Hi Elena, do you see PMC as More a cultural Term, or as a class in the marxist Definition? Because they (Mostly do not own the means of production or relevant capital). The often function as the „agents of capital“ but also depend on a wage or salary. Sorry for the question :)
I pretty much follow the Ehrenreich's and Catherine Liu's definition as "intellectual labourers", mostly referring to academia, media, the NGO complex. I exempt small business owners, and that part of higher income workers that don't produce intellectual content (mostly doctors, lawyers, though they *could* become PMC as we see today). The PMC does not have a political project class of its own, and only attaches itself to the ruling class in order to get a "piece of the cake".
“we heard about the cancellations and attempts at intimidation of virologists, epidemiologists and even the scientific developer of the mRNA-vaccine, Robert Malone, who openly admits that the spike proteins developed by the vaccine in the human body have high cytotoxic characteristics”
Robert Malone is by no means the ‘scientific developer of the mRNA-vaccine’ and the paper that Steve Kirsch put together is misleading at best. As one example the extrapolations and claims being made from the Japanese study are pure conjecture. From the paper referencing the Japanese study:
“Here’s what this means. This vaccine seeks out your daughter’s ovaries and instructs the cells in the ovaries to turn out a very toxic spike protein. It also goes to your child’s brain, heart, and other critical organs.”
First of all the study in question was done in rats not humans and involved 50 ug of modified lipid-mRNA administered intramuscularly. The figures that they put together to demonstrate that the vaccine appears to ‘seek out’ the ovaries intentionally leave out the amount at the injection site as this would dwarf the numbers for all other organs. Kirsch also ignores the far more understandable percent of administered dose which for the ovaries tops out at 0.095 %. This may well be 12.3 ug lipid equivalent as reported in the figure but is a tiny fraction of the administered vaccine. Why they focused in on the otherwise random 12.3 and left off the injection site value (165 at 48 hrs post injection) does not exactly engender trust in their analysis or aims. Here is the same data including the injection site: (unable to include images)
Additionally, they fail to discuss the entire dose given to rats – 50 ug – is actually larger than one human does (30 ug). Humans, that typically weigh far more than an adult rat, received only 60% of the dose examined in this study. To be more precise female wistar ham rats (the ones used in the Japanese study) typically max out at 250 g (0.25 kg) for the rats with ovaries while globally humans average about 62 kg. So while the rats used in this study received 1.66 times the dose that is given to humans they weigh roughly 1/250 that of an average human. For humans the drug is injected into the upper arm in a muscle that for most people is probably not too much smaller than the entire rat used in the study.
The author of this ‘report’ either does not understand what he is discussing or is intentionally trying to mislead his readers. Either way there is absolutely no basis for the fearmongering claims that he makes and it is with good reason that scientists have been ignoring his ‘work’ on this subject.
More germane to this article is the focus on the cytotoxic characteristics of the spike protein. This is not at all the omen that it is made out to be. It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that when we ask cells in our body to make a protein found in a highly contagious virus that we end up with a cytotoxic condition. This simply means that the circumstances are harmful or deadly to the cells. The relatively small number of cells that will receive the mRNA for the spike protein – the vast majority of them located at the injection site – run the risk of injury or death as they produce a viral protein that functions to make it easier for the virus to enter our cells. We are looking to alert our immune system in order for it to learn to identify and respond to spike proteins when they enter our body. The vaccine is a drug and does impact the cells in our body – as is precisely the goal. If it were simply a benign cup of water we wouldn’t be able to receive immunity from covid as a result. The biological claims made in this article are wholly without merit.
Hi Niels, thanks for the extended contribution, it's much appreciated. First of all - Robert Malone and his criticism of the probable harms of the mRNA vaccine is just one of hundreds of examples from different immonologists who have expressed their doubts about both the effectiveness of the vaccine and its concrete effects over the last year. It has also been widely reported in the last few weeks that the vaccine is practically useless against the Delta variant, as the Israel case has shown, and Pfizer has announced today that it recommends not two, but three injections. All of this leads one to doubt the usefulness of the vaccination in toto. But that is all a red herring. To me, the question is not: are the vaccines effective, will they stop the spread of the virus (which they may or may not do), but to see how 'science' - or rather, the way that government institutions define science - is being used to serve political uses. For there is absolutly no rationale that explains why vaccinated people, if vaccination is the way out of the pandemic (which I doubt it is) should keep wearing masks, keep on having to quarantine or isolate when they travel, keep on having to take PCR-tests. The vaccine does not change anything. This is because the vaccine is not a means out of the pandemic, but a means to enforce it, to keep regulations intact: and all the better if big pharma can make a gargantuan profit from it. So no, the vaccination will not stop the virus. And that is the whole point: it has never been about stopping the virus and taking care of the well-being of the population. It is about power and control. The original nasty alpha variant of Covid-19 has been exterminated for over 6 months now. There is no medical emergency with the ensuing variants, a 99.9% recovery rate, practically no fatal cases. The virus has gone from being as dangerous as a flu (flus are dangerous!) to being as dangerous as a common cold. This is also why infections speed up again with every new variant (and we hear about the Lambda variant already in Switzerland), but you have NO NEW HOSPITALISATIONS. Yet, European governments stick to the "incidences rate"/100 000 inhabitants to judge on regulations. But these incidence rates say nothing about health risks. Why do governments stick to the incidence rates and not move to a new variable - hospitalisations? Because it would be inconvenient to have very low hospitalisation numbers in the face of having to justify the strict measures, in the face of a virus as dangerous as a common cold.
Governments will push a policy of lifting/imposing lockdowns and restrictions as they see fit. The fearmongering has been done by government experts who have been lying about the dangers of the variants in the last months, not by people recommending not to take a vaccine that may cause as yet unknown long-term effects in the human body.
I see the greatest danger in the refusal to clearly discern the political uses of the virus, which become more obvious by the day.
I don’t want to get bogged down in the biological specifics regarding the vaccine & covid but I don’t think that there is backing to any of your claims (the vaccine is proving to be very effective against the Delta variant in terms of serious complications and deaths, a third shot is biologically understandable if you want to reduce the likelihood of infection as antibody production naturally declines with time, a reduced ability of the vaccine to wholly stop infection with the delta variant leaving one able to expel active virus in public spaces makes masks a sensible means of reducing transmission when ~1/2 of the population has no interest in vaccinations, the virus was always more dangerous than the flu and remains so for the unvaccinated, the fact that the majority of hospitalizations and the vast majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated is a sign of the vaccine’s effectiveness…).
The more substantive issue is that it’s fundamentally flawed to base your political critiques on the notion that covid is simply as bad as the flu or common cold. Where does this leave you if (when?) a pandemic comes around that has a much higher mortality rate? A proletarian targeted response would be one that gives the virus its due while supporting the working class. Clearly this is not what has been happening but that is to be expected given that globally the working class is extremely weak and disorganized. The bourgeoisie will naturally maximize this – and any other crises – to their own ends. But why react to that by going into the dead end of downplaying the biological impacts of the virus and buying into conspiracy theories about the vaccine? A call for material support for workers, ability to control their working conditions (lots of workers are concerned about getting sick on the job with a novel virus) and to have a life not confined to their houses doesn’t seem like too difficult of a path to create. You can be against the repressive lockdowns while supporting the distribution of masks and vaccines to the people. We are in dire need of a strong and organized working class but that won’t be found by tailing the rightwing covid deniers…
I respectfully disagree. You cannot separate the authoritarian, completely ill-defined, and inappropriate measures against the virus from the struggle for freedom, which is a struggle for the working class. Believing that the ruling class has the best interests of the population in mind is mind-bogglingly naive. As for my estimation of the objective “danger” the virus poses, I rely on numbers and especially numbers that don’t add up, like the dissonance between infections and hospitalizations. Numbers have become a means of control. There is no coherent and informed position that is both in the interests of the working class and simultaneously buying into the propaganda of state authorities. State authoritarian measures are never in the interests of workers.
Love the blog, though I'm following up on the "Red Pill" vaccine stuff and am unconvinced. It appears the term "cytotoxic" is wielded to scare people, without specifying what the actual side-effects will be.
There is no evidence that Robert Malone single-handedly invented these vaccines. At best it appears he is one of many who contributed to their development.
Since I don't understand the nuances of climate science, I listen to what the scientists have to say. 97% agree that human-caused climate change is happening and will be catastrophic for our species soon. 3% of climate scientists are skeptics of climate change, and are funded by fossil fuel companies to spout misinformation. I'll trust what the majority of experts have to say until there is evidence that the skeptics are right: that the 97% are indeed being bribed by the big bad communist governments to lie about climate change.
I approach vaccine-science in the same way. The consensus among immunologists and doctors (who know better than you and I on this stuff) is that vaccines are safe and effective. Side-effects do occur but are extremely rare, and are miniscule occurrences relative to the effects of Covid-19, a disease everyone would probably get unprotected without lockdowns and vaccines. Therefore the point that vaccines are worth getting for they are safe and effective still stands strong.
Do I agree with lockdowns and coerced vaccines? Fuck no! Do I trust big pharma? No way. Do I think big pharma will act as corporations do and do anything to protect its PR to sell its product, including bribing scientists and governments? Probably. But as it stands I have found zero evidence of big pharma pulling the strings of medical academia and bribing editors of Nature, and therefore I'll just have to trust the overwhelming consensus on them being safe and effective.
I am sympathetic to the idea of the mainstream vaccine consensus to be a hoax, just yet to see a convincing case in its favor.
Thanks for writing Elena. Really great.
Thanks! - listening to RSR on CRT while driving back from France as we speak…make my whole family listen to it;)
Yep. Cogent analysis. And I share the anger for sure. We've got to stop this shit.
Hi Elena, do you see PMC as More a cultural Term, or as a class in the marxist Definition? Because they (Mostly do not own the means of production or relevant capital). The often function as the „agents of capital“ but also depend on a wage or salary. Sorry for the question :)
I pretty much follow the Ehrenreich's and Catherine Liu's definition as "intellectual labourers", mostly referring to academia, media, the NGO complex. I exempt small business owners, and that part of higher income workers that don't produce intellectual content (mostly doctors, lawyers, though they *could* become PMC as we see today). The PMC does not have a political project class of its own, and only attaches itself to the ruling class in order to get a "piece of the cake".
wow! yes! thank you!
I've been looking for an article like this for a whole year. Thank god I'm not alone.
You’re definitely not alone!
Damn this one hit hard, also love that you bring up Taibbi, he’s one of the only brave voices left in this media sphere. Dope piece as usual btw
Thanks!
“we heard about the cancellations and attempts at intimidation of virologists, epidemiologists and even the scientific developer of the mRNA-vaccine, Robert Malone, who openly admits that the spike proteins developed by the vaccine in the human body have high cytotoxic characteristics”
Robert Malone is by no means the ‘scientific developer of the mRNA-vaccine’ and the paper that Steve Kirsch put together is misleading at best. As one example the extrapolations and claims being made from the Japanese study are pure conjecture. From the paper referencing the Japanese study:
“Here’s what this means. This vaccine seeks out your daughter’s ovaries and instructs the cells in the ovaries to turn out a very toxic spike protein. It also goes to your child’s brain, heart, and other critical organs.”
First of all the study in question was done in rats not humans and involved 50 ug of modified lipid-mRNA administered intramuscularly. The figures that they put together to demonstrate that the vaccine appears to ‘seek out’ the ovaries intentionally leave out the amount at the injection site as this would dwarf the numbers for all other organs. Kirsch also ignores the far more understandable percent of administered dose which for the ovaries tops out at 0.095 %. This may well be 12.3 ug lipid equivalent as reported in the figure but is a tiny fraction of the administered vaccine. Why they focused in on the otherwise random 12.3 and left off the injection site value (165 at 48 hrs post injection) does not exactly engender trust in their analysis or aims. Here is the same data including the injection site: (unable to include images)
Additionally, they fail to discuss the entire dose given to rats – 50 ug – is actually larger than one human does (30 ug). Humans, that typically weigh far more than an adult rat, received only 60% of the dose examined in this study. To be more precise female wistar ham rats (the ones used in the Japanese study) typically max out at 250 g (0.25 kg) for the rats with ovaries while globally humans average about 62 kg. So while the rats used in this study received 1.66 times the dose that is given to humans they weigh roughly 1/250 that of an average human. For humans the drug is injected into the upper arm in a muscle that for most people is probably not too much smaller than the entire rat used in the study.
The author of this ‘report’ either does not understand what he is discussing or is intentionally trying to mislead his readers. Either way there is absolutely no basis for the fearmongering claims that he makes and it is with good reason that scientists have been ignoring his ‘work’ on this subject.
More germane to this article is the focus on the cytotoxic characteristics of the spike protein. This is not at all the omen that it is made out to be. It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that when we ask cells in our body to make a protein found in a highly contagious virus that we end up with a cytotoxic condition. This simply means that the circumstances are harmful or deadly to the cells. The relatively small number of cells that will receive the mRNA for the spike protein – the vast majority of them located at the injection site – run the risk of injury or death as they produce a viral protein that functions to make it easier for the virus to enter our cells. We are looking to alert our immune system in order for it to learn to identify and respond to spike proteins when they enter our body. The vaccine is a drug and does impact the cells in our body – as is precisely the goal. If it were simply a benign cup of water we wouldn’t be able to receive immunity from covid as a result. The biological claims made in this article are wholly without merit.
Hi Niels, thanks for the extended contribution, it's much appreciated. First of all - Robert Malone and his criticism of the probable harms of the mRNA vaccine is just one of hundreds of examples from different immonologists who have expressed their doubts about both the effectiveness of the vaccine and its concrete effects over the last year. It has also been widely reported in the last few weeks that the vaccine is practically useless against the Delta variant, as the Israel case has shown, and Pfizer has announced today that it recommends not two, but three injections. All of this leads one to doubt the usefulness of the vaccination in toto. But that is all a red herring. To me, the question is not: are the vaccines effective, will they stop the spread of the virus (which they may or may not do), but to see how 'science' - or rather, the way that government institutions define science - is being used to serve political uses. For there is absolutly no rationale that explains why vaccinated people, if vaccination is the way out of the pandemic (which I doubt it is) should keep wearing masks, keep on having to quarantine or isolate when they travel, keep on having to take PCR-tests. The vaccine does not change anything. This is because the vaccine is not a means out of the pandemic, but a means to enforce it, to keep regulations intact: and all the better if big pharma can make a gargantuan profit from it. So no, the vaccination will not stop the virus. And that is the whole point: it has never been about stopping the virus and taking care of the well-being of the population. It is about power and control. The original nasty alpha variant of Covid-19 has been exterminated for over 6 months now. There is no medical emergency with the ensuing variants, a 99.9% recovery rate, practically no fatal cases. The virus has gone from being as dangerous as a flu (flus are dangerous!) to being as dangerous as a common cold. This is also why infections speed up again with every new variant (and we hear about the Lambda variant already in Switzerland), but you have NO NEW HOSPITALISATIONS. Yet, European governments stick to the "incidences rate"/100 000 inhabitants to judge on regulations. But these incidence rates say nothing about health risks. Why do governments stick to the incidence rates and not move to a new variable - hospitalisations? Because it would be inconvenient to have very low hospitalisation numbers in the face of having to justify the strict measures, in the face of a virus as dangerous as a common cold.
Governments will push a policy of lifting/imposing lockdowns and restrictions as they see fit. The fearmongering has been done by government experts who have been lying about the dangers of the variants in the last months, not by people recommending not to take a vaccine that may cause as yet unknown long-term effects in the human body.
I see the greatest danger in the refusal to clearly discern the political uses of the virus, which become more obvious by the day.
I don’t want to get bogged down in the biological specifics regarding the vaccine & covid but I don’t think that there is backing to any of your claims (the vaccine is proving to be very effective against the Delta variant in terms of serious complications and deaths, a third shot is biologically understandable if you want to reduce the likelihood of infection as antibody production naturally declines with time, a reduced ability of the vaccine to wholly stop infection with the delta variant leaving one able to expel active virus in public spaces makes masks a sensible means of reducing transmission when ~1/2 of the population has no interest in vaccinations, the virus was always more dangerous than the flu and remains so for the unvaccinated, the fact that the majority of hospitalizations and the vast majority of deaths are among the unvaccinated is a sign of the vaccine’s effectiveness…).
The more substantive issue is that it’s fundamentally flawed to base your political critiques on the notion that covid is simply as bad as the flu or common cold. Where does this leave you if (when?) a pandemic comes around that has a much higher mortality rate? A proletarian targeted response would be one that gives the virus its due while supporting the working class. Clearly this is not what has been happening but that is to be expected given that globally the working class is extremely weak and disorganized. The bourgeoisie will naturally maximize this – and any other crises – to their own ends. But why react to that by going into the dead end of downplaying the biological impacts of the virus and buying into conspiracy theories about the vaccine? A call for material support for workers, ability to control their working conditions (lots of workers are concerned about getting sick on the job with a novel virus) and to have a life not confined to their houses doesn’t seem like too difficult of a path to create. You can be against the repressive lockdowns while supporting the distribution of masks and vaccines to the people. We are in dire need of a strong and organized working class but that won’t be found by tailing the rightwing covid deniers…
I respectfully disagree. You cannot separate the authoritarian, completely ill-defined, and inappropriate measures against the virus from the struggle for freedom, which is a struggle for the working class. Believing that the ruling class has the best interests of the population in mind is mind-bogglingly naive. As for my estimation of the objective “danger” the virus poses, I rely on numbers and especially numbers that don’t add up, like the dissonance between infections and hospitalizations. Numbers have become a means of control. There is no coherent and informed position that is both in the interests of the working class and simultaneously buying into the propaganda of state authorities. State authoritarian measures are never in the interests of workers.
Love the blog, though I'm following up on the "Red Pill" vaccine stuff and am unconvinced. It appears the term "cytotoxic" is wielded to scare people, without specifying what the actual side-effects will be.
There is no evidence that Robert Malone single-handedly invented these vaccines. At best it appears he is one of many who contributed to their development.
Since I don't understand the nuances of climate science, I listen to what the scientists have to say. 97% agree that human-caused climate change is happening and will be catastrophic for our species soon. 3% of climate scientists are skeptics of climate change, and are funded by fossil fuel companies to spout misinformation. I'll trust what the majority of experts have to say until there is evidence that the skeptics are right: that the 97% are indeed being bribed by the big bad communist governments to lie about climate change.
I approach vaccine-science in the same way. The consensus among immunologists and doctors (who know better than you and I on this stuff) is that vaccines are safe and effective. Side-effects do occur but are extremely rare, and are miniscule occurrences relative to the effects of Covid-19, a disease everyone would probably get unprotected without lockdowns and vaccines. Therefore the point that vaccines are worth getting for they are safe and effective still stands strong.
Do I agree with lockdowns and coerced vaccines? Fuck no! Do I trust big pharma? No way. Do I think big pharma will act as corporations do and do anything to protect its PR to sell its product, including bribing scientists and governments? Probably. But as it stands I have found zero evidence of big pharma pulling the strings of medical academia and bribing editors of Nature, and therefore I'll just have to trust the overwhelming consensus on them being safe and effective.
I am sympathetic to the idea of the mainstream vaccine consensus to be a hoax, just yet to see a convincing case in its favor.