COVID-19 Vaccine: Facts vs Bullshit

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COVID-19 Vaccine: Facts vs Bullshit

Jun 03

I have a friend who keeps sending me horrific bullshit about this vaccination that I told her people must stop spreading. “But it’s all true.”

Her go to line is, “Check it out.”

Obviously she didn’t.

The first thing I saw at the top of her next email concerned the number of people who have died from the vaccine: “So far, nearly 8,000 people (reported) have died in Europe, and 4,000 people have died in the US, in a very short period of time. These are the reported deaths, –the actual deaths are likely higher.”

As a journalist, I have access to certain tools most don’t know about, and I immediately found the first time this appeared on the web, and lo and behold it came from Tucker Carlson of Fox Fraudcasting. Tucker Carlson is not a journalist and he’s never been credible. In fact, he’s entertainment for the fascist leaning Americans who fear anything they know nothing about.

He spews lies, and that 8,000 and 4,000 dead was debunked immediately, everywhere.

Getting your information about COVID-19 from Fox News is like getting investment advice from the Food Channel.

I told her to stop getting her information from Fox, and she wrote back: I never watch Fox! I didn’t support Trump!

But obviously she’s getting her information from people who do watch Fox. She soon followed up with a story about a: Bombshell Video, Leaked Documents Detail How Facebook Censors Vaccine Facts When They Don’t Fit CDC, Big Pharma Narrative.

I respect her as a person, but as a researcher/journalist, there’s a lot to be desired. I took time out to read the article. It was a story about that famous investigative journalist James O’Keefe of Project Veritas.

I lost it. I just started laughing and had to go outside for a break. Again, she doesn’t watch Fox News so she doesn’t know that he’s a Fox News regular. I wrote back:

Do you know how many times he’s been caught manipulating videos and faking data?
Do you know he’s being sued right now for millions? for fraud? Do you know he’s been banned from Twitter for posting verifiable lies?
Yes, he suing twitter for violating his 1st amendment rights, which shows how stupid he is. Twitter has nothing to do with the first amendment; he violated terms of service. Everyone has lost these lawsuits. Mainly because they don’t understand the constitution.
If your sources are crap, your data is crap. He’s not a scientist, he’s a comedian.
Yours truly.

I shouldn’t have to have to debunk all this crapola. There are sites on the web that debunk them. When she sends me something she doesn’t just send me one thing; it’s always paragraphs after paragraphs of stuff, which, by the way, is a standard method of conspiracy theorists. “Overwhelm them.” They won’t take the time to check out the facts and in the light of “so much evidence” they must be right.

It turns out that just ONE ingredient in the Tide is in the vaccine: Water.

I have lost respect for many people because of this subject. Professionals I used to read, quote, and when their information was trustworthy, I’d pass it on. Too many have left the rational world from Mercola to Russell Blaylock.

I can’t do that anymore.

My friend and her husband have health issues. Many things affect them poorly and they avoid them. People with allergies must be careful around this vaccine, because anaphylactic shock is a possibility. There are some people whose doctors will advise against the vaccination. Those people will be safer once we’ve developed herd immunity.

But sadly, we’re not going to reach herd immunity for a long time due to the anti-vaxxer movement. And she and her husband’s lives are now in danger because of that; and possibly in more danger than had they been vaccinated.

This is a standard meme for vaccines. If you get one, why do I?

I hope I’m repeating myself: we don’t get vaccinated just for ourselves but for those around us, those we love. Nobody knows who will die from this bug, and you might be perfectly safe. But you can pass a virus to someone it will kill.

Our History of Reporting on Vaccinations

If you’ve read our paper, Studies Show, you soon realize that I am both a scientist and a journalist. I have a love of science, especially medical science, while at the same time I am a harsh critic of science, especially medical science. I point out its inherent weaknesses, and its flaws—and sadly, its flaws are many. But so are its successes. This vaccine is one huge success.

I am a critic of the science, and a critic of drugs. Some are worthless, such as cholesterol lowering drugs, and when doctors tell you we must weigh the benefits against risks, you might find that avoiding that drug will be more beneficial than taking it. And then there is the simple concept of letting your food be your medicine. I happen to be blessed with a physician who has studied nutrition. He’s also recommended six vaccinations he felt I needed at my age. I got them.

Drugs have side effects and risks. That’s modern medicine.

Vaccines are drugs.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

HOWEVER

Because of the anti–vaxxer movement during a pandemic, I’ve completely stopped writing about vaccines because the anti–vaxxers will use that to bolster their deadly beliefs.

I’ve written about the Wakefield study, and still today we hear on the news the phrase “disgraced Doctor Wakefield.” I’m always amazed because his study was not debunked by scientists, but by a professional skeptic. Wakefield and his colleagues lost their medical licenses over this debacle, but years later, when the courts took up the issue again, they pronounced that there was nothing wrong with the results of their study; they’d done nothing deceitful or deceptive in their research, and the study even noted that further research must be done on these issues they discovered. The sad part is that the mainstream media did not report that those physicians still living in Great Britain were given back their medical licenses.

For many, they heard that first here at our site. This is how shameful our medical journalism is in this country. It too focuses on the sensational, and that is just tiresome, inaccurate, and not real journalism, but entertainment.

Having said this, I quit writing about vaccines. I didn’t want to give any conspiracy nut anything to use.

The Genius Behind the Vaccine: Kati Karikó

She grew up in Hungary wanting to be a scientist. Nobody knew why; she’d never met one, but she aimed her life in that direction, earned a PhD at the University of Szeged and did postdoctoral work at the university’s Biological Research Center.

She, her husband, and their 2-year-old daughter moved the US in the mid-eighties when her university’s research program ran out of money.

Now this is really important: She’d had an idea (one that was laughed at by most of her colleagues) that she could instruct the body to make its own medicines. Her focus was singular and obsessive, and that was on the messenger RNA in the body, the “messenger” that carries the DNA instructions to every cell in the body.

She’d find collaborators along the way, but few grants, and in the university system, it’s always been “publish or perish.” When she applied for grants, she was turned down. Repeatedly. Thus it was very important for her to find confederates.

For years it was, as they say, touch and go. She never got her own lab and she put in so many hours that her husband claimed she was earning about a dollar an hour.

On her way to a full professorship, her grant proposals were rejected, and she was demoted.

The fact that she eventually succeeded could be the plot of a Horatio Alger book, in which the hero advances only through “luck and pluck.”

While other scientists take their breakthroughs into the corporate world to get rich, Kati’s goal was just to help humanity. And here is how successful she was. (Out of the NY TImes).

Chinese scientists posted the genetic sequence of the virus ravaging Wuhan in January 2020, and researchers everywhere went to work. BioNTech designed its mRNA vaccine in hours; Moderna designed its in two days.
The idea for both vaccines was to introduce mRNA into the body that would briefly instruct human cells to produce the coronavirus’s spike protein. The immune system would see the protein, recognize it as alien, and learn to attack the coronavirus if it ever appeared in the body.
The vaccines, though, needed a lipid bubble to encase the mRNA and carry it to the cells that it would enter. The vehicle came quickly, based on 25 years of work by multiple scientists, including Pieter Cullis of the University of British Columbia.
Scientists also needed to isolate the virus’s spike protein from the bounty of genetic data provided by Chinese researchers. Dr. Barney Graham, of the National Institutes of Health, and Jason McClellan, of the University of Texas at Austin, solved that problem in short order.
Testing the quickly designed vaccines required a monumental effort by companies and the National Institutes of Health. But Dr. Kariko had no doubts.
On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”
To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-kariko.html

I don’t usually post memes here but please, steal this and post it everywhere.

One of the most prevalent conspiracy theories about this vaccine is, “How can it be safe when it was developed so quickly?”

No it was not. It took well over 20 years to complete the research, and was tested all the time. It has never modified the DNA, but modified the messages the DNA receives.

If anyone says you can get COVID from the vaccine they are talking out their ass. There is nothing new and fast about this vaccine. The original vaccine was developed over 15 years ago, and mRNA vaccines have been tested for the past 7 years, with that risk vs benefit ratio always in their minds, and as Dr Kati put it, “The benefit is huge and there’s really little to no risk.” https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2020/december/penn-mrna-biology-pioneers-receive-covid19-vaccine-enabled-by-their-foundational-research

That is straight from the scientist’s mouth; the scientist who worked on this idea, this concept, that she could teach the body to make its own medicines by just sending a very tiny, different message to the DNA. It’s brilliant, and exactly the type of scientific breakthrough that people like me live to see.

Conspiracy Theories and the Anti-Vaxxer Movement

You already know our feelings on vaccines: they are drugs, drugs have side effects, and those side effects must be studied and drugs must be researched to do less damage while producing more immunity. Drugs are drugs, but if the anti-vaxxers had been around in the fifties, we’d still have polio. (And yes, there were problems with the polio vaccine, but in the end, it terminated polio because we all got the vaccine.)

We’ve posted an article about conspiracy theories here: Conspiracy Theories.

I don’t remember if we informed people in that article, but people most susceptible to conspiracy theories about vaccines are people who live in fear. They’ll easily cling to something that plays to their fears. On the other hand, people who don’t live in fear, tend to handle the postings others cling to and happily pass on to others with rational thought: ‘

does it sound like bullshit?
is it backed by real science?
who’s promoting this?
are the sources credible?
and finally: how quickly can this be debunked?

What? did they quit tracking you on your phone, over the internet, and from your TV?

Stop me if you’ve heard this . . .

Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics. Oh, and so do idiots.

Someone told me that the odds of dying from this thing are just 1% so if it’s my turn to go then it’s my turn to go.

THERE IS SO MUCH WRONG WITH THAT KIND OF THINKING (OR LACK THEREOF)!!!

If you are examining fatality rates, you have to consider (facts have contexts) age, race, demographic, and other factors (how healthy that person is, for example). Then you have to consider that the unvaccinated are playing Russian Roulette.

Too many assume that you have to be a certain age or have a health concern to die, when in reality, college kids have died from this. Children died from this. The thing about COVID-19 is we have an idea of those factors that can lead to death, but there are exceptions, and when they start piling up, there are an awful lot of exceptions.

People send me statistics and statistics and statistics thinking these tiny numbers don’t mean anything.

In the 2018-2020 flu season, of the 35.5 million who caught the flu, just 34,200 died. That’s a fatality rate of .09%. From the latest John’s Hopkins collected data (thank you, Alexa), the current fatality rate in the us is 1.8. Your average Jo & Joann off the street poo-poo these numbers, but that is 20 times the rate of death of that flu season.

I’m not even going to go any further into statistics, because of the exceptions and this simple fact: we don’t get vaccinated only for ourselves. We get vaccinations to protect those around us, to protect others.

And if you don’t care about others, go away. We don’t need you.

If you are convinced something is bad, you’ll only research and accept information that supports your convictions.

And yet, anything that is just plain wrong can be debunked.

I was sent the following:

Bombshell: Nobel Laureate Reveals that Covid Vaccine is ‘Creating Variants’ (rumble.com)

60% of New Covid Cases are from People Who Have Been Vaccinated

Luc Montagnier was one of the few scientists who said that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was synthetic

The person sending these accepted them as truth and didn’t even take a few seconds to check their veracity.

One by one:

The Bombshell above was posted at rumble.com, so I went to mediabiasfactcheck.com (we’ve written about this site) and the results of their investigation.

Overall, we rate Rumble Right Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories as well as false information, use of poor sources, and a lack of transparency.

mediabiasfactcheck.com

And then we found that the Nobel Laureate never said anything like that.

The 60% line above was supposedly from a “Yale doctor” and we found that again, nothing even close to that was said by Yale doctor.

And Luc? well, his assessment of where the virus came from is his opinion, and other experts have their opinions:

Was coronavirus made in a lab? Claim met with skepticism. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Science/Was-coronavirus-made-in-a-lab-Claim-met-with-skepticism

No, SARS-CoV-2 does not contain HIV genetic code! https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/big-data/no-sars-cov-2-does-not-contain-hiv-genetic-code/

CORONAVIRUS: INSTITUT PASTEUR WARNS AGAINST FALSE INFORMATION CIRCULATING ON SOCIAL MEDIA https://www.pasteur.fr/en/home/research-journal/news/coronavirus-institut-pasteur-warns-against-false-information-circulating-social-media

Scientists can have their “opinions” but they are just that opinions.

Here are two pieces I found right away, and the person sending me this stuff would have found the same had she taken the time to do her homework:

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-health-coronavirus/fact-check-there-is-no-evidence-to-suggest-covid-19-vaccines-will-kill-people-by-causing-antibody-dependent-enhancement-current-evidence-demonstrates-the-opposite-idUSL2N2ND0WS

French Nobel laureate falsely credited with faux vaccine quote

Well, I’m done.

If you want to send me crap to debunk, I’m not going to read it. Everything that’s been sent to me thus far has been easily debunked in just seconds.

The truth is out there, so allow me to point to it below, at sites you can trust.

And we will not reach the herd immunity numbers if we keep posting and reposting bullshit that keeps people from getting vaccinated.

Oh, and do not listen to the stories about personal experience: My leg fell off after I got the shot, or my life was ruined by the shot. First and foremost, these anecdotal reports are worthless because if anything happens after a vaccine, it takes real science to determine if a reaction has been caused by the vaccine and not something else that is going on with someone’s health.

The CDC is collecting data, they are monitoring the side effects. We need good data for future pandemics. And people are just plain nuts. They get a shot, something happens, and they immediately blame the shot. People are not scientists and when they say this caused that, it’s just their human nature, and not a scientific call.

Go here to help the CDC collect data on reactions to the vaccine: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/vaers.html