Post Pandemic Ghouls and the attack on science
Much money has been made on the back of the pandemic, not all due to excess drug company profits, or the political corruption identified in the UK COVID inquiry. In a way these are to be expected and could be countered by better public sector procurement, improved regulations, and better politics.
Social media too has been making significant money by allowing ‘creators’ to monetise misinformation. These are a few of the starkest examples of post pandemic ghoulish behaviour and why the ongoing attack on science matters.
Lied Suddenly
First there was Plandemic, featuring a discredited anti vaccination campaigner, Judy Mikovits, suggesting that the whole pandemic was planned. It was full of nonsense but watched by millions of people. Then came ‘Died Suddenly’, a film made by Stew Peters, an American evangelist whose God given mission is to save lives by preventing people getting vaccinated.
Again, millions watched it on the first day of its release, and it has been promoted by RFK Jr and American Republican politicians including the pugnacious anti-science, dim-witted Senator, Marjorie Taylor Greene. The film is high on emotion and pitifully low in quality or ethics.
For instance, he has no problem using examples of people who died suddenly before vaccination was available, people who died of traffic accidents, some who haven’t died at all as well as cases of sudden death without even knowing if they had been vaccinated at all. Consent was not sought.
The film has been termed akin to grave robbing, and was hilariously exposed by Peters BBC interview. That he believes the earth is flat, that COVID was caused by snake venom and ran a bounty hunter business doesn’t seem to bother his way too many followers.
Back in the real world, there is no early or late data suggesting that vaccines were or are connected to sudden death, or increased death rates. Though there are lots of problems that might occur after a vaccination, some genuine, most will be those which would have occurred in any case.
UK madness
This is not exclusively and American phenomenon. Our own more superficially chummy John Campbell really scrapes the bottom of the barrel by giving airtime to an (appropriately named) undertaker, John O’Looney who main trade now seems to be claiming that excess deaths are due the vaccines causing clots which are in fact a normal post mortem finding. The ludicrous video had 1.5million views.
For interest, O’Looney initially claimed that COVID19 was nothing more than a cold but went on to end up on ITU with COVID19. That experience didn’t help him see reality any more clearly, going on to wonder if vaccinated people illuminate under UV light, that the world is being run by ‘entities’ running on ‘energy’, and that political leaders are literally not human.
Despite clear being bonkers, he has made a significant online presence, even been interviewed by RFK Jr, a potential US President whose integrity is clearly non-existent.
Even more wild is his clearly delusional claim that coroners are tampering with bodies before they reach him in order to remove the clots before he can find them, overestimating his own importance by many orders of magnitude. That such ideas are bordering on mental illness might have alerted Campbell, a former nurse, to the nonsensical nature of the claims. It’s rather sad to see such a deluded character having such success on You Tube with way too many people finding his bonkers claims newsworthy.
Midazolam murders
I have previously highlighted the problem with the so called Midazolam murders, but unfortunately the hideous story has not gone away. Even worse is the suggestion by John Campbell (and O’Looney) that many pandemic deaths were due to his former colleagues committing euthanasia!
He highlights a paper which any careful reader would see straight through – red flags of a single author with no relevant qualifications or experience, publication without peer review in a dubious site, and as usual, obvious confusion of correlation with causation.
Campbell and his ilk scans the internet for anything which suits his agenda, fails to check out his sources, or the papers frankly dubious references, or indeed, even the text of the paper which is not credible. Yet he claims that many of the early deaths were due to the use of a drug called Midazolam, a drug used in end-of-life care by his former nursing and medical colleagues.
There can be genuine problems with palliative care when sedatives are used according to protocols such as the defunct Liverpool Care Pathway. For me this was a huge administrative overload when I used it but was aimed at ensuring that all patients who need help with medications at the end of life have them ready to use if and when needed.
Problems occur when it is used inappropriately, too soon, or not at all. Nothing is ever black and white, but for a retired nurse to claim that thousands of people have been killed by nurses and doctors all over the country is shameful.
The bottomless barrel
According to ever busy antivaxxers, vaccines or their components can cause just about any disease you care to mention, including dementia , or the non-existent ‘turbo-cancer’ to add to the ever expanding list of problems that are attributed to vaccines in this increasingly mad world. ? But why stop there, it seems progressive political views can also be linked to vaccination.
Vaccines and cancer
Claims that vaccination is causing cancer are ludicrous. For instance, the most potent carcinogen is exposure to ionising radiation. After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, leukaemia started to be seen at about two years, and solid tumours after about 10. Daily smoking also takes decades for the many cancers it causes to become evident.
This most basic biology does not deter the ghouls from tying in vaccination to just about every cancer you can imagine, however soon after vaccination, again creating fear and anger in those who cannot see through it and adding to the problems of people diagnosed with cancer.
Proving the barrel is truly bottomless, the latest ghoulish opportunism is from prominent antivaxxer Canadian doctor William Makis who, claims that the shooting of Slovakian prime minister Fico was due to his rejection of the developing WHO pandemic treaty. That the leader of a nation of 5 million people is clearly against international co-operation is bad enough but to claim this was behind the attempted assassination really is paranoid nonsense.
The anti-vaccine machine
All this might seem silly, interesting, madcap. History is littered with delusions and illusions manipulated for political or religious gain, but social media had made mind polluting gibberish go global.
Contrary to the ‘David vs Goliath’ myth that they are just little guys fighting the machine, misinformation is spread by well-funded networks making considerable amount of money. Their airtime and viewers are many magnitudes greater than those who debunk this stuff. It is making a huge political difference in the USA and here too, in the ugly form of Nigel Farage who like all far right politicians, seeks to make capital out of vaccine issues.
Anti vaxxers like to claim they are up against well-funded public health/drug company complexes, but increasingly it is the opposite. Their industry translates to more infections, more suffering, and more preventable deaths.
Misinformation Road leads to the madness and is making facing the challenge of climate change, the raid decay of nature, AI, war and other real issues we face way more difficult to tackle.
This has massive implications for us all. Misinformation matters.