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This video struck me quite forcefully; I remember that this UK doctor was making regular update videos at the height of the pandemic, very much giving "consensus" information and advice on how dangerous the virus was etc. Nowadays we see something like this: even totally "inside the tent" experts giving detailed information on just how shockingly unwise and dangerous it was to force mRNA vaccines on the public.

https://youtu.be/nq2qwql8xBs

I do not criticize those who took the vaccines. I would tell those people the same thing I told a few family and friends at the time: I am not taking it because I see mass hysteria, and I don't trust scientists even a little bit not to be affected by the obvious mass hysteria.

(Notice how I was not claiming any medical or scientific knowledge in the field, but this heuristic has served me well. Crowd dynamics *completely* change people and are intensely dangerous; since around 2010 the world has dramatically changed because those crowd dynamics can be set off by a much more powerful vector in the form of social media, which is kind of super-charged internet for the masses).

Those who took the vaccines in many cases were forced to at the point of losing their livelihood. Plenty of others just considered it a moral obligation, combined with an intelligent deference to scientific authority. They were wrong on the latter point, but not in a way I consider stupid, just *perhaps* a little naive (even that's a stretch!).

The other thing that clouded people's judgement was fear. Even to this day I think a lot of intelligent people somehow convinced themselves that covid19 was some kind of monstrous threat like the bubonic plague that justified a biologically nuclear response like rushed, experimental vaccines. As I've said before here, intelligence and wisdom are very different things.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Campbell was far from "inside the tent" during the pandemic, except perhaps the first year. To me he seems like text book example of audience capture, similar to Bret Weinstein.

This is different from intentional grift. Millions of views, and the money that brings, does weird things to people. My guess is that what happens is that critical feedback gets swamped out by all the adoration. And perhaps because you get no feedback while talking in the mic, you mistake that for being right.

There's a similar phenomenon, I forgot the term for it, where academics who leave academia often become conspiracy theorists because they're no longer grounded by relentless peer review and instead only get feedback from their non-academic fanbase.

Imo by far the best channel on the topic is TWiV. They grew during the pandemic, but are still only at 128K subscribers. Sadly on Youtube it seems like a good heuristic to ignore anyone with more than a million subscribers.

As for whether not getting the vaccine early on, when there are many uncertainties, is a good decision is tricky. The safest thing might be to wait and avoid people in the mean time. But if you're 100% sure you'll get infected, then you should compare only two things:

1. Infection without vaccination

2. Infection after vaccination

There was no randomized controlled trial for the virus itself (the UK did this later at very small scale). That would be the ideal way to compare the risk of vaccines with the risk of the virus itself. When looking at more recent allegations of mRNA vaccine keep that in mind: the baseline for comparison should be infection.

It seems incredibly implausible to me that a non-replicating tiny fragment of virus mRNA (the vaccine) can do more harm than a replicating complete virus. The latter leaves much more RNA all over your body.

Biology is extremely complex, so it's certainly possible we'll get a nasty surprise, but anyone claiming that is making an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence - that's reviewed by competent people rather than conveniently delivered straight to popular Youtubers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Campbell_(YouTuber)

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waxwing 1y ago

OK you're probably right about the first paragraph; it was lazy of me to make assumptions just from seeing the guys videos about 10-20 times back in the day.

I did listen to TWiV a few times, but it's a bit too in the weeds for me.

"But if you're 100% sure .. baseline for comparison should be infection." Hmm, that sounds true, but this part and especially the 2,3 paragraphs that follow is the centrepoint of what I mean about expertise, intelligence, wisdom: I know you are a trained scientist, as am/was I, but afaik you are not an expert in this field (if you are, forgive the error): do you really think you can assess correctly things like mRNA vaccines? I certainly cannot. But, I did not believe the scientific information coming out at the time, due to the mass hysteria. (The idea of science, even physical science, as unbiased and objective is a bit fantastical nowadays; no chance, and *especially* not something with political sensitivity and with huge economic incentives, too). Sorry if that seems luddite, unserious analysis, but to me it was obvious. And it also seems clear, trying hard to filter and admittedly I could be wrong, but it seems clear that the vaccines did not come without substantial health risks, and were rushed, and were using experimental new tech. It's just to me obviously unwise. The data on total death rates was just not there to support the idea that this was a plague level event requiring desperate measures. All this is an example of taleb's "via negativa" way of thinking; there's a ton of stuff here we can't fully, properly assess; but in the absence of a plague-level event a rush to action like we saw with these vaccines was unwise. Everyone got infected anyway, as you'd expect; the virus became less dangerous over time, as you'd expect. I believe it was a profoundly unwise decision to mass vaccinate with something so new.

Also, thanks for the serious critique of my point of view.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

I took several courses in cell biology back in uni, so at least I know the basics of (m)RNA and virus replication. I also followed TWiV for several years during the pandemic, and for a while even a German language podcast with Christian Drosten.

I also kept fairly close track of Dutch statistics (and had at least some knowledge of their strengths and short comings). Read various policy documents and followed technical briefings to parliament.

I participated in an early mRNA vaccine trial. I got the placebo, with side-effects! I also listened to the first FDA approval hearing to see if anyone there raised serious concerns. I read some of the stuff Pfizer submitted back then as well.

Nothing there set off any alarm bells. But it's like reviewing assembly code: I don't think I'd spot a well crafted exploit. But it surely didn't look like rushed junk science. It was fast in large part because serious money was thrown at the problem, where vaccines before were generally not that interesting to big pharma.

But note that my bar was pretty low: I was looking for evidence to contradict my prior that the vaccine is less dangerous than an infection. It's what I needed to know in order to stop avoiding people.

Perhaps if they had found statistically insignificant efficacy combined with severe side effects, I would have been more worried. Because I agree with you that there was some degree of mass hysteria that *could* have pushed a very dangerous vaccine through.

So I consider myself much better informed than e.g. someone listening to Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein, but obviously less informed than a virologist, immunologist, epidemiologist, economist, etc (none of these experts have a full picture either - which they sometimes forgot).

So I feel somewhat confident stating that, without further information, an mRNA vaccine should be orders of magnitude less harmful than a real virus. And that when conflicting information comes in about bad side effects, the first thing I would recommend is to reconsider how harmful you think the virus is. If that leads to an absurd conclusion (100% mortality) then I would assume there's something wrong with the study of side effects.

In general I don't think one should "do your own research". Only if you're willing to put serious time into it, and have some skill in navigating scientific literature. Even TWiV is ultimately pop science and can only help you so far. It's especially unwise to follow contrarian research unless you really know how to evaluate it. Mainstream science* has issues, but most people who contradict it are wrong. There's no cheat code there. Sometimes simply ignoring an area of science can be fine. But with a pandemic you're kind of forced to take action one way or another. That's one reason why I did "do my own research"

* = hard sciences anyway

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

By the way I agree the tech was experimental, but it's also the closest we've ever gotten to nature's delivery mechanism - with which I had some familiarity. There's very few moving parts that could explain a dramatically bad outcome, especially a delayed one where the trial shows success ... and ten years later we're all dead.

Rand 1y ago

alternative treatment?

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Treatment is orthogonal. Vaccines reduce the odds of getting sick in the first place.

Once you're sick, you can consider treatments. A little chicken broth does wonders if you're merely dehydrated from fever, but you may need something more potent. Treatments require their own randomized control trials, some educated guess work pending their results. One those results are in, it's important to drop any obsession with said treatment - because that's where optimism turns into quackery.

Rand 1y ago

i have to disagree/prevention is key/treating symptoms, no thanks

Rand 1y ago

no vax/no covid/np/ same 4 many/we all didn't get covid

Rand 1y ago

not either or/variations/ always consider allways

techfeudalist 1y ago

“It seems incredibly implausible to me that a non-replicating tiny fragment of virus mRNA (the vaccine) can do more harm than a replicating complete virus. The latter leaves much more RNA all over your body.”

The RNA isn’t the problem. It’s the spike protein. Here’s why it’s plausible to me.

There are inconsistent volumes of lipid nanoparticles in the shot. Some batches are known to be “hot”.

It appears this LNPs have an affinity to particular organs.

We don’t how long to those transfected cells produce spike proteins (but the mRNA was modified to last longer than normal mRNA)

I’m not so confident that the viral infection produces less dangerous spike protein than natural infection.

Furthermore, the virus enters via your nasal passages which are primed to detect infections and your immune system responds earlier to reduce viral load.

Whereas the LNPs go straight to internal organs (like your heart) and produce a toxin in unknown volumes for unknown duration.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

You would indeed need to find a hypothesis along those lines. And then provide evidence for it.

Two problems I find with your specific suggestion:

1. Covid infections do reach the heart

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9318581/

" The postmortem study conclusively establishes the presence of the virus in the heart"

So it can't just be about spike proteins reaching the heart. Those proteins are the same whether produced by the vaccine or the virus, and the latter produces orders of magnitude more because of replication.

2. mRNA lifetime is measured in minutes

Perhaps the modifications to the vaccine mRNA extend that, but in order to explain a delayed severe side-effect, this would have to be measured in months or even years.

Remember I was looking for a scenario where the vaccine is worse than the virus, in a way that trials couldn't catch, not merely for bad side-effects.

techfeudalist 1y ago

That paper seems to just do a binary test of whether it was detected or not using a test we now know is faulty. Even still, the paper didn’t find statistically significant positivity in heart fluid (1 out of 2 samples).

The shots don’t contain mRNA. They contain modRNA. The lifetime isn’t measured in minutes. Spikes have been measured in victims even months after the shot indicating that potentially the modRNA is incredibly durable or the RNA is being reverse transcribed into celular DNA.

You can find these details if you want.

Also, if you don’t yet recognize that you have been lied to by every official agency on this topic, didn’t notice the $700 million in payments from pharma to the personal bank accounts of the regulators, and if you haven’t noticed the coordinated censorship of doctors, then by all means, keep on injecting yourself with whatever they tell you. It’s for the greater good, after all. 🫡

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

There are plenty of studies that find virus in the heart, among many other organs. You seem very skeptical of that, but not applying the same skepticism when it comes to the vaccine.

modRNA is only one molecule different from normal mRNA, why would this change durability by many order of magnitude? You seem to be confused about half life: it's to be expected that a few detectable molecules remain after a long time. This happens with mRNA too, that's why PCR tests give false positives long after someone is no longer infectious.

Adding bribes and a coverup as a necessary ingredient of your hypothesis just makes it orders of magnitude less plausible to me.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

(I tried to find a paper measuring the half-life of mRNA vs. pseudouridine based modRNA it, but can't find one - other than vague statements that it's "longer". This would be a useful datapoint. Though again, the mRNA would have to cause damage for this to matter, because it transcribes to the exact same spike protein as the virus.)

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

* the mod-RNA would

techfeudalist 1y ago

But It doesn’t transcribe to the exact same spike does it? They modified that too.

Interesting how you can’t find official data on the durability of modRNA. You don’t think that’s odd?

Anyway, the reason the credibility of the NIH is relevant is that the NIH regulators were personally paid $700 million and you’re sending me NIH studies and saying I’m not following the science.

BTW, what happens to studies that don’t increase those payments? Are researchers forced to publish them?

But if you think you can trust those studies that they did publish, then i don’t know what to say. 😂

You didn’t seem to know that it was modRNA and you don’t seem to know that they modified the spike too. I would recommend you dig into it a bit further a with a careful eye on who is telling you what and whether you think the person is motivated by something other than your health.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

You're arguing in bad faith, so I'm going to stop engaging.

WhiteZ 1y ago

the Debunk the Funk with Dr Wilson youtube channel does a good job at debunking vaccine disinformation.

He has videos on dr Campbell.