Qohel

Make a Difference

Year: 2021

Senators Lying to You

July 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Getting vaccinated is important. It protects you and the people around you.

It’s not just a personal choice. We all have a responsibility to care for the most vulnerable in our communities.

I replied a few days ago to a post on Facebook which claimed vaccines didn’t work, and are unnecessary because there are good, cheap medications which prevent COVID-19 or reduce its severity. It was talking about Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, of course. I posted a link to studies showing there is no evidence of any positive effect for Hydroxychloroquine, and very limited evidence for any value in Ivermectin.

Someone responded that this was wrong because the whole world had seen the huge benefits of Ivermectin treatment in India. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. What happened was that the usual anti-vax quacks misunderstood the data, and came up with impressive looking misleading graphics (one of the few things they do well), and circulated these amongst the usual people on Facebook and Twitter who could be guaranteed to look no further and ask no questions, but would simply pass them on because they agree with the positions they have already adopted.

Bad enough that ordinary people do this. I can understand questions, but reposting misleading and dangerous graphics and misinformation costs lives. If you have questions, go to genuine medical and science sources, or ask your GP.

It is even worse when politicians and public figures, who should be held to higher standards, repeat the same dangerous propaganda.

This morning I noticed a post from Senator Gerard Rennick, which makes the claim that Australia’s COVID19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce has found that Ivermectin reduces deaths from 53 to 22 per 1,000 cases, ICU admissions from 115 to 61 per 1,000 cases, and increases viral clearance within 7-10 days from 539 to 701 per 1,000 cases. Impressive figures. Except that a few minutes of checking reveals that this is not what the COVID19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce has found at all.

Even good sources can be misread, and misrepresented. In this case, given that the Senator and the Senator’s staff can be assumed to be reasonably intelligent, and to have reasonable comprehension skills, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion this post and accompanying graphic are not deliberately misleading. That is, the Senator is lying to you. If a person or organisation needs to lie to make a point, then they almost certainly have no point to make. Lying about vitally important medical information and treatment is especially morally despicable.

What does the Taskforce say? It has reviewed hundreds of papers on dozens of different subjects relating to COVID19 spread, prevention and treatment. On Ivermectin, they summarise the results of relevant papers. That is what the figures above are – summaries of a few of many papers reviewed. NOT. I repeat, NOT, the view of most papers, or of the Taskforce itself. The taskforce specifically says about each of the papers quoted, that they have low confidence, because in each case the reliability of those studies is undermined by bias (in other words, the writers found what they wanted to find) and poor study design. The Taskforce, after reviewing all the papers available, and considering the dozens of ongoing studies into possible anti-viral effects of Ivermectin, find there is no evidence to support its use outside of well-designed clinical trials.

The real findings? “In comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have an effect on AEs or severe AEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients.” https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab591/6310839

What is particularly disappointing about this is that Gerard Rennick, Malcom Roberts, and George Christiansen, who have a lot to offer, are undermining their credibility in matters on which they are knowledgeable and in which they have made genuine contributions, by repeatedly posting what amounts to anti-vax silliness.

Ditto for some other sources such as Catallaxy Files, one of Australia’s best websites for discussion of economic issues, which has posted such nonsense as the claim that the COVID19 virus and variants have never been isolated. This would come as news to the dozens of teams around the world who have done just that, and on the result of whose work the vaccines were designed. Or that Ivermectin research is being quashed. Again, news to the dozens of teams of researchers around the world who are pursuing possible anti-viral effects, even though there is currently no evidence of such effects at non-lethal doses, and it is difficult from a pharmacokinetic point of view to see how there could be useful anti-viral effects in vivo.

The tidal wave of dangerous nonsense continues. Don’t accept it. Check with real sources, or ask your GP.

https://covid19evidence.net.au/

Anti-vaxxers. Consistently Wrong

July 9, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I am going to give up trying to counter anti-vax fantasies on social media.

While I remain alarmed by the volume of misinformation, and the harm this has the potential to do, it has become clear that anti-vaxxers are either invincibly stupid, or simply don’t care about the harm they do. Nothing dents their obscene and dangerous enthusiasm to post vicious misinformation.

A person I follow on twitter messaged me yesterday to say that the outbreak at the Baulkham Hills Summitcare home in Sydney proved that vaccines did not work. Simply and obviously, that is not the case at all. If anything it is strong evidence of exactly the opposite. There are 139 residents, 133 of whom are fully vaccinated. Two thirds of staff are not.

As an aside, that is shocking. Shocking that staff care so little for the residents they are supposed to be caring for that they felt entitled to be typhoid marys. Your imagined rights to work wherever you like do not extend to endangering the lives of people around you.

The virus was introduced to the centre by an unvaccinated staff member. So far six staff and four residents have COVID19. In an enclosed, close environment, particularly with people in poor physical condition, who are obese, or who have impaired immune systems, the virus spreads quickly. On average nearly 100 out of a population of 139 would contract the disease, and four of those would die. Instead, 4 out of 139 have contracted the disease, and none of those are in serious condition.

Then there are those who keep claiming, on the basis of no evidence whatever, that the vaccines are experimental. This is one of those claims that keeps going around, which has been disproven so often that it makes it clear anti-vaxxers just do not care about the truth.

Each of the new vaccines has been extensively tested. The Moderna vaccine was created in February last year, before the first death from COVID19 in the USA. The rest of last year was spent safety testing, including tens of thousands of volunteers, and produced no, that is zero, adverse effects. That is not to say none were reported. But more were reported by people who had the placebo than by people who had the vaccine. The same is true of the other vaccines. Each was tested over many months, with tens of thousands of volunteers. Then safety data was reviewed by health departments around the world, and other health organisations, before being approved for use. The fact that there is ongoing monitoring does not mean they are experimental. There is ongoing monitoring with every genuine medical treatment or intervention.

So far over 3 billion doses have been administered, with over 1 billion people now fully vaccinated. This is about as far from experimental as it is possible to get.

Instead, many anti-vaxxers insist that the government should be providing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. But despite some early promise, there is no evidence hydroxychloroquine is effective at all. Ivermectin remains of interest, and further research continues. But at the moment, the evidence is that the dosage required to produce a therapeutic effect in the body would be so toxic it would kill the patient before having any effect on the virus.

Both of these treatments really are experimental, with limited or no evidence of any benefit. But don’t expect consistency from anti-vaxxers.

Talking about a lack of consistency, some have posted a video including commentary from the “inventor of mRNA vaccines” actually a secondary author on a couple of minor papers in the eighties, saying the spike protein in the vaccine is cytotoxic, and this is what is causing lots of deaths, making the vaccine worse than the disease. Except the vaccine doesn’t contain the spike protein, it encourages your body to produce them, it isn’t toxic, and the vaccines are saving thousands of lives. Apart from that, all easily checked, all good.

But then the same people who are posting that piece of standard anti-vax nutjobbery post excited links about Novavax, saying this is a vaccine they would be happy with. But unlike any other COVID19 vaccine, Novavax works by injecting the spike protein directly into your body. Yep, the same spike protein that two posts ago they were claiming the inventor of mRNA vaccines had proven was deadly. Not to mention Novavax really is experimental.  But don’t expect consistency from anti-vaxxers.

Still talking about a lack of consistency, you may have seen a video or other post claiming that never in the history of biology has a more virulent or dangerous developed or evolved from previous forms.

Just stop and think about this for a second. Is this claim remotely feasible? Where do new, deadly viruses come from then? The only other option I can think of is that they are dropped down the chimney by the plague fairy. Or maybe Santa sheds them during his annual flyover.

Then a day or so later the same people post a video by a vet touted by antivaxxers as a leading virology expert (of course) claiming that vaccines only kill off the weaker viruses, and that because of this, vaccines enable new, more deadly variants to develop. But wait a minute, yesterday you were claiming science had proven new, more deadly variants couldn’t develop. Had never developed. Never in the history of biology. It’s all about keeping people scared so we can be controlled!

Just stop and think about this latest claim for a second. Has this development of raging new deadly variants ever happened before, with any vaccine? Ever? Are we now swamped by new and more deadly versions of Smallpox? No, thanks to vaccines, Smallpox has been eliminated. Are hospitals over-run with new deadly forms of Chicken Pox? No, Chicken Pox has largely been eliminated, and with it the scourge  of Shingles as people get older. Rubella? There’s lots more Rubella, right, and lots more birth defects. No. Thanks to vaccines, Rubella has gone from most developed countries, and with it, the birth defects it caused.

Of course you really can’t believe that new, deadlier viruses never develop, and at the same time that vaccines inevitably cause new, deadlier viruses. Both of these things are simply false. But don’t expect consistency from anti-vaxxers.

Then, over the last few days, the usual suspects have been asking how we managed to go straight from the Delta variant to the Lambda variant. What happened to all the letters in between? More proof they’re just trying to scare us.

But look. News flash. Just because you haven’t heard of something does not mean it doesn’t exist. If these people were following genuine science and medical sources, and not just the loony tunes channel on Facebook, they would know there are variants named after all the Greek letters up to Lambda. Lambda is in the news because it is the latest variant of concern. Some variants are less infectious, some more. Some are more treatment resistant, some less. The ones that are of more concern, like Delta and Lambda, are either more infectious, or less susceptible to vaccines or treatment, or both.

But don’t expect consistency from anti-vaxxers. Or responsibility or truthfulness. They just don’t care.

Anti-Vax Propaganda Costs Lives. Just Stop It.

June 24, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I continue to be frustrated by the sheer tidal wave of misinformation on social media about COVID19 and vaccination.

Not at all with people who have doubts or questions. Given the horror stories that floating around Facebook and Twitter, and the fact that we tend to be more influenced by what we see more often, it is natural that people have questions.

What I do not understand or have patience with is people who pass on dangerous misinformation without checking. This is not reasonable, or “just discussion,” or whatever other excuses they come up with to justify themselves.

If you are telling people there is a massive conspiracy that involves every world government, every medical research facility and university, and the vast majority of medical practitioners, and on that basis, also telling them that they should ignore potentially life-saving advice being given, then you have an absolute, and I mean absolute, no excuses, obligation to check every story you post which supports that point of view, and every piece of counter-advice you pass on.

Failing to do this is not just lazy. It is intellectually dishonest to the point of being malicious. People die when they are given incorrect medical advice.

Just a couple of examples:

  1. COVID vaccines are magnetic. They put metal in them to force the chemicals throughout the body.

No, they are not. There is no metal in them at all. Lists of ingredients of all Western vaccines are publicly available. This is a claim, like most anti-vax claims, that simply does not stand up to a moment’s thought. The average dose is about 1ml. A fifth of a teaspoon. Even if it were as densely packed with magnetic material as a liquid can be, it would not be enough to make keys stick to your chest. That’s either showmanship, or sweat and dirt.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/21/fact-check-covid-19-vaccines-arent-magnetic/7698556002/

  1. Hundreds of people have died after getting the vaccine.

This is either sheer stupidity, or deliberate, dangerous distortion in order to deceive and manipulate. As at today, about 7 million doses of Pfizer and Astrazeneca COVID19 vaccines have been administered in Australia. You would expect about 3,500 of those people to be dead within a month.

The anti-vaxxers immediately screech, gleefully misquoting information from Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration; Well that’s horrifying! All those people dead and they don’t care! It’s all about money! It’s a obviously a depopulation programme! What else are they hiding from us!

The answer is, Nothing. In any population of 7 million people in Australia, about 3,500 will die every month, vaccine or no vaccine. That’s just how many people die every month anyway. What the TGA figures show clearly is that there is no increase in death rate in any population group following vaccination.

  1. Well, it’s still dangerous, and no sensible person would get it.

As I noted in a previous post, the chances of dying because of an adverse reaction to a vaccine are about the same as getting killed by lightening sometime this year. That is about one chance in two million. If you get COVID19, you have about a 3 in 100 hundred chance of dying. That is, 60,000 in two million. Not to mention the far more common serious long term negative effects of COVID19 on respiratory and circulatory systems, the brain and the kidneys. By contrast, getting any of the Western COVID19 vaccines is vastly safer than being on the pill, driving a car, or taking aspirin.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/getting-a-covid-jab-is-safer-than-taking-aspirin

  1. But renowned scientists are saying that the spike protein produced by the vaccine is cytotoxic, and kills red blood cells and does heaps of other nasty stuff.

No, they are not. Any scientist, or anyone who appears to have any credentials whatever no matter how bogus, who makes an anti-vax claim, is touted by anti-vaxxers as a “renowned scientist” or “renowned researcher.”

This includes disgraced lab assistants like Judy Mikovits, the “Frontline Doctors,” a motley collection of loony conspiracy theorists, and outright scammers like Joseph Mercola and Sherri Tenpenny.

The most recent “renowned scientist” to join this sad parade is Byram Bridle, a vet. I have read some of his writing on alleged cyto-toxicity of the COVID19 vaccines. It seemed obvious to me, who has only a first year university understanding of chemistry and biology, that he was confusing or conflating the spike protein the vaccines prompt cells to produce, and the lipid envelope which carries the vaccine safely into the cells.

Bridle claims to have uncovered a secret report which outlines just how toxic the vaccine is, and how it spreads through the body and accumulates in key areas, like the brain and the ovaries. Oh no! Except that he didn’t uncover it. That report has been public knowledge for months. And it doesn’t say anything like what he says it does. Don’t take my word for it. Read these two articles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-cytotoxic-idUSL2N2O01XP

“COVID-19 vaccines are going to sterilize our womenfolk,” Take 2

  1. Well there are plenty of things that cure COVID19, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, for example. But they are pretending they don’t work and hiding the research because they can’t make any money out them, and they are making billions out of vaccines.

Really? Like, really? Every doctor, nurse, university and government is hiding the truth and letting people die in order to make a few more bucks? If you honestly think that way, then I feel sorry for you.

The fact is, Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were initially promising, but larger, better designed tests did not show any measurable benefit. A recent meta-study of Ivermectin which claims to show a benefit if administered in the early stages of the disease is worth following up, but at this stage that study is simply an amalgam of small, not particularly rigorous studies. Putting a bunch of bad data together does not equal good data.

Results from Peru and India, where Ivermectin has been widely used, are suggestive, but again, not clear. Further research continues. No one is hiding anything. In addition, the only drug widely approved for treatment of COVID19, and the only drug demonstrated to reduce mortality, Dexamethasone, is a cheap generic.

  1. Anyway we know they are lying because Dr Fauci admitted that wearing masks makes no difference. It’s a con!

This claim is based on a video that dates from early 2020. At that time it was thought that infection was spread mostly by contact with infected surfaces, rather than being airborne. If that was the case, wearing masks would not make much difference. That was the CDC’s advice at that time.

When it became clear that the virus could be spread via airborne droplets, the advice changed. Viruses don’t float around the air by themselves. They float around in droplets from sneezing or exhaled breath, and these droplets are easily filtered out by a well-fitting close-weave mask. Wearing masks, distancing, and good hygiene all help reduce the spread.

That is the great thing about science. It is open to new information. When new evidence is received, theories and ideas, and the practical advice based on those theories, also change. People who claim they would have more confidence in science if it didn’t keep changing its mind, simply show that they know nothing about what science is or how it works.

The list could go on, and on, and on. It’s not a vaccine! It’s experimental gene therapy. My sister’s boyfriend told me that his uncle’s boss knows someone whose mother’s friend works in a hospital and says heaps of people are dying from the vaccine and they are not allowed to say anything about it. OK.

The problem is that antivaxxers are always happy to create new scare stories, with no regard for truth or the potential deadly effects of their tales, and to support these by references to obscure articles they misquote or don’t understand, knowing that most people won’t bother to read them.

Dangerous misinformation spreads like a plague. That misinformation causes unnecessary infections and deaths, and delays strategies to reduce the impact of COVID19 on society. The much happier truth, that the mortality rate is coming down as research continues, and clinical practice clarifies what works and what does not work, and that there are now multiple carefully researched, safe and effective vaccines, is slower to get around.

Let’s hope that changes.

Astrazeneca and Johnson and Johnson Vaccines Pose No Risk and Will Save Lives

April 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments
I am still astonished by people who claim COVID-19 is “just the flu” or even worse, “the whole thing is made up.”
To believe this, you have to believe that every government in the world, every university and medical research foundation, and almost every medical practitioner, are either stupid, or involved in a conspiracy to reduce and control the population.
Questions like “Why would anyone take a vaccine that is likely to kill them, to prevent a disease that 99.99% of people will survive anyway?” also still float around Facebook and Twitter. The question is based on two false claims. First, that the vaccine is dangerous, or even that it is actually designed to kill people. Second, that COVID-19 either doesn’t exist or is not dangerous.
COVID-19 is a serious, highly infectious illness. The global average mortality rate is 3%. The mortality rate in Australia is about the same. As of this morning, Australia has had 29,437 cases, for 909 deaths.
This means that out of every thousand people who contract it, about thirty will die. This is in Australia, where we have one of the best health care systems in the world. The mortality rate for seasonal influenza is about 0.1%. About one person in every thousand who catches it will die. The mortality rate for COVID-19 is thirty times higher.
The mortality rate is lower for healthy younger people. It is higher for older people, or people who are obese, have diabetes, have chronic renal failure or heart disease, have or have had some forms of cancer, and possibly, people who are seriously vitamin D deficient. Government policy quite rightly puts people in these groups, along with health and aged care workers, at the top of the list to receive the vaccination.
The rate of morbidity – long term serious negative health effects in recovered patients – is even higher. This can include chronic lung damage, inflammatory disease and neurological impairment. These effects have been noted in children and young adults as well as in older people.
But surely the change of mind by the Australian Federal government and, in the US, the CDC, about the Astrazeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines proves that they are dangerous, more dangerous than the disease itself?
The people who make this claim are often the same people as those who claim the disease is a ruse to force people to take an experimental gene therapy that is actually a slow-acting poison as a form of population control. And the government and medical authorities are pausing administration of some vaccines because concerns exist about their safety, which proves they are all dangerous. It is not possible reasonably to hold both of these opinions together.
I won’t engage with the population control/gene therapy delusion. That is sheer, baseless silliness.
But are the Astrazeneca and J&J vaccines really causing a large number of fatal blood clots?
Being vaccinated, no matter against what, does not make you immortal. People still die from heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness, accidents, etc.
169,301 people died in Australia in 2019. That is, 464 people die in Australia every day – eighteen people per million population. The figure is roughly similar in the US, and in most other developed nations.
It should be obvious, then, that if you vaccinate a million people in a day, eighteen of them will die the same day, because they would have died that day anyway. If you take another million people from a similar population group and don’t vaccinate them, eighteen of them will die that day too. In both groups, 126 will die in the following week, 525 in the following month, over 1500 after three months.
So when you see headlines blaring “125 People Dead a Week After COVID Jab,” stop and think. Out of a million people, 125 will die in an average week anyway. In fact, since the vaccine is being given first to people in high risk groups, you would expect the death rate to be slightly higher, because the death rate in those groups; the elderly, the obese, people with heart disease and chronic renal failure, for example, is significantly higher anyway.
So what is the truth about blood clots? Your blood needs to clot. For people who lack some blood clotting factor, people with haemophilia, for example, every cut or major bump can be a risk of death, because they do not stop bleeding. On the other hand, you do not want clots forming at random or floating around your bloodstream.
The media invariably describes the blood clots that have been reported days or weeks after someone has been vaccinated as “rare” as if that proves they can only have been caused by the vaccine. But how rare are such clots in the general population?
The CDC estimates that the overall incidence of deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism is about one person per thousand population per year.
Clots you don’t want can be caused by a variety of factors; sitting for too long, as in long distance plane travel, smoking, pregnancy, heart attacks, oral contraception. The additional risk of developing a dangerous blood clot for a woman on the pill is between 0.3% and 1.0% every ten years. About one in every two hundred women will develop a dangerous blood clot over any ten year period on the pill. Most of the clots reported after vaccination were in women under sixty, the group most likely to be users of oral contraception.
Not every adverse effect reported after a vaccine is the fault of the vaccine. In the Pfizer trials, with over 70,000 people, 0.7% of those who received the vaccine reported a severe adverse reaction. Not good, you might think. But 0.8% of those who received a placebo, usually a tiny injection of normal saline, also reported a severe adverse reaction.
How many of the adverse reactions reported by people who received the placebo were caused by the vaccine? None, because they didn’t receive the vaccine. So how many of the lower number of adverse reactions reported by people who did receive the vaccine were caused by the vaccine? Probably also none. But all were investigated carefully and thoroughly for any possible causative effect, or any incidence over the average in the general population.
In the case of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, after six million doses administered, six women who had received the vaccine reported serious blood clots within two weeks. All were aged between 18 and 48. To be clear, the vaccine was called into question after 1 person per million, all of whom were in a high risk group for blood clots for other reasons, developed clots that normally occur at a rate of one per thousand people every year.
If that sounds ridiculous, it is.
Cutting supply of the Astrazeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines will not save lives. There is no evidence that either vaccine poses any additional risk to recipients. Both vaccines have proven 90% effective in preventing severe illness due to COVID. Both will save lives.

Hating Bill Gates

March 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Bill Gates has been the Emmanuel Goldstein of the anti-vaccination movement for years. But why are so many other people suddenly jumping in?

Boy that Bill Gates is an evil dude. Or so you might think if all you read is Facebook and Twitter. US commentator Candace Owens (whom I otherwise like and admire) has called him a “vaccine criminal,” while conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says he is “Satan’s benchwarmer,” the “placeholder for the anti-Christ.” Gates is hell-bent on depopulating the world so the elite can take over and live in unimaginable luxury while the common folk live as slaves. His chosen method for this depopulation is vaccines, and COVID-19 was created to trick or force everyone into getting the vaccine that will either kill them or track them using microchip implants.

What makes it even worse is that he has publicly announced his intentions, and has been carrying out this plan in plain view, if people would only look. He even owns patent WO (for World Order) 666 for implantable tracking technology, but people are sheeple, and refuse to believe what is right in front of them.

It’s a great plot for a movie. Tom Hanks has to uncover the secret and save the world in the nick of time.

You can’t get much more evil than all that. If all of this is true.

So let’s look at some of the claims being made about Bill Gates, and see how much truth is in them. But first, let’s consider another, related post that has recently done the rounds of Facebook and Twitter. This tells the story of Robert F Kennedy Jnr bravely facing down the CDC and showing that “The CDC is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry. The agency owns more than 20 vaccine patents and purchases and sells $4.1 billion in vaccines annually.”

Hmm.. sounds worrying. Let’s check. First of all though, let’s understand what patents are.

Patents protect a creator’s design, product or process, so that the creator can invest in research and development, and be confident that some ratbag is not going to come along and steal their work and profit from it by using the process or manufacturing the product without having done the creative work and research. For example, there are over a thousand patents which protect the latest iPhone.

Vaccines are hugely expensive to create, and just as hugely expensive to test, then to package and bring to market. In the same way many patents may protect a product like an iPhone, many patents may be needed to protect a single vaccine. These may cover the antigen itself, adjuvants, packaging, manufacturing processes, method of delivery, etc. Patents can be licensed to other companies or individuals. iPhones include technology licensed from other companies, as well as technology developed by Apple itself.

The CDC owns a large number of patents related to medical technology. This is because the CDC does a huge amount of medical research. Some of these relate to vaccines. This is because from time to time a researcher will discover, for example, an antigen that provokes an immune response to a particular pathogen, or a method of inactivating a virus for use in a vaccine, or a new adjuvant.

The CDC lists all of its patented technology which is available to be licensed. https://www.cdc.gov/os/technology/techtransfer/industry/licensing/technologies.htm Given it is a publicly funded organisation, why would the CDC patent these things? Why not just let people use them? There are three reasons. Firstly, it stops anyone else from patenting the CDC’s research, profiting from it, and stopping others using it. Secondly, licensing this technology protects the integrity of the manufacturing process, assuring end users of the quality of the product. And thirdly, licensing royalties provide a small return to tax-payers for their investment in the CDC’s research.

The CDC owns patents, not on vaccines, but on vaccine technology (amongst many other things), which it licenses to manufacturers and to other research bodies. There are fifty-seven such patents currently listed. So far, Robert Kennedy Jnr is roughly, sort of right. The CDC does own more than 20 vaccine-related patents. Everything else he said in the interview in which he made that claim, and everything else in the Facebook post in which these claims appear, is false. As we go on to consider the Bill Gates conspiracy theories, we will see that this is a very common anti-vax tactic: Make one true, or near true, claim, then by exaggerating, missing context, or simply making data up, proceed to make claims which are completely false, and because false, dangerous. Dangerous because they are an attempt to dissuade people from receiving life-saving treatments and preventatives.

The CDC does not sell vaccines. In fact it spends nearly half its annual budget (in 2017 $4.1 billion out of a total $11.9 billion budget) on buying vaccines. Which it then sells at a profit, right? No. Which it then gives away:

“CDC buys vaccines at a discount and distributes them to grantees—i.e., state health departments and certain local and territorial public health agencies—which in turn distribute them at no charge to those private physicians’ offices and public health clinics registered as VFC providers.” https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/about/index.html#glance

But it still makes money from its vaccine technology patents? Yes, although it does not manage the licensing of those patents directly. This is handled by National Institutes of Health Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), which is responsible for licensing all of the patents generated from the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC. If we want to be picky, we should note it is the Department, specifically the Secretary of the Department, which owns the patents, not the CDC itself.

Last year the OTT reported income of $78.2 million for all patent licensing from the NIH, CDC and FDA. Let’s say that half of this was licensing of CDC patents, and half of that was generated by vaccine technology patents. The CDC has another six research areas in which patents are available to license, so this is a very generous estimate. That means the CDC’s income from vaccine-related patent licensing was no more than $19.55 million, and probably less.

There are three things to note about this. Firstly, the CDC does not make $4.1 billion selling vaccines. It doesn’t sell vaccines. It SPENT $4.1 billion on vaccines, which it gave away. Second, the maximum of $19.55 million which the CDC made from royalties on vaccine-related payments is less than one fifth of one percent of its budget. Thirdly, all of those royalties went back into further medical services and research. If you think less than one fifth of one percent of the CDC’s budget is enough to corrupt an entire organisation whose purpose is improving health, whose personnel are there and are recruited because they want to make world a better and healthier place, many of whom put themselves at considerable risk in order to do so, then allow me to suggest politely that you have rocks in your head.

This does not mean the CDC is above criticism. It is sometimes slow to react, and sometimes gives contradictory advice. Like all very large government organisations it has become top heavy and bureaucratic. It has lost focus on its original mandate to research and assist with infectious diseases, and broadened into other medical fields. But there is no evidence to suggest it is corrupt or in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies.

Considering these claims by Kennedy has given us some useful background to the conspiracy theories about Bill Gates, and the venomous rage those stories generate.

Let’s start with patent WO666. Microsoft Technology does own patent WO2020060606A1. That is the little bit of truth in this story. It isn’t owned by Bill Gates. Bill Gates hasn’t worked day-to-day at Microsoft since 2008, and retired from his position as Chairman of the Board in 2014. The WO doesn’t stand for World Order, it is an abbreviation for World Intellectual Property Organization, the largest international patent issuing organisation, and is the preface to all patents issued by that body. The A1 at the end indicates that the patent has not yet been granted; it has been applied for and published so other patent holders can review it before the patent is granted. The 2020 indicates the year in which it was published. The patent number is 060606. These are issued sequentially and have no meaning other than being an index/reference. The number does include three sixes, but you have to ignore the other eight letters and numbers to get “patent 666.”

What is the patent application for? Microchipping humans, right, so they can be tracked? No. There is nothing in the application which suggests any kind of implant or any sort of geo-location or tracking.  It is an application for digital technology which could be included in a watch or fit-bit type device, which would reward users with crytpto-currency for physical activity.

Most crypto-currency, bitcoin is an example, is “mined” using computer GPUs. This process uses considerable electricity, estimated at over 60 terawatt hours per year; more than the entire country of Switzerland. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/07/08/bitcoin-devours-more-electricity-than-switzerland-infographic/

The Microsoft proposal would reward people with crypto-currency for keeping fit. It is that simple. It is also worth noting that the patent hasn’t been granted yet, and that while Microsoft had a fitness band, released in 2014, it stopped producing them in 2016, and has announced no plans to produce another. If granted, the technology patented in WO2020060606A1 would likely be licensed to other companies like Fitbit, rather than in a new product made by Microsoft itself. A company which in any case, as noted above, Bill Gates is no longer involved in running.

“But Bill Gates and Dr Anthony Fauci sent $7.5 million to the Wuhan lab to research altering bat viruses so they would infect people, and Bill Gates owns the patent for Coronavirus!”

The little bit of truth in this is that since 2014 the National Institutes of Health has granted $3.7 million to a well-respected research organisation called Ecohealth Alliance to fund research into coronaviruses. Since 1984 Dr Anthony Fauci has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of twenty-seven bodies which make up the NIH. Dr Fauci has never been in Wuhan, and it is not clear whether he had any role in the grant to Ecohealth Alliance. He certainly had no role in The Ecohealth Alliance’s decisions about where that grant money was directed. Bill Gates, incidentally, has nothing to do with the NIH. The Gates Foundation has made one grant of $1.5 million to Ecohealth Alliance, but that was in 2020 and was for agricultural development.

Funds from the NIH grant were divided between the Wuhan lab, and institutes in Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore. This is a list of published papers based on research partially funded by that grant.

https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_results.cfm?aid=9819304&icde=49588715

Most of the recent virus scares have come from zoonotic infections, that is, infections which have jumped from animal hosts to humans. Examples include Zika, Ebola, Plague, and West Nile Fever. Research into coronaviruses is important because of their ability to jump from animal to human hosts, often with deadly results. Many ordinary colds result from one of the four common coronaviruses: 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1. Most people will suffer from one these at least once, with nothing more than a mild fever, a cough and sniffly nose.

However, coronaviruses can also be killers. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) are both examples. Because these diseases are highly infectious and have high mortality rates, many health authorities were concerned that the next major pandemic could be a coronavirus, and offered grants for study into their genome and infection pathways. If a new, deadly coronavirus appeared (and it has – that is what COVID-19 is), this research would help us be better prepared.

China’s behaviour in deleting records of the genome, denying the outbreak, and then denying the risk of infection, were reprehensible. China should be held to account. It is possible that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. This needs to be carefully and independently investigated. But the research itself was worthwhile and deserved to be funded. There was nothing nefarious about the funding at all. Also, Bill Gates had nothing whatever to do with it.

But then how does he happen to have a patent for coronavirus that dates from 2014? Surely that proves this pandemic was all planned in advance?

The normal anti-vax conspiracy practice, as we have seen above, is to take a little truth, and then add several large lies. In this case, there is no truth at all, just several wild assumptions.

There are many coronaviruses. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds many medical services and research organisations. One of these is the Pirbright Institute in England. The Pirbright Institute has received two grants from the Gates Foundation, one in 2013 for research into diseases affecting livestock, and one in 2016 for research into a more effective flu vaccine.

In 2018 Pirbright was granted a patent which covers the development of an attenuated (weakened) form of a coronavirus that causes respiratory diseases in poultry, which they hope might be used be used as a vaccine to prevent respiratory diseases in birds, including avian infectious bronchitis. The vaccine is not owned by Bill Gates, the funding his foundation provided was for completely different purposes, and the weakened avian coronavirus for which Pirbright holds a patent is a completely different pathogen from SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus which causes COVID-19.

In the last couple of months the Pirbright Institute, which has considerable experience with zoonotic and respiratory infections, has collaborated with researchers at the University of Oxford and Public Health England, to try to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Bill Gates has nothing to with that either.

https://www.pirbright.ac.uk/news/2020/03/pirbright-begins-testing-new-coronavirus-vaccines-animals-help-combat-covid-19

“But still, everyone knows Bill Gates experimented on African children with untested vaccines.”

The trouble with claims like these is that they are easily made, and easily passed on. Just create a meme with a happy looking picture of Bill Gates juxtaposed with a dying black child, and another child being poked with what looks like a horse needle, and you are guaranteed a viral response. People are less inclined to read referenced articles, or to look carefully for facts in government or local medical reports. It is easier and more fun to repost that story about the horrible Bill Gates, because, like, it’s probably true, and even it isn’t he deserves it because everyone knows he has done so many other horrible things. Then you can feel indignantly self-righteous for a few minutes, be pleased with the number of likes you get, and go back to cat videos and complaining about the government.

Except that Bill Gates Bill Gates doesn’t own any vaccine patents, he doesn’t sell vaccines, and he doesn’t conduct any research into vaccines. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds health services and research including sanitation, vaccines, clean water, anti-biotics, birth services, and diagnostic and treatment centres. Mr Gates has no role in the day-today determination of which bodies receive grant funding, and no role at all in determining how grant recipients spend that money.

This experiments on black children story seems to have started with a 2017 non-peer reviewed article on international law and the accountability of NGOs, (non-government organisations).

https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1205&context=annlsurvey

In that article, the author, Sharmeen Ahmed, claims that several programmes funded by the Gates Foundation resulted in “numerous deaths and injuries, with accounts of forced vaccinations and uninformed consent.” She offered no references to support these claims.

If true, this would show that some organisations which have been part-funded by the Gates Foundation need to operate more carefully and openly, and perhaps that the Foundation needs to vet grant-receiving organisations more carefully. But Ahmed’s claims are not true. They were known not to be true six years before they were published. Sadly, like most anti-vaxxers, Ahmed has no interest in what is true.

Her story related a mishmash of distortions about a trial of HPV vaccination that was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which ran in India, Peru, Uganda and Vietnam. Let’s note first off that it was not a trial of an untested or experimental vaccine, as is often claimed in various Farcebook references. Gardasil had been approved for use in the USA in 2006, following many years of research and clinical trials, and Cervarix in 2009. They have been hugely success in reducing the incidence of cervical cancer. By 2010, when large numbers of girls began to be vaccinated through the trial programme, both vaccines had solid research support, had been approved for use in most Western countries, and had been proven in the field to be both safe and effective. The purpose of the trial funded by the Gates Foundation was not to assess the vaccine itself, but the practicalities and costs of  widespread vaccination in very poor rural and densely populated urban areas.

All went well, until a small number of girls in India, seven out of 23,428, died within four months of receiving the vaccine. This story was picked up by local, then national media. A furore was created, and the trial halted. A government review was undertaken. Sharper readers may already be wondering whether seven girls out of 23,428 in impoverished areas of India dying in any four month period was anything out of the ordinary. Sadly, they would be right to do so.

To quote from the official government report:

“There were a total of 7 deaths, 5 from the AP and 2 from Gujarat. A detailed review of death cases were undertaken from the available records in the form of FIR, Clinic/hospital prescriptions/records and the autopsy. Out of the five deaths reported from Andhra Pradesh, two died due to consumption of organo-phosphorus poisoning (autopsy proven) and one died due to drowning in a well.

These three girls died after 45, 97 and 49 days after the last HPV vaccine dose respectively. The fourth case developed symptoms 96 days after receiving the third dose of the vaccine and had died of unrelated disease which cannot be linked possibly to HPV. The fifth case had started symptoms 23 days after the last dose and possibly died of severe malaria after eight days of treatment in health facilities. Similarly at Gujarat, one case died of snake bite and the other case died of severe malaria.

… The background death rates among girls 10-14 years of age in both Vadodora and Khammam districts did not show any increase rate. In fact in Vadodora district the death rate has significantly decreased in 2009 compared to the past years.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20180106062830/https://www.icmr.nic.in/final/HPV%20PATH%20final%20report.pdf

None of the deaths of any of the seven girls was related in any way to the Gardasil or Cervarix vaccines they received as part of the trial. We have seen the same kind of irrational panic over the last month in relation to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. “It causes blood clots!” No it doesn’t. The rate of dangerous thromboembolism is no greater in vaccine recipients than unvaccinated populations. See the WHO review here:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/03/who-review-finds-no-blood-clot-link-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine

And my own earlier comments about relative risk and COVID-19 vaccination here:

https://qohel.com/2021/02/01/covid-19-health-matters-life-matters/

Just as an aside, another of the programmes funded by the Gates Foundation was MenAfriVac. This programme, which cost $70 million, was one of the most successful African health initiatives ever. Between 2010 and 2019, 315 million people in Africa’s meningitis belt, an area extending across the width of sub-Saharan Africa, received the vaccine. Cases of meningitis A have dropped almost to zero. According to the WHO, the vaccine is “expected to eliminate meningococcal A epidemics from this region of Africa,” Meningitis regularly killed thousands of people during outbreaks. Not any more. Without MenAfriVac, hundreds of millions of Africans would be vulnerable to a disease that can kill within hours and leave survivors paralysed, blind, and intellectually disabled.

If anti-vaxxers cared about the truth, they would be gasping for breath right now. Sadly for their victims, they don’t. They only care about ammunition. Here is the last gasp.

“But Bill Gates has publicly said he intends to use vaccines for population control! He is lulling people into a false sense of security before forcing everyone to be vaccinated with a vaccine that isn’t a vaccine, will permanently alter their DNA, and will kill half of those who receive it.”

To paraphrase Theoden of Rohan, “What can people do against such reckless stupidity?” Is it even worth trying to answer such manifest irrationality? Well, perhaps briefly.

Firstly, just because a vaccine operates in a different way from previous vaccines does not mean it is not a vaccine. The mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines developed against COVID-19, are designed to provoke an immune response just like other vaccines. They just shortcut a couple of steps in doing so, and this has the potential to make them faster and more reliable. Neither mRNA vaccines, or any other proposed COVID-19 treatment or preventative does or even can alter human DNA.

“Yeah, well, Bill Gates still said he was going to use vaccines to eliminate half the population.”

No, he didn’t. So where the heck did that come from? In 2010 Bill Gates said “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

Does this mean he intends to poison vaccines, or implant tracking devices in them, or slow release killers to be activated by the 5G signal?  I am not going to link to any of the fantastically dishonest or relentlessly stupid and baseless videos which make this claim. You can find them, or friends will send them to you.

Instead, here is a link to Bill Gates explaining exactly what he meant, which is pretty much exactly what it was obvious to me and every rational person on the planet he meant. As infant and youth mortality improves, families have fewer children, so over time the rate of population growth declines, and even becomes negative. This is true of every developed country in the world. There is nothing remotely controversial about this. What this means is that doing everything possible to improve infant mortality and health does not mean unsustainable population growth. The evidence shows exactly the opposite. The healthier we are, the more stable the population becomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obRG-2jurz0

None of this means that Bill Gates is perfect. He is human. He gets things wrong. His Foundation will get things wrong. They fund some programmes I believe are inappropriate. But this does not make him a monster. Despite the occasional misallocation (in my view) of funds by the Gates Foundation, it is still a huge influence for good. See the MenAfriVac programme briefly described above for one example. What we should be concerned about, and doing everything we can to combat, is the repeated, lazy and vicious misrepresentations of anti-vax lobby groups. Anti-vaxxers kill children. If anyone deserves contempt, it is they.

More from the Anti-vax Tinfoil Hat Brigade

February 21, 2021 / / 0 Comments

It was interesting to see a few hundred tin foil hatters turn out to the million people anti-mandatory-vaccinations comedy sessions around the country.

Void of purpose from the start, since no COVID-19 vaccine in Australia is mandatory.

Bu of course, the “I’m not anti-vax, but…” crowd are not really about objections to mandatory vaccination, they want to scare people off vaccines altogether.

This in unmitigatedly, inexcusably evil.

It isn’t woke, or clever. People who are anti-vaxxers don’t know more than others. They haven’t “Done their research.” They are not concerned about your welfare, or that of your children.

But, they wail…

COVID-19 vaccines are experimental. No, they are not.

COVID-19 vaccines contain cells from aborted babies. No, they do not.

COVID-19 vaccines change your DNA. No, they do not.

COVID-19 vaccines contain tracking devices. No, they do not.

COVID-19 vaccines have terrible side effects the government and bug pharma are hiding from you. No, they do not.

COVID-19 vaccines are part of Bill Gates and the Cabal’s plot to reduce world population. No, they are not.

COVID-19 vaccines don’t stop you getting the disease. Yes, they do.

COVID-19 vaccines won’t save lives. Yes, they will, and already are.

None of the above complaints has any basis in science or reality. They originate with scumbags, scroungers and scammers like Andrew Wakefield, Joseph Mercola, Robert F Kenned Jnr, Sherri Tenpenny, etc.

I have said this before, and it is worth saying again, if you are telling people not to get a proven, life-saving medication or procedure because you don’t understand that post hoc ergo propter hoc (after, therefore must be because of) is a fallacy, or because you would rather pass on Facebook memes that agree with your prejudices, or you can’t be bothered checking your views with genuine science and medical authorities, then you are either astonishingly stupid, or simply evil. There is no other option.

You don’t get to try to talk people out of life-saving medical treatments on basis of unchecked dim-wittery from known shysters, and then claim to be concerned about others.

By all means don’t get the vaccine if you don’t want to. But this is not just a decision that affects you. You are in exactly the same position as those who refused to refused to follow Ignaz Semmelwiess’s guidelines on handwashing between examinations. “There’s no reason it should work!” “You can’t make me wash my hands!” “You can’t experiment on me!” “It’s just a conspiracy to sell carbolic acid!” They were the what anti-vaxxers are now – promoters of fear, disease and death, and for the same reasons.

There are limits to how much a society can tolerate deliberate, dangerous, dishonesty when it comes to health and safety. So again, don’t get the vaccine if you don’t want to. No one will make you. But understand if people need to put other precautions in place to protect themselves, their families, their workers, their clients and residents, and those who are genuinely unable to get the vaccine from the demented selfishness of the anti-vaxxers.

Google, Facebook, and Mainstream Media Madness

February 19, 2021 / / 0 Comments
I am no fan of either Google or Facebook. Google has a long history of distortion of news and of down-grading results from websites it disagrees with. Facebook does the same, while at the same time happily continuing to profit from the publication of anti-semitism and anti-vax paranoia, both are which are counter-factual and dangerous to the point of being evil.
But…
People now complaining about Facebook’s delisting Australian news sites, and Google’s suggestion it may do the same thing, or cease to operate to operate in Australia at all, have either not been paying attention, or are deliberately grandstanding.
For an example of the latter, take this exchange from Hansard: Economics Legislation Committee 22/01/2021
Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2020. (H/T Catallaxy Files)
… Senator BRAGG: Turning to your tax affairs, how much corporate tax did Google pay in Australia last year?
Ms Silva : Last year Google paid $59 million in tax, and we comply with the tax laws of the land. We restructured our business in 2016 in line with the government’s shift and the change to MAL, the multinational anti-avoidance law. We shifted to a reseller model from then, and last year’s tax was $59 million.
Senator BRAGG: $59 million in corporate tax?
Ms Silva : $59 million in corporate tax.
Senator BRAGG: What’s your revenue in Australia?
Ms Silva : The gross revenue was $4.8 billion, and the profit before tax was $134 million.
Senator BRAGG: $4.8 billion, and you paid $59 million in corporate tax. …
Senator Bragg was an accountant before he became a Liberal Party Senator. He knows very well that taxes are paid on profits, not revenue. Almost no commercial enterprise in Australia could survive if taxes were paid on revenue, that is income before any expenses. Our own business, for example, has revenue of about $1.5 million per year. Our profit, the money left over after expenses including wages, including ours, which are less on an hourly basis than our staffs’, is about $30,000 per year, almost all of which goes back into the business.
Google Australia’s profit before tax was $134 million. It paid $59 million in corporate tax. this is an effective tax rate of 44%. Not only is Google paying its share of tax in Australia, but by world standards, Australia is an extremely expensive place to do business.
Now to today’s stories about Facebook de-linking Australian news sites.
More than half of all traffic to Australian media sites is driven by Facebook and Google. Google does not publish full stories from news sites, it simply links to them. Australian media have spent months whining about this, and complaining to government that Facebook and Google should be forced to pay for sending traditional media media websites traffic.
In no rational world does this make sense. Everyone who has ever run a website knows that traffic is life. Most websites, at least from time to time, pay for advertising, which in web world, means paying for traffic. But here in Australia, media companies want Facebook and Google, which send them the vast majority of their traffic, to pay them for the privilege of doing so.
Sadly, and destructively, but unsurprisingly, they seem to have convinced a sufficient number of politicians that this was a good plan. Unsurprisingly, because most politicians have never run a business, and have no idea how real-world market forces work.
Also unsurprisingly, Facebook has simply said “No thanks. If we have to pay for linking to you, we won’t link to you.” A perfectly reasonable and foreseeable outcome. But now see how the media darlings explode with rage as their traffic, and consequently their advertising revenue, drops to a tiny proportion of previous figures. It’s so unfair! All my work has disappeared!
Tough. Play silly games, win silly prizes.
If the Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2020 is not defeated, something that seems unlikely at this stage, Australia’s traditional media groups could well find themselves pushed to the wall far faster than they expected. And it will be their own short-sighted, greedy fault.

COVID-19: Health Matters. Life Matters

February 1, 2021 / / 1 Comment

If one million people are vaccinated with the new COVID-19 vaccine over the next year, this is what we can expect:

4500 will develop an invasive cancer. 1600 will die from cancer.

About 250 will develop Bell’s Palsy (facial paralysis).

1,000 will be diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

About 500 will suffer from Encephalitis (brain inflammation).

1700 will have strokes.

Almost 5,000 will die from heart disease.

In total, of that million who were vaccinated, 15,000 will be dead a year later. More than 280 every week. 40 people every day.

Do you still want to take the risk?

You should, because that is how many people will contract and die of those illnesses in any case. Every year, of every million people in peaceful, prosperous nations, about 15,000 will die, about one third of them from some form of heart disease.

Given that the vaccine will be administered first to people in vulnerable groups; older people and people with pre-existing conditions, the death rate may be even higher in that group. As it would be for people in that group in any case.

Incidentally, over any given year, for every million people, about 120 will die in motor vehicle accidents, about 40 from drowning, about 200 from poisoning, accidental or otherwise, and about 50 will be murdered. Having the COVID-19 vaccine won’t change those figures either.

So when you see alarmist headlines about someone dying two weeks after getting the vaccine, remember you could have a headline every week screeching that another person who recently had the vaccine had been stabbed, shot, strangled or poisoned. Or one hundred headlines every week about someone who was recently vaccinated getting divorced.

For every million people, about 6,000 get divorced each year. So for every million people who receive the COVID-19 vaccine in any given year over one hundred will get divorced every week.

Anti-vaxxers see these headlines and ask “How many times does this have to happen before we realise it is not a coincidence?”

That is because they have no understanding of either health or mathematics. That is not so bad. Lots of people don’t. What is bad is that they don’t want to know, but pretend they do. They prefer to read Robert Kennedy Jnr, Sherri Tenpenny, Joseph Mercola, Andrew Wakefield and other scammers, and pass on the “information” they receive from those sources without stopping and thinking, and without checking with reputable science and evidence based sources.

Is dangerous and dishonest to the point of being evil to try to convince people not to be vaccinated against childhood diseases or a dangerous virus like COVID-19 on the basis of nonsense being passed around Facebook. Anti-vaxxers suggest to people that protective actions against disease are in fact some sort of plot to depopulate the world. People who make such claims and try to stop widespread vaccination are under an absolute moral obligation to check their facts, and to read and consider sources which challenge their assumptions.

They don’t. That is what makes them dangerous.

My suggestions: Don’t engage with people who post anti-vax propaganda. That just promotes them and their posts. Report false information. Look up quality evidence and research based websites like https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ and https://stronger.org/ and repost interesting, and more importantly, truthful, evidence based articles from there. Swamp out the pro-disease, pro-childhood illness, pro-death activists with reality.

Because health matters, and life matters.

© 2024 Qohel