How to Have a Difficult Conversation about Vaccination

I’ve decided to wait a little longer before being vaccinated, so that I can observe and weigh rapidly accumulating evidence for and against vaccination.

I’m feeling social pressure to get vaccinated, and I expect that pressure to increase, so I’ve been thinking about how to discuss this divisive topic with people that I care about. My plan follows.

I will start by acknowledging that we share common goals:

  • prevent serious sickness and death
  • resume normal activities as soon as possible
  • do what is best for the majority of citizens

Then I will carefully articulate that I understand what the other person believes:

  • vaccination prevents serious sickness and death
  • vaccination reduces spread of the virus
  • vaccination discourages the emergence of new more dangerous variants
  • vaccination protects against variants, and if protection fails in the future for a new variant, can be remedied with a new booster vaccine
  • therefore, a person who does not get vaccinated is being irresponsible by increasing the risk to both vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens

Then I will confirm that I understand why they have these beliefs:

  • health authorities and political leaders in almost all countries of the world are communicating that these beliefs are true
  • all of the mainstream news media supports these views
  • there is an aggressive worldwide campaign underway to vaccinate most citizens
  • countries with the highest vaccination rates have to date shown the most improvement in cases and sickness

Then I will identify the source of my concern that our vaccination policy may be a mistake:

  • Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a vaccine expert with 30 years experience developing vaccines https://www.linkedin.com/in/geertvandenbossche/
  • Bossche is not an anti-vax conspiracist
  • Bossche thinks our leaders and vaccine developers are competent with good intentions but may have overlooked some serious implications of their strategy due to the urgency to “do something”, and due to a lack of understanding of how some aspects of the immune system function
  • Bossche thinks our current broad vaccination policy would be the correct policy if deployed before the virus was widespread in the population

Then I will explain why I think we should pay attention to Bossche:

  • he is intelligent with good intentions
  • his arguments are science based and plausible
  • he is not saying that his hypothesis is absolutely correct, he is saying there is enough existing science and emerging evidence to warrant an urgent investigation and discussion by the scientific community
  • caution is wise because we are intervening in an unprecedented manner (vaccinating during a pandemic with emerging variants) on a complex system (immune system), within a complex system (human body), within a complex system (global civilization), using a tool with long-lasting irreversible effects (vaccination), and the penalty for making a mistake is high (much worse pandemic)
  • our leaders have not earned our trust because to date they have a poor track record of making timely and wise decisions on the virus
  • if Bossche is correct and we’ve made a mistake then our current vaccination policy has serious long term implications that may not be undone

Then I will provide a link to Bossche’s site and point to an April 22 interview of Bossche by Bret Weinstein, a PhD biologist, who helps Bossche explain a complex topic, and which is the best starting point for understanding the risks.

Click to access geert-vanden-bossche-faq-23-may-2021.pdf

Then I will explain the implications of Bossche being correct:

  • vaccination prevents serious sickness and death from the original virus
  • vaccination reduces spread of the original virus
  • vaccination encourages the emergence of new more dangerous variants
  • vaccination will not protect against new variants, and may block the effectiveness of new booster vaccines for new variants
  • vaccination will reduce the innate immune system’s ability to respond to new variants
  • therefore, a healthy person at low risk of serious sickness who chooses to be vaccinated will increase the risk to vaccinated and unvaccinated citizens, and to themselves
  • by waiting for a review of the science and for data on emerging variants, before being vaccinated, low risk citizens may be doing the right thing for both themselves and society

Then I will explain that my decision to wait would be wrong if:

  • I was unhealthy or my immune system was weak
  • I had regular close contact with people that are unhealthy or have weak immune systems
  • I was not using high caution with social distancing, masks, and personal hygiene

124 thoughts on “How to Have a Difficult Conversation about Vaccination”

  1. There is nothing I enjoy more than intelligent, knowledgeable, truth seeking, open minded brains discussing something important.

    Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology) discussed the evidence in support of Ivermectin, and the malfeasant campaign against its use, in their podcast earlier this week.

    I have some Ivermectin in my emergency supplies for use in case I get sick. Assuming I can secure an additional supply, I’ve made a decision to start taking Ivermectin as a prophylactic (prevention) measure against Covid.

    P.S. Rewind to the beginning for an update on the lab origin hypothesis of Covid.

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    1. One concern I have regarding ivermectin, which I haven’t seen discussed, is that if everybody starts taking it as a prophylactic surely it increases the risk of resistant worms and other parasites developing. We have drenches that we no longer use on the sheep because of resistance. Thankfully ivermectin is still effective.

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    2. Vanden Bossche discusses briefly that prophylactic Ivermectin could also cause pressure for viral mutation but seemed to recommend it in early disease. I’m using prophylaxis that enhances the immune system…vitamin D, zinc, quercetin, vitamin C, and melatonin but reserving Ivermectin if early treatment is necessary.

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      1. Thanks. I’m taking D and C every day but Zinc and Quercetin only once a week because my supplies are limited. Also trying to eat healthier and to get regular exercise.

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  2. Hi Rob, you did a great detailed analysis here with many points worth noting but my response in this conversation when it comes up is usually as simple as possible… I just want to wait for results of the long term studies

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      1. One could then ask why people continue to breed, consume and ignore all of the ruin our modern civilization imposes upon the ecosystems that support that society. I would tell them that unless they are willing drastically reduce their highly consumptive lifestyle then they are imposing great damage upon society and are therefore hypocrites and should go fuck themselves. There is no point getting into any of these arguments with non thinking people.

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  4. Hi Rob, Thank you for creating this public record regarding virology, vaccinations and Covid-19. I have followed similar reasoning and reached similar conclusions regarding vaccinations for the virus. In addition, I would add to the list waiving rights of redress should an adverse reaction or death occur. Personally, I am unwilling to forfeit indemnity rights for an experimental vaccine and the population experiment presently underway globally. Said more colorfully, I am unwilling to be a guinea pig for big pharma. Keep up the good work.

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  5. Your logical, balanced perspective is simply a breath of fresh air in a politicized world.

    NPR’s “On the Media” program (produced at WNYC, with a consistently liberal bias), heard this morning, discussed the growing credibility of calls for an honest investigation of the origins of covid-19. Yes, they said, previous attributions of the pandemic to a “lab leak” were often dismissed as right-wing conspiracy theories, but then the official “international” investigation was so totally contrived by the Chinese to dismiss the possibility of the lab leak, than responsible scientists in the US have a good reason to advocate for a better investigation.

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  6. Ivermectin is off patent and apparently cheap to manufacture.

    I thought the Ivermectin horse paste I bought last year at $0.15/mg was a little expensive.

    Today I searched for Ivermectin tablets sold for human prescriptions and was shocked to find they are about $3.00/mg.

    That works out to $54 per weekly prophylactic dose. Fuck that.

    Click to access FLCCC-Alliance-I-MASKplus-Protocol-ENGLISH.pdf

    Does anyone know of a low cost source of Ivermectin?

    I’m ok using the dark web if that’s the best path.

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    1. Perhaps an Indian supplier. There seem to be many and it was $53 AUD for 100 12mg pills.
      Never used one but maybe worth the gamble.

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    2. I searched the drug sites on the dark web. Also tried China. Nada.

      Looks like local feed and tack shops remain the best source.

      Our leaders amaze me. They continue to do the exact opposite of what wise leaders should do.

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  7. 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.

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  8. Bossche seems to be regularly expanding the FAQ on his site. Here’s the latest #25.

    https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/faq

    #25 Contradictory messages are circulating about the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines towards variants (including the double mutant from India). Who is wrong and who is right?

    Stakeholders of the ongoing mass vaccination campaigns claim good effectiveness towards variants but don’t always mention that this relates to the capacity of these vaccines to prevent severe disease and hence, hospitalization and death. It is clear, however, that all Covid-19 vaccines fail in blocking viral transmission, especially transmission of more infectious variants. This is a huge problem as viral transmission is now increasingly taking place among healthy people in general and vaccinees in particular (as their S-specific Abs do not sufficiently neutralize S variants). The resulting suboptimal S-directed immune pressure serves as a breeding ground for even more infectious variants. As more and more people are now getting their second shot and as more and more younger age groups are getting vaccinated, suboptimal immune pressure on viral infectiousness is only increasing. This will eventually lead to full resistance of Sars-CoV-2 to these vaccines.

    In conclusion: Although decreasing the burden on the health care system, success in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic should not be anticipated based on good vaccine effectiveness in terms of prevention of severe disease and hospitalizations only, but also on reduction of transmission among healthy vaccinees. The latter criterion can no longer be verified as health authorities are now no longer reporting about breakthrough infections in vaccinees unless they are coming down with severe disease. Precisely due to the lack of effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines in blocking viral transmission continued mass vaccination campaigns will only promote dominant propagation of more infectious variants and eventually cause Sars-CoV-2 to become fully resistant to Covid-19 vaccines. Even if the already announced ‘updates’ of these vaccines would manage to overcome the problem associated with ‘antigenic sin’ (this will require substantial adjuvantation), the issue with more infectious immune escape variants will remain. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the updated vaccines as well will fail to prevent viral resistance.

    It goes without saying that circulation of a vaccine-resistant virus in populations with a high vaccine coverage rate will be highly problematic.

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    1. Also from Geert Vanden Bossche FAQs

      How can it be explained that in Israel it seems that the massive vaccination has almost stopped the pandemic and no dramatic effects are being observed over people that have been vaccinated? “It’s just a matter of weeks for a surge in Israel to occur due to resistance of the virus to vaccinal antibodies in vaccinees. I expect this surge to occur before summer.”

      As you have noted before Rob, Israel seems to be a good test of Geert Vanden Bossche theories. And Bossche seems to be willing to “put it (Israel) out there” so to speak, as a test.

      Viruses are tricky things, I suppose a failure of the virus to re-emerge in Israel will not entirely invalidate his ideas. But lets see what happens. I suspect we will only know the truth of things until late in this fall or into winter, as we watch variants emerge, or not, across the U.S., UK, etc.

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      1. I agree. Let’s watch. It’s a very complex system and I don’t understand everything Bossche says, but I believe he is an intelligent truth seeker with good intentions who is very worried.

        There’s something strange with the Israel data I monitor. The percent vaccinated hasn’t changed for a long time.

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  10. Listened to the author talk today on NPR. This is his new book: Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain
    by Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler

    The brain is not a truth seeker. Nor do we have insight on how our own brains work. The brain seeks functionality. The book comes across to me as an anti-un-denial one with some good points.

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      1. Could be Vedantam’s “useful delusions” made many of us feel good while destroying the planet at the same time. Not very useful in the end.

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    1. I loved Dr. Murphy’s book. I read it a couple of weeks ago and since then have read Blip. Blip was good but Murphy’s book was great. If I had taken this course back in college I might have had an entirely different life! I loved General Physics when I went to college (in my early 30’s – took a while to get there paying as I went). I loved the math and the explanatory power of the science of Physics. But, now almost 40 years later I did not do all the problem sets in Murphy’s new book;) (old brain). Now I am selectively re-reading certain sections. I have just started the space colonization vs. exploration chapter. I used to love Star Trek – now in retrospect I kinda despise what science fiction does. Most popular science fiction throws physics out the window – how could you have a story if humans are energy constrained to a tiny fraction of the speed of light? Even Carl Sagen had to throw out physics for the sake of “Contact” (how could you have a universe populated by many advanced sophisticated civilizations if you can never contact them?). SciFi basically gives those who deny limits to human civilization the excuse that human ingenuity can solve anything (which it can’t).
      My current feeling is that we are perhaps alone in the universe? If the Fermi Paradox/Drake Equation is answered by the fact that all technological civilizations self destruct then that appears to be our fate also. If we somehow survived the coming collapse of industrial (fossil fueled) civilization would we ever be able to even look/listen for extraterrestrial intelligence (much less to travel like Star Trek to other worlds)? Without our fossil fuel inheritance would we ever have become aware of the greater universe? (how would you build Mt. Wilson observatory or the Hubble Space Telescope without fossil fuels?). My fear is that even if we as a species survive collapse will we just go back to never knowing anything about the wider universe – i.e. worshipping planets and stars as gods/messengers? Are we just a brief expression of the Universe achieving a limited self awareness only to sink back into the darkness of the eons?
      I appreciate Dr. Murphy and his desire to use science to light a candle against that darkness (to paraphrase another Carl Sagen book).
      AJ

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      1. Thanks AJ for taking the time to share your thoughts. I agree with you. Good science fiction should teach good science to citizens, but instead usually misleads and reinforces denial.

        If you’d like to expand your thoughts into an essay I’d be more than pleased to post it.

        I expect simple single-cell prokaryotic life will be widespread in the universe because, as Nick Lane explains, all you need is rock, water, CO2, and a geologically active planet of which there are probably 100’s of billions of candidates in the universe.

        Complex multi-cellular eukaryotic life will be rare due to the requirement for an improbable endosymbiosis of 2 prokaryotes, and intelligent life, as Varki explains, will be short lived and vanishingly rare because it can only emerge in tandem with overshoot enabling reality denial.

        I think our existence, at the very peak of what may be possible in the universe, is cause for great awe and joy, even if the future is dark. I don’t think there’s a better place or time to be alive in the universe than right here right now.

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      2. Don’t throw the Tribble out with the bath water. There is some great SF out there. The writer Peter Watts does an excellent job of putting “science fact” in SF. Naturally he takes liberties, but he uses real science as a springboard for his ideas. “Blindsight” even has a technical appendix and has been used in neuroscience college classes.

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      3. I know of a science fiction novel that has an energy constrained future humanity making radio contact with ET’s (who also went through something similar to our fossil fueled industrial stage -ending just as badly). So it is the kind of story you are asking for.

        But the hilarious thing is: This much more scientifically accurate story was written by a guy who worships planets as gods/ messengers. ROFLMAO

        The story is Star’s Reach

        The author is the ArchDruid John Michael Greer.

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          1. Greer may be crazy, but he is not in denial and he can be entertaining as hell.

            His most recent non-fiction book is kind of a Lovecraftian take on the rising political insanity
            The King in Orange

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              1. Probably
                but i don’t think all the traditional responses to death have the same impact on our actions.
                The atheist position that you have your one life then you are done is different from
                the Christian position that you have one life then eternal reward or eternal punishment and they are both different from the belief in reincarnation. Where you keep coming back time after time dealing with the problems you have created until you learn how to live as a good human.

                Now the belief reincarnation might be total woo woo but it doesn’t let you off the hook for the crap you do, which might be why John’s occult mumbo jumbo did not lead him to overshoot denial.

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          2. “Crazy” is a term of art. “Insane” is a term of law. Remember that. H.S. Thompson.

            Archdruid! I’m all down with meeting this dude. Definitely on my Vernal Equinox party list. He’ll be the guy wearing the cape right?

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            1. Greer moved behind a paywall with his coven so you’ll have to pay for his voodoo doom. He has some good insights but I quit him many years ago because he needs an editor to remove about 9 out of every 10 words he writes (with no loss in content).

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              2. “Voodoo Doom.” Love it ! My new expression of the week. So you have to put a coin in Zoltar eh to get behind the curtain. Too bad.

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        2. Thanks for the suggestion. I already read it.
          I followed JMG when he wrote his earlier blog. The current one seems to focused on the occult(woo). My criticism of JMG is that he sees climate change as a much less lethal existential threat than people like Paul Beckwith, Alex Smith and McPherson(they may be a little to pessimistic but I feel they are closer to reality than JMG).
          As far as Star’s Reach, I found it entertaining, but it follows JMG’s belief that what is coming is slow. . . catabolic collapse. I don’t think that is possible because it doesn’t take abrupt climate change into consideration nor does it deal with a breakdown of the USA and what happens to it’s 10,000 nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants. I think he writes from a perspective of supporting his theory of catabolic collapse, whereas I think that our hyper complex civilization will have a hard time avoiding a precipitous fall and warring states over the last of the resources.
          In my 20’s I loved Star Trek (mainly because they lived in a universe devoid of gods). A few of the episodes stand the test of time, IMHO, especially a few philosophical episodes like : The City on the Edge of Forever, The Inner Light (perhaps a premonition of our fate?).
          AJ

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    2. I love the work that Tom has done over the years to educate the public but I feel that even he has a small amount of bias as he talks about trying to build a society that would be sustainable on a 10000 year timescale. No civilization – not even any of the preindustrial ones – is sustainable over that time period.

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  13. 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”.

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  15. 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.

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  16. Kunstler interviewed Tim Morgan today. Nice to hear Morgan’s voice although he was unable to say the words overshoot and population reduction.

    https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-344-chatting-with-dr-tim-morgan-of-surplus-energy-economics/

    Dr. Tim Morgan is a leading exponent of the view that the economy is an energy system, not a financial one. This was set out in the report Perfect Storm, when Tim was global head of research at leading international finance firm Tullett Prebon, and in his book Life After Growth.

    Since that book was published in 2013, his focus has been on modelling the economy as an energy system. His model – the Surplus Energy Economics Data System (SEEDS) – produces results that differ radically from models which accept the premise that energy and resources play no more than supporting roles in an economy shaped and driven by money.

    His research can be found at: https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/

    https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/9/4/8/948599893d702038/KunstlerCast_344.mp3

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  17. 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/

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    3. Kasprak’s post seems to be making similar arguments against Vanden-Bossche as were made by Dr. Mobeen Syed, only in somewhat simpler terms that are more understandable to laypeople like myself.

      On today’s show Dr. Mobeen is debunking a claim by a Nobel Laureate that vaccines are causing variants “Are Vaccines Causing Variants?” Mobeen says at least Vanden-Bossche has a paper that you can go through line by line; not so with this one – just claims, with no evidence.

      Rob, do you have an update on Israel?

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          1. Thanks.

            Syed starts by disparaging “so called experts” but Syed’s background is software engineering with zero vaccine development experience.

            https://medicinex.stanford.edu/medx-speakers/mobeen-syed/
            https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobeen-syed-8ab9312/

            I did not finish it because he’s not focused on Bossche’s claims in this talk.

            I remember briefly looking at Montagnier’s claims quite a while ago and concluded he was not credible.

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  19. 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….

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  20. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think it was not wear masks (there weren’t enough) then the consensus was wear masks. Think Kunstler is exaggerating here to make his point.

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    1. I don’t know what happened in the US. In Canada we were initially told not to wear masks because they didn’t help. They lied to us to maintain supply for health care workers because they screwed up and didn’t have an emergency inventory despite being warned for years that an pandemic was inevitable. My “leaders” also acted about 4 months too late after it was obvious that travel with China should have been stopped.

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      1. I agree. I only think masks were discouraged because of a lack of inventory. If a large number of people were not both anti-mask and anti-vaccine, I think the vaccine passports idea wouldn’t have much support. However, putting a piece of cloth on your face is an affront to liberty.

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  21. 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.

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  22. https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/oil-what-are-the-risks-for-the-future-of-europes-supply-the-new-shifts-report-about-peak-oil/

    The study from The Shift Project analyses the outlook for the future oil production from the 16 main EU current suppliers by 2030 and 2050. Based on a critical assessment of the data from the Norwegian company Rystad Energy, a strong reference in the fossil-fuel industry, the results show that:

    All 16 countries show a declining trend in new reserve discoveries, and the size of new fields in operation also tends to decrease overtime.

    14 out of the 16 examined countries demonstrate a decline in production or a level lower than the maximum level observed in the past.

    The depletion rate of the accumulated discoveries to this date in the 16 countries is close to 70%, and the time lag between identification and development is increasing is all countries. This is due to the scarcity, over the last ten to thirty years, of significant new oil fields with a quality level or geographical location that would justify development within the timeframe previously in force in the industry.

    The EU has so far not assessed the risks and potential impacts from these projections. Nevertheless, such an assessment is important since in addition to the decrease of global oil supplies, the EU’s share of the global market will likely be affected by two other factors.

    First, the increase in domestic consumption in many exporting countries which is gradually eroding their export capacity, and thus exacerbating the risk of a squeeze on net importing countries. Second, the emergence of new, large consumer countries on the global oil market, like China and India, who are competing for crude oil supplies with developed countries, whose demand for crude oil remains massive. For reference, the EU currently imports about 10% of global oil production, similar to China.

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  23. Nice refresher on our climate predicament from Albert Bates today.

    I wish someone would discuss and model our most probable trajectory (aka reality) and tell us what climate results at the end of the century: 50% drop in GDP and fossil energy consumption this decade, followed by annual 4% decline. Knowledgeable optimists like Nate Hagens and Justin Ritchie think we’ll be ok. I suspect they’re wrong.

    https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-great-pause-week-63-mr-andersons.html

    We have been cautiously but definitively informed by numerous scientific conferences and publications now that both of the following statements are true:

    In the business as usual scenario presently being followed, Earth is on track to a global average temperature increase of 3.7 to 6.9 degrees C by the end of the present century.

    At any temperature above 3 degrees, no organized human civilization will be possible. Agriculture will not work. Our sweat glands will not cool us outdoors (they fail above 40 to 50°C, depending on individuals). Superstorms will wreak havoc on wind farms, solar arrays, and hydroelectric dams. Fires and floods will take down our cities.

    “There is no suggestion that all humans would die and all life would go off the planet,” Anderson said, “and there is no suggestion that that would be the case, but it would be a devastatingly different world than where we are today and it also wouldn’t be stable.”

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    1. Rob,
      I had already read Albert Bates blog today before you posted your comment. Albert usually depresses me (probably means he is right). But, I too have wondered what would happen if the economy crashed as MAC10 or Charles Smith think will happen. They appear to see complete economic collapse as a real possibility. Without such collapse causing a war (possible) how would the capitalist economic system get restarted? My hope, (?? be careful what you wish for??) would be that the system, if it could restart, would be at a much reduced energy level. Would that be enough to save us from the worst that Albert says is possible? I too wish someone would address that question head on, as also, I am unsure that would be enough?
      AJ

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  24. Thanks for the Albert Bates link – I appreciate that he brings in the thinking of systems ecologist HT Odum.
    Have you seen Nate Hagens 2021 Earth Day talk yet?

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    1. Rather… It is still hard to believe, that mighty people at the top in China DOES NOT know. I mean – what do they count on?? That babies born today would really work in 2050 for the pensions? That they would go for war with India, Russia, Pakistan??

      They have best AI, best scientists… what do they think, they have to have reliable scenarios of where we go.

      Instead of planning most painless way of degrowth, they push ahead in Titanic.

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    2. LOL, I was going to post the same thing.

      In this case it seems the citizens are wiser than their leaders because they did not fill their quota when the one-child policy was doubled.

      I’m thinking the root cause of the new three-child policy is their debt backed fractional reserve monetary system which requires the economy to grow or else it will crash. With peak oil constraining the growth of individual’s wealth you can get around the problem by increasing the number of poor people.

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  26. Dr. Peter McCullough 105 minute interview recorded May 21, 2021 on the suppression of early Covid treatment.

    Ignore the click bait sensational title. McCullough is intelligent, articulate, and expert on the issues.

    At times he gets too close to ill intent conspiracy for my taste, but ignoring those bits there’s a lot of substance to think about here.

    As an aside, my Canadian government is bombarding its citizens with the get vaccinated message. I pay very close attention to every one of their messages. They provide zero data or rationale to support their message. Zero. And they never mention prevention or early treatment.

    Dr. McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A & M College of Medicine, Dallas, TX USA. Since the outset of the pandemic, Dr. McCullough has been a leader in the medical response to the COVID-19 disaster and has published “Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Infection” the first synthesis of sequenced multidrug treatment of ambulatory patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the American Journal of Medicine and subsequently updated in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine. He has 40 peer-reviewed publications on the infection and has commented extensively on the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis in TheHill and on FOX NEWS Channel. On November 19, 2020, Dr. McCullough testified in the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and throughout 2021 in the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, Colorado General Assembly, and New Hampshire Senate concerning many aspects of the pandemic response.

    Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, FACP, FACC, FAHA, FCRSA, FCCP, FNKF, FNLA
    Professor of Medicine, Texas A & M College of Medicine
    Board Certified Internist and Cardiologist
    President Cardiorenal Society of America
    Editor-in-Chief, Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine
    Editor-in-Chief, Cardiorenal Medicine
    Senior Associate Editor, American Journal of Cardiology
    For more information about Dr. McCullough, please visit: heartplace.com/dr-peter-a-mccullough

    https://rumble.com/vhp7y5-full-interview-world-renowned-doctor-blows-lid-off-of-covid-vaccine.html?mref=6gby3&mrefc=3

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  27. Yes, very impressive interview with Dr. McCullough.

    Regarding Canadian govt. messaging on covid you correctly write “They provide zero data or rationale to support their message. Zero. And they never mention prevention or early treatment.” and yet you question Dr. McCullough’s allusion to ill-intended conspiracies. I sense some cognitive dissonance.

    Brett Weinstein of the DarkHorse podcast has just concluded a magisterial 2.5 hr interview with Dr. Pierre Kory of the FLCCC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn_b4NRTB6k Weinstein’s position on ivermectin has shifted significantly in recent weeks and he now characterizes the suppression of early treatment of covid as “the crime of the century”. I think Drs. Kory and McCullought would be inclined to agree with him.

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  28. Must watch.

    Dr. Bret Weinstein interviews Dr. Pierre Kory about prevention and treatment with Ivermectin.

    I wonder if the winds are starting to blow in a different direction like they have for the lab leak hypothesis? This is the second video by Weinstein on Ivermectin that has not been taken down by YouTube.

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      1. From the Steve Kirsch article at TrialSiteNews, linked above:

        Ranking the options

        At the present time, if I had to order preferred approaches to COVID I would choose:
        1.Novavax or Covaxin vaccine when widely available if the superior safety data is confirmed and I haven’t had COVID
        2.Prophylaxis then early treatment if infected in the meantime while waiting for #1
        3.Current vaccines using pre-treatment and post-treatment to address clotting (aspirin 81mg), inflammation (fluvoxamine), endothelial cell damage (NAC) if I had to be vaccinated for purposes of business or travel or some other reason and #1 wasn’t available.

        Another pre-post vaccination options:
        1.one adult aspirin, 40mg famotidine, 25 mg benydrl before the jab. After jab: keep up liquids, 81mg aspirin qd, loratadine qd, 40mg famotidine bid until sure you’re past things.
        2.Pepcid + celebrex given pre- and post-vaccine.
        3.HCQ, IVM, FLV combo pre- and post-vaccine.

        It is important you speak with your doctor before making your decision so that you can make the decision that is right for you.

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  30. I don’t think this guy is overshoot aware but his explanation today of why there are many product shortages is very interesting and highlights the fragility of our complex global supply chains.

    Things are not totally broken. I had a recent pleasant experience with an AliExpress shipment from China. My microwave oven broke and a ordered a new door safety switch for about $2 and paid an extra $1 for ePacket delivery and I received it in only 10 days. That’s better than my last order from Amazon Canada.

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  31. 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

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  32. Tim Morgan today on reality denial, without being aware that’s what he’s writing about.

    https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/201-the-icarus-factor/

    Almost everything that we hear and read about the current situation is somewhere between the misleading and the outright fallacious. Reportedly modest falls in economic output last year disguise, beneath gargantuan fiscal and monetary interventions, a far harsher reality. Assurances of a brisk “recovery” promise little more than a return to purely statistical, cosmetic “growth”.

    The current spike in inflation is no more “transitory” now than QE and ZIRP were “temporary” back in 2008-09.

    The public are being treated to three main fictions. The first is that we can spend our way to prosperity.

    The second is that we can borrow our way out of a debt problem.

    The third is that we can print our way to monetary stability.

    It’s quite possible, of course, that decision-makers really believe all of this is feasible, but there’s no necessary conflict between sincerity and fallacy.

    Where this leaves us is with a financial system that’s “running on empty”, and has long since ceased to act as a meaningful proxy for the ‘real’ economy of labour, energy, goods and services. There’s no way off a treadmill which requires continuous and increasing credit and liquidity injections to retain a waning semblance of viability.

    Once the ‘financial’ economy of money and credit has departed this far from the ‘real’ economy of goods and services – and once imbalances between asset prices and all forms of income are this far out of kilter – the trend back towards equilibrium builds unstoppable gravitational force.

    In short, money, in all of its forms – whether as debt and other obligations, as asset prices and as other claimed ‘stores of value’ – has taken wing, soaring far above any underlying grounding based in economic reality.

    As the situation heats up, the wax securing the wings starts to melt.

    From here, a fall back to economic Earth can neither be much delayed, or rendered painless.

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    1. But further down in a reply to comments on his post, he says,

      “The system can hold together for a lot longer than might seem rational, through a blend of wishful thinking, denial and – importantly – the lack of alternatives.

      Let’s say, purely illustratively, that someone lost faith in USD. Fine, but what does he/she buy instead? We’re into a realm of what we might call ‘relative narratives’.”

      There it is, denial.

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  33. How can something that turns green when it needs to be discarded and replaced be green?

    It can’t, unless the species that manufactures and buys it evolved to deny reality.

    What that species really wants, instead of saving the planet (and their grandchildren), is a cool car with high performance that can be driven when gas runs out.

    http://blog.gorozen.com/blog/exploring-lithium-ion-electric-vehicles-carbon-footprint

    Our analysis suggests a modern lithium-ion battery has approximately 135,000 miles of range before it degrades to the point of becoming unusable. An extended-range Tesla Model 3 has an 82 kWh battery and consumes approximately 29 kWh per 100 miles. Assuming each charge cycle has a ~95% round-trip efficiency and a battery can achieve 500 cycles before starting to degrade, we conclude a Model 3 can drive 134,310 miles before dramatically losing range. Incidentally, Tesla’s Model 3 warranty covers the battery for the lesser of eight years or 120,000 miles and does not apply until the battery has degraded by at least 30%. If the Jefferies analysis is correct (and we believe it is), then an EV will reach carbon-emission parity with an internal-combustion vehicle just as its battery requires replacement. This will come as a huge disappointment for those believing that EV adoption will have significant impacts on CO2 reduction.

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  34. Nice insight from CTG.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/27/dont-expect-the-world-economy-to-resume-its-prior-growth-pattern-after-covid-19/comment-page-5/#comment-297495

    Collapsed happened a long time ago. There is no way one can time it because the goalposts were changed. Remember that along the way, things changed so dramatically. Mark to model came into effect around the last 2008 financial crisis where the banks are allowed to mark to unicorns and do not have to book the losses, money printing was not allowed before 1971 gold-window closure. The media now is not complicit with the regulators. Now, investigative reporting is gone. It is replaced by “coverup reporting”. Bad/wrong narratives are parroted as truth by the media. Politicians of all shapes and stripes are utmost corrupt, statistics and data (from government or any source) are all fake (probably). Add in a population is seriously dumbed down, you get a recipe of continuity. If we were to use the metrics or rule of law of the 1970s or 1960s, we would have collapsed totally in 1999 or 2008.

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    1. Well…I think that when collapse started, or starts, depend your viewpoint. I prefer to mark it at the point when energy production in aggregate begins its terminal decline. We might be at that point. Or we might somehow move beyond the global oil production highs achieved prior to COVID and power a little higher. I tend to think the former, but we will see. Dr. Tim Morgan says his SEEDS system shows energy PER Capita has peaked. A similar view put forward by Gail Tverberg in her articles and charts. The standard run in the original Limits of Growth had industrial production peaking about 2015, from memory.

      Dr. Dennis Meadows (of LTGrowth) said in a lecture (writing from my memory) that systems work hardest to maintain their structure when the pressure of change/collapse is on those systems. In this view, removing mark to mark accounting on banks, loosening environmental regulations, massive central bank liquidity measures, etc. are steps taken to maintain the global economic and governance “system” in more or less its current form and energy consumption levels. That form has the U.S. at its core as global hegemon, with energy moving from the periphery of the system to the core. If this systems view is correct, the system will more or less hold its shape until it breaks, and then rapidly move into another form, and probably lower energy production and consumption level, at least for what was the core of that previous system.

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    1. Rob,
      Sadly the chain of e-mails the Martenson dissects does support the contention that the players conspired to use “Science” to support their position that the Covid virus was not a lab leak – all the while denigrating those who suggested that it was. Big black eye for institutional Science.
      AJ

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      1. Yes, and it’s important we understand the origin.

        If Covid originated in the wild we may need to build more labs to prevent a repeat.

        On the other hand, if Covid originated in a lab we need to close existing labs.

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          1. Not sure there is a conundrum? We need Science to investigate and monitor natural pathogens (virus, etc.) while at the same time not doing gain-of-function research to see if they can create highly transmissible lethal pathogens. China is to blame for this escape BUT the U.S. “virology” community is to blame for pursuing this research in spite of a U.S. ban on it. Why was the U.S. funding this in China (less oversight, cheaper, skirt U.S. law????). There should be a Geneva convention banning this type of research (would it do any good??). Probably not. There’s plenty of blame to go around but U.S. Science gets a big black eye.
            AJ

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  36. Very few people know Chris Martenson, but a lot of people know Joe Rogan.

    I’m taking bets that Fauci does not go to prison, just like no bankers went to prison for the widespread fraud in the 2008 financial crisis.

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  37. 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.

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  40. Tim Watkins’ thinking is a little muddled today. Most of the time he writes about collapse being inevitable and imminent due to non-renewable energy depletion. Today his message is that unnecessary Covid lockdowns threaten collapse.

    I suffer from similar conflicted thinking. It’s very hard to be both aware and to accept reality.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/06/08/how-to-ruin-your-economy/

    Without renewed stability across the economy though, private investment is unlikely to happen. Instead – as we have seen throughout the pandemic – potential investors will seek refuge in various unproductive asset bubbles where they are ultimately at risk from a deflationary collapse. This is why we needed to know the end state before we blundered our way into locking down our economies. It is also why we desperately need a responsible adult not only to define that end state, but also to stick to their guns in the face of media-inspired variant scares. Only then can we hope to understand just how much economic damage has been done. And only with that understanding is there any hope of restoring the degree of economic stability required to prevent a severe collapse.

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  41. 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).

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    2. Rob,
      I thought Tom Murphy’s post was illuminating.
      We are all guilty of various degrees of hypocrisy. Even though I would have limited myself to 2 children (and assumed my wife would want to also), circumstances caused 4 children. All of this occurred 30 years ago before I became (10 years ago) collapse aware. When I believed in Ray Kurzweil’s singularity and a brave techno future awaited.
      As Dr. Murphy points out, we all do what we can (I’ve been a vegetarian for 40 years and haven’t flown in a plane in 5+ years). But we’re human and stuck in a culture that glorifies growth and conspicuous consumption – it’s difficult to buck the tide all the time.
      So, I agree with you that we should have democratically authorized population reduction – if possible.
      Sadly, I don’t think that is going to happen. That puts me in the position of hoping for a swift and complete economic collapse as maybe the only thing that will prevent our destruction of the biosphere and human extinction. I also realize that such a collapse will probably end the lives of all the people I care for but that is better than extinction and a loss of the knowledge this BLIP of fossil energy has allowed Science to achieve.
      AJ

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      1. I get what you’re saying. I sometimes share your view.

        I’ve been a little bummed out the last week or so. I’m getting very irritated at respected influential overshoot aware people who never mention the need for population reduction. That would include pretty much all the big names. I think their silence is deplorable.

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  42. Humans throughout their entire history have sought to ingest substances that distort reality. I’ve often wondered if this is an artifact of our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

    Joe Rogan today interviewed Edward Slingerland on his new book “Drunk” in which he explores the “beer before bread” hypothesis that humans shifted from a hunter gatherer to an agricultural way of life to fulfill their craving for alcohol.

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    1. I read a review of A short history of drunkenness over at energy skeptic a week or so back. I got a chuckle out of Mark Forsyth’s theory below:

      “It looks like there was beer, and, importantly, it looks like there was beer before there were temples and before there was farming. This leads to the great theory of human history: that we didn’t start farming because we wanted food—there was loads of that around. We started farming because we wanted booze.”

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    1. Thanks, that’s a good list.

      He missed:
      1) Why haven’t we educated citizens on simple low cost things they can do to improve their immune systems?
      2) Why are we aggressively suppressing the use of a safe, proven, and low cost drug for treatment and prevention that could have prevented at least 50% of all deaths to date?
      3) Give the risks, why are we pushing vaccines on low risk people?
      4) Why have we not aggressively investigated the most probable source of the virus?
      5) Why have we not shut down similar potential sources of new viruses as a precaution until we know the truth?

      I get that Fauci and the WHO and the pharmaceutical companies have conflicts of interest with the above list.

      I do not get why the health minister of my little province or the health minister of my little country do not do the right things. I don’t think they are corrupt or colluding. I think they are stupid and timid and very poor leaders.

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  44. I think I mentioned this important article by Steve Kirsch already.
    https://trialsitenews.com/should-you-get-vaccinated/

    Now this interview on the Dark Horse podcast with Kirsch and Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA Vaccine technology. I’m about 37 minutes in, and I think this is essential for wide distribution. Both Kirsch and Malone have been vaccinated with Moderna; but if they knew then what they know now, they would not have done it. Dr. Paul Marik (FLCCC) has made the same statement.

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      1. Regarding the recent Dark Horse podcaset linked above – I am reluctant to try to summarize in my own words, as I do not claim any level of expertise in these matters, and I would prefer people give attention to the resources provided and the context therein, rather than my words. But I understand the “too long didn’t read/listen” problem, and this was requested elsewhere, so here goes, to the best of my understanding, though it’s difficult to try to explain this and be brief at the same time). I am paraphrasing or summarizing from the sources linked below. Please let me know if you think I have mis-stated anything:

        As part of building an immune response to the virus, the mRNA code is being injected to build the spike protein (mRNA delivery platform – Moderna and Pfizer) or the DNA code also to build the spike protein (adenovirus vector delivery platform – Johnson & Johnson and Astrozenica).

        This spike protein was designed to lodge in the membranes of the cells where the vaccine was injected, and stay there. The makers of the vaccines understood that there was a risk of the spike not staying stuck in those cell membranes, and so they specifically engineered them so they wouldn’t be biologically active.

        Unfortunately, it turns out that 1) the spike proteins ARE cleaving off from those cells, and becoming distributed throughout the body, and 2) they ARE biologically active, which means they are very dangerous.

        I believe the two points above are now accepted knowledge. In fact, data obtained from Pfizer through a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, shows that the biodistribution of lipid nanoparticles which carry the mRNA show that the ovaries get the highest concentration of this toxic protein. Will this turn the ovaries into a very large manufacturing plant to turn out more toxic spike protein? Accumulation in the bone marrow is second highest concentration. What are the long term implications of that?
        This biodistribution throughout the body may explain the very wide variety of adverse events being reported, from blood clots to heart attacks, myocarditis, bells palsy, and on and on.

        Here is the Steve Kirsch paper at Trial Site News:
        https://trialsitenews.com/should-you-get-vaccinated/

        Look for the graphic, showing the death report in the U.S. government’s official Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is more than all 70 vaccines over the past 30 years combined, as well as the graphic showing the shocking level of the spike protein showing up in ovaries.

        Here is Tess Lawrie’s preliminary report/letter, regarding what’s been reported in the UK’s “Yellow Card” system:

        Click to access Yellow-Card-Letter.pdf

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        1. Thanks for the summary David. I remain comfortable with my decision to wait on the vaccine and watch the emerging data.

          Perhaps there is a bright side to the potential side effects you summarized? We might not need a one child policy or birth lottery to reduce the birth rate. 🙂

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          1. Rob,
            I had come to the conclusion that the issues raised by Geert Vanden Bosche did not have enough support by data, and I was on the verge of making an appointment to get the Moderna. Then I came across this info, and am now back again in wait and watch mode. Perhaps Novavax will prove to be relatively safe, and I’m hoping the FDA doesn’t push it aside because they already have plenty of the other vaccines available.
            I’m hoping to be able to get Ivermectin, to be able to have on hand for prophylaxis or early treatment.

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            1. Yes, there’s no evidence of cases increasing in highly vaccinated countries like Israel as Bossche predicted. New variants are emerging as Bossche predicted but I have not seen any evidence that these variants are caused by the vaccine.

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            2. If you are in the U.S. almost all “farm & ranch” stores that carry horse supplies will have an Ivermectin paste. You would just have to figure out the dose (unless you are horse size – as many of my fellow citizens are;)). I bought 7 tubes for about $3 each and if I remember each tube is good for 2 0r 3 doses. Cheap stuff. I got the J&J vaccine and now wish I hadn’t based on everything that has come out.
              AJ

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              1. You are lucky in the US. The tubes I’ve bought here in Canada are $16 each.

                Be very careful to read the ingredients. Some horse paste has Praziquantel in addition to Ivermectin. You do NOT want that. You want Ivermectin only.

                I calculated that one tube will provide 6 doses for my body weight.

                I find it reassuring that the dose veterinarians prescribe for horses in the same as that prescribed by the FLCCC for humans.

                https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-mask-plus-protocol/

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              2. I have the IVM horse paste on hand for emergency use, but am not comfortable taking it as prophylaxis, as the quality control on this not-made-for-humans product might not be up to expected standards. FLCCC.net has a list of doctors, and I’m working my way through the list to find one who is licensed in my state, and charges the least for a consultation. Text2MD looks good, but I can’t get the required “Medici” app to work.

                This looks like a more complete list than the one at flccc.net:
                https://www.exstnc.com/

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                1. From https://www.exstnc.com/

                  CANADA
                  BC CDC, Alberta Health Services: IVM not recommended for COVID-19 outside of approved clinical trials (April 21, 2021)
                  However, no COVID-19-related IVM clinical trials have been authorized by Health Canada as of May 23, 2021
                  https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/list-authorized-trials.html#a2

                  Why does my Canadian government not think independently on Covid prevention and treatment? They think independently on many other issues.

                  Is the entire G7 healthcare system captured by pharmaceutical company interests?

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        2. david, thank you so much for that summary. I saw this video posted at the automatic Earth a couple of days ago, and didn’t watch it due to its length, and not having an oveview of its content. Its content is, pardon my French, fucking stunning. That the creator of mRNA vaccines is openly opposed to this vaccine is extraordinary. I’d encourge everyone to watch, summarise and share this.

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          1. Yes, thank you Cat. And just to be precise, Malone was not the creator of the mRNA vaccines, but rather the inventor (when a grad student) of the technology used to create mRNA vaccines.

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  45. A few months ago, a doctor wrote down a list of the 35 (?) reasons he was not going to get the vaccine. Can someone direct me to that list? My brother has asked me for it, and I can’t remember where I saw it.

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