PFIZER, MODERNA AND ASTRA…OH MY!

First, I am not a scientist. I have high school Applied Science, at best and a good lot of those classes were spent in malls, at the homes of friends and in nice weather, a local beach.

Second, I am getting the vaccine but…and it is a bit “BUT”, I neither trust nor believe the pharmaceutical companies, nor the various government agencies involved. See, I do have a bit of an “in”; a very close family member was high on up in the Canadian arm of Food/Drugs. He was involved in testing, interpreting literature…the dude was an analytical, science brain on two feet. He was the prototype of the stereotypical scientist persona. Loved the guy but he could be an ass. Through him and as it was through him, not personal experience, my conclusions/opinions of pharmaceutical companies and government are very…very dim.

Yes, government (bureaucrats and politicians) are bribed. Yes, pharmaceutical companies are profit driven (duh).

As a result, we can’t trust either entity to give us the truth. The uncomfortable fact is that even the pharmaceutical companies don’t know “the truth”. Let us not forget that it is these two entities permitted Celebrex, Vioxx and Zantac to enter the market, and in decades passed…Thalidomide. Diet pills, (Speed in the modern vernacular) were prescribed to pregnant women, albeit, also in decades passed.

Oxycontin, morphine derivatives….yes, the onus is on the patient to fully understand contraindications, risks but let’s face it and pharmaceutical companies are more than aware that patients do not use due diligence when taking medications, prescribed or off-the-shelf.

The rush toward the vaccine can be cloaked in “the public good” but you have to really be a bit of a moron, to believe this is the driving force. The driving force is money and there are a lot of folks, in both government and pharmaceuticals making truckloads off these products.

Are you aware that if there turns out to be long term, serious side effects, that the government has protected the pharmaceutical companies involved, with the vaccines, from legal repercussions, down the road? This should terrify everyone.

The truth is – pharmaceutical companies just don’t know what long-term effects may be. We are learning that some variants, of Covid are, themselves, “immune” to the vaccine.

Will the vaccine trigger autoimmune conditions, later on? We don’t know.

I looked at the studies and even I am leery about them. There are reams of conspiracy theories out there, from the sublime to the ridiculous. I don’t need them to harbour a healthy (pun not intended but welcomed), mistrust of pharmaceutical companies and government. The highest R-naught factor for the original virus is 6.6 and with the UK virus, it is 7.

Here’s a chart of the R0 factors of well-known diseases, for comparison and a link to the web page.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ng-interactive/2014/oct/15/visualised-how-ebola-compares-to-other-infectious-diseases

So yes, Corona virus is pretty high as a contagion and using the euphemism of “variant” (Far less “scary” than mutation, which is what variants are, in reality.), the R0 will, probably, climb. It is a virus. The whole raison d’être of a virus is survival. How does it survive? By mutating. Sometimes a virus will mutate itself into harmlessness but, Corona doesn’t seem to be on that particular track, or at least some of the strains aren’t quite ready to fly the white flag. The strains that have taken an unwitting self-destruct sequence…well, they have self-destructed. Will the variants end up that way or will they continue to adapt and mutate, rending our vaccines useless? Who knows…

So, I guess it comes down to each of us, to weigh the pro’s and cons. Do your own investigating, don’t rely on the internet, government, or pharmaceuticals to do your thinking for you. Read the studies, (Keep a bottle of Advil handy or wine…your choice; they are rough going for the layman.) Forget mainstream news agencies. If you haven’t figured out, they are full of shite…then you aren’t paying attention.

Conclusion to all of the above? I get my vaccine next week. I don’t want to do this, but…I do want to be able to travel, in the future and I am, pretty much, convinced, that like the smallpox vaccination cards of the 60’s – we will not be able to indulge in free movement without proof of vaccination. I am older and long-term side effects are less of a concern for me. Please, I can’t encourage you enough, to read – inform yourself, ask questions and when you have collected all the information you are able to gather – make your decision. Don’t be forced either way. This decision could not be more personal. This cannot be undone.

Here are some links to get you started:

https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v1

Idiots, Idiots…It’s a Pandemic of Idiots

I want to be careful here; I’ve been told that when my frustration level hits the red zone, I become very sarcastic and sometimes downright nasty.

While this, really, shouldn’t have to be said; the internet has been, by and large, abused by too many people without even the most basic understanding of how the damn thing works.

OMG, Facebook is censoring! Yes. It is. False information is being removed, because? Let’s see if we can connect the dots…because, people are sharing it and there are just too many gullible people out there, sucking it up. Yes, they are entitled to their opinion but Facebook is a corporation, you don’t pay for it, so if you don’t like what is going on? Leave. Simple as that. YouTube is pulling down channels, videos with false information? All outraged, are you? Don’t go to the site; you aren’t paying a dime for it. Grow, the hell, up.

Let’s address a few things:

1. Contact apps – I forget the meme…something about defriending people if you download the app. Just so many….I don’t know where to start with this one. Seriously? Who, the fuck, do you think you are that you believe the “gubbermint” is watching YOU? Let me let you in on a little “deep state” secret, (it isn’t really a secret, at this point, it should be, glaringly, evident); the “gubbermint” doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. The app isn’t some nefarious plot to find out where you shop or to whom you speak. Even Walmart knows that. The minute, you open a cell phone, Bluetooth enabled or not, you are trackable. The minute you log on to your computer – VPN be damned – you are trackable. Pay a bill? Government could, if they chose to do so, track you. Use a credit card? Same thing. Pay taxes? Whole lot of information on your-all-important-self.
2. Covid is a conspiracy, in order to vaccinate everyone, injecting microchips. This one is so stupid I can’t even fathom the level of idiocy. A microchip will not fit through a syringe, my friends and that’s just for starters. What kind of injection would it be, that allows for the transport of this microchip”

• Intravenous injection?
• Intramuscular injection?
• Subcutaneous injection?
• Intradermal injection?

A microchip could not be introduced through any of these methods. Could a chip be introduced? Sure, a very few companies actually wanted to do this, but it would need to be introduced, subcutaneously, and yeah, you would notice something like that. Didn’t work, by the way.

1. Bill Gates. This one is just too much. The same people spreading this segment of an interview, which was edited and not very artfully, are sharing this absolute bullshit, using software and tools, brought to them by Bill Gates. There was some alluding to profit made by his charity; of course, the truth was totally ignored in favour of sensational bullshit. His charity didn’t MAKE money; it’s a charity. The work done by the charity WOULD HAVE been worth, I think it was 700 million, due to the benefits it wrought, vis a vis, healthcare etc. But hey, I get it, economics is not everyone’s forte however, this does not excuse wanton ignorance or spreading of malicious bullshit, created by basement Cheeto-munching keyboard bullshitters.
2. Covid was created in a lab and set loose by the Chinese. This one hurts so much, my eyes hurt. Oh sure, create a virus, set it loose on their own soil, to kill their own people. China is leaps and bounds ahead of most nations with regard to various technologies. I think it is rather obvious, if they wanted to infect the world, there are far more efficient ways to do it, rather than in a wet market, in some godforsaken little town. Was Mexico planning a global takeover with Swine flu? What about the United Kingdom and Mad Cow disease? Viruses that mutate and infect humans have happened long before the likes of Alex Jones or that insane Polly person (a Youtube idiot) decided to lower IQs with their videos. The main raison d’être of any virus or bacteria, is to survive. They do it pretty well, and have been doing it since life began. Viruses and bacteria, in animals, rodents do mutate and create problems from people, not just due to consumption; you can get salmonella from a damn turtle, for crying out loud. I caught psittacosis from some companions birds we had rescued. Chinese were not involved.
3. The heads of the various governments’ health departments aren’t expert on this virus – what about “novel coronavirus” do people not grasp? NOVEL – its new. Every researcher in the world is learning, as fast as they can, about this little bugger. No one has all the answers, they can only provide guidelines based on the evidence presented at any given time. And because it’s a virus, the information that may be true today, could very well change tomorrow – depending on which way the virus mutates. There are NO definitive answers yet; doesn’t take a virologist to figure out that erring on the side of caution, is the best line of defense.
4. There is no personal privacy anymore. None. Nada. Zip. Get over yourselves. Even people who think they are living “Off the grid”, are not. Even they are traceable, it’s just that nobody much cares who they are or what they are doing, so they continue on in ignorant bliss.

Everything is hackable. EVERYTHING. The Departments of Defense, the banking institutions, your email…somewhere, and probably pretty close to you, is someone with the knowledge and skill set to hack into your life. And there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it.

Go forth with the knowledge that you are as insignificant as a bug to the government, you have no control over what they do, you never did and never will. Sorry, but that’s the truth of it. Make a good life for yourself and your family. Stay safe, stay healthy. Stop spreading bullshit.

Conspiracy, Covid, Gates and the real virus danger.

Please stop. Please?

I get it, these are scary times. I get it, we are all worried, to some degree, about health, about our financial status etc but really?

Fear is at the bottom of most of the unattractive traits in humanity. Okay, fear and ignorance. Frankly, I get really annoyed by the latter because, in this day, in age, there is no excuse for ignorance. We have access to, virtually, every single piece of viable knowledge, throughout our history. So, I get a little bent out of shape when I see, ordinarily, intelligent people spreading YouTube garbage as actual information. These same people claim media is fake yet believe some half-baked asshat with access to a camera and microphone.

Do I believe popular media? No. Let’s face it, they aren’t charitable organizations and they need to pay their overhead like any other business. They create sensational headlines or headlines with trigger words, in order to generate interest/clicks.

I, certainly, don’t believe any of the YouTube offerings of “news”. I do confess to watching some of the conspiracy videos but simply for comedic relief.

The Gates-haters are the ones that make me laugh the hardest. If it weren’t for Gates? Few if any of these boneheads would be spewing their claptrap. Here’s a thought, if Gates is the devil that the haters claim? If he had the technology to implant microchips? Do ya not think that he would also possess the technology to block all these “truthers”? I like to think he watches them as well and giggles, at their expense.

We are a long, long way from a vaccine for Covid. Vaccines take time. They take something called “research” and that is my key word, “RESEARCH”!!

For the love of whatever invisible friend in whom you believe, RESEARCH. Stop the proliferation of ignorance and fear based on some yahoo, videotaping in some ersatz office setting. (Probably in his/her basement).

No, don’t believe popular media but for heaven’s sake, give yourself a smack if you believe what you see on the Youtubes…

If you don’t hold a higher degree in one of the health sciences, if you don’t know the difference between a bacterium and a virus? Don’t spread information unless you have, thoroughly, researched what you are posting. Of course, the best thing you could do would be to take a few science classes, a far better way to spend your time online, than watching twitches on YouTube.

The real viral danger (See what I did there ? ), is spreading faster than that Covid could have wished, in its wildest, little virus dreams…the Ignorance Virus. The difference is, of course, there is a cure for the Ignorance Virus; it is widely available and often, free of charge. The vaccine has a more common name; education.

Don’t believe popular media but using the same logic, don’t believe YouTube or Reddit or any other place where conspiracies are birthed, nurtured and then set lose to infect the unwary, the naïve.