Thread by @Aleks_Ulyanov71

A response to @Jonathan_K_Cook's latest post on #COVID19 [Thread] @caitoz @ggreenwald @MaxBlumenthal @NafeezAhmed @aaronjmate @BenjaminNorton @mtaibbi @BylineTimes @oriolmitja @IndependentSage @HZiauddeen @jimmy_dore @RonPlacone @UsefulIdiotpod @richimedhurst @BTnewsroom

https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1439140729146814472

[Thread] 1 With respect, big issues with the arguments in your article and Dr Robert Malone's interview w @jimmy_dore. (1) Discussion of leaky vaccines is not relegated to the fringes, it's appeared on eg Reuters and National Geographic recently. (2) Vaccines have been highly

@jimmy_dore 2 efficient in damping transmission of previous variants, see eg nationalgeographic.com/science/articl…. Even vs delta, current estimates stand at 50-60% vaccine effectiveness at preventing infection. The compounding effect across the population

3 still provides a strong damping effect. (3) Vaccines do not 'encourage' the virus to become more potent. The virus mutates randomly and at the same speed, vaccine or no vaccine. Variants of concern started appearing before vaccine rollout. The more transmissible strands

4 become dominant not because they grow faster, but because the others grow more slowly, which is a net gain. (4) Thanks for noting that Professor Andrew Read, one the original authors of the 2015 study on chickens you cite, is unequivocally in favour of vaccination

5 (see eg forbes.com/sites/andreamo…). Professor Read describes how the original vaccine developed in the 1960s for Marek's disease (discussed in the 2015 paper) was effective for 10 years.

6 When it eventually became inefficient due to virus evolution, another version was developed that lasted another ten years. As Professor Read explains, the logic of not rolling out a vaccine now which is highly effective against severe disease and death out of fear of

7 hypothetical future virus evolution is absurd. (5) Furthermore, according to the 2015 paper, the mechanism by which a leaky vaccine may give rise to more lethal viruses is that very lethal strands kill hosts very quickly, before efficient transmission can occur. A leaky

8 vaccine may extend the host's life, increasing the strand's transmissibility. This mechanism (and your argument) is obviously irrelevant to COVID19. You should retract this part of your article. (5) 'Leaky vaccines simply allow the virus to adapt and evolve'. As noted by

9 Professor Read, it is NOT vaccinating people that allows the virus to mutate and adapt most efficiently. Evolution takes place primarily in the bodies of the unvaccinated. (6) Your argument that the medical profession is helpless to judge the effects of leaky vaccines is

10 equally problematic. Transmissibility is not a mystery, it's a basic parameter of epidemiological models (we have discussed the details of the reproduction number R since the start of the pandemic). There is nothing to stop researchers from setting transmissibility in

11 vaccinated populations to a high level in their models and study the results. You clearly depend on this extremely weak argument to 'explain' (rather, avoid) the fact that the vast majority of medical and public health professionals worldwide support vaccination. (7) You use

12 the scary word 'superspreader' about vaccinated, asymptomatic people. In fact most infected people, vaccinated or not, develop mild or no symptoms and, if not diagnosed, can go on to infect others. This is why frequent testing is a key weapon against COVID. This on top of the

13 strong reduction in transmission and symptomatic disease and death provided by vaccines even against delta. (8) Dr Robert Malone's arguments in his interview with @jimmy_dore are, to say the least, equally problematic. Rather than making a focused, logical argument, he flings

@jimmy_dore 14 mud at the entire vaccination programme hoping some will stick, aiming to spread fear and suspicion in his audience. He mixes separate (and highly polemical) issues such as vaccination per se, vaccination mandates, and proposals to deny medical care to the unvaccinated,

@jimmy_dore 15 in an obvious attempt to stoke anger. (9) His demands for 'rock-solid evidence' when choosing responses to COVID are extremely selective. He does not once mention the undisputed protection against severe illness, death, and, by extension, collapse of health systems given

@jimmy_dore 16 by vaccines as proven by pre-rollout medical studies and confirmed by post-rollout data after millions of vaccinations w an extremely good safety profile. This is apparently what Dr Malone considers public policy 'by intuition', 'flying by the seat of the pants', and policies

@jimmy_dore 17 that 'kill Americans'. Instead he raises dubious, hypothetical or currently irrelevant arguments as (per above) virus evolution driven by vaccines. (10) Malone makes a number of claims not supported by scientific consensus, let alone 'rock-solid' evidence: That ivermectin /

@jimmy_dore 18 hydroxychloroquine are '70-80% effective' in treating COVID (any positive effects of ivermectin are yet to be proven- @jimmy_dore points out, correctly, that more studies are needed, see eg nature.com/articles/d4158…;

@jimmy_dore 19 That the vaccinated transmit COVID as much as the unvaccinated (Untrue- Using the number given by Dr Malone, 50% protection against infection provides a strong dampening effect across the population, plus, when infected, the vaccinated have a high viral load for a shorter

@jimmy_dore 20 time than the unvaccinated); That vaccine efficacy 'peters out after six months' (gross misrepresentation- from what we know vaccine waning is partial and efficacy remains high, see eg nature.com/articles/d4158…); That there is

@jimmy_dore 21 no data backing the use of boosters and they may be counterproductive (the use of vaccine boosters for many diseases is very well understood & works on the same principle as the original vaccine; preliminary data from Israel suggests COVID boosters are highly effective

@jimmy_dore 22 in reinforcing protection, see eg nature.com/articles/d4158… (11) Dr Malone explains the decision to mass vaccinate as an unholy alliance of Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Media who have infected people's and politicians' minds. Big

@jimmy_dore 23 US Pharma must have a really long arm to have infected the minds of the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban governments too (among many others), since they jumped to develop vaccines from the start. Another collective Dr Malone conveniently leaves out of his 'analysis': Medical and

@jimmy_dore 24 public health professionals worldwide, who are overwhelmingly in favour of vaccination. (12) Dr Malone describes his complete recovery from COVID, apparently implying that infection is not such a bad thing. I am glad Dr Malone recovered but would suggest he tries that argument

@jimmy_dore 25 with the families of 680,000 dead from COVID in the US and 136,000 in the UK, plus the millions living with long COVID (estimated 1 million in the UK). (13) Dr Malone finishes his interview with a call to 'stop the crazy' of the universal vaccination programme (proven to be

@jimmy_dore 26 effective against transmission, severe disease and death) in favour of antiviral treatments backed by nothing like 'rock-solid' evidence. Strikingly (and after relying on his credentials for the duration of the interview) Dr Malone states that people should 'use their brain

@jimmy_dore 27 and common sense' rather than 'letting the media pump ideas into your head', since 'you don't have to be somebody with a stupidly long time of postgraduate education' as this is 'simple stuff to figure out'. This is straight rabble-rousing as opposed to any sort of scientific

@jimmy_dore 28 claim. The conclusion can only be that people should ignore anything the medical profession worldwide recommends, since they (unlike himself) must be bought off, incompetent or delusional. This is straight demagoguery and it is, to say the least, a shame that @Jimmy_Dore

@jimmy_dore 29 gave this sort of discourse a platform and failed to push back on any of Dr Malone's claims. [End]

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