Astroturfing COVIDiocy: Seems Antivaxxers Submitted 23410 FAKE cases of Myocarditis from COVID vaccines in kids to VAERS

As of December 31st, 2021, there were supposedly 23713 reports of myocarditis in children / young adult after Pfizer vaccines were reported to VAERS. It's interesting that in a majority of cases, no race or ethnicity was listed. 

So a team of pediatricians both in and out of CDC checked every single case. 

Turns out only 303 are real (265 12-15yr old) out of over 27 MILLION doses given out to those age groups during that time. 

Basically, there is no risk at all. Myocarditis occurs at or above this rate without COVID or vaccination. 

You can read their report here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-01-05/02-COVID-Su-508.pdf

Which sort of begs the question... who, besides anti-vaxxers, have time to flood VAERS with 23410 FAKE reports of myocarditis in kids as a side effect of COVID vaccine? 

And did they really think that real doctors would not want to follow up, if there are indeed that many reported problems? 

Who did they think they were fooling? 

Crazy COVIDiocy: How Ivermectin Became Popular Among Qnuts

It was interesting that Qnuts, followers of Qanon, would rather take drugs that do NOT treat COVID for treating COVID, they would also build elaborate conspiracy theories to explain their anti-reality. So how did it all start? 

It all started in 2020, when the entire world is looking for SOMETHING to fight COVID. Then someone published a paper, claiming Ivermectin, an existing antiparasite drug, seems to affect RNA virus as well, and COVID virus is an RNA virus. And their study shows that it seems to work on COVID virus... in a petri dish. 

So, we should do animal testing, right? 

Wrong. The study was flawed. The concentration given was WAY TOO HIGH, far in excess of what's even achievable in a live human without it being toxic / overdose. 

Basically, the petri dishes used achieved a concentration of 2000 to 4000 ng/mL

Even at 10X the maximum dosage currently allowed, which comes out to be about 120 mg of Ivermectin for an adult human, the maximum blood concentration of that is only bout 250 ng/mL, 10% of the concentration as specified in the study. 

In other words, you have to give 100x the concentration of Ivermectin to get the same results in the petri-dish, and that's 10X too much. Ivermectin *is* deadly when overdosed. There was at least one death in New Mexico that is attributed to Ivermectin overdose. 

Here is a very relevant XKCD

XKCD: When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin
"kills cancer cells in a petri dish," keep in mind: so does a handgun

Okay, what about such claims is 50+ studies "proving" that Ivermectin is effective? 

Still wrong. Twelve of them are not about ivermectin alone, but in combination with something else. Thus, they are NOT proof of ivermectin's effectiveness. 

Others are testing for different things, some about reducing symptoms, some are about reducing death rate, some about prevention. They are all separate data points, and some of them have outright faked data, where data are copied-and-pasted. Or sequence of numbers extremely unlikely to happen in nature... or someone who was already dead when the study allegedly took place. There's also one where there's heavy suspicion of uneven samples, where placebo group has a lot more sicker patients, while the healthier patients appeared in the ivermectin group. 

The Cochrane study, which does meta analysis of existing studies, but only of high quality studies, counted only 20 or so studies, and their conclusion was that there is no evidence to suggest that ivermectin is effective in treating COVID. 

Yet you have someone whose specialty is NOT in epidemiology or drug testing (in fact, her degree is in reproductive science) claiming that NOTHING will convince her that ivermectin does not work. It should not surprise you that Dr. Theresa "Tess" Lawrie is well known in UK for antivax nonsense and misinformation. 

Don't be a COVIDiot and believe random doctors tell you. Not all doctors believe the same thing. Some are kook-ier than others. 

Today I learned: Sometimes "lobster" is not lobster, and shrimp is not prawn

I used to think that shrimp is just small prawns. Turns out I was wrong. 

Shrimp is under the pleocyemata sub-order, while prawns are in the Dendrobranchiata sub-order. 

Too technical? Shrimp are sea creatures and are generally small and curved. Prawns are usually fresh-water creatures and usually larger and straight. 

At least in AMERICAN usage. Folks elsewhere may refer to them differently. 

So just for fun I looked up langoustines, which is something ELSE entirely. Sometimes called Norway lobster, it's basically a small lobster that grows up to 25 cm long, but typically about 20 cm long, which isn't that big, and has a narrow body. Compare that to what's usually known in the US, the "Maine lobster". 

There's also "squat lobster", which is actually a type of crab. But their meat looks about the same, so much so, that Red Lobster was once caught substituting squat lobster meat for real lobster meat. And this was apparently common practice many years ago. 

Why Do People use Pictures Not of Them in Social Profiles Any Way?

People are picking pictures of criminals, porn stars, and so on, as their social media profile pix.

Don't they know they look stupid doing so?

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-choose-your-Profile-Photo-for-Social-Media-a-list-of-dos-and-do-not-dos

Hilarious Exchange: some moron thinks lying on LinkedIn is a right

LinkVaark loves highlighting the morons who put up fake pictures (actors, actresses, models, etc.) as their profile pix. Recently, he found a real gem... Someone put up picture of a doll, really, a high-end display doll.

Then apparently this moron start posting comments asking the pix to be removed, then claimed "that doesn't mean the profile's a fake! There's nothing against it!"  Clearly, the guy didn't read LinkedIn rules...  Below is a shortened version.

Read the whole thing (and see the actual picture that caused the hilarity) over at Linkvarrk:

http://linkvaark.com/2011/06/16/linkedin-fake-profile-mucho-bizarro/#comments