How MedShadow fakes it to discredit Dr Simone Gold - Part 2: Vaccinations

There has been a growing trend of attacking, vilifying, and censoring any doctor who doesn’t conform to the establishment medicine perspective on COVID-19. Many highly qualified physicians, virologists, vaccinologists, epidemiologists, and others have been maligned in this way. One doctor under attack is Simone Gold, the medical doctor and lawyer who founded America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS). Suzanne B. Robotti, the founder and president of the website MedShadow, took it upon herself to attack Gold (and America’s Frontline Doctors) by making spurious and misleading claims about her activities and statements.[1] MedShadow’s attempt to discredit her and her organization harms their readership more than they do Dr. Gold and AFLDS. At the beginning of her article, Robotti explained that a friend asked her for her thoughts on a YouTube video featuring Dr. Gold. As YouTube had already taken the video down (as they do with any counter-narrative information they wish to censor) she found it elsewhere, yet shared with her readers neither the original title of the video, The Truth About the Covid-19 Vaccine, nor the actual link which she found (her attempt at explaining to readers that they can now find it as Video 1, the fourth video down from the top (the top of where?) or to keep looking, is pure obfuscation). It might be that she didn’t want anyone to learn how she not only misconstrued facts but also was dishonest about some of what Dr. Gold had said. For instance, Gold referred to a retracted Lancet study about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a therapy for Covid-19 patients, to give an example of the lies that were being promulgated about HCQ and the dishonesty of the media; the study had been widely promoted as proving that HCQ is not effective and even dangerous, for Covid-19 patients, yet the retraction was hardly mentioned by the media. Robotti, however, stated that Gold's intent was to show that HCQ is safe. To help the public understand the deceitful tactics used by MedShadow (and others) to obfuscate and hide the truth from their audience, AFLDS analyzes and responds to her allegations. This is Part 2 of AFLDS's response to MedShadow’s 12 false claims about Dr. Simone Gold.  You can read AFLDS's response to her first 2 claims in Part 1, here.

Claim 3. Why don’t we have vaccinations for other coronaviruses?

Medshadow: "Gold says that researchers “failed” in creating vaccines for previous coronaviruses like SARS and MERS. “They can’t do it safely,” she says, and adds that AIDS doesn’t have a vaccine either (Minute 25:01). That’s largely false." AFLDS: Gold never mentioned AIDS; the author of the paper Robotti references (discussed below) to prove why coronavirus “vaccination research was abandoned” discussed AIDS. The issue of safety and difficulty in creating a vaccine for SARS and MERS will be addressed in a future part of this series, when we respond to Robotti’s claims regarding Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). MedShadow: "In every case, except AIDS, vaccines were deemed unnecessary because the disease can be controlled. For both SARS (COV-1) and MERS (MERS-CoV), it’s possible to isolate patients and prevent larger outbreaks because they are not contagious until symptoms appear. Vaccination research was abandoned on these two diseases because vaccines are not needed and no one would pay for the development." AFLDS: Was vaccine development really abandoned because the diseases could be controlled? The SARS epidemic was of short duration, with an atypical penumonia discovered in China in November 2002, and ending in  July 2003. The MERS epidemic started in 2012 and in 2021 there are still cases being reported.^[2] Whether or not individuals are contagious before symptoms appear may not be as important in controlling an epidemic as is assumed, since 

[i]t is not always possible to identify patients with MERS-CoV infection early because like other respiratory infections, the early symptoms of MERS-CoV infection are non-specific.

 It's not unreasonable to expect that the same held true during the SARS epidemic. Clicking on the link which Robotti uses as a reference for why “vaccination research was abandoned” brings us to a May 2020, commentary piece by Natalie E. Dean, PhD, entitled “COVID-19 Data Dives: Why Don't We Have a Vaccine for SARS or MERS?”^[3] Dean’s review of the SARS epidemic concludes that “after being contained in 2003, there have been no SARS outbreaks since". So, a reason why we don’t need a vaccine for SARS has to do not so much with an ability to control the disease, but with the fact that SARS basically disappeared. In Dean’s review of MERS, she refers to potential strategies that have been discussed for a MERS vaccine, linking to a 2018 document entitled “WHO consultation on MERS-CoV therapeutics and vaccine evaluation”.^[4] The document reviews several difficulties in producing a vaccine for MERS (one of which was mentioned as being faced with the SARS vaccine development), but especially the difficulty in finding a target population of sufficient size and an outbreak of sufficient duration. Control efforts, the report says, has reduced human to human transmission (the initial source of infection is dromedaries)^[5]  but didn’t preclude their perceived need for a vaccine. MedShadow: "Unfortunately, COVID-19 patients are contagious long before becoming symptomatic. Even more difficult, some people get infected with COVID-19 and have such mild symptoms (or even no symptoms) and spread COVID-19 without knowing it. Therefore, isolating the sick is too little, too late." AFLDS: The table below compares SARS, MERS, Covid, the Flu, Measles, and Strep.   

 SARS^[6]MERS^[7]Covid-19^[8]FluMeasles^[9]Strep^[10]Incubation2-7 days; can be as long as 142-14 days2-14 days1-4 days7 to 14 days Become symptomatic Usually, 5 daysUsually, 5-6 daysUsually, 2^nd dayUsually, 10-12 days Become ContagiousWith symptoms (as far as has been reported)Not known24 – 48 hours before symptoms1 day before symptomsHealthy children - from 3-5 days before rash appears.2-5 days before symptoms appearAsymptomatic transmissionLittle information/one case^[11],[12]Insufficient evidence^[13]No evidence.^{[14],[15],[16]}Scant, if any evidence^[17]No documentation.^[18]Yes^[19]

 As we can see, although COVID-19 patients are contagious before symptoms start, in relation to other illnesses they are not contagious “long before” becoming symptomatic. Furthermore, except for strep, there is little, if any, evidence of asymptomatic spread for these illnesses, including COVID-19. SARS, with a reproduction rate of .58, and MERS, with a reproduction rate  of .69, are less contagious than COVID-19, which has a reproduction rate of 3.1.^[20] That means that for every person who is contagious with SARS or MERS, two people in a susceptible population will need to be exposed for one to become infected; with COVID-19, one person can easily infect 3 people.^[21] However, SARS and MERS mortality rates are 9.5% and 34.4% respectively,^[22] while the untreated survival rate for COVID-19, as of September 2020, is over 99% percent for healthy individuals up to age 70 and almost 95% for those over 70.^[23] Contact tracing and PCR testing were instituted early on for Covid-19. These measures resulted in thousands upon thousands of people put into quarantine/isolation who never got sick, entire societies locked down, and face mask wearing required in many locations, yet despite these preventive measures, it seems that we have not been able to contain the virus.^[24],[25] Vaccines have not helped either. Israel, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, now (in September 2021) has the highest per capita rate of Covid-19 cases.^[26] Neither containment measures nor vaccination seem to be effective at mitigating Covid-19.^[27] Thousands of people could have been saved from needless quarantine and the size of the pandemic reduced, however, if the PCR test, used to detect Covid-19 “cases”, was used more judiciously or not at all. A 2007 NY Times article, "Faith in Quick Tests Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t”, showed that PCR tests are not reliable for determining the cause of an illness and are responsible for false epidemics.^[28] Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR, stated that the PCR tests was not developed as a diagnostic tool and if you cycle high enough you can find anything in anybody. A May 2020, study found that PCR cycles above 24 were not reflective of infectious disease.^[29] According to the investigators: 

RT-PCR detects RNA, not infectious virus, thus its ability to determine duration of infectivity of patients is limited. Infectivity is a critical determinant in informing public health guidelines/interventions.

 Therefore, they cultured 90 positive samples on Vero (monkey) cells and found that only 26 samples demonstrated viral growth, indicative of infectious virus. They found no growth in samples that were done with more than 24 cycles or after 8 days from onset of symptoms. This means that any PCR tests which use more than 24 cycles or are done after 8 days from onset of symptoms are most likely false positives. Despite this and similar findings,^[30] tests in the US and other countries regularly use cycles of 35 or more,^[31],[32] except for fully vaccinated people suspected of being “breakthrough” cases; for them the CDC recently reduced the number of cycles to <28.^[33] We also know that patients who are in better health, with more effective immune systems, are less sick. 

In the case of the original SARS or influenza, whether a person develops mild symptoms or pneumonia depends not only on how much virus is in their lungs, but also on their immune response and their overall health.^[34]

 Covid-19 patients are similar. CDC records show that 94% of all people who died with/from Covid had 2-3 comorbidities on average, and were mostly elderly; only 6% of people who died from Covid had no other health issues.^[35] It is apparent that there are many variables involved in recognizing and controlling disease outbreaks; the timing of infectivity is only one of many factors to be considered when discerning the actual need for a vaccine. Please note that there is a lot of data regarding SARS, MERS, and Covid-19 from different sources. Some of them may present information that is different from what we have due to a variety of factors, including their data sources, the amount of accurate data available at any specific point in time (as epidemics progress more data become available and clearer, as do more gaps in knowledge), and the fact that different populations may present differently.   ‍