Psychiatrist Norman Doidge, MD, has recently published a long, four-part article entitled Needle Points, in which he examines vaccine skepticism in America. The author, who got vaccinated “early and voluntarily,” is solidly pro-vaccine, yet he displays what is in these divisive times an unusual willingness to see the issue from the perspective of those with whom he disagrees.
Thanks for writing this - I much appreciate your perspectives on this phenomenon and the mass psychology behind it.
For me, the question of covid vaccine safety is first and foremost an epistemological question. What can we know, and what can we not yet know? Is our science and data collection set up so as to know the truth, or to support the truth of a particular predetermined position?
Put another way, if we look at the history of vaccine development, what are the chances that a vaccine developed in less than a year, tested for six months, using a never-before-deployed technology and targeting a novel virus with a CFR of ~1%, will ultimately prove to have a positive risk-benefit ratio? My scientific mind, after examining the history of vaccine development, would put these odds at around 10%.
Whatever we believe these odds to be, is there any possible reason why a government or medical establishment truly interested in maximizing public health would not want to track very large control and treatment groups indefinitely to see whether some harm might appear that would justify changing treatment recommendations?
Like Charles, I started out ambivalent and in fact very nearly chose to get vaccinated, but as it became clear that governments and doctors were planning to become coercive and to prematurely declare complete vaccine safety - before such a statement could possibly be made given unknown long-term effects, despite some worrying signals of harms that were not detected in the trials, and despite the absence of any significant negative correlation between vaccination rates and infection rates - I decided that the odds were against this being a good idea. The more time passes, the more I am convinced that I made the right choice.
I do appreciate this post Markael. It's thoughtful and insightful.
I'm curious as to why you think the benefit to risk ratio will turn out unsatisfactory? Does this include the social piece, meaning what the discussions surrounding the vaccine seem to be doing to us as a society (pitting one against the other)?
If that's the case, I can understand your viewpoint entirely. Although that really doesn't have anything to do with the shot itself, more the messaging and humans involved in the discussions unfortunately.
But from a sheer scientific and "physical disease" perspective, what evidence do you see of any kind that the vaccine isn't a net positive on preventing hospitalization, death, etc?
Of course we don't know the vaccine long term effects, but vaccines typically don't produce long term effects, and while this is new technology, it surely doesn't seem that the mechanism of application (mRNA) will be a long term health issue.
Of course we can't know this now, but I'm wondering, is it mainly intuition that gives you this feeling of a net negative on the risk benefit comparison?
I've struggled with this whole thing too, but I simply don't see that side of it.
It's not just intuition, although that is a part of it. I have read and written a great deal about the knowns and unknowns of the science. It's true that vaccines typically don't produce long-term effects, and that when they do these effects tend to be immunological. So there is the immunological concern element which largely centers around the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement or - on a wider scale - driving the evolution of the virus in a way that leads to greater pathogenicity. These remain wild cards, although they are not my top concern at the moment.
These vaccines instruct the body to produce a protein - essentially a chemical - that is then immunogenic. In this way they are unlike any vaccines previously deployed, and a bit more like a drug. Unfortunately it turns out that this spike protein is biologically active. I won't fill this comment up with citations - Google Scholar will find you the sources - but various studies have found that spike protein directly triggers formation of fibrin blood clots which are themselves an inflammatory signal, and also that it may enter the cell nucleus and interfere with DNA replication.
These findings are highly preliminary and of uncertain relevance to health at this point, but the overall point is that unlike traditional vaccines which inject a known quantity of whole virus - which is then destroyed by the immune system, these vaccines instruct the body to produce a small molecule - a protein - inside of our cells. It was supposed to stay put, but studies have found free S1 in the plasma for the first seven days, and exosomes (small particles that bud off of cells) carrying spike protein in the blood for up to four months after the second injection. This molecule has not been adequately tested for biotoxicity, and unlike with vaccines there is plenty of precedence for delayed/long-term effects following chemical exposure.
So there is plenty of science that leads me to doubt the official story. That said, I don't doubt that the vaccines are effective in terms of preventing severe illness and hospitalization, and that for certain demographics with high covid risk and limited remaining life years, it is almost certain that vaccination has a net benefit in terms of saving lives even given the unknown risks.
The real kicker though, for me, is the way that we treat people who believe they have been injured by these vaccines. They are repeatedly told - with no proof whatsoever - that their debilitating symptoms which began shortly after vaccination could not possibly be connected. Now, I'm willing to grant that coincidences are a thing, and if we vaccinate 200 million people perhaps 20,000 (that's 1 in 10,000) will have a serious unrelated problem shortly thereafter, and that therefore we shouldn't be alarmed by every anecdotal story of a stroke or heart attack in the days after getting the shot. That said, it would be entirely reasonable to *expect* that a rushed vaccine is going to have a higher-than-average incidence of real adverse events. In a healthy society, in order to convince people to accept a risk for the common good we would offer compensation - both psychological and monetary - for the inevitable injuries. Just as we honor fallen soldiers, so we would honor those who died or were injured in the vaccination effort. And just as sometimes we honor someone who had a heart attack on the battlefield rather than being killed by enemy fire, so we would end up honoring a few vaccine "survivors" whose injuries were purely coincidence. That is OK. But instead we gaslight, ignore, and actively silence vaccine-injured people, and accept vaccine exemption from liability in a world in which we otherwise accept lawsuits for sidewalk potholes and coffee served too hot. This tells me that something is very much amiss, and there is an element of religious belief ("vaccines save lives", "vaccines are always good") that is getting in the way of finding truth and choosing the best way forward.
I am a retired internist/endocrinologist. I had reservations about this vaccine technology and early on decided I wanted to be a free rider before I got jabbed. Having other relatives still working in the health industry and other family members generally do well without serious adverse effects, my mind began to ease.
I was preparing to volunteer to administer vaccines this past spring. I held off because there was no assurance that I would be vaccinated before doing so. This seemed counterintuitive, just as it's the policy of the airlines that parents put on their oxygen masks before their child's.
Around then, research was coming out about harms from the virus spike protein. That got me thinking that the vaccine may cause similar injuries with the manufacturing of spike protein. So I held off.
Then I learned about vaccine induced enhancement of viral infections. This can happen through antibody dependent enhancement; immune activation via via activated CD4 memory T-cells; and other abnormal T-cell responses. See:
"Vaccine-induced enhancement of viral infections" Vaccine
Volume 27, Issue 4, 22 January 2009, Pages 505-512
Indeed, this article points out, "vaccine-induced enhancement has been a major stumble block in the development of certain flavi-, corona-, paramyxo-, and lentivirus vaccines."
Public health officials preach vaccines, but influenza vaccine failures are well described. Influenza vaccine failure: Failure to protect or failure to understand?
Drummed into my pandemic education circa mid 1980’s were fears of an influenza A pandemic. Hemagglutinin (and sometimes neuraminidase) glycoproteins from influenza viruses in waterfowl could recombine into human influenza viruses to introduce a novel sub-type for which our immune system had no standing army. An influenza pandemic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of influenza-related deaths, remains a threat to humans.
Excerpt from "Influenza Vaccine — Outmaneuvering Antigenic Shift and Drift"
N Engl J Med. 2004 Jan 15;350(3):218-20. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp038238:
"The hemagglutinin is the viral attachment protein that also mediates the entry of the virus into the cell by fusion. The neuraminidase is an enzyme whose main function is to facilitate the cell-to-cell spread of virus. The immunology of influenza is, in a sense, very straightforward. Antibody against the hemagglutinin is neutralizing and is very protective against infection and illness. Antibody against the neuraminidase can reduce the severity of illness. The immunology of influenza is, in a sense, very straightforward. Antibody against the hemagglutinin is neutralizing and is very protective against infection and illness. Antibody against the neuraminidase can reduce the severity of illness."
What acts as Covid’s hemagglutinin and neuraminidase? It appears that spike protein is important for both “cell-free” (through ACE2 receptor) and cell-to-cell transmission.
This June 2021 pre-print, "SARS-CoV-2 Spreads through Cell-to-Cell Transmission" (bioRxiv. 2021 Jun 1;2021.06.01.446579. doi: 10.1101/2021.06.01.446579), shows evidence that cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can occur in the absence of ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor expression in target cells through the SARS-CoV-2 spike.
The findings of this NIH funded study are extremely concerning and it should be peer reviewed and published. The authors (primarily from Ohio State University) point out that, “Cell-to-cell transmission is considered to be an effective means by which viruses evade host immunity, especially antibody-mediated responses.”
Indeed, they found cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is resistant to antibody neutralization. Moreover, “(w)hile not statistically significant, some of the COVID-19 sera (2 out of 5) even enhanced cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 6D), although the underlying mechanisms are currently not known.”
In vitro lab studies are not the same as in vivo experience with vaccines. But the blame and shame game of the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is absolutely immoral if the precautionary principle remains germane to science.
Your comment is, at least, a sane summing up of some potential issues and red flags. At least you acknowledge that the vaccine has made a positive difference to the majority of those who’ve taken it. Pretty much everyone else on here is having an already converted to the religion party.
I feel completely disempowered just listening. Talk about being gas-lit. To have Charles, whose work I have followed for years, get lost in anecdotes, and shaming and blaming those who have also done their due diligence, those who date to view vaccines as a critical if imperfect approach to a problem (and a much more clearly dangerous and debilitating illness) leaves me feeling completely disempowered. I feel as though I’m in one of those dreams where I can’t move or I’m drowning in quicksand. Everybody has alterior motives, no one can be trusted. All pharmaceutical companies are evil, all newspapers lie. All these references to sources that no one reads. All this innuendo and accusation, this slamming of everything traditional or mainstream, the ignoring of so many biochemists and toxicologists and researchers who explain that this IS NOT a new untested vaccine, but a variation of something that has been in development since SARS or even before. I am not saying we shouldn’t follow up on all reports; obviously we should. But how in hell is that we should only listen to skeptics telling horror stories of sudden deaths (which are then immediately claimed to be caused by vaccines). There are millions of stories where everything goes well.
No one I know personally has been killed by a vaccine. No one I know has even had an adverse reaction. No one I know has heard of any one who has. I do know (or knew) people who have been have been harmed or killed by the virus.
I had a woman arrive at my retreat centre for a visit with her friends last week. I didn’t know her personally. She claimed that covid was a hoax and that those who had been vaccinated were shedding deadly something or other: what the something or other was she could not say. She told me her son (who I was told later had Down Syndrome and was autistic) threw up every time he got near anyone who had had a vaccine. Honestly this stretches credulity beyond the breaking point it, nonetheless no doubt, some people on here will take her story as truth and start repeating it around.
It feels like the same sort of sentiments are being presented here as those that once caused people to turn on women who worked as healers, calling them witches and accusing them of illnesses and sudden deaths without cause or proof. These women were burned or drowned in the thousands. Only in this case our witches are vaccines.
The very fact that things became serious enough that governments felt forced to legislate some aspects of vaccine use has brought the wrath of the unschooled, the mistrustful and the just plain frightened down upon them. Who cares about the science… who cares about the statistics, who cares about reality… the only thing that matters anymore is our freedom to be irresponsible, to care not a wit for our neighbours, the ill, and the elderly, because god forbid someone told us some thing we didn’t feel right about.
We take a thousand things for granted every day before breakfast to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland. We eat junk, we eat chemicals, we eat food grown in chemicals altered soils. We assert our right to smoke dope while ignoring the statistics of the biochemical risks to people (especially young men) under 25.
It’s always all about us. Don’t anybody tell us what to do… large numbers of us don’t bother to go out to vote but we all get out to complain at the drop of a hat.
The hypocrisy inherent in the intuitive judgement of so many, the laziness, the damning innuendo, the condemnation of anything we don’t understand, and so are scared of is, itself, scary and dangerous.
I can understand the fear of the unknown but sometimes we need to face our fears for the good of our fellow humans. By all means investigate all claims but, for a change, listen to both sides of the argument. Science makes mistakes and then it investigates and fixes them. Superstition takes every fact and twists it around to support whatever perspective it already believes in.
Are you aware that the swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10 was declared a fake pandemic by The Council of Europe in 2010? The vaccine developed to deal with it was withdrawn after around 700 young people developed narcolepsy after being vaccinated. The 1976 swine-flu vaccine was withdrawn after 25 deaths associated with it in the US. 10s of thousands of deaths have been reported across the world following the c19 vaccines. Investigations by universities into how completely vaccine death and injury are captured by various voluntary reporting schemes conclude between 1% and 10%. Steve Kirsch, a professional statistician who shares his findings online, has calculated that about 40% of events are captured. One way or another, we are way beyond 25 deaths here.
Were you aware that the man who exposed the fake swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a lung specialist who once held a government post in Germany in the SPD, was censured at the beginning of this 'pandemic' as he began to speak out? Many other eminent scientists, including the Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, have also been censured because they are critical of the official position. It's not just the superstitious who are critical, as you unfairly state. Far from it. I'm sure most people who support the narrative and vaccines are similarly superstitious; most people are. It's almost exclusively supporters of the narrative who get screen time. It's the critics who are deplatformed, cancelled, including Dr Michael Yeadon, who was by turns Vice President and CSO at Pfizer for years. He is a micro-biologist. Have you heard of Dr Byram Bridle? A virologist/vaccinologist from Ottowa University, he went public with his findings earlier this year, findings that were highly critical of the c19 vaccines, and was treated to vicious opprobrium from colleagues and mass media alike. He has been deplatformed. A colleague of his at Ottowa University was fired for refusing the vaccine. Stories like theirs abound, including of Dr Robert Malone, co-inventor of mRNA technology.
Are you aware that the WHO removed from their definition of pandemic the criteria requiring large numbers of deaths and illnesses, about a month before they declared the swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10? Now all that is required to declare a pandemic is that a new virus be spreading across the world. When is that not the case? Are you aware that around 70% of WHO funding is conditional? Are you aware that there are contracts between nation states, the WHO and Big Pharma corporations that are triggered when pandemics are declared by WHO, contracts not fully open to public scrutiny? Pharmaceutical corporations make fortunes on pandemics and vaccine sales.
Are you aware that the PCR tests used to determine if a person is infected cannot detect whole virus, merely particular fragments thereof? Are you aware that the science is divided on the CFR and IFR of covid19, with Dr John Ioannides calculating its IFR at around 0.14% to 0.15%, similar to a heavy flu? He attributes any and all excess mortality to lockdown measures. There are legal cases being developed in Canada, Italy and the UK on this point. Look into the Midazolam situation and Matt Hancock in the UK, spring 2020. Italy recently reduced its number of c19 deaths in 2020 from a little over 132,000 to around 3,700, a 97% reduction. The PCR test, the CDC admitted recently, cannot differentiate between flu and c19. A new set of tests that can are due to be released this December. Besides, the ct level used for the now redundant c19 tests ranges from 35 to 45 across the world, with no clear guidelines on this pivotal parameter. I believe Fauci stated that results produced above a ct of 28 are clinically meaningless. Apparently, serious labs don't like to go above a ct of 11. That stated, do we know who died of what, especially as, most mysteriously, autopsies of c19 deaths were more or less forbidden, and death-certificate protocols were changed in April 2020 to allow the presence of c19 thereon to mean the person died of c19. In combination with PCR testing set way too sensitive, this obviously generates huge deaths and cases for c19, whether or not it was the actual cause.
I could go on (masks, 'asymptomatic spread', ivermectine used very successfully in India and Japan but banned elsewhere, the dreadfully negative impact and ineffectiveness of lockdowns ...). The point here is that there is no genuine debate taking place, getting a public airing. I have been looking closely at what is going on since March 2020 and am confident that a very strange transition to a new totalitarian system of global governance is being tricked onto the world under cover of a fake pandemic. I want to be wrong. I am not superstitious. And, like you, I feel like I am drowning. Neither of us is happy with the situation. Both of us want good science to prevail. Both of is want healthy outcomes. The problem is how to talk about it all. Why is this so difficult? That this is so difficult, so emotional, so turbulent, is for me one of the clearest indications that this fraught situation, this terribly divided people we have become, is by design. Why deplatform critical voices right from the very start? The decision to lockdown was unprecedented, and extreme. Critical voices needed to be heard for that very reason. Why were they banned and censured?
Toby, you just exposed the entire fraud that has been waged on the world! It is too much for some to wrap their mind around, that's all. I do feel sorry for them, as the truth is really tough. But, if they will dare to go down the rabbit hole, listen to McCullough, Kennedy, Tess Lawrie, Steve Kirsch, or Michael Yeadon, etc.,..their eyes will be opened. And that's precisely why they will not.
My husband had an adverse reaction to the Swine flu jab in 2010 and it took him a number of years to rebuild his health. This has led us to not take the vaccine. We think we had Covid early on before testing and it was not that significant about a week of feeling poorly. We are in our 70's . I appreciate the openness and balance that Charles brings to this conversation.
That should shake up a few mRNA cell and gene therapy advocates coasting along, absorbing the MSM obfuscation, manipulations, and outright lies, if they will bother to think this through!
Before our worldwide rollout of Forced Experimental Bio-Tech,) (my label for the C19 Shots,) a Harvard Pilgram Health Plan review concluded that as little as 1% of actual vaccine injuries made it into VAERS.
Many doctors cannot, or will not recognize them when they happen. Then the Covid Jabs happened and hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans have been injured by them, and thousands have died. It is not acceptable to force a dangerous medical treatment on anyone! And I do suggest we are using propaganda to "normalize" heart attacks, strokes, and neurological issues in very small children.
Coincidence? Not a chance.
Yes, Covid 19 is dangerous, but We Have Steadfastly Refused to Develop Early Treatment Strategies! A few normal Doctors have done so, but hit brick walls again and again, when bringing this information to our "Officials," and people have to go to court to get the hospitals to allow their loved ones to receive the Ivermectin that their own doctors have prescribed! This has saved a few, but 100s of thousands died, from this behavior. This is all insane, or murderous, depending on your viewpoint.
I lean towards murderous, but there is an argument for flat out incompetent.
However the lockstep messaging Worldwide implies premeditation, planning and coordination. Back to straight up health information , listen to Dr. Peter McCullough . He is absolutely top of his field, and is calling for a full moratorium on all the Covid Shots because of their horrible safety profiles.
Yes, I am. And that's sad, because I am not a "freaking crazy person". It troubles me deeply that we cannot talk to each other. The fact that this is so is, for me, a clear sign that the divisions preventing us from talking are desired. Do you want this division, this emotional tension, this terrible divergence to continue? If not, what do you think we should do to change it? If you do want things to stay this way, why?
Can you actually contradict a single thing he is saying? You can't and you won't be able to. You are one of those so entrenched in your views that you simply can't see the other side. You lose the argument when you insult people. What I always say is give it time and the truth will come out.
I didn't keep a copy of the source for that data, but remember the announcement fairly well (the numbers I cited are very specific!), and other announcements out of Italy, too. There has been much back and forth on death numbers in several countries because it just isn't clear, and different groups make different claims. There is of course massive political/corporate interference on this, and so many other c19 issues, so we will never know how deadly c19 really was. A source on c19 lethality I trust above others is Professor John Ioannidis, a very highly respected epidemiologist from Stanford University.
I will let most of your comment stand but you are incorrect or a bit out of your element about a lot of your PCR material, specifically that 'serious' labs don't look at Cts above 11. The instructions for use for any given PCR assay will detail the Ct range that is considered 'Positive', and it usually is in the range of 5-35, maybe even out to 40. A Ct of 11 would be 'very' positive, whereas a Ct in the 30s likely would be someone who is asymptomatically positive, or recently had an infection with leftover NA material. You are correct that it detects the presence of nucleic acid (NA), very specifically, and this by itself cannot be used to indicate a clinical diagnosis (but effectively it does indicate extremely well if the patient has recently been infected or not).
The CDC didn't need to 'admit' that the C19 PCR test cannot identify flu, all PCR tests are designed with primers that specifically target ONLY the DNA/RNA of the target of interest, and are tested to ensure they DO NOT register any other target as a positive (this is referred to as specificity in the literature). The FLU/C19 combo assays use primers that target both viral genomes, but use different fluorophores (and thus can only be run on instruments that support what is called 'multiplexing').
Thank you for your response to my comment, tugordie.
Perhaps one should always be wholly unemotional and, let’s say, academic, when writing comments, but perhaps not. I tend to go for a mix of emotional disclosure and a willingness to be corrected where wrong. I wrote the comment you responded to in an outpouring that I did not make any attempt to render in any way neutral; the comment I was responding to seemed very dismissive of my own position and others who share it. To the degree, then, that my comment was an authentic expression of my feelings, I stand by it. And in fact I stand by it in toto for other reasons, too, not the least of which is the subsequent discussion it seems to have engendered.
The statement on PCR was not plucked from my imagination. The point about “serious” labs and CT values not over 11 had two sources. The first was a meta-study – if memory serves – showing rapid decline in reproducible virus above a CT of 11, such that certainty about ‘live’ or ‘active’ virus can only really be asserted at 11 and lower. (PCRs do not detect whole virus, so they cannot directly detect, but only imply, infection.) You appear to agree with this: you mention the sliding-scale assessment of what constitutes ‘positive’.
The second source was an effort to address an odd anomaly in virology re. the total absence of genuine – not “mock” – control experiments. Dr Stefan Lanka – of whom I am not particularly fond – carried out control experiments in which he subjected cell cultures to the mix of chemicals virologists add to them when they subject those cultures to their virus “isolate” to observe the pathogenicity of a particular virus. The difference is that Lanka included no virus “isolate”, only the fixatives, antibiotics, etc. (I use speech marks to indicate that virus “isolates” are not purified, i.e. they contain material other than the purported virus.) Lanka observed exactly the same cytopathic effects without the presence of virus. Lanka’s control experiments suggest, therefore, that it is not clear that what virology calls viruses are in fact pathogenic; there is no clear laboratory proof of this claim to date (I also know Dr Yeadon has agreed that this is true). When Lanka sent off the resultant material to labs for sequencing, the labs he approached refused to go above a CT of 11, claiming anything above that threshold produces an unscientific result.
Why did Lanka want to go above 11 and into the high 30s / early 40s? To be able to sequence, model, or ‘discover’ in-silico, the proteins of SARS-CoV-2. Which, when the lab finally consented to the higher CT values, is what happened: SARS-CoV-2 was ‘discovered’ (modelled) in-silico from dead-cell detritus that had never been exposed to it.
This leads to the next point. The CDC ‘admitting’ the (Drosten?) PCR of early 2020 could not distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and flu. This was a story that exploded in the summer of 2021 and was fact-checked as ‘fake’ shortly thereafter. Because I was also aware of a microbiologist from a university in California reporting he had only found flu virus in all samples claimed to have been positive SARS-CoV-2 tests, and because the flu ‘disappeared’ in 2020 and 2021, it seemed to me that the high-CT values could be muddying the water in this regard. Yes, I know and knew that the test, any PCR test, is supposed to target proteins (primers) unique or at least highly particular to the object they are testing for, but with the Drosten PCR, this did not appear to be the case: There was an article from a Spanish medical journal showing that entering the primer(s) Drosten used into the BLAST database yielded something like a hundred hits, most (or all?) of which are present in humans. But, it was a while back that I read this, so my memory on this point is a little hazy.
In sum, then, I felt the ‘fake’ news re. the CDC’s ‘admission’ was of a type with other data I was aware of at the time. But, in the interests of brevity, or more likely because I was writing more emotionally than academically, I expressed that point with zero context and as nuance-free as I did. That said, I am extremely skeptical about sites branding this or that piece of news as fake. There are vested interests on every side of whatever news is reported. I deem it very corrosive to open discourse to label things “fake” in this dismissive way.
As you can see, it takes a long comment to explain a small detail in a long comment! But comments are not scientific discourse, they are an opportunity to air feelings and impressions. That’s how I use them, on the whole. Besides, I’m just a regular guy trying to make as much sense as I can out of a very unusual and troubling situation.
Have YOU been threatened with loss of your job if you TOOK the vaccine? How would that feel? You hear people terrified of side effects and material loss for NOT taking it, and have zero empathy. You do a lot of whining for someone who hasn't been shamed, bribed, or threatened if you refuse a potentially lethal shot.
I had covid, took horse paste, got mocked for it, and got better. I'm 67, supposedly high risk. Now my natural immunity isn't good enough to let me keep working in my field.
I've had friends and family members killed and injured right after getting these shots. I'm sorry if vaccine hesitancy gets on your nerves. Try to empathize.
Right in there with you, Zade. Had Delta and recovered. The stupid vax-not-vax doesn't even work for Delta, so is completely redundant anyway. Never mind my post-infection immunity (tested and confirmed). Then I was forced to take the vax after threatened job loss (would have been ruinous for me and my family in a country of 45% unemployment). I have not felt well ever since after having fully recovered from the actual disease. But hey - let's all wax righteous and sanctimonious about how terrible the anti-vaxxers are.
I'm so sorry to hear you got put in an impossible situation. A friend survived a terrible case in March, then got badgered and bullied into a Pfizer shot. Months later she still has symptoms of GBS that set in ten days after the shot, which she got 6-7 months after recuperating from covid. I could list so many others. But you know firsthand. And for the vax-credulous none of that matters. As long as THEY feel safe and vindicated.
There are ways to recover dna stability and health after the mrna shots and variants. However it requires delving into energy healing and the work of alternative medicine and or nutrition, such as joe dispenza and lipton.
I have faced the fear of the unknown, Cali. I got ill. I got better. I am now being forced to vaccinate, when it's not medically necessary, and is possibly medically contra-indicated. I haven't just sucked this out my thumb - I have tried to read credible research. I do care about Science, believe it or not. Science never told people to have a measles or polio shot after they had contracted it. This purported vaccine doesn't even protect against the Delta strain which I've actually overcome. Why should I face another fear of having a redundant injection now that I have faced the actual fear of getting ill? Most importantly, people are only a danger to others if they're ill - and both vaccinated and unvaccinated can still get ill. Trust me, I knew I was ill. I stayed out of everyone's way. Please don't assume selfishness or irresponsibility on the part of the skeptical. Or absolute protection on the part of the vaccinated, too, for that matter - whom I have seen out and about and mingling unmasked in full force, which could also be construed as not caring a jot for the neighbours, ill or elderly.
Don't take it! Find another job, it's not worth it. What if you are injured or killed? A mother recently got vaccinated so she could help out in her daughter's classroom, and died from the vaccine (friend of my brothers).
It's almost like you think the people who don't bother to vote are the same ones complaining. Why on earth would you think or even imply that?? Perhaps you should do that statistics refresher course you've been meaning to take. Why do you keep assuming it's all about what we "don't understand" or what is "unknown"? Did it ever occur to you that the people refusing this are well informed - better able to give informed consent - than most vaxed people who get their information only from the CDC?? That it's precisely because of what they know that they are refusing? That I'm not so concerned about my fellow humans that I'm going to risk my health & well-being? The "other side" is willing to risk the health & well-being of children by getting them vaccinated with an inadequately tested non-vaccine (and Rachel's changing the definition of "vaccine" doesn't make it so) for which there are NO LONG-TERM SAFETY DATA in children 5-11. Why do you assume that people refusing to be vaccinated aren't waiting for better data? Why are you assuming that they are uninformed, when in fact it's the vaccine-gullible who have only part of the story & were willing to give consent to be jabbed with a concoction made by a company that has no legal liability in the event people are harmed or killed? I wouldn't buy a toaster off eBay from someone who didn't stand behind his or her product! Why do you think that just because YOU don't know anyone who was harmed or killed, no one was? You sound like Pauline "Everyone I know voted for McGovern" Kael. I am sorry you know people who were killed by the disease, but were they vaccinated? Because plenty of vaccinated people have caught, spread, & died of covid, & are you aware that anyone who is within 2 weeks of the last jab is considered "unvaccinated" for data reporting purposes? Your rant is the most self-aggrandizing, condescending piece of schlock I've read in quite a while. Good heavens. Get over your hippy-dippy kumbaya self & do a deep dive into PubMed. And do another one into my previous post on the nature of informed consent, which is elsewhere in this thread. Science makes mistakes & then it investigates & fixes them??? Do you know how THIS science is discovering its mistake? By conducting large-scale studies on uninformed masses via coercion. If you are such a sheep that you're willing to go along with that & to then bleat your virtue-signaling about the good of humanity, you are the PERFECT dupe for the pharma companies. The absolute perfect dupe, because you aren't even aware that what they are waging is a marketing campaign. Jesus Christ. GET over yourself.
While you're working yourself into a self-righteous snit about the horrors of the vaccine -- which are entirely speculative if you REALLY did into the evidence -- I think of people like David Graeber, the brilliant anthropologist and anarchist, who died last year of complications from Covid.
Every scrap of solid, verifiable evidence says that if the vaccines had been available then, and if he had chosen to receive one, he would still be alive today, ready to play a vital role in the coming decades as we deal with the crapstorm headed our way. He was 59, in reasonably good health, and he died a horrible painful death.
That could be you, or any one of the other passionate voices against the tyranny of these vaccines. The way I see it, millions of intelligent, thoughtful people (including Charles, who I have a ton of respect for) have been infected with a fear of vaccines -- for Covid and for other diseases -- that is putting them, and everyone around them, at risk. That thought makes me very sad.
Nearly all of my friends have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, including chronic migraines and myocarditis. I have listened to both sides of the argument, but what reasons do I have to listen to media outlets or scientific research that was funded by the pharmaceutical industry? I’m a young male college student who lives a healthy lifestyle and I have a long tradition in my family of practicing functional natural medicine—medicine that works WITH Nature to help the immune system, as opposed to a corrupt, fear-based and fear-incentivized medical tradition that pits humans against Nature. The vaccine tricks the immune system to produce an immune response, I prefer the natural way of medicine better (even if, yes, it is less profitable to the system). I see no logic behind getting the vaccine just so I can protect those “more vulnerable.” First of all, from my research, the science is clear that the rate of infection is equal between those who had or haven’t had the vaccine, and secondly, I see it as immoral to sacrifice my own health considering the unknown long-term health effects of an experimental vaccine in which corners were cut in clinical trials just so I can make others “feel safe” as a result of their unnecessary fear propagated by the media which in fact weakens the immune system and automatically makes you dependent on bullshit vaccines in the first place
One of my sisters would not now be terrified for her life if she hadn't taken the JJ shot. One of my friends wouldn't be calling 911 almost weekly because of diabetic coma induced by the same shot (after all his adult life competently managing his type 1 diabetes). One of uncles wouldn't have stroked out if not for Pfizer. Another would still be alive but a surprise case of cancer got him after his shots.
The mindset you call superstitious for attributing death and injury to the shots could equally be said to exist among true believers in benefits of these highly flawed and inefficacious vaccines, masking, 6 feet of "social" distancing.
Well I think you are blind and stupid. The vaccines have a risk that is completely unknown. The virus has a known low risk to all except the old and comorbid.
Instead of being afraid of ending up like him, we will give you something greater to be afraid of. What that is.... you will see soon enough. The thing about fear, son of man, is that it a mind killer and i can always override your fear logick using a greater fear.
With all due respect Snarling Fifi, if you're going to make a post like this acting like your view and your approach is the sure fire correct way to view this issue, you might want to be sure you don't have any other posts in this thread where you claim that this is "not a vaccine!"
Whoops, it looks like you already did that.
Anyone who is in healthcare (or at least reasonably well informed) knows that a vaccine doesn't mean full immunity from disease. It's ridiculous to claim otherwise. I've worked in healthcare for many years. You might be right to say that the "media" tried to push the idea that this vaccine would confer full immunity and protection, but anyone who knows what a vaccine actually is never bought into that.
Are you serious? All due respect, Scott, there's nothing false in that post, and I'm always going to react that way to posts that are dripping with condescension toward the unwashed masses. Interesting that you think a person manifesting that kind of superiority doesn't deserve to be called out. Well I do. Cali's post is just chock full of elitist snobbery, & it's sick-making.
My point: The CDC modified its definition of the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website on 9/27/21. Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” Imagine the number of drugs that can now, or will, be called "vaccines"!
My point is that once the CDC became aware of its inefficacy at doing anything a vaccine purports to do, it could have changed what THIS non-vaccine is called...stopped calling it a vaccine, since it didn't meet the classic definition. But no. Changing definitions is what the left does best, whether it's "vaccine" "gain of function" or "fully vaccinated."
Do you think they changed the definition for the benefit of people in healthcare? They changed it for the benefit of the masses, to try to maintain their marketing campaign's credibility, which would wane faster than the efficacy of the medication when it became known that the "immunity" [sic] lasted only 6 months or less.
And BTW: I add that little tidbit pretty much every time I see someone call this thing a vaccine. Because not everyone reads all my comments. The medication doesn't deserve to be called a vaccine. Period.
Well if you haven't read it, how on earth can you tell it's "unstable"? Killing the messenger; what the left does best. Good luck listening only to, & learning only from, people who color inside the lines.
Also, if you look at excess deaths in 2020 and 2021, they are both quite elevated. I suspect that 2020 was elevated due to latent injury from covid-infection-spike, and 2021 from covid plus vaccines. If our public-health response was working, shouldn't excess deaths be lower this year? https://www.usmortality.com/excess
This is an excellent summation of everything surrounding this issue.
I'll readily admit that I'm biased toward science as a process, and I have much experience with scientific literature as a physical therapist. I also understand the flaws of treating science as religion, which is definitely happening in many people.
But here's the thing: you don't have to listen to those people, and most who are finding the science zealots are those actively looking for them as a way to bolster their "see what's happening here!!!!" attitudes. You're not going to convince me that the vast majority of physicians, healthcare practitioners, the FDA, CDC, etc is somehow involved in some type of vaccine conspiracy. That is completely baseless, and why Markaels post is appreciated, because he tends to steer clear of that way of thinking.
The conspiratorial side of this makes zero sense as to the motive. Simple thought. If this was truly a deep conspiracy by government and big Pharma, then the motive would be for the vaccine to work so incredibly well that no one dies so they can keep pushing their drugs.
It is completely understandable to dissect the issues and potential effects of the vaccine, but when the argument starts implying that these people aren't trying to help their fellow citizens by introducing these vaccines, the argument becomes extremely flimsy at best and completely dismissed at worst.
The problem is that if someone is already to this level of thinking, there's literally no amount of data that could convince them otherwise. Their primitive mind is in full control, as Tim Urban would say.
As Charles explains, a lot of this is simply the effects of psychological principles. Confirmation bias, need for acceptance, availability heuristic...of which all of us humans are vulnerable, regardless of political party, professional title, or status. The most concerning element in all of this for me has been the intense shaming and ostracizing, which has led to censorship and resistance to open communication. These are not healthy responses in a society, and are a red flag of an underlying psychological crisis. People get caught up in arguing over facts and figures, and yet we need to attend to the emotions behind this and own them and clarify them, otherwise we will be stuck in a social tension without resolution. All groups and sides need to do this. Can we honestly talk about our fears, without resorting to shame and blame? Can we discuss the impacts this whole experience has had on us personally, yet also listen with an open heart and mind to the stories of others, even if they contradict our beliefs?
I do believe there is some intentional leveraging of the psychological chaos already at play, even if it's simply the media wanting to cater to certain narratives and stoke fears for their own bottom line. I don't know for sure how deep that rabbit hole goes, but some of it is really obvious and a symptom of capitalism cut off from community (I recommend reading Eisenstein's Sacred Economics on that topic, for example).
However, whether or not there is manipulation, we are all just responding as humans do, and our education system never taught how to process emotions, listen empathically, communicate effectively or develop emotional intelligence. If anything, some of this was actively discouraged. Social media, TV, and politics further diminish our interpersonal and introspective abilities and prompt us to shame others, scapegoat, and project our feelings rather than owning and processing them.
There is a lot of focus on a biological crisis, whether embracing it or being skeptical of it, but the psychological crisis that was brewing even before COVID and which has skyrocketed is AT LEAST equally important and potentially dangerous. And it is not something that can be resolved by force or regulation, only by invitation, openness, acceptance, and willingness to listen.
Genuinely curioius, do you still feel this way in 2022? Not trying to get into an argument, I am just interested in how people's beliefs might have changed over time.
Hello Cali, I am just wondering if you have also read the 4 chapters of Needle Points that Charles linked? That will be informative as to the reliability of research into vaccine efficacy, potential risks and so, however coming from an author who would like to see more widespread vaccination. It's very informative and if too long I'd recommend chapter 4 first. It also gives more background to Charles' argument.
Nearly all of my friends have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, including chronic migraines and myocarditis. I have listened to both sides of the argument, but what reasons do I have to listen to media outlets or scientific research that was funded by the pharmaceutical industry? I’m a young male college student who lives a healthy lifestyle and I have a long tradition in my family of practicing functional natural medicine—medicine that works WITH Nature to help the immune system, as opposed to a corrupt, fear-based and fear-incentivized medical tradition that pits humans against Nature. The vaccine tricks the immune system to produce an immune response, I prefer the natural way of medicine better (even if, yes, it is less profitable to the system). I see no logic behind getting the vaccine just so I can protect those “more vulnerable.” First of all, from my research, the science is clear that the rate of infection is equal between those who had or haven’t had the vaccine, and secondly, I see it as immoral to sacrifice my own health considering the unknown long-term health effects of an experimental vaccine in which corners were cut in clinical trials just so I can make others “feel safe” as a result of their unnecessary fear propagated by the media which in fact weakens the immune system and automatically makes you dependent on bullshit vaccines in the first place. DO YOUR RESEARCH!
Markaele, in all sincerity I thank you for this comment.
Fascinating synopsis and something for me to put in my brain. This is the type of stuff I love about these discussions!
I don't care if someone isn't vaccinated. I have a 5 year old and I do legitimately have concerns about getting him vaccinated in the best future. It's also obvious that the virus itself could be riskier.
Life is messy, and these decisions are hard. I truly thank you for being such a good source of a back and forth on the internet.
This entire thread is wonderful and I feel grateful to be in the company of people with intelligent and thoughtful views. Thank you all! Robert Malone, MD is a major voice of calm and grounded analysis of the data and he also is on substack. https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/archive?utm_source=menu-dropdown Well worth checking him out. On the topic of mass psychology he offers the work of Mattias Desmet from U. of Ghent, on Mass Formation Psychosis.
These new injections are as qualitatively different from what have been the traditional vaccines (and many have had awful consequences) as a nuclear weapon is from a standard TNT one.
I'm late to the party here, but the vaccine safety studies themselves show far more severe adverse events produced by the vaccines than severe COVID-19 prevented. In both cases "severe" means "prevents daily activity and requires medical intervention". I wrote about Pfizer here (Moderna is worse):
The highest quality scientific data we have, from randomized trials, show clearly that the vaccines cause far more severe outcomes than they prevent.
If the vaccine is supposed to provide a benefit for critical or fatal outcomes, properly done science would have made the study large enough to show that benefit. But nothing significant is shown for those categories. The only statistically significant signal is for "severe" and weaker, and for those the vaccine's risk/benefit ratio is upside down. It is not unreasonable to extrapolate from these gold-standard studies and also expect such an upside down ratio for critical and fatal outcomes. Studies that do purport to show a benefit are all observational and therefore lower quality.
The vaccine wasn’t developed in less than a year. The technology has been in development since SARS and in concept even before that. When it became apparent that the virus was spreading at such an alarming rate, the already in progress research was given much added funding and labs that had the capacity to do this kind of research all worked together to speed things up.
I see that argument a lot. Technology is not "proven" until it has been successfully and safely deployed; time in development is irrelevant. Airplanes were in concept in the 1800s and in development in the early 1900s. They didn't become safe by modern standards until the 1950s, after the inevitable bugs were worked out in response to deadly crashes.
The sensible way to deploy genetic vaccines would have been to produce an influenza version and trial it alongside the traditional flu vaccine in ever-larger groups over a decade or so. An entirely illogical way to introduce them for the first time is to use the occasion of a crisis to deploy them to the entire human population including low-risk groups with claims of 100% safety that simply cannot be justified given the lack of experience with this technology.
No one cares how long it took to develop. They care about the clinical trials for safety & efficacy. They were tested for months, not years, and on small populations that excluded some groups who were still later "encouraged" to get the jab. There are no long-term data in children, in whom there is no covid emergency, & yet the jab was given EUA approval for that group. It's sick-making that people will offer up their kids as guinea pigs to get a medication (NOT a vaccine) that they don't need, that does not confer immunity, that has been under-tested in studies that were underpowered. Using your kid as a hood ornament for virtue-signaling instead of protecting them. It's disgusting.
"Whatever we believe these odds to be, is there any possible reason why a government or medical establishment truly interested in maximizing public health would not want to track very large control and treatment groups indefinitely to see whether some harm might appear that would justify changing treatment recommendations?"
The COVID-19 vaccine wasn't developed in on 1 year, nor was it new technology; it took years! Closely related viruses were being studied with vaccines being developed during the Obama years. I think my research show the risks weighing in at getting vaccinated. People I know have had this disease & passionately say you don't want to go through it. I don't want to die believing I didn't take the risk. Nor do I want to be the cause of anyone I know being sick or dying because I didn't take the risk.
Time in development is much less important to me than time and comprehensiveness of testing. If we had been following large (~1 million people) groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, looking at not just risk of covid infection/death but also all-cause mortality and rates of all health conditions of concern, then if no red flags were raised I would feel confident enough in safety after one year. The fact that this is not happening, and that they vaccinated the control groups in the trials so there is in fact *no* longer-term control group in any controlled trial, greatly reduces my confidence in safety.
Surely having no control groups invalidates the trial? I have felt (as ex Public Health) that this is crucial as is research into those people who appear to not be affected at all. What is it about their lifestyle, habits, eating patterns, past medical history, approaches to self care, natural immunity, that is supporting these individuals? How about research funding going in to that. Feels unlikely under the prevailing narrative and vested interests.
It's not the time in development, it's the time in testing, that matters. This was tested for too short a time in studies that were underpowered. And BTW: This is NOT a vaccine, and Rachel's changing the definition of "vaccine" so she could call it one with a straight face doesn't make it so. This is a medication. It prevents severe symptoms. It doesn't stop one from being infected or from spreading the disease. It prevents severe symptoms and death in the elderly. It specifically does NOT confer immunity, which is why the definition of vaccine was changed to speak to "protection" rather than immunity.
I really appreciate this thorough approach to the covid vaccine safety question, along with the extensive citations that are included for evidentiary reference. As always, the deep care taken to respect people with viewpoints across the spectrum is very welcome. The practice of choosing to see others through the lens that recognizes their highest self as their truest self is a much needed medicine.
There are some on this thread who have raised objections to the arguments made in this article in favor of vaccine skepticism. The most common objection seems to be that if the arguments are not completely dispositive on the issue, then they should be dismissed entirely.
This kind of objection misses the point. The purpose of presenting those arguments in this article is not to present the case that will convince the vaccine credulous into becoming vaccine skeptics. The point is to demonstrate that there is a strong rational basis for the vaccine skeptical viewpoint. It's not necessary to agree with this viewpoint in order to recognize the rational basis for it as a conclusion that many have arrived at.
The purpose in recognizing the grounds for this rational basis to to realize the need for more transparency and open public discourse on the issue - to remove the barriers of censorship, and the threats to the careers of doctors and scientists who present evidence that challenges the vaccine credulous narrative.
Thank you Charles for your ongoing contribution to this end!
Thank you for not hiding your truth behind lofty language and philosophical pondering. You manage to “come out” firmly against the totalitarian biosecurity state but yet also manage not to dehumanize another side. I am so glad you dare breaking taboos that cannot be mentioned, acknowledging and giving voice to the silent suffering of thousands, and helping us expose the cracks spreading fast through the constitutive narratives of our modernity.
The ignorance and/or cowardice of the scientific community in this time is not unexpected, but is still incredible to witness. Like a car stuck on a railroad track, you can see what is coming yet it is still jarring when the impact happens.
The data gerrymandering going on with the efficacy studies and nuking of controls can no doubt fool much of the public, but the scientific community can no doubt see right through it. Or, if they can’t, then maybe we have worse problems then we thought?
As always, thank you for sharing your wisdom Charles, there is much fertile ground these essays fall into as seeds of truth. My prayer is that they grow into powerful trees.
If there is widespread fraud & deception in the vaccine trials & studies, where's the proof? All I've seen are isolated anecdotes & perhaps-facts.
I certainly see no sign of the scientific community as a whole "seeing through" anything. Just a few isolated individuals.
Maybe they're right. I have no way of knowing, because they aren't providing the facts required to change the minds of anyone who isn't predisposed to believe their claims.
Anecdotes might not be evidence but they are useful clues to understanding what's going on.
A good example is Maddie de Garay; if you read her story you can start to paint a picture of at least how some of the manipulation has happened. She was dropped from the child Pfizer trial after having an adverse event (removing her from the AE statistics) AND she couldn't report her symptoms because the options were just multiple choice that excluded paralysis (her adverse event).
Looks like some more solid info there than what's usually on offer. BMJ is certainly a reputable source. I don't have time for more than skim them right now, but my quick take is this:
The Toby Rogers piece still leans heavily toward speculation, and neither of the other two offer what I said above would be required: conclusive evidence of harm from the vaccines. The address the potential for harm, but not harm itself. Unless I missed something.
One example that comes to mind recently is the irrational fear of serious illness for children. Vaccinating children with any of the COVID-19 vaccines currently available will almost certainly be a net negative for them/our future. The selfishness on display is pretty incredible. Here’s the latest cdc data on the age spread of death due to COVID-19: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
Only 4/100 COVID-19 deaths are attributed to individuals under the age of 45. Then think how different a 45 year old body is from a 4 year old body to understand the risk benefit a little better. Basically any adverse reaction in children would tip the scale to negative.
Please note: these numbers do not include co-morbidity data which are a known risk multiplier.
Even though the trials showed lower COVID hospitalizations in the treated group, there were four times as many TOTAL hospitalizations in the treated group compared to controls. The vaccines are causing collateral damage greater than the benefit they provide.
wikipedia? well, that place -- while still beloved for the wealth of reliable info available there on _non-contentious_ subjects -- has been depressing to observe over the course of covid, as key covid-tangential articles, especially those of persons & corps involved, were drastically altered & key information outright censored in a systematic way, i.e. to boost one side of the narrative while demolishing the other. The battles in "talk"/edit pages if wiki articles have often been "settled" by refusal to accept any source except (one such as) the NYT; apparently some folks see no catch-22 in this particular 'validation' set-up. Hint: Relying on centralized info-brokers is a surefire way to empower those with vested interest in controlling such bottlenecks.
With anecdotes and speculation. And yes, some solid reasons why people with evidence would be reluctant to come forward. That is definitely a critical problem.
Thank you very much Mr. Eisenstein, I myself as a doctor reading this, respect and agree with every single word you mentioned here, and I will try to uphold its meaning, I will never obey my government to do harm, actually I am going to take the government to court over their absurd vaccine mandates and segregation among vaccinated and unvaccinated with a stupid QR code that has no meaning whatsoever but to coerce and enslave the population.
Charles - Of course, I welcome the reminder that the vast majority of people caught in the COVID narrative, and even the people promoting it, are honest, good-hearted people. Some of them are my dear friends and family.
But I'd also ask you to come to terms with evidence that a much smaller number of people engineered the COVID crisis. Whether their purpose was pure evil can be argued. Maybe they thought that taking control of the entire human population was the only way to save the planet from global warming, or some such arrogance. But we can regard them as "honest, good-hearted" people only if we shut our eyes to the evidence.
* There's Event 201, Oct 2019, in which a handful of people from the Gates Foundation, the WEF, and Hopkins University eerily anticipated a coronavirus pandemic, and planned that the response to it should not be to marshall medical resources for global distribution but rather to declare martial law, isolate people from one another, and censor their communications.
* There's the story that Ron Unz tells, based on ABC News at the time, that the US Defense Intelligence Agency knew in Nov 2019 about a highly contagious virus spreading through Wuhan, at a time when even the Chinese government was not yet aware of it. As he says, the person who knows first about the fire is the arsonist.
* There's Moderna's work on a COVID vaccine before the rest of us knew there was a COVID problem. Similarly, the COVID PCR test was being developed before the need for it was established.
* The reason the COVID vaccines are so toxic is that they induce (or deliver) the spike protein of the virus. The spike protein is the part of the virus that was engineered -- the rest of the virus is plausibly natural. And the spike protein was engineered to be toxic in a number of ways, causing blood clots, attacking the CNS and fertility, even suppressing DNA repair. Someone made a knowing decision to develop vaccines that deliver this toxic spike protein to the body, when they might have chosen any harmless epitope from other parts of the virus.
* And there's the broader context of a shutdown of freedoms initiaed with the Patriot Act and prosecuted relentlessly through the War on Terror during the ensuing years. Even though the official stories behind 9/11 and COVID look very different, the policies pursued in response are continuous, and the agenda behind these two manufactured crises look to be one agenda. I am not alone in suspecting that the Deep State that brought us 9/11 is the same Deep State that created SARS-CoV-2 as a bioweapon in service to this agenda.
In summary: I agree that there are a lot of social and political conditions that are no one's fault that made possible the COVID deception. But a balanced view of the deception must also account for a small number of people who have consciously played the role of deceivers.
We have a century of evidence easily discerned by critical thinking ( which they try to tell us 'critical thinking' is bad) why to not trust the government. From my experience this dichotomy is easily defined and divided by those who view the evidence of the govts malfeasance as just more conspiracy garbage....and those who've taken the energy to investigate events for themselves and know the govt can't be trusted to have the best intentions. The former jump to the first of the line, and the later say 'no thank you'. That's the line in the sand. There's a point when govts become an organism to and for themselves, which seek only expansion of the organism and we've long passed that point. And we can see that it's not only the US govt, which is the most likely perpetrator, but it's allies such as Australia and Canada which are leading their citizens into totalitarianism. And it can't be discarded that the west is in conspiracy with China, which is already a totalitarian dystopia. Interestingly, it's the same govts who have the bioweapons labs, who also are becoming totalitarian. And they try to deploy the 'you're a Conspiracy theorist' meme when anyone who knows world history, knows history revolves around conspiracy. That's how govt works. By conspiracy. The whole World Economic Forum 'Build Back Better' ' you'll own nothing, and be happy' is a blueprint long ago written on the Georgia Guidestones. The uber leaders, whoever they are....maybe those who go to Davos, or possibly a rung higher, are well documented planning greater social control and reducing population. In March of 2020, I did a small analysis of the chances that the virus escaped from the wuhan lab, or was only a coincidence it began 10 klicks away. It was a one in 2 million possibility that the virus began by coincidence near the lab. So no one can ever convince me ...we're not dealing with a bioweapon leaked accidentally, or on purpose. But most likely on purpose....because as Jose says....there's a predominate amount of evidence that preceded the pandemic that makes believing it was just a coincidence ....absurd. And so those that have that spike protein circulating inside their bodies will think it's nothing but pure conspiracy theory. But they are the confused, who think their govt cares. The authors insights on why the establishment is lockstepping behind the cdc and fda is very helpful in our discussions with our brainwashed family members, and I will send it out. But the interesting difference in this 'conspiracy theory' is....if ADE is real, time will tell us shortly. So to me, this isn't 'vaccine hesitancy' ....this is political awareness. Open vaers tells me everything I need to know. I put my trust in hydroxy and ivermectin. Luckily we have medical heroes that have come forward and shone a light. And I'll keep cherrypicking my sources, thank you.
Many people are simply not ready to hear what you're saying, and it won't matter how much evidence you provide. They will run away with their hands over their ears because the revelation of such an evil world destroys their peace of mind. However, just because someone can't hear it now doesn't mean that in a few months or years they won't eagerly accept it. For me personally I woke up to these things years ago. For a couple of years it really discouraged me, but then I realized that seeing the war between good and evil (not just between freedom and tyranny) simply reinforces what I believe about God and the scriptures. Now it is still hard to look at, but it also strengthens my faith because it proves the Bible true.
I sympathize with those who still want to believe that qualified people are taking care of things and we just have to go along and it will all be okay. Despite the evidence that they lost definitely ate NOT. Like the kids who learn about Santa 🎅🏻 and choose to continue to believe the story.
Americans in numbers can never see the truth while they're still trapped in the bubble of their propaganda. They don't even realize they're being propagandized. Luckily I've been outside for over 35 years living in what's now the freest country on the planet. Mexico. Amlo has announced an end to the vax campaign in the first of the coming year, as well as saying there will be no campaign to vaccinate children. We have zero mandates, and meds are available over the counter. Of course the President of the USa, or whoever's really running the country, and the closet dictator to the north will do everything within their power to foil Mexico's freedom. Only time will tell. Yet all of us expats ( examine that phrase ) still have families back home lost in their delusions believing their walking on the yellow brick road. Most people trace, like Edward Curtin, the beginning of this problem to either the jfk assassination , or the induction of 1500 nazi intel agents into the cia after wwii. I prefer to see the big lie originating when Truman told the american people the day after he dropped the bomb that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, when the american govt knew full well they were murdering civilians. Of course, I know it's really a copout ....that it began much earlier at Jamestown. After all, our ancestors killed 4 million people who were living on the land the settlers thought were there's by divine decree. That's the problem with the bible ...it has many interpretations.
Excellent points, Josh! I agree with Charles that it is important to point out that the vast majority of people going along with the narrative, probably including the majority of doctors, scientists, and public officials, are not doing it from a desire to do harm, but either out of fear of sticking their necks out, or because they still implicitly trust the system that is guiding their compliance. I also wholeheartedly agree with you that it is of vital importance to recognize that this is not the case for those setting the agenda at the very top. What has been rolled out is clearly deliberate and premeditated, in my view. Those who have done so may or may not believe the harm they are causing is ultimately for the greater good, based on a utilitarian calculation informed by a set of values I absolutely oppose. But regardless of their long-term intentions, the important fact to recognize is that these actions are deliberate, and they have been implemented and bolstered through an ongoing campaign of deception and authoritarianism. We need to realize what we're dealing with at the top of the pyramid.
'The truth will out.' It is courageous thinkers like Charles, willing to look at the many-faceted sides of any issue, that will shed light on what has been hidden. Those of us with lived experience of vx damage have learned by walking a difficult road to question assumptions we once took for granted. I am one of those appalled by the dumbing down of complex science to a one size fits all approach. Science allows for variables, hypotheses, discussion & exchange of ideas. Thank you, Charles, for shedding light.
Thank you for another brave and thoughtful piece. I have realized that most people who have willingly gotten vaccinated have been terrorized by fear of death from covid. I think a recent poll showed that they think an unvaccinated person who gets covid has a 40% chance of being hospitalized when it's actually leas than 1%. The pharma ad supported mainstream media has so severely censored that they have NO IDEA about the extent of injuries and deaths nor of the effectiveness of numerous early treatments. Look how few of your readers like your writing on this topic. It got politicized. They say I am "siding with the Trumpers." And shut me down. Because The Narrative of NPR, MSNBC and CNN is all they follow and believe. I agree that humility and mutual respect are what's needed. I am listening.
The author brought up the issue of paternalism and the tendency of "experts" to institute and administer policies intended for the good of others. Here is what C.S. Lewis had to say about that.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” -- from 'God in the Dock'
With this fragment, stitched within a wonderfully articulated tome to the increasingly gratefully, unvaxxed: “embedding all these forms of arrogance is the base-level mythology of modernity that views humanity as the sole possessor of full beingness in the world, superior to the rest of life, destined to impose order upon chaos. The ambition to tame the wild finds its most highly developed expression in science. Science first tames the world conceptually with its quantities and categories; then it controls the world materially through technology. This brings enormous power.”
Charles surfaces the through line of all his work and proves - not that he needs to - that if anyone thinks he has ‘changed’ - that it is in fact those observers who have been distracted or detracted from their path.
"It is a short step from this progressivist certitude to forced vaccination (for their own good), censorship (for their own good), and lying (for their own good)."
This is an important point. In Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper spends a considerable number of pages criticizing Plato's Republic, and particularly Plato's support for the "noble lie." In Plato's view, the best society would be a rigid hierarchy led by an intellectual elite (with the philosopher king at the pinnacle) imposing its will on the masses, who are variously ruled by their appetites or spirit as opposed to rationality. Plato advocates for a system in which the elite compel, manipulate, censor, and lie for the "good" of the masses. Popper exposes how this embrace of the noble lie inevitably leads to totalitarian dystopias, and is in fact a primary cause of such dystopias. The noble lie is the enemy of open societies.
From the Popperian perspective, recent history illustrates how we got to where we are. After Trump got elected, there was a paradigm shift among the elites. Journalists and academics threw out the old objectivity or fair and balanced playbook (however tenuously they followed that playbook before) in favor of furthering the #resistance. In so doing, they openly embraced the noble lie. They could spin any tale they wanted so long as it advanced their cause because, in their view, Trump did not deserve a fair hearing. Hence all of the completely baseless Russiagate and related conspiracy theories.
Having embraced the idea of the noble lie, all bets were off. We went from a paradigm in which the media and academia "manufactured consent," as described by Chomsky, to one in which they manufactured reality. Once "safe and effective" became part of the official catechism, there was nothing short of videos of people dying on the spot with vaccine needles in their arms that was going to shake it. You can't reason people out of a belief they did not reason themselves into, and you can't fight a noble lie with facts because facts are beside the point in a manufactured reality. We are well on our way to the totalitarian dystopia Popper describes, and it all begins with the noble lie.
David S...this didn't begin nor even accelerate with Trump. Obama was worse, a cia breed double faced liar of the highest order, and Bush 9/11 and his wmd lie, which was a peak. But this noble lie, as I mentioned earlier, from my reading, began with Truman and his declaration after murdering a few hundred thousand civilians in Japan, that we were destroying their war capacity for the benefit of mankind. Perhaps even back to his creation of cia, thru the unscrupulous nazi banksters, the Dulles brothers, who chaired the Warren commission. And the so-called intelligencia elite , many compromised in university positions or fostering the lies in the elite funded think tanks or ngo's, are no more than puppets for the forces of evil at work in this world, which is in reality controlled ultimately by the banksters who are ushering us into their corporate fascism dystopia. Not uninteresting is the fact that Klaus Schwab is married to a Rothschild. JFK warned us and we didn't listen. Not only....we didn't even consider the prospect that he warned us of. And your mention of Chomsky is interesting, in demonstrating their true insidious disinfo-nature. If you didn't see his rant about locking up the unvaxed without food and water, everyone should, because it fully illustrates the compromised intelligencia's true being. They're like rats rewarded in their maze. And hopefully they'll eat each other in the end.
Outstanding writing and thinking on this topic. Thank you, Charles. I also appreciate the quote from Raelle Kaia about the "bungee hesitant." I was aware of this from the beginning, when the mainstream media starting using "anti-vaxxer" — just like "conspiracy theorist" — as a potent weapon to marginalize anyone challenging dominant narratives that happen to serve our technocracy and corporate power. Also how patronizing "hesitant" is: Everyone I know who hasn't gotten jabbed is militant about it; not hesitant. At the end of the day, the reasons to be cautious are myriad: The so-called "efficacy" of the vaccines plummet after a short period of time. So much so that people now need a "booster" after 6 months. The current vaccines and the boosters are not even oriented toward the current variants. Getting a "booster" is now like getting a flu shot for last year's flu. The there's antibody dependent enhancement, the fact that the spike protein goes systemic and is cardiotoxic and can even cross the blood-brain barrier. Add to this, the fact that the vaccines don't prevent getting SARS-CoV-2 or transmitting it. "Breakthrough cases" are the norm now, and people who are vaccinated are carrying higher viral loads. And then there's the scam of downplaying natural immunity. And then, as Charles writes, why would anyone trust Big Pharma, the captured regulatory agencies and corrupt politicians who are pushing this?? All for a virus with a 99.7 percent survival rate, especially if you're not old with preexisting conditions...
Hi Sean, appreciate your summary, I could feel myself ticking of the points you made as a yes, and yes ....:). One thing I wonder is how to find a middle ground between the vaccine adamanct and the vaccine hesitant. The phrase I use is vaccine intelligent. I feel both side can align to this and perhaps then start to have conversations that are less fraught. I have very good friends who are vaccinated and they were clear it was to live their lives free of control from the authorities. I just could not do that and they understood why. We are able to talk about what is happening without it being a judgement of our personal decisions.
Medicine is both an art and a science. The doctor knows “more” but not necessarily “better.” Only the patient can truly know what is “best” for him/herself and any treatment should take this into consideration.
Given all the unknowns, I feel we should err on the side of choice, not mandates. The only reason I can see that something can work is if it is voluntary. I personally don't "believe" in the vaccine, for many reasons which I won't go into here. The only reason I could see to legitimately urge people to get vaccinated would be, if it does work, then it could free up crucial hospital beds. Otherwise, if those who are vaccinated can't get Covid, they should feel safe. It's those who aren't vaccinated who should feel at risk. Let them take that risk. However, from all the reading I've done, I can't say whether it's working or not. They talk about "breakthrough" cases. They say we need boosters. Nobody and nothing is convincing to me.
The reporting in the clinical trials of the vaccines was extremely flawed There are many people experiencing bad side effects, and although statistically it may not be a significant number, it is still significant. Given all the unknowns, it is incomprehensible to me how we have gotten to this place of mandating the Covid vaccine.
I also want to say that, against my desires and convictions, I did get vaccinated. Some of my family members threatened to boycott the memorial I planned for my mother. My 92 year-old Aunt Hank led the charge. I knew when I was beaten. :) It was more important for me to have them come and feel safe. I did not feel the vaccine was necessary or beneficial, and I may be having some troubling side effects. It's hard to tell. My gut feeling is that it can trigger problems depending on where one's weaknesses are. However, I am confident that no permanent damage has been done and I feel lucky, as I know others have not been so fortunate. There are so many things that we do to ourselves that are harmful - over-indulging in sweets, not exercising, etc. So taking the vaccine didn't seem all that bad, considering.
I have seen the permanent damage from vaccines. Clearly it might be less than the lives lost. But some have actually lost any quality to life. Is this the new survival of the fittest?
I see that you are a Naturopath. Thank you for speaking out. So many in the medical profession are afraid to take a stand.
It is always an uphill battle for the victims. The powers that be squash any opposition or criticism as long as possible, until the wounded get tired and either go away, or if they do persist, it takes years and years of effort to get anything at all. It's always too little and too late. They simply do not have the resources to fight Big Money. But at least one Senator is listening - Ron Johnson (R) Wisconsin. He is convening committee hearings for experts who oppose or question the vaccine and those who have been injured to testify. www.realnotrare.com
(Having been vaccine 'damaged' 20 years ago and living with it, I have been hiding my views on vaccines and unable to talk about it as the reaction is usually aggressive/dismissive/uncredulous. It's only now that I feel I can talk about it openly as this conversation is louder and giving me a voice. I have been ignored, repressed, silenced - a discriminated minority group and its a hard place to be.)
I am a physician and public health epidemiologist. I am vaccinated but have no intention of getting a booster shot. Over the past 4 months the data has becoming clear: there will be no herd immunity. We knew this last year. Coronaviruses are like the flu, you can only manage them not eliminate them. None of the vaccines prevent transmission, no matter how we spin the data. The viral load and shedding from Delta is the same in an infected vaccinated versus unvaccinated individual. And secondary infection rates, as per a UK study, are essentially the same as in the unvaccinated. The period of shedding may be shorter and symptoms may be milder but that poses a risk that a vaccinated individual may be more prone to spread the virus during that shortened shedding period especially if symptoms go unrecognized.
One bit of data that appears to be true based upon multiple studies is the vaccines do reduce the risk of severe disease requiring hospitalization or that results in death. They are not perfect, but they clearly do reduce that risk. So with this data becoming more clear its time for a paradigm shift: vaccinate and boost the vulnerable at risk population. As needed provide ring immunity around them. Teach people to identify their own risk factors so they adjust their choices accordingly. But wide spread mandatory vaccination of young healthy people should no longer be a requisite to achieving the unachievable herd immunity.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this, looking back 2 years later.
Are you seeing vaccine-injuries amongst your patients? Have you lost friends & family to aggressive turbocancers yet?
Should healthy children have been authorized to get the shots?
Do your workplace have a vaccine mandate, and if so, did you lose competent healthcare workers who refused to comply? As a result, did patient-care suffer, and employee burnout skyrocket?
You said you wouldn't get a booster-- but what about the updated omicron bivalent?
Appreciate hearing from someone in your position who was able to see the situation for what it was back in 2021.
So as not to loose sight of the highly unethical nature of mandating vaccines or other medical treatments, the above linked article, titled “The Ethics of Vaccine Refusal,” is essential reading. Although at times technical, the author nevertheless lays out very cogent and, to me at least, surprisingly very strong ethical arguments against mandatory vaccination even when the intervention in question is a hypothetical perfectly safe and effective preparation. I hope you find it helpful...
ABSTRAC
Proponents of vaccine mandates typically claim that
everyone who can be vaccinated has a moral or ethical
obligation to do so for the sake of those who cannot be
vaccinated, or in the interest of public health. I evaluate
several previously undertheorised premises implicit to the
’obligation to vaccinate’ type of arguments and show
that the general conclusion is false: there is neither a
moral obligation to vaccinate nor a sound ethical basis to
mandate vaccination under any circumstances, even for
hypothetical vaccines that are medically risk-free. Agent
autonomy with respect to self-constitution has absolute
normative priority over reduction or elimination of the
associated risks to life. In practical terms, mandatory
vaccination amounts to discrimination against healthy,
innate biological characteristics, which goes against the
established ethical norms and is also defeasible a priori.
Wonderful, exactly my viewpoint. It doesn't matter if covid is as virulent as Ebola, or if the vaccines are 100% sterilizing, or if the risk of vaccine injury is 0%. It is still unethical to mandate vaccination! Thank you!
Thanks for writing this - I much appreciate your perspectives on this phenomenon and the mass psychology behind it.
For me, the question of covid vaccine safety is first and foremost an epistemological question. What can we know, and what can we not yet know? Is our science and data collection set up so as to know the truth, or to support the truth of a particular predetermined position?
Put another way, if we look at the history of vaccine development, what are the chances that a vaccine developed in less than a year, tested for six months, using a never-before-deployed technology and targeting a novel virus with a CFR of ~1%, will ultimately prove to have a positive risk-benefit ratio? My scientific mind, after examining the history of vaccine development, would put these odds at around 10%.
Whatever we believe these odds to be, is there any possible reason why a government or medical establishment truly interested in maximizing public health would not want to track very large control and treatment groups indefinitely to see whether some harm might appear that would justify changing treatment recommendations?
Like Charles, I started out ambivalent and in fact very nearly chose to get vaccinated, but as it became clear that governments and doctors were planning to become coercive and to prematurely declare complete vaccine safety - before such a statement could possibly be made given unknown long-term effects, despite some worrying signals of harms that were not detected in the trials, and despite the absence of any significant negative correlation between vaccination rates and infection rates - I decided that the odds were against this being a good idea. The more time passes, the more I am convinced that I made the right choice.
I do appreciate this post Markael. It's thoughtful and insightful.
I'm curious as to why you think the benefit to risk ratio will turn out unsatisfactory? Does this include the social piece, meaning what the discussions surrounding the vaccine seem to be doing to us as a society (pitting one against the other)?
If that's the case, I can understand your viewpoint entirely. Although that really doesn't have anything to do with the shot itself, more the messaging and humans involved in the discussions unfortunately.
But from a sheer scientific and "physical disease" perspective, what evidence do you see of any kind that the vaccine isn't a net positive on preventing hospitalization, death, etc?
Of course we don't know the vaccine long term effects, but vaccines typically don't produce long term effects, and while this is new technology, it surely doesn't seem that the mechanism of application (mRNA) will be a long term health issue.
Of course we can't know this now, but I'm wondering, is it mainly intuition that gives you this feeling of a net negative on the risk benefit comparison?
I've struggled with this whole thing too, but I simply don't see that side of it.
It's not just intuition, although that is a part of it. I have read and written a great deal about the knowns and unknowns of the science. It's true that vaccines typically don't produce long-term effects, and that when they do these effects tend to be immunological. So there is the immunological concern element which largely centers around the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement or - on a wider scale - driving the evolution of the virus in a way that leads to greater pathogenicity. These remain wild cards, although they are not my top concern at the moment.
These vaccines instruct the body to produce a protein - essentially a chemical - that is then immunogenic. In this way they are unlike any vaccines previously deployed, and a bit more like a drug. Unfortunately it turns out that this spike protein is biologically active. I won't fill this comment up with citations - Google Scholar will find you the sources - but various studies have found that spike protein directly triggers formation of fibrin blood clots which are themselves an inflammatory signal, and also that it may enter the cell nucleus and interfere with DNA replication.
These findings are highly preliminary and of uncertain relevance to health at this point, but the overall point is that unlike traditional vaccines which inject a known quantity of whole virus - which is then destroyed by the immune system, these vaccines instruct the body to produce a small molecule - a protein - inside of our cells. It was supposed to stay put, but studies have found free S1 in the plasma for the first seven days, and exosomes (small particles that bud off of cells) carrying spike protein in the blood for up to four months after the second injection. This molecule has not been adequately tested for biotoxicity, and unlike with vaccines there is plenty of precedence for delayed/long-term effects following chemical exposure.
So there is plenty of science that leads me to doubt the official story. That said, I don't doubt that the vaccines are effective in terms of preventing severe illness and hospitalization, and that for certain demographics with high covid risk and limited remaining life years, it is almost certain that vaccination has a net benefit in terms of saving lives even given the unknown risks.
The real kicker though, for me, is the way that we treat people who believe they have been injured by these vaccines. They are repeatedly told - with no proof whatsoever - that their debilitating symptoms which began shortly after vaccination could not possibly be connected. Now, I'm willing to grant that coincidences are a thing, and if we vaccinate 200 million people perhaps 20,000 (that's 1 in 10,000) will have a serious unrelated problem shortly thereafter, and that therefore we shouldn't be alarmed by every anecdotal story of a stroke or heart attack in the days after getting the shot. That said, it would be entirely reasonable to *expect* that a rushed vaccine is going to have a higher-than-average incidence of real adverse events. In a healthy society, in order to convince people to accept a risk for the common good we would offer compensation - both psychological and monetary - for the inevitable injuries. Just as we honor fallen soldiers, so we would honor those who died or were injured in the vaccination effort. And just as sometimes we honor someone who had a heart attack on the battlefield rather than being killed by enemy fire, so we would end up honoring a few vaccine "survivors" whose injuries were purely coincidence. That is OK. But instead we gaslight, ignore, and actively silence vaccine-injured people, and accept vaccine exemption from liability in a world in which we otherwise accept lawsuits for sidewalk potholes and coffee served too hot. This tells me that something is very much amiss, and there is an element of religious belief ("vaccines save lives", "vaccines are always good") that is getting in the way of finding truth and choosing the best way forward.
I am a retired internist/endocrinologist. I had reservations about this vaccine technology and early on decided I wanted to be a free rider before I got jabbed. Having other relatives still working in the health industry and other family members generally do well without serious adverse effects, my mind began to ease.
I was preparing to volunteer to administer vaccines this past spring. I held off because there was no assurance that I would be vaccinated before doing so. This seemed counterintuitive, just as it's the policy of the airlines that parents put on their oxygen masks before their child's.
Around then, research was coming out about harms from the virus spike protein. That got me thinking that the vaccine may cause similar injuries with the manufacturing of spike protein. So I held off.
Then I learned about vaccine induced enhancement of viral infections. This can happen through antibody dependent enhancement; immune activation via via activated CD4 memory T-cells; and other abnormal T-cell responses. See:
"Vaccine-induced enhancement of viral infections" Vaccine
Volume 27, Issue 4, 22 January 2009, Pages 505-512
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X08015053
Indeed, this article points out, "vaccine-induced enhancement has been a major stumble block in the development of certain flavi-, corona-, paramyxo-, and lentivirus vaccines."
Public health officials preach vaccines, but influenza vaccine failures are well described. Influenza vaccine failure: Failure to protect or failure to understand?
Expert Rev Vaccines. 2018 Jun; 17(6): 495–502; doi: 10.1080/14760584.2018.1484284
Drummed into my pandemic education circa mid 1980’s were fears of an influenza A pandemic. Hemagglutinin (and sometimes neuraminidase) glycoproteins from influenza viruses in waterfowl could recombine into human influenza viruses to introduce a novel sub-type for which our immune system had no standing army. An influenza pandemic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of influenza-related deaths, remains a threat to humans.
Excerpt from "Influenza Vaccine — Outmaneuvering Antigenic Shift and Drift"
N Engl J Med. 2004 Jan 15;350(3):218-20. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp038238:
"The hemagglutinin is the viral attachment protein that also mediates the entry of the virus into the cell by fusion. The neuraminidase is an enzyme whose main function is to facilitate the cell-to-cell spread of virus. The immunology of influenza is, in a sense, very straightforward. Antibody against the hemagglutinin is neutralizing and is very protective against infection and illness. Antibody against the neuraminidase can reduce the severity of illness. The immunology of influenza is, in a sense, very straightforward. Antibody against the hemagglutinin is neutralizing and is very protective against infection and illness. Antibody against the neuraminidase can reduce the severity of illness."
What acts as Covid’s hemagglutinin and neuraminidase? It appears that spike protein is important for both “cell-free” (through ACE2 receptor) and cell-to-cell transmission.
This June 2021 pre-print, "SARS-CoV-2 Spreads through Cell-to-Cell Transmission" (bioRxiv. 2021 Jun 1;2021.06.01.446579. doi: 10.1101/2021.06.01.446579), shows evidence that cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can occur in the absence of ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor expression in target cells through the SARS-CoV-2 spike.
The findings of this NIH funded study are extremely concerning and it should be peer reviewed and published. The authors (primarily from Ohio State University) point out that, “Cell-to-cell transmission is considered to be an effective means by which viruses evade host immunity, especially antibody-mediated responses.”
Indeed, they found cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is resistant to antibody neutralization. Moreover, “(w)hile not statistically significant, some of the COVID-19 sera (2 out of 5) even enhanced cell-to-cell transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 6D), although the underlying mechanisms are currently not known.”
In vitro lab studies are not the same as in vivo experience with vaccines. But the blame and shame game of the "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is absolutely immoral if the precautionary principle remains germane to science.
you are citing a source that is 11 years old... ancient history in the world of vaccine development and knowlegege of various corona viruses...
Your comment is, at least, a sane summing up of some potential issues and red flags. At least you acknowledge that the vaccine has made a positive difference to the majority of those who’ve taken it. Pretty much everyone else on here is having an already converted to the religion party.
I feel completely disempowered just listening. Talk about being gas-lit. To have Charles, whose work I have followed for years, get lost in anecdotes, and shaming and blaming those who have also done their due diligence, those who date to view vaccines as a critical if imperfect approach to a problem (and a much more clearly dangerous and debilitating illness) leaves me feeling completely disempowered. I feel as though I’m in one of those dreams where I can’t move or I’m drowning in quicksand. Everybody has alterior motives, no one can be trusted. All pharmaceutical companies are evil, all newspapers lie. All these references to sources that no one reads. All this innuendo and accusation, this slamming of everything traditional or mainstream, the ignoring of so many biochemists and toxicologists and researchers who explain that this IS NOT a new untested vaccine, but a variation of something that has been in development since SARS or even before. I am not saying we shouldn’t follow up on all reports; obviously we should. But how in hell is that we should only listen to skeptics telling horror stories of sudden deaths (which are then immediately claimed to be caused by vaccines). There are millions of stories where everything goes well.
No one I know personally has been killed by a vaccine. No one I know has even had an adverse reaction. No one I know has heard of any one who has. I do know (or knew) people who have been have been harmed or killed by the virus.
I had a woman arrive at my retreat centre for a visit with her friends last week. I didn’t know her personally. She claimed that covid was a hoax and that those who had been vaccinated were shedding deadly something or other: what the something or other was she could not say. She told me her son (who I was told later had Down Syndrome and was autistic) threw up every time he got near anyone who had had a vaccine. Honestly this stretches credulity beyond the breaking point it, nonetheless no doubt, some people on here will take her story as truth and start repeating it around.
It feels like the same sort of sentiments are being presented here as those that once caused people to turn on women who worked as healers, calling them witches and accusing them of illnesses and sudden deaths without cause or proof. These women were burned or drowned in the thousands. Only in this case our witches are vaccines.
The very fact that things became serious enough that governments felt forced to legislate some aspects of vaccine use has brought the wrath of the unschooled, the mistrustful and the just plain frightened down upon them. Who cares about the science… who cares about the statistics, who cares about reality… the only thing that matters anymore is our freedom to be irresponsible, to care not a wit for our neighbours, the ill, and the elderly, because god forbid someone told us some thing we didn’t feel right about.
We take a thousand things for granted every day before breakfast to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland. We eat junk, we eat chemicals, we eat food grown in chemicals altered soils. We assert our right to smoke dope while ignoring the statistics of the biochemical risks to people (especially young men) under 25.
It’s always all about us. Don’t anybody tell us what to do… large numbers of us don’t bother to go out to vote but we all get out to complain at the drop of a hat.
The hypocrisy inherent in the intuitive judgement of so many, the laziness, the damning innuendo, the condemnation of anything we don’t understand, and so are scared of is, itself, scary and dangerous.
I can understand the fear of the unknown but sometimes we need to face our fears for the good of our fellow humans. By all means investigate all claims but, for a change, listen to both sides of the argument. Science makes mistakes and then it investigates and fixes them. Superstition takes every fact and twists it around to support whatever perspective it already believes in.
Are you aware that the swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10 was declared a fake pandemic by The Council of Europe in 2010? The vaccine developed to deal with it was withdrawn after around 700 young people developed narcolepsy after being vaccinated. The 1976 swine-flu vaccine was withdrawn after 25 deaths associated with it in the US. 10s of thousands of deaths have been reported across the world following the c19 vaccines. Investigations by universities into how completely vaccine death and injury are captured by various voluntary reporting schemes conclude between 1% and 10%. Steve Kirsch, a professional statistician who shares his findings online, has calculated that about 40% of events are captured. One way or another, we are way beyond 25 deaths here.
Were you aware that the man who exposed the fake swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a lung specialist who once held a government post in Germany in the SPD, was censured at the beginning of this 'pandemic' as he began to speak out? Many other eminent scientists, including the Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier, have also been censured because they are critical of the official position. It's not just the superstitious who are critical, as you unfairly state. Far from it. I'm sure most people who support the narrative and vaccines are similarly superstitious; most people are. It's almost exclusively supporters of the narrative who get screen time. It's the critics who are deplatformed, cancelled, including Dr Michael Yeadon, who was by turns Vice President and CSO at Pfizer for years. He is a micro-biologist. Have you heard of Dr Byram Bridle? A virologist/vaccinologist from Ottowa University, he went public with his findings earlier this year, findings that were highly critical of the c19 vaccines, and was treated to vicious opprobrium from colleagues and mass media alike. He has been deplatformed. A colleague of his at Ottowa University was fired for refusing the vaccine. Stories like theirs abound, including of Dr Robert Malone, co-inventor of mRNA technology.
Are you aware that the WHO removed from their definition of pandemic the criteria requiring large numbers of deaths and illnesses, about a month before they declared the swine-flu pandemic of 2009-10? Now all that is required to declare a pandemic is that a new virus be spreading across the world. When is that not the case? Are you aware that around 70% of WHO funding is conditional? Are you aware that there are contracts between nation states, the WHO and Big Pharma corporations that are triggered when pandemics are declared by WHO, contracts not fully open to public scrutiny? Pharmaceutical corporations make fortunes on pandemics and vaccine sales.
Are you aware that the PCR tests used to determine if a person is infected cannot detect whole virus, merely particular fragments thereof? Are you aware that the science is divided on the CFR and IFR of covid19, with Dr John Ioannides calculating its IFR at around 0.14% to 0.15%, similar to a heavy flu? He attributes any and all excess mortality to lockdown measures. There are legal cases being developed in Canada, Italy and the UK on this point. Look into the Midazolam situation and Matt Hancock in the UK, spring 2020. Italy recently reduced its number of c19 deaths in 2020 from a little over 132,000 to around 3,700, a 97% reduction. The PCR test, the CDC admitted recently, cannot differentiate between flu and c19. A new set of tests that can are due to be released this December. Besides, the ct level used for the now redundant c19 tests ranges from 35 to 45 across the world, with no clear guidelines on this pivotal parameter. I believe Fauci stated that results produced above a ct of 28 are clinically meaningless. Apparently, serious labs don't like to go above a ct of 11. That stated, do we know who died of what, especially as, most mysteriously, autopsies of c19 deaths were more or less forbidden, and death-certificate protocols were changed in April 2020 to allow the presence of c19 thereon to mean the person died of c19. In combination with PCR testing set way too sensitive, this obviously generates huge deaths and cases for c19, whether or not it was the actual cause.
I could go on (masks, 'asymptomatic spread', ivermectine used very successfully in India and Japan but banned elsewhere, the dreadfully negative impact and ineffectiveness of lockdowns ...). The point here is that there is no genuine debate taking place, getting a public airing. I have been looking closely at what is going on since March 2020 and am confident that a very strange transition to a new totalitarian system of global governance is being tricked onto the world under cover of a fake pandemic. I want to be wrong. I am not superstitious. And, like you, I feel like I am drowning. Neither of us is happy with the situation. Both of us want good science to prevail. Both of is want healthy outcomes. The problem is how to talk about it all. Why is this so difficult? That this is so difficult, so emotional, so turbulent, is for me one of the clearest indications that this fraught situation, this terribly divided people we have become, is by design. Why deplatform critical voices right from the very start? The decision to lockdown was unprecedented, and extreme. Critical voices needed to be heard for that very reason. Why were they banned and censured?
Toby, you just exposed the entire fraud that has been waged on the world! It is too much for some to wrap their mind around, that's all. I do feel sorry for them, as the truth is really tough. But, if they will dare to go down the rabbit hole, listen to McCullough, Kennedy, Tess Lawrie, Steve Kirsch, or Michael Yeadon, etc.,..their eyes will be opened. And that's precisely why they will not.
My husband had an adverse reaction to the Swine flu jab in 2010 and it took him a number of years to rebuild his health. This has led us to not take the vaccine. We think we had Covid early on before testing and it was not that significant about a week of feeling poorly. We are in our 70's . I appreciate the openness and balance that Charles brings to this conversation.
That should shake up a few mRNA cell and gene therapy advocates coasting along, absorbing the MSM obfuscation, manipulations, and outright lies, if they will bother to think this through!
Before our worldwide rollout of Forced Experimental Bio-Tech,) (my label for the C19 Shots,) a Harvard Pilgram Health Plan review concluded that as little as 1% of actual vaccine injuries made it into VAERS.
Many doctors cannot, or will not recognize them when they happen. Then the Covid Jabs happened and hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans have been injured by them, and thousands have died. It is not acceptable to force a dangerous medical treatment on anyone! And I do suggest we are using propaganda to "normalize" heart attacks, strokes, and neurological issues in very small children.
Coincidence? Not a chance.
Yes, Covid 19 is dangerous, but We Have Steadfastly Refused to Develop Early Treatment Strategies! A few normal Doctors have done so, but hit brick walls again and again, when bringing this information to our "Officials," and people have to go to court to get the hospitals to allow their loved ones to receive the Ivermectin that their own doctors have prescribed! This has saved a few, but 100s of thousands died, from this behavior. This is all insane, or murderous, depending on your viewpoint.
I lean towards murderous, but there is an argument for flat out incompetent.
However the lockstep messaging Worldwide implies premeditation, planning and coordination. Back to straight up health information , listen to Dr. Peter McCullough . He is absolutely top of his field, and is calling for a full moratorium on all the Covid Shots because of their horrible safety profiles.
One of my friends got GBS from that swine flu vaccine. She's lucky to be alive today.
are you aware that you SOUND like a freaking crazy person on the internet?
Yes, I am. And that's sad, because I am not a "freaking crazy person". It troubles me deeply that we cannot talk to each other. The fact that this is so is, for me, a clear sign that the divisions preventing us from talking are desired. Do you want this division, this emotional tension, this terrible divergence to continue? If not, what do you think we should do to change it? If you do want things to stay this way, why?
And how exactly does a crazy person sound? Do you realize mother fuckers are trying to steal your freedom?
Can you actually contradict a single thing he is saying? You can't and you won't be able to. You are one of those so entrenched in your views that you simply can't see the other side. You lose the argument when you insult people. What I always say is give it time and the truth will come out.
Harsh but unfortunately true
“ Italy recently reduced its number of c19 deaths in 2020 from a little over 132,000 to around 3,700, a 97% reduction.” I did an online search for this claim and it did not lead to what you stated. You may not trust this publication but it does link to some documents that appear genuine. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/05/fact-check-italy-did-not-lower-its-covid-19-death-toll-3-783/6195621001/
I didn't keep a copy of the source for that data, but remember the announcement fairly well (the numbers I cited are very specific!), and other announcements out of Italy, too. There has been much back and forth on death numbers in several countries because it just isn't clear, and different groups make different claims. There is of course massive political/corporate interference on this, and so many other c19 issues, so we will never know how deadly c19 really was. A source on c19 lethality I trust above others is Professor John Ioannidis, a very highly respected epidemiologist from Stanford University.
Hi Toby,
I will let most of your comment stand but you are incorrect or a bit out of your element about a lot of your PCR material, specifically that 'serious' labs don't look at Cts above 11. The instructions for use for any given PCR assay will detail the Ct range that is considered 'Positive', and it usually is in the range of 5-35, maybe even out to 40. A Ct of 11 would be 'very' positive, whereas a Ct in the 30s likely would be someone who is asymptomatically positive, or recently had an infection with leftover NA material. You are correct that it detects the presence of nucleic acid (NA), very specifically, and this by itself cannot be used to indicate a clinical diagnosis (but effectively it does indicate extremely well if the patient has recently been infected or not).
The CDC didn't need to 'admit' that the C19 PCR test cannot identify flu, all PCR tests are designed with primers that specifically target ONLY the DNA/RNA of the target of interest, and are tested to ensure they DO NOT register any other target as a positive (this is referred to as specificity in the literature). The FLU/C19 combo assays use primers that target both viral genomes, but use different fluorophores (and thus can only be run on instruments that support what is called 'multiplexing').
Thank you for your response to my comment, tugordie.
Perhaps one should always be wholly unemotional and, let’s say, academic, when writing comments, but perhaps not. I tend to go for a mix of emotional disclosure and a willingness to be corrected where wrong. I wrote the comment you responded to in an outpouring that I did not make any attempt to render in any way neutral; the comment I was responding to seemed very dismissive of my own position and others who share it. To the degree, then, that my comment was an authentic expression of my feelings, I stand by it. And in fact I stand by it in toto for other reasons, too, not the least of which is the subsequent discussion it seems to have engendered.
The statement on PCR was not plucked from my imagination. The point about “serious” labs and CT values not over 11 had two sources. The first was a meta-study – if memory serves – showing rapid decline in reproducible virus above a CT of 11, such that certainty about ‘live’ or ‘active’ virus can only really be asserted at 11 and lower. (PCRs do not detect whole virus, so they cannot directly detect, but only imply, infection.) You appear to agree with this: you mention the sliding-scale assessment of what constitutes ‘positive’.
The second source was an effort to address an odd anomaly in virology re. the total absence of genuine – not “mock” – control experiments. Dr Stefan Lanka – of whom I am not particularly fond – carried out control experiments in which he subjected cell cultures to the mix of chemicals virologists add to them when they subject those cultures to their virus “isolate” to observe the pathogenicity of a particular virus. The difference is that Lanka included no virus “isolate”, only the fixatives, antibiotics, etc. (I use speech marks to indicate that virus “isolates” are not purified, i.e. they contain material other than the purported virus.) Lanka observed exactly the same cytopathic effects without the presence of virus. Lanka’s control experiments suggest, therefore, that it is not clear that what virology calls viruses are in fact pathogenic; there is no clear laboratory proof of this claim to date (I also know Dr Yeadon has agreed that this is true). When Lanka sent off the resultant material to labs for sequencing, the labs he approached refused to go above a CT of 11, claiming anything above that threshold produces an unscientific result.
Why did Lanka want to go above 11 and into the high 30s / early 40s? To be able to sequence, model, or ‘discover’ in-silico, the proteins of SARS-CoV-2. Which, when the lab finally consented to the higher CT values, is what happened: SARS-CoV-2 was ‘discovered’ (modelled) in-silico from dead-cell detritus that had never been exposed to it.
This leads to the next point. The CDC ‘admitting’ the (Drosten?) PCR of early 2020 could not distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and flu. This was a story that exploded in the summer of 2021 and was fact-checked as ‘fake’ shortly thereafter. Because I was also aware of a microbiologist from a university in California reporting he had only found flu virus in all samples claimed to have been positive SARS-CoV-2 tests, and because the flu ‘disappeared’ in 2020 and 2021, it seemed to me that the high-CT values could be muddying the water in this regard. Yes, I know and knew that the test, any PCR test, is supposed to target proteins (primers) unique or at least highly particular to the object they are testing for, but with the Drosten PCR, this did not appear to be the case: There was an article from a Spanish medical journal showing that entering the primer(s) Drosten used into the BLAST database yielded something like a hundred hits, most (or all?) of which are present in humans. But, it was a while back that I read this, so my memory on this point is a little hazy.
In sum, then, I felt the ‘fake’ news re. the CDC’s ‘admission’ was of a type with other data I was aware of at the time. But, in the interests of brevity, or more likely because I was writing more emotionally than academically, I expressed that point with zero context and as nuance-free as I did. That said, I am extremely skeptical about sites branding this or that piece of news as fake. There are vested interests on every side of whatever news is reported. I deem it very corrosive to open discourse to label things “fake” in this dismissive way.
As you can see, it takes a long comment to explain a small detail in a long comment! But comments are not scientific discourse, they are an opportunity to air feelings and impressions. That’s how I use them, on the whole. Besides, I’m just a regular guy trying to make as much sense as I can out of a very unusual and troubling situation.
A great compilation of the timeline toby
Have YOU been threatened with loss of your job if you TOOK the vaccine? How would that feel? You hear people terrified of side effects and material loss for NOT taking it, and have zero empathy. You do a lot of whining for someone who hasn't been shamed, bribed, or threatened if you refuse a potentially lethal shot.
I had covid, took horse paste, got mocked for it, and got better. I'm 67, supposedly high risk. Now my natural immunity isn't good enough to let me keep working in my field.
I've had friends and family members killed and injured right after getting these shots. I'm sorry if vaccine hesitancy gets on your nerves. Try to empathize.
Right in there with you, Zade. Had Delta and recovered. The stupid vax-not-vax doesn't even work for Delta, so is completely redundant anyway. Never mind my post-infection immunity (tested and confirmed). Then I was forced to take the vax after threatened job loss (would have been ruinous for me and my family in a country of 45% unemployment). I have not felt well ever since after having fully recovered from the actual disease. But hey - let's all wax righteous and sanctimonious about how terrible the anti-vaxxers are.
I'm so sorry to hear you got put in an impossible situation. A friend survived a terrible case in March, then got badgered and bullied into a Pfizer shot. Months later she still has symptoms of GBS that set in ten days after the shot, which she got 6-7 months after recuperating from covid. I could list so many others. But you know firsthand. And for the vax-credulous none of that matters. As long as THEY feel safe and vindicated.
There are ways to recover dna stability and health after the mrna shots and variants. However it requires delving into energy healing and the work of alternative medicine and or nutrition, such as joe dispenza and lipton.
I have faced the fear of the unknown, Cali. I got ill. I got better. I am now being forced to vaccinate, when it's not medically necessary, and is possibly medically contra-indicated. I haven't just sucked this out my thumb - I have tried to read credible research. I do care about Science, believe it or not. Science never told people to have a measles or polio shot after they had contracted it. This purported vaccine doesn't even protect against the Delta strain which I've actually overcome. Why should I face another fear of having a redundant injection now that I have faced the actual fear of getting ill? Most importantly, people are only a danger to others if they're ill - and both vaccinated and unvaccinated can still get ill. Trust me, I knew I was ill. I stayed out of everyone's way. Please don't assume selfishness or irresponsibility on the part of the skeptical. Or absolute protection on the part of the vaccinated, too, for that matter - whom I have seen out and about and mingling unmasked in full force, which could also be construed as not caring a jot for the neighbours, ill or elderly.
Don't take it! Find another job, it's not worth it. What if you are injured or killed? A mother recently got vaccinated so she could help out in her daughter's classroom, and died from the vaccine (friend of my brothers).
Read a journey of souls by newton. Free audio on ytube. It may help people if they realize what else is going on and what lies beyond body death.
It's almost like you think the people who don't bother to vote are the same ones complaining. Why on earth would you think or even imply that?? Perhaps you should do that statistics refresher course you've been meaning to take. Why do you keep assuming it's all about what we "don't understand" or what is "unknown"? Did it ever occur to you that the people refusing this are well informed - better able to give informed consent - than most vaxed people who get their information only from the CDC?? That it's precisely because of what they know that they are refusing? That I'm not so concerned about my fellow humans that I'm going to risk my health & well-being? The "other side" is willing to risk the health & well-being of children by getting them vaccinated with an inadequately tested non-vaccine (and Rachel's changing the definition of "vaccine" doesn't make it so) for which there are NO LONG-TERM SAFETY DATA in children 5-11. Why do you assume that people refusing to be vaccinated aren't waiting for better data? Why are you assuming that they are uninformed, when in fact it's the vaccine-gullible who have only part of the story & were willing to give consent to be jabbed with a concoction made by a company that has no legal liability in the event people are harmed or killed? I wouldn't buy a toaster off eBay from someone who didn't stand behind his or her product! Why do you think that just because YOU don't know anyone who was harmed or killed, no one was? You sound like Pauline "Everyone I know voted for McGovern" Kael. I am sorry you know people who were killed by the disease, but were they vaccinated? Because plenty of vaccinated people have caught, spread, & died of covid, & are you aware that anyone who is within 2 weeks of the last jab is considered "unvaccinated" for data reporting purposes? Your rant is the most self-aggrandizing, condescending piece of schlock I've read in quite a while. Good heavens. Get over your hippy-dippy kumbaya self & do a deep dive into PubMed. And do another one into my previous post on the nature of informed consent, which is elsewhere in this thread. Science makes mistakes & then it investigates & fixes them??? Do you know how THIS science is discovering its mistake? By conducting large-scale studies on uninformed masses via coercion. If you are such a sheep that you're willing to go along with that & to then bleat your virtue-signaling about the good of humanity, you are the PERFECT dupe for the pharma companies. The absolute perfect dupe, because you aren't even aware that what they are waging is a marketing campaign. Jesus Christ. GET over yourself.
While you're working yourself into a self-righteous snit about the horrors of the vaccine -- which are entirely speculative if you REALLY did into the evidence -- I think of people like David Graeber, the brilliant anthropologist and anarchist, who died last year of complications from Covid.
Every scrap of solid, verifiable evidence says that if the vaccines had been available then, and if he had chosen to receive one, he would still be alive today, ready to play a vital role in the coming decades as we deal with the crapstorm headed our way. He was 59, in reasonably good health, and he died a horrible painful death.
That could be you, or any one of the other passionate voices against the tyranny of these vaccines. The way I see it, millions of intelligent, thoughtful people (including Charles, who I have a ton of respect for) have been infected with a fear of vaccines -- for Covid and for other diseases -- that is putting them, and everyone around them, at risk. That thought makes me very sad.
Nearly all of my friends have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, including chronic migraines and myocarditis. I have listened to both sides of the argument, but what reasons do I have to listen to media outlets or scientific research that was funded by the pharmaceutical industry? I’m a young male college student who lives a healthy lifestyle and I have a long tradition in my family of practicing functional natural medicine—medicine that works WITH Nature to help the immune system, as opposed to a corrupt, fear-based and fear-incentivized medical tradition that pits humans against Nature. The vaccine tricks the immune system to produce an immune response, I prefer the natural way of medicine better (even if, yes, it is less profitable to the system). I see no logic behind getting the vaccine just so I can protect those “more vulnerable.” First of all, from my research, the science is clear that the rate of infection is equal between those who had or haven’t had the vaccine, and secondly, I see it as immoral to sacrifice my own health considering the unknown long-term health effects of an experimental vaccine in which corners were cut in clinical trials just so I can make others “feel safe” as a result of their unnecessary fear propagated by the media which in fact weakens the immune system and automatically makes you dependent on bullshit vaccines in the first place
One of my sisters would not now be terrified for her life if she hadn't taken the JJ shot. One of my friends wouldn't be calling 911 almost weekly because of diabetic coma induced by the same shot (after all his adult life competently managing his type 1 diabetes). One of uncles wouldn't have stroked out if not for Pfizer. Another would still be alive but a surprise case of cancer got him after his shots.
The mindset you call superstitious for attributing death and injury to the shots could equally be said to exist among true believers in benefits of these highly flawed and inefficacious vaccines, masking, 6 feet of "social" distancing.
I hadn't heard that Graeber died of anything related to COVID. Do you have a credible link to that story?
Well I think you are blind and stupid. The vaccines have a risk that is completely unknown. The virus has a known low risk to all except the old and comorbid.
Instead of being afraid of ending up like him, we will give you something greater to be afraid of. What that is.... you will see soon enough. The thing about fear, son of man, is that it a mind killer and i can always override your fear logick using a greater fear.
With all due respect Snarling Fifi, if you're going to make a post like this acting like your view and your approach is the sure fire correct way to view this issue, you might want to be sure you don't have any other posts in this thread where you claim that this is "not a vaccine!"
Whoops, it looks like you already did that.
Anyone who is in healthcare (or at least reasonably well informed) knows that a vaccine doesn't mean full immunity from disease. It's ridiculous to claim otherwise. I've worked in healthcare for many years. You might be right to say that the "media" tried to push the idea that this vaccine would confer full immunity and protection, but anyone who knows what a vaccine actually is never bought into that.
Are you serious? All due respect, Scott, there's nothing false in that post, and I'm always going to react that way to posts that are dripping with condescension toward the unwashed masses. Interesting that you think a person manifesting that kind of superiority doesn't deserve to be called out. Well I do. Cali's post is just chock full of elitist snobbery, & it's sick-making.
My point: The CDC modified its definition of the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website on 9/27/21. Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” Imagine the number of drugs that can now, or will, be called "vaccines"!
My point is that once the CDC became aware of its inefficacy at doing anything a vaccine purports to do, it could have changed what THIS non-vaccine is called...stopped calling it a vaccine, since it didn't meet the classic definition. But no. Changing definitions is what the left does best, whether it's "vaccine" "gain of function" or "fully vaccinated."
Do you think they changed the definition for the benefit of people in healthcare? They changed it for the benefit of the masses, to try to maintain their marketing campaign's credibility, which would wane faster than the efficacy of the medication when it became known that the "immunity" [sic] lasted only 6 months or less.
And BTW: I add that little tidbit pretty much every time I see someone call this thing a vaccine. Because not everyone reads all my comments. The medication doesn't deserve to be called a vaccine. Period.
What an unstable rant. I wouldn't read all of what you wrote either
Well if you haven't read it, how on earth can you tell it's "unstable"? Killing the messenger; what the left does best. Good luck listening only to, & learning only from, people who color inside the lines.
"Over a 60X increase in pro sports adverse events since the vaccines rolled out
Nobody can explain that. Some poo-poo these events saying that they happen all the time. True, they do. But not at this rate. Something happened in 2021 that changed things. I wonder what..." -- https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/over-a-60x-increase-in-serious-adverse
Also, if you look at excess deaths in 2020 and 2021, they are both quite elevated. I suspect that 2020 was elevated due to latent injury from covid-infection-spike, and 2021 from covid plus vaccines. If our public-health response was working, shouldn't excess deaths be lower this year? https://www.usmortality.com/excess
This is an excellent summation of everything surrounding this issue.
I'll readily admit that I'm biased toward science as a process, and I have much experience with scientific literature as a physical therapist. I also understand the flaws of treating science as religion, which is definitely happening in many people.
But here's the thing: you don't have to listen to those people, and most who are finding the science zealots are those actively looking for them as a way to bolster their "see what's happening here!!!!" attitudes. You're not going to convince me that the vast majority of physicians, healthcare practitioners, the FDA, CDC, etc is somehow involved in some type of vaccine conspiracy. That is completely baseless, and why Markaels post is appreciated, because he tends to steer clear of that way of thinking.
The conspiratorial side of this makes zero sense as to the motive. Simple thought. If this was truly a deep conspiracy by government and big Pharma, then the motive would be for the vaccine to work so incredibly well that no one dies so they can keep pushing their drugs.
It is completely understandable to dissect the issues and potential effects of the vaccine, but when the argument starts implying that these people aren't trying to help their fellow citizens by introducing these vaccines, the argument becomes extremely flimsy at best and completely dismissed at worst.
The problem is that if someone is already to this level of thinking, there's literally no amount of data that could convince them otherwise. Their primitive mind is in full control, as Tim Urban would say.
It's why Markaels post is a breath of fresh air.
As Charles explains, a lot of this is simply the effects of psychological principles. Confirmation bias, need for acceptance, availability heuristic...of which all of us humans are vulnerable, regardless of political party, professional title, or status. The most concerning element in all of this for me has been the intense shaming and ostracizing, which has led to censorship and resistance to open communication. These are not healthy responses in a society, and are a red flag of an underlying psychological crisis. People get caught up in arguing over facts and figures, and yet we need to attend to the emotions behind this and own them and clarify them, otherwise we will be stuck in a social tension without resolution. All groups and sides need to do this. Can we honestly talk about our fears, without resorting to shame and blame? Can we discuss the impacts this whole experience has had on us personally, yet also listen with an open heart and mind to the stories of others, even if they contradict our beliefs?
I do believe there is some intentional leveraging of the psychological chaos already at play, even if it's simply the media wanting to cater to certain narratives and stoke fears for their own bottom line. I don't know for sure how deep that rabbit hole goes, but some of it is really obvious and a symptom of capitalism cut off from community (I recommend reading Eisenstein's Sacred Economics on that topic, for example).
However, whether or not there is manipulation, we are all just responding as humans do, and our education system never taught how to process emotions, listen empathically, communicate effectively or develop emotional intelligence. If anything, some of this was actively discouraged. Social media, TV, and politics further diminish our interpersonal and introspective abilities and prompt us to shame others, scapegoat, and project our feelings rather than owning and processing them.
There is a lot of focus on a biological crisis, whether embracing it or being skeptical of it, but the psychological crisis that was brewing even before COVID and which has skyrocketed is AT LEAST equally important and potentially dangerous. And it is not something that can be resolved by force or regulation, only by invitation, openness, acceptance, and willingness to listen.
No question about it. This is a fair assessment of the situation, imo
Genuinely curioius, do you still feel this way in 2022? Not trying to get into an argument, I am just interested in how people's beliefs might have changed over time.
I hope you will find someone to debate publicly and get a $5,000 finder's fee from Steve: https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/earn-5k-if-you-can-find-someone-who
Hello Cali, I am just wondering if you have also read the 4 chapters of Needle Points that Charles linked? That will be informative as to the reliability of research into vaccine efficacy, potential risks and so, however coming from an author who would like to see more widespread vaccination. It's very informative and if too long I'd recommend chapter 4 first. It also gives more background to Charles' argument.
So why does Charles say he is immune I don't see that anyone is immune
I am. In the midst of a pandemic (so called) I've suffered nary a sniffle. I don't mask, I don't distance, I don't vaxx. 'Splain that.
You're lucky?
Nearly all of my friends have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, including chronic migraines and myocarditis. I have listened to both sides of the argument, but what reasons do I have to listen to media outlets or scientific research that was funded by the pharmaceutical industry? I’m a young male college student who lives a healthy lifestyle and I have a long tradition in my family of practicing functional natural medicine—medicine that works WITH Nature to help the immune system, as opposed to a corrupt, fear-based and fear-incentivized medical tradition that pits humans against Nature. The vaccine tricks the immune system to produce an immune response, I prefer the natural way of medicine better (even if, yes, it is less profitable to the system). I see no logic behind getting the vaccine just so I can protect those “more vulnerable.” First of all, from my research, the science is clear that the rate of infection is equal between those who had or haven’t had the vaccine, and secondly, I see it as immoral to sacrifice my own health considering the unknown long-term health effects of an experimental vaccine in which corners were cut in clinical trials just so I can make others “feel safe” as a result of their unnecessary fear propagated by the media which in fact weakens the immune system and automatically makes you dependent on bullshit vaccines in the first place. DO YOUR RESEARCH!
Fuck you. Go get a booster and just maybe you'll feel better.
Since I can't find a way to edit comments here, I should have said the spike protein may interfere with DNA *repair* not replication: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/10/2056/htm?title
Some other sources for the above.
Spike protein linked to clotting and resultant inflammation:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.05.21252960v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.12.464152v1.abstract
Free spike S1 in blood plasma following vaccination:
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab465/6279075
Spike protein in circulating exosomes up to four months following vaccination:
https://pdfhost.io/v/ZRcezbv7t_JI2100637_proof
Markaele, in all sincerity I thank you for this comment.
Fascinating synopsis and something for me to put in my brain. This is the type of stuff I love about these discussions!
I don't care if someone isn't vaccinated. I have a 5 year old and I do legitimately have concerns about getting him vaccinated in the best future. It's also obvious that the virus itself could be riskier.
Life is messy, and these decisions are hard. I truly thank you for being such a good source of a back and forth on the internet.
yes, please! I'lls see if there's more to this thread, but wanted to say thanks in case I loose it!
This entire thread is wonderful and I feel grateful to be in the company of people with intelligent and thoughtful views. Thank you all! Robert Malone, MD is a major voice of calm and grounded analysis of the data and he also is on substack. https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/archive?utm_source=menu-dropdown Well worth checking him out. On the topic of mass psychology he offers the work of Mattias Desmet from U. of Ghent, on Mass Formation Psychosis.
These new injections are as qualitatively different from what have been the traditional vaccines (and many have had awful consequences) as a nuclear weapon is from a standard TNT one.
Great analogy.
I'm late to the party here, but the vaccine safety studies themselves show far more severe adverse events produced by the vaccines than severe COVID-19 prevented. In both cases "severe" means "prevents daily activity and requires medical intervention". I wrote about Pfizer here (Moderna is worse):
https://norstadt.substack.com/p/severe-adverse-events-vs-severe-covid
The highest quality scientific data we have, from randomized trials, show clearly that the vaccines cause far more severe outcomes than they prevent.
If the vaccine is supposed to provide a benefit for critical or fatal outcomes, properly done science would have made the study large enough to show that benefit. But nothing significant is shown for those categories. The only statistically significant signal is for "severe" and weaker, and for those the vaccine's risk/benefit ratio is upside down. It is not unreasonable to extrapolate from these gold-standard studies and also expect such an upside down ratio for critical and fatal outcomes. Studies that do purport to show a benefit are all observational and therefore lower quality.
Say what?
Please see my above post regarding risk/benefit.
The vaccine wasn’t developed in less than a year. The technology has been in development since SARS and in concept even before that. When it became apparent that the virus was spreading at such an alarming rate, the already in progress research was given much added funding and labs that had the capacity to do this kind of research all worked together to speed things up.
I see that argument a lot. Technology is not "proven" until it has been successfully and safely deployed; time in development is irrelevant. Airplanes were in concept in the 1800s and in development in the early 1900s. They didn't become safe by modern standards until the 1950s, after the inevitable bugs were worked out in response to deadly crashes.
The sensible way to deploy genetic vaccines would have been to produce an influenza version and trial it alongside the traditional flu vaccine in ever-larger groups over a decade or so. An entirely illogical way to introduce them for the first time is to use the occasion of a crisis to deploy them to the entire human population including low-risk groups with claims of 100% safety that simply cannot be justified given the lack of experience with this technology.
No one cares how long it took to develop. They care about the clinical trials for safety & efficacy. They were tested for months, not years, and on small populations that excluded some groups who were still later "encouraged" to get the jab. There are no long-term data in children, in whom there is no covid emergency, & yet the jab was given EUA approval for that group. It's sick-making that people will offer up their kids as guinea pigs to get a medication (NOT a vaccine) that they don't need, that does not confer immunity, that has been under-tested in studies that were underpowered. Using your kid as a hood ornament for virtue-signaling instead of protecting them. It's disgusting.
"Whatever we believe these odds to be, is there any possible reason why a government or medical establishment truly interested in maximizing public health would not want to track very large control and treatment groups indefinitely to see whether some harm might appear that would justify changing treatment recommendations?"
Briefly, no.
You’re assuming that these two groups are separate and can be monitored separately. They can’t.
The COVID-19 vaccine wasn't developed in on 1 year, nor was it new technology; it took years! Closely related viruses were being studied with vaccines being developed during the Obama years. I think my research show the risks weighing in at getting vaccinated. People I know have had this disease & passionately say you don't want to go through it. I don't want to die believing I didn't take the risk. Nor do I want to be the cause of anyone I know being sick or dying because I didn't take the risk.
Say what?
So if time it took to develop this vaccine, would it be safe to say if it took longer you would feel safe knowing it is safe?
Time in development is much less important to me than time and comprehensiveness of testing. If we had been following large (~1 million people) groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, looking at not just risk of covid infection/death but also all-cause mortality and rates of all health conditions of concern, then if no red flags were raised I would feel confident enough in safety after one year. The fact that this is not happening, and that they vaccinated the control groups in the trials so there is in fact *no* longer-term control group in any controlled trial, greatly reduces my confidence in safety.
Surely having no control groups invalidates the trial? I have felt (as ex Public Health) that this is crucial as is research into those people who appear to not be affected at all. What is it about their lifestyle, habits, eating patterns, past medical history, approaches to self care, natural immunity, that is supporting these individuals? How about research funding going in to that. Feels unlikely under the prevailing narrative and vested interests.
It's not the time in development, it's the time in testing, that matters. This was tested for too short a time in studies that were underpowered. And BTW: This is NOT a vaccine, and Rachel's changing the definition of "vaccine" so she could call it one with a straight face doesn't make it so. This is a medication. It prevents severe symptoms. It doesn't stop one from being infected or from spreading the disease. It prevents severe symptoms and death in the elderly. It specifically does NOT confer immunity, which is why the definition of vaccine was changed to speak to "protection" rather than immunity.
I really appreciate this thorough approach to the covid vaccine safety question, along with the extensive citations that are included for evidentiary reference. As always, the deep care taken to respect people with viewpoints across the spectrum is very welcome. The practice of choosing to see others through the lens that recognizes their highest self as their truest self is a much needed medicine.
There are some on this thread who have raised objections to the arguments made in this article in favor of vaccine skepticism. The most common objection seems to be that if the arguments are not completely dispositive on the issue, then they should be dismissed entirely.
This kind of objection misses the point. The purpose of presenting those arguments in this article is not to present the case that will convince the vaccine credulous into becoming vaccine skeptics. The point is to demonstrate that there is a strong rational basis for the vaccine skeptical viewpoint. It's not necessary to agree with this viewpoint in order to recognize the rational basis for it as a conclusion that many have arrived at.
The purpose in recognizing the grounds for this rational basis to to realize the need for more transparency and open public discourse on the issue - to remove the barriers of censorship, and the threats to the careers of doctors and scientists who present evidence that challenges the vaccine credulous narrative.
Thank you Charles for your ongoing contribution to this end!
Thank you for not hiding your truth behind lofty language and philosophical pondering. You manage to “come out” firmly against the totalitarian biosecurity state but yet also manage not to dehumanize another side. I am so glad you dare breaking taboos that cannot be mentioned, acknowledging and giving voice to the silent suffering of thousands, and helping us expose the cracks spreading fast through the constitutive narratives of our modernity.
The ignorance and/or cowardice of the scientific community in this time is not unexpected, but is still incredible to witness. Like a car stuck on a railroad track, you can see what is coming yet it is still jarring when the impact happens.
The data gerrymandering going on with the efficacy studies and nuking of controls can no doubt fool much of the public, but the scientific community can no doubt see right through it. Or, if they can’t, then maybe we have worse problems then we thought?
As always, thank you for sharing your wisdom Charles, there is much fertile ground these essays fall into as seeds of truth. My prayer is that they grow into powerful trees.
If there is widespread fraud & deception in the vaccine trials & studies, where's the proof? All I've seen are isolated anecdotes & perhaps-facts.
I certainly see no sign of the scientific community as a whole "seeing through" anything. Just a few isolated individuals.
Maybe they're right. I have no way of knowing, because they aren't providing the facts required to change the minds of anyone who isn't predisposed to believe their claims.
Anecdotes might not be evidence but they are useful clues to understanding what's going on.
A good example is Maddie de Garay; if you read her story you can start to paint a picture of at least how some of the manipulation has happened. She was dropped from the child Pfizer trial after having an adverse event (removing her from the AE statistics) AND she couldn't report her symptoms because the options were just multiple choice that excluded paralysis (her adverse event).
Start here:
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/ten-red-flags-in-the-fdas-risk-benefit
Then try this:
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
Unblinding the trials as soon as they ended, thus eliminating the ability to conduct long-term safety and efficacy data:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4956
Looks like some more solid info there than what's usually on offer. BMJ is certainly a reputable source. I don't have time for more than skim them right now, but my quick take is this:
The Toby Rogers piece still leans heavily toward speculation, and neither of the other two offer what I said above would be required: conclusive evidence of harm from the vaccines. The address the potential for harm, but not harm itself. Unless I missed something.
Hey Bill! Thanks for replying to my comment.
One example that comes to mind recently is the irrational fear of serious illness for children. Vaccinating children with any of the COVID-19 vaccines currently available will almost certainly be a net negative for them/our future. The selfishness on display is pretty incredible. Here’s the latest cdc data on the age spread of death due to COVID-19: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
Only 4/100 COVID-19 deaths are attributed to individuals under the age of 45. Then think how different a 45 year old body is from a 4 year old body to understand the risk benefit a little better. Basically any adverse reaction in children would tip the scale to negative.
Please note: these numbers do not include co-morbidity data which are a known risk multiplier.
Bill - In my view, the most important point is in this article. https://www.scivisionpub.com/pdfs/us-covid19-vaccines-proven-to-cause-more-harm-than-good-based-on-pivotal-clinical-trial-data-analyzed-using-the-proper-scientific--1811.pdf
Even though the trials showed lower COVID hospitalizations in the treated group, there were four times as many TOTAL hospitalizations in the treated group compared to controls. The vaccines are causing collateral damage greater than the benefit they provide.
Oh, my. You'll have to do much better than citing a paper by an outright quack with zero peer credibility.
Check the Wikipedia entry for the author, J. Bart Classen.
wikipedia? well, that place -- while still beloved for the wealth of reliable info available there on _non-contentious_ subjects -- has been depressing to observe over the course of covid, as key covid-tangential articles, especially those of persons & corps involved, were drastically altered & key information outright censored in a systematic way, i.e. to boost one side of the narrative while demolishing the other. The battles in "talk"/edit pages if wiki articles have often been "settled" by refusal to accept any source except (one such as) the NYT; apparently some folks see no catch-22 in this particular 'validation' set-up. Hint: Relying on centralized info-brokers is a surefire way to empower those with vested interest in controlling such bottlenecks.
Also, another red flag 🚩 would be the definition of “fully vaccinated”, which is a very sly way of cherry-picking data that makes the public feel more confident in the product. A very good breakdown of this is found here: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/why-vaccinated-covid-deathshospitalizations
Bill, he addressed this extensively in the essay.
With anecdotes and speculation. And yes, some solid reasons why people with evidence would be reluctant to come forward. That is definitely a critical problem.
Thank you very much Mr. Eisenstein, I myself as a doctor reading this, respect and agree with every single word you mentioned here, and I will try to uphold its meaning, I will never obey my government to do harm, actually I am going to take the government to court over their absurd vaccine mandates and segregation among vaccinated and unvaccinated with a stupid QR code that has no meaning whatsoever but to coerce and enslave the population.
Charles - Of course, I welcome the reminder that the vast majority of people caught in the COVID narrative, and even the people promoting it, are honest, good-hearted people. Some of them are my dear friends and family.
But I'd also ask you to come to terms with evidence that a much smaller number of people engineered the COVID crisis. Whether their purpose was pure evil can be argued. Maybe they thought that taking control of the entire human population was the only way to save the planet from global warming, or some such arrogance. But we can regard them as "honest, good-hearted" people only if we shut our eyes to the evidence.
* There's Event 201, Oct 2019, in which a handful of people from the Gates Foundation, the WEF, and Hopkins University eerily anticipated a coronavirus pandemic, and planned that the response to it should not be to marshall medical resources for global distribution but rather to declare martial law, isolate people from one another, and censor their communications.
* There's the story that Ron Unz tells, based on ABC News at the time, that the US Defense Intelligence Agency knew in Nov 2019 about a highly contagious virus spreading through Wuhan, at a time when even the Chinese government was not yet aware of it. As he says, the person who knows first about the fire is the arsonist.
* There's Moderna's work on a COVID vaccine before the rest of us knew there was a COVID problem. Similarly, the COVID PCR test was being developed before the need for it was established.
* The reason the COVID vaccines are so toxic is that they induce (or deliver) the spike protein of the virus. The spike protein is the part of the virus that was engineered -- the rest of the virus is plausibly natural. And the spike protein was engineered to be toxic in a number of ways, causing blood clots, attacking the CNS and fertility, even suppressing DNA repair. Someone made a knowing decision to develop vaccines that deliver this toxic spike protein to the body, when they might have chosen any harmless epitope from other parts of the virus.
* And there's the broader context of a shutdown of freedoms initiaed with the Patriot Act and prosecuted relentlessly through the War on Terror during the ensuing years. Even though the official stories behind 9/11 and COVID look very different, the policies pursued in response are continuous, and the agenda behind these two manufactured crises look to be one agenda. I am not alone in suspecting that the Deep State that brought us 9/11 is the same Deep State that created SARS-CoV-2 as a bioweapon in service to this agenda.
In summary: I agree that there are a lot of social and political conditions that are no one's fault that made possible the COVID deception. But a balanced view of the deception must also account for a small number of people who have consciously played the role of deceivers.
We have a century of evidence easily discerned by critical thinking ( which they try to tell us 'critical thinking' is bad) why to not trust the government. From my experience this dichotomy is easily defined and divided by those who view the evidence of the govts malfeasance as just more conspiracy garbage....and those who've taken the energy to investigate events for themselves and know the govt can't be trusted to have the best intentions. The former jump to the first of the line, and the later say 'no thank you'. That's the line in the sand. There's a point when govts become an organism to and for themselves, which seek only expansion of the organism and we've long passed that point. And we can see that it's not only the US govt, which is the most likely perpetrator, but it's allies such as Australia and Canada which are leading their citizens into totalitarianism. And it can't be discarded that the west is in conspiracy with China, which is already a totalitarian dystopia. Interestingly, it's the same govts who have the bioweapons labs, who also are becoming totalitarian. And they try to deploy the 'you're a Conspiracy theorist' meme when anyone who knows world history, knows history revolves around conspiracy. That's how govt works. By conspiracy. The whole World Economic Forum 'Build Back Better' ' you'll own nothing, and be happy' is a blueprint long ago written on the Georgia Guidestones. The uber leaders, whoever they are....maybe those who go to Davos, or possibly a rung higher, are well documented planning greater social control and reducing population. In March of 2020, I did a small analysis of the chances that the virus escaped from the wuhan lab, or was only a coincidence it began 10 klicks away. It was a one in 2 million possibility that the virus began by coincidence near the lab. So no one can ever convince me ...we're not dealing with a bioweapon leaked accidentally, or on purpose. But most likely on purpose....because as Jose says....there's a predominate amount of evidence that preceded the pandemic that makes believing it was just a coincidence ....absurd. And so those that have that spike protein circulating inside their bodies will think it's nothing but pure conspiracy theory. But they are the confused, who think their govt cares. The authors insights on why the establishment is lockstepping behind the cdc and fda is very helpful in our discussions with our brainwashed family members, and I will send it out. But the interesting difference in this 'conspiracy theory' is....if ADE is real, time will tell us shortly. So to me, this isn't 'vaccine hesitancy' ....this is political awareness. Open vaers tells me everything I need to know. I put my trust in hydroxy and ivermectin. Luckily we have medical heroes that have come forward and shone a light. And I'll keep cherrypicking my sources, thank you.
Many people are simply not ready to hear what you're saying, and it won't matter how much evidence you provide. They will run away with their hands over their ears because the revelation of such an evil world destroys their peace of mind. However, just because someone can't hear it now doesn't mean that in a few months or years they won't eagerly accept it. For me personally I woke up to these things years ago. For a couple of years it really discouraged me, but then I realized that seeing the war between good and evil (not just between freedom and tyranny) simply reinforces what I believe about God and the scriptures. Now it is still hard to look at, but it also strengthens my faith because it proves the Bible true.
I sympathize with those who still want to believe that qualified people are taking care of things and we just have to go along and it will all be okay. Despite the evidence that they lost definitely ate NOT. Like the kids who learn about Santa 🎅🏻 and choose to continue to believe the story.
*that they most definitely are not
Americans in numbers can never see the truth while they're still trapped in the bubble of their propaganda. They don't even realize they're being propagandized. Luckily I've been outside for over 35 years living in what's now the freest country on the planet. Mexico. Amlo has announced an end to the vax campaign in the first of the coming year, as well as saying there will be no campaign to vaccinate children. We have zero mandates, and meds are available over the counter. Of course the President of the USa, or whoever's really running the country, and the closet dictator to the north will do everything within their power to foil Mexico's freedom. Only time will tell. Yet all of us expats ( examine that phrase ) still have families back home lost in their delusions believing their walking on the yellow brick road. Most people trace, like Edward Curtin, the beginning of this problem to either the jfk assassination , or the induction of 1500 nazi intel agents into the cia after wwii. I prefer to see the big lie originating when Truman told the american people the day after he dropped the bomb that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, when the american govt knew full well they were murdering civilians. Of course, I know it's really a copout ....that it began much earlier at Jamestown. After all, our ancestors killed 4 million people who were living on the land the settlers thought were there's by divine decree. That's the problem with the bible ...it has many interpretations.
The Bible is like anything else. People impose what they want onto it. However, it says what it says.
Excellent points, Josh! I agree with Charles that it is important to point out that the vast majority of people going along with the narrative, probably including the majority of doctors, scientists, and public officials, are not doing it from a desire to do harm, but either out of fear of sticking their necks out, or because they still implicitly trust the system that is guiding their compliance. I also wholeheartedly agree with you that it is of vital importance to recognize that this is not the case for those setting the agenda at the very top. What has been rolled out is clearly deliberate and premeditated, in my view. Those who have done so may or may not believe the harm they are causing is ultimately for the greater good, based on a utilitarian calculation informed by a set of values I absolutely oppose. But regardless of their long-term intentions, the important fact to recognize is that these actions are deliberate, and they have been implemented and bolstered through an ongoing campaign of deception and authoritarianism. We need to realize what we're dealing with at the top of the pyramid.
Yes - my view of this is completely aligned with yours. Thanks for the work you've contributed to this and the larger issues.
Ed Curtin reminds us that there is a continuity between the JFK assassination, the 9/11 attacks, and the COVID crisis: https://odysee.com/@GeopoliticsAndEmpire:f/EdCurtin-911-Covid:2
Thanks for sharing this link! I'm listening to the interview now. This is great information.
'The truth will out.' It is courageous thinkers like Charles, willing to look at the many-faceted sides of any issue, that will shed light on what has been hidden. Those of us with lived experience of vx damage have learned by walking a difficult road to question assumptions we once took for granted. I am one of those appalled by the dumbing down of complex science to a one size fits all approach. Science allows for variables, hypotheses, discussion & exchange of ideas. Thank you, Charles, for shedding light.
Thank you for another brave and thoughtful piece. I have realized that most people who have willingly gotten vaccinated have been terrorized by fear of death from covid. I think a recent poll showed that they think an unvaccinated person who gets covid has a 40% chance of being hospitalized when it's actually leas than 1%. The pharma ad supported mainstream media has so severely censored that they have NO IDEA about the extent of injuries and deaths nor of the effectiveness of numerous early treatments. Look how few of your readers like your writing on this topic. It got politicized. They say I am "siding with the Trumpers." And shut me down. Because The Narrative of NPR, MSNBC and CNN is all they follow and believe. I agree that humility and mutual respect are what's needed. I am listening.
The author brought up the issue of paternalism and the tendency of "experts" to institute and administer policies intended for the good of others. Here is what C.S. Lewis had to say about that.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” -- from 'God in the Dock'
Yes.
With this fragment, stitched within a wonderfully articulated tome to the increasingly gratefully, unvaxxed: “embedding all these forms of arrogance is the base-level mythology of modernity that views humanity as the sole possessor of full beingness in the world, superior to the rest of life, destined to impose order upon chaos. The ambition to tame the wild finds its most highly developed expression in science. Science first tames the world conceptually with its quantities and categories; then it controls the world materially through technology. This brings enormous power.”
Charles surfaces the through line of all his work and proves - not that he needs to - that if anyone thinks he has ‘changed’ - that it is in fact those observers who have been distracted or detracted from their path.
blessings to you dear brother
"It is a short step from this progressivist certitude to forced vaccination (for their own good), censorship (for their own good), and lying (for their own good)."
This is an important point. In Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper spends a considerable number of pages criticizing Plato's Republic, and particularly Plato's support for the "noble lie." In Plato's view, the best society would be a rigid hierarchy led by an intellectual elite (with the philosopher king at the pinnacle) imposing its will on the masses, who are variously ruled by their appetites or spirit as opposed to rationality. Plato advocates for a system in which the elite compel, manipulate, censor, and lie for the "good" of the masses. Popper exposes how this embrace of the noble lie inevitably leads to totalitarian dystopias, and is in fact a primary cause of such dystopias. The noble lie is the enemy of open societies.
From the Popperian perspective, recent history illustrates how we got to where we are. After Trump got elected, there was a paradigm shift among the elites. Journalists and academics threw out the old objectivity or fair and balanced playbook (however tenuously they followed that playbook before) in favor of furthering the #resistance. In so doing, they openly embraced the noble lie. They could spin any tale they wanted so long as it advanced their cause because, in their view, Trump did not deserve a fair hearing. Hence all of the completely baseless Russiagate and related conspiracy theories.
Having embraced the idea of the noble lie, all bets were off. We went from a paradigm in which the media and academia "manufactured consent," as described by Chomsky, to one in which they manufactured reality. Once "safe and effective" became part of the official catechism, there was nothing short of videos of people dying on the spot with vaccine needles in their arms that was going to shake it. You can't reason people out of a belief they did not reason themselves into, and you can't fight a noble lie with facts because facts are beside the point in a manufactured reality. We are well on our way to the totalitarian dystopia Popper describes, and it all begins with the noble lie.
David S...this didn't begin nor even accelerate with Trump. Obama was worse, a cia breed double faced liar of the highest order, and Bush 9/11 and his wmd lie, which was a peak. But this noble lie, as I mentioned earlier, from my reading, began with Truman and his declaration after murdering a few hundred thousand civilians in Japan, that we were destroying their war capacity for the benefit of mankind. Perhaps even back to his creation of cia, thru the unscrupulous nazi banksters, the Dulles brothers, who chaired the Warren commission. And the so-called intelligencia elite , many compromised in university positions or fostering the lies in the elite funded think tanks or ngo's, are no more than puppets for the forces of evil at work in this world, which is in reality controlled ultimately by the banksters who are ushering us into their corporate fascism dystopia. Not uninteresting is the fact that Klaus Schwab is married to a Rothschild. JFK warned us and we didn't listen. Not only....we didn't even consider the prospect that he warned us of. And your mention of Chomsky is interesting, in demonstrating their true insidious disinfo-nature. If you didn't see his rant about locking up the unvaxed without food and water, everyone should, because it fully illustrates the compromised intelligencia's true being. They're like rats rewarded in their maze. And hopefully they'll eat each other in the end.
Outstanding writing and thinking on this topic. Thank you, Charles. I also appreciate the quote from Raelle Kaia about the "bungee hesitant." I was aware of this from the beginning, when the mainstream media starting using "anti-vaxxer" — just like "conspiracy theorist" — as a potent weapon to marginalize anyone challenging dominant narratives that happen to serve our technocracy and corporate power. Also how patronizing "hesitant" is: Everyone I know who hasn't gotten jabbed is militant about it; not hesitant. At the end of the day, the reasons to be cautious are myriad: The so-called "efficacy" of the vaccines plummet after a short period of time. So much so that people now need a "booster" after 6 months. The current vaccines and the boosters are not even oriented toward the current variants. Getting a "booster" is now like getting a flu shot for last year's flu. The there's antibody dependent enhancement, the fact that the spike protein goes systemic and is cardiotoxic and can even cross the blood-brain barrier. Add to this, the fact that the vaccines don't prevent getting SARS-CoV-2 or transmitting it. "Breakthrough cases" are the norm now, and people who are vaccinated are carrying higher viral loads. And then there's the scam of downplaying natural immunity. And then, as Charles writes, why would anyone trust Big Pharma, the captured regulatory agencies and corrupt politicians who are pushing this?? All for a virus with a 99.7 percent survival rate, especially if you're not old with preexisting conditions...
Hi Sean, appreciate your summary, I could feel myself ticking of the points you made as a yes, and yes ....:). One thing I wonder is how to find a middle ground between the vaccine adamanct and the vaccine hesitant. The phrase I use is vaccine intelligent. I feel both side can align to this and perhaps then start to have conversations that are less fraught. I have very good friends who are vaccinated and they were clear it was to live their lives free of control from the authorities. I just could not do that and they understood why. We are able to talk about what is happening without it being a judgement of our personal decisions.
Medicine is both an art and a science. The doctor knows “more” but not necessarily “better.” Only the patient can truly know what is “best” for him/herself and any treatment should take this into consideration.
Given all the unknowns, I feel we should err on the side of choice, not mandates. The only reason I can see that something can work is if it is voluntary. I personally don't "believe" in the vaccine, for many reasons which I won't go into here. The only reason I could see to legitimately urge people to get vaccinated would be, if it does work, then it could free up crucial hospital beds. Otherwise, if those who are vaccinated can't get Covid, they should feel safe. It's those who aren't vaccinated who should feel at risk. Let them take that risk. However, from all the reading I've done, I can't say whether it's working or not. They talk about "breakthrough" cases. They say we need boosters. Nobody and nothing is convincing to me.
The reporting in the clinical trials of the vaccines was extremely flawed There are many people experiencing bad side effects, and although statistically it may not be a significant number, it is still significant. Given all the unknowns, it is incomprehensible to me how we have gotten to this place of mandating the Covid vaccine.
I also want to say that, against my desires and convictions, I did get vaccinated. Some of my family members threatened to boycott the memorial I planned for my mother. My 92 year-old Aunt Hank led the charge. I knew when I was beaten. :) It was more important for me to have them come and feel safe. I did not feel the vaccine was necessary or beneficial, and I may be having some troubling side effects. It's hard to tell. My gut feeling is that it can trigger problems depending on where one's weaknesses are. However, I am confident that no permanent damage has been done and I feel lucky, as I know others have not been so fortunate. There are so many things that we do to ourselves that are harmful - over-indulging in sweets, not exercising, etc. So taking the vaccine didn't seem all that bad, considering.
I have seen the permanent damage from vaccines. Clearly it might be less than the lives lost. But some have actually lost any quality to life. Is this the new survival of the fittest?
I see that you are a Naturopath. Thank you for speaking out. So many in the medical profession are afraid to take a stand.
It is always an uphill battle for the victims. The powers that be squash any opposition or criticism as long as possible, until the wounded get tired and either go away, or if they do persist, it takes years and years of effort to get anything at all. It's always too little and too late. They simply do not have the resources to fight Big Money. But at least one Senator is listening - Ron Johnson (R) Wisconsin. He is convening committee hearings for experts who oppose or question the vaccine and those who have been injured to testify. www.realnotrare.com
I am so with you 🙏
thank you!
(Having been vaccine 'damaged' 20 years ago and living with it, I have been hiding my views on vaccines and unable to talk about it as the reaction is usually aggressive/dismissive/uncredulous. It's only now that I feel I can talk about it openly as this conversation is louder and giving me a voice. I have been ignored, repressed, silenced - a discriminated minority group and its a hard place to be.)
I am a physician and public health epidemiologist. I am vaccinated but have no intention of getting a booster shot. Over the past 4 months the data has becoming clear: there will be no herd immunity. We knew this last year. Coronaviruses are like the flu, you can only manage them not eliminate them. None of the vaccines prevent transmission, no matter how we spin the data. The viral load and shedding from Delta is the same in an infected vaccinated versus unvaccinated individual. And secondary infection rates, as per a UK study, are essentially the same as in the unvaccinated. The period of shedding may be shorter and symptoms may be milder but that poses a risk that a vaccinated individual may be more prone to spread the virus during that shortened shedding period especially if symptoms go unrecognized.
One bit of data that appears to be true based upon multiple studies is the vaccines do reduce the risk of severe disease requiring hospitalization or that results in death. They are not perfect, but they clearly do reduce that risk. So with this data becoming more clear its time for a paradigm shift: vaccinate and boost the vulnerable at risk population. As needed provide ring immunity around them. Teach people to identify their own risk factors so they adjust their choices accordingly. But wide spread mandatory vaccination of young healthy people should no longer be a requisite to achieving the unachievable herd immunity.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this, looking back 2 years later.
Are you seeing vaccine-injuries amongst your patients? Have you lost friends & family to aggressive turbocancers yet?
Should healthy children have been authorized to get the shots?
Do your workplace have a vaccine mandate, and if so, did you lose competent healthcare workers who refused to comply? As a result, did patient-care suffer, and employee burnout skyrocket?
You said you wouldn't get a booster-- but what about the updated omicron bivalent?
Appreciate hearing from someone in your position who was able to see the situation for what it was back in 2021.
Thank you Eileen, I love it when you can feel the integrity and competence of the person and can settle into listening to their views.
https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2021/10/20/medethics-2020-107026
So as not to loose sight of the highly unethical nature of mandating vaccines or other medical treatments, the above linked article, titled “The Ethics of Vaccine Refusal,” is essential reading. Although at times technical, the author nevertheless lays out very cogent and, to me at least, surprisingly very strong ethical arguments against mandatory vaccination even when the intervention in question is a hypothetical perfectly safe and effective preparation. I hope you find it helpful...
ABSTRAC
Proponents of vaccine mandates typically claim that
everyone who can be vaccinated has a moral or ethical
obligation to do so for the sake of those who cannot be
vaccinated, or in the interest of public health. I evaluate
several previously undertheorised premises implicit to the
’obligation to vaccinate’ type of arguments and show
that the general conclusion is false: there is neither a
moral obligation to vaccinate nor a sound ethical basis to
mandate vaccination under any circumstances, even for
hypothetical vaccines that are medically risk-free. Agent
autonomy with respect to self-constitution has absolute
normative priority over reduction or elimination of the
associated risks to life. In practical terms, mandatory
vaccination amounts to discrimination against healthy,
innate biological characteristics, which goes against the
established ethical norms and is also defeasible a priori.
Wonderful, exactly my viewpoint. It doesn't matter if covid is as virulent as Ebola, or if the vaccines are 100% sterilizing, or if the risk of vaccine injury is 0%. It is still unethical to mandate vaccination! Thank you!