News Round-Up: Musk on Serious Side Effects of the Covid Vaccine, Vaccination and Excess Mortality and the Racist BMI
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Elon Musk: failure to acknowledge serious side effects from the vaccines is a lie
The Swiss extended the Covid emergency law in a referendum
Scientific study links Covid-vaccination in Germany and Japan to excess mortality
Can a body mass index really be racist?
Majority of Americans wouldn't give up gas stoves to 'save the climate'
Elon Musk: failure to acknowledge serious vaccine side effects is a lie
Joe Rogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk and a scientist and Covid-vaccine advocate Peter Hotez were the key players in last week's Twitter controversy, which ended with Musk admitting to suffering a serious Covid vaccine side-effect and calling the denial of these injuries a lie.
The case began when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is campaigning to be the Democratic Party's candidate for the 2024 US presidential election, visited the popular Joe Rogan podcast. Kennedy is a well-known vaccine skeptic. Over the years, he has put out a variety of information about the harmful effects of vaccination that is patently inconvenient from the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry and the health policy planners who support them. It is not surprising, for example, that the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Kennedy states that he promotes anti-vaccine propaganda and health conspiracy theories. Since vaccines are an important issue for Kennedy, they were also addressed on Rogan's programme – for example, he spoke about the links between vaccination and autism.
He also discussed why the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which he said were effective against the coronavirus, were ridiculed. Kennedy explained that the vaccine cannot be given an emergency use authorisation if there is an available drug that is effective. “So they had to destroy ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and discredit it. And they had to tell everybody it’s not effective. Because if they had acknowledged that it’s effective in anybody, the whole $200 billion vaccine enterprise would have collapsed," he said.
Such criticism of the vaccines on a show with millions of listener and viewers led, predictably, to mainstream press criticism of both Rogan and the Spotify platform which publishes Rogan's podcast. Rogan has received similar criticism in the past. Now, for example, Vice wrote that Spotify is no longer even trying to stop the misinformation about vaccines on Rogan's show.
This article was shared on Twitter by Professor Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine. Hotez, who is also known in some quarters as the vaccine scientist, appeared constantly on television throughout the pandemic as an expert and gave constant pro-vaccine comments. While his arguments were changing over time, as with many other scientists who commented consistently on the same subject – here, for example, the evolution of Hotez's arguments over three years is cut together into a humorous video clip – the core of the arguments remained the same. According to him, Covid vaccines are effective, safe products that are also necessary for children.
In a post on Rogan's show, Hotez now regretted that many "believe this nonsense" that Kennedy speaks. Hotez's post was in turn responded to by Rogan, who made him an offer – if you claim Kennedy is spreading "misinformation", come on my show to debate him and I'll contribute $100,000 to a charity of your choice.
Rogan's offer was then joined by a number of other Twitter users, and eventually the stake for the Hotez' favourite charity was raised to more than $2.6 million.
Hotez, however, did not accept the invitation. This was echoed by Twitter owner Elon Musk, who said Hotez is afraid of a public debate because he knows he is wrong. In response, Hotez responded to Musk's claim that the anti-vaccine misinformation was fatal to 200,000 Americans. Musk then pointed out that he was in favour of vaccines, but that “the world obviously went crazy with excess vaccination against Covid-19”. "So many people I know had serious side effects from the vaccines, including myself. Failure to acknowledge that is a lie," Musk posted.
Swiss voters extend Covid-19 emergency law until next year in referendum
Swiss voters have extended the Covid-19 emergency law until 2024 in a referendum. The extension was backed by 61.9% of those who took part in Sunday's referendum a week ago. As it stands, the extension of the law will not change people's daily lives, as all the restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have already been lifted more than a year ago. But of course, an extension will give the state the opportunity to reintroduce restrictions.
"With Covid-19, we are continuing to ensure that the authorities can act quickly in the event of an emergency to protect public health and particularly vulnerable people," said Lorenz Hess, a member of parliament from the Centre Party (Die Mitte), after the results became clear.
The issue was put to a referendum because a decision by Parliament last December to extend the state of emergency until June 2024 sparked opposition in the country, with two citizens' movements opposing it and gathering the signatures needed for a referendum. In particular, these groups disagreed with the legal provisions governing the issuing of Covid certificates and the SwissCovid contact-tracing mobile application. Apart from the right-wing People's Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei), all other political parties in the country campaigned for the extension of the emergency law.
This is the third time that the Swiss have been able to vote on emergency legislation on the coronavirus pandemic. Referendums in June and November 2021 also gave a positive result, with 60.2% and 62% of voters in favour of the restrictions respectively.
Swiss voters also voted on Sunday in favour of a new climate law that aims to reduce the use of fossil fuels and reach net zero by 2050. 59.1% of voters were in favour. Voters also agreed to a global 15% income tax rate for multinationals – which received 78.5% support. Turnout in last Sunday's referendums was 42%.
Study on excess mortality in Japan and Germany notes links to mass vaccination
German mathematician Dr. Hagen Scherb and Japanese medical doctor Keiji Hayashi published a research letter based on their findings in a scientific journal Medicine and Clinical Science back in March this year, but it did not receive much attention.
In the case of Japan, the paper points out that the country had “a significantly elevated mortality in the earthquake and tsunami era from 2011 to 2013“ – the catastrophe caused the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in 2011. However, there were no new waves of excess mortality in Japan before 2021. In 2020, when the pandemic began, mortality was well below average, with more than 40,000 fewer deaths than expected. Excess mortality started to rise in 2021, when 11,500 more people died than expected. In 2022, however, Japan already had more than 122,000 excess deaths.
In Germany the researchers did not find any major deviations from the 'normal' mortality trends between 2005 and 2020. However, in 2020, excess mortality started to rise there too, with more than 18,000 people dying more than expected. In 2021, Germany had over 48,000 excess deaths, and in 2022 over 66,000.
Vaccines against coronavirus were introduced in late 2020.
Based on the figures, the researchers conclude that it needs to be investigated whether the excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 might be due to the pandemic counter measures, “including the vaccinations with their possibly underestimated immediate or protracted side effects”.
The parallel increase in mortality with vaccination campaigns has also been noted by other researchers. Here, for example, researchers in Norway have compared vaccination coverage in European countries in 2021 and excess mortality data in 2022. The figures show that the higher the vaccination coverage in a country, the higher its excess mortality.
American Medical Association says body mass index is racist
One of the leading medical organisations in the United States, the American Medical Association (AMA) is recommending that doctors stop using the body mass index (BMI) to measure healthy weight because it has "racist roots", reports Daily Mail.
The AMA Council on Science and Public Health said: “Our AMA recognizes the issues with using body mass index (BMI) as a measurement because: (a) of the eugenics behind the history of BMI, (b) of the use of BMI for racist exclusion, and (c) BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined ideal Caucasian and does not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity.”
As it is explained, the BMI was developed not by a doctor or any other health professional, but by a Belgian mathematician Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, who attempted to measure the height and weight of the 'average' man based on white European men. However, this means that this method of measurement is not suitable for other races, as it does not take into account racial differences, different body shapes and how and where fat is deposited in the body. As an example, Asians may fall within the 'healthy' BMI range, but they are still at risk of diabetes. It also points out that black women tend to accumulate fat around their hips and legs, while white women tend to accumulate fat around their waist, which is more of a health risk for the latter, even though both have similar BMIs.
Instead of BMI, the AMA recommends measuring a person’s visceral fat, the percentage of fat, bone, and muscle in one’s body, and genetic and metabolic factors such as abnormal blood sugar levels.
Perhaps if one can chew through the ideologically charged verbiage, it might even turn out that a different measurement would indeed give a better picture of a person's health.
2/3 of Americans are reluctant to give up their gas stoves for the sake of the climate
A recent poll in the United States shows that a majority of Americans oppose any laws or regulations that would ban the use of gas stoves to fight climate change. The policy of banning gas stoves is being pursued in the Democrat-led states of the US. For example, in New York, a ban on the installation of gas stoves in most new homes went into effect in early May this year.
However, 69% of respondents to the poll, conducted on June 14 and 15 , were against any laws or regulations banning or reducing the use of gas cookers over time. Such opposition was high among both Democrat and Republican voters. 31% were in favour of the measures.