I am not medically trained. I have nothing to contribute regarding the safety of COVID vaccines or the efficacy of potential alternative treatments such as the use of Ivermectin. I am writing this article because I am concerned about censorship of these issues, especially when these discussions involve well-accomplished experts. This article is a follow-up of my earlier article discussing the censorship of Brett Weinstein and medical experts by Big Tech, "Adverse Side Effects from COVID Vaccines." We need to have these conversations in order to break through the official gated policy narrative on these issues. I will tell this story in tweets. It will never be the case that censorship will improve the quality of the conversations on these issues. Click on these images and dig in:
Full disclosure: I have been doubly vaccinated with the Modern Vaccine. I have trusted ubiquitous assertions by government and health care providers, that the vaccines are safe. I knew that the vaccines were extraordinary quick to market. I wondered about their safety, but I considered the COVID virus itself to be a much greater risk. I am extremely concerned about the existence of COVID and the devastation it has caused, medical and economic. I am extremely concerned about the potential emergence of variants and COVID.
Also, I have long been suspicious about the effects of tribal affinities on the free flow of information (on many topics). On topics related to the pandemic, there have been major reversals by medical authorities in the past 1 1/2 years that concern me. Some of these relate to the alleged efficacy (and non-efficacy) of mask-wearing, where government mandates were issued in the absence of controlled studies. I am also aware that we have seen very little in the way of data regarding adverse side effects regarding the general population, as well as populations of adolescents and immune-compromised and pregnant individuals. It is also apparent that the misinformation relating to the wearing of masks could be motivated by an inclination to downplay vaccine-related deaths (in order to encourage people to get the vaccines on a nationwide basis).
It is in this context that I am sharing the following materials. I have no medical expertise. I find the following information intriguing. I hope that this information (which has possibly been suppressed) is further developed in the public sphere. Here is the basis for my concerns, a discussion hosted by Brett Weinstein, who has a long history of fearlessly discussing topics that run counter "preferred" public narratives.
The guests suggest that we need an honest conversation regarding use of the the COVID vaccines regarding certain populations where there is natural immunity (children, young teenagers and those who have already had COVID) and where there is alarming data (pregnant women). They also advocate that we badly need honest national dialogue regarding the promising data based on the prophylactic use of repurposed Ivermectin.
Here are two key points made during this deeply engaging discussion:
Point 1. An ongoing course of Ivermectin, long-shown to be a safe drug, is fantastically effective in protecting people from COVID. Brett notes that he and his wife Heather were not vaccinated, but have chosen to use Ivermectin prophylactically. Brett and the guests argue that where a safe alternative to the vaccines is available, this information should be available. The guests are convinced, based on discussed evidence, that Ivermectin is a potentially a "miracle drug" that should be widely repurposed and made available to the public. They are gravely concerned that discussions regarding Ivermectin have been suppressed on the Internet, for social and financial motives they discuss.
Today, I spotted these graphs regarding Ivermectin usage in India. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information in this June 1, 2021 article by Justus R. Hope, a doctor, but it is eye-popping and compels me to know more:
Another excerpt from this article:
A 97% decline in Delhi cases with Ivermectin is decisive - period. It represents the last word in an epic struggle to save lives and preserve human rights. This graph symbolizes the victory of reason over corruption, good over evil, and right over wrong. It is as significant as David’s victory over Goliath. It is an absolute vindication of Ivermectin and early outpatient treatment. It is a clear refutation of the WHO, FDA, NIH, and CDC's policies of "wait at home until you turn blue" before you get treatment.
Point 2. On the vaccine side, the guests express concern that there are significant adverse side-effects to the COVID vaccines that are not being discussed widely. In fact, the information is being suppressed, the group strongly suggests, because it doesn't fit the ongoing narrative that the COVID vaccines are "safe." Further, the data regarding adverse side effects is not systematically being collected, much less discussed. The conversation suggests that the VAERS database (voluntary reports) significantly under-reports incidents. Data suggest that the rate of deaths so far from the COVID vaccines in the U.S. might be in the range of 5,000-20,000, the lower end which is greater than the number of deaths from all other vaccines in the U.S. over the past 70 years. For further information on this point, consider Steve Kirsch's recent article at TrialSiteNews, where you will see many details on which he based his concerns in the above video: "Should You Get Vaccinated." The guests also argue that silicon valley is actively suppressing youtube videos and other information. Adverse vaccine-related bloodwork seems to resemble the bloodwork of those who have COVID. The biggest alarm here, the guests agree, is the lack of an alarm.
Here are a few excerpts:
However, based on what I now know about the vaccine side effects, current COVID rates, and the success rate of early treatment protocols, the answer I would give today to anyone asking me for advice as to whether to take any of the current vaccines would be, “Just say NO.”
The current vaccines are particularly contraindicated if you have already been infected with COVID or are under age 20. For these people, I would say “NO! NO! NO!”
In this article, I will explain what I have learned since I was vaccinated that totally changed my mind. You will learn how these vaccines work and the shortcuts that led to the mistakes that were made. You will understand why there are so many side effects and why these are so varied and why they usually happen within 30 days of vaccination. You will understand why kids are having heart issues (for which there is no treatment), and temporarily losing their sight, and ability to talk. You will understand why as many as 3% may be severely disabled by the vaccine.
What I find deeply disturbing is the lack of transparency on how dangerous the current COVID vaccines are. Healthy people could end up dead or permanently disabled at a rate that is “off the charts” compared with any other vaccine in our history. Look at the death report in our government’s official Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) summarized in the tweet below. This is the most deadly vaccine we’ve ever made by a long shot. That’s why they have to give you incentives to get vaccinated. They need to vaccinate everyone BEFORE people read this article or watch this video of Dr. Peter McCullough explaining clearly why the current COVID vaccines are unsafe and completely unnecessary for our children.
82% miscarriage rate in first 20 weeks (10% is the normal rate). It is baffling that the CDC says the vaccine is safe for pregnant women when it is so clear that this is not the case. For example, one our family friends is a victim of this. She miscarried at 25 weeks and is having an abortion on 6/9/21. She had her first shot 7 weeks ago, and her second shot 4 weeks ago. The baby had severe bleeding of the brain and other disfigurements. Her gynecologist had never seen anything like that before in her life. They called in a specialist who said it was probably a genetic defect (because everyone buys into the narrative that the vaccine is safe it is always ruled out as a possible cause). No VAERS report. No CDC report. Yet the doctors I’ve talked to say that it is over 99% certain it was the vaccine. The family doesn’t want an autopsy for fear that their daughter will find out it was the vaccine. This is a perfect example of how these horrible side effects just never get reported anywhere.
I invite you to listen to the detailed conversation in the video above. I'm writing this as I watch the live discussion. I will update with more after I finish viewing the entire video . . .
[June 12 2021 two updates]
I love this exchange between Steve Kirsch and hundreds of Youtube Subscribers who told him that they appreciated his passion and his message but warned him that his manners were rude and that he was getting in the way of his own message.
Andrew Sullivan describes the situation and the pathetic spineless nebulous apology by the Editor of journal of the American Medical Association. I invite you to visit (and support) Sullivan's excellent substack website, "The Weekly Dish," for the full article and a steady stream of excellent writing by Andrew Sullivan. Here's an excerpt regarding the AMA Editor. This is who we are becoming:
I was just reading about the panic that occurred in the American Medical Association, when their journal’s deputy editor argued on a podcast that socio-economic factors were more significant in poor outcomes for non-whites than “structural racism.” As you might imagine, any kind of questioning of this orthodoxy required the defenestration of the deputy editor and the resignation of the editor-in-chief. The episode was withdrawn from public viewing, and the top editor replaced it with a Maoist apology/confession before he accepted his own fate.
But I was most struck by the statement put out in response by a group called “The Institute for Antiracism in Medicine.” Here it is:
The podcast and associated promotional message are extremely problematic for minoritized members of our medical community. Racism was created with intention and must therefore be undone with intention. Structural racism has deeply permeated the field of medicine and must be actively dissolved through proper antiracist education and purposeful equitable policy creation. The delivery of messages suggesting that racism is non-existent and therefore non-problematic within the medical field is harmful to both our underrepresented minoritized physicians and the marginalized communities served in this country.
Consider the language for a moment. I don’t want to single out this group — they are merely representative of countless others, all engaged in the recitation of certain doctrines, and I just want an example. But I do want to say that this paragraph is effectively dead, drained of almost any meaning, nailed to the perch of pious pabulum. It is prose, in Orwell’s words, that “consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” It is chock-full of long, compounded nouns and adjectives, riddled with the passive voice, lurching and leaning, like a passenger walking the aisle on a moving train, on pre-packaged phrases to keep itself going.
Notice the unnecessary longevity: a tweet becomes an “associated promotional message.” Notice the deadness of the neologisms: “minoritized”, “marginalized”, “non-problematic”. As Orwell noted: “the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning.” Go back and see if you can put the words “minoritized” or “non-problematic” into everyday English.
Part of the goal of this is political, of course. The more you repeat words like “proper antiracist education” or “systemic racism” or “racial inequity” or “lived experience” or “heteronormativity,” the more they become part of the landscape of words, designed to dull one’s curiosity about what on earth any of them can possible mean. A mass of ideological abstractions, in Orwell’s words, “falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.”
In modern America, this is how easy it is to get intelligent people in high places to stop saying what they are thinking. You have probably wondered, like I have, why the German people didn't rise up to overthrow Hitler. Now think about what is happening today in the United States. People are not being sought out and killed. Their relatives are not being threatened with death. They are not being thrown into education camps. They are merely being threatened with social disapproval and economic loss. But they are so terrified, their assholes so incredibly puckered, that they are refusing to ask obvious questions and to say obvious things. Highly trained medical professionals are afraid to stand up and acknowledge the obvious need to conduct multivariate analyses to understand complex situations. They are willing to look in their mirrors in the morning knowing that they are living and speaking lies. That's how powerful and perverted the Woke Movement is. That is why I have a difficult time walking away from this topic.
Wokeness (including the modern version of CRT) is clearly a religion (as John McWhorter argues). I've been through this kind of thing all my life, given that I am both an agnostic and an atheist. I've seen the Overton window closing on me. I've seen the disappointment in others as I ask obvious questions and acknowledge obvious things around me. This is giving me something like PTSD, bringing me back to the days when my well-meaning father worked overtime to jam overly-pious Catholicism down my throat. I've been there, seen this, and don't know what to do about it, given that those who are captive have done the equivalent of constructing "electric fences" around numerous critically important topics in their minds, thereby nullifying the possibility that we can move forward by using Enlightenment Principles. Too many of us can't (or won't) talk anymore, even about the Emperor's state of undress.
I'm still stunned by the silence of left-leaning media outlets at this hypocrisy so boldly committed in broad daylight. Even a young child has the ability to see that risk of disease is risk of disease. Your political viewpoint has no relevance to your risk of contracting COVID in a large outdoor group. Yet dozens of experts hypocritically stepped forward, knowing that the left-leaning news media had their back.
Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.
Free speech rests on the faulty notion that words are harmless.
Free speech is the tool of the powerful, not the powerless.
The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say; it still leaves other people free to kick you out.
But you can’t shout fire! in a crowded theatre.
The arguments for freedom of speech are outdated.
Hate speech laws are important for reducing intolerance, even if there may be some examples of abuse.
Free speech is nothing but a conservative talking point.
Restrictions on free speech are OK if they are made in the name of civility.
You need speech restrictions to preserve cultural diversity.
Free speech is an outdated idea; it’s time for new thinking.
I believe in free speech, but not for blasphemy.
Visit Areofor Lukianoff's responses to each of these fallacies.
In response to the fallacy that free speech is an outdated concept, Lukianoff gave this succinct defense of John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty (available from free at this link):
John Stuart Mill’s central arguments in On Liberty remain undefeated, including one of his strongest arguments in favour of freedom of speech—Mill’s trident—of which I have never heard a persuasive refutation. Mill’s trident holds that, for any given belief, there are three options:
A) You are wrong, in which case freedom of speech is essential to allow people to correct you.
B) You are partially correct, in which case you need free speech and contrary viewpoints to help you get a more precise understanding of what the truth really is.
C) You are 100% correct. In this unlikely event, you still need people to argue with you, to try to contradict you, and to try to prove you wrong. Why? Because if you never have to defend your points of view, there is a very good chance you don’t really understand them, and that you hold them the same way you would hold a prejudice or superstition. It’s only through arguing with contrary viewpoints that you come to understand why what you believe is true.
Lukianoff ends his article with this:
Free speech is valuable, first and foremost, because, without it, there is no way to know the world as it actually is. Understanding human perceptions, even incorrect ones, is always of scientific or scholarly value, and, in a democracy, it is essential to know what people really believe. This is my “pure informational theory of freedom of speech.” To think that, without openness, we can know what people really believe is not only hubris, but magical thinking. The process of coming to knowing the world as it is is much more arduous than we usually appreciate. It starts with this: recognize that you are probably wrong about any number of things, exercise genuine curiosity about everything (including each other), and always remember that it is better to know the world as it really is—and that the process of finding that out never ends.
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