Super article on why Dolores Cahill believes what she does

Brendan Burgess

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A very good explanation and very lucidly written

Take-home message:
-Dr. Dolores Cahill is a professor at the School of Medicine of University College Dublin who has consistently spread misinformation about COVID-19, including the myth that children wearing masks would have a lower IQ
-University professors who, during the pandemic, have spread clear and harmful falsehoods about COVID-19 are said to be protected by academic freedom, but there is a tension between this freedom and scholastic rigour
-People with science doctorates and medical degrees are not immune to believing untrue things, being motivated by their values, or failing to properly understand and appraise the scientific literature
 
Really excellent article Brendan.
We used to defer to priests, now it's a hodgepodge of celebrities and "professionals" who seem to think that being an expert in one field qualifies you to comment on another unrelated area.
 
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Rally excellent article Brendan.
We used to defer to priests, now it's a hodgepodge of celebrities and "professionals" who seem to think that being an expert in one field qualifies you to comment on another unrelated area.
That was my first thought too.
But this isn't an unrelated area for her, she was more than just a GP\doctor\lecturer.
With her training and experience she should be better placed than the vast majority to understand and interpret the data.

What jumps out to me is how many of her claims had no foundation in data, or studies etc
People can be wrong for the right reasons i.e. a larger study contradicts a smaller one.
Right for the wrong reasons i.e. a guess turns out to be correct
Right for the right reasons.
And wrong for the wrong reasons, which is what we seem to have with Dolores Cahill.
 
That was my first thought too.
But this isn't an unrelated area for her, she was more than just a GP\doctor\lecturer.
With her training and experience she should be better placed than the vast majority to understand and interpret the data.

What jumps out to me is how many of her claims had no foundation in data, or studies etc
People can be wrong for the right reasons i.e. a larger study contradicts a smaller one.
Right for the wrong reasons i.e. a guess turns out to be correct
Right for the right reasons.
And wrong for the wrong reasons, which is what we seem to have with Dolores Cahill.
People from all walks of like can go a bit nuts. I'm not saying that is the case with Dolores. I'm just making a general point that smart people are just as susceptible to hubris and narcissism and myopic self-delusion as the rest of us. Maybe more so.
 
People from all walks of like can go a bit nuts. I'm not saying that is the case with Dolores. I'm just making a general point that smart people are just as susceptible to hubris and narcissism and myopic self-delusion as the rest of us. Maybe more so.
The example of Linus Pauling cited in the article is a high profile case in point!
Only ever two time individual Nobel Prize winner and he ended up promoting Vitamin C quackery.
 
Her strange case gets stranger still...

An arrest warrant has been issued for Irish anti-mask and anti-vaccine campaigner, Dolores Cahill, by a London court.
The live warrant was issued for the arrest of Professor Cahill by Westminster Magistrates Court on August 10 for failure to answer bail in relation to charges of attending an illegal anti-lockdown rally in Trafalgar square in September of last year.
Westminster Magistrates have said a new court date of September 10 has been set for Prof Cahill.


 
The media love doing a hatchet job on Prof Cahill. She is not given any airtime yet people like Luke O Neill who has strong links to big pharma has much airtime as he likes. What has she done or said wrong exactly ? Personally I like to listen to all viewpoints. We are in unprecedented times where the truth is there for everyone to see in plain sight but mass propaganda by media is in full swing 24/7. Where are the excess deaths last year for example? Compared to 2019 or 18 ? What about suicides, missed cancer diagnosis and vaccine related deaths ? How much attention are they getting ? Why do we need vaccine passes when they don’t stop transmission ? Immunity from vaccine is clearly dropping off a cliff after 6 months. What next? Why are we vaccinating kids with a 1/16000 chance of myocarditis when their chance of serious illness from COVID is much less ? Time will tell.
 
Why should we give booster shots when much of the developing world has had none ? Is that not immoral. As Mike Ryan said in recent days like having two life jackets when others have none ??
 
Why are we vaccinating kids with a 1/16000 chance of myocarditis
Have you a link to that?

Edit, I found this from the Harvard Medical School.
It's also worth noting that myocarditis is rarely serious and can be caused by numerous things, including Covod19.
There has been no link established between the vaccine and the condition.
I'm sure plenty of women have become pregnant since getting the vaccine but they vaccine didn't cause that either.
 
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Why should we give booster shots when much of the developing world has had none ? Is that not immoral. As Mike Ryan said in recent days like having two life jackets when others have none ??
Yes, that's exactly what it's like.
To extend the analogy we are already given lifejackets to everyone here, whether they can swim of not and whether they are in the water or not, while those in the rest of the world who can't swim and are in the water are drowning.
 
What has she done or said wrong exactly ?
She's making stuff up and telling lies that are dangerous and will get people killed.
"Big Pharma" is extremely heavily regulated, certainly from a clinical and production side, so being linked to it is a good thing from the point of view of reputational proficiency.
 
Suggest you check out the journal article by Dionne A et al in the August edition of JAMA cardiology ( a reputable publication). The HSE documents quote the above risk, not me. Myocarditis is a serious condition often with long term sequelae. I’m not here to defend Prof Cahill. Her qualifications/ expertise speaks for itself. I will say this. We are very early in this vaccine rollout. The medical profession understands that there is a very long lag in side effect data being reported, validated and subsequently published. Big pharma has rolled out many many medications over the years which have subsequently (after several years in the marketplace) had their licences revoked. It is a very poor media that does not investigate the other side of the coin. There are many reports of adverse reactions on VAERs and elsewhere. Who knows if this vaccine will remain approved into the future? I can’t say. It’s important to keep an open mind. Just on the point of kids wearing masks. My kid had to have speech and language therapy several years ago. Visual face to face contact by me and his therapist (viewing of mouth and tongue operation) was essential to address his treatment. It was emphasised to me verbally and in written letters from the HSE that kids with untreated speech delay do worse at school in the short and long term. Ask any speech and language therapist and I’m quite sure they will confirm that covering children’s faces for long periods of the day would be adverse to their academic development. It’s obvious to me. How would a deaf child manage to learn to lip read ? Prof Cahill makes several valid points worthy of consideration, the Irish media have treated her shamefully IMO.
 
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@Susie2017, nobody is suggesting that vaccines are perfect or that they don't have side effects but there is a subtext to much of the anti-vax stuff that pharmaceutical companies are somehow conspiring to make people unwell or that a vast cohort of scientists, doctors, engineers, technicians and other employees are conspiring to subvert procedures and processes which are in place to ensure products are as safe as possible. Do remember that those same people will take the vaccines, as will their parents, grandparents and children.

There are negatives to wearing masks and taking vaccines and closing down society and we have to balance those negatives against the greater societal and public health positives. That's the job of the government we elect, advised by the public servants we employ. So far they have got it mostly right. The evidence and the consensus is that the positives derived from vaccines greatly outweigh the risks.

The evidence presented by Professor Cahill has been debunked by her peers and her students. The predictions she make have been totally incorrect. Therefore I'll go with facts and evidence and the advice of respected public bodies, governments and the vast majority of the experts.
 
Suggest you check out the journal article by Dionne A et al in the August edition of JAMA cardiology ( a reputable publication).
Read from the same publication.
"Finally, it is important to frame concerns about potential vaccine-associated myocarditis within the context of the current pandemic. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 is a clear cause of serious cardiac injury in many patients. The mechanism of injury may be direct infection, an immune-mediated response, or a combination of direct or indirect effects. Prevalence of cardiac injury may be as high as 60% in seriously ill patients. Notably, nearly 1% of highly fit athletes with mild COVID-19 infection have evidence of myocarditis on cMRI., Given that COVID-19 vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing infection, any risk of rare adverse events following immunization must be carefully weighed against the very substantial benefit of vaccination."
 
It also concludes that the long term outcome of patients with this vaccine induced myocarditis is unclear. How many kids get serious COVID ? In Ireland the maximum number of hospitalised COVID positive children that I have seen is three on any given day. It is very often 0 or 1. There are quite a number of young people presenting with vaccine serious adverse effects enough to write up in reviews like this, there are also other cohorts only recently published. As I said it takes time to get peer reviewed and published. From a medical perspective damaged myocardium cannot repair itself. It leaves behind a scar. That equates to a reduced life expectancy. It would be very unusual for a medicine that causes this side effect in children/young adults to be left on the market unchanged, IMO. Despite the remarkable impetus behind the vaccine strategy the long term data are still outstanding and it is only with a long passage of time that the full list of adverse effects will be elucidated. Immunity is dropping quickly after 6 months yet the language is vaccine ‘breakthrough’ not failure. Like it or not it’s production was rushed bypassing the usual safety protocols. Details on pharmacokinetics / biodistribution are unclear to me. Can anyone answer how long the mRNA remains in the body producing spike proteins for instance ? Does it vary between individuals ? There are many well qualified experts online with cautious views. Some respected Drs are banned from YouTube and Facebook despite their immunology/vaccinology/ICU experience/ qualifications/ lack of vested interest etc. Social media is nowadays telling us who is right and who is wrong. The Taliban are allowed on Twitter but Trump is banned. Strange times we are living in.
 
It also concludes that the long term outcome of patients with this vaccine induced myocarditis is unclear. How many kids get serious COVID ? In Ireland the maximum number of hospitalised COVID positive children that I have seen is three on any given day. It is very often 0 or 1. There are quite a number of young people presenting with vaccine serious adverse effects enough to write up in reviews like this, there are also other cohorts only recently published. As I said it takes time to get peer reviewed and published. From a medical perspective damaged myocardium cannot repair itself. It leaves behind a scar. That equates to a reduced life expectancy. It would be very unusual for a medicine that causes this side effect in children/young adults to be left on the market unchanged, IMO. Despite the remarkable impetus behind the vaccine strategy the long term data are still outstanding and it is only with a long passage of time that the full list of adverse effects will be elucidated. Immunity is dropping quickly after 6 months yet the language is vaccine ‘breakthrough’ not failure. Like it or not it’s production was rushed bypassing the usual safety protocols. Details on pharmacokinetics / biodistribution are unclear to me. Can anyone answer how long the mRNA remains in the body producing spike proteins for instance ? Does it vary between individuals ? There are many well qualified experts online with cautious views. Some respected Drs are banned from YouTube and Facebook despite their immunology/vaccinology/ICU experience/ qualifications/ lack of vested interest etc. Social media is nowadays telling us who is right and who is wrong. The Taliban are allowed on Twitter but Trump is banned. Strange times we are living in.
Very hard to follow this. Maybe break up the text a bit?
 
And the one point I could make sense of - I'm delighted that Trump and nutters like him banned on twitter.
 
Very hard to follow this. Maybe break up the text a bit?
We'd be veering into a medical discussion but a few minutes on Google will show that the concerns are largely unfounded and that vaccinating children is to protect other people as much or more that to protect the children.
The reduced speed limit outside schools isn't to protect my car from damage if I hit a child, although thankfully it also has that effect. Similarly vaccinating children is to protect the wider community and create that heard immunity we keep hearing about.
 
Children should not be vaccinated to protect adults with a vaccine that is still EUA, without full long term data. They should not take the hit for the elderly and most would not want them to. It would be unethical, probably immoral in my view to expect them to do this. As it is still EUA the ethical thing to do would be to use it on vulnerable children i.e at risk of severe disease. Vaccinating then without documenting the necessity is also questionable when many of them will already have antibodies. Herd immunity will not happen with the current coronavirus vaccines as they do not stop carriage or transmission. That has been acknowledged by Prof Pollard Oxford/AZ in an interview last week as well as many others. Vaccines should be given instead to older vulnerable adults in low income countries. As advocated by Dr Ryan WHO. I gather there has been a death this week of a young 23 year old gentleman reportedly after a vaccine in Ireland. I haven't seen it reported on mainstream media yet, so cannot confirm (?why). If that has happened then that is a catastrophe for him and his family. The roll out of the vaccine in the young cohort should be at least reviewed urgently with a view to doing no further harm. All IMO.
 
I gather there has been a death this week of a young 23 year old gentleman reportedly after a vaccine in Ireland. I haven't seen it reported on mainstream media yet, so cannot confirm (?why). If that has happened then that is a catastrophe for him and his family. The roll out of the vaccine in the young cohort should be at least reviewed urgently with a view to doing no further harm. All IMO.
If you can't confirm it don't post it especially when it could easily be scurrilous nonsense.
 
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