How to Have a Difficult Conversation about Vaccination

Tom Murphy wrote a nice essay today on the difficulty of being overshoot aware and living a life without hypocrisy.

To me, awareness of my own inconsistent behaviors only serves to highlight my anxiety. I know that giving up things that I could easily afford is sometimes hard. If someone as motivated (freaked out) as I am can’t bring myself to do all I can, then what chance do we have a society to make really tough decisions and accept sacrifices? How will a democracy elect to make those choices?

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2021/06/credibility-from-apparent-hypocrisy/

I left the following comment:

Thanks for your honesty and candor. I suspect most overshoot aware people suffer from similar conflicted thoughts. I know I do.

The difficulty and improbability of lifestyle choices reducing threats to modern civilization highlights why those of us that understand what’s going on should focus on democratically supported population reduction policies.

Yes I know the probability of getting a majority to vote for population reduction is vanishingly small. But every new voice increases the probability of the only thing that might help our predicament. Recall that many topics we now regularly discuss in polite company were taboo a few decades ago.

A rapidly falling populaiton reduces every one of the many threats we face (except maybe growth based ponzi schemes like retirement plans, but we both know those will fail anyway due to other limits to growth).

I remember listening to interviews with Charles Hall on EROI 10+ years ago. I like and respect him. Albert Bates wrote a nice history of Hall’s scientific work today.

https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-great-pause-week-64-new-hope-creek.html

What Hall discovered was that the sunlight received and flora of the stream could not support the population of fish without some external subsidy. That subsidy came in the form of leaves and insects that fell from the forest. Big fish swam upstream to lay their eggs into shallow environments with concentrated energy resources and collect that subsidy, even though they had to expend energy to swim against the current. Little fish swam downstream to be in deeper, less stressful environments with easier escape from predators until they, too, made the migration.

Chris Martenson unpicks recent evidence that Dr. Fauci covered up the Wuhan lab leak.

The February 2021 global CO₂ level was 415.88 parts per million (ppm), which was 2.96 ppm higher than the February 2020 global CO₂ level. On April 8, 2021, CO₂ levels at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, reached a peak of 421.36 ppm.

The 2020 global annual methane growth rate of 15.85 ppb was the highest on record. The global methane level in January 2021 was 1893.4 ppb, 20 ppb higher than the January 2020 level.

The 2020 global annual nitrous oxide (N₂O) growth rate of 1.33 ppb was the highest on record. The global N₂O level in January 2021 was 333.9 ppb, 1.4 ppb higher than the January 2020 level.

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/06/greenhouse-gas-levels-keep-rising-at-accelerating-rates.html

Bossche today explains why, despite the recent good news about vaccine effectiveness, the risks of vaccinating young people are unacceptable.

Is the Fed simply reporting the facts, or are they trying to influence behavior?

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/05/28/feds-favorite-lowball-inflation-gauge-is-red-hot-not-seen-in-decades-even-without-the-base-effect/

The Fed’s favorite inflation measure, generally the lowest inflation measure the US government provides — tracking a lot lower than even the Consumer Price Index which already understates actual inflation — and therefore our lowest lowball inflation measure, and therefore the Fed’s favorite inflation measure, was released this morning, and it was a doozie, despite being the most understated inflation measure the US has so far come up with.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price index without food and energy, the “core PCE” index, jumped by 0.7% in April from March, after having jumped by 0.4% in March from February, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. Those two months combine into an annualized core PCE inflation rate of 6.4%, meaning that if price-increases continue for 12 months at the pace of the past two months, then the annual inflation would be 6.4% as measured by the lowest lowball measure the US has.

This was the highest two-months annualized rate since 1985. And it shows to what extent inflation has suddenly heated up in March and April.

I agree with Kunstler that our “leaders” have not yet earned our trust. It looks like he’s also decided to wait for more data.

As usual, Kunstler ruins an otherwise good essay by ending it with partisan politics which I did not copy here.

As an aside, my government is still not talking about Vitamin D or Ivermectin.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/national-horror-story-hour/

In the early going of the War on Covid-19, The Science told its soldiers, the doctors, to jam ventilators down patients’ throats. Whoops, that didn’t work so well. The Science told everybody to fuggeddabowt Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Vitamin D. The Science told New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to stash Covid-19 infected patients in nursing homes. The Science told everybody don’t bother with masks, then to definitely wear masks, then to maybe not wear masks, then to wear double masks, then to get vaccinated and wear masks. Golly, what to believe? Some people began to think that The Science was full of shit — which is, let’s face it, a dangerous thought, and something which, thank Gawd, Facebook, Twitter, and Google corrected for us.

One thing The Science remained adamant about for a whole year was that Covid-19 did not come from the Wuhan, China, Institute of Virology, where-and-to-which, it just happened, one of the US government’s Knights of The Science, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was funneling US taxpayer-funded grant money for the purpose of doing gain-of-function research on exotic bat corona viruses. Gosh, why would you even do that? (Doesn’t gain of function = make it more deadly?)

Supposedly to gain knowledge so that mankind will be prepared to fight the emergence of deadly bat viruses that somehow manage to sneak into the human population at some future date. These things can happen, you know. We’ve already tangled with bird flu and swine flu, so deadly bat flu could hardly be out of the question. Of course, one of the dangers, when you are playing with deadly respiratory viruses in a lab, is that lab workers might inhale a virus or two and become infected with a specimen that The Science has engineered to be especially troublesome… but that was very unlikely, maintained Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Science Advisor to the President.

Until this month when Dr. Fauci conceded to a Senate Committee that perhaps an investigation was warranted to find out if, perchance, Covid-19 escaped from the Wuhan lab — since, it turns out, the Wuhan lab was such a sloppy-ass operation that its level of safety was comparable to an ordinary dentist’s office. It also turns out, according to a Wall Street Journal report this week, that three Wuhan lab workers did indeed need to be hospitalized in November 2019, which was around the time the bug got loose among the civilians of Wuhan City, while Chinese tourists and workers were still winging around the world on airplanes by the tens of thousands — prompting one to wonder whether, also perchance, this was something that the CCP wanted to happen? ¿Quién sabe?

Now that “safe and effective” vaccines are available against Covid-19, The Science is urging everybody to take it, pronto, and the government is assisting in the distribution and deployment of vaccinations even to the very borderline of coercing citizens into it by turning the “vaccine hesitant” into social pariahs. No restaurant meals or ballgames for you Science-offending trolls! How’s that working? According to Dr. Fauci, and several other Knights of The Science, more than half of the people on their staffs got vaxed voluntarily. More than half! Now that’s a ringing vote of confidence in The Science!

Never mind that the vaxes being deployed got exempted from the normal years-long safety trials that The Science previously deemed essential for new vaccines, and received special liability protection against lawsuits, should something go awry with the jabs. And never mind the strange side-effects being reported, ranging from human reproductive problems to fatal blood clots. And never mind that apparently quite a few people who got the vax have also gotten Covid-19. And never mind that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued to flutter about her place of business wearing color-coordinated face masks, despite being vaxed and spending her time among colleagues who are all vaxed up.

Standing by on all that to see how the vaccine beta-testers make out over a somewhat longer haul….

Alex Kasprak, a geologist who has written an impressive collection of debunking articles including “Is This a Real Video of a Man Riding a Hoverboard in Traffic?” has debunked the claims of Geert Vanden Bossche.

https://www.snopes.com/author/alex/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/drone-hoverboard/

It’s clear that Kasprak is unbiased, fully understands Bossche’s hypothesis, and has a better command of vaccine science than Bossche from the title and summary of his essay:

Geert Vanden Bossche Stokes Fear of COVID-19 Vaccine To Promote His Own Flawed ‘Solution’

Anti-vaccine activists are promoting a veterinarian’s claim that the only way to prevent a future COVID-19 vaccination-related calamity is through a product he claims to have invented.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/03/26/geert-vanden-bossche/

Mike Stasse operates the Damn the Matrix blog from his small farm in Tasmania.
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/

Stasse was recently interviewed by the Post-Growth Australia podcast. It’s nice to associate a voice with his writing. One big idea stood out for me: “Growth is only necessary so that people can repay their debts.”

https://share.fireside.fm/episode/pimcp3Kw+dSjyIvjF

“Degrowth is happening whether we like it or not” – Michel Stasse

In the ‘Tasmanian Perspectives’ series, PGAP host Michael Bayliss travels around the Apple Isle to interview Post-Growth mainlanders who have resettled in Tasmania and to discuss their reasons why.

In this episode, I travel to the Huon Valley to meet with Michel Stasse, long-time Degrowth advocate, founder of the ‘Damn The Matrix’ blog and DIO superhero who self-built an impressive self-sufficient, off-grid eco home in the Huon Valley.

Mike kindly took some time aside for giving me a tour of his home where the on-site interview took place and discussed with me his reasons for moving from Queensland to Tasmania. We then discuss his life journey towards understanding limits to growth, standing for politics in Queensland, to his current advocacy for Degrowth and his reasons why electric cars and the green new deal won’t save us.

I interviewed Mike in February on a hot day for Tasmania – mid 30s – and the day in which Australia endured the Facebook kerfuffle, including the removal of content from Australian activist groups and organisations. As such, there was a whiff of apocalypse already in the air, and during the interview Mike certainly doesn’t mince words as he takes us somewhere down the deep end. So a ‘health warning’ for anyone expecting a utopian outlook for this episode.

Dr. Bossche yesterday proposed several paths out of the predicament he has been warning us about.

One path with a decent probability of success would be to develop a new live attenuated vaccine that kills the virus rather than simply reducing sickness as do the current vaccines. This new vaccine would not work and could not be offered to people who have been vaccinated with the current vaccines.

Along the same line of reasoning, it would also be conceivable to immunize CoV-seronegative subjects with a live (i.e., replication-competent) attenuated, heterotypic CoV (e.g., an attenuated endemic common cold CoV) in order to induce cross-protective cytotoxic T cells (CTLs). Such a live attenuated vaccine would induce S-specific Abs that are not protective against Covid-19 infection and, therefore, not subject to viral immune escape and not promote enhanced viral infectiousness. However, recall of Ag-specific memory CTLs would lead to clonal expansion of these cells and thereby produce large numbers of Ag-specific, MHC class I-restricted effector T cells. By destroying virus-infected target cells, cytotoxic effector T cells would abrogate the infection and hence, prevent progression to Covid-19 disease. Live attenuated vaccines have been particularly useful for large scale immunization campaigns targeted at eradicating viruses such as smallpox and poliomyelitis virus (although the latter has not yet been fully eradicated). However, only S-seronegative subjects would be eligible for parenteral immunization with live attenuated CoV as heterotypic anti-S Abs can still bind Sars-CoV-2 and could, therefore, prevent vaccine take or put the vaccinee at risk of Ab-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease. There is also always a risk that a live attenuated vaccine causes disease in immunosuppressed subjects. This issue could, however, easily be solved by monitoring vaccinees for clinical symptoms after immunization and treating them with antivirals, if needed.

Another path would be to develop an NK cell-based vaccine, which (I believe) interacts with the innate immune system, and could be offered to previously vaccinated people, but requires a significant advancement of vaccine technology and thus cannot be relied on in the short term.

Finally, there is yet another option for achieving fast, transmission-blocking immunity without promoting propagation of selective immune escape variants. As this approach is not based on targeting adaptive cytolytic T cells but innate NK cells, there would be no need for host cells to first become infected with live virus to efficiently prime a protective immune response. The concept is no longer fully theoretical but more work need to be done to advance it into the clinic (8). Alike potential induction of Ag-specific CTLs by Ag bound to adaptive, Ag-specific Abs, sensitization of NK cells could be triggered by binding of polyspecific natural Abs to viral particles.

Another path with a high probability of success is early treatment of infected people with anti-viral drugs so that they recover quickly and can then rely on their immune system for subsequent protection.

Theoretically, components of the multidrug early treatment kit (e.g., ivermectin) could also be used during a limited period of time to drastically reduce viral infectious pressure in any given population. Provided all healthy, non-vaccinated people and, even more importantly, all vaccinees would take the drug around the same time according to the prescribed regimen, the infectious pressure may rapidly drop beneath the threshold required for the virus to transmit and replicate. But even before that happens, the decrease in infectious pressure would already reduce the risk for healthy, non-vaccinated people to contract Covid-19 disease. While having a curative effect in those who contracted the disease and abrogating infection in vaccinated spreaders, antiviral drug treatment administered during a pandemic would also serve as chemoprophylaxis to those who have not yet been infected or who cleared a previous infection. Based upon successes reported for infection and treatment immunizations against parasites, it is not unreasonable to speculate that antiviral chemoprophylaxis in susceptible individuals followed by exposure to circulating Sars-CoV-2 variants provides broad and long-lived protective immunity.

He goes on to explain that great care would need to be taken with such an anti-viral drug campaign to avoid drug resistant variants.

Bossche explains that we need a Plan C because our current Plan B probably won’t work:

Of course, vaccine manufacturers claim they are already in the process of ‘updating’ their vaccines in order for those to better match the antigenic constellation of the more infectious variants. However, it is difficult to imagine how this could solve the above-described problem of immune escape variants. First, they will need to strengthen adjuvantation of the S-targeted vaccines to overcome the well-known ‘antigenic sin’ issue and allow for epitope spreading such as to cover more Sars-CoV-2 variants (9). However, adding new adjuvants to vaccines has been the single most important stumbling block in modern vaccinology. But even more importantly, the virus will continue to evolve towards enhanced infectiousness and vaccine resistance as long as the conditions for those evolutionary dynamics are fulfilled, i.e., as long as vaccines that cannot block transmission are used in mass vaccination campaigns conducted in the heat of a pandemic of a highly mutable virus.

Bossche concludes by saying that a growing number of scientists are joining him in calling for an immediate halt to our mass vaccination campaigns.

Conclusive remarks:
A steadily growing community of world-class scientists and experts keep calling for an immediate halt to the mass vaccination campaigns as the single most important global health emergency of international concern. At the same time and with the same level of urgency, they urge regulatory and health authorities to officially recognize and promote sequential multidrug treatment as medical standard of care for dealing with Covid-19 disease. Early treatment, as established by P. McCullough and others, should now be made widely available as it has proven highly efficient, practical and cost-effective. Treating Covid-19 patients at an early stage of disease has been shown to dramatically mitigate the current Covid-19 crisis by saving numerous lives and reducing the burden of hospitalizations very substantially. As post-infection treatment intervention, early treatment would also more rapidly provide patients with strong and long-lived protective immunity against Covid-19 and hence, readily contribute to growing herd immunity. Improved, vaccine-based immune interventions will take more time but should be further explored as quick ‘updates’ of the current Covid-19 vaccines will most likely fail to solve the pandemic because they are still based on the very same immunological concept and mechanism. Because those don’t address the risk of evolutionary immune escape, predominant circulation of more infectious and eventually vaccine-resistant viral variants is inevitable. In this regard, the vaccine community may want to focus more on developing vaccines with transmission-blocking capacity and which elicit immune responses that are not prone to antigenic sin. In the highly likely event that upon continued mass vaccination Sars-CoV-2 will eventually become resistant to the current Covid-19 vaccines, such a novel type of vaccines will be required to protect all those previously immunized with any of these vaccines. Since there is also a clear need for a more comprehensive pandemic preparedness, the scientific and vaccine community may want to consider developing vaccine concepts that are capable of tapping into the potential of NK cells as the latter have the capacity to recognize a broad spectrum of pathogen-associated patterns.

Until we develop vaccines that are capable of controlling Covid-19 without generating pockets of immunity that are prone to promoting enhanced viral infectiousness, we may need to rely on a short but large scale course of antiviral drug treatment using a safe, efficient and cost-effective compound that can be made available in high quantities at low cost (this is for experts to decide but is seems like ivermectin would qualify). A well-coordinated and targeted drug treatment program could be a game-changer and turn the tide of this pandemic in that it could drastically reduce the chain of viral transmission, not at least in vaccinees. Whether sensibly targeted virucidal chemoprophylaxis will provide populations with sustained protection from Covid-19 in the post-pandemic era and hence, serve as a full-fledged substitute for herd immunity is likely but unproven. Virucidal chemoprophylaxis seems, however, a promising option, the effectiveness of which could rapidly be explored at low cost and without raising the type of safety concerns that are associated with the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns.

This is a complicated topic and I’m sorry if I’ve summarized Bossche incorrectly. Please correct me if you have a more accurate interpretation of Bossche’s paper.

https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/cautious-suggestions-on-a-way-out-of-a-mismanaged-covid-19-pandemic

P.S. I’m taking bets that our “leaders” will soon deeply regret that they went out of their way to discredit a drug that was discovered 50 years ago with a clean safety track record and that warranted a Nobel prize by deliberately disparaging it as “parasite deworming treatment”.

It’s mind boggling how many people who make a living analyzing economic issues see the problems we face but are unable to connect the dots to overshoot.

Here we have John Williams (http://www.shadowstats.com/), the grandfather of inflation monitoring, discussing our rock and hard place, with no clue of the underlying forces.

https://rumble.com/embed/veup99/?pub=4

Wolf Richter today is good for a chuckle. He details how hundreds of billions of an “inflation protecting store of wealth” vaporized in a few days.

You can’t make this shit up….

Facebook has labeled the interview linked above by Weinstein of Bossche a “hoax”.

It is a science based plausible testable hypothesis by a domain expert about a serious threat to civilization.

It is not a hoax.

I’m so glad I closed my Facebook account 2 years ago.