Thursday, March 11, 2021

While The Mainstream Celebrates The End Of CV19, Major Risks Remain

Back in my January update on how disastrous the US response to the coronavirus is, I talked about delaying second shots and trifling with the virus opened the doors to mutations.  And, thus, the possibility of making this situation even more disastrous.  Interestingly, a top vaccine advocate, link below,  has come out and talked about the possibility of attempting to vaccinate people during a pandemic could create a horrendous monster.  And, with the vaccine permanently altering our immune response, the potential for a mutated strain to overrun our immune system.  In other words, regardless of whether the vaccines work and to what degree, exposing the virus to vaccines in the midst of a pandemic where the virus is jumping from host to host gives the virus a chance to become exposed to the vaccine and mutate around it.  Thus, creating a potentially deadlier situation that is potentially unstoppable.  Right now, these are risks based on sound science as opposed to guaranteed outcomes.

While some of this scientist’s assertions are yet to be validated in outcomes, and are open to being challenged, this dialog brings up a good point that many people don’t seem to grasp.  Risk management and risk analysis and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  As an example, countless people including those with sciences training view death graphs or infection graphs and see cases going down. Thus, they conclude the pandemic is over.  Or, people see that many have some substantial degree of immunity or show few symptoms and conclude this is just like the flu.  This happened in the 1918 pandemic as well.  And, years later countless health issues arose.  This isn’t a political issue.  It’s an issue of science and a lack of understanding of risk analysis.  Even conservative doctor Scott Gottlieb has talked about how without modern medicine this virus could have been as deadly as the 1918 pandemic.  Lack of understanding and quantification of risk is everywhere in this pandemic and in our fragile society.  Everything is politicized.  $15 an hour minimum wage is attempting to deal with a risk of a fragile society.  Providing healthcare to all in society is an attempt to create a resilient society.  Helping those during the pandemic is an attempt to address a risk of a fragile or non-resilient society.  Not helping communities and small businesses creates a risk in a fragile society.  The lack of public policy enforcement in Texas’s energy debacle creates risks and fragility.  Global supply chains and globalization creates incredible risks and fragility across countless outcomes.  The list of risk and even a lack of rudimentary understanding of fragility, lack of resilience and associated outcomes defines our horrendously corrupt corporate government and our wildly fragile society.  The United States is one shock away from massive crisis.  Yet, rather than discussing real and substantive issues, all of these and more are turned into political issues that the US doesn’t have money to deal with.  Or, that one party or the other is attempting to gain an upper hand.  This is fundamentally due to the lack of democratic public policy embracing a common good and the outcomes associated with Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan and Chamber of Commerce fundamentalism that places faith in corporations to provide in lieu of democratic public policy.  Our nation is literally run by corporate and political idiots.

This was actually exposed by Trump who has a third grade understanding of science, zero understanding of risk and absolutely no understanding of mathematics.  Projections on where the virus may be going are useful but as we’ve seen, they are often wrong.  Deaths and cases are lagging indicators. By the time someone thinks we are past the virus, new cases could be rising.  So, there is no way we are ever going to tell when this is over.  Does this mean we should shut down every aspect of our lives ad infinitum?  No.  We have learned a lot about transmissibility and how to protect against it.  What we have not learned is risk analysis or risk management and using actionable data to manage it; a concept that seems to not be understood by policy makers, the medical establishment or US citizens.  There are many reasons for this that I’m sure I don’t fully appreciate but a few are 1) the US hasn’t had to deal with crisis in ages so we don’t understand the concept of risk, 2) We make almost nothing and have outsourced science, so we are simply science illiterate, 3) Our educational system is horrendous on purpose and so we don’t education people to think in terms of risk analysis, creating a sustainable democracy(As the liberal arts were created for this purpose by the ancient Greeks) across any spectrum of society, 4) No one is willing to listen to true experts because they believe the entire system is stacked against them or are so close to being completely destabilized by authoritarian corporate government that they can’t afford to contemplate anything.

Below are three timely links worth reviewing as it pertains to remaining risks associated with the pandemic, the vaccine and lack of a data-driven, scientific policy view on behalf of the benefit of democracy and every citizen.

A Brutal Attack on Scientific Dissent link – This is nothing new but timely. I’ve noted for ages that junk science defines so much of our reality. This is substantially driven by the diminishing standards of science created by the corporate (for profit) funding and corporate takeover of US science.  Rabid attacks against those who question the authority of institutionalized entitlement is part and parcel to our hierarchical, institutionalized society.  I’ve talked about this in the posting on credentialism versus competence.  Entitled careerists whose self-interest trumps seeking truth use verbal assaults and attacks against truth seekers who have legitimate questions on policy or science.  This is a form of what is now being called cancel culture that has existed for ages in our culture.  Feynman discussed this generations ago.  So, did Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn in his criticism of the conformity of US corporate culture including its science nearly 60 years ago.  Cancel culture, shouting down dissent and conformity are part and parcel to corporate capitalism and  institutionalized entitlement.

Open letter from scientists on vaccine safety link – Nothing highlights the level of ignorance in our nation more than the rushing of a new form of vaccine that has absolutely no long term or even short term safety data during small, two month clinical trials.  The complete lack of risk analysis, risk management and data required to make actionable risk decisions is palpable.  These questions are serious concerns about the potentiality of unintended consequences and lack of critical risk assessment of a rushed vaccine.  Corporate medical science in the US is often less about science and more about profits. We lack even rudimentary data in nearly every aspect of our healthcare system.  And, the vaccine safety data NOT being captured except for voluntary submission to the CDC’s VAERS database shows how we are literally flying blind.  Even so, the number of deaths, late term pregnancy losses, Bells Palsy cases and anaphylactic cases is far greater than projected.  Harvard did a study some years ago that VAERS data is so inaccurate it captures an incredibly small amount of true data points.  This doesn’t even take into consideration there are absolutely no longer term reporting systems available to track potential long term effects of either the virus or the vaccine.

Vaccines during pandemic unintended consequences and risks link – This is the video highlighted in the above paragraphs with a vaccine developer who is concerned about rolling vaccines in the middle of a pandemic may allow the virus to mutate into a strain that is far worse.  This is scientifically comparable to bacteria developing resistance with improper use of antibiotics.  At this point, I would classify it as a major risk rather than a quantifiable issue.  But, with vaccine rollouts just starting and policymaker decisions to delay second shots, the opportunity for the virus to react to the vaccine and mutate is definitely real.  Given the world will likely be vaccinating for the next few years and that the vaccines may not stop transmission or infection, the potential for viral mutation is a major risk.  And, in a worst case, as this scientist notes, new vaccine boosters may not accomplish anything as we have permanently changed our natural immune response with the introduction of a vaccine that doesn’t actually vaccinate people but rather limits worst case outcomes.

posted by TimingLogic at 11:10 AM