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p.s. Clark
I just discovered Ben Goldacre´s BAD PHARMA among my (too) many books.
It´s not BAD SCIENCE though. That´s different. But still.
I knew there is something. But forgot about it.
(I used to have a lot of friends from book publishing and received literally tons of books no human being can read in one life time.)German Bundestag for the first time has discussed the implementation of a parliamentary commission to investigate the Covid crises on the basis of the RKI-Files.
The decision has yet to be made.
The focus seems to be constitutional matters and civil rights liberties in the light of extraordinary legal and law enforcement measures that were taken based on insufficient or not conclusive enough scientific evidence as the argument goes.
“On Wednesday, April 24, 2024, the Bundestag debated a motion by the AfD parliamentary group entitled “Establishment of a Coronavirus Commission of Inquiry – Error Analysis and Development of Better Approaches for Future Pandemics” (20/11137) for the first time. Following the debate, the MPs referred the motion to the committees for further discussion, with the Health Committee taking the lead.”
“In the view of the parliamentary group, the publication of the RKI protocols alone makes it clear that certain measures or regulations were issued on the basis of errors or insufficient scientific knowledge. According to the motion, the institutions should have withdrawn from the “political-media dynamics of the immediate events” and adopted a “higher-level perspective”.
According to the applicants, the commission should seek answers on how to prevent lockdowns in the future and how to “maintain economic, societal and social life as far as possible” even during a pandemic. The commission is to develop answers to a variety of legal, medical, technical, political and social questions in the context of pandemics.
The commission, consisting of 16 members of the Bundestag and 16 experts, should be constituted immediately and present its findings and recommendations for action before the parliamentary summer break in 2025. Its report should be made available to the general public.”
AG, “Bad Science” is an easier read and a bit more poking fun at how stupid some of the supposed science is whilst at the same time making a serious point.
“Bad Pharma” is a much more forensic and technical read and less entertaining and focused on the malfeasance of big pharma. (Thus more anger inducing) It’s not a light read. It is highly informative.Goldacre also wrote “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that” which is in a similar style to “Bad Science.”
All are worth a read.ET
THX!!!
(its the German version, which is under a different title – which is also why I didn´t immediately connect the dots)
But with that there should be no comprehension issue.Bad Science is the essential toolkit for understanding Bad Pharma.
Bad Science starts with the simplest (and most hilarious) examples of the various ways that bullshit can be disguised as science, and works its way up through increasingly complex and technical deceptions, also exposing ‘MSM’ laziness, gullibility, incompetence, sensationalism and complicity at every stage.
The pharmaceutical companies are the most adept, using all the techniques from the most crude to the most sophisticated, and also the most sinister, carefully calibrating each type of deception to get it past the regulations, the regulators, and the medical community.
Clark, you have given a better synopsis than I had. It’s been a while since I read them, though I have read them twice.
A report today about Zhang Yongzhen, reputedly first scientist to publish a sequence of the Covid-19 virus in China has been evicted from his lab along with his team. First scientist to publish Covid sequence in China ‘evicted’ from lab
“The move shows how the Chinese government continues to pressure and control scientists, seeking to avoid scrutiny of its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.”
I don’t know how true or not this is but I suspect we’ll see more reports critical of China.
archive.is is giving me PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR again, so here is what appears to be the original (Associated Press):
Chinese scientist who first published COVID sequence stages protest after being locked out of lab by Dake Kang.
Suggestion: As archives seem to have frequent temporary outages (caused by lack of money in some cases), maybe also cite the original title and source. This would also be more informative than diverse links that all read “archive.is/gobbledegook”.
Because it´s in the news: the EU-Commission has now officially revoked its approval of AstraZeneca´s vaccine.
However as Germany is concerned the vaccine´s use had already been stopped March 2021 after 12.803.142 doses had been applied.“EU Commission Plans to Strip Funding From Public Prosecutors Investigating Ursula von der Leyen’s Pfizergate Scandal”
“Surely just a coincidence!
As regular readers are well aware, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is facing a number of legal challenges over the Pfizergate scandal, including from the New York Times, the governments of Hungary and Poland, a Belgian lobbyist and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO. In early April, we discussed the possibility that her reelection campaign may be over-shadowed by these multiple lawsuits as well as other corruption allegations. At that time, the EPPO had just taken over a Belgian criminal probe into the highly opaque vaccine negotiations between von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla.
Since then, the Commission, it seems, has gone on the offensive. According to an article published earlier this week by POLITICO EU, the EU executive plans to reduce the EPPO’s funding, prompting the EPPO, in a rare move, to threaten to sue the Commission. Founded in 2017 with the mission of “investigating transnational and complex financial crimes, notably serious organised crimes and money laundering flows,” the EPPO last year launched more than 200 fraud investigations related to the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Facility, which has provided €800 billion of EU cash to help support post-COVID economic recovery.”
Naked capitalism had a link to this very thorough (and long) paper on the state of the science regarding masks and respirators for the prevention of respiratory disease. In short, they do work if not perfectly. Droplet vs aerosol spread is discussed in depth and several recommendations are made with respect to future studies and health authorities dissemination of information. It’s loooooong, so you might just want to read the summary and conclusion.
Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review (Greenhalgh et al., May 2024) Clin Microbiol Rev.
Even though it’s 2024 this is still the mosr appropriate thread for this. The BMJ published a study on Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022
Conclusions: Excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. This raises serious concerns. Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality.
Clark, I see you have commented on this study in a different thread. The daily sceptic somewhat sensationalised their findings to fit their viewpoint. However, sources from England, which I have referred to in some of the covid threads, using ONS data have shown similar trends up to approx the same date. There had been significant excess deaths from all causes most of which were not attributed to covid 19 using the same criteria used during the pandemic to attribute cause of death. That doesn’t mean that I think it was vaccines that caused it but I do think there was little public attention and that government ought to be taking measures to determine what the causes were/are.
ET, I agree with your June 5, 08:57 post #98492; the article in BMJ isn’t bad, but it doesn’t look particularly rigorous either; e.g. the authors claim to have had the paper peer reviewed themselves, but supply no details of reviewers nor resultant revisions, nor any link to such. I’d like to see some discussion around this paper, and these issues, that includes some epidemiologists. I agree that excess deaths have increased since we were blessed with SARS-CoV-2, and this paper is a good wake-up call. Governments should commit money to investigate the causes – fat chance.
For a while I’ve also been meaning to thank you for the link to the very thorough review paper about the effectiveness etc. of masks and respirators. It confirms many suspicions I have held since early in the mask-or-not politicised row. It was very lax of the WHO to continue insisting on early 20th century findings about droplets, when evidence was very clearly indicating that #CovidIsAirborne. Fresh air and masking were key, while governments blathered on relentlessly about hand-washing and how far apart people should stand.
Here is an interesting take on long covid and some other aspects of the pandemic from Naked Capitalism “Debilitating a Generation”: Expert Warns That Long COVID May Eventually Affect Most Americans.
Some tid bits:
“Their decision not to emphasize the airborne transmission message stemmed from their acknowledgment that if they did, it would shift liability from individuals avoiding droplet transmission to institutions responsible for maintaining air quality. And they did not want the institutions to have that liability. Now, without question, the CDC and the WHO have finally acknowledged that they’ve been aware all along of its airborne nature. Donald Trump admitted as president he knew it was airborne in February of 2020.”
Other interesting things about accident rates increasing due to effects of covid on cognition and some other bits and pieces.
Reuters has a piece on US anti-vax propaganda campaign in the Phillipines: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic . It was designed to undermine the Chinese Sinovac vaccine by discrediting it.
ET
thx for posting
Let me “double-down”:https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/06/open-sunday.html#more
“(…)
The issue below deserves a serious write up. Alas, I am currently not up to it. It was an incredibly irresponsible campaign and some people likely died over it.Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic – Reuters
The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.First thought: This wasn’t a war. So why the f*** was the Pentagon at all involved in any such stuff?
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.
The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.
Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.
Note that the Chinese vaccine in question was not a ‘dubious’ mRNA vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna but a classic one consisting of attenuated viruses. Such a vaccine was/is very unlikely to cause harm. To claim otherwise will in the end have left vulnerable people without the protection a vaccine could have given them.
How much the anti-vax movement in the ‘west’ was a reaction to the anti-Chinese Pentagon manipulations in the Philippines and elsewhere? Such campaigns always ‘leak’ and have echoes.
Consider this the next time you read about defect or otherwise ‘bad’ Chinese products:
[T]he Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”
And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.
Then Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga was at the head of the campaign. Braga is currently the commanding general of United States Army Special Operations Command.
(…)”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Special_Operations_Command
ET, thank you for those very informative links.
Clark, thank Naked Capitalism for most of them and another from today The impacts of long COVID across OECD countries which is from the OECD itself. It’s a dry read but illuminating.
Naked Capitalism, sometimes in the “links” or “water cooler” section seem to be good at ferreting out these studies.
It seems remarkable that the government/NHS has lost all interest in covid. Vaccines are for the over-75s only, tests are no longer free, and the reporting apparatus has been abandoned. Response from the GP is, “What are you telling us for?”
The ‘treatment’ for it is along the lines of, “Take a paracetamol, drink water, get rest’ – all very well, but did nothing come out of all the research into treatment for this?
It’s hard to understand why – after so much effort and curbs on liberties during the pandemic – we now get a collective shrug from the Establishment when cases arise.
The ONS collects and presents deaths data the most recent of which is .
For the week ending June 7 there were fewer deaths than expected and deaths from or involving covid (table 3 in the downloadable data) are far fewer than from influenza or pneumonia.
Messed up the link, sorry.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have ruled that the Covid ‘vaccine’ is not a traditional vaccine and has been redefined as a medical treatment.
The State of Kansas is also suing Pfizer for basically lying.
The ruling of the court in that case is here.
It is not about defining the vaccine, it’s about whether the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) making vaccination mandatory or employees would lose their jobs and whether they could rely on a previous ruling related to smallpox vaccination. The argument was that the covid vaccine didn’t prevent spread (of covid), as such (as the smallpox vaccine did) they couldn’t rely on that precedent.
All vaccinations are a form of medical treatment, there is no re-definition here. The case is about whether LAUSD could lawfully mandate a vaccination that only protected the individual and not everyone else they worked with.Link not working, its here
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[ Mod: Fixed. ]This might be a little tangential to the thread but I’m going to post it anyway.
Mice created with full human immune systems for the first time. or the full paper from nature is:
A humanized mouse that mounts mature class-switched, hypermutated and neutralizing antibody responses.“They mount mature neutralizing antibody responses to Salmonella (S.) Typhimurium and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Spike S1 receptor-binding domain (RBD),…” (hence the relevance)
Apparently created by injecting human cord blood derived stem cells and some oestrogen into a breed of immuno-deficient mice.
I wonder if the cord blood donors were told what their samples were to be used for
i.e. humanising mice or were they just consented for “scientific research.”Whilst I can see the usefulness and can admire the technical ingenuity I am also a little repulsed by it.
There will be breeds of these humanised mice with specific cancers and other diseases used to develop drugs and mRNA vaccines.
