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Comment by 40four | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, the long term of effects of the vaccines are still very unclear. For adults and children. There are concerning reports regarding serious complications that tend to not get talked about very much in the media

I chose to vaccinate myself. I don’t have kids, but I’m not sure it would be a given that I would vaccinate them yet. I think I would want to have a better understanding of the risks. Sorry you’re in that position, I’m sure it’s stressful.

After listening to Dr. Robert Malone, I’m beginning to wonder if there aren’t a non-trivial number of physicians against vaccinating kids, who are getting censored. He is adamantly against it. Problem is we can’t even have conversations about it in social media without folks getting censored.

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According to [1] Mr Malone said "mRNA vaccine technology I created" which is not true as far as I can find tell. He did work on mRNA technology decades ago but didn't invent mRNA vaccines. He also states that "The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children's cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins.". What does that even mean, a "viral gene"? Toxic spike proteins? Sounds like fear mongering to me given how it's worded.

Furthermore he states that "These proteins *often* cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including -Their brain and nervous system -Their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots -Their reproductive system, and -This vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system" There is absolutely no data supporting any of this as far as I can find.

Should we trust this person?

[1] https://globalcovidsummit.org/news/live-stream-event-physici...

> which is not true as far as I can find tell. He did work on mRNA technology decades ago but didn't invent mRNA vaccines.

It was removed from wikipedia, but here's an archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210614140319/https://en.wikipe...

He invented the initial platform and performed the first mRNA vaccine experiments in 1989.

There's 9 patents in his name for the platforms and his name is all over the original experiments.

I don't think the powers at be can memory hole him that easily.

> What does that even mean, a "viral gene"? Toxic spike proteins?

What he's getting at is, the spike protein the vaccine makes you generate enters the heart and other organs easily and causes damage.

The spike protein itself is potentially toxic to us and causing myocarditis. There is evidence of that, how widespread is disputed.

Whether "long covid" is a symptom of this spike protein toxicity, vaccine induced or natural, is unclear.

Many many things related to covid, some taboo, some not, are yet to be determined.

> Should we trust this person?

Should we trust media reporters and random people slinging mud on the internet, I doubt it.

In this field, we should listen to him, yes, not shun him, as he has relevant domain knowledge which is clearly verifiable.

Trust implies faith, why are you "trusting" scientists? You should listen and verify.

The fact you are attacking him and not trying to disprove what he is saying is suspect.

The wiki link you posted is the only version mentioning his name prominently. Neither before (https://web.archive.org/web/20210530162316/https://en.wikipe...) nor after. So I wouldn't call it "scrubbing". It'd be like me putting my name in there and calling it scrubbing when the next person removes it.

I trust consensus I guess but I'm not an expert in any of this at all so my ability to verify anything is quite limited. I might have made a mistake here but I'm still not convinced he's trustworthy.

I didn't call it scrubbing. I made a vague comment about memory holing him but that was a reference to the Twitter ban, Wikipedia removal, etc. in general.

A scientist isn't trustworthy or not, their work speaks for itself. He invented the original mRNA platform. He was a key scientist in the first mRNA vaccine experiments.

He's making statements about the severity and frequency of side effects in children that I just can't find any proof for. That disqualifies him in my opinion until I can find data supporting his claims.

Until then, for me, he's in the same corner as others hanging out with right-wing extremists [1] spreading misinformation.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...

That propaganda hit piece was already posted elsewhere and I commented:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29881075

Please be specific which statement you disagree with.

Not sure what you mean by propaganda hit piece but you seem to be having some kind of beef with The Atlantic. I can easily verify what's written in there. He was on Tucker Carlson (1) and Steve Bannon (2), it's not easy to find him talking to non right wing extremists. That's all I said and all I referenced the article for.

If you're referring to the statements about child vaccine side effects, I mentioned those in my earlier comment.

(1) https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-mrna-vaccine-in...

(2) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=00BKcx3HO0Q

The terminology 'viral gene' is not a made up fear mongering term... It's a plainly descriptive term. It is an encoding for a protein of a virus, in this case the modified c19 spike protein.

Also with regards to fundamental changes to the immune system - this is also true.

""" See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting or the Hoskins effect,[1] refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version of that foreign pathogen (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections """

> Also with regards to fundamental changes to the immune system - this is also true.

As far as I understand (from the wikipedia article) the Hoskins effect (also) applies if you simply got infected once. It's not something specific to the vaccine.

Claiming the "vaccine causes a fundamental change" is a bit misleading. The vaccine OR infective exposure have the described effect, which is normal! And altering the immune system to prepare it for future infections is the point of any vaccine, isn't it?

Now, one might say that it's not good to vaccinate everyone so that there remains a population that can get freshly infected with new variants and build up immunity fresh. But they'd then be altering their immune system by the response to that as well, if they don't die from the infection.

Respectfully, Dr. Malone's entire platform is contrarianism. He is opportunistically acting on his own behalf in my belief.

Recently, he published an article highlighting a noted increase in insurance claims (death and disability) in Indiana. He then intentionally implied a link and placed blame on the vaccine.

However, he took no care whatsoever to do any thoughtful analysis of the data before presenting the conclusions he did. He did not even attempt to perform a comparative analysis between Indiana and other states based on vaccination rates. This is low-hanging-fruit simplicity that could have either disproven his claim or supported it - if he cared to. He did not.

This is not the type of information I expect to see come from someone supposedly claiming to be on the right side of science here.

And yet it remains heavily influential, reaching millions of people via Twitter, Joe Rogan, and other mediums, reducing critical analysis to trivial opinion masking as expertise.

Respectfully, that's your opinion, most of what you said is subjective and emotional, I disagree with your interpretations.

Since you brought it up, let's discuss it, what's your hypothesis on the cause of this death uptick?

Please put us "on the right side of science", which apparently Dr. Malone is on the wrong side of due to his hypothesis, not his contributions.

But to test these hypotheses, we would require investigation into the deaths, which maybe Dr. Malone was just trying to get people to look at.

For those interested in seeing the topic you're referencing for themselves:

https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insuran...

> “And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

> and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64”

> Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.

> “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

If you're interested in Malone, I definitely recommend reading the Atlantic article about him:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/robert-m...

TLDR: he got spurned early on in his career, is bitter about it, and seems to be willing to say just about anything as long as someone will give him some modicum of fame.

If you're interested in Malone, don't just read that hit piece, written by an author who had previously stuck to woke issues.

Wikipedia's not perfect, but his article there would be an improvement.

Who, the author of that hit piece, or Malone?

Ridiculous to try to sum up a scientist's life with a shallow hit piece written by a daft "woke" author.

Typical mudslinging strategy to discredit dissenters.

I can't believe people actually read trash like The Atlantic at this point.

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