Hamlin’s collapse and sudden death or cardiac arrest in young athletes
It was a terrible moment watched by millions: Buffalo Bills’ player Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a hit. He was in cardiac arrest but immediate medical attention caused his heartbeat to resume, and he is now in critical condition and intensive care.
As soon as I heard the news, I thought it was either a case of spontaneous cardiac arrest or a phenomenon known as commotio cordis, which I recalled from previous tragic incidents involving young athletes. This is what I wrote last night after hearing he’d been struck in the chest during the play that had just ended:
I was thinking the player might have been felled by some form of commotio cordis. I first heard of the phenomenon when this death occurred.
Hamlin is considerably bigger than the usual victim, but it is still possible that this is what happened.
Even if it’s not commotio cordis, the sudden cardiac arrest of healthy young athletes is not as unusual event as one might think or hope. I wrote this last night, as well:
…[Sudden cardiac arrest] happens to a certain percentage of professional athletes with some regularity. Go to the link. Read it. See the list towards the bottom under “notable cases.” And those are just cases of fairly well-known athletes who died. There are many many cases of people who are not professional athletes, or who had some sort of incident but didn’t die.
Note the dates.
There has been no recent uptick, by the way. But people are paying more attention, that’s all.
Here’s a statistic from the article: “a population as large as the United States will experience the sudden cardiac death of a competitive athlete at the average rate of one every three days, often with significant local media coverage heightening public attention.” The footnote for that quote is from an article written in 2012. Long before COVID or COVID vaccines.
It is a tragic phenomenon and unfortunately it’s not as uncommon as we would like.
In that comment I was addressing the idea that this had something to do with a COVID shot or with COVID. The ascribing of every bad event to something connected with the vaccine in particular is something I’ve noticed and noticed and noticed. The great majority of those doing so either do not understand statistics, misuse them, don’t care about them and only look at anecdotal evidence, or state that they distrust all statistics issued by official sources and consider them lies. That latter bit allows them to say or believe anything they wish, of course.
Believe me, I understand distrust of the CDC and the government. They’ve earned our distrust, to a large extent. But that doesn’t mean that the people who promote alternate theories and who post lies or errors about what’s going on are to be believed either. I have spent an enormous number of hours on this blog countering what they write, but mostly in the comments section here and so it’s difficult for me to locate much of it and to amalgamate it into one big post or several. It’s a time-consuming job, and I’m weary of it at this point. But I’ll just reiterate that everything of the sort that I’ve read is highly flawed.
As I said, though, I understand the distrust. However, the emotions of rage and frustration shouldn’t cloud our judgment. The whole thing is compounded by the fact that research involving human subjects, and the statistics involved, are not easy to understand and most people don’t understand them. I have an advantage at that because I’ve taken a statistics course at the graduate level, but that doesn’t mean I know everything either. But it means I have a relatively sophisticated understanding of the principles involved and can critique both the original research and the critiques of that research with some degree of understanding.
I don’t have an agenda except trying to get to the truth as best I can, using the tools and knowledge I have. Defending the government is not my goal, but debunking the government is not my goal either.
Most of the US and the Western world is vaccinated. I don’t know the exact total, but it’s vast. In that vast number of people, bad things will happen to some. Actually, eventually, bad things will happen to all. Only statistics can tell us what difference the vaccine makes, but to properly evaluate those statistics a vast number of things must be taken into consideration, among them the ages and relative pre-vaccine debility of the vaccine recipients, and the usual pre-vaccine incidence of those same events in a matched population.
I’ll add a recommendation to look at this article, this one, and also this.
That last link involves some research done in Minnesota in an attempt to figure out the cause of the excess deaths there. Here are some quotes:
COVID-19 comprised 9.9% of deaths [in Minnesota] in 2020. Other categories of causes of death with significant increases in 2020 compared to 2018–2019 included assault by firearms (RR 1.68, 95% CI 1.34–2.11), accidental poisonings (RR 1.49, 95% CI 1.37–1.61), malnutrition (RR 1.48, 95% CI 1.17–1.87), alcoholic liver disease (RR, 95% CI 1.14–1.40), and cirrhosis and other chronic liver diseases (RR 1.28, 95% CI 1.09–1.50). Mortality rates due to COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 causes were higher among racial and ethnic minority groups, older adults, and non-rural residents…
Deaths due to assault by firearms were increased in individuals 15–34 and 45–64?years of age, with the greatest increase among those 45–64?years (RR 2.30, 95% CI 1.23–4.32) and women (RR 2.28, 95% CI 1.24–4.22) (Supplemental Table 2). There were also significant increases in deaths due to assault by firearms among Black Minnesotans (RR 1.82, 95% CI 1.35–2.45), non-rural residents (RR 1.73, 95% CI 1.35–2.20), and men (RR 1.60, 95% CI 1.25–2.04). When firearms-related deaths were stratified by sex (Supplemental Table 3), we found that the majority of these deaths were among men, though women saw a larger increase in firearms-related mortality in 2020 relative to 2018–2019.
Deaths due to accidental poisoning/overdose increased 49% in 2020 relative to 2018–19 (RR 1.49, 95% CI 1.37–1.61). Although the category includes all types of poisonings, nearly all accidental poisonings included one or more drug (98.4% across the 3 years). The proportion of accidental poisoning deaths that included one or more opioids increased from 55.6% in 2018–2019 to 63.3% in 2020 (RR 1.69, 95% CI 1.52–1.88). Accidental poisoning deaths increased substantially in nearly all demographic groups (Supplemental Table 4). The greatest increases occurred among racial and ethnic minority populations…
Deaths due to malnutrition were increased among residents aged 85?years and older (RR 1.76, 95% CI 1.27–2.45), women (RR 1.64, 95% CI 1.23–2.19), White individuals (RR 1.44, 95% CI 1.13–1.83) and rural residents (RR 2.50, 95% CI 1.55–4.04) (Supplemental Table 6). Their rates of death in 2020 were 60.4, 2.95, 2.6, and 3.1 per 100,000, respectively…
We did not find statistically significant increases in deaths due to other causes, including those hypothesized to be affected by pandemic-related changes in daily life and access to health care including cancer, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, dementia, kidney disease, motor vehicle collisions, and suicide.
As you can see, it’s a complex process, but all-cause deaths can involve a great many causes having nothing to do with COVID or COVID vaccines.
To get back to Hamlin – he is now reported to be sedated and in critical condition. That almost certainly means he is being purposely kept in a coma, cooled, and has been placed on a breathing tube. That is pretty much standard procedure after a cardiac arrest of any real duration. What they will probably do in the next few days is periodically withdraw the coma-inducing drugs for a short while at a time in order to test his reflexes and then later to see whether he can follow simple commands such as to squeeze a person’s finger. Those tests are to evaluate whether he is retaining function and what his long-term prognosis might be. Then if all goes well, they take him out of the coma and off the breathing tube on a certain schedule as he heals. He could make a full recovery, although he certainly might not, and anything in between, depending on how oxygen-deprived he was for how long. Prayers go out for a full recovery.
The more I look at the video of the hit the more I think the hit stopped his heart. It was shoulder to chest right at the heart.
I’m hopeful that the prompt response saved his brain.
I looked at some old Ox Baker videos soon as the story broke where I am. I was guessing something like that when he just stopped moving and fell over.
Sheesh… praying for a full recovery.
I watched the game and saw the hit. It was no more violent than is common in such settings. The shoulder pads protect much of the precordium. I once had a patient have a cardiac arrest when I injected a varicose vein. I thumped her on the chest and she woke up and asked what had happened. It may just have been a vaso-vagal response but I was not going to wait and see.
My grandson is now 18 and 6 foot 5 inches. He is a football and baseball athlete. He has not been vaccinated and will not be. His sisters likewise but I think young men are at greater risk. Aaron Rogers is looking pretty smart today.
In October 1971 Detroit Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes died on the field upon being hit and taken down by Chicago Bears middle linebacker Dick Butkus. His death was immediate and it was televised: I remember watching it.
The hit Butkus administered was not especially impactful, at least by Butkus’s standards. I seem to recall that Hughes was done in by an undiagnosed heart condition. Still the fact that it was Butkus who dealt him the fatal blow only increased his legendary status among football players and fans. Many players felt that it was only a matter of time before the incredibly hard-hitting Butkus killed someone.
Mike K:
The hit does not have to be incredibly violent. It has to be at an exact split-second moment in the heart’s rhythm.
“There has been no recent uptick, by the way. People are paying more attention, that’s all.” Yes!
Lots of vaccine skeptics have been counting up athlete deaths, and they seem convinced that there have been orders of magnitude more athlete deaths than normal in the past two years. But as you point out, they are looking for them in a way that no-one really did before.
Is your assertion just a sense, based on your understanding of statistics? Or do you have any numbers that can help debunk the “catastrophic increase in athlete deaths” conspiracy theories? If you have any numbers, please share them!
There is no way to tell what caused Hamlin’s cardiac arrest without analysis of his heart and condition. With luck, he will survive, although I doubt he will play football again. It is comforting to know that medical experts say everything that could have been done for him, was done, and done properly. Modern CPR techniques and AEDs are saving lives. I recently took a CPR course and am carrying plastic gloves and a one-way valve for breathing support with me in case I need to help someone.
It is unreasonable to diagnose this as anything until tests are done on Hamlin. It is not impossible that he’s got some kind of myocarditis, and not impossible that it was the hit itself. A friend who’s at the hospital has posted online that tests will be done, and those, if made public, should provide information.
Charlie:
Here’s one article I found in a few seconds. There are others, but I’m not at home for the moment and I’m using my phone so I’ll keep this brief. Also note that quote in the post from the 2012 study about how common it was back then, long before COVID. In 2012 the rate was one competitive athlete every 3 days in the US on average. That was already a surprisingly high incidence.
Kate:
It is common for tests in young victims of sudden cardiac arrest to reveal no discernible problem.
And even if cardiomyopathy were to be found to be present in Hamlin’s case, it doesn’t tell you why. There are many possible causes, including COVID itself or many other viruses.
Yes, of course, Neo. But I think that ruling OUT vaccine-induced myocarditis without evidence is as invalid as ruling it IN, without evidence. I hope very much, if Hamlin survives, that they will be able to determine whether he has any ongoing cardiac risk or whether this was a freak accident.
Yes, prayers for Damar Hamlin.
I don’t have anything to offer for the technical discussion here. I just thought of “Pistol” Pete Maravich, the legendary basketball star, who died of heart failure at the age of 40 in an informal pickup game.
Turned out he had been born without a left coronary artery (!) and the corresponding right artery was greatly enlarged. I don’t know how serious that is, but it sounds so.
Maravich played top college and professional basketball. He trained with an insane work ethic. All without a left coronary artery.
His highlight reels look tame compared to those of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and later stars. But the Pistol pioneered the incredible ball handling, no-look passes, long shots before the three-point line was added, and double-triple-fake-out lay-ups.
He inspired Larry Bird. (Which, for me, is “Say no more.”) And by chance, Maravich’s last season was on the Celtics when Bird came in as a rookie.
Here’s an over-the-top tribute, but true in the specifics.
–“7 Stories That Prove Pete Maravich WAS NOT HUMAN!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hq5wPxMC8M
To “Pistol” Pete Maravich!
In 1974 a teammate on my brother’s high school football team dropped just like this. AED devices did not exist then. But one of the coaches had CPR training and the player survived. Had it happened five years earlier, before CPR training became more widespread, he would have been died.
The player yesterday did not suffer a notably hard impact. Remembering my football days, we were trained to tackle by hitting the ball carrier in the sternum. With our face mask. We even had drills to practice this. The “carrier ” had to advance, hands on top of the helmet, towards the tackler. The impact wasn’t hard because the point was to teach the technique. But the face mask always hit me below the bottom of the shoulder pads, and it hurt!
huxley,
Re: “But the Pistol pioneered the incredible ball handling, no-look passes…”
No slam on Pistol Pete but long before him was a ball handler by the name of Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics. There’s no doubt in my mind that Pistol Pete’s inspiration was Bob Cousy.
Check out his move at 1:02… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsjubxYxAE
Seemed, once I had time to watch local news, that maybe one high school kid died on the court or the field every year at schools in areas covered by the local news. Which presumes others in other areas.
But I do not recall hearing about a Brit in soccer practice included, I don’t recall hearing anything else but the one time each year, more or less. Nothing from the west coast, or the Buenos Aires Junior Commandos or something.
If you pull all of the everywhere’s usual together this year, it looks odd. But the actual issue may be…nothing but more reporting.
That said, automatic ruling out is not good practice.
Some questions about the Minnesota numbers. Why are they all up, all up this last year? Why not some down?
Are there secondary effects from the vax? How much did the anti-covid protocols affect people’s behavior? Name me something else which would apply across the board.
Really like to know about the malnutrition. My wife and I drive Meals and Wheels. There are people in differing circumstances, some would be pretty tough without us, some getting by with their family’s help. Why would the latter drop off?
What you’ve pointed out – that for athletes to suddenly collapse was not unheard of before the past two years – is what people need to see. Because there is a general sense that it is abnormal – particularly among conservatives and the anti-Covid-regime crowd. A recent survey of 1000 Americans found that nearly 50% believed that Covid “vaccines” were contributing to abnormal numbers of sudden, unexplained deaths and many – at least 1 in 4 – believed they personally knew of somebody whose death could be attributed to the vaccine. Whether that’s true or not, a lot of people think it, and need to be shown that random deaths are always possible. I agree that to blame the jab for every death that doesn’t have another obvious explanation is foolish (and I personally wish people would stop. I had to stop looking at accounts that were constantly posting collections of articles about people “dying suddenly” because I started fearing that it was about to happen to me every time I felt a little strange). But a couple of questions should be asked until we get a straight answer: Does the shot contribute to conditions a person might already have, accelerating death? And does that mean there are certain tests people can and should undergo before they get the jab, or a booster? Does the spike protein on SARS-COV-2 cause long-term damage that could lead to death, and if so, do vaccines that cause the body to replicate the spike protein over and over again make this long-term damage even more likely? Certainly, compelling the jab without knowing – forcing everyone to participate in a massive medical experiment – was unethical.
Not just young athletes having sudden heart attacks:
https://nypost.com/2022/12/24/abc-news-this-week-producer-dax-tejera-dead-at-37/
37-year-old elite Ivy Leaguer, completely healthy, Stephanopoulous lackey drops dead in the Yale Club last week of a heart attack. Based on his impeccable credentials, you do realize that he was certainly fully vaxxed, and boosted as many times as he could have been.
Statistically speaking, isn’t myocarditis a more likely cause of on-field heart trouble than comottio cordis? The CDC acknowledges myocarditis as a known side effect of the Covid vaccines, one which disproportionately affects healthy young men. And myocarditis is generally quite serious, often associated with significantly-shortened lifespans.
While comottio cordis, on the other hand, is extremely rare and affects mostly smaller boys and teenagers who get hit by a projectile (e.g. a baseball or a hockey puck). It’s not even a leading cause of athlete heart attack. For the statistically-minded, comottio cordis is a weird first thought.
No offense, but a post like this that mentions extremely rare comottio cordis while conspicuously failing to even *mention* newly-prevalent myocarditis has a lot in common with what I’m seeing from vaccine promoters on twitter and in the mainstream media, who have all simultaneously “flooded the zone” with the statistically-unlikely theory that this was a case of comottio cordis. It feels more like an attempt to explain something *away* rather than to accurately assess probabilities.
I take your point that the skeptics shouldn’t assume that every news story supports their worst fears. But similarly, the vaccine enthusiasts shouldn’t be in such a hurry to assume that no news story about a heart health problem could possibly be related to the known heart health problem acknowledged to be associated with the vaccines. As you say, most of the Western world has been vaccinated. So, even with a relatively rare side effect, the law of large numbers means there are a whole lot of athletes running around with heart inflammation who didn’t have it before.
I also take your point that people may be noticing sudden cardiac arrest in athletes more because they are looking for it. And I’m sure you’re right that the conspiracy theorists are wildly overestimating any increase. But are you justified in boldly asserting that there has been no increase? It doesn’t seem so. I acknowledge that you just did a quick google search for an article, but it quotes Fifa doctors, from an organization that mandated vaccines for its players! And the article appears in a publication supported by ad revenue from…Pfizer.
Perfectly healthy people drop dead in marathons and other running events. Even before Covid vaccinations.
Life has unforeseen risks. Shocking and unbelieved. Got to blame someone!
mennecan;
Of course the phenomenon is not limited to athletes. No one ever said it was. But people are even more surprised when it does happen to athletes, who are seemingly in the prime of health. But it can happen to anyone at any time, and sometimes does.
More common in smokers, by the way.
Sudden cardiac arrest is far more common in people with underlying heart disease. But sometimes there is no heart disease and autopsy reveals nothing.
The problem for me is simple: the government lies about everything. There is no truth anywhere that can be counted on. Add in the reports of VAERS that are above 1 million now and I’m confident that some of these deaths are directly caused by the vaxx.
It is like climate change, where every extreme weather event is cited as evidence of oncoming disaster.
I witnessed an on-field death at a College Football game. A referee.
I don’t believe anyone touched him. It happened to be an unusually hot day, but I later read he was in good shape and trained for the physical demands of his job.
They tried CPR, of course, then cut his chest open on the field and administered adrenaline, all to no avail. Even folks with very good binoculars didn’t learn that until reading the news report, that evening. However, the amount of time they worked on him, and then the slow way the ambulance left the field when they put him in it (it didn’t even turn on its siren) convinced most of us he was dead.
The game continued. I felt kind of creepy when I learned the facts, afterwards. Like I was an accomplice in something very disrespectful.
JackWayne:
I have written about the VAERS data here. Please read it. Your confidence in your conclusion is unjustified if you’re relying on VAERS data.
That is not to say that there are zero deaths attributable to the COVID vaccine. If there were zero, it would be a highly unusual vaccine indeed. All vaccines have some risks, including the risk of a deadly allergic reaction – and many of them have the risk of heart inflammation.
Take a look at tetanus shots, and at this article with links to a bunch of information about a host of vaccination types and heart inflammation (DPT and smallpox, for example). This one talks about pneumonia and flu shots.
I could go on.
To die laughing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI
People I’ve known (Jerry) have died mountain biking with their pack on a Saturday trail ride, walking alone to the Health Club for the day’s water aerobics (Frank), or not died (Mel) because their running buddies saw him drop and knew what to do.
I used to work at Disney World pre-covid (husband still works there), and I was friends with a somewhat higher up manager who often was Duty Manager during the marathon races they often host. Don’t know how true it is, but years ago (again, pre-covid), she told me that during every marathon there tends to be two runners that have heart attacks – one makes it and the other doesn’t. Another one of my managers was once on the “care team” for the family of a runner who died during the race that morning. So I know of at least one person who for sure died during a race, which leads me to think what my manager friend said is somewhat true. And it definitely would be evidence that heart attacks happen in fitness/exercise events more often than we realize.
(Having said all that, I still don’t trust the vaccine. But I also know not every heart attack is related to the shot either.)
Charlie:
You are quite mistaken in your interpretation of my lack of explicit mention of myocarditis in the post.
In the post I didn’t discuss myocarditis explicitly because we’ve discussed it so many times on this blog before, and I thought it was implicit when I wrote, “I was addressing the idea that this had something to do with a COVID shot or with COVID.” I thought it was quite obvious to anyone who follows this blog that the mechanism in a sudden death of that sort connected with a COVID shot would be likely to be a suspicion of myocarditis, and I was offering two different alternative possibilities. One of those possibilities is quite common, relatively speaking: cardiac arrest with no obvious pathology. The other is the more rare commotio cordis – which I mentioned because Hamlin’s episode involved a sudden blow to the chest (which is necessary for commotio cordis but not for the others). I offered both possibilities in the following sentence: “As soon as I heard the news, I thought it was either a case of spontaneous cardiac arrest or a phenomenon known as commtio cordis, which I recalled from previous tragic incidents involving young athletes.”
Do you know how many young men have died of spontaneous cardiac arrest with no other findings on autopsy? Quite a few, unfortunately. Do you know how many have died of post-COVID vaccination myocarditis? It is very rare to begin with, and death is even more rare. See this:
What’s more, myocarditis serious enough to threaten life ordinarily causes symptoms (see this), and there is no report that Hamlin wasn’t feeling fine. The two alternative explanations I posited don’t involve any symptoms. In addition, post-vaccine myocarditis usually occurs rather quickly, within a week or so of the shot. There is no report that Hamlin had recently had a shot.
Obviously, one cannot, from afar, rule out myocarditis. But if he is found to have it, and if he recently had a COVID shot, I am fairly sure that news will come out.
Charlie:
One more thing – about the research and figures on sudden death in athletes, and COVID shots – who else is going to be interested in the research but people connected to sports? There’s a lot of basic research on COVID and COVID shots, but the sports connection is a rather specialized area. That one article I linked is hardly the only one. Here’s another, this time from a cardiology publication. But they get at least some of their data from groups connected with sports:
Regarding the death of Detroit Lions receiver Chuck Hughes in 1971. He collapsed while returning the offensive team huddle after a routine play. He had not been hit by Dick Butkus. Here is a detailed article from the Detroit Free Press:
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2021/10/23/detroit-lions-chuck-hughes-death-nfl-game-wife-sharon-hughes/6107091001/
Hope he can get through this OK.
The REAL miracle is…that not more NFL, CFL AND college football players get killed by some of those hits.
(Now if some of those fentanyl victims can get the same amount of coverage, maybe President Fentanyl will decide to do something…hah, I’m SUCH a kidder….)
Neo- unfortunately this kind of thing simply happens from time to time. Several years ago my wife and I were watching a hockey game where something similar happened. A player named Jiri Fischer had a relatively minor hit. Made it all the way to his bench and had a very similar collapse. Team doctors and one in the stands saved his life. I saw an interview with him several years ago and he mentioned they were still not 100 percent sure of the cause.
Alex Berenson posted this thoughtful piece on the incident.
Tucker Carlson chastised those publicly jumping to conclusions and making declarations about the cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. In a brief appearance with Tucker, cardiologist Peter McCullough suggested that the NFL and Hamlin’s team should disclose Hamlin’s vaccine status. Since the Covid vaccine that Hamlin was likely coerced into getting is the same experimental treatment most of the public got, disclosure is reasonable and important.
My take-away is this: the reason that we (speaking generically) are arguing about whether or not the Covid vax played a role in any, all, or none of the “sudden unexpected deaths” of athletes and others is primarily because the CDC, most other health organizations, and nearly the entire government apparatus of every country on earth lied incessantly about everything related to the pandemic for nearly 3 years.
Including in published studies in (formerly) reputable medical journals.
With all due respect — “COVID-19 comprised 9.9% of deaths [in Minnesota] in 2020” is a statistic pronounced with apparently no consideration of whether that was deaths with, or of Covid, which has been discussed ad nauseum for years. Maybe they adjusted for that ambiguity, and maybe not, but “covid deaths” is a bottom-line number that IMO cannot be trusted anymore without knowing the agenda of a study’s authors and sponsors.
However, I do appreciate Neo’s indefatigable research, and hope that eventually some of the obfuscations of the governments, health experts, and pharmaceutical companies will be straightened out.
Regardless of the ultimate cause of Mr. Hamlin’s collapse, this response was extremely heartening to me.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2023/01/damar-hamlin-toy-drive-donations-bills
People are amazingly generous when they have a way to channel it.
In an interview with Kim Iverson, Robert Malone considers the possibility of a differential diagnosis – multiple possible causes, with probability ranges assessed for each, including those mentioned here at Neo. Since Hamlin is, fortunately, improving, Malone points out there will be no autopsy and likely no conclusive finding of a cause.
Serendipity at work – just saw this post from December that I missed, although I think I have subliminally absorbed the gist of the substance.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/12/26/ted-lieu-attacks-new-twitter-files-as-misinformation-immediately-gets-dragged-by-elon-musk-for-spreading-misinformation-n679321
What stands out for me is the same vitriolic response to anyone that questions a vaccine link that accompanied suggestions that SARS Co-V2 originated in a lab, the Hunter Biden laptop discovery, opposition to the Antifa/BLM riots, election fraud (not 2016 of course, but 2020) etc etc. As a Los Angeles resident I have absolutely no cause to believe that the public authorities (Barbara Ferrer et al) are concerned about my health. From the beginning, lockdowns closed perfectly safe restaurants while food stands akin to the 3rd world popped up all over serving food out of coolers in the rain and then in the hot sun (still are). Sitting out on the asphalt rather than in our church facilities, the parking meters cordoned off with hazard tape so the public couldn’t go to the beach on Memorial Day and on and on. It’s never been about science. A large part of the medical community is compromised, taking orders from the CDC, formed to create a pandemic response, didn’t have one and still don’t but somehow had the authority to declare people didn’t need to pay their rents. The bigger picture is control of the populace, by people that are vested left and right in ways and means that require our acquiescence or disenfranchisement. Theodore Darymple saw it some time ago. Substitute “accept the narrative” for “political correctness”. History can be an excellent teacher.
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
—Theodore Dalrymple, “Our Culture, What’s Left Of It”
Ted Lieu.
‘Nuff said.
“…I have absolutely no cause to believe that the public authorities…are concerned about my health….”
The veritable truth, at least generally—though one MUST apologize to those medical personnel who are valiantly fighting against the tsunami—since EVERYTHING has been politicized, and the politics is strictly partisan and meant to serve a larger purpose—an overarching political goal (in fact pushing the name “Lysenko” to the forefront).
Recently Dr. Deborah Birx—she of “You-have-absolutely-no-reason-to-believe-a-word-I-say” fame—has felt it necessary to re-inject herself into the conversation, heavens knows why.
(Perhaps because of Il Fauci’s meltdown?—or should-be meltdown, were he able to feel 28.35 grams of shame…)
…which leads us to the all-too-familiar question: What is wrong with these people???
Let’s embrace the power of AND.
Even though there has never been a case of commotio cordis described in the history of professional football after how many millions of hits, and the average age of a person experiencing commotio cordis is 15, before the chest wall musculature matures, and yes, it happens in the face of projectile at high speed–baseball, hockey puck, lacrosse ball–hitting the chest directly over the ventricle, thus basically being a point contact (NOT blunt trauma)—let’s say that rather benign hit set up the arrhythmia we saw take him down.
IF he had the increase in cardiac inflammatory markers upon injection of the experimental mRNA when he was injected (shown in a recent study in 100% of the subjects, which has been published in peer reviewed journal) –and reportedly, 100% of the Bills have been–the residual scarring that occurs with healing after ANY and ALL carditis, no matter how trivial, may well be why that “routine, “unremarkable” (words used by players to describe what they saw) hit set up conditions to trigger a fatal arrhythmia. As has been discussed elsewhere–there is no such thing as “trivial” myocarditis, as far as one’s subsequent health goes.
My experience with unquestionable commotio cordis on a lacrosse field –shot on goal, so over 80 mph, hit the goalie’s left chest; he took a step forward, then dropped to the ground—immediate CPR, WITH rescue breathing (which I still advocate if you don’t want brain dead people on ventilators being the result of your resuscitation) was an immediate return to sinus rhythm on defibrillation, restoration of spontaneous breathing, and a player talking to us and waving to his teammates from the ambulance.
Went to his senior prom the following Saturday.
What I saw Monday night causes to me–in my professional judgement (four decades of resuscitations; IANAL though)–to think there was an underlying cardiac issue. The length of his CPR; the reported return to fibrillation after being in sinus rhythm, necessitating another defibrillation; remaining on a ventilator; when viewed together, cause experienced physicians and cardiac ICU nurses on other forums to note this is not how this generally works when an AED is immediately available these days, and indicates an underlying compromised heart.
He could have low grade myocarditits right now from any one of a number of viruses, and we do have RSV and influenza as well as Covid circulating. He also could have it from a recent “booster.”
Do these guys play sick?? You bet they do–all the time.
Do we have a very dangerous experimental substance being injected–mandated at many universities, still–that should have been pulled the second week it started being used ? Yes, we do.
(Phizer stroke data alone, released last week, would have prevented authorization under non EUA circumstances.
The data Phizer wanted to take 75 years to release, remember?)
Covid at the beginning was equivalent to a “bad flu.”
We were being given CASE fatality numbers, NOT what matters–INFECTION fatality numbers.
Yes, “they” were INTENTIONALLY terrorizing you.
For your own good, of course. Because they are your betters.
(In their minds, for certain.)
Now it’s not even a mild flu, in terms of infection fatality numbers.
And the cold hard truth is OLD PEOPLE DIE. Every single day.
Our ICUS are full EVERY SINGLE WINTER.
Our Pedi ICUs too.
Covid is effectively treated with near benign drugs that reduce deaths by 40-90%, depending on the rest of the regiment. When started early, most peopel are better in 24 hours; often symptom free in 48. There is no one shot drug that gets you bettter as fast as the multi drug/supplement regimen. (and yes, Paxlovid does cause relapses. way more than 6% in my experience.)
flccc.net has the protocols
Don’t let them use your ignorance to manipulate you.
In my opinion, there is no reason for continuing to risk ANYBODY’s life, or a stroke, or their fertility, or even a sore arm at this point in time.
Most certainly, NOT the permanent immune suppression it appears to cause.
This is an experimental genetic therapy that is most definitely NOT a vaccine.
See Cdc’s definition before they changed it in spring 2021. they already knew by then it wasn’t preventing infection or transmission.
No, you were NOT “saving granny.”
You were being manipulated into taking an experimental genetic treatment.
Here’s Dr. RW Malone’s view of what we saw:
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/cardiac-arrest-in-athletes
Telemedicine at its longest and finest?
Om,
🙂
John Wilcox:
You’re right about the death of Chuck Hughes. I misremembered what happened — what I saw (or thought I saw). Butkus did not hit Hughes. But he was standing near Hughes when the latter collapsed and signaled the sidelines for help. I incorrectly remembered the incident as Butkus signaling the sideline after tackling Hughes.
Memory is tricky. Thanks for the correction.
On re-read, I check the links.
Wikipedia as the reference on this? It is well known to be edited by Lefty Lou and Social Justice Warrior William. (More likely, the FBI, CDC, and HHS, we are learning.) My kids weren’t allowed to use it for any paper they wrote from eighth grade forward.
Rueters on fact checking? They are not reliable in any matter Covid.
I find Steve Kirsch and Ed Dowd’s Substacks–two experts in statistics/data (they are both investors) –to be useful to my search for truth. I place blind faith in no one–and Steve is flat out wrong in a recent one saying nine minutes of CPR means brain death–not at all the case in an oxygenated person. (But I do not expect accurate medical analysis from him.)
Dowd is who “saw” the huge uptick in Q3 and Q4 2021 “excess” deaths reported by insurers–which match the timing uptick in athlete deaths shown at good science, and have persisted, but fortunately, dropped off somewhat.
Dowd’s work has been confirmed by the Society of Actuaries, btw.
His book was released two weeks ago.
Titled Cause Unknown.. (I think with a big wink)
https://www.amazon.com/Cause-Epidemic-Sudden-Childrens-Defense/dp/1510776397/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WO1P1OYNBSUF&keywords=ed+dowd+cause+unknown&qid=1672836930&sprefix=ed+dowd%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1
So yes indeed, that REAL DATA of significantly increased excess deaths could be Climate Change, phalates and glycophosphaltes and other endocrine disruptors finally catching up with us all, maybe having something to do with the alignment of the moon and the stars too–but I’ll put my money on something else that happened in massive numbers during the late spring and summer of 2021 and has been shown to cause body wide inflammation, that persists for weeks in many. Clots, strokes, MIs, a fib, too. All of which can KILL people.
It most definitely is not something “we are just seeing now”–it is how people have made so much money for so long by selling insurance. And if they want to KEEP making that money–they HAVE to find the cause. I trust that they will.
(It would be very interesting to see if life insurance policy pricing is taking injection status into account. Maybe with the athletes? Or their disability insurance–that number of claims is way up too. Why there is such a labor shortage, across the board.)
We’ve seen what it does to people–why so few who work in hospitals took the “opportunity” to be boosted when offered fall 2021. Nothing like having a 23 year old girl come in with massive stroke three days post shot. Then another and another. “This happens” was my immediate first thought–for the first one.
Not the third one.
Then the Sudden Adult Death Syndrome started getting PR in MSM. What???`
Easy for somebody who’s practice for over four decades to NEVER EVER EVER heard of that, isn’t it? But I can tell you of four 30 somethings in my life who have died, suddenly, unexpectedly, since summer 2021.
Of course I am aware of the occasional, RARE unexplained death of a young person–nothing like the pile up we are dealing with.
And most interesting to me, despite the SC upholding the mandate of health care workers (who don’t have basic bodily autonomy because why??? especially in the face of a useless, dangerous substance? Which does NOT–repeat NOT–decrease transmission. Rather it turns the multiple injected in to near symptom-free carriers, by increasing their IgG4, so their tolerance to the virus. Same thing that happens with desensitizing injections for grass, pollen, bee stings)
and despite CMS saying no Medicare moneys would be distributed as of April 6, 2022 to institutions whose staffs were not fully boosted by then –NO system I know of in the country has enforced boosters.
Nor has CMS withheld the cash.
Why? My guess:
They know we would walk–and TALK about why we walked.
Can’t run a hospital without staff.
Can’t have doctors and nurses and janitors and cleaning crew no longer threatened by loss of their paycheck telling the world what is going on.
My goal is not debunking the government, discrediting health care regulators, nor exposing so many in my profession as the non-critical thinking ill-informed oh too human people they are. (Not unlike the German physicians of 1930s I have recently learned.)
Dare I say–unethical? Were you given informed consent about the known complications of that injection?
If you were told it was “safe and effective” any time after August/early fall 2021–you were lied to by someone who has no excuse for not knowing differently by then.
Remember–92% of primary care physicians are now employed. “Ask your doctor” as they say. Who signs your paycheck doc?
I want the lying and the dying to stop.
I am deeply committed to keeping this out of our children.
Now that it is on the CDC’s list of childhood vaccinations, the ONLY way that can happen is if CITIZENS are informed of the dangers and the lies and the extent of the corruption* and demand their local and state governments never require it.
It is on all of us to protect them.
We do that by letting people know the truth; the facts and the data.
First do no harm is how that oath I took goes.
* Euphemistically referred to as “regulatory capture”, so as to not offend the officials doing the regulation–as though they are not autonomous adults who are well aware of –and responsible for– what they are doing.
Hughes was hit (not by Butkus) on the reception he made a few plays earlier. There was speculation that the hit could have dislodged a clot. But he was not involved in the play before he collapsed. He had a family history of heart disease and an autopsy found he had 75% blockages in some arteries. Incredibly sad day that I still (as a native Detroiter) remember.
Lee:
As I’ve written before – I believe several times – I don’t buy the argument from non-authority that you’re selling. Fact-checking is sometimes quite accurate even on sites that are sometimes not accurate or at least biased in that they minimize the importance of certain things. I never post a link to a fact-check site unless I independently think what is actually in it is accurate. All sources have biases, and many have inaccuracies, and I do my own homework first. I have had to retract very very little over the course of my blogging which began in 2004. And I often post links to fact-check sites but ONLY when I have reason to believe the article I’ve linked is accurate.
Same for Wiki, which much of the time merely aggregates other articles and research. Sometimes good, sometimes not, and I don’t link it unless I find it to be pretty good.
And the same with sites that are written by vaccine skeptics – I independently study what they say and so far I am singularly unimpressed with their knowledge of statistics, logic, truthfulness, or math. I have my own doubts and questions, and I cite places and people who have doubts and questions but who seem to understand better what they’re talking about.
On the question of vax-related sudden deaths, I’d add that these annual numbers aren’t granular enough to address the question. I’d want to know how many died within, say, a few weeks of getting the shots. The expected numbers would be much smaller for such a short time frame. But no one seems to want, or have the data, to look at that.
The two mental heuristics I see going on here are:
1) I just started noticing something just now, so it must be new (sudden deaths of healthy young athletes).
2) Bad people are saying this (COVID vaccinations had nothing to do with these deaths), and we know they lie about other things, so I choose to believe the opposite of what they are saying.
What I am not saying is that people following these heuristics are coming up with the wrong answers, and I’m not saying heuristics are bad.
What I am saying is that unless and until we see matched cohorts of young athletes pre- and post-vaccination, and we compare the death rates by cohort–not the death counts–then there is not even valid evidence that ANYTHING is unusual about these deaths. Until we know that a problem exists, it makes no sense to argue about whether the vaccine is responsible for it.
Remember when every death WITH COVID was blamed ON COVID? I’d like to not fall into the analogous error of blaming deaths WITH vaccination ON vaccination.
I know, I know, dumb and bad people wanted us to fear COVID, get vaccinated, and they got money and power by doing these bad, dumb things, and now they are saying the vaccines didn’t kill people so that must be a lie and if I seem to be agreeing with it, or even insufficiently condemning it, then I too am dumb and bad and all my statements are also dumb and bad on any topic whatever. I get it.
Dr Peter McCollough was interviewed by Carlson. He’s no crank…he’s the most published cardiologist in the US. He says there are more incidents of cardiac arrest since the mRNA vaccines.
https://twitter.com/SKMorefield/status/1610447297220943872
Sorry about the twitter embed but I couldn’t find the interview anywhere else.
You don’t get it Frederick. My husband has a very serious reaction to any coronavirus spike protein. Because of the governmental response and the massive fear that informed the medical community out the gate, he wasn’t even offered the fundamental protocol since the 1970’s for a respiratory infection when brought to the hospital at the time everything was locked-down so those needing attention could be treated. I carry in my purse the British Medical Journal article and chart that has the information showing on what basis EUA was determined. I’ve posted it here 3 times since January 2021–not one response. In it a Chief Medical Officer of Moderna states that “interruption of transmission” could not be determined. The only thing the trials definitively stated was that the vaccines (newly defined–Orwell would be proud) would “prevent symptomatic disease in the recipient”. That was proven to be false within weeks (maybe days). Excluded from the study (to conclude in 2023) were: children and adolescents; the immunocompromised; pregnant and breastfeeding women. Once EUA was obtained the Control Group was immediately allowed to get the vaccine. In other words the study is garbage. All right there in October 2020. I recovered from Covid in April 2020 without issues (like a flu) just like 95+% of people prior to this “vaccine” rollout. We’ve been played. Billions have been. I was a huge Pharma defender and vaccine enthusiast until this whole debacle. You seem to think the people making BIG BUCKS (not “some money”) is nothing to pay attention to. Well the sayings “follow the money” and “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” have a lot more wisdom to offer than your analysis.
For the record, personally we know of one death involving Covid. An unvaccinated friend’s friend who was ventilated and making the same progress my husband did with maximum 15L of oxygen on the facemask, when his ventilator was accidently unplugged and though his oxygen saturation came back, he was brain-dead and was taken off life-support. A 58 year old successful retired man with his 7th grandchild about to be born.
@Sharon W:You don’t get it Frederick.
I’m sorry to hear about your husband, but unless he’s a healthy young athlete who was vaccinated and there’s a matched control for him somewhere who wasn’t, nothing you said about him is related in any way to anything I’ve said.
You think you’re arguing with me, but you’re proving me to be accurate by your behavior. Your post did not address anything I said–instead it was about whose side you are on and why–and an explicit statement that you are going to follow heuristics instead of evidence. Which is the thing I said I was observing, and to prove me wrong you went ahead and did it.
But the real issue is are young healthy athletes dying more often than they used to, and once we’ve settled IF that is even happening, we might be able to decide if the COVID vaccine has anything to do with it.
And no one has shown any valid evidence that more young healthy athletes are dying AT ALL, much less anything about what could be to blame, COVID vaccines or anything else.
But yeah, I’m dumb and bad because I’m saying something that sounds like I’m not blaming deaths on the COVID vaccine, I got that.
That’s the real issue? Not imposing an unvetted therapeutic on the mass public with the promise of recovery the same as existed before the roll-out? Using this to threaten people with their livelihoods. Using fear to control people and set societal standards that do not conform with health and science. Our scope is different. Very different.
@Sharon W:Our scope is different. Very different.
Indeed. I am only trying understand an empirical question: are more young healthy athletes dying than they were?
I am not saying the vaccines were safe, necessary, effective, blameless in the deaths, etc. Not one of those things have I said. Nor have I said that anything you said is even false.
But you’ve decided I’m on the dumb and bad team because your heuristic says I’m saying words that don’t sound like your team’s words. It doesn’t matter what those words even were.
I’m pointing this out, that you and other people are doing this, because you may not realize you are. Once people realize “hey I’m not using evidence to determine what I think is true, I’m applying rules to things I see people say to decide if I want to think it’s true” then maybe they can decide they do want to look at evidence instead. It’s usually the right way to go.
Frederick I did not call you dumb, I disagreed with your assessment. In this thread the subject of whether or not vaccine status is pertinent to the circumstance was addressed. I am making the point that the governing authorities early-on determined that it is perfectly reasonable to demand to know vaccine status to enter a restaurant, theatre, even outdoor venues. But somehow wanting to know such a thing when early deaths and health issues arise became verboten. Hmmm. At the beginning of the roll-out when hospitalizations were ramping up we heard regular reports of how it was the unvaxxed that were dying and so on. Not so far along we stopped hearing of vax status. Hmmm. It seems to me that information should have continued to be amassed. At this point is there any trustworthy source for this kind of data? Not that I’m aware of.
@Sharon W: I disagreed with your assessment
Okay, what did you disagree with, because there were only two things in my assessment. Was it this?
The two mental heuristics I see going on here are:
1) I just started noticing something just now, so it must be new (sudden deaths of healthy young athletes).
2) Bad people are saying this (COVID vaccinations had nothing to do with these deaths), and we know they lie about other things, so I choose to believe the opposite of what they are saying.
or was it this?
What I am saying is that unless and until we see matched cohorts of young athletes pre- and post-vaccination, and we compare the death rates by cohort–not the death counts–then there is not even valid evidence that ANYTHING is unusual about these deaths.
Or was it both?
#2
Not going along with the narrative because information is suppressed and there is a massive propaganda program is not the same as “we know they lie about other things, so I choose to believe the opposite of what they are saying.”
Especially if anecdotally you have a number of amazing coincidences of sudden deaths, sudden cancer diagnosis followed by imminent death all from people that were vaxxed as a part of your own life-experience. I have quite a list. Never had cause to have a list like this before. I was dragged into hearing the other side and upon listening to the “debate” between RFK Jr. and Dershowitz I discovered truth I was never willing to listen to before. And as I said–I was a huge Big Pharma apologist and got every vaccine offered for my children. I admit, I would not do that now.
Sharon W:
You are certainly free to disbelieve me or anyone else, or to distrust me or anyone else. And I completely defend your right or anyone’s right not to be vaccinated. However, anecdotal evidence is not science. Plus, sometimes people don’t notice something that’s been happening right along, until it fits into a theory the person already has.
In other words, sudden death is unfortunately common, and because such a huge number of people are vaccinated some will die within days or weeks or months of vaccination. As for me, I’ve had many many many people I know die ever since childhood, some of them quite suddenly. I believe everyone has had that experience, some more than others and some less than others. Some of these people in my life who died have been young. What was the common denominator? I never saw one and don’t think there was one.
And remember the vaccine/autism connection? Plenty of people believed that was the case and it was not. I recommend you read this post of mine as well as this one.
It’s also a bit like cancer clusters. I wrote a post about that which I recommend to you as well: here it is.
@Sharon W:#2
You’re not actually disagreeing with #2. You are saying that because the data I describe in #2 is not there, you get to believe what you do based on these other things you talked about. Okay, but that is not what my #2 said. My #2 said, in order to know that athletes are really dying more than they use to, we would have to go get this data. This is true whether or not the data is there or is being hidden, I described the data we would need, and you didn’t address why I was or was not wrong about that.
Instead you decided to say something totally different and non-responsive–saying you haven’t seen this data, you believe data is being suppressed, and because you see massive propaganda, you get to “not go along with narrative”. And that’s fine but that is exactly the #1 I said you were doing, instead of looking at valid evidence.
if anecdotally you have a number of amazing coincidences of sudden deaths
But this is exactly what you do not know. You do not know if these are amazing coincidences, or if they happen all the time, or if they’re actually less common than they used to be. You are using the heuristic “I’m paying attention to this now, and I wasn’t before, so this must be new”. Like I said in my #1 above. You go on to repeat it here:
I have quite a list. Never had cause to have a list like this before.
If you had been keeping such a list 20 years ago you have no idea if would come out the same, because you weren’t…
Okay, and then you deny you are doing “we know they lie about other things, so I choose to believe the opposite of what they are saying.” but then you go right on to say
got every vaccine offered for my children. I admit, I would not do that now.
because listening to the “debate” between RFK Jr. and Dershowitz I discovered truth I was never willing to listen to before.
Even though none of the childhood vaccines are connected to any of this that’s going on now. Kids have been getting those vaccines for 50 years, but because you are bothered by one new kind of vaccine that just came out now, and the people who are pushing it, now you want to call the vaccines into question.
I’m not saying it’s wrong for you to think this way, but what you are NOT doing is looking at actual evidence before you decide what to think. Instead, you are applying heuristics to tell you what you are willing to listen to and from whom.
And you may be getting the right answer about the COVID vaccines by thinking this way–but you could be getting the right answer if you flipped a coin and decided that vaccines are bad if it comes up heads. You could, by luck, get the right answer, but that’s not a reliable method of knowing what is true or not true.
And also I hope you see that you are not actually engaging what I actually say. Instead, you are looking for cues that I am not on “your side” and then instead of arguing with me, you are arguing with people you think are on “my side” as though I said any of those things, which I didn’t.
You are not alone, not on this comments section, not on the Right, not in the world. Common as this approach is, it is not the way to learn what’s really true.
Ferderick.
You’re right that we believe a lot of things because they’ve worked for a long time. I think it was seventy years ago I got my first Salk shot.
It works.
But, in addition to being new, Covid was born into and of massive confusion, some of it actually accidental. The same for the vaccines. And it’s new. We don’t have seventy years of history to assess.
We know that if an effective therapeutic is found, the EUA goes away. This provides an incentive to dismiss or suppress such a therapeutic. Whether this is happening and if so, for that reason, is not knowable. But the question, “What would look different if they really were….?” could certainly raise the eyebrow.
The same is true of other issues. The whole thing is so mixed up that it’s not possible to insist we believe as we do the Salk vaccine.
In addition, some things bother certain individuals more than they do others, which leads to excessive concern for what’s going on inside the smoke screen of competing narratives.
About forty years ago, I had a week’s bout with what the doctor said was “winter vomiting sickness”. Since then, my health issues have all been mechanical; injuries, heart valve, so forth. So I wasn’t particularly worried about Covid for me. And I figured I was in good enough shape to manage the vax issues, if any.
And, for various reasons, I’m not particularly territorial about such time as I may or may not have left.
So…booring.
On the other hand, there are people who are, in a sense, enjoying this. A woman told me of a kid who, in some way, had brought the Covid to his grandmother who died. So somebody told the kid. He’s in counseling, the woman said with grim satisfaction. I observed that the sick, sadistic son of a bitch who told the kid and no doubt went home giggling should be horsewhipped. Turns out I’m the bad guy. Needless to say, she loves AGW, as well.
Bad news from China. Bring your own bed, say the hospitals, being overrun. Crematoria booked solid so families burning their loved ones in the street. Think another bat got loose?
You are not alone, not on this comments section, not on the Right, not in the world. Common as this approach is, it is not the way to learn what’s really true.
It seems to me that this is true of both sides: Those who dismiss the idea that there are deaths from the vaccine by saying “There’s no evidence for it” are just as guilty of drawing conclusions without evidence as those who assert there are. As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The difference between these vaccines and the polio and other vaccines that have been around for 50+ years in one form or another is that they have been heavily tested, and were before they were administered. The Covid vaccines are indisputably experimental and were rushed out and administered to billions of people. Unlike the polio and measles vaccines it’s increasingly clear that the benefits of these vaccines are ephemeral and limited, and we don’t yet know the costs.
Jimmy:
I don’t see anyone saying here saying that it’s impossible, just that there’s no evidence for it causing more deaths than other vaccines do (which is not zero deaths). At some point if good evidence emerges for it I will believe it. I have looked very closely at the evidence so far.
Which is more illogical, believing in something for which there is as yet no evidence (that COVID vaccines are killing a significant number more people than other vaccines do), or not believing in it because there is as yet no evidence? That belief, however, is not set in stone.
There is so much justified rage at the government and the CDC in particular, and Fauci et all, as well as at people like Hochul and Whitmer and the hypocritical and tyrannical ways in which they have tried to control people, that I think that rage is spilling over into anger at the vaccine because of the lies that were told about it. When it was obvious it didn’t prevent COVID and some officials were still saying it did, who wouldn’t be angry? But that doesn’t mean that those who try to prove the COVID shots have no value whatsoever or that they are killing vast numbers of people are telling the truth. When I go to their sites and look at the evidence they offer and how they crunch the numbers and interpret them, I see major major flaws that people who don’t understand statistics aren’t going to catch.
In other words, just because person A is lying and/or mistaken doesn’t mean that person B who is saying something different isn’t also lying and/or mistaken.
Chuck Hughes had significant arterial blockage. He was pronounced dead at the same hospital that had ignored his complaints of chest pains shortly afterward. The hospital paid a large settlement to his widow.
But that doesn’t mean that those who try to prove the COVID shots have no value whatsoever or that they are killing vast numbers of people are telling the truth. When I go to their sites and look at the evidence they offer and how they crunch the numbers and interpret them, I see major major flaws that people who don’t understand statistics aren’t going to catch.
Again true of both sides. (I have PhD-level training in statistics, incidentally.) Part of the problem, as I mentioned above, is that these are rare events, so there’s a limited amount of data, and a paucity of genuine efforts to collect the necessary data.
Which is more illogical, believing in something for which there is as yet no evidence (that COVID vaccines are killing a significant number more people than other vaccines do), or not believing in it because there is as yet no evidence?
It’s not about logic, it’s about where the burden of proof is, or as Bayesians would say, it’s about what your “priors” are. And those priors are by definition based not on statistics but on knowledge of the circumstances in which the shots were developed and administered, and more important, on knowledge of the possible biological mechanisms that potentially could be causing injury. As KJB said in another context, I am not a biologist, so I have to evaluate the arguments of people like Malone, McCullough, and others. Much of what they say is not based on statistics, but their understanding of mRNA vaccines and immunology.
And as for public policy, even if the injuries are extremely rare, they have to be measured against the benefits, which are vanishingly small for people under age 40.
By the way, you might want to watch this video (understandable at 1.25x):
https://rumble.com/v1ze4d0-covid-19-vaccines-what-they-are-how-they-work-and-possible-causes-of-injuri.html
Or, for a bit of effective propaganda,
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lahkfisaxlt0a3j/MEMORIAL_DAY_MASTER__1080p_h264_Dec%2020.mp4?dl=0
@Jimmy:Again true of both sides.
Are there only two sides? Here we go with the heuristic. I’m pretty sure your Ph. D. level training in statistics is going to be more likely to get you to the truth than side-ism.
The reason politics is so toxic these days is exactly this heuristic. It’s how Elon Musk suddenly became “right-wing” and a “dangerous” billionaire overnight. It’s “I decide what to think based on whose side people appear to be on.”
My main point all along about the athlete deaths is that no one has yet shown that the number of deaths is unusual in any way, and that before anyone can talk meaningfully about whether the COVID vaccine is to blame, we first have to know if the thing to blame it for is even happening. So tell me how that puts me on a COVID vaccine “side”? Only by favoring heuristics over empirical evidence could you possibly say that and believe it.
If the new talking point on the Right became that the vaccine was bad because it was turning people into newts, I would want to see those newts before I started to dig in to whether the vaccine was responsible. Even if I already believed the vaccine to be bad!
And as for public policy, even if the injuries are extremely rare, they have to be measured against the benefits, which are vanishingly small for people under age 40.
I endorse this 100%, and even got my pro-COVID vaccine doctor to acknowledge it was true. So tell me again what “side” I’m on?
Neo, you say, “Here’s another [article], this time from a cardiology publication. But they get at least some of their data from groups connected with sports.”
I understand that you’re grabbing these on the fly, but come on. This article repeatedly says, “there’s no evidence that these recent athlete deaths are associated with the vaccine.” But there are two logical fallacies here. First, they did not do any testing or autopsies in the cases cited to even try to determine whether there was a link to the vaccine. Stating “we did not find the evidence we did not look for” is not very convincing. Second, my question was not about whether there was a proven link, my question was where you got your assertion that there has been no increase in athlete deaths relative to the pre-vaccine baseline.
It is clear now that your assertion was basically just your sense of things rather than a product of statistics. (Which is fine and understandable–the data pre-2021 is surely incomplete because no-one was as motivated to centralize and quantify the data as they are now. Sudden deaths of young athletes are pretty shocking, so with some work we *might* be able to construct a pre-2021 data set, but it would still be flawed.)
And your assertion seems to be influenced by where you think the burden of proof lies. You seem to think that the vaccines should be assumed safe until proven otherwise, and you haven’t found the assertions of a LACK of safety particularly convincing yet.
But I would suggest you are putting the burden of proof in the wrong place. There are plenty of terrible safety signals. VAERS itself is designed to capture safety signals, and the regulators who were rushing to approve the EUA vaccines promised to use VAERS for that. VAERS is showing a massive increase in vaccine injury, including deaths. And you seem to have internalized and adopted the perpetrators’ “oh, well, those hundreds of thousands of incidents (most filed by medical professionals) are probably hoaxes or coincidences.” You seem to have internalized and adopted the perpetrators’ claims that myocarditis is a mild condition (a claim that was rarely made pre-2021).
If your point is that we can’t KNOW for sure what felled the football player, well, no duh. If your point is that there has been no increase in athlete deaths, it seems poorly supported. And if your point is that the vaccines seem pretty safe, well, it seems that you’re willfully ignoring lots of data. All-cause mortality is admitted, by governments, to be significantly increased in the most-vaccinated countries. In fact, it’s considerably higher in 2021 and 2022 than during the peak of the pandemic year 2020. Myocarditis and pericarditis cases, though “rare” in an absolute sense, are very high by pre-2021 vaccine safety standards. Even Covid-19 infections and deaths are now higher among vaccinated people and in more highly vaccinated countries.
Moderna and BioNTech never released any products before. Read up on Moderna’s history. mRNA vaccines have lots of known safety problems. Read up on previous attempts at coronavirus vaccines. They all failed because they weren’t safe. Why should these new products, pushed by propagandists and profiteers with a tiny fraction of standard safety testing, be assumed safe in the presence of so many red flags? They shouldn’t be. The burden of proof is on the pushers. And they have not come close to meeting it.
“Propagandists and profiteers,” well, those are terms usually not used by the unbiased. Just sayin’ …..
But “we knows.”
Yes, I am indeed biased against Pfizer, a company with a long track record of corruption https://twitter.com/kanekoathegreat/status/1610375042940153856
And I am biased against EUA vaccines as opposed to FDA-approved vaccines, due to the lower safety testing requirements for EUA vaccines.
But it’s not my bias that causes me to use words like propagandists and profiteers. Even if their motives were pure (saving the world), they, by their own admission, engaged in propaganda.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/14/scientists-admit-totalitarian-use-fear-control-behaviour-covid/
And plenty of profits were enjoyed. The Covid vaccines generated more annual revenue than any blockbuster drug in history. In fact, they generated more annual revenue in their first year than any other corporate product of ANY kind ever did. Bigger than color TV, bigger than the Volkswagen Bug, bigger than Fedex, bigger than the iPhone. Even though the two companies, Moderna and BioNTech, had never before launched ANY products. They EACH set the all time first-year revenue record in business history with their very first product. So, there was plenty of profiteering too.
Charlie:
You apparently wish to believe the vaccines are causing lots of deaths because of your pre-existent distrust, and when a person has a preconceived notion like that all evidence is sifted through it. That’s your prerogative, but don’t expect me to share it. My goal is objectivity. I’m skeptical about both sides, and I evaluate things accordingly, and pay a lot of attention to my knowledge of statistics.
Jimmy:
You’re making quite a leap there.
And by the way, vaccine skeptics tend to ignore the history of mRNA vaccines. See this as well as this.
Neo, I don’t wish to believe that the vaccines are causing lots of deaths. I take your point that I sound biased. But I’m trying to lean against them and think clearly. I too am trained in statistics. And I am also not emotional about my “pre-existent distrust.” But some pre-existent distrust of these products is reasonable in this case. They used a new technology, on a new virus, and by definition the safety testing was more limited than usual due to the short timelines vs. standard. And those short trials supposedly demonstrated very high efficacy, which has not borne out in real world application. Suggesting that the safety claims may have been similarly overstated.
Anyway, I’m sorry to have seemed argumentative. I have a real, sincere question I’ve been trying to get at, a little clumsily I admit. I actually agree with you that the “Covid vaccines are causing lots of deaths” crowd has not proven their case. (And I agree that their case is often highly influenced by their biases.)
But what I’m trying to figure out is, why are you so sanguine about all the red flags? To me, a few suggestive red flags include: the VAERS data showing serious and even fatal side effects at higher rates than for other vaccines, the all-cause mortality data being significantly elevated in 2021 and 2022 vs baseline and even vs 2020, and the heart inflammation related side effects, which, while rare, aren’t that rare by serious vaccine side effect standards. Most of these fall into the “correlation is not causation” category. But the red flags to me seem indicative of trouble. Trouble along the lines of “these new vaccines are not just ineffective, but may be dangerous.” But to you the red flags don’t seem to indicate that, and I am legitimately curious why not. I’m asking because I enjoy your writing and your logic.
Is it that you distrust the data (like thinking the VAERS data is the result of false reports or overreporting due to Covid hype and therefore can’t be compared to VAERS data for other vaccines)? Is it that that you think the correlations have other causes (like all-cause mortality increases being after-effects of lockdowns)? Is it that you’re starting with a presumption of innocence for the vaccines that must be overcome beyond a reasonable doubt? Is it something else?
Or maybe I’m misreading you and you are worried about these red flags and you’re just cautioning against the more extreme claims from vaccine skeptics?
I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on this. And I won’t argue! I’ve tried to finally ask my main question, and I’m just curious about what you think.
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