OMG! Did I just read what I think I read?
That was my thought after seeing the headline on Allysia Finley’s column about Covid vaccines posted New Year’s Day. Finley is a writer for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which has a long history of challenging prevailing wisdom, particularly from the Beltway’s Democratic denizens and their mainstream media enablers.
I’m compelled to issue a reader advisory for those who uncritically believed and embraced all the mainstream media’s government-issued Covid propaganda. The headline and column might trigger a heart attack, stroke, or other adverse health event often resulting from shock or alarm. If you fall into this category, reader discretion is advised.
Ready? Here’s the headline:
Finley cites studies that possibly indicate that Covid vaccines are responsible for triggering more variants, thereby putting those with the most jabs at higher risk. The studies are technical, but here’s some insight from the authors who conducted one of them.
“This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19,” the authors noted. “We still have a lot to learn about protection from COVID-19 vaccination, and in addition to a vaccine’s effectiveness it is important to examine whether multiple vaccine doses given over time may not be having the beneficial effect that is generally assumed.”
One of the things I’ve learned about Covid studies is that there are scientific Johnny & Janes-on-the-spot available 24/7 to immediately discredit any media report questioning vaccine safety and effectiveness. We will no doubt be hearing from them in short order. And WSJ readers would be wise not to quickly embrace Finley’s Covid reporting and analysis.
In October 2020, Finley published this column advising readers they might want to consider taking zinc based on studies showing that people who died of Covid were zinc deficient.
Here was the basis for Finley’s zinc advocacy:
Last month, researchers from Spain reported that patients who died in hospitals in March and April on average had zinc blood levels of 43 micrograms per deciliter; survivors had 63. A level of 70 is considered normal. After adjusting for age, sex, illness severity and treatments, every unit increase of zinc in the blood was associated with a 7% lower likelihood of dying. That’s huge.
I was all set to run out and buy zinc by the truckload but decided to check with an endocrinologist I know and trust. Here’s what he said about Finley’s analysis:
Low zinc levels are often seen in people with diabetes, alcoholism, colitis, liver disease, HIV, ageing etc. The low zinc in the patients with poor covid outcomes most likely reflects their comorbidities rather than anything therapeutic about zinc. I hope the article doesn’t prompt a spate of zinc toxicities.
My caveat about Finley notwithstanding, I’ve long followed those with impressive credentials who questioned vaccine safety and I refused to readily dismiss them, especially since they were censored on social media and smeared by the mainstream media. I recall one of the discredited vaccine critics warning more than two years ago that vaccines would ultimately worsen the pandemic because they would create more variants. Finley’s column indicates the critic possibly wasn’t the nut job the media made him out to be.
Moreover, Finley is hardly the only mainstream journalist who possibly erred in reporting on Covid. I remember this tweet from New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli charging those who believed the Covid virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China were racist.
ProPublica and Vanity Fair in late October posted this story citing evidence that the virus did indeed escape from the Wuhan lab, which reportedly was quite troubled. The mainstream media went ballistic, and quickly moved to discredit the story.
Admittedly, Vanity Fair is no longer a credible publication, but ProPublica is, and it takes allegations questioning the accuracy of its reporting quite seriously. After reviewing the myriad criticisms, ProPublica stood by its story and gave a very detailed explanation as to why.
The lesson here is the mainstream media for years has immediately dismissed all claims questioning vaccine safety and effectiveness as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But some of those claims were possibly valid, and censoring those who raised concerns did a great disservice to scientific debate and ultimately fueled conspiracy theories. I’m more inclined to believe someone the U.S. government and media goes to great lengths to tell me not to listen to.
Analyzing vaccine studies and research is a highly specialized discipline, one that takes years to master. Two of the world’s leading vaccine experts are Marion Gruber and Phil Krause, who resigned from the FDA in September of last year reportedly because of undo political pressure from the Biden Administration to approve vaccine boosters. I’ve been distrustful of the FDA ever since, more so now given the considerable evidence the agency turned a blind eye to the adverse side effects resulting from the drug Propecia.
I’m forever mindful of Frances Kelsey, the Canadian-born FDA reviewer who was maligned as a “bureaucratic nitpicker” for refusing to approve Thalidomide, a drug that caused more than 100,000 babies to be born with deformities and killed more than 7,000. I’m also mindful of a warning attributed to Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a Canadian pathologist, who warned about vaccine safety early on and government and media attacks on critics.
“When the history of this (Covid) madness is written, there will be hundreds of books on it over the next few years, reputations will be slaughtered,” Hodkinson said. “There will be blood in the gutter because of the obvious insanity of what’s happening on a scale that’s never been seen before.”
Maybe Finley’s analysis is flawed, but the fact the Wall Street Journal published it is a major step forward. Hopefully it proves a watershed moment allowing controversial Covid opinions to be openly discussed and debated.