Conspiracy theories: the election and the Vaccine

 what do you believe? The talking heads or the reality?

The Epoch Times has links to the Falung Gong, a Buddhist sect that is persecuted by China.

quick, listen before Youtube censors it.

of course, According to Time Magazine, there was indeed a cabal of good guys who manipulated the anti Trump coup, to stop him from "destroying democracy" (aka asking someone to examine the questionable votes and the possibility of rigged voting machines, something that the MSM had worried about before the election but forbad questioning after the election.)

or as AceOfSpades quipped:

OUT: The election wasn’t rigged.

IN: The election was rigged, but in a good, smart, upper-middle-class Wine Aunt way.

Any questions?

(Instapundit has several links on this)

Update...or maybe worse...http://www.theeponymousflower.com/2021/02/former-overstock-ceo-trump-threatened.html

.........

And the manipulation and censorship of stories (hunterBiden Call your office) by the mainsyream media has resulted in half the americans distrusting the press....

nor is this manipulation only against Trumpieboy for political purposes: 

 Chinese bots are pushing the "bad response" to the virus vaccine stort, which of course lets them divert anger against China to anger against the government.

The anti Trumpieboy propaganda overlaps with a lot of anti vax propaganda. Why? Because his "operation warp speed" will save lives, (so can't let him get credit for it). 

The anti vax stuff is big on the social media and some of these stories are being fueled by bots etc. out of China too. and of course out ofRussia.

PBS Frontline (Feb 2021)discusses China's anti vax propaganda.

the trouble is that this dual conspiracy theory of bad government response (blame Trump) and bad vaccine(blame Trump) propaganda was all over the social media sites and many cable 'news" shows... 

presumably this was to benefit the Democrats before the election (even Kamela Harris said she wouldn't trust the "trump vaccine"). But now it is hurting Biden. 

But for us in other countries, it is worse than that... anti vax propaganda is now all over the internet/social media in Asia, and if people don't get the vaccine, a lot of people will die.

The anti vax was traditionally a left wing upper class conspiracy theory, but alas the right wing who believe it now too.

But this is not new (Russia did this against Measles and Polio vaccine 30 years ago, because the westerners were helping to save kid's lives, and that couldn't be tolerated).

But never mind: It is "in" to say you don't trust vaccines: and not just among the anti vax upper class "green" whites in the US, but now among the "conservative" types for some reason.

alas, their delusions are spouted with little push back because the social media is a bubble so those pushing it only get positive feedback.

this old news report shows how manipulation is being done.

 

As I noted above: if you make people upset at the vaccine, you won't get mad at China for releasing it to the world.

But not all the vaccine news is bad: Lots of vaccines being approved, so it's only a matter of time until the epidemic becomes a minor problem.

But there is good news out there: Combining vaccines that use different methods of inducing immunity might work better than a single approach. (Nature magazine article).

Some researchers also think that combining two vaccines could strengthen immune responses by harnessing the best features of each. That would be particularly desirable now that vaccine developers are combating coronavirus variants that seem to be partially resistant to certain immune responses, says Barouch.

more here. 

and more good news: a big surprise: The Sputnik vaccine might actually work.

and not just work, but work very well.

....and the Oxford and Johnson and Johnson vaccine seem to work well too.

Good news for us, since Duterte is friendly with Russia. And although the Pfizer vaccine is the best one, it requires deep deep freezing so is not practical for poorer countries.

we are still waiting for the logistics to get out the vaccines here. Lots of articles but no hard data that I trust so no links today.

the bad news? The virus is mutating (something all viruses do)... the British variant is stopped by most vaccines, but the new variant covid out of South Africa might not be completely stopped by the vaccines (developing). Why South Africa? I suspect it is because South Africa has a high rate of HIV, so it means it can mutate better in people with bad immune systems. 

Africans have a low Covid mortality and many people discuss theories on why this is. A young population?  (maybe a genetic reason or maybe because they have strong T cells from other infectious disease) 

UK Guardian discusses here.

but on the other hand, in the west, African Americans have a high rate of Diabetes and obesity which are risk factors,

Similarly, in Africa, there is a lot of HIV which increases your risk.

so the epidemic in South Africa has been quite bad and now there is a new mutation there.

But one does wonder about the cities in the US: most deaths are in nursing homes, but what about the HIV infected population there? LINK

but of course whispering anything about HIV will get you censored. (HIV destroys T cells). 

a discussion of T cell immunity at the BBC here.

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afterthought: I know: I shouldn't combine two stories that seem to have little to do with one another. 

But both stories have the background of ordinary folks distrusting the official press, and distrusting "experts".

Once you lose trust, it takes quite a long time to build trust in these institutions again.

Sigh.