Our nation’s younger generations are self-harming and dying in unprecedented numbers that appear to directly correlate with closures
Author of the article:Sabrina Maddeaux Publishing date:Dec 30, 2021 • 1 day ago • 5 minute read • 377 Comments
Nicki Dewar, whose 31-year-old daughter, Kristin, died of an opioid overdose, places carnations on the steps of the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg on Nov. 24, 2021, during National Addictions Awareness Week. A new StatCan report reveals that as the pandemic stretches on, it’s younger Canadians who are disproportionately dying, largely due to unintentional overdoses and poisonings. PHOTO BY KEVIN KING/POSTMEDIA NEWS
A pandemic that disproportionately kills the elderly is undeniably bad, but just as tragic is a response that disproportionately kills the young. As time goes on, the latter is claiming more and more Canadian lives.
In a devastating year-end update on COVID-19’s social and economic impacts, Statistics Canada estimates there were 19,884 “excess deaths” (more deaths than what would normally be expected) in Canada between March 2020 and May 2021. While excess deaths early in the pandemic largely occurred among seniors and were attributable to COVID-19, such deaths rose significantly later on among younger Canadians and were not caused by the virus.
Approximately 35 per cent –– or over 7,200 –– of total excess deaths occurred among those between 45 and 64 years old despite the demographic accounting for only seven per cent of COVID-related deaths. Perhaps even more disturbing, approximately 15.6 per cent –– or about 3,100 –– of Canada’s excess deaths occurred among those younger than 44, even though that youngest cohort accounts for only 0.7 per cent of the country’s COVID-19 deaths.
The report is clear: as the pandemic stretches on, it’s younger Canadians who are disproportionately dying
The report is clear: as the pandemic stretches on, it’s younger Canadians who are disproportionately dying. Not from the virus itself, but from the choices we’ve made along the way –– and continue to make. These deaths are largely due to unintentional overdoses and poisonings, and some by choice, among the populations most affected by prolonged social and economic restrictions. Opioid overdoses in particular increased by 88 per cent compared with the same time period prior to the pandemic.
As officials breathlessly report Omicron case numbers that appear to have diverged from hospitalization and death rates, the conversation about restrictions and lockdowns must be different than it was in early- to mid-2020. The risk calculus is simply not the same, and the level of harm we may inflict on the young and the vulnerable is immense.
StatCan found opioid-related hospitalizations have been highest among those with lower levels of income and education, who are unemployed or out of the labour force, who self-identify as Indigenous, who live in lone parent households, and who spend more than 50 per cent of their income on housing. The data also found high levels of stress among women, those aged 35 to 44, LGBTQ+ communities, and those who live with children under the age of 15. It’s no coincidence these groups are also among the most likely to be impacted by closures of businesses, community supports and schools.
As shocking as this latest report is, it comes with a caveat that means things are very likely worse than they seem. It covers the pandemic period only up to May 2021. This is about the time older Canadians began to receive vaccines. Since then, hospitalizations and deaths of the elderly and 65-plus demographic have plummeted, yet there’s everyindication overdoses continue to spike. The portion of excess deaths younger Canadians actually account for is likely larger than it appears in StatCan’s year-end report.
And it’s not getting better. National modelling predictsa further increase in opioid overdose deaths through at least the first half of 2022 –– and that doesn’t even account for increasing rates of alcohol poisoning deaths. The other thing about substance abuse and addiction is that, even if they don’t result in death, they don’t simply disappear once stressors evaporate. Restrictions may eventually lift, but the substance-abuse issues that began or worsened during lockdowns will stick around for life, destroying livelihoods, relationships, and families in their wake. The potential collateral damage is, to use a term we’re now all intimately familiar with, exponential.
These are not easy deaths. We are constantly asked, and rightfully so, by medical professionals and media to imagine the scene inside COVID-19 hospital wards. To picture the patients on ventilators, struggling to breathe, that privacy laws won’t allow us to see. It only seems fair to ask the same for the young and the vulnerable, many dying alone in apartments or on streets from overdoses; skin turning blue, gurgling and seizing.
Also uncaptured by StatCan are the skyrocketing suicide attempts and self-harm rates among the very youngest Canadians. After last winter’s widespread lockdowns, some hospitals saw the number of youth admitted for suicide attempts triple within a four-month period. Those hospitalized during this period also generally stayed longer due to more serious attempts. Eating disorders in youth were described by doctors as “unprecedented,” and some children’s hospitals saw referrals increase by 90 per cent in the same four-month period. Children’s hospitals in Ontario considered transferring older teens to adult hospitals as they became too full to function.
Also uncaptured by StatCan are the skyrocketing suicide attempts and self-harm rates among the very youngest Canadians
Our nation’s younger generations are self-harming and dying in unprecedented numbers that appear to directly correlate with closures, and yet few seem willing to acknowledge this lest it result in hard conversations that don’t include lockdowns as acceptable recourse.
Meanwhile, Omicron data from South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States continues to point toward significantly less hospitalization and death. Preliminary Canadian data suggests the same pattern, combined with anecdotal reports that some of the hardest hit hospitals from earlier waves, like Brampton Civic Hospital in Ontario, are down to only two COVID patients in the ICU. It’s extremely difficult to reconcile this growing pool of evidence with calls for additional restrictions when we know what the cost of those restrictions will be.
Many proponents of harsher restrictions prefer to present this cost in economic terms, framing the choice as being between lives and dollars. This has the benefit of bestowing their views with moral righteousness while painting those who disagree as deranged Scrooge McDucks. We now know this is a straw man argument. There are lives on the other side of the scale, too, and they’re excessively young.
It’s a painful question to ask, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. At what point do COVID hospitalizations and deaths among older generations stop justifying the growing sacrifice of Canada’s young? If people aren’t willing to consider this question, and publicly justify their answers, they shouldn’t be in the business of recommending further lockdown measures.
Would Financial Post columnist Diane Francis argue that smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts and the obese should be denied publicly funded health care, and forced to pay for their medical treatment out-of-pocket?
These groups of people, after all, “strain health-care systems and force hospitals to postpone surgeries or turn away Canadians who need treatment for other illnesses.” As Ms. Francis puts it: “In a single-payer health-care system like Canada’s, it is only fair and prudent” to “make people pay for the burden they impose on the system” when making unhealthy choices.
Nobody should be permitted to burden taxpayers “with the medical costs you incur because of your own irresponsibility.” “Public health measures should not be confused with freedom of choice or rights,” argues Ms. Francis. If you fall ill because of your own choice, “nobody else should have to pay for your personal negligence and irresponsibility.”
Would Winnipeg gastroenterologist Dr. Charles Bernstein argue that obese people or smokers should be barred from entering grocery stores and supermarkets?
Surely these people should shoulder “the added cost and inconvenience” of grocery delivery, “instead of letting them drain health-care resources” for preventable illnesses. As Dr. Bernstein puts it: “They’re going to use up hospital services and… ruin it for the rest of us.” Is Dr. Bernstein aware that in Manitoba, smoking—to consider just one of the unhealthy personal choices listed above—causes 2,000 deaths a year, whereas just over 800 deaths in Manitoba were linked to Covid-19 in 2020?
According to the Manitoba government, a whopping 50 percent of smokers in Manitoba will die from a tobacco-related illness, costing the provincial health care system $244 million annually. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in Manitoba. So why is Dr. Bernstein not calling for smoking to be banned, and for smokers to be punished for draining health-care resources?
As both Health Canada and the Center for Disease Control explain it, obesity increases risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. All of these diseases, caused or exacerbated by obesity, are costing taxpayers huge swaths of money. Following the reasoning of Diane Francis and Dr. Bernstein, this money could be better spent on the good Canadians who exercise regularly and eat healthy foods in moderation.
Have Dr. Bernstein and Diane Francis considered the fact that obese people are far more likely to end up in hospital with Covid? According to the CDC, having obesity may triple the risk of hospitalization due to a Covid infection. Obesity decreases lung capacity and is linked to impaired immune function, both very unhelpful when fighting Covid.
Further, the CDC states that being a current or former cigarette smoker can make you more likely to get severely ill from Covid. It also seems to be ignored that, as a result of lockdowns and their vast collateral damage, alcoholism and drug overdoses are on the rise, burdening the health care system. Both Dr. Bernstein and Diane Francis seem to believe that there are good Covid patients and bad Covid patients. The latter should be punished for their bad choices, in their view.
In fact, Diane Francis directed her venom and Dr. Bernstein directed his vitriol not at the obese or smokers—or any other group burdening the healthcare system because of their own unhealthy choices—but at Canadians who decline the new Covid vaccines. Ms. Francis argues that the vaccine-free should pay for their own medical costs, and Dr. Bernstein argues that the vaccine-free should be banned from grocery stores. Banning people from grocery stores is immoral and will generally impact the poor who cannot afford home deliveries. Further, access to food is considered a fundamental human right by the United Nations. If the Manitoba government accepts Dr. Bernstein’s advice, many unvaccinated Manitobans who are impoverished or who live in rural areas will face starvation if they cannot access grocery stores.
Ms. Francis and Dr. Bernstein are repudiating the ethical principle of informed and voluntary consent established by the Nuremberg Code. They are selectively arguing for government discrimination against one group of people, completely ignoring the fact that there are countless unhealthy choices made by millions of Canadians every day, with many of these decisions directly costing taxpayers dearly.
Dr. Bernstein and Ms. Francis also ignore the well-established fact that Covid vaccines do not stop Covid spread, as stated publicly by health authorities and by the vaccine manufacturers themselves. Public statements by public health officials are confirmed by the experiences of Israel, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom where vaccination rates as high as 100 percent are not stopping the spread of Covid, nor do they prevent people from catching Covid and dying from it.
Nobody disputes that the new Covid vaccines have not been subjected to any long-term safety testing. Nobody seriously questions that about 80 percent of Covid deaths in Canada have been amongst elderly people in nursing homes who were already very sick with multiple serious conditions. No Canadian government, federal or provincial, has put forward persuasive evidence to support the claim that Covid threatens everyone; the governments’ own data and statistics tell us the opposite.
Since the Covid vaccine does not stop Covid spread, there is little if any medical or scientific basis for vaccine passports, let alone denying medical care and the right to shop for groceries to Canadians who legitimately exercise their Charter right to bodily autonomy. Are Ms. Francis and Dr. Bernstein willing to take a consistent position, and advocate for the denial of publicly funded healthcare to smokers, alcoholics, drug users and the obese?
“My mental health has been terrible for two years” says an overwhelmed mother of five
Author of the article:Scott Laurie
Publishing date:Dec 30, 2021
Rebecca and Oded Abraham, and family Submitted photo
The mental health impact of the pandemic, lockdowns and restrictions is only beginning to be felt, according to some medical professionals and regular surveys by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.think the impact is huge,” said family doctor Alanna Golden, who on Monday wrote an open letter to the premier urging that schools reopen normally in January.“One of the impacts we don’t talk a lot about is: What does this mean for kids in the future, for their mental health over time?”
Golden’s petition had attracted 631 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
It spells out how a number of jurisdictions around the world have made a commitment to keeping schools open, regardless of case counts.
The letter — addressed to Doug Ford, Education Minister Stephen Lecce and chief medical officer Kieran Moore — reads in part:
“Children and youth have experienced significant increases in hospital mental health admissions for eating disorders and psychiatric illness (55% and 30% respectively), emergency mental health visits (25%) and urgent care mental health visits (20%).”
Rebecca Abraham supports the letter’s aim to keep schools open.
She and her husband Oded, a registered nurse, have five children. She said the pandemic is a major struggle.
“My mental health has been terrible for two years. My husband’s mental health has been terrible. Our kids’ mental health has been terrible,” said Abraham, a Hamilton health-care administrator.
“We’ll see in a few years what the mental health effects are, but right now it’s been literally day by day. But how can we live in this day-by-day mentality before it takes its toll on us?”
CAMH has been tracking anxiety, depression, binge drinking and financial worry since the pandemic started.
Its latest survey — of 1,001 Canadians this summer — showed 19% of participants reporting moderate to severe anxiety.
“In terms of mental health problems, we need to understand that this will not be over when the case counts go down,” said Dr. David Gratzer, a psychiatrist with CAMH.
“The people struggling now might be struggling for months or even years.”
Abraham, who remains anxious about possible changes to a return to classes in January, is just eager to hear something positive.
Desmond Tutu did some great things. But he had a monstrous side too Melanie PhillipsDec 28
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2017
The revelations that have surfaced in a small number of outlets about the profound antisemitism of Archbishop Desmond Tutu have come as an unpleasant shock for a number of people who have read them. For many have had absolutely no knowledge of this whatsoever.
Since his death two days ago, Tutu has been almost universally eulogised as one of the greatest men of the age. And indeed, there is no denying the vital part he played with Nelson Mandela in helping rid South Africa of the obscenity of apartheid and liberate black South Africans to take control of their own destiny in their own land.
There was, however, another side to Tutu — a shocking side. And just as one should respect the dead and pay tribute to their achievements, it is also incumbent upon us to tell the truth about that person if that truth is important enough, however distasteful this may be. And it undoubtedly is that important.
It’s not merely that Tutu demonised Israel with libellous falsehoods. Worse still, he explicitly and repeatedly demonised the Jewish people. His occasional claims that he identified with the Jews and his acknowledgement that they had been allies in the great fight against South African apartheid generally morphed into his grotesque and incomprehensible accusation that the Jews of Israel had done to the Palestinian Arabs what the apartheid regime had done to the black population of South Africa.
On the Gatestone site, Alan Dershowitz has reprised the condemnation of Tutu that he wrote back in January 2011. He writes:
He minimised the suffering of those murdered in the Holocaust, asserting that “the gas chambers” made for “a neater death” than did Apartheid. In other words, the Palestinians, who in his incorrect view are the victims of “Israeli Apartheid,” have suffered more than the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. He complained of “the Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust,” and demanded that its victims must “forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust,” while refusing to forgive the “Jewish people” for “persecute[ing] others”.
Tutu asserted that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” thus echoing the notorious and discredited “Zionism equals racism” resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations and subsequently rescinded. He accused the Jews of Israel of doing “things that even Apartheid South Africa had not done”. He said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly of God: Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings”. He said that Jews have been “fighting against” and being “opposed to” his God. He has “compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa”. He complained that “the Jewish people with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others”. He implied that Israel might someday consider as an option “to perpetrate genocide and exterminate all Palestinians”.
He complained that Americans “are scared…to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful”. He accused Jews — not Israelis — of exhibiting “an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support”. While attacking Israel for its “collective punishment”of Palestinians — which he claims is worse than what Apartheid South Africa did — he himself called for the collective punishment of Jewish academics and businesses in Israel by demanding boycotts of all Jewish (but not Muslim or Christian) Israelis. (This call for an anti-Jewish boycott finds its roots in the Nazi “Kauft Nicht beim Juden” campaign of the 1930s.)
When confronted with his double standard against Jews, he justified it on phoney theological grounds: “Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can’t ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people”. There is a name for non-Jews who hold Jews to a double standard: It is called antisemitism.
Tutu acknowledged having been frequently accused of being antisemitic, to which he has offered two responses: “Tough luck;” and “my dentist’s name is Dr. Cohen”.
I have quoted this at length for a reason. First, there is the extraordinary extent and depth of Tutu’s hatred, lies and demonisation directed at Israel and the Jewish people. How does this square with the good that he did in fighting South African apartheid?
Part of the reason for his animus is the doctrine of “intersectionality”, which holds that all “powerless” peoples or groups are linked by victimisation and are therefore by definition incapable of doing bad things, while all “powerful” people are linked by their abuses of power and are therefore by definition incapable of doing good things.
Thus the “apartheid” libel against Israel, a commonplace today in so-called “progressive” circles. It is, of course, mind-blowing that Tutu, of all people, could hold that Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and where all its citizens patently enjoy equal civic and religious rights, practised apartheid.
But the idea that his belief was the result of intersectionality has surely got that the wrong way round. For he helped put rocket fuel behind the “apartheid” lie. As Jay Nordlinger, author of a history of the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in 2014 about the prize’s winners:
The most harmful of them is Desmond Tutu: because he is a South African hero who, for decades, has peddled the lie that Israel is an “apartheid state”. Coming from him, it is more harmful than from (the countless) others.
The more likely explanation for Tutu’s antisemitism is theological. He was close to the “supersessionists” of the Sabeel centre in Jerusalem, which has virtually single-handedly poisoned much of the Anglican church against Israel and the Jews.
For Sabeel and its founder, Canon Naim Ateek — who has long been warmly embraced by the Church of England establishment — have taken an ancient antisemitic calumny and weaponised it against Israel.
As I wrote here a few days ago this calumny, called “replacement theology” or “supersessionism” and which dates back to the early church fathers, held that because the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus, the Christians inherited all the promises made by God to the Jewish people who became instead the party of the devil.
Ateek fused this doctrine, which was responsible for the persecution and murder of countless numbers of Jews in medieval times, with Palestinianism. As a result, he claimed that the divine promise of the land of Israel had been inherited bythe Palestinians.
Thus at a stroke the Jews were monstrously transformed from the indigenous people of the land of Israel — for whom alone it was ever their national kingdom, hundreds of years before either Jesus or Mohammed — into its oppressive colonisers. The Palestinian Arabs became explicitly identified with Jesus (the Jew from Judea who was suddenly and ludicrously transformed into a Palestinian) and were described in terms as being “crucified” by the Jews — who had thus merely substituted another set of victims for the original.
This shocking and implicitly murderous set of lies was embraced by Anglicans and other liberal Christian churches because they had become heavily influenced by the “liberation theology” adopted by the World Council of Churches from the 1970s onwards and which fed Sabeel’s politicised theological revisionism.
“Liberation theology”, which sought to turn the church into a radical movement by representing the “oppressed” of the world, was Marxist dogma. And so although most Anglican clerics may think of themselves as soggy liberals — and in the case of Tutu, actually inveighed against communism — the doctrine they have adopted is straight out of the Karl Marx anti-capitalism and antisemitism playbook.
So this is almost certainly why Tutu turned truth and lies about Israel and the Jews inside out. He has been regarded as a saintly figure because he led the process of “truth and reconciliation” that eschewed retribution against the perpetrators of the apartheid regime. And it was indeed a noble achievement to emerge from enslavement without engaging in violent revenge.
But reconciliation without retribution is also a negation of justice. And where justice is denied as being irrelevant or even harmful, injustice invariably follows.
So it proved with Archbishop Tutu. For while he demonised and delegitimised Israel with falsehoods and distortions, he was muted in his criticism of atrocities in the developing world. After 9/11, he soft-pedalled criticism of Islamic extremism while unleashing ferocious attacks instead against George W Bush and Tony Blair for attempting to defend the west against it in Iraq and Syria.
In 2012, he even refused to to sit down with Blair at a conference because of the war in Iraq. So no forgiveness and reconciliation for some people, then. As Wayne K Spear observed in Canada’s National Post after that histrionic gesture, Tutu didn’t blame Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or President Assad’s “Alawite thugs” for the current state of Syria and Iran: this too was instead the fault of Bush and Blair. Wrote Spear about Tutu’s denunciation:
“You are a member of our family, God’s family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran,” he oozes to an absent Blair. But what on earth is this to mean if military action against the world’s theocratic fascists and dictators earns one condemnation while at the same time the crimes of these same theocrats and dictators are cleansed from the public record?
All this is terrible and depressing. More terrible still, though, is the silence with which Tutu’s bigotry against the Jewish people has been received.
Despite its scale, it has simply been ignored by all who have continued to lionise Tutu as a moral beacon for the world. Dershowitz first assembled his forensic charge sheet against Tutu almost eleven years ago.
And yet, after his death CNN called him “the voice of justice;” the Associated Press said he was a “moral conscience;” the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “a towering global figure for peace and inspiration to generations across the world;” the Economist said he was “the best kind of troublemaker;” and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, called him “a healer and apostle of peace”.
Not one of these or any of the innumerable others whose similar tributes have poured forth in an unstoppable geyser of hero-worship uttered a single word about his antisemitism.
Maybe they just didn’t know? Maybe they did know but allowed his South African legacy to erase it from their minds as just too complicated and contradictory to process? Or maybe they think that Israel deserves what Tutu said about it and that the Jews really aren’t worth bothering about? That antisemitism is so marginal it just doesn’t matter — and the Jews should simply shut up about it?
Whatever the reason, this near-universal airbrushing of Tutu’s bigotry as he is all but canonised as a modern saint throws into the sharpest relief the devastating moral confusion of our era.
Arwen~ This is really good news! Accurate reporting is what is needed. That should be a given, sadly , not the “case”…no pun intended. The “journalist” tries to lead the doctor to conclude that this is because of high vaccination rates, and the doctor does not respond with an affirmative but points out countries with high and low vaccination rates are experiencing the same.
The doctor does not support the journalist’s opinion…and looks instead at data:)
A few friends have asked my thoughts on the covid jab(s) so I thought it was time to write an article on the topic.
All my friends had not heard most of the details I shared, so I figured you might appreciate hearing some of what I told them.
Knowing how contentious this issue is, part of me would rather just write about something else, but I feel like the discussion/news is so one-sided that I should speak up.
As I always strive to do, I promise to do my best to be level-headed and non-hysterical.
I’m not here to pick a fight with anyone, just to walk you through some of what I’ve read, my lingering questions, and explain why I can’t make sense of these covid vaccines.
THREE GROUND RULES FOR DISCUSSION
If you care to engage on this topic with me, excellent.
Here are the rules…
I am more than happy to correspond with you if…
You are respectful and treat me the way you would want to be treated.
You ask genuinely thoughtful questions about what makes sense to you.
You make your points using sound logic and don’t hide behind links or the word “science.” In other words, make a kind, level-headed argument (links welcome), but don’t just post a link and say “read the science.” That’s intellectually lazy.
If you do respond, and you break any of those rules, your comments will be ignored/deleted.
With that out of the way, let me say this…
I don’t know everything, but so far no one has been able to answer the objections below.
So here are the reasons I’m opting out of the covid vaccine.
#1: VACCINE MAKERS ARE IMMUNE FROM LIABILITY
The only industry in the world that bears no liability for injuries or deaths resulting from their products, are vaccine makers.
The covid-vaccine makers are allowed to create a one-size-fits-all product, with no testing on sub-populations (i.e. people with specific health conditions), and yet they are unwilling to accept any responsibility for any adverse events or deaths their products cause.
If a company is not willing to stand behind their product as safe, especially one they rushed to market and skipped animal trials on, I am not willing to take a chance on their product.
No liability. No trust.
Here’s why…
#2: THE CHECKERED PAST OF THE VACCINE COMPANIES
The four major companies who are making these covid vaccines are/have either:
Never brought a vaccine to market before covid (Moderna).
Are serial felons (Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, and Johnson and Johnson).
Moderna had been trying to “Modernize our RNA” (thus the company name)–for years, but had never successfully brought ANY product to market–how nice for them to get a major cash infusion from the government to keep trying.
In fact, all major vaccine makers (save Moderna) have paid out tens of billions of dollars in damages for other products they brought to market when they knew those products would cause injuries and death–see Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex, Thalidomide, and opioids as a few examples.
If drug companies willfully choose to put harmful products in the market, when they can be sued, why would we trust any product where they have NO liability?
In case it hasn’t sunk in, let me reiterate…3 of the 4 covid vaccine makers have been sued for products they brought to market even though they knew injuries and deaths would result.
Astra Zeneca has similarly lost so many lawsuits it’s hard to count. Here’s one. Here’s another…you get the point. And in case you missed it, the company had their covid vaccine suspended in at least 18 countries over concerns of blood clots, and they completely botched their meeting with the FDA with numbers from their study that didn’t match.
Oh, and apparently J&J (whose vaccine is approved for “Emergency Use” in the US) and Astrazenca (whose vaccine is not approved for “Emergency Use” in the US), had a little mix up in their ingredients…in 15 million doses. Oops.
Let me reiterate this point:
Given the free pass from liability, and the checkered past of these companies, why would we assume that all their vaccines are safe and made completely above board?
Where else in life would we trust someone with that kind of reputation?
To me that makes as much sense as expecting a remorseless, abusive, unfaithful lover to become a different person because a judge said deep down they are a good person.
No. I don’t trust them.
No liability. No trust.
Here’s another reason why I don’t trust them.
#3: THE UGLY HISTORY OF ATTEMPTS TO MAKE CORONAVIRUS VACCINES
There have been many attempts to make viral vaccines in the past that ended in utter failure, which is why we did not have a coronavirus vaccine in 2020.
In the 1960’s, scientists attempted to make an RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) vaccine for infants.
In that study, they skipped animal trials because they weren’t necessary back then.
In the end, the vaccinated infants got much sicker than the unvaccinated infants when exposed to the virus in nature, with 80% of the vaccinated infants requiring hospitalization, and two of them died.
After 2000, scientists made many attempts to create coronavirus vaccines.
For the past 20 years, all ended in failure because the animals in the clinical trials got very sick and many died, just like the children in the 1960’s.
You can read a summary of this history/science here.
Or if you want to read the individual studies you can check out these links:
In 2005 mice and civets became sick and more susceptible to coronaviruses after being vaccinated
In 2012 the ferrets became sick and died. And in this study mice and ferrets developed lung disease.
In 2016 this study also produce lung disease in mice.
The typical pattern in the studies mentioned above is that the children and the animals produced beautiful antibody responses after being vaccinated.
The manufacturers thought they hit the jackpot.
The problem came when the children and animals were exposed to the wild version of the virus.
When that happened, an unexplained phenomenon called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) also known as Vaccine Enhanced Disease (VED) occurred where the immune system produced a “cytokine storm” (i.e. overwhelmingly attacked the body), and the children/animals died.
Here’s the lingering issue…
The vaccine makers have no data to suggest their rushed vaccines have overcome that problem.
In other words, never before has any attempt to make a coronavirus vaccine been successful, nor has the gene-therapy technology that is mRNA “vaccines” been safely brought to market, but hey, since they had billions of dollars in government funding, I’m sure they figured that out.
Except they don’t know if they have…
#4: THE “DATA GAPS” SUBMITTED TO THE FDA BY THE VACCINE MAKERS
When vaccine makers submitted their papers to the FDA for the Emergency Use Authorization (Note: An EUA is not the same as a full FDA approval), among the many “Data Gaps” they reported was that they have nothing in their trials to suggest they overcame that pesky problem of Vaccine Enhanced Disease.
They simply don’t know–i.e. they have no idea if the vaccines they’ve made will also produce the same cytokine storm (and deaths) as previous attempts at such products.
“Previous attempts to develop an mRNA-based drug using lipid nanoparticles failed and had to be abandoned because when the dose was too low, the drug had no effect, and when dosed too high, the drug became too toxic. An obvious question is: What has changed that now makes this technology safe enough for mass use?”
If that’s not alarming enough, here are other gaps in the data–i.e. there is no data to suggest safety or efficacy regarding:
Anyone younger than age 18 or older than age 55
Pregnant or lactating mothers
Auto-immune conditions
Immunocompromised individuals
No data on transmission of covid
No data on preventing mortality from covid
No data on duration of protection from covid
Hard to believe right?
In case you think I’m making this up, or want to see the actual documents sent to the FDA by Pfizer and Moderna for their Emergency Use Authorization, you can check out this, or this respectively. The data gaps can be found starting with page 46 and 48 respectively.
For now let’s turn our eyes to the raw data the vaccine makers used to submit for emergency use authorization.
#5: NO ACCESS TO THE RAW DATA FROM THE TRIALS
Would you like to see the raw data that produced the “90% and 95% effective” claims touted in the news?
Me too…
But they won’t let us see that data.
As pointed out in the BMJ, something about the Pfizer and Moderna efficacy claims smells really funny.
There were “3,410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1,594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1,816 in the placebo group.”
Wait…what?
Did they fail to do science in their scientific study by not verifying a major variable?
Could they not test those “suspected but unconfirmed” cases to find out if they had covid?
Apparently not.
Why not test all 3,410 participants for the sake of accuracy?
Can we only guess they didn’t test because it would mess up their “90-95% effective” claims?
Where’s the FDA?
Would it not be prudent for the FDA, to expect (demand) that the vaccine makers test people who have “covid-like symptoms,” and release their raw data so outside, third-parties could examine how the manufacturers justified the numbers?
I mean it’s only every citizen of the world we’re trying to get to take these experimental products…
Why did the FDA not require that? Isn’t that the entire purpose of the FDA anyway?
Good question.
Foxes guarding the hen house?
Seems like it.
No liability. No trust.
#6: NO LONG-TERM SAFETY TESTING
Obviously, with products that have only been on the market a few months, we have no long-term safety data.
In other words, we have no idea what this product will do in the body months or years from now–for ANY population.
Given all the risks above (risks that ALL pharmaceutical products have), would it not be prudent to wait to see if the worst-case scenarios have indeed been avoided?
Would it not make sense to want to fill those pesky “data gaps” before we try to give this to every man, woman, and child on the planet?
Well…that would make sense, but to have that data, they need to test it on people, which leads me to my next point…
#7: NO INFORMED CONSENT
What most who are taking the vaccine don’t know is that because these products are still in clinical trials, anyone who gets the shot is now part of the clinical trial.
They are part of the experiment.
Those (like me) who do not take it, are part of the control group.
Time will tell how this experiment works out.
But, you may be asking, if the vaccines are causing harm, wouldn’t we be seeing that all over the news?
Surely the FDA would step in and pause the distribution?
#8: UNDER-REPORTING OF ADVERSE REACTIONS AND DEATH
According to a study done by Harvard (at the commission of our own government), less than 1% of all adverse reactions to vaccines are actually submitted to the National Vaccine Adverse Events Reports System (VAERS) – read page 6 at the link above.
While the problems with VAERS have not been fixed (as you can read about in this letter to the CDC), at the time of this writing VAERS reports over 2,200 deaths from the current covid vaccines, as well as close to 60,000 adverse reactions.
“VAERS data released today showed 50,861 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines, including 2,249 deaths and 7,726 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 26, 2021.”
If those numbers are still only 1% of the total adverse reactions (or .8 to 2% of what this study published recently in the JAMA found), you can do the math, but that equates to somewhere around 110,000 to 220,000 deaths from the vaccines to date, and a ridiculous number of adverse reactions.
Bet you didn’t see that on the news.
That death number would currently still be lower than the 424,000 deaths from medical errors that happen every year (which you probably also don’t hear about), but we are not even six months into the rollout of these vaccines yet.
If you want a deeper dive into the problems with the VAERS reporting system, you can check this out, or check this out.
But then there’s my next point, which could be argued makes these covid vaccines seem pointless…
#9: THE VACCINES DO NOT STOP TRANSMISSION OR INFECTION
Wait, what?
Aren’t these vaccines supposed to be what we’ve been waiting for to “go back to normal”?
Nope.
Why do you think we’re getting all these conflicting messages about needing to practice social distancing and wear masks AFTER we get a vaccine?
The reason is because these vaccines were never designed to stop transmission OR infection.
If you don’t believe me, I refer you again to the papers submitted to the FDA I linked to above.
The primary endpoint (what the vaccines are meant to accomplish) is to lower your symptoms.
Sounds like just about every other drug on the market right?
That’s it…lowering your symptoms is the big payoff we’ve been waiting for.
Does that seem completely pointless to anyone but me?
It can’t stop us from spreading the virus.
It can’t stop the virus from infecting us once we have it.
To get the vaccine is to accept all the risk of these experimental products and the best it might do is lower symptoms?
Heck, there are plenty of other things I can do to lower my symptoms that don’t involve taking what appears to be a really risky product.
Now for the next logical question:
If we’re worried about asymptomatic spreaders, would the vaccine not make it more likely that we are creating asymptomatic spread?
If it indeed reduces symptoms, anyone who gets it might not even know they are sick and thus they are more likely to spread the virus, right?
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard many people say the side effects of the vaccine (especially the second dose) are worse than catching covid.
I can’t make sense of that either.
Take the risk.
Get no protection.
Suffer through the vaccine side-effects.
Keep wearing your mask and social distancing…
And continue to be able to spread the virus.
What?
It gets worse.
#10: PEOPLE ARE CATCHING COVID AFTER BEING FULLY VACCINATED
Why would I take a risk on a product, that doesn’t stop infection or transmission, to help me overcome a cold that has a .26% chance of killing me–actually in my age range is has about a .1% chance of killing me (and .01% chance of killing my kids), but let’s not split hairs here.
With a bar (death rate) that low, we will be in lockdown every year…i.e. forever.
But wait, what about the 500,000 plus deaths, that’s alarming right?
I’m glad you asked.
#12: THE BLOATED COVID DEATH NUMBERS
Something smells really funny about this one.
Never before in the history of death certificates has our own government changed how deaths are reported.
Why now, are we reporting everyone who dies with covid in their body, as having died of covid, rather than the co-morbidities that actually took their life?
Until covid, all coronaviruses (common colds) were never listed as the primary cause of death when someone died of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune conditions, or any other major co-morbidity.
The disease was listed as the cause of death, and a confounding factor like flu or pneumonia was listed on a separate line.
To bloat the number even more, both the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. changed their guidelines such that those who are suspected or probable (but were never confirmed) of having died of covid, are also included in the death numbers.
Seriously?
If we are going to do that then should we not go back and change the numbers of all past cold and flu seasons so we can compare apples to apples when it comes to death rates?
According to the CDCs own numbers, (scroll down to the section “Comorbidities and other conditions”) only 6% of the deaths being attributed to covid are instances where covid seems to be the only issue at hand.
In other words, reduce the death numbers you see on the news by 94% and you have what is likely the real numbers of deaths from just covid.
Even if the former CDC director is correct and covid-19 was a lab-enhanced virus (see Reason #14 below), a .26% death rate is still in line with the viral death rate that circles the planet ever year.
I’d really love to trust him, but besides the fact that he hasn’t treated one covid patient…you should probably know…
#13: FAUCI AND SIX OTHERS AT NIAID OWN PATENTS IN THE MODERNA VACCINE
Thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act, government workers are allowed to file patents on any research they do using tax payer funding.
Tony Fauci owns over 1,000 patents (see this video for more details), including patents being used on the Moderna vaccine…which he approved government funding for.
Mr. Fauci, you have some explaining to do…and I hope the cameras are recording when you have to defend your actions.
For now, let’s turn our attention back to the virus…
#15: THE VIRUS CONTINUES TO MUTATE
Not only does the virus (like all viruses) continue to mutate, but according to world-renowned vaccine developer Geert Vanden Bossche (who you’ll meet below if you don’t know him) it’s mutating about every 10 hours.
How in the world are we going to keep creating vaccines to keep up with that level of mutation?
Why, given that natural immunity has never ultimately failed humanity, do we suddenly not trust it?
Why, if I ask questions like the above, or post links like what you find above, will my thoughts be deleted from all major social media platforms?
That brings me to the next troubling problem I have with these vaccines.
#16: CENSORSHIP…AND THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF SCIENTIFIC DEBATE
I can’t help but get snarky here, so humor me.
How did you enjoy all those nationally and globally-televised, robust debates put on by public health officials, and broadcast simultaneously on every major news station?
Wasn’t it great hearing from the best minds in medicine, virology, epidemiology, economics, and vaccinology from all over the world as they vigorously and respectfully debated thingslike:
Wasn’t it great seeing public health officials (who never treated anyone with covid) have their “science” questioned?
Wasn’t it great seeing the FDA panel publicly grill the vaccine makers in prime time as they stood in the hot-seat of tough questions about products of which they have no liability?
Oh, wait…you didn’t see those debates?
No, you didn’t…because they never happened.
What happened instead was heavy-handed censorship of all but one narrative.
It’s the FIRST amendment Mark–the one our founders thought was most important.
With so much at stake, why are we fed only one narrative…shouldn’t many perspectives be heard and professionally debated?
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO SCIENCE?
What has happened to the scientific method of always challenging our assumptions?
What happened to lively debate in this country, or at least in Western society?
Why did anyone who disagrees with the WHO, or the CDC get censored so heavily?
Is the science of public health a religion now, or is science supposed to be about debate?
If someone says “the science is settled” that’s how I know I’m dealing with someone who is closed minded.
By definition science (especially biological science) is never settled.
If it was, it would be dogma, not science.
OK, before I get too worked up, let me say this…
I WANT TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN
I really do.
If lockdowns work, I want to do my part and stay home.
If masks work, I want to wear them.
If social distancing is effective, I want to comply.
But, if there is evidence they don’t (masks for example), I want to hear that evidence too.
If highly-credentialed scientists have different opinions, I want to know what they think.
I want a chance to hear their arguments and make up my own mind.
I don’t think I’m the smartest person in the world, but I think I can think.
Maybe I’m weird, but if someone is censored, then I REALLY want to hear what they think.
Don’t you?
To all my friends who don’t have a problem with censorship, will you have the same opinion when what you think is censored?
Is censorship not the technique of dictators, tyrants, and greedy, power-hungry people?
Is it not a sign that those who are doing the censoring know it’s the only way they can win?
What if a man who spent his entire life developing vaccines was willing to put his entire reputation on the line and call on all global leaders to immediately stop the covid vaccines because of problems with the science?
What if he pleaded for an open-scientific debate on a global stage?
Would you want to hear what he has to say?
Would you want to see the debate he’s asking for?
#17: A WORLD-RENOWN VACCINOLOGIST IS SOUNDING THE ALARM…
Here is what may be the biggest reason this covid vaccine doesn’t make sense to me.
When someone who is very pro-vaccine, who has spent his entire professional career overseeing the development of vaccines, is shouting from the mountaintops that we have a major problem, I think the man should be heard.
Now or Never 