Glad you reposted Daniel. Something very nefarious is going on, as you are well aware. I am in British Columbia, but I have friends all over the world, and many concur with the opinions and observations you have noted in your article. That said, I also have many friends and family members who have bought into the massive marketing campaigns promoting the c-vax and believing all numbers. The divisions are so palpable that I am avoiding those I know who have received the vax, because as soon as they've had it, they tend to become extremely judgemental toward those who refuse, or as in the popular media term, "hesitant." We are being bombarded with the push to get the second shot now, which most will take as they do not check the VAERS reports from the U.S. nor do they seem to care.
Those of us who have gone from the "hesitant" to "no possible way" decision are the ones who have been asking critical questions, often based on protecting personal health from a barely-existing virus (in our area, 0-7 cases max this entire time), and are now responding to current information that is barely reaching the mainstream audiences.
In fact, the reality is that they should really be calling for a halt to the vax program unless the protocols are based on ignoring those facts and instead being prepared to deal with the aftermath of potential long-term side effects that will become more clear as the months go on. Unfortunately, many of those health problems will not be attributed to the vaxxes and people will remain oblivious, unless the medical professionals who are on top of this are actually granted a platform to be heard, or the public launches a serious pushback.
I scan major media websites all over the world daily. I notice what is being fed to the consumers of such media in order to shape public opinion, and also note what is being withdrawn, particularly in the case of the pandemic info. As an example, the latest quandary of a lab leak as the virus' origin. What is missing from U.S. media is the Canadian component. It was also a very quick in/out in our own media of late, yet it likely has an important connection to the American story.
Also, the extremely tangled web of elites, intelligence communities, big tech (especially Bill Gates) and the entire thread of connections back to Jeffrey Epstein and his dark empire. Another part of the puzzle that is only beginning to emerge on certain channels (definitely not on FB!)
I just started out questioning the vax's effects for my own health purposes. I thought it would simply be a quiet choice that we could make, and take it or leave it. It is shocking to witness the rise of such divisions between the shot and the un-shot. Although, I suppose we should have known better having read the Lock Step Scenario that was part of the GBN/Rockefeller Foundation's 2010 document on the future of sustainability and technology.
The question I had been concerned about regarding the uptake of the SI spike protein after it was delivered via the mRNA "jab" (cute slang, eh?) has been answered in the attached link. Will this reach the masses? Only time will tell. Oh, and one more question... why isn't the nasal spray, SaNoTize, also being made available on a mass scale? Developed in Canada, approved in NZ and Israel, and currently being tested in India. 100% effective against COVID when administered at first symptoms. Ah, we probably already know the answer — at least if we're thinking critically. For now, I guess I can only say that it is refreshing to hear a credentialed virologist state, "we made a mistake."
Wow, welcome to the whirlwind, Daniel! This is a great and necessary article. What you say from about halfway through till the end is more than enough to have your mouth taped shut by the establishment media
I wasn’t aware you tried to post this on Facebook but it’s obvious why you got slammed. My social media helper said in no uncertain terms that if I posted anything she called “conspiracies/facts” around the virus or the vaccines my page would be compromised/buried/or taken down. Anything. She meant my so-called business page cause I want people to buy my book. She DID say I could post anything I want on my personal page. So did you post this on your personal page? If so, she’s wrong (as I thought might be the case). I push what I have to say to the limit outside of Covid, for now, because I am so off the charts about it
As for Fauci, you’re not going back far enough if you think only right-wing people were saying he’s a crook. That’s been the case before Covid when he was called out for his behavior and character by those doing the research around vaccine companies in general. He’s basically a bag man for Bill Gates
Regarding the lifespan / modern medicine fallacy, I’m glad you mentioned being in the Amazon vs. the party line, because the fact is we’re not only Church of Science (call it “scientism”), we’re Eurocentric. Europe and the US western civ had a terrible history of zero hygiene, terrible diet, crowding, straight through the Middle Ages and into the 20th century — in other words, led by the life denying focus of the (Catholic) Church to ignore and suppress anything having to do with the body. And more recently we’ve added pharmaceuticals, junk food, sugar addiction, the list goes on. No wonder we bought the myth that “before modern medicine people only lived to be 50.” Weston A. Price, dentist in the 1920s wondered if the awful state of his patients’ teeth might be due to diet, travelled around the world visiting “primitive” people and was amazed at their vibrant health, near perfect teeth, etc.
You also say that if Covid being a lab creation is seen a catastrophe created by science, it would change our attitude about biotechnology. That’s not the whole story. It would also bring attention to why these “bioweapons” are being made in the first place — out of a paranoid nationalism setting up insane military profits without end
Playing up the risks of the vaccine is an interesting approach to take. But I think your thought experiment falls short in one key area: the "Evil business oligarch" conspiracy.
You're skeptical of each cog in the machine, all the way up to the top of the totem pole. Sure, people want to get rich, or go down in history for solving a huge outbreak. But being skeptical of each scientist, researcher, business person, and politician within the vertical stack is absolutely unrealistic.
The "Evil business oligarch" conspiracy -- those at the top are playing the rest like marionettes. The scientists working through the process to release these vaccines are honest, well educated individuals.
I'm skeptical of a lot, but this is lunacy. Sorry dude.
Over-arching type conspiracy theories are popular because they dredge up huge levels of emotion from otherwise disconnected psyches. It's Truman Show stuff. There's no single conspiracy going on with Covid that I see. Just a shit ton of the usual predatory opportunism and a heap of powerful agencies trying to use the situation to forward their own agendas.
People said the same thing a year ago when I pointed out the obvious facts that this came from a lab. It’s not my problem you refuse to wake up to what’s going on around you. The information is there for you if you do some digging. I recommend looking into Event 201 as a starting point, and look who funded that also. But some people just refuse to open their eyes.
I also shared this in the FB thread but reposting here:
"I really see a lot of both/and truths in the arguments being made here. It seems to me that some people forget that the way the trials of these vaccines took place were indeed unusual and accelerated by the standards of medicine to date. This can be argued as a necessary measure due to the global emergency, which was buckling hospital systems worldwide. Western countries started widespread distribution under emergency use measures, which was also an unprecedented move at the vast scale it has been happening. At the time of the EUAs getting granted in the US, the preliminary data (a few months worth) suggested high effectiveness against serious illness from Covid for several of the vaccine candidates. That was good enough data for the FDA to move forward with EUAs. This is not the same as full approval, which looks to be coming soon for Pfizer.
Typically in drug and vaccine trials, participants stay blinded and are followed for months to years to identify longer term side effects and variations among ethnic/demographic groups. Many scientists warned that early unblinding would compromise the long term data collection. There was a heated debate on this topic among scientists before EUAs were granted, but it was ultimately left up to the pharma companies who went ahead with unblinding and allowing anyone in their trials to get their vaccine under EUA, essentially removing them from the placebo-controlled trial. This leaves only real world data as the avenue to study long term efficacy and safety, which is subject to many flaws and biases. It is not the gold standard of double blind placebo testing that pharmaceutical candidates have always been held to in the past. Another unprecedented move due to the perceived exigencies of the pandemic.
Clearly this is a deadly pathogen that has killed many people globally and has been wreaking havoc on our health care systems. It makes sense that science would step up to create a vaccine to protect at risk populations. The arguments for mass immunization also make sense to prevent runaway mutations and new variants. But it also makes sense that some people are wary of taking a vaccine that has been subject to several unprecedented aspects to its rollout and is literally still in the experimental phase of development. In the past, it would be a very small subset of the global population that would elect to be in a clinical trial or take a pharmaceutical product under an EUA. People would likely weigh their risks versus benefits carefully. They may want to wait awhile, perhaps years, to see if any as yet unknown side effects may develop after the drug has been in use for some time.
And as many have stated, pharma companies have given us plenty of reasons to distrust them in the past — manipulating clinical trial data to make their products appear safer and more effective, etc., sometimes with horrifying and disastrous consequences for people who took their products. There’s clearly a profit motive involved in pharmaceutical production, and Covid vaccines are no different. Sure, it may be true that the products are also life saving. But it has also been the case that they’ve been damaging or deadly, which often we don’t learn about until many years later.
We also have to consider the degree that confidence in the institutions of government, the media, and public health have been eroded over the years and especially during this pandemic. From the CDCs flip-flopping on mask wearing early on and the WHOs feckless investigation into Covid’s origins, to the media’s knee jerk dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis and recent reversal, to to the rampant ineptitude, corruption, and hyper-partisan madness of our entire corporatized-political edifice from top to bottom — it’s no wonder people are skeptical of the “experts” and “authorities” who change their messaging one day to the next, for reasons that often seem more about optics, politics, and self-preservation than honesty and accountability.
So where does that leave us? Some will say “trust the science” and will deride those voicing concerns as unintelligent or paranoid, even when there are valid aspects to consider, such as I described above. Others will point to legitimate evidence for their concerns and use these to reflexively discount any statements of fact, data, persuasion coming from the authorities and segments of society they’ve deemed untrustworthy. Some will suspect conspiracies, and they may get it half right. Others will reflexively call them kooks but will refuse to see the elements of truth. It’s a messy, fractious war of worldviews playing out in an increasingly complex and inscrutable world."
--
Check out this JAMA article for a window into the ways the unprecedented Covid19 vaccine rollout under EUAs is upending how vaccine trials may be conducted into the future. Blinded placebo RCTs for vaccines may be a thing of the past. Mass distribution of vaccines under EUAs based on preliminary short-term data may be the new precedent. What does this mean for "trusting" science going forward, when the gold standard of research/trialing is being discarded and new "alternative" means of assessing safety and efficacy are being thought up on the fly? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776787
Daniel, thank you very much for this post. It frightens me that your post was blocked on FB. No reason for that except censorship on behalf of big gov't and big pharma. FB is a private company and they can do what they want but it certainly shows their stripes. I agree with you that there are many valid reasons to be concerned about the vaccines. One point that is not getting any press is the fact that these vaccines were funded by large amounts of taxpayer money. Yet to my knowledge they STILL have not released the raw data from their studies. (Pfizer states that they will release the data "upon request, subject to review" but I haven't found any further reporting). With the massive conflict of interest you outline in your post we are still depending on their "90-95% effectiveness, etc." as presented through their filters with no proper, unbiased third party analysis of their data set. I'm not talking about patents or trade secrets--that's a separate issue--i'm talking about the complete data set from their safety studies. If they are so concerned about combatting "vaccine hesitancy" doesn't it stand to reason they would want us to have all the details as to how the studies were conducted? It seems not. I wonder why?
Daniel, I find myself in basic agreement with you here except that I’m not convinced by the data that the virus is in fact that harmful. Crap in equals crap out and the testing data is so incredibly crappy (false positives are the rule not the exception) that all downstream data from the tests is highly suspect. A your essay actually gives me some hope because you never know when you’re taking controversial positions whether you are crazy, or is everyone else actually crazy? In this case, it’s good to see a highly intelligent and informed person like yourself saying what I feel personally. So, please, keep doing what you’re
I only post photos of surfing and fishing on Facebook these days as it has become a venue for intellectual mud wrestling. You raise important and legitimate questions that the neoliberal elite can't answer. Common sense was outlawed in the US after 9/11, now we reap the bitter harvest.
What is going on is quite literally a New World Order conspiracy and agenda. Most people can’t fathom that there is literally a Cult who planned this all out to begin with. That’s why the research continued. The WHO is behind it, Fauci is behind it, Bill Gates is behind it, along with people we may never know the name of. The end goal is nothing short of Global Fascism.
The virus wasn’t only leaked from a lab; it was intentionally released. I’m still trying to work out what role the vaccines play, but in many ways the Pandemic was created FOR the vaccines. Whatever role they play, I feel in my gut that it’s dangerous. Will it kill massive amounts of people in a few years? Will it create a new Super Pandemic mutation? Pay attention to what Bill Gates has said about Pandemic 2 multiple times, and the fact that he funded and I believe attended Event 201 in October 2019. Please look into this if you haven’t.
Or maybe the vaccines will simply sterilize many people. That itself would achieve a mass depopulation Agenda without killing off people. But pay attention to the goals of the Georgia Guidestones also.
What boggles me is that the Left tends to hate Capitalism, but they can’t seem to link this together with Vaccine manufacturers, and the billions in profit they are making, while snubbing and suppressing alternative methods of treatment like Ivermectin. I could go further into why this isn’t Free Market Capitalism, but I will keep it brief, other than mentioning that the State is an ugly marriage with this movement, and the Free Market translates to being Free of State interference.
But staying on point, people need to wake fuck up right now. We entering a very dangerous stage in humanity, and we need a mass awakening and Counterculture to fight against this. We can’t leave it to just the Right Wing Trumpers. Democrats and the Left need to open their eyes and we need to all unite against the REAL enemy.
This is wrong. We are not given the truth, of both sides. The good and the bad. Instead coerced into fear and social pressures. Manipulation from our governing bodies. Strange times we are moving into, and I have empathy for the brain washed.
Amazingly, it also includes an intimation that China creating novel viruses as bioweapons is a concern with some real merit. So wild to see this in a mainstream article.
"As officials at the NSC tracked collaborations between the WIV and military scientists—which stretch back 20 years, with 51 coauthored papers—they also took note of a book flagged by a college student in Hong Kong. Written by a team of 18 authors and editors, 11 of whom worked at China’s Air Force Medical University, the book, Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, explores issues surrounding the development of bioweapons capabilities.
Claiming that terrorists using gene editing had created SARS-CoV-1 as a bioweapon, the book contained some alarming practical trade craft: “Bioweapon aerosol attacks are best conducted during dawn, dusk, night or cloudy weather because ultraviolet rays can damage the pathogens.” And it cited collateral benefits, noting that a sudden surge of hospitalizations could cause a healthcare system to collapse. One of the book’s editors has collaborated on 12 scientific papers with researchers at the WIV.
The book’s dramatic rhetoric could have been hype by Chinese military researchers trying to sell books, or a pitch to the People’s Liberation Army for funding to launch a biowarfare program. When a reporter with the Rupert Murdoch–owned newspaper The Australian published details from the book under the headline “Chinese Held Talks on Bioweapons Benefits,” the Global Times, a Chinese state-owned media outlet, ridiculed the article, noting that the book was for sale on Amazon.
The inflammatory idea of SARS-CoV-2-as-bioweapon has gained traction as an alt-right conspiracy theory, but civilian research under Shi’s supervision that has yet to be made public raises more realistic concerns. Shi’s own comments to a science journal, and grant information available on a Chinese government database, suggest that in the past three years her team has tested two novel but undisclosed bat coronaviruses on humanized mice, to gauge their infectiousness. "
Fauci has no chance to survive the fallout from the lab leak reality. He was sanctioning bat coronavirus research 5 years ago. The guy is toast and he knows it.
The US will hammer China via the mass media for infecting the world. It's the only way they can get out of being owned by China in a decade.
The university of washington began testing for COVID independently, before any large scale standard tests were available.
This is how the virus was first identified in America.
The students and scientists who discovered it did so at risk of their careers to go around regulation and begin testing ASAP to start tracking the spread.
They found the virus, independently. There is no conspiracy here.
I enjoyed this article, mainly due to the skepticism. I try not to take a side, but I am rethinking my political leanings as people try to silence a whole side of the debate. Open communication is what democracies are founded upon, I find it very suspicious when we can't disseminate information. Sure, the wrong information can be hurtful, but truth is where we eventually settle. I mean, imagine if we were able to truly silence all those jerks back in the day who tried to convince us the earth wasn't flat, I mean that fringe group of crazies that went against popular belief and common sense. Does that episode in history teach us we should work harder to silence the opposition? The Nazis tried to silence any discussion other than Hitler is great, Jews are terrible. The FBI tamped down on Civil Rights meetings. It is too preliminary to tell who is right in the vaccine debate, but we know with the mask debate. It seems suspicious when we won't let the different views be exposed, and work so hard to silence them.
Also, you mentioned lifespan, and it is not completely accurate. That (fifty) was the average lifespan, but that was because it was hard to survive childhood, but once you did, statistically speaking you were likely to live to a similar age that we live to now, and this was true hundreds (possibly thousands) of years ago. Of course, if you average the young deaths with the old deaths, you get an average of 30, 40, or 50 (depending on the century) that not very a minority of the population died at. I was just reading an article about this, but I can't find it otherwise I would link it here.
Overthinking things is a thing. The NY Times count right now is 3,544,961 deaths worldwide, a few of them being people I knew who no longer have the option of arguing with you about whether the "morbidity and dangers appear to be overhyped". Sheesh.
Time to untangle the spaghetti. First, you can never save lives. Not gonna happen. The goal is to postpone deaths, plus minimize suffering. The hundreds of thousands if not millions of caregivers, plus medical researchers and yes, even regulators that together, internationally, brought vaccines to the people in record time are heroes in my book.
Stubborn antisocial refusal to get with the program here may kill the refusers' grandmas, or even children. Or it might not. There's a gradient. These folks might not get the vaccine and everything will turn out just fine anyway. Most drunk drivers don't kill anyone. Nevertheless the study of probability and statistics informs intelligent decision making here.
The people who make weapons of war, whether munitions, chemical weapons, AI, biological weapons, or what have you - there's no gradient; these people are the absolute worst of humanity. Did the virus escape from a lab? I dunno. I have no problem with looking into it more if there's new evidence, but whether that did or did not happen, Trump is still an evil, ignorant loser and the virus can still be fatal.
Authoritarianism and censorship are bad things. However, getting booted from Facebook isn't even censorship. If you are spreading doubt and taking Rand Paul's side against Dr. Fauci, I'm fine for them to call BS on that and tell you to get off their lawn. I read your article anyway.
Glad you reposted Daniel. Something very nefarious is going on, as you are well aware. I am in British Columbia, but I have friends all over the world, and many concur with the opinions and observations you have noted in your article. That said, I also have many friends and family members who have bought into the massive marketing campaigns promoting the c-vax and believing all numbers. The divisions are so palpable that I am avoiding those I know who have received the vax, because as soon as they've had it, they tend to become extremely judgemental toward those who refuse, or as in the popular media term, "hesitant." We are being bombarded with the push to get the second shot now, which most will take as they do not check the VAERS reports from the U.S. nor do they seem to care.
Those of us who have gone from the "hesitant" to "no possible way" decision are the ones who have been asking critical questions, often based on protecting personal health from a barely-existing virus (in our area, 0-7 cases max this entire time), and are now responding to current information that is barely reaching the mainstream audiences.
In fact, the reality is that they should really be calling for a halt to the vax program unless the protocols are based on ignoring those facts and instead being prepared to deal with the aftermath of potential long-term side effects that will become more clear as the months go on. Unfortunately, many of those health problems will not be attributed to the vaxxes and people will remain oblivious, unless the medical professionals who are on top of this are actually granted a platform to be heard, or the public launches a serious pushback.
I scan major media websites all over the world daily. I notice what is being fed to the consumers of such media in order to shape public opinion, and also note what is being withdrawn, particularly in the case of the pandemic info. As an example, the latest quandary of a lab leak as the virus' origin. What is missing from U.S. media is the Canadian component. It was also a very quick in/out in our own media of late, yet it likely has an important connection to the American story.
Also, the extremely tangled web of elites, intelligence communities, big tech (especially Bill Gates) and the entire thread of connections back to Jeffrey Epstein and his dark empire. Another part of the puzzle that is only beginning to emerge on certain channels (definitely not on FB!)
I just started out questioning the vax's effects for my own health purposes. I thought it would simply be a quiet choice that we could make, and take it or leave it. It is shocking to witness the rise of such divisions between the shot and the un-shot. Although, I suppose we should have known better having read the Lock Step Scenario that was part of the GBN/Rockefeller Foundation's 2010 document on the future of sustainability and technology.
The question I had been concerned about regarding the uptake of the SI spike protein after it was delivered via the mRNA "jab" (cute slang, eh?) has been answered in the attached link. Will this reach the masses? Only time will tell. Oh, and one more question... why isn't the nasal spray, SaNoTize, also being made available on a mass scale? Developed in Canada, approved in NZ and Israel, and currently being tested in India. 100% effective against COVID when administered at first symptoms. Ah, we probably already know the answer — at least if we're thinking critically. For now, I guess I can only say that it is refreshing to hear a credentialed virologist state, "we made a mistake."
https://omny.fm/shows/on-point-with-alex-pierson/new-peer-reviewed-study-on-covid-19-vaccines-sugge?fbclid=IwAR00mAvZo5k_qXZH5l3qRPbIQGzdgo2Nb_NWE4FSr6TEHZOGTVwrsC16fh0
amazing thank you
Wow, welcome to the whirlwind, Daniel! This is a great and necessary article. What you say from about halfway through till the end is more than enough to have your mouth taped shut by the establishment media
I wasn’t aware you tried to post this on Facebook but it’s obvious why you got slammed. My social media helper said in no uncertain terms that if I posted anything she called “conspiracies/facts” around the virus or the vaccines my page would be compromised/buried/or taken down. Anything. She meant my so-called business page cause I want people to buy my book. She DID say I could post anything I want on my personal page. So did you post this on your personal page? If so, she’s wrong (as I thought might be the case). I push what I have to say to the limit outside of Covid, for now, because I am so off the charts about it
As for Fauci, you’re not going back far enough if you think only right-wing people were saying he’s a crook. That’s been the case before Covid when he was called out for his behavior and character by those doing the research around vaccine companies in general. He’s basically a bag man for Bill Gates
Regarding the lifespan / modern medicine fallacy, I’m glad you mentioned being in the Amazon vs. the party line, because the fact is we’re not only Church of Science (call it “scientism”), we’re Eurocentric. Europe and the US western civ had a terrible history of zero hygiene, terrible diet, crowding, straight through the Middle Ages and into the 20th century — in other words, led by the life denying focus of the (Catholic) Church to ignore and suppress anything having to do with the body. And more recently we’ve added pharmaceuticals, junk food, sugar addiction, the list goes on. No wonder we bought the myth that “before modern medicine people only lived to be 50.” Weston A. Price, dentist in the 1920s wondered if the awful state of his patients’ teeth might be due to diet, travelled around the world visiting “primitive” people and was amazed at their vibrant health, near perfect teeth, etc.
You also say that if Covid being a lab creation is seen a catastrophe created by science, it would change our attitude about biotechnology. That’s not the whole story. It would also bring attention to why these “bioweapons” are being made in the first place — out of a paranoid nationalism setting up insane military profits without end
The Guardian just published this very apropos piece from progressive-left commentator Thomas Frank. It touches on a lot of what Daniel discusses here re: how the lab leak hypothesis threatens to explode the liberal-elite worldview of Scientism and the cult of expertise. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-chin
working link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/01/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak-covid-virus-origins-china
Great Post Daniel. These are important discussions that need to be happening everywhere. This is my latest attempt to get the conversation going:
https://madhavasettymd.medium.com/waking-up-to-wuhan-eight-reasons-why-this-physician-no-longer-trusts-dr-fauci-the-cdc-or-the-fda-31e8ed70ca96
Playing up the risks of the vaccine is an interesting approach to take. But I think your thought experiment falls short in one key area: the "Evil business oligarch" conspiracy.
You're skeptical of each cog in the machine, all the way up to the top of the totem pole. Sure, people want to get rich, or go down in history for solving a huge outbreak. But being skeptical of each scientist, researcher, business person, and politician within the vertical stack is absolutely unrealistic.
The "Evil business oligarch" conspiracy -- those at the top are playing the rest like marionettes. The scientists working through the process to release these vaccines are honest, well educated individuals.
I'm skeptical of a lot, but this is lunacy. Sorry dude.
Over-arching type conspiracy theories are popular because they dredge up huge levels of emotion from otherwise disconnected psyches. It's Truman Show stuff. There's no single conspiracy going on with Covid that I see. Just a shit ton of the usual predatory opportunism and a heap of powerful agencies trying to use the situation to forward their own agendas.
You’re fast asleep.
Sorry dude.
bro, you are head-over-heels in a manic episode. i recommend you take time off of the internet for your well being.
People said the same thing a year ago when I pointed out the obvious facts that this came from a lab. It’s not my problem you refuse to wake up to what’s going on around you. The information is there for you if you do some digging. I recommend looking into Event 201 as a starting point, and look who funded that also. But some people just refuse to open their eyes.
I also shared this in the FB thread but reposting here:
"I really see a lot of both/and truths in the arguments being made here. It seems to me that some people forget that the way the trials of these vaccines took place were indeed unusual and accelerated by the standards of medicine to date. This can be argued as a necessary measure due to the global emergency, which was buckling hospital systems worldwide. Western countries started widespread distribution under emergency use measures, which was also an unprecedented move at the vast scale it has been happening. At the time of the EUAs getting granted in the US, the preliminary data (a few months worth) suggested high effectiveness against serious illness from Covid for several of the vaccine candidates. That was good enough data for the FDA to move forward with EUAs. This is not the same as full approval, which looks to be coming soon for Pfizer.
Typically in drug and vaccine trials, participants stay blinded and are followed for months to years to identify longer term side effects and variations among ethnic/demographic groups. Many scientists warned that early unblinding would compromise the long term data collection. There was a heated debate on this topic among scientists before EUAs were granted, but it was ultimately left up to the pharma companies who went ahead with unblinding and allowing anyone in their trials to get their vaccine under EUA, essentially removing them from the placebo-controlled trial. This leaves only real world data as the avenue to study long term efficacy and safety, which is subject to many flaws and biases. It is not the gold standard of double blind placebo testing that pharmaceutical candidates have always been held to in the past. Another unprecedented move due to the perceived exigencies of the pandemic.
Clearly this is a deadly pathogen that has killed many people globally and has been wreaking havoc on our health care systems. It makes sense that science would step up to create a vaccine to protect at risk populations. The arguments for mass immunization also make sense to prevent runaway mutations and new variants. But it also makes sense that some people are wary of taking a vaccine that has been subject to several unprecedented aspects to its rollout and is literally still in the experimental phase of development. In the past, it would be a very small subset of the global population that would elect to be in a clinical trial or take a pharmaceutical product under an EUA. People would likely weigh their risks versus benefits carefully. They may want to wait awhile, perhaps years, to see if any as yet unknown side effects may develop after the drug has been in use for some time.
And as many have stated, pharma companies have given us plenty of reasons to distrust them in the past — manipulating clinical trial data to make their products appear safer and more effective, etc., sometimes with horrifying and disastrous consequences for people who took their products. There’s clearly a profit motive involved in pharmaceutical production, and Covid vaccines are no different. Sure, it may be true that the products are also life saving. But it has also been the case that they’ve been damaging or deadly, which often we don’t learn about until many years later.
We also have to consider the degree that confidence in the institutions of government, the media, and public health have been eroded over the years and especially during this pandemic. From the CDCs flip-flopping on mask wearing early on and the WHOs feckless investigation into Covid’s origins, to the media’s knee jerk dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis and recent reversal, to to the rampant ineptitude, corruption, and hyper-partisan madness of our entire corporatized-political edifice from top to bottom — it’s no wonder people are skeptical of the “experts” and “authorities” who change their messaging one day to the next, for reasons that often seem more about optics, politics, and self-preservation than honesty and accountability.
So where does that leave us? Some will say “trust the science” and will deride those voicing concerns as unintelligent or paranoid, even when there are valid aspects to consider, such as I described above. Others will point to legitimate evidence for their concerns and use these to reflexively discount any statements of fact, data, persuasion coming from the authorities and segments of society they’ve deemed untrustworthy. Some will suspect conspiracies, and they may get it half right. Others will reflexively call them kooks but will refuse to see the elements of truth. It’s a messy, fractious war of worldviews playing out in an increasingly complex and inscrutable world."
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Check out this JAMA article for a window into the ways the unprecedented Covid19 vaccine rollout under EUAs is upending how vaccine trials may be conducted into the future. Blinded placebo RCTs for vaccines may be a thing of the past. Mass distribution of vaccines under EUAs based on preliminary short-term data may be the new precedent. What does this mean for "trusting" science going forward, when the gold standard of research/trialing is being discarded and new "alternative" means of assessing safety and efficacy are being thought up on the fly? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776787
Daniel, thank you very much for this post. It frightens me that your post was blocked on FB. No reason for that except censorship on behalf of big gov't and big pharma. FB is a private company and they can do what they want but it certainly shows their stripes. I agree with you that there are many valid reasons to be concerned about the vaccines. One point that is not getting any press is the fact that these vaccines were funded by large amounts of taxpayer money. Yet to my knowledge they STILL have not released the raw data from their studies. (Pfizer states that they will release the data "upon request, subject to review" but I haven't found any further reporting). With the massive conflict of interest you outline in your post we are still depending on their "90-95% effectiveness, etc." as presented through their filters with no proper, unbiased third party analysis of their data set. I'm not talking about patents or trade secrets--that's a separate issue--i'm talking about the complete data set from their safety studies. If they are so concerned about combatting "vaccine hesitancy" doesn't it stand to reason they would want us to have all the details as to how the studies were conducted? It seems not. I wonder why?
Daniel, I find myself in basic agreement with you here except that I’m not convinced by the data that the virus is in fact that harmful. Crap in equals crap out and the testing data is so incredibly crappy (false positives are the rule not the exception) that all downstream data from the tests is highly suspect. A your essay actually gives me some hope because you never know when you’re taking controversial positions whether you are crazy, or is everyone else actually crazy? In this case, it’s good to see a highly intelligent and informed person like yourself saying what I feel personally. So, please, keep doing what you’re
Daniel:
That is fucking absurd, but not surprising.
I only post photos of surfing and fishing on Facebook these days as it has become a venue for intellectual mud wrestling. You raise important and legitimate questions that the neoliberal elite can't answer. Common sense was outlawed in the US after 9/11, now we reap the bitter harvest.
Keep up the good work,
Peter
https://covid19.unair.ac.id/&ved=2ahUKEwimsLLfhIryAhXB8HMBHY-TAqEQFjAAegQIFhAC&usg=AOvVaw3b-yuqMFfLQhUG0mgXd4V7
What is going on is quite literally a New World Order conspiracy and agenda. Most people can’t fathom that there is literally a Cult who planned this all out to begin with. That’s why the research continued. The WHO is behind it, Fauci is behind it, Bill Gates is behind it, along with people we may never know the name of. The end goal is nothing short of Global Fascism.
The virus wasn’t only leaked from a lab; it was intentionally released. I’m still trying to work out what role the vaccines play, but in many ways the Pandemic was created FOR the vaccines. Whatever role they play, I feel in my gut that it’s dangerous. Will it kill massive amounts of people in a few years? Will it create a new Super Pandemic mutation? Pay attention to what Bill Gates has said about Pandemic 2 multiple times, and the fact that he funded and I believe attended Event 201 in October 2019. Please look into this if you haven’t.
Or maybe the vaccines will simply sterilize many people. That itself would achieve a mass depopulation Agenda without killing off people. But pay attention to the goals of the Georgia Guidestones also.
What boggles me is that the Left tends to hate Capitalism, but they can’t seem to link this together with Vaccine manufacturers, and the billions in profit they are making, while snubbing and suppressing alternative methods of treatment like Ivermectin. I could go further into why this isn’t Free Market Capitalism, but I will keep it brief, other than mentioning that the State is an ugly marriage with this movement, and the Free Market translates to being Free of State interference.
But staying on point, people need to wake fuck up right now. We entering a very dangerous stage in humanity, and we need a mass awakening and Counterculture to fight against this. We can’t leave it to just the Right Wing Trumpers. Democrats and the Left need to open their eyes and we need to all unite against the REAL enemy.
Also I highly recommend giving this a watch. A highly respected doctor reveals the truth of what’s going on. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/nq997f/interview_with_the_most_published_doctor_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb
This is wrong. We are not given the truth, of both sides. The good and the bad. Instead coerced into fear and social pressures. Manipulation from our governing bodies. Strange times we are moving into, and I have empathy for the brain washed.
Just read the Vanity Fair piece on the machinations within the US gov't to quash investigations into a lab origin for SARS Cov-2. Hands down the best investigative journalism I've read in a long while. There's so much smoke pouring out of this story. I hope people read it. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins
Amazingly, it also includes an intimation that China creating novel viruses as bioweapons is a concern with some real merit. So wild to see this in a mainstream article.
"As officials at the NSC tracked collaborations between the WIV and military scientists—which stretch back 20 years, with 51 coauthored papers—they also took note of a book flagged by a college student in Hong Kong. Written by a team of 18 authors and editors, 11 of whom worked at China’s Air Force Medical University, the book, Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, explores issues surrounding the development of bioweapons capabilities.
Claiming that terrorists using gene editing had created SARS-CoV-1 as a bioweapon, the book contained some alarming practical trade craft: “Bioweapon aerosol attacks are best conducted during dawn, dusk, night or cloudy weather because ultraviolet rays can damage the pathogens.” And it cited collateral benefits, noting that a sudden surge of hospitalizations could cause a healthcare system to collapse. One of the book’s editors has collaborated on 12 scientific papers with researchers at the WIV.
The book’s dramatic rhetoric could have been hype by Chinese military researchers trying to sell books, or a pitch to the People’s Liberation Army for funding to launch a biowarfare program. When a reporter with the Rupert Murdoch–owned newspaper The Australian published details from the book under the headline “Chinese Held Talks on Bioweapons Benefits,” the Global Times, a Chinese state-owned media outlet, ridiculed the article, noting that the book was for sale on Amazon.
The inflammatory idea of SARS-CoV-2-as-bioweapon has gained traction as an alt-right conspiracy theory, but civilian research under Shi’s supervision that has yet to be made public raises more realistic concerns. Shi’s own comments to a science journal, and grant information available on a Chinese government database, suggest that in the past three years her team has tested two novel but undisclosed bat coronaviruses on humanized mice, to gauge their infectiousness. "
What virus? There has never been any isolated virus found to prove contagion. Insilico virus is what they are selling on the news.
Faucci and NIH own 1/2 of Moderna stock
Fauci has no chance to survive the fallout from the lab leak reality. He was sanctioning bat coronavirus research 5 years ago. The guy is toast and he knows it.
The US will hammer China via the mass media for infecting the world. It's the only way they can get out of being owned by China in a decade.
The university of washington began testing for COVID independently, before any large scale standard tests were available.
This is how the virus was first identified in America.
The students and scientists who discovered it did so at risk of their careers to go around regulation and begin testing ASAP to start tracking the spread.
They found the virus, independently. There is no conspiracy here.
I enjoyed this article, mainly due to the skepticism. I try not to take a side, but I am rethinking my political leanings as people try to silence a whole side of the debate. Open communication is what democracies are founded upon, I find it very suspicious when we can't disseminate information. Sure, the wrong information can be hurtful, but truth is where we eventually settle. I mean, imagine if we were able to truly silence all those jerks back in the day who tried to convince us the earth wasn't flat, I mean that fringe group of crazies that went against popular belief and common sense. Does that episode in history teach us we should work harder to silence the opposition? The Nazis tried to silence any discussion other than Hitler is great, Jews are terrible. The FBI tamped down on Civil Rights meetings. It is too preliminary to tell who is right in the vaccine debate, but we know with the mask debate. It seems suspicious when we won't let the different views be exposed, and work so hard to silence them.
Also, you mentioned lifespan, and it is not completely accurate. That (fifty) was the average lifespan, but that was because it was hard to survive childhood, but once you did, statistically speaking you were likely to live to a similar age that we live to now, and this was true hundreds (possibly thousands) of years ago. Of course, if you average the young deaths with the old deaths, you get an average of 30, 40, or 50 (depending on the century) that not very a minority of the population died at. I was just reading an article about this, but I can't find it otherwise I would link it here.
Andy Fusso
Overthinking things is a thing. The NY Times count right now is 3,544,961 deaths worldwide, a few of them being people I knew who no longer have the option of arguing with you about whether the "morbidity and dangers appear to be overhyped". Sheesh.
Time to untangle the spaghetti. First, you can never save lives. Not gonna happen. The goal is to postpone deaths, plus minimize suffering. The hundreds of thousands if not millions of caregivers, plus medical researchers and yes, even regulators that together, internationally, brought vaccines to the people in record time are heroes in my book.
Stubborn antisocial refusal to get with the program here may kill the refusers' grandmas, or even children. Or it might not. There's a gradient. These folks might not get the vaccine and everything will turn out just fine anyway. Most drunk drivers don't kill anyone. Nevertheless the study of probability and statistics informs intelligent decision making here.
The people who make weapons of war, whether munitions, chemical weapons, AI, biological weapons, or what have you - there's no gradient; these people are the absolute worst of humanity. Did the virus escape from a lab? I dunno. I have no problem with looking into it more if there's new evidence, but whether that did or did not happen, Trump is still an evil, ignorant loser and the virus can still be fatal.
Authoritarianism and censorship are bad things. However, getting booted from Facebook isn't even censorship. If you are spreading doubt and taking Rand Paul's side against Dr. Fauci, I'm fine for them to call BS on that and tell you to get off their lawn. I read your article anyway.
Andy you need to do more research.