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Friday, October 21, 2022

Pandemic Play Along - Covid19 Minimizer BINGO Cards

It's fall 2022. The Winter of our Dystopian Plague is upon us. We have a sustained SARS-CoV-2 surge, hundreds of deaths per day, abandonment of all mitigation strategies save the pharmaceutical ones, immune-evasive variants that render some of those pharmaceutical interventions useless, multiple circulating variants (variant soup), pediatric wards full of sick kids, and minimizers as far as the eye can see. Oh the minimizers. They infest every level of government and the media.

Might as well hunker down as much as we are able, fire up the Corsi-Rosenthal box, and play some games until spring - because this winter is comin' in like Hannah Montana. 





Covid19 Minimizer BINGO Cards may be saved and disseminated by clean air lovers everywhere. 


U.S. Versions 1 & 2


O Canada Edition

U.K. Edition




Enjoy, mask up, and stay safe out there!

Friday, April 8, 2022

R-E-S-P-E-C-T My Unbiased Science Authority!

As written about here before, there are certain contentious issues that Skeptics like to zero in on and the controversy over Lyme disease is no exception.

For those who may not be aware, there is ongoing debate as to the cause of post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, or PTLDS which is also referred to as chronic Lyme. Some deny that a persistent infection is at play, even while much research exists that supports this. From the Columbia University website:

When patients are treated shortly after infection, most patients recover fully and do well. For patients whose symptoms return or for those whose initial infection wasn't caught early, the course of illness may be more prolonged and the treatment uncertain. Because we do not yet have a diagnostic test that is a sensitive marker of active infection, patients and doctors are left with tremendous uncertainty regarding whether or not to treat with additional antibiotics. This uncertainty can lead to conflict — with some doctors advocating treatment and others stating further treatment is not indicated. Such conflict can create anxiety in patients as they become uncertain whom to trust — and it can even cause conflict between doctors who hold different perspectives on this illness.

As you can see, this conflict plays out even among physicians. Sadly, it's the patients who end up caught in the middle of this messy business. 

In today's example we find a doctor of philosophy who has decided that she is the defacto expert when it comes to Lyme disease, PTLDS and chronic Lyme, and you must never question her authority! 


Comments on this echo chamber have been limited to Substack subscribers only.
(Side note - pictured is the bound dissertation by Dr. Love, not a book.)


Andrea C. Love, PhD of the Unbiased Science podcast (USP) cohosted with Jessica Steier, DrPH, PMP, shared links to the USP episodes on Lyme disease last weekend and were met with much criticism from Lyme patients. I watched from the sidelines as comments disappeared and people were banned. Links to legitimate research on chronic Lyme were deleted. 

Dr. Love is firmly in the camp that denies chronic infection is at play. She is of course entitled to her own opinion on the matter and to express that opinion through social media and through the podcast and website that she contributes to in her personal time, just like I'm doing here.

There are however, a number of issues that are problematic with the USP Facebook/Instagram posts. (Full disclosure: I have not listened to the podcast episodes, and do not address them in this blog.)

First is a specific and unusual assertion made by Dr. Love that is contradictory to the CDC and IDSA guidance on treating Lyme disease.

“As such, there is no thing as a chronic Lyme infection. Even without antibiotics, most infections would self-resolve.”



In the restricted comment section (followers only!) on Instagram Dr. Love also advises a follower that “infection would be cleared by the immune system even without abx treatment."

As I stated earlier, there is quite a bit of controversy over the cause of PTLDS or what it should be called, but one area where everyone agrees is that infections need to be treated with antibiotics! This is not at all in question. It is a universally well-accepted fact that an untreated infection can lead to serious illness and even death. Not treating a patient with such an infection would be considered malpractice.

It is very concerning that Dr. Love, who is not a medical doctor, through her credentials and podcast, is influencing people to not take tick bites seriously or to delay or forgo necessary and lifesaving treatment.


***THIS IS A VERY BAD PLAN***

Of course in addition to this, Dr. Love is refusing to allow discussion by banning people and restricting comments on the social media pages for the USP - which means this dangerous advice has gone uncorrected. 

Communication goes both ways. If you want to be a science communicator, you best get that right. As a scientist who has elected to use her advanced degree to communicate science to the public, she is responsible to disseminate accurate information and to allow a fair exchange with stakeholders. She's also responsible to check her ego at the door in favor of the health and well being of the public and USP's followers. 

"Our content educates the general public about scientific matters that have direct relevance to their lives and health-related decisions...We know that now, more than ever, the world needs accurate information. We know misinformation is a threat to people’s lives and the stability of our societies. At Unbiased Science, we fight for truth, health, and the evidence-based way." - Unbiased Science Institute

The fucking irony in calling your organization "Unbiased" and then engaging in this juvenile, arrogant behavior is enough to make Alanis Morissette roll over in her metaphorical grave!

When she's not podcasting, merching or Substacking (only $55 per month!), Dr. Love portrays Lyme patients (sick people) as deluded zealots who doctor shop, drink urine, have "implausible coinfections," are hostile toward evidence-based medicine,  have Munchausen's, Munchausen's by Proxy, and are medical child abusers.

A degree is not a free pass to demean and gaslight patients. There is no excuse for this shit.

The USP also claims that biofilms and cyst forms of Borellia are "not real problems with Lyme disease"...except again, there is actual research on this and it even has pictures!

Imaginary Lyme biofilms



The USP echo chamber is not much better. Mz./Mr./Mrs./Ms./Mx. Tooth over here has decided that you and your health are a worthless anecdote and only "fully fleshed" (ew, wtf) research studies matter, but not the ones you post, those get deleted! Fuck off you lousy cripples with your pseudoscience! 


It should come as no surprise then, that the USP engage in typical Skeptic behavior when it comes to other areas of science and ethics, not just Lyme. Did you know, everything is a chemical?

A popular myth about dose response straight from the chemical industry.


Also, it's totally normal for your nonprofit to have paid ad partnerships with 3M right? Right?? 





(Full disclosure: 3M has ravaged my community and poisoned the bodies of my friends. I'm not unbiased towards them.)

You MUST hate on organic food (and straight up lie about it) if you want to be a Skeptic.



Here are a couple more graphics that have not aged well...

Breakthrough infections: SO RARE!


Spoiler: KEEP YOUR MASK ON YOU FUCKING DOPE



I guess the question we need to ask is how much are we willing to tolerate from these twatwaffles in the name of "science"?

Why is it that David Avocado Wolfe, Dr. Joe Mercola and Gwyneth Paltrow are held to a standard that doesn't apply if you and your bestie have degrees and call yourselves Unbiased Science? Well, probably because these people are filthy fucking hypocrites, that's why.

Would you like to see a new day where we hold sci-commers accountable for their actions instead of them getting to hide behind science as a virtuous shield while they shoot missiles at sick and suffering people, and suckle off the teat of toxic industries?

Ah well, we can dream.

Friday, January 28, 2022

A Brief History of Pandemic Front Groups

The Covid-19 pandemic has enriched some of the elite, but it has also gotten in the way of powerful corporate profits. Let’s look at a brief chronological history of pandemic inspired front groups seeking to promote the financial interests of a certain few. 

Do you remember when America’s Frontline Doctors suddenly burst onto the scene in crisply pressed matching embroidered lab coats for a well publicized press conference?


According to a report by NBC News, “The event was hosted and funded by the Tea Party Patriots, a right-wing political nonprofit group led by Jenny Beth Martin, the group's co-founder, who spoke at the news conference...Tea Party Patriots have been critical of measures enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Before America's Frontline Doctors, the group launched the Second Opinion Project, a website that hosted videos of doctors attacking state and local coronavirus efforts.”

This circus featured Dr. Stella Immanuel, who brought the side show with her claims that endometriosis is caused by demon sperm. No really.


She’s continuing the world class level of entertainment by now claiming that the messenger RNA vaccines will turn you into nephilim and you won’t be allowed into the kingdom of God. She provides scriptural citations, oh ye of little faith.

Unfortunately for the public under viral assault, this dark money fueled stunt failed to elevate the conversation about HCQ beyond Orange Man Bad! territory so who the fuck knows if it’s any good or not? Their goal was really to oppose any restrictions or mitigation anyway…

After America's Frontline Docs faded off into semi obscurity, a new cowboy rode into town! A town called Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Of course this just so happens to be the home to the decades old front group, the American Institute for Economic Research.

In her book Why Trust Science? Naomi Oreskes, the co-author of Merchants of Doubt states that AIER “promotes anti-scientific discussion of climate change, much of which promotes the familiar canard that climate change will be minor and manageable.”


The main authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya and Sunetra Gupta seen posing in front of the AIER Cotswold Cottage mansion below, advocated for a somewhat vague “focused protection” strategy after Jeffrey Tucker, former Editorial Director for AIER slid into Kulldorf's DMs on Twitter to invite him to the mansion for some R&R. ‘We’ve got a nice place here, why don’t you come and visit us - two hours away?  We’ll feed you well and relax a bit.’ And he wrote me back and said ‘Okay.’


A principle intention of the declaration was to allow the virus to spread through the population to create “herd immunity.”

Click for animation


Says Gupta, “…not only is it a good thing for young people to go out there and become immune, but that it is almost their duty." 

It's your DUTY to get infected with an organ and immune system damaging virus for the economy, kids! 

Gupta even claimed that we had maybe already reached herd immunity back in 2020.



Ooops!


But not only are the GBD authors terribly, horribly, stupidly wrong, they are also the public face of a network of moneyed interests that want to make sure the economy continues to grind on regardless of the high risk of death or disability for those caught in the wheels.


It should therefore come as no surprise that the Tea Party, who were intimately involved with America’s Frontline Doctors, makes another appearance behind the GBD, along with the orchestration and support from AIER mentioned previously.

This brings us up to the present time, where during the most massive surge yet in the pandemic another group of “experts” are calling for lifting the already weak and inconsistent patchwork of pandemic mitigation strategies being utilized in public schools.



#UrgencyOfNormal launched a webinar which was open to the public, well, unless you have ever tweeted about #UrgencyOfEquity or #COVIDisAirborne, then you were digitally escorted out.
Monica Gandhi rounded this out by blocking people who have never engaged her...


…and deleting her tweet about the toolkit, that despite being described as “evidence based”…


…reads like some Dead Alive baby birthed from the Independent Women's Forum after the GBD impregnated it in the dining room of a house full of zombies. 





The citations and cherry picked, misrepresented stats in the toolkit are easily dismantled, and have already been multiple times just on Twitter. 

But less clear is the funding, support, and/or political motivation behind this well-coordinated effort that appears more legitimate on the surface than America's Frontline Doctors and the GBD. It is somewhat differentiated by its focus on children, who are clearly suffering due to the shit response to the pandemic by the adults around them.

Despite the framing of this being "for the children" the timing and message don’t pass the sniff test. The agenda is not even remotely in the best interest of children. 

Keep both eyes on #UrgencyOfNormal in the coming weeks to see if we can catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

Is that a voting machine? I'm keeping my gaze turned to the LEFT this time ahem ahem



Monday January 31 - And already we have an update. Joe Friday reports a game of musical chairs, where five of the original Urgency of Normal authors (see screen shots above) have disappeared and been replaced. Monica Gandhi, Jeff Vergales, Amy Beck, Tara Henderson and Aparna Bole have been replaced by Vinay Prasad, Jennifer Grant, Martha Fulford, Ram Duriseti and Todd Porter. 

What does this all mean? It's anyone's guess but there are some clues.

Prasad is listed as an Author and Contributor at the Brownstone Institute, along with the GBD Authors Kulldorf, Bhattacharya, and Gupta. Brownstone describes itself as the "spiritual child" of the GBD, naturally. And wouldn't you know, the Founder and President of Brownstone is Jeffrey Tucker. That guy sure gets around!


Wednesday, March 1 - Oh, hey, looks like this memo might explain in part the political motivation behind some of this new "Urgency."