ecosophia: (Default)
John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2022-10-25 11:44 am

Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 64

smudge goes thereAs we proceed through the second year of these open posts, it's pretty clear that the official narrative is cracking as the toll of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines rises steadily and the vaccines themselves demonstrate their total uselesness at preventing Covid infection or transmission. It's still important to keep watch over the mis-, mal- and nonfeasance of our self-proclaimed health gruppenfuehrers, and the disastrous results of the Covid mania, but I think it's also time to begin thinking about what might be possible as the existing medical industry reels under the impact of its own self-inflicted injuries. 

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.   
scotlyn: balancing posture in sword form (Default)

Re: Vaccines as a class

[personal profile] scotlyn 2022-10-27 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yes, the auld "I'm pro-vax, BUT...." A disclaimer often found in scientific papers, too. Except it will be more like a sentence proclaiming that "vaccines are recognised to have saved millions of lives, BUT..."

And, yes, to wanting *reasons* for that which we cannot understand... and not being at all equipped to understand the simple fact that sometimes, shale happens, and there is NO reason.

That said, my basic stance is that claims of safety (like any other claims used in marketing) require evidence of safety, and that the burden of that evidence lies on the claimant, not on the person questioning the claim.

As to... "There is a balance to be struck between "let viruses spread freely with no interventions" and "kill, lockdown, and quarantine to control"." Well, but ARE these the only available options? And, indeed, do we KNOW that "kill, lockdown and quarantine to control" is ACTUALLY what our immune systems are doing? Or is that simply what our current working *model* of our immune system looks like?
scotlyn: balancing posture in sword form (Default)

Re: Vaccines as a class

[personal profile] scotlyn 2022-10-27 07:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Oops... Actually, I now see that your "balance between" IS a reference to all the other available options... :)

Re: Vaccines as a class

[personal profile] dendroica 2022-10-27 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"And, indeed, do we KNOW that "kill, lockdown and quarantine to control" is ACTUALLY what our immune systems are doing?"

I didn't mean to suggest that there was a choice, or that the immune system works this way.

What I meant to convey, without using enough words, is that staying alive in a world of predators and damaging forces is like a dance, and sometimes the dance moves look like control and attack and kill and sometimes the moves look like bending with the wind and allowing viruses to replicate.

Brian Mowrey's "immune equilibrium" theory is one way of envisioning this dance with regard to the human immune system. (https://unglossed.substack.com/p/burned-all-my-notebooks)

He suggests, for example, that antibody levels against respiratory viruses waning over time is more of a feature than a bug, since it allows the viruses to get what they want (survival and replication) without needing to evolve to defeat adaptive immunity thereby becoming more dangerous.


What I meant to convey by "striking a balance" is that vaccination is a dance move. One side might believe it is always the best choice and another side might believe that any human attempts to train and tweak our immune systems are hubristic and wrong, but in reality it is a tool that will in all likelihood prove to be beneficial in some cases and harmful in others, and our task is to discern this for each virus and each person using the tools available to us, of which science done properly is one of many.

I suspect that so long as it is possible to vaccinate following rabies exposure to prevent fatal infection, we will choose to do so. I also suspect that vaccination by way of mRNA injection will prove to be a terrible idea that will never again be attempted once this episode of insanity is over. As for everything in between - smallpox, measles, polio, flu - time will tell, and the results may take centuries to be fully apparent. An intervention that is good from the perspective of patient survival may not be so good from the perspective of the ongoing coevolutionary dance between viruses and the human immune system.
Edited 2022-10-27 22:04 (UTC)