In my hospital in the midwest the majority of covid positives were unvaxxed in 2021. It didn't transitioned to mostly vaxxed until Q1-Q2 2022 at the end of Delta. I also anecdotally noted on the outpatient side starting after Thanksgiving 2021 that a significant number of positives had had a booster in the prior 2 weeks.
That was my more limited observation as well - I caught presumed Omicron from a just-boosted person. So I was really surprised in late summer when I started to see the evidence that has now convinced me that the boosted were still, as a group, way behind on "meeting the virus."
"Chicken Egg Yolk Antibodies (IgYs) block the binding of multiple SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variants to human ACE2"
I would be surprised if such things survived intact when injested. However, I guess things like antibiotics manage to survive our stomachs and vitamin D3 does so maybe IgY would as well.
Is there any way to communicate with you directly. My wife has a bunch of high school students engaged in a project/competition looking at the data and what it portends for a certain industry ... and we are looking for a mentor or at least feedback.
Does anyone think there's any credence to the idea that the difference in outcomes during the Delta wave in the summer of 2021 between the Northeast, south, and Midwest was due to the so-called healthy user bias? That the higher rate of vaccine uptake in the northeast was not the key determinant of whether a person ended up severely ill or dead from Covid. That the primary determinant was the same socioeconomic factors that result in better outcomes for cancer and heart disease when compared across the same regions historically. This does not counter Brian's argument that the deaths during the Delta waves were primarily in the unvaccinated. It does call into question how effective, if at all, the vaccine was in the more heavily vaccinated populations during the Delta wave. 
The Northeast had two things going on, which was healthy user bias and higher natural immunity + disrupted seasonality due to having a bigger spring 2020 wave and a Canada-influenced spring 2021 Alpha wave.
I don't think the Northeast is *good* evidence of vax efficacy. Rather, it strongly refutes the inference that deaths in the South were somehow from mandates or boosters since those elements would have been even more at play in the Northeast. Thus, the organic conclusion is that the case rates are not lying. Virus plus suppression of early treatment killed. But even if not "good" evidence, it's still consistent with other evidence RE severe efficacy in Israel and the UK. Which is to say, there were still Delta waves in the Northeast, for example PA had a good amount of cases but nothing like the skew in excess deaths of Southern states.
Biologically, severe efficacy just makes sense. Severe outcomes happen due to delayed immune response (not over-active immune response, that was always a myth). In the Paxlovid trial, in the placebo group almost everybody who had a fast antibody response was fine, all the severe outcomes were in the placebo people who didn't have a fast antibody response - https://unglossed.substack.com/i/52792651/assay-what So circulating antibodies help control the virus. Yes they aren't everything but we make them for a reason, after all.
Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
In my parents' rural community a lot of people died of COVID.. largely due to lack of early treatment and general poor health. Of course if they did go to the hospital they rarely returned.
Unfortunately my parents refused to believe this was largely avoidable (by early treatment, vitamin d, and not killing people in the hospital) and so they could not be talked out of the shots.
The fact is a lot of people died. But they have a hard time accepting the true malevolence of our overlords. Nothing I say gets through.
I should say, they do accept the malevolence of Trump, largely without question. But apparently not OWS.
There is no evidence anywhere of the injections offering benefit to anyone but indemnified companies profiting from them. Not even in the fraud clinical trials. The injections dont even create mucosal antibodies FFS. The only endpoint was PCR result period. And they gamed that by testing all placebo recipients and only tested injected cohorts after adjudication. Furthermore they ignored vaccine reactogenicity which if they didnt the difference in PCR outcomes would be nearly equal. Despite all of that AND ignoring that more injected participants died they still only managed under 1% absolute risk reduction. The only real proxy is ACM and that aint looking so good anywhere except places that didnt mandate the injections. The NNTV is literally infinity if real (not gamed) data is used.
What these articles show is how easily propagandized medicine tossed the hippocratic oath into the used needle bin and literally targeted people who did not succumb to mass media fear campaign in order to help bolster it. This was mob mentality bullying to the point of murder and speaks profoundly horrifically to the depths society has fallen even before we havent reached the food and energy scarcity that waits us due to abjectly stupid policies of governments being deployed now.
Countless politicians promulgate about the need to reduce the population via vaccines, a pandemic is faked, and deployed "vaccines" create historic discord disability and death but it woulda been worse without the vaccine. WOW.
You've constructed something of a motte and bailey, haven't you? The NNTV and reactions arguments can stand against the severe efficacy argument. So there is no need to assert "no evidence" of severe efficacy, which is patently false. There is a mountain of evidence. Could 100% of that mountain be healthy user bias? Sure, maybe. But it's still a mountain.
Efficacy against severe illness was not an endpoint. And is conflated by the nonsensical not counting vaccinated from 1st injection. Anyone can play armchair epidemiologist by cooking the books.
So you only would accept whatever evidence in the trial is declared an "endpoint"? Is reality just a procedure? In that case I have bad news.
2.5.4.1.1.2. Secondary Efficacy Endpoints
Study C4591001 has secondary endpoints based on different approaches to COVID-19 case evaluation criteria as follows:
-COVID-19 confirmed at least 14 days after Dose 2
-Severe COVID-19
-CDC-defined COVID-19
All Confirmed Cases of Severe COVID-19 After Dose 1 – All-Available Population
Among participants in the all-available efficacy population, 1 case of severe COVID-19 occurred after Dose 1 in the BNT162b2 group compared to 9 cases in the placebo group
Pick it up at 6:56. Any contradiction in what McCullough is saying here?
(Remember this is not my wheelhouse, stats and science.)
Do you find the data credible?
And the findings indicate that "severe Covid" is reduced by the injections.
One of the reasons that I ask is b/c I watched the Clare Daly video where she laid out the trials for children, (far smaller cohort) and how the terms were defined, and how the children were excluded who did not fit the desired outcomes (more jabs!).
And very much like when I crunched the Pifzer study numbers which Barney references, I came away baffled at what the "efficacy" was supposed to mean.
So if I read you correctly, the Pfizer vaccine provides a strong benefit against "severe COVID", and that conclusion is reached on the manufacturer trials data? Sorry if I'm missing some nuance, and I probably am. Thanks if you have time.
Some mountain Hugh Grant. Jeeze let me get my avy bag. Testing of adjudicated participants by central lab.
. . . cases confirmed either (1) ≥7 days after Dose 2 or
(2) ≥14 days after Dose 2 . . .
eliminated reactogenicity and unvaccinated until 14 days post dose 2.
Come on man, that's weak. 5x as many injected excluded
There were 311 participants (1.4%) in the BNT162b2 group and 60 participants (0.3%) in the placebo group excluded for having important protocol deviations on or prior to 7 days after Dose 2. A post hoc evaluation was performed to assess the imbalance of these important protocol deviations in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups for the final analysis of efficacy. This showed that the majority of exclusions from the evaluable efficacy (7 days) population in the BNT162b2 group were due to dosing/administration errors or administration of study intervention that was deemed not suitable for use. This is detailed in the C4591001 Final Analysis Interim CSR and in Module 2.7.3.
Placebo and mRNA had same efficacay numbers throughout. Its all datacrime starting with the PCR for goodness sake. Those trials have more holes than a Tom and Jerry wedge of cheese.
Then you cross post PANDA proving severe disease is rare anyway. Whatever. Good day.
The media is the virus. The danger was the hospitals. Post natural infection clearance was always the solution. Never was it untested, undisclosed ingedient comprised, dangerous injections.
Still seems like a lot of motte and baileying. If you want to debate severe efficacy why keep throwing unrelated things I don't disagree with back into it. "Not only is severe efficacy not real, but the night is dark, come on man." This doesn't broadcast confidence in your own conclusions. Because your conclusions have zero evidence, only nihilism to support them. I cross-post that severe outcomes are rare. I am not arguing about severe outcome frequency, I'm arguing about severe outcome efficacy.
I wonder what the percentage of vaxxed vs. unvaccinated deaths were during the Delta wave. They weren't all unvaccinated of course. I recall that in Vermont, 76% of their deaths in September 2021 were those vaccinated.
Thanks for this perspective. I thought that most of the less than 1% of the population dying of covid could be those not vaccinated. But there were uncertainties in the data... vaccinated counted as unvaccinated, deaths with or from covid, and of course unvaccinated people were more likely to take early treatments which were being restricted.
I don't know anyone who died of covid, I live in California which has a healthier population than the poor, more obese Midwestern states. The one person I know who became most ill with covid was not vaccinated and didn't take any early treatments besides Chinese herbs. She wasn't hospitalized, but she said she almost didn't make it. Then she got covid again, much more mild. Most of my unvaccinated friends got mild omicron, and many of my vaccinated friends and family have had covid or other significant respiratory and flu illnesses. And I know about 20 people who have vaccine side effects, although it I can't know how much the vaccine was involved in these cancers, young stroke, chest pain, arrhythmias, severe arthritic pain this winter, fatigue, erectile difficulty and thyroid issues.
All I got in the 3 years was a lousy, self-inflicted bacterial throat infection that set my vocal development back for ~ half a year. Zero of my extended family who did not get the wonderjuice had a confirmed SARS2 infection even once, and the lust for voluntary (by management) testing in German workplaces I know of is still there. Also in my extended family, the "boosted" had "it" (not sure the variants) >= 1 times, same with colleagues. Also, for the past months, some colleagues seem permanently sniffly to oscillating degrees, but with negative tests.
Though I'm curious how valid those bought-in-bulk tests form a year ago still properly detect the currently floating around stuff. Those tests can't be too specific, but also not too loose, to detect not just every coronavirus but also not just once variant, ... They did get a few positives in december, though - a couple among < 40 employees. In that small company I also find it interesting how, within the same year, 3 people developed a type of cancer. Two males in the 50s, one female in the 20s. That's almost 10%. Quite the statistical oddity. One is dead, one was benign skin type, the girl is in treatment, not been to work a lot the past few months before new year, now diminished work time.
California is a paradox. The highly vaxxed people were all healthy and at basically no risk from the virus to begin with - after all, the virus was already here in late 2019 via Chinese students in the UC network and no one even noticed, aside from some anecdotes of a wave of illness at Davis.
But California still had loads of hospitalizations and deaths in 2021. Predominately, as far as I can tell, in inland LA, and in Central Valley, unvaccinated elderly hispanic. There was an LA Times story where valley doctors described the scene. They seemed pretty engaged with the patients and so the reported unvaccinated status doesn't seem to be a miscategorization. On the other hand, probably no use of outpatient HCQ.
Brian, would you be interested in doing an analysis of the EuroMOMO excess death data? Lots of people have been citing it as evidence of increased mortality, but their website points out some limitations and biases in the model that aren't corrected for. No one seems to be taking this into account. I've tried looking for other possible corroborative evidence, such as the average age of death or the per capita deaths in lower age groups - these don't seem to indicate anything amiss. But I'm no stats expert.
As for that, I endorse Ron Unz's analysis of excess deaths (but not his conclusion that this settles the debate on the injections). Put simply, lots of highly vaxxed European countries don't have any working age excess deaths, and these seem to be the ones where SARS-CoV-2 doesn't meet with as many existing comorbidities. https://unglossed.substack.com/p/american-excess-mortality-does-not
So excess deaths in healthier countries seem to only be in the elderly, suggesting it's more about the virus. Additionally, I think there's still a lot of "virus debt" that needs to be paid, for both SARS-CoV-2 and flu - https://lostintranslations.substack.com/p/seasonality-shifts
Perhaps we just have to let go of the notion of excess deaths being valuable for measuring how deadly things are. The stats seem to exaggerate the danger of the virus and totally obscure the danger of the vaccine, but I'm not going to put my faith in an injection vs a million years of evolution and the immune system because stats say so.
Seems like another indication of healthy user bias. Obviously, we can't make older people young again (not yet, at least), and the likelihood of morbidity increases with age, but the main takeaway from me is still that the crux of the Covid problem as well as most chronic diseasesin the United States are preventable health problems. Everybody's fretting over whether this pandemic has ended and when the next one is coming, but you see very little in the mainstream about the things we know would mitigate it. Those things are eat right and exercise. Of course, we know you can't advise people to lose weight anymore because that's fat shaming, and I imagine you can't advise them to exercise more because that would be sloth? shaming. Building up some tolerance to the sun without being slathered in sunscreen probably wouldn't hurt, either. 
Probably those messages are "promoted" in the sense that someone's job is to make the CDC web page for this and that good lifestyle choice. But it isn't what the news reports them to be saying. So it's unclear whose interests are being revealed.
Beyond that, I think it's really up to people and communities to get their act together on that on their own.
I've been taking various issues that come up in the anti-covid crowd (falling birth rates, myocarditis, excess deaths) and trying to corroborate with the data from Norway, which has pretty good stats available over a large range of subjects.
My conclusions:
1. There's a distinct uptick in heart-related issues during the rollout. Looks like maybe 200-300 extra cases in a country of 5mill. Hospitalizations only, so it doesn't include subclinical damage.
2. Birth rates fell drastically in 2022, but there was a baby boom in 2021, so it's too early to say if this might be related to fertility. The average of 2021 and 2022 is equal to 2020.
3. Average age of death has not decreased, nor has there been any significant change in deaths among working age people, if you compare the numbers to the last 10 years. "Excess deaths" are high, but I think the model is "broken" to some extent.
I'm suspicious of the models as well. I think baseline was depressed by being in a very oddly regular flu pattern from 2010-2019. Usually you would have more action there.
At the same time the trends of death per thousand were rising, but I don't see much difference in the mortality database using trend so I don't know if that matters. In https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283850v1 Fig 2 it makes a big difference in Finland and Germany but not so much Norway. In Fig 3 the observations in my markup of the Unz table seem to be reflected, suggesting virus but not vaccine driving the stats either way
This matches my anecdotal experience - all the people I personally know who died or were hospitalized from Covid were unvaccinated. Some of them even took some kind of early treatment (not sure which or how much), but were not working with a physician who could oversee the treatment and follow up with situation-specific advice.
On the other hand, I also know people who were injured by the vaccine, or who developed Long Covid even after having been previously vaccinated. Reality is messy. I'm still glad I didn't get the jab.
At what point does the CDC data become ‘fruit from the poison tree’ and cannot be trusted? From your perspective, is the co-mingling of the dying ‘with’ and ‘from’ Covid mortality data even worth analysis? I’m seriously asking this question and have no dog in the fight. I appreciate your objective analysis of these issues but cannot get past the nasty confounders imbedded in dirty data.
The CDC cannot be trusted, because no American data sets can be trusted. However, the problem remains that something happened in America, so these are the only data sets that we have for that something.
The with not from problem might still be caustic for "Long Covid" stats, especially the Al-Aly Veterans Affairs papers. On the other hand they've been corroborated from the far more reliable UK biobank as far as brain and cardiac stuff.
Overall I think it's clear that the virus has driven a lot of deaths. But still nothing like an actual plague. If it hadn't been hyped so much, if Western medicine wasn't so incompetent, we'd have been more worried about other stuff this whole time.
I appreciate the difficulty of the situation. FWIW, Brian's analysis matches my own anecdotal experience - everyone I know who died or was hospitalized due to Covid (5 people) was unvaccinated (some by choice, some because it was pre-rollout). That doesn't mean the vaccines are safe, nor that they are effective in the long run, but it does mean that they had a significant impact on covid deaths during the Delta wave.
I think this is actually a big help to understand "the other side" of people who were desperate to get everyone vaccinated. In summer and early fall of 2021, people working on covid wards were REALLY seeing that almost everyone coming in was unvaccinated. It was naturally horrifying for them, because they were seeing the worst possible outcomes of the choice to remain unvaxxed. As long as your focus was the covid ward, your main takeaway was "if only everyone would get vaxxed, this would be over".
It's only when the focus shifted to (for example) the emergency room where heart issues and clots started increasing, or to Facebook groups were thousands of people were trying to bootstrap treatments for vaccine injury, that you start to see the downside of the choice to get vaccinated.
Bottom line: Medicine is always a risk/benefit analysis. We have to work hard to keep a clear head about the risks and benefits of ALL alternatives. It's not easy, especially given the corruption and propaganda being spewed at us with a firehose.
I remember back in 2021 I kept hearing that 98% of all Covid patients in hospitals were allegedly ‘unvaxxed’ which turned out to be not true due to how the default assumption that was coded into each patients medical chart was vax sratus ‘unknown’. Unless one had their jab within that hospital system, they were considered unvaxxed.
The data has been consistently dirty and I can absolutely agree with you that it must have freaked out a lot of the hospital staff if they were incorrectly led to believe that most of the Covid patients weren’t jabbed. My wife and I both had delta around 09/2021 and haven’t had any of the other variants since.
My wife is a doctor specializing in Integrative Functional Medicine and her patient load is a compendium of people under 40 with a disease profile of a 65+ demo. She can no longer trust the CDC or NIH and it feels like the Wild West to her.
The most outlandish numbers were from reporting outcomes starting in December 2020, which was ridiculous because no one was really vaccinated yet until the winter wave subsided.
It was a bit insulting, but also just embarrassing for the supporters of the vax in that the problem was so obvious but even smart people reacted with "well, it's the statistic so I have to repeat it like it's reality." Gross.
For the summer wave in the US I relied on inference. Absolute numbers in more well-surveyed Israel and UK showed that there weren't a lot of vaxxed people being hospitalized yet. Therefore, even if the US was categorizing "unknown" as "unvaccinated," it would only be capturing a fraction of that small fraction, especially given that in the South vax rates were much lower than Israel and the UK. So it never mattered. I think a real rate of 1/3 to 1/4 of all hospitalizations being vaxxed in Delta wave is realistic. Note that after Omicron took over the media reported a switch to higher vaxxed hospitalized. https://unglossed.substack.com/p/life-potential
I think Substack has been infiltrated and corrupted. What the hell...? Like the Bot Farms care whether it's Twitter or Gab or Substack? The bit about Alex Berenstein, now Steve Kirsch...somebody is doing a very good job of making us question our beliefs. I'm not a number cruncher guy, just have really accurate gut reactions to bullshit. This all reeks of the undermining of confidence in the 'misinformation' gurus that have been the glue that held me and many others together over the last 2 years.
Substack having dissenting viewpoints isn't an infiltration or corruption. It'd also be strange to find bots who are producing the work Brian has unless spending very good money I suppose.
One of my criticisms about the freedom movement or whatever the movement is called, is that there actually hasn't been enough criticisms or discourse. When someone presents an idea we would hope that people make good-faith attempts to find faults in the logic, or to point out limitations in studies cited.
But instead, it sometimes feels more like people may post something out there and is just taken as being factful. There's no remarks about any issues with the analysis.
We also haven't done ourselves any favors when we view criticisms or pushback as some form of "fact checking", as if we shouldn't provide rebuttals.
When it comes to Kirsch Brian is raising a criticism of the analysis, and therefore either the analysis has some faults or Brian's criticisms are not of merit, but that's worth exploring. If we don't explore it then should we just assume that Kirsch's analysis is correct? We don't do ourselves any favors in figuring out what's going on when we use poor data.
From my perspective, what should have held this group together was the search for answers and open discourse so that feedback and constant flow of information is allowed. Should we not speak out when something seems to be an egregious error?
We shouldn't be idolizing any individual, or even the movement. As soon as we idolize people and put our trust in them we stop thinking critically and just look to certain people for answers rather than learning along the way.
To Berenson, I'll say that many (from my perspective) many people are critical in his sudden pivot in his position. He suddenly seems to be part of a group that attempts to argue that long COVID doesn't exist as a way to undermine the actual severity of COVID. Even if one were to argue that a majority of COVID cases may not be severe, or that the lockdowns and mandates shouldn't have happened, you can do so without acting as if long COVID isn't real or that certain vaccine-injured people are just faking it.
With Ivermectin I think he's certainly allowed his own position so long as he reads the studies and criticizes them accordingly, but this is also where Berenson appears to be lacking and just accepts the results of a study so long as it tells him what he wants.
I guess that "steelmanning" the opponents arguments often ends up rather doing the other party's homework for them, not just presenting it in a fair way, which might smell like "helping the enemy" of what one has settled on, so goes the perception.
But strawmen can't only be torn down by those who designed them, so, it's no use. If all is done honestly, things should converge to a clearer view of what is, hopefully.
(the last bit was just saying what you already said in another way, for whoever suspicious comes along and reads over it)
I have not "infiltrated" substack, I have been here since summer 2021 and have been combatting the myth of "secret vaccinated Covid deaths" the entire time. The argument against the Covid vaccine is a COST BENEFIT argument. You can't WIN a cost benefit argument if you don't acknowledge the benefit. Berenson, with his eternal toddler tantrum against severe efficacy, is the one doing the sabotaging.
The difficult thing about all of this is trying to find who you can trust. Even people with good intentions can make mistakes, have blind spots, or allow their egos to get in the way. I don't know of anyone in the medical freedom movement that hasn't at least made some mistakes or chased down some red herrings. The best you can hope for is to find people who are at least clearly trying to correct their own mistakes.
In the case of Steve Kirsch, my impression of him is that he's a Type A personality who has a severe tendency to jump the gun on things. It made him a good entrepreneur, but he's not so good at the careful, nuanced discussions. Thus he ends up being a purveyor of *actual* misinformation, whether or not it's his intent. I stopped following him a while ago because of that. The facts around the vaccines and covid are bad enough - no need to exaggerate them. It just makes it harder to communicate with people who have alternative perspectives.
As regards Alex, I didn't think the criticism was entirely fair. Although I disagree with him about a lot and find his brash NY ego to be abrasive, his fight against censorship was valuable to the entire medical freedom movement. He was also one of the first among the covid skeptics to get kicked off of Twitter and bring his audience over to Substack, which has proven very valuable.
I have to say that Brian is one of the most careful, evenhanded thinkers I've found so far. He actually digs into the data, is good at keeping his confirmation bias out of the way, and calls out both sides on their bad analyses.
I don't have anything against jumping the gun as a general principle - I have done it myself, when I felt I had found something true.
So for Kirsch, I think he was right from the start to trust anecdotes and call out a problem. But after that, a lot of goofs. I think it stems from not being previously aware of how bad medical statistics are at revealing reality. If you don't come into this having already given thought to how bias distorts data, to seemingly impossible degrees, leading to the already ongoing replication crisis, you just end up throwing a lot of bias-distorted-data around.
I agree about his treatment of anecdotes - I think anecdotes, if treated properly, are extremely valuable data points. My issue with Steve is that he allows his own bias to distort his view of the data. Then he comes up with dramatic clickbait-ey headlines and blares around his own biased conclusions without acknowledging the points that the other side may have correct. I much prefer your approach. :)
I think these unscientific surveys are pretty meaningless. I ran actual numbers comparing all cause mortality death rates between vaccinated (at least one shot) and unvaccinated (zero shots.). My write up is here:
1. The shots did provide some protection against death for between 6-9 months for several age groups. Unfortunately they provided negative protection for young people since their second month on market.
2. That protection corresponded with the Delta wave for older groups so it’s not out of the question that more unvaxxed may have died in late summer / early Fall of ‘21.
3. However, since September ‘21, every single age group has seen excess deaths in people who got at least one shot.
4. I used UK data because it’s the most reliable and accurate despite its flaws. But they chose to stop publishing all cause mortality by vax status as of May ‘22, likely because they realized exactly what I did...the vaxxed have been dying at a higher rate since mid to late 2021.
Don’t argue with me about surveys or anecdotes. If you find a legitimate flaw in my data or calculations then I’m happy to discuss, and to admit if you prove me wrong
"3. However, since September ‘21, every single age group has seen excess deaths in people who got at least one shot."
No, the ONS deaths are lower for adults in cumulative or monthly all-cause deaths until May 2022, when some age+sex groups shift to negative in monthly. Likewise, overall excess deaths goes positive from May onward. So maybe the black-out is hiding deaths. But there's nothing September 21 - April 22.
By “excess deaths” what I mean is that for the vaccinated (one shot or more) they’ve died at a greater rate than their portion of the population. For instance, if 75% of an age group was vaccinated and 80% of deaths occurred in that subset, then that’s what I’m considering “excess deaths.” I think you’re likely referring to overall societal deaths in relation to previous years. Even though we are using the same term, we are referring to different metrics.
You can't use population denominators for the ONS data. It doesn't purport to reflect all Brits, only those who are in the Public Health Data Asset. The same way you can't figure "how many people named Joe ace math tests" with an 'all Joes' denominator, you must use the Joes taking math tests number.
With universal health care, how many Brits are you suggesting are not in ONS? And are you suggesting it wouldn’t at least have a representative sample of vaxxed vs unvaxxed?
Anyone who wasn't in the 2011 census, General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) data for coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic planning and research, and the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), is excluded. So you use the ONS denominators because they are only recording events for this well-contacted group. You don't bring in imaginary wrong denominators because the ONS ones disagree with your conclusions.
Frankly, if and when I see better data then I’ll readily consider it. Every study I’ve read trying to estimate deaths for vaxxed vs unvaxxed has been ridiculous. Some look only at “COVID deaths” and there’s a long line of evidence that those are not counted correctly, and often mislabeled people with one or two shots as “unvaccinated”,
blatantly ignored any deaths resulting from the shots, and often conflated “died with COVID” with “died from COVID.” I’ve seen studies comparing counties that voted Trump vs Biden and using those as proxies for vax status, which is just silly. And I’ve seen modeling studies that can be summarized as “garbage in, garbage out.” So if you can show me a study that looks at actual all cause mortality, by month, by vax status (number of shots, not invented terminology like the CDC uses), by age group then I will happily read it. Short of that I won’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. I do not believe that in aggregate these shots have saved a single life. Do you have a study that hits all those criteria?
Great article. I don’t personally know anyone who died from covid, but I do know of one definite vax injury (myocarditis). The waves of deaths that hit the elderly homes were also surrounded by insistent stories about them being denied any antibiotics- antibiotics that could have helped for post viral respiratory infections/pneumonia. Have you been following jikkyleaks and the antibiotic demonization that accompanied the covid outbreak? Or the midazolam that was given to the elderly in the old age homes in the UK, effectively killing them?
Bacteria seem to be scapegoats for the virus directly injuring the lung. Antibiotics were liberally applied, so lung injury wasn't from bacteria, as far as I can make out
"-Despite frequent prescription of broad-spectrum empirical antimicrobials in patients with coronavirus-associated respiratory infections, there is a paucity of data to support the association with respiratory bacterial/fungal coinfection."
What is "empirical antimicrobials" referring to - does that mean they determine the exact variant of bacterium and prescribe an antibiotic that shows specific effectiveness in the petri dish?
Because, some lung killer bacteria are "resistant to almost everything", like Klebsiella P.
I supposedly had Klebsiella Oxytoca in my throat, a tad unusual. Its initials are K.O., but luckily, it was less impressive. But it made me research those kinda bugs a bit. Some essential oils like oregano, coriander, and ginger extract seem effective, but that stuff won't be much liked by lungs, I imagine?! ~ 5x the reportedly effective concentration of oregano oil is bearable in the throat as mist of glycerin/water/oil mixture spray. Yeah I tried that, lol. (with doubts whether topical application can even be possibly enough... but the ENT prescribed a spray, too - which in a study had zero effect on K.O. - argh) But I'm also the guy who goes to the invisibly marked "for our kind" table in the corner of the Thai restaurant and take their chili flakes, friendly nodding back to the bemused guest there.
Opposite - it's when they prescribe without a culture, just as a guess. Yeah, lung oregano seems problematic - did you try bleach?
Way back in March 2020, I was still active as normal, not doing the pre-lockdown, then I thought I felt a little off so I ate a clove of garlic on a totally empty stomach at 9PM. Thought I was going to die for 10 minutes. Was as bad but different to an experience eating a tangerine on an empty stomach. In which case I was sure the feeling could only be cancer. But it was just a Tangerine Mystery.
Bleach? I thought that works only for orange men :D Although I heard it's common in the US to use oxygen donors as a disinfectant... it's kinda unheard of here. I guess it's pure hell for some anaerobic bacteria, if you can get it to them, eh?
I guess I know what you mean with garlic. I used to make tahina sauce with a lot of fresh garlic, and it's not defused by heat. Can feel rather lousy in the stomach the next morning, without it having been empty.
Citrus fruit, not sure... I used to eat fruits as first meal regularly, but not citric. And if citric, buffer it with a banana as a fruit salad, but that's more to be milder on the teeth. I also used to eat a perhaps 1.5 kg pine apple at once, my belly wouldn't complain, only perhaps the mouth being digested from those enzymes :D
In my hospital in the midwest the majority of covid positives were unvaxxed in 2021. It didn't transitioned to mostly vaxxed until Q1-Q2 2022 at the end of Delta. I also anecdotally noted on the outpatient side starting after Thanksgiving 2021 that a significant number of positives had had a booster in the prior 2 weeks.
That was my more limited observation as well - I caught presumed Omicron from a just-boosted person. So I was really surprised in late summer when I started to see the evidence that has now convinced me that the boosted were still, as a group, way behind on "meeting the virus."
Just dropping this here. Sounds interesting:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33191178/
"Chicken Egg Yolk Antibodies (IgYs) block the binding of multiple SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variants to human ACE2"
I would be surprised if such things survived intact when injested. However, I guess things like antibiotics manage to survive our stomachs and vitamin D3 does so maybe IgY would as well.
Thanks - and have received your email, will reply as soon as I have a chance
*edit: Lol, I had a really different impression of what a chicken egg yolk antibody meant.
Is there any way to communicate with you directly. My wife has a bunch of high school students engaged in a project/competition looking at the data and what it portends for a certain industry ... and we are looking for a mentor or at least feedback.
Does anyone think there's any credence to the idea that the difference in outcomes during the Delta wave in the summer of 2021 between the Northeast, south, and Midwest was due to the so-called healthy user bias? That the higher rate of vaccine uptake in the northeast was not the key determinant of whether a person ended up severely ill or dead from Covid. That the primary determinant was the same socioeconomic factors that result in better outcomes for cancer and heart disease when compared across the same regions historically. This does not counter Brian's argument that the deaths during the Delta waves were primarily in the unvaccinated. It does call into question how effective, if at all, the vaccine was in the more heavily vaccinated populations during the Delta wave. 
The Northeast had two things going on, which was healthy user bias and higher natural immunity + disrupted seasonality due to having a bigger spring 2020 wave and a Canada-influenced spring 2021 Alpha wave.
I don't think the Northeast is *good* evidence of vax efficacy. Rather, it strongly refutes the inference that deaths in the South were somehow from mandates or boosters since those elements would have been even more at play in the Northeast. Thus, the organic conclusion is that the case rates are not lying. Virus plus suppression of early treatment killed. But even if not "good" evidence, it's still consistent with other evidence RE severe efficacy in Israel and the UK. Which is to say, there were still Delta waves in the Northeast, for example PA had a good amount of cases but nothing like the skew in excess deaths of Southern states.
Biologically, severe efficacy just makes sense. Severe outcomes happen due to delayed immune response (not over-active immune response, that was always a myth). In the Paxlovid trial, in the placebo group almost everybody who had a fast antibody response was fine, all the severe outcomes were in the placebo people who didn't have a fast antibody response - https://unglossed.substack.com/i/52792651/assay-what So circulating antibodies help control the virus. Yes they aren't everything but we make them for a reason, after all.
Very sad. Incredible how doctors and nurses could show such CONTEMPT for the lives of patients entrusted to their care.
In my parents' rural community a lot of people died of COVID.. largely due to lack of early treatment and general poor health. Of course if they did go to the hospital they rarely returned.
Unfortunately my parents refused to believe this was largely avoidable (by early treatment, vitamin d, and not killing people in the hospital) and so they could not be talked out of the shots.
The fact is a lot of people died. But they have a hard time accepting the true malevolence of our overlords. Nothing I say gets through.
I should say, they do accept the malevolence of Trump, largely without question. But apparently not OWS.
There is no evidence anywhere of the injections offering benefit to anyone but indemnified companies profiting from them. Not even in the fraud clinical trials. The injections dont even create mucosal antibodies FFS. The only endpoint was PCR result period. And they gamed that by testing all placebo recipients and only tested injected cohorts after adjudication. Furthermore they ignored vaccine reactogenicity which if they didnt the difference in PCR outcomes would be nearly equal. Despite all of that AND ignoring that more injected participants died they still only managed under 1% absolute risk reduction. The only real proxy is ACM and that aint looking so good anywhere except places that didnt mandate the injections. The NNTV is literally infinity if real (not gamed) data is used.
What these articles show is how easily propagandized medicine tossed the hippocratic oath into the used needle bin and literally targeted people who did not succumb to mass media fear campaign in order to help bolster it. This was mob mentality bullying to the point of murder and speaks profoundly horrifically to the depths society has fallen even before we havent reached the food and energy scarcity that waits us due to abjectly stupid policies of governments being deployed now.
Countless politicians promulgate about the need to reduce the population via vaccines, a pandemic is faked, and deployed "vaccines" create historic discord disability and death but it woulda been worse without the vaccine. WOW.
You've constructed something of a motte and bailey, haven't you? The NNTV and reactions arguments can stand against the severe efficacy argument. So there is no need to assert "no evidence" of severe efficacy, which is patently false. There is a mountain of evidence. Could 100% of that mountain be healthy user bias? Sure, maybe. But it's still a mountain.
Efficacy against severe illness was not an endpoint. And is conflated by the nonsensical not counting vaccinated from 1st injection. Anyone can play armchair epidemiologist by cooking the books.
So you only would accept whatever evidence in the trial is declared an "endpoint"? Is reality just a procedure? In that case I have bad news.
2.5.4.1.1.2. Secondary Efficacy Endpoints
Study C4591001 has secondary endpoints based on different approaches to COVID-19 case evaluation criteria as follows:
-COVID-19 confirmed at least 14 days after Dose 2
-Severe COVID-19
-CDC-defined COVID-19
All Confirmed Cases of Severe COVID-19 After Dose 1 – All-Available Population
Among participants in the all-available efficacy population, 1 case of severe COVID-19 occurred after Dose 1 in the BNT162b2 group compared to 9 cases in the placebo group
https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/STN-125742_0_0-Section-2.5-Clinical-Overview.pdf
Is this the original data set from the Pfizer trials?
It’s the snapshot as of March (21?) 2021. So 3 to 4 months after the submission for EUA
May I pick your brain?
https://sagehana.substack.com/p/team-reality-a-mini-documentary-ep
Pick it up at 6:56. Any contradiction in what McCullough is saying here?
(Remember this is not my wheelhouse, stats and science.)
Do you find the data credible?
And the findings indicate that "severe Covid" is reduced by the injections.
One of the reasons that I ask is b/c I watched the Clare Daly video where she laid out the trials for children, (far smaller cohort) and how the terms were defined, and how the children were excluded who did not fit the desired outcomes (more jabs!).
And very much like when I crunched the Pifzer study numbers which Barney references, I came away baffled at what the "efficacy" was supposed to mean.
So if I read you correctly, the Pfizer vaccine provides a strong benefit against "severe COVID", and that conclusion is reached on the manufacturer trials data? Sorry if I'm missing some nuance, and I probably am. Thanks if you have time.
Some mountain Hugh Grant. Jeeze let me get my avy bag. Testing of adjudicated participants by central lab.
. . . cases confirmed either (1) ≥7 days after Dose 2 or
(2) ≥14 days after Dose 2 . . .
eliminated reactogenicity and unvaccinated until 14 days post dose 2.
Come on man, that's weak. 5x as many injected excluded
There were 311 participants (1.4%) in the BNT162b2 group and 60 participants (0.3%) in the placebo group excluded for having important protocol deviations on or prior to 7 days after Dose 2. A post hoc evaluation was performed to assess the imbalance of these important protocol deviations in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups for the final analysis of efficacy. This showed that the majority of exclusions from the evaluable efficacy (7 days) population in the BNT162b2 group were due to dosing/administration errors or administration of study intervention that was deemed not suitable for use. This is detailed in the C4591001 Final Analysis Interim CSR and in Module 2.7.3.
Placebo and mRNA had same efficacay numbers throughout. Its all datacrime starting with the PCR for goodness sake. Those trials have more holes than a Tom and Jerry wedge of cheese.
Then you cross post PANDA proving severe disease is rare anyway. Whatever. Good day.
The media is the virus. The danger was the hospitals. Post natural infection clearance was always the solution. Never was it untested, undisclosed ingedient comprised, dangerous injections.
Still seems like a lot of motte and baileying. If you want to debate severe efficacy why keep throwing unrelated things I don't disagree with back into it. "Not only is severe efficacy not real, but the night is dark, come on man." This doesn't broadcast confidence in your own conclusions. Because your conclusions have zero evidence, only nihilism to support them. I cross-post that severe outcomes are rare. I am not arguing about severe outcome frequency, I'm arguing about severe outcome efficacy.
I wonder what the percentage of vaxxed vs. unvaccinated deaths were during the Delta wave. They weren't all unvaccinated of course. I recall that in Vermont, 76% of their deaths in September 2021 were those vaccinated.
Thanks for this perspective. I thought that most of the less than 1% of the population dying of covid could be those not vaccinated. But there were uncertainties in the data... vaccinated counted as unvaccinated, deaths with or from covid, and of course unvaccinated people were more likely to take early treatments which were being restricted.
I don't know anyone who died of covid, I live in California which has a healthier population than the poor, more obese Midwestern states. The one person I know who became most ill with covid was not vaccinated and didn't take any early treatments besides Chinese herbs. She wasn't hospitalized, but she said she almost didn't make it. Then she got covid again, much more mild. Most of my unvaccinated friends got mild omicron, and many of my vaccinated friends and family have had covid or other significant respiratory and flu illnesses. And I know about 20 people who have vaccine side effects, although it I can't know how much the vaccine was involved in these cancers, young stroke, chest pain, arrhythmias, severe arthritic pain this winter, fatigue, erectile difficulty and thyroid issues.
All I got in the 3 years was a lousy, self-inflicted bacterial throat infection that set my vocal development back for ~ half a year. Zero of my extended family who did not get the wonderjuice had a confirmed SARS2 infection even once, and the lust for voluntary (by management) testing in German workplaces I know of is still there. Also in my extended family, the "boosted" had "it" (not sure the variants) >= 1 times, same with colleagues. Also, for the past months, some colleagues seem permanently sniffly to oscillating degrees, but with negative tests.
Though I'm curious how valid those bought-in-bulk tests form a year ago still properly detect the currently floating around stuff. Those tests can't be too specific, but also not too loose, to detect not just every coronavirus but also not just once variant, ... They did get a few positives in december, though - a couple among < 40 employees. In that small company I also find it interesting how, within the same year, 3 people developed a type of cancer. Two males in the 50s, one female in the 20s. That's almost 10%. Quite the statistical oddity. One is dead, one was benign skin type, the girl is in treatment, not been to work a lot the past few months before new year, now diminished work time.
California is a paradox. The highly vaxxed people were all healthy and at basically no risk from the virus to begin with - after all, the virus was already here in late 2019 via Chinese students in the UC network and no one even noticed, aside from some anecdotes of a wave of illness at Davis.
But California still had loads of hospitalizations and deaths in 2021. Predominately, as far as I can tell, in inland LA, and in Central Valley, unvaccinated elderly hispanic. There was an LA Times story where valley doctors described the scene. They seemed pretty engaged with the patients and so the reported unvaccinated status doesn't seem to be a miscategorization. On the other hand, probably no use of outpatient HCQ.
Brian, would you be interested in doing an analysis of the EuroMOMO excess death data? Lots of people have been citing it as evidence of increased mortality, but their website points out some limitations and biases in the model that aren't corrected for. No one seems to be taking this into account. I've tried looking for other possible corroborative evidence, such as the average age of death or the per capita deaths in lower age groups - these don't seem to indicate anything amiss. But I'm no stats expert.
As for that, I endorse Ron Unz's analysis of excess deaths (but not his conclusion that this settles the debate on the injections). Put simply, lots of highly vaxxed European countries don't have any working age excess deaths, and these seem to be the ones where SARS-CoV-2 doesn't meet with as many existing comorbidities. https://unglossed.substack.com/p/american-excess-mortality-does-not
So excess deaths in healthier countries seem to only be in the elderly, suggesting it's more about the virus. Additionally, I think there's still a lot of "virus debt" that needs to be paid, for both SARS-CoV-2 and flu - https://lostintranslations.substack.com/p/seasonality-shifts
Perhaps we just have to let go of the notion of excess deaths being valuable for measuring how deadly things are. The stats seem to exaggerate the danger of the virus and totally obscure the danger of the vaccine, but I'm not going to put my faith in an injection vs a million years of evolution and the immune system because stats say so.
Seems like another indication of healthy user bias. Obviously, we can't make older people young again (not yet, at least), and the likelihood of morbidity increases with age, but the main takeaway from me is still that the crux of the Covid problem as well as most chronic diseasesin the United States are preventable health problems. Everybody's fretting over whether this pandemic has ended and when the next one is coming, but you see very little in the mainstream about the things we know would mitigate it. Those things are eat right and exercise. Of course, we know you can't advise people to lose weight anymore because that's fat shaming, and I imagine you can't advise them to exercise more because that would be sloth? shaming. Building up some tolerance to the sun without being slathered in sunscreen probably wouldn't hurt, either. 
Probably those messages are "promoted" in the sense that someone's job is to make the CDC web page for this and that good lifestyle choice. But it isn't what the news reports them to be saying. So it's unclear whose interests are being revealed.
Beyond that, I think it's really up to people and communities to get their act together on that on their own.
I've been taking various issues that come up in the anti-covid crowd (falling birth rates, myocarditis, excess deaths) and trying to corroborate with the data from Norway, which has pretty good stats available over a large range of subjects.
My conclusions:
1. There's a distinct uptick in heart-related issues during the rollout. Looks like maybe 200-300 extra cases in a country of 5mill. Hospitalizations only, so it doesn't include subclinical damage.
2. Birth rates fell drastically in 2022, but there was a baby boom in 2021, so it's too early to say if this might be related to fertility. The average of 2021 and 2022 is equal to 2020.
3. Average age of death has not decreased, nor has there been any significant change in deaths among working age people, if you compare the numbers to the last 10 years. "Excess deaths" are high, but I think the model is "broken" to some extent.
I'm suspicious of the models as well. I think baseline was depressed by being in a very oddly regular flu pattern from 2010-2019. Usually you would have more action there.
At the same time the trends of death per thousand were rising, but I don't see much difference in the mortality database using trend so I don't know if that matters. In https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.12.22.22283850v1 Fig 2 it makes a big difference in Finland and Germany but not so much Norway. In Fig 3 the observations in my markup of the Unz table seem to be reflected, suggesting virus but not vaccine driving the stats either way
This matches my anecdotal experience - all the people I personally know who died or were hospitalized from Covid were unvaccinated. Some of them even took some kind of early treatment (not sure which or how much), but were not working with a physician who could oversee the treatment and follow up with situation-specific advice.
On the other hand, I also know people who were injured by the vaccine, or who developed Long Covid even after having been previously vaccinated. Reality is messy. I'm still glad I didn't get the jab.
Thank you for reminding me that the next thing I need to write up is the stupid Washington long covid efficacy paper
At what point does the CDC data become ‘fruit from the poison tree’ and cannot be trusted? From your perspective, is the co-mingling of the dying ‘with’ and ‘from’ Covid mortality data even worth analysis? I’m seriously asking this question and have no dog in the fight. I appreciate your objective analysis of these issues but cannot get past the nasty confounders imbedded in dirty data.
Thank’s Brian for all that you have done.
The CDC cannot be trusted, because no American data sets can be trusted. However, the problem remains that something happened in America, so these are the only data sets that we have for that something.
The with not from problem might still be caustic for "Long Covid" stats, especially the Al-Aly Veterans Affairs papers. On the other hand they've been corroborated from the far more reliable UK biobank as far as brain and cardiac stuff.
Overall I think it's clear that the virus has driven a lot of deaths. But still nothing like an actual plague. If it hadn't been hyped so much, if Western medicine wasn't so incompetent, we'd have been more worried about other stuff this whole time.
I appreciate the difficulty of the situation. FWIW, Brian's analysis matches my own anecdotal experience - everyone I know who died or was hospitalized due to Covid (5 people) was unvaccinated (some by choice, some because it was pre-rollout). That doesn't mean the vaccines are safe, nor that they are effective in the long run, but it does mean that they had a significant impact on covid deaths during the Delta wave.
I think this is actually a big help to understand "the other side" of people who were desperate to get everyone vaccinated. In summer and early fall of 2021, people working on covid wards were REALLY seeing that almost everyone coming in was unvaccinated. It was naturally horrifying for them, because they were seeing the worst possible outcomes of the choice to remain unvaxxed. As long as your focus was the covid ward, your main takeaway was "if only everyone would get vaxxed, this would be over".
It's only when the focus shifted to (for example) the emergency room where heart issues and clots started increasing, or to Facebook groups were thousands of people were trying to bootstrap treatments for vaccine injury, that you start to see the downside of the choice to get vaccinated.
Bottom line: Medicine is always a risk/benefit analysis. We have to work hard to keep a clear head about the risks and benefits of ALL alternatives. It's not easy, especially given the corruption and propaganda being spewed at us with a firehose.
I remember back in 2021 I kept hearing that 98% of all Covid patients in hospitals were allegedly ‘unvaxxed’ which turned out to be not true due to how the default assumption that was coded into each patients medical chart was vax sratus ‘unknown’. Unless one had their jab within that hospital system, they were considered unvaxxed.
The data has been consistently dirty and I can absolutely agree with you that it must have freaked out a lot of the hospital staff if they were incorrectly led to believe that most of the Covid patients weren’t jabbed. My wife and I both had delta around 09/2021 and haven’t had any of the other variants since.
My wife is a doctor specializing in Integrative Functional Medicine and her patient load is a compendium of people under 40 with a disease profile of a 65+ demo. She can no longer trust the CDC or NIH and it feels like the Wild West to her.
The most outlandish numbers were from reporting outcomes starting in December 2020, which was ridiculous because no one was really vaccinated yet until the winter wave subsided.
It was a bit insulting, but also just embarrassing for the supporters of the vax in that the problem was so obvious but even smart people reacted with "well, it's the statistic so I have to repeat it like it's reality." Gross.
For the summer wave in the US I relied on inference. Absolute numbers in more well-surveyed Israel and UK showed that there weren't a lot of vaxxed people being hospitalized yet. Therefore, even if the US was categorizing "unknown" as "unvaccinated," it would only be capturing a fraction of that small fraction, especially given that in the South vax rates were much lower than Israel and the UK. So it never mattered. I think a real rate of 1/3 to 1/4 of all hospitalizations being vaxxed in Delta wave is realistic. Note that after Omicron took over the media reported a switch to higher vaxxed hospitalized. https://unglossed.substack.com/p/life-potential
I think Substack has been infiltrated and corrupted. What the hell...? Like the Bot Farms care whether it's Twitter or Gab or Substack? The bit about Alex Berenstein, now Steve Kirsch...somebody is doing a very good job of making us question our beliefs. I'm not a number cruncher guy, just have really accurate gut reactions to bullshit. This all reeks of the undermining of confidence in the 'misinformation' gurus that have been the glue that held me and many others together over the last 2 years.
Substack having dissenting viewpoints isn't an infiltration or corruption. It'd also be strange to find bots who are producing the work Brian has unless spending very good money I suppose.
One of my criticisms about the freedom movement or whatever the movement is called, is that there actually hasn't been enough criticisms or discourse. When someone presents an idea we would hope that people make good-faith attempts to find faults in the logic, or to point out limitations in studies cited.
But instead, it sometimes feels more like people may post something out there and is just taken as being factful. There's no remarks about any issues with the analysis.
We also haven't done ourselves any favors when we view criticisms or pushback as some form of "fact checking", as if we shouldn't provide rebuttals.
When it comes to Kirsch Brian is raising a criticism of the analysis, and therefore either the analysis has some faults or Brian's criticisms are not of merit, but that's worth exploring. If we don't explore it then should we just assume that Kirsch's analysis is correct? We don't do ourselves any favors in figuring out what's going on when we use poor data.
From my perspective, what should have held this group together was the search for answers and open discourse so that feedback and constant flow of information is allowed. Should we not speak out when something seems to be an egregious error?
We shouldn't be idolizing any individual, or even the movement. As soon as we idolize people and put our trust in them we stop thinking critically and just look to certain people for answers rather than learning along the way.
To Berenson, I'll say that many (from my perspective) many people are critical in his sudden pivot in his position. He suddenly seems to be part of a group that attempts to argue that long COVID doesn't exist as a way to undermine the actual severity of COVID. Even if one were to argue that a majority of COVID cases may not be severe, or that the lockdowns and mandates shouldn't have happened, you can do so without acting as if long COVID isn't real or that certain vaccine-injured people are just faking it.
With Ivermectin I think he's certainly allowed his own position so long as he reads the studies and criticizes them accordingly, but this is also where Berenson appears to be lacking and just accepts the results of a study so long as it tells him what he wants.
I guess that "steelmanning" the opponents arguments often ends up rather doing the other party's homework for them, not just presenting it in a fair way, which might smell like "helping the enemy" of what one has settled on, so goes the perception.
But strawmen can't only be torn down by those who designed them, so, it's no use. If all is done honestly, things should converge to a clearer view of what is, hopefully.
(the last bit was just saying what you already said in another way, for whoever suspicious comes along and reads over it)
I have not "infiltrated" substack, I have been here since summer 2021 and have been combatting the myth of "secret vaccinated Covid deaths" the entire time. The argument against the Covid vaccine is a COST BENEFIT argument. You can't WIN a cost benefit argument if you don't acknowledge the benefit. Berenson, with his eternal toddler tantrum against severe efficacy, is the one doing the sabotaging.
The difficult thing about all of this is trying to find who you can trust. Even people with good intentions can make mistakes, have blind spots, or allow their egos to get in the way. I don't know of anyone in the medical freedom movement that hasn't at least made some mistakes or chased down some red herrings. The best you can hope for is to find people who are at least clearly trying to correct their own mistakes.
In the case of Steve Kirsch, my impression of him is that he's a Type A personality who has a severe tendency to jump the gun on things. It made him a good entrepreneur, but he's not so good at the careful, nuanced discussions. Thus he ends up being a purveyor of *actual* misinformation, whether or not it's his intent. I stopped following him a while ago because of that. The facts around the vaccines and covid are bad enough - no need to exaggerate them. It just makes it harder to communicate with people who have alternative perspectives.
As regards Alex, I didn't think the criticism was entirely fair. Although I disagree with him about a lot and find his brash NY ego to be abrasive, his fight against censorship was valuable to the entire medical freedom movement. He was also one of the first among the covid skeptics to get kicked off of Twitter and bring his audience over to Substack, which has proven very valuable.
I have to say that Brian is one of the most careful, evenhanded thinkers I've found so far. He actually digs into the data, is good at keeping his confirmation bias out of the way, and calls out both sides on their bad analyses.
I don't have anything against jumping the gun as a general principle - I have done it myself, when I felt I had found something true.
So for Kirsch, I think he was right from the start to trust anecdotes and call out a problem. But after that, a lot of goofs. I think it stems from not being previously aware of how bad medical statistics are at revealing reality. If you don't come into this having already given thought to how bias distorts data, to seemingly impossible degrees, leading to the already ongoing replication crisis, you just end up throwing a lot of bias-distorted-data around.
I agree about his treatment of anecdotes - I think anecdotes, if treated properly, are extremely valuable data points. My issue with Steve is that he allows his own bias to distort his view of the data. Then he comes up with dramatic clickbait-ey headlines and blares around his own biased conclusions without acknowledging the points that the other side may have correct. I much prefer your approach. :)
I think these unscientific surveys are pretty meaningless. I ran actual numbers comparing all cause mortality death rates between vaccinated (at least one shot) and unvaccinated (zero shots.). My write up is here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16JUXjd9FZilQczcm3pHzZIW-Fe-aeI1_?usp=share_link
In short:
1. The shots did provide some protection against death for between 6-9 months for several age groups. Unfortunately they provided negative protection for young people since their second month on market.
2. That protection corresponded with the Delta wave for older groups so it’s not out of the question that more unvaxxed may have died in late summer / early Fall of ‘21.
3. However, since September ‘21, every single age group has seen excess deaths in people who got at least one shot.
4. I used UK data because it’s the most reliable and accurate despite its flaws. But they chose to stop publishing all cause mortality by vax status as of May ‘22, likely because they realized exactly what I did...the vaxxed have been dying at a higher rate since mid to late 2021.
Don’t argue with me about surveys or anecdotes. If you find a legitimate flaw in my data or calculations then I’m happy to discuss, and to admit if you prove me wrong
"3. However, since September ‘21, every single age group has seen excess deaths in people who got at least one shot."
No, the ONS deaths are lower for adults in cumulative or monthly all-cause deaths until May 2022, when some age+sex groups shift to negative in monthly. Likewise, overall excess deaths goes positive from May onward. So maybe the black-out is hiding deaths. But there's nothing September 21 - April 22.
By “excess deaths” what I mean is that for the vaccinated (one shot or more) they’ve died at a greater rate than their portion of the population. For instance, if 75% of an age group was vaccinated and 80% of deaths occurred in that subset, then that’s what I’m considering “excess deaths.” I think you’re likely referring to overall societal deaths in relation to previous years. Even though we are using the same term, we are referring to different metrics.
You can't use population denominators for the ONS data. It doesn't purport to reflect all Brits, only those who are in the Public Health Data Asset. The same way you can't figure "how many people named Joe ace math tests" with an 'all Joes' denominator, you must use the Joes taking math tests number.
With universal health care, how many Brits are you suggesting are not in ONS? And are you suggesting it wouldn’t at least have a representative sample of vaxxed vs unvaxxed?
Anyone who wasn't in the 2011 census, General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) data for coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic planning and research, and the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), is excluded. So you use the ONS denominators because they are only recording events for this well-contacted group. You don't bring in imaginary wrong denominators because the ONS ones disagree with your conclusions.
Frankly, if and when I see better data then I’ll readily consider it. Every study I’ve read trying to estimate deaths for vaxxed vs unvaxxed has been ridiculous. Some look only at “COVID deaths” and there’s a long line of evidence that those are not counted correctly, and often mislabeled people with one or two shots as “unvaccinated”,
blatantly ignored any deaths resulting from the shots, and often conflated “died with COVID” with “died from COVID.” I’ve seen studies comparing counties that voted Trump vs Biden and using those as proxies for vax status, which is just silly. And I’ve seen modeling studies that can be summarized as “garbage in, garbage out.” So if you can show me a study that looks at actual all cause mortality, by month, by vax status (number of shots, not invented terminology like the CDC uses), by age group then I will happily read it. Short of that I won’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. I do not believe that in aggregate these shots have saved a single life. Do you have a study that hits all those criteria?
THESE ARE HORRIFIC TIMES TO SURVIVE IN! This is a powerful government
intent on murdering us! Which one in the last century does it remind you of?
BINGO! Fauci's Ouchies a.k.a. quackcines are causing Vaccidents leading to
MORE of us in Vaccemetaries! Right now this may be called "The Genocide Killing
of The Willing." In the near future this Nazi-style government also under The Christian
Vatican in Rome may force us ALL to get jabbed or we get dragged to FEMA
Camps. I will still just say, "NO!" How about YOU? STAY WELL NATURALLY!
I post publicly and freely on MeWe. ETERNAL LIFE BLESSINGS FOR YAHWEH'S SAINTS!
Great article. I don’t personally know anyone who died from covid, but I do know of one definite vax injury (myocarditis). The waves of deaths that hit the elderly homes were also surrounded by insistent stories about them being denied any antibiotics- antibiotics that could have helped for post viral respiratory infections/pneumonia. Have you been following jikkyleaks and the antibiotic demonization that accompanied the covid outbreak? Or the midazolam that was given to the elderly in the old age homes in the UK, effectively killing them?
https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1620566782280097792
Bacteria seem to be scapegoats for the virus directly injuring the lung. Antibiotics were liberally applied, so lung injury wasn't from bacteria, as far as I can make out
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/71/9/2459/5828058
"-Despite frequent prescription of broad-spectrum empirical antimicrobials in patients with coronavirus-associated respiratory infections, there is a paucity of data to support the association with respiratory bacterial/fungal coinfection."
What is "empirical antimicrobials" referring to - does that mean they determine the exact variant of bacterium and prescribe an antibiotic that shows specific effectiveness in the petri dish?
Because, some lung killer bacteria are "resistant to almost everything", like Klebsiella P.
I supposedly had Klebsiella Oxytoca in my throat, a tad unusual. Its initials are K.O., but luckily, it was less impressive. But it made me research those kinda bugs a bit. Some essential oils like oregano, coriander, and ginger extract seem effective, but that stuff won't be much liked by lungs, I imagine?! ~ 5x the reportedly effective concentration of oregano oil is bearable in the throat as mist of glycerin/water/oil mixture spray. Yeah I tried that, lol. (with doubts whether topical application can even be possibly enough... but the ENT prescribed a spray, too - which in a study had zero effect on K.O. - argh) But I'm also the guy who goes to the invisibly marked "for our kind" table in the corner of the Thai restaurant and take their chili flakes, friendly nodding back to the bemused guest there.
Opposite - it's when they prescribe without a culture, just as a guess. Yeah, lung oregano seems problematic - did you try bleach?
Way back in March 2020, I was still active as normal, not doing the pre-lockdown, then I thought I felt a little off so I ate a clove of garlic on a totally empty stomach at 9PM. Thought I was going to die for 10 minutes. Was as bad but different to an experience eating a tangerine on an empty stomach. In which case I was sure the feeling could only be cancer. But it was just a Tangerine Mystery.
Bleach? I thought that works only for orange men :D Although I heard it's common in the US to use oxygen donors as a disinfectant... it's kinda unheard of here. I guess it's pure hell for some anaerobic bacteria, if you can get it to them, eh?
I guess I know what you mean with garlic. I used to make tahina sauce with a lot of fresh garlic, and it's not defused by heat. Can feel rather lousy in the stomach the next morning, without it having been empty.
Citrus fruit, not sure... I used to eat fruits as first meal regularly, but not citric. And if citric, buffer it with a banana as a fruit salad, but that's more to be milder on the teeth. I also used to eat a perhaps 1.5 kg pine apple at once, my belly wouldn't complain, only perhaps the mouth being digested from those enzymes :D
We've all been there, just getting around to the pineapple when its the last day it will be perfect
Pineapple always needs to pass tactile, visual & olfactory inspection before being passed to ingestion stage! I've thrown away some, heavy-heartedly.
Those horrifying testimonials. Grisly. Wicked. Murderous. There must be accountability and justice.