W. Niederhut

There are two interesting data-based articles about COVID in the M$M this week, for those around here who are interested in data. 🤥 One is the NYT article about the far higher COVID death rates in the U.S. compared to other wealthy nations, which is largely attributed to non-compliance with basic U.S. public health recommendations.* The second is a fascinating analysis of Vietnam's remarkable success in managing the pandemic.** A multi-factorial analysis showed that the decisive factor in Vietnam's success is TRUST in the government and the citizenry. The U.S. has money and vaccines but no social cohesion or trust in government health experts. On the contrary, Dr. Fauci and his family have been receiving death threats from angry Fox News-watching Trumplicans. Donald Trump, Fox News, and the anti-vax propagandists deserve a lot of credit for undermining our U.S. response to the pandemic. It's all about free-dumb. MAGA! * https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html ** https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/01/trust-lancet-covid-study/

Paul, I beg to differ. Science is science. It's about epistemology--the scientific method for discerning the truth, through empiricism and a logical analysis of data. That includes probabilistic analyses of treatment outcomes in relation to control populations. How does treatment compare statistically with a placebo or no treatment? Post-truthers and the anti-vaxxers have tried to present this vaccine debate as a mere polarized difference of opinion between "experts," in which, "no one has a monopoly on truth." It isn't. That is why I have consistently tried to post the actual peer-reviewed scientific data in our discussions, with associated statistical analyses. Conversely, if you look carefully at what the anti-vaxxers are presenting as evidence, it falls apart under scientific scrutiny. At worst, it is anecdotal material, devoid of context or controls. That's why their claims have been consistently debunked by the true experts. As an example, what are the risks of COVID infection and stillbirths for vaccinated and un-vaccinated, pregnant women? Where is that data in the Children's Health Defense Organization article posted above? I've been analyzing medical papers for 40 years, and I've even been quoted in the New York Times on a couple of occasions as a critic of Big Pharma. And I know that pharmaceutical companies have often massaged data and oversold their over-priced products. But the efficacy and relative risk data for the COVID vaccines has been phenomenal, contrary to the constant disinformation coming from the anti-vax community. The people dying from COVID are the un-vaccinated, like Meat Loaf. Even Donald Trump admitted that much recently. (And he got booed for admitting it.)

Paul, I haven't studied the pediatric COVID data very closely. Obviously, the COVID morbidity and mortality risks are significantly lower for children than for older adults, so the risk/benefit ratio for vaccinations is higher-- which is not to say that COVID isn't killing children. As for the dubious Children's Health Defense article (posted above) about vaccines allegedly causing stillbirths, here's some context. In a recent study of 18,000 women in Scotland, vaccinated women had significantly reduced risks of severe illness, hospitalizations, death, and stillbirths compared to the un-vaccinated. So much for Senator RoJo and the "Children's Health Defense Organization." SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination rates in pregnant women in Scotland https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01666-2

Paul, The Children's Health Defense Organization is one of the main sources of anti-vaccine disinformation in the world. You know you're on shaky ground when a screwball like Senator Ron Johnson is your spokesperson. Children's Health Defense - Wikipedia In terms of scientific data analysis, adverse events need to be interpreted in the context of the normal population prevalence of such adverse events. Sh*t happens, with or without vaccines. For example, the anti-vaxxers have repeatedly emphasized the risk of myocarditis in young people receiving COVID vaccines. (Glenn Kessler's Fact Check article in today's WaPo reviews some of that disinformation.) But what does the properly analyzed scientific data about vaccines and myocarditis indicate? A recent analysis of 3,500,000 younger adults in Denmark who received the Pfizer vaccine showed that only 1 in 75,000 vaccinated adults experienced clinically verified myocarditis. 1 in 75,000! SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and myocarditis or myopericarditis: population based cohort studywww.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-068665 Meanwhile, COVID-19 infections cause a significant risk of myocarditis, in addition to irreversible damage to lung, kidney, and neuronal tissue. www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm

Geez, Ron, what a frigging psychopath... 😵 What sort of twisted physician would hypnotize and program a Manchurian Candidate to murder Bobby Kennedy? They say that the culture of any institution comes from the top down. That was, evidently, the case with the CIA in the MK-Ultra era. Certainly makes me wonder about the John Hinckley, Jr. case. Incidentally, I'm finally reading A Lie Too Big to Fail this week. The first few chapters are mostly a re-hash of material that Pease published in DiEugenio's The Assassinations anthology. However, I didn't recall reading before that James Angleton had copies of the RFK assassination photos.

Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker column this morning... How the falsehood of athletes dying from coronavirus vaccines spread www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/01/how-falsehood-athletes-dying-covid-vaccines-spread/ February 1, 2022

It's somewhat miraculous that those guys didn't incinerate the planet. I first heard about the Joint Chiefs' plans to nuke the Soviet Union and China in October of '62 from Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. If I recall correctly, they were planning to launch the B-52s from Okinawa.

It should have been the national headline today. Granted, Trump's coup plot is hardly "news," per se, but where are the headlines about his confession? Is it because we are all completely numb when it comes to the issue of Trump's criminality-- like boiling frogs? Perhaps listening to a POTUS tell 30,000 lies has that effect.

Addendum: Here's a reference regarding guns and Trump's January 6th coup. Guns, ammo … even a boat: how Oath Keepers plotted an armed coup | US Capitol attack | The Guardian

Paul, As a physician, I have been truly surprised by the ignorance and public resistance to basic pandemic health measures during the past two years-- quarantine/social distancing, the use of masks, and compliance with vaccines that have proven highly efficacious. (We had a great thread going here on the forum in 2020 about "Journals of the Plague Year," where everyone seemed to be reasonably focused on the scientific data and doing the right thing.) The morbidity and mortality data during the Delta variant surge in 2021 demonstrated the remarkable efficacy of the vaccines-- with 99% of all U.S.COVID deaths in the last quarter of 2021 occurring in the un-vaccinated. (I posted a reference link for the 2021 CDC morbidity & mortality data above.) Then the anti-vaxxers renewed their attacks on vaccines during the past six weeks on the grounds that they were not very effective in preventing Omicron infections. (My wife and I both caught the Omicron bug over the Christmas holiday, despite being fully vaccinated.) But the most recent data from the U.K. has now shown that the vaccines, with boosters, reduced the Omicron death risk by 95%. (I posted that reference above.) And the latest data also indicates that unvaccinated, at risk, people in the U.S. -- like Meat Loaf--are dying from Omicron in increased numbers. (I posted that reference above.) As for the January 6th coup attempt, Ben's oft-repeated argument about the absence of guns has been repeatedly debunked by me and others, on the grounds that the Capitol Police were too overwhelmed on January 6th to arrest and search the attacking mob for weapons. Most of the Capitol attackers were identified and arrested ex post facto. We now know precisely where some of the guns were cached. That information has surfaced in the DOJ indictments against the Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy. And we also have information about other weapons brought to the Capitol by Trump's "Stop the Steal" mob, including the man from Alabama who brought homemade napalm bombs to the Capitol in his truck! Above all, we now know that Trump was actively conspiring to overturn the election results. We have the Eastman and Ellis memos, and Trump, himself, just openly admitted the plot at his MAGA rally in Conroe, Texas. Why is Trump's confession of his coup plot not in the M$M headlines?

I'm re-posting this data for Ben-the-Vaccine-Agnostic. He, obviously, didn't read it or understand it the first time around... 🤥 And, incredibly, Ben is still pushing his debunked Fox News "Patriot Purge"/"scrum" narrative about Trump's January 6th coup attempt. No amount of contrary evidence seems to dislodge Ben's fixed belief that Trump was not the driving force behind his coup attempt. This is what "post-truth" politics is all about-- the reliance on "alternate facts," and the absurd notion that, "No one has a monopoly on truth." It reminds me of the television comedy show, "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"-- where, "Everything is made up and the points don't matter." Who was it who said, "Those who can make people believe absurdities can convince them to commit atrocities?"

Confederate Flags, Conspiracies, and the Ghost of JFK Jr.: What I Saw at Trump’s Bananas Texas Rally It’s part roadshow and part religious revival, but the show is a grift and the religion being revived is fascism https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-texas-rally-conspiracies-ghost-of-jfk-jr-1292592/ January 30, 2022 Excerpt Without a hint of irony, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the upcoming elections are a race between “Patriots and Traitors,” suggesting that the side that isn’t on trial for seditious conspiracy is the traitorous one. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said the election was stolen and that Marxists want to “take away the country from us.” Gov. Abbott made an abstruse comparison between Biden’s response to the Russian army at the Ukraine border to the Texas-Mexico border, doubling down on the idea that immigration is a part of a planned invasion.

With all of the historic real news happening right now--Russia, the January 6th investigation, Voting Rights sabotage, Omicron deaths, cryptocurrency collapse, etc.-- I couldn't figure out why Ben was suddenly ranting about urban decay and crime in Detroit and liberal "Donk" cities. Where is this coming from? Here's the answer. Ben has been watching Faux News. After their "Patriot Purge" and anti-vax narratives became untenable, Rupert Murdoch's propagandists at Faux, apparently, needed a new bogus narrative to rile up their MAGA base... Detroit. Donks causing urban decay, crime, and poverty in black inner cities. Fact-checking Fox News’ narrative on “America’s Crime Crisis” The truth about rising crime is way more complicated than Fox makes it seem https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fact-checking-fox-news-narrative-americas-crime-crisis January 28, 2022

Well, Jimmy Dore gets two things right in this moronic, inaccurate YouTube harangue. 1) Neil Young is no intellectual, (duh) and 2) Young made a deplorable, homophobic slur in 1985. Shame on him for that. But Neil Young is no hypocrite. Just the opposite. Has there ever been a more sincere, tactless, (and, at times, simple-minded) rocker in history? Frankly, I'm not surprised that Young is being attacked now by the Fox News "Freedom fries" coalition for objecting to COVID disinformation at Spotify. (Remember when the Fox News-watching Iraq War jingoists started attacking French fries in 2003, after Dominique de Villepin debunked the Bush/Cheney administration's WMD propaganda?) There's more to this Neil Young/Spotify story than people realize. Mark Sumner just published a good review of the subject. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/29/2077459/-Spotify-s-policies-are-expressly-designed-to-encourage-deadly-disinformation-about-COVID-19

Paul, To be honest, I know very little about Joe Rogan. I did watch his recent interview of Oliver Stone, which was reasonably well done. To his credit, Rogan had the decency to give Oliver Stone a voice. And Rogan seems likeable. He's no Dick Cavett, but at least he did some homework on JFK Revisited. As for two of my favorite old hippies, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, I'm sure that our right wing libertarian ideologues around here will agree that they have every right to refrain from doing business with a media corporation that has promoted COVID disinformation. Right wing libertarians believe in "freedom" and individual rights, don't they? 🤥 The "cancel culture" that I am most concerned about in the U.S. right now is the right wing Republican censorship of the teaching of true American history in our schools. It's like something out of N-A-Z-I Germany in the 1930s. Only white nationalist mythology allowed! Can't teach about the history of slavery, Jim Crow, our genocidal Manifest Destiny, and the confiscation of half of Mexico in the 19th century by jingoistic white slave owners.

Joni Mitchell Pulls Music from Spotify in a Stand With Neil Young Against COVID Misinformation Joni Mitchell joins Neil Young in protest over Joe Rogan Spotify podcast - The Washington Post January 29, 2022

Good news and bad on the COVID-19 front, folks. The bad news is that Omicron is killing people. Omicron infections are less lethal than Delta, but more prevalent. * The good news-- from the latest UK data-- is that vaccine boosters have reduced the Omicron death risk by 95% in people over 50.** This is a subject we were discussing here last month-- i.e., is it worth getting a booster? The answer is, "Yes." *Omicron Deaths in U.S. Exceed Delta’s Peak as Covid-19 Optimism Rises in Europe https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-deaths-in-u-s-exceed-deltas-peak-as-covid-19-optimism-rises-in-europe-11643201653 January 26, 2022 **Covid-19 Vaccine Booster Shot Cuts Omicron Death Risk by 95%, U.K. Study Shows The analysis was done for people 50 and older, the population at highest risk of severe illness and death https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-booster-shot-cuts-omicron-death-risk-by-95-u-k-study-shows-11643302875 January 27, 2022

Trump Merchandise For Sale-- Buy Now While Supplies Last! Cryptocurrencies accepted! www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-money-businesses/2022/01/27/e321fc70-77c8-11ec-9102-d65488c31bb1_story.html January 28, 2022

Joseph McBride mentioned in his recent interview by Len Osanic that the late, great Orson Welles had actually written (or acquired?) a screenplay about Sirhan, in which Welles wanted to play the part of an MK-Ultra doctor involved in hypnotizing and programming Sirhan as a Manchurian candidate. Welles, apparently, couldn't get funding for the Sirhan film. As usual, Orson Welles was decades ahead of the curve.

Cord Meyer, apparently, retired from the CIA in 1977, around the time of the Church Committee investigations. According to Wikipedia, he became a syndicated columnist, and died of lymphoma in 2001. I notice that the Wiki chapter on Meyer mentions the E. Howard Hunt death bed "confession" fingering LBJ, Cord Meyer, William Harvey, and David Morales in the JFK assassination plot, FWIW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_Meyer

O.K., Education Forum history buffs, don't everyone answer at once... 🤥 This one requires a little research. Answer: December 3, 1895 !! December of 1895 was the last time a Republican majority U.S. Senate confirmed a Democratic Presidential nominee to the SCOTUS. It was Justice Rufus Peckham, nominated by President Grover Cleveland.

Larry, Do you know offhand if anyone ever talked to David Christensen's ex-wife and kids? Also, if they haven't been shredded by now, there are probably some interesting records about his experiences at Kirknewton from the psychiatric ward at the Sheriden VA-- especially if he attributed his psychiatric problems to his October 1963 intelligence work.

Here's a trivia question for the forum. (Not that Republicans currently have a Senate majority per se-- although Manchin and Sinema certainly gave them one in the cases of Build Back Better and the John Lewis Freedom to Vote bill.) Q. When was the last time that a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate approved a Democratic President's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court?

More Post-Truth politics. Reasons to be cheerful. I never imagined that things would get this bad in the U.S. Americans' Trust in Science Now Deeply Polarized, Poll Shows Republicans’ faith in science is falling as Democrats rely on it even more, with a trust gap in science and medicine widening substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-01-26/americans-trust-in-science-now-deeply-polarized-poll-shows January 26, 2022

Good article at Vox today describing the CDC data that I referenced for the forum last night (above.) The extraordinary success of Covid-19 vaccines, in two charts Deaths tell one story of the pandemic. The lives saved tell another.www.vox.com/22894978/covid-19-vaccine-lives-saved-deaths-avoided-omicron-chartJanuary 27, 2022