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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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CDC has released a report today finding preliminary association between the Pfizer vaccine and stroke for those over 65 years of age.

Another drop in the bucket - or is the bucket spilling out the top now?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/bivalent-boosters.html

Following the availability and use of the updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines, CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a near real-time surveillance system, met the statistical criteria to prompt additional investigation into whether there was a safety concern for ischemic stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent.

Pfizer is associated significantly with strokes - CDC is keeping us in the dark about the exact data.

This preliminary signal has not been identified with the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent. There also may be other confounding factors contributing to the signal identified in the VSD that merit further investigation. Furthermore, it is important to note that, to date, no other safety systems have shown a similar signal and multiple subsequent analyses have not validated this signal:

They then list multiple studies that did not replicate this finding for the BIVALENT vaccine - well of course, this vaccine was testing on mice, and then deployed without long term testing. Do they have monovalent data they are not mentioning?

EDIT: Is it possible monovalent risk benefit analysis is simply using a different pathogen, and now with the advent of Omicron, this is a medical update saying this level of strokes is no longer worth the benefit vs the current pathogen? Food for thought.

No change in vaccination practice is recommended.

This contradicts what Paul Offit's opinion is, which was posted in the NEJM. Paul Offit believes we should not give bivalent boosters to young healthy patients.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2215780

It would be much more shocking to announce a chance to the vaccine campaign, than to keep the current inertia the same. I think we are seeing a communication strategy developing to deliver the population into accepting yearly mRNA vaccines - instead, they will be directed to other worthwhile candidates for vaccination - IF pharma companies can even deliver those.

In my eyes: mRNA vaccines are dangerous, so you need to determine how dangerous the pathogen presenting is. I see a great use case for mRNA developing for Airborne Ebola Zaire strains (90% mortality) or other disease of similar magnitude. Simply put: your vaccine should not significantly increase cardiovascular risk. It should be absolutely negligible. 1 in a million, whereas these vaccines might be 1 in 100,000.

The vaccine debate has to be the least productive of any topic. has anyone on either side ever had their minds changed on this issue despite all the ink spilled? Given how many people have taken the vaccines (billions worldwide) if there was even a small uptick in deaths and other complications, it would be a huge deal and unavoidable. You would not need to comb through huge troves of data to find maybe a tiny uptick in deaths for some small cohort

Well, let's say you did not want to take the vaccine, and you were mandated to take it. You could choose either J&J, mRNA, Novavax, or even fly overseas to get Covaxin. You may begin debating at that point.

mRNA vs. Other vaccines is a very difficult topic, because defanging a countries ability to give mandated vaccines is bad, but mandating vaccines that are bad isn't good. In fact, perhaps extreme caution should be taken based on the prior.

Why should a state even have the ability to mandate medical treatment when that's a very clear bright line violation of natural rights?

I care much more about the ethics of mandates than I do the specifics of efficacy. The individual must make the informed decision on this, not the state, and any mandates are tyranny that must be defended against to the death.

There is certainly a debate to be had about mRNA, a very necessary one, which was poisoned by the will to impose without discussion as we now know for a fact, but the idea that we should assume from the beginning that the State has to retain tyrannical powers in the name of public health is insane.

any mandates are tyranny that must be defended against to the death

This seems like overly dramatic macho posturing. Obviously you are still alive and didn’t do anything of the sort.

Can you seriously not imagine a situation where mandates would be warranted? I don’t support the mandates for COVID, but being unwilling to even consider that there might be a point where the tradeoff scales tip is just an unreasonably ideological suicide pact. If there were a hypothetical disease much more deadly than COVID, surely you must be able to imagine such a thing

This seems like overly dramatic macho posturing. Obviously you are still alive and didn’t do anything of the sort.

If someone is charged by a needle-wielding thug with the intent to stab them with it, I believe they are entitled to defend themselves, up to and including using lethal force against the assailant. Even if said thug is an agent of the state. Of course, this would be analogous to compulsory vaccination, which is not the form most vaccine mandates took in 2021. Rather, they are more akin to a mugging, and that's a slightly greyer area when it comes to whether lethal force is appropriate for self defence.

Regardless, medical coercion is a gross violation of ethics. Even in the absence of vaccine mandates themselves, lockdownist regimes violated medical ethics in how they offered the vaccines. They advertised that restrictions would go away without vaccines, hence created the implicit threat of more restrictions in the case of refusal.

My judgement on this comes from the UKDH reference guide to consent for examination or treatment, which says:

To be valid, consent must be given voluntarily and freely, without pressure or undue influence being exerted on the person either to accept or refuse treatment. Such pressure can come from partners or family members, as well as health or care practitioners. Practitioners should be alert to this possibility and where appropriate should arrange to see the person on their own in order to establish that the decision is truly their own.

[...]

When people are seen and treated in environments where involuntary detention may be an issue, such as prisons and mental hospitals, there is a potential for treatment offers to be perceived coercively, whether or not this is the case. Coercion invalidates consent, and care must be taken to ensure that the person makes decisions freely. Coercion should be distinguished from providing the person with appropriate reassurance concerning their treatment, or pointing out the potential benefits of treatment for the person’s health. However, threats such as withdrawal of any privileges, loss of remission of sentence for refusing consent or using such matters to induce consent may well invalidate the consent given, and are not acceptable.

On this basis, the existence of vaccine mandates clearly poses a risk for violating informed consent, as it introduces duress in several ways. Firstly, it means pressure or undue influence being exerted on the person to accept treatment from government, employers, retail services etc. Secondly, it also means threats of the withdrawal of privileges in an environment with involuntary detention. See how specific the language here is, how closely and specifically it applies to the circumstances of vaccine mandates in countries that carried out lockdowns, despite the age of the document long predating covid. That should hint that these recommendations are not simply some backporting or recency bias for the sake of winning an argument, but instead represent best practice as it was already understood.

Even political leaders broadcasting claims that vaccines are a route out of lockdowns, or that unless X% of the population are vaccinated that restrictions will continue, introduces duress. However, this is more of a footnote, as regimes that carried out the false imprisonment of the entire population are already instantly rendered illegitimate by doing so.

Personally, I found the whole process so fucking disgusting that I refused to take the vaccines purely on the basis of that. I don't care if they're the best or the worst vaccines in the world. The rubicon is crossed, and the relevant institution is no longer trustworthy. For the state to insist that people are born subhuman, and only acquire rights after jumping through regime-approved hoops and injecting regime-approved substances on a regime-approved schedule... The very thought sickens me. The fact that a large proportion of my fellow countrymen, as if somehow I can regard them in such friendly terms any more, agreed with these mandates sickens me even more.

If someone is charged by a needle-wielding thug with the intent to stab them with it, I believe they are entitled to defend themselves, up to and including using lethal force against the assailant. Even if said thug is an agent of the state. Of course, this would be analogous to compulsory vaccination, which is not the form most vaccine mandates took in 2021.

Even mandatory vaccinations would not consist of "needle-wielding thugs" charging you trying to stab you.

For the state to insist that people are born subhuman, and only acquire rights after jumping through regime-approved hoops and injecting regime-approved substances on a regime-approved schedule...

Is not a remotely rational description. Nowhere in the Western world did vaccine requirements come anywhere near the level of the unhinged rhetoric you keep repeating. (China wielding people inside their houses? That's legitimately terrifying, but also not an aberration in China.) You are not describing reality. You are not describing actual events, behaviors, or policies. You have never, in all the time you have ridden this hobby horse, described the world we live in. Nothing you have described actually happened, ever.

Austria came close to criminalizing being unvaccinated, aborting plans to do so at the last minute.

Nowhere in the Western world did vaccine requirements come anywhere near the level of the unhinged rhetoric you keep repeating.

Some countries implemented lockdowns on the basis of vaccine status. Again Austria comes to mind as an example. Austria's regime did decide that people who did not jump through regime-approved hoops and take regime-approved medication on a regime-approved schedule are so unworthy that they do not deserve the right to leave their homes. I don't know what to call that beyond treating them as subhuman. Many more places decided that they couldn't be allowed to attend events, restaurants and bars, shops etc. Even the US, to this day, continues to regard unvaccinated people as lesser by making it illegal for them to enter the country.

And I've seen enough rhetoric from governments and supporters of mandatory vaccinations to know that, without pushback, they'd have gone further. Because of this, I'm not particularly interested in merited impossibility, nor lockdown denial.

Austria came close to criminalizing being unvaccinated

Even if I believe you (I don't), you're describing something that was floated as a proposal, not something that actually happened.

Austria's regime did decide that people who did not jump through regime-approved hoops and take regime-approved medication on a regime-approved schedule are so unworthy that they do not deserve the right to leave their homes.

I could reword almost any law to sound ridiculous and dystopian. "Some people are treated as so subhuman they aren't even allowed to get behind the wheel of a car!"

I don't know what to call that beyond treating them as subhuman.

There are many situations in which the government can restrict your freedom to travel. While you may not agree with all (or any) of them, they are not "treating you as subhuman." Unless you're an anarchist and you believe all laws are treating you as subhuman, in which case, okay, that would at least be consistent if still irrational.

Even the US, to this day, continues to regard unvaccinated people as lesser by making it illegal for them to enter the country.

All countries have restrictions on who can enter, and the US is not the only one that includes vaccinations as a requirement, and not all vaccination requirements are COVID-related. So every country in the world regards some people as "lesser" in this fashion.

Your rhetoric is unhinged and counterfactual.

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I will not fedpost, but I quit my job over this and moved to a sane country, I think that's enough skin in the game for this conversation.

And no I don't see a point where the government is allowed to become tyrannical because the very legitimacy of the government stems from it not being so. Not even if the bodies are piling up in the streets will I accept to be injected with drugs against my will.

Mary Mallon would have been entirely justified to kill her captors and escape for by the point they imprisoned her in perpetuity they broke the social contract and returned her and themselves to the state of Nature.

Health decisions about one's body must rest in individual will however much it is possible. Informed consent is the bare minimum. Anything else is ethically unacceptable.

Mary Mallon would have been entirely justified to kill her captors and escape for by the point they imprisoned her in perpetuity they broke the social contract and returned her and themselves to the state of Nature.

I was unfamiliar with that but assuming that following is accurate I do not consider it as straightforward. And if you go "returned her and themselves to the state of Nature" then it anyway justifies using raw power to overpower everyone else anyway - and I do not think that it is in any way better.

Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), commonly known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born American cook believed to have infected between 51 and 122 people with typhoid fever. The infections caused three confirmed deaths, with unconfirmed estimates of up to 50. She was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella typhi.[1][2] She persisted in working as a cook and thereby exposed others to the disease. Because of that, she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, eventually for the final two decades of her life. Mallon died after a total of nearly 30 years in isolation.[3][4]

(...)

She used fake surnames like Breshof or Brown, and took jobs as a cook against the explicit instructions of health authorities. No agencies that hired servants for upscale families would offer her employment, so for the next five years, she moved to the mass sector. She worked in a number of kitchens in restaurants, hotels, and spa centers. Almost everywhere she worked, there were outbreaks of typhoid.[35] However, she changed jobs frequently, and Soper was unable to find her.[13]

In 1915, Mallon started working at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City. Soon 25 people were infected, and two died. The head obstetrician, Dr. Edward B. Cragin, called Soper and asked him to help in the investigation. Soper identified Mallon from the servants' verbal descriptions and also by her handwriting.

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

f you go "returned her and themselves to the state of Nature" then it anyway justifies using raw power to overpower everyone else anyway - and I do not think that it is in any way better.

I don't think you understand, one has a duty to escape the state of nature if at all possible (at least according to Hobbes) and enter into more adequate equilibria in general. That tyrannical governments force us out of it by defecting is a moral sin. But once it's you vs the world, yes anything is permitted. John Smith is perfectly legitimate to blow away any and all law enforcement sent by a congress that would pass the kill-John-Smith-on-sight act, or to break any laws passed by such a body as they are now null and void concerning him.

This is not an argument against rebellion, it is an argument against tyranny.

In the case of Mary specifically it's extremely debated whether she knew for a fact she was responsible for those illnesses (which I do believe would carry some amount of responsibility vis à vis nonagression), but I'm merely referring here to the injustice of her perpetual imprisonment as punishment for existing as a danger.

In such a circumstance I would rebel, because there would be nothing else to do than rebel, asking for people to acquiesce to the destruction of their autonomy or indeed to their own destruction is game-theoretically unreasonable, and that's the fundamental truth that natural law attempts to point out.

And this truth, embedded in the concept of natural rights is what makes forcing people to engage in medical procedures unreasonable. You can't reasonably ask people to give up control of their own body. And I don't think it's overstating it to say that this is a matter worth dying over because people have done so in its name in the past.

The issue is they tried to give her several outs, as in not working as a cook. Its only when she went to some lengths to continue doing that, that they locked her up entirely.

If she was justified in killing those who imprisoned her then those she endangered would be justified in outright killing her. But they tried not to do that.

If being imprisoned allows one to kill to stop it, then being infected with a deadly disease by someone who has been told multiple times to stop doing the thing that caused outbreaks should also meet that bar.