MD, PhD, MAE, FMedSci, FRSB, FRCP, FRCPEd.

A few months ago, I started contributing to a German blog. This has been fun but only moderately successful in terms of readership. This week, I posted something about a homeopath and his strange attitude towards COVID vaccinations. This post was so far read by around 20 000 people!

As it was so unusually successful (and because there is a big conference today on the subject), I decided to translate it for my non-German readers.

Here we go:

A lot of downright silly stuff is currently being written about vaccine side effects at the moment, not least on Twitter where I recently found the following comment from a medical colleague:

I’ve been a doctor for 25 years now. I have never experienced such an amount of vaccine side effects. I can’t imagine that other colleagues feel differently.

This kind of remark naturally makes you think. So let’s think a little bit about these two sentences. In particular, I would like to ask and briefly answer the following questions:

  1. How reliable is this physician’s impression?
  2. What does the reliable evidence say?
  3.  Is it conceivable that this doctor is mistaken?
  4. What might be the causes of his error?
  5. Who is the author?
  6. Why is the tweet questionable?

1. How reliable is this doctor’s impression?

A whole 25 years of professional experience! So we are dealing with a thoroughly experienced doctor. His statement about the current unusually large amount of vaccination side effects should therefore be correct. Nevertheless, one should perhaps bear in mind that the incidence of side effects cannot be determined by rough estimations, but must be precisely quantified. In addition, we also need data on the severity and duration of symptoms. For example, is it only mild pain at the injection site or venous thrombosis? Are the symptoms only temporary, long-lasting, or even permanent? In general, it must be said that the experience of a physician, while not completely insignificant, does not constitute evidence. Oscar Wilde once said, “experience is the name we give to our mistakes.”

2. What does the reliable evidence tell us?

Even if the good doctor had 100 years of professional experience and even if he could accurately characterize the side effects, his experience would be trivial compared to the hard data we have on this subject. Nearly 2 billion vaccinations have now been performed worldwide, and we are therefore in the fortunate position of having reliable statistics to guide us. And they show that side effects such as pain at the injection site, fatigue, and headaches are quite common, while serious problems are very rare.[1] A recent summary comes to the following conclusion (my translation)[2]:

The current data suggests that the currently approved mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for the vast majority of the population. Furthermore, broad-based vaccine uptake is critical for achieving herd immunity; an essential factor in decreasing future surges of COVID-19 infections. Ensuring sufficient COVID-19 vaccination adoption by the public will involve attending to the rising vaccine hesitancy among a pandemic-weary population. Evidence-based approaches at the federal, state, city, and organizational levels are necessary to improve vaccination efforts and to decrease hesitancy. Educating the general public about the safety of the current and forthcoming vaccines is of vital consequence to public health and ongoing and future large-scale vaccination initiatives.

3. Is it conceivable that this doctor is mistaken?

In answering this question, I agree with Oscar Wilde. The evidence very clearly contradicts the physician’s impression. So the doctor seems to be mistaken — at least about the incidence of side effects that are not completely normal and thus to be expected. Even if indeed ‘other colleagues feel no differently’, such a cumulative experience would still mislead us. The plural of ‘anecdote’ is ‘anecdotes’ and not ‘evidence’.

4. What might be the causes of his error?

I wonder whether our doctor perhaps did not see or did not want to see the following circumstance: It is inevitable that a physician, at a time when soon 50% of all Germans were vaccinated, also sees a lot of patients complaining about side effects. He has never seen anything like that in his 25-year career! That’s because we haven’t been hit by a pandemic in the last 25 years. For a similar reason, the colleague will treat far fewer frostbites in midsummer than during a severe winter. The only surprising thing would be not to see more patients reporting vaccine side effects during the biggest vaccination campaign ever.

5. Who is the author?

At this point, we should ask, who is actually the author and author of the above tweet? Perhaps the answer to this question will provide insight into his motivation for spreading nonsense? Dr. Thomas Quak (no, I did not invent the name) is a practicing homeopath in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany. Like many homeopaths, this Quak probably has a somewhat disturbed relationship to vaccination. In his case, this goes as far as recommending several vaccine-critical machinations on his website and even offering ‘critical vaccination advice’ as a special service.[3]

Now we can immediately put the Quak tweet in a better perspective. Dr. Quak is a vaccination opponent or critic and wants to warn the public: for heaven’s sake, don’t get vaccinated folks; side effects are more common than ever!!!! Therefore, he also conceals the fact that the side-effects are completely normal, short-term vaccination reactions, which are ultimately of no significance.

6. Why is the tweet concerning?

Perhaps you feel that the Quak and his Quack tweet are irrelevant? What harm can a single tweet do, and who cares about a homeopath from Fürstenfeldbruck? As good as none and nobody! However, the importance does not lie in a single homeopath unsettling the population; it consists in the fact that such things currently happen every day thousandfold.

In their narrow-mindedness, vaccination opponents of all shades want to make us believe that they are concerned about our well-being because they know more than we and all the experts (who are of course bought by the pharmaceutical industry). But if you scratch just a little at the surface of their superficiality, it turns out that the exact opposite is true. They are ill-informed and only interested in spreading their hare-brained, misanthropic ideology.

And why do homeopaths do this? There are certainly several reasons. Although Hahnemann himself was impressed by the success of vaccination, which was invented in his time and hailed as a breakthrough, most of his successors soon sided with vaccination critics. Many do so by warning (like our Quak) of side effects, thinking that they are thus protecting their patients. However, they ignore two very important points:

  1. Even if the dangers of vaccinations were much greater than they actually are (no one is claiming that they are completely harmless), the benefits would still far outweigh the potential harms.
  2. If the Quaks (and all the quacks) of this world succeeded in dissuading a sizable percentage of the population from vaccinating and thus save them from the ‘oh-so-dangerous side effects’, they would still be doing a real disservice to public health. With regard to COVID-19, this would mean that the pandemic would remain with us in the long term and cost many more lives.

Whatever the motives of the homeopathic anti-vax brigade, it is certain that their attitude is a threat to our health. This has repeatedly made me state:

The homeopathic pills may be harmless, but unfortunately, the homeopaths are not!

REFERENCES

  1. COVID-19 vaccine availability: what are the side effects? | British Journal of General Practice (bjgp.org) ︎
  2. Review the safety of Covid-19 mRNA vaccines: a review – PubMed (nih.gov) ︎
  3. Vaccination Information (doktor-quak.de) ︎

 

 

57 Responses to Thoughts on the bigotry of vaccination opponents

  • See here:
    https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/datasets.html

    That the datasets from 1991 to 2019 are around one to four megabytes whereas 2021 is already over eighteen megabytes, and the year is only half way through.

  • What’s different about the Covid vaccines, at least the mRNA ones, seems to be that systemic side effects are common. I’ve been giving away “I’ve been vaccinated” buttons, so I hear a lot about people’s vaccine reactions. I’ve never had a systemic reaction to a vaccine, but I was pretty wiped out for about two days after the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, and three days after the second.
    That spike protein on the coronavirus seems to be a very reactogenic little beastie. And it seems like a good sign when people do have a strong reaction to the vaccine, like their immune system is responding well and hopefully making lots of antibodies.
    And it’s a warning that the actual disease could be pretty bad. That’s a big way that Covid-19 kills people, with excessive immune reactions. So it suggests that it’s a good thing you got vaccinated.
    But someone anti-vaccine just talks about the side effects, and leaves it at that. Different spins on the same facts.

    • I’d urge everyone to look at the sizable data rather than anecdotes

      • Sure. But if you were coming up with a measure of how side-effecty a vaccine is, it should be weighted by how common the side effects are. Also by how severe the side effects are.
        By a measure like that, the Covid vaccine, at least the mRNA ones, are pretty side-effecty. Systemic side effects that go on for several days are more severe than local reactions.
        Researchers have been trying to develop a vaccine that’s less side-effecty, I’ve read. That would help with vaccination efforts.

      • PS Here’s some quantitative info about mRNA vaccines:

        > Depending on vaccine product, age group, and vaccine dose,
        approximately:
        • 80–89% of vaccinated persons develop at least one local symptom
        • 55–83% develop at least one systemic symptom following vaccination

        Systemic symptoms post-vaccination:
        • Most are mild to moderate in severity
        • Occur within the first three days of vaccination
        • Resolve within 1–3 days of onset.
        • More frequent and severe
        – Following the second dose
        – Among younger persons compared to older persons

        https://www.healthvermont.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/COVID-19-HAN-AnaphlaxismRNACOVID-19Vaccines.pdf

        The mRNA vaccines for Covid do tend to be rather reactogenic (side-effecty) in other words.

        • @Laura

          Ok, that is interesting but tells only one side of the story. How does reactogenicity of mRNA vaccines compare to that of the non-mRNA vaccines? Like J&J or AstraZeneca?

          • Neal on Wednesday 02 June 2021 at 23:25 said:
            “… non-mRNA vaccines? Like J&J or AstraZeneca?”

            No, they generate the mRNA indirectly after their spike2-gene has been absorbed directly into the nucleus of your cells.

          • @Old Bob

            they generate the mRNA indirectly after their spike2-gene has been absorbed directly into the nucleus of your cells.

            I can’t blame a badly educated layperson like you for not understanding how RNA or viruses work, but you might want to be more careful parroting all those antivaccine memes.

            Those Covid-19 vaccines do not contain ‘spike2-genes’, they contain spike-coding mRNA – which is a sort of disposable single-strand copy of part of a gene, telling ribosomes how to create the spike protein.
            And no, that mRNA does not enter the nucleus in any way. If mRNA would enter a cell’s nucleus, EVERY viral infection would cause mRNA to enter the nucleus. And that simply does not happen, ever.

            Here’s a (somewhat simplified) comparison:

            Viruses enter the cell and release their mRNA. Ribosomes automatically start processing that mRNA and create viral proteins and other viral components – ALL viral components, thus creating new viruses and ultimately destroying the cell. The immune system notices this, and starts producing antibodies. This takes a while (typically one to two weeks), after which any viruses are immediately destroyed, also upon any future contact. However, if viral replication outpaces the immune system, or if the immune response gets out of hand, the patient may die.

            mRNA Vaccines enter the cell and release their mRNA – which only contains part of the viral mRNA. Ribosomes automatically start processing that mRNA and create the viral protein(s) that are encoded by it. In this case, spike proteins are created, which appear on the outside of the cell. The immune system notices this, and starts producing antibodies. As no complete viruses are produced, and mRNA degrades in a matter of days at most, production of those spike proteins automatically stops within a week or two at most, at which time the immune system should have had ample opportunity to ‘memorize’ this foreign protein as something to attack immediately upon renewed contact. This is basically the same as with a real viral infection, but without the risks.

            Simply said: those vaccines don’t do anything that the virus itself does not do, and in neither case is the cell’s nucleus involved.

          • Richard Rasker on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 12:35 said:

            “….Those Covid-19 vaccines do not contain ‘spike2-genes’…”

            From here:
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_%26_Johnson_COVID-19_vaccine
            Quote
            “…It is a viral vector vaccine based on a human adenovirus that has been modified to contain the gene for making the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.[3] …”
            End of Quote

          • @Old Bob
            My apologies, those vaccines contain adenoviruses, which are DNA viruses (not RNA viruses), and their DNA indeed gets into the cell’s nucleus — my bad, I hadn’t properly read your comment and assumed that you were talking about mRNA vaccines.

            But this still does not mean that the vaccine does anything different than the adenovirus, except create those extra spike proteins. So how is this bad in any way? Everyone of us has been infected with lots of adenoviruses already, without any worse effects than a runny nose and a cough. And without those spike proteins, the viral-based vaccine doesn’t work for Covid-19.

            And this also does not mean that your references to VAERS data and Pierre Kory’s propaganda are evidence of any malfeasance by the FDA.

          • Richard Rasker on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 14:18 said:

            “…except create those extra spike proteins…”

            I.e. instead of the “hair of the dog” you get its teeth.

          • @Old Bob

            I.e. instead of the “hair of the dog” you get its teeth.

            What are you referring to? That those spike proteins are a problem? Sorry, but then you are quite wrong.

            Worldwide, TWO BILLION vaccine doses have been administered already, and so far, those vaccines have caused maybe a couple of dozen or so deaths, mostly through a rare thrombosis side effect.

            And no, the actual number of deaths or other severe side-effects is not severely underestimated as you appear to suggest – after all, even those extremely rare cerebral venous thrombosis cases have been linked to certain vaccines, so it is impossible that monitoring missed a far larger amount of vaccine-related deaths.

            Getting vaccinated with any of the available Covid-19 vaccines is extremely safe, far safer than simply going out on the road in your car, and most definitely far safer than getting the actual infection.

          • Richard Rasker on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 15:32 said:

            “…Worldwide, TWO BILLION vaccine doses have been administered already, and so far, those vaccines have caused maybe a couple of dozen or so deaths…”

            This guy says otherwise:
            https://trialsitenews.com/should-you-get-vaccinated/

          • @Old Bob
            There are lots and lots of Tom, Dick, and Harries out there on the internet that claim to know more than the experts in the field. First, the author of that article you are referring to is an entrepreneur and inventor in the field of computers, one of his inventions is an optical mouse (I guess that makes him an expert on vaccines. These days everyone who can use google is an expert). Second, his entire article is based on a wrong assertion made after analyzing the data from VAERS database. It has already been pointed out to you in comments to your VAERS post above that VAERS data is unreliable. Coming back to your gotcha article, it is a mishmash of anti-science rants, anecdotes, conspiracy theories, debunked scientific theories and quotes from known anti-vaxers. The anti-vaxer claims that the author subscribes to and repeats in his article were debunked, on a website that has a url using the name of author’s favorite anti-vaxer: https://byrambridle.com/. Moreover, the author repeatedly claims that he has insider knowledge of things related to vaccines and that his readers should take his word for it. Might I remind you that the author is not a medical doctor but that doesn’t stop him from liberally doling out medical advice for his unsuspecting anti-vaxer audience.

          • @Old Bob

            This guy says otherwise

            This Steve Kirsch is an entrepreneur who has no education or even practical experience in medicine or scientific research. Why on earth would you listen to what this medically and scientifically inept person says about vaccines? Even at a glance, most of the things he claims are fallacious, outright untrue, or anecdotes that can’t be verified.

            He seems to be just another one of those basically smart people who seriously overstepped their field of competence, claiming to possess “special knowledge” that real doctors and scientists don’t appear to have. If you choose to believe people like this, probably because they confirm your preconceived beliefs, so be it. Just know that there are vastly more knowledgeable people out there who do know what they’re talking about – and luckily, those are the people who save millions of lives with very safe and very effective vaccines.
            I for one won’t waste any more of my time on whatever or whoever else you care to dredge up. Have a nice life.

          • Richard Rasker on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 21:42 said:

            “This Steve Kirsch is an entrepreneur who has no education or even practical experience in medicine or scientific research… Even at a glance, most of the things he claims are fallacious, outright untrue…”

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

          • Old Bob on Friday 04 June 2021 at 09:52 said: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem”

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

          • Jack on Friday 04 June 2021 at 02:04 said:

            “…There are lots and lots of Tom, Dick, and Harries out there on the internet that claim to know more than the experts in the field…”

            Experts like this:
            https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

          • Old Bob on Friday 04 June 2021 at 11:23 said: “Experts like this:
            https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

            Textbook example of whataboutism:
            https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whataboutism

          • @Jack – the problem with these kind of arguments trying to discredit people like Dr Byram Bridle is that they do real science a major disservice. For one thing for some unknown reason this site https://byrambridle.com/ doesnt seem to have been written by a real scientist or someone who even knows what science is. Why is there no peer review, transparency and why is this site hosted in some anonymous building in Iceland? Who in their right minds would try and debunk someone by posting something with a tiny unpublished, not peer reviewed, and very selective sample size that would not be accepted as evidence in any scientific journal and yet say categorically that these vaccines cause no risk to breast feeding babies? This whole notion is absurd based on these two studies that are cited. Even the Eagle-Eyed EE must smell a rat here by even a casual look at these papers: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252998v1 and https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.23.21257686v1. As scientists I really think we can do better than this. No wonder that the public are losing faith in the objectivity of science right now when so much blatant propaganda is being foisted on people.

    • Laura,

      it seems like a good sign when people do have a strong reaction to the vaccine, like their immune system is responding well and hopefully making lots of antibodies.

      My understanding is that with the Covid vaccines there isn’t a strong correlation between the severity of the reaction and the strength of the resulting immunity – in other words, they all work very well, even if you don’t react to them.

      The reactions come on quite quickly, before the immune system has had time to start making antibodies, so I suspect that it is innate immunity (i.e. non-specific) that is responsible rather than adaptive immunity (i.e. tailored to a specific antigen and mediated by antibodies). It has also occurred to me that the reactions that people are reporting might be to the vector of the mRNA (i.e. the adenovirus or the liposome) rather than to the spike protein itself.

      One thing that is clear is that hen it comes to covid the mRNA-based vaccines are much more effective than those made using a more traditional approach, i.e. with killed whole viruses or virus components.

      Another thing that is still to be determined is whether a fall in serum antibodies with time means that the protection from the vaccine is wearing off. What is really important for preventing future infections from taking hold isn’t necessarily the level of antibodies in the blood at the time, but whether they can be cranked up rapidly when a repeat exposure is detected. This involves the creation of memory B-cells, which can’t be readily measured.

      • >When it comes to covid the mRNA-based vaccines are much more effective than those made using a more traditional approach, i.e. with killed whole viruses or virus components.

        Is that true? I heard the J&J vaccine was tested on a population while there was a Covid variant going around, and that may have been why it was less effective in the clinical trial. I don’t know about the other non-mRNA vaccines.

        • The Johnson and Johnson vaccine uses a viral vector to deliver mRNA and works in a similar way to the Oxford / Astrazeneca vaccine.

          It is quite difficult to compare the findings of clinical trials of the different vaccines as the data were collected in different ways and from different populations. What is clear, however, is that the mRNA vaccines all work well.

  • N=1, I know, but I certainly had mild systemic side-effects to the AstraZeneca vaccine I had almost 3 weeks ago. I felt mildly nauseous and lethargic from the day after the vaccine to 5 days after. After that, I had only mild soreness about 5cm below the injection site for about 2 weeks. The soreness also started the day after the vaccine.

    I’m still not quite out of the 20-day window for any clotting side-effects.

    But anyway, I’ve certainly experienced systemic side-effects from a non-mRNA (adenovirus vector) COVID vaccine.

  • The Emergency Use Authorisation should be withdrawn because this exists:
    https://ivmmeta.com/

    • @Old Bob
      If there is one thing that should be withdrawn, it is ivmmeta.com. That ‘meta review’ is Pierre Kory’s propaganda channel for relentlessly promoting an unproven Covid-19 treatment, Ivermectin (a.k.a. ‘the New Hydroxychloroquine’).

      The information there contains lot of misinterpreted, biased, cherry-picked and otherwise bad research, up to and including outright misdirection. Also see https://edzardernst.com/2021/05/mucormycosis-black-fungus-is-the-indian-ayush-ministry-trying-to-decimate-the-population/#comment-131810

      No, I can’t blame you for not recognizing this example of Bad Science – it is often impossible for laypeople like you to distinguish proper scientific reviews from bad ones.
      However, you should be careful when criticizing scientific consensus and the FDA’s policies based on just one Web page you came across.
      And oh, also note that Pierre Kory calls the way Covid-19 is currently handled “The Crime of the Century”. This is slanderous propaganda language, aimed at sowing public distrust, and certainly not the way a good scientist should communicate his dissent.

      • Richard Rasker on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 12:35 and at 12:11 said

        “…a badly educated layperson like you… parroting… example of Bad Science… it is often impossible for laypeople like you…”

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

        • @Old Bob

          I don’t see how Psychological Projection applies here. Although, it is a nice strategy on your part to you keep that Wikipedia link in your back pocket for when you run of cogent arguments to make.

          • Neal on Thursday 03 June 2021 at 15:48 said:

            “I don’t see how Psychological Projection applies here…”

            Which is a projection in itself, (obviously), that we all do when we opine: “I think so and so is badly educated.”

            The other guy just thinks “So what’s that got to do with anything!?”.

            If I told you what I thought, then that would lead to a dreary exchange of opinions because no one cares about other people’s opinions, only their own. Anything I say about that would just be a projection, adding more noise or garbage, to and fro, with neither party listening to the other because there is nothing to hear, the original topic is long lost.

            The topic is “Thoughts on the bigotry of vaccination opponents” (a dramatic-irony of projection in itself) so the scene is preset with vaccination-opponent == bigot by definition, hence no amount of evidence, or reason or “cogent argument” will make any difference to the definition, hence the “I think Old Bob is badly educated…” is true by definition because he is a… vaccination opponent… (it is assumed).

            So it is only necessary to make that assumption and all the rest follows: “I don’t see how Psychological Projection applies here…” because We, the un-bigotted are Right and You the bigotted are Wrong.

            But Jennifer Bridges, a nurse at Houston Methodist is downright biggotted:
            https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/29/texas-hospital-vaccine-lawsuit/
            Quote
            “The complaint, filed in state court, says Houston Methodist’s vaccine mandate violates a set of medical ethics standards known as the Nuremberg Code, which was designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects without consent.”
            End-of-quote

          • Old Bob on Friday 04 June 2021 at 15:17 said
            “Which is a projection in itself, (obviously), ….”

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

          • Old Bob,

            I have followed your link to the newpaper report of a group of employees at a hospital in Texas taking their employer to Court for requring them to to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Although there is a valid argument about how the rights of an individual are weighed against the responsibilities that go with those rights, instead they have chosen to take the position that their employer’s action is in violation of the Nuremberg Code, a set of medical ethics standards, on the grounds that the vaccine is experimental. Following the Nuremberg Trials, in which it emerged that Nazi doctors had conducted human experimentation without their subjects’ consent, and a set of ethical standards known as the Declaration of Helsinki was agreed internationally. I don’t know whether the US was party to this, but since the US generally doesn’t sign up to international agreements concerning human rights I suspect it wasn’t, and the Nuremberg Code might then be a home-grown version (perhaps somebody could elucidate me on this?).

            It has long been a requirement in the UK’s National Health Service that anybody with the potential for physical contact with patients is vaccinated against hepatitis B, and anybody working in obstetrics is vaccinated against rubella (German measles). The moral argument is that people undergoing treatment have a right to expect that they will be adequately protected by infection control policies and that staff working there have agreed to the terms and conditions in thier contracts.

            Aside from ethical considerations, there is the practical one that people generally resist what they regard as coercion, so making vaccination compulsory could end up reducing them numbers vaccinated.

            As far as I can tell, people in the US have less of a sense of public duty than in most other countries, and conversely many groups have less support and protection from the state. I suppose this fits in with a political system with two right-wing parties, one more extreme than the other.

          • But Jennifer Bridges, a nurse at Houston Methodist is downright biggotted:

            Of course she is, Old Bob. She’s an idiotic antivax loon. Same as you.

  • Dr. Julian

    You have moments or brilliance and wisdom.

    However, your comment about the USA having a system of two conservative parties reveals your ignorance of the USA…. unless you are speaking of the Republican & Libertarian Parties.

    • However, your comment about the USA having a system of two conservative parties reveals your ignorance of the USA…. unless you are speaking of the Republican & Libertarian Parties.

      Perhaps I was exaggerating a little here. But I often hear Americans describing the Democratic party as being left-wing or socialist, whereas it seems to me that it is pretty moderate by the standards of the rest of the world.

  • So
    You are denying the fact that Fauci’s own emails implicate him ?

    The US Senate is already putting him under pressure.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/07/nolte-dr-fauci-either-liar-fraud/

    • Fauci has done nothing wrong, and no, his e-mails don’t implicate him in anything. If anything, he did an absolutely sterling job under the most difficult of circumstances – no, not so much the Covid-19 crisis itself, but the fact that he had to work under the rule of a narcissistic psychopath whose only goal was making himself look good, even if that meant letting hundreds of thousands of Americans die.

      And it is this same narcissistic psychopath who, through his grovelling GOP sycophants, now tries to punish Fauci after the fact for being far more professional, sensible and popular than himself, by recycling the ‘Chinese lab virus’ conspiracy theory and suggesting that Fauci was in on this – the ‘evidence’ being that Fauci had contact with a high-ranking Chinese infectious disease specialist early on in the pandemic. Which actually is Fauci’s job …

      [Breitbart]
      Are you serious? Breitbart is one of the worst hate-mongering extreme right websites in existence, almost continuously spreading lies and slander about (among other things) democrats.

      Anyway, I would advise Edzard to block any future postings with similar extreme right-wing propaganda such as yours, as this blog is dedicated to a scientific assessment of SCAM. There are already enough GOP-biased dung heaps out there where you will no doubt receive a warm welcome.

  • Professor

    I think I know you won’t post this link.

    But I provide it so that you might learn something yourself. I think you will allow your own ears to hear….enjoy the truth.

    https://youtu.be/aZ87id2zQ7I

  • This site https://byrambridle.com/ is classic misrepresentation for public uninformed consumption. Lets take first statement as an example
    The claim that literally Bridle made is that the spike protein is a toxin. By vaccinating with mRNA, we are vaccinating with a toxin.
    The response that is then made is that the mRNA vaccine contains no spike protein. So Bridle is incorrect
    The first part of the response is correct, mRNA contains no spike protein. The second part is not correct because mRNA vaccine instructs the host to produce a protein that the host body recognises as a spike protein.
    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html
    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
    Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines
    Learn more about how mRNA vaccines trigger our immune systems to produce antibodies that protect us against COVID-19.

    CDC explain it above
    So Bridle is correct, the mRNA vaccine (while not directly containing the spike protein) causes the body to produce a protein that the body recognises as a spike protein, a toxin.
    And so on through the rest of this seemingly prooaganda site
    the question one should ask, why is the science being played out on a public forum? Why is the science not being developed in the usual way, within academia, science research organisations, etc, to reach consensus which is then shared with the public? Can anyone answer this?

    • The spike protein is not a toxin. Toxins have a pharmacological effect on the body (e.g. Staphylococcus aureus toxin, which will be giving many people diarrhoea and vomiting at this time of year as a result of not washing their hands while preparing food, then leaving it out for too long before eating it). The function of the spike protein is to enable the virus to gain entry into cells.

  • You’re bought and paid for. No one goes out of their way to put up web pages that attempts to empower the globalists agendas like injecting the entire planet with a potion that the manufacturers and pushers DONT WANT LIABILITY FOR. You are supporting and promoting a ‘great’ TOTALITARIAN ‘reset’ that serves to FINISH OFF THE HUMAN RACE. You are a TRAITOR to humanity. These injections HAVE BEEN KILLING AND MAIMING and this is KNOWN by all involved in pushing these injections which then means MURDER and ASSAULT from injuries some of which cause PERMANENT HEART DAMAGE for one and the incidence of cancers have increasing big time for the ones who got talked into the mNRA injections. There is also Graphhene Hydroxide in these injections, DANGEROUS and DEADLY for many. And thanks for playing dirty fact checkers for the efforts of Reiner Fuellmich and the Committee they started. How many SOCK PUPPETS have you created to play your game?

    • ” You’re bought and paid for.”
      As your 1st statement is wrong and insulting, I did not bother to read further.

    • Information everyone should know about Pfizer mRNA vaccine. Study information revealed from Pfizer, but not published by the mainstream media. Pfizer asked for 55 years to release the study data. They were denied and small pieces of data are being revealed little by little.
      Mr. Bloom posted it in another thread, but I think it deserves another look, if anybody here looked at all. (top link)

      https://westernstandardonline.com/2021/12/watch-bc-doctor-reviews-shocking-stats-from-released-pfizer-documents/

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/critics-outraged-by-fda-request-to-hide-pfizer-vaccine-data-for-55-years/ar-AAQUufd

      https://ourgreaterdestiny.org/2021/12/court-orders-fda-to-comply-with-foia-request-to-release-information-on-pfizer-vaccine

      https://citizenfreepress.com/column-3/pfizer-vaccine-data-on-adverse-events/

      • @concerned patient
        What you claim to have found is called ‘post-market surveillance data’, and that is a way of data collection where as much as possible EVERY EVENT after(!) vaccination in the vaccinated population is recorded.

        And yes, it is completely normal that this data contains huge numbers of events, up to and including quite a few deaths – simply because it contains huge numbers of people. You know, the real variety: people who get sick, have accidents, and sometimes die. Almost none of which is actually associated with the vaccine. The collected data is combined with statistical population data (e.g. expected levels of mortality and morbidity, causes of death and so on), and with relevant statistics such as temporal distribution of reported events etcetera, and also with Pfizer’s research and commercial data – some of which is confidential. All this is analysed to see if any health issues correlate with the introduction of the vaccine. I believe that this is also how it was established that there was indeed a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clotting disorders – which were so rare that they did not emerge in the phase III trials involving some ~40,000 volunteers, and that the Pfizer vaccine was associated with a slightly increased chance of myocarditis in younger people.

        What this data does NOT provide is an exclusive report of vaccine side effects. No, there were no 1200 deaths caused by vaccination, and no, the vaccine did not cause thousands of epileptic seizures, and no, the vaccine did not cause hundreds of cases of traumatic injuries. The data describes all medical problems that people experienced AFTER vaccination, not BECAUSE OF vaccination.
        But as could be expected, a lot of antivaccine people, conspiracy mongerers and cranks did present these figures as if they were all caused by vaccination. This is not a new strategy, and has been used by antivaccine people to suggest that childhood vaccines cause almost all childhood deaths – up to and including road accidents and drownings.

        Yes, it is of course ludicrous an FOI request should take 55 years to fulfil – but you must realize that this is about a LOT of data (IIRC, more than 40,000 case reports, each containing up to dozens of pages, and growing by hundreds or thousands of pages every single day), and that there apparently is quite a bit of Pfizer’s confidential data in there – which means that they want to review things carefully prior to release. So even if 500 pages per months are approved for release, the whole lot would indeed take many decades to process.

        You should also realize that up until a few years ago, FOI requests were not all that common, and mostly used in isolated cases where decisions from public officials raised doubt.
        Unfortunately, antivaccine people, conspiracy idiots and other cranks have increasingly weaponized FOI requests, and abuse them to further their own agenda: they simply file massive amounts of individual FOI requests as soon as certain governmental decisions and policies are made public – not so much because they want to know the actual backgrounds, but because this is a way to throw sand in the machinery, and make government officials spend countless man-hours on the process of complying with these requests – which they are bound by law to fulfil. And as soon as information is released, even more new requests are filed, usually for documents referenced in the original data. At best these documents are then superficially scanned for words such as ‘deaths’ and ‘mortality’, which are then presented out of context as ‘proof’ that sinister things are going on. Most of these FOI requests are useless anyway, because the information is in fact aimed at experts and officials who know how to correctly read the data and the jargon.

        To paint a more vivid picture: just imagine that you are an airline pilot, and you are in the middle of landing a plane with 280 passengers in really bad weather – and then a dozen of these people show up in your cockpit, demanding that you explain to them in detail what you are doing and why, and they want all that information NOW, and in writing, and oh, we want to look into your flight plans, and we need your credentials, and where is the information about previous flights? And why have we not landed yet? And hey PAL, I’m TALKING to you! And who the hell is this Roger you keep talking to on your radio? …

    • Nice one, Janet. Not a single thing in your post is even close to being correct. I could calmly, logically and patiently deconstruct your nonsense but I won’t bother. Logic and rationality is not something you understand. The shame is that, as with QAnon – another heap of garbage you no doubt believe – as the evidence accumulates that you are completely and utterly wrong, as prophecy after prophecy fails to materialise you will either have to acknowledge that you were wrong (which won’t happen) or double down further in a frenzy of post-hoc rationalisation to ensure your warped worldview is not compromised.

      You have no idea how stupid you are being. I hope one day you’ll find out.

    • @Janet

      Would you like a tinfoil hat to got with that rant of yours? I sell all kind of tinfoil hats, you name it and I will custom make it to your specifications. I will even give you a steep discount. Let me know soon, supplies are running out. These days there are lot of people like you clamoring for tinfoil hats and you don’t want to miss out.

      Oh by the way, the only time Prof. EE gets paid is when I give him a cut of my profits selling tinfoil hats to people like you.

      Professor, I told you I am going to make you very rich one day.

      Looking forward to hearing from you Janet!

      Your Truly,
      Tin Tin
      Tinfoil Hats LLC
      Magatown, Texas, USA

      PS: I have to be close to where most of my customers live. So, I recently opened an office in Florida, USA as well.

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