My Current Default Position About COVID Booster Vaccines

I received two COVID shots as well as a booster. Then, about six months ago I got COVID, which had me feeling down in the dumps for 3 days, which also left me with a loss of strength and balance for a few weeks after that. I'm hearing a lot about the alleged need for all of us to get more and more boosters lately. Should I? I'm not a scientist. I don't know how to read the medical research with confidence. I thought we would all have clear answers about COVID and boosters by now, but it has never been less clear. And now we have Twitter Files indicating that the U.S. government has been warping the conversation about COVID and vaccines, even having a hand in shutting down well-decorated medical professionals who disagree with the national narrative of "get lots and lots of booster shots." I wish we had dependable information about the following:

1. Whether boosters are meaningfully effective

2. Whether boosters are safe; and

3. Whether the risks of boosters (according to some) outweigh the benefits of booster (according to others).

It doesn't help that public health officials and CDC have been so wrong about so many things over the last few years. The evidence on this includes the internal reversals of CDC policy (e.g., No need for a mask, then you must wear a mask; getting the jab will keep you from getting COVID, then not so much). Every time there is a new pronouncement reversing a prior pronouncement, it is presented with equal confidence. Thus, it is not surprising to see recent statistics showing that ever greater numbers of Americans are refusing to get the newest boosters. But also consider comments by doctors such as "Elizabeth Bennett" on Twitter:

I am one of the many people who are now somewhere between disoriented, distrusting and disgusted with the state of COVID information. I am not alone:

In the absence of reliable information and wide-open vigorous conversation among our medical professionals, the rest of us need to act on assumptions and guesses. I am assuming that I am at more risk if I get yet another new booster than if I refuse it. I'm open to new information, of course, but I'm highly concerned that doctors and researchers with legitimate concerns about the boosters are still being shut out of the conversation. I've seen ample confirmation of this censorship--many doctors and researchers being completely shut down by Twitter for instance.  I also see many serious sounding accusations like these.  I would like to know a lot more information. I would like to have credible answers to these 130 highly specific concerns assembled by Steve Kirsch.

In the meantime, no more boosters for me.

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I’d Like to Be a Fly on the Wall at Google These Days

First, a Tweet from Glenn Greenwald, noting what I have been noticing:

Taibbi's revelations should outrage every American. Since when is it the proper role of the U.S. Government to guide and filter conversations of Americans? Taibbi has arguably helped to reveal millions of violations of civil rights, per Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). The Court’s decision was in favor of group of book publishers who sued a purportedly private "commission" created to “to educate the public concerning any book . . . or other thing containing obscene, indecent or impure language” that could corrupt youth. The Supreme Court held that through its threats of prosecution, the commission engaged in censorship. The Court further held that the commission's actions constituted acts of the state under the Fourteenth Amendment because the commission operated “under color of state law.” The government cannot use private intermediaries to engage conduct that the government cannot do on its own due to U.S. civil rights laws.

Also consider Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., Inc., 500 U.S. 614 (1991): "Although the conduct of private parties lies beyond the Constitution's scope in most instances, governmental authority may dominate an activity to such an extent that its participants must be deemed to act with the authority of the government and, as a result, be subject to constitutional constraints."

Now consider this  follow-up Tweet by Elon Musk:

My thought at this moment. If we had caught merely one FBI agent meddling with a few acts of censorship at Twitter, it would have been a big deal and it would have caused much outrage. Are these disclosures too big, too many to absorb by most Americans? This overwhelming lawlessness brings to mind the quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

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Quotes by Mark Twain & Carl Sagan & Upton Sinclair

Three quotes for Today. Twain and Sagan quotes are quite similar, worth mentioning them both in this day and age. These are three of my favorite quotes:

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” – Mark Twain

“If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

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In Praise of FoxTrot Professional Search Software for Mac

I have sometimes struggled to comb through several decades of legal research (as well as science and philosophy research) on my iMac 4tb hard drive. I've used Apple Spotlight's multi-faceted document search function over the years and it is often quite helpful. Today, however, I learned about FoxTrot Professional Search. It is incredibly powerful, allowing you to pinpoint documents, images, spreadsheets and mail in dozens of ways, including proximity searches and tailor-made search strings with exceptions. You can apply complicated search requests to multiple indices on your main HD, as well as external drives (I've got another 3+ TB of data on my external drive. I've been exploring the parameters of FoxTrot for a couple of hours now and I highly recommend it. $100 per workstation. I hope this helps somebody out there . . .

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