“We are seeing anti-medical, anti-science narratives everywhere – how can doctors like me respond?”, writes Dr Mariam Tokhi in the Guardian. She starts with the heartrending story of an eight year old Australian girl called Elizabeth Struhs who died of diabetic ketoacidosis due to the withdrawal of the insulin she needed to live. Her family belong to a religious sect called “the Saints” that believes that medicine should not be used. Her father, mother and brother, alongside several other members of this sect, have been found guilty of her manslaughter. Dr Tokhi then writes,
I am seeing the rise of anti-medical, anti-science narratives everywhere. A patient in my clinic tells us that she has stopped her HIV antiviral tablets, because her pastor told her she has been healed by prayer. A parent rejects mental health treatment for his impulsive, suicidal teenager, telling me that ADHD and major depression are made-up, modern conditions. A pregnant mother asks me to sign her Advanced Care Directive, saying she declines blood products in the event of a life-threatening bleed during birth, worried that she could receive “vaccine-contaminated” blood. Another tells me she will “free-birth” without midwifery or medical care.
During the Covid pandemic, conspiracy theorists distributed junk maps of Covid-19 cases connecting them to 5G mobile phone towers. As a result, I spent countless hours doing community outreach, health promotion work and endless individual consultations trying to debunk pseudoscience and explaining (often unsuccessfully) the risk-benefit ratios of vaccines. In the last year, we have seen outbreaks of pertussis, measles, chickenpox, hepatitis and influenza, often linked to pockets of vaccine refusal.
Medical doctors and scientists now face a barrage of anti-science, anti-medicine narratives, and it feels like we are losing the battle. We are no longer trusted instinctively. So how do we engage with people who mistrust us?
It is a heartfelt piece. I don’t doubt her sincerity. My answer to her question is also heartfelt and sincere: start by admitting what you, the doctors and the medical profession as a whole, did to lose so much trust.
Remember how so many of you said that complete social isolation was vital for the duration of the pandemic except for those attending Black Lives Matter protests? Remember how distinguished doctors, epidemiologists and virologists were denounced when they said that, for much of the population, the risk of harm from Covid-19 was less than the risk of harm from lockdown? Remember how you declared the theory that the Covid-19 coronavirus strain came from a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a racist conspiracy theory, and cheered when Facebook deleted posts that discussed it? Remember how you self-censored discussion even among yourselves of the side effects that the Covid vaccines, like all vaccines, have – thus degrading the system of reporting adverse reactions that was once universally understood to be a vital tool to improve the safety of medicines?
For the record, I have taken every vaccine offered to me, including the Pfizer and the Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccines, and I am happy with that decision. But the unquestioning faith I once had that I would be given all relevant information before I chose to accept any medical procedure has gone. Some of it departed alongside the faith that I would be given a choice at all. Such faith as I now have in the medical profession as a whole is in its residual ethics. Most doctors were trained in better times, and according to better precepts. I trust old doctors more than young doctors. Lest I offend any young doctors reading this, that’s still quite a lot of trust. It’s not that I think any significant number of doctors set out to harm people. It’s that I do think a significant number of doctors refused to consider many serious and well-founded policy and treatment proposals regarding Covid on no better grounds than that they might have helped Donald Trump’s electoral chances, and an even larger number never even got to hear about such proposals in the first place, except at second hand as the ravings of folk in tinfoil hats. These proposals were not necessarily correct. But excluding them from discussion for political reasons gnawed away at the edifice of trust in medicine.
And the gnawing persists. When termites infest a property, they eat the walls from inside, so that if you tap the walls they sound hollow. If all else is quiet you can even hear the rustle of tiny jaws directly. That is a metaphor for how millions of people feel about the house of medicine now: not that it has fallen down with a crash – it is still their shelter – but that the walls have hollow patches and that sometimes one hears a soft scratching noise . . . and if you tell the owners of the house about it, they say you are imagining things or just trying to make trouble.
The Guardian‘s (pre-moderated) comments burn with outrage at the medical misinformation that comes from religious people and right-wingers. At medical misinformation coming from left-wing New Age practitioners, not so much; and at medical misinformation coming from the medical profession itself and enforced by censorship, none at all. Maybe some comments that pointed out that the medical establishment itself had some responsibility for the loss of public trust in medicine were made, but the Guardian censored them so we’ll never know what they said.
Saint Paul said to turn to God, but also to use doctors, so Christians can use both. If normal medicine doesn’t work, THEN use prayer and faith- what have you got to lose?
The reason I will never ever listen to my GP again was he knew I had COVID in March 2020, but the practice kept bugging me to get the jabs. I asked why would I need it after having had the disease, and was told the anti-bodies only last a month or so. I asked how they knew so soon, and was told “we’ve been informed.”
I was then told by the fellow who owns a lab that does blood works he too was told same but after a year of testing for exactly that, concluded that was utterly untrue. When he asked why that advice had been given, he never got a reply. I told this to my GP. They ignored me & I kept getting the calls to come get the jab, which I did not.
Fuck them all. I don’t know anyone who regrets not getting jabbed.
Song for a new era:
Intelligence community: “The laptop is fake! Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into sullying Biden!”
Reporters: “Jan 6 protesters murdered cops! Biden sharp as a tack! Trump says Nazis are nice people!”
Doctors: “Two masks are needed! The vaccine is a vaccine! Wet lab!”
Chorus: “Why oh why do they fail to honor us anymore!
Add to that the way early treatment with HCQ and then ivermectin were derided as quackery and shut down, along with the proposals floated to restrict or ban over-the-counter sales of vitamin D supplements in response to suggestion that such supplements might be helpful.
The thing that struck me about HCQ and then ivermectin is that their proponents presented them as a realistic treatment with realistic drawbacks, rather than as quack panaceas: “Yes, you do have to be careful to avoid overdosing. Yes, it really needs to be combined with other things to work well. No, it’s unlikely to do any good if you wait until the patient is at death’s door…”
The opponents ran scientific studies to confirm that yes indeed, those treatments doesn’t do any good you give them by themselves, if you overdose the patient, or if you wait until the patient is at death’s door. Then the usual media suspects loudly announced “Scientifically Proven! HCQ and ivermectin are quack treatments that do not work!”
And yet… Trump was given ivermectin when he came down with Covid, and there were rumors that US congresscritters, their families, and their staff would receive ivermectin when they came down with Covid.
Finally, some of us remember how the idea of a quickly-developed vaccine was derided when Trump was pushing it during his first administration – it was a Bad Orange idea from the Bad Orange Man. And then, after Biden was installed in the Oval Office, the Covid jab – a vaccine only by an Orwellian redefinition of the term – became a “take it or else” thing.
For the record, I have taken every vaccine offered to me, including the Pfizer and the Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccines
Jesus, WHY?
There is a long history of people rejecting modern medicine and trusting in faith, even before COVID.
She is just indulging in Politicized confirmation bias. eg her false claim the HIV AIDS program being defunded by bad orange man.
“self-censored discussion even among yourselves of the side effects that the Covid vaccines, like all vaccines, have”
The covid “vaccines” are not like other vaccines; they are (mostly) gene treatments that cause your own cells to produce the spike proteins that are effectively the actual vaccine. Therefore their side effects were always unlikely to be similar to those of normal vaccines.
As for trust in the medical profession, all medical professionals who have recommended or delivered Covid vaccines to children, and all those who have recommended or delivered irreversible (or potentially irreversible) “treatments” for gender dysphoria in children, should be struck off. When that happens, it might be reasonable to believe the medical establishment is making a valid attempt to become trustworthy once more.
The answer to the doctor’s question of why we have lost trust in medicine and science is because doctors have betrayed us. I don’t say that lightly, and I know a lot of doctors who have tried hard to be honest. But for the medical profession to put us in a position where they have lied to us so much that we don’t know when to trust them is simply a betrayal. A betrayal of their professional obligation. A betrayal of basic human decency.
Whether the lies are part of the massive political pressure, or the corruption of the drug companies or the massive regulatory capture, or the worst of both worlds government/private healthcare system. It all destroys the notion underlying the good doctor’s premise, that medicine and science are some pure hearted seeking of the truth.
See the problem is that most medicine is very, very good. This betrayal I think is most evident in the matter of vaccines. The large majority of vaccines are very good things. I remember when I went to Brazil a few years ago I had to get a vaccine against Yellow Fever and Dengue fever, both of which are endemic in Brazil, even in the cities. Not getting those vaccines is just simply stupid. And for kids to forgo pertussis, mumps, rubella or tetanus is just a really foolish choice. But giving kids those Covid vaccines isn’t a bad choice, it is simply child abuse, or it would be were the parents fully informed. But how is the regular mom to know what to do? She has to trust the professional and if the doctor lies to her it is the most appalling abuse, and the most damaging thing to that mom who trying to do what is best for her kids.
The problem is that that small amount of medicine that doctors lie about totally undermines all the amazing good that they do. The vast majority of medicine is an massive gift to humanity. but if you shit in the chili pot, no matter how good the chili was the whole thing gets poisoned.
Perry’s comment above is heartbreaking. I totally understand why he says he can’t trust his GP. But surely there will be a time in his life when he needs his GP and his GP gives him choices that he Perry is not qualified to make. What then? Like I say, it is heartbreaking. We NEED to be able to trust our doctors, it is an abomination that they have made that so hard.
I mean what are you going to do? Take out your own gall bladder? I think there is a video about that on YouTube.
I think we saw it writ large in the confirmation hearing of JFK Jr. I’ll be honest, I think some of his ideas are a bit kooky. But to listen to those senators, all bought off by the drug companies, all complicit in the great Covid dishonesty, all participants in the censorship and destruction of so many honest doctors who tried to bring some sense to the insanity of 2020. To listen to them mercilessly attacking an honest guy who is seeking to restore health and integrity to a population that is dying from the dreadful state of health and healthcare in America is a scandal of epic proportions.
Like I say I think JFK Jr. is a bit kooky, and I don’t agree with him on everything, I think he is just plain wrong about autism. But he is at least a change agent, and it is hard to imagine any change that would be bad for the American medical system and its government regulation. A system that when you think it has reached its nadir, it says “you think that’s bad…. hold my low calorie, pasteurized beer.”
Every single person claiming that the Senators are asking RFK legitimate questions for legitimate purposes, or that the medical folks flogging Covid vaccines are pure of heart, would agree that the doctors promoting smoking back in the 50s were all corrupted by corporate cash.
But now everybody’s pure. See? You just have to believe, and have no memory nor knowledge of history.
If he has any say in US climate policy, he could be a disaster.
Some of his medical ideas are . . . unfounded.
He’s where he is because he brought a bunch of votes with him after the Dems roundly insulted him, and he helped Trump win. But he’s really not a good fit for where Trump seems to want to go, and I think he has the potential to be a serious bug in the system.
I was sort of hoping he’d not make it through confirmation, and then everyone could shake hands and agree that it was a good effort and part as friends.
I admired JFK Jr.’ thesis and scholarship in his book, “The Real Anthony Fauci”. His pronouncements on “Climate change” are therefore, to me, both worrying and anomalous. Though his confirmation, would in my view, promote the needed shake-up of the US medical hierarchy.
Speaking for myself:
I have worked in biotech and molecular biology for many years, I used to make a living designing and running PCR. Everything I read or heard about PCR being inaccurate (eg can’t tell the difference between ‘flu and covid) did not fit with my experience of the technique. So I count the PCR-as-inaccurate as wrong.
Covid isn’t dangerous and the hospitals are empty – so the colleague who was a nurse on a covid ward who told me that every bed was full, they had 14 requests for beds in one shift and 11 people died was lying? Or it really is that bad?
The wards are empty – so the guy delivering compressed gas to our labs who told me that he knew that hospitalisation was dropping because he’d delivered 100 full oxygen cylinders that morning (a non-covid load was 20) but only collected 80 empties, was lying? Or had someone been venting the oxygen to fool him?
RFK Jr and his ilk – the general anti-vax community – have been wrong about vaccines for 30 years. Mostly, they seem to do this for financial reasons – “vaccines are dangerous, buy my healthy supplements!” and their reasoning does not fit with any biotech I know, or is based on a few discredited studies, or both. So when they claim covid vaccines are dangerous, I don’t believe them.
Yes, the mRNA vaccines work differently to traditional vaccines, but they’re not gene therapy. When someone tells me that mRNA is a foreign substance and will change your DNA – not possible according to all the biochemistry I know, so why should I believe them? I could be wrong, but it would be such a fundamental change to the current model of protein production that
our understanding of cellular biochemistry would have to be rewritten.
HCQ/Ivermectin – the effects claimed by their supporters do not fit with the way those medications work. Ivermectin simply cannot reach the required concentration in human cells. The studies supporting them that I have read in detail have some serious methodological flaws that mean their results cannot be trusted. So I don’t agree that HCQ/Ivermectin are effective.
Remember when someone realised the covid vaccines were tested on a cell line derived from an aborted fetus so they couldn’t take the vaccines? HCQ and Ivermectin (and many others including aspirin) were tested on the same cell line, but their supporters don’t have a problem with this.
The cause of death on the certificate isn’t covid? It’s Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, caused by pneumonia, caused by covid – so the cause of death is covid.
TL:DR – The anti-vax and covid-isn’t-dangerous people tell me things that are, based on my own experience in the relevant subjects, simply incorrect. So I will take the vaccines because I don’t trust the people who tell me not to.
I never worked in biotech and molecular biology but I’ve got a doctorate in mathematics & have crunched numbers for a living for three decades. And that is why I don’t trust Gingerdave & think he’s a source of literal disinformation. The COVID injection would not even be considered a vaccine except they changed the definition so it is. That’s how much of an idiot the establishment thinks you are.
I and my wife are old and visit doctors more often now. These visits confirm the suspicions I first felt 50 years ago in university and law school knowing many pre-med and med students who went on to become MDs.
They are not usually high-IQ people.
They are mostly aggressive, energetic, ambitious people capable of memorizing vast amounts of information without questioning its accuracy and working 16 hours a day for weeks on end. They are thinly salted with high IQ people.
It was exactly the same in law school.
90% of all medical and law student are there to earn a good income.
Assume your doctor and lawyer are about as bright as Google – lots of information, little discrimination about what is important and that he/she wants to spend the minimum possible time with you that will get the fee paid.
I like to think I was better than that, but for sure money was the initial primary motivation.
@gingerdave
I have worked in biotech and molecular biology for many years, I used to make a living designing and running PCR. Everything I read or heard about PCR being inaccurate (eg can’t tell the difference between ‘flu and covid) did not fit with my experience of the technique. So I count the PCR-as-inaccurate as wrong.
Thanks for your extremely well informed comment. But to me it is a perfect illustration of the OP. I agree with many of the points you made. Certainly Covid was a dangerous disease that killed a lot of people. People who say PCR based testing is inaccurate are just plain wrong. Certainly mRNA vaccines work quite differently than most vaccines and so forth.
But this is the problem — you are required to fall into one of two camps — “Covid was a worldwide existential threat and we must do everything the government says”, or “Covid is a big conspiracy theory to allow evil politicians to make 1984 a reality.” There is no middle ground allowed. It is much like if you are a Trump supporter you have to think all his ideas are perfect, yuge, genius. And if you are a Trump hater (and lets be clear, in American politics there is no more Republican and Democrat, only Trumpians and AntiTrumpians) then EVERYTHING Trump said is hitleresque and must be opposed and protested and destroyed by fair means or foul.
In the context of Covid, the data seems to support the idea the lockdowns were more harmful than helpful, that masks didn’t work, that treating children with Covid vaccines was not only useless but often caused quite serious side effects, that attempts to control the public health narrative was probably the most successful censorship campaign in US history leading to a new system of anti disinformation that lead, for example, directly to Trump losing the 2020 election, that the “Believe us Covid is so dangerous you have to give up your civil rights” crowd told us that all doctors agreed when there were many very highly qualified doctors who did not and whose views were massively censored and whose careers were destroyed, and (this being one place I actually disagree with your comments) many, many doctors who treated many, many Covid patients said that HCQ in combination with other medications was extremely effective at curing Covid if started early enough.
Again, my point is that accurate medical information becomes deeply compromised when mixed with inaccurate or dishonest medical information. That is true whether it is doctors mixing good medical information with much of the dishonestly they gave based on highly politicized public health information, and it is equally true from the non doctors justifiably questioning the dishonest information from the public health infrastructure while pushing the nonsense stuff you hear on from Dr. Internet, like “a macrobiotic diet will cure your cancer.” This latter advice being the thing that killed Steve Jobs.
It goes to the very heart of the OP’s comment. Doctors and Science are deeply discredited because they have lied to us. And when someone lies to you, especially someone in whom you have placed your trust, it takes a long, long time to rebuild that trust.
I am very much a “believe science, believe medicine” person. I’m an engineer and I find the nonsense Internet to be Dunning Kruger writ large. That is why I used the word “betrayal”. To me if feels like if your spouse cheats on you. They had your heart, you loved them with your soul, and then they betrayed you. Sure, many of the things you loved about them are still true but that only makes the betrayal all the more horrible. You can never look at them the same again. Is it possible to restore that trust. Yes, but it is a long process. And if that spouse isn’t even willing to admit they were wrong, it is even harder.
I roll my eyes when I hear the 5G nonsense, or the “apple cider vinegar reverses aging in your brain” nonsense. But I’m left alone, because my first love, science, seeking the truth through evidence, the experimental method, has betrayed me with dishonesty. And so I am alone without a side to stand on. It sounds like you are a scientist too. Don’t you feel that betrayal too?
I think Fraser is hitting the nail on the head. There’s a huge gap between “we were lied to” and “everything the establishment says is a lie, and everything every anti-establishment crackpot says is true”.
I’m almost sixty. I got all the jabs they would give me, and I think for someone my age it was the right thing to do. But I don’t think it can
really be disputed that the effectiveness of the vaccines were overstated and the risks were understated. People below are certain age were probably better off not getting the shot, people who had already gotten the disease may well have been better off not getting the shot, and in any case it was immoral and illegal to try to force anyone to take an experimental vaccine. So I’m an anti-vaxer despite getting every shot they would give me, and I’m a sucker to boot.
One other thing: Everyone knew all along that the “t-shirt” masks were basically useless. Everyone. All along. Wearing one was like wearing a Gadsen flag shirt, except the opposite.
People are easily scared.
The medical science side of things – they were scared of a new, potentially world-shattering illness that was possibly cooked up for that very purpose – by their fellow scientists.
Many overreacted, but when a new killer designer-virus gets loose, I’ll come down on the side of overreacting – until we know differently.
We knew differently at some point, but human nature being what it is, they kept overreacting. Inertia.
I think they did so mostly out of fear, not out of some weird idea of ruling the world.
Masks were essentially useless for the purpose claimed – but they were a useful tool to remind people that we were on a war footing, that there was a common danger, that precautions were needed. That was why so many people who should know better kept masking up, and masking US up.
Until it became clearer that Covid wasn’t another killer plague. But the fearful people – and the bureaucracy – kept at it, because of the fear and because of inertia. Many cannot switch off a war footing easily. Many don’t want to, as it becomes a new profit center. Others simply enjoy the tighter social control available in a war footing.
Covid was very bad for certain populations. I was helping my sister develop and build out new infrastructure in her care homes, to keep people alive and also connected to the rest of the world. I watched the bodies being carted out daily, at about 30 times the normal rate. Old, chronically-sick bodies – but they were indeed dying at a scary rate.
(As a side note: In Minnesota, our governor, Tim Walz – yeah THAT Walz – made the executive decision that hospitals should release elderly Covid patients back to nursing homes. He ought to be executed for that order. The toll was horrendous in our care homes. 81% of Minnesota’s Covid deaths happened in oldster care facilities. It was that order that caused us to have to try to redesign airflow and security in my sister’s facilities.)
I suspected that the vax wasn’t a vax the third time I got Covid – but I saw that oldsters were surviving Covid more often if they had the shots. A treatment, not a vax. So I avoided getting it. Too experimental for me. But not a useless thing for some.
Like everything else in life, Covid became a thing of intense polarization. It got reduced to political slogans on both sides. We got TOO fearful, and so a lot of people have paid too high a price. Kids, mostly.
But no one who got the vax should consider themselves to be a sucker. It was a serious illness. We just didn’t know enough.
@bobby b
But no one who got the vax should consider themselves to be a sucker. It was a serious illness. We just didn’t know enough.
I agree. Hindsight is 20/20, and were I older or were my parents still alive I think the vaccine might have been the right choice at the time. However, at first we didn’t know enough, but then, later, we did know enough. And the people we trusted to inform us got drunk with power and started lying to us. That’s the problem.
I don’t object when doctors and scientists make honest mistakes. They are human. But when they start being actively dishonest, when their start using the trust we give them to harm us and advantage themselves? That is when we need to call them to account.
As to Tim Walz (and Cuomo in New York), isn’t that exactly the case here. The decisions these men made were responsible for the deaths of thousands. Insofar as they made that decision without sufficient information you have to say, there but the grace of god go I. But to continue with it when you know it is wrong, to fail to acknowledge your mistake? To allow thousands to die to cover your political reputation? And then to have the audacity to run for Vice President?
Only a politician could have that level of mendacity, that level of chutzpah, that level of narcissism.
The problem I have here is that every source I read that said this, based their risk calculation on a claim that PCR testing was inaccurate, and so I don’t rate those statements as accurate for the same reasons I described above.
Yes, many doctors said that HCQ and IVM were wonder cures, but when good quality studies were done those results weren’t seen.
It’s not betrayal I feel, more puzzlement that so many people will believe things that are so different to the biochemistry that I understand.
@bobby b: It was a serious illness. We just didn’t know enough.
Actually we knew quite a lot, fairly early on, from when the disease got loose on the Diamond Princess. Refreshing memory from Wikipedia, those on board suffered an overall mortality rate for those infected of 2%. This was on a ship with passengers mainly in their 70s, many of them with pre-existing health conditions. It became apparent from other sources, too, that the young – often another vulnerable group – were much less vulnerable to this particular disease.
I knew this and based my own decisions on it. Medical science must have known it too.
Bobby:
But then, you must also have suspected that “”herd immunity”” isn’t immunity the second time you got Covid.
Look how they seek to label all dissent “anti science”.
Many doctors and medical scientists rejected the Covid lockdowns, argued that there were generally effective Early Treatments for Covid, and were against the Covid “vaccines” – but they are lumped in with the “anti science” and “conspiracy theory” people.
The agenda of the Guardian is obvious – smear all dissent, pretend that all dissent is “anti science” and “conspiracy theory”.
@Gingerdave
It’s not betrayal I feel, more puzzlement that so many people will believe things that are so different to the biochemistry that I understand.
First of all I find you a breath of fresh air. A person who is willing to discuss these things from an honest point of view, since I think both sides are so polarized that spend more time yelling than listening.
Nonetheless, there obviously is a difference between microscopic biochemistry and macroscopic human systems. I haven’t done it for a while but for sure back in late 2020 I looked at the publicly available death rates in all the States in the US and compared them based on the severity of the lockdowns and simply speaking there was no correlation. In fact, if anything, states with lockdowns had a slightly higher rate. Not to any level of statistical significance and there is huge variability between states, but I sorted based on population density which would seem to be the main controlling factor here. As an example, the death rate if Florida which had very light restrictions was a bit better than California which had very high levels of restriction. That despite the fact that California has a an average age ten years younger than Florida, and despite the fact that older people tend to be clustered in Florida where they are spread out in California.
Like I say, I haven’t done that analysis recently, and I’m not sure there is much value in doing so since politics dramatically screwed up the accuracy of death rates (almost classifying any death with a covid positive person as being a covid death. Famously a guy who died in a motorcycle accident who was covid positive was initially classified as a covid death, and there is plenty of video evidence of people in senior roles of state health agencies saying as much.)
So although I respect and appreciate your desire for data, it is important to remember that the data itself has been poisoned by politics. And I think in many ways the worst outcome of Covid was the acceptance of the general public in many countries that it was OK for the government to interfere with the free press to censor information that was contrary to their plans, including data from very serious and capable scientists and doctors. The Barrington declaration being perhaps the most prominent of them all created by doctors at fringe universities like Oxford, Harvard and Stanford, that was almost hailed as treasonous, and was deeply censored in the press.
Irrespective of the recommendations it is this totalitarian streak that emerged during Covid that is the most terrifying of all. And what REALLY worries me is that if there is another pandemic, one with much more serious consequences than the already brutal Covid, that the public will be so inured, so justifiably distrusting of the medical institutions that honest and important warnings will go unheeded. One can only cry wolf so many times before your voice blends into the background. And so, when the wolf does come, somebody’s gonna die.
Yep. At that point – my second bout – I knew we were on the wrong track. There should have been no “second bout.” It was all going to be about treatment, not immunity. But we are a sloganeering species, and so “vaccine” became the word and the hope of the day.
Here in Minnesota, by the time it was over, nursing homes had a 3.5% mortality rate. In Massachusetts, IIRC, it was 12.5%. Not “of those who were infected” – but “of all residents.” And a lot more old, obese, pre-compromised residents were, I think, hastened on their way by the illness without actually dying of it.
That’s high. Not bubonic-plague high, but high. I’d argue that the Diamond Princess results weren’t the final word on how serious it was.
@bobby b: in Minnesota … nursing homes had a 3.5% mortality rate. In Massachusetts, IIRC, it was 12.5%
That became clear fairly early on as well. Granted, we know that because sending people with Covid from hospitals back to their nursing homes happened before it was known how easily it would spread in that environment. Nevertheless the effect of the disease was reasonably well understood early enough that the official responses were clearly excessive. In essence, it should have been treated like a bad flu (that yes, agreed, was dangerous particularly to the old and frail) and the medical establishment worldwide knew that.
Hindsight is 20-20, for sure. But looking back, for me the tell was the pressure. I won’t be hustled, and this was a hustle. My dermatologist leaned on me to get vaccinated! (And my GP didn’t mention Covid, ever. ) So my first response was, watch and wait.
Except for Covid, I am up to date with every vaccine that is appropriate. If Yellow Fever comes around, I am golden. (heh) But no more- no new vaccines, and I fight mRNA applications in every form, tooth and nail.
It’s such a shame. Trust in what may be the greatest advance in medicine is shattered. Immunization has always been a tradeoff between the benefits and the slight risk of side effects, and an honest mind could understand and accept this. No more.
@bobby b
Here in Minnesota, by the time it was over, nursing homes had a 3.5% mortality rate.
Not that I disagree with your general point, but TBH 3.5% doesn’t seem very high in a nursing home. That is one in thirty residents dying per year. I’d have thought baseline mortality at a nursing home would be quite a bit higher than that irrespective of any passing pandemic. The annual death rate of the whole of the US population of all ages is already close 1%. So those at the terminal end of life dying at four times that rate does not seem particularly surprising.
BTW, for those who think Covid wasn’t deadly or bad please have a look at this graph: https://database.earth/population/united-states-of-america/deaths
Covid did exist – Neil Oliver and co are wrong in claiming that it did not exist, but everything else the establishment claimed was false.
Covid did not come from an animal market – it came from the Wuhan Chines lab, due to research financed by American government agencies and the Eco Health Alliance (led by Peter Daszak – of the World Health Organisation, and British subject – so Mr Biden could not pardon him).
Covid was a danger to human life – which the World Health Organisation at first denied (I have not forgotten that), and it was a danger to the United States which “Doctor” Tony Fauci of the American government agency who had helped finance it, at first denied (he would like us to forget those denials).
The “lockdowns” did NOT “save lives”, on the contrary they did terrible harm – and officials and “experts” who pushed them (such as Tony Fauci) should be punished for the most savage attack on Civil Liberties in modern times.
There were, not were not, generally effective Early Treatments for Covid – and people who denied that, such as Tony Fauci (but really the whole international establishment) are culpable for the many, very many, people who died because they did not get those Early Treatments – because those Early Treatments were smeared and doctors who tried to get them to patients were punished – indeed ruthlessly persecuted. The smearing and persecution of Early Treatment being for the purpose of getting Emergency Authorisation of the Covid “vaccines”.
And the Covid “vaccines” pushed by Tony Fauci, and the rest of the international establishment, were not very “effective” and were certainly NOT “safe”.
I don’t agree. The idea “Gingerdave” & his ilk are arguing from the POV of dispassionate science is somewhere between debatable & laughable.
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
I don’t agree. The idea “Gingerdave” & his ilk are arguing from the POV of dispassionate science is somewhere between debatable & laughable.
I’ll have to assume you didn’t read what he said. His arguments were quite reasonable. As to his “ilk” I’d probably agree with you, but Gingerdave sans ilk seemed very much concerned with reason and data and open to hearing different points of view.
The events, the lying about the origins of Covid and the initial pretence that it was not much of a threat (at first the World Health Organisation, Tony Fauci, and others, said Covid was not a threat – then, without any apology, they said it was such a deadly threat that all Civil Liberties needed to be crushed), the despicable “lockdowns” (which did NOT “save lives” – and were the most vicious attack on basic liberties in the modern history of Western countries), the smearing of Early Treatments and the persecution of doctors and medical scientists who supported them (this undermining of Early Treatment meant that vast numbers of people who could have been saved – DIED), and the pushing of the Covid “vaccines” which are not very effective and are certainly not “safe”, did have a positive side – yes a positive side.
The international administrative state (government and corporate) was shown to be (was exposed as being) both totally dishonest and utterly malevolent – nothing they now say, about C02 being evil or whatever, will now be believed.
Perry – you were treated appallingly, and you are right not to trust that doctor again.
A doctor should have one loyalty – to their patient, but too many now are loyal to their employer – either corporate or government, as they know they will be savagely persecuted if they do not follow “the line” on such things as Covid. The breaking of the individual relationship between healer and patient is indeed terrible.
As for the authorities generally – at some points their vicious lies and persecution slipped into parody, for example having ruthlessly tried to stop people associating with each other (even closing down churches – and, tragically, the “mainstream” church authorities cooperated with the state) – the same authorities then reversed themselves by encouraging the “anti racist” riots (“protests” – involving several murders and a vast amount of burning and stealing) after Mr George Floyd died from the drugs he willingly consumed (for which people were sent to prison, and one was cut up with a knife, for crimes that everyone knew they did NOT commit).
When asked about how the “protests” were obviously gatherings of people, the very thing the authorities had said spread Covid, the authorities said that this did not matter as “racism is a public health emergency”.
After all this anyone who trusts the authorities again, about anything, is an idiot.
What i’d like to know from Perry is, is he talking about his British doctor (as i suppose) or his Czech doctor?
— WRT HCQ: I submit that the best evidence for its effectiveness came (indirectly) from that fraudulent paper in The Lancet which claimed that HCQ is NOT effective.
That paper led to Swiss doctors no longer prescribing HCQ, after which the death rate in Switzerland increased; only to go down again when the paper was retracted and HCQ started being used again in Switzerland.
I base my assertion on this article from France Soir (in English).
I trust a ‘natural experiment’ like this, more than i trust double-blind controlled trials (which in turn i trust more than in vitro studies).
We are at a point where traditionally-empirist English-speaking people have to rely on French news for analysis of empirical data.
… explaining (often unsuccessfully) the risk-benefit ratios of vaccines
In my fully vaxxed household, we caught COVID and passed it on to each other.
And that seemed to be quite the common situation in other households.
So regarding the “risk-benefit ratio” it turns out there is zero benefit, only risk.
And the numpties in government and the medical establishment still continued to coerce and threaten us if we didn’t continue with the boosters.
The loss of trust was not about the vaccine, it was about the massive gaslighting that we could plainly see happening.
“So I will take the vaccines because I don’t trust the people who tell me not to.“
This doesn’t strike me as a very good reason to take a vaccine that has been rushed through development at the speed of light for a disease that is harmful mostly only to very old people or very ill people, and was acknowledged as such even by the authorities very early on during the epidemic.
Oh, and the hospitals are always full to the brim when the flu comes along so why should Covid be any different?
OK, I will expand.
The PCR-is-inaccurate hypothesis is (to me) a fundamental part of the debate. This gives us the official hospitalisation and death rates from covid, and therefore is the basis for the risk calculations.
I am told that PCR is inaccurate – that it can’t distinguish between covid, flu, and other respiratory infections. So I take a look at the PCR protocols that were available at the time, and check them against the gene sequence databases – and find that, according to my experience of PCR, these would work as they’re supposed to. So I explain this, and am told that I am wrong.
This is possible, I am a simple herder of nucleic acids – but if PCR is the case, most/all of the PCR I have done would not have worked, and this would also mean that DNA does not behave the way we think it does.
The person who tells me PCR is inaccurate also tells me I shouldn’t take the vaccines.
So to me, their understanding of biology is faulty – and therefore I don’t trust them about the vaccines.
The hospitals were all full of covid patients. How well would the hospitals cope if they had to deal with the usual patient intake and covid?
In my fully vaxxed household, we all caught it at different times but didn’t pass it to each other – and this happened to other people I know. Is your personal experience more significant than mine?
To me, the problem with your natural experiment has the flaw that other things might have happened at the same time. Without a proper controlled trial, how do you know that IVM is the only variable? In the history of medicine there have been many trials where an initially-unknown variable skewed the result.
So I look at the trials, and they’re done to the same standards I would expect based on the vaccine trials I was aware of before covid. You might define them as experimental, but to me they’re not because the phase 3 trials were done (eg Moderna). So if your argument for not taking the vaccine is that it’s experimental, I’m going to ignore that because it doesn’t fit with my experience.
The covid vaccine trials were fast – but the phase 3 trial of Salk’s polio vaccine took as long. The trials were quick because everything else was dropped.
Several people told me that the vaccines were gene therapy, would change your DNA and that mRNA is toxic. When I described the current understanding of protein production and that mRNA is present in our cells, I was accused of lying. When I dug out textbooks from the 1990’s that described mRNA in the cells, this was ignored.
I asked how the vaccines changed your DNA – without the enzymes needed – they were unable to explain, but insisted it was the case.
I asked for proof that the enzymes were present in the vaccines, they were unable to provide this.
So if your argument against taking the vaccines requires a fundamental change in our understanding of protein production, which probably means that all our models of cellular biochemistry is wrong – I’m going to evaluate it as unfounded.
TL:DR Too many of the reasons I have been given against the vaccines do not fit with my experience of biology. So I think these arguments are flawed and do not provide a reason not to take the vaccine.
Too many of the reasons I have been given FOR the vaccines do not fit with my experience of statistics. Plus, the claim about the “vaccine” being superior to natural immunity was BS. That is was a fomite disease was BS. That masks were effective was BS.
I don’t believe a word you say, old chap.
I am baffled by what appears from his second contribution to be Gingerdave’s view that whether lockdowns were more harmful than helpful is in some way dependent on whether PCR tests were accurate. That lockdowns were harmful is obvious; I would have thought you assessed the harmful/helpful balance by comparing countries and states that locked down hard with those that didn’t (Sweden, Florida) and determining whether the former had better Covid death rates than the latter. Everything I have read indicates that those that locked down hard did no better.
Likewise with the vaccination of children. The authorities knew long before this was pushed in the UK that children were in little danger from Covid; I don’t see that this well known fact had anything to do with the accuracy of PCR testing. What the UK government did via lockdowns and pushing the vaccination of children was to sacrifice the future prospects of children and the young in an attempt to reduce the effects of Covid on the elderly. Appalling in my view – and I’m one of the elderly.
Of course lockdowns were harmful, the question is whether they were worse than the disease.
2 reasons:
a) because a common argument against lockdowns and vaccines was that the PCR tests couldn’t distinguish between Covid, flu and other upper respiratory tract infections, therefore the offical line that there were many people in hospital with covid and dying of covid was wrong, they all had flu, so the lockdowns were not justified, and we could go back to normal life.
b) if PCR is inaccurate, then the results of the vaccine trials are unreliable (covid in trial participants was confirmed by PCR), so the vaccines don’t work, so there’s no justification to taking them.
So if a skeptic’s argument hinges on their belief that PCR is inaccurate, but their reasoning contradicts my experience of PCR, I’m not going to agree with them because their reasoning is flawed.
If a hospital has 10 children with respitatory infections, and PCR tests show that 9 of them have covid, that tells me that covid is a problem, but if the PCR is wrong, covid isn’t a problem.
Olson
In hospitalized adolescents, “179 COVID-19 case-patients, six (3%) were vaccinated and 173 (97%) were unvaccinated. Overall, 77 (43%) case-patients were admitted to an intensive care unit, and 29 (16%) critically ill case-patients received life support during hospitalization, including invasive mechanical ventilation, vasoactive infusions, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation; two of these 29 critically ill patients (7%) died. All 77 case-patients admitted to the intensive care unit, all 29 critically ill case-patients, and both deaths occurred among unvaccinated case-patients.”
Shin
As of September 3, 2022, 5,388,338 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and 46 deaths (3 in 2021 and 43 in 2022) were reported in children ≤ 18 years in Korea…Only four had history of COVID-19 immunization.
Copeland is an interesting paper, comparing adverse events after vaccination and after covid infection with the baseline rate of these conditions.
This table has the details, but they also did a summary.
Children are not at risk from covid?
There’s lots of studies that found covid to be a risk to children. Certainly not as bad for adults and much less than the elderly – but not 0.
So you believe that PCR can’t distinguish between covid and flu?
Can you tell me how and why? Specifically – including sequences and primers? Complete with a source for this?
You believe that the mRNA vaccines do alter a recipient’s DNA?
How does it do this, complete with reaction pathways, relevant enzymes and how these enzymes are introduced into the body if not already present? Complete with source?
Do you think that mRNA is toxic?
I think I’m giving up Gingerdave. The point I was making was that my arguments did not depend on whether PCR tests were accurate and in fact had nothing to do with that. Your response may well address the reasoning of others but it does not address mine. Thank you, however, for confirming so convincingly that in statistical terms Covid was of little danger to children; I did not say they were at no risk. If you think that in light of that very small risk it was appropriate to vaccinate them we will have to agree to differ.
May I ask you to consider the possibility that in analysing the admittedly very complex issues that the response to Covid gives rise to, you may be giving more weight to what follows from whether PCR tests are accurate than is justified because that is an area in which you have a special expertise.
I was going to respond to Gingedave’s reply to me, above, but that requires some time which i have not got at the moment. Maybe later.
Dismissing Gingerdave’s latest comment is easier, though.
The line of reasoning that Gingerdave attributes to the “lockdown deniers” is not only one that i never heard before (and i have read a lot of lockdown denial); but also one that can be rebuked without any reference to PCR reliability.
Because, if the hospitals are full of people with flu (with excess deaths reaching 100% of normal for the season in Italy, the UK, and other countries; and maybe 300% in NY City), then lockdowns are just as appropriate as in the case that hospitals are full of people with covid.
“Just as appropriate” are key words here, because the theory that lockdowns are appropriate for an epidemic of severe respiratory illness is the one thing that “lockdown deniers” deny. (Although the looniest of them also question whether excess deaths happened at all.)
Again, this is something that i have never heard from “mRNA vaccine deniers”. (It is again a reasoning that can be dismissed independently of PCR accuracy, but i won’t go into that.)
And incidentally, the main argument actually made* against mRNA vaccines is not that the mRNA is reverse-transcripted into DNA. It is that they lead to death of the cells that absorb and express the mRNA. If those are heart cells, needless to say some problems are likely to arise.
* in the real world, as distinct from Gingerdave’s imagination.