57. The Basket
5.17.2023 The best of Rational Ground, Team Reality and many others...
Click HERE to see The (prior) Basket and HERE to see The (next) Basket
Click HERE to see The Conspiracy Basket series
Note: I read a lot of Substacks each day. The Basket is intended to be a collection of the money quotes from the best of what I read. My goal is that you enjoy this service because it saves you time and quickly informs you. And my hope is that you find one or two articles that you click into because you want more.What you can find in this collection (these are my headlines, not the authors’):
EDTA Chelation Treatment For Unvaccinated? by ANA MARIA MIHALCEA, MD, PHD
Back Pay For Vax Furloughs by Vinay Prasad
(Lack Of) Free Speech In Turkey by AMUSE
CDC “Mused” About mRNA In Breastmilk In 2021 by JOSH GUETZKOW
Climate Change Corporatocracy by A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR
HVAC The New “Do Something” by Igor Chudov
TdaP/DTaP Overdose by Meryl Nass
Vaxed Vs Un-Vaxed by John Dee
Destruction Of Truth & Falsity by KATHERINE WATT
Cut Out The Middleman by Brian Mowrey
Homelessness The Result Of Other Problems by JOHN HAWKINS
Elon Vs Global Censorship Forces by JORDAN SCHACHTEL
More Shame Please by el gato malo
The Pfizer Racket by JOSH GUETZKOW
Steele Propaganda by Dr. Robert Malone
Ventilators Killed by Alex Berenson
Durham Takeaways by SUSAN SCHMIDT
Poor Outcomes From E-Learning by JOSH STEVENSON
Google’s New AI by JON RAPPOPORT
Scotland’s Essential Workers IFR by Mark Changizi
EDTA Chelation Treatment For Unvaccinated? by ANA MARIA MIHALCEA, MD, PHD
Symptoms may not be completely resolved in one intravenous infusion, however it is important to document that the rouleaux formation and the micro clotting improved significantly. EDTA is in the body for 24 hours after infusion, so 90 minutes is a very rapid check, and improvements in blood quality do continue. I have seen many patients who improved significantly after 2-3 Chelation’s and I have had patients who within 2 weeks had complete resolution of symptoms with 8 IV treatments. I will post that documentation soon.
Back Pay For Vax Furloughs by Vinay Prasad
a long standing principle of medical ethics is in order to mandate a personal health intervention, it is not sufficient to show a personal health benefit. You can't force people to take blood pressure pills, for instance, even though it has overwhelming data it would be good for hypertensives. You can’t fire someone for having a blood pressure of 140/90, who declines medication because he believe it makes him tired.
Instead, to mandate a medical intervention you have to have a strong confidence that that mandate benefits third parties, and moreover that the benefit is so large, it outweighs the loss of autonomy.
When it comes to Covid vaccination. The ethical criteria to mandate was never met.
COVID19 vaccine mandates were unethical. Employers need to be litigated to pay people what they are owed. Public health should foot the tab.
(Lack Of) Free Speech In Turkey by AMUSE
The same left-wing journalists, pundits, politicians, and academics who criticized Elon Musk’s plan to protect free speech on Twitter are now sounding the alarm that the billionaire is not doing enough to protect free speech on the platform.
Fast forward to 2023 and critics began changing their tune.
For example, Substack author and Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias had previously warned:
"Musk's free speech absolutism is a threat to democracy."
"Musk's free speech absolutism is a gift to authoritarians."
"Elon Musk's free speech absolutism is a recipe for disaster."
…but earlier today Yglesias raised concerns about Musk’s commitment to free speech and the future of Twitter pointing out that Twitter had complied with lawful orders from the Turkish government and censored content prohibited in the Republic of Türkiye.
We may not like or agree with speech laws that violate our constitution but it isn’t our place to overrule the will of the people in other democracies. The West has a LONG history of imposing its values and culture on countries like Turkey and India—asking Elon Musk to use Twitter to ‘colonize’ their speech codes would be a huge mistake.
CDC “Mused” About mRNA In Breastmilk In 2021 by JOSH GUETZKOW
It appears that one of the e-mails in this recent release was supposed to be redacted, but for some reason the square was not opaque. You can see the (b)(5) in gray stamped over it and a rectangular border around the text intended for redaction. It’s dated Dec. 7, 2021 from the head of the CDC’s VAERS team, John Su, and it’s quite revealing
this e-mail proves that Su had seen VAERS reports for COVID-19 vaccine “exposure by breast milk” on Dec. 7, 2021. Of course it had been established that COVID antibodies were present in breast milk in vaccinated mothers, but officials claimed — and still do — that it poses no risk to breastfeeding infants.
Such reports were not new in Dec. 2021, but apparently there happened to be enough reports that week to catch John Su’s attention, if not his concern. His attitude seems rather blasé, and he writes that his observations are “offhand musings.” He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned to see reports of exposure by breastmilk.
Climate Change Corporatocracy by A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR
From a philosophical standpoint, the root problem with the climate change narrative is that nothing can disprove it (thereby making it fulfill the classic criteria of pseudoscience). Climate change is an intentionally vague term, and fluctuations in weather always occur, so any unwanted fluctuation can be attributed to human-caused climate change (especially given how flexible our “models” are), and there is no way to prove or disprove any argument asserting climate change.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, whenever evidence emerges that suggests the climate change hypothesis is wrong, that data is attacked, censored, hidden, or altered. In the same way, those questioning vaccines are never given a platform to present their argument (as doing so asserted as equivalent to enabling murder), those questioning climate change are treated the same.
systemic issue that plagues our country and show the natural trend toward monopolization and exploitation of the American people once government gets bought out by corporatocracy
Our current way of life is immensely destructive to the environment, and there is a good chance the pollution we are producing and our overconsumption of natural resources will eventually cause devastating environmental collapses. It’s just that since I do not believe carbon dioxide emissions are causing any of the current environmental damage we are seeing, I can’t, in good faith, endorse the current Climate Change narrative.
HVAC The New “Do Something” by Igor Chudov
Since the “Covid pandemic” started over three years ago, humanity has been beset with the “we need to do something” syndrome. That syndrome surfaces when public servants see “doing nothing” as risky for their careers. Therefore, they enact measures that appear beneficial without first ascertaining that they would accomplish anything.
A new trend is now emerging: “improved building ventilation.” The CDC adopted this approach several days ago and called to upgrade the ventilation systems of existing buildings.
The result of the filtration campaign will be immense profits for HVAC retrofitting companies, accompanied by fake science worship, virtue signaling, blaming people whose homes are not retrofitted, magical thinking, and hysterics.
TdaP/DTaP Overdose by Meryl Nass
Babies get twice the tetanus toxoid as an adult that might weight 10-20 times more from the GSK vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. Babies get 10 times the diphtheria toxoid dose as adults in the GSK shots. Babies get 3 times the pertussis toxoid, the FHA (filamentous hemaglutinin) and the pertactin as adults from the GSK shots.
Sanofi’s shots gives babies 2 times the tetanus toxoid, 7.5 times the diphtheria toxoid, and 4 times the pertussis toxoid as adults.
Would adults tolerate the large doses we give to babies? Would someone please explain these dosing choices?
Vaxed Vs Un-Vaxed by John Dee
It would appear that unvaccinated folk didn’t fare as well as vaccinated counterparts no matter how we slice the cake but this assumption still rests on many confounding factors as stated. What we ought to do is account for as many confounding variables as possible to ensure we are comparing like-with-like in a fair and just manner
Since national COVID cases were high when national vaccine uptake was low, with COVID cases petering-out when vaccine uptake was high, then any attempt to analyse this dataset as a homogeneous block will always result in apparent vaccine benefit even if the vaccine was saline.
Analyse this lot as one big fat lump and you’ll get instant vaccine benefit regardless of whether the vaccine is doing anything useful. In my book if the vaccine is doing anything remotely useful then we ought to know about it and evaluate genuine benefit against genuine risk.
which points to possible vaccine benefit but the fact that we see somewhat similar odds ratios across two very different periods suggests to me that something murky might be going on. Things are getting curiouser and curiouser, and my guess is that COVID-19 coding is being rather dubiously handled. Either that or a Trust-level decision was made not to test seriously ill patients, especially if they have been vaccinated.
Destruction Of Truth & Falsity by KATHERINE WATT
I think one of the most important changes that the globalists made to society over the past century…was to instill in human minds an inability to think of anything in the world as unequivocably true or false.
The destruction of concepts of truth and falsity has been very good for liars.
It’s helped them seed their lies throughout human institutions without detection or push-back.
Without clear, well-formed access to categories of true and false, an individual human being has no basis upon which to make moral judgments about the rightness and wrongness of his own acts and omissions, or acts and omissions taken by others.
Cut Out The Middleman by Brian Mowrey
As the title indicates, Kipfer and co. have made a gene-to-virus (“reverse genetics”) platform for SARS-CoV-2 that is “cloning-free.” So, no clones here.
One wonders why someone hasn’t thought to try it before — to “cut out the middleman.” In fact, maybe someone already has (as in, with SARS-CoV-2).
“Another DNA-based method has been described by Lamballerie et al…This method, termed “infectious subgenomic amplicons” (ISA), allows transfected overlapping DNA fragments to recombine within the eukaryotic cell into a full-length genome copy.”
Here the cell only needs to be transfected with PCR-amplified fragments of the virus gene — they auto-recombine, and the virus gene results. The “clonal” middle-man is cut out of the equation. What Kipfer, et al. go on to report is successfully making an ISA platform for SARS-CoV-2, and finding the result to be high-fidelity and versatile.
But hopefully, by having a new, simpler method of converting DNA for a virus into real virus, the question about there was ever some mysterious, incredible portent to the use of “clones” in existing methods can be put to bed.
Homelessness The Result Of Other Problems by JOHN HAWKINS
Being homeless is not the CAUSE of their problems, it’s a RESULT of their problems. The fix for their problems is not a house, it’s to address what’s causing them to be homeless in the first place.
How are so many Americans NOT HOMELESS?
9,982 out of every 10,000 people in America ARE NOT homeless in a given year.
if we look at the numbers, we have to conclude that the overwhelming majority of criminals, along with dumb, irresponsible, crazy, irritating, and lazy people in the United States aren’t homeless.
45% of the homeless have significant mental problems.
38% of homeless people are alcohol dependent, and 26% are dependent on other harmful chemicals.
the only way to actually solve the problem would be to help people IN SPITE OF THEMSELVES.
“We have a lot of legal concerns about how you force people off the street and into shelter,” advocate Judith Goldiner, head of the law reform unit at the Legal Aid Society, told The Wall Street Journal.
showing real compassion as a society would require us to help the homeless become functional human beings again, even if they’re not ready to do that because of the drugs they’re on or their mental problems.
Elon Vs Global Censorship Forces by JORDAN SCHACHTEL
While Elon is indeed the world’s wealthiest man, he isn’t exactly in a position to have “f–k you money” veto power over the global forces for censorship and oppression. If he gets too much on the wrong side of either of the world’s two major superpowers, Musk could find himself in a position where his entire fortune is under assault.
Twitter is certainly not insulated from its owner’s geopolitical balancing act.
The most glaring liabilities come from his business properties. Tesla, his most valuable asset, is completely beholden to the Chinese government, given that almost half of the company’s sales and resources reside there. SpaceX, his private rocket/space company, currently relies on U.S. taxpayer subsidies and U.S. government authorization to continue sending goods and services into space.
In his early tenure over Twitter, Musk has prioritized pragmatism over principle. While potentially advantageous for running a profitable business, that strategy may lead to an eventual full embrace of its new CEO’s preferred corporate agenda.
The first wave of putative Covid deaths in Spring 2020 demonstrated extremely unusual characteristics in some areas - including New York City and Bergamo, Italy. Excess mortality exploded overnight at precisely the time restrictions were implemented, whereas there was no sign of anything unusual immediately prior. The mortality peaks rocketed to unprecedented levels of excess mortality and then quickly subsided.
an isolated “laboratory,”…can provide clues to the true severity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The Diamond Princess cruise ship
25% of those over 60 and 9% of those under 60 were reportedly infected. On the DP, the case fatality rate (CFR) for those over 60 was 2.6%. This assumes that all 14 deaths of passengers were caused by a Covid-19 infection contracted while on the DP. On the other hand, the CFR for those under 60 years of age was 0.0%, since none in this age bracket died.
The 1,045 crew members, confined in tight quarters with no fresh air when not serving passengers, suffered no ill effects from this supposedly novel deadly virus. This alone should have influenced public policy globally
More Shame Please by el gato malo
like many things in societies and real life, shame is likely something of a goldilocks zone.
shame too much and you’re a repressive autocracy that stifles and stunts.
shame too little and you cultivate the frailty and malfunction of those who refuse to become adults or gain resilience.
and somewhere in the middle there’s a happy zone of functional, free societies full of sound people.
no student at such an august institution as oxford should be so challenged by simply hearing ideas with which they disagree as to be rendered some sort of bawling babe triggered into the desperate need of “professional help” in “safe spaces.”
that’s shameful. it’s fragile. it’s broken and it’s weak.
The Pfizer Racket by JOSH GUETZKOW
Eliquis is used to prevent strokes from blood clots caused by atrial fibrillation. And they have a new drug, not yet available in Israel or most of the rest of the world outside the US, that is supposed to directly treat atrial fibrillation. Plus they make a few blood pressure medications as well (though they were hit with a scandal in 2022 when they had massive recalls due to a carcinogenic compound found in many lots).
So basically Pfizer creates the #1 selling pharmaceutical product in the world, the Comirnaty COVID vaccine, which apparently can cause atrial fibrillation and high blood pressure. It then turns around and pays for
advertisementspublic service announcements to increase sales of its products that are used to treat the problems caused by its vaccine. (Direct to consumer pharma ads are not allowed in Israel.)Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a classic case of a racket, in the traditional meaning of “an organized criminal act in which the perpetrators…offer a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket.”
Steele Propaganda by Dr. Robert Malone
Back in 2016, I believed that the Steele report was, for the most part, real.
Yesterday, we learned from the Durham Report, produced by special counsel John Durham, that most likely it was Clinton and the DNC who worked with the Russians to produce the Steele report.
Where did the US government go so very, very wrong? What is truly Russian disinformation versus US disinformation? When did the DNC and the FBI become so deeply corrupted?
Censorship and propaganda will not protect “democracy” (technically a representative republic), they will destroy it.
Ventilators Killed by Alex Berenson
Aggressive use of ventilators may have killed some Covid patients, a new paper from Northwestern University researchers suggests.
Covid itself has a “relatively low mortality rate" compared to other respiratory illnesses, the researchers found after examining about 600 patients with severe pneumonia. Yet Covid patients remained intubated longer than other patients and developed secondary bacterial infections more often.
Those extra infections caused many deaths in Covid patients, the researchers wrote. More patients may have died from the bacterial infections than Covid itself.
The new finding is particularly troubling because media outlets and hospitals both pressed ventilator use for Covid patients in 2020, frequently claiming ventilator shortages were likely.
Durham Takeaways by SUSAN SCHMIDT
A quick read revealed the following key takeaways:
There was no valid predicate for the investigation, and the FBI knew it.
“There’s nothing to this, but we have to run it to ground.”
“It’s thin”; “There’s nothing to this.”
The Trump campaign investigation was premised on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” and U.S. intel agencies possessed no “actual evidence of collusion” when the probe began
Sensational stories published in the New York Times in February and March 2017 claiming Trump associates were in contact with Russian intelligence agents were false.
FBI Director James Comey pushed heavily for an investigation of Carter Page, starting in April 2016 when Page was a government witness in an espionage investigation of Russian diplomats in New York.
At the direction of the FBI, confidential human source Stefan Halper recorded lengthy conversations with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, in which each denied the campaign had any involvement with Russian officials.
Durham was highly critical of the FBI’s “startling and inexplicable failure” to investigate the so-called “Clinton Intelligence Plan.”
Poor Outcomes From E-Learning by JOSH STEVENSON
Despite the marketing and the absolute certainty that more tech is “vital for a post-industrial world”, and a necessity for achieving educational equity, the results were not so promising. The MIT article addresses that premise directly:
“Judging from the evidence, the most vulnerable students can be harmed the most by a heavy dose of technology—or, at best, not helped. The OECD study found that “technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students.” In the United States, the test score gap between students who use technology frequently and those who don’t is largest among students from low-income families.”
The results we were promised from increased tech adoption, always available learning content, and a device for every child has turned out to be not much more than a successful marketing campaign. One where tech corporations cashed in, government overspent taxpayer money, and once again, the children were let down.
Google’s New AI by JON RAPPOPORT
OK. Here it is in a nutshell. Google will launch an AI that gives you a few paragraphs of summary, whenever you use it to search. That summary will appear at the top of the page.
Let’s say you type in “government censorship.” Boom. Above all the blue entries designating websites and blogs, you’ll get that summary.
Not you (of course not), but MANY people will read the summary and be satisfied. They won’t open up sites or blogs.
As a result, huge numbers of those sites and blogs will go broke.
AND, many people will accept what Google’s AI tells them. They’ll swallow Google’s data, and they’ll accept Google as the number one CONTENT PROVIDER.
Scotland’s Essential Workers IFR by Mark Changizi
David Tait did an FOI on Covid deaths among a broader class of 300,000 workers, this time concerning teachers, retail workers (shop workers), and police officers.
“There have been no such deaths recorded for any of these categories of people aged 20-64 who were not retired.”
we have actually known since March of 2020 that Covid’s IFR was low. In those days, the Center for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford estimated it to be, overall, around 0.3%. Over time, that got lower and lower, and it was always known that it varies over many orders of magnitude as a function of age.
these Scottish numbers suggest an IFR that’s even lower still.
For the working age demographic of 20-64, among 450,000 people, and zero deaths, even without knowing how many were infected we can amazingly still calculate that the IFR is approximately…
0.00000%
If you like this, and have a tinfoil hat, you might like The Conspiracy Basket. Check it out!
In case you missed it…
