Rant: Child Dead in LA is Just a Sign of Things to Come

When Trump nominated RFK Jr to CDC Head, things are going to get bad, and the latest news is merely a sign to come. 

RFK Jr is, for lack of better term, a so-called vaccine freedom-fighter... as in vaccine should NOT be mandatory. They claim the "risks" of vaccine means it should be a personal choice, when it *should* be public policy, because diseases affect everybody. Once RFK jr took office, one of the first things done was firing the entire vaccine advisory panel... and replaced it with a group composed of various vaccine denialists that were discredited during COVID. Since then, CDC has basically waived every school vaccine mandate, claiming it's a state-level issue or personal freedom issue. As a result, childhood diseases such as measles, which was nearly eradicated decades ago (back in Year 2000), and used to be only counted in the teens, except for a few cases in isolated communities where vaccine denialists congregate, is making a major comeback. Measles case count per year is at a 33 year high. 

And this new child death in Los Angeles is a sign of things to come. 

To keep a long story short, Los Angeles County Health has reported a death of a child from a measles-related brain disorder called SSPE, which was basically "delayed measles". The child probably contracted measles while very young (less than 1 year old). While it is notable that this is probably BEFORE the child could be vaccinated for measles (generally MMR vaccine is given between 12-15 months old), but unvaccinated people are often protected by "herd immunity" (low chance of encountering the disease due to high percentage of vaccinated people around them). SSPE means measles virus entered the brain, and lay dormant until months or even years later. The child appears to have recovered, then the symptoms started appearing, as the virus started to destroy the brain and nerves from within. First memory starts to go, then mood changes, then muscle coordination deteriorates. Mental acuity lessens. All this, in the course of a few months... and the body lives on... And there is no cure and no treatment. 

Los Angeles County Health officer Muntu Davis released a statement, from which I quote: "Infants too young to be vaccinated rely on all of us to help protect them through community immunity. Vaccination is not just about protecting yourself—it's about protecting your family, your neighbors, and especially children who are too young to be vaccinated."

And yet RFK jr is proposing that we do away with vaccines because of "freedom". 

Would you not sacrifice a little bit of YOUR freedom to lessen the health risks for your children and your children's children? 

Wellness Craze Follow Up: Raw Milk May Have Infected and Killed Two Cats of Bird Flu

According Los Angles County Department of Public Health, two indoor cats in LA County have died of H5N1 bird flu after consuming Raw Farm LLC raw milk. Tests are underway to confirm the diagnosis, but the milk had already been recalled statewide. 

Previously this blog had covered the unscientific naturalistic arguments used by raw milk advocates to justify their consumption. Here's another reason for you to stop consuming unsanitary food... No matter how tempting their specious arguments sound. 

AntiScience COVIDiocy: How to Pretend to Care About Science While Spewing Anti-Science Misinformation

One of the ways antivaxxers catch the attention of sheeple is pretending to care, and one of the ways they pretend to care is by portraying their antivax attitude as "concerns about vaccine safety". Indeed, if you ask RFK jr, he would say he's not antivax, he's pro vax safety. 

And one of the most frequent sources antivaxxers like to cite is VAERS, or Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. They love to "dumpster dive" into VAERS data and claim VAERS numbers are proof that vaccine caused injuries or even deaths, even though VAERS itself CLEARLY states that VAERS does NOT establish "cause-and-effect" relationship between the vaccine and the reported adverse event. 

Here's an example of an adverse event reported to VAERS. Patient had Pfizer COVID shot on Jan 9, 2021. Patient had a single car accident on Jan 23rd, 2021. She spun out into a snowbank. She was transported to ER, treated, and released. She was found unresponsive on Feb 1, 2021 and pronounced dead. An autopsy revealed she had a brain bleed. 

Yes, that's a genuine VAERS entry, 1004811-1, of which a screenshot is included below. I can't link it because VAERS doesn't allow direct linking. You will have to zoom in the see the details. 

The death and the vaccination are clearly unrelated, but as per proper procedure, it's included in VAERS, and the report was submitted on Feb 5th, 2021. In fact, CDC instructions to health care providers were to include the data in VAERS, "regardless if the reporter thinks the vaccine caused the AE (adverse event)". The reason is simple: CDC needs a way to know if there's a side effect they never considered or expected, and the only way to know is to report EVERYTHING, so the data can be mined later for commonalities. 

So if you search for "COVID vaccine" and "death", you would probably end up counting this one, and probably dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands like it, where if you look at the details, there's just no way they could be linked. 

Not that it stopped antivaxxers and pundits like Tucker Carlson from claiming "vaccines killed thousands" when the data they cited does NOT indicate such a thing, and organizations across the country had to put out FAQs debunking such fearmongering. 

When confronted, most antivaxxers will reply with "but I just want a safe vaccine" or variations thereof, often with emphasis "but even one adverse event is one too many". 

Some antivaxxers will then trot out the "COVID isn't that dangerous" trope, esp. with the "children tend to have milder symptoms" bit. 

So you remind them "so you are comparing a KNOWN risk of COVID such as death, long COVID, and MIS-C, vs a POTENTIAL unknown risk of vaccine adverse reaction that has so far not been observed?"

Some may be smart enough to admit defeat, but some will segue into VAERS dumpster diving. 

That's when you remind them that they're processing garbage data and drawing bogus conclusions, as we had discussed above. 

And what's when they block you because they can't beat you with the truth. 

More COVIDiots: can a judge "compel" a hospital to administer something that doesn't work? An Ohio judge just did...

Would YOU decide to take horse dewormer because somebody on the Internet told you it can cure COVID? 

Before you said yes, remember many months ago someone said the same thing about hydroxychloroquine? It was touted by no less than Trump himself. That did not work. 

So why would you expect ivermectin to work? It doesn't either. 

There is ONE study in Egypt with positive results for ivermectin that was NOT peer-reviewed. Then the publisher retracted the paper. Turns out there are SERIOUS problems with the data, where there are signs that data have been copied between patients, among other problems. The entire study cannot be trusted. 

You can guess what the antivaxxers did... Scream "censorship", never mind the details. 

So what is this about a judge? Hold one for one more thing...

Ivermectin CAN be used on humans... for a MUCH reduced dosage... for parasites. It can be used topically for head lice, or internally for "river blindness", and so on. It was so useful, the team that found the human use got the Nobel Prize in 2015. Again, it kills parasites, not viruses. 

Now onto the judge. 

In Ohio, a woman, Julie Smith, has her husband in the ICU for COVID since July 15th, 2021. Julie, found a Dr. Fred Wagshul, supposedly an expert in treating COVID with ivermectin, who was willing to prescribe her husband ivermectin. The hospital refused. Thus the lawsuit. 

We have determined above that most studies regarding ivermectin are either inconclusive or flawed. There is little evidence to suggest Ivermectin can prevent or treat COVID. Yet its proponents continue to claim the proof is "irrefutable" and such that it works. 

Just think about it. Ivermectin has NEVER before been formal trial tested in ANIMALS OR HUMANS for fighting a virus, muchless COVID, until very recently. Suddenly, it works wonders... then THAT study was found to be potentially fraudulent. So what's the conclusion? 

Logically, it should be "I'll have to wait and see, as there's no evidence that it really works. If it worked that well, I'd want to see some MORE proof. Extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence."

Indeed, that's the current Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis of ivermectin and COVID conclusion based on all existing studies (will be updated as more studies are performed):

Based on the current very low- to low-certainty evidence, we are uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin used to treat or prevent COVID-19.

But now, just because some patient asked for this unproven treatment because she shopped for a doctor that will give it to her, does that means the hospital has to provide it? Apparently a judge decided that to be a "yes". Does a judge have the right to decide if a treatment is viable? Or can any patient walk into any hospital and demand a quack treatment just because she found a doctor willing to prescribe it? 

But hold on, it gets worse. 

The dose prescribed was "30 mg daily for 3 weeks". 

So what's a typical ivermectin dose? 

For intestinal deworming, the suggested dose is ONE, repeat ONE ONLY, dose of 200 mcg/kg. Assuming her husband is 100 kg (220 pounds), that's 20 mg dose.

This "doctor" has prescribed a dose 50% over that (30 mg), FOR 21 full days. 

Where did he even get this number? 

There is no science to his prescription. 

And I'll just leave you with this bit of news...

Anti-vax police Captain of Georgia town who touted ivermectin, taken quite a bit himself, and proud of his unvaccinated status, has died of COVID. 

Don't be a COVIDiot. Get vaccinated. 

Today I Learned: The 5G Conspiracy Theory Was Started by Russian Trolls

Looking back at 2020, there was a flood of crazy conspiracy theories linking COVID to 5G, and some of them stated that...

• COVID was not spread from person to person. Instead, 5G radiation caused the body to create the COVID virus
• 5G radiation weakened the body's immune system thus allow COVID to infect
• COVID virus was spread via 5G radiation (?!)

You can blame a bunch of clueless celebrities, such as Keri Hilson (who needs to stick to singing) falsely spreading claims that 5G caused COVID, by making casual observations that China rolled out 5G then BAM! COVID.  She and various celebrities forgot an important lesson in science: correlation is NOT causation 

The debunking is TRIVIAL... Iran, which has no 5G, is also a major cluster of COVID. How do you explain that? Hmmm? 

But did you ever wonder, who STARTED this nonsense anyway? Let's do a little tracing. 

Hilson spread a video by Dr. Cowan who's also against 5G. What nobody checked was Cowan was under probation by California medical board. The video was a talk by Cowan at an anti-vax conference headlined by none other than disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield. When it was shared by anti-vax RFK jr, it's enough to make the rest of the conspiracy theorists like David Icke jump in with their own copycat take on the disinfo. 

And before you think this is harmless, ALMOST 80 5G towers in UK were attacked in 2020, and several phone carrier employees hospitalized due to attacks in the UK. Canada also had reports of several phone towers damaged. Sad part is none of them were actually 5G towers.  Tennessee believes several state-owned towers were damaged by COVID conspiracy theorists. And the damage may be far more widespread than suspected. 

Cowan is hardly the first to make wild claims. The first doctor to make such a claim was a Dutch doctor by the name of Kris Van Kerckhoven, a general practitioner, in January 2020. His interview was published in a local paper that claimed 5G is dangerous, without proof. He then suggested there may be a link between 5G and COVID, which had just appeared in Wuhan, Again, without any proof. But it was enough to get the conspiracy theorists rolling. 

When there isn't that much known about COVID during February and March of 2020, various conspiracy theorists started flooding the net with "the truth about COVID" and it got past the sanity filters of the search engines, and started to, pardon the pun, gone viral. 

But who was the first to claim 5G causes illnesses? 

Turns out, it was a Russian troll news outfit called "RT News". And it started as early as January 2019, a whole YEAR before COVID really affected the world. 

As tracked by Wired and NYTimes, RT had repeatedly posted videos containing baseless rants about 5G, including statements such as "it might kill you" "health risks" and even claims that children exposed to 5G incurred brain damage, about 10+ times in 2019 alone. Yet there seems to be no particular reason for it other than to delay the global rollout of 5G so Russia can catch up. 

So there you have it: anti-vax idiots trolled by Russians. 

In other words, double idiots. 

Herbalife "managed" critical lab study with legal threats, scientific journal caved

Herbalife decided to silence scientists who published a study that may put their products in a bad light by first sending bogus claims from their scientists, then when that failed, sent in their lawyers with multiple threats against the journal, and the journal caved and removed access to the study. 

As reported by BehindMLM, medical researchers in India had published a research paper detailing their findings of heavy metal in Herbalife products sold in India.  At first, Herbalife sent in their own "toxicologists" from Brazil disputing the paper. Science was reviewed by the journal's panel, and found to be correct, and thus, the paper was definitely NOT retracted. However, it appears that Herbalife, realizing it cannot challenge the science of the study, decided to send legal threats to the medical researchers of the study, but also directly to the journal's staff, journal's editorial panel and the publisher, Elsevier. 

And despite the editorial panel concluding that there was no cause for retraction as per COPE guidelines, the publisher and the journal pulled the paper ANYWAY, without consent of the authors. 

And furthermore, retracted studies are usually kept available for access in order to provide a reference on what not to do. This was not done. The entire study simply disappeared. 

Two thoughts on this: 

A) Why isn't there an anti-SLAPP equivalent for scientific studies? SLAPP, or "strategic lawsuit against public participation", is a tactic a person or organization is being sued to prevent it from publicizing some information that the public deserves to know. What Herbalife did here is a SLAPP to prevent the study from being publicized. 

B) With the high cost being charged by Elsevier to "publish" those journals (we're talking about a couple hundred dollars to read ONE article, sometimes), you'd think Elsevier would actually have a team of lawyers to defend such. 

But this cannot stand. It's time to make Herbalife realize they can't get away with this behavior.