By Letter to the Editor on December 9, 2020.
How long is the UCP going to insist that we will survive this pandemic with the current rules? Jason Kenney, please get off your high horse and break the spread of the virus! Shut down the bars and other social venues. Now! The vaccine will not help till next year. I am angry!
Gerhardt Hartman
Coaldale
Request granted. Now if we can get anti-mask ‘freedom’ morons to get with the program, we might have a chance!
Too little too late for many of our senior friends. He has created the worse mess in Canada and has destroyed Christmas for a lot of seniors.
So you obviously prefer government control over personal responsibility and you are angry because the vaccine won’t be till next year. So you are mad at both the government and the private sector. Sucks to be you. Funny, we have railed for years about big pharma, the opioid crisis, profits before lives and other hate big business mantras, and here we are, trusting our lives to the very same outfits whom only six months ago were the punching bags. It took 20 years to develop a polio vaccine and this miracle vaccine has shown up in less than 6 months, and you trust them.
Educate yourself ‘buckwheat’ (stupid user name by the way) respiratory vaccines have been under development for years. That a worldwide pandemic accelerated research is a no brainer. But no, let’s not trust that medical science advances. And at the moment yes, we need the government to jump in because a few denying morons like yourself continue spread garbage and f*** it up.
Yawn
Sucks to be you.
how is one to trust big pharm on this? they knowingly poisoned, addicted, and ruined a wide swath of lives, from all walks of life, with their synthetic “opioids”, that came with an addiction rate way way above that of opium, and again, they knew the extent of the fall out for ages before the crap hit the fan. barely a tip of the iceberg, big pharm has been poisoning and recalling product for decades…the bottom line is all that matters. health canada – complicit, or without a clue. govt, in the pockets of big pharm, and big corp.
sorry, i am not brave enough to take a chance on this latest cynical game. i will prefer to take my chance with covid. i wear a mask, keep my distance as best as i can, but feel it is bs that people can shop big stores, but virtually everything else becomes off limits.
things that get my sensors going: 1) people are allowed to fly wherever, for whatever reason, and then return to canada. people are allowed to fly into canada…voluntary/mandatory quarantine…what a joke. how is that enforced? it isn’t. 2) masks…still no basis as to what is a reasonable mask; anything will, do lol…are you kidding? 3) no enforcement of masks, as people are without them whenever they choose in stores, too many people…maybe theses are the same dolts that leave their shopping carts wherever they wish in the parking lots? 4) markets at record highs! real estate seems to be abuzz…as if; what a pandemic; 5) not one, not two, but at least 3 “free world” developed vaccines for covid, plus the sputnik v in russia, and at least another in china…and it must be a miracle of god that they have all come to fruition at the about the same time! praise be!!
Mostly agree with you on this biff, there are too many exceptions, too many opposing opinions. Will do like you, look after myself. I have been attempting to post a link regarding possible side effects to the vaccines, however have not been able to get it on here. Must have something attached to it that gets it bumped. So far the FDA, AMA, and CDC have come up with 22. Some serious. Food for thought.
GOOGLE life site news
the following is copied from harper’s magazine, 2/28/2006. the article is titled, “viral marketing” (the selling of the flu vaccine). it does not copy very well as the references to power point notes do not show as they do in the article. i say, history repeats, because we are suckers….we are made scared, insecure, too hopeful of govt and big corp, and suspicious of too many of the wrong things. good luck, sheeple.
This “recipe,” outlined in a PowerPoint presentation, is the U.S.
government’s public-relations strategy for selling Americans on flu
shots. At the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, Glen,
Nowak of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
used these slides to explain how certain messages generate buzz and
drive demand. Indeed, the influenza virus has spawned a national
industry of late, with President Bush himself asking Congress
to fund a $7.1 billion flu “preparedness plan.” But in the CDC’s
aggressive marketing of the shots, the agency has employed dubious
statistics and questionable methods, leaving Americans less
equipped than ever to gauge the threat rationally. The recipe, as
Nowak revealed, relies on creating “concern, anxiety, and worry”-
its main ingredient, in other words, is fear.
Government officials and health experts following the recipe are
instructed here to “predict dire outcomes.” From a 2002 focus
group, the CDC determined that death statistics in its fluprevention
literature were “eye catching and motivating.” Participants
in the study believed “20,000 deaths was compelling,
frightening” and “should be part of the headline.” In 2003, the
agency began announcing that the number of Americans killed
each year by flu had surged to 36,000, an 80 percent increase that
is now widely reported. Among all flu-prevention messages in the
news during the week of9j21/03, according to Nowak’s presentation,
“Flu kills 36,000 per year” appeared second most often, just
behind “Doctors recommend/urge flu shot.” But the 36,000 figure
is actually a measure of “flu-associated” fatalities-almost exclusively
among the elderly and infirm, whose deaths from other illnesses
the CDC thinks might not have occurred without the flu.
Records show that only 1,400 deaths a year are attributed to flu.
Another way to “motivate behavior,” the recipe notes here, is to
describe a flu season as “very severe,” “more severe” than previous
years, and “deadly”-all terms that had been used to frame the
2003~2004 threat. Yet that winter’s flu was later ruled typical and
“medium in terms of overall impact.” The CDC’s mortality figures,
also presented as fact, are similarly misleading. Although many
health experts contend that flu is a significant cause of wintertime
mortality, other scientists argue that its role in these deaths
is minor. This uncertainty can be seen on the government’s list of
the leading causes of death: at seventh place, with 65,681 annual
fatalities, is “influenza and pneumonia.” When separated out, however,
flu is credited with fewer than 750 of the total. The CDC
claims that more virulent flu strains and a growing elderly population
led to the recent sharp climb in flu-associated deaths, but this
too is.suspect. These factors did not cause a corresponding rise in
recorded flu deaths, which actually fell 30 percent.
54 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / M’\RCH 2006
ANN 0 T.
VIRALNIA
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last.Of
A T o N
mTING
accine, by Peter Doshi
The CDC believes anything that encourages more people to get flu
shots-even, as suggested in this step, spreading the notion that all of
us could be in serious danger-will result in fewer deaths. But the efficacy
of the flu vaccine ‘is itself uncertain. Each year hundreds of clinically
indistinguishable illnesses are diagnosed as flu, yet COC records show
that the influenza virus causes only an eighth of these. It turns out that
even the best shots have no effect on at least half the illnesses thought
to be flu. Several recent studies have also called into question the fundamental
justification for expanded vaccination. After looking at more
than three decades of data, scientists at the National Institutes of Health
last year concluded, “We could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage
after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group.” And
because flu shots contain some level of toxic mercury, there is concern
that for some the vaccine might do more harm than goocl.
Iy
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Vae . e Intereststers Influenza
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influenza . e.g., Ihnn health ffl .
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people-: helping foster the J ess,and/or affecting lois f at
susceptible to a bad case rceptJon thatrnany people 0
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Here the recipe emphasizes that the public must be made to
grasp the “seriousness of the illness.” When 50 million doses of
vaccine suddenly became unavailable in 2004, Americans understandably
panicked. Health centers were inundated with worried
flu-shot seekers, price gouging was reported, and medical experts
predicted a public-health “catastrophe.” The CDC, with its
knowledge of P.R., downgraded its scary portrayal of the flu to “an
annoying illness” from which most people “will recover just fine.”
It stressed the protective benefits of regular hand washing. And
once the alleged crisis abated, the agency returned to its strident
communications plan. By the next fall, the CDC director was publicly
stating that the flu is not “a benign illness. Many people don’t
appreciate that it can result in hospitalization, various complications.
For about 36,000 people every year, death.”
Demand for vaccine is up this year, a trend the CDC attributes in part
to its repeated warnings about pandemic influenza. Such accounts of
a looming plague are themselves perennial. In 1976 US. officials initiated
a plan to vaccinate “every man, woman, and child” for an imminent
pandemic of “swine flu.” Yet a year later, swine flu had killed
at most one person, whereas the vaccine is believed to have caused a
debilitating illness. Alan Hinman” former director of the US. immunization
program, drew what is exactly the wrong lesson from this fiasco:
“that expansion to pandemic-level vaccination of the entire population
would be much easier if there was an effective, stable, ongoing
[flu] vaccination program.” In this season’s pandemic scare, Congress
has responded to Bush’s call by passing a bill that allows the government
to confer blanket immunity from liability on makers of vaccines.
As the wages of fear accrue to pharmaceutical companies, Americans
are made into a captive market for vaccines of questionable worth. •
Peter Doshi is a graduate student
at Harvard University.
ANNOTATION 55
ok, so being unsure as to whether copyright permits posting the article as above, i have since attempted to remove it, and repost using some essential quotes and references. but this site does not allow me to delete the post, nor even edit it…what is going on, herald. this forum has become more bush league over the years, not better.
lololol minuses because you support the herald not allowing editing or deletion of posts? this forum is lame, and yet, a perfect example of society. minus minus hahaha
just the minuses again – nothing to say….what do you not like in the harper’s article? do not like truth that upsets one’s glazed over view of reality?
despite history being a constant with regard to absolute power residing not with the stupid masses, but with a small core of power and wealth brokers, here we are in the so-called age of information…and what do we find? powerless masses made insecure and frightened and suspicious by the owners of mass media and all things that constitute power and real wealth in our society. and, utter failure to be suspicious of the very things that require investigation and suspicion. govt and big corp must be transparent, but they are increasingly opaque; people must be free within the context of responsibility to each other’s safety and freedom, but instead, we have been rendered increasingly transparent. it is backward, folks. whsitleblowers are bad; hushed people are good.
the bigger joke is that there are the simple minded that see a more egalitarian society as totalitarian. and yet, here we are, under a corrupt and unsustainable economic system, ever more under the watchful eye of big brother and big corp, fearful mo f whatever the govt and big corp controlled media tell us to fear, and we think our freedom is not being whitewashed.
good luck, folks. gas prices about to explode…to pay for the latest covid expenses, most of which is lining big corp pockets. the cost of living is going to jump rather largely as a consequence. but fear and one’s inability to face discomfort, and instead buy into a calming narrative that is bs, will keep the masses more passive than if there were military on every corner.
hoping i have got it mostly wrong, but history says no, and so do the facts of the day.
good health and luck to all. minus me to the hilt – my signing off gift.
Maybe someone will give you a keyboard with ‘caps’ button on it for Christmas?