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Vivien C Buckley's avatar

Danice and Brianne are people with integrity, I’ve communicated with both on our vaccine support group. It’s telling when I hear someone with the accusatory ad hominem “antivaxxers”, right away I KNOW they’re captured because it comes right out of pharma’s playbook. There are so many really, really disgusting people out there and one of them is Hiltzik. Somehow pharma has no problem locating these shills, his duplicity must be evident in his writings. How do these people live with themselves, how do they justify their dirty deeds? How do they still have a job?

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Vivien C Buckley's avatar

I’m just reading an article in The Hamilton Spectator with the heading U.S. anti-vaxx move worries scientists which cites Angela Rasmussen virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist at Western University in London Ontario, said the U.S. immunization advisory committee has been a global leader in evaluating and making recommendations on vaccines and a useful resource for other countries, including Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

Well, that tells me they do no research for themselves just rubber stamp everything coming out of the States. Really, are they totally oblivious to the corruption? Don’t these people have a responsibility to ensure safety for their own countries?

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Tardigrade's avatar

After reading all this, both transcripts and also the LA Times column in question, he did treat both interviewees respectfully in the column, but still felt it necessary to throw in the obligatory anti-VAX boilerplate accusations. Not to mention calling you "right-wing". So it wasn't just the inflammatory headline (headlines are often written by editors, not article authors).

I was struck by one statement he made in his column, "The AstraZeneca vaccine has been taken off the market due to competition from vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which are more effective." The Wikipedia article about AstraZeneca has a long list of countries, not just in Europe, that halted rollout due to side effects. So sure, eventually it was withdrawn because it wasn't commercially viable anymore. His statement is very misleading.

How is this person still employed at that newspaper?

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Sybil's avatar

Oh, Thacker. What a slime!

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Tardigrade's avatar

Typo: that should be Editor Dean Baquet.

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