This is an interesting (short) analysis by a Canadian doctor that is worth 8min of your time. I don't know if it's right, but it is a seemingly cogent argument that can't be easily dismissed and demands a robust rebuttal (thread).
The said doctor was concerned after seeing a number of his community patients experience serious side effects. He decided to undertake D-Dimer tests, which is a test to detect blood clots, and found evidence of recent blood clotting in more than 60% of his vaccinated patients.
His argument is that 75% of the mRNA spike proteins are - contrary to design/claims - going intravenous, and ultimately end up attaching to the linings of tiny capillaries (small blood vessels), following which they are attacked by platelets, resulting in blood clots.
In the majority of cases the symptoms/consequences of this may not be detectable in immediate disease. However, this dynamic causes permanent damage to said capillaries, particularly in the brain and heart, and the body is not able to repair this damage.
This would explain the relatively high prevalence of cardiac and neurological side effects being reported. In addition, he argues that the damage is *cumulative*. This would explain why we see more adverse reactions post the second dose, and in patients that have had covid before
This is seriously concerning, and as noted, demands investigation & rebuttal. Covid itself is dangerous, and covid vaccines are effective in protecting against it. But no vaccine that causes unexpected and detectable blood clots in 60% of those receiving it can be called *safe*.
Stories like the below are, fortunately, still fairly rare. However, it would be consistent with the Canadian doctor's analysis. When the vaccine failed to protect against covid, the impact combined with vaccine capillary damage may have caused strokes.
Also worth observing is that the said doctor, when he raised concerns about high instances of serious side effects in his patients to Canadian health authorities, he was threatened with the loss of his license.
He nevertheless decided to speak up. However, you can rest assured that if people's jobs are on the line, for every one doctor willing to speak up, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, that have had the same experience and are unwilling to risk their jobs.
If he is right about cumulative and permanent capillary damage, regular booster shots will be an absolute disaster for public health, as would a doomsday scenario of covid evolving to be vaccine resistant, if reinfection compounds the capillary damage caused by the vaccines.
I'm not a doctor and I don't know what's right. But we deserve to have much better information and assurances about the risks than are currently available, including credible and rigorous rebuttal of these concerns, which are currently lacking.
We are relying purely on the trial data which demonstrated efficacy and sufficient short term safety. But we have absolutely no information on the long term effects, and the mRNA vaccines were *never* supposed to go intravenously, and yet there is a lot of evidence they are.
We have no idea what the consequences of this will be, because it hasn't been tested and we don't have any long term track record. Clinical trials are great, but they are *not a 100% guarantee against a major blunder*. Things do get missed. Approved treatments do get recalled.
What I would like to see is far less religious/ideological commitment to vaccines, and a far more open, transparent, and rigorous dialogue, as well as data collection, on the real world evidence that we are seeing. It is being suppressed, not collected, analyzed and discussed.
In our effort to overcome *vaccine hesitancy* by all means (compulsion and censorship), driven by our (understandable) desire to defeat covid, we are increasing the risk of catastrophic mistakes being made.
Also worth emphasizing: *this doctor was not anti vax*. He recommended and gave the vaccine to his patients. His views have been informed by his direct experience and investigations, including the data from the D-Dimer tests. We need to stop this *pro vax*/*anti vax* bollocks.
What we should all be for is *pro evidence*, and pro figuring out what is most likely to be true. Vaccines are not all the same. The diseases they treat are different; the mechanisms of action are different; the safety data is different; and the risk/rewards are different.
Anyone who claims categorically they are *pro vax* or *anti vax* is demonstrating that they don't understand the difference between between them; don't have any nuanced understanding of how they work; and that they are unwilling to change their view in response to new evidence.
I have been pro all vaccines my whole life as I never had any reason to doubt them, and I was pro covid vaccines until a few weeks ago. Now I am more circumspect/undecided *wrt CV19 vaccines only*. Notable is my personal & financial interests actually align w being *pro vaccine*.
I recently moved to Singapore. My girlfriend lives in Indonesia and I haven't seen her in 18mths. Most of my friends & family live outside of Singapore. I want nothing more than this damn pandemic to be over so I can travel again. An end to pandemic would be great for business.
I have absolutely no personal interest/stake in anything other than the vaccines working as promised and ending the pandemic. I want that just as much as anyone. But my best assessment of truth is independent of my own self interest - it's a discipline I've long cultivated.
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This is a huge scandal. Paul has uncovered a Wuhan institute study that listed an NIH grant number. According to Paul, in the study, two bat coronavirus spike genes were combined w a SARS backbone, which were shown to be able to replicate in humans (cont)
The Hill's reporting claims Fauci lobbied for gain of function research to be permitted again in the US after Obama banned it. If this is true, Fauci was clearly a supporter of GOF research. Wuhan may have been funded due to the inability of such studies to happen in the US.
What is Fauci's defense (having previously told Congress unequivocally the NIH had never funded GOF research in Wuhan). He simply declared that the study Paul references is "not gain of function research", because "qualified virologists" from the NIH say so.
From both a markets & epidemiological perspective, I think there is some legit cause for concern here - if just from tail risk perspective. The Delta variant per se is no big deal, but early evidence of rising hospitalizations amongst vaccinated could be.
A similar trend is being seen in Israel - albeit it is still early days. Some epidemiologists believe lockdowns and vaccines are creating selection pressures on virus that are driving the prevalence of new mutations in the same way antibiotics can promote antibiotic resistance.
They do not create the variants (per se). What they can do is create more space for those variance to increase in prevalence as other variants die off. Lockdowns can select for more infectious variants (Delta), and vaccines can select for vaccine-resistant mutations.
This is an example of the often breathtaking ignorance of European bureaucrats. I don't think I've ever seen so many mistakes made in a single tweet. One of the reasons improved relations with Russia is so difficult is people like this have no idea what they're talking about.
Facts: Russia's economy is growing not declining. It's leaders *do* want to diversify the economy away from natural resources, and the country *has* in fact already meaningfully diversified its economy away from resources over the past decade or so, albeit share is still high.
The rule of law needs more work but it has been improving in Russia. European gas imports are at record highs and gas prices have surged. Europe faces declining domestic O&G production in coming years & reliance on imports may rise. And Russia has built a gas pipeline to China.
To some ears, this sounds sensible. To others, Orwellian.
It's because there is a commonly held misperception that repressive govt historically emerge due to "bad people doing bad things". In fact, it was driven by ppl that thought they were the good guys doing necessary things.
The issue is bigger than the short term issue at hand. The fundamental problem is the human tendency to hubris & a belief that centralized authority can and should ascertain truth. This leads to a tendency towards authoritarianism, driven by expediency & amplified by emergency.
Emergencies have often been the trigger for the emergence of repressive govt, as was the case in Hitler's Germany for eg. Emergencies lead ppl to accept the suspension of typical constitutional guardrails that prevent the excess accumulation of power, as it's considered necessary
One of the most underappreciated attributes of certain stocks is they are *very unlikely to lose you money*. Investors are often too preoccupied with *looking up*, worrying about catalysts & growth/re-rate potential, & forget to *look down* and ask, how likely am I to lose money?
It is striking the number of times I see people dismiss certain cheap stocks because they are unexciting, lack a catalyst & lack multibag potential, and totally ignore the fact that the likelihood of losing money over a decent holding period in such stocks is essentially zero.
Meanwhile, I routinely see people touting stocks for their growth potential, blue sky upside scenarios, etc, and totally failing to consider *how much could I lose if my bullish assumptions/expectations don't pan out*.
There is a problem in the medical field with people considering randomized controlled trials the *only* source of evidence. It is the *gold standard* of evidence, but that does not mean other inferior sources of evidence have no value. It is an excessively binary way of thinking.
Randomized controlled trials should, as a generalization, trump other inferior forms of evidence (although RCTs are not 100% infallible). But in the absence of RCT data, *the best alternative sources of evidence should be used*, and it should not be assumed to be useless.
An analogy: In a murder trial, the gold standard of evidence might be video footage of the murder occurring. However, we don't say that because we often lack the very best form of evidence, that it is impossible to infer by any other means/evidence what is likely to have happened