The perfect writeup of how I feel and see this "Protest" - thank you for some clarity but sadly those who really need to read it wont... they are too far gone...
Thanks Christopher. Australia has had a similar experience with its copycat truck convoy “freedom” followers, and the Wellington mixed bag of protestors continues to get a lot of support from Australian mates. As if there’s anything new about these latest antivax, anti-mandate demands. Boring, as you say, and the vast majority of people in Aotearoa have had a gutsful.
I don't know if you have a Jamaican friend or not, but your contention that
"Jamaica is currently being inundated with thousands of covid cases, hospital ICUs are at capacity" is measurably false.
I guess the various other intolerant people who read your post just take what you say for fact and don't check anything?
Your statement "A mouse infected, eaten by a cat who then sleeps on your pillow is a far more likely way of getting infected than going to the supermarket in your mask" is ridiculous. Please provide data on a person contracting covid from an animal that became infected by eating another animal? I can't think of a more preposterous statement.
You talk about tolerance while stating, seemingly without irony "The director of Wellington hospital has told the protestors that they will not be welcome at the hospital should they fall ill" Omicron is indeed not comparable to the flu. It is comparable to the common cold. The ten year mortality rate for flu is around 0.12% in the US (CDC figures). The covid mortality rate is estimated at about 0.15% as of mid last year https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ without the effect of vaccines. Omicron is certainly much lower.
The vaccine may explain some of that but that doesn't really hold up when you look at South Africa. Many more cases of Omicron, less than 30% vaccination rate, far less hospitalisation and death then ever before.
Hospitalisation rates in NZ have never gone over 10%. By definition the vaccine can only be effective for 10% of the population who would end up hospitalised. We know who they are:
70 year olds and over (average age of death in the UK was 82.4 vs all cause death of 81.7).
Vaccinate all of them, you'll get about as much protection form these vaccines as there is to get.
Anyone who doesn't feel safe is welcome to get it as well.
Vaccine mandates and passes have no logical basis they are completely unjust and an obvious governmental over reach in 20 months of obvious overreach.
Covid is a disease of ill health and old age. Old people can't help being old but I have heard nothing from the experts about the serious obesity problem in this country. Grant Robertson is clearly obese. Hearing a lecture from him on how I should stay healthy is a joke. If all the obese people lost weight (they've had nearly two years to do it) we would have far more impact on covid and general health than the vaccine does.
But to the intolerants like you of this country it's fine for people to eat themselves to death and burden the health system and increase all of our risks of getting covid (as the obese are more susceptible to contracting it and spreading it as well) but not for people to decide whether to take a vaccine or not.
And I don't care if they eat themselves to death it's up to them. It's you intolerants who should be in their faces. Otherwise you are just hypocrites.
None of this is conspiracy this is all from published peer reviewed papers. All of these are things that we have either been told are impossible (altering DNA) or highly unlikely largely by utterly clueless "experts" like Siouxsie Wiles.
The reason none of the protestors trust the media and nor do I, is because the media and their pet experts have been repeatedly wrong throughout this, the largest over reaction in human history. When they haven't been outright lying through their teeth.
So the link you provided is for hospitals in Jamaica, NEW YORK CITY, USA... not sure about your geography skills but those are in two different places man. Geezus, wake up at the back of the class already?!
I am uncertain of whether seriously ill patients are in ICU in Jamaica or only the critically ill. I will be generous to your argument and count them both as ICU, a generosity you seem unwilling to extend to the protestors, or it seems, to anyone who questions our governments narrative.
So at the time you wrote "currently hospital ICUs are at capacity" their ICUs were at 60%.
You are connected to FACT correct? At least I came here via the FACT facebook page.
Isn't FACT against misinformation? I absolutely made a mistake but it turns out my mistake didn't matter, because still everything you said about the situation in Jamaica was false and yet you use it as a critical argument in your piece to put down people you don't agree with.
Incidentally if you are associated with FACT in some way you might want to update your website about the whole "the vaccine definitely can't change your DNA thing" because it seems likely it can.
And this is where the nuance comes in that is missing from your writing and the actions of our government and the "experts" like Helen Petousis-Harris and Wiles and the rest of the panic crew. When Petousis was asked:
Can mRNA vaccines alter your DNA?
she answered
No. The mRNA in the vaccine cannot enter the cell nucleus where your DNA is, neither could it integrate it nor alter it in any way.
The true answer is there is a very real mechanism by which it may be happening.
But here is where nuance is important. Because I don't think it matters much if it does. It happens in a covid infection and it doesn't seem to give everyone who gets covid cancer so why would it be more concerning in the vaccine? I don't think it is. As it stands it is not a reason not to get the vaccine as far as I am concerned.
But the arrogance and hubris of people like her is what people like me and the protestors really have a problem with. We don't trust them. Because they talk with a certainty, no one has enough understanding to have. They act as if "the science" is a location we have already arrived at, not a process moving in a direction. And they are wrong. Again and again and again.
Her answer should be, "as far as I know it's not possible but we haven't tried this in two or three billion people before so we don't really know what will happen. But ultimately we believe the vaccine is better then getting covid.
I would disagree with her, but I would be totally fine with that statement. It's honest, she's a smart person, we can agree to disagree.
Instead we get certainty she does not have. She either knows that and she is lying for the cause or she is very arrogant and actually believes she can talk so carelessly in absolutes.
You have misinformed people in this writing. You have attempted to make a moral argument based on completely false information.
Are you going to write a correction for the readers that you have misled?
Glad you got all that off your chest Tim. There is a certain moral relativism I can read into what you wrote. Not sure if it's deliberate but it's pretty obvious. You think you're smart and have it all figured out don't you? Man you're a total cliché, my email inbox is filled with guys like you. There's no point in arguing because the cognitive dissonance is so strong you can't smell your own bullshit. In the month of January in Jamaica alone, 179 people died of covid related complications that is a fair bit of their near 3k total fatalities so far. The fact you felt the need to erroneously pick through this stat - which has absolutely nothing to do with my argument, speaks volumes. And then you switch it to endogenous reverse transcriptase, pretending like you know what that is. It's laughable man. Even in your fictional scenario with the presence of reverse transcriptase, and the information in the spike mRNA reverse transcribed, the nucleotides would be way too large to get through the nuclear membrane AND then be incorporated into the chromosomes. You don't really understand how DNA works do you? How it's intricately wrapped his tones, making it near inaccessible unless the cell is replicating.
Anyway, learn to be more open minded and think less of yourself, especially your intellectual capabilities. Because people that think they are smarter than they actually are, are boring. And I don't engage with boring people. Please refrain from writing on here unless it's something constructive.. this is not a space for you to air out all your frustrations. I'm not a therapist.
The perfect writeup of how I feel and see this "Protest" - thank you for some clarity but sadly those who really need to read it wont... they are too far gone...
"A sad, hopeless, spoilt and entitled people." Tautoko.
Thanks Christopher. Australia has had a similar experience with its copycat truck convoy “freedom” followers, and the Wellington mixed bag of protestors continues to get a lot of support from Australian mates. As if there’s anything new about these latest antivax, anti-mandate demands. Boring, as you say, and the vast majority of people in Aotearoa have had a gutsful.
Thanks. Sensible and calm. Appreciate your writing
It's difficult to know where to begin.
At the time you wrote this (21/02) Jamaica had 55 confirmed covid cases.
That's about as low as it's been in the last year.
They had 3 deaths and the 7 day average was 5 deaths. That's around midway for their deaths from covid.
On average 61 people a day die in Jamaica so covid caused just 5% of deaths that day.
In the last 6 months their ICU capacity has never been above 60% (https://data.rgj.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity/facility/jamaica-hospital-medical-center/330014/)
I don't know if you have a Jamaican friend or not, but your contention that
"Jamaica is currently being inundated with thousands of covid cases, hospital ICUs are at capacity" is measurably false.
I guess the various other intolerant people who read your post just take what you say for fact and don't check anything?
Your statement "A mouse infected, eaten by a cat who then sleeps on your pillow is a far more likely way of getting infected than going to the supermarket in your mask" is ridiculous. Please provide data on a person contracting covid from an animal that became infected by eating another animal? I can't think of a more preposterous statement.
You talk about tolerance while stating, seemingly without irony "The director of Wellington hospital has told the protestors that they will not be welcome at the hospital should they fall ill" Omicron is indeed not comparable to the flu. It is comparable to the common cold. The ten year mortality rate for flu is around 0.12% in the US (CDC figures). The covid mortality rate is estimated at about 0.15% as of mid last year https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ without the effect of vaccines. Omicron is certainly much lower.
The vaccine may explain some of that but that doesn't really hold up when you look at South Africa. Many more cases of Omicron, less than 30% vaccination rate, far less hospitalisation and death then ever before.
Most of the protestors are not anti vaccination, neither am I. But this vaccine is possibly the worst in history, it does nothing to reduce spread and we knew that with delta (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7) .
Hospitalisation rates in NZ have never gone over 10%. By definition the vaccine can only be effective for 10% of the population who would end up hospitalised. We know who they are:
Overweight or obese, 78% of hospitalisations in the US (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html)
Comorbidities, around 90% have at least one (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34449622/)
70 year olds and over (average age of death in the UK was 82.4 vs all cause death of 81.7).
Vaccinate all of them, you'll get about as much protection form these vaccines as there is to get.
Anyone who doesn't feel safe is welcome to get it as well.
Vaccine mandates and passes have no logical basis they are completely unjust and an obvious governmental over reach in 20 months of obvious overreach.
Covid is a disease of ill health and old age. Old people can't help being old but I have heard nothing from the experts about the serious obesity problem in this country. Grant Robertson is clearly obese. Hearing a lecture from him on how I should stay healthy is a joke. If all the obese people lost weight (they've had nearly two years to do it) we would have far more impact on covid and general health than the vaccine does.
But to the intolerants like you of this country it's fine for people to eat themselves to death and burden the health system and increase all of our risks of getting covid (as the obese are more susceptible to contracting it and spreading it as well) but not for people to decide whether to take a vaccine or not.
And I don't care if they eat themselves to death it's up to them. It's you intolerants who should be in their faces. Otherwise you are just hypocrites.
I understand the technology fine as do most of the protestors. It is untested in the long term, certainly rushed as evidenced by the whistle blower in the BMJ (https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635), increases myocarditis above what covid causes in males under 40 (https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/uk-now-reports-myocarditis-stratified?utm_source=url), and there is a very real mechanism for it to alter your DNA through similar mechanisms to how covid 19 does https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2105968118.
None of this is conspiracy this is all from published peer reviewed papers. All of these are things that we have either been told are impossible (altering DNA) or highly unlikely largely by utterly clueless "experts" like Siouxsie Wiles.
The reason none of the protestors trust the media and nor do I, is because the media and their pet experts have been repeatedly wrong throughout this, the largest over reaction in human history. When they haven't been outright lying through their teeth.
So the link you provided is for hospitals in Jamaica, NEW YORK CITY, USA... not sure about your geography skills but those are in two different places man. Geezus, wake up at the back of the class already?!
Fair cop. Apologies for that let me correct my mistake.
On the date you wrote your article 6 patients were "critically ill" and 18 seriously ill https://www.moh.gov.jm/updates/coronavirus/
Jamaica had 40 ICU beds as at August 12 2021: https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/covid-19-putting_228584
According to the World Bank, as of 2017 Jamaica had about 5092 hospital beds in total:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.BEDS.ZS?locations=JM
I am uncertain of whether seriously ill patients are in ICU in Jamaica or only the critically ill. I will be generous to your argument and count them both as ICU, a generosity you seem unwilling to extend to the protestors, or it seems, to anyone who questions our governments narrative.
So at the time you wrote "currently hospital ICUs are at capacity" their ICUs were at 60%.
You are connected to FACT correct? At least I came here via the FACT facebook page.
Isn't FACT against misinformation? I absolutely made a mistake but it turns out my mistake didn't matter, because still everything you said about the situation in Jamaica was false and yet you use it as a critical argument in your piece to put down people you don't agree with.
Incidentally if you are associated with FACT in some way you might want to update your website about the whole "the vaccine definitely can't change your DNA thing" because it seems likely it can.
Covid already does that:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2105968118
And there are endogenous reverse transcriptases that have pretty powerful action and would be good candidate for mediating these processes
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1771
There is a review here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34087261/
And this is where the nuance comes in that is missing from your writing and the actions of our government and the "experts" like Helen Petousis-Harris and Wiles and the rest of the panic crew. When Petousis was asked:
Can mRNA vaccines alter your DNA?
she answered
No. The mRNA in the vaccine cannot enter the cell nucleus where your DNA is, neither could it integrate it nor alter it in any way.
The true answer is there is a very real mechanism by which it may be happening.
But here is where nuance is important. Because I don't think it matters much if it does. It happens in a covid infection and it doesn't seem to give everyone who gets covid cancer so why would it be more concerning in the vaccine? I don't think it is. As it stands it is not a reason not to get the vaccine as far as I am concerned.
But the arrogance and hubris of people like her is what people like me and the protestors really have a problem with. We don't trust them. Because they talk with a certainty, no one has enough understanding to have. They act as if "the science" is a location we have already arrived at, not a process moving in a direction. And they are wrong. Again and again and again.
Her answer should be, "as far as I know it's not possible but we haven't tried this in two or three billion people before so we don't really know what will happen. But ultimately we believe the vaccine is better then getting covid.
I would disagree with her, but I would be totally fine with that statement. It's honest, she's a smart person, we can agree to disagree.
Instead we get certainty she does not have. She either knows that and she is lying for the cause or she is very arrogant and actually believes she can talk so carelessly in absolutes.
You have misinformed people in this writing. You have attempted to make a moral argument based on completely false information.
Are you going to write a correction for the readers that you have misled?
Glad you got all that off your chest Tim. There is a certain moral relativism I can read into what you wrote. Not sure if it's deliberate but it's pretty obvious. You think you're smart and have it all figured out don't you? Man you're a total cliché, my email inbox is filled with guys like you. There's no point in arguing because the cognitive dissonance is so strong you can't smell your own bullshit. In the month of January in Jamaica alone, 179 people died of covid related complications that is a fair bit of their near 3k total fatalities so far. The fact you felt the need to erroneously pick through this stat - which has absolutely nothing to do with my argument, speaks volumes. And then you switch it to endogenous reverse transcriptase, pretending like you know what that is. It's laughable man. Even in your fictional scenario with the presence of reverse transcriptase, and the information in the spike mRNA reverse transcribed, the nucleotides would be way too large to get through the nuclear membrane AND then be incorporated into the chromosomes. You don't really understand how DNA works do you? How it's intricately wrapped his tones, making it near inaccessible unless the cell is replicating.
Anyway, learn to be more open minded and think less of yourself, especially your intellectual capabilities. Because people that think they are smarter than they actually are, are boring. And I don't engage with boring people. Please refrain from writing on here unless it's something constructive.. this is not a space for you to air out all your frustrations. I'm not a therapist.
You have no clue what you are writing about.