ecosophia: (Default)
John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2025-04-08 11:21 am

Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 192

very up to dateWe are now in the fourth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary more than three years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health are anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.


5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.


With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 
scotlyn: a sunlit pathway to the valley (Default)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

[personal profile] scotlyn 2025-04-10 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
And... to push back just a LITTLE more...

Evidence is all around us, all the time, and useful evidence in relation to the effectiveness and/or safety of pharmaceutical products (the specific topic under discussion here), is available to every user of a product, to every prescriber of a product, to every family member or close friend or associate of a user of a product, should any of those individuals choose to pay attention.

Evidence is that which is seen, and it is typical of an expert class that they wish the rest of us to think that the only evidence which *counts* is that which is hidden to the ordinary person, but miraculously revealed to the credentialled expert.

But, you know, "the plural of anecdote IS data" (as Raymond Wolfinger *actually* said - though he is frequently misquoted - http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/); and likewise, "the singular of data is anecdote" (as this blogger muses - https://blogs.iq.harvard.edu/the_singular_of), which means that evidence is what any of us may SEE, if we choose to pay attention.

And, finally, what experts choose to tell us, when they've expensively controlled the variables, and compiled the statistics, and presented them to their peers, may STILL fail to convince, if it contradicts what ordinary people can easily *see* happening all around them.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-10 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Let me clarify. The sort of evidence that "everyone can see" is when someone feels bad, and a new treatment makes them feel so much better that it can't be natural improvement. Or when they start a drug and suddenly have muscle pain and brain fog like never before; it's likely a side effect (certainly so if they quit the drug and it goes away).

I specified that only RTCs supply useful information on the BENEFIT of PREVENTIVE medicines, which is a very different case from either of the above. How do you know that drugs taken by healthy people, out of fear of future disease, work to prevent this or that condition? This is not something individuals can see. Mom went on a blood thinner and then didn't have a stroke in the next year, so can you conclude it saved her from that experience? You cannot, because there was a 98.5% chance she wouldn't have had one anyway.

No non-randomized, data-dredging study can ever provide answers on the size of benefit in such cases, because people who choose to take medications to reduce supposed risks are different from those who choose not to. So the drug-vendors dig through a database and "show" that some drug either reduces the risk of every condition in the book, or at least doesn't increase the risk of conditions it in fact DOES cause.

So we get claims that covid vaxxes reduce your risk of being injured in automobile accidents. Suuuure. People who were quick to be vaxxed were more fearful, so they and perhaps their friends and family drive more cautiously. It is literally impossible to correct for such confounding factors.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-11 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
"The sort of evidence that "everyone can see" is when someone feels bad, and a new treatment makes them feel so much better that it can't be natural improvement."

That line reminds me of how I've long found it interesting that despite all the pharmaceutical ads and propaganda out there, I never see ads for antibiotics...one of (or maybe the only) widely-used prescription drugs that seems to fit the above criteria.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-11 11:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Precisely. When penicillin hit the market, the modern clinical trial and drug development methodologies now required in the West had not yet been developed. It was just obvious that it worked. Same for aspirin and the like.

Also, it's a waste of money to advertise for antibiotics, because you only take them for a couple of weeks. The TV ads are for things they want you to keep on pounding for the rest of your life.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-12 04:58 am (UTC)(link)
Well, not exactly the same for aspirin. That miracle drug got a serious test run on an unsuspecting populace in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic. Various US military departments, copycating one after another, endorsed giving lethal doses of aspirin as treatment for that influenza epidemic. Unsurprisingly, such lethal doses of aspirin induce the exact terminal spiral that was instead attributed to the Spanish flu, namely drowning in one's own lung fluids.

As Scotlyn wrote, had doctors, patients, or family paid attention to what they were witnessing, they could easily have figured out what was causing the spate of sudden deaths. Alas, due to quarantining, family was not allowed to witness enough details to put two and two together, while the patients were either too poisoned or eventually too dead to remember the details. It was the good doctors who failed to draw the obvious conclusions, which they were in the best position to witness and deduce, all because so-called "authorities" had given them unquestionable "health protocols" to blindly follow.

Were that walk down memory lane to remind you a little too closely of the covid ventilator scandal, where intubated patients ended up having a much lower survival rate than those left to breathe on their own, your unease could easily be explained away. You see, everyone is supposed to put their unwavering trust in so-called "authorities", thereby ignoring any life experiences they were actually around to witness. On the one hand, it's called memory holing; on the other hand, it's called acting like a good doctor. Obedience to sacred "protocols" (such as randomized control trials) is what sets scientists and doctors so far above the rest of us poor plebs, who are left outcast in the darkness to rely on our paltry observations and unquantifiable remembrances, a dreaded excommunication... which many of us have now grown quite fond of.

As for aspirin, you’re quite correct; it was indeed just obvious that it worked... at certain doses. It was equally obvious that it killed at certain other doses, but for some unknown reason none of the trusted “authorities” could arrive at that painfully (or perhaps even deadly) obvious conclusion. And that was long before those “authorities” could be publicly shamed into greater lockstep conformity by flagellating them with reams of randomized control studies. The glamour of protective “protocols” handed down by unquestionable so-called “authorities” [read: Dogmas] is nothing new in ersatz religions; it’s more of a hackneyed cliché, in fact. Our Dogmas kill as effectively in the age of covidiocy as they did in 1918, the allure of randomized control studies notwithstanding.

— Christophe
scotlyn: a sunlit pathway to the valley (Default)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

[personal profile] scotlyn 2025-04-11 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Fair enough.

So, if we restrict ourselves to "drugs taken by healthy people, out of fear of future disease", then we are in the domain of gambling - ie playing the odds.

From the point of view of any individual person making a decision as to whether to take this punt, the sole value of an RCT is to provide the same benefit that a bookmaker provides to their punters, giving a fair assessment of odds. The punter then decides whether those odds stack up, for them. With no guarantee of success... it's gambling, after all! Odds are odds, not certainties.

The only thing that I would add to this, though, is that the standard of safety that should apply to drugs taken by healthy people, out of fear of future disease, is of the very highest and most rigourous. There should be a near zero chance of that drug taking away ANY of the health the person already enjoys, otherwise the uncertain prospect of not getting a feared disease that might never happen anyway, is a bet worth forgoing.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-11 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, that's how I feel. If nature does something to me, that's how it goes; if I pay good money to have it happen, I'll be infuriated.

But it could also logically depend upon the likelihood of benefit, the likelihood of harm, and how much value or disvalue you put on each potential outcome. Whether you're at 100% health or not (who of us is, past 30?) has little to do with that.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-12 07:41 am (UTC)(link)
Don't forget how many courtesans and women of noble birth in the late Roman empire were perfectly willing to undergo the risks of consuming minute doses of belladonna in order to dilate their pupils, in the hope of convincing their conquests of their true and abiding affection. Or how about today's society set, willing to hack themselves to oblivion with plastic surgery, in the vain, vain, truly vain hope of convincing their conquests of their true and abiding beauty? Gambling is an addiction after all, so there's really no telling what kind of risks a truly uncontrolled addict might be willing to take to get their next fix. In some cases, the more risky the drug or procedure, the more potent a fix it can offer the gambling addict (Michael Jackson comes to mind.)

Nonetheless, the highest and most rigorous standard of safety should certainly apply to any drugs callously *advertised* at healthy people for the fun and profit of gazillionaires. If addicts want to search out the seediest bookmakers and most nefarious dealers in the furthest backrooms of the meanest streets, that's on them; however, permitting the Fauci's of the world to cripple and then liquidate the unsuspecting is truly beyond the pale. Just another of the unexpected joys of living through a time of civilizational unraveling.

— Christophe
scotlyn: a sunlit pathway to the valley (Default)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

[personal profile] scotlyn 2025-04-12 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, you are correct that the weighing up of "the odds" is personal to each punter, and that is why, in the honest world of book-making, the punter knows that when you place your bet it may win, BUT it may lose... You never walk into a bookmakers without knowing that you may lose your shirt (should you decide to wager it)...

In the dishonest world of drugs, we are continually offered "odds" that are:
1) statistically gamed to oversell potential benefits and undersell potential harms...
2) presented as the "prudent" thing to do; or as the socially conscious and unselfish thing to do...
3) aimed at training us to see ourselves as bundles of risk that we are responsible for managing well...

...and that dishonesty prevents us from detecting that (whenever we are speaking of those classes of drugs aimed at prevented a feared disease, or lowering a risk factor), we have entered a casino, where the house always wins.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-13 06:50 am (UTC)(link)
Odds happen to be a particularly challenging abstraction for our little primate brains to rationally judge and compare. We will all fail to accurately predict the likelihood of two unlikely outcomes occurring consecutively until we manage to discover how to override our instinctual presumptions by utilizing some corrective calculating method, such as multiplying odds together. More often, we simply revert to ingrained emotional reactions whenever confronted with odds of much complexity or subtlety. That’s part of why we cling so desperately to black-or-white dichotomies and can so easily be herded into strident emotional entrenchment when confronted with nuance or uncertainty of outcome. Con artists, card sharks, and snake-oil salesmen depend on our odds-illiteracy and their own odds-facility to fleece us for all we’re worth.

I’m particularly fond of applied kinesiology as a divination practice because the part of our soul that muscle testing allows us to communicate with, the embodied part that dwells on the physical plane, is exceptionally gifted at keeping track of and comparing multiple codependent odds and likelihoods. The embodied part of our soul is the part that is continuously monitoring, extrapolating, and then adjusting the rates of all the various subconscious systems that keep our organism alive. Core temperature compared to the extremities, cross-reference that with blood pressure fluctuation upon rising from sitting, plus low salt levels and high blood sugar, add a dash of dehydration, vasodilation from recent emotional stimulation, that ongoing arrhythmia, and a lack of several nutrients in the bloodstream. “Quick, conscious mind, figure out which ones need to be adjusted in which directions simultaneously to achieve homeostasis! Oops, not quick enough — you die.” Yeah, our souls really are that much wiser and more talented than our headstrong little conscious minds care to admit. Heck, that simplified example didn’t even touch on any the subtle plane influences and parasites that our souls have to continuously take into account.

Such extraordinary horsepower, steered by such an obtuse charioteer! Thank the gods that that charioteer goes to sleep each night, so the soul gets a fighting chance to try to rebalance its various levels without constant distraction. Of course, in the hands of an uncommonly clueless charioteer, any divination practice can get dreadfully corrupted. A conscious mind that manipulatively attempts to exploit its soul by abusing any method of divination will very quickly discover precisely how much wiser and more talented its soul is, as that soul carefully calculates exactly what answers its consciousness actually needs to learn from, rather than what its consciousness had hoped to gain from. Each soul is perpetually steering its conscious awareness towards what it needs to learn, but those lessons come so much more easily when the ambitious charioteer is not cynically trying to rein in and exploit the soul's natural goodwill.

So, the embodied part of the soul can do all kinds of complex calculations of overlapping causes with complementary responses in order to obtain optimal outcomes — that is its daily grind, after all. The trick is to remember that its understanding of causes, responses, and outcomes will always be incomprehensibly more subtle and nuanced than anything the conscious mind can understand. Just as focusing on how to align one’s will with the will of any god one interacts with will considerably improve the results of that divine relationship, so focusing on coming into alignment with one’s soul will considerably improve the results of that lifelong partnership.

In this casino world we will always find ourselves dealing with statistical gaming, social shaming, and manipulative training. Our soul learned all about those dishonest techniques long ago, and our conscious mind is always learning from and relating to our soul’s wisdom, even when it doesn’t want to, even when it’s desperately trying to run away from that wisdom. It takes an awful lot of lifetimes to finally relinquish trying to escape from the soul’s deep wisdom, then quite a few more to get the hang of actually aligning with the soul and its purpose in coming into incarnation. As long as we keep running off with our fingers in our ears, it's our own dishonesty that prevents us from detecting our soul’s wisdom. Once we stop all that frantic running and actually listen, we're able to hear our soul clarifying those dishonest techniques, calculating the complex odds, and clearly warning us “That shot will be the death of you.” The house only wins when we’re running scared away from our Selves.

— Christophe
scotlyn: a sunlit pathway to the valley (Default)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

[personal profile] scotlyn 2025-04-13 01:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Excellent riposte, Christophe - thank you!

"we will always find ourselves dealing with statistical gaming, social shaming, and manipulative training..." (nicely phrased)

"The house only wins when we’re running scared away from our Selves... [and when we play a different game of our own choosing, the house loses.]"

Yes. Exactly. :)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-14 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, and have you noticed how consistently the house has been losing and running scared, ever since we learned how to play an altogether different game? Once the 2022 great implosion of covid-hysteria began picking up steam, the bumbling idiots who fancied themselves the casino's owners went into a panicked tizzy, frantically trying to run away from what their souls well knew to be true all along. Had those wannabe despots taken into account the inescapable blowback their panic-mongering ensorcellments would eventually precipitate, perhaps they would not have begun their descent down that frightfully ill-considered course in the first place.

But they did, and their games began. Their resulting self-immolation has turned into a delightfully cathartic sight to behold, has it not? Let's do be as generous as possible towards those self-styled Capitol-dwellers, and extend to them our most sincerest of wishes, "May the odds be ever in your favor..."

— Christophe

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-14 11:46 am (UTC)(link)
> Let's do be as generous as possible towards those self-styled Capitol-dwellers, and extend to them our most sincerest of wishes, "May the odds be ever in your favor..."

Such a chronically underrated story, I'm certain Suzanne Collins has significant prescience.

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

(Anonymous) 2025-04-13 02:04 pm (UTC)(link)
"aimed at training us to see ourselves as bundles of risk that we are responsible for managing well"

What a perfect description! You've just absolutely nailed my feelings about that worldview.
scotlyn: a sunlit pathway to the valley (Default)

Re: 24-5 flu vaccine study

[personal profile] scotlyn 2025-04-13 08:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Just to say that that all credit for that phrasing properly belongs to Ivan Illich who wrote a great deal about how changes in medical practice during the 20th century actually transformed our relationships with our own bodies to something very different... If this topic interests you, you might check out the blog of David Cayley who wrote posts and a book on the topic, as well as making several broadcasts. :)

https://www.davidcayley.com/ivanillich