This article from AP News caught my attention. Here it is (I haven’t changed a word):
The flashy postcard, covered with images of syringes, beckoned people to attend Vax-Con ’21 to learn “the uncensored truth” about COVID-19 vaccines.
Participants traveled from around the country to a Wisconsin Dells resort for a sold-out convention that was, in fact, a sea of misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines and the pandemic. The featured speaker was the anti-vaccine activist who appeared in the 2020 movie “Plandemic,” which pushed false COVID-19 stories into the mainstream. One session after another discussed bogus claims about the health dangers of mask wearing and vaccines.
The convention was organized by members of a profession that has become a major purveyor of vaccine misinformation during the pandemic: chiropractors.
At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines.
They have touted their supplements as alternatives to vaccines, written doctor’s notes to allow patients to get out of mask and immunization mandates, donated large sums of money to anti-vaccine organizations and sold anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, the AP discovered. One chiropractor gave thousands of dollars to a Super PAC that hosted an anti-vaccine, pro-Donald Trump rally near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
They have also been the leading force behind anti-vaccine events like the one in Wisconsin, where hundreds of chiropractors from across the U.S. shelled out $299 or more to attend. The AP found chiropractors were allowed to earn continuing education credits to maintain their licenses in at least 10 states.
On this blog, I have often discussed that chiropractors tend to be anti-vax. It all goes back to their founding father, DD Palmer, who famously wrote:
- Vaccination and inoculation are pathological; chiropractic is physiological,
- and who in 1894, published his views on smallpox vaccination: ‘…the monstrous delusion … fastened on us by the medical profession, enforced by the state boards, and supported by the mass of unthinking people …’
- and who stated in 1896 that keeping tissue healthy is therefore the best prevention against infections; and this is best achieved by magnetic healing.
But that’s long ago! We are not like that anymore! … say the chiros of today.
Do you believe them?
If so, you might want to read this article by Jann Bellamy. Or alternatively, just look at some of my finds from the Internet:
102 Responses to “The uncensored truth” about COVID-19 vaccines” … as told by some chiro loons
Leave a Reply to has Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Oh there was stuff on the ten o’clock news last night and in a ‘vox pops’ piece in America, some young woman was voicing off about her God-given immune system, and I had to change the channel. Even from a Christiaan theology point of view, completely wrong (but I won’t go into that here).
They speak from the luxurious position of being in a generation, and a country, that doesn’t lose lots of children to polio, smallpox, diptheria, whooping cough and tuberculosis. Thanks to large-scale vaccination.
that’s a polite way of expressing it; one could also say THEY SPEAK FROM THEIR ARSE.
I am (almost) always polite….
“Thanks to large-scale vaccination.”
Narcissists are physiologically incapable of counting beyond One.
In today’s (Saturday) edition of the “i” newspaper on Page 25, there is a super Opinion article by guest columnist Professor Jim Al-Khalili, my favourite science presenter, entitled “Those who are talking loudest about science know the least”. He cites the Dunning-Kruger effect, in a piece written with style and vigour.
My parents come from a generation where everyone knew someone who had polio and had to walk on crutches for the rest of their lives or, in the worst case, had to rely on the iron lung.
The corona deniers lack this experience otherwise they would talk quite differently about the vaccinantion.
Yes, that’s what I was getting at. I am old enough (b.1957) to have seen people (one was a family friend) with a leg brace due to polio.
I am in my early 40s and I grew up in India during the 80s and 90s. I remember several kids in our school with leg braces. Back then it is a very common to come across someone with polio when you are walking on the street. Govt used to constantly run PSAs on TV that showed children disabled with polio and urging parents to vaccinate their kids.
I oppose the vaccine mandate it should not be that way at all that’s a fact it won’t be is well its by a choice that’s it final
Pardon?
You seem to be confusing facts with opinions.
A lot of people seem to have trouble telling the difference between what ought to be and what is. One clue is that nobody can agree on what ought to be.
So doctors and scientists never get things wrong? Thalidomide – anyone remember that? That’s what happens when medications are not thoroughly tested over a number of years. polio, smallpox, diptheria, whooping cough and tuberculosis vaccines were all tested for years before human consumption, how many years was the Covid vaccine tested? Answer is 0 years. YOU are the experiment….congratulations.
5 Years ago nobody wanted to eat a GM tomato, now you inject GM stuff straight into your body, you don’t even know what’s in the vaccine yet you say people not getting it are stupid! YOU are the stupid one, doing what your told without question. Baaaa
“So doctors and scientists never get things wrong? ”
who said this?
It becomes tiresome watching the fools waving and shouting and displaying their ignorance. The virus is thankfully ridding us of a lot of them.
Ignorance: If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it!
@Jeff
Medicines are fundamentally different from vaccines. Medicines try to change the body’s biochemistry, and since our biochemistry involves literally hundreds of thousands of proteins, enzymes and mechanisms by which these things work and interact, medicines almost always have unforeseen side effects. No scientist (or pharmaceutical company, for that matter) would dream of bringing a new medicine to market after just a few months of development and testing.
Vaccines, on the other hand, are all designed do exactly the same thing: they trigger the immune system by presenting it with a pathogen, or a part or toxin of a pathogen. They do not affect the body’s biochemistry in any way. This basically means is that a vaccine can’t do anything that the pathogen in question can’t do.
This means that vaccines are inherently much safer than medicines – which is also evidenced by the fact that in over 200 years of vaccination, no vaccine ever had any long-term harmful side effects.
Well, if mRNA vaccines are ‘GM stuff’ that is injected straight into the body, then catching a simple cold is even far worse ‘GM stuff’ entering your body – because those rhinoviruses do EXACTLY the same that the mRNA vaccine does: they merge with cells in your body to get RNA into those cells, after which the cell’s machinery automatically starts making proteins and other viral parts.
The only difference is that with an actual infection, your cells make all the proteins necessary to create new viruses that infect new cells to repeat the cycle, killing lots and lots of cells in the process and making you ill, whereas the vaccine’s mRNA just causes one such viral protein to be made. Which can’t make you seriously ill but still triggers the immune system all the same.
What a strange thing to say. We know exactly what is in those vaccines, up to the last ingredient. See https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/comirnaty-epar-product-information_en.pdf for all the details you may want to know.
I prefer to use the term uninformed or ill-informed, because these people only listen to other, equally ill-informed people. It often helps if things are properly explained to them in somewhat more detail than just “you’d better get the vaccine, because it protects you” (which, even though correct, is not really informative and doesn’t address doubts and fears).
Nope, we choose to get vaccinated because we understand the risks of both the disease (pretty high) and vaccination (extremely low) – and not just because someone tells us that this is so, but because we can look up things and conclude that yes, those vaccines seem quite safe and effective. Once again: there has never been a vaccine that had any unexpected long-term side effects. Covid-19. OTOH, causes long-term side effects in as many as 1 in every 4 people it infects, up to and including neurological damage.
Here’s a nice picture to go with your closing remark. Hope you appreciate.
Wow … the risk of the disease is “pretty high “ 😂 actually it’s low ! And it’s not a disease , it’s a virus , the survival rate from covid 19 is currently 99.98% survival rate ! And higher the younger you are , it’s a cold now it has waned out just like they always knew it would , they know how viruses behave from history and the amount of god awful experiments they do on animals , the viruses mutates mutates and wanes out they know this ! The virus mutates as is doesn’t want to kill the host in order for the virus to spread it needs the host to live ! So it becomes more contagious and less serious , if the host dies the virus dies with the host . You should probably do some further research on these so called vax , try using duck duck go to get some actual truth and try listening to reputable doctors such as doctor Michael yeardon or doctor Robert Malone even doctor Peter McCullough or doctor Ryan cole there are many .
Michael Yeardon in an anti-vaxxer.
Robert Malone spreads fake news about on the safety and efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
Peter A. McCullough is a cardiologist without any experience in virology or immunology who promotes misinformation about COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.
Ryan Cole, a pathologe, has been reported to a Washington medical board as he adviced or treated patients outside of Idaho’s standard of care.
Your “experts” endanger human lives. Your are busted, pal!
@T
This must be another post from one of our resident trolls under a new pseudonym – which this time is just the capital ‘T’ … a bit too lazy to come up with anything longer, are we?
And where did you get this number? Ah, I see.
Yup, just like the smallpox virus, or the polio virus, or the yellow fever virus, or … oh, wait …
Viruses don’t ‘want’ anything. They simply spread and survive any way they can. Many pathogens survive by being extremely lethal to particular species of hosts but causing no or only mild symptoms in other species (e.g. ebola), others by being extremely infectious, others by having a long latency between infection and death (e.g. hepatitis B), and others again by killing ‘only’ 1% of the infected population – such as the coronavirus or the poliovirus.
Ah, the Parade of Fools … half of them are not even doctors to start with, all of them are liars who played down the risk of Covid-19 and/or hugely exaggerated the risk of vaccination, and no, none of them can be called ‘reputable’ any more.
Anyway, this is pretty sloppy trolling. A bit more care and attention next time please, or I will just ignore your future drivel.
“Michael Yeardon in an anti-vaxxer.
Robert Malone spreads fake news about on the safety and efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.
Peter A. McCullough is a cardiologist without any experience in virology or immunology who promotes misinformation about COVID-19, the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.
Ryan Cole, a pathologe, has been reported to a Washington medical board as he advice or treated patients outside of Idaho’s standard of care.
Your “experts” endanger human lives. Your are busted, pal!”
Michael Yeardon is not an anti-vaxer. He was never opposed to vaccines till the current covid vaccines. Like many of us, we are skeptical because they haven’t been tested to the same rigor of vaccines developed previously. First line healthcare workers are some of the ones that have seen first hand the results of the side effects of these vaccines. None of the vaccines administered in the USA are to this point in time properly FDA approved…. no, not even Pfizer vaccine that is given in the USA.
Robert Malone is neither an antivaxer. He is double vaxxed and boosted. He opposed mandates, and he opposed vaccines for those previously infected and already have natural immunity, and for the younger population whom are at low risk to the virus, but higher risk to vaccine side effects.
Peter A. McCullough has treated on the front line covid patients, both through his global network and personally. He has extensive experience in early treatment of covid, something that those stuck of vaccine treatment only still consider useless. Sadly, to much of the heath care specialist worldwide are still relying on vaccines heavily to stop the dying.
If you think Dr. Anthony Fauci that hasn’t personally treated one patient knows better, you go see Tony rather than Peter when you get covid…. and your odds of living just went down.
Early treatment could have saved more than fifty percent of the deaths from covid this far. Once long covid develops, your chances of dying go up dramatically. Health care systems, doctors and hospitals in many countries rejected the idea of early treatment of covid. We were told if you have symptoms, or test positive… DON’T GO TO THE DOCTOR OR HOSPITAL ! We were instructed to stay home until we were dying…. THEN …. go to the hospital. Peter A. McCullough took another approach, and many are fortunate that he did.
Dr Ryan Cole is a pathologist that is an expert in immunology. He believes that it is not just a viral pandemic, but an international vitamin D-deficiency pandemic where 70 percent of the world is immune-suppressed because of vitamin D deficiency. He also shared that ninety-six percent of people in the ICU due to COVID-19 are actually vitamin D deficient and are susceptible to coronaviruses of any sort.
It would appear that he is correct.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34607398/
@concerned patient
Ah…so you dont believe in what the experts have to say. However that doesn’t stop you from listening to people that you believe to be experts, like Malone, McCullough, Cole etc. In other words, “experts” that confirm your biases.
Here is a different meta-analysis on Vit D that came to an opposite conclusion compared to the one you were referring to.
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-021-00744-y
I am not an expert in evaluating meta-analyses but the above study seem like a better quality one as they have a much larger cohort size and picked better quality studies. That said, I would happily defer to Professor Ernst & Co. for their expert opinion in this matter. Unlike you I don’t have problem with experts.
@concerned patient
Yes, he is. He tries to scare people away from vaccinating against Covid-19 by telling the most egregious lies about both the disease and the vaccines against it.
And this is another egregious lie from antivaxxers such as Yeadon. ALL Covid-19 vaccines on the market have been tested just as rigorously as existing vaccines, with tens of thousands of test subjects in phase III clinical trials and the usual follow-up monitoring. The main reason why these vaccines could be deployed within 6 months instead of 1-2 years is that the paperwork was speeded up significantly, usually by avoiding the usual delays. Normally, when a request for approval is submitted, a lot of time is wasted just waiting for documentation to be set up and processed, which can take up to several years. Most of this time, nothing actually happens, as the paperwork just sits there in a stack until it ends up on some clerk’s desk, who then looks at it, maybe puts in a few corrections and remarks, and then shoves it on top of another stack, to be processed by the next department – weeks or months later. These steps have been compressed into just a few weeks by giving these vaccines priority over everything else. Because every day of unnecessary delay of these vaccines meant thousands of unnecessary deaths.
More FUD and lies. Yes, vaccines cause side effects: sore arms, or a day or two of light fever at most. But nothing worse.
This is a very stupid lie. And before that, ALL vaccines had emergency use authorization in the US and full approval in the EU, based on the same requirements that pertain to normal FDA approval.
And then there’s this: normally, you people don’t bother with procedures AT ALL – even worse: you demand that anything that anyone comes up with as a treatment should be freely available and used without restrictions, even treatments that don’t work or may be even harmful. Yes, I’m talking about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin etc.. No doubt, you would have had no problems with these medicines being approved without evaluation at all – but when it’s about vaccines (that have been properly tested and evaluated), you suddenly insist that every procedure must be followed fully and to the letter, and no exemptions and short-cuts should be allowed.
So apart from liars, you antivaccine people are also hypocrites. Well done.
Sadly, there are still lots of brainless idiots like you who don’t understand that vaccines are by far the best way to prevent people from dying of Covid-19.
Unvaccinated persons who contract Covid-19 still are far more likely to end up in the ICU and/or the grave than vaccinated persons. Yes, also with the milder omicron variant.
Yes, and that early treatment is called VACCINATION. There are no effective early treatments once someone got infected.
Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? People who die from Covid-19 do so within 3-4 weeks of getting infected. ‘Long Covid’ by definition is be diagnosed 3 months after the initial infection, and at that point, people usually don’t die any more of the infection.
Once again: what treatment? Please get this into your head: once you are infected with Covid-19, THERE IS NO EFFECTIVE TREATMENT. OK, dexamethasone can sometimes prevent a deadly cytokine storm, but at that point, people are already on the brink of death.
.. is a lying antivaccine person who should lose his medical license for spreading misinformation about both Covid-19 and vaccines (e.g. that the latter would have killed tens of thousands of people).
Nope, Cole is NOT an ‘expert in immunology’, he is specialized in dermatopathlogy, and operates his own pathology lab. This site only mentions that he has ‘researched immunology’, but that says nothing (and was almost 30 years ago). He has no special credentials or experience to his name with regard to immunology – which would also be rather incongruous with his background as a pathologist.
What Cole is, is yet another antivaccine person who may have killed hundreds of people with his lies and misinformation.
And you are apparently so gullible as to believe and repeat all this rubbish.
@Richard Rasker
Thank you for your excellent reply. I had similar thoughts when I read @concerned patients blatant falsehoods. Unfortunately, my English is not good enough to formulate such an answer that it will not cause any misunderstandings.
Richard,
Ventilation and everything else used in ITU constitutes treatment, though most of this comes under the heading of “supportive care”. However, I must correct you as there are now several effective drugs in early-stage Covid. One of them is the anti-viral mulnopiravir, which has been shown to have a marked impact on the risk of hospitalisation and death in individuals who are particularly vulnerable to Covid as a result of other medical problems. In the UK there is a system in place whereby everybody at risk has been sent a home kit to take a specimen for PCR at the first appearance of symptoms. This is sent back to a Government laboratory, and if it is positive there is a delivery service to ensure that the drug is taken straight to those who require it.
There are also two monoclonal antibody preparations, sotrovimab and Ronapreve, which have also been approved in the UK for early stage Covid in those deemed at risk of more severe disease.
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2990
@Dr Julian Money-Kyrle
Thank you for your corrections! I was indeed not aware of the existence of mulnopiravir. However, these are not the primary early treatment medicines advised by Mr. McCullough and his buddies from the AAPS:
https://procompounding.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/COVID-TREATMENT-GUIDE-ZN-AAPSOnline.org_.pdf
“* Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with azithromycin (AZM) or doxycycline
OR
* Ivermectin with azithromycin (AZM) or doxycycline”
Only after these long-debunked treatments do they suggest the use of medicines that have at least a modicum of efficacy – which are still considerably less effective and far more expensive than vaccines.
Richard,
The drugs that I referred to have more than a modicum of efficacy, but I do grant you that they are a lot more expensive than vaccines, and are also rather more toxic. However, their use (at least at the moment in the UK) is confined to people who have already contracted Covid and are at particular risk of serious infection or death, such as immunocompromised individuals for whom the vaccines give only limited protection or none at all.
@Dr Julian Money-Kyrle
Thank you for this additional explanation. My main gripes of course are with these people who try to discourage vaccination and claim that many patients are better off getting ‘early treatment’ – and then go on to promote long-debunked medicines or vitamins.
But indeed I should be a bit more careful in what I say, and not get carried away with annoyance about those antivaccine people.
Jeff,
That was 60 years ago, about the time I was born, so I can’t remember anything as I was too young. However, I am well aware of how a sudden rise in cases of phocomelia (literally seal-limbs) led to the realisation that unborn babies could be damaged by pharmaceuticals, which completely changed drug development, testing and prescribing. I am now very grateful for thalidomide, having taken it myself for multiple myeloma (a form of bone marrow cancer), and I am currently on a similar drug, pomalidomide, which has kept me stable for the past four years.
That is certainly not true of the smallpox vaccine, which was famously tested on 8-year-old James Phipps by Edward Jenner, who then went on to inoculate him with live smallpox material to see whether the vaccination had worked.
With eight billion or so doses given so far worldwide I think it is fair to say that it isn’t perfectly safe, but it is very safe indeed, particularly when compared with Covid itself, which is anything but.
If you would like to get your facts straight you could do worse than watching this year’s Richard Dimbleby memorial lecture, broadcast on BBC television a few days ago and available on iPlayer. It was given by Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who headed the team that developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. She tells the story of how it came about and it is fascinating to hear it from somebody so intimately involved. She explains how they had been researching this technology for many years, had already developed other vaccines using it (for instance against Ebola) and as they knew that it was only a matter of time before another pandemic hit the world they were all ready to act as soon as it did. They were able to progress rapidly from one stage of development to the next because they didn’t have to wait years in between each step for funding to be agreed, which is the reason why vaccines usually take much longer. Also it is much easier to make an RNA vaccine than a conventional one, which involves growing viruses in living tissues (usually live eggs).
I would have been quite happy to eat a GM tomato five years ago if I had been offered one.
We have been using insulin made by genetically modified bacteria for my entire career as a physician (I qualified in 1986). This was not only easier but much safer than extracting it from animal pancreases.
As well as pomalidamide, I am also having monthly infusions of daratumumab, a monoclonal antibody made by genetically modified cells in culture. I am extremely grateful for this technology, without which I would have died about four years ago.
This is publically available information. Just google the name of the vaccine plus “excipients” which is the term for non-active components of any pharmaceutical preparation.
Do you know what is in everything else that you might consume?
Fwiw. My mom was taking thalidomide for her myelodysplastic dysplasia. Worked for several years.
With this kind of fallacious reasoning, it’s only a relatively short step to the “Breatharianism” of Ellen Greve, aka ‘Jasmuheen’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmuheen
Saying
“I don’t need vaccines because I trust my immune system”
is like saying
“I don’t need education because I trust my brain”
(I believe this one can be credited to Gert van Dijk”)
I love that.
👍. Perfect retort
Also from the article:
“ The purveyors of vaccine misinformation represent a small but vocal minority of the nation’s 70,000 chiropractors, many of whom advocate for vaccines.”
“… which says he is among the small group of people responsible for nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine content online.”
“The purveyors of vaccine misinformation represent a small but vocal minority of the nation’s 70,000 chiropractors, many of whom advocate for vaccines.”
OK. And what are all those pro-vaccine chiros doing to get rid of the quacks in their midst? About as much as mainstream medicine does to get rid of its, I’ll wager; i.e. nowhere near enough. Foxes, henhouses, etc.
“… which says he is among the small group of people responsible for nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine content online.”
In other words, the amount of damage they do is proportionally far greater than just their raw numbers. All the more reason to strip them of accreditation and run them clear out of town.
Look, everyone does apologetics, mainstream medicine included. And then it’s back to business as always, because nothing ever gets changed. Here’s a golden opportunity for your non-Palmerite wing to score big points over conventional docs for once, by properly cleaning out your own house first. Let us know how it works out.
Hear! Hear!
Apologetics?
My post merely pointed out a few things Ernst left out….this is a vocal minority.
How to stop it is a complex issue of which I doubt anyone here is part of the solution.
It is a vocal minority that is very loudly making your whole profession look garbage. But hey. Do something, do nothing; it’s no skin off my nose either way you go.
Just don’t cry “But-but-but” while simultaneously declaring “it’s too hard to solve”. If you can’t solve it, either it’s because your self-regulation isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on or because your whole system is working exactly as designed. Either way, that’s on you. Don’t get whiny when other people point out your profession puts itself above patients, after you didn’t even have the courage to tell them yourself first.
If you have a problem with me pointing out this is a vocal minority, that’s not my problem.
Once again, it’s not my profession they are dragging down with them. And if you are happy to let them do so, that’s fine by me too. The sooner that those who genuinely care for patients go be physios, the sooner chiropractic can be the exclusive playground for Palmer’s quacks, and never the twain confused again by the general public. It’s a win either way.
Speaking of covid-19 vaccines, I found this story to be interesting. If 80% vaccine rates are not sufficient… what’s the needed number ?
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/jump-in-singapore-covid-19-cases-despite-80-per-cent-vaccination/ar-AAOTum2
it means the 20% of idiotic anti-vaxxers need to get vaccinated
That 20% is not all anti-vaxxers though. Some fraction of that will be children (since their vaccine trials were done last), some will be people who cannot be vaccinated for other medical reasons, and some will be the people who are bottom of the pile for everything (the disadvantaged). And let’s not forget the millions more who cannot be vaccinated because they are already dead; killed, directly and indirectly, by this rotten disease.
None of whom deserve to be lumped in with that social contagion.
Not all in the 20% not vaccinated group will be anti-vaxxers, vaccine hesitancy is a different beast. We must be careful not to call all those not yet vaccinated idiots- they will never change their minds if we offend and belittle instead of listen, understand (people’s fears and anxieties) and patiently explain (again!). To do the former risks them truly becoming anti-vaxxers.
“vaccine hesitancy is a different beast”
OK. Perhaps we call it a neurosis instead?
And while you are not wrong about any of this, it does get tiring after a while to keep on hearing how we need to understand their concerns and points of view; yet not that they should work to understand ours.
And, how do you think we feel when a malignant manipulator feigns harmless neurotic in order to make us run ourselves ragged providing them every answer and benefit of the doubt, even as their malicious JAQ-ing and true agenda starts to reveal itself after a while, after that mask begins to slip. Take “Bart”, for example; do you think he’s an honest actor here, or an abuser playing us for fools? It is exhausting and demoralizing to get burned and burned again, and then to be lectured about our poor attitude is just the capper on that.
Empathy and understanding is a two-way street.
One more thing: it is not hard for us rationalists to step into their shoes and walk around in them; all we do is turn off the training we’ve had in how to think analytically and self-check and self-correct, and revert to being the irrational animals that we all are by default. Whereas irrational thinkers have either never learned to think rationally and self-critically, or learned to do it at one time how but have subsequently made the choice to abandon it (looking at you, Montagnier). Thus while it is easy for us to mentally model their motivations and perspective, it is hard-to-impossible for them to mentally model ours; even as they are absolutely convinced that they understand us better than we understand them.
But, of course, I’m just a callous murdering Pharma Shill so none of that counts. Dang, busted again.
Terrific technology, search engines. Enter a few choice keywords, and ker-pow! I quickly found some recent discussion here:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210803/delta-variant-could-drive-herd-immunity-threshold-over-80
TL;DR: The exact threshold for achieving herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 isn’t yet known, but may well be ≥90% thanks to delta’s greater infectiousness. (For comparison: polio requires >80%, measles requires >95%.)
It should also go without saying that we need to achieve it worldwide, as soon as we can. The more places where the virus still runs rampant, the more opportunities that creates for new, even more infectious, strains to evolve; pushing us back still further.
(In a good and just world, spoiled pampered westerners shrieking about 5G microchips would all be shipped off to Somalia and the DRC, there for nature to take its course. Alas, here we are.)
Bart,
The proportion of people that need to be immune to an infectious disease in order to prevent the numbers growing exponentially is one minus the reciprocal of R0, which is the number of people each case goes on to infect in the absence of any immunity. R0 is the baseline measurement of infectivity, and the current infectivity (i.e. the number of people that each case infects when all real-life measures are taken into account) is simply R.
So for measles, for instance, R0 is 20 (i.e. each case infects 20 others) so 1-0.05 = 95% need to be vaccinated.
At the start of the pandemic, R0 (for the alpha variant) was about 3, so it was estimated that 65 – 70% would have needed to be vaccinated had there been a vaccine available at the time. However, the delta variant, which is currently responsible for the majority of infections, is estimated to have an R0 of about 8 or 9, which equates to about 88 – 90% immunity.
Unfortunately the current vaccines to not give 100% protection against being infected, though they are very effective and preventing severe illness and death. There are various estimates, which I suppose depend on exactly what is being measured and in what population (and how recently they were vaccinated), but I understand that they give around 70 – 80% protection against infection. A quick calculation therefore tells us that even if everyone were vaccinated, that would not on its own be enough to end the pandemic.
Of course other measures, such as hand-washing, social distancing, mask-wearing, isolation of individuals with confirmed infection etc., all reduce the risk of transmission, and combined with vaccination they can bring R below 1.
The worry is that the more widely the virus is allowed to circulate, particularly in an unvaccinated population, the greater the chance of an even more infectious variant emerging. This is one reason why organisations such as the WHO are so keen for rich countries to donate their surplus vaccine supplies to those who have none, rather than using them to give a booster to people who are unlikely to die if they become infected, or simply keeping them “just in case” until they go out of date.
They don’t notice the contradiction that you supposedly don’t need to make a corporation profit because you have an immune system but in the same breath they say you need to make another corporation profit to ‘optimise’ your immune system.
No thanks, I don’t need your quack remedies, I have an immune system.
Sadly people are going to have to learn this the hard way ☹️
Every person who ever died of an infectious disease – Spanish Flu, Diptheria, Smallpox, Polio etc etc, had an immune system. Sadly they became too dead to learn.
Dr. Julian
Thanks so much, that was an excellent reply, I appreciate that much more than the blog moderators response to me.
My response to both you and John is this;
The “idiots” that don’t want the vaccine the professor speaks of may well consist of a large percentage of persons that already suffered through the covid virus and survived. Some (perhaps a large percentage) of these patients will argue that their immunity is superior to vaccine immunity…. and justly so. So yes, the immune system has ligetimacy when you consider those that have already survived the virus. It has been shown that antibodies are equal or superior to vaccines. We have also witnessed that the vaccine efficacy is lasting as little as three months before trailing off, and requiring booster jabs. So without mandates, it is not likely that any State is capable of vaccine rates over 90%, in my view.
Mandates are coming, it’s just a mater of time.
In response to David B
Not all infectious diseases are created equal. The listed diseases had much higher mortality or injury rates than covid. Not an apples to apples to comparison.
“It has been shown that antibodies are equal or superior to vaccines.”
1 ) Vaccines generate antibodies.
2) Can you produce evidence for this statement?
3 ) I don’t think it is true.
Bart,
They will be arguing from opinion, though, not data.
I am not sure what you mean by this, and from the sound of it I don’t think you do, either.
The vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to provoke a response that is then protective against infection with the virus itself. This involves the production of antibodies, but also stimulation of B cells and T cells. The aim is to give comparable protection to that which comes from having survived the infection, but without the associated risks.
It seems that immunity resulting from vaccination, like the immunity from the infection, wanes with time, but further doses of the vaccine will stimulate it again, either as a second (or third) vaccine dose or as vaccination following infection. The current advice therefore (at least in the UK) is that the vaccine should still be given to people who have recovered from Covid.
I’m not sure that is entirely relevant, as Covid has still managed to kill 4.55 million people worldwide so far, and 138,000 in the UK, where I live, including friends and relatives of mine who otherwise had many healthy years to look forward to.
Smallpox, of course, has been completely eradicated by vaccination, one of only two diseases of which that can be said (the other is rinderpest, a virus infection of livestock that is related to measles). I have never seen a case of diphtheria in 30 years of medical practice. Polio is now very rare, again as a result of vaccination, though I knew several people with leg braces when I was at primary school, and my uncle was crippled by it, though not as badly as the many beggers that I have seen when travelling through India. However, most people survived polio with nothing more than a flu-like illness and the mortality rate is lower than for covid; in your view does this mean that the campaign to eliminate it was not necessary?
Epidemiologists tell us that it is inevitable that we will have another pandemic along the lines of Spanish flu, and it is just a matter of time, and how prepared we are for it. Covid was not the first and it won’t be the last.
The interplay between infections and the immune system is very complex. Many fatalities in covid are as a result of an inappropriate overreaction of the immune system which the coronavirus provokes. Measles, on the other hand, wipes out the immune memory for infections previously encountered, with a consequent increase in mortality over the following five years or so from other infections.
It is not at all clear that this is the most effective way of maximising infection rates, though politicians tend to implement policies that they think will be popular rather than effective.
Regardless, while vaccination is an essential tool in the fight against the pandemic, and is very effective at reducing tnhe severity of infection (more effectiive han it is at preventing infection in the first place), it is clear that on its own it will not be enough to end the pandemic, and there is little prospect of eradicating SARS-Cov-2 altogether.
What I find interesting is this:
In the beginning it was masks, social distance and hand washing. Now that the vaccine is available all I hear is masks and vaccine.
If the goal is to end the pandemic shouldn’t they also continue to strongly recommend social distancing and hand washing until the Pandemic is over?
DC,
I said:
You replied:
What conclusion do you expect people to draw from that?
@DC: All of these measures are still recommended, and those recommendations are easy enough to find if you look for them.
Therefore, two possible explanations:
1. Washing and distancing are still being mentioned after vaccination and masking, but your brain only retains the first two things it hears.
2. Popular media messaging has been deliberately narrowed to focus public attention on the two things that have by far the biggest effect.
Whichever it is, it points to the same, very human, limitation. People are a lot better at remembering two things than they are at remembering lots of things; and people will quickly switch off entirely if recited long or inconsistent lists.
It’s not ideal, but it is pragmatic. You work with the human beings you’ve got, not the human beings you wish you had. Maybe in another million years, as long as we survive that far. 🙂
What conclusion do you expect people to draw from that?
That masks and vaccines are good enough.
@DC: “That masks and vaccines are good enough.”
It is less than ideal, but if that is the most that the public is willing to do then it will have to be. Considering large clods of America not only proudly refuse to do even that much, but take great delight in being utterly appalling to everyone else about it too, even that will be no easy achievement.
There is a reason I say all these anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers deserve to be shipped off to the DRC or Somalia. The disgusting poisonous brats have absolutely no idea how fabulously privileged they all are; a year spent living as the bottom billion of humanity must do would either educate them or remove them from our gene pool entirely. Win-win. Sorry, but I have no tolerance left for such people at all.
has: It is less than ideal, but if that is the most that the public is willing to do then it will have to be.
I don’t know if that is the most they are willing to do.
But I can say that the conversations that I have had with people that aren’t vaccinated is that most are confused and frustrated over the topic. The reasons are variable.
Some here and elsewhere want to totally blame the leaders of the anti-vax movement, and they do hold their share of the blame. However, I think the mixing of science with politics has left some with questions that haven’t been answered. These are more appropriately labeled as vaccine-hesitant and that is more of a lack of trust of politicians (speaking of the USA)
@DC
Speaking of the USA, lack of trust in politicians and the government in general is an intrinsic characteristic of a large subset of American society that existed long before this pandemic started. Anti-vax leaders like Kirsch take advantage of that to push their agenda and misinformation, and you wonder why the anti-vaxxers are confused and frustrated about the topic…
gotcha sir
Full steam ahead, 100%, here we come.
Here is an MIT scientist’s team’s analysis of the statistics showing 200k deaths in the USA
https://rumble.com/embed/vjm4tu/?pub=4
Thanks for the link. It’s long, but worth a listen.
@Bart
No, it is not worth a listen. Kirsch is a business person who has no education or knowledge in the field of medicine, immunology or statistics, yet makes the most outrageous claims about Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccination.
Also note that at first he merely said that Covid-19 vaccines didn’t work and caused infertility, but quickly escalated his claims to include ever more severe effects, and now he says that it kills hundreds of thousands of people. By Christmas, he will probably claim that half of all Americans have died from Covid-19 vaccination.
The following is a list of all the peer-reviewed research on which his conclusions and claims are based:
https://rationalwiki.org/w/images/2/2f/Tumbleweed.gif
And here a similar claim about ‘vaccine deaths’ is debunked: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/evaluating-claim-in-peer-reviewed-toxicology-reports-article-vaccines-kill-5-for-every-1-save
It is quite simple: the total number of deaths was lowest during the peak in vaccinations, and for months thereafter. Also note that these vaccinations were largely administered to the weak and elderly during this period. So if these vulnerable people all survived vaccination, then when did all those claimed ‘vaccination deaths’ happen? Answer: they didn’t.
Also note that for the past few months, almost all excess deaths are among unvaccinated people.
Meh. If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything. Especially if the data is low quality to begin with, and the conclusion already known. And as for the method of reporting, instantly suspect.
For some reason, Alties have no problem accepting that Big Pharma will say and do absolutely anything for power and money. And yet, when it’s one of their own, telling them just what they like to hear, that possibility isn’t even considered. Why is that, do you think?
After all, 200K US in 9 months deaths is 10% of the normal annual (pre-COVID) US death rate, which is a number of dead people large enough to be very hard to disguise or miss. So for some random internet schlub selling product to detect these 200K excess deaths not caused by COVID, while governments, NGOs, healthcare professionals, epidemiologists, et al say nothing about it, means that either someone is incredibly blind and stupid, or someone is lying to themselves and/or others.
So, first things first: please find the 200K excess US deaths in 2021 which do not track COVID infection rates. e.g. States where infections have gone down (a lot), yet deaths have gone up (a lot). If you are unable to find this, don’t worry: hardcore “Depopulation Agenda” believers will rationalize it simply by claiming the reported infection statistics are fabricated to be whatever “They” need them to be. But at least by making that initial effort, it proves to us that you’ve done your basic due dilligence, for yourself, to the best of your lay abilities: a rudimentary “sniff test”, or “Does this story smell fishy to me?”
That evidence of action, regardless of outcome, indicates you’re open to evidence and reason, and changing your mind when mistakes are detected or better information comes along. (Unlike Roger, who has never yet met a quack nostrum or conspiracy theory he won’t happily shill as “The Absolute Truth”. Even while half of them mutually contradict the other half.)
’Cos if you aren’t prepared to do your own homework, then why should we? And we can proceed accordingly.
Here is an UPenn scientist’s analysis of the fantastical claims made by Kirsch et. al. regarding vaccine “deaths”.
https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/evaluating-claim-in-peer-reviewed-toxicology-reports-article-vaccines-kill-5-for-every-1-save
https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/do-pfizer-vaccines-kill-2-people-for-every-1-saved-evaluating-viral-social-media-reports
Good dissections. And I LOLed at the line “[Kirsch] starts his presentation by claiming “I have no conflicts.”” That statement alone lands his credibilty in the sewer.
BTW, early on in the public vaccination program, we should expect to see greater-than-average non-COVID deaths in the newly vaccinated portion of the population, simply because the people who got vaccinated first are the elderly and the medically vulnerable, i.e. people who are a lot likely to die sooner than the rest of us anyway, regardless of vaccination status. You cannot extrapolate from that very atypical section of the population to the population as a whole; and anyone who does is either a fool or has something to sell you. What matters is whether those greater-than-average deaths are in line with the greater-than-average deaths that you’d expect to see within that same sub-population every other year, and I’m willing to bet that when the raw numbers are controlled for that any “bump” disappears.
Related: self-selection bias, Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Another telling line:
Which is to say, everything he says is built atop guesses.
And while there nothing inherently wrong with using guesses in formulating a hypothesis, to jump straight from that guesswork to declaring “vaccines have killed 200K Americans” without even stopping first to test if his guesses are any good or total crap, is somewhere between criminally incompetent and criminally malicious.
And to discover he has done exactly that, says everything we need to know about the trustworthiness of the man and the credibility of his arguments. But SOP for COVID grifters as long as there’s voracious rubes like Roger to gobble it all up and ask for more.
And the lulz keep rolling in…
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-hydroxychloroquine-ivermectin-hacked/
The level of grift is both shocking and shameless, yet almost entirely unsurprising by now. MLMs and Ponzi schemes must appear tired old also-rans in comparison. And all incredibly obvious and transparent too. Which further suggests that their success comes not because they fool Roger and his ilk but because Roger and his ilk want to be fooled; and all they are doing is providing that service.
I wonder perhaps if the final key to beating COVID will not be immunologists, but psychopathologists. Sad.
Then Richard, I don’t think you didn’t listen to the presentation.
You don’t need to have specific qualifications to use evidence produced by other professionals and compile a presentation.
No, indeed I didn’t waste my precious time on this because I KNOW what the man says. Kirsch is most certainly NOT part of a ‘MIT scientists team’, but a bullshit-spouting fool, and any ‘evidence’ that he comes up with regard to Covid-19 consists of fabrications, lies, misinformation and conspiracy crap. His dumb blather is not worth spending even a minute on, let alone more than two hours.
Ahhhh yes
Now I know the official standard.
MIT Scientists team…. lol
OK, now I know, thanks.
Careful, kid. Your mask just slipped.
And Kirsch is still an arrogant ass who pulled his figures right out of it, and his Humpty Dumpty math isn’t worth the chip wrapper it’s written on. Dude didn’t just cook the numbers, he set them on five-alarm fire. Shame on anyone who propagates that; there is no excuse.
Nor do you need specific qualifications to fabricate the numbers from which you draw your conclusions, though I’m sure it would be helpful in covering up your malfeasance. Fortunately, Kirsch is not that sophisticated, which is why his fabrication is so quickly revealed by others. Perhaps if you looked for more than just confirmation bias, you’d save yourself a lot of time.
Related: And yet more evidence of anti-vaxxers sending their best. From a (R) candidate for next Texas governor (emphasis mine):
Currently getting ratioed all to hell by everybody and their mother pointing out to this… potatoe that a monoclonal antibody treatment is $2000 (versus a $20 vaccine) and is 100% owned, manufactured, and sold by—you guessed it—Big Pharma.
And what are the odds that this will even slow them down? LOL, as if I’d be fool enough to take that bet. There’s a reason Las Vegas is the size it is.
* Bonus fact: The CEO of Regeneron, which makes and sells monoclonal antibody therapy, is a member of Trump’s golf club, and it was one of the treatments specially given to Trump when he got himself hospitalized with COVID last year.
“Enriching the pockets of Big Pharma and corrupt bureaucrats and politicians”? Indeed.
Vaccine misinformation is of course nothing new and actually goes back to the first vaccination, the controversy being beautifully depicted in the famous, glorious cartoon by Gillray (see link below).
Vaccinated literally means cow-ised. I’ve had my two cow-isings for Covid, and will jump at it as and when a booster is offered. I also had a cow-ising for flu for the first time last winter, and intend to get cow-ised for it this winter too.
https://www.themorgan.org/blog/cow-pock-or-wonderful-effects-new-inoculation
Here’s a good, balanced article describing how Steve Kirsch went from being a successful entrepreneur to full antivaxx loony: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/05/1036408/silicon-valley-millionaire-steve-kirsch-covid-vaccine-misinformation/
It’s the classic tale of someone seriously overstepping their area competence to promulgate a newly acquired belief, completely blind to their own flawed reasoning and lacunas in their knowledge.
The awful bird’s @BadVaccineTakes just posted on this too:
https://twitter.com/BadVaccineTakes/status/1447883909073674243
“Where does the 41 come from?”
So close.
prey tell, then why the need to suppress info on alternative therapies that work? so they could roll out poison unchecked under EUA. (you haven’t figured this out yet? why bother with you – seriously… I don’t know why I bother writing this)
you with the vax are the ones still getting sick – and spreading it. doesn’t stop you from getting it – then you walk about because ‘you’ are safe – spewing on everyone, including whatever that vax did to you. Then you have the nerve to blame the unvaxxed. I am happy to avoid the ‘vaxxed’ as you are to avoid me. You all will be getting super sick – enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ll stick with my uncorrupted, hard won natural immunity.
There is a lady on the BBC television show The Repair Shop right now this minute, who as a child in the 1940s on holiday with her parents on the island of Millport, not far from me, was diagnosed as having polio, and had to be quarantined from her parents on the mainland. She survived, learning to walk again, but now has a condition called Post-Polio Syndrome, which is causing muscle wasting. So much for natural immunity.
What suppression?
Suppression of information(*) about all those extremely effective and dirt-cheap alternative therapies to prevent and cure Covid-19 that literally no-one has ever heard about … oh, wait …
*: Well-known among children by its true name ‘fairy tales’.
LOL!
Since when was it possible to vaccinate coronavirus. Its not possible because it keeps mutating.
The so called vaccines do not stop you getting it or spreading it. That is not a vaccine. Every other vaccine does what it says, creates immunity. These jabs are therefore categorically, technically, scientifically and legally not allowed to even be referred to as a vaccine.
so much nonsense in so few words!
how did you manage that?
@Your mum
Ruthie? Is that you?
(And according to your definition, tetanus and diphtheria and influenza vaccines too are ‘categorically, technically, scientifically and legally not allowed to even be referred to as a vaccine’ – but who are you to dictate what the definition of a vaccine is?)
Who tf is Ruthie? I don’t care anyway. The fact the cdc changed the definition of what a vaccine is just last September should tell you all you need to know about what is really going on.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,1 a vaccine is “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” Immunity, in turn, is defined as “Protection from an infectious disease,” meaning that “If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.”
Neither Moderna nor Pfizer claim this to be the case for their COVID-19 “vaccines.” In fact, in their clinical trials, they specify that they will not even test for immunity.
Unlike real vaccines, which use an antigen of the disease you’re trying to prevent, the COVID-19 injections contain synthetic RNA fragments encapsulated in a nanolipid carrier compound, the sole purpose of which is to lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein, not the actual virus.
They do not actually impart immunity or inhibit transmissibility of the disease. In other words, they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2; they only are supposed to lessen your infection symptoms if or when you do get infected.
As such, these products do not meet the legal or medical definition of a vaccine, and as noted by David Martin, Ph.D., “The legal ramifications of this deception are immense.”
Very true.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of people here applauding this poison because they are in fact government employees or agencies working for them. They spread bs and support it, in exchange for a paycheck.
This corruption runs deep. Very, very deep.
… you don’t say!
tell us more
any evidence?
Which government?
@Your mum
Oh, just a rather dim person just like you spouting the exact same ill-informed nonsense that you do. Recently promised us to go away and never come back. But as we all know, most trolls return under a new pseudonym within a week or two, to start their dimwitted shenanigans all over again, trying to yank people’s chain. Hence the question.
People are dying as a result of taking this stuff so it’s not something I’d take lightly or try to misinform anyone about. Comparing me to something I am not is pointless. And how can I be so ill informed to be able to inform you that this jab is simply not a vaccine, its much much more and has been in development for over 50 years. It didn’t just come about as quickly as it appeared to to the common person who hasn’t at least taken a look into its development.
@Your Mum
Surely you mean “People are dying as a result of NOT taking this stuff”?
Those Covid vaccines don’t kill people. Quite the contrary, they doubtlessly saved millions of lives already.
?? Then what is it? To the best of my knowledge, it is simply a vaccine that closely mimics what the virus itself does: insert viral mRNA into cells. The cell then responds by making one viral protein, which in turn is recognized by the immune system, leading to a pretty good protection against the real thing. The vaccine does not do anything that the actual virus does not do too.
Make that about 30 years, but yes, mRNA vaccines have indeed been in development for quite a while, and human trials have been carried out for the past 10 or 15 years or so. This is why several pharmaceutical companies succeeded in coming up with an effective and safe Covid-19 vaccine on short notice, and why these vaccines made it through all required trials in one go. And the neat thing is that if the virus mutates, the production of matching vaccine can start within mere days, simply because all they have to do is use the new viral mRNA. (OK, this is oversimplification, but these vaccines are far faster, easier and safer to make than traditional vaccines, which require cell cultures in which to produce viruses, and lots of tedious steps to process this viral soup into a safe and effective vaccine.)
People are not only suddenly having heart attacks and dying but are also being left paralysed by these jabs. I guess you are too ignorant to have seen these things happening and believe the media when they tell you it’s just a coincidence. I will not reply to any of your comments because it is clearly wasted. Feel free to waste your own time by all means.
Of course they are. We presumably wouldn’t know any of them, though because they go to a different school.
Meanwhile the unvaccinated continue to die of COVID, secure in the knowledge that they’re right.
Four acquaintances of mine, from my area, died in the first wave of Covid, before vaccines were available. I do not know, within my purview, of anyone who has had any ill-effects from vaccination. I have had two Astra-Zeneca and a Pfizer, with no adverse effects whatever.
So that proves everything……
@Your Mum
Um, maybe you should spend less time in the ‘fiction’ section of the Internet, and get your information from real experts?
So ignorance is linked to eyesight? Interesting! Do you have any links to evidence for this?
But no. I can’t find any reports of increased cardiovascular disease and paralysis linked to vaccination. Can you? No? Then you are talking nonsense.
So let me get this straight: you are making very serious claims without providing even the smallest bit of evidence for what you say – yet I am the ‘ignorant’ one wasting your time because I don’t simply believe what you say?
And oh, I don’t ‘just believe’ the media either; I always try to go straight to the source, i.e. scientific articles.
I just did 🙂 Anyway, even if you may not have learned anything from this exchange, there may be other people who do.
KAPOW!
Prof. Ernst,
I know you are a busy man, but can we please have a leaderboard that shows a list of top 10 dumbest comments made in the comments section? I can think of at least half a dozen such comments made in the last few days that I can nominate.
thanks for the suggestion but the choice is too large and the decision too hard.