Covid Chernobyl

I was watching Chernobyl for like the 4th time (it is such a great show) and it occurred to me how similar the original reaction to the disaster was to COVID.

"It's just a cold."
= "It's just like a chest xray."

"It's only dangerous to old people and people with pre-existing conditions."
= "Everything is under control. There's no reason to evict people living around nuclear reactor."

"I became fully informed about how vaccines work from watching non-scientists explaining science in youtube videos. That's how I know more than doctors and nurses."
= "Can you explain exactly how I blew up the reactor? Then it doesn't matter that all of the evidence points to the reactor having exploded. If you can't explain my incompetence in detail then your opinion doesn't matter."

"The steps taken to contain the virus killed more people than the virus."
= "A panic will kill more people than the radiation."

"Anyone believes this is not a normal flu is a fool and a traitor."
= "Anyone believes that this is a good time to panic is a fool and a traitor."

"The number of deaths is exaggerated."
= "The number of deaths is exaggerated."

"This is why everyone hates scientists."
= "This is why everyone hates scientists."

I recently posted a video in the reddit sub WayOfTheBern that debunked Jimmy Dore's take on COVID and the COVID vaccine. WOTB is rabidly anti-COVID vaccine. Far more rabid than C99P.
So I expected the widespread backlash that I got. What surprised even me was how fundamentally weak it was.
One person watched just the first minute of the video. Hardly any detractor even clicked on the video. Yet every single person confidently proclaimed that the video was only "attacking jimmy, not debunking" and "pushing Big Pharma propaganda" and made "apologies for lies", that Status Coup was a "dimestore MSNBC knockoff" and was "gladly regurgitating establishment narratives" and "sold out the 99%", that the scientist being interviewed was a "lightweight" who was "playing on fear" and was in some undefined way working for Big Pharma, that I was a "corporate shill" and "fascist nutjob" and "establishment troll".
Almost no one wanted to debate the actual points in the video. Absolutely no one conceded a single fact the video brought up, even when Dore obviously contradicted himself, nor when he clearly misunderstood the article he was presenting.
When I called out most of these blatantly false claims almost no one tried to back them up, with the few exceptions of people that doubled-down on the personal insults.
Several people openly said that they knew everything necessary about vaccines and that everyone who disagreed was spreading lies.

The thing is that this was not an outlier on this subject in my experience (I'm not talking about C99P, which is almost always unusually civil).
No one had the slightest interest in learning facts that contradicted their opinions, nor did they want to verify if anything they believed to be true had been later disproven.
The consistent assumption is that if I didn't buy their take on the subject then I must also believe X, Y, and Z. For instance, if I didn't believe that the vaccine killed more people than COVID then I must be a shill for Big Pharma.
What seems clear is the most important thing is "the team", and this is reflected by a serious lack of independent, critical thinking.

The best example I can give is how so many of people on this "team" who have justifiable doubts about the safety of the Pfizer COVID vaccine because of the insufficient testing, have absolutely no problem believing that ivermectin was a COVID cure-all despite there being absolutely ZERO testing of it against the COVID vaccine until very recently (and most of those tests don't show any effectiveness against COVID).
That is clearly and unquestionably a hypocritical double-standard. It's as undeniable as 1 + 1 = 2.
Yet every single time I pointed this out, it was universally denied by the "team". Some people denied it out of dishonesty. But even more disturbing, some people honestly didn't have enough critical thinking skills to see and understand the obvious logical contradictions of their opinions, and that bothers me a lot more.

If you are unable to use logic and common sense to critically examine your opinions and the opinions that you hear, then it's only a matter of time before someone scams you out of all your money or you get talked into doing something you will later regret.
With that in mind, the biggest group out there who believes that untested COVID vaccines are dangerous, but ivermectin does work because of second-hand anecdotes also believes that Trump won the 2020 election despite all the evidence disproving it. This group, that even Fox News hosts called "fucking insane" in private texts (according to court documents in Fox News v. Dominion Voting), have little regard for facts, evidence, and book learnin'.

No, I'm not saying anyone here is like that. But if I happened to find myself agreeing with a bunch of people that don't care what the truth actually is, I would have to re-examine my opinions.
Also suspicious is how many people on the Left that have bought into this team are increasingly convinced that their real enemies aren't Republicans who despise them and oppose everything they value, nor the corporate Dems who sell them out for a nickle every chance they get, but are instead progressives, who lack the spine to fight for them.

It's like getting beaten up by the high school bully every day, but focusing all of your anger at the kid in the crowd who yells "Leave him alone", while telling the bully "I could never hate you because you are just doing what you do," as he knocks your teeth out. Then trying to convince the bully of how much you two have in common.

On a more personal note, one of my oldest and best friends jumped into the whole anti-vaxx thing with both feet. One day he was normal. We would have deep-dive conversations about politics and economics.

Then he cut himself off from friends and refused to visit without explaining why. Then he started sending out angry anti-vaxx emails to everyone that eventually evolved into non-nonsensical, curse-word filled rants about how the whole world was against him because he refused to be needle-raped.

So that's colored my view on the subject. The anti-vaxx movement cost me a good friend.

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Comments

what might be considered a profit making placebo might be warranted.

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@humphrey After all, Pfizer and Moderna got the government to sign an agreement so that they can't be sued. Why would they do that if they believed in their product? And of course, why would anyone trust Big Pharma about anything. Plus the lockdowns were unfair and punishing to the working class.

All of these things are fair game and I agree with.

But a placebo?
1) Every major study showed the vaccines saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
2) There are COVID vaccines that aren't mRNA.
3) Even if the number of deaths from COVID got downgraded by a third, it would have still killed more Americans than any other pandemic in history.
4) etc. etc.

This reminds me a lot of the debate about the Ukraine war.

You've got liberals on one side that think Putin is absolute evil, which makes Ukraine on the side of good, and we can never waver in restoring Ukraine's "traditional borders" even if it risks nuclear war.

I've seen people on the other side that believe that Ukraine was committing genocide in the breakaway regions in the Donbas before Russia invaded, and Putin invading last year was justified.

Both sides have it wrong. You don't have to think that the other side is wrong about everything. In fact, if you do then you need to look in a mirror.

Putin is not a nice guy, but he's no more evil than our government. Ukraine is just as corrupt as Russia. Ukraine was not committing genocide before the invasion. Putin's invasion was neither justified, nor was it wise.
But most important:
a) we've sent waaayyy too much money to Ukraine that they will never be able to pay back, and which people here in America need much more. By sending that money to Ukraine we are condemning thousands of poor Americans to suffer and die.
b) risking nuclear war is absolute insanity and criminal
c) Crimea has no historical connection to Ukraine and the people in Crimea want to be part of Russia

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@gjohnsit

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
And I may indeed regret it.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@humphrey was no doubt supported by a conspiracy among nearly all of the world's emergency rooms, who were of course all lying to us when they told us that the vast majority of the COVID-19 patients coming in were unvaccinated ones.

That having been said, the vaccine promoters were more or less begging for "skeptical" responses when they had both news and online discussion in the US censored across the board in favor of vaccine promotion.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Occasional Sanity. This place has it. Thanks.
And, yeah, if I ever start a punk band? Not a bad name, eh?

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Cassiodorus's picture

between the original Wuhan variant (and I have to think at this point that I have met people who contracted that variant) and the Alpha and Delta variants (and I suppose we might also add the Beta variant, which spread through South Africa before being superseded by Delta) and, on the other hand, the Omicron variant.

The original, Alpha, and Delta variants were quite deadly, or at least they were deadly among a certain genetic slice of the population (and the nature of this genetic slice does not appear to have been revealed entirely). This was, from what I know, because those variants attacked portions of lung tissue which did not produce immune responses. The Omicron variant, on the other hand, went through several manifestations, from BA1 to BA2 to BA2.12.1 to BA4 to BA5 (thus making it very hard for the vaccine manufacturers to catch up with it), eventually winding up with a disease about three times as prevalent as the flu and about as deadly overall as the flu but with a much wider variety of symptoms. This relative innocuousness is why Joe Biden feels safe in declaring the pandemic over.

No?

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

of how we've come to "not think". We are forced to make choices that in the past we don't care or feel strongly about. Our answers put us on a path that is always branching, subject to judgment by all who see our choices here on the internet. A lot of these choices seem reflexive, here's a decision put in front of you that must be made now, so make it now. Then you're forced to defend yourself, or join the majority that passes as community and avoid the worst of negative criticism. Take that poll, write that comment. Participate in a platform designed to make money. We're the product and consumer. The communication revolution that's the internet held so much promise to connect people. Instead it's dividing and conquering us. It feels like a new edition of an old playbook.

And that's why it's better to be blue, not orange.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

You're not the best diplomat I've ever met - and in a time when the CIA has managed to do to America precisely what Kennedy hoped to do to them, diplomacy is at a premium.

You have your sob-story, others have theirs. Never allow emotion and personal stake to supercede reason and objectivity. Like the Towers of Hanoi, there is a place for all these things (although really, I could as soon leave emotion as take it), and a proper sequence to processing them.

As goes r/WotB, how did your encounter actually go down? Did you get dogpiled, caught in a cyberspace version of a bully-circle by stranger after stranger, or was it really just a pit-fight between you and one or two others?

There are certainly one or two people there who are piss-poor diplomats, even worse than you - but I know at least one of them has an even worse personal story to fuel his stance. NEVERTHELESS, he can be mollified with a diplomatic approach. Certainly, there must be harsh limits to turning the other cheek - BUT that should indeed be, ideally, the universal initial reflex. Seeing how the other party responds after you do, now THAT tells you something.

I have seen - and run away from - MULTIPLE groupthink-hives in my time, because there's NOTHING I hate more. I stick around there because I DO feel free to dissent. It may not be as civil as here, but at least for me, it's almost as much so, and consider that here is a small and apparently-now-ossified number of individuals, whereas r/WotB is much much larger, and I think still growing.

Your "Chernobyl" analogy is awfully one-sided considering it could at least as easily be employed to the opposite effect (in fact, it even makes it sound as if the Prik-resisters are the ones IN CONTROL by comparing them to the USSR party-line of all things, and you know that much is not true, and you know that kind of 'casting' matters) - especially compared to this doozy Snoopydawg dug up for us: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/never-again-is-now...

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

really this big a tool for the establishment? Serious question, not an attack, based on the evidence above:

"It's only dangerous to old people and people with pre-existing conditions."
Absolutely Correct based on actual metrics observed duriing the pre-jab phase of ‘pandemic’.
Recommended policy to go home until you turn blue, Then seek treatment that Will Kill you(remdesiveer, ventalator in the us, midazolam? and opioids in the uk) surely didn’t help the stats in a Good way

"I became fully informed about how vaccines work from watching non-scientists explaining science in youtube videos. That's how I know more than doctors and nurses.”
Gaslight to the Max, Baby!
McCulloagh(so?) Molhatra, FLCC, Campbell too many others to name
All doctors or PhD practicing nurses with more letters behind their names than there are in the alphabet(slight exaggeration) not to mention the declaration by three ‘fringe’ zealots from where? let me think. . . hmmmm oh Yeah! Stanford, Harvard and uhhh, Oxford! Yeah, that’s some Non-science-y peeps right there.

Again, like other posters that spew bullshit in Really Obvious ways, I could continue to pick this apart but most people will see it whether I point it out or not.
The BNMW is Strong in this one Obiwan.

I noticed you didn’t post the vid here? That you admit to trolling reddit with?

No Golden Spoon for YOU!

oh Nooo’s! I didn’t curse.

f@cking maroons

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6 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

@Tall Bald and Ugly
If I'm not a total skeptic, then I must be a tool of the establishment.
If you think I'm on Team Establishment then your assumptions are flawed.

This is my thinking:
Was there a pandemic? If you said 'yes' then this is a medical science issue. End of story.
We aren't talking about a political decision about domestic spending or going to war. This was a virus.

However, Team Skeptic (often/usually) frames this as a culture war issue.
Which is why you see people from Team Skeptic using derogatory terms like "Twitter Nurses" to try to smear nurses who were taking videos at work that showed there was a pandemic and how they were getting overwhelmed.
This rubbed me very wrong.
Another thing that rubbed me wrong is the dismissive way Team Skeptic liked to say, "It's only dangerous to old people and people with pre-existing conditions."
Oh really. The virus is "only" killing hundreds of thousands of old and sick people. It's not like their lives had value. There is a serious empathy problem within Team Skeptic.

I realize that vaccines always have some risks. The polio vaccine is a good example.
There were serious documented side effects from the polio vaccine. They were MUCH better documented than any rumored side effects from the COVID vaccine.
Using those standards we should never have done widespread polio vaccines.
But think about that. Would we be better off if polio hadn't been eradicated? Of course not. Does it make me part of Team Establishment because I still think the polio vaccine was a net good thing?

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@gjohnsit

you are not really a skeptic.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

even. @gjohnsit @
Reading comprehension much? Where, oh Wise One, did I say old folks lives don’t matter? A Bad ASSumption on your part, doncha tink?
Then to pivot to, calling a spade a shovel mind, a point I Didn’t Make?!?
AND refusing to rebut points I Did make?
Classic. Straw. Man.

I’d also like to point out I didn’t touch your ‘Ukraine Analogy’ too many holes, so little time.
Same with ivermectin.

But, my standard disclaimer; want a jab? Get a jab! See how Easy that is?
If you want to Mandate jabs for Everyone? Well, here’s where you Will be told to cordially Fuck Off any AND All would be authoritarian douchbags
Apologies to actual douchebags performing a service.

I’ve addressed Your points
get back to me when you feel like addressing mine Without arguing something I Didn’t say.

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

snoopydawg's picture

You should read this and see if it is.

There was no way anyone could declare unequivocally that the mRNA jabs were safe because they had no long term results and it’s very apparent that they are nowhere near effective. In fact we were lied to about the 94% efficacy because the true efficacy was only .84%.

If you think you should get jabbed over and over and still not be protected from infection go for it, but why post this here after the way it was treated on wotb?
Please answer this question.

Also you should take a look at the Never Again videos that moonbat posted the link to. It might open your mind.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

Gotta watch those decimal places!

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

snoopydawg's picture

No one had the slightest interest in learning facts that contradicted their opinions, nor did they want to verify if anything they believed to be true had been later disproven.

You just proved it by what you said about ivermectin. No studies huh? It’s not only been on the market for decades and it’s one of the safest medicines ever, but there have been plenty of studies that showed how well it works for Covid. But the anti ivermectin folks keep stubbornly ignoring the evidence. As for the safety of the mRNA jabs they had been in studies for decades and none were ever approved because they did not work nor were they safe. They only got approved under EUA. And the recent Cleveland hospital study shows that the more injections healthcare workers get the more likely they are to get sick. This was posted in one of the recent dose essays that you might have missed. There has been plenty of information in the dose essays that you might be interested in if you are open minded to have your opinion challenged. You can find them through the search engine here.

As for safe and effective:

Pfizer’s Clinical Trial Had More Deaths After Vaccination than Placebo. Pretty damning information for Pfizer and the FDA. There has been lots of information in the Pfizer trials that have been released by court order that shows why Pfizer wanted to hide it for 75 years. You can find lots of the information on it by going to the above links homepage.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

You just proved it by what you said about ivermectin. No studies huh? It’s not only been on the market for decades and it’s one of the safest medicines ever,

Yes. AGAINST PARASITES. Not against viruses.

but there have been plenty of studies that showed how well it works for Covid. But the anti ivermectin folks keep stubbornly ignoring the evidence.

There are so many studies that show ivervectin has little or no positive effect against COVID that I won't bother to list them here.
There's been very few that have shown any positive effects and most of them were badly flawed.
For examples, here, here, and here.
I've seen absolutely no members of Team Skeptic that have acknowledged these problems. Probably you were unaware of them, would be my guess. But a simple Google search would have fixed that.
But even ignoring the issue of the flawed studies, Team Skeptic embraced ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 before there were ANY serious studies done. This is a fact. And that's a double-standard that you need to face.

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snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

and why they were designed to fail so that there couldn’t be any treatment that would keep the jabs from getting the nod. HCQ is another bad drug account to Fauci except that it was recommended for SARS1 and recommended by the WHO for Covid as has ivermectin I have looked at both sides. Can you say the same?

The studies gave people doses at late stage instead of early as recommended and too high of doses and a few medical journals have retracted the studies. The lancet and the New England journal of medicine. They admitted that they were completely bogus. Then there are the town in Africa that gave ivermectin and other stuff and the results were clear that they were effective. Utter Pradesh which I probably spelled wrong. Plus many doctors have used both to treat patients with great success. We can probably talk past each other all day and not change eithers mind. No one will force you to take either nor prohibit you from getting jabbed. This should work both ways I think especially since the jabs don’t block transmission.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

why they were designed to fail so that there couldn’t be any treatment that would keep the jabs from getting the nod.

So the federal government rigged all these studies so that you could only use these vaccines. Uh why?
How does this benefit the government? And how exactly did they rig them?
I've worked around doctors that were doing government-funded studies. I never saw anyone from the government standing over these doctors with guns, or even clipboards.
And let's say the government was trying to rig these studies. That's a whole lot of people not being paid by the government that must assist with this coverup.

I don't buy this at all.

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@gjohnsit

of there being a distinction between corporate and government interests
and you may be able to detect the angle as to who benefits

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snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

You haven’t heard of regulatory capture? I can’t believe this has to be spelled out to you. I’m not going to try. Except no vaccine no incredible profit. You already mentioned why trust in something that you can’t hold responsible for injury…. I’m guessing you declined to read the link I posted?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg Rigging studies is not the way regulatory capture works. That's doubly true when it comes to rigging multiple studies done by many third parties in several countries.

One other thing, if ivermectin was the magic cure what was to stop Merck from charging big money for it? The profits from the COVID vaccines would simply turn into profits from ivermectin.

I honestly think that you haven't thought this out.

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snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

Ivermectin wouldn’t bring in the same money as the jabs are. How many times does that need explaining? And can you tone down the snide remarks? Why are you being selective about what you respond to? Just don’t take anything you don’t think works and take what you think does. I’m not sure whether this is a continuation of your anti Dore spiel or to pick a fight with others who think different from you. Or maybe it’s both? Again after the response from wotb what was your goal for posting this here?

And in case you missed the montage of Pfizer funding the media, medical journals and many other things that’s what a regulatory capture looks like. We’ve posted the Pfizer sponsored video here many times. How’d you miss it?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

Lobbyists working for our government agency? To interfere in a doctor/patient relationship. What are the odds that they only target the meds big pharma doesn’t want prescribed? Not too long ago Pfizer got nailed for recommending off label use for neurontin for many diseases that it was never tested for. And let’s not forget how vioxx got approved after the manufacturer rigged the trials. It almost took an act of gawd to get it off the market after it had killed over 100,000 people who had heart attacks after taking it. Only for it to reappear with a black box label saying how dangerous it was. And we can never forget the opioid epidemic that went on for over a decade while the FDA sat on its ass and watched millions of Americans get addicted and die from it. Pfizer paid the biggest criminal fine in history and yet not one person went to prison for it.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg
that looking the other way (how regulatory capture normally works) and rigging studies (how regulatory capture never works) are two different things that involve very different groups of people.
But I'm losing hope that pointing out the obvious will get me anywhere.

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@snoopydawg
First of all, your source Aaron Siri is heavily invested in a specific outcome.
Just a quick look around I find books by him titled "Banned by Law Professors, Revered by Law Students: The Siri Method". Not to mention that they guy has made a career from suing people over vaccines.

But let's go past that for now.
The question here is are the ivermectin studies being rigged by the government for the benefits of Big Pharma. Not a single one of your links goes even 1% of the way towards proving that. At best it references a couple of minor studies, with not enough test subjects, to prove unrelated points.
It does however compare anyone to who believes in the COVID vaccines to Nazi genocide and people who want to euthanize half of the population of countries.

If this was your strongest evidence, well, have fun.

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@gjohnsit on Ivermectin. Any company can manufacture it. Generic drug at generic price.
It has been know to have anti-viral properties for over a decade. Merck has no control over it.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp

prices for the jabs as much as they want even though our tax money was used to pay for them. The newest Alzheimer’s drug got approved even though it doesn’t actually help people not get it or get any benefit from taking it. But Biden decided to raise our Medicare rates because of how much it costs.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@on the cusp
You mean like insulin? It's not like a Big Pharma company could raise the price of insulin, amirite?

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@gjohnsit Also used @gjohnsit as an anti-cancer treatment off label.
Similar to a hundred Other drugs used off label.

Oh, and safer than Aspirin

And btw, you trying too hard

edit to add.the btw

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

fun way to stir up the bees
fact free and heavy on the opinion, Ma
glad there are a few here that still pay
attention to the details

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The elephant in the room Died Suddenly with an acute case of Excess Mortality.
Stats and facts.

But go ahead, jab up Baby!

Kids? Really?
History will Not be Kind.

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4 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march