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Antivaccine nonsense Skepticism/critical thinking

What does antivax really mean since COVID-19?

In 2010 I wrote about how I define “antivaccine.” Has my definition changed since COVID-19? Yes and no, but that’s why an update was needed. So what does “antivax” mean now, since COVID-19?

I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement, antivax disinformation, and antivaxxers for close to a quarter of a century. Here’s a brief history. I first encountered antivaxxers on Usenet—does anyone remember Usenet?—in the late 1990s and then began writing about them here beginning in late 2004. Since then I have written more articles on vaccines, antivax misinformation, and the antivaccine movement than I can easily catalogue, both here and at my not-so-secret other blog. Recently, it occurred to me that it’s been over 12 years since I wrote a post specifically about what I mean when I refer to someone or someone’s claims as “antivaccine”. I had been thinking about updating that post for a while, going back at least to times when I noted how “new school” antivaxxers who started out being against just COVID-19 vaccines were so rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the “old school” antivaxxers from before the pandemic, in particular how “new school” antivaxxers were adopting the same deceptive tropes to argue against vaccinating children against COVID-19 that “old school” antivaxxers had deployed against, for example, vaccinating against measles with the MMR.

It’s also important to me to update that old post because these days there are seemingly more antivaxxers than ever out there trying do deflect criticism in an old way, namely by accusing vaccine advocates of reflexively labeling anyone who has “concerns” about COVID-19 vaccines as “antivax”. While certainly, I try to avoid doing that, reserving the term for those who set off my disinformation antennae with real antivax talking points, I do have to concede that this sort of reflexive labeling does occasionally occur. That’s another reason why I decided that I needed to update my old post, to minimize that tendency.

While many things have changed, a lot of things have stayed the same with respect to antivaccine arguments, which led me to think that an update—or a rethinking, if you will, of my 2010 post was long overdue, just as I decided a month ago that an update to my post from 2008 about “brave maverick doctors” was in order. I joked in that post that, in some ways, it’s easy to echo the concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio by Justice Potter Stewart, where he famously wrote about pornography:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

While it’s still as true in 2022 as it was in 2010 that I “know it when I see it” as far as antivaccine propaganda goes, I also realize that it’s important to try to define “antivaccine” in such a way that those who haven’t been paying attention to the antivaccine movement for well over two decades can start to recognize it too. I’ll use an analogy. This summer and fall, I helped teach a class for our incoming interns on basic surgical skills, such as tying knots and suturing. When you’ve been a surgeon over 30 years, such skills are part of what we like to call “muscle memory”. I just do them without thinking. However, when I had to stop and think through the individual steps in such a way as to teach beginners how to do the different kinds of knots and stitches, I soon realized that it’s very, very hard to break down something that I have been able to do without thinking about it into individual steps. Those of you who have ever had to teach beginners how to do a multistep task that you’ve done for so long that you don’t have to think about it any more will appreciate the analogy, namely that breaking down the patterns and characteristics that identify an antivaxxers is like teaching knot tying to interns.

I can identify antivax misinformation very easily without thinking much about it, having internalized the pattern recognition necessary to do it, but conveying that information in a useful fashion to those unfamiliar with antivaccine arguments is not a trivial task. However, that does not mean that the task impossible. It’s also true that the difficulty is compounded by the fact that there are a number of different flavors of antivaccine views ranging from—I kid you not—the view that vaccines are a tool of Satan to depopulate the earth (and even make you a “hybrid of Satan”) to much milder views, such as opposition to vaccine mandates, which might or might not be associated with antivaccine views.

It’s also important to realize that most people who buy into antivaccine views do so out of ignorance, because they have been misled, rather than due to stupidity. Now, as 12 years ago, I’ll repeat that, when I “go medieval” on antivaccine activists, my ire is almost always reserved for leaders of the antivaccine movement, who spread the misinformation and disinformation that deceives people susceptible to it. Unfortunately, though, if there’s one thing that I’ve observed over the last 12 years, it’s that, once someone starts down the path towards being antivaccine, there is a strong tendency for that person to go further and further down the rabbit hole. You have only to look at how so many “new school” antivaxxers, who only started to fear vaccines thanks to the demonization of the new COVID-19 vaccines, have increasingly embraced “old school” antivax claims demonizing all vaccines.

Another point that I’d like to emphasize is that it’s not a binary question whether one is antivax. It’s not “provaccine” or “antivaccine.” It’s a continuum, ranging from vaccine advocates who suffer greatly from harassment for their efforts to antivax conspiracy theorists who view vaccines as poison and think that vaccines will turn you into a demon. (I’m not joking about that latter part.) Similarly, there’s an important interface between whether someone thinks vaccines are dangerous versus what they think about public health policy choices related to vaccines, which I will address near the end. (Yes, I’m referring to, “I’m not antivax; I’m anti-mandate.”)

The antivaccine movement in 2022 compared to 2010: The same, but different

In 2010, I noted something that is just as true today as it was then; so that’s where I’ll start. I’ve discovered that, when I’m actually in an exchange with someone whom I suspect of having antivaccine views, one rather reliable way of differentiating fear based on what they’ve read online from real antivaccine views is to ask a simple question: Which vaccines do you think that in general, barring medical contraindications, all children should receive? If the answer is “none” then I’m pretty much done; I know I’m almost certainly dealing with an antivaxxer. I will, however, note that this question may require some prodding and follow up to get an answer. Rarely am I able to get a definitive answer on the first try, because most antivaxxers, particularly if they’ve been antivax for a while, are a bit more wary and careful about answering such questions. At some level, they sense that I’m trying to get them to admit that they are antivaccine. Even so, if I ask something like, “If you had it to do all over again, would you vaccinate your child?” or “If you have another child, will you vaccinate that child?” I will usually eventually get the candid response I’m looking for.

If my first doesn’t provide a definitive answer, then a good follow up question is: Are there any vaccines that you consider to be safe? (I leave out effective for this question, because even most antivaxxers will concede that most vaccines currently approved are effective.) If the answer is “none”, that’s easy. They’re antivax. If they hem and haw and try to waffle and equivocate, then the answer is that they’re almost certainly antivax but sense what I’m trying to do and are trying to avoid being ensnared in what they consider to be trap. Sometimes the really clever ones will name a single vaccine (tetanus vaccines are their favorite), thinking that that will mollify me. It won’t work because, as I like to say, this ain’t my first rodeo.

It is important to point out here that there has emerged a significant new wrinkle since the pandemic hit. That difference, unsurprisingly, relates to how COVID-19 vaccines are perceived compared to all the other “old” and “established” vaccines that have been on the current CDC schedule of recommended vaccines for years; i.e., the “new school” anti-COVID-19 vaccine variety of antivaxxers compared to “old school” antivaxxers who used to blame vaccines for autism back in the day. As I’ve said, two years since the first COVID-19 vaccines were granted emergency use approval (EUA), there’s less and less daylight between the two, as, unfortunately, I predicted there would be.

I would also point out that in December 2020 it was much more understandable—to me, at least—that many would be wary and suspicious of the new vaccines. Two years on, it’s much less understandable, given their safety record. On the other hand, there are other differences between 2022 and 2010. First, in 2010 social media was still in its relative infancy, and antivaxxers had not mastered it. They have now. Second, and more importantly, in 2010 antivaxxers were still fringe. Now there exist large networks that promote antivax disinformation that misuse data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) to falsely blame vaccines for all manner of horrors and spread antivax disinformation, such as AIER, the Brownstone Institute, and contrarian doctors publishing bad science and reviews that portray vaccinating against COVID-19 as at best useless and at worse dangerous. While it’s true that antivaxxers were doing that in 2010, their papers rarely achieved much traction. That was because the doctors and scientists doing it then were fringe and had always been fringe. Today, there are a number of formerly well-respected physicians and scientists doing what Andrew Wakefield and Dr. Mark Geier used to do back in the day; only they seem more credible for it because of their prior reputation. (I’m talking to you Dr. Vinay Prasad and Dr. John Ioannidis.)

Worse, antivax disinformation has infested conventional media and become public policy in some states, such as Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist, crank, and antivaxxer named Dr. Joseph Ladapo to be Surgeon General and thus in charge of the state’s entire public health apparatus. Unsurprisingly, he promptly started using his office to discourage vaccinating children against COVID-19, even faking science to do it. Given the antivax propaganda apparatus that has developed over the last few years, it can be harder to distinguish “on the ground” real antivax true believers from those who have become vaccine hesitant due to the relentless drumbeat of disinformation coming from AstroTurf groups, conservative news outlets, and even government officials like Dr. Ladapo. Indeed, antivax disinformation appears on an almost nightly basis on the most watched cable news station, Fox News, with pundits like Tucker Carlson regularly regurgitating antivax talking points to audiences of millions.

Conspiracy theories über alles

The single biggest change that I’m going to make in my assessment of how to recognize an antivaxxer now as compared to 2012 grows from a revelation that I came to a few years after my post on recognizing what makes an antivaxxer, namely that all antivaccine beliefs are rooted in conspiracy theories, specifically what I have called the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement. In 2014, that conspiracy theory was simple. Basically, repeating and believing antivaccine conspiracy theories is arguably the strongest indicator that you are dealing with an antivaxxer, so much so that if you see someone spewing antivax conspiracy theories and being utterly resistant to questioning them, that in and of itself is enough to identify an antivaxxer. Indeed, all antivax conspiracy theories tend to be variations on a theme, namely that “They” know that vaccines don’t work/are harmful, but “They” covered it up. It’s the same conspiracy theory at the heart of, for example, Kevin Trudeau’s famous book Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. In the US this central conspiracy theory posits that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “knew” that vaccines cause autism. In fact, if you believe these conspiracy theories, the CDC itself has demonstrated that vaccines cause autism but has assiduously covered up all evidence, the first and most notable example being the Simpsonwood conspiracy theory.

The Simpsonwood conspiracy theory derives its name from the Simpsonwood Conference Center, where the CDC held a conference in 2000 to discuss the evidence relating to thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. It was first brought to popular attention by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his infamously bad “expose” called Deadly Immunity, simultaneously published in both Rolling Stone and Salon.com. I discussed this conspiracy theory in detail way back in 2005, after RFK Jr. first published it. So did Skeptico and Lindsay Beyerstein.

So what is the Simpsonwood conspiracy theory? Basically, as I explained both in 2005 and 2014 (and a few times between). If you believe the antivaccine movement, it was all about covering up a link between the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism. In reality, the Simpsonwood conference was all about examining evidence from the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a collaborative effort between the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office and nine managed care organizations (MCOs) established in 1990 to monitor immunization safety and address the gaps in scientific knowledge about rare and serious events following immunization to determine if there really was a reason for concern about thimerosal in vaccines. Although the decision had been made in 1999 to remove thimoerosal from childhood vaccines, the decision hadn’t been fully implemented yet, and the CDC wanted to determine whether there was any cause for concern. It was hardly the action of a group that wanted to “cover up” anything, particularly the bit about publishing the entire transcript. None of this, however, prevented antivaccine activists, particularly the branch known as the “mercury militia” for its affinity for the set of antivaccine beliefs associated with mercury in vaccines as a cause of autism, from dreaming up all manner of conspiracy theories.

In reality, there was nothing nefarious going on at Simpsonwood. It was all rather mundane, actually. A preliminary result of an analysis by CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten, MD seemed to indicate an elevated risk of autism. However, in further analyses that eliminated confounders, the risk continued to fall until it disappeared, and that’s the analysis that was ultimately published, as I explained in detail.

Nearly a decade later, antivaxxers reinvented the “CDC coverup” conspiracy theory about vaccines into the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory. In less than two years, this conspiracy theory became the basis of VAXXED: From Coverup to Catastrophe, a propaganda movie disguised as a documentary by Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree. I’ll leave you with my detailed review of the film, for interested readers who might want to see the full depth of the conspiracy theory and how it is just another iteration of the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, this time with the CDC having supposedly “covered up” evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Does any of this sound familiar? Specifically, does the claim that the CDC “knew” that thimerosal in vaccines caused autism but covered it up or that the CDC “knew” that the MMR cause autism but covered it up remind you of all the conspiracy theories that the CDC “knows” that COVID-19 vaccines are causing all sorts of harm but have “covered it up” or even that COVID-19 vaccines are causing people to “die suddenly” but covered it up? Or that the CDC is supposedly so compromised by big pharma that the “fix was in” for ACIP to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for children?

You get the idea. When it comes to identifying committed antivaxxers, seeing them spout some variation of the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement and being unwilling to question it are such good indicators of an antivaxxer that you need go no further.

But what if a potential antivaxxer won’t give you such a clear indicator. Fear not! There are others, such as…

“Vaccines don’t work”? “Vaccines are dangerous”? They’re both!

If you look at the types of arguments used to oppose vaccination, they will almost always boil down to two different flavors, either that vaccines don’t work or that vaccines are dangerous—often both. Like the slogan “Tastes great, less filling”, both of these claims often co-exist to differing degrees, with some anti-vaccinationists arguing that both are true: Vaccines don’t work and they are dangerous.

This being the real world, one has to remember that vaccines are not perfect. They are not 100% effective, and there can be rare serious side effects. What differentiates anti-vaccine cranks from, for example, scientists who deal with issues of efficacy versus side effects and potential complications all the time, is exaggeration far beyond what the scientific data will support. For example, if the influenza vaccine is less efficacious than perhaps we would like (which is true), then it must be useless. More recently, if COVID-19 vaccines do not halt transmission completely, then they “don’t stop transmission” at all and are therefore useless. (Never mind that, even if it were true that the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission at all—which it isn’t—there is still great value in preventing severe disease and death due to COVID-19.) This is, in essence, the Nirvana fallacy, wherein if something is not perfect it is claimed to be utterly worthless. Part and parcel of this approach involves the complement, namely vastly exaggerating the potential side effects and complications due to vaccines to paint them as being far more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. In addition, anti-vaccine activists frequently attribute harms to vaccines that the existing scientific data definitely don’t support as being reasonable or legitimate. The claim that vaccines cause autism is the most famous, but it is far from the only one of these sorts of claims. It’s not uncommon to hear fallacious claims that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases, asthma, and a general “weakening” of the immune system, among others, all of which have been resurrected and repurposed to demonize COVID-19 vaccines.

One of the most famous examples of exaggerated harm or nonexistent risks is the infamous “toxin” gambit. This fallacious argument claims that there are all sorts of scary chemicals in vaccines. Of course, there are all sorts of chemicals with scary names in vaccines, just as there are all sorts of chemicals with scary names in almost everything, from food to clothing to household cleaners, among others. The dose makes the poison, and the amounts of these chemicals, such as formaldehyde, are tiny. As we’ve pointed out time and time again, for instance, the amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is so tiny that it’s overwhelmed by the amount of formaldehyde made as a byproduct of normal metabolism. Unsurprisingly, this gambit has been resurrected for COVID-19 vaccines, in the form of demonization of the lipid nanoparticles used to carry the mRNA to cells and even to the spike protein used as an antigen. Even the old antivax claim that there are “aborted fetal parts” in vaccines has been reborn and recast for COVID-19 vaccines, and new versions have been invented, such as faux environmental “concern” that horseshoe crab blood was used to make COVID-19 vaccines and, more recently, the use of moth cells to make a conventional protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.

Overall, the “tastes great, less filling”-type anti-vaccine claims that vaccines are dangerous and don’t work, can be differentiated from scientifically valid concerns about the efficacy and safety of vaccines on the basis of how evidence is treated and the types of arguments that are used. Scientists, of course, tend to be a lot more measured and express an appropriate level of uncertainty when discussing the evidence for their concerns; anti-vaccine activists are under no such constraints. That’s why, for example, when scientists discuss declining efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines due to the rise of variants like Delta and Omicron, they bring numbers and point out that these variants can also evade “natural immunity” due to infection with prior variants, whereas antivaxxers claim that the evidence means that COVID-19 vaccines never worked and that “natural immunity” is lifelong.

Antivaccine, not pro-safe vaccine

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in nearly 18 years blogging about vaccines and the pseudoscience used to attack them, it’s that no one—well, almost no one—considers himself “anti-vaccine.” This is very easily verifiable in the outraged reaction elicited from people like J.B. Handley (who simultaneously gloats about the decline in confidence in vaccines among parents, just as antivaxxers today gloat about how distrust of COVID-19 vaccines has led to distrust of the entire vaccine schedule among many parents), Jenny McCarthy, and Dr. Jay Gordon when they are described as “anti-vaccine. Jenny McCarthy, for instance, used to reliably retort, “I’m not ‘anti-vaccine.’ I’m pro-safe vaccine.” An alternative response was, “What I really am is ‘anti-toxins’ in the vaccines.” Meanwhile, Dr. Gordon will say the same thing while simultaneously saying that he doesn’t give a lot of vaccines and foolishly admitting in the comments of a blog post that some parents have actually had to persuade him to vaccinate “reluctantly”.

These days, people like Drs. Vinay Prasad, Joseph Ladapo, and other formerly “reputable” doctors howl indignantly when it’s even hinted that they are antivaccine and, much like antivaxxers 12 years ago, conflate observations that they are repeating old antivax talking points with being called antivaccine, even when it’s pointed out that the intent is to educate them about what they are saying. “Oh, no,” they will respond in essence, “we’re not ‘antivaccine.’ We’re just trying to argue that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t safe enough for children”. Unfortunately, they do it using very similar tropes that “old school” antivaxxers used to use back in the day to argue against the whole vaccine schedule.

Approaching the evidence

If there’s one thing that distinguishes science from the way the anti-vaccine and similar movements approach evidence, it’s that the anti-vaccine movement values anecdotes over careful science. This was true in the past, where antivax websites used to serve up numerous anecdotes about vaccines causing autism using the classic post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that in essence argues because one thing happened before another, that thing must have caused it. Similarly, so did antivax movies such as The Greater Good and VAXXED. Now, antivaxxers serve up examples of people who “died suddenly” as indicating that COVID-19 vaccine kills, even when they can’t actually show that vaccines were responsible and ignore the history of conditions like sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), a condition usually due inherited genetics that predisposes young people to sudden cardiac arrest. These days, all cases of SADS that antivaxxers find out about are portrayed as evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are killing young people in huge numbers. There’s even a new movie about it, Died Suddenly, which is so full of misinformation that it portrays people caught on camera fainting before there were even COVID-19 vaccines as evidence that the vaccines are killing young healthy people.

Perhaps one of the most characteristic aspects of the anti-vaccine movement is the same one that is shared by virtually every denialist movement, be it denying the science of climate change, evolution, or scientific medicine. That is the use of logical fallacies, cherry picking of the evidence, and distortion of the science. One of the best example of cherry picking and distortion of evidence engaged in by anti-vaccine activists is still, even after 12 years, a set of graphs I discovered before my 2010 post by a man named Raymond Obomsawin, in which he tried to represent as “proof vaccines didn’t save us”. As I pointed out in my response, this was intellectual dishonesty at its most naked. Basically, Obomsawin deceptively conflated mortality and incidence. Worse, he also chose his graphs in a way that parts of the data were left out. Obomsawin’s disingenuous approach to the evidence was mirrored by naturopath David Mihalovic, who wrote the infamous “9 Questions That Stump Every Pro-Vaccine Advocate and Their Claims.” Amusingly, Dr. Mark Crislip answered each and ever one of these “nine questions” without difficulty.

Examples of antivaxxers doing exactly this sort of thing with data about COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, masks, and “lockdowns” are too numerous to discuss, although I will mention briefly a subset of this technique, the misrepresentation of VAERS data to demonize vaccines, a technique that has been, alas, also adopted by physicians whom I would not have considered antivax before the pandemic.

Reaction to criticism

Science is, if you’ll forgive the term, a highly Darwinian process. To be a scientist, you have to have a thick skin, because you’ll need it. Reviewers, mentors, other scientists, and virtually anyone to whom you present your results will be picking away at them, looking for flaws, looking for reasons to invalidate your conclusions. There’s nothing personal in it (usually); it’s how the process of science works. Similarly, those who have an appreciation for science understand that it’s a rough-and-tumble world where scientists have to be able to defend their work. Yes, it’s messy as hell, but it works. It may take a lot longer than we’d like and be a lot more confusing than the public likes, but over time hypotheses that don’t hold up are weeded out, to be replaced by those that do. Scientists understand this, and most know not to become too distressed by criticism. True, scientists are human and can’t always separate themselves from their science; sometimes they lash out at criticism. However, for the most part, they don’t react the same way as denialists do when criticized. More importantly, contrary to scientists, it’s rare for antivaxxers to change their mind due to the evidence.

The anti-vaccine movement shares another characteristic with denialists of all stripes, and that’s an intolerance to criticism. Instead of answering it with science (which they can’t do), they tend to answer criticism with vitriol and conspiracy mongering. After all, when it’s all a conspiracy between the government and big pharma to “suppress” the data that allegedly show that vaccines cause autism, then anyone who speaks out for that viewpoint must be hopelessly compromised by relationships between big pharma and his university, even if such relationships need to be made up or extrapolated beyond all relationship to reality (a.k.a. the pharma shill gambit). If the critic is a woman, then she must have been the victim of a date-rape drug.

Perhaps the best way of describing how anti-vaccine groups react to criticism is to point out that their first response tends to be to try to suppress criticism rather than to answer it. Usually, this is accomplished through ad hominem attacks and now, in the age of social media, engineering targeted harassment of their critics on social media platforms, harassment that sometimes spills over into real life, with antivaxxers personally confronting the objects of their hatred, such as when Austin Bennett physically attacked California Sen. Richard Pan in 2019, a result of the increasingly violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement.

Since the pandemic, the virulence of the reaction to criticism and against the beleaguered public health community trying to mitigate the worst harms of the pandemic has skyrocketed to even worse levels. I’ll leave you with just one term here: Nuremberg 2.0, the old antivax idea that public health officials advocating for vaccines should be subjected to trial by a Nuremberg-style tribunal for their supposed crimes, a fantasy more virulent and violent than ever but repurposed for public health officials who advocated masks, “lockdowns”, and then vaccine mandates to control COVID-19. For example:

Or Dr. Roger Hodkinson:

Dr.Hodkinson sure sounds…angry.

Let’s just say that if you see someone reacting this way to criticism of antivax misinformation, they’re almost certainly an antivaxxer, even the ones who question whether the rhetoric has gone too far.

The politics of antivax

As much as in general I hesitate to discuss partisan politics on this blog, when it comes to antivax disinformation it is now impossible to avoid discussing the sea change in the political orientation of the antivaccine movement as a whole over the last 12 years, specifically how tight the association has become between the antivaccine movement and the Republican Party and even far-right groups like the Proud Boys. This was not always the case—or even the case in 2010, when I wrote the original version of this post.

Indeed, back when I first started writing about the antivaccine movement in 2004, there existed an exaggerated if not outright false stereotype that antivaxxers tended to be hippy-dippy crunchy lefties, particularly suburban moms, in liberal enclaves like Marin County or Manhattan. To be sure, there was such a contingent of a “back to nature” crowd, but in reality that stereotype was very wrong in a number of ways. There has always been a libertarian right wing component to the antivaccine movement, for example, General Bert Stubblebine III’s Natural Solutions Foundation and others with extreme distrust of the government, including government-recommended vaccine schedules. Basically, as I’ve discussed many times, the antivaccine movement back then encompassed the right and left, and antivax views tended to be fairly evenly distributed among them.

Then came the pandemic. Before there were even any COVID-19 vaccines, antivaxxers quickly allied themselves with COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, anti-“lockdown” protesters, and QAnon, with fascists becoming an increasingly common sight now at antivaccine rallies and antivaccine rhetoric becoming increasingly violent. Even “liberal icon” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has addressed fascist groups without a hint of irony.

This association became undeniable with the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in January, after which a number of journalists noted the increasingly tight association between the antivaccine movement and the far right, with reports about how far right extremists have “jumped on the antivaccine bandwagon” are recruiting antivaxxers and how prevalent far right groups were at the rally. (I even noted the similarities and differences between “Defeat the Mandates” in 2022 and Jenny McCarthy’s “Green Our Vaccines” rally 14 years earlier.) I’ve long said that, if you scratch an “anti-mandate” activist, nine times out of ten (at least!) you’ll find an antivaxxer. As I also like to say, “Come for the freedom, stay for the antivax conspiracy theories”, which sums up how antivax messages of “freedom” and “parental rights” used to attack vaccine mandates resonated with conservatives in much the same way that they had begun to do when antivaxxers opposed SB 277, the California law that banned nonmedical exemptions, in 2015.

I won’t belabor the point, other than to emphasize that, as much as the antivaccine movement encompassed a wider range of politics 12 years ago (and arguably might have leaned left a bit), right now, in 2022, it is impossible to deny that it has morphed into primarily a right wing movement. That means that my updated definition of what constitutes “antivaccine” has to account for that, particularly given how, for example, that former hotbed of antivax activism, Marin County, now has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 vaccination. Basically, vaccines, particularly COVID-19 vaccines, have, like it or not, become a political issue, a political signifier, even.

So what does “antivaccine” really mean in 2022 and beyond?

As I noted in 2010, distinguishing true antivaccine rhetoric from hesitancy or just general ignorance is not always easy. In this post, I’ve attempted to update my take on what “antivaccine” really means for our current time. To help, I’ll recap a bullet-pointed summary of the characteristics I’ve just discussed, which are mostly the same as in 2010 but rearranged somewhat”

  • Conspiracy mongering about vaccines
  • The “vaccines don’t work” gambit
  • The “vaccines are dangerous” gambit
  • Claiming to be “pro-safe vaccine” while being unrelentingly critical about vaccines
  • Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology
  • Cherry picking and misrepresenting the evidence, often using logical fallacies
  • Trying to silence criticism rather than responding to it
  • Tendency to be politically right wing

Someone who is antivaccine will almost certainly use at least three or four of these techniques. Indeed, when these eight techniques fail to suffice, they make up more.

In updating my post, I again feel obligated to caution my readers. We have to be careful about leaping to the conclusion that someone is antivaccine. That’s where the “I know it when I see it” test can backfire. Fortunately, over the last two decades I can count on the fingers of one hand (with one or two fingers left over) the times when I might have prematurely called someone “antivax” who turned out not to be. It happens, and when it does I just apologize, correct myself, and move on. So should you.

It was also with some trepidation that I added the bullet point about being right wing. Even though right now the antivaccine movement has, thanks to its alliance with “anti-lockdown” and “antimask” movements, been nearly completely subsumed as particularly fanatical foot soldiers in a more general far right wing political movement, that’s not to say that there aren’t still a lot of left-wing antivaxxers around. That’s why I say, even as I added that last bullet point, apply it carefully, and remember that, by itself, it can’t be decisive. You need at least three or four more bullet points to go along with it. Similarly, if someone is clearly progressive or left wing, that does not mean they aren’t antivax. After all, 10-20 years ago it tended to be liberal coastal enclaves where vaccine hesitancy and resistance were the highest and measles outbreaks as a result more common. Politics can shift, sometimes dramatically and rapidly. The last 10-15 years have shown us that with respect to the antivaccine movement. There’s no reason the same thing couldn’t at some future happen in the opposite direction. However, right now, a lot of antivaccine conspiracy theories go along with pro-“freedom” and anti-“mandate” rhetoric.

Finally remember that, now as then, the anti-vaccine movement is a denialist movement, very similar to deniers of anthropogenic climate change, science-based medicine, and evolution. As such, it uses the same fallacious strategies and distortions of science to promote its agenda and reacts the same way to criticism. Similarly, the antivaccine movement is also far more about ideology than it is about science, which is why it remains so stubbornly resistant to reason and science. Finding an effective means to counter its message will likely require developing effective general strategies to counter science denialist movements of all types, including and emphasis, in particular on medical conspiracy theories, which the antivaccine movement is but one that is a subset of all the sort of conspiracy theories that undergird all science denial.

Sadly, as much as certain aspects of what “antivaccine” means have changed, such as the politics and the global infrastructure that promotes distrust of vaccines, the central core has remained largely the same, and that core was a variant of a conspiracy theory in 2010 and remains so in 2022.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

229 replies on “What does antivax really mean since COVID-19?”

Great article Orac!

You are mostly right and we mainly agree: Covid antivaxxers ARE antivaxxers.

I have also written on the topic of “who is an antivaxxer”. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an antivaxxer is a person who opposes SOME vaccines or SOME mandates or even one who is merely SKEPTICAL about some vaccines. (M-W changes its definitions often but it seems to still remain the case)

As a Covid-skeptic and Covid-antivaxxer, I fit that definition. I often encountered readers who would say something like “I am opposed to Covid vaccines, but I am NOT an antivaxxer”. I wrote a post saying that yes, you ARE an antivaxxer, here’s the definition, here’s the Michel Gunner video, there is nothing to be ashamed of, and you do not have to be opposed to ALL vaccines to be an antivaxxer. Accept this designation and be happy and proud, I suggested.

A huge debate followed, but most people generally concurred.

Until 2020, regrettably I had zero interest in vaccines with ONE exception: I knew that flu vaccine was a scam. I was a busy person and vaccines were at the bottom of my interest pile. This all changed with Covid, the Pradhan paper and zerohedge article, and the coordinated corporate media hysterics that could not be explained by any benign motives. How could they be sure that “it is safe and effective” based on a trial that lasted 67 days on average? Of course they could not and “safe and effective” was a lie regardless of how may bespectacled “health experts” and crazed newspapers would repeat it.

Why would they be hell bent on forcing young people to take “Covid vax” when it did not stop transmission and young people did not need it?

Why are my certain close associates having immune problems after the HIV-gene-carrying vaccine, I asked myself?

All of this woke me up and I became a staunch Covid antivaxxer. Your articles, as well as others, convinced me that I fit the definition of “antivaxxer” due to the inclusivity of the definition, so I decided to accept this label and not fight it.

The “Covid vaccine” is at best a mistake and, going further, it is actually a crime against young people worldwide. It made the pandemic worse, facilitated reinfections, and I am sorry for anyone who took it. If you, my dear reader, have not yet regretted it, you will. There are things more important than “it prevented severe illness in some people in 2021” – it made the pandemic a raging dumpster fire. Many indications are that Covid in the USA, right now, is as bad as last winter or the previous winter.

Because people were FORCED to take Covid vaccine due to mandates, we have millions with a keen interest in questions like “why am I having my third Covid despite the safe and effective vaccine”, “is my new physical ailment due to the Covid vaccine I was required to take”, “are they lying about other vaccines too”, and so on.

The Covid vaccine fiasco totally blew up the previously obscure world of vaccines. It woke up tens of millions of people. Antivaxxers did not bring on this situation. It was brought on by Covid (a lab made plague), the Covid vaccine (at best a grab for money), the crazy corporate media, the web of corrupt “foundations”, greedy pharma companies, and so on.

The fallout is not the fault of antivaxxers — it is the fault of Covid, its lab origin, and the “Covid vaccine”.

The consequences to “all vaccines” will be monumental. So will be the effect of “Covid” and “Covid vaccine” on population, the political balance, and so on. Covid is only in its beginning!

I would like to preempt one question: am I against childhood vaccines? My answer is: I do not care about them for now, just as I did not before. I no longer trust the people who approve them, however. I want those people fired, investigated, sanctioned appropriately, and their secrets published.

The fallout is not the fault of antivaxxers

Well yes, it is primarily the fault of people like you igor, people who are willing to tell lies like “the flu vaccine is a scam” and repeat bullshit stories about scores of people being harmed by vaccines.

Spreading the crap you do is bad enough: trying to dodge responsibility about your attempts to put people at risk for their health [by listening to you] is terrible.

Strange then that my Medical Insurer rewards me for getting vaccinated against flu.
This is the fundamental problem with most conspiracy theories. Eventually, in order for them to work, people and organisations that would be working against their own interests would have to be involved.

It’s not a conspiracy theory. More likely than not you’ll still get the current strain of the flu even though you’re ‘vaccinated’.

@john labarge Conspiracy theory is that insurance companies conspire with big pharma to lose money. Any takers ?

“I don’t care about childhood vaccines for now, I just spread conspiratorial nonsense designed to make people distrust and avoid them.”

This is a more extreme version of the tactic used by some antivax pediatricians. They profess support for a few vaccines, especially if delayed, while haranguing about “toxins”, corporate greed and supposedly corrupt research, in a manner designed to get parents to fear and avoid all childhood vaccines.

A few things..,
— re “Covid ( a lab made plague)”
— “flu vax is a scam”
— ” Covid vax.. did not stop transmission”
— young people don’t need it; hiv genes – but I have no time now

Search RI for “origins of Covid”- you’ll find 55 hits! Orac’s article of 8/8/22 explains how it is highly unlikely that the virus originated in a lab as studies illustrate genetics traced to the wet markets very clearly.

No vaccine is EVER 100% effective or 100% safe. Nothing in the world is.
Flu vaccines reduce case numbers and Covid vaccines reduce transmission. Other commenters have shown with graphs how much Covid vaccines reduce serious illness and death.

Often anti-vaxxers use deaths from a VPD as their only metric – e.g. deaths rates were already getting lower prior to the vaccine – as if that is the only thing that mattered. People can be very sick, need ICU care without dying. They can lose time at work and not be able to care for children, elders or their home. It might cost them money in lost wages or paying people to assist them. Vaccines also reduce suffering. Respiratory infections can have long term consequences.

Anti-vaxxers minimise the benefits of vaccines, exaggerate vaccine risks whilst they negate how serious these illnesses can be and then present unrealistic prevention or treatment strategies for them. People who die of Covid were already dying.

@Igor:

After perusing your detailed argument, I’m suggesting that calling you an antivaxxer is perhaps inappropriate

How about bullshit artist? Does bullshit artist work for you?

Why are my certain close associates having immune problems after the HIV-gene-carrying vaccine, I asked myself?

If you had the slightest clue about genetics you would never ask yourself such a question because you would understand that there is nothing in common between HIV and SARS-CoV-2 that is anywhere near long enough to constitute a gene. But then, if you actually had the slightest clue you would be someone else.

You have still failed to try to explain why anyone would attempt to insert a 19 nucleotide sequence and why you would expect such an insertion into a coding region to be “lethal” to the virus.

“Many indications are that Covid in the USA, right now, is as bad as last winter or the previous winter.”

WRONG
WRONG
DEAD WRONG

We see about 1 positive covid every other week or so in clinic. Across all providers. It’s mild. I get maybe 1 positive in an ER shift. I have sent exactly ZERO patients to the floor or ICU with covid in the last six months.

This time last year I couldn’t find beds for all of them. I was getting 10 positives on a shift with 5-6 being really sick. I’d get 2-3 in clinic daily and have to admit one with frequency. That went for everyone practicing.

Everyone else in this region is seeing the same thing. What we have is a burgeoning flu epidemic.

All the same rampant moral hazard exists re childhood vaccines.

Now I’m not anti vaccine, from a science perspective; natural immunity and the premise of (normal , inactivate virus vaccines) are logically tied.

I’m anti vaccine tho, because the science has been corrupted by psychopathic entities with unlimited resources to tilt reality especially those whose funding depends on them.

To an ex-practicing attorney the reliance on experts always depends on who’s paying them.

“Now I’m not anti vaccine”

You lie about vaccines. You are absolutely just an anti-vaxxer. Your lack of an education is why you lie about vaccines. Pathetic attempt at trolling.

I’m anti vaccine tho

Full stop: yes, yes you are.

To an ex-practicing attorney

Your litany of posts in which you dismiss evidence because you don’t like it rather on its validity completely explains the reason for the “ex” in front of the word attorney.

Don’t trust it. Like is not involved.

Semantics. You don’t trust it because it disagrees with your predetermined view of “reality” — your distrust isn’t based on science, or data, it’s based on the fact you disagree with the results. How’s that different from not liking it?

I don’t trust it because of conflicts of interest

Conflict you imagine to be there, based on the fact that the studies never support what you imagine to be true.

You’ve never supplied any data that backs your comments, nor have you explained who/what would generate the huge amount o funds needed to corrupt every person that would need to be paid in the huge corruption conspiracies you spew..

What are you talking about? Pharma a is the biggest campaign contributor; biggest media purchaser and the one who funds all the studies. It’s all in the open.

If you think doctors and scientists aren’t afraid to piss off Pharma with negative information and/or studies you’re in the bubble fella.

What are you talking about? Pharma a is the biggest campaign contributor; biggest media purchaser and the one who funds all the studies. It’s all in the open.

Even if we believe your assertion that doesn’t support your implication that scientists and doctors bend to the will of “big pharma”. You’re essentially implying everyone is as low on the integrity scale as you are.

@john labarge Pharma does no fund all studies, NIH funds many of them, as private charities do.

Work on getting his/her license revoked, stop him/her from publishing, put out bad press.

Yes as Igor said I’m ok with being antivax. The health system is so unbalanced that it’s become untrustworthy.

Work on getting his/her license revoked, stop him/her from publishing, put out bad press

So once again — do you have evidence for this assertion or is this another case of you dropping a piece of bullshit and not returning to it?

@john labarge But they have Senator Jonson behindnthem. Poor underdogs,
ABIM is not a licensing body. Your source is seriously confused,

@johhn labarge Tell us one example when big pharma has caused revocation of somebodys medical licence.

@Aarno: don’t hold your breath for any evidence to support his quackery: he’s never given any before. He just sprays his shit the way a hippo does when it spins its tail.

“(normal , inactivate virus vaccines)”
So you’re against all vaccines directed against bacteria, like pertussis?
You’re not OK with a tetanus shot?
What about live virus vaccines, like polio or measles or yellow fever?
Or, I don’t know, smallpox, the classic vaccine?

Gosh you’re coddled.

Psychopathic entities ? Unlimited resources ? There indeed is a conspiracy theory as usual.
Vaccination erased smallpox. Is smallpox virus a part of conspiracy ?

However,as I said, smallpox was eradicited by vaccines. Is smallpox virus par of the plot ?

Of coursse COVI do not have of HIV gene, there are a short sequence similarity. This is actually magical thinking, called pars pro toto. Smallest similarity with HIV will cause same than the full virus.There is no immune suppression either,reaction is more robust than after infctipn..

The right can’t cope with a pandemic, you’d prefer a decline of democracy?
Fair play be damned eh John, political opportunism 101

And mr. Trump wants the constitution to be skipped, because he can’t accept he lost the elections.
Talking about authoriratian

He will run for president, against Republoican party, if he is not candidate of the party.

Twitter on the other hand was just perfect when leftists were running it. So open and tolerant…

In the Respectful-Insolence Disclaimer it states, “Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.” Orac has made a herculean effort to teach that medical advice (i.e., vaccinations) must be based on risk/benefit analysis. Currently, this system works extremely well to support state-of-the-art and experimental vaccines. Thanks, Orac!

Off topic but on target:

MJD has learned much about “respectful insolence” and cancer at this blog. Does the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) inhibit cancer research? The review article below respectfully, in the absence of insolence, answers this question.

Cancer-related innovation and U.S. patent applications – https://orionjournals.com/ijsru/sites/default/files/IJSRU-2022-0182.pdf

A while back I had someone I couldn’t say no to ask me to look through a whole bunch of patents related to a process we were working on.

It was an eyeball drying, mind-melting waste of time like I’ve never seen. I’ve seen VCR instructions that used clearer English, and freshman papers written in 15 minutes that had more and better citations.

Patents would be basically my next-to-last place to look for scientific innovation (just before the total quackery parts of the internet).

(And the thing I was supposed to be looking for? 60% of the patents I was sent were completely off topic, and the other 40% were years out of date compared to the literature.)

Yeah, if mjd is whining because the low bar set by the patent office is blocking ideas those ideas must be “free energy from a grapefruit and paper clip” stupid.

Nope, it’s up, there are just often a lot of issues with comments not showing up as promptly as we’d like, especially if you’re new.

Sometimes I like to think of the slightly buggy comment section as my computer’s way of reminding me to do other things.
(Another thread ate 3 of my comments, and I’ve been commenting here for more than a decade, across assorted platforms.)

I told you covid would tip the scales towards us antivaxxers.

I knew people would be blindsided by their own injuries & having to bury their loved ones from vaccine deaths. I knew they would suffer cognitive dissonance from you provaxers gaslighting them & that would push them all the way from “on the fence” or “pro” … To Anti.

They didn’t deserve this. This is the one lesson that truly sucks to learn the hard way & I know this from personal experience. You’re going down on the wrong side of history for this but you deserve it, because they would have listened to us old-school antivaxxers; if it hadn’t been for the likes of you.

Us old school antivaxer autism & SIDS moms have been getting a lot of apologies recently from these new antivaxxers. Many of them have stopped all vaccines for their children, it’s not just about the covid vaccines anymore.

Hate that it had to happen THIS way though. The hospitals & morgues are full. So many people have lost so much. Business is booming for funeral homes & florists. And probably Oncologists too.

Like, a preterm dies 24 hours after external oxygen supply was cut. Vaccines are obviously the culprit, or perhaps not.
(This is from your own posts.)

But, My God, you really rocked that moose in those spandex. Respect.
“I knew people would be blindsided by their own injuries “

And yet vaccine rates are well in excess of 90% in most places, so this wet dream of yours looks more wishful thinking than reality.

But at least Americans aren’t falling for it again. Look at booster uptake.

@ Igor Chudov

In a previous exchange you wrote: “I believe that the story of major vaccines like measles and polio is as complicated as the Covid vaccine, and I do not want to get into those too deeply for now. I do not want to have half-assed opinions and do not have time to research those in-depth.”

I guess you lied because your posted comment above is pure Bull Shit, not based on any in-depth study or understanding.

His comment is on the money.

Yes, Joel’s is spot on.

Oh, you meant serial liar igor? If by “on the money” you mean “steady as crypto-currency” you’d be right — his bullshit and that scam are on equally shady footing.

@Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH

I guess you lied because your posted comment above is pure Bull Shit, not based on any in-depth study or understanding.

But I did not opine on “other vaccines”, other than the scam flu vax!

I just expressed my agreement with orac on calling Covid-antivaxxers “antivaxxers”.

@ coschristi

As usual, you are NUTS! And it would be a waste of effort to repeat ALL the research and international data on covid and covid vaccines and even more wasted effort to once more explain the history of vaccine-preventable deaths. The fact that there are a number of people who agree with you means no more than there are people who believe in QAnon, etc.

One thing I’d like to understand is is there anything that could be called a vaccine that could legitimately questioned in the opinion of Orac and his band of Pharma defenders? (He’ll the CDC even changed the definition for these.) If the answer is no then it’s not about evidence or science but pure doctrine.

The VAERs reports the DoD database tampering, the rapid efficacy decline that was easily foreseeable, the claiming transmission stops then slows then slows a little- none of this has been explained in more than a priesthood manner.

So much wrong in your above comment. But I’ll bite.

[I]s there anything that could be called a vaccine that could legitimately questioned in the opinion of Orac and his band of Pharma defenders?

Given that smallpox vaccine is no longer used, that the attenuated Oral Polio Vaccine has been replaced with the killed Injected Polio Vaccine, that wholecell Pertussis vaccine was replaced with acellular Pertussis vaccine, and that a Rotavirus vaccine was taken off the schedule after post-marketing surveillance revealed an increased (but still minuscule) risk of a side-effect, the answer to your rhetorical question is “yes”.
Not the gotcha you thought.

@ johnlabarge

Return of the MORON. You have continuously ignored or too stupid to understand what Orac writes and various commenters, including myself. You have indicated NO understanding of immunology, nor the in-depth requirements for approval of vaccines, including long-term follow-ups. So, in essence, you are just one more MORON posting based on rigid bias and IGNORANCE.

KEEP MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF

Scientists can legitimately question vaccines. Scientists with the appropriate knowledge that is. In fact anyone can question vaccines. What you really mean is ‘why isn’t my opinion given the same weight as legitimate experts?’.

Obviously because your opinion isn’t worth as much. That’s just a fact. How good a cook are you? Do you think that knowing how to operate the hob and read a recipe book puts you on the same level as some guy with a Michelin star?

I doubt any of the medical people on this blog trust governments to get it right all, or even some, of the time. Or Big Pharma to put out the unvarnished truth. I certainly dont. Arguing with you doesn’t make them slaves to big pharma, it means your argument, or your framing of the argument is bad.

The “definitions” argument has to be one of the lamest around.
No, the CDC did not change the definition of vaccines to accommodate the mRNA vaccines. It did improve the language used, and spelled out exactly why, that is, to try to get through to the labarges and chudovs of the world who know zero immunology and harbor false notions.
Some general purpose dictionaries changed their entries. Every instance of that which I have seen went from being primarily a description of how vaccines have been made in the past (often already outdated by decades) to something more legitimately called a definition. Not a single one had anything to do with accommodating the mRNA vaccines unless they happened to be added to the how-it’s-made list.

I think you’ll find that confirmation bias is the leading cause of coincidence.

Also looking for problems now, that you didn’t look for before.

So John, who the hell do you want to make the vaccines if not the pharmaceutical companies? Maybe pet food companies should have a go, or cosmetic companies? Please, let me know who you think should make them?

You mean besides all the vaccines that don’t work and haven’t been approved? You mean besides all the questions that this here group had about the Sputnik vaccine?
Like all of those?

HIV vaccine did not work, and trials showed that. How this could happen, if ni pharma controls everything ?
You mean ha VAERS reports are not explained way you like ? They sill do not show causality.

Yo did not answer the question. If pharma controls everything, wh some vaccines are rejected.
As for bivalent boosters, read this:
Chalkias S, Eder F, Essink B, Khetan S, Nestorova B, Feng J, Chen X, Chang Y, Zhou H, Montefiori D, Edwards DK, Girard B, Pajon R, Dutko FJ, Leav B, Walsh SR, Baden LR, Miller JM, Das R. Safety, immunogenicity and antibody persistence of a bivalent Beta-containing booster vaccine against COVID-19: a phase 2/3 trial. Nat Med. 2022 Nov;28(11):2388-2397. doi: 10.1038/s41591-022-02031-7. Epub 2022 Oct 6. PMID: 36202997; PMCID: PMC9671805.
No mouses involved.

Aarno, remember that labarge views controlled studies as “opinion” and “knows” all the data generated is bad.

He never gives support for those things, he just “knows” them.

@ Everyone ABOUT COCHRISTI

Cochristi had twins born extremely low birthweight and extremely premature, basically borderline if they even would survive and with extremely high probability if they survived that they would have lifetime disabilities. They were in a neonatal intensive care unit at 6 months of age when given the MMR vaccine. One died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Cochristi blames the death on the MMR vaccine. However, numerous studies have shown that risk of SIDS is extremely high for very low birthweight and/or very premature infants. So, yep, anything is possible; but numerous studies have NOT found MMR vaccine to cause SIDS. Cochristi is absolutely certain, despite high risk of SIDS for extremely low birth weight and extreme prematurity.

There is more. Cochristi admitted she had a genetic disorder and that she had altogether 10 or 11 children, several with genetic disorders, so, in addition to extremely low birthweight and extremely prematurity, good chance the twins also had a genetic disorder. One could also wonder why they were born so premature? I won’t get into this; but the point is that Cochristi believes with absolute certainty SIDS was caused by the MMR vaccine. Perhaps, this is her defense mechanism against accepting her genetic disorder, her having so many children, and, perhaps, her lifestyle played a roll.

In any case, overwhelming evidence has found the MMR vaccine to be extremely safe. Yep, nothing is perfectly safe and rare severe adverse events can occur; but anyone who know the history of measles would understand that the risk from the vaccines is infinitesimal compared to from measles. I would suggest you read the Wikipedia article on measles. High deaths before advent of antibiotics and with the exponential growth of antibiotic resistance, good chance that if we abandoned the vaccines that the death rate would skyrocket. Measles is a highly contagious disease.

@ Joel,

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?? You barely got anything right about me at all!

Firstly, I do not have a “genetic disorder”. I carry variants on certain genes that imply susceptibility to adverse events from vaccines, such as in the HLA-complex, MTHFR, MECP2 & various genes involved in cytokine regulation, that are ASSOCIATED with Autism. They do not “cause” autism; none of the 300+ SNP’s identified as being “associated” with autism do. You could have all 300+ & if unvaccinated; never regress into autism, because autism is a Multifactorial genetic Immune Mediated disorder: The genes loaded the gun; the vaccines pulled the trigger. The Broad Autistic Phenotype is actually quite superior but the CDC is picking us off one by one with their recommended schedule. TRAGIC.

Secondly; yes my twins were born at low birthweight & at 29 weeks but they were discharged from the NICU at TWO months old, after doubling their birthweight & after being home with me for another two months; they had quadrupled their birthweight & passed their O2 titration test that was ordered by their Pedi the same day their first vaccines were given.

It was NOT an MMR; who TF gives an MMR to a 4 month old baby anyway!? My twins were given the DTP +HepB,

Yes, less than 24 hrs after her first vaccines; my little girl went to sleep & never woke up. Her twin brother also experienced several episodes of brady & apnea for the next 4 nights but he is a healthy full grown father of two now not “barely surviving with lifelong disability”. Jesus Christ.

Funny how many of those genetic variants associated with autism are also found in higher prevalence in SIDS babies. Funny how they are all on genes controlling immune mediation. Funny how cytokine profiles in severely autistic children show evidence of atypical immune provocation, which is identical to the abnormal cytokine profiles found in SIDS babies upon autopsy. I could go on & on …

What’s NOT funny is that I’ve been posting here on RI for YEARS & you take it upon yourself to write a bio on me containing so many errors that I barely even recognized myself.

Back on topic: Antivaxers don’t cause more antivaxers; adverse events from vaccines do. Have a great day.

Back on topic: Antivaxers don’t cause more antivaxers;

Balderdash! It has been abundantly obvious over the past couple of years that people who were large indifferent to vaccines have become foaming at the mouth antivaxxers because they believe what other antivaxxers spew. That spew is falsehoods and FUD about vaccines, with claims of harms that are not supported by evidence. You constantly try to spread falsehoods and FUD about vaccines.

To expand what you say…
surveying these people for well over 10 years, I’ve found that anti-vax mothers who attribute their children’s ASD ( and other serious conditions) to vaccines frequently proselytise to naive young mothers/ the public in a variety of ways as they report themselves
— in person, speaking to young mothers/ pregnant women in stores
— leaving anti-vax brochures in doctors’ offices
— writing on websites like AoA, the now largely defunct TMR, CHD
— using social media to spread the world
— speaking at anti-vax/ autism conferences
— trying to be interviewed in legit media
— appearing in altie films, writing books, appearing on altie radio

They comment on sites like Vaccine Injury Stories FB ( now down), Vaccine Injury Victims ( run by a lawyer), CHD, Del’s place and even RI, telling tales of woe that are unsupported by facts.
They construct theories of autism after vaccines concocting unrealistic mechanisms of action.

Actually, causation of autism has been investigated for decades through a confluence of studies** and vaccines are not one of them. I’ve repeated the evidence/ investigators’ names so many times I won’t repeat but basically the brain differences that result in a dx of ASD are set up prenatally although some might happen during the birth itself. Not months or years later.

Stories about autism and vaccines are the mothers’ condition.

** including animal research, post mortem, abortion, twin studies, imaging studies, genetic studies, prenatal exposure to meds/ chemicals,
other maternal illness/ conditions, facial physiognomy, observation of infants before vaccines/ video studies by trained observers.

mRNA vax causing myocarditis is widely supported by the evidence. Some countries don’t recommend the vax for young men for that reason.

mRNA vax causing myocarditis is widely supported by the evidence.

Post said evidence.
Do you know what has a stronger correlation to myocarditis, according to GOOD evidence?
COVID-19.
From a risk perspective, the vaccine is the better option.

It’s not funny how you can’t support your anti-scientific nonsense. You are just someone with an opinion, you’re not a scientist. You more look like an anti-vax clown.

MTHFR

Wow, that’s passé.

autism is a Multifactorial genetic Immune Mediated disorder

In related news, that phrase appears nowhere but here.

Orac’s reasoning here is defective. The covid mRNA vaccines are different. They are not what they were advertised to be. They were not proven relatively safe before they were offered to the world. They still have not been proven safe.

A person can certainly be skeptical of the covid mRNA vaccines without being skeptical of all previous vaccines. And one can certainly be skeptical of the drug industry, which is known to be very powerful and corrupt, without being against all vaccines.

All that has nothing whatsoever to do with being an antivaxxer. I am sure that some vaccines are effective and relatively safe. I won’t say exactly which ones, since I don’t have children and never had to research specific vaccines. I trust that, with their long history, some of them are just fine. When Orac demands people tell him exactly which vaccines they approve of, they might hesitate for the same reason I would. That is no way proves they are an antivaxxer.

I am not and never was an antivaxxer, by Orac’s definitions. I have always been skeptical of the drug industry and I do think some drugs are over-used and toxic. I think, as do many others, that terrible corruption is now evident between the drug industry and our medical agencies, and the government. Also the news media, since drug makers are the biggest advertisers, and therefore most journalists would be afraid to criticize them.

Since the pandemic, there has been an all out messaging campaign to promote the mRNA vaccines. They are seen as the medicine of the future, and tremendous amounts of money have been and will be made. And aside from the money, many scientists genuinely believe they are an efficient way to promote health.

I am not a professional biologist, but I am someone who reads and educates myself, and I always have been. I have paid attention to and read about health all my life. I believe in a natural approach to health, whenever possible. Of course it is not always possible and drugs and surgery are sometimes needed. But, in general, I think that the more we mess with the intricate life processes, the more likely damage will occur.

I ignore conspiracy theorists, and all hysterical irrational sources of information. I listen to sane scientists who dare to question the medical authorities and the drug industry. There is plenty of evidence that the covid mRNA vaccines are not safe. They also happen to be much less effective than advertised.

And there is no reason to give these vaccines to healthy children and young people. Their risk of serious covid is zero, so they will not benefit at all. And their risk of damage from the vaccines is still unknown. Just the fact that it can cause heart damage should make you wonder what else it can cause.

I ignore conspiracy theorists, and all hysterical irrational sources of information.

Except that you push conspiracies about the covid vaccine and you are a source if irrational information. You can’t even separate your lies from your actions.

I ignore conspiracy theorists

Aren’t you the one who asserted that the multitude of virologists who reject the tales of human intervention in the genome of SARS-CoV-2 are all in it together to cover it up so they can go on with their research? I could be wrong, since your sort are entirely fungible.

I ignore … and all hysterical irrational sources of information.

That must post quite a challenge when you encounter a mirror.

and all hysterical irrational sources of information.

Oh, phegm! That should be “That must pose quite a challenge …”
and the “and all hysterical irrational sources of information.” doesn’t belong there. Actually, all hysterical, irrational sources of information [sic] don’t belong anywhere.

There is evidence that Fauci who funded the research tried to cover it up. Of course he probably ‘doesn’t recall’.

The point is that many virologists who actually understand the relevant matters have looked at the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and find nothing suggestive of human intervention therein. But that doesn’t stop the likes of you who think that “codon” is just the way the English pronounce “cordon” and cling to the unsupported and unsupportable claims that the SARS-CoV-2 genome has been manipulated.

Untrained observers peer through small telescopes or stare at fuzzy photographs of Mars and see canals, cities, faces, fossils and much more. They project their desires to find signs of life and they inevitably see that.

The same is true of codon sequences. They want to see genetic engineering or design and they inevitably see that.

The fuzzier or less understood the data the better to project their beliefs. It’s pareidolia.

Lol so officials wanting to continue funding gain of function (that of course is anything but gain of function) hired experts to claim that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t come from a lab leak?

Well isn’t that special?

@john labarge You could actually go to the facts. Failing that, show thatt experts evaluating evidence were involved in gain of function research

There is evidence that Fauci who funded the research tried to cover it up.

You have links to the evidence, right? Reputable sources? Or is this another of your blanket assertion instances where you make an outrageous statement, get called on it, and never address it again?

Labarge and Chudov are much of a muchness. It is easy to tell from the words they use and way they use those words that they are both profoundly ignorant of pretty much everything necessary to evaluate the nonsense they buy into. Neither can make any semblance of an answer when challenged on something actually requiring some knowledge and understanding.

Neither can make any semblance of an answer when challenged on something actually requiring some knowledge and understanding.

It’s pretty clear that the best way to get labarge to drop one of his conspiracy/blanket assertion string of comments is to ask him for the data and/or evidence that supports it. Those things never exist, so he moves on to some other line of BS

Well, I was all excited to read John’s link. It seems Fauci was involved with people who we doing their jobs, investigating the possibility of SC2 being created in a lab (no actual evidence). He got thanked for saying that there was no evidence (that was nice).

John, there’s a documentary series you should watch. On Netflix right now. It’s called Inside Job.

Yes john, it’s a safe bet there were discussions about whether covid escaped from a lab or not. The best evidence to date is against the lab origin theory, despite your repeated lies about “Fauci funded gain of function research” and trying to extend that to imply he’s responsible for it.

Once again: we have strong evidence for why “ex-lawyer” is part of your self-description: you suck at identifying evidence.

Of course, Fauci does not fund anybody.NIH grants go through a peer review.

@john labarge It is not committee either, it is peer review.
Have you considered that is physically impossinle for a single man to read and decide all NIH grant proposals ?

Everything you just said was a lie. Good job. Why do you do that?

“I am not and never was an antivaxxer”

Sorry, but you are. You lie about the COVID vaccines, constantly. You are an anti-vaxxer.

Orac pointed out that a defining characteristic of antivaxers is their unwillingness to name any vaccine children should receive, barring medical contraindications.

IR confirms this.

“I am sure that some vaccines are effective and relatively safe. I won’t say exactly which ones”

No, Orac’s reasoning is not defective.

We can’t say the same for you.

Nobody has zero risk of COVID, and no vaccine is 100% effective.I suggest you add math to topics you study.

So you have had two doses of Johnson & Johnson? I have no problem with that. My first shot was an end of day J&J leftover and I was thrilled to have it.

Turns out the first action for the new GOP majority in the House won’t be investigating Hunter Biden after all. Per Fox News: “McCarthy vows military vaccine mandate will end or national defense bill won’t move forward.” That’s current GOP Minority Leader and maybe next Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for those who don’t follow politics. He’s calling this “the first victory of having a Republican majority”.

I don’t for a instant imagine McCarthy or the vast majority of the GOP Reps who will back him on this (pretty much all of them, I suspect) are antivax true believers. Rather, I suspect this agenda item was passed forward by Koch-network aligned funders – the same oligarchs behind such “think tanks” as Orac’s beloved AIER/Brownstone – who still, at this late date, see COVID denialism as a potent culture war grievance to organize and rile up the Fox-News/Truth-Social base.

The content of antivax messages may be recycled, but the current context – where they come from. where they land, and to what end – has changed dramatically, and in ways much darker than I ever imagined… And I’m a pessimist…

…won’t be investigating Hunter Biden

I’m guessing that they and their advisors are starting to realize there’s even more “nothing” in that than there was in HRC and the Benghazi fiasco. And, even though there is no more reason to “investigate” the anti-covid actions than there is to go after Hunter Biden, the covid business is fresher in the minds of their supporters, and it’s easier to spread bullshit about than the laptop would be.

Its a confluence of idiotic libertarianism around ‘muh freedumbs’ and the coopting of all the rights buzz wording of issues by the AV cult over the last decade or so, giving rise to the phenomena that while not all AVers are on the right, more and more the GOP in your country is the political wing of the AV cult. We are seeing this up here with Pierre Poilievre courting the same types of people.

@ Indie Rebel

Return of another moron. You write: “And there is no reason to give these vaccines to healthy children and young people. Their risk of serious covid is zero, so they will not benefit at all. And their risk of damage from the vaccines is still unknown. Just the fact that it can cause heart damage should make you wonder what else it can cause.”

First, the risk of heart damage has been found to be much higher from the actual virus than the vaccine among young people. Second, even if risk of serious covid low, they can transmit to others, people who could not be vaccinated, vaccine didn’t supply high enough protection, etc. And the risk to them from the vaccine is far less than from the actual virus, even if fewer kids develop serious covid; but it isn’t zero. Lying moron. And after two years with massive studies, numerous different adverse event follow-up programs in US and abroad, I think we know a tremendous amount about the mRNA vaccine.

And despite your continuous stupid dishonest biased comments, we have studied mRNA for almost 60 years and the world-wide data shows it has saved an enormous number of hospitalizations and deaths.

YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT

Oh my goodness gracious garsh.
Here I am monitoring the measles outbreak in my home town.
58 cases
22 hospitalized
3 partially vaccinated, 55 completely unvaccinated.
Most of them are babies and preschoolers.
https://www.columbus.gov/publichealth/programs/Infectious-Disease-Investigation/Measles-Information/

My fingers are crossed, I’ve said my tots and pears that no babies die.

Then I read this lot railing against the government and whoever else they don’t like.
Do they care about babies? Doubt it.
Do they know that measles is a baby killing virus? Maybe. Do they care? I don’t know. They are too busy shaking their fists.
Do they care about public health? Couldn’t prove it by their comments.

Is there anything I could say to get their attention?
“Look! Over there! Is that Fauci?”

Yeah, that might do it.

Cheers all. If you have any tots and pears to spare, send them our way. We could use them.

@ Cochristi

Yep, I might have got the months discharged wrong and the vaccine. I don’t have the time to go back through all our exchanges to find exactly what you wrote; but I did a brief search and found several of my comments that included references that vaccine are NOT causes of autism. And despite what you choose to believe there are numerous studies of tragically dead kids diagnosed with autism that show changes in brain that had to occur during pregnancy and there are numerous videos of kids showing autistic like behaviors prior to being vaccinated. So, if you want to prove discharge month and vaccine, then find which of Orac’s articles your comments with this info were on.

And you write you don’t have a genetic disorder; but multiple variant genes. And I guess you never mentioned that some of your other kids also have.

The bottom line is that you are a rabid antivaxxer who blames her infants SIDS on a vaccine, despite overall evidence that very low birthweight and prematurity have high risk of SIDS; but it had to be the vaccine.

And I did get it right that you blame a vaccine for your infants SIDS and overwhelming sciences says you are wrong.

Maybe if I feel up to it I’ll try to find your comments; but don’t hold your breath.

You are just one more rigidly biased antivaxxer.

Yep, I am an antivaxer alright.

Please show me which study of post mortem brain tissue from autistic people proves the changes occurred during prenatal development.

Isn’t it funny how you show that you don’t know the first thing about science and scientific research?

I’ve looked, and I see nothing anywhere indicating you are educated in any way. So why do you think you can challenge actual scientists?

Do you understand the Dunning-Kruger effect?

NEVER dare to question actual scientists. Everything any actual scientists says is always true. Actual scientists should be running the world. Or else Dunning-Kruger.

As I’ve said many times in many places: You are free to ask any question you want. Just don’t pretend that you know enough to formulate sensible questions or that you understand complex answers when you lack the required fundamental knowledge.

Antivaxxers are notorious for pretending they know things that they clearly do not. There is abundant evidence in support of that assertion to be found around here.

NEVER dare to question actual scientists.

Nobody here says that.

Everything any actual scientists says is always true. Actual scientists should be running the world.

Nobody says that either.

Or else Dunning-Kruger

When people like you,labarge, lucas, igor, or the other people who are completely uneducated in the relevant areas make statements implying your pulled-from-your-ass idea is correct and the results from studies around the world are wrong, then yes, that comes into play. And when you clowns continue to do it the next logical conclusion, that you are simply liars trying to get attention. .

“NEVER dare to question actual scientists”

Well, with the size of your ego, you could. Which do you prefer? Pitchfork or flaming torch?

If you want to challenge scientists you have to do it with better science. Everything else is worthless conjecture.

Why haven’t you learned that, yet? Go get an education, go do the work, go publish your findings. Until then you’re just a worthless anti-vaxxer with an opinion you can’t support without lying.

@ Cochristi

I found the following, haven’t found which vaccine; but I acknowledge highly probably wasn’t MMR. So, vaccinated at 4 months, not 6 months; but 2 lbs 14 oz which according to below anything less than 3 pounds, 4 ounces is very low birthweight. And if you look at Why is Low Birthweight a Concern? It includes Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

So, I was right about being very low birthweight, off by 2 months for the vaccine, and wrong about which vaccine; but still right about your denying that the risk for SIDS was very high (I will try later to see if I can find any actual probabilities), and from CDC Vaccine Safety Sudden Infant Death Syndrome:

“Babies receive multiple vaccines when they are between 2 to 4 months old. This age range is also the peak age for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The timing of the 2 month and 4 month shots and SIDS has led some people to question whether they might be related. However, studies have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS. Multiple research studies and safety reviews have looked at possible links between vaccines and SIDS. The evidence accumulated over many years do not show any links between childhood immunization and SIDS.” You can go to website and click on the underlined “Multiple research studies and safety reviews” https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/sids.html

And the fact you miscarried a third child at 10 weeks certainly indicates major problems were happening.

And look at all the listed potential problems associated with very low birthweight.

christine kincaid
says:
February 12, 2021 at 6:20 pm
@ Joel,
I’ve had twins twice. My daughter who died of “SIDS” was one of the first set of twins, who were initially triplets. They were born at 29 weeks & she was 2 lbs 14 oz. Her twin brother was 2 lbs 13 oz. I carried them for 6 weeks after my water broke at 23 weeks. Their fraternal sibling was miscarried at 10 weeks.

My twins were discharged at 2 months old from the NICU, unvaccinated. They were vaccinated just before turning 4 months old with the recommended 2 month old’s round & sent home, to spend the night with sleeping parents

From Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Very Low Birthweight
Very low birthweight is a term used to describe babies who are born weighing less than 1,500 grams (3 pounds, 4 ounces). Only a few babies, 1.5 percent, are born this tiny.
The primary cause of very low birthweight is preterm birth (born before 37 weeks gestation). Very low birthweight babies are often born before 30 weeks of pregnancy. Being born early means a baby has less time in the mother’s uterus to grow and gain weight. Much of a baby’s weight is gained during the latter part of pregnancy.
Why is very low birthweight a concern?
A baby with very low birthweight is often at increased risk for complications. The baby’s tiny body is not as strong and he or she may have a harder time eating, gaining weight, and fighting infection. Because they have so little body fat, very low birthweight babies often have difficulty staying warm in normal temperatures.
Because many babies with very low birthweight are also premature, it can be difficult to separate the problems due to the prematurity from the problems of just being so tiny. In general, the lower the baby’s birthweight the greater the risks for complications. The following are some of the common problems of very low birthweight babies:
Low oxygen levels at birth
Inability to maintain body temperature
Difficulty feeding and gaining weight
Infection
Breathing problems, such as infant respiratory distress syndrome (a respiratory disease of prematurity caused by immature lungs)
Neurological problems, such as intraventricular hemorrhage (bleeding inside the brain)
Gastrointestinal problems, such as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). This is a serious disease of the intestine common in premature babies.
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
Nearly all very low birthweight babies need specialized care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) until they can gain weight and are well enough to go home.
Generally, the smaller the baby, the higher the risk. The survival of these tiny babies is directly related to their weight at birth.
Risks for long-term complications and disability are increased for babies with very low birthweight. Generally, the lower the birthweight, the greater the chances for developing intellectual and neurological problems, which may include the following:
Cerebral palsy
Blindness
Deafness
Developmental delay 

@ Joel,

Low birthweight doesn’t cause SIDS, Joel. You are talking about a risk factor that is associated with SIDS.

Etiologically speaking; ATYPICAL IMMUNE RESPONSES CAUSE SIDS & this has been confirmed in over 100 studies. In fact, in some studies, ALL post mortem brain tissues in ALL babies who died from SIDS show strong or moderate levels of interleukin-1, which happens to be a cytokine central to … mediation of immune responses to vaccines.

And yes, low birth weight babies can be more susceptible to having an atypical immune response from an atypical immune provocation … Which is exactly what vaccines are.

@ Joel, (this might be a duplicate, sorry if so)

Low birthweight doesn’t cause SIDS. It’s a risk factor for SIDS but many normal birthweight babies also die from SIDS.

Do you know what ALL babies who die from SIDS have in common? Elevated Interleukin 1 levels in their brain.

In other words, SIDS results from an atypical immune response to an atypical immune provocation.

Do you know what qualifies as an atypical immune provocation? Vaccines.

Do you know which cytokine is a central mediator of immune response to vaccines?

Interleukin 1.

And by the way, none of the multiple studies on the CDC page compared vaccinated vs unvaccinated SIDS rates.

“And by the way, none of the multiple studies on the CDC page compared vaccinated vs unvaccinated SIDS rates.”

Not necessary.

Surely you were able to see that SIDS rates have been decreasing over the last decades? Anti-vaxxers can hardly complain of increasing numbers of jabs if it doesn’t correlate with increasing numbers of problems.

@ Cochristi

You write: “Low birthweight doesn’t cause SIDS. It’s a risk factor for SIDS but many normal birthweight babies also die from SIDS.” Note that low birth weight increases risk fourfold and so I would bet very low birthweight increases risk even higher.

Just one quote: “Prematurity and low birth weight also increase the risk for SIDS fourfold (37, 38), the most likely reason being the associated increased vulnerability in these infants due to immature autonomic systems.” Jhodie R Duncan, PhD and Roger W Byard, MBBS, MD. Chapter 2 Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: An Overview in SIDS Sudden Infant and Early Childhood Death: The Past, the Present and the Future. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513399/

Though for under 3 months, here is: “Conclusions DTPPtHib immunization is not a risk factor for early SUD. In this population, we found the same risk factors as described for SIDS.” Annie-Pierre Jonville-Bera,1 Elisabeth Autret-Leca,1 Florence Barbeillon,1Josepha Paris-Llado2 & the French Reference Centers for SIDS (2001). Sudden unexpected death in infants under 3 months of age and vaccination status – a case-control study. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology; 51: 271-276.

So, one study that compares vaccinated with unvaccinated. I could find more; but below lists some.

A list of articles with links can be found at: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccines-and-other-conditions/vaccines-sudden-infant-death-syndrome-sids

“New research finds that more genetic features appear to be linked to sudden unexplained deaths in infants and toddlers” Sukanya Charuchandra (2022 Dec 5). Genetic testing could help identify underlying cause of SIDS. Advanced Science News.

You write: “Do you know what ALL babies who die from SIDS have in common? Elevated Interleukin 1 levels in their brain. In other words, SIDS results from an atypical immune response to an atypical immune provocation.”

Actually: “it has recently been recognized that the brain directly controls or modulates many aspects of immune function, while molecules classically associated with the immune system, such as interleukin-1, are synthesised within the brain and act directly on the central nervous system to modify local and systemic functions.” Nancy Rothwell (1992 Oct 25). Interleukin-1 in the Brain.

So, basically interleukin is synthesized to modify local and systemic nervous system, could be for a number of reasons, including genetics, and brain dysfunction, etc. Not elevated only as result of an atypical immune response. But for you, it can only be because of vaccines, always only vaccines, so why do they find elevated interleukin 1 in a diverse number of situations???

As I’ve written and others, it has to be the vaccines in your mind. You are rigidly locked into this, thus, mentally sick.

This is really a waste of my time as you have made it absolutely clear that in your mind it is always the vaccines and nothing, no research, nothing will change your mind.

Apparently Kirstie Alley didn’t die of cancer, but was murdered because she knew too much about those hiding the truth about COVID-19 vaccines and ivermectin.

The illuminati have struck again – at least that is what some want us to believe. I expect Labarge et al. will be parroting this line in time.

@ Dangerous Bacon,

Kirstie Alley was working 6 months ago on the TV show “The Masked Singer” & would had to have been vaccinated to do so, under a mandatory immunization policy per the Screen Actors Guild & American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Sadly, had she just waited until last month, when SAG-AFTRA dropped their vaccine mandate, she would still be alive.

If you get a phone call, claiming to be from Windows, and that you have a virus on your computer, hang up. It’s a scam. Also hang up if they claim to be from your anti-virus software supplier or Amazon or a prince in Nigeria.

@coschristi, you have no mechanism of causation, and there is an alternative explanation for Alley’s cancer.
Alley was a Scientologist, and one of the lies Scientology uses is claiming that it is impossible for high-ranking Scientologists to develop cancer. Allie most likely delayed getting tested and treated until the cancer was at an advanced stage.

From what I’ve read, bowel cancers have fewer symptoms and, what there are are similar to IBS etc? If she was a true believer then it would be pretty easy to assume more mundane causes for any symptoms she might have had.

From what I’ve read, bowel cancers have fewer symptoms and, what there are are similar to IBS etc?

That’s how things played out for a (late) friend of mine.

@ Cochristi

Interleukin 1 is a major cytokine of the immune system with a main function to alert and activate other parts. In the periphery, cell tissues, innate immune cells such as neutrophils and macrophages send out interleukin 1 to neighboring cells, innate immune cells and adaptive immune cells in nearest lymph nodes to alert them to a problem. And the problem can range from infections with bacteria or viruses to burns from spilled hot water to bruised inflamed ligaments, etc. The amount of interleukin 1 sent is proportional to the problem and also if the problem is system-wide or local. So, even if a vaccine elicited interleukin 1 since it is either killed or greatly weakened it doesn’t spread throughout the body so it only elicits localized cytokines such as interleukin 1 which alerts the adaptive immune system, B-cells and T-cells, in nearby lymph nodes. However, a number of things can cause appearance of interleukin 1 in brain, including Schizophrenia and other mental problems, high level of stress, low levels of oxygen (typical of very low birthweight premies), and, of course, if an infection gets out of control and becomes system wide.

Now let me be clear, I can’t say with absolute certainty that in a world with 100s of millions of kids that some rare genetic, epic-genetic, toxins could interact with a vaccine and its constituents. So, maybe a rare number of cases of SIDS were caused by a vaccine and I mean RARE. First we know that number of vaccines has increased as number of SIDS cases has decreased over past decades. Second, we know that very low birhtweight premies have weak immune systems and if exposed to a natural microbe would have a high likelihood of dying. Third, we know that lots of vaccines are given precisely during period when SIDS highest, so post hoc ergo propter hoc. In other word, though not necessarily true; but let’s say that 1 case of SIDS per 1,000 cases of SIDS was caused or contributed to by a vaccine. If we delayed vaccinated all kids during that period the number suffering and even dying would be much higher. So, can I completely rule out a very rare occurrence. Nope; but to emphasize as you do, not just risk of SIDS; but antivax would lead to mass suffering, hospitalizations, and death.

In other news..

“Everything will be turned upside down and the current prosecutors and judges as well as the heads of health departments and their superiors will find themselves in the dock at Nuremburg 2.” **

Anti-vaxxers at a freedom conference? RFK jr? Del? Mike?
No, conspirators on Telegram cosplaying Q Anon/ January 6 in Germany today. 25 arrested

** reported today by Die Zeit

But with some differences. They allready had someone who should lead the new to form government and people for other positions, like a former judge for the department of justice. She used to be a member of parlament for a right-wing party.

Most of you here will look at the first 5 seconds of this video and say “Oh that’s Tucker Carlson, he’s right-wing racist stupid evil, nothing he ever says is true.” And you will say “Oh that’s Dr. Aseem Malhotra, he’s a cardiologist who advises his patients to improve their lifestyle, how stupid, everything he ever says is wrong.

But maybe at least ONE of you will watch the whole video and explain WHY you think everything they say is wrong. Instead of stupid insults, maybe you can give us scientific reasons why you think this is all wrong.

I find this video to be rational, scientific, factual, accurate, and SCARY. I respect both of these men, and I care not at all about your hysterical insults.

Tell me exactly why you think they are so wrong. Tell me why, for example, you think it’s perfectly fine that MOST of the FDA’s funding comes from the big drug companies. How is that ok? Tell me why Tucker Carlson is stupid for thinking that is a problem.

Tell me WHY it’s ok if the Pfizer vaccine causes 1 in 800 who take it to have serious side effects. Tell me WHY it makes sense to give a vaccine to healthy children when it will only benefit 1 in many thousands of them.

Tell me WHY you think they are lying, or delusional, or whatever else you think. Explain why. You don’t need to explode with rage and insults and profanity. If you are correct, you should be able to state your case calmly.

Show that you are capable of being rational. I have not seen that here yet.

As Dr. Malhotra says, it is understandable that the big drug companies care about profits rather than the health of patients. It is their job to make profits. What is NOT understandable is that we have allowed them to control the FDA. Explain why you think that is perfectly ok.

FDA funding does not come from drug companies. It charges them drug evaluation costs. FDA actually rejects many drugs, do you know that ?
Now you are saying 1 per 1000 children have problems with COVID. Try to get number right.
Where Tucker got his SAE numbers ? Find citation ?

Tell me why, for example, you think it’s perfectly fine that MOST of the FDA’s funding comes from the big drug companies. How is that ok? Tell me why Tucker Carlson is stupid for thinking that is a problem.

Your premises are faulty. Tucker Carlson is not stupid. He IS an evil, hateful neo-fascist propagandist, but quite a clever and successful one. Since he’s long been a champion of a pro-business/anti-goverment ideology, I don’t buy for a second he actually thinks the relationship between the pharmas and the FDA is a problem, (or for that matter, that he actually thinks “most of the FDA’s funding comes from the pharmas”). He just thinks he can sell suspicion of this to his MAGA audience. Who, of course, he actually despises as rubes, being an uber-spoiled trust fund kid from La Jolla who respects only the moneyed and powerful. In short, yes, he’s lying, and the why is that of all grifters: a lust for power that transcends anything resembling ethics — which are, you know, just for wussies.

OTOH, I’d guess Malhotra actually believes what he says, thus is not ‘lying’ but merely wrong, and is eager enough for an audience, any audience, to to not look a gift-host in the mouth.

If you were genuinely trying to establish yourself as a champion of rationality, you wouldn’t be declaring respect for Tucker Carlson of all people as scientific, factual and accurate. But then, methinks you know that, and you’re just trolling.

“I have never heard Carlson make a comment that could be interpreted as racist.”

That’s because you’re not even aware enough, you’re just a true believer in anything Tucker says. You’re not aware you’re probably a racist.

If you don’t understand how the conspiracy theory of “white replacement theory” is nothing but racist nonsense then you are a racist.

“What is NOT understandable is that we have allowed them to control the FDA.”

I’m sorry, you’re making a claim you have no foundational evidence for.

Why is that? Oh yes, it’s because you’re just a standard lying anti-vaxxer.

@ Indie Rebel

You write: “I find this video to be rational, scientific, factual, accurate, and SCARY. I respect both of these men, and I care not at all about your hysterical insults.”

Says it all that you, in your immense stupid scientific ignorance believe the above.

You write: “Tell me WHY it’s ok if the Pfizer vaccine causes 1 in 800 who take it to have serious side effects. Tell me WHY it makes sense to give a vaccine to healthy children when it will only benefit 1 in many thousands of them.” Give link to Pfizer statistics or did you get it from the video???

“There have been over 164,165 pediatric hospital admissions (ages 0-17) with COVID-19 since August 2020”.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The Facts About COVID-19 and Children.
And about 700 have died; however, as I and others have explained, children can infect others. For instance if they go shopping with parent and someone who could not be vaccinated or vaccine didn’t take, they could become infected. So, not too many deaths, that is, if you don’t value the lives of each and every child; but certainly 164,000 hospitalizations is NOT good or, maybe, you could care less???

It really isn’t worth responding to you as you have been refuted by myself and many others numerous times and you just keep MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF.

And again, the first statement by you that I copied above says it all. YOU ARE AN IDIOT

@ Indie Rebel

You write: “As Dr. Malhotra says, it is understandable that the big drug companies care about profits rather than the health of patients. It is their job to make profits. What is NOT understandable is that we have allowed them to control the FDA. Explain why you think that is perfectly ok.”

First, your question if we think it perfectly OK assumes we agree with Dr. Malhotra that drug companies control the FDA and only care about profits. Of course, you need to make profits to stay in business; but so does every business. When you buy groceries aren’t you afraid the food will be “contaminated”, after all sold for profit? Do they control the FDA? Just because they collaborate doesn’t prove this? How else could FDA evaluate vaccines without collaboration with manufacturers? In addition, I would bet you have never gone to FDA website, looked up a single vaccine, and gone through ALL the documents, including ALL the studies they looked at, incredibly thorough. And you fail to understand that almost all nations have their own evaluations of vaccines; e.g., Sweden, UK, European Union, Canada, Israel, etc. and they also have their own adverse events reporting since. And the US has several different adverse events reporting systems. And finally in your asinine immense antivax stupidity you don’t understand that one can search National Library of Medicine’s online database PubMed and find literally 1,000s of peer-reviewed studies of vaccines, including the mRNA covid vaccines and can also find over 70 peer-reviewed articles on research in developing mRNA vaccines prior to COVID-19. Do you really believe that all of the aforementioned can’t be trusted? Of course you do, typical of a paranoid deranged antivaxxer.

In other words, your believing Dr Mahotra indicates your rigid antivax bias as well as you immense stupidity. Anyone who understands immunology understands how and why vaccines work. Not you.

“one can search National Library of Medicine’s online database PubMed and find literally 1,000s of peer-reviewed studies of vaccines, including the mRNA covid vaccines and can also find over 70 peer-reviewed articles on research in developing mRNA vaccines prior to COVID-19.”

You are a moronic brainless fart. Read what you wrote here. Thousands of studies of vaccines, INCLUDING the mRNA covid vaccines. How many studies of the mRNA covid vaccines? One, two, 50? You statement doesn’t bother to say. You imply there are thousands of mRNA covid vaccines.

That is because you are a filthy piece of intentionally deceptive garbage.

So, you understand all about how vaccines work. Really? Then you would know the mRNA covid vaccines do NOT work like any other vaccines. They work completely differently from other vaccines. But you are too stupidly braindead to see any difference.

Slink back in your rat hole, you ugly flea infested garbage eating rat.

And don’t reply to my comment until you have watched the video I linked. Which you won’t ever do. Because you are stuck in your evil closed little mind that never dares to question any official dogma.

There is no other way to talk to someone like you, you slimy ball of snot.

Then you would know the mRNA covid vaccines do NOT work like any other vaccines. They work completely differently from other vaccines

OK. Dazzle us with your brilliance. Convince us that YOU have some reasonable comprehension of how mRNA vaccines work and compare and contrast with, say, a “live” attenuated virus vaccine.

Wow. Possibly the best “I’m going to start shouting because my lies have been called out” rant I’ve seen all year. Remarkable.

You could do Google Scholar searcm MRNA COVID vaccinns instead of ranting. There are 400000 hits

When you buy certain foods, it is contaminated with flavor enhancers that make you want to eat more, too much sugar, high fructose corn syrup, pesticides etc. All of this is because it makes foods more addictive or lowers costs. So yeah for-profit businesses operate primarily to make profits, precisely why we should view their representations skeptically and why when they capture regulatory agencies, that’s a bad thing.

I don’t think anyone disagrees with ‘for profit businesses need controls’ and ‘the businesses shouldn’t be able to bypass those controls’.

What do you suggest? Bearing in mind that any organisation will need to be paid to produce any independent analysis and that the expertise to do the analysis allows for talent poaching.

You’ve already shown that you don’t trust your government but it’s not like a private company would be guaranteed any more trustworthy.

For starters vaccine manufacturers should be strictly liable for any injuries attributable to the vaccine as adjudicated in court.

They’re already liable for injuries due to negligence. As for injuries from side effects, those go first to vaccine court, which is funded by the manufacturers. If the injured party isn’t happy, they can then sue the manufacturer in normal court. The manufacturer will likely say there’s no hard proof this particular injury was from the vaccine, so they would have been better off in vaccine court.

So the current situation is actually more favorable to the plaintiffs than what I think you want. It’s not like you grow a third ear when you have an allergic reaction to a vaccine.

Judges and juries tend to take their jobs seriously and look hard at that weight of the evidence requirement.

Gotta much better chance of pay out in the vaccine court than facing the science and money of the manufacturer directly.

Leading anti-vaxxers often bemoan the fact that they cannot sue the manufacturers directly but, as you can see in the comment above, they could if they wanted to. Easier to talk big and say how they’d win if only they got a chance. In reality, they know that they cannot compete with the science and data. Otherwise they would have already done it.

What they really want, is the chance to create millions of nuisance cases. Which would almost all be defeated but could potentially make the manufacturers stop producing vaccines due to the sheer weight of numbers and publicity. Rather cynical really, considering that it won’t be them paying for the expensive lawyers out of their own pockets.

@sadmar

Before replying to my comment, you should have watched the video. Then you could have explained exactly what you think Dr. Malhotra said that is wrong.

Tucker Carlson is an independent free thinker, and that is why he interviews a doctor who dissents from the official dogma. Sure, you see him as evil, if you hate all conservatives. I doubt you understand what conservatism even is. And I doubt you have watched any of Carlson’s shows.

No, I don’t agree with everything Carlson says about everything. I agree with what his guest says in this interview. I specifically asked commenters here to refrain from their usual angry bleating, and actually watch the video and find out what it says.

No one has done that so far.

Tucker Carlson is an independent free thinker

Actually, he’s a nazi supporting white supremacist who gets paid a lot of money to lie (although you quickly get the impression he would lie free of charge because he enjoys it) to ignorant clowns who believe his crap about race, critical race theory, white supremacy, replacement theory, and the other hot touch points for the extreme right. I’m not surprised at all that you’ve hitched your wagon to his ass. Your characteristics and his are a perfect match.

You should try to find scientific citations. At least, cite Malhotra directly.

@ldw56old

You are F of S. I have never heard Carlson make a comment that could be interpreted as racist. He, and other conservatives, are appalled by the bizarre excesses of current progressive ideology when it comes to race, and transgenderism. I, and many other liberals, feel the same way.

Since you accused Carlson of supporting Nazis, why don’t you prove it with a link? I have watched many of his shows and never once heard any kind of reference to Nazis. Certainly nothing supporting Nazis. Not once, not ever.

I am a Jewish lifelong liberal, and I believe I would have noticed.

You are F of S. I have never heard Carlson make a comment that could be interpreted as racist.

Then you don’t fucking pay attention. Which isn’t a surprise: your posts showed you never paid attention when you were in school either. The same for you missing his support for nazis and white supremacists.

appalled by the bizarre excesses of current progressive ideology when it comes to race, and transgenderism

That has to be a record for
– telling us you’re another racist
– telling us you have no understanding of the science of gender

I, and many other liberals, feel the same way

Liberal? That might be the most extreme bit of bullshit you’ve posted

Oh I think I understand the current “science of gender” pretty well. Every child who doesn’t fit nicely into the cultural stereotype of their sex qualifies for hormone blockers. So they can have more time to “think it over.”

But the blockers permanently damage their sexual (and other) development. Boys are left with a tiny penis, for life. For example. They are on track for opposite sex hormones, which can be devastating for health. And they will be on those hormones for life.

And this all leads up to drastic surgery that supposedly will magically transform them into the opposite sex.

It’s good for the medical and drug industries. Not good for kids.

We have so much freedom now, to be ourselves. Why are kids being told they must fit into one or the other gender stereotype? The whole thing is beyond bizarre.

Oh I think I understand the current “science of gender” pretty well. Every child who doesn’t fit nicely into the cultural stereotype of their sex qualifies for hormone blockers.

If anyone still harbored the possibility that you had any understanding of anything that bit of bullshit vaporized it. You are a universal ignoramus (and serial liar to boot).

Ever talked to a transgender, or met a transgender child?
Or talked to people treating them?
I’m getting sick and tired of people who don’t know anything about transgenders, like me and still have strong opinions about it, which are mostly wrong.
It is always the same, people who don’t know anything about transgenders, never met one, never talked to one, or talked to people treating them, giving opinions, based on false ideas.

You know absolutely nothing about the science of gender and where the research is, nor do you understand what is actually happening in hospitals and everything else. You’re just going to repeat right-wing lies without any evidence to back you up.

This is an area of minor expertise of mine, I can assure you I know a hell of a lot more than you ever will. Don’t post your hate speech here.

I will post whatever I want here, you are not in charge. There are plenty of liberal feminists who think the transgender mania has gone too far.

You want to squeeze all ideas into left vs right. Anything you don’t agree with is “right,” and everything “right” is hate speech.

You have never learned how to think.

@Christine Rose
“So you have had two doses of Johnson & Johnson? I have no problem with that.”

I had one shot of J&J, because I didn’t want mRNA. I was going to visit elderly relatives, and I believed the propaganda that my getting vaxxed would protect them. I was nauseous for about 2 months, but then got better. J&J is a whole virus, so the immune system can get rid of it.

Then 6 months later I got the Moderna booster, because I had heard a lot of people say they didn’t get side effects from it. I immediately got nauseous, then terrible vertigo that lasted months. Nausea continued on and off, then got worse and worse and now I am a wreck. Crazy vomiting, which I NEVER had before. I never had any of this before.

The trouble with the mRNA vaccines is they can continue generating spikes indefinitely. And since the spikes are not attached to a pathogen, the immune system might not get rid of them. It is known that the spikes are toxic and can cause inflammation, among other things.

You won’t hear about this from the CDC.

The J&J vaccine essentially is an mRNA vaccine in that it delivers SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mRNA, just using a different method. It is still the machinery of recipient cells that translates that mRNA to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The trouble with the mRNA vaccines is they can continue generating spikes indefinitely. And since the spikes are not attached to a pathogen, the immune system might not get rid of them. It is known that the spikes are toxic and can cause inflammation, among other things.

Again you prove your profound ignorance of these matters.

The mRNA vaccines do not result in indefinite production of spike protein. mRNAs, including those of the vaccines, quite simply “break” fairly quickly. There are cellular processes that detect this and destroy the broken mRNA. Even if that didn’t happen, the immune system which essentially exists to track down and destroy foreign proteins, will find and destroy cells putting up spike peptides on MHC.

There is no good evidence that spike protein is “toxic” in any significant way. Again, the immune system is all about finding and destroying foreign proteins. Inflammation can indeed occur – it is a normal part of the immune response.

The CDC doesn’t tell you about these things because they, like virtually 100% of what you post, are bullshit.

über der J&J vaccine:

Like the Sputnik and Oxford/AZ COVID vaccines it is a viral vector type. You start with an Adenovirus (so name because it was first isolated from human adenoids; J&J uses HAdV-D26, known as Ad26 to its friends). A gene is deleted from the Ad virus genome to make it replication-incompetent – it can infect host cells like a normal Ad virus but it can’t replicate. Typically the “E1” gene is deleted. It is called “E” for “early” because it is one of the first transcribed and translated genes. The protein(s) coded are necessary for replication of virus and if they aren’t made replication doesn’t proceed. DNA, reverse-transcribed from the SARS-CoV-2 S (spike) gene (which RNA) is inserted into the Ad virus genome. The Ad virus is grown in culture. The “live” virus is used in the vaccine.

The modified Ad virus infects recipient cells. Since it is a DNA virus, its genome gets transported to the nucleus of an infected cell where the necessary machinery resides. There the DNA is translated to mRNAs which exit the nucleus by normal mechanisms. From that point on the process is the same as for the mRNA vaccines.

“The trouble with the mRNA vaccines is they can continue generating spikes indefinitely.”

Lie lie lie, that’s all you do. You can’t support this trashy opinion, either.

Of course, mRNA vaccines do not translatenspikes indefinitely. MRNA has a short half life.

The trouble with the mRNA vaccines is they can continue generating spikes indefinitely. And since the spikes are not attached to a pathogen, the immune system might not get rid of them. It is known that the spikes are toxic and can cause inflammation, among other things.

You won’t hear about this from the CDC.

Since you’re making it up out of nothing you’re right: the CDC won’t repeat that bullshit.

@doug

“The J&J vaccine essentially is an mRNA vaccine in that it delivers SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mRNA, just using a different method. It is still the machinery of recipient cells that translates that mRNA to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.”

The J&J is NOT an mRNA vaccine! It contains the DNA to generate the spikes, but it does not cause our own body’s cells to generate them! The immune system knows to get rid of the J&J adenovirus which is generating the spikes! The mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, cause the spikes to be displayed on our own body’s cells. This can confuse the immune system. And there is no way to predict how many spikes will be generated, or for how long.

J&J made me very sick, but for a limited time. I am still very sick, a year later, from Moderna.

I was going to write that her level of cluelessness is astounding, but in reality it is quite typical for an antivaxxer.

Host cells absolutely DO make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. I suspected you were clueless about this stuff and now you have removed all doubt. You clearly don’t know anything about viruses or the immune system.

EVERYTHING required by a virus like SARS-CoV-2 or Human Adenovirus 26 (the vector for J&J) is made using host cell machinery and host cell materials. That is true for the vast majority of viruses. A few, like the pox viruses, which have big DNA genomes, code some of their own machinery. This means that it is recipient cells that make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein coded in the J&J vaccine.

The human immune system MAY know how to “get rid” of Ad26 at the time that the J&J vaccine is administered because it may have learned how during a previous infection with “wild” Ad26 (one of the potential problems with Ad vector vaccines is that the immune system may destroy the vaccine vector before it gets to “do its thing.” The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine used a chimpanzee Ad virus with the expectation that most people would not have existing adaptive immunity to it (some people in parts of the world where chimps are endemic do show evidence of some existing immunity). IF the immune system got rid of all of the vector virus before any SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could be made the vaccine would be utterly useless against SARS-CoV-2.

The immune system tracks down proteins (or more accurately, short peptides of the proteins). If you understood how that worked you would understand why some monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 don’t work with newer variants and why there is partial immune escape with SARS-CoV-2 variants. But of course you lack the fundamental knowledge and just spew bullshit.

Just to hammer some points extra hard:

Viruses do not replicate outside of host cells.

The adenovirus in the vector vaccines does not contain any SARS-CoV-2 protein.
No SARS-CoV-2 spike (“S”) protein is made until the virus infects recipient cells. It is ribosomes in the infected cells that make the S protein. Some small amounts of intact S may be put up on the surface of cells. Peptides of S are most certainly put up by MHC which puts up peptides of ALL proteins made in cells.

I don’t know the answer to this, but does the J&J have LNPs as an ingredient? Since it’s using adenovirus I would guess not? My money is on LNPs causing major problems when they find their way into the vascular system/heart. Could be spike being produced there as well. But I wonder whether mRNA LNPs have a way of sneaking into blood vessels while the Adenovirus vax doesn’t do so as easily. I understand Novavax to also have LNPs though I don’t know what for.

The assumption that no part of the mRNA vax has anything to do with myocarditis – the one mostly reached by people here who worship at the alter of the vax church – is anti-scientific. There is something leading to the increased myocarditis.

Let’s hope in five years or so folks who were so injured are fully recovered and don’t suffer more consequences.

I presume that injured apply for compensation? Check CICP stats.
Interesting thing is that there is one claim of myocarditis deah.

I’m sure I read a hypothesis that it was the immune response to covid and its vaccines that caused the myocarditis. Don’t know if that went anywhere though.

You do not know virology either. All viruses make body celles to replicate themselves, and cause them to produce their proteins. To do that, viral RNA is first transcripted to RNA.

@doug

“Just to hammer some points extra hard”

You have not said anything I did not already know.

The J&J adenovirus vaccine is a WHOLE virus, which is something the immune system can understand. The mRNA vaccines are completely different, something that does not occur naturally. This confuses and suppresses the immune system.

AND, the mRNA is synthesized to be more durable than natural RNA. So how long it stays in cells and continues to cause the generation of spikes is not known.

AND the LNPs were designed to cross the blood brain barrier, by the way. The LNPs and the mRNA they contain can go anywhere in the body.

AND these spikes are KNOWN to be toxic, and are known to be a major cause of damage from a natural covid infection.

So maybe you can learn something from me, since I do not restrict my reading to the CDC website.

You may have read something about this but you very clearly do not even begin to understand it.

The Ad26 vector in the J&J vaccine incorporates no SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. NONE! When the vector is grown in culture there is SARS-CoV-2 spike protein made but it is not incorporated into the vector virions or present in the vaccine. It is not until the vector infects recipient cells that SARS-CoV-2 S protein is made IN THOSE CELLS from which it is presented to the immune system. (There is a little “hook” in growing a replication-incompetent virus in culture. Can you identify the hook?)

Learn some basic virology and immunology. Clearly you know nothing about either.

Your other assertions are bullshit.

Again, immune system understand foreign proteins. They may may be part of a virus
Modified RNAs are indeed more durable, but they still hydrolyse quite fast.
Designed to cross BBB ? Why is that ?
As for spike protein, you just know things. Again, all antivaxxers think that it i toxic, I presume.

@doug

“The Ad26 vector in the J&J vaccine incorporates no SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. NONE! ”

Take a reading course. I NEVER said the J&J vaccine contains the covid spike. NEVER. I said it contains the DNA that causes infected cells to generate the covid spike.

If the vector virus contains no SARS-CoV-2 protein and the vaccine contains no SARS-CoV-2 protein, how do you imagine that it would trigger an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2?

Yes, the vaccine does contain DNA that causes the spike protein to be made. The point I’m trying to make, which clearly is beyond your comprehension, is that is infected recipient cells that make that protein and that the protein is presented to the immune system by those infected (HUMAN!) cells, just exactly as happens with the mRNA vaccines. But you wrote “It [J&J vaccine] contains the DNA to generate the spikes, but it does not cause our own body’s cells to generate them!” Now you say “I said it contains the DNA that causes infected cells to generate the covid spike.” Are you really so astoundingly dense that you don’t see that those two sentences are mutually contradictory?

To use a Nero Wolfe expression, you are a hopeless imbecile.

You will notice that will first cause infectt ed cells to generate spike RNA.That is how prorin synhesis works.

@doug
You are the imbecile. Viruses infect cells for the purpose of creating more viruses. They take over the cells’ machinery in order to reproduce. The covid mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, ONLY cause cells to create spike proteins.
MORON.

Now you seem to be desperately trying to backtrack.
You wrote:

“It [J&J vaccine] contains the DNA to generate the spikes, but it does not cause our own body’s cells to generate them!”

That is false. It does contain DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein within the genome of the Ad26 vector. The Ad26 vector is NOT replicated. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is made in infected cells and is NOT assembled onto any virion. Once mRNA from the vector DNA has been transcribed to mRNA, the process of production and presentation of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is exactly the same as it is for the mRNA vaccines. Other Ad26 proteins that are made in infected cells are essentially just trash. Samples of those will be put up on the surface of the cell in the same manner as the spike.
Do yo even know what happens with mRNA in cell?

“Once mRNA from the vector DNA has been transcribed to mRNA …” should be “Once the vector DNA has been transcribed to mRNA …”

So you think full viral RNA with spike is less dangerous than spike RNA alone ? How this is possible ?

@doug
“Do yo even know what happens with mRNA in cell?”

Yes, retard, I know exactly what happens with mRNA in a cell. If you want to find out, google can be a good resource.

I don’t believe for a femtosecond that you actually know or understand what happens with mRNA in cells. You’ve repeated displayed very compelling evidence that you know nothing about any of this.

Guess what? That use of “retard” as a slur gets you a temporary ban. I haven’t decided how long yet, but I’ve had enough.

I’m going to add the word “retard” to the block list, as that’s been an oversight. If anyone uses it, their comment will go straight to the trash. While I’m at it, I’m going to add “moron” to the automatic moderate list. Antivaxxers and people on “our side” have been using that word far too much. Look up its history. It’s almost as bad as using “retard” as an insult.

Well how are people on “your side” going to continue expressing their contempt for dissenters, if they can no longer use the word “moron?”

And what about “idiot?” That also used to be a correct medical term for “stupid.”

And while you’re at it, why not ban the word “stupid?” All these words mean the same thing. Most of the commenters on “your side” cannot express disagreement without insulting their opponents.

So they will find another word. And then another word.

“Idiot” is actually a more difficult call, as it has a longer history of being used as a general term for a stupid person; so it’s not as easy a call.

The R word was originally a euphemism for the M word. There was an entire medical classification of words that referred to levels of impairment.

Because mRNA is so little known by the general public, anti-vaxxers/ alties run with it in order to misinform their audiences.
Amongst those I survey, spike protein is frequently demonised ( I suppose because spikes sound so scary). As we observe here, followers repeat this and add their own misconceptions. Recently, ( see The Highwire.com, Thursday; video) Del and ICAN managed to get a US senator to sponsor a meeting with Del, lawyer Siri and denialist MDs, PhDs : Malone, McCollough, Risch, Cole, Marik etc . Cole also “educates” the audience in detail later on.

Spikes are portrayed as deadly little razors that damage various cells/ structures. I’ve heard this on other outlets ( NN, prn). In addition, alties often describe Covid in a manner that suggests it is a retrovirus ( it isn’t but retroviruses are scarier than regular viruses). One of the key attributes of altie programming is to get the audience to first reject mainstream news, governmental agencies and universities. Wikipedia and sceptics like Orac are alties’ nemeses. ” Don’t believe news sources, experts and the government, believe ME!”, they imply. They also involve journalists who are far out of the mainstream.

If the public never studied life science, they are easy to fool by presenting ‘experts’ and highly detailed technical terms ( actually, techno-babble). This has become an entire industry because alternative health sites sell supplements/ foods/ books and writers can monetise their nonsense on Substack. Of course, to get or keep an audience, they need to present ever more outrageous material and bigger lies PLUS they compete with each other.

Good point about the term “spike!” Somewhere along the line quite some time ago I heard or read someone making similar points about the term conjuring false notions of a sharp and dangerous thing, but I’d totally forgotten about it. The SARS-CoV-2 spike is a bit longer than the spike of lots of better known viruses, but it is rounded and knobby at the “action” end.

There is a nice animation by Dr. Janet Iwasa on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6bkvVDalfI
Dr. Iwasa has a PhD in cell biology and, iirc, now works full time doing “molectular animation.” She was the featured guest on TWiV 726 (March, 2021). She put her SARS-CoV-2 animation up as a publicly accessible freebee on youtube.

The mRNA vaccines code for spike protein that has two prolines substituted at strategic positions so the spike is locked in pre-fusion conformation, meaning the mechanism for getting through a cell membrane is defeated. I know the Oxford/AZ vaccine codes for spike without this modification. I can’t remember offhand whether or not the J&J does.

Jeez, if I’m gonna put something in quotation marks I could at least spell it right! That’s “molecular animation”

@Orac
“That use of “retard” as a slur gets you a temporary ban.”

Is that really worse than what I have been called here? Is “moron” really better than “retard?” Is “pile of shit” really preferred now? Sorry, I have not kept up with all the politically correct verbal idiocy.

You are a person who takes pride in your independence, by copying the talking points you pretend to understand, and pasting them here with an air of pseudorebelliousness. You are less helpful than a piece of shit, which can be treated to produce fertilizer that aids the growth of useful plant life.

@Orac
“Fear not. I also added the word “moron” to the “always moderate” list.”

Did you ever notice the many times I was called a moron, simply because someone disagreed with me? And I was called much worse, very often.

And they are still calling anyone they disagree with “stupid.” Why is “stupid” politically correct, when other words with similar meanings are not?

Are you going to start censoring all insults? There are posters at your blog who cannot write a comment without insulting their opponents.

So, after taking it for years, I used a word that I had no idea was a politically incorrect way of saying “stupid.” Are you at all aware that “mentally retarded” was a polite substitute for earlier medical terms like moron, idiot and imbecile?

So pretty soon maybe “stupid” will be on the taboo list. And then how are your admirers here going to express their contempt for dissenters?

It’s interesting how some people here are can be angry and seething with contempt for anyone who disagrees with them, yet believe themselves to be so so sensitive and tolerant.

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