It's (Not) All About Us

 

I've seen this meme before.  Just saw it again the other day.

I have some concerns.

First, there certainly is a problem in Canada with ALL of the things mentioned.  Homelessness, poverty, child poverty, hunger, mental health problems, services for veterans, and so on.

My observation is simply this: We don't fund those things nearly well enough because there isn't the political will to do so.  And the reason there isn't the political will is because Canadians don't elect politicians who say they will DO something about those problems.  Why not?  Because those are problems experienced by "other people".  Not us.  Them.

People are poor, we are told, because they are lazy.  People have mental health issues because they are weak.  And we certainly don't want to address any issues that make us uncomfortable.  And on it goes.

So those "billions" we donate to other countries......

Canada donates approximately 0.31% of Gross National Income to Foreign Aid.  That's not very impressive when compared to many other wealthy countries.  In fact, of about 12 relatively high-income countries (some much smaller than us), only Italy and the US contribute less.

You can read more about Foreign Aid here:

So why should we donate to countries that are so less fortunate than we are?  Because it's the right thing to do?  Yes, but also because it's in our self-interest to do so.  The reality is that when people are impoverished, angry, resentful, potentially violent or crazy and you don't offer them any other options, quite often those are the choices they make.

And many of those other countries?  The reason why so many of them are poor is clearly because of us (the wealthy west) - we exploited their resources when we found it convenient.  We exploited their cheap labour so we could have cheap consumer goods.  We've meddled in their governments.  And when they try to leave the hell-holes they're living in, we build walls to keep them out and whine about immigrants.  Immigrants who know how to work and would contribute to Canada IF they were given half a chance.

You can read more about Immigration here.

Canada.  We can do better.

Doubling Down on a Dangerous Narrative

 

I seem to have struck a nerve.

A couple of weeks ago, an article (a REAL article, not just a Letter to the Editor) written by Art Joyce, appeared in a local paper, The Valley Voice.  That article can be read in its entirety here, on page 16.

The Valley Voice February 9th 2023

I responded with a brief letter, pointing out how inaccurate and misleading his article was

My letter can be seen here, on page 4  The Valley Voice, February 23, 2023  and a more lengthy response was posted on my blog.   That article can be seen here: A Falsely Dangerous Narrative.  Some explanations cannot be made in 2 paragraph snippets, especially when The Valley Voice makes a disproportionate amount of space available to anything coming from the anti-vaccine and anti-science community.

 The following week, Mr Joyce responds.  His response can be seen here:  The Valley Voice, March 9, 2023, page 5

Mr Joyce makes several claims.  One is that I "... didn't address even one of the points ..." in his article.  In fact, I addressed ALL of them.  Apparently Mr Joyce didn't actually READ my comments.  He then goes on to appeal to authority - he's written X number of books and articles over 30 years as a journalist - and then appeals to science - what could be more scientific than references to VAERS, a bunch of footnotes and some random names with Dr in front of them?  I have no comment about Mr Joyce's other works.  They could be great.  I'm just saying that this particular article is nonsense.

Here's the thing, Mr Joyce.  I addressed every single one of your points.  Every. Single. One.  Did you address mine?  No.  And just because you include references to a database in a pretense of using "science" doesn't mean you've been able to draw any useful conclusions from it.  This is like owning an electron microscope and having no idea how to use it.  Owning the microscope doesn't make you an expert in electron microscopy. You might impress some people because you own such a device, but if you don't know how to use it...., well, you're just another schmuck with your own personal dust collector.

Mr Joyce then goes on to dig in a bit deeper by mentioning, once again, the people he called on in his original article to support his stand.  It bears mentioning that just repeating something that was unhelpful or misleading to begin with does nothing to make it more helpful, or truthful.  The fact is, ALL the people he mentions are generally well-known for their stand against vaccines and the kind of public health actions that we saw over the past 3 years.  I'm sure they have their reasons for believing what they do, just as children have reasons to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.  Eventually, one just has to learn how to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Mr Joyce goes on to mention, once again, someone who seems to be one his pet sources, a certain Dr Naomi Wolf.  I will have to admit not knowing much about Ms Wolf.  She was one of the earlier pioneers in the Feminist movement, along with people like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.  So far, so good.  In more recent years, however, Ms Wolf seems to have had an epiphany, and not a good kind.  Increasingly, she's been viewed this way: (from Naomi Wolf - Wikipedia)

Since around 2014, Wolf has been described, by journalists and media outlets, as a conspiracy theorist.^[a] She has received criticism for promoting misinformation on topics such as beheadings carried out by ISIS, the Western African Ebola virus epidemic and Edward Snowden.^[7][8][9]

She has objected to COVID-19 lockdowns and has criticized COVID-19 vaccines.^[10][11] In June 2021, her Twitter account was suspended for posting anti-vaccine misinformation.^[12]

As I mentioned before, Ms Wolf has a PhD in Philosophy.  This doesn't qualify her in any field related to medicine, virology, pharmacology, immunology or really anything related to the pandemic.  Even in her later writings, she's come under increasing criticism, with comments like "... a "silly book" containing "much dubious neuroscience and much foolishness."

Ms Wolf could very well have "a team" or "researchers", but we can see pretty clearly what her team is looking for.  I wouldn't give it much credence.

In a final (one hopes) parting shot, Mr Joyce tosses in the name of one girl who was supposedly "injured" by the Pfizer vaccine.  It's difficult to find much credible information on this incident.  I'm discounting YouTube videos and anything from known anti-vaxx cultists, but I was able to find ONE article that described the situation.  That article, from November 2021, mentions that:

The mother of the girl and the group behind the ad have not provided any evidence that the girl was diagnosed as harmed by a Covid-19 vaccine.

We all should know by now that people CAN react adversely to vaccines, just as they can from any medical procedure.  Many people can also react adversely to viruses, and many die.  The question is what is the risk vs reward ratio?  The anti-vaccine industry is going to great lengths to claim that "thousands" (or is it millions?) have died, had heart attacks, strokes, Bell's Palsy and all manner of other outcomes from being vaccinated with what they call "experimental mRNA vaccines".  

These are the vaccines that have been administered to billions of people around the world.  They've been studied and under development for close to 20 years.  They're new, certainly.  Their approach is revolutionary.  Expect to see them being used to treat other conditions.  Calling them "experimental" at this state is a bit of a stretch.

Despite all this, I'm grateful to Mr Joyce for bringing, once again, his opinions into view again.  It makes it quite clear where he has decided to hang his hat.

The Origins of COVID-19

 

I'm still trying to understand why this matters to so many people, but the issue of where the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from has galvanized discussion among scientists, intelligence agencies and, of course, the anti-vaxx community for approximately 3 years.

There are two main theories out there, as likely everyone knows by now.  I use the word theories but I'm not even certain that's the right word.  In science, the word theory has a special meaning, specifically a  possible explanation based on supporting evidence.  I'll leave it to the reader to decide which explanation (s) meet that definition.

The Field Museum presents a clear definition of what theory means in science:

A theory is a carefully thought-out explanation for observations of the natural world that has been constructed using the scientific method, and which brings together many facts and hypotheses.

 As I said, there are two possible explanations out there:

1) The virus jumped from wild animals to humans at a so-called "wet market" in Wuhan, China.

2) The virus leaked from a lab, also in Wuhan, China.

In recent days, the whole debate has been ignited again with comments from the FBI and other American intelligence agencies.  It seems likely that many people have latched onto these recent reports because they have always been convinced that the virus emerged as the result of a lab accident.  

This article from NPR covers the main discussion points quite well:

What does the science say about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

Virologist Angela Rasmussen, who contributed to one of the Science papers, says the DOE's "low confident" conclusion doesn't "negate the affirmative evidence for zoonotic [or animal] origin nor do they add any new information in support of lab origin."

"Many other [news] outlets are presenting this as new conclusive proof that the lab origin hypothesis is equally as plausible as the zoonotic origin hypothesis," Rasmussen wrote in an email to NPR, "and that is a misrepresentation of the evidence for either."

One of the actual scientific publications referred to in that article can be seen here.

Their "One-Sentence Summary" says (and I paraphrase): Geographical clustering of the earliest known cases and the proximity of positive environmental samples to live animal vendors suggest that the Wuhan Market was the site of the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One

sentence

summary:

Geographical

clustering

of

the

earliest

known

COVID-19

cases

and

the

proximity

of

positive

environmental

samples

to

live-animal

vendors

suggest

that

the

Huanan

Seafood

Wholesale

Market

in

Wuhan

was

the

site

of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic

One

sentence

summary:

Geographical

clustering

of

the

earliest

known

COVID-19

cases

and

the

proximity

of

positive

environmental

samples

to

live-animal

vendors

suggest

that

the

Huanan

Seafood

Wholesale

Market

in

Wuhan

was

the

site

of origin of the COVID-19 pandemic

This article from the Rand Corporation is a bit dated (from June 2021), but briefly mentions the main possibilities.

It seems the debate will continue and might never be conclusively resolved.  But some adherents on both sides of the issue seem to have a point to make, so I'm sure the matter won't go away any time soon.

The Laws of Natural Selection are Still in Efect

 

I almost hate to bring this up at a time when around 400 Americans (and about 25 Canadians) are still dying from this virus EACH DAY.  That's an annualized rate of around 150,000 in the USA and about 9500 in Canada.  As an interesting aside, note that Canada's rate is approximately half the rate in the USA, taking into account the sizes of our respective populations.  Note also that, in a normal flu season, approximately 3500 Canadians will die from the effects of that virus.

However, a quick look at a very simple graph comes courtesy of Our World in Data.  If you follow the link and pass your cursor over the lines, you can clearly see that unvaccinated people are dying from this virus at a rate that is approximately 5 to 7 times greater than ANY vaccinated people, whether they've had a bivalent booster or not.  I'm really not sure how that data could be interpreted in any other way.

Natural Selection is still at work, weeding out the weak, the less agile, the less intelligent, the less careful, one at a time.  Ignore Biology at your peril.

The Pfizer Papers (?)

 

Continuing their long-standing practice of jumping on ANYTHING that they think might sow fear, the anti-vaxxers have recently jumped on a number of documents that were released related to the clinical trials of the Pfizer mRNA COVID vaccine.

The Claims:

There are a multitude of claims made by the anti-vaxx "community".  Here are some:

• Pfizer was trying to hide 80,000 pages of clinical trial data.
• Pfizer wanted to seal those documents for 75 years.
• Those documents show only a 12% efficacy rate
• The vaccine harms fetuses and trials weren't done on pregnant women.
• and so on....

What do we know?

Pfizer did not attempt to seal "those documents" for 75 years.  In fact, the documents weren't even in the hands of Pfizer.  Following the clinical trials, the documents were turned over to the FDA for evaluation.

The delay in releasing those "documents" had to do with all the personal data contained therein.  The FDA was claiming that redacting all that personal data was going to take time (likely in the range of 5 years, realistically), but the anti-vaxxers immediately started talking about 50 years, or 75 years, or whatever.  Neither the courts not the FDA mentioned 75 years.  That only came from groups trying to create an issue when there wasn't one to begin with.

This article explains a number of salient points:

Did Pfizer Try To Hide 158K Vax Adverse Events for 75 Years?

The differences in efficacy numbers seems to come from this:

Fact-Check - Pfizer Documents do not show that COVID-19 vaccine has 12% efficacy

It seems to be a difference between "confirmed" COVID cases or "suspected".  Clearly, it makes better sense to use confirmed cases, partly because COVID does share a number of symptoms with other diseases, like the flu, colds, and so on.  

As for pregnant women, it is true that the initial clinical trials did not include them.  There was, however, substantial information that pregnancy put women at a higher risk of serious outcomes from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.  Any pregnant women with other conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension or obesity, were at an even higher risk.  So initially, it was believed that pregnant women would benefit from being vaccinated, as was the case with pretty much everyone else.

This article from the New England Journal of Medicine addresses mRNA vaccines and pregnancies.

Note that the article dates from June 2021.  Much more information is available now than was available then.  This article from Johns Hopkins in February 2022 takes another look.

In fact, if anyone is really interested in studies on COVID and COVID vaccines related to pregnant women, this study from Trends in Molecular Medicine in May 2022 is useful.  It's somewhat technical, but there are clear language statements here and there that convey the important take-home message.  The introduction is as follows:

COVID-19 during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of stillbirth and preterm birth.

The current COVID-19 vaccines were not tested in pregnant women in the initial clinical trials, but information on their safety, immunogenicity, and effectiveness has been generated from observational studies.

No major safety concerns on the use of mainly the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women have been identified.

Pregnant women mount immune responses to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines comparable to non-pregnant counterparts.

Anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG are detected in cord blood following maternal vaccination at concentrations that strongly correlated with both maternal antibody levels and the time elapsed since vaccination.

Vaccination of pregnant women with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines has been shown to be effective in protecting the women against disease.

More detailed explanations appear in the body of the article.

Notwithstanding all the good information available, I have zero hope that the anti-vaxx community will look for anything that might run counter to their beliefs.

House of Trump, House of Putin

 

Book Review

House of Trump, House of Putin   by Craig Unger

Some time after polls closed in the USA following the 2016 Presidential election, Deputy Nikonov of the pro-Putin United Russia Party made the following announcement:

"Three minutes ago, Hillary Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections and a second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the United States of America and I congratulate you on this."

"His statement was greeted by enthusiastic applause.  Donald J. Trump had just become Vladimir Putin's man in the White House."

This was just another step in a long-range plan of Putin's, as described by the US Senate:

"Ultimately, Putin's goal ... was to attack the democracies of Europe and the United States and undermine the transatlantic alliance upon which Europe's peace and prosperity have depended on for over 70 years."

Over the course of this exceptionally well researched and documented book, the author outlines how Trump, the Trump organization and the people around him, including many members of the Republican Party, cultivated relations with Russia and Putin.  The author also examines what is known about Putin's rise to power and how destabilizing the West was one of his primary objectives and how well he succeeded.

The question remains:

 "Are millions of Americans actually going to accept allegations that the president of the United States was serving the interests of a hostile foreign power?  I still wonder if the truth is too transgressive for the American public to accept"

We are still waiting to find out.

Some Basic Statistics

The Facts:  Individuals who remain unvaccinated or "under vaccinated", are multiple times more likely to get sick, hospitalized and die from the SARS-CoV-2 virus than vaccinated individuals when you consider the relative size of those two groups in the whole population. Here's why this is a fact:

One persistent distortion we hear the anti-vaxx community make regularly is how there are more vaccinated people dying than unvaccinated.  This is an example of something that has the skin of truth but is stuffed with lies.  Here's why.

These graphics come from the pages of Scientific American.  It's very worthwhile reading the article in full, but the basic message is contained in these two images.  Click on the images to see a much clearer picture.

What matters are the relative sizes of the populations you're comparing.  One group is far smaller than the other one.  And yet, deaths from that group are proportionally larger.  As the article mentions, suppose 100% of the population was vaccinated.  We know that the vaccines are only 95% effective, perhaps somewhat less.  This means that ALL of the deaths will be from that group of vaccinated people.  This shows that the vaccines most certainly work, even though they are not perfect.  Unvaccinated people have none of that protection.  

What matters are the deaths per 100K of each group.

In the graphics above, deaths are roughly the same from each group - slightly higher in the unvaccinated group, but let's say they're approximately equal.  However, when you look at the numbers on a per 100,000 basis, we can see that the unvaccinated are having a much poorer time of it.

Don't be misled by superficial comments from people who are determined to mislead you.  Look at real data and what that data means.