“all too often catches my attention on this board”.
Come on, it’s a couple of posters who post a lot.
Were you double dosed?
In any case, it’s great you’re not in the hospital!
Guy
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Are you in Taiwan?
Some information for your consideration
You should not have trusted anyone ever.
There is no “anymore” unless you refer to a former babe-in-arms status, when, to be fair, you had no real choice.
Possibly because I teach them some science-based courses, I’'m getting some overseas students in the 20-25 year old range asking me if they should take the jab.
I’m telling them no, while attempting to make it clear that I have no special qualifications in this area (unless you count a Distinction in Population Genetics in the third quarter of the last century) and its just my impression of their risk benefit balance at this time.
Bit worrying.
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That makes you more qualified than 90% of the people authoritatively sounding off on the subject.
While I got no problem with the cautionary general message on mRNA vaccines (and am now rather regretting my Moderna jab, though I have some risk factors which made it seem a least-bad option at the time) there seems to be quite a lot of BS in that Bettermann (2021) article.
Starting with the title “Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer confirmed to cause brain damage,…” The source article only claims the potential for such an effect, and it seems to be based on observing mRNA sequences with the potential to bind proteins and re-conform them as prions. They don’t seem to have experimentally demonstrated this in vitro, let alone in vivo
Dr Bettermann then interprets this as “In other words, the jab has the potential to cause dangerous, disease-causing proteins to absorb into human DNA”
Those are indeed other words. They are unclear other words, but to the extent they mean anything (proteins do not “absorb into DNA” though they may adsorb onto DNA) they are other words with a quite different meaning.
The good doctor seems to be confusing (deliberately or through ignorance) the prion possibility with a reverse transcription possibility, which his source paper does not deal with at all.
Its probably better in such a case to just link to the source (assuming you read it) which in this case is a lot more cautious, though its got some “bioweapon” stuff in it with very thin support.
This would avoid the overlying BS.
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On a personal note, I’m now wondering whether I should take the second Moderna jab. It was due on 22nd, but supply problems have pushed it back another fortnight.
As I said above, I rather regret taking the first one (due to the emerging data on medium and long term risks), but I assumed that essentially “the damage is done” and I wouldn’t materially increase the risks by the second dose.
The delay has me second-guessing this, but I’d think its probably unknowable.
If you don’t get that shot, I’ll come down to southern Taiwan, seize your “Ducked” ID card, and get it myself! 
Guy
I saw Malone the other day on a podcast and I found this piece about him.
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Well I read it. It doesn’t really say anything other than “I’m sooo pissed off that this old guy who disagrees with me gets more attention than my articles do.”
Bartlett is “a writer”. He gives no indication here that he knows anything about science, or the pharma industry, or vaccines, or anything else other than writing, and yet he seems to think he’s qualified to critique someone who (as he grudgingly admits) probably was instrumental in creating mRNA vaccines, and he does so largely on the basis of a long ad hominem. The Dunning and Kruger effect is strong with this one.
"…the mainstream news media is either shamelessly complicit or too stupid to figure out what’s really going on. In that alternate media universe…
"
Lost me at “alternate media universe”. Sounds like the good ól familiar media universe to me.
Woodward and Birnstein don’t live there anymore.
I stuck with it though.
I thought the "“He’s fucking up his chances for a Nobel Prize." quote rather odd used as support for the contention that there was no suppression of dissent.
Possibly relevant quote from the Malone interview.
“The duck is regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical industry”
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And: the hundreds of other people who busted their &sses over several decades to make this technology work. It’s an incredible story.
Guy
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I hope they’ll let us know when they succeed, then 
The Malone-related content in that Nature overview seems not-very-obliquely aimed at downplaying his contribution and claim as mRNA vaccine originator and Nobel Prize candidate. For present purposes, this is not very important, though the " " “He’s fucking up his chances for a Nobel Prize." quote above suggests
(a) At least some of his peers think he’s a candidate.
(b) This might be one way of keeping this elite and presumably independent-minded group in-line. (As well as truckloads of money, of course. The list of company floatations, mergers and acquisitions suggests these are by no means simply disinterested seekers after the truth)
Malone says he’s been assured by The Nobel Committee they will just look objectively at the evidence. Time to quote Mandy Rice-Davies, perhaps, but in any case it doesn’t have to be true to discourage boat-rocking. It just has to be thought plausible.
Anyway, for present purposes what matters here is whether he is in a position to know whereof he speaks, and this does not seem to be seriously in doubt.
Is he motivated by pique at being denied full recognition/access to the trough? Possibly, but this would not exclude the possibility that he is right, and that big, unjustified, and unprecedented risks are being taken.
Time to quote Oliver Cromwell “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken…”, because if they are mistaken, even only a bit, this will be a massive fuckup composed of millions of personal tragedies, and I might be one of them.
(That last bit was me. Cromwell would have been more…Cromwellian)
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“This technology doesn’t work! Oh, and please give me proper credit!”
It does remind one of the old joke: The food here is terrible! And the portions are so small!
Guy
Sorry, but that is just bollocks.
He’s not saying the technology doesn’t work. He’s saying its application has large potential dangers, especially when it is rushed into implemention on a massive scale without adequate oversight or long term testing.
Bit like nuclear power. Short term upside, sure. But fairly low probability risks should be taken very seriously because they have potentially large long term impacts.
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