Maarten Keulemans blijft er maar op los fabuleren en dat kan want "de Volkskrant". Het debunken van zijn schrijfsels bleek zinloos want argumenten verliezen het van autoriteit en hij doet er zelf niets mee - of hij kan niet nadenken. Hoe dan ook: het resultaat is hetzelfden: nihil.
As far as I'm concerned, the tweet below may haunt him for life, just as the reptiles still harass Thierry (that was just an adequate metaphor) and the handyman still stalks Maurice (Read The Corona Murder Case1Corona Murder case: https://virusvaria.nl/de-corona-moordzaak/) - metaforisch gesproken natuurlijk. Want in metaforen mag je liegen.
This time Maarten tackled Steve Kirsch. Not that Steve is never wrong, but you have to come from a good background to see through him. Maarten is wearing trousers that are much too big. Perhaps he thinks he is eligible for the $1 million that Kirsch has offered to the pro-vaccine expert who wants to have a public debate with him.
That's not going to happen to him.
Zijn kritiek was namelijk dermate stompzinnig, dat ik denk dat ik moet uitleggen hoe de gedachtengang precies was - al blijft ook dat speculatie want harde logica zit er simpelweg niet in. Maar ik was altijd al sterk in poëzie-analyse dus ik durf het wel aan.
Bekijk eerst goed de tweet met grafiek hieronder, van Steve. Steve vraagt: "Als de Covidprikken hartproblemen terugdringen, hoe leg je deze Noorse statistiek dan uit?" De grafiek toont de toename van hartmedicatie (cardiac med.) per 1k.
Snap je 'm al? De eerste fout.
1. Yearly totals are not a date axis
Apparently Maarten sees the x-axis as a continuous date axis. So in his head, the year 2021 takes place between the tick marks 2020 and 2021. According to him, 2021 represents the position on January 1, 2021. Above the 2021 number we see the total for 2020. At least that's what Maarten thinks. Because only if you look at it this way, the trend is already increasing in Covid year 2020 and not in vaccination year 2021. Of course, that is not possible at all because the vaccines are safe. That idea - that outcome - is already there before the rational analysis process starts, or what has to go before it.
He does not understand that above a tick mark with a year, the value of that entire year is actually shown, you could say: the position as of December 31. This is pure dilettantism. Something for an introductory course in graphically represented data.
Ander puntje: zou hij het hebben laten weten als hem was opgevallen dat er twee keer "2015" op de x-as staat? Dat heeft hij vast gemist want dat had zeker een sneer opgeleverd. Maar het wordt nog bonter.
And I don't even mean the sound, base ad hominem about a donation button. Read and shudder.
2. X en Y verwisselen: "foutje"
He complains that the x-axis starts at 48. But if I look closely myself, it is actually much worse: the x-axis does not start at 48 but at 2013! 2012 years are being hidden away!
He has trouble remembering what is X and what is Y in a graph.
His accusation here boils down to the fact that the neutral niet bij 0 begint. Dat vindt hij misleidend. Als een dyslect op het Groot Nationaal Dictee die verontwaardigd is als iets met 'dt' wordt gespeld.
3. Axes also tell a story
Maarten gets confused by axes that don't start at 02Y axis magnifies HUGELY: https://x.com/mkeulemans/status/1591788854708764672?s=20. Logaritmische assen 'verdoezelen' dat het in werkelijkheid veel steiler gaat3Logarithmic obfuscation: https://x.com/mkeulemans/status/1613700310685343744?s=20. He also finds the use of two y-axes suspicious4MC over multiple y-axes https://virusvaria.nl/ongehoorde-kritiek-van-maarten-keulemans-deel-2/#:~:text=As%20links%20is%20anders%20dan%20as%20rechts. He sees that as deception: the wappies are constantly trying to mislead us!
Eigenlijk bemoeit hij zich met dingen die hij niet begrijpt en klaagt vervolgens dat hij misleid wordt. Hij had er natuurlijk ook gewoon wat meer tijd in kunnen steken om te doorgronden wat er staat. Tenminste - je mag hopen dat dat had geholpen.
The fact that a y-axis that does not start at zero is “manipulative” is one thing classic layman's misunderstanding. In scientific literature, whether it is statistics, econometrics or epidemiology, it is common to cut off the y-axis.
- An absolute zero adds nothing if the variation is relatively small.
- A full range from zero to sixty would squash all nuances, especially since nothing can be seen between 0 and 45.
- Graphs about changes, trends and correlations should illustrate differences. Therefore, you scale the axis to the relevant interval.
Dat leer je letterlijk in de eerste week van een basiscursus wetenschappelijke visualisatie maar als Maarten door een telescoop kijkt roept hij: 'Bedrog! Dit lijkt veel groter dan het is!'
Dat zijn dan weer kapitale blijken van... onwennigheid met data? Deze wetenschapsjournalist heeft nog nooit nagedacht over wat grafieken eigenlijk zijn, hoe die een verhaal vertellen.
4. Welk 'hartmedicijn'?
Hij stelt vragen zonder zich werkelijk te interesseren. Dat blijkt ook weer als hij niet eens de moeite neemt om na te denken over 'welk hartmedicijn' het gaat. Alsof het over een specifiek medicijn gaat. Luiwammes. Medicijnen hebben eigen ATC-classificaties, afhankelijk van het doel. Hier zal de Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification are intended, developed by WHO. Appropriately, main group C contains cardiovascular medications.
ATC main group C
C = Cardiovascular system
This includes almost all medicines aimed at:
- hart
- blood vessels
- blood pressure
- heart rhythm
- heart failure
Common subgroups
- C01 – Cardiac therapy
(bv. digoxin, anti-arrhythmic) - C02 – Antihypertensiva
- C03 – Diuretic
- C07 – Beta blockers
- C08 – Calcium antagonists
- C09 – ACE-remmers & ARB’s
- C10 – Lipidenverlagers (statins)
Examples
- Metoprolol → C07AB02
- Enalapril → C09AA02
- Furosemide → C03CA01
- Atorvastatin → C10AA05
Let's check if it's correct, I found the source within two minutes.5Source graph https://jarle.substack.com/p/norway-continued-increase-in-cardiac Yes, it was true.
Wat een luie, incompetente, valse prikpropagandist. En dan ook nog even snel wat desinformatie eroverheen: "Mijn gok: andere voorschrijf-richtlijn." Hecht iemand belang aan Maartens gok? Hij heeft daarvoor vast weer even een snel telefoontje gepleegd: "welke smoes kan ik gebruiken?" Zo'n voorschriftwijziging zou ingrijpend en zeker gedocumenteerd en internationaal afgestemd zijn. Daar is geen spoor van te vinden.
En zo'n richtlijn, stijgt die ook met de jaren...? Manmanman. Data-betisme met een megafoon.
These data can be shaped even more dramatically. With trend lines or, as here, by comparing the increase in two 5-year periods: the percentage increase from 2016-2020 (blue) and 2020-2024 (purple) for the different age groups per 1000 inhabitants.
How can someone constantly display his ignorance and still be taken seriously by readers who say they appreciate a quality newspaper? It's really serious. That amiable writer with his smooth social chat once again made it clear that not much is happening in his head. In his position that looks very much like culpable negligence.
Maarten ziet liever een Y-as vanaf 0, zonder ge-cherrypickte leeftijden - dan zie je vanzelf dat er eigenlijk helemaal niets bijzonders aan de hand is in de jongere cohorten... Doorlopen mensen!
Or not? Here all ages per 1000, men (blue) and women (orange) separately:
Footnotes
- 1Corona Murder case: https://virusvaria.nl/de-corona-moordzaak/
- 2Y axis magnifies HUGELY: https://x.com/mkeulemans/status/1591788854708764672?s=20
- 3Logarithmic obfuscation: https://x.com/mkeulemans/status/1613700310685343744?s=20
- 4
- 5
I needed the FHI tables to convince myself that 2022 is not the 1st year in which the vaccinated are part of the graph, as Keulemans claims, but the 2nd.
In my opinion, the dividing line between before and after vaccination would have been better placed in the middle between 2020 and 2021 instead of 2020.
The graph for all ages shows an increase from 2015; that fits in with Keulemans (increase started before vaccinations).
By the way, the article contains a bit too much swearing for my taste (“virtuous…”).
I'm really sick of all this nonsense about donation buttons. Check out what kind of building they are in. Who sponsors that?
Keep an eye on this: this is not about Norway or how the figures actually work. It's about his 'criticism'. Let me unpack one random cohort for you. This Norwegian source does not go back further than 2004. The increase was already underway there.
This would make it possible to nuance the bar graph (the 'dramatic presentation') - although the kink will certainly remain a problem in 2020.
But that is probably all too difficult, therefore too time-consuming and too unimportant. That can be covered up with excuses. Scoring points cheaply, that's what it's all about.
Thanks for calling MK to order, but it won't make much difference. I'm afraid that this fungus, in his own eyes, has already risen to such a height that nothing touches him anymore.
It never ceases to amaze me that adult gentlemen can go on such rants - and at the same time think so poorly and uncritically. If they have to go all the way to Norway to dig up figures, you can bet there is cherry picking.
Just checked in the Netherlands: this is the state of affairs there in ATC code C:
2020 61.886
2021 59.986
2022 59.743
2023 59.934
2024 60.373
In short: Anton, you have once again fallen into a trap set by the anti-vaxers. And you are now dutifully doing what those anti-vaxers prefer: attacking those who do look at it critically. (And of course I'm the first to admit that I shot from the hip, for example with the swapping of the x and y axes!)
By the way: I find qualifications such as 'virtue retarded' and 'lazy, incompetent, false propaganda propagandist' disappointing and I leave it to you. Why on earth would I be pro-vaccination? Everyone should know that, right?
Source for Dutch figures: https://www.gipdatabank.nl/databank?infotype=g&label=00-totaal&tabel_g_00-totaal=B_01-basis&geg=vs&spec=&item=
And I invite you: just look up these numbers for, say, the five best vaccinated and five worst vaccinated European countries?
Illustrating a fiction with a picture and presenting it as fact is “critical viewing?” Haha
I'm curious about the increase in heart medication in 2025. In 2012 it was still a combination of 7 drugs, called "the golden seven", but the side effects were so intense that it became "the golden 5" and so less and less and more lifestyle advice, but with an aging population, so there are no significant differences. In 2020, no one was allowed to go to the doctor with heart complaints and for many it turned out not to be necessary. After the injection campaign started, medication use initially decreased, partly due to the many cardiac arrests that people did not survive. Despite more conscious (read more carefully, especially in young people who suddenly have to visit a cardiologist more often...) prescribing, use is increasing while a decrease would be more logical. I will be concerned if it does not quickly become clear that it was propaganda because there are already so many victims.
My knowledge of cardiology concerns the Netherlands, so I rely on people like Steve Kirsch, Aseem Malhotra and others regarding the figures from abroad and of course Anton and others. These are all people who, without any self-interest, are seriously concerned about the future of people who have been injected with MRI, including pregnant women.
Mr. Keulemans, your undertone with words like “donate button Steve” (and you are allowed to do that) provokes opposition, which you then abuse because you supposedly always admit your mistakes “off the cuff” because the others have to go all the way to Norway, etc. We canceled De Volkskrant because of you. Partly because of you, both my parents did not survive the corona period (not because of Covid itself but because of the measures), so it goes a bit further than words. Thank you for your response here, but it came very close to this (very reliable) site that I trusted.
Day “c”, perhaps it would be most useful if you email (initial dot last name at newspaper title dot nl). You're now calling me a murderer, and I'm curious why you feel that way.
Mr Keulemans, this is exactly what you always do. I am not calling you a murderer (maybe that is the voice of your conscience? I hope so!), but look up the definition of murderer and you will read that I am NOT calling you that. Perhaps you always jump to conclusions so quickly and shoot from the hip too often, even based on scientific substantiation that gives a different sound than your side of the story? The reason I don't use my full name has to do with my family, you will have to respect that. By the way, it has been proven that my parents died from the corona measures. You have contributed to the propaganda and you continue to do so, so you are complicating the path to justice for the many victims and relatives. I don't feel that way, that's true!
Day 'c', you write: "partly because of you, both my parents did not survive the corona period", that's why.
Anyway, the invitation stands.
“Going on a rampage” is a bad thing, isn't it? And then I also held back. I'll just peel off your comment.
The fallacy/framing
Nagging about Steve Kirsch's donation button is a form of framing, in this case to make him suspicious or ridiculous in the eyes of your readers. That is an 'ad hominem' fallacy, nothing substantive, and that sounds a bit cheap coming from someone who pays his rent by writing bread for a concern partly sponsored by government contributions. Easy to talk from your position of virtue in your luxurious office environment. That regarding 'virtue' and 'ad hominem'. Easy, right?
'Virtuous' ad hominem
Throwing in such a fallacy is of a questionably low intellectual level. You can't go much lower on the argumentation ladder. The qualification 'Retarded' is then quite adequate. It really could have been worse:
All joking aside: Just don't do those ad hominems anymore, you're way too smart for that...
From 'trick propaganda'
Even in this answer you are again pushing your pro-coronavirus agenda. These are Norwegian figures, which clearly do not match the claim that corona shots would lead to a reduction in heart problems. We see such claims in all kinds of studies. According to a recent, much cited French research as much as 25% to 30% fewer heart problems.
How does that fit with the apparently rising heart problems in very highly vaccinated Norway? Then what on earth is going on in that country? Or with that research? Those are the questions at stake.
But what do you do? You're going into sting propaganda mode. Because oh dear, imagine if those injections did NOT protect against heart problems...!? Because that is the focus. Not 'anti-vax' rhetoric about vaccine damage or death.
Talking about “uncritical thinking”.
‘Vals’
So which 'false' (another loaded word on my own account) deflection technique do you use? You're just going to talk about something else. “It doesn't seem that way in the Netherlands.” So what? I didn't hear you say to those French researchers: "We don't see that 25%-30% improvement in heart problems at all in the Netherlands. How do you explain that?" Then you won't notice that. Not even shooting from the hip.
You say that you look critically, but you don't act accordingly. You didn't even look at the data. You 'shoot from the hip' on a graph that you want to burn down a priori without understanding it or even looking at it properly. Then nothing remains of your criticisms. Even from the hip you only shoot in one direction. That indicates incompetence, you just don't do this, you should do your best, especially in your position.
Looking inside your skull
And now you ask me 'Why on earth would I be in favor of vaccination?' But Maarten, how am I supposed to know that? I just note that it is so. There are all kinds of reasons and circumstances. Because vaccination helps, maybe? Because vaccinations have saved millions of lives? Because you have cognitive dissonance and/or you have completely painted yourself into a corner? Because the government is an important advertiser and you get the scoop? Just make it up. I just shoot from the hip.
You are really the one who has to find out for yourself, at least if you really don't know yet. If you want someone to look into your head, it is better to ask a psychologist or psychiatrist. I know a neurologist who would probably be willing to do that.
By the way, I would like to thank you for your invitation to historically map the heart medications of 10 countries. On a previous occasion I did a lot of work in the hope that you would respond substantively to it. I'm not going to do that again. I just saw that you placed a graph on X. I can also cherry pick, even from the same dataset. Take a look at the number of heart medication users since 2020.
(I'll tell you: it doesn't mean anything anyway because they are absolutes, there is no history, no age categories, etc. etc. and it is also completely off-topic.)
I object to the negative designation: Antivaxer. Vaccination is nothing more than injecting a healthy body with toxic substances, in the hope of achieving something positive and not causing any damage to the body. We have long been told that this is how this principle works, but there is no evidence of it. Whether vaccination works or not, and whether it is harmful or not, cannot be determined. It's not even scientific. More trial and error. Or a faith, if you prefer. If you don't like that, then you're an anti-vaxer? I say, that's totally fine, I'm an anti-vaxer. That seems the healthiest to me. There are also provaxers, and that seems more risky to me, but everyone has to know that for themselves. Faith cannot be guided or explained scientifically. So antivaxer is a positive word and, in my opinion, a healthy position, nothing more and nothing less.
Interesting discussion, and at first I didn't want to get involved, but the temptation is too great. I have no intention of offending or offending anyone. I would really like to better understand why emotions are running so high on this subject.
Before I continue: no, I do not have a medical background, but I am the proud owner of a reasonably healthy body, and I would like to decide for myself what type of medical procedures I undergo.
Brief description of how someone can move from being relatively vaccination neutral to 'anti-vaxx'.
Before the Covid period, I was relatively critical about vaccinations, but I did, for example, take hepatitis B and Tetanus vaccines in 2019 for a trip to Vietnam. Flu shot never taken more instinctively than substantiated. Only learned more later, and then the decision was only confirmed.
In December 2020 we got covid. At least a positive PCR test at the GGD indicated this, later I learned that the PCR test was never intended for use as it was used. And also extremely unreliable.
After a week and a relatively mild course, we assumed that we had built up natural immunity. The life-saving vaccines were offered about 2 months later, in early 2021. I had already read several articles, including one in Nature that confirmed that natural immunity is -logically- superior to vaccinations. The article in Nature ended with the advice to vaccinate anyway. Separate. Called the GGD and asked whether it was useful to get a vaccine after an infection, and tried to get an explanation as to why that would be better. They didn't get any further than: 'it's just better'. The RIVM also recommended vaccination and the website stated that natural immunity was inferior to vaccines.
In the meantime, we understood that a new form of vaccination had been introduced, the mRNA vaccines. Formerly known as immune therapy. Also delved into that and tried to understand the differences with the traditional vaccines. Vaccines that passed tests in record time. By definition, it is therefore impossible to determine long-term effects. So we let that one pass us by. I have never been seriously ill again, but I have had very unpleasant experiences with QR code access.
Then I also delved into traditional vaccines. Confidence in the usefulness and effectiveness of vaccinations feels almost religious. But what is that trust actually based on? I have come to the conclusion that this trust is based on carefully maintained myths. The panic about measles almost seems medieval. People who do not want to have their child vaccinated because they believe that natural childhood illnesses are preferable to artificial interventions are denounced.
You can call me an anti-vaxxer in the meantime, I don't understand how that can be an insult. There may well be vaccines that are useful, but both the American and Dutch vaccine schedules are becoming increasingly extensive. No research has been done into the consequences of all these vaccinations, often administered simultaneously. That is what Robert Kennedy is asking for, decent testing of all those childhood vaccines and freedom of choice and insight into possible risks. But in the Dutch media, Kennedy is consistently called an 'anti-vaxxer'. The mainstream media, including De Volkskrant, consistently portray Kennedy as a dangerous madman. People who take the time to really listen and see what he is saying see an extremely reasonable, intelligent man who wants to improve the health of the average American who has gone completely out of control. Against the pharmaceutical lobby. The masses in the Netherlands are lulled to sleep by our mainstream media. Abolishing hepB injections for newborns doesn't even make the news.
As a thought experiment, try to imagine that vaccines do more harm than good, is that really such a strange proposition? Try to empathize with parents whose children have been maimed for life or even died. Are they all anti-vaxxers and what purpose do they serve through publicity? The people who are critical of injections have nothing to gain, in fact they have a lot to lose. Could it be that they raise valid points and that a pharmaceutical/medical complex actually has a great interest in vilifying and ridiculing critics.
I don't know if Maarten reads this, but I hope he makes an attempt to be open to people who are critical of the current state of affairs.
Thanks Cees, I certainly read it, but I'm also on holiday at the moment, so I won't answer too promptly.
“immune therapy”
Would that be the same as so-called immunotherapy? Is that also based on mRNA?
Immunotherapy is the same as immunotherapy; This is a treatment that attempts to make the immune system stronger so that it can attack cancer better. The goal of immunotherapy is to make the tumors smaller.
( https://www.erasmusmc.nl/nl-nl/kankerinstituut/patientenzorg/behandelingen/immunotherapie )
mRNA in cancer control has been experimental for much longer, and still is.
In 1990, researchers from the University of Wisconsin (Wolff et al.) showed that administered mRNA could cause cells to produce proteins. Soon after, scientists began to speculate that this type of coding RNA could be used to train the immune system against both viruses and tumor antigens.
Around 2005–2010 it became clear that lipid nanoparticles could be used to protect mRNA and get it into cells.
Before 2020, more than 20 clinical trials with mRNA immunotherapy were already underway.
These mRNAs usually coded for proteins typically found on cancer cells, such as MAGE-A3, NY-ESO-1, CEA, PSMA, etc.
Results were very mixed: sometimes mild immune activation, rarely true tumor regression. Many side effects, biodistribution problems, etc.
Many studies were funded by BioNTech and CureVac, who then wanted to refine their platforms — the later COVID jabs simply used the same technological framework they were testing for cancer.
mRNA had therefore never been used successfully. It's just relatively easy and quick to design and put together, which is why the industry is pushing it. The Covid emergency broke the law and governments quickly demanded a vaccine. That was the golden opportunity for this experimental technology.
Back to the fire
After the loose, false, irresponsible speculation about where the smoke (increased use of heart medication) comes from, MK everything under the belief: 'Covid was terrible and vaccines brought salvation'.
Now no more smoke (increase in heart medication) but fire in Norway (increase in heart and cancer deaths. See:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10801945/
Furthermore, in terms of fire, e.g. demonstrably a lot of cardiac deaths in the US in the pre-vaccine Covid period. (“You see, it was that terrible corona that caused cardiac death”). To preventively not to perpetuate the believer in their faith. The following:
Eline van de Broek has shown that the stagnant patient flow, which cardiologists noted early on, is also probably to blame. (Maybe MK has already been forgotten?).
P.S. due to limited circulation in the first year (see Insightful RIVM research), by all measures, it is much more likely that the above perverse effect of fear and measures played a role.
Clearly an effect of measures and the extreme fear of Covid from WHO, OMT and our government (for demonstrable, objective, extreme perceived danger of this bleak wind of fear, see MdH's research viapeil.nl into estimated IFR in different age categories).
However, after avoiding cardiac care in the first corona year, it appears that excess mortality still occurs during the omicron heart period and cancer also leads to more mortality. So there is still an additional vaccination effect, also on cancer? Could just be.
Or was the then widely spreading omicron now the culprit and responsible after all.
This offers another escape for the persistent believers. However, it does require a revision of their previous acknowledgment that Omicron was milder. We'll see.
I made a mistake. Actually meant to say 'gene therapy', but I wrote it a bit too quickly I think. In itself it is still correct, because before that time it had only been used as immune therapy. More luck than wisdom. A discussion can easily take a different direction.
I’d love to have a live 1:1 chat with Maarten about what the data shows.
Emotion(s) are running high on this subject.
Let me also use a metaphor.
I am an avid metal detector seeker.
We, those searchers, are regularly confronted with people who walk past and shout “beep, beep, beep” and then laugh even harder when they follow after shouting “have you found the treasure yet?”
No idea what makes them laugh so much, but “humanity” seems to have a need to show others that they themselves are “normal” and that they think the same as the big picture.
Explaining what such a hobby adds to you as a person has no effect on this response at all. It also makes no difference to the historical archaeological finds that have been made as a result.
You are and will remain a fool if you walk around with something like that.
Only when you find their lost wedding ring on the beach, only then, but only in the safety of 1 on 1, will they be willing to admit that it is a nice hobby.
However, as soon as the group is present again, they obediently shout “beep, beep, beep” “have you found the treasure yet?”
There is really more investigative journalism here than just measuring each other up.
Maarten, your point about the guidelines is not a wild guess. Target values for antilipemics and antihypertensives have been/are being reduced in all European countries (thanks to the ESC guidelines). This means that more and more people are eligible for these resources (which belong to the C ATC group). You can take this on my authority: I've been in that business for years, and can send you links if you want; I am listed as the author of the most recent Dutch cardiology guideline (for statins and antihypertensives).
Maarten, your plaster database link shows the number of prescriptions, not the number of users. If you convert it to the number of users, you also see an increase in users of heart medication between 2020 and 2025 (but less spectacular than compared to Norway).
Maarten/Anton: where the actual large increases in users can be seen is in the B ATC Group (antithrombotic B01). There is also a guideline component here (more and more people are eligible for antithrombotic agents), but perhaps also a vaccine component. Both can be the cause of a number of things and it is (in my opinion) impossible to say whether it is due to a guideline, vaccine, measures or everything together when you look at these numbers.
-How can we find a conclusive answer to this question?
My suggestion is to look VERY carefully at this publication by my former colleagues:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40172984/
At national level (CBS micro data) we look at the incidence of pulmonary embolism in the years 20-22 compared to 2015-19. I quote from the abstract: 'Pulmonary embolism incidence in the Dutch population decreased from 2015 to 2019 but markedly increased by 23% (95% confidence interval 20%-26%), 52% (48%-56%), and 7% (4%-9%) in 2020-22 (vs. 2019), respectively.'
You will receive antithrombotic drugs for pulmonary embolism. The increase in pulmonary embolism was mainly seen in 2020 (measures/changed protocols including long-term ICU admission) and in 2021 (measures plus vaccination) and then disappeared again. This means that the guideline is no longer an explanation (pulmonary embolism incidence actually decreased until 2020 and there were no guideline changes for antithrombotic agents between 2015-2022) and measures or vaccination (or both) remain as an explanation.
Of course you can say: 'and covid'. But that is only possible if you believe in the Covid spaghetti monster. You are probably familiar with Stefan Lanka's experiments and also the criticism of the Drosten paper (where authors use a computer model to determine Sarscov2 and then develop the PCR based on it). Long story short: there was no Sarscov2 and therefore no Covid. What remains is vaccine and/or measures.
Why not have a discussion about this in a room where we sit around the table together. If you want, I think I can still do that at my old employer with my old academic friends. Perhaps we can then come to an agreement.
Maarten and Anton both have my e-mail address and can email me if they show interest in this meeting (if both Anton and Maarten see benefit in such a conversation, I think I can make it possible to have the conversation in that hospital where I worked with my former colleagues).
I still notice it.
I thank Mr. Keulemans for the invitation, that is a waste of time. “A murderer is someone who deliberately kills (murder)”. The circumstances that caused my parents to die are very complex, but they would still have lived healthily if it had not been for the propaganda surrounding corona. (Except for a fatal accident for which most people pay insurance... this is irrelevant but I'll write it down anyway for Mr. Keulemans). Is spreading propaganda as done by, among others, Mr. Keulemans and his editor-in-chief of the Volkskrant “speaking with one mouth” called “complicit in the suffering”? No idea, I have no words for it. I wish justice for all victims and relatives and am extremely grateful to those who strive for it! Anyway, Willem and Steve, I hope Mr. Keulemans accepts your invitations. Mr Keulemans, have a pleasant continuation of your holiday. Greetings from c
The increase in pulmonary embolism diagnoses in 2020 is all the more remarkable because at the time pulmonary embolism was sometimes mistaken for corona, as you have demonstrated.
'There was no SARS COV 2 and therefore no Covid.
Remains about vaccine and/or measures'.
Nice statement that I agree with.
I think measures (lockdown, keeping your distance, washing hands and supermarket trolleys, wearing face masks, keeping your distance outside and ultimately vaccinating) have had a fear-mongering effect that can only be mitigated by following up on these matters (or perhaps using lidocaine ;-).
Could it be that (in addition to the misdiagnosis regarding pulmonary embolism that you made) this wave of fear has also made people susceptible to infections. CDC research showed that the risk of death upon admission with Covid increased, in addition to diabetes and obesity, due to having an anxiety disorder.
Hyperventilation is also seen as an anxiety disorder. I also came across a hypothesis somewhere (from an ambulance employee) that people with low saturation values (which can occur after a hyperventilation attack) could be wrongly mistaken as Covid patients.
I can imagine if, based on this (and of course a hypersensitive positive PCR test), you are intubated with a large amount of abdominal fat on the abdomen and ventilated (thus blocking diaphragmatic breathing) you will not get better and it may even be fatal.
What do you think about this?
By the way, couldn't those spheres that Maarten saw at Eric Snijders simply be exosomes, by-products of the inflamed cells? Correlation between their presence and a positive PCR test for Covid certainly does not constitute causality.
Cutting and pasting with a computer to identify viruses seems unreliable to me.
But apparently seeing (of virus through cryo EM) works for some people to believe!! For me it remains a Sinterklaas story.
(In small, gullible children, the belief in Sinterklaas himself seems to remain intact if someone dresses up as Sinterklaas in front of their eyes. I see some analogy here ;-).
(Do not rule out that viruses are commensal in any case and not the poison they have been assigned with their name).
Curious about your look at this.
Somehow I find it astonishing, such a statement in denial of absolutely all facts. And I honestly don't understand him.
Do you really think that all scientific bodies in the world, all labs, plus all universities have gone into a massive form of mass psychosis? Here we are simply dealing with a virus that has been isolated, multiplied in a controlled manner in cell lines, transferred to laboratory animals (which makes them sick) and genetically sequenced down to the last RNA letter - see the detailed family trees of virus evolution, based on *hundreds of thousands* of times that routine: isolate virus from patients, sequence genome with the Sanger method, upload code to database.
I think you just mean: I thought the measures were disproportionate. Of course you can agree with that - and some of the measures were also disproportionate, as I have often noticed. But to now say that the coronavirus itself was a chimera? That seems really demonstrable to me.
About disproportionate measures, see, among others:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/we-hebben-winkelwagentjes-en-volleyballen-voor-niets-lopen-schrobben~b8319430/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/we-hebben-onze-handen-misschien-voor-niets-stuk-gewassen-maar-niemand-die-het-hardop-zegt~bfb947d8/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/afstand-houden-thuiswerken-scholen-dicht-waren-de-nederlandse-coronamaatregelen-effectief~b0734614/
I'm not a fan of Maarten either. But I have learned that data analyzes can only be done properly if you have thorough knowledge of the subject. That is certainly the case with 'science journalists'. They just write about what someone else says. In addition, one must keep a close eye on what a scientist claims, what criticism he receives for this, and how this is subsequently countered. You can learn something from that.
From there, I find it difficult to estimate the truth of all that data.
But if I peer between the eyelids and add up all the (micro) data regarding cardiovascular damage, the phenomena of myocarditis and vasculitis from Covax, medication intake, etc., then it does not surprise me that one of the longer-term effects of MRI vaccination causes cardiovascular damage. Perhaps not yet of such a nature that thousands of them would fall over. But enough to prove it statistically.
So without thorough knowledge of the subject, you think you can make a statement... 😉 Be careful. I wouldn't just dare to do that. That will be a huge job, if you want to substantiate that. There are also trends of medications that are becoming more or less popular among cardiologists (usually less so) and a serious patient really needs to be prescribed something. Figure it out. In the Netherlands, the number of patients prescribed heart medication is increasing quite sharply (5% since 2020), but that does not say everything.
For example, there is a subcategory that is declining sharply. I think that is just as worthy of investigation. Then you should also ask cardiologists whether they a) even know or can estimate which subcategories these could be and b) why. Purely based on figures, it is all less clear than mortality, even though medicines are an important cause of death. Dick Bijl often mentions that.
And even then: how bad is that, medication as a cause of death in seriously ill people? “He was going to die anyway; at least we tried…” or “He did die from the side effects, but otherwise he would have died much sooner” or “…at least he had a few extra good years.” It is really a completely different story than preventively injecting healthy people. Including children.
“All children aged 6 months and older are eligible for vaccination.” (juni 2022)
Based on minuscule trials. Pfizer only had ~1,700 children between 6 months and 4 years in the vaccine group, Moderna had ~2,300 children in that age range.
The follow-up duration was ≤ 2 months after the second dose in babies with a blank learning immune system.
The first cut is the deepest.
The effectiveness was measured in relative risk reduction of mild infections, not of hospitalization or death, which occurs extremely rarely or never in healthy children (after all, they are vaccinated). And so we chat away from the subject again.
The world is full of rabbit holes. Anyone who tries to cover such a rabbit hole with fallacies and bullshit arguments must either ask themselves why that is, or have themselves thoroughly checked.
Exploring such a rabbit hole is usually prohibited. I have experienced that very often, but afterwards I was able to go my own way or it even had a positive result so that many more people benefited from it. Since 2020, the dens have been closed and tamped and are monitored. My university graduate children were always able to continue my work, but that also changed immediately in the spring of 2020. People with fallacies and bullshit arguments help that surveillance consciously or unconsciously, paid or unpaid and often with a passion reminiscent of religion. The government goes the extra mile with letters to young parents, for example, with the text “You have not had your child vaccinated…!!!” Very threatening, while it could be that someone has been vaccinated but not registered because that option is (still) available in our country. Privacy is also a rabbit hole that they are covering and tamping down. It has nothing to do with health (and safety), which is very clearly visible. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly visible…
Certainly enough to prove statistically!
I am in the wind energy business myself. Not because I think the climate is falling over, or other motivating reasons. No, I'm just an (E) technician through and through, and I just think it's fantastic how all those different parts are linked together into a workable whole.
And I also do a lot of analysis on that, and look at common malfunctions. How to improve or prevent.
Now there was someone who linked the status list to canceled materials. The idea behind that was quite interesting. A 'layman' could therefore reasonably estimate which part was possibly defective. But blindly relying on such systems/data analyzes is not always smart.
A wind turbine is made up of various data buses. And now it is true that CAN buses require different distribution boards than serial buses.
Yet the most frequently written off material in the event of a SERIAL bus error was a CAN distribution board. A planner/work planner then directs a technician, looks at the list of most frequently written off materials, and provides the wrong printout.
The technician replaces that PCB, but the fault/data interruption is not resolved and will return.
The system therefore continues to maintain itself. Another line was charged for this fault and the indicator went from 50% to 51%. The CAN print was replaced for these faults. Especially in larger organizations with many 'ordinary' technicians (without thorough system knowledge), the first-time-right indicator will quickly drop due to these data analyses.
In fact, all kinds of other analyzes are also flawed as a result. Development needs to develop a better print because it breaks so often, etc.
The correct analysis is that the technicians need better training because they replace parts that have nothing to do with the fault.
But I think we mean the same thing. The human body is complex. Simply putting some data together and drawing conclusions from it is very difficult for a layman. Then you really need to have some insider information and knowledge.
Frank van de Goot therefore also advocates allowing health insurance to continue for a little longer after death and thus the possibility of recommending an autopsy to surviving relatives. With more autopsies, more clarity in causes of death. Theo Schetters uses different data sets than Ronald Meester recently explained, thus providing more clarity in excess mortality. It's all complex, but in the meantime we all have to deal with it.
Where does Theo Schetters say that, about that other dataset? Was that about admissions, hospitalization, causes of death, mortality rates? Do you mean the recent conversation at DNW? What clarity did he mean, do you know?
I do indeed think he meant that conversation at DNW the other day. Listened to this yesterday and he talks about this. I think it is best to listen to this yourself to hear exactly what he says/means.
Indeed, that conversation is what I mean. Also the data from the nursing homes. Have I listened too hopefully or is there something useful in it?
Maarten, thank you for your detailed response.
Offers a lot to shoot for. I will now limit myself to Sars-Cov-2 (Covid).
I notice a significant fear regarding Covid, and I think you share this with the regular Volkskrant readers you claim to serve. Fear is also ingrained in the name, S stands for Severe.
The question is whether this fear is justified and has not been unnecessarily fed in the mainstream media, including our Volkskrant (indeed, I am also a reader myself).
After an initial downplay of fear by various authorities, including in the Netherlands, the WHO subsequently focused entirely on fear and this was duly followed almost everywhere.
At the beginning of 2020, nothing else seemed to exist. Even the common flu disappeared completely (was all, including older forms, still tested?).
If you had flu-like symptoms, you were tested specifically for Covid with a hypersensitive PCR test
(The sensitivity of the test, the number of selected cycles was released and I suspect unnecessarily high. Logically: if you as a company did not register the covid and someone later turned out to have this seriously, then you were not in the right place.)
Suppose that in addition to an active 'old', undetected flu, you still had a trace of Covid, this was guaranteed to be removed (on one or a few small parts of the entire Covid fingerprint) and you were guaranteed to be branded as a Covid victim.
(Regardless of the question of whether you were contagious with that positive Covid test or whether it was responsible for your flu symptoms.)
In short, fear was blinding at that time and in blind panic the Serious Deadly Sars-Cov-2 was seen everywhere.
The result was measures that were particularly detrimental to the socio-economically disadvantaged and people covered by the Wlz, and led to 'Covid' mortality among them.
The well-endowed did not die (I think it was observed in a Nivel study).
It is a pity that nothing has been done in the Volkskrant to temper this fear and thus weaken the call for measures that have proven to have perverse effects (including vaccination, but more about that later).
But apparently the journalists and editors shared the fear of their readers and thus a kind of small, but no less tragic 'ant fear spiral of death' was created.
[In advance: to my dismay, the web links I wanted to add in this response are lost. This comment with links is on my substack!]
Hello gentlemen,
Back from vacation I read your comments. And I have to say it from my heart: your position on this subject remains something that I absolutely cannot understand.
I think I understand the underlying feeling. Your reactions express such dissatisfaction and frustration. One has been kicked out of his hospital, the other feels like a laughed at metal detector seeker, the next is still furious about the corona measures, Anton seems bitter that I work in such a 'luxury office environment'.
Everything is allowed, of course. But the fact that it then leads to an uncritical embrace of the complete corona-skeptical bingo card truly surprises me.
Just a few recurring themes:
>>“There was no corona, only PCR test results, and they are not intended for this” (Cees Mul)
There is some truth in this: a PCR test is indeed only useful if you use it to confirm a suspected infection. Otherwise, a small percentage of false positives could be magnified into a strong signal of non-really existing 'patients'.
What Mul forgets, however: precisely for that reason, the GGD decided at the time to only apply the PCR test to people who already had covid-like symptoms. A pre-selection, to keep any false positives under control.
Not that it was really necessary. It soon became clear that the PCR test has a very high specificity. If it gives a positive result, it is extremely reliable and you can be assured that it really is SARS-COV-2 - after all, the test looks at the genetic fingerprint of that virus. And that it concerns at least tens of thousands of virus particles: at a lower virus count the test had a cut-off point.
And, as professor of medical microbiology Bert Niesters (UMCG) once said to me: 'Those particles do not just blow in.' They are created on the spot, in your throat or nose.
Yet another piece of evidence that I find convincing: the number of positives in the test street turned out to be a good predictor of the number of hospital admissions two weeks later.
>>“That Keulemans is a dirty propaganda propagandist.”
The standard reflex. If I'm going against disinformation, I'm sure it's because I'm pro-vaccine, or even 'because the government is a major advertiser,' right?
But that is not the case. I'm just neutral. I don't care what everyone does or injects or not: I am not the vaccination doctor. I'm not in any camp, except that as a journalist I'm always on the side of the regular, everyday subscriber trying to understand what's happening in the world. Not on the side of 'the government' or 'the industry': we are completely independent, which is stated in our editorial statute, our rule book.
What exactly I think doesn't really matter. I try to represent as honestly as possible what I read in the professional literature and hear from the most relevant experts. And no, I am not a 'scientist', just as a sports journalist is not a top athlete himself. Yet another strange misunderstanding.
In the meantime, we (fortunately) live in a country where vaccination is a free choice. Simply because that is what we have democratically agreed with each other. And for years before corona, I spoke to experts who pointed out that the government cannot argue for or against vaccines.
As professor Hedwig te Molder said in one of my pieces: 'You should not say on the one hand: parents can choose for themselves, as is the official policy, and immediately add: but if you choose against it, that is irrational and you follow your emotions too much.'
That really stuck with me and I have repeated it many times since. For example, I drew criticism when Hugo de Jonge, against the advice of the OMT, played the moral blackmail card: 'It is the fault of the unvaccinated that we are still in lockdown.'
Quote from professor of health communication Julia de Weert, in one of my articles about this: 'You want to get people on board. And then it is counterproductive to say that those who do not get vaccinated are in fact selfish. This only makes people more resistant. A missed opportunity.' Moreover, there are countless reasons why people do not get vaccinated, Van Weert emphasizes. “De Jonge now tars everyone with the same brush.”
>>“Vaccination is nothing more than injecting a healthy body with toxic substances, in the hope of achieving something positive and not causing any damage to the body. We have long been told that this principle works, but there is no evidence of it.” (Dom Beau)
There is also some truth in this: vaccination is, we will agree, inducing a mini-infection to train the memory of the immune system.
What is categorically incorrect, however, is that 'the evidence is lacking' that vaccines work. This is a classic from the anti-vax repertoire that builds on the fact that boosters and some new vaccines are usually no longer tested against a placebo, but against an existing vaccine. That makes sense: if a vaccine against a certain infectious disease is already available, it would be unethical to give a group just a placebo.
In reality, however, completely new vaccines are indeed tested double-blind against a placebo. This also happened with the Covid shots.
>>“The vaccines were tested in record time. By definition, it is therefore impossible to determine long-term effects. So we let them pass us by.” (Cees Mul)
This is of course partly true. The vaccines came through the procedures faster, not because the procedures were shortened, but because there were (a) plenty of patients to test on, (b) tests were merged and (c) everyone was urgently looking for vaccines. The Covid vaccines are therefore also thought-provoking proof that a lot is possible if everyone puts their shoulders to the wheel.
But what about the long-term effects? Vaccinologists argue at this point that vaccines only have short-term side effects, immediately after the injection. That makes some sense. Medicines with long-term effects generally involve long-term use, which can accumulate in the body.
You don't have to expect anything like that with vaccination. The side effect is immediate (such as arm pain, but also thrombosis after AstraZeneca), or it is not, vaccinologists assume. What does sometimes come to light after a longer period of time are side effects that are so rare that it takes many vaccinations to notice them. A side effect such as myocarditis (20 to 40 times per million injections, depending on age and type of vaccine) is not found after 'only' tens of thousands of injections.
Yet I fundamentally agree with Cees' doubts. In principle, you cannot rule out a long-term side effect. That is also why the freedom to choose whether or not to inject is, in my opinion, so important. And it is a mistake that people with very normal, understandable concerns about the vaccine were dismissed as 'wappies' or irresponsible idiots.
$
Well, back to the statement that dominates this site: that the Covid vaccines have caused and continue to do a lot of damage, in terms of excess mortality, heart disease or other serious conditions.
Would it really? Would such a thing be conceivable?
At this point I see you (and the often politically motivated foreign supporters of that idea) constantly making the same mistake: you go on a 'fishing expedition', hunting for unusual patterns. And in the hundreds of statistics from hundreds of countries you can ALWAYS find something suspicious.
Especially if, as Herman does, you adjust the definitions somewhat (assuming that excess mortality should actually be followed by undermortality and that this counts as additional excess mortality, for example). It is scientific thinking turned on its head: not trying to refute hypotheses, but rather looking for evidence FOR your hypothesis - and explaining away any counter-evidence.
Bear in mind that the predictions that the corona-skeptical movement previously made DID NOT HOLD. After the first wave, corona was not over, as was widely claimed at the time - there was a second wave, a third, and a fourth. The corona period was not the start of permanent QR codes, as many claimed – the measures were scaled down.
The mRNA vaccines did not cause a massive outbreak of autoimmune diseases, as Theo Schetters assumed; people don't drop dead en masse on the street; blood clots have not been detected on a large scale; there is no international increase in the number of sudden cardiac arrests; and there are no structurally more or worse cancers diagnosed than before.
Oh, and the alleged massacres in nursing homes after the vaccination campaign? Every time I heard such a rumor, I followed it up: put me in touch with the nursing home in question, on a background basis if necessary? But the care homes in question always turned out not to exist, even after a thorough search.
I do know what convinces me personally that there is no such thing as massive 'vaccine damage'. If that were the case, you would see more deaths in the best vaccinated countries (hello Sweden!) than in poorly vaccinated countries such as Romania or Slovakia. And with each round of vaccinations, the hospitals would fill up with people who just survived.
Any claim that vaccines are secretly very harmful will have to answer at least these questions:
1/ What exactly are the many thorough, peer-reviewed, published studies that determine that there is no significant vaccine-related death or disease burden doing wrong? Like this one, this one or this one?
2/ As John Ioannidis showed, excess mortality per country correlates with the socio-economic differences in that country, and not with how many vaccines were given. Why not?
3/ If vaccines cause massive health damage, which ones? And why do we not see it structurally in the regular statistics on cancer and cardiovascular disease in all countries where the vaccines have been widely deployed?
4/ Why would supervisory authorities such as the Lareb, which even found the rare side effect myocarditis (incidence: approximately 20-40 in 1 million), not find such a side effect?
5/ Why should well-informed journalists like myself, with countless sources and confidential and personal connections to scientists, never hear about the horrific abuse that is apparently being kept under wraps here? Why is this not discussed at conferences and symposia?
If you have an answer to this, I'd love to hear it.
$
This brings me to the end of this (much too long) response.
Of course: you can assume that all doctors and universities in the world are in cahoots with each other and with the industry, that all supervisory bodies and watchdogs have been bribed, and that professional journalists like myself turn away en masse or are simply too stupid to understand it or too lazy to write it down.
That you see something here that all relevant scientists, professional associations, academic societies and RIVMs of the world have completely missed.
But gentlemen: I wouldn't count on it too much.
[In advance: to my dismay, the web links I wanted to add in this response are lost. This comment with links is on my substack!]
Hello gentlemen,
Back from vacation I read your comments. And I have to say it from my heart: your position on this subject remains something that I absolutely cannot understand.
I think I understand the underlying feeling. Your reactions express such dissatisfaction and frustration. One has been kicked out of his hospital, the other feels like a laughed at metal detector seeker, the next is still furious about the corona measures, Anton seems bitter that I work in such a 'luxury office environment'.
Everything is allowed, of course. But the fact that it then leads to an uncritical embrace of the complete corona-skeptical bingo card truly surprises me.
Just a few recurring themes:
>>“There was no corona, only PCR test results, and they are not intended for this” (Cees Mul)
There is some truth in this: a PCR test is indeed only useful if you use it to confirm a suspected infection. Otherwise, a small percentage of false positives could be magnified into a strong signal of non-really existing 'patients'.
What Mul forgets, however: precisely for that reason, the GGD decided at the time to only apply the PCR test to people who already had covid-like symptoms. A pre-selection, to keep any false positives under control.
Not that it was really necessary. It soon became clear that the PCR test has a very high specificity. If it gives a positive result, it is extremely reliable and you can be assured that it really is SARS-COV-2 - after all, the test looks at the genetic fingerprint of that virus. And that it concerns at least tens of thousands of virus particles: at a lower virus count the test had a cut-off point.
And, as professor of medical microbiology Bert Niesters (UMCG) once said to me: 'Those particles do not just blow in.' They are created on the spot, in your throat or nose.
Yet another piece of evidence that I find convincing: the number of positives in the test street turned out to be a good predictor of the number of hospital admissions two weeks later.
>>“That Keulemans is a dirty propaganda propagandist.”
The standard reflex. If I'm going against disinformation, I'm sure it's because I'm pro-vaccine, or even 'because the government is a major advertiser,' right?
But that is not the case. I'm just neutral. I don't care what everyone does or injects or not: I am not the vaccination doctor. I'm not in any camp, except that as a journalist I'm always on the side of the regular, everyday subscriber trying to understand what's happening in the world. Not on the side of 'the government' or 'the industry': we are completely independent, which is stated in our editorial statute, our rule book.
What exactly I think doesn't really matter. I try to represent as honestly as possible what I read in the professional literature and hear from the most relevant experts. And no, I am not a 'scientist', just as a sports journalist is not a top athlete himself. Yet another strange misunderstanding.
In the meantime, we (fortunately) live in a country where vaccination is a free choice. Simply because that is what we have democratically agreed with each other. And for years before corona, I spoke to experts who pointed out that the government cannot argue for or against vaccines.
As professor Hedwig te Molder said in one of my pieces: 'You should not say on the one hand: parents can choose for themselves, as is the official policy, and immediately add: but if you choose against it, that is irrational and you follow your emotions too much.'
That really stuck with me and I have repeated it many times since. For example, I drew criticism when Hugo de Jonge, against the advice of the OMT, played the moral blackmail card: 'It is the fault of the unvaccinated that we are still in lockdown.'
Quote from professor of health communication Julia de Weert, in one of my articles about this: 'You want to get people on board. And then it is counterproductive to say that those who do not get vaccinated are in fact selfish. This only makes people more resistant. A missed opportunity.' Moreover, there are countless reasons why people do not get vaccinated, Van Weert emphasizes. “De Jonge now tars everyone with the same brush.”
>>“Vaccination is nothing more than injecting a healthy body with toxic substances, in the hope of achieving something positive and not causing any damage to the body. We have long been told that this principle works, but there is no evidence of it.” (Dom Beau)
There is also some truth in this: vaccination is, we will agree, inducing a mini-infection to train the memory of the immune system.
What is categorically incorrect, however, is that 'the evidence is lacking' that vaccines work. This is a classic from the anti-vax repertoire that builds on the fact that boosters and some new vaccines are usually no longer tested against a placebo, but against an existing vaccine. That makes sense: if a vaccine against a certain infectious disease is already available, it would be unethical to give a group just a placebo.
In reality, however, completely new vaccines are indeed tested double-blind against a placebo. This also happened with the Covid shots.
>>“The vaccines were tested in record time. By definition, it is therefore impossible to determine long-term effects. So we let them pass us by.” (Cees Mul)
This is of course partly true. The vaccines came through the procedures faster, not because the procedures were shortened, but because there were (a) plenty of patients to test on, (b) tests were merged and (c) everyone was urgently looking for vaccines. The Covid vaccines are therefore also thought-provoking proof that a lot is possible if everyone puts their shoulders to the wheel.
But what about the long-term effects? Vaccinologists argue at this point that vaccines only have short-term side effects, immediately after the injection. That makes some sense. Medicines with long-term effects generally involve long-term use, which can accumulate in the body.
You don't have to expect anything like that with vaccination. The side effect is immediate (such as arm pain, but also thrombosis after AstraZeneca), or it is not, vaccinologists assume. What does sometimes come to light after a longer period of time are side effects that are so rare that it takes many vaccinations to notice them. A side effect such as myocarditis (20 to 40 times per million injections, depending on age and type of vaccine) is not found after 'only' tens of thousands of injections.
Yet I fundamentally agree with Cees' doubts. In principle, you cannot rule out a long-term side effect. That is also why the freedom to choose whether or not to inject is, in my opinion, so important. And it is a mistake that people with very normal, understandable concerns about the vaccine were dismissed as 'wappies' or irresponsible idiots.
$
Well, back to the statement that dominates this site: that the Covid vaccines have caused and continue to do a lot of damage, in terms of excess mortality, heart disease or other serious conditions.
Would it really? Would such a thing be conceivable?
At this point I see you (and the often politically motivated foreign supporters of that idea) constantly making the same mistake: you go on a 'fishing expedition', hunting for unusual patterns. And in the hundreds of statistics from hundreds of countries you can ALWAYS find something suspicious.
Especially if, as Herman does, you adjust the definitions somewhat (assuming that excess mortality should actually be followed by undermortality and that this counts as additional excess mortality, for example). It is scientific thinking turned on its head: not trying to refute hypotheses, but rather looking for evidence FOR your hypothesis - and explaining away any counter-evidence.
Bear in mind that the predictions that the corona-skeptical movement previously made DID NOT HOLD. After the first wave, corona was not over, as was widely claimed at the time - there was a second wave, a third, and a fourth. The corona period was not the start of permanent QR codes, as many claimed – the measures were scaled down.
The mRNA vaccines did not cause a massive outbreak of autoimmune diseases, as Theo Schetters assumed; people don't drop dead en masse on the street; blood clots have not been detected on a large scale; there is no international increase in the number of sudden cardiac arrests; and there are no structurally more or worse cancers diagnosed than before.
Oh, and the alleged massacres in nursing homes after the vaccination campaign? Every time I heard such a rumor, I followed it up: put me in touch with the nursing home in question, on a background basis if necessary? But the care homes in question always turned out not to exist, even after a thorough search.
I do know what convinces me personally that there is no such thing as massive 'vaccine damage'. If that were the case, you would see more deaths in the best vaccinated countries (hello Sweden!) than in poorly vaccinated countries such as Romania or Slovakia. And with each round of vaccinations, the hospitals would fill up with people who just survived.
Any claim that vaccines are secretly very harmful will have to answer at least these questions:
1/ What exactly are the many thorough, peer-reviewed, published studies that determine that there is no significant vaccine-related death or disease burden doing wrong? Like this one, this one or this one?
2/ As John Ioannidis showed, excess mortality per country correlates with the socio-economic differences in that country, and not with how many vaccines were given. Why not?
3/ If vaccines cause massive health damage, which ones? And why do we not see it structurally in the regular statistics on cancer and cardiovascular disease in all countries where the vaccines have been widely deployed?
4/ Why would supervisory authorities such as the Lareb, which even found the rare side effect myocarditis (incidence: approximately 20-40 in 1 million), not find such a side effect?
5/ Why should well-informed journalists like myself, with countless sources and confidential and personal connections to scientists, never hear about the horrific abuse that is apparently being kept under wraps here? Why is this not discussed at conferences and symposia?
If you have an answer to this, I'd love to hear it.
$
This brings me to the end of this (much too long) response.
Of course: you can assume that all doctors and universities in the world are in cahoots with each other and with the industry, that all supervisory bodies and watchdogs have been bribed, and that professional journalists like myself turn away en masse or are simply too stupid to understand it or too lazy to write it down.
That you see something here that all relevant scientists, professional associations, academic societies and RIVMs of the world have completely missed.
But gentlemen: I wouldn't count on it too much.
Thanks for this extensive response, Maarten. I suspect that others will respond, I will wait a moment, also because I want to formulate the answer calmly. Especially where you discuss my comments. And to prevent us from having a chaotic discussion with reactions tumbling over each other.
Thanks. Here is the annotated version of my response, with links.
https://mkeulemans.substack.com/publish/post/183432407
Nowhere is it said that people missed it, it is indicated that it is being kept silent.
It has been made clear several times that there are sufficient indications that evidence exists or is not even made known.
There is no hard evidence for excess mortality, the data is lacking.
It is also not released.
I sincerely hope that all of us here on this site are wrong, sincerely.
And maybe we should stop trying to identify them, because as stated before, we remain crazy (for me as a metal detector seeker).
Time will tell us.
Richard: I hear that often, but it *isn't right*.
There are now literally hundreds of academic studies that neatly establish on the basis of the data that there is no such thing as massive excess mortality, a mysterious wave of disease or a structurally increased incidence of, say, tumors or cardiovascular diseases among vaccinated people (apart from rare myo- and pericarditis).
This also applies in our country. After the excess mortality peak at the end of 2021 and the Omtzigt motion, a program of around 20 studies into excess mortality has been launched in our country. The result, again, was that there was nothing strange or unusual going on in relation to the vaccines. See for example here for an overview: https://www.zonmw.nl/nl/artikel/congres-oversterfte.
And no, you are not crazy, at most a bit one-sidedly informed.
Unfortunately, due to my clumsiness, my answer ended up at the bottom of the comments directly above your message.
Do you mean this response Cor?:
Maarten, thank you for your detailed response.
Offers a lot to shoot for. I will now limit myself to Sars-Cov-2 (Covid).
I notice a significant fear regarding Covid, and I think you share this with the regular Volkskrant readers you claim to serve. Fear is also ingrained in the name, S stands for Severe.
The question is whether this fear is justified and has not been unnecessarily fed in the mainstream media, including our Volkskrant (indeed, I am also a reader myself).
After an initial downplay of fear by various authorities, including in the Netherlands, the WHO subsequently focused entirely on fear and this was duly followed almost everywhere.
At the beginning of 2020, nothing else seemed to exist. Even the common flu disappeared completely (was all, including older forms, still tested?).
If you had flu-like symptoms, you were tested specifically for Covid with a hypersensitive PCR test
(The sensitivity of the test, the number of selected cycles was released and I suspect unnecessarily high. Logically: if you as a company did not register the covid and someone later turned out to have this seriously, then you were not in the right place.)
Suppose that in addition to an active 'old', undetected flu, you still had a trace of Covid, this was guaranteed to be removed (on one or a few small parts of the entire Covid fingerprint) and you were guaranteed to be branded as a Covid victim.
(Regardless of the question of whether you were contagious with that positive Covid test or whether it was responsible for your flu symptoms.)
In short, fear was blinding at that time and in blind panic the Serious Deadly Sars-Cov-2 was seen everywhere.
The result was measures that were particularly detrimental to the socio-economically disadvantaged and people covered by the Wlz, and led to 'Covid' mortality among them.
The well-endowed did not die (I think it was observed in a Nivel study).
It is a pity that nothing has been done in the Volkskrant to temper this fear and thus weaken the call for measures that have proven to have perverse effects (including vaccination, but more about that later).
But apparently the journalists and editors shared the fear of their readers and thus a kind of small, but no less tragic 'ant fear spiral of death' was created.
Yes, that's him.
Dear Maarten, I don't think we will find a solution here, but I would still like to respond again.
You refer twice to things I mention in my response. I'll go into that later. I would first like to state the general tenor of your response. It's quite condescending. It seems like a bunch of cranks have come up with some dubious theories that don't fit with the usual thinking. Your criticism is also often in that direction; the majority, including many experts, have a rounded opinion, so who are you to have doubts about that. Of course, there are always studies that support the existing narrative, just as there are studies that support the critics' positions. It seems to me a disastrous path to beat each other over the ears with study results. These studies are then debunked, and before you know it there are too many details and the essence is forgotten.
What I find strange is that a science journalist does not show more curiosity, especially about 'controversial' theories. The history of the pharmaceutical industry is riddled with scandals and lawsuits, but since Covid do we believe them at face value? How strange is that? You yourself say somewhere “could it really be, could something like that be conceivable?” This concerns an increase in heart disease and other serious conditions. Good question if you were to ask it seriously. There is scientifically substantiated evidence that shows that people continue to produce spike proteins years after a vaccination. Via all kinds of different body cells, spread throughout the body, including the brain. I suspect that this information has also reached you, right? “We” (if that exists) is much more than the few people who post on this site. They're not all crazy and stupid people, believe me. The fact that they do not just get their information from the NPO and the 'quality newspapers' does not make them suspicious. Substantiated criticism of an existing system seems desirable to me. Don't swear, that's pointless.
I assume you know the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss. A hygienist who had the solution for childbed fever in the 19th century. 'Science' thought it was a nonsensical idea that washing hands and disinfecting tools would solve the problem. This despite proven effectiveness by Semmelweiss, among others. The man met a tragic end in a psychiatric clinic. Of course, this does not mean that every dilettante is always right, but it does show that a firm belief in existing methods can be dangerous. 'Science' benefits when it is challenged.
There are many oversimplifications in your response. I think the biggest one is that you put the mRNA method on a par with the 'traditional' vaccines. I think you know very well that artificially produced mRNA is taken up by the body cells via LNPs, where the spike proteins are then produced as planned. A wonderful method perhaps for specific cancer treatments, but for a respiratory virus... This would require an open discussion in which the risks of this approach are weighed against the benefits. Then you quickly arrive at the danger that Covid-19 was or, according to some, still is. Already in 2020, Jon Ioanides indicated that the IFR was no higher than a usual flu. I'll stop here for a moment, otherwise this comment will be as long as yours. I will leave the rest undiscussed because otherwise my response would become even longer.
Let's go back to the 2 points in which you respond to my comments:
1. The PCR discussion. You say: “There was no corona, only PCR test results, and they are not intended for this” (Cees Mul)”, I never say “there was no corona”. I say: “At least a positive PCR test at the GGD indicated that, later I learned that the PCR test was never intended for use as it was used. And also extremely unreliable.”
The above is a very free interpretation of my text. Consciously or not, but you immediately suspect me as a Corona denier. The PCR test has been used to determine Covid numbers. It is possible that the policy became more subtle later, but by then the greatest damage had already been done. During the Covid period, all other common respiratory diseases disappeared like snow in the sun. Because a PCR test with 40 cycles always finds some kind of DNA structure, after which 'the patient' is then registered as a Covid case, you create the impression that there is a dramatic situation. My position is that using this PCR method you can create the impression of a pandemic in any flu winter. I think the 'autumn wave' was a direct result of the increased number of tests. The more you test, the more you find. Firstly, the PCR test was not developed to detect respiratory viruses and secondly, it was never intended as a diagnosis. Everyone of us walks around with loads of bacteria, viruses, etc. in our nasal passages. That doesn't mean we are sick or getting sick. I'm not saying it was intentional. It was probably blind panic and then reason is quickly thrown overboard. Afterwards, you must have the courage to look back and learn from any mistakes you may have made.
2. About the long-term effects.
I'm glad you partly agree with me on this. But that's where my problem lies: There may or may not have been research into long-term effects. So it is binary. If NO research has been done, then we do NOT know the long-term effects. If there are, we can take them into account and decide on an individual basis whether the balance is in favor of vaccination. So you can't partly agree with me. The 'vaccines' were and are marketed as 'safe and effective'. Without knowing the long-term risks, neither has been proven and the slogan 'safe and effective' is therefore disinformation.
The long-term effects of the mRNA injections are not known. We do know that cases have been found where people continued to produce spike proteins years after injection. That's not good to say the least. As a science journalist, aren't you curious about that?
I'll leave it at this for now. First clear snow.
Maarten, I appreciate you answering here. What I also appreciate is that you take a clear stand. This has consolidated the basic conditions for a dialogue.
Where we seem to fundamentally differ is not so much the question of whether scientific institutes, statistical institutes, health institutes and the media can be wrong. In your comment on Cees (and us) you indicate that you may well doubt the infallibility of all those institutions. The only point in which we differ is that you firmly answer that anyone who thinks such institutions can fail is crazy, while I think: 'Interesting question, let's investigate!'
The idea that the above institutions can never fail is a comforting idea, and also an idea that provides a certain form of trust, hope, solidarity, bliss. Malleable society. We do it together. We do it for someone else. We do our best! There is also something vain about it, especially if you belong to one of those institutions. That is to say: anyone who works for such an institute can never make a mistake, because those institutes never make a mistake. It is a fairy tale that I too have believed in for a long time and... suffered from. The fairy tale is not true and all fairy tales that are not true suffer from it, just think of the fairy tale of Sinterklaas for example and how you suffered when you found out that the fairy tale was not true.
Maarten, there is a lot more to say about this and (to be honest) it could be said a little better by me (but I just can't manage it).
I'll apply what you say about frustrated commentators here to myself. I'm not frustrated because I was 'bonjoured' (your words) from the hospital. It was not fun to leave my colleagues at the time in amazement and confusion, but I had no choice. I now feel freed from that hospital. However, I am frustrated by the fact that what is so clear to me, I have difficulty/cannot make clear to people who work for the above-mentioned institutions. I just can't do it! -But I'm doing my best. See the letter I sent to you/Anton as yet another attempt. It might help to leave the digital environment behind and exchange ideas over a cup of tea in a room or something. That offer stands.
Enough. The weather is nice here, with all that snow, and it should be enjoyed. As a free man (who no longer has to work for an important institution) I have plenty of time for that and that is what I am going to do now.
In pais.
Richard: I hear that often, but it *isn't right*.
There are now literally hundreds of academic studies that neatly establish on the basis of the data that there is no such thing as massive excess mortality, a mysterious wave of disease or a structurally increased incidence of, say, tumors or cardiovascular diseases among vaccinated people (apart from rare myo- and pericarditis).
This also applies in our country. After the excess mortality peak at the end of 2021 and the Omtzigt motion, a program of around 20 studies into excess mortality has been launched in our country. The result, again, was that there was nothing strange or unusual going on in relation to the vaccines. See for example here for an overview: https://www.zonmw.nl/nl/artikel/congres-oversterfte.
And no, you are not crazy, at most a bit one-sidedly informed.
Hello Cees,
Thanks for your answer. I'll leave it entirely up to you if I think you're crazy or something - I just take you seriously.
I do wonder if that is mutual. The disdain on this site is certainly not pleasant. And your criticism that I am not curious enough and that I would go along with all kinds of authorities really irritates me.
My job is to critically question established powers on behalf of our readers, and that is what we do. Especially during a crisis like corona!
I will mention something: I was the first to have a patient in the newspaper with long Covid-like complaints after vaccination, revealed that the QR codes were not effective in combating corona, wrote numerous pieces about thrombosis after AstraZeneca and after Janssen, wrote extensively about the lack of effectiveness of face masks and school closures, pointed out that the cabinet remained in 'pandemic mode' for too long, and let experts have their say with the criticism that Hugo de Jonge was far too high on vaccines.
Couple links:
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/wacht-ons-een-winter-vol-rampspoed-hoe-we-gaan-leven-met-corona~be370e04/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/handig-zo-n-coronapas-maar-is-er-eigenlijk-bewijs-dat-die-werkt~bd66ccbe/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/mrna-vaccins-zijn-de-toekomst-gaat-de-revolutie-te-hard-wel-volgens-dwarse-deense-onderzoekers~b7df95aa/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/lareb-wil-onderzoek-naar-mogelijk-postvaccinatiesyndroom-na-coronaprik~bb921552/
https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/gezocht-de-uitgang-uit-de-pandemie-daar-heeft-de-wereld-ruime-ervaring-mee~b1400c91/
Do you really think that I haven't seriously delved into all kinds of wild stories about cardiac arrests, turbo cancers, blood clots, spike proteins, and so on? Of course. If there really was such a thing as terrible excess mortality due to vaccines, I would be crazy not to put that on the front page. We sell newspapers with it, we make money with it, and we earn journalistic prizes with it.
A few loose points:
-PCR does not have its cut-off point after 40 cycles, but after about 25-27.
-PCR does not detect influenza virus: different specificity.
-Ioannidis (whom I have already interviewed three times) has never claimed that Covid is not more deadly than the flu: that was the IFR leaning mainly on African countries, with a young population and poor data. Ioannidis' own manuscript states that the IFR in the Netherlands was 0.68% during the first wave. This was later adjusted to 1.2% in our country with its large aging population.
- CONSTANT research is being conducted into long-term effects: that is simply part of Lareb's range of tasks (the F4 studies).
-I am of course aware of the rumors about persistent spike and I even presented it to some pathologists not so long ago. That did not lead to an article in the newspaper. The problem is that the 'evidence' is not watertight at all. For example, the methods that are supposed to demonstrate a spike are often flawed, and the spikes that are detected often come from the virus itself (I spoke to a Dutch pathologist who demonstrated them before there were any vaccines.) But you are certainly right that the file is not yet closed.
Anyway, so far!
Hello Maarten,
I once asked chatgpt to review your text. This is what the judgment was.
Short conclusion
The text is not written at an equivalent level.
The attitude is predominantly corrective, defensive and at times condescending, even though the intention is visible to remain rational and factual.
The writer structurally positions himself above the addressed group: epistemic (more knowledge), moral (more reasonable) and professional (journalist with sources).
Extensive analysis of posture
1. Position of the writer
The writer consistently portrays himself as:
rational
well informed
journalistically independent
embedded in “the serious world” of science and expertise
In contrast, those addressed are portrayed as:
emotionally driven (“what dissatisfaction and frustration”)
embittered
prone to “bingo cards”, “classics”, “reflexes”
people who don't understand basic scientific methods
This creates an asymmetrical relationship: one explains, the other needs to be corrected.
2. Use of language that is condescending
There are several rhetorical choices that appear explicitly condescending:
Psychologize
“The dissatisfaction and frustration expressed by your reactions.”
This reduces arguments to emotions rather than treating them seriously as positions.
Trivializing framing
“the complete corona-sceptic bingo card”
“classic from the anti-vax repertoire”
This suggests predictability and intellectual laziness in the other.
Didactic explanation tone
The writer repeatedly explains “how it is,” without leaving open the possibility that the other person may be reasoning at a different but rational level.
Sarcasm in irony
“hello Sweden!”
“Oh, and the alleged massacres in nursing homes?”
That increases distance and makes dialogue difficult.
3. Appearance of openness, actual closedness
The text contains sentences such as:
“There is some truth in that”
“That is of course partly true”
“Yet I fundamentally agree with Cees' doubts”
But these acknowledgments function primarily as rhetorical buffers. They are always followed by:
debunking
repositioning of authority
refer back to established knowledge
There is no essential vulnerability or acknowledgment that the writer himself could possibly be wrong.
4. The last resort: delegitimizing
In the conclusion, the position of the other is implicitly reduced to:
conspiracy thinking
global conspiracy
intellectual overestimation of oneself
“That you see something here that all knowledgeable scientists… have missed.”
This is a classic final delegitimization: anyone who still disagrees places themselves outside the reasonable world.
Summary judgment
Attitude: corrective, defensive, authority-driven
Relationship: hierarchical (explainer vs. misled listener)
Tone: rationally packaged, but emotionally charged
Condescending? Yes, mainly implicitly and structurally, not rude or overtly offensive
I also asked chatgpt to write a “counterpart” that addresses the content.
I appreciate the attempt to bring the debate back to facts and data, and I recognize the frustration over unsubstantiated claims and wild speculation. At the same time, I think your analysis closes down a number of important questions too quickly, not because they are easy to answer, but precisely because they are at the intersection of science, policy and human trust.
Let me start with what I do not claim. I am not claiming that there is a global conspiracy, nor that vaccines are inherently dangerous, nor that all scientists, doctors and journalists are acting in bad faith. Such caricatures do not help the conversation. What I do doubt is whether our current systems are well enough equipped to recognize and recognize subtle, complex or politically uncomfortable effects in a timely manner.
A key point in your argument is that large-scale vaccination damage should be visible in the statistics. That sounds intuitive, but is methodologically less obvious than it seems. Statistics are not neutral mirrors of reality; they are the end point of definitions, choices, classifications and assumptions. Especially with multifactorial health outcomes – such as mortality, cardiovascular disease or general excess mortality – it is extremely difficult to clearly isolate one cause.
Take excess mortality. We know that this is related to an aging population, delayed care, socio-economic differences, lifestyle changes, stress, Covid infections themselves and possibly vaccination. This means that a vaccine-related effect does not have to be visible as a sudden spike, but can manifest itself as a slight shift within an already noisy pattern. The lack of a clear signal is then not conclusive proof that such an effect does not exist.
In addition, adverse event registration is largely passive. Reporting systems such as Lareb are valuable, but depend on willingness to report, recognition and timing. If doctors and patients are told in advance that serious side effects are 'very rare', a causal link is less likely to be established or reported. That is not an accusation, but a well-known phenomenon in pharmacovigilance.
You ask the legitimate question why supervisory authorities would not find large-scale damage. But the history of medicine shows that this often does happen, but only late. Consider smoking, asbestos, DES, certain medicines or medical devices. In virtually all of these cases, there was no conspiracy, but there was institutional inertia, confirmation bias and reluctance to draw sweeping conclusions without “irrefutable evidence.”
The appeal to international consensus also deserves nuance. Consensus is not static, but the result of processes in which power relations, financing, reputations and policy pressure play a role. This does not mean that consensus is worthless, but it does mean that it is less suitable as a conclusion to a discussion that is still in full swing.
Another point is that distrust is often presented as a psychological or emotional problem, while it can also be rational. People who felt pressured by policies, excluded through QR codes, or saw doubt moralized have reason to be suspicious of the same institutions that now say all is safe. That distrust not only affects their interpretation of data, but also their willingness to feel heard.
Finally, the fact that extreme predictions have not come true does not automatically mean that milder concerns are unfounded. Science is not an all-or-nothing system. There is a large gray area between 'massive disaster' and 'no problem at all'. Precisely there, critical questions should not be dismissed as fishing expeditions, but as legitimate attempts to better understand what we may not yet see.
My plea is therefore not a rejection of science or data, but a call for epistemic modesty. Let us recognize that uncertainty does not automatically equal misinformation, and that skepticism does not have to be the enemy of science, but can be a necessary corrective to it. Only from that attitude can a truly open conversation arise.
Hi Richard, point of order: I will not respond to ChatGPT blurb.
AIs are great as tools for all kinds of applications, but a crucial pitfall is that they are simply text generators that rely on their input and their training materials – the Clever Hans effect. I advise everyone to do their own thinking and not rely too much on the magic machines of Silicon Valley. 😉
That's not me – Clever Hans…
Excess mortality (= absolute mortality minus expected mortality) is not at all related to aging. Yes, aging causes total mortality to increase, but expected mortality will also increase at the same rate.
To eliminate aging, you must always look at the expected and absolute mortality per 100,000 in that group.
Always good to start a discussion!
Of course. But what do you think will happen to excess mortality if a new virus is circulating in an immuno-naïve population that is mainly fatal for people aged 60+?
That is a hypothetical question that hinges on the assumption that a new virus was circulating. You can (on the one hand) argue endlessly about this assumption or (on the other hand) dismiss it in a nutshell. I find such discussions unsatisfactory.
Rather than hypothetical questions (what if?) I ask questions that can be answered factually. That saves a lot of time.
Here is such a factual question. What do you think will happen if, in March 2020, the entire hospital staff of, among others, the LUMC, AUMC, Erasmus MC, yes the entire coagulation expert world, forgets that someone who comes to the emergency room and has all the symptoms of pulmonary embolism (shortness of breath, dry cough, elevated temperature with high D-dimer, and has phenotypic characteristics such as older age, more often male, many underlying diseases), has a pulmonary embolism until proven otherwise?
Answer: then a lot of people who have these symptoms (and come to the emergency room) will die, because they are not treated (in time) with life-saving medication for their underlying life-threatening illness (pulmonary embolism). I have already explained this exhaustively, but you are always too busy when I refer you to my explanation.
I understand that there is no return from an illusion once it has been explained, but I still want to give you the opportunity to come out of your illusion.
So take a moment and read my letter that I sent to IGJ at the end of 2021. See:
https://bvnl.nl/corona/ooggetuigenverslag-van-een-bezorgde-arts-epidemioloog-tijdens-de-eerste-coronagolf/
What I don't understand: a building further away, in 2020, professor of coronavirology Eric Snijders and his group were simply conducting molecular research into those viruses. With, among other things, cryo-EM, on which you can simply see those viruses.
I'm actually curious: what is your view on the molecular and genetic evidence? In your view, what are those Sanger-sequenced RNA sequences that were isolated from clinical samples (then replicated several times)? Flatly asked: what are those balls that I was looking at in Eric's office?
And that's why all those measures and injections even for children and pregnant women? Maarten reminds me of van Kooten and de Bie as brothers who felt that they had been in the resistance by sending the Germans in the wrong direction when they asked for directions. A list with, in Maarten's view, critical questions and pieces. Meanwhile, one insult after another and even “non-existent nursing homes”. People critical of the corona measures who asked questions about the care of their loved ones were banned from nursing homes. As soon as people talked about it, Maarten also put you in the conspiracy corner. I think I can predict the future: People like Maarten will say “but even on the Virusvaria site I have proven people (partly) right…”. A unique coincidence on Crete last week. 6 people died suddenly within 24 hours (1 Dutch person), 60+ in the minority. And no, it wasn't due to a heat wave or something like that. You might think who needs “studies” anymore?
No 'c', that is not correct (again).
We have of course paid a lot of attention to the abuses in nursing homes (not myself, but my colleagues in the healthcare editorial team). The 'non-existent nursing homes' to which I am referring is the persistent rumor of nursing homes that have been depopulated by the vaccination campaign.
If you know of such a nursing home: I would love to hear about it.
And your ridiculous allegation that I "put people in a conspiracy corner" who criticized the treatment of the elderly in the nursing home: now just provide proof of that? I myself lost a stepmother and a father-in-law during corona, and as a citizen I also had to endure the measures passively.
Mr. Keulemans, Maarten. First of all, my condolences for your lost loved ones (and I sincerely mean that. I miss that myself and also hear it from others when people have lost loved ones to the corona measures/corona shots, it is preferable to remain silent about it.) Hereby: Care organization AuntLouise with the then chairman of the board Conny Helder, who is probably known to you because she later became a minister. And Opella in the Gelderse Valley. With Opella it was and is non-negotiable. You can obtain further information by reading a lot and looking back at, among other things, the new media. So somewhat less one-sided than the information you receive so far from what you consider to be the “most relevant experts” and their professional literature. The next time you "stand up to disinformation" you can certainly use my tips. I hope that real science will be conducted (again) in the future. Questioning and researching, researching and questioning, progressive insight.
What I don't understand: a building further away, in 2020, professor of coronavirology Eric Snijders and his group were simply conducting molecular research into those viruses. With, among other things, cryo-EM, on which you can simply see those viruses.
I'm actually curious: what is your view on the molecular and genetic evidence? In your view, what are those Sanger-sequenced RNA sequences that were isolated from clinical samples (then replicated several times)? Flatly asked: what are those balls that I was looking at in Eric's office?