Another interpretation is that we are seeing a predictable backlash against 2+ years of authoritarian covid policy overreach which broke the social contract. The way back is to embrace the principles of voluntary informed consent and cooperation that have always formed the basis of good medical and public health policy. You will not understand or persuade those who disagree with you by vilifying them.
Please also define “anti-vaccine”. Like you, I have had 3 covid shots and have declined more boosters recommended by the CDC. Are we now “anti-vaxxers” too?
The reason I am an anti-vaxxer or a more accurate term would be a vaccine heretic is simply due the fact that the safety of child hood vaccines has never been properly established.
All you have to do is look at the vaccine package insert of any childhood vaccine to see how little Of a priority safety was.
First red flag is that none of the child hood vaccines have ever gone through a full toxicology screening. None have been tested for there mutagenic or carcinogenic potential or impairment to male fertility
47 of the 114 fda approved vaccines did test for impairment for females.
The clinical trials used for Licensure were efficacy trials to determine Efficacy not Safety.
It is Scientifically impossible to the determine safety of a new vaccine if the control “placebo” is anything other than a saline solution.
In the trail for Prevnar 7 they used an investigational meningococcal vaccine as their placebo/Control to determine Efficacy but they also used it to determine safety.
How do you determine the safety of a new vaccine that didn’t go through a toxicology screen then use another new vaccine that didn’t go through a toxicology screen as the control/placebo to determine safety?
The Prevnar 7 trial shows that the only potentially
safe ingredient is the target antigen.
Per FOIA requests it is now known that none of the childhood vaccines used a saline placebo tor determine safety for Licensure.
Sure you can point to multi million dollar Observational studies that may or may not show a causal association but that can never prove biologically that a vaccine did or did not cause the adverse event.
There is a very simple solution to your Anti-vaccine problems.
The Left has become more corporate, they've shifted so much, leaving blue collar workers to the Right. That should partly explain why they are more eager now to embrace the products of the big corporates. I'm old enough to remember when me and my fellow lefties were always suspicious of the rich and powerful.
I'm going to disagree a bit with Renee DiResta, as much as I respect her, regarding when the rightward shift started. As I've been documenting since at least 2010, the tilt to the right of the antivaccine movement goes back several years before 2015 (2009 at), and, even though in the past the antivax movement had a roughly as strong leftwing component, there nonetheless has long been a right wing/libertarian component to it going back to the 1800s.
In the post above from 2022, I documented this evolution and described how now the antivax movement is now flirting with, even embracing, outright fascism—and why I think that is. Certainly, I will concede that that shift accelerated in 2015 in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak California SB 277, the bill that eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, and then was turbocharged by COVID-19. However, the rightward shift to the antivax movement goes back at least to the Tea Party movement in 2009. Heck, in 2012, I attended a debate between Steve Novella and antivax quack Julian Whitaker at the right wing/libertarian confab known as Freedomfest, which (I learned) had been promoting antivax propaganda going back a few years before that. In that "debate," Julian Whitaker Gish galloped the familiar antivax tropes, along with portraying vaccine mandates as an assault on "freedom."
Also, let's not forget that the most vocal antivaxxers in Congress in the 1990s were pretty much all Republicans, such as Dan Burton, who used his position as Chair to weaponize the House Oversight Committee to drag CDC scientists for interrogation over the alleged link between vaccines and autism.
I don't consider myself on the right at all but I'm certainly getting more and more concerned about how these vaccines are tested. I firmly believe that many vaccines are core to public health and they work; the worry I have is that we've unleashed a pandora's box.
I have fought the vaccine fanatics for years on their claims of autism, but now I see rates of autism of 1 out of 36 children. I hear the reason is "the rates are higher because we're better at diagnosing autism", but that's disingenuous - I am 57 years old and don't recall one child in my entire youth who had autism or acted as if they had autism. Now, it's everywhere.
Is it the vaccines? Or is it glyphosate or any one of a number of other exogenous factors? The vaccines are suspect. But we'll likely never know the truth, because there is a major fear of admitting that some vaccines may cause more harm than good, against the backdrop of endangering all of public health.
While conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine people have always been around (the 2 groups are highly overlapping but perhaps not completely), I think there are numerous contributors, including personality factors (link #1 below). The "need for chaos" explains the election of Trump, and the growing political divide based on education explains why some feel the need to exert their superiority, although there are plenty of educated folks promoting conspiracy theories, some of which is based on simple self-promotion exacerbated by social media. Certainly the sins of Big Pharma (2nd link) and the revolving door between the FDA and Big Pharma made it very easy to sow distrust about a new vaccine, even among some with no history of vaccine hesitancy. Research on Terror Management Theory has demonstrated that existential anxiety increases tribal behavior (link #3), and a pandemic will certainly increase existential anxiety. As our modern world becomes ever more threatening and filled with mortality salience, expect tribal-influenced conspiracy theories to only increase.
The 2020 so called election was definitely rigged by many actors who planned the chaos on Jan 6. Just like Covid was a bioweapon, you need your look beyond the obvious. Do the research. Know the actors and their motivations and intentions.
As sited in your article, What was the average age in the heavily red communities and the heavily blue communities? If you compare like age groups in those communities is there still a 60 fold difference in death rates?
What you don't consider is how many of those who question vaccine safety and efficacy used to be Democrats but have become disillusioned with their party and moved away from it! I think if you looed at those numbers they would be much more partisan!
Dr. Ouffit, you seem to uncritically quote a then-hobbyist (in 2015 she had no research affiliations) in the misinformation research filed, Renee DiResta. Even Twitters own Y Roth steered colleagues away from working with her. She was disparaged by many on Twitter's trust and safety team. see here for more details:
Her past background of CIA work, and sleezy defense of her own misinformation spreading as well as lying on the record, mark a serious question whether DiResta's work is indicating the facts or itself creating a narrative she would like to spread.
Dr, Ouffit, you are certainly aware of how to draw the conclusions and set the research agenda to match it, many academics shoot their arrows, drawing the bulls-eye target afterwards. Any quote of DiResta without some disclaimer of her nefarious tactics and questionable behavior; Makes me wonder, Are you too drawing the targets after you have shot your arrows?
Another interpretation is that we are seeing a predictable backlash against 2+ years of authoritarian covid policy overreach which broke the social contract. The way back is to embrace the principles of voluntary informed consent and cooperation that have always formed the basis of good medical and public health policy. You will not understand or persuade those who disagree with you by vilifying them.
Please also define “anti-vaccine”. Like you, I have had 3 covid shots and have declined more boosters recommended by the CDC. Are we now “anti-vaxxers” too?
I'm just here for the comments. 🍿
The reason I am an anti-vaxxer or a more accurate term would be a vaccine heretic is simply due the fact that the safety of child hood vaccines has never been properly established.
All you have to do is look at the vaccine package insert of any childhood vaccine to see how little Of a priority safety was.
First red flag is that none of the child hood vaccines have ever gone through a full toxicology screening. None have been tested for there mutagenic or carcinogenic potential or impairment to male fertility
47 of the 114 fda approved vaccines did test for impairment for females.
The clinical trials used for Licensure were efficacy trials to determine Efficacy not Safety.
It is Scientifically impossible to the determine safety of a new vaccine if the control “placebo” is anything other than a saline solution.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjIgu6pvJuBAxX3GTQIHe2LB84QFnoECDMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.drugs.com%2Fpro%2Fprevnar.html&usg=AOvVaw18sWNC_WFzPuWcy_XuQOXW&opi=89978449
In the trail for Prevnar 7 they used an investigational meningococcal vaccine as their placebo/Control to determine Efficacy but they also used it to determine safety.
How do you determine the safety of a new vaccine that didn’t go through a toxicology screen then use another new vaccine that didn’t go through a toxicology screen as the control/placebo to determine safety?
The Prevnar 7 trial shows that the only potentially
safe ingredient is the target antigen.
Per FOIA requests it is now known that none of the childhood vaccines used a saline placebo tor determine safety for Licensure.
Sure you can point to multi million dollar Observational studies that may or may not show a causal association but that can never prove biologically that a vaccine did or did not cause the adverse event.
There is a very simple solution to your Anti-vaccine problems.
Do the safety science.
The Left has become more corporate, they've shifted so much, leaving blue collar workers to the Right. That should partly explain why they are more eager now to embrace the products of the big corporates. I'm old enough to remember when me and my fellow lefties were always suspicious of the rich and powerful.
I'm going to disagree a bit with Renee DiResta, as much as I respect her, regarding when the rightward shift started. As I've been documenting since at least 2010, the tilt to the right of the antivaccine movement goes back several years before 2015 (2009 at), and, even though in the past the antivax movement had a roughly as strong leftwing component, there nonetheless has long been a right wing/libertarian component to it going back to the 1800s.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2022/01/28/why-is-there-now-such-an-affinity-between-antivaxxers-and-fascism/
In the post above from 2022, I documented this evolution and described how now the antivax movement is now flirting with, even embracing, outright fascism—and why I think that is. Certainly, I will concede that that shift accelerated in 2015 in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak California SB 277, the bill that eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, and then was turbocharged by COVID-19. However, the rightward shift to the antivax movement goes back at least to the Tea Party movement in 2009. Heck, in 2012, I attended a debate between Steve Novella and antivax quack Julian Whitaker at the right wing/libertarian confab known as Freedomfest, which (I learned) had been promoting antivax propaganda going back a few years before that. In that "debate," Julian Whitaker Gish galloped the familiar antivax tropes, along with portraying vaccine mandates as an assault on "freedom."
Also, let's not forget that the most vocal antivaxxers in Congress in the 1990s were pretty much all Republicans, such as Dan Burton, who used his position as Chair to weaponize the House Oversight Committee to drag CDC scientists for interrogation over the alleged link between vaccines and autism.
I don't consider myself on the right at all but I'm certainly getting more and more concerned about how these vaccines are tested. I firmly believe that many vaccines are core to public health and they work; the worry I have is that we've unleashed a pandora's box.
I have fought the vaccine fanatics for years on their claims of autism, but now I see rates of autism of 1 out of 36 children. I hear the reason is "the rates are higher because we're better at diagnosing autism", but that's disingenuous - I am 57 years old and don't recall one child in my entire youth who had autism or acted as if they had autism. Now, it's everywhere.
Is it the vaccines? Or is it glyphosate or any one of a number of other exogenous factors? The vaccines are suspect. But we'll likely never know the truth, because there is a major fear of admitting that some vaccines may cause more harm than good, against the backdrop of endangering all of public health.
This worries me.
The whole "Left vs Right" circus act is about DIVIDE & CONQUER
don't let the forces of the dark-side divide us!
Bahahah! Do you really think anyone listens to you anymore?!? How much Pfizer and/or Moderna money do you receive...
While conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine people have always been around (the 2 groups are highly overlapping but perhaps not completely), I think there are numerous contributors, including personality factors (link #1 below). The "need for chaos" explains the election of Trump, and the growing political divide based on education explains why some feel the need to exert their superiority, although there are plenty of educated folks promoting conspiracy theories, some of which is based on simple self-promotion exacerbated by social media. Certainly the sins of Big Pharma (2nd link) and the revolving door between the FDA and Big Pharma made it very easy to sow distrust about a new vaccine, even among some with no history of vaccine hesitancy. Research on Terror Management Theory has demonstrated that existential anxiety increases tribal behavior (link #3), and a pandemic will certainly increase existential anxiety. As our modern world becomes ever more threatening and filled with mortality salience, expect tribal-influenced conspiracy theories to only increase.
https://neurosciencenews.com/psychology-conspiracy-theories-23531/
https://angeloslaw.com/legal-blog/2022/01/10-biggest-pharmaceutical-settlements/
http://www.sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au/2023/chapters/PyszczynskiSSSP2023.pdf
The 2020 so called election was definitely rigged by many actors who planned the chaos on Jan 6. Just like Covid was a bioweapon, you need your look beyond the obvious. Do the research. Know the actors and their motivations and intentions.
As sited in your article, What was the average age in the heavily red communities and the heavily blue communities? If you compare like age groups in those communities is there still a 60 fold difference in death rates?
What you don't consider is how many of those who question vaccine safety and efficacy used to be Democrats but have become disillusioned with their party and moved away from it! I think if you looed at those numbers they would be much more partisan!
Great article!!
Dr. Ouffit, you seem to uncritically quote a then-hobbyist (in 2015 she had no research affiliations) in the misinformation research filed, Renee DiResta. Even Twitters own Y Roth steered colleagues away from working with her. She was disparaged by many on Twitter's trust and safety team. see here for more details:
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/twitter-files-yoel-roths-private
In her later work at New Knowledge (later Yonder),the CEO was involved in a scandal - while DiResta was working there - with subverting an election:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html
https://public.substack.com/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship
Her past background of CIA work, and sleezy defense of her own misinformation spreading as well as lying on the record, mark a serious question whether DiResta's work is indicating the facts or itself creating a narrative she would like to spread.
Sources:
https://public.substack.com/p/why-renee-diresta-leads-the-censorship
Dr, Ouffit, you are certainly aware of how to draw the conclusions and set the research agenda to match it, many academics shoot their arrows, drawing the bulls-eye target afterwards. Any quote of DiResta without some disclaimer of her nefarious tactics and questionable behavior; Makes me wonder, Are you too drawing the targets after you have shot your arrows?
in a sane world this author has zero readers but such is the sound bubble of the leftist cult
https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/