bloomer

Famous Cardiologist Truthbombs millions live on BBC

89 posts in this topic

43 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What was the time it took between the moment they first discovered an increased numbers of birth defects and the moment they first suspected the connection?

The discovery of increased numbers of birth defects probably happened fairly early on, due to skewing of the expected numbers. We can assume this would have happened around the same time the first thalidomide babies were born. Chemie Grunenthal employees (the distributor of the drug) appear to have had early access, and the first known thalidomide baby was born to one such employee in 1956. Most of the first crop of birth defects were occurring in late 1957, around 9 months after the drug was in more widespread use. The direct causal link appears to have been first established in 1961, but it would have been suspected for some time before this.

If social media had been available back then, there probably would have been more widespread concern about the drug in the public domain as early as 1956 / 1957, but it also seems likely that "thalidomide scepticism" and "anti-thalidomiders" would have been subject to ridicule, censorship, fact-checking by corporate interests, etc. 

This is also reminiscent of the global lung cancer epidemic of the late 19th / early 20th century. A causal link was established by the 1940s, but the tobacco companies effectively propagandised the public into believing cigarette smoking was harmless or even beneficial.  Even by the 1960s, only a third of all doctors in the US believed that the case against cigarettes had been established. 

Edited by axiom

Apparently.

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2 hours ago, Girzo said:

I believe life is too messy for such calculations and predictions. Too many variables in the system. 0.1% would not be justified probably, it's often better to be conservative and not intervene for 0.1% of society. Brutal, but action often lead to more harm, by undesired side effects. For example, your theoretical calculations assume certain threshold level to be achieved that is not achieved and the death rate goes up by 0.5%.

I know you example is a fun thought experiment, with 100% conviction assured, but life never has such conditions.

There's a reason why social science uses p = 0.05 so often, it's hard to be more sure of anything at the scale of society.

The reality is that the actual rate of saved lives is nothing as small 0.1%. So your point is moot. Millions of lives were saved. If anti-vaxxers were in charge millions of lives would have been lost.

The irresponsibilty of anti-vaxxers is almost criminal.

Edited by Leo Gura

You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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I think Brazil's response to covid under the leader of the far right figure of Bolsonaro is a good example of what happens when covid policies are not stringent enough


Be-Do-Have

You have to play the cards you're dealt

There is no failure, only feedback

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44 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I think Brazil's response to covid under the leader of the far right figure of Bolsonaro is a good example of what happens when covid policies are not stringent enough

What happened there?


You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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1 hour ago, Ulax said:

@Leo Gura https://reliefweb.int/report/brazil/toll-bolsonaro-s-disastrous-covid-19-response-enpt

Here's a brief article about it.

They had around 680,000 deaths i think

Very interesting, thanks!

He's as incompetent and stupid as Trump. The only reason Trump didn't make things as bad is because the US has a highly effective deep state of world-class professionals.

Edited by Leo Gura

You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Not today. It's almost become like the default position of the bottom half of the IQ curve.

??????

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12 hours ago, axiom said:

I suppose the vaccine sceptics are thinking it will prove to be another Thalidomide, which was recommended as a matter of course to women in early stage pregnancy in the late '50s to early '60s. It took five years (1957 to 1962) for the connection to be made between thalidomide and oddly increased numbers of birth defects. Ultimately a direct causal link was found, and it was estimated to have caused 10,000 birth defects and miscarriages. Surprisingly, the class action suit was only settled in 2013 - over half a century later - for $89 million.

Back then the standards to approve a drug were different and less strict + the example that you brought up is not analogous to covid vaccines, because literally around the whole world all these companies, institutions, hospitals and countries were participating in this process (not just 1 or two), + billions of people got the vaccine + we know that under 2 month we can see all the side effects (I would dare anyone to find data that shows, that a significant number of people people suffered long term side effects that wasn't under 2 month time window). 

So the idea that collectively everyone participating could intentionnaly hide stuff (when they have the incentive to expose each other) or the idea that after billions of people getting the vaccine all these companies and insitutions after doing multiple tests and research on these vaccines, and they would somehow all collectively make that big of a mistake muiltiple times during the testing process and at the same time no one could leak or show any tangible evidence about it is just ridiculously improbable. 

9 hours ago, axiom said:

If social media had been available back then, there probably would have been more widespread concern about the drug in the public domain as early as 1956 / 1957, but it also seems likely that "thalidomide scepticism" and "anti-thalidomiders" would have been subject to ridicule, censorship, fact-checking by corporate interests, etc. 

In this case the simple "corporate interest" argument won't be enough, because everyone participated in this all around the world. You have all these countries and insitutions with a big incentive to expose each other to make more money and to gain political power. The idea that China or Russia wouldn't say or wouldn't have said anything bad about western vaccines, when they shit on the west all the time, and when they would do anything to gain more money and power in all the other cases,is a ridiculous idea.

The other insteresting thing about this censorship argument is that if the censorship is so biased and strong on this, then why is the case, that I could find all the antivaxx related stuff on google, on youtube and why is the case that experts are able to debunk the claims and the data that has been given by these people?

Edited by zurew

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1 hour ago, zurew said:

Back then the standards to approve a drug were different and less strict

Yes, this is true.  In fact the thalidomide crisis ultimately led to greater regulatory oversight and monitoring of drugs. However, when a vaccine is developed and distributed so quickly, the monitoring of longer term side effects cannot be followed so stringently.

1 hour ago, zurew said:

literally around the whole world all these companies, institutions, hospitals and countries were participating in this process (not just 1 or two)

Thalidomide was prescribed most widely in Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa. Around 2.5 to 3 million doses were distributed worldwide before it was withdrawn.

1 hour ago, zurew said:

we know that under 2 month we can see all the side effects

Two to three months is obviously not long enough, and this is one reason why most drugs are tested for years. As far as attributing excess deaths or an increase in myocarditis etc to the covid vaccines, this also takes time to establish. It will take a while, obviously, and it may yet prove to be "only" a minor link. 

But a minor link is still a link. Birth defects and miscarriages caused by thalidomide were quite rare (0.3%). But the impact was clearly severe enough to warrant compensation regardless. It is something that must be taken seriously. 

This is not so much about a big conspiracy as it is about the proper evaluation and reporting of longer side effects. This can only be done in real time over years. It seems very likely that there will ultimately be some form of compensation to those affected even if the incidence of harms is only a tiny blip relative to the number of administered doses. 

There could also prove to be a very substantial causal link. Only time will tell.

Edited by axiom

Apparently.

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42 minutes ago, axiom said:

Two to three months is obviously not long enough, and this is one reason why most drugs are tested for years.

No, this is where you are wrong. The reason for multiple year testing process is not because the doctors are expecting long term side effects (that will show up after years). But because if you have a completely new drug , then you need to establish all the slow testing process before you get to testing on humans and that requires a lot of funding, but when you get there you don't need years to approve the vaccine, because there hasn't been shown any empirical data that would suggest that after years suddenly long term side effects will show up when it comes to the vaccines.

In this case there were a lot of people who voluntered for testing and that has accelearated the approval process dramatically.

Quote

https://www.immunology.org/public-information/vaccine-resources/covid-19/covid-19-vaccine-infographics/speed-of-development

Has the speed of developing vaccines for COVID-19 compromised safety?

No. All the standard safety procedures have been followed during clinical trials on vaccines for COVID-19 and the rigorous regulatory processes have been fully completed as for any other vaccine or medicine.

BSI%20resource_How%20vaccine%20so%20fast

42 minutes ago, axiom said:

But a minor link is still a link. Birth defects and miscarriages caused by thalidomide were quite rare (0.3%). But the impact was clearly severe enough to warrant compensation regardless. It is something that must be taken seriously. 

As far as I know, regarding to thalidomide,  no tests were done involving pregnant women, so thats the reason why it took time to notice, but in this case, the claims are mostly involving side effects involving heart problems such as myocarditis and things like that, and a lot of tests has been done on all of those stuff. So the question is this: what side effects do people suspect the vaccine cause, that the doctors haven't done any tests about?

Edited by zurew

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19 minutes ago, zurew said:

No, this is where you are wrong. The reason for multiple year testing process is not because the doctors are expecting long term side effects (that will show up after years). But because if you have a completely new drug , then you need to establish all the slow testing process before you get to testing on humans and that requires a lot of funding, but when you get there you don't need years to approve the vaccine, because there hasn't been shown any empirical data that would suggest that after years suddenly long term side effects will show up when it comes to the vaccines.

Without referring to authoritative sources - just from a common sense perspective -  if a side effect can take 1-2 years to materialise, it’s not going to get picked up in a vaccine development and rollout that takes under 12 months. I don’t need to back up this obviously true fact with links to sources for the same reason I don’t need to ask gpt-3 if I’m hungry. 

Phase II and Phase III trials (typically lasting years) are not conducted because long term side effects are expected, but rather - in part - to hopefully discover them if they exist. This is one of the reasons most drugs take a long time to approve.

Yes, it is understandable that they had to rush through the phases and the approval for the covid vaccines. I’m not criticising that. But obviously, there is less chance to discover longer-term side effects with a rushed rollout.

By now we know that there are side effects of the vaccines that weren’t foreseen prior to their approval, so this is a moot point.


Apparently.

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12 minutes ago, axiom said:

By now we know that there are side effects of the vaccines that weren’t foreseen prior to their approval, so this is a moot point.

Such as what?

12 minutes ago, axiom said:

Phase II and Phase III trials (typically lasting years) are not conducted because long term side effects are expected, but rather - in part - to hopefully discover them if they exist. This is one of the reasons most drugs take a long time to approve.

Show me any vaccine where you see long term side effects showing up after years, or give me reasons for why should we expect this time to long term side effects show up after years.

12 minutes ago, axiom said:

Without referring to authoritative sources - just from a common sense perspective -  if a side effect can take 1-2 years to materialise,

"If a side effect can take 1-2 years" such as what side effects?  Again all the claims ,that the vaccine "sceptics" made was around myocarditis and related to mostly hearth issues, and we knew about them from testing that they show up after a few weeks at max under 2 month time window. So what side effects are we talking about that will take more than 2 month to show up?

Even in the case of thalidomide most side effect showed up very quickly and not after years.

12 minutes ago, axiom said:

But obviously, there is less chance to discover longer-term side effects with a rushed rollout.

The idea, that the vaccine can lurk in your body for years without any side effects and then suddenly cause serious long term side effects is not supported by any data and there weren't presented any good reasons for why that would be the case.

Edited by zurew

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1 minute ago, zurew said:

Such as what?

As far as I’m aware, myocarditis is very much a known side effect of the vaccine. Happy to be corrected.


Apparently.

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12 minutes ago, zurew said:

Even in the case of thalidomide most side effect showed up very quickly and not after years.

That’s true, but it took many years for the causal link to be established, as explained. 

Right now we have unexplained excess deaths. These may / may not be attributable (in part) to the covid vaccines, covid policy, or longer term complications from covid itself. This will be investigated and I guess we’ll know - hopefully sooner rather than later.

Edited by axiom

Apparently.

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30 minutes ago, axiom said:

but it took many years for the causal link to be established, as explained. 

That is true, but again no tests were done involving pregnant women, after they started testing for it I believe the causal link didn't take too much time (Feel free to correct me , if i am wrong).

In our case, we have already done many tests involving myocarditis and all the data Ive seen suggest that it is pretty rare. Even if I take your point for granted that (during the early stages, when the vaccines were approved they didn't find any causal link between the vaccine and myocarditis), I could explain that by this: during the approval process the vaccine was tested only on a few thousand people compared to billions of people, so if the chance of myocarditis is incredibly low, it won't show up or it will show up but in like a handful of cases - but even with that many volunteers, the probable side effectc should visibly show up).

So I don't think your point about myocarditis is good, but if you would want to make a strong point I think you would have to show a long term side effect that is much more probable and that didn't show up during the approval process or before the approval for vaccine was done.

Plus it seems, that after the reports more research was done regarding to certain side effects and concerns, - more research was done regarding to myocarditis and all of those still showed that side effects will show up after weeks at max under a 2 month time window and that the occurence is really rare. - this point is important, because it shows that we don't have to rely solely on the test that were done before the vaccine approval, but we can see studies that were done after the approval process and as far as I know the conclusions from them are consistent with what I said.

Edited by zurew

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@zurew Fair enough. Keep an open mind. You never know where this is heading…


Apparently.

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6 minutes ago, axiom said:

zurew Fair enough. Keep an open mind. You never know where this is heading…

Sure, If anyone shows data to prove their point about vaccines being dangerous or much more dangerous than we thought, I will change my position on this.

Thanks for the good faith discussion!

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Pray tell, how many years of studies have you done to ascertain the long term side effects of a covid infection or long covid?

What if getting covid causes you to grow testicles on your face in 10 years?

The double standards here are beyond absurd.

Edited by Leo Gura

You are God. You are Truth. You are Love. You are Infinity.

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7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Pray tell, how many years of studies have you done to ascertain the long term side effects of a covid infection or long covid?

What if getting covid causes you to grow testicles on your face in 10 years?

The double standards here are beyond absurd.

Yes, we can’t know. Some prominent cardiologists - amongst the most cited in the world - believe there is some causal link between covid vaccines and excess deaths.

Now, I say let’s wait and see until there is more data and this can be substantiated.

In the meantime, we cannot know.

I think what is really silly is holding on to the idea that there is definitely, absolutely no link here and that there will ultimately be nothing to answer for. Again, we can’t know yet, but the growing number of medical professional beginning to take this more seriously indicates - to me at least - that there might be something to it.

It’s not necessary to take a position on this yet. 


Apparently.

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