The article, “Covid 19 vaccines and the misinterpretation of perceived side effects clarity on the safety of vaccines,” was originally published by a Chinese peer-reviewed medical journal called BioMedicine. PMC apparently has an agreement with the journal to cross-publish its pieces, meaning it has met its “certain scientific and technical standards.” The author, Raymond Palmer, works at an outfit called “Full Spectrum Biologics” in Western Australia and had patented, among other things, an electromagnetic radiation bra.
For collectors of fatuous rationalization, the abstract is a thing of beauty. Here it is, with emphasis added:
In the era of Covid 19 and mass vaccination programs, the anti-vaccination movement across the world is currently at an all-time high. Much of this anti-vaccination sentiment could be attributed to the alleged side effects that are perpetuated across social media from anti-vaccination groups. Fear mongering and misinformation being peddled by people with no scientific training to terrorise people into staying unvaccinated is not just causing people to remain susceptible to viral outbreaks, but could also be causing more side effects seen in the vaccination process.
This brief review will offer data that may demonstrate that misinformation perpetuated by the anti-vaccination movement may be causing more deaths and side effects from any vaccine. A mini review of published literature has been conducted and found that mental stress clearly causes vasoconstriction and arterial constriction of the blood vessels. Therefore, if subjects are panicked, concerned, stressed or scared of the vaccination, their arteries will constrict and become smaller in and around the time of receiving the vaccine. This biological mechanism (the constriction of veins, arteries and vessels under mental stress) is the most likely cause for where there has been blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, dizziness, fainting, blurred vision, loss of smell and taste that may have been experienced shortly after vaccine administration. The extreme mental stress of the patient could most likely be attributed to the fear mongering and scare tactics used by various anti-vaccination groups.
This paper does not aim to rule in or out every side effect seen, but it is highly likely that many apparent side effects seen shortly after a subject has received a vaccine could be the result of restricted or congested blood flow from blood vessel or arterial constriction caused by emotional distress or placebo based on fear around vaccines.
The piece is abject kookery, clearly. My hope that it was another Sokal-esque hoax on easily gulled journals was apparently misplaced. How did it get published and who is this author? Rebekah Barnett’s “Dystopian Down Under” substack examines those questions for those who are interested. The connections she finds are troubling.
Fully vaccinated or boosted continue to make up the majority of Covid-19 hospitalizations in North Carolina
Meanwhile, the majority of hospitalizations (52.9 percent) and intensive care unit (ICU) hospitalizations (53.6 percent) in North Carolina occurred to fully vaccinated or boosted individuals, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS):
Those data are not reliable, however. DHHS still refuses to differentiate between those hospitalized because of a Covid infection and those in the hospital for other reasons, even an outpatient procedure, who test positive upon entry for Covid. DHHS also refuses to differentiate among those who have died from a Covid infection and or merely had a positive Covid test when they died from other causes. (For more on this problem, see the discussion at “Fell Off a Ladder and Came Down with Covid.”)
Back in April 2022, DHHS made a sudden change to its weekly Respiratory Disease Surveillance report. This change came months after former DHHS head Mandy Cohen had told media that unvaccinated people accounted for 99 percent of the state’s cases of Covid-19 and Pres. Joe Biden had settled on calling it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Increasingly during that time, however, more and more new confirmed Covid-19 cases were happening to vaccinated and boosted individuals than to unvaccinated people.
So the change made by DHHS was simply to stop publishing the slide that showed it. The final slide showed that 54 percent of new cases had occurred to fully vaccinated or boosted individuals.
Very recently, on November 2, 2022, DHHS stopped publishing the report proper and moved to a “dashboard” presentation of the data. That page includes a note dated April 28, 2022, that explains why DHHS stopped tracking cases by vaccination status (emphasis added):
Recent trends in reported case rates by vaccination and booster status have become difficult to interpret due to a number of factors, including: higher prevalence of previous infection among the unvaccinated and un-boosted groups; difficulty in accounting for time since vaccination and waning protection; and potential biases related to differences in testing practices (e.g., at-home tests) and prevention behaviors.
It concludes with this note: “These factors are likely to impact differences in mortality rates by vaccination status but to a lesser degree.” The odd thing is that DHHS does not publish mortality rates by vaccination status. It would follow, however, that death rates would be related to hospitalization rates, if only we had good data on those.
