22 hours ago, simon43 said:

As a general question about Covid vaccinations, is the 'push back' against ALL Covid vaccines, or just against those using mRNA technology? Going 1 step further, is the 'push-back' against ALL vaccines, such as the Polio, Smallpox, Pneumonia vaccines?

Each denier finds their own comfortable spot on the spectrum of science denial. Many of them feel they were born with the ability to discern the full nature of Nature with just the normal human senses. They will rely on experts in many fields except in medicine..... because to them, the lure of $$ ruins everything. Yet, they glom onto fringe purveyors of nonsense who... of course are also striving to monetize their false narratives.

Just now, simon43 said:

Also, was any vaccine actually needed? Possibly, the urge to vaccinate was out of a fear that this virus, - widely thought to have been manufactured in China as essentially a weapon against the West, and authorities had a knee-jerk reaction, fearing a virus that might totally wipe out civilisation (well, Western civilisation anyway...)

Nonsense. There was no pandemic. There was no virus.

A hoax. Made up by the US Deep State. Started in 2017 and put into action when Kary Mullis passed in 2019. Why then? Because the inappropriate PCR test was gonna be the hoax driver.

17 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

Also 5G generated electromagnetic radiation is proven as harmful. And also on that subject a powerful industry lobby is pushing to pollute even further the already toxic environment that we are living in.

And just like the human body will self-heal, nature will hit back to heal itself from human insults.

Once WW3 is done and dusted, nature will, given a little time, restore itself to normality.

Nature rules OK. Just have to give it chance.

22 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

You’re right, no vaccine or consumable is completely risk-free - that applies all, food, liquids, vaccines, including the Covid vaxes. The real issue is balance. When something is given to millions, there will inevitably be some adverse events, but that doesn’t mean the overall risk is high - it simply means you're arguments are disproportionate.

Putting that into perspective, even something as ordinary as drinking water carries risk - people choke on liquids every year, and aspiration (when fluid goes into the airway) can lead to injury or even death, particularly in vulnerable groups - more so than vaccine negatives ?... worth a look into.

According to organisations like the National Health Service and the World Health Organisation, accidental choking and aspiration are recognised causes of injury worldwide.

The point of course isn’t that water is dangerous - it’s that risk exists in everyday life. What matters is whether the benefits outweigh those risks, and the evidence shows that vaccines (and Covid vaccines - at the time) reduced severe illness, transmission and death for the vast majority of people (anti-vaxxers will ask for then argue those facts) - you, and those arguing along side you fail to recognise that very simple facet - balance of risk compared to every day life - crossing a road, driving, drinking wine.

So.. what I see is the silly persistent unwillinness to acknowledge those facts ( or even entertain that idea) because you are so locked into anti-vax bias.

Because its intellectually dishonest - your implication's are that vaccines do nothing and more people are harmed by them than any good they do - thats always been your underlying sentiment in these threads - recognise that - I'd go as far and see such opinions as being dangerous from the wider public health perspective.

There is also an ever-expanding body of published “science” (the word used just as loosely as in your comment) claiming that the Earth is flat and that the Moon landings never occurred.

“Quoting ‘there are none so blind’ doesn’t make your argument stronger - it’s a verbal meme. It’s all you anti-vaxxers have left.

Now… you are either implying a quote from the Book of Jeremiah (5:21):
“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not”... though I'm not sure Jezza was keen on vaccines either back in circa 600 BCE...

Or… you are (mis)quoting Jonathan Swift:
“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired” [A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Enter’d into Holy Orders, 1721].

But… dumbing it down for meme-like consumption while trying to sound steeped in grand quotes - it’s not even a quote (though I note you didn’t use quotation marks). Nevertheless, the implication is clear. Your ‘ye olde’ tone points to “There are none so blind as those who will not see” - because they’re not your words. Otherwise, you’d have simply said: “Some people won’t see the truth because they don’t want to” or “People ignore facts on purpose"...

And with that, you’ve twisted reality - accusing others of ignoring facts while building your argument on the same fallacy. It boils down to: believe me, or you’re ignoring evidence. Then you pad it out with “papers say” and dismiss disagreement as “mainstream science".

I will of course concede there are plenty of papers critical of vaccines - that’s exactly how science works: question, test, verify, repeat. But quantity isn’t proof. If it were, every fringe theory with a stack of articles would be true - and every self-appointed ‘expert’ on those anti-vax forums wouldn’t sound so consistently detached from reality (its so easy once again to bring up Stiddle's viruses don't exist arguments).

What matters is the overall weight of high-quality evidence - the benefits dwarf the risks for essentially everyone. And people like you take an infinitesimally small minority of adverse cases and inflate it into a major public health threat - which is simply wrong.

So… be careful how you drink your water - there are thousands of studies on swallowing and aspiration. The fact that even water can go down the wrong way isn’t controversial - unless, of course, it were being sold by pharmaceutical companies, in which case you and every contrarian like you would be posting on ‘anti-water’ sites instead.

Yes - that's gaslighting again if you like - but that’s the point: to highlight the ridicule I see in arguments like yours, pushed by like-minded, self-styled ‘independent thinkers’ and anti-authoritarians who relentlessly recycle this flawed, repetitive narrative as if they’re victims of some grand Big Pharma, white-coat conspiracy.

--- ---- ---

And so - that’s my measured response to this silliness. I’ll only put this level of effort into replying to you - on occasian and those are getting less because of the repetitive daftness, also because the others aren’t worth it (and yes, they can take offence if they like - I’m not concerned they're to stupid to entertain unless I'm feeling sufficiently facetious to bite and jibe). Most of them can’t present a coherent, well-structured argument - at least you can, which is why you get a proper reply when I can be bothered...

So, lately, it’s just a quick jab at the underlying flaws in basic reasoning - something many are far too thin-skinned to handle.

For most, this will be TL;DR - which suits me fine. If they (dumb arsed half-wits who'll find that specific comment objectionable because they know they are being directly referenced) can’t follow the science with intellectual balance, they’re unlikely to grasp the nuance layered into what I’ve written anyway and simply retort with an AI authorship or word salad accusation.

Enjoy the month... sip slowly.

That is a wonderful post @richard_smith237 and it covers far too much for the pea-sized brains of the anti-VAX folk to comprehend.

What they can't seem to understand is that over 13.53 billion Covid 19 vaccines were administered globally and as yet there is no absolute/clear evidence that the vaccines actually caused deaths, although the following was published just recently:

"Herein, a literature review of COVID-19-vaccine-related deaths has been carried out according to the PRISMA standards to understand if there is a causal relationship between vaccination and death and to highlight the real extent of such events. There have been 55 cases of death after COVID-19 vaccination reported and a causal relationship has been excluded in 17 cases. In the remaining cases, the causal link between the vaccine and the death was not specified (8) or considered possible (15), probable (1), or very probable/demonstrated (14)".

It matters not what experts, professors, scientists, doctors, research establishments etc state, there are always dipsticks out there who will listen to discredited ex-doctors etc and believe them and what they see on Facebook and other websites, but quite why I have no idea, other than they need something in their lives to give them a challenge because that's what they thrive on, whether it's right or wrong, true or false.

Sad people really, once again thank you for your great post.

23 hours ago, FlorC said:

It is not just about vaccines sorts that you list , themselfs ,

it is also about all the other things they put in the shots.

You just cannot trust it anymore.

What are they putting in the shots ?? without googling it, would you even know what an adjuvant is ?

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

What are they putting in the shots ?? without googling it, would you even know what an adjuvant is ?

He heard about it through the grapevine so it must be true. The deniers are Just like the housewives of the 50's and 60's who got their 'news' from the circulating gossip. What could go wrong?

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

What are they putting in the shots ?? without googling it, would you even know what an adjuvant is ?

NOTE: I have not read other replies.

But to answer your question:
Well, yes, I know what an adjuvant is because I've had friends and family that have undergone cancer treatment.
It's an additional "substance" put into the medication which assists the main ingredient to do its job - whatever that may be.

From your query, I assume there are adjuvants in vaccines. So I assume, based on that, that whatever the additional "ingredients" are in the vaccine shot, it helps the primary "ingredient"do its job.
Like Vitamin D supplements helping to absorb Calcium.
But, then again, I'm not a medical doctor so I defer to those that are professionally qualified to be one. Like medical doctors used to defer to me in my area of qualified expertise when I taught their kids at college.

I don't stand around and question the bloke re-roofing my house; before contracting the company, I check to see if he (or "they" in this case) are qualified, currently, licensed, and insured. And let them get on with it.

I don't go on YouTube and watch three twenty minute DIY vids and then think I'm "as qualified" as a person that's done it for twenty two years.

Just now, The Oracle said:

I don't stand around and question the bloke re-roofing my house; before contracting the company, I check to see if he (or "they" in this case) are qualified, currently, licensed, and insured. And let them get on with it.

I don't go on YouTube and watch three twenty minute DIY vids and then think I'm "as qualified" as a person that's done it for twenty two years.

Would you listen and lend credence to an expert Senate testimony under oath?

3 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

All we wanted initially was the right not to take it. The pressure and two-tier treatment, through which the unvaccinated became second-class citizens with everything it entails, was the initial impetus which set the whole antivax movement in motion and still, to this day, fuels the resentment we feel (and very rightly so because it was very tough and unfair). Was it wrong to mandate it and persecute those who didn't want it? Was Michael Gunner right or wrong to say "If you are anti-mandate, you are an antivaxxer"?

The comparison with driving or drinking water is a false equivalence, as vaccines are mandatory. Make them optional and watch the antivax sentiment become much more mellow. If I were living in France, I would have social services on my back for not vaccinating my son, that is the gist of the issue.

I recognise it.

Now we can discuss how I was intially a pro-vaxxer who took all the recommended boosters before moving to Thailand in 2009 and subjected his son to the whole schedule a few years after that. At the time, I didn't know anything about vaccines, zilch – I just subscribed to the idea that they were a benefit to mankind, without even considering challenging it. Nowadays, I am much more knowledgeable on the topic, I know what the ingredients are, I know what effects they can have on a baby's (and an adult's) body (not through memes but articles and studies, of which there are hundreds) and I know just how corrupt the pharmaceutical industry is. My transition from pro-vax to anti-vax was concomitant with a transition from ignorance to knowledge – that's all.

It's a common proverb, like "the early bird catches the worm" or "don't put all your eggs in one basket" – I wasn't trying to quote anyone and wasn't even aware of any such quotes, although the Bible one does ring a bell now you mention it.

I appreciate the effort.

---

Conclusion:

As I see it, the fundamental question is, can we have a conversation, or are we going to remain locked in our fixed standoffs where nobody is willing to concede an inch?

I am willing to tone down the rhetoric a little and entertain the idea that all vaccines are not necessarily bad. After all, I received a bunch myself, both as a kid and as an adult, and didn't grow a third arm. And people I respect, such as Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the world's top virologists, are pro-vaccine – I can only assume he has valid reasons to hold his stance as an expert. He is, however, very critical of the Covid vaccine as it isn't the same thing. The same can be said of Peter McCullough.

(Of course, entertaining an idea does not oblige one to ultimately subscribe to it.)

Now, if I were to repost the peer-reviewed study which shows that the Spike protein is still present in the body after one year, would you be willing to look at this data at face value and discuss the potential implications of such a finding? In a serene setting, of course, where one doesn't feel that conceding a point will be disingenuously used by the opposing party to push simplified talking points.

Rattlesnake, I'll meet the tone you've set, because you've actually shifted it - and that deserves a reply in kind rather than another volley - seems you have changed from anti-vax to anti-mandate (or at least your position in this argument has).

On the mandates. You're right, and I've never properly disagreed - I just rarely say it because the conversation never gets that far. Coercion was the original sin. Two-tier citizenship, lost jobs, restricted travel, social ostracism dressed up as public health - that was the moment a legitimate medical intervention became a political weapon. Michael Gunner's "if you're anti-mandate, you're an antivaxxer" was the exact rhetorical sleight-of-hand that radicalised people who were merely cautious. Conflating "I want to choose" with "I deny the science" was lazy, authoritarian, and counter-productive. It poisoned the well for a generation.

But here's the part that needs saying alongside it, because the mandate critique only tells half the story: vaccination is not really an individual product, it's a collective one. A vaccine in one arm protects that arm. A vaccine in eighty arms out of a hundred protects the immunocompromised kid in chemo, the eighty-year-old with a shot heart, the newborn too young to be jabbed, and, quietly, the unvaccinated adult next to them on the bus. That's herd immunity, and it isn't an ideological flourish, it's arithmetic. The success of every vaccine programme in human history - smallpox, polio, measles - has rested on community uptake, not personal preference. Take the community out of the equation and the maths collapses.

So the honest position has two halves, and most people only hold one of them. Yes - the forcing was wrong, particularly for a pathogen whose risk profile didn't justify the foot on the throat. And yes - the public has a corresponding duty to understand why uptake matters, rather than treating immunisation as a purely private transaction with personal upside and no social weight. Both can be true. Both are true.

And here's the part that concerns me more than any single argument in this thread. Covid was, in epidemiological terms, a rehearsal. A nasty one, but a rehearsal. The next pathogen - and there will be one at some point in the future - may well not be so forgiving. A 1918-grade flu, a SARS-1-lethality coronavirus that actually spreads as readily as SARS-2, a re-engineered zoonotic with a 5% case fatality rate in working-age adults - in that scenario, mandates, distancing, and lockdowns won't be a political overreach, they'll be the bare minimum keeping the morgues from overflowing into car parks. And we will need them implemented fast, trusted broadly, and complied with willingly.

That is the well the heavy-handedness of 2020-22 has poisoned. Not the well of this virus - the well of the next one.

Authorities cried wolf at volume eleven for a pathogen that, for most working-age people, didn't warrant it - and in doing so they spent the very social capital they will desperately need when an actual wolf shows up. Every person now reflexively suspicious of any future health directive - reasonable or not - is a small debt accruing interest against the next outbreak.

That, more than the spike protein, more than the boosters, more than any single policy failure, is the lasting damage.

So we're agreed on the abuse. Where I'd push you to go further is on the principle: defend the right to refuse, by all means - but don't let that defence harden into a posture that pretends community immunity is a myth, or that the next pandemic will be politely optional. It won't. And if we can't rebuild some shared understanding of why collective uptake matters before it does, the mandates next time round will be far uglier than anything we just lived through - and the people imposing them will, tragically, have a point.

On the spike-persistence study - post it. I'll read it on its merits. I won't strawman it, won't quote-mine it, won't weaponise a concession. If something durable shows up in the data, that's a real conversation - mechanism, dose-dependence, clinical correlation, the lot. Vanden Bossche and McCullough I'd push back on specifically (Vanden Bossche's immune-escape predictions haven't aged well; McCullough's forecasting record is, charitably, patchy) - but "this expert is wrong about X" is a categorically different argument from "this expert is a fraud," and I'll keep those separate.

Now - the harder question. I ask it without malice, because I think you're one of the few here capable of answering it honestly.

You've made your case as a thinking person who arrived where you are by reading. Fine. But the tent you've walked into doesn't only house thinking people. In this very forum, on comments running parallel to ours, you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of stiddle Mump, who writes:

"Nonsense. There was no pandemic. There was no virus. A hoax. Made up by the US Deep State. Started in 2017 and put into action when Kary Mullis passed in 2019. Why then? Because the inappropriate PCR test was gonna be the hoax driver."

No virus. No pandemic. A Deep State production dated to 2017 and cued to a virologist's death is forum simply pantomime. It isn't scepticism - it's a parallel reality. The morgues, the excess-mortality curves, the sequencing labs in forty countries running independently to the same conclusion, the clinicians who lost colleagues at the bedside - all of it, apparently, lies according to some.

So, sincerely: are you comfortable being in coalition with that? With the "viruses don't exist" crowd? With the "covid was a scam from day one" contingent? With the witless fools who think coining "scandemic" and "covidiots" makes them the next Hitchens - when in fact it just announces, that they mistook a sneer for an argument and a hashtag for a thought.

Because the anti-vaxx movement doesn't get to march under one banner in public and then disown the lunatics marching beside it the moment someone points them out.

The moderate, study-citing wing and the "it was all a hoax orchestrated by a dead biochemist" wing share the same banner, the same hashtags, the same momentum, the same memes.

Every nuanced post you write gives cover to ten unhinged ones; every unhinged post tars yours by proximity. That is the cost of playing in the same football kit, and pretending otherwise is the one piece of intellectual honesty I haven't yet seen from your side of the table.

You can be a critic of pharmaceutical capture, of mandate overreach, of specific Covid-vaccine concerns - without signing up to a movement increasingly defined by denying the existence of the science and the disease itself.

The honest move - the one that would actually move this conversation forward - is to draw that line on the thread, in public. Name the Mumps of this forum and say plainly: "that is not what I'm arguing, and frankly it discredits the case I'm trying to make"

I'll stand beside that with you and defend the distinction. Because for now, the intellectual balance can't exist - because the rest of your team won't allow it, and your silence will keep reading, fairly or not, as endorsement of the silliness posted by many of those along side whom you set your stage.

And let's not pretend otherwise: this thread didn't begin with a study, a question, or a thought. It began with a copy-pasted meme - Just as most of Red's threads do. You keep hanging your hat on that peg, lining up beside people whose entire contribution is screenshots and slogans, copy and paste from facebook and twitter, and calling it intellectual company.

It isn't. It's a symptom dressed as a stance - and every time you nod along to it, you're not joining a debate, you're joining a mental illness with a hashtag.

Just now, The Oracle said:

NOTE: I have not read other replies.

But to answer your question:
Well, yes, I know what an adjuvant is because I've had friends and family that have undergone cancer treatment.
It's an additional "substance" put into the medication which assists the main ingredient to do its job - whatever that may be.

From your query, I assume there are adjuvants in vaccines. So I assume, based on that, that whatever the additional "ingredients" are in the vaccine shot, it helps the primary "ingredient"do its job.
Like Vitamin D supplements helping to absorb Calcium.
But, then again, I'm not a medical doctor so I defer to those that are professionally qualified to be one. Like medical doctors used to defer to me in my area of qualified expertise when I taught their kids at college.

I don't stand around and question the bloke re-roofing my house; before contracting the company, I check to see if he (or "they" in this case) are qualified, currently, licensed, and insured. And let them get on with it.

I don't go on YouTube and watch three twenty minute DIY vids and then think I'm "as qualified" as a person that's done it for twenty two years.

A better response that the initial response.... But you are quoted as saying:

18 hours ago, FlorC said:

I would not trust Sinovac not just because it came from China,

but like I said any shot (conventional or mrna) has additives which cannot be trusted.

Big pharma cannot be trusted.

So... What are these mysterious "additives" in the shots that can't be trusted?

List them. With dose, with mechanism, with a viable source that isn't a wellness blog from 2009 or a meme stitched together by someone intent on spreading disinformation in there repetitive endless attempts to volumise misinformation.

And use modern data - not the dusty thimerosal-and-mercury talking points that get wheeled out every single time, because the moment someone trots out mercury in childhood vaccines, the inaccuracy alone forces a correction: it was removed from the routine paediatric schedule over twenty years ago.

So, at least be factually honest about what's actually in a vial in 2026 - not out of date information.

Please also ensure that your comments understand that while aluminium in an injection sounds frightening, the word alone does most of the rhetorical work in anti-vaxx circles - but in the quantities used, it isn't harmful at all.

Not even remotely. An infant ingests more aluminium in a single day of breast milk or formula than they receive across the entire childhood vaccine schedule combined.

Formaldehyde? Sounds like embalming fluid, gets the 'meme-ers' purring - except your own body manufactures more of it per hour as a routine metabolic by-product than exists in any jab, and a single ripe pear contains more than a vaccine dose.

The dose makes the poison. Always has. Paracelsus worked that out in 1538 - about five centuries before the anti-vaxxers discovered the comments in echo-chamber forums and decided they'd cracked toxicology over breakfast.

So name the additive. Cite the dose. Show the harm. Or concede that what you're actually objecting to isn't a chemical - it's a meme you saw once.

Just now, rattlesnake said:

Would you listen and lend credence to an expert Senate testimony under oath?

"under oath" doesn't add an iota of scientific authenticity. It merely means the testifies believes he's telling the truth.

Since you seem to have difficulty believing the mainstream experts, why would you believe another 'expert'? Since you have very little knowledge of science you are truly unable to distinguish between the other sides experts and your favored expert.

Edited May 3May 3 by gamb00ler

Just now, gamb00ler said:

"under oath" doesn't add an iota of scientific authenticity. It merely means the testifies believes he's telling the truth.

Since you seem to have difficulty believing the mainstream experts, why would you believe another 'expert'? Since you have very little knowledge of science you are truly unable to distinguish between the other sides experts and your favored expert.

It isn't about me, I ask the question to those who dismiss information on grounds of credibility (or lack thereof). A nurse on YT doesn't count… that's fair enough. What about those who tick all the right boxes?

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

Rattlesnake, I'll meet the tone you've set, because you've actually shifted it - and that deserves a reply in kind rather than another volley - seems you have changed from anti-vax to anti-mandate (or at least your position in this argument has).

On the mandates. You're right, and I've never properly disagreed - I just rarely say it because the conversation never gets that far. Coercion was the original sin. Two-tier citizenship, lost jobs, restricted travel, social ostracism dressed up as public health - that was the moment a legitimate medical intervention became a political weapon. Michael Gunner's "if you're anti-mandate, you're an antivaxxer" was the exact rhetorical sleight-of-hand that radicalised people who were merely cautious. Conflating "I want to choose" with "I deny the science" was lazy, authoritarian, and counter-productive. It poisoned the well for a generation.

But here's the part that needs saying alongside it, because the mandate critique only tells half the story: vaccination is not really an individual product, it's a collective one. A vaccine in one arm protects that arm. A vaccine in eighty arms out of a hundred protects the immunocompromised kid in chemo, the eighty-year-old with a shot heart, the newborn too young to be jabbed, and, quietly, the unvaccinated adult next to them on the bus. That's herd immunity, and it isn't an ideological flourish, it's arithmetic. The success of every vaccine programme in human history - smallpox, polio, measles - has rested on community uptake, not personal preference. Take the community out of the equation and the maths collapses.

So the honest position has two halves, and most people only hold one of them. Yes - the forcing was wrong, particularly for a pathogen whose risk profile didn't justify the foot on the throat. And yes - the public has a corresponding duty to understand why uptake matters, rather than treating immunisation as a purely private transaction with personal upside and no social weight. Both can be true. Both are true.

And here's the part that concerns me more than any single argument in this thread. Covid was, in epidemiological terms, a rehearsal. A nasty one, but a rehearsal. The next pathogen - and there will be one at some point in the future - may well not be so forgiving. A 1918-grade flu, a SARS-1-lethality coronavirus that actually spreads as readily as SARS-2, a re-engineered zoonotic with a 5% case fatality rate in working-age adults - in that scenario, mandates, distancing, and lockdowns won't be a political overreach, they'll be the bare minimum keeping the morgues from overflowing into car parks. And we will need them implemented fast, trusted broadly, and complied with willingly.

That is the well the heavy-handedness of 2020-22 has poisoned. Not the well of this virus - the well of the next one.

Authorities cried wolf at volume eleven for a pathogen that, for most working-age people, didn't warrant it - and in doing so they spent the very social capital they will desperately need when an actual wolf shows up. Every person now reflexively suspicious of any future health directive - reasonable or not - is a small debt accruing interest against the next outbreak.

That, more than the spike protein, more than the boosters, more than any single policy failure, is the lasting damage.

So we're agreed on the abuse. Where I'd push you to go further is on the principle: defend the right to refuse, by all means - but don't let that defence harden into a posture that pretends community immunity is a myth, or that the next pandemic will be politely optional. It won't. And if we can't rebuild some shared understanding of why collective uptake matters before it does, the mandates next time round will be far uglier than anything we just lived through - and the people imposing them will, tragically, have a point.

On the spike-persistence study - post it. I'll read it on its merits. I won't strawman it, won't quote-mine it, won't weaponise a concession. If something durable shows up in the data, that's a real conversation - mechanism, dose-dependence, clinical correlation, the lot. Vanden Bossche and McCullough I'd push back on specifically (Vanden Bossche's immune-escape predictions haven't aged well; McCullough's forecasting record is, charitably, patchy) - but "this expert is wrong about X" is a categorically different argument from "this expert is a fraud," and I'll keep those separate.

Now - the harder question. I ask it without malice, because I think you're one of the few here capable of answering it honestly.

You've made your case as a thinking person who arrived where you are by reading. Fine. But the tent you've walked into doesn't only house thinking people. In this very forum, on comments running parallel to ours, you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of stiddle Mump, who writes:

No virus. No pandemic. A Deep State production dated to 2017 and cued to a virologist's death is forum simply pantomime. It isn't scepticism - it's a parallel reality. The morgues, the excess-mortality curves, the sequencing labs in forty countries running independently to the same conclusion, the clinicians who lost colleagues at the bedside - all of it, apparently, lies according to some.

So, sincerely: are you comfortable being in coalition with that? With the "viruses don't exist" crowd? With the "covid was a scam from day one" contingent? With the witless fools who think coining "scandemic" and "covidiots" makes them the next Hitchens - when in fact it just announces, that they mistook a sneer for an argument and a hashtag for a thought.

Because the anti-vaxx movement doesn't get to march under one banner in public and then disown the lunatics marching beside it the moment someone points them out.

The moderate, study-citing wing and the "it was all a hoax orchestrated by a dead biochemist" wing share the same banner, the same hashtags, the same momentum, the same memes.

Every nuanced post you write gives cover to ten unhinged ones; every unhinged post tars yours by proximity. That is the cost of playing in the same football kit, and pretending otherwise is the one piece of intellectual honesty I haven't yet seen from your side of the table.

You can be a critic of pharmaceutical capture, of mandate overreach, of specific Covid-vaccine concerns - without signing up to a movement increasingly defined by denying the existence of the science and the disease itself.

The honest move - the one that would actually move this conversation forward - is to draw that line on the thread, in public. Name the Mumps of this forum and say plainly: "that is not what I'm arguing, and frankly it discredits the case I'm trying to make"

I'll stand beside that with you and defend the distinction. Because for now, the intellectual balance can't exist - because the rest of your team won't allow it, and your silence will keep reading, fairly or not, as endorsement of the silliness posted by many of those along side whom you set your stage.

And let's not pretend otherwise: this thread didn't begin with a study, a question, or a thought. It began with a copy-pasted meme - Just as most of Red's threads do. You keep hanging your hat on that peg, lining up beside people whose entire contribution is screenshots and slogans, copy and paste from facebook and twitter, and calling it intellectual company.

It isn't. It's a symptom dressed as a stance - and every time you nod along to it, you're not joining a debate, you're joining a mental illness with a hashtag.

Moving along at a tangent to another of your excellent posts, some time ago I did post an article which showed that the mRNA methodology (for want of better terminology) had shown good results in fighting cancer when used with Keytruda.......that would be a huge step forward in fighting cancer. But the Anti-Vaxxers who railed against mRNA, won't want this treatment if suffering from cancer!!!!!

Moderna mRNA-based drug cut the risk of recurrence or death when combined with immunotherapy Keytruda

 In combination with an approved immunotherapy, the mRNA drug cut the risk of recurrence or death nearly in half after five years compared with melanoma patients who got only the immunotherapy, drugmaker Moderna said.

Moderna is developing the drug, called intismeran autogene, in partnership with Merck, which makes Keytruda, the immunotherapy used in the trial.

Edited May 3May 3 by xylophone

Just now, xylophone said:

But the Anti-Vaxxers who railed against mRNA, won't want this treatment if suffering from cancer!!!!!

Definitely not, I would take Dr. Hulscher's protocol if I had cancer.

Just now, rattlesnake said:

Would you listen and lend credence to an expert Senate testimony under oath?

Just now, rattlesnake said:

It isn't about me, I ask the question to those who dismiss information on grounds of credibility (or lack thereof). A nurse on YT doesn't count… that's fair enough. What about those who tick all the right boxes?

You presented that one of your favorite 'experts' testified 'under oath' in an attempt to add credence to your opinion. It doesn't add any scientific weight under oath. Your (and everyone's) opinion should be based on science. My comment just clarified that your description of the testimony as 'under oath' does not contribute any scientific credibility to your opinion.

Edited May 3May 3 by gamb00ler

Just now, gamb00ler said:

You posited that one of your favorite 'experts' testified 'under oath' in an attempt to add credence to your opinion. It doesn't add any scientific weight under oath. Your (and everyone's) opinion should be based on science. My comment just clarified that your description of the testimony as 'under oath' does not contribute any scientific credibility to your opinion.

In this particular instance, I was clarifying the grounds for dismissal of vaccine criticism. I have done it often and the person asked usually ignores the question altogether. If they do answer, it is usually something along the lines of "one opinion doesn't mean anything", thereby clarifying their stance: they don't dismiss vaccine criticism on grounds of expertise and relevance, but on grounds of whether they agree or not – not the same thing.

On 4/30/2026 at 8:50 AM, Red Phoenix said:

That awkward silence in the world right now is the vaccinated slowly realising the unvaccinated were right ?

No, it's the realization that the anti-vaxxers were just a bunch of deranged clowns like RFK Jr

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

Rattlesnake, I'll meet the tone you've set, because you've actually shifted it - and that deserves a reply in kind rather than another volley - seems you have changed from anti-vax to anti-mandate (or at least your position in this argument has).

I have always been more anti-mandate than anything. People should have a choice. Florida's Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, summarised it in a short sentence and I subscribe to every word:

"You have sovereignty over your body, so that's where it starts."

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

On the mandates. You're right, and I've never properly disagreed - I just rarely say it because the conversation never gets that far. Coercion was the original sin. Two-tier citizenship, lost jobs, restricted travel, social ostracism dressed up as public health - that was the moment a legitimate medical intervention became a political weapon. Michael Gunner's "if you're anti-mandate, you're an antivaxxer" was the exact rhetorical sleight-of-hand that radicalised people who were merely cautious. Conflating "I want to choose" with "I deny the science" was lazy, authoritarian, and counter-productive. It poisoned the well for a generation.

Indeed. The damage is done. As Dr. Larry Palevsky said in a podcast a few years ago (paraphrased from memory), "The political measures taken under the guise of Covid could cause the collapse of the vaccine industry altogether".

There is a breach of trust between the people and the authorities. Fixing this won't happen spontaneously, wounds won't heal over time, it won't be forgotten, at least not for another couple of decades – as you said, the well is poisoned for a generation; an antidote must be added to the well and its recipe is a complex one. The main ingredient is trust.

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

So we're agreed on the abuse. Where I'd push you to go further is on the principle: defend the right to refuse, by all means - but don't let that defence harden into a posture that pretends community immunity is a myth, or that the next pandemic will be politely optional. It won't. And if we can't rebuild some shared understanding of why collective uptake matters before it does, the mandates next time round will be far uglier than anything we just lived through - and the people imposing them will, tragically, have a point.

'Doing your bit for the greater good' is no longer an audible principle for the public. I think that in order to achieve anything meaningful, there needs to be absolute transparency and accountability regarding what happened between 2020 and 2022, from the cruel, unnecessary lockdowns (while the enforcers in various countries were seen partying maskless) to the coverup of vaccine injuries, which are more numerous and wide-encompassing than what is actually recognised. Anything less will not suffice and will only deepen the chasm.

For every politician who speaks about 'antivaxxers' using derogative language, 100 people sitting on the fence, still resentful about what happened during Covid, are encouraged to radicalise their stance. For every 'TV expert' who repeats that the vaccine is safe and effective, 10 channels emerge on social media to explain he is lying… and they have millions of people listening eagerly – ultimately, it doesn't even matter who is telling the truth, what matters is who has public engagement (I read an interesting statistic this morning, the average age of people who watch the main 'mainstream' TV channels in France is between 58 and 67; the younger people are on social media, they subscribe to the notion that the authorities are lying to some degree and they are open to alternative explanations).

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

Now - the harder question. I ask it without malice, because I think you're one of the few here capable of answering it honestly.

You've made your case as a thinking person who arrived where you are by reading. Fine. But the tent you've walked into doesn't only house thinking people. In this very forum, on comments running parallel to ours, you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of stiddle Mump, who writes:

Quote

"Nonsense. There was no pandemic. There was no virus. A hoax. Made up by the US Deep State. Started in 2017 and put into action when Kary Mullis passed in 2019. Why then? Because the inappropriate PCR test was gonna be the hoax driver."

No virus. No pandemic. A Deep State production dated to 2017 and cued to a virologist's death is forum simply pantomime. It isn't scepticism - it's a parallel reality. The morgues, the excess-mortality curves, the sequencing labs in forty countries running independently to the same conclusion, the clinicians who lost colleagues at the bedside - all of it, apparently, lies according to some.

So, sincerely: are you comfortable being in coalition with that? With the "viruses don't exist" crowd? With the "covid was a scam from day one" contingent? With the witless fools who think coining "scandemic" and "covidiots" makes them the next Hitchens - when in fact it just announces, that they mistook a sneer for an argument and a hashtag for a thought.

I am open to all ideas and inputs, and welcome a plurality of opinions. That does not mean I swear unconditional allegiance to one 'cause' or 'banner'. I have known Stiddle for a few years and I like and respect him. Does that mean I agree or support everything he says? No. As I told him before, I am personally not convinced that viruses don't exist. That's it, not a big deal, perhaps I will revise my stance in the future, perhaps not… in any case, I have gotten interesting insights from him over time, and I am not going to roll my eyes or become hyperbolic and tense just because he has the audacity to challenge a dogma. Challenge is a good thing, it furthers understanding for everybody.

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

The honest move - the one that would actually move this conversation forward - is to draw that line on the thread, in public. Name the Mumps of this forum and say plainly: "that is not what I'm arguing, and frankly it discredits the case I'm trying to make"

The radicality on display is the result of the aforementioned shortcomings. Don't blame Stiddle, Red Phoenix or Rumak (all of whom I respect and whose input I value) for it, blame those who pushed the pendulum so far in their desired direction that it is only normal and expected that it should come swinging back with equal force. I don't think removing people from the conversation would be a constructive step forward.

And memes have a distinct characteristic in the sense that they encapsulate a given issue and provide a basis on which people are then free to build, as demonstrated by this thread. If Red's opening meme was devoid of significance, there would barely have been any replies, if any at all.

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

On the spike-persistence study - post it. I'll read it on its merits. I won't strawman it, won't quote-mine it, won't weaponise a concession. If something durable shows up in the data, that's a real conversation - mechanism, dose-dependence, clinical correlation, the lot. Vanden Bossche and McCullough I'd push back on specifically (Vanden Bossche's immune-escape predictions haven't aged well; McCullough's forecasting record is, charitably, patchy) - but "this expert is wrong about X" is a categorically different argument from "this expert is a fraud," and I'll keep those separate.

I will dig it up and post it when I have a minute. Yeah, Vanden Bossche's dire predictions haven't happened (thankfully), he shouldn't have been so categorical about it.

On 4/30/2026 at 3:03 AM, simon43 said:

You've posted in the wrong forum...

Try the joke forum :)

I was thinking, the health forum under requests for mental health assistance.

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

A better response that the initial response.... But you are quoted as saying:

So... What are these mysterious "additives" in the shots that can't be trusted?

List them. With dose, with mechanism, with a viable source that isn't a wellness blog from 2009 or a meme stitched together by someone intent on spreading disinformation in there repetitive endless attempts to volumise misinformation.

And use modern data - not the dusty thimerosal-and-mercury talking points that get wheeled out every single time, because the moment someone trots out mercury in childhood vaccines, the inaccuracy alone forces a correction: it was removed from the routine paediatric schedule over twenty years ago.

So, at least be factually honest about what's actually in a vial in 2026 - not out of date information.

Please also ensure that your comments understand that while aluminium in an injection sounds frightening, the word alone does most of the rhetorical work in anti-vaxx circles - but in the quantities used, it isn't harmful at all.

Not even remotely. An infant ingests more aluminium in a single day of breast milk or formula than they receive across the entire childhood vaccine schedule combined.

Formaldehyde? Sounds like embalming fluid, gets the 'meme-ers' purring - except your own body manufactures more of it per hour as a routine metabolic by-product than exists in any jab, and a single ripe pear contains more than a vaccine dose.

The dose makes the poison. Always has. Paracelsus worked that out in 1538 - about five centuries before the anti-vaxxers discovered the comments in echo-chamber forums and decided they'd cracked toxicology over breakfast.

So name the additive. Cite the dose. Show the harm. Or concede that what you're actually objecting to isn't a chemical - it's a meme you saw once.

Well you list a number of them claiming they are not harmful, where is your prove ?

Others claim they are harmful.

https://www.newstarget.com/2026-05-02-the-unseen-war-hidden-vaccine-dangers.html

But hey , I'm not stopping you from letting them inject you with it.

Just now, rattlesnake said:

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

Rattlesnake, I'll meet the tone you've set, because you've actually shifted it - and that deserves a reply in kind rather than another volley - seems you have changed from anti-vax to anti-mandate (or at least your position in this argument has).

I have always been more anti-mandate than anything. People should have a choice. Florida's Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, summarised it in a short sentence and I subscribe to every word:

"You have sovereignty over your body, so that's where it starts."

That sounds principled until the sentiment is actually pressure-tested.... lets put that to scrutiny then...

First, the source: Joseph Ladapo is not a neutral authority on this - he is the surgeon general who was caught altering a Florida state vaccine safety analysis to manufacture a risk signal that the underlying data didn't support.

The original draft showed no significant cardiac risk in young men from mRNA vaccines; the published version, after his edits, did. That's not a quibble - that's a public official falsifying public-health data to fit a political position.

Quoting him on bodily sovereignty is like quoting Lance Armstrong on cycling ethics.

Second, the principle itself: "You have sovereignty over your body" is a fine sentence - it's also one nobody actually believes when you follow it to its conclusion. You don't have the sovereign right to drive drunk, because your body, behind a steering wheel, becomes a threat to mine. You don't have the sovereign right to handle food in a restaurant with active hepatitis A. You don't have the sovereign right to smoke in a hospital ward, walk into an operating theatre unwashed, or skip quarantine with an active TB infection.

Bodily sovereignty has always ended at the point your body becomes a vector for harm to someone else's. Vaccination policy lives precisely on that line - it isn't a novel intrusion, it's the same century-old principle applied to airborne pathogens.

Third, the people the slogan forgets: "Personal choice" sounds clean only if you pretend the immunocompromised child on chemotherapy doesn't exist. Or the newborn too young to be jabbed. Or the eighty-year-old with a fragile heart. Or the organ transplant recipient on immunosuppressants for life. None of those people get a choice. Their protection is borrowed entirely from the immunity of the people around them.

When you opt out, you don't just exercise a private right; you withdraw a contribution from a public good that vulnerable strangers are quietly depending on.

That's not sovereignty. That's free-riding with a libertarian costume on.

Fourth, consistency: If "my body, my choice" is the unshakable principle, then say so across the board: no mandatory seatbelts, no licensing of surgeons, no food inspection, no drink-driving laws, no quarantine powers, no compulsory schooling vaccinations - which, incidentally, have been law in most Western countries for over a century (that last point I'm sure you'd object to )

If you accept any of those - and you do - then you've already conceded the principle isn't absolute.

You're not arguing for sovereignty; you're arguing about where the line gets drawn. Which is a legitimate conversation - but it's a different one, and dressing it up in Ladapo's slogan masks that rather than clarifies it.

Fifth, and this is the bit anti-mandate folk consistently dodge: Children. A two-year-old has no sovereignty to invoke; the parent invokes it for them (I've seen some very nasty comment from anti-vaxxers accusing parents of poisoning their children - this is one Rumak's favourate nasty remarks when he's lacking anything intelligent to bring to the table).

Society has long held - across the political spectrum, across centuries - that parental authority over a child's body does not extend to letting that child die from preventable disease.

That's why we don't allow parents to refuse blood transfusions for their dying kids on religious grounds in most jurisdictions. The "sovereignty" frame quietly assumes the patient is a consenting adult. Most of the people the schedule actually protects aren't.

So yes - go for it, be anti-mandate if you like. There's a real argument there about where coercion crossed the line during Covid, and on that we may even agree. But please retire "sovereignty over your body" as the philosophical fig leaf, because it is doing none of the work it pretends to. It's a bumper sticker borrowed from one debate (abortion) and welded onto another (infectious disease) - two fields that operate on opposite ethical foundations, because a foetus is not airborne and a measles case is.

So... Pick the real argument. Defend that one. But don't hide behind a sentence that, on inspection, every signatory to it would abandon the moment the man next to them on the bus started coughing tuberculosis.

Just now, FlorC said:

Well you list a number of them claiming they are not harmful, where is your prove ?

Others claim they are harmful.

https://www.newstarget.com/2026-05-02-the-unseen-war-hidden-vaccine-dangers.html

But hey , I'm not stopping you from letting them inject you with it.

From this thread last year:

https://aseannow.com/topic/1358387-food-for-thought-a-common-sense-vaccine-statement-and-a-bs-one/

On 4/21/2025 at 12:59 PM, Red Phoenix said:

Let's start with the common sense one:

When we’re talking about vaccines, we are talking about taking chemicals, metals, proteins, and more—and injecting them right into the bloodstream—and then acting shocked when people develop serious issues—or worse, death—from such a procedure.  

But, but, science scientism...

 

And now the BS one:

 

In 2013, Congressman Bill Posey asked the CDC on record why they haven’t done a simple vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study. The CDC responded: “It would be unethical to withhold vaccines from children in order to study outcomes.”

 

Case closed...

 

= = =

Inspired by Franklin O'Kanu and his Unorthodoxy website...

 

On 4/21/2025 at 1:10 PM, richard_smith237 said:

 

Yawn.. the same tired nonsense... 

 

Here’s what typically goes into the makeup of a vaccine, with the flu and MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccines as examples:

 

1. The Active Ingredient

This is what triggers the immune response.

Flu Vaccine: Usually contains inactivated (killed) or attenuated (weakened) influenza viruses, or just tiny bits of them (like the haemagglutinin protein).

MMR Vaccine: Contains live attenuated viruses of measles, mumps, and rubella. These are weakened just enough that they don’t cause the disease in healthy people but still kick your immune system into action.

 

2. Stabilisers

These keep the vaccine potent during storage and transport.

Often things like gelatin (yes, from pigs), sorbitol, or sucrose.

MMR, for example, contains gelatin and sorbitol as stabilisers.

 

3. Preservatives

Used to prevent contamination, especially in multi-dose vials.

Older flu vaccines might contain thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative), though most single-dose flu shots today are thimerosal-free.

MMR doesn’t need preservatives because it’s supplied in single-dose vials and mixed fresh.

 

4. Adjuvants (mainly in flu, not in MMR)

Help boost the immune response.

Some flu vaccines (like the Fluad brand for older adults) use MF59, an oil-in-water emulsion of squalene.

MMR doesn’t contain adjuvants.

 

5. Residuals from Manufacturing

Tiny traces of things used during production, but cleaned out as much as possible.

Egg proteins (especially in flu vaccines made in eggs),

Neomycin (an antibiotic used in MMR to prevent bacterial contamination),

Cell culture material like chick embryo cells or human diploid cells (especially for MMR).

 

 

 

As for  Chemicals, Metals, Proteins:

 

Vaccines can definitely contain chemicals, metals, and proteins… Oh, sounds terrible !!!

But what are they really ???

 

Chemicals

These aren't your average household cleaners - but carefully chosen bits to keep the vaccine safe and stable.

Formaldehyde – Used to inactivate viruses or detoxify toxins. It’s in tiny trace amounts, and your body naturally has more formaldehyde in your blood than a vaccine ever would.

Sodium chloride (salt) – To balance pH and match the body’s natural fluids.

Sodium phosphate / Potassium phosphate – Buffers to keep the vaccine stable.

Polysorbate 80 – Emulsifier to keep ingredients blended (found in some flu vaccines).

Sucrose or lactose – Sugar, baby. Used to stabilise.

 

Proteins

Your immune system’s sexy little nemesis.

Viral proteins – Flu vaccines often include purified surface proteins like haemagglutinin (HA).

Egg proteins – Residuals if the vaccine is grown in eggs.

Gelatin (a protein) – Used as a stabiliser, especially in MMR.

 

Metals

Aluminium salts (adjuvants) – Found in some flu vaccines, not MMR. They stimulate a stronger immune response. You actually get more aluminium from food and water than from a vaccine.

Thimerosal (ethylmercury) – Only in some multi-dose flu vials (not in MMR). It's a preservative and has been mostly phased out due to public concern, even though studies show it's safe in those tiny amounts.

 

Most of the daft claims have been repeatedly rebutted - and people such as yourself circle back to the same misinfirmation.

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

That sounds principled until the sentiment is actually pressure-tested.... lets put that to scrutiny then...

First, the source: Joseph Ladapo is not a neutral authority on this - he is the surgeon general who was caught altering a Florida state vaccine safety analysis to manufacture a risk signal that the underlying data didn't support.

The original draft showed no significant cardiac risk in young men from mRNA vaccines; the published version, after his edits, did. That's not a quibble - that's a public official falsifying public-health data to fit a political position.

Quoting him on bodily sovereignty is like quoting Lance Armstrong on cycling ethics.

Second, the principle itself: "You have sovereignty over your body" is a fine sentence - it's also one nobody actually believes when you follow it to its conclusion. You don't have the sovereign right to drive drunk, because your body, behind a steering wheel, becomes a threat to mine. You don't have the sovereign right to handle food in a restaurant with active hepatitis A. You don't have the sovereign right to smoke in a hospital ward, walk into an operating theatre unwashed, or skip quarantine with an active TB infection.

Bodily sovereignty has always ended at the point your body becomes a vector for harm to someone else's. Vaccination policy lives precisely on that line - it isn't a novel intrusion, it's the same century-old principle applied to airborne pathogens.

Third, the people the slogan forgets: "Personal choice" sounds clean only if you pretend the immunocompromised child on chemotherapy doesn't exist. Or the newborn too young to be jabbed. Or the eighty-year-old with a fragile heart. Or the organ transplant recipient on immunosuppressants for life. None of those people get a choice. Their protection is borrowed entirely from the immunity of the people around them.

When you opt out, you don't just exercise a private right; you withdraw a contribution from a public good that vulnerable strangers are quietly depending on.

That's not sovereignty. That's free-riding with a libertarian costume on.

Fourth, consistency: If "my body, my choice" is the unshakable principle, then say so across the board: no mandatory seatbelts, no licensing of surgeons, no food inspection, no drink-driving laws, no quarantine powers, no compulsory schooling vaccinations - which, incidentally, have been law in most Western countries for over a century (that last point I'm sure you'd object to )

If you accept any of those - and you do - then you've already conceded the principle isn't absolute.

You're not arguing for sovereignty; you're arguing about where the line gets drawn. Which is a legitimate conversation - but it's a different one, and dressing it up in Ladapo's slogan masks that rather than clarifies it.

Fifth, and this is the bit anti-mandate folk consistently dodge: Children. A two-year-old has no sovereignty to invoke; the parent invokes it for them (I've seen some very nasty comment from anti-vaxxers accusing parents of poisoning their children - this is one Rumak's favourate nasty remarks when he's lacking anything intelligent to bring to the table).

Society has long held - across the political spectrum, across centuries - that parental authority over a child's body does not extend to letting that child die from preventable disease.

That's why we don't allow parents to refuse blood transfusions for their dying kids on religious grounds in most jurisdictions. The "sovereignty" frame quietly assumes the patient is a consenting adult. Most of the people the schedule actually protects aren't.

So yes - go for it, be anti-mandate if you like. There's a real argument there about where coercion crossed the line during Covid, and on that we may even agree. But please retire "sovereignty over your body" as the philosophical fig leaf, because it is doing none of the work it pretends to. It's a bumper sticker borrowed from one debate (abortion) and welded onto another (infectious disease) - two fields that operate on opposite ethical foundations, because a foetus is not airborne and a measles case is.

So... Pick the real argument. Defend that one. But don't hide behind a sentence that, on inspection, every signatory to it would abandon the moment the man next to them on the bus started coughing tuberculosis.

Who Joseph Ladapo is or what he has done does not change the fact that bodily sovereignty is a fundamental notion, which was not taken from the anti-abortion movement but from the Nuremberg Code, the core principle of which is that an individual has absolute authority over their own body, including decisions regarding health and physical integrity.

The comparison with seatbelts is a gross false equivalence, as seatbelts are external and removable, whereas vaccines are internal and irreversible. Furthermore, seatbelts offer roughly the same degree of protection to everyone, whereas a vaccine will interact differently depending on a person's unique biology and condition at the moment of inoculation.

Body sovereignty is an absolute principle and therefore not open to debate. If I say no then it's no, period.

Edited May 3May 3 by rattlesnake

Just now, rattlesnake said:

Who Joseph Ladapo is or what he has done does not change the fact that bodily sovereignty is a fundamental notion, which was not taken from the anti-abortion movement but from the Nuremberg Code, the core principle of which is that an individual has absolute authority over their own body, including decisions regarding health and physical integrity.

The comparison with seatbelts is a gross false equivalence, as seatbets are external and removable, whereas vaccines are internal and irreversible. Furthermore, seatbelts offer roughly the same degree of protection to everyone, whereas a vaccine will interact differently depending on a person's unique biology and condition at the moment of inoculation.

Body sovereignty is an absolute principle and therefore not open to debate. If I say no then it's no, period.

The Nuremberg Code citation is a misuse. The Code was written to govern Nazi-style experiments on prisoners without consent - not routine, licensed, peer-reviewed medical procedures, offered with a consent form or even emergency public health responses. Conflating "no one may experiment on you" with "no public-health measure may ever apply to you" is a category error, and dressing it in Nuremberg's clothes is surely well below you. If your reading were right, every TB quarantine of the last eighty years would have violated it. None did, because none were experiments.

The seatbelt rebuttal collapses too. Vaccines aren't "irreversible" - the antigen is metabolised within days; the immune response that follows is your own body's. Meanwhile, plenty of medical interventions are internal and irreversible - surgery, transplants, dental work - and we still license them, regulate them, and in specific cases compel them: court-ordered psychiatric meds, emergency transfusions, mandatory TB treatment.

Reversibility is a red herring. The real question is whether individual choice can ever be overridden by collective interest, and it already is, constantly, across domains you accept without protest.

Then the closer: "Bodily sovereignty is absolute and not open to debate. If I say no then it's no, period".

A principle that is "not open to debate" isn't a principle - it's a dogma.

And the absoluteness collapses instantly: forced psychiatric holds, drink-drive blood draws, TB quarantine, court-ordered treatment for children whose parents refuse on religious grounds - all tyranny, on your reading.

You don't actually believe that, which means you don't hold the principle absolutely either. You hold it the way every adult holds principles: contextually, weighed against others. Pretending otherwise is forum theatre.

And "no means no" is borrowed from sexual consent - where it works precisely because the act affects only the parties involved. Infectious disease isn't sex. Lifting the slogan and hitching it onto epidemiology falls apart the second you ask the obvious question: whose body is the disease moving through?

Argue mandates on proportionality and I'm with you.

But "absolute sovereignty, end of discussion" is a slogan with a Nuremberg sticker glued onto distastefully.

Just now, rattlesnake said:

Body sovereignty is an absolute principle and therefore not open to debate. If I say no then it's no, period.

Brilliant - now say it to the newborn in the next ward whose only defence against the disease you're now free to carry is the yes you just refused to give.

Edited May 3May 3 by richard_smith237

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

The Nuremberg Code citation is a misuse. The Code was written to govern Nazi-style experiments on prisoners without consent - not routine, licensed, peer-reviewed medical procedures offered with a consent form. Conflating "no one may experiment on you" with "no public-health measure may ever apply to you" is a category error, and dressing it in Nuremberg's clothes is surely well below you. If your reading were right, every TB quarantine of the last eighty years would have violated it. None did, because none were experiments.

While the Nuremberg Code was originally written for human experimentation, its core concepts have been integrated into modern medical practice and international human rights law regarding all medical interventions.

Interesting reads:

Fifty Years Later: The Significance of the Nuremberg Code

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199711133372006

---

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Article 3

Human dignity and human rights

1. Human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms are to be fully respected.

2. The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society.

Article 6

Consent

1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/universal-declaration-bioethics-and-human-rights

---

I draw your attention to article 3 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights:

The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society

This principle is etched in stone and telling me it isn't kind to grandma or the newborn next door is (while I respect the viewpoint), quite frankly, irrelevant.

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

What are they putting in the shots ?? without googling it, would you even know what an adjuvant is ?

An irritant to start the ball rolling.

Mercury or alumium will do nicely Sir.

Just now, Stiddle Mump said:

7 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

What are they putting in the shots ?? without googling it, would you even know what an adjuvant is ?

An irritant to start the ball rolling.

There is nothing by the name of 'Stiddle Mump' in any vaccine I've ever heard of.

Just now, Stiddle Mump said:

Mercury or alumium will do nicely Sir.

Already covered above... Its why I hardly bother responding to you - nature has the answers - its in my nature to 'mostly' ignore fluktards.

7 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Metals

Aluminium salts (adjuvants) – Found in some flu vaccines, not MMR. They stimulate a stronger immune response. You actually get more aluminium from food and water than from a vaccine.

Thimerosal (ethylmercury) – Only in some multi-dose flu vials (not in MMR). It's a preservative and has been mostly phased out due to public concern, even though studies show it's safe in those tiny amounts.

Just now, rattlesnake said:

While the Nuremberg Code was originally written for human experimentation, its core concepts have been integrated into modern medical practice and international human rights law regarding all medical interventions.

Interesting reads:

Fifty Years Later: The Significance of the Nuremberg Code

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199711133372006

---

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Article 3

Human dignity and human rights

1. Human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms are to be fully respected.

2. The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society.

Article 6

Consent

1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.

https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/universal-declaration-bioethics-and-human-rights

---

I draw your attention to article 3 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights:

The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society

This principle is etched in stone and telling me it isn't kind to grandma or the newborn next door is (while I respect the viewpoint), quite frankly, irrelevant.

Interesting points - the morality of these issues from a public health vs personal freedoms perspective is worthy of further discussion - too late to get into detail and counter that now, but its a debate I can get into - for now I'll leave it with a quote from a famous Vulcan: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

First, the source: Joseph Ladapo is not a neutral authority on this - he is the surgeon general who was caught altering a Florida state vaccine safety analysis to manufacture a risk signal that the underlying data didn't support.

The original draft showed no significant cardiac risk in young men from mRNA vaccines; the published version, after his edits, did. That's not a quibble - that's a public official falsifying public-health data to fit a political position.

Quoting him on bodily sovereignty is like quoting Lance Armstrong on cycling ethics.

If true, there is no excuse for such behavior. But where is the source. If it were true, for sure he would be destroyed by Big Pharma, but it's the first time I hear about him allegedly forging a vaccine safety analysis. So let us know the source so that we can look into it.