It’s a Vaccine, Jim, But Not As We Know It.

Published at NewCatallaxy blog on 20th September, 2021.

Who knew the term “non-sterilising vaccine” six months ago? If you did not, you are in plentiful company. Maybe the woke young, who know everything, knew about it, but for oldies like me, a vaccine was a vaccine was a vaccine. It protected you from the thing you were vaccinated against, and because you couldn’t catch it, you couldn’t pass it on.

That’s old fashioned. The CDC definition of terms includes [my emphases]:

Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

These definition were introduced by the CDC…let me see… “Page last reviewed: September 1, 2021”…weeks ago. Before then, the definitions were (26th August, 2021; page last reviewed: May 16, 2018):

Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

Science moves so fast.

The hey-day of vaccines was the 50s and 60s, and the stars of the show were smallpox and polio vaccines. Both diseases are caused by viruses, and, like the common cold, measles and herpes, those viruses are particular to humans – they have no other hosts. That characteristic makes it possible, even if not practical, to eliminate the disease.

Some years ago, the WHO announced the death of smallpox. (It wasn’t quite dead, but it was on life support in labs about the place, just in case, heaven forbid, some other rogue state decides to use its lab supply to produce biological weapons.) But to eliminate a virus, you have to have a sterilising vaccine; or, in terms most people understand, one that works.

Think of it this way. There are measures you can take to prevent disease; for example, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise, along with plenty of sunlight to top up your Vitamin D levels. These are prophylactic measures, but they’re non-sterilising prophylaxis. You can still get crook. It’s just that, compared to an obese person, or a person suffering from some immunodeficiency, or a person with a heart ailment, you have much less chance of catching whatever disease happens to be doing the rounds. If you do get sick, though, and you have good medical treatment available to you, you come under a therapeutic regime in the care of your doctor and, if it’s severe enough, hospital staff. The purpose of the therapies is to reduce the severity of the disease. The therapy may be non-sterilising (addressing the symptoms only) or, thanks to modern medical advances, sterilising (as penicillin was initially.) These are unexceptional health-care measures (though particular therapies will vary greatly in effectiveness), and the same general principles have applied for millennia before the advent of vaccines. In the case of prophylaxis and the ameliorating of symptoms, the aim is to reduce the likelihood of contracting disease, and, should that fail, to reduce the severity of the disease.

The story we are now hearing about the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is that they do just this, and only this. But that was not always the story.

When SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were first touted, soon after our international border was closed, they were to be the definitive solution to Covid-19, eliminating all concerns about the virus and allowing us to get back to “normal.” That story is still essentially the public version of vaccine reality, as promoted ceaselessly by the media, Chief Medical Officers and Ministers of the Crown. But, quietly, the notion of getting back to normal has been nudged, prodded and shouldered off the stage. Normal has become new normal, a horse of a different colour. New normal starts with vaccinations, but somehow masks are here to stay, along with anti-social distancing, perspex shields and lines on the floor in shops and supermarkets, QR codes at every doorway, and a general level of hostility and suspicion.

The cracks in the foundations began with the surge of adverse events, as reported by VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, in the U.S., and the Yellow Card system in the U.K. Nobody believes that these systems are accurate reflections of the actual numbers of such events. All agree that these are under-reported, but no-one knows by how much.

The Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) from the U.S. FDA for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was issued in December of 2020, for persons older than 15 and older than 17, respectively. In May of 2021, the Pfizer EUA was extended to adolescents 12 to 15 years of age. In the same month, the CDC recommended that children from 12 years old should have the vaccine. At the time, the CDC’s own best estimate of Infection Mortality Rate for the 0-19 years age group was 3 per 100,000 infected; 0.003%.

At the end of June 2021 that the FDA added a myocarditis warning to the vaccine fact sheets. Studies noted that the risk was greatest in younger males.

While this was happening, it was gradually becoming obvious that vaccinated people were getting sick, and vaccinated people were dying. Obvious, that is, unless you were getting your information from the nightly news. If it were to turn out that similar numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated were becoming ill and were dying, what would happen to the vaccine push? Fortunately for politicians and drug companies, scientists determined that the vaccinated people were much less likely to become ill, and much less likely to die. Sighs of relief all round. That in spite of, for example, a study of an outbreak in Barnstable County Massachusetts, which found that 74% of those who tested positive were fully vaccinated. Only five of those required hospitalisation, but four of them were fully vaccinated.

So what do these vaccines actually do, or more precisely, what do they not do, as opposed to what we were told they would do? They are to some yet-to-be-determined extent, prophylactic. The deeply-ingrained acceptance of vaccination, in general, in Australia arises from their original promise: effectively complete prophylaxis. We didn’t take earlier vaccines in order to make our bout of smallpox or polio less dangerous to some uncertain extent. When the Covid-19 vaccines were introduced, no-one who was hectoring us to take them was saying that we would still get infected, would still pass the virus on, would still get sick, but not as badly, and would still die, but not as many of us.

Yet that is the reality, and the new story was brought centre-stage without a blush or a hint that it was a brand-new narrative. Nothing to see here, folks. Are we so used to being lied to?

How, then, does the vaccine differ from any other protocols of incompletely effective prophylactic measures and possibly incompletely effective therapy if the disease is contracted? It differs in this; that the vaccine is a threat to your health and your life.

If there are protocols of proven effectiveness in prevention and treatment of Covid-19, and there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that this is the case, then those who suppressed such protocols are culpable for a considerable measure of the suffering, debility and death that has been wrought by Covid-19. They are also culpable for every sickness, debility and death from the vaccine.
If I am denied accurate and complete information about the risks of the vaccine, including appraisals of rushed vaccine roll-outs in the past, or about the availability of alternatives, I am denied the possibility of informed consent. That is a denial of one of my most basic human rights in a supposedly free society.

Active, ceaseless, recalcitrant suppression is the hallmark of our political “leaders,” CMOs, legacy media and especially social media. The medical profession has largely cowered in silence, when they have not actively been part of the suppression and the touting for the vaccines. If the protocols are shown to be effective, all of these people have blood on their hands.

It’s not up some some lesser crested cockatoo on TV, or the CMO of the Administrative State, or the Prime Minister, to decide what risks I take with my life and health. Were I a serf, that decision would rest with the Lord of the Manor. If the elites lording it over us think that they can take those decisions for us, it makes crystal clear what their view of us plebs is. But I insist that I am a citizen, and I insist on making those decisions about myself for myself, and I insist on the information I need to make that decision.

There is a crucial difference between the risks I run from SARS-CoV-2 and the risks I run from a vaccine. I can minimise the risks I run from the virus. I know enough about its habits and its preferences to adjust my behaviour to try to avoid it. I can take advantage of the now commonplace changes to workplaces and spaces. I can take advantage of online orders and contactless pickup. Or I can take my chances in shops and malls. Most importantly of all, I could, until last Friday, find a GP who will offer me the best alternative prophylactic and, should I become infected, therapeutic protocols that have been determined by his colleagues around the world.

But there is nothing I can do to neutralise the risks of the vaccine; except refuse to take it.

As a postscript, I acknowledge Alex Berenson, whose Substack post wended its way to me and alerted me to the change in the CDC definitions. He also pointed out that the so-called vaccine is in fact a therapy.

The Forgotten Vaccine

This article was published in Quadrant Online on 14th September, 2021.

A paywalled article in the BMJ begins,

…the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the…vaccine. “The track record for serious adverse events is very good. It’s very, very, very rare that you ever see anything that’s associated with the vaccine that’s a serious event,” he said.

This was written in 2018; the YouTube appearance was in October 2009, and the vaccine was the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine.

[B]y October 2009 the new vaccines were being rolled out … in the UK, with prominent organisations, including the Department of Health, British Medical Association, and Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, working hard to convince a reluctant NHS workforce to get vaccinated. “We fully support the swine flu vaccination programme … The vaccine has been thoroughly tested,” they declared in a joint statement.
Except, it hadn’t. Anticipating a severe influenza pandemic, governments…had made various…arrangements to shorten the time between recognition of a pandemic virus and the production…and administration of that vaccine… [An arrangement], adopted by countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, and Germany, was to provide vaccine manufacturers indemnity from liability for wrongdoing…

By 2018, the incidence of narcolepsy in young people throughout Europe as a result of vaccination, primarily with Pandemrix, was sufficiently well established to give rise to lawsuits in which the manufacturers’ confidential concerns about the vaccine were brought to light.
A 2012 article at orthomolecular.org, with the relevant citations in Swedish and Finnish, outlines the sequence of events.

On 25 September 2009, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) approved Pandemrix…In Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, the authorities explicitly set the goal of vaccinating the entire population…
Mass vaccination started in Finland and Sweden in October 2009. … [T]he authorities initiated an enormous public relations campaign… Solidarity became the slogan: “Be vaccinated to protect your fellow citizens.” … In Sweden, 60% of the population had been vaccinated, while in Finland 50% was covered.
In August 2010, Finland reported an increased occurrence of narcolepsy in children and youngsters vaccinated with Pandemrix. On 1 September 2010, Finland stopped all Pandemrix vaccinations.
On 1 September 2011, the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) … stated…, “The increased risk associated with vaccination amounted to six cases of narcolepsy per 100,000 persons vaccinated in the 4-19 age group during the eight months following vaccination. This was 12.7 times the risk of a person in the same age group who had not been vaccinated.”…
This statement was made almost exactly two years after the THL’s earlier statement…that it would be safe. [My emphases]

It will be pointed out, accurately, that on those figures from 2011 the risk of 4-19 year olds contracting narcolepsy from the vaccine was 0.006%. Keep that figure in mind.

In Sweden, at least 150 children are now [2012] suffering from narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix vaccine. In Finland, the number is approximately 100. … Narcolepsy is a disease with lifetime consequences, and the risk that Pandemrix may have caused other neurological illnesses has not yet been excluded.

By November of 2020, a Medical Xpress web article noted:

The Swedish Pharmaceutical Insurance has so far approved 440 of 702 narcolepsy claims linked to Pandemrix, paying out a total of 100 million kronor (9.8 million euros, $11.6 million) in compensation. [My emphasis]

The current population of Sweden is 10 million; of Finland 5.5 million.
In the U.K., according to The Guardian in 2017, a High Court decision opened the way for “about 100 people in the UK with narcolepsy” allegedly caused by Pandemrix to claim compensation under the Vaccine Damage Payment Act. The Court rejected an appeal by the Government to withhold payments.
In Ireland, however, the State admitted no liability in settling a 2019 case brought by a then 26 year old woman. Another case was settled by mediation, without admission of liability, for €990,000. An Irish narcolepsy support group claims over 70 children are affected.
Narcolepsy sufferer Meissa Chebbi, 10 at the time of her vaccination, is quoted in the Medical Xpress article. “I’m not going to take the (COVID) vaccine until after about five years when we know what the risks are.” This is the voice of bitter experience. The John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center puts it this way. “A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer, to assess whether the vaccine is safe and efficacious in clinical trials, complete the regulatory approval processes, and manufacture sufficient quantity of vaccine doses for widespread distribution.”
Just to get back to that extremely low risk of narcolepsy; 0.006% in 4-19 year olds. In April of 2021, the CDC’s own best estimate of Infection Mortality Rate for the 0-19 years age group was 3 per 100,000 infected; 0.003%.

Breaking News: Stairs sue Dan Andrews for defamation

Published at Catallaxy Files on 10/06/2021

A set of stairs today filed a defamation suit against Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, lawyers representing the as-yet unnamed stairs announced today.

“Dan Andrews called our client ‘slippery’,” a spokes-entity for the stairs’ lawyers said. “‘Slippery’ is an entity slur that stairs take very seriously, as the Premier is about to discover. Our client is not the slippery entity in this incident.”

No further details of the suit are available.

Debunking Dr Shiva

This document was prepared some time ago, but could not find a home.

Ever since I first saw the analysis by Evans, Smith and Shiva of vote leakage in the big Michigan counties, I have thought of it as the single most compelling evidence of electoral fraud, and one with much wider application that just Michigan. Michigan was selected because of the availability of straight part-ticket voting in that State, a bit like the above-the-line voting in the Senate here. That gives a demographic snapshot of the party vote on a precinct-by-precinct basis. (Polling booths are probably the nearest analogy to the precincts.) By comparing the specific Trump/Biden vote to the straight-ticket voting, a picture of the leakage to or from the party Presidential candidate can be constructed. Continue reading “Debunking Dr Shiva”

Practice makes Perfect

The mid-term elections of Trump’s presidency were held on the 6th of November 2018, amid high expectations of a so-called “blue wave” of Democrat victories. All House of Representatives seats were on the line, but although Democrats won control of the House, they made little impact in the Senate, which remained under Republican control.

Florida was particularly sensitive about election processes because the result of the 2000 Presidential election, which hinged on the result in Florida, was effectively settled in the Supreme Court of the US. Broward County has 1.2 million voters, a similar number to Miami-Dade county. Unlike Miami-Dade, however, Broward officials did not expect to complete the count by the deadline for sending preliminary totals to the State. Continue reading “Practice makes Perfect”

Learning from Bin Laden

Bin Laden knew a thing or two about the media; especially the Western media. On the rare occasions on which he permitted an interview, he always had the entire exchange recorded by his own videographer. It’s a lesson a good many Australian public figures could have benefitted from. The latest of them is Andrew Hastie.

When Major-General Brereton released his report, Andrew Hastie, as a former officer in the Special Service Regiment (SASR), was anxious to put his point of view. He wrote an article published in The Australian, and then he was interviewed by Andrew Probyn for the ABC. In his Australian article, Hastie wrote, “The report is hard reading. It is comprehensive, detailed and unsparing in its judgment on those ­alleged to have committed war crimes.” A problem jumps out from this, a problem that characterises the whole media circus. It does accurately characterise the report, and it seems also to characterise Hastie’s attitude. How can unsparing judgment be made on allegations? Such language implies pre-judgement.

Continue reading “Learning from Bin Laden”

Brereton’s Backup

The most interesting, and in many ways the most useful, part of the Brereton report is Annex A, the Whetham Report, to Part 3, Strategic, Operational, Organisational and Cultural Issues. It’s written by Dr. David Whetham. Among (many) other things, he’s Director of the King’s Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College, London. He was made Assistant Inspector-General of the ADF for the purpose of this very report. Here’s his bio from King’s.

David Whetham is Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. He is the Director of the King’s Centre for Military Ethics and delivers or coordinates the military ethics component of courses for between two and three thousand British and international officers a year at the UK’s Joint Services Command and Staff College. Before joining King’s as a permanent member fo staff in 2003, David worked as a BBC researcher and with the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] in Kosovo, supporting the 2001 and 2002 elections.

Continue reading “Brereton’s Backup”

No officers were harmed in the making of this report

It’s like this, in the gospel according to Brereton

All that said, it was at the patrol commander level that the criminal behaviour was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed, and overwhelmingly at that level that responsibility resides…
The Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop/platoon, squadron/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Commander Joint Task Force 633, Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Headquarters. Nor…was [there] any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes.
…responsibility and accountability does not extend to higher headquarters…
The responsibility lies in the Australian Defence Force, not with the government of the day.
…that culture was not created or enabled in SOTG, let alone by any individual Special Operations Task Group Commanding Officer. … It was in their parent units…that the cultures…were bred, and it is with the commanders of the domestic units who enabled that, rather than with the SOTG commanders, that greater responsibility rests. Continue reading “No officers were harmed in the making of this report”

Hate-speech legislators discover freedom of speech

Merkel Says Big Tech Shouldn’t Have Power to Decide Who Has Free Speech

French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump

UK minister: Trump ban shows Twitter taking “editorial decisions,” could mean regulation

World governments condemn tech-induced censorship of President Trump, plan to regulate (featuring Michael McCormack)

Isn’t it wonderful that leaders who were previously fanatical in outlawing “hate-speech” have seen the light? Well, it would be if they had, but there is not the slightest hint that they have changed any of their opinions. They have seen an opportunity to achieve two useful results. Continue reading “Hate-speech legislators discover freedom of speech”

Young & Free

[Published at Catallaxy Files 12/01/2021]

In 1942, the Special Services Division, Services of Supply, United States Army, published a booklet called Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia. The first section includes this:

The Australians have much in common with us – they’re a pioneer people; they believe in personal freedom; they love sports; and they’re out to lick the Axis all the way. But there are a lot of differences too – their ways of living and thinking on all sorts of things – like tea, central heating, the best way to spend Sunday, or saluting officers and such.

Continue reading “Young & Free”