Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[Joe Hillshoist]

If they have it.

[The Bernician]

Up-thread, someone raised the point of people being vaccinated thus becoming more bought in to the narrative. Obviously, the more someone signs up to a position and the longer they hold it, the harder it is psychologically for them to shift it. But encouraging, cajoling and ultimately forcing people to change their physical selves in a show of obedience will surely make that entrenchment all the deeper. And the vax passports will force people to take this on as an identity. For that among many other reasons, my position - until such point as the threshold for my compliance is met (which, of course, I don't know yet. Would it be losing my job? My home? My child? I'm not sure, but it is higher than going to the pub) is that I refuse to share my vaccination status, as I would refuse to share all medical records for non-medical reasons. In the real world, of course, this would be tantamount to declaring myself as unvaccinated, but I think it's important that we all refuse to play along with that labelling - regardless (of course) of our vaccination status. (I don't intend to discuss my own here.) I'd be interested to hear from anyone here who self-declares as vaccinated who disagrees with this. After all, this entails turning down a 'privilege' granted for compliance, at a personal cost, however large or small.

There are many red flags showing that the passports have no public health intention, but the red-est of all is the refusal (increasingly becoming uniform) to accept natural immunity. The nurse quoted up-thread who gave that reason is making an argument to which there is no possible counter that doesn't involve an outright lie. I don't think any argument should rest on that - there is a higher principle in play - but it's not bad to have an irrefutable justification to hand.

Once the virus is endemic, and it almost is, vaccination passports won't be any use anyway. The vaccines we have now don't always prevent infection. They will most of the time for most people tho. (And they do seem to lower the risk of death or serious illness significantly. You don't have to accept this. I'm not gonna argue about numbers with you or anyone else. Its pointless.)

So the reason for a vaccine passport - to prevent infection spreading - no longer exists.

If anything it will create a false sense of security.

Rapid forms of testing will be necessary to control outbreaks and probably will become part of the process for attending first world circuses like sporting events, concerts and the like. (Dunno what happens to the local pub in all this.) Because vaccinated people will still spread the virus.

Thanks for engaging. And, yes, it is pointless. But, I think, not for the reasons you imply (that everyone is talking past everyone), but that we're past that point, because it's now a political/moral question and not an epidemiological one.

In some circumstances, the reason for a vaccine passport could indeed be to prevent infection spreading. And, yes, all things being equal, in this case, vaccine passports alone in this case would reduce spread somewhat. For me, making participation in society more or less conditional on submission to a particular medical intervention is a line that cannot be crossed in a liberal democracy (i.e., the line that is instead being crossed is the one that separates liberal democracy from not-liberal-democracy). Now, one could say (and I'm guessing you would too) that this is too absolutist of me. But in that case, we'd need to consider proportionality. This has two sides: on one side, we need to think of the severity / risk of the disease, and of the efficacy of the medical intervention in question. On the other, we need to think about the downsides to the individual of what we're asking them to do: how provably safe is the intervention? How do known risks compare with benefits, for the individual in question? How do these trade off against collective benefit, i.e. how well does the intervention reduce risks to others and/or societal burdens, e.g. to the health system? Those sort of questions are the next tier down if you're not opposed to them on principle.

Beyond that, I'd make the case that all things are not equal. There are alternatives, which are better and/or more logical. Let's put to one side the question of suppressed treatments. One doesn't even need to accept the evidence of the efficacy of these to see that suppression of that evidence is problematic. Then, there is the red flag to which I alluded: natural immunity is very clearly better for protecting the collective than are the favoured treatments, so its rejection is pretty strong evidence that this is not the purpose at all. And, even if we accept the terms you outline, then frequent testing is also far more likely to reduce spread than proof of having had the favoured medical treatment, as this allows us to exclude a far higher proportion of the infectious. Given what a huge step introducing these forms of discrimination is, one must once again ask questions not only of motives (even if you disagree with me that the above is proof of some other motivation than public health), but of proportionality.

[mentalgongfu2]

So Joe Biden just threatened to get me fired if I don't immediately submit to getting my first two doses of a shitty, leaky, dangerous mRNA "vaccine" that does not even protect me (and certainly not anyone else) against the now dominant Delta variant.

I am wondering what everyone here thinks about this. Do you all have Joe Biden's back on this? You know, because he is so obviously violating my right to informed consent for my own good?

Or maybe we should consider a hypothetical situation in which Joe Biden would be in right? Or talk about a heinous Texas law instead? Or maybe we should all discuss just how much this is in no way like any other totalitarian decree in human history?

Biden's executive overreach should be struck down by the courts immediately, but if it it isn't (since he is building on decades of similar executive order overreach), it's a useful reminder to point out that you could instead just face a weekly covid test.

Is that also a horribly concerning precedent to set? Yes, it is.

But as of today, he is threatening to have you fired if you aren't vaccinated AND refuse to submit to a regular covid test. You probably consider that splitting hairs, but I have and always will believe the devil is in the details. To be clear, I am 100 percent against the measures Biden announced today, for many reasons.I still think the stuff posted here claiming "scamdemic" is generally poorly-sourced bullshit from hucksters.

I think many of the people on this thread are guilty of promoting bullshit. But I do agree this executive order is horrible. It won't help and will probably make everything worse.

As far as the Nazi comparison you keep harping on, I don't get why you're so insistent on not-so-subtly bringing it up even after Jack's message a few pages back. There's a big difference between an entire religious, cultural and ethnic group being forced to wear a symbol for identification and ultimate murder and people who voluntarily don that symbol so they can pretend their current real or perceived oppression is the same. It's horribly insulting, and y'all should let it go for that reason alone and find another way to promote the victim complex you're so insistent on maintaining.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Thanks for engaging. And, yes, it is pointless. But, I think, not for the reasons you imply (that everyone is talking past everyone), but that we're past that point, because it's now a political/moral question and not an epidemiological one.

In some circumstances, the reason for a vaccine passport could indeed be to prevent infection spreading. And, yes, all things being equal, in this case, vaccine passports alone in this case would reduce spread somewhat. For me, making participation in society more or less conditional on submission to a particular medical intervention is a line that cannot be crossed in a liberal democracy (i.e., the line that is instead being crossed is the one that separates liberal democracy from not-liberal-democracy). Now, one could say (and I'm guessing you would too) that this is too absolutist of me.

Maybe its absolutist. My old man came to Australia from Fiji. He had to have a smallpox vaccination to return to Australia if he went home. The rest of us had to be vaccinated if we went back with him but by the time I was 5 that was done. I have a smallpox vaccination scar but my younger brother doesn't because in that five years it was considered eradicated. There are other examples too. In liberal democracies, but were they real at any point in the last 50 years.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” - Zappa.

But in that case, we'd need to consider proportionality. This has two sides: on one side, we need to think of the severity / risk of the disease, and of the efficacy of the medical intervention in question. On the other, we need to think about the downsides to the individual of what we're asking them to do: how provably safe is the intervention? How do known risks compare with benefits, for the individual in question? How do these trade off against collective benefit, i.e. how well does the intervention reduce risks to others and/or societal burdens, e.g. to the health system? Those sort of questions are the next tier down if you're not opposed to them on principle.

Beyond that, I'd make the case that all things are not equal. There are alternatives, which are better and/or more logical. Let's put to one side the question of suppressed treatments. One doesn't even need to accept the evidence of the efficacy of these to see that suppression of that evidence is problematic. Then, there is the red flag to which I alluded: natural immunity is very clearly better for protecting the collective than are the favoured treatments, so its rejection is pretty strong evidence that this is not the purpose at all. And, even if we accept the terms you outline, then frequent testing is also far more likely to reduce spread than proof of having had the favoured medical treatment, as this allows us to exclude a far higher proportion of the infectious. Given what a huge step introducing these forms of discrimination is, one must once again ask questions not only of motives (even if you disagree with me that the above is proof of some other motivation than public health), but of proportionality.

The disease is fucked. It targets enzymes on your epithelial cells in all sorts of vital parts of your body. It s not just an upper respiratory disease. Its systemic.

Right now according to some people (nurses I know) the NSW health system is on the verge of collapse in parts of the city.

Collapse doesn't mean bodies piling up in the street (tho eventually it might.) It means the health system can't function. So people who would otherwise survive heart attacks or serious car accidents won't because in some hospitals there is no room left for them to get proper treatment. That is just what I've heard, it not from an official source or anything. And it might not come to pass but what it does mean is the informal comms networks that nurses in NSW use are passing the message that this is as full on as anything people in the effected parts of Sydney have ever seen. They don't know if their medical infrastructure will cope and if it doesn't they can't provide the care they expect to be able to. They are worried about having to choose who to treat and who to leave to die.

It might not come to that but the fact they are worried about it is bad enough really.

[The Bernician]

Anyhow, you also talk about hows and whys. I've had the pleasure of being a full-time parent to an extremely inquisitive and questioning now-toddler. 'Why?' came extremely early, and to try and answer those questions properly is no small matter. Usually, after checking she doesn't mean 'how?

Children haven't been brainwashed yet, so when they are told the world is a certain way, they naturally question it . It's actually the most admirable common trait in children.

Most people couldn't go three 'whys' deep with a toddler without being thrust into an existential crises. Parents are put under more intellectual scrutiny than most professors who lecture these toddlers as students once they have become fully developed personalities.

Every time we go outside we put on clothes. We never think about why we do this. If it is a warm and sunny day, a toddler may think it stupid to wear clothes outside, and ask their parent 'why' they must do so. The parent then must either let their toddler go out naked and likely be embarrassed for them, or teach their toddler to be ashamed of their body to fit in. Pretty confronting stuff people learn if they actively engage with parenting.

It's ashame a lot of people don't really want to raise their kids these days, and see that activity as a burden rather than something they can learn from. Anyway, doesn't sound like you have that issue though.

But beyond this early childhood scenario , the entire cycle of parenthood is a course on the foundation of power relationships. Parents who do not recognise the change in the real power relationship between them and their child will have an unstable relationship with them. This generally becomes acute in the early teens when there is a disagreement over, not only rules, but most importantly a parents ability to enforce the rules. A parent who makes rules they can't enforce will become an illegitimate authority, BUT, this is exactly the same for a goverment! If you make rules, you must enforce them. If you cannot enforce the rules, you must get rid of them to reflect the rules you can enforce. Some parents become authoritarian! They become reactionary in an attempt to hang onto the old power relationship which granted them more control over their child. But if the will of the teenager does not break, then the relationship will break. Some parents will recognise the power relationship has shifted, and work with the teenager in granting them more freedoms, thus allowing them to keep some control, which in my opinion is responsible government, so probably responsible parenting too. Others would give up trying to control them completely, which would be zero goverment, or anarchy.

I'm not even a parent but find all this shit so interesting.

I don't want to bang on too much and stray too far away from the topic, as I definitely have the zealotry of a convert on this (the conversion being from an unthinking 'kids are basically just stupid adults' to realising they are so much more). The 'why?' game, and seeing how many in a row you can answer, or if you can answer a string to the satisfaction of the toddler, is for me great fun, and very challenging - but you need lots of patience. And, sure, many people don't really want to parent their kids, but we also live in societies that make people time poor, and anxious. It's hard to carve out the mental space to feel like you have time to do it properly, and I'm not going to beat up on anyone for not managing it.

(Funnily enough, I just paused writing for a ten minute conversation about why she can't go to nursery today after vomiting yesterday. I don't pretend that rules always make sense, and discuss why sometimes we accept ones that don't, and sometimes we don't.)

It was obviously progress in our societies that women were no longer (to the same extent) to domestic and reproductive tasks, but that wasn't given to us out of altruism. Those tasks have now been handed over to be at the very least mediated by the market, and I agree that we suffer for it. I often wonder what forcibly separating children from their parents for most of their waking lives from the age of one (or sometimes younger) is doing to their development, and particularly to their levels of security and/or anxiety. Much as parents reassure each other 'they cry the first few times, but they get over it', it seems like it could open them up to the sort of governmental abuses we're seeing at the moment. To be clear, I don't blame parents for the choices they make: we make our own histories, but not in conditions of our own choosing.

(Ten minute detour on veganism and animal welfare more generally. I really get all my moral positions interrogated pretty comprehensively on a regular basis.)

Just responding to your nakedness example, I believe it is possible to do that in a more enlightened way - by allowing nudity where there's no reason not to, and discussing the level of warmth and clothing needed for a given day, as well as explaining (if it comes up) that as people get older they often feel uncomfortable being naked. I don't really believe in avoiding 'age inappropriate' questions (though the fullness of the answer must be judged carefully). But ultimately, wider societal and peer pressures are going to take over whatever you do, so I guess the first years are about laying a foundation of questioning open-mindedness.

And your analogies as to where things stand today make sense. Interestingly, it's generally parents who have fucked up the relationship who then turn authoritarian, as the channels of communication gradually get closed down, probably through shutting down conversations and brushing off questions. Though there will regardless be a tough period of the child separating themselves from your worldview where it's probably best to accept and perhaps even embrace the need for some conflict. With governments, there are obviously some differences, but I feel that in both cases authority must always be earned, and that the power a government or parent enjoys should always be seen as a sacred duty more than as a perk to be enjoyed. In neither case is 'just because' good enough, but nor is a half-arsed, non-sensical justification. Though clearly it's not quite as clear-cut as this, as there will be at the margins some behaviours or individuals that do need reining in, and of course that ambiguity opens up infinite avenues for abuse from infinitesimally small to unimaginably vast. In theory, in a democracy, governments are easier to escape than parents, but in reality I'd suggest it's the other way round: the tendency of a parent's power is to wane as children's independence grows to completion, whereas society-level power will always tend towards consolidation and centralisation. In each case, though, the limits to what can be done to enforce rules must be constructed somehow outwith that power relationship, and my big fear right now is that those limits are being destroyed. And probably sitting around waiting for a saviour isn't a great strategy.

[Harvey]

So the reason for a vaccine passport - to prevent infection spreading - no longer exists.

The spread of infection could not be more irrelevant to the purpose and design of 'Vaccine' or 'Health' Passports. The purpose of a 'vaccine passport' is to permanently restrict and control access to every aspect of society. The purpose is to entrench deep and lasting apartheid on the sole criteria of compliance to power. It's the tried and tested method of despots.

[The Bernician]

Thanks for engaging. And, yes, it is pointless. But, I think, not for the reasons you imply (that everyone is talking past everyone), but that we're past that point, because it's now a political/moral question and not an epidemiological one.

In some circumstances, the reason for a vaccine passport could indeed be to prevent infection spreading. And, yes, all things being equal, in this case, vaccine passports alone in this case would reduce spread somewhat. For me, making participation in society more or less conditional on submission to a particular medical intervention is a line that cannot be crossed in a liberal democracy (i.e., the line that is instead being crossed is the one that separates liberal democracy from not-liberal-democracy). Now, one could say (and I'm guessing you would too) that this is too absolutist of me.

Maybe its absolutist. My old man came to Australia from Fiji. He had to have a smallpox vaccination to return to Australia if he went home. The rest of us had to be vaccinated if we went back with him but by the time I was 5 that was done. I have a smallpox vaccination scar but my younger brother doesn't because in that five years it was considered eradicated. There are other examples too. In liberal democracies, but were they real at any point in the last 50 years.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” - Zappa.

But in that case, we'd need to consider proportionality. This has two sides: on one side, we need to think of the severity / risk of the disease, and of the efficacy of the medical intervention in question. On the other, we need to think about the downsides to the individual of what we're asking them to do: how provably safe is the intervention? How do known risks compare with benefits, for the individual in question? How do these trade off against collective benefit, i.e. how well does the intervention reduce risks to others and/or societal burdens, e.g. to the health system? Those sort of questions are the next tier down if you're not opposed to them on principle.

Beyond that, I'd make the case that all things are not equal. There are alternatives, which are better and/or more logical. Let's put to one side the question of suppressed treatments. One doesn't even need to accept the evidence of the efficacy of these to see that suppression of that evidence is problematic. Then, there is the red flag to which I alluded: natural immunity is very clearly better for protecting the collective than are the favoured treatments, so its rejection is pretty strong evidence that this is not the purpose at all. And, even if we accept the terms you outline, then frequent testing is also far more likely to reduce spread than proof of having had the favoured medical treatment, as this allows us to exclude a far higher proportion of the infectious. Given what a huge step introducing these forms of discrimination is, one must once again ask questions not only of motives (even if you disagree with me that the above is proof of some other motivation than public health), but of proportionality.

The disease is fucked. It targets enzymes on your epithelial cells in all sorts of vital parts of your body. It s not just an upper respiratory disease. Its systemic.

Right now according to some people (nurses I know) the NSW health system is on the verge of collapse in parts of the city.

Collapse doesn't mean bodies piling up in the street (tho eventually it might.) It means the health system can't function. So people who would otherwise survive heart attacks or serious car accidents won't because in some hospitals there is no room left for them to get proper treatment. That is just what I've heard, it not from an official source or anything. And it might not come to pass but what it does mean is the informal comms networks that nurses in NSW use are passing the message that this is as full on as anything people in the effected parts of Sydney have ever seen. They don't know if their medical infrastructure will cope and if it doesn't they can't provide the care they expect to be able to. They are worried about having to choose who to treat and who to leave to die.

It might not come to that but the fact they are worried about it is bad enough really.

Right. The example as you describe it sounds pretty reasonable. So perhaps I'm not absolutist. To me, I guess, it's kind of theoretical for a couple of reasons. First, my apparent absolutism most likely stems from the fact I don't have sufficient trust in the existing institutions to prevent over-reach. Second, the conditions in the questions I posed are clearly not met. Apparently, we disagree on the severity of the illness itself, which is fine. (Briefly, my judgement on what I've read and seen is that this is a disease that burns - at a population level - brightly, but pretty briefly, if left to its own devices. But my position on vax passports doesn't rest on that, so it's not really worth debating.) But the flip side - of the track record of the vaccines - is strong enough on its own to render comparisons with smallpox moot. And the well-rehearsed litany of behaviours by governments around the world not only cast (to put it mildly) suspicion on their motives, but present some things that I really can be absolutist on, such as choosing propagandising fear directed at the mass of their populations over calm explication and scientific debate. That is relevant here, because trust and faith are necessary if basic democratic principles are to be suspended for specific, time-limited purposes (even if one judges that doing such is proportionate).

[Harvey]

He had to have a smallpox vaccination to return to Australia if he went home. The rest of us had to be vaccinated if we went back with him but by the time I was 5 that was done. I have a smallpox vaccination scar but my younger brother doesn't because in that five years it was considered eradicated. There are other examples too.

Were any of these vaccines called vaccines without conferring immunity? Did those vaccines kill tens of thousands through adverse reactions in only nine months? Had they done so, would you still cite them here today?

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^^^^^

Precisely. It's a false equivalence. These current crop of covid shots may well be labeled 'vaccines', but that's the lone similarity. In all other respects they are quite distinct. One can argue -- as many already have, compellingly -- that since these shots do not confer immunity (the formal descriptions from the manufacturers never actually claimed to do so) or prevent spread they would not qualify as vaccines.

Smallpox made sense for eradication because it was a uniquely human virus ― there was no animal reservoir. By contrast, most respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 (a.k.a. COVID) come from animal reservoirs: swine, birds, bats, etc. As long as there are bats in caves, birds in ponds, pigs in mud baths, and deer living in forests, respiratory viruses are only controllable through individual immunity, but it is not possible to eradicate them. There will always be a near-identical cousin brewing in the wings.

The covid shots were also minimally trialed (for about a year, far less than the 7+ year average for vaccines), and are using new, previously untested (for mass distribution as 'vaccine') technology.

In short, it's not a viable/applicable comparison.

[Harvey]

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-09-04/vaccine-children-science/

On child vaccines, the experts are suddenly reluctant to follow ‘the science’
Jonthan Cook, 4 September 2021

In some of these blogs I have been trying to gently highlight what should be a very obvious fact: that “the science” we are being constantly told to follow is not quite as scientific as is being claimed.

That is inevitable in the context of a new virus about which much is still not known. And it is all the more so given that our main response to the pandemic – vaccination – while being a relatively effective tool against the worst disease outcomes is nonetheless an exceedingly blunt one. Vaccines are the epitome of the one-size-fits-all approach of modern medicine.

Into the void between our scientific knowledge and our fear of mortality has rushed politics. It is a refusal to admit that “the science” is necessarily compromised by political and commercial considerations that has led to an increasingly polarised – and unreasonable – confrontation between what have become two sides of the Covid divide. Doubt and curiosity have been squeezed out by the bogus certainties of each faction.

My latest: We are not conquerors of our bodies, the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we’re waging is one we can never hope to win

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021 ... n-science/

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) April 19, 2021

All of this has been underscored by the latest decision of the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations. Unexpectedly, it has defied political pressure and demurred, for the time being at least, on extending the vaccination programme to children aged between 12 and 15.

The British government appears to be furious. Ministers who have been constantly demanding that we “follow the science” are reportedly ready to ignore the advice – or more likely, bully the JCVI into hastily changing its mind over the coming days.

Over the weekend, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, even suggested, in a potentially radical overhaul of traditional ideas of medical consent, that doctors – and presumably schools – might soon be allowed to persuade children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against their parents’ wishes.

And liberal media outlets like the Guardian, which have been so careful until now to avoid giving a platform to “dissident” scientists, are suddenly subjecting the great and the good of the vaccination establishment to harsh criticism from doctors who want children vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Watching this confected “row” unfold, one thing is clear: “the science” is getting another political pummelling.

Peek behind the curtain

There are a few revealing snippets buried in the media reports of the JCVI’s reasons for delaying child vaccinations – information that challenges other parts of the vaccination narrative that have been unassailable till now.

One concerns long Covid, fear of which has probably been the main factor driving parents to push for their children to be vaccinated – given that Covid poses little immediate threat of serious illness to the vast majority of children. Of long Covid in children, the JCVI argues, according to the Guardian, that “the impact of the symptoms may be no worse than those seen in children who have not actually had Covid”.

What to make of that? We know that over the past few decades a small but growing proportion of children have been suffering from long-term chronic fatigue syndromes – often following a viral infection. This may relate to more general immunity problems in children that, like other chronic disease, doctors have been largely baffled by – and may even be contributing to.

Is long Covid another fatigue syndrome, and one that many of these children would have suffered from if they had been infected with a different virus, like flu? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a debate on that question, let alone an answer, any time soon.

Then there is this. The Guardian reports that the JCVI was concerned about “the unknown longer-term consequences of a rare side-effect [myocarditis – heart inflammation] seen with mRNA vaccines such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots. … What makes the JCVI uneasy is that there is little long-term follow-up on vaccinated children.”

“Unknown longer-term consequences”? A lack of “follow-up” on vaccinated children? These sound more like the criticisms of the tin-foil hat-wearers than the cautious advice of vaccination experts.

Or is it just that we have been given a fleeting peek behind the curtain of official medical debate to see an uncertainty that has been actively concealed from us. “The science” is not quite as solid as the scientists or politicians would have us believe, it seems.

Piling on the pressure

What sensible view should we, the public, take when that “scientific” consensus suddenly solidifies – possibly as soon as next week – behind exactly what the politicians are demanding.

The government and parts of the media are clearly going to keep piling the pressure on the JCVI. The committee’s efforts to avoid being drawn into a highly charged and politicised debate about vaccinating children is written all over the caveats and get-out clauses in its decision on Friday.

The government’s stated aim in wanting to vaccinate children is to avoid “disruption” to children’s education, as though this is about the well-being of pupils. But we need to be honest: the disruptions were imposed on schools by politicians and educators not for the sake of children but for the sake of adults, frightened by our own vulnerability to Covid.

The JCVI has embarrassed the government by reminding us of this fact in relation to child vaccinations. Not only have we deprived children of a proper education over a year or more and opportunities to develop physically, mentally and emotionally through their school life, clubs, trips and sport, but now, suggests the JCVI, we want to inject them with a new drug whose long-term consequences are not fully understood or, it seems, being properly investigated.

Keep this quote. It'll soon be inconvenient and get forgotten. JCVI prof says: 'The MHRA actually allow you to use a vaccine, and we say, well, do we need to? And the answer is no, not for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds, on health grounds' https://t.co/2kgdEwRllu pic.twitter.com/VCGzJ7SdNN

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 6, 2021

All of this will be unmentionable again as soon as the JCVI can be arm-twisted into agreeing to the government’s demands. We will be told once again to blindly “follow the science”, to obey these political dictates as we were once required to obey the spiritual dictates of our clerics.

Censoring testimony

“Follow the science” is a mantra designed to shut down all critical thinking about how we respond to the pandemic – and to justify censorship of even well-qualified dissenting scientists by corporate media and their social media equivalents.

For example, YouTube has excised the testimony of medical experts to the US Congress who have been trying to bring attention to the potential benefits of ivermectin, a safe, long-out-of-patent medicine. Instead the corporate media is derisively describing it as a “horse drug” to forestall any discussion of its use as a cheap therapeutic alternative to endless, expensive vaccine booster shots.

(And by the way, before the “follow the science” crowd work themselves into a lather, I have no particular view on the usefulness of ivermectin, I simply want experts to be allowed to discuss it in public. Watch, for example, this farcical segment below from the Hill in which the presenters are forced, while discussing the media furore about podcast star Joe Rogan’s use of ivermectin to treat his Covid, to avoid actually naming the drug at the centre of the furore for fear of YouTube censorship.)



To want more open debate, not less, about where we head next, especially as western states have vaccinated significant majorities of their populations, is often being treated as the equivalent of “Covid denial”.

Where this new authoritarian climate leads is apparent in the shaming of anyone who tries to highlight that our responses to Covid are following a familiar big-business-friendly pattern: focus all attention on expensive, short-term, resource-hungry quick fixes (in this case, vaccines) and ignore important, long-term, sustainable solutions such as improving the population’s health and immunity to this pandemic and the ones likely to follow.

My latest: Most politicians and doctors have ignored the amassing evidence of Vitamin D's dramatic effects on Covid hospital patients. Might it be because the vitamin is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated lab technicians? https://t.co/gsh4xEOzd5

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 15, 2021

An obesity epidemic – obesity is a key factor in susceptibility to severe Covid, though you would hardly know it from the media coverage – is still not being tackled, even though the obesity epidemic, unlike Covid, has been growing as a public health threat for many decades. Why? Because the corporate food industry, and more especially the fast-food and sugar industries, and the corporate health industries are financially invested in it never being tackled.

There is no serious media debate about the role of health in tackling Covid because the corporate media are invested in exactly the same consumption model as the food and health corporations – not least, they heavily depend on corporate advertising.

Which is why the media hurried to amplify attacks on Jonathan Neman, head of the salad fast-food restaurant chain Sweetgreen, for supposedly “downplaying the importance of vaccines”, as soon as he pointed out the statistical fact that 78 per cent of people admitted to hospital for Covid are obese and overweight. He asked quite reasonably:

What if we made the food that is making us sick illegal? What if we taxed processed food and refined sugar to pay for the impact of the pandemic? What if we incentivized health?

Politicians, of course, have no interest in taking action against the corporate food industry both because they depend on campaign donations from those same corporations and because they want good press from the corporate media.

Studies on immunity

Another topic that has been made all but taboo is the issue of natural immunity. A series of recent studies suggest that those who have caught and recovered from Covid have a better response to the delta variant than those who have been vaccinated only.

Those who have recovered appear to be many times less likely to get reinfected, suggesting natural immunity confers stronger and longer-lasting protection against Covid than vaccines, including preventing hospitalisation and transmission to others.

That may have significant implications for our reliance on vaccines. For instance, vaccines may be playing a part in creating new, more aggressive variants, given that the vaccinated have been wrongly encouraged to see themselves as at less risk of catching Covid but are in fact more likely than those who have recovered to transmit the disease.

If that is the case, the current orthodoxy preferring vaccines has turned reality on its head.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, these studies have received almost no coverage. They conflict with every single message the politicians, media and “follow the science” crowd have been promulgating for months.

How much that narrative has been engineered can be seen in the role the World Health Organisation played early on, as the vaccines were being rolled out, in secretly trying to rewrite medical history. Uniquely in the case of Covid, they pretended that herd immunity could only be achieved through vaccination, as though natural immunity did not count.

I've had run-ins with Off-Guardian of late, but they're right to highlight the WHO mucking about with the established definition of 'herd immunity'. This kind of thing does nothing but undermine trust in science and scientists https://t.co/SgEMqnptZu

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 2, 2021

Highlighting this new study does not mean that letting Covid rip through the population is the best strategy, or that vaccinations do not help prevent illness and the spread of Covid.

But it does undermine the simple-minded, and novel, insistence that vaccination is the only safe way to protect against a virus, or even the best.

It does undermine the case increasingly being promoted by politicians and the media that the unvaccinated should be treated as a threat to society and accorded second-class status (watch the video below).



It does undermine the demand for vaccine passports as a prerequisite for “normal life” being restored.

My latest: Does social solidarity only count when it gets us back to the pub? It's time for a real debate about the values behind 'immunity passports' https://t.co/FqowlZ7L0Z

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 5, 2021

And it hints at an additional reason the JCVI may have been reluctant to rush into testing a new generation of vaccines on children for a disease that is rarely serious for them and to which they will have stronger immunity if they catch it rather than being vaccinated against it.

Glaring vacuum

What these studies and others suggest is that we need a more open, honest debate about the best way forward, a more inclusive debate rather than what we have at the moment: accusations, arrogance and contempt – from both sides.

The left should not be siding with media corporations to shut down debate, even Covid denial; they should be pushing for more persuasive arguments. And the left should not be cheering on the bullying or stigmatising of people who are hesitant about taking the vaccines, either for themselves or their children.

BREAKING: A judge revokes a Chicago mom’s custody of her 11-year-old son after she admits that she is unvaccinated. The dad is vaccinated, and will retain custody until she is. RT IF YOU SUPPORT THE JUDGE’S DECISION TO PUT THE CHILD’S SAFETY BEFORE HER MOM’S DANGEROUS IGNORANCE!

— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) August 30, 2021

Enforce a glaring vacuum in the public discourse, as has happened with Covid, and two things are guaranteed: that politicians and corporations will exploit that vacuum to increase their power and profits; and a significant section of the public will attribute the worst, most cynical motives to those enforcing the vacuum.

The very act of gagging anyone – but most especially experts – from conducting certain kind of conversations is bound to increase political alienation, cynicism and social polarisation. It creates no kind of consensus or solidarity. It creates only division and bitterness. Which, putting my cynic’s hat on for a moment, may be the very reason why it seems to be our leaders’ preferred course of action.

[The Bernician]

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-09-04/vaccine-children-science/

On child vaccines, the experts are suddenly reluctant to follow ‘the science’
Jonthan Cook, 4 September 2021

In some of these blogs I have been trying to gently highlight what should be a very obvious fact: that “the science” we are being constantly told to follow is not quite as scientific as is being claimed.

That is inevitable in the context of a new virus about which much is still not known. And it is all the more so given that our main response to the pandemic – vaccination – while being a relatively effective tool against the worst disease outcomes is nonetheless an exceedingly blunt one. Vaccines are the epitome of the one-size-fits-all approach of modern medicine.

Into the void between our scientific knowledge and our fear of mortality has rushed politics. It is a refusal to admit that “the science” is necessarily compromised by political and commercial considerations that has led to an increasingly polarised – and unreasonable – confrontation between what have become two sides of the Covid divide. Doubt and curiosity have been squeezed out by the bogus certainties of each faction.

My latest: We are not conquerors of our bodies, the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we’re waging is one we can never hope to win

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021 ... n-science/

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) April 19, 2021

All of this has been underscored by the latest decision of the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations. Unexpectedly, it has defied political pressure and demurred, for the time being at least, on extending the vaccination programme to children aged between 12 and 15.

The British government appears to be furious. Ministers who have been constantly demanding that we “follow the science” are reportedly ready to ignore the advice – or more likely, bully the JCVI into hastily changing its mind over the coming days.

Over the weekend, the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, even suggested, in a potentially radical overhaul of traditional ideas of medical consent, that doctors – and presumably schools – might soon be allowed to persuade children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against their parents’ wishes.

And liberal media outlets like the Guardian, which have been so careful until now to avoid giving a platform to “dissident” scientists, are suddenly subjecting the great and the good of the vaccination establishment to harsh criticism from doctors who want children vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Watching this confected “row” unfold, one thing is clear: “the science” is getting another political pummelling.

Peek behind the curtain

There are a few revealing snippets buried in the media reports of the JCVI’s reasons for delaying child vaccinations – information that challenges other parts of the vaccination narrative that have been unassailable till now.

One concerns long Covid, fear of which has probably been the main factor driving parents to push for their children to be vaccinated – given that Covid poses little immediate threat of serious illness to the vast majority of children. Of long Covid in children, the JCVI argues, according to the Guardian, that “the impact of the symptoms may be no worse than those seen in children who have not actually had Covid”.

What to make of that? We know that over the past few decades a small but growing proportion of children have been suffering from long-term chronic fatigue syndromes – often following a viral infection. This may relate to more general immunity problems in children that, like other chronic disease, doctors have been largely baffled by – and may even be contributing to.

Is long Covid another fatigue syndrome, and one that many of these children would have suffered from if they had been infected with a different virus, like flu? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a debate on that question, let alone an answer, any time soon.

Then there is this. The Guardian reports that the JCVI was concerned about “the unknown longer-term consequences of a rare side-effect [myocarditis – heart inflammation] seen with mRNA vaccines such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots. … What makes the JCVI uneasy is that there is little long-term follow-up on vaccinated children.”

“Unknown longer-term consequences”? A lack of “follow-up” on vaccinated children? These sound more like the criticisms of the tin-foil hat-wearers than the cautious advice of vaccination experts.

Or is it just that we have been given a fleeting peek behind the curtain of official medical debate to see an uncertainty that has been actively concealed from us. “The science” is not quite as solid as the scientists or politicians would have us believe, it seems.

Piling on the pressure

What sensible view should we, the public, take when that “scientific” consensus suddenly solidifies – possibly as soon as next week – behind exactly what the politicians are demanding.

The government and parts of the media are clearly going to keep piling the pressure on the JCVI. The committee’s efforts to avoid being drawn into a highly charged and politicised debate about vaccinating children is written all over the caveats and get-out clauses in its decision on Friday.

The government’s stated aim in wanting to vaccinate children is to avoid “disruption” to children’s education, as though this is about the well-being of pupils. But we need to be honest: the disruptions were imposed on schools by politicians and educators not for the sake of children but for the sake of adults, frightened by our own vulnerability to Covid.

The JCVI has embarrassed the government by reminding us of this fact in relation to child vaccinations. Not only have we deprived children of a proper education over a year or more and opportunities to develop physically, mentally and emotionally through their school life, clubs, trips and sport, but now, suggests the JCVI, we want to inject them with a new drug whose long-term consequences are not fully understood or, it seems, being properly investigated.

Keep this quote. It'll soon be inconvenient and get forgotten. JCVI prof says: 'The MHRA actually allow you to use a vaccine, and we say, well, do we need to? And the answer is no, not for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds, on health grounds' https://t.co/2kgdEwRllu pic.twitter.com/VCGzJ7SdNN

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 6, 2021

All of this will be unmentionable again as soon as the JCVI can be arm-twisted into agreeing to the government’s demands. We will be told once again to blindly “follow the science”, to obey these political dictates as we were once required to obey the spiritual dictates of our clerics.

Censoring testimony

“Follow the science” is a mantra designed to shut down all critical thinking about how we respond to the pandemic – and to justify censorship of even well-qualified dissenting scientists by corporate media and their social media equivalents.

For example, YouTube has excised the testimony of medical experts to the US Congress who have been trying to bring attention to the potential benefits of ivermectin, a safe, long-out-of-patent medicine. Instead the corporate media is derisively describing it as a “horse drug” to forestall any discussion of its use as a cheap therapeutic alternative to endless, expensive vaccine booster shots.

(And by the way, before the “follow the science” crowd work themselves into a lather, I have no particular view on the usefulness of ivermectin, I simply want experts to be allowed to discuss it in public. Watch, for example, this farcical segment below from the Hill in which the presenters are forced, while discussing the media furore about podcast star Joe Rogan’s use of ivermectin to treat his Covid, to avoid actually naming the drug at the centre of the furore for fear of YouTube censorship.)



To want more open debate, not less, about where we head next, especially as western states have vaccinated significant majorities of their populations, is often being treated as the equivalent of “Covid denial”.

Where this new authoritarian climate leads is apparent in the shaming of anyone who tries to highlight that our responses to Covid are following a familiar big-business-friendly pattern: focus all attention on expensive, short-term, resource-hungry quick fixes (in this case, vaccines) and ignore important, long-term, sustainable solutions such as improving the population’s health and immunity to this pandemic and the ones likely to follow.

My latest: Most politicians and doctors have ignored the amassing evidence of Vitamin D's dramatic effects on Covid hospital patients. Might it be because the vitamin is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated lab technicians? https://t.co/gsh4xEOzd5

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 15, 2021

An obesity epidemic – obesity is a key factor in susceptibility to severe Covid, though you would hardly know it from the media coverage – is still not being tackled, even though the obesity epidemic, unlike Covid, has been growing as a public health threat for many decades. Why? Because the corporate food industry, and more especially the fast-food and sugar industries, and the corporate health industries are financially invested in it never being tackled.

There is no serious media debate about the role of health in tackling Covid because the corporate media are invested in exactly the same consumption model as the food and health corporations – not least, they heavily depend on corporate advertising.

Which is why the media hurried to amplify attacks on Jonathan Neman, head of the salad fast-food restaurant chain Sweetgreen, for supposedly “downplaying the importance of vaccines”, as soon as he pointed out the statistical fact that 78 per cent of people admitted to hospital for Covid are obese and overweight. He asked quite reasonably:

What if we made the food that is making us sick illegal? What if we taxed processed food and refined sugar to pay for the impact of the pandemic? What if we incentivized health?

Politicians, of course, have no interest in taking action against the corporate food industry both because they depend on campaign donations from those same corporations and because they want good press from the corporate media.

Studies on immunity

Another topic that has been made all but taboo is the issue of natural immunity. A series of recent studies suggest that those who have caught and recovered from Covid have a better response to the delta variant than those who have been vaccinated only.

Those who have recovered appear to be many times less likely to get reinfected, suggesting natural immunity confers stronger and longer-lasting protection against Covid than vaccines, including preventing hospitalisation and transmission to others.

That may have significant implications for our reliance on vaccines. For instance, vaccines may be playing a part in creating new, more aggressive variants, given that the vaccinated have been wrongly encouraged to see themselves as at less risk of catching Covid but are in fact more likely than those who have recovered to transmit the disease.

If that is the case, the current orthodoxy preferring vaccines has turned reality on its head.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, these studies have received almost no coverage. They conflict with every single message the politicians, media and “follow the science” crowd have been promulgating for months.

How much that narrative has been engineered can be seen in the role the World Health Organisation played early on, as the vaccines were being rolled out, in secretly trying to rewrite medical history. Uniquely in the case of Covid, they pretended that herd immunity could only be achieved through vaccination, as though natural immunity did not count.

I've had run-ins with Off-Guardian of late, but they're right to highlight the WHO mucking about with the established definition of 'herd immunity'. This kind of thing does nothing but undermine trust in science and scientists https://t.co/SgEMqnptZu

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 2, 2021

Highlighting this new study does not mean that letting Covid rip through the population is the best strategy, or that vaccinations do not help prevent illness and the spread of Covid.

But it does undermine the simple-minded, and novel, insistence that vaccination is the only safe way to protect against a virus, or even the best.

It does undermine the case increasingly being promoted by politicians and the media that the unvaccinated should be treated as a threat to society and accorded second-class status (watch the video below).



It does undermine the demand for vaccine passports as a prerequisite for “normal life” being restored.

My latest: Does social solidarity only count when it gets us back to the pub? It's time for a real debate about the values behind 'immunity passports' https://t.co/FqowlZ7L0Z

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 5, 2021

And it hints at an additional reason the JCVI may have been reluctant to rush into testing a new generation of vaccines on children for a disease that is rarely serious for them and to which they will have stronger immunity if they catch it rather than being vaccinated against it.

Glaring vacuum

What these studies and others suggest is that we need a more open, honest debate about the best way forward, a more inclusive debate rather than what we have at the moment: accusations, arrogance and contempt – from both sides.

The left should not be siding with media corporations to shut down debate, even Covid denial; they should be pushing for more persuasive arguments. And the left should not be cheering on the bullying or stigmatising of people who are hesitant about taking the vaccines, either for themselves or their children.

BREAKING: A judge revokes a Chicago mom’s custody of her 11-year-old son after she admits that she is unvaccinated. The dad is vaccinated, and will retain custody until she is. RT IF YOU SUPPORT THE JUDGE’S DECISION TO PUT THE CHILD’S SAFETY BEFORE HER MOM’S DANGEROUS IGNORANCE!

— Occupy Democrats (@OccupyDemocrats) August 30, 2021

Enforce a glaring vacuum in the public discourse, as has happened with Covid, and two things are guaranteed: that politicians and corporations will exploit that vacuum to increase their power and profits; and a significant section of the public will attribute the worst, most cynical motives to those enforcing the vacuum.

The very act of gagging anyone – but most especially experts – from conducting certain kind of conversations is bound to increase political alienation, cynicism and social polarisation. It creates no kind of consensus or solidarity. It creates only division and bitterness. Which, putting my cynic’s hat on for a moment, may be the very reason why it seems to be our leaders’ preferred course of action.

Interesting you should post this now, as I've just seen that the Times today is reporting that 'Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer for England) is set to conclude a review of medical evidence next week', which he was instructed to conduct when the JCVI gave the wrong answer], which will recommend that children 12 and over should be vaccinated 'to benefit their mental health, education and social development'. I did actually laugh when I read this, but of course it's not funny in the slightest. That anyone might need an explanation of why this is so appalling is in itself appalling. Perhaps education should be conditional on a week's residential at Dolphin Square? After all, the cost of missing out on all that healthful social interaction would surely be greater than whatever small downsides there could be to the trip.

(I read this today, but I knew it was coming as soon as the JCVI reported. One form of emotional inoculation is to ignore the 'good' news.)

[Harvey]

https://www.dumptheguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/uk-vaccine-advisers-acted-like-medical-regulators-covid-jabs-children-neil-ferguson

Prof Neil Ferguson says JCVI was conservative in rejecting use of vaccines already approved by MHRA

That's the headline. Enough said. No need to quote from the rest of the article (which consists of Ferguson bullshitting excuses for unnecessary and dangerous intervention) except for this short rebuttal from the JVCI:

Jeremy Brown, professor of respiratory infection at UCL and a member of the JCVI, stressed that the role of the MHRA and JCVI were different. “MHRA make a broad decision about whether a product can be used in a given population – so they have decided that the vaccine is safe to use in this population, whether it’s necessary to use in a given population is to JCVI’s remit. So the MHRA actually allow you to use a vaccine, and we say, well, do we need to? And the answer is no, not for healthy 12 to 15-year-olds.”

[Harvey]

Dr Julie Ponesse, Professor of ethics.

[Karmamatterz]

When shining a laser pointer at a wall the cat always falls for it.

See, certain things are worth roasting and calling out, but not the fucking dinosaur in the living room, head and neck smashed through the roof. Just walk around the rubble to stare at -- and chase! -- the moving red dot on the wall.

Flood the zone. Anyone recall those words from the Event 201?

The people who manage these narratives know what they are doing. Some stuff I'm sure just naturally works its way out into the stream of noise. Other noisy news bits are placed as tactics to fulfill the overall strategy. On a daily basis we see and hear more and more noise to distract people away from the fact that this is a scam and that we are all being duped. Create enough noise and it dramatically decreases the public from being able to keep up with what is really going on. It helps to keep anxiety and fear heightened. With enough fear people won't gather together and talk about organizing.

To be clear, I am 100 percent against the measures Biden announced today, for many reasons.I still think the stuff posted here claiming "scamdemic" is generally poorly-sourced bullshit from hucksters.

And for fucks sakes I'm not saying there is no Corona virus. They have been around for a long time. Just look up some older medical textbooks and you will see Corona viruses are listed as common colds.

If by now you don't see the enormity of this scam you likely never will. I feel sorry for people who are still under the spell of the mass hysteria. I do recognize it's not easy to differentiate fact from fiction in situations like this. After all, there is no historic reference for us to cognitively associate to for peace of mind.

[Karmamatterz]

Dr Julie Ponesse, Professor of ethics.

@Harvey

Thanks for posting that heartbreaking video. Only a cruel authoritarian asshole would not be moved by that. If anybody actually cares, you must watch it until the very end in order to get the full message and find out what happened to the professor.

This really makes me sick to my stomach.

The authoritarian dipshit Biden can go fuck himself. Anybody that called Trump a fascist or a Nazi and is not recognizing Biden is WORSE is willfully ignorant, or agrees with what he is doing. I don't give a fuck if you call this a purity test or whatever. This latest mandate is morally and ethically wrong wrong wrong.