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Ascent of the Angry and Stupid

Scientifically speaking,  stupid people harm themselves while also harming others. In addition, stupid people are irrational and erratic, and are very dangerous to others. After discussing the destructive role of the stupid in any society whatsoever, I will focus on the delicate interplay of actions of intelligent and helpless people, who in balance make or break a functioning democracy.  Unless things change fast in the US, we can kiss our democracy goodbye for decades. If you want to see how a virulent ascent of the stupid looks up close, and what implications it has for our fight against social injustice and climate change, please watch the brilliant "Don't Look Up" movie.

Unvaccinated people demonstrating in Los Angeles. There are tens of millions of the raving mad and/or angry, stupid people in the US and other developed countries. Source: New York Times, 12/25/2021.

I overlapped at UC Berkeley with Professor Carlo M. Cipolla for a decade, until his death in the year 2000. I wish I got to know him better. In 1988, Carlo published in Italian a magnificent essay on human stupidity he framed axiomatically as five Basic Laws:
  1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.
  2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.  In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake.
  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. 
His essay was translated into English in 2011. The current book edition was published in 2019.  Figure 1 is my interpretation of Carlo's graphs.

Since stupid people are unpredictable, a rational person always underestimates their destructive power.  This underestimation may have deadly consequences for millions of people trapped in the currently imploding global economy that was created and run by rational bandits, who harm others for personal gain. This economy is now subject to ecological overshoot, exhaustion of most resources and a runaway climate change. The criminal global inaction in face of these existential crises is aided and abetted by the stupid and bandit politicians elected with miniscule marginal votes of stupid people. 

Figure 1. My poetic interpretation of the graphs in the splendid short book by Professor Carlo M. Cipolla, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity."  There are four quadrants of any human society regardless of epoch and geography. Clockwise, from the upper left, there are helpless people, intelligent people, bandits and the stupid. The fraction of irrational, stupid people in any society whatsoever is constant and is independent of partitions of the other three populations of rational people, who fall into each of the remaining three quadrants of society. 

Here are but a few examples of stupid people. Marcus Lamb, a Christian broadcaster and vaccine skeptic, died of COVID. Phil Valentine, a radio host who scoffed at COVID, then urged his followers to get vaccinated and died.  

A mechanical engineer, let's call him B., an inspired designer of complex lab equipment for possibly the best manufacturer of such equipment in the world, suffocated slowly of COVID at home. B. didn't vaccinate and refused to go to hospital, claiming that vaccines are poison and don't work, and in the hospital they might harm him.  

A contractor to my neighbor was late for an appointment, and stated matter-of-factly that he was at the funeral of a relative who died of COVID. He added that eleven other people in his family and circle of friends also died of COVID.  He then observed that those people were killed by the hospitals, because their bodies could not withstand intubation.

An accomplished senior professor at UT Austin, let's call him L., refuses to vaccinate himself, does not mask, and encourages students not to vaccinate.

You are beginning to grasp that being stupid has no correlation with the level of professional education, race, ethnicity, sex, religiosity or any other characteristic of a stupid person.

For every two COVID-related deaths in a blue state, we have registered in the US three COVID deaths in a red state.  In other words, if you are a Republican, you have a 50% higher chance of dying of COVID.  I do not imply here that there is not an unexpectedly large share of the really stupid, unvaccinated Democrats. That's why the death differential is only 50%, not 1300%, as it should be - all things being equal -  if no Republicans ever vaccinated against COVID, unlike Trump and his family, all the Faux News propagandists, and plenty of other lying, cynical bandits, who send you - the stupid or helpless people - to death at the current rate of 440,000 souls per year.   


With historical, genetic and statistical justification, Carlo noted that the fraction of stupid people in any society is a constant σ independent, for example, of the level of education or social position.  Thus, there exists the same σ fraction of stupid professors, academic administrators, and scientists, including Nobel Prize laureates (many more in economics). Given the constant σ in any society, how do we distinguish between successful and failing societies?  The differences are subtle and fragile, as shown in Figures 2 and 3.
 
Figure 2.  In a successful society there is a outflux of helpless people who temporarily act like intelligent people.  The reasons for this behavior are many and subtle.  One obvious reason is that some of the helpless people get energized and organized, and start acting as intelligent people.  The Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980/81 and in 1989/95 was a good example of such phase transition in a society that almost always has been ruled by stupid bandits. The Obama phenomenon in 2008 was a similar example in the US. Another reason is that within a political and legal framework of a country, the stupid bandits, who - for example - might kill you for ten dollars, modify their behavior to be smarter and less harmful, more like thieves whose gain is exactly a victim's loss and the society suffers no net loss.  This figure is based on my interpretation of Cipolla's book.

When one compares Figures 2 and 3, one sees that what differentiates a successful society from a failing one is whimsical. An ailing successful society can reverse course quickly and with deadly consequences that are difficult or impossible to undo.  I remind you that the σ of stupid people is the same in both types of societies and continues to do its oft-invisible harm like termites, cancer or the COVID virus. Thus my recurring appeal to most Americans:  stay politically active and vote

Figure 3. In a failing society, the otherwise intelligent people become discouraged, lose energy and drive, and become apathetic and helpless. Also, the reasons to be the smart bandits disappear, and with them the limits on inflicting harm on others.  For different reasons, these negative changes affect many countries around the world, but in particular the United States of America. Today, Poland is a locked-in failure of a  democratic society. My prediction is that by 2024, USA will too be a democracy in name only, and there will be the massive economic-, environment-, and climate-related damage inflicted on the US citizens and the world at large. Unless of course we mobilize against the stupid and act. In Poland this mobilization failed, I am warning you.

So what is the key reason of changing a society's success to failure?  In my mind, it is a fine-tuned polarization and irreversible bifurcation of this society, and a slew of parallel economic failures and social injustices. Polarization by Facebook, Faux News, political parties, and churches et al. starts from preying on the genetically wired feature of all humans: wanting to belong to something, anything for that matter.

In "Is Life Better When We're Together?" the New York Times describes the psychological experiments conducted many years ago by a Polish Jew, Dr. Tejfel and his followers, who split subjects into two groups based on the flimsiest of criteria. One group might be called "Leopards" and another "Tigers".   Or a Group A and B with no other associations whatsoever.
 
"In fact, Dr. Tajfel’s meaningless, minimal groups were even more meaningless than they appeared. He and his collaborators had actually ignored the kids’ responses to the dots and paintings. Instead, as the social psychologists Dominic J. Packer and Jay J. Van Bavel note, describing these experiments in their new book, “The Power of Us,” “in each case, the researchers had essentially flipped a coin and assigned people to groups based on chance.” Still, biases locked in right away. Overwhelmingly, people in Dr. Tajfel’s experiment gave more of the money he put at their disposal to members of their own group than the other. Moreover, they were bent on creating as large a disparity as possible, even when offered the option of maximizing the amount of money for everyone, at no cost. Their behavior seemed vindictive, “a clear case of gratuitous discrimination,” Dr. Tajfel wrote. 

Since then, other researchers have run their own minimal group experiments, pushing those findings further. Dr. Packer and Dr. Van Bavel have split people into leopards and tigers, for example. Others have gone maximally minimal and divided people into group A and group B. Still, the pride — the readiness to connect — is always there. When you tell people they’re in group A, Dr. Packer says, those people are reliably psyched to be in group A. Stick leopard people in a brain imaging machine and show them a picture of a stranger, and their brain activity changes if they know that the stranger is a leopard person, too. Their positivity toward other leopard people increases and even supersedes racial biases that cut the other way."

And this, my friends, is what the Democrats have been missing all along, and the Republicans are preying on.  People desperately want to belong to a community of anything, antivaxxers and antimaskers are but the last incarnations of this need: 

“The line is being drawn, folks,” said a man in jeans and a red T-shirt. He said the people in the audience “had been shouted down for the last 20 years, and they’re finally here to draw a line, and I think they’re saying, ‘We’ve had enough.’”

"Social scientists who study conflict say the only way to understand it — and to begin to get out of it — is to look at the powerful currents of human emotions that are the real drivers. They include the fear of not belonging, the sting of humiliation, a sense of threat — real or perceived — and the strong pull of group behavior."

The older foci of belonging were political parties, KKK, Free Masons, Black Panthers, local churches, schools, rotary clubs, sororities, and professional societies for the likes of me.  The Republicans have recognized these venues clearly and took charge of most of them, including local school boards, judgeships, sheriff offices, county governments, state governments, and governorships. Now they are reaching to take over Washington DC.   The rather clueless Democrats only now are attempting meekly to reverse this incredible on-the-ground advantage of the Republicans.  

Changing demographics in the US seems to favor Democrats, but the Republicans are valiantly changing election laws and gerrymandering election districts to prevent people of color from voting.  Republicans have been playing the long game, while Democrats are stumbling into some still undefined game.  They better hurry, or the stupid and happily belonging - now under total control of the Trumpistas - will eat their lunch.

Here is another observation: success or failure of a country depends on the mixture of stupid, intelligent, helpless and bandit persons running different branches of government. Long term adjustments in proportions among these four groups may save or doom a country.  Given what I just said, chances are that quality of most levels of government in the US has decreased.

In my mind, the US is on a pathway to doom, with the Republicans marching in goose lockstep, and the Democrats squabbling.  But as a scientist, how do I quantify what I think? This PNAS paper gives some answers:

"Our study was motivated by a highly disturbing puzzle. Confronted with a deadly global pandemic that threatened not only massive loss of life but also the collapse of our medical system and economy, why were we unable to put partisan divisions aside and unite in a common cause, similar to the national mobilization in the Great Depression and the Second World War? We used a computational model to search for an answer in the phase transitions of political polarization. The model reveals asymmetric hysteresis trajectories with tipping points that are hard to predict and that make polarization extremely difficult to reverse once the level exceeds a critical value."

Simply put, there are thresholds of polarization beyond which a society can no longer come together an bifurcates irreversibly.  This is exactly what is happening in the US.  We have bifurcated and US democracy is in mortal danger, see Figure 4.  This figure demonstrates, I hope, the dire need of house-to-house political campaigning by volunteers to sway the helpless and mobilize the intelligent (and occasionally a smart bandit).  The stupid are like rock fragments.  Nothing will ever sway them, so don't try.

Figure 4. Tipping points in the level of party identity. Polarization is measured as partisan difference (A and C) and extremism (B and D). A and B show a higher critical value in the polarizing trajectory than in the recovery trajectory. This means that there would be little effect on partisan divisions (A) or extremism (B) should the strength of party identity drop below CP, the critical value at which rising polarization suddenly explodes. CP drops sharply when the level of intolerance increases from  α= 0.1 to α = 0.3 (C and D); i.e., party identity does not need to be strong in order to trigger a phase transition to high polarization. Moreover, the hysteresis trajectory becomes asymmetric, indicating bifurcation and the irreversibility of polarization, even if the strength of party identity were to drop to zero. Source: PNAS.

Now on to the outsized roles of helpless, indecisive people in a polarized democracy, like the US, UK, France, Holland, Poland, Brazil, etc. In a fascinating Physical Review E paper by German physicists, "Repulsion in controversial debate drives public opinion into fifty-fifty stalemate" the authors show that
"...in controversial debates with large consequences, the public opinion is often trapped in a fifty-fifty stalemate, jeopardizing broadly accepted political decisions. Emergent effects from millions of private discussions make it hard to understand or influence this kind of opinion dynamics. Here we demonstrate that repulsion from opinions favors fifty-fifty stalemates. We study a voter model where agents [people, TWP] can have two opinions [stupid and intelligent people, and a few bandits; TWP] or an undecided state in between, and where we allow for repulsion of opinions and for doubt: in pairwise discussions, undecided agents can be not only convinced, but also repelled from the opinion expressed by another agent, and decided agents [only some intelligent people and some bandits, TWP]  may return to the undecided state. As a result, we observe that, if an agent is repelled instead of being convinced in at least one out of four interactions, as in controversial debates, the frequencies of both opinions equalize. This voter model attractor reproduces the phenomenology of repeated Brexit poll data well and provides a mechanism solely based on local interactions between agents that may explain stalemate polarization in controversial opinion formation."

Figures 5 and 6, reproduced from this paper, show a successful society in which intelligent people and some of the helpless provide a safe margin for governance (Angela Merkel's Germany), and a failing society in which the results of a major vote are subject to a stalemate and low participation of both intelligent and helpless people (Brexit in UK).  Notice that an obnoxious loud and foul mouth, like Donald Trump in the US or Nigel Farage in the UK, can sway many of the helpless and discourage some of the intelligent people. Also notice that in my terminology, Trump is a border-line smart bandit and Farage is a vicious stupid person. 

Figure 5. Results of a repeated polls performed by “Infratest Dimap”  about the satisfaction of Germans with chancellor Angela Merkel's management of the EU financial crisis. Here the government can govern.


Figure 6. Results of a repeated poll performed by “YouGov” and accessed through “whatukthinks.org” on how British people would vote on a referendum to leave the EU.  TWP's comment: In a failing polarized society the results of a vote are random, and depend on when exactly this vote occurs relative to the whimsical emotions of the electorate.  Note that the helpless and discouraged [the green curve] likely did not vote or voted randomly, saying probably "my vote means nothing," or "I am too busy to vote," or "I liked XY more today, so I voted yes/no."  Two years later, it became clear to the helpless and intelligent what a monstrous mistake they made.  The stupid have remained steadfast in their  convictions or are lashing out at the government for delusional reasons.

In summary, democracies fizzle out for subtle and whimsical reasons. The key two reasons are  discouragement of the intelligent and apathy of the helpless. In a successful society people self-organize and strengthen the intelligent parts of population. In a failing society, the opposite is true. The intelligent people check out and helpless people become even more helpless, whine and do not vote. In the bifurcated US, it is probably time to create new political parties, let's call them the "Republicans with Brains and Hearts" and the "Democrats with Fewer Grandiose Policy Delusions".  But this is a long term project. In the meantime, the strong intelligent people and smart bandits must unify their forces, and go after the helpless and the stupid bandits, convincing many of them to vote. For the last time, do not waste your energy and resources on the stupid. Recognize them and run, see Figure 7.

Figure 7. Fifty seven percent of these 2,313 Americans are stupid. Fourteen percent are clueless. Source: Brian, a friend of mine.

P.S. (12/28/2021) Brian has pointed out to us this review of reviews of the "Don't Look Up" movie. The title of this Forbes review is "Why Sneering Critics Dislike Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up,’ But Climate Scientists Love It."  Since I have been on the receiving end of communicating unpleasant messages to the public and government officials for some 20 years, I can relate. 

I remember clearly the embarrassed EU ministers of environment in 2007. How they tried to explain to me why they could not do anything about the monstrous fires in Indonesia and equatorial Africa that were devouring the virgin forests and peat swamps in the name of progress and oil palm plantations.  The WTO rules, fair trade rules and other rules they said, while I was showing them the satellite images of the infernos on the ground and telling them how they could enforce an oil/oil products buying ban.  Or the corn  ethanol apologists, claiming in 2004-2012 what a superior technology this was.  Or the switchgrass ethanol shills with professorial titles explaining in 2008 how next year for sure that promising technology would use the genetically modified switchgrass programmed to start rotting before harvest for easier digestion and to improve process economics.  It's like I was speaking to patients in an asylum for the insane.

Or today, how people react to me saying that climate is warming in the Middle East at twice the global rate, and Mecca is a place where already the year-around average temperature is 29 degrees C.  Or what to do about the grotesquely overpopulated Arabian Peninsula, where one needed yesterday a strong one-child economic policy. Or that plain old dust will deteriorate performance of solar cells in the sunny deserts by up to two thirds.  And then there was another COP26, etc.  

Thus I am driven nuts when a Luke Goodsell of ABC News Australia believes the [movie] director, Adam McKay, “just doesn't know how to let people enjoy things—even if it is their own destruction.”

Well, fuck all those apologists for the unmaintainable status-quo as we slip-slide into an Armageddon in which we are the new Chicxulub comet (in my environmental class I teach about mass extinctions). Climate change is back-loaded.  The more GHGs we emitted in the past between 1798 and the moment I am writing these words,  the more difficult it will be to recover for millenia to come. Given the status quo, in the very near future it will be impossible to recover, and we shall cook (and occasionally freeze) our children and grandchildren. I hope that by now you fully appreciate how lethal the viciously stupid people are, many of my fellow faculty included.

P.S.P.S. (Jan 2,  2022) From my friend, a prominent ag-journalist, Alan Guebert: 
"Despite an honest-to-goodness flood of evidence to the contrary, more than 100 million American adults continue to deny the existence of climate change. That’s roughly one third of the country. 
 
Congress is little better. Currently, 109 House members and 30 senators, or about 26 percent of all members, have cast “doubt on the clear, established scientific consensus that the world is warming,” according to the Center of American Progress, a policy research institution headquartered in Washington, DC.
 
The good news is that this astonishing total is down from 150 just three years ago; the bad news is that it’s still 139.

The really bad news, however, is that the majority of congressional climate deniers represent rural America, arguably the economic sector with the most to lose in today’s climate upheaval. Not even 22 “extreme weather events” in 2020, where damage “exceeded $1 billion each,” turned their heads."

Comments

  1. If by stupidity, one means intelligence or IQ or the like, certainly it IS correlated to other variables (postulate 2). Even if one means something else (postulate 3), why should it almost axiomatically be uncorrelated with other traits? Surely much descriptive science has shown us that quite often trait X will be correlated to other traits.

    And why is the definition of "stupidity" given in the third postulate instead of the first? We're reading two postulates before we even know that the writer is not referring to intelligence but is referring to destructive behavior.

    Furthermore, any such postulates ought to have some studies, examples, explication supporting them. And they are WAY too uncaveated for any serious discussion of social behavior.

    Also, there are actually times when a seemingly self destructive behavior can be strategically useful (see game theory literature). For example, if you can credibly convince someone that you are "stupid" enough to activate a device that kills both you and the other person, you can extract a ransom from him in a similar manner as if you just threatened his life, without hurting yourself. (Some occasional acts as well as signalling behavior are useful in presenting a convincing case.) [But this level of actual discussion is more sophisticated than a simplistic "Republicans are stupid" article.]

    P.s. Check out that Haynesville production curve.

    https://shaleprofile.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PA46328.png

    All the peaker anti-shale proclaimers getting their butts kicked by cold hard reality. What's funny to me is the tribalistic, almost religious, behavior of the nominally anti-religion, pro-Science (capitalized, of course, as it is not an objective, curious analytical approach, but a religion of association with like minded people) left-wingers.

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    1. Hi Besselfunctionlvr,

      I am glad that you are commenting again. There are multiple studies of human attitudes and stupidity, but they exceed this brief essay.

      As to your P.S., I hope that you have read our Haynesville paper in JNGSE. We predict that Haynesville will indeed continue to perform nicely: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187551002100247X
      and produce over 90 Tscf of gas. Haynesville wells are also the best candidates for refracturing.

      You may also be interested in the first of the two companion papers on the Permian Basin. We predict that gas production in the Permian will overtake soon that from the Marcellus:
      https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/43

      Delete
    2. They are good stuff. I'm not sophisticated enough to get into the intricacies of the methods. For Haynesville, seems like you're not that different than EIA and USGS. Little lower, but very similar. And twice as large as the UT study (at higher prices).

      It sort of makes me wonder about the efficacy of these bottoms-up methods. UT study was very detailed. And done by (seemingly) shale sympathetic types, not peak oilers. But still ended up being way too conservative.

      Delete
  2. I can only speak for Stupidity in the U.S., which I think has a much higher number of idiots than any other nation on earth. What a way to go for the richest nation that has ever, or will ever exist thanks to bounteous fossil fuels! What a waste of human potential. Like you wrote, people want to belong to SOMETHING because we are an incredibly lonely nation, giving up free-range exploring children for indoor kids for unreasonable fears and their inward computer games & social media. With TV and air conditioning, people don't sit on their stairs in front or porches anymore, greeting others walking by -- everyone is inside glued to the TV. In school the highest attention is paid to athletes, who get letters for their jackets - the smart kids are generally ridiculed and seen as losers. For adults, in most of the U.S. outside of cities the only institution to meet others is the church, and many religions in the U.S. are more like cults -- evangelists, Mormons, fundamentalists and so on. The average american reads just ONE book a year, and that one book is often The Bible. The college educated read 7 books a year. Mainly fiction. The newspapers and magazines rarely cover ecology, energy decline, biodiversity loss and more, just endless entertainment and discussion of political gossip with almost no coverage of the actual policies being voted on. Just nuts. Could it be a sign of collapse that it just keeps getting worse? Is it the junk food and pollution causing more autism, lower sperm counts, Alzheimer's, Chohns' and other relatively new diseases? Who knows, I just hope it means that those of us Paying Attention and living in more sustainable ecoregions pass on our genes!

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    1. Dear Energyskeptic,

      I disagree with you that the fraction of the US population that is stupid is any different from any other country. Genetic stupidity seems to be a universal constant enforced by Mother Nature on all species, humans as well.

      Too many Americans indeed miss indeed good or even decent education, and the priorities of the neoliberal capitalism cult most here belong to, are totally screwed up. Americans also miss a good infrastructure, quality free time and above all access to decent medical care. Poor diets, lack of physical education, and poor health of so many people in the US conspire to make our COVID mortality rate one of the highest in the world.

      What surprises me as a part-time expat is that Europe that delt very well with COVID last year, fell into the realm of the stupid and angry, just as much as the US or worse. The UK is a total basket case, and will become a failed Small Britain before long. Sad...

      Delete
  3. A disappointing post. You do realise that the basis for the pandemic is completely unproven, right?

    No SARS-COV2 Virus has ever been isolated and purified. Also please differentiate that SARS-COV2 is the supposed virus and COVID-19 is the supposed symptomatic illness. An illness that seems to obey border controls.
    (https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/younger-people-in-us-getting-hit-hard-by-delta-variant
    The first illness in history to acquire symptoms from all of the existing common ailments, like blisters on feet from diabetes. Loss of smell in the elderly. It even says it's more common in the elderly.
    https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/smell-disorders-when-your-sense-of-smell-goes-astray-2018121215539
    Attribution of anything and everything based on an unproven RT-PCR test.
    "Long Covid" can also be attributed to vaccine injury and what used to be called post viral fatigue syndrome (probably also due to inappropriate use of antibiotics and steroids during treatment).)

    Anecdotes do not prove a point. Do you have the case notes for Marcus Lamb? Seems nobody does or mentions circumstance.

    As someone from the UK I know how few hospitalisations are because of supposed COVID-19 Symptoms. Most "cases" are tested on admission to hospital for other issues but if they then die, well we know what the death cert will say.

    See this from 17 mins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2VgBm9pTI

    But, and this is a big one - https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsofelderlycarehomeresidentsduetocovid19vaccine

    Months later and still no answer - Is it because those most likely to be in intensive care who were vaccinated were already dead? Correlation is not causation and there are far to many question marks.

    My experience of those who choose not be vaccinated are also among the highly educated wealthy.

    See what needs to be done - https://doctors4covidethics.org/notes-and-recommendations-for-conducting-post-mortem-examination-autopsy-of-persons-deceased-in-connection-with-covid-vaccination/

    But this is a problem - https://www.postoffice.co.uk/life-cover/life-insurance/what-is-a-direct-cremation

    As for Omicron, see the symptoms - https://solidariteit.co.za/en/air-pollution-increasing-gauteng-severely-affected/

    Gauteng is supposedly ground zero for omicron.

    Home of ANGELIQUE COETZEE.

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  4. Dear Duncan,

    First, the fraction of the highly educated and wealthy who are stupid is the same sigma exactly. This seems to be a law of nature. Second, just look at excess death certificates in cities, counties and countries. There are still 5-15% excess deaths relative to the rolling averages from the times before the pandemic.

    Whatever the virus is against which ALL of my family and their spouses took two vaccine shots and boosters, it has worked thus far. No one has become sick, despite two of my daughters being in the healthcare system in the middle of the pandemic, and many of my children's close, vaccinated friends becoming slightly sick, exposing them to the virus.

    I forgot to add that an undergraduate advisor at my former department at UT Austin has just died of COVID, so did her son. Both were unvaccinated. So please remain unvaccinated if this is your decision, but realize that the incremental risk is very high.

    Because of the vaccinations, the excess COVID related deaths are "only" 440,000 people per year. They would be easily 1.5-2 times that without the vaccines against this unidentified virus. By the way, identification of the origin of this virus is next to impossible now. I know because I talk to the geneticists who have been involved. The current vaccines still do not work against the viral attack in your nose and sinuses, but they DO work once the infection gets into the your lungs. This is when all the people I described died. Good luck. - Tad

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    1. As someone who suffered a serous case of pneumonia long before the advent of COVID I have some incite into the causes of such illnesses, as it turns out mine was due to the onset of a dairy allergy, probably initiated during the use of broad spectrum antibiotics. All problems disappeared once my diet was corrected including repeated inner ear infections & vomiting after my first cup of tea with milk in the mornings etc.

      I have subsequently learned this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QeIMPCDdNA

      Fo Covid, take for example Scotland (one of the few places I can get complete data) had below average deaths in hospital for 2020 & significantly more deaths in the home. Deaths in the home are attributed lockdown NOT Covid. Excess mortality is a judgment call with no specific meaning. Total end points is the true measure - how many died in total in 2020 compared to 2019 & the increase correlates to the deaths at home & that's it.

      At the same time where did all the influenza cases go?

      "They would be easily 1.5-2 times" - This is highly speculative. I understand that the origin of any virus is fraught with uncertainty but my point is that symptoms can be correlated with what seems to be its origin (Correlation is not causation). Therefore the listed symptoms of omicron tally with the effects of pollution in Gauteng, just as the symptoms of Delta corollate to symptoms and effects of air pollution in the relevant part of India, just as the original symptoms correlate to the high levels of chemical air pollution in Wuhan. The effect of the lock down somewhat proved the point - https://theconversation.com/wuhans-lockdown-cut-air-pollution-by-up-to-63-new-research-138084

      See also the relationship of nitric oxide to AIDS & Poppers to the homosexual communities where the illness supposedly originated.

      The same game is being played again.

      Delete
    2. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/10/asia/china-wuhan-pollution-problems-intl-hnk/index.html

      Delete
    3. https://brandnewtube.com/watch/411-deaths-per-million-doses_GZEQClyUk4nzzFp.html

      Delete
  5. This is Going back a while but you were right about china - https://youtu.be/gh1i0E3ZcVU?t=80

    And this is where we are at - https://youtu.be/J28Jr_zOrPU

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    1. Hi Duncan,

      Thank you for the thorough replies. Extra deaths at home are also due to Covid. They are caused directly by the people sick with Covid blocking ICU and hospital beds, and straining/infecting medical and EMS personnel. I am of the opinion that if one did not vaccinate and got infected with Covid, hospitals should give them medications and place them directly in empty nursing homes to be tended by their families. These people would get exactly what they worked for. Why should my daughters, for example, risk their lives to save the fools? Why should other sick people pay with their lives, because our medical system is so overwhelmed tending to the fools?

      Delete
  6. End points.

    https://brandnewtube.com/watch/prof-norman-fenton-explaining-ons-quot-vaccine-quot-data-anomalies_1mUrOWOgBLP6Val.html

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  7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356756711_Latest_statistics_on_England_mortality_data_suggest_systematic_mis-categorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination

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  8. Obviously I cannot speak for the US but in the UK we never even got close to filling the capacity of the hospital's, unlike previous years that I had experienced for myself with people on beds in the corridors. Fear kept people at home who should have been in hospital for other complaints. It's all documented and not controversial.

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  9. What is very disturbing is the effect on mental health.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00175-z

    Then I see this:-

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(21)00448-4/fulltext

    They would not have got away with this in the UK at the moment but who knows in the future.

    https://joannamoncrieff.com/une/

    Some of these drugs can have very bad outcomes, even if only taken for a week or two. Why would they even have been considered it as a treatment?

    In the early part of the pandemic known and proven drugs for treating flu were trialled but a lethal doses and then dismissed in favour of an experimental vaccine - that is still in trial stage until 2023.

    Trailing a drug is not just to see if it seems to work but also to track longer term outcomes.

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  10. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2021/04/nhs-nightingale-hospitals-worth-money

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  11. Well the vaccination rates in the UK and US are different: One dose, 77% in UK vs 74% in US; two doses, 70% in the UK vs 62% in US; and boosters, 48% in the UK vs 21% in US.

    Thus in UK people are much less likely to go to a hospital once sick with Covid. In the hopelessly polarized US, most of the stupid and stupid bandits, and many helpless decided not to vaccinate. In the UK, your PM has been calling daily for people to vaccinate, damn it! In the US, the government has largely given up, because there are no ways of changing those 40 million chunks of stone without breaking them.

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  12. The spare capacity of our hospitals was from the start. Well before the vaccine was even available. I still think you should look carefully at the study I posted above for the UK. It would seem that the bulk of unvaccinated deaths come after vaccination but within the 14 day period that does not count as vaccinated. A dead zone - literally.

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  13. Also worth examining the true figures for Israel. Both in terms of vaccination rate and who are getting sick and dying.

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  14. https://brandnewtube.com/watch/update-from-israel-efrat-fenigson-dec-16th-2021_FoUEteqUuZD6Hwy.html

    IMHO we are already into some of those "discontinuous solutions" (quoting your good self). Yesterday (31st of December 2021) I went for a walk without my coat or hat as the temperature was 16 degrees. Today it is forecast as 14. Now all we need is a blue ocean event this coming summer & then all this madness will be over by the following year. People in power are looking to control and that whole idea is illusions as we control nothing.

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  15. https://inews.co.uk/news/official-covid-symptoms-list-must-be-updated-as-majority-with-cold-likely-to-have-covid-1375507

    Can't you see how absurd this is? As I said before - anything and everything is being written into the unproven RT-PCR. There was even a court case in Portugal that found it to be unreliable.

    https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/12/08/peter-roderick-is-it-lawful-to-require-self-isolation-after-a-positive-covid-19-test/

    The majority of colds are still colds.

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  16. Prof Fenton :-

    https://youtu.be/RU_ik8ePgwI

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  17. These interesting laws of stupidity seem to be almost perfectly proven in high academic institutions in the US, where democracy does not exist and leaders at all levels are chosen based on their loyalty, not on their ability to lead. Likewise, academic institutions seem to be very happy keeping faculty busy with idiotic administrative tasks just to fill up time and discourage intellectual freedom and extraordinary thinking.

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    1. Therefore, if even within universities, institutions of higher educations, so-called think tanks, and other prestigious academic abodes, democracy does not exist, is not taught by example, and leaders are chosen because of loyalty, do you find it surprising that the laws of stupidity are expressing themselves so crystal clear even among highly educated folks? Where would you land "conformism" in your diagrams?

      Delete
    2. Too many faculty are selfish intelligent people, but many more are smart and stupid bandits who cause more harm to the society than good to themselves. The power- (research funding) and fame-hungry bandidos in academia abound. They have learned how to play the system and how to play the opportunistic politicians and clueless but hopeful journalists hungry for "good news" to be fed to the ultimately self-delusional, distracted and uneducated public as "likes" or "dislikes". Whether it is Mark Jacobson of Stanford (dams and hydropower will provide an easy solution to all humanity's power supply problems), or Jim Green of NASA (we can terra-form Mars and Venus to make these hostile planets feel just like Earth we have just fucked up so thoroughly), or Carlos Duarte of KAUST (we can 3D ink-print coral facsimiles at an astronomical cost, and pretend that the root causes of coral demise disappear), or so many others, the conclusion is the same. Too many faculty have become a big part of the BAU problem, not a solution. These faculty are rewarded richly by their administrators and funding agencies. And if their "solutions" go south, they can always ride their fame to another university, preferably in another country.

      Delete
  18. Well, this trend away from democracy in academia is global. Academic institutions are at the mercy of confused (predatory? plain stupid?) funders, who choose the increasingly irrelevant areas of research and ask everyone to march in lockstep. Academia in particular is not doing research on avoiding the climate breakdown holocaust, but instead is asked to follow the trendy delusions of AI and machine learning, as if though computer magic could save us from the asteroid impact. This asteroid is us: overpopulation, overconsumption, overshoot, pollution, mass extinctions etc. We larger than Mount Everest and are hitting the Earth at 70 km/s as I am writing these words. Stupid rule everywhere, and most faculty do not dare to look up and shout basta!

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  19. Final analysis of UK "case" data - https://youtu.be/6umArFc-fdc

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  20. Dr. Patzek, as a former student of yours at UT, I occasionally check in on your blog, as I enjoy your insights. I noticed on a different post that you are fighting some form of cancer - I'm sorry to see that and wish you well in your fight against it.

    I feel compelled to say that I'm disappointed in your accusation of covid-skeptics as being stupid. You're obviously intelligent, and you're a data-driven and science-driven individual, but you never seem to question that the data you're given might be misleading or exaggerated. Which is surprising given that you show considerable cynicism on other topics - but have no cynicism towards governments and/or media.

    Please have a look at this thread . You will likely dismiss this as anecdotal, but these are real-life people who have very serious adverse reactions, including death, from the covid vaccines. Would you be willing to tell these people to their faces that they're stupid? Or even worse, that their maladies weren't actually caused by the vaccines? Do you not see the absolute cruelty involved in forcing people on pain of losing their livelihood to get injected? The selfishness of covid-fanatics to force others to get dangerous injections and wear pointless masks? What happened to old-school liberals? You just like tyrannical governments when they happen to be on your side.

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    1. Well, I hope that you took my E^4 Class at UT Austin. If you did, you'd understand that there are public policy imperatives in this overpopulated and over-damaged ecosphere. Simply put, polio, plague, smallpox, whooping cough, COVID-19, and other highly infectious dangerous deceases must be subject to vaccination mandates. The precocious young Americans, who grew up with plenty, must recognize that what they took for granted is now mostly gone and shall never come back.

      Thus, if your chances of dying of COVID in the US are statistically 12x higher than mine, simply because you have not vaccinated, then on the average you are 1) blocking my hospital bed, 2) blocking my wife's ICU bed, 3) infecting me and others unnecessarily, 4) making me and others wear masks to protect ourselves from you, and 5) imposing on our society huge economic losses, from your own sickness/death too.

      Therefore, as a vaccinated sane person, I suggest that 1) all unvaccinated people be denied hospital beds and especially ICU beds, and 2) be denied any medical coverage reimbursements, should they have medical insurance in this predatory, backwards society of ours.

      Close to home, Arletta and her son, both of whom subscribed to your worldview, are dead. And within one week, too.

      In Texas, one in four people knows someone who died of COVID in their family or among their friends. That's a recent public opinion poll. Is this a good thing?

      So are you still going to be disappointed in me, or will you reassess your worldview based on scientific evidence and social imperatives? If you do, please vaccinate ASAP.

      Delete
    2. I find it interesting that the "follow the science mantra" is being used world wide. With regard to other "infections" that you mention, take polio as an example. It was already in decline prior to vaccinations. Can I suggest that you investigate its prevalence by region as it correlates with exposure to DDT at that time and it's reduction as usage declined and also more damningly it's re-emergence recently in places where agricultural land use has changed.

      Delete
  21. Thanks for the reply. I'm saddened to hear about Arletta. She did a great job helping myself and doubtless many other students navigate undergrad.

    "Simply put, polio, plague, smallpox, whooping cough, COVID-19, and other highly infectious dangerous deceases must be subject to vaccination mandates"

    This is not an argument. I could counter with: simply put, no man-made lab cocktail injections (also ones with a massive financial incentive and no liability!) should ever be a requirement for basic functioning in the world. This is the logical equivalent of your statement, just with the opposite view.

    "chances of dying of COVID in the US are statistically 12x higher than mine, simply because you have not vaccinated,"
    "In Texas, one in four people knows someone who died of COVID in their family or among their friends. That's a recent public opinion poll"

    Those statements are just not true. Dr. Patzek, my chances of dying of covid are non-zero, but they're much lower than yours, due to age alone. You seem to have missed my point about relying on government data. How is it that you're so jaded about many things but not the gov? I've had heard of many people, friends and family and acquaintances, of testing positive for covid, but not one hospitalization or death. I'm going to trust that over "a recent public opinion poll".
    There's also a difference between dying with covid and dying of covid. If a person has 5 co-morbidities, they were going to be on the way out soon anyway, but the hospital puts it down as a covid death. Do you see that your precious statistics might be misleading?

    1) blocking my hospital bed,
    You can keep your hospital bed, I don't want it.

    2) blocking my wife's ICU bed,
    Same as above.

    3) infecting me and others unnecessarily,
    Yes, asymptomatic people are actually the sick ones! 2 + 2 = 5! You're just too stupid to understand!

    4) making me and others wear masks to protect ourselves from you
    This is lunacy - YOU are the one making myself and others wear masks, on pain of losing careers! I do not care at all whether you wear a mask, other than I think it makes you look like a ridiculous feckless coward.

    By the way, would you be in support of hazmat suit mandates? If not, why not? How do you logically justify drawing a line between little paper masks and hazmat suits? You don't want to be a grandma killer do you? If you are in support of hazmat suit mandates, do you realize how totally insane that is?

    5) imposing on our society huge economic losses, from your own sickness/death too.
    Government policy, not nobodies like me, has imposed those huge economic losses, no doubt advised by individuals such as yourself.

    So yes, I'm still disappointed in you. Life itself is a risk - and is short. Reality is, we're all going to die and this desire to turn the world into some ultimate safe space where nothing bad ever happens to anyone will just turn it into an insufferable hell. If you wish to isolate, get injected with useless poisons, and suffocate yourself, go right ahead, but that's not enough for you, now I am forced to as well, because of your selfishness. This lunacy is no way to live life.

    "please vaccinate ASAP."
    Needless to say, I won't be doing that. Keep calling me stupid though, I'm sure that'll change my mind!

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    1. Well, as you can see, we now live in two different worlds that begin to have zero intersection. And there is no more discussion.

      Soon there will over one million dead Americans, who died from COVID. Most of them were unvaccinated. How do you estimate the social cost of these deaths and millions of hospitalizations? Government fault, or the careless, misguided people? Both of my daughters are medical workers and are completely tired and sick of the unvaccinated begging for help every day. Government fault, or the stupid people?

      I understand that there will be no agreement between us, so let's finish this conversation.

      Delete
    2. " over one million dead Americans, who died from COVID"

      Propaganda.

      "How do you estimate the social cost of these deaths and millions of hospitalizations"

      I accept that death is an inherent part of life, and is coming for us all, myself included, whether we like it or not. What ends would you be willing to go to live for say, 500 years, 5000 years, forever? Would the means justify those ends?

      "unvaccinated begging for help"

      The only thing we're begging for is the covidistas to shut the hell up already and move on.

      "we now live in two different worlds that begin to have zero intersection"

      If only that were possible.

      "will be no agreement between us, so let's finish this conversation"

      Yeah. I do sincerely wish you good health in the coming years, though.

      Delete
    3. Do you have parents, grandparents, and uncles?

      You are steeling yourself for the inevitable world that is coming our way. I understand this. But let me venture a conjecture: you and your children will not like that world. Having said that, our positivist, capitalist (if there ever was a positive meaning of this word, not just naked greed) civilization is falling apart. What will come next we do not know exactly, but I know a little about it from my childhood and youth in the communist Poland. Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet, so think twice about an experiment you want to usher. I encourage you to think about my words 10 years from today. Good luck...

      Delete
    4. Also, life expectancy in this new world will be much shorter than today. Again, your position is correct. We need to decrease the number of living humans by about 5 billion people for the Earth's ecosystems, and the remaining humans kept alive by them to survive. What it means, in particular, is that the young people today already choose to have many fewer children. Logically, I understand you. Given my age, I will not see that world, but you will. I feel deep pain for my children and you.

      Delete
  22. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6740077/

    So from this how do we know what was "polio" and what was not at any given point in time?

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  23. https://www.wired.com/2012/06/arsenic-pesticides-in-our-food/

    Since 1890's

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  24. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(19)30524-8/fulltext

    Another perspective -

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-019-0830-8

    So I need geographic data now.

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  25. "Soon there will over one million dead Americans, who died from COVID. " - there is no evidence for this statement. There may be a million who died after a positive RT-PCR test, but that's not the same thing, especially when the CT is well in excess of 35 cycles & there is no chain of evidence that ties the test to a specific unique illness causing virus. Tell me what the specific unique symptoms of COVID-19 are exactly? This is the basic point, the emperor has no clothes. An illness is as an illness does. Co-morbidity needs to be evaluated for each "case". Your approach is far too simplistic.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. OK, Duncan, you got me. People have been dying in the hospitals mostly of severe respiratory shock, caused by the body's immune reaction against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, heart failure, etc. If you worked in a hospital or a nursing home, you'd know first hand that there has been a flood of excess deaths, because of the rich variety of COVID-19 symptoms. Then there are after-effects that can last for many months.

      One of daughters is a clinical assistant professor at UC San Francisco and a specialist in endocrinology. She could tell you a story or two about (auto)immune reactions. My wife is a retired PT who worked most recently in a nursing home, where the patients dropped like flies in 2020. My other daughter is a nurse at UCSF. If I shared your remarks with them, they would blow up with anger. They are on the receiving end of your non-illnesses that cause non-deaths for non-reasons.

      Your persistent denial of vaccine efficacy against infectious diseases borders on obsession, and I do not understand what drives you, a former UT student who wrote me, and 30 million other people in the US alone.

      From my vaccinated friends, who got the Omicron variant of the virus, I report that their symptoms are similar to flu. The COVID vaccines do NOT stop the virus from attacking your nose (a different immune subsystem), but they do protect you from the deadly lung failure. Stay safe!

      Good luck in your emotional crusade against vaccines and science. Anything you say will have a confirmation somewhere on the internet that will reinforce your belief system.. This is the essence of my post and the essence of our societal decay at the speed of light.

      You could also go out, see some nature, and relax. Our respective societies are falling apart at a lightening speed, regardless of blame throwing. The UK will go to hell first, though. There are solid scientific reasons for me saying so, but that's a different story...

      Peace, Man.

      Delete
  26. "Cytokine storm during COVID-19 vaccination: Occasionally, the vaccination may lead to cytokine storm and other complications raised by it."

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2021.690621/full

    Just one example of what the "fact checkers" only a few months ago said was impossible for mRNA vaccines. How many more denials will be proven false over time? It's true that one can find all sorts of misinformation on the internet and many things to feed confirmation bias, but we are all at the mercy of that. I have even seen studies to show how many medical studies are junk. However I think you need to add the category called "gullible" on those charts. Time will tell who falls into it.

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    1. Duncan, you really refuse to recognize the same reality I sense. Statistically, it is exactly 21 days from a positive RT-PCR test or no test at all for the avid antivaxxers when the COVID-19 death curve overlays the cases/hospitalizations curves. So if you happen to get the Delta variant, and you are unvaccinated, statistically this is how long you've got to live, unless you are young, very healthy and lucky. Several unvaccinated people I knew personally were not lucky, and now they are the dead stupid.

      So do not blame excess deaths on vaccinations, because you have no right to do so, outside of the fringe extremist circles that in the US belong to what formerly was the Republican party, and now is a quasi religious cult that plays on the grievances, real and imaginary, of some white people..

      Please do go back to my canonical definition of the stupid in the post above: These are the people who not only harm themselves but also hurt others, while they're killing themselves, while also blocking hospital beds and ICU beds, infecting others and possibly causing more deaths and costs. Can we agree on this definition? Also, please remember what I wrote above. To change worldviews and core beliefs of most people is utterly impossible.

      Also, I will not publish any of your comments that rely on the links to others. Tell me what your own thoughts are.

      The particular article you are citing, talks about the concerns of people like you, who'd blow one adverse reaction in a million out of any proportion and decide hysterically not to get vaccinated, while attempting to discourage others. I can't cite the entire conclusions of this paper here, but here is one paragraph:

      "Multiple waves of infection place a huge burden on the state, doctors, and scientists in establishing a successful fight against SARS-CoV-2. Some of countries have achieved a sufficient number of vaccinations to curb the pandemic. In contrast, some countries confirm lowered vaccinations either due to unavailability of vaccines as per requirement or because of vaccine hesitancy. Because of the severe impact of the pandemic in terms of infection intensity and mortality, the vaccination drives in between this pandemic have reduced vaccine hesitancy among the population, and this has contributed to achieving herd immunity. Herd immunity generally requires a protective immune response in 60%–70% of the population attained either through infection with the virus or by vaccination. Global scientific coordination and partnership is the key to successful vaccination against COVID-19. It is particularly effective because nationalistic approaches to immunization will continue to raise issues such as vaccine development and production, pricing, allocation, and deployment, and only a global resource collaboration can fulfill these goals."

      Did you get what they wrote?!

      Delete
  27. Well, countries and media outlets are not helping themselves when the say how young people are susceptible to a delta variant when they show people in ICU wards saying they wish they had taken the vaccine, and then they turn out to be actors. 2 in one report in the UK and the same in Australia. The odds of that happening are astronomical.

    The analysis of Fenton only concurs with my own observations but I expect no one to listen to me.

    But the initial spike of deaths in early 2020 also tied to medical and social malpractice. The use of a drug cocktail mentioned in a case study in the Lancet. The deaths of elderly in Italy who never had any virus - the staff just walked away and left them to dye. The elderly in the UK who were just sent from hospital back to the nursing homes. The native Americans who were shipped large container loads of experimental drug cocktails.

    Then all the historically proven drugs were taken off the menu because of earlier criminal misuse and over prescription. eg. Quinine based medication that if over prescribed causes Atrial fibrillation (age dose dependant that killed mostly the elderly, our primeminister had a taste of the effect) but normally is quite reliable.

    So then we get to a place that portrays the only saviour as an experimental gene therapy. The definition of a pandemic was changed ahead of time that it is not the number of deaths that define it. The supposedly just discovered spike protine was patented back in 2000 for use in a dog vaccine.

    Have you ever heard of the saying "how to boil a frog"? Things have been manipulated for quite some time, but you can only believe what I am saying if you check the details for yourself. I would recommend that you start by reading Oneness Vs the 1% by Vandana Shiva which gives data on how India had been a prototype for the world.

    But when it comes to diagnosing a viral illness it has been test over symptoms all the way. You have a positive test and then enough of a particular symptom get a positive, then that symptom is added to the illness. This is awful medicine.

    I was only pointing out to someone a couple of weeks ago that there are alternative diagnosis to AIDS than HIV I'd you have a wider view of the data. For example the high rate in Tampa at the moment in what neighbourhoods that coincide with certain chemical plants and a fairly recent chemical spill that has got into the water table. Symptoms can have more than one cause and there are many ways to destroy an immune system over time, if we take our blinkers off.

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  28. In the wake on anti-vaccine folks who seem to currently dominate this blog of yours, I would like to take you back to your initial point about the laws of stupidity, taxonomy of stupidity, and consequences thereof, as stated by former UC Berkeley Professor Carlo M. Cipolla. Using a very recent event, allow me to momentarily take you to your former stumping academic grounds, the Longhorn nation (I chuckle just to imagine what type of conspirator hypothesis your anti-vaccine Longhorn student on this posting will unveil about what I am about to write): Universities are supposed to be the hub and abode of intellectual freedom, extraordinary thinking, inordinate ideas, outlier points of view, all to enrich and preserve nature and society in profoundly constructive and ethical ways. UT Austin’s mottos read “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” and “What starts here changes the world”. I am sure that you remember both of them during your time as department chair at UT Austin. It is expected, of course, that UT Austin will act by example and do with consistency of those mottos. After all, students are breathing that culture and, what better example of instruction than doing and acting as your motto says, isn’t it? So, let me take you to the song that you may also recall from graduation ceremonies, donor events, and chest thumping bravado sport events: The Eyes of Texas. Do you recall it? Well, there is this circumspect history professor at UT Austin, Dr. Alberto Martinez, who’s written very well-research articles about the racist origins of the song (https://almartinezut.medium.com/true-origins-of-the-eyes-of-texas-3f2188569f0e, https://almartinezut.medium.com/100-problems-in-the-eyes-of-texas-10959642e535; please read them if you have not). To any person with regular intellectual acumen, it would become obvious that the song truly has racist origins, yet UT Austin insists that it does not. Why? Because rich oil donors threatened to withdraw their deep pockets from the coffers of the institution. And guess who did UT Austin side with? The truth or the stupidity fueled with highly-paid external consultants? You guessed it! (https://thedailytexan.com/2021/03/25/ut-austin-history-professor-contrary-report-the-eyes-of-texas-origins/)

    That’s a great example for Dr. Cipolla’s theory. Magnificent example of stupidity being taught to all the students of a higher-tier public academic institution. But there’s more: UT Austin using donor and State moneys is about to open its new think-tank, the freshly minted Liberty Institute. For what? To defend the rights of stupidity and to affirm stupidity as an academically valid endeavor. With these actions, does UT Austin truly think that students are that stupid, cannot think by themselves, and are not able to differentiate mottos from actions? Contradictions and stupidity? Fabrication of stupidity to foster an environment of conformism and stupidity?

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    1. Well, dear Anonymous, I quit my job of a Regent's Professor, and Department Chairman. I did not do it because I was happy with UT Austin and its trajectory.

      But that's ancient history, and I like to focus on the positive memories I have of my 6.5 years there.

      There are several powerful forces at play here. The first one is the power of a tribal myth. "The Eyes of Texas" is a myth, and as such it no longer lives in the realm of truths or untruths. Facts do not matter, and you need to understand this. Myths are so powerful, regardless of their objective validity, that people live and die by them. All religions are myths, and look at what they have done to eternal human brutality and blood bathing.

      Another factor has to do with the generic corruption of education systems at all levels and everywhere. The primary purpose of these systems is accreditation for money or social privilege, not education and imparting wisdom. Our product are people with the fancy pieces of paper that enhance their social status and salaries. They know it and we know it. Have you ever wondered why our students fight so desperately to increase their GPAs, regardless of how much they know? They want a glossier accreditation, not knowledge.

      How well we educate our students is incidental and dependent on their good luck of having decent teachers. Most of us strive to be good teachers with high ethical standards, but then there are too many bandits among faculty and administrators. Bandits hurt other people for personal benefit. And never gloss over the corrosive stupid in academia.

      Finally, there is the question of resources to support education and ambitions of faculty. There has been an incredible proliferation of the wannabe tier-one universities that dilute available research funding and resources. This is a classic example of more is not better. So now all faculty are evaluated for their prowess of getting money into the system, and this competition has spun off yet another level of banditry and corruption.

      Finally, there is the society at large that is eying us with anger. They don't give a damn about our science and ambitions, just want the fancy certificates for their increasingly uneducated children. Thus in-your-face stupidity is ascending too. Everywhere. This is how civilizations collapse. Unfortunately, academia is no longer a cure, but has become a part of the problem. We, the faculty, are an essential part of the government-industrial-academic-military establishment. And we shall remain so, until an unhappy end of this cycle of human history.

      Delete
  29. Tad, a buddy of mine just told me about this post which I thoroughly enjoyed. FWIW, I transcribed, scanned the images, and posted Dr. Cipolla's article on my website around 1996 at http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/stupidity/. Though I removed it under protest, it can still be found at archive.org using that link.

    It is a profound treatise on economics, a discipline which for the most part is characterized by its practitioners as a perpetual motion machine.

    I gave a talk on energy and climate yesterday to about 150 soon-to-graduate Mechanical Engineering students at San José State. At the outset we did a poll on the significance of global warming – 47% checked "The house _is_ on fire! Emergency!! All hands on deck!" and 20% checked "The situation is hopeless. We're toast."

    Not everyone is stupid.

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  30. Tad, I appreciated your thoughts about Covid. It is truly a pity that most unvaccinated people and their medical advisors – such as they are – still after 2 years do not know how to treat viral infections. The public discourse on early treatment remains trivialized and uninformed.

    Within days of the lockdown for Covid right about this time 2 years ago, I found myself talking to doctors who were realizing 99% to 100% recovery rates for early treatment using large doses of vitamin C administered intravenously. I had known immediately who to call because of a chance meeting I had in 1975, which I subsequently wrote about here:

    http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n24.shtml

    If and when another viral pandemic emerges, long before there is a vaccine, folks will recover from infection if they get treatment early with a suitable virucide. Vitamin C in adequate doses is the one immediate safe option for everyone. I keep a large supply on hand.

    When I got Covid in January, I got relief of the severe symptoms a few hours after taking just one dose of ivermectin, and I followed up with IV Vitamin C (25 grams). All is well, and I continue using about 1 gram (1000 mg) of Vitamin C per day as I had before.

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  31. This post gave me a framework for understanding where we are today as a society and how fragile our hold on democracy and a successful civilization truly is. I was with you all the way to Figure 4 (I struggled with these graphs), but got your takeaway loud and clear: either we build a coalition or lose it all. This exchange with your former student, Anonymous, is an awfully effective demonstration of your premise: stupid people exist in all social demographics, including the highly educated. If I weren't reading it, I would scoff that the exchange was cynically constructed to make your point. Calling the vaccine a "useless poison" and masking the act of "cowards"...I'm frequently reminded of the children's book, The Emperor's New Clothes, when confronted with the denial of climate change or the reality of the Covid pandemic. How do so many stupid people not just survive, but seem to thrive?

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  32. Well, Becky, things they re not getting any better. Without constant vigilance and reminding ourselves that in the end there are more people with common sense than crazies, we will go down. The most recent example is the wife of the Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas. She conspired actively to subvert of the US Constitution and supported an armed coup d'état. Need I add more? The conflict over vaccines is just one of the many crazy divisions that bedevil our developed societies. I got at least twenty more messages on this subject from one person. I decided not to publish his ramblings. He then sent me a highly abusive message, because I ignored his idée fixe. People do get clinically crazy over vaccination. The 2022 elections and the 2024 presidential election will be a huge test of our democracy. I am not optimistic...

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  33. I always have to smile at the complacancy of those who think that they are not in the ranks of the stupid. Belief in a true pandemic and climate change are not mutual. I believe in the demonstrable science of climate change, as someone who has experience of conservation biology. One does not need to be a modeller to observe profound changes in living biomes. Killing bats and poisoning vultures will do far more harm than the pandemic in the longer term, if we are fortunate enough to have a longer term. When you understand that the "unclean" animals of the Jewish Torah were all "keystone species", they were able to understand that without "science" or modelling. Tad, may I suggest you do a blog on the stupid of the latest IPCC report that still does not deal with the 40 year lag on the measurable effects of CO2 and the other gases, methane having a shorter lag but becoming CO2 in the longer term anyway. The effects of aerosol masking as observed when all flights were cancelled the 2 days after 9/11. Industrial air pollution is our paradoxical saviour at the moment. There must me considerable data captured when all the flights stopped in the early part of the pandemic, it has still not been published.

    What about the 50 and counting, observable positive feedback loops?

    All this talk of where things will be in 50 and 100 years, when the evidence is that tipping points have already been reached.

    Not sure how voting is going to be of any use here?

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    1. Duncan,
      Briefly, the IPCC reports (plural) have had very serious omissions all along. They are very good examples of the very educated and respected scientists, who too are stupid at times. For example, several of their emissions scenarios have no physical basis whatsoever. They are plainly much too high, and could not be physically realized on planet Earth. I showed them in detail the reasons for this statement in 2010, at the AAAS conference in San Diego, and was completely ignored as a shill for the petroleum industry. Their must recent 3500+ pages of the mostly inscrutable prose repeat several of the same errors. Their writing style is so bad that I wonder who can read their reports AND understand them. Even more importantly, they never mention overpopulation as THE key driver of the human-wrought destruction of the planet, and in particular, the role of the top 10% of the global population that uses some 50% of global primary energy, i.e., us. All other impacts are the result of overpopulation and overconsumption, but we fail to connect the dire climate effects to this root cause. The Russian attack on Ukraine is now likely to correct some of this energy abuse. Life goes on...

      Thus IPCC is a highly politicized organization, in which most participants thrive in their little drawers never sticking their heads out. I remind you that being stupid is universal, and spills over to some Nobel prize recipients, particularly in economics. Now I will be excommunicated by all, but so be it.

      Delete
  34. A glaring problem with climate scientists in general is their not recognising rate of change and its implications. James Lovelock may be right about transitioning between two steady temperature states, but there is no evidence in the fossil record of the rate of transition we have now. Trees cannot walk but even if they could the soil structure and type at different latitudes vary greatly and take longer time scales to change. We can't just move everything towards the poles to compensate. We are on the verge of summertime temperatures that will denature grains. Agriculture is soon to end. Babylon should have been our teacher regarding deep water irrigation and salting the soil and as Sumerians recognising that the plow (mattock) was a curse foisted on man from the gods.

    In the UK we have a BBC programme called "country file". Because of the fuel issues and Ukraine they were talking about conservation agriculture this week. 30 years too late IMHO. An organisation called groundswell has been pushing it for decades with very little traction even though it always made good economic sense. Slightly lower yeild in the early years but without the need for oil based fertilizers and pesticides and the unessacary costs. After about 10 years the yeild is about the same. Next would come the food Forrest's.

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  35. Speaking about Babylonians and Sumerians, I am reading a fascinating book, "Against the Grain," which answers richly the points you are raising. We really need big organizations with global reach, such as UN or IPCC, but by their very nature they are compartmentalized and bureaucratic. Also many of the people who work there are narrowly specialized and unable to understand what the guy in the next drawer is saying. Cutting across disciplines - with passion I might add - has been my vocation and the cause of unending pain.

    My Russian student, Natalia, just delivered the full reanalysis of temperature data for Saudi Arabia since the year 1950. If these unvarnished data cannot convince everyone about the geologically instantaneous climate bifurcation, I do not know what will. Since the year 1850, we have emitted an equivalent of two Chicxulub comet impacts. And then we act surprised when this violent catastrophe, called the global industrial economy, will take us down in a split of a geological second. So, instead, we watch the Oscars and debate whether Will Smith should or should not have smacked the other guy. Yes, we "Don't Look Up."

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  36. Thanks for the pointer. I have ordered a copy of "Against the Grain,". I have researched Sumerian and Akkadian texts in the past, but only via translation on the Sumerian texts which are not so good IMO. Had a little help from Irvin Finkel at one point. As time permits I will look at the original tablets myself, now that good learning guides are available for the script. I am looking more at the Saharan and sub-saharan cattle cultures at the moment. How the transformed Kerma and Egypt. Have you read "Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans: Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean" from jhu press?

    Joseph Tainter and Eric H. Cline on complex societies and there fall. The past may not repeat itself but it does rhyme with the present.

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  37. Hi Tad, have you seen Paul Beckwith's latest video - https://youtu.be/xj8WISW7wOY

    Nothing in the UK news about this.

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  38. The vaccinated are.dropping now like.flyes working age deaths are up 40% and WW that's 18 million people as of now . Eat this shit stupid ! And get ready to meet your maker

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  39. Is this you? https://www.youtube.com/user/elekkr/videos. Regardless, you hold some pretty strong views and you are not shy about being offensive. I wish you could sit in my class and we could talk more clamly.

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  40. As someone who is a stickler for accuracy in data I would like to correct Etyere Petyere regarding the 40% increase in all cause mortality over the latest period. We do not know how many were vaccinated yet and how significant that might be. However the 40% increase is highly significant and unparalleled, even in WW1 & 2.

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    1. Dear Duncan,
      I thought about answering E.P. seriously, but perished that thought as counterproductive. He is not likely to listen to anything but his propaganda megaphone.

      But you are exactly right. The highest increase in morality was estimated roughly for India, mostly because of lack of data in the poor rural areas there, and a complete lack of collaboration from the Modi regime. My own intuitive estimate would be >10-20 million dead, with most bodies dumped into the rivers and disposed into the open sea. None of these people were vaccinated, they were malnutritioned, lived in crowded conditions and extreme poverty, and had little or no medical care. In the cities, you heard about people suffocating to death because of lack of oxygen and air conditioning.

      Russia still has a very high rate of increase of mortality, but their population is 30% vaccinated or less, and mostly in the big cities. In countryside, vaccination rate was negligible, and the population is old and unhealthy. The Russian vaccine is good, but the people there do not trust their medical system.

      Another curious case is that of Africa, with close to zero Covid vaccination across that continent, but young population and little diabetes. We heard that the rate of mortality there did not change because of Covid, but now we are told that in several countries there were large-to-very large increases of mortality that went unrecorded. The root cause is the same, lack of medical care, record keeping, and grinding poverty.

      China of course has always lied about their low Covid mortality and had the spectacularly ineffective vaccines that contributed to countless deaths there and in many other countries across the world that received the deadly gift of free Chinese vaccines. From personal experience I know what happened in Bahrain, UAE, etc., whose populations were totally vaccinated with two Chinese vaccines, people felt safe, would contract Covid and die. Again obesity and diabetes played major contributing roles.

      In the developed western countries, the increase of morality was between -1% to 15% or so, depending on the country. The rich and socialist Scandinavia had no or negligible rate of increase. The US was in the 15% range, because of lack of public health policies, lack of access to medical care for many millions of people, insufficient capacity of private hospitals, and obese, diabetic population. The rate of increase was the highest in the Red states. The Republicans were very successful in explaining to the faithful that a) there is no Covid virus, just another flu; b) vaccines don’t work and are not needed; c) masks are for the weak liberals and don’t work; and d) general access to healthcare is not a human right but something real men should despise. Among the developed countries, the U.S. has one of the highest diabetes rates, just behind the Middle East, mostly because of the exceptionally unhealthy surgery diets, poverty, and lack of physical exercise. Again, the poor Red states have the highest rates of diabetes and co-mortality from Covid. All these factors are related to 30-40 million people here having no or substandard medical care, and being assured that such access is socialism and we hate those socialists, don’t we?

      Two final remarks. My daughter is an endocrinology specialist a UCSF (one of the two top medical centers in the U.S.), who works on the deadly diabetes and treats for free the poorest patients.

      The m-RNA vaccines confer the highest level of immunity to the virus, but decay fast. For example, I had a recent CAR T treatment against my lymphoma, and my genetically modified lymphocytes that kill the sick cells immediately erased all of my m-RNA vaccinations, all four of them. I will receive the monoclonal antibodies (like Trump), that will keep me protected for six months and then will have to revaccinate from the beginning, like Trump.

      Delete
    2. https://kunstler.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-29-at-8.47.46-AM.png

      Delete
    3. Dear E.P.,
      You are a victim of believing the loudest voice in the computer and false equivalencies. I know James personally, and he is no specialist in anything technical or medical. In 1966, Kunstler graduated from New York City's High School of Music & Art, and attended the State University of New York at Brockport, where he majored in theater. He has no right to make sweeping claims for which he has no professional knowledge. And you have no right to believe in what he says, only because it agrees with your worldview. If you are not vaccinated, then statistically your chance of dying of Covid is 12-13 times higher than if you were. Since you are young and fit, you will survive just fine, but with unknown long-term consequences. I am 70, have cancer, and will not survive being unvaccinated.

      Delete
  41. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7705596/

    In type 2 diabetes it is the intracellular lipid that drives it.

    Marketing of vegetable ghee (hydrogenated oil) and imported butter have pushed India to the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. In Mumbai the favourite street food uses about a third of a pound of butter per portion.

    Type 1 is also on the increase in infants who are given cows milk based formula, since 70% of the world population are not suited for it.

    The traditional cows milk used in India had a very different profile.

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    1. Yep. At least half of all Covid deaths has type 1 or 2 diabetes plus obesity as the key comorbidity factors. Age enters next.

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  42. "masks are for the weak liberals and don’t work", on that point I go with tradition virology and the practise of surgeons. 1) if a surgeon suspects a viral infection they do not operate and only consider their mask to be good for protecting from droplets of blood and fluid into the mouth. Many surgeries were carried out without masks prior to the era of pandemic. 2) a hazmat and some specialist masks do have the ability to stop a virus but none of the ones generally worn would have much effect. As one surgeon said, it's like trying to stop a gnat with a chain link fence.

    Just in, we are now having reports of plastics being found in human lung studies for the first time, they just happen to be the same types of plastics of which the mass produced disposable mask are made. No one has stated a solid connection yet though, but it's not much of a leap.

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    1. You are right, Duncan. It is the virus-loaded cough and saliva droplets I worry about. They are the main mechanim of transmission in crowded spaces. Any single mask is vastly insufficient to stop the tiny viruses, but this is not how they travel and stay viable. They need water to do that. Robust ventilation and hepa filters are key.

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  43. I am not a big believer in the viral load theory and water droplets. I am not saying that it is not a possible route but I don't think it has great significance. I am a believer in terrain theory of a sort. The back of the throat can act like a Petri dish, dependant mostly on what one eats. This has long been recognised by professional singers who avoid cow's milk (lactose & casin) before a performance but high sugar drinks can have a similar effect.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-surfaces-covid-mobile-phone-screens-banknotes-steel-vinyl-study-b983146.html

    So the virus lives on surfaces quite well, just like all other Corona viruses. Why on earth anyone would think that it did not is baffling, unless it was a justification for pushing mask wearing. All of this demonstrates to me that SARS-COV-2 is not as communicable or as dangerous as claimed unless you are in a high risk group which includes those on a highly animal based diet that is also high in refined sugar. Evidence continues to build that ivermectin and some antimalarials were/are effective early treatments for this particular virus with better risk benefit ratio than mRNA.

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    1. Well, two years ago, we were taught to disinfect every solid and fabric surface when we came back from shopping. Then we discovered that the virus does not survive for many hours on dry surfaces, especially when they are also warm. So it is not just the viral load, but also time to exposure. If someone with a very high viral load coughs into a vent system with no filters, and you breath his air in seconds or few minutes, you become infected. But if someone coughs several meters away from you, and you have a mask, the viruses in his cough droplets will not get you, after several minutes or hours. That's the best we can hope for.

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  44. As a result of forced and coerced experimental poison vaccination the people who unquestioningly submitted themselves to these have now a compromised immune systems and became hyper spreaders of super viruses . These poisons also don't prevent you from getting covid and don't save you from deaths whatever all the manipulated statistics are telling you . Among the poison vaccined population working age deaths are up 40% that's 18 million people now world wide pfizer admitted to inefficacy of his vaccine .

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    1. Well, dear E.P., we are of different times and different places. I could give you a lecture on what messenger RNA (a ribonucleic acid) is. It is generated by your DNA on the as needed basis to code for amino acids (proteins) in the ribosomes in all of your cells. I could tell you that the mRNA vaccines cannot possibly alter the virus or you, but teach your body how to recognize the spike proteins the Covid virus uses to enter your nose, throat and lungs, multiply and spread. I could then tell you that these vaccines are not magic, and will not prevent infection every time, but will make fewer viruses enter your body and save you from a severe infection and possible death otherwise. I could proceed to explaining that it is in fact the unvaccinated people worldwide, who hold more viruses for a longer time, are the key sources of virus mutations in their bodies, and spread the virus much more than the vaccinated people ever could. There is one grain of truth in your big sack of misinformation and propaganda: these mRNA vaccines by their very nature are unstable and may decay too fast to really teach your body how to fight the virus. That's why I repeated my vaccination four times and avoided Covid altogether over the last two years. My own genetically modified lymphocytes, I just took in a CAR T procedure to kill my lymphoma, are much more stable and keep on multiplying 1000-fold for a month. The first thing they do is they erase all of my m-RNA vaccinations. So soon, I will have to take the monoclonal antibodies that saved the life of a generally unhealthy former president Trump, and follow up with re-vaccination in six months.

      I could finish with telling you how the virus constantly mutates, and how most of these mutations are irrelevant, but others are deadly. The more of unvaccinated people get sick, the more chances the virus has to mutate and infect even more people. This is the story of the delta and omicron variants of the virus. Believe me, the virus is not done with us.

      But all of these efforts would likely be futile, because you would not listen to me and you would think of me as of yet another know-all asshole, not to be trusted, as opposed to whatever (mis)information sources you and tens of millions of others ingest every day. So do me a favor, please go back to Figures 4-6 in this post, and try to understand why our country, once the hope of humanity, is now hopelessly split, and there is no or little cross-flow of information between the likes of me and you. This dialog is our only chance of reaching some common ground, however faint this chance might me.

      Delete
    2. Tad, please be careful that you may be combating one form of misinformation with another kind. Proteins (aminos) do not alter DNA, they don't need too. The field of epigenetics and gene expression show us how RNA changes life outcomes, particularly in studied conducted with genetically identical twins. Food is the most significant programmer. A search of Medline will demonstrate just how much research is being conducted on the "gut brain". Keep in mind that snake venom could be characterised as mRNA therapy (with similar associated side effects). If one were to liquidate a small amount of peanut and inject it into someone it is highly probable that this person's immune system will develop a hypersensitivity to it in the future, thus making highly allergic to peanuts. Leaky gut syndrome brings about the same type of issues. Leaky gut is usually brought about by the use of oral broad spectrum antibiotics. After this effect, eggs can cause rheumatoid arthritis and dairy can trigger type 1 diabetes. The proteins are too similar to the relevant organs and everything the subject is challenged with the foods the immune system attacks them. In terms of a gene therapy that only targets the spike, it is a narrow type of immunity that may leave people open to other similar viruses being then unable to develop the broad natural immunity. Studies referring to the combination of natural immunity and the vaccine do not state that natural immunity comes first and that there is no evidence that mRNA enhances it. A strong antibody response is not a good marker of good immune response. More does not = better.

      Delete
    3. Well, dear Duncan, we live in the most complex Anthropocene world, which no one fully comprehends. No one. Especially all the complex interactions of thousands of the chemicals we are exposed to each day.

      In this truly scary world, scientists publish papers with 10-30 authors, meaning that all are averaging responsibility, and no one fully grasps what they are writing. Ordinary people are in the dark all the time, and are being manipulated, stoked, and made raving mad by the highly paid professionals, like Carlson Tucker. His huge success is tracking hour-by-hour what riles the scared, angry people the most, and then delivering to them a huge overdose of it. When I read the angry and cruel language of E. P., I am sure that we will not survive as a civilization. And for good reason, too.

      As my reply to E.P. - see below - indicates, the harmful, man-made chemicals, carcinogens and endocrine disruptors that interact in unknown and complex ways, will ultimately kill off the populations of the richest countries. The populations of the poor countries will be decimated by hunger, heat and lack of water. Oh, and all will be increasingly lacking natural resources. Not a happy picture for the young ones...

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  45. As per most "evidence" during this pandemic, the evidence is sketchy and sample sizes too small but we do have something - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.646679/full

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  46. Yes . You could tell . Couldn't you ?!. My advise to you ;Tell this to the contargan babyes who got to born with no hands and legs whatnot . The agent orange victims who have been told it is harmless and all the birds almost wiped out DDT s silent springs and another 100 stories of the sort . All those things were deemed safe but your poison vaccines designed to vipe out wide swaths of the population brought to you by the great reset they are safe . Of course . Your problem is you have no place left to hide because your internal clock is ticking to detonate to a time.where it cant be traced back to the poison vaccine you took and has triggered in you cancer cardio whatnot disease . That's what programmed dna rna rns poison vaccines will do . And i have my guns readyed to inject some led into the people who would try to inject me with those poison vaccines . You had your chance to make an informed decision before you let yourself be marked the lethal mark of the beast .
    Yes you fell for the snotty nose is a deadly disease fairytale and now you have to meet your maker . How dsoes that feel ?Congratulations .
    The angry and the stupid

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  47. Dear E.P., If you were to check the ecology papers I published over the last 20 years, you'd notice that I agree with you exactly. The situation is actually far, far worse than what you describe. There are almost 200,000 man-made chemicals in the environment, many of them last forever, others decay, but their decomposition products are sometimes deadlier than the parent. Agent Orange is a child's play compared with the pesticides and herbicides we are all exposed to in the environment in which we live, the food we eat, the water we drink nd the air we breathe. I have fought in court cases against Dow Chemical and DuPont, among others, and am painfully aware of the damage their factories and products inflict on the surrounding poor populations. Then there was unbelievable chemical waste dumping in the poor southeast of the U.S.

    I am old enough to remember my hair being sprayed with DDT in kindergarten, I am kidding you not. Duncan, in his answer above, is pointing out yet another level of complex interactions of organic chemicals with our bodies. We cannot possibly address all these complexities in a blog like this and short essays.

    My son, Lucas, is Executive Director of the Napa County Resource Conservation District. His purpose in life is to work with farmers to eliminate chemicals from agriculture, manage properly watersheds, and restore forests, while removing excess biomass by controlled burns and vegetation thinning to prevent the catastrophic forest fires there. He became who he is because he worked with me as an undergraduate opposing the BP-Berkeley deal on the Energy-Biosciences Institute that failed as we predicted. That institute was to produce genetically modified plants and novel pesticides and herbicides.

    So let's agree on something: We all know that the excessive chemicals in our environment are deadly and harm all life, not just humans. Then there are plastics everywhere. We are close to the complete collapse of the global ocean, a cosmic catastrophe in the making with the dire unknown consequences for the planet. We are at the cusp of a truly runaway global warming that will kill far many more millions of people than Covid ever will. There is only one solution. In the rich countries, we need to make do with far less and change our lifestyles dramatically. We need a Big Simplification.

    What will happen to me is immaterial. And without taking chemotherapy poisons into my body, I would have been dead for 2-1/2 years already, prior to any Covid vaccinations. Please stop being so abusive. You are boiling with anger. Is this how you talk to your family and friends?

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  48. Tad, it is commendable, the efforts that you and your son have been engaged in over many years. I went the permaculture design certificate route some years ago and engage in smaller scale designs. What amazed me was the time I saw mushroom spaw and coconut matting placed on top of crude oil. Over time we got tasty edible mushrooms and when the matting was lifted, no oil to be seen. The ultimate conversion & there may be many other solutions like this, if they can be significantly upscaled. As for biomass, if it can possibly be rolled down to the ground it changes from something of a fire hazard to something that retains humidity in the ground. David Holmgren has an Interesting example. I will post if I can find it...

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  49. Found it on YouTube. Its title is - Revegetating and Reducing Fire Risk in Spring Creek Gully

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  50. https://robinwestenra.blogspot.com/2022/05/unpacking-geert-vanden-bossches-final.html?m=1

    https://robinwestenra.blogspot.com/2022/03/official-nz-moh-data-indicated-fully.html?m=1

    I rest my case

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  51. Hi Tad and All...

    Just a few points, unwritten in stone, to at least consider in case they have not been...

    • The RPC test and how it was done may have been problematic, giving questionable results.
    • COVID-19 (CV19) may have escaped from the lab, whether deliberately or accidentally. This is apparently not the first time a virus has escaped a lab. If dangerous research like this cannot be transparent and safely conducted, then it should not be conducted. Simple. If we are giving ourselves more problems with our technology than it solves, it's time for a reality-check. We appear long overdue.
    • There are concerns with how CV19 deaths are or were counted, such as 'with' CV19 or 'from' CV19.
    • There are questionable potential incentives that some front-line health care providers were or are being given.
    • The CV19 vaccine is not like classical vaccines and so we should not conflate them. The CV19 vaccine has been called a 'gene therapy' or something like that and apparently works as some kind of model rather than the real thing.
    • There are issues surrounding legal liability WRT the vaccine manufacturers.
    • Apparently, Putin found some dubious US-run or US-lead bio research facilities in Ulkraine
    • Deaths from both CV19 and vaccines may be over-counted or undercounted.
    • Leaky vaccines may produce stronger versions of viruses and/or enhance their spread. This looks to be the case with the CV19 one.
    • From an evolutionary standpoint, we could not have an immune system without exposure. Sterilizing our world may not in the end protect us.
    • The initiations and results of science and technology are sociopolitical as well and, along with our limited wisdom as a species, are helping to trash the planet. Biotech should not be any different as a possibility for this.
    • Masks work and don't work, depending on where we get our information and/or what we are talking about. Some of 'the science' may also be contradictory, invalid, problematic and/or inconclusive.
    • There is concern out there-- perhaps growing-- that CV19 and maybe the Ukraine issue are ways or at least being used as leverages to help conduct 'controlled demolitions' of our global-industrial culture that is both running out of the low-hanging fruit of fossil fuels and trashing the planet.
    • I went without both a CV19 vaccine or mask throughout the pandemic and am alive to talk about it. In fact, I didn't catch a cold at all and neither did a much older relative over 80 who I spent a large amount of time with during the pandemic and who also didn't catch anything and only got half the vaccine shot (one appointment of two), no boosters and wore a mask infrequently/arbitrarily. Yes, anecdotal, but there it is.
    • Some of the effects of trying to control the pandemic, such as through lock-ins and whatnot may prove to be worse, over time, than the pandemic/CV19 itself, such as WRT extra suicides, extra loneliness, extra stress, surgery postponement, poor exercise, poor exposure to the outside and sunlight, poor diet, child development and possible health issues related to the vaccine and masks worn.
    • Statistics often need to be viewed long-term. Two or three years with CV19 is not nearly a long enough time to draw many conclusions.
    • The CDC and maybe the WHO and related others may have serious conflicts-of-interest.
    • There was an apparently extensively-researched book published, entitled, 'The Real Anthony Fauci' that may shine a dubious light on its subject and, as such, perhaps on the pandemic as a whole.
    • There may be something to be said, perhaps very serious, about the implications of extending the biological (virii vs humans) 'arms race' outside of the human body and into the corporate/big-pharma/big-government/big-biotech realms. We're already aware of antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' and 'superweeds' afterall.
    • 'My body, my right', and as such and writing as an anarchist, I grant no entity that is already unethical such that most governments are, a questionable vaccine mandate over me.

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  52. A late post to your blog but unfortunately the time for conspiracy theories has ended and the time for hard cold facts has begun. Please see https://youtu.be/bGZJfVR9-wo
    https://youtu.be/a4LcPF87YLE
    https://youtu.be/9CairUDsY98

    You can probably get a feel for the new reality.

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  53. After all who were the stupids ? The ones who didnt die sudden death syndrome's myocarditis the ones who live now and will love after the long and agonizing deaths of the aftereffects of the covid death inoculations takes the rest of the idiots who didnt make the educated decision to resist the pressure to take it. Die idiot die stupid vaccinated people you won the darvin award .

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  54. Dear E.P.
    Did you read my long reply to you on Myocarditis? In the US, mostly the sick, malnutritioned and old are the victims. You seem to be very angry and surrounded by darkness. Can you direct your anger at something constructive? Like helping other people? Your friends? Family? I have dedicated my life to being a teacher, and no matter what darkness and cancer surrounded me, I always had a reason to live and smile. The young optimistic people do this to you.

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    1. Yes i am very angry of people who are representing death inoculations and trying to delude themselves and unsuspecting others . To fall for the same fate just to somehow validate a life altering mistaken decision . Damn you all ! And i should be angry actually the whole society should be angry knowing now what we know but it cant be since most people dont think for themselves and fall for the false authority . You see DJOKOVICH he refused your poison inoculations wont enter the us and did an all time record in tennis he is the top of the world nobody ever before him and guess what no POISON INNOCULATIONS for him . He is the winner he even beat america not even being able to be there to collect another title . You all losers your biggest loss will be your life's sooner than later . And you deserve it !

      Delete
    2. Well, E.P., by now I know well who you hate and I know that you lack empathy. But what/whom do you like? What do you stand for? What would you like to change around you, except for getting rid of the people you don't know personally but hate? Please stop defining yourself by the people you hate, and start looking at the people or animals you love. This might make you a better and happier human being.

      Recently, we were adopted by up to six stray cats. The news got around in the cat neighborhood that we liked animals and would feed them, despite knowing better. With time two cats went away, three stayed with us, and one is a frequent visitor. The three that stayed provide us with an intense sense of joy. "Our" cats do not care about vaccines, climate change, human misery, etc. They just want to be petted and eat. One must spend some time on our laps to be truly content. Do you have an animal you like?

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  55. Yes catering to some cats at best thats a christian things to do at the outmost . (Did jesus care for animals ?!....hopefully ) But This does not suffice . Trying to redeem karmic debt by doing "humanitarian" acts to animals will not help . Your only redemption is 1; to remove this post 2. Put up another post where you apologise for the mistaken act posting this in the first place . Nothing less will do .

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  56. I disagree, this post should stand as it was Tads position at the time. Most books of learning are out of date by the time they are published & I am sure that Tad wrote this in good faith, in accord with his understanding at the time. Data is always open to reinterpretation and re-evaluation. Such as here - https://youtu.be/Dk7HCcmsMiA.

    However, it would be nice to hear some of Tads latest opinion in a new post, even if it is not Covid related.

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  57. E.P., did you notice that so far I published all of your comments, even though I 1) disagreed with most of them and 2) found some to be very offensive. Then how can you request me to withdraw my post, only because you do not like it? Should I have deleted your posts, because I did not like them? I can. Please try to think it through. We are still on a two-way road in America, not on the terminal one-way dead end of totalitarianism you seem to like so much. And don't give me your "I'm right, you are wrong, and I have the right to offend you" answer.

    I learned about your solution to publishing 50 years ago, when I was censored and threatened by the communists over and over again. Why do the flaming right wingers in America act just like the old communists in Poland? Try to give me an honest non-abusive answer if you can.

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  58. i am giving you 24 hors from now to remove this post while apologizing for writing it to everyone . understand ?! in case of noncompliance i will delete your blog and pay a witch to curse you !

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    Replies
    1. This blog is much more relevant today than it was two years ago. The miserable narcissistic victims on the right and left want to see only that with which they agree, and hate everything they don't. So get a life, grow up and ignore my blogs!

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  59. “Good faith people are willing to be corrected (because the Truth is important); not so the liars of course (they know they are wrong) or the ideologues. So the ideologues therefore don’t act in good faith, though they think they do.” — Truman Verdun

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  60. Paul from Lawn Guy LandOctober 19, 2023 at 3:28 AM

    The trope of "the US is a Democracy" is false. It is supposedly a Constitutional Republic, and there is a supposed to be a significant difference. In practice, the US stopped being a Republic about the time of the Civil War, and has ceased even being a functional democracy by the early 1900's when powerful monied interests began buying politicians in sufficient numbers for their own gain. Especially at the higher levels of gov, the candidates are pre-selected by the bandits to appeal to the cunning, selfish and stupid, who keep casting ballots in sufficient quantity to make it appear there is "public support". When even that fails, the votes are rigged. See also: auditny.com who document over 338,000 votes that can not be traced to actual living registered NY voters who can be proven to have participated in the process. There are other independent vote audit teams reporting not just significant but astounding "flaws" in other state and local elections. The question must be asked: qui bono? If the UN was monitoring our elections, the results would be thrown out, but because the "right" candidates, regardless of party, always win, "our elections are a success and a model for the world". (*cough*)

    As astute observer or his time and of the human condition Mark Twain so wittily observed, "if voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it", and "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." He also said " Consider the average intelligence of the common man, then realize 50% are even stupider."

    I can well understand why the very intelligent refuse to vote because to do so is a violation of conscience, to refuse to allow their names as a stamp of approval to the all too often criminal acts done "in the name of the (voting) public. Voting, whether for a winning or losing candidate or policy, is explicit consent to the process and the results thereof. Voting in a democracy is very simply mob rule, and the mob is nearly always too stupid and or selfish to do what is good for them in the long term, so even if the bandits weren't in control, we would still be doomed. To make matters even worse, as the wealth gap increases and as resource expense and scarcity increases, there will be ever more bifurcation in attempts to blame "the other".

    Such things never end well, but this is the course we as a species have set and are now committed to sail. The Titan we've assembled as a complex society and economic engine is far too big and unwieldy to turn at this point, the bilge pumps are barely keeping up as it is, and the leaks are getting worse. As a certain ships' carpenter reputedly said: "as sure as iron is heavier than water, she's going down". The only things left to do are enjoy the ice cubes on the deck for our drinks, re-arrange the deck chairs, applaud the band, and wait for the inevitable. Even those who have staked claims in the few lifeboats, I don't believe have fully figured the vortex of when this goes down, and it's just as likely to sink most of them as well.

    Ah well. A toast to you while the champagne still flows. I appreciate your thoughts, Tad, and wish you well in all ways. Thanks for posting your insights and allowing discussion in the comments.

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  61. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97qRUqYLNu0

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