Covid19

[MadManMike]

24 minutes ago, Ali C said:

Apparently each strain is named after the Greek alphabet, I missed a few of them so  it wasn’t exactly obvious but it seems  we’re up to the 15th named strain

Ah that makes sense, what with the Delta variant... Seems I missed everything from D to O then.

[AdamR28]

Vernon Coleman's website is an interesting read.

Examples...

https://vernoncoleman.org/articles/here-proof-covid-19-was-downgraded-march-2020 --> https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

https://vernoncoleman.org/articles/how-many-people-are-vaccines-killing

https://vernoncoleman.org/videos/vernon-colemans-wednesday-review-episode-three

https://openvaers.com/index.php

[Ali C]

"We note that when patients die 60 days after a positive covid test, they are added to the covid death figures but if someone were to die 60 minutes after a covid vaccine, then it is just a coincidence."

I hadn't even considered that

[AdamR28]

Indeed. At best, this is illogical.

 

 

[marg26]

7 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

Vernon Coleman's website is an interesting read.

So is the wikipedia page about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Coleman - doesn't exactly sound good - pseudoscientific, AIDS denialist, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist

7 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

https://vernoncoleman.org/articles/here-proof-covid-19-was-downgraded-march-2020 --> https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

Yes but what does it mean, how should we interpret it? According to Coleman: "It proves that everything that has happened since March has been a lie."  which in my mind supports everything I read about him on that wikipedia page.

 

[AdamR28]

His site is very much at one end of the scale, granted, but it raises some interesting topics IMO. That was my point. 

His collection of links to 'normal' people's negative experiences of the jab is extensive.

As with all these things it is for the reader to separate the wheat from the chaff and make up their own mind. 

Mainly I find it odd that our government doesn't classify Covid as dangerous, and hasn't since March 2020.

[Alyksett]

40 minutes ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

His site is very much at one end of the scale, granted, but it raises some interesting topics IMO. That was my point. 

His collection of links to 'normal' people's negative experiences of the jab is extensive.

As with all these things it is for the reader to separate the wheat from the chaff and make up their own mind. 

Mainly I find it odd that our government doesn't classify Covid as dangerous, and hasn't since March 2020.

The problem I have with these sites/yellow cards for people to catalog their negative experiences with the vaccine is that it just reeks of confirmation bias and anti intellectualism. To me, all these sites are just a place where people list every bad experience they have/think they have after they get the shot without any substantiation of the connection between the shot and the symptoms. 

Not to mention the guy that is writing all this had his medical license stripped from him, denies AIDS exists, and thinks masks cause cancer. This should be more than enough for people to instantly write anything off written by him but instead it's used as "evidence" against vaccines. I think if you're on the side of citing this guy as an expert/ a source of evidence rather than citing sources from an actual team of researchers/a credible scientific organization then you're on the wrong side of this whole thing.

[marg26]

Maybe read this and see what you think:

https://fullfact.org/health/Vernon-Coleman-Trafalgar-Square-conspiracy-claims-false/

Don't get me wrong, things that have happened in relation to covid do raise questions, and give me doubts, but when the suggested reading is someone such as Coleman I'd rather put my trust in Peppa Pig LOL. It's all a bit of a mess really!

Edited November 29, 2021 by marg26

[Pete.M]

7 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

Mainly I find it odd that our government doesn't classify Covid as dangerous, and hasn't since March 2020.

It's odd, but equally I'm not surprised. It has been clear since the start that our government isn't particularly interested in saving lives. 

Here's a friendly reminder to keep up the mask wearing in busy public areas. Does it take any effort to put one on? Nope. Not at all. And yet so many people seemingly don't care about spreading it to potentially vulnerable people. Ideally we should be using ffp2 masks. 

[isitafox]

The conspiracy theorists who keep banging on about evidence showing this and that and then linking to webpages as if what is written on the internet is set in stone make me chuckle. 

I had a local woman rant at me on FB when it all kicked off stating that there was all this evidence that covid was a hoax and she'd happily send me copies of the PDF she'd found online to prove it. Never realised only top government officials had the power to write a letter and convert it to PDF...... 

[AdamR28]

Firstly let me say that the idea of these discussions at this point (for me, at least) is to try and find rounded evidence / commentary around the subject, in order to make myself (and others?) better informed. I am not trying to change anyone's mind or 'be a conspiracy theorist'.

 

3 hours ago, isitafox said:

The conspiracy theorists who keep banging on about evidence showing this and that and then linking to webpages as if what is written on the internet is set in stone make me chuckle.

I completely agree with you there, but IMO that works both ways (eg. how do we know what's written on any website is the truth?). It can be 'certified' by whatever organisation, but how we know that is correct? Someone somewhere pays for every research study to be done.

 

4 hours ago, Pete.M said:

It's odd, but equally I'm not surprised. It has been clear since the start that our government isn't particularly interested in saving lives.

I agree with you there. I'm interested to find out what you think the government is interested in achieving, if you've considered it? I've thought about this quite a bit and my (admittedly naturally skeptical) brain hasn't come up with many positive options.

 

10 hours ago, marg26 said:

Maybe read this and see what you think:

https://fullfact.org/health/Vernon-Coleman-Trafalgar-Square-conspiracy-claims-false/

Don't get me wrong, things that have happened in relation to covid do raise questions, and give me doubts, but when the suggested reading is someone such as Coleman I'd rather put my trust in Peppa Pig LOL. It's all a bit of a mess really!

Ha! I have to agree that Peppa Pig is probably pretty reliable as far as things go.

The fullfact site certainly does paint a poor picture of Dr Vern, eh!

I try to question the motives of any source of information, since IMO that is the very 'base'. It doesn't look like Dr Vern is out to make any money from this, and the way he has been shut down (if that is true...) certainly makes that impossible. So I guess he could be a psychopath? I couldn't see another reason for him to be so motivated in what he does - but willing to listen to ideas. It would be a very intelligent trick to write articles about how to spot a psychopath and be one yourself: https://www.vernoncoleman.com/istonyblair.htm 

Equally looking at FullFact, it is a charity which made £280k profit last year (£2m turnover), after 4 of the 11 officers drew personal benefits of more than £60k each (no corporation tax to pay as a charity too, of course). Approximately half of their funding comes from Google / Facebook / Whatsapp, with another 20-25% of it coming from another charity which made £5.4m profit in 2020. FullFact is a decent business. I'm not saying this source cannot be trusted, but working back to base motives it makes me question the reliability.

 

11 hours ago, Alyksett said:

The problem I have with these sites/yellow cards for people to catalog their negative experiences with the vaccine is that it just reeks of confirmation bias and anti intellectualism. To me, all these sites are just a place where people list every bad experience they have/think they have after they get the shot without any substantiation of the connection between the shot and the symptoms. 

Not to mention the guy that is writing all this had his medical license stripped from him, denies AIDS exists, and thinks masks cause cancer. This should be more than enough for people to instantly write anything off written by him but instead it's used as "evidence" against vaccines. I think if you're on the side of citing this guy as an expert/ a source of evidence rather than citing sources from an actual team of researchers/a credible scientific organization then you're on the wrong side of this whole thing.

I do agree with all of the above. Confirmation bias works both ways too, I'm sure you'll agree. So if you look at it from the other side, there are a lot of people 'dying from Covid' where there is no substantiation of the connection between the disease and the death.

I haven't read about his thoughts on AIDS or masks causing cancer, but I can see on the face of it that degrades his trustworthiness, definitely. I can imagine a link between masks and cancer (breathing in tiny particles of plastic) but unsure how one could claim AIDS is fake. His website includes a page which pulls together non-biased information from normal people - which I thought was interesting, that's all.

I know I fall on the 'wrong' side of this compared with the masses, but in many ways wish I didn't. It makes you feel uncomfortable being 'the odd one out'. Honestly I am not sure where the truth is in this and I don't think we'll ever really know, but I'm trying to explore all the options. The whole thing just feels... weird.

[MadManMike]

6 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

 

I know I fall on the 'wrong' side of this compared with the masses, but in many ways wish I didn't. It makes you feel uncomfortable being 'the odd one out'. Honestly I am not sure where the truth is in this and I don't think we'll ever really know, but I'm trying to explore all the options. The whole thing just feels... weird.

Absolutely this! It's been very awkward talking to colleagues and I've not really gone any further than "I chose not to have it for a number of reasons".

We are definitely the minority, but I feel strongly enough that I won't let that force me into having it.

[Pete.M]

8 hours ago, Adam@TartyBikes said:

I agree with you there. I'm interested to find out what you think the government is interested in achieving, if you've considered it? I've thought about this quite a bit and my (admittedly naturally skeptical) brain hasn't come up with many positive options.

(I might have sounded slightly passive aggressive before)

I'm not sure if you could say they're trying to achieve anything in particular, but that's probably not quite what you meant. I think it's a case of minimising the hit to themselves and to high-level tory donor's / supporters. Instead of taking immediate action, they took time to figure out how best to support their own connections. The amount of dodgy companies, and tory-related companies, involved in the supply of medical goods is absolutely staggering. And they took the opportunity to push the NHS closer to full privatisation. Most people are not aware of the steps that have gradually but continuously pushed it towards privatisation, over several decades. Including actions taken by the Labour government. Sorry I'm off topic now.

That's all I can assume; they're favouring their own connections over saving lives. 

[AdamR28]

Agree with you Pete! There's a lot of money to be made from all of this, and a lot of power to be had.

Market volatility means lots of money changing hands. I have some investment funds which went up 4% in November, then Omicron got announced and they dropped 4%. If you know when this is going to happen, or even be able to directly influence it... anyway enough speculation, facts:

 

Here's Pfizers own report into their vaccine side effects: https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf

The interesting numbers:

- 42086 case reports made

- 93473 side effects noted (ie. more than 2 side effects per person on average)

- 1927 got Covid 19 (unclear whether this is directly due to the jab or in general during the length of study)

- 11361 not recovered at time of report

- 520 'recovered' but with left permanent side effects

- 9400 still unknown at time of report (however I think we can assume fully recovered else they would have been in touch)

- 1223 deaths

 

Based on current worldwide reporting, the death rate from Covid is 1.98% (5.2m deaths 264m cases). But as we know this is "deaths - for any reason - within 28 days of a positive test", so that value is higher than accurate. (At age 85, a man has a 1.2% chance of death within the next 1 month.)

Pfizers report seems to declare that 2.9% (1223/42086) of patients die following the jab, for reasons ungiven.

The report data comes from 2 months worth of patients.

Death and permanent side effect rate is likely to be higher than listed, as the report concluded with 25%+ of the case reports incomplete.

The conclusion of the report states that their jab has a favourable risk : benefit balance.

I hope I have interpreted that correctly and impartially. 

 

Personal commentary: still smells really, really weird.

[Ali C]

this is interesting...

It's coming from perhaps one of the most qualified scientists regarding virology and vaccines (just check out his qualifications and job titles he's had). He's suggesting that the vaccines could be a good idea if we WEREN'T in a pandemic and actually intervening like this could be disastrous and prolong the pandemic or even make it worse. This is the first time IN HISTORY that humans have taken the approach we're taking regarding world-wide vaccine intervention in a pandemic.


Here's his interview
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/videos-and-interviews/geert-vanden-bossche-interview-at-the-highwire   

and if you fancy a read here's his open letter to the WHO
https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/616004c52e87ed08692f5692/6180d0742de00f1d9cd1f0a6_who-open-letter.pdf

"I am all but an antivaxxer. As a scientist I do not usually appeal to any platform of this kind to make a stand on vaccine-related topics. As a dedicated virologist and vaccine expert I only make an exception when health authorities allow vaccines to be administered in ways that threaten public health, most certainly when scientific evidence is being ignored. The present extremely critical situation forces me to spread this emergency call. As the unprecedented extent of human intervention in the Covid-19- pandemic is now at risk of resulting in a global catastrophe without equal, this call cannot sound loudly and strongly enough."

Edit: To try and give a balanced post, here's a link to a page who thinks this is all wrong. I'm not saying who is right or who is wrong but I know one is more qualified than the other...not that means everything.
https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches-claims

[isitafox]

Bit of a skim read but I get the idea he's saying we shouldn't be mass vaccinating and should let the virus do it's thing so we develop natural antibodies against it rather than giving it reason to keep mutating and make it potentially more dangerous but more so keeping it in circulation? 

[Ali C]

I think that's the super simplified version of it yeah, I had jane explain it to me and I've forgotten the details but that sounds close enough

[marg26]

Love this short paragraph from your link:

"I’ll be blunt: there is very little within this letter that is even close to being correct, and there is almost no evidence presented to support any of its claims. I’ll now go through it point-by-point to explain where it’s wrong."

- no fluffy vagaries or dressing it up. Beautiful! - the rest of the article however is too technical for me to read. Here's an alternative: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking-pseudoscience/doomsday-prophecy-dr-geert-vanden-bossche or https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/countering-geert-vanden-bossches-dubious-viral-open-letter-warning-against-mass-covid-19-vaccination/

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by marg26

[JT!]

I got my booster about 20 hours ago. Very similar effects as my 2nd dose. A little light headed, armpit ache, minor back age. Feeling generally fatigued and a slight headache.

[Jere_h]

Thought I'd share some views from my country, that used to be ranked as one of the "happiest country in the world".

Every day we hear how there's almost 50 seriously ill covid patients in the hospitals who need special care (in the whole country of 5,5 million people). Hence the whole healthcare system is soon failing due to lack of nurses, they say. However the nurse issue has been on the table for years and that's completely caused by the government itself by not paying them enough. They already promised to increase the healthcare capacity solely for covid patients but nothing has changed so far. As a quick comparison, there was over 200 critical patients during an influenza wave in 2016 and everything was considered normal back then.

Instead they are more efficiently than ever pushing a new law that allows mandatory covid vaccination for nurses. Now everyone can guess what happens when a significant part of current nurses/healthcare staff will be fired, quit or even switch career completely. Many of the current healthcare students will quit as well, because they can't even get through the internship anymore without having to be injected.

I don't say a word here about the so called vaccine, it's everyone's own decision (and should be). But it's getting pretty clear that our governments are not working for our health. The next year will be scary for sure.

[Ali C]

After hearing the new fear mongering news that the government is putting out against the Omicron variant I thought I'd share this video. Jane shared it with me as her degree is is phycology and it's essentially explaining how "mass formation" works (mass psychosis) and the behaviours that lead to groups of people collectively thinking one thing. 

Again I'm not 100% saying this is exactly what's happening and you could even use the argument that the people who are against the vaccine are the ones suffering with mass formation but he brings up some interesting points which if correct give a whole new perspective to those who hadn't considered it before.
 

    
I'm still not vaccinated and have no plans to be

[AdamR28]

Haven't watched the video, but can imagine what it says. Mental health definitely suffering more than physical health now.

 

Funny how Boris is totally different when talking to camera than real people (that hilarious 'announcement' last night where he basically told us all he was our saviour).

A million boosters a day until the end of the year they say? Nice little Xmas bonus... https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/covid-19/vaccines/covid-19-vaccination-programme

(GPs to get paid £15 per jab, add a fiver if a Sunday or a Bank Holiday, add £30 if at a care home or housebound patient.)

[Ali C]

well to cut it brutally short he's saying how there's been a perfect recipe for this phenomenon to occur. Most people in the western world have a general level of anxiety with one key ingredient being loneliness, even before the pandemic this has been an issue (and he doesn't mean loneliness in having zero friends, he means actual social interaction rather than on-line or forced friends like work colleagues etc). The lockdowns, working from home and even harder measures to see doctors have increased this level of loneliness and anxiety.

Unlike "normal" anxiety that has a obvious cause (his example being a lion roaring at you) that has an obvious cure (running away from the lion), this general level of anxiety in the population doesn't have a single cause or cure. With this pandemic it brings an obvious cause and unites everyone to a single issue and a fight to fix it, people are desperate to fight for something and will take whatever action they're told to do to fix it.

The issue is that this desire to be brought together for a cause can blind people and cause them to follow rules that otherwise might seem totally outrageous otherwise. It's what happened in Germany and other dictatorships...the same ingredients and same desire to be joined together for a cause were in place and caused normally kind, smart people to partake in some heinous acts.

The pandemic might not be as serious as the Nazi party coming to power but I thought his interview was really interesting. I'm not saying I'm 100% right about my thoughts on the virus and vaccine but I have been surprised by how many people I would consider very smart have totally committed to follow what the government has told them and be quite aggressive to those who are questioning things.   

[Ali C]

Ok whatever your views on Joe Rogan (as I’ve said I’m not a mega fan) he does get some interesting guests on.

 

This time we have Dr Peter McCullough who drops some bombshells.

quite long but worth a listen, he’s surly got to be one of the leading brains on Covid treatments. 
 

im seeing so many opinions from independent scientists suggesting that the way we’re treating Covid is negligent at best and inhumane at worst. How can we trust doctors if they’re being paid per jab? How can we trust research if it’s funded by corporations who’ll have most to gain from people talking vaccines?

I’m just glad someone like this managed to get on a huge platform like Joe’s that won’t be censored

[JT!]

On 12/13/2021 at 7:09 AM, Ali C said:

I have been surprised by how many people I would consider very smart have totally committed to follow what the government has told them and be quite aggressive to those who are questioning things.   

...says every person who thinks the Earth is flat.

I don't mean that as harsh and insulting as it sounds, but I just wanted to point out the absurdity of that statement.

It's perfectly fine to question things, like, how much money are GPs making from covid booster shots? That's a perfectly reasonable question. Another perfectly reasonable question is how much more money are bike shop owners making because of covid?

The problem is that these questions, they find the answers the questions were designed to find, they're not genuine questions, they're implications hidden as enquiry. For example, how much more money are bike shop owners making because of covid? Would it not be beneficial for bike shop owners to push vaccine hesitancy because if covid sticks around longer their shop would make more money? Hey, I'm just asking questions, why so aggressive?