Hot enough for ya?
5 Minutes with a Climate Sceptic
So what’s wrong with this narrative? In a nutshell, we’ve vastly oversimplified both the problem and its solutions. The complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity of the existing knowledge about climate change is being kept away from the policy and public debate. The solutions that have been proposed are technologically and politically infeasible on a global scale.
“Rare” Vaccine Breakthroughs
Grab a coffee.
More and more stories like this one from the Boston Globe are popping up.
79 fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents have died, 303 hospitalized in very rare COVID ‘breakthrough’ cases, officials say
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have already been 4,115 reported cases of fully vaccinated people being hospitalized or dying with Covid-19 coronavirus breakthrough infections.
That’s as of June 21, 2021. Nearly half (49 percent) of these cases have been female and a little over three-quarters (76 percent) have been 65 years and older. There were a total of 3,907 hospitalizations and 750 deaths among those who had breakthrough infections, although not all of the hospitalizations may have been due primarily to Covid-19.
Here’s a study.
We found that severe COVID-19 infection, associated with a high mortality rate, might develop in a minority of fully-vaccinated individuals with multiple comorbidities. Our patients had a higher rate of comorbidities and immunosuppression compared to previously reported non-vaccinated hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Further characterization of this vulnerable population may help to develop guidance to augment their protection, either by continued social-distancing, or by additional active or passive vaccinations.
Alex Berenson has a number of thoughts
This flaw means the trials couldn’t provide definitive evidence on how well the vaccines work against serious cases of Covid. In contrast, the trials for monoclonal antibodies did prove they worked, because the companies that ran those focused on people at high risk.
The trials had at least two other major flaws. They followed most participants for only about two months after the second dose. And when they calculated vaccine efficacy, they ignored cases that occurred just after the first dose was given.
This meant that when Pfizer and Moderna said in November 2020 their vaccines were about 95% effective at preventing Covid, what they meant was that the vaccines were 95% effective at peak protection FOR A MATTER OF WEEKS.
Neither the companies nor anyone else had any way of knowing how well the vaccines would work in a year, much less in five years – or 20 years. They simply did not have any long-term data. How could they?
and
Data from England and Scotland show similar trends. In Scotland, hospitalizations have risen more than fivefold in the last several weeks. And more than half the people who died of Covid in the last week of June were fully vaccinated.
For a number of weeks now instead of useful information Canadians have once again been bombarded with this kind of fear mongering propaganda . Boiling a number of complicated systems down to one single simplistic variable.
A Little Jab ‘ill Do Ya?
Many years ago I learned the most fundamental rule of toxicology -it’s the dose that makes the poison-. One aspirin and your headache goes away, one bottle of aspirin and you go away.
Nature- Quarter-dose of Moderna COVID vaccine still rouses a big immune response
A little bit of coronavirus vaccine goes a long way towards generating lasting immunity.
Two jabs that each contained only one-quarter of the standard dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine gave rise to long-lasting protective antibodies and virus-fighting T cells, according to tests in nearly three dozen people1. The results hint at the possibility of administering fractional doses to stretch limited vaccine supplies and accelerate the global immunization effort.
and
In the earliest trial of Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine, study participants received one of three dose levels: 25, 100 or 250 micrograms3. The top dose proved too toxic. The low dose elicited the weakest immune response. The middle dose seemed to offer the best balance: it triggered strong immunity and had acceptable side effects.
That 100-microgram dose ultimately became the one authorized for mass use in dozens of countries. But Moderna scientists later showed that a half-dose seemed to be just as good as the standard dose at stimulating immune protection4.
To find out whether a low dose might offer protection, scientists analysed blood from 35 participants in the original trial. Each had received two 25-microgram jabs of vaccine 28 days apart.
Six months after the second shot, nearly all of the 35 participants had ‘neutralizing’ antibodies, which block the virus from infecting cells, the researchers reported in a preprint published on 5 July1. Participants’ blood also contained an armada of different T cells, both ‘killer’ cells that can destroy infected cells and a variety of ‘helper’ cells that aid in general immune defence.
Now they don’t really mention straight up that lower doses should also lead to less adverse reactions from the vaccines but it certainly stands to reason that it should work that way. There is always a balance between efficacy and safety in dosage recommendations and in the mad rush to get these out the door and into arms you can see there being a lot of pressure on just making sure the damn things worked.
Nerd Fight!
Yuri Deigin has a bone to pick with Bret Weinstein.
Looking for COVID-19 ‘Miracle Drugs’? We Already Have Them. They’re Called Vaccines
Some tidbits on the Yuri twitter page
More to come…
Safe And Effective ®
Let me begin by stressing that I’m not an anti-vaxxer — not by any stretch of the imagination. And every time I use this post title, I want you to remember that.
It’s not just that I’ve had childhood vaccines and a couple of tetanus shots, but vaccines remain the most important step forward for the health and longevity of purebred companion dogs (of which I am a breeder) of the last 100 years. Vaccines are a way of life here, and like many of you in the agriculture industry, I routinely administer them myself. They protect against the horrors of parvovirus and distemper. Diseases that once wiped out a lifetime of work in a week are no longer a threat, and for that I am grateful.
That said…
Holy Hell, failures like this have a way of making you sit up and pay attention.
Something strange started happening to calves in Europe in 2007: Horrific blood clotting issues & depletion of bone marrow Read how in 2010, under pressure, Pf!zer finally withdrew the BVD vacc!ne linked to Bleeding Calf Syndrome
From 2011: Vaccine linked to ‘bleeding calf syndrome’
Bleeding calf syndrome (bovine neonatal pancytopenia or BNP) affects new born calves resulting in low blood cell counts and depletion of the bone marrow. It first emerged in 2007 and a serious number of cases are reported each year. In affected calves, bone marrow cells which produce platelets are also destroyed. Consequently the calves’ blood does not clot and they appear to bleed through undamaged skin. There is evidence that BNP is linked to the use of a particular vaccine against “Bovine viral diarrhea virus” (BVDV). […]
Prof Till Rümenapf from Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen commented that, “Alloantibodies (antibodies generated by one individual of a species against another of the same species) are produced by the mother if she has different MHC I than the bovine cells used to grow the vaccine. These do not harm the mother. However if her calf has the same MHC I as the vaccine production cells, the antibodies in her colostrum will destroy the calf’s cells, including those of the bone marrow. Destruction of megakaryocytes results in the calf being unable to produce platelets and consequently its blood cannot coagulate.”
I can guarantee no one at Pfizer saw that coming. Let’s hope they learned something from it.
The Iron Law of Woke Projection
If they’re accusing you of something it’s usually something that they themselves are doing.
There’s a lot of stories like this floating around right now ‘Variant factory’: The unvaccinated pose a risk to more than just themselves, designed to bully, scare, shame and guilt people into doing something they may not want to do.
Geert Vanden Bossche Has a thing or two to say about this claim.
non-vaccinated people are not to be considered factories of variants as there is no evidence whatsoever that they transmit more virus or shed for a longer time than asymptomatically infected vaccinees. As explained in the above-mentioned article, non-vaccinated people are not responsible for selecting immune escape variants and enabling adaptation of increasingly anti-S Ab-resistant variants. Vaccines, however, are to be seen as the breeding ground and ‘pilot plants’ for these variants.
He has a longer more technical explanation here.
It is almost impossible to believe that scientists studying the genomic/ molecular epidemiology or evolutionary biology of Sars-CoV-2 would not understand that mass vaccination campaigns promote natural selection and propagation of immune escape variants when they all come to the conclusion that selective immune pressures exerted by antiviral host immune responses provide fitness-enhancing mutations with a transmission advantage enabling their adaptation to the infected host (tissue)-specific environment.
And an excellent video on the subject here.
Follow the links, read the pieces, watch the video and you’ll be inoculated against the latest BS variant.
What The Hell Happened To Doctors?
Dr. Drew and Dr. Pierre Kory chew the fat on a number of topics. From Covid to Ivermectin, various treatments, personal experiences, censorship and our medical systems. Canada gets a dishonorable mention and at one point we find out the Dr. Drew is still a bit of a Fauci fanboy and Dr Kory politely bursts that bubble. Lots of good stuff.
A couple of different ways to watch or listen. Video here or my personal preference the periscope version that lets me listen on your phone without killing the battery while doing other things.
UnMask the Kids
Tucker Carlson dives into what’s been done to the kids with the constant masking. Video and transcript here And has a heartbreaking interview with a mom who’s 12 year old daughter volunteered for the pfizer trail and subsequently suffered a severe reaction.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Climate Models: Worse Than Nothing?
When the history of climate modeling comes to be written in some distant future, the major story may well be how the easy, computable answer turned out to be the wrong one, resulting in overestimated warming and false scares from the enhanced (man-made) greenhouse effect.
Meanwhile, empirical and theoretical evidence is mounting toward this game-changing verdict despite the best efforts of the establishment to look the other way.
Consider a press release this month from the University of Colorado Boulder, “Warmer Clouds, Cooler Planet,” subtitled “precipitation-related ‘feedback’ cycle means models may overestimate warming.”
“Today’s climate models are showing more warmth than their predecessors,” the announcement begins.
Related: Climate change is real, and one consequence is an increase in vegetation.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Warnings about processed meat fail the test of science;
A new re-analysis of the science concerning links between processed meat and chronic disease indicates that studies showing a relationship between the two are very low quality and suffer from, as the authors put it, “serious risk of bias and imprecision.”
This conclusion is unsurprising, as it follows a recent set of analyses that rocked the nutrition world. That earlier set of studies, published in Annals of Internal Medicine earlier this month, concluded that guidelines warning us to consume less red and processed meat are based on evidence with very low certainty. The researchers who performed those analyses asserted there is no way to determine, for any given individual, what the risks or benefits of eating meat might be.
Whiplash injuries on the rise as public attempts to follow the science.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Two Arctic Fish Are Breaking the Rules of Genetics
Laurie Graham, a molecular biologist at Queen’s University, in Ontario, and the lead author on the paper, knows she’s making a bold claim in arguing for the direct transfer of a gene from one fish to another. That kind of horizontal DNA movement once wasn’t imagined to happen in any animals, let alone vertebrates. Still, the more she and her colleagues study the smelt, the clearer the evidence becomes.
Nor are the smelt unique. Recent studies of a range of animals—other fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals—point to a similar conclusion: The lateral inheritance of DNA, once thought to be exclusive to microbes, occurs on branches throughout the tree of life.
Sarah Schaack, an evolutionary genomicist at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, believes these cases of horizontal transfer still have “a pretty big wow factor” even among scientists, “because the conventional wisdom for so long was that it was less likely or impossible in eukaryotes.” But the smelt discovery and other recent examples all point to horizontal transfers playing an influential role in evolution.
Delta, Delta, Delta
Globe and Mail: COVID-19 outbreak at Calgary hospital linked to Delta variant grows to 33, including 10 fully vaccinated
the majority of cases linked to the current outbreak at the Foothills Medical Centre are mild, though two patients have required intensive care.
Meanwhile over in Winnipeg… “almost every”
Why get bogged down in all those complicated science based details when you can just be sciency.
How’s about a nice getaway on a Cruise Ship that’s only running at 30% capacity of fully vaccinated guests?
You Don’t Say
The observational study, published by medRxiv, found that antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc, could increase the coronavirus survival rate by as much as nearly 200% if distributed at higher doses to ventilated patients with a severe version of the illness.
“We found that when the cumulative doses of two drugs, HCQ and AZM, were above a certain level, patients had a survival rate 2.9 times the other patients,” the study’s conclusion states.
And when did they figure this out?
Saint Barnabas Medical Center is a 557-bed, teaching medical center in Livingston, New Jersey. Using the hospital’s discharge coding data, we identified 255 Covid patients, who were admitted by May 1, 2020 and required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Ethical approval for the study was granted by the hospital’s Institutional Review Board.
Apparently observational studies don’t count. Or so we’re being told.
Y2Kyoto: Polar Bear Extinction Watch
A joint US/Russian aerial survey has estimated that a minimum of 3,435 polar bears (but possibly as many as 5,444) likely inhabited the Chukchi Sea in 2016, quite a bit more than a previous study that estimated a population size of 2,937 the same year (which used data from one small US area extrapolated to the entire region).
The study, done by fixed-wing aircraft in April and May 2016 (Conn et al. 2021), estimated 3095 bears in the Russian portion of the Chukchi Sea compared to 340 in the US portion. That’s almost 10 times as many Russian bears as US bears in the Chukchi Sea, a statistic we’ve never had before now. The number estimated for the US portion in this study was almost 3 times as many as was estimated for the previous Regehr and colleagues study (340 vs. 126)(Regehr et al. 2018). Based on this latest data, the density of bears was said to be about half (~0.001 bears/km2) the density calculated from 1987 aerial survey data (0.002 bears/km2) but whether these figures are truly comparable remains to be determined.
Covid: the political virus
Will the province of Manitoba issue arrest warrants for the organizers of this rally as they did for an anti-lockdown rally last week? That’s not likely to happen if past experience is a guide. It would seem that the science is settled: Covid is not a threat when gatherings are in support of an approved political cause.
The organizers said they would not grant interviews — they included justifications for holding the rally in the midst of the pandemic in the social media posts.
When asked how the no gathering rule will be enforced at the rally, a provincial spokesman said nothing official is on the books — but the public health order is clear.
The story paywall goes up in the next 24 hours.
From Conspiracy Theory
to science journal. The turn around time is getting quicker.
The Science Cartel
The idea that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a laboratory, and then escaped accidentally, always had a certain plausibility. The virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, where there is a laboratory that conducts research on bat coronaviruses — one of only a handful in the world to do so. Yet this possibility was dismissed quite forcefully and from the beginning of the outbreak by prominent virologists.
Speaking of which, Lomborg on Scientific Americans new editorial policy.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Did climate change cause societies to collapse? New research upends the old story.
A report recently published in the journal Nature argues that an obsession with catastrophe has driven much of the research into how societies responded to a shifting climate throughout history. That has resulted in a skewed view of the past that feeds a pessimistic view about our ability to respond to the crisis we face today.
“It would be rare that a society as a whole just kind of collapsed in the face of climate change,” said Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University and the lead author of the paper. The typical stories of environmentally-driven collapse that you might have heard about Easter Island or the Mayan civilization? “All those stories need to be retold, absolutely,” he said.
“Good People”
Virtue signaling hell.
It’s easier than thinking.