Irrationality and the Covid vaccine

Loss of balance over the pandemic crosses continents and political divisions

By Melanie Phillips   Oct 28/21

Dancing against the Plague; Pieter Bruegel, 1518

In my Times (£) column this week, I wrote about the dangerous irrationality of those  implacably opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine.

I wrote that while some concerns about the Covid vaccine were understandable — due to the acceleration of the normal testing regimen, or concerns about civil liberties if vaccination is made a condition of someone’s job or entry into a venue — there had been a significant loss of rationality and any sense of proportion.

You can go online and find people with scientific qualifications saying in terms that the state is actually trying to poison people with the Covid vaccine. But there’s no evidence whatever for this fantastic and paranoid claim. Many who assume that a doctoral or professorial handle confers intellectual authority tend automatically to believe such claims. Under serious and informed scrutiny, however, they fall apart.

Vaccination always involves a balance of harms. But all the available and reputable evidence indicates that the harms resulting from this vaccine are rare and vastly outweighed by its benefits.

It’s claimed, for example, that tens of thousands are suffering serious vaccine side effects. But this is based on statistics showing merely the number of those who subsequently died of other ailments; it doesn’t prove cause and effect. It’s claimed the vaccine may affect women’s fertility; there’s no evidence for that. And so on and on.

Yet anti-vaxers in Britain have even been abusing and intimidating children at their school gates over taking the vaccine. Such an unhinged set of fears is coming from both ends of the political spectrum.

Elements on the right have latched onto every single government response to the pandemic to claim a world-wide conspiracy to enslave and poison people, involving globalists, paedophiles, the “deep state,” Jewish financiers — and Bill Gates working with all of the above to control the world through microchips.

However, vaccine hostility has long roots in liberal “back to nature” movements too which for decades have used homeopathy, eaten only organic food and shunned all vaccinations for their children. The belief that “Big Pharma” drug companies were evil was previously a left-wing mantra. And now, as reported in the Observer, vaccine hostility is associated with the “wellness” industry and alternative lifestyles including ayurvedic healing, meditation and something called “conspirituality”. This turns out to be the intersection of yoga, juice cleanses, New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups controlling the universe.

Now this madness has reached Israel, where the third “booster” shot has brought under control a fourth wave of Covid cases over the summer. This was caused by a combination of waning efficacy from the two-shot vaccination programme, a stubborn residue of people refusing to get vaccinated and the arrival of the mega-infectious Delta variant.

The hospitals started to fill up with mainly young and unvaccinated people suffering serious effects of the virus. Vaccinated people who contracted it mostly suffered far less serious effects than if they had not been vaccinated — in which case many of them would have died.

On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported 236 serious cases of Covid-19 in the country, the lowest figure in ten weeks. Just 12 percent of the seriously ill were fully vaccinated.

Yet the health ministry’s director of public health, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis who has been a prominent advocate of the Covid vaccine, is now under physical threat from anti-vaxers. Ha’aretz reports:

Alroy-Preis’ high threat level designation follows what the police consider credible intelligence about plans to harm her or those around her. She has been a focus of criticism by vaccine opponents, some of whom have even called on social media for her to be physically attacked…Relatives of Alroy-Preis have filed three separate police complaints over the threats against her.

Clearly this is beyond disgraceful. It is also wildly irrational, given the proven success of the vaccine in preventing infection, serious illness and death from Covid-19. Determined to avoid further ruinous lockdowns, Israel’s government has put all its energies into vaccinating as much of its population as possible, including — from this summer — children aged 12-15.

Now that the US Food and Drug Administration has voted overwhelmingly to authorise the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children aged 5-11, Israel’s government  has signalled that it will start vaccinating this age group too as soon as the US issues final approval.

In Britain, the issue of vaccinating young children with the Covid vaccine induces hysterical opposition, with claims that Covid-19 causes no harm to young children while the vaccine may harm them badly. So it’s worth looking at the evidence from Israel about the relative risks to children from both Covid-19 and the vaccine. Ha’aretz reports:

One of the reasons for the delay in Israel [to vaccinating children] was the appearance of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, as a side effect among some people under 30 who had been vaccinated – mostly males – which required examination.

Since then, it has been found that myocarditis is extremely rare: according to the Health Ministry, there were 12 cases of the disease out of 256,000 people aged 12-15 who received two doses of the vaccine. Most of these cases were mild and did not require hospitalization. Despite the data showing the side effect is rare, the fear of myocarditis became a major argument among parents who did not want their children to be vaccinated.

… While children rarely become seriously ill or die from COVID-19 compared to adults, some develop complications. Infections in unvaccinated kids have also risen due to the easily transmitted Delta variant.

“To me, the question is pretty clear,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, a paediatric vaccine expert at the CDC and a voting member of the panel. “We don’t want children to be dying of COVID-19, even if it is far fewer children than adults, and we don’t want them in the ICU.”

From the beginning of the pandemic until the middle of this month, 2,660 Israeli children were hospitalised with COVID-19. Out of this number, 398 were in moderate, serious or critical condition. The Knesset Committee on the Rights of the Child was presented with data this month showing that 31 children aged 5 to 11 had contracted the coronavirus and been in serious or critical condition — and that three had died.

But while most children infected with the virus had mild symptoms, the effects of “long COVID” are also part of the debate. Children who suffer from long COVID experience ongoing symptoms even after recovering, including nerve and lung damage, and problems with their digestive system.

A Health Ministry survey showed that 11 percent of those who had contracted the virus developed long COVID. Among children aged 3 to 6, the percentage of cases who suffered from the symptoms of long COVID six months after they recovered was 1.8 percent. For children aged 6 to 12, the number stood at 2.4 percent. But doctors also say long COVID is under-diagnosed and seems to be more common than the data shows.

Children are also at risk of contracting PIMS, or Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome, after recovering from the coronavirus — a condition which can be serious or even life-threatening. Roughly 120 such cases have been reported in Israel so far, a 16-year-old has died from the syndrome.

To repeat: for vaccination to be ethical — and necessary — the harm it may do has to be vastly outweighed by the harm it will prevent. From the Israeli evidence, it would seem that, even when it comes to children, a Covid vaccination programme meets that requirement.

October 29, 2021 | 79 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest

Leave a Reply

29 Comments / 79 Comments

  1. …the influential CDCsponsored article by Shimabukuro et al. (2021) used to support [the idea that the use of mRNA vaccines in pregnancy is now generally considered safe], on closer inspection, provides little assurance, particularly for those exposed in early pregnancy. The study presents falsely reassuring statistics related to the risk of spontaneous abortion in early pregnancy, since the majority of women in the calculation were exposed to the mRNA product after the outcome period was defined (20 weeks’gestation)

    The study presents falsely reassuring statistics related to the risk of spontaneous abortion in early pregnancy, since the majority of women in the calculation were exposed to the mRNA product after the outcome period was defined (20 weeks’ gestation). In this article, we draw attention to these errors and recalculate the risk of this outcome based on the cohort that was exposed to the vaccine before 20 weeks’ gestation. Our re-analysis indicates a cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion 7 to 8 times higher than the original authors’ results (p < 0.001) and the typical average for pregnancy loss during this time period. In light of these findings, key policy decisions have been made using unreliable and questionable data. We conclude that the claims made using these data on the safety of exposure of women in early pregnancy to mRNA-based vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are unwarranted and recommend that those policy decisions be revisited.
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355827630_Science_Public_Health_Policy_and_the_Law_Rapid_Communication_Spontaneous_Abortions_and_Policies_on_COVID-19_mRNA_Vaccine_Use_During_Pregnancy

  2. From Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News.

    Study shows dramatic decline in effectiveness of all three COVID-19 vaccines over time
    Thu, November 4, 2021, 10:58 PM
    Syringes filled with Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine in a tray at a mobile vaccination site in Miami.
    Syringes loaded with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine lie in a tray at a mobile vaccination site in Miami. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
    As the Delta variant became the dominant strain of coronavirus across the United States, all three COVID-19 vaccines available to Americans lost some of their protective power, with vaccine efficacy among a large group of veterans dropping between 35% and 85%, according to a new study.

    Researchers who scoured the records of nearly 800,000 U.S. veterans found that in early March, just as the Delta variant was gaining a toehold across American communities, the three vaccines were roughly equal in their ability to prevent infections.

    But over the next six months, that changed dramatically.

    By the end of September, Moderna’s two-dose COVID-19 vaccine, measured as 89% effective in March, was only 58% effective.

    The effectiveness of shots made by Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, which also employed two doses, fell from 87% to 45% in the same period.

    And most strikingly, the protective power of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine plunged from 86% to just 13% over those six months.

    The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.

    The three vaccines held up better in their ability to prevent COVID-19 deaths, but by July — as the Delta variant began to drive a three-month surge of infections and deaths — the shots’ effectiveness on that score also revealed wide gaps.

    Among veterans 65 and older who were inoculated with the Moderna vaccine, those who developed a “breakthrough” infection were 76% less likely to die of COVID-19 compared with unvaccinated veterans of the same age.

    Older veterans who got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and subsequently experienced a breakthrough infection were 70% less likely to die than were their unvaccinated peers.

    And when older vets who got a single jab of the J&J vaccine suffered a breakthrough infection, they were 52% less likely to die than their peers who didn’t get any shots.

    For veterans under 65, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines provided the best protection against a fatal case of COVID-19, at 84% and 82%, respectively. When younger veterans inoculated with J&J vaccine suffered a breakthrough infection, they were 73% less likely to die of COVID-19 than were their unvaccinated peers.

    Johnson & Johnson representatives did not immediately respond to requests to discuss the study’s findings.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended booster shots for everyone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months earlier.

    Boosters are also recommended six months after a second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines for everyone 65 and older; those with medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to a serious case of COVID-19; those who live in nursing homes or other group settings; and those who live or work in high-risk settings like hospitals or prisons.

    In addition, all people with compromised immune systems are advised to get a booster shot if it’s been at least 28 days since their vaccine took full effect.

    With millions of vaccinated Americans pondering whether they need a boost, the new study offers the most comprehensive comparison yet of how the three vaccines have performed across the nation this year.

    It tracked 780,225 veterans of the U.S. armed forces from Feb. 1 to Oct. 1. Close to 500,000 of them had been vaccinated, while just under 300,000 had not.

    Hailing from across the country, all were cared for by the Veterans Affairs’ unified system, which provides healthcare to 2.7% of the U.S. population. While the group under study was ethnically and racially diverse, the record-keeping that researchers relied upon was uniform.

    Because these were veterans, the study population comprised six times as many men as women. And they skewed older: about 48% were 65 or older, 29% were between 50 and 64, and 24% were under 50.

    While older veterans were more likely to die than younger vets throughout the study period, the decline of the vaccines’ protection against illness and death was seen in both young and old.

    The study was conducted by a team from the Public Health Institute in Oakland, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, and the University of Texas Health Science Center.

    Dr. Barbara Cohn, the study’s lead author, said in addition to its comparison of COVID-19 vaccines, the group’s analysis provides “a lens for making informed decisions around primary vaccination, booster shots, and other multiple layers of protection.” That includes mask mandates, coronavirus testing and other public health measures aimed at countering viral spread.

    Strong evidence of the vaccines’ declining power should prompt even states and locales with highly vaccinated populations to consider retaining mask mandates, the authors said. And the findings strongly support the CDC’s recent recommendation that all recipients of the J&J vaccine get a booster.

    The study concluded that the Delta variant, which drove a wave of infections and deaths across the country this spring and summer, was likely the factor that most eroded the protection of vaccines.

    Other researchers have found similar evidence of declining vaccine effectiveness. But they have suggested that the immune system’s defenses against SARS-CoV-2 simply fade with time, and that waning vaccine effectiveness would likely have been seen with or without the arrival of a new, more transmissible strain.

    This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

  3. @Edgar
    Yes, the thin leg was a tell-tale sign of the disease and it was this sign that has led historians to proclaim the disease existed in ancient Egypt from this same sign in a statue of an ancient Pharaoh, and drawings. This distinctive sign was also noted in other cultures over the centuries. The disease is associated with paralysis and it is extremely painful as nerve cells are attacked by the immune system. Even so, Sister Kenny discovered that if you flex the limbs and administered hot compresses as therapy it diminished the loss of muscle mass due to the lack of use from the paralysis. Her methods, the Kenny method, created a great deal of controversy but great results, and in spite of this she was greatly at odds with the physicians of the day to treat the patients. The usual treatment was immobilizing the limbs and letting the muscles “tighten up” due to atrophy resulting in permanent muscle loss.

    You likely are aware of the iron lung used to treat those who experienced paralysis of the chest to help with breathing. There is a woman who, at the age of 5 caught Polio, from the oral vaccine as I recall, and has had to sleep in an iron lung all her life and still uses it currently. She bought all the available parts for the lung from the manufacturers and had to search for a replacement from museums when her last one finally broke. Such a terrible disease.

    Related to the infantile paralysis term, it was always assume it was only a disease of the young, though some disputed this concept, it was widely accepted as a certain fact. During WWI when troops from every part of the world were moved about, soldiers, who were not exposed during their childhood, caught the disease in outbreaks, it proved the infection was not limited to the young. A distinction about adults is that the paralytic form of the disease affects about 15-30% of those infected rather than 1-2% of children, but due to the fact that children were almost all of the cases, the term of infantile paralysis stuck. The fellow who officially named it, was called Erb, though I’ve forgotten his first name. He named it ‘anterior poliomyelitis’ to describe the fact that the virus infected the spinal cord near the brain and the immune system attacked the nerve cells – very painful disease. I had a relative back in the 30’s who developed the disease and it was a terrible experience for him. I read his journal as a young boy relating the experience, and it was quite memorable and quite terrible for him. He used the metal brace as well and died at a young age.

    The thing about Polio is that it never really was such a seriously widespread disease as you would believe given its notoriety. In 1952, the peak cases in the US, for example only number ~50-55K and the peak deaths occurred in 1916 with the infamous New York outbreak and for the entire year only 7K people died. Tuberculosis was a much more devastatingly issue in cases and deaths, but the devastation of Polio was shouldered almost exclusively by the kids with terrible consequences. I am often struck by the comparison of Polio to Covid which are eerily striking on a number of levels, for both their similarities and their distinctions.

  4. BEAR

    Sorry for my tardiness, but just now came across your post about my having been a boxer. Yes I did box in my youth very successfully, for audiences who were violently Anti-Semitic, and who would greet me with curses and boohs. But at the end of each fight they would applaud. Geh fregem??

    There would be a raucous din during the action, but I hardly heard it. However I ALWAYS clearly heard ONE voice, that of my dearly beloved late father, who would be shouting…”give it to him Jerry”…(a strange phenomenon) my nickname at home was “Jerry”, for rather obscure but explainable reasons. (because my aunt, who spoke only Yiddish could never pronounce my transliterated “English” name, although it was very close to my Hebrew name.)

    After this over-lengthy ramble, may I ask WHY you mentioned it…?

  5. READER

    You should not feel flattered, your text was, in my opinion excellent. And, contrary to your story about your family lack of listening for more than 30 secs. the post I referred to was quite long, which benefitted we who read it.

  6. PELONI

    Just a corroborating point here….You mention that Polio was thought at one time to be a childhood disease. Welll…. I lived through that time, and when young, there had not yet been any mention of the term “polio”(myelitis), but it was known everywhere as “infantile paralysis”.

    I had a close friend who caught it, and for years had to wear an iron leg brace on one leg. His leg eventually became extremely thin, with most of the muscle gone.

  7. @Reader
    @Adam

    Generally, ALL vaccines cause side effects, however, up until the COVID crisis, the inventors and manufacturers seemed to try to minimize this possibility.

    This is well stated, Reader, but doesn’t go far enough in explaining that vaccine and drug standards and regulations place the onus of proof that their product is safe, and failing this proof, or at least the claim that this has been demonstrated(vioxx), their biological product could never be placed on the market for those who want to hazard the risk, much less the use of mandated requirements. Now, following the standard of the these shots, they are proposing this walk after lunch investigation should be the standard process for drug reviews. This is the very reason why the VAERS/Yellowcard reports from months from covid so dramatically dominates the reports of all the yearly reports.

    In addition to this point, I should note something I have spoken of before and have failed to mention here in this thread and which is very relative to the question of the Covid vaccines. Coronaviruses are very genetically unstable, moreso than other viruses such as the Measles and Polio viruses. This is why there has never been a successful Coronavirus vaccine after many decades of research, and no the flu vaccine is not related to Coronavirus. It is, however, not for a lack of trying to do so. Many Veterinary vaccines have been pulled after seriously devastating results on multiple occasions, not the least of which was the vaccine for ferrets, but there were such vaccines pulled for dogs and cats as well. The virus mutates, quite readily, away from the originally targeted strain which was used to develop the vaccines. This genetic walk is called genetic drift, and subtly changes the virus over time. This produces weakly binding antibodies and many differing disasters result. All viruses mutate, but Coronaviruses mutate very quickly. The SARS-Cov2, however has a genetic spell checker which checks the code as the daughter viruses are built. This should help conserve its viral code from rapid mutations, but it doesn’t eliminate the rate of mutation, it simply slows the speed of mutation. So, Coronaviruses are simply bad subjects for vaccine development. The Covid scare, however, alleviated the vital requirement of safety demonstration to push it to market, and after the rollout, no one will act to limit the harms to the hundreds of thousands of victims that have been created from this drug as the victims are referenced as noise…and now we are pushing it on kids.

    Vaccination always has a cost, which is why we must always require the rewarding benefit to be disproportionately greater than this cost, as Melanie points out in her caustic unbalanced article above. But we must also be very mindful that every harm that comes from a vaccine was done by a person, while every harm that comes from natural disease is done by a virus. None of us can hold a virus accountable for the harms it does, but when a person is harmed by another person or by society, there is an accountability that needs to be remedied – these victims have rights that society can not simply ignore as noise after having caused such life-long or life-limiting injuries. We must tend to those we harm from our vaccine programs and address these facts as real and the victims as important…this is not just a matter of justice, it is a matter of morality, as I see it.

    Reader, I haven’t heard of the seizures with Polio vaccine. It isn’t surprising as the virus is neurologically focused. Is this something you read or from word of mouth? If you read it somewhere and are familiar with the source, I would be interested in reading it if you have a citation. Thanks

  8. @adamdalgliesh

    “I never knew that there were people who had bad adverse reactions to the polio vaccines ”

    The oral polio vaccine caused permanent seizure disorders in a few children (from “anecdotal” evidence).

    Generally, ALL vaccines cause side effects, however, up until the COVID crisis, the inventors and manufacturers seemed to try to minimize this possibility.

  9. (2 of 2)
    Polio is believed to have afflicted the world since the age of the ancient Egyptians, but it only occurred in outbreaks since 1868 in Norway. Since then it has struck randomly around the world, and there were many horrifying attempts to develop a vaccine, the worst of which killed half of the test subjects. The similarities with Covid are starkly apparent as are the distinctions. Polio is a disorder of the nervous system that is transmitted via fecal-oral contamination and results in paralysis of approximately 1-2% of cases(the percentages all vary somewhat depending on the cited source). ~95% of cases are asymptomatic and the balance of 3-8% are mild cases that could be mistaken for flu. The initial perception was that this was a childhood disease, but that is because the adult population had already been infected, unknowingly, and had immunity to it. Sometimes, 20-40yrs after infection with non-paralyzing polio, it can inexplicably cause paralysis in a person and this is what occured with FDR.

    There were 2 vaccines(oral and injectable) developed to prevent Polio and each had serious issues despite the careful testing methods in a maturing field of knowledge in which procedures and ethics were each still developing. The injectable form created in 1955 was associated with a systemic(body-wide) protection without protecting the gut(oops) and this vaccine was accidentally cross-contaminated with a cancer causing virus SM40 which was administered in ~90% of adults and ~60% of children(yikes!). Meanwhile the oral vaccine developed in 1962 stimulated the creation of the vaccine-variants(claimed to occur in 1/750,000 vaccinations) that now cause cases outnumbering those associated with the wild-type virus(yikes!) and ,in recent years, the oral vaccine has caused half a million children to become partially paralyzed in India alone, of which ~40% is irreversible(yikes!). The upside is that Polio is nearly vanished from the planet, beyond the few nations listed above while small outbreaks are frequently observed year after year caused by the vaccine-variants. Note – Polio was always associated with small outbreaks as the disease was only punishing(paralysis) to 1-2% of those infected while all 100% would then be immune – just FYI.

    The relationship to the Covid shots lies in the fact that there is always a response when we interfere in the natural dynamics between a virus and the immune system. The virus learns from the immune system and the immune system learns from the virus. If we do not strike a certain balance in our interference, such interference can have a devastating effect. To strike the correct balance, we must be willing, able, and actively pursuing the causal deleterious effects that such interference might produce. Not desiring to over emphasize or under-emphasize the reality should be the desire of us all. To this point, the oral Polio vaccine has been reformulated several times. If we do not look for our mistakes, we can not correct them. The problems with the Covid vaccines may be limited by reformulation or co-treatment with steroids or other medical treatments to at least limit the damaging consequences that many would rather simply ignore. This is not a scientific pursuit, it is in fact something much more sinister that we are now injecting these gene therapies into children without having established a limiting method to the severe harms accompanying them.

    This is a very abreviated discussion of what I can share, so if you have a greater interest in the history, the disease, the development, or the immunology/treatments, let me know.
    /2

  10. (1 of 2)
    @Adam

    This is a very broad topic so if there is something not discussed here that is of interest, let me know. Of what I am aware I could write a small volume on the topic and on which others have written lengthy volumes.

    I never knew that there were people who had bad adverse reactions to the polio vaccines that caused them permanent paralysis and other severe adverse reactions when the vaccines ewere first developed and then widely used in the 1959s. Nor did I know that there were still dangerous polio-causing viruses still circulating through human populations.

    The wild-type virus is still endemic in Pakastan and Afghanistan, but the vaccine-associated strains of Polio have been found in many nations over the years. To be clear, I am not certain when vaccine associated polio was first discovered. I have tracked them back as far as Egypt in 1982, and since then it has been discovered in Egypt(1982–1993), Dominican Republic(2000–2001), Philippines(2001), Haiti(2000–2001), Madagascar(2002 and 2005), China(2004), Indonesia(2005), Cambodia(2005–2006), and Nigeria(2005–2010), Congo(2004–2017), and Tanganyika(2017). In 2019-20 there were twenty countries with outbreaks of the vaccine-associated Polio. Dr. Ardis has recently claimed that a flaccid paralysis that is occurring currently in the US is related to ongoing Polio vaccination here in the US, and his argument seems plausible, but I will let him explain his argument for this assertion(start ~2min37sec):
    https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/2021/08/28/dr-bryan-ardis-cdc-knows-new-vax-will-paralyze-children/
    The CDC claims their warning is unrelated to Polio, but they are currently among the least trustworthy sources on the planet, in my view.

    The Polio vaccination program has been an incredibly successful project, and my comments should not mislead you to believe otherwise, despite the serious setbacks and side-effects. Polio was a terrible disease that frightened the world to act in concert, in competition, and in coordination towards eliminating the disease from the planet, as they had with Smallpox. The campaign to eliminate Smallpox was a very fortunate program that had the unfortunate consequence of leading people to believe that the success that was achieved by pioneers of vaccines during the era preceding the rise of Napoleon could be easily reproduced in the modern era with our elevated knowledge, tools and organization.
    /1

  11. @Edgar

    Edgar,

    are you sure you meant me because I usually don’t write treatises.

    In my family, they were always yelling “Bekitzur!” whenever a family member’s tale lasted more than 30 seconds, so I was kind of trained to provide short responses.

  12. @Edgar
    Of course not. Hope they find it helpful.

    Related to Melanie’s commentary, your assessment well described her lack of topical discussion. I found the broad construct of her argument, to discuss the balance of harms, a fairly stated prospect. It was the very admiration of her ability to mold the conversation that left me quite regretful of the fact that rather than explain her views based on the evidence of the benefits and the inspection of the harms, she assumed one and ignored the other. If I had agreed with her views, I would have been ashamed of the squandered opportunity to describe the situation more directly than to describe her opposition as the “intersection of yoga, juice cleanses, New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups controlling the universe.” Quite beneath my opinion of her abilities to thoroughly capture an argument squarely on the facts.

  13. READER and PELONI,

    Your posts, both of which I would regard as treatises, impressed me to the degree that I took the liberty of sending them to my son and two daughters, each of whom will both understand and appreciate everything therein.

    Your texts have far more depth than the article by Melanie Phillips itself, which seems more of a semi-social history than a discussion on scientific methodology or the intricacies of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and/or Delta, of COVID.

    I hope that neither of you mind that I have done so.

  14. @Edgar
    The details of the basis of their viral myocarditis diagnosis are quite significant, because it could suggests systemic circulation by the vaccine in at least this test subject, if their conclusion that the source was from a virus rather than from the vaccine. Additionally, in the vaccine group, there were seven individuals who developed various heart conditions including two heart attacks which were not seen in the placebo group, while the placebo group had 4 less significant heart conditions including no heart attacks which were not seen in the vaccine group. The occurrences for each of the cardiac events is a single case in both groups. Remarkably, there were a total of 8 neurologic events split between the two groups with no concerning findings. Also two subjects died during the Phase III trial, one in the placebo and one in the vaccine group – each died of Covid. The vaccinated subject developed symptoms 1wk post-jab and died 8 days later – he was 53yrs. This might suggests the Novavax will likely have a similar post-jab period of reduced immunity(maybe) as the other shots. There were 9 other cases of Covid in the vaccine group that developed disease post-jab while 96 subjects in the placebo group developed Covid. Remarkably, again, out of 14K test subjects, only 100 became ill at the height of the Covid breakouts in the fall which was similarly found in the other four 2020 vax trials.

    They employed the routine Pharma game of using the Relative Risk Reduction calculation to derive a value of 89.7% efficacy, but the reality is that the Absolute Risk Reduction sits at 1.2% which matches the value obtained for J&J which had the 2nd highest ARR value of the 2020 studies, just behind Astra Zeneca at 1.3%. The significance of this ARR value reflects the reality that for every 1 person shown to be protected by the vaccine, 84 people had to be vaccinated, ie 83 of 84 people gained no benefit from being vaccinated while only 1 of 84 people did benefit from being vaccinated, but all were equally at risk for side effects. To compare to this, Pfizer required 117 be vaccinated to benefit 1 person, FYI. Also there was a strong similarity between the vaccine and placebo groups related to safety issues base on broad categories. The efficacy dropped down to 86.3% when the wild-type virus was ignored and only Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants were considered. It should be highlighted as relavent that this trial was conducted in Sept. 2020, six month before Delta dominated, and no subject in this study had an opportunity to contract Delta which developed in Dec 2020.

    So, for what it is worth, this is what is shown. They crossed all their T’s but as we have seen heretofore, it is nearly impossible to get clean info on the drug trials, but to my eyes, nothing stands glaringly concerning here as compared to what we have observed of the other vax. I have yet to read any serious reviews of Novavax. In any case, it is a good idea for your family to put off vaccination as long as possible. They have natural immunity(if the diagnosis is correct) and it will be best to delay any further immune stimulation from the Spike for as long as possible to not create additional issues with their immature immunity. Also, there is a >4X increase in side effects associated with vaccinating the Covid recovered. So, I hope this was more than just info overload and helps somewhat.
    /2

  15. @Edgar
    Very good idea to wait, for any reason, to be vaccinated after being Covid recovered, as there is >4X increase in side effects from vaccinating the Covid recovered.

    Regarding Novavax, it is very different from the other vaccines and was developed under guidance that was once routine, but is now ignored. The Good Clinical Practice Guidelines were employed in the Novavax trial which included a independent safety monitoring group, an ethical throwback to the pre-Covid era. The drug trials also included animal studies, another routine step before Covid, but quite remarkable for the Covid shots. They also performed a separate Phase I and II and the most recently reported Phase III was reported in September. Among the significant aspects of the missing Phase II trial in the 2020 trials was that in Phase II, adverse events are identified and in Phase III these events are quantified and evaluated as meaningfully significant or not – this creates a 2-fold analysis of safety harms. This by itself is a significant hurdle that the other 4 shots ignored and many millions of people have been disadvantaged to not have had this built-in check on safety findings while evaluation was being conducted.

    From what I have seen of the Novavax data, which was published about 5wks ago, the results were promising, with an ‘efficacy’ of 90%. This shot, however, is based on the same very toxic Spike protein that the other shots are based, which is also the toxic part of the virus. They utilize a moth virus(Baculovirus) to grow Spike protein in a moth, collect the spike, and attach them to lipidnonoparticles, unfortunately(https://mfame.guru/novavax-on-the-verge-of-making-history/). They use also employed a much smaller amount of spike than the other vax types(though I have yet to read an actual number to compare to the 11.3billion spike generating factories in Pfizer, for example), but to achieve a significant immune response they use an adjuvant(routine element of traditional vaccines that stimulates the immune system to program the Tcells/antibodies) made of an irritating tree bark compound. Given the large number of adverse reactions of the other vax with unknown(but massive) number of spike being produced for unknown number periods of time (upto 5 months or longer), Novavax having a finite, and reportedly small, number of Spike in their shot can only be a good thing, a very good thing. They take the Spike attached to the lipidnanoparticles along with the adjuvant and inject it into the Deltoid muscle where it will hopefully not circulate, to avoid the systemic issues found in the other vax.

    The safety concerns observed in Phase II testing was very similar to that in Phase III. Phase III included 14,039 subjects divided and balanced into vaccine and placebo groups. The Phase III trial included subjects with comorbidities(44.5%), and elderly >65 yrs(27.3%), the latter of which was missing from some of the 2020 trials. The trial was made up of 95% white subjects, 462 Asian subjects, and only 60 black subjects. The trial also included only 700 obese subjects. The outstanding weaknesses in the powering of subject selection of the trial would have to be the limited number of black and obese subjects.

    They did find a single case of myocarditis during 3days post-2nd jab which

    an independent safety monitoring committee considered the event most likely to be viral myocarditis

    They do not detail if this diagnosis was determined via diagnostics or simply presumed which presents a serious question.
    /1

  16. @Edgar

    All I could find about Novavax quickly is that it already contains the spike protein and is easier to store and transport.

    “It seems” that it causes fewer side effects.

    There was also something about nanoparticles in it.

  17. IF anyone is interested, my daughter tells me that one of the vaccines she has been waiting for(we both distrust mRNA) NOVAVAX, seems due to come onto the Canadian market place fairly soon.

  18. @Peloni. Peloni, thank you so much for your explanations of thrisks involed in vaccinating during a pandemic., and for informing us about the problems with the polio vaccines when they were first developed. My next questions aim at learning more about polio and the vaccines developed to enable us to aquire immunity to it.

    I never knew that there were people who had bad adverse reactions to the polio vaccines that caused them permanent paralysis and other severe adverse reactions when the vaccines ewere first developed and then widely used in the 1959s. Nor did I know that there were still dangerous polio-causing viruses still circulating through human populations.

    Were there many such adverse reactions? Was the number of such reactions comparable to the adverse reactions to the cv2-19 vaccine?

    I have heard that there have been a few new cases of polio in Africa, and that they have been blamed on flaws in the vaccines themselves.But I I did not know that the polio viruses were still circulating through human populations everywhere, including the United States. Have there been any recent polio cases outside of Africa? How much are we at risk for a new polio epidemic?

    Thank you, Peloni, for your willingness to answer my questions. Every time you answer one question, your answer brings into my mind new questions. This is not because your answers are unclear, but because the more I learn, the more I realize how much more I need to learn. Many thanks for your detailed and lucid answers to my questions, which amount to an informal tutoring session. Or maybe a class for all of us readers of Israpundit/. They have vastly expanded my knowledge about a subject of vital importance to me and all of us in these difficult times.

    I feel enormously empowered by the informal tutoring session you have been giving me and all of us Indepundit followers.

  19. @Adam
    Sorry for the delay

    it is OK to vaccinate if there is a small outbreak

    Under ideal settings, vaccines would be best employed to provide immunity before it is needed, ie while the virus/bacteria is not currently ravaging the public. As you move away from that quiescent state, it becomes more and more dangerous to employ such a valuable asset as an effective vaccine, if it is indeed effective. Following the immune stimulation from a vaccine or infection, the body has a refractory period in which it has a developing immune response, in which Tcell and antibodies are programmed. This can last upto weeks to complete, as long as 6weeks in some cases . In that time, the body, if exposed to the virus, would be fending off further infection with an immature immune response which can perform in an imperfect manner- think of it as sending in unexperienced troops into the frontline of battle. The more widespread the outbreak, the more likely this exposure by newly vaccinated people would result in the immature immunity defending against the actual virus.

    When we add the issue of a leaky vaccine onto his topic, the problem become significantly worse. Leaky vaccines are dangerous, they are always dangerous. They are programming the Tcells and antibodies to only wing their target virus/bacteria, rather than kill it. This can allow the target virus to adapt via surviving mutants. When we use a ineffective(off-target) vaccine to protect people and don’t give these off-target vaccines the opportunity to fully mature to give the best chance of protection, it can be a force-multiplier of poor outcomes.

    So vaccinating during any outbreak could be problematic(but moreso with larger outbreaks) because a breakthrough case could generate a mutant which exacerbate the potential for disease, but it is best to treat such fires while they are small. The risk with vaccinating during an outbreak would increase with the size of the outbreak because it increase the opportunity for a virus to infect someone who has a limited, building immunity and create a variant – Hawaii has 5% Delta+ cases for example and this is presumably immune to the vaccine. To offset this issue, however, the Measles virus is very stable, genetically(doesn’t mutate readily), and we know the vaccine is very effective -100%(more or less) protective. And the outbreak was not the entire state or even all of NYC. So, all of these factors would be considered when considering the risk-benefit ratio which is how all medical situations, personal and public, should be decided.

    Regarding the Polio vaccine, there were a lot of mistakes and there were multiple casualties, not the least was associated with the fact they really had no idea what they were doing. The Polio story is fascinating tale of walking blindly in the dark on the basis of ethics, innovation, treatments, manufacturing, testing, development and rollout. The players include Sabine, Kenney, Brodie, Kolmer, Saulk and other and their tales, together, describes how the world really cut their teeth on vaccine development and production over about 20+yrs. Most of the problems associated with the Polio vaccine were associated with manufacturing issues, rushed techniques, and the use of a modified-live vaccine – none of this was easy, painless or pretty. In fact the greatest issue included the modified-live oral Polio vaccine which has caused partial paralysis. The Polio vaccine does create viral Vaccine Derived Polioviruses strains and the majority of Polio today is due to this circulating strains which are the consequence to the oral modified-live vaccine.

    The Vaccine Derived Poliovirus Strains is part of a wider topic called Vaccine Associated Induced Disease(this goes by many names). This umbrella term collectively is associated with many topics in which vaccines have generated either immunologic disease or improved viral responses which cause more serious disease. These are why such techniques of testing for 10yrs were developed and pursued – to prevent harm, prove efficacy and provide evidence of a significant and positive benefit-risk ratio.

    I am happy that you are able to follow these topics. I think empowering people with such details as they are able to appreciate can lift much of the vale shrouding the medical mischief in which we currently find ourselves. Let me know if you have any other questions.

  20. @ Peloni. Thanks for all your very detailed and specific explanations, Peloni. I think that I understand the whole concept of vaccination and what it involves muchbetter now.

    If I understand you correctly, it is OK to vaccinate if there is a small outbreak that is confined to a small area or one community, as was the case with the recent measles outbreak in Brooklyn. Have I got that right? I seem to remember that there was also a measles outbreak at the same time somewhere in Westchester, at a school there. I don’t think the patients were mainly haredim. If my memory is correct, then, they decided to vaccinate despite ongoing outbreaks in two localities, but it had not spread widely. Was that a risky thing to do.

    My impression is that the Salk and Sabin vaccines were administered during the 1950s polio epidemic, or pandemic. Yet it seemed to be effective in causing the disease to disappear more or less completelyover something like a 24 year period. with a steadily diminishing number of cases. Was this a risky thing to do? Was it something that happened during this 50s polio pandemic that led to the concern about not vaccinating during an epidemic?

    Again, many thanks for your patience in answering all my questions. You have been in effect tutoring me and all of us in the basics of this aspect of medical science. ITHis has made me feel much better and less frightened when I understand what’s going on with Covid and what theissues connected with it are. It is scary when their is a disease outbreak and you have no idea what is causing it or what to do about it.

    And of course one’s anxiety is much greater when one knows that public health agencies have made false statements about how to treat the disease. This forces reasonable people to turn to alternative information sources, such as yourself, to understand what is going on. Again, many thnks for your patience.

  21. @Adam

    Also with the other vaccines that seem to give lifetime protection, such as th polio vaccines…was first administered during a pretty severe polio epidemic in the early 1950s.

    Polio was a very carefully deployed vaccine, even as they had no idea what they were doing. The success of the Polio vaccine stimulated them to pursue a host of new vaccines in the following decade. The 1960’s are often termed the golden age of vaccines, but not because everything was wonderful and not because everything was successful and not because they had no serious consequences. There was a great deal of excitement, many mistakes and serious lessons learned about Original Antigenic Sin, Antibody Dependent Enhancement and many other topics as well during this period of time. They learned what could be done, what should be done, and how best to approach doing them. These were powerful lessons associated with not just vaccines either, as you might have heard of thalidamide and its terrible consequences. So, many lessons were learned in the 60’s, but none of these lessons were learned without serious casualties. Then in the 1970’s-present, we have seen fit to ignore everything that was learned in the 60’s. In the past year, we have ignored any level of safety or concern with establishing a reason for what is being done, we just do it and blur the consequences and suggest it is all good.

    Hope this helps explain things somewhat. Let me know if I missed something or if I was unclear in my meaning.
    /4

  22. @Adam

    But I still would like a little more information about how the “successful” vaccines work.

    Vaccines are created, generally, by weakening a virus/baceria/protein by adding something like alcohol to a sample of a given virus, for example. It’s called attenuated or modified-live vaccines and causes the virus to be nearly dead but entact enough for the immune system to see it altogether but not strong enough to cause its disease – unless you give it to someone who is immune suppressed, eg someone undergoing chemotherapy, which is a very big medical no no. Even for some who are not immune suppressed, the modified-live vaccine can cause a low level disease to occur. The alternative is called a killed vaccine. This is where they grow a virus, for example, and kill it and place it in a vaccine. The vaccine has all the pieces the virus but it is not going to create disease. The killed vaccine is often less successful than the modified-live vaccines, but the modified live vaccines can actually cause disease, so it is a trade-off. The vaccines also have a portion of the vaccine that give the vaccine bulk and causes an increase in irritation to the tissues it is injected into. This is called the adjuvant. The adjuvant is used to create a greater immune response than if the killed or modified-live elements were injected without it. The adjuvant often includes aluminum which is a whole other story of controversy over vaccines.

    [Vaccinating people] does not seem to cause harm or make the measles outbreak worse, as according to your theory that vaccines should be administered during an outbreak, it should.

    Vaccinating during an outbreak is dangerous because of the possibility of creating the monster mutant that can evade the protection of the vaccine being deployed, which is why in the modern era of vaccines(post-60’s), to my knowledge, we have never done so. For instance, the ‘outbreak’ a couple of years ago where the heredim were made the poster-child of antivaxxers for refusing to be forced to be vaccinated. There was a small outbreak, but it was not as if the virus was breaking out everywhere, as with Covid. So the measles outbreak in NY was more like vaccinating on the toes of an outbreak, as opposed to Covid where we are vaccinating in the teeth of the outbreak – a very different type of scenario. The measles vaccine is known to be very effective, but vaccines take a moment to work, and in the meantime they can allow a refractory period of diminished immune system, affording the virus an advantageous window of attacking while the immune system is trying to build an immune response to the vaccine. With Covid, ignoring for a moment that it doesn’t create a sterilizing immunity, the vaccine creates a very weakened immune system where the innate and adaptive components are all weakened, with only the antibody response able to be protective. The problem lies in the fact that the antibodies are not produced for 7-11days after the injection(it takes this long for antibodies to be programmed and released into the blood). So for nearly 2wks, the immune system has a huge blind opening for infection, by SARS-Cov2 or anything else, which is why they refuse to allow the breakthrough cases created in this time to be labeled as caused by the vaccines, even though they are.
    /3

  23. @Adam

    I don’t understand what a vaccine “leak” means. What is it in the vaccines that leak, and how does that cause harm?

    It means the vaccine is not perfectly protective, ie some attacked viruses may escape and create variants. So the unkilled viruses leak thru and have the ability to create escaping daughter viruses, and this perpetuates the outbreak.

    I want to understand why the flu vaccine, which is also said to be a leaky vaccine, nevertheless seems to provide protection for a somewhat longer time than the covid vaccines.

    This is a complex topic. Flu has no single source of infection. There are nearly 20 potential causes for it. Worse than this, though, the vaccines are developed for none of the existing causes of the flu. The researchers anticipate how the existing viral causes of flu will mutate over the next flu season and create a vaccine on that expectation, but only for 4 of the sources of flu, 2 influenza A viruses and 2 influenza B viruses. The ‘vaccine’ makes no attempt to protect against the other causes of flu, including Rhinovirus, RSV, and others. It is quite a scam, as when the vaccine fails, well, they have a built in answer why it failed. They estimate it works somewhere between 39-60% of the time, but I do not accept these figures are likely well based. The Pharma was going broke about 20yrs ago, so they came up with the flu vaccine as a cash cow model to save them from products that cost too much and made too little before their license ran out and the medicines became generic and cheap. The flu vaccine has been speculated by some to have helped create the flu it was meant to prevent. Whatever the reality is, the charm was wearing thin after the terrible flu season of 2017-8 when 60,000+ died from the flu and even before this. The number of people seeking out the flu shot were dwindling. Some have speculated that this is the road that led to Pharma’s part in the Covid hoax…maybe…
    So, to answer why it works longer than Covid is to presume it works at all, which seems dubious to me when it doesn’t even attempt to protect against more than 3/4 of the sources of flu. Also, as many have now pointed out, the current vaccines are for the Covid19 wild-type virus, when it is 2021 and we have an entirely new variant, Delta, that is still be vaccinated against using a vaccine developed against the virus initially collected in Jan 2020. Something to think about.
    /2

  24. @Adam
    Good questions all. Let me know if I miss any or if I am not clear in my answers.

    I still don’t understand why some vaccines, such as the measles, polio and smallpox vaccines, were able to give people more or less permanent immunity to their respective diseases.

    The loss of a permanent protection is due to a lack of memory. Memory against a virus is usually created by Tcells which have functioned to defend the body against a given virus being parked somewhere in the body and wait to be called up for active duty, as it were, after the virus reappears. If the period of time is so long, the memory may be insufficient to prevent disease and this is why a booster some years down the road may be appropriately required. But with Covid, there is a distinction. There are independent researchers investigating a number aspects of the Virus and the Vaccine, as the Spike creates the disease and the immunity. There is something in the spike that causes the majority of Tcells to become inactivated and the few that remain become exhausted by the onslaught of spike swarming the body. This happens with the virus and it happens with the vaccines. We don’t know why. I have read some explanations, but I am uncertain of their value currently as research is still being pursued by individuals such as Dr. Cole, who are working on their own time and their own dollar while pursuing these matters. But there is a distinction between the vaccine and the virus, as the virus has memory, strong robust memory that is quite durable. The vaccine skips the infection step, where a few viruses, or a few thousand viruses, enter the body, and they simply injects 11.3billion fake viruses(mRNA vax) into a person. The dis-proportionality in these numbers as an initiating source can not be easily ignored. Part of Vander Bosshe’s warnings included the fact that such an overwhelming source of immune stimulation could shut down the innate immune system. We have some support for this conclusion in the British reports, but we don’t have the actual data. The over-stimulation of the immune system, a high titer desensitization, could be causing the body to ignore the foreign spike as being foreign. But the 3rd jab seems to have increased antibodies again, so who knows the reality. I recently saw an article from early Sept where the iMOH stated with a straight face that herd immunity was almost completed(LOL), and yet here we are in Nov and the deathrate is still 3X(monthly ave) where it was before the 3rd jab program began. But I have, by chance, heard of several people who have died following the 3rd jab, including Dr. Vincet Wang, who was a retired Infectious Disease expert whose doctor told him to drink more water when he asked for treatment(he was in Austin TX). In truth, the third jab program is too close to fairly judge one way or the other, but it doesn’t seem to be sterilizing, but we will see.
    /1

  25. ADAM

    Whilst not straying so far afield as to read the exotic UK press, I saw the very same thing in the plebian Arutz Sheva. I was disappointed that she was not sitting closer to Biden and didn’t cough all over him.