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THE VANDEN BOSSCHE CONTROVERSY

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    1. THE AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORTS: COVID-19 AND CARE HOMES.

      The report on the United Kingdom. A passage from the report:

      Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on older persons living in care homes in England. 28,186 “excess deaths” were recorded in care homes in England between 2 March and 12 June, with over 18,500 care home residents confirmed to have died with Covid-19 during this period. UK government decisions and failures resulted in violations of the human rights of people living in care homes, notably the right to life, to health and to non-discrimination. From discharging 25,000 patients, including those infected, into care homes; to denying care homes residents admission to hospital and imposing “do not attempt resuscitation” orders on them without due process, to failing to provide PPE (personal protective equipment) and testing to care homes. Older persons living in care homes were abandoned to die.

      I guess; “people in care homes had their right to life violated”, sounds better than; “people in care homes were murdered,” but it is less accurate.

      THE ELDERLY PEOPLE IN CARE HOMES WERE MURDERED.

      http://preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1184

  2. The content wherein scientists respond to each other is the most important content, IMHO. Del’s commentary is nice, and I really dig his attitudes about scientific truth, but you HAVE to be able to sift through the petty-vs-solid commentary in scientist-on-scientist action. Looking at Dryburg’s version of this ( at https://dryburgh.com/vanden-bossche-theory-fact-or-fiction/ ) , which consists of emailed responses to V.B.’s ideas from 3 different experts, I can’t say a bit, including that Wittkowski displays a mixture of what seems to be nitpicking, as well as comments that reveal that Vanden Bossche may not always know what he’s talking about (it may be that he is trying to use more accessible language–awkward for him, given his scientific-jargonized vocab–and Wittkowski is taking that as “he’s using the wrong words”).

    To look at Wittkowski’s comments more closely (MY PERSONAL REACTIONS TO THEM IN CAPS): “In this sentence alone, he makes three fundamental mistakes:

    1) I am worried about immune escape, as are many other people, see Wang … Ho (2021, Nature). The assumption that nobody is worried is wrong.–TAKING “NOBODY” WAY TOO LITERALLY? V.B. MEANS THAT MANY WHO SHOULD BE CONCERNED AND SOUNDING THE ALARM ARE NOT, AND ALSO PROVIDES A PAPER WITH MANY CONTRIBUTORS REFLECTING THE SAME WORRIES THAT HE HAS, SO HE HIMSELF KNOWS IT’S NOT “NOBODY”.

    2) The escape we see is not from innate immunity (which are not specific to a particular pathogen), but from adaptive immunity (T-cells, antibodies, which are specific to a particular virus).
    I’M PRETTY SURE V.B. GETS THIS–EVEN I GET THIS– EVEN THOUGH HE’S A D.V.M., NOT AN M.D.–THE PRINCIPLES ARE THE EXACT SAME IN ANIMALS AND IN THE HUMAN ANIMAL, SO….?
    3) I agree that the problem is “global implementation of infection prevention measures”, but the lockdowns are the problem, not the vaccines. It is the lockdowns that are “transforming a quite harmless virus into an uncontrollable monster.”–WHAT HE SAYS ABOUT LOCKDOWNS IS PLAUSIBLE, BUT WHY CAN’T VACCINES CONTRIBUTE? WITTKOWSKI NEVER REALLY LAYS IT OUT; HE JUST POKES LITTLE HOLES IN THE LANGUAGE AND INDIVIDUAL IDEAS OF V.B.

    Another case of W.’s splitting hairs? “I would replace [Geert’s claim of] “research expert” with “research coordinator” – “I was a coordinator of the Ebola program at GAVI. So we were interacting with several different vaccine companies …”. Role of a coordinator.”…V.B. HAS SERVED AS A COORDINATOR OR DIRECTOR OF VARIOUS VACCINE-RELATED ENTERPRISES, WHICH I ASSUME CANNOT DO WITHOUT THE REQUISITE EXPERTISE IN VACCINOLOGY.

    COVID is not “chronic” (chicken pox and herpes are) SARS-CoV-2 gets cleared…IT SEEMS OBVIOUS THAT V.B. MEANS, BY “CHRONIC”, “HAVING LONG-TERM SYMPTOMS AS OPPOSED TO A SWIFT RESOLUTION”. I’M SURE HE UNDERSTANDS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CORONAVIRUSES AND CHICKENPOX–AGAIN, EVEN I KNOW THAT STUFF.

  3. [cont’d fr. last comment] And so on, and so on. Witkowski’s comments seem mostly like cheap shots. He continues to split hairs over natural/innate immunity, humoral immunity, etc. In general, he seems to make relative statements into absolute statements, which they never were, and then goes after the absoluteness of the statements. This is a common strategy for confirming bias, and a logical fallacy (a form of the “straw man” fallacy). All, or nearly all of his comments seem to reflect this fallacy–the question is, why? On some level, he has to know he’s missing the point, and skating around it, because Wittkowski presumably knows his s***.

    As far as Yeadon is concerned, I center on this statement: “My selected set of 20-40 snippets which confers my immunity to this virus is DIFFERENT from the set of snippets another persons immune system is using.
    So even if there’s an unlikely variant which escaped my combination lock immunity, it will not have escaped yours.”…BUT IF THIS IS THE CASE, THEN WHY ARE THE VARIANTS SPREADING THE WAY THEY ARE? EVEN CERTAIN VACCINES SEEM INEFFECTIVE AGAINST THEM, SO….WHY IS HE TALKING ABOUT THESE “SNIPPETS” AS IF THEY WOULD KEEP THAT FROM HAPPENING? AND WHY DOES HE ULTIMATELY AGREE WITH V.B. THAT WE SHOLD NOT VACCINATE EVERYONE? HE DOES NOT SAY, AND I WISH HE WOULD. SAME FOR DR. BRIDLE, WHO SAYS HE’S COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSIONS AS V.B., BUT BY A DIFFERENT ROUTE, BUT THEN DOES NOT SPECIFY HIS OWN ROUTE (WHICH MIGHT BE VERY ENLIGHTENING).

    I CANNOT PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND THIS STATEMENT OF BRIDLE’S; THE LAST SENTENCE SEEMS A NON-SEQUITUR, AS HE SWITCHES FOCUS FROM THE VACCINES TO THE LOCKDOWNS: Some have argued that the emergence of partially immunoevasive mutants of SARS-CoV-2 prior to the rollout of vaccines invalidates the idea of vaccines potentiating this effect. However, one could argue that this observation actually supports the idea. The extended global lockdowns dramatically slowed progress towards natural immunity. Time and slow development of herd immunity = potentiation of immunoevasive mutants.”

    The commentary about the lockdowns having slowed the processes of the pandemic and allowed the virus to have the time to mutate are very interesting, as is the one expert’s comment that antibiotics and viruses don’t compare, because the latter mutate much less frequently (although I believe V.B.’s main point is that this process is being accelerated, which makes Wittkowski’s rebuttal amount to, perhaps, this: “It can’t be accelerating because it usually isn’t accelerated”). Either he accepts V.B.’s premises that demonstrate that mutation is accelerating, and that the rate of acceleration is dangerous, or he doesn’t. Whether viral mutation rates are usually dangerous is moot.

    As Del, and V.B. himself keep saying, we need to get these people into a room so they can confront each other, make it public so that the public can watch and respond (although there’s a good chance that the public will simply be attracted to the experts who seem most sure of themselves, poor logic notwithstanding).

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Allegations of ‘astroturfing’ emerged over The HighWire’s coverage of virologist Geert Vanden Bossche and his public plea to halt all COVID-19 vaccination. Del addresses the allegations with a response including important dialogues with RFK Jr. and Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

POSTED: March 29, 2021

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