Year: 2023 (Page 2 of 7)

Maybe think again. You have to have an Instagram account to sign in to Threads. If you then decide you want to cancel your Threads account, the Facebook/Threads/Instagram umbrella corporation will only allow you to do this if you also cancel your Instagram account.

In addition, as both Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk have noted, signing up to Threads demands access to almost every aspect of your life. Everything you post, no matter how private, and all the data gatherable from that post; where you are, who you are with, health, financial, and family information, is Meta’s, and Meta can do with that information whatever it likes.

Finally, straight out of the block, Threads is implementing Meta’s practise of censoring and ultimately cancelling people who post ideas with which it disagrees. That’s great if you agree with Meta and prefer to live in an echo chamber. For those who are happy with diversity, happy to engage, and live in the real world, not so good.

Disney had a go at the Narnia stories several years ago. The first movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe didn’t really have a heart. Despite this, Lucy was lovely, and the movie wasn’t bad as far as Hollywood movies go. The next episode, Prince Caspian, spent the first ten minutes making the audience dislike, and therefore not care about its lead characters, and went downhill from there. Disney’s final attempt, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was a vile schmozzle from beginning to end.

The movies did not engage the huge potential audience of people around the world who love the Narnia books, because they did not convey what Lewis wrote the books to convey. They were washed out, and ultimately boring.

Netflix now owns the movie rights to the Chronicles of Narnia. So new movies. Yay! Right? Probably wrong.

To direct the new movies Netflix has appointed the director of the eviscerated 2019 version of Little Women, Greta Gerwig. This version removed the Christian faith which was the heart of the books, the faith which gave the Little Women their hope, courage, and resilience. Greta replaced this with feminine strength and independence. This resulted in a movie which is atheistic, anachronistic, preachy, and dull. Greta also directed the recent live action Barbie movie. Of this, the less said the better.

No doubt the new movies will include lots of dramatic action, impressive CGI, and repeated failed attempts at humour. What they will almost certainly not include is any real understanding of CS Lewis and his faith, the faith explained in and evident throughout the Chronicles. And consequently, like Disney’s versions, and Amazon Prime’s Rings of Tedium, they miss the whole point, and will fail.

Variations of this image have been posted on social media many times. Yet Western countries continue to import people whose cultural values are simply incompatible with notions of equality, rule of law, freedom of religion, etc. See recent riots in France. All races are equal, but not all cultures are equal.

In addition, immigration programmes need to take account of available infrastructure including housing. Leith van Onselen at News Ltd explains why the current housing crisis in Australia is largely due to unprecedented levels of immigration.

Sensible immigration means ensuring that, except in absolute emergencies, those who come to our countries share our values and want to live according to our laws. It also means limiting numbers so that undue strain is not placed on water, road, housing medical and educational facilities.

I am a migrant. I came to Australia in 1978. I have worked or studied since then, have paid taxes, have never been on a government benefit. People who come wanting to be part of society and willing to work make a long-term positive economic and social contribution. Australia and the USA would not be the successful countries they are without their long history of welcoming immigrants.

At the same time, unreasonably high levels of immigration cause difficult to manage short term demands on services, pain to existing residents, and generate long term problems including alienation and consequent ill will, dependence on benefits, and higher crime rates.

Just be sensible!

This Spotify playlist – New Rock Royalty – is a collection of newish rock, featuring Australia’s hottest new Band, Two Times Shy. It is updated every week or so, is safe for family and work, and will always have Two Times Shy’s latest releases. If you enjoy it, please like and share.

I keep seeing people posting on social media that they have been hacked. Hacked is when someone gets into your account without your permission, and can post and change settings. This can happen, but it is not common.

Far more frequent is being cloned. This is when they don’t have your password or access to your account, but create a copy of your profile, often using your profile pic and publicly available personal information. They do this to make it easier to scam your friends. The more friends you have, and the more personal information anyone can see, the more attractive your account is to cloners, because that gives them more chances to rip people off.

You can’t stop this happening. But you can reduce how attractive your profile is to cloners by making your personal information and friends list private. If they can’t see your personal information it is harder for them to fool your friends, and if they can’t see who your friends are, they won’t know who to send friend invites to.

I went for a seven kilometre run yesterday afternoon at a nearby conservation park. I took this photo of the Brisbane River from the Moggill ferry on the way home.

I don’t watch much commercial TV, but my Dad is staying with us for a few weeks, and he likes to watch the news. Last night I saw for the first time one of the taxpayer funded advertisements for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

I was appalled at its dishonesty.

It began by saying the Constitution is 123 years old, and “still doesn’t recognise indigenous people.” How shocking! How racist! Except it is nothing of the sort. The Constitution still doesn’t recognise white people, or Chinese people, or Italians, or middle-aged redheads with bushy eyebrows. Why am I excluded? ☹

The reason people of my ethnicity are not recognised in the Constitution is that no race is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. To repeat; the reason people of Irish, African, Vietnamese, or Australian Aboriginal  descent are not recognised in the Constitution is that no race is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. This is not racist or exclusionary. It the exact opposite. No race is singled out for recognition or special treatment because we have a commitment as a nation to treating everyone of every race and background as equal before the law, with equal rights and obligations.

The ad, paid for by you whether you like it or not, continued by saying the Voice would give indigenous Australians a say in their own future.  But they already have a say. In fact, lots of says.

According to the 2021 Census, people of aboriginal descent make up about 3.8% of Australia’s population – an increase of 30% since the previous census in 2016. But people claiming aboriginal descent make up nearly 8% of elected representatives in our Federal Parliament. In addition there are multiple bodies which claim to lobby for and represent the interests of indigenous people.

The National Indigenous Australians Agency says its purpose is to be: “responsible for whole-of-government coordination of policy development, program design, and service delivery for Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people, who are grouped under the term Indigenous Australians.”

This body is funded by taxpayers to the extent of over $1 billion per  year. It is one of many.

Despite what the ads tell you, aboriginal leaders are far from unanimously supportive of the Voice. Voice advocates in Canberra flatly refused to meet with a group of aboriginal people who had travelled from around Australia to talk to them about concerns they had about being separated by race, and about additional layers of bureaucracy in consultation and delivering services.

Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine has visited and talked to people in Aboriginal communities around Australia. He says most of them are suspicious of the Voice, regard it as another white-fella feel good scheme, and do not believe it will do them any practical good. Jacinta Price says the last thing most aboriginal people want is to be singled out by race, and that what is needed is not yet another expensive “voice’ but ears which are willing to listen.

Sadly, listening is something Voice advocates still seem unwilling to try.

The story of a ninety-five year old NSW nursing home resident being tasered by police has generated lots of clicks (and therefore advertising revenue) and created an outcry on social media.

It does seem shocking. It also seems like the “outrage on demand” stories that appear almost daily on social media.

Outrage is a very satisfying feeling. We should be wary of it; the encouragement it gives us to think ourselves superior, the easy excuse to think others evil, and the way it justifies words and actions which may be cruel and have consequences worse than the event about which we were told to outraged.

The lady in the news story may have been threatening another resident with the knife she was wielding. Or may have been on the verge of stabbing herself. Or police may indeed have acted precipitously to protect themselves. All we really know is that experienced staff called police because they were not able to resolve the situation safely.

Let’s delay both judgement and outrage until we know what really happened. And don’t hate just because the media tells us to.

According to some estimates, Maurice Hilleman’s vaccines save eight million lives every year. Amongst all the fake heroes, empty-headed movie stars, etc, his is a name worth remembering.

Having said that, COVID-19 vaccines saved some 20 million lives around the world in the year from December 8 2020, and December 8 2021. More recent data shows more than 3 million lives saved in the US alone to the end of 2022.

On May 12th an article appeared in News Ltd press and digital outlets relating the story of a young man who was diagnosed with Retinal Vein Occlusion a few days after receiving his second dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine.

Cody Hose-Ross, who is a twenty-one year old tradesman, applied for compensation under the Government’s vaccine injury compensation scheme. An eye surgeon, Dr Peter Davies, supported his claim, writing “His colour photography shows an unusual discolouration in the temporal retina of the right eye which is not seen in the left eye and my interpretation is that it represents area where the vaccine has directly landed in the retinal circulation leading to patchy ischaemia of the outer retinal layers in the deep capillary plexus.”

The vaccine “landed directly in the retinal circulation.” Right.

Dr Davies’s opinions were supported by Professor Peter McCluskey, also an eye surgeon. Essentially, and apart from vaccine “landing directly in the retinal circulation” a claim so ridiculous it belongs in Mad Magazine, the argument by both experts was that Hose-Ross’s RVO appeared soon after his second dose of vaccine, so was probably caused by it.

Is that reasonable? Is RVO so rare that doctors and compensation bodies can be sure that any incidence after vaccination was caused by the vaccination?

It is important that compensation courts and assessment bodies be on the generous side of fair. People who have suffered one of the tiny number of genuine serious vaccine injuries should be given every support they need. It is also important that those courts and other bodies be truthful. Injuries or events that are not a consequence of vaccination should not receive compensation.

People commonly and naturally attribute adverse events after vaccination to the vaccination. In the large Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials 1% of those who received the vaccine reported a significant adverse effect; something more than headache, mild fever or soreness at the site. But 1.7% of those who received the placebo also reported serious adverse effects. Obviously, none of those effects could have been caused by the vaccine – those people had not received the vaccine. But then how many of the effects reported by the 1% of people in the vaccine group were caused by the vaccine? How would we know?

Something that needs to be kept in mind all the time when considering whether an event was a direct consequence of another event is this: just because something happens after another something, does not mean the first something caused the second. For example, imagine you change the brand of coffee you drink. The very first morning you use the new coffee, you get a flat tyre on the way to work. Did the coffee cause the flat tyre? How do you know? Most people would answer no, because even though getting a flat tyre is rare, it does happen, and also there is no obvious way a change in coffee could cause a flat tyre.

The same considerations apply in medicine. First, if x is supposed to have caused y, is there is a clear correlation between x and y? And second, is there a mechanism by which x could cause y?

How does this relate to COVID vaccines and RVO?

A study conducted in Australia in 2006 in persons forty-nine years of age and older found that the cumulative ten year incidence rate for Retinal Vein Occlusion was 1.6%. This means an averaged rate of 0.16% per year or approximately 1600 people per year per million diagnosed with RVO. Increasing age is correlated with higher rates of RVO, as is high blood pressure, so the rate for the general population may be lower.

To account for this, let’s say an actual average of half this rate; eight hundred people diagnosed with RVO each year in Australia. This matches with recorded incidence figures in Australia and around the world.

This means about sixty-seven people diagnosed with RVO every month in Australia. Important to note is that this rate has not changed since COVID-19 vaccines were introduced.

Over the last two years, most Australians have had three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. One every eight months. What this means is that on average, every month, just over eight people in Australia will be diagnosed with RVO within thirty days of having received a COVID vaccine.

Just to make that clear, what happens anyway, vaccine or not, is that on average, every month, just over eight people in Australia will be diagnosed with RVO within thirty days of receiving a COVID vaccine.

The question is not “Did some people get RVO after having a vaccine?” Of course they did and will, just as some people will over-boil their eggs, have car accidents, get a bonus at work, get married.. None of these things is related to vaccination status. The question is “Are people who have been vaccinated getting RVO at a higher rate than those who have not?”

Over the last couple of weeks somewhat distorted interpretations of a recent paper have been passed around social media by antivax activists. They claim this paper was published in Nature. It was actually published in NPJ Vaccines. NPJ Vaccines is part of the Nature family, but it is not Nature. This matters because accuracy matters.

The finding of this paper was not that a link between COVID vaccination and increased onset of RVO was proven, but that “Retinal vascular occlusion may not be a coincidental finding after COVID-19 vaccination.” This is a very long way from a proven connection.

Another, larger study was published in JAMA Ophthalmology only a month before. This study, which considered some of the same data as the NPJ paper, found “No evidence suggesting an association between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and newly diagnosed RVO.”

The best interpretation of these two papers and other evidence at this stage is that even with careful analysis of a sample size of over three million patients, there is insufficient basis to claim a connection between COVID-19 vaccination and the onset of RVO.

If you have Type II Diabetes, talk to your GP about the possible use of a GLP1RA to supplement Metformin. Recent studies confirm the effectiveness of GLP1RAs such as Semaglutide in glucose reduction and assistance in weight control. They also appear to have positive effects on other systems including renal and cardiac function, and restoration of NK cell functionality leading to possible reduction in the incidence of cancer. These combined effects suggest a significant increase in lifespan is possible.

This was the view a year ago:

https://www1.racgp.org.au/ajgp/2022/july/glp1ra-therapy-in-type-2-diabetes

More recent research confirms this and notes additional benefits:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23772

I am horrified to see Ivermectin still being touted as a cure or preventative for COVID-19, usually in company with claims big pharma, governments, hospitals, medical practitioners, universities and research bodies all conspired to hide the evidence so that they could push vaccines on an unsuspecting populace…

It takes a special kind of mentality to believe that millions of people working independently all over the world, all of whom have previously been dedicated to wellness, health and finding cures, suddenly decided, for the sake of $, to hide the real cures for a dangerous illness.

More importantly, the facts show clearly that Ivermectin, valuable as it is in treating parasites, has no benefit in treating or preventing COVID-19.

Along with many other possible treatments, Ivermectin showed promise in early trials. Ivermectin was particularly interesting to me because Thomas Borody hoped it might work. Thomas Borody is one of the heroes of 20th century medicine, and anything he says is worth listening to.

However, larger and more rigorous trials soon made it clear that there was no benefit from Ivermectin at any stage of COVID-19 infection, and that it had no positive additional effect when combined with other complementary medications such as zinc.

There is no cover up here, except amongst anti-vaxxers. Comments on health and medical matters need to be based firmly in real science and data, not social media posts or the opinions of fringe figures such Robert Malone or Tess Lawrie. Nor is it the case that one opinion is as good as another. Opinions are worse than useless if they are not based on an accurate assessment of evidence, and in the case of misinformed opinions on medical matters, may be seriously harmful.

Science Based Medicine has a good summary of some of the anti-vax pro-ivermectin arguments, contrasted with what real-world data shows.

I have great respect for Gabriël Moens AM and Augusto Zimmermann. Their research is careful and detailed, and their opinions on Australia’s Constitution and legal history carry great weight.

Their opinions on medical science, however, carry as much intrinsic weight as the opinions on delicate questions of constitutional law held by the nail technicians in the nail clinic at my local shopping plaza. That is not to say that a nail technician could not have opinions on constitutional law that were worth hearing and considering. But those opinions would have to be based on years of intensive reading, of understanding the context and history of Australian law, and have been tested in discussions with genuine experts like Moens and Zimmermann.

Expertise in one area, such as decorative acrylic fingernails, does not necessarily translate into expertise in electrical engineering or law. Expertise in law does not magically translate into expertise in plumbing or immunology.

So I was disappointed to read their recent article in the Australian Spectator https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/the-shocking-refusal-of-medical-treatment-to-the-unvaccinated/ decrying the “shocking refusal of medical treatment to the unvaccinated” which they describe as discriminatory.

The article refers particularly to the case of Vicki Derderian. Vicki needs a heart transplant. The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne has declined to perform that surgery until she is vaccinated against COVID-19. According to an anonymous source quoted in the article “they want her to have three vaccines.”  The other two are is not specified, although this likely refers to second and third doses of one of the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ll see why this is important later.

This is certainly discriminatory. But there is nothing wrong with being discriminating. I discriminate in favour of good wines, good music, good books. One of the many disappointments with the Moens/Zimmermann article is that they use a perfectly good word to create a negative connotation where none is warranted.

The question is not “Is it discriminatory?” but “Is it unfairly discriminatory?”

The answer, as the authors would have found if they talked to anyone in the transplant unit at the Alfred, or indeed any transplant surgeon or immunologist, is NO.

Instead, to support their case, Moens and Zimmermann provide a virtual catalogue of medical wackos and grifters.

They mention Peter McCullough as  a leading and renowned cardiologist. He may be called that in anti-vax circles, but nowhere else. There is a discussion here: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/depopulation-by-covid-19-vaccines/  of why the partnership of Mercola and McCullough is so obnoxious, and so dangerously wrong.

There is an analysis here explaining why his paper claiming to have found a link between COVID-19 and dangerous myocarditis had to be retracted: https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/paper-claiming-covid-vaccines-and-myocarditis-link-is-retracted/  

Here is a list of McCullogh’s articles with discussion demonstrating why they are misleading, mistaken or just outright dishonest: https://healthfeedback.org/authors/peter-mccullough/

Moens and Zimmermann claim “scientists have now discovered that mRNA vaccines, not Covid infection itself, may cause brain and heart damage.”  Scientists have discovered no such thing.

This claim is based on a single study of just one patient, a seventy-six year old with multiple serious underlying conditions, whose autopsy showed minute quantities of COVID-19 spike protein in both heart and brain. The author of the article was not aware of previous COVID infection,  assumed that spike proteins were present because of vaccination three weeks prior to death, and then assumed that these caused the mild observed myocarditis and more serious necrotising encephalitis. There is no evidence other than this article that COVID-19 vaccines are associated with necrotising encephalitis. The best that can be said about this is that it is an interesting article which warrants further investigation.

The article goes on to quote other fringe authors and articles, including one from the Epoch Times. The Epoch Times has as much credibility on complex medical issues as an article from Dolly magazine. No attempt appears to have been made to engage with transplant surgeons, immunologists or any other medical professionals or researchers.

This article is on the same level as an article written by a heart surgeon claiming proof of an advanced pre-ice-age civilisation is absolutely clear, quoting experts like Erich von Daniken and Graham Hancock, and claiming evidence is being suppressed by big archaeology.

Or an article by a dentist in support of sovereign citizenship, quoting such well-known legal experts as Malcom Roberts, Tommy Cryer and Mitch Modeleski to claim Article 61 of Magna Carta was invoked in 2001, so that since that time there has been no legal monarchy, and therefore no laws promulgated anywhere in Commonwealth nations since then have any effect, that Australia now has the status of a corporation on the US stock exchange, and that legal practitioners in Australia know all this, but keep it quiet to safeguard their lucrative positions in the system.

That would be bizarre and obviously wrong to any legal expert. Just as wacky medical conspiracies are bizarre and obviously wrong to scientists and medical researchers.

Why do medical professionals want Vicki Derderian to be vaccinated prior to her heart transplant? Because pre-transplant immunisation is vitally important to the survival of transplant patients. Immuno-suppressant protocols are necessary to ensure the donor organ is not rejected. This means patients have zero resistance to common illnesses.

COVID-19 is endemic in our communities. As I write, Victoria has 6,452 known cases, including 311 currently in hospital, with an average of six people dying from COVID-19 each day. NSW has over 6,600 known cases, and nearly 1300 people in hospital. Research has shown that three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine prior to transplant significantly improves resistance, and therefore survivability,  for transplant patients.

Triage is the process of the allocation of medical resources to those who are most likely to benefit from them. Resources are not unlimited, and some, including organs suitable for transplant, are in very short supply. Giving a heart or a liver to one person almost certainly means that someone else will miss out, and either not receive a transplant organ, or have to wait.

Let’s do a simple triage exercise. You have one liver. You have two patients. One is a fifty-seven year old overweight man, an alcoholic and habitual drug user. He has refused to give up drinking and has a history of non-compliance with medical directions. The other patient is a bright fourteen year old girl with unresectable liver cancer. Who do you give the liver to?

This exercise provides the answer to the question above “Is it unfairly discriminatory?”

It is extremely sad that Vicki Dederian has been convinced, as Moens and Zimmermann seem to have been, by bad faith actors or anti-vax social media posts. She may hold her views sincerely. She may have a vaccine exemption. The article makes much of this. But that simply exempts her from vaccine requirements for travel. It has nothing to do with the provision of health care. None of this alters the fact that her refusal to be vaccinated severely impacts the likely success of her transplant operation, just as the misguided alcoholic’s refusal to give up drinking impacts  the likely success of his.

Vilifying health officials and accusing them of unfair discrimination because they choose to give a heart to someone who has a greater chance of benefiting from it is not the answer. The answer is for Moens, Zimmermann and Vicki Dederian to spend less time talking to and reading medical charlatans, and more time talking to genuine medical researchers and practitioners.

A week ago, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 no longer an international public health emergency.  This was not because COVID-19 has been eradicated. Far from it. And certainly not because it was never really a threat, as some antivaxxers have claimed. Nearly seven million people have died. It is because over 13 billion doses of COVID vaccines have been administered, with over 70% of the world’s population having received at least one dose. In addition, there are now effective treatment regimes for COVID. Together, this means you are less likely to get COVID-19. If you do, you are very unlikely to become seriously ill, will be infectious for less time, and will be given treatments which have been proven to work.

That is something worth celebrating.

I haven’t read through the entire Federal budget document, but there are a couple of issues that are obvious.

The budget includes a great many handouts to people who are likely to vote Labor: people in public housing, people on benefits, people who want someone else to pay the bill when they go to the doctor. These look good – let’s be a generous and caring society, etc. Except that it is very easy for governments to be generous with other people’s money, and tempting to do what looks good without adequate regard for long term consequences.

These handouts have to be paid for via either taxes or inflation.

Increased taxes necessarily apply most heavily to people who don’t rely on the government for income; those who produce useful things, provide useful services, and employ others. Increased taxes mean less money to buy new equipment, to buy stock, to pay wages. When governments make harder it for people to run a business, fewer people will try, more businesses will go bankrupt, fewer people will be employed, more businesses will move overseas. All of this results in higher unemployment and even more demand on benefits, which means more demand on taxes.

The alternative is simply printing money to pay for handouts. But this has an almost immediate push effect on inflation which will cancel out any benefit for those most in need within a year or so.

The second concern is the almost complete omission of major infrastructure projects or maintenance, or rural services.

Although most people live in cities, Australia still relies hugely on its primary industries for export income and economic stability. Neglecting rural and remote Australia is a recipe for long-term decline.

Neglecting infrastructure and maintenance means the much touted (very small) surplus is an illusion. It is actually creating an infrastructure and maintenance debt which will have to be paid with heavy interest in future years.