Getting the vax details wrong, but the big picture right

A copy of Steve Kirsch's essay on how the CDC is allegedly misleading us with covid-19 data:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15xRA5isx-4NvmqLc8KNWSa16uqkn2wARhwf1Czt3hBQ/edit?usp=sharing 

The following is a series of emails I've sent to an anti-vaxxer friend. I think the anti-vaxxers get the big picture right, but the details wrong. The big picture being that governments and corporations are controlling much of people's lives; there are not many good ways left for "right livelihood" in today's world (with the exception of science, engineering and computers, which are out of reach for most people, and also the ethics can be questioned even there, and also jobs that are about healing the sick, traumatized people that this culture produces); we are disconnected from each other and nature; much of what liberals say seems absurd on the face of it and imposes costs on working-class people; much of the built environment is ugly. Many working class jobs are being outsourced to third world slaves and machines. Here is a beautiful essay about getting the details wrong but the big picture right:https://www.ecosophia.net/an-empire-of-dreams/ . And another. And a third

Looking at the Jama article cited as the first step in the "proof" that the VAERS data is off by at least a factor of 50-150 (actually could be as high as 200 if we take the lower tail of the 95% confidence interval of the Jama study and the higher tail of the 95% confidence interval of the CDC VAERS), it is only one study. There are several others (see comments below) that show much lower 1.3-8x URFs, so why cherry pick this one?

Next, Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose, Mathew Crawford cite a letter they wrote to the CDC "sidestepped this question". How is this proof of sidestepping without showing the CDC response? A few sentences later, they contradict themselves by saying the CDC "chose not to respond to the letter.". Perhaps this is an oversight, giving the wrong link, but it doesn't help establish their credibility. And also the people looking at this google doc, should have caught it, and the fact they didn't just affirms my growing suspicion (I have no data on this, admitted) that people are increasingly unable to read (youtube and tik tok have rotted people's brains) and use critical thinking.

Onward, though I should probably stop here given what we've seen already. The authors then pretend (dishonesty, they also bring in an earlier higher January estimate from CDC that is non sequitur, they don't use it, but it does obfuscate things) like they.have an independent estimate, but it's really the same data from the JAMA article, and a slightly updated estimate (lower) from VAERS, so instead of 50x they now get only a 41x difference.

Then they cite a japanese study, which besides the low statistical significance mentioned earlier (quote from paper:"Statistical analysis was not performed due to the small number of subjects with anaphylaxis.")

, also has a systemic problem that the participants are all Japanese and "The underlying reasons of such high incidence of anaphylaxis in Japan are unknown, but the presence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) additive,7 which is also used in many cosmetic and pharmaceutical products is considered to be one of the reasons for inducing anaphylaxis by the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Of the 37 HCWs who developed anaphylaxis, 57% had some history of allergy, and four patients had a history of cosmetics allergy, suggesting the potential involvement of PEG." I am guessing that PEG is not used in the US vaccines, or else the Japanese are more allergic to it, or else there is no statistical significance to this study to differentiate their numbers from the CDC numbers.

Next we go to VAERS to see how many deaths after vaccination are actually being reported in 2021.  I did my own analysis here, but I will go back to look at what the authors of the paper actually do later. Most of the people who are reported dying after the vaccine are older people who could have died from the strain of going to the clinic or wherever they were vaccinated, if not at home. As a control of we can look at the number of people dying from causes that could have any possible connection with the vaccine, such as infections, respiratory ailments, circulatory ailments, etc.  in 2019, before the covid madness (It would be great if there was also data for 2020 and 2021, but it's not yet available on the wonder.cdc.gov site). The average of deaths in 2019 per 10 day period is about 39536 for people over 50. This is much bigger, more than a factor of 10 bigger than the number of deaths being reported for older people in connection with the vaccine, in the 10 day period between vaccination and death--3115-- so signal is swamped out by noise/background for the elderly population (there were very little deaths (<100 in ten day period after vaccination) reported into VAERS in 2020, and very little vaccines). There was a similar low signal compared to background for other age groups.

This, combined with a friend's analysis:

"The basic idea is, there is a separate reporting system for ALL deaths.  If you compare deaths in 2020-2021 to recent previous years, you see big bumps in deaths that correspond pretty closely (like w/in 10-20% or better) to the official Covid count.  That disproves:

Claims that vaccines are killing many people.  If that were true, we would see a big uptick in death in spring 2021 when lots of people were vaccinated.  We didn’t.

 Oh and they want to argue that the CDC is just lying about the numbers?  But the CDC gets their numbers from the states.  If the numbers were fake, why aren’t any of these states run by Republican governors who have been resisting social distancing and vaccine mandates haven’t uncovered any fake numbers?"

closes my mind somewhat to more evidence from the anti vaxxers. Not completely closed though, but a mind has only so much space and time. 

I was going to see if I can make $1M from this guy's bet (S. Kirsch, whom you printed the doc on the kitchen table for) that 150K-200K and counting people have died from the covid vaccine. But he is sooooo dishonest. Here are the fine detail terms of his bet (this is the "switch", contradicting the "bait"):

"1. That the vaccines are so deadly that they should be stopped because they kill more than 1 person per million fully vaccinated

2. That nobody on the planet actually believes that the CDC is telling the truth" So (1) means that out of about 200 million people fully vaccinated, more than 200 have died. Yes, almost certainly more than 200 have died. That is very different than his bait claim of 150-200K and counting dead from covid vaccine! WTF! And there is no way to disprove (2) except by taking polls, and maybe it's true, but irrelevant to what is actually about the number of people dying. I'm sorry, but this guy is just showing ill will. I'm disappointed, because I thought I had a chance to win 1M dollars.

This guy has an interest in making money from promoting his own treatments:

In Mid-2020, Kirsch founded the Covid-19 Treatment Fund (CETF) to fund research into off-label treatments for Covid-19:

•  "This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 24 October 2021.

So I did look at the main concern with the PCR protocol from this link that you sent me, namely the Ct values. The authors are either ignorant or intentionally misleading. They cite a paper which I include here (pcr2) as their proof that one gets a 97% false positive rate with Ct=35. What that paper actually shows is that for people who have been infected with covid, detection of the virus at Ct=35 only means they are still infectious for less than 3% of them. But they still almost certainly (with less than 2% error) have pieces of dead virus in them that are being detected with the PCR test. They are either misunderstanding or intentionally misusing the meaning of "false positive". It means that someone who does not have any of the covid viral RNA in their nose is still tested as positive with the PCR test (The WHO has set the false positive limit as less than 2%, not 97% as these guys erroneously claim). It does not mean that the person is still infectious.

So you can't say that because of Ct values above 30, the actual cases of covid are much less than reported with PCR tests. You can say that out of those tested positive, some will not be infectious anymore (especially those with Ct values>30), and less than 2% of them will actually be falsely positive and have no covid RNA in them. But so what? Lower Ct values may be appropriate if what you care about is infectiousness, but if you care about finding whether there is any covid RNA in a person, you need higher Ct values so as to minimize false negatives, not just false positives.

I have no further motivation to look at the other claims against PCR testing (bad primers, erroneous GC content and Tm, etc) that they harp about. This was the major one listed in the initial email that you sent me, and there is no reason to believe that the people doing this testing are morons, misusing a technology that is the most accurate one we have for RNA detection and that has been around for a while. I am including another paper  (PCR1)that talks about how and why false positives can happen, in case you are interested.

Thanks for the reply. I am responding now but this is my last.

I know I sent other material....We can agree on some and leave the rest..

I appreciate your efforts here but lets please move on to more productive non-covid issues, such as the community plan there.

Sure, but we must be able to figure out disagreements, not just "agree to disagree". That doesn't work for most things when people are in a community. It works for things like religion or artistic taste, but anytime we will share work or resources, we need to be able to come to agreement otherwise we will be getting in each other's way.

 

 

 1.The CDC is dropping the PCR test as of 12/31/2021 in favor of other tests. https://www.dailyveracity.com/2021/07/27/the-cdc-is-abandoning-the-pcr-test/

Most test sites are apparently still using it though.

Nope, that is absolutely not what the CDC is doing. See email from Larry. 

 

2. Test results without clinical observations of symptoms are meaningless.

Nope. PCR test is THE MOST SENSITIVE test we have of someone having contracted the virus. It does not mean they are still having live virus in them, but that NOT what the CDC ever claimed. IT is the most accurate number for estimating how many people got infected. Whether they are still infected with live virus at the time of the test is irrelevant for that estimate. 

This was always a "casedemic" of bullshit stats as put forth by MSM.

You have been duped by the Chinese, the Russians or some other disinformation spreader (or your friend the multibillionaire, what's his name, Kirsch). It is heartbreaking. I gave you specific reasons WHY the PCR claims were mistaken. Do you at least understand what I was saying about the double entendre of false positive?

No one is denying the PCR will detect virus, it is how that is interpreted. The detection of covid RNA "pieces of dead virus” alone may be technically accurate but is meaningless in terms of an actual sickness or infectiousness. Infectiousness is what has hyped this from day one;  it is the key issue.  A ‘case’ that is simply a positive test result of dead virus is not a case of anything.

Not at all. It was all about estimating the number of people who got the virus at some point, within a margin of 2% (the maximum number of false positives as defined by pieces of viral RNA not in patient, but test says they are). The only time people care about whether someone is still infected is if they want to see how long they need to be quarantined, which was what the paper the folks who wrote that paper cited. 

Even Fauci admitted the PCR test cycling issue  back in July 2020. 

“Fauci directly responded to a question about COVID-19 testing, specifically how patients with positive tests might determine whether or not they are actually infectious and need to quarantine.

“What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard,” Fauci said, is that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-[competent] are minuscule.”

Yes, so what? We all agree on this. 

“It’s very frustrating for the patients as well as for the physicians,” he continued, when “somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like [a] 37 cycle threshold, but you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle.

So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period.” 

https://archive.is/AhkDV#selection-1179.52-1191.121

But most likely it means the patient got covid at some point and got over it. There is no other way to get dead virus RNA pieces in you

3. You focused on only one issue of the 10 listed with PCR.

Yes, because I told you you only get one more strike. The universal donut cult can keep making up BS, and it does that mean I have to keep checking every one of their claims.There has to be a limit. But, if you want we can keep talking about the two issues I have looked into, till we come to agreement.

And sent a report that admits in conclusion there are issues.

"Have provided additional evidence that false positive SARS CoV-2 PCR test results do occur in the clinical setting and are especially a problem in a low prevalence screening situation where the prior probability of a positive test is low."

Yes, the whole paper is about whether someone is still infectious or not. It is not about whether someone has virus in them. Out of 100 people without virus, the test will find erroneously, that 2 have virus, whether because of  high Ct, cross contamination, human mislabeling of sample, etc. You and that paper make the claim that the CDC over-estimated the number of people who got covid, not how many are still infectious at time of testing. That is a false claim.