Farewell to Wade Burleson and Plans for EChurch@Wartburg. Some of the Big Stories of 2021

These “celestial fireworks” are actually the Antennae Galaxies. NASA

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ― Elbert Hubbard


My response to a Twitter storm regarding Wade Burleson and the NYT

The NYT posted: First They Fought About Masks. Then Over the Soul of the City. Subtitle In Enid, Okla., pandemic politics prompted a fundamental question: What does it mean to be an American? Whose version of the country will prevail?

If you read the story in its entirety, you will learn about Wade.

A prominent supporter of the recall effort was Ms. Crabtree’s pastor, Wade Burleson, whose church, Emmanuel Enid, is the largest in town. Enid has a substantial upper middle class, with large homes and a gated community near a country club and a golf course, and many of those families are part of the church’s 3,000-strong congregation.

Mr. Burleson, 59, served two terms as president of the Southern Baptists of Oklahoma, the largest evangelical denomination in the state. He was considered a moderate in the Southern Baptist tradition, calling for greater leadership roles for women and speaking out for victims of sexual abuse, including asking church leaders to create a database to track predators, an unpopular stance.

But in the early months of the pandemic, he started speaking against mask mandates. He promoted the work of Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a Ukrainian-born doctor turned right-wing media star, who claimed to have a novel treatment for the coronavirus. Mr. Burleson used apocalyptic language, invoking Nazi doctors as a specter of where mask and vaccine mandates could end up. Mandates, he argues, are the first steps toward complete government control, and he feels called to warn people.

Here is where I want to stop and explain my friendship with Wade. First, it should be noted that I have been a strong advocate of the vaccine and boosters, taking an early stand on the matter. I have always followed the mask mandates for the area that I am in at any one time. I have also strongly opposed the efforts of anti-vaxxers and my writing will show that.

Shortly after I started blogging, I became concerned about the vehemence of the Mark Driscoll bros, receiving emails that were pretty disgusting. I was shocked at what I learned about Sovereign Grace and CJ Mahaney. As I spoke out, I received threats and derogatory comments from The Gospel Coalition Bros like Joe Carter who accused me of libel. Although a friend was helping to write during that time, the weight of the blog fell on my shoulders.

There was a time when I began to feel that I might quit blogging, especially as I discovered more and more stories of churches and sexual abuse, especially in the SBC. I also began to realize that women were not held in high esteem by many of the complementarian folks. I began to call the hard-core Calvinists “Calvinistas” since it seemed their beliefs were weaponized against all who might disagree with their obviously superior stance on the faith. I felt alone and discouraged.

Then I got a call from Wade Burleson who asked me to come out to Enid to spend the weekend with Rachelle and him. They encouraged me and we found common ground on the sex abuse issue as well as the role of women in the church. Without them, I may have left blogging behind.

Wade is not an authoritarian. He does not demand that his friends follow him in lockstep. He tips towards Calvinism; I do not. He is open to young-earth creationism; I am a theistic evolutionist. He loves the SBC. He knows I am now Lutheran. He was supportive of me as I wandered in the post-evangelical wilderness, looking for a church home. He was the only pastor who came to the dessert for the women of the For Such a Time as This rally. The only one… He called women on his staff “pastors” which probably caused the SBC to look the other way.

It was due to the support of Wade and (Dr.) Rachelle that I continued to blog. Wade will always be my friend, even when we disagree. I am saddened by those who claim I must drop a friend because he disagrees with me. That isn’t going to happen.

What about EChurch@Wartburg?

In the meantime,  I have decided to feature talks and sermons by a number of Christian pastors, leaders, and teachers in EChurch@Wartburg. There is a lot out there and I think it will be fun and challenging.

The Stories of 2021

So what did they forget? What do you think the most dramatic story is of 2021?

Comments

Farewell to Wade Burleson and Plans for EChurch@Wartburg. Some of the Big Stories of 2021 — 218 Comments

  1. dee,

    Thx, Dee, Happy New Year to you and your lovely family, too.

    I greatly appreciate this post with your story about Wade. I watched live as he proposed the database of offenders at the SBC; they would have none of it. I, too, have very high regard for Wade, disagree with him like you (same points), and wish him well.

    Thanks for your summary of top 2021 stories.

    I also want to thank TWW commenters and wish them well. Reading Max’s Bible quotes is always a lift, for example. Also, the professor who weighs in from academia inspires. HUG makes me laugh. Elastagrahm & Wildhoney are insightful, warm and very sharp. Etc.

    Finally, thanks, Todd, for being one of the good guys. Your research is meticulous, thus highly informative. God bless.

    We’re still here. Ever grateful.

  2. As much as I disagree with certain of Wade’s political stances, it is encouraging to hear that he and Dee have stayed friends. Without a trusted relationship, I think there is little hope for positive influence (in either direction 🙂 ).

  3. Happy New Year to you as well!

    I would recommend “Veterans of the Culture Wars” podcast for helpful perspectives on the CT podcast and material about MD and Mars Hill Church.

  4. Happy New Year! Thanks for all your work on this blog Dee. I honestly don’t know how you do it.

    Thanks also to all the readers and thoughtful commenters.

    I also want to say that I have the utmost respect and admiration for Wade Burleson.

    In the summer of 2019 my daughter, Leah and I were on a cross-country trip. I made a point of stopping in Enid on a Sunday morning so I could meet Wade and attend a church service. Wade is such a kind and gracious man. He took time out of his busy Sunday morning to take Leah and I into his office and talk with us, then, between the Sunday school hour and 2nd service he drove us to an area where his church had a huge vegetable garden and housing for different groups of people in need, including the homeless.

    He had this to say about his legacy: “You have to ask other people beside me,” he said. “I really haven’t thought about that. I know that at times I can be a polarizing figure, but if you know me you know that I love everybody. I do. I love everybody, particularly those who disagree with me. But I live by principle. I don’t change my mind because people want me to change it. I change my mind through science, intellectually, and general persuasion.”

    Wade really does love all people. He is an example to me of how to treat those who disagree, though it’s doubtful I will ever measure up to his standards. I truly believe that were there more pastors in the SBC like Wade, they would be in great shape.

    Read this article for more information about Wade: https://www.enidnews.com/news/progress/emmanuels-burleson-finding-another-calling-in-coming-retirement/article_86a3d06c-81cf-11eb-85e8-2b9851e0d703.html

  5. Thankful for how God is using His priesthood of all believers to expose the deeds of darkness, starting with His house! Painful but necessary process to refine His Church.

  6. While I would wish I could wish everyone a Happy New Year, I know that that is not what is really in store for the world this year. 2020 was a hard year. 2021 turned out in many ways to be an even harder year. And I have no doubt that this trend will continue throughout this year. There is a civil war brewing and a impending economic collapse coming. These things people are bringing onto themselves with their own choices. There will be movement towards these things this year at least, if not the actual starts of one or both.

    And what Dee wrote about Wade here just highlights what I have clearly seen in the past year. A man who sees one thing clearly and speaks out against the evil of the abuse of authority also gets completely deceived in all the antigovernmental hype to the point where he is preaching and promoting conspiracy theories that are pure b.s. Yet I am not being hard on him for I once was totally deceived by Gospel for Asia and the Voice of the Martyrs.

    The sad reality as I see it is that every Christian is still like I was, like Wade still is. We are all very, very, very easily deceived and we will be. This is why I pat no one on the back and I do not think patting each other on the back for the good jobs we think we are doing is appropriate. While I appreciate those who highlight abuse like Wade, I also see the same people, including everyone here writing and reading are still deceived in some big ways. It is the state of the body of Christ and it is sad in a way words cannot express. This is being exposed by the pandemic and will be further exposed as things further snowball in the world.

    What we need now more than anything else is real humility. I have tried to be close to Jesus most of my adult life and yet even that did not prevent my own past great deception. We have not found the humility we need until we stop getting deceived. If you think you are not now or cannot easily be you already are…

  7. Dee,

    Thank you for your kind words. Rachelle and I treasure our friendship.

    I also appreciate Todd Wilheim’s words.

    The NY Times reporter, Sabrina Tavernise, came to Enid too (just like you and Todd). She spent three days and marveled at the differences between Enid and New York City. As you know (Dee), my wife – Dr. Rachelle Burleson – and I am not against vaccines or the wearing of masks. We are both strongly against MANDATES. There is a huge difference. Rachelle and I are thin, in good health, we eat a KETO diet (low carb) and we take vitamin supplements every day. Yet, we would be vehemently against government mandates that everyone who is obese should be penalized for driving up health care costs or everyone who eats at a fast-food restaurant should be marked and denied insurance – yet heart disease and diabetes kill more Americans every year than Covid does (or will).

    If you respond, “But not being vaccinated causes other people to ‘catch’ the disease.” Really? I think not. Cruise ships of fully vaccinated people are getting sick. Navy ships of 100% vaccinated (and boosted) sailors are being called back to port with “Covid outbreaks.” Hospitals are now filled with vaccinated and unvaccinated people on oxygen and/or vents. Airlines are shutting down because vaccinated pilots are getting sick and going into quarantine. The disease evolves and every year the vaccinated will have to be “boosted” once or twice (like the flu).

    We’ve decided to fight the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 with good health and disease recovery, not vaccines – though we are not against vaccines for other people.

    I am anti-authoritarian (as you know), and I don’t care if that authoritarianism comes from “the right” or “the left,” I will resist it. America is the land of liberty, not the domicile of dictators.

    I think Americans may be waking up to the fact that Sars-CoV-2 is an animal kingdom virus and it is here to stay (like the flu). It cannot be eradicated like polio, or smallpox, or measles. It will come back every year. Some people may choose to fight the disease and its variants that result from catching Sars-CoV-2 with annual vaccines, but you will have to take one or two “booster” shots every year in order to “keep up” with the number of variants. That is your right if you choose to do so, and I would never denigrate you for your choice.

    My wife and I will fight this disease with good health, eating right, and natural supplements. We (Dr. Burleson and I) have both had Sars-CoV-2 and have nicely recovered. We may (or may not) get it again. There seems to be some scientific evidence that disease-recovery immunity gives a broader and longer-lasting immunity than artificial immunity (“vaccine” or “booster” shots), but that is all yet to be determined. We are not afraid of getting Sars-CoV-2 again and the variant disease that comes with it, and we will deny receiving any shot therapeutic shot just like we denied the flu vaccine shot this year. If we change our minds, it will be due to our understanding of science and data, not societal or governmental pressure.

    Because of my disease-recovery immunity, I was asked by the American Red Cross to give plasma to those very sick in the early days of Covid-19. I caught Covid and recovered early. I am happy to do all I can to help our society. If I believed for a moment that me getting a “vaccine” or “booster” for Covid-19 would help America, I would.

    I believe resisting mandates is helping America more.

    And I love the fact that you and I can disagree on a subject like this and continue to be friends (though I’m not sure we’ve ever spoken about mandates).

    So, it’s been a fun ride with Wartburg Watch.

    I am “retiring” from pastoral ministry, but I will continue to write and speak out on the existential issues that face our nation. I sometimes offend but am never offended.

    Blessings to you and your delightful husband, Dee!

    Wade Burleson

    P.S. – My new website with archives of my writing and speaking and new material will be up and running on 02.02.2022. IstoriaMinistries.com

  8. Todd Wilhelm,

    I remember when you went to visit him. I was shokced online when ne Christian said he was killing people and that I should dump him as a friend. That person does not understand the real blessing of friendship.

  9. Happy New Year, all.

    While it’s not exactly a TWW-oriented story, since the responsibility can’t be attributed to misconduct on the part of specific church or church movement leaders, I think that the ongoing and long-term decline in forms of community and public-spiritedness, that has interacted in unhelpful ways with the pandemic (which has functioned as a kind of ‘stress test’ of many systems) is an important (‘chronic’ rather than ‘acute’) story that impacts the churches, since they share in the trouble or prosperity of the civilization in which they ‘reside.’

    As the Roman Empire fell into chaos, the churches were on the rise and were able to mitigate some of the problems. I don’t see them playing as constructive a role in the decline of our present civilization — and I hope I’m wrong.

    Not a happy thought with which to begin a new year.

  10. Ava Aaronson,

    He was the only one, years ago, who bravely stood up on the database and alos called the IMB to account. For that, he was sidelined. We are a complex peope who have a hard time when people don’t march lockstep.

  11. Wade Burleson,

    Wade
    It doesn’t matter how you say it or even the love with which you live your life, we must obey and give up friends if they don’t walk in lockstep with us. It is sad when it it is seen in the Christian community. It doesn’t evne matter if your wife has a doctorate in nursing. You must say it and do it exactly like us or you are suspect. You are not even worthy to be my friend because my ideas are more important than the people who are part of our lives.

    You are my friend and always will be. I will miss listening to your weekly sermons. They have been life-affirming. Some day people will have to ask themselves the question: “Does your love trump your theology or your “correct” thinking? ”

    The problem for me is how to love those who reject me or my friends.

    I continue to write because you encourgaed me. Thank you.

    Love to you and Rachelle.

  12. Wade Burleson,

    Re: “ I believe resisting mandates is helping America more.”

    Wade,
    I agree and thank you for doing so. I am vaccinated, by today’s standard, but that will soon change and I doubt I will take any more shots. I also agree with you about most of the issues mentioned above by Dee and by you. I may have become aware of your teaching and views thru this blog, which is a blessing.

  13. dee: We are a complex peope who have a hard time when people don’t march lockstep.

    Jesus, it seems, was not a lockstep leader, tho’ He reads the hearts of people, and tho’ He is God.

    There were all sorts that followed Jesus with a myriad of issues. Same in Acts, the Early Church.

    2 things:
    1. We should never compromise our own values in our own lane of our own life. Thus, mask, vax, boost, distance, etc., regardless of presidents, popes, & pastors, for me & my household. That’s us in our lane.
    2. God, even in the NT, has a bottom line: Ananias & Sapphira, Acts 5, lying then dead. King Herod, Acts 12, hubris, eaten by worms, also dead. God being God, His lane, solely His lane. Instead of the Us & Them stuff, God alone should concern us.

  14. Wade Burleson: P.S. – My new website with archives of my writing and speaking and new material will be up and running on 02.02.2022. IstoriaMinistries.com

    DEE,

    Wade, in his great kindness, has kept that link going for some time now, I suspect to allow me and my friend Rex Ray to comment back and forth. Rex Ray and I disagree on many things, this is true, but I would fight for his right to have his OWN opinion and his OWN vote.

    Wade’s kindness to me after my husband died was something that helped me cope with the grief, and those prayers will always be appreciated. I also do not agree with Wade on many political or theological issues, but I am firmly convinced that he has a good heart for people, especially people in need of help and support in this world. What many of his critics do not know is that Wade supported missionaries and women professors (Dr. Klouda) who were targeted by Paige Patterson’s people and it cost Wade who suffered as a result. That took character. That kind of character remains with Wade, and also I believe he still has a shepherd’s heart.

    Agree or disagree, people are FAR more important to us than any disagreements especially if they are committed to Christ at the center of their lives. That is what I know as surely as I live and breathe. Thanks, Dee, for sharing your own thoughts about Wade. I’m glad he is your friend and this will not change. 🙂

  15. Wade Burleson: I am not against vaccines or the wearing of masks. We are both strongly against MANDATES.

    I completely agree. My wife and I had covid in Feb 2020 before there was testing, and we are currently recovering from what we suspect is omicron (I tested positive for covid last week and am waiting for the results of the variant test). I live in one of the most unvaccinated states, and we are not getting hit as hard as the most vaccinated states, which is opposite of how it should be. I suspect we will all look back in hindsight and find the vaccines were far less helpful than hoped and expected. And we might even find they made the virus worse. And now there appears to be evidence that the vaccines lower one’s immunity against omicron. The problem is it takes so much time to do do the studies and evaluate long term affects, time that few want to take. So I think it is premature to take a dogmatic stance either for or against the effectiveness and long term safety of the vaccines. We just don’t know enough yet. But we will in time.

  16. Here are a couple of developments that I thought were interesting in 2021:

    1. Jonathan Merritt, religious news writer, comes out as gay. His father, James Merritt, past President of the SBC who denied for years that his son was gay, brags on Twitter about how good his gay son’s preaching is. First, the preaching is not good, and second why would Merritt Sr. get into this on Twitter? It also comes out that Merritt Sr. has a habit of telling racist minstrel jokes at the same time he’s been trying to be the SBC’s conscience on race. Merritt Sr, ends up losing his part time teaching gig at an SBC seminary over all of this.

    2. The SBC passes what probably is an illegal motion at its annual meeting that causes about 1/3rd of its governing board to quit. All or almost all of the professionals have quit the Board called the Executive Committee due to the fact that the EC has voted to waive attorney client privilege. Pastors now dominate the Board almost exclusively.

    3. Senior staff at the SBC executive committee also quit, setting up an opportunity for the SBC to appoint a minority to lead the SBC offices. The SBC is so excited to show how it’s not racist.

    4. The SBC President, Mobile, AL pastor, Ed Litton, is discovered to have delivered sermons that other pastors have preached almost word for word. The period involves 17 years and about 140 videos on litton’s church website have disappeared from public view.

    5. Russell Moore left the SBC to join a Presbyterian/Anglican Church. He’s also a regular guest lecturer at the University of Chicago under the leadership of Obama’s political advisor, David Axelrod.

    6. A sermon prep service called Docent is discovered to have been playing a significant role in the crafting of sermons for big name evangelicals. The people at Docent providing these services are not theologians or pastors. They are historians and sociologists who often have no background or connection to evangelical churches. No wonder so many evangelical pastors often preach the same talking points on secular issues.

    7. The head of church planting for the SBC’s North American Mission Board, Dhati Lewis invents a new doctrine to go along with the Greatest Commandments and the Great Commission. It’s called the Great Requirement. In a nutshell, it’s socialism wrapped up in the Bible. Lewis claims that a “gospel” that doesn’t bring social and economic restoration is not the gospel. Lewis was forced to leave the mission board, but he’s set up another gig and will obviously continue to “consult” with the mission board.

    8. LifeWay continues to downsize big time. Word has it they’ll eventually be down to a dozen folks or so.

    9. The PCA refused to discipline the churches that helped formulate and host Revoice, the LGTBQ friendly conference that caused such a stir.

    10. T4G says 2022 is its last year, and even this year won’t feature 2 of the 4, Mahaney or Mohler.

    11. Within the last month Al Mohler has left the Gospel Coalition. No one knows why at this point. The bigger concern is that fewer and fewer people care.

  17. Oracle at Delphi: 6. A sermon prep service called Docent is discovered to have been playing a significant role in the crafting of sermons for big name evangelicals. The people at Docent providing these services are not theologians or pastors. They are historians and sociologists who often have no background or connection to evangelical churches. No wonder so many evangelical pastors often preach the same talking points on secular issues.

    Oops, you forgot #12:

    12. Calvinista Fashionista Services. They all wear the same fancy drip (outfits, fashion). Pastors shed their traditional dull no-label nondescript robes, for top drawer pricey stage-and-Media-worthy wardrobes. Fashion for the Gospel, F4G.

  18. Ken F (aka Tweed): We just don’t know enough yet. But we will in time.

    I disagree.
    Epidemiology and vaccines (since the time of Jenner) have a proven track record based on rigorous science.
    I’m stumped as to why anyone would not want to get vaccinated against COVID.
    When I was a little kid, we were glad to get Salk’s vaccine against Polio.
    It’s almost as if we are moving into a new Dark Age.

  19. Oracle at Delphi:
    Here are a couple of developments that I thought were interesting in 2021:

    8. LifeWay continues to downsize big time. Word has it they’ll eventually be down to a dozen folks or so.

    Isn’t that interesting while remembering when Lifeway — along with many brick and mortar stores —- were reportedly heading in the downward direction on many metrics, they decided to stick quite a tidy sum into a new headquarters with bells and whistles aplenty?

    https://americanbuildersquarterly.com/2018/10/22/russell-vance-lifeway/

    “So, in November of that year (2015), the company sold its 15 acres of downtown property and fast-tracked plans for a new facility. Only 19 months passed between its groundbreaking and completion.”

    “Strengthening the team dynamic at LifeWay, there are plazas on each floor with cafés and vending options; “fun zones” with ping-pong, foosball, video games; a fitness center; and a terrace outside the third-floor café, among other relaxing features.”

    Shortly after, the oops:

    https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707188128/lifeway-christian-closing-brick-and-mortar-book-stores

    ”Its bricks-and-mortar division has been losing money since 2013”. And yet, on they went.

    https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/rainer-lifeway-did-all-we-could-to-save-stores/

    “As recently as August 2018, Rainer gave trustees a positive report about LifeWay stores, based in significant measure on the customer migration from Family Christian, he said.””

  20. Mr. Jesperson,

    Your own specific post is confusing and I don’t understand it (I usually find yours excellent).

    But I think it very wrong of anyone, just because Wade dared say he can take it, to use the thread as a “tear strips off Wade by proxy for getting at each other” thread.

    Several of you have an immature attitude to what goes on on other planets than the neatly manicured USA. Nick The Good pointed out that there are Wartburgers beyond there.

    By all means speak for yourselves but be tentative about its application to others – like Ava says Ava’s lane is Ava’s lane.

    Are you all going to adopt a primary purpose? Two days ago in my near terror – without family, and frailer than most of you – I was promised TWW was a space for sanity and safety.

    The more I detail what I’ve found out about what my church peers have been put through, even in private, the more danger of some sort they will be in – I think. My mum is last known to have seen the brother she didn’t tell us she had, when she was 16 and he was 12; I thought it normal that neighbours stop her and have a go at her in the street, in front of me.

    The world didn’t arrive at some nice place. Bismarck’s Prussia caused the Death Of God (against a backdrop of Jonathan Edwards and William James). Why did Britain conduct a 200 years war against Russia? These ARE current affairs. Highland Clearances? Black Israelites?

    Some of you haven’t heard of Australia because it is beyond the International Time Warp. Do you now suddenly think peoples not hallowed by your own Manifest Destiny are swanning it?

    St Paul The Unfashionable asks us to be tactful and caring around each others’ consciences. On some subjects more weighty than the meat cited, another might have more insight than you, and the fact doesn’t have to be finnicked over. Maybe someone else had a different career from you. Leave us be. That is what “Communion” is.

    I know, Richard Dawkins the Old, Restless and Reformed, says there is no such thing as someone else’s conscience so who are we to judge?

    Anyone would think the claimed grief over bad church was fake.

    I think it is backward of Wade to claim a 6 tear-off calendar day creation or a conspicuously young earth. Adam and Eve were the first, the furthest back, people that could be remembered. There was a foggy-looking void before that (further attested). Nibelungs and nephilims (fog dwellers) are in themselves ordinary people just like you and me and lived in foggy parts for a while (a lot of work has been put in on this by mainstream people of no ideology). Nimrod was a brigand against the Lord or, by one account, the Lady Of Aratta (goddess of the Eden region): not content with capturing statues, he tried to confect a unified religion, but I love our multiplicity of denominations (that used to be an English gift, too). Nimrod’s regime fell apart amidst immigration, disaster and emigration.

    Linguistics and archaeology are fraught with MORE eggshells than even religion, government and medical science. Does not Scripture ask us to be of sound mind and good courage. Why should we not cherish knowledge about us and our world? (This is the one thing that ever pulled me through.) Why would we want to shroud it in a fateful value of “ignorance”?

    Earth is estimated as middle to longish aged (an estimate being a quite respectable exercise). At actual first Creation which is in verse 1, a day was obviously different, and at the creation of mankind we’re not sure about days. That DOESN’T alter mankind’s special qualities.

    In England half a century ago we were balanced and knowledge apparently hadn’t been hijacked. “Creation” meant simply the same as “Nature” to church attenders and agnostics alike: it meant “what turned up”, you slotted God in or not, coping with not knowing “HOW” (which commonsensically didn’t interfere with His other roles). Richard Dawkins only says the things he says because he and his classmates were molested – in three successive schools – by vicars not good enough for parish work – which to my knowledge was not addressed by IICSA, and he is copying their theology wholesale.

    I ABHOR AUTHORITARIAN EPISTEMOLOGY. God created me – with foresight and good taste – to contribute my findings to the pool. To accept doesn’t mean to forbid yourself from exercising your own degrees of inference.

    Logic got totally abolished (after Dummett and I don’t see why). Psychology got replaced wholesale by behaviourism (a.k.a game theory).

    For me unlike most “Reformed”, Scripture has meanings which, like in all utterances, are at the intersection of allusions (because what words do is allude, and parts of speech are metaphorical).

    That’s not a “strip off”, Wade is used to trying to convey that specific thing that way, and evidently he conveys a great amount that is important, well. I shall treasure where Enid is plotted in my atlas.

    Thank you Dee and Christiane for your frankness in explaining how kind Wade & Mrs Wade have been to you.

    Could Luther have got the populace to ally with the Emperor at that time to stop excesses by princes? I don’t know: I think the Emperor wasn’t a nice type himself.

  21. Raswhiting,

    Ken F (aka Tweed),

    You are proving the difference between package dealing, and the deconstruction Jesus does. I too am very pro-vax as vax, assuming work has been put into it.

    In all other diseases (but increasingly less so) there is treatment and remediation, and not unreliable “tests” carelessly disrupting staffing.

    Because of the tendency to centralise milk collection, farmers have to waste milk and there are sometimes shortages. Tests (for which knighthoods have already been dished out) ought to be made more reliable.

    This is a very serious series of diseases but the politicians aren’t making use of good insights.

    Firm knowledge is provisional, tentative and pluralistic. Brittle non-knowledge mustn’t be looked into.

    Imagining myself or you sailing a boat in the sea, you don’t just ride one wave, but many waves. You don’t know where they will be or what they will be like. If you think you can infer, you estimate, and you judge tentatively and proivisionally. That was the only way they got round the world: soaking wet cloths, ropes and gappy planks. (Earlier flying was / much light flying is like that too.)

    I used to watch sailing dinghies go where they were going by not going where they were going.

    God says what He is saying by not saying what He is not saying (among other ways of course).

    Every good thing gets its counterfeits to discredit it, flesh and blood straw men to draw fire. I (just about) lived through a pincer movement and I wish I had understood it earlier. Good authority gets its hands tied and arms twisted and elbows jogged.

    Christians are called to ask for God’s providence to defend the fabric of all sorts of things.

  22. Oracle at Delphi: restoration

    The Pentateuch, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Jesus, Paul, James, are about advocacy (to our heavenly Father first) and assertion.

    Not about “regime change” as a plotted course.

    Collaboration as promoted by Abraham Kuyper was seen in that light in circumstances easier than today’s.

    Justice for all especially the small!

  23. Wade Burleson,

    Interesting ref. to Red Cross.

    You illustrate (sometimes as far as I can see) the difference between brittle epistemic hegemony deadening all minds (ready for wildfire) and vital investigation that enlists all, making defences flourish.

    I often can’t play your videos but that’s just that.

    I’m a methodical realist and I see the semiotics in all things.

    Not only Hebrew, but all languages consist of metaphor upon metaphor. Fragments are like the ingredients in a pudding mix constantly churning or an old-fashioned kaleidoscope.

  24. Wade Burleson,

    I believe in phenomenology (NON-Heidegger version) i.e being honest about interpretations and judgments, and in Saint J H Newman’s degrees of inference which you & I have to do every moment of every day: Newman often mentioned conscience and this is the only way we would have conscience.

    Richard Dawkins only says there is no such thing as the next person’s conscience because the vicars, not good enough for parish work, at his three schools, held to that (AFAIK IICSA hasn’t dealt with that).

  25. dee,

    The raj got Tamils to light fires with their records of previous sea rises, because they offended Evangelical dogma. The first Cromwell had all manuscripts thrown out of universities. Medieval maths was abolished and not rediscovered till almost Einstein’s time. Justinian and Theodosius had knowledge destroyed except the ambiguous Plotinism solely because it contained a concept of some sort of “God”. What things were done to children in the far east in the 14 th century and more recently? Lots of big shouts do make civilisation go backwards, that’s why we should pray for God to help the world. If we’re stumped for words we should use the Lord’s Prayer.

  26. Mr. Jesperson,

    Is it possible that you are deceived? You have said a number of things that are a but unusual but you believe that you are a prophet and I’m not so sure thaat you are. It doesn’t take supernatural guidance to know that there are going to be a number of problems in the year to come. Anyone who listens to the news now and then can catch that drift.

    Mr. Jesperson: The sad reality as I see it is that every Christian is still like I was,

    Do you see yourself in this? You are just like everyone else. Read scripture and think about it.

  27. Muff Potter: I disagree.

    We should be able to disagree – a SPOV society is not free. While vaccines have been around for a long time, mrna vaccines have not. And not all viruses respond the same way to vaccines, so it remains very true that we still don’t know enough about the long term safety and effectiveness of these particular vaccines. Which is why mandates and shaming are inappropriate. The oddest language I am hearing is the unvaccinated are putting the vaccinated at risk. How is that even possible if the vaccines are effective? Nearly everything we were told with certainty about this virus early on turned out to be wrong. We should expect that as we learn more about it. I strongly suspect we will likewise find that much of what we know with certainty right now about these vaccines will also be wrong in the future. I wish both sides of this debate could chill a little more as this mystery unfolds.

  28. I can respect someone who, while opposing mask mandates (on which I say, trust experts), is also sensitive to people who are uncomfortable being in church for a variety of reasons.

    Unfortunately, the anti-mask pastor in my recent history decided that March 2020 was a good time to lengthen the services from 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs and shame his congregation for missing the service for just about any reason, like family vacation or work.

  29. Michael in UK: Could Luther have got the populace to ally with the Emperor at that time to stop excesses by princes? I don’t know: I think the Emperor wasn’t a nice type himself.

    Nor was Luther a ‘nice guy’.
    He is directly responsible for planting and germinating the earliest seeds of Germanic anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust.

  30. Quick thoughts: if the vaccine and boosters were causing immune enhancement syndrome we should be seeing the percentage of the infected who have severe disease or death RISING, not FALLING. So the shots ARE doing their job. Yes, vaccinated people can get sick. We all know that can happen with polio shots, measles shots, etc, right? They are not 100% effective, any of them. The difference is that the vast majority get those other shots starting in infancy. Herd immunity reduces breakthrough infections. Also, remember the breakthrough infections of covid seem to have a lower rate of transmission than cases in the non vaxxed. So the shots are reducing transmission, also. So getting the shot not only protects the individual but also protects others. The same is true of masks. A properly fit tested and worn n95 (plentiful now) offers a very high degree of protection both to the wearer and to those around them. It is why your paramedic wears one: not just to stay well, but to protect you from any pathogens they may be carrying.

    If you are struck by a car today and need massive surgery, and are a person who refuses to wear masks in public (no one should NEED a mandate) you should insist the surgeon and operating room staff wear no masks. Also you should insist they not maintain a sterile field or scrub up.

    In a perfect world I would agree with Wade in resisting mandates. However, we don’t have a perfect world. We need laws against theft, rape, murder, speeding, drunk driving, etc. IN THAT SAME WAY God has given the “magistrate” the power to make and enforce law. Which is why for centuries in times of plague and pestilence governments have issued rules. The same rules we don’t resist when we choose a restaurant. Who wants to eat at a place that does not follow cleanliness laws? Drink from a water system that is contaminated?

    I firmly believe the kindest, most loving person in the world is a threat to life if driving drunk. And in the same way, a person who refuses in the name of personal freedom to either get vaxxed and mask up in public, avoiding crowds, or to voluntarily stay away from public venues, is equally a threat. Both kill innocent people who may not be able to avoid them. It doesn’t matter if neither the drunk or the carrier believe they are a threat. They remain a threat.

    Wade and I have enjoyed sparring, learning from each other, and a sort of on line friendship since the old days on BaptistLife. I consider him a “virtual friend” and have no doubt as person he is very loving and kind. I consider him above reproach as a Baptist author and theologian, and am saddened that I can no longer recommend his books lest a new Christian suffer a heavy dose of John Birch politics.

    The Quaker side of me reminds me it is not what we say, but how we live that counts. I am deeply saddened to believe my “friend” speaks words of eternal life but lives out a theology of rebellion and death. That is another great loss of the pandemic.

    On the pandemic front, our extended family member who contracted covid (delta likely) in mid October is now in a rehab center. Covid destroyed the kidneys, caused pulmonary emboli, loss of part of the large intestine with ostomy necessary, caused lung damage, and as in so many, a degree of dementia as it attacked the brain.

    This is a beast.

  31. dee,

    Ok

    Ava Aaronson: 12. Calvinista Fashionista Services. They all wear the same fancy drip (outfits, fashion). Pastors shed their traditional dull no-label nondescript robes, for top drawer pricey stage-and-Media-worthy wardrobes. Fashion for the Gospel, F4G.

    I always think the young restless and reformed crowd dresses kind of sloppy.

  32. dee,

    Ok

    Ava Aaronson: 12. Calvinista Fashionista Services. They all wear the same fancy drip (outfits, fashion). Pastors shed their traditional dull no-label nondescript robes, for top drawer pricey stage-and-Media-worthy wardrobes. Fashion for the Gospel, F4G.

    I always think the young restless and reformed crowd dresses kind of sloppy.

    JDV: As recently as August 2018, Rainer gave trustees a positive report about LifeWay stores, based in significant measure on the customer migration from Family Christian, he said.””

  33. Wade Burleson: We’ve decided to fight the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 with good health and disease recovery, not vaccines – though we are not against vaccines for other people.

    I’m going to be mean here and point out that this does not work, Wade. I have a coworker who was on Team Good Health and Vitamins But Keep Your Vaccines Away From Me–they have been on long term disability since Labor Day as a result. Why yes, they have Long COVID. I’m also going to note that another coworker of mine went from live and let live (“I’ve got my vaccines and I’m not going to bug anyone about getting them”) to “GET VACCINATED!!! And I will block anyone who gets nasty!” on their Facebook last Thursday. Which was the same day that her deliberately unvaccinated firefighter nephew died of COVID.

    So Wade, it is my opinion that you are not just unhelpful on this but downright dangerous. I would advise people NOT to pay attention to a retired minister, no matter how right he is about sexual abuse, but to the trained doctors, epidemiologists, nurses and others who have the experience. Or you may end up sick or even dead. Sorry to be mean about this but my coworker is *distraught* because this was an avoidable death.

    That said, I am merely an ex-lawyer turned general technologist whose specialty is in managing and investigating large technical incidents, so Your Mile May Vary with regards to what I have to say.

  34. Raswhiting:
    I agree and thank you for doing so. I am vaccinated, by today’s standard, but that will soon change and I doubt I will take any more shots. I also agree with you about most of the issues mentioned above by Dee and by you. I may have become aware of your teaching and views thru this blog, which is a blessing.

    And this attitude is why we’re never getting out of the pandemic. I am tired, very tired of people who are quite deliberately deciding they are going to opt out of reasonable health mandates because of MUH FREEDUMBS. I’m going off to study Japanese now, and hope that someday, somehow I’ll be able to get back to Japan. But because of some attitudes currently being displayed, I’m not going to be able to, or to a lot of other countries, because Americans as a group are so self-centered we do not care.

    Oh, and if you care about any of this, maybe being all MUH FREEDUMBS is a bad look for Christians. Something something “love your neighbor” something something.

  35. Muff Potter: It’s almost as if we are moving into a new Dark Age.

    Without wading into this disagreement (and my opinions on the specific question at issue would satisfy neither party, I’m sure) I appeal to everyone to

    * take seriously the possibility of post-acute chronic sequelae (aka “long Covid”) and make efforts somewhere on the spectrum from “reasonable” to “urgent” to avoid exposure. We may be obliged to “live with” this, but we may not like living with it, and reducing the frequency of reinfection over a span of decades could materially improve one’s quality of life.

    * not assume that vaccination will prevent infection or transmission (it appears to be more effective at reducing disease severity than disease incidence). Maybe sterilizing vaccines will be developed and deployed — I earnestly hope so — but what we have now are not that.

    * continue to employ “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (distancing, masking, ventilation, general health maintenance, immune support, etc) to help with #1 in the light of #2.

  36. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: I am tired, very tired of people who are quite deliberately deciding they are going to opt out of reasonable health mandates because of MUH FREEDUMBS.

    Vaccinations are not going to get us out of this mess (and some argue they are making it worse). Nearly everyone is going to get the omicron variant whether or not everyone is vaccinated and whether or everyone wears masks. In this sense the mandates are useless. And it’s not just a problem in the US because it is surging in countries that are much more compliant with mandates than we are. On the bright side, this variant appears much less damaging, so it could be a godsend if it edges out all the deadlier variants. We’ll find out within the next few weeks or months.

  37. Muslin,
    Thank you for your words about “muh freedoms.” I just got off the phone comparing notes with a teacher friend of mine about how we’re feeling about returning to school on Tuesday with the explosion of COVID in my area. We are expecting chaos, possibly moving to online learning again, and lots of sick kids and staff. The nature of teaching and Omicron tend towards that.

    My church, where our pastor is anti-vax and anti-mask made the very mature decision today to have online worship for the next few weeks until things get a little more back to normal (pre-Omicron). There are so many people who are ill in the church that there weren’t enough staff and volunteers to run programs. People who have a large platform to argue their anti-mask and anti-vaccine views make it hard for the rest of us who would like to stay well.

  38. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes,
    In our extended family, everyone is working or attending school full time throughout. All have followed all mandates. No one has become ill, by the grace of God. Some work on the frontline. Some travel for work, including overseas where, “I’m an American,” does not always get what one wants.

    I suppose quitting one’s job is an option, but so far none have. We don’t talk politics, but we’re transparent about what we’re doing out of respect for others.

    Even taking all precautions, personally I rely heavily on prayer. Like Michael…

    Michael in UK: we should pray for God to help the world. If we’re stumped for words we should use the Lord’s Prayer.

    Personally, beyond work & caring for loved ones, I have little energy for discourse. Saving my words for prayer.

  39. Ken F (aka Tweed): The oddest language I am hearing is the unvaccinated are putting the vaccinated at risk. How is that even possible if the vaccines are effective?

    Hello KEN F.

    The way I have understood this is that as long as the unvaccinated are possibly ‘carriers’ of the virus, the virus itself has a tendency to ‘change’ form so that it is even more contagious (the proper term for this is ‘genetic mutation’ during replication of the virus). This ‘mutation’ may mean that the vaccines we have already in use may NOT take care of the ‘new’ form of the mutated virus which may also be much more highly contagious than the first form of the virus.

    It’s complicated. But once you get what is going on, you can figure out WHY that strange language is used that now doesn’t seem to make sense to you. Sorry I’m not more clear.

    Maybe this helps explain it better than I can:
    https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/how_do_viruses_mutate_and_what_it_means_for_a_vaccine

  40. linda: our extended family member who contracted covid (delta likely) in mid October is now in a rehab center.

    I am sorry that your relative has suffered so from this virus. Prayers for you and all in your circle.

  41. linda: I firmly believe the kindest, most loving person in the world is a threat to life if driving drunk.

    Just last night, was listening to my dad and grandparents recount the time in the early 60s when they witnessed a car come barreling down a country road, through an orchard packing area that had been teeming with people only minutes before, and end in a firey wreck after taking out a peach tree. The intoxicated driver survived only because he fell out of the car as it went around a curve. After bemusedly paying the incensed orchard owner for the damaged tree, he went on his merry way. Tragedy was missed by only the narrowest of margins, but people merely shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders, and went back to minding their own business.

    Twenty years later, MADD was born in a community only an hour away, sparked by the death of 13-year-old Cari Lightner, after she was hit and killed by a repeat-offender. And in the world I grew up in, drunk driving was seen as distinctly un-cool, reckless, and shameful.

    Drunk driving was no longer tolerated as simply an acceptable risk of doing life, and the innocents killed or maimed by it were no longer viewed as acceptable collateral damage.

    Kinda makes me hopeful for the world my grandkids (God willing) will experience, once humanity figures out what other types of “collateral damage” are no longer acceptable.

  42. linda: our extended family member who contracted covid (delta likely) in mid October is now in a rehab center. Covid destroyed the kidneys, caused pulmonary emboli, loss of part of the large intestine with ostomy necessary, caused lung damage, and as in so many, a degree of dementia as it attacked the brain.

    I am so sorry. Praying for your family member and their loved ones.

  43. Wild Honey: Drunk driving was no longer tolerated as simply an acceptable risk of doing life, and the innocents killed or maimed by it were no longer viewed as acceptable collateral damage.

    Kinda makes me hopeful for the world my grandkids (God willing) will experience, once humanity figures out what other types of “collateral damage” are no longer acceptable.

    I’m thinking of the many children massacred in schools.

  44. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes,

    This obviously varies from person to person and Wade should have been stressing this. I don’t dare find out what “mask mandate” or “vaccine mandate” means in some of your localities. I hear of atrocities in some places.

    “Christian leaders” stole our time, our money and our personalities.

    Will anyone listen to Newman that’s why God sent him: use YOUR degrees of YOUR inference.

    When the wordly establishment notices that “christian leaders” have abolished personality they will feel like cutting corners more.

    Dee is a politician and sees things on the surface that’s why she has turned it into a V thread. I didn’t know what Wade said because I have problems with videos.

    It’s Dee’s / Todd’s prerogative and now that it is a V thread you have ALL GOT TO think out what YOUR inference means.

    Let me tell you something about the UK because it’s not all rose cottages.

    In the UK there has been a committee for many years that controls how science is communicated, “non-controversial” just as much. A dumbed down version for outsiders and gobbledy gook for insiders. No real communicating for intelligent people who love science – all science.

    “Christian leaders” who don’t teach us to pray are shams. They taught the world that prayer is show and doesn’t otherwise exist. Do you know of anyone whom privately and under their breath mutters “please God stop the plague”?

    “Christian leaders” taught the world AND christians that there is no God of ours.

    I don’t exist to get “influenced”. Challenge to Dee: will you invite us to put prayer requests on “E-church” weekly?

  45. Linn,

    It’s no use worrying about “large platforms”. Politicians on all sides are doing the same damage.

    Did God create your neighbour for “influence” (the Jesuitical way) or Inference?

    Then teach your neighbour to exercise THEIR individuality, away from all platforms, while you and they are able.

    I remember all sorts of religious contexts catholic and protestant in which we were told it was morally better in God’s eyes that we be mindless. Now I understand what they were up to.

  46. linda,

    This is exactly the sort of thing we don’t hear enough. UK government quangos are riddled with office blockers who insist there is no such thing as chronic illness.

    Death rates are AS forecast, fully two years ago, with lesser rates of some other illnesses (so far).

    Some of us have had chronic viral illness from viruses closely related to corona viruses, for decades, and are (often) officially told we are shamming it. This awaits the patients you describe and this is the biggest reason we should be considerate, but the dodgy contract fixers aren’t the ones to tell us how.

    Flipping and flopping is an art, just like the studied “conversion” (because they bask in brownie points) by the church bosses that succeeded in establishing that they are “almost as totally depraved as thou”.

    My breadth of experience gives me depth and range of perspective. That was an instinct more than an intent. We don’t know why God gave us our gifts. As a kiddie I was looking into things (preferably hands off) and thinking. I got told not to. Then I got coaching after healing prayers.

    Authorities since F Bacon and J S Mill misunderstand causes as single causes. The one thing that doesn’t come into any science is stampeding anyone into OR out of anything.

  47. Stagey show folks tell half TRUTHS to suit themselves. Weren’t Appalachian towns sprayed weekly by your friendly neighbourhood DDT team? Why are people who are struggling to ARTICULATE (a skill not taught) alleged to be the main evil? As for laboratories, British newspapers published articles on those decades back, are British people supposed to make a fuss? Quite a lot of people didn’t happen to keep clippings, I suppose. No-one knows the difference between a “plan” and an accident / bungle / mistake, least of all those most involved. As for some regimes, some are objectively extremely bad yet some clergy and others have expressed support for such, and that’s nothing new. Show people don’t ask us to ask our God to send help, which would be the only crucial thing, in AD 33, AD 733, AD 1433, now.

  48. Muslin, fka Dee Holmes,

    Please don’t misplace blame (but I couldn’t hear the Wade broadcasts in detail week after week). The solution to button pressing problems (why have you even got buttons?) doesn’t lie in more button pressing, this is G⍤del’s theorem, if you don’t believe me look up G⍤del. Then try Duhem-Quine for size. Jesus didn’t over-use excluding the middle, so neither should mathematicians. The only genuine way through is degrees of inference and (for christians which we might be) prayer. To teach your neighbour inference during your life is a work of mercy.

  49. Mr. Jesperson,

    The non-existence of spiritual gifts got turned into a political football. In God’s (quiet) real world which Christians find so uninteresting, the spiritual gifts will always be combined with natural ones.

    The lyricists whom H.U.G. calls prophets are indeed so because they engage their power of observation, imagination and use of words. It was up to christians to share all the meaning of Scripture which mostly wasn’t done.

    We all have combinations of fivefold / ninefold / 55 fold which aren’t meant to be vetoed by the elite. But we’ll stunt and waste them if we don’t devour hugely all the meanings in Scripture, nature and history.

    Like me you struggle to articulate. Wide knowledge on all subjects, and study of the skills involved, will help us though.

  50. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    You’re quite right Ken. Cases in UK, Europe, Australia and South Africa have seen a rapid surge in the number of cases of the Omicron variant but there has been no corresponding rise in ICU cases and reports are now suggesting that the surge is over. Similarly, mask mandates and vaccine passports have not slowed or prevented the surge. And all this comes from official sources. Much maligned Sweden’s response was proven to be correct – it has bumped along at the bottom of all the charts for months and the Swedes have enjoyed an almost normal life.

    As Linus says “Trust the science is the most anti-science statement ever. Questioning science is how you do science”
    As Charlie Brown says “Give it to God and go to sleep. God loves you and so do I.”

    Wade is right as far as mandates go – it is a question of individual conscience and no state or government has the authority to overrule it. Hobbes proposed that there should be no conscience other than what the king or state decrees and was supported by various church figures. And this is seen in the current state of affairs with people asking government what they should do. They do not seem to realise the dangers involved. James Durham argued for freedom of conscience in a series of sermons four hundred years ago and fortunately prevailed.

    I’m surprised that “muh freedumbs” passed the acceptable language test.

    And I say all this as one who lost his father to Covid in the most awful circumstances a year ago and I’ve been fully vaccinated and boosted.(but I could still catch it)

  51. “So what did they forget? What do you think the most dramatic story is of 2021?”
    +++++++++++++++++++++++

    i think the something-of-an-uprising at John Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist, College & Seminary is somewhere on the dramatic scale.

    Ravi Zacharias/RZIM is #1.

    if i had seen Bigfoot that would have been Super-#1.

    if i had seen Bigfoot, Mothman, and an alien that would have been Ultra-Super-#1.

    it would be the Platinum Edition if it happened all on the same day.

  52. Samuel Conner: the possibility of post-acute chronic sequelae (aka “long Covid”)

    This item was in my news feed this AM:

    https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1139035/v1_covered.pdf?c=1640020576

    The virus can persist in the body for long periods after the resolution of acute infection. It can attack any organ.

    It is possible that, from the perspective of any individual, infection is inevitable, even with excellent anti-infective measures, but that is not an argument for complacency. Reducing the frequency of reinfection over years and decades may materially reduce the amount of accumulated damage one experiences from repeated ‘long Covid’ and the effect that has on one’s ability to function and on one’s life span.

    FWIW, this site may be of interest.

    https://www.projectn95.org/

    Stay well, all. If this virus does become endemic and “lived with”, it will still be prudent to take individual precautions to reduce the likelihood of reinfection.

  53. Ken F (aka Tweed): The oddest language I am hearing is the unvaccinated are putting the vaccinated at risk. How is that even possible if the vaccines are effective?

    Ken F. – a concise, logical, and cogent expression summarizing the seemingly lack of critical thinking in our country, replaced by a great deal of mass psychosis. Truth be known, when nature is allowed to take its course (a focus on good health and disease-recovery through natural supplements and therapeutics), variants are not as numerous they become through man-made treatments are indiscriminately used (or mandated). That is the lesson we should have learned from penicillin. A “vaccine” for a coronavirus (which is an animal kingdom virus that can never be eradicated) is helpful when used for a targeted population at risk of death. Overuse of mRNA vaccines seem to CAUSE variants according to the science and the data.

  54. We’ve decided to fight the coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 with good health and disease recovery, not vaccines – though we are not against vaccines for other people.

    Muslin, fka Dee Holmes: I’m going to be mean here and point out that this does not work, Wade. I have a coworker who was on Team Good Health and Vitamins But Keep Your Vaccines Away From Me–they have been on long term disability since Labor Day as a result. Why yes, they have Long COVID. I’m also going to note that another coworker of mine went from live and let live (“I’ve got my vaccines and I’m not going to bug anyone about getting them”) to “GET VACCINATED!!! And I will block anyone who gets nasty!” on their Facebook last Thursday. Which was the same day that her deliberately unvaccinated firefighter nephew died of COVID.

    So Wade, it is my opinion that you are not just unhelpful on this but downright dangerous. I would advise people NOT to pay attention to a retired minister, no matter how right he is about sexual abuse, but to the trained doctors, epidemiologists, nurses and others who have the experience. Or you may end up sick or even dead. Sorry to be mean about this but my coworker is *distraught* because this was an avoidable death.

    That said, I am merely an ex-lawyer turned general technologist whose specialty is in managing and investigating large technical incidents, so Your Mile May Vary with regards to what I have to say.

    With respect, Muslin, please use your skills as a lawyer and properly comprehend what I’m saying. You seem to misunderstand. I’m not telling other people what to do. I’m telling you what we’ve done.

    And, it has worked incredibly well. We have broad-based disease-recovery immunity. I am NOT saying others should do as we have done, especially if you are older, fat, or in poor health (coronavirus attacks fat cells), but what I am saying I will not be forced by lawyers or attorneys to take a vaccine.

    We (my wife and I) are smart, well-read, educated, and are take “informed consent” very seriously. We do not consent, nor will we comply.

    But we affirm, encourage, and respect people like you who take in the information, believe it is best for you to be vaccinated, and comply.

    Surely, you understand?

    How it is “dangerous” for you that we choose disease-recovery immunity when you have been vaccinated is something I don’t understastand. If you think it is dangerous for “other” people, then your view of the intelligence, abilities and critical thinking skills of our fellow Americans is lower than mine.

    Happy New Year,

    Wade

  55. Muff Potter: I disagree.
    Epidemiology and vaccines (since the time of Jenner) have a proven track record based on rigorous science.
    I’m stumped as to why anyone would not want to get vaccinated against COVID.
    When I was a little kid, we were glad to get Salk’s vaccine against Polio.
    It’s almost as if we are moving into a new Dark Age.

    I’m with you, Muff.

    The data in our province is the unvaccinated are taking up most of the ICU beds.

    The vaccine won’t stop you from getting COVID but will impact the outcome. I know this because of the people I know, the unvaccinated have been significantly more sick.

    This summer 1200 people made a nuisance of themselves by protesting at our largest hospital, harassing staff and getting in the way of emergency personnel. My wife and I witnessed this display personally as we work in same complex. Fortunately the backlash was so strong that subsequent protests were stopped and laws enacted to prevent repeat events at our other vulnerable areas. (These clowns had plans to blockade public schools).

    Many so called “Christian” signs could be seen.

    Hospitals in our southern health sector “Bible belt” are losing doctors to harassment up to and including death threats. Even at their homes.

    I have never seen such madness.

    Sorry, based on what I’ve seen, the anti Vax movement seems more based on an entitled demographic that is having a fit because they feel they can’t control the conversation anymore.

    And most of it is religiously driven.

    My wife’s a committed Christian and won’t go near a church right now.

  56. elastigirl: if i had seen Bigfoot, Mothman, and an alien that would have been Ultra-Super-#1.

    Which also has the potential to be the start of a great joke:

    “Bigfoot, mothman and an alien walk into a bar..”

    Mothman could have been an alien if John Keel is to be believed.

  57. christiane,

    I think the situation may be more discouraging than this. Because the vaccines are “non-sterilizing” — they do not prevent infection or transmission (they do reduce disease severity and there is evidence of a degree of reduction of transmission; unfortunately, most transmission occurs early in the course of an individual infection, when the virus proliferates in the upper respiratory tract mucosa, which is not involved in the vaccine humoral and cellular immune response) — they actually present selective pressure on the virus to mutate to a form that is resistant to the immune response elicited by the vaccines.

    And selection of more transmissible variants will tend to occur regardless of the public health response or individual behaviors. So the emergence of highly transmissible and vaccine-immune-response-evading strains is not surprising.

    This was a risk that our health authorities took when they relied on non-sterilizing vaccines to control the pandemic and relaxed other guidance, such as the standard “non-pharmaceutical interventions” that have been first line defense against contagion for as long as “public health” has been a thing. It appears that this is gradually being recognized and the old 2020 era pre-vaccine guidance is gradually being re-incorporated.

  58. As of today, 824,000 Americans have died of covid.

    We can argue about prevention and treatments and rights, but let’s not forget the 824,000 pillows that no longer cradle a cherished head at night.

  59. dee,

    Dee, this is a little off-topic (although it goes with the theme of Christians accepting each other without being lock-step together on every issue). My question for you is, how are things going for you in the LCMS since you accept science (evolution)? I grew up Lutheran but I don’t quite feel like I can be comfortable in the LCMS. I visited an LCMS church for a while, talked with the pastor and did not feel welcome after that. My impression is if you accept evolution, you are suspect and “you don’t know the Bible” etc. Have you found it more accepting or found a way to get along? The ELCA is nowadays out of bounds for me but I haven’t seen a way I could get along in the LCMS churches around here.

  60. Jack: “Bigfoot, mothman and an alien walk into a bar..”

    … and the bartender said, “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  61. Jacob,

    While Jacob asked a specific question to Dee, he his hitting on a fundamental (opps, I said a fighting word!) issue..
    What is one “believers” core belief is another “believers” “secondary/tertiary” issue..
    While I think we should all make a real effort to be peace makers and “love each other”, it is a real challenge when I, for example, want to have integrity with my profession in science (and not compartmentalize my belief), and yet some believers call me “worldly/compromising/backsliden/or worse”… I tend to just “stay away from those “believers”….. but that just leads to more “polarization”..

  62. Jack,

    Those of us that grew up in young earth creationism, YEC, experienced, and still experience the same kind of anti-science madness.. With YEC, most people do not understand basics physics, and NUTTY statements/concepts that YEC’s say to try to support YEC when those of us that know physics try to talk with them.
    However, average Christian does not know, or care about integrity of physics, and so, just call people like me, that call out the YEC nutjobs as being intolerant to the “other side”….
    But, now, people are dying from COVID, and the science of evolving viruses is biting..

    Instead of people realizing that the natural world will do what it naturally does, not what it is supposed to do based on ones “theology”, we are going to see more and more extreme, crazy behavior.. G%d help us

    P.S. I attended seminars by virologist/public health scientist years ago which predicted EXACTLY what we are experiencing with COVID.. what is happening is NOT a surprise…..

    But then, I am just part of the “left wing/communist plot”, so disregard everything I am saying.. oh, and I am also either G$dless, or helplessly gone off the deep end…

  63. Wade: Vaccine mandates, like mask mandates, do not force anyone to get the shot or wear the mask. What they say is that you cannot be employed certain places without them, or enter certain places without them. You certainly have the liberty to absent yourself. Real civil disobedience ALWAYS accepts the consequences. You may PERSONALLY fair quite well while refusing them, and I pray you do not suffer as our family member is suffering. But your actions designed to in your eyes keep yourself as healthy as possible DO IMPACT the rest of us. Simply put, the unvaxxed unmasked are more likely to transmit the disease. Not that the vaxxed and maxxed are 100% non transmitters. The science (real science, not conspiracy theory fluff) shows clearly that non vaxxed and non masked, even if appearing healthy, are more likely to be transmitters than healthy appearing vaxxed and masked folks. There are so many people out there that have literally done everything they can to stay healthy, but need our society as a whole to do the same for THEM to survive. Your callous focus on “your health” and “Rachelle’s health” encourages others to show similar callous disregard. So now where I live, many who follow your thoughts are refusing testing and not staying home when clearly ill. Our state has not only all times for illness (which may be mild) but for hospitalizations FOR, not WITH, covid. Our systems are staggering and people who for whatever reason are not as exceptional, buff, and just gosh done near perfect as you are DYING.

    It is a little like driving on the interstate. I may make sure I am sober, skilled, healthy, see well, and obeying all laws. All it takes to kill me is one selfish person driving under the influence going the wrong direction. The world is watching “Christians” reason and stand for the rights and brag on their own good fortune or blessing of being healthy and reacting by trashing Christianity as a whole, and evangelical Christianity in particular.

    Not all obese people, not all seniors, not all immune compromised are saved. And Christians taking your stance are making it devilishly hard for the rest of us to reach them for Christ. Those living the way you do are also hindering in another respect. Dead people don’t get saved, or are you counting on a post mortem conversion for them?

    The law of gravity works whether folks believe it or not. If you and I were in an airplane at 5,000 ft and had to jump, we most certainly will head toward the earth. The prudent person puts on the parachute. The refuser who jumps will die. But with this virus, it is more like the refuser counts on landing feet first in a pile of down feathers himself, and so runs around cutting off the parachutes of others.

    I bid you peace, and while I will always treasure the Baptist theology I learned from you, and will miss our back and forth debates that were always instructional, never demeaning, I will no longer follow you nor recommend your books. Your current stance is, I believe, too risky to do so.

    For those praying for our covid suffering loved one, please continue. After covid pneumonia, loss of kidney function which will be permanent, loss of part of the large intestine, pulmonary emboli, dvt, and covid induced dementia there is some improvement. Enough to move to a rehab center. Please all, stay as safe as you can personally whatever you choose, and because so many are choosing to put the rest of us at risk, wear a respirator if you must be in public, don’t go inside with those you don’t shelter with (unless your doc and telehealth is not sufficient”, avoid crowds, wash your hands, and if you have not had the shot and have no medical reason not to get it, please think of those of us not young or buff or healthy who just want to live and get one!

  64. My family tree includes a man who was born in the 1730s. He served on the winning side of the 1776 conflict. Safe to say he received the controversial new smallpox vaccine under General Washington’s orders.

    He and his wife raised a family and lived into their golden years. At age 77, this man died. Well, he had exceeded his Biblical threescore years and ten. In addition, he could barely write his name on the enlistment papers in 1776, so he might not have been smart enough to live any longer. Heck, maybe he was overweight and did not work out. At any rate, he was low-hanging, overripe fruit. What could he expect? So long. No great loss.

    Except that the record shows who else died the same month. The old musket-toter was neither first nor last to meet his Maker.

    A half-dozen of his adult children and little grandchildren perished, too.

    They died of fever. Possibly the crude medicines of the time hastened their deaths, but the fever came first, claiming lives all over town. They treated it with what they had.

    They died of fever. They did not die of tyranny, which the adults understood, probably better than most of us.

  65. Jacob,

    I have never belonged to a church that prescribed a specific belief about evolution. Do you mind sharing how the topic came up?

    In my mind, evolution lives in the world of science, and Genesis in the world of relationship with God. I have never thought the two were in conflict.

    Modern science has saved my mortal life from three different life-threatening illnesses. During hospital treatment I constantly prayed, and chaplains stopped by once or twice a day. These things, too, were not in conflict.

  66. Jack: I have never seen such madness.

    Nor have I ever seen this kind of insanity against time proven protocols in epidemiology and the public health.
    Did you ever see the scene in the film Soylent Green where old-timey actor Edward G. Robinson wept into his hands saying: “How did we come to this?”
    That’s how I feel.

  67. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    “Anti-science madness, “Most people don’t understand basic physics”, “average Christian does not know, or care about integrity of physics”, “Nutty statements”, “YEC nut jobs” “more and more extreme crazy behaviour”
    Nice to see you haven’t lost any of your elitist disdain for those who hold views different from yours.

  68. Would you like to discuss the latest “theory/explanation” that Answers in Genesis uses to explain why radioactive breakdown of Uranium is wrong? I had to “pick my jaw off the floor” when I read it??
    Thank G$d they do not design atomic bombs, nuclear plants, and radioactive medical treatments

  69. Lowlandseer on Mon Jan 03, 2022 at 01:16 PM said:

    “Nice to see you haven’t lost any of your elitist disdain for those who hold views different from yours.”
    +++++++++++

    hmmm… seems to me Jeffrey’s response (as a scientist) is as reasonable as my response (as a right-brain creative) to my brother-in-law’s belief that the earth is flat.

  70. Jeffrey Chalmers,

    I don’t know if you are addressing the question to me but I will assume that you are. I don’t know anything about “Answers in Genesis” but would refer you to “The Doctrine of Creation” in Joel R Beeke’s excellent Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 2.

    In it he writes “If we are going to call scientists to humility, then we must practice humility ourselves as Christians and theologians. What does this mean for us?
    First, humility about a subject that we cannot directly observe requires us to lean wholeheartedly upon God’s Word, and not our own understanding. It is not humility to be sceptical or agnostic about matters on which God has spoken.
    Second, humility requires us not to confuse the inerrancy of the Bible with the inerrancy of our interpretations of it. We must be willing to re-examine our doctrines and test them by the Word of God.
    Finally, we need to be careful not to go beyond Scripture and create doctrines about how the universe began that are not taught by God’s Word. Creationists can indulge in speculative theories that are loosely based on the Bible, but dogmatism is not warranted in such matters. Theologians must remember that the Bible was written for ordinary people, and, though it is true in all that it affirms, it does not speak in technical, scientific terminology.”

    He also says earlier, “The valid point of this argument is that science cannot trace the age of a supernatural act, such as creation, by comparing it to present, natural processes.”

  71. Lowlandseer: Nice to see you haven’t lost any of your elitist disdain for those who hold views different from yours.

    Science works because of predictions. If a particular conclusion can be rigorously derived from a theory and measurements show conclusively that the prediction isn’t observed that calls the prediction and theory into question. Einstein’s general relativity theory in 1916 claimed that gravity could have wavelike properties. A couple of years ago such behavior was observed. Read about the LIGO observations in 2017 in wikipedia using the index GW170817 .

    YEC has not made a single verifiable prediction that is different from conventional science.

  72. OldJohnJ,

    AND..
    some YECist claim that the laws are physics are wrong, and the constants are not “constant”… What they are teaching is downright dangerous..
    So, I am not supposed to “call this out”?? They would flunk a basic physics course if they said this… so, I guess they would have to “lie” to pass??

    So, my saying this is nutty and arrogant??

  73. Lowlandseer,

    I grew up trained in YEC..I know first hand the dogma and lies. I know first hand the “persecution” that happens when you question YEC dogma..
    Those of us that understand the false science that YEC teach need to call it out for what it is..
    For example, saying the basic constants in the basic laws of physics are not “constant” to fit their view that the earth is only 12,000 years old is nuts..

  74. Lowlandseer,

    “Education” got so dumbed down in the States (from what I can see from England) Jeffrey knows what he thinks he’s saying is arguable. Children get overstrained in hot air and not allowed to explore knowledge: they sense they have been wrongfooted by contradictions. It is not as good as in my day, here, either (and that was fraught) (and I didn’t go to a school like Dawkins’).

    Jacob,

    As far as I can see you did not mention illness or vaccinations. (On that subject it has been a hard two day struggle to start establishing some balance.) Not to pre-empt Dee but, “evolution” is not science in the “usual” sense because it is not yet a bunch of hypotheses. Darwin himself hadn’t done any workings. His ideas are a combination of those of his grandad, Spencer, Huxley et al so they shouldn’t have seemed surprising, not even for their vagueness. Here are a few of my own observations as a tentative “evolution supporter”:

    1 – S J Gould, a moderate Darwinist, saw roles for contingency and Bell curves. The establishment led by Richard Dawkins has totally demonised him. Gould never commented on human faculties, other than a few basic physical ones, as being wholly analogous to animal ones. I thought him admirably agnostic.

    2 – “Natural PROCESSES OF selection” (Wallace’s phrase) actually comprises contingencies that have eliminated most species from the ecosphere. This is a completely separate thing from mutations which may have also have followed contingencies. A lot really is known about these things but keeps being left out of account.

    3 – Vicars at Dawkins’ three schools were not good enough for parish work (which hasn’t to my knowledge been dealt with at IICSA) and that is why Dawkins says the things he does – copying in effect the very theology of those vicars.

    4 – Dawkins is seriously excellent at: phenomes, memes (better than Blackmore), morphology, ethology, and humorous sketch writing.

    5 – We can’t be sure anyone was around with a tear-off calendar so resort has been had to the procedure, respectable in itself, of estimates. Estimates are effectively concepts presented in diagram format. Not only the scales but even the dimensions of the diagram are surely open. Hypotheses (if we even get that far) consist of many elements not rigidly fixed to each other.

    6 – I’ve actually got lots more to say, especially about all texts and language and not only the Bible.

    7 – “Evolution” seems to be a fallback ragbag label for “what turned up” with a half-hearted, and mostly underinformed, attempt to focus on the actual turning up processes.

    8 – Science tentatively suggests only a small PART of God’s actions at the beginning of human (or cosmic) history as well as at His next Coming. I’d like a more realistic and frank exposition among Christians firstly, of what the economy in the Kingdom of God is, Ascension, Holy Spirit, gifts, providence, what is saving about. The public are going to turn round to us at Judgment Seat and ask us why we didn’t explain to them how to count the good cost, why we didn’t talk the walk, why we discredited and blasphemed prayer.

    9 – All knowledge and study was science, but the usage of that word is mostly applied to a subset. History, linguistics and philosophy depend on the same degrees of inference as all other areas. Yet inference skills – including understanding of analogy – have become lost across the board, which didn’t worry the high profile media “christian bosses” (who copy Dawkins’ old vicars) which is what has imperilled humanity.

    10 – “Evolution” is neither a “thing” concretely, nor a “thing” as fact but a bunch of ideas towards ideas, for series of hypotheses on different aspects and it’s in that sense I used to acknowledge, and still acknowledge “it”. I wasn’t thought unusual in that in my young day by church attenders OR agnostics. Nature used to awe us.

    11 – I’m deconstructing (and abbreviating), you may have had contact with package dealers.

  75. OldJohnJ,

    This is very interesting because as far as I knew hitherto, they hadn’t made what are termed “predictions”. They (or a little known offshoot of them) are growing up. Of course there isn’t a dividing line between “young” and “old”. Canonical “comparative linguistics” selectively airbrushed known facts about people movements.

    Cosmology and the appearance of biological forms (which seem to be something to do with crystals) are to some extent separate focuses but it would be wonderful if we could home in on all this better. Vitalists and process philosophers * intuit, and wax poetic about, connections. Also, not all secular philosophy denied human faculties.

    { * different from process theology }

  76. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    I am one who moved all the way to theistic evolution or as some would prefer, evolutionary creationism. I can do this by proclaiming that God is the one who created the heavens and the earth “ex nihilo” and that Adam was a unique creation of God, the only being in God’s creation which had the “breath of life” breathed into him. This breath of life ais what is breathed into all humans. I believe that it is that very breath of God which makes us different than the plants and animals. It was a specific acts which differentiated us.

    Of course, weird Ken Ham would say I probably am not a Christian. He would be wrong. Then again, he is wrong about lots of things, especially in science. He was not trained beyond a bachelor level in science and his utterances are an embarrassment to many of us. I am not saying he isn’t saved (which is what he would say about me.) But he has hurt many young people who go to college and think they have the answers to those “godless evolutionists.” They find they have been sold a bill of goods.

  77. Unfortunately, I wish it was just Ken Ham teaching this…. Ken Ham was nit around when so went to school….
    There are a large number of Christian Colleges that require faculty to have a “young earth position”

  78. The non vaxxed and non-masked, even if appearing healthy, are more likely to be transmitters than healthy appearing vaxxed and masked folks. There are so many people out there that have literally done everything they can to stay healthy, but need our society as a whole to do the same for THEM to survive. Your callous focus on “your health” and “Rachelle’s health” encourages others to show similar callous disregard.”

    Linda, if I for a moment believed what you believed, I would mask and get vaccinated.

    I believe you are dead wrong. The coronavirus is spread among the vaxxed and masked as much as it is spread among those not vaccinated and not masked.

    The virus is going to virus.

    I know history. I know pandemics. I know epidemics. My wife and I know science. We know data. We are smart – just like you.

    We simply disagree.

    For the first time in history a medicine is deemed ineffective because of the people who refuse to take it.

    Thank about that for one moment.

    Sure, a mask on those who are sick MITIGATES the spread of the virus, but to mask the healthy is ineffectual, and even those masked will spread the disease. The vaccine will NOT PREVENT infection or spreading.

    My wife and I, respectfully, are thinking about other people. Those, like you, who are afraid of the virus and shame others for not “keeping your family safe” need to be lovingly confronted and told that no human being has the power to keep another human being alive.

    People will die of cancer, and I am not responsible.

    People will die of obesity and heart disease, and I am not responsible.

    People will die of alcoholism, and I am not responsible.

    People will die of Covid, and I am not responsible.

    I always respect our dialogue and conversation, and I appreciate your love for your family, our country, and the LORD. My prayers are with your loved one with long-term Covid.

    We must simply disagree on this issue. Your understanding of science and data is not our understanding. We respect your willingness to vaccinate and mask, and were we in your home, we would wear a mask out of respect for your boundaries. In our home, we welcome the unvaccinated and the unmasked. If someone is showing symptoms, we would politely ask that they stay home until they feel “at ease” (the opposite of “dis-ease”).

    At some point, the entire world will realize that God has given us some pretty amazing machines we call “bodies’ and “anti-bodies.” For those compromised, man has done a great job with medicine and vaccines.

    I’m against mandates. Even from those loving people like you who feel that violating your mandate is “dangerous,” “anti-Christian,” and “unhealthy.”

    If I believed like you, I would act as you.

    I don’t believe like you, but I respect you.

    I simply ask for the same respect but will love and accept you even when you can’t give it in return.

    Not ‘buying my books’ or “recommending me to other people’ no more changes my mind than a man pointing a gun at me and says, “your wallet or your life.”

    I will do at the moment what I deem best for the robber and for me.

  79. dee: But he has hurt many young people who go to college and think they have the answers to those “godless evolutionists.” They find they have been sold a bill of goods.

    That is what I find so harmful. Children taught YEC growing up will figure out it doesn’t work. They will question whether church has anything to offer them if it taught things that clearly don’t seem to be true. Then they will go “none” or “done” or even atheist. It is like YEC is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    My sense of the LCMS is that if you don’t accept YEC then you could never become a teacher or a deacon or a pastor. I have no interest in doing any of those roles but it does set the tone for a place. I just can’t go to a church if I find a lot of negativity and fear over innocent things.

  80. Jacob,

    I think there are some changes going in the LCMS. I do know one thing for sure. They respect women and involve women far more than any SBC church I know (Except for Wade’s.)
    Also, when my church discusses Genesis, I have listened closely. I have yet to hear any insistence on YEC teaching. Instead, discuss the important issues surrounding creation. I have been pleasantly surprised.

  81. Muff Potter: actor Edward G. Robinson wept into his hands saying: “How did we come to this?”
    That’s how I feel.

    This is how many people from both sides feel. There are intelligent, reasonable, campssionate people with diametrically opposed views on how best to handle the pandemic. Perhaps it would be good to look for common ground and not assume the worst about the other side.

  82. Jeffrey J Chalmers: There are a large number of Christian Colleges that require faculty to have a “young earth position”

    Why is this? Is there something ‘necessary’ about the YEC stance that must be a part of the employee’s Christianity?
    Even the sacred Scriptures tell us, this:
    “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

    I’m thinking that sometimes the rigid ‘God in a Box’ thinking diminishes the Church in how some must insist on ‘controlling’ what is ‘declared’ as ‘God’s Word’,
    when only the declaration is a little more than a ‘tribal’ talking-point that helps to label and fix ‘loyalty’ to a power-base too insecure to rest in the fullness of the real Word. My opinion, yes. Not worth much in the argument, no; but it seems sad to see people ‘forced’ to bend to the will of men ‘or else’ they are threatened with the loss of income. Why? Because in the old Hebraic tradition, to deprive a person of his (her) way to make a living was seen as tantamount to his(her) murder.

  83. Jack: Many so called “Christian” signs could be seen.

    perhaps what is wanted to be called ‘Christian’ is now nothing more than a paganistic tribalism built up intensely to serve an autocrat in hopes of getting in on the money and the power ???

    think about it

    look at the ‘signs’ again

    What WERE those ‘signs’? threatening and bullying are NOT the acts of a Christian people, no;
    they are instead the acts of a people frightened and angry, a people who have gone to find comfort in a leader who says ‘I, alone, can fix it.’ And for him, they have risked disobeying the laws of our nation and even the laws of God. And they feel ‘justified’ because they have declared their autocratic-wanna-be to ‘the annointed one’ of God.

    tribalism and white supremacy are on the move in our land and operating at the ‘local’ levels now: the local health clinics and hospitals, the local school boards, the local town hall meetings and council meetings . . . our citizens are even pursued to their cars with threats of violence against themselves and their families by these tribal thugs

    not much ‘Christianity’ in the new ways of those who would destroy our democracy and replace it with a strong-man autocrat and his powerful oligarchs . . .

    my question if HOW did at least a third of our nation decide they wanted to get rid of our democratic form of government and are now admiring of leaders like Putin?

    ?

  84. A point that I think is worth making is that some of the skepticism one encounters about the efficacy of face coverings for reducing CV contagion is rooted in valid observations that cloth face coverings are not effective at filtering sub-micron scale particles, such as virions.

    Surgical procedure masks are more effective than cloth masks, but against the more transmissible delta and, now, omicron variants, they are not highly effective.

    N95 respirators (often called “masks” and superficially they resemble the less effective options, but they are sophisticated medical devices) remain highly effective at reducing inhaled and exhaled viral loads.

    The “masks don’t work” meme is not accurate when applied to N95 respirators.

    N95s were hard to come by at the beginning of the pandemic. Stockpiles were inadequate and manufacturers were not able to ramp up production quickly enough to satisfy the enormous needs of the health care system, and it was difficult to impossible for “civilians” to find them.

    The supply issues have been resolved and N95s are no longer in short supply and are no longer prohibitively expensive. Provided they are not used in oil mist environments, they can be re-used.

    Here’s a site that offers a variety of models at reasonable price:

    https://www.projectn95.org/

    I do not see my preferred model, the 3M Aura series, here, however.

    3M Auras can be found at online marketplaces, at under $1 per each if purchased in case quantity (note, however, that Auras do not fit all face shapes equally well; perhaps research fit online before getting them in quantity). If your means permit, consider getting them in quantity and offer to friends, family, neighbors and even enemies. I can testify that they are generally gladly received and are regarded to be a genuine expression of neighborly concern.

  85. dee: Also, when my church discusses Genesis, I have listened closely. I have yet to hear any insistence on YEC teaching. Instead, discuss the important issues surrounding creation. I have been pleasantly surprised.

    Good to know! Maybe I will check things out again. My impressions are based on what I saw and heard some years ago, mostly in a certain part of the country.

  86. Samuel Conner: The “masks don’t work” meme is not accurate when applied to N95 respirators.

    Most of the “___ don’t work” memes are distortions of supposedly absolute positions—positions that few people actually hold. Good masks reduce transmission when properly worn. It’s not an absolute. It’s also not hard to understand.

    Cars have seatbelts, shoulder harnesses, air bags, shatter-resistant glass, and many more advanced safety features. Nobody expects any one feature to provide perfect safety, but we value the features anyway.

    I wish we had a similar perspective about reducing risks of covid.

  87. Friend:
    Jacob,

    I have never belonged to a church that prescribed a specific belief about evolution. Do you mind sharing how the topic came up?

    I’m not Jacob, but if I may, I have an example from a former church: https://www.doxachurch.net/doctrine

    In their doctrinal statement, under the God the Father section, it states, “We believe God the Father made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, in six literal days…”

    I can’t find the membership application online (it used to be there, looks like they took it down at some point). While I can’t be certain without actually seeing the membership application, my recollection from 4 years ago is that you had to agree with their statement of beliefs and their doctrinal statement.

  88. christiane,

    Answers in Genesis has a whole list of Christian schools that are YEC…. It is quite a long list…and of course, Answers in Genesis says you should only send your kids there…. I should let them tell you why..

  89. Jeffrey Chalmers,

    But I do find it kind of ironic that Liberty U is prominent on the list.. send your sons AND daughters to Liberty so the President AND is wife can “rate” your child, and maybe make a pass at them!! But don’t worry, they will not learn any of that “secular humanist” science..

  90. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    You are kind of missing the point of what I’ve been saying, whether deliberately or otherwise and your constantly pejorative language towards those you disagree with – YECers or otherwise – is quite astounding.
    As for old John J, at least he is honest enough to say that science works because of predictions.
    But the main point is that the discussion was mainly about Covid and mandates and freedom of conscience, not your pet hate or your great knowledge and superiority.

  91. Lowlandseer: pejorative language towards those you disagree with

    I think it bears noting that this practice was standard on the part of YEC leaders during the period when I was paying close attention in the ’80s and ’90s and into the late ’00s. A leader of the movement even affirmed in my hearing to a consultation among YE and OE leaders (that I had the privilege of participating in, in a supporting/consulting role), in the mid 2000s, that he ‘liked pejorative’ in dealing with those who disagreed with him on the subject. And, of course, in rhetoric of apologists such as KH, it is not hard to find this tone.

    Of course, that does not justify employing the same rhetorical methods in response.

    For my part, I stopped worrying about YEC in the ’10s when I formed the hypothesis that this might be a manifestation of the outworking of Romans 1 wrath of God coming down on the churches, a kind of ‘giving over to darkened understanding.’ Up to that point, I had been trying to oppose demonstrable errors, but it occurred to me that I might be working against the Divine purposes. Maybe the churches get the leadership they deserve. Of course, that can have implications for the rest of us and may call for protective measures, such as “run away”.

    This is, of course, entirely consistent with ‘strong Sovereignty’ and one would hope this hypothesis would not offend those of Reformed persuasion.

  92. Muff Potter: actor Edward G. Robinson wept into his hands saying: “How did we come to this?”
    That’s how I feel.

    Ken F (aka Tweed): This is how many people from both sides feel.

    Muff, this is a good description of how I feel, too, but not from your perspective angle.

    I’m blessed with family and friends who are diverse in their thoughts and practices regarding the pandemic and responses. Most of us are vaccinated, if that’s the right word for it. I say that because, I can’t not face the fact that these vaccines are not like previous vaccines. Not all of my family and friends are boosted or thrilled with the idea of getting a booster, especially if omicron has more methods of action which evade vaccine produced antibodies. I’m trying to listen carefully to data analysis by expert medical data examiners (not the party line[pharma/gov/”nonprofit” other] and not the extreme, somewhere center). If the data clearly shows that the booster ramp up of wild covid antibodies are protective against severe omicron infection, then the booster makes some sense. If omicron is a less severe disease, affecting both vaxxed and unvaxxed with a less severe disease, something like a bad cold or flu, then boosters don’t make as much sense to me. The data is growing and I’m interested, still, in an honest examination of it, what’s there, what isn’t there, how can it be viewed differently than reported if looking more deeply from a different perspective.

    I’m against mandates, but I’m certainly for taking precaution to avoid giving and receiving covid infection and being transparent about vaccine and symptom/testing status in gatherings. I would have rather seen a shot gun approach to addressing the pandemic, with therapeutics and safe vaccine development. I’m astonished by the tactics used for pushing the vaccine narrative as the one solution. It has eroded my view of the credibility of prestigious medical journals, institutions, gov leadership and further negatively affected my trust in the…commercial care system. Please don’t misunderstand me, I believe there are a multitude of caring experts working in our institutions and commercial health care system, but the care protocols, nowadays, are not always the care that I want, so I pick and choose and intentionally work on trying to be informed in order to give consent, or not.

  93. Samuel Conner,

    Thanks Samuel, you are right to look for vigorous yet courteous debate without giving offence. I’ve never had much to do with YEC although I did buy a book once called The Genesis Record which I never finished reading.
    I think part of the difficulty here (and Michael in the UK touched on this a few days ago) is that most of the discussion is USA-centric and despite what YEC says about itself and its adherents, it is not that big or important, nor does it speak for the Reformed worldwide.
    For example, the Reformed are often portrayed as being a bit backward and anti-science. Yet Puritans, like Richard Baxter could speculate about the existence of other worlds beyond ours and say things like –
    “The love of the universe, as bearing the liveliest image or impress of its cause, is an eminent secondary love of God, and a great help to our primary or immediate love of him. Could we comprehend the glorious excellency of the universal creation, in its matter, form, parts, order, and uses, we should see so glorious an image of God, as would unspeakably promote the work of love.
    What pleasure had Galileo in his telescopes, in finding out the inequalities and shady parts of the moon, the Medicean planets, the adjuncts of Saturn, the changes of Venus, the stars of the via lactea, &c.! Even so a serious, holy person, hath more sensible pleasures in the right exercise of faith, and love, and holiness, in prayer, and meditation, and converse with God, and with the heavenly hosts, than the bare discerning of sincerity can afford.
    It is a thing most irrational to doubt of the being of the unseen worlds, and the more excellent inhabitants thereof; when we consider that this low and little part of God’s creation is so full of inhabitants: if a microscope will show your very eyes a thousand visible creatures which you could never see without it, nor know that they had any being, will you not allow the pure intellectual sight to go much further beyond your microscope?”.
    (A Christian Directory: A Sum of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience in Four Volumes)
    The disagreement arises where science sees itself as its own end and makes a god of itself.

  94. Lowlandseer: disagreement arises

    I would argue that a great deal of disagreement arises because it is imagined, on the part of believers, that more is at stake than may actually be at stake.

    One of the paradoxes of the YE position (at least as it stood when I stopped paying attention) is that an important aspect of its (I think this is also true of many flavors of Intelligent Design) rhetorical appeal — that ‘we must reject natural history in order to preserve a theology of Divine relevance to the Creation’ — actually embraces the assumptions of the more extreme advocates of the position it opposes (that assumption being that God is irrelevant to the history of the world if natural history descriptions of the past are accurate).

    Embrace of a strong conception of Divine sovereignty alleviates these concerns, or at least did for me. (This is not to deprecate the concerns of those who find such conceptions distressing; it’s a trade-off that makes sense to me, but perhaps that’s just me).

    I think there’s an implicit Deism hiding underneath a lot of christian opposition to natural history. That’s really unfortunate, IMO.

    Alas, ‘is it what it is’ (or, perhaps better, what has been Decreed that it shall be).

  95. Lowlandseer,

    COVID will follow the laws of nature/physical world.. (I readily admit that I am not the first to say this).. not believing these these realities for political or theological reasons is irrelevant to the virus.
    We are seeing these realities of COVID play out in real time.. and they were predicted, in general decades ago.. Now we can debate what these specific “laws” are, and DEFINITELY how science does not “know” all of these laws, but as oldJohnJ stated, science makes models and these models are tested.. for example, the types of mutations we are seeing in COVID were predictable, and the models of the virus are showing the mutations are appearing where they were predicted..
    My point of young earth creationist is that they are on record denying/attempting to rewrite laws of nature.. and have helped to create a culture of distrust of science.. I know, I was personally taught this. And there is plenty of examples of this

  96. Lowlandseer,

    You are correct in that YEC is mostly “USA centric”.. but, this is a blog that originates in the US, and a majority of the abuse discussed occurs in the US.
    But, within the USA, survey after survey show that large numbers of American do not believe in modern science view of evolutionary biology, the age of the Universe, and even the reduced total carbon output of electric cars.. despite very sound studies that say otherwise.. in other words, there is a large distrust of anything “science” in the US..
    We can debate all of the theological implications of “modern evolutionary biology”, but one outcomes of that model is the mutations in COVID which we are seeing play out in real time..

  97. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    “WASHINGTON, D.C. — Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years — either with God’s guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God’s involvement at all (22%).”

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx

  98. Samuel Conner: I think there’s an implicit Deism hiding underneath a lot of christian opposition to natural history. That’s really unfortunate, IMO.

    To me it is a very “modern” assumption that the Genesis creation accounts are meant to be read like a modern Westerner might read them, and a distorted version of modern science can be read into them. Thus, every scientific discovery is most anxiously questioned to see whether it is “biblical” and and how it can be rejected or be made to fit in a “biblical” narrative.

    On the other hand, if you figure that God spoke to ancient people in a way they could understand (no secret messages about the speed of light hidden in it!), then you have little reason for doubt or anxiety.

    The Genesis accounts re-do ancient cosmology in a wonderful way. The stars and the moon and the sun are demoted from being gods to just being time keepers or sources of light. The world is no longer haunted with mysterious forces that will destroy you unless you placate the gods somehow. No, there is one sovereign God who declares his creation to be good. This is very radical but it seems to get lost when people try to “modernize” the story.

    I apologize for helping to put out of topic things into this thread.

  99. Muff Potter: Did you ever see the scene in the film Soylent Green where old-timey actor Edward G. Robinson wept into his hands saying: “How did we come to this?”
    That’s how I feel.

    Yes, I have seen that film. Edward G. Robinson’s performance is a highlight, especially the scene where he submits to euthanasia.

    When Charlton Heston passed away, we had a Hestival. Watched ‘Omega Man’, ‘Soylent Green’ & of course ‘Planet of the Apes’. We considered Ben Hur and the Ten Commandments but only had so much time.

    I am optimistic that as long as people keep talking, there’s always hope.

    And even if they don’t then we can still be a voice of reason.

    However crazy the world seems to be, we still have control over our own minds and reactions.

    And maybe that’s something to take away from the gospels. If you believe Jesus was God then his reactions were amazingly restrained. Couple of tables turned over.

    We can all disagree without burning the house down.

    The 1918 pandemic didn’t wind down until 1922 so we’ve got a ways to go.

    I also do have faith in American institutions like a free press and the constitution. People natter about a lot of things but American institutions are pretty robust.

    Authoritarian regimes (including some of the churches in North America) don’t get it. Democracy is loud and chaotic but also creative.

    All madness is temporary.

    Stay well.

  100. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    Way back in mists of time the late Jim Pa ker sais

    “American Evangeilcalism here is three thousand miles wide and half an inch deep.

    He subsequently explained that he had been talking primarily about American theologians. So it would seem that their students and followers have been badly served by their erstwhile leaders .over many years.

    So I agree with you in your assessment of some of them. And I think that the parachurch organisations are not equipped to reverse the decline.

    Happy 2022.

  101. Jack on Tue Jan 04, 2022 at 09:40 AM said:

    “Authoritarian regimes (including some of the churches in North America) don’t get it. Democracy is loud and chaotic but also creative.

    All madness is temporary.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++

    i love your comment. thank you.

    Stay well.

  102. Jeffrey J Chalmers on Mon Jan 03, 2022 at 11:39 AM said:

    “P.S. I attended seminars by virologist/public health scientist years ago which predicted EXACTLY what we are experiencing with COVID.. what is happening is NOT a surprise…..”
    ++++++++++++++++++

    this is very fascinating to me (sitting here, lost in creative world of art, a galaxy away from science).

    can you elaborate more? what/how/why/when….

  103. Jack: All madness is temporary.

    ““One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.”
    (Ann Lamott)

  104. Jack on Mon Jan 03, 2022 at 08:58 AM said:

    Mothman could have been an alien if John Keel is to be believed.
    ++++++++++++++++++

    it’s too easy.

    (well, not unlike john piper casually chalking up complex natural disasters to “God’s mad at you cuz you were naughty. there, end of story.”)

    and, gaaaaaaaaaahhhhd mothman is intriguing.

  105. elastigirl,

    Watch the movie “Contagion” to start with..
    Basically, the continuing “fear” is that a human is infected with a typical virus (i.e. cold or flue), and at the same time gets infected by a virus that normally does NOT infect humans. With BOTH viruses in the SAME person’s cells at the SAME time by “chance” the two virus combine, or part of their genetic material combine to create a “new” virus that contains properties of both virus, and humans would have NO immunity to this “new” virus.
    A VERY simplistic answer, but gives you the drift, I hope…
    This is why you hear every so often there is an bird or pig flue out brake somewhere and health officials go in and KILL ALL of the pigs/birds in the village.. an attempt to prevent exactly what I just described…
    The evidence continues to mount that COVID is a combination of a Bat virus and a human corona virus… sigh…

    There are suggestions that HIV came from primates…

  106. elastigirl: this is very fascinating to me (sitting here, lost in creative world of art, a galaxy away from science).

    And yet art and science can be closely allied.
    DaVinci proved it.

  107. While we are still off topic consider the James Webb Space Telescope “JWST” that was launched this most recent Christmas day. It has now accomplished perhaps the most difficult part of its deployment, the sun shield. It still has almost 6 months of check out and calibrations before starting its science mission. One capability is the measurement of nearby exoplanets for atmospheric oxygen which is considered to be a sign of biological life. The Bible treats God and Jesus strictly in the singular. Any hint that there are other life bearing planets should prove exceptionally controversial even compared to current YEC arguments.

  108. Michael in UK: that’s why we should pray for God to help the world. If we’re stumped for words we should use the Lord’s Prayer.

    I took note of, related to and appreciated this as I’ve been reading comments.

    In addition to reading and appreciating topics here at TWW, I like and appreciate Roger E Olsen’s blog topics and commenters’ responses.

    I have also appreciated Wade’s support of women in church leadership, support of abuse victims and advocates. I have also appreciated the majority of his church messages that I viewed as well as found a very few, maybe just one, that I just would not watch. From what Dee has said, what I’ve read at his blog and what I’ve listened to, I believe he has helped with a lot of issues/causes that I like to see help going toward.

    In regards to what I read of Wade’s pandemic approach, his personal approach, it is one I can respect, one that I may have embraced if I had had covid already and had the community of like mindedness surrounding me and the health and younger age, etc and since I hear that everyone is going to be exposed anyway and quite likely infected, as things are now. Wade and I agree in being against vaccine mandates. Since Wade is a public church figure, it seems reasonable that he reveal how he is navigating this. Since I can’t wrap my mind around the mainstream unbiased(not enmeshed with Pharma money, etc) science of the data, because I can’t find it, it is hard to embrace the one solution narrative and associated navigation regarding the original covid-19 vaccines and boosters that are still EUA, two years later… So, even though I may disagree with Wade on a few things, I’m in agreement with him regarding informed consent/human dignity and personal health care choices/human dignity.

    I think safe therapeutics have been withheld from people and not easily offered to or considered by the general public in our public health care system. That is a very disturbing reality, IMO. If that is , in fact, true, from the fair practice science of considering off label use therapeutics and meta analyses, including observational, RCTs and the very important factor of informed consent, I find it hard to understand why there is not generous room for differences to be more easily voiced and respected in discussions about covid-19 management. I am math/statistics and physical science trained, a little, not a lot. IMO, since we are not in a perfect world, an approach involving multiple measures(including those outside Pharma control$) of managing and better understanding covid-19 to help with the cause of saving lives and quality of life is the approach that makes best sense to me.

  109. OldJohnJ on Tue Jan 04, 2022 at 02:30 PM said:

    “The Bible treats God and Jesus strictly in the singular. Any hint that there are other life bearing planets should prove exceptionally controversial even compared to current YEC arguments.”
    ++++++++++++++++

    well, a singular God is not incompatible with multiple-planetary life forms. (but this goes without saying, of course)

    so, continuing on with a conversation from some years ago, it seems to me Jesus as earth’s emmanuel (god with us) applies to earth human beings.

    seems to me God by definition would reach out similarly to other intelligent life forms on other planets.

    (…and i thought mothman was intriguing…)

  110. linda,

    Well said, IMO.
    I really think the ‘mandate’ and ‘freedom’ picture has distorted what should be common sense in health decision-making. As a healthcare provider, I see substantial number of people who refuse vaccine “because I don’t agree with mandates”. Well, can’t we separate the healthcare vaccine decision (on its own merits) from the politics and government?

    There is definitely data supporting that:
    1. Unvaccinated do get COVID at a higher rate than vaccinated (and certainly much lower risk of hospitalization and death, which as noted by others above greatly affects our healthcare systems and the hard-working people in them);
    2. Vaccinated individuals, when infected, clear the virus more quickly (thus shorter time for being contagious);
    3. Contagiousness starts prior to any symptoms occurring;
    4. Widespread mask-wearing does reduce transmission of the virus. No, not prevent it completely. But putting #3 and #4 together, wearing a mask might prevent your transmitting COVID to someone at risk because you THINK you’re (generic you) healthy, but you’re actually contagious.
    Which is why many of us see wearing a mask in public as a sign of loving your neighbor, and getting vaccinated as a sign of loving (all) your neighbors (community).

  111. OldJohnJ,

    Having dug into my 17 volume Works of Ussher, especially the Latin sections of his calculations on the date of Creation (manipulating technical data in a manner remarkably similar to modern scientists) he concluded that “The beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of the evening preceding the 23rd day of October, 4004BC and that Adam and Eve were created on Friday, October 28”

    And although he is regarded “as something of a joke, he was, and is, a voice to be taken seriously. He made use of an immense amount of material in his laboratory. It is not clear to me that modern chronologers have anything like the mastery of sources that Ussher had.”
    (The Confessional Presbyterian volume 16, 2020)

    🙂

  112. Lowlandseer,

    If I ever had the “time”, I would look up “Ussher”‘s work. I always find that the actual documents are at least a “little” different than what I was told…

  113. readingalong: As a healthcare provider,

    Thank you for your hard work on the frontlines, for your sacrifice in these tumultuous times, for risking your life, for graciously putting up with those ungrateful, for saving lives, and for your comment. God bless you a hundredfold. I mean this from the bottom of my heart.

    I don’t know you, but I’ve seen what healthcare providers are dealing with, so tears of gratitude come when I see what our life savers have faced. Ever grateful.

  114. elastigirl: it’s too easy.

    (well, not unlike john piper casually chalking up complex natural disasters to “God’s mad at you cuz you were naughty. there, end of story.”)

    and, gaaaaaaaaaahhhhd mothman is intriguing.

    Wasn’t me. Read Keel’s book ‘The Mothman Prophecies’. ‘True’ story that links the mothman to the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse. Minor spoiler ‘Here come the Men In Black…’

  115. readingalong: Well, can’t we separate the healthcare vaccine decision (on its own merits) from the politics and government?

    In our province, the conservative party leadership race was nearly upset by a person who was able to mobilize the anti health mandate block.

    Often a committed block can be very useful to someone wanting to get ahead.

    With great pandering comes great responsibility.

  116. Jeffrey J Chalmers,

    It’s always the case that older figures had more knowledge than they were stereotyped (except certain cardboard cutout types one gets a “feel” for).

    Ussher may be wrong on one detail but it would be good to know where he was solid.

    All firm knowledge is tentative.

    16 th century authorities in many countries destroyed manuscripts wholesale.

  117. Ella: I’m astonished by the tactics used for pushing the vaccine narrative as the one solution.

    This surprises me too. For example, I don’t understand why natural immunity has been so thoroughly denigrated for this particular virus. It seems like natural immunity is getting no attention at all other than fears about why it won’t work or why it is dangerous. Has that ever happened before with any other virus or pandemic? Not that we should purposefully infect people, but why does it make sense to mandate vaccinations for people who have recovered, especially from this most recent variant?

  118. Ella,

    I share your concerns about the apparent lack of interest, on the part of the health authorities, in repurposing known safe medications as possible therapies.

    In the past, physician discretion for off-label uses of safe medications was not discouraged, and such uses could have a large public health benefit through early anecdotal discovery of useful off-label interventions. The idea that safe medications should not be used off-label until there are strong controlled trials results proving their efficacy for the off-label use seems to be a novel theory that has arisen in the context of the current pandemic. One wonders why.

    I don’t understand the official disapproval of this now, and it is hard not to wonder whether space is being reserved for new on-patent antiviral agents.

    Sometimes, no matter how cynical one is, the reality is worse (a theme that comes up in TWW reporting at times, so I think it’s not just me). I hope that is not what has been happening this time, but I share your intuition that it may be.

  119. Jacob: The Genesis accounts re-do ancient cosmology in a wonderful way.

    IMO, yes and amen to everything you have written here.

    I think it’s a subtle form of eisegesis to demand that the Scriptures answer the questions we think are important. And it can be hard to perceive that one is doing this; rather, one can reckon that one is acting out of valid faith, but in fact one may be “wresting” the texts. It would IMO be better to start from a posture of trying to discern what questions the authors of the Scriptures thought were important.

    For the authors and editors of the OT, the question of Israel’s loyalty to YHWH was of paramount importance. The obvious anti-idolatry polemic of Genesis 1 makes perfect sense in the context of the questions that mattered to the people God decreed would create and preserve the texts.

    IMO this problem (of assuming “what is important to me” is the same thing that was important to the people who wrote the ancient texts) doesn’t happen just in the interpretation of Genesis. I think it happens in our readings of the New Testament, when we assume that the problems that hold our attention are the problems that the texts are speaking to. We interpret Jesus’ preaching to have been a kind of first century version, adapted to Israel, of Billy Graham. But perhaps the problems facing Israel, and that Jesus was preaching about, were not the same problems that preoccupy hearers of modern-day attempts to speak the Gospel, and that preoccupy the modern speakers.

    NT Wright has been immensely helpful to my thinking about this.

    Again, thank you for your comment.

  120. Samuel Conner: I don’t understand the official disapproval of this now, and it is hard not to wonder whether space is being reserved for new on-patent antiviral agents.

    Follow the money. There is very little profit in cheap treatments. And no money at all in natural immunity.

  121. Ken F (aka Tweed): And no money at all in natural immunity.

    Average hospital stay for a Covid patient costs about 50 grand CDN.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cihi-covid19-canada-hospital-cost-1.6168531

    Yes, by all means follow the money.

    And 30 odd thousand of my fellow Canadians had the temerity to die in hospital. Wasting all that treatment.

    Our incompetent, uncaring doctors could have hit the farm supply store for horse dewormer or headed to Petland for fish tank cleaner.

    No matter, those weaklings are gone now, thank goodness for good old cheap natural immunity.

    Survival of the fittest and all that!

    Chuck that ventilator, walk it off!

  122. Jack: Average hospital stay for a Covid patient costs about 50 grand CDN.

    So you are saying that cost justifies rejecting all but a few (very few) treatment options? I don’t understand that rational. Why should the cost cause us to automatically reject consideration of potential low cost treatment options? It seems like we should be looking at all possibilities rather than just the most profitable ones. I understand some companies are making record profits while at the same time perfectly capable healthcare workers have been fired over non-compliance with mandates.

  123. Just thinking out loud, but it would be really helpful to have an agreed-upon “intentional snark” font.

    Also, a “preview” function to improve detection of typos and unclosed html tags (and the weird intermittent misattribution of quoted text; am really puzzled by that one) would help commenters who, like me, at times click the ‘submit’ button too soon.

    Just a New Year’s ‘wish list’. The ‘blog is already superb as is, but it is hard to turn aside from ‘a quest for more’.

    Maybe next year in Jerusalem.

  124. I think I have found the cause (or one of the causes) of the “misattributed author” bug/feature.

    Below is the result when I highlighted some text from a comment by KenF but then clicked “Reply and quote” in a different comment (a prior comment by Jack). The quote gets attributed to Jack but the quoted text is from KenF’s comment.

    There may be other ways of producing this effect, but this might be the cause of some of the occasions in which commenters have experienced this.

    The ‘fix’ for this effect is to be careful that the highlighted text is from the comment whose “reply/quote” link you are clicking.

    ===

    Jack: I understand some companies are making record profits while at the same time perfectly capable healthcare workers have been fired over non-compliance with mandates.

  125. Ken F (aka Tweed): This is how many people from both sides feel. There are intelligent, reasonable, campssionate people with diametrically opposed views on how best to handle the pandemic. Perhaps it would be good to look for common ground and not assume the worst about the other side.

    A close relative of mine was a cardiologist for a half-century. He spent a lot of time encouraging patients to improve their health through diet and exercise. Had they complied, he would have made less money.

    Many patients wanted medication rather than advice on diet or exercise. Some left his practice because he did not hand them a prescription. Some protested because he prescribed an inexpensive older medication instead of the one they saw on TV (“Ask your doctor for…”).

    When patients showed up with chest pains, some accused my relative of trying to enrich himself with heart catheterization, or days in the CICU.

    HOWEVER, most patients truly appreciated my relative’s compassion and clinical skill, even if they didn’t want to exercise vigorously and eat more healthful foods.

    The covid situation is somewhat similar. Some people take precautions, some don’t. Some treatments work well, some don’t. Some treatments cost a lot, some don’t. Some doctors are greedy, but most want their patients to thrive.

    Masks are cheaper than monoclonal antibodies, and the patient has to pay. And yet doctors recommend masks for prevention.

    Most doctors would rather prevent disease than treat it.

  126. Ken F (aka Tweed): There are intelligent, reasonable, campssionate people with diametrically opposed views on how best to handle the pandemic.

    I stand on my original statement.
    There is nothing intelligent or reasonable about refusing time proven protocols in epidemiology.

  127. Friend: The covid situation is somewhat similar.

    Wouldn’t it be intereting if we were to treat other diseases, such as obesity, in the same way we treat covid? Mandatory diets. Loss of jobs for eating incorrectly. Banning certain types of food and restaurants. Mandatory eating of fun foods like kale. Denying medical care to obese people. Given the huge negative impact of obesity on our healthcare system, it wouldnt be much of a stretch to make such arguments. Same with smoking, alcoholism, drug addictions, and other diseases caused by free lifestyle choices.

  128. Ella: I find it hard to understand why there is not generous room for differences to be more easily voiced and respected in discussions about covid-19 management.

    Follow the money…

  129. Muff Potter: There is nothing intelligent or reasonable about refusing time proven protocols in epidemiology.

    Agreed. Those time-proven protocols normally require time for extensive testing, double blind studies, feedback via venues such as VAERS, etc. Many believe way too many time proven protocols were rushed or bypassed. It’s ok for you to believe it is ok to do this with any entirely new type of vaccine. But I don’t believe it is ok to look down and laugh at people who have concerns about these new vaccines. We need more civility and conversation to work through this, not less.

  130. Ken F (aka Tweed): It seems like natural immunity is getting no attention at all other than fears about why it won’t work or why it is dangerous.

    Simply put, data so far shows that the vaccine (for this particular disease) works better and lasts longer than having previous infection (“natural” immunity). Here is a partial quote from Johns Hopkins website:
    “Another study published on Nov. 5, 2021, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at adults hospitalized for COVID-like sickness between January and September 2021. This study found that the chances of these adults testing positive for COVID-19 were 5.49 times higher in unvaccinated people who had COVID-19 in the past than they were for those who had been vaccinated for COVID and had not had an infection before.
    A study from the CDC in September 2021 showed that roughly one-third of those with COVID-19 cases in the study had no apparent natural immunity.”
    Link to source:
    https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-natural-immunity-what-you-need-to-know

  131. Ken F (aka Tweed): For example, I don’t understand why natural immunity has been so thoroughly denigrated for this particular virus.

    Recall the appeal, in early 2020, for people to practice ‘distancing’ measures in order to ‘flatten the curve’. The goal of these measures was very explicitly to keep the demands on the healthcare system (especially hospitals and their ERs and Critical Care departments) below the capacity of the system.

    The primary purpose of the first batch (the ‘warp speed’ agents) of vaccines developed was to reduce the incidence of severe disease — another way of ‘flattening the curve’ to protect the healthcare system.

    The problem, from a public health policy perspective, with reliance on ‘natural immunity’ is that the way you get to that, by tolerating uncontrolled spread of the virus in the population, entails a substantial risk of overwhelming the healthcare system (as indeed appears to be happening in places now with the Omicron wave).

    This might be an explanation for the official denigration of acquired immunity as a legitimate protective condition. There might be fear that if the utility of acquired immunity is acknowledged, that would be interpreted in the population as an endorsement of uncontrolled spread in the population, which would weaken compliance with ‘flatten the curve’ measures, overthrowing the ‘flatten the curve’ agenda and risking severe harm to the healthcare system. I think that’s a valid concern; whether it was the right policy is less clear to me.

    I do think that our healthcare authorities don’t have a high opinion of the ability of the American people to understand subtlety and nuance. The “either or” rather than “both and” approach to vaccination and masking looks to me like an instance of this. That didn’t work out well and I think it is being walked back. At some point, maybe they’ll encourage people to use highly effective face coverings, such as N95s.

  132. Samuel Conner: Sometimes, no matter how cynical one is, the reality is worse (a theme that comes up in TWW reporting at times, so I think it’s not just me). I hope that is not what has been happening this time, but I share your intuition that it may be.

    Thank you for your entire comment. It is nice to know that I’m not alone on this issue, here at TWW.

    What sadly stood out to me in the movie “Contagion”, from my cynical perspective, is how the part where the research doctor injects themselves to speed up the process of available vaccine seemed so unbelievable. What would be even more unbelievable, to me, would be for a politician or governmental authority to sacrifice themselves in the research process. And from my less cynical perspective, there are many doctors and research scientists that have risked a tremendous amount to make their good thoughts and expertise with safe cheap therapeutics public during this time. Overall, what keeps coming to mind, in regard to movies, that seems fitting for how I feel during this time, is the Twilight Zone episode “Number 12 is Just Like You.”

    In the nonfiction arena, something that keeps coming to mind is a 2016 World Science Festival program that a friend referred me to. This friend has been following this area of research even before the pandemic. At 1:07 in that program an ethical question is asked, “What would you now say no to in this (synthetic biology) field?”

  133. Ken F (aka Tweed): Mandatory diets. Loss of jobs for eating incorrectly.

    Ken F (aka Tweed): Follow the money…

    Several of your comments contain strawman arguments and thin-end-of-the-wedge arguments. I’ll assume goodwill, though.

    But as long as we are following the money, let’s follow all of it.

    Some of the money is in my bank account, because I am still alive after extensive treatment for three different life-threatening illnesses.

  134. Friend: Several of your comments contain strawman arguments and thin-end-of-the-wedge arguments. I’ll assume goodwill, though.

    But so do many current arguments for the various mandates. The fact that those comments appear so flawed in relation to other diseases should be a red flag for how they apply to this one. It could be hinting that we are missing the mark with out current approach.

    Somehow we are turning into a highly polarized society where any concerns about the wisdom and effectiveness of mandates marks one as a deplorable. Surely we can do better than this as a society. Surely there should allowance for healthy debate and disagreement.

  135. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    You’ve used a strong word, mandate, in several coments and responses.

    I don’t favor broad mandates of any kind; in that regard, you and I have quite a bit in common. I do dearly wish that more people would voluntarily shield themselves from covid. I also favor some requirements for specific settings—either temporary measures, or regulations in line with established policies.

    Do you favor any covid requirements, in any setting, for masks, distancing, or vaccination? If you want to give an example, please pick one. How would you safeguard a high school, nursing home, restaurant, or other locale?

  136. Friend,

    That is my experience as well..
    I could go on and on, but both “sides” are so intrenched, not worth the time..
    But, the level to which people are willing to “buy into” conspiracy theories these days is breathtaking..
    But then again, because I do medical research, get grants from the NIH, and review for them, I am part of one of these “grad conspiracies” so, you should not listen to me!!! (I wish it were as “exciting” as conspiracy theorist like to make it!))

  137. Wade Burleson,

    Thank you, Wade, for your comment and your service to recognize and address issues that are near and dear to my heart.

    And, you’re welcome.

    And, I wish you well in your non retirement endeavors regarding the importance of informed consent.

  138. Samuel Conner,

    Not a scientist, and happen to take a prescription medication for an off-label use. But my guess is thalidomide made the medical community a lot more cautious with pharmaceuticals.

    And lawsuits. There’s always the lawsuits to encourage canto, if nothing else.

  139. Wild Honey,

    I certainly agree that physicians would be quite sensibly reluctant to use agents with known serious toxicities for unproved off-label purposes.

    The oddity is the official hostility shown to off-label uses of known safe medications, in the context of the present public health emergency. It’s a head-scratcher.

    A quick Google search suggests that around 40% of prescriptions written in US are for off label purposes. Off-label is not exotic; it’s routine.

    Why the hostility (and derision) toward off-label uses of safe agents in the pandemic?

    And will a consequence of this be that physician discretion for off-label uses will be forbidden for treatment of all conditions in future? I’m not sure that’s an outcome to welcome.

  140. Ella: seemed so unbelievable.

    I suspect there is a great deal more dedication and self-sacrifice among academic researchers than one would guess by drawing inferences from the visible behavior of the for-profit Pharma sector.

    I think I read somewhere that researchers working on the Russian COVID vaccine used themselves as test subjects for very early safety trials. Can’t find the link, but this came up while searching:

    https://nationalpost.com/news/russian-professor-twice-infects-himself-with-covid-19-says-herd-immunity-wont-save-us

  141. Friend: You’ve used a strong word, mandate, in several coments and responses.

    I did not choose that word. Why do you find it odd that I used it? This word has been all over the news and in discussions for many months now, so I don’t know which word would be better. As for what kind of restrictions should be in place, Florida seems to be a good model considering their death rate being so low. Florida has been slammed for being so open and mandate-free for all this time, but their numbers are unbeatable.

  142. Ken F (aka Tweed): Follow the money…

    Exactly! Conflict of intere$t = bias is the first location I notice when I go on that journey.

    I sure hope for something of miracle proportion to happen to change something in a health beneficial and positive way for patients and workers associated with our stressed health care system, including reducing its costs. It’s complicated…

  143. Ken F (aka Tweed): So you are saying that cost justifies rejecting all but a few (very few) treatment options? I don’t understand that rational.

    I’m doing what you said – following the money.

    In the U.S. healthcare is mostly for profit – as I understand it.

    In Canada we have socialized medicine. Contrary to popular belief – this is not free. We pay heavy taxes.

    Between the economy and everything else, believe me, since the government is running massive deficits and are footing the bill for treatment, if they could pump me full of horse dewormer or buy fish tank cleaner from PetSmart to clear the hospitals, they would.

    If there was some cheap magic bullet that would cure or mitigate covid or defang it, the vast majority of doctors would use it – the evidence would be overwhelming.

    Yes, pharmaceutical companies have misbehaved – Vioxx, thalidomide and more recently Theranos (medical device but still…).

    These are individual companies – hence they make the news.

    What’s being floated is that there is some massive conspiracy that involves all pharmaceutical companies, all governments in all nations, and nearly every single medical professional in nearly every single jurisdiction.

    That somehow pharmaceutical profits are the driving reason for governments to deep six economies and drive inflation – or maybe the farmers are in on it too, and big oil (they’re usually up to something) and I’m not saying it’s aliens but…

    Seriously though, Covid has thrown an entire civilization into disarray. Multiple dominoes have fallen.

    But since we’re following money, which gathering place had the most to lose when folks had to stay home? Churches.

    In our province, where has the most pushback to health mandates come from? Churches – specifically evangelical churches.

    And cui bono when it comes manipulating a certain block demographic – here comes Peter Cottontail, running down the money trail….

  144. Samuel Conner: Why the hostility (and derision) toward off-label uses of safe agents in the pandemic?

    Derision does not help a discussion. However, if a medication is safe but ineffective, people could get sicker and even die because they are taking the wrong medicine.

    They might also spread contagion. Meanwhile the manufacturer profits.

  145. Ken F (aka Tweed): Florida has been slammed for being so open and mandate-free for all this time, but their numbers are unbeatable

    Yep unbeatable!

    Florida – Population 21.48 million Covid deaths 62 541
    Canada – Population 38.01 Million Covid deaths 30 513

  146. Ken F (aka Tweed): Florida has been slammed for being so open and mandate-free for all this time, but their numbers are unbeatable.

    Florida’s numbers are not exactly unbeatable. They have the tenth-highest rate of deaths per 100,000, according to Statista:

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/

    I called mandate a strong word, but of course it’s not your fault that it has been used so often. My point was that I’m not a proponent of big long-term requirements that cover vast swaths of the population.

    I do think the word mandate is overused, though, often to describe store policies, local health regulations, emergency measures, employment requirements, etc.

  147. Friend,

    In an environment in which there are no approved prophylaxes and few or no approved effective therapies (and, unfortunately, there appear to be few effective therapies for Omicron, putting us back to where we were in early 2020), it is quite sensible to allow physician discretion to use known safe agents. This experimentation can lead to discovery of useful agents.

    There’s not significant profit in off-patent medications; I really don’t see that a strong innuendo.

    Ivermectin, an extremely safe human medication that is widely derided as “horse paste” (including twice already in this thread) costs pennies a dose, has known antiviral properties, including the protease inhibitor action that is the basis of the efficacy of the new agent Paxlovid. It’s being used (in human formulations) as anti-viral therapy in other countries, but you will have a hard time finding it in US. Pharmacies are reluctant to fill prescriptions and physicians don’t want to prescribe it. That’s really odd, because these same pharmacies will fill scripts for unproved off-label uses of other medications, and the doctors will write such prescriptions.

    Ivermectin has other reported (in the medical literature — you can check it out at Pub Med — search “ivermectin COVID mechanism”) anti-CV mechanisms.

    There appears to be an official policy of deprecating ivermectin in US, and it appears to be effective.

    I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I think of it more as “regulatory capture.”

  148. Jack: there is some massive

    Jack: there is some massive

    echo chamber; back scratching (someone smaller bleeds)

    There always was bad planning; hence the bad planning hypothesis

    hardly sensational

    Have Christians heard of asking God for His Providence and help for us and those around us?

    That was a notion Christians had in less fashionable days

    Stagey show people liked to discredit prayer

    Eschatology isn’t new, it’s been here since Jesus Ascended & Sent us Another Comforter

    It’s been here since Jeremiah defended the poor against “Make Judah Great Again” Josiah.

    Stagey show people liked to make charismatic go off the rails in order to blaspheme by misleading us in both directions at once

    You can have your Macarthur or you can have your Bill Johnson.

    Jesus dis-excluded the excluded middle, walked right through the mob, thought laterally.

    To continually mutter
    “God please turn back the plague
    God give us just quality of government in the US / UK / elsewhere”
    in between muttering Lord’s Prayers IS the charismatic

  149. Samuel Conner: don’t have a high opinion of the ability of the American people to understand subtlety and nuance

    The legacy of the dumbing-down policies of the dictator F Bacon, J S Mill in his frequent less sharp spells, “elder at 25” Spencer, the intense media giant W James, the ruthless charlatan O W Holmes Jr.

    (James the opposite in policy to C S Peirce whose name he made sure to drop)

  150. Friend: Florida’s numbers are not exactly unbeatable.

    Yes, there are two states ahead of them on this list: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html. Over the past few months Florida has been doing great. Given the huge contrast in approaches and mandates, one would expect Florida deaths to be among the worst in the nation if the mandates are as effective as advertised. Based on numbers, I think there needs to be more room to allow non-mandate approaches.

    As a side note, a number of politicians from states with strict mandates have recently been getting caught vacationing maskless in Florida. Maybe those politicians know more than they are telling us.

  151. Samuel Conner: it is quite sensible to allow physician discretion to use known safe agents. This experimentation can lead to discovery of useful agents.

    My father died of off-label use.

    This happened a while ago, after thalidomide but before laetrile. He was in an American hospital, under a physician’s care.

    I’m sure that medication was safe for somebody and effective for something, but not for him and not for that disease.

    The medication that sent my daddy to heaven was later found to be carcinogenic, and is now banned in the US.

    I’d rather see well-designed studies instead of ad hoc experiments that may or may not work out for individual patients and wide populations.

  152. Friend: I’d rather see well-designed studies instead of ad hoc experiments that may or may not work out for individual patients and wide populations

    These are definitely needed. In a public health emergency , the bar for allowing discretionary use of known safe agents is lower.

    I have read that medical ethicists consider it unethical to not employ known safe agents in circumstances like the ones we currently face.

    I predict that ivermectin will come into widespread use when a way is found to combine it with an on-patent medication (and there are reports of this kind of study in Pub Med). It may be that the efficacy of the combination therapy will be due more to the IVM than to the other agent, but at least it will be a highly profitable product. And that isn’t innuendo; it’s just the facts of life in US.

  153. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    Interesting and accurate—and limited, as the link shows deaths in the last seven days. I wouldn’t use that for planning travel.

    Omicron is everywhere, regardless of who is governor. The US recorded one million new covid cases today. The BBC called it a world record.

    The omicron variant is milder than delta but more contagious. Florida’s new cases are skyrocketing. Death is a lagging indicator.

  154. Samuel Conner: Ivermectin, an extremely safe human medication that is widely derided as “horse paste” (including twice already in this thread) costs pennies a dose, has known antiviral properties, including the protease inhibitor action that is the basis of the efficacy of the new agent Paxlovid. It’s being used (in human formulations) as anti-viral therapy in other countries, but you will have a hard time finding it in US. Pharmacies are reluctant to fill prescriptions and physicians don’t want to prescribe it. That’s really odd, because these same pharmacies will fill scripts for unproved off-label uses of other medications, and the doctors will write such prescriptions.

    Ivermectin has other reported (in the medical literature — you can check it out at Pub Med — search “ivermectin COVID mechanism”) anti-CV mechanisms.

    There appears to be an official policy of deprecating ivermectin in US, and it appears to be effective.

    Seriously, our conservative government is the most pro business, anti tax bunch that I know of.

    You guys know a lot about the States so I don’t know what the deal is there but healthcare is firmly in the provincial sphere here.

    Meaning – if the medicine is safe and approved then doctors can prescribe it.

    Ivermectin may not harm folks in people doses but at least some of our doctors would prescribe it if it was effective against covid. Heck, if it saves a buck, I’m telling you our bunch in the provincial legislature would endorse handing it out like candy.

    You can call it what you want – most people in our Southern Health area have been taking the horse version. That area still takes up the lions share of our ICU beds.

    Ivermectin is an anti parasite drug effective against things like scabies – which are like little spiders – much bigger than a virus.

    I put in a search for Ivermectin efficacy for Covid here’s some of the top results:

    https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/ppih/if-ppih-covid-19-sag-ivermectin-in-treatment-and-prevention-rapid-review.pdf

    https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/08/19/bmjebm-2021-111791

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w

    Apparently the journal “Nature” and the Alberta Health Services is in cahoots.

    And if our bunch are conservative and willing to save a dime then the Alberta government is doubly so – given the attitude there if any government would be handing out Ivermectin it would be them.

    Of course they’re just pretenders, they are so in on “it” – nudge nudge wink wink say no more say no more….

  155. Friend: Florida’s new cases are skyrocketing.

    But their hospitilizations are below the national average, which could be a good sign. Yes, omicron is everywhere, and the current vaccines seem to be useless for preventing infection. Whether or not they result in more mild omicron infections remains to be seen.

  156. Things are “going parabolic” in the aggregate US COVID case counts, but the situation is quite geographically uneven.

    A site that I have found helpful for assessing “how great is my risk of crossing paths with a CV carrier if I step out the door today?” is

    https://urbanobservatory.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=ad46e587a9134fcdb43ff54c16f8c39b

    To pick some representative numbers, the densely populated counties of the SE tip of Florida have active COVID case prevalences in the range of 4 to 5% of the population: one in 20 to one in 25 of the people are currently infected. I’m guessing that the hospitals there may be obliged to implement crisis protocols and triage patients coming in for care.

    In the western part of the FL panhandle, the numbers of much less scary, generally below 1% of the population infected.

    The map covers the entire US at county level resolution.

    I believe that these estimates are based on reported case counts; the true number of cases, including asymptomatic cases that are not tested, could be higher.

    Right now, the county I live in is above 1% of population infected. IMO when case prevalence is that high (my threshhold is 0.3%, kind of arbitrary; currently things are way worse than that), one ought not to do any non-essential thing that involves contact with people you aren’t confident are uninfected.

    ——–

    Stay safe everyone. It was predicted that there would be a tidal wave of Omicron cases and it is upon us.

    For advocates of not avoiding exposure to the virus for the sake of having a (hopefully) mild infection and acquiring natural immunity, I urge you to do some reading in the growing medical literature (abstracts and some full papers can be found at Pub Med) on “long COVID”. The virus damages the lining of blood vessels and can harm any organ. It can cause lasting damage that can lead to long term impairments even after the chronic infection is resolved.

    Stay well, or as well as possible, all.

  157. Samuel Conner: In a public health emergency , the bar for allowing discretionary use of known safe agents is lower.

    I have read that medical ethicists consider it unethical to not employ known safe agents in circumstances like the ones we currently face.

    Medical ethicists probably also know that bad actors will push their wares on a desperate public during an emergency. Perhaps the standards of study need to be higher, not lower.

    In case you were reading quickly, I will repeat this:

    My father died of off-label use of a safe medication.

  158. Samuel Conner: I suspect there is a great deal more dedication and self-sacrifice among academic researchers than one would guess by drawing inferences from the visible behavior of the for-profit Pharma sector.

    I’m sure that does happen. Right now, for me, the Pharma behavior is so loud and 90’s and 20’s events that I didn’t follow then, but am more privy to now is the harmony for my information seeking. That does effect the inferences that I draw.

    Samuel Conner: I think I read somewhere that researchers working on the Russian COVID vaccine used themselves as test subjects for very early safety trials.

    Wow! I will want to find and read about this. Reminds me of Fred Roger’s mother’s advice “Look for the Helpers.” Nonfiction is a way better place to find good stories like this than fiction. Hopefully, it will bring some balance.

    Thanks!

  159. Jack: Yep unbeatable!
    Florida – Population 21.48 million Covid deaths 62 541
    Canada – Population 38.01 Million Covid deaths 30 513

    Friend: Florida’s numbers are not exactly unbeatable. They have the tenth-highest rate of deaths per 100,000, according to Statista:

    Ken F (aka Tweed): Florida has been slammed for being so open and mandate-free for all this time, but their numbers are unbeatable

    The sources that I listen to are saying that looking at “all cause” mortality by group factor, vaccinated versus unvaccinated is a view of the data that will give an insightful comparison. I’m going to be looking for how to get at that kind of data, probably not easy to get at, but I’m curious and it makes sense, to me, to look there. I wonder if anyone is collecting it on a large official scale though?

  160. Ken F (aka Tweed): But their hospitilizations are below the national average, which could be a good sign. Yes, omicron is everywhere, and the current vaccines seem to be useless for preventing infection. Whether or not they result in more mild omicron infections remains to be seen.

    Hospitalization is down because of vaccination, not in spite of it.

    Full disclosure, got my third shot, so did my wife.

    I really encourage vaccination. Your outcome will be better.

    As I’ve mentioned, the conspiracy theories don’t work outside the context of the United States.

    For us, elections are won and lost over healthcare. Any government that could produce a magic bullet for covid (ivermectin or Brussels sprouts) would be in power for a long time. Trudeau would have totally brought it forward to secure his majority last fall.

    He didn’t because there is no magic bullet and we wound up spending a ton of cash we don’t have on an election that got us same minority government.

    Any provincial government that could put pie on the feds face would do it.

    Our health minister is an evangelical Christian whose church has flaunted health guidelines. If the conspiracy was there, she’d blow the lid.

    But she hasn’t because there isn’t one.

  161. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    I agree with The Who’s old definition of herd immunity that was changed during, or just before this pandemic started, a definition that included counting those with natural immunity as part of the herd immunity. Why would WHO change that at this time? This, too, I guess is another sign post in following the money, in terms of where Who’s money comes from and the history of the funding structure there. This is a quick, easy to find a bit of information and I don’t know why this sign post is seemingly invisible to many. The doctors that I listen to work from the old definition as they share study results and offer their view and the steps they take to get there. None of the doctors that I listen to are promoting purposeful seeking to become infected. They are the ones giving long covid patients real help and hope, IMO.

  162. Ken F (aka Tweed): But I don’t believe it is ok to look down and laugh at people who have concerns about these new vaccines. We need more civility and conversation to work through this, not less.

    It was never my intention to make fun of or denigrate anyone.
    Pleas accept my apology if it sounded that way.
    Believe me, I know what it feels like to be laughed at and excoriated for harboring certain views.

  163. Jeffrey J Chalmers,
    In 1930’s Germany, two Nobel physicists promoted a theory or thesis (had no basis to be a theory) regarding what they termed “Jewish science”, as in Einstein’s work, which they claimed was false. These two said there was real science and false science, the Jewish kind.

    It was a divide among scientists that pulled “the rest of us” into their “expertise”, their thinking, their propaganda. 20/20 hindsight, we recognize what this was all about.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-2-pro-nazi-nobelists-attacked-einstein-s-jewish-science-excerpt1/

  164. Friend,

    Yes, I saw that and was grieved by it. I’m sorry that you lost your father untimely. Some of my siblings believe that my mother passed untimely because of physician error — misdiagnosis of a treatable condition. This is very painful. I am sorry for your suffering.

    With respect both to you and to the trauma of this tragedy, I’m not sure that the conclusion you draw, that agents like ivermectin must not be employed in off-label uses in the pandemic, follows from the details of your experience.

    There are many anecdotal reports of people in US who have lost family members shortly after those members received one of the EUA vaccines. These people are deeply traumatized by that experience and many of them quite understandably have become opposed to the vaccines, informed by their experiences. I believe, from prior commentary, that you do not approve of the inferences these suffering people have drawn from their experiences. For my part, I’m equivocal — I don’t know enough to be confident that the vaccines are safe for all people. There might be contraindications that have not been discovered yet, that are responsible for adverse reactions. But in the present emergency, I’m not confident that the anecdata warrants blanket prohibition of the EUA vaccines. I do wish there were more transparency — for example it appears that Pfizer wants to conceal the patient level detail of its clinical trials for several decades; I have the impression that this is not a normal procedure in the handling of clinical trials data.

    Ivermectin is known safe, administered in billions of doses since the late ’80s for anti-parasitic applications. It has known antiviral properties and there are reasons to believe that it can interfere with CV replication with cells, and with CV fusion with cells. To argue that it must not be employed in any off-label use, for example in terminal patients who cannot be rescued with current approved methods (patients sick enough to require intubation are hard to rescue with current methods, and under crisis standards of care, which may be coming to many ERs and CCUs, the sickest patients will not be treated at all in order to conserve resources for those more likely to respond to treatment), strikes me as unreasonable.

    One can hope that clinical trials in terminally ill CV patients might be started. I believe that there is an extensive trial of ivermectin underway in UK, but it was paused recently due to a shortage of the investigational agent. Perhaps we’ll know more soon.

    I’m sure this final thought will be vulnerable to dismissal as simply more anecdata, but there are clinicians who believe that ivermectin is helpful to their patients. These people,

    https://covid19criticalcare.com/

    believe that their protocols (which are much broader than ivermectin in therapy, and much broader in terms of recommendations for prophylaxis than the guidance US public health authorities have been offering) are helpful to their patients.

  165. Jack: I put in a search for Ivermectin efficacy for Covid here’s some of the top results:

    I recently saw one published in JAMA, approx. 500 patients in Columbia, placebo-controlled, found no statistical difference between the Ivermectin and placebo groups in clinical outcomes.

  166. Jack: Ivermectin is an anti parasite drug effective against things like scabies – which are like little spiders – much bigger than a virus.

    All medications work at a molecular level to perturb, inhibit or promote some molecular-scale process in the target pathogen or in the host cells. The fact that viruses are much smaller than metazoan parasites is completely beside the point. Your observation is wonderful as comedy, but not helpful for discussion of medicine.

    Ivermectin is known to interact with the CV spike protein in a way that inhibits cellular uptake of virus. It also has been found (in in silico analysis — computer molecular dynamics simulation) to strongly interact with the part of the ACE2 receptor that CV spike protein interacts with for virus fusion with host cells.

    And there are numerous studies that exhibit evidence of clinical efficacy. However, evidence is not proof, and these studies generally are small enough that they don’t have high statistical power — the confidence intervals of the relative risk results are wide enough that individual studies don’t establish beyond reasonable doubt that the observed favorable results are not simply fortuitous. (And, likewise, there are some studies that find a null result, but again, these studies have little statistical power). This is all quite normal in the early stages of research on a new application of a medication — funding is tight and the resources available for immediate deployment don’t permit large studies with high statistical power.

    UK is currently conducting a much larger trial that includes ivermectin as an investigational agent:

    https://www.principletrial.org/

    sadly, the supply of investigational agent ran out:

    https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/96194

    Presumably this supply issue will be resolved at some point and the trial resumed.

    ===============

    Switching topics a little, the thought occurs to wonder why the idea of “testing widely used known safe medications for therapeutic benefit in COVID” did not occur to the US public health establishment back in early 2020 when the “Warp Speed” vaccine plan was being implemented. It would have been really sensible, from a prudential standpoint, to make large investments in pharmaceutical prevention and therapy as well as in vaccine development. Screening of current known safe medicines, and especially off-patent and orally bioavailable medications (these are especially useful for prophylaxis since cost is not a deterrent and at-home administration is simple) is a really obvious idea. Yet it was not made a priority.

    Surely the US public health authorities can walk and chew gum at the same time. Perhaps some day we will gain insight into the reasons that a search for inexpensive therapeutic and preventive options was not higher on the US health establishment’s priorities.

  167. Oracle at Delphi: Within the last month Al Mohler has left the Gospel Coalition. No one knows why at this point.

    Perhaps some of his buds are preparing the way for him to join ACNA. He appears to have lost his New Calvinism influence. He could invent a new movement over at ACNA, call it New Anglicanism with a young band of Anglicanistas to takeover a different corner of Christendom.

  168. Stories of 2021 … I would put the Fundaevangelical movement into the weird fringes of political activism on the list … seemed an appropriate addition on this January 6 day of infamy.

  169. Samuel Conner: I believe, from prior commentary, that you do not approve of the inferences these suffering people have drawn from their experiences.

    I am very sorry that your mother died, and that her death might have been caused by a misdiagnosis. That is agonizing.

    I appreciate your sympathy on my father’s death. Please do not extrapolate that I am indifferent to the suffering of others. (Were you referring to a specific comment? I’ve just scrolled through my words here, which emphasize voluntary precautions and high standards for clinical trials.)

    Everybody in this discussion is touching a piece of the elephant.

    We are not describing the whole elephant.

    We also are not very good at describing one another, or understanding one another’s thoughts and principles. On this topic, it is tempting to think, “Aha! You’re one of those _____ people!” But all of us are more complex than that, our experiences and analyses more nuanced.

    Peace.

  170. Max: He could invent a new movement over at ACNA, call it New Anglicanism with a young band of Anglicanistas

    The phrase that flew to mind was “deliver us from evil.”

  171. Samuel Conner: Switching topics a little, the thought occurs to wonder why the idea of “testing widely used known safe medications for therapeutic benefit in COVID” did not occur to the US public health establishment back in early 2020 when the “Warp Speed” vaccine plan was being implemented.

    Did you see the story?
    https://nypost.com/2022/01/03/uk-nurse-recovers-from-covid-19-after-being-given-viagra/
    The headline is hilarious, but it makes sense that Viagra could be useful for treating some covid symptoms It seemed to make a huge difference in this case.

  172. Ella: None of the doctors that I listen to are promoting purposeful seeking to become infected.

    Neither am I. But it still seems like it should be taken into account for how many jabs a person should get. It seems to count for nothing right now, which makes so sense and needs some explaining by The Science.

  173. Friend: Peace.

    Yes and amen!

    Regarding past commentary, I was thinking of a prior thread (and perhaps I am misremembering) in which (IIRC) you argued against vaccine skepticism on the basis of anecdata (an argument with which I am sympathetic) — maybe I’m misremembering. That was another long and contentious thread and I think tempers at times rose a bit in that one.

    I don’t agree with your views about ‘what is appropriate in the current emergency’, but I also don’t think ill of you. My default posture is that people almost always have compelling good faith reasons for the views they hold. I’m confident that is true of you.

    I hope that our public health authorities are agonizing over their decisions, which affect many people, as much as we are, who have to make decisions about whether to run the risk of contracting the disease in order to extend help to vulnerable neighbors (I am currently in isolation while awaiting a CV test and am wondering if the elderly chemotherapy patient, to whom I provided transport to life-preserving therapy this week before I developed a worrisome symptom and was advised to isolate and test, is now in danger.)

    (Aside: the staff at the cancer clinic, from the custodial staff up to the senior physicians, are all using surgical procedure masks. My patient friend and I are consistently the only people in sight who are using N95s. This is IMO madness, but the people who decide the facility PPE budget don’t want to use the more protective N95s except in cases where there is a confirmed CV diagnosis in a patient. Asymptomatic spread is a real thing and I fear an Omicron outbreak at that facility before long and wonder what that will mean for my vulnerable friend.

    At some point, I think our public health authorities will acknowledge that N95s are not only appropriate for ‘civilian’ use, but are advisable for widespread use as an anticontagion measure.

    I think it is the counsel of wisdom for us ‘civilians’ to be ahead of the curve and adopt this practice sooner than later.

    It is IMO a public tragedy that this was not made a top communication priority back in late November when it was clear that the Omicron tsunami was coming.

    Maybe the reality is that they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.)

  174. Friend: The phrase that flew to mind was “deliver us from evil.”

    Considering the level of darkness prevalent among many ministers and ministries throughout America, I would say it’s high time for believers to begin praying “deliver us from evil” in earnest as we enter a new year.

  175. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    Sadly, you show why this story is concerning. How do you know it was the viagra? In order to find out if that was the case one has to do a double-blind prospective study. These case reports are meaningless.

  176. Folks,

    I think it is time to bring this post to a close. Please get in your final comments and then I’m going to shut it down.

    As for me, I’m glad for the vaccine and the booster. My son-in-law got sick over Christmas and had a mild case, sort of like a cold. That beats being hospitalized or being flat on one’s back.

  177. Muff Potter: Pleas accept my apology if it sounded that way.

    Thanks. Apology accepted. It sounded like you and Jack were denigrating people who have questions and concerns about these new vaccines. There are actual valid reasons for concern, such as immunity exhaustion that could be be triggered by vaccines.

  178. dee,

    The thought occurs to wonder “why would a clinician even think of using viagra in therapy of COVID”?

    It looks to me like there has been research interest in this agent as possibly useful at least since mid 2020. Here’s an example from a PubMed search on COVID viagra

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33077403/

    This looks to me like a good example of use of physician discretion in a situation that is otherwise likely to be hopeless.

    We don’t know that this “hail Mary” last resort intervention is what saved this patient. Maybe the patient would have staged an unexpected recovery without intervention. I suspect, however, that the patient, the patient’s family, and the patient’s physician are all open to the possibility that this intervention was the decisive thing for this patient.

    My guess is that the patient’s physician spent a lot of time digging in the investigational meds and medical hypotheses literature and formed an informed judgment on which of the unproved possibilities would be best for this patient.

    This case study will encourage other clinicians to take a look at the same literature and form their own medical judgments. I don’t this this case study as being problematic. It’s arguably an example of ‘what is needed in the present emergency’.

    In the present emergency, I don’t think this is a bad thing.

  179. Samuel Conner: I am currently in isolation while awaiting a CV test

    I hope your test result comes back negative.

    Assuming that omicron is the dominant variant where you live, it appears to be contagious for fewer days than delta and earlier forms of the virus. And of course it’s milder.

    That earlier discussion did get heated, but one of our regular posters had asked for the discussion, and I thought it was productive. I do believe that the covid vaccines available in the US are safe and effective for most people, but not all. I don’t favor sweeping requirements.

    A caregiver works for one of my few remaining older relatives. Her reason for refusing the vaccine is that it supposedly contains a government tracking chip and the Mark of the Beast. My relative has been vaccinated and wants a booster, but she can’t seem to book him an appointment. I don’t view her as a vaccine skeptic, because her objection has no scientific or medical basis. I view her as a truly dear suffering person who endangers someone I’ve known my whole life.

    The painful irony: I don’t visit him, because I’m afraid of carrying covid to him. I hope he lives long enough for me to see him again. He is compos mentis and philosophical about his caregiver.

    Thank you for your graciousness.

  180. Samuel Conner,

    Not knowing more, it may be that viagra was the only investigational therapy available at the hospital to which the patient was admitted, so maybe there was not that much clinician discretion.

    If the case is published as a standalone report in the medical literature (I don’t see it in PubMed yet), perhaps there will be an explanation of why this investigational therapy rather than others was chosen.

  181. dee,

    Thank you, Dee.

    It’s been a somewhat contentious thread, but these are conversations many of us can’t/won’t have in real life. I think they have value in sharing information and also in reminding us that we’re all children of God, human beings of equal worth.

  182. Samuel Conner: Surely the US public health authorities can walk and chew gum at the same time. Perhaps some day we will gain insight into the reasons that a search for inexpensive therapeutic and preventive options was not higher on the US health establishment’s priorities.

    And I’m telling you, that logic doesn’t work. The political capital of a magic bullet in Canada would far outweigh any influence big pharma (or big anyone) could wield. None of our political parties have gone there. I suspect the US Government is the same way, seriously – all parties would push each other out of the way to get this over and done with. The “hero” factor would guarantee future elections for a very long time.

    Never mind that – there are so many good doctors, that if it was effective and safe, they’d be all over it – government be darned. In my industry, I’ve seen doctors accept untested blood when nothing else is available (now they do weigh the risk of whether the donor has passed all other criteria and there is whole process to go through), but doctors make these life and death decisions every day.

    It’s inconceivable that every single doctor in every single nation on the planet would not take a chance – in good faith – on something they have high confidence would save a life.

  183. dee: I think it is time to bring this post to a close. Please get in your final comments and then I’m going to shut it down.

    As for me, I’m glad for the vaccine and the booster. My son-in-law got sick over Christmas and had a mild case, sort of like a cold. That beats being hospitalized or being flat on one’s back

    Great discussion! Thanks for hosting it!

  184. Jack: It’s inconceivable that every single doctor in every single nation on the planet would not take a chance – in good faith – on something they have high confidence would save a life.

    So true! Thank you for pointing this out.

    Allow me to point out that ivermectin is being used in other countries.

    Yikes, it’s even available over the counter (in human formulation, I hasten to add) in some countries.

    The premise of your objection is simply not valid.

    But I still wish you well.

    Am currently listening to a rather foul-mouthed conversation at “The West WIng Thing” podcast.

    The conversation starts about 8 minutes in.

    It’s funny in a really sorrowful way.

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-west-wing-thing/id1457602260

    We in US are not well served by our leadership, of either party.

    I’m glad that you reside in Canada. In April, perhaps lift a glass to us in US who didn’t make it through this Winter.

  185. Jack: Any provincial government that could put pie on the feds face would do it.

    Jack,

    That made me laugh. 🙂 (I’m also a Canadian, and live in one of the provinces whose current provincial government (which, for many reasons, I can’t stand), would be more than happy to put (cow) pies on the face of the current federal government. And don’t get me started on my provincial government’s attitude towards health care….or, for that matter pretty much any other topic….)

  186. Samuel Conner,

    I have read/listened to a discussion of anti-androgen therapy that was found by the speaker to be beneficial for his covid patients. The FLCCC group invited this speaker and this therapeutic class in as part of one of their protocol options. Ignore this if viagra is not related to anti-androgens in any way.

  187. dee: I think it is time to bring this post to a close. Please get in your final comments and then I’m going to shut it down.

    As for me, I’m glad for the vaccine and the booster.

    And that would be my final comment as well. I spent a long career as a scientist and refuse to throw good science out the window in the world’s fight against this deadly virus. I’m proud to say I’m a fully vaccinated and boosted Wartburger.

  188. Ken F (aka Tweed),

    I think we’re in agreement to have natural immunity included in calculations and messaging around herd immunity. And we are in agreement in that authorities of the product developed using The Science, ought to do more to explain and take questions on the necessity of boosters. In my group of nonlocal old friends there are a few unvaxxed, think they had covid, some vaxxed early, some late. The late ones are still in “fully vaxxed” timeline, but if they wanted, as if that would make sense, even 2 months out could have had another shot. When does it stop?

    Here’s what I understand: the booster supposedly ramps up, awakens, alerts, original covid antibodies to get ready for something, omicron presently probably, for which these antibodies are not as effective against. Each time a shot is taken there is risk that seems wise to run a bit of cost benefit analysis on, with the uncertainty of possible long covid infection factored in as well as one’s state of health and risk of shot reactions and possible, rare complications. It appears omicron infection causes a less severe disease than other variants, but is still a disease with possible uncomfortable symptoms and degrees will vary for different people. Not getting boosted does not mean an individual exposed to covid variants, either vaxxed or previously infected, has no memory of, or protection against, covid.

    I think, for now, it is a positive that Gov is not redefining “fully vaxxed,” but rather saying “be up to date,” which is better than mandated “full vaxxed.” If you’ve gone thru omicron then I’ve read/heard you have great immunity protection for delta. Vaxxed and unvaxxed, both, can be asymptomatic and infectious, so masking, symptom monitoring, still apply. My sources say the disease is declining.

  189. Jack: political capital of a magic bullet

    I think the logic does work in US, though I certainly concede that you are better positioned than I to know whether it is valid as applied to the policies of the government of Canada.

    In US, policies that have majority support among voters of all affiliations have no chance of passage in Congress.

    A prime example, and one that is highly relevant to the present emergency, is “Medicare for All”, a Canadian-style single payer system of health insurance.

    To quote a famous US politician (who lost in 2016), this will “never ever happen.” And she’s probably right.

    Remember those of us who died this Winter.

  190. Samuel Conner: So true! Thank you for pointing this out.

    Allow me to point out that ivermectin is being used in other countries.

    Yikes, it’s even available over the counter (in human formulation, I hasten to add) in some countries.

    The premise of your objection is simply not valid.

    But I still wish you well.

    I can only comment on what I know. My aunt and uncle are doctors in south east Asia and they are not prescribing ivermectin.

    We’re a planet of 7 billion humans, there are so many reasons why the virus is rampant in some jurisdictions and not others.

    The herd immunity theory has been a failure in Britain and Sweden. In Africa, rampant Covid has given rise to the Omicron variant. World vaccine inequity is a primary culprit.

    Suffice it to say, I’ll leave it there – great discussion. Glad I got vaccinated and boostered, hope our discussion has planted the seed for some others to think about it.

    The world is in the same boat – we’ll mourn our losses together.

    I’ve missed visiting the States – hope to see it again soon!

  191. From Tennyson, these words about ‘hope’:
    ‘Oh yet we trust that somehow good/
    will be the final goal of ill ‘

    People now know that among the dead from Covid, there are mostly the unvaccinated. How that this is processed, I cannot see into the hearts of others, no.

    For some reason, the ‘issue’ became politicized, and at that point,
    but some, who preached trumpism, quietly got themselves vaccinated but ‘opposed the mandates’ so that an individual could decide for him/her self whether or not to get protected . . .

    but then, clinging to freedom became an exercise in embracing danger among some who were ‘knowledgeable’ in ways that resulted from bad science or from mis-information, also frequently purveyed among those with a political agenda

    and so people died, in the red states too, eventually as the wild rumpus continued

    until Trump said ‘get vaccinated’, and THE ‘true believers’ yelled ‘BOO’ as he spoke,
    and some folks woke up

    it reads like a scene in the children’s book
    “Where The Wild Things Are”

    I wish it were.

  192. Max: refuse to throw good science out the window

    If only US federal public health authorities were so conscientious!

    This is a useful summary of 2021 re: pandemic and federal policy. You will note the places where established principles of public health and management of contagion were … discarded in the interest of other agendas.

    Muff — your objections can justly be turned against our national leaders as well as against individual ‘transgressors’ of sound science. And, to quote David in the famous incident of the plague that followed the census of the fighting men, “these are but sheep”. We should be angryer with our leaders, who ought to know better.

    Jack — sorry that it took me so long to reply to your “political capital” reasoning. I really didn’t understand it at first — a measure of how responsive to constituent concerns political parties in Canada may be (something of which I was not aware), and how unresponsive to voter concerns (the constituents are the big donors) the parties in US are (something of which you seem to not be aware; it’s natural to assume that local conditions prevail more widely).

    https://jmfeldman.medium.com/a-year-in-how-has-biden-done-on-pandemic-response-88452c696f2

    We are not well served by our political leaders, but that should not surprise Wartburgers. Why would leaders in the public sphere be all that much better than the leaders we are more familiar with in church contexts?

    The love of many grows cold.

    Stay warm all, outside and inside.

  193. Jack: Britain and Sweden. In Africa, rampant Covid has given rise to the Omicron variant. World vaccine inequity is a primary culprit

    I agree to some degree with your argument on Africa and Omicron (though it is the kind of variant that appears at this stage anyway).

    Everything around virus illnesses is relative and on continuums.

    As for your “Sweden argument” herd immunity is an occurrence (not understood) and not a theory.

    In the UK we don’t know:

    – who had covid because the supposed symptom list is all wrong
    – unavailable and faulty tests
    – how much worse all other diseases are getting because:

    i . neglect
    ii . covid makes them worse

    Covid viruses are particularly closely interrelated with five of the other groups of viruses.

    Flu deaths are very much down for the second year running.

    As for “election politics” the BBC and The Guardian published two different counts for weeks. I have thought for several decades US public officials ought to:

    – abolish the Electoral College
    – reform primaries
    – I hesitate to phrase it like this but, find out what it is to count. Not only there but in Britain also, increasingly children are overstrained in matters of hot air and not allowed knowledge.

    It’s healthy that adults demand knowledge, in church and in every walk.

    St Paul says pray for just quality of government unceasingly but who is St Paul to make recommendations? The other public are going to ask us one day why we didn’t pray.

    There was a nice Creation discussion here, I hope to join in continuing it.

  194. “The false comparison

    Some people, including many doctors, believe that as long as the death rate from the vaccine is less than the death rate from COVID that we shouldn’t stop the vaccine since it produces a net savings in lives.

    This is totally false. It is not the # killed by the virus that matters. It is the estimated # of lives saved by the vaccine.

    Net lives saved = (# saved by the vax) – (# killed by the vax)

    Let’s look at that. The Pfizer Phase 3 trial proved they could save 1 COVID life for every 22,000 vaccinated.

    So with 220M fully vaccinated, we’ll save 10,000 lives according to Pfizer’s own study. There is no better data than this. This is the gold-standard, double-blind randomized trial result. Nobody can argue with it.

    But the calculation of deaths due to the vaccine is at least 150,000, and I have 13 different ways to show that.

    So we’ve killed over 150,000 people to maybe save 10,000 lives.

    Any rational person would stop the vaccines immediately.

    But this isn’t about science or rational thinking. This is about a belief. The belief is that the only thing that matters is saving people from COVID, no matter how many people we have to kill to do it.”

    https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/there-is-no-stopping-condition

  195. Ken,

    I think there may be a gigantic ceteris paribus fallacy here — the assumption that in the absence of the vaccines, all else would have been equal in terms of medical outcomes.

    Yet we have seen the US health care system groaning, creaking and at risk of collapsing under the weight of severe disease in an increasingly vaccinated population.

    Vaccination has reduced the number of people with severe disease — disease requiring hospitalization — and this has preserved the health care system from the collapse it would have experienced in the absence of these interventions.

    (This is not to commend the US public health authorities; I think their decision earlier in 2021 to relax guidance on ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs) was very unwise and there are numerous other criticisms that could be leveled. See the retrospective here:

    https://jmfeldman.medium.com/a-year-in-how-has-biden-done-on-pandemic-response-88452c696f2
    )

    The purpose of the vaccines was to reduce severe disease incidence to a level that the healthcare system could manage, and they were more or less successful at that.

    I don’t know whether your 150,000 versus 10,000 number is accurate on ceteris paribus terms, but there is no doubt in my mind that the vaccines saved many more than 10,000 lives given the actual constraints on the capacity of the US healthcare system.

    My criticism is the reliance on vaccines as the primary (at this point, practically only) intervention that the public health authorities are willing to strongly recommend or mandate. NPIs are always the first line of defense in public health, and they should not be relaxed in favor of other interventions, but rather supplemented by the other interventions as they become available.

  196. Michael in UK: As for your “Sweden argument” herd immunity is an occurrence (not understood) and not a theory.

    My last word, promise. My terminology might be off but a failure is a failure…and herd immunity is understood.

  197. Samuel Conner: NPIs are always the first line of defense in public health

    Great goal, but not an absolute, as I’m sure you realize.

    I’m old enough to remember when pregnant women lived in terror of “German measles,” rubella. All they could do was hide at home when it was circulating… impossible for those who already had children, unknowable if they did not yet realize they were pregnant. If they were exposed, all they could do was wait in terror to learn whether the baby would be born deaf—or at all.

    Old newspapers are full of heartbreaking stories about children bitten by dogs with rabies, who could only wait to die. Sure, avoid dog bites, but it’s nice to have a vaccine.