I agree; it expressed the disorientation and frustration and despair simply and powerfully. However, I don't think I like where he ultimately let it lead. The choice between the Weinstein-Heyings of the world and the "authoritative" sources such as the CDC, NIH, etc. is not a 50/50 tossup. CDC, NIH, and certainly the media have not exactly draped themselves in glory, but if I really know nothing about the science involved -- to the point where I'm incapable of evaluating the arguments adequately -- I choose the CDC or NIH every day of the week and twice on Sundays. At least I know that they have relevant expertise, understand how to find and read the relevant studies, and have some accountability.
That being said: I strongly disagree with efforts to censor folks like Weinstein and Heying. For one, I don't know that what they say is untrue. That should be a subject for discussion, and we should be willing to have that discussion for as long as significant questions remain. For Ivermectin, based on the reading I've done, there are a number of potentially promising studies out there, but none of them are good randomized controlled trials, and that it's not that hard to get good-looking but bullshit results in studies that don't have controls and randomized, double-blind trials. I think Bobby Koomar's point about Dexamethasone should be well-taken: cheap, easily available drugs like that are perfectly well-accepted for treatment of COVID, provided they have the requisite data.
With scientific consensus, for one. Science is not a perfect thing, but it's the best method we've yet found for understanding our reality. Scientific consensus does matter. It's not god, but I'll take the advice of those responsive to it over the advice of those who are earning a living by disagreeing with it.
I never claimed there was. I claimed that were I unable to make sense of the science myself, I'd trust those who are responsive to consensus -- which the large government institutions tend to be.
I also stressed my disagreement with suppressing dissent. However, your article posed a question: what does one do when one has no ability to assess the science? I think the answer is fairly clear: you trust those who 1) you know have the training and knowledge to assess and synthesize the relevant studies properly within context, and 2) are likely to follow the consensus when it does arrive. Because if you lack the knowledge to make the evaluation, consensus is indeed your best bet. That doesn't mean the mavericks are wrong; merely that if you cannot evaluate the science, it seems unwise to trust them over those with the best qualifications and the weight of consensus.
I'd also point out that consensus *does* appear to be that Ivermectin is unproven -- with promising results from studies with methodological problems. I'm in favor of doing proper RCTs. But I wouldn't decide to take the stuff myself on the advice of a few folks who hold up a few studies that show it may work.
I think you slightly misunderstand my position. I'm not sold yet on ivermectin. I can't say one way or the other whether it's the wonder drug some believe it to be. I would like to see an open debate about it and large scale clinical trials. What I do know — and which you agree with — is that suppressing all talk about it is anti-scientific and dangerous to public health.
But I would push back on defaulting to the CDC, NIH, WHO, etc. Given their track record over the past year and a half, I simply don't give them the benefit of the doubt for being good faith arbiters of what's in evidence and what's not. I think they've shown themselves to be thoroughly political institutions and their judgments should be regarded as being heavily influenced by political considerations.
A question - you mention being a frequent listener to DarkHorse, but also that you haven’t come across any new & concerning evidence regarding vaccines. Have you listened to Bret Weinstein’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology, and Steve Kirsch? Steve’s disposition makes the interview a hard listen, but the information therein — while inconclusive — raises the red flags on the mRNA COVID vaccines an inch or two further.
Thanks! You know, I did listen to it and I actually went back and forth on mentioning it when I wrote that line. Because of that episode I am aware of the VAERS reports etc., but I didn't find myself entirely convinced at the time. That may in part be because I don't have the requisite background, and actually I was planning on going back and re-listening to it specifically to sound out the case for short-term hazards from the vaccines. But since I wasn't persuaded by it I left the line in that I have yet to hear compelling evidence.
I agree Steve made it a little hard to listen to. I hope Bret has Malone back on for a 1-1.
Makes sense. I have found it a tricky topic to navigate - the Japanese FOIA document regarding preferential accumulation of lipids in the ovaries 48 hours after injection sounds compelling on the surface, but the deeper implications of that data remain foggy for me. I feel an urge to communicate the information to pre-menopausal female peers who I know want to have children in the future and are yet to be vaccinated (I'm up in Canada, roll-out is a little slower), but the ambiguity of the data's implications make the social cost of expressing skepticism to all but my closest friends & family a questionable bargain.
Anyways - I really appreciate you writing on this topic. I came across your work on animal agriculture via Greenwald, and as a longtime vegan I subscribed expecting to hear more on that topic; I'm delighted that you're exploring other topics so incisively as well. If you ever put up a paywall, I'll definitely be there for it.
I'm vegan too, and definitely plan to fill up some space in this newsletter writing about animal rights. Stay tuned!
And I actually did put up a (voluntary) paywall recently — I thought. But if you don't see it then I must have messed it up which explains why not a single person has signed up for a paid subscription yet! lol
Leighton, we are really happy that you wrote this article. We really need people to write and talk about this dynamic that has been our world for the past year+.
You perfectly captured the state of confusion "Am I crazy?" feeling that we are increasingly living with. Just trying to talk to people about anything vaccine/covid related beyond "Did you get your shot yet?" is met with silence at the end of the line.
Leighton, before I proceed, I want to note, I am not arguing in favor of youtube censoring his videos, and as someone with a PhD in the relevant fields, I've been suggesting (like many scientists) that lab leak should be taken seriously.
I think you've done a good job laying out your thought process, but I think you vastly overestimate Bret Weinstein as a source of good info on this topic. Take for instance his Bill Maher appearance, where he claims that susceptibility to UV light and lack of transmission outdoors is an indication that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab. A first year virology graduate student could tell you that this is straight up asinine. Many viruses are susceptible to UV light and almost all respiratory viruses transmit much better outdoors than indoors. These things are not evidence of anything one way or the other. Whenever he has said something correct about the evidence in favor or the lab leak, it's clear its from reading the work of other scientists who have actually done close examinations of primary data (people like Alina Chan and the scientists at DRASTIC). He doesn't have any original insights and his explications of others work often puts undue weight on certain lines of evidence over others (e.g. he places the existence of a furin cleavage sight as more pertinent than the lack of mutations in early case sequencing data). He also places absurd weight on the lab leak hypothesis (he claims its close to 90-98% likely), which even someone like Alina Chain would call out of bounds.
I don't have as much expertise on medical science, but the reason doctors across the world haven't adopted this cheap miracle drug is not because of some big pharma conspiracy, it's that there aren't randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that show its efficacy. As a counter-example, take dexamethasone, also a cheap drug, that was adopted world-wide as treatment following solid evidence from RCTs. More absurd, is his idea for resolving the pandemic: have everyone take ivermectin at the same time for a short duration of time. The idea that this will work in a world where you can't get 20% of people to wear a mask is delusional beyond all recognition. Worse yet, convincing people that Ivermectin is some kind of medical drug (when there's no solid evidence for it) could actually get lots of people killed. This is especially galling when there's no good evidence that the vaccines are harmful or particularly risky.
I don't want to waste more time on this, but suffice to say that Weinstein doesn't know what he's talking about, and he jumps from one conspiracy theory to the next (e.g. see his initial comments about election fraud) bringing on whatever credentialed scientist who will back him up (Robert Malone, for instance, has promoted straight quackery: https://twitter.com/uberfeminist/status/1408901303468761091). The fact that he happened to be tangentially right about one thing (lab leak) is not a point in his favor--especially when you look at the broad swatch of his career. For more on what's wrong with Weinstein, please take a look at this article: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/06/youre-probably-not-galileo-scientific-advance-rarely-comes-from-lone-contrarian-outsiders/
A relevant quote from the piece:
"This tendency towards sensationalism and grandiose claims is not restricted to lofty theoretical topics – it also manifests in the explanations offered for mundane events. For example, when encountering technical difficulties recording their podcast in Portland, Bret and Heather speculated that this could be due to ‘external interference’ and placed tinfoil hats on the cameras to reduce the interference, but subsequently revised their opinion, attributing it instead to the effects of radiation-leakage from the Fukushima nuclear plant. They claim, incorrectly, that seafood from the Pacific is now too dangerous to eat. In the same recording, they discuss the dangers of water fluoridation, a classic Bircher conspiracy theory, and describe the evidence for water fluoridation as preposterous, taking pains to point out that it is derived from industrial waste and that it is ‘insane to medicate this way’."
I think there is a tendency among a lot of people to see the breakdown in media institutions and therefore reject all mainstream narratives and take suppression as evidence of proof of the legitimacy of a claim. This is simply put a logical fallacy. Please don't succumb to it.
Bobby, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I'm entirely open to the possibility that Bret is wrong, even recklessly wrong. As I mention in the piece, I'm not qualified to judge Weinstein's scientific claims. (I do think that I'm qualified to weigh in on the lab leak possibility, because that's far less technical, but on ivermectin I totally admit my ignorance.) But of course, as I presume you would agree, even if he *is* recklessly wrong, that doesn't even start to justify censoring him. The answer to ungrounded conjecture is *more* debate, not less.
But also, in Weinstein's defense, he has frequently said that if there haven't been enough randomized control trials on ivermectin, then fair enough — let's do some! If he's at least correct that there has been significant evidence that it *could* be a promising therapy, then why aren't we doing more research on it instead of trying to stifle discussion about it? (I know that there is now that PRINCIPLE study being launched at Oxford, which is good news.) And I would also push back on the idea that it's a conspiracy theory that pharma is suppressing ivermectin, because I don't think it requires a conspiracy. All it requires is a lack of incentive for the pharma companies to dig into it themselves, and the presence of an incentive for them to poo poo the idea in their communications with the US government. That's not tinfoil hat land, that's just business as usual in DC.
That said, again, I don't know that this is happening, I just don't think it's outlandish that it could be.
Your last point I totally agree with, and was kind of the point of this essay. When media institutions squander their credibility by showing clear ideological bias and orthodoxy, then we're left with no compass with which to navigate between what's credible and what's absurd. That's precisely where I find myself on the ivermectin question.
You may well be right about the Weinstein's not being entirely credible on this. However that piece you linked to was not at all convincing. It makes no mention of the scientific "consensus" that has already been wrong or questionable at best during the pandemic (e.g. lab leak a conspiracy, scientists saying racism worse than pandemic therefore protest, lockdowns being unquestioningly applied without CBE, masks not good/masks good, etc). Instead it frames them as scientists going against the consensus doing original research, and places them in that historical context rather than this current pandemic's context. That's seems disingenuous.
I see Weinstein as a sometimes-useful progressive counterweight to progressive orthodoxy. He's not an authority and before you give credence to a claim he makes you should follow up.
Not that it matters, but 90% sounds about right to me for lab leak; I think there's something there with ivermectin but Weinstein is too confident about it; and his reasoning about UV and indoor-vs-outdoor transmission is poor.
Birchers criticized fluoridation; so what? You're committing a sort of anti-halo-effect fallacy. It's like how the media and scientific establishment politicized the lab-leak hypothesis and ruled it anathema, because Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump were touting some variant of it. Weinstein's criticisms of fluoridation, which I believe are unsound, are different from Birchers'; the Cotton/Pompeo/Trump version of lab-leak is different from what you'll come to conclude from reading people like Alina Chan.
I feel the same as you, but never could have put it so eloquently. I have not taken the vax, but I'm not anti vax. I've just had the virus, trust my body, and trust other scientists that a combo of super high vitamin D, C, quercitin, can help me get through the virus. And it did, once I started that protocol that I read hospitals recommend, my lungs stopped being irritated and the symptoms finally receded. I still think the vaxx is likely a net good, but why would I take any new medicine if I feel my body can handle it? It's like people have never seen the class action lawsuit medical commercials on things that were formerly deemed safe. The risk may be small (hopefully), but there is still risk, and people have the right to weigh that risk themselves. Some will be wrong and some will be right, but it's better than government mandating new medicines. Also, I think you should have spoke to the FB group that was removed where a hundred thousand women were sharing extreme period issues that were extreme.
At my work most people just had headaches and soreness for a couple days. But a few got hit hard after the second dose, 2 had food poisoning symptoms for a week and said they'll never take it again. That's enough for me to try to be healthier and let my body handle it. If CV makes an extreme come back, maybe I'll get the vax.
Don't vaccinate your baby, not against covid at any rate. Babies are pretty much entirely uneffected by Covid and it will be a couple years before your child is of the age that vaccine apartheid will become as issue for him, and in the meantime networks of people opposed to the vaccine can form and perhaps some justice can be served to some people. The second part it unlikely, but if you can wait and see, why not?
Yeah a friend of mine who's a PA and operates a nursing home has been dealing with terminal Covid patients basically for the last 18 months. He's obviously not "anti-vaxx," and understands the science and the medicine better than most. When I asked him if he was going to vaccinate his toddler, his response was, and I quote "FUUUUCK no."
My kid will be in preschool in a year. Not sure if they'll have requirements but that'll be the first big test.
Beautifully written. You captured the feelings of disorientation and paranoia generated by this issue brilliantly.
I agree; it expressed the disorientation and frustration and despair simply and powerfully. However, I don't think I like where he ultimately let it lead. The choice between the Weinstein-Heyings of the world and the "authoritative" sources such as the CDC, NIH, etc. is not a 50/50 tossup. CDC, NIH, and certainly the media have not exactly draped themselves in glory, but if I really know nothing about the science involved -- to the point where I'm incapable of evaluating the arguments adequately -- I choose the CDC or NIH every day of the week and twice on Sundays. At least I know that they have relevant expertise, understand how to find and read the relevant studies, and have some accountability.
That being said: I strongly disagree with efforts to censor folks like Weinstein and Heying. For one, I don't know that what they say is untrue. That should be a subject for discussion, and we should be willing to have that discussion for as long as significant questions remain. For Ivermectin, based on the reading I've done, there are a number of potentially promising studies out there, but none of them are good randomized controlled trials, and that it's not that hard to get good-looking but bullshit results in studies that don't have controls and randomized, double-blind trials. I think Bobby Koomar's point about Dexamethasone should be well-taken: cheap, easily available drugs like that are perfectly well-accepted for treatment of COVID, provided they have the requisite data.
"I choose the CDC or NIH every day of the week and twice on Sundays.... have some *accountability*."
With whom, other than an MSM which exists mainly to kiss Deep State ass?
With scientific consensus, for one. Science is not a perfect thing, but it's the best method we've yet found for understanding our reality. Scientific consensus does matter. It's not god, but I'll take the advice of those responsive to it over the advice of those who are earning a living by disagreeing with it.
But that's the thing, there is no scientific consensus. How can there be consensus when one side of a debate is being suppressed?
I never claimed there was. I claimed that were I unable to make sense of the science myself, I'd trust those who are responsive to consensus -- which the large government institutions tend to be.
I also stressed my disagreement with suppressing dissent. However, your article posed a question: what does one do when one has no ability to assess the science? I think the answer is fairly clear: you trust those who 1) you know have the training and knowledge to assess and synthesize the relevant studies properly within context, and 2) are likely to follow the consensus when it does arrive. Because if you lack the knowledge to make the evaluation, consensus is indeed your best bet. That doesn't mean the mavericks are wrong; merely that if you cannot evaluate the science, it seems unwise to trust them over those with the best qualifications and the weight of consensus.
I'd also point out that consensus *does* appear to be that Ivermectin is unproven -- with promising results from studies with methodological problems. I'm in favor of doing proper RCTs. But I wouldn't decide to take the stuff myself on the advice of a few folks who hold up a few studies that show it may work.
I think you slightly misunderstand my position. I'm not sold yet on ivermectin. I can't say one way or the other whether it's the wonder drug some believe it to be. I would like to see an open debate about it and large scale clinical trials. What I do know — and which you agree with — is that suppressing all talk about it is anti-scientific and dangerous to public health.
But I would push back on defaulting to the CDC, NIH, WHO, etc. Given their track record over the past year and a half, I simply don't give them the benefit of the doubt for being good faith arbiters of what's in evidence and what's not. I think they've shown themselves to be thoroughly political institutions and their judgments should be regarded as being heavily influenced by political considerations.
I feel exactly the same way! Thanks for writing this. Its good to know others are experiencing the same vertigo.
Terrific piece Leighton. Thank you!
A question - you mention being a frequent listener to DarkHorse, but also that you haven’t come across any new & concerning evidence regarding vaccines. Have you listened to Bret Weinstein’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology, and Steve Kirsch? Steve’s disposition makes the interview a hard listen, but the information therein — while inconclusive — raises the red flags on the mRNA COVID vaccines an inch or two further.
Thanks! You know, I did listen to it and I actually went back and forth on mentioning it when I wrote that line. Because of that episode I am aware of the VAERS reports etc., but I didn't find myself entirely convinced at the time. That may in part be because I don't have the requisite background, and actually I was planning on going back and re-listening to it specifically to sound out the case for short-term hazards from the vaccines. But since I wasn't persuaded by it I left the line in that I have yet to hear compelling evidence.
I agree Steve made it a little hard to listen to. I hope Bret has Malone back on for a 1-1.
Makes sense. I have found it a tricky topic to navigate - the Japanese FOIA document regarding preferential accumulation of lipids in the ovaries 48 hours after injection sounds compelling on the surface, but the deeper implications of that data remain foggy for me. I feel an urge to communicate the information to pre-menopausal female peers who I know want to have children in the future and are yet to be vaccinated (I'm up in Canada, roll-out is a little slower), but the ambiguity of the data's implications make the social cost of expressing skepticism to all but my closest friends & family a questionable bargain.
Anyways - I really appreciate you writing on this topic. I came across your work on animal agriculture via Greenwald, and as a longtime vegan I subscribed expecting to hear more on that topic; I'm delighted that you're exploring other topics so incisively as well. If you ever put up a paywall, I'll definitely be there for it.
Looking forward to reading on Leighton!
Ben
I'm vegan too, and definitely plan to fill up some space in this newsletter writing about animal rights. Stay tuned!
And I actually did put up a (voluntary) paywall recently — I thought. But if you don't see it then I must have messed it up which explains why not a single person has signed up for a paid subscription yet! lol
Do you also do crossfit? Which do you tell people about first? Kidding, enjoyed the article.
Ah - yes, it is there! I don't know if it was when I first subscribed, but in any case - happy to be the first! Keep up the great work!
It wasn't — once you alerted me I checked and I hadn't enabled it. Oops!
Leighton, we are really happy that you wrote this article. We really need people to write and talk about this dynamic that has been our world for the past year+.
You perfectly captured the state of confusion "Am I crazy?" feeling that we are increasingly living with. Just trying to talk to people about anything vaccine/covid related beyond "Did you get your shot yet?" is met with silence at the end of the line.
Leighton, before I proceed, I want to note, I am not arguing in favor of youtube censoring his videos, and as someone with a PhD in the relevant fields, I've been suggesting (like many scientists) that lab leak should be taken seriously.
I think you've done a good job laying out your thought process, but I think you vastly overestimate Bret Weinstein as a source of good info on this topic. Take for instance his Bill Maher appearance, where he claims that susceptibility to UV light and lack of transmission outdoors is an indication that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab. A first year virology graduate student could tell you that this is straight up asinine. Many viruses are susceptible to UV light and almost all respiratory viruses transmit much better outdoors than indoors. These things are not evidence of anything one way or the other. Whenever he has said something correct about the evidence in favor or the lab leak, it's clear its from reading the work of other scientists who have actually done close examinations of primary data (people like Alina Chan and the scientists at DRASTIC). He doesn't have any original insights and his explications of others work often puts undue weight on certain lines of evidence over others (e.g. he places the existence of a furin cleavage sight as more pertinent than the lack of mutations in early case sequencing data). He also places absurd weight on the lab leak hypothesis (he claims its close to 90-98% likely), which even someone like Alina Chain would call out of bounds.
I don't have as much expertise on medical science, but the reason doctors across the world haven't adopted this cheap miracle drug is not because of some big pharma conspiracy, it's that there aren't randomized clinical trials (RCTs) that show its efficacy. As a counter-example, take dexamethasone, also a cheap drug, that was adopted world-wide as treatment following solid evidence from RCTs. More absurd, is his idea for resolving the pandemic: have everyone take ivermectin at the same time for a short duration of time. The idea that this will work in a world where you can't get 20% of people to wear a mask is delusional beyond all recognition. Worse yet, convincing people that Ivermectin is some kind of medical drug (when there's no solid evidence for it) could actually get lots of people killed. This is especially galling when there's no good evidence that the vaccines are harmful or particularly risky.
I don't want to waste more time on this, but suffice to say that Weinstein doesn't know what he's talking about, and he jumps from one conspiracy theory to the next (e.g. see his initial comments about election fraud) bringing on whatever credentialed scientist who will back him up (Robert Malone, for instance, has promoted straight quackery: https://twitter.com/uberfeminist/status/1408901303468761091). The fact that he happened to be tangentially right about one thing (lab leak) is not a point in his favor--especially when you look at the broad swatch of his career. For more on what's wrong with Weinstein, please take a look at this article: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2021/06/youre-probably-not-galileo-scientific-advance-rarely-comes-from-lone-contrarian-outsiders/
A relevant quote from the piece:
"This tendency towards sensationalism and grandiose claims is not restricted to lofty theoretical topics – it also manifests in the explanations offered for mundane events. For example, when encountering technical difficulties recording their podcast in Portland, Bret and Heather speculated that this could be due to ‘external interference’ and placed tinfoil hats on the cameras to reduce the interference, but subsequently revised their opinion, attributing it instead to the effects of radiation-leakage from the Fukushima nuclear plant. They claim, incorrectly, that seafood from the Pacific is now too dangerous to eat. In the same recording, they discuss the dangers of water fluoridation, a classic Bircher conspiracy theory, and describe the evidence for water fluoridation as preposterous, taking pains to point out that it is derived from industrial waste and that it is ‘insane to medicate this way’."
I think there is a tendency among a lot of people to see the breakdown in media institutions and therefore reject all mainstream narratives and take suppression as evidence of proof of the legitimacy of a claim. This is simply put a logical fallacy. Please don't succumb to it.
Bobby, thanks for the thoughtful feedback. I'm entirely open to the possibility that Bret is wrong, even recklessly wrong. As I mention in the piece, I'm not qualified to judge Weinstein's scientific claims. (I do think that I'm qualified to weigh in on the lab leak possibility, because that's far less technical, but on ivermectin I totally admit my ignorance.) But of course, as I presume you would agree, even if he *is* recklessly wrong, that doesn't even start to justify censoring him. The answer to ungrounded conjecture is *more* debate, not less.
But also, in Weinstein's defense, he has frequently said that if there haven't been enough randomized control trials on ivermectin, then fair enough — let's do some! If he's at least correct that there has been significant evidence that it *could* be a promising therapy, then why aren't we doing more research on it instead of trying to stifle discussion about it? (I know that there is now that PRINCIPLE study being launched at Oxford, which is good news.) And I would also push back on the idea that it's a conspiracy theory that pharma is suppressing ivermectin, because I don't think it requires a conspiracy. All it requires is a lack of incentive for the pharma companies to dig into it themselves, and the presence of an incentive for them to poo poo the idea in their communications with the US government. That's not tinfoil hat land, that's just business as usual in DC.
That said, again, I don't know that this is happening, I just don't think it's outlandish that it could be.
Your last point I totally agree with, and was kind of the point of this essay. When media institutions squander their credibility by showing clear ideological bias and orthodoxy, then we're left with no compass with which to navigate between what's credible and what's absurd. That's precisely where I find myself on the ivermectin question.
You may well be right about the Weinstein's not being entirely credible on this. However that piece you linked to was not at all convincing. It makes no mention of the scientific "consensus" that has already been wrong or questionable at best during the pandemic (e.g. lab leak a conspiracy, scientists saying racism worse than pandemic therefore protest, lockdowns being unquestioningly applied without CBE, masks not good/masks good, etc). Instead it frames them as scientists going against the consensus doing original research, and places them in that historical context rather than this current pandemic's context. That's seems disingenuous.
*without CBA (cost benefit analysis).
I think you meant the opposite of this: "almost all respiratory viruses transmit much better outdoors than indoors."
I see Weinstein as a sometimes-useful progressive counterweight to progressive orthodoxy. He's not an authority and before you give credence to a claim he makes you should follow up.
Not that it matters, but 90% sounds about right to me for lab leak; I think there's something there with ivermectin but Weinstein is too confident about it; and his reasoning about UV and indoor-vs-outdoor transmission is poor.
Birchers criticized fluoridation; so what? You're committing a sort of anti-halo-effect fallacy. It's like how the media and scientific establishment politicized the lab-leak hypothesis and ruled it anathema, because Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump were touting some variant of it. Weinstein's criticisms of fluoridation, which I believe are unsound, are different from Birchers'; the Cotton/Pompeo/Trump version of lab-leak is different from what you'll come to conclude from reading people like Alina Chan.
I feel the same as you, but never could have put it so eloquently. I have not taken the vax, but I'm not anti vax. I've just had the virus, trust my body, and trust other scientists that a combo of super high vitamin D, C, quercitin, can help me get through the virus. And it did, once I started that protocol that I read hospitals recommend, my lungs stopped being irritated and the symptoms finally receded. I still think the vaxx is likely a net good, but why would I take any new medicine if I feel my body can handle it? It's like people have never seen the class action lawsuit medical commercials on things that were formerly deemed safe. The risk may be small (hopefully), but there is still risk, and people have the right to weigh that risk themselves. Some will be wrong and some will be right, but it's better than government mandating new medicines. Also, I think you should have spoke to the FB group that was removed where a hundred thousand women were sharing extreme period issues that were extreme.
At my work most people just had headaches and soreness for a couple days. But a few got hit hard after the second dose, 2 had food poisoning symptoms for a week and said they'll never take it again. That's enough for me to try to be healthier and let my body handle it. If CV makes an extreme come back, maybe I'll get the vax.
Don't vaccinate your baby, not against covid at any rate. Babies are pretty much entirely uneffected by Covid and it will be a couple years before your child is of the age that vaccine apartheid will become as issue for him, and in the meantime networks of people opposed to the vaccine can form and perhaps some justice can be served to some people. The second part it unlikely, but if you can wait and see, why not?
Yeah a friend of mine who's a PA and operates a nursing home has been dealing with terminal Covid patients basically for the last 18 months. He's obviously not "anti-vaxx," and understands the science and the medicine better than most. When I asked him if he was going to vaccinate his toddler, his response was, and I quote "FUUUUCK no."
My kid will be in preschool in a year. Not sure if they'll have requirements but that'll be the first big test.