Paul Connett is putting all his eggs in one basket. He says “you only have to read four studies” to find community after fluoridation harmful. Image credit: Fluoride Action Network newsletter.
Paul Connett, director of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), now claims “You only have to read four studies…” to come to the conclusion that community water fluoridation (CWF) is bad for your health. As I said in the first article in this series that is simply bad science. One should not ignore all the other relevant studies – and anyway, these four studies do not say what Connett claims.
In this article, I discuss the second study Connett recommends. It’s citation is:
Table 2: Summary of results from Green et al (2019). Red triangles indicate a statistically significant relationship.
Note: See Table 1 for an explanation of symbols and bars
No, Green et al (2019) did not “replicate” the findings of Bashash et al (2017) – although Connett may be using the word “essentially” to cover up his over-confidence in the claim.
Unlike Bashash et al (2017), Green et al (2019) did not find a statistically significant relationship of child IQ (FSIQ) with MUF. However, when they separated the children by sex the relationship was significantly negative for males (positive, but not statistically significant, for females). They also reported statistically significant relationships of IQ with maternal F intake estimated using an unvalidated subjective method, but not with drinking water F.
When the IQ (FSIQ) was separated into subsets no significant relationship was found for verbal IQ (VIQ) but there was a significant relationship with MUF of performance (PIQ) for boys. There was also a significant relationship of PIQ with drinking water F. So quite a mixed bag – and perhaps indicating that separating the data into different groups based on sex and using different cognitive measures can tweak out significant relationships. But it reminds me of the old saying that one can get the answer one wants if the data is tortured enough.
As for the statistically significant relationships reported by Green et al (2019) – none of them are at all “strong” as can be seen in these figures taken from the paper:
Antifluoride campaigners use of this paper in their propaganda relies on a very weak relationship which, according to Green (2018) explains only 4.7% of the variance in IQ, and required separation of children by sex to get statistical significance.
Polishing data and ignoring non-significant relationships
A concern I have about this study is the differences in the findings reported in the original MA thesis of Green (2018) and the final paper of Green et al (2019). For example, the thesis reported an adjusted association of FSIQ with fluoride intake (B = -3.82, 95% CI: -7.65 to 0.02, p = .05) which she describes as having “just missed significance” while the final paper reports this association as significant (B = -3.66, 95% CI: -7.16 to -0.15, p = 0.04). What was done to move this association into statistical significance?
I am also concerned that not all the non-significant associations recorded in the thesis are reported in the final paper. For example, Green (2018) reported that neither VIQ or PIQ was significantly associated with fluoride intake and VIQ was not significantly associated with water fluoride concentration and these facts were not reported in Green at al (2019). On the other hand, the significant relationship of PIQ with water fluoride concentration was reported in the final paper.
Selectively reporting results of statistical analyses like this gives a false impression of how important the results may be in practice. Sure, I can understand why authors will bias their presentation in this way but a good peer review should identify this bias and insist on the presentation of complete results.
Oh, and the overall comparison of child IQ from areas of residence of their mothers during pregnancy did not show any statistically significant difference due to fluoridation in Green et al (2019) – see Table 3.
Table 3: Comparison of cognitive scores obtained by Green et al (2019) for children of mothers living in fluoridated and unfluoridated areas during pregnancy
Connett is wrong to claim that the Green et al (2019) study “replicated” the Bashash et al (2017). It didn’t by a long shot. The study itself is also very weak, it has several faults and has been widely criticised in the scientific community.
Ken a person applying for a job in the athletics department of an educational institution might be accepted depending on the sort of institution. They may be into training male runners who have bigger lungs. But will they be all-rounders and into female shot put, & the whole field for a secondary school?
I think there is a place for special categories.
And the X and Y chromosomes harbour differing gene patterns.
I my young days, before fluoridated tooth paste. boys always use to be academically superior. Not so now.
I wonder Ken.
I don’t quite have p<0.05 significance between Covid-19 cases and fluoridation status of DHBs in NZ. As an amateur I won't be able to get more specific birth &c., data for cases to use which might change my estimations.
Need to find more about the X chromosome which is related to ACE-2 which is said to be an entry point for Covid-19 and any effect of fluoride on it.
“I don’t quite have p<0.05 significance between Covid-19 cases and fluoridation status of DHBs in NZ."
Perhaps because the government releases Covid-19 data by DHB and CWF is determined by local councils and not DHBs? If you're trying to do that, surely you've figured out you're trying to compare apples with… maybe hydraulic door closers?
You'll never see any relationship unless the government releases Covid-19 figures according to council. Even then it can't be accurate – the Bluff Wedding cluster is much larger than the Invercargill number, implying spread from the Bluff cluster to all around the country.
Thanks Stuartg.
I’m presuming that how severely travellers may affect their destination would depend on the ability of the immune systems of the people at the destination to deal with small amounts of Covid-19.
The TB vaccination hypothesis does not have weight added to it by my chart of age ranges and Covid-19. That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990 and since it was given at age 13 those people would now be around 50 or so, which does not show fewer cases in NZ. Japan and South Korea have been proposed as examples but they are fairly low on environmental fluoride. Not sure about Germany. My chart (further down the thread I start to look at travel age as to whether that coul be the cause for what this chart shows.) https://www.facebook.com/brian.sandle/posts/2979428342100233?comment_id=2979434432099624
To see the 5G coverage one has to magnify the Vodafone coverage map and see the purple patches. It only covers patches around Auckland Wellington and Christchurch as far as I can see at the moment. I think more in Christchurch (Canterbury DHB) than Wellington (Capital and Coast DHB) so if having any effect should be opposite to the fluoridation effect which exists in Wellington but not Christchurch,
“I’m presuming that how severely travellers may affect their destination would depend on the ability of the immune systems of the people at the destination to deal with small amounts of Covid-19.” – Why presume? Why not use available data? You’d need to explore that data anyway in order to justify the assumptions that you’ve made in that statement.
“That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990” – that’s a baseless assumption contradicted by current use of BCG within NZ.
My point about the DHBs and clusters was that at least fifty people positive for Covid-19 have left Invercargill for other parts of the country. That’s about 5%, or about 0.05, of current cases; that number will swamp any tiny signals you think you’re finding. Marist College is residential, I understand, so where are the people from that cluster residing now, after they’ve gone home? Your unrealised and so unvoiced assumption that people are immobile is not borne out by evidence.
You’ve already made several wrong assumptions without realising it. Enough that any conclusions you reach can immediately be dismissed. How many more wrong assumptions are you making without realising it?
Stuartg quoted me then wrote: ““That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990” – that’s a baseless assumption contradicted by current use of BCG within NZ.”
Stuartg wrote: ” Your unrealised and so unvoiced assumption that people are immobile is not borne out by evidence.”
I cannot easily know where all the people went but presume they wouldn’t all have gone to the same place. I don’t know if I would be able to get useful data from MOH. I don’t know if they will be tracking people who have not had symptoms who could however be carriers. Depending on the thymus &c function in those communities it will have varying difficulty taking hold.
I’m thinking about the stats have varied and shall try to relate then to the data about the wedding. A 5% change in some areas could change the rank order which I am using Vassarstats to work with.
rs t. One-tailed p
26 Mar 0.474 2.28 0.0175
27 Mar 0.4802 2.32 0.016146
28 Mar 0.4469 2.12 0.024081
29 Mar 0.2953 1.31 0.1033345
30 Mar 0.2697 1.19 0.124753
31 Mar 0.2594 1.14 0.1346145
1 Apr 0.3467 1.57 0.0669135
2 Apr 0.3904 1.8 0.044322
3 Apr 0.3082 1.37 0.0937675
4 Apr 0.244 1.07 0.149379
5 Apr 0.3056 1.36 0.095311
6 Apr 0.2876 1.27 0.1101285
7 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
8 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
averaged number of cases then correlated
0.3621 1.65 0.058142
There is also the matter of international arrivals. Alsothe Ruby Princess cruise ship with infected passengers which went to Southern, Canterbury, Mid Central and Hawkes Bay but not further north before returning to Australia.
And I would think a much greater effect than the Invercargill wedding would be the numbers of international airport arrivals bringing the virus.
Capital and Coast (Wellington Airport) has only about half what Canterbury does, but has many more cases.
About last December from Infoshare
Auckland airport 5265713
Christchurch airport 885738
Dunedin airport 21624
Hamilton airport 34
Palmerston North airport 0
Rotorua airport 0
Wellington airport 477131
Queenstown airport 362782
Whoops thanks for your attention, After posting here I noticed the same correlation result for 7 and 8 Apr. I had left out 4 Apr and doubled 8 Apr
Corrected figures show somewhat less significance.
Date rs t. One-tailed p
26 Mar 0.474 2.28 0.0175
27 Mar 0.4802 2.32 0.016146
28 Mar 0.4469 2.12 0.024081
29 Mar 0.2953 1.31 0.1033345
30 Mar 0.2697 1.19 0.124753
31 Mar 0.2594 1.14 0.1346145
1 Apr 0.3467 1.57 0.0669135
2 Apr 0.3904 1.8 0.044322
3 Apr 0.3082 1.37 0.0937675
4 Apr 0.2979 1.32 0.1016885
5 Apr 0.244 1.07 0.149379
6 Apr 0.3056 1.36 0.095311
7 Apr 0.2876 1.27 0.1101285
8 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
averaged number of cases then correlated
0.3441 1.56 0.0680845
You’re anti-fluoride. And pro just about every conspiracy fantasy on the planet. We get that.
You’ve got a belief, not even a voiced hypothesis, and you are torturing data in a vain effort to try to “prove” it. One way of torturing the data is to apply significant figures well beyond the support of the data. You are introducing error without even realising it.
You’re ignoring data that disproves your belief. That’s straightforward cherry picking.
You’ve just dismissed a 5% change without realising that’s what 0.05 entails.
You’re making obvious assumptions that aren’t just wrong, you don’t even realise they are assumptions and that you are making them. Example of a wrong assumption: “(I) presume they wouldn’t all have gone to the same place.” That assumption may, or may not, be valid for a random population sample, but this is a wedding party, not a random population sample.
You’re still using data as though populations are immobile – that’s an example of an assumption you’ve made without even realising it.
And then you get miffed when no-one pays attention to your “proofs”…
Brian, you seem unable to detect when someone is joking with you. I wonder if that inability was caused by fluoridation. 🙂
However, the TB vaccination issue was something I saw touted in Twitter based on a map of occurrences in Germany – the old eastern area has a lower incidence. The discussion went on to suggest that the lower occurrences in the east of Germany and other areas which had been part of the USSR or its allies was due to the better health service before the “collapse of communism.”
Of course, these sorts of attempts to “torture the data” are stupid – even though they appeal to conspiracy theorists. The fact is areas with high levels of travellers will have higher numbers of cases. That stands out like a sore thumb and only fools attempt to extract other causes while ignoring that.
A bit like the fools who even get to publish papers about fluoridation on the basis of tortured data ignoring regional effects
Stuartg wrote: “One way of torturing the data is to apply significant figures well beyond the support of the data. You are introducing error without even realising it.”
I had taken the figures down to 2 signfcant figures, but when I copied and pasted into vertical columns the extra ones have jumped back in.
Note I have not based any calculation on those extra digits.
Stuartg wrote: “You’re anti-fluoride. And pro just about every conspiracy fantasy on the planet. We get that.”
I have never proclaimed myself to be anti-fluoride. I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.
And you like exact speech.
So please distinguish “conspiracy fantasy,” from plain “conspiracy.”
There you go. My search shows 27 comedy events in Chemnitz but 45 in Halle. Looks like fluoridation is the reason the world is no longer funny. Perhaps you missed out on fluoridation in your youth
Stuartg so you can’t distinguish a conspiracy from a conspiracy fantasy?
““Dr. Bill Livingston, Celebrated Cancer Specialist” was the very image of the traveling snake oil salesman. He was neither a doctor nor a cancer specialist; his real name was not even Livingston. More to the point, the “Rock Oil” tonic he pawned was a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum and had no effect whatsoever on the cancer of the poor townsfolk he conned into buying it.
He lived the life of a vagabond, always on the run from the last group of people he had fooled, engaged in ever-more-outrageous deceptions to make sure that the past wouldn’t catch up with him. He abandoned his first wife and their six children to start a bigamous marriage in Canada at the same time as he fathered two more children by a third woman. He adopted the name “Livingston” after he was indicted for raping a girl in Cayuga in 1849.
When he wasn’t running away from them or disappearing for years at a time, he would teach his children the tricks of his treacherous trade. He once bragged of his parenting technique: “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp.”
A towering man of over six feet and with natural good looks that he used to his advantage, he went by “Big Bill.” Others, less generously, called him “Devil Bill.” But his real name was William Avery Rockefeller, and it was his son, John D. Rockefeller, who would go on to found the Standard Oil monopoly and become the world’s first billionaire.”
So you think such entities with their actions have stopped, Stuartg?
Rather than trying to divert why not discuss my points? https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-310-rise-of-the-oiligarchs/
Come off it, Brian. I have produced a correlation showing that fluoridation causes a lack of humour. Don’t confuse the issue by demanding extra details. 🙂
I’d be mildly interested to know why you think the actions of an individual, Livingston, have any relevance to you wanting to be able to distinguish between conspiracy and conspiracy fantasies.
You obviously have a faith/belief that CWF, and 5G (and probably all EMF), and BCG, and birthplace, and thymus, and, for all I know, the rate of inflation have something to do with Covid-19.
In trying to reinforce your belief you are making wrong assumptions not validated by publicly available information. You are cherry picking which data to use and dismissing other data. Then you are torturing the already unmatched and incomplete data to produce some completely irrelevant numbers that seem to satisfy you. And, most important of all, you have not formulated a hypothesis that is able to be tested.
Is that sufficient discussion for you? I can continue with examples:
You are attempting to compare DHB level data with council level data – they are unmatched data and cannot be correlated (apples with hydraulic door closers).
At first you assumed that attendees at a wedding lived at that location and remained there afterwards – an unwarranted assuption.
You then assumed that those attendees randomly distributed around the country after the wedding – another unwarranted assumption, and as we now know 12 went to Wellington DHB and 20 to Waikato DHB.
After that you decided to ignore the mobility of the wedding group, effectively discarding about 5% of the data.
In torturing your unmatched data you’ve also made an assumption (probably without realising it) that populations are immobile, that persons live with the same water supply from birth to death – I note that this is the same major assumption that you were oblivious to with your rubbish about rugby captains and football teams in the past.
And you don’t have a sense of humour.
Would you care to get people to pay attention to you? It’s easy. Just work like a scientist.
First formulate a hypothesis that can be tested. Put it down in writing.
Second, decide how it can be tested, what criteria are needed to confirm or refute the hypothesis. Put it down in writing.
Look for and find all of the data available.
Perform the data analysis using all of the data.
Finally compare the analysis with the pre-decided criteria for confirmation and refutation.
Decide whether your hypothesis warrants further investigation, or that it can be discarded.
Then discuss.
Stuartg doesn’t like conspiracies. We get that. Watergate must do his head in!
Ken, can you confirm that Dr Rob Beaglehole was given the appropriate training after he claimed – falsely – that all health authorities around the world recommend water fluoridation. Of course, the vast majority of countries don’t add fluoride to their water. Ken, can you remind me which countries, other than NZ, does so?
Stuartg wrote: “You obviously have a faith/belief that CWF, and 5G (and probably all EMF),..”
Thanks for reminding me of another confounder. The 20-30-year-olds get on their phones, and to be private have them by their heads, and interact that way to the exclusion of the old talking I have been told by someone who knows work places. So they will be well-exposed to EMFs.
I pointed to the 5G coverage maps which shoe only a fraction of Auckland , Wellington and Christchurch covered. I have to say you are not reading clearly.
Ross. you were attracted to this article, or series because they expose how Paul Connett is attempting to limit reading to only 4 poor studies which don’t actually say what he wants them to say.
But instead of responding to my article, you have asked me to comment on someone I actually do not know.
Surely if you have a question about that person you should direct your query to them – not me.
We do get some weird people here. But please make your comments on the article and don’t bring in irrelevancies.
I have no problems with conspiracies, like Watergate, or the actions of Wakefield and his lawyers to generate mistrust in MMR, when there is proof that they exist.
What bemuses me is dreamers who construct elaborate conspiracy fantasies, each running contrary to evidence, in order to justify their faith/belief that the world is somehow different from reality.
Stuartg wrote: “In torturing your unmatched data you’ve also made an assumption (probably without realising it) that populations are immobile, that persons live with the same water supply from birth to death – I note that this is the same major assumption that you were oblivious to with your rubbish about rugby captains and football teams in the past.”
There are different observations. People who captain All Blacks obviously move around. My observation about them is fluoridation at time of birth. Indeed the mother may have gone out of the district for the birth. Such as Richie McCaw’s mother was in Oamaru for his birth but he grew up on his family’s farm in the Hakataramea Valley, not fluoridated. The only top All Black whose parents lived in a fluoridated, though he did not become captain, Jonah Lomu, and he died early with kidney disease. No captain was raised in a fluoridated area at a young age to my knowledge. Kieran Read grew in the old non-fluoridated part of Drury.
There are many other football observations, but I’ll keep it simple and please help me write a hypothesis that will satisfy you for the captains.
You want to understand the role of the thymus in the immune system? Here’s a simple, brief, relatively up-to-date, easy to understand overview of the immune system which can be used as a starting point for further exploration: https://geekymedics.com/immune-response/ Note the tiny role played by the thymus as part of the whole.
It seems that you don’t want to discuss any of the obvious errors that were pointed out to you and would rather change the subject instead.
They way I looked at it I noticed a few All Black captains were born in non-fluoridated areas. I suppose I formed a sort o hypothesis that I could find some All Black captains who were born (raised at early age) in fluoridated areas. But I destroyed that hypothesis.
Stuartg wrote: “It seems that you don’t want to discuss any of the obvious errors that were pointed out to you and would rather change the subject instead.”
I’m thinking how to explain to you. You try to create an impression that the 5% chance level for significance would be somehow connected to a variation in data of 5%.
But instead of responding to my article, you have asked me to comment on someone I actually do not know.
Ken,
You don’t know Dr Beaglehole? That does surprise me. He was until recently the Dental Association Spokesperson on water fluoridation. You discuss fluoridation quite a lot, yet you had never heard of the man?
I am surprised that someone in his position wouldn’t know that most countries do not add fluoride to their water. Indeed, I’m sure he knows it, and he was being dishonest when he said what he said. He doesn’t need media training, he simply needs to tell the truth.
Can you remind me which countries add fluoride to their water?
As I said previously, you have some interesting data.
And you still haven’t formed a hypothesis that you can test without using the data you already have.
I pointed out many ways that you could test a hypothesis once you have actually formulated it. I also pointed out to you that it only took a short time to determine that your observations were most likely an outlying exception to hundreds, if not thousands, of similar datasets within NZ and around the globe.
That’s why I called it rubbish. There’s nothing to discuss until you’ve formed a testable hypothesis.
Many countries use CWF. Many countries don’t use CWF if natural fluoride levels are sufficient. Many countries remove fluoride from water if natural levels are higher than CWF.
Sometimes a country will do all three things.
This happens because many countries, like New Zealand, leave it up to local authorities to decide whether to do anything about fluoride or not.
If you really don’t know the answer to your question, the internet is a great way of finding out. I’m sure Soundhill could help you if you asked, but take his references and reading with a grain of salt. He tends to both cherry-pick and misread.
So many countries that you can’t name them all…Dr Beaglehole had the same problem despite the fact that not many countries add fluoride to their water.
I took your advice and Google is indeed my friend.
“Although the prevalence of caries varies between countries, levels everywhere have fallen greatly in the past three decades, and national rates of caries are now universally low. This trend has occurred regardless of the concentration of fluoride in water or the use of fluoridated salt, and it probably reflects use of fluoridated toothpastes and other factors, including perhaps aspects of nutrition.” SOURCE: Cheng KK, et al. (2007). Adding fluoride to water supplies. British Medical Journal 335(7622):699-702.
“In most European countries, where community water fluoridation has never been adopted, a substantial decline in caries prevalence has been reported in the last decades, with reductions in lifetime caries experience exceeding 75%.” SOURCE: Pizzo G, et al. (2007). Community water fluoridation and caries prevention: a critical review. Clinical Oral Investigations 11(3):189-93.
In other words, it is isn’t necessary to add fluoride to water to have great pearly whites!
Ross – I said I don’t know the person – whether I have “heard of him” is irrelevant. The fact is that is somewhat strange, even questionable, that you ask me questions about him instead of asking him – as you obviously do know him.
If you have problems of forgetfulness regarding fluoride addition during water treatment then just do a search online. It is lazy and disrespectful to expect others to do that for you.
I repeat, why do you not address my article (that’s what comments are for) that attracted you here? It is simply weird to be attracted by the article but not even respond to it – to attempt diversions.
But then again, as I have said we do get some weird people here as the preceding comments indicate.
Stuartg wrote: “Note the tiny role played by the thymus as part of the whole.”
So is the “immunological education” it performs a tiny part? If that education is imperfect wrong things in our body may be attacked.
From your link:
“the thymus gland is situated just in front of the heart in the mediastinum. It is active throughout life, but is at its largest in childhood and decreases in size after puberty. It is where lymphocytes mature and receive their immunological “education” before being released into the bloodstream.”
The thymus is sometimes removed for heart operations in children. Then they may take longer to fight off infections. Here is what it is like when that immunological education is reduced or missing:
” The routine removal of the whole or part of the thymus, which accompanies the surgical treatment of congenital heart defects, has a significant impact on the formation of the immune cell pool and the maintenance of the phenotype and functionality of naive T cells later in the patient’s life. The thymus’s ability to regenerate warrants the modification of operative techniques to enable the preservation of this gland, or its larger fragment, during neonatal cardiac surgery. Despite numerous cellular changes in the immune system, thymectomized patients do not exhibit specific clinical symptoms that could be associated directly to thymectomy alone. Current studies indicate that complete or partial thymectomy results in accelerated aging of the immune system and reduces T-cell diversity, which may consequently lead to increased susceptibility to autoimmune or neurodegenerative disease [12]. Further studies (especially long-term) are required to establish the late consequences of thymectomy.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5767777/
And please note my cited RNZ talk from an Otago University associate Professor is not only dealing with the thymus, but other immune mechanisms which I believe ought to be checked for any impact of fluoride in some people, slowing their healing.
Though in my current observation I was more concerned with any difference in the immune system after vaccination, that is to invaders other than what vaccination has trained us to attack.
Stuartg wrote: “I also pointed out to you that it only took a short time to determine that your observations were most likely an outlying exception to hundreds, if not thousands, of similar datasets within NZ and around the globe. ”
Scientists work with sample populations. They get a p value and if it happens to be 0.05 that would mean their result has a 5% chance of being am “outlying exception.”
Yes. I gave you examples of where to find hundreds of sample populations to rest. Obviously you haven’t looked them up. But it’s hardly surprising when you haven’t yet managed to form a hypothesis to test.
Maybe you haven’t formed a testable hypothesis yet because your subconscious realises testing it would mean destruction of at least part of your faith/belief?
“Though in my current observation I was more concerned with any difference in the immune system after vaccination”
Ah, yes, I wondered if you would bring up vaccination. I had noted within the USA the correlation of high incidence of Covid-19 in the areas that antivaccinationists live and are active. I’ll leave you to ponder the correlation.
Why your concern about possible thymectomy during correction of neonatal heart defects? Could you enlighten us to its relationship to Covid-19 infection? Perhaps by pointing out the proportion of such people who have been infected by Covid-19?
Stuartg your thymus ref is 6 years old. This is more recent: “Nowadays it is known that impaired thymus function may have a number of consequences for the immune system as an increased predisposition to infection and autoimmunity, reduced response to vaccines with age and possible risk of cancer development. Patients subjected to complete thymectomy as neonates are more likely to suffer from atherosclerosis, autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases, as well as they have a higher predisposition to develop rashes, eczema, or contact allergies and show stable disbalance of naïve T cells in the periphery, especially if thymectomy happened at the age below one year [2,3,4,5,6,7]. According to other data, thymectomy has no critical clinical effects, if performed in the post-infant period [8]. However, most data were collected in a short follow up time after thymectomy and therefore not considering the time for the onset of age-related diseases in the thymectomised group. Also, the inclusion of individuals with residual thymic tissue might cause an underestimation of the impact of thymectomy.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12015-020-09955-y
I talked of the thymus to wonder whether it and “innate” immunity could explain the lower numbers of covid-19 cases in the under 20s and who however have had vaccinations of sorts. The vaccine-reduced immunity to other invaders or immune-disregulation caused by the vaccination in the 20s. Would covid-19 symptoms be a minor cytokine storm, more likely with reduced immune regulation from vaccine-impaired T-cell or general immune system regulation?
Note the older age at which Gardasil is given the more shots required.
Stuartg note the lesser cases per 100,000 of covid-19 in the over-70s who developed their own immunity to measles mumps. (Though if they happen to be infected noticeably they may die more.)
However if it means anything they are much lower users of cellphones.
Stuartg wrote: ” I had noted within the USA the correlation of high incidence of Covid-19 in the areas that antivaccinationists live and are active.”
Wakefield didn’t start opposition to giving the three valent mealses mumps and rubella vaccine till after the year 2000. The affected people are not yet into their 20s.
Stuartg wrote: “But then the biggest error you are making is cherry picking your data before you’ve even formulated a working hypothesis.’ Do you class noticing a pattern like smoking and ill health as cherry picking for a study?
Just to amuse myself, I read back over your comments, and noted things that you had and hadn’t mentioned as related to Covid-19 infections.
So far you’ve related Covid-19 to vaccines (more specifically BCG and Gardasill), the thymus, CWF (but not endemic high fluoride), 5G, 4G, EMF in general, socialist health practice, German comedians, and birthplace. I’m amused that a couple of these appear to have negative correlations.
That’s quite a collection of conspiracist fantasies there.
You’ve still a way to go, though. You appear to have left out glyphosate, agricultural runoff, wastewater runoff, pollution, biofuels, e-cigarettes, mercury, fetal DNA, aluminium, and influenza vaccine for the complete collection.
You also seem to have ignored the obvious positive correlations of smoking, proximity to water sources (rivers, seas, etc), road network density, presence of antivaccinationists, and population mobility. I wonder why.
You claim to want to discuss things. Well, I’ve opened the discussion with several areas where your thinking shows obvious errors, but you seem reluctant to discuss them.
Here’s an idea: perhaps the causative agent of Covid-19 is a recently evolved variant of previously known coronaviridae. Maybe it evolved through one or more interspecies transfer. Maybe it’s transmitted by droplet spread, especially in areas of high population density with highly mobile populations. Maybe the differences people show to Covid-19 infection is down to simple things like individual variations in immunity, or even the numbers of viruses in the initial viral load causing the infection. Maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with any of the conspiracist fantasies you brought up.
What do you think? Does the available data and evidence support that idea?
“Do you class noticing a pattern like smoking and ill health as cherry picking for a study?” But that’s not what you’ve been doing.
Would I classify gathering some data, discarding other data, and attempting an analysis of incomplete data before you’ve even formulated a hypothesis as cherry picking? Yes, of course I would.
“Wakefield didn’t start opposition to giving the three valent mealses mumps and rubella vaccine till after the year 2000. The affected people are not yet into their 20s.”
Wasn’t his fraudulent paper published in 1998?
What has Wakefield to do with current location of antivaccinationists and the incidence of infection of Covid-19? Discuss.
Stuartg wrote: ” Maybe the differences people show to Covid-19 infection is down to simple things like individual variations in immunity, ”
I have given some suggestions for causes for those variations. I have not covered so far where it is not gene expression because of environment (which may even be inherited (epigenetics) but because of the presence or absence of genes, such as been claimed about some northern europeans.
Stuartg wrote: “What has Wakefield to do with current location of antivaccinationists and the incidence of infection of Covid-19? Discuss.”
We need to decide which apparent correlations are spurious. We should try to look for all possible variables to consider.
If a correlation happens to be spurious we may get an idea from from the partial correlations. Isolating it will have little effect on the relatioships of causal factors.
Stuartg wrote: “Would I classify gathering some data, discarding other data, and attempting an analysis of incomplete data before you’ve even formulated a hypothesis as cherry picking? Yes, of course I would.”
But please don’t try by that means of arguing to build public perceptions against including variables in studies for the future.
Stuartg wrote: “I’d be mildly interested to know why you think the actions of an individual, Livingston, have any relevance to you wanting to be able to distinguish between conspiracy and conspiracy fantasies.”
The discourse cited refers how “Livingston”‘s son Rockefeller started a corrupt monopoly. One way corrupt monopolies have of fighting off public dislike is to create the perception that whoever is challenging them is involved in conspiracy fantasy.
If you use data to develop a hypothesis, you are then obliged to discount that data when testing the hypothesis. Check the history of research into ESP decades ago for the reasons why, or maybe just watch “Ghostbusters”.
Once a scientist formulates a hypothesis, only then do they search for data, analyse the data, and check for confounders.
As I said, you are cherry picking your data, discarding data you don’t like or can’t make fit, and then trying to analyse incompatible data, all in order to produce spurious correlations. I would guess that only then are you going to produce a “hypothesis” that encompasses the spurious correlations.
Why do I say that? Because that’s what you’ve consistently done so far.
Except that you’ve never actually got to the stage of producing a hypothesis.
Stuartg I’ll try to get through David Gorski’s article. (Orac) But when Isee such things written as: “The outbreak doesn’t even have to be of a vaccine-preventable disease to produce antivaccine conspiracy theories.”
I don’t hold out for much useful imput from it.
That’s a really good attitude to take/sarcasm: “I don’t agree with him, so I’ll not pay any attention to what he’s written, nor to any of his references.” Is it because he deals with reality rather than fantasy?
Maybe that’s part of the reason that you don’t manage to follow the scientific method.
I merely assumed that you may want to find out what was already known about the relationship between influenza vaccine and Covid-19, i.e. there is none.
I’d have thought you would have been glad to have one of the confounders you consider eliminated for you. After all, it would ease your data collection and analysis after you eventually manage to formulate a hypothesis.
The immune system does not only deal with vaccine-preventable diseases.
If the immune system happens to be somewhat cut back when there is a fever as the vaccine teaches its immunity then mightn’t it be overwhelmed more easily by things it normally can deal with but a vaccine can’t?
I would say it’s a failing of David Gorski not to take such matters into account. I shall have to read his article very carefully.
From the Gardasil leaflet and I haven’t included the part relating to allergic reactions. It is not a minor thing the immune system is having to deal with.
And as the girl increases in age more shots are required. Why?
Tell your doctor if you or your
child have any of the following
and they worry you:
• pain, swelling, redness, itching
and bruising at or around the
injection site
• headache
• fever or high temperature
• nausea
• dizziness
• fatigue
Studies show that there was more
swelling where the shot was given
when GARDASIL 9 was given at
the same time with other vaccines
such as Repevax or Menactra
and/or Adacel.
These are the most common side
effects seen with GARDASIL 9.
These side effects are usually
mild and usually improve or
disappear within a few days.
As with other vaccines, additional
side effects that have been
reported during general use for
GARDASIL 9 are shown below.
Side effects reported during the
general use of GARDASIL are
also shown below. GARDASIL
side effects are reported as they
may be relevant to GARDASIL 9
since the vaccines are similar in
composition.
GARDASIL 9
• fainting sometimes
accompanied with seizure-like
movements
• vomiting
Additionally, the following side
effects have been seen with the
general use of GARDASIL.
GARDASIL
• skin infection (may appear as
hot, tender and red skin)
• bleeding or bruising more
easily than normal (may
appear as purple or red spots
visible through the skin
• swollen glands in the neck,
armpit or groin
• muscle weakness, abnormal
sensations, tingling in the
arms, legs and upper body
(Guillain-Barre syndrome)
• confusion
• joint pain or painful, swollen
joint
• aching muscles (may appear
as muscle weakness or
weakness that is not caused
by exercise)
• unusual tiredness, weakness
• chills
• generally feeling unwell
If any of the above symptoms
worsen or you or your child
has any unusual or severe
symptoms after receiving
GARDASIL 9, contact your
doctor or healthcare provider.
Stuartg The Orac article was published on Jan 30. Maybe you didn’t read down to the comments. One of them points out (Mar 29) that, owing to elevated ACE2, “our study suggests that influenza spreading and its associated therapies could exacerbate the symptoms of COVID-19 and therefore great care must be given for patients with prior influenza infection” https://archive.is/1Txsm
So stay home if you have flu, but also maybe if you had flu vaccine?
I have been trying to figure why “The Mirror” may have written the headline:
“People who get the winter flu jab are firmly advised to shield themselves from the coronavirus by isolating for 12 weeks, the deputy chief medical officer for England warns.” though a commenter tries to correct that.
Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.
You’re trying to figure out why “The Mirror” is advising people to protect themselves from Covid-19 infection? Are you serious???
I got the impression that you had no sense of humour…
I’m afraid I’m an exception, then. Living in a fluoridated area but retaining a sense of humour.
Maybe it’s because I was born in a fluoridated area but brought up in a non-fluoridated area? Or the frequent transitioning between the two whilst chasing jobs as an adult? Just like a rugby player, really…
Stuartg wrote: “Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.”
I have seen that paper before. For a certain military group they determined no interference. Note that paper was accepted on 1 Oct 2019 before SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for Covid-19, was known about.
Here is a fresh paper, but not yet peer-reviewed.
” While the underlying mechanisms of vaccine associated virus interference remain to be revealed and while more evidence for or against it is clearly needed, the study independent input data presented here suggest that vaccinations against influenza virus might be a relevant factor for respiratory tract infections through SARS-CoV-2. This mode of vaccine interference, if further confirmed in future studies, could potentially be used in COVID-19 prevention, containment, and mitigation measures.”
“Stuartg wrote: “Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.”
I have seen that paper before.”
And yet again you are obviously not reading carefully. My second referral was not to a “paper” but to a blog post with referrals to multiple papers.
Do you want to discuss your inability to read things carefully?
You said that you wanted to discuss your ideas. I’ve shown where you’re going wrong with them. But then you haven’t discussed them any further. Instead you just divert. Maybe you didn’t want to discuss them at all. In that case, why put them into this forum?
Stuartg wrote: “And yet again you are obviously not reading carefully. My second referral was not to a “paper” but to a blog post with referrals to multiple papers.”
At 2:14pm yesterday you commented with two http links.After I commented on the first you asked me to comment on the other, which is explaining some people’s misreading of a vaccine interference coronavirus test in a military setting. The paper dates from before the knowledge of the virus which causes covid-19. I have replied with a more recent paper. Have you looked at it yet?
The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously and has been said to respond to HIV medication. But who can we trust?
Sruartg wrote: “And right at the moment most of my reading time is going into managing Covid-19 patients. This is light relief for me.”
and you wrote: “That’s a really good attitude to take/sarcasm: “I don’t agree with him, so I’ll not pay any attention to what he’s written, nor to any of his references.”
I wrote: “The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously,” but their word was not “adventitiously,” but “fortuitously.”
Looks like a crappy paper, Brian and the reason for withdrawal – “This paper has been withdrawn by its authors. They intend to revise it in response to comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.”
I have not seen it used in any conspiracy theory I am aware of. However, there is a paper form a US research lab which describes the insertion of a bit of RNA from HIV into a coronavirus. The authors showed this had a damaging effect on human lung tissue.
This has been cited as part of a conspiracy theory.
While there are questions about human creation of such viruses there is no indication of it being used as a weapon or that it accidentally escaped – it was simply part of normal research looking for possible problems. But, yes, a more credible candidate for a conspiracy theory than the one you cited.
It is understandable that you did not want your claim checked out so used an extreme passive presentation. But that is dishonest.
This was stated in “GreatGameIndia” which I saw a while back.
“”Note: Authors of “uncanny” 2019-nCoV preprint have voluntarily withdrawn the preprint: “It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories…we
appreciate the criticisms… and will get back with a revised version.””
The reason I put it up was that Stuartg said he was looking into Covid-19 management.
A number of sources have talked of using AIDS medicine, a more modern sort, less damaging than the earlier type.
In the current circumstances authors are putting papers on line to get the info out there a lot faster than it would be out there if waiting for peer review.
How often would you think papers are accepted at the first submission?
I think it to be unethical to discourage early release at the moment.
Ken, the research team is from the Indian Institute of Technology which ranks 182 in the World, higher than VUW, UOC, but lower than Auckland, and similar to Otago..
Their biological sciences school is only 12 years old but I would presume it to be fair dinkum.
This is serious isn’t it?
Here are some details of the researchers, the professors in charge towards the end.
Prashant Pradhan
Previous Qualifications
M.Sc. Biotechnology, South Asian University, New Delhi
Ashutosh Kumar Pandey
Previous Qualifications
M.Tech in Computational and Systems Biology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
JRF at International Centre For Genetic Engineering And Biotechnology, New Delhi (2013-2014)
Area of Research
Systems Biology
Akhilesh Mishra
Previous Qualifications
CSIR-UGC-NET JRF, BINC JRF, GATE
M. Sc. Bioinformatics, Botany
Area of Research
Physico-chemical parameter based prokaryotic & eukaryotic genome annotation pipeline.
Dr. Parul Gupta
PhD (July-2003 to August-2008)
Present Position
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad
Praveen Kumar Tripathi
Previous Qualifications
ICMR-JRF, GATE-2014
PG Biomedical Sciences (University of Delhi)
PG Diploma – IPR Law (Indian Academy of International Law)
Area of Research
Understanding Non-Structural proteins of Chikungunya Virus
Manoj Balakrishna Menon
a professor and PLOS One academic editor amongst much else
james gomes
Home
Biography
Current Research
Courses
Publications & Projects
Research Group
Extracurricular Interests
Biography
I received my Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University and my M.S. and Ph.D from Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. As a graduate student at Tulane, I received several awards including the prestigious Sigma Xi research award. I worked as Senior Process Engineer for Process Services Inc., Baton Rouge and as Executive Engineer for L&T, Powai, Mumbai, before joining IIT Delhi. My current research interest is in the area of Systems and Network Biology. We apply mathematical and computational methods to study disease networks, understand disease progression and determine new drug targets, followed by directed experiments. My group is interested in neurodegenerative diseases, virus-host interaction networks and malaria. The results of our work on Angiogenin gives a cohesive and comprehensive picture of the molecular origins of functional loss of all ALS associated ANG mutants. We recently created NeuroDNet, a database with interactive tools that enables the creation of interaction networks for neurodegenerative diseases under one portal for interrogation and analyses. It enables the construction and analysis of neurodegenerative diseases through protein interaction networks, regulatory networks and Boolean networks.
Note that both are to the same blog site and neither of them to a peer reviewed publication. However both do use peer reviewed publications in their links.
If you had read it, you would find the second (first of the links in this reply) has already discussed your link. I suggest that you read the links, and their references. Carefully.
“The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously”
“The reason I put it up was that Stuartg said he was looking into Covid-19 management.”
If you’d read it carefully, you’d have realised that it has absolutely nothing to do with managing patients with Covid-19, which is what I mentioned I was reading about. Or didn’t you read my comment carefully?
Stuartg wrote: “If you’d read it carefully, you’d have realised that it has absolutely nothing to do with managing patients with Covid-19, which is what I mentioned I was reading about. Or didn’t you read my comment carefully?”
I didn’t understand whether you included only palliative care or included more hopeful treatment.
Since you seem to be interested in technological advancement I thought you would be interested i possible use of HIV medication.
Moving along:
“A list of candidate therapeutics has been published by WHO (https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/keyaction/overview-ncov-therapeutics.pdf?ua=1). The Chinese Academy of Sciences also suggested a list of 30 different
compounds, with 12 HIV medicines, including Saquinavir, Indinavir, Lopinavir, ritonavir and Carfilzomib, two
respiratory syncytial virus drugs, a schizophrenia medication and an immunosuppressant. Candidates also include
certain Traditional Chinese Medicines. The efficacy and safety of these candidates for COVID-19 still need to be
confirmed by robust clinical evaluations”
Thanks Ken for getting me to follow on from the Indian article. The paper trail led me to that which I pass on before getting through it.
That WHO link got corrupted in my paste. And the main link doesn’t show – just brings up the scrollable article.Try removing spaces from this
ht tps:/ / www. apfh. pt /xfiles/ scContentDeployer_pt/ links/ link92 .pdf
“I didn’t understand whether you included only palliative care or included more hopeful treatment.”
Then I suggest that you look up the many meanings of the word “managing”.
“I thought you would be interested i possible use of HIV medication.(sic)”
No, I’m not. Been there, done that. It took a couple of seconds to recall the HIV antiretrovirals work with the reverse transcriptase specifically found in HIV, then about five minutes more to find they are already shown to have little or no effect on SARS-CoV-2 (the hint is in the taxonomy of the viruses).
Could you explain how these are related to your faith/belief that infection with SARS-CoV-2 is somehow related to vaccines (such as influenza, BCG and Gardasill9), the thymus (as such a tiny part of the immune system), CWF (but not endemic high fluoride), 5G, 4G, EMF in general, socialist health practice, German comedians, birthplace, and the several other conspiracy fantasies that you have mentioned? Anyone would think that you’re using these as a diversion away from discussion of the multiple errors you demonstrate in your imaginings about conspiracy fantasies?
Your link was not corrupted. Just as my earlier link was not corrupted, but either you or your browser seems to have misread it. Maybe your web browser is doing the corruption instead?
Or maybe Big Pharma or the CDC has infiltrated your computer? Or worse, Big Fluoride?
Btw, nothing new to me in the link. Like I said, most of my reading time recently has been going into managing Covid-19 patients.
I presume that you haven’t actually read that link you supplied.
Because if you had, you’d not be spouting nonsense about vaccines, CWF, 5G, and all the rest of the rubbish dredged up by your conspiracist fantasies. It effectively eliminates the entire of them out of discussion.
In fact, it’s a good counterargument against any conspiracist fantasy about Covid-19. Thankyou for supplying it.
Stuartg
No as I said I hadn’t read the link through.
And in the same way Orac pointed out how people had been misreading the Wolff study, you have been misreading my stuff.
The way you group CWF, 5G and vaccines all together would mislead readers who came in at that point.
Ken introduced the 5G concept. Which he later called humour, but I had seen it rather as wit directed at me so responded calmly, saying how only parts of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have 5G. There is none in Southern DHB which however has a high level for NZ of Covid-19 cases. If you had read my comment and you should be intelligent enough, I would guess now that you are trying to be an annoying time waster.
And earlier you said I talked of CWF not environmental fluoride. You are wrong. I spoke of Japan and South Korea both of which I thought have lower environmental fluoride than China and fewer Covid-19 cases. They are not fluoridated to my knowledge.
I don’t think I have mentioned on this group so far that Northern Italy, where the higher level of cases have occurred has no fluoridation but higher level of environmental fluoride. Some 0.5 mg per litre compared to further south.
And when you say, “It effectively eliminates the entire of them out of discussion.” You would be applying that very principle you accuse me of talking about applying with regard to reading Orac. I knew you might later be doing that yourself so I put that comment in to catch you out. Fair catch.
I cited the article for some useful points. Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?
Stuartg as for the Krstin Andersen paper you cite I note that on Andersen’s Twitter page he does not appear to have replied to this:
Alpha
@FUTURENEWS2020
Replying to
@K_G_Andersen
and
@biorxivpreprint
some suggest the problem isn’t in having hiv motifs inserts but having them joining together in one virus naturally is quite a stretch. How probable is it 4these motifs to get together naturally.another issue some note that its necessary to look at 3d picture to make a conclusion”
“Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?(sic)”
Simple answer: read your own reference, pages 75-81. I also mentioned virus specific reverse transcriptase previously, in case you didn’t read that either.
“Fair catch.”
Yes, your own reference does indeed give the answer to your question.
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? You know, specifics that can be answered, not just vague faith/belief. If you decline to give specific questions, you can’t expect specific answers.
As you noted above, about CWF versus environmental fluoride, you give vague pointers most of the time rather than specifics. When you mention actual details it’s relatively easy to point out where your thinking is in error and suggest corrections. If you want specific answers, then it’s appropriate for you to ask specific questions. If you persist in vague generalities then it is not appropriate for you to say “Ahah, that’s a wrong answer for the question I actually meant when I used such vague wording.”
You still need to re-read your comments before you post. As an example: “Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?” I can understand the mis-spelling of medication, but is “though” a mis-spelling of “thought”, or just poor grammar? I had to guess at your question, as would anybody.
Now, how about discussing the multiple errors you’ve made? You asked for discussion, I replied. Then you shut up and diverted.
Brian – you say “I had seen it rather as wit directed at me so responded calmly.” That is the problem – you clearly cannot see when people make fun of you and consequently dig yourself into an even deeper hole of making yourself appear even more ridiculous.
Stuartg wrote: OK. You rely on Twitter. I’ll rely on peer reviewed literature.”
However note that your cite: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” is a letter to a journal therefore not peer-reviewed.
For a bit of paranoia/conspiracy I point out the letter comes from the Scripps Institute who work together with China.
That combo might have a reason to try to cover up what they had been doing. The businessman Trump said so passionately this is a Chinese virus – it comes from China.
But the theory of pangolin transmission is rather shaky.
“However note that your cite: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” is a letter to a journal therefore not peer-reviewed.”
And if you had read carefully, you would know that I acknowledged that. It also refers to peer-reviewed papers – or didn’t you bother to read that far?
“But the theory of pangolin transmission is rather shaky.”
You demonstrate that your ability to distinguish between ideas, hypotheses and theories is extremely shaky, maybe even non-existent.
Any discussion of your multiple errors yet? Have you decided to accept the discussion as valid and move on? Or decided to ignore and divert? (Yet again)
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? You know, specifics that can be answered, not just vague faith/belief. If you decline to give specific questions, you can’t expect specific answers.
Yes, I know I’m repeating myself, but you seem unwilling to explore this topic in spite of your previously stated willingness to discuss.
Sruartg wrote: “Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again?”
I’m feeling some hypotheses germinating.
For the moment not about observational matters.
Here’s a negative hypothesis about one of several possible mechanisms:
Though the ameloblasts, which form tooth enamel, form from epithelial cells, and are damaged by too much systemic fluoride, the protective function of the epithelial cells in the respiratory tract will not be damaged.
“a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.”
Now, unless you can justify the formulation of your “hypothesis” with some sort of proper evidence then it is wrong to call it a “hypothesis.”
But you just haven’t any evidence. You are not proposing a “hypothesis” you are simply peddling a pet conspiracy theory because of you mad fixation on fluoridation.
Ken any detective needs to follow up all possiblities even if they don’t seem probable.
I have talked about responses of certain individuals before.
Here see about dental fluorosis and genetics. Stress of fluoride on the endoplasmic reticulum leading to fluorosis. I’ll want to eliminated fluorides effect on other cells sourced from epithelial cells. http://www.journalajds.com/index.php/AJDS/article/view/30106/56486
Detectives do not follow up “all possibilities.” That would be absolutely stupid – they would not solve any times because they are following wisps instead of evidence..
They start with the evidence and work from there. That is why the get somewhere.
But you are admitting that you stick with “possibilities” – no matter how weird – and ignore the evidence.
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again?
“I’m feeling some hypotheses germinating.”
Then they’ve been germinating without producing any growth for several years now. If we’re using horticultural analogies, I think that the term you were intending is “decomposing”.
Ken wrote: “Detectives do not follow up “all possibilities.” That would be absolutely stupid – they would not solve any times because they are following wisps instead of evidence..”
Sensing dogs follow wisps. I wouldn’t be quick like that or like IBM’s “Watson” diagnostic AI computer. But a lot of “mes” could do it. We would scan and discard many useless patterns being so quick till one clicks ready for a hypothesis.
And unlike Watson we may not have to be programmed to produce money for our owner.
The reference you gave me already discards the many useless “patterns” produced by your faith/belief/religion of conspiracist fantasy. It’s a pity you didn’t read it before undertaking your flights of fantasy.
For your edification, the Dirk Gently method of detection treats everything as significant and related to the question, back to and including the big bang.
But it first requires a question to answer. It’s a pity that you don’t have a question to which the method can be applied, just faith and belief in your conspiracist fantasy religion.
Oh, yes. You need to be aware that the method was invented by a comedy writer and has no application outside of comedy literature…
“For your edification, the Dirk Gently method of detection treats everything as significant and related to the question, back to and including the big bang.”
Stuartg do you know any doctors who have had diseases like EBV or Lyme? Orac who you cite and “Science Based Medicine” call Functional Medicine quackery, though here a doctor has used it to deal with her own severe trouble that could have been life long if she had not come across it.May be more of this sort of thing around after Covid-19 or its treatments.
What was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? After all, it was you who said you wanted to discuss it.
Stuartg wrote: “Of course. Bill Gates now donates more to the WHO than any single country.”
Hard to see whether that is altruistic or whether he wants to elevate his level of power over systems.
Note:
“While working with the Computer Center’s PDP-10, Gates was responsible for what was probably the first computer virus, a program that copies itself into other programs and ruins data. Discovering that the machine was connected to a national network of computers called Cybernet, Gates invaded the network and installed a program on the main computer that sent itself to the rest of the network’s computers and crashed. When Gates was found out, he was severely reprimanded and he kept away from computers for his entire junior year at Lakeside. Without the lure of computers, Gates made plans in 1970 for college and law school. But by 1971 he was back helping Allen write a class scheduling program for their school’s computer.”
Maybe Trump is trying to isolate him via the removal of W.H.O. funding again.
In his news conference on Al Jazeera TV today Trump was asked about the story of the Chinese research lab worker who got infected by accident and his girl friend. Trump is not sure whether WHO/(Gates) knew about it from the start and did nothing.
You raised the ideas yourself. I merely noted that all of your evidence free beliefs were those of other conspiracy fantasists and had already been debunked by people of greater knowledge and intellect than yourself.
But you’re the person who said “I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.” So why don’t you now discuss them? Why do you keep attempting to divert attention away from your debunked and erroneous ideas?
You want to build a concrete building. Sure if too little cement is used it may be weak. So take plenty of cement and the correct sort of sand or gravel to the job. But in some countries you may find that is not sufficient. They may be short of water.
While I’m looking at fluoride I keep other things in mind.
Do you consider the material in this to be conspiracy, normal business cover-up, political lies or what blaming Covid-19 on to China?
How about stopping the diversions? “I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.”
How about discussing a simple question? What are the patterns that you see? Or do you use the word “patterns” as a euphemism for “conspiracist fantasies I’ve seen in my Facebook feeds”?
Stuartg. a “mockumentary” because it speaks against the Chinese Communist Party set up by Yale (Skull and Bones.)
“Back in 1903 Yale Divinity School established a number of schools and hospitals throughout China that were collectively known as ‘Yale in China’. It has since been shown that Yale In China was an intelligence network whose purpose was to destroy the Republican movement of Sun Yat-sen on behalf of the Anglo American establishment. The Anglo American establishment hated Sun because he wanted to develop China. On the other hand they loved the Chinese Communists because they intended to keep China backward and were committed to growing dope. One of Yale In China’s most important students was Mao Tse Tung.”
Stuartg wrote: “How about discussing a simple question? What are the patterns that you see? ”
I am grasping at any leads.
This morning’s news on RNZ is that WHO is doubting the use of antibody tests to allow people back to work. Seems to be a problem with developing/retaining antibodies. Presumably that would be a worry for vaccination, too.
I don’t want to put things down to one cause.
I may have reported before that after an operation nearly 20 years ago I found it hard to keep my balance when going to the supermarket. Iwould be walking close to the shelves in case I might need to hang on. I can’t really correlate it but it did get better, and later I realised I have stopped cleaning my teeth with fluoridated toothpaste before going out to the shop.
Around Christmas last year I developed a sort of lower spine stenosis I think which made it very painful to walk. I later noticed it to be about the same time as the dentist put a fluoride gum on my tooth.
It’s getting better with a little cider vinegar, vitamin K2,vitamin C.
I may have had the stenotic tendency a long while back, and I had gone to find out about some loss of sensitivty in toes. I was referred for ultrasound of calf no result. Come to think of it may have been near the fluoride toothpaste time. So not to put things down to one cause.
“Stuartg: “A mockumentary because I thought you were attempting to be humorous when you posted it.”
When you can’t answer it laugh at it.”
So you weren’t trying to be funny. OK. My mistake. I should have remembered your lack of humour. Being completely serious, here’s my brief reply: https://www.apfh.pt/xfiles/scContentDeployer_pt/links/link92.pdf If you’d bothered to actually read your own reference, you’d not have needed to ask for an opinion on the “mockumentary.”
“I am grasping at any leads.”
Grasping at straws, more like. I’ve told you, your own reference is a really good overview to learn the basics about Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2. It can be used as fine starting point, with many leads, if you’re really serious about wanting to know more. Definitely much better than that “mockumentary.”
“This morning’s news on RNZ is that WHO is doubting the use of antibody tests to allow people back to work.”
Well, if you had been paying attention to the various lines of research, rather than fixating on conspiracist fantasies, you’d have realised the problem is with the kits to measure antibodies, not with human bodies generating them. From March: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/covid-19-self-test-could-allow-return-to-work-says-public-health-england The WHO is merely warning that the kits aren’t good enough yet to rely on. That’s old news to people working in the field. Even I’ve been discussing it with colleagues for weeks, and we’re well down the pecking order.
Maybe the Dunning-Kruger effect is making itself known again? You know a little, and think you’re an expert, but in reality you don’t even know enough to realise how little you know, and that lack of knowledge makes you misinterpret the news that you are hearing.
Stuartg wrote: ” you’d have realised the problem is with the kits to measure antibodies, not with human bodies generating them. From March:”
It has just been said on TV1 News there seems to be doubt about herd immunity developing.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has cautioned countries against investing too much in antibody tests. The WHO says there is “no evidence” that having had the virus would guarantee immunity” https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52319956
You’re still diverting away from Covid-19 and fluoride, which is one of your conspiracist fantasies and the topic you claim to want to discuss.
You seem concerned that blood tests to determine immune status to SARS-CoV-2 may not do what they claim. Let’s clarify that: a test that measures blood borne antibodies, antibodies to a virus that infects mucosal tissue and almost never appears in the blood, may not indicate immunity to that virus.
Well, duh…
That’s not news, it’s olds.
I keep forgetting your basic lack of knowledge and understanding. Especially when it’s about things I learned at high school many decades ago.
I suggest that you look at a high school biology textbook, in particular the bit about different types of immunoglobulins, where they are found, how they act, and what type of immunity they can confer. It doesn’t have to be current; even a fifty year old book should suffice. It may confer you some insight.
Although I guess you would prefer the Facebook echo chamber of your conspiracist fantasies rather than learning about actual science.
Open Parachute 
Ken a person applying for a job in the athletics department of an educational institution might be accepted depending on the sort of institution. They may be into training male runners who have bigger lungs. But will they be all-rounders and into female shot put, & the whole field for a secondary school?
I think there is a place for special categories.
And the X and Y chromosomes harbour differing gene patterns.
I my young days, before fluoridated tooth paste. boys always use to be academically superior. Not so now.
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Only a fool would look to toothpaste to find out the reason why ‘boys always use to be academically superior.”
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I wonder Ken.
I don’t quite have p<0.05 significance between Covid-19 cases and fluoridation status of DHBs in NZ. As an amateur I won't be able to get more specific birth &c., data for cases to use which might change my estimations.
Need to find more about the X chromosome which is related to ACE-2 which is said to be an entry point for Covid-19 and any effect of fluoride on it.
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Soundhill,
“I don’t quite have p<0.05 significance between Covid-19 cases and fluoridation status of DHBs in NZ."
Perhaps because the government releases Covid-19 data by DHB and CWF is determined by local councils and not DHBs? If you're trying to do that, surely you've figured out you're trying to compare apples with… maybe hydraulic door closers?
You'll never see any relationship unless the government releases Covid-19 figures according to council. Even then it can't be accurate – the Bluff Wedding cluster is much larger than the Invercargill number, implying spread from the Bluff cluster to all around the country.
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Thanks Stuartg.
I’m presuming that how severely travellers may affect their destination would depend on the ability of the immune systems of the people at the destination to deal with small amounts of Covid-19.
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Don’t forget to include the presence/absence of 5G as a confounder.
Then again what about including TB vaccinations as a covariate – there are some interesting patterns in Germany related to that.
The final thing, though, is torturing data like this can produce any answer you want and you will find something to fit your bias.
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Ken some physiological functions can be activated by a brief low dose of EMF, and more won’t do more. Others have a dose response.
On this Vodafone map it doesn’t seem to show in Hamilton, Dunedin or Invercargill which are however as Waikato and Southern DHBs the highest on my Covid-19 chart. https://www.vodafone.co.nz/network/coverage/?gclid=CjwKCAjw7LX0BRBiEiwA__gNw4BhqeLTI1yxtYiSm0UARAUqC6ttmSSxJyWFKGUzn9iP-Q5CP1o3jxoCVm0QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
The TB vaccination hypothesis does not have weight added to it by my chart of age ranges and Covid-19. That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990 and since it was given at age 13 those people would now be around 50 or so, which does not show fewer cases in NZ. Japan and South Korea have been proposed as examples but they are fairly low on environmental fluoride. Not sure about Germany. My chart (further down the thread I start to look at travel age as to whether that coul be the cause for what this chart shows.) https://www.facebook.com/brian.sandle/posts/2979428342100233?comment_id=2979434432099624
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To see the 5G coverage one has to magnify the Vodafone coverage map and see the purple patches. It only covers patches around Auckland Wellington and Christchurch as far as I can see at the moment. I think more in Christchurch (Canterbury DHB) than Wellington (Capital and Coast DHB) so if having any effect should be opposite to the fluoridation effect which exists in Wellington but not Christchurch,
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Soundhill,
“I’m presuming that how severely travellers may affect their destination would depend on the ability of the immune systems of the people at the destination to deal with small amounts of Covid-19.” – Why presume? Why not use available data? You’d need to explore that data anyway in order to justify the assumptions that you’ve made in that statement.
“That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990” – that’s a baseless assumption contradicted by current use of BCG within NZ.
My point about the DHBs and clusters was that at least fifty people positive for Covid-19 have left Invercargill for other parts of the country. That’s about 5%, or about 0.05, of current cases; that number will swamp any tiny signals you think you’re finding. Marist College is residential, I understand, so where are the people from that cluster residing now, after they’ve gone home? Your unrealised and so unvoiced assumption that people are immobile is not borne out by evidence.
You’ve already made several wrong assumptions without realising it. Enough that any conclusions you reach can immediately be dismissed. How many more wrong assumptions are you making without realising it?
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Stuartg quoted me then wrote: ““That vaccination was phased out here from 1980 to 1990” – that’s a baseless assumption contradicted by current use of BCG within NZ.”
It’s still used in limited areas of risk, but I don’t believe it to be widely used: “1948 BCG (Tuberculosis) immunisation is introduced initially for nurses then later for all adolescents. Universal screening and vaccination of 13-year-olds stops in the South Island in 1963, is phased out in the North Island in the 1980s, and ceases in 1990.”
https://healthcentral.nz/history-of-nzs-childhood-immunisation-schedule/?fbclid=IwAR3Was_4wqXEaglx2xFyj7da4htYWFXFLZNtV2h4UXdV0T-9R6n8IoFdsLs
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Stuartg wrote: ” Your unrealised and so unvoiced assumption that people are immobile is not borne out by evidence.”
I cannot easily know where all the people went but presume they wouldn’t all have gone to the same place. I don’t know if I would be able to get useful data from MOH. I don’t know if they will be tracking people who have not had symptoms who could however be carriers. Depending on the thymus &c function in those communities it will have varying difficulty taking hold.
I’m thinking about the stats have varied and shall try to relate then to the data about the wedding. A 5% change in some areas could change the rank order which I am using Vassarstats to work with.
rs t. One-tailed p
26 Mar 0.474 2.28 0.0175
27 Mar 0.4802 2.32 0.016146
28 Mar 0.4469 2.12 0.024081
29 Mar 0.2953 1.31 0.1033345
30 Mar 0.2697 1.19 0.124753
31 Mar 0.2594 1.14 0.1346145
1 Apr 0.3467 1.57 0.0669135
2 Apr 0.3904 1.8 0.044322
3 Apr 0.3082 1.37 0.0937675
4 Apr 0.244 1.07 0.149379
5 Apr 0.3056 1.36 0.095311
6 Apr 0.2876 1.27 0.1101285
7 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
8 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
averaged number of cases then correlated
0.3621 1.65 0.058142
There is also the matter of international arrivals. Alsothe Ruby Princess cruise ship with infected passengers which went to Southern, Canterbury, Mid Central and Hawkes Bay but not further north before returning to Australia.
And I would think a much greater effect than the Invercargill wedding would be the numbers of international airport arrivals bringing the virus.
Capital and Coast (Wellington Airport) has only about half what Canterbury does, but has many more cases.
About last December from Infoshare
Auckland airport 5265713
Christchurch airport 885738
Dunedin airport 21624
Hamilton airport 34
Palmerston North airport 0
Rotorua airport 0
Wellington airport 477131
Queenstown airport 362782
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Whoops thanks for your attention, After posting here I noticed the same correlation result for 7 and 8 Apr. I had left out 4 Apr and doubled 8 Apr
Corrected figures show somewhat less significance.
Date rs t. One-tailed p
26 Mar 0.474 2.28 0.0175
27 Mar 0.4802 2.32 0.016146
28 Mar 0.4469 2.12 0.024081
29 Mar 0.2953 1.31 0.1033345
30 Mar 0.2697 1.19 0.124753
31 Mar 0.2594 1.14 0.1346145
1 Apr 0.3467 1.57 0.0669135
2 Apr 0.3904 1.8 0.044322
3 Apr 0.3082 1.37 0.0937675
4 Apr 0.2979 1.32 0.1016885
5 Apr 0.244 1.07 0.149379
6 Apr 0.3056 1.36 0.095311
7 Apr 0.2876 1.27 0.1101285
8 Apr 0.2337 1.02 0.1606215
averaged number of cases then correlated
0.3441 1.56 0.0680845
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Soundhill,
You’re anti-fluoride. And pro just about every conspiracy fantasy on the planet. We get that.
You’ve got a belief, not even a voiced hypothesis, and you are torturing data in a vain effort to try to “prove” it. One way of torturing the data is to apply significant figures well beyond the support of the data. You are introducing error without even realising it.
You’re ignoring data that disproves your belief. That’s straightforward cherry picking.
You’ve just dismissed a 5% change without realising that’s what 0.05 entails.
You’re making obvious assumptions that aren’t just wrong, you don’t even realise they are assumptions and that you are making them. Example of a wrong assumption: “(I) presume they wouldn’t all have gone to the same place.” That assumption may, or may not, be valid for a random population sample, but this is a wedding party, not a random population sample.
You’re still using data as though populations are immobile – that’s an example of an assumption you’ve made without even realising it.
And then you get miffed when no-one pays attention to your “proofs”…
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Brian, you seem unable to detect when someone is joking with you. I wonder if that inability was caused by fluoridation. 🙂
However, the TB vaccination issue was something I saw touted in Twitter based on a map of occurrences in Germany – the old eastern area has a lower incidence. The discussion went on to suggest that the lower occurrences in the east of Germany and other areas which had been part of the USSR or its allies was due to the better health service before the “collapse of communism.”
Of course, these sorts of attempts to “torture the data” are stupid – even though they appeal to conspiracy theorists. The fact is areas with high levels of travellers will have higher numbers of cases. That stands out like a sore thumb and only fools attempt to extract other causes while ignoring that.
A bit like the fools who even get to publish papers about fluoridation on the basis of tortured data ignoring regional effects
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Stuartg wrote: “One way of torturing the data is to apply significant figures well beyond the support of the data. You are introducing error without even realising it.”
I had taken the figures down to 2 signfcant figures, but when I copied and pasted into vertical columns the extra ones have jumped back in.
Note I have not based any calculation on those extra digits.
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Thanks Ken, it will be a bit of work to check Germany, but my first look
Click to access FJ1998_v31_n3_p129-174ands001-s034.pdf
Gives Cheminitz was fluoridated and Halle (Saale) wasn’t.
https://www.ovulation-calculators.com/coronavirus/de/
The fluoridated town had 2.01% of cases proceeding to death whereas teh non-fluoridated town had 1.4%.
I haven’t been through figures to find those, they are the first I came upon.
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Stuartg wrote: “You’re anti-fluoride. And pro just about every conspiracy fantasy on the planet. We get that.”
I have never proclaimed myself to be anti-fluoride. I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.
And you like exact speech.
So please distinguish “conspiracy fantasy,” from plain “conspiracy.”
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There you go. My search shows 27 comedy events in Chemnitz but 45 in Halle. Looks like fluoridation is the reason the world is no longer funny. Perhaps you missed out on fluoridation in your youth
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Soundhill,
“So please distinguish “conspiracy fantasy,” from plain “conspiracy.””
In your mind, none,.
Especially when neither are actually present.
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Stuartg so you can’t distinguish a conspiracy from a conspiracy fantasy?
““Dr. Bill Livingston, Celebrated Cancer Specialist” was the very image of the traveling snake oil salesman. He was neither a doctor nor a cancer specialist; his real name was not even Livingston. More to the point, the “Rock Oil” tonic he pawned was a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum and had no effect whatsoever on the cancer of the poor townsfolk he conned into buying it.
He lived the life of a vagabond, always on the run from the last group of people he had fooled, engaged in ever-more-outrageous deceptions to make sure that the past wouldn’t catch up with him. He abandoned his first wife and their six children to start a bigamous marriage in Canada at the same time as he fathered two more children by a third woman. He adopted the name “Livingston” after he was indicted for raping a girl in Cayuga in 1849.
When he wasn’t running away from them or disappearing for years at a time, he would teach his children the tricks of his treacherous trade. He once bragged of his parenting technique: “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp.”
A towering man of over six feet and with natural good looks that he used to his advantage, he went by “Big Bill.” Others, less generously, called him “Devil Bill.” But his real name was William Avery Rockefeller, and it was his son, John D. Rockefeller, who would go on to found the Standard Oil monopoly and become the world’s first billionaire.”
So you think such entities with their actions have stopped, Stuartg?
Rather than trying to divert why not discuss my points?
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-310-rise-of-the-oiligarchs/
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Ken wrote: “Looks like fluoridation is the reason the world is no longer funny.”
Is the average birth year of comedians before or after the start of fluoridation?
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Come off it, Brian. I have produced a correlation showing that fluoridation causes a lack of humour. Don’t confuse the issue by demanding extra details. 🙂
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Soundhill,
I’d be mildly interested to know why you think the actions of an individual, Livingston, have any relevance to you wanting to be able to distinguish between conspiracy and conspiracy fantasies.
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Soundhill,
“Rather than trying to divert why not discuss my points?”
Have you made any?
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Soundhill,
You obviously have a faith/belief that CWF, and 5G (and probably all EMF), and BCG, and birthplace, and thymus, and, for all I know, the rate of inflation have something to do with Covid-19.
In trying to reinforce your belief you are making wrong assumptions not validated by publicly available information. You are cherry picking which data to use and dismissing other data. Then you are torturing the already unmatched and incomplete data to produce some completely irrelevant numbers that seem to satisfy you. And, most important of all, you have not formulated a hypothesis that is able to be tested.
Is that sufficient discussion for you? I can continue with examples:
You are attempting to compare DHB level data with council level data – they are unmatched data and cannot be correlated (apples with hydraulic door closers).
At first you assumed that attendees at a wedding lived at that location and remained there afterwards – an unwarranted assuption.
You then assumed that those attendees randomly distributed around the country after the wedding – another unwarranted assumption, and as we now know 12 went to Wellington DHB and 20 to Waikato DHB.
After that you decided to ignore the mobility of the wedding group, effectively discarding about 5% of the data.
In torturing your unmatched data you’ve also made an assumption (probably without realising it) that populations are immobile, that persons live with the same water supply from birth to death – I note that this is the same major assumption that you were oblivious to with your rubbish about rugby captains and football teams in the past.
And you don’t have a sense of humour.
Would you care to get people to pay attention to you? It’s easy. Just work like a scientist.
First formulate a hypothesis that can be tested. Put it down in writing.
Second, decide how it can be tested, what criteria are needed to confirm or refute the hypothesis. Put it down in writing.
Look for and find all of the data available.
Perform the data analysis using all of the data.
Finally compare the analysis with the pre-decided criteria for confirmation and refutation.
Decide whether your hypothesis warrants further investigation, or that it can be discarded.
Then discuss.
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Stuartg, firstly let us understand more about the role of the thymus in immune function, and other facets of the developing immune system.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018742074/our-immune-system-vs-coronavirus-i-think-of-it-as-an-orchestra
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Stuartg doesn’t like conspiracies. We get that. Watergate must do his head in!
Ken, can you confirm that Dr Rob Beaglehole was given the appropriate training after he claimed – falsely – that all health authorities around the world recommend water fluoridation. Of course, the vast majority of countries don’t add fluoride to their water. Ken, can you remind me which countries, other than NZ, does so?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11714146
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Stuartg wrote: “You obviously have a faith/belief that CWF, and 5G (and probably all EMF),..”
Thanks for reminding me of another confounder. The 20-30-year-olds get on their phones, and to be private have them by their heads, and interact that way to the exclusion of the old talking I have been told by someone who knows work places. So they will be well-exposed to EMFs.
I pointed to the 5G coverage maps which shoe only a fraction of Auckland , Wellington and Christchurch covered. I have to say you are not reading clearly.
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Ross. you were attracted to this article, or series because they expose how Paul Connett is attempting to limit reading to only 4 poor studies which don’t actually say what he wants them to say.
But instead of responding to my article, you have asked me to comment on someone I actually do not know.
Surely if you have a question about that person you should direct your query to them – not me.
We do get some weird people here. But please make your comments on the article and don’t bring in irrelevancies.
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Ross,
I have no problems with conspiracies, like Watergate, or the actions of Wakefield and his lawyers to generate mistrust in MMR, when there is proof that they exist.
What bemuses me is dreamers who construct elaborate conspiracy fantasies, each running contrary to evidence, in order to justify their faith/belief that the world is somehow different from reality.
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Stuartg wrote: “In torturing your unmatched data you’ve also made an assumption (probably without realising it) that populations are immobile, that persons live with the same water supply from birth to death – I note that this is the same major assumption that you were oblivious to with your rubbish about rugby captains and football teams in the past.”
There are different observations. People who captain All Blacks obviously move around. My observation about them is fluoridation at time of birth. Indeed the mother may have gone out of the district for the birth. Such as Richie McCaw’s mother was in Oamaru for his birth but he grew up on his family’s farm in the Hakataramea Valley, not fluoridated. The only top All Black whose parents lived in a fluoridated, though he did not become captain, Jonah Lomu, and he died early with kidney disease. No captain was raised in a fluoridated area at a young age to my knowledge. Kieran Read grew in the old non-fluoridated part of Drury.
There are many other football observations, but I’ll keep it simple and please help me write a hypothesis that will satisfy you for the captains.
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Soundhill,
You want to understand the role of the thymus in the immune system? Here’s a simple, brief, relatively up-to-date, easy to understand overview of the immune system which can be used as a starting point for further exploration: https://geekymedics.com/immune-response/ Note the tiny role played by the thymus as part of the whole.
It seems that you don’t want to discuss any of the obvious errors that were pointed out to you and would rather change the subject instead.
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They way I looked at it I noticed a few All Black captains were born in non-fluoridated areas. I suppose I formed a sort o hypothesis that I could find some All Black captains who were born (raised at early age) in fluoridated areas. But I destroyed that hypothesis.
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Stuartg wrote: “It seems that you don’t want to discuss any of the obvious errors that were pointed out to you and would rather change the subject instead.”
I’m thinking how to explain to you. You try to create an impression that the 5% chance level for significance would be somehow connected to a variation in data of 5%.
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But instead of responding to my article, you have asked me to comment on someone I actually do not know.
Ken,
You don’t know Dr Beaglehole? That does surprise me. He was until recently the Dental Association Spokesperson on water fluoridation. You discuss fluoridation quite a lot, yet you had never heard of the man?
I am surprised that someone in his position wouldn’t know that most countries do not add fluoride to their water. Indeed, I’m sure he knows it, and he was being dishonest when he said what he said. He doesn’t need media training, he simply needs to tell the truth.
Can you remind me which countries add fluoride to their water?
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Soundhill,
As I said previously, you have some interesting data.
And you still haven’t formed a hypothesis that you can test without using the data you already have.
I pointed out many ways that you could test a hypothesis once you have actually formulated it. I also pointed out to you that it only took a short time to determine that your observations were most likely an outlying exception to hundreds, if not thousands, of similar datasets within NZ and around the globe.
That’s why I called it rubbish. There’s nothing to discuss until you’ve formed a testable hypothesis.
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Ross,
Many countries use CWF. Many countries don’t use CWF if natural fluoride levels are sufficient. Many countries remove fluoride from water if natural levels are higher than CWF.
Sometimes a country will do all three things.
This happens because many countries, like New Zealand, leave it up to local authorities to decide whether to do anything about fluoride or not.
If you really don’t know the answer to your question, the internet is a great way of finding out. I’m sure Soundhill could help you if you asked, but take his references and reading with a grain of salt. He tends to both cherry-pick and misread.
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Many countries use CWF.
So many countries that you can’t name them all…Dr Beaglehole had the same problem despite the fact that not many countries add fluoride to their water.
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Ross,
I can’t name them all because I’m just not that interested in knowing.
And right at the moment most of my reading time is going into managing Covid-19 patients. This is light relief for me.
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I took your advice and Google is indeed my friend.
“Although the prevalence of caries varies between countries, levels everywhere have fallen greatly in the past three decades, and national rates of caries are now universally low. This trend has occurred regardless of the concentration of fluoride in water or the use of fluoridated salt, and it probably reflects use of fluoridated toothpastes and other factors, including perhaps aspects of nutrition.” SOURCE: Cheng KK, et al. (2007). Adding fluoride to water supplies. British Medical Journal 335(7622):699-702.
“In most European countries, where community water fluoridation has never been adopted, a substantial decline in caries prevalence has been reported in the last decades, with reductions in lifetime caries experience exceeding 75%.” SOURCE: Pizzo G, et al. (2007). Community water fluoridation and caries prevention: a critical review. Clinical Oral Investigations 11(3):189-93.
In other words, it is isn’t necessary to add fluoride to water to have great pearly whites!
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Ross – I said I don’t know the person – whether I have “heard of him” is irrelevant. The fact is that is somewhat strange, even questionable, that you ask me questions about him instead of asking him – as you obviously do know him.
If you have problems of forgetfulness regarding fluoride addition during water treatment then just do a search online. It is lazy and disrespectful to expect others to do that for you.
I repeat, why do you not address my article (that’s what comments are for) that attracted you here? It is simply weird to be attracted by the article but not even respond to it – to attempt diversions.
But then again, as I have said we do get some weird people here as the preceding comments indicate.
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Stuartg wrote: “Note the tiny role played by the thymus as part of the whole.”
So is the “immunological education” it performs a tiny part? If that education is imperfect wrong things in our body may be attacked.
From your link:
“the thymus gland is situated just in front of the heart in the mediastinum. It is active throughout life, but is at its largest in childhood and decreases in size after puberty. It is where lymphocytes mature and receive their immunological “education” before being released into the bloodstream.”
The thymus is sometimes removed for heart operations in children. Then they may take longer to fight off infections. Here is what it is like when that immunological education is reduced or missing:
” The routine removal of the whole or part of the thymus, which accompanies the surgical treatment of congenital heart defects, has a significant impact on the formation of the immune cell pool and the maintenance of the phenotype and functionality of naive T cells later in the patient’s life. The thymus’s ability to regenerate warrants the modification of operative techniques to enable the preservation of this gland, or its larger fragment, during neonatal cardiac surgery. Despite numerous cellular changes in the immune system, thymectomized patients do not exhibit specific clinical symptoms that could be associated directly to thymectomy alone. Current studies indicate that complete or partial thymectomy results in accelerated aging of the immune system and reduces T-cell diversity, which may consequently lead to increased susceptibility to autoimmune or neurodegenerative disease [12]. Further studies (especially long-term) are required to establish the late consequences of thymectomy.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5767777/
And please note my cited RNZ talk from an Otago University associate Professor is not only dealing with the thymus, but other immune mechanisms which I believe ought to be checked for any impact of fluoride in some people, slowing their healing.
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Though in my current observation I was more concerned with any difference in the immune system after vaccination, that is to invaders other than what vaccination has trained us to attack.
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Stuartg wrote: “I also pointed out to you that it only took a short time to determine that your observations were most likely an outlying exception to hundreds, if not thousands, of similar datasets within NZ and around the globe. ”
Scientists work with sample populations. They get a p value and if it happens to be 0.05 that would mean their result has a 5% chance of being am “outlying exception.”
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Soundhill,
“Scientists work with sample populations.”
Yes. I gave you examples of where to find hundreds of sample populations to rest. Obviously you haven’t looked them up. But it’s hardly surprising when you haven’t yet managed to form a hypothesis to test.
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Soundhill,
Maybe you haven’t formed a testable hypothesis yet because your subconscious realises testing it would mean destruction of at least part of your faith/belief?
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Soundhill,
“You try to create an impression that the 5% chance level for significance would be somehow connected to a variation in data of 5%.”
Not at all, just pointing out that you decided to ignore a variable and doing so at that time would potentially contribute 5% error.
But then the biggest error you are making is cherry picking your data before you’ve even formulated a working hypothesis.
Have you ever considered actually formulating a hypothesis that you can test?
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Soundhill,
“Though in my current observation I was more concerned with any difference in the immune system after vaccination”
Ah, yes, I wondered if you would bring up vaccination. I had noted within the USA the correlation of high incidence of Covid-19 in the areas that antivaccinationists live and are active. I’ll leave you to ponder the correlation.
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Soundhill,
Why your concern about possible thymectomy during correction of neonatal heart defects? Could you enlighten us to its relationship to Covid-19 infection? Perhaps by pointing out the proportion of such people who have been infected by Covid-19?
Btw, have you looked at the clinical consequences of thymectomy? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266974763_Routine_thymectomy_in_congenital_cardiac_surgery_changes_adaptive_immunity_without_clinical_relevance
Again, why do you focus on the thymus yet ignore the rest of the immune system?
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Stuartg your thymus ref is 6 years old. This is more recent: “Nowadays it is known that impaired thymus function may have a number of consequences for the immune system as an increased predisposition to infection and autoimmunity, reduced response to vaccines with age and possible risk of cancer development. Patients subjected to complete thymectomy as neonates are more likely to suffer from atherosclerosis, autoimmune or neurodegenerative diseases, as well as they have a higher predisposition to develop rashes, eczema, or contact allergies and show stable disbalance of naïve T cells in the periphery, especially if thymectomy happened at the age below one year [2,3,4,5,6,7]. According to other data, thymectomy has no critical clinical effects, if performed in the post-infant period [8]. However, most data were collected in a short follow up time after thymectomy and therefore not considering the time for the onset of age-related diseases in the thymectomised group. Also, the inclusion of individuals with residual thymic tissue might cause an underestimation of the impact of thymectomy.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12015-020-09955-y
I talked of the thymus to wonder whether it and “innate” immunity could explain the lower numbers of covid-19 cases in the under 20s and who however have had vaccinations of sorts. The vaccine-reduced immunity to other invaders or immune-disregulation caused by the vaccination in the 20s. Would covid-19 symptoms be a minor cytokine storm, more likely with reduced immune regulation from vaccine-impaired T-cell or general immune system regulation?
Note the older age at which Gardasil is given the more shots required.
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Stuartg note the lesser cases per 100,000 of covid-19 in the over-70s who developed their own immunity to measles mumps. (Though if they happen to be infected noticeably they may die more.)
However if it means anything they are much lower users of cellphones.
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Stuartg wrote: ” I had noted within the USA the correlation of high incidence of Covid-19 in the areas that antivaccinationists live and are active.”
Wakefield didn’t start opposition to giving the three valent mealses mumps and rubella vaccine till after the year 2000. The affected people are not yet into their 20s.
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Stuartg wrote: “But then the biggest error you are making is cherry picking your data before you’ve even formulated a working hypothesis.’ Do you class noticing a pattern like smoking and ill health as cherry picking for a study?
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Soundhill,
Just to amuse myself, I read back over your comments, and noted things that you had and hadn’t mentioned as related to Covid-19 infections.
So far you’ve related Covid-19 to vaccines (more specifically BCG and Gardasill), the thymus, CWF (but not endemic high fluoride), 5G, 4G, EMF in general, socialist health practice, German comedians, and birthplace. I’m amused that a couple of these appear to have negative correlations.
That’s quite a collection of conspiracist fantasies there.
You’ve still a way to go, though. You appear to have left out glyphosate, agricultural runoff, wastewater runoff, pollution, biofuels, e-cigarettes, mercury, fetal DNA, aluminium, and influenza vaccine for the complete collection.
You also seem to have ignored the obvious positive correlations of smoking, proximity to water sources (rivers, seas, etc), road network density, presence of antivaccinationists, and population mobility. I wonder why.
You claim to want to discuss things. Well, I’ve opened the discussion with several areas where your thinking shows obvious errors, but you seem reluctant to discuss them.
Here’s an idea: perhaps the causative agent of Covid-19 is a recently evolved variant of previously known coronaviridae. Maybe it evolved through one or more interspecies transfer. Maybe it’s transmitted by droplet spread, especially in areas of high population density with highly mobile populations. Maybe the differences people show to Covid-19 infection is down to simple things like individual variations in immunity, or even the numbers of viruses in the initial viral load causing the infection. Maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with any of the conspiracist fantasies you brought up.
What do you think? Does the available data and evidence support that idea?
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Soundhill,
“Do you class noticing a pattern like smoking and ill health as cherry picking for a study?” But that’s not what you’ve been doing.
Would I classify gathering some data, discarding other data, and attempting an analysis of incomplete data before you’ve even formulated a hypothesis as cherry picking? Yes, of course I would.
How else would you classify it? Discuss, please.
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Soundhill,
“Wakefield didn’t start opposition to giving the three valent mealses mumps and rubella vaccine till after the year 2000. The affected people are not yet into their 20s.”
Wasn’t his fraudulent paper published in 1998?
What has Wakefield to do with current location of antivaccinationists and the incidence of infection of Covid-19? Discuss.
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Stuartg wrote: ” Maybe the differences people show to Covid-19 infection is down to simple things like individual variations in immunity, ”
I have given some suggestions for causes for those variations. I have not covered so far where it is not gene expression because of environment (which may even be inherited (epigenetics) but because of the presence or absence of genes, such as been claimed about some northern europeans.
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Stuartg wrote: “What has Wakefield to do with current location of antivaccinationists and the incidence of infection of Covid-19? Discuss.”
We need to decide which apparent correlations are spurious. We should try to look for all possible variables to consider.
If a correlation happens to be spurious we may get an idea from from the partial correlations. Isolating it will have little effect on the relatioships of causal factors.
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Stuartg wrote: “Would I classify gathering some data, discarding other data, and attempting an analysis of incomplete data before you’ve even formulated a hypothesis as cherry picking? Yes, of course I would.”
But please don’t try by that means of arguing to build public perceptions against including variables in studies for the future.
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And more light relief: https://babylonbee.com/news/researchers-delay-new-vaccine-until-they-figure-out-how-to-make-it-cause-autism
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Soundhill,
“We need to decide which apparent correlations are spurious.”
Very good. Remember it for when you decide to stop cherry picking and analyzing incompatible data in an attempt to produce spurious correlations.
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Stuartg wrote: “You’ve still a way to go, though. You appear to have left out glyphosate, agricultural runoff, wastewater runoff, pollution, biofuels, e-cigarettes, mercury, fetal DNA, aluminium, and influenza vaccine for the complete collection.”
Thanks for pointing out e-cigarettes.
As for influenza vaccination sorry I think that I forgot to transfer that here.
I point out: “Seasonal vaccination remains the most effective way to protect against influenza virus infections. However, there is accumulating evidence suggesting that repeat seasonal vaccination may, in specific instances, result in reduced antibody responses and diminished vaccine effectiveness. Although the effect of repeat influenza vaccination on the antibody response to influenza has received substantial attention in recent years, much less is known about consequences on the T-cell compartment. In this issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Richards et al [1] report that blunted CD4+ T-cell responses resulting from repeat vaccination may underlie previously reported deficits in the antibody response.”
https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiz434/5554481
Then to read that in combination with: “Laboratory head Katherine Kedzierska found people’s immune system responded to coronavirus in the same way we try to fight the flu.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/research-how-bodys-immune-system-fights-coronavirus-covid-19/12059266?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_content&utm_campaign=%5Bspecialist_sfmc_18_03_20_science%5D%3A125&user_id=9b07d489bca243ad88fa0519a9caf1235c6b0329fea21db05d21ca89258709cf&WT.tsrc=email&WT.mc_id=Email%7C%5Bspecialist_sfmc_18_03_20_science%5D%7C125https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fnews%2F2020-03-17%2Fresearch-how-bodys-immune-system-fights-coronavirus-covid-19%2F12059266&fbclid=IwAR05Q3Nz-azZyScVZjwgVlobbi5nwUgcz0tcQlqM0CGCrabMFTndzHkZrXA
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Stuartg wrote: “I’d be mildly interested to know why you think the actions of an individual, Livingston, have any relevance to you wanting to be able to distinguish between conspiracy and conspiracy fantasies.”
The discourse cited refers how “Livingston”‘s son Rockefeller started a corrupt monopoly. One way corrupt monopolies have of fighting off public dislike is to create the perception that whoever is challenging them is involved in conspiracy fantasy.
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Stuartg quote me and wrote: ““We need to decide which apparent correlations are spurious.”
Very good. Remember it for when you decide to stop cherry picking and analyzing incompatible data in an attempt to produce spurious correlations.”
And please don’t try to discredit consideration of possible confounders.
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soundhill,
You still don’t get it, do you? …sigh.
If you use data to develop a hypothesis, you are then obliged to discount that data when testing the hypothesis. Check the history of research into ESP decades ago for the reasons why, or maybe just watch “Ghostbusters”.
Once a scientist formulates a hypothesis, only then do they search for data, analyse the data, and check for confounders.
As I said, you are cherry picking your data, discarding data you don’t like or can’t make fit, and then trying to analyse incompatible data, all in order to produce spurious correlations. I would guess that only then are you going to produce a “hypothesis” that encompasses the spurious correlations.
Why do I say that? Because that’s what you’ve consistently done so far.
Except that you’ve never actually got to the stage of producing a hypothesis.
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soundhill,
It’s well established that use of influenza vaccine has no effect on Covid-19 incidence or infection, apart from in the community that develops conspiracist fantasies: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/01/30/coronavirus-flu-vaccine/ https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-viral-interference/
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Stuartg I’ll try to get through David Gorski’s article. (Orac) But when Isee such things written as: “The outbreak doesn’t even have to be of a vaccine-preventable disease to produce antivaccine conspiracy theories.”
I don’t hold out for much useful imput from it.
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soundhill,
That’s a really good attitude to take/sarcasm: “I don’t agree with him, so I’ll not pay any attention to what he’s written, nor to any of his references.” Is it because he deals with reality rather than fantasy?
Maybe that’s part of the reason that you don’t manage to follow the scientific method.
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soundhill,
I merely assumed that you may want to find out what was already known about the relationship between influenza vaccine and Covid-19, i.e. there is none.
I’d have thought you would have been glad to have one of the confounders you consider eliminated for you. After all, it would ease your data collection and analysis after you eventually manage to formulate a hypothesis.
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Stuartg
The immune system does not only deal with vaccine-preventable diseases.
If the immune system happens to be somewhat cut back when there is a fever as the vaccine teaches its immunity then mightn’t it be overwhelmed more easily by things it normally can deal with but a vaccine can’t?
I would say it’s a failing of David Gorski not to take such matters into account. I shall have to read his article very carefully.
From the Gardasil leaflet and I haven’t included the part relating to allergic reactions. It is not a minor thing the immune system is having to deal with.
And as the girl increases in age more shots are required. Why?
Tell your doctor if you or your
child have any of the following
and they worry you:
• pain, swelling, redness, itching
and bruising at or around the
injection site
• headache
• fever or high temperature
• nausea
• dizziness
• fatigue
Studies show that there was more
swelling where the shot was given
when GARDASIL 9 was given at
the same time with other vaccines
such as Repevax or Menactra
and/or Adacel.
These are the most common side
effects seen with GARDASIL 9.
These side effects are usually
mild and usually improve or
disappear within a few days.
As with other vaccines, additional
side effects that have been
reported during general use for
GARDASIL 9 are shown below.
Side effects reported during the
general use of GARDASIL are
also shown below. GARDASIL
side effects are reported as they
may be relevant to GARDASIL 9
since the vaccines are similar in
composition.
GARDASIL 9
• fainting sometimes
accompanied with seizure-like
movements
• vomiting
Additionally, the following side
effects have been seen with the
general use of GARDASIL.
GARDASIL
• skin infection (may appear as
hot, tender and red skin)
• bleeding or bruising more
easily than normal (may
appear as purple or red spots
visible through the skin
• swollen glands in the neck,
armpit or groin
• muscle weakness, abnormal
sensations, tingling in the
arms, legs and upper body
(Guillain-Barre syndrome)
• confusion
• joint pain or painful, swollen
joint
• aching muscles (may appear
as muscle weakness or
weakness that is not caused
by exercise)
• unusual tiredness, weakness
• chills
• generally feeling unwell
If any of the above symptoms
worsen or you or your child
has any unusual or severe
symptoms after receiving
GARDASIL 9, contact your
doctor or healthcare provider.
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Stuartg The Orac article was published on Jan 30. Maybe you didn’t read down to the comments. One of them points out (Mar 29) that, owing to elevated ACE2, “our study suggests that influenza spreading and its associated therapies could exacerbate the symptoms of COVID-19 and therefore great care must be given for patients with prior influenza infection”
https://archive.is/1Txsm
So stay home if you have flu, but also maybe if you had flu vaccine?
I have been trying to figure why “The Mirror” may have written the headline:
“People who get the winter flu jab are firmly advised to shield themselves from the coronavirus by isolating for 12 weeks, the deputy chief medical officer for England warns.” though a commenter tries to correct that.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-top-medic-warns-anyone-21708701?fbclid=IwAR1IJNinm8tRTs1GVoToghGcHu9mmTPtAc0rq0m-UuwWu3dmppjE2wvfoQg
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Soundhill,
Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.
You’re trying to figure out why “The Mirror” is advising people to protect themselves from Covid-19 infection? Are you serious???
I got the impression that you had no sense of humour…
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It is well established that fluoridation destroys one’s sense of humour. Brian is a victim of fluoridation.
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I’m afraid I’m an exception, then. Living in a fluoridated area but retaining a sense of humour.
Maybe it’s because I was born in a fluoridated area but brought up in a non-fluoridated area? Or the frequent transitioning between the two whilst chasing jobs as an adult? Just like a rugby player, really…
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Stuartg wrote: “Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.”
I have seen that paper before. For a certain military group they determined no interference. Note that paper was accepted on 1 Oct 2019 before SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for Covid-19, was known about.
Here is a fresh paper, but not yet peer-reviewed.
” While the underlying mechanisms of vaccine associated virus interference remain to be revealed and while more evidence for or against it is clearly needed, the study independent input data presented here suggest that vaccinations against influenza virus might be a relevant factor for respiratory tract infections through SARS-CoV-2. This mode of vaccine interference, if further confirmed in future studies, could potentially be used in COVID-19 prevention, containment, and mitigation measures.”
https://archive.is/1Txsm free download.
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Sorry wrong link. Try this:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3558270
“Association between influenza vaccination rates
and SARS-CoV-2 outbreak infection rates in
OECD countries”
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Humour or wit?
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soundhill,
“Stuartg wrote: “Obviously you didn’t read the second referral of the two I posted. I’m sure that I’ve noted your propensity not to read carefully before; you’ve just demonstrated it yet again.”
I have seen that paper before.”
And yet again you are obviously not reading carefully. My second referral was not to a “paper” but to a blog post with referrals to multiple papers.
Do you want to discuss your inability to read things carefully?
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soundhill,
You said that you wanted to discuss your ideas. I’ve shown where you’re going wrong with them. But then you haven’t discussed them any further. Instead you just divert. Maybe you didn’t want to discuss them at all. In that case, why put them into this forum?
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Stuartg wrote: “And yet again you are obviously not reading carefully. My second referral was not to a “paper” but to a blog post with referrals to multiple papers.”
At 2:14pm yesterday you commented with two http links.After I commented on the first you asked me to comment on the other, which is explaining some people’s misreading of a vaccine interference coronavirus test in a military setting. The paper dates from before the knowledge of the virus which causes covid-19. I have replied with a more recent paper. Have you looked at it yet?
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The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously and has been said to respond to HIV medication. But who can we trust?
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Sruartg wrote: “And right at the moment most of my reading time is going into managing Covid-19 patients. This is light relief for me.”
and you wrote: “That’s a really good attitude to take/sarcasm: “I don’t agree with him, so I’ll not pay any attention to what he’s written, nor to any of his references.”
It’s rather ironic that that is the approach that the Science Based Medicine people apply. The author you are asking me to read being a king pin one. For example they scoff at Mercola. So I suppose you won’t be able to look at his reporting of current approach to Covid-19 treatment. You won’t even want to know which authorities he is quoting.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/07/coronavirus-treatment.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200407Z2&et_cid=DM501437&et_rid=845468019
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“is said to have” – I really cannot respect anyone who is so dishonest they use such an extreme passive sense in their writing.
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Ken it was said in a paper which was then retracted because they said people had been using it for conspiracy theory.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/
early/2020/01/31/2020.01.30.927871.full.pdf
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I wrote: “The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously,” but their word was not “adventitiously,” but “fortuitously.”
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Looks like a crappy paper, Brian and the reason for withdrawal – “This paper has been withdrawn by its authors. They intend to revise it in response to comments received from the research community on their technical approach and their interpretation of the results. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.”
I have not seen it used in any conspiracy theory I am aware of. However, there is a paper form a US research lab which describes the insertion of a bit of RNA from HIV into a coronavirus. The authors showed this had a damaging effect on human lung tissue.
This has been cited as part of a conspiracy theory.
While there are questions about human creation of such viruses there is no indication of it being used as a weapon or that it accidentally escaped – it was simply part of normal research looking for possible problems. But, yes, a more credible candidate for a conspiracy theory than the one you cited.
It is understandable that you did not want your claim checked out so used an extreme passive presentation. But that is dishonest.
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Ken quite a lot of publishers have picked it up. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=493280482140548087&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2020
This was stated in “GreatGameIndia” which I saw a while back.
“”Note: Authors of “uncanny” 2019-nCoV preprint have voluntarily withdrawn the preprint: “It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories…we
appreciate the criticisms… and will get back with a revised version.””
The reason I put it up was that Stuartg said he was looking into Covid-19 management.
A number of sources have talked of using AIDS medicine, a more modern sort, less damaging than the earlier type.
I am not trying to be persuasive.
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Ken it doesn’t have to be a “crappy” paper.
In the current circumstances authors are putting papers on line to get the info out there a lot faster than it would be out there if waiting for peer review.
How often would you think papers are accepted at the first submission?
I think it to be unethical to discourage early release at the moment.
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Ken, the research team is from the Indian Institute of Technology which ranks 182 in the World, higher than VUW, UOC, but lower than Auckland, and similar to Otago..
https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/indian-institute-technology-delhi-iitd
Their biological sciences school is only 12 years old but I would presume it to be fair dinkum.
This is serious isn’t it?
Here are some details of the researchers, the professors in charge towards the end.
Prashant Pradhan
Previous Qualifications
M.Sc. Biotechnology, South Asian University, New Delhi
Ashutosh Kumar Pandey
Previous Qualifications
M.Tech in Computational and Systems Biology, Jawaharlal Nehru University
JRF at International Centre For Genetic Engineering And Biotechnology, New Delhi (2013-2014)
Area of Research
Systems Biology
Akhilesh Mishra
Previous Qualifications
CSIR-UGC-NET JRF, BINC JRF, GATE
M. Sc. Bioinformatics, Botany
Area of Research
Physico-chemical parameter based prokaryotic & eukaryotic genome annotation pipeline.
Dr. Parul Gupta
PhD (July-2003 to August-2008)
Present Position
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad
Praveen Kumar Tripathi
Previous Qualifications
ICMR-JRF, GATE-2014
PG Biomedical Sciences (University of Delhi)
PG Diploma – IPR Law (Indian Academy of International Law)
Area of Research
Understanding Non-Structural proteins of Chikungunya Virus
Manoj Balakrishna Menon
a professor and PLOS One academic editor amongst much else
Click to access M-Menon.pdf
james gomes
Home
Biography
Current Research
Courses
Publications & Projects
Research Group
Extracurricular Interests
Biography
I received my Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University and my M.S. and Ph.D from Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. As a graduate student at Tulane, I received several awards including the prestigious Sigma Xi research award. I worked as Senior Process Engineer for Process Services Inc., Baton Rouge and as Executive Engineer for L&T, Powai, Mumbai, before joining IIT Delhi. My current research interest is in the area of Systems and Network Biology. We apply mathematical and computational methods to study disease networks, understand disease progression and determine new drug targets, followed by directed experiments. My group is interested in neurodegenerative diseases, virus-host interaction networks and malaria. The results of our work on Angiogenin gives a cohesive and comprehensive picture of the molecular origins of functional loss of all ALS associated ANG mutants. We recently created NeuroDNet, a database with interactive tools that enables the creation of interaction networks for neurodegenerative diseases under one portal for interrogation and analyses. It enables the construction and analysis of neurodegenerative diseases through protein interaction networks, regulatory networks and Boolean networks.
I can’t find much about Dr Vivekanandan Perumal
Bishwajit Kundu
http://web.iitd.ac.in/~bkundu/
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Just look at the comments on the paper. No wonder it was withdrawn. They are embarrassing.
You will have to find another citation for your conspiracy theory.
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soundhill,
Since you don’t seem to be able to follow my links, I’ll repeat them:
Note that both are to the same blog site and neither of them to a peer reviewed publication. However both do use peer reviewed publications in their links.
If you had read it, you would find the second (first of the links in this reply) has already discussed your link. I suggest that you read the links, and their references. Carefully.
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soundhill,
“The new novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes covid-19 is said to have HIV material inserted into, and said to be unlikely with other 3 inserts to have got there adventitiously”
Not that old conspiracist fantasy again.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Or to explain wth less jargon:
https://www.genengnews.com/news/coronavirus-evolved-naturally-and-is-not-a-laboratory-construct-genetic-study-shows/
In basic English: totally disproven. Get yourself up to date.
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soundhill,
“The reason I put it up was that Stuartg said he was looking into Covid-19 management.”
If you’d read it carefully, you’d have realised that it has absolutely nothing to do with managing patients with Covid-19, which is what I mentioned I was reading about. Or didn’t you read my comment carefully?
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Stuartg wrote: “If you’d read it carefully, you’d have realised that it has absolutely nothing to do with managing patients with Covid-19, which is what I mentioned I was reading about. Or didn’t you read my comment carefully?”
I didn’t understand whether you included only palliative care or included more hopeful treatment.
Since you seem to be interested in technological advancement I thought you would be interested i possible use of HIV medication.
Moving along:
“A list of candidate therapeutics has been published by WHO (https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/keyaction/overview-ncov-therapeutics.pdf?ua=1). The Chinese Academy of Sciences also suggested a list of 30 different
compounds, with 12 HIV medicines, including Saquinavir, Indinavir, Lopinavir, ritonavir and Carfilzomib, two
respiratory syncytial virus drugs, a schizophrenia medication and an immunosuppressant. Candidates also include
certain Traditional Chinese Medicines. The efficacy and safety of these candidates for COVID-19 still need to be
confirmed by robust clinical evaluations”
Thanks Ken for getting me to follow on from the Indian article. The paper trail led me to that which I pass on before getting through it.
Click to access link92.pdf
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That WHO link got corrupted in my paste. And the main link doesn’t show – just brings up the scrollable article.Try removing spaces from this
ht tps:/ / www. apfh. pt /xfiles/ scContentDeployer_pt/ links/ link92 .pdf
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soundhill,
“I didn’t understand whether you included only palliative care or included more hopeful treatment.”
Then I suggest that you look up the many meanings of the word “managing”.
“I thought you would be interested i possible use of HIV medication.(sic)”
No, I’m not. Been there, done that. It took a couple of seconds to recall the HIV antiretrovirals work with the reverse transcriptase specifically found in HIV, then about five minutes more to find they are already shown to have little or no effect on SARS-CoV-2 (the hint is in the taxonomy of the viruses).
Could you explain how these are related to your faith/belief that infection with SARS-CoV-2 is somehow related to vaccines (such as influenza, BCG and Gardasill9), the thymus (as such a tiny part of the immune system), CWF (but not endemic high fluoride), 5G, 4G, EMF in general, socialist health practice, German comedians, birthplace, and the several other conspiracy fantasies that you have mentioned? Anyone would think that you’re using these as a diversion away from discussion of the multiple errors you demonstrate in your imaginings about conspiracy fantasies?
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soundhill,
Your link was not corrupted. Just as my earlier link was not corrupted, but either you or your browser seems to have misread it. Maybe your web browser is doing the corruption instead?
Or maybe Big Pharma or the CDC has infiltrated your computer? Or worse, Big Fluoride?
Btw, nothing new to me in the link. Like I said, most of my reading time recently has been going into managing Covid-19 patients.
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soundhill,
I presume that you haven’t actually read that link you supplied.
Because if you had, you’d not be spouting nonsense about vaccines, CWF, 5G, and all the rest of the rubbish dredged up by your conspiracist fantasies. It effectively eliminates the entire of them out of discussion.
In fact, it’s a good counterargument against any conspiracist fantasy about Covid-19. Thankyou for supplying it.
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Stuartg
No as I said I hadn’t read the link through.
And in the same way Orac pointed out how people had been misreading the Wolff study, you have been misreading my stuff.
The way you group CWF, 5G and vaccines all together would mislead readers who came in at that point.
Ken introduced the 5G concept. Which he later called humour, but I had seen it rather as wit directed at me so responded calmly, saying how only parts of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have 5G. There is none in Southern DHB which however has a high level for NZ of Covid-19 cases. If you had read my comment and you should be intelligent enough, I would guess now that you are trying to be an annoying time waster.
And earlier you said I talked of CWF not environmental fluoride. You are wrong. I spoke of Japan and South Korea both of which I thought have lower environmental fluoride than China and fewer Covid-19 cases. They are not fluoridated to my knowledge.
I don’t think I have mentioned on this group so far that Northern Italy, where the higher level of cases have occurred has no fluoridation but higher level of environmental fluoride. Some 0.5 mg per litre compared to further south.
And when you say, “It effectively eliminates the entire of them out of discussion.” You would be applying that very principle you accuse me of talking about applying with regard to reading Orac. I knew you might later be doing that yourself so I put that comment in to catch you out. Fair catch.
I cited the article for some useful points. Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?
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Stuartg as for the Krstin Andersen paper you cite I note that on Andersen’s Twitter page he does not appear to have replied to this:
Alpha
@FUTURENEWS2020
Replying to
@K_G_Andersen
and
@biorxivpreprint
some suggest the problem isn’t in having hiv motifs inserts but having them joining together in one virus naturally is quite a stretch. How probable is it 4these motifs to get together naturally.another issue some note that its necessary to look at 3d picture to make a conclusion”
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soundhill,
“Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?(sic)”
Simple answer: read your own reference, pages 75-81. I also mentioned virus specific reverse transcriptase previously, in case you didn’t read that either.
“Fair catch.”
Yes, your own reference does indeed give the answer to your question.
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? You know, specifics that can be answered, not just vague faith/belief. If you decline to give specific questions, you can’t expect specific answers.
As you noted above, about CWF versus environmental fluoride, you give vague pointers most of the time rather than specifics. When you mention actual details it’s relatively easy to point out where your thinking is in error and suggest corrections. If you want specific answers, then it’s appropriate for you to ask specific questions. If you persist in vague generalities then it is not appropriate for you to say “Ahah, that’s a wrong answer for the question I actually meant when I used such vague wording.”
You still need to re-read your comments before you post. As an example: “Answer me why is HIV medicaiton though worth trying?” I can understand the mis-spelling of medication, but is “though” a mis-spelling of “thought”, or just poor grammar? I had to guess at your question, as would anybody.
Now, how about discussing the multiple errors you’ve made? You asked for discussion, I replied. Then you shut up and diverted.
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soundhill,
“as for the Krstin Andersen paper you cite I note that on Andersen’s Twitter page he does not appear to have replied to this:”
OK. You rely on Twitter. I’ll rely on peer reviewed literature.
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Brian – you say “I had seen it rather as wit directed at me so responded calmly.” That is the problem – you clearly cannot see when people make fun of you and consequently dig yourself into an even deeper hole of making yourself appear even more ridiculous.
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Stuartg wrote: OK. You rely on Twitter. I’ll rely on peer reviewed literature.”
However note that your cite: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” is a letter to a journal therefore not peer-reviewed.
For a bit of paranoia/conspiracy I point out the letter comes from the Scripps Institute who work together with China.
That combo might have a reason to try to cover up what they had been doing. The businessman Trump said so passionately this is a Chinese virus – it comes from China.
But the theory of pangolin transmission is rather shaky.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00548-w
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soundhill,
“However note that your cite: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” is a letter to a journal therefore not peer-reviewed.”
And if you had read carefully, you would know that I acknowledged that. It also refers to peer-reviewed papers – or didn’t you bother to read that far?
“But the theory of pangolin transmission is rather shaky.”
You demonstrate that your ability to distinguish between ideas, hypotheses and theories is extremely shaky, maybe even non-existent.
Any discussion of your multiple errors yet? Have you decided to accept the discussion as valid and move on? Or decided to ignore and divert? (Yet again)
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soundhill,
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? You know, specifics that can be answered, not just vague faith/belief. If you decline to give specific questions, you can’t expect specific answers.
Yes, I know I’m repeating myself, but you seem unwilling to explore this topic in spite of your previously stated willingness to discuss.
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Stuartg: wrote: ” I wrote: “But the theory of pangolin transmission is rather shaky.”
You demonstrate that your ability to distinguish between ideas, hypotheses and theories is extremely shaky, maybe even non-existent.”
Thank you for pointing out that pangolin transmission is not even a theory, unlike what many are claiming.
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Sruartg wrote: “Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again?”
I’m feeling some hypotheses germinating.
For the moment not about observational matters.
Here’s a negative hypothesis about one of several possible mechanisms:
Though the ameloblasts, which form tooth enamel, form from epithelial cells, and are damaged by too much systemic fluoride, the protective function of the epithelial cells in the respiratory tract will not be damaged.
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One definition of a hypothesis:
Now, unless you can justify the formulation of your “hypothesis” with some sort of proper evidence then it is wrong to call it a “hypothesis.”
But you just haven’t any evidence. You are not proposing a “hypothesis” you are simply peddling a pet conspiracy theory because of you mad fixation on fluoridation.
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Ken any detective needs to follow up all possiblities even if they don’t seem probable.
I have talked about responses of certain individuals before.
Here see about dental fluorosis and genetics. Stress of fluoride on the endoplasmic reticulum leading to fluorosis. I’ll want to eliminated fluorides effect on other cells sourced from epithelial cells.
http://www.journalajds.com/index.php/AJDS/article/view/30106/56486
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Detectives do not follow up “all possibilities.” That would be absolutely stupid – they would not solve any times because they are following wisps instead of evidence..
They start with the evidence and work from there. That is why the get somewhere.
But you are admitting that you stick with “possibilities” – no matter how weird – and ignore the evidence.
that is why people laugh at you.
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soundhill,
Now, what was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again?
“I’m feeling some hypotheses germinating.”
Then they’ve been germinating without producing any growth for several years now. If we’re using horticultural analogies, I think that the term you were intending is “decomposing”.
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Ken wrote: “Detectives do not follow up “all possibilities.” That would be absolutely stupid – they would not solve any times because they are following wisps instead of evidence..”
Sensing dogs follow wisps. I wouldn’t be quick like that or like IBM’s “Watson” diagnostic AI computer. But a lot of “mes” could do it. We would scan and discard many useless patterns being so quick till one clicks ready for a hypothesis.
And unlike Watson we may not have to be programmed to produce money for our owner.
These guys will do their work too cheaply. They won’t be liked.
https://newatlas.com/medical/uk-researchers-dog-detect-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR0TQWJuqAKclH3m9cAMh-8V1M5xpAyzWA8leyzm5XvPYKqiYQVICHlHN0g
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You are burbling, Brian.
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Ken you seem to want to suppress the conditions for germination of a hypothesis.
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soundhill,
The reference you gave me already discards the many useless “patterns” produced by your faith/belief/religion of conspiracist fantasy. It’s a pity you didn’t read it before undertaking your flights of fantasy.
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soundhill,
“Ken any detective needs to follow up all possiblities even if they don’t seem probable.”
I take it you follow the Dirk Gently method of detection rather that endorsed by police in the real world?
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…rather than that…
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soundhill,
For your edification, the Dirk Gently method of detection treats everything as significant and related to the question, back to and including the big bang.
But it first requires a question to answer. It’s a pity that you don’t have a question to which the method can be applied, just faith and belief in your conspiracist fantasy religion.
Oh, yes. You need to be aware that the method was invented by a comedy writer and has no application outside of comedy literature…
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“For your edification, the Dirk Gently method of detection treats everything as significant and related to the question, back to and including the big bang.”
Including Wikipedia as IBM Watson does.
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Stuartg do you know any doctors who have had diseases like EBV or Lyme? Orac who you cite and “Science Based Medicine” call Functional Medicine quackery, though here a doctor has used it to deal with her own severe trouble that could have been life long if she had not come across it.May be more of this sort of thing around after Covid-19 or its treatments.
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Stuartg you like military stuff.
Gates have donated nearly $1million to Distributed Bio November 2019, topic pneumonia.
I suppose there may be a pay back in the agreement.
There is a connection between Gates and W.H.O, and W.H.O advised Trump not to close the US borders to China.
More sales?
Distributed Bio is to have monoclonal antibodies tested by the US Military.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/15/coronavirus-antibodies.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200415Z2&et_cid=DM508251&et_rid=851011859
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soundhill,
Diverting again, I see.
What was your hypothesis about any possible interaction between fluoride intake and Covid-19 again? After all, it was you who said you wanted to discuss it.
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soundhill,
You want a good reference all about about Covid-19 and how it can be treated? Here’s one: https://www.apfh.pt/xfiles/scContentDeployer_pt/links/link92.pdf
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soundhill,
“There is a connection between Gates and W.H.O”
Of course. Bill Gates now donates more to the WHO than any single country.
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soundhill,
“do you know any doctors who have had diseases like EBV or Lyme?”
Of course. Myself. Completely resolved by using treatment prescribed by my GP. An anecdote to match your anecdote.
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Lyme can resolve in the early stages with antibiotics.
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What would you think of coenzyme Q10 vs the Hashimoto/vitiligo axis?
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Stuartg wrote: “Of course. Bill Gates now donates more to the WHO than any single country.”
Hard to see whether that is altruistic or whether he wants to elevate his level of power over systems.
Note:
“While working with the Computer Center’s PDP-10, Gates was responsible for what was probably the first computer virus, a program that copies itself into other programs and ruins data. Discovering that the machine was connected to a national network of computers called Cybernet, Gates invaded the network and installed a program on the main computer that sent itself to the rest of the network’s computers and crashed. When Gates was found out, he was severely reprimanded and he kept away from computers for his entire junior year at Lakeside. Without the lure of computers, Gates made plans in 1970 for college and law school. But by 1971 he was back helping Allen write a class scheduling program for their school’s computer.”
Maybe Trump is trying to isolate him via the removal of W.H.O. funding again.
In his news conference on Al Jazeera TV today Trump was asked about the story of the Chinese research lab worker who got infected by accident and his girl friend. Trump is not sure whether WHO/(Gates) knew about it from the start and did nothing.
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soundhill,
You said “I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them”, referring to the possibility of a relationship between CWF and Covid-19.
So, instead of diverting away from the topic all the time, how about discussing what you claim to want to discuss?
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Stuartg you are the one who started talking conspiracy.
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soundhill,
You raised the ideas yourself. I merely noted that all of your evidence free beliefs were those of other conspiracy fantasists and had already been debunked by people of greater knowledge and intellect than yourself.
But you’re the person who said “I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.” So why don’t you now discuss them? Why do you keep attempting to divert attention away from your debunked and erroneous ideas?
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Stuartg things work in concert.
You want to build a concrete building. Sure if too little cement is used it may be weak. So take plenty of cement and the correct sort of sand or gravel to the job. But in some countries you may find that is not sufficient. They may be short of water.
While I’m looking at fluoride I keep other things in mind.
Do you consider the material in this to be conspiracy, normal business cover-up, political lies or what blaming Covid-19 on to China?
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soudhill,
How about stopping the diversions? “I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.”
How about discussing a simple question? What are the patterns that you see? Or do you use the word “patterns” as a euphemism for “conspiracist fantasies I’ve seen in my Facebook feeds”?
Straightforward reply to the conspiracy mockumentary you posted: https://www.apfh.pt/xfiles/scContentDeployer_pt/links/link92.pdf Perhaps you should read it rather than just posting it?
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Stuartg. a “mockumentary” because it speaks against the Chinese Communist Party set up by Yale (Skull and Bones.)
“Back in 1903 Yale Divinity School established a number of schools and hospitals throughout China that were collectively known as ‘Yale in China’. It has since been shown that Yale In China was an intelligence network whose purpose was to destroy the Republican movement of Sun Yat-sen on behalf of the Anglo American establishment. The Anglo American establishment hated Sun because he wanted to develop China. On the other hand they loved the Chinese Communists because they intended to keep China backward and were committed to growing dope. One of Yale In China’s most important students was Mao Tse Tung.”
https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-297-china-and-the-new-world-order/
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soundhill,
A mockumentary because I thought you were attempting to be humorous when you posted it. After all, the reference you supplied negates it.
“I see patterns and come to this group to discuss them.”
What are the patterns that you see? Or do you use the word “patterns” as a euphemism for “conspiracist fantasies I’ve seen in my Facebook feeds”?
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Stuartg: “A mockumentary because I thought you were attempting to be humorous when you posted it.”
When you can’t answer it laugh at it.
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Stuartg wrote: “How about discussing a simple question? What are the patterns that you see? ”
I am grasping at any leads.
This morning’s news on RNZ is that WHO is doubting the use of antibody tests to allow people back to work. Seems to be a problem with developing/retaining antibodies. Presumably that would be a worry for vaccination, too.
I don’t want to put things down to one cause.
I may have reported before that after an operation nearly 20 years ago I found it hard to keep my balance when going to the supermarket. Iwould be walking close to the shelves in case I might need to hang on. I can’t really correlate it but it did get better, and later I realised I have stopped cleaning my teeth with fluoridated toothpaste before going out to the shop.
Around Christmas last year I developed a sort of lower spine stenosis I think which made it very painful to walk. I later noticed it to be about the same time as the dentist put a fluoride gum on my tooth.
It’s getting better with a little cider vinegar, vitamin K2,vitamin C.
I may have had the stenotic tendency a long while back, and I had gone to find out about some loss of sensitivty in toes. I was referred for ultrasound of calf no result. Come to think of it may have been near the fluoride toothpaste time. So not to put things down to one cause.
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soundhill,
“Stuartg: “A mockumentary because I thought you were attempting to be humorous when you posted it.”
When you can’t answer it laugh at it.”
So you weren’t trying to be funny. OK. My mistake. I should have remembered your lack of humour. Being completely serious, here’s my brief reply: https://www.apfh.pt/xfiles/scContentDeployer_pt/links/link92.pdf If you’d bothered to actually read your own reference, you’d not have needed to ask for an opinion on the “mockumentary.”
“I am grasping at any leads.”
Grasping at straws, more like. I’ve told you, your own reference is a really good overview to learn the basics about Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2. It can be used as fine starting point, with many leads, if you’re really serious about wanting to know more. Definitely much better than that “mockumentary.”
“This morning’s news on RNZ is that WHO is doubting the use of antibody tests to allow people back to work.”
Well, if you had been paying attention to the various lines of research, rather than fixating on conspiracist fantasies, you’d have realised the problem is with the kits to measure antibodies, not with human bodies generating them. From March: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/covid-19-self-test-could-allow-return-to-work-says-public-health-england The WHO is merely warning that the kits aren’t good enough yet to rely on. That’s old news to people working in the field. Even I’ve been discussing it with colleagues for weeks, and we’re well down the pecking order.
Maybe the Dunning-Kruger effect is making itself known again? You know a little, and think you’re an expert, but in reality you don’t even know enough to realise how little you know, and that lack of knowledge makes you misinterpret the news that you are hearing.
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Stuartg wrote: ” you’d have realised the problem is with the kits to measure antibodies, not with human bodies generating them. From March:”
It has just been said on TV1 News there seems to be doubt about herd immunity developing.
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“The World Health Organization (WHO) has cautioned countries against investing too much in antibody tests. The WHO says there is “no evidence” that having had the virus would guarantee immunity”
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52319956
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soundhill,
You’re still diverting away from Covid-19 and fluoride, which is one of your conspiracist fantasies and the topic you claim to want to discuss.
You seem concerned that blood tests to determine immune status to SARS-CoV-2 may not do what they claim. Let’s clarify that: a test that measures blood borne antibodies, antibodies to a virus that infects mucosal tissue and almost never appears in the blood, may not indicate immunity to that virus.
Well, duh…
That’s not news, it’s olds.
I keep forgetting your basic lack of knowledge and understanding. Especially when it’s about things I learned at high school many decades ago.
I suggest that you look at a high school biology textbook, in particular the bit about different types of immunoglobulins, where they are found, how they act, and what type of immunity they can confer. It doesn’t have to be current; even a fifty year old book should suffice. It may confer you some insight.
Although I guess you would prefer the Facebook echo chamber of your conspiracist fantasies rather than learning about actual science.
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