COVID-19: The Critical Role of Chinese Herbal Medicine, Mental Healthcare & Science Literacy

APPENDIX

I have separated these addendums to keep my personal views away from the document itself so that it can stand on its own, without being tainted by personal opinion rather than science. I recognise the error in this, and instead will likely be splitting this off into another page in due time.

SKEPTICAL OF TCM?
Update: I have moved this to another draft/preview blog post here – Apologies for loop arounds – I’ll correct all links accordingly asap!

KEEPING YOUR HEAD SCREWED ON: DEBUNKING MISINFORMATION

✨PLEASE BEGIN WITH MY ESSAY SERIES: (and always remember, it’s as easy as typing “debunk” into every web search you do!)

COMBATING MISINFORMATION IN THE COVID-19 ERA (Parts 1-2)
MISINFORMATION IN THE COVID-19 ERA: DANGERS & DELUSIONS (Parts 3-4)

1. FACT CHECKING DATABASES

⭐⭐Media Bias/Fact Check.com
⭐#CoronaVirusFacts Alliance
- Poynter’s mission is to champion the duty of a free press to inform, educate and hold the powerful accountable. As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, journalists, fact-checkers, educators and students around the world look to Poynter for best practices in covering the most significant story of this generation. …The IFCN is on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus infodemic by coordinating the largest collaborative fact-checking project ever.
  - 5G
  - Bill Gates
Skeptical Raptor
FirstDraft Alpha: Debunk information about coronavirus (Covid-19)
- Search for information and debunks in more than 20 languages.
FactCheck.org: A Guide to Our Coronavirus Coverage
Misinformation Watch – COVID19MisInfo.org
FullFact.org

2. GENERAL ARTICLES

⭐⭐Coronavirus Capitalism – And How to Beat It (Video, The Intercept)
Excess deaths associated with covid-19 pandemic in 2020: age and sex disaggregated time series analysis in 29 high income countries (5/21)
Covid-19 Bullshit Exposed in 5 Simple Graphics (11/20)
The Atlantic – Renee Diresta (9/2020)
🌟Why smart people believe coronavirus myths (BBC)
Here’s How to Fight Coronavirus Misinformation (The Atlantic)
Why Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Flourish. And Why It Matters. (NY Times)
Debunking Coronavirus Trutherism (Medium)
- Looking at hard evidence in response to conspiracy theories
The Atir-Rosenzweig-Dunning Effect: when experts claim to know the unknowable (Big Think)
COVID-19 conspiracy theories: Vaccines and 5G (along with Bill Gates) are responsible! (Science Based Medicine)
Coronavirus Is the Crisis of Conspiracy Theorists’ Wildest Dreams (Vice)
Fact-checking hoaxes and conspiracies about the coronavirus (PolitiFact)
Coronavirus conspiracy theories spread panic and dangerous misinformation (Mashable)

3. CONSPIRITUALITY IN GENERAL (References from my Misinformation 2 Essay)

4. THE VACCINE (Preliminary citation database for my upcoming Misinformation final essay/book.)

⭐COVID-19 vaccine facts and myths – UPDATED info about the new vaccines (skepticalraptor.com) (Dec 5, 2021)
Every Covid-19 Vaccine Question You’ll Ever Have, Answered
Quick Summary: COVID-19: Popular UBC professor busts myths about the virus and vaccines on social media
The Whole Truth: Covid-19 Vaccination
- “Declining the vaccine is far riskier than having it.”
No, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Was Not Arrested, Here’s How This Conspiracy Theory Emerged
UNVACCINATED vs VACCINATED
- ⭐⭐Only nine Ontarians under the age of 60 have ended up in the ICU with a breakthrough case of COVID-19 (Nov 25, 2021)
  - “As a point of comparison a total of 8,355 unvaccinated individuals under the age of 60 have ended up in hospital with COVID-19 over the same time-period and 1,722 of them have required treatment in the ICU.”
    - This… Quite honestly, should be the end of any debates, and I may as well stop adding to this database 😜
- ⭐CDC Science Brief: SARS-CoV-2 Infection-induced and Vaccine-induced Immunity
  - Key statement: “Available evidence shows that fully vaccinated individuals and those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 each have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months.” – Here I now stress that one route confers protection without the dangers of dying choking from Covid, one route prevents Long Covid, and one route has essentially infinitely less side effects. I wonder which one? 🤔
- ⭐COVID infection rates are NOT unrelated to vaccines – debunking research
  - “I’m going to set aside the irony that anti-vaxxers love to argue that the bulk of vaccine research is garbage, usually bought by Big Pharma. But any “research” that supports their pre-conceived conclusion is, of course, Nobel Prize-worthy.”
- ⭐‘Thirty-, 40- and 50-year-olds shouldn’t be dying at this level’: A day in a Victoria ICU
- Antibody protection after mild COVID-19 may not last; an estimated 100 mln people have had long COVID (Reuters 11/21)
  - KEEP IN MIND: The sheer difference in severity of disease in the flu vs Covid-19: “Among 43 Australians who dealt with mild COVID-19 early in the pandemic, 90% still had antibodies 12 months later. But only 51.2% had antibodies that showed “neutralizing activity” against the original version of the virus and only 44.2% had antibodies that could neutralize the early Alpha variant, the research team at the University of Adelaide reported on Thursday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Neutralizing antibodies against the now dominant and highly transmissible Delta variant were seen in only 16.2%, with 11.6% against Gamma, and against Beta in only 4.6%. Those who had mild COVID-19 “are vulnerable to infection with circulating and newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants 12 months after recovery,” the researchers said. The findings “reinforce the potential benefit” of tailoring vaccine boosters to currently circulating variants, similar to how annual flu vaccines are tailored to current influenza strains, they said.”
- The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha & Delta variant transmission (MedRxIV Database)
- How Hospitals Became Vaults That Hid Evidence of Covid-19’s Toll (The Intercept)
- Unvaccinated 60 times more likely to end up in ICU with COVID-19, Ontario data shows (Global News)
- Doctors and Nurses Are ‘Living in a Constant Crisis’ as Covid Fills Hospitals and Omicron Looms (NYT)
  - ““Unless you are up in that unit working side by side with me seeing the true devastation of the virus and what it physically does to the human body, how can you appreciate it? How?” said Jamie Vinson-Hunter, a respiratory therapist.”
- ‘The Impact of the Vaccine Has Been Tremendous’ (Medscape)
- Stop Calling It a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ (Atlantic)
- As Omicron Hits, COVID-19 Case Counts Don’t Mean What They Used To (Time)
  - “It no longer makes sense to assume “cases” equate to “disease” in areas of high vaccination coverage and this misguided equivalency can have negative consequences.”
- What J&J Can Still Teach Us (Atlantic)
- More than 98 per cent of eligible people have received COVID-19 vaccine in this Calgary region
- Vaccine offers more protection against COVID-19 than natural immunity, CDC study finds
- Vaccinated America Has Had Enough (Atlantic)
- Covid Vaccines Prevented Nearly 40K Deaths Among US Seniors From January to May: Report (Common Dreams)
- COVID-19: The Unvaccinated Pose a Risk to the Vaccinated (FactCheck 9/21)
- RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines. (Politico)
OMICRON, BOOSTERS & ISRAEL
- ⭐Why do we need COVID vaccine boosters for the Omicron variant? (skepticalraptor.com)
- COVID vaccine boosters: the most important questions
- COVID vaccines protect against Delta, but their effectiveness wanes
  - And, as I keep repeating – despite the waning, how many lives were saved during this period? That’s all that matters.
- Q&A: Why COVID-19 booster shots turned out to be more complicated than vaccines
- Israeli study suggests booster vaccine highly effective
- Protection of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19 in Israel
- What pushed Israel out of herd immunity?
- Q&A: Why COVID-19 booster shots turned out to be more complicated than vaccines
- COVID-vaccine booster shot shows promise in Israeli study
- ⭐The Covid spike in highly vaccinated Israel holds grim omens for other economies
  - Likely the best discussion I have found.
- ‘Goldmine’ U.K. study may hint why Israel has had a larger issue with waning vaccine protection
- Pfizer says Israel data shows third Covid shot restores protection from infection to 95% as it makes case to FDA for boosters
- COVID vaccine effects wane over time but still prevent death and severe illness
- Biden Covid team sees vaccine efficacy waning in unpublished data from Israel
  - A key point with this one is the recommendation against boosters in the general population. Meaning, as evidenced from the articles above, there appears to be evidence in boosters only for the most vulnerable populations.
MANDATES
- As you’ll read in my final Misinformation Essays, I’m quite on the fence when it comes to mandates. While I absolutely avoid posting YouTube content and choose researched articles instead, the ZDoggMD video here is shares a similar view that I have. That said to me, it always comes down to numbers: If it can be shown that mandates save lives by increasing vaccination rates, then I am generally for as a health professional, it as lives trump a temporary loss in personal freedoms. MUCH more on this in my next essay.
- ⭐⭐Why Vaccine Mandates Do Not Infringe on Liberty (Current Affairs)
  - This is the best piece I’ve read so far and fits perfectly with my core thesis of social welfare & health being co-opted by the right wing via misinformation propaganda.
- ⭐Americans Are Suing to Protect Their Freedom From Infection (Atlantic)
- ⭐This Vaccine Mandate Is A Huge Mistake | A Doctor Explains (ZDoggMD)
- ‘Rage’: Physicians speak out against threats over COVID-19 public health measures
MRNA VACCINES
- ⭐What are COVID-19 mRNA vaccines? Science to help debunk myths (Skeptical Raptor)
- ⭐The next act for messenger RNA could be bigger than covid vaccines (MIT Review)
- ⭐Unlocking the potential of vaccines built on messenger RNA (Nature)
- ⭐Malaria is notoriously hard to vaccinate against. A new vaccine technology might change that. (Vox)
- ⭐An Appreciation for Vaccines, and How Far They Have Come (NY Times)
- mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology (nature.com)
- How mRNA Technology Could Change the World – The Atlantic (ampproject.org)
- Skeptical Raptor – Science of vaccines, cancer, nutrition, evolution
ANTIVAXX CONSPIRITUALITY and the SLIDE TO THE RIGHT
- ⭐⭐The Conspirituality Report
- ⭐⭐The Trouble with J.P. Sears (& why we shouldn’t support Toxic “Influencers”). (Waylan Lewis, founder of Elephant Journal…. that says a lot.)
- ⭐How cognitive biases and adverse events influence vaccine decisions (maybe even your own)
- ⭐Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science (Guardian)
- ⭐Network of Right-Wing Health Care Providers Is Making Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, Hacked Data Reveals (The Intercept)
- ⭐Inside the Mind of an Anti-vaxxer (Atlantic)
- ⭐The great COVID-19 infodemic: How disinformation networks are radicalizing Canadians (Global News, Dec 18, 2021)
- ‘Sharp increase’ in online disinformation since delta outbreak began
  - “We started noticing that there was a closer link between Covid-19 disinformation and wider sets of fringe beliefs,” explained Kate Hannah, the project lead of The Disinformation Project, in a briefing to media. “From August last year we noticed it was becoming two or three steps to take people through to white supremacist or far-right ideologies, QAnon material, extreme misogyny, incel material and transphobic material, and we started viewing Covid disinformation as one of the entry-level ideas that draws people down these further disinformation ideology pathways.”
- ⭐Covid-19: Three weeks inside a rabbit hole of dangerous misinformation (Sept 2021)
  - “Around 2.2 million people in New Zealand have had one vaccine dose. Even if the death toll was 117, it would mean a fatality rate of 0.005 per cent, about 20 times less than the seasonal flu and 150 times lower than the Covid-19 fatality rate in New Zealand so far. For vaccines to be as deadly as the lowest possible estimate of Covid-19 (0.15 per cent, which is not deemed plausible by most experts) there would need to be thousands of deaths. Even the argument against vaccines supports their use.“
- Misinformation from the U.S. is the next virus—and it’s spreading fast (Maclean’s – Jan 2022)
- Guests urged to be vaccinated at anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr’s party
- Counties that voted for Trump have a higher Covid death rate, analysis reveals
  - “New data analysis has revealed that if US Democratic voters were to make up their own country, it would have one of the world’s most vaccinated populations, with over 91% of adults having received at least one shot.”
- Medical experts v anti-vaxxers: the Covid-19 information battle | World news | The Guardian
- Unverified reports of vaccine side effects in VAERS aren’t the smoking guns portrayed by right-wing media outlets – they can offer insight into vaccine hesitancy
PREGNANCY
SIDE EFFECTS
- Much more on this subject on the way as I strive be be balanced in m reporting.
- Reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in Canada
- Study saying COVID-19 vaccines cause heart inflammation that was hyped by anti-vaxxers, withdrawn due to miscalculation
  - Study claiming 1 in 1,000 risk of heart inflammation after COVID vaccine got calculation wrong (National Post)
  - “The study authors have requested the paper be retracted because the incorrect data ‘vastly inflates the incidence of post-vaccine myocarditis’
VACCINE CAPITALISM
- ⭐For much more on this, see: Kersplebedeb
- ⭐We Must Take The Vaccine Industry Into Public Ownership To Ensure Its Products Are Available To All (Common Dreams)
INVERMECTIN/JOE ROGAN/RUSSEL BRAND etc
INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS TO FOLLOW
- KingGutterBaby (love her – all about her stories)
- Dr. Garth Davis (doesn’t hold back)
- WokeScientist (love the political angles)
- Dr. Risa Hoshino

5. ON MASKS

Covid-19 vs Surgical Mask. Do Masks Work Or Not?
Modeling COVID-19 Mortality Across 44 Countries: Face Covering May Reduce Deaths (Journal of Preventative Medicine, Nov 2021)
- Via In Global Study, Tougher Mask Laws Linked to Fewer COVID Deaths
Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How. (New York Times)

SPRING 2020 ARCHIVE

6. “PLANDEMIC” (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

6. BILL GATES (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

8. 5G AS A CONNECTION TO COVID-19 (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

(I have less here because… of how little time I’ve devoted to the topic because of how silly it is. And to be clear, this is specifically on the claims of 5G related to Covid – not a discussion on the safety of 5G itself, per se)

RETRACTED: 5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells (PubMed)
- I’m just sharing this because someone shared the original with me, and I’m pointing out it was very, very retracted.
- PubMed Leaps Into Pseudoscience, Links 5G, Coronavirus
- This is by far the stupidest coronavirus ‘study’ ever published
COVID-19 and the 5G Conspiracy Theory: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Data
How the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory tore through the internet (Wired)
Your 5G Phone Wont Hurt You. But Russia Wants You To Think Otherwise. (NY Times – 5/12/19 – Note the date!)
No, 5G Is Not Causing Coronavirus (or Anything Else)
No, 5G doesn’t cause the coronavirus (CBC debunking Dr. Thomas Cowan)
The latest COVID-19 conspiracy theory puts the blame on 5G (FastCompany 4/03/2020)

THE BIG PICTURE

7 Predictions for a Post-Coronavirus World
How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear
Coronavirus: nine reasons to be reassured
- While this article is now relatively outdated, please keep your facts aligned with resources such as Medscape, CDC, WHO, and Wikipedia, instead of zero-ing in on the absolute worst-case scenarios and contributing to public hysteria.
COVID-19 Mortality Rate May Be ‘Considerably Less Than 1%’
- This is world-wide, rather than individual regions where there obviously can be significant variations/variables – most notably in the US.
Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.
The entire premise of my original video has been confirmed by this latest report from Italy – please take this as a chance to have your loved ones begin the path to overall health!
COVID-19 compared to other diseases
The Ecology of Disease (from 2012!)
The coronavirus did not escape from a lab. Here’s how we know.
COVID-19 crisis tells world what Indigenous Peoples have been saying for thousands of years
‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?

EMERGING NEWSFRONTS

SOCIO-POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Not wanting to wade into political debate… But these are simply pretty hard to argue against.

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