Update Re Scott Adams And mRNA Injections

I don’t follow Scott Adams, so I when I posted his tweet that had gone viral, in which he seemingly admitted that “anti-vaxxers” had “won”, I didn’t understand where this was coming from. I was puzzled by his tone, by his seeming contention that “anti-vaxxers” were reacting with reflexive distrust for Big Gov/Corp, but figured that the tweet served the purposes of the continuing point I wanted to make. The comments I received quickly led me to realize that there was more going on.

This morning I came across this article that provides a good explanation for me and others like me.

'Dilbert' Creator Scott Adams Admits Vax Critics Were Right, Still Doesn't Get Why

It’s a good article, but for my purposes this is the money portion:

As is often the case with comedians, Adams’ tone makes it difficult to discern the extent to which his video may be tonge-in-cheek.

He has developed a sizable following on Twitter, where he largely supports conservative causes and positions, but controversially broke rank with many of his followers in coming out strongly in favor of the vaccines.

The dilemma is a familiar one within MAGA’s anti-vax subculture, where even once-sacred cows like former President Donald Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity, both of whom crowed about the importance of the vaccine, have been left tarnished, to an extent, by the science.

Adams’s sarcastic intonation seemed to suggest that the recent video was a nod to his many online critics, more a genuflection than a sincere admission of error.

Indeed, since being proven wrong by the data, he has regularly pushed the idea that both sides in the debate use faulty reasoning and information to reach their conclusions.

After saying that he didn’t want to “put any shade … whatsoever” on his acceptance that the vaccines were a mistake, Adams them proceeded in the video to reiterate his defense that drinking the vax Kool-Aid seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

He also downplayed the fact that warning signs about the vaccine’s risks were present almost immediately, along with strong evidence suggesting they had no efficacy in preventing the transmission or contraction of the virus.

Instead, Adams suggested that opponents were simply invested emotionally in a contrarian worldview.

“The anti-vaxxers, I think, were really just distrustful of big companies and big government,” he said. “That’s never wrong.”

…

Naturally, he was met with more backlash online after posting the video.

While invoking the psychological concept of heuristics—essentially, the idea that vaccine skeptics relied on their preconceived beliefs and opinions to form a snap judgment,  Adams’s fallacy lies in another clinical concept—the idea of Type I versus Type II errors in hypothesis testing.

…

Since there is always a degree of uncertainty, a Type I error results in the rejection of a hypothesis that is, in fact, true. A Type II error result from acceptance of a false hypothesis.

…: Is it better to try something experimental that might offer some unknown benefit or to follow the status quo and risk missing out on something better?

…

But in reality, another variable was added into the mix—the possibility that the vaccine not only had no effect, but that it had an actively adverse effect on different segments of the population, including healthy young adults and children.

Read it all. It’s well reasoned.

Now, here’s an article that is bound to get some pushback from pro-injection circles, although the data is quite striking on its face. Many large epidemiological surveys are subject to criticism based on the large number of uncertain and therefore mostly uncontrollable variables. Nevertheless, Africa has emerged as a big winner. Moreover, when Trump first touted HCQ there were people who pointed to Africa as a possible lab for testing this approach:

Africa Is Starkly Unvaccinated, And Starkly Unvanquished By COVID

Pictures save time:

The author then goes into a review of the whole problem of diagnosis, and the use of the inappropriate “PCR test” for diagnostic purposes—as well as the crazy incentives in the US for hospitals to diagnoze Covid over flu or pneumonia or other respiratory viruses.

But the worst comes toward the end. The worst, that is, for injection enthusiasts who can’t bear the thought of cheap, easily administered, cures or prophylaxis that offer no windfall profits for Big Pharma and little role for Big Gov:

How Africa Defeated COVID so Decisively Without Vaccines

Part of the African continent’s success is no doubt due to a fortunate accident of microbiology, infectious diseases, pharmacology and immunology. It so happens that two of the most effective treatments for COVID, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, are also routine prophylactic weekly medicines throughout equatorial Africa, because they happen to be known for a half-century as the most effective, applicable and safest anti-parasite medications. So the population, particularly through about 31 countries, the tropical middle rectangle roughly, of Africa already were well-equipped prior to COVID events launching in late 2019 to early 2020.

As fortune would have it, the unpatented and relatively inexpensive half-century old drug ivermectin, whose inventors won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015, also has been the most effective medicine against COVID, [15] due in part to its specific effect against RNA transcriptase, as well as its blocking effect on all three parts of the trimeric spike protein, and other mechanisms.

Hydroxychloroquine is also used widely throughout at least equatorial regions of Africa as a prophylactic against parasites, but which fortunately has now been studied extensively and used successfully as both prevention and treatment of COVID disease, and as inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 replication and activity. This is shown in over 380 studies conducted in 55 countries.

It’s encouraging to see the WSJ—as establishment as a media outlet gets—carrying articles like this one. It’s evidence that maybe WE really are winning:

WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over "Deceptive" Booster Campaign

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their "deceptive" campaign for bivalent Covid boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking "the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy."

Follow the link for an extended discussion. However, the author points out three factors that were widely reported very early on and remain important considerations because, duh, science:

The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA Covid shots could simply be 'tweaked' to to target new variants - in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain.

To call this wishful thinking would be extremely generous.

As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen.

1. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated.

2. Vaccines have 'hard wired' our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, "so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines."

3. Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.

Finley has brought receipts too...

All of this was widely predicted by expert vaccinologists. Pivoting back to the anti-Adams article, which raised the third possibility of active harm, some of those vaccinologists also predicted that possibility. As with epidemiological surveys, there are complications to interpreting excess mortality statistics. But there are undoubtedly incentives for Big Gov/Health to try to deflect attention. It’s getting harder and harder. The truth keeps leaking out. Will nuclear war do the deflection trick?