Did Dallas CPS Really Seize a Baby From Parents For Choosing a Midwife?

The headline is sensational: "Black Couple Says Texas Authorities Seized Their Newborn Because They Chose a Midwife Over a Hospital"

But are the facts true? Here's the narrative, TL;DR version: 

• The Jacksons, who live in Desoto, near Dallas, Texas, chose home birth and gave birth to Mila 2 weeks ago, with a licensed midwife
• Jacksons took Mila to their pediatrician for a checkup, and doctor diagnosed Mila with jaundice, a common condition.
• Jacksons chose home treatment with their midwife instead of hospital stay.
• The doctor reported the Jacksons to Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) even though the Jackson have explained to the doctor that the midwife will conduct phototherapy.
• Desoto police and CPS agents raided Jacksons' home at 5AM but the parents refused to hand the baby over. Police and CPS left after a while, only to return later demanding that the couple hand over the child again as she's legally a CPS ward at this time, despite after hearing explanations from both the parents AND the midwife. They eventually left again. Several days went by.
• Last Tuesday, police returned and demanded the baby AGAIN, and when the parent refused, one was arrested, then police took his keys, and used it to enter his home and took the baby.
• Jacksons have had ONE visit with the baby, and when they noticed some problems with the baby, they were DENIED permission to seek treatment, was told "it's the foster family's responsibility"

But are these ALL the facts? 

Not quite. Here's what they don't tell you, or it got glossed over, and you have to dig to find it. 

While mild jaundice does go away by itself, baby Mila's bilirubin level is 21.7. That is considered "go to the hospital ASAP" level of jaundice. 

And according to reports, the family has been with the same pediatrician for years, so presumably he did not call CPS at the drop of a hat, but only did so when he felt he had no choice in the best interest of the child. 

But let's make things perfectly clear: 

A midwife is NOT a pediatrician or a neonatologist. And severe jaundice is beyond the expertise of a midwife. 

So in essence, the parents are right: they did get their baby taken away BECAUSE they want a midwife to treat their baby for severe jaundice instead of a hospital and a pediatrician. 

That's the equivalent of asking your local quick-lube place (that changes your engine oil) to replace your car's engine. 

But the real question now is, is CPS sending the baby off to get the phototherapy done? Did it work?

And the post-mortem, why did the whole thing took another two days for CPS to take custody? 

Propaganda COVIDiocy: Care To Guess Who ELSE Had Been Reporting Pfizer COVID Vaccine Killing People? The Russians, Of Course

One of the often-repeated refrains from antivaxxers is Pfizer COVID vaccine (Cominarty) had killed thousands, though the same claims were also levied against all the other Western COVID vaccines such as the AstroZeneca vaccine and J&J vaccine as well. 

Care to guess who's the loudest "news outlet" (besides Fox News, and I don't mean Tucker Carlson?) that claimed so? 

The Russian RT News, of course, with clickbait titles such as "Health authorities on alert after nurse DIES follow vaccination with Pfizer's Covid-19 shot in Portugal"

RT news as screencap'ed by FirstDraft News
https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/rt-fringe-undermine-covid-vaccinations/

Of course, nobody cares about the rebuttal from the Portuguese Government stating that there is no link between her death and the vaccine. 

Keep in mind that RT is a Russian propaganda website spreading plenty of fake news along real news. It has amplified fake news such as harm of 5G, including "5G caused COVID". 

The disinformation is so bad that Germany has officially banned RT German only a few days ago. 

So if you are repeating antivax propaganda, consider your sources carefully. You may be helping the Russians spreading fake news. And I mean fake as in "not real", not Trumpian fake news, which is any news he didn't like. 

Public COVIDiocy: Coroner Admits He Did Not Declare a SINGLE person Dead of COVID in 2021

The following quote is from USA Today:

In Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, coroner Wavis Jordan said his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” Jordan does not investigate deaths himself. He requires families to provide proof of a positive coronavirus test before including it on a death certificate.

In 2021, he hasn’t pronounced a single person dead from COVID-19 in the 80,000-person county.

This sort of underreporting is most prevalent in the heavily Red (Republican) areas such as the South. 

Experts estimate that the current US Death Statistics are probably off by as much as 20%. 

At this moment, it's at 871K. If it's under by 20%, it'd be already over a MILLION deaths in two years. 

Which makes the death rate at 1.385%, instead of 1.2% as it stands right now. 

That makes it time to point out the raw number of deaths vs death rate. 

Right now, the state with the most COVID deaths is California, followed by Texas and Florida. 

However, that's raw numbers. What about deaths per population?  

FWIW, the worst death rate is Mississippi (360 per 100K), followed by Arizona (352) and New Jersey (346). 

California at 199 is well below Florida (297) and Texas (269). 

Best? Hawaii, at 81. But remember, Hawaii requires either a negative test within 72 hours of arrival or spending 5 days in self-quarantine. And they can do that because they can check everybody at the airport. And if you choose to break quarantine anyway? You'd be subject to arrest. 

Do you see any anti-vaxxers screaming about their "freedom" in Hawaii?

COVIDiocy Propaganda: How to see through anti-vaxxer attempts to mislead you

Recently someone posted this graph, claiming Ivermectin has stopped the spread of COVID in Japan, so much so they stopped using vaccines altogether. 

COVID-19 in Tokyo - Japan 
Sharp drop after ivermectin recommendation? Really? 

Note that this is a multi-layered lie, and we have to take it apart layer by layer. 

First, is this graph real? 

Answer: Yes, the data seems to be real, and seems to match the official Tokyo Metropolitan Government website's COVID page. 

Did "Tokyo Medical Association" recommend use of Ivermectin? 

Answer: Yes, its chairman Haruo Ozaki did conduct a press conference lobbying for the official Japanese government guidance to include Ivermectin. However, they do NOT represent the Japanese government or even the Tokyo Metropolitan government. They are merely one of the lobbying groups, and a sub-group within the Japan Medical Association, also a lobbying group.

What does the Japanese government say about Ivermectin? 

The official guidance from the Japanese Ministry of Health on Ivermectin, according to AFP, states that "compared to standard treatment and placebo, ivermectin did not reduce deaths, shorten the hospitalization period and improve time of virus disappearance."

The health minister stated in August that they need to see proven effect before any update to the guidance will be issued. 

What about claims that Japan had stopped rollout of COVID vaccine? 

False. Japan continues to use three types of COVID vaccines. 68 percent of Japanese population has had two doses. 

So what caused the drop? 

Tokyo and major cities declared a state of emergency, targeting alcohol sales and crowd sizes at large events. People are voluntarily masking up and businesses adopted anti-infection methods. The emergency measures were not lifted until October 2021. 

It is the lockdown, masking, and vaccination, that caused the drop of COVID cases. 

Who started the lie?

The lie appears to have originated from a conspiracy theorist-oriented "Hal Turner Radio Show" website, which had been fact-checked before by AFP for spreading misinformation. Turner had previously claimed that 50K Chinese soldiers had invaded Maine from Canada in December 2020 and were killed, but US covered it up as an earthquake. Yes, it's as stupidly crazy as it sounds. 

Turner was previously convicted of threatening to assault three federal appeals court judges in 2010 and was banned from radio for 3 years. 

So it was just a big coincidence? 

As they say on CSI, "correlation is not causation". Japan never adopted Ivermectin as treatment, so it can't be the cause of lower COVID cases. And TALKING about ivermectin has no therapeutic effect. 

So there you go. Don't fall for COVIDiot propaganda. 

COVIDIocy Misinformation: How People Use Statistics To Mislead

NOTE: This post is also available at amlmskeptic.blogspot.com as it illustrates an important misinformation tactic: presenting a scary statistic, without verifying it, and without context or base rate (aka background rate). 

Recently, experts warned that pregnant women are being deliberately targeted with COVID vaccine misinformation. Some claimed that vaccine can affect fertility, while another claimed vaccines cause stillbirths. One even cited a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons" to claim the vaccine is unsafe for pregnant persons. But the study actually shows the opposite of it. So how do you spot such misinformation? By always looking for the context. If a statistic is presented WITHOUT context, you cannot trust it. 

Feel free to read the abstract of the summary above, but I'll include a relevant highlight from the Pubmed link above:

... 13.9% resulted in a pregnancy loss...

While the 13.9% pregnancy loss sounds alarming in itself, you cannot say whether the vaccine is bad or good without knowing the context of such a number. What you should be asking here is "so what is the normal pregnancy loss, i.e. pregnancy loss rate without COVID vaccine?" Or to use a statistics term, what is the base rate or background rate, so we can have a proper comparison? 

Turns out, the answer is not that simple, because in the US, there are actually TWO terms for pregnancy loss: miscarriage (for fetus before 20 weeks), and stillbirth (fetus at 20 weeks or older), and separate statistics are kept. 

For miscarriage, the answer is between 10-20%, according to the Mayo Clinic, but that's reported cases. The actual rate is higher due to unrecognized pregnancies. As high as 33% according to some estimates. 

"About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage."

Once past 20 weeks, the fetal death rate falls off significantly, down to 1 in 100 to 160 pregnancies, according to CDC. 

As the study used the term "pregnancy loss", which encompasses BOTH stillbirth and miscarriage, and 10-20% vastly overshadows the 1/160 rate, 10-20% is the right number to use as a base rate. 

Thus, the 13.9% number is actually somewhat BELOW the known rate, if we take the median, which is about 15%. And the difference is so small it is probably within statistical error margins. 

Thus, there is no known risk to pregnancy by the mRNA COVID vaccine, since the rate of vaccinated pregnancy loss is almost indistinguishable from the unvaccinated pregnancy loss rate. 

But you wouldn't know that if you ONLY heard the 13.9% figure. It sounds scary. And that's what the people who presented those statistics WANT you to feel: FEAR through propaganda, manipulating your thoughts through misinformation and disinformation. 

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A similar thing happened with the earlier CDC vaccine reaction tracking that there seems to be a few cases of myocarditis among people who got vaccinated, that they temporarily halted the use of one COVID vaccine for a few weeks, out of an abundance of caution, while the study was re-checked and more data was gathered. Myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscles. CDC later put the odds of such at about 4.8 per million.  

As expected, anti-vaxxers started touting this as "COVID vaccines are unsafe". They even got a study that supposedly proves that myocarditis increased after COVID vaccines were added. But again, should you check the studies, what is the base rate, and what are the alternatives? 

Turns out, Reuters had published a full fact-check article on this. The study that was touted by the anti-vaxxers made a huge error. The original study was done by The University of Ottawa Heart Institute. It stated that odds are 1 in 1000 of developing a heart problem after COVID vaccination. It was put on preview on September 16th, before it was peer-reviewed. Turns out, they used the wrong figure in "doses administered". They used a figure of 32379 over the study period of 2 months. It should be about 25X larger at 845930. Instead of 1/1000, the figure is more like 3.78/100000. The paper was withdrawn from preview on September 24th, and the Heart Institute itself had issued an apology. 

So the evidence is not there. There are also TWO MORE factors to consider... 

a) What is the base rate of myocarditis? i.e. what is the possibility of catching it without the vaccine?  

According to Wikipedia, it's about 22 per 100K people per year. And 20% will die in the first year. 

However, this is the overall rate. The rate is much lower for younger people, about 5 per 100K people. 

b) What is the possibility of COVID-induced myocarditis, if you caught COVID instead of vaccinating, but recovered? 

Existing myocarditis data from 2019 (pre-COVID) was compared to 2020 data (during COVID) and the signs are having had COVID suggests you are "15.7 times more likely" to have a myocarditis event. 

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Another study involving records of 2 million patients from 40 different hospitals specifically looked for incidents in individuals who had received the COVID vaccine. Guess how many cases they found? Twenty, out of Two Million. 1 per 100000. That's lower than the background rate / base rate. It is of no factor. 

But now you have mothers screaming on Twitter that "my teenager caught myocarditis from the vaccine". 

Except, again, there's no proof from temporal association, i.e. correlation is not causation. It's an anecdote, not data. 

CDC has the data, and it's sharing in the full report from June 2021:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-06/05-COVID-Wallace-508.pdf

The results now show more children are getting infected and dying because the vaccine isn't available for them until VERY recently, and the unvaccinated are clogging up the hospital beds so people who need normal hospitalization can't get in, and either transfer to a different state... or die. 

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When the antivaxxers tell you "do your own research", what they actually mean is "please read our propaganda (where we scare you into supporting us and distrust the doctors)" 

What you should do instead, is REALLY do your research... by spotting other people's propaganda for what it is... intention to manipulate you. 

And yes, I am trying to manipulate you... into REALLY thinking for yourself, not just looking up stuff to confirm your own beliefs.