OK here we go again, more superficial and misleading garbage on the internet. Charles Eisenstein posting on, guest what, his own site charleseisenstein.substack.com, where he can of course post any stuff that he feels like posting, nobody to factcheck or review his ramblings. See this article here. In this he claims that humans have a need to execute pariahs for some vaguely described reason. Then apparently anti-vaxxers are the latest pariahs, though he does admit nobody is suggesting executing them. But then he gets to the paragraph below;
“The science behind this portrayal is dubious. Contrary to the association of the unvaccinated with public danger, some experts contend that it is the vaccinated that are more likely to drive mutant variants through selection pressure. Just as antibiotics result in higher mutation rates and adaptive evolution in bacteria, leading to antibiotic resistance, so may vaccines push viruses to mutate. (Hence the prospect of endless “boosters” against endless new variants.) This phenomenon has been studied for decades, as this article in my favorite math science website, Quanta, describes. The mutated variants evade the vaccine-induced antibodies, in contrast to the robust immunity that, according to some scientists, those who have already been sick with Covid have to all variants (See this and this, more analysis here, compare to Dr. Fauci’s viewpoint“.
The Quanta article he cited basically makes the obvious point that viruses mutate all the time and so if you have a lot of vaccinated individuals the virus will adapt to infect them. Scientists and clinicians are well aware of this and there is not much anyone can do about it so it may ultimately be necessary to develop new vaccines. So what? The present vaccines are extremely efficacious when it comes to stopping serious disease and death, but are a little less effective against the delta variant. It may be necessary to modify booster vaccines to account for this and later variants, not surprising, a new vaccine for the flu is made each year. However suggesting that it is better not to vaccinate is stupidly wrong. Without the Covid-19 vaccines deaths in the US would now be in the millions. And viruses mutate to infect more efficiently whether or not there are vaccinated people around. Remember that the delta variant originated a few months ago in India at a time when there was essentially no pool of vaccinated individuals.
So then he links to a post by Hooman Noorchashm MD, PhD who is supposedly a physician scientist (here). Hooman lists on Linkedin as being an assistant professor 2014-2017 at Thomas Jefferson University and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 2003-2006. Being an assistant professor is the first step up the academic ladder and leads to associate professor with tenure if the individual is successful as measured by peer reviewed publications, grants and other accomplishments. Dr. Noorchashm apparently failed to make that transition in either place and does not currently list an academic affiliation. He is now a practicing physician so it is a stretch to call himself a physician scientist; he did not make the cut as a scientist, twice. His article was posted on his own site noorchashm.medium.com. Of course anybody can post anything on their own web site. He goes on to contradict an article in the Wall Street Journal, just polemically, he does not cite any source for the information he claims, just mentions “the bulk of the studies on the topic of..”. Why not cite them? Obviously he did not learn much in his attempts to be a real scientist. There is nothing to suggest that the Wall Street Journal took any notice of this basically contentless tirade. Also, of course, there is money involved- he expresses his opinions, guess where, Fox News for which he presumably gets well paid.
The next thing Eisenstein cited is an article in Arutz Sheva, a journal I never heard of, see here. As with Dr Noorchashm there is no link to back up the claims in this article, so it may be totally made up rubbish for all I can tell. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. They claim that 7,700 new cases of infection occurred in Israel, “in the most recent wave starting in May”, not very specific. 72 people who had been infected got reinfected, while about 40% of the new cases had been vaccinated. So the majority, more than 50% who got infected were not vaccinated, which they don’t mention. Since Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries on the planet there are now more vaccinated people than non-vaccinated, so this tells you that clearly it is better to be vaccinated. Note they don’t say how many of the vaccinated and unvaccinated got seriously sick and died, a key bit of information. They also don’t break that down for the 72 reinfected either. Other recent studies show that the vast majority of those seriously ill and dying from Covid-19 were not vaccinated. Just search for “percentage of people in ICU unvaccinated” on any search engine and you will see numerous different reports all showing that the percentage of ICU Covid-19 patients who are unvaccinated is uniformly in the high 90s. So this journal implies that natural immunity is better than vaccines; Rubbish!! How many of the infected in Israel have died from Covid-19; the number is 6,559 as of today, about 5,200 before the vaccination program started. How many more would have died without vaccines? Obviously thousands more. So just a little thought will tell that this article is sloppily put together, misleading, just the sort of crap linked to by anti-vaxxers. And what about the site, Arutz Sheva? I wasn’t surprised to find that the site and a parent journal were founded to cater to right wing religious extremists, often not reliable sources of information. Of course an online journal is subsidized by adverts so it is in their interest to post as much click bait as possible, again follow the money.
In the same article is a link to a CNN video about this pathetic dishonest fraud Joseph Mercola (here). This is supposed to be a hit piece by CNN but by my estimation Dr. Mercola fully deserved to be hit, multiple times and then some more. Then, below the link to the CNN video there was a long tirade from Mercola about how poorly treated he has been and how the British secret service is after him and similar rubbish. This has now been taken down, I think Mercola is finally feeling some heat from all this bullshit he puts out. Of course at the bottom was a link to purchase his latest book. Again he is not a scientist, only an MD with the usual ego and delusions. He is the number 1 spreader of nonsense about masks and vaccines allegedly not working, vaccines causing death, basically all that rubbish. He of course puts all his crap on his own website where you can buy lots and lots of his worthless rubbish merchandise. Follow the money- he is making a decent income off of the clueless and gullible, some of whom will needlessly get sick and die. What selfish cynicism, especially from someone who took the Hippocratic oath. See this load of total nonsense.
Finally the article goes to an article concerning Dr. Fauci, to his credit Eisenstein links to a contrary view, although he clearly thinks his previous links were reality. This link goes to Business Insider, not a vanity site but a real serious journal with high standards, see here. Unlike all the above crap this quote Fauci accurately and directly cites two articles in Science, one of the world’s most rigorously peer reviewed journals. These papers are here and here. Two other papers are cited and can be downloaded from BiorXiv and ware currently not yet peer reviewed although this is in progress, these can be downloaded from here and here. See the difference? One side either does not link anywhere or links to dubious bullshit sites which do not detail their sources of information and the other allows you to read the data on which they are making their claims. This is just total rubbish versus science, I know which I am going to rely on. You’ll also notice that Fauci is not trying to sell you anything. To get back to Eisenstein’s garbage article, he later opines,
“For these reasons, I won’t try too hard to substantiate my belief that – and I may as well say it explicitly as a gesture of goodwill to the censors, who will thus have an easier time deciding what to do with this article – the Covid vaccines are much more dangerous, less effective, and less necessary than we are told.”
He of course provides absolutely no evidence for this. And there is none. And again;
“Nor is the foregoing analysis incompatible with the theory that Covid and the vaccination agenda is a totalitarian conspiracy to surveil, track, inject, and control every human being on earth.”
Just paranoid rubbish. Science is running the response to Covid-19 in the US with, at least now, relatively little input from the government. This is as it should be. Science is the only trick that humans ever developed which can lead to any new understanding or progress. You can pray to whichever of the numerous gods you prefer and you may then feel better but apart from that you will get nowhere. You can believe misinformation on the internet if you want but that gets you worse than nowhere, it gets you making really stupid decisions. Garbage in garbage out. I also noticed that Eisenstein wants you to get a paid subscription to his great thinkings, again follow the money. He is also not a scientist or even a clinician, being apparently a journalist and speaker. So he is even less qualified than the awful dishonest and useless Mercola and Noorchashm to have any meaningful opinion about vaccines. I’m going to edit my take on Eisenstein’s rubbish article and send it to him with an admonition to STFU since he is harming innocent ignorant and misinformed people.
Gerry Shaw Blog 