Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 64
Oct. 25th, 2022 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
As 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.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-26 03:23 pm (UTC)In a more condensed form, a functionally-defined "vaccine" is any product introduced into the human body to *specifically* train the immune system to recognize and attack something. This is in contrast to immunotherapies that generally boost immune response, that modulate the activities of particular aspects of immunity (e.g. immunosuppressants), or that specifically train the immune system *not* to attack something (e.g. allergy/desensitization shots).
It seems to me that most people would agree with this functional definition, which includes such treatments as "cancer vaccines" (where the immune system is being trained to recognize and attack cancer cells).
I've generally stayed out of the "is-it-or-is-it-not-a-vaccine" argument, since for me these novel products have clearly fit into the category as commonly and functionally understood, whether or not they fit into the more precise clinical definition.
I also think that this class - as thus defined functionally - has biological relevance with regard to shared concerns and risk factors. Any products designed to specifically train the immune system to attack something can potentially become problematic when:
1. The immune system makes a mistake and also learns to attack a component of self (autoimmunity), or
2. This sort of immune training is undertaken too many times, leading to a "state change" in immune function with unknown and potentially complex consequences, or
3. Failure to encounter the target "attack-ees" in the natural context of illness, innate immune response, and generation of adaptive immunity (because vaccines have pre-established adaptive immunity) has implications for immune system development, also with unknown and potentially complex consequences.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-26 07:21 pm (UTC)Yes, you make some sense with this "functional definition" (as opposed to the clinical definition which is more my own comfort zone).
Ok, so in this sense you are proposing that any product whose function is to train the immune system to recognise and attack something can be classed as a vaccine.
So, lets take this definition of "vaccine" as a class into common parlance and see if some of the things people say about vaccines still make sense.
1) does it make sense to accuse any person of being "PRO-products which train the immune system to recognise and attack something" or "ANTI-products which train the immune system to recognise and attack something"?
2) does it make sense for the compilation of a "Childhood Schedule of Products Which Train the Immune System to Recognise and Attack Something" be such a public health sensitive issue that a listing there can be the entry into complete product liability immunity? or for such a listing to become a condition of entry into schools?
3) would anyone claim that Products which Train the Immune System to Recognise and Attack Something are key in making progress against infectious diseases and save millions of lives every year?
4) would we have a category of Products which Train the Immune System to Recognise and Attack Something Preventable Diseases?
Anyway, what I am trying to get a handle on with this set of questions is - what are the "hidden" stakes for people when making any *general* statement about the entire class of "vaccines"?
And why are so few words exchanged about *this* vaccine or *that* vaccine? Or why are claims about *this* vaccine or *that* vaccine quickly expanded into a discussion about "vaccine class"?
There are many mysteries here.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-26 09:18 pm (UTC)I didn't get all of the recommended DTP shots as a kid because of the whole "parents sued the manufacturers over the side effects, after a while no manufacturer would make it anymore" thing. I'm the exact right age of tail-end Gen Xer to be affected by that. I then got whooping cough as a teen. No fun but survived fine.
And then the CDC changed the recommendations to a different vaccine anyway (DTaP, the one with *acellular* pertussis, as far as I can make out less effective and also with a lower risk of side effects. Info on how the aP vaccine doesn't prevent asymptomatic transmission used to be all over the net--I remember getting that info from the CDC web site back when my anti-most-vaxes in-laws all had whooping cough and I was deciding whether to get a Tdap--but when I went to find that info more recently, I couldn't find it anywhere).
So IDK if it "makes sense" but (as you probably already know) that whole thing was the justification for it--"If we keep letting parents sue manufacturer, they'll all be scared off from producing valuable vaccines that many people do want"...(see also the contingent who are constantly criticizing the FDA for not approving lifesaving medicines quickly enough).
It really should have occurred to them that the liability shield would create an incentive to get new products onto the childhood schedule. But I believe it didn't, because that's the kind of thing that often doesn't occur to people. It's not the spirit of the law, after all.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 09:23 am (UTC)The case against the specific product called the DTP is exceedingly strong, and it should certainly have been removed from the WHO's list of recommended vaccines as soon as this research emerged. But it has not.
But, also, the fact that you got a case of whooping cough as a teenager signals another aspect of mass vaccination campaigns that is seldom mentioned. Which is the way they alter patterns of susceptibility within a population. I am not familiar with the specifics of whooping cough, so I will give a different example. Prior to vaccination campaigns, with several different iterations of measles vaccines, the normal "susceptible pool" in humans consisted of people between 2 and 15 years old. Up to age 2 most children were protected by the antibodies they received from their mothers, who would have been exposed, and most likely infected, when THEY were children. People older than 15 were almost universally immune for life due to their own bout of infection as a child. And, every few years there would be a year when measles would sweep through this susceptible population. Between the 1800's and the 1960's the drop in death rates from measles was precipitous, and by the time I myself got the infection (in 1963, the first year a vaccine was on offer), parents did not fear the infection at all. It was just one of those childhood things. But here came the vaccines, and well, why not?
So, very early in the 1980's researchers began to notice and study outbreaks of measles in highly vaccinated populations - eg. schools and colleges with 95%+ vaccination rates. In the media, outbreaks were always blamed on the "vaccine hesitant", but the research literature makes it clear that the outbreaks were possible because vaccinated people could become vectors as easily as unvaccinated people could. They could not help but conclude that measles vaccination was NOT offering the same protection as measles infection, and that the wearing off of vaccine effectiveness could not be predicted. One population change that was noted was that measles was now appearing in adults older than 15, who tended to have a rougher time with the infection. Also, measles was now appearing in babies younger than 2, who (apparently) were no longer protected by their vaccinated instead of infected mothers' antibodies. And measles is also much more serious in babies. Both these alterations in susceptible populations may be almost entirely due to mass vaccination for an infection which had long ceased to present an existential threat to those most susceptible.
Just as antibiotics are now known to do, vaccines exert evolutionary selection pressures on both susceptible populations and pathogens, effects which are only beginning to be properly studied.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 02:07 am (UTC)From the perspective of belief in Progress:
1) Yes, with regard to anti, not so much for pro ("pro-vax" is not a slur anywhere so far as I'm aware, except perhaps with regard to these specific terrible injections).
2) Yes
3) Definitely
4) Definitely, with the goal of having all diseases fall into that category eventually.
This is an important discussion, because I think it helps to unpack the beliefs and thought processes behind the craziness. Because ultimately this is not about the "Products", it is about the "Something."
That "something" is the entire category of infectious diseases capable of causing death, which from the lens of Progress is an aberration, something that Must Not Be Allowed.
Consider, as an analogy, the level of fear in Progress-believing nations that surrounds those few predators capable of killing humans - sharks, bears, mountain lions - and how far out of proportion that fear is to any actual level of risk.
Infectious disease is a predator. It is a component of the biosphere that can put an end to our lives, and the religion of Progress says that we, humans, are the top dog in Earth's biosphere. We must die eventually, but no other life form will kill us, and when that happens it's an aberration, a skeletal hand reaching from the evil, brutish past into the civilized present, akin to being slain by the devil himself.
Vaccines are, functionally, Products which Train the Immune System to Recognize and Attack (infections pathogens). That means that, within the belief system of Progress, they are effectively saviors from the devil. And it's not hard to see how a savior can become a sacrament, how earned trust in such a product can become blind trust, how vaccine injuries Cannot Possibly Be Worse than the diseases they prevent, how within this dominant belief system a new infectious disease that causes any death whatsoever can cause a society-wide freakout to which a vaccine must be the solution.
Nearly all human religions have wards against evil. This one happens to demonstrably work, at least some of the time. Its psychological value is at least as important as its physical value, and can persist (at least to True Believers) in the absence of any physical value. I think that if you were to ask devout believers in Progress if they would take a vaccine that carried a 1% chance of death that effectively prevented a disease that carried a 0.1% chance of death, many would say yes. Many would say that any harm done by the vaccines - no matter how severe - must be outweighed by their protections against the evils of infectious disease. And therefore immunity from liability is perfectly acceptable if it allows more vaccines to be produced and distributed to more people.
I think this also helps to explain why covid-mania was such a nothing-burger across most of Africa, where death by infectious disease or death-by-hungry-lion is still a common part of life in many areas. Belief in Progress is not so widespread there, and humans are situated within the web of life rather than standing above or apart from it.
So, yes, I think that vaccines *as a class* have a special status within the religion of Progress because they are functionally Products which Train the Immune System to Recognize and Attack those predatory pathogens which ought to be relegated to the history books but are somehow still with us (obviously because not everyone has availed themselves of the sacraments...).
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 02:40 am (UTC)I originally thought that the 'spell' had been propagated equally successfully to the Ukraine issue, but you can actually hold discussions about that after their initial "Putin is an evil madman" rant.
I think that's because most people have the view that the Western political system is broken. They may not agree on how and to what degree it's broken, but broken it is.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 09:47 am (UTC)I would just add that "pro-vax" is not (yet) much of a slur, because it is, in fact, the default believer's stance - as you have so eloquently outlined here.
It WILL become a slur as the heretics (those who doubt ANY aspect of the default, and are therefore grouped together - FROM the default position - as "anti-vax") gain some ascendancy, which has been happening slowly, for many years, and is happening more quickly now.
The other thing that I would love to explore is how the alternative to "kill to control" approach that JMG is always pointing us to consider is the "dance to participate" approach.
In re viruses, specifically, one might be moved to consider a viral "infection" as a sort of "intitiation ordeal" which helps to cement our connection to, and participation in, the natural world - should we survive it. If we have predators (as we really, really ought to), their role in our lives is to keep us fit and supple, by taking us out quickly, if not entirely painlessly, when we are not.
(In this regard, I would note that human hunters are also not the best of predators. We do not go for the weakest and the ill, we really want those big, healthy antlers to display on our walls. Our selection pressures are exerted against the strongest, not the weakest, and we therefore do not strengthen the populations we prey against.)
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 03:38 pm (UTC)Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 03:57 pm (UTC)To date I have mostly seen it used by believers who feel the need to affirm their belief before going on to question something about the covid shots. "I'm pro-vax BUT..."
The heretics will certainly come up with slurs for out-of-touch Progress believers - some already exist - but I don't think "pro-vax" will catch on.
From within the Progress paradigm, it is "anti-vax" to question the dogma that vaccines are safe and effective sacraments that ought to be given to all humans to ward off the evil of infectious disease.
The truly opposite viewpoint - that vaccines are *all* agents of evil that cause death and disability and have no benefits whatsoever, and that all vaccination should be prohibited by law - has a very small number of supporters, and I don't expect that number to grow by much.
Instead, it seems to me, we have a growing camp of "vax-realists" who see the class of products known as "vaccines" as medical interventions that can have both costs and benefits. There will probably be - at least temporarily - a swinging of the pendulum toward the opposite end, what might be called "vax-doubters". The vax-doubter position is an acknowledgement that vaccination can be useful *in theory* - and probably a willingness to get a rabies shot if bitten by a rabid dog - but a refusal to accept any more standard vaccines for self or family after being burned by the covid vaccine debacle and seeing the deep-rooted corruption and fraud within the vax-pharma-regulatory agency bureaucracy.
After another few generations - if the technology to produce vaccines still exists and the religion of Progress implodes - I would expect this to settle into an equilibrium in which vaccines are still in use on a purely voluntary basis, but only a small number of shots for which solid evidence of benefit exists. At that point I predict that people will look back on the "vax wars" as one of those strange episodes in human history where humans got themselves all in a tizzy over some distinction or other.
I expect that - as evidence of vaccine harm mounts - there will be a growing movement to blame all manner of deaths and diseases on vaccines without proof of a link. Hearthspirit has been making that argument here, and has suggested that Real Not Rare and other compilations of vax injury stories feed into it in a harmful way.
I actually see that phenomenon as distinct from the pro-vax/anti-vax debate and the sacramental status of vaccines, driven by a different by equally deep aspect of the human psyche. Most of us don't want to die or get sick, and so there is a strong tendency to find reasons to believe why suffering happens to *other* people (but couldn't happen to us). "He got cancer because he wallowed in harmful thoughts." "She got raped because of what she was wearing." "My uncle had a stroke because he was vaccinated." If we can assign cause to some distinction between ourselves and the person who is suffering, then we can feel more secure (while also blaming the victim for their own suffering).
It is important to avoid falling into that trap, but I also think it is important to acknowledge the reality of vaccine injury.
"Dance to participate" - yes! Although when confronting predators and pathogens, there is a certain amount of infantry required as part of the dance. There is a balance to be struck between "let viruses spread freely with no interventions" and "kill, lockdown, and quarantine to control".
Thanks also for putting words to my discomfort with the human hunting community. Those who participate - including some very serious hunters in my family - like to frame it in terms of bringing home food and being a part of nature. But too often the goal seems to be to establish human dominance over powerful creatures and to feed the ego by bringing home trophies. If you would drive 200 miles and sit in a tree for three days to shoot a giant buck but you wouldn't shoot the doe in your backyard, then it's not about food or participating the web of life...
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 06:23 pm (UTC)Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 06:41 pm (UTC)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?
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 07:35 pm (UTC)Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-27 09:59 pm (UTC)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.
Re: Vaccines as a class
Date: 2022-10-28 01:42 am (UTC)