#I can be persuaded on vaccine requirements

[mariacallous]

Kristina Collins didn’t know her photo was being used on Telegram. Over the past few months, an Instagram picture of Collins, a Texas-based doctor and dermatologist, has been used by scammers on the chat app to try to persuade people to buy false proof that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 and other diseases.

“The last thing you want as a physician is for your identity to be used to promote misinformation,” Collins tells WIRED, adding that many doctors use social media specifically to make sure people have access to accurate health information. “When people are able to take that likeness and use it for bad purposes, whether it’s fraud, whether it’s misinformation, I think it’s really scary.”

The Telegram channel impersonating Collins wasn’t alone. Researchers at Logically, a UK-based disinformation detection company, have uncovered a network of around 60 Telegram channels selling Covid-19 vaccination certificates and other proof of vaccination documents, and claiming to sell various medicines. In 25 of the channels, administrators used a “Dr.” prefix in their username, with 13 of the channels using the real-world names and/or photographs of legitimate medical professionals.

The network has been operating since at least June 2022, with more than a thousand accounts on X posting links that push people toward the Telegram channels selling “vaccine passes,” according to Chris Proops and Maisie Draper, Logically researchers who investigated the activity. Overall, they say, the social media operation has reached more than 3 million people with over 62,000 posts, and cryptocurrency accounts linked to the efforts have processed $286,000.

The scam is the latest in a long line of Covid-19 and health-related misinformation and disinformation, which has broadly attempted to capitalize on conspiracy theories and some people’s concerns about vaccinations. It highlights how scammers can abuse social media platforms, particularly those with loose stances on moderation, and potentially erode trust in medical systems.

“They're directing people, anti-vaxxers primarily, on X to then move to Telegram and subscribe to the around 50 Telegram channels that they have,” Draper says. The researchers identified around 20 “campaigns” on the Elon Musk–owned social media platform that were pushing people toward Telegram channels. The first was in June 2022 and the most recent at the start of December.

Draper and Proops say the efforts used repeated messaging, often replying to “verified” accounts on X that are linked to anti-vaccination sentiments, and consistently mentioned conspiracy theories such as the “great reset.”

“A lot of it is playing on anti-vaxxers’ vulnerabilities to being paranoid about things like the next pandemic, or other kinds of vaccines, like the measles vaccine,” Draper says.

The Telegram channels, where administrators impersonate doctors, also follow similar patterns to one another. Many of the channels have names related to Covid-19 vaccinations, and they claim to sell pandemic-related travel passes, allowing people to enter the UK, US, Canada, and other countries. They can sell the passes for around $250 to $500 each, with payments often being requested in bitcoin. Photos of the documents they claim to sell look similar to the official versions of the documents.

However, the vast majority of countries no longer require proof of vaccination to enter them and haven’t done so for long periods of time—for instance, the UK removed travel restrictions in 2022. “Over time, we started seeing a trend change where it wasn't just Covid passes,” Proops says. The Telegram channels have offered tuberculosis test results, meningitis vaccine results, and documentation around hepatitis A and B, tetanus, polio, and more, he says.

The researchers say they believe doctors are being impersonated to give the scammers a veneer of legitimacy. The Logically researchers contacted several doctors who were not aware their identities were being used. One doctor, they say, had not heard of Telegram. Collins says she was not aware of her image being used in this way until she was contacted by Logically and WIRED. She added that her image had also been used on a scam Instagram account.

Since the researchers started monitoring the X accounts and Telegram channels last year, many of the accounts and channels have been removed by the social media companies; however, around half of the Telegram channels are still active. Neither Telegram nor X responded to WIRED’s request for comment on the accounts or whether Telegram was aware of the impersonation of doctors taking place.

A WIRED review of the Telegram channels still active shows regular posts from administrators and other members. Some of the channels have only a few hundred members; others have a few thousand. The administrators of some channels have been inactive for several months. Within the channels is a slurry of well-worn and debunked conspiracy theories.

One still-active channel claims itself as a “coalition of doctors” who can get people “genuinely registered documentation” for those traveling to the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and 15 EU countries. The owner of the channel uses the name of a legitimate US-based plastic surgeon who has around 50,000 followers on social media, and a photograph of another doctor. Draper says that within the communities, people “are sharing photographs of side effects of the vaccine and fearmongering about the future impacts of lockdowns.”

The channels also claim to sell the drug ivermectin, which the US Food and Drug Administration said should not be used to treat or prevent Covid-19 in 2021. One of the channels lists half a dozen different kinds of medicines it claims to be able to provide. One claims it is selling weight loss drug Ozempic, while another tells people to not get a flu shot.

“The landscape of misinformation actors is abundant,” says Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a researcher of political communication at the Oxford Internet Institute who has studied misinformation on Telegram and vaccine and health misinformation. Herasimenka, who was not involved in the Logically research, says he has not seen doctors being impersonated on Telegram regularly, but that those behind misinformation and disinformation can use a variety of tactics. He says misinformation efforts can often be run for political or social goals, while those using it to make money can be often overlooked. “There are so many people who try to make money using misinformation, they would use any opportunity to profit,” Herasimenka says.

There is no evidence indicating that the Telegram channels offer legitimate goods, and it isn’t possible to verify whether anyone purchasing items from them receives anything. Some channels have posts from “customers” who claim to have purchased items from the Telegram groups. One account, which claims it ordered a vaccine certificate and drugs to the US, shared a photo of the back of an envelope claiming they received their order. Other posts use generic photos of drugs or vaccine certificates to claim items were delivered.

The Logically researchers say the likelihood that the false documents have been sent to people is “relatively low,” and their main motivation is likely financial. Proops says that while the documents the groups claim to be selling are not of much use now, the networks could be used in different ways in the future. The continued use of the channels and spreading of anti-vaccination messages could also undermine trust in health systems around the world, Proops says.

Collins, the doctor who had her image stolen, says she is concerned that it will become easier for scammers or people looking to undermine health care professionals to do so as image generation with artificial intelligence becomes more available. “As AI gets even better, they can go beyond just taking your picture off of a website, and actually potentially make a video of you talking,” Collins says. This will make it “really hard for an average person to sort out if this is a fake account or not.”

[torturedpoetemotions]

Genuine question, in cases of violent/serial violent crime, do you believe that the rehabilitation is possible if the person is allowed to remain freely in the public? Because imprisonment is inherently punitive, humane treatment and therapeutic opportunities or not. I believe every incarcerated person is entitled to dignified treatment & care regardless, but like. if someone kills their spouse for insurance money, or rapes somebody, I think a time-out from society is in order on top of therapy, rehabilitative measures, etc. Can you persuade a perpetrator to seek rehabilitation if there are no consequences for rejecting it?

See, I disagree that inpatient rehabilitation is equivalent to imprisonment, or that making something mandatory makes it punitive. Vaccines are mandatory in some places to attend public school. Seat belts, a valid license, and active insurance are mandatory to operate a vehicle. You can't leave the country without a passport, that's mandatory. Public school is mandatory unless the parent demonstrates that their child is participating in a valid homeschool curriculum. Taxes are mandatory. Most people don't want to be doing those things for one reason or another. But are they punitive?

Making rehabilitative therapy--whether inpatient or outpatient--mandatory after the commission of a violent crime doesn't make it punitive. Punitive doesn't mean "something I have to do that I don't want to do." Punitive means something that is inflicted as a penalty or retribution for an offense.

Imprisonment is punitive not because people don't want to be there, but because being punitive is its primary goal: as such, the experience of being imprisoned is made as degrading and traumatizing as the prison administrators can get away with. And because the state's general attitude is that prisoners are there to be punished, they can get away with quite a lot.

Imprisonment strips the person of basic human rights as long as they're in and disenfranchises them for life once they're out. And because it exists in a society that encourages ostracization and stigmatization of anyone who's been to prison, it continues to be punitive even after the imprisonment has ended. People who go to prison are constantly controlled, abused, exploited, given shoddy medical care and nutrition, subjected to living conditions we don't allow animals to suffer, and isolated from the rest of society first physically, then when they get out socially, economically, and politically.

Even if a person doesn't like rehab or want to do it, the purpose would not be to inflict a penalty on them as a price or deterrent. The purpose would be to help them recognize the destructiveness of their own behavior, deal with its root causes, and give them resources and coping strategies to make better choices going forward. Effective rehabilitation would involve either outpatient treatment or comfortable accommodations in an inpatient facility with access to nutritious food, medical care, the opportunity to develop healthy outlets in the form of hobbies or self-expression, and regular therapy. It would also necessarily involve help reintegrating into daily life, help securing employment and housing, and help building a solid support system. Finally, it would require emergency resources that former patients could access without judgment or penalty if and when they ever feel they may again become a danger to themselves or others for any reason.

Granted, this kind of system would not work perfectly. But then, our current system doesn't either, and comparisons to countries that focus on rehabilitation suggest that our current system actually exacerbates the problems that lead to violent crime. Rehabilitative justice would also work best in a demilitarized society with universal physical and mental healthcare, free housing, well-funded fact-based public education, and universal income where gentle parenting was the norm and rehabilitative justice started in early childhood. But I would settle, for a while, for not exacerbating all the other problems in our society with a punitive justice system.

[unprocione]

           * @greenherb ︴ continued from 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔!

"..you've won one every year since you started, won nationals, and they still won't let you in?" leon will have to take two steps for every one of kevin's own strides, but knows he'll have no issue keeping up, even with his astonishment at the seemingly insane requirements of the s.t.a.r.s entry exams taking his breath away. "that's.. that's ridiculous. maybe there's something wrong with the test, like a trick question, something like that." leon's eyebrows furrow; he won't know for sure until he takes the exam someday himself, but maybe he and kevin can compare notes when that day comes. leon's own marksmanship wasn't too shoddy. on average, he could hit the dead-center of the target most often than not if he really gave his full concentration, the result of weekends spent with officer kennedy senior on various gun ranges. however, leon was sure there was plenty of tips and tricks to learn how to hone his accuracy further from the advice of a national champion like kevin - if his father were still alive, he would surely be proud of how far leon had come.

leon's own boots are unblemished, barely scuffed, coming to a pause with a squeak against the polished floors. "that's what i said. i'm sure you clean up nice and all, but there's a distinct difference between.. your type's nice, and, you know, my standards." leon stumbles a bit at the clap on the back, cracking a grin at their back & forth exchange. "that's alright, really, if i had to, i'd work out of my car if it made a difference here, uh, but i'd rather not, of course." leon stays behind kevin as he's led out of the building's side entrance, using the taller officer's silhouette as shelter against the incoming mist of rain. he makes a convincing shadow, mirroring kevin with a mild raise of his hand in greeting to the pair of strangers clustered under the awning, but leon doesn't stick around to make an impression, stuck to kevin like glue, and even then, the smoke certainly doesn't persuade him otherwise. to his credit, he makes it halfway up the stairs before mentioning the cigarette plucked from the box, a new personal record. "you know, they actually say women find men who don't smoke more attractive these days? just ah, in case you hadn't heard."

leon picks at the black polish on his nails as they continue, paint chipping and flaking away with ease, leon nodding his head to acknowledge kevin and then, realizing he was out of kevin's eyeline again, speaks up. "got it! i trust you. straight to back hall, outside, then stairs... i think i can remember that. do i need a key card for this door, or..? and why are we working out of museum rather than like, a station building, if it's this difficult to get around in a hurry? is there a separate building for the holding cells? how far from our desks? is there an emergency exit in case of a fire or something, so i don't set off any alarms by accident?" firing off a handful of questions without taking a breath, leon steps ahead of kevin into the doorway as guided, but doesn't stray far from kevin at all, glancing over his shoulder and waiting patiently for him to take the lead again, maneuvering his damp bangs away from falling into his face with a toss of his head.

"i'm right behind you. murders, though? i was told, uh, rabies outbreak and influenza, a really nasty combination. i'm up to date on all my vaccinations, just in case, i had them finished up before i left new york with my last physical. i've heard nothing about murders. are you guys thinking like there's a possible serial killer in the midst of all this too? christ."

[heatherhasbetterthingstodo]

Letter 15 of 22

January 27, 2022

Dear Premier Stefanson,

It has been exactly fourteen (14) days since I sent correspondence with feedback that was expressly solicited when you said on January 12th that you "will be taking advice from other Manitobans…moving forward." I have yet to receive any acknowledgement that my advice going to be taken into consideration (or that it's even been received); therefore, this email - with additional commentary - will be re-sent to you and a few other key decision-makers every day until policy changes in Manitoba to adequately address my concerns and/or you respond to me personally.

Today, in light of what Dr. Roussin mentioned yesterday about new public health orders being in the works, I would like to draw your attention to a few things that Dan Lett conveyed in his most recent opinion piece via the Winnipeg Free Press; namely, the one entitled "Gentle persuasion, inflexible rules: Facts, patient conversation sufficient to change some vaccine-hesitant minds; for others, nothing short of enforced mandate will get it done" (January 26). It's a great article and I submit that it eloquently offers what MB Gov might be looking for when drafting, approving and enacting new restrictions: balance. Ever since vaccines became available, a small but vocal number of people have actively sought to either attack or altogether avoid the "M-word"; but as Lett wrote about mandates, "A new study released this month by economists at Simon Fraser University found that just the announcement of an impending mandate restricting public-venue entry to the fully vaccinated increased first-shot uptake by 66 per cent. The study noted the results are consistent with research in other countries on mandate efficacy." It may or may not be the case that the current wave is reaching a peak - that remains to be seen. But as Dr. Reimer mentioned on January 19th, it's reasonable to think that more variants are coming and that we do not know what circumstances are going to look like (regarding transmissibility and/or severity). That being said, it's time for Manitoba to take some decisive action - especially if Covid is going to be with us for a while yet. Specifically, we need to restore what has for too long not been balanced.

Perhaps "learning to live with the virus" actually means requiring vaccination and mask-use long-term. Accordingly, back to what Mr. Lett wrote: "We must never, ever abandon efforts to educate and otherwise persuade the hesitant to get their shots, even if that means waging the war for vaccines on a case-by-case basis." However, since we've seen over this past year how stubborn some can be to follow strong recommendations, a solution that's offered is this: "Our path out of this crisis involves both strategies: we should continue efforts to persuade the people who are open-minded enough to be persuaded, while applying harsher measures for those who are not." I concur and would strongly encourage you to consider - with whatever's forthcoming in the new health orders - to do what you said by striving for balance. And by this I unequivocally mean that the provincial government has NOT done enough to apply pressure to those willingly not yet vaccinated - thus, keeping all of us in a state of helpless unbalance…unprepared for the next wave. Thus, the "shift" that needs to happen next is toward increased mandating, not less. That's how to achieve balance. Otherwise, we will have more Greek-lettered viruses coming our way, or perhaps, there will be some originating here.

Sincerely, X

------

Dear Premier Stefanson et al,

Greetings from Southern Manitoba. In light of the comments made at yesterday's press conference (i.e. January 12, 2022) - where it was specifically stated that the provincial government "will be taking advice from other Manitobans as well moving forward" - I would like to take this statement seriously/literally and provide you with some feedback from a deeply concerned resident of the Rural Municipality of Hanover. While the term "stakeholders" was likely used to refer primarily to business owners, I think it's vital to point out what should be obvious: all residents/citizens collectively are the most significant stakeholders in Manitoba, and if these voices - like my own - are not being listened to, what this conveys is that there is some serious misgovernance taking place (which undermines the democratic purpose/process of politicians acting on behalf of those who they are supposed to represent). Obviously, I don't expect a response, since it's clear that leaders in the current administration aren't even willing to answer direct questions from official members of the press. But if any confidence in this current government has any hope of being restored, I would appreciate if this correspondence was at the very least passed along to the people to whom it's addressed. Accordingly, at this time I would like to name four different issues: suppressing public health recommendations, the provincial response level, forced back to school, and expanding the proof of vaccination.

First, it was painfully obvious at yesterday's press conference that the government was indeed advised by its own public health division that stricter measures were needed in order to protect all Manitobans. Instead, what we saw was a blatant disregard of such recommendations in favour of a what was termed a "balanced" approach, which is clearly no longer concerned at all with "containing" the spread of Covid-19 but resigned to allow the entire population to contract the virus that some of us have been trying extremely hard to fight against these past two years. We're only in this position now - of supposedly needing to accept that "Covid is here to stay" - because the provincial response to the pandemic has ever tended to be reactive (as opposed to proactive) and has not listened to expertise from medical professionals soon enough to "mitigate" the collateral damage of human lives that we've seen. Granted - this is a worldwide problem and not a shortcoming that's specific to Manitoba; however, this does not release us from the responsibility to do our utmost to keep people safe - no matter the cost. Sure, listen to multiple sources. But if it's a veritable issue of life/death or health/illness, this alone trumps any political, economic, or religious interests. Therefore, if public health and/or medical experts are telling the government anything that has relevance to decisions that are being made at the provincial level, this ought to be transparently disclosed and must factor into policies that are enacted to protect the well-being of those who call Manitoba home.

Second, it was a common refrain the last few press conferences that Manitoba has had more strict measures in place than the other provinces across Canada (as some kind of justification/rationalization for not stepping up the current response level). To be perfectly honest, regardless of what our neighbours to the West, East, or South are doing, what matters above all else is to hold to a higher standard than those whose response has been subpar. In other words, the province of Manitoba should be seeking to be a leader nationally and globally in its championing of health and safety (instead of a follower, or a pariah). As it stands, we currently have the worst rate of active Covid-19 cases in Canada (again), and the province's response is to keep the response level at Orange - even though case numbers are worse than they have ever been throughout the entire pandemic. This is completely irresponsible and unacceptable. The province's response level should have been at Red long ago - with stay-at-home orders for all not-yet-vaccinated people (except for essentials), no guests at all for households that have any unvaccinated individuals, no special treatment for religious organizations, expanded and consistent enforcement of public health orders, etc. What's more, what Canada needs is a more unified approach, because what's happened to date - with each province essentially acting in isolation - is not working. Similar to the federal mandate for all civil servants to be vaccinated, a more unified partnership/coordination across provinces and territories to implement public health measure compliance is necessary to have any hope of preventing and containing future waves of the virus.

Third, this rhetoric of schools being "last to close, first to open" has to stop. Obviously no one wants schools to be closed since in-person learning spaces are inarguably preferable to online/virtual formats for most students. The reality of the capitalistic world that we occupy is that most people are reliant on children being in school so that parents/caregivers can work. And yet, by compelling students, staff and teachers to attend classes at an unsafe time during a global epidemic - without ensuring sufficient access to scientifically proven medical-grade masks for all, not substantially upgrading ventilation, not allowing time for students to get their second dose before restarting classes, etc - is nothing less than willing endangerment of human life. My kids, for example, got their first dose of the vaccine on the very first day they were eligible (i.e. November 28th); however, with the 8-week period that they are supposed to wait until their next vaccine appointment, the earliest we could make a booking was January 23rd (which we have done). Based on the "Severe Outcomes by Vaccination Status" graphs shown in the press conference, two doses provides significantly more protection than one (with any number of doses being preferrable to zero). That being said, there is no way that we are sending our children back to school before they have the opportunity to receive their second shot. Fortunately, we have the flexibility to do this as a family. But what about the large number of families who have no other option than to send their children back to school, or for those whose employment is school-based (who themselves have no option to strike because of the collective bargaining agreement)? Thus, it's crucial that the province delays the start of in-class learning until this present wave peaks and/or the province can adequately demonstrate that safety measures have in fact been systematically, expansively and verifiably increased at each school across every school division. Alternatively, distance options should at least be provided for families who have been advised to "look after themselves."

Finally, we already have a reliable system in place to ensure that the most people in public spaces are vaccinated, but it has not be expanded to its full potential. Only a vocal minority of Manitobans have expressed disagreement with proof of vaccination, so this should not prevent its continued use long-term. After all, there should be a lasting benefit for those who have faithfully abided by the province's strong recommendation to be vaccinated (and enduring consequences for obstinance). Also - if the province actually believes in vaccines as an important measure to contend with the Coronavirus (i.e. something "we're going to need to learn to live with…in the longer term"), then Manitoba seriously needs to consider implementing a vaccine mandate for all citizens and permanent residents, as well as requiring vaccines as a condition of attending public schools. Requirement is proven to yield more results than recommendation, and while there will always be those who stand in opposition, the cost-benefit of safeguarding life for all outweighs the preferences of individuals…otherwise, we wouldn't have laws that protect each other from harm.

All this to say, when it's communicated to us that, "it's up to Manitobans to look after themselves," what this signals is resignation and abdicating responsibility. That's not what we need from elected officials. We need you to set an example for us to follow; to inspire us to do better; to make hard decisions that will cost financial and political supporters; to answer questions honestly when asked directly; to keep calm and carry on with all of the things. That is the way out of the pandemic: not giving up.

Sincerely, X

p.s. Next time when N95 or medical grade masks are provided for Manitobans - which we as a family did not receive - please consider doing so at a location where there's more access for everyone, such as a Canada Post office. Not every community has a Liquor Mart, but even the smallest town has a post office (or is proximate to one).

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Good morning Ralph! I’m an attorney in the US and I saw your anon asking about the legality of vaccine requirements set by artists. I can shed some light, though probably not much and I’m going to do that annoying thing that lawyers do where we say “well it depends!” and refuse to give anyone any solid answers. But that’s really, truly, honestly, cross my heart hope to die, because in the case of the legality of vaccine requirements it does depend on a lot of different factors and we don’t have very many solid answers. This is not something anyone has ever really had to deal with before, the legal system looks to past precedent when deciding how to handle current issues, and there just isn’t much of that here. As a kind of general rule, though, the baseline we start from is the idea that private entities are free to require basically whatever they want as a prerequisite to service, and consumers are free to choose not to patronize those entities if they don’t like the requirements. An important thing to remember, that I think a lot of people tend to forget - all those handy rights the US constitution affords its citizens only apply to the government. There are limited exceptions - the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act are two of the biggest examples. But, so long as they’re complying with the guidelines provided by those limited exceptions, private entities can and always have been able to do pretty much whatever they want.

Now, vaccines are an interesting question because you start to get cross over into other issues - the right to privacy, bodily autonomy, “compulsory” disclosure of personal medical information, etc. If the question was “can an artist require me to wear a mask at his concert even though wearing a mask wasn’t required at the time I bought my ticket” the answer would unequivocally be yes. Artists and venues can (and do!) require all sorts of things for entry - you have to have a ticket, you have to submit to a bag search and go through a metal detector, you’re generally required to be wearing shoes and pants and a shirt. Masks absolutely can be added as a requirement, at any time, and whether or not it was a requirement that you reasonably could have anticipated when you bought the ticket doesn’t matter. But vaccines feel a little different, and admittedly they are. A mask is, in essence, a piece of clothing for your face. You wear it for a few hours, you take it off, you go about your life. It’s a temporary measure. Vaccines are not. A vaccine is a medical treatment, once you’ve gotten it you can’t “take it off” or decide you don’t want it anymore. It just feels like there should be a higher level of scrutiny than just “if you don’t like the requirement don’t support the entity.” But there really isn’t. That old idea that a private entity can set pretty much whatever rules and restrictions for access to and use of their private property stands. That tenant is arguably strengthened when the issue involves public health risks, because an employer has a duty to protect their employees and customers.

The EEOC ruled in May that companies can legally require their employees to be vaccinated. There are no federal laws preventing an employer from requiring employees to provide proof of vaccination, that information just has to be kept confidential. If there is a disability or sincerely held religious belief preventing an employee from being vaccinated they are entitled to a “reasonable accommodation” that does not pose an “undue burden” on the business. This isn’t a 1:1 comparison to your anon’s question about whether or not artists can require vaccination of concert attendees, but it is really useful guidance, because it’s a statement about what is and isn’t appropriate re: vaccine requirements straight from the mouth of one of the biggest federal players in the game. If, for example, a bunch of maroon five fans decided to sue the ban for their vaccine requirements, the EEOC decision is something judges and lawyers would look at in evaluating the suit.

HIPAA is the big one that a lot of people like to cite as protecting them from being asked about vaccination status by businesses or employers, but that’s just entirely untrue. HIPAA prevents a specific list of entities - doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. - from disclosing medical data about a patient in their care. Event venues, artists, employers - none of them fall into the category of a “covered entity” that has to abide by HIPAA requirements. And even then, there’s an argument to be made that HIPAA still wouldn’t prevent them from asking if you’re vaccinated and refusing you entry if you’re not, just that they can’t turn around and tell someone else what your vaccination status is.

So on a high level the answer is yes, artists can absolutely require vaccination of concert attendees. Full stop.

But that’s only taking into account federal laws. There are state laws at play too, and those are absolute mess. It feels like each state is handling their approach to vaccine requirements differently, and a lot of them conflict with the federal laws at play. While in theory federal laws should trump state laws, that’s not really true in practice, and a lot of people who are much smarter than me are still struggling with how to navigate that maze, so I’m not going to bother adding my two cents about how I think it should go. From a fact based standpoint, though, know that state laws are an issue and add even more “it depends on ____” factors to our already uncertain analysis. Texas, Arkansas, and Florida, for example, all have laws prohibiting businesses and governmental entities from requiring digital proof of vaccination. Whether or not these laws will withstand judicial scrutiny in the places they conflict with federal law remains tbd, but as it stands now an artist playing a show in Texas couldn’t require vaccines for entry to that show. But if their tour stop is, say, Indiana, they could require vaccines there, because Indiana state law only prevents governmental and quasi-governmental entities (schools) from requiring vaccines. Private entities can do whatever they want.

The final thing I want to touch on is your anon’s concern that the vaccine requirement wasn’t in place when the tickets were originally bought. It doesn’t matter. If the question is “can an artist require vaccines” the answer is “yes” and whether or not that requirement was in place when you bought your ticket doesn’t matter. BUT! As with everything else, there are exceptions. There might be an argument that adding a vaccine requirement is a contractual violation, if we were to imagine the exchange of ticket purchase for entertainment a contract between the buyer and the artist. There’s maybe an argument that you paid for a service you’re no longer getting because the circumstances under which the service will be provided has changed so drastically. These are issues that if someone wanted answers to they’d have to hire an attorney to file a civil suit against the artist, and then see the litigation through to get a ruling from a judge. To the best of my knowledge that hasn’t been done. But even if it is is done in the future, the answer to the overarching question “can an artist require vaccines” won’t change. All that will change is the artist will be required to come up with some sort of refund scheme for those who choose not to be vaccinated.

Anyway! I didn’t mean to write an entire treatise in your inbox. I saw the anon’s question and immediately went “oh interesting! I know a little bit about that” and, as per usual, a little bit has turned into a rambling lecture that I’m not actually sure anyone will even learn anything from. At the very least it might entertain you.

Xoxo, a US attorney who really needs to go do work someone will pay her for and stop theorizing about the interplay of federal vs state laws.

Thanks anon! That's all very interesting and relevant information. It gives a really good sense of how complex the situation is and the relevant dynamics in play. And also a good sense of what the law does and doesn't cover - because there's a whole practical side of this that is largely

I'll throw in one more thought. One of my concerns about vaccine passports are the equity issues. Existing issues of access to healthcare have played out in vaccine rates and that's true of both race and class everywhere that I have looked at. I don't think vaccines can be considered meaningfullly accessible if poor people and black people aren't accessing them. In general, the best answers to that will be resourcing to take vaccines to where people are and (and the situation for native americans really undscores this) and paid sick leave. But while vaccination rates are lowest for those who face most marginalisation, restricting access to society on the basis of a vaccination is discriminatory in a serious way.

[youarejesting]

Sly like a... ? Part 2

[Master list] [Sly Master List] Beta: n/a (at the moment) Rating: All Pairing: Hybrid!BTS x FailedHybrid!Reader Genre: Hybrid au, fluff, action, adventure, angst, drama, slice of life. Some marked chapters will contain mature/smut scenes, BUT they will not have plot in those scenes and are 100% skippable without losing your place in the story. Words: 2.1k

Summary: Human’s strive to be better, faster and stronger looking to animal DNA. Thus Hybrids are born. As the rise for designer and Pedigree Hybrids increase, so do the failed attempts. There is one species scientists are unsuccessful in creating, but, folklore says they have been here all along, hiding and blending in with the humans for many millennia. How clever they are.

[First] [Next]

It was your dream to convert a large warehouse on the outskirts of town into a home and education center for Hybrids. Somewhere they could learn to be self-sufficient. You would have professors and volunteers, teaching and fundraising, all for the day you could buy another warehouse on the other side of town. You wanted it to become the norm that these Hybrid facilities would build and grow in every city. Allowing the Hybrids to become an independent race no longer looked down upon by society.

You were on the last day of your heat and craving something savory. As it was late your best option was the convenience store that was always open late.

Things were falling into place as you received an email earlier that day confirming that all the items you had requested were acquired. That meant school books, equipment, and more. You were also granted the first loan for the Hybrids, a loan you would receive every term. The board wanted no less than five and no more than ten participants for an adequate examination of results.

You assumed for the program to be officially approved, you would have to show successful results from Hybrids with different backgrounds during this trial. That meant different ages and different upbringings. Wondering if it was worth visiting the adoption agency or perhaps a Hybrid store, it wouldn’t hurt for more variables.

Shaken from your thoughts by a shadowed figure rustling through the garbage, in a dark alley between the antiques and postal office. Your ears picked up the sound easily, feet scuffing to a halt on the pavement catching the Hybrid’s attention. Their eyes searched the dark for any sign of threat before falling upon you, a deep growl resonating on the wind. It was best to not get involved with stray Hybrids, they tended to be more violent. This is what you were doing the program for, to stop Hybrids from ending up homeless and on the streets. To prove that they aren’t dangerous and are capable of learning.

Struck by an idea, if you could get a Hybrid from the street to join the trial program, you could prove they weren’t violent and show that given the opportunity they could all learn and grow into members of society.

“Can I buy you dinner?” You called out, voice cracking from the cold. Your breath puffed out like smoke visible between you both. The night brought you more energy, it made you feel alive.

Cars passed, their headlights illuminating the entire alleyway and reflecting in his eyes a blood-red. He stalked forward, his body moving gracefully but you could see he was hurt, his shirt ripped and there was a strong scent of blood in the breeze. That was a downside to having heightened senses. You tried to control the disgusted look on your face, “I will pay and there is nothing else to it, just sit and have dinner with me, so I don’t look like a woman in her mid to late twenties eating alone at a convenience store”

He looked you up and down, it was then you noticed his features, he was a feline, not a common house cat. No, he was a big predator.

“Do I look like some charity case? Some pathetic creature who needs help from a human?” His words rumbled from his chest in a growl. You wanted to correct him that you weren’t exactly human yourself but decided against it. Stuck somewhere between Hybrid and human you didn’t fit in either category.

“What’s it to you? My reason is my reason, just take the free meal. Hell! Exploit me for a free meal, anything you want, go crazy.” You shrugged, trying desperately to charm him. He seemed to contemplate his choices for a moment before turning to walk away. You scrambled for your wallet and grabbed out twenty dollars, holding it out to him.

“Wait! At least take this; if you don’t want to eat with me, get something warm, and here is my card if ever you need help.”

He eyed the money but didn’t move to take it. Hoping he wouldn’t rip your arm off, you grabbed his hand. You knew it was risky. His fingers were cold, but you didn’t want to linger and make him mad, quickly placing the money on his palm with your business card.

“Have a good night, mister,” He nodded confused about the whole encounter, before shoving his hands in his pockets and leaving. It seemed even if you tried your best, it wouldn’t be enough to persuade him. He was too defensive, the best you could hope for was that he would stay safe in the cold.

What trials and tribulations must you go through to have these Hybrids trust and confide in you? Hopefully, it wouldn’t be this hard to get through to the group of Hybrids you were soon to obtain.

This was going to be a rather difficult experiment and you weren’t sure if it was going to go well but you hoped with every fiber of your being that you would see this through for the sake of the Hybrids.

That night you dreamed about the group of participants being hostile and unresponsive to the program, it did little to soothe your nerves the next morning. When you received an email about the new house. Jimin would have the key and would meet you outside later that day with the other Hybrids. No matter who they were, you were going to make sure they were achieving the best result they could.

The government had registered two Hybrids in your name, their files attached to the confirmation email. The two participants were so contrasting, Hoseok was a deer Hybrid, from a small farming family. The other was a Lion Hybrid by the name of Namjoon. He was from New Zealand and had participated in another government program regarding genius Hybrids.

Altogether, there were four: Namjoon the genius, Hoseok the country bumpkin, Taehyung, and Jimin. You decided to look for possible participants within the Hybrid store, and rehoming center. That would give you a wide variety of variables for the experiment; each would have a different background and would require different tools to help them.

You started at the nearest Hybrid shop. There were several rooms each with an observation window, a photo card, and a brief description of the Hybrid sitting, reading or playing video games inside. It was such a small space, how could they live in these tiny rooms every day until someone adopted them. Reading their descriptions by the windows you analyzed each of them, your attention caught by one playing video games. He had dark ears that stuck out from his dark hair. He seemed fun and you thought it would be easy to connect with him.

Hello, My name is Jungkook, I am twenty-three and I am a fully vaccinated Melanistic Jaguar.

You didn’t bother reading the rest, thinking you would like to learn about him properly, “Sir, I would like to adopt this Hybrid,” You declared, whilst walking towards the counter to begin the paperwork. Once everything was signed the young Jaguar boy was led from his small room. He looked nervous holding a small store backpack filled with all his essential items.

On the drive to the next location, you were the one doing most of the talking, receiving quiet one-word answers and small fidgets. He seemed excited when you finally parked the car, you guessed he was eager to see his new home.

However, as you walked towards the menacing rehoming center, he grew quieter and quieter, slowing to a stop before the entrance. Looking at his feet crying profusely, you realized how this must look. He must have thought he had done something wrong, how could he think you would buy him and rehome him on the same day.

“Jungkook, I am not abandoning you, I am picking up a brother for you to play with.” It took a few moments to console the young man. Wiping his tears and giving him a few pats on the head careful of his ears.

Deciding anyone younger than Jungkook would be too much to handle. “You have to help me find a big brother, someone you think will be really nice and that you like to play with, what do you think? Can you do that for me?”

Jungkook nodded, sniffing and wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “Okay, I can do that,”

The inside of the rehoming center smelt like disinfectant, you explained you were looking for another Hybrid and were led to a large room. There were Hybrids of all ages all playing and entertaining themselves with different activities.

It was overwhelming even for you, so you grasped Jungkook’s hand and encouraged him to look around, “Hey, what about ping pong?” You grinned at Jungkook who smiled playing a few rounds with you, the two of you giggling.

“Have I told you I am the ping pong master,” an older Hybrid grinned, he had a striped tail. You handed over the paddle and stood near Jungkook. “Do you want to play a game?”

Jungkook nodded, was this boy unable to say no. Either way, the two were getting along quickly, the older Hybrid was very playful and funny, even as he lost you were holding your sides from the laughter and Jungkook seemed to grow really comfortable with him.

Talking to one of the volunteers she explained that Seokjin was a raccoon hybrid and the oldest in the center. She explained that he often took the younger hybrids under his wing. It was an easy decision to adopt him. While you were filling out the paperwork, Jungkook was telling you all about his match with Seokjin.

“And I got the winning shot,” He grinned, swinging his arm like he was hitting an invisible ping pong ball.

“He seems really fun, would he make a good big brother?” It was cute how he nodded wholeheartedly. “Jungkook why don’t you go tell him that he is coming home with us?”

He grew embarrassed again, his dark ears twitching but followed the volunteer nonetheless. You were quick to finish up the last of the paperwork before the two came back laughing volunteer in tow.

“Unbelie-Bubble” Seokjin said before squeaking in laughter. He had all of his things and like Jungkook was nervous, but he showed it through talking.

You felt good with your selection, there was a Hybrid for every walk of life and socio-economic background. This would be perfect for the trial. They all seemed like lovely young Hybrids and you could already see them forming friendships.

It was on your way out that you saw a familiar face struggling against Hybrid control. “This is your last time, you know what happens to strays.”

“Wait!” You shouted, everyone in the lobby froze turning to look at you, the cold room felt quite warm with all of the attention “He is mine”

They froze looking between you and the hybrid before letting him go curiously. The injured Hybrid staggered over to you, knowing this was his best chance at survival, “why didn’t you tell them my name?” you asked him curiously but he kept his head down.

“This white tiger Hybrid is yours?” The handler spoke in disbelief, practically accusing you of lying. “why is he not microchipped, or registered in our system?”

“I was supposed to register him last week when I got him but I had been busy with work, I would like to properly register him under my name today,” You didn’t break under this man's pressure, you could notice the more he held eye contact the more he seemed to falter himself. “so that you will stop taking him in when he is harmlessly walking the streets”

The man opened his mouth to argue but you blinked up at him, watching him lower his hand.

“I am so sorry miss, we didn't mean to cause you trouble?” It wasn’t exactly odd behavior, you often found your arguments nullifying this way. You liked to think that your self-confident stare was what made people give in.

“Miss we have just noticed some suspicious activity in your account it says you have adopted four Hybrids today,” The woman behind the desk said, “We are legally required to ask your intentions or we can detain the Hybrids from you”

Almost questioning her, you remembered the government was placing two Hybrids in your name; they would be arriving today as well. With a smile you removed a folder from your bag, “I have a grant from the government.” You said brandishing the signed document, “I will be placing these Hybrids in my care”

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I've always thought there's something a bit culty about some people's attitudes towards vaccines. Vaccines in general are an amazing technology that indubitably saved many lives, but there's some nuance to that, which basically boils down to, "Like most scientific discoveries, they require rigorous testing and sometimes unexpected conditions led to something being improved that shouldn't have been." For example, a handful of years ago, I believe 2017, the flu vaccine consistently made flu worse for people who were vaccinated, at least on my college campus. I was not vaccinated, but I did contract the flu and it nearly killed me. I don't want to know what would have happened if I had been. (Take this example with a grain of salt: I've never gotten the flu vaccine because I regard it as gambling with extra steps and no reward.)

I'm absolutely not anti-vaccine! Like I said it's a great technology and does save lives. I'm up on everything except flu and Covid. But what I mean by the culty attitude surrounding it is this: when I was 14 my pediatrician tried to trick me into taking a vaccine -- I don't recall which one -- for some STD. I refused it on account of not being sexually active (I was 14, and she herself admitted that it was pointless if I wasn't having sex), but she tried to give it to me anyway, telling me it was something else, and I guess thinking I wasn't looking at the labels on the syringes? I can't figure out why she was so intent on getting that vaccine in me, aside from a general pervasive believe that more vaccines is better, regardless of whether or not you're actually going to use those antibodies. And the pushback I received for not getting the flu vaccine was always insane, nevermind that I've contracted the flu exactly once in my life, indicating that I probably don't generally need it. (Periodic unfriendly reminder that no vaccine prevents you from carrying a disease, so it's ridiculous to try to pull the 'protecting others' card on this, not that people weren't trying even years ago.)

Anyway my point is, way back in 2020 when a vaccine started to be discussed, I thought "Oh, great," because I could see that peoples' already cultlike obsession with vaccines was going to be fanned by all the fear surrounding Covid, and erupt into something really ugly, just like how religious cults convince their members to stay by showing them only the ugly parts of the outside world and using fear to convince them that this is better. And it's even worse than I thought. Any criticism of the Covid shot, no matter how mild (I.E. "I think it should have been subject to more rigorous testing.") is met with vicious mockery at best, just like when someone trapped in a cult realizes that one of the teachings is based in bigotry or something. It's really scary to me, too, because what I didn't realize was that the leaders of this particular cult are entrenched in the government, which means that you can't just leave like you can with a cult.

You're right and you should say it. I think people are way too easily persuaded to be scared. Plus, there is a huge difference between something like a flu shot and, say, the polio vaccine. The polio vaccine eliminates polio. The flu shot has a chance of keeping you from getting sick for one year. But people hear "vaccine" and think "oh they're all the same thing". Even when they should know better, like with covid, because the people pushing it aren't even pretending it was a one and done solution. It was always "well we might need boosters". They even left a spot open for a third shot on the earliest vaccine cards. The real insidiousness though, is the aggressive suppression of information regarding anything potentially negative about the covid vaccines. And not just because they're hiding potentially life saving information, but because this is going to destroy trust in the medical industry for decades. People are going to always wonder if their doctor is actually trying to help them, or if they're just upholding the narrative.

And speaking of doctors, fuck your doctor, holy shit. I'm pretty sure tricking someone into getting a medical treatment is illegal. And even if it isn't, it's unethical as hell. I hope you found a new doctor after that. If you haven't, find one.

[power-chords]

My mother was a copyeditor for the Times for 33 years so I benefit from a subscription. They send out a weekly newsletter on Monday mornings and this one felt important to share. So I am copying and pasting here, inclusive of links and diagrams:

Good morning. Many vaccine skeptics have since changed their minds and gotten shots. Here’s why.

How to persuade

When the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a poll at the start of the year and asked American adults whether they planned to get vaccinated, 23 percent said no.

But a significant portion of that group — about one quarter of it — has since decided to receive a shot. The Kaiser pollsters recently followed up and asked these converts what led them to change their minds. The answers are important, because they offer insight into how the millions of still unvaccinated Americans might be persuaded to get shots, too.

First, a little background: A few weeks ago, it seemed plausible that Covid-19 might be in permanent retreat, at least in communities with high vaccination rates. But the Delta variant has changed the situation. The number of cases is rising in all 50 states.

Although vaccinated people remain almost guaranteed to avoid serious symptoms, Delta has put the unvaccinated at greater risk of contracting the virus — and, by extension, of hospitalization and death. The Covid death rate in recent days has been significantly higher in states with low vaccination rates than in those with higher rates:

(For more detailed state-level charts, see this piece by my colleagues Lauren Leatherby and Amy Schoenfeld Walker. The same pattern is evident at the county level, as the health policy expert Charles Gaba has been explaining on Twitter.)

Nationwide, more than 99 percent of recent deaths have occurred among unvaccinated people, and more than 97 percent of recent hospitalizations have occurred among the unvaccinated, according to the C.D.C. “Look,” President Biden said on Friday, “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.”

The three themes

What helps move people from vaccine skeptical to vaccinated? The Kaiser polls point to three main themes.

(The themes apply to both the 23 percent of people who said they would not get a shot, as well as to the 28 percent who described their attitude in January as “wait and see.” About half of the “wait and see” group has since gotten a shot.)

1. Seeing that millions of other Americans have been safely vaccinated.

Consider these quotes from Kaiser’s interviews:

“It was clearly safe. No one was dying.” — a 32-year-old white Republican man in South Carolina

“I went to visit my family members in another state and everyone there had been vaccinated with no problems.” — a 63-year-old Black independent man in Texas

“Almost all of my friends were vaccinated with no side effects.” — a 64-year-old Black Democratic woman in Tennessee

This suggests that emphasizing the safety of the vaccines — rather than just the danger of Covid, as many experts (and this newsletter) typically do — may help persuade more people to get a shot.

A poll of vaccine skeptics by Echelon Insights, a Republican firm, points to a similar conclusion. One of the most persuasive messages, the skeptics said, was hearing that people have been getting the vaccine for months and it is “working very well without any major issues.”

2. Hearing pro-vaccine messages from doctors, friends and relatives.

For many people who got vaccinated, messages from politicians, national experts and the mass media were persuasive. But many other Americans — especially those without a college degree — don’t trust mainstream institutions. For them, hearing directly from people they know can have a bigger impact.

“Hearing from experts,” as Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser polls, told me, “isn’t the same as watching those around you or in your house actually go through the vaccination process.”

Here are more Kaiser interviews:

“My daughter is a doctor and she got vaccinated, which was reassuring that it was OK to get vaccinated.” — a 64-year-old Asian Democratic woman in Texas

“Friends and family talked me into it, as did my place of employment.” — a 28-year-old white independent man in Virginia

“My husband bugged me to get it and I gave in.” — a 42-year-old white Republican woman in Indiana

“I was told by my doctor that she strongly recommend I get the vaccine because I have diabetes.” — a 47-year-old white Republican woman in Florida

These comments suggest that continued grass-roots campaigns may have a bigger effect at this stage than public-service ad campaigns. The one exception to that may be prominent figures from groups that still have higher vaccine skepticism, like Republican politicians and Black community leaders.

3. Learning that not being vaccinated will prevent people from doing some things.

There is now a roiling debate over vaccine mandates, with some hospitals, colleges, cruise-ship companies and others implementing them — and some state legislators trying to ban mandates. The Kaiser poll suggests that these requirements can influence a meaningful number of skeptics to get shots, sometimes just for logistical reasons.

“Hearing that the travel quarantine restrictions would be lifted for those people that are vaccinated was a major reason for my change of thought.” — a 43-year-old Black Democratic man in Virginia

“To see events or visit some restaurants, it was easier to be vaccinated.” — a 39-year-old white independent man in New Jersey

“Bahamas trip required a COVID shot.” — a 43-year-old Hispanic independent man in Pennsylvania

[nation-of-bros]

EU Hypocrisy

When I see the pictures of brimful stadiums and concert halls from America, I feel so fooled here. The EU and the "Buntesrepublik Schland" celebrate themselves as morally superior and totally free, but that doesn't change the fact that we are still massively disenfranchised and subjected to total arbitrariness of politicians together with their so called "experts". If Russia were to attack Germany, I would hardly take up arms to defend our supposed freedom. I wouldn't be much worse off in Russia unless I criticize the government. But even in Germany it can cost you your job if you have a different political opinion or are simply not vaccinated. So where are we better if we discriminate against people who think differently or are just plain healthy?

I've been treated like dirt for two years. They don't give a fuck about my needs and insult me ​​as "unsolidarity". I'm extremely pissed off by the hypocrisy of the EU and its crappy decadent population, how they're all wallowing in their solidarity orgy, waving blue yellow flags and letting the EU persuade them that the Ukrainians are fighting "for our freedom." I think they are not fighting for "our freedom" but primarily for their own nation or just an age-old rift between Ukrainians and Russians. Ukraine isn't even a member of the EU yet, and for good reason, because the Ukrainian state was far too corrupt to ever be able to meet the admission requirements.

This war in the Ukraine has only lasted a week and is already being massively exploited ideologically. I keep asking myself what freedom they mean? The freedom to actually work 70% of the year for the state because we enjoy the highest tax burden of any Western nation; or the freedom of not being able to engage in any public leisure activities; or the freedom that I am massively restricted in my education and career just because I don't want to undergo BioNTech's actually forced gene therapy; or the freedom that I can no longer travel because in the EU only those who have been boosted enjoy full freedom to travel?

It disgusts me to the extreme how the EU is using this war in Ukraine and all the suffering for their own "We're doing great" propaganda! I mean, Yemen has been at war for many years and it hasn't bothered anyone in Europe; nor when American soldiers shoot at Arab civilians with drones because it's fun. And to this day, Western governments owe a rational reason why the Allies had to rid Libya of the supposedly dreadful Gaddafi, turning it from the richest country to the poorest in North Africa, thanks to Western “democratization” by bombs from the sky. No, none of this has ever interested western people. They only care about what the mainstream media and governments focus them. Westerners are no way better than the silent Russian majority watching Putin go berserk, and would do the same if they were in Russian shoes.

Rushing governments that dehumanize their own citizens

Our Federal President, the "moral authority" of Germany, so to speak, who always has the last word, describes unvaccinated people as "antisocial", in the subtext as absolutely undesirable citizens for whom there is no understanding. And now people of Russian origin are being denigrated, who have been living here for many years and are not at all to blame for Putin's shitty war of aggression. The hatred doesn't stop at anyone, not even at Russian truckers who just supply us with goods, but are now being threatened. How can a trucker be blamed for the madness of a government he may not even have elected? Is that what intelligent people do, indiscriminately blaming and attacking others just because the media showed them who is the new enemy? We are in no way better. As soon as politics gives us permission, we go crazy and throw fundamental rights and social interaction overboard.

I witnessed how people in the supposedly democratic paradise of the EU were detained  by the police for hours in public places like terrorists just because they went for a peaceful walk in protest against the government not wearing a face mask. The lack of compliance with Corona requirements is a popular reason for our authorities to break up unwanted demonstrations. I've seen enough videos from Dresden and many other German cities where the police beat demonstrators mercilessly, even old people. The authorities send police forces from other federal states to Saxony in a targeted manner because they have less inhibitions about getting rough since they don't have to expect to meet relatives or acquaintances under the protesters. A state with such a perverse approach to its own citizens is basically no better than Russia. And I haven't even talked about how our authorities specifically pay Antifa troops to beat up counter-demonstrators or political undesirables. Yes, we really are that incredibly better.

The West deliberately let the Ukraine war arise

The EU and NATO knew very well that Russia would attack. They could have prevented it by forcing Ukraine to find compromises with Russia over the separatist areas and Crimea, which originally belonged to Russia anyway. But the Ukrainian nationalists did not want to accommodate Russia one millimeter. Now they are torn apart in a bloody war with the Russian bear. And I maintain that the EU and NATO want this war.

While NATO has finally found a reason for its previously completely useless existence with the Russian attack and can look forward to massive financial donations from the member states, the EU urgently needed a war to deflect the question of guilt after this corona shit, as well as blaming the "necessary sanctions against Russia" for the already ruined economy. Furthermore, several million Ukrainian refugees mean a nice boost of cheap labor to help rejuvenate Europe's aging population. After all, the EU immediately set up a special status for the white Ukrainians for 3 years, which makes the entire asylum procedure superfluous and gives them immediate permission to work. I don't want to say that I think that's bad, but they didn't see the need for it with Syrian refugees.

For weeks, Russian troops "practiced" on the Ukrainian border. And the West could not think of anything else but to do NOTHING and let Ukraine continue to provoke Russia. If they now wave blue and yellow flags, they are not expressing solidarity, but are misusing the war in Ukraine for their own politics because there is nothing better than an enemy to achieve unity and desired political demands.

[stoweboyd]

Ezra Klein on Mandating Vaccination

He gets right to the edge, and backs down.

In What if the Unvaccinated Can’t Be Persuaded, Ezra Klein makes the case for compelling vaccination:

We do not solely rely on argumentation to persuade people to wear seatbelts. A majority of states do not leave it to individual debaters to hash out whether you can smoke in indoor workplaces. Polio and measles were murderous, but their near elimination required vaccine mandates, not just public education. When George Washington wanted to protect his soldiers from smallpox, he made vaccinations mandatory. It worked. “No revolutionary regiments were incapacitated by the disease during the southern campaign, and the mandate arguably helped win the yearslong war,” wrote Aaron Carroll.

However, when considering the politics of vaxx denial, he won't take the final step:

Though I’d like to believe otherwise, I don’t think our politics can support a national vaccination mandate. The places that would most benefit from a mandate would be those most opposed to following one, and deepening partisan divisions here would be catastrophic (this is a problem that also afflicts the C.D.C.’s new masking guidance, as my colleague David Leonhardt notes). A high-stakes showdown between, say, the federal government and the State of Florida over a mandate would be a distraction we don’t need.

He might change his tune if a new strain appears that is dramatically more lethal. But I still think he's wrong on the merits, as I wrote about in Bar Owners To The Rescue:

President Biden has begun to require that federal employees in many agencies get vaccinated or frequently tested, but strangely, not the military, who are commonly vaccinated for a wide variety of diseases when stationed overseas. He seems averse to mandating vaccination, although the federal and state governments clearly have the power to do so, as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905 (Jacobson versus Massachusetts) and 1924 (Zucht v. King):

Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote [in 1905] about the police power of states to regulate for the protection of public health: “The good and welfare of the Commonwealth, of which the legislature is primarily the judge, is the basis on which the police power rests in Massachusetts,” Harlan said “upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

[…]

When a separate question of vaccinations—state laws requiring children to be vaccinated before attending public school—came up in 1922 in Zucht v. King, Justice Louis Brandeis and a unanimous court held that Jacobson “settled that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination” and the case and others “also settled that a state may, consistently with the federal Constitution, delegate to a municipality authority to determine under what conditions health regulations shall become operative.”

But states have not stepped up to mandate vaccinations, nor to require those adults who refuse vaccination to be quarantined.

Which I believe we will look back on as a monumental mistake.

[toshootforthestars]

From the report by Beth Mole, posted 19 July 2021:

Fully vaccinated people are largely protected from delta; the current vaccines are still highly effective against developing COVID-19 from delta and other variants of concern. Though a small proportion of people can develop so-called “breakthrough infections,” those infections will mostly be asymptomatic or mild. But, unvaccinated people are completely vulnerable. Moreover, those who have received only one dose of a two-dose vaccine or have only recovered from COVID-19 are not much better off than those who are completely unvaccinated.

But according to new polling data from CBS News, a new wave of vaccinations seems unlikely. Among unvaccinated and partly vaccinated people, only 48% said they are concerned about delta. Among fully vaccinated people, 72% reported being concerned about the variant.

Despite the fact that the current COVID-19 vaccines have proven highly effective and safe, 53% of those who are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated said in the poll that they are concerned about side effects. 50% of the group cited a lack of trust in the government as a reason not to get vaccinated. And 45% said they don’t trust the science. All of these percentages are higher than they have been in earlier polls, indicating that these anti-vaccine sentiments are hardening among the unvaccinated.

Some unvaccinated people who may be more persuadable have said they are waiting for the vaccines to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (currently, they are authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization). On Friday, Pfizer and BioNTech said that the FDA had granted them a Priority Review designation for their mRNA vaccine, but they didn’t expect a decision on full approval until January 2022. Currently, vaccine providers are administering only around 520,000 COVID-19 vaccine per day, down from a record of 4.6 million in a day in April.

With over 161 million people vaccinated, only 48.6% of the US population is fully vaccinated.

See also: How much COVID misinformation is on Facebook? Its execs don’t want to know

For years, misinformation has flourished on Facebook. Falsehoods, misrepresentations, and outright lies posted on the site have shaped the discourse on everything from national politics to public health. But despite their role in facilitating communications for billions of people, Facebook executives refused to commit resources to understand the extent to which COVID-19-related misinformation pervaded its platform, according to a report in The New York Times.

Early in the pandemic, a group of data scientists at Facebook met with executives to propose a project that would determine how many users saw misleading or false information about COVID. It wasn’t a small task—they estimated that the process could take up to a year or more to complete—but it would give the company a solid understanding of the extent to which misinformation spread on its platform.

The executives listened to the data scientists’ pitch and then reportedly ghosted them.

The data team’s proposal wasn’t approved, and they were never given an explanation for why it was silently dropped.

The revelations come as Facebook has drawn fire from the White House for its role in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that prevent it. “They’re killing people,” President Joe Biden said about the role of social networks in the spread of misinformation. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. They’re killing people.”

Biden later walked back his comments slightly, but they revealed the administration’s frustration with social media platforms—and with Facebook in particular—over their response to the pandemic.

For weeks, the White House pressed Facebook for details on how the company is combating COVID vaccine misinformation. The social network offered some details but gave unsatisfying answers to other requests.

Facebook’s unwillingness or inability to understand the scope of COVID misinformation on its platform was apparent in comments it gave to The New York Times, in which it blamed its nescience on the lack of a “standard definition” for pandemic-related misinformation. “The suggestion we haven’t put resources toward combating COVID misinformation and supporting the vaccine rollout is just not supported by the facts,” said Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman.

“With no standard definition for vaccine misinformation, and with both false and even true content (often shared by mainstream media outlets) potentially discouraging vaccine acceptance, we focus on the outcomes—measuring whether people who use Facebook are accepting of COVID-19 vaccines.”

For researchers who study misinformation, that explanation isn’t sufficient. “They need to open up the black box that is their content ranking and content amplification architecture,“ Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times. “Take that black box and open it up for audit by independent researchers and government. We don’t know how many Americans have been infected with misinformation.”

Me: 

This situation is extremely bad!

First off, the individuals that aren’t getting vaccinated just do not care to. They’ve bought hook line and sinker into all the disinfo and misinfo on facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, reddit, and/or whatever 8chan replacement one choosed. What they see and read reinforces their pre-conceived (and factually incorrect) views that “experts” “really don’t know shit about anything” and thusly are “blowing things way the fuck outta proportion,” etc. Their views are both informed by, and reinforced by:

what they read and see online

what they hear on FM/AM radio

what they watch on broadcast TV

what their friends and communities consume from media

what the prevailing societal and political attitudes in one’s community are

“rugged individualism” and the post-1980 erosion of the social contract

So, if your fb friends are covid truthers, if the on-air personalities you hear on the radio at work are covid truthers, if your neighbors and friends at werk are covid truthers, if the elected leaders are covid truthers, if the snippets of Fox News you get to see randomly are pushing covid truther disinfo, and if those in your inner circle at that 4th of July party you went to are covid truthers, then you yourself, at a minimum from peer pressure, will dismiss the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, scores of hospital operators, plus countless professionals in medicine and epidemiology in your decision not to get vaccinated, nor to mask up indoors in public even when “recommended”.

“I have rights. I know what’s really going on. I’ve got things figured out.”  Or, at a minimum, “I don’t give a fuck either way.” “Fuck you.”

Facebook absolutely is responsible for the covid truther disinfo and misinfo being shared on their platform.  I believe they are the largest vector of disinformation and misinformation to the public. So many people are chugging the “vaccines are a scam, masks don’t work and I have rights” kool-aid thanks to disinfo introduced and shared widely on facebook

Some other major vectors of disinfo: iHeartMedia - Premiere Networks - iHeartRadio, Entercom/Audacy, Westwood One, One America News, Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcast Group, YouTube + Google, TikTok, and Reddit.

“I saw a video on YouTube where the military did a study…”  or “I heard a guy on the radio saying mask mandates are part of a plot…”  It's all bullshit!

At this point it cannot be anything but an active choice the leadership at these companies consciously make to pipe out total bullshit in a time of crisis. Content from all of the above easily makes its way to facebook, too, unrestricted!

The U.S continues to spiral into this post fact, post truth, anti-intellectual, anti-science neo-fascist hellscape where no lives matter and where mass death is AOK because “none of us get out of this world alive” or some asshat folksy quip that masks as wisdom.  Empathy, reasoning, established facts and observable reality have all become political statements… People hear what they want to hear.

IMO this is truly a disastrous situation with no easy way out.

Many, many people will not wear masks again.  Many, many people see the survival rate for coronavirus and they surmise wrongly that the risk for them of getting covid is worth it, that the risk for others isn’t remotely their concern, and that the entire situation is overblown. The social contract is in bad shape. Public confidence in the state is almost gone. Covid truthers are everywhere.

Getting a vaccine requires time off from work to travel to a mass vax site that’s still open, time off to recoup post-shot (if necessary), and overcoming fear that the anti-vax disinfo on social media was true after all. Plus overcoming peer pressure from unvaccinated friends and family.

Covid case numbers are likely undercounts. Test kits are still problematic. Persons with no health insurance have no PCP to call when they get sick. Underinsured persons may have to wait weeks for their approved PCP to get around to a telehealth call. Many people are getting sick and not getting tested and they’re not reporting anything to anyone. State officials, wanting to look good, may skew whatever data is reported to them.

COVID-19 is an airborne virus. Most people catch covid from contagious asymptomatic people. Coronavirus has always been a risk for children! Getting vaccinated is part of an overall good strategy to keep COVID-19 at bay. Masks work!!! If indoors, stay in a ventilated room if you’re with other people, and keep doors and windows open for air circulation. Coronavirus is producing extremely serious long-term cognitive and cardiovascular complications for many people who survive it. “Long covid” is real.

We don’t have to live with this! The political and business leadership in much of the United States today have collectively decided there’s nothing that can or should be done in regards to covid-19, no masking requirements, no easy supplies of N95 masks, and no mitigation efforts of any kind. They wrongly conclude that COVID-19, a new virus with so many unknowns, “isn’t that bad” and so the level of permanent damage or death resulting from covid is acceptable.

None of this is acceptable, the amount of permanent damage and death occurring from COVID-19 is far, far too high, and there’s no rational excuse whatsoever to allow this virus to spread across this country unchecked. There’s no reason to allow this virus to spread further. There’s no valid reason for me and anyone else to justify allowing covid to spread out of control.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Have you seen this RS article?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/jason-isbell-covid-vaccine-required-1210914/

I hadn't anon - thanks for sending it through. I generally find discussions of vaccine requirements quite frustrating, because they seem to talk about how people want the vaccines and tests to work and what they want them to do, instead of how they do work.

I wish someone who advocated for a requirement for vaccinations or tests would do so in a way that engaged with the risks still involved. Because while the vaccines do offer protection against both infection transmission, vaccinated people do still catch COVID and pass it on to others. And testing negative for COVID three days works as a screening provision, but no more.

So when an artist says that he's doing this:

Because I don’t feel right onstage while I think people might be getting deathly ill in the crowd. I don’t think it’s fair to the audience or to the crews at the venues or to my crew to put people in a situation where they’re possibly risking their lives or taking the virus home to their kids, or they go to school and give it to other kids. It just didn’t feel right. I pride myself, and I have always prided myself, on being successful at a job where nobody gets hurt. I’m not an investment banker or a hedge fund manager. I don’t need anybody to fail for me to succeed. And I think if we hadn’t put these kinds of restrictions in place and we didn’t hold the line on it, I would feel like I was taking advantage of people while I’m doing my job. I don’t ever want to do that, because that little thing that I love the most about the job that I have is the fact that it spreads something positive. I want to protect that. I don’t want to spread positive tests — I want to spread positive vibes.

I really love the sentiment and agree with it and think it's important. But I think there's a gap between what he thinks his requirements are doing and what they're actually doing, and not being honest about that gap is quite dangerous. Because people could get deathly ill in a crowd where people had to show proof of vaccination or take a test in the last 72 hours - given enough gigs in enough places where COVID levels are high and someone will. And I think it's important to be honest about that - both to ourselves and to people we're inviting into spaces.

I would feel much more comfortable with this sort of approach if it was communicated as follows: 'We require vaccines and tests because we're committed to lowering the risk for everyone involved. But there is still a risk. Someone who tested negative for COVID in the last 72 hours can still be infectious today. Someone who has been vaccinated can still catch and transmit COVID. We want to make the risk as low as possible, but we want you to know that there is still a risk.' (Ideally alongside other risk prevention measures people were asking of gigs such as ventiliation provisions).

I don't blame this artist at all! He's doing the best that he can in a very difficult position (and the fact that he's in Texas makes the decisions he's making so much harder). He seems really decent and thoughtful and with good values that he's committed to. He also knows more about the situation in Texas and Alabama and how to navigate it than I do.

But I do think the principle of clear, honest communication around risk is an important one.

[hopebird3]

US coronavirus: it might take 'many, many' more vaccine mandates to conclusion the Covid-19 pandemic, Fauci says

© Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty photos an indication backyard of Langer's Deli in l. a. on August 7 mentioning proof of a Covid-19 vaccination is required for entry. tens of millions of americans nonetheless should get vaccinated to sluggish or cease the unfold of Covid-19 and getting the pandemic below manage could take "many, many" more vaccine mandates, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Fauci, the director of the national Institute of allergy and Infectious ailments, said if greater individuals aren't persuaded to get vaccinated with the aid of messaging from health officers and "trusted political messengers," extra mandates from colleges and companies can be vital. "I agree with it truly is going to turn this round because I don't suppose individuals are going to wish to no longer go to work or no longer go to college ... they will do it," Fauci told CNN's Jen Christensen right through an interview at the NLGJA, the affiliation of LGBTQ Journalists, conference Sunday. "you'd like to have them do it on a totally voluntary groundwork, but if that would not work, you've gotten acquired to move to the alternatives." The mixture of the tremendously contagious Delta variant and the vaccine holdouts has put the U.S. in a "very intricate period" of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fauci spoke of. Of the eligible population within the US, which is presently confined to americans 12 and older, 63% are completely vaccinated, in line with statistics from the facilities for sickness control and Prevention. health experts and officials are aiming for the colossal majority of the inhabitants to be inoculated to control the unfold. ultimate week, President Joe Biden introduced vaccine requirements that include a mandate for companies with greater than a hundred employees to require vaccination or general checking out for employees. businesses that desire employees to come to work and live at work will advantage from vaccine necessities, US Surgeon accepted Dr. Vivek Murthy said. The mandate will advantage personnel as neatly, he introduced. "I consider so that you can now not most effective enhance public fitness, nonetheless it will give individuals some extra peace of intellect," Murthy instructed CNN Sunday. because the debate over mandates continues, some hospitals are feeling the impact of lagging vaccination charges. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis sounded the alarm Friday, saying, "We actually have the bottom ICU purchasable price that we've got had due to the fact that the start of this disaster, in part as a result of the unvaccinated with Covid and just different kinds of trauma that goes up seasonally this time of yr." Polis spoke of some hospitals in his state "reaching very near their means limits. And that wouldn't be going on if americans were vaccinated." To booster, or no longer to booster? an international neighborhood of vaccine scientists, together with some from the USA meals and Drug Administration and the world health corporation, say the latest evidence on Covid-19 vaccines doesn't appear to help a need for booster photographs within the typical public. The scientists, who authored a paper about this, include two senior FDA vaccine leaders, Dr. Philip Krause and Marion Gruber, who can be stepping down in October and November, the FDA introduced late final month. No additional details had been launched about their retirements, although they sparked questions on even if the departures would affect the agency's work. The paper's authors write that vaccine efficacy is still high against extreme sickness, including for the enormously transmissible Delta variant, despite the fact much less so for symptomatic disease. "existing evidence doesn't, for this reason, seem to reveal a need for boosting in the established inhabitants, wherein efficacy in opposition t extreme disorder is still excessive," the scientists write within the new paper, published Monday in the clinical journal The Lancet. The FDA and other public fitness companies all over proceed to verify evidence on Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and the role booster doses of the vaccine might play in improving immunity towards the disorder. different facts on the area will quickly be coming. the brand new England Journal of medicine will post Israeli information displaying that a booster shot of Pfizer's vaccine dramatically lowered severe Covid-19, in line with Dr. Nachman Ash, director prevalent of the Israeli Ministry of health. Israel begun its booster software on August 1; booster photographs were given to 2.eight million people there up to now. thus far, a good deal of the country's statistics on the efficacy of booster photographs has no longer been reviewed through outdoor specialists and published in a medical journal. US federal fitness officers have introduced plans to offer booster doses this autumn, starting September 20, discipline to authorization from the FDA and consent from the CDC. The FDA's Vaccines and related biological products Advisory Committee is assembly on Friday to talk about the utility with the aid of vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech to manage their Covid-19 vaccine as a 3rd dose, or "booster" shot, to individuals a while sixteen and older. children could get access to vaccines by means of Halloween parents concerned about keeping their young toddlers from the virus could have access to vaccinations for them by using for Halloween, talked about the former commissioner of the FDA. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who's a board member at Pfizer, informed CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday the company is expected to have statistics on vaccinations for children a long time 5-eleven ready for the FDA through the conclusion of September. "The FDA says it can be a matter of weeks, not months, to make a choice if they're going to authorize vaccines for youngsters between 5 to 11. I interpret that to be in all probability four weeks, might be six weeks," said Gottlieb. however, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky turned into greater guarded about when kids can also be vaccinated. She spoke of Monday that the CDC is working urgently on a Covid-19 vaccine for more youthful infants, with the hope that they might be vaccinated via the conclusion of the 12 months. "We're looking ahead to the businesses to put up the information to the FDA. We're looking forward to to be able to take place within the fall," she advised NBC's "nowadays" exhibit. "we will look at that records from the FDA, from the CDC, with the urgency that we all consider for getting our children vaccinated and we're hoping by means of the conclusion of the 12 months." meanwhile, the FDA cautioned parents not to race to vaccinate their infants before approval from the agency. "babies don't seem to be small adults -- and issues that may well be addressed in pediatric vaccine trials can include whether there's a need for diverse doses or distinctive energy formulations of vaccines already used for adults," the FDA pointed out in a statement Friday. until it's protected to vaccinate that age neighborhood, Dr. James Versalovic, pathologist-in-chief at Texas toddlers's sanatorium, informed CBS that prevention is critical. "moreover prevention ... we need to continue to stress to all folks and families the importance of timely diagnosing through testing," Versalovic spoke of. "after which triage the care as it should be. decide no matter if that baby needs clinic-based care. We understand a way to treat babies at this point in the pandemic." NYC welcomes lower back college students ny city public college device reopened Monday morning with a hundred% of its students lower back in lecture rooms. "we have been working for 18 months to get equipped for this present day," big apple schooling Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter advised CNN in an interview Friday. All college students and teachers returning to school on Monday could be required to wear masks, and the city previously introduced a vaccine mandate for all public college personnel and not using a checking out opt-out. On Friday, the United Federation of teachers mentioned in an announcement that an unbiased arbitrator determined lecturers who have documented or non secular exemptions ought to be provided a non-classroom assignment. department of schooling officers spoke of Monday that 74% of lecturers and 66% of scholars 12-17 years historical have been vaccinated in long island metropolis. US training Secretary Miguel Cardona seemed virtually from a Bronx school and praised NYC officials for the reopening plan. "To all the families which are observing -- they've worked so tough, they've organized, they are doing everything to make sure your little ones and body of workers are secure," Cardona referred to. also on Monday, NYC all started enforcing its vaccination passport guidelines, which makes vaccinations required for indoor eating, gyms, and different venues. "here is the day we now have been watching for," de Blasio referred to Monday. heritage will bear in mind it, he stated, as "a day that was a online game changer, a change maker, a flip round day. this is the day NYC's coming returned in full force." 먹튀검증

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think people aren't able to grasp the more nuance and difference of Ironwood vs a actual villain like Salem? Is the concept that sometimes you can't save everyone and have to make the tough calls hard to understand? I'm all for IW saving everyone and stoping Salem, but the show has yet to provide anyway that's possible. What's he supposed to do? I want to know what people want IW to do that will save Mantle, Atlas, and stop Salem.

I think a lot of it stems from unintentionally and/or willfully misunderstanding what the situation actually is. I list both because sometimes the misunderstanding stems from “I completely forgot they established this eight episodes ago,” sometimes it’s “I spend a lot of time in the fandom and when theories started being presented as facts I didn’t notice the change,” or “I’ve hated this character for so long that anything said even remotely in their favor is going to fall on deaf ears,” etc. There are a lot of ways it can come about, but the takeaway is I don’t think the concept that you can’t always save everyone is hard to understand, so there’s something interfering with the ability to see the situation that way. Those who supposedly don’t understand it are viewing it as Situation B whereas we’re seeing Situation A. We’re asking why they don’t like the taste of apples when they think they’re eating an orange. 

Some concrete examples that I’ve seen in regards to Ironwood: 

“But Ruby can just use her silver eyes. Ironwood is ignoring an obvious weapon here. He’s not even willing to try to fight and that’s bad.” This is applying our knowledge - an audience’s meta, genre savvy knowledge - to the situation, thereby changing it, but it’s not knowledge Ironwood shares. That situation doesn’t exist in the canon. No one has established for him that silver eyes are a potential weapon against Salem. Ruby hasn’t even realized that yet. Why would he risk everything on a theory no one has ever brought up? How much does Ironwood even know about SEWs? It’s a slightly more complicated version of yelling at the protagonist for not arresting the serial killer. The audience has forgotten that we know who the killer is because we have additional knowledge that the character lacks. 

“Ironwood’s plan is stupid. The grimm are just going to fly up to Atlas and then they’ll be trapped. How are they going to feed themselves for months on end? He’s resigning the people of Atlas to a slow, agonizing death.” This is simultaneously ignoring the actual situation and making it sound far worse than it is by assuming a whole bunch of lore that we don’t know anything about, one way or the other. The situation is not, “What’s the best plan Ironwood can come up with and is this one it?” it’s “What’s any plan he can come up with? Because that plan is better than death.” None of our characters claimed flying away was perfect or without problems, just that it had a possibility of ending better than staying to face Salem will. We then have those assumptions tacked on. Do we know how high grimm can fly? No. Do we know how long Atlas can sustain itself? No. Did Ironwood ever say he planned to stay up there for months on end? No. Yet fans are inclined to state the worst potential outcome as facts: grimm can fly that high and Atlas will starve and Ironwood does plan to hide in the clouds forever... even though there’s nothing to support any of that. 

Finally, we got another perfect example in my last reblog: “And Ironwood would leave them to die because of a pissing match he had with Ozpin.” First, framing them disagreeing and then Ironwood listening to Ozpin over the course of many years as a “pissing match” is highly inaccurate. (Insert here: likewise misinterpreting his “I’d have you shot” comment as legitimate setup for him shooting people now). Second, the conflict of whether to leave Mantle behind or stay to fight a doomed battle has nothing to do with Ozpin. He’s still hanging out inside Oscar. He is not a part of this decision process, nor is Ironwood acting like he is. There is nothing in our final episode to suggest that any of Ironwood’s choices stem from a “pissing match” with his former boss... but that sentence sounds really damning, doesn’t it? It’s reeeeallly easy to state something with confidence and allow readers to fill in the blanks: “Well I remember them disagreeing in the past... and this one post said that maybe Ironwood thought he was shooting Ozpin instead of Oscar... so yeah! He’s a villain because he cares more about his fight with Ozpin than his kingdom!” And then they spread that belief further. Yet where is the evidence for this? Not in the scenes where Ironwood and Ozpin resolved their conflicts. Not in Ironwood kindly greeting Oscar when he thought he was Ozpin. Not in the vault scene where Ironwood basically went, “Are you still Oscar?” and Oscar went “Yup” and that was the end of that. When you’ve got fans who watched the episode once (nothing wrong with that, it’s just then easy to misremember things), a fandom that states headcanons as facts, and other fans who are inclined to make confident but unsubstantiated statements, it’s incredibly easy to tell everyone that 2 + 2 = 10. You pick a canon event, present it as something it wasn’t, pick a headcanon, slam them together, and people come to a wildly different conclusion from what you’d get if you’re dealing strictly with the canon. 

So I think anyone is able to grasp the nuance of this situation, it just requires dealing with this situation. Which is why I demand evidence! From both others and myself so that we can see what the situation actually is. Any and every statement made has to be able to be backed up by dialogue, visuals, action, or narration in the canon, or we need to acknowledge when statements have dialogue, visuals, actions, or narration that contradicts them in the canon. Doesn’t mean there isn’t wiggle room - there’s still very much interpretation of these things, as well as contradictions within the canon - but demanding evidence helps keep everyone on the same page. If someone can’t point to when Ironwood learned that silver eyes could potentially defeat Salem, or if they can’t present the dialogue where he says he intends to never land Atlas, or if they can’t show you where they formed the opinion that Ironwood was talking to Ozpin, or if they’re ignoring the five scenes you can pull up that undermine their position... it’s not persuasive. And if it’s not persuasive it’s unlikely to be the real situation. And if it’s not the real situation, then the fan is never going to grapple with the actual question at hand: Is it worth risking everyone you’ve already gotten to safety to fight someone who you currently have no way to beat? 

Evidence is everything. Not to make this a soap box post, but this is how misinformation about ~important~ subjects is spread as well, not just our fun webseries. Has this person misrepresented this situation? Have they left out crucial information? If I ask them to trace their logic will they do so? Does it make sense? Can they point to the moment when they said this thing happened? Can they back up their claims with sources? Do I trust those sources? Honestly, fandom is a great place to practice skills that are going to help you throughout your life and this is one of the reasons why the anger at me making fandom “unnecessarily political” is hilarious. Not only is media inherently political, not only are massive online communities inherently political, but the behavior  we exhibit in fandom is wrapped up in politics as well. Statements like “Ironwood abandoned a city because he was pissed at Ozpin” are just a safe, fictionalized version of “Vaccines will give your kids autism.” They’re both unsubstantiated claims that sound very damning. So you ask, “How did you reach that conclusion? Because if I demand evidence for that I don’t think I’m going to be persuaded...” 

When you’ve got a pocket of fandom that demands and listens to evidence, then you’ve likewise got a pocket working with the same situation. Then you can grapples with the aspects that stem from personal preference and subjectivity: I still stand by Ruby’s inability to leave people behind, Ironwood’s pragmatism resonates with me, I’d call him a hero, I’d call him an anti-hero, now we have to grapple with him shooting people and whether that clearly villainous act is built into his character arc well or if it’s an OOC call of the authors  ... all interpretations that differ, but are cut from the same cloth. 

[tinyshe]

Pure, Unalloyed Evil Masked as a Pandemic Analysis by Mike Whitney

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Mike Yeadon is a soft-spoken microbiologist and a former vice-president of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer. He spent 32 years working for large pharmaceutical companies and is a leading expert on viral respiratory infections.

He is also a man on a mission, and his mission is to inform as many people as possible about the elite powerbrokers that are using the pandemic as a smokescreen to conceal their real objectives. Here’s Yeadon in a recent interview:1

“If you wanted to depopulate a significant portion of the world, and to do it in a way that wouldn’t require destruction of the environment with nuclear weapons, or poisoning everyone with anthrax or something, and you wanted plausible deniability, whilst you had a multi-year infectious disease crisis; I don’t think you could come up with a better plan of work than what seems to be in front of me.

I can’t say that’s what they’re going to do, but I cannot think of a benign explanation for why they are doing it.”

“Depopulation?” Who said anything about depopulation? Isn’t it a bit of a stretch to go from a mass vaccination campaign to allegations of a conspiracy to “depopulate a significant portion of the world?” Indeed, it is, but Yeadon has done extensive research on the matter and provides compelling evidence that such a diabolical objective may, in fact, be the goal.

Humans Are Capable of Unimaginable Viciousness and Cruelty

Moreover, it is not for lack of proof that people are not persuaded that Yeadon is right, but something more fundamental; the inability to grasp that men are capable of almost-unimaginable viciousness and cruelty. Here’s Yeadon again:2

“It’s become absolutely clear to me, even when I talk to intelligent people, friends, acquaintances … and they can tell I’m telling them something important, but they get to the point [where I say] ‘your government is lying to you in a way that could lead to your death and that of your children,’ and they can’t begin to engage with it.

And I think maybe 10% of them understand what I said, and 90% of those blank their understanding of it because it is too difficult. And my concern is, we are going to lose this, because people will not deal with the possibility that anyone is so evil …

But I remind you of what happened in Russia in the 20th century, what happened in 1933 to 1945, what happened in, you know, Southeast Asia in some of the most awful times in the post-war era. And, what happened in China with Mao and so on … We’ve only got to look back two or three generations. All around us there are people who are as bad as the people doing this.

They’re all around us. So, I say to folks, the only thing that really marks this one out, is its scale. But actually, this is probably less bloody, it’s less personal, isn’t it? The people who are steering this … it’s going to be much easier for them. They don’t have to shoot anyone in the face.

They don’t have to beat someone to death with a baseball bat, or freeze them, starve them, make them work until they die. All of those things did happen two or three generations back … That’s how close we are. And all I’m saying is, some shifts like that are happening again, but now they are using molecular biology.”

People ‘Cannot Imagine Anything so Demonic’

He’s right, isn’t he? Whereas, a great many people know that the government, the media and the public health officials have been lying to them about everything from the efficacy of masks, social distancing and lockdowns, to the life-threatening dangers of experimental vaccines, they still refuse to believe that the people orchestrating this operation might be pushing them inexorably toward infertility or an early death.

They cannot imagine anything so demonic, so they stick their heads in the sand and pretend not to see what is going on right beneath their noses. It’s called “denial” and it is only strengthening the position of the puppet masters that are operating behind the scenes. Here’s more from Yeadon:3

“… In the last year I have realized that my government and its advisers are lying in the faces of the British people about everything to do with this coronavirus. Absolutely everything. It’s a fallacy this idea of asymptomatic transmission and that you don’t have symptoms, but you are a source of a virus.

That lockdowns work, that masks have a protective value obviously for you or someone else, and that variants are scary things and we even need to close international borders in case some of these nasty foreign variants get in.”

Many readers may have noticed that this interview appeared on a small Christian website called Lifesite News. Why is that? Shouldn’t the informed observations of a former Pfizer vice president appear on the front pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post? Wouldn’t you expect the big cable news channels to run a hot-button interview like this as their headline story?

Of course not. No one expects that, because everyone knows that the media honchos reflexively quash any story that doesn’t support the “official narrative,” that is, that COVID is the most contagious and lethal virus of all time, which requires a new authoritarian political structure and the wholesale evisceration of civil liberties.

No One Is Allowed to Refute the Official Propaganda

Isn’t that the underlying storyline of the last year? COVID skeptics and naysayers, like Yeadon, are not allowed to refute the official propaganda or debate the issue on a public forum. They’re effectively banned from the MSM and consigned to the outer reaches of the Internet where only a scattered few will read what they have to say. Here’s more:4

“Everything I have told you, every single one of those things is demonstrably false. But our entire national policy is based on these all being broadly right, but they are all wrong. But what I would like to do is talk about immune escape because I think that’s probably going to be the end game for this whole event, which I think is probably a conspiracy.

Last year I thought it was what I called ‘convergent opportunism.’ That is, a bunch of different stakeholder groups have managed to pounce on a world in chaos to push us in a particular direction. So, it looked like it was kind of linked, but I was prepared to say it was just convergence.

I [now] think that’s naïve. There is no question in my mind that very significant powerbrokers around the world have either planned to take advantage of the next pandemic or created the pandemic. One of those two things is true because the reason it must be true is that dozens and dozens of governments are all saying the same lies and doing the same inefficacious things that demonstrably cost lives.”

Let’s pause for a minute, and ask ourselves why a modest, self-effacing microbiologist who operated in the shadows for his entire professional career has thrust himself into the limelight when he knows, for certain, he will either be ridiculed, smeared, discredited, dragged through the mud or killed.

In fact, he openly admits that he fears for his safety and assumes that he could be “removed” (“assassinated”) by his enemies. So, why is he doing this? Why is he risking life and limb to get the word out about vaccines?

A Moral Obligation to Warn People

It’s because he feels a moral obligation to warn people about the danger they face. Yeadon is not an attention-seeking narcissist. In fact, he’d rather vanish from public life altogether.

But he’s not going to do that because he’s selflessly committed to doing his duty by sounding the alarm about a malign strategy that may well lead to the suffering and death of literally tens of millions of people. That’s why he’s doing it, because he’s an honorable man with a strong sense of decency. Remember decency? Here’s more:5

“You can see that I am desperately trying not to say that it is a conspiracy, because I have no direct evidence that it is a conspiracy. Personally, all my instincts are shouting that it’s a conspiracy as a human being, but as a scientist, I can’t point to the smoking gun that says they made this up on purpose.”

Many of us who have followed events closely for the last year and have searched the internet for alternate points of view are equally convinced that it is a conspiracy, just as Russiagate was a conspiracy. And while we might not have conclusive, rock-solid proof of criminal activity, there is voluminous circumstantial evidence to support the claim.

By definition, a “conspiracy” is “an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons.”6 What is taking place presently across the western world meets that basic definition.

Just as the contents of this article meet the basic definition of a “conspiracy theory,” which is “an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of a small powerful group. Such explanations reject the accepted narrative surrounding those events; indeed, the official version may be seen as further proof of the conspiracy.”7

We make no attempt to deny that this is a conspiracy theory, any more than we deny that senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA, DOJ and U.S. State Department were involved in a covert operation aimed at convincing the American people that Donald Trump was a Russian agent.

That was a conspiracy theory that was later proven to be a fact. We expect that the facts about the COVID operation will eventually emerge, acquitting us on that account as well. Here’s more from Yeadon:8

“I think the end game is going to be, ‘everyone receives a vaccine’ … Everyone on the planet is going to find themselves persuaded, cajoled, not quite mandated, hemmed-in to take a jab.

When they do that every single individual on the planet will have a name, or unique digital ID and a health status flag which will be ‘vaccinated,’ or not … and whoever possesses that, sort of single database, operable centrally, applicable everywhere to control, to provide as it were, a privilege, you can either cross this particular threshold or conduct this particular transaction or not depending on [what] the controllers of that one human population database decide.

And I think that’s what this is all about because once you’ve got that, we become playthings and the world can be as the controllers of that database want it.”

Mass Vaccination a Pathway to Absolute Social Control

So mass vaccination is actually the pathway to absolute social control by technocratic elites accountable to no one? Are we there yet? Pretty close, I’d say. Here’s more:9

“And they are talking the same sort of future script which is, ‘We don’t want you to move around because of these pesky ‘variants’ — (but) ‘don’t worry, there will be ‘top-up’ vaccines that will cope with the potential escapees.’ They’re all saying this when it is obviously nonsense.”

Is he right? Is the variant hobgoblin now being invoked to prolong the restrictions, intensify the paranoia and pave the way for endless rounds of mass vaccination? Judge for yourself, but here’s a sampling of articles that appeared in recent news that will help you decide:

1. Reuters — South African Variant Can ‘Break Through’ Pfizer Vaccine, Israeli study says10

“The coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can ‘break through’ Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine to some extent, a real-world data study in Israel found, though its prevalence in the country is low and the research has not been peer reviewed …

We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group. This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection,” said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern. (So, according to the article — the vaccine doesn’t work.)

2. The New York Times — Rise of Variants in Europe Shows How Dangerous the Virus Can Be11

“Europe, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, has once again swelled with new cases, which are inundating some local hospitals and driving a worrisome global surge of Covid-19.

But this time, the threat is different: The rise in new cases is being propelled by a coronavirus variant first seen in Britain and known as B.1.1.7. The variant is not only more contagious than last year’s virus, but also deadlier.

The variant is now spreading in at least 114 countries. Nowhere, though, are its devastating effects as visible as in Europe, where thousands are dying each day and countries’ already-battered economies are once again being hit by new restrictions on daily life …

Vaccines will eventually defeat the variants, scientists say. [So, they don’t work now??] And stringent restrictions can drive down cases of B.1.1.7. [So, don’t leave your home.] …

‘We’ve seen in so many countries how quickly it can become dominant,’ said Lone Simonsen, a professor and director of the PandemiX Center at Roskilde University in Denmark.

‘And when it dominates, it takes so much more effort to maintain epidemic control than was needed with the old variant.’” [In other words, we are effectively dealing with a different pathogen that requires a different antidote. It’s an admission that the current crop of vaccines doesn’t work.]

3. Cell — SARS-CoV-2 Variants B.1.351 and P.1 Escape From Neutralizing Antibodies12

“… our findings indicate that the B.1.351 and P.1 variants might be able to spread in convalescent patients or BNT162b2-vaccinated individuals and thus constitute an elevated threat to human health.

Containment of these variants by non-pharmaceutic interventions is an important task.” [Note — In other words, the new vaccines don’t work against the new COVID strains, so we might need to preserve the onerous lockdown restrictions forever.]

How can people read this fearmongering bunkum and not see that it is designed to terrify and manipulate the masses into sheeplike compliance?

Variant Being Used to Fuel COVID Hysteria

There’s no denying that the variant is being used to fuel the COVID hysteria and perpetuate the repressive social restrictions. So, the question we should be asking ourselves is whether we can trust what we are being told by the media and the public health officials?

And the answer is “No,” we cannot trust them. They have repeatedly misled the public on all manner of topics including masks, asymptomatic transmission, immunity, infection fatality rate, social distancing and now variants. According to Sunetra Gupta, who is professor of theoretical epidemiology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow:13

“… some of these variants could be more transmissible, but the truth is … even with a marginal increase in transmissibility … that does not have much of a material effect or difference in how we deal with the virus. In other words, the surge of the virus cannot be ascribed to a new variant …

The other question is are these variants more virulent, and the truth is we don’t know, but it is unlikely because the data don’t seem to say so despite the scary headlines … Pathogens tend to evolve toward lower virulence … because that maximizes their transmissibility … It is much more probable that these strains will not be materially so different that we would have to alter our policies.”

So, according to Gupta, even if the new strains of COVID are more transmissible, it is highly unlikely that they are more lethal. Here’s more on the topic from diagnostic pathologist Dr. Clare Craig, who provides a more technical explanation:14

“SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence has ~30,000 letters. Alterations in a handful of letters will not change it’s shape much — if it did it wouldn’t function properly anyway. Fear mongering about immune escape is not needed and is irresponsible especially when no evidence to support the claims.”

In essence, Craig is saying the same thing we said earlier, that the slight mutations to the infection will not impact the immune reaction of people who already had the virus. Thus, the current crop of “variants” should not be a cause for alarm. If you have already had COVID or if you already have prior immunity due to previous exposure to similar infections, (SARS, for example) the new strain should not be a problem.

It should also not be a problem if the new vaccines provide the type of broad-based immunity that one should expect of them. Again, the mutations represent only the slightest change in the composition of the pathogen (less than 1%), which means that — if the vaccines don’t work — they are, in effect, useless.

Media Misstating Science to Terrify the Public

Here’s a longer explanation that some readers might find overly technical and perhaps tedious, but it’s worth wading through in order to see that the media is deliberately misstating the science to terrify the public. This excerpt is from an article by Yeadon. Here’s what he said:15

“The idea is planted in people’s mind that this virus is mutating in such a way as to evade prior immunity. This is completely unfounded, certainly as regards immunity … (that is) gained naturally, after repelling the virus … It’s important to appreciate that upon infection, the human immune system cuts up an infectious agent into short pieces.

Each of these short pieces of protein are presented to other cells in the immune system, like an identity parade … These have a range of functions. Some make antibodies & others are programmed to kill cells infected by the virus, recognized by displaying on their surface signals that tell the body that they’ve been invaded.

In almost all cases … this smart adaptive system overcomes the infection. Crucially … this event leaves you with many different kinds of long-lived ‘memory’ cells which, if you’re infected again, rapidly wipe out any attempt at reinfection.

So, you won’t again be made ill by the same virus, and because the virus is simply not permitted to replicate, you are also no longer able to participate in transmission … The general ‘direction of travel’ (for viruses) is to become less injurious but easier to transmit, eventually joining the other 40 or so viruses which cause what we collectively term ‘the common cold.’

What generally doesn’t happen is for mutants to become more lethal to the hosts (us). But the key point I wanted to get across is just how large SARS-COV-2 is. I recall it’s of the order of 30,000 letters of genetic code which, when translated, make around 10,000 amino acids in several viral proteins.

Now you can see that the kinds of numbers of changes in the letters of the genetic code are truly tiny in comparison with the whole. 30 letter changes might be roughly 0.1% of the virus’s code. In other words, 99.9% of that code is not different from the so-called Wuhan strain.

Similarly, the changes in the protein translated from those letter code alterations are overwhelmed by the vast majority of the unchanged protein sequences. So your immune system, recognizing as it does perhaps dozens of short pieces … will not be fooled by a couple of small changes to a tiny fraction of these.

No: your immune system knows immediately that this is an invader it’s seen before, and has no difficulty whatsoever in dealing with it swiftly & without symptoms. So, it’s a scientifically invalid …

… even if mutations did change a couple of these, the majority of the pieces … of the mutated virus will still be unchanged & recognized by the vaccine-immune system or the virus-infected immune system & a prompt, vigorous response will still protect you.”

Why Are Public Health Officials and the Media Lying?

Let’s summarize: We have presented the informed views of three reputable scientists all of who explicitly refute the idea that the so called “variants:”

Are more lethal

Have the potential to reinfect people who have already had COVID

Have mutated enough to reinfect people who have already been vaccinated (unless, of course) the vaccine does not provide broad-based immunity to begin with (which is possible since Phase 3 long-term trials were never conducted).

So, why are the public health officials and the media lying about this matter, which is fairly clear-cut and uncontroversial? That is the question.

Yeadon concludes that there is something flagrantly diabolical about their denial. He thinks they are lying in order to dupe more people into getting injected with a substance that will either render them infertile, cause them great bodily harm or kill them outright. Take your pick. Here’s more:16

“The eugenicists have got hold of the levers of power and this is a really artful way of getting you to line-up and receive some unspecified thing that will damage you. I have no idea what it will actually be, but it won’t be a vaccine because you don’t need one. And it won’t kill you on the end of the needle because you would spot that.

It could be something that will produce normal pathology, it will be at various times between vaccination and the event, it will be plausibly deniable because there will be something else going on in the world at that time, in the context of which your demise, or that of your children will look normal.

That’s what I would do if I wanted to get rid of 90 or 95% of the world’s population. And I think that’s what they’re doing.”

“The eugenicists have got hold of the levers of power?” Has Yeadon gone mad?

Has the pressure of the global pandemic pushed him off the deep end or is he “on to something” big, something that no one even dares to even think about; a plan so dark and sinister that its implementation would constitute the most grievous and coldblooded crime against humanity of all time; the injection of billions of people with a toxic elixir whose spike protein dramatically compromises their immune systems clearing the way for agonizing widespread suffering followed by mountains of carnage?

There are others, however, who see a connection between the current vaccination campaign and “the eugenicists.” In fact, Dr. Joseph Mercola points to the link between the lead developer of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Adrian Hill, and the Eugenics movement. According to Mercola:

“Hill gave a lecture at the Galton Institute (which was known as the U.K. Eugenics Society) in 2008 for its 100-year anniversary. As noted in Webb’s article:17

‘Arguably most troubling of all is the direct link of the vaccine’s lead developers to the Wellcome Trust and, in the case of Adrian Hill, the Galton Institute, two groups with longstanding ties to the UK eugenics movement.

The latter organization, named for the ‘father of eugenics’ Francis Galton, is the renamed U.K. Eugenics Society, a group notorious for over a century for its promotion of racist pseudoscience and efforts to ‘improve racial stock’ by reducing the population of those deemed inferior.

The ties of Adrian Hill to the Galton Institute should raise obvious concerns given the push to make the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine he developed with [Sarah] Gilbert the vaccine of choice for the developing world, particularly countries in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, the very areas where the Galton Institute’s past members have called for reducing population growth …

Emeritus professor of molecular genetics at the Galton Institute and one of its officers is none other than David J. Galton, whose work includes ‘Eugenics: The Future of Human Life in the 21st Century.’

David Galton has written that the Human Genome Mapping Project… had ‘enormously increased … the scope for eugenics … because of the development of a very powerful technology for the manipulation of DNA.’

This new ‘wider definition of eugenics,’ Galton has said, ‘would cover methods of regulating population numbers as well as improving genome quality by selective artificial insemination by donor, gene therapy or gene manipulation of germ-line cells.’ In expanding on this new definition, Galton is neutral as to ‘whether some methods should be made compulsory by the state, or left entirely to the personal choice of the individual.

… The Wellcome Centre regularly cofunds the research and development of vaccines and birth control methods with … a foundation (name withheld) that actively and admittedly engages in population and reproductive control in Africa and South Asia by, among other things, prioritizing the widespread distribution of injectable long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs).

The Wellcome Trust has also directly funded studies that sought to develop methods to ‘improve uptake’ of LARCs in places such as rural Rwanda…’ LARCs afford women in the Global South ‘the least choice possible short of actual sterilization.’

Some LARCs can render women infertile for as long as five years, and, as Levich argues, they ‘leave far more control in the hands of providers, and less in the hands of women, than condoms, oral contraceptives, or traditional methods.’

… Slightly modified and rebranded as Jadelle, the dangerous drug was promoted in Africa … Formerly named the Sterilization League for Human Betterment, EngenderHealth’s original mission, inspired by racial eugenics, was to ‘improve the biological stock of the human race.’”

Does Eugenics Factor Into the mRNA Vaccine?

So, how does “eugenics” factor into the creation and distribution of the mRNA vaccine? Is there a link or are we grasping at straws? We can’t answer that question, but a recent article by Mathew Ehret at Off-Guardian provides a few interesting clues. Here’s what he said:18

“The fact that the organizations promoting the rise of this eugenics policy throughout Nazi Germany and North America included such powerhouses as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Human Sterilization League for Human Betterment … which have all taken leading roles in the World Health Organization over recent decades is more than a little concerning.

The fact that these eugenics organizations simply re-branded themselves after WWII and are now implicated in modern RNA vaccine development alongside the Galton Institute (formerly British Eugenics Association), Oxford’s AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should give any serious thinker pause as we consider what patterns of history we are willing to tolerate repeating in our presently precarious age.”

We’ll end this piece with an excerpt from a 2010 article by Andrew Gavin Marshall at Global Research, who presciently noted that:19

“Eugenics is about the social organization and control of humanity … (particularly) population control …

The ideas of Malthus, and later Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin were remolded into branding an elite ideology of ‘Social Darwinism,’ which was ‘the notion that in the struggle to survive in a harsh world, many humans were not only less worthy, many were actually destined to wither away as a rite of progress. To preserve the weak and the needy was, in essence, an unnatural act.’

This theory simply justified the immense wealth, power and domination of a small elite over the rest of humanity, as that elite saw themselves as the only truly intelligent beings worthy of holding such power and privilege.

Francis Galton later coined the term “eugenics” to describe this emerging field. His followers believed that the ‘genetically unfit’ ‘would have to be wiped away,’ using tactics such as ‘segregation, deportation, castration, marriage prohibition, compulsory sterilization, passive euthanasia — and ultimately extermination’ …

Sir Julian Huxley was also a life trustee of the British Eugenics Society from 1925, and its President from 1959-62 … ‘Huxley believed that eugenics would one day be seen as the way forward for the human race,’ and that, ‘A catastrophic event may be needed for evolution to move at an accelerated pace’ … It is much the same with ideas whose time has not yet come; they must survive periods when they are not generally welcome.

The 21st-century technologies are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups.

They will not require large facilities or rare raw materials. Knowledge alone will enable the use of them … I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

… Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system.

If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite …

A horrifying vision indeed; but one which builds upon the ideas of Huxley, Russell and Brzezinski, who envisioned a people who — through biological and psychological means – are made to love their own servitude. Huxley saw the emergence of a world in which humanity, still a wild animal, is domesticated; where only the elite remain wild and have freedom to make decisions, while the masses are domesticated like pets.

Huxley opined that, ‘Men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.’”

We must ask ourselves whether the current mass vaccination campaign is a science-based effort to relieve sickness and disease or a fast-track to a dark and frightening dystopia conjured up by evil men seeking to tighten their grip on all humanity?

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