disbelief and amusement when contemplating Brexit). Ever since then, anybody copying him by using the words “Wuhan virus” in the same context is liable to be regarded as expressing racist views, whatever their actual intent.
Your local media may have been referring to the Wuhan virus originally, but the connotations of words change with time and events, and I would guess that many of them are using different language now.
While I am pleased to hear about the favourable experiences of your own family members, I should point out the the UK has just mourned its 100,000th covid death while the toll worldwide is now well over two million. The parochial views that you have expressed here over the years paint a picture of a paranoid survivalist living in a bunker with his arsenal of assault weapons. However the very fact that you take part in discussions on this international forum shows that this caricature can’t be entirely accurate. Personally I think we would both enjoy an evening spent getting drunk together…
I think his point is “public health measures against COVID-19 have been generally pretty successful in Australia, though they could have been better (viz. the Jun-Oct 2020 outbreak in Victoria).”
There are a lot of Stupids around, yes a lot.
Why would one see a chiropractor for COVID or seek advice from them on viruses? What does lower back pain/musculoskeletal issues have to do with viruses? I am still in awe, millions seek a chiropractor for detrimental health conditions. Like seeking a foot doctor for lung issues, at least aforementioned have medical degrees.
Jim,
At least a foot doctor doesn’t claim that problems with the feet cause disease elsewhere by blocking the flow of energy. Unless they are a reflexologist.
“Only 3.1% (IQR: 1.6%-6.1%) of the general population sought chiropractic care for visceral/non-musculoskeletal conditions.”
Chiropractic & Manual Therapies volume 25, Article number: 35 (2017)
3.1% of the “general population” is still 200,000,000 people. Or were you trying to downplay your malfeasance some other way? Because medical malpractice is medical malpractice, whether it’s 1 or one million.
I would have to look at those 15 papers but i suspect it is…of those who sought chiropractic care, 3.1% did so for visceral/nonMSK complaints.
In the US that would be around 1 million people.
Might be, but that’s a very different sentence to your original quotation, so someone’s been sloppy somewhere.
(3.1% of the US population is ~9M. Dunno what % of US uses chiropractors, but I guess you’re working on a tenth of that.)
Utilization is around 10%.
So 3.1% of that population makes more sense.
So in Australia, close to 1 million sought treatment from a chiropractor for visceral/non–musculoskeletal conditions? My millions should have been thousands for Australia. I was thinking US, if so, that would put that percentage to millions.
“My millions should have been thousands for Australia.”
Hundreds of thousands; but hey, what’s a magnitude between friends? Alties are often out by 5 or 6 decimal places and still think absolutely nothing of it; heck, the homeopaths are out by an entire universe!
Jim,
Your understanding of percentages seems to differ from most people’s. Or maybe not – a friend of mine told me that when she was working for a national newspaper selling advertising space somebody asked everybody in the department “what is 60% of 40?” and almost none of them could give a correct answer. This is now the first question I ask any local politician canvassing votes door to door.
“Your understanding of percentages seems to differ from most people’s.”
I think that was an accident of phrasing rather than math. I took it to mean applying DC’s 3.1% to the US population (~300M), which does indeed yield a number in the millions range (~9M).
““what is 60% of 40?” and almost none of them could give a correct answer. This is now the first question I ask any local politician canvassing votes door to door.”
LOL. (Although I have to admit I had to math it myself: 60% = ⅗; 40 ÷ 5 = 8; 8 × 3 = 24. Terrible rusty; on a good day would’ve had that off the top of my head.)
But a good question to ask, given pols’ own enthusiasm for using percentages in place of absolute numbers, or vice-versa, whenever they’ve got something to hide—now they’ve no reason for not quoting both!
“a national newspaper selling advertising space somebody asked everybody in the department “what is 60% of 40?” and almost none of them could give a correct answer. This is now the first question I ask any local politician canvassing votes door to door”.
Haha, that made me smile. I got the answer 24 in my head OK, but I am not at all a numbers person, and checked on a calculator just to be sure!
Where I particularly struggle with percentages is where they say something like “there has been a two hundred percent increase in cases this year compared to last year. So, if there were twenty cases last year, were there forty this year, or sixty? Is the “two hundred percent increase” INSTEAD of last year’s base figure, or ADDED ON to last year’s base figure? I guess the former?
For me it would be mentally easier if they said “there have been one and a half times as many cases this year or twice as many or thrice as many etc.
But I digress…..
Confused, the percentage of 3.1 to US or Australia populations was correct, if not, please explain where I messed up? I used simple mathematics to form my conclusion. Maybe most people are right and I am wrong.
Jim,
In that case I owe you an apology. Sometimes it is difficult to follow an entire thread in this blog and it wasn’t clear to me from your post what calculation you were making.
Julian
Dr. Julian,
Thank you for responding, was really thinking my math was off but my brain kept going to same figures. No apology needed, we all do what you stated, why I asked the question.
@Ken McCleod
Thanks for posting and submitting a complaint to AHPRA.
Zero tolerance for this BS.
Do you have copies of the other video’s as I would like to submit a complaint to AHPRA as well.
Any other Australian Chiropractors who would like to submit a complaint here is the AHPRA page:
https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Notifications/Concerned-about-a-health-practitioner.aspx
You can also submit a complaint to the Office of the Health Ombudsman in Queensland:
https://www.oho.qld.gov.au/
And
Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribinal (QCAT):
https://www.qcat.qld.gov.au/
I have checked the Australian legal database (AustLii) for decisions and set the filters to Queensland and searched for “Weber”.
No hits.
Sorry, that was the only video I have relevant to this particular chiropractor.
@Ken McLeod
All good.
Gathering all the information into one complaint for AHPRA.
Submitted a complaint with link to the Dropbox video.
Thanks, ‘Critical_Chiro’
I would appreciate a copy of your complaint, so that I can learn for future complaints. It would be kept in confidence of course. I’m at [email protected]. Be sure to remove all features identifying yourself.
I see Weber took his video down as soon as he received the complaint from the regulator. If he really believed in what he was saying about the pandemic being just ‘hysteria’ he would have left it there and defended it against criticism.
Usually AHPRA CBA have a three step complaints process where few would be stupid/stubborn enough to escalate it to the third step.
I recall at the beginning of the pandemic that AHPRA CBA said they would have zero tolerance for these claims and would take swift action. Maybe this was the test case that triggered this AHPRA CBA’s directive.
Would still expect some sort of disciplinary action and conditions placed on his registration.
https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Registration/Registers-of-Practitioners.aspx?q=CHI0001601286&t=dS9vyeZhFzV7uo2rJQsK
None so far.
Disappointing.
It’s made the press in Australia.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/chiropractor-forced-to-take-down-video-on-coronavirus-claiming-nonsense-about-big-bad-bug/news-story/57390e8ab06cce03ba5eba8e23f7f694
Well, you asked for support with evidence. How about data provided by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, which shows a 2020 mortality rate that is the same as 2008? Will that do?
https://www.markavis.org/2021/09/03/covid-hysteria-the-case-of-the-uk/
Quite simply, it is a hysteria. The UK was supposedly hard hit?
You consider your blog a valid source? Don’t make me laugh.
Btw, your article only repeats the same false evidence and refers to a selective choice of data so readily shared among corona deniers.
The source is the UK Office for National Statistics. I refer to the blog, rather than the original document because there is some additional material in addition to the ONS statistics. There is a direct link to the ONS statistics that I cite. What about the UK’s Office for National Statistics mortality statistics is ‘false evidence’?
And there it is – a smear that I am a ‘corona denier’ – using the term denier as the method of smearing. I do not at any point deny that the virus is real, that people have died from it. I simply point out that, according to the ONS, the mortality rate for 2020 is not very high at all.
I am not being selective in my evidence. If the virus is truly very lethal, then this would show up in the mortality rate statistics. The statistics for mortality rates show that it is not that serious i.e. the mortality rate of 2020 rose to the same level as 2008.
You are someone who dismisses with vague hand waving and smears. However, what, precisely, is wrong with the ONS data?
You have no answer, of course, except hand waving and smearing.
Sadly, this is where debate has fallen.
Well, Mark, it seems that you of a mindset with the crank chiropractor above, who just can’t believe that Covid 19 is anything more than ‘just hysteria.’ If he, and you, went to reputable sites for information rather than seek to confirm your bias, you would find that Covid 19 is indeed a crisis. Go for instance, to the:
– World Health Organisation which shows a confirmed death toll of 4,602,882, (https://covid19.who.int/)
– World O Meter 4,643,454 (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/)
– The Economist estimated global excess deaths has ‘the actual toll is 15.4m people. We find that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies between 9.5m and 18.5m additional deaths.’ (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates)
No wonder chiropractors are held in such low esteem, when such incompetence is their Standard Operating Procedure.
You are still not addressing the data I provide. This data is mortality rates, from the UK’s ONS. How is it wrong?
This is what matters – how many people are dying in excess of any normal year.
You compare me with the chiropractor, to smear me by association. I am not that person, not saying the same thing, and showing very, very solid evidence for my position.
As for your statistics, the UK shows a high death toll from Covid, and death from Covid is even included in the ONS report. But the overall mortality rate just shows this is displacement for deaths from other causes – a small uptick in the mortality rate due to Covid – but no more than that.
Explain how this is possible, that the mortality rate is the same as 2008, if Covid is as bad as they hysteria claims.