NewsNation hosted a Town Hall meeting with RFK Jr. this week. Moderator Elizabeth Vargas and Family Medicine Dr. Tariq Butt demonstrated how little they knew about vaccine safety.
I listened to the whole thing, I still can’t believe how between the moderator and this doctor they don’t get what he’s saying. He’s asking for SAFETY DATA AND TESTING!!! We as a society need to listen to RFK, JR and think critically!! Why is this so tough?
Why, as a society, are we so afraid of being wrong? This has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm no stranger to the feeling of being uncomfortable admitting I don't know something or that I'm mistaken, but I've been trying to make it practice lately to get more comfortable not knowing. The problem is, if we can't be wrong, then we become desperately afraid of the truth. So here we are... And that's a truly dangerous thing.
It’s one thing to take a position and defend it even if it’s flawed. After all we are all humans with egos that don’t like to be put in our place. Sometimes as they say we just need to agree to disagree and go our merry way.
But where things get confusing and often downright ugly and cruel is when these same flawed assumptions become accepted as the final word whereby we start to force them on others. Over the last three years (and before that with childhood mandates) we’ve witnessed a complete nightmare stampeding on individual rights and personal health choices.
Let’s hope the vast number of people currently being confronted with the whole truth and nothing but the truth have the decency and the humility to see how damaging their compliance to enforce these criminal like actions have been. I would love to see an apology sometime.
As would I (love to see an apology and a change in policy). I have 3 children born in the 90's. The first two received their infant vaccinations at their pediatrician's office on the regular schedule as it was established at that time. I didn't even consider questioning it - or rather, it never occurred to me to question it. My third child was born in 1996 and sometime between then and the second one (1993), the powers that be determined that they would be able to vaccinate a higher percentage of children if they did so in the hospital right after they were born. My third child developed a massive array of anaphylactic food allergies within the first 3 months of her birth, while the other two had mild food allergies. Now RFKJr says that he'd never heard of or knew anyone with anaphylactic food allergies growing up and I believe him, but in my family, my father had an anaphylactic allergy to eggs from infancy, my husband had a dairy allergy as a child and several of my siblings had food allergies, so I was aware and alert to the possibility that my kids might. I was diligent about introducing food very slowly with the two older ones, but my third, the smallest and the only one vaccinated in the hospital developed severe rashes, cried constantly and wasn't gaining weight like the other two had. She's lucky to have had me for a mom because I kept going back to the doctors to say something was wrong (she was only consuming breastmilk) and I thought it was allergies. They poo-pooed me until she had an anaphylactic reaction at 4 months after I'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier in the day. To this day, I've never had a doctor be open to the possibility that the vaccinations she received in the hospital had something to do with the severity of her allergies. I would never say that allergies are the result of vaccinations because I don't think that's true, but I do think that if one has the propensity to develop allergies based on family history, the assault on an immature immune system can trigger a much more dramatic response than in a child who doesn't have that propensity - particularly if the substances they include in the vaccine or the process they use to develop the vaccine is problematic (like incubation on eggs). For the rest of her childhood, I delayed her vaccinations as long as possible and signed waiver after waiver so that she could go to school where she had to sit at the "peanut free" table. She's almost 27 now and has a much shorter list of foods that might kill her than she did as a little girl, but I'm still mad about it. Vaccinating infants in the hospital is completely unnecessary and I'm grateful that RFKJr is calling attention to it.
Nowadays if you refuse a vaccine or want to delay your pediatrician will just fire you as a patient. It’s very hard to get care for your child if they don’t stick to the vax schedule. Doctors don’t even care if your kid has a reaction. “Just keep vaxxing!” They’ll say.
Ouf! I’m sorry. I was very fortunate to have a pediatrician who had worked with medicine people on the Navajo reservation. She was open minded about all kinds of alternatives to “her way”. I just wished I could find a doctor for me like that.
Yes, I’ve wondered that myself. I think it’s because of the implications of them realizing that if the government or other authority figures have lied (or been deceived) about this one thing opens the door to wonder what else might they be lying about. It is a dark and deep rabbit hole to go down.
Not to put you on the spot, but is it/has it always comfortable for you to not know? I’m thinking about the fact that even as a little kid in school, I didn’t want to raise my hand unless I was at least pretty sure I knew the answer. As a teacher, it’s always been super important to me to make sure my students know that it’s ok to not know and that if they don’t, it’s an opportunity to learn. I can’t tell you how many kids apologize for not knowing.
Thanks for getting the word out. Thanks for framing the issue as a question of Epistemology. Erin Burnett was refuting something Kennedy said a couple days ago and said, ‘It’s just wrong’, but didn’t even seem to think evidence was required. My heart was racing as I read your piece. Tears started to well up. I found myself speed reading as if your piece was going to get this whole nightmare over. Thanks for all your efforts to end the bull$hit!
“In this case, the spectacle arose not because Vargas was wrong, but because she was so sure she was right.” In “The Art of Being Right,” Arthur Schopenhauer talks about “intellectual vanity.” Many people are more interested in being “right” than in knowing the truth. The more you challenge them, the more they dig in their heels, and resort to logical fallacies, as Vargas did when she brought up RFK’s family. Anyone with a basic understanding of logical discourse can see she made a fool of herself.
Well done those two believers for actually letting RFK speak!
Most of the problem is the emotional chasm we have to cross to accept the reality of the situation - how would they feel if RFK was right AND what would it mean for them? This issue bobs between our subconscious and our conscious minds and makes us feel so uncomfortable that most people reject the truth to avoid dealing with the feelings it stirs.
Vaccine science is bodged, there is no doubt about it!
We need to do the trials properly before injecting this stuff into our kids
Jun 30, 2023·edited Jun 30, 2023Liked by Madhava Setty
You know, there may be some rational premise for some voluntary vaccinations for some people for some pathogens some of the time, in so far as it mimics the body's immune response to a natural infection but with reduced risk. However, the accuracy and honesty of the scientific data behind the vaccine program (rather than the premise) is a whole other story.
When you add to that the blatant misrepresentation of mRNA transfection as a 'vaccine" when its mechanism of action entirely different and wholly inappropriate for the prevention of disease, they shouldn't be surprised if people say a big FU to the whole vaccine program.
“Mass varicella vaccination is expected to cause a major epidemic of herpes zoster, affecting more than 50% of those aged 10-44 years at the introduction of vaccination.”
This past April, while on a relaxing, stress free vacation, I got shingles in my eye/head. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. I was certain I had a fast growing brain tumor that must have erupted in my skull. Toradol, Excedrin, oxycodone, and something else my wife wrote for me did nothing. Took 4 days of unyielding pain before the rash appeared and we figured out what was going on.
I’m 43 and healthy.
My family doctor informed me that it was the varicella vaccine (which my children, 7 and 13 had of course).
Many people, got shingles after the covid vaccine, including me. Israel in 2020 recommended people to get their shingles shot before getting the covid shot.
Proper health advisories weren't to be found in 2020. I believe the outbreaks of shingles in some people who got the covid shot is due to immune suppression, allowing latent viruses to manifest. Getting a shingles shot wouldn't have prevented this phenomenon and very well may have made things worse.
Casting familial aspersions was a major low blow in a pathetic interview. I thought he handled it rather well, though you could see the impatience bubbling up. I hope he can maintain his composure for the duration of the campaign, it is key. I cannot imagine the stress. I stopped praying a couple years ago but I feel like I might start again for his sake.
I love RFK. His message is my own. But his delivery is impeding him, perhaps greatly. He starts with the unavoidable burden of the voice defect then exacerbates the handicap by excessive emotional and physical intensity. I keep thinking how my benighted loved ones will respond. I know them. They'll mistake the fervor as imbalance, sign of one not to be entrusted with the nation’s care.
I find the same behavior in myself in conversation with friends and neighbors and family soaked in the liquid of official lies -- soaked to the point of feeling that substance as their own, their very blood. I begin always with the inner commands: stay calm, speak deliberately, don't aggressively interrupt; above all, in words and voice and gesture, avoid even a hint of combat. I fail every time. As soon as the objections start, I lose it, ignoring every inner direction.
All of us on the side of reason and real science are profoundly frustrated, enraged really, at what has been done in the name of safety and science, especially to children. It is difficult to control the inner pressure of intense emotion once debate begins. Few of us come equipped with a pressure regulator. But we must find a way to meter out our intensity, mastering ourselves sufficiently to reach the badly deceived but decent opposition.
Dr. Robert Malone is a master of measured delivery. It appears to be natural to him. Others of us need coaching. RFK would do well to learn from Dr. Malone’s example, to the great benefit of a noble endeavor.
I’ve actually come to like his voice, I feel like with other speakers it’s easy to half listen while doing another task, but with him I’m forced to listen 100%. As I multitask almost everything else being forced to stop and listen seems a good thing.
RfkJr. was far more patient than I can ever imagine being when he knows the data and knows their arguments are specious. I try to remind myself to just ask good questions rather than spill out all the data that I know but I mostly fail at that. It is clearly a skill we should try to develop.
I’m exactly the same. I don’t want to get emotional about it but end up doing just that. I’m vaccine injured and have read papers ad nauseam. When I throw a stack of medical journals etc. in front of people they don’t even have a curiosity to flip through them. The de rigueur retort is “but they’ve saved millions of people from getting covid.”
So if this is the crux of the argument, ARE inert placebo controls required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine? I'd really like to understand this point.
Yes. To be very clear, an inert placebo is required to establish efficacy only. That's the point of a placebo, to see if the efficacy of the vaccine exceeds the placebo effect.
To establish safety, a placebo is not even necessary. A safety trial should replicate exactly what would happen if someone chose not to get vaccinated. If someone chose not to get jabbed, they would not receive a shot of an inert substance. They don't get jabbed at all.
The idea that a different vaccine or a shot with adjuvants can be substituted for a placebo is nuts. It's these adjuvants that are responsible for most or all of the adverse events that occur with vaccination. If both groups are getting the bad stuff there is no way to assess risk.
Wow, I never saw the safety issue in that way. Thank you.
Could one then assume that the use of an adjuvant rather than a pure saline placebo would permit a correct measure of efficacy but knowingly mask some portion, perhaps all of the adverse events? If I’m seeing that correctly for the first time, that’s downright diabolical.
I listened to the whole thing, I still can’t believe how between the moderator and this doctor they don’t get what he’s saying. He’s asking for SAFETY DATA AND TESTING!!! We as a society need to listen to RFK, JR and think critically!! Why is this so tough?
It seems that they have been so conditioned to see these agencies as authoritative that they can't believe they are not actually doing science.
Why, as a society, are we so afraid of being wrong? This has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm no stranger to the feeling of being uncomfortable admitting I don't know something or that I'm mistaken, but I've been trying to make it practice lately to get more comfortable not knowing. The problem is, if we can't be wrong, then we become desperately afraid of the truth. So here we are... And that's a truly dangerous thing.
It’s one thing to take a position and defend it even if it’s flawed. After all we are all humans with egos that don’t like to be put in our place. Sometimes as they say we just need to agree to disagree and go our merry way.
But where things get confusing and often downright ugly and cruel is when these same flawed assumptions become accepted as the final word whereby we start to force them on others. Over the last three years (and before that with childhood mandates) we’ve witnessed a complete nightmare stampeding on individual rights and personal health choices.
Let’s hope the vast number of people currently being confronted with the whole truth and nothing but the truth have the decency and the humility to see how damaging their compliance to enforce these criminal like actions have been. I would love to see an apology sometime.
As would I (love to see an apology and a change in policy). I have 3 children born in the 90's. The first two received their infant vaccinations at their pediatrician's office on the regular schedule as it was established at that time. I didn't even consider questioning it - or rather, it never occurred to me to question it. My third child was born in 1996 and sometime between then and the second one (1993), the powers that be determined that they would be able to vaccinate a higher percentage of children if they did so in the hospital right after they were born. My third child developed a massive array of anaphylactic food allergies within the first 3 months of her birth, while the other two had mild food allergies. Now RFKJr says that he'd never heard of or knew anyone with anaphylactic food allergies growing up and I believe him, but in my family, my father had an anaphylactic allergy to eggs from infancy, my husband had a dairy allergy as a child and several of my siblings had food allergies, so I was aware and alert to the possibility that my kids might. I was diligent about introducing food very slowly with the two older ones, but my third, the smallest and the only one vaccinated in the hospital developed severe rashes, cried constantly and wasn't gaining weight like the other two had. She's lucky to have had me for a mom because I kept going back to the doctors to say something was wrong (she was only consuming breastmilk) and I thought it was allergies. They poo-pooed me until she had an anaphylactic reaction at 4 months after I'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier in the day. To this day, I've never had a doctor be open to the possibility that the vaccinations she received in the hospital had something to do with the severity of her allergies. I would never say that allergies are the result of vaccinations because I don't think that's true, but I do think that if one has the propensity to develop allergies based on family history, the assault on an immature immune system can trigger a much more dramatic response than in a child who doesn't have that propensity - particularly if the substances they include in the vaccine or the process they use to develop the vaccine is problematic (like incubation on eggs). For the rest of her childhood, I delayed her vaccinations as long as possible and signed waiver after waiver so that she could go to school where she had to sit at the "peanut free" table. She's almost 27 now and has a much shorter list of foods that might kill her than she did as a little girl, but I'm still mad about it. Vaccinating infants in the hospital is completely unnecessary and I'm grateful that RFKJr is calling attention to it.
Nowadays if you refuse a vaccine or want to delay your pediatrician will just fire you as a patient. It’s very hard to get care for your child if they don’t stick to the vax schedule. Doctors don’t even care if your kid has a reaction. “Just keep vaxxing!” They’ll say.
Ouf! I’m sorry. I was very fortunate to have a pediatrician who had worked with medicine people on the Navajo reservation. She was open minded about all kinds of alternatives to “her way”. I just wished I could find a doctor for me like that.
Yes, I’ve wondered that myself. I think it’s because of the implications of them realizing that if the government or other authority figures have lied (or been deceived) about this one thing opens the door to wonder what else might they be lying about. It is a dark and deep rabbit hole to go down.
Not to put you on the spot, but is it/has it always comfortable for you to not know? I’m thinking about the fact that even as a little kid in school, I didn’t want to raise my hand unless I was at least pretty sure I knew the answer. As a teacher, it’s always been super important to me to make sure my students know that it’s ok to not know and that if they don’t, it’s an opportunity to learn. I can’t tell you how many kids apologize for not knowing.
I’m not sure. To be a little snarky I probably didn’t often raise my hand in school, though that was probably more from boredom than anything else.
But for this I mean once you don’t trust the government it kinda opens up a Pandora’s box of conspiracy theories which I’m not sure I’m ready for.
Brilliant comment, Camille.
Thanks for getting the word out. Thanks for framing the issue as a question of Epistemology. Erin Burnett was refuting something Kennedy said a couple days ago and said, ‘It’s just wrong’, but didn’t even seem to think evidence was required. My heart was racing as I read your piece. Tears started to well up. I found myself speed reading as if your piece was going to get this whole nightmare over. Thanks for all your efforts to end the bull$hit!
“In this case, the spectacle arose not because Vargas was wrong, but because she was so sure she was right.” In “The Art of Being Right,” Arthur Schopenhauer talks about “intellectual vanity.” Many people are more interested in being “right” than in knowing the truth. The more you challenge them, the more they dig in their heels, and resort to logical fallacies, as Vargas did when she brought up RFK’s family. Anyone with a basic understanding of logical discourse can see she made a fool of herself.
Well done those two believers for actually letting RFK speak!
Most of the problem is the emotional chasm we have to cross to accept the reality of the situation - how would they feel if RFK was right AND what would it mean for them? This issue bobs between our subconscious and our conscious minds and makes us feel so uncomfortable that most people reject the truth to avoid dealing with the feelings it stirs.
Vaccine science is bodged, there is no doubt about it!
We need to do the trials properly before injecting this stuff into our kids
Man this is so well written thank you ✊🏿
You know, there may be some rational premise for some voluntary vaccinations for some people for some pathogens some of the time, in so far as it mimics the body's immune response to a natural infection but with reduced risk. However, the accuracy and honesty of the scientific data behind the vaccine program (rather than the premise) is a whole other story.
When you add to that the blatant misrepresentation of mRNA transfection as a 'vaccine" when its mechanism of action entirely different and wholly inappropriate for the prevention of disease, they shouldn't be surprised if people say a big FU to the whole vaccine program.
I was so happy to read this analysis. Thank you!!!
Brilliant article. Thank you!
they dont just take information. they take $$$
“Mass varicella vaccination is expected to cause a major epidemic of herpes zoster, affecting more than 50% of those aged 10-44 years at the introduction of vaccination.”
This past April, while on a relaxing, stress free vacation, I got shingles in my eye/head. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. I was certain I had a fast growing brain tumor that must have erupted in my skull. Toradol, Excedrin, oxycodone, and something else my wife wrote for me did nothing. Took 4 days of unyielding pain before the rash appeared and we figured out what was going on.
I’m 43 and healthy.
My family doctor informed me that it was the varicella vaccine (which my children, 7 and 13 had of course).
Holy cow
Many people, got shingles after the covid vaccine, including me. Israel in 2020 recommended people to get their shingles shot before getting the covid shot.
Proper health advisories weren't to be found in 2020. I believe the outbreaks of shingles in some people who got the covid shot is due to immune suppression, allowing latent viruses to manifest. Getting a shingles shot wouldn't have prevented this phenomenon and very well may have made things worse.
Casting familial aspersions was a major low blow in a pathetic interview. I thought he handled it rather well, though you could see the impatience bubbling up. I hope he can maintain his composure for the duration of the campaign, it is key. I cannot imagine the stress. I stopped praying a couple years ago but I feel like I might start again for his sake.
I love RFK. His message is my own. But his delivery is impeding him, perhaps greatly. He starts with the unavoidable burden of the voice defect then exacerbates the handicap by excessive emotional and physical intensity. I keep thinking how my benighted loved ones will respond. I know them. They'll mistake the fervor as imbalance, sign of one not to be entrusted with the nation’s care.
I find the same behavior in myself in conversation with friends and neighbors and family soaked in the liquid of official lies -- soaked to the point of feeling that substance as their own, their very blood. I begin always with the inner commands: stay calm, speak deliberately, don't aggressively interrupt; above all, in words and voice and gesture, avoid even a hint of combat. I fail every time. As soon as the objections start, I lose it, ignoring every inner direction.
All of us on the side of reason and real science are profoundly frustrated, enraged really, at what has been done in the name of safety and science, especially to children. It is difficult to control the inner pressure of intense emotion once debate begins. Few of us come equipped with a pressure regulator. But we must find a way to meter out our intensity, mastering ourselves sufficiently to reach the badly deceived but decent opposition.
Dr. Robert Malone is a master of measured delivery. It appears to be natural to him. Others of us need coaching. RFK would do well to learn from Dr. Malone’s example, to the great benefit of a noble endeavor.
I’ve actually come to like his voice, I feel like with other speakers it’s easy to half listen while doing another task, but with him I’m forced to listen 100%. As I multitask almost everything else being forced to stop and listen seems a good thing.
RfkJr. was far more patient than I can ever imagine being when he knows the data and knows their arguments are specious. I try to remind myself to just ask good questions rather than spill out all the data that I know but I mostly fail at that. It is clearly a skill we should try to develop.
I’m exactly the same. I don’t want to get emotional about it but end up doing just that. I’m vaccine injured and have read papers ad nauseam. When I throw a stack of medical journals etc. in front of people they don’t even have a curiosity to flip through them. The de rigueur retort is “but they’ve saved millions of people from getting covid.”
So if this is the crux of the argument, ARE inert placebo controls required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine? I'd really like to understand this point.
Yes. To be very clear, an inert placebo is required to establish efficacy only. That's the point of a placebo, to see if the efficacy of the vaccine exceeds the placebo effect.
To establish safety, a placebo is not even necessary. A safety trial should replicate exactly what would happen if someone chose not to get vaccinated. If someone chose not to get jabbed, they would not receive a shot of an inert substance. They don't get jabbed at all.
The idea that a different vaccine or a shot with adjuvants can be substituted for a placebo is nuts. It's these adjuvants that are responsible for most or all of the adverse events that occur with vaccination. If both groups are getting the bad stuff there is no way to assess risk.
Thank you! Many of us are truly interested in understanding the nuance and appreciate when professionals take the time to explain in simpler terms.
Wow, I never saw the safety issue in that way. Thank you.
Could one then assume that the use of an adjuvant rather than a pure saline placebo would permit a correct measure of efficacy but knowingly mask some portion, perhaps all of the adverse events? If I’m seeing that correctly for the first time, that’s downright diabolical.
Bobby is a charm in this interview. I wished I were as composed as he is facing complete morons.
Wow. It is refreshing to hear a politician who knows his stuff. Stike that. Knows more than the science "experts" in fact.