28 Comments
Mar 23, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I am a paid subscriber over on Berenson's stack. I just posted a comment to him about your substack. It might get buried, but I know he does read some comments, and I think the ones addressed to him directly are more likely for him to read. Hopefully.

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Much obliged, Erika, I greatly appreciate it.

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Post it. Must give him the opportunity to see the error and correct it.

I have done similar on others over the oft repeated claim that Japan has approved Ivermectin for use against Covid and that is the reason for the low counts of cases and deaths here, which is untrue.

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Much obliged, TS, I greatly appreciate it.

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Mar 23, 2022·edited Mar 23, 2022

i am afraid you are not correct. there is a lot misinfo spread by "fact checkers" on mainstream western media. Japan allowed use of ivermectin on mid August 2021 and could obtain it without prescription from a doctor. covid cases collapsed after ivermectin was introduced in about two weeks.

Same situation is in taiwan where ivermectin is used as part of treatment protocol, plus 20 or 30 other countries.

as a general rule, got to accept as truth the opposite of what fact checkers claim as truth. for one thing, why would anyone employ a huge number of journalists to do the heavy lifting to tell us what is true and what is not true? after all these are private business looking after their bottom line ... smt does not add up.

For more info on japan experience and use of ivermectin after mid august, 2021 listen to this detail video by dr. John Campbell who has been provaxx in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1GF0H9V_1g

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Incorrect. Here is the link to the English language, Japanese government webpage listing what it has approved for use. https://www.pmda.go.jp/english/about-pmda/0002.html

I just refreshed it and checked it before copying it. According to the Japanese government, Ivermectin has NOT been approved for use against Covid in Japan.

I live in Japan. I teach at various medical school, through not as a doctor. I have been told I must wear a mask for online classes. I have a child, Japanese, enrolled in Japanese elementary school. I think I am well versed in the Japan covid experience.

While not banned, Ivermectin has not been approved by the Japanese government. Please help me put an end to this persistent untruth.

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on link above check on minute 2:45 to see the original japanese article.

ivermectin is a mute point now. there are many studies proving its efficacity. this website contains more than 100 studies on ivermectin, countries etc.

https://ivmmeta.com/

even pfizer admitted as much on ivermectin on their docs released last month.

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And? Not my point. I am not against the use of Ivermectin. It is a false claim to say that Japan has approved it for use against covid. It has not. Continuing to make this false claim and refusing to correct it hurts the creditability of those who make it. This is the untruth I want help in stopping the spread of.

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Mar 23, 2022·edited Mar 23, 2022

well, sorry but this is sort of splitting hairs. what is stated on minute 2:45 is that according to the Chairman of Medical Association: 1) doctors can prescribe it without restrictions 2) citizens can buy it from india.

as demonstrated by the chart on minute 1, right after these changes were introduced in Japan (before it was not allowed as a treatment in japan) covid cases collapsed.

one would wish dr. fauci and dr. collins had done the same in US instead of telling people to stay home until they get worse and go to hospital and put in ventilators.

1 million people died in US because of dr. fauci being hard head and insisting on his own ways and forbidding use of ivermectin. he should resign immediately.

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Another big reason for the differences in deaths beside the very narrow criteria used here for assigning covid as the cause of death (The policy and practice differing here.) most likely lies in the treatment. Those I know of who have had Covid, received symptom relief medications and bed rest in isolation only. While other drugs are approved, their cases were mild enough to not warrant the stronger (?) and more dangerous medications and certainly not early use of ventilators. We also have fewer obese people here.

In short, any comparisons between countries must first determine what scales each is using to measure and then convert as necessary. Comparing Japan and the US on anything runs into the problem if assuming we are using the same scales when if we ever are, it would be a rare case.

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Incorrect. I have been following Covid since late 2019 as we have, well had, huge numbers of people coming from there and Japanese going and returning. One of my clients was heavily engaged in the tourist industry. Ivermectin was never restricted.

My wife, who works for a big pharma company here and who used to be in Regulatory Affairs just walked in, so I asked her if it was ever disallowed. She gave a confused look and answer, “How could it be? On what grounds would it be?”

There is no date of change in policy towards Ivermectin as there was no change in the government”s policy in regards to using Ivermectin against covid. Therefore that can not be a reason for whatever change in numbers we have seen locally. I suspect the cause for this particular change in the trend is more likely due to weather or season. The reason for the difference in numbers between the US and Japan is that the two countries are not use IG the same scale to measures cases and deaths. Nor are they going about testing the same way.

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Same on the U.K., not completely ruled out mandatory vaxx for doctors and nurses in nhs. They are simple liars

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Shame on them, but they are not alone in their attitude to failure, which used to be something to learn from, right? 'It's not the mistake that is the problem, but the unwillingness to learn from them' has been supplanted, it seems, by 'anything goes'.

This is no way to walk through life, and retribution will come, eventually, as virtually all literature and drama from the Odyssey to Shakespeare to, say, Checkov intimates.

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by epimetheus

OK, so "dumped" is the wrong term for Austria, as well as "walked away" for Germany. Last week has seen the parliamentary discussion on vaccine mandates. The vote is scheduled for the beginning of April.

I guess it is difficult for American journalists, even diligent ones, to get matters absolutely right about what those tiny European countries are doing over there.

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fact checkers will correct them ... well if it goes against their narrative.

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by epimetheus

may 1 deadline for greece is not true. in greece they charge pensioners 100 euro every month if they are not vaxxed, which means receiving the latest dose, the gov has decided. right now, they are on the fourth dose. this is a considerable amount given that pensions have been cut quite a few times the last few years.

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Shame on them, esp. the monthly fees are even more cruel than the quarterly ones levelled on residents of Austria.

As an aside, isn't Greece associated with humanistic thinking and reason? I suppose we should change that troubling factoid, too, and replace it with Aldous Huxley's imagery of a boot stomping on the face of humanity.

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Mar 24, 2022Liked by epimetheus

The quote you are thinking of is by George Orwell: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever." Spoken by O'Brien the regime functionary in the novel '1984'.

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Stilly me, thanks for the correction and apologies to both Huxley and Orwell.

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Mar 24, 2022·edited Mar 24, 2022

greece as a people yes. as to who rules it, there is no different from much of europe (where all these world wars are happening). Ioannis Kapodistrias (Ιωάννης Καποδίστριας) was the last real hope in modern times, he was assassinated because wanted like andrew jackson to have money issued by the state and not privately owned central banks. fall of constandinople was the real downfall, from then gnosi and treasures went to europe (recoinnasance) and moscow (niece of last byzantium emperor) married ivan III and many people and treasures went there giving rise to modern russia in the map. see things are connected, nothing by coincidence. God has a way of making it even again ... cest la vie.

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Truly horrible. I assume 100eur is a lot for a retired person in Greece

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definitely it could be around 20% or so. it is the only people in the whole world that are being pushed this far ... coincidence??? may be ... available for people in country to choose from only two ... both mRNAs, pfizer or moderna ... pick your poison.

btw, all political parties united in that front. syriza critizes mitzotakis for being too soft. tsipras proposed to outsource it to private police vaxxines, i suppose pay them 20 euros for every vaxx, so imagine that.

the other guy of pasok, proposed not to let any unvaxxed to buy food or medecine, basically starve them to death ... i guess is for our own good ... yeah well ... cest la vie in the big city ...

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Correct on both accounts: dirty play, and these 'other news' are very troubling, indeed, as I fear that once any kind of problems happen with--say, the injections, energy prices, or food supplies--noone will trot out any context.

And without analysis of context (i.e., how we got here), by the way, all of these issues (and virtually everything else, too) will simply mean that 'stuff happens', which humanity used as a kind of 'explanation' until the Scientific Revolution.

Welcome, in other words, to the world I study professionally, the post-medieval pre-modern imaginarium where--truth be told and as much as I enjoy learning and teaching about it, as opposed to living in it--black and white magic are used to 'explain' what's going on.

To make up a little example: you fall down the ladder and break your arm--was it because you cursed secretly thereby provoking God's righteous wrath ('white' magic) or because your neighbour's darned black cat, you know, the one with the fiery eyes, crossed your path while you walked to the barn ('black' magic).

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I wouldn't go that far, even though there's ample of pessimism to go around, including the more spectacularly known cases of, say, Spengler's Decline of the West.

Note that Spengler's associate Weber himself considered the future of the West as one of 'mechanised petrification' (mechanisierte Versteinerung), which is certainly equally damning, if eerily prescient.

Weber, though, even he's typically held up as one of the archetypes of Modernity, also pointed out that there's a possibility for parallel, even contradictory, systems of order to coexist at the same time. I do think Weber was onto something here, for this notion was revolving around what (in post-modernistic lingo) is called 'action-orientation'.

So, in short: I think 'the West' isn't already collapsed…intellectually and spiritually, just not physically yet'. Sure, there's a lot of systemic inertia to consider, but I'd posit that part of 'the West' is certainly quite far ahead down that particular road, but other parts aren't.

Time will tell, I suppose.

What do you think about this line of thinking?

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