A case study of how miscalculated fear, media propaganda, and selective deference to scientific authority lead to the dangerous sacralization of mRNA vaccines.
Sam Harris is one of the most over rated narcissists "thought leaders" I used to listen to him but realized more often then not he doesn't have an original thought of his own. whether you love of hate Trump. his TDS was over the top and ridiculous. I didnt get the vax but as a physician had enough experience to know that unquestioning trust in the FDA and big pharma is going to get you into trouble. Their track record is horrendous and for someone as "smart" as Harris to say otherwise is well, not smart.
All government unr licesning is about control of teh professional class. These government controlled systems allow those in government to coerce prvate citizens into either suporting something or saying nothing at all for fear of never being able to earn a living again in your profession. Licensing was sold as a means to protect the customer but that abandoning of "Buyer be ware" hepled make modern men weak.
Janine - If you don;t mind sharing with all, what kind of pressure did you and yuor fellow doctors face from your own employer not to mention any licensing boards to tow the narrative on covid or at the least not challenge it?
Have to call BS on the claim of one of the most Brilliant minds and intellectually honest .... His first claim about rationalizing it was an unselfish decision to get vaccinated does not support the claim. Consider the impact on your family if the vaccine killed you or permanently disable you. It was know relatively early simply by observation that few healthy people were getting seriously sick never mind dying of C19. Ioannidis' first study estimated a IFR that was not particularly lethal, in fact more like the flue, forget the exact date published but early enough to stop many from taking a poorly tested product. Finally, if you have a perfectly healthy young person, is it ethical to kill them and harvest their organs to save 5 others in need of organ transplants? Harris is implying it is by supporting taking a product that may kill you to maybe save someone else. Not brilliant logic in my far less brilliant mind.
Henry, Dr Ioannidis published his first IFR on March 17, 2020. He calculated it to be .125%. I published the first correct IFR at .1% on March 8, 2020. We both used the Diamond Princess Cruise ship data. The difference is because we didn't get the difficult adjustment to lower the IFR based on the average age on the ship vs back in the US. We were remarkably close, though. Several groups used the Diamond Princess and got 1.5 - 2% for the IFR. They used too many deaths not knowing that the average time from onset to death was only 18 days. I, Dr. Ioannidis and Dr. Levin (.3%) knew this.
I appreciate the information. I may never understand why every health authority in the world reacted like it was the end of the world, even after they knew the risks were small for most. There are a range of possible explanations, some I prefer not to think about.
Like everything there is no one singular thing, event, or whatever you want to call it that explains this. Many within the field simply go with the flow not taking time to think beyond the surface level on anything either b/c no time to waste on it or they just trust the systems that much.
You also have to corrupted/co-opted people, the ones paid to either keep their mouths shut or to promote a specific narrative. If these are persons high enough up the food chain many downstream from that will just trust what is said b/c they've never had reason to believe otherwise. For those of us untrustworthy of government in general, we can more easily see the corruption take place than those within b/c we don't just TRUST anyone or anything.
Then you have a fairly large percentage of any group of people who are the go-along-to-get-along types. My own father was one of these. These are people who will do/go along with whatever they perceive is the majority opinion making women very susceptible to this since females more so then males desire group acceptance. The majority of women will agree to all sorts of aggreges acts if they believe the majority support it and that they will not be accepted by the majority if they too do not agree. There was a famous experiment done on this that involved a group of subjects were only 1 was the real subject and the rest were actors. They were all asked to pick the shortest line of 3 lines and while it wasn’t ridiculously obvious as to which was longer it was obvious enough that anyone not picking the true shortest line is doing so out of denial, desire to not go against the group because all the actors are told to pick the second shortest line.
If one can control that which primarily influences people then you can make the minority supported narrative become majority supported simply by lying to everyone as to how much support it has.
It is likely not the brilliance of your mind that falls short of Sam Harris', Rather, your own estimation of your brilliance that falls well short of Harris'.
"Not all of this was Harris’ fault — the experts he selectively platformed (primarily Dr. Eric Topol and Dr. Nicholas Christakis) took strangely extreme positions on this matter and did not exercise appropriate caution"
You are actually too kind here. It was precisely Sam Harris' fault by virtue of the voices he chooses to listen to and feature on his podcast. He applies the same biased discretion favoring statist establishment views when it comes to politics and, I would maintain, virtually all other matters.
> Indeed, it was not out of the question at that time — given the absence of long-term data — that vaccines may substantially curb transmission
There was long-term data though on other coronaviruses and the complete failure of vaccines to prevent spread. We know that they spread through upper respiratory and that immunity is localized, so we knew that an injection wasn’t going to slow transmission. Maybe a nasal spray could have. A group of biologists called RadVac were trying to make an open source nasal spray vaccine-- just some selected peptides in a spray, no need for fancy manufacturing other than the peptide synthesis, for which labs already are well capable.
> I have genuine faith Harris will come to his senses.
I think people who got the vax under real delusion or under the spell of this mass formation thing are pretty much unrecoverable. It’s one thing to get the vax like Robert Malone did, in a cold and calculated way. It’s another thing to be a part of the Covidian cult and let them enter your body with the shot. People are spiritually injured and Sam-Harris-style rationality cannot heal one from such an injury-- something much deeper is needed.
Hi Lonious: Can you tell us more about Malone getting the vaccine "in a cold and calculated way." If you prefer to talk to me privately, my email is: Rsheftall@alum.mit.edu
I have no special information, I was just thinking of an answer he had given on a podcast around the time. I’m sorry I no longer know which one. Probably he has repeated the answer in any podcast where this topic comes up.
I think his answer was something like he was suffering from some symptoms after a covid infection (aka long covid) and had, on the weight of some studies which indicated the vaccine could maybe help alleviate such post-infection symptoms, decided to make the gamble and get the shot, even though he knew what the risks could be, and probably didn’t have any magical thinking about the vaccine’s effects, either at the individual or population level.
Basically, he was apparently making a rational individual decision about whether to undertake this medical procedure, which is what everyone should have done. But most people who got the vaccine could not isolate themselves from the social hysteria and pressure. His reasoning which proved to be wrong was still at least one dealing with medical probabilities and outcomes. Whereas most people had emotional and fear-based reasons deep down, which is why I believe they were “spiritually” injured, because they let outside forces violate their bodily autonomy, and were not mindful enough to notice this psychological process playing out in them. If you ask them why they got the vaccine they will display all sorts of emotional and cognitive dissonance markers and it is really uncomfortable. Whereas Malone’s answer was bland and objective; he seems to have just calculated for himself and that was that.
I have zero faith he will come to his senses......arrogance is baked in the cake....the damage is done and many people follow and listen to him....even if he comes around it will be too late.....
Sam Harris lost his intellectual integrity long before Covid. Trump Derangement Syndrome tore away any semblance of pervasive sense Sam claimed to possess.
His vehemently zealous anti-Trumpism delved deep into his psyche, a psyche so distorted he raised the likes of Hillary Clinton on a proverbial pedestal. His inability to discern existing and unfolding information on his assessments exposed a mind vulnerable to, in fact overcome by, 'religious' fervor.
Quite the irony.
His Covidiocy was just a continuation of his fall from intellectual prowess - though I never viewed him to have approached the pinnacle, or, even have it in sight.
Frankly, preceding this, his approach to atheism was fundamentally religious, exposing a mind trapped between impenetrable boundaries. Made obvious by his complete inability to acknowledge any positive contribution Christianity, in particular, has made to Western Civilization.Whilst being ludicrously naive to the dangers of what was to fill the gap of loss of faith, or, the death of God.
Contrast the contemporary reverence of Sam Harris, to Friedrich Nietzsche, who understood the flaws of religion, but was intellectually honest enough to see the vacuum the death of God would leave in the human psyche - we fell very short of his aspirational ubermensch.
Sam thought of himself as an exception, and there are some. As did many of his admirers. But no, Sam is a glaring example of the rule.
His anti-religious views are what made me lose respect for him, far before Trump or Covid. Not that he was an atheist, but as you said that he could not find any positive to religion. It became obvious to me that he had this glaring "wall" in his thought process that he could not get around. So I realized that if he can be this oblivious irrational about one topic, even when called out, he could and would be about others. Trump and Covid have proved it again and again.
As other have said, I think his "Wall" is his ego. If he feels strongly about something, he is not capable of being rational. More so he is not capable of either acknowledging this or even seeing it, even if pointed out. To me this makes him so much worse than most people. That lack of humility keeps him from truth.
Listening to Harris’ use of language in his podcasts, it’s clear he is one of those commentators that hides his smarts by using a sneaky cultivated line in passive-aggressive whereby, in one sentence he makes a benign reference to the opposition, and two sentences later drops in a derogatory adjective to catch the tail end of the memory of the benign statement and thereby subverts the listeners settled opinion. All delivered in a measured, hypnotic, soporific, meter, revealing the the spaces in his line of thought. Clever, but extremely irritating.
I wish it would make a difference but I had to accept long ago (when I canceled all subscriptions with Sam H) that his is the worse case of Trump Delusion Syndrome and vaccine/Covid mass formation psychosis I’ve witnessed. He is so mentally ill it is disturbing.
Stop lying about Sam Harris. "one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century". Sam has never been any of those things. He is a great regurgitator of ideologies he subscribes to. Nothing more. He is not an original thinker, nor is he a critical thinker nor is he honest when faced with contradictory truth. He wanted and achieved the aura of a great thinker... but he was a stupid person's smart person (to borrow a phrase).
"one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century."
lol. Seriously? You're loosing me and killing your cred. He's precisely the opposite while putting up the appearance. Trump. The Jordan Peterson conversations. Get real.
1) Has Harris taken any of the covid money that greased the palms of "influencers"? Would this explain his perplexing recalcitrant position? A lot of people are chained to the carrots they took during the heyday of the covid narrative.
2) Is/was Harris involved with the Department of Defense in any way? It turns out this was a military psychological operation in which the DOD and all sorts of intelligence agencies were swarming the western world in an unusually coordinated fashion. Could Harris be an operative?
I know one thing, these questions are not out of the range of possibility.
Harris is a miltant atheist. He took down his Twitter account after people objected to his tweet "he hated Trump to such an extent ........"
"Gad Saad suggested that Harris' decision to leave Twitter was just the latest in a string of "acts of childish insolence," where he "broke friendships, doubled down, and exhibited astounding pomposity."
I disagree with Harris as brilliant but have you also considered he may have received “funding” from the Biden Admin to push a pro vaxx message? I wish we could have a list of all the influencers who received money. Not sure if it’s possible through FOIA.
I really don't think Sam Harris is paid by Biden. That would permanently destroy his podcast in a way that would be irrecoverable. NY Times, WaPo, and others have been paid by federal agencies to promote the vaccine, though.
Many influencers were paid, not just the institutions. Low name recognition podcasters with a moral code were disturbed and shared the invitations at the time the vaxx campaign unfolded. Later more was revealed about the scope of it. I wonder if anyone ever FOIAd that information to compile a list of recipients. It should be public since public monies were used to divvy out the payments.
"The infection fatality rate for Covid in the non-elderly population was known to be in the proximity of 0.035% at the time (credit to John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacahrya on this area of research) with a massive age gradient. Natural immunity was an established fact. The Covid death figures that greatly alarmed Harris at the time were known to be seriously inflated and miscalculated..."
From very early on unequivocal information was readily available to make a sound decision: Wait.
Harris should have known the risk profile of Covid. For him it was very low. The unavoidable fact there was no, and could not possibly have been, any medium/long term safety testing/data on the 'vaccines' was clear.
Undertaking an irreversible medical procedure to eliminate/mitigate a known (extremely low) risk, whilst assuming a completely unknown risk - could be zero, could be catastrophic - was always a fool's errand. The risk of Covid was known, though obscured by propaganda. The risk of the novel mRNA/lipid nano-particles vaccines to treat a corona virus was completely unknown- though careful research would have exposed serious concerns.
Harris took the gamble, which he now dresses up as reasoned thought. He was wrong. No doubt, catastrophically wrong for many of his followers.
The error is forgivable. Even understandable. But, his failure to acknowledge his error over a prolonged period, coupled with his continuing disparaging of those who 'got it right', is his self imposed intellectual death sentence.
TSMe. the history of establishing the correct IFR ... Dr. Ioannidis's article came out on March 17, 2020. I had already calculated the IFR to be .1 %. (depending on a few assumptions you had to make) on March 8, 2020. It made me feel great when a friend in Phnom Penh told me about the article. and read what Dr. Ioannidis wrote: "projecting Diamond cruise ship Data on to the age structure of the US population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be .125%" because I used the Diamond Princess and adjusted for age as well and had gotten a lot of flak from people when I made the claim that the health authorities (WHO, CDC, China Medical) had the IFR 30 or 40 x too high. It was mostly in the form of "Why should we believe you over the CDC?"
The answer to their question is you were basing your claim on objective data and facts. No doubt few were interested in assessing the veracity of yours v the CDC's claims?
Sam Harris is one of the most over rated narcissists "thought leaders" I used to listen to him but realized more often then not he doesn't have an original thought of his own. whether you love of hate Trump. his TDS was over the top and ridiculous. I didnt get the vax but as a physician had enough experience to know that unquestioning trust in the FDA and big pharma is going to get you into trouble. Their track record is horrendous and for someone as "smart" as Harris to say otherwise is well, not smart.
The medical regulatory bureaucracy, and big pharma, is to global health, what the military industrial complex is to global peace.
All government unr licesning is about control of teh professional class. These government controlled systems allow those in government to coerce prvate citizens into either suporting something or saying nothing at all for fear of never being able to earn a living again in your profession. Licensing was sold as a means to protect the customer but that abandoning of "Buyer be ware" hepled make modern men weak.
Janine - If you don;t mind sharing with all, what kind of pressure did you and yuor fellow doctors face from your own employer not to mention any licensing boards to tow the narrative on covid or at the least not challenge it?
Have to call BS on the claim of one of the most Brilliant minds and intellectually honest .... His first claim about rationalizing it was an unselfish decision to get vaccinated does not support the claim. Consider the impact on your family if the vaccine killed you or permanently disable you. It was know relatively early simply by observation that few healthy people were getting seriously sick never mind dying of C19. Ioannidis' first study estimated a IFR that was not particularly lethal, in fact more like the flue, forget the exact date published but early enough to stop many from taking a poorly tested product. Finally, if you have a perfectly healthy young person, is it ethical to kill them and harvest their organs to save 5 others in need of organ transplants? Harris is implying it is by supporting taking a product that may kill you to maybe save someone else. Not brilliant logic in my far less brilliant mind.
Henry, Dr Ioannidis published his first IFR on March 17, 2020. He calculated it to be .125%. I published the first correct IFR at .1% on March 8, 2020. We both used the Diamond Princess Cruise ship data. The difference is because we didn't get the difficult adjustment to lower the IFR based on the average age on the ship vs back in the US. We were remarkably close, though. Several groups used the Diamond Princess and got 1.5 - 2% for the IFR. They used too many deaths not knowing that the average time from onset to death was only 18 days. I, Dr. Ioannidis and Dr. Levin (.3%) knew this.
I appreciate the information. I may never understand why every health authority in the world reacted like it was the end of the world, even after they knew the risks were small for most. There are a range of possible explanations, some I prefer not to think about.
There are. We have to think about them, unfortunately.
Like everything there is no one singular thing, event, or whatever you want to call it that explains this. Many within the field simply go with the flow not taking time to think beyond the surface level on anything either b/c no time to waste on it or they just trust the systems that much.
You also have to corrupted/co-opted people, the ones paid to either keep their mouths shut or to promote a specific narrative. If these are persons high enough up the food chain many downstream from that will just trust what is said b/c they've never had reason to believe otherwise. For those of us untrustworthy of government in general, we can more easily see the corruption take place than those within b/c we don't just TRUST anyone or anything.
Then you have a fairly large percentage of any group of people who are the go-along-to-get-along types. My own father was one of these. These are people who will do/go along with whatever they perceive is the majority opinion making women very susceptible to this since females more so then males desire group acceptance. The majority of women will agree to all sorts of aggreges acts if they believe the majority support it and that they will not be accepted by the majority if they too do not agree. There was a famous experiment done on this that involved a group of subjects were only 1 was the real subject and the rest were actors. They were all asked to pick the shortest line of 3 lines and while it wasn’t ridiculously obvious as to which was longer it was obvious enough that anyone not picking the true shortest line is doing so out of denial, desire to not go against the group because all the actors are told to pick the second shortest line.
If one can control that which primarily influences people then you can make the minority supported narrative become majority supported simply by lying to everyone as to how much support it has.
It is likely not the brilliance of your mind that falls short of Sam Harris', Rather, your own estimation of your brilliance that falls well short of Harris'.
"Not all of this was Harris’ fault — the experts he selectively platformed (primarily Dr. Eric Topol and Dr. Nicholas Christakis) took strangely extreme positions on this matter and did not exercise appropriate caution"
You are actually too kind here. It was precisely Sam Harris' fault by virtue of the voices he chooses to listen to and feature on his podcast. He applies the same biased discretion favoring statist establishment views when it comes to politics and, I would maintain, virtually all other matters.
> Indeed, it was not out of the question at that time — given the absence of long-term data — that vaccines may substantially curb transmission
There was long-term data though on other coronaviruses and the complete failure of vaccines to prevent spread. We know that they spread through upper respiratory and that immunity is localized, so we knew that an injection wasn’t going to slow transmission. Maybe a nasal spray could have. A group of biologists called RadVac were trying to make an open source nasal spray vaccine-- just some selected peptides in a spray, no need for fancy manufacturing other than the peptide synthesis, for which labs already are well capable.
> I have genuine faith Harris will come to his senses.
I think people who got the vax under real delusion or under the spell of this mass formation thing are pretty much unrecoverable. It’s one thing to get the vax like Robert Malone did, in a cold and calculated way. It’s another thing to be a part of the Covidian cult and let them enter your body with the shot. People are spiritually injured and Sam-Harris-style rationality cannot heal one from such an injury-- something much deeper is needed.
I believe that most of these cult members would literally rather die than admit their stupidity.
Hi Lonious: Can you tell us more about Malone getting the vaccine "in a cold and calculated way." If you prefer to talk to me privately, my email is: Rsheftall@alum.mit.edu
Thanks!
I have no special information, I was just thinking of an answer he had given on a podcast around the time. I’m sorry I no longer know which one. Probably he has repeated the answer in any podcast where this topic comes up.
I think his answer was something like he was suffering from some symptoms after a covid infection (aka long covid) and had, on the weight of some studies which indicated the vaccine could maybe help alleviate such post-infection symptoms, decided to make the gamble and get the shot, even though he knew what the risks could be, and probably didn’t have any magical thinking about the vaccine’s effects, either at the individual or population level.
Basically, he was apparently making a rational individual decision about whether to undertake this medical procedure, which is what everyone should have done. But most people who got the vaccine could not isolate themselves from the social hysteria and pressure. His reasoning which proved to be wrong was still at least one dealing with medical probabilities and outcomes. Whereas most people had emotional and fear-based reasons deep down, which is why I believe they were “spiritually” injured, because they let outside forces violate their bodily autonomy, and were not mindful enough to notice this psychological process playing out in them. If you ask them why they got the vaccine they will display all sorts of emotional and cognitive dissonance markers and it is really uncomfortable. Whereas Malone’s answer was bland and objective; he seems to have just calculated for himself and that was that.
That was a great answer and I appreciate very much, you taking the time for me.
I have zero faith he will come to his senses......arrogance is baked in the cake....the damage is done and many people follow and listen to him....even if he comes around it will be too late.....
Being outraged by Trump U and not even concerned about the blatant Biden schemes speaks volumes.
Sam Harris lost his intellectual integrity long before Covid. Trump Derangement Syndrome tore away any semblance of pervasive sense Sam claimed to possess.
His vehemently zealous anti-Trumpism delved deep into his psyche, a psyche so distorted he raised the likes of Hillary Clinton on a proverbial pedestal. His inability to discern existing and unfolding information on his assessments exposed a mind vulnerable to, in fact overcome by, 'religious' fervor.
Quite the irony.
His Covidiocy was just a continuation of his fall from intellectual prowess - though I never viewed him to have approached the pinnacle, or, even have it in sight.
Frankly, preceding this, his approach to atheism was fundamentally religious, exposing a mind trapped between impenetrable boundaries. Made obvious by his complete inability to acknowledge any positive contribution Christianity, in particular, has made to Western Civilization.Whilst being ludicrously naive to the dangers of what was to fill the gap of loss of faith, or, the death of God.
Contrast the contemporary reverence of Sam Harris, to Friedrich Nietzsche, who understood the flaws of religion, but was intellectually honest enough to see the vacuum the death of God would leave in the human psyche - we fell very short of his aspirational ubermensch.
Sam thought of himself as an exception, and there are some. As did many of his admirers. But no, Sam is a glaring example of the rule.
His anti-religious views are what made me lose respect for him, far before Trump or Covid. Not that he was an atheist, but as you said that he could not find any positive to religion. It became obvious to me that he had this glaring "wall" in his thought process that he could not get around. So I realized that if he can be this oblivious irrational about one topic, even when called out, he could and would be about others. Trump and Covid have proved it again and again.
As other have said, I think his "Wall" is his ego. If he feels strongly about something, he is not capable of being rational. More so he is not capable of either acknowledging this or even seeing it, even if pointed out. To me this makes him so much worse than most people. That lack of humility keeps him from truth.
Listening to Harris’ use of language in his podcasts, it’s clear he is one of those commentators that hides his smarts by using a sneaky cultivated line in passive-aggressive whereby, in one sentence he makes a benign reference to the opposition, and two sentences later drops in a derogatory adjective to catch the tail end of the memory of the benign statement and thereby subverts the listeners settled opinion. All delivered in a measured, hypnotic, soporific, meter, revealing the the spaces in his line of thought. Clever, but extremely irritating.
I wish it would make a difference but I had to accept long ago (when I canceled all subscriptions with Sam H) that his is the worse case of Trump Delusion Syndrome and vaccine/Covid mass formation psychosis I’ve witnessed. He is so mentally ill it is disturbing.
Stop lying about Sam Harris. "one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century". Sam has never been any of those things. He is a great regurgitator of ideologies he subscribes to. Nothing more. He is not an original thinker, nor is he a critical thinker nor is he honest when faced with contradictory truth. He wanted and achieved the aura of a great thinker... but he was a stupid person's smart person (to borrow a phrase).
"one of the most brilliant, intellectually honest, and sophisticated minds of the 21st century."
lol. Seriously? You're loosing me and killing your cred. He's precisely the opposite while putting up the appearance. Trump. The Jordan Peterson conversations. Get real.
I absolutely adore Dr. Battacharya. What a sweet, humble man he is.
As for Harris, he’s proven himself to be quite the superficial phoney
I have two questions about Sam Harris.
1) Has Harris taken any of the covid money that greased the palms of "influencers"? Would this explain his perplexing recalcitrant position? A lot of people are chained to the carrots they took during the heyday of the covid narrative.
2) Is/was Harris involved with the Department of Defense in any way? It turns out this was a military psychological operation in which the DOD and all sorts of intelligence agencies were swarming the western world in an unusually coordinated fashion. Could Harris be an operative?
I know one thing, these questions are not out of the range of possibility.
Harris is a miltant atheist. He took down his Twitter account after people objected to his tweet "he hated Trump to such an extent ........"
"Gad Saad suggested that Harris' decision to leave Twitter was just the latest in a string of "acts of childish insolence," where he "broke friendships, doubled down, and exhibited astounding pomposity."
Sam Harris is a clown.
I disagree with Harris as brilliant but have you also considered he may have received “funding” from the Biden Admin to push a pro vaxx message? I wish we could have a list of all the influencers who received money. Not sure if it’s possible through FOIA.
I really don't think Sam Harris is paid by Biden. That would permanently destroy his podcast in a way that would be irrecoverable. NY Times, WaPo, and others have been paid by federal agencies to promote the vaccine, though.
Many influencers were paid, not just the institutions. Low name recognition podcasters with a moral code were disturbed and shared the invitations at the time the vaxx campaign unfolded. Later more was revealed about the scope of it. I wonder if anyone ever FOIAd that information to compile a list of recipients. It should be public since public monies were used to divvy out the payments.
"The infection fatality rate for Covid in the non-elderly population was known to be in the proximity of 0.035% at the time (credit to John Ioannidis and Jay Bhattacahrya on this area of research) with a massive age gradient. Natural immunity was an established fact. The Covid death figures that greatly alarmed Harris at the time were known to be seriously inflated and miscalculated..."
From very early on unequivocal information was readily available to make a sound decision: Wait.
Harris should have known the risk profile of Covid. For him it was very low. The unavoidable fact there was no, and could not possibly have been, any medium/long term safety testing/data on the 'vaccines' was clear.
Undertaking an irreversible medical procedure to eliminate/mitigate a known (extremely low) risk, whilst assuming a completely unknown risk - could be zero, could be catastrophic - was always a fool's errand. The risk of Covid was known, though obscured by propaganda. The risk of the novel mRNA/lipid nano-particles vaccines to treat a corona virus was completely unknown- though careful research would have exposed serious concerns.
Harris took the gamble, which he now dresses up as reasoned thought. He was wrong. No doubt, catastrophically wrong for many of his followers.
The error is forgivable. Even understandable. But, his failure to acknowledge his error over a prolonged period, coupled with his continuing disparaging of those who 'got it right', is his self imposed intellectual death sentence.
TSMe. the history of establishing the correct IFR ... Dr. Ioannidis's article came out on March 17, 2020. I had already calculated the IFR to be .1 %. (depending on a few assumptions you had to make) on March 8, 2020. It made me feel great when a friend in Phnom Penh told me about the article. and read what Dr. Ioannidis wrote: "projecting Diamond cruise ship Data on to the age structure of the US population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be .125%" because I used the Diamond Princess and adjusted for age as well and had gotten a lot of flak from people when I made the claim that the health authorities (WHO, CDC, China Medical) had the IFR 30 or 40 x too high. It was mostly in the form of "Why should we believe you over the CDC?"
The answer to their question is you were basing your claim on objective data and facts. No doubt few were interested in assessing the veracity of yours v the CDC's claims?