I thought you'd address concerns around absolute versus relative risk in Baccine studies. Or critically look at placebo definitions and uses in these trials.
It was making the article too long (especially as concerns COVID - that vaccine in particular caused most of the concern for obvious reasons) I may do a follow up article at some point, but it promised to derail this piece. I'll count this as a vote for a deeper dive, though
Good article, especially driving the point home that MANY other factors, particularly sanitation practices, are doing 80% of the heavy lifting. But I have 2.5 major quibbles with you, here.
1. mRNA concerns are fr and you didn't go into specifics here. I would too, but I don't have the stamina to give you the 4 page answer, and unfortunately it really can't be explained in less than 4 pages, but they're objectively unsafe approaches as implemented currently.
1.5. Adjuvents, as you mentioned, like mercury to spur the immune system into responding to something tame like a half-HP virus injection, were not entirely removed. Mercury, specifically, was. But in many cases in American and UK vaccines, instead they stepped down to aluminum. It's less toxic, but all the same issues still apply. Who the fuck eats aluminum on the reg? The human body isn't meant to deal with that! And furthermore, the immune system is surprisingly elegant and tracks every minute detail of previous bodily invasions, down to the vector. You get tetanus from getting pricked by rusty metal, getting into your bloodstream; as such, an injection of (anti-)tetanus makes sense, it's the same delivery vector. You get the flu from breathing in flu viruses into your lungs; it DOESN'T make sense to try to train your immune system to expect a future flu to come through an injection like the shot. There is some cross-over, but there's also confusion to your immune system introduced, and that's how you get random ass allergies to other shit, like by sheer coincidence you haven't eaten peanuts in about 10 years, but today is the day you both got a flu shot AND ate some peanuts, so your immune system is very much "WTF is happening?!" and freaks out about the peanuts because why is respiratory shit coming down my veins, is it actually coming from my mouth or stomach?? That's how that shit happens, RFK isn't insane.
2. And I will seriously take you to the mat for this one. I will die on this hill, unpopular opinion that it is.
While he did commit a stellar performance, in a role he absolutely sold despite the film being otherwise shitty from the ground up... I cannot abide by the idea that Raul Julia "owned" the M. Bison character. No, not at all, the movie was not written well for an accurate M. Bison, you are seriously triggering my Street Fighter canon autism. I love the film, sarcastically/ironically as many do, cult classic awful thing that it was, and for that, I am still grateful that Raul Julia delivered in this abortion of a flick. But that's my beef: it's an abortion of a Street Fighter movie, and whatever Raul Julia was playing, while awesome, was NOT M. Bison, that is, Vega, a.k.a. "Dictator," and his high-risk/high-reward strategies, nor his Psycho Drive derived abilities rooted in the Alpha lore.
I accept your condescending reply acknowledging my deep Street Fighter plot knowledge, and its irrelevance to pop culture writ large. BUT MY POINT STANDS.
Fair responses - I spent a ton of time doing a deep dive on mRNA during lockdown (it was fascinating, I don’t actually have a PhD in biochemistry - the time tradeoff for the credentialism wasn’t really worthwhile, but I am … reasonably informed on certain topics, he said with his usual level of modesty). Yes, this absolutely got rushed to market. They did after all call it Operation Warp Speed. I may or may not get around to a fuller writeup here; it certainly wasn’t going to fit in this article without being a complete divergence and well into esoterically unreadable for most people.
There’s a moderately plausible line of thought - not proven, mind you - that holds that allergies are sort of a hazard of modern sanitation (the antiparasitic component of your immune system mis-targeting other prospects). Basically, our immune system evolved over millions of years to fight off nasty things like parasitic worms (helminths). To do this, it created a hyper-aggressive defense squad (IgE antibodies and mast cells) designed to literally flush, vomit, cough, or scratch the parasites out of our bodies.
In the modern world, extreme cleanliness and sanitation mean we rarely get parasites anymore. However, our immune system still has this massive defense squad sitting around with nothing to do.
Because many harmless proteins—like pollen, peanuts, or pet dander—look chemically identical to parts of a parasite (called "molecular mimicry"), your immune system gets confused. It panics, thinks it's under attack by a worm, and launches its full chemical warfare suite. The result? Instead of expelling a parasite, you just get a runny nose, hives, or an asthma attack.
In short: your allergies are just a bored immune system mistaking a peanut for a parasitic worm. It’s … plausible. Imperfect theory, but most of them are. Worth discussing, at least.
And as far as your crucial point! Well, I will have to say this. Raul Julia … saved that movie. He was really the reason to watch Street Fighter. It certainly wasn’t the Belgian Guile, nor the scammer Ken-and-Ryu duo, nor … I think they made Chun-Li a journalist? They made a hash of the storyline; it’s like the later Fast and the Furious movies where to everyone’s great annoyance the protagonists get ready to do a street race and the plot literally skips over it… the Street Fighter movie has remarkably little of what it says on the tin. For a man who was dying at the time he made the movie … he and Chadwick Boseman sort of left their mark by going out with memorable last roles. Fair compromise?
I thought you'd address concerns around absolute versus relative risk in Baccine studies. Or critically look at placebo definitions and uses in these trials.
It was making the article too long (especially as concerns COVID - that vaccine in particular caused most of the concern for obvious reasons) I may do a follow up article at some point, but it promised to derail this piece. I'll count this as a vote for a deeper dive, though
Good article, especially driving the point home that MANY other factors, particularly sanitation practices, are doing 80% of the heavy lifting. But I have 2.5 major quibbles with you, here.
1. mRNA concerns are fr and you didn't go into specifics here. I would too, but I don't have the stamina to give you the 4 page answer, and unfortunately it really can't be explained in less than 4 pages, but they're objectively unsafe approaches as implemented currently.
1.5. Adjuvents, as you mentioned, like mercury to spur the immune system into responding to something tame like a half-HP virus injection, were not entirely removed. Mercury, specifically, was. But in many cases in American and UK vaccines, instead they stepped down to aluminum. It's less toxic, but all the same issues still apply. Who the fuck eats aluminum on the reg? The human body isn't meant to deal with that! And furthermore, the immune system is surprisingly elegant and tracks every minute detail of previous bodily invasions, down to the vector. You get tetanus from getting pricked by rusty metal, getting into your bloodstream; as such, an injection of (anti-)tetanus makes sense, it's the same delivery vector. You get the flu from breathing in flu viruses into your lungs; it DOESN'T make sense to try to train your immune system to expect a future flu to come through an injection like the shot. There is some cross-over, but there's also confusion to your immune system introduced, and that's how you get random ass allergies to other shit, like by sheer coincidence you haven't eaten peanuts in about 10 years, but today is the day you both got a flu shot AND ate some peanuts, so your immune system is very much "WTF is happening?!" and freaks out about the peanuts because why is respiratory shit coming down my veins, is it actually coming from my mouth or stomach?? That's how that shit happens, RFK isn't insane.
2. And I will seriously take you to the mat for this one. I will die on this hill, unpopular opinion that it is.
While he did commit a stellar performance, in a role he absolutely sold despite the film being otherwise shitty from the ground up... I cannot abide by the idea that Raul Julia "owned" the M. Bison character. No, not at all, the movie was not written well for an accurate M. Bison, you are seriously triggering my Street Fighter canon autism. I love the film, sarcastically/ironically as many do, cult classic awful thing that it was, and for that, I am still grateful that Raul Julia delivered in this abortion of a flick. But that's my beef: it's an abortion of a Street Fighter movie, and whatever Raul Julia was playing, while awesome, was NOT M. Bison, that is, Vega, a.k.a. "Dictator," and his high-risk/high-reward strategies, nor his Psycho Drive derived abilities rooted in the Alpha lore.
I accept your condescending reply acknowledging my deep Street Fighter plot knowledge, and its irrelevance to pop culture writ large. BUT MY POINT STANDS.
Fair responses - I spent a ton of time doing a deep dive on mRNA during lockdown (it was fascinating, I don’t actually have a PhD in biochemistry - the time tradeoff for the credentialism wasn’t really worthwhile, but I am … reasonably informed on certain topics, he said with his usual level of modesty). Yes, this absolutely got rushed to market. They did after all call it Operation Warp Speed. I may or may not get around to a fuller writeup here; it certainly wasn’t going to fit in this article without being a complete divergence and well into esoterically unreadable for most people.
There’s a moderately plausible line of thought - not proven, mind you - that holds that allergies are sort of a hazard of modern sanitation (the antiparasitic component of your immune system mis-targeting other prospects). Basically, our immune system evolved over millions of years to fight off nasty things like parasitic worms (helminths). To do this, it created a hyper-aggressive defense squad (IgE antibodies and mast cells) designed to literally flush, vomit, cough, or scratch the parasites out of our bodies.
In the modern world, extreme cleanliness and sanitation mean we rarely get parasites anymore. However, our immune system still has this massive defense squad sitting around with nothing to do.
Because many harmless proteins—like pollen, peanuts, or pet dander—look chemically identical to parts of a parasite (called "molecular mimicry"), your immune system gets confused. It panics, thinks it's under attack by a worm, and launches its full chemical warfare suite. The result? Instead of expelling a parasite, you just get a runny nose, hives, or an asthma attack.
In short: your allergies are just a bored immune system mistaking a peanut for a parasitic worm. It’s … plausible. Imperfect theory, but most of them are. Worth discussing, at least.
And as far as your crucial point! Well, I will have to say this. Raul Julia … saved that movie. He was really the reason to watch Street Fighter. It certainly wasn’t the Belgian Guile, nor the scammer Ken-and-Ryu duo, nor … I think they made Chun-Li a journalist? They made a hash of the storyline; it’s like the later Fast and the Furious movies where to everyone’s great annoyance the protagonists get ready to do a street race and the plot literally skips over it… the Street Fighter movie has remarkably little of what it says on the tin. For a man who was dying at the time he made the movie … he and Chadwick Boseman sort of left their mark by going out with memorable last roles. Fair compromise?
Fair compromise. <3