By guest blogger Ken McLeod
RICHARD MICHAEL NILSSON is the owner of Colloidal Minerals Australia Pty Ltd, ACN 003 484 955, of Wyongah New South Wales (NSW), Australia. On August 13 he was convicted in the Wyong Court, after pleading guilty to offences including intimidation with intent to cause fear of physical or mental harm.
Nilsson is a prolific antivaxxer, deluging unlucky politicians, journalists, health officials, etc with emails containing misinformation about vaccines and warning of the dire consequences to come to anyone involved in vaccination programs. He has been known to harass and threaten. Usually recipients have better things to do than engage with a crank, but he has been known to go too far.
As the Sydney Daily Telegraph reported on 14 August 2021: “Anti-vaccine activist Richard Nilsson pleads guilty to sending death threats.”
“A Central Coast anti-vaccine campaigner who sent death threats to The Sunday Telegraph journalist Jane Hansen has pleaded guilty to the charge of using intimidation to unlawfully influence a person.
“Richard Nilsson, 66, from Wyongah, sent an email to Ms Hansen’s work email address on the evening of February 27.
“The subject of the email was “WHEN IS A MURDER WARRANTED? YOURS, YES?”
The contents of the email read: ‘I am proposing that your murder might well be a celebration of not life but death! And what a celebrated and glorious one at that!
‘I know ten thousand that would do it, but of course it only needs one and you will never know until it is too late!
‘I expect you might meet your maker, maybe in the near future … the sooner the better, yes?’
“Ms Hansen has reported widely on vaccination since 2013 when The Sunday Telegraph launched the No Jab No Play campaign, and more recently has reported on the vaccine rollout for Covid-19.
“On February 27, the evening the email was sent, Sky News re-ran a documentary made by Ms Hansen called Big Shots, which looked at anti-vaccine activity in relation to the pandemic and the vaccine rollout.
“Mr Nilsson followed up his email with another with the subject line: “WHEN IS SLUT NOT A SLUT AND IS A SELECTIVE SLUT STILL A SLUT?” before launching into a barrage of abuse.
“Mr Nilsson, who runs a business selling colloidal silver, faced Wyong Court on August 11 and pleaded guilty to a charge of use intimidation/violence to unlawfully influence a person.
“He received an 18-month Community Corrections Order to be of good behaviour.
“Ms Hansen said threats to journalists who write on the subject of vaccination were not unusual but Mr Nilsson’s emails were unsettling in their violence.
‘All journalists get abused on occasion, especially on the currently highly emotive topic of vaccination, and mostly it is best ignored but this email was next level and no one should have to put up with such vile abuse,’ she said.
“Mr Nilsson is well known by politicians, who have also received numerous emails from him suggesting all manner of conspiracies, including that Covid vaccination is a mass depopulation exercise.”
Nilsson appeared before His Honour Ian Guy in case number 2021/00159728, R V Richard Michael Nilsson. He was convicted of stalking or intimidation with intent to cause fear of physical or mental harm, an offence under section 13 of the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 (NSW). This attracts a maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment and/or $5,500. He could also have been convicted of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence, an offence under section 474.17 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Commonwealth of Australia). That carries a maximum penalty of 3 years imprisonment.
He was sentenced to a Community Corrections Order requiring him to be of good behaviour.
A rational person would have thought themselves lucky that they had avoided years of a high-fibre low-calorie diet of porridge and baked beans, but we are not dealing with a rational person here.
Hardly was the ink dry on the Court file, than on the 15th, two days after he was found guilty, Nilsson pounded his foam-flecked keyboard and sent another rant in an email to 130 people and organisations, including politicians, Skeptics groups, a Radiation Oncologist, government departments, doctors, political parties, people in the horse-racing industry, scientists, journalists, lobby groups including climate and conservation organisations, mental health groups, the National Security Hotline, and a coal mining company.
It reads: “Subject: FW: The Hidden Victims of the Covid Vaccine and why I included you all in this email…
“When will it be that enough lives have been ruined and enough have been murdered? And when will the maiming and the killing end?
“My hope is that some of you here own up and confess (I know who among you are in this group and I suspect in time you will all pay a heavy price for your crimes and transgressions), while others it is incumbent upon you to inform all those you purport to represent that the maiming and killing that has transpired and of course is inevitably and scheduled to transpire will continue until such time we say: f_ ck you!
“I know, and some of you know too, who the traitors are. Scott Morrison is just one and Greg Hunt is another and of course Jane Halton, Brendan Murphy and Paul Kelly are other worthless humans and are included and we know they are just tools – plasticised and fake as they are.
“I have an incomplete list of those who need to answer for their crimes and it does not include all I have included in this email.
“Add a Mr Skerrit. His evilness is seen in his face and in his utterings and communications and his connection with Jane Halton and the WHO and the so-called, Australian Health (sickness proliferation) Dep’t and Event 201 should not be lost on anyone with brain cells that still operate and are able to coordinate.
“Wake the f_ _k up!”
All emphases and redactions above are as in Nilsson’s email. Scott Morrison is the Prime Minister, Greg Hunt the Commonwealth Minister for Health, Brendan Murphy is a former Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Australia and now Secretary of the Department of Health. Paul Kelly is the current Chief Medical Officer, the “Mr Skerrit” he refers to is Adjunct Professor John Skerritt, Deputy Secretary, Health Products Regulation Group, Therapeutics Goods Administration. “Jane Halton” is a former Secretary of the Commonwealth Dept of Health, now Council Member of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The “Event 201” that Nilsson refers to was a tabletop exercise conducted in October 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS), the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York City. According to the CHS, “®he exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences”.
Event 201 simulated the effects of a fictional coronavirus originating in bats but passing to humans via pigs. Claims that Event 201 was a rehearsal for the COVID-19 pandemic have been debunked by fact-checking outlets such as USA Today and FullFact, but facts have never matter to antivax conspiracy theorists and other assorted cranks. All emergency response authorities and health bureaucracies conduct exercises to identify threats and to develop and improve response plans. There was nothing unusual in “Event 201” except in the fevered imaginations of nutters and fruitloops.
Does Nilsson, with no qualifications whatsoever, really think that he knows more about emergency response and immunology than those distinguished experts, and all the scientists researching Covid19 and vaccines? How does 20 minutes reading email conspiracy theories trump PhDs, professorships and Nobel Prizes? How conceited does someone have to be to imagine that? Where is the boundary between conceit and dementia? So does accusing honourable people of ‘crimes and transgressions,’ ‘maiming and killing,’ being ‘traitors,’ are evil tools, ‘who need to answer for their crimes’ constitute the good behaviour that the Court imposed? And coming within hours of the Court hearing?
Watch this space.
99 Responses to ANTIVAXXER CONVICTION
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Those supporting vaccines being mandatory for all are as much the problem as the solution…. unknowingly.
We know that the vaccines are not fully effective, not even close to what was told us in the beginning. Many of those contracting new infections are those that have been vaccinated, even with a double dose of vaccines. We also now know that booster vaccines will also be needed to maintain protection, proving to us that the vaccines are not reliable for protection. Variants will continue to arise and inhibit efficacy of covid vaccines. Infection rates for vaccinated population continue high.
At the same time, there is good evidence that natural immune response after covid infection is superior to immunization via vaccines, regardless of variants.
Vaccinated populations also spread the virus. A false sense of security by those vaccinated are contributing to the spread of the virus.
Cruel vaccine proponents want to assign blame to anti-vaxers for the ongoing spread of the virus. So which side really is responsible for the ongoing spread of viral load ?
@Listener
But effective enough to reduce hospitalization and death rates in vaccinated people by approximately 90%. This alone is a good reason to get everyone vaccinated.
This is a lie. In fact the opposite appears to be the case: the natural immune response to Covid-19 is one of the major risk factors of this disease, causing severe illness and damage in relatively many patients, with cytokine storms, blood clotting disorders and lung damage as often-seen complications, caused by an excessive immune response.
So please go away with your ill-informed antivaccine propaganda.
Thank you for your succinct reply to the antivax zombie, Richard.
I see that I must correct myself here:
Listener seems to be correct with his suggestion that actually getting infected produces longer-lasting immunity against renewed infection than getting vaccinated: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-no-infection-parties
However, this is absolutely NOT an argument against vaccination and for letting the virus spread fully uncontrolled. Getting infected is still several orders of magnitude more dangerous than getting vaccinated – which was what I was focused on.
I therefore think that this scientists’ words are rather badly chosen:
No, natural immunity is ABSOLUTELY NOT ‘better than vaccination’, because acquiring natural immunity kills roughly 1% of people (and leaves even far more with long-term sequelae), whereas vaccination only kills 0,00001% of people.
The correct statement would be that natural immunity is longer lasting than immunity through vaccination, with the added caveat that it comes at a very high price in terms of death, suffering and healthcare load.
People infected with Corona are much more likely to have severe side effects than those who have been vaccinated.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475
Absolutely. But antivaxxers often use fallacious arguments, and one of these arguments is that vaccine-derived immunity is less effective than immunity through actual infection.
This, in fact, is true (and that is what I needed to correct in my previous response), but what makes it fallacious is that it completely ignores the point that even running the risk of infection is far more dangerous than getting vaccinated.
@Richard Rasker
“This, in fact, is true (and that is what I needed to correct in my previous response), but what makes it fallacious is that it completely ignores the point that even running the risk of infection is far more dangerous than getting vaccinated.”
This might well be true, but it’s still an individual choice.
@Listener
No, not completely. Even though it turns out that Covid-19 vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing infections, they still do curtail the spread of the virus to a significant extent. Which makes the decision to take the vaccine or not at least partly a matter of public health, and not merely a personal choice.
Having said this, I am not a proponent of forced vaccination at all. But I am a proponent of countering misinformation and antivaccine propaganda – something you are spreading too through, among other things, the Nirvana fallacy (i.e. that vaccines should not be used because they are not a 100% perfect solution), the erroneous suggestion that vaccines are undesirable because getting the disease results in better immunity (because this totally ignores the fact that this would kill and harm vastly more people), and of course creating a negative association by the gratuitous use of hostile rhetoric (“Cruel vaccine proponents …”).
I think that people should be able to make their own informed choice, with the emphasis on ‘informed’, as in ‘based on verifiable scientific facts’, not on false rhetoric, fallacies and lies. And even though unexpected developments crop up regularly in this pandemic, the facts according to our current understanding are pretty straightforward:
– Covid-19 kills on average 1 in every 140 people it infects – in Western countries, that is.
– Covid-19 leads to hospitalization of on average 1 in every 40 people it infects.
– Covid-19 kills children too, and not only children with underlying conditions.
– Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective, certainly in the short term: they reduce hospitalization and death rates by well over 90% for all age groups.
– Covid-19 vaccines are not 100% perfect in preventing infection, but they are still quite superior in reducing the spread of the virus compared to doing nothing. This means that getting vaccinated not only protects the vaccinated people themselves, but also other people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, and those ~5% for whom the vaccine doesn’t work.
– Covid-19 vaccines just are as safe as any existing vaccine on the market, i.e. extremely safe.
– The main disappointment: immunity from Covid-19 vaccines is waning faster than hoped for, resulting in vaccinated people eventually getting infected and thus contributing to spreading the disease again. This, however, is not a valid argument against vaccination – because even with this shortcoming, the advantages of vaccination still outweigh the drawbacks by orders of magnitude.
Addendum:
I just thought of something interesting: antivaccine people, homeopaths and other quacks and cranks will STILL demonize vaccines even though these vaccines are proven to prevent 95% of deaths and hospitalizations – but at the same time, they consider homeopathic treatment that (in trials) appears to be 2% effective(*) hugely successful, and certainly reason enough to promote it.
*: E.g. an oscillococcinum trial, with the result that it reduced duration of a flu infection (which on average takes 14 days to fully resolve) by 0,28 days.
I’ve never quite got the logic of “the best way to protect yourself against a disease is to contract the disease”.
But if you must contract a disease let it be one that is not mortal. Like vaccines. Sorry, they are not entirely without risk but with appropriate testing they have a vastly reduced risk of causing harm.
Nietzsche said “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
Serious mental illness destroyed him.
Listener
My wife is an ICU nurse. In her unit are seven COVID patients. All are very ill and all are expected to die. All but one are unvaccinated.
This is the UK. Where the Delta is ripping through the unvaccinated population. And killing a lot of them.
A virus which preys upon the stupid, it would seem.
We know that the vaccines are not fully effective….
Nor are parachutes but the next time I jump out of an airplane at 1,000 metres, I think I will wear one.
To counter some of the official denials and Government spin surrounding covid vaccines you may wish to read this BBC REPORT which only appeared on the BBC web site (in my opinion) because this person was ‘one of their own’ so to speak. There are many more serious and fatal events post-jab that are not being reported. Now I wonder why that might be?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796
I saw it; very sad!
how many death per how many trillion vaccinations?
what do you think?
risk/benefit?
“the general risk of these types of clots following a first jab is estimated to be around 12.3 per million doses.”
and
“a study looking at patients in the United States suggests 39 people in every million who are infected with coronavirus go on to have a CVST within two weeks of a Covid diagnosis.”
So it would appear that getting vaccinated with the ‘most risky’ vaccine still bears only one third of the risk of blood clots that getting the actual infection has.
So go get your vaccine folks!
If Dr JMK can be pedantic and pick up Edzard on his use of “trillion” – which in my reading was clearly used in a vernacular sense just to mean “an awful lot” – I’m going to quibble about your use of stats here.
What you are in fact comparing is the conditional probabilities of a clot GIVEN that one has had the vaccine, with having a clot from covid GIVEN that one has been infected with covid.
If one takes the vaccine the prior for it becomes 1, whilst that for the covid case remains less than 1, and probably a lot less if someone practices masking, social distancing etc.
So the probability of getting a clot from the vaccine may actually be higher than that of getting covid AND then getting a clot.
@zebra
You are of course correct that getting vaccinated is guaranteed to expose a person to the full risk of side effects, whereas not getting vaccinated does not automatically exposes this person to all the risks that this infection entails. The latter indeed involves the extra chances of getting infected in the first place.
However, and once again based on simple statistics, the chances of getting infected when not vaccinated are very high in the medium and long term, rendering this argument more or less moot.
Let me explain by means of actual developments in my home country:
Here in the Netherlands, we register some 2,500 new infections every day, so far almost all in unvaccinated people. As there are approximately 5 million unvaccinated people here, an unvaccinated person has a daily chance of 0.5% of getting infected. This doesn’t seem like much, but the accrued chance is approximately 84% over 1 year and 97% over 2 years(*) – not even accounting for the fact that vaccinated people will start spreading the virus in increasing numbers as their immunity is waning.
But even in the very unlikely scenario that unvaccinated people could succeed in reducing the long-term chances of infection to, say, 1%, getting vaccinated is still far less risky. Even a 1% infection rate gives unvaccinated people an average chance of 1 in 10,000 of dying of Covid-19 – roughly one hundred times the chance of dying from vaccine side effects.
*: Calculation: the unvaccinated have a daily chance of 99.5% or 0.995 to evade infection. For 2 days, this becomes 0.995² = 0.99, over 3 days 0.995³ = 0.985, and so on. And 0.995 tot the power of 365 results in a chance of ~16% to evade infection. After 2 years, almost every unvaccinated person (97.4%) has been infected.
(In case anyone spots any errors in the reasoning or the calculations: corrections are very welcome. And yes, one caveat is that infection chances may drop as more people have been infected, i.e. a kind of herd immunity – but it is impossible to account for this at the moment.)
I agree that comparing the risk of an adverse event per number of vaccinations with the same event per number of covid infections is misleading since not everybody who is unvaccinated becomes infected. However, if we take the UK for example, according to today’s BBC News the total number of confirmed cases so far is 6,628,709, which is roughly 10% of the population. Therefore as a very rough approximation you can compare the figures by dividing the rate of the same adverse events among those infected by 10. If you do that, it is still very clear that the vaccines prevent a great deal more deaths or serious illnesses arising from clotting problems than they cause.
Of course these only comprise a minority of covid deaths, and the vaccines are very effective in preventing most of those.
Even though the vaccines are only partially effective at preventing infection with the delta variant, they do reduce this risk as well, and therefore the R number. Since coronavirus infections propagate exponentially, the total number of cases is very sensitive to small changes in the R number and it is clear that without them we would have seen a lot more infections.
Social distancing, hand-washing and wearing masks all have their part to play, but without they vaccine they are less effective.
It’s not going to be per trillion as the population of the earth isn’t nearly that large.
My understanding is that that the risk of death from the vaccine is of the order of 1 in 1 million, but this depends on the age and sex of the person being vaccinated as younger females are more likely to get blood clots. I would have to look up the exact figures.
The vaccines were originally expected to reduce serious illness and death from Covid, and they have been proven to be far more effective than was hoped. They were not expected to be reliable at preventing infection, though they did markedly reduce the risk of infection with the alpha variant. However, the delta variant in the predominant one now worldwide and although the vaccines are just as effective against it with regard to hospitalisation and mortality, they are much less effective in preventing infection (I believe something of the order of 60 – 70% effective), and research published last week shows that the viral load in those who have been vaccinated who are unlucky enough to contract the delta variant is just as high as in the unvaccinated, so although they are much less ill they are probably just as infectious.
The BBC News this morning has more detailed figures concerning the risks of serious adverse events due to clotting disorders arising from covid vaccination, and how this compares with the disease itself.
All adverse events following vaccination are reported and available to the public. Far from events not being reported, the BBC article links to the UK Yellow Card reporting site (below) and informs readers, “72 deaths and 417 reported cases”.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting
The same happens in Australia via the Therapeutic Goods Administration. In fact Australian media reported excessively on very few deaths, and this adversely effected vaccine uptake.
I think it’s important to note there is no “government spin” and certainly no “official denials”. Quite the opposite. The TGA report detailed information and deaths attributed to the vaccine, on a weekly basis (below). Anti-vaccination activists use those figures to wrongly claim all deaths are due to the vaccine.
https://www.tga.gov.au/periodic/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-safety-report-26-08-2021
I suppose one ought to include a link to that video, so that people can critique it.
Here it is:
https://sp.rmbl.ws/s8/2/z/Y/0/g/zY0gc.caa.mp4
R.I.P., all those featured, they gave their lives to prove a good point.
“Does Nilsson, with no qualifications whatsoever, really think that he knows more about emergency response and immunology than those distinguished experts, and all the scientists researching Covid19 and vaccines?”
Yes, he does.
Classic case of vastly overblown confidence in one’s own brain.
The easiest person to fool is oneself. Science is our best protection. Richard Feynman (once again).
“Interesting figures from today’s RKI weekly report, each based on 18-59 year olds:
– Proportion of unvaccinated in population: 40%.
– Unvaccinated among new cases 84.1%
– Unvaccinated among hospital admissions 93.9%
– Unvaccinated among intensive care units 96%”
https://twitter.com/m_grill/status/1430938181357219843
So get vaccinated as soon as possible if you haven’t already! It preserves your health, it possibly saves your life.
To the many here that replied to my post in this thread.
Every person that replied, including you Lenny, argue that the covid vaccinations will protect the covid infected patient from further complications or death.
This is perhaps true. However, this alone is no argument for forcing vaccinations on the population that chooses to NOT be vaccinated. They only hurt themselves.
@Listener
What about the people they infect? What about the healthcare professionals who have the exhausting job of looking after them? What about the people affected by the jobs they can’t do whilst ill or once dead? What about the loved ones left behind after they die?
They hurt many, many people with their selfishness.
@Lenny
Just to be clear. Vaccinated people can infect other people also, this is no argument. The rates of vaccinated population getting infected with covid are quite high.
Please do some catch-up with the current news.
quite high but less
@Lenny
“What about the people they infect ? ”
Ohhh, you’re referring to the vaccinated folks. right ? …. lol. (so much for 97% efficacy we were promised. Now we need a booster every 8 months) What a sham.
Professionals who look after them went in to healthcare to do just that. If they don’t want to do so, they need to find another career.
“What about the loved ones they leave behind ?” … same as any other unfortunate cause of death.
A government, nor an employer should be able to demand a person is vaccinated against their will. An vaccination is a medial procedure. And everybody should have the choice to accept or reject according to their choice any medical procedure performed on their body…. minors might be another can of worms to which I will avoid for the time.
Look, many many thousands of seniors, and even the general population die every year from the flu. Nobody has previously brought the issue many of you at this blog message board are bringing now. It’s the same damn thing, people infect others with flu that patients die from every year.
Actually, if you look at the statistics, almost nobody has died from the flu in the past 18 months….ZILCH !! lol … all Covid-19….. hmmm.
Listener,
No, I don’t think he is referring to the vaccinated folk, who are protected against becoming seriously ill. However, there are many people who are immunocompromised (for instance by cancer treatment) for whom not only does the vaccine not work but the chance of dying if they get covid is much greater.
And I don’t think anybody promised 97% efficacy.
You clearly have very little idea what goes on in healthcare. Specialists in areas other than infectious diseases with 10 years or more of professional training and many years of experience are finding that they are unable to treat their own patients because the hospitals in which they work are overwhelmed with covid. Are you suggesting that the solution is for oncologists, cardiologists, surgeons etc. should abandon their vocation in favour of something else?
From the time I was a student and throughout my career it has been a condition of my employment that I am vaccinated against certain diseases in order to avoid harm to others. Nobody ever complained about it.
Nobody has campaigned against the flu vaccine the way that antivaxxers are spreading misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines.
You seem to think that it is acceptable for thousands of people to lose years of useful life from preventable causes.
According to the Office for National Statistics (the body responsible for collecting data to inform the Government and anybody else who can use it);
“Influenza and pneumonia deaths were ranked 7th in the top 10 leading causes of death in October 2020 and 8th in November 2020.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfrominfluenza2020
and in the four months from March to June 2020 there were 4,426 deaths from influenza and pneumonia in England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland are recorded separately).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsfor2020
Oh dear, so the libertarian fringe, usually so quick to defend the rights of private business to impose whatever employment conditions they wish, suddenly comes over all snowflake when those same business want to protect their profits by requiring staff to be vaccinated.
As you said yourself, “If they don’t want to do so, they need to find another career.”
Won’t private health and social care businesses protect their interests by keeping staff, patients and residents alive rather than dead?
Dead or very ill health and care workers are unproductive workers. Health and care workers should be properly informed about the health and care work they do. They should be properly informed about vaccines. Those who resolutely reject such information should not be health or care workers. Such rejection leads to them being a deadly danger to the people who they should be protecting from danger.
Who decides what proper information is?
Medical consensus must be the guide.
@Leigh Jacoson
“Who decides what proper information is?
Medical consensus must be the guide.”
Medical consensus is biased towards themselves. If you don’t believe that I have some land for sale.
Since you bring up medical care workers. There are quite a high number of them also that have not interest in being vaccinated. These are educated people, and people that have their pulse in the situation. And many are even more firmly decided against forcing vaccines.
https://www.newstribune.com/news/news/story/2021/jul/27/why-dont-more-health-care-workers-take-virus-vaccines/880857/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-wont-some-health-care-workers-get-vaccinated-2021021721967
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/hospitals-worry-about-e2-80-98staffing-crisis-e2-80-99-over-unvaccinated-workers/ar-AANEc4m
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/04/30/health-workers-are-getting-fired-for-refusing-the-covid-vaccine-heres-why-office-workers-could-be-too/?sh=7d85d1547c4c
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/health-care-workers-covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy_n_601881ebc5b622df90f61167
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/rochester/coronavirus/2021/08/02/unvaccinated-rochester-health-care-workers-lead-protest-against-vaccine-requirement
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210628/huge-number-of-hospital-workers
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/health-care-and-nursing-home-worker-unions-working-hard-to-stop-vaccine-mandates/
“Who decides what proper information is?”
NOT YOU!
Not journalists either.
Experts who can understand the nature and quality of the evidence and can interpret it in a relevant context.
@Listener
These are invariably NOT doctors and scientists.
Wrong. They have no relevant medical eduction. They are educated to take care of patients, NOT to diagnose them or to determine any treatment, and certainly not to judge the efficacy of treatments or vaccines.
I am also against forcing vaccines, even for these people. But as a consequence of their refusal to get vaccinated they should be prohibited from working with patients.
For comparison: the hepatitis B vaccine has been mandatory since the 1990s for all healthcare workers who come into contact with patients, and there have been no objections against this policy whatsoever. Then why object against this vaccination requirement?
@Richard Rasker
Ahhhh yes, Richard
Unless one is an MD or a Scientist, one doesn’t have the proper understanding to decide for themselves what medical procedures they want to accept in their bodies.
MD’s prescribed me to take meds, and I followed their advice for too many years. One med almost killed me, the other caused low kidney function. So much for MD’s knowing what is best for us.
Take that SHIT and shove-it !
I’ll make my own decisions about what is best for me.
of course, you do; everyone should make their own decision.
but experts must issue their advice based on the best available evidence.
“I’ll make my own decisions about what is best for me.”
MDs and Scientists with they decades long “education” are totally overrated. That is why whenever I need surgery, I go to the nearby butcher shop. In my experience butchers do a better job at cutting off the diseased parts of ones body way better than any surgeon can. By far that was the best decision I made in my life. You should try going to a butcher when you need surgery too! I promise you that you wont regret it!!
Correctly diagnosing patients and finding optimal treatments is often very difficult, which is also reflected by the fact that a medical education takes 10 long years of very hard study and building experience. And of course, doctors can make mistakes, or, even worse, may be simply bad at their job (one would almost think that they are humans …).
I am sorry to hear about your bad experiences, and it goes quite a way towards explaining your attitudes – but do you really think that almost all doctors and medical scientists are wrong? And that those vaccines they advise to each and every one of us are killing and harming people in droves?
Also, don’t forget that vaccines are a completely different league of products than medicines. Vaccines all do exactly the same thing: present the immune system with a pathogen or a part thereof. They don’t do anything in the body that an actual pathogen doesn’t do as well.
Medicines OTOH are substances that act on the body’s chemistry, which can lead to all sorts of unintended and harmful side effects. This is also reflected in the R&D success rate: less than 1% of promising new pharmaceutical substances end up on the market as medicines, with the rest being found too harmful or ineffective in the trial phases – whereas most newly developed vaccines pass all tests for safety and efficacy with relatively few failures (I recall one dengue vaccine that could lead to excessive immune responses, and has been withdrawn as a result).
Thank you for this well-supported, scientifically literate answer.
I couldn’t agree more. But as I said before: decisions about one’s health must be well-informed, and I am afraid that this aspect leaves a bit to be desired in your case, given the highly dubious and partly even discredited sources of information that you cite.
It is fairly simple: either 99% of all the world’s scientists and doctors are wrong, or that 1% of dissenters and their adherents are wrong. You seem to choose to base your opinion on what the latter group says.
To all
From the CDC
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/08/24/cdc-covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness-fell-from-91-to-66-with-delta-variant/?sh=3c1cccc28f77
(Forbes link, but you can find the same information from the CDC)
We know that the virus will continue to have variants, so are we supposed to get re-vaccinated every 6-8 months to be “immune” to the virus ? What else can I assume ?
I don’t think they can some up with new vaccines that fast.
This is the latest and greatest science ?
“so are we supposed to get re-vaccinated every 6-8 months to be “immune” to the virus ? ”
yes, just like everyone gets vaccinated against the flu virus every year!! that is what goes for latest and greatest in science world! sigh! I go a magician when I need medical treatment, they can cure anything and everything with a wave of a hand!
@Listener
Let’s just put it this way: if I have to choose between an annual Covid-shot and an infection that is several times more hazardous than the flu, with a 1% chance of killing me, just bring on the syringe! Especially because most likely, immunity from the actual infection will not last forever either.
And yes, that we have several vaccines that absolutely reduce the risk of serious disease is indeed the latest and greatest science.
“Medical consensus is biased towards themselves.” Listener.
Foolish Listener.
Consensus does not imply unanimity, it implies significant majority. Bias included for all concerned, both the majority and the minority of experts.
Experts know a lot more than non-experts – by definition, bias in both notwithstanding. Experts who dispute the consensus opinion are necessarily of the minority opinion.
If all experts and non-experts alike are nothing but bags of bias, then non-experts will still have to lump the biases of the majority experts, simply because they know more than non-experts.
Some non-experts believe they know better than the consensus of experts. It may occassionally happen that someone is strangely inspired but it isn’t likely to happen too often. We all magically become experts? How would that work?
I didn’t bring up medical care workers, I distinguished between them – I used the term “health” in the sense of medical.
“Quite a high number” is meaningless. Parity or a substantial minority means consensus is lacking. A substantial majority represents consensus.
It’s about health and care workers protecting the vulnerable according to our best medical knowledge, with consensus expert opinion if there is consensus.
Your first link is broken. Your second I concur with – trust between experts and well meaning non-experts is essential. But if trust fails, well meaning non-experts have to go. Else expertise becomes redundant and ignorance rules – benevolently if lethally.
Your third link provides hard cases, but hard cases must be faced. Protection of the public must rule and expert knowledge must prevail. Compassion must conform with duty to protect the public. If a health or care worker finds themselves in conflict with expert opinion the conflict must be worked out, but generals are generals and foot soldiers are foot soldiers.
#4 is #3 again.
#5 wobbles but doesn’t fall into #3/4. That’s a good news story.
#6 back to #3.
#7 Same old same old.
#8 Same old same old again…
There’s a problem at the bottom of the chain of command. Some of the troops are mutineers.
That is sad and bad for all concerned. Vaccine fears based on ignorance or misunderstanding must be addressed because the duty of medical and care professions is to protect the most vulnerable.
In this sad, bad battle, compassion for the most vulnerable must be based on our best medical knowledge in accordance with the present medical consensus, if there is such, and there is for Covid-19.
Alternatives to consensus may be brilliance or menace. Brilliance is much less likely than menace. With Covid-19 vaccines the alternative – disease, means death, serious injury and bad health on a huge scale.
Unfortunate but unavoidable battles must be won or lost. Mutineers must be removed from the battle field with Covid-19. Take the vaccine or remove yourself. You endanger where you should protect life. Hospitals and care homes should be as safe as havens can be. Unvaccinated non-immune compromised health workers are harbingers of death.
Something that is not true for each and every member of a population can still be true for a population in general. It ain’t rocket science! (Seat belts and airbags don’t prevent all death and injury in RTAs, but they result in an enormous reduction of death and injury in a population.)
Straw man argument: nobody is having vaccination forced upon them. But choice works both ways: you are at liberty to refuse the vaccination, and the non-sociopathic members of society are at liberty to refuse to have you anywhere near them.
That is quite simply not true. Given a disease with an R-rate of 4 and a mortality rate of 0.1, even a vaccine that is only 50% effective at preventing each of infection, transmission and mortality (and the Covid vaccines are better than that wrt infection and mortality, less good wrt transmission), the mortality from the disease in a population will decline if sufficient people are vaccinated.
Do you need a worked example? (You’d only need primary school arithmetic to verify it.)
It’s not just protecting the covid patient themselves from complications or death – it’s that the cost of these are not limited to the patient, they are born by society at large, both in terms of resource allocation (we’re seeing cases where hospital beds are not available to others who need them, because they are filled with covid patients) and the transmission of the infection to others.
At this point it becomes morally acceptable for societies to look at ways of limiting these risks – given that one of the first duties of a government is to protect its citizenry.
I don’t think any of the western democracies are considering genuinely forced vaccination. What they are saying is that if you want to take part in certain activities then you need to be vaccinated. And it seems that outside of the US which has politicized this issue to an extraordinary extent, most people don’t have much of a problem with this.
@Zebra
If you want to make that defense. You must also argue that it should be lawful, and expedient to force people to eat and drink in a way that promotes less disease. Exercise more, and nobody would permitted to smoke or drink alcohol… etc.
You wanna go there ?
isn’t the argument FOR vaccination that it eventually it must reduce the chances of mutations of the virus and thus save lives?
I wouldn’t say it was THE argument but it is certainly AN argument, though primarily it is an argument for concentrating our vaccination efforts on those countries with limited resources where the virus is spreading widely.
@EE
No, the virus can mutate just the same with vaccinated or non-vaccinated patients.
you are missing my point:
fewer vaccination -> more infection -> more virus around -> more chances of mutation -> more likelihood of one mutation not being covered by the vaccinations available -> more fatalities.
@Listener
Eating and drinking unhealthily are not currently contagious diseases that would spread exponentially though a population unless otherwise checked.
So, no, I don’t have to argue that the same public health measures should be used in both situations.
However if a major political movement started convincing its followers to drink a couple of bottles of whisky every day as a proof of their loyalty or patriotism, I might re-consider.
Public health is not an all-or-nothing question of libertarianism versus totalitarianism, even if that is how you are trying to protray it.
Eating and drinking the wrong things primarily damages your own health, and although this ultimately uses healthcare resources that might be allocated differently otherwise, the most effective way of dealing with this is education, and by making healthy choices more readily available.
Smoking is a bit different because of the health effects of passive smoking (i.e. inhaling somebody else’s smoke). In the UK and Europe smoking in public places has been restricted by law (not banned altogether) and this, along with other measures, appears to have been successful in reducing smoking. Very few people, as far as I can tell, have a problem with this.
Vaccinating against an infectious disease is altogether different because the vaccine reduces the risk of getting infected and therefore has a large effect on the number of people who might otherwise be spreading the virus (the effect is large as spread is exponential and therefore very sensitive to small changes in transmissability). With regard to the use of limited healthcare resources, people with other medical problems are having difficulty accessing healthcare right now as a direct result of hospital beds and personnel being tied up with patients who are seriously ill from coronavirus, most of whom are unvaccinated.
Increasing the level of vaccination will free up these precious resources immediately. Improving diet and smoking habits will take decades for the effects to show.
I am guessing that you, Listener, are American as very few people in the UK, and indeed Europe (with the exception of France) understand your position at all. As far as I can tell there is a very vocal group of people in the US who feel that individual freedoms are much more important that civic duty, and who fail to realise that with rights always come responsibilities in the way that they are exercised. I have no idea whether they are representative of Americans as a whole.
It seems to me the same mindset that believes that the right to shoot people is more important than the right not to be shot, which again makes very little sense to those living outside the US.
@Dr. JMK
If I were to turn back the clock a couple hundred years to entertain arguments against the US Constitution amendment, I might consider your position…. in hindsight.
However, the fact is there are more firearms in the hands of the US population than there are citizens…. not including firearms owned by the military and law enforcement agencies is a huge headwind. So to be clear, the estimate is somewhere around 400 million firearms in homes. So doc, the horse is already out of the barn… so to speak.
To get these firearms out of homes ( and the horse back in the barn), what is your idea for making that a reality ? Offer money for the population holding firearms to be compensated ? Sure, what next… pass legislation, right… then what for those that don’t want to comply ? What next, do a home to home search ? Do all that and there would still be nothing short of 100 million firearms remaining in homes … LARGELY NOW IN THE HANDS OF CRIMINALS.
So in that scenario, the general public looses, even those that don’t own firearms are left with a more dangerous society since the criminals will now have a superior edge than previous to the firearm confiscation.
You might see now why there is no easy solution.
Beyond all that, I’ll bring up a point of perspective that perhaps you or others are not aware of. It’s a statistic known as DGU, or “Defensive Gun Use”. I’d rather not list a bunch of links that mean nothing to you, but I’ll give you just one.
If you care to, do your own research on the matter and you will find that the studies of DGU concluded this it saves many more lives than firearms take. The statistical report was even confirmed by the CDC.
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/firearms/defensive-gun-uses-in-the-us/
Listener,
I do not know enough about the US to have any meaningful opinion about the most effective way to implement a gun control policy. From my viewpoint as an outsider the American obsession with guns, and the way that the idea of shooting other people appears to have become normalised, is that it is utter madness. But the US is not the only foreign country to have strange customs.
The statistics you link to on defensive gun use may be correct, but it is my understanding that there are many deaths from suicide (where the urge often passes quickly if ready means are unavailable), domestic violence and accidental shootings. Still, for most people the illusion of being in control of a situation is more important than actual safety (one of the reasons why it is likely to be a long time before driverless cars become commonplace).
I am not against guns as such – I grew up with them – but I was brought up with the notion that you shouldn’t shoot anything unless you intend to eat it.
Why not?
Australia ran two gun buyback schemes, one in 1996/7, after the Port Arthur massacre, that retrieved ~650000 guns, and one in 2003 that retrieved ~69000 guns. The 1996/7 buyback cost AUD308 million (~USD225 million). The retrieved guns were destroyed.
Gun buyback schemes in the USA appear to have been far less successful.
But Australia has far fewer guns/person than the USA anyway, and there are restrictions on gun ownership in Australia that would be unlikely to be legislated for in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)
Ah, I should have read on. This addresses my earlier post well enough.
You guys are spouting BS
The vast majority of media lies are contributing to the government narrative.
https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/07/04/deaths-hospital-vaccinated-uk.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/vaccinated-people-singapore-make-up-three-quarters-recent-covid-19-cases-2021-07-23/
Are vaccines really stopping the spread ?
and you are quite sure that it is not you who is “spouting BS”?
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” ― Charles Bukowski
@Listener
Civilized people put their conclusion at the end of their argument – and after supplying proper supporting evidence. Also, you appear to have made a remarkably bad choice in selecting your nickname here, as you appear deaf to all reasoning and arguments against your claims.
Yes, they are. Just not with 100% effectiveness.
Stephanie Seneff may once have been an accomplished computer scientist, her more recent ventures into biological and medical issues are an absolute disaster. This article is a prime example of lying with statistics, among other things by not taking population size into account in statistical calculations, and mixing up percentages and absolute numbers. It is absolutely untrue that vaccinated people have a six times higher chance of dying from Covid-19 than unvaccinated people. Here is a proper explanation of the figures: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/25/significant-proportions-of-people-admitted-to-hospital-or-dying-from-covid-19-in-england-are-vaccinated-this-doesnt-mean-the-vaccines-dont-work/
Well, vaccinated people make up only 15% of recent COVID-19 cases here in the Netherlands, with the vast majority of new cases and hospitalizations still being among the unvaccinated. And, here too, with the majority of people here vaccinated, one would expect the proportion of hospitalizations and even deaths among vaccinated to rise relative to unvaccinated people – simply because the proportion of unvaccinated people is decreasing.
I hope that this clarifies why we are NOT ‘spouting BS’ here, and why you should not only believe the sources that suit your own biases and preconceptions. Although I have my doubts that you will actually listen this time.
Vision Times reports that China hopes to vaccinate 2/3 of its population of 1.5billion by October.
https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/08/27/china-aims-to-vaccinate-1-1-billion-people-by-october-to-win-peoples-war.html
Todd Crawford reports:
“Chinese netizens [sic] have been posting stories online of people dying of heart failure and brain hemorrhages following vaccination with a domestically produced vaccine.”
“Other posts by Chinese citizens are claiming vaccinated individuals are contracting epilepsy, leukemia and are experiencing memory loss following inoculation with Chinese vaccines.”
“To date Chinese authorities have not released any official statistics concerning adverse reactions to vaccinations.”
“Family members who have tried to voice their concerns have faced suppression with some being banned from social media,” The Epoch Times reported.
I hold no brief for Xi Jinping, but I don’t believe he would be commanding a national vaccine drive if scientists and doctors were not strongly advising him to do so. TCM to accompany it by order perhaps? Not the other way round, I hazard a guess, notwithstanding TCM being Xi Jinping’s declared Chinese “jewel”.
But who or what is the “The Epoch Times”.
Simon van Zuylan-Wood reported for The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/inside-the-epoch-times-a-mysterious-pro-trump-newspaper/617645/
To all….
We’ve been lied to by the Authorities again.
Pfizer vaccine approval… NOT
Bait and switch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js1bAtwxcNY
@Listener
I compiled a list of articles for your reading pleasure. It appears that the anti-vaxxers are going the way of the dodo.
Cambridge-educated anti-vaxxer dies from Covid:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-anti-vax-vaccine-lawyer-dies-leslie-lawrenson-b949378.html
Florida radio host who called himself ‘Mr Anti-Vax’ dies of Covid-19:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/29/conservative-radio-host-anti-vaxxer-dies-covid-marc-bernier
Extreme right meets the virus, and a death in the family results:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-0723-20210722-bjpv2dfltbhhfa5b2662ejjfk4-story.html
Anti-Vaxxer Couple Dies Of COVID-19 Just 2 Weeks Apart; Leaves 4 Kids Behind:
https://www.ibtimes.com/anti-vaxxer-couple-dies-covid-19-just-2-weeks-apart-leaves-4-kids-behind-3276505
The Fable of the Sick Anti-Vaxxer:
https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/immanuel-pfeiffer-smallpox-antivaxxer-covid-vaccines-history.html
They realised they were wrong too late: The anti-vaxxers making the best case for the Covid shot:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/covid-vaccine-us-antivaxx-jab-b1896231.html
What the ivermectin debacle reveals about the hypocrisy of the anti-vaxxer crowd:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/politics/ivermectin-covid-19-fox-news/index.html
Anti-vaxx police officer who had been taking horse worm medicine dies from Covid:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/anti-vaxx-police-officer-dies-covid-b1910221.html
@Talker
Soooo… perhaps I should compile a list of links that confirm that vaccinated patients also died from Covid-19. It wouldn’t be difficult, I know of a couple of people myself.
To point out some individual cases means something small. You are using anecdote to arrive at a wide conclusion, something widely frowned upon at this blog.
“To point out some individual cases means something small. You are using anecdote to arrive at a wide conclusion…”
Look here everyone, the pot is calling the kettle black! I doubt that you all are surprised.
@Talker
BTW- you completely avoided the subject of the Youtube link speaking to the subject of FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine.
Try to stay on subject. It appears that posting a list of links that speak to non vaccinated patients is much more compelling for you.
@Listener
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/yes-the-fda-really-has-given-full-approval-to-comirnaty/
It would appear that you have been listening to the wrong people again.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/alabama/articles/2021-08-06/nearly-all-state-covid-deaths-among-unvaccinated
https://www.cnet.com/health/99-of-covid-deaths-are-now-of-unvaccinated-people-experts-say/
“99.2% of COVID deaths are now of unvaccinated people.”
Data from other states (and countries) paints a similar picture.
The number of Covid deaths among vaccinated people is only a minute fraction of the veritable slaughter going on among unvaccinated people. And you just happen to know several of these extremely unlucky people? With all due respect, but this is so extremely unlikely that I think you are not being truthful here.
Or do you mean ‘know’ as in ‘made the news’? Well, yes, of course some of these cases made the news – not because they are happening all the time, but for exactly the opposite: because they are so rare. And of course also because they fit in with antivaccine propaganda that vaccines are no use etc..
@Richard Rasker
No Richard, you are listening to the wrong people.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/grim-warning-israel-vaccination-blunts-does-not-defeat-delta
ZEROHEDGE
Dr. Anthony Fauci and the rest of President Biden’s COVID advisors have been proven wrong about “the science” of COVID vaccines yet again. After telling Americans that vaccines offer better protection than natural infection, a new study out of Israel suggests the opposite is true: natural infection offers a much better shield against the delta variant than vaccines.
https://www.europereloaded.com/this-ends-the-debate-israeli-study-shows-natural-immunity-13x-more-effective-than-vaccines-at-stopping-delta/
You can google yourself and find many news sources for the same headline.
@Listener
Zero Hedge? Really?
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge :
“Zero Hedge is a batshit insane Austrian school finance blog run by two pseudonymous founders …”
And you tell me that I listen to the wrong people?
You really are not much good at comprehensive reading, are you? Yes, a natural infection offers better and probably also longer protection against renewed infection. But, and please get this into your rather dense head, NATURAL INFECTION KILLS ALMOST 1% OF PEOPLE. And no, vaccination DOES NOT kill 1% of people (or even 0.001%) – it instead PREVENTS Covid-19 deaths in well over 95% of cases. Only idiots claim that getting Covid-19 is better than getting vaccinated. So please stop parrotting the antivaccine propaganda from people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
Anyway, I’m fed up with having to explain the same basic things to you over and over again, so I’ll leave it at this.
@Richard Rasker
Richard, I can see that you don’t get out much, or even read.
You don’t like ZeroHedge… OK, I’ll spoon feed the news for you. However, I doubt you will accept an Israeli publication either. Your stuck in your own mindset. Israeli officials don’t want to accept the data either, they are stuck in mired thiinking … just like you.
“Israel’s national research body for epidemiology, the Gertner Institute, conducted the research, and Dr. Amit Huppert from its bio-statistical unit told The Times of Israel that policymakers should pay attention.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-study-claims-major-drop-in-vaccine-protection-experts-dont-believe-it/
@Listener
“you completely avoided the subject of the Youtube link speaking…”
I am merely point out to the fact that the misinformation in the YT link you posted kills people.
“It appears that posting a list of links that speak to non vaccinated patients is much more compelling for you.”
Of course, the unvaccinated are relevant to this topic. They are dying in large numbers due to Covid, because they believed the BS perpetrated by anti-vaxxers like Malone features in the YT link you posted.
You are not much of a listener are you? Listener?
Google banned antivax from Facebook but not youtube.
Youtube is the Janus face of Google. The moral duplicity of Google.
One face looks away from evil whilst the other face welcomes it.
Google gotta grift man!
@Leigh Jackson
Google and Facebook are two separate and independent corporations…. are you aware ?
Thanks for correcting me. I joined Facebook a long while back and left it a long while back. I rarely visit Youtube. Antivaxers do seem to love it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/12/10/google-announces-plan-to-tackle-vaccine-misinformation-through-new-information-panels/
https://about.fb.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-misinfo-update/#removing-more-false-claims
I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, least of all on social media platforms.
You appear to be incorrigible when it comes to science, particularly the science of vaccines.
@Listener
As I have a personal policy of not wasting time on watching videos(*), could you please explain in a few words how ‘we have been lied to’? And what in your opinion is so wrong with Covid-19 vaccines that even a 95% death prevention rate is in your eyes not enough to advise people to take them? Also note that there are more countries in the world than the US alone, and that scientists and doctors in these countries come to much the same conclusion as American scientists and doctors – without the politically motivated polarization that appears to be ruining the US.
*: Video is a good medium for lying to people and spreading propaganda, and less so for properly informing people. One of the reasons for this is that videos rarely if ever contain references to sources, and also because videos force you to take in the information at the speed and in the way the maker intended it. And oh, it sometimes takes minutes before it comes to the point.
This is why I have a huge preference for written information: I can skim it in a glance to see if it’s worth reading, I can easily reread parts if necessary, and take time to ponder and/or verify what is said, and I’m not distracted by emotional (body) language of the presenter. Overall, it is usually far more informative than a monologue of a talking head.
Richard,
I completely agree with what you say about videos. I get very frustrated when I am trying to learn how to use a piece of equipment or software and all I can find on the subject are videos. It is particularly annoying if I am simply trying to look something up.
@Richard Rasker
This link has a video available also, but in this link you can verify what I’m copy and posting by a short read.
Big Media Lie: FDA Never Approved Pfizer Emergency-Authorized Covax
Dr. Robert Malone explains how the FDA carried out a sleight of hand propagated by the Biden administration and major news media to mislead the public that the federal agency approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA treatment. As Malone explains, the FDA in fact approved an entirely different mRNA shot that goes under the brandname Comirnaty, while Pfizer’s now widely distributed COVID-19 continues to enjoy indemnity as the public is deceived into believing the EUA injection is FDA approved.
The Pfizer vaccine being administered in the USA is not available actually not available in the USA. They are still using the EUA vaccine to jab patients. So patients accepting the “FDA” approved vaccine are being jabbed with a different vaccine this is still EUA.
http://memoryholeblog.org/2021/08/24/big-media-lie-fda-never-approved-pfizer-emergency-authorized-covax/
You clearly did not read (or perhaps understand) the article by David Gorski that I linked to.
Robert Malone is a conspiracy-mongering fool who really should know better, given his background. And so should those who listen to this man.
FYI: those two vaccines are exactly the same vaccine. The ‘difference’ is a purely legal/administrative one, in order to be able to use supplies of either one, whichever is available – one officially still under the EUA, the other one as the fully approved brand.
You are definitely listening to the wrong people. All the sources you come up with are brainless, mostly ultra-right-wing conspiracy idiots and ditto channels, utterly clueless about health, disease and vaccination.
@Richard Rasker
OK Richard
I’ll spell it out differently… just for you.
“The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product.
Second, the FDA pointed out that both the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine, and the existing vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”
There is a huge real-world difference between products under an EUA compared with those that FDA has fully licensed. EUA products are experimental under U.S. law.”
https://truthcomestolight.com/2-things-mainstream-media-didnt-tell-you-about-fdas-approval-of-pfizer-vaccine/
@Listener
Ah, the good old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He doesn’t need any introduction here. Let me ask you a question and I would appreciate an honest response.
What makes you believe the stuff Robert F. Kennedy Jr says over the FDA, most scientists, and doctors?
@Listener
Your lack of comprehension is absolutely staggering. Let me spell it out, just for you:
THERE IS NO HUGE REAL-WORLD DIFFERENCE.
In fact, there IS NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. The ‘experimental’ EUA product is 100% IDENTICAL TO THE LICENSED PRODUCT. It is just produced and marketed under a different name, because full approval is still pending for lower age groups (who can receive the EUA product).
Anyway, I give up trying to explain. You are either very, very stupid, or you are deliberately trolling and trying to get your nefarious antivaccine propaganda across.
“You are definitely listening to the wrong people. All the sources you come up with are brainless, mostly ultra-right-wing conspiracy idiots and ditto channels, utterly clueless about health, disease and vaccination.”
Richard, I admire the patience you exhibit when conversing with anti-vaxxers. They are too deep in the rabbit hole of their own making that they just don’t realize that their kind is dying due to their extreme stance on vaccines. Unfortunately, no amount of information we provide is going to help them dig themselves out.
BTW, is there reference to the mark down language that you use to create hyperlinks and stylized quotes in your posts?
http://html5doctor.com/blockquote-q-cite/ Shows you how to use blockquotes, etc
https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp Shows how to embed hyperlinks
Thanks Lenny!
It’s mostly HTML formatting tags, so codes between those triangular brackets. No doubt, these can be found online, but for your convenience, here is a small list that I use most.
Quoted text: <blockquote> Your quoted text here </blockquote>
URLs: <a href=”your URL here”> your readable text here </a>
Bold: <b> your bold text here </b>
Italics: <i> your italicized text here </i>
Strike-through: <strike> your strike-through text here </strike>(spaces inserted for extra readability)
And oh, to get the triangular brackets themselves to display instead of being interpreted as tags, use the special codes & lt; and & gt; with the spaces after the ampersand (&) removed (otherwise you would see < and > instead of the codes).
perfect! Thanks Richard!
To all
hmmm…. Biden Administration vaccine booster policy not going over well at FDA
“Two of the top vaccine regulators at the Food and Drug Administration are leaving this fall, reportedly because they’re upset that the Biden Administration is pressuring the agency to approve COVID-19 booster shots to American adults .
The New York Times reports that an inter-agency email revealed that Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the F.D.A.’s vaccines office, will retire at the end of October, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, will exit in November.
Sources indicated both women were upset the White House jumped the gun with its declaration that booster shots should be given eight months after people have received their second vaccine dose. Neither reportedly believes there is enough solid data to justify giving booster shots at the moment. ”
https://www.newsandguts.com/top-vaccine-officials-quit-fda-as-uproar-builds-over-white-house-booster-push/
You sheep…. keep on lining up every six months for your booster jabs.
Hot off the press
a new variant
https://worldnewsera.com/news/entrepreneurs/who-says-it-is-monitoring-a-new-covid-variant-called-mu/
Biden’s getting FDA pushback? Your barrel is risibly parched.
@ Leigh Jackson
Yup
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/31/biden-booster-plan-fda-508149
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/bidens-booster-plan-seen-facing-us-cdc-fda-resistance
“”I would be very surprised if the CDC recommended a third dose of the vaccine to the general population,” said Offit, a former member of the CDC’s advisory panel of outside experts that evaluates vaccine data for the agency.”
Yup. Parched.
@Leigh Jackson
“barrel is risibly parched”
Lol! I like that expression. I don’t think we use that here in US. But hey! there is google help you with that. Funny thing is, some people don’t even bother to read, let alone understand the context of the post before they respond.
@Talker
It doesn’t have anything not understanding the expression, my reply had everything to do with the fact that I don’t agree with the narrative.
I urge anyone to answer the following questions; and if you derive at a honest answer for each you will know which side of the argument is the right side:
How many deaths were in 2020 (when everyone was unvaccinated) vs 2021? Which is greater and what could be a logical explanation of the result?
At what point are you considered “fully vaccinated” after getting the shot? If you end up in the hospital after injection and die before the prescribed timeline what statistic do you become? An unvaccinated death?
Does the vaccine keep you from contracting or spreading the virus?
Is there a virus in history that ever stopped producing variants?
What’s the average age of a person that dies of covid? Is it greater than the average life expectancy?
On average how many comorbidities did the victims of covid have?
What are the odds of dying from COVID for a person to an otherwise healthy individual?
What are the long-term side effects of the MRNA vaccine?
How does an MRNA vaccine differ from a traditional vaccine? Why is it considered experimental?
For the efficacy tests, what is the duration of those monitored in testing and what methods they used?
Have there been any whistleblowers that have come forward concerning the process of testing?
How does the all-cause mortality rate look like in 2021? Are hospitals seeing increased number of cases of people with heart conditions/strokes/blood clots etc?
What is the difference between an EUA (emergency use vaccine) versus a licensed vaccine?
How do the VAERS numbers look compared to other vaccines? (Eudravigilance Numbers as well)
Is it true that the definition of “Vaccine” was recently changed?
How many freedoms are you willing to give up to in the name of the pandemic? Do you think any of your sacrificed freedoms will ever be given back?
Lastly, I would encourage people to read the stories of those that have been adversely effected and judge for yourself, don’t be told what to think or what to believe. Much of the information is censored and labeled as “misinformation”. Are legitimate deaths misinformation? How much can you write off as coincidence?
thecovidblog.com is one site that tells some of the stories. Read through the VAERS cases, determine if they add up in your own mind.
How many people in your inner circle genuinely wanted the vax versus how many were coerced? How did the incentives work out so far?
Les
Mendacious question. For example, let’s ask how many COVID deaths there have been since before and after the bulk of the population here in the UK were vaccinated by March 2021. Prior to this date: 123,000. Since it: 20,000. And, let’s not forget, that’s with the more dangerous Delta raging. The majority of those deaths post 3/21 are aged 50+ and are unvaccinated – a cohort which is 95% vaccinated. What could be the logical explanation? Vaccines are very effective at preventing serious disease and death.
The rest of your questions are easily answered with a five minute Google search. It is fairly obvious that you don’t have much of a grounding in science, Les. Basic virology tells us that RNA viruses like COVID mutate rapidly. DNA viruses such as smallpox don’t. And why don’t we see smallpox any more? Because the disease has been eliminated. By vaccines.
That’s because it is misinformation, Les. COVID deniers and antivax loons have a very tenuous grasp of what constitutes truth.
And if you think that dumpster-dive through VAERS supports your position, it shows only that you don’t understand what VAERS is and how it works.
I am interested to know what you mean by that question. In the form that you are asking it doesn’t really make sense. Life expectancy is itself an average, as it is based on median survival. However, it is a meaningless term unless you specify what group of people you are applying it to. For instance in the UK the life expectancy at birth of people born in 2000 is greater than the life expectancy at birth of people born in 1960, but less than the life expectancy at age 5 of people born in 2000.
A moment’s thought, though, makes it quite clear that however you define it, life expectancy is by definition going to be greater than the median age of people from the same group dying of Covid, as all of them would have lived longer if they hadn’t died of the infection.
Before the vaccine, when most of the people dying from Covid were older, I saw an estimate that it was robbing them of about ten years of life. I haven’t seen any recent figures.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/severe-covid-infection-doubles-chances-of-dying-in-following-year-study?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2_M96GriqRkT96IiLyxaWNiKkDh3Z_iaN6wTWL672r96qVDzbr-XZexMg#Echobox=1638349088
I hadn’t seen this very interesting study. The Guardian article contains a link to the original paper in Frontiers in Medicine which looked at a cohort of 13,638 individuals undergoing a PCR test, which they divided into those who were negative, those who were positive with mild disease and those who were positive with severe disease. They followed them up for 12 months and looked at the number of deaths in each group. They found that those with severe disease were more than twice as likely to die during the follow-up period than those who were negative, and nearly twice as likely to die as those who were positive but only had mild Covid. The deaths were from a wide variety of causes and mostly not respiratory or cardiovascular.
Their findings show that, following recovery, the severity of a bout of Covid is a strong risk factor for future early death. One explanation is that Covid has profound and widespread effects on future health. Another explanation is that those who are at higher risk of dying anyway are also liable to become more ill if they get Covid. However, the investigators adjusted their data for age, sex and comorbidities (i.e. known risk factors for death within a specified period) so it suggests that it is the Covid infection itself that is responsible.
Other infections are known to increase future all-cause mortality. An example is measles, which damages immune memory of previous infections with other pathogens.