The known scientific reasons to refuse inoculations include enhancement (quite applicable considering the enhancement observed in SARS and MERS) recombination, and contamination. As you stated statistical conclusions can be murky when relating to an individual, vaccines may save lives, they also damage and end life, for others. For someone so sharp on individual privacy and the implications to losing it, you seem to miss the grand implications of injecting viral genetic material and agents designed to affect such material. Hard to understand why anyone would accept a software patch, from anyone other than the OE Manufacturer. Best of Luck
I used to be 100% pro-Snowden, but he is becoming more and more of a false propagandist. He continues to be right-on about privacy and security issues, but he still blindly swallows the lies and false propaganda of the "(inter)national (in)security" state, the corporate-fascist global(ist) deep state shadow government that, along with "al CIAduh(!)", the NSA, et al., is who really runs the U.S. and the world, and is completely destroying our freedoms, liberties, rights AND OUR ENTIRE PLANET, INCLUDING MOST OF HUMANITY.
Snowden, like the majority of "Americans", refuses to COMPLETELY wake up and face 100% of the truth about what has really happened (e.g., 9/11 and its draconian, dystopian aftermath---all planned for by the way in the Project for a New American Century, etc.), and about what is really going on [i.e., the total takeover of our beloved country (the U.S.) and world by the Yale Skull & Bones "Fourth Reich" corporate-fascist globalist Nazis and their minions [who really attacked us on 9/11 and brought down all three of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers (including Building 7, otherwise known as the Solomon Brother's Building), and brought down our constitutional republic as well, ushering us into a real-life "1984" dystopian, and draconian, nightmare of authoritarian, increasingly becoming totalitarian, control of the U.S., the West and the world, overthrowing liberty, freedom and rights].
He, and they, also refuse to face that the same above-referenced people, "the Bill Gates' ilk" eugenicists and the rest of the "Fourth Reich" globalists, are behind the "pandemic" and the "inoculating" of everyone, and the increased calls for forced vaccination, violating our right(s) to informed CONSENT, and to the "my body (or my life), my right" [to refuse vaccination(s)], as well as our right(s) to bodily and psychological privacy, and to not have ANYTHING forced into, and/or taken away from, our bodies and/or our private spaces as a whole.
Soon those aforementioned anti-freedom-liberty-and-rights goons will be criminalizing "non-vaccination-compliance" and unreasonably (to put it mildly), and in violation of our rights to our persons and our bodies, and to freedom of choice in violation of our free will, and in violation of our rights as a whole, forcing virtually everyone to get vaccinated, including the immuno-compromised who the vaccines, if forced on them, will very likely murder them.
I have resisted it up until now, but I am increasingly coming to the conclusion, as a result of his latest articles, that Snowden continues to be a deep state shadow government operative in the (dis)guise of a True Patriot (a wolf in sheep's clothing; whereas I, on the other hand am a lamb in wolves' clothing, referring to my nom d'plume, "Steppen-Wolf"), and/or is still quite brainwashed by them (the deep state shadow government), and is therefore not to be trusted AT ALL.
I respectfully disagree with this post, Steppen-Wolf, while conceding that I understand it. I think there are many reasons to resist this vaccine; however, as I hope we all agree, it is and should be a personal choice, and I don’t hold anyone’s choice on this matter against them. The data in favor of getting vaccinated is not at all clear to me, and I feel I’ve seen much more of it than most – though not an expert by any means. That said, while this particular piece was less deeply thoughtful than others of Snowden’s, I judge a writer and a thinker by their best work. In all of us, there is going to be residue of who we once were, and he did in fact once work for the CIA. Even going through everything he has gone through is not enough to obliterate his past and who he was. After all, we grow out of who we once were. So while I think I know what you mean – sometimes things leap out at me that he says or writes, and it can be jarring because it strikes me as very incongruous with who he seems to be now – I also feel that on balance he has contributed immeasurably to the path forward we are all trying to forge. We are in a fight for the future, and to my eyes he has fought – and very courageously – on the right side.
Cindy - I think most folks seem to have missed the whole point of his post, which was how to respond in the face of uncertainty, the point I responded to in my first post here - in the form of a Pascal's wager ...
I don't think who he is "now" is any different from who he was then - looking at issues in terms of what we "know" and what we don't - and then deciding, is it better to act or not ... The fact that he seems to come down, if I am not mistaken, in favor of doing things that may help us deal with both the virus and human induced climate change rubs folks who deny both the wrong way, seems to be what is behind all the sturm und drang we see here ...
I, myself have issues with GOF research, which I think needs to be banned - was that what was involved in the advent of this particular virus - I don't know, and at this point doesn't matter because what we have to do is deal with it no matter how it arose. I am a believer in vaccines - but I think we maybe oughta stick to the more conventional vaccine platforms for a number of reasons ...
This post, for me, rather cemented my respect for this guy - not just because I happen to agree with him in this particular instance, but because of his approach to the issue ...
These issues are very complex. I do not think people missed the point, but rather need to challenge and expand on the complexities embedded in them. The dialogue it provokes is as important and as interesting as the article itself, and for that I am thankful. Erring on the side of doing things that may help isn't a bad message to pass along. But within the context of being uncertain of the end design (authoritarianism/corporate greed/lack of transparency and accountability...) I think the suggestion is met with healthy reservation. Mainly within the chaos of navigating the pandemic.
I think sometimes we, and i include myself, suffer from a "paralysis of analysis" - we analyze something to death, in this case perhaps literally, while the problem we are dealing with proceeds apace ...
I would suggest that navigating the pandemic and determining "the end design" of corp motivation are 2 issues that need different responses. The first being that we are faced with a disease that is killing us, though there are still those in denial of this fact, and we are faced with the "don't just stand there, do something" or "the don't do anything, just stand there" choices - this is where Pascal's wager comes in. If we choose the former, the speed at which the virus is "progressing" dictates we gotta do it pretty quickly (the same with climate change) - but we need to consider which "something" we should do. For me, vaccines are a mechanism for training our immune systems to deal effectively with the disease, without overwhelming it, and masks, of the proper material (re filtering efficiency) and fit (like making sure your seat belt is fastened) are a mechanism for "filtering" out the disease, as filters are a basic method for dealing with "air pollutants" of which this virus is one. So even though I have been vaccinated (J&J - personal choice) I still wear a mask with other "strangers" - maybe its a "belt and suspenders" approach. I am waiting and hoping for a better vaccine, not just one "tweaked" around a spike variant, in the meantime, what's the old saying, don't let the better be the enemy of the good - and i think these vaccines are good for what they purport to do, reduce severe illness and death - as for the transmission bit, the jury may still be out - so, I wear my mask ...
The second issue is one of our "market" approach, prioritizing profit over people - but that has been going on for a loooong time and requires a much wider, longer term approach - and i don't think we oughta wait to solve that before we deal with the first ,,,
Julia, we skeptics are just idiots if we don't read other people's ideas. Ed is wholly dependent on liberal goodwill. Vaccine skepticism would likely give him a cell next to Assange. And he is a smart brave guy. If anyone is likely to bring me an important new perspective it will be people like him.
The fact is that few people have direct knowledge of things like climate and the covid vaccine. The experts are 99.9% funded by interested parties who would not fund them if they didn't toe the line. Intelligent people must continually search for new perspectives and new information or we will live in a self imposed bubble of our own ideas.
Typical lack of understanding of, and respect for, freedom of speech. I have a right to come here and express myself, just as you do. But you free-speech-violators seek to shut some people up. Why are you here, to simply make "say-nothing" comments like the foregoing, and to shut down the free speech of those you disagree with because they "offend" you, by seeking to drive them away and/or shut them up? Again, how typical of typical right-violating people with little or not respect for and understanding of free speech.
With regard to Ed Snowden, I keep hoping I'll turn out to be wrong, and that I'll find that he's not on a big attention-seeking ego trip, but the more he writes, and the more he speaks at conferences and the like, the more my concerns about him are verified. He's getting off on all the attention; and, like Manning, is seeking his "fifteen minutes of fame" over and over again. At least Snowden does it in a more "mentally-healthful" way than Manning, who is an extremely mentally disturbed person that, at times when not receiving the attention Manning believes Manning should get, attempts suicide over and over again. (I don't underestimate the hell-on-earth, including torture, Manning was put through by the U.S. government, which undoubtedly severally-worsened his mental illness---particularly because I've too have been in prison and know, from personal experience, the hell that that system can put one through.)
The more I watch and read Snowden with discernment, the more I detect his trying too hard to be "sophisticated" and to show his "intelligence", seeking the attention and "glorification" that he invariably receives in response to his communications, making himself out to be such an "advanced thinker". And now he is "mentally-masterbating" his way to more and more attention, though in a more "sophisticated" way than Manning. Yet I detect that Snowden is mentally unbalanced as well, and I see through his "attention-grabbing".
Also, Snowden's articles of late have been less and less beneficial, and have increasingly become "look at me, I'm an extremely-smart person" forays into over-complicating matters with excess philosophizing, rather than sticking to issues concerning the "'security' state" condition of our country and world, and how what the U.S. and global government(s) are doing is leading no where good, and to increasing "'1984'-style" "totalitarianization" of the U.S. and the world, which he doesn't warn about enough, if at all. Thus, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that even he lacks the True Discernment to be able face just how dire things truly are, and how grave what all of it is leading to truly is, and that he doesn't want to face it, because he still holds out false hope for "beyond-the-point-of-no-return" evil government, and still believes in much of the evils they foist on the world, because he falsely believes they're "necessary".
Unfortunately, you are wrong about me. but that's your opinion. I never thought that freedom of speech, like other freedoms, is freedom of faith. freedom of thought, in need of limitation. All that you ascribe to me is, again, your opinion. As for Edward, here you personally insulted not only him. writing. "However, I notice that Snowden is also mentally unstable, and I see him" drawing attention "but me, as I like him, like his ideas, thought, manner of presentation. I think many will agree that such statements are disrespectful and offensive and, for that matter, a violation of the law.
Again, you don't understand freedom of speech. According to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case LAW precedent(s) interpreting and explaining the First Amendment, particularly Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), free(dom of) speech INCLUDES "offensive" speech. Contrary to the falsehoods that you've been taught and/or led to believe, NO ONE has ANY right to not be offended, anywhere; otherwise, if they did, it would contradict the First Amendment, which is part of the Supreme Law(s) of the Land, the U.S. Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution; which, it is the DUTY OF *ALL* AMERICANS, including you, to protect, preserve, defend, uphold, AND OBEY....
....EVERYWHERE! Respecting EVERYONE'S freedom of speech, everywhere.
Anyway, I will not justify my comments, for they stand, nothing but accurately, on their own. And, before you (may) say it, NO, I am NOT unaware that there are other U.S. federal and state laws that contradict SCOTUS and the First Amendment; but again, since the latter is the SUPREME, FIRST AND FOREMOST *LAW* OF THE LAND, THAT *ALL OTHER LAW(S)* **MUST** CONFORM TO OR THEY ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL, those so-called "laws" are, as I said, unconstitutional, and we have absolutely no legal obligation(s) WHATSOEVER to obey such unconstitutional "laws". In fact, it is our DUTY to *NOT* obey them; because, since they don't conform with the Supreme Law(s) of the Land, and contradict, contravene and violate them, they do not hold or have ANY force of law, and are legally unenforceable (and/or are ONLY "enforceable" ILLEGALLY).
[Now watch, you'll probably ignore all that I just wrote, misinterpret it, twist it around, and/or not take it seriously, etc. (and will write some "defense" against using offensive speech, that supposedly, and nothing but falsely and fraudulently, states that "offensive speech is 'illegal'", and/or that people allegedly have the "right" to not be offended{?}; but, if so, please spare me).]
It bothers me when people say this. We don't know what reasons anyone might have for remaining anonymous. The substance of what someone says is what matters, not whether or not they are anonymous.
Guess what - when you catch a disease like this, the virus is "injecting" its own genetic material - As to ADE which is what I think you refer to in the beginning, if it is discovered in early trials, the vaccine is scrapped. As to "contamination", that is something we need to, and can, insure against. And, unlike with a vaccine, the dose you get from a virus you breathe in is a wild card ...
If we were just talking about "individual privacy", or even individual risk, you may have a point - but we are not - the more folks that have the virus, the more petri dishes for the virus to mutate and recombine in, and the more opportunities for a virus to emerge that your own immune system (your OE Manufacturer) let alone another's, can't handle. Using monoclonal antibodies are the "patches", vaccines are "data", fed into your natural, (as opposed to artificial) intelligence system, in amounts that don't overwhelm the system
And remember, it's not just your own "private" life you are risking, but others' lives as well, maybe even the ones you actually care about ...
It reduces your viral load, which reduces the amount of virus that you scatter when you're near people, so it reduces transmission. It probably doesn't stop transmission to others entirely, but it helps.
Actually, to quote Faucci, "What we learned that's new, John, in answer to your question, is that when you look at the level of virus in the nasopharynx of people who are vaccinated who get breakthrough infections, it's really quite high and equivalent to the level of virus in the nasopharynx of unvaccinated people who get infected."
Did you make that up? An interesting fact, most who died in the Civil War died of disease. Healthy country people died at twice the rate of puny slum dwellers.
SH, Guess what…an encounter with the virus is not the same as “catching the disease”. Most individuals digested the information in this ‘new’ virus without any symptoms whatsoever. Moreover, when we encounter the virus in the wild, the genetic information gets indexed in the tonsils, tracked throughout the body, and digested into natural and lifetime immunity. Your advice, bypasses the known and unknown gates of the immune system, and moreover has a high likelihood of contamination, as evidenced historically with lab made inoculations, as well as these CV2 ones at hand.
High Viral load is present in both on vaccinated individuals (following the vaccination) and unvaccinated individuals, depending on what stage they are in. A high viral load is also conducive to transmission, which puts the kabbash on the whole asymptotic transmission BS
So high viral loads can occur in unvaccinated folks, i.e. those who encountered it in the wild, which is conducive to transmission - but just sorta "tracks through the body" - whereas high viral loads in vaccinated individuals do what, exactly ...
First you say that "an encounter with the virus" results in "most" folks having no symptoms, i.e. asymptomatic, even though they may have high vital loads, which, as you say, are conducive to transmission Then you say that high viral loads, conducive to transmission, being present in BOTH vaccinated and unvaccinated folks, "puts the kabbash on the whole 'asymptotic' transmission BS" Does a virus transmitted by unvaccinated folks result in asymptomatic disease, but the same virus transmitted by vaccinated folks doesn't? Now that is very interesting, how does that work?
High viral loads result from the virus replicating inside the body of the infected person. The purpose of vaccination used to be to prevent that replication, which also prevented transmission. The body's immune system would recognise the virus upon entry and target it for destruction. If you're observing a high viral load in a vaccinated individual, that's because the vaccine didn't work and is not stopping the virus from breaking into and bursting the cells of the host organism, resulting not only in disease but also in millions of transmissible copies of the virus.
Hi! Waiting to hear from MMS about what I saw as contradictions in his post, which I don't think your response dealt with ... To address the points you make (though I don't think they resolve the contradictions I see in MMS' post, above) ... Here is my understanding of the process ..
The bodies immune system has 2 arms, an innate and an adaptive one - the first, innate, are the "first responders", troops that attack right away - at the point of entry (nasopharyngeal mucosal surfaces), and from my reading, seem to have a high level of IgA expressing abs, as opposed to IgG which are the ones most tested for (and then there are IgMs) - OK, blah, blah so what - the vaccine, encounters the immune system via a different route, injection If the innate system works pretty well, it may keep the virus from entering the lower respiratory tract and on, that is why there is some speculation about developing a nasal vaccine as well, a nip it in the bud so to speak - that approach makes sense to me - nasal or nasal plus injection.
Another fly in the ointment, so to speak, is the extent to which the PCR tests, the Gold Standard, by which we diagnose CoVid -19 measure the presence of living replicable virus, or dead stuff, studies in folks who keep testing + for the virus for weeks or months, have shown that these long lasting "viruses" are non replicable - so, the question for me would be - if both vaccinated and unvaccinated folks can have high loads of virus to shed - is there a difference in replicability of the virus from the two - is there a difference in pathogenicity between what the two groups are "transmitIng". In other words, I don't think the presence of high loads in vaccinated people necessarily indicates the vaccines "don't work" - we would have to study that and to my knowledge nobody is conducting those - they would be expensive - a lot harder to culture organisms than to test for them ...
As I have said - I think we need better vaccines, with, IMO, a better platform - the problem is these were hyped as the latest "state of the art technology" - too much was expected, but for me the relevant question is whether what we have now works doing what, exactly - "statistically" it works to reduce severe disease and death - we do need one that reduces transmissability as well, hence perhaps the nasal approach, and one, IMO, that targets more than the spike protein ...
As my posts on other subjects on Mr. Snowden's site indicate, I am a "low tech person" - forget the GE stuff, I think it will, if it hasn't already, lead us down the rabbit hole where we will find ....
Hi SH, no need to wait. The only contradictions you’ve identified are based on the scientifically invalid assumption that asymptomatic transmission is actually a thing. Once you clear that up, it should be easy to digest.
SH, the unvaccinated individual who displays no symptoms does not transmit. If they develop symptoms (minority of encounters) they will become transmitters. If they recover (majority of encounters) their body will have incorporated the new information and we will observe natural immunity, (so far holding robust and enduring, we should expect lifetime immunity, based on historical observations). They no longer are transmitters once they are immune.
Vaccinated individuals on the other hand, not only contribute to the possibility of recombination but also will be transmitters (if they have symptoms). Their immunity (not as robust or enduring) will continue to be bombarded and they will continue to contribute to recombination possibilities. Hope that helps.
Uh, I think you are relying on "old data" with regard to "no symptoms, no transmission" that was the feeling with SARS CoV-1 on the basis of which folks were told don't need masks unless you are sick" With SARS CoV-2 however, it became apparent that you could have "no" or "mild" symptoms and still transmit, the advice changed "Yeah, wear a mask!" ...so one can harbor the virus, without being sick - offering possibilities for mutation and recombination - and in fact there is some suggestion that perhaps some at least of our variants have arisen in folks whose immune systems didn't completely clear it ...
"They are no longer emitters once they are immune" and when is that, exactly ....
"Historical observations" lead us to expect "lifetime immunity" - historical observations of what, precisely - we only have "historical observations" of CoV-2 for what, a coupla years? And the only "lifetime" observations of folks with it, are from those who have - died. And then of, of course there's the flu .... any "lifetime immunity" from that?
Any body that "encounters" the virus, for a short or longer time, has the possibility of fostering "recombinations" - including folks who "encountered, but not cleared it, and that's a whole other story .. Your idea that only vaccinated, as opposed to unvaccinated, folks with high viral loads can transmit, with or without symptoms, requires proof ...
Yes correct High viral load AND transmission, AND symptoms all are tethered. Their vaccination status is not.
You critique as if this is a brand new strain with no historical progeny. SARS1, 2 AND 3 ALL came from the same lab and ALL are related. In Light of this FACT you have adopted ‘New’ explanations for transmission and drivers. Newsflash friend: This entirely predictable and treatable respiratory infection with conventional and stockpiled pretreatment medicines. You’ve been utterly lied to. Sorry.
High viral loads will be present in both cohorts with symptoms….hence putting the Kabbash on the idea of asymptomatic transmission. All lockdowns and masking have been a COMPLETE WASTE. Perhaps come back to discuss after digesting this information. https://t.co/HJIqINweX4
OK - repeating what you said above doesn't resolve the contradictions I outlined, If you aren't going to address those, save your bits and bytes, I don't have time to spend (another) hour watching a video ....
Ok let’s try again. High viral load is correlated to the depth of infection, and is required for effective transmission. It is present both in vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts, and is tethered to the extent of their infection, NOT their vaccination status. Sure why spend and hour learning about Truth when you can spend 19months+ swimming in lies?
The trials on SARS and MERS did in fact observe ADE and were scrapped. This SARS2 variant inoculation (really SARS3) did not have animal trials,thanks to warpspeedo, and as far as I know, we don’t inject humans with new variants, for you know, ethical reasons.
In fact, there were animal studies. I looked over several of them, but didn't read every word. I believe the trials for SARS that were problematical used ferrets, because of some sort of similarity to humans in terms of upper respiratory infections. And they didn't use those in the animal studies for COVID-19 -- they used mice and primates.
Please try again. The normal studies you are attempting to equate CV2 studies with take 24 months at minimum with deaths over 150 being sufficient to scrap. You are still under 1 year and over 12,000 deaths and 400k injured.
I am not trying to "equate" anything, I am simply stating that there were animal studies. I don't know a lot about animal studies, but when I looked over the ones for Covid vaccines, they struck me on logic alone as being utterly inadequate. Sorry, I was sleepy last night when I posted that. What I wanted to say is that while those who are pro-Covid vaccines make stuff up out of thin air (to my ears), we who oppose the mass vaxxing of people who are not at risk, and who oppose mandates, should attempt to be accurate because our words will be challenged more rigorously than theirs.
Well, considering the oath to do no harm, it doesn’t apply. 150 deaths from a vaccine was enough to scrap the vaccine (ex. Swineflu). We are currently at 12k. Also keep in mind the data uptake techniques are ALSO under centralized assault as evidenced by the violent traffic crashes being counted as covid deaths. Here maybe this short clip will help you understand how we arrive at skewed conclusions and why now, being vaccinated with 2 boosters will br considered “unvaccinated” https://twitter.com/pandemichoax21/status/1433455755680702467?s=21
I’m referring to the SARS and MERS vaccine trials in which inoculated animals had a harder time dealing with later encounters. To do that, they inoculate the animals with the vaccine, they wait and observe, then re-inoculate them with the wild virus. If those animals do worse than the control group animals which have only encountered the wild virus, they consider that ‘enhancement’ or more accurately-‘disease enhancement’.
They don’t do this trial with humans because for some reason it’s not ethical to inoculate humans with the wild virus, it’s ONLY ethical to inoculate humans with the vaccine. 🤪🤪🤪
Proof in this live experiment? Sure; check on India, Israel in their variant waves and compare that to the unvaccinated cohort. Then wait and see how many more variant waves they will create under their strategy.
SARS-CoV-2 is the more proper name for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The "CoV" portion stands for "co-variant", I believe. The diseases are fairly closely related.
“Uncontrolled doses”?😂 let me help you. The virus itself “injects you with genetic material” that was replicated in a human and provides a full profile for immune systems to index. On the other hand, the inoculation is lab made, myopic, outdated, and inhibits the development of a full profile immunity index.
From my limited knowledge of history it seems that we are threading a dangerous path with COVID legislation all over the world. I'm starting to see the precursors of 2001 and WWII everywhere. I don't disagree that COVID is harmful, I just can't help but see it as a 9/11 v2 where everyone is so deadly afraid of a danger to the point where they surrender everything for an illusion of safety. One study I became aware of around the start of 2020 is "Pathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism" https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/MurraySchallerSuedfeld2013.pdf Having watched the events unfold with that in the back of my mind, as well as some basic knowledge of history and psychology, has been one of the scariest events of my life. It truly does seem to me like a carbon copy of 2001. We were facing an (at the time) unknown threat and the fear and uncertainty that created was abused to the fullest by politicians all over the world to introduce horrific and totalitarian legislation under the guise of safety. All around the globe it suddenly became "the new normal" to carry around cell phones with closed-source government apps for contact tracing. I doubt I have to explain to you how that can potentially be abused.
Already during the initial panic people completely lost their composure and in many countries allowed their governments to pass "temporary emergency legislation" to give them emergency powers and in many cases blatantly violate the constitution of the country. For instance in Denmark 18m mink were culled due to suspicion that they were infected with COVID. The farmers who had their lives ruined were of course promised full compensation. Unfortunately someone forgot that and when it came to actually handing out that compensation suddenly the money printers ran dry and money was nowhere to be found. This was later declared unconstitutional, and the government started backtracking and saying it was "just a recommendation" in spite of armed police forcefully entering mink farms. Ultimately this of course ended up with no one major being held accountable and everything proceeding as usual.
After the initial panic had died down I started researching COVID a bit more in depth due to my inherent mistrust of the CCP owing to their less-than-ideal human rights track record. I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it was very likely related to the Wuhan Institute. The moment I tried to talk to anyone online about this I was of course immediately banned from social media for "spreading misinformation" and even pointing out how the WHO had uncritically shared CCP propaganda around "No human to human transmission" would immediately get me labelled a nutjob in my social life. Regardless of repeated attempts at civil discourse most people seems to have swallowed the whole "authoritative sources" of social media hook, line and sinker. Even purely scientific criticism routinely got dismissed. Science very quickly got replaced by the religion of scientism where any criticism of the official narrative is crazy and people just need to "follow the science" which I find rather ironic since that would usually be accompanied by some random news article. I try my very best to remain objective and open around my own biases. I'm fully aware that I am far from what one would consider "normal" but sometimes I just can't help but think it is the world that is going mad. I've unironically had people call me a science denier for pointing out that it was ridiculous to compare the raw number of cases in Denmark and the US with eachother despite Denmark having a population of 5.6 million. (In case anyone is interested, yes, Denmark did have less cases than the US. Go figure) As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a recent piece there is also the bizarre refusal to ever apply cost-benefit analysis to COVID measures. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-bizarre-refusal-to-apply-cost.
Since then government propaganda has gotten even worse. Once again I've seen examples from all over the world of leaders assuring people that they have no plans to introduce vaccine passports or anything similar while at the same time in other interviews openly advocating for vaccine passports. And when called out on it the near-universal response has been "That is just a conspiracy theory".
Of course, one cannot have events unfolding on a global scale without politicians lying about it somewhere, but I cannot shake the unease that comes from observing these clear inconsistencies and the complete refusal by the mainstream press to address any of them. I'd personally feel significantly better about taking a vaccine if politicians would just be open about it. It was developed in less than a year, of course there are going to be mistakes, and yet there has been pretty much no transparency around the process. For instance I think the contracts the medical industry have scored are completely unacceptable. I would prefer to get vaccinated but I cannot with good conscience allow the complete erosion of our rights to get it. I find the lack of understanding for the anti-government perspective absolutely baffling. If there is one thing that can make me start questioning something it is censorship. After all "If you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You are simply proving that you fear what he has to say". Yet for some reason the government seems to think that the best way to go about things is the use of force. I've talked with an Australian friend of mine about this a couple of times and he is likewise terrified and the psychotic behavior of police and how they seem to have completely lost touch with reality. See this video for an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YtsdzkDZ5o This is yet another massive red flag to me. I am reminded of the Nuremberg trials and the insistence from the nazis that they were "just following orders".
This raises the question: even if you make the assumption that someone is 100% on board with everything that has happened so far, what makes you think that the police/military/anyone else will step up and protect you if it ever does go too far. I fear that we are heading down the path of WWII were we end up so terrified of a certain group of people (In this case those of us that are not yet vaccinated) that people are willing to commit the same atrocities, this time in the name of medical fascism and with no regard for people who cannot take the vaccine for medical reasons.
Perhaps I just don't stray far from the beaten path of the internet but it is very rare for me to bump into anyone who is genuinely completely lost in a conspiracy theory and think COVID is actually sent to earth by aliens as a form of population control or that vaccines cause autism, etc. It seems to be an overwhelming majority of people who has seen through the obvious propaganda (Not saying that the propaganda is necessarily untrue, but it is still propaganda nonetheless) surrounding it and how many of our rights have been infringed in the name of "safety".
In my eyes the issue seems to be that we DONT all agree on the facts. And that anytime anyone asks an honest question they are met with a wall of obvious propaganda and often massive hypocrisy from politicians that will say that we should all be extremely careful and wear masks, only to then the next day go to a private party with no mask. I for one do not blame people for getting cynical and nihilistic, I frankly struggle to understand how you can remain so optimistic and hopeful that things will change when most of the (legislative) damage that happened as a response to 9/11 is still around.
A complete sidenote to all of this: Is it just me or did your post end rather abruptly?
Excellent response. I couldn't have worded it better, I hope Edward replies to this. I thought this particular post by Edward's did not have much information in it in all honesty, which surprised me. Unless I missed something?
We don't agree on all the facts. The FDA says that Ivermectin doesn't help with COVID, but peer-reviewed RCT studies show that it does. https://c19ivermectin.com/ Who are you going to believe? Scientists or politicians? The politicians don't want to give up their power. The vaccine makers don't want to give up their contracts. The FDA only allowed the vaccines because there was "no treatment". If Ivermectin was seen as a treatment, that would have been the end of the vaccines.
Russ Nelson: I agree with you. One needs only look at the problem from perspective of other countries. AND - to follow the money. Cheap solutions are very bad for vaccine profits. End of story. Very surprised that Ed is not seeing this. We need to educate him. The question is not, should we believe politicians or scientists. The question is, should we believe epidemiologists who actually see patients and have no conflict of interest? Lots of political advisors, it turns out, have MD's, but are so politically ambitious that they have never bothered seeing patients in their lives.
Everything happening is terrifying. In Australia, the government has lost its mind. It would be ironic if things are calmer and freer in Russia than in other places, and maybe Snowden sees the world differently from us based on that. (I have no idea -- I don't know much about Russia at all.) I think I read that Putin has banned vaccine mandates?
Knowing the history of some of these drugs companies, and seeing how heavily the governments are trying to push the vaccines onto people, and create COVID passports, amongst all the other ways they are monitoring us and controlling our media (As you said, they Google for you) - how can people not be suspicious of the vaccines? It's not like these people have always had our best interests at heart.
Is this a fact: "the vaccine (which saves lives)"? I'd suggest we're in the midst of 'the long-term study'. The vaxxed have volunteered to participate, the unvaxxed are the control group (which the PTB would like to eliminate, ensuring no actual data is procured). Perhaps in 10 years, we'll have the results.
1. Is it preventing death / long term illness from COVID-19? The answer here appears to be yes; hospitals around the US are reporting that way more of the hospitalized and dead from covid are now unvaccinated. Yes there are breakthrough cases, but it's a lot fewer.
2. Does the vaccine do long term damage? Yes, this one is less certain. However, the vaccine experts say that if a vaccine is going to have bad effects, it'll happen in weeks, not years. It's been long enough now, we would have seen the deleterious effects already.
It's important to point out here that in a Pfizer study that used mid-March as the end of data collection, YES, fewer people died of Covid in the vaccinated group; however, fewer people died of ALL causes in the placebo group. I think it's important to look at Covid as one part of an immense and immensely complex society. So much that we have done is overkill that imo ends up doing more harm than good. As for "experts," has anybody revisited Eisenhower's farewell speech lately? It's known mainly for his phrase "military-industrial complex." But he also speaks of the grave danger of government funding of science and further says this: "In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the great and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific, technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, to integrate these and other forces new and old within the principles of our democratic system, ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."
His speech was so prophetic, wasn't it? And, yes, humane. He used it to warn us of what might occur if we weren't careful. And we weren't careful, so here we are.
1.) So the "hospitals", government and MSM claim. Every person has got to stop trusting them. The MSM are the biggest false propaganda ministry of government to ever exist in the entire history of the planet. Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, would be green with envy to get a hold of the level of propaganda ministry we have today. They have "al CIAduh(!)" agents embedded throughout "journalism", and actually have their evil, lying, neo-Nazi "talking heads" constantly appearing and telling us what are supposedly "the 'facts'" and how we are supposed to "think", NOT for God's sake!
2.) We ARE seeing the deleterious effects already, you just won't hear about them on the MSM, and they are already in the thousands worldwide, probably soon to be millions. There can and will be long term effects as well, such as immune disorders and/or worsening of them in those who already have them pre-vaccination.
Only the brainwashed still trust the U.S. and global(ist) government(s), and their propaganda arm, the MSM; but, unfortunately, most "Americans" and world-citizens are still brainwashed, and most of them will sadly remain that way and never wake up to what's really going on, or won't until it's far too late.
Sorry, "Zeta", since she deleted her posts, or Ed deleted them, I can only post my reply in response to her deleted posts by "replying" to yours.
I am so exceedingly tired of "wackypants" like yourself. You and most people are part of a mass-insanity (and there can't be any more "wackypants" people than those), and live in a fantasy world (where government and the MSM "can be trusted"). Our own founders of the U.S. warned ALL OF US against trusting ANY government, including "our own". So, naturally, the mass-insane like yourself falsely believe that all those who have been set free by the truth and are no longer a part of the mass-insanity, and no longer live in a fantasy world, are supposedly the "crazy" ones, and that the real "wackypants" like yourself are the "sane" ones (I'd laugh, but you people are so sad). As Robert A. Heinlein so correctly said in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land, "The majority is usually WRONG"! [Emphasis provided by me.]
We're certainly living in a strange land and world when most people trust EVIL as they do. Speaking of which, I'm now of the impression that if the NSA and its corporate-fascist cohorts-in-widespread-crimes-against-humanity-and-war-and-many-other-crimes-aka-evil stopped the wrongdoing that Snowden blew the whistle on, and they would have him, he would go back to work for them (if he isn't already still doing so). Or, if they hadn't committed those crimes in the first place, he would still be working for them (again, if he isn't already). Some people still working for them, like OBL did right until his death in December 2001, are willing to be fall-guys and/or scapegoats in order to further the ends that the "Fourth Reich" globalists are working towards, and have almost completed, believing they will be a part of the relatively-limited number of survivors of the mass-culling of seven billion human beings from the face of the planet (if the corporate-fascist globalists get their way).
But the truly sane are supposedly "crazy", and the truly crazy are allegedly "sane".
Weird... I was emailed the deleted post & it seemed pretty benign. And usually on similar comment pages the deleted post remains catalogued chronologically marked 'deleted', here it was 'disappeared'. Ah, move on along folks... nothing to see here! (probably just the NSA screwin' with Ed)
The Western world is suffering from a huge lack of ability to find consensus. Centuries of corruption in institutions (media, governments, legal system, science) which should engage in a consensus finding process might be one of the reasons. Loss of trust and difficulty to orientate and navigate in the massive overflow of information leads to a dangerous state for the mind and for a society. The civil-war like events we saw with Trump and now with Covid in the US seem to reveal a disease of the society which has grown since long. Those events are only the salt which hurts enough to make us aware of those previously less visible wounds.
But there might be also some intended function which is not talked much about. Dividing the population in vaxxers/anti-vaxxers, stupid labeling of people by birth date like boomers/generation x (converting a continuum of people into tribes), supporters of political parties which are 99% the same crap but risking their life to fight each others,.... all that helps that people do not unite against the real oppression but waste their energy in tribal fights. Why are some countries doing so stupid provoking actions like only allow vaccinated people drive on the highway (Pakistan)? Or the draconic measurements in France? Or police brutality amplifying extreme sentiments? Are governments really that incompetent on the social side? Might be. But might be also that this serves a common goal of all the corrupt institutions to divide people so they do not gain power to show governments that the power comes from the people. Divide and conquer is such an old tactic, hard to believe the observed patterns happens completely by coincident.
for decades in western countries the appearance seems to matter more Thani substance. You can see this everywhere: in society (people), in politics, in the economy (the triumph of finance over industry is eloquent) and even in science, where the number of publications per year counts more to make a career than the content. . We also should all ask ourselves the right questions, if it is not a bit our fault that we find ourselves at this point.
Sorry to see that the trolls are here too. I just wanted to mention that Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I was very appropriate for your essay. Science can only be a search for the truth that never ends and sometimes reaches dead ends despite our best efforts. Keep writing - you are doing well.
While I understand your expertise and experience are based in an entirely different field and within a completely different government agency, I am admittedly surprised at the inability to see that the very same denial tactics, media control, and suppression of any dissenting information are at play here. This is partly my fault, I've had you on a pedestal of sorts for a while now (personal hero status to be transparent).
One does not have to deny the seriousness or danger of Covid to possess the ability to see the incredible impact on our privacy, rights and freedom happening with a swiftness unlike anything I have ever seen before. An impact that does not match the danger it claims to be countering.
The CDC, The WHO and the NIH are not so different from the NSA - government agencies with budgets and interests and people filling their offices and hallways making deals with private sector companies in exchange for anything worth bartering.
Science is not guiding this path we are on.
In fact, the legitimized scientific community out there without a hand in the pharma piggy bank is absolutely appalled at what is happening.
Your points about google-based journalism are completely valid - we are seeing this even in major news outlets, with narratives aimed to discredit any sort of question or dissent by citing papers having nothing to do with their points, and in some instances those papers and studies concluding the opposite of the journalist's point. No one is fact-checking the fact checkers.
Evidence based science is no longer the guiding principle here, it is all about narrative and shareholder interests.
This is a formal plea to someone who seems to be gifted in the art of skeptical research to dig a little, even if it's not your particular brand of Deep State Dissent.
This article misses the mark on a number of levels, but let's start with the nature of statistics. As the economist Frank Knight explained a hundred years ago, "risk" is not the same thing as "uncertainty." Risks can be quantified using statistical methods because a well-defined system with unchanging properties (like a pair of dice, a deck of cards, or a roulette wheel) can be used to generate independent events where the proportions of various outcomes will converge on a particular values even though we are ignorant of many of the specifics that govern which die faces or which card turns up, or which slot on the wheel the ball drops into in any given instance. By making enough observations to estimate the proportions, one can then extrapolate these proportions to anticipate future events of the same class using frequentist statistical methods. There are also Bayesian statistical methods that enable one to revise risk calculations as one gains more specific knowledge about the nature of the system, thus narrowing the class of events.
Uncertainty, on the other hand, can't be quantified in this fashion. There are unique systems that are constantly changing and qualitatively unlike other systems in important ways, rendering prior observations useless for knowing how the system will behave in a particular instance in the absence of detailed knowledge concerning its composition, arrangement of its parts, and physical/chemical laws governing the interactions among those parts. One can make decisions based on rough analogies and educated guesses, but this can open the door to potentially spectacular errors.
A classic example of such an error occurred in the credit ratings agencies (S&P and Moody's) with respect to the subprime real estate bubble that lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. The quantitative analysts in these agencies thought they knew what the probabilities of defaults were and rated various mortgage-backed securities accordingly, while the more experienced real estate securities experts thought the quants were crazy. The management sided with the quants, but it turned out that they were horribly wrong. Past stastistics concerning subprime mortgage default rates proved to be useless because the very act of giving high ratings to subprime-backed securities coupled with recent changes in bank capital regulations (known as "Basel II") was pumping enormous quantities of credit into the sector and thus greatly increasing the proportion of debtors who ultimately would default once the bubble burst.
Complex, uncontrolled, dynamic systems are always prone to these sorts of errors, which is why one must be extremely cautious about what conclusions to draw from statistical data concerning them. In the case of climate models, there is a lot that isn't known about the role of clouds, etc. that make even basic climate parameters hard to estimate accurately. If a UN agency then selects the models it likes and tries to extrapolate their predictions concerning temperature increases to analyze large-scale impacts on natural ecosystems or on human economies, then one has left the realm of quantitative calculations based on verifiable causal laws of physics and chemistry completely. Such pretense of knowledge is not science; it is the same sort of socialist central planning conceit that brought the former Soviet Union to its knees.
The slogan "follow the science" rings even more hollow when arbitrary authority is flaunted in place of rational persuasion. Science does not consist of a corrupt technocratic elite telling you what the facts are and what conclusions the rest of society must draw from them, while all contrary voices and inconvenient data get systematically censored from social media and banished from the nightly news and from leading scientific journals. Statistics do not serve the broader interests of the American people if only a few corporatist oligarchs and their lackeys get unfiltered access to them. If all we get to see is the carefully-crafted propaganda peddled by Dr. Fauci while actual statistics about adverse jab effects and highly asymmetrical disease risks are kept hidden from the public, we might as well have someone like Trofim Lysenko become the face of "science" instead.
I know one thing none of us can deny: The media is worthless. The only hope the state has for hanging on to their propaganda arm in the 21st century is by applying central control over digital communications. And the blockchain (thanks to arcane mathematics) will make sure they don’t. From there, it’s a free-for-all information distribution and consumption landscape. And that’s OK with me.
I realize you were using illustrative examples re the COVID and climate references—but I feel I must interject on your treatment of the concept of fact—vis-a-vis nuance.
For example, what about people who believe that there is evidence to support that the climate is changing, and that it is caused by human activity, but believe the models used to quantify risk are insufficiently supported, or that the policy proposals currently on the table are insufficiently supported as effective or acceptable means to mitigate that risk, or that alternatives with a less objectionable profile of tradeoffs have been given insufficient attention to justify precluding them.
Or with COVID, they accept that the vaccines are a good thing that address a legitimate threat to certain demographics, but feel that creating a vaccine passport system to encourage vaccine uptake has unacceptable tradeoffs with respect to granting the government increased powers over our lives. Or that the biosecurity paradigm is destructive because it reframes therapeutics as deployable weapons systems in a military theater.
These are valid concerns that live inside nuance that matters.
Is it fear of the actual vaccine or is it fear of the authoritarian state that promotes it? I ha e been double vaxx, but I am very empathetic towards those that do not trust the powers that be and are sceptical of the disaster capitalism that spins from above. Trust is so sacred and people are desperate for finding sources to enlighten them, rather than manipulate. Those sources are hard to find
I believe you’re right. But how does an individual that does not have a PhD in virology or environmental science know who to trust? The media is littered with “experts” that Are often financially biased.
So is the article you are referring to talking about numbers of deaths in folks who have received the vaccine? Btw, which vaccine, doesn't say - but I would be amazed if nobody died after receiving a vaccine - it would be a miracle - dying AFTER receiving a vaccine is not the same as dying BECAUSE of receiving one ...
User received a one-week ban for this comment. This is the first time I've engaged in any moderation at all, and I would rather not have to do it again. Any future bans will be permanent.
Why did I do this?
We are a very small community here, and that means it succeeds or fails based on how well we work together. For that to happen, it needs to be welcoming place: we need to have a baseline tolerance for dissenting views, yes, but also exercise generosity and good-faith in responding to those you disagree with. Calling someone a "willful-idiot" unworthy of a response will not help you change minds, and it does not make people feel welcome to engage.
I encourage this user to be more respectful of others when they return.
Not one person defended my RIGHT to freedom of speech, including "offensive" speech. It goes to show that most "Americans" don't know or understand the truth about freedom of speech (including, evidently, Edward Snowden himself), and that it INCLUDES "offensive" speech. (See my response to Ed after my "ban" expired, immediately below Ed's free-speech-violating edict and action.)
I know what GR is, and I read the article re the "alerts", updated, about the number of deaths of folks who have received the vaccine and THAT was the article I commented on - having read THAT I confess i had no great desire to read all that other stuff - was all that stuff you talk about in there, too?
No proof for aliens, but proof for angels and demons ... OK
As to my being a "willful idiot", is it better to be a "willful" or an "unwillful" one? Generally i have found that the insults start where the rationality ends ...
Thank you Edward for bringing your ethical and laser-like focus to the troubling, (but necessary) subject of climate change apathy. Scientists and, as a result, fossil fuel companies and world leaders have been aware of the existential threat climate change poses since at least the 1980s. All three groups have reacted variously with a spectrum of motivations. And here we are today.
For many decades, the information deficit model was deemed the gold standard for bringing us out of the polluted dark ages and into the sunshine of renewable clean energy future. This hasn’t happened quickly enough. What, then, should we focus on?
Understand the world-view of other people and meet them where they are (if possible - if not, try to leave them on good terms).
Avoid polarising political arguments and speak honestly person-to-person about your climate concerns and what local and immediate effects are evident.
Positive solution-based conversations.
Authentic story-telling breaks down ideological barriers and enables conversations which open peoples’ minds.
Try using inoculation theory as a way to improve identification of misinformation.
Finally, thank you Ed for all you have done and continue to do. You are are a hero to me. Your moral and ethical courage has been an uplifting example to us all, proving that we are capable of brave, noble conduct.
Good people around the world need your voice to help overcome the demonic lies and censorship by BigPharma that suppresses info and access to safe effective inexpensive early treatment remedies that could have saved millions of lives if public had not been denied this info by corrupt pub health "experts," msm and social media monopoly platforms working on behalf of BIgPharma via cynically named "Trusted News Initiative. Please educate yourself to the reality, elements of which are reflected in: https://richardrosenthal.substack.com/p/fda-fraud-deception-arrogance
The scheme to impose Covid19 and experimental "vaccines" on the world is rife with "anomalous" acts that objectively spell premeditated murder, but have been hidden from the public by the most aggressive propaganda and censorship campaign the world has ever known. For history of the diabolical campaign to demonize hydroxychloroquine, necessary for the vax cos to get Emergency Use Authorizations, please see: https://richardrosenthal.substack.com/p/time-to-call-a-knave-a-knave?r=13rnq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=email
Only by your getting better acquainted with the facts will you be able to help avert the tyranny that threatens to destroy what is left of democratic societies. Please do your part. Your courageous voice is desperately needed and can help save millions more lives.
Many thanks and abiding respects. Richard Rosenthal
The known scientific reasons to refuse inoculations include enhancement (quite applicable considering the enhancement observed in SARS and MERS) recombination, and contamination. As you stated statistical conclusions can be murky when relating to an individual, vaccines may save lives, they also damage and end life, for others. For someone so sharp on individual privacy and the implications to losing it, you seem to miss the grand implications of injecting viral genetic material and agents designed to affect such material. Hard to understand why anyone would accept a software patch, from anyone other than the OE Manufacturer. Best of Luck
I used to be 100% pro-Snowden, but he is becoming more and more of a false propagandist. He continues to be right-on about privacy and security issues, but he still blindly swallows the lies and false propaganda of the "(inter)national (in)security" state, the corporate-fascist global(ist) deep state shadow government that, along with "al CIAduh(!)", the NSA, et al., is who really runs the U.S. and the world, and is completely destroying our freedoms, liberties, rights AND OUR ENTIRE PLANET, INCLUDING MOST OF HUMANITY.
Snowden, like the majority of "Americans", refuses to COMPLETELY wake up and face 100% of the truth about what has really happened (e.g., 9/11 and its draconian, dystopian aftermath---all planned for by the way in the Project for a New American Century, etc.), and about what is really going on [i.e., the total takeover of our beloved country (the U.S.) and world by the Yale Skull & Bones "Fourth Reich" corporate-fascist globalist Nazis and their minions [who really attacked us on 9/11 and brought down all three of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers (including Building 7, otherwise known as the Solomon Brother's Building), and brought down our constitutional republic as well, ushering us into a real-life "1984" dystopian, and draconian, nightmare of authoritarian, increasingly becoming totalitarian, control of the U.S., the West and the world, overthrowing liberty, freedom and rights].
He, and they, also refuse to face that the same above-referenced people, "the Bill Gates' ilk" eugenicists and the rest of the "Fourth Reich" globalists, are behind the "pandemic" and the "inoculating" of everyone, and the increased calls for forced vaccination, violating our right(s) to informed CONSENT, and to the "my body (or my life), my right" [to refuse vaccination(s)], as well as our right(s) to bodily and psychological privacy, and to not have ANYTHING forced into, and/or taken away from, our bodies and/or our private spaces as a whole.
Soon those aforementioned anti-freedom-liberty-and-rights goons will be criminalizing "non-vaccination-compliance" and unreasonably (to put it mildly), and in violation of our rights to our persons and our bodies, and to freedom of choice in violation of our free will, and in violation of our rights as a whole, forcing virtually everyone to get vaccinated, including the immuno-compromised who the vaccines, if forced on them, will very likely murder them.
I have resisted it up until now, but I am increasingly coming to the conclusion, as a result of his latest articles, that Snowden continues to be a deep state shadow government operative in the (dis)guise of a True Patriot (a wolf in sheep's clothing; whereas I, on the other hand am a lamb in wolves' clothing, referring to my nom d'plume, "Steppen-Wolf"), and/or is still quite brainwashed by them (the deep state shadow government), and is therefore not to be trusted AT ALL.
I respectfully disagree with this post, Steppen-Wolf, while conceding that I understand it. I think there are many reasons to resist this vaccine; however, as I hope we all agree, it is and should be a personal choice, and I don’t hold anyone’s choice on this matter against them. The data in favor of getting vaccinated is not at all clear to me, and I feel I’ve seen much more of it than most – though not an expert by any means. That said, while this particular piece was less deeply thoughtful than others of Snowden’s, I judge a writer and a thinker by their best work. In all of us, there is going to be residue of who we once were, and he did in fact once work for the CIA. Even going through everything he has gone through is not enough to obliterate his past and who he was. After all, we grow out of who we once were. So while I think I know what you mean – sometimes things leap out at me that he says or writes, and it can be jarring because it strikes me as very incongruous with who he seems to be now – I also feel that on balance he has contributed immeasurably to the path forward we are all trying to forge. We are in a fight for the future, and to my eyes he has fought – and very courageously – on the right side.
Cindy - I think most folks seem to have missed the whole point of his post, which was how to respond in the face of uncertainty, the point I responded to in my first post here - in the form of a Pascal's wager ...
I don't think who he is "now" is any different from who he was then - looking at issues in terms of what we "know" and what we don't - and then deciding, is it better to act or not ... The fact that he seems to come down, if I am not mistaken, in favor of doing things that may help us deal with both the virus and human induced climate change rubs folks who deny both the wrong way, seems to be what is behind all the sturm und drang we see here ...
I, myself have issues with GOF research, which I think needs to be banned - was that what was involved in the advent of this particular virus - I don't know, and at this point doesn't matter because what we have to do is deal with it no matter how it arose. I am a believer in vaccines - but I think we maybe oughta stick to the more conventional vaccine platforms for a number of reasons ...
This post, for me, rather cemented my respect for this guy - not just because I happen to agree with him in this particular instance, but because of his approach to the issue ...
These issues are very complex. I do not think people missed the point, but rather need to challenge and expand on the complexities embedded in them. The dialogue it provokes is as important and as interesting as the article itself, and for that I am thankful. Erring on the side of doing things that may help isn't a bad message to pass along. But within the context of being uncertain of the end design (authoritarianism/corporate greed/lack of transparency and accountability...) I think the suggestion is met with healthy reservation. Mainly within the chaos of navigating the pandemic.
I think sometimes we, and i include myself, suffer from a "paralysis of analysis" - we analyze something to death, in this case perhaps literally, while the problem we are dealing with proceeds apace ...
I would suggest that navigating the pandemic and determining "the end design" of corp motivation are 2 issues that need different responses. The first being that we are faced with a disease that is killing us, though there are still those in denial of this fact, and we are faced with the "don't just stand there, do something" or "the don't do anything, just stand there" choices - this is where Pascal's wager comes in. If we choose the former, the speed at which the virus is "progressing" dictates we gotta do it pretty quickly (the same with climate change) - but we need to consider which "something" we should do. For me, vaccines are a mechanism for training our immune systems to deal effectively with the disease, without overwhelming it, and masks, of the proper material (re filtering efficiency) and fit (like making sure your seat belt is fastened) are a mechanism for "filtering" out the disease, as filters are a basic method for dealing with "air pollutants" of which this virus is one. So even though I have been vaccinated (J&J - personal choice) I still wear a mask with other "strangers" - maybe its a "belt and suspenders" approach. I am waiting and hoping for a better vaccine, not just one "tweaked" around a spike variant, in the meantime, what's the old saying, don't let the better be the enemy of the good - and i think these vaccines are good for what they purport to do, reduce severe illness and death - as for the transmission bit, the jury may still be out - so, I wear my mask ...
The second issue is one of our "market" approach, prioritizing profit over people - but that has been going on for a loooong time and requires a much wider, longer term approach - and i don't think we oughta wait to solve that before we deal with the first ,,,
So that's my take :)
Yes, that does APPEAR so.
He has to be careful with how he words things so that he isn't silenced. He also has to look credible, or he might not be listened to.
If you consider that Ed ' is a propagandist, falsely blind' and don't believe in what he is writing, then the question is why you are here.
Julia, we skeptics are just idiots if we don't read other people's ideas. Ed is wholly dependent on liberal goodwill. Vaccine skepticism would likely give him a cell next to Assange. And he is a smart brave guy. If anyone is likely to bring me an important new perspective it will be people like him.
The fact is that few people have direct knowledge of things like climate and the covid vaccine. The experts are 99.9% funded by interested parties who would not fund them if they didn't toe the line. Intelligent people must continually search for new perspectives and new information or we will live in a self imposed bubble of our own ideas.
Typical lack of understanding of, and respect for, freedom of speech. I have a right to come here and express myself, just as you do. But you free-speech-violators seek to shut some people up. Why are you here, to simply make "say-nothing" comments like the foregoing, and to shut down the free speech of those you disagree with because they "offend" you, by seeking to drive them away and/or shut them up? Again, how typical of typical right-violating people with little or not respect for and understanding of free speech.
With regard to Ed Snowden, I keep hoping I'll turn out to be wrong, and that I'll find that he's not on a big attention-seeking ego trip, but the more he writes, and the more he speaks at conferences and the like, the more my concerns about him are verified. He's getting off on all the attention; and, like Manning, is seeking his "fifteen minutes of fame" over and over again. At least Snowden does it in a more "mentally-healthful" way than Manning, who is an extremely mentally disturbed person that, at times when not receiving the attention Manning believes Manning should get, attempts suicide over and over again. (I don't underestimate the hell-on-earth, including torture, Manning was put through by the U.S. government, which undoubtedly severally-worsened his mental illness---particularly because I've too have been in prison and know, from personal experience, the hell that that system can put one through.)
The more I watch and read Snowden with discernment, the more I detect his trying too hard to be "sophisticated" and to show his "intelligence", seeking the attention and "glorification" that he invariably receives in response to his communications, making himself out to be such an "advanced thinker". And now he is "mentally-masterbating" his way to more and more attention, though in a more "sophisticated" way than Manning. Yet I detect that Snowden is mentally unbalanced as well, and I see through his "attention-grabbing".
Also, Snowden's articles of late have been less and less beneficial, and have increasingly become "look at me, I'm an extremely-smart person" forays into over-complicating matters with excess philosophizing, rather than sticking to issues concerning the "'security' state" condition of our country and world, and how what the U.S. and global government(s) are doing is leading no where good, and to increasing "'1984'-style" "totalitarianization" of the U.S. and the world, which he doesn't warn about enough, if at all. Thus, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that even he lacks the True Discernment to be able face just how dire things truly are, and how grave what all of it is leading to truly is, and that he doesn't want to face it, because he still holds out false hope for "beyond-the-point-of-no-return" evil government, and still believes in much of the evils they foist on the world, because he falsely believes they're "necessary".
Unfortunately, you are wrong about me. but that's your opinion. I never thought that freedom of speech, like other freedoms, is freedom of faith. freedom of thought, in need of limitation. All that you ascribe to me is, again, your opinion. As for Edward, here you personally insulted not only him. writing. "However, I notice that Snowden is also mentally unstable, and I see him" drawing attention "but me, as I like him, like his ideas, thought, manner of presentation. I think many will agree that such statements are disrespectful and offensive and, for that matter, a violation of the law.
Again, you don't understand freedom of speech. According to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case LAW precedent(s) interpreting and explaining the First Amendment, particularly Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), free(dom of) speech INCLUDES "offensive" speech. Contrary to the falsehoods that you've been taught and/or led to believe, NO ONE has ANY right to not be offended, anywhere; otherwise, if they did, it would contradict the First Amendment, which is part of the Supreme Law(s) of the Land, the U.S. Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution; which, it is the DUTY OF *ALL* AMERICANS, including you, to protect, preserve, defend, uphold, AND OBEY....
....EVERYWHERE! Respecting EVERYONE'S freedom of speech, everywhere.
Anyway, I will not justify my comments, for they stand, nothing but accurately, on their own. And, before you (may) say it, NO, I am NOT unaware that there are other U.S. federal and state laws that contradict SCOTUS and the First Amendment; but again, since the latter is the SUPREME, FIRST AND FOREMOST *LAW* OF THE LAND, THAT *ALL OTHER LAW(S)* **MUST** CONFORM TO OR THEY ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL, those so-called "laws" are, as I said, unconstitutional, and we have absolutely no legal obligation(s) WHATSOEVER to obey such unconstitutional "laws". In fact, it is our DUTY to *NOT* obey them; because, since they don't conform with the Supreme Law(s) of the Land, and contradict, contravene and violate them, they do not hold or have ANY force of law, and are legally unenforceable (and/or are ONLY "enforceable" ILLEGALLY).
[Now watch, you'll probably ignore all that I just wrote, misinterpret it, twist it around, and/or not take it seriously, etc. (and will write some "defense" against using offensive speech, that supposedly, and nothing but falsely and fraudulently, states that "offensive speech is 'illegal'", and/or that people allegedly have the "right" to not be offended{?}; but, if so, please spare me).]
There is a line between free speech and harassment with willful harm, defamation, and slander.
Good point! Mr Wolf might be, how shall I say, handicapped in some way . . . In any case, thanks to you, Julia. Smart and perceptive post!
"... Snowden continues to be a deep state shadow government operative..." [Citation needed]
Good grief!
And clearly you are still brainwashed by them, too.
Hmmm - it appears that anybody who flouts your company line must be brainwashed, eh?
Wow are you from Earth ?
Your post is a bit wordy.
Sorry, I disagree with you 100%. Is that okay?
Yet another troll trolling to start trouble.
I think you're a deep state shadow cooperative
at least he uses his own name
It bothers me when people say this. We don't know what reasons anyone might have for remaining anonymous. The substance of what someone says is what matters, not whether or not they are anonymous.
Amen!
Just like George Orwell.
Guess what - when you catch a disease like this, the virus is "injecting" its own genetic material - As to ADE which is what I think you refer to in the beginning, if it is discovered in early trials, the vaccine is scrapped. As to "contamination", that is something we need to, and can, insure against. And, unlike with a vaccine, the dose you get from a virus you breathe in is a wild card ...
If we were just talking about "individual privacy", or even individual risk, you may have a point - but we are not - the more folks that have the virus, the more petri dishes for the virus to mutate and recombine in, and the more opportunities for a virus to emerge that your own immune system (your OE Manufacturer) let alone another's, can't handle. Using monoclonal antibodies are the "patches", vaccines are "data", fed into your natural, (as opposed to artificial) intelligence system, in amounts that don't overwhelm the system
And remember, it's not just your own "private" life you are risking, but others' lives as well, maybe even the ones you actually care about ...
The jab doesn't stop transmission so there's no benefit to the community if I get one.
It reduces your viral load, which reduces the amount of virus that you scatter when you're near people, so it reduces transmission. It probably doesn't stop transmission to others entirely, but it helps.
Actually, to quote Faucci, "What we learned that's new, John, in answer to your question, is that when you look at the level of virus in the nasopharynx of people who are vaccinated who get breakthrough infections, it's really quite high and equivalent to the level of virus in the nasopharynx of unvaccinated people who get infected."
The virus reproduces IN YOUR BODY.
How do you know? From the government and/or MSM false propaganda, correct?
And you know it's not true? How do you know? Do you have your own "propaganda" to that effect?
Did you make that up? An interesting fact, most who died in the Civil War died of disease. Healthy country people died at twice the rate of puny slum dwellers.
It’s called natural immunity.
SH, Guess what…an encounter with the virus is not the same as “catching the disease”. Most individuals digested the information in this ‘new’ virus without any symptoms whatsoever. Moreover, when we encounter the virus in the wild, the genetic information gets indexed in the tonsils, tracked throughout the body, and digested into natural and lifetime immunity. Your advice, bypasses the known and unknown gates of the immune system, and moreover has a high likelihood of contamination, as evidenced historically with lab made inoculations, as well as these CV2 ones at hand.
High Viral load is present in both on vaccinated individuals (following the vaccination) and unvaccinated individuals, depending on what stage they are in. A high viral load is also conducive to transmission, which puts the kabbash on the whole asymptotic transmission BS
So high viral loads can occur in unvaccinated folks, i.e. those who encountered it in the wild, which is conducive to transmission - but just sorta "tracks through the body" - whereas high viral loads in vaccinated individuals do what, exactly ...
First you say that "an encounter with the virus" results in "most" folks having no symptoms, i.e. asymptomatic, even though they may have high vital loads, which, as you say, are conducive to transmission Then you say that high viral loads, conducive to transmission, being present in BOTH vaccinated and unvaccinated folks, "puts the kabbash on the whole 'asymptotic' transmission BS" Does a virus transmitted by unvaccinated folks result in asymptomatic disease, but the same virus transmitted by vaccinated folks doesn't? Now that is very interesting, how does that work?
Which one is the actual BS ...
High viral loads result from the virus replicating inside the body of the infected person. The purpose of vaccination used to be to prevent that replication, which also prevented transmission. The body's immune system would recognise the virus upon entry and target it for destruction. If you're observing a high viral load in a vaccinated individual, that's because the vaccine didn't work and is not stopping the virus from breaking into and bursting the cells of the host organism, resulting not only in disease but also in millions of transmissible copies of the virus.
Hi! Waiting to hear from MMS about what I saw as contradictions in his post, which I don't think your response dealt with ... To address the points you make (though I don't think they resolve the contradictions I see in MMS' post, above) ... Here is my understanding of the process ..
The bodies immune system has 2 arms, an innate and an adaptive one - the first, innate, are the "first responders", troops that attack right away - at the point of entry (nasopharyngeal mucosal surfaces), and from my reading, seem to have a high level of IgA expressing abs, as opposed to IgG which are the ones most tested for (and then there are IgMs) - OK, blah, blah so what - the vaccine, encounters the immune system via a different route, injection If the innate system works pretty well, it may keep the virus from entering the lower respiratory tract and on, that is why there is some speculation about developing a nasal vaccine as well, a nip it in the bud so to speak - that approach makes sense to me - nasal or nasal plus injection.
Another fly in the ointment, so to speak, is the extent to which the PCR tests, the Gold Standard, by which we diagnose CoVid -19 measure the presence of living replicable virus, or dead stuff, studies in folks who keep testing + for the virus for weeks or months, have shown that these long lasting "viruses" are non replicable - so, the question for me would be - if both vaccinated and unvaccinated folks can have high loads of virus to shed - is there a difference in replicability of the virus from the two - is there a difference in pathogenicity between what the two groups are "transmitIng". In other words, I don't think the presence of high loads in vaccinated people necessarily indicates the vaccines "don't work" - we would have to study that and to my knowledge nobody is conducting those - they would be expensive - a lot harder to culture organisms than to test for them ...
As I have said - I think we need better vaccines, with, IMO, a better platform - the problem is these were hyped as the latest "state of the art technology" - too much was expected, but for me the relevant question is whether what we have now works doing what, exactly - "statistically" it works to reduce severe disease and death - we do need one that reduces transmissability as well, hence perhaps the nasal approach, and one, IMO, that targets more than the spike protein ...
As my posts on other subjects on Mr. Snowden's site indicate, I am a "low tech person" - forget the GE stuff, I think it will, if it hasn't already, lead us down the rabbit hole where we will find ....
Hi SH, no need to wait. The only contradictions you’ve identified are based on the scientifically invalid assumption that asymptomatic transmission is actually a thing. Once you clear that up, it should be easy to digest.
SH, the unvaccinated individual who displays no symptoms does not transmit. If they develop symptoms (minority of encounters) they will become transmitters. If they recover (majority of encounters) their body will have incorporated the new information and we will observe natural immunity, (so far holding robust and enduring, we should expect lifetime immunity, based on historical observations). They no longer are transmitters once they are immune.
Vaccinated individuals on the other hand, not only contribute to the possibility of recombination but also will be transmitters (if they have symptoms). Their immunity (not as robust or enduring) will continue to be bombarded and they will continue to contribute to recombination possibilities. Hope that helps.
Uh, I think you are relying on "old data" with regard to "no symptoms, no transmission" that was the feeling with SARS CoV-1 on the basis of which folks were told don't need masks unless you are sick" With SARS CoV-2 however, it became apparent that you could have "no" or "mild" symptoms and still transmit, the advice changed "Yeah, wear a mask!" ...so one can harbor the virus, without being sick - offering possibilities for mutation and recombination - and in fact there is some suggestion that perhaps some at least of our variants have arisen in folks whose immune systems didn't completely clear it ...
"They are no longer emitters once they are immune" and when is that, exactly ....
"Historical observations" lead us to expect "lifetime immunity" - historical observations of what, precisely - we only have "historical observations" of CoV-2 for what, a coupla years? And the only "lifetime" observations of folks with it, are from those who have - died. And then of, of course there's the flu .... any "lifetime immunity" from that?
Any body that "encounters" the virus, for a short or longer time, has the possibility of fostering "recombinations" - including folks who "encountered, but not cleared it, and that's a whole other story .. Your idea that only vaccinated, as opposed to unvaccinated, folks with high viral loads can transmit, with or without symptoms, requires proof ...
Yes correct High viral load AND transmission, AND symptoms all are tethered. Their vaccination status is not.
You critique as if this is a brand new strain with no historical progeny. SARS1, 2 AND 3 ALL came from the same lab and ALL are related. In Light of this FACT you have adopted ‘New’ explanations for transmission and drivers. Newsflash friend: This entirely predictable and treatable respiratory infection with conventional and stockpiled pretreatment medicines. You’ve been utterly lied to. Sorry.
I don't think its my advice that has been contaminated ...
High viral loads will be present in both cohorts with symptoms….hence putting the Kabbash on the idea of asymptomatic transmission. All lockdowns and masking have been a COMPLETE WASTE. Perhaps come back to discuss after digesting this information. https://t.co/HJIqINweX4
OK - repeating what you said above doesn't resolve the contradictions I outlined, If you aren't going to address those, save your bits and bytes, I don't have time to spend (another) hour watching a video ....
Ok let’s try again. High viral load is correlated to the depth of infection, and is required for effective transmission. It is present both in vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts, and is tethered to the extent of their infection, NOT their vaccination status. Sure why spend and hour learning about Truth when you can spend 19months+ swimming in lies?
The trials on SARS and MERS did in fact observe ADE and were scrapped. This SARS2 variant inoculation (really SARS3) did not have animal trials,thanks to warpspeedo, and as far as I know, we don’t inject humans with new variants, for you know, ethical reasons.
In fact, there were animal studies. I looked over several of them, but didn't read every word. I believe the trials for SARS that were problematical used ferrets, because of some sort of similarity to humans in terms of upper respiratory infections. And they didn't use those in the animal studies for COVID-19 -- they used mice and primates.
Please try again. The normal studies you are attempting to equate CV2 studies with take 24 months at minimum with deaths over 150 being sufficient to scrap. You are still under 1 year and over 12,000 deaths and 400k injured.
I am not trying to "equate" anything, I am simply stating that there were animal studies. I don't know a lot about animal studies, but when I looked over the ones for Covid vaccines, they struck me on logic alone as being utterly inadequate. Sorry, I was sleepy last night when I posted that. What I wanted to say is that while those who are pro-Covid vaccines make stuff up out of thin air (to my ears), we who oppose the mass vaxxing of people who are not at risk, and who oppose mandates, should attempt to be accurate because our words will be challenged more rigorously than theirs.
Over 150 out of how many - 12,000 out of how many ...
Well, considering the oath to do no harm, it doesn’t apply. 150 deaths from a vaccine was enough to scrap the vaccine (ex. Swineflu). We are currently at 12k. Also keep in mind the data uptake techniques are ALSO under centralized assault as evidenced by the violent traffic crashes being counted as covid deaths. Here maybe this short clip will help you understand how we arrive at skewed conclusions and why now, being vaccinated with 2 boosters will br considered “unvaccinated” https://twitter.com/pandemichoax21/status/1433455755680702467?s=21
SARS variant inoculation? Are you referring to a variant of the virus or to the vaccine?
I’m referring to the SARS and MERS vaccine trials in which inoculated animals had a harder time dealing with later encounters. To do that, they inoculate the animals with the vaccine, they wait and observe, then re-inoculate them with the wild virus. If those animals do worse than the control group animals which have only encountered the wild virus, they consider that ‘enhancement’ or more accurately-‘disease enhancement’.
They don’t do this trial with humans because for some reason it’s not ethical to inoculate humans with the wild virus, it’s ONLY ethical to inoculate humans with the vaccine. 🤪🤪🤪
Are you suggesting that there is an ADE phenomenon involved with the current ones? Proof?
Proof in this live experiment? Sure; check on India, Israel in their variant waves and compare that to the unvaccinated cohort. Then wait and see how many more variant waves they will create under their strategy.
SARS-CoV-2 is the more proper name for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The "CoV" portion stands for "co-variant", I believe. The diseases are fairly closely related.
Guess what - the virus itself "injects you with genetic material" in uncontrolled doses - it also damages and ends life ....
“Uncontrolled doses”?😂 let me help you. The virus itself “injects you with genetic material” that was replicated in a human and provides a full profile for immune systems to index. On the other hand, the inoculation is lab made, myopic, outdated, and inhibits the development of a full profile immunity index.
All vaccines are "lab made"
We do need better vaccines, on multiple platforms ...
Correct and hence are all likely contaminated with retroviral codes as a result. This is just one of many known reasons to avoid if possible.
Ah, so avoid ALL vaccines - great idea! Back with measles, polio, etc.
You believe this business model started in 2020?
From my limited knowledge of history it seems that we are threading a dangerous path with COVID legislation all over the world. I'm starting to see the precursors of 2001 and WWII everywhere. I don't disagree that COVID is harmful, I just can't help but see it as a 9/11 v2 where everyone is so deadly afraid of a danger to the point where they surrender everything for an illusion of safety. One study I became aware of around the start of 2020 is "Pathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism" https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/MurraySchallerSuedfeld2013.pdf Having watched the events unfold with that in the back of my mind, as well as some basic knowledge of history and psychology, has been one of the scariest events of my life. It truly does seem to me like a carbon copy of 2001. We were facing an (at the time) unknown threat and the fear and uncertainty that created was abused to the fullest by politicians all over the world to introduce horrific and totalitarian legislation under the guise of safety. All around the globe it suddenly became "the new normal" to carry around cell phones with closed-source government apps for contact tracing. I doubt I have to explain to you how that can potentially be abused.
Already during the initial panic people completely lost their composure and in many countries allowed their governments to pass "temporary emergency legislation" to give them emergency powers and in many cases blatantly violate the constitution of the country. For instance in Denmark 18m mink were culled due to suspicion that they were infected with COVID. The farmers who had their lives ruined were of course promised full compensation. Unfortunately someone forgot that and when it came to actually handing out that compensation suddenly the money printers ran dry and money was nowhere to be found. This was later declared unconstitutional, and the government started backtracking and saying it was "just a recommendation" in spite of armed police forcefully entering mink farms. Ultimately this of course ended up with no one major being held accountable and everything proceeding as usual.
After the initial panic had died down I started researching COVID a bit more in depth due to my inherent mistrust of the CCP owing to their less-than-ideal human rights track record. I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that it was very likely related to the Wuhan Institute. The moment I tried to talk to anyone online about this I was of course immediately banned from social media for "spreading misinformation" and even pointing out how the WHO had uncritically shared CCP propaganda around "No human to human transmission" would immediately get me labelled a nutjob in my social life. Regardless of repeated attempts at civil discourse most people seems to have swallowed the whole "authoritative sources" of social media hook, line and sinker. Even purely scientific criticism routinely got dismissed. Science very quickly got replaced by the religion of scientism where any criticism of the official narrative is crazy and people just need to "follow the science" which I find rather ironic since that would usually be accompanied by some random news article. I try my very best to remain objective and open around my own biases. I'm fully aware that I am far from what one would consider "normal" but sometimes I just can't help but think it is the world that is going mad. I've unironically had people call me a science denier for pointing out that it was ridiculous to compare the raw number of cases in Denmark and the US with eachother despite Denmark having a population of 5.6 million. (In case anyone is interested, yes, Denmark did have less cases than the US. Go figure) As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a recent piece there is also the bizarre refusal to ever apply cost-benefit analysis to COVID measures. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-bizarre-refusal-to-apply-cost.
Since then government propaganda has gotten even worse. Once again I've seen examples from all over the world of leaders assuring people that they have no plans to introduce vaccine passports or anything similar while at the same time in other interviews openly advocating for vaccine passports. And when called out on it the near-universal response has been "That is just a conspiracy theory".
Of course, one cannot have events unfolding on a global scale without politicians lying about it somewhere, but I cannot shake the unease that comes from observing these clear inconsistencies and the complete refusal by the mainstream press to address any of them. I'd personally feel significantly better about taking a vaccine if politicians would just be open about it. It was developed in less than a year, of course there are going to be mistakes, and yet there has been pretty much no transparency around the process. For instance I think the contracts the medical industry have scored are completely unacceptable. I would prefer to get vaccinated but I cannot with good conscience allow the complete erosion of our rights to get it. I find the lack of understanding for the anti-government perspective absolutely baffling. If there is one thing that can make me start questioning something it is censorship. After all "If you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You are simply proving that you fear what he has to say". Yet for some reason the government seems to think that the best way to go about things is the use of force. I've talked with an Australian friend of mine about this a couple of times and he is likewise terrified and the psychotic behavior of police and how they seem to have completely lost touch with reality. See this video for an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YtsdzkDZ5o This is yet another massive red flag to me. I am reminded of the Nuremberg trials and the insistence from the nazis that they were "just following orders".
This raises the question: even if you make the assumption that someone is 100% on board with everything that has happened so far, what makes you think that the police/military/anyone else will step up and protect you if it ever does go too far. I fear that we are heading down the path of WWII were we end up so terrified of a certain group of people (In this case those of us that are not yet vaccinated) that people are willing to commit the same atrocities, this time in the name of medical fascism and with no regard for people who cannot take the vaccine for medical reasons.
Perhaps I just don't stray far from the beaten path of the internet but it is very rare for me to bump into anyone who is genuinely completely lost in a conspiracy theory and think COVID is actually sent to earth by aliens as a form of population control or that vaccines cause autism, etc. It seems to be an overwhelming majority of people who has seen through the obvious propaganda (Not saying that the propaganda is necessarily untrue, but it is still propaganda nonetheless) surrounding it and how many of our rights have been infringed in the name of "safety".
In my eyes the issue seems to be that we DONT all agree on the facts. And that anytime anyone asks an honest question they are met with a wall of obvious propaganda and often massive hypocrisy from politicians that will say that we should all be extremely careful and wear masks, only to then the next day go to a private party with no mask. I for one do not blame people for getting cynical and nihilistic, I frankly struggle to understand how you can remain so optimistic and hopeful that things will change when most of the (legislative) damage that happened as a response to 9/11 is still around.
A complete sidenote to all of this: Is it just me or did your post end rather abruptly?
This turned out a lot longer and more ramble-y than intended. It is also not as well sourced as I would have liked and I forgot to include this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_pre-war_Nazi_Germany in case anyone wants to never sleep again
Excellent response. I couldn't have worded it better, I hope Edward replies to this. I thought this particular post by Edward's did not have much information in it in all honesty, which surprised me. Unless I missed something?
We don't agree on all the facts. The FDA says that Ivermectin doesn't help with COVID, but peer-reviewed RCT studies show that it does. https://c19ivermectin.com/ Who are you going to believe? Scientists or politicians? The politicians don't want to give up their power. The vaccine makers don't want to give up their contracts. The FDA only allowed the vaccines because there was "no treatment". If Ivermectin was seen as a treatment, that would have been the end of the vaccines.
Russ Nelson: I agree with you. One needs only look at the problem from perspective of other countries. AND - to follow the money. Cheap solutions are very bad for vaccine profits. End of story. Very surprised that Ed is not seeing this. We need to educate him. The question is not, should we believe politicians or scientists. The question is, should we believe epidemiologists who actually see patients and have no conflict of interest? Lots of political advisors, it turns out, have MD's, but are so politically ambitious that they have never bothered seeing patients in their lives.
No, only granting of EUA
Excellent post you put in perfect words what I could not
Everything happening is terrifying. In Australia, the government has lost its mind. It would be ironic if things are calmer and freer in Russia than in other places, and maybe Snowden sees the world differently from us based on that. (I have no idea -- I don't know much about Russia at all.) I think I read that Putin has banned vaccine mandates?
My aussie friend actually sent me this a while back lol https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vFcvGs8MJ4Y
Haha, that's a great video, the world is truly upside down.
Addict: My thoughts exactly. I am a new subscriber, and I scrolled down to find the rest of it. No more written.
Knowing the history of some of these drugs companies, and seeing how heavily the governments are trying to push the vaccines onto people, and create COVID passports, amongst all the other ways they are monitoring us and controlling our media (As you said, they Google for you) - how can people not be suspicious of the vaccines? It's not like these people have always had our best interests at heart.
They have been damaging their case for vaccines, yes.
Is this a fact: "the vaccine (which saves lives)"? I'd suggest we're in the midst of 'the long-term study'. The vaxxed have volunteered to participate, the unvaxxed are the control group (which the PTB would like to eliminate, ensuring no actual data is procured). Perhaps in 10 years, we'll have the results.
I think there are two parts to this equation.
1. Is it preventing death / long term illness from COVID-19? The answer here appears to be yes; hospitals around the US are reporting that way more of the hospitalized and dead from covid are now unvaccinated. Yes there are breakthrough cases, but it's a lot fewer.
2. Does the vaccine do long term damage? Yes, this one is less certain. However, the vaccine experts say that if a vaccine is going to have bad effects, it'll happen in weeks, not years. It's been long enough now, we would have seen the deleterious effects already.
It's important to point out here that in a Pfizer study that used mid-March as the end of data collection, YES, fewer people died of Covid in the vaccinated group; however, fewer people died of ALL causes in the placebo group. I think it's important to look at Covid as one part of an immense and immensely complex society. So much that we have done is overkill that imo ends up doing more harm than good. As for "experts," has anybody revisited Eisenhower's farewell speech lately? It's known mainly for his phrase "military-industrial complex." But he also speaks of the grave danger of government funding of science and further says this: "In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the great and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific, technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, to integrate these and other forces new and old within the principles of our democratic system, ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."
Wow... powerful quote! Thanks for sharing that. Deepens my respect for, perhaps, the last humane president.
His speech was so prophetic, wasn't it? And, yes, humane. He used it to warn us of what might occur if we weren't careful. And we weren't careful, so here we are.
Sorry, *** should be "to the equal and opposite danger"
1.) So the "hospitals", government and MSM claim. Every person has got to stop trusting them. The MSM are the biggest false propaganda ministry of government to ever exist in the entire history of the planet. Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, would be green with envy to get a hold of the level of propaganda ministry we have today. They have "al CIAduh(!)" agents embedded throughout "journalism", and actually have their evil, lying, neo-Nazi "talking heads" constantly appearing and telling us what are supposedly "the 'facts'" and how we are supposed to "think", NOT for God's sake!
2.) We ARE seeing the deleterious effects already, you just won't hear about them on the MSM, and they are already in the thousands worldwide, probably soon to be millions. There can and will be long term effects as well, such as immune disorders and/or worsening of them in those who already have them pre-vaccination.
Only the brainwashed still trust the U.S. and global(ist) government(s), and their propaganda arm, the MSM; but, unfortunately, most "Americans" and world-citizens are still brainwashed, and most of them will sadly remain that way and never wake up to what's really going on, or won't until it's far too late.
Ah, so where did YOU hear about them ...
Yup - gotta stop trusting those hospitals, eh - has anybody died from Covid, or is it all our imagination - tell that to their relatives ....
This is the MSM story line... I'm skeptical.
Sorry, "Zeta", since she deleted her posts, or Ed deleted them, I can only post my reply in response to her deleted posts by "replying" to yours.
I am so exceedingly tired of "wackypants" like yourself. You and most people are part of a mass-insanity (and there can't be any more "wackypants" people than those), and live in a fantasy world (where government and the MSM "can be trusted"). Our own founders of the U.S. warned ALL OF US against trusting ANY government, including "our own". So, naturally, the mass-insane like yourself falsely believe that all those who have been set free by the truth and are no longer a part of the mass-insanity, and no longer live in a fantasy world, are supposedly the "crazy" ones, and that the real "wackypants" like yourself are the "sane" ones (I'd laugh, but you people are so sad). As Robert A. Heinlein so correctly said in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land, "The majority is usually WRONG"! [Emphasis provided by me.]
We're certainly living in a strange land and world when most people trust EVIL as they do. Speaking of which, I'm now of the impression that if the NSA and its corporate-fascist cohorts-in-widespread-crimes-against-humanity-and-war-and-many-other-crimes-aka-evil stopped the wrongdoing that Snowden blew the whistle on, and they would have him, he would go back to work for them (if he isn't already still doing so). Or, if they hadn't committed those crimes in the first place, he would still be working for them (again, if he isn't already). Some people still working for them, like OBL did right until his death in December 2001, are willing to be fall-guys and/or scapegoats in order to further the ends that the "Fourth Reich" globalists are working towards, and have almost completed, believing they will be a part of the relatively-limited number of survivors of the mass-culling of seven billion human beings from the face of the planet (if the corporate-fascist globalists get their way).
But the truly sane are supposedly "crazy", and the truly crazy are allegedly "sane".
So which are you?
Weird... I was emailed the deleted post & it seemed pretty benign. And usually on similar comment pages the deleted post remains catalogued chronologically marked 'deleted', here it was 'disappeared'. Ah, move on along folks... nothing to see here! (probably just the NSA screwin' with Ed)
So what did this "deleted" post say. and who was the author?
I suspect it was deleted by the author… I respect their right to do so.
In saying that TPTB would like to eliminate the unvaxxed, is leaving them unvaxxed the way to do it?
The Western world is suffering from a huge lack of ability to find consensus. Centuries of corruption in institutions (media, governments, legal system, science) which should engage in a consensus finding process might be one of the reasons. Loss of trust and difficulty to orientate and navigate in the massive overflow of information leads to a dangerous state for the mind and for a society. The civil-war like events we saw with Trump and now with Covid in the US seem to reveal a disease of the society which has grown since long. Those events are only the salt which hurts enough to make us aware of those previously less visible wounds.
But there might be also some intended function which is not talked much about. Dividing the population in vaxxers/anti-vaxxers, stupid labeling of people by birth date like boomers/generation x (converting a continuum of people into tribes), supporters of political parties which are 99% the same crap but risking their life to fight each others,.... all that helps that people do not unite against the real oppression but waste their energy in tribal fights. Why are some countries doing so stupid provoking actions like only allow vaccinated people drive on the highway (Pakistan)? Or the draconic measurements in France? Or police brutality amplifying extreme sentiments? Are governments really that incompetent on the social side? Might be. But might be also that this serves a common goal of all the corrupt institutions to divide people so they do not gain power to show governments that the power comes from the people. Divide and conquer is such an old tactic, hard to believe the observed patterns happens completely by coincident.
for decades in western countries the appearance seems to matter more Thani substance. You can see this everywhere: in society (people), in politics, in the economy (the triumph of finance over industry is eloquent) and even in science, where the number of publications per year counts more to make a career than the content. . We also should all ask ourselves the right questions, if it is not a bit our fault that we find ourselves at this point.
Sorry to see that the trolls are here too. I just wanted to mention that Albrecht Durer's Melencolia I was very appropriate for your essay. Science can only be a search for the truth that never ends and sometimes reaches dead ends despite our best efforts. Keep writing - you are doing well.
While I understand your expertise and experience are based in an entirely different field and within a completely different government agency, I am admittedly surprised at the inability to see that the very same denial tactics, media control, and suppression of any dissenting information are at play here. This is partly my fault, I've had you on a pedestal of sorts for a while now (personal hero status to be transparent).
One does not have to deny the seriousness or danger of Covid to possess the ability to see the incredible impact on our privacy, rights and freedom happening with a swiftness unlike anything I have ever seen before. An impact that does not match the danger it claims to be countering.
The CDC, The WHO and the NIH are not so different from the NSA - government agencies with budgets and interests and people filling their offices and hallways making deals with private sector companies in exchange for anything worth bartering.
Science is not guiding this path we are on.
In fact, the legitimized scientific community out there without a hand in the pharma piggy bank is absolutely appalled at what is happening.
Your points about google-based journalism are completely valid - we are seeing this even in major news outlets, with narratives aimed to discredit any sort of question or dissent by citing papers having nothing to do with their points, and in some instances those papers and studies concluding the opposite of the journalist's point. No one is fact-checking the fact checkers.
Evidence based science is no longer the guiding principle here, it is all about narrative and shareholder interests.
This is a formal plea to someone who seems to be gifted in the art of skeptical research to dig a little, even if it's not your particular brand of Deep State Dissent.
This article misses the mark on a number of levels, but let's start with the nature of statistics. As the economist Frank Knight explained a hundred years ago, "risk" is not the same thing as "uncertainty." Risks can be quantified using statistical methods because a well-defined system with unchanging properties (like a pair of dice, a deck of cards, or a roulette wheel) can be used to generate independent events where the proportions of various outcomes will converge on a particular values even though we are ignorant of many of the specifics that govern which die faces or which card turns up, or which slot on the wheel the ball drops into in any given instance. By making enough observations to estimate the proportions, one can then extrapolate these proportions to anticipate future events of the same class using frequentist statistical methods. There are also Bayesian statistical methods that enable one to revise risk calculations as one gains more specific knowledge about the nature of the system, thus narrowing the class of events.
Uncertainty, on the other hand, can't be quantified in this fashion. There are unique systems that are constantly changing and qualitatively unlike other systems in important ways, rendering prior observations useless for knowing how the system will behave in a particular instance in the absence of detailed knowledge concerning its composition, arrangement of its parts, and physical/chemical laws governing the interactions among those parts. One can make decisions based on rough analogies and educated guesses, but this can open the door to potentially spectacular errors.
A classic example of such an error occurred in the credit ratings agencies (S&P and Moody's) with respect to the subprime real estate bubble that lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. The quantitative analysts in these agencies thought they knew what the probabilities of defaults were and rated various mortgage-backed securities accordingly, while the more experienced real estate securities experts thought the quants were crazy. The management sided with the quants, but it turned out that they were horribly wrong. Past stastistics concerning subprime mortgage default rates proved to be useless because the very act of giving high ratings to subprime-backed securities coupled with recent changes in bank capital regulations (known as "Basel II") was pumping enormous quantities of credit into the sector and thus greatly increasing the proportion of debtors who ultimately would default once the bubble burst.
Complex, uncontrolled, dynamic systems are always prone to these sorts of errors, which is why one must be extremely cautious about what conclusions to draw from statistical data concerning them. In the case of climate models, there is a lot that isn't known about the role of clouds, etc. that make even basic climate parameters hard to estimate accurately. If a UN agency then selects the models it likes and tries to extrapolate their predictions concerning temperature increases to analyze large-scale impacts on natural ecosystems or on human economies, then one has left the realm of quantitative calculations based on verifiable causal laws of physics and chemistry completely. Such pretense of knowledge is not science; it is the same sort of socialist central planning conceit that brought the former Soviet Union to its knees.
The slogan "follow the science" rings even more hollow when arbitrary authority is flaunted in place of rational persuasion. Science does not consist of a corrupt technocratic elite telling you what the facts are and what conclusions the rest of society must draw from them, while all contrary voices and inconvenient data get systematically censored from social media and banished from the nightly news and from leading scientific journals. Statistics do not serve the broader interests of the American people if only a few corporatist oligarchs and their lackeys get unfiltered access to them. If all we get to see is the carefully-crafted propaganda peddled by Dr. Fauci while actual statistics about adverse jab effects and highly asymmetrical disease risks are kept hidden from the public, we might as well have someone like Trofim Lysenko become the face of "science" instead.
Where "risk" and "uncertainty" meet - risk may be statistically determined, uncertainty is not knowing which side of a "statistic" I am on ...
I know one thing none of us can deny: The media is worthless. The only hope the state has for hanging on to their propaganda arm in the 21st century is by applying central control over digital communications. And the blockchain (thanks to arcane mathematics) will make sure they don’t. From there, it’s a free-for-all information distribution and consumption landscape. And that’s OK with me.
Does anyone else feel like this post ended rather abruptly?
I often feel like I have suddenly found the end of a moving walkway at the end of his posts.
Maybe that's because it's an ongoing story :)
Maybe he suffers from Stephanson's Disease: an inability to bring a story to a close.
I realize you were using illustrative examples re the COVID and climate references—but I feel I must interject on your treatment of the concept of fact—vis-a-vis nuance.
For example, what about people who believe that there is evidence to support that the climate is changing, and that it is caused by human activity, but believe the models used to quantify risk are insufficiently supported, or that the policy proposals currently on the table are insufficiently supported as effective or acceptable means to mitigate that risk, or that alternatives with a less objectionable profile of tradeoffs have been given insufficient attention to justify precluding them.
Or with COVID, they accept that the vaccines are a good thing that address a legitimate threat to certain demographics, but feel that creating a vaccine passport system to encourage vaccine uptake has unacceptable tradeoffs with respect to granting the government increased powers over our lives. Or that the biosecurity paradigm is destructive because it reframes therapeutics as deployable weapons systems in a military theater.
These are valid concerns that live inside nuance that matters.
Is it fear of the actual vaccine or is it fear of the authoritarian state that promotes it? I ha e been double vaxx, but I am very empathetic towards those that do not trust the powers that be and are sceptical of the disaster capitalism that spins from above. Trust is so sacred and people are desperate for finding sources to enlighten them, rather than manipulate. Those sources are hard to find
But they are out there ...
I believe you’re right. But how does an individual that does not have a PhD in virology or environmental science know who to trust? The media is littered with “experts” that Are often financially biased.
Read Global Research for one thing. http://www.globalresearch.org
So is the article you are referring to talking about numbers of deaths in folks who have received the vaccine? Btw, which vaccine, doesn't say - but I would be amazed if nobody died after receiving a vaccine - it would be a miracle - dying AFTER receiving a vaccine is not the same as dying BECAUSE of receiving one ...
Are you a Q-Anon fan, too?
User received a one-week ban for this comment. This is the first time I've engaged in any moderation at all, and I would rather not have to do it again. Any future bans will be permanent.
Why did I do this?
We are a very small community here, and that means it succeeds or fails based on how well we work together. For that to happen, it needs to be welcoming place: we need to have a baseline tolerance for dissenting views, yes, but also exercise generosity and good-faith in responding to those you disagree with. Calling someone a "willful-idiot" unworthy of a response will not help you change minds, and it does not make people feel welcome to engage.
I encourage this user to be more respectful of others when they return.
Not one person defended my RIGHT to freedom of speech, including "offensive" speech. It goes to show that most "Americans" don't know or understand the truth about freedom of speech (including, evidently, Edward Snowden himself), and that it INCLUDES "offensive" speech. (See my response to Ed after my "ban" expired, immediately below Ed's free-speech-violating edict and action.)
I know what GR is, and I read the article re the "alerts", updated, about the number of deaths of folks who have received the vaccine and THAT was the article I commented on - having read THAT I confess i had no great desire to read all that other stuff - was all that stuff you talk about in there, too?
No proof for aliens, but proof for angels and demons ... OK
As to my being a "willful idiot", is it better to be a "willful" or an "unwillful" one? Generally i have found that the insults start where the rationality ends ...
Thank you Edward for bringing your ethical and laser-like focus to the troubling, (but necessary) subject of climate change apathy. Scientists and, as a result, fossil fuel companies and world leaders have been aware of the existential threat climate change poses since at least the 1980s. All three groups have reacted variously with a spectrum of motivations. And here we are today.
For many decades, the information deficit model was deemed the gold standard for bringing us out of the polluted dark ages and into the sunshine of renewable clean energy future. This hasn’t happened quickly enough. What, then, should we focus on?
Understand the world-view of other people and meet them where they are (if possible - if not, try to leave them on good terms).
Avoid polarising political arguments and speak honestly person-to-person about your climate concerns and what local and immediate effects are evident.
Positive solution-based conversations.
Authentic story-telling breaks down ideological barriers and enables conversations which open peoples’ minds.
Try using inoculation theory as a way to improve identification of misinformation.
Finally, thank you Ed for all you have done and continue to do. You are are a hero to me. Your moral and ethical courage has been an uplifting example to us all, proving that we are capable of brave, noble conduct.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/nov/10/brain-climate-change-science-psychology-environment-elections
https://www.elevatescientific.com/time-to-move-on-from-the-information-deficit-model/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-29/climate-change-global-warming-six-groups-rebecca-huntley/11893384
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101477
https://theconversation.com/inoculation-theory-using-misinformation-to-fight-misinformation-77545
your inoculation link was very interesting, thank you for sharing
You are welcome.
9/10 dentists agree with this post
Maybe this Expert has valuable knowledge to share? https://rumble.com/vlzlr0-dr.-peter-mccullough-the-vaccine-is-failing-in-the-uk-and-israel-offbeat-bu.html
Mr Snowden:
Good people around the world need your voice to help overcome the demonic lies and censorship by BigPharma that suppresses info and access to safe effective inexpensive early treatment remedies that could have saved millions of lives if public had not been denied this info by corrupt pub health "experts," msm and social media monopoly platforms working on behalf of BIgPharma via cynically named "Trusted News Initiative. Please educate yourself to the reality, elements of which are reflected in: https://richardrosenthal.substack.com/p/fda-fraud-deception-arrogance
The scheme to impose Covid19 and experimental "vaccines" on the world is rife with "anomalous" acts that objectively spell premeditated murder, but have been hidden from the public by the most aggressive propaganda and censorship campaign the world has ever known. For history of the diabolical campaign to demonize hydroxychloroquine, necessary for the vax cos to get Emergency Use Authorizations, please see: https://richardrosenthal.substack.com/p/time-to-call-a-knave-a-knave?r=13rnq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=email
Only by your getting better acquainted with the facts will you be able to help avert the tyranny that threatens to destroy what is left of democratic societies. Please do your part. Your courageous voice is desperately needed and can help save millions more lives.
Many thanks and abiding respects. Richard Rosenthal