To my many online vaccine skeptic colleagues: The current issue of the Duluth Reader published a Letter to the Editor from a local Duluth, MN Emergency Room physician whose final statement was “Kohls is intellectually dishonest and needs to go”. His arguments concerning the current pandemic will seem plausible to most readers (and also most publishers and editors of most newspapers) so I would appreciate some outside help from colleagues in refuting his arguments. I have made it a policy of mine to not get down in the mud with critics and waste valuable time and column space in responding to critics. My experience is that most of my critics in the past have been trolls. However this critic (who did not identify himself as an ER doc) seemed to make plausible arguments that are very much in line with the mainstream Big Pharma, Big Media, NIH, CDC, NIAID, FDA narratives.
Anyway I hope somebody out there might be willing to refute some of the statements made by the letter-writer. The email address to use is info@readerduluth.com. In case anybody wants to mention how the Reader’s LTE section for 11/12/2020 was accessed, the web address was https://duluthreader.com/articles/2020/11/12/116271-letters-nov-12-2020.
Immediately below is the LTE and below that is the published column that Dr Bernhardt criticized (also attached above).
Thanks, Gary
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Kohls continues to misinform
Gary Kohls continues his campaign of misinformation and disinformation about SARS-COV-2, testing and vaccinations. His November 5th column begins with the lie that “the elusive (and therefore dubious) SARS virus has not yet been isolated in the lab, much less been reproducibly grown in living tissue culture.”
Fact: On January 20, 2020, CDC received a clinical specimen collected from the first reported U.S. patient infected with SARS-CoV-2. CDC immediately placed the specimen into cell culture to grow a sufficient amount of virus for study. On Feb. 2, 2020, CDC generated enough SARS-CoV-2 grown in cell culture to distribute to medical and scientific researchers.
Kohls then proceeds to describe our current situation as an “alleged pandemic which has relied on testing with the equally dubious PCR test kits...” The test kits are properly described as RT-PCR, which stands for Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction. It’s the PCR portion that Kohls has issues with. It is an extensively tested technique for identifying short chain sequences of DNA. Kohls claims “the PCR test’s inventor has repeatedly asserted that his test CANNOT be used for diagnostic purposes.” Fact: PCR and RT-PCR are widely used around the world for diagnosis of viral disease. The test is extremely accurate and sensitive.
The test inventor, Dr Kary B. Mullis won a Nobel prize for his work. He died in 2019 before the pandemic started so he had nothing to say about SARS-COV-2. He additionally never said the test could not be used for diagnostic purposes. That notion circulated this past summer on Facebook and fringe websites – the very places Kohls does his research. There are several debunkings of this by responsible organizations such as Reuters.
Kohls then expresses doubt that asymptomatic people with a positive test are truly infected, calling it “conventional wisdom.” Conventional wisdom actually did not expect high asymptomatic infection rates based on experience with SARS-COV-1. These people go on to develop antibodies so we do know they were infected. Kohls must know this.
All of this is in the first four paragraphs of Kohl’s article. It’s clear Kohls has no training or expertise in virology or diagnostic testing. He then goes on to disparage the proposed vaccine protocols in his typical tendentious fashion, taking issue with statisticians who design the trials because he knows better. He suspects they’re crooked and own company stock. He doesn’t like the risk reduction statistics in particular but doesn’t tell the reader that continuing information is accrued from vaccinated people far beyond the phase three trial.
On the date of publication of Kohl’s article there were 123,718 newly diagnosed Covid-2 cases and 1,154 deaths. The world needs an effective vaccine as soon as safely possible. Some risk attaches to any new vaccine and can only be discerned by trials and follow up. The world also needs accurate information. Robert Boone, that’s your responsibility. Se fi
Greg Bernhardt – Duluth
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The Flawed Covid-19 Vaccine Testing Programs at Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca
Bu Gary G. Kohls, MD – November 1, 2020 (1803 words)
There doesn’t appear to be much difference between the testing protocols of the dozens of pharmaceutical companies that are working on developing a vaccine for the elusive (and therefore dubious) SARS virus that has not actually yet been isolated in the lab, much less been reproducibly-grown in living tissue cultures.
The evidence for the existence of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus in any given patient has mostly been assumptive in the current alleged pandemic which has relied on testing with the equally dubious PCR test kits that have been manufactured by any number of fly-by-night outfits which are making unreliable test kits.
The “case” incidence and death statistics of the current alleged pandemic must therefore be also regarded as dubious because the PCR test’s inventor has repeatedly asserted that his test CANNOT be used for diagnostic purposes.
However, the aggressively Big Pharma/Big Media-promoted “conventional wisdom” says that if the PCR test turns out to be positive (even if the PCR-positive individual is totally asymptomatic, always wore the masks and never ever developed Covid symptoms) that subject must be assumed to be so infectious that he must be quarantined for weeks. If the subject does not comply with the quarantine order, he or she can– in certain jurisdictions – be arrested and imprisoned.
What should be of concern to thinking people is the fact that some of these pharma companies (not to mention that many of the PCR test kit manufacturers) are indeed just “start-ups” - like the National Institutes of Health’s (and Anthony Fauci’s) favorite vaccine company Moderna, whose business only involves vaccine development - not manufacture.
Yet Moderna is deeply involved in the race for FDA approval, and its stock price has sky-rocketed on hopes that it might massage its test results enough to get its Covid-19 vaccine approved (or at least be given Emergency Use Authorization [EUA] by the FDA).
Despite its sky-high stock price ($67 per share as of October 30, 2020), Moderna has yet to earn a single penny from the sale of any of its handful of experimental vaccines. It has, not surprisingly, developed its protocol for testing its 2-dose experimental Covid-19 vaccine that is essentially the same as the announced protocols of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccines in that half of the approximately 30,000 volunteers that they have amassed will be injected with two doses of its active vaccine (each of which contains uncertain-to-be-safe ingredients). The other half will be injected with a placebo. (Interestingly, in the past, some vaccine-testing companies have added a tissue-toxic ingredient that will cause injection-site symptoms presumably so that the placebo group won’t know if they got the vaccine or not.)
There are reportedly any number of start-up and established pharmaceutical corporations world-wide that are also trying to be the next block-buster vaccine-seller on the planet, but NONE of them, much less the four experimental vaccine companies listed below, have been following time-honored methods of testing its experimental drugs and vaccines on lab animals, a serious breach of protocol that has become the “new normal” in order to comply with President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, agenda which Trump has been pushing in order to produce a vaccine – any vaccine - before his re-election bid is decided!!
Of course, the fast-tracking (aka, “short-circuiting”) of normal vaccine safety and efficacy studies has been condemned by all ethical scientists that don’t have economic or professional “conflicts of interest” that guarantee profitable results from the dangerous pseudoscientific pro-vaccine stances that Big Pharma shills like those in the Trump administration and the current HHS, NIH, CDC, NIAID and FDA has taken over the past 10 months.
Conditional, tentative, Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the already corporate-compromised FDA is likely to be granted even if the data that is presented to the FDA regulatory commissions are flawed and/or statistically insignificant – which means that the vaccine has not been proven to be safe and effective, especially in the long-term, which, by definition, can’t be safely assessed for many years. Sadly, the members of most standard “regulatory” commissions are often corporate shills that have ulterior motives.
There are 30,000 volunteers in each drug company’s study groups and they are essentially healthy, essentially middle-aged, eager and “patriotic” volunteers. Half of the 30,000 will be injected with a series of two immunologically-active vaccines. The other 15,000 members of the group will get two shots of a placebo that is supposed to be immunologically-inactive. None of the 30,000 will be informed as to which group they are in.
The approximately 30,000 total human guinea pigs that signed up for the Moderna study will be monitored until a paltry 53 of the 30,000 volunteers gets positive (and very dubious) PCR test results! The 53 may not have - and may never develop - SARS signs and symptoms for them to be included in the study!
Of course, false-positive PCR tests are extremely common and can happen to anybody, especially people who have had a common cold, which is often caused by simple, benign coronaviruses.
The designers of the Moderna study – just like the other drug companies that are in the race – will argue that their study should be considered relevant, reportable to the FDA as theoretical proof of effectiveness but they cannot claim that their vaccine is either safe or effective long-term.
However, these short-term studies can only be partially relied upon for short-term safety and effectiveness if 13 or fewer of the 53 PCR-positive “cases” occurred in the vaccinated population while at the same time 40 or more of the positive PCR “cases” occurred in the placebo group. What won’t be discussed will be the fact that over 14,900 of both the placebo group and the vaccine group also didn’t have positive PCR tests Covid-19 symptoms!
It is totally appropriate for legitimate doubters of America’s Big Pharma-co-opted drug and vaccine regulatory agencies to ask the question, “What kind of Big Pharma-influenced, profit-oriented, junk science is behind the studies that are being hastily approved by the likes of the obviously co-opted HHS, NIH, CDC, NIAID and FDA?
It is also totally appropriate for the public to have full information about what kind of coercive pro-vaccine influence is coming from such Trump appointees as his HHS director (and non-physician) Alex Azar, who came into Trump’s administration from a $2 million dollar per year CEO post at Big Pharma/Big Vaccine giant Eli Lilly. Azar also is part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which is the impetus behind the fast-tracking of vaccine development, which is certain to be a disaster.
There will surely be dubious conclusions coming from all of the other provably untrustworthy pharmaceutical corporations that are in the race to develop an Emergency Use Authorized-vaccine that will not have been proven to be either safe or effective long-term – but will certainly be unaffordable.
Suspiciously, the major investment partner of start-up Moderna is actually the US government regulatory and funding body called the National Institutes of Health (including the CDC and the NIAID) which reportedly has a 50% financial stake in the company.
One can safely assume that – given the corrupt capitalist system that has thoroughly taken over our nation - that every Moderna shareholder (even our government bureaucracies) will do everything they can do to promote its products.
One must suspect also that these government agencies and their buddies in the corporate world are doing everything they can to keep the sheeple from noticing the most important data points in the studies discussed.
And one of those bits of information is that at least 29,800 of the 30,000 volunteers in Moderna’s vaccine trials, will likely not become infected whether the got the placebo or the vaccine. What could easily happen long-term is that a significant number of the 15,000 in the vaccine group, are at risk of developing disabling chronic illnesses such as autoimmune disorders.
What About the Vaccine Trials of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, et. al.?
The other significant statistical realities that won’t be pointed out in the corporate-controlled medical journals (or the corporate-controlled media) are the concepts of “Actual Vaccine Efficacy” and “Relative Vaccine Efficacy”, which are akin to the likewise purposely hidden-from view Actual Risk Reduction (AAR) and Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) that are often ignored in drug efficacy trials.
For Moderna, 13 positive PCR tests in the 15,000 member vaccine arm of their trial 13/15,000 = 0.00086) is an arbitrarily chosen data point that, when compared to the placebo trial may represent some sort of significance. 0.00086 is an obviously miniscule number that is the same as a percentage figure of 0.086 %.
And 40 or more positive PCR tests in Moderna’s placebo group of 15,000 subjects (40/15,000 = 0.0027) likewise represents a similarly miniscule percentage figure of 0.27 %. Subtracting 0.086 % from 0.27 % will obtain the “actual” miniscule benefit of being vaccinated (0.086 %) with Moderna’s potentially toxic vaccine vs. receiving the presumably innocuous placebo.
However, the falsely-inflated “relative” vaccine effectiveness numbers means that in calculating the Moderna results takes the fraction 13/40 (which = 0.325 in decimal terms, and which is 32.5% in percentage terms. The corporation’s mathematicians, in the standard method of calculating relative risk reduction (RRR), subtracts the 0.325 from “1”, resulting in a decimal number of 0.675 (which, in percentage terms is 67.5%).
So Moderna statisticians – who may, incidentally, own shares in the company - will then report to his bosses at corporate headquarters the “relative” effectiveness rate of 67.5 %, which the bosses will receive as positive, whereas it is a actually a deceptively inflated figure when it is put side-by-side with the actual vaccine effectiveness number of 0.184.
Note that Pfizer’s experimental vaccine trial also uses the PCR positivity number of 32 in the 30,000 group, 25 in the 15,000 placebo group, and 7 in the 15,000 vaccine group as starting statistical analysis points.
Using those numbers, Pfizer’s statisticians are actually reporting out the falsely-inflated Relative Risk Reduction/Relative Vaccine Effectiveness numbers (rather than the Actual Risk Reduction (ARR) numbers to America’s easily propagandized press corps and medical professionals, who can be relied upon to report – over and over again – the inflated benefits to their listeners, viewers and patients.
Predictably, Johnson & Johnson is also using the same mathematical trickery as the other Gang of Four, using as their arbitrary PCR-positivity break-points the following numbers: 77 PCR-positive tests among the 30,000 total group; 59 PCR-positive tests in the 15,000 person placebo group, and17 PCR-positive tests in the 15,000-person vaccine group.
AstraZeneca is doing the same, just using slightly different numbers of PCR-positivity: 50 in the 30,000 group, 38 in the15,000 placebo group and 12 in the 15,000 vaccinated group.
What we seem to have is well expressed in my version of Mark Twain’s famous quote: “There are 3 (or 4) kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Covid Statistics”.
Discuss.
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