site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31234 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

14
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So there have been a lot of people suddenly collapsing or dying recently. Or have there? My Twitter feed certainly seems to think so. Off the top of my head we have Adam Rich, a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee, an Old Dominion basketball player, an NFL player, and tons of normal people as well. This does seem... odd? I can't remember a lot of people just suddenly collapsing and dying in the past although I remember Hank Gathers from 1990 as a rare exception.

Now, I'm willing to accept that it's possible that sudden deaths of healthy people may be normal-ish thing. Possibly this is just signal-boosted noise. As a heuristic, no one I know personally has collapsed so it's presumably not incredibly widespread. We also have the possibility that Covid itself, not vaccines, is causing these deaths.

The problem is that, as a layperson, it is nearly impossible for me to obtain unbiased information about this phenomenon. I encourage you to search Google for "vaccine death". The results are a muck of "fact checks", opinion pieces, and out-of-date articles talking about how many lives the vaccine saved.

On the other hand, on Twitter, (where free speech is truly allowed now), #vaccinedeath is allowed to trend. However, the results for that hashtag tend to be a lot of anecdotes of sudden collapses mixed in with spurious assertions about vaccine safety.

What's a normal person to do in this information environment? For myself, I will not be receiving future Covid vaccine doses. They have an unknown risk against a low risk from Covid itself. However, I have little confidence in this assessment. And I have no faith that I will be able to reach a confident assessment. When counter-narrative information is suppressed by the media and by the scientific apparatus, how can we trust anything they say? But it doesn't mean the counter-narrative is correct either. It just means there is no way to be confident without a free exchange of ideas.

a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee

She didn't just fall over dead. She presumably committed suicide based on her family's suspiciously suicide related statements after her death. That's fan speculation anyways.

1 negation, and a couple of weird anecdotes.

The NFL player who collapsed had it happen due to a collision with direct impact to the heart. This was a completely different case than covid related myocarditis.

On the weird side, there have been 2 unique occurrences in the soccer world. Christian Ericsson is arguably the most high-profile death (and subsequent resuscitation) on the soccer field due to spontaneous cardiac arrest a few months after his vaccine. Players dropping dead isn't entirely unheard of. But Ericsson is the most high profile. On a similar note, Sergio Aguero, one of the greatest football players of his era, had to suddenly retire after his new club (in 2021) identified scarring on his heart.

Curiously, both players had spent their entire careers with world class medical teams, without any of them having any inkling of such major heart tissue scarring. Barcelona (Aguero's new club) famously called it gross negligence, saying that Aguero should have never been allowed to be a pro player, because someone during his 20 career should have caught this. This is after Aguero had just broken the record for most premier league career goals in the history of the sport at arguably the world's best team. Something doesn't compute.

The NFL player who collapsed had it happen due to a collision with direct impact to the heart. This was a completely different case than covid related myocarditis.

I'd assumed they were talking about Uche Nwaneri, but he wasn't in the NFL anymore.

It's kind of amazing how much coverage of current and former NFL players (and other staff) there is. Looks like (former) NFL player dying isn't some rare occurrence, even for younger ones. I wonder what the life expectancy of an NFL player is.

Barcelona (Aguero's new club) famously called it gross negligence, saying that Aguero should have never been allowed to be a pro player, because someone during his 20 career should have caught this.

This sort of thing isn't unheard of in other sports: cyclist Michael Goolaerts died in the 2018 Paris-Roubaix race of cardiac arrest.

I have two cautions about your anecdote here: first, professional athletes are likely using performance-enhancing drugs (without making any specific accusations). Many of these are pretty well-linked with cardiac issues (testosterone, EPO, and various stimulants). A number of sudden cardiac arrest incidents in young athletes have seen hushed rumors since at least the 1980s, corresponding to the rise of EPO.

Secondly, "[professional] should never have been allowed to play due to risk" belies the fact that many players at the top level are exceptionally focused and don't take well to being sidelined. It's plausible to me that a player getting such advice from their doctor might choose to ignore it because they already accept risk to their bodies in sport (see NFL players), and because their alternative career options are much less lucrative.

[spent 2 minutes googling here idk]

What if covid itself contributes? this "investigated rates of COVID-19 myocarditis among 1,597 athletes from 13 of the 14 Big Ten universities. They observed an overall prevalence of 2.3%, with 9 cases of clinical myocarditis and 28 cases of subclinical myocarditis". study is here.

And sudden cardiac arrests aren't unheard of in sports, they're just rare. Given there are many sports, many many athletes, a few high-profile people dying isn't that surprising!

What if covid itself contributes?

Covid almost surely contributes. Internal scarring due to viral infections is well known at this point. The question people are asking is --> do silent/loud symptoms induced by the vaccines (every 6 months, if booster) cause an increase in scarring that is similar to what a serious infection would cause ? I'd rather take a bout of covid every few years, instead of a 6 monthly slow buildup scar-tissue on my heart. Skipping boosters may be a risk worth taking if I am young. (I am not boosted yet)

I am still very much pro-vaccines. I would take the first 2 doses again if I was back in 2020. I have taken every other established vaccine & will vaccinate any child I have at any point. I am just not sold on the mRNA boosters or the risk of serious illness for a sub-30 yr old from any of the current variants of covid.

Well, the elephant in the room is the inexplicable and ongoing high level of excess deaths being reported among all age groups and across continents. These deaths do not appear to be driven primarily by Covid itself or at least not directly.

I would be interested in seeing reputable data on this. Is there a good source? Would be interesting to see if its possible to tease apart the effect of vaccination vs. long-term Covid symptoms.

I've heard that Sweden has had less total excess death than other countries. Presumably their vaccination levels are quite high. Maybe the excess deaths are somehow lockdown-related. Is there a "Sweden" for anti-vaccine policy, i.e. a first world country that had a much lower of vaccination than others?

Nobody reputable is going to make any (non-deboonky) comment on this, by definition.

A disreputable (but seemingly smart and reasonably good-faith/not crazy) cat has been drawing conclusions from the UK NIH data for some time; the latest is here:

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/uk-age-stratified-all-cause-death

I don't hang my hat on this analysis particularly, and I'm sure there's nits to be picked -- but it's not obviously terrible, and the effect sizes require that the nits be pretty big.

I'd actually be happy to see some reasonable complaints about this one -- on its face it's very concerning, and reasonable explanations are not jumping out at me on first read.

Thank you. This was the direction I was hoping to go in with my top-level post, but people got distracted (understandably so) about which D-list celebrity collapsed for this or that reason.

I'll give this a read, and maybe try to make a different top-level post next week.

OTOH regarding UK death data for 2022 this was just posted. It argues that:

  • once you age-adjust (which takes into account that the expected trend for the mortality rates in aging Western societies would be to rise, there's mostly no excess mortality that wouldn't be explained by Covid)

  • like in most countries, excess mortality spikes follow Covid spikes (though the Fisch argues in other posts for other countries that for this winter the other respiratory diseases almost certainly also show an effect)

  • while there are no not-explainable-by-Covid excess deaths in > 65 age bands, there are some not-explainable-by-Covid excess deaths in < 65 age bands, but these are better explained by NHS being burdened than by vaccination, if you look at schedules

I don't have time to read this analysis any more closely than El Gato's, but it also doesn't seem obviously terrible -- and it kind of doesn't really conflict that much?

In the bar-graphs, the Spring 2022-present deaths still look very concerning if you subtract off the covid bars, especially in the younger age brackets -- Fisch seems to take note of the here, but just kind of... shrugs it off?

I'd also note that Gato is using pretty narrow age bands already, so age-adjustment doesn't seem like it should make much difference.

I'll see if I can do a more adversarial reading later, but again the effect size is really large -- even Fisch notes ~10k excess non-Covid deaths over this period, which seems like kind of a fuckload?

if there is a 50-50 chance of excess deaths, then there is a 1/4 odds by chance alone of two consecutive years of excess deaths.

Naively, one might have predicted excess deaths to be unusually low, perhaps negative, following a pandemic which disproportionately and prematurely killed off so many elderly and unhealthy people. Instead, we have significant, consistent, and prolonged increases across all groups. There is a clear signal in the data, and it is not wrong to suspect the mRNA vaccines as a potential culprit. Unfortunately, the institutions which we depend upon to research these questions have strong incentives to avoid particular results, and they have proven themselves quite untrustworthy where such conflicts of interest are in play. We're left with a lot of anecdotes, hear say, conspiracy theories, and gut instincts to guide our action.

I mean, the pandemic is still ongoing. If COVID were suddenly gone, sure. And even then we might still expect excess deaths from long-term damage of the pandemic.

Covid will never be gone, nevermind suddenly gone. By that logic, the pandemic will go on forever. But almost everyone has had the virus; it's endemic now. We lost. The question is now just discovering how badly we lost, and how much of the damage was self-inflicted (if the virus was made in a lab, then I guess it was all self-inflicted, but you know what I mean).

the pandemic

Please define.

Covid infections "strongly" (arguable) above longterm YOY. "Abnormal" amounts of Covid.

LOL. The longterm is epsilon, since COVID didn't exist prior to 2019. If you're going to use that as a criterion, you're never going to declare the pandemic over. And your criteria are broken.

There's going to be a "new normal". I think we're still well above it.

I’ve come to a conclusion that vaccines do cause myocarditis in the young. COVID also causes myocarditis. COVID’s not a big enough deal to me that I feel like digging thru 100’s of studies to figure out which risks is higher. As someone fairly young and in shape Whose had COVID, had 1 vaccine, been exposed to COVID since and got no COVID I’ve basically just decided to ignore COVID and the vaccine. I see no reason to jab myself every 6 months and take some incremental vaxx myocarditis risks as a sub 40 male.

If I were a 65 year old male I’d probably try to figure it out. But it’s just not worth my time to figure out which marginal risks is worse. I have a larger risks crossing the street and typing this out and dying which I’m doing right now than my guess from COVID or vaxx.

Long since came to a conclusion the left was full of shit that vaxx was no risks. But I knew that from my own personal symptoms and seeing many leftist on message boards saying they were knocked out for two days from vaccine yet claimed no big deal.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

Check out this study - you can do an autopsy and link sudden death to mRNA myocarditis. This should help you understand a bit more why such a rare risk is worth your time.

You've posted this link to various places, so I'll respond here: hasn't the idea that vaccine can cause myocarditis in at least some cases been a part of the official data at least since 2021? At least the Finnish health authorities have stated that the mRNA vaccine can cause myocarditis for young men and that strenuous exercise just after vaccination should be avoided. Currently, the second booster is not available here for people under 60, unless they have extra conditions.

The question is, though, how common myocarditis is and if it's common enough to mean that vaccination is more risky than being unvaccinated, for all groups or some. The jury is still out on that question, as far as I've understood, and this study does not by itself answer it.

For young males, the risk of myocarditis after the 2nd dose of mRNA vaccine is higher than with covid infection. This should be taken into account in all vaccine recommendations, unfortunately in the USA we've chosen a "one size fits all" approach that groups 80 year old women with 19 year old men.

Since you can die suddenly from dysrhythmia after vaccine induced myocarditis, we need to reevaluate where we are in this campaign. This was not known at the EUA authorization in 2020.

N= 25? That’s sort of my point it’s not so dangerous that theirs thousands dying and obvious deaths everywhere. It seems to be a mild statistical risks. Also as far as I could tell from that brief they did nothing to figure out if myocarditis was caused by COVID or mRNA vaccine.

I think people have died from the vaccine. I don’t have a smoking gun telling me it’s an issue disproportionately worth my time. Like I ordered an AI book today - I think figuring out how I fit in with our new AI overlords is more worth my mental energy than trying to figure out small statistical risks.

And at this point I just have COVID vaccine Super safe as primarily another example of the powers that be suppressing any information against their edicts. Another example of them lying to me.

Among the 35 cases of the University of Heidelberg, autopsies revealed other causes of death (due to pre-existing illnesses) in 10 patients (Supplementary Table 1). Hence, these were excluded from further analysis. Cardiac autopsy findings consistent with (epi-)myocarditis were found in five cases of the remaining 25 bodies found unexpectedly dead at home within 20 days following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.

5/25

Well, this is not the statistical smoking gun I want per say.

So of 35 sudden deaths, 10 were other causes. And then of 25 sudden deaths, 5 were found to have thee abnormality. They were looking for sudden deaths from myocarditis and they found it.

Who knows. We basically agree in a bunch of domains, I just think it's still not possible to say this is a disproportionally unimportant issue.

You may be interested in Epistemic Learned Helplessness.

Adam Rich, a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee, an Old Dominion basketball player, an NFL player, and tons of normal people as well.

I had to look up Adam Rich since I didn't recognise the name. His Wikipedia history has some perhaps relevant snippets:

"At age 14, he tried smoking marijuana, and at 17, in 1986, he dropped out of high school. He almost died of a valium overdose in 1989. In 1991, he was arrested and charged with attempted burglary of a pharmacy.

...In 2002, Rich was arrested for driving under the influence (DUI). He was in drug rehabilitation at least three times.

....Rich died in his Los Angeles home on January 7, 2023, at the age of 54. The cause of death was not disclosed."

Hm - Hollywood actor with history of drug addiction and (at times) risky behaviour dies of undisclosed causes. Plainly this must be due to the Covid vaccines! Do even we know if he was vaccinated or not?

MMA fighter, basketball player, NFL player - what do they have in common? Sportspeople dropping dead? Surely this does not happen to healthy young people who are athletes! But you know - it does.

Tons of normal people - yes, every day, tons of normal people drop dead for no (apparent) reason. People die in their sleep. Years back, I had a family member who was fine when one of their family left the house, when they came back a couple of hours later, the first person was dead.

We hear more about sudden deaths/mysterious deaths when there is something happening like a pandemic and with all the fights over vaccinations and risk. Maybe there is a greater risk. Or maybe we're just hearing about deaths now that we wouldn't have heard reported on five years ago, because there was no "rash of sudden deaths linked to eating bananas" story to hang them off. I suppose all I can say is "don't panic, judge for yourself if you think you are at high risk of adverse outcomes if you contract Covid, then decide to get boosters or not". Same with "will I bother getting the flu vaccine this year?" Probably a good idea, given that (over here at least) there has also been a rise in RSV and with everything going around at the one time, better not risk it.

Hm - Hollywood actor with history of drug addiction and (at times) risky behaviour dies of undisclosed causes. Plainly this must be due to the Covid vaccines! Do even we know if he was vaccinated or not?

Basically the right is doing the same thing the left did in 2020-2021.

Basically the right is doing the same thing the left did in 2020-2021.

Yeah. It's kinda hilarious how things have pivoted from 'random deaths/medical issues pinned on LONG COVID' to 'random deaths/medical issues pinned on VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS'.

Honestly personally I think the effects of 'Long Lockdown' in terms of weight gain, exercise disrupted, habits picked up, mental issues are probably going to present a greater specter than either COVID or the vaccine.

Um no.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

Here's a scientific paper showing there is a special link between mRNA and sudden death. Why would the right not be interested in the counternarrative developing? It's a smoking gun.

I find this phenomena truly bewildering, transmogrifying the availability heuristic with confirmation bias. Are people suddenly collapsing more than before? I have no idea, but the boosters of this claim tend to offer anecdotes rather than any sort of systemic data. Assuming the sudden collapses are indeed happening more than usual, are they due to vaccine risk? Same here, I have no idea if that's true, nor how exactly one would reach this conclusion. We know that humans are mortal and susceptible to dying (sometimes suddenly even) from many causes. Why are vaccines conclusively and exclusively heralded as the cause? No idea.

If you want generalizable tips for a normal person it would be:

  1. You should not rely on anecdotes to establish a trend

  2. If there is indeed a trend, you should only adopt a particular cause if you have good reason to dismiss other explanations

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

Take a look at this autospy report. If you can find bodies that have died after vaccination, you can propose that people are dying after vaccination, from the vaccination. I find it bewildering that people are uninterested in the long view of isolated cases of heart damage, and a novel biotechnology vaccine (that could be substituted for a conventional vaccine at that!).

Of what I wrote, what do you disagree with?

I am very interested in this. Surprised that it was even published against the zeitgeist tbh.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=j_DdSMn55cA&ab_channel=Dr.JohnCampbell

Here's Mr. Campbells exploration. If you're looking for more.

I find this phenomena truly bewildering, transmogrifying the availability heuristic with confirmation bias.

I think the combination sounds like the Chinese robber fallacy to me. Read this if you have not yet:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/

Yes it's exactly this. It's widely applicable idea and I didn't want to obfuscate it by just referring to it by its pet name.

Yeah, it seems like the online-right is succumbing to the same confirmation bias as the left in 2020 (someone dies of 'X', tested positive for Covid; ergo Covid death)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

Why are hearts found with heart damage in cadavers? Why is it not plausible that this is a actual issue?

The online right is, alternatively, demonstrating the exact appropriate amount of interest you'd expect, countering the efforts of a public health campaign to minimize this information.

I think it increases the likelihood of myocarditis, which factored into my own personal decision not not be vaccinated, but people who are vaccinated dropping dead does not establish causality. You'd have to compared this to people who are not vaccinated and control for lifestyle and other variables.

I would take another look at the study. There was cellular evidence that these cadavers could have had a dysrhythmia from the mRNA associated lymphocyte aggregation in the myocardial tissue. Not causal but pretty convincing.

consider that people drop dead and show heart damage and defects before the advent of vaccine. it's like liver damage and pain killers...enough people take pain killers that it's a statistical certainty some will get adverse side effects and even die.

Hepatotoxicity actually is a real problem with many different classes of drugs, including NSAID and opioid painkillers. It's not just a coincidence.

The liver likes to grab onto and break down drugs in the bloodstream, which is a problem with drug delivery; not only can many drugs harm the liver, but the liver also prevents the drugs from reaching their target tissues.

Of course, hepatotoxicity from medicine is much more of a problem for people whose livers are busy and/or damaged from processing excessive alcohol and/or fructose. For most people with healthy livers, occasional use of painkillers is fine.

That hardly explains why the same lymphocytes at the deltoid vaccine site were found in the cardiac tissue. It was a specific immune related reaction.

You are in a social media bubble that is motivated to hunt down and amplify any vaguely suspicious death. A retired child actor that hasn't worked in 20 years, seriously? Do you think you would have heard of his death in any other circumstance? Anyway if we are going by celebrity deaths only we can look at wikipedia categories:

There you go, we have now proven COVID-19 excess mortality as well as vaccine's safety and effectiveness in the stupidest way possible.

PS. I don't know of any way of tracking the number of "collapses" that lead to hospitalization but not death in celebrities, as far as I know nobody is keeping track of that.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

I mean, in many ways, people keep proving that a safe and effective vaccine is actually dangerous in ways comparable to a "dangerous" infectious disease!

Why are autopsies finding out that the heart is participating in the vaccination process! We should see lymphocytes in the muscle of the deltoid, not the heart.

It is not necessary (and in fact, it is discouraged) to keep posting the same link over and over.

If you want people to take it seriously, you won't get them to take it more seriously by spamming it at them.

Understood - I felt like it was wrong. I was blocked by aaa, I'm assuming because it was inconvenient to his argument or annoying.

I still find it odd that people skip over like this study doesn't exist, as it keep bubbling into all these tertiary debates about the possibility of vaccine sudden death.

Feels like an influx of a persuasion hit the board. Which I welcome, frankly.

Stopping immediately.

I'd expect a general upward drift in 'celebrity deaths' on Wikipedia due to the notability window as well. Rates of achieving 'celebrity status' started to accelerate 40-50 years ago, which is about commensurate with when you'd expect the 20-30 something celebrities of then to start departing.

Haha, I literally thought it was Adam Richman from Man vs. Food. No, I would not have heard of any of these D-listers in normal circumstances.

For myself, I will not be receiving future Covid vaccine doses. They have an unknown risk against a low risk from Covid itself.

Why do you believe covid's potential harm is more known or bounded than the vaccine? We have a little bit more long term data (about a year) for the virus but the vaccine's data is also of higher quality

Fair point. I should have phrased this differently. My statement implied that getting a vaccine and getting Covid are either/or. This is clearly not the case. I should have said something like this:

"My risk from Covid is low. Vaccines have extremely limited efficacy against current Covid strains and unknown risks. Why add an additional risk factor, even if the risk from vaccine is also low".

That said, I think vaccine risk is harder to quantify since it's not properly studied. There's a nonzero chance that the data is bullshit in a way that matters. Any researcher investigating vaccine risks would be committing career suicide. It's like a courtroom with a prosecutor but no defense. It doesn't mean the defendant is innocent, but it does mean I wouldn't trust the result of the trial.

Also, we have tons and tons of data on "coronaviruses", and SARS 2 is one of those. mRNA nanolipid particle injections? Less experience, to say the least.

A few months ago, my mother-in-law (mid-70s, and not the most reliable source), suffered a mild heart attack hours after receiving both her Covid booster and a flu shot. She said the ER nurse asked her if she had been boosted recently and followed with "We see this all the time." Coincidentally, my dad (late 70s, fully boosted) also suffered a mild heart attack around this time last year while in the hospital for a colonoscopy, and the doctors told him it was probably stress-related.

I do look skeptically at the anti-vaxxers who act like no one ever had heart or health issues prior to the Covid vaccine, but there does seem to be a lot more noticing going on, and no trust that anyone in power would admit if any of that noticing was of something real.

I think the smoking gun is that so many of these people are young athletes. Musicians and actors dying in suspicious circumstances is Tuesday; athletes have historically not done that because if they weren't in peak physical health they wouldn't be notable athletes, they'd be wannabes. That to me requires explaining.

Could Performance Enhancing Drugs be a contributor? My first mean thought when hearing about an athlete's sudden heart problems is the possibility that drugs were a factor.

Several of my friends and family believe in all kinds of paranormal stuff, including ghosts and dreams that predict the future. They have stories of things that they claimed happened to them that, if true, would confirm their beliefs. These are otherwise intelligent people who I would believe if I didn't know that what they were telling me was impossible. So, I would give almost no credence to a nurse who claims to have noticed a pattern in when people have heart attacks.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

I am spamming this and I apologize to anyone who's mad about this. We can find evidence of special heart damage from the mRNA vaccine from autopsies. We have the FDA announcing a possible association with PE and Pfizer. This nurse could simply think "I've seen a slide of someone's damaged heart after vaccination, maybe it's connected." and all of a sudden you accuse them of a crime of logic.

Note both the fact there is a rare risk AND the nurse can be commiting a crime of logic can both be true. We already know that nurses and doctors are (like most people) generally terrible at statistics and interpreting things they notice as statistically significant events.

If there is an issue it would need to be analysed at a population level in a statistically significant way.

Otherwise we also have to give equal credence to nurses who posted stories about so many healthy young people dying of covid after not getting vaccinated and the like.

Fair. But during a period of intense censorship, a diffuse cloth of similar anecdotes and experiences actually ended up with some evidence and studies to confirm. Take the myocarditis risk, as well as possible sudden death from myocarditis, being proved experimentally. (check my post history if you interested in link)

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

Fenphen was on the market from 1990 until 1997 before the evidence that it caused heart failure was overwhelming. Vioxx was another, released in 1999 and recalled in 2004. Bret Weinstein famously has a theory that since all our drugs are tested on the same cohort of lab mice, and those lab mice have been selected for an outrageous senescent capacity, the testing will broadly miss drugs that are just generally toxic. And this broad toxicity will manifest in the organs that have the most trouble healing, like the heart. So drugs that cause generalized cell damage have that damage manifest as heart failure.

Once people have been getting boosters every 6 months for as long as Fenphen or Vioxx were allowed on the market, if the evidence isn't in I'll let it go. But until then...

Clinical trials are run in humans before drugs are approved, lab animals missing many negative effects that are present in humans is very well known and accounted for.

Fenphen

24 cases in 1997 for a drug that was very popular is not overwhelming evidence. The FDA is very risk averse and irrational at times, approving super-expensive off-label cancer treatments which cost $10k/month and prolong life by months (with a lot of side effects), but a drug that treats a major societal problem like obesity effectively, albeit with some possible side effects, is a no-go.

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9903/09/heart.fen.phen.risk/

According to the study, people who never took fen-phen had a 3.6 percent incident rate of heart valve disease. Of 1,163 former fen-phen users in the study, those who took the drugs for less than six months had a 4.5 percent incident rate, which was not a statistically significant difference.

This is much more nuanced than the 'fenpen=lethal' narrative by the media. This is why doctors do not have people take it for more than 3 months at at time. There is an elevated risk, but not that much , and obesity carries risks as well, so one must take that into account, too.

There is an elevated risk, but not that much , and obesity carries risks as well, so one must take that into account, too.

Yeah. Ignorant of the exact permutation with Fenphen but if it was a reliable 'obesity cure' it's pretty hard to imagine side effects that weren't immediately, gigantically apparent being worse than obesity itself.

Bret Weinstein famously has a theory that since all our drugs are tested on the same cohort of lab mice, and those lab mice have been selected for an outrageous senescent capacity, the testing will broadly miss drugs that are just generally toxic. And this broad toxicity will manifest in the organs that have the most trouble healing, like the heart. So drugs that cause generalized cell damage have that damage manifest as heart failure.

I've never heard of 'senescent capacity' so it's difficult to know what you mean, but I'll assume you're referring to telomere length. It's trivially true that lab mice have longer telomeres than humans, but your broader point is false - if you're really curious, you can read the FDA guidance here. Studies generally march through mice/rats -> dogs -> non-human primates (usually macaques these days). You need data on PK (frequently using dogs as they have similar kinetics to humans) as well as convincing toxicity data in nonrodent species. Then you have small scale dose-escalation studies in healthy humans where toxicity is again evaluated prior to larger trials to test for efficacy & safety with more statistical power.

Fenphen was on the market from 1990 until 1997 before the evidence that it caused heart failure was overwhelming. Vioxx was another, released in 1999 and recalled in 2004.

I'm not as familiar with Fenphen, but for Vioxx Merck just...lied to people, it doesn't have anything to do with laboratory mice.

A decent number of heart-related deaths, here. And given the subject of the list, doesn’t include Fabrice Muamba/Christian Eriksen events where the player survived:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_associaton_football_players_who_died_during_their_careers

So there have been a lot of people suddenly collapsing or dying recently. Or have there? My Twitter feed certainly seems to think so. Off the top of my head we have Adam Rich, a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee, an Old Dominion basketball player, an NFL player, and tons of normal people as well. This does seem... odd? I can't remember a lot of people just suddenly collapsing and dying in the past although I remember Hank Gathers from 1990 as a rare exception.

Social media means that events and deaths that in the past would not have been so newsworthy or broadcast , are broadcast to everyone and made immediate. A basketball player collapsing would not have gone viral 20 years ago like it does today.

On the other hand, on Twitter, (where free speech is truly allowed now), #vaccinedeath is allowed to trend. However, the results for that hashtag tend to be a lot of anecdotes of sudden collapses mixed in with spurious assertions about vaccine safety.

I am not a fan of the vaccines that much , but I think they are safe. Given how many people have taken them, if there was even a small % in complications and deaths it would be hard to avoid...hospitals would quickly be overwhelmed. You would not need anecdotes.

Off the top of my head we have Adam Rich, a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee, an Old Dominion basketball player, an NFL player, and tons of normal people as well.

These striking me as overmatching in a world filled with news. Rich is 54 years old and we don't have a cause of death - people dying at 54 isn't all that rare. We don't have a listed cause of death for Lee, but my wager for a dead 18-year-old where no one said what the cause is will be that she died from drugs or suicide. The ODU player isn't dead, he collapsed and then walked off the court a couple minutes later. Hamlin was struck directly in the chest by a 215-pound man traveling at a high rate of speed; he may have had an underlying condition and it may have even been vaccine-induced myocarditis, but it's hardly a canonical example of "sudden collapse".

I'm not getting any additional Covid vaccines on the basis that I don't need one, they don't have the best risk profile, and they don't work very well anyway, but I really don't see much reason to think they're all that dangerous. Every list of people collapsing seems like it turns out to be pretty crappy.

They haven't released a cause of death for Adam Rich or Victoria Lee yet, so it's inappropriate to count them toward some current trend. Celebrities die all the time without the family releasing a cause of death. When it happens to younger people it often means suicide or that drugs were involved, which seems a bit apt with respect to Rich as he has a known history of mental illness. As for Lee, her sister said:

Please give our family grace and respect during this most difficult time. And please, check on your loved ones. Keep checking on them. Give them hugs and tell them how much they mean to you. You just never know.

This isn't the kind of advice one gives in the wake of a sudden death from an unknown cause. As for the ODU basketball player, he collapsed during the game, was responsive the entire time, spent the rest of the game on the bench, rode home on the team bus, and was supposed to follow up with ODU medical staff upon returning to campus. This isn't exactly in the same league as Hamlin's injury, and probably wouldn't be in the news at all (At least outside of the Hampton Roads area) had the country not been on edge due to what happened last Monday. So that leaves Hamlin as the only person who had a sudden, life-threatening cardiac event, and I'd hardly call one person a trend.

So that leaves Hamlin as the only person who had a sudden, life-threatening cardiac event, and I'd hardly call one person a trend.

Come on son. It doesn't leave shit, all you have done is claim Rich (54) was young and had a history of mental illness (he was a child movie star) and so he might have oded or killed himself.

Then we get to Lee, where you tell us that people don't advise others to check on your loved ones and tell them you love them when someone dies suddenly of an unknown cause? The conclusion you reach being - I think - that she committed suicide too? Why wouldn't your loved one dying suddenly of an unknown cause prompt you to check on your loved ones and make sure they know how much you love them - before it's too late you know, before they die suddenly from an unknown cause?

Lastly we have the ODU player, who didn't die, so his life wasn't threatened enough to count. And now you have made up just so stories for three of them, you can declare Hamlin the only person who had a sudden, life-threatening cardiac event! Except you can't expect any of that to convince the op - he is concerned because he doesn't know what information he should be believing, and you throw even more possibilities into the mix! Or to put it another way, jeroboam expressed his hypothetical possibilities to promote gathering more information. You expressed your hypothetical possibilities to promote gathering less information.

  • -11

I speculated based on the available evidence. If you find this insufficient, then I'm willing to concede that we don't know anything about the cause of death/cause of collapse and should avoid speculating about it at all. The lease reasonable course is to insinuate that these must have all been related to the COVID vaccine, of which no evidence exists at all.

The idea that someone would tell their followers to “keep checking in on [their loved ones]” in the event of a sudden death doesn’t really make sense - occam’s razor is that it’s way more likely a suicide where “checking in” might have made a difference.

The IG post about Lee is pretty consistent with how other people with public profiles have their suicides reported to the public. Want to make a wager?

Why she died isn't important to me. I actually agree with rov's overall point, and have up voted several others who made similar points in different ways. What I object to is the way rov seemed to be using hypotheticals to increase ignorance instead of decreasing it. It all seems to be leading to an attitude of 'just don't think about it', and that's the worst attitude in the world imo. It's a trend I have been noticing recently, where someone posts "hey what do you guys think of this interesting thing that happened?" And half the early replies are 'who cares, stop thinking about it'. And it's been happening all over the place for a while, but I am starting to see more of it here on the motte, and I am not a fan.

Don't pick bad object level arguments when trying to argue a broader point. Accepting "wrong on the details but correct on the overall" is how you get the "this hate crime may have been a hoax but it draws attention to the important problems" kind of statements. Those are rejected here for the same reasons.

Sorry for screwing you around, but I don't know how else to do it.

Yeah. Phrasing definitely supports a suicide.

Victoria Lee was pretty clearly a suicide, given the admonition in her sister's announcement of her death to "please check on your loved ones." As for Damar Hamlin, "According to Tadwalkar, Hamlin likely experienced a rare complication called commotio cordis — ventricular fibrillation, a type of cardiac arhythmia, caused by the injury to the chest when he made a tackle.".

There has been an increase in heart attacks among relatively young people, but that increase started [at the beginning of the pandemic] (https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked-to-spike-in-heart-attacks/)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/

So the vaccine can make you die in a special way due to lymphocytes in your heart - but the idea that Damar did not have any type of underlying structural sensitivity to a tackle is completely debunked...I do not think so.

I thought the commotio cordis explanation was likely debunked by the resuscitation?

How so?

Yes it’s been debunked and the article he cites has the statistics to do most of the debunking

“study from 2002Trusted Source evaluating 128 cases of commotio cordis found that 78% occurred in people under the age of 18 — 62% of whom were playing a competitive sport at the time the attack.

About 75% of the deaths occurred in people playing baseball, ice hockey, and softball, most of which took place after being struck in the chest by the ball or puck, Mokashi said.”

  • 62% we’re playing a competitive sport - 75% of deaths occurred in baseball, ice hockey, softball.

Basically use those stats on 128 cases and commotio cordis incredibly rare and hence very doubtful to be the Hamlin case. Plus combined with needing to be resuscitated twice and his longer term hospital stay (pronged actually had commotio and returned to play 2 days later).

commotio cordis incredibly rare and hence very doubtful to be the Hamlin case.

You are using the wrong denominator. You seem to be looking at (cases of commito cordis)/(number of athletes). But, to determine whether it is likely to be the cause of Hamlin's case, you need to look at (cases of commito cordis)/(number of athletes who collapse from heart conditions). This article says that it is in fact the second most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes.

Regardless of the statistics- outlier events do happen occasionally- the 'needing to be resuscitated twice' seems like evidence against commotio cordis.

But what is the latest on that? Because according to this article, "Hamlin was resuscitated only once, a family spokesman clarified Wednesday, not twice, as his uncle told CNN on Tuesday."

My understanding is that the needing CPR twice was a miscommunication (likely because of something like "he was initially triaged in a resuscitation bay at the trauma center" which is a different kind resuscitation).

However even if he did have CPR twice that isn't evidence against commotio cordis, damage from "down time" (even with prompt high quality CPR) can lead to other problems like anoxic brain injury (likely avoided it seems), pulmonary damage (seems present), and issues with perfusion to other parts of the body that can lead to PT/OT needs. If your heart gets fucked up it fucks shit up. Not out of the woods after initial ROSC is obtained.

If you look at some of the initial medical social media discussion of this you'll see that some people were confused, commotio cordis is rare (and is more common in pediatric populations for physiology reasons) but that's what it looked like, pretty much slam dunk (ex: initial continued perfusion allowing to stand followed by sudden collapse). So we were wondering if it was an atypical presentation of something more "common" in this setting like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

I haven't seen a diagnosis released yet but cordis is most likely at this point and is pretty much a freak accident and has nothing to do with COVID.

Your denominator isn’t correct either. You would want cases of heart attacks that did not involve a small ball hitting the heard.

(Cases of non small ball commito cordis)/(non small ball heart attacks)

https://twitter.com/Covid19Critical/status/1612925178111234050

If you look at the actually, all the incidents of this very rare form of cardiac arrest, it's generally people who are younger, so it's 15 to 16 year old boys, it's generally a projectile, softball, cricket ball, punch to the chest, it's something with high velocity and a very direct impact; and it's in boys whose chests are not as covered with muscle and/or chest protectors. Initially I thought it was commotio cordis, it really doesn't fit the pattern.

From your link, it's 3% of football deaths that are attributed to commotio cordis. I followed through and found it was 7 out of 243 deaths across 20 years, among high school and college aged players.

I'm skeptical that a grown man, heavily muscled and padded, suffered from commotio cordis by getting run into by a receiver. There's no hard projectile, he's not a teenager, and his chest is both muscled and protected. I just think it's grasping at straws to conclude it's CC instead of some other cardiac issue (100 out of 243 deaths in football over those 20 years).

Also the nature of the hit wasn’t in the open field where there was a lot of force. It was a relatively tame hit.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats