Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The lies, mistakes and total nonsense just keep on coming from the experts and the media. Here's a roundup of what I've seen today without even searching for it. CDC Director Denies Myocarditis in 5-11 Year Olds who Took COVID Vaccines CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told ABC News on December 10 , "We haven't seen anything yet [in 5-11 year olds]. We have an incredibly robust vaccine safety system, and so if [problems] were there, we would find it."  Yet in a CDC repor t, a slide dated the same day noted 14 reports of myocarditis in that age group, eight of which were followed up on and "met CDC working case definition for myocarditis." (By the way, I wasn't able to find this report even with a highly tailored Google search. Qwant.com turned it up.) Follow-up is in progress for other five reports, and one is under review. Click image to enlarge. "No problems." Source : Adverse events among children ages 5–11 years after COVID-19 vaccination:

Photo from Pexels . Worst Surge Ever That's the warning over at  our local Fox affiliate . After quoting doctors warning about surge upon surge and massive ramifications and not enough beds in the city,  the article quotes Dr. Paul Calkins, the Associate Chief Medical Executive at IU Health: “There may be a few people alive that saw the flu kill millions of people in 1918 but other than those people nobody has ever seen anything like this before,” Dr. Calkins said. Oh really. Hospitalizations (both with and because of COVID) are surging, but deaths are not.  From https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/ To be charitable, maybe he's talking about the COVID pandemic in general and he was quoted out of context. But the article, with the headline about the WORST SURGE EVER (referring to Community Health's contingency plans) makes it sound like the pandemic is worse than ever right now . But anybody who goes to the state's coronavirus website can see that's a wild exaggeration. 

Gibraltar has canceled official Christmas celebrations over surging COVID cases. Its >100% vaccination rate is due to "doses given to Spaniards who cross the border to work or visit the territory every day," according to RT .  The article continues, "Similarly well-vaccinated countries have also reported surges in Covid-19 infections recently. In Singapore, where 94% of the eligible population have been inoculated, cases and deaths soared to record highs at the end of October, and have since subsided slightly. In Ireland, where around 92% of the adult population is fully vaccinated, cases of Covid-19 and deaths from the virus have roughly doubled since August." As I said months ago, if you can get COVID, you can spread COVID, and vaccinated people are obviously getting and spreading COVID. This study in The Lancet found vaccination only reduced household transmission of the delta variant from 38% to 25%. This preprint of a huge study found vaccination modestl

A Long Beach, New York emergency room has closed due to staffing shortages. At least they're admitting it's because of the state's vaccine mandates and not claiming that dozens of employees suddenly quit because of stress. Story here . Mount Sinai Long Beach hospital fired 72 healthcare staff due to vaccine mandate, and then closed down due to staff shortage. This is stupid beyond imagination 🤯 pic.twitter.com/0pKqGBUfGR — Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) November 24, 2021 COVID vaccines don't stop infection or spread, they only slow it down a little . Nevertheless, the ER has been closed to keep you safe . The hospital says it's just temporary until they find more employees, who are going to come from...where, exactly? While the ER is closed, patients can rush to the nearest emergency room five miles away, presumably through New York City's gridlocked traffic.  This closure was due to a state mandate, but hospitals and doctors offices are likewise driving the clow

Alleged Faking and Frenzy on Pfizer Study A Pfizer researcher has blown the whistle on the sloppy, helter-skelter practices at a contractor called Ventavia during the COVID vaccine trial. The British Medical Journal reports  regional director Brook Jackson's revelations: Falsifying data Employing inadequately trained vaccinators Delay in following up on adverse events Overwhelmed staff Possible unblinding of participants Jackson reported the problems to the FDA, who never investigated them. Jackson was fired.  Vendors Lied: Volunteers Wrecked Meantime, researchers "did everything in their power to hide what happened" to Maddie de Garay, a trial participant. At age 12, Maddie participated in the Pfizer trial and received two doses of the vaccine. According to Maddie's mother, Stephanie de Garay, Trials have participants use an app to report specific adverse reactions, but the app doesn't have a way to report other reactions. Other reactions are reported to the stud

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does

It started with hard-core cynics. Then came the rednecks , then blue collar people, and now the middle class is joining in. I'm talking about people who realize most of those making public health decisions not only have no idea what they're doing, but they don't realize they have no idea.  "This product is an ear loop mask, this product is not a respirator and will not provide any protections against COVID-19 (coronavirus) and other viruses or contaminants."  Some of their magical thinking would be funny if people weren't suffering:  From Portland, Oregon : "We’re seeing the number of people hospitalized going up at rates we’ve never seen before,” said Peter Graven, Ph.D., lead data scientist in OHSU’s Business Intelligence unit. “ We had hoped to see the new statewide masking mandate make a difference in flattening the rate of infection, but we’re not seeing that yet.” I noticed that people in the building trades, who probably wear masks for work or k

Every day is bringing fresh coronavirus quackery disguised as science. Getting COVID makes you dumber ; kids are at significant risk of COVID ; the unvaccinated are driving infections --these are actual, mainstream ideas out there. There are not enough days in the week for me to debunk it all: my vacation is over today; my cracked bathroom ceiling is half-scraped and the fan-light I dropped and broke needs to be replaced; and I badly need some time engaging with people who haven't lost their minds.  So I am calling on readers to sharpen their thinking skills, use the scientific method and learn how to read studies and understand risk. Don't worry--the videos below are entertaining and succinct. In less than an hour, you'll know more about science than most reporters on the news.  * * * * * This four-minute video by Gerd Gigerenzer shows you the difference between relative and absolute risk--or how Pfizer can claim, with a straight face, 90% effectiveness for a vaccine that

Have you ever known a crazy-maker--someone who lied, exaggerated, and caused trouble for its own sake? At some point, it's wise to ignore them or even cut off contact. While we can't stop the corona kiddie crazy-making in the media, we can hold it up to scrutiny by looking at more reliable sources than Nurse Ratched and tabloid journalists working for organizations formerly known as newspapers.  Would you take advice from this woman? Stock photo from Pexels . If you think I'm exaggerating, the Miami Herald quotes an epidemiologist : Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Florida International University, said the spike in pediatric hospitalizations over the last week was preventable. “It’s very unfortunate,” she said. “ These kids didn’t even get to make the decisions that are impacting their health.” Trepka said she is especially concerned about kids starting school again. She urged parents to get their eligible children 12 and older vaccina

I keep seeing the same error in the news: you're 25 times more likely to end up in the hospital if you're unvaccinated! It's due to a misunderstanding of relative vs. absolute risk.  From Pixabay . For readers who aren't familiar with the concept, I've made a visual aid based on actual figures from Indiana:  Dates: April 15, 2021 through July 13, 2021 Hospitalizations due to COVID: 4,045 Percent of hospitalized COVID patients who were vaccinated: 2% Population of Indiana: 6,500,000 Going by the high portion of unvaccinated COVID patients, it makes it sound like you're 50 times more likely to go to the hospital if you haven't had the shot. That's relative risk. If you're at a high risk of getting a bad case of COVID, that's meaningful. But if you aren't, you're reducing a tiny risk to a minuscule risk.  I didn't forget to add the first two columns--they just don't show up in the context of a population of 6.5 million. Likewise, the

In the great push to get everybody jabbed with the experimental COVID vaccine, people in the wait-and-see camp have been painted as conspiracy theorists and anti-science morons--the sort of people you'd see at the recent Redneck Rave where 15,000 people came and some ended up impaled, choked or badly cut. Dozens were charged with crimes. Won't it be interesting to see Edmonson County, Kentucky's COVID stats in a few weeks. Surely the local hospital will be full of rednecks, and not just to have fingers sewn back on...right? Use this, plus your region's dashboard, to calculate your odds. Photo from Pixabay . Maybe not. Humans are inherently bad at estimating odds. Several news outlets report that 99% of COVID patients in the hospital are unvaccinated, so does that mean you're almost a hundred times more likely to end up in the hospital if you haven't had your shots? Not quite. Looking only at hospitalized people rather than the whole population is relative risk

The Anointed are at it Again Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Photo from Pixabay . Remember a few years ago when standard nutrition advice was to eat a low-fat diet with plenty of heart healthy whole grains and avoid artery clogging saturated fat ? This, despite human evolution pointing towards limited-carb diets for most of the past few million years, despite critics calling out the junk science, despite common experience of improved health on low-carb diets, and despite the fact that diabetes and overweight skyrocketed after low-fat diets became commonplace starting around 1980? The advice was everywhere and accepted as common sense and good science, despite all facts to the contrary.  The same thing is happening with COVID vaccines. We're all being nudged (or worse) to get a dose or two of these safe vaccines despite warning signs, despite alternative treatment possibilities, and despite kids not needing them. Some states have lotteries for the newly jabbed to win a pile of

As regular readers know, association isn't causation. But when an association is strong enough, causation is likely. The CDC has a system called VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Report System) to "detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines." Anyone can report an adverse event (a medical problem following a vaccine), and health care professionals are required to do so. People reporting don't have to prove the vaccine caused the reaction, and some reactions might be just a coincidence. But one new set of vaccines accounting for over half of all deaths reported since 1990  to VAERS is a very big coincidence. Click to enlarge tables. Deaths per vaccine reported to VAERS since 1990 (top 11 vaccines on list).  I assume the percent of events adds up to over 100 because people often get more than one kind of vaccine at a time. Again, this list (shown in part) depicts 30 years of reports.  Permanent disability events per vaccine reported to VAERS since 1990 (top 12

The Badlands of South Dakota. An article today in The Spectator ( US and UK ) decries the lack of regulations in South Dakota to deal with the coronavirus, calling it a "failed experiment." The author compares South Dakota's response, or lack of it, to Sweden--and then calls Sweden a failure, too. From this, he concludes that lack of coronavirus regulation allows rampant spreading of the disease, and implies that strict regulation controls it. Does it really--and are those devil-may-care Swedes and South Dakotans about to drop like flies? Let's look at their numbers and compare them not to perfection, but to some places that have had strict regulations to get an idea how well the regulations might be working. The article doesn't specify which measures should be mandated, so let's assume lockdowns.  I'll avoid using out-of-the-way places and epicenters, since they would have low or high numbers no matter what they did. And since there's been so much v