The influential medical journal BMJ reported on WHO modelling (not yet published proper) purporting to show that COVID-19 vaccines “saved at least 1.4 million lives” in Europe. Given my published research on the effectiveness and safety of the jabs being exaggerated, of course I would have an issue or two with it. While the BMJ did not, as is typical, grant me the word count for a full ‘Lataster treatment’, it did at least allow me to publish a very short critique of the study as a ‘rapid response‘. Some of the issues I raised in this little debunking:
- The WHO European Respiratory Surveillance Network (WHOERS) assumed an absurdly low waning of vaccine effectiveness, 0.25% per week, when we all know that the jab’s effectiveness declines extraordinarily quickly, even turning negative (for Covid deaths as well as infections) within a year. Ironically, some of the most recent evidence for COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness comes from… the WHO.
- Estimates of expected mortality like IFRs/CFRs aren’t properly explained or justified, with the relevant section of the study’s supplementary material dealing with this containing several instances of “Error! Reference source not found”. You don’t say.
- The WHOERS somehow strongly encourages vaccination, though it only considered the benefits and not the risks of vaccination. Remember how we’re supposed to weigh up risks and benefits? Like a lot of things, that’s apparently on the way out. Reminds me of people gleefully plying kids with hormone pills and encouraging unnecessary surgeries, with nary a care for the potential consequences. I note the increasing research that the risks of the jab are quite substantial (they’re also still not fully known), and almost certainly outweigh the benefits (at least in the young and healthy). Even without this, encouraging these products without even mentioning the risks is beyond irresponsible.
- Of course I reference the JECP4 articles, especially the dodgy definitions of ‘vaccinated’ and ‘unvaccinated’ likely leading to highly exaggerated effectiveness and safety estimates. I note that the study’s supplementary material employs a bunch of studies that use such dodgy definitions.
- While the evidence of COVID-19 vaccine negative effectiveness continues to grow, some of it incredibly supplied by the WHO itself, it’s not factored at all in the WHOERS model.
- I didn’t have the word count to mention that WHO receives a chunk of funding from Bill Gates, who profited bigly off of the jabs. Conflict of interest much?
Recall that I also earlier criticised the U.S.-focused Kitano et al., published proper, and the Australian-focused Lin et al., which might be published in PLOS One soon as a comment. I’ve been struggling to get my critiques published of another major Australian study, and the big international one that Senator Ron Johnson personally asked me about – stay tuned. And if possible, I’d like to look at the New Zealand study.
As someone who has criticised several of these jab-promoting studies now I can inform you that they’re all pretty similar, and that includes the problems. The researchers typically use exaggerated estimates of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness and safety; minimise or don’t even attempt to factor in the risks; minimise or don’t even account for rapid waning of vaccine effectiveness (and also negative effectiveness); use questionable datasets and COVID-19 IFRs/CFRs, hyping up the danger Covid poses and thus the potential benefits of the jabs; and fail to properly disclose their financial links to the vaccine manufacturers.
Dr. Raphael Lataster is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Sydney, specialised in misinformation, and a former pharmacist. This article was first published in his Substack newsletter, Okay Then News. Read more on his research and legal actions, including his recent win against the healthcare vaccine mandate in New South Wales.
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Restaurant/stadium/etc asks potential customers to present a “vaccine passport” before entry. As a potential customer I would first demand to see the vaccine passports of all the workers in that facility. Only fair, right?
Liberal Democrats it is then.
I have never voted for the Liberals, Lib Dems or whatever believing them to be a cowardly safe haven for those who cannot decide between Conservative and Socialist.
New, one issue, parties will achieve nothing except to waste money and split the anti authoritarian vote.
With a voice already in Parliament and the media and with their current 100% record why vote for anyone else, except those honorable notable Labour, Conservative and Other MPs that just outed themselves as champions of liberty ?
Yes Ben Bradshaw, that includes you, surprisingly.
76 is a good number to start with three years to build up the anti momentum.
Makes sense, if only because it is the only way to obtain Proportional Representation; and PR is the only way forward for small new parties to grow.
We need new parties in order to protect minorities from the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
PR is a disaster. It guarantees nothing will ever get done. That’s why ZZ Top run Israel. Strangely enough the most effective is a three party where the opposition plus the ‘third’ can stop the worst excessives of government.
The Liberal Democrats have always been a bit weak on actual liberalism. But to judge by their actions they are right on this and will get my vote unless there is an even more explicitly anti-lockdown party on offer.
Does anybody know how they voted for the 3 lockdowns and the previous covid bill?
The Liberal Democrats are not anti-lockdown; they are not opposed to the non-pharmaceutical interventions.
I suspected that. It’s just this specific extension they are against
Yup, I got a bit excited at that too, then I saw this https://www.libdems.org.uk/s21-covid-motion – they are firmly part of the ‘lockdown earlier and harder’ and ‘close the borders’ brigade. And it seems some of the labour MPs didn’t think the bill went ‘far enough’ in supporting people to self-isolate. So sadly this is not really coming about as a result of these people looking at the scientific evidence which says that quarantining the healthy is pointless, in the case of the lib-dems it’s probably a desperate grab for attention prior to the local elections, after which their local councillors will be pressing at every stage for ‘local powers’ – it never ends….
Ben Bradshaw seems to have made the transition so why not the Lib Dems, even if only for short term electoral advantage (which Ben does not require).
Doesn’t look like Bradshaw has made that much of a transition – only last week he was pushing for hotel quarantine to be replaced by a GPS tracking system. Replacing prison with house arrest enforced by electronic tag for the crime of going on holiday doesn’t cut it with me I’m afraid. I would be more convinced if he was asking when we are going to have an international tourist industry again….
Point taken, his main interest seems to be the resurrection of the local tourist industry which would, of course, benefit from the destruction of overseas travel.
my MP is firmly against all restrictions (as he emails me) and is in the CRG. Then he votes for everything going
And that only because they know that they’ll never be in a position to exploit it.
Sir Forensic fancies his chances at taking the helm of HMS Despotic if they can make this temporary emergency permanent.
Why are you simping for a party?
We don’t vote for parties, and we certainly don’t vote for leaders. We get one vote, in our constituency, and we vote for the actual candidates who are standing there. Please, please, try to get that through your skull.
Look at the individuals actually standing. Find out what they believe, and vote for the individual who best represents your beliefs, or for none of the above.
Sure, most low-information voters are just going to scrawl their X by the picture of the rosette that they’ve always voted for, but perhaps informed voter might try to be better than that. If we don’t, then all we’re ensuring is that the second-worst Party of Davos candidate will get in, time after time after time.
I have never voted for Ben Bradshaw precisely because he is of the Labour party (not that any other party has ever put up a candidate of merit against him).
Despite my now advocating voting Lib Dem on the basis of their new stand re Coronovirus legislation in Ben’s case I would now vote for him for that same reason and because he is the sitting MP.
I made that proviso in my initial post.
This from a conservative who never forgave them for getting rid of Enoch Powell because he was anti Common Market and never voted for them since they got rid of Mrs Thatcher for similar reasons.
Wonderland. Simply not where we live. I lived for a while in Andorra. Got to vote. You actually wrote the name on the ballot. That’s Democracy. In the UK it’s very simple. The only workable is a single issue anti lockdown. The rest will be fixed.
Regarding lockdowns being “electoral gold” in Australia and NZ, I wonder why in those countries the bottom-up popular will to stop Covid is so much stronger than in the Americas or Europe?
From an Australian poster on a (members-only) forum which I frequent:
Wow, is there no opposition to this? It’s so brutal, just for a mild respiratory illness.
In an extension of the orientalist attitudes that many Westerners have shown regarding East Asian responses to Covid, some argue that what has happened in Australia is that the country has gone back to its penal colony roots.
Repressive regime seems like repressive regime wherever it happens. Don’t see how that’s ‘orientalist’ or any other ‘ist’.
I can’t help but see regret in Aus/NZ future if this continues; this from someone who lives in a small, repressive, ‘let’s do zero-covid’ island which is in the same uncomfortable position.
Isle of Man?
Yup, the home of terrifying motorbike road racing, now run by bedwetters for bedwetters and going down the shitter with nary a peep.
See Paula’s excellent comment below.
Was the Isle of Man capable of following a zero covid plan in the way that the UK wasn’t simply because its much smaller size means it’s far more difficult for someone to reach it illegally?
If you head out to sea from the northern coast of France in a vaguely northwesterly direction you’re almost assured of making landfall in Great Britain, but reaching the Isle of Man would likely require far greater navigational skills.
I don’t think so, it’s fairly visible; I can see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from our coasts.
There’s just no pull factor to reach it illegally as benefits and housing are dependent on residency for five years at least.
I’m sure that there are other European countries that are far more attractive to benefit scroungers, and that most illegal immigrants to the UK come here not to scrounge but to work.
Although the real issue isn’t illegal immigrants per se, but about British citizens returning illegally if they’d ended up stranded abroad by an Australian-style border policy.
In Victoria it was highly publicized when an illegal gathering in a garden shed was discovered after someone at the local KFC drive-thru made a suspiciously large order, which alerted the manager to call in the licence plate to the police.
The problem is you can have ‘popular will to stop Covid’ until you are blue in the face – it’s a waste of time if the methods you are using are ineffective. If I was going to be very unkind I would say Europe and especially those parts of the US that are opening up are more alert to the follies of thinking you can ‘control a virus’ The UK had a carefully thought-through pandemic plan which it threw out of the window in favour of measures that had no evidence base. But at least in some quarters we seem to be very slowly realising our mistakes.
Surely the point is that if people have a strong will to stop Covid then they will accept the methods that are effective, such as sealed borders and highly intrusive surveillance: like the universal QR code checking mentioned above, which in NZ also applies to buses, shopping malls (both the mall as a whole and the individual shops within) and each building within university campuses.
It’s interesting that Americans are typically appalled by the harsh lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand, while Europeans are more likely to be appalled by their sealed borders.
I live in Auckland, NZ and have used the bus twice lately. There is no pressure to use the QR code and I have not worn a mask either, I now have an exemption but have not shown it.
I didn’t see anyone using a QR code at a mall entrance the other day, though I did see some using individual shop’s ones.
Recently there has been more PR about using them as compliance has fallen considerably, which pleases me!
You’re joking of course? If not you need professional help.
What did I say in my message above that implies that I “need professional help”?
Just reading about antibody-dependent-enhancement and I came across the following meeting “Consensus summary report for CEPI/BC March 12–13, 2020 meeting: Assessment of risk of disease enhancement with COVID-19 vaccines”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7247514/
Part of the conclusions are
“Data are needed on whether antibody waning could increase the risk of enhanced disease on exposure to virus in the long term”
I don’t suppose they have that data yet do they? Hasn’t really been enough time
IT GETS BETTER!!!
BLOOD TESTS TO ENTER A PUB???????
Apparently supported by the Damm man.
‘In March 19th the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a press release detailing changes to its operational strategy for K-12 students. It stated that among other things, students may now reduce their social distancing from 6 feet to 3 feet.’
https://www.aier.org/article/the-6-foot-mandate-was-bad-science/
Europe, and this country, begin to look embarrassingly backward, even stupid/dumb.
The case of Holmseley Care Home in Devon is very puzzling. The police have arrested two care workers on the basis of “wilful neglect”. The Home has had an outbreak of Covid 19. Nine residents are reported as having died of the disease. Yet the residents and most of the staff had been vaccinated. None of this makes sense. If the residents were vaccinated – and the vaccines are safe and effective, as we are constantly told by the authorities – how could the residents die of Covid 19? What did they die of? Surely the deaths would be vaccine adverse reactions? Why have two of the workers been accused of wilful neglect? What is it that they allegedly did not do? Why is there a police investigation?
“As part of their enquiries, officers are speaking to staff and conducted a search of the home. Post-mortems have been conducted on three of the deceased residents.”
maybe just trying to look like they are doing something?
Very odd report indeed (Local Live), it implies both that the deaths are Covid related and that the Staff are at fault.
Normalising Police involvement in cases of Staff non- compliance ?
Don’t understand how they could have an outbreak with vaccinated residents unless either the outbreak began too soon after vaccination for immunity to take effect, or at least half of the residents had such weak immune systems in the first place that the vaccine didn’t work.
I fear for the upcoming Panorama ‘Covid’ documentary. Glimpsing the trailers it looks like they’ll try to trash Sweden and extol Boris. Maybe with a ‘not soon enough, not hard enough, not long enough’ flavour. (I really hope I’m wrong). Of course the Sheeple will gobble it all up. Panorama used to be a strong investigative program. Hope lives eternal!
Outside of the metropolitan bubble it will reach those ten viewers who can’t be bothered to switch it off.