The corresponding author of a new paper in an Elsevier journal that claims “there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic” says he “fully expected” the criticisms — and that the “real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario.”
Ronald Kostoff and colleagues published “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?” in Toxicology Reports in mid-September. In the paper, they colleagues conclude:
A novel best-case scenario cost-benefit analysis showed very conservatively that there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic. The risk of death from COVID-19 decreases drastically as age decreases, and the longer-term effects of the inoculations on lower age groups will increase their risk-benefit ratio, perhaps substantially.
About a week later, Samuel Klein, of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, began tweeting criticism of the paper, which he has now gathered at his blog. One passage:
Overall, basic statistics is abused; sources misquoted, and standard knowledge and practice misrepresented, extensively, to confirm a desired result. The topline numbers claimed in the article differ by a factor of 5 million from the best serious estimates of risk/benefit analysis for the vaccines.
Klein noted that the paper reminded him of a paper by Harald Walach and colleagues that claimed two people died of COVID-19 for every three vaccinated. That paper was retracted — but later republished — and Walach lost a university post over the episode. The paper was one of two of Walach’s about COVID-19 to be retracted.
Kostoff told Retraction Watch:
I’m well aware of the criticisms of our TR paper (which are an extremely small fraction of the copious and totally overwhelmingly positive responses), and I fully expected them. Given the blatant censorship of the mainstream media and social media, only one side of the COVID-19/”vaccine” narrative is reaching the public. Any questioning of the narrative is met with the harshest response. Front-line people (doctors, nurses, etc.) who are attempting to shed light on this situation are being fired, losing licenses, and having their reputations and finances destroyed. I went into this with my eyes wide open, determined to identify the truth, irrespective of where it fell. I could not stand idly by while the least vulnerable to serious COVID-19 consequences were injected with substances of unknown mid and long-term safety.
We published a best-case scenario. The real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario, and could be the subject of a future paper. What these results show is that we 1) instituted mass inoculations of an inadequately-tested toxic substance with 2) non-negligible attendant crippling and lethal results to 3) potentially prevent a relatively small number of true COVID-19 deaths. In other words, we used a howitzer where an accurate rifle would have sufficed!
One of Kostoff’s colleagues, Aristidis Tsatsakis, is the editor in chief of the journal and was originally listed as the handling editor, but Kostoff tells us that was an error by Elsevier. The paper now lists Konstantinos Poulas as handling editor, and Tsatsakis told us “an erratum is published related to the issue,” although we could not locate said erratum.
Kostoff said:
The Handling Editor was entered incorrectly by the Publisher. As soon as we became aware of this error, we had it corrected. All the co-authors are senior people, and we know better than to have a co-author serve as Handling Editor.
Many of the tweets that criticized our efforts raised this issue, and then drew very negative conclusions. In the tweet you reference, Jeffrey Morris states initially: “When you are senior editor of a journal and handle your own paper, it is not peer review, it is an editorial”. That’s a true statement, but with the inference that this is what we did, is a strong accusation. A good researcher, or historian, or journalist, would check with primary sources before making such an accusation and drawing such conclusions. Morris could have contacted the editor and asked whether the posting was correct. Instead, he chose to run with an erroneous posting, and has (so far) offered no apology or retraction of his accusation.
I don’t want to get into the business of responding to tweets/facebook/Instagram etc. criticisms of our paper. I could spend the next five years doing that, given the unlimited resources of those who are going all out to discredit our findings. I would suggest that Morris re-read Appendices A and D to see what we mean by excess deaths.
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“Instead, he chose to run with an erroneous posting, and has (so far) offered no apology or retraction of his accusation.”
I expect that will be a long time coming.
The comments by Klein quoted above are pure nonsense, and reflect no understanding of what we did. He has no publications in the field that show any acquaintance with the subject matter, and his comments demonstrate that quite well. I checked the major databases, and could find no publications of any type under his name. This is a Harvard researcher? Hell, I’m retired, and published eighteen papers in peer-reviewed journals the last three years, five of which had over fifty citations, and ten of which addressed COVID-19 directly.
If you want to see an objective analysis of the paper by a real expert in the field, the following seven-minute video excerpt (https://www.bitchute.com/video/OLOFmsnp1uAm/) (starting at about 51:00) should suffice. The speaker is a Professor of Viral Immunology who has spent a career researching and developing vaccines, and he describes our paper in detail.
I will address one more issue, then call it a day.
Vaccine Hesitancy has been raised, and portrayed as something to be avoided. First of all, the inoculant is not a vaccine; it does not meet the legal definition of a vaccine, as we showed in the paper (CDC re-definitions notwithstanding). Operationally, it is a highly toxic substance that operates in a stealth mode with respect to the immune system, and purportedly reduces the severity of symptoms.
From the package insert for COMIRNATY (Pfizer): “COMIRNATY has not been evaluated for the potential to cause carcinogenicity, genotoxicity, or impairment of male fertility. In a developmental toxicity study in rats with COMIRNATY there were no vaccine-related effects on female fertility”
“All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. In the US general population, the estimated background risk of major birth defects and miscarriage in clinically recognized pregnancies is 2% to 4% and 15% to 20%, respectively. Available data on COMIRNATY administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”
“A developmental toxicity study has been performed in female rats administered the equivalent of a single human dose of COMIRNATY on 4 occasions; twice prior to mating and twice during gestation. These studies revealed no evidence of harm to the fetus due to the vaccine”
Would you buy an artificial sweetener that had these cautions?
Additionally, the “safety” studies that were performed were for the very short-term only. Given these constraints, why would you not be hesitant, especially if you are in the ~under-thirty-forty demographic that has a low chance of being adversely affected by COVID-19?
In the Toxicology Reports paper published in mid-September (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002100161X), a best-case scenario for COVID-19 “vaccination” was evaluated, and a nominal cost/benefit ratio of five was obtained. This meant there were five deaths due to the “vaccine” for every COVID-19 death. Today, I posted a brief study where I substituted a real-world scenario for the best-case scenario, and added some tradeoffs as well. One of the tradeoffs was using 20x scale-up from VAERS rather than 100x scale-up used in the paper (although I firmly believe the 100x scale-up is correct). Even with the different tradeoffs selected, the cost/benefit ratio is higher than for the best-case scenario. The reason is simple. The number of deaths truly attributable to COVID-19 is quite small, and even a modest number of deaths due to the “vaccine” is enough to give a high cost/benefit ratio (although I firmly believe the number of actual deaths due to the “vaccine” is anything but modest). The new study can be found at the following link:
https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/
http://blogs.harvard.edu/sj/2021/09/30/journal-level-fraud-elsevier-fakes-peer-review-of-covid-click-bait/
This is an objective analysis of the claims made by Byram Bridle, whom your video features:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211020140737/http://www.byrambridle.com/
If the information published by the journal was incorrect, Kostoff should ask the journal for an apology, rather than someone who pointed out that information.
I have no problem with someone pointing out an error. I do have a problem with their then making unfounded accusations without checking primary sources.
Isn’t the journal the primary source in questions of editorial role?
If I read some stupid argument in a paper, or see a Figure that was clearly created in Photoshop, I don’t feel obliged to contact the authors and check that the argument was their words, or the Figure was their creation, before commenting on PubPeer.
If it later turns out that the stupid argument or the manipulated image was indeed the work of the journal, then the publisher owes everyone an apology.
This is dishonest. The handling editor position is written down, in hard copy, on a document that should be check and recheck for accuracy. It IS the primary source. There is no higher source. You sign off that the information is accurate. Suggesting he needs to check somewhere else is absurd. If you guys screwed it up, that’s on you. But the entire episode was sketchy, even outside the absurdity of the “data”. Just take responsibility for a royal screw up and accept the criticism was appropriate. But now the paper is relegated to the dust bin, where it belonged in the first place, and Tsatsakis removed from his Editor-In-Chief positions.
That was a minor error, not a “royal screw up”, and we published an Erratum as soon as it was pointed out. But it’s interesting how many of the commenters here conveniently overlook the major ethical violation that is being committed, and will result in untold loss of life. There are Sins of Commission and Sins of Omission. The information contained in our paper, in other fact-filled papers on COVID-19 “vaccines” that have been deliberately retracted, and in countless papers of similar quality that were deliberately aborted during the review process, will not be available for people to give informed consent to “vaccinating” themselves or their children. Deaths and injuries that could have been avoided with proper informed consent will occur. You may be comfortable with that; I’m not.
So according to Kostoff, it is not the journal’s responsibility to publish accurate information. Instead the onus is on the reader to contact the journal editor to confirm that the statements put out by the journal are not incorrect or false.
What a clown.
Ad hominem attacks are unwelcome in any dignified forum. Please focus on the study and offer some counter arguments to his findings as that would be more helpful to the subscribers of retraction watch.
Calling someone a clown in and of itself is not an ad hominem. It only becomes an ad hominem if you say that someone is incorrect *because* they are a clown.
Nonsense. If the argument rested on the idea that he’s a clown, you’d have a case. Calling him a clown after having already made his case is simply the cherry on top.
Ad hominem attacks is the tool of the feeble. Question yourself about the source of this agressiveness. Unless, of course, your sole motivation is retribution.
It seems like Kostoff is using the Tucker Carson defense, who’s lawyers were so successful, that the judge came to the decision that ‘Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes’
How does this kind of stuff even get published? Who did they ask to do the peer review? Judy Mikovits and Joe Rogan?
Assuming the claims in this paper are wrong, its appearance in the scientific record, even if only temporary, is extremely detrimental to public health. Given the high degree of vaccine hesitancy that has already claimed thousands of Covid deaths, allowing such papers to be disseminated by a respected publisher borders on the criminal. How is Elsevier or other major publishers that allow publication of such outlandishly false claims any different from, say, Facebook given the recent revelations of the latter’s involvement in the spread of misinformation.
There is full consensus that everyone will eventually encounter the virus. Current Covid jabs do not appear to be a panacea. According to recent technical reports (TRs) published by Public Health England, most of the Delta deaths from 1 Feb 21 to present occurred in fully vaccinated folks which questions the effectiveness of this intervention (where are the Covid TRs from the CDC / FDA). Reports from Israel also indicate how quickly the efficacy wanes. The public overconfidence has led to a false sense of safety and more covid related deaths. To assume that these mRNA vaccines (the only other “successful” mRNA vac was developed by CureVac in 2013) are safe and effective with so little time on the market is not very wise. Every vaccine must be evaluated over years to determine the potential for antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), a virologist’s worst nightmare as the vaccine may actually weaken the immune system against further mutations (variants). This cannot be assessed in 18 months. That is why vaccine trials normally last many years, a chronological issue (not money or bureaucracy). Prophylactic and early treatment protocols (boosted immunity/antiviral medication) are the sensible way out of this mess while we wait on a time-tested safe and effective vaccine. Merck seem to agree as they devise an antiviral to treat us at home much like we treat the flu.
Herd immunity is only possible with effective vaccines (and natural immunity), and even Iceland, over 90% inoculated, has not achieved it. The Scandinavians have moved on, intelligently acknowledging this basic immunological fact. This is more than enough evidence for me. If the current vaccines are working against natural immunity (because of ADE), then everyone should be hesitant about the jab. I’ll take my chances with prevention and early treatment which I know has cured millions (yet no one seems to discuss something so obvious). When a truly safe and effective vaccine is authorized, I may take that one. I think Valneva may be the one.
Hsmokes,
Outstanding comment! Logical, factual; no diatribe.
Your comment on safety testing bears repeating. We published a paper on the COVID-19 vaccine development over a year ago. A historical analysis showed that average time from initial vaccine development to distribution was ~12-15 years, with much of that being safety testing. The COVID-19 inoculations had a few months of safety testing (which we analyze in the recent paper), and how well they reflected the target population is highly questionable. In any case, this testing did not and could not address mid and long-term impacts. While that might not be of over-riding interest to the elderly, it should be of primary concern to the young. If the inoculations prove to be problematic for the mid and long-term, it is the youth that will bear the consequences.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween2januaryand2july2021
Directly from Public Health England, January to July 2021: “51,281 deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19); 640 occurred in people who were fully vaccinated, which includes people who had been infected before they were vaccinated.”
CDC reports Hsmokes asked for:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/Novel_Coronavirus_Reports.html
Safety reporting systems:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/work-groups-vast/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vsd/index.html
The above information was easily accessible.
I read your appendices but I still don’t understand how the VAERS dataset isn’t riddled with potential confounders and bias. The VAERS site explicitly states those datasets are not appropriate for establishing an association between vaccines and events, long before covid. They’re just passive reporting for signaling. Your paper doesn’t mention bias or confounding once, however, the dataset you used clearly states its data is biased. It does seem to go against the basic principles of statistics.
Vaccine trials do indeed last years because of money constraints, not because it takes time to watch for ADE. That is simply false! One looks for ADE with things like characteristic eosinophilic infiltration at the moment the vaccinated patient gets the natural disease, whether soon or late. No sign of this was seen with mRNA vaccines in COVID animal trials.
In the human vaccine trials, histopathology could not be done, however it was obvious that people who contracted COVID in the vaccine group were not more ill than people who contracted COVID-19 in the placebo group. In fact the opposite was heavily the case. The idea that the ADE reaction gets worse with years time after vaccination has no science behind it i can find. Cite your evidence! Or retract.
Otherwise there is no reason to believe that the results we saw in the vaccine trials for those who were infected, will not be the same so long as the vaccine produces clinical immunity, partial or full.
So that would explain why instances of ADE are identified in the initial period of testing (or use). Has ADE ever been identified for subsequent variants or mutations? Do you have a publication explaining how this mechanism is relevant? Thanks
“Iceland, over 90% inoculated, has not achieved [herd immunity].”
Perhaps not, but Iceland has the lowest Covid deaths/100,000 population in the European Economic Area.
It would take a stroke of evil genius to cause “extremely detrimental” public harm with a single publication in Toxicology Reports. Lucky us, we are not dealing with any kinda genius here. The publication in question doesn’t provide any new primary data, in fact it’s nothing more than an inexpert attempt to meta-analysis, appearing in a marginal journal of dubious editorial integrity. If anyone is going to use this publication in public health decision-making, their problems are of more fundamental and long-lasting nature, than simply being gullible. I can see how public health researchers/officials may be irritated by the possibility of having the misattributed label of “scientific paper” attached to the confirmation bias shopping list in question, but, really with all other incompetent garbage that Covid-19 pandemic stirred to the surface – what’s one more drop in the septic tank?
I agree with your points, Vladimir, but it is not public health researchers or officials’ take on these papers that we should be concerned with. It’s average vaccine-hesitancy-predisposed citizens -and there seems to be a significant number of them- who might casually see a reference to this ‘scientific paper’ on, say, social media, leading them to further doubt the value of vaccinations. Given that vaccine hesitancy ultimately affects us all, vaccinated and unvaccinated, we should be greatly concerned with the dissemination of such pseudoscience.
Anti-vaxxers gobble up anything that fits their cognitive and analytical style, be it a Facebook post, rantings of a disgraced or disgruntled one-upon-a-time scientist, or a half-baked report that technically counts as “science” because it went through perfunctory peer-review. At this point anyone who could be swayed by actual science or authority already has been. Protecting the fragility of the vaccine-hesitant masses by policing publications in thousands of inconsequential journals is not a prudent use of time for those who unlike the authors of paper in question can tell 5′ end of mRNA from its 3′ end – I assume you are familiar with the Brandolini’s law. And publishers ain’t gonna to police their open access/low impact cash cows for mediocre, pedestrian, or incompetent research. Just don’t get apocalyptic about impact of this “report” – there was never a paper about Earth being flat in Science or Nature, yet we got people believing that it is.
Vladimir, I appreciate your responses. Yes, I am well aware of Brandolini’s law and agree with your opinion regarding publishers’ unwillingness to provide proper oversight over their own highly profitable journals. However, simply doing nothing about ‘reports’ like the one we are discussing, which are part of the growing infodemic of false or misleading science, especially if it contributes to actions that potentially puts our own lives at risk, does not seem to me to be a good option either.
Dear Guititio, Facebook is hiring people like you to do what is necessary to save millions of lives – censorship, oppress alternative opinions. Also, Elsevier should of course not be able to decide what they want to get published if it does not fit the official sacred dogma to protect the people. We need an index librorum prohibitorum, what do you think?
Join the Inquisition, now!
Egon, you seem to be advocating for the right to express alternative opinions regardless of their merit or of their consequences. What ever happened to the notion that “with freedom comes great responsibility”?
in view of the numbers that have become public of late, i think this did not age well….
“According to recent technical reports (TRs) published by Public Health England, most of the Delta deaths from 1 Feb 21 to present occurred in fully vaccinated folks which questions the effectiveness of this intervention”
Most of the people in the age-groups most at risk are vaccinated, so that tells us rather little. I think the reference is to “SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England” Technical briefing 21 dated 20 August 2021.
If so, then there were 390 deaths unvaccinated and 679 fully vaccinated. Among the adult population as a whole, about 88% are vaccinated. That is, while the unvaccinated represent about 12% of the population, they represent about 36% of Covid deaths. That is one answer to the question about the effectiveness.
That is right if adverse effects to include vaccine related death are ignored when calculating the minuscule variant D case fatality rates, .004 (unvac) and .001 (vac) respectively. 74% of the COVID deaths from the D variant in the UK were a combination of partially and fully vaccinated from 1 Feb 21 – 20 Aug 21, the period previously indicated, but a higher percentage of unvaccinated relative to the vaccinated population died during this time frame.
For a vaccination to be really effective it must keep people from dying but it should also not associate to or cause death (in the older/higher risk cohorts) which I believe is the general point of the study under discussion. If we account for the concerning data representing vaccine related deaths, the vaccinated D variant case fatality rate could quite possibly dwarf the unvaccinated death rate. This would be a result of the panacea complex, and a complete failure to recognize and fully utilize early treatment protocols, a better solution to avoid covid death until we know more about the potentially serious long-term health issues regarding the currently available vaccines.
Speculation about the potential for ADE from current vaccines is interesting, but not really relevant to the claims made in the paper under discussion, of an actual (though non-existent) post-vaccination death toll.
It is worse than not relevant. It is a red herring. ADE is due to antibodies, and therefore it is more common when antibody levels are high. It happens early after vaccination and challenge, and with time the chance of it happening with disease challenge decays. Like the antibody levels.
It is not something that happens as a late side effect of vaccines when it didn’t show immediately. I don’t know of any case of that happening in animal or human vaccines.
Hesitancy now, due to fear of an effect we’ve literally never seen, is perverse.
In Australia, the TGA (equivalent to the US CDC) records 9 confirmed deaths from COVID vaccines (all AZ) out of 585 reported deaths from 28.8 million vaccine doses.
https://www.tga.gov.au/periodic/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-safety-report-07-10-2021
Meanwhile, there have been 1,421 deaths from COVID out of 125,080 recorded cases.
To claim the vaccine kills five times as many, even in the over-65 cohort is ridiculous.
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-vaccines
Thank you Susan. All the examples of vaccines with ADE presented on this website are in-line with my premise that more time is needed to demonstrate whether the currently available vaccines demonstrates ADE. It is my understanding that Pfizer’s Phase III trail should of formally ended May 22 but was prematurely completed when the control group was given the shot. In this case, Pfizer will miss out on this critical assessment by ending the normal phasing protocol designed to ascertain the possibility of ADE over time. Time will tell.
Have you ever seen a case of ADE appearing +6 months after vaccination?
Did we read the same document? All of those examples were identified (almost) immediately, and when using the original strain(s). With so many people vaccinated (and the whole world watching), do you see any evidence of ADE anywhere in the world today? Have you ever seen ADE caused by viral mutation(s)?
As for time – how much time do you estimate is needed?
Obviously, ‘Time will tell’ (and is such a cliché), but what do you expect it to tell you?
Well, I expect the paper will be retracted, as another example of the misuse of VAERS. To quote the source of the reports the authors used,
“Some reports to VAERS might represent true vaccine reactions, and others might be coincidental adverse health events not related to vaccination at all.
Generally, a causal relationship cannot be established using information from VAERS reports alone.
The number of reports submitted to VAERS may increase in response to media attention and increased public awareness.
It is not possible to use VAERS data to calculate how often an adverse event occurs in a population.”
Since they misused this information, in direct contradiction of guidelines about this information, their conclusions are nonsensical and misleading.
Yes. This. Exactly this.
True but that requires an in depth study of those who die. The FDA does not investigate all cases just those that the manufacturers flaged as possible side effects during the trials. So with vastly curtailled (and designed to succeed) trials few cases are likely to be investigated. This is an issue long known about and which FDA (who have to pay the compensation should they find evidence of vaccine harm) play down. Given investigation of cause is rare, proving damage is rare. So sadly the VAERS reports are as good as it gets.
VAERS reports can be quite detailed including timeline of vaccination. Odd don’t you think that a car crash victim who also happened to have a (flawed) pcr test within 28 days of death is a covid death but death after vaccine is considered a coincidence? We are being fed lies and the proper analysis of deaths appears not to be being done. Along with vaccine injury after one jab people have their reports removed from VAERS. We are living in an orchestrated event.
Odd that you think that VAERS is ‘the truth’. True, they can be quite detailed, but also wrong or not relevant. Have you read any of them? Do you think that death from COVID-19 after vaccination is a ‘side effect’?
This appears to be the argument, common amongst anti-vaxxers, that Covid deaths are counted as deaths from any cause within 28 days of a positive test and therefore vaccination deaths ought to be counted as deaths from any cause within 28 days of a vaccination.
I don’t know which country or state Jeanette is referring to, but in England, there are two measures in use: NHS and ONS. NHS figures are deaths in hospital from any cause within 28 days of a positive test. That’s essentially a management statistic, and it’s available daily, so it’s popular with media and government: regrettably so, in my view. Presumably that’s the sort of count that is being referred to here. ONS figures are based on death certificates, in which the cause of death has been certified by a medical practitioner with Covid as underlying or contributory cause of death. These figures take time to compile and are usually released weekly.
As it happens, the two sets of figures, NHS and ONS, are quite similar, and are in turn in broad agreement with the 2020 figures for excess deaths week by week over the five-year average.
The ONS writes “We use the term “due to COVID-19” […] when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death. We use the term “involving COVID-19″ […] when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.”
During 2020, roughly 90% of deaths “involving” Covid were deaths “due to” Covid.
The Science-Based Medicine blog has a very useful discussion of the pitfalls of using the VAERS database to estimate risks, and provides a clear description of what it is for and not for. If the authors want to follow the guidelines for identifying and quantifying hams, they would better use VSD and CISA. For further information, try this blogpost; https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/dumpster-diving-in-vaers-doctors-fall-into-the-same-trap-as-antivaxxers/
I expect the paper will be retracted
By whom? The journal’s Editor-in-Chief?
Or the publisher, in the end…
If you read the Twitter thread cited above in which I pointed out the journal listed the same person as senior author abd handling editor, I do critique the appendix making your case for the dramatic 5 dead for 1 saved argument.
I wrote out details of my criticism in the appendix off the is blog post critiquing a similar claim by Steve Kirsch at the FDA booster meeting: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/do-pfizer-vaccines-kill-2-people-for-every-1-saved-evaluating-viral-social-media-reports
I will pull it out as its own blog post for your convenience later tonight and welcome the authors’ response to my critique, here and/or on my blog page
Wow, that staunch defense of statistical misconduct by its editor is a new one. Why would anyone trust future articles coming from this journal.?
A good researcher, or historian, or journalist… will record this as the year Toxicology Reports was exposed as being harmful to one’s health.
Even if the authors drank their own kool-aid and can’t see these simple errors, Elsevier should not publish journals that repeatedly hurt public health by posting false statistical analyses as fact. Jeffrey: please share that blog post here when you have written it.
Wow, that staunch defense of statistical misconduct by its editor is a new one. Why would anyone trust future articles coming from this journal.?
A good researcher, or historian, or journalist… will record this as the year Toxicology Reports was exposed as being harmful to one’s health.
Toxicology Reports is a vehicle for the tobacco industry, so “harmful to health” is fair enough. Editor Konstantinos Poulas (retroactively appointed Handling Editor for the present paper) is funded by Philip Morris International to “[develop] new vaping products and [shares] pro e-cigarette research from the tobacco industry”.
Hence last year’s Editorial, “Nicotine and SARS-CoV-2: COVID-19 may be a disease of the nicotinic cholinergic
system” (Farsalinos et al 2020), promoting nicotine as a cure for COVID-19.
Here is my critique of the Vaers excess deaths analysis in the appendix of this paper
https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/evaluating-claim-in-peer-reviewed-toxicology-reports-article-vaccines-kill-5-for-every-1-save
Their results are driven completely by an assumption that vaers reports are constant over time, so they infer any extra reported deaths per day reported close to vaccination over the daily number of Vaers reported deaths months later must be caused by vaccines, and this extrapolation leads to their outlandish claims.
I also show from USA all cause excess deaths during the time USA residents were vaccinated that their estimates are completely implausible.
You could also follow up their conclusion on the lethality of the vaccines and make a retrodiction as to how many excess deaths should have been observed in the treatment arms of the vaccine phase III trials. I can’t imagine, if the paper under discussion was correct, that the vaccines would have completed phase III trials, never mind be rolled out to the general population.
(not the same Stewart as comments upthread)
In the phase 3 study there was zero evidence of excess deaths.
There were almost identical numbers of deaths in the vaccine and placebo arms during the blinded randomized period of the trial.
In this setting the placebo provides a rigorously relevant background death rate for the study population and suggested no evidence of excess deaths caused by vaccine
It is clear that there is a controversy surrounding not only the content but also the handling of this paper, and, without wishing to enter to enter into the content controversy, it must surely have been clear to the authors on writing the paper that it would be controversial. It seems odd, therefore, that they should choose to publish in a journal of which one of the authors was editor-in-chief. Not only would this diminish the impact of the paper, since those opposed to its conclusions would surely point to that as a reason to discount them, but it deprives the authors of a critical opinion which would have been potentially able to improve the scientific content by tensioning it against an independent view.
In this case, we understand that the handling was “delegated to” (in the words of the erratum) Dr Konstantinos Poulas. It is doubly odd that the handling of this controversial paper would be delegated to a co-author of the editor-in-chief, having published jointly (again in Toxicology Reports) on Covid vaccine safety and that latter oddity is compounded by misfortune in that Dr Poulas has had a paper on the Covid risk retracted for his undeclared conflict of interest (see “‘Unfair and unsubstantiated’: Journal retracts paper suggesting smoking is linked to lower COVID-19 risk”).
I think it is fair to say that this paper has been handled in a distinctly sub-optimal way.
It is doubly odd that the handling of this controversial paper would be delegated to a co-author of the editor-in-chief, having published jointly (again in Toxicology Reports) on Covid vaccine safety
Very much this. The submission of the present paper was delegated to Poulos… the same Poulos who collaborated with Tsatsakis (among others) on a companion paper, “Safety of COVID-19 vaccines administered in the EU: Should we be concerned?” and published it in Tsatsakis’ journal – belatedly remembering that the submission had been delegated to their regular collaborator Vardavas.
Yes, and those other 576 folk, where in the vast, vast majority of cases, a seasoned health professional took the time and effort to complete an 8 page report (I believe) to submit to the TGA due to the temporal connection between date of vaccination and death. (my point is the report was not compiled and submitted by my 8yo)
Yet 576 coincidences, I gather, with no autopsy.
And if VAERS suffers from massive under reporting, so too does the system in Australia. Without question.
And Calculus fails to distinguish between deaths from COVID and ‘with’ COVID.
Average age of death down here from this pandemic, 85+.
If you are worried about inaccurate attributions of deaths from covid, look at excess all cause deaths and see that the number in hard hit countries like the USA are the same order of magnitude as covid attributed deaths, and the excess deaths occur primarily in spikes corresponding to times of surges of pcr positive cases in that local area
There is no such evidence of excess deaths during the time of high vaccination rates
See this link — black line is excess deaths, red is covid cases and blue is vaccinations.
https://twitter.com/jsm2334/status/1443655897578934274?s=21
In the TR paper, we used a best-case scenario. In a posting I did yesterday (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/), I modified the best-case scenario to get a real-world scenario, and added some tradeoff studies as well. As expected, the costs outweigh the benefits far more in the real-world scenario compared to the best-case scenario. The reasons for this are quite simple, and are explained in the posting.
And how does this scenario comport with real world evidence? For all the modelling inputs, how do your predictions compare with actual data? Excess deaths spiked with Covid infections as I understand, not with vaccinations.
Your assumptions are still highly suspect (to be nice).
Besides the point that it is not possible to accurately estimate event rates from an open reporting system like VAERs, any such efforts are highly dependent on your arbitrary assumptions on the background rate of deaths and underreporting rate.
The key assumption, as I point out in my blog post regarding your paper, is that you estimate the background rate of deaths in VAERs based on the rate of deaths >1 month after vaccination. This strongly assumes that reporting of a death after vaccination is equally likely any point in time, and is not more likely if in the day or two after vaccination than if after 2 or 3 months. Clearly a false assumption, and it COMPLETELY drives your results.
Inadequate evaluation of your methodology and subjective assumptions is one of many peer review failures of this paper (whoever the reviewers and handling editor were).
And your prominent mentioning of the specious claim that only 6% of COVID deaths are really caused by COVID-19 because the other 94% had co-morbidities demonstrates your bias and your lack of understanding of how death certificates are filled out or how co-morbidities contribute to deaths that are still caused by a particular disease.
By your logic, most cancer deaths are not caused by cancer because typically the death is not caused by cancer itself but by other organ-system complications induced by the cancer (thus other causes other than cancer mentioned), and most heart disease deaths are not caused by heart disease since most of these deaths also have other co-morbidities as well.
I address all the points you mention in the real-world cost-benefit scenario I posted recently (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/), where the c/b ratio is far higher than in the best-case cost-benefit scenario.
You keep re-iterating the same point (“This strongly assumes that reporting of a death after vaccination is equally likely any point in time, and is not more likely if in the day or two after vaccination than if after 2 or 3 months. Clearly a false assumption, and it COMPLETELY drives your results.”), even though you offer zero evidence supporting your claim. I address that point ad nauseum in the above link.
Under the least stringent scenario, including further relaxed restrictions, the c/b ratio is ~15. The least stringent case is overly optimistic; the c/b ratio is actually far worse.
“And your prominent mentioning of the specious claim that only 6% of COVID deaths are really caused by COVID-19 because the other 94% had co-morbidities demonstrates your bias and your lack of understanding of how death certificates are filled out or how co-morbidities contribute to deaths that are still caused by a particular disease.”
The claim is not specious. It is based on the argument I made in a paper published last year in Food and Chemical Toxicology (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32805343/). I switch coordinate systems from symptoms/diseases to modifiable Contributing Factors (CFs). The point I make in the article is if there is a mix of CFs present, assigning cause of disease to any one constituent of the mixture is arbitrary. For the SARS-CoV-2 virus in particular, it is not a CF in the sense of pesticides, smoking, etc. In the limiting case of a healthy immune system, it will have no impact, whereas the true CFs will typically have an adverse effect even in the presence of a healthy immune, circulatory, neural, endocrine, etc. system. That’s why I refer to it as a ‘trigger’ in the paper.
Using the CF coordinate system is the basis of the protocols I have developed for preventing and reversing chronic diseases over the past decade (e.g., https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/59311). They can to some degree be carried over to preventing infectious diseases, based on the initial aspects of the unified theory of chronic-infectious diseases I am developing (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34485092/). The point is, if one only works in the symptom coordinate system, all one ever develops are more dead-end treatments. That’s the present mainstream approach. One never achieves prevention or reversal. By working in the CF coordinate system, the path to disease prevention or reversal becomes clear.
But again, in the real-world cost-benefit scenario I posted last week (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/), I even relaxed that condition to some degree, and still arrived at a c/b ratio ~15.
You are in the position of a Yugo car salesman who’s trying to make his customers believe they are buying a Mercedes! You are selling a product that can’t avoid causing damage, and that is reflected in the massive c/b ratios. Try as you may, you cannot overcome the deficiencies of the underlying physics.
The Appendix describes your methodology to come up with the astronomical (and completely infeasible) vaccine-caused death estimates.
The key assumption is just as I describe — you assume the spike early on can only be explained by “true vaccine causation” and estimate the background rate based on the reporting at later time points, which implicitly assumes that the reporting should be relatively constant over time if there was no vaccine deaths.
As a statistical data scientist, it is truly shocking to me that any manuscript could pass peer review with the methodology and assumptions underlying your methods, no matter whether the topic was something controversial like vaccine safety or about something completely uncontroversial. The fact that the peer review process of this paper is suspect for the reasons mentioned above is unsurprising to me, and explains how a paper presenting analyses using this methodology could be published.
And to imply that because COVID-19 is not the only factor listed on the death certificate, but also includes other comorbidities and other direct causes of death (e.g. pnuemonia, blood clots of various types, organ failure) that are known results of advanced disease with this virus, somehow implies that these were not caused by COVID-19 demonstrates a misunderstanding of death attribution and death certificate recording that is staggering for someone in a peer reviewed scientific article.
Many on social media are confused by this, but for this misunderstanding and misrepresentation to prevail after peer review is also shocking to me, but then again not shocking given the suspect peer review process surrounding this paper.
8 page report for TGA? Under-reporting of vaccine reactions? Not even close. Despite what you “believe” or you “gather”, any individual can make an adverse reaction report (https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccines). Under-reported? Hardly. The TGA is already tracking multiple adverse reaction reports that have originated from the same URL but with different names, addresses, and email addresses.
No autopsy? Any evidence? Or just you “gather”.
Sorry – Calculus doesn’t “fail to distinguish between deaths from COVID and ‘with’ COVID”.
The deaths are reported in Worldometer as a summary from all jurisdictions here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/
An Australia-specific summary is provided here: https://covidlive.com.au/report/daily-deaths/aus
All deaths are reported to the State coroners and health departments. If you have a better source for COVID deaths in Australia, please provide it.
I see a claim made by many anti-vaxxers that deaths from COVID are all in old-aged people with co-morbidities … but funnily enough those factors are never mentioned regarding vaccine-related deaths.
In Australia, the rate of death from COVID is about 1%. The rate of death from a COVID vaccine is about 0.00005%. I don’t think any of your claims can account for those differences.
Go on … admit it … you are an anti-vaxxer.
“Go on … admit it … you are an anti-vaxxer.”
Two comments.
I am neither an anti-vaxxer or a pro-vaxxer. Vaccines are another technology, and I evaluate new technologies based on their costs and benefits, including health costs. If the benefits outweigh the costs, the vaccine gets a Green Light; if the converse is true, Red Light.
But pro or anti-vaxx is irrelevant to the present discussion. The inoculant being administered presently does not meet the legal definition of a vaccine, as we showed in our paper. You could have used pro or anti-communist, or pro or anti-abortion in your comment, and it would be equally relevant to the subject at hand. As we pointed out in the paper, its main goal is to suppress symptoms, which is basically what a treatment does. Am I now anti-treatment?
I’m sorry, but you are simply wrong. If you go wrong on this “legal definition of a vaccine”, there’s no reason to expect you to be correct on anything else. Juts as a reminder, a vaccine is “a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease” (Webster, but choose the dictionary you prefer). There are specific types of vaccines, and these change as technology changes. Once, the only vaccine was vaccinia (hence the name), but things have changed over several hundred years.
Feel free to create whatever definitions and diversions you choose, but that doesn’t change the law or the facts. The full paragraph in the paper states: “A vaccine is legally defined as any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of one or more diseases [5]. For example, a January 2000 patent application that defined vaccines as “compositions or mixtures that when introduced into the circulatory system of an animal will evoke a protective response to a pathogen.” was rejected by the U.S. Patent Office because “The immune response produced by a vaccine must be more than merely some immune response but must be protective. As noted in the previous Office Action, the art recognizes the term “vaccine” to be a compound which prevents infection” [6]”
In other words, stimulating a response is insufficient; it must be protective. I would strongly recommend that all the readers of the comments on this site access the reference (6) from which the above quote was extracted. It provides the fully documented sordid history behind what we are experiencing today.
But all this is an obvious diversion from the hard truth. In the paper, we postulated that a real-world cost-benefit scenario would be even worse than the best-case cost-benefit scenario we analyzed. The follow-on analysis that I posted recently (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/) confirmed our postulation. I cannot recall seeing a technology that had a worse cost/benefit posture than this one. The present inoculation is in a class by itself!
An accurate cost/benefit analysis will reflect the underlying technical issues. As we point out in the paper, the inoculant is highly toxic, both in the spike protein it produces, and in the encapsulating shell. It operates in a stealth mode, bypassing much of the innate immune system through the injection and bypassing much of the immune system in the bloodstream (for extended circulation) because of the LNP coating design. Why would anyone expect such a toxic system operating in stealth mode not to have serious adverse health effects? The high cost/benefit ratio in the real-world scenario reflects this underlying physical reality.
Kostoff et al wrote “A vaccine is legally defined as any substance designed to be administered to a human being for the prevention of one or more diseases [5].”
Out of context this definition is nonsensical, as it covers any prophylactic treatment, e.g. antibiotics.
The source of the definition is a subchapter of the US legal code, which begins with an important clause:
For purposes of this subchapter —
To leave out that explicit scoping language, and to claim that the shorthand used within the subchapter is a general “legal definition”, is not honest.
I would expect that if the underlying logic of the paper was true, that there would be varying risks from the different types of Covid vaccines. I wonder if the author has tried to use VAERS (or a more suitable database) to see if these findings comport with his predictions.
I would encourage people not to be drawn into discussion of whether the medications in question are “legally” vaccines or not. (What law? In what jurisdiction?) It is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether the research reported in this paper is correct or not, and is being used as a stupid and infuriating smokescreen to distract from the real question.
The medications could be “legally” footballs; laws don’t have to make sense or conform to reality. It would not change any aspect of what they actually do or what their risks are. And it is a mark of a crank to pretend otherwise.
In the comments on the present article, and the Jessica Rose article, there is no lack of negative critiques on the VAERS database, and its use by the authors of the respective papers. No disagreement on the negative aspects of VAERS; we laid them out in our paper. Any database that reports ~1% of adverse events (as shown by the tracking study of Harvard Pilgrim a decade ago) has obvious deficiencies.
However, on the other side of the coin, I find it interesting (although not unexpected) that no one offers a critique of the CDC database proclaiming hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths in the USA alone. Let’s examine that database, and test its purity relative to VAERS.
The initial step for generating the CDC-reported death data is to identify COVID-19 cases. This was done in the USA almost overwhelmingly with the use of PCR tests, using a Ct of ~40 (sometimes greater). As I showed in my real-world cost-benefit scenario posting (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/), in that Ct range, the false positives range from 90% to 97% (https://www.brlax.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/PCR-Test.pdf). If we assume an inner point of 95% false positives, we are left with ~5% true positives. Thus, only 5% of those who the CDC claims died from COVID-19 actually died from COVID-19.
Once a person was tagged as COVID-19, then, according to Drs Zelenko, Ardis, and many others who actually work with patients, they were given treatments that were known to be ineffective/harmful and denied treatments known to be effective/harmless (https://www.bitchute.com/video/jv3GSOcoIGCP/). Estimates by hands-on doctors who actually developed and successfully used protocols on COVID-19 tagged patients were that, based on their positive experience with thousands of patients, approximately 85% of the hospitalizations and deaths that occurred could have been prevented. In other words, they died from neglect (or whatever diplomatic term one wishes to use), rather than COVID-19. Thus, our 5% of true positives who died from COVID-19 (rather than neglect) is now reduced to 0.15×5, or 0.75%.
Next, the CDC stated that ~94% of those who died from COVID-19 had one or more comorbidities (obesity, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, cardiac problems, etc.). As we showed in our FCT paper, using contributing factors rather than symptoms, assignment of death to any single constituent of a toxic mixture is completely arbitrary. Thus, our 0.75% of true positives who died from true COVID-19 is now reduced to 0.75×0.06, or 0.045%.
Finally, as I showed in the real-world cost-benefit scenario (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/), the inoculant was able to prevent ~1/3 of COVID-19 deaths, based on two referenced studies. Thus, our 0.045% of true positives who died from COVID-19 is now reduced to 0.015%. With numbers like these, the VAERS deaths attributed to the inoculation without scale-up are more than enough to generate a high cost/benefit ratio. With any real-world scale-up, they go through the roof!
So, we have VAERS that under-represents adverse events by a factor of 100, and the CDC database that overstates the number of true COVID-19 deaths for which a vaccine was needed by a factor of ~6700! But, for some strange reason, the ‘objective independent’ commenters who critiqued the above article neglected to mention the problems with the COVID-19 death data that drove this whole pandemic in the first place.
So, we have VAERS that under-represents adverse events by a factor of 100
You keep saying this – that you feel entitled to multiply the number of reported deaths by 100. Because 99% of deaths go unnoticed.
Statements that you have made on the PCR test and false positives are incorrect.
The ELMS Research assessment that you base these on contains horrendous errors, such as “It is also not able to tell you if you are finding the virus or a relative of that virus since it is only looking at a portion of its necleotides. In English the test can’t tell the difference between Covid and other Coronavirus (e.g. the flu). Even the CDC has stated “This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.” See pages 39 and 40 of this report. This means that the test can return a positive result for the flu or other viruses.”
First of all, that quoted CDC statement simply means that the subject may have diseases present, that are caused by other pathogens.
More importantly:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348732878_Pseudowissenschaftliche_Kritik_an_einem_von_der_Berliner_Charite_veroffentlichten_Coronavirus_SARS-CoV-2-Test_publiziert_von_Peter_Borger_und_Koautoren_Pseudoscientific_criticism_on_a_Coronavirus_SARS
“Viral nucleic acids in a swab cannot have been produced “just so” by the patient. It will always be produced in the course of an active infection. Hence it does not matter how many of the detected copies are intact or defective. They all have been produced by virus infected cells of the patient and hence they indicate an active infection (no matter if the respective person develops the disease or not)”
“It is well known that several coronavirus strains circulate in mankind cause common cold. However, of SARS-like ß Corona viruses currently only SARS-CoV-2 is circulation in mankind. Other circulating ß corona viruses (HKU, OC43) have been tested. Since 2003 SARS-like ß corona viruses are monitored worldwide and quite often novel strains are detected in bats and other mammals. None of them have appeared in humans so far.”
“The E gene exists in all corona virus strains. There is not a single gene which is specific for SARS-CoV-2. The task is to find sequence parts in the genome of a virus which are both specific for the viral taxon of interest as well as sufficiently conserved. For this reason the task is to detect sequence variants present in SARS-CoV-2 (and close relatives) but absent in all other viruses circulating in mankind to date. And this is exactly that [sic] the test achieves.”
You may also study this article and the comments:
https://www.pepijnvanerp.nl/2020/12/some-considerations-on-the-retraction-paper-for-the-corman-drosten-pcr-test/
Furthermore, here is an in-depth article by a recognized virology expert:
https://virologydownunder.com/the-false-positive-pcr-problem-is-not-a-problem/
Ian Mackay makes an excellent point that if there really were a false positive problem, Australia would not have had so few daily cases during extended periods of time.
On another point, the fact that you refer to the analysis of VAERS underreporting by non/pseudo-scientist Steve Kirsch (an engineer) says a lot. Jeffrey Morris presents a great analysis of Kirsch’s paper.
Moreover, you don’t seem too well versed on “vaccine alternatives”. Please examine the following:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ivermectin-is-the-new-hydroxychloroquine-take-6-incompetence-and-fraud-everywhere/
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/virus-treatments-quackery-what-not-to-take-for-flu-colds-or-covid-19/#Bonus_section_COVID-19_quack_treatments
Finally, the COVID-19 vaccines satisfy the definition of vaccines given by CDC, FDA, etc:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-latest-antivax-false-claim-mrna-vaccines-against-covid-19-are-not-vaccines-but-medical-devices-or-gene-therapy/
It is, therefore, hard to consider anything in your paper credible. A retraction would be a reasonable course of action.
Two quotes from “science-based” medicine and one from Skeptical Raptor. Why not quote directly from CDC/FDA, rather than go through the middleman?
Per your comment on a real Canadian hero, Dr. Byram Bridle. When the history of this “pandemic” is written, his legacy will will be similar to that of Raoul Wallenberg in WWII; the legacy of his detractors: ….you fill in the blanks!
Dr. Bridle is not the only courageous Canadian doctor willing to tell the truth despite the risk to his reputation, career, and finances. There are many other courageous Canadian doctors, as well as nurses and health care personnel. Some of these modern day Raoul Wallenbergs include Drs. Charles Hoffe, Roger Hodkinson, Francis Christian, Patrick Phillips, Jean Marc Benoit, Caroline Turek, Stephen Malthouse, Daniel Nagase, Chris Milburn, Darrel Wolfe, Gary Davidson, Neda Amani, Dorle Kneifel, Bill Code, and Rochagne Kilian. They have all paid dearly for their integrity and honesty because of their willingness to go on the record, but in aggregate they provide a picture of the real harm that has been inflicted, is being inflicted, and will be inflicted on our population by these inadequately tested experimental gene therapies. They can be seen in videos on Bitchute, and I highly recommend them to all interested in the real story/tragedy of this pandemic.
We should not neglect their heroic American counterparts like Drs. Vladimir Zelenko, Peter McCullough, Bryan Ardis, Ryan Cole, et al. who developed treatment protocols that work and have saved thousands of lives, despite unrelenting opposition from the official medical administration of the USA. Their stories are also told on Bitchute.
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich’s Corona Investigative Committee is another excellent source of pandemic truth. Fuellmich is an accomplished lawyer who was involved in the victories of Dieselgate and Deutche Bank, and is pursuing legal suits against entities involved in this pandemic, based on showing the uselessness and non-applicability of PCR tests, especially at the high cycles at which they were run. He and his collaborators have already won some Lower Court cases debunking use of PCR testing for diagnostic purposes, and they are ready to go to the Higher Courts. He has had a wide variety of experts relevant to the present pandemic testify before his committee, including some mentioned above, and I recommend these interviews highly. They also can be found on Bitchute.
And we should also not forget the less-than-heroic University administrators and K-12 administrators in Canada, the USA, and other countries. Despite the overwhelming evidence of essentially no harm from COVID-19 for those under their supervision, as reflected in our TR paper and others, they chose the despicable path of instituting inoculation mandates for attending class. The harm that has already been inflicted by their acquiescence (e.g., explosion in myocarditis, among many others), and the greater harm that remains to be inflicted, will be a black mark on the history of this continent.
It’s a good thing I did link to that article on SBM, because it thoroughly debunks your claim that the vaccines are “inadequately tested experimental gene therapies”.
Your linking to a load of bitchute videos isn’t a good look. Bitchute is mainly for videos that would never be allowed on YouTube, due to their disinformation policy, and is a favourite amongst conspiracy theorists. They’re typically devoid of any scientific basis.
The claims made by Dr Bridle have been debunked by reputable scientists, for which I’ve provided information.
Zelenko and Raoult are partners in fraud (the latter being exposed by Elisabeth Bik, and he’s also being investigated by the French Drugs Authority [https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210721-french-drugs-authority-investigating-raoult-s-covid-hydroxychloroquine-trials]). Neither HCQ nor IVM have been shown to work – indeed, Andrew Hill et all updated their meta-analysis of IVM, and it shows a very strong probability of having no effect on COVID: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1003006/v1
What “treatment protocols that work” were you talking about? Ones that use steroids/antibiotics that are known to work, with useless IVM thrown in for good measure? McCullough and AFLD are making excellent profits on filling those prescriptions, and McCullough is on the board of two of the companies related to those treatments – a huge conflict of interest that he hadn’t declared in some of his recent publications, and is now getting into trouble for (besides previously claiming affiliation with Baylor, which the latter is suing him over).
McCullough either lied or did not understand the paper he is writing about in this article, stating that “the study found vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated.”:
https://theexpose.uk/2021/08/24/oxford-university-study-finds-fully-vaccinated-healthcare-workers-carry-251-times-viral-load-compared-to-the-unvaccinated/
He has also spouted conspiracy theorist nonsense about why he thinks governments are trying so hard to push vaccines on everybody. What’s more, his paper with Jessica Rose on vaccine-induced myocarditis got removed from the journal (https://pubpeer.com/publications/C9EC1C8336F615B6BCA5C724932682). It, too, was an example of VAERS dumpster diving, and made the specious claim – without any valid references – that vaccine-induced myocarditis is more harmful than that caused by COVID-19. Dr Paul Offit stated that myocarditis caused by the vaccine is generally transient and self-resolving, whereas from COVID it’s much more severe and may result in a heart transplant (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXbKLqSnmw0 at 7:00) – pretty much the exact opposite of Rose/McCullough paper. I give Offit much more credibility as a scientific expert on vaccines. The PubPeer comment by Tomato Leaf also supports Offit’s statement.
Tell me again, is McCullough a hero?
One more time, HCQ was shown to be useless. But they were claiming it reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 85%. After that, they pivoted to IVM, also claiming similar results. How can that be? And IVM has been slowly but surely also been going down the tube.
You have not responded about my link to the article by Ian Mcckay, a renowned PCR expert – much more so than a lawyer.
You keep on trying to minimize the impact of COVID-19 on children. However, it is a bigger deal than you are willing to admit. See this article, as well as others by Dr Jonathan Howard:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-and-children-more-useless-comparisons/
Do you see your self as a ‘Raoul Wallenberg’? How do you think that you have put your self in any danger? I find the rush for so many ‘brave’ people to position themselves as the victims as amusing (and somewhat sad). It seems that the only thing in any kind of danger is your reputation.
The only scientific paper Fuellmich presents is by Ioannidis. Do you see that Ioannidis’s research on mortality has held up over the last 18+ months?
As others have pointed out, if the false-positive rate were really 95%, then positive PCRs should be barely correlated with other measures like hospitalization rate. Consider the case of institutions (e.g., some universities) that tested everyone on campus at least weekly–if the FP rate were 95%, the test results should be uncorrelated with the test results in the surrounding community (unless you’re positing an alternative cause), and uncorrelated with the COVID-19 hospitalization rate in the surrounding community. What’s actually observed is a very strong correlation between those rates.
As Daniel Ansari observes, the ELMS research is problematic. For starters, it badly misrepresents the Jaafar et. al. paper. ELMS represents Jaafar as saying “based on the scientific consensus of more than 100 studies, the cycle threshold should be no more than 30 cycles”, but what it actually says is “with a consensus at approximately Ct >30”. Moreover, Jaafar is specifically about the threshold for recovery from an identified infection, so the threshold levels discussed there aren’t necessarily relevant to early detection.
But the biggest problem is that ELMS assumes that viral cultures are perfect, and so completely neglects the possibility of viral culture false negatives. Studies with control samples have shown that viral cultures have a substantial false negative rate at small viral loads, a result that is mentioned in Jaafar: “confirming that these high Ct values are mostly correlated with low viral loads”. This could argue that a lower Ct value should be used for termination of quarantine, but (again) isn’t relevant for early detection, where the greater sensitivity of PCR is useful.
A secondary issue is that viral culture and PCR don’t detect the same thing. A viral culture detects a live infection. PCR detects fragments that may be the result of a live infection or a recent infection. ELMS considers a recent infection a false positive. While a recent infection, already overcome, may result in some unnecessary quarantines, it does still have useful information for contact tracing, and deserves monitoring.
Absolutely, I agree 100% with everything you’ve said.
I’d like to emphasize a few of these points.
The COVID cases – determined by PCR – are importantly also correlated with deaths, with peaks in deaths often occurring about 14 days following peaks in cases. You can check that the graphs of these for most countries followed this pattern, especially earlier in the pandemic. These results mutually reinforce each others’ validity – of PCR positive cases, and COVID-19 deaths.
I’ll quote my own comment from Ian Mackay’s post on PCR:
‘I feel that this Jaafar et al study is very important to understand, because it has been misinterpreted by a Portuguese court to rule PCR tests unreliable (and hence, quarantines “unlawful”) – and in turn, this ruling has been used by the conspiracy theorists to support their “casedemic” narrative.
Some people are making the ridiculous claim that it shows that at Ct = 35, the accuracy rate is only 3%, with the false positive rate being up to 97%.
What it actually shows (correct me if I’m wrong), is that at this Ct, of the 74 positive samples detected by PCR, only 2 (< 3%) of these were able to infect other cells.
It doesn't help that the language of the French authors seem to obfuscate this reading: "At Ct = 35, the value we used to report a positive result for PCR, <3% of cultures are positive."'
Thus, a PCR positive result almost certainly indicates infection with the virus – either a presymptomatic/post infection, or a symptomatic one.
Here's some more information on Reiner Fuellmich:
https://medika.life/reiner-fuellmich-fact-checked-and-exposed-as-a-covid-conspiracy-con/
Quoting a comment there, "Mr. Fuellmich’s claim is based on the allegation that the world has been played by “a PCR test case-demic,” not by a novel (it’s not new) coronavirus. The core of the argument begins with German virologist, Dr. Drosten who developed the PCR test to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in January 2020 (not to be confuse with the inventor,Dr. Mullis, of the PCR-test). Skewing the cycles of amplification this test was then Initially used by the WHO in an effort to generate enough ‘cases’ to declare a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) – phonetic sound is “fake”. This was needed to activate the emergency use of a vaccine."
Well, Andreas Beyer has already shown that the criticism of the Corman-Drosten test is indeed invalid (http://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/04/author-defends-paper-claiming-covid-19-vaccines-kill-five-times-more-people-over-65-than-they-save/#:~:text=October%2025%2C%202021%20at%208%3A13%20pm).
It is not unreasonable to assume that Fuellmich – like many conspiracy theorists – is driven by grift, profiteering from donations and lawsuits.
We have other ways of tracking and checking infection-mortality for COVID-19. On the isolated Diamond Princess ship some 700 people got SARS-CoV-2 (many without symptoms, ie not clinical “cases”). We know from repeated testing of the same people so there are few false positives and negativess.
Some 7 died. That’s 1%.
Estimates from populations tend to give about 0.25%. They are younger than the cruise ship average. The point is that numbers as low as your infection-mortality are not believable.
Erratum added to the paper:
“The publisher wishes to clarify that Dr Aristidis Tsatsakis, the Editor-in-Chief of Toxicology Reports, was not involved in the peer-review of this article. Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to the Handling Editor Dr Konstantinos Poulas.
The publisher would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221475002100175X
“it thoroughly debunks your claim that the vaccines are “inadequately tested experimental gene therapies”
A new technology used for a coronavirus “vaccine” tested for a few months on a sample not representative of the elderly and frail population that needs it most is your idea of an adequately tested substance? Our previous comprehensive vaccine review showed that the average development time to distribution for a vaccine was 12-15 years, and you want people to believe that the one year development to distribution period for the Moderna/Pfizer vaccine is adequate? Even your fellow apologists for Moderna/Pfizer will have a hard time swallowing such nonsense!
I would prefer that the videos I mentioned were on Youtube, but the blatant censorship of the truth about this “pandemic” and subsequent mass inoculation by the social media that you and your fellow apologists admire necessitates these courageous professionals to use Bitchute as their outlet to the world. As far as conspiracy theorists are concerned, I will let the viewers of these videos make up their own minds about who is telling the truth.
“What “treatment protocols that work” were you talking about?”
These are protocols developed and used by Zelenko, McCullough, Ardis, Cole, and many others, and can be accessed on the links provided by the videos. Some have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. These are front-line doctors who have hands-on experience in treating patients and preventing 80-90% of the deaths that occurred without their treatments, not Pfizer/Moderna apologists who scrape the bottom of the barrel for references that support their agenda.
“his paper with Jessica Rose on vaccine-induced myocarditis got removed from the journal”
No reason was given, but the truth obviously offended the inoculation providers and mandators and their Amen Corner that populates the blogs. The explosive increase in myocarditis that Rose and McCullough demonstrated is only the tip of the iceberg of the real damage on our youth that will be inflicted by these inoculations. If I were on the Editorial Board of that journal, I would have resigned immediately.
“Tell me again, is McCullough a hero?”
McCullough and Zelenko have done more for the health of their fellow citizens, at great personal cost, than you and your fellow Moderna/Pfizer apologists will do in twenty lifetimes. I will add to that list a great Canadian hero, Dr. Charles Hoffe, a small town physician who stated that >60% of post-inoculation patients show evidence of microclotting through increased D-dimer levels. While that needs to be confirmed, if irreversible microclotting occurs after each inoculation and it is cumulative, then we are condemning a vast number of people to some degree of disability, and probably a reduced lifespan.
Further, I will add to that list a great American hero, Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist who runs the largest independent diagnostic laboratory in Idaho. On a few of his videos, he mentions seeing an increase in cancers among the inoculated since January 2021, including a twentyfold increase in uterine cancer compared to past years. He is assembling a group of other lab directors to pool their findings for confirmation purposes. He is a hands-on pathologist immersed in reading actual patients reports, not some ivory tower propagandist cherry-picking references to suit his own agenda.
“I give Offit much more credibility as a scientific expert on vaccines.”
While he is an expert on vaccines, myocarditis is a cardio problem, and McCullough is world-class in that discipline. If you want to go to a vaccinologist for a cardio problem, that’s your choice. I prefer a cardiologist!
“a renowned PCR expert – much more so than a lawyer.”
The difference is, that lawyer has heard testimony from numerous PCR experts, and is basing his conclusions on the aggregate testimony, not on one cherry-picked “expert” that promotes your agenda.
Finally, I re-emphasizer my real-world cost-benefit scenario (https://dailyclout.io/citizens-corner-analysis-real-world-cost-benefit-scenario/) that shows massive cost-benefit ratios for even the most vulnerable demographic, 65+, and these ratios will only increase as we go down in age. The benefit side of the equation, those who needed a vaccine for death prevention, could have been done a year ago, before the inoculations were rolled out. It showed that number was extremely small. The cost side was known certainly by March 2021, and the inoculations should have been terminated at that time. Instead, by administering prophylactic inoculations in the midst of a pandemic, we are creating more variants, and are on the road to endless inoculations.
I end with an excellent vugraph presentation on many aspects of the inoculations (https://www.skirsch.com/covid/VRBPAC-10-26-21.pdf). Read it, and make up your own minds about who is telling the truth.
I find your use of the quotations for “vaccine” to be interesting. Is your definition of a vaccine structural or based on the biological effect? If the mRNA vaccines were 100% effective, would you define it as a vaccine? How do you characterize the influenza vaccine (definitely not 100% effective)? Do you differentiate between the different types of polio vaccines?
As I am sure you noticed, the E.L.M.S. Research, LLC report was drafted by a person not trained in any of the relevant scientific fields, but rather in lacrosse. Do you have any published research papers that you can cite?
As for the ‘excellent vugraph presentation’, really? He bases his conclusions on your ‘research’ (and asks a lot of questions). How can you then use it to support your conclusions? It seems a textbook case of the Circular Reasoning fallacy.
Regarding you ‘cost-benefit’ calculations, I have a few questions about your starting assumptions:
– Do you consider the underreporting to be the same for all side effects? I would submit that you are confusing ‘reporting’ and associating. It would be obvious to all that all cases of hospitalization (not to mention deaths) are ‘reported’, but they may not be associated with the vaccination.
– Do you consider that underreporting has held steady with the Covid-19 vaccines? I would also expect that the massive media reporting (not to mention the anti-vax posts) would have effected the reporting rate significantly.
– How does the VAERS system compare to other vaccine databases?
– Do you consider all reported cases to be connected to the vaccines? I don’t know if you read any of the VAERS the reports, but there are some that are obviously not ‘side effects’ (unless you characterize ‘breakthrough infection’ as a side effect) or occurred +6 months after vaccination. What % of the reported cases do you factor as being vaccine related?
– Regarding your negating of PCR testing, how do you submit that the number of SARS-COV-2 infections should be calculated? What do you think are the false positive/negative rates? Do you have any thoughts regarding countries that have low positive rates (<1%)?
If a significant portion of the infections are false positive, that should lead you to the conclusion that COVID-19 is much more fatal than the CDC realizes, and that many of the population falsely think that they have 'natural immunity'. Am I following your 'logic' correctly?
And regarding your 'expert' lawyer, a lawyer's job is to cherry-pick the facts they want to present, and to present them is a way that best supports what ever result they want to achieve (and the 'excellent vugraph presentation' is an excellent example, a 'greatest hits' of anti-vax claims). A lawyer that can't do that would be a failure (and broke) and should change professions. A scientist's job, from the time of Aristotle, is to present all know research and to present an analysis that relates to all the known science. When you don’t do that, you become an activist (or a lawyer).
You might be an anti-vaxxer if …
You believe the COVID 19 pandemic was planned (the plandemic).
You hold up Andrew Wakefield as a role model.
You think Bill Gates plans is trying to alter everyone’s DNA through “vaccines”
You burned down your local 5G cell tower to avoid catching COVID.
You believe mRNA vaccines to actually be gene-altering drugs with mutagenic effects.
You believe none of the vaccines (AZ, Pfizer, Moderna, etc.) have been “properly tested” and have been rushed through.
You know that the vaccines secretly contain graphene oxide even though the legal ingredient list submitted to the FDA does not list graphene oxide (although you aren’t really sure what graphene oxide is or what it does).
And besides which, the vaccine manufacturers have not provided a list of vaccine ingredients so that is obviously a fake ingredient list.
You ignore the sum of COVID 19 advice provided by scientists and medical experts published in reputable, high-impact, peer-reviewed journals because you found an article on the internet written by a highly qualified homeopathy expert.
You ignore any COVID 19 science on YouTube or the mainstream media as companies like Alphabet and Facebook are suppressing the “real numbers”; and instead seek out videos on bitchute, opinions on gab, and articles on rumble, blacklistednews, etc.
You believe the same scientists and medical experts are in league with politicians and Big Pharma to make huge profits.
You believe HCQ and Ivermectin are not just cures, but will also prevent you from catching COVID 19.
You trust your “natural immunity” to handle any disease that you might catch.
You know that since COVID 19 has struck, flu rates have gone down, so clearly COVID is just the flu.
You know that COVID 19 only kills those with co-morbidities. Meanwhile, COVID 19 vaccines kill perfectly healthy people.
You conducted your own research based on spurious assumptions and found that the COVID 19 vaccines kill five times as many people as the COVID 19 disease itself, even though the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
Charlatan: take Wallenberg’s name out of your mass-murdering mouth.
R. Kostoff is not a scientist, but a pattern-seeker. His recent papers share core mistakes: finding patterns in an ocean that confirm a desired story, not knowing or doing a statistical analysis.
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?as_ylo=2020&q=“rn+kostoff”
This COVID paper seems more directed. Its claims are founded on errors, but artfully misleading. They include direct lies, not novice stats mistakes – corrected patiently by people above with no effect. The paper is enormously popular online, only getting more so. It harms especially the elderly and the credulous. Many will die as a result.
Kostoff lies about basic things:
– what vaccination means
– how PCR works
– the practice of COVID PCR
– the effects of standard care
– the effects of fad OTC treatments
– what VAERS data mean
– the base rate of adverse events
– how cause of death is assigned
– what co-morbidities mean
Given that unrealism, engaging with the specifics of the paper as though it were actual research only legitimizes it.
“Toxicology Reports” has a systemic problem with identifying who handled the peer-reviewing and publication decisions for submitted manuscripts. In an Erratum dated 14 October, readers are advised that three recent papers by editor Tsatsakis and others had not been ushered through the publication process by Tsatsakis (as originally claimed), but had in fact been handled by other members of the editorial board.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750021001761
It is as if people just wander into the office, take whatever manuscript is on top of the pile, and decide what to do with it, without keeping records of who decided what. Meanwhile the Editor-in-Chief is too busy writing manuscripts for possible publication in the journal, to notice the confusion.
I note that in the case of the third paper covered by this Erratum (“Vaccine- and Natural Infection-Induced Mechanisms that Could Modulate Vaccine Safety”), “Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to Dr Anca Oana Docea”. Dr Docea is a regular collaborator with the authors, and is cited 21 times within it. Was it really so difficult to find someone unlinked to the manuscript they were handling?
“Vaccine- and Natural Infection-Induced Mechanisms that Could Modulate Vaccine Safety”
There is so much more in this particular paper for the RW crew to look into, if they’re not bored with Toxicology Reports yet. Such as the fact that the authors can cure Alzheimers Disease. This strikes me as worthy of greater publicity.
“As an example, the first author’s group did a study to develop a protocol that would prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [159].”
An earlier version of the document exists on a preprint server at Georgia Institute of Technology, signed by five of the present eight authors: “R.N. Kostoff, D. Kanduc, A.L. Porter, Y. Shoenfeld, M.B. Briggs COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Considerations Georgia Institute of Technology (2020)” (http://hdl.handle.net/1853/63710). It is more explicit about its purpose as an anti-vaccine polemic. The authors evidently scoured the immunology literature, looking for reports of inefficacy of any vaccine for any disease in any species; quote-mined them; and arranged the negative sentences in a sprawling Taxonomy of Failure which occupies half the document. The main contribution of the additional authors Calina, Spandidos and Tsatsakis was to replace this in the published version with a collage of copypasted reports of inefficacy in flu vaccines (because flu and COVID-19 are the same thing).
So the journal’s Editor-in-Chief deserves credit for seeing the potential for a more readable paper within the original document, though it seems a bit naff to publish it in his own journal.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/579549CBDA67FC3A60848008C01656#6
There are many questions here for Elsevier management.
In a region with small population both deaths and ADEs were notable. In the UK in general post the first round of vaccines to the elderly in care homes there was likewise a considerable spike in deaths esp given so many had already died after first wave of covid and those left had survived it. It was significant enough to be raised by an MP in Parliament. I personally know 2 people who had significant adverse effects and know of one who was left with Gillian Barre. I do not trust the gov. or the bulk of the funded by pharma medical fraternity nor the pharma funded reviews and instead listen to people who have no vested interests and are suppressed by those pushing the ‘approved narrative.’ Watch the population decline.
In a region with small population both deaths and ADEs were notable.
[Citation needed]
ADE?
Brazil is a wonderful object lesson in just how well vaccines work. The following charts are from the ourworldindata site. I chose July 1, 2021 as the start as that is when Brazil started to get serious about vaccinations. The charts are instructive. I only wish I had been able to superimpose one of the other.
First is biweekly confirmed Covid deaths per million population
Next is the fraction of the population fully vaccinated.
Similar effect in Australia, although lower numbers. With Delta and a lockdown we couldn’t stop the new cases per day increasing, but with increasing vaccination they dropped. We then removed restrictions and they started going up again. Lockdowns may work, but vaccination is a lot easier.
Elsevier profits while this misinformation spreads:
While the author and the editor/author defend their junk science/propaganda, and Elsevier makes money off of it, somewhere in South Brooklyn, this trash is being posted on local Facebook pages, where the rate of COVID is almost twice that of the rest of NYC.
People who have no clue how to read a scientific article are printing it out to read alongside material by someone named Dr. Simone Gold who is writing about “Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (VAIDS).” Yeah, not kidding, VAIDS, “jabs make you lose your immune systems and lots of people in the Pfizer clinical trials died of Sepsis.”
In Figure 2 the over 65 have 20 deaths per million in the week following inoculation. This is equivalent to 1 death per thousand per year. Given that Australian (Similar to US but I know where to find the life table) males aged 65 have a risk of about 10 per thousand per year, and it gets worse when older, I should be better off getting the vaccine. The improvement will be that people in very poor health wouldn’t have been vaccinated. Did this paper have a statistical reviewer? I think not.
Hi,
I am by no mean a medical expert , not my field.
While I was reading all the comments, I couldn’t help notice that, while many aspect of the paper were criticised, none actually directly commented on the topic as defined by the title: “
Retracted (no date shown): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750022001160
——————————————————-
The article has been retracted at the request of the Founding Editor, Prof. Lawrence H. Lash, on the basis that there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable: https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction-guidelines-cope.pdf.
The focus of the paper is on a critically important public health issue. As such, it is essential that the presentation be accurate and balanced. Additional external review of this paper following publication concluded that it demonstrates inappropriate bias in multiple ways.
The use of key terminology, specifically the key terms “inoculation” and “vaccination” diverges from common use and are incorrect, indicating clear evidence of bias.
Publicly available data from the United States Center for Disease Control (U.S. CDC) were concluded by the external reviewers to be misinterpreted to make the erroneous conclusion that the vast majority of reported deaths due to COVID-19 are actually due to other comorbidities. Such an egregious misinterpretation and misrepresentation are unacceptable.
I documented the retraction process in detail, including the official re-reviewers’ comments and my responses. This documentation was posted as an OpEd in Trial Site News (https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/anatomy-of-a-retraction-ea3c16b1). The comments and responses are repeated verbatim in the Appendix to the OpEd. I’ll leave it to the reader to judge the credibility of the retraction process.