Is it all about the so-called "vaccines"?
Pitfalls of an exclusive focus on "vax safety".
A long and very important debate between Tracy Beth Høeg and Denis Rancourt has taken place, revolving around Rancourt et al.’s paper arguing that there have been circa 17 million “vaccine” deaths worldwide since 3/11. You can see the debate on Rumble here.
The page beneath the video also features a long list of key points, and supporting links—also very useful.
I am not an epidemiologist, a virologist, a toxicologist, etc., and I therefore cannot evaluate, let alone critique the fine details of the debate. My primary interest is pandemicism—the intersection of authoritarianism and catastrophism.
In brief, Rancourt appears to win this debate in that he successfully defends most of his main arguments. Again, I say that as someone who is not a specialist in that field.
However, and this is critical, there is a really important limitation: Rancourt and his co-authors failed to discuss or account for other causes of ALL CAUSES mortality, and they seem to assume that all or most excess deaths are vax deaths. In Rancourt’s written contribution to the debate, where he responds to key criticisms made by Høeg, three of the nine listed points all deal with this issue—and they do so in a manner that is unsatisfactory and unconvincing. Rancourt does not know the vaccination status of the deceased, and we need to know at least that in order to implicate the vaccines to begin with. He also states that they did not see any “sudden" changes, “surges” or “peaks” that are associated with the lockdowns and related restrictions. But it is important to note that the lockdowns always preceded those surges. In other words, it is an assumption that the peaks are associated with the vaccine rollouts. Rancourt et al. are probably right, but for now that is the most we can say.
However, because there is a serious problem where all causes mortality is concerned in Rancourt’s original paper, it means the paper will likely be dismissed. What I would ask is: do we want to produce studies that have an impact, or not? (I cannot speak as an expert here, other than as one who produces arguments that make little impact.) If I were to recommend anything it would be to produce a more holistic analysis, across a broader range of countries, while trying to plug the holes in leaky assumptions.
Høeg for her part is not the enemy, so I did not see why there were so many shrill comments on Rumble denouncing her, even to the point of calling her a shill for Pfizer. Høeg is playing the role of peer reviewer—however, I can see how some of her remarks opportunistically position her as a self-appointed gatekeeper, who then pronounces what is “sane” or not. This can provoke rancor. Rancourt, who is generally calm and pleasant throughout the debate, also has some really unfortunate moments: he constantly talked over Høeg, not allowing her a chance to reply without interruption. Rancourt was the only one using inflammatory or insulting language: “you don't know what you’re talking about,” “that paper is garbage,” “Ioannidis doesn’t know what he’s doing,” etc. It was supposed to be a friendly encounter between people who are basically on the same side. One has to read Høeg's paper below to get her full critique, because it did not come through with Rancourt dominating the air time and presenting graph after graph.
At a basic level, and I think this is what Høeg was repeatedly trying to get across, there is a methodological problem. Rancourt et al. note how following a peak in vax rollouts, there is a peak in excess deaths—not always, not always to the same degree, but enough times to form a recognizable pattern across countries. Good. But, there is something else that precedes the peak of excess deaths: some would say “new Covid variants” (I do not), and others like myself would remember and underline the lockdowns. Both the shots and the excess deaths are just two elements in the bigger picture of pandemicism. And even if we eventually find out that the vaccines were indeed the cause of the excess deaths, we would need to remember that they were vaccines that were injected into bodies that had been negatively impacted by lockdowns.
Rancourt et al.’s paper threatens to obscure two critically important points, and it’s a problem with all arguments that want to position the shots as “kill shots”:
(1) it obscures the massive, ongoing damages caused by the lockdowns themselves—in fact, by saying that all or most excess deaths are vax deaths, you are effectively diminishing or even whitewashing the lockdowns and preserving them for future use because, after all, they did little harm, right?
(2) it obscures the politics surrounding the entire 3/11 scam, and reduces everything to a vax safety issue. So if the shots were proven to be 100% safe, would you have all been on board with mandating them? That is the dead end of vax safety, it evades such discussions.
I could add more, for example: that I resent how important debates are being reduced to statistical ones, to number crunching; how the white coats on all sides continue to dominate discussion and suck all the oxygen out of the room; how “ordinary” people are often heard last, and known least; how even specialists in a broader range of disciplines have been sidelined in order to keep the spotlight on the Faucis and Faucis-in-waiting. The other side says Covid caused all the deaths; our side says it was the poison shots. The other side says take the shots to protect against Covid; our side says take Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, etc. Each side has its white coats, its data, its miracle cures, its arch causa mortis—remarkable symmetry. But for now, the two main points I wanted to make are the ones in bold above.
Here are the two key background papers for the debate (but see the bigger list on the Rumble page):
COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere
Good points. It's funny how "our side" seems to have largely forgotten the lockdowns. the essentially YEARS of lockdown, to me, was the most heinous aspect of the whole thing and I still haven't recovered from the panic that "they'll" do it again.