Article 43
Friday, August 27, 2021
NWO - Pfizer Vaccine Approved
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In general, people are considered fully vaccinated: 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine. If you don’t meet these requirements, regardless of your age, you are NOT fully vaccinated.
- CDC, September 16, 2021
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Scandal Behind the FDA Fake Approval of Pfizer Jab
By F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
August 30, 2021
On August 23 as the FDA announced full approval for the Pfizer mRNA gene-edited substance. Or not quite, when the full papers of FDA are studied. Fauci, whose NIAID has financial interest in the vaccine, referred to the FDA decision as the final “stamp of approval.” It is however anything but final or an impartial, scientific rigorous medical evaluation. Rather it is a politically-motivated decision by an FDA that is corrupt beyond the imagination of most people.
Backtracking on its statement in 2020 that it would hold normal FDA advisory committee hearings with independent experts to discuss the Pfizer application for full approval, now the FDA told the British Medical Journal that they did not believe a meeting was necessary ahead of granting full approval of what is the most controversial vaccine in modern history. The BMJ quotes Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who serves as a consumer representative on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, These [FDA] public meetings are imperative in building trust and confidence especially when the vaccines came to market at lightning speed under EMERGENCY USE AUTHORIZATION.
Witczak continued with the alarming note, “It is already concerning that full approval is being based on 6 months’ worth of data despite the clinical trials designed for two years. There is no control group after Pfizer offered the product to placebo participants before the TRIALS WERE COMPLETED.” Read that again, slowly. Pfizer tests destroyed their own control group mid-stream! And its six month rollout of the mRNA jab worldwide has resulted in catastrophic side effects which have been totally officially ignored. Is this “science” Dr Fauci?
The refusal of the FDA and its Acting Director, Janet Woodcock, to convene its Drugs Advisory Committee for discussion of the Pfizer and BioNTech decisions is even more shocking as in June three members of that same panel resigned in protest for being disregarded in another drug approval. NPR network reported, “Three experts have now resigned from a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee after the agency approved an Alzheimers drug called Aduhelm against the wishes of nearly every member on the panel.” One of the three, Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, in his resignation letter from the FDA Advisory Committee (June 10, 2021), wrote: “For both eteplirsen and aducanumab, the decisions by FDA administrators to ignore the Advisory CommitteeҒs clear recommendations led to their approval of two highly problematic drugs that offered little evidence that they would meaningfully benefit patientsWith eteplirsen, the AdComm (Advisory Committee) and FDA’s own scientific staff reported that there was no convincing evidence that the drug worked; both groups were OVERRULED by FDA leadership...”
Now the FDA refusal to convene their advisory committee for the Pfizer decision is all the more astonishing in light of the fact that the Government Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in its official VAERS data bank for recording vaccine negative effects has recorded 8,508 reports of fatalities following the Pfizer mRNA shot in the past seven months, a number MORE than for all vaccines combined in the past 30 years. By denying a public hearing the FDA avoided any discussion of these alarming fatality numbers, let alone the tens of thousands of SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS including heart attacks, blood clots, miscarriages, permanent paralysis following the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs. The public declaration by Fauci before approval that he expected it, is also unethical influencing, but that is the least of the crimes.
Faked Approval
It seems the FDA executed a clever ruse in which it issued separate rulings for a Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech vaccine which is widely used in the USA, and another ruling for the similar vaccine of Pfizers German-based partner and developer of the mRNA platform, BioNTech of Mainz. It is only BioNTech that got FDA approval, but conditioned on completion of a series of further tests on select groups including infants, pregnant women and youth, by 2027. The US vaccine, Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, only got extension of its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), not full approval!
In their separate letter to Pfizer, the FDA stated, “On August 23, 2021, having concluded that revising this EUA is appropriate to protect the public health or safety under section 564(g)(2) of the Act, FDA is reissuing the August 12, 2021 letter of (Emergency Use) authorization in its entirety with revisions incorporated to clarify that the EUA will remain in place for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the previously-authorized indication and uses...”
Buried in a footnote in the letter the FDA admits there are two legally separate entities and vaccines - Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine and BioNTech GmbH of Mainz with its own vaccine trade-named Comrinaty. The FDA writes that “The products are LEGALLY DISTINCT WITH CERTAIN DIFFERENCES. Legally distinct means two separate vaccines. If you find this confusing it is meant to be. Only under an EUA ruling is Pfizer presently exempt from vaccine liability. Some lawyers are calling the FDA ruse a classic “bait and switch” tactic, a form of fraud based on deception.
US vaccinologist and a developer of the mRNA technique, Dr Robert Malone, has accused the FDA of playing a “bureaucratic shell game” with their supposed early approval of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. He cites the two separate FDA letters, “There is a letter for Pfizer and a letter for BioNTech. The New York Times and the Washington Post got it wrong. The authorization is not for Pfizer. The authorization is for BioNTech, and it will only be initiated at the time BioNTech PRODUCT BECOMES AVAILABLE...”
Adding to the bizarre irregularities, in their two separate letters, one to BioNTech and another to Pfizer, the FDA repeatedly deletes the location of the vaccine manufacturing they approve. Why that? Is it in China where BioNTech has a joint agreement with Fosun Pharma of Shanghai to JOINTLY PRODUCE and market Comirnaty vaccine for COVID-19? Why do they need to hide that location data from the public? Would it expose the entire fraud?
FDA-Pfizer Conflicts of Interest
In 2019 Pfizer made a very conflicted appointment to its board of directors. It took Scott Gottlieb, who had just resigned as head of the FDA three months earlier. If this gives an appearance of a huge conflict of interest, it is. Alongside Gottlieb at Pfizers Board of Directors sits Dr Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who headed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation until 2020. The Gates Foundation is behind every single key part of the covid vaccine rush and owns stock in Pfizer to boot.
Another person who links Pfizer and Gates is Prof. Holly Janes, a bio-statistical expert in Gates’ hometown Seattle, at the Fred Huff cancer research center. Janes is also a member of the FDA Vaccine Committee until 2023. Notably, she co-designed the controversial trials for both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines for Fauci’s NIAID from her Seattle center, which is also FUNDED by the Gates Foundation.
Janes is Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, known as Fred Hutch. Earlier she received Gates Foundation research money for a six year period when she worked for the Gates Foundation from 2006 to 2012 to develop “statistical and study design support for pre-clinical vaccine performance trials.” Prof. Janes also helped develop the program that TRACKS VACCINE DATA at John Hopkins University.
The person who runs FDA as “Acting Director” is Janet Woodcock. To call her tainted is mild. She has been at FDA since 1986, almost as long as Fauci at NIAID. Woodcock was Bidens choice to head FDA, but a massive opposition from 28 groups including state attorneys general and citizen groups forced him to name her “acting,” which does not need Congressional scrutiny.
Woodcock was directly responsible for the FDA approval of deadly opioids over the objections of her own scientists and other advisors. Two decades ago as head of the FDA unit responsible, Woodcock was instrumental in the approval of a powerful opioid, Zohydro, even though the FDA’s own scientific advisory committee voted 11-2 to keep the drug off the market because it was unsafe. The online Drugs.com writes, “Hydrocodone (Zohydro) can slow or stop your breathing. Never use Zohydro ER in larger amounts, or for longer than prescribed. .. Swallow it whole to avoid exposure to a potentially fatal dose. Hydrocodone may be habit-forming, even at regular doses”. Woodcock later approved the sale of a high-strength narcotic pill, OxyContin, as “safer and more effective” than other painkillers based on the false claims of the now bankrupt manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. Some 500,000 Americans have since died as a RESULT OF OPIOD ADDICTION.
Woodcock clearly is the key FDA person behind the duplicitous August 23 Pfizer decision, seeing to it that there were no public advisory hearings to review relevant data. It would be relevant to know what discussions or communications went on with her former boss, now Pfizer director, Scott Gottlieb.
Why?
There are many unanswered question in this twisted tale of corruption at FDA and Pfizer. Was this theater rushed through by the Biden Administration to accelerate the forced vaccination of millions of Americans uncertain or skeptical of taking an emergency or experimental jab? Why is there such an incredible pressure from mainstream media and politicians to vaccinate every man, woman and now child in the US? Are the vaccines really safe if there are so many dire cases of adverse events after the Pfizer jab? Why did the FD refuse to allow its independent vaccine committee to weigh in?
It is worth noting that as of August 14 Pfizer does not mandate vaccines for its own employees. Also the Biden White House does not mandate vaccines for its staff. These are all serious issues that demand serious and honest answers.
About the author:
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK.
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Yes, the FDA really HAS given full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
After the FDA announcement a week ago that Comirnaty, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, had been approved, it took less than a day for antivaxxers to spin a conspiracy theory claiming that the FDA hadn’t really approved the Pfizer vaccine at all and that Comirnaty wasn’t available, all to protect Pfizer from liability. Its a superficially plausible conspiracy theory that falls apart upon closer inspection.
By David Gorski
Science Based Medicine
August 30, 2021
One week ago today, the FDA granted FULL APPROVAL TO COMIRNATY, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, and there was much rejoicing. One reason for the rejoicing was the belief, widespread among health authorities, that one thing holding many back from getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was the knowledge of how the three COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the US (made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson) had been distributed under an emergency use authorization (EUA). Because this was less than full FDA approval in that it is a MECHANISM which permits the FDA to “allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives,” so the thinking goes, many vaccine-hesitant didn’t trust the vaccines but would trust them once the FDA formally approved them, as STEVE NOVELLA DISCUSSED LAST WEEK. To some extent, this might be true, although I rather suspect that the number of vaccine-hesitant who will be persuaded by full FDA approval of Comirnaty to get the shot will be relatively small compared to what was hoped for. I also know that full FDA approval won’t sway antivaxxers in the least.
Indeed, it was almost as though antivaxxers were ready with a line of propaganda about Comirnaty and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Just to be transparent, I will note that I wrote about this last week for my not-so-super-secret other blog, but this bit of misinformation has gone viral to the point where I thought it very much worthwhile to cover it for Science-Based Medicine as well. Obviously, there will be overlaps between my previous post and what I’m writing now, but there have also been developments since last week that weren’t covered, and as a result this post is substantially different from the previous one. (Also, if you don’t read my other blog, this will be all new to you anyway.) Moreover, since I wrote that post, I think Ive found an element from FDA messaging that left the door open to a new conspiracy theory that builds on this one. As I’ve said before, I do grudgingly almost have to hand it to antivaxxers. No matter how often their misinformation based on bad science, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories is debunked with science, evidence, events, and reason, theyre always ready with a Talking Point B (and C and D and E) to replace the debunked talking point with a new one. In this case, after Comirnaty had been approved on Monday, antivaxxers came up with this conspiracy theory by Tuesday.
But what is this conspiracy theory? Follow me down the rabbit hole.
“The FDA pulled a bait and switch”
Although the sources that led me to this particular conspiracy theory were articles posted by Tuesday, I’ll begin with a Tweet from antivax “thought leader” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:
Here’s my latest with @NassMeryl… Buried in fine print of Monday’s approval by FDA of Pfizer Comirnaty COVID vaccine are 2 critical facts that affect whether vaccine can be mandated + whether Pfizer can be held liable for injuries.
The ARTICLE LINKED to claims:
The press REPORTED that VACCINE MNDATES are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now REQUIRED the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.
But there are several bizarre aspects to the FDA approval that will prove confusing to those not familiar with the pervasiveness of the FDA’s regulatory capture, or the depths of the agency’s cynicism.
First, the FDA acknowledges that while PFIZER has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine produced under EMERGENCY USE AUTHORIZATION (EUA) - still available for use.
The FDA DECREES that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product.
So what does that particular footnote in the FDA LETTER say? Let’s quote it:
The licensed vaccine has the same formulation as the EUA-authorized vaccine and the products can be used interchangeably to provide the vaccination series without presenting any safety or effectiveness concerns. The products are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness.
So the licensed vaccine (Comirnaty) has the same formulation as BNT162b2, the designation for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that has been distributed since December under an EUA. However, for reasons not described in the FDA letter, the FDA says that the two are “legally distinct,” and there is the phrase that’s launched a major conspiracy theory among antivaxxers.
RFK Jr. and Meryl Nass continue:
Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not impact safety or “effectiveness.”
There is a huge real-world difference between products approved under EUA compared with those the FDA has fully licensed.
EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.
U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines.
I’ve pointed out, here and elsewhere, many times before that the NUREMBERG CODE GAMBIT is nothing more than a convenient way of comparing vaccine advocates and those favoring vaccine mandates to Nazis. First, it deceptively conflates a legal definition of “experimental” or “investigational” (basically any drug or biological that hasn’t yet received full FDA approval) with a scientific definition of “experimental.” The way I like to show the deception is to point out that a product that has gone through phase 1, 2, and 3 testing involving tens of thousands of subjects, over 300 million doses of which have been administered with an excellent record of safety and effectiveness in just the US alone, is not, by any reasonable scientific definition, “experimental” any more. It’s just not yet FDA-approved. Moreover, the “Nuremberg Code” gambit intentionally ignores more recent statements of ethics regarding human subjects research, such as the BELMONT REPORT in the 1970s and the DECLARATION OF HELSINKI, which was most recently updated in 2018. Why would antivaxxers ignore a more recent and comprehensive statement on the ethics of human subjects research in favor of a 75 year old code that, while historically very important, is not the current standard? Isn’t it obvious? The more recent reports don’t involve a judgment against Nazis, and antivaxxers are about nothing if they aren’t about comparing doctors to Nazis and vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.
You can see the conspiracy theory here. To sum up its essence, antivaxxers are claiming that the FDA did a “bait and switch,” approving Comirnaty, the Pfizer vaccine given a trade name while leaving BNT162b2, the designation of the vaccine that had been granted an EUA under the same EUA, all in order to not just give the “appearance” that COVID-19 vaccine mandates are now legal but to allow the old BNT162b2 not to have to be covered under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, the law that created the Vaccine Court and mandates that all claims of vaccine injury go through the Vaccine Court first before they can go through regular federal courts.
Of course, antivaxxers frequently forget to mention that the Vaccine Court is rather lax. The Vaccine Court was designed, if anything, to err on the side of paying out, as the Daubert standard for admissibility of expert witnesses isn’t always enforced, leading sometimes to “expert witnesses” who would never be allowed in regular courts. Speculation is permitted, and all that is required to potentially win a settlement is a “BIOLOGICALLY PLAUSABLE” MECHANIM mechanism, rather than a scientifically demonstrated mechanism. Also, it’s a civil court, and the standard of evidence for compensation is what some have called “50% and a whisker.” Moreover, compensation is AUTOMATIC for so-called “table-injuries” (known injuries that science attributed to vaccines listed on the VACCINE INJURY TABLE). Indeed, I frequently suspect that what drives so much of the antivax hatred towards the Vaccine Court is not just that it has rejected claims of causation of autism by vaccines, but from trial lawyers. Even though they can get a lucrative steady paycheck billing their hourly rates while representing families taking their case to the Vaccine Court, trial lawyers who want to sue vaccine manufacturers for fantastical “vaccine injuries” will never get a massive contingency fee percentage of a huge headline-making award.
In any event, UC-Hastings LAW PROFESSOR DORIT REISS has explained that vaccines issued under an EUA are probably not covered by the NCVIA of 1986 and the Vaccine Court, but under a much more restrictive system:
In essence, COVID-19 vaccines manufacturers, distributors, and administrators are currently almost completely exempt from liability because the vaccines and other COVID-19 products - are under a PUBLIC READINESS AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS ACT (PREP) DECLARATION.
The only exception the only situation where you can sue these actors - is if you can show they engaged in “willful misconduct”.
The conditions are rather restrictive, too. The vaccine maker must have acted:
· intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose;
· knowingly without legal or factual justification; and
· in disregard of a known or obvious risk that is so great as to make it highly probable that the harm will outweigh the benefit
Reiss further notes:
People harmed by a vaccine covered by the declaration may turn for compensation to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program WHICH IS HARD TO USE.
So there you have the conspiracy theory in a nutshell. Ironically, RFK Jr.’s version of the conspiracy theory is the least wild one.
Robert Malone and Greg Hunter crank the conspiracy up to 11
Although I don’t know for sure, I think that this particular conspiracy theory originated with Dr. Robert Malone. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He’s a scientist who’s made a name for himself in crank circles by claiming to be the “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” He isn’t, as far as I can tell, although that doesn’t stop him from ranting about how his contributions to the vaccine are being “ERASED FROM WIKIPEDIA” for going against orthodoxy on COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines against the disease. Amusingly, it appears that his wife got busted editing his Wikipedia entry under the nym Glasspool1 and that there were a lot of other suspicious edits to his entry, leading Wikipedia editors to take action to put the kibosh on this attempt to use Wikipedia for self-promotion.
In any event, the first instance of this conspiracy theory that I saw was published last Tuesday on Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog as a post titled FDA LIED - VAX NOT APPROVED STILL EXPERIMENTAL:
The big news the FDA had given “full approval” to the Pfizer CV19 vaccine is a HUGE lie. The FDA has granted approval to some future vaccine called “Comirnaty.” (FDA approved the biologics license application (BLA) submitted by BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH for COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA). (HERE’S THE LETTER FROM THE FDA TO PFIZER) You cannot get Comirnaty now because it does not exist. Who knows when, in the future, they will manufacture it so you can get this vax. What you can get is the same old experimental Pfizer vaccine that is under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). All the FDA did was extend the EUA for the crap they were already injecting. This is the vaccine that is available for the forced mandates to civilians and military alike. It’s a total experimental vaccine, and they lied to the public and said it was “fully approved” and “safe and effective.” In a letter to Pfizer on Monday, the FDA said, “… the EUA will remain in place for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the previously-authorized indication and uses. . . There it is in black and white from the criminal NUREMBERG CODE violating liars at the FDA.
Don’t take my word for it. Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA (that is found in the so-called vaccines), says there are “two vaccines.” Today, Dr. Malone explained what the FDA did on Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” There was one approval for a future vaccine, and one extension of the Emergency Use Authorization for the vaccine being used now. There is little doubt this will continue to be used for all the upcoming mandates. Is this a huge lie to trick the public into taking the experimental shot? I say yes.
Unsurprisingly, Hunter (whom I had, oddly enough, never heard of before encountering this article) invoked the Nuremberg Code gambit, because of course he did. Unlike RFK Jr., though, Hunter completely ignored the footnote in the FDA letter stating that Comirnaty and BNT162b2 have the same formulation and can be used interchangeably, and instead went right for this rather confusing passage:
On August 23, 2021, having concluded that revising this EUA is appropriate to protect the public health or safety under section 564(g)(2) of the Act, FDA is reissuing the August 12, 2021 letter of authorization in its entirety with revisions incorporated to clarify that the EUA will remain in place for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the previously-authorized indication and uses, and to authorize use of COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) under this EUA for certain uses that are not included in the approved BLA. In addition, the Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers Administering Vaccine (Vaccination Providers) was revised to provide updates on expiration dating of the authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and to update language regarding warnings and precautions related to myocarditis and pericarditis. The Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers was updated as the Vaccine Information Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers, which comprises the Fact Sheet for the authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and information about the FDA-licensed vaccine, COMIRNATY (COVID- 19 Vaccine, mRNA).
So what does this mean? The language about Comirnaty is, as is often the case, confusing legalese and jargon. First of all, what this means is that, while Comirnaty is now fully FDA-approved for use in people age 16 and older to prevent COVID-19, its use in those aged 12-15 will continue to fall under an updated EUA rather than full FDA approval, just as the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine’s use has since the EUA was issued for this indication in May. The reason is simple. Approval of a biologics license application (BLA) requires more follow-up data than an EUA, and insufficient time has passed since the clinical trial upon which the FDA based its May EUA that authorized use of the Pfizer vaccine in children aged 12-15 was concluded. As the FDA put it in a PRESS RELEASE, the vaccine will be “available under emergency use authorization (EUA), including for individuals 12 through 15 years of age and for the administration of a third dose in certain immunocompromised individuals” and that the BLA was granted under PRIORITY REVIEW.
If you have the stomach for it, here is the VIDEO OF MALONE’S CLAIMS (four minutes out of a much longer interview)
And here is HERE IS GREG HUNTER’S RANT.
Hunter takes Malone;s conspiracy theory and runs with it, cranking the conspiracy up to 11 by claiming that, besides the FDA’s extension of the EUA on the Pfizer vaccine (now called Comirnaty) for indications not covered in the BLA (children age 12-15 years and the third dose for immunosuppressed people), the FDA also extended the EUA for existing stocks of vaccines, leading Hunter to rant that its a “huge lie” that the Pfizer vaccine has been “fully approved.” Not only that, but he claims that Comirnaty doesn’t exist yet:
While they did approve the biologics license, the BLA submitted by BioNTech manufacturing for Comirnaty, they didn’t approve the Pfizer vaccine, what we already have… AndComirnaty, you can’t get that now. That’s not out for a few years. So what did they do? Oh, here’s what they really did.
Before I go on, though, I cant help but point out that Comirnaty is indeed available and being used in Europe under that very name, making Malone’s point SEEM RATHER SILLY:
Here’s all the proof that you should need that this vaccine already exists. My vaccination record (all I’ve done is scrubbed identifying information as I prefer to be anonymous on twitter). Will you now accept that this vaccine DOES exist and your sources are liars?
None of this, of course, deters Hunter. Hunter then quotes the part in the passage above about the FDA reissuing the August 12, 2021 letter of authorization in its entirety with revisions incorporated to clarify that the EUA will remain in place for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the previously-authorized indication and uses, and to authorize use of COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) under this EUA for certain uses that are not included in the approved BLA. He then goes on to rant:
Can you get the Comirnaty now? Can you get that now? No, thats the only license they gave. You canҒt get that right now. What you can get is whats in the emergency use authorization. ThatҒs what theyre going to inject everyone with. You canҒt get the new approved vaccine. Its not been created yet, and itҒs only for the BioNTech manufacturing of Comirnaty. I believe thats how you say it. It doesnҒt matter; you cant get it for a couple of years. What you can get is the crap theyҒve already been injecting into us, and theyve extended the emergency use violation, meaning that when you have the Pentagon mandating vaccinations and mandating for state and federal workers they’re mandating the forced participation in an experimental drug trialand a dangerous one at that. Shame on you, FDA, for lying! You didnגt give full approval for the crap that theyre going to use in the next couple of years.
It’s not just Hunter, either, who picked up this conspiracy theory and ran with it. For example, Robert Barnes, a conservative lawyer who has WORKED FOR ALEX JONES and has been a regular contributor to Jones conspiracy website Infowars, TWEETED:
There is no *available* FDA approved licensed vaccine. Here’s what is happening. If FDA approved & licensed COVID19 vaccine, it would have to revoke the EUA vaccines & subject the vaccine maker to more liability risk. So it only approved a future vaccine that isn’t “available”.
Again, this doesnt make sense, given that Comirnaty is clearly already available in Europe, at least. Indeed, when RFK Jr. sounds less out there than you do, you really should rethink, but rethinking is not what conspiracy theorists do. Instead, they double down. Where RFK Jr. only says that the FDA has stated that supplies of Comirnaty are simply constrained right now and that the FDA is taking advantage of this to allow the old vaccine to continue to be distributed under the EUA and thereby supposedly escape falling under the NCVIA of 1986, Malone and Hunter go far beyond that and much deeper into the rabbit hole of conspiracy mongering by saying that this was intentional all along.
But what’s really going on?
The FDAs action, explained
Last Thursday (after I had written the first version of this post in which I expressed a bit of puzzlement over why the FDA would have chosen this route), Aaron Blake wrote an excellent explainer for The Washington Post titled “VACCINE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS BECOME VEN MORE DESPERATE AFTER FULL FDA AUTHORIZATION”. (That is, of course, a great title and very accurate.) Blake, as I did, notes first about the claim that the FDA never really approved the Pfizer vaccine:
Its a claim many of the most prominent vaccine skeptics you might have heard of are pushing with increasing gusto. ItҒs just not something that, according to experts, actually lines up with the FDAs announcement.
Some of these claims are rather inscrutable. But they boil down to the idea that the FDA has engaged in a bait-and-switch. While it fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that will be marketed under the name Comirnaty, the FDA also extended the emergency-use authorization for the same vaccine under the existing name.
Some have gone so far as to ignore the former and claim this was strictly about extending the emergency-use authorization (EUA). But most of it involves suggesting the full authorization provides a pretext for mandating the emergency-use version (which some wrongly suggest is different). Others have wrongly claimed that if this was truly a real, full authorization, the EUAs would have to be voided җ so the fact that they arent means it isnҒt a full authorization.
Blake then cites a different footnote that I should have cited:
Although COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) is approved to prevent COVID-19 in individuals 16 years of age and older, there is not sufficient approved vaccine available for distribution to this population in its entirety at the time of reissuance of this EUA. Additionally, there are no products that are approved to prevent COVID-19 in individuals age 12 through 15, or that are approved to provide an additional dose to the immunocompromised population described in this EUA.
This is actually quite clear and I should have noticed it in my first version. There isnt enough Comirnaty to take care of the entire population that needs to be vaccinated. That is a very different claim than saying that Comirnaty is not available and even more different than the claim made by Hunter and others that it wonҒt be available until 2023, which appears to have come out of thin air. (At least, if there is a basis for it, I havent been able to find it in nearly a week.)
Blake then goes on to explain why the FDA acted as it did, pointing to another claim by antivax conspiracy theorists that came out of thin air:
As for the idea that they simply wouldnҒt be allowed to continue the EUAs if they truly had a fully approved version? That comes out of thin air. The FDA is allowed to continue with EUAs even if a fully approved treatment is available, as long as there isnt an ғadequate amount of the fully approved treatment available. (The above footnote is appended to the FDA using this precise language.)
WhatԒs more, the full authorization doesnt include some groups in the EUAs, such as those between 12 and 15 years of age җ meaning those groups wont yet have access to the fully authorized version.
ғThat language gives FDA a tremendous amount of flexibility to continue to issue EUAs, or to retain existing EUAs, even after one or more products are approved, said Patricia J. Zettler, a former FDA attorney and law professor at Ohio State University. ԓFor example, remdesivir is fully approved for the treatment of covid-19 requiring hospitalization, but there remains an EUA for the product for pediatric patients outside the scope of the approval.
Zettler added: ԓThere is nothing suspicious going on here; this is just regulatory language explaining why a legal standard is met.
In other words, the FDA phrased its letter as it did in order to explain that it was meeting the standard of the law. Basically, even though Comirnaty is available now, itԒs not available in sufficient supply to meet current need, and the FDA is allowed to continue the EUA for BNT162b2 until supplies of Comirnaty are sufficient. Also, by law, the FDA couldnt yet approve BNT162b2 for the other uses covered by its EUAs, namely children 12-15 years old and third ғbooster doses for people with weakened immune systems for whatever reason, be it disease, cancer chemotherapy, or whatever.
If you want a more step-by-step explanation, I found a great Twitter thread explaining the situation:
I also like how he finishes thusly, one might sayԅinsolently:
Truly, I couldnt do better myself, other than to reference this particular post on Robert Malone. YouҒll excuse me if I couldnt resist, but, whatever role Malone might have played in developing lipid nanoparticle-encapsulated mRNA as a means of getting cells to make a desired protein, right here, right now, in 2021 he has become a full-on conspiracy crank.
A wrinkle
I will conclude by circling back to a rather cryptic comment that I made near the beginning of this post about a ғkey element behind the FDA messaging that might explain more fully why there might have been a legal difference between Comirnaty and BNT162b2. Amazingly (to me, anyway) Robert Malone didnԒt pick up on it, nor did any other antivaxxers OTHER THAN ONE:
So they are saying Comirnaty has “optimized codons to improve antigen expression” while the “V8” formulation that was used on the animals during the trial does not contain that.
This is one I found intriguing, but not entirely sure it is a cause for immediate concern.
Again, I hesitate to bring this up because doing so risks giving antivaxxers another talking point. On the other hand, its always better to be proactive, so that if one of the bigger antivax social media influencers picks up on this a refutation will be ready.
First, though, what does this mean?
As I’ve explained before, in brief, DNA replicates from a DNA template and results in a double-stranded molecule that is very stable, as it has complementary sequences that tightly bind to each other in a sequence-specific fashion. This DNA template is unwound by enzymes that use the template to make RNA strands, which are single-stranded, which is then used by a ribosome to make protein out of amino acids. Again, to put it simply, each nucleotide equals one letter of the code; each three-nucleotide sequence (codon) equals one word that translates to an amino acid. Given that there are four nucleotides, there are 64 possible codons. Since there are only 20 amino acids, that means that most amino acids are encoded by more than one combination of nucleotides or more than one codon, leaving aside codons that code for “start” and “stop”; i.e., the genetic code is redundant.
What this regulatory statement seems to be saying is that Comirnaty, while using an mRNA sequence that produces exactly the same amino acid sequence for the SARS-COV2 spike protein using optimized codons.Ӕ It turns out that the use of certain codons can be more efficient at producing the desired protein than the use of others; again, even though the codons used might be different, the amino acid sequence, and thus the protein produced, is exactly the same. What isnt entirely clear to me is when the decision to use the optimized codons referred to was made. There is an article I found dating back to May 2020 that states:
Nucleoside modified mRNA (modRNA) candidate encoding an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike protein antigen. COMIRNATY is the lead candidate of the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162 program, which includes another modRNA candidate that encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) antigen antigen; a uridine containing mRNA (uRNA) candidate; and a candidate using self-amplifying mRNA (saRNA). The other candidates are known as BNT162a1, BNT162b1, and BNT162c2.
THIS ARTICLE USES Comirnaty and BNT162b2 interchangeably, using the term “COMIRNATY (BNT162b2)” in the title. Moreover, the ENTRY IN DRUGBANK states:
On July 1, 2020, the manuscriptdescribing the preliminary clinical data for BNT162 was available online for scientific peer-review for potential publication.
On July 27, 2020, the Companies advanced nucleoside-modRNA candidate BNT162b2, which encodes an optimized SARS-CoV-2 full-length spike glycoprotein, at a 30g dose level, in a 2-dose regimen, into Phase 2/3 study of up to 30,000 participants aged 18 Ֆ 85 years, and is expected to include approximately 120 sites globally.
And THIS REPORT in USA Today:
The Food and Drug Administration issued full authorization Monday for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Soon, millions of Americans will face a confusing, difficult task: How in the heck do you pronounce Comirnaty?
That’s the brand name for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It’s pronounced co-MER-na-tee according to Scott Piergrossi, president of creative for the Brand Institute, which crafted the name.
It’s a little easier to say than BNT162b2, the research name of the vaccine while it was first being studied, but not much.
I predict that other antivaxxers will make an attempt to quote mine that part of the FDA letter to imply that Comirnaty is chemically different than BNT162b2, but it’s not. BNT162b2 is Comirnaty, and Comirnaty is just the trade name for BNT162b2. Not that that will stop conspiracy theorists.
The bottom line
The conspiracy theories being spread by the likes of Robert Malone, RFK Jr., and Greg Hunter (among many other antivaxxers and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists) falsely claiming that the FDA never really approved the Pfizer vaccine with a full BLA are just thatconspiracy theories. They’re predicated on a misunderstanding or intentional misrepresentationtake your pick - of EUAs versus full FDA approvals, such as the BLA issued for Comirnaty. From what Ive been able to gather, legally the FDA, if it wanted to keep the Pfizer vaccine available to children aged 12-15 and to keep allowing immunosuppressed people to receive a third “booster” dose of the vaccine, it had to act the way that it did. Moreover, although the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines under two names (Comirnaty or BNT162b2 or just the ԓPfizer vaccine) are legally distinct, they have the same formulation. They are the same vaccine.
Unfortunately, this conspiracy theory sounds very convincing. It even had me scratching my head for a while; that is, until I started doing some digging. The bottom line is that the FDA and press are not lying. The Pfizer vaccine is fully FDA-approved.
About the author:
Dr. Gorski’s full information can be found HERE, along with information for patients. David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a SURGICAL ONCOLOGIST at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the GRADUATE PROGRAM IN CANCER BIOLOGY at Wayne State University. If you are a potential patient and found this page through a Google search, please check out Dr. Gorski’s biographical information, disclaimers regarding his writings, and notice to patients here.
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Pfizer Admits Israel Is the Great COVID-19 Vaccine Experiment
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Global Research
September 21, 2021
Pfizer admits its treating Israel as a unique ғlaboratory to assess COVID jab effects. Whatever happens in Israel can reliably be expected to happen elsewhere, months later
Pfizer entered into an exclusivity agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Health, so the only COVID shot available is PfizerԒs. The Pfizer shot has a higher risk for heart inflammation among young men than some of the other COVID shots, but Israeli youth have no option but to get the most dangerous one
Pfizers shot went from a 95% effectiveness in December 2020 to 39% by late July when the Delta strain became predominant in Israel. In response to obvious vaccine failure, Israel started giving out third boosters at the end of July 2021
Vaccine failure is also evident in Israeli data showing fully vaccinated are at higher risk of severe illness when infected with SARS-CoV-2 or any of its variants than unvaccinated, and now make up the bulk of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths
Natural immunity is far superior to the protection you get from the COVID shot, because when you recover from the infection, your body makes antibodies against all five proteins of the virus, plus memory T cells that remain even once antibody levels diminish
According to a recent Israeli news report, which I POSTED ON TWITTER September 13, 2021, Pfizer admits its treating Israel as a unique ғlaboratory to assess COVID jab effects. Whatever happens in Israel can reliably be expected to happen everywhere else as well, some months later.
In other words, the Israeli population is one giant test group - without a control group, unfortunately and as noted by the news anchors, the people really should have been informed that they were part of one of the biggest medical experiments in human history.
Pfizer entered into an exclusivity agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Health at the outset, so the only COVID shot available is Pfizerגs. As noted by the news anchor, we now realize that the Pfizer shot has a higher risk for heart inflammation among young men than some of the other COVID shots, but Israeli youth have no option but to get the most dangerous one.
Israel Rolls Out Booster Shots
ISRAEL was one of the first countries to implement draconian vaccination mandates, even though the Pfizer shot was completely experimental. Israelis were told they could not enter certain venues without a vaccination card, such as restaurants, gyms, swimming pools and hotels.
As a result, they now have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. As of mid-September 2021, nearly 14.6 million doses had been administered.2 At two doses, that would give them a vaccination rate of 80.5%. Its probably a bit less than that, because Israel started giving out third boosters at the end of July 2021.3
The first group to qualify for a third shot were seniors over the age of 60. Less than three weeks later, eligibility expanded to include people over the age of 40, as well as pregnant women, teachers and health care workers, even if theyҒre younger than 40. By the end of August 2021, boosters were offered to all previously vaccinated individuals, all the way down to the age of 12.4
By the second week of September 2021, when an estimated 2.8 million Israelis had received a third dose, a possible fourth dose was already being prepared.5
Health Ministry director general Nachman Ash told Radio 103FM they still dont know when a fourth dose might be needed,6 but clearly, thereҒs no indication that the boosters wont continue. And each time that happens, the people will forfeit their freedoms all over again, until they get the next shot.
Israeli Data Considered the Best Around
If thereҒs a silver lining to this experiment, its that Israel at least appears to be far more diligent and transparent in its data collection than the U.S. The data coming out of Israel is considered by many to be the best in the world because of their commitment to transparency. As explained by Science magazine:7
ғThe nation of 9.3 million has a robust public health infrastructure and a population wholly enrolled in HMOs that track them closely, allowing it to produce high-quality, real-world data on how well vaccines are working Ņ
Israels HMOs ҅ track demographics, comorbidities, and a trove of coronavirus metrics on infections, illnesses, and deaths. We have rich individual-level data that allows us to provide real-world evidence in nearіreal time, [Clalit Health Services chief innovation officer, Ran] Balicer says ҅
Now, the effects of waning immunity may be beginning to show in Israelis vaccinated in early winter; a preprint8 published last month found that protection from COVID-19 infection during June and July dropped in proportion to the length of time since an individual was vaccinated. People vaccinated in January had a 2.26 times greater risk for a breakthrough infection than those vaccinated in April.Ŕ
Unfortunately, we cannot rely on U.S. data to get a clear idea of how the COVID shots are working, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has chosen not to track all breakthrough cases. As reported by ProPublica,9 the CDC stopped tracking and reporting all breakthrough cases May 1, 2021, opting to log only those that result in hospitalization and/or death.
As noted in the article, this irrational decision has left the nation with a muddled understanding of COVID-19Ӓs impact on the vaccinated. It also prevents us from understanding how variants are spreading and whether those who have received the jab can still develop so-called “long-haul syndrome.” Individual states are also setting their own criteria for how they collect data on breakthrough cases, and this patchwork muddies the waters even further.
September 10, 2021, National File posted a SHOCKING VIDEO on Twitter featuring senior doctors and a North Carolina marketing director discussing how they would count recovered COVID patients as active COVID hospitalization cases in an effort to inflate hospitalization rates. Why? For no other reason than to scare people into getting the jab. It’s a marketing ploy.
Additionally, a study showed nearly half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have only mild symptoms or are asymptomatic. They were hospitalized for some other reason and just happened to “CDC CAUGHT COOKING THE BOOKS ON COVID VACCINES” make U.S. data on infection, hospitalization and mortality rates near useless.
Clear Evidence of Vaccine Failure
The boosters in Israel were rolled out in response to obvious vaccine failure. Pfizers shot went from a 95% effectiveness in December 2020, to 64% in early July 2021 and 39% by late July, when the Delta strain became predominant.12,13 While the country boasts one of the highest fully vaccinated rates in the world, they now also have one of the highest daily infection rates.14 So much for the hallowed concept of vaccine-induced herd immunity.
August 1, 2021, the director of IsraelҒs Public Health Services, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.15
The vaccinated are not only susceptible to testing positive, though: Theyre also increasingly likely to experience serious disease when infected. Double-jabbed Israelis started making up the bulk of serious COVID-19 infections in July 2021, and by mid-August, 59% of serious cases were among those who had received two COVID injections.16
Others have cited even higher numbers. August 5, 2021, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients were fully vaccinated, and that they made up 85% to 90% of COVID-related hospitalizations overall.17
August 20, 2021, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky admitted that the Israeli data ғsuggest increased risk of severe disease amongst those vaccinated early,18 and just like the Israeli Ministry of Health, the CDCԒs answer to this dilemma is simply more shots, as if thats going to solve anything.
Mass Vaccination Actually Drives Mutations
Natural immunity is far superior to the protection you get from the COVID shot. Why? Largely because it works on more levels to provide a far more comprehensive and robust immune response. When you recover from the infection, your body makes antibodies against all five proteins of the virus, plus memory T cells that remain even once antibody levels diminish.
This provides lifelong protection, unless you have impaired immune function. The immunity you receive from the COVID jab is in the form of just one type of antibody җ the antibody against the original SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. If that spike protein sufficiently mutates, those antibodies become useless.
As warned by Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche,19 those specific antibodies are also more robust than the nonspecific antibodies you get from natural infection, so they overtake any natural antibodies you may have.
Aside from that, mass vaccination also creates evolutionary pressure that drives the production of mutations. While most mutations result in milder versions of greater infectivity, it could also result in more deadly variations.
This is particularly true when a vaccine is leaky,Ӕ meaning it doesnt fully prevent infection (which none of the COVID shots does). Just like when you overuse an antibiotic that fails to eradicate the bacteria, which allows antibiotic-resistant bacteria to flourish, overuse of a leaky vaccine can pressure a virus to become more lethal.20,21
In an open letter to the World Health Organization dated March 6, 2021, BOSSCHE WARNED that implementing a global mass vaccination campaign during the height of the pandemic could create an “uncontrollable monster” where evolutionary pressure will force the emergence of new and potentially more dangerous mutations.
ғThere can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines.
Israeli Data Confirm COVID Jab Increases Infection Risk
Real-world data from Israel seem to confirm BosscheԒs fears, showing those who have received the COVID jab are 6.72 times more likely to get infected than people with natural immunity.24,25,26
Knowing what we already know about the risks of these shots and their tendency to encourage mutations, it seems reasonable to suspect that all were doing is digging ourselves an ever-deeper, ever-wider hole thatҒs going to be increasingly difficult to get out of.
Disturbingly, a study27 posted August 23, 2021, on the preprint server bioRxiv warns the Delta variant is posed to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines.Ӕ
The researchers found that, if four common mutations were to occur simultaneously in the receptor binding domain of the Delta variant, the resulting virus would not only be immune to the neutralizing antibodies produced in response to Pfizers injection, but it would also enhance the infectivity of the virus.
This could essentially turn into a worst-case scenario that sets up those who have received the Pfizer shots for more severe illness when exposed to the virus than they would have experienced had they not gotten the shots.
Will Boosters Fail?
Initial reports from Israel suggest the third Pfizer dose has improved protection in the over-60 group, compared to those who only got two doses of Pfizer.28 According to REUTERS:
“Breaking down statistics from Israel’s Gertner Institute and KI Institute, ministry officials said that among people aged 60 and over, the protection against infection provided from 10 days after a third dose was four times higher than after two doses. A third jab for over 60-year-olds offered five to six times greater protection after 10 days with regard to serious illness and hospitalization.”
However, anyone who thinks one or more booster shots are the answer to SARS-CoV-2 is likely fooling themselves. Time will tell if the third booster will rein in hospitalization and death rates, but Im not optimistic.
Knowing what we already know about the risks of these shots and their tendency to encourage mutations, it seems reasonable to suspect that all weҒre doing is digging ourselves an ever-deeper, ever-wider hole thats going to be increasingly difficult to get out of.
Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at the Israel Institute of Technology, doesnҒt seem very hopeful either, telling Science the surge in COVID-19 cases is already so steep, even if you get two-thirds of those 60-plus [boosted], itӒs just gonna give us another week, maybe two weeks until our hospitals are flooded again.30
Older Than 50: 60% Who Die From COVID Are Double Vaxxed
Data from the U.K. - where available COVID shots include Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen - are also starting to show vaccine failure, at least among older adults.
As of August 15, 2021, 58% of COVID patients admitted to hospital who were over the age of 50 had received two COVID jabs and 10% had received one dose. So, partially or fully ԓvaccinated individuals made up 68% of hospitalizations.31
Only in the 50 and younger category were a majority, 74%, of hospitalizations among the unvaccinated. The same applies to deaths. Unvaccinated only make up the majority of COVID deaths in the under-50 age group. In the over-50 group, the clear majority, 70%, are either partially or fully ԓvaccinated.
ItԒs also unclear whether hospitals in the U.K. are still designating anyone who is admitted and tests positive with a PCR test as a COVID patient.Ӕ If so, people with broken bones or any number of other health problems who have no symptoms of COVID-19 at all might be unfairly lumped into the unvaccinated COVID patientӔ total.
Why Do Naturally Immune Need the COVID Shot?
As explained earlier, natural immunity is far superior and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity. This is a long-held medical fact that has been tossed aside as too inconvenient to matter in COVID-19. Instead, everyone, including those who have recovered from the infection, are told they need to get the shots.
In a recent CNN interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked why people with natural immunity are required to get the COVID shot even though theyre likely more protected than “vaccinated” people. HIS REPLY
“That’s a really good point. I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”
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Monday, August 16, 2021
NWO - Covid Denialism and Political Radicalization
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Proponents of the vaccine are unwilling or unable to understand the thinking of vaccine skeptics or even admit that skeptics may be thinking at all. Their attempts to answer skepticism or understand it end up poisoned by condescension, and end up reinforcing it.
- Convincing The Skeptics
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The Authoritarian Radicalization of Trumpist America
Trumpists Made Red States Failing States. Now They Want to Do the Same to The Rest of America
By Umair Haque
Eudaimonia
August 12, 2021
If you havent seen THIS BIZZARE, NIGHMARISH VIDEO by now, you should. At a local school board meeting in Tennessee, parents who wanted masks worn in schools - what few there were - were violently shouted down by parents who were opposed to kids wearing masks. The anti-maskers - Red State Trumpists - were literally apoplectic with rage, screaming at the top of their lungs, so much their voices had gone hoarse, shaking fists, punching the air, needing to be restrained. “We know who you are!!” they shouted.
Imagine facing a mob like that - literally baying for your blood. Fellow parents at your kids school. All because you wanted the kids to be safe. That’s America in 2021.
All that raises a number of question in the minds of sane, thoughtful people. What kinds of parents dont want their kids to wear masks? And why does the issue of mask-wearing trigger such disproportionate, violent rage in Trumpists? It seems baffling, bewildering. What happened to these people?
Whats happening is that Trumpist America’s getting radicalized. This might not be news to you - still, I wonder if the average sane American really knows what it means. Its a word thrown around all too casually - “radicalization.” Americans take it for granted now that their neighbours and colleagues - right down to fellow parents at the neighbourhood school - might indeed have been radicalized. It doesn’t have the sinister air of extreme danger it should. So let me try and shed a little light on the issue of radicalization.
Let me continue my example. Why does the issue of kids wearing masks in school trigger a kind of insane, manic rage in Trumpists? The first thing you might note is that the rage is completely disproportionate. Masks dont hurt kids - they protect them. Wearing a mask isnҒt a big deal - if it was, Asia wouldnt be doing it long before Covid. So what exactly is going on here?
What’s happening is the confluence of several things. Trumpist Americans have been radicalised into a certain set of beliefs. The strong should prevail over the weak, and the weak deserve to perish. The strong prove their strength by dominating and subjugating the weak. Any concession to human vulnerability is weakness, and weakness rightly equals death. In Trumpist language, this is being a “loser” or a “sissy” or what have you.
This is an essentially fascist belief system. Its Nietzsche for dummies. Nietzsche, proclaiming God dead, went on to argue that the only point of life was exerting one’s “will to power,” gaining power, of a certain kind - a “master morality,” which was opposed to a “slave morality.” The “master,” the ubermensch, was the one who could dominate anyone else, and therefore, he was the moral one, the one under whom everything - and everyone else - was inferior. Power was the purpose life, and using it to abuse others was the expression of oneגs purity and faith and goodness, in a bizarrely perverse twist of thinking.
Naturally, the Nazis picked up on this wonderfully foolish set of ideas. They declared themselves the ubermensch, the chosen ones, and set about dominating, abusing, and subjugating the weak, which meant anyone different in society. Tied into this set of ideas about purity was a related set of ideas about genetic superiority. You couldnt really get ill if you were one of the chosen ones, after all - you were supposed to “uber,” above, beyond mundane human concerns. You were strong to the point of being superhuman. Illness was a sign of bad blood, bad hygeine, a lack of virtue, which was in the genes.
Not in a virus.
That precisely where Trumpist America is today. It’s subscribed to more or less exactly the same ideology as the Nazis of the 1930s. Think about the central idea: Im one of the chosen ones, therefore I’m strong to the point of being superhuman. Illness is a personal defect, a product of defective blood. Its something that happens to the weak, who deserve it.
Therefore, youd better not make my kid wear a mask. It goes against literally everything I believe in. My kid isnҒt one of the dirty, filthy, vulnerable subhumans. And even if he gets sick - its a righteous test of his or her faith and strength. Mask-wearing is for “sissies,” “wimps,” “losers” - subhumans, not people of pure blood and absolute faith, like me and my kids. And if you make them wear masks, then you might make them turn into those kinds of people. You might sap their strength. They might not be superhuman chosen people anymore.
Or they might not begin to think they are.
It’s fascism 101. You can see the elements of racism and bigotry in it, too, and you don’t have to look very hard. Covid’s a disease for those dirty, filthy others - in poor countries, and minorities in America, whove been especially badly hit. Us? If a few of our kids die, well, so be it. More of theirs will.
Like I said - fascism 101. All that should begin to answer the question - why are these Trumpist Red State idiots so weirdly violently opposed to kids wearing masks in schools? It’s a question with a surprisingly deep and nuanced answer, albeit one which can be summed up in one sentence. They’re being radicalised into fascism.
I’ve chosen that example because its such a psychologically disturbing one - who thinks wearing masks during a pandemic is a bad thing, a burden, a big deal? You’ve got to be wrong in the head in some profound way. But there are plenty more.
If you need them restated, here are a few. The average Trumpist believes the election was stolen. They believe that Jan 6th was some kind of tourist jaunt - and if it was indeed a coup, it was justified. They believe in further violence, if democracy doesn’t consent to their demands for a fascist society, which is authoritarianism, by the way. They believe that society should only be ordered one way, and every form of thought and action and even blood and faith should be controlled, monitored and purified- that’s totalitarianism.
What’s the common thread in that last paragraph? It’s not just that these things are regressive, anti-modern, dangerous, or backwards though they are. It’s the word “belief.” That is what radicalisation is really about.
The modern person, at least, doesn’t really live that much of their life according to beliefs. The modern person lives according to facts. That’s because beliefs are very dangerous things.
Let me give you a few examples. We don’t educate our kids because we “believe” it’s the right thing to do - we know it’s the smart, just and fair thing to do. Every educated kid is a boon to themselves and the world around them. We invest in public goods, healthcare, education, transport, media, retirement - at least in wise societies like Canada and Europe - not because we “believe” it’s right. But because we know its fair, intelligent, and beneficial to all - we know that it vastly improves the quality of life for all of us.
In other words, modern life hinges on a little thing called knowledge. Now, sometimes, that knowledge arrives late - like in the case of climate change, where, unsettlingly, the planet is heating much, much faster than even the worst case predictions. But even predictions are a form of knowledge - they-re not just beliefs, but grounded in reason, logic, data, evidence.
Beliefs are fundamentally different. One of the great problems in American life is that beliefs and facts are placed on pedestals of equivalent height. If someone wants to live their life according to their “beliefs,” we’re told, that’s fine.
And it is - but only to an extent. Because no man or woman is an island. Your beliefs are inevitably going to affect me in some way. If you don’t “believe” in educating your kid properly, well, enough kids like that are going to end up ruining my society, too. Worse, if you “believe” that education consists of teaching your kid things you also “believe” like minorities and gays are going to hell, women are things to be subjugated, animals don’t have souls, abuse is justified, and so on then how are we going to live together in a modern society at all?
I’ve raised that dynamic because it’s exactly how societies die.
Where else in the world do you see this process of radicalisation happening? Afghanistan. There, too, people “believe” that women should wear veils and not be educated and never be seen in public and art is bad and you shouldnt take vaccines and masks are signs of weakness. They teach their kids all that. Their kids become the Taliban, and the idea of living in modern society goes out the window. The violent men with guns who believe their way is the best way, the only righteous and pious and true way, arrive, and violently subjugate and abuse the rest.
Remember Nietzsche, purity, will, “masters,” and “slaves?” Now do you see what radicalisation really is a little bit better? Let me connect all those dots, then.
Radicalization is best thought of as a regression to pre-modern forms of life. Medieval forms of social and political order, culture, norms, values, relationships, behaviour thinking. It’s the replacement of forms of life based on knowledge, with those based on beliefs. Beliefs are things we hope to be true. Facts, which make up knowledge, are things which we know to be true crucially, even if we donגt want them to be.
So beliefs and knowledge aren’t nearly the same thing. Knowledge might not be purely objective, but it isn’t nearly as subjective as beliefs.
Beliefs are things which can be manipulated by demagogues. Run rampant through societies like viruses of stupidity and folly and hatred. Spread as forms of collective delusion and mania through mobs. Like the one threatening their fellow parents in Kentucky.
Please don’t for a moment imagine that I’m putting “knowledge” on an impregnable pedestal. It too should be questioned and debated and challenged and rethought. Indeed, thats the point of knowledge, at least when the idea of it is well understood. Knowledge is never infallible [ that’s the point of it. Beliefs, though, are made to infallible, which is why they’re such dangerous things.
Let me make one final point.
So who’s radicalising Trumpist America? Well, obviously, Trump is. And obviously, too, the hateful beliefs which still gird the rage of Red States are leftovers of a racism and bigotry, a backwards way of life, which never really went much of anywhere. But there’s a third party, probably, too.
Who put Trump in the White House to literally fulfill a mission of “social turmoil” through radicalization? Who designed “mind viruses” to infect America and radicalise it, elevating Trump to power, disinformation and misinfo campaigns on Facebook and so forth? RUSSIA DID. That much we know. Do you think Russia just… stopped? Probably not. The likelihood is there are still plenty of psy-ops at work radicalising Trumpist America - Facebook campaigns, microtargeted ads, Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson who now OPENLY PAL AROUND with Putin’s cronies like Orban. You don’t have to look very hard to see Russia’s hand at work in the ongoing radicalisation of Trumpist America. After all - who benefits most?
In a larger sense though, the who doesnt matter. And RussiaҒs just playing its own game, very very smartly. Only the outcome matters. That outcome is this.
Americas closest parallel right now isnҒt other modern societies like Canada and Europe. Those societies do have their radicalised elements. But by and large, theyre at the fringes, well away from majoritarian power. They donҒt have the capability to plunge entire states like Florida and Texas into chaos. Their extremists and fanatics are kept in check by healthy institutions. Americas very, very different. Its closest parallel right now is place like Afghanistan. Places where the fanatical elements of society arenҒt kept in check - but have the ability to push everything and everyone else to breaking point. Through intimidation, harassment, outright violence. Because, well, they believe flatly crazy things.
The radicalization of Trumpist America has made it a failed state. Its a place where Red States are now Plague Belts - full of mobs of parents who violently abuse other parents for wanting kids to wear masks. But that radicalisation isnҒt going anywhere. Its getting worse, not better. And that is an ill augury for the future, my friend.
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The Dark Secrets Behind COVID-19
By Gordon Duff
New Eastern Outlook
October 8, 2021
As the summer, Northern Hemisphere, come to a close, the Delta variant of COVID-19, and perhaps others, are sweeping the planet and, in particular, the United States. That nation is particularly vulnerable, not so much because of its inequities in providing healthcare to its poor as to its insane political environment.
But is it simply politics? With children, for the first time, beginning to fill hospitals and a flood of dead, not in their 80s but in their 30s and 40s, actual statistics have now become “classified.”
States like Florida, caught over and over faking statistics to save the political dreams of a corrupt governor, have now simply not just stopped counting but have criminalized investigative reporting as well.
But it doesn’t stop there, the CDC blocks reporting on age and race of the dead. The fact that the Delta variation brings about a more severe COVID and does it in hours, even minutes in some, killing more quickly than before is more than a suspicion but why is reporting this blocked in the United States?
Then, worst of all, is what is now clearly a coordinated effort to join longstanding anti-vaccine communities with anti-government extremists and white supremacists, all anti-science conspiracy addicts with flawed reasoning and emotional impediments.
This has given the US a “rebel army” who are seemingly unaware that their actions may well be engineered by certain forces to create and maintain a human petri dish capable of breeding and disseminating a “next wave” of vaccine resistant COVID that will kill us all.
Does this sound extreme to you? If it does, then it is likely you are not trained in psychological warfare where what we are seeing today, promoted quack treatments, disease denialism, vaccine rumors, all of it falls under “cover and deception” components of a “black op.”
Then, when we look at network TV and its role in spreading rumors, and the ties of media executives to extremist groups, we gain a perspective.
An even broader examination of the sources of the groups behind COVID denialism lead to other parallels, like the White Helmets, Bellingcat, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the corrupt OPCW and a vast network of fake NGO’s that steal oil, move weapons and run the international heroin business.
The layer behind that leads to Washington “think tanks” and right wing political action committees and behind that, financial organizations, big pharma, and the social media giants that have been the allies of the disease from day one.
We thus return to the questions which are asked and yet unasked.Ғ
Is COVID bio war?
If so, who did it?
If so, why did they do it?
Then there is the biggest question of all:
Why is no one asking these questions?
Blaming China is not asking a question. Spreading internet hoaxes is not asking questions, it is simply derailing any real investigation by poisoning the water. This is what intelligence agencies do and what we see being done every day.
Only one nation in the world has stopped COVID and yet is in the middle of a raging epidemic at the same time. An examination of the antivaccine movement, the dark money behind it and those who may well have created COVID-19 raises questions.
There are plenty of reasons to question COVID-19, not whether it exists or even whether it was invented in a lab, there are bigger questions that may well be answered. Key to finding answers is tracing down those who lie, not just the endless flood of denialist news reports or the cabal of grifters and profiteers who make up the heart of the anti-vaccine movement.
Bitcoin has opened doors to dark funding, usually attributed to intelligence agencies with RussiaҒ being the go-to when blame is dished out.
Real counter-intelligence specialists, at one time had to profile traitors and terrorists. Now it is even suspected that much of humanity through exposure to social media and device driven psychosisҒ has lost all capability of reason and discernment.
From Paul Rosenberg for SALON:
Political misinformation whether “fake news,” conspiracy theories or outright lying - has often been attributed to widespread ignorance, even though there are numerous examples of 20th-century propaganda aimed at those most attentive to politics. Books like Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomskys MANUFACTURING CONSENT began to challenge that notion, as did the 1991 study of media coverage of the first Gulf War with the memorable bottom line, THE MORE YOU WATCH, THE LESS YOU KNOW. In the age of social media, scholarly explanations have shifted to discussions of “motivated reasoning,” which could be defined by Paul Simon’s line from The Boxer: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
But the ignorance perspective has a deep hold on us because it appeals to the Enlightenment notion that we are motivated to pursue truth. We are “the thinking animal,” right? The important part of that expression may be animal.Ғ Human beings have an evolutionary history, and deception is commonplace in the animal world because it confers evolutionary advantage. Theres good reason to believe we’re not so different, other than the fact that humans are ultra-social creatures. In ancestral and evolutionary terms, being part of a successful social group was every bit as essential as food and water. So deception among humans evolved from group conflicts. Thats the thesis of a recent paper called ӔThe Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions of Falsehood by the Danish political scientists Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen and American anthropologist John Tooby.
While the paper aligns with the “motivated reasoning” perspective, its focus goes deeper than the psychological mechanisms that produce and reproduce false information.
There are also those who see the root of this descent of mankind “back into the trees” as having an earlier source as part of a multi-generational effort, citing funding from both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, to being about what eugenicists back during the latter 19th and earliest parts of the 20th century failed at. We might also note that this effort we make reference to was why so many powerful Americans, names like Bush, Harriman, Ford, Rockefeller and Dupont threw their weight behind Adolf Hitler.
The eugenicists wanted America, and Europe as well, to be ruled by an oligarchy of self-appointed elites, really “robber barons,” and to be populated with mildly ProtestantӔ white people of sufficient intelligence and education to maintain a profitable industrialized society but to stay free of trade unions, socialist politics and, most of all science.Ӕ
The political expression of the eugenicists dream is called populism.Ӕ The embodiment of this effort would be Donald Trump.
Let me remind you that these are just theories, based on political research and, we hope, reasoned speculation.
Investigation provides answers but investigation is always blocked or controlled.
It is not unreasonable to assume that the same people who caused so much death in the 20th century are doing it today as well as no one stopped them then and no one can stop them now.
As for investigation, let’s set down a few points early on, things that simply dont fit in a rational world:
The scientific community has been predicting a bat-borne severe upper respiratory virus (SARS) for over a decade
Massive funding has gone into programs to develop new SARS viruses, money from public heath funds but also defense and even covert cash, mostly American, for “testing purposes”
These programs all published, all had components exploring vaccine strategies and all had classified components where publishing was withheld and data went directly to military and intelligence organizations
Lets now go a step further.
The US government under Donald Trump, as early as 2017, began disassembling the protocols, mechanisms and organizations put in place to protect from pandemics and no reason whatsoever was given for this effort
Similarly the mechanisms to study pandemic spread were defunded as well or put under control of anti-science political hacks or “lobbyists” with connections to highly suspect organizations
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party) backed these measures despite protests from the defense community they normally blindly support
Early failures, borders kept open, pandemic responses blocked, lies and denial on a daily basis enabled COVID to take a foothold and then decimate the United States, all done by Trump and his political backers
All the while, while less and less was done to stop COVID, the “engine of lies” in Washington played a blame game with China and Russia
Then there are these oddities:
False reports of death rates, some low as .00001 percent of infect with the truth was so much higher, initially 60% of infected and down, today, to 2.08 percent with advanced treatments and, also withheld, the most vulnerable having died off already (Source: Worldmeters)
Something inexplicable is happening in America. A pandemic is raging, but not across the nation. No, the pandemic, ostensibly SARS COV 2 or COVID-19ғ is filling hospitals and killing again but is also doing so in a very odd way.
That “odd way” is not inexplicable. COVID is now a “disease of choice,” far more insidious than cigarettes, or the addictions, alcohol, and drugs. There is no “high” from not being vaccinated.
As we enter mid-August 2021, that civil war warned about under Trump has hit, a “soft” version. Talk about losing state borders, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, the heartland of “Dixie” is becoming a near reality.
In analysis, one has to discern whether these are simply “events spinning out of control” or the orchestrations of an agenda driven organization, perhaps the inheritors of the mantle of the eugenics movement that put so much money into Hitlers rise to power or something else?
The rules are simple:
Who benefits?
Follow the money
Yet those rules are never followed and those who ask relevant questions find themselves suffering the scrutiny and we might add retaliation of powerful US agencies.
Yet, we still ask: “Do we have proof of a conspiracy?”
About the author:
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of VETERANS TODAY, especially for the online magazine NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK.
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A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy
Social scientist Michael Bang Petersen on why people believe outrageous lies as a tool in violent group conflict
By Paul Rosenberg
Salon
August 8, 2021
Political misinformation - whether “fake news,” conspiracy theories or outright lying - has often been attributed to widespread ignorance, even though there are numerous examples of 20th-century propaganda aimed at those most attentive to politics. Books like Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s MANUFACTURING CONSENT began to challenge that notion, as did the 1991 study of media coverage of the first Gulf War with the memorable bottom line, “the more you watch, the less you know.” In the age of social media, scholarly explanations have shifted to discussions of “motivated reasoning,” which could be defined by Paul Simon’s line from “The Boxer”: “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
But the ignorance perspective has a deep hold on us because it appeals to the Enlightenment notion that we are motivated to pursue truth. We are “the thinking animal,” right? The important part of that expression may be “animal.” Human beings have an evolutionary history, and deception is commonplace in the animal world because it confers evolutionary advantage. There’s good reason to believe we’re not so different, other than the fact that humans are ultra-social creatures. In ancestral and evolutionary terms, being part of a successful social group was every bit as essential as food and water. So deception among humans evolved from group conflicts. That’s the thesis of a recent paper called “The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions of Falsehood” by the Danish political scientists Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen and American anthropologist John Tooby.
While the paper aligns with the “motivated reasoning” perspective, its focus goes deeper than the psychological mechanisms that produce and reproduce false information. These researchers are trying to elucidate the functions of those mechanisms, that is, to answer the question of why they evolved in the first place. I interviewed Petersen three years ago, about a previous paper, “A ‘Need for Chaos’ and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies,” which was summarized on Twitter thusly: “Many status-obsessed, yet marginalized individuals experience a ‘Need for Chaos’ and want to ‘watch the world burn.’” That paper provided crucial insight into prolific spreaders of misinformation and why they do what they do. But that individualist account was only part of the story. This new paper seeks to illuminates the evolutionary foundations and social processes involved in the spread of outright falsehoods. So I had another long conversation with Petersen, edited as usual for clarity and length.
Over the past decade or so, it’s become more common to regard the spread of political misinformation, or “political rumors,” as they’re sometimes called, as the result of “motivated reasoning” rather than ignorance. But your new paper proposes a broad evolutionary account of the social functions behind that motivated reasoning. Tell me about what led you to writing it, and what you set out to do?
One of our major goals with this research is to try to understand why it is that people believe things that other people believe are completely bizarre. I think it’s clear for everyone that that problem has gained more prominence within the last few decades, especially with the advent of social media. It seems that those kind of belief systems - belief in information and content that other people would say is blatantly false - is becoming more widespread. It can have some pretty dire consequences, as we could see for example with the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
So what we’re trying to understand is, why people believe things that must be false. The traditional narrative is, “Well if you believe false things, then you must be stupid. It must be because you haven’t really made an effort to actually figure out what is going on.” But over the last few decades, more and more research has accumulated that suggests that’s not the case. In fact the people who are responsible for spreading misinformation are not those who know the least about politics. They actually know quite a lot about politics. In that sense, knowledge doesn’t guard against believing things that are false.
What we’re trying to do is to say, “Well, if it’s not because people are ignorant, then what is it?” In order to understand that, we utilize the framework of evolutionary psychology, basically trying to understand: Could there be anything adaptive about believing false information? Could this in some way be functional? Is it actually sort of on purpose that false information is believed and spread, rather than being an accident?
Before you discuss human evolution, you have a section of nonhuman animals. What can we learn from deception and conflict in the animal world?
I think that’s an important stepping stone, to look at the animal world, because most people would say that what animals do is the products of biological evolution, and has some sort of evolutionary advantage. And what we can see in animals is that they spread false information all the time when they are engaged in conflict
One sort of obvious example is that animals try to appear larger than they are when they are engaged in conflict with other animals. That’s, of course, to send a signal to the other animals that you shouldn’t mess with me and if we actually get into a real fight I will win. So animals are trying to get an upper hand in conflict situations by making false signals.
So how does that change, or not change, when we look at humans?
First, that is also what we should expect that humans do, that if they can send false signals that are advantageous to them, then they should do it. What we then discuss is that there are certain constraints on the degree of falsehood in animal communication. That constraint is that communication systems evolved in the first place because they are a helpful for both individuals or both organisms involved in the exchange. So before a communication system can evolve it should be adaptive for the sender and for the receiver. That means that even in conflict situations you cannot set up blatant falsehoods. There are some kinds of reality constraints.
We are then saying that actually, in some situations, with regards to humans and human evolution, these constraints doesn’t operate. That’s because if we look at nonhuman animals, then the conflict is often between two individuals, but in human conflict it’s often between two groups, and the members of one group, are cooperating with each other against the other group. That means there might be certain advantages, within one group, to spread misinformation and spread falsehoods, if that can give them an upper hand in the conflict with the other group. Then we go on to discuss a number of ways in which that might be true.
You identify three functions of information sharing: group mobilization for conflict, coordination of attention, and signaling commitment. You argue that accomplishing these goals efficiently is what gets selected, in evolutionary terms, not truth or veracity. Can you give an example of each, starting with mobilization?
When you want to mobilize your group, what you need to do is find out that we are facing a problem, and your way of describing that problem needs to be as attention-grabbing as possible before you can get the group to focus on the same thing. In that context, reality is seldom as juicy as fiction. By enhancing the threat for example, by saying things that are not necessarily true Ӕ then you are in a better situation to mobilize and coordinate the attention of your own group. The key thing is that it may actually be to your group’s advantage that if everyone is in agreement that we don’t like these other guys, then we make sure that everyone is paying attention to this other group. So by exaggerating the actual threat posed by the other group, you can gain more effective mobilization.
The key to understand why this makes sense, why this is functional, is that one needs to distinguish between interests and attention. A group can have a joint set of interests, such as, “Well, we don’t like this other group, we think we should deal with this other group in in some way.” But on top of that interest or set of interests, there is the whole coordination problem. You need to get everyone to agree that this is the time to deal with that problem. It’s now, and we need to deal with it in this way. It’s in that sort of negotiation process where it can be in everyone’s interest to exaggerate the threat beyond reality, to make sure that everyone gets the message.
You’ve more or less answered my next question about coordination. So what about signaling commitment? How does falsehood play a role there?
I think these are the two major problems, the mobilization on the one part and then the signaling on the other part. When you’re a member of the group, then you need other group members to help you. In order for that to take place, you need to signal that, “Well, I’m a loyal member of this group. I would help you guys if you were in trouble, so now you need to help me.”
Humans are constantly focused on signals of loyalty: “Are they loyal members of the group?” and “How can I signal that I’m a loyal member?” There are al sorts of ways in which we do that. We take on particular clothes, we have gang tattoos and all sorts of physical ways of expressing loyalty with the group.
But because we humans are exceptionally complex, another way to signal our loyalty is through the beliefs that we hold. We can signal loyalty to a group by having a certain set of beliefs, and then the question is, “Well, what is the type of belief through which we can signal that we belong?” First of all, it should be a belief that other people are not likely to have, because if everyone has this belief, then it’s not a very good signal of group loyalty. It needs to be something that other people in other groups do not have. The basic logic at work here is that anyone can believe the truth, but only loyal members of the group can believe something that is blatantly false.
There is a selection pressure to develop beliefs or develop a psychology that scans for beliefs that are so bizarre and extraordinary that no one would come up with them by themselves. This would signal, “Well, I belong to this group. I know what this group is about. I have been with this group for a long time,” because you would not be able to hold this belief without that prehistory.
I believe we can see this in a lot of the conspiracy theories that are going around, like the QAnon conspiracy theory. I think we can see it in religious beliefs too, because a lot of religious beliefs are really bizarre when you look at them. One example that we give in the text is the notion of the divine Trinity in Christianity, which has this notion that God is both one and three at the same time. You would never come up with this notion on your own. You would only come up with that if you were actually socialized into a Christian religious group. So that’s a very good signal: “Well, that’s a proper Christian.”
Right. I was raised Unitarian. As a secular Jew in Northern California at that time, the only place we could have a home was a Unitarian fellowship. It was filled with secular Jews, definitely not “proper Christians.”
Yes, I went to a private Catholic school myself, so I’ve been exposed to my portion of religious beliefs as well. But there’s another aspect that’s very important when it comes to group conflict, because another very good signal that you are a loyal member is beliefs that the other group would find offensive. A good way to signal that I’m loyal to this group and not that group is to take on a belief that is the exact opposite of what the other group believes. So that creates pressure not only to develop bizarre beliefs, but also bizarre beliefs that this other group is bad, is evil, or something really opposed to the particular values that they have.
This suggests that there are functional reasons for both spreading falsehoods, and also signaling these falsehoods. I think one of the key insights is that we need to think about beliefs in another way than we often do. Quite often we think about the beliefs that we have as representations of reality, so the reason why we have the belief is to navigate the world. Because of that, there needs to be a pretty good fit or match between the content of our beliefs and the features of reality.
But what we are arguing is that a lot of beliefs don’t really exist for navigating the world. They exist for social reasons, because they allow us to accomplish certain socially important phenomena, such as mobilizing our group or signaling that we’re loyal members of the group. This means that because the function of the beliefs is not to represent reality, their veracity or truth value is not really an important feature.
In the section “Falsehoods as Tools for Coordination” you discuss Donald Horowitz’s book, THE DEADLY ETHNIC RIOT. What does that tell us about the role of falsehood in setting up the preconditions for ethnic violence?
THE DEADLY ETHNIC RIOT is an extremely disturbing book. It’s this systematic review of what we know about what happens before, during and after ethnic massacres. I read this book when I became interested in fake news and misinformation circulating on social media, and this was recommended to me by my friend and collaborator Pascal Boyer, who is also an evolutionary psychologist. Horowitz argues that you cannot and do not have an ethnic massacre without a preceding period of rumor-sharing. His argument is exactly what I was trying to argue before, that the function of such rumors is actually not to represent reality. The total function of the rumors is to organize your group and get it ready for attack. You do so by pointing out that the enemy is powerful, that it’s evil and that it’s ready to attack, so you need to do something now.
One of the really interesting things about the analysis of rumors in this book is that, if you look at the content of the rumors, that’s not so much predicted by what the other group has done to you or to your group. It’s really predicted by what you are planning to do to the other group. So the brutality of the content of these rumors is, in a sense, part of the coordination about what we’re going to do to them when we get the action going which also suggests that the function of these rumors is not to represent reality, but to serve social functions.
What I was struck by when I read Horowitz’s book was how similar the content of the rumors that he’s describing in these ethnic massacres all over the world, how similar that is to the kind of misinformation that is being circulated on social media. This suggests that a lot of what is going on in social media is also not driven by ignorance, but by these social functions.
One point you make is that to avoid being easily contradicted or discredited, these kinds of “mobilization motivations should gravitate towards unverifiable information: Events occurring in secret, far away in time or space, behind closed doors, etc.” This helps explain the appeal of conspiracy theories. How do they fit into this picture?
When we look at falsehoods there is a tension. On one level, there is a motivation to make it as bizarre as possible, for all the reasons we have been talking about. On the other hand, if you are trying to create this situation of mobilization, you want the information to flow as unhindered as possible through the network. You want it to spread as far as possible. If you’re in a situation where everyone is looking at a chair and you say, “Well, that chair is a rock,” that’s something that will hinder the flow of information, because people will say, “Well, we know that’s really a chair.”
So while there is this motivation or incentive to create content as bizarre as possible, there is also another pressure or another incentive to avoid the situation where you’re being called out by people who are not motivated to engage in the collective action. That suggests it’s better to develop content about situations where other people have a difficult time saying, “That’s blatantly false.” So that’s why unverifiable information is the optimal kind of information, because there you can really create as bizarre content as you want, and you don’t have the risk of being called out.
We see a similar kind of tactic when conspiracy theorists argue, “Well, we are only raising questions,” where you are writing or spreading the information but you have this plausible deniability, which is also a way to avoid being called out. Conspiracy theories are notorious exactly for looking for situations that are unverifiable and where it’s very difficult to verify what’s up and what’s down. They create these narratives that we also see in ethnic massacres, where we have an enemy who is powerful, who is evil and who is ready to do something that’s very bad. Again, that completely fits the structure of mobilizing rumors that Horowitz is focusing on. So what we’ve been arguing, here and elsewhere, is that a lot of conspiracy theories are really attempts to mobilize against the political order.
In the section “Falsehoods as Signals of Dominance” you writethat “dominance can essentially be asserted by challenging others,” and argue that when a given statement “contradicts a larger number of people’s beliefs, it serves as a better dominance signal.” I immediately thought of Donald Trump in those terms. For example, he didn’t invent birtherism, and when he latched onto it he didn’t even go into the details there were all these different versions of birther conspiracy theories, and he didn’t know jack-shit about any of them. He just made these broad claims, drawing on his reputation and his visibility, and established himself as a national political figure. I wonder if you can talk about that - not just about Trump, but about how that works more generally.
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Sunday, August 01, 2021
Demonising the Unvaccinated
Vaccine Lobby vs the Unvaccinated: The Global COVID-19 Faultline May Now Be Unbridgeable
By Dr. Mathew Maavak
Activist Post
July 30, 2021
When the global COVID-19 vaccination drive kicked off earlier this year, two distinct faultlines gradually emerged, separating the relatively monolithic pro-vaxxer camp from the more heterogeneous assemblage of fence-sitters, sceptics and outright vaccine refuseniks. The new divide reflected a larger chasm that has prevailed since the watershed event of Sept 11 2001. It was a divide between those who lapped up mainstream narratives and those who instinctively questioned them.
Doubts over the novel coronavirus were sown from the onset by scientific data which appeared sketchy, contradictory and outright DODGY. Big Techs DIGITAL PROGRAMS against undesirable questions and expert opinions reinforced suspicions further. It was clear that earnest scientific inquiry, which thrives on vigorous debates, will not be tolerated.
This ironically resulted in the free worldӔ resorting to the likes of TikTok a Chinese platform once targeted by the TRUMP administration - to post their opinions and grievances, including a litany of adverse reactions to various vaccines. Despite this, Western elites still have the gall to view themselves as champions of ֓free speech even as MASS PROTESTS against the NEW NORMAL roil their CITIES.
The hypocritical actions of countless LEADERS, celebrities and “influencers” worldwide who routinely flouted the very lockdowns they had advocated inevitably hardened public scepticism. If there are different sets of norms for the ruling and the ruled, why shouldn’t there be space for divergent opinions over the coronavirus?
The Informed Unvaccinated
A recent MIT STUDY revealed that CORONAVIRUS SCEPTICS were generally better-informed and scientifically literate vis-a-vis their vaccinated counterparts. The unvaccinated cohort also appeared more “sophisticated” in the use of “datasets from official sources” as well as state-of-the-art visualization methodsӔ to interpret the COVID-19 conundrum. The qualitative contrasts between the pro-vaxxer and unvaccinated camps are nicely encapsulated in this VIDEO CLIP.
Mainstream tirades against vaccine holdouts including profanity-laden epithets such as MORONS and calls to “remove them from society” - further alarmed the unvaccinated. Faced with such gratuitous hostility, vaccine refuseniks can be forgiven for regarding the growing inoculation divide as one between septic tanks and sceptic camps.
One set is fuelled by an intractable Wokist dogma that seeks to undermine every society along its path of contagion. Information is curated by anonymous fact-checkers with little or no domain-level expertise. Obedience is demanded in its totality; otherwise every molehill will be raised to the level of a Mt. Everest through a hyper-trolled hissy fit. Trying to understand the Wokist mindset is like data-mining a bottomless sewer.
Vaccine sceptics, as the author observed, are generally informed by caution, a spirit of inquiry and a PROPHOLACTIC approach to the pandemic. They have been boosting their immune systems through a variety of means since the outbreak. The author himself spends up to 3 hours a day on jungle treks!
Sceptics can also quote an impressive array of experts ranging from mRNA technology pioneer DR ROBERT MALONE, Harvard epidemiologist DR MARTIN KULLDORFF to Nobel Prize-winning virologist DR LUKE MONTAGNIER as well as EXPERT TESTIMONIES before US state and federal authorities. Big Tech and Big Media have not only censored these viewpoints, they may have also played a role in removing cheap, prophylactic drugs like hydroxychloroquine, colchicine and ivermectin from over-the-counter (OTC) pharmacy shelves worldwide. It is considered a heresy to even mention these drugs in the social media. Stricter PRESCRIPTION REGIMENS meant that it was sometimes easier to procure illicit drugs. If one follows the science of statistics, the results are as predictable as they are depressing: DRUG OVERDOSES killed 93,000 Americans in 2020, registering a 30% year-on-year increase.
The global medical gulag ushered in by the NEW NORMAL inadvertently brought together like-minded individuals across borders, ethnic divides and language barriers, particularly via the exchange of information that were constantly supressed by Big Tech and Big Media. Examples of successful prophylactic treatment regimens (e.g. ARMACAO DOS BUZIOS in Brazil) were discovered via these interactions.
Arguments of the Unvaccinated
There are many reasons behind rising pushbacks against an aggressive global vaccine lobby.
To begin with, the APPROVL PROCESS for new drugs and medical devices in the United States may take 12 and 7 years respectively while vaccine development traditionally involved a long, complex process that may span 10-15 YEARS. Nearly all Covid-19 injections flogged worldwide today are experimental vaccines that were developed in less than a year. Tragic cases like THALIDOMIDE BABIES and the CUTTER INCIDENT continue to serve as a cautionary reminder to the unvaccinated. Negative testimonies from families and friends, or from dying patients themselves, are available on TikTok or YouTube alternatives such as BitChute and Brighteon.
As a result, trust in governments has reached an all-time low. Leaders who parrot the ethos of the New Normal cannot reverse course and face the consequences. By the end of 2020, billionaires made US $3.9 TRILLION during the pandemic while workers lost US $3.7 trillion. How can politicians justify this silent transfer of wealth? The figures for 2021 are likely going to be much worse. A prolonged medical emergency, backed by repressive state actions, is the only way this ungodly momentum can be maintained.
Distrust towards official COVID-19 statistics was also fuelled by irrefutable counter-trends. SWEDEN which had never imposed mandatory lockdowns, masking or mass inoculations is faring much better than its vaccine-obsessed counterparts. Schools were kept open and tourists flowed in. Did Sweden just prove the primacy of herd immunity over vaccines?
As of July 29, the cumulative COVID-19 DEATH TOLL in Sweden stood at a relative low of 14,617. Yet, during the initial outbreak of the pandemic early last year, the global Ministry of Truth was livid at Swedens laissez-faire RESPONSE. The Nordic redoubt was prophesied to become a CATASTROPHE and “an EXAMPLE of how not to handle COVID-19.” Swedish experts were carefully cherry-picked by left-wing bastions to be an echo chamber for the New Normal agenda. For a while, it seemed that the only real science coming out of Sweden were the ones vetted by the INCOMPARABLY ERUDITE Greta Thunberg.
In the United States, a White House plan for door-to-door vaccination appeared hypocritical in light of a stubborn refusal to reveal the number of “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases among its VACCINATED staff. Was contact tracing activated to check on people who may have been infected by these individuals?
With such shocking deficits in government transparency, can one blame sceptics for hypothesizing whether it is the vaccines that are ACTUATING the new coronavirus variants? According to a WHISTLEBLOWER who reportedly accessed RAW DATA FROM THE VACCINE ADVERSE EVENTS REPORTING SYSTEM (VAERS), a mind-blowing 45,000 people have allegedly died from Covid-19 vaccines in the United States. Surely, this figure cannot be true? It is nonetheless a fact that LESS THAN 1% OF adverse vaccine events are actually reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This leak has sparked a lawsuit led by attorney Thomas Renz against the US federal government. Since a suit has been filed, allegations must be proven in a court of law under the threat of perjury. At the very least, this action may shed some light on how the opaque VAERS functions. If the lawsuit has any merit - which remains doubtful - another charge may be warranted against the grossly misnamed “fact-checking” industry for being complicit in many deaths.
Scapegoating the Unvaccinated
The renewed COVID-19 surge worldwide has necessitated a predictable scapegoat, going by prevalent liberal logic. CNN’s cherry-picked experts are now labelling the unvaccinated as VARIANT FACTORIES because “the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.” This leap of logic can also be used to hypothesize whether the LGBTQK community may act as “variant factories” for more contagious HIV strains in the future. After all, as the CNN-channelled logic goes: “All it takes is one mutation in one person.” But one can just hear the accusatory shrieks of “intolerance,” “bigotry,” and “hate” when a specious argument is countered by a more politically-sensitive one.
As for “variant factories,” whatever happened to those pangolins or bats that were allegedly the source of the novel coronavirus? Bats can travel up to 800KMS and may live for more than 20 years. Bats are also the ultimate “variant factories”. If the zoonotic theory of COVID-19 was correct, bats from southern China should have devastated the northern reaches of neighbouring Southeast Asia last year. However, the worst affected nations in the region are further to the south. Coincidentally, these are the countries that unquestioningly follow WHO recommendations. Calls by former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to learn from India’s successful PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT have fallen on deaf ears. India had quietly reinstated hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin into the COVID treatment protocol in the face of subtle opposition from its Silicon Valley diaspora.
Scapegoating the unvaccinated as “variant factories” is not only scientifically unproven and ethically deplorable but it criminally likens them to rats carrying a plague. How soon should we wait before the unvaccinated are targeted by mobs inflamed by the “science” of incentivised experts and anonymous fact-checkers? For a historical precedent, think of the centuries-spanning mob lynching of PLAGUE-CARRYING JEWS?
In an ironic twist, nearly 84% of new COVID cases in Israel are among vaccinated individuals - as US Senator RON JOHNSON pointed out in a recent interview. Even if this figure is contestable, how come Sweden does not have a problem with the Delta variant? The EFFICACY of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel has steadily dropped from a purported 90% to just 39% in a matter of months.
At the end of the day, the VACCINE RUBICON has just widened. If current vaccines aren’t working against new variants, why should the unvaccinated jump headlong into the inoculation bandwagon? Coercive vaccination campaigns may have also permanently eroded trust in healthcare systems worldwide.
Section Revelations • Section NWO •
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