Archive for the ‘Healthcare’ Category
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me till I’m sane
The thing about mental illness is that it can get steadily worse if it’s not confronted and dealt with. Not always, some people just stay in the same state, but it’s true for enough people that cures are constantly being looked for.
Most of the time nowadays that means drugs plus possibly psychological work, but a distant relative of mine just had electroshock therapy the other day, which sounds surprising since it gained a justifiably awful reputation in the 20th century. However, in limited circumstance it can still work.
However, there is another approach and that’s the idea of curing mental illness via surgery, and it has a surprisingly long history, as this article in Human Events notes:
In the late 19th century, the female reproductive system was thought to be the cause of a range of mental disorders afflicting women. Thousands of mostly young women had their perfectly healthy uteri and/or ovaries removed as a supposed cure for their mental distress.
In the early 1900s, surgical bacteriology was popular. This stemmed from the belief that mental illness was caused by diseased parts of the body. Between 1920 and 1930, Dr Henry Cotton, director of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, removed over 11,000 teeth. If the patient didn’t recover, he’d continue his quest, removing their tonsils, spleen, stomach or colon. Cotton wasn’t just some crank experimenting on his patients; he was well-respected and seen as a leader in his field. He eventually suspected himself of going mad and had his own teeth removed.
And of course anybody who ever saw the movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, will be aware of the procedure of lobotomy:
In the 1940s, this was a groundbreaking new procedure, so widely celebrated that its inventor, Antonio Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize for its invention in 1949. At the time, those suffering from severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia were condemned to being locked up in mental asylums where the conditions were horrific. Lobotomies seemed to be the humane option, and Walter Freeman, the doctor who brought the procedure to the US, played down the negative effects and grossly exaggerated the benefits.
I’d forgotten that none other than one of JFK’s sisters had this procedure – which fucked her up for life.
So yes, dear readers, the recent explosion in the practice of cutting off breasts, penises and testicles, and crafting artificial vaginas and penises, plus all the drugs to convince the body that it’s the opposite sex, all to “cure” the mental condition of gender dysphoria, has a long pedigree of horror.
Actually, so does the Trans stuff, as this poor bastard discusses in, The ‘Sex Change’ I Had 40 Years Ago Was A Scam, Not Medicine:
Every step I took to identify as a female did not make me a female but devaluated me as a man, father, and husband. Each step dehumanized my male body and identity. So-called gender-affirming treatment destroyed my life and relationships, as well as those of my family. The same thing is happening to people today, except at younger ages. I know. I get their emails.
In the decades following my surgery, instead of the “gender” industry dying out, it has run rampant — devaluing, dehumanizing, and destroying thousands of lives. When I fell for the scam, the patients were exclusively adult men. Today, the industry targets vulnerable adolescents of both sexes influenced by the emotional and physical throes of puberty, who can’t be expected to grasp the long-term consequences, such as infertility, bone density loss, and heart problems.
To be fair there are people who are happy with their sex change – I worked with a couple of trans-woman in America in the 1990’s – but they were adult men who had given it a lot of careful thought first, including living “as a woman” (dresses, makeup, etc) first.
And all those other past surgeries are now considered not just failures, but barbaric ones. I’d like to think that by 2020 the Trans stuff will be as well, even with it “running rampant” in the last decade. Certainly some of the medical community are already having second thoughts:
Read the rest of this entry »More than half (56.3%) of liberal white women…
…. age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That’s more than DOUBLE the percentage (27.3%) of conservative white women in the same age bracket.
Not self-diagnosed, like people do on Instagram, but actually diagnosed by a medical professional as having a mental health disorder.
Complete with a chart (you should always have a chart)
It explains a lot, from the recent explosion of Trans, to the worshipful, uncritical support of Jacinda Ardern by this group of woman in New Zealand, to what I wrote about the other day in The Sabbath and The Experience Machine:
Could it be that the modern world — the Western world, and every world dominated by modernity (e.g., Japan, South Korea) — has become disenchanted, feels itself dissolving in Chaos, and is choosing to die by not reproducing? It’s commonly observed that primitive tribes often do not survive contact with modern men. It’s not a matter of disease. It’s that those societies, and the individuals within them, can’t withstand the psychic shock of having their religious worldview shattered, even if they stand to live better materially as modern people.
But why? Why are these “Liberal” (US meaning Left-wing or Progressive) woman so miserable? What about Progressive Men in this age group?
Medsafe: Benefit Risk Balance of Covid-19 “Vaccine” is Unclear
I recommend everyone read Cranmer’s Substack article summarising a number of OIA requests on the vaccine approval process of the Covid19 shot in New Zealand. “Safe and Effective” – the mantra we were sold – was a lie. It was not known to be safe or effective.
The Pfizer vaccine was approved for use by New Zealand’s regulator, Medsafe on 3 February 2021. The development was immediately welcomed by then Prime Minister Ardern who stated, “Medsafe’s decision is the culmination of a rigorous assessment process over many months to ensure the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is safe and effective to use here. It is informed by the most up-to-date medical and scientific data. We can have confidence in their decision.”
However, in reality, the government’s representation of Medsafe’s assessment was overstated. Specifically, Medsafe’s clinical assessment found:
- “The duration of the vaccine protection has not been established beyond two months.”
- “At this stage, there is limited evidence of protection against severe disease.”
- “There is no long term safety follow-up information.”
- “Vaccine prevention of asymptomatic infection and disease transmission has not been established.”
Therefore when it made its benefit risk assessment, Medsafe concluded:
Pfizer Vaccine Approval in NZ Under Scrutiny: A Retrospective Analysis | Cranmer’s SubstackThe benefit risk balance of Comirnaty (COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine) for active immunisation to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 in individuals 16 years of age and older, is not clear. At this stage, there is evidence only for short-term protection, and longer-term safety data are lacking. However, experience with the vaccine is accumulating rapidly.
Meanwhile, in the UK, a brave MP continues to speak out on the tragedy of the shots. The video below shows an almost empty chamber, where as the speech started, the various politicians scarpered out, presumably so they would not have to hear anything that might hurt their pitiful minds. YouTube initially censored the speech soon after it was posted, but due to the outcry (and probably competition from other streaming services) has allowed it back. If it vanishes once more, here is the Rumble version.
To prevent just one healthy adult aged between 50 and 59 from being hospitalised due to covid the Government’s own data states that 43,600 people have to be given an autumn booster jab. With a serious adverse event rate of 1 in 800 that means that in the healthy 50 to 59 year old group, as a result of using the mRNA boosters, 55 people would die or be put into hospital with side-effects to prevent one single case of covid presenting in hospital.
The same data shows that for the healthy younger people the number needed to be boosted to prevent a single hospital admission with Covid-19 is far higher. 92,500 boosted jabs were required to be administered to prevent one hospitalisation in the healthy 40 to 49 year old group, which would simultaneously put 116 people at probability of death or serious adverse reaction into hospital from the jab.
The healthy 30 to 39 year old group required age group required 210,400 booster jabs to prevent a single, covid hopitalisation; so 263 of this group will have been into hospital or sadly, died as a result of the booster side effects, just to keep one covid case out of hospital.
But the data gets worse because hospitalisation does not necessarily mean a serious medical intervention such as intubation or oxygen. To prevent severe hospitalisation from covid-19, the numbers needed to be boosted become astronomical … [10:17]
Andrew Bridgen MP
Back to Medsafe in New Zealand. How on earth was the Pfizer shot approved for use here? The answer is that despite Medsafe’s concerns about lack of safety and efficacy data, a number of individuals making up the Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC), a group whose members remain a state secret to this day, recommend going full steam ahead, regardless.
Somewhat strangely, although MAAC is a statutory committee under the Medicines Act, it has, since the outbreak of Covid, kept the identity of its members confidential. Requests for details of MAAC’s membership has been refused by the Ministry of Health when requested via the Official Information Act on the basis that they might be harassed. It seems an odd position to take given that the membership of various other advisory groups are known, and that MAAC has played a pivotal role in the approval of the vaccine.
Pfizer Vaccine Approval in NZ Under Scrutiny: A Retrospective Analysis | Cranmer’s Substack
MACC told Medsafe to approve the shots, and Chris James on behalf of Medsafe complied. The MACC members presumably thought that the missing safety and efficacy data would be gathered as people were injected and managed to convince others of this view. In other words, they saw nothing wrong with using the population of New Zealand as their guinea pigs, either believing or hoping the shots would be safe and effective. They took a gamble that did not pay off and now they are too afraid to reveal themselves.
Now that billions of doses have been injected into people worldwide, data from various nations around the world is showing neither safety or nor efficacy. The response of political leadership is denial and silence. As various individuals try and show the data to those that have the power to stop the shots, the powerful ignore and deny. The mainstream media and online platforms run interference. The whole situation is deadly serious and outrageous, yet those tasked with the safety of NZ’ers from medical malfeasance are missing in action.
Three Years Ago Today
We heard the infamous phrase, “15 days to slow the spread” as an explanation for the new, untested, unprecedented policy of lockdown.
Since then we’ve had Birx boasting in her autobiography about how she and a few others deliberately subverted the decision-making process in the Trump Administration to get what they wanted.
I’m now told regularly that I need to forget about all this and move on,
I don’t think so.
And let’s also not forget who kept them in their jobs and supported them.
An evil Sir Humphrey – with money
I don’t recall the ultimate bureaucrat, Sir Humphrey Appleby, whose image graces this blogs icon image, ever using money in the way that former NIAID director Anthony Fauci has done.
Sir Humphrey certainly had a lot of persuasive power at his disposal but it was usually more around the traditional bureaucratic aspects of bending rules and regulations and CYA tactics when things went bad.
But the following? This is bribery, plain and simple.
Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks…
… and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
So says none other than the US Establishment’s own sorority newsletter, the New York Times, reporting on the recent study of masks and mask mandates, the Cochrane Study. I’d been going to post on this anyway, but having the NYT cover it just makes it more delicious:
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by non-randomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
A point that I and many other opponents of mask mandates made from the start.
So, when do all the assholes – from politicians to bureaucrats to MSM figures, as well the ordinary people who acted as Stasi enforcers – actually also start apologising for this totalitarian insanity, in public around the world, including here in New Zealand?
The interview Stephens quotes is from February 5th. Quite a long time ago in the news business. And that interview, of course, was not conducted by a New York Times reported. He had to go outside the “Paper of Record” to find reportage about the Cochrane Study because, once again, the New York Times has refused to cover it.
And why won’t they cover it? Because the Cochrane Study is an impeccable meta-study of 78 other studies which has proven, once and for all, that masks did nothing to slow the spread of covid.
I’m sure you’ve noticed all the media and technocratic non-elite rushing to confess their errors? Remember, confessing errors is what they themselves say distinguish them from Disinformation Spreaders. If they don’t confess their errors, they are Disinformation Spreaders and Conspiracy Theorists.
My guess is they never will, as that article’s author points out. Given the NYT article I suppose our MSM might be forced to cover this story.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Experts Hoping You Don’t Notice
On yesterday’s Kiwi Blog General Debate, regular commenter cmm posted a link to a NZ Herald article published last week about a recent NZ study showing higher rates of heart disease after Covid vaccination. He noted that the authors stated the results ought to be treated with caution, which he agreed with, but not for the reasons given in the article. His comments below:
Covid-19 coronavirus: NZ study showing higher rates of heart disease after Covid vaccination should be treated with caution – expert | NZ Herald | 8 February 2023
ALL studies, reports, experiments should be treated with caution. It is not “science” to accept something based on one report or one methodoly.
And it certainly is not science to accept the safety of the vaxx based on “coz it’s banned to say otherwise” or “coz Pfizer said”. Pfizer, who were so certain about the safety that they got every country to sign a waiver from prosecution before they would provide product.
I find it interesting that they try to counter this with:
“The risk of vaccine-related adverse events was still dwarfed by the risk of heart problems from catching Covid-19, the paper said.”So, in effect, don’t worry about the adverse events because they are tiny compared to the risks if you do get Covid. That makes it sound like the vaxx is good on balance.
However anyone with more than half a brain will realise that the vaxx did not stop you getting Covid, so the purported benefit is non existent.
cmm, Kiwiblog General Debate | 15 February 2023
To back up cmm’s excellent point of the vaxx not stopping people from getting Covid, I give you a screenshot showing the number of cases to the 13 Feb in NZ as 2,199,579. For those that might have trouble making sense of those numbers (maybe the font is too small, etc), NZ has reported nearly two million, two-hundred thousand Covid cases. That is a real number and not a joke. Most of those cases were reported after mass vaccination of the population started.
Reference: NZ Ministry of Health page for Covid-19: Current Cases. If you do click on the link, just be aware that the page is updated weekly now (used to be daily), and the only way to get prior pages is to use the Wayback Machine.
Gosh, they are not making much effort to display the numbers in a user friendly manner, are they? If I was in charge of reviewing this page before it was published, I’d get the programmer to right align the numbers, and put in some damn commas. How is a person supposed to look at numbers that are left aligned like text? And without commas? It’s not like it hard to do. Incredible.
Now that I’ve recognised cmm’s well-made and incredibly relevant point, I will move on to what screamed at me after I read the NZ Herald article; and after I typed out a furious post under cmm’s about the experts back pedaling after they ensured that many young people received at least two shots and more: and after I had to go outside and do something physical just to work off the anger. Weed eating/whacking/snipping (whatever the terminology is) satisfied that urge. I destroyed many weeds, going until the battery ran out and then had a shower to get all the crap out of my face and hair. The weeds were long and it had been wet; it had been a jungle out there.
My final paragraph that I wrote on Kiwiblog is what I’d like to highlight especially.
[T]he NZ study is only using data from Feb 2021 to Feb 2022; likely because it all went pear-shaped from March 2022, as the younger cohorts were getting their 3rd shots
Behold below, NZ’s Covid jab chart. Look at the green “first booster”, ie shot three. Remember that first booster was rolled out for the elderly around Christmas, 2021. I remember my elderly in-laws trying to get it and being annoyed they were not eligible, and then no jabbing station was open until early January. My father in law was dead less than six months later (apparent sudden heart attack).
However, most of shot 3 was given during January and February, with the younger age groups far more likely to receive it in February/March.
Now, let’s look at what period the NZ study used to check for myocarditis:
The authors of the research paper looked at associations between 12 adverse conditions and the Pfizer vaccine between February 2021 and February 2022. They compared the historic rate of these conditions in New Zealand with rates after vaccination.
It found no link between vaccination and the majority of the selected adverse events, including nerve and blood-related conditions.
However, the Covid-19 vaccination was associated with a “rare but significant increased risk of myo/pericarditis”, the paper said.
The study estimated an excess of two cases of myo/pericarditis per 100,000 people vaccinated after the first dose of the vaccine and an excess of three cases of per 100,000 people vaccinated following the second dose of the vaccine.
Did you notice that they seem to have only studied the effects of the first two shots? I thought at first that they had included the first booster, and potentially cut off their study when the data became too hot; but no, they didn’t even go there. That’s probably why this comment about being “limited by the data” was made in the article:
They also urged caution in reading too far into its findings, saying they may have been limited by the data used in the analysis.
Back in early 2022, I was waiting for the updated myocarditis graph from Medsafe that included the booster data. This was the last one ever published, just as shot 3 (the booster) was made available to younger people. Notice that the younger cohorts had a larger number with a problem after 2 (the purple) shots vs 1 (dark green). While as the problem after 3 (turquoise) was just barely registering, but would have shown up in the next couple of months, had Medsafe had the balls to publish the graph.
Which brings me back to the NZ Herald article, where the various experts seem to be trying to tell the truth, while mixing it with the expected propaganda. For instance, first two paragraphs below are bullshit, and the last seems an explicit warning for young people not to get anymore than two shots – which is too little, too late:
Professor Peter McIntyre, an epidemiologist at the University of Otago, said the vaccine’s link with myocarditis was picked up and communicated very early in New Zealand. While some had complained at the apparent speed at which the vaccine was introduced, he said this had likely saved many lives.
“One thing to emphasise is that the checking and double-checking of the vaccine was really well done in New Zealand. And the [risk] information was added – maybe not as quickly as we might have ideally liked – but it was still quickly and it was still something that was acknowledged and carefully followed.”
He said that while the study provided further reassurance about the vaccine programme at the height of the pandemic, it was now time to reassess the blanket approach of targeting all age groups for Covid vaccination.
“The older population is going to have to keep having yearly boosters, possibly even more, because they’re continuing to be at risk.
“But for young people, having had their two doses, and in most cases having had an infection, the picture is different … and the risk of myocarditis is still there, even though it’s rare. So we may need to start moving away from everything for everyone to … specific targeted messaging for groups.”
Oh, and all you older people who might be considering “yearly boosters” for Covid. Don’t. Surely you can see, at the very least, that the damn things do not work as Covid prevention? I mean, 2.2 million cases of Covid, mostly after the shots were rolled out points to something that could not even be considered a “vaccine”. So, why take the risk of an adverse reaction for something that does not even work?
“Viruses that replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, including influenza A, SARS-CoV-2,…
…. endemic coronaviruses, RSV, and many other ‘common cold’ viruses, cause significant mortality and morbidity and are important public health concerns. Because these viruses generally do not elicit complete and durable protective immunity by themselves, they have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines. In this review, we examine challenges that have impeded development of effective mucosal respiratory vaccines, emphasizing that all of these viruses replicate extremely rapidly in the surface epithelium and are quickly transmitted to other hosts, within a narrow window of time before adaptive immune responses are fully marshaled.”
That’s from a recent article published in a medical magazine called Cell:
Let me give you a quick synopsis of the article which is basically what I learned about viruses and vaccines at high school and university:
- Vaccines are not suitable for coronaviruses because these respiratory viruses spread and mutate too quickly. They replicate in the mucosal system (nose, lungs) to be spread to other humans before they hit your immune system where they usually get wiped out. Evolution is clever like that. As the article notes:
“This observation raises a question of fundamental importance: if natural mucosal respiratory virus infections do not elicit complete and long-term protective immunity against reinfection, how can we expect vaccines, especially systemically administered non-replicating vaccines, to do so?” - This is the answer to the fifty year old question, If they can land a man on the Moon why can’t they cure the Common Cold?. It’s also the reason that flu vaccines, despite being an impressive development thirty years ago, are still not very good, with a best case record of 60% protection in one North American flu season and the worst being 19%, with the rest in between and usually below 50%
- Vaccines can only be “sterilizing” when the virus is a stable one like Smallpox and Measles. It should be noted that even with these far worse diseases mandates have never been imposed for vaccination, not out of some Libertarian goal of My Body, My Choice, and allowing free riders, but because it is not necessary for public health or, in the case of the former disease, elimination.
- It takes a long time to test a vaccine, or as the article puts it:
“Considering that vaccine development and licensure is a long and complex process requiring years of preclinical and clinical safety and efficacy data, the limitations of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines remind us that candidate vaccines for most other respiratory viruses have to date been insufficiently protective for consideration of licensure - For coronaviruses, there is really only one way forward: better anti-viral treatments, therapeutic treatments, and, of course, acquired immunity.
I knew this decades ago, which was why I have never taken a flu vaccine, knowing how hit and miss it is. As I get older and my immune system weakens then I may do so because the cost/benefit calculation will have changed.
Epidemiologists and virologists also knew this, which is why such people wrote our MOH’s Influenza Pandemic Plan in 2010 and kept updating it, while never mentioning, let alone proposing, population lockdowns, mask mandates outside of healthcare staff, or vaccine mandates.
Dr Fauci also knew all this, and he is the author of that article. Writing any of this stuff in the last three years would have seen you banned from Social Media sites, the MSM and the subject of snarking and derision, plus outright abuse. Remember:
If you don’t do what we tell you, Grandma will die.
He lied through his teeth about everything and the real kicker is that he’s still so utterly confident in his untouchability that he can write this after retirement – and he’s probably correct in that assessment.
But in all honesty no punishment possible could possibly match what I would like anyway, which at a minimum would be stripping him of his pensions and any investments he made in the pharmaceutical industry, plus jail time – all the way to that good old American custom of tarring and feathering. A public execution is probably a little too harsh and in any case would not be necessary since the objective here is less punishment of Fauci for his sins than for the mirror objective to that of the British Navy executing Captain Byng by firing squad on the quarterdeck of his own flagship which, in the words of a French historian Voltaire, “was done to encourage the others”.
It’s like the old Sex Pistols song: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
Oh yes, I see it all she cried, as she waved her wooden leg
One of my Dad’s favourite sayings.
And the memory is generated by this news from – of all places – the once famous, uselessly shallow (in my opinion), once sold-for-one-dollar, POS MSM source that is likely still trusted by those Who Believe.
Newsweek.
Specifically this article by one Kevin Ball, Ms MD/PhD student, Medical School:
As a medical student and researcher, I staunchly supported the efforts of the public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believed that the authorities responded to the largest public health crisis of our lives with compassion, diligence, and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines, and boosters.
I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives.
I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not in hindsight. Amazingly, some of these obfuscations continue to the present day.
But perhaps more important than any individual error was how inherently flawed the overall approach of the scientific community was, and continues to be. It was flawed in a way that undermined its efficacy and resulted in thousands if not millions of preventable deaths.
Read the whole thing. He’s more generous than I when it comes to motives, but that’s probably the result of observing how many of my fellow Kiwis were such utter pricks during the great Chinese Lung Rot Freakout.
Most of us did not speak up in support of alternative views, and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices like world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Scott Atlas, or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi, sounded the alarm on behalf of vulnerable communities, they faced severe censure by relentless mobs of critics and detractors in the scientific community—often not on the basis of fact but solely on the basis of differences in scientific opinion.
Still, it’s nice to see at least some regrets beginning to creep into the True Believers. He even seems to get the fundamental philosophical aspects beyond the technocratic debates:
Our emotional response and ingrained partisanship prevented us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We systematically minimized the downsides of the interventions we imposed—imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In so doing, we violated the autonomy of those who would be most negatively impacted by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, Blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations were overlooked because they were made invisible to us by their systematic exclusion from the dominant, corporatized media machine that presumed omniscience.
That phrase, presumed omniscience. Tell Ms Day-Weaver.
Reminds me of this woman, a teacher with science degrees, who got red-pilled.
But at least her 14 year old son survived his myocarditis.
Kaufman Institute for Coincidence
Enjoying the rain in the North Island?
There’s plenty more to come so you may as well sit back on this gloomy Sunday and put a smile on your face by watching the following.
Even though it’s satire I’m amazed that Youtube let it stay,
No Minister 