29 replies to this topic

[jroseland]

Having found Dr. Mercola's previous book, EMF*D, very eye-opening, scientifically rigorous, and full of the kind of pragmatic takeaways that a biohacker like me loves, I picked up The Truth About COVID-19. It gets five stars from me for rigorously making the case for freedom, health, and suspicion of all the monolithic institutions profiting from the COVID pandemic...

 

 

The real skeptic (or critical thinker) challenges power, they do not devote themselves intellectually to perpetuating the status quo or defending billionaires, overpaid celebrities on television, politicians, and multi-national corporations. The most deserving target of skepticism should be impositions by the powerful upon the public. If the monolithic institutions of society appear to be colluding to coerce you into doing something that should be the subject of your skepticism. In the foreword of the book, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. eloquently and vociferously applies Occam's razor in eviscerating the COVID profiteers who call us "conspiracy theorists" while they rob us of our human rights...

 

Government technocrats, billionaire oligarchs, Big Pharma, Big Data, Big Media, the high-finance robber barons, and the military industrial intelligence apparatus love pandemics for the same reasons they love wars and terrorist attacks. Catastrophic crises create opportunities of convenience to increase both power and wealth. [7]

While obliterating the American middle class and dropping an additional 8 percent of Americans below the poverty line, the 2020 “COVID coup” transferred a trillion dollars of wealth to Big Technology, Big Data, Big Telecom, Big Finance, Big Media behemoths (Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch), and Silicon Valley Internet titans such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Jack Dorsey. It seems beyond coincidence that these men, who are cashing in on the poverty and misery caused by global lockdowns, are the same men whose companies actively censor critics of those policies. [11]

 

Listen to podcast: Skepticism of the COVID profiteers is justified - "The Truth About COVID-19" Book Review

 

Edited by jroseland, 30 July 2021 - 05:36 AM.

[Gal220]

I dont think vaccines were necessary for this virus, BUT what if it were a more deadly virus for all ages and we really needed a quick answer?  How could the system be improved?

 

-Decentralize power so each state has its own CDC, NIH, FDA.  Blow up world organizations like the WHO.

-Each country add a wing to the NIH where one just looks at repurposed drugs.  Another wing just looking at plant extracts.  Make sure they dont report to 1 person, each autonomous.

-Term limits and oversight to prevent kickbacks from pharma.

 

Just a few countries approved Ivermectin and it was worth a try, way more than Remdesivir.  

 

-On the vaccine front, why was there zero effort to make them safer like a blood thinner?  I think another separation of powers is in order for that.  Need an agency that makes recommendations.

                   The AZ shot was restricted to over 55 in many countries, BUT that cut their vaccine supply in half.

-Moderna is possibly 4x the dose really needed.  How much faster would that have allowed countries to get vaccinated?  Taking a smaller dosage would have some effect on adverse events.

-Vitamin D is down and D-Dimer is up after vaccination, virtually no coverage of this.

 

[Hip]

Having found Dr. Mercola's previous book, EMF*D, very eye-opening, scientifically rigorous

I have not read the book, but doesn't Joseph Mercola argue that 5G will damage human health? Well the 60 GHz radio waves employed by 5G do not penetrate through the skin, so they cannot get into the body, and cannot affect any internal organs. 5G is massively attenuated by just 1 mm of human skin. The leaves of a tree are also sufficient to totally blot out the 5G signal. 5G certainly will not pass through a wall of a building, and even a window can be enough to block the signal.

If he is stoking fears about 5G affecting health, it sounds like Mercola has a poor grasp of electromagnetic theory.  

He is a shrewd businessman though: he knows how to profit from all the 5G hysteria in social media by writing a book which stokes and caters to those fears. No surprise then that shrewd Mercola is worth in excess of $100 million. He knows how to make money by milking the masses.
 

 

The real skeptic (or critical thinker) challenges power.

Indeed, so when you get someone with Mercola's power, which results from his massively influential Internet reach, we need to be very critical of what he says. 

He is worth over $100 million. That kind of bank balance does not sound like dedication to science, but dedication to profit. Everyday scientists who work in medical research labs only get quite modest salaries. That is what dedication to science really involves: a focus on science, not money making. But Mercola seems to love the filthy lucre. He should be called Joseph "Ka-Ching" Mercola.

 

In particular, Mercola wields massive power in the anti-vax movement. Two thirds of the anti-vax content on social media comes from the "dirty dozen", with Mercola the top of the dirty dozen list. That is a lot of global influence he wields; Mercola is one of the main reasons why there is now massive coronavirus vaccine hesitancy in the world. Think about it: Mercola did not climb the ladder of a career scientist, with all the checks and balances that involves. He has no medical authority to promote his anti-vaccination views on the world. But he does so anyway. That's called unchecked power. 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 30 July 2021 - 07:52 PM.

[geo12the]

Mercola also once said tanning beds are healthy while at the same time selling Tanning beds. He is a quack who makes $$$ off of spreading BS. People who say "you are a sheep for believing mainstream media" then become sheep to people like Mercola who make a fortune manipulating people's fears and giving lousy advice. Read more here:

 

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online

Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

By Sheera Frenkel

July 24, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Biden has blamed online falsehoods for causing people to refrain from getting the injections. But even as Mr. Biden has urged social media companies to “do something about the misinformation,” Dr. Mercola shows the difficulty of that task.

Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”

And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.

In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”

The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”

He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. He did not identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim. 

A native of Chicago, Dr. Mercola started a small private practice in 1985 in Schaumburg, Ill. In the 1990s, he began shifting to natural health medicine and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to share his treatments, cures and advice. The site urges people to “take control of your health.”

In 2003, he published a book, “The No-Grain Diet,” which became a New York Times best seller. He has since published books almost yearly. In 2015, he moved to Florida.

As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.

His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.

Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.

In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”

Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.

In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.

The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.

The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011 and has fined him millions of dollars.

Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.

But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.

In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”

When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.

He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.

In May, Dr. Mercola took down many of his own Facebook posts to evade the social network’s crackdown on anti-vaccine content. Facebook also recently removed his Feb. 9 article.

But Dr. Mercola has continued to raise vaccine questions. In a Facebook post on Friday, he used another study to mull how useful the Pfizer vaccine was against Covid-19 variants. One headline in the post said the vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but it did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91 percent effective against serious illness.

“Is this possible? We were told 95 percent effectiveness,” he wrote.

Within a few hours, the post had been shared more than 220 times.

 

[zorba990]

I have not read the book, but doesn't Joseph Mercola argue that 5G will damage human health? Well the 60 GHz radio waves employed by 5G do not penetrate through the skin, so they cannot get into the body, and cannot affect any internal organs. 5G is massively attenuated by just 1 mm of human skin. The leaves of a tree are also sufficient to totally blot out the 5G signal. 5G certainly will not pass through a wall of a building, and even a window can be enough to block the signal.

If he is stoking fears about 5G affecting health, it sounds like Mercola has a poor grasp of electromagnetic theory.

He is a shrewd businessman though: he knows how to profit from all the 5G hysteria in social media by writing a book which stokes and caters to those fears. No surprise then that shrewd Mercola is worth in excess of $100 million. He knows how to make money by milking the masses.



Indeed, so when you get someone with Mercola's power, which results from his massively influential Internet reach, we need to be very critical of what he says.

He is worth over $100 million. That kind of bank balance does not sound like dedication to science, but dedication to profit. Everyday scientists who work in medical research labs only get quite modest salaries. That is what dedication to science really involves: a focus on science, not money making. But Mercola seems to love the filthy lucre. He should be called Joseph "Ka-Ching" Mercola.

In particular, Mercola wields massive power in the anti-vax movement. Two thirds of the anti-vax content on social media comes from the "dirty dozen", with Mercola the top of the dirty dozen list. That is a lot of global influence he wields; Mercola is one of the main reasons why there is now massive coronavirus vaccine hesitancy in the world. Think about it: Mercola did not climb the ladder of a career scientist, with all the checks and balances that involves. He has no medical authority to promote his anti-vaccination views on the world. But he does so anyway. That's called unchecked power.

Would like to see refs. I don't see how a phone can get 5G signal indoors if what you are saying is true.

[Hip]

Would like to see refs. I don't see how a phone can get 5G signal indoors if what you are saying is true.

 

That's why 5G will never entirely replace 4G, because unless you are in direct line of sight of a 5G transmitter, you are not going to get a signal.

 

If a tree is in the way, you lose the signal. The only way to make 5G work is to place base stations at every corner. Which then becomes expensive. And you will still find areas where there is no 5G signal, so you need a 4G fallback. 

 

 

 

This 5th generation (5G) system will add high frequency electromagnetic radiation with Gigahertz (GHz) wavelengths in the millimeter range. These high frequency tiny wavelengths penetrate only the outer layer of the skin, unlike 2G, 3G and 4G technology which passes through the body.  Major health concerns with exposure to 5G are to skin, eye and adverse systemic metabolic signaling through skin sensors, as well as heat effects.

Source: here.

Edited by Hip, 31 July 2021 - 06:53 PM.

[zorba990]

That's why 5G will never entirely replace 4G, because unless you are in direct line of sight of a 5G transmitter, you are not going to get a signal.

If a tree is in the way, you lose the signal. The only way to make 5G work is to place base stations at every corner. Which then becomes expensive. And you will still find areas where there is no 5G signal, so you need a 4G fallback.



Source: here.

Thanks for that info. Seems counter to the advertised benefits of 5G but the physics is the physics. Seems to penetrate about as deeply as a tanning bed does.
I suppose it will be useful at outside events.

I'm not a huge fan of Mercola as he is an opportunist and has damaged certain alternative health ideas (like for instance liposomal vitamin c, of which he makes a fake version).

His endorsement of applying critical thinking to new medical treatments such as the RNA jab, though, do not dissuade me from digging further.
Anymore than any politician's or news organization's, or billionaire software ripoff artist's endorsement of taking it does.

[Hip]

It is shame that we cannot rely on people's rationality to make the correct decision about taking the vaccine. Most people are basing their vaccination decision or all the non-rational emotional garbage that gets posted on social media and anti-vax websites. 

 

There are certain people who may be advised to avoid the coronavirus vaccine, for example those who have had problems with vaccines before; the extremely frail and elderly (as there have been reports of deaths after the coronavirus vaccine in this group).

 

However, in terms of a rational decision, for me it is a no-brainer to get the vaccine. The vaccine not only protects you and your family and friends from death, but the vaccine protects from long COVID, which can be a fate worse than death. Let me explain.

 

 

 

One in seven people in the UK who have caught coronavirus are getting long COVID.

 

Long COVID appears to be very similar to (or the same as) the disease myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which is known to be pretty much the worst life-destroying disease you can get (I know, as I have ME, and I have no life whatsoever). 

 

Some of those people with long COVID slowly recover after about 6 months, but a certain percentage do not seem to be recovering at all, and so may have to spend the rest of their lives bedbound or housebound, which is common for ME patients.

 

Death is not as bad as getting long COVID or ME, in my view. So forget about the death that coronavirus can cause. The real issue is the long COVID, which about 1 in 7 get from this virus, and a percentage of those get what will likely turn out to be permanent long COVID for the rest of their lives. 

 

 

 

How many get long COVID which will last for the rest of their life. Well this article says 376,000 people in the UK have had long COVID for over a year. And I think we can estimate there has been around 15 million cases of COVID in the UK (5 million official case, but there are at least double that, because of the asymptomatic cases).

 

So that means your chances of getting long COVID that lasts for a long time (quite possibly a lifetime) is about 2.5%. 

 

This is quite a bit higher than you risk of death, and as I mentioned, for those who will become bedbound or housebound for the rest of their lives due to long COVID, that is arguably a fate worse than death. Indeed, some long COVID patients have already committed suicide, as they find their disease unbearable. Death was a better option for them, it seems.

 

 

 

Anyone who is too afraid to get the COVID vaccine, you can instead consider the measles vaccine, which may offer a degree of protection against COVID. 

 

Edited by Hip, 01 August 2021 - 12:26 AM.

[zorba990]

Well i have had the measles vax as well as many others And fairly recently for reasons unrelated to covid so thats nice
Interesting I cannot post a link to ryan coles presentation here I will try again
https://rumble.com/v...-ryan-cole.html

Edited by zorba990, 01 August 2021 - 03:10 AM.

[Mind]

There is another discussion about 5G here.

[Gal220]

It is shame that we cannot rely on people's rationality to make the correct decision about taking the vaccine. Most people are basing their vaccination decision or all the non-rational emotional garbage that gets posted on social media and anti-vax websites. 

 

There are certain people who may be advised to avoid the coronavirus vaccine, for example those who have had problems with vaccines before; the extremely frail and elderly (as there have been reports of deaths after the coronavirus vaccine in this group).

The health agencies need to find a brain and start recommending secondary products with these vaccines like blood cleansers/thinners.  

 

Lots of provaccine people have flipped on these blood clotting vaccines.  Im not sure what is so irrational about people dying after the vax, more reported deaths than all other vaccines combined for 20+ years...

[Hip]

The health agencies need to find a brain and start recommending secondary products with these vaccines like blood cleansers/thinners.  

 

Lots of provaccine people have flipped on these blood clotting vaccines.  Im not sure what is so irrational about people dying after the vax, more reported deaths than all other vaccines combined for 20+ years...

 

I looked into the idea of taking blood thinners along with the vaccines with the idea of trying to prevent a clot, but it turns out blood thinners could make things worse, because of the unusual nature of these clots. These COVID vaccine clots are not regular clots, but very unusual forms of blood clot.

 

Unfortunately I cannot remember the specific details of this, and why blood thinners can make things worse, because it was some months ago that I looked it up (and I have the neurological disease ME/CFS, which has destroyed my long term memory). 

 

There are are several supplements which are good blood thinners and clot preventers, like bromelain, rutin, grape seed extract, as well as of course the classic blood thinner aspirin. 

 

But I would look into the safety of using these with a COVID vaccine, because from what I read, these thinners might make things worse. I just wish I could remember the details.

Edited by Hip, 01 August 2021 - 03:10 PM.

[Gal220]

I dont have the reference either, but European doctors claimed it was easy to treat if you had symptoms and got to the hospital.  Hard to believe they couldnt give something to take a few days after vaccination.

[Hip]

I dont have the reference either, but European doctors claimed it was easy to treat if you had symptoms and got to the hospital.  Hard to believe they couldnt give something to take a few days after vaccination.

 

I found more info: the COVID vaccine blood clots are unusual because they arise along with low blood platelets (blood platelets are the cells which clump together to form a clot, which prevents you from bleeding to death if you get a cut or injury). 

 

So I believe there is a risk of uncontrolled bleeding if you give standard anticoagulants like heparin to someone with these COVID vaccine blood clots. This article on the medical treatment of these blood clots specifically says no heparin under any circumstances.

 

 

The supplement rutin would also be a no-no, because rutin prevents blood clots by inhibiting platelet accumulation. 

 

So you would want to find some anti-clot treatment that might help prevent the clots that appear with these COVID vaccines, but not a treatment which affects blood platelets. 

Edited by Hip, 01 August 2021 - 07:10 PM.

[jroseland]

It is shame that we cannot rely on people's rationality to make the correct decision about taking the vaccine. Most people are basing their vaccination decision or all the non-rational emotional garbage that gets posted on social media and anti-vax websites. 

 

No, the reason why there's more "anti-vaxers" than ever before refusing the COVID vaccine is the repeated blatant contradictions coming from the authorities. A lot of people have noticed the lockdowns are dramatically more harmful to society than a nasty flu and have lost trust in authority.

 

Your comment totally typifies the disconnect between the two sides of the argument, the "anti-vaxers" are listening to what the authorities and pro-vaxers are saying, but the pro-vaxers are ONLY listening to the "anti-anti-vaxers" who are largely funded by big pharma. I've listened to at this point, at least 25 hours of pro-vax podcasts, videos, etc and mostly they just misrepresent, call names, and strawman. They don't come close to addressing the anti-vax arguments and evidence.

 

But I've said everything I have to say about the issue in my podcast and I have a policy of not debating strangers on the internet so good luck - I hope your faith in authority serves you well.

[Hip]

No, the reason why there's more "anti-vaxers" than ever before refusing the COVID vaccine is the repeated blatant contradictions coming from the authorities. A lot of people have noticed the lockdowns are dramatically more harmful to society than a nasty flu and have lost trust in authority.

 

 

Because sometimes contradictory statements come from the authorities, that means you should not get a vaccine? How is one related to the other? 

 

And again, lockdowns certainly have adverse effects; but how does that relate to whether or not you would take a vaccine?

 

 

Contradictory statements come from the authorities because authorities are not consist of one single person, but many people, and those experts may have slightly differing views on the best strategy. You find this in all walks of life, in politics, economics, religions, etc. 

 

It is normal to be exposed to an array of differing views in any area of life. This should not stop you making a decision though. 

Edited by Hip, 03 August 2021 - 03:08 PM.

[Gal220]

Because sometimes contradictory statements come from the authorities, that means you should not get a vaccine? How is one related to the other? 

Agreed, it should be strictly a risk/benefit calculation.

 

The 20k death reports and nearly 1 million serious adverse events reported by the European Union’s Database of Adverse Drug Reactions gives me pause.

There are far more injuries with these vaccines than say your standard flu vaccine.

 

Ill go with some antivirals for prevention and H202 nebulization if sick.

[geo12the]

No, the reason why there's more "anti-vaxers" than ever before refusing the COVID vaccine is the repeated blatant contradictions coming from the authorities. A lot of people have noticed the lockdowns are dramatically more harmful to society than a nasty flu and have lost trust in authority.

 

Your comment totally typifies the disconnect between the two sides of the argument, the "anti-vaxers" are listening to what the authorities and pro-vaxers are saying, but the pro-vaxers are ONLY listening to the "anti-anti-vaxers" who are largely funded by big pharma. I've listened to at this point, at least 25 hours of pro-vax podcasts, videos, etc and mostly they just misrepresent, call names, and strawman. They don't come close to addressing the anti-vax arguments and evidence.

 

But I've said everything I have to say about the issue in my podcast and I have a policy of not debating strangers on the internet so good luck - I hope your faith in authority serves you well.

 

It's not a frigin contest. When you take away all of the politics, all of the pundits, all of anti-vax profiteers like Mercola here is the truth we are left with: Vaccines keep people from getting sick and dying. The side effects are minimal. Everything else is political noise.

[Hip]

The 20k death reports and nearly 1 million serious adverse events reported by the European Union’s Database of Adverse Drug Reactions gives me pause.

 

And the US VAERS database reports about 12,000 deaths occurring in the days and weeks after vaccination. See here. Those deaths look concerning at first glance. 

 

But because there is so much heightened fear and worry about the coronavirus vaccines, I wonder whether these are incidental deaths which may be unrelated to the vaccine, but people report them to VAERS because of the worry about vaccine safety. Anyone can add a report to the VAERS database: patients, their parents or friends, and of course doctors. 

 

 

In the US, over 200,000 people die each month. That works out to about 6500 deaths a day. So you are going to get a lot of people dying anyway just after the vaccine. If you vaccinated the entire US population, you would naturally get 6500 deaths on the day of the vaccination, 6500 deaths the next day, 6500 the day after, and so forth; and those deaths would have occurred anyway, being unrelated to the vaccination.

 

Because of the vaccine fears, those deaths may get reported to VAERS. But they may be unrelated to the vaccine.

 

The fact that the VAERS website you linked to shows older people are reported to have died after COVID vaccination much more frequently than younger people already fits into the death patterns that we know: there are usually more deaths in older age groups than younger. See the reported post-vaccine deaths per age group here. 

 

You see that in the 0-50 age group, there are 600 reported deaths. In the 66 and older group there are about 6700 deaths. So that falls into the pattern that we know, which is that there are normally naturally lots more deaths in the older age groups.  

 

That said, there have been media reports of very frail and elderly people dying after the vaccination, and so the very frail and elderly may want to think twice about being vaccinated.   

 

 

 

 

You can actually interrogate (query) the VAERS database here, and probe into the nature of the adverse effects and deaths that appear after the coronavirus vaccines (and any other vaccine). I have not been able to find a website which allows you interrogate the European database. 

Edited by Hip, 03 August 2021 - 04:53 PM.

[geo12the]

 

And the US VAERS database reports about 12,000 deaths occurring in the days and weeks after vaccination. See here. Those deaths look concerning at first glance. 

 

 

 

Gal and others will point to the VAERS and the European equivalent as proof the COVID vaccine is more deadly and Hip you hit the nail right on the head. To dig deeper I pose the question to Gal and others: Before COVID had you even heard of the VAERS site? I hadn't. Neither had most people. Most people who got a flu vaccine or shingles vaccine or whatever and had side effects did not bother to go to VAERS and enter their information. With the COVID shots everyone is hyper vigilant about side effects, so of course the rate at which side effects are reported with the COVID vaccines is higher. Not because there are more side effects but because of increased reporting. Does that make sense? 

Edited by geo12the, 03 August 2021 - 05:41 PM.

[Gal220]

Gal and others will point to the VAERS and the European equivalent as proof the COVID vaccine is more deadly and Hip you hit the nail right on the head. To dig deeper I pose the question to Gal and others: Before COVID had you even heard of the VAERS site? I hadn't. Neither had most people. Most people who got a flu vaccine or shingles vaccine or whatever and had side effects did not bother to go to VAERS and enter their information. With the COVID shots everyone is hyper vigilant about side effects, so of course the rate at which side effects are reported with the COVID vaccines is higher. Not because there are more side effects but because of increased reporting. Does that make sense? 

Supposedly they inform people about VAERs when you get the shot and health care professionals are suppose to report aslo. If you want to ignore the data, thats fine, but its not hard to confirm its happening = LINK1, LINK2

Certainly I do advise people take precaution, I have found excellent tips here on Longecity and other sources.   

 

Delta is going to get everyone vaccinated soon, given the risk, I prefer the natural way myself.

Edited by Gal220, 03 August 2021 - 06:17 PM.

[geo12the]

Supposedly they inform people about VAERs when you get the shot and health care professionals are suppose to report aslo. If you want to ignore the data, thats fine, but its not hard to confirm its happening = LINK1, LINK2
Certainly I do advise people take precaution, I have found excellent tips here on Longecity and other sources.

Delta is going to get everyone vaccinated soon, given the risk, I prefer the natural way myself.

I am not ignoring the data. I and Hip are saying the data set is not complete enough to draw the conclusion you are drawing and we
give the reasons why the data set is not complete enough.

Edited by geo12the, 03 August 2021 - 09:32 PM.

[jroseland]

Lockdowns are back in lot of places, thought I share some home fitness tips here...

 

The gym is closed and it may not re-open soon, welcome to the new normal.

But a global pandemic is no excuse to not look good naked. You’ve worked out when you were dead tired and exhausted, you’ve trudged through snow and miserable weather to get a workout in, a little virus is no excuse to not work out.

 

 

Listen to podcast: 9 Lifehacks for Staying Fit During COVID Lockdowns

Edited by jroseland, 04 December 2021 - 10:48 AM.

[joesixpack]

Guess what? He was right. We all now know that the vaccine does not prevent infection, does not prevent spread and does not provide immunity. In other words, they are fraudulent.

 

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

 

Mercola also once said tanning beds are healthy while at the same time selling Tanning beds. He is a quack who makes $$$ off of spreading BS. People who say "you are a sheep for believing mainstream media" then become sheep to people like Mercola who make a fortune manipulating people's fears and giving lousy advice. Read more here:

 

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online

Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

By Sheera Frenkel

July 24, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Biden has blamed online falsehoods for causing people to refrain from getting the injections. But even as Mr. Biden has urged social media companies to “do something about the misinformation,” Dr. Mercola shows the difficulty of that task.

Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”

And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.

In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”

The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”

He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. He did not identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim. 

A native of Chicago, Dr. Mercola started a small private practice in 1985 in Schaumburg, Ill. In the 1990s, he began shifting to natural health medicine and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to share his treatments, cures and advice. The site urges people to “take control of your health.”

In 2003, he published a book, “The No-Grain Diet,” which became a New York Times best seller. He has since published books almost yearly. In 2015, he moved to Florida.

As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.

His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.

Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.

In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”

Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.

In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.

The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.

The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011 and has fined him millions of dollars.

Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.

But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.

In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”

When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.

He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.

In May, Dr. Mercola took down many of his own Facebook posts to evade the social network’s crackdown on anti-vaccine content. Facebook also recently removed his Feb. 9 article.

But Dr. Mercola has continued to raise vaccine questions. In a Facebook post on Friday, he used another study to mull how useful the Pfizer vaccine was against Covid-19 variants. One headline in the post said the vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but it did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91 percent effective against serious illness.

“Is this possible? We were told 95 percent effectiveness,” he wrote.

Within a few hours, the post had been shared more than 220 times.

 

 

Edited by joesixpack, 15 December 2021 - 02:13 AM.

[geo12the]

Guess what? He was right. We all now know that the vaccine does not prevent infection, does not prevent spread and does not provide immunity. In other words, they are fraudulent.

 

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

 

 

Sigh. Here we go again. Vaccines don't necessarily prevent infection but they keep people from getting sick. The COVID vaccines keep people from getting severely ill and ending up in the hospital and dying. They are saving lives. Look at the graphs.  Haven't we gone over this enough here? How much do we need to beat a dead horse? 

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[joesixpack]

Sigh. Here we go again. Vaccines don't necessarily prevent infection but they keep people from getting sick. The COVID vaccines keep people from getting severely ill and ending up in the hospital and dying. They are saving lives. Look at the graphs.  Haven't we gone over this enough here? How much do we need to beat a dead horse? 

 

Usually it does not take you and your buddy long to blast in and derail productive discussion. You are a little late on this one, so I will humor you and respond.

 

Vaccines are designed to prevent infection and illness. Take a flu vaccine, you should not get the flu. Take a polio vaccine, don't get polio. Sometimes they don't work.

 

What you and your fellow trolls are "now" saying is that it was never meant to work. You say it was, and does, prevent "serious illness". This is bullshit. It is not a vaccine if it does not prevent infection or illness. Nothing about serious illness there. Also, it does not prevent death, and long covid. It does not prevent spread. People that are vaccinated still spread. 

 

No vaccine was ever designed to, or purposed with preventing serious illness. They are designed to prevent getting the disease.

 

Boosters. Vaccine boosters are heard of. Tetanus vaccines need a booster at 5 or 10 years for instance. Nobody has ever heard of a booster needed in 6 months, and then 12 months and 18 months. Or, maybe every year until eternity. Bullshit. This vaccine does not work. Period.

 

Beat the dead horse, over the fact, that the vaccine, does not protect against the illness, does not stop spread, does not stop deaths.. But it has major negative effects, and significant deaths. Look on VAERS

 

Please prove me wrong.

 

Can't wait until Thing 2 chimes in.

[geo12the]

Usually it does not take you and your buddy long to blast in and derail productive discussion. You are a little late on this one, so I will humor you and respond.

 

Vaccines are designed to prevent infection and illness. Take a flu vaccine, you should not get the flu  Take a polio vaccine, don't get polio. Sometimes they don't work.

 

What you and your fellow trolls are "now" saying is that it was never meant to work. You say it was, and does, prevent "serious illness". This is bullshit. It is not a vaccine if it does not prevent infection or illness. Nothing about serious illness there. Also, it does not prevent death, and long covid. It does not prevent spread. People that are vaccinated still spread. 

 

No vaccine was ever designed to, or purposed with preventing serious illness. They are designed to prevent getting the disease.

 

Boosters. Vaccine boosters are heard of. Tetanus vaccines need a booster at 5 or 10 years for instance. Nobody has ever heard of a booster needed in 6 months, and then 12 months and 18 months. Or, maybe every year until eternity. Bullshit. This vaccine does not work. Period.

 

Beat the dead horse, over the fact, that the vaccine, does not protect against the illness, does not stop spread, does not stop deaths.. But it has major negative effects, and significant deaths. Look on VAERS

 

Please prove me wrong.

 

Can't wait until Thing 2 chimes in.

 

Yes anyone who does not agree with you is a troll. I'm not in a contest with you or anyone else here. I am just spreading the truth. You can follow Mercola and the other gurus people here worship.

 

Sterilizing immunity means a vaccine protects against infection. But not all vaccines are sterilizing. That is a fact. 

 

"Take a flu vaccine, you should not get the flu"

 

The flu vaccines don't work as well as the COVID vaccines. The protection they offer is usually 50% or less in any typical year.  AND when they do work they don't necessarily prevent infection. It's discussed here:

 

"We know this from years of study on influenza vaccines. These vaccines typically induce protection from disease, but not necessarily protection from infection."

 

Look when you strip away all the propaganda and BS the COVID vaccines prevent disease and death and they work stupendously well, much better than I would have predicted. LOOK AT THE GRAPHS. Do you dispute this data? 

How can you look at this data and say the vaccines don't work? You are one of the anti-vax partisans sitting on the sidelines rooting for the vaccines to fail. I like to be optimistic and think all people are fundamentally good and want what is best but folks like you make me question that thinking. 

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[TheFountain]

Does this book implicate Fauci like it should?

 

[Daniel Cooper]

Does this book implicate Fauci like it should?

 

 

For a man that proclaims he represents "The Science", Fauci is trying to thread an awfully fine needle through a carefully worded and recently updated definition of Gain of Function. 

 

If he really cared about "The Science", there's no getting around the fact that the viral manipulation being done at WIV was potentially dangerous in and of itself, no matter how cleverly you craft a definition. It would be helpful if he simply admitted the danger that is obvious to anyone that understands what they were doing, even to a layperson such as myself.

[Gal220]

The Real Anthony Fauci

 

is out

 

The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health

 

 

Lots of Amazon reviews

 

From the first one..

 

"One of the darkest stains on Fauci’s career, aside from his role in the COVID pandemic, was his handling of the HIV epidemic. The first cases of AIDS surfaced in 1981. Initially, the AIDS program was run by the National Cancer Institute, a separate institute inside the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). The general belief was that AIDS had a chemical etiology caused by drug use. This all changed when the HIV virus was discovered.

Fauci made a deliberate crusade to make sure that inexpensive approaches that worked were not available to sick people, in order to make sure that AZT would be the only solution. And AZT was the most expensive drug in history. It was $10,000 for a one-year supply [while costing just $5 per dose to manufacture, plus U.S. taxpayers paid for all of the research and development of the drug

Although the bonanza of money made with AZT pales in comparison to Pfizer making out like a bandit. The US taxpayers paid $20B to fund the research and another $10B to market the COVID jab and Pfizer created the bestselling drug in the world and will make $35 billion from it this year. Even better, unlike AZT, this is absolutely risk free and they can never be sued for injuries. This is precisely the playbook that Fauci followed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

An estimated 330,000 people have died from AZT alone. Overall, the similarities between the AZT scandal and what's happening today with the COVID jab and Remdesivir are striking. Again, Fauci has discouraged the use of any prevention for COVID-19, and any treatment using inexpensive and relatively nontoxic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. U.S. taxpayers funded the research while drug companies have made an estimated $100 billion in profits from the shots in a single year, all while having zero liability for injuries and deaths even as people are being coerced into taking them.

"