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Fear is the New Smart
Auguste Renoir The umbrellas 1881-6
“When it comes to shifting attitudes to vaccines, it is crucial to distinguish between public information campaigns that seek to educate the public and those that seek to persuade them,” said Philipp Schmid, a behavioural scientist researching vaccine scepticism at the University of Erfurt. “[..] if you don’t proactively tackle the problem at all, you end up playing catch-up with the anti-vaxxers. In a way, governments have to work on a parallel vaccine rollout – immunising the public against science denial.”
But WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said: “it’s very important for people to understand that at the moment, all we know about the vaccines is that they will very effectively reduce your risk of severe disease. We haven’t seen any evidence yet indicating whether or not they stop transmission.” And Dr. David Martin claimed: It’s Gene Therapy, Not a Vaccine. One might add: It’s not science, it’s a sales job.
Now, I don’t know exactly who the WaPo refers to when they say “the anti-vaccine movement”, or that German guy with “the anti-vaxxers”, but it appears there is a widespread movement going on to promote mRNA vaccines, both by governments and by the press. And we’re not supposed to ask questions. Well, I’m sorry, but I make a living asking questions. And I think asking questions is not just everybody’s right, it’s an obligation. So don’t come at me with “domestic terrorism” or “anti-vaxxers”, a term that has nothing to do with the topic to begin with. Asking questions is not the same as being against something.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Thank You 2020
Eugene Delacroix Greece expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi 1826
We started covering the coronavirus early on, in January, and never looked back. Many people got their first exposure to the virus through us (pun very much intended). What developed throughout 2020 was not just a solid reader-base, but also a maturing comments section, that taught me as much as it did readers.
Thank you for that. The comments from medical professionals and others became a strong part of the entire story. And it was by no means a one-sided thing; opinions were always all over the place, as they should be.
That’s the big problem in my view that we face these days: our media have become one-dimensional, the exact opposite of what they should be. This became clear through the Trump era, and the incessant hammering of one actor vs the deafening silence about all others in the same theater and on the same stage.
And we see that again today: try, if you can, to find in the MSM a critical opinion about lockdowns, or facemasks, or about the newly-fangled vaccines. It’s very hard if not impossible. This one-dimensionality hides behind “the science”. Which is something that doesn’t really exist, as we know because scientists in different countries contradict each other, as do those in the same country, and scientists even often contradict themselves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Virus 1 – Media 0
Salvador Dalí Mi esposa desnuda 1945
That change appears to bear fruit. The WaPo announced the other day they’re hiring 150 more “reporters”. Who are not really reporters, in the new setting they’re more like narrators. They’re servants to the narratives favored by editors and owners, the ones they expect -and know- to generate the most clickbaits.
Superficially, the media landscape sort of still looks the same, same logos, same slogans, but below the surface everything has changed. What’s important is no longer News, but the favored interpretation of it. It seems to work miracles for the MSM, but it’s dangerous for the nation. Because: where are you going to get your news, on the basis of which you can form your own opinion?
And if you can’t get news that doesn’t already have an inbuilt opinion, how are you supposed to have a opinion of your own? At the end of the day, you will be left with a nation that is poorly informed and has no opinions of its own. Everyone just regurgitates opinions forced upon them 24/7.
The main difference with 5 years ago is probably that social media have joined the MSM in their strategy. They now all force-shape opinions for clickbait. And nobody puts a loophole in their way:
Facebook Joins Twitter In Reverting To Pre-Election News Feed Algorithms
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Canadian Health Ministry Exploring “Immunity Passports,” Vaccine “Tracking And Surveillance”
Canadian Health Ministry Exploring “Immunity Passports,” Vaccine “Tracking And Surveillance”
Ontario government says non-vaccinated people could face travel, social restrictions
A World in a State of Total Confusion
While 17 states have joined Texas in their lawsuit against Pennsylvania for a fraudulent election, YouTube/Google and the new BigTech conspiracy against the people vow to delete any content claiming the election was tarnished in any way pronouncing Biden is the president-elect which is totally illegal for only the Electoral College can make that determination – note CNN, New York Times, or the Washington Post.
The Georgia Governor refuses to investigate anything including dead voters which is a common fraud in every election. The Republican Party filed a suit against the governor to mandate he follow the law.
Then in Delaware, the US Attorney is investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes which can lead to Biden himself. Is there any wonder why our computer has been highlighting the week of December 21 following the Electoral College vote and then the week of January 4th which is the Georga runoff for the Senate rather than inauguration day? The target week of the 4th is the biggest target and it is that election that will determine who controls the Senate.
VACCINE:
We are getting in reports from around the world that people are getting sick from the vaccine. Pfizer has issued a warning now itself. I have heard from health workers who had to quit or take the vaccine. Both Pfizer and Moderna are producing separate vaccines that use messenger RNA, or mRNA, to trigger the immune system to produce protective antibodies without using actual bits of the virus. This experimental coronavirus vaccine is the first-ever authorized vaccines that use mRNA. In reality, there are no long-term studies and this whole thing has been pushed for political purposes – not health. Nobody in government cares about us – EVER! We are the great unwashed who are tolerated – but perhaps not for long.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Our conversation with a coronavirus
Our conversation with a coronavirus
We have all been flummoxed by the way in which the coronavirus called COVID-19 has behaved as if it has agency in the world. We say it “moves,” “adapts,” “evades,” and “tricks us.” We attribute an intelligence to it. We marvel at its ability to manifest itself in so many ways. And everywhere we read COVID-19 is an enemy, an invader, and a killer, one that uses stealth to spread itself. We must defeat it, wipe it out, and eradicate it.
Many places on the internet we are implored to understand COVID-19 in order to stay safe—but only until such time as we vanquish this foe of humankind with a vaccine.
It occurs to very few people that we might be in a conversation with this coronavirus which is transmitting information to us by its actions and responding to our actions with its own reactions.
The rise of antibiotic resistance is another reminder that we are, in fact, in dialogue with the natural world. Everywhere—after centuries of practicing an ideology that claims we humans can control nature and with the right tools always and everywhere bend it to our will—we are being reminded that we are part of nature, that we are, in fact, organisms in an environment.
The modern environmental movement reintroduced the idea that we humans must align ourselves with the natural world or perish. But much of that movement is now focused on technical fixes such as electric cars designed to enable humans to live pretty much as they have been in the recent past.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Lethal or Contagious
Lethal or Contagious
There was this comment at the Automatic Earth yesterday that got me thinking. It was sort of wrapped in a bit of -more- innuendo about health officials not getting the results they were looking for in COVID19 numbers, as if the whole virus event is some goal-seeked conspiracy. You’ll be familiar with it by now.
I said back in the day that measures like lockdowns can’t last long, because people are social animals. You would just have hoped that when they were finally, far too late, decided upon, that countries, states, communities, would have made the best of them. But it’s been, and more importantly will be, an awful mess, other than in a few places.
And I did say that too, that the so-called leadership in the world today is good at declaring a lockdown, albeit too late, but not at anything else, not at timing it, not at executing it, let alone at managing the way out of it in reopening societies. It is all so predictable.
But people have been solidly dug into their trenches now, after 2 months, and they’ve done so much reading, and watching pundits, that they’re no longer looking for news, they’re looking for opinions, ones that match their own darkest notions. We’ve come to the point that if there’s nothing suspicious going on, then that’s mighty suspicious.
And there’s plenty of such opinions, and plenty among them that lay the blame for freedoms and livelihoods lost somewhere, anywhere. So yeah, in that sense it’s time to reopen, the mental health sense. But not, unfortunately, in the physical health sense. The virus is still prevalent in most communities and many a community will pay a steep price.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Don’t Bet on a Vaccine
Don’t Bet on a Vaccine
If we get one, great. But here’s why we can’t count on it and what that means.
Every day politicians promise eventual relief from the threat of COVID-19 with a vaccine. An unprecedented scientific race to develop more than 100 of them is now underway. But don’t roll up your sleeve yet. Any promise of a technical solution for a global pandemic remains a great gamble for a variety of reasons.
So we had better develop a robust Plan B: Get very good at living with the coronavirus in our midst, keeping large outbreaks to a minimum. The key to this, lacking a super effective vaccine, is: test, trace and isolate. Repeat. Repeat. And repeat again. We have the means to do this now, and it should become our way of life for many months, and likely years, to come.
Why should we be wary of the promise a vaccine will deliver us any time soon from the coronavirus?
Some viruses are more ‘wily’ than others. Vaccines are artificial tools to confer immunity to diseases. Instead of waiting for natural immunity and disease cycles to do the often deadly and random job, our civilization now depends on the efficiency of vaccines. Immunization is as much a part of modern civilization as the highway.
Vaccines, however, have their limits and can also suffer from diminishing returns. The evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald has noted that humans have used vaccines for the last 200 years to conquer the easiest adversaries: measles, diptheria, rabies, polio and smallpox. “We are now left with the more wily ones which will probably evade our vaccination efforts by changing their coats.” Malaria and viruses like HIV are masters at evading the immune system.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Lockdowns Work
Why Lockdowns Work
There was another comment at the Automatic Earth yesterday questioning the function and wisdom of various lockdowns. I thought I’d explain this in more detail.
Ilargi if you or anyone else could explain what the exit strategy is from a lockdown I’d be interested in hearing it. As it is, this lockdown I repeat is no different than financial QE – everyone comes out weaker than they were before treatment. Financial QE covers up her problem just like lockdown does, but makes it worse in the long run. The only exit strategy I can see is to keep lockdown until a vaccine or effective treatment, neither of which are on the horizon.
If you are arguing that even healthy economies can survive indefinite closure, with intermittent re-openings I don’t know what to tell you. The suggestion is made that Sweden has a huge vested interest in understating fatalities. It is also certainly true that the rest of the world has an even greater vested interest in criticizing the Swedish approach because it demonstrates how useless the total lockdowns are. BTW the reported differences in fatalities between Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia are not statistically significant. Playing with numbers and not understanding how things may not be as they seem.
First, let’s re-establish that no lockdown would have been needed if and when politicians and scientists had done what’s in their job descriptions. That does not mean that no lockdown was called for once they did fail. Indeed, it’s the failure to act at the very beginning, say January 31, when the WHO sent out its first warning, that made lockdowns inevitable.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Scientists Discover Alarming Coronavirus Mutation That Could Render Vaccine Useless
Scientists Discover Alarming Coronavirus Mutation That Could Render Vaccine Useless
The prospect that SARS-CoV-2, the “novel” coronavirus responsible for causing the illness COVID-19, might be mutating and evolving as it spreads across the globe has been such a terrifying prospect for the scientific community, that medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci seem to avoid even engaging on the topic.
Asked about the possibility of viral mutation during one of the White House’s inaugural task force press briefings, Dr. Fauci assured the public that scientists have found “no evidence” of any concerning mutations, though the prospect that a mutated version of the virus might return during next year’s flu season has kept some virologists up at night with nightmares about needing to start the vaccine clock from zero.
The problem is that vaccines often aren’t as effective against viruses that mutate, like the flu does every season (that’s why you need to keep getting that flu shot year after year). And now, a new scientific paper that – like most of the coronavirus research being cited in the press – has yet to be peer reviewed claims to have identified a mutation in a sample of the virus collected in India that could create serious problems for researchers working on a vaccine.
Monitoring the mutation dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 is critical for the development of effective approaches to contain the 21 pathogen. By analyzing 106 SARS-CoV-2 and 39 SARS genome sequences, we provided direct genetic evidence that 22 SARS-CoV-2 has a much lower mutation rate than SARS. Minimum Evolution phylogeny analysis revealed the putative original status of SARS-CoV-2 and the early-stage spread history. The discrepant phylogenies for the spike protein and it receptor binding domain proved a previously reported structural rearrangement prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
