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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Did “Died Suddenly” just die suddenly as a conspiracy theory?

“Died Suddenly” is a movie and a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 vaccines are causing young people to drop dead but “they” are trying to suppress the evidence. I guess a new study showing no correlation between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death is just part of “Their” effort.

One of the more pernicious and—let’s just say it—downright ridiculous conspiracy theories to have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic is the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory. The basic idea is that young, healthy people all over the world have “died suddenly” as a result of sudden cardiac death caused by—you guessed it!—COVID-19 vaccines. The “died suddenly” conspiracy theory takes many forms, such as blaming the sudden on-field cardiac arrest of an elite athlete like Damar Hamlin on vaccines to conspiracy “documentaries” positing a wave of death due to the vaccines, to embalmers misleadingly claiming that they’re seeing more clots than ever, to anti vaxxers swooping down on the families of those who died suddenly to blame their deaths on vaccines, a phenomenon for which the term “ghouling” was coined. Antivaxxers are even branching out with the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory to blame a wave of deaths of zoo animals on COVID-19 vaccines, because why limit your anti vax conspiracy mongering just to humans?

In any event, I decided to look at some actual evidence this week, as a study whose results are completely inconsistent with COVID-19 vaccines causing people to “die suddenly” due to cardiac causes. Why now? After all, the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory is just a variation on what antivaxxers have been doing for a very long time for childhood vaccines and HPV vaccines. What caught my eye this week and reminded me that I needed to write about this study, which was released over a week ago, was the reaction of antivaxxers to the death of Canadian folk legend Gordon Lightfoot on Monday at the age of 83.

By way of a bit of background, let me just say that I love Gordon Lightfoot’s music and have been a fan since I was a child in the early 1970s, when my mother (also a fan) introduced me to his music. Now let’s take a look at what Mark Crispin Miller felt obligated to write yesterday after hearing about Gordon Lightfoot’s passing a few days before, Gordon Lightfoot probably would be alive today, despite his age, if he had not been “vaccinated.” The blurb informs us:

And many others too might be alive, if he did not join in the “vaccination” propaganda pushed by so many musicians all around the world. (If only he had thought to question it instead…)

The hilarious and telling thing about Miller’s including Gordon Lightfoot in his “died suddenly” narrative is this:

We decided early on, when we started this project early last year, to use a cut-off date of 75, figuring that, since sudden deaths are likelier at so advanced an age, we should err more on the side of caution in such cases, for the sake of greater credibility.

But wait, you say: Lightfoot was 84, which is a pretty ripe old age to reach before dying. Also, those of us who are fans know that he has suffered a number of health issues over the years, including emergency surgery for a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm in 2002, after which:

The graveness of Lightfoot’s illness stems from an aneurysm he suffered in 2002. The singer fell into a coma for six weeks and, even though he recovered and returned to performing, he then suffered a stroke four years later onstage. Still, Lightfoot continues touring; playing five cities in five nights, in his words, like a hockey team.

So it is established from this history that Gordon Lightfoot had significant and serious vascular disease dating back at least 21 years, which caused him to develop an aortic aneurysm that almost killed him as well as to suffer a minor stroke onstage a few years later. In addition, Lightfoot spent decades of his life battling alcohol and addiction, although he had been sober since the 1980s. In any event, while it is true that Lightfoot had managed to tour prodigiously in the 2000s and in 2012 reported in an interview that he generally hit the gym six days a week, it is also true that in April he had to cancel an upcoming tour due to “health-related issues.” It is also true he had been hospitalized at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, which is where he died.

So how does Miller justify including Lightfoot, an octogenarian, in his “died suddenly” list? Obviously, it was because he needed more fodder:

But we soon became more flexible, since it’s no less suspicious when somebody rich and famous, in his/her 80’s or even 90’s, just drops dead—with no cause reported, and without having been unwell, and was known to have been “vaccinated”—than when someone younger dies that way. So it was, of course, with both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, both of whom, old as they were (96, 99), could have lived still longer lives; so it was with Ramsey Clark, dead (suddenly) at 93, though very fit up til the end; and so it was with Paul Sorvino, who “died suddenly” at 83, and who—despite vague claims, in “our free press,” about recent “health problems”—had been working non-stop, with several projects going, when he just up and died, just like so many others. (Sorvino, BTW, was one of a few dozen departed movie people who, at this year’s Oscars jamboree, were left out of the “In Memoriam” segment, which—just like the year before—would have been too long, and maybe called attention to what’s going on, if they’d included all those who ought to have mentioned there.)

I like the conspiracy theory about how the Oscars had left Paul Sorvino out not because of an oversight, but rather because it had tried to cull the list of celebrities who had died over the last year in order to hide how huge a number it was. Top-notch crank conspiracy mongering, there, Mark! Also, why Sorvino? Why didn’t “they” decide to “suppress” the news of the deaths of less famous celebrities in the annual Oscar In Memoriam tribute? Inquiring minds want to know!

Basically, there is no evidence that Gordon Lightfoot died because he was first vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine over two years prior to his death. We don’t know when Gordon Lightfoot got his boosters, but it’s reasonable to assume that it was at least several months ago, when the bivalent vaccine first came out. In any event, blaming his death on COVID-19 vaccines is even more of a stretch than the usual “died suddenly” anecdote, in which the time between vaccination and death is usually at least a lot less than several months or aren’t octogenarian folk singers with a long history of cardiovascular disease.

As much as antivaxxers stretch to blame sudden cardiac deaths on vaccines—they’ve even gone so far as to coin a term “sudden adult death syndrome” (SADS), which is a misnomer for a long-known condition with the same acronym known prepandemic as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome—there is just no good evidence that vaccines are killing people this way. In fact, just the opposite. For example, here is the study I mentioned at the beginning of the post that was announced in a press release late last week that found no association between out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and COVID-19 vaccination. If you want the Cliffs Notes version, the press release is perfectly fine, but I know my readers. They want the actual study, which was published in an official journal of the American Heart Association, Circulation, and entitled No Association Between Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest and COVID-19 Vaccination.

The study comes out of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Alfred Health in Australia. In it, investigators led by cardiologist and researcher Dr. Liz Paratz asked the question: Was there a wave of sudden cardiac deaths in young people, especially associated with myocarditis, that could be correlated to vaccination against COVID-19. For this sort of study, Australia has a great resource, a database of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases known as the EndUCD registry, which investigates all OHCAs aged 1–50 years in Victoria. The other great things about this database are that it is large and very granular in the clinical detail available about all the cases recorded.

To address their questions, the authors looked at cases from three time periods:

  • Immediately before the pandemic (April 2019–Feb 2020)
  • During the pandemic but preceding vaccine availability (March 2020–January 2021)
  • a third period correlating to both COVID-19 presence in the community and vaccine availability (Feb 2021–March 2022)

These time periods were compared against age-specific vaccination and COVID-19 rates for Victorians aged 1–50 years on a monthly basis. There were two outcomes examined:

  • The primary outcome was comparison of the defined time periods against OHCA rates, unascertained OHCA or OHCA due to myocarditis.
  • The secondary outcome was causes of young sudden death within 30 days of COVID-19 vaccination, with reference to age-matched normative Australian data.

The bottom line was this:

Within the study population of 4 490 483 people, 4 166 442 people were 5 to 50 years of age and therefore eligible for vaccination during the 3-year time period; during this time they received a total of 8 776 089 vaccinations. From February 2021 to June 2021, the BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines were administered in a 50:50 ratio nationally. From June 2021 to September 2021, the BNT162b2 vaccine was the only vaccine recommended for this study population; from September 2021 onward, both the BNT162b2 and mRNA1273 vaccines were available.

A total of 2242 people experienced OHCA during the study period (unascertained OHCA, 223; myocarditis causing OHCA, 13). No variation was seen in median monthly rates of OHCA (P=0.7481), rates of myocarditis causing OHCA (P=0.7378), or unascertained OHCA (P=0.2323) according to the defined time periods (Figure [A]).

Translation: There was no difference seen in the rates of OHCA, myocarditis causing OHCA, or unascertaine OHCA (OHCA for which the cause was never found) during the time periods.

But, just to be sure, the investigators did this analysis:

Thirty-eight people (median age, 44.6 years; 63.2% male; 2.6% with a history of cardiac pathology) experienced sudden death within 30 days of their COVID-19 vaccination and were referred for forensic assessment (vaccine types: BNT162b2, 22; ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, 9; mRNA-1273, 2; and vaccination type not documented, 5). No difference was seen in underlying causes of sudden death compared with previously published age-matched data (P=0.235; Figure [B].

For those of you who like data presented visually:

No "died suddenly" here!
OHCA graphed versus COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 vaccination.

And, for those who like their conclusions very clear:

Our statewide analysis of OHCA in young people did not demonstrate increased rates of overall OHCA, myocarditis causing OHCA, or unascertained OHCA during the COVID-19 pandemic or after the introduction of nationally mandated COVID-19 vaccination. Causes of death in young people experiencing fatal OHCA within 30 days of their COVID-19 vaccination were consistent with prepandemic causative profiles.

Our registry captures the entire denominator of cardiac arrest in young people occurring within a population of 4.2 million people, with widespread COVID-19 vaccination occurring throughout the population in time period 3. Although COVID-19 vaccination (and COVID-19 itself) have been associated with cardiac complications such as myocarditis and pericarditis,5 most of these episodes have been reported to be mild in the acute phase. It is reassuring to see in our data that rates of myocarditis causing OHCA or, indeed, overall rates of OHCA in young people, showed no signal for any relationship with the introduction of widespread COVID-19 vaccination or community rates of COVID-19 infection.

The authors do note that this is an ecological study, with all the limitations of such a study design. The investigators didn’t look at patient-level data other than the forensic analyses of the cause of death of the 38 people who “died suddenly” within 30 days of COVID-19 vaccination, but that analysis failed to find any evidence of the causes of death being any different than pre-pandemic.I also like to point out that a common problem with an ecological study designs is that it will find a correlation that isn’t real or a much larger correlation than actually exists. That being said, these data are not definitive or the final word on the subject, but they do represent pretty strong evidence that, at the very minimum, COVID-19 vaccines are not causing a wave of people under 50 “dying suddenly.” I’d be willing to bet that they aren’t causing a wave of people over 50 to “die suddenly” either, but this study did not address people over 50.

I’ll conclude with an even more ridiculous example of “died suddenly” from Dr. Paul “we want them infected” Alexander. I include it because it’s a local story from the Detroit area (where I live) that’s been getting a lot of play. In brief, last week a middle school student intervened when a school bus driver became ill to take control of the bus and bring it to a safe stop. There is, of course, video, and the story made national news. He was honored on Wednesday for his heroism, as was announced earlier this week:

The Macomb County middle school student who stopped his school bus after the driver passed out will be honored by the Warren Consolidated Schools Board of Education.

Seventh-grade student Dylan Reeves will be honored for his heroic efforts Wednesday (May 3) at 31300 Anita Drive during the board meeting at 7:30 p.m. at the WCS Administration Building.

On Wednesday (April 26), students were heading home from Carter Middle School when the bus driver lost consciousness about a mile and a half down Masonic between Schoenherr and Hayes roads.

Reeves, 13, noticed the female bus driver began losing consciousness as she started veering into oncoming traffic, causing him to act swiftly by taking the wheel and slowly stopping the bus while instructing his classmates to call 911.

Dillon Reeves’ name appears to be misspelled in this account. It’s Dillon.

Cool kid, as you can see from an interview with him:

“I was just thinking just to do the right thing,” he said. “I just got up and did what’s right.”

Reeves, a seventh grader at Carter Middle School, said he saw the driver shaking and lose consciousness in the mirror, so he got up and safely stopped the bus, which had 60 people on it.

“Honestly, I didn’t really drive it. I just took over the steering wheel and stopped it before hitting a car of course because it was really close,” he said. “If I wasn’t there, I just know that It would have just been like a complete disaster.”

Once Reeves brought the bus to a stop, he yelled for others to call 911.

“I was more worried about the rest of the students on the bus, especially the bus driver,” he said.

Reeves said it was a lot to go through, but he wanted to make sure he did what was right when he saw the driver in distress.

This is what you hope kids learn. There are a lot of adults who wouldn’t have known what to do, but this 13-year old did!

Leave it to Dr. Alexander to take an uplifting story like this about the quick thinking of a 13-year-old who took charge and averted a disaster that could have resulted in the injury and deaths of his fellow students in a traffic crash and turn it into antivax disinformation:

Was this vaccine-induced myocarditis with the bus driver? What? Linked to the shot in any way? Would we be ever told the truth? Information is emerging yet as I praise Dillon as a hero and boy is he one, we have to ask questions. What is being spun to us? Once I learn more, will update. Please update me once you know more.

Dr. Alexander can’t help but also turn his crank fight with Dr. Robert “I am the inventor of mRNA vaccines” Malone (who didn’t invent mRNA vaccines) and Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, who arguably did up to 11:

Was this bus driver vaccinated? More than likely 100% to be driving that bus. Malone and Karikó and Weissman, what say you? As inventors of the core key ingredient of the mRNA technology gene injections. What say others like you who did this with your fraud untested unsafe mRNA technology? What in God’s name were you thinking? Did you ever test it for safety before you unleashed it? Is this only always about money to you people? Fame? Nobels? Why did you do this? Malone has now said para “these vaccines are not completely or properly safe”, after it was rolled out and after he knew about the lack of safety and huge risks. But that aside, that time delay in warning the world, can Dr. Malone tell us about the safety of the mRNA technology he worked on in the past and he invented and that is in the final vaccine today? Where is the safety data? Was any safety testing done with regards to the mRNA technology itself? On its own or in combination with the lipid-nano particle complex? On the nano technology itself? When he wrote the Research Gate paper I think in 2020 (? as to exact date), what did he then know about the harms of mRNA technology he invented in terms of any use in any human vaccines? Can he be open, transparent, explicit please.

I told you that this was utterly ridiculous. Nothing was reported about if or when the bus driver had been vaccinated. From the news reports, it sounds to me as though she might have had a seizure of some sort. But of course it had to be the vaccine, and of course Dr. Alexander has to claim that Reeves saved the bus driver and his fellow students on the bus from possible injury and death because the vaccine took out the bus driver. The level of conspiracy mongering here is just to over-the-top that I have to wonder if Dr. Alexander is lying.

Whether spread by liars, true believers, or grifters, though, the “died suddenly” conspiracy theory is one of the more ridiculous ones that I’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately, in the middle of the pandemic, it can be persuasive. I asked if “died suddenly” had died suddenly as a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, I think you know the answer to that question. As is the case with all conspiracy theories, “died suddenly” is immune to data, evidence, science, and reason.

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]

125 replies on “Did “Died Suddenly” just die suddenly as a conspiracy theory?”

And once again, antivaxxers mangle the evidence to fit their ideology.
Early last month, a neighbour of my parents died. He was a 76 year old widower with prostate cancer who had got fit after years of being overweight and had been under huge amounts of stress due to the actions of his younger daughter. Sadly, he was going to emigrate to live with his elder daughter and her family in England. According to these clowns, his death would have been due to the vaccine, not to his age and health problems.

So it was, of course, with both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, both of whom, old as they were (96, 99), could have lived still longer lives

Wait, but aren’t those royalties part of the shapeshifting elite, who drink blood of young children to stay young and healthy? They should be aware of the dangers of vaccines, shouldn’t they? So how could the vaccines have caused their death? Either they shouldn’t have taken the vaccine, or because of them belonging to the elite, who rule everything and know everything, they should have gotten a save version of the vaccine? /s

No, no, no! The Queen and Prince Phillip were committed to homeopathy, meaning that they cured all their ailments simply by drinking water that contained only the memory of the blood of young children.

Sadly a friend of ours has been recently subjected to a severe case of ghouling over the past month or so, her husband, 41, died in his sleep of an undiagnosed congenial cardiac issue.

As if she didn’t have enough to deal with, with two teenagers loosing their dad, a bunch of sick (I’d normally swear gratuitously at this point) people, have swamped her FB page with unsolicited comments and links to some of the Sudden Death conspiracy sites, so much so she had to max her privacy settings to keep them away.

They really do have no shame.

Pharma companies brought us the likes vioxx and opiates and even killed people with failed vaccine experiments. Equating skepticism thereof with QAnon and pizzagate is pretty laughable.

Pharma companies brought us the likes vioxx and opiates

Please explain, in your own words, your plan for addressing chronic pain. Don’t forget to figure out what rofecoxib actually is.

Killed people in failed vaccine experiements ? When id thi happen ?

What is your opinion as to the 9 mrna patents held by Dr. Malone? What were those for? I believe they go back to the 80’s. Kariko came later.

<

blockquote>. . . But we soon became more flexible, since it’s no less suspicious when somebody rich and famous, in his/her 80’s or even 90’s, just drops dead—with no cause reported, and without having been unwell, and was known to have been “vaccinated”—than when someone younger dies that way. . . . >
Let me fix that for you, Mr. Miller: “We decided to broadly widen our criteria in order to pad our numbers as much as possible because we want the scare factor publicity.”

On my machine comments appear in a typeface that’s about 100 microns high, so I miss a LOT Of typos unless I squint really hard.

re ICAN
it’s easier to go directly to highwire.com/ watch

Ooops! I mixed the order up. see below about video of Dartmouth event from high wire BS site

Anecdote time!

An MD friend of mine has an old friend who is a cardiac surgeon. They both love to fish, and went off on a long-planned fishing trip, hours from home.

It so happens that the cardiac surgeon has a son in his twenties, who got his Moderna vaccine a bit before they left.

So, they get out to their venue, and a call comes — the son is hospitalized with myocarditis!

They immdiately pack up and head back, and along the way, the poor surgeon, who knows approximately everything about the heart (my friend describes him as the single most competent person he has ever known), is worried sick about his son, describing one way after another this could go very bad.

All in vain. In a couple of days, the kid was fine.

So, these rare complications do actually happpen. In this case there were no obvious lasting sequelae, and apparently that’s pretty typical.

@ palindrom:

OT but …
@ highwiretalk has a video of ICAN’s attorney, Aaron Siri, speaking to the attendees at Dartmouth : he is introduced by RFK jr. Supposedly a group called React19 put the event together. ( 1 hour plus)

I’m sure Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó are well aware of the safety data from all the phases of testing that were done on both mRNA vaccines. I’m not so sure about Malone. And of course there is all the post authorization data as well.

But Alexander ignores all that to speculate about what might have happened in this one case.

Major kudos to the student for such quick action! It can’t be easy to step up and take over the wheel in a case like that with the driver in the way.

We do know that Dr. Malone himself was vaccinated.

So I don’t know if I give him the benefit of the doubt and think he was ignorant rather than dishonest.

Thanks. I was pretty sure the other two as active researchers would have dug into it. Malone seemed to be more into griping about not getting proper credit for his role in the process.
His research seems to have been mainly in the area of treatments for Zika and more recently SARS-CoV-2.
The one Covid-19 vaccine related article is https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9080959
He and a group of authors discuss biological mechanisms for a lot of diseases and vaccines including TTP or the Janssen vaccine. But there is no real data and it seems a bit speculative to my non-biological training.

I just paid $35 for access to this article. It seems like a newsworthy story can be written about it so I hope I have not wasted my money.

When Covid vaccine skeptics talk about “dying suddenly”, they do not mean “sudden deaths that are classified by Australian authorities as vaccine-related during the vaccination campaign”. While every antivaxxer talks about their own thing, broadly they mean “all deaths”, however classified by authorities.

The article Orac referred to, No Association Between Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest and COVID-19 Vaccination, shows no increase in OHCA at all.

This contradicts a roughly 10% increase in mortality that happened in Australia in 2021. To look at the mortality in Australia, visit STMF https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/ – then select Australia, 2021, remove “female” and “male” so you only have total mortality. Those deaths were possibly not recorded as OHCA but as “natural caus deaths”.

Something was killing Australians in 2021. It was not Covid as Covid only started around December of 2021. The death increase roughly coincided with the beginning of the vaccination campaign in February.

Also note my personal opinion, Covid vaccine does not necessarily cause ONLY increased immediate deaths. It increases mortality well past the vaccination date. Take a look at Australian mortality for 2022, which is much worse than 2021.

2023 mortality is not available for Australia in STMF. But it is available for New Zealand, which is having roughly 20% excess mortality this year. So mortality is worsening in those countries instead of improving. Sick people are swamping hospitals. Germany has daily deaths statistics which I follow and it is also experiencing excess mortality, the last week’s E.M is 17%. (DeStatis publishes a XLS spreadsheet daily)

We are living in a strange historical period of greatly increased death rates and lowered birth rates, among countries who received vaccines.

I am glad none of that is my fault in any way. I am worried for my vaccinated relatives and friends. We have a tragedy that is unfolding.

Igor’s $35 to buy access to the article was a better use of his money than the $$ he paid for black market ivermectin.

Apparently he didn’t know or care that among ivermectin’s side effects are a variety of cardiac issues, including EKG changes, hypotension and tachycardia.

“Gastrointestinal and neurological effects were the most reported (in connection with ivermectin use). Among 53 cases considered as serious, the most frequently reported concerned neurologic disorders (11 cases including 1 encephalitis, 1 coma and 1 death), respiratory disorders (8 cases including 2 deaths), gastrointestinal disorders (8 cases including 1 death) and cardiac disorders (5 cases including 2 deaths by cardiac arrest).

http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9020491/

So, that’s multiple Died Suddenly cases due to ivermectin (including two instances of cardiac arrest), in just one database. Hmm, how many of the other cases breathlessly reported by antivax ghouls might have featured unsuspected ivermectin use?

Steve Kirsch better get on this pronto.

Yeah, but those ivermectin deaths will get counted as covid deaths because hospitals get bounties for them!

Yeah, all those Australians must be dying from Ivermectin (which was essentially banned in Australia by the TGA)

P.S I agree that Ivermectin should not be taken continuously

Ivermectin was never “banned”, or even “essentially banned” in Australia.

What actually happened was that in Sep 2021, general practitioners were prevented from prescribing ivermectin for “off-label” uses, including prescribing it for COVID. Specialists in particular fields were still permitted to prescribe ivermectin as they saw appropriate.

One of reasons for the restriction (apart from the ineffectiveness of ivermectin against COVID) was to prevent off-label prescribing from using up stock of ivermectin that was needed for conditions that ivermectin is known to be effective for.

The restrictions will be lifted on 1 Jun 2023.

Now, let’s see how Australia’s “ban” has affected the COVID death rate:
USA: 3472/million
Australia: 783/million

Thees links are to the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, the federal body that regulates medicines and medical devices in Australia.
https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/new-restrictions-prescribing-ivermectin-covid-19
https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/removal-prescribing-restrictions-ivermectin

The suggestion that use of Ivermectin for Covid would “exhaust stocks of it used for intended purposes” is ludicrous and shows that the TGA was dishonest. Ivermectin is plentiful and sells for $0.30 per pill wholesale worldwide.

I bought a bunch of it for $1.80 per pill (retail). It is extremely widely available. My first two packs of IVM were $10 per pill (bought on black market) and it was the best investment of my life, as my wife had Covid shortly thereafter and IVM helped greatly. I was worried about the outcome due to certain factors.

The real reason for banning it was that Australian government knew Ivermectin worked well, so it wanted to ban it and promote the Covid vaccine instead.

Australia, an island nation, managed to postpone its Covid pandemic, so it delayed its start – but the pandemic continues unabated there and excess mortality is very high.

Australia, an island nation

Nothing like a geology fail as icing on the failcake.

“knew Ivermectin worked well, so it wanted to ban it and promote the Covid vaccine instead.”

Are you another one of these idiots who can’t tell the difference between a treatment for people WITH covid and a vaccine aimed at preventing covid? If ivermectin worked then it would be quite possible to use it as part of a combined approach. If you’re gonna claim a conspiracy then at least blame it on a drug designed to treat a covid infection.

The real reason for banning it…

As was pointed out twice Igor, Australia did not ban it. Why did you triple down on that particular lie?

Once more for the cheap seats:

IVM HAS NO PLACE IN COVID WHATSOEVER

You’re a tragically ridiculous broken record.

@Igor Chudov TGA means certified supply, no pill pusher in Internet. And ivermectin does not cure COVID, Some prove, please.

Excess deaths may not be caused by vaccination,have you ever though that ? So there is no contradiction.
Again UK ONS has data of deaths by vaccination status:
ttps://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland
You can check them.
I notice that you think that all governements of the world are part of conspiracy. Quite far fethed, is it not ?

Oh my god, do you mean humans are actually immortal?, so if we actually die it cuz ov da jibby jabbys?

“The article Orac referred to, No Association Between Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest and COVID-19 Vaccination, shows no increase in OHCA at all”

“This contradicts a roughly 10% increase in mortality that happened in Australia in 2021”

Conveniently classifying all deaths as heart attacks?

Hit by a car? Heart attack. Fell off a ladder? Heart attack. Murdered by neighbour? Heart attack.

Sounds familiar. Sounds like what Dr fix said about Covid death reporting. Apparently what’s good for the goose isn’t so good for the gander.

There again these falsified death certificates. Can you tell us details of the plot ?

They aren’t ‘falsified’ in that the government (CDC) set this as the policy. They are just wrong in a factual sense. Look up Dr. Birx and death certificates. I’ve posted here many times.

Can you tell us details of the plot ?

channeling john to imagine his answer:

the plot is huge. everyone in the medical area is involved, corrupted by money from soros, gates, and others worldwide. it’s too big to go into here. worth a google though.

I personally wrote over a dozen that stated “Acute Hypoxic Respiratory Failure due to COVID Pneumonia.”

Labarge seems to think the COVID part was superfluous or dishonest. Just goes to show how big of a deranged fool he really is.

Here’s one from last week: “Hypotensive shock due to intrathoracic ballistic trauma.” I’m sure Labarge thinks the bullets weren’t the cause.

He’s such a big medical expert; and such an expert on how death certificates work. He’s spent so many hours working in hospitals.

He also thinks we all lied when we swore an oath. That oath wasn’t to Big Fartmah or whatever else his diseased brain envisions. If a doctor lies on a death certificate it is we who can be penalized. Labarge thinks we were all lying to make the hospital a couple more bucks. More incontrovertible proof he’s got ZERO clue what he’s talking about.

ZERO

Labarge knows about as much about how healthcare works as I do about how to run the collider at CERN.

If he had any dignity or sense he would be ashamed.

Not really. I understand what you mean but deliberately ignoring covid as a cause or contributing factor leads to underestimation of its dangers. Health agencies need to know what all the effects of covid are, in order to plan a response.

For instance, when looking into the dangers of alcohol, taking account of people who have fallen into rivers and drowned while pissed is totally valid. It’s no good whining that the person drowned and therefore didn’t die of alcohol.

It also happens with canals, when drunk people decide to pee in the canal.

Bottom line is if it was Covid the vaccines didn’t work; if it was the vaccines the vaccines didn’t work and if it was lockdowns the officials pushing the vaccines aren’t trustworthy. In any case the public health apparatus is at best a liability due to incompetence. probably a reckless collection of Big Pharma conflicted authoritarians, and maybe even evil- attempt to force their wares on folks rather than compete against other solutions.

Almost all developed countries have lower Covid-19 and excess deaths then the USA (https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext)… And less vaccinated states have higher Covid-19 and excess deaths than more vaccinated (Bilinski A, Emanuel EJ. COVID-19 and excess all-cause mortality in the US and 18 comparison countries. JAMA. 2020;324(20):2100-2102. doi:10.1001/jama. 2020.20717).

He can’t, or maybe he doesn’t want to. John seems more interested in making wild accusations than evidence-based arguments.

maybe even evil- attempt to force their wares on folks rather than compete against other solutions

Which “other solutions” would those be, LaBilge?

Antivaxers will be busy trying to dismiss the new study by fanning any conceivable link between its authors and Big Pharma. Maybe their health care facility once got a grant from a drug company for something. If not, perhaps they’ve shopped at Rite-Aid or Walgreens.

There’s gotta be a link!

Lied suddenly.

(Mark Crispin Miller is an HIV denier, which implies he wants HIV people not to take medication, which also implies he’s fine with them dying to prove him correct about the lack of viral cause of AIDS or something – and he’s teaching in lower Manhattan, Ground Zero for some of the worst HIV epidemic in the USA. Shameless ghoul. No doubt he will be part of the RFK Junior campaign.)

These people are truly beyond belief. What happens in the brains of highly trained medical professionals that sends them down these rabbit holes? Are their politics running roughshod over their medical training? Is it that once they’ve been shown to be wrong they double down rather than admit error? Is there a common denominator? Narcissism? They’re starting to sound as unhinged as the average nut getting their information from social media instead of medical journals.

@ Igor Chudov

You write: “Something was killing Australians in 2021. It was not Covid as Covid only started around December of 2021.”

Though I found several articles, Wikipedia’s Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia (2020) says it all. First cases January 2020 and the article documents almost weekly increases in cases. So, your claim it “only started around December of 2021” is off by almost two years.

And you can also find deaths by year and month, including 2020 and 2021 in Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022 Sep 10). COVID-19 Mortality in Australia: Deaths registered until 31 August 2022.

You just keep proving you are a sick dishonest ignorant excuse for a human being.

According to Our World in Data, Australia had 1,540 Covid deaths during 2021. (Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths)

During the same period of 2021, Australia experienced approximately 4,372 excess deaths. (Excess mortality: Cumulative number of deaths from all
causes compared to projection based on previous years, per million people)

So it was not Covid that was killing Australians in 2021 – 2/3 of the excess mortality was “something other than Covid”.

Oddly enough, I know that, because I live in Australia.

Can you tell me how it contradicts the fact that more than 2000 Australians died of COVID before you claimed that COVID first arrived in Australia?

By the way, since Orac mentions data from Victoria, Australia:

The state of Victoria is busy DESTROYING VACCINATION RECORDS of its citizens.

“21E Destruction of COVID-19 vaccination
information
An employer must destroy COVID-19
vaccination information recorded or held
under regulation 21D within 30 days after
the revocation of this Part (the specified
destruction date), unless a law of Victoria or
the Commonwealth or of any other State or
Territory—
(a) requires the information to be destroyed
on a day that is earlier than the
specified destruction date; or
(b) permits or requires the information to
be retained on or after the specified
destruction date.
21F Revocation of Part
This Part is revoked on 12 July 2023.”

They are literally destroying evidence of who was vaccinated. Guess why 🙂

The Victorian (Australian state) government is telling companies not to unnecessarily retain health information about employees.

The official COVID vaccination records of Australians are held by the Australian federal government, not by the states. I can access mine any time I want to. It also keeps track of all my other vaccinations for me.

Igor once again demonstrates his ignorance. I have lost count of the topics that Igor knows nothing about.

I live in Australia. My COVID-19 vaccination status is held by the Commonwealth Government, not by my employer or the state I live in.

Regulation 21D mentioned is this:
Collection and use of COVID-19 vaccination information
(1) For the purposes of performing a duty imposed by Part 3 of the Act or these Regulations, an employer is authorised to collect, record, hold and use COVID-19 vaccination information from a specified person who attends or will be attending a workplace under the employer’s management or control to do the following—

(a) to determine reasonably practicable measures to control the risks to health and safety associated with COVID-19 at that workplace;

(b) to implement any reasonably practicable control measure to control the risks to health and safety associated with COVID-19 at that workplace.

(2) If immediately before the commencement of this regulation an employer holds COVID-19 vaccination information that was collected pursuant to the Public Health and Welling Act 2008 about a specified person who attends or will be attending a workplace under the employer's management or control, the employer is authorised to record, hold and use that information for the purposes of subregulation (1).

Employers were allowed to collect vaccination data during emergency and were now ordered to destroy it.

@ Igor Chudov

You write: “2023 mortality is not available for Australia in STMF. But it is available for New Zealand, which is having roughly 20% excess mortality this year. So mortality is worsening in those countries instead of improving. . . We are living in a strange historical period of greatly increased death rates and lowered birth rates, among countries who received vaccines.”

“Government officials and academic experts in New Zealand confirm the country saw its largest year-over-year increase in deaths in a century last
year. The number of deaths in the country hit 38,574 in 2022, up 10% from 34,932 in 2021, according to a release last month from Stats NZ, the
country’s official data agency. . .But officials and experts say the culprit isn’t COVID-19 vaccines.

Rebekah Hennessey, an analyst with Stats NZ, said a significant factor is the nation’s growing but aging population. New Zealand’s population has grown by roughly 9% since 2015, while the number of people aged 65 and over has increased by 18%, according to the agency’s data. . .“More people in older ages is going to mean more deaths even if the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t happen,” Hennessey explained in an email.

Last year’s death figures underscore these demographic trends: nearly two in every three deaths were among people aged 75 years or older and about
one in five were among those 90 and older, according to the agency.

The pandemic itself was the other key driver. Around 2,400 of all deaths last year were attributable to COVID-19, Stats NZ said in its Feb. 20 release, citing national health data.”

[Phillip Marcelo (2023 Mar 7). Deaths rise in New Zealand due to COVID, demographic shifts. AP News]

“This increase – attributed to Covid-19 and an ageing population”

[Julia Gabel and Chris Knox (2023 Feb 19). New Zealand records biggest increase in registered deaths in 100 years NZ Herald.]

So, yep, mortality is worsening; but not due to vaccines; but to aging population and actual covid infections

You write: “I am glad none of that is my fault in any way. I am worried for my vaccinated relatives and friends”

Actually, given that overwhelming international data clearly show that vaccinations reduces severe covid, hospitalizations, and deaths, if anyone believes your incredibly stupid dishonest antivax comments and gets severely sick, hospitalized, or dies from actual covid, it is your fault. Unfortunately, there are many people who can easily be swayed by false arguments, people who don’t take the time to double check. In my refutations of your many bogus comments, on average it has taken me 10 minutes or less searching the internet.

So, you were wrong about Australia and wrong about New Zealand. In fact, you have been wrong in almost every single sentence you’ve written in your comments; yet, you ignore when I and other clearly show how wrong you are and JUST KEEP MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF

NZ Herald disingenuously compares 2022 to 2021, showing a 10% increase, but 2021 itself was a year of greatly increased mortality (also not due to Covid). They intentionally used 2021 for comparison to understate the extent of NZ’s die-off.

NZ Herald and Stuff (another NZ newspaper) are financed by the NZ government. Both publications, and the same government led by the former health minister Chris Hipkins, bear direct fault for poisoning Kiwis with Covid vaccines. Naturally, they are afraid of the grave responsibility and the consequences of the public realizing that millions of Kiwis were poisoned, so they continue to insist that the excess deaths in NZ are no big deal and they are “not because of vaccines”.

20% increase in mortality is basically unheard of and is many standard deviations away from the norm. Supposedly, these deaths are not because of Covid (because “vaccines work” right?).

So what causes these excess deaths? There is no answer and no attempt to find out. The fact that the government of NZ is not spending great resources honestly investigating mortality, saying they have no idea what causes it, but saying “but we are sure it is not the vaccines”, tells us what we need to know.

The desperate government of NZ is busy trying to distract its dying population by making up new crises around meaningless issues, while excess deaths continue. They might succeed and distract their citizens from the fact that they were dying.

We live in interesting times!

20% increase in mortality is basically unheard of and is many standard deviations away from the norm.

How many is ‘many’ here? Do show your work.

Brave Sir Igor seems to have run away, just as with the mystery Z-test routine in the comments from an earlier post.

Somebody should give LaBilge coconuts.

As I have said multiple times,UK ONS do have deaths by vaccination status
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland
If cause of excess mortality were vaccines, these data would show it
Do you know that older people are more probable to die ? Start speaking about age adjusted excess deaths.
NZ death rate is here
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/death-rate
It turned worse at 2007.

Naturally, they are afraid of the grave responsibility and the consequences of the public realizing that millions of Kiwis were poisoned

And . . . Paging Smut Clyde.

Quoth Igor: NZ Herald and Stuff (another NZ newspaper) are financed by the NZ government.

No, they really aren’t. That awful tabloid rag the NZ Herald is owned by NZ Media & Entertainment. Its editorial stance is pretty much centre-right. Most of its revenue from advertising & from subscribers. Similarly Stuff is largely funded via advertising, subscriptions, & donations from supporters. Both get also get some funding from NZ On Air, but this is not the same as what you’re trying to imply, that they’re solely funded by the government.

Naturally, they are afraid of the grave responsibility and the consequences of the public realizing that millions of Kiwis were poisoned

Dunno why they should be, given there’s no evidence that this has actually happened.

We have an aging population, Igor; that plus the well-documented impact of covid-19 infection on cardiovascular health (among many other effects of the virus) helps explain the data that you’re trying to spin into something it’s not.

Australian bureau of statistics does have data for January 2023.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release
They do age adjustment for you
In 2023, there were 14,547 deaths that occurred by 31 January and were registered by 31 March. This is 1,605 deaths (12.4%) more than the baseline average, but 1,713 (10.5%) less than in 2022.
12,813 of the deaths occurring in January 2023 were doctor certified and 1,734 were coroner referred.
The age-standardised death rate (SDR) for January was 40.7 deaths per 100,000 people, slightly lower than the baseline average (41.1) and below the rate for 2022 (47.0).
As for causes of death,you would love this:
Deaths due to ischaemic heart disease were 8.7% below the baseline average in January 2023 and 16.5% lower than January 2022.
There is a graph for deaths. Deaths in January are going down baseline is almost unchange

Aarno, thanks. I took a look. I believe that January data is not yet complete (look at the chart “All deaths by week of occurrence by publication release date”). That may affect death rates, especially among younger people who deaths may take more time to process.

Or it may not. Is there a selective bias here, making daa of young people specifically bad ?

It’s strange the Igor didn’t mention that the miscarriage data that he was “analyzing” was also incomplete. I suppose these things only matter to him when the finding is inconsistent with his priors.

Barry Humphries died last week at age 89. I am sure he will become a “Died Suddenly” statistics. I am equally sure that Dame Edna Everage, Sandy Stone, Sir Les Patterson and Bazza McKenzie will also join the list.

Everyone who has died, young or old have died because from the vaccines. Cause of death doesn’t matter. It is always the vaccines, even if they get run over by a car.

Similar standard for Covid deaths but y’all aren’t curious about those.

I don’t know the details of the plot. I can speculate – get people scared so that they can push mass mail in voting, quiet antiestablishment movements across the world, transfer wealth out of small business and make people terrified enough of a bad cold to be willing subjects of an mRNA experiment. But it’s always been that no matter how many preexisting conditions a patient had including terminal cancer a positive Covid test meant a Covid death; but no matter how proximate to the vaccine VITT, myocarditis, heart attack or stroke – folks here will look to the ends of the earth to discount the vaccine.

How mail voting is related to vaccination ? Who get the wealth wealth of small businesses. Bad cold killed 1200000 in US. Terminal cancer ? As DrYeti said, You know nothing death certiicates. Terminal association is very different thing than an actual test.

No… But I can understand that you would like to think that, making it easier for you to ignore those that disagree with you.

This pisses me off but that’s why you do it.

People DIED you absolute bottom feeder. Their loved ones pounded on ICU windows while they died because they couldn’t visit before we had vaccines. It was HORRIBLE.

You are a sick son of a bitch, a pathetic misanthrope, and a degenerate public health/healthcare operations dilettante.

The people who served in those roles to keep you and your family safe and to treat you should you need it do not deserve your slander, your disrespect, or your capriciousness.

We didn’t make those deaths up. We are NOT exaggerating them. You should be ashamed.

That link respecting ventilator infection probably explains why the French doctor had antibiotics in his treatment stack.

From the conclusion of the paper that labarge’s linked article is summarizing:

” Unsuccessful treatment of VAP is associated with greater mortality. The relatively long length of stay among patients with COVID-19 is primarily due to prolonged respiratory failure, placing them at higher risk of VAP.”

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/170682

More proof you don’t know what the hell you’re taking about.

Anyone with COVID on a vent got broad spectrum antibiotics.

Sad ignoramus. Keep clutching at any fail straw you can find that seems to confirm your misbegotten certitude.

Wow, that’s 5 vaccine deaths for the price of 5. Special offer.

I was wondering about that.

Dame Edna did write an obituary for Barry Humphries in the Daily Telegraph.

At 64, sometimes I have senior moments. Must be the vaccines and boosters.

@ Igor Chudov

You cite an Australian Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (COVID-19 Vaccination Information) Regulations 2022
S.R. No. 53/2022.

You write: “They are literally destroying evidence of who was vaccinated. Guess why”

As usual you don’t do your homework and intentionally misinterpret something based on your stupid antivax bias. Yep, refers to employers keeping records of who was vaccinated, something that during the height of the pandemic they did; but the actual permanent records are held by the Australian government and, or course, by individuals on their respective vaccine cards, which some specific employers may require and for international travel.

Here is Australian official summary of what you cited:

“The Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (COVID-19 Vaccination Information) Regulations 2022 enable employers to collect, record, hold and use COVID-19 vaccination information from specified persons attending a workplace under their management or control in order to determine and to implement reasonably practicable measures to control COVID-19 risks.

The regulations do not impose any new obligations on employers.
A specified person includes employees, independent contractors and their employees, volunteers and students on placement permitted to attend the workplace.

The regulations, which were introduced following the removal of certain vaccination requirements under the Pandemic Orders, commenced today and will be in effect until 12 July 2023. Any COVID-19 vaccination information recorded or held under these regulations must be destroyed within 30 days of this date, unless the information is otherwise required to be destroyed earlier or retained after this date.

Employers are reminded that a worker’s COVID-19 vaccination status is sensitive health information and that there are legal obligations under other legislation which may impact their powers under these new regulations.
The new regulations do not affect an employer’s duty to, so far as reasonably practicable, consult with employees when making decisions about the measures to be taken to control risks to health or safety.

Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (COVID-19 Vaccination Information) Regulations 2022”

[Regulations to allow collection of COVID-19 vaccination status (2022 Jul 12)]. available at: https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/news/2022-07/regulations-allow-collection-covid-19-vaccination-status

And here is info on official Australian government vaccine registry.

“You can get a COVID-19 digital certificate or immunisation history statement online to:

prove you’ve had COVID-19 vaccinations
keep track of all vaccinations you’ve had
see if any vaccinations are overdue or are due soon
prove your vaccinations are up to date for education, employment and travel purposes.”

[Get a COVID-19 digital certificate or immunisation history statement] at: https://my.gov.au/en/services/health-and-disability/Coronavirus-COVID-19-vaccinations/get-proof-of-your-COVID-19-vaccination/get-a-covid-19-digital-certificate-or-immunisation-history-statement

Igor, you really are a stupidly dishonest sick antivax biased individual. And as I’ve written umpteen times, you don’t understand immunology, basically that vaccines create same memory immune cells as created during an actual disease; but without suffering through the disease. Simply our immune system doesn’t recognize intact, whole “functioning” microbes; but only small parts called antigenic determinants, so vaccineS present these. And you ignore solid US data and international data comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated on hospitalizations and deaths.

YOU ARE A SICK SICK SICK ASSHOLE. ASSHOLE IS APPROPRIATE BECAUSE YOU AND OTHER ANTIVAXXERS IGNORE ANY AND ALL REFUTATIONS OF YOUR ANTIVAX COMMENTS AND MAY BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SUFFERING AND DEATHS OF PEOPLE WHO READ WHAT YOU WRITE AND ARE TOO STUPID TO DO FURTHER RESEARCH. SO, YOU MAY HAVE PEOPLE’S SUFFERING AND DEATH ON YOUR HANDS.

Igor Chudov’d checked his sources.

I also acuse anti vaxxers as culpable murderers whereby people have died after taking in their shit. There have been plenty of thise stories all over the Internet.

Joel:

Get a COVID-19 digital certificate or immunisation history statement

I have a copy of my Australian COVID-19 digital certificate sitting on my phone, updated last month when I got my booster. I haven’t needed to show it to anyone for quite a while, though.

Oh Jesus F. Spaghetti, Mark Crispin Miller… He wrote some sharp media criticism back in the day, and I used one of his essays in a couple classes I taught. I don’t know anything about him personally, so he might have been a little wiggy back then in ways that didn’t show in his work. I also can’t posit an explanation about why he’s now gone so completely off his nut, but he most surely has. [As tenured faculty at NYU, I doubt he’s in it for the grift, or just adopting this as a cynical ploy to some other end. I take it as some kind of messianic true-believer delusion.]

I’d guess Denise might note that as a media studies professor, he’s oddly untroubled by being way out of his area of expertise and education. On one hand, I think that’s less frightening than the same garbage coming from Paul Alexander, who not only has some medical science credentials, but was in a position to influence policy in ways that played into the deaths of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. On the other hand, there might be something more frightening here in another way — why would anybody be faithfully following a rogue humanties professor’s takes on an outrageous conspiracy theory? I mean, really, as Orac aptly demonstrates, attributing Gordon Lightfoot’s death to vaccines could pass for the reductio ad absurdum of an Onion parody. I suppose I should know better by this point… maybe I do know better… but I still find it disturbing that this is getting any traction at all. I guess it hits at the heart, regardless of the head.

The head still struggles to make some sense of these phenomena, to see if this evidence can point to some useful wider understanding of… something. Orac tags part of the SMH factor: it’s puzzling and depressing that anything is so “immune to data, evidence, science, and reason.” Puzzling though it may be, I’ve certainly learned it’s a not un-common occurrence. The example that comes to my mind this morning is the brilliant video documentary “Lord of the Universe” about the seemingly inexplicable cult that surrounded Guru Mahara Ji in the mid-seventies. (Like a lot of CTs and other assorted weirdness, this movement had drawn in a previously respected figure you might think wouldn’t fall for this stuff: Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis.) What’s particularly brilliant about the documentary is how it’s both funny and tragic at the same. On the one hand the whole grift is silly and trivial enough to laugh at, but on the other you see the signs of the real troubles that have led the followers to seek “enlightenment”, and feel worry for the consequences of the inevitable let-down. I think a lot of common CTs are known among non-believers more for their comic elements: Flat Earth, Illuminati, Flouridation, and of course the Reptilian Alien NWO. Maybe we focus on these because their wigginess offers a degree of comfort, lest we fully admit the psychic vulnerabilities of our species? Anyway, by comparison, there really isn’t anything comparably funny about “died suddenly”, despite the Onion level outrageousness. It’s too damn serious. As space-upstairs has noted here recently, COVID ant-vax is unconsciously (subconsciously?) suicidal.

The third chunk of the WTF trifecta is inter-related to the seriousness. There’s just so damn many people drawn into conspiracy theory now. Orac is certainly correct that the trauma of the pandemic made CTs like ‘died suddenly’ more attractive. (I don’t know if this was a thing before the pandemic for other vaccines, as earlier angst was almost all about jabs for youngsters, but I certainly imagine it could have been a minor theme at the edges, and yet another area where old tropes have been recycled and retconned.) But, here’s the thing I thing we all (collectively) haven’t properly grasped: the massive increase in bat-sh!t crazy that preceded the pandemic. I am, of course, referring to Trumpism, or ‘the worldwide explosion of populism (fascism)’, but not just that, there’s growth in other weirdness less defined by far-right partisanship as well. Anyway, I don’t have a number, but what would the maximum spread of old-school antivax have been, even just in California. The problem, after all, was that while a small minority overall, it was clustered geographically enough to threaten population immunity from measles etc. So what, 5% at most?? Maybe less?? It was fringe, as indeed most conspiracy theories have been. Yet some mix of the conspiracy theories underlying Trumpism have been embraced by something like 30% of the adult population of the US, completely captured one of the major political parties, and turned it away from democracy. The Donald’s Tweets/’Truths’ notwithstanding, the leading voice of this movement and its CTs, Tucker Carlson, had the most-watched program on cable television. Something big – much bigger than vaccines, or anything relating to public health for that matter – has broken in our culture. Not to pick on what may just be poorly stated remark, but a ‘minion’ wrote the other day, “in the US the GOP now is effectively the political wing of the AV cult.” Nope. Ass backwards. The GOP is now the political outlet of the old AV cult, but that’s a case of the AV cult having been swallowed entirely by a much larger fascist alternative reality, with the exponentially increased number of people who have adopted antivax views doing so primarily as a badge of allegiance to side in the Great Culture War.

I feel the need to offer this bit of context on my commentary: this Bigger Thing, this major socio/cultural force that is not only crazy but f-ing evil has troubled me to the extent where my clinical depression accelerated and I became thoroughly non-functional, on the edge of suicidal despair, to the point where I entered ECT despite my feelings that (admittedly earlier versions) similar therapy had not helped my father’s depression, and might have actual harmed him. I think it helped me some fwiw, but I attribute my current non-crisis state more to volunteer work at Habitat for Humanity keeping me busy, and ketamine infusion therapy I’ve been getting from Kaiser…

With my brain now functioning more-or-less, instead of just despairing at this Bigger Thing, I seek to comprehend it better. To ask why it has happened (social media algorithms being one part, yes, but that’s also symptomatic of something deeper), what it all means, and what I or anyone might do about it. Looking around, where I don’t see denial that it’s even there, or minimization, or panglossian projections that it will just go away, I see other people more or less as dumbfounded as I am on all those counts. So while I guess Miller’s wacko “project” of ‘documenting’ sudden deaths is somehow symptomatic of the Bigger Thing, I imagine that this evidence, properly interpreted, might lead to some helpful more specific hypothesis, that deciphering this exemplar might reveal something useful about at least the antivax arm of the Bigger Thing. But I can’t put my finger on anything….

I mean, I take Miller to be part of that parallel weirdness that connects to something other than Fox-ist culture wars. Oh, there are crossover elements, but the paranoia seems to be coming from something other than fears of CRT, BLM, immigrants, gender-affirming care, yadda yadda yadda. There’s a (fairly) little gang of pundits and journalists previously known through more-or-less ‘liberal’ outlets who are now all in on COVID denial and antivax, e.g. especially Matt Taibbi, and maybe you could put Naomi Wolf in there as well. These people come from a demographic more akin to many old-school antivaxers – not politically conservative (not that this necessarily makes them ‘left’), not rural, not poorly educated. Yet, AFAIK, they weren’t drawn to antivax prior to the pandemic, though they may, like Wolf and (I think) Miller, have been veering into other conspiracy territories prior… I wonder who’s in the audience for their Substacks: old-school AVs? Trumpy AVs? Kirsch-ean tecno-libertarian bros? Shape shifting reptillians? Maybe in my younger days I would have tried to find out, but I don’t have the mental or physical energy anymore.

Hmm. I’m rambling, and lacking a suitable concluding thought to draw this to some sort of closure, so I’ll just stop…

@ sadmar:

Mark Crispin Miller definitely writes outside his area of expertise ( see article about him on Wikipedia) often venturing into conspiracy mongering. His work appears on prn.live through its chief honcho.

re “parallel weirdness” ( Taibbi, Wolf) : that’s a good describer. I don’t know what else to call them but they sometimes choose odd bedfellows – Taibbi with Musk and Wolf with Bannon! I hear about their latest views/ audios via the usual suspects prn/ NN/ CHD. Formerly known as liberals, perhaps?

I’ve commented about Wolf’s uncanny ability to botch numbers ( see Wikipedia on her) and calling herself a feminist whilst sometimes taking very interesting positions ( too much to go into now)
BUT what do all of them have in common ?
They have very little education in life science! Yet they pontificate.

How do I know this? They misuse terminology, seem to not comprehend important concepts AND they don’t brag about studying it … when they ooze braggadocio about everything else!

*Most of my regular targets appear to have little or no basic bio or physio. They make obvious mistakes. I’m not a physician or biologist but started out undergrad in this area and then had lots of graduate study relevant to psych ( physio, developmental, pharmacology, aging, illnesses, perception).

You certainly know by now that I don’t think “very little education in life science” is particularly relevant regarding what contributes to people becoming antivax crusaders. Most such folks (me, for example; I didn’t even have HS biology) are sensible enough to stay in their lanes, and there’s no shortage of folks with sterling educations in life science who’ve gone weird. Yesterday, on the last thread, I remarked on Dr. Scott Jensen, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota for the last election, who put COVID anti-vax as the central theme of his overall Trumpist campaign. Before the pandemic, he’d been a GOP moderate in the state senate, known for more bipartisanship than most of his party, and a thoroughly conventional “family physician.”

What I speculated above was it might be telling that so many people give credibility to anti-vax crusaders who have no health science background. But on second thought, that’s probably not that significant. Which is to say the AV minions probably see the likes of Miller or Del or the random poster on Facebook as communicators, Paul Revere’s of the conspiracy, just spreading the news gleaned from the small army of educated and credentialed nutters: Malone, McCullough, Mercola, Malhotra… and that’s just some of the ‘M’s. This is pseudo-science, which means you need some expertise or outside knowledge to distinguish the faux version from the real thing.

By “parallel weirdness”, I meant parallel to the Trumpy Tucker-spread virtue signaling anti-vax, in that there are folks who’ve gone down the COVID rabbit hole who have no history of ties to that sort of politics. So I conclude they took some different route to wind up at a similar place. I realized that the fact their work may have circulated mainly in “liberal” circles doesn’t necessarily make them liberals (Wolf especially). Left/right distinctions tend to over-generalize, especially outside the rightist movement, where there’s actually a crazy smorgasbord of positions bncolaged out of bric-a-brac from the ideological thrift shop. None of that probably applies to Wolf, whose only consistency seems to be signs of a personality disorder. But there’s a kind of cynical, individualist ideology particular to political journalists, that I could see playing a role in Taibbi cozying up to Musk.

Here’s the hypothesis I’m entertaining about the breadth of weirdness — of which anti-vax is really just a tiny sliver, if perhaps a representative one: We are seeing so many people ‘break’ because they are experiencing something like an instinctual apprehension that we are headed toward an abyss. Folks are careening all over the place like animals who sense the coming of a natural disaster… There are a variety of spectres, no doubt, not the least of which being that we ARE heading straight into a climate disaster the lead ripples of which are already lapping at our ankles. I suspect the masses who just put the spectres out of mind as they go about their daily routines, and even the outright denialists, consider at some deep level that homo sapiens have finally breached the Promethean point-of-no-return. The angst rising up from this is magnified by the perception that the problem sneaked up on us while we were worrying about other potential apocalypses: nukes, biological warfare, wayward asteroids… and we’re stuck facing an avalanche with too much momentum to stop.

Put another way: it probably doesn’t matter how much science or what kind of commitments to principle are woven together in the rug you stand on if you feel the rug being jerked out from under you, lower your gaze just for an instant, and see nothing but blackness all the way down….

[But then, I’m a depressive, so YMMV, :- ) ]

@ sadmar:

I agree there might be a whiff of Gotterdammerung ** about and people may now be casting their fears on whatever seems evil. And media/ internet certainly exacerbates that.

Back to my own pathway:
I focus on how readers can spot BS :
OK, you say you had very little bio BUT still, you are able to ferret out crap and point out why it’s bad. I imagine that like other regulars ( in physics, software, law, engineering etc). you know how to look up stuff and can also easily detect that phony, know-it-all voice.

The M woo-meisters/ doctors you mention are tricksier: they can disguise their woo in trappings of actual research – they’re better
liars, better with language and do have prestigious credentials. Also Del’s attorney, Siri.

The alties I discuss most cosplay great expertise and simultaneously appear similar to the audience- not over-educated, not a member of the elite- altho’ brilliant- and just like the audience, tired of being held down by elitist arrogance. Both consider themselves rebels about to shift the corrupt paradigm- and Fauci with it! Psychologists found CT and anti-vax believers show narcissistic and paranoid trends and reject hierarchies of expertise.

So what gives these poseurs away to the newbie w/o bio?
— they steer followers away from standard lit/ experts
— too much back story about their humble beginnings
— like other accomplished liars, they include too many details
— all or nothing results; SB treatments= BAD; WOO= ALL GOOD
— a sanctimonious tone; their charities
— religious references

There’s a lot more but I am currently really tired

** my grandmother used to say people were similarly terrified when 1900 neared

Since I have little to do today…

I thought I might expand my thoughts about how non-medical people can spot alt med/ anti-vax mis-information more easily:
–one of the biggest tells is how much they frighten followers relying upon pre-existing anxiety especially in times of crisis: they fear monger about health issues as well as societal woes often mixing them together in a word (y) salad exploring the variety of intrinsic malignancy surrounding the public.

Vaccines are dangerous. So are hospitals. So are gangs and cities. Doctors cause harm. So do meds. So do most foods.

Health care and mental health providers usually TRY to allay the public’s unwarranted fears by providing information without omitting real risks that they should know. SBM shows a cost/ benefit analyses of risk by clearly stating the numbers.

Because I’ve worked counselling people ( in various situations) I can recognise when someone is doing the exact opposite: they capitalise on fear and worry. They ramp up uncertainty by listing all of the dire outcomes that might ensue but they are highly selective in their chosen topics:
vaccines, not the illness, are deadly
meds, not the condition, are dangerous
government is the problem, not a solution.

–they do include grains of truth to capture audience attention

— they provide easy solutions for complex problems.
If cancer is a worry, they provide a perfect solution by providing formulae and foods that prevent it.
if an infectious disease is rampant, they show you how to entirely avoid it through enhancing immunity
if crime is worrisome, they encourage moving to simpler, rural areas ( and sell you seminars about ” best places”)

–They blame victims who become ill/ die despite “doing the right thing” to cover themselves.

— They insult and blame professionals whilst falsely claiming expertise.

@ Igor Chudow

You write on New Zealand: “20% increase in mortality is basically unheard of and is many standard deviations away from the norm.”

First, one has to look at actual numbers. For instance, if 10 die from some disease one year and 30 die the next, it is tripling; but if 100 die and then next year 20 only 20% increase. So, percentage increase based on actual first number. If you actually looked at what I cited, New Zealand had a large increase in senior citizens, including above the age of 90. You do realize that as we age our risk of dying increases? So, if more people at higher ages, well . . .

Unheard of? Really? How about the 1918 flu pandemic?: In the United States, a quarter of the population caught the virus, 675,000 died, and life expectancy dropped by 12 years”

1957 flu pandemic had huge increase in deaths over previous years, 116,000 who died from flu. And if you go back to earlier history, Smallpox killed 1/3 of Boston’s population in early 1600s, yellow fever, measles, flu, and many other diseases killed many, sometimes just one region, sometimes throughout the nation prior to 20th Century.

YOU JUST KEEP ON DISPLAYING YOUR STUPIDLY DISHONEST ANTIVAX BIAS. NEVER HEARD OF THE 1918 FLU PANDEMIC, YOU STUPID STUPID SICK SICK LOWLIFE?.

@ Igor Chudov

Reasons for increased deaths besides actual COVID include:

increase in antibiotic resistant infections, so more people dying from bacterial infections
global warming, literally people who can’t afford air-conditioning or outside, increased deaths
toxins from fossil fuels estimated to cause 100,000 premature deaths in US
microscopic particles of plastics now found in all of us, including infants
huge increase in consuming of processed foods. When I was growing up we always had a tossed salad, some sort of meat/fish, potatoes or rice, and cooked vegetable, now lots of junk foods
large percentage of population don’t do regular exercise; e.g., simply walking a mile several times per week
consumption alcohol and other recreational drugs
Pesticides often create reactive oxygen species which damage all of our cells.

All in all, several papers conclude that American life-expectancy is shortening and they don’t attribute it to vaccines because to some extent vaccines counter the above; but only to some extent.

I could give list of papers supporting above; but I know you will ignore because you live in your own sick reality. As Renate wrote above, basically it is always the vaccines in your sick mind.

We antivaxxers love making fun of this pro-vaccine quack trope “people started dying at greatly increased rates since 2021 because of global warming”.

Like they were not using fossil fuels before 2021, haha.

Yes, but global warming is a slow proces, so at some point it may influence the lives of people. The amount of carbondioxide gets bigger, just like the amount of other chemicals produced by burning fossil fuels. So the influence will get bigger as well.

If you eat more calories, than you need, you might get fatter. At some point you might get overweighted and if you still keep eating more calories thant you burn, at some point this overweight might have a bad influence on your health.

In a way it is the same with burning fossil fuels and global warming.

In the summer of 2021, western Canada and northwest US experienced an unprecedented heat dome for about a week in June. Record all-time highs were set all over BC. 619 people died from the heat in BC alone. I experienced the second highest temp ever recorded in Canada – 47.3C (117F).
Global climate change doesn’t account for all the increased deaths but it certainly helps.

https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/blogs/science-health/surviving-heat-impacts-2021-western-heat-dome-canada#:~:text=Residents%20of%20British%20Columbia%20won,June%2025%20to%20July%201.

Igor Chudov. Perhaps you should pop over to sorryantivaxxer.com for examples of people dying because they believe the crass, irresponsible diatribe of ant vaxxers like yourself. There are hundreds of storys BUT what is quite unique is the storys are all in their own words from their social media accounts.

This is what YOU doing, killing people.

Is there a pool on which pharmaceutical company Walensky is going to?

@ johnlabarge

You write: “Is there a pool on which pharmaceutical company Walensky is going to?”

Just some info about Rochelle Wolensky:

Walensky had been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School since 2001, first as an instructor, then as a professor. Walensky was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2012 to 2020, and served as chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2017 to 2020. . She conducted research on vaccine delivery and strategies to reach underserved communities. Walensky has worked to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa, led health policy initiatives, and researched clinical trial design and evaluation in a variety of settings. Walensky was chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council at the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2015 and has served as a member of the US Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents since 2011. She serves on the board of directors of Mass General Brigham. She has been co-director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital since 2011. . . On May 5, 2023, Dr. Walensky announced her resignation from her role at the CDC, effective June 30, 2023. Her decision came as the Biden administration was preparing to end the nation’s national health emergency status around COVID, and she was one of multiple administration officials to leave after working on the pandemic”

So, her entire career before CDC was in academia, where she made major contributions. Will she go to a pharmaceutical company? No indication either way; but, if she does, so what? She has been a strong advocate of vaccines for many many years, so what would change? But, so far, no indication what she will do.

So, as usual, you post meaningless, stupid comments and as I’ve pointed out over and over, you have given NO indication you understand even the most basics of immunology, so you don’t know anything about vaccines, except what your stupidly ignorant antivax biased warped mind produces. A prime example of how stupid you are was your claim in previous exchange that covid hospitalizations no greater than flu. As with Igor Chudov, no matter how many times you are shown to be completely wrong, you just KEEP MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF.

I think you and Igor could compete for ASSHOLE OF THE MONTH

Just some info about Rochelle W[a]lensky

Well, sure, but Igor has an MBA and “a Substack.”

If you’d just read my blog, folks
You’d reject the jabs from hell.
Learn all about the conspiracies
Pharma spins to keep you unwell
When you reach the part, where donations come
Know that freedom isn’t free
And you can be a hero too
If you just subscribe to me.

A new vaccination campaign is underway in Australia to vaccinate endangered koalas against chlamydia. Wild koalas are trapped and then immunized against the debilitating disease, which can drastically reduce fertility.

“After a check-up to make sure the animals are in good condition, researchers administer anesthesia and shots of vaccine, then keep them under observation for 24 hours after they wake up, to confirm there are no unexpected side effects, said Wakeman.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/wild-koalas-caught-vaccinated-chlamydia-99186924

Next up: Steve Kirsch will send an FOIA application to Australian wildlife officials, demanding to know how many koalas Died Suddenly after vaccination.

And Naomi Wolf will investigate the tragedy of Koala stillbirths and shockingly early deliveries of tiny, incredibly pre-mature Koala babies!

Gorilla Martha, who lived in Gladys zoo, died suddenly and unexpectedly of multiple organ failure, around April 27, 2022.

Gladys zoo previously announced plans to vaccinate animals against Covid-19.

Martha’s cubs are now orphans.

Gorilla Martha has a human counterpart, Kassidi Kurill, who also died of multiple organ failure shortly after Covid vaccination. Kassidi’s human children are also orphans.

The above story was “debunked” by the Daily Beast in article “COVID Truthers’ New Martyr Is a Gorilla Mom Named Martha”.

The debunking acknowledged the zoo’s previous intention to vaccinate animals against COVID-19, but asserts that ” It’s total bullshit. In fact, Martha was not even vaccinated”

However, the Daily Beast provides no references to back that up, and gorillas, who are large primates, would logically be the first candidates for vaccination. The death statement from the zoo makes no reference to Martha’s vaccine status.

So – an aging gorilla with a heart ailment common in its species, and no evidence it was vaccinated against Covid-19.

But antivaxers just know the vaccine did it.

Martha’s cubs? Surely you mean infants, or children?

I’d re-read your comment if I were you. The reason no-one takes your ramblings on science seriously is demonstrated starkly.

No evidence for or against vaccination status, or if that status had anything to do with organ failure. Yet, your tone says it was the vaccine what done it. With a further subtext (I suspect) that if the zoo told you that she wasn’t vaccinated, you’d accuse them of lying. That much certainty with that little evidence is why you would never qualify as a scientist.

gorillas, who are large primates, would logically be the first candidates for vaccination

You misspelled ‘chimpanzees’.

Kassidi Kurill, who also died of multiple organ failure shortly after Covid vaccination.

Thanks again for noting that you’re so stupid you think A following B means B is the cause of A.

Eff you for once again trying to weaponize the death of someone to gain points for your anti-science screeds.

All deliveries of koala babies are tiny and incredibly pre-mature.

I know: that’s why I imagined that Wolf would attribute that fact to vaccines.
If it were kittens, she perhaps would say the vaccine made them all have closed eyes and folded-up ears.

Naomi Wolf is rather unhappy that her “information” about Covid vaccines’ dire consequences for women has been disparaged by UK media regulator, Ofcom, as being harmful. ( her latest Substack article).
She appeared on GB News with Mark Steyn who were also singled out for misinformation.

Her penultimate article uncovers how high ranking women at Charles’ coronation appear to have gone all-Druid because of their long, “shapeless” white gowns.
No, Naomi, that’s ( House of) Alexander McQueen’s aesthetic.

Amusingly, Steve Kirsch turned up at the Raptor’s place to rant about the absence of post-marketing safety studies on vaccines.

It hasn’t gone well for him.

Most amusing was his claim that VEARS reports were responsible for the removal of the smallpox vaccine from the schedule in the US. Sadly for those who wanted to see all the gory details, he deleted his posts on this topic. He has left plenty of other gems intact.

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