Excellent point, Ken. A-symptomatic carriers (the vaccinated) are more likely to spread disease, unknowingly. I have strong antibodies and am mindful to stay home when I feel the symptoms of illness. However, I don't believe it's my place to force anyone to do what I think is right because I'm not into authoritarian fascism. How do you feel about the creation diseases by the systems that be like covid, cancer, and the like? Do they not carry responsibility to do the right thing? Keep on, dear brother.
That’s just not true. If the vaccinated were more likely to spread disease then you’d see a higher rate of covid in counties with higher vaccine rates. It’s the opposite. This is an easy one.
You don’t have the right to shoot someone in the street, and you don’t have the right to spread disease during a pandemic. That’s not fascism, it’s humanitarian.
If you won’t show love to and protect your neighbors, you won’t be a part of any conscious evolution of man.
Dear Ken, I bet there is ample evidence for your claim, and mine. The fog machine of war gives rise to a lot of paradoxes. Seemingly opposing truths must be held gently. I find it helpful to focus on peace building in the midst of uncertainty, work towards resiliency, and build community around shared values such as humility. As Jordan Peterson said, "humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn." Study, meditation, & service are some excellent pillars. Peace, my brother!
Science is evidence based. What you’re spouting isn’t that. Normally I wouldn’t care - we’ve already eradicated polio, small pox, and for the most part measles - but during a pandemic the antivaxxers have death on their hands. This isn’t a paradox with multiple competing truths. This is a bunch of idiots drinking bleach and killing old people. If you’re not willing to do something simple at zero cost to you to keep the most vulnerable members of our human family healthy, you’re a member of a death cult. Plain and simple
If we were to start at ground zero: it is no measure of human decency or health to deliberately release bio-weapons into the whirrled at large, to genetically modify food sources, the list goes on...
Thank you for your help in articulating this viewpoint, that I know in my bones, is the world we must create. There is so much fear after a year and a half of the daily media narrative around so many deaths. I am just recently starting to be able to connect with a few family members and friends around my 'irresponsible' decision to focus on health and early treatment as prevention rather than counting on the one answer of Industrial Medicine. I have lived my adult life making this choice, but it has never been so scrutinized and judged as it is now. So often, I end up trying to protect loved ones from my thoughts and decision because the repercussions of their choice to take these shots may be so counter to good they are hoping to accomplish. It seems there is no point in making them feel awful should I, by chance, be successful conveying any part of my counter narrative. Yet even for those fully vaccinated that next fork in the road still beckons.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
It is common knowledge that vaccinated individuals are still able to contract and spread covid, often times with no symptoms at all. How are the vaccines effective when they do not provide robust enough immunity to stop the spread?
You’re wrong. Look at the data. Counties in America with the highest vaccination rates have the lowest level of covid spread! That’s the definition of effective!
What about Israel? They have one of the highest vaccination rates of any country, yet here is a report stating that 59% of hospitalized covid cases were in the vaccinated. They're already mandating a third dose because of its lack of lasting power and everyone who is already "fully vaccinated" will not be deemed "fully vaccinated" shortly. If you don't see this whole international power grab as a potential slippery slope into fascism, then your view is myopic. I think the healthy among us who are willing to 'risk it' so to speak without getting vaccinated are well aware of the misuse and abuse of power done by governments and profit motivated corporations worldwide.
We are being asked to trust the very establishments that have poisoned us and abused their positions of power since their inception and you wonder why people are hesitant. The government gives tax breaks to the manufacturers of diabetes, continues to approve the widespread use of glyphosate and other toxic chemicals to be sprayed on a vast majority of the nations food, while many developed countries are highly restricting or banning glyphosate.
How about this? "Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History" - $2.3billion paid out by Pfizer in largest case of health care fraud in history.
I want to give the benefit of the doubt to money hungry corporations and our government, but it is incredibly difficult for me to trust them with their abhorrent track records. Trusting for-profit corporations to be doing everything in the best interest of the public and the commons is simply naive.
Israel has a nearly 80% vaccinated rate (skewed towards the elderly and those with comorbidities), so if 59% of the hospitalized are vaccinated that points to the efficacy of an even waning level of protection offered by the vaccines. Yes, it looks like efficacy drops over time. Some prevention is better than no prevention. We just need to get the disease’s R value (the number of people that an infected person spreads it to) down to below 1 for it to die out. So yes, you should take the vaccine!
As far as your mistrust of corporate interests, that’s all completely well founded. One thing you can trust greedy people to be is greedy, and it obviously doesn’t benefit capitalists to shut down the economy to quarantine, so yes I suppose I trust them to actually want to end the pandemic.
If you don’t trust them, I’d suggest trusting the entire scientific community. Yes a corporation could buy off a few scientists here and there, but it would be pretty paranoid indeed to think they have nearly every scientist and statistician in every country on the planet in their pocket.
Let’s get real here. There’s a disease. There’s a safe and effective vaccine. You should take it
Corona viruses have been around since before humans were humans. The virus came from another animal if we are to believe the official story. These viruses aren't going to "die out" like polio did because other animals contract and spread the viruses, similar to flu viruses. We must learn to coexist. Getting everyone vaccinated is not the finish line. As we have seen, the virus will continue to replicate within human and animal hosts regardless of their vaccination status and will pose threats to us in the future. The sooner we understand that, the faster we can start addressing the holistic issues that allowed for this virus to take advantage of weakened immune systems of our population.
Large scale scientific studies can not take place without large amounts of funding. Scientists have to 'play ball' so to speak with the current paradigm and those that fund it. The investors in these studies want specific results because there is money to be made based off of the claims of the study. Scientists that speak outside of the current paradigm risk being dismissed by their colleagues and the scientific community at large. Recall the story of Galileo if you will: the man understood that the earth was not the center of the universe, rather that we were revolving around the sun. This was seen as heresy at the time and he was thrown in jail.
I'm not saying that all scientists are corrupt or bought or can not be trusted. I do think that scientists that are willing to play ball get preferential treatment by their superiors, get vetted, and chosen to conduct very expensive experiments/studies based on their loyalty to the paradigm at large. If they out themselves as a fringe thinker, thinking outside the current paradigm, they might just get Galileo'd. What would those 12 years of school have been for if they lose their profession and respect of their peers?
Quoting the late great Max Planck: "science makes progress funeral by funeral: the old are never converted by the new doctrines, they simply are replaced by a new generation."
These types of control tactics take form in politics as well. Bernie never stood a chance at becoming the Dem candidate coming from outside the DNC. The DNC members that held power over the course of his campaign did what they could to ensure that he would bow out and herd a bunch of disenfranchised true liberals into the pervading neoliberal fold. Same stuff, different industry trying to control narrative and flow of information. Media is the head of this. Check this piece of large scale misinformation or "fake news" made by the New York Times: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/nyt-issues-major-correction-after-claiming-900000-kids-have-been-hospitalized-with-covid/ar-AAPgeKt
- bunch of nonsense which nobody will realize was nonsense because the revision gets buried after the grandiose claims of 900k children being hospitalized due to covid which is completely false.
The same New York Times that goaded the American public into the war in Iraq post 9/11 under the false pretense of "WMDs." They failed to do any sort of due diligence as journalists to verify these claims, and instead parroted what our corrupt government told them to to gain the favor of the public so that it could be pushed through congress. We no longer need to manipulate the public or congress into agreeing to start a new war, as the president was given the power to single-handedly declare acts of war, granted to them by the Patriot Act, which has received bipartisan approval for its reauthorization. /Rant - Just illuminating the corrupt, top down approach that plays out in many influential industries.
'Science' as we know it has largely become 'sciencism,' based largely on faith. This becomes abundantly obvious with everyone parroting the "trust the science" trope, dismissing any sort of critical thinking - which as we all know is at the root of the scientific process. In fact, we are being told by many talking heads in the media to NOT do our own research.
If you can't see the inherent bias in large scale, for profit scientific/medical industry, then your view is still myopic.
I had covid, have strong antibody titers and will not be taking the vaccine at least in the near future.
Let's get real here. There are a lot of diseases, with heart disease being the number one killer in developed nations. Haven't seen a lick of public info being spread on how to combat this or diabetes, but instead our government favors the manufacturers of these diseases by giving them preferential treatment and tax breaks.
Here's a hard one to swallow that doesn't affect developed nations so much: 36million people will die of starvation this year alone. This is a crime against humanity, knowing full well that we have the resources as a global community to completely eradicate this issue. It really makes you wonder why people are more concerned about getting Southeast Asia and Africa vaccinated than fed. Probably because Covid is mostly an issue for the diabetic, heart diseased developed nations, who control the world narrative, resources, and direction of said resources. Note that the vast majority of Covid deaths have 2+ comorbidities associated with them (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, all of which
6 billion doses have been administered with zero deaths. Counties with the highest vaccination rates have the lowest death rates. People areless likely to die if they get it.
Do you really think the non-mainstream media of people repeating heresay and anecdotes is a better source of information than the vast majority of scientists in every country on the planet?
They’re probably more upset that you’re choosing to spread disease during a pandemic than they are worried that you’re going to get sick (you sound like a physically healthy person with no comorbidities). My question is why are you afraid of a vaccine that has billions of successful test cases worldwide?
I just read a lot of the comments and I have no desire to dispute. What I do want is a stop to the censorship and an accurate accounting of what's really happening and the freedom for people to make their own decisions concerning their own and their children's health. If you want to believe the jab is in your best interest, go for it, but quit trying to force it on those of us who don't want it, and don't try the emotional blackmail of saying we have to do it to protect others. If the jab were all that effective, why the fear of the unvaccinated?
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
The vaccinated are bigger disease vectors than the unvaccinated.per several studies including one where there were 251 times as many virus in the nasal passages of the vaccinated as the unvaccinated. People who are fully vaccinated are dying from Covid, especially the Delta variant as well as so many getting serious and deadly adverse events from the vaccine. Children have almost no risk and I will not compromise my health for people's belief that it will protect others, a belief that has no scientific basis. By any definition of a vaccine prior to summer of 2020, this is not a vaccine. Both the CDC and The WHO changed their definitions of a pandemic, a vaccine and how deaths are attributed more than once since Feb. 2020, definitions that both organizations used for the previous 17 years. This is a gene therapy.
Wait, are you trying to use science to make a point that 99.99% of science disagrees with? That’s comical.
An easy thought experiment disproves your point. If the vaccinated were spreading disease faster than the unvaccinated, then you’d see a county by county inverse correlation between vaccine rates and covid rates. Sadly, you’re obviously wrong
Please read this article about what's happening in Israel, a country with among the highest vaccination rates in the world. There was an outbreak at a hospital that was traced to a fully vaccinated person spreading it to other fully vaccinated people with the medical personel wearing n-95 masks. The problem is that the science does not support that the unvaccinated are spreading the virus faster. the countries with the highest rates of vaccination also happen to be countries with the highest rates of Covid, particularly the Delta variant. People are saying that the unvaccinated are spreading Covid and "authorities" who have financial and other incentives are saying it, but they're not even citing studies. It's the old, "I'm the authority, trust me." Doctors and well credentialed scientists that present a different view are de-platformed and their articles taken down claiming it's misinformation, losing their jobs, losing residency at hospitals, being taken off as editor for some medical journals. One of many doctors this has happened to is Dr. Peter McCullough a highly qualified cardiologist and editor of several medical journals. We don't have an open forum. We don't have debate among scientists and medical people. We have censorship as bad as anything in the former Soviet Union and current day China. I have a challenge: Look for and read the studies. Ask for proof. I assume the people here are intelligent folks and are capable of doing so.
I'm looking at some of the comments and replies and am very sad that even on this site, civility is going by the wayside. People are calling others names and vilifying them. I'm beginning to regret having posted any comment at all. The division in this country and on this site is becoming a chasm and that does not bode well for this country or the world. It's also a distraction from much more pressing problems, some of which I wrote in my first post. I sometimes wonder if all of this attention on Covid and the gene therapy shot was designed to keep our attention away from much more deadly conditions and from all of the underlying causes including toxins such as Roundup which is much more deadly and likely causes Covid to be worse, but gives Monsanto/Bayer phenomenal profits.
The old saying "Divide and Conquer" is being used very effectively.
Christa - thanks for your contributions here. I agree, lamentably, that some remarks posted on this chat are mean spirited and unproductive. Yet the majority, whether I agree with them or not, are good food for thought and, at times, a light in the darkness.
To your Roundup comment, Dr. Zach Bush and many other researchers have studied the prodigious toxins in the air that circulate on currents throughout our world. These include glyphosate and cyanide and are responsible for a great deal of the respitory illnesses of our times. Despite the studies demonstrating this cause and effect, this toxic pollution is under addressed. The focus is, oddly, everywhere but where the damage is origniating.
And Bayer Monsanto likely has one of the largest contributions to the ailing health of our planet and its inhabitants. Seems like everytime we seek to eradicate (rather than balance) weeds, insects, viruses, or bacteria, we irreperably disrupt our entire ecosystem and end up in a pernicious, never ending war against nature and ourselves.
I support you in steering these discussions to the open minded, open hearted roundtable intended by Charles.
For your Israel example, they completely opened up for all indoor maskless activity right before delta hit. And their rates skyrocketed despite the protections offered by the vaccines (not because of it). Yes you still need to wear masks because the vaccines aren’t 100% effective and delta is more contagious. Israel is not an argument against get vaccinated. It is a cautionary tale about masking.
Dude, you’re just making things up. I am no fan of Roundup, but there is no evidence for nor even a theoretical causal link between glyphosate and covid.
Science is evidence based, that’s the whole point. Evidence is the dividing line between science and pseudoscience. People get deplatformed when they make baseless claims that have the potential to cause real harm to society. There really are people who drank bleach because Donald Trump baselessly hypothesized that it might cure covid if taken internally. Not all opinions are deserving of equal weight in a crisis. The one’s that have evidence need to be promoted (that’s science), and the one’s that are uncorroborated by evidence need to be deplatformed.
Read "Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health And the Environment. One Scientist's Determined Quest To Reveal the Truth" by Stephanie Seneff, PhD. She's a senior researcher at MIT and this book is really more of a textbook on how things work and how glyphosate is most likely disrupting enzyme and protein synthesis in our bodies as well as in other organisms. It's very detailed. And yes, she traces the way in which glyphosate is linked to covid. You can read the details yourself, but briefly, just one way is by affecting our microbiome which recent science has been demonstrating is essential for our immune system. Many of the beneficial organisms in our gut use the Shikimate pathway that glyphosate disrupts. Researchers in our micro-biome have shown that in the presence of even small amounts of glyphosate, the balance in our gut changes from one dominated by beneficials to one dominated by pathogenic microbes such as E. Coli, Clostridium species and Candida species. Glyphosate has also been shown to loosen the tight junction between cells in the gut lining as well as those of the blood-brain barrier, allowing partially digested proteins and toxins into the bloodstream and our brains. Glyphosate, because it is also a chelator, acts to carry aluminum into the brain. Aluminum is a neurotoxin. This is one of the things that affects good sleep since aluminum also disrupts the Pineal gland's production of Melatonin. Insufficient and poor quality sleep affects the immune system which makes us more susceptible to any disease including covid. There are other more direct effects as well, but I'm out of time now. so if you're really interested in the mechanisms and the proofs, read the book.
The answer to claims well based or not is not to remove or deplatform them, but to do the research and come to your own conclusion. When I was in college and for many years thereafter, we were told that the neurons we had when we were babies are all the cells we will ever have, that brain cells don't regenerate. this was taught as fact by schools and the medical establishment. Of course now with better imaging and other types of microscopy, it's been established that brain cells do indeed regenerate. So we have to be really careful about not allowing differing views. Humans tend to be really arrogant about what they think they know. Even scientists have a tendency to forget that absence of proof is not proof of absence. Scientists are as human as the rest of us and humans really like to come to conclusions even when there is not enough proof. It's also very difficult to get an answer to a question you don't ask or that you are predisposed to discount.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Examples of non-pharmacological treatment for depression include opening a window, watching less television, and taking a daily walk. We're very much at a moment for choosing a path.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Many thanks, Charles. Just what I needed right now given how tough it is to hold the line where I live. May be faced with unpaid leave in a little more than a month but will not comply with their health edicts. I have conducted my own risk/benefit analysis and have decided that as a healthy 54 year old who eats well, practices yoga and meditates daily, gets plenty of sleep and supplements, this virus is not a threat to me. My body, my choice. I gave up on western medicine decades ago when I could see most md’s Were pill pushers, captured by big Pharma. One major opioid crisis and virus with an average age of death above 80 and a survival rate of 99.5% later confirms my decision was the right one. If there is a pandemic in North America, it is a pandemic of the obese! Thanks again for having the courage to state your position. It gave me a bit more hope
I’ve never heard a more selfish line of reasoning. You might as well go around with a gun and shoot fat people and the elderly. Is this the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible, Charles?
Used the examples to prove a point, Ken. No more selfish than forcing people to take a spike protein therapeutic in order to keep their job under the auspices of the collective good of society. Sorry not a collectivist, Ken.
“my personal opinion is that, even holding other variables constant, the risks and harms far outweigh the benefits”
Which risks and harms are those? This is a serious question, not sarcasm. I genuinely want to know what you’re talking about, because it is incredibly difficult to find a settling point within this debate, and vagueness like this from someone whose thought journey I’ve found deeply resonant, isn’t helping. At this point, the only reliable guide I can go with is simple, direct experience; that I and all I know who’ve had the vaccine, are just fine.
“ I would have to unfold a complex discussion of systemic bias in the information environment”
I would appreciate it if you would unfold this complex discussion, anyway. It is so, so hard to know what to trust in the info stream, where to find reliable information. Partly this is a perception thing, I believe. So much misinformation flying around on all sides, so much emotional manipulation, cherry picking, pandering to confirmation biases,…it feels to me like I can’t be sure of even what I’m sure of, any more. Maybe especially what I’m sure of. I would be very interested in reading your thoughts on this. If you’ve already published them somewhere, I’d like to know.
I at first wasn’t interested in getting the vaccine for Covid 19. I felt suspicious of the industrial medicine profit machine, and it’s motives, for one thing. And I had read claims of harm by some of the vaccines I’d received as a child, and looked into the supposed evidence to support these, and was feeling very uncertain and concerned, but also skeptical of everything coming from both the opposing ends of the debate. On top of this, I knew for sure that the vaccines I’d been giving my pets had been making them sick, and on researching everything I could find on both sides of that debate, found, among a couple other convincing situations, that the whole logic of vaccinating pets annually wasn’t logical at all. They do not need it, anymore than you or I do. How had I not recognized this fallacy all these years?? I started having my pets titred annually, instead, to check their ongoing immunity levels. When and if their immunity drops below a protective level, I have them immunized for that one virus. So far, that’s only happened once to one animal, in 8 yrs. So that was some evidence that vaccine companies aren’t playing fair and honest, and I held that awareness as I considered whether to get the Covid 19 vaccine as it became available to me. I decided to wait and see what would happen with those who chose to get it, over the next 6 mos to year. For the first several months after it was available to me, I did just that. I waited.
Then, I changed my mind, and decided to go ahead and be vaccinated, for these reasons; 1. I believed, given the ongoing rates of infections, and what I know of human (civilization’s) nature, there was a strong enough likelihood that, at some point in the future, vaccination might be required for work, travel, etc., and I made a calculated choice to go ahead and do it early on, so as not to encounter a situation where it became a source of stress and urgency because I needed to do something where it was required; 2. Why this seemed a reasonable motivation for taking a vaccine that I actually still felt somewhat unsure of the safety of, was that honestly, I live in a world and a society where I am every day “forced” by necessity to engage in activities and expose myself to situations and things that I have good reason to suspect, or else I flat out know, are harmful to me—I chose the vaccine deliberately, knowing it is highly likely to protect me from something (Covid 19) I know can cause me great harm (from direct experience with people I personally know who’ve either died from it, or received what is known as “long-haul” damage from it), while also knowing that the harm the vaccine itself could cause, couldn’t be any worse than either the infection or my current life exposure to this civilization and it’s sicknesses.
I made a somewhat cynical, but logical choice, also knowing that I have already received numerous vaccines and their boosters in my lifetime, have not suffered terrible harm that I’m aware of, and have not gotten infected with any of the illnesses these vaccines are designed to protect against.
Do I think the vaccine companies are capable of cynically making profit off our collective suffering without much ethical hesitation? Possibly. It wouldn’t be the first time. Do I think it’s possible this new set of vaccines could convey harmful side effects that the medical establishment might ignore, conceal, or diminish? It’s possible. It’s happened before. As a holistic healer myself, I am painfully aware that there is a substantial bias in general against narratives that don’t support the dominant, techno-medical one of powerful control of human disease. Do I think it’s also possible, even if the above is true, that the vaccine is mostly safe, and definitely safer than Covid 19? It’s possible, yeah. So far, so good
Sounds like someone trying to convince themselves after the fact that indeed they did the right thing? You are right to question the wisdom of your decision, Anne. There is more going on here than the simple/obvious scenario that we are led to believe is the only thing at stake.
Even if the v were tested over a period of years, gov't approved, had no adverse effects at all, did not cause any deaths at all and was proven effective at doing what it was supposed to do, I still would not seek it out.
Why? To me, the danger here is not life vs. death, (everybody dies), nor is it societal inclusion vs. being an outcast (there are always "outcasts", I have always been one, even among "outcasts"). The real danger, as I see it, is in losing ones' humanity, losing ones' ability to love oneself and ones' fellow humans through making a fear-based decision in the face of coercive force.
What is the essential character of your consciousness, your highest value when push comes to shove? Is it love or fear? When ones' worst fear (dying, societal rejection) is presented before you, what will you do?
The decision one makes at this critical point in history indicates the future world one wishes to live in. Which world works for you? A world where scared folks make decisions concerning their own bodies/minds based on coercive force (no choice at all, really) or a world where folks are free to make these choices without experiencing coercive force or threat of subsequent societal condemnation hanging over their head?
I guess I'm very lucky. There's no "freedom" issue for me. The definition of freedom I've always lived by is There is no freedom without responsibility. That means responsibility to myself and others. I took the vaccine for two reasons. 1) I had COVID early, in a foreign country, couldn't afford a hospital, nearly died. Now I'm a long hauler and have two new diagnoses related to COVID. 2) I sure as heck don't want the karma of passing it on to someone who dies. Even fully vaxxed, I wear a mask outside my home. For me, it's not a matter of freedom. It's a matter of caring. BTW, I'm also lucky I've lived an extraordinary life, have had an organic diet most of my adult life, and have the ability to buy and take supplements. None of that kept me from getting COVID.
Does that mean I agree with the vaccines? Yes, til something truly better comes along. Will I get angry with folks who don't take it? No. I will ask a question, though. If unvaxxed people don't trust modern medicine, why go to a hospital if one catches it?
Well, what we have here is a clever nonsense statement, Robin. Politicians, gurus, cult leaders, are masters of this kind of self-contradictory speech that says nothing yet gives us warm fuzzies. I'd guess you heard or read that somewhere and are repeating it here because it creates an air of noble personal sacrifice where in truth what one is actually doing is abdicating personal responsibility to oneself and others.
Most of us don't. Some are coerced by family and some actually hope that the hospital will actually use effective treatments, though I think that's an empty hope. I know of several people who were coerced by family and fear to go to the hospital. The hospital treatment didn't work and they went to court to get the hospital to use Ivermectin. The judge ordered the hospital to give it to the patient. the hospital again refused. the family went to the administration, but before the Ivermectin was used, the patient died. Contrary to what Biden is saying, the majority going to the hospital now for Covid are fully vaccinated.
Great. A good choice. Leaves hospital beds open for those with other needs. Heart and other needed surgeries were sent from Idaho to WA because they have no beds due to unvaxxed COVID patients. Now Washington is having to search for beds in Oregon, California and Alaska, because they have no beds left due to unvaxxed. I hope you don't get sick, but if you do, glad you'll stay home.
Nicely done, Anne. Very fair and reasonable. I got my third vaccination today (age 73) and am sure that there is less chance of suffering and suffocating to death from the vaccine than from being unvaccinated with the Covid virus in my body. It wasn't a hard choice for me, though I only eat organic real food, exercise regularly, and do know first hand as a professional the down-side of industrialize medical intervention of mental, emotional, social distress. I hope Charles does respond to you and will share his evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid. Thanks for your thoughtful response!
"I started having my pets titred annually, instead, to check their ongoing immunity levels. When and if their immunity drops below a protective level, I have them immunized for that one virus."
Please elaborate on the above statement. How does one check their ongoing immunity levels? What is a protective level? Who determines that level? Is this something only available for animals? If it were something humans could do, we have the answer to disease.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Your reply is full of false assumptions disguised as fact. And character attacks as though they are sound, logical arguments. Maybe that's why Charles removed your post the first time. it isn't fun responding to "leader of death cult", "you're an extremist", "you're using pseudoscience", "you're trying to justify your wife's acupuncture career". I don't see any substance to actually back up your claims except emotion and Ad Hominem.
And I wouldn't reply to them either, but because I thought I'd point out your emotional plea bargaining here, and wanted to verify the next pattern you'll be spouting out towards me (an impending character attack and anger- the pattern all pro-vaxxers use against anyone who questions them along with totalitarian dictators of the past use too).
Thank you thank you everything you write Charles makes me feel like I am not alone in my thoughts and beliefs. Your eloquence and holistic understanding/appreciation of the natural order brings me such joy but also bewilderment when those around me don’t want to consider an alternative perspective and admire the virtue signaling that the pro Vax indoctrination has encouraged.
Simply not true Ken. Many people have taken the shot due to feeling forced to from threat of losing their livelihood, being omitted from social access, or pressure from others.
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”
Who is "spreading disease" Ken? How do you define a pandemic? I suggest re-reading the quote above a few more times but you do you. Good luck and live well.
The unvaxxed are spreading a deadly disease under the guise of personal freedom. It’s a sick game when you claim the freedom to kill the elderly, the fat, and the immunocompromised
Incorrect. You realize that vaxxed and unvaxxed have similar viral loads.. in fact many studies show vaxxed have higher viral loads than unvaxxed (i.e. can spread more easily). That being said - I don't think anybody is "spreading disease". Unfortunately the practice of mass vaccination might be worsening the variants but I would still say that anybody who wants to get a shot should be able to get a shot. Even if the data shows that it's accelerating illness for a community. I wouldn't advise it but what people put in their bodies should be their choice. https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
The data doesn’t show that. Counties with higher vaccination rates in America have lower covid rates. Game over.
And to everyone on this thread: stop trying to use science to prove a point that science doesn’t agree with. If you want to say that Jesus came to you in a dream and said the vaccine is evil, fine, but don’t pretend like it’s a logical argument
Incorrect. Also this isn't a game. Science isn't an institution Ken. It's a process. This will be the last time I respond to a comment from you but I wish you well. As a parting gift enjoy some wisdom from a wise man: https://youtu.be/r3y4Asw9zZA?t=101
It's good to feel your clarity and protection for what is good and life sustaining. It has always been beyond me how so many in the environmental movement can't join the dots between industrial medicine and its pollution of the human body and the pollution of the land. That incapacity for joined-up thinking is the divided self in action.
The whole concept of side-effects and collateral damage permeates all those normal, acceptable industrial philosophies, as if there couldn't imaginably be a solution that not only remedied the problem, but even had side-benefits and Did No Harm. I have said this about our health in some eco circles over the years and been deemed completely mad.
The opioid crisis, which killed 70,000 people in the USA in 2020, has shown us that people are in pain and we in actual health know that pain is a sign that something needs deep time and attention to be resolved. But it can be resolved and actually morph into great insight and wisdom -PTSW, post traumatic stress wisdom.
Too many in my own area of deep work, meditation, have long given up on enlightenment (what I view as complete healing) as something reachable, and so have contented themselves with teaching people how to cope (fit in) to this sick culture, thereby disabling them from actually having the strength to CHANGE the culture into something healthier.
The only good thing coming out of this terrible situation we find ourselves in is that it is lighting a fire under our butts and forcing us to wake up, take note, and put into action the precious wisdom traditions we've been blessed to come in contact with. They only work if we do the work they ask of us.
May we do the inner work necessary now to heal ourselves and transform the culture into something life-sustaining and beautiful.
How is promoting vaccine misinformation healing to the culture? To see medicine as polluting to the human body is the definition of insanity. You’ve lost the plot brother
Everything I have ever felt, as an adult aware of the industrial systems we live in, exemplified in one article. Thank you so much for writing this and sharing it. This is what we need.
Wow, I’m sorry you’ve had such a narrow range of feelings in your adult life. And that one of those feelings is a desire to spread disease during a pandemic
Your rhetoric is so ugly, Ken. You are only dividing and pushing people further away from any cause you hope to achieve, bud. Chill out, go get some fresh air.
Well RG, he's a good example of the religious fervor true believers exhibit in thinking they know what's best for everyone else. A small minded and narrow perspective which inevitably leads to authoritarianism.
Interesting article with many good points. I usually ask the people who don't want to hear my data, the test of truth is does it work? So in that context, how well do you like your life? Do you think a society with 54% of our children having a chronic illness, 1 in 36 with autism, 1 in 12 with food allergies, 1 in 285 having cancer, 1 in 12 having asthma, 1 in 5 having learning disabilities is a system that works well? I'm 74. When I was in my 20's, none of these were true. In the 60's and part of the 70's, a single wage earner could support a family. Now for the majority of people, it requires 2 at least and even then many struggle. Frankly, our system is failing in all of the things the same people who argue with me consider important.
There's an old argument that goes, "what's more important perception or reality?" Granted, perception does affect reality, but in the long run I find that if your perceptions are too far off from reality, reality will come back and kick you in the butt. It's called consequences. We are reaping the consequences of a system based on flawed assumptions and beliefs that has been around way too long.
I'd like to say, believe whatever you want and you reap the consequences, but unfortunately, it seems those proponents of a failing system just won't let the rest of us go on with our lives. It's sort of like racism and sexism. People believed women were weaker and had to be protected and not allowed to direct their own lives. They weren't as smart or responsible as men. So how did they try to prove it? They prevented women from access to education, self-empowerment, political and economic power. What's worse, the dominant culture had to make women believe they were inferior to men. The same went for racism. So now what's happening? We are locked out of schools, medical offices, governmental buildings, free travel etc. because we don't accept the "authorized narrative" about Covid-19 and the gene therapy jab. Our spokespeople are deplatformed, vilified, muzzled. If we are so wrong, why are the powers that be so afraid of us exercising our voice? Why must everyone's lives be controlled by a fear driven scenario?
I could go on, but that may be a waste of energy and time. I will repeat: If your perceptions are too far from the truth, truth/reality, will come back and kick you in the butt and just like disease rates are skyrocketing (and I don't mean Covid), the consequences facing us will most likely destroy life as we know it. Climate change including rising sea levels; destruction of our topsoil; the inundation of toxicity from pesticides and industrial sources; the reduction of nutrients in our food; the alteration of the magnetic fields our species evolved with; economic and political systems that no longer meet the needs of people and the times, are all coming together at this time creating a perfect storm.
Hopefully this will shake people loose from outdated paradigms and free us to create a better world.
Back in 2005 I took a flight, for the first time since the 70's, and I was kind of shocked at what the air quality looked like from up there: reddish brown horizon and long, black, streaky clouds. Yet nobody really talks about it. My guess is that people don't want to risk their 401k accounts.
You're right. I read, I think in Discover Magazine this year, don't remember what month, that small particle pollution has been increasing and causing increasing health issues including asthma. But these small particles also carry cyanide and glyphosate among other toxins and both of those toxins contribute majorly to making Covid a problem. I've just started reading "Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health And the Environment" by Stephanie Seneff, PhD. I'm about a third of the way through it and will have reread large sections because it's very technical, but it really answers the question of how. I'm learning more about amino acids and proteins and how things work than I dreamed. our bodies are so amazingly complex. I highly recommend this book. Personally, among other things, I think Covid is a distraction from the truly horrifying things that we are faced with. I've said it before; I think our health care system will collapse in less than 10 years, possibly less than 5 because of the dramatic increase in chronic illness. the increasing rates of autism alone has the capacity to do it, but just like the air pollution you mention, I think the reason is the same as what you said with the 401K accounts. Even more so, people don't want to acknowledge that their lifestyle is killing them and that big multinational corporations are taking advantage of people's willful ignorance to make huge profits at our expense.
People spreading antivax propaganda during a pandemic are immoral. A lot them weren’t removed from social media, they died from covid. So I guess your point about perception and reality is somewhat accurate
One concern is the definition of 'antivax propaganda'. It seems that computers have trouble distinguishing between scientific debate and pseudo-science propaganda. Even if the tech companies hired an army of human censors, there is still the problem of allowing legit criticisms of the dominate narrative. No doubt there are people that just want to see the world burn, but they normally don't rally large numbers to that cause unless there are underlying conditions. Mostly I'm trying to avoid 'attribution bias' and look for common systemic problems.
True. But confirmation bias is a bigger problem. People scanning the internet looking for the .1% outlier articles that support their opinion and ignoring the 99.9% against aren’t engaged in scientific debate, they’re propagandists who are killing people by promoting lies in a pandemic.
Elsewhere on this thread people have claimed that the vaccinated spread disease more than the unvaccinated. This is just a blatant falsehood.
This is not debate. This is a platform elevating lies and promoting disease.
Charles, you did this! (Not that he reads any of this)
I’m not worried about myself. I’m young and healthy. I’m worried about my family members who aren’t. I’m worried about our elders who will die from a breakthrough infection. I’m worried about the immunocompromised who can’t develop immunity.
How can Charles claim to be a part of the conscious living community and not be willing to show love to his fellow man - someone he may never meet - by getting the vaccine at zero personal cost. It’s a glaring hole in his thought and philosophy. Of course now that he has gone so far down this path and is an antivax guru, he won’t be able to admit he was wrong. So he’s stuck... consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds as Emerson once wrote
So if you claim people wanna be in an “echo chamber” and are the “victims” of confirmation bias, than do share with the rest of us, what have you considered reading/researching that doesn’t echo your standpoint? Have you looked into opposing research done by doctors/scientist? Since you obviously walk the intellectual and moral high ground.
I always start reading your essays and end up completely absorbed, nodding my head in recognition and appreciating you putting so eloquently much of what I'm also feeling.
I love the way you call wyt people back to nature. However, as an indigenous person who is connected to indigenous communities still living their traditions, using their natural medicines, I receive messages all the time that they have no Medicines that work against COVID. Most North and South Native Americans, African tribes, and Asian tribes, see COVID as another smallpox, and tribes are locked down and vaccinating as many as they can. What would you suggest for them? Most tribal people don't have the money to buy supplements, go to fancy reiki, sound healing, light frequency, massage spas, retreats, workshops. They can't afford supplements, and have often been forced onto lands that are arid and can't support healthy agriculture. What will your new society do about that? Here in the western U.S., rivers and aquifers are drying up due to climate chaos. Mass migration has already begun. Without clean water, or enough water, the west is fast becoming a dust bowl. Yes, all these things need action, not talk. We're talking ourselves to extinction. So how do you propose we implement all your suggestions RIGHT NOW? We don't have much time left. Indigenous, and even biblical, prophecies have foretold the times we're in now many centuries ago, yet we've continued down the path of self destruction. We're tired of talk. We've been loving as naturally as possible forever, except where colonization has prevented it. So now I'm asking, What are you who are waking up to your own embedded colonial privilege going to DO about it?
As you are so passionate and engaged with this particular piece of the mycelial puzzle, perhaps that is where your light of solution wayfinding can shine. Imagine if every person had to solve every challenge or be judged inadequate. Thank you for your passion and I'm grateful that you can help in your area 💝
All the unvaxxed wyt people I know are also strongly advocating for better access to health care, including vaccinations, for everyone, especially historically oppressed communities. AND participating in #LandBack and other reparations actions. Charles supports our freedom to choose and makes it possible for us to continue our work, without falling into despair.
By using unqualified absolute terms like “all” you make your statement more likely to be incorrect. The qualified “all” that I was describing have been much more scrupulous about masking, isolating, hygiene, and distancing than the other folks I know. And, unlike the vaxxed, not one has had COVID.
I actually kind of agree: if you don’t want to participate in society on any level and are going to isolate, mask, and distance then you probably aren’t spreading much disease. If you are going to participate in society, it’s completely immoral not to take the free, safe, and effective vaccine
Robin, my heart literally ached when I read your post. I am so sorry for you and for your community for feeling so helpless during this time. You are 1000% correct that it is time to stop talking and take action, but we little people have no power to take action, as our country is controlled by corrupt politicians and industry. Americans have gradually gotten sicker since 1960 as a result of this multi-layered corruption. The vaccine has indeed caused many injuries and deaths, and Charles is trying to inform his readers that we have a right to reclaim our health that has been stolen by big pharma and big ag. If your community has multiple co-morbidities or weight concerns, the community is considered high risk for not surviving Covid. And if there is a lack of available funds for supplements such as Vitamin D3 , Vit C and Zinc, then perhaps the vaccine is your best option, as it lessens the severity of symptoms and likelihood of hospitalization. Your concerns are valid and I hear you. There are some of us that want to bring justice to all Americans. It's going to take nothing short of a revolution and overthrow corrupt politicians and big business. These comments are not to meant to placate you or your fears. You have my empathy and compassion and my wishes for safekeeping until this virus mutates into nothingness.
Thank you. I've said for years we need to fire them all. We aren't powerless as long as we agree. We can elect new folks. We've already started. The problem is, while we all want the same things, we don't agree on how to get there. That's where the work is.
I just answered your previous comment, now I read this and I want to add this:
I do not believe we "have to agree" on how to get there, if we want the same thing... why don't "get there" by different means and ways? Diversity is great ;)
Good points. One idea is to start from the ground up, with nutrition. A return to traditional, natural foods diet free of sugar, refined carbs and processed foods will make a tremendous difference. There are ways to do it, cheaply, even in a food desert. You must know obesity/diabetes/hypertension, the top risk factors for severe Covid other than advanced age, are rampant in Native Americans (and others) eating Western diets. These conditions are reversible with a low carbohydrate, real food diet. So that's one piece, a beginning. Create a healthy terrain for a strong, resistant immune system.
Thanks for your comment Robin, I write from Europe and I would like to tell you what I think about this very important point:
history tells that at each power crisis, the ruling elites can avoid revolution (thus giving up a certain amount of power) by dividing insurgents. If the insurgents fight against each other, the ruling elites will only have to split in two parts, each pretending to be on this or that side of the fighting insurgents and lead respectively both insurgent parties. As soon as political peace will be newly established, the ruling elites will reunite. As a result we will have a part of the insurgent people who lost being defeated, colonized, imprisoned or killed and the winning part of the insurgent people will serve and legitimate again the same ruling elites under a new power paradigma (color-switch).
In order to avoid this happening, people should try not to divide or fight against or blame each other. The quest for revolution is first of all a quest for emancipation of individuals and communities. A healthy community express solidarity to other communities, even if they are fighting on different fronts. White privileged people are doing well by refusing jabs and related burocracy, at the same time they shouldn't forget to express solidarity and fight alongside with indigenous people, because both white and indigenous people are fighting the same enemy on different fronts, and because they aren't fighting with the aim of "getting to the power", but with the will of freedom and (w)healt.
Interesting lecture: "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice"
Refusing to get a vaccine is not fighting a revolution against the power structure. It’s refusing to show love to and protect the most vulnerable in a time of crisis. If you can’t step up and do something simple and zero cost for the health of your community, you will not be apart of the revolution and next evolution of man. Period. The future will not belong to the selfish, the uniformed, the ignorant, the callous, the crackpots, or the wingnuts. This is the glaring hole in Eisenstein’s thought!
Some Latin American countries have had success reducing covid deaths in hospitals with emergency use of the drug Ivermectin which is incredibly cheap. Why are we not researching it, or other drugs, if saving lives is really the goal. https://covid19criticalcare.com/news-reports/
The CDC and FDA have squashed the concept of Ivermectin and are labeling it as a horse de-wormer to scare people. It is an anti-parasitic drug used to treat scabies and other little critters! I have taken it and it is highly effective. A meta-analysis was done using 25 independent studies of Ivermectin as an off-label use for Covid. Doctors presented the meta-anaylsis study results to Congress in 2020. Nothing came of it. That is because no money is to be made with Ivermectin. Follow the dollars and you will understand why the gov't is pushing the vaccine for big pharma.
I too am taking the horse paste. You're an idiot for falling for media propaganda and calling a medication that pre-COVID I would take during every travel to a third world country to protect against Malaria. But "suddenly" nOoOo It TuRns OuT I wAS tAkINg HoRsE pAsTE aLl AlOnG WoW!
Also, like you point out ivermectin has real, studied, evidence based, peer reviewed uses. People (& horses) who need it can’t get it because antivaxxers decided it tastes better than bleach and are sucking it down all willy-nilly. Weird that you antivaxxers are so pumped on this product of industrial medicine for an unproven use, when the vaccine is siting right next to it and has been proven to work! Are you guy still just afraid of shots? I could mail you a lollipop
Ken, with all due respect, name calling is not helpful and does not solve the problem our world is facing today. We are all divided because of mandates over our personal health choices. If someone doesn't want a vaccine that wasn't thoroughly tested for 5 years of trials, which is the standard, then it is simply their choice. We all know, and the CDC too, that the vaccine does not provide immunity but only lessens the severity of symptoms. Based on that, there can never be herd immunity from the vaccine. Here is a link for an interesting paper from Israel, one of the highest vaccinated countries. They now say that the vaccinated are carrying higher viral loads (several studies support this position). And calling me an idiot might not be accurate considering I am an RN and stand with many other RN's that question the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccine. One of my co-workers took the shot, threw a clot, had a stroke and died. He was in his late 30's. Here is the link: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.39.2100822 I hope you can find more peace in your heart and acceptance for other opinions that don't necessarily agree with your own. There is much to learn and name calling is not a way to discover new information. Be well.
Just saw this. You’re completely wrong. The vaccine decreases the odds that you get sick as evidenced by simple county by county comparisons of vaccine rates and covid rates. That’s building immunity! And if you’re really an RN you should know this. Sorry for your friend, but this is a perfect example of why anecdotal evidence cannot be elevated to the level of statistical fact. Spreading misinformation during a pandemic kills people
"Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified."
Thank you for posting this link. Also, Peru used Ivermectin from May to Dec 2020 and had a 24 fold decrease in cases and deaths. https://osf.io/9egh4/
Studies in Argentina, India and African nations have also shown success with Ivermectin. Follow the dollars. Bill Gates invested money in Pfizer, giving them the funds needed to develop a vaccine just two months prior to the first cases of Covid. Fauci is a part owner of the Moderna vaccine patent. Both vaccines have caused unnecessary injuries and deaths.
I’m willing to admit that at some point in the future ivermectin may pass the peer review phase and be approved as a therapeutic. But you know what already works with no side effects? Getting vaccinated! Why are you so into this other product of industrial medicine that has yet to pass peer review?
The UK just published their report on Covid. The deaths among the vaccinated were more than double from the deaths of the unvaccinated. There is so much information that you are choosing to ignore.
You’re misinterpreting the statistics. The UK has a more than 85% vaccination rate. So if as you say only twice as many vaccinated are dying but they make up nearly 6 times as many people, that points to the major lifesaving effect of vaccines. Somehow you’ve concluded the opposite. This is simple high school level proportional reasoning. You’re either bad at math and accidentally lying or you’re intentionally lying. Either way this is a prime example of someone spreading lies during a pandemic. Lies kill people! Get vaccinated!
No side effects? Your nothing but a misinformation spreader Ken. You like to create this persona of someone who cares about others but ignore the harm being done to people from the shots.
A friend who was feeling a bit off, (not deeply depressed), just off for a couple of weeks, was just offered SSRIs from her doctor, because, well you know, "your serotonin could be low." Aka.. your fluids are low... time to go to the shop. She was ready to start taking them, before she was willing to try changing her diet, exercising or meditating, getting better sleep, or anything. I offered... "why don't you try the other stuff 1st... and consider the SSRIs as a last-ditch effort. This article was a nice boost to that argument.
This is one of the best essays I have read that describes the many issues that are of concern to me regarding modern day medicine and the many reasons why such issues are not black and white as portrayed by the media but rather quite gray.
As an engineer and a scientist for a half century I designed a lot of complex, leading edge electronic equipment used in very complex systems for military and commercial applications. Such a career teaches you very quickly that you must look at every facet of what the long term impacts are of every design you create, otherwise someone could be harmed or even die from your creation. Unfortunately this is not the case in modern medicine for a variety of reasons, which are quite eloquently discussed by Charles Eisenstein in this essay. It’s complicated yet always presented by powerful interests and their media counterparts as simple thereby asking us to “just trust us.” I don’t.
Another recent post by Sylvia Forest reflects my sentiments exactly. Can someone point me to the interview with Dr Zach?
Greg Schneider - It is on Charles' podcast 'A New and Ancient Story' ep 49: Life is a Community - from 28th July '21. It's a good podcast all round. What I like is that there's nothing glib about the way Charles conducts interviews. There are sometimes pauses while he considers his response - something you rarely find with any interviewer - they seem to need to fill every space (or people will switch to something else??)
His podcast is excellent. Well worth a regular listen. I’ve learned so much from the guests he meets, love his intelligent and engaged interview style, and as always, learned much from Charles. Have followed up on many books, other podcasts, concepts, etc. Very rich.
Charles, thank you for another brilliant, beautifully presented 'opinion' ;). You always seem to write precisely what I am trying to articulate to myself (I'm not yet at the point of making my views public as it is such a hostile environment; being a scientist doesn't help). Having you in my corner has been an enormous blessing, a solid rock to lean against. Thank you.
I‘m sorry you are disturbed by my ability to interpret research papers and think for myself, but I don‘t apologise for it. I wish there was a vaccine for feeling disturbed; I‘d likely queue up for it. I guess you‘d prefer some charged water infused with bush flowers? See you on the flipside, Ken.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s also no measure of health to spread disease during pandemic. Get vaccinated
Excellent point, Ken. A-symptomatic carriers (the vaccinated) are more likely to spread disease, unknowingly. I have strong antibodies and am mindful to stay home when I feel the symptoms of illness. However, I don't believe it's my place to force anyone to do what I think is right because I'm not into authoritarian fascism. How do you feel about the creation diseases by the systems that be like covid, cancer, and the like? Do they not carry responsibility to do the right thing? Keep on, dear brother.
Not all a-symptomatic carriers are vaccinated—-that right there is another GIGANTIC myth.
Yeah, this is so obvious I don’t know why he decided to write that
That’s just not true. If the vaccinated were more likely to spread disease then you’d see a higher rate of covid in counties with higher vaccine rates. It’s the opposite. This is an easy one.
You don’t have the right to shoot someone in the street, and you don’t have the right to spread disease during a pandemic. That’s not fascism, it’s humanitarian.
If you won’t show love to and protect your neighbors, you won’t be a part of any conscious evolution of man.
Charles, this is your fault!
Dear Ken, I bet there is ample evidence for your claim, and mine. The fog machine of war gives rise to a lot of paradoxes. Seemingly opposing truths must be held gently. I find it helpful to focus on peace building in the midst of uncertainty, work towards resiliency, and build community around shared values such as humility. As Jordan Peterson said, "humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn." Study, meditation, & service are some excellent pillars. Peace, my brother!
Science is evidence based. What you’re spouting isn’t that. Normally I wouldn’t care - we’ve already eradicated polio, small pox, and for the most part measles - but during a pandemic the antivaxxers have death on their hands. This isn’t a paradox with multiple competing truths. This is a bunch of idiots drinking bleach and killing old people. If you’re not willing to do something simple at zero cost to you to keep the most vulnerable members of our human family healthy, you’re a member of a death cult. Plain and simple
Love you, Ken.
If we were to start at ground zero: it is no measure of human decency or health to deliberately release bio-weapons into the whirrled at large, to genetically modify food sources, the list goes on...
Yes, and... you should get vaccinated to protect the most vulnerable among us
Don't tell others what to do commie. In other words take a flying F-off.
Ah, I thought of this quote when reading Charles' essay!
Thank you for your help in articulating this viewpoint, that I know in my bones, is the world we must create. There is so much fear after a year and a half of the daily media narrative around so many deaths. I am just recently starting to be able to connect with a few family members and friends around my 'irresponsible' decision to focus on health and early treatment as prevention rather than counting on the one answer of Industrial Medicine. I have lived my adult life making this choice, but it has never been so scrutinized and judged as it is now. So often, I end up trying to protect loved ones from my thoughts and decision because the repercussions of their choice to take these shots may be so counter to good they are hoping to accomplish. It seems there is no point in making them feel awful should I, by chance, be successful conveying any part of my counter narrative. Yet even for those fully vaccinated that next fork in the road still beckons.
A feeble roundup of the arguments against vaccination. So we should use alternatives because there is no evidence they work?
Ha, nailed it Peter
You voiced my feelings & concerns for family & friends so accurately
I am still open to phrases and small ideas I can put out that might help their awakening 🦋
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
It is common knowledge that vaccinated individuals are still able to contract and spread covid, often times with no symptoms at all. How are the vaccines effective when they do not provide robust enough immunity to stop the spread?
You’re wrong. Look at the data. Counties in America with the highest vaccination rates have the lowest level of covid spread! That’s the definition of effective!
What about Israel? They have one of the highest vaccination rates of any country, yet here is a report stating that 59% of hospitalized covid cases were in the vaccinated. They're already mandating a third dose because of its lack of lasting power and everyone who is already "fully vaccinated" will not be deemed "fully vaccinated" shortly. If you don't see this whole international power grab as a potential slippery slope into fascism, then your view is myopic. I think the healthy among us who are willing to 'risk it' so to speak without getting vaccinated are well aware of the misuse and abuse of power done by governments and profit motivated corporations worldwide.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/nearly-60-of-hospitalized-covid-19-patients-in-israel-fully-vaccinated-study-finds.html
We are being asked to trust the very establishments that have poisoned us and abused their positions of power since their inception and you wonder why people are hesitant. The government gives tax breaks to the manufacturers of diabetes, continues to approve the widespread use of glyphosate and other toxic chemicals to be sprayed on a vast majority of the nations food, while many developed countries are highly restricting or banning glyphosate.
https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup-lawsuit/where-is-glyphosate-banned-/
Are you familiar with the Tuskegee experiments? Those were carried out by the US gov and the CDC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
How about this? "Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History" - $2.3billion paid out by Pfizer in largest case of health care fraud in history.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history
The revolving door of Pfizer/FDA - https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/cue-revolving-door-criticism-former-fda-commish-gottlieb-joins-pfizer-s-board
I want to give the benefit of the doubt to money hungry corporations and our government, but it is incredibly difficult for me to trust them with their abhorrent track records. Trusting for-profit corporations to be doing everything in the best interest of the public and the commons is simply naive.
Israel has a nearly 80% vaccinated rate (skewed towards the elderly and those with comorbidities), so if 59% of the hospitalized are vaccinated that points to the efficacy of an even waning level of protection offered by the vaccines. Yes, it looks like efficacy drops over time. Some prevention is better than no prevention. We just need to get the disease’s R value (the number of people that an infected person spreads it to) down to below 1 for it to die out. So yes, you should take the vaccine!
As far as your mistrust of corporate interests, that’s all completely well founded. One thing you can trust greedy people to be is greedy, and it obviously doesn’t benefit capitalists to shut down the economy to quarantine, so yes I suppose I trust them to actually want to end the pandemic.
If you don’t trust them, I’d suggest trusting the entire scientific community. Yes a corporation could buy off a few scientists here and there, but it would be pretty paranoid indeed to think they have nearly every scientist and statistician in every country on the planet in their pocket.
Let’s get real here. There’s a disease. There’s a safe and effective vaccine. You should take it
Corona viruses have been around since before humans were humans. The virus came from another animal if we are to believe the official story. These viruses aren't going to "die out" like polio did because other animals contract and spread the viruses, similar to flu viruses. We must learn to coexist. Getting everyone vaccinated is not the finish line. As we have seen, the virus will continue to replicate within human and animal hosts regardless of their vaccination status and will pose threats to us in the future. The sooner we understand that, the faster we can start addressing the holistic issues that allowed for this virus to take advantage of weakened immune systems of our population.
Large scale scientific studies can not take place without large amounts of funding. Scientists have to 'play ball' so to speak with the current paradigm and those that fund it. The investors in these studies want specific results because there is money to be made based off of the claims of the study. Scientists that speak outside of the current paradigm risk being dismissed by their colleagues and the scientific community at large. Recall the story of Galileo if you will: the man understood that the earth was not the center of the universe, rather that we were revolving around the sun. This was seen as heresy at the time and he was thrown in jail.
I'm not saying that all scientists are corrupt or bought or can not be trusted. I do think that scientists that are willing to play ball get preferential treatment by their superiors, get vetted, and chosen to conduct very expensive experiments/studies based on their loyalty to the paradigm at large. If they out themselves as a fringe thinker, thinking outside the current paradigm, they might just get Galileo'd. What would those 12 years of school have been for if they lose their profession and respect of their peers?
Quoting the late great Max Planck: "science makes progress funeral by funeral: the old are never converted by the new doctrines, they simply are replaced by a new generation."
These types of control tactics take form in politics as well. Bernie never stood a chance at becoming the Dem candidate coming from outside the DNC. The DNC members that held power over the course of his campaign did what they could to ensure that he would bow out and herd a bunch of disenfranchised true liberals into the pervading neoliberal fold. Same stuff, different industry trying to control narrative and flow of information. Media is the head of this. Check this piece of large scale misinformation or "fake news" made by the New York Times: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/nyt-issues-major-correction-after-claiming-900000-kids-have-been-hospitalized-with-covid/ar-AAPgeKt
- bunch of nonsense which nobody will realize was nonsense because the revision gets buried after the grandiose claims of 900k children being hospitalized due to covid which is completely false.
The same New York Times that goaded the American public into the war in Iraq post 9/11 under the false pretense of "WMDs." They failed to do any sort of due diligence as journalists to verify these claims, and instead parroted what our corrupt government told them to to gain the favor of the public so that it could be pushed through congress. We no longer need to manipulate the public or congress into agreeing to start a new war, as the president was given the power to single-handedly declare acts of war, granted to them by the Patriot Act, which has received bipartisan approval for its reauthorization. /Rant - Just illuminating the corrupt, top down approach that plays out in many influential industries.
'Science' as we know it has largely become 'sciencism,' based largely on faith. This becomes abundantly obvious with everyone parroting the "trust the science" trope, dismissing any sort of critical thinking - which as we all know is at the root of the scientific process. In fact, we are being told by many talking heads in the media to NOT do our own research.
If you can't see the inherent bias in large scale, for profit scientific/medical industry, then your view is still myopic.
I had covid, have strong antibody titers and will not be taking the vaccine at least in the near future.
Let's get real here. There are a lot of diseases, with heart disease being the number one killer in developed nations. Haven't seen a lick of public info being spread on how to combat this or diabetes, but instead our government favors the manufacturers of these diseases by giving them preferential treatment and tax breaks.
Here's a hard one to swallow that doesn't affect developed nations so much: 36million people will die of starvation this year alone. This is a crime against humanity, knowing full well that we have the resources as a global community to completely eradicate this issue. It really makes you wonder why people are more concerned about getting Southeast Asia and Africa vaccinated than fed. Probably because Covid is mostly an issue for the diabetic, heart diseased developed nations, who control the world narrative, resources, and direction of said resources. Note that the vast majority of Covid deaths have 2+ comorbidities associated with them (heart disease, obesity, diabetes, all of which
https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year/
Think bigger.
Can I see that data? I saw the exact opposite out of Harvard: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7#article-info
Ken, there is so much evidence that this is not a safe and effective vaccine. Peer beneath the mainstream media and you'll find it.
6 billion doses have been administered with zero deaths. Counties with the highest vaccination rates have the lowest death rates. People areless likely to die if they get it.
Do you really think the non-mainstream media of people repeating heresay and anecdotes is a better source of information than the vast majority of scientists in every country on the planet?
They’re probably more upset that you’re choosing to spread disease during a pandemic than they are worried that you’re going to get sick (you sound like a physically healthy person with no comorbidities). My question is why are you afraid of a vaccine that has billions of successful test cases worldwide?
I just read a lot of the comments and I have no desire to dispute. What I do want is a stop to the censorship and an accurate accounting of what's really happening and the freedom for people to make their own decisions concerning their own and their children's health. If you want to believe the jab is in your best interest, go for it, but quit trying to force it on those of us who don't want it, and don't try the emotional blackmail of saying we have to do it to protect others. If the jab were all that effective, why the fear of the unvaccinated?
I am vaccinated and have no fear of the unvaxxed
Good for you. I’m glad you aren’t immunocompromised and don’t have any comorbidities
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Because 1. People with comorbidities will die if they get a breakthrough case
2. Immunocompromised people don’t develop immununity at the same rate as the rest of us
3. Children can’t be vaccinated yet
4. The above three groups’ right to life outweighs your right to be a disease vector
The vaccinated are bigger disease vectors than the unvaccinated.per several studies including one where there were 251 times as many virus in the nasal passages of the vaccinated as the unvaccinated. People who are fully vaccinated are dying from Covid, especially the Delta variant as well as so many getting serious and deadly adverse events from the vaccine. Children have almost no risk and I will not compromise my health for people's belief that it will protect others, a belief that has no scientific basis. By any definition of a vaccine prior to summer of 2020, this is not a vaccine. Both the CDC and The WHO changed their definitions of a pandemic, a vaccine and how deaths are attributed more than once since Feb. 2020, definitions that both organizations used for the previous 17 years. This is a gene therapy.
Wait, are you trying to use science to make a point that 99.99% of science disagrees with? That’s comical.
An easy thought experiment disproves your point. If the vaccinated were spreading disease faster than the unvaccinated, then you’d see a county by county inverse correlation between vaccine rates and covid rates. Sadly, you’re obviously wrong
Please read this article about what's happening in Israel, a country with among the highest vaccination rates in the world. There was an outbreak at a hospital that was traced to a fully vaccinated person spreading it to other fully vaccinated people with the medical personel wearing n-95 masks. The problem is that the science does not support that the unvaccinated are spreading the virus faster. the countries with the highest rates of vaccination also happen to be countries with the highest rates of Covid, particularly the Delta variant. People are saying that the unvaccinated are spreading Covid and "authorities" who have financial and other incentives are saying it, but they're not even citing studies. It's the old, "I'm the authority, trust me." Doctors and well credentialed scientists that present a different view are de-platformed and their articles taken down claiming it's misinformation, losing their jobs, losing residency at hospitals, being taken off as editor for some medical journals. One of many doctors this has happened to is Dr. Peter McCullough a highly qualified cardiologist and editor of several medical journals. We don't have an open forum. We don't have debate among scientists and medical people. We have censorship as bad as anything in the former Soviet Union and current day China. I have a challenge: Look for and read the studies. Ask for proof. I assume the people here are intelligent folks and are capable of doing so.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-outbreak-vaccinated-patient-herd-immunity-theory/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=ea1eed7e-df55-4651-b376-06023fddfc88
I'm looking at some of the comments and replies and am very sad that even on this site, civility is going by the wayside. People are calling others names and vilifying them. I'm beginning to regret having posted any comment at all. The division in this country and on this site is becoming a chasm and that does not bode well for this country or the world. It's also a distraction from much more pressing problems, some of which I wrote in my first post. I sometimes wonder if all of this attention on Covid and the gene therapy shot was designed to keep our attention away from much more deadly conditions and from all of the underlying causes including toxins such as Roundup which is much more deadly and likely causes Covid to be worse, but gives Monsanto/Bayer phenomenal profits.
The old saying "Divide and Conquer" is being used very effectively.
Christa - thanks for your contributions here. I agree, lamentably, that some remarks posted on this chat are mean spirited and unproductive. Yet the majority, whether I agree with them or not, are good food for thought and, at times, a light in the darkness.
To your Roundup comment, Dr. Zach Bush and many other researchers have studied the prodigious toxins in the air that circulate on currents throughout our world. These include glyphosate and cyanide and are responsible for a great deal of the respitory illnesses of our times. Despite the studies demonstrating this cause and effect, this toxic pollution is under addressed. The focus is, oddly, everywhere but where the damage is origniating.
And Bayer Monsanto likely has one of the largest contributions to the ailing health of our planet and its inhabitants. Seems like everytime we seek to eradicate (rather than balance) weeds, insects, viruses, or bacteria, we irreperably disrupt our entire ecosystem and end up in a pernicious, never ending war against nature and ourselves.
I support you in steering these discussions to the open minded, open hearted roundtable intended by Charles.
For your Israel example, they completely opened up for all indoor maskless activity right before delta hit. And their rates skyrocketed despite the protections offered by the vaccines (not because of it). Yes you still need to wear masks because the vaccines aren’t 100% effective and delta is more contagious. Israel is not an argument against get vaccinated. It is a cautionary tale about masking.
Dude, you’re just making things up. I am no fan of Roundup, but there is no evidence for nor even a theoretical causal link between glyphosate and covid.
Science is evidence based, that’s the whole point. Evidence is the dividing line between science and pseudoscience. People get deplatformed when they make baseless claims that have the potential to cause real harm to society. There really are people who drank bleach because Donald Trump baselessly hypothesized that it might cure covid if taken internally. Not all opinions are deserving of equal weight in a crisis. The one’s that have evidence need to be promoted (that’s science), and the one’s that are uncorroborated by evidence need to be deplatformed.
Read "Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health And the Environment. One Scientist's Determined Quest To Reveal the Truth" by Stephanie Seneff, PhD. She's a senior researcher at MIT and this book is really more of a textbook on how things work and how glyphosate is most likely disrupting enzyme and protein synthesis in our bodies as well as in other organisms. It's very detailed. And yes, she traces the way in which glyphosate is linked to covid. You can read the details yourself, but briefly, just one way is by affecting our microbiome which recent science has been demonstrating is essential for our immune system. Many of the beneficial organisms in our gut use the Shikimate pathway that glyphosate disrupts. Researchers in our micro-biome have shown that in the presence of even small amounts of glyphosate, the balance in our gut changes from one dominated by beneficials to one dominated by pathogenic microbes such as E. Coli, Clostridium species and Candida species. Glyphosate has also been shown to loosen the tight junction between cells in the gut lining as well as those of the blood-brain barrier, allowing partially digested proteins and toxins into the bloodstream and our brains. Glyphosate, because it is also a chelator, acts to carry aluminum into the brain. Aluminum is a neurotoxin. This is one of the things that affects good sleep since aluminum also disrupts the Pineal gland's production of Melatonin. Insufficient and poor quality sleep affects the immune system which makes us more susceptible to any disease including covid. There are other more direct effects as well, but I'm out of time now. so if you're really interested in the mechanisms and the proofs, read the book.
The answer to claims well based or not is not to remove or deplatform them, but to do the research and come to your own conclusion. When I was in college and for many years thereafter, we were told that the neurons we had when we were babies are all the cells we will ever have, that brain cells don't regenerate. this was taught as fact by schools and the medical establishment. Of course now with better imaging and other types of microscopy, it's been established that brain cells do indeed regenerate. So we have to be really careful about not allowing differing views. Humans tend to be really arrogant about what they think they know. Even scientists have a tendency to forget that absence of proof is not proof of absence. Scientists are as human as the rest of us and humans really like to come to conclusions even when there is not enough proof. It's also very difficult to get an answer to a question you don't ask or that you are predisposed to discount.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Examples of non-pharmacological treatment for depression include opening a window, watching less television, and taking a daily walk. We're very much at a moment for choosing a path.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Many thanks, Charles. Just what I needed right now given how tough it is to hold the line where I live. May be faced with unpaid leave in a little more than a month but will not comply with their health edicts. I have conducted my own risk/benefit analysis and have decided that as a healthy 54 year old who eats well, practices yoga and meditates daily, gets plenty of sleep and supplements, this virus is not a threat to me. My body, my choice. I gave up on western medicine decades ago when I could see most md’s Were pill pushers, captured by big Pharma. One major opioid crisis and virus with an average age of death above 80 and a survival rate of 99.5% later confirms my decision was the right one. If there is a pandemic in North America, it is a pandemic of the obese! Thanks again for having the courage to state your position. It gave me a bit more hope
I’ve never heard a more selfish line of reasoning. You might as well go around with a gun and shoot fat people and the elderly. Is this the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible, Charles?
Used the examples to prove a point, Ken. No more selfish than forcing people to take a spike protein therapeutic in order to keep their job under the auspices of the collective good of society. Sorry not a collectivist, Ken.
Well as long as you agree that you aren’t promoting the collective good of society, I guess we have an accord
“my personal opinion is that, even holding other variables constant, the risks and harms far outweigh the benefits”
Which risks and harms are those? This is a serious question, not sarcasm. I genuinely want to know what you’re talking about, because it is incredibly difficult to find a settling point within this debate, and vagueness like this from someone whose thought journey I’ve found deeply resonant, isn’t helping. At this point, the only reliable guide I can go with is simple, direct experience; that I and all I know who’ve had the vaccine, are just fine.
“ I would have to unfold a complex discussion of systemic bias in the information environment”
I would appreciate it if you would unfold this complex discussion, anyway. It is so, so hard to know what to trust in the info stream, where to find reliable information. Partly this is a perception thing, I believe. So much misinformation flying around on all sides, so much emotional manipulation, cherry picking, pandering to confirmation biases,…it feels to me like I can’t be sure of even what I’m sure of, any more. Maybe especially what I’m sure of. I would be very interested in reading your thoughts on this. If you’ve already published them somewhere, I’d like to know.
I at first wasn’t interested in getting the vaccine for Covid 19. I felt suspicious of the industrial medicine profit machine, and it’s motives, for one thing. And I had read claims of harm by some of the vaccines I’d received as a child, and looked into the supposed evidence to support these, and was feeling very uncertain and concerned, but also skeptical of everything coming from both the opposing ends of the debate. On top of this, I knew for sure that the vaccines I’d been giving my pets had been making them sick, and on researching everything I could find on both sides of that debate, found, among a couple other convincing situations, that the whole logic of vaccinating pets annually wasn’t logical at all. They do not need it, anymore than you or I do. How had I not recognized this fallacy all these years?? I started having my pets titred annually, instead, to check their ongoing immunity levels. When and if their immunity drops below a protective level, I have them immunized for that one virus. So far, that’s only happened once to one animal, in 8 yrs. So that was some evidence that vaccine companies aren’t playing fair and honest, and I held that awareness as I considered whether to get the Covid 19 vaccine as it became available to me. I decided to wait and see what would happen with those who chose to get it, over the next 6 mos to year. For the first several months after it was available to me, I did just that. I waited.
Then, I changed my mind, and decided to go ahead and be vaccinated, for these reasons; 1. I believed, given the ongoing rates of infections, and what I know of human (civilization’s) nature, there was a strong enough likelihood that, at some point in the future, vaccination might be required for work, travel, etc., and I made a calculated choice to go ahead and do it early on, so as not to encounter a situation where it became a source of stress and urgency because I needed to do something where it was required; 2. Why this seemed a reasonable motivation for taking a vaccine that I actually still felt somewhat unsure of the safety of, was that honestly, I live in a world and a society where I am every day “forced” by necessity to engage in activities and expose myself to situations and things that I have good reason to suspect, or else I flat out know, are harmful to me—I chose the vaccine deliberately, knowing it is highly likely to protect me from something (Covid 19) I know can cause me great harm (from direct experience with people I personally know who’ve either died from it, or received what is known as “long-haul” damage from it), while also knowing that the harm the vaccine itself could cause, couldn’t be any worse than either the infection or my current life exposure to this civilization and it’s sicknesses.
I made a somewhat cynical, but logical choice, also knowing that I have already received numerous vaccines and their boosters in my lifetime, have not suffered terrible harm that I’m aware of, and have not gotten infected with any of the illnesses these vaccines are designed to protect against.
Do I think the vaccine companies are capable of cynically making profit off our collective suffering without much ethical hesitation? Possibly. It wouldn’t be the first time. Do I think it’s possible this new set of vaccines could convey harmful side effects that the medical establishment might ignore, conceal, or diminish? It’s possible. It’s happened before. As a holistic healer myself, I am painfully aware that there is a substantial bias in general against narratives that don’t support the dominant, techno-medical one of powerful control of human disease. Do I think it’s also possible, even if the above is true, that the vaccine is mostly safe, and definitely safer than Covid 19? It’s possible, yeah. So far, so good
Sounds like someone trying to convince themselves after the fact that indeed they did the right thing? You are right to question the wisdom of your decision, Anne. There is more going on here than the simple/obvious scenario that we are led to believe is the only thing at stake.
Even if the v were tested over a period of years, gov't approved, had no adverse effects at all, did not cause any deaths at all and was proven effective at doing what it was supposed to do, I still would not seek it out.
Why? To me, the danger here is not life vs. death, (everybody dies), nor is it societal inclusion vs. being an outcast (there are always "outcasts", I have always been one, even among "outcasts"). The real danger, as I see it, is in losing ones' humanity, losing ones' ability to love oneself and ones' fellow humans through making a fear-based decision in the face of coercive force.
What is the essential character of your consciousness, your highest value when push comes to shove? Is it love or fear? When ones' worst fear (dying, societal rejection) is presented before you, what will you do?
The decision one makes at this critical point in history indicates the future world one wishes to live in. Which world works for you? A world where scared folks make decisions concerning their own bodies/minds based on coercive force (no choice at all, really) or a world where folks are free to make these choices without experiencing coercive force or threat of subsequent societal condemnation hanging over their head?
I guess I'm very lucky. There's no "freedom" issue for me. The definition of freedom I've always lived by is There is no freedom without responsibility. That means responsibility to myself and others. I took the vaccine for two reasons. 1) I had COVID early, in a foreign country, couldn't afford a hospital, nearly died. Now I'm a long hauler and have two new diagnoses related to COVID. 2) I sure as heck don't want the karma of passing it on to someone who dies. Even fully vaxxed, I wear a mask outside my home. For me, it's not a matter of freedom. It's a matter of caring. BTW, I'm also lucky I've lived an extraordinary life, have had an organic diet most of my adult life, and have the ability to buy and take supplements. None of that kept me from getting COVID.
Does that mean I agree with the vaccines? Yes, til something truly better comes along. Will I get angry with folks who don't take it? No. I will ask a question, though. If unvaxxed people don't trust modern medicine, why go to a hospital if one catches it?
"There is no freedom without responsibility".
Well, what we have here is a clever nonsense statement, Robin. Politicians, gurus, cult leaders, are masters of this kind of self-contradictory speech that says nothing yet gives us warm fuzzies. I'd guess you heard or read that somewhere and are repeating it here because it creates an air of noble personal sacrifice where in truth what one is actually doing is abdicating personal responsibility to oneself and others.
Wow! I guess you don't read well. Personal responsibility is my life work.
This guy’s an idiot
Devolving back into name calling shows your true character there Ken. Thanks for showing your true self to everyone here.
"human freedom is the capacity to act differently in the face of utterly unchanged circumstances" Stephen Jenkinson (London Real interview July 2019).
Yes.
I agree. That's why my freedom includes caring about other's health enough to wear a mask, even though many won't
Most of us don't. Some are coerced by family and some actually hope that the hospital will actually use effective treatments, though I think that's an empty hope. I know of several people who were coerced by family and fear to go to the hospital. The hospital treatment didn't work and they went to court to get the hospital to use Ivermectin. The judge ordered the hospital to give it to the patient. the hospital again refused. the family went to the administration, but before the Ivermectin was used, the patient died. Contrary to what Biden is saying, the majority going to the hospital now for Covid are fully vaccinated.
I’ll get angry a folks who don’t take it for you. How dare they choose to spread disease during a global pandemic
Great. A good choice. Leaves hospital beds open for those with other needs. Heart and other needed surgeries were sent from Idaho to WA because they have no beds due to unvaxxed COVID patients. Now Washington is having to search for beds in Oregon, California and Alaska, because they have no beds left due to unvaxxed. I hope you don't get sick, but if you do, glad you'll stay home.
You bring up some important things to consider and I applaud you for it.
You’re an idiot
Nicely done, Anne. Very fair and reasonable. I got my third vaccination today (age 73) and am sure that there is less chance of suffering and suffocating to death from the vaccine than from being unvaccinated with the Covid virus in my body. It wasn't a hard choice for me, though I only eat organic real food, exercise regularly, and do know first hand as a professional the down-side of industrialize medical intervention of mental, emotional, social distress. I hope Charles does respond to you and will share his evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid. Thanks for your thoughtful response!
I appreciate your perspective this! I hope Charles answers you!
You made a tough decision but it sounds like it was the right one for you. Stand by it.
If you're truly interested in learning the facts, search "The Last American Vagabond."
"I started having my pets titred annually, instead, to check their ongoing immunity levels. When and if their immunity drops below a protective level, I have them immunized for that one virus."
Please elaborate on the above statement. How does one check their ongoing immunity levels? What is a protective level? Who determines that level? Is this something only available for animals? If it were something humans could do, we have the answer to disease.
(Ironically for an article decrying the censorship of competing ideas, the moderator deleted my post. This is exactly how the digital echo chamber of extremism works and how people end up misled by pseudoscience and lies. So, here it is again for however long it lasts. Show love to all humanity, get vaccinated!)
To choose to be a disease vector during a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of 4.5 million loved ones is completely and utterly immoral. Who really things that humanity will show the willpower to make the lifestyle changes necessary to avoid the worse effects of fossil fuels and climate change when you - an intelligent, articulate, and otherwise educated human being - aren’t willing to get a safe and effective vaccine to protect the most vulnerable among us during a time of crisis. Congratulations Charles, you’re now the leader of a death cult - the very thing you claim your life’s work to be against.
You’re killing people in order to justify your wife’s acupuncture career. Please, you have to stop. The rest of us have families too
Your reply is full of false assumptions disguised as fact. And character attacks as though they are sound, logical arguments. Maybe that's why Charles removed your post the first time. it isn't fun responding to "leader of death cult", "you're an extremist", "you're using pseudoscience", "you're trying to justify your wife's acupuncture career". I don't see any substance to actually back up your claims except emotion and Ad Hominem.
Science has evidence to back it up. That’s why it’s science. Go back to school
Except they won’t let you in the door because you’re not vaxxed. Oh irony. You’re really in a bind here intellectually
And I wouldn't reply to them either, but because I thought I'd point out your emotional plea bargaining here, and wanted to verify the next pattern you'll be spouting out towards me (an impending character attack and anger- the pattern all pro-vaxxers use against anyone who questions them along with totalitarian dictators of the past use too).
How many totalitarian dictators try to get people to stop killing people? This is a boring and uninteresting counter argument
Thank you thank you everything you write Charles makes me feel like I am not alone in my thoughts and beliefs. Your eloquence and holistic understanding/appreciation of the natural order brings me such joy but also bewilderment when those around me don’t want to consider an alternative perspective and admire the virtue signaling that the pro Vax indoctrination has encouraged.
Nobody got vaxxed to signal virtue. We did it to protect our loved ones
Simply not true Ken. Many people have taken the shot due to feeling forced to from threat of losing their livelihood, being omitted from social access, or pressure from others.
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”
- John Stuart Mill
Does spreading disease during a pandemic constitute an impediment to another’s freedom?
Who is "spreading disease" Ken? How do you define a pandemic? I suggest re-reading the quote above a few more times but you do you. Good luck and live well.
The unvaxxed are spreading a deadly disease under the guise of personal freedom. It’s a sick game when you claim the freedom to kill the elderly, the fat, and the immunocompromised
Incorrect. You realize that vaxxed and unvaxxed have similar viral loads.. in fact many studies show vaxxed have higher viral loads than unvaxxed (i.e. can spread more easily). That being said - I don't think anybody is "spreading disease". Unfortunately the practice of mass vaccination might be worsening the variants but I would still say that anybody who wants to get a shot should be able to get a shot. Even if the data shows that it's accelerating illness for a community. I wouldn't advise it but what people put in their bodies should be their choice. https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
The data doesn’t show that. Counties with higher vaccination rates in America have lower covid rates. Game over.
And to everyone on this thread: stop trying to use science to prove a point that science doesn’t agree with. If you want to say that Jesus came to you in a dream and said the vaccine is evil, fine, but don’t pretend like it’s a logical argument
Incorrect. Also this isn't a game. Science isn't an institution Ken. It's a process. This will be the last time I respond to a comment from you but I wish you well. As a parting gift enjoy some wisdom from a wise man: https://youtu.be/r3y4Asw9zZA?t=101
Thank you Charles
It's good to feel your clarity and protection for what is good and life sustaining. It has always been beyond me how so many in the environmental movement can't join the dots between industrial medicine and its pollution of the human body and the pollution of the land. That incapacity for joined-up thinking is the divided self in action.
The whole concept of side-effects and collateral damage permeates all those normal, acceptable industrial philosophies, as if there couldn't imaginably be a solution that not only remedied the problem, but even had side-benefits and Did No Harm. I have said this about our health in some eco circles over the years and been deemed completely mad.
The opioid crisis, which killed 70,000 people in the USA in 2020, has shown us that people are in pain and we in actual health know that pain is a sign that something needs deep time and attention to be resolved. But it can be resolved and actually morph into great insight and wisdom -PTSW, post traumatic stress wisdom.
Too many in my own area of deep work, meditation, have long given up on enlightenment (what I view as complete healing) as something reachable, and so have contented themselves with teaching people how to cope (fit in) to this sick culture, thereby disabling them from actually having the strength to CHANGE the culture into something healthier.
The only good thing coming out of this terrible situation we find ourselves in is that it is lighting a fire under our butts and forcing us to wake up, take note, and put into action the precious wisdom traditions we've been blessed to come in contact with. They only work if we do the work they ask of us.
May we do the inner work necessary now to heal ourselves and transform the culture into something life-sustaining and beautiful.
I am praying for you here in Ireland.
How is promoting vaccine misinformation healing to the culture? To see medicine as polluting to the human body is the definition of insanity. You’ve lost the plot brother
Everything I have ever felt, as an adult aware of the industrial systems we live in, exemplified in one article. Thank you so much for writing this and sharing it. This is what we need.
Wow, I’m sorry you’ve had such a narrow range of feelings in your adult life. And that one of those feelings is a desire to spread disease during a pandemic
Your rhetoric is so ugly, Ken. You are only dividing and pushing people further away from any cause you hope to achieve, bud. Chill out, go get some fresh air.
Well RG, he's a good example of the religious fervor true believers exhibit in thinking they know what's best for everyone else. A small minded and narrow perspective which inevitably leads to authoritarianism.
Interesting article with many good points. I usually ask the people who don't want to hear my data, the test of truth is does it work? So in that context, how well do you like your life? Do you think a society with 54% of our children having a chronic illness, 1 in 36 with autism, 1 in 12 with food allergies, 1 in 285 having cancer, 1 in 12 having asthma, 1 in 5 having learning disabilities is a system that works well? I'm 74. When I was in my 20's, none of these were true. In the 60's and part of the 70's, a single wage earner could support a family. Now for the majority of people, it requires 2 at least and even then many struggle. Frankly, our system is failing in all of the things the same people who argue with me consider important.
There's an old argument that goes, "what's more important perception or reality?" Granted, perception does affect reality, but in the long run I find that if your perceptions are too far off from reality, reality will come back and kick you in the butt. It's called consequences. We are reaping the consequences of a system based on flawed assumptions and beliefs that has been around way too long.
I'd like to say, believe whatever you want and you reap the consequences, but unfortunately, it seems those proponents of a failing system just won't let the rest of us go on with our lives. It's sort of like racism and sexism. People believed women were weaker and had to be protected and not allowed to direct their own lives. They weren't as smart or responsible as men. So how did they try to prove it? They prevented women from access to education, self-empowerment, political and economic power. What's worse, the dominant culture had to make women believe they were inferior to men. The same went for racism. So now what's happening? We are locked out of schools, medical offices, governmental buildings, free travel etc. because we don't accept the "authorized narrative" about Covid-19 and the gene therapy jab. Our spokespeople are deplatformed, vilified, muzzled. If we are so wrong, why are the powers that be so afraid of us exercising our voice? Why must everyone's lives be controlled by a fear driven scenario?
I could go on, but that may be a waste of energy and time. I will repeat: If your perceptions are too far from the truth, truth/reality, will come back and kick you in the butt and just like disease rates are skyrocketing (and I don't mean Covid), the consequences facing us will most likely destroy life as we know it. Climate change including rising sea levels; destruction of our topsoil; the inundation of toxicity from pesticides and industrial sources; the reduction of nutrients in our food; the alteration of the magnetic fields our species evolved with; economic and political systems that no longer meet the needs of people and the times, are all coming together at this time creating a perfect storm.
Hopefully this will shake people loose from outdated paradigms and free us to create a better world.
Back in 2005 I took a flight, for the first time since the 70's, and I was kind of shocked at what the air quality looked like from up there: reddish brown horizon and long, black, streaky clouds. Yet nobody really talks about it. My guess is that people don't want to risk their 401k accounts.
You're right. I read, I think in Discover Magazine this year, don't remember what month, that small particle pollution has been increasing and causing increasing health issues including asthma. But these small particles also carry cyanide and glyphosate among other toxins and both of those toxins contribute majorly to making Covid a problem. I've just started reading "Toxic Legacy, How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health And the Environment" by Stephanie Seneff, PhD. I'm about a third of the way through it and will have reread large sections because it's very technical, but it really answers the question of how. I'm learning more about amino acids and proteins and how things work than I dreamed. our bodies are so amazingly complex. I highly recommend this book. Personally, among other things, I think Covid is a distraction from the truly horrifying things that we are faced with. I've said it before; I think our health care system will collapse in less than 10 years, possibly less than 5 because of the dramatic increase in chronic illness. the increasing rates of autism alone has the capacity to do it, but just like the air pollution you mention, I think the reason is the same as what you said with the 401K accounts. Even more so, people don't want to acknowledge that their lifestyle is killing them and that big multinational corporations are taking advantage of people's willful ignorance to make huge profits at our expense.
Interesting that you trust science in one situation and not in another...
Well isn't that the pot calling the kettle black. You walked right into that one Ken.
People spreading antivax propaganda during a pandemic are immoral. A lot them weren’t removed from social media, they died from covid. So I guess your point about perception and reality is somewhat accurate
One concern is the definition of 'antivax propaganda'. It seems that computers have trouble distinguishing between scientific debate and pseudo-science propaganda. Even if the tech companies hired an army of human censors, there is still the problem of allowing legit criticisms of the dominate narrative. No doubt there are people that just want to see the world burn, but they normally don't rally large numbers to that cause unless there are underlying conditions. Mostly I'm trying to avoid 'attribution bias' and look for common systemic problems.
True. But confirmation bias is a bigger problem. People scanning the internet looking for the .1% outlier articles that support their opinion and ignoring the 99.9% against aren’t engaged in scientific debate, they’re propagandists who are killing people by promoting lies in a pandemic.
Elsewhere on this thread people have claimed that the vaccinated spread disease more than the unvaccinated. This is just a blatant falsehood.
This is not debate. This is a platform elevating lies and promoting disease.
Charles, you did this! (Not that he reads any of this)
Just get the vaccine and you'll be fine.
I’m not worried about myself. I’m young and healthy. I’m worried about my family members who aren’t. I’m worried about our elders who will die from a breakthrough infection. I’m worried about the immunocompromised who can’t develop immunity.
How can Charles claim to be a part of the conscious living community and not be willing to show love to his fellow man - someone he may never meet - by getting the vaccine at zero personal cost. It’s a glaring hole in his thought and philosophy. Of course now that he has gone so far down this path and is an antivax guru, he won’t be able to admit he was wrong. So he’s stuck... consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds as Emerson once wrote
So if you claim people wanna be in an “echo chamber” and are the “victims” of confirmation bias, than do share with the rest of us, what have you considered reading/researching that doesn’t echo your standpoint? Have you looked into opposing research done by doctors/scientist? Since you obviously walk the intellectual and moral high ground.
I always start reading your essays and end up completely absorbed, nodding my head in recognition and appreciating you putting so eloquently much of what I'm also feeling.
In gratitude 🙏
Ah yes, feeling like murdering the elderly today are you? Nod away
Your a disturbed individual Ken, please seek help.
I love the way you call wyt people back to nature. However, as an indigenous person who is connected to indigenous communities still living their traditions, using their natural medicines, I receive messages all the time that they have no Medicines that work against COVID. Most North and South Native Americans, African tribes, and Asian tribes, see COVID as another smallpox, and tribes are locked down and vaccinating as many as they can. What would you suggest for them? Most tribal people don't have the money to buy supplements, go to fancy reiki, sound healing, light frequency, massage spas, retreats, workshops. They can't afford supplements, and have often been forced onto lands that are arid and can't support healthy agriculture. What will your new society do about that? Here in the western U.S., rivers and aquifers are drying up due to climate chaos. Mass migration has already begun. Without clean water, or enough water, the west is fast becoming a dust bowl. Yes, all these things need action, not talk. We're talking ourselves to extinction. So how do you propose we implement all your suggestions RIGHT NOW? We don't have much time left. Indigenous, and even biblical, prophecies have foretold the times we're in now many centuries ago, yet we've continued down the path of self destruction. We're tired of talk. We've been loving as naturally as possible forever, except where colonization has prevented it. So now I'm asking, What are you who are waking up to your own embedded colonial privilege going to DO about it?
As you are so passionate and engaged with this particular piece of the mycelial puzzle, perhaps that is where your light of solution wayfinding can shine. Imagine if every person had to solve every challenge or be judged inadequate. Thank you for your passion and I'm grateful that you can help in your area 💝
All the unvaxxed wyt people I know are also strongly advocating for better access to health care, including vaccinations, for everyone, especially historically oppressed communities. AND participating in #LandBack and other reparations actions. Charles supports our freedom to choose and makes it possible for us to continue our work, without falling into despair.
No, what all the unvaxxed white people are doing is spreading disease during a pandemic
By using unqualified absolute terms like “all” you make your statement more likely to be incorrect. The qualified “all” that I was describing have been much more scrupulous about masking, isolating, hygiene, and distancing than the other folks I know. And, unlike the vaxxed, not one has had COVID.
I actually kind of agree: if you don’t want to participate in society on any level and are going to isolate, mask, and distance then you probably aren’t spreading much disease. If you are going to participate in society, it’s completely immoral not to take the free, safe, and effective vaccine
Safe eh? Tell that to all the people who have died and experienced serious side effects from the shots. You have a curious sense of morality.
Robin, my heart literally ached when I read your post. I am so sorry for you and for your community for feeling so helpless during this time. You are 1000% correct that it is time to stop talking and take action, but we little people have no power to take action, as our country is controlled by corrupt politicians and industry. Americans have gradually gotten sicker since 1960 as a result of this multi-layered corruption. The vaccine has indeed caused many injuries and deaths, and Charles is trying to inform his readers that we have a right to reclaim our health that has been stolen by big pharma and big ag. If your community has multiple co-morbidities or weight concerns, the community is considered high risk for not surviving Covid. And if there is a lack of available funds for supplements such as Vitamin D3 , Vit C and Zinc, then perhaps the vaccine is your best option, as it lessens the severity of symptoms and likelihood of hospitalization. Your concerns are valid and I hear you. There are some of us that want to bring justice to all Americans. It's going to take nothing short of a revolution and overthrow corrupt politicians and big business. These comments are not to meant to placate you or your fears. You have my empathy and compassion and my wishes for safekeeping until this virus mutates into nothingness.
Thank you. I've said for years we need to fire them all. We aren't powerless as long as we agree. We can elect new folks. We've already started. The problem is, while we all want the same things, we don't agree on how to get there. That's where the work is.
I just answered your previous comment, now I read this and I want to add this:
I do not believe we "have to agree" on how to get there, if we want the same thing... why don't "get there" by different means and ways? Diversity is great ;)
Good points. One idea is to start from the ground up, with nutrition. A return to traditional, natural foods diet free of sugar, refined carbs and processed foods will make a tremendous difference. There are ways to do it, cheaply, even in a food desert. You must know obesity/diabetes/hypertension, the top risk factors for severe Covid other than advanced age, are rampant in Native Americans (and others) eating Western diets. These conditions are reversible with a low carbohydrate, real food diet. So that's one piece, a beginning. Create a healthy terrain for a strong, resistant immune system.
Thanks for your comment Robin, I write from Europe and I would like to tell you what I think about this very important point:
history tells that at each power crisis, the ruling elites can avoid revolution (thus giving up a certain amount of power) by dividing insurgents. If the insurgents fight against each other, the ruling elites will only have to split in two parts, each pretending to be on this or that side of the fighting insurgents and lead respectively both insurgent parties. As soon as political peace will be newly established, the ruling elites will reunite. As a result we will have a part of the insurgent people who lost being defeated, colonized, imprisoned or killed and the winning part of the insurgent people will serve and legitimate again the same ruling elites under a new power paradigma (color-switch).
In order to avoid this happening, people should try not to divide or fight against or blame each other. The quest for revolution is first of all a quest for emancipation of individuals and communities. A healthy community express solidarity to other communities, even if they are fighting on different fronts. White privileged people are doing well by refusing jabs and related burocracy, at the same time they shouldn't forget to express solidarity and fight alongside with indigenous people, because both white and indigenous people are fighting the same enemy on different fronts, and because they aren't fighting with the aim of "getting to the power", but with the will of freedom and (w)healt.
Interesting lecture: "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice"
Refusing to get a vaccine is not fighting a revolution against the power structure. It’s refusing to show love to and protect the most vulnerable in a time of crisis. If you can’t step up and do something simple and zero cost for the health of your community, you will not be apart of the revolution and next evolution of man. Period. The future will not belong to the selfish, the uniformed, the ignorant, the callous, the crackpots, or the wingnuts. This is the glaring hole in Eisenstein’s thought!
Simple living, tax strike, solidarity economics, collective healing, decol education
Some Latin American countries have had success reducing covid deaths in hospitals with emergency use of the drug Ivermectin which is incredibly cheap. Why are we not researching it, or other drugs, if saving lives is really the goal. https://covid19criticalcare.com/news-reports/
The CDC and FDA have squashed the concept of Ivermectin and are labeling it as a horse de-wormer to scare people. It is an anti-parasitic drug used to treat scabies and other little critters! I have taken it and it is highly effective. A meta-analysis was done using 25 independent studies of Ivermectin as an off-label use for Covid. Doctors presented the meta-anaylsis study results to Congress in 2020. Nothing came of it. That is because no money is to be made with Ivermectin. Follow the dollars and you will understand why the gov't is pushing the vaccine for big pharma.
You’re an idiot. Stop eating horse paste
You're an idiot Ken. Stop spreading your vile rhetoric.
I too am taking the horse paste. You're an idiot for falling for media propaganda and calling a medication that pre-COVID I would take during every travel to a third world country to protect against Malaria. But "suddenly" nOoOo It TuRns OuT I wAS tAkINg HoRsE pAsTE aLl AlOnG WoW!
Also, like you point out ivermectin has real, studied, evidence based, peer reviewed uses. People (& horses) who need it can’t get it because antivaxxers decided it tastes better than bleach and are sucking it down all willy-nilly. Weird that you antivaxxers are so pumped on this product of industrial medicine for an unproven use, when the vaccine is siting right next to it and has been proven to work! Are you guy still just afraid of shots? I could mail you a lollipop
The dosages people are taking are horse dosages. And it’s a paste. So, yep, horse paste.
Don’t worry, science just figured out a vaccine for malaria while you weren’t looking. You won’t have to eat paste any more.
Please don’t go to Africa and try to convince children not to get vaccinated against malaria now...
It’s horse deworming medicine. Why are you afraid of a human vaccine but not of horse deworming medicine? You’re insane
Ken, with all due respect, name calling is not helpful and does not solve the problem our world is facing today. We are all divided because of mandates over our personal health choices. If someone doesn't want a vaccine that wasn't thoroughly tested for 5 years of trials, which is the standard, then it is simply their choice. We all know, and the CDC too, that the vaccine does not provide immunity but only lessens the severity of symptoms. Based on that, there can never be herd immunity from the vaccine. Here is a link for an interesting paper from Israel, one of the highest vaccinated countries. They now say that the vaccinated are carrying higher viral loads (several studies support this position). And calling me an idiot might not be accurate considering I am an RN and stand with many other RN's that question the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccine. One of my co-workers took the shot, threw a clot, had a stroke and died. He was in his late 30's. Here is the link: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.39.2100822 I hope you can find more peace in your heart and acceptance for other opinions that don't necessarily agree with your own. There is much to learn and name calling is not a way to discover new information. Be well.
Just saw this. You’re completely wrong. The vaccine decreases the odds that you get sick as evidenced by simple county by county comparisons of vaccine rates and covid rates. That’s building immunity! And if you’re really an RN you should know this. Sorry for your friend, but this is a perfect example of why anecdotal evidence cannot be elevated to the level of statistical fact. Spreading misinformation during a pandemic kills people
So here is a article published in the American Journal of Pediactrics
Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
"Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified."
Thank you for posting this link. Also, Peru used Ivermectin from May to Dec 2020 and had a 24 fold decrease in cases and deaths. https://osf.io/9egh4/
Studies in Argentina, India and African nations have also shown success with Ivermectin. Follow the dollars. Bill Gates invested money in Pfizer, giving them the funds needed to develop a vaccine just two months prior to the first cases of Covid. Fauci is a part owner of the Moderna vaccine patent. Both vaccines have caused unnecessary injuries and deaths.
I’m willing to admit that at some point in the future ivermectin may pass the peer review phase and be approved as a therapeutic. But you know what already works with no side effects? Getting vaccinated! Why are you so into this other product of industrial medicine that has yet to pass peer review?
The UK just published their report on Covid. The deaths among the vaccinated were more than double from the deaths of the unvaccinated. There is so much information that you are choosing to ignore.
You’re misinterpreting the statistics. The UK has a more than 85% vaccination rate. So if as you say only twice as many vaccinated are dying but they make up nearly 6 times as many people, that points to the major lifesaving effect of vaccines. Somehow you’ve concluded the opposite. This is simple high school level proportional reasoning. You’re either bad at math and accidentally lying or you’re intentionally lying. Either way this is a prime example of someone spreading lies during a pandemic. Lies kill people! Get vaccinated!
No side effects? Your nothing but a misinformation spreader Ken. You like to create this persona of someone who cares about others but ignore the harm being done to people from the shots.
A friend who was feeling a bit off, (not deeply depressed), just off for a couple of weeks, was just offered SSRIs from her doctor, because, well you know, "your serotonin could be low." Aka.. your fluids are low... time to go to the shop. She was ready to start taking them, before she was willing to try changing her diet, exercising or meditating, getting better sleep, or anything. I offered... "why don't you try the other stuff 1st... and consider the SSRIs as a last-ditch effort. This article was a nice boost to that argument.
some people want a silver bullet versus actually "working" or changing themselves.
This is one of the best essays I have read that describes the many issues that are of concern to me regarding modern day medicine and the many reasons why such issues are not black and white as portrayed by the media but rather quite gray.
As an engineer and a scientist for a half century I designed a lot of complex, leading edge electronic equipment used in very complex systems for military and commercial applications. Such a career teaches you very quickly that you must look at every facet of what the long term impacts are of every design you create, otherwise someone could be harmed or even die from your creation. Unfortunately this is not the case in modern medicine for a variety of reasons, which are quite eloquently discussed by Charles Eisenstein in this essay. It’s complicated yet always presented by powerful interests and their media counterparts as simple thereby asking us to “just trust us.” I don’t.
Another recent post by Sylvia Forest reflects my sentiments exactly. Can someone point me to the interview with Dr Zach?
Greg Schneider - It is on Charles' podcast 'A New and Ancient Story' ep 49: Life is a Community - from 28th July '21. It's a good podcast all round. What I like is that there's nothing glib about the way Charles conducts interviews. There are sometimes pauses while he considers his response - something you rarely find with any interviewer - they seem to need to fill every space (or people will switch to something else??)
https://charleseisenstein.org/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story-podcast/dr-zach-bush-life-is-a-community-e49/
Also available on itunes.
His podcast is excellent. Well worth a regular listen. I’ve learned so much from the guests he meets, love his intelligent and engaged interview style, and as always, learned much from Charles. Have followed up on many books, other podcasts, concepts, etc. Very rich.
So you spent your life working for the military industrial complex, and now you’re antivax during a pandemic. Makes sense, you love killing people.
Charles, this is the community you’ve created. This is your death cult!
Charles, thank you for another brilliant, beautifully presented 'opinion' ;). You always seem to write precisely what I am trying to articulate to myself (I'm not yet at the point of making my views public as it is such a hostile environment; being a scientist doesn't help). Having you in my corner has been an enormous blessing, a solid rock to lean against. Thank you.
Holy crap! You’re a scientist? And you’re presumably antivax and pro-homeopathy? This is disturbing
I‘m sorry you are disturbed by my ability to interpret research papers and think for myself, but I don‘t apologise for it. I wish there was a vaccine for feeling disturbed; I‘d likely queue up for it. I guess you‘d prefer some charged water infused with bush flowers? See you on the flipside, Ken.