Episode: 3445
Title: HPR3445: True critical thinking seems to be the key
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3445/hpr3445.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 23:37:24

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3445 for Friday, 15 October 2021.
Did show is entitled, true critical thinking, seems to be the key and is part of the series' health
and health care it is hosted by Dave Morris and is about 72 minutes long and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is a response to HPR 3414.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15. That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthost.com.
Hello everybody, welcome to Hacker Public Radio. My name is Dave Morris and I have a co-host
long here with me Andrew Conway which we'll talk more about each other in our cells.
I should say in a moment or two. What we're doing here is we are looking at episode 3414
which was entitled, critical thinking may make you critical of the COVID crisis.
We're looking at it as a show from a new HPR host and we're just examining the points being made
in that show from point of view of an analysis of the points. Nothing about the show host or anything
about but looking at them in as unbiased away as is possible. Let's start with some terms that are
used throughout this particular show. The first one is critical thinking and I thought it was
important to define that to some degree. It's not an easy subject to define but Wikipedia says
it's the analysis of facts of former judgment. It says that the subject is complex which
has said several definitions exist which generally include rational skeptical unbiased analysis
or evaluation of factual evidence and there's a reference. There's lots of references in this
each section we're talking about has got references and they're all consolidated at the end
of the main show notes. So the terms fact factual evidence unbiased analysis are very important
and I would contend that episode 3414 fails to some extent in regards to critical thinking
in several places but we're going to look at this as we go along. Second point is what's an experiment
an experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis. This is from Wikipedia.
Experiments provide insight into cause and effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a
particular factor is manipulated. So what happens if you pour this substance in or poke it or
stick an electric electric shock into it or whatever. The term experiment is used I believe incorrectly
in episode 3414 but better term would be observational anecdote so we'll be looking at that in a
bit more detail. The next point is just to say just to say that we're talking here about COVID
which is a disease caused by a virus. The virus is a coronavirus. There are many
viruses that are classified in this way. It's called that because of its spike, the spikes on
the surface of it has a sort of crown-like look to it. The name of the virus in this particular case
is SARS-CoV-2 and so SIRS SARS stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome and that's the
type of disease caused by the virus. At least the most severe part of it. COV COV signifies
it's a coronavirus. I think this name was produced by the World Health Organization WHO, yeah.
And the two on the end means it's the second SARS-type coronavirus to have caused problems of human
disease in the recent past. The other one just called SARS at the time. I don't think it's been
renamed. That occurred in 2003. It's not the same virus. It's a different virus. The disease
has similarities but it's not the same. Actually, I think it has been retrospectively renamed
SARS-CoV-1, yeah. Okay, okay. That makes sense, yeah. In the historical literature, like
World War I wasn't called that at the time from this reason. It's just called SARS but I think
now it's called SARS-CoV-2 SARS-CoV-1. I haven't had a look. I couldn't find it but it's been
very much a moving target, hasn't it? This thing, yeah. But just to make things clear because it is
an area that has caused confusion in all sorts of ways, I think. And there's still name changes
and so forth. It's variants and so on, which names whose names are changing. The name of the disease
caused by SARS-CoV-2 is COVID-19. So there are two different things. The virus is not COVID-19,
the virus is SARS-CoV-2 and the disease is not a SARS-CoV-2, it's COVID-19. The letters COVID
define it as a coronavirus disease. Not the nicest name but there you go. And the 19 part is because
it was first discovered in 2019. That's my terms that I thought would be helpful to have defined.
That's all cleared. The way I think about it is COVID-19 is the bag of symptoms that a doctor
or a medical professional would use to diagnose the disease without any test. There is no test
for COVID-19. You can't do a test for COVID-19 in a sense because it is the bag of symptoms you
would recognise. The test is specifically, as you said, for SARS-CoV-2 sometimes it's cold.
And I think it's important to realise that at some point the judgment of a medical professional
was essential here to decide whether somebody actually does have the disease and that judgment may
depend upon the test for the virus. Indeed, indeed, yes. What we want to do then is to analyse
the various points made in episode 3, 4 and 4. And what we're doing is we're looking at
individual slices of the original show. We're referring to a piece of the audio and I've put
the start and end times into the notes and we're going to sample the audio to add in to relevant
points. But if you're just looking at the written form, there's a transcript of the audio in there.
So there's the original thing that we're actually talking about. So a little bit of
biography from the two of us, I'm Dave Morris, I've already said I've got a degree in biology
and I've maintained an interest in the subject read around it, kept learning about it while
actually working outside that subject in information technology. And during my education,
as with most scientific education, I was required to read and understand scientific papers and
the arguments that they made so to do sort of meta-analyses and that type of thing. I tried to use
these methods that I've learned to analyse the points made in episode 3, 4, 1, 4 and to refer to
as many relevant papers and articles as I could as I could find. So how do you, Andrew?
Yeah, unlike Dave, first of all, my name is Andrew Conway, also known as McNalloo Online.
Unlike Dave, I don't have a background biology. In fact, I didn't really even study it at
school to any great length. So I'd really do defer to Dave and people who know more than me about
that. So you'll notice that what I'm saying, what I say, I'm careful not to stray into territory that I
don't have expertise in. Where my background lies in science is in statistics, mathematics,
physics and astronomy. And my PhD was in statistical methods of inventing useful statistical methods
to analyse solar and geomagnetic activity. And while I was doing that, I got into adult education
and I ended up, first of all, at Glasgow University and then I went to the open university.
And while I was there, I actually ended up teaching postgraduate, a course in advanced statistics.
And at the same time was writing a book on astronomy for children. So one interesting
mind is trying to explain these kind of scientific mathematical statistical ideas to a wide audience.
That's something that I thread that's run the way throughout my adult life. Most recently,
I stepped out of my comfort zone and had a look at data on society and economics and
particularly the society in which I live, which is in Scotland. And that was published in a book called
How Scotland Works a couple of years ago. And I have actually worked in keeping that information
up to date and at the new information that we've all had to try and digest on COVID-19 and the
pandemic. Although my focus has been particularly how that's taken place in Scotland and the UK in
detail, although I am always looking at other countries too. So I'm not a virologist. I'm not
epidemiologist. I can barely see it. I defer to David in the biology, but it doesn't
dress me, you know, and I'm learning about that as I go. Excellent. Fantastic. Yeah, just I'm not a
virologist, nor an immunologist, nor an epidemiologist, or any of those things, but just, you know,
having had a doing a degree in the subject can mean that you end up looking around for all of the
the materials on the news and digging into scientific papers and that sort of thing. So
it's I'm a great believer in to continuous learning into my older age. So yeah.
So let's get on with the with the various points. We've got six points that we're going to be
addressing. And we'll just we'll just go ahead first into these. And
there each one is followed by the audio, I should say, is followed by responses from the
the two of us. So let's begin with point one, which is concerning social distancing.
I want to take you on a tour of thinking. I want to expose you to some very common experiments.
The news media used a spray bottle filled with a clear liquid that turns blue under ultraviolet light.
They had someone stand six feet away and they sprayed the bottle in the subject's direction.
At six feet, many large droplets made their way from the bottle to the subject.
Because of this, we have our six feet social distancing rule. If this proves anything,
it proves six feet is not enough. But if they told us we couldn't get within 18 feet of
another person, how far do you think that rule would get? Well, the face mask takes up the slack,
right? Right? So my response to that is that the process of using a spray bottle as an experiment
is not what you might argue is an experiment. It's not much of one. And it doesn't fit the definition
that we talked about earlier. And in what respect is a spray bottle, a simulation of human breathing
or coughing? And how does the liquid that was used relate to what comes out of a human mouth or
no? So it may well be a good experiment in spray bottle squirting, but not much to do with human
spreading of viruses. And I disagree that this so-called experiment simulates human transmission
of infectious materials. It only demonstrates that whatever you be reactive liquid that was being
used in the demonstration, that it can travel further than six feet when sprayed from this
particular device. So that's my feeling. Yes, I have a few separate points. I agree with
what Dave has just said there. I feel this point made in episode 3, 4, 1, 4 on social distancing
would be made much stronger if we had a specific reference. We were only told that this experiment
was done by the news media. Now that immediately makes me wonder why are we not given a specific
reference? Why not a link to YouTube video? He does it elsewhere. Why not for this? I think given
that quite a lot of weight has been placed in this at a specific reference, we would strengthen
the argument here. Now the other implication is that the six foot distancing rule is based on
this simple flawed experiment. Now I don't believe this is the case. There are much more rigorous
experiments and I'll mention one later when we come to masks. But no matter how good your
experiment, even if you did do a much better simulation of human breathing, that would not tell us
what distance we can specify in the social distancing rule, that is a matter of judgment.
And to emphasize that point, in the US it's quoted as six feet, they like imperial measurements
ironically. In the UK it is quoted as two meters, which is just a little bit longer than six feet.
And throughout Europe, the distances were generally shorter. There were either one or one and a half
meters throughout Europe. I guess throughout the world there was a lot of variation.
If you want to read more about this, and actually an interesting debate about how this is handled
politically, there is quite an interesting exchange in a debate in the UK Parliament, which
I've linked to in the show notes. Finally, a six foot distancing rule or any distance.
It's intended to be a simple and easy to understand measure that will help reduce transmission.
I think most people, I would say it's commonly understood that droplets in aerosols
will exceed this distance. Nobody really believes that there is some invisible barrier at six feet
that you're safe at. If they do believe that, they should be corrected pretty quickly. And I believe
they would be. But I don't believe that's a way to believe so. As with the few points made in
that show, I think this is somewhat of a straw man argument. Good stuff. So like I said before,
there are three references relating to this particular point and there listed after the written
responses here. So we've tried to choose things which are particularly relevant to the
points we're putting forward. Obviously there are loads and loads more, but we don't want to go too far
with this, but please do your own research. So we're moving on then to point two where we're talking
about the effectiveness of masks. And that's from two minutes, 22 to three minutes, 21. I was
meaning to say this each time, but I forgot last time. And we'll hear what the audio says
that particular range. If you wear eyeglasses, you've already done the next experiment many times.
If you don't wear eyeglasses, you can still observe this experiment. When you come out of grocery
store on a cold day, stop for a while and watch those who are coming in. Those wearing eyeglasses
will have their eyeglasses fogged up. You already know why I know. If every breadie's breath is going
around their masks already, what good is a second mask going to do? You can answer that one easily.
How much more effective is an N95 mask on your face over an N95 mask in your pocket? A little.
When I spray paint, if the mask seals to my face, I won't smell the thinner, but when it doesn't
quite seal, I can smell the thinner. If you can smell the coffee, well, hair should never go around
the mask. So moving on to my response, these are observations and not an experiment, I think.
There's some relevant observations and there are questions that we're looking at.
Does having a poorly fitting mask completely cancel out the effect wearing a mask is one way of looking at it?
I would say that different types of masks will have different levels of effectiveness and they need
to be worn properly to optimize effectiveness. People with their noses outside their masks are
wearing them in properly as people are wearing them on their chin and you do see an amazing amount
of this which are fine to really stretch, as well on your head really in many cases.
The readily available mask types such as the disposable surgical masks which are very easy to
come by and also washable cloth masks which become quite popular. They will both reduce the
respiratory clouds. It tends to be called of particles coming out of breath and therefore will
lessen the likelihood of a COVID-19 carrier spreading the virus. There's a paper that I've
referenced here which is the first in a list of references down below which does quite detailed
analysis over to Andrew. Well, the point made here is that and I agree with it as that a mask is
not 100% effective in stopping transmission of the virus. But again, this point risks a strong
unargument because very few people would claim that masks can be 100% effective. Yeah, but obviously
like a mask with it's like that you would use in some biohazard facility or when you're spray
painting talks like paint, which is mentioned in the show, has to be of a very high standard.
But the masks we're talking about here that are worn by the general population who are nowhere near
the standard cloth masks and the two-ply masks, certainly not. So there is no, I think it's
commonly understood that masks do not give you anything like 100% protection. Now, government and
media were mentioned in this show, but let me give you this example. A government minister did
try to claim that wearing a mask could lead to 100%, or nearly, I think he did actually claim it
was a complete protection. But let's say, be generous and see, he really meant nearly 100%
protection in stopping transmission with two people in fairly close proximity wearing masks.
So that was the claim that he made. He was immediately criticized for making this claim,
because medical professionals were worried that understood it, that this could lead to complacency,
that masks not immune to the virus, but would protect you completely from the virus. This isn't
true. And so he was criticized roundly by journalists in particular and the public on social media.
And in the end, it was shown that the infographic he had based this claim on had no valid source.
That was just a nice pretty picture that somebody had put together with some numbers and words
on it, that as far as we know being made up, it didn't come from any scientific study. And he
apologised, which is good, and retracted the claim. So my point here is that most people understand
that masks limit transmission. They don't stop it entirely. Now, personally, I wear masks.
When I'm out and about indoors. But I am quite skeptical about their efficacy for a number of
reasons. This is because there are so many different factors at play in the real world that we can't
simulate a scientific experiment. How many people are present, what type of masks, how are they
wearing them, how are they handling them, what are the ventilation like? I could go on.
Now, I came across an article published in The Journal Nature, which is a highly respected
journal, a few know anything about science. And it has quite a further description of an
experiment done in a small number of individuals wearing different masks. Now, interestingly,
they filmed two things. One was that homemade cloth masks could increase the amount of particles
coming out. But that didn't mean that would increase transmission. It was actually part of the
mask being aerosolised, being this particles being created by the breath going through the mask,
the increased particles. It could lead to increased transmission, but that experiment wasn't
designed to test that. Every other type of mask did certainly reduce transmission to a statistically
significant degree. But cloth masks had a bit of a question mark in them in that study. The other
thing that they filmed is one individual of their study consistently produced higher quantities
of particles, no matter what mask they were wearing. In other words, there was evidence for a
super-spreader, not in the careless wandering around with the band and ignoring all the rules,
type of super-spreader, but one that was a super-spreader physiologically, they just produced more
particles from their breath. It was, again, it was unclear as to why this was the case.
So, I think the point here is we make, we should understand that masks and the science behind them
are very, it is difficult to pin down and that will generate debate. Now, just because their debate
doesn't mean they're useless. Even if, say, a mask and wearing is 50% effective, we're 25%
effective, then it's still reducing transmission and in concert with other methods, such as social
distancing, I think it's still worth doing them. So, when the point is made that social distancing
isn't enough and to quote, face mask takes up the slack, end quote, I think that's too simplistic.
There's not just two methods at play here, there's not just two factors. I think you have to
think more widely than that and not try and isolate one individually.
Excellent, yes. Okay, going on to the next point where we're talking about the spreading of the
virus and this is from 321 to 505, it's longer, longer section of audio, which we'll hear now.
The next experiment I do nearly every day, I make a cup of coffee and I put milk into it.
You can probably do this with tea also. If you pour the milk in along the edge of the cup,
you don't need to stir it with a spoon. With the right cup, the milk will be completely mixed in.
Why is this important? If you put a COVID patient wearing a mask in the corner of a room,
the air they breathe will be stirring up the room. It won't be as complete as the milk gets mixed,
but it will get some mixing done. The next experiment requires the weather to cooperate,
but hopefully you can recall a previous version of this experiment. It concerns water in the air.
When the water in the air is in large groups or drops, it falls to the ground very quickly.
When the drops are really tiny, they have very little weight but proportionately great wind drag.
This allows the tiny drops to spend a lot more time in the air before hitting the ground.
The drops that come out of a person's mouth are very tiny indeed. Combine their time in the air
with the breathing causing the mixing and you have six feet and masks adding up to a very short
safe time in an enclosed area. The other day I saw two people traveling in a car with masks on.
If they are from different families and are brought together for some test that requires them to
travel together, the media would have them wear masks to keep safe. If you've been paying attention,
you know that if they had different viruses in their systems before it's the trip,
they were sharing those viruses after the trip.
So going on to my response to this, there are no other word experiment is used a lot.
There aren't really any experiments here, but there's some observations which are
which are worth discussing. And yes, an infected person in a closed, poorly ventilated room
wheel spread viruses in the atmosphere. This is known and the experiments have shown it.
Its observations will show people catching disease from such environments.
And yes, human breath contains some very fine aerosols, which may contain infective agents.
It contains fine animals, so cause particles. But the fine aerosol is the element that tends to
move around more for a fairly obvious reasons, I guess. And this is these particular factors
are that make up the reason why the advice in general is to avoid situations where large numbers
of people are congregating indoors and to boost ventilation in indoor environments as much as
possible. And as we've been saying, use masks and suitable distancing in indoor environments
as well, which will help to offset the fact that there is virus potentially in the atmosphere
in that environment. So Andrew. Yes, well, I actually don't have that much to add.
I think the main thing I would say here is that most of the description given here is actually
fairly accurate. And I think the real world everyday analogies, these kind of analogies are actually
appropriate and helpful, I think in the mean that mixing of the coffee cup is a nice way to
visualize mixing that will occur in the air in the room, which is all invisible, of course,
where you can see it in the coffee cup. Another one that I like is you're boiling a pan of
peas, you can see convection currents in the peas. So it's nice to visualize things in these ways.
There's a few details where I would quibble, though the wind drag, when that's met in the
room, that area, I'm not quite sure what the science is seeing, what is being said about the
science there. But my main problem is it would be good to quote a reference in here again. It
would strengthen the point that's made. And it's the same problem, again, I've mentioned before,
it's a kind of straw man argument that mask the social distancing, even together, are nowhere
near 100% in affecting transmission. If you were briefly passing through a room or indoor area
or a shop even, just to go in and buy a newspaper and come back out again, I think there's good
argument there that the mask will help you also keeping your distance from people, it's not going
to hurt, but there should be no expectation that gives you complete protection either. But I think,
and that's for circumstances worth doing, if you were in a badly ventilated room,
crowded with a lot of people for many hours on end, would social distancing, would a mask help
you so much then? I think probably not, you know, in that situation you're facing a much
higher risk of catching the virus, especially if there happens to be one person who's infected,
spewing up articles in that room and the air is getting mixed out. So yes, that is true,
in that latter circumstance. But again, you know, by controlling our behavior during the pandemic,
we can make masks and social distancing be more effective by choosing the circumstances
that we go into. So it's not just about the mask and social distancing, it's thinking through
the wider picture again. Thank you. So moving on to point four, we're looking at the importance
of vitamin D3 and the audio is taken from the show five minutes, six seconds, two, seven minutes,
twenty one. And now I drop the bomb, the bomb of hope. There are three web pages that I want you
to know about. Two of them testify of the importance of vitamin D3 to your immune system.
And one of them testifies to the importance of body temperature to someone exposed to COVID,
or any other virus. 4,000 to 5,000 IU is recommended dose for wintertime,
but I talked with someone whose doctor recommended 45,000 IU for a short time to get her D3
up to a safe level. Oh, here's another experiment that happens every year. And even those who want
you to get a vaccine admitted, when October came around last year, even those advocating for
a vaccine predicted a second wave of COVID infections. In order for a second wave to happen,
there had to be a receding of the first wave that would have been during the experiment in the summer.
History records this experiment every year, not just for COVID, but for all viruses.
Flu season takes a break in the summer. That doesn't mean you can't get the flu during the summer,
but it's a lot harder. The politicians don't want you to think about how the sunshine
increases vitamin D3 in your system, and keeping your body temperature warm slows the growth of viruses.
I want you to ask yourself why the flu takes a break in the summer, and how can we keep it going
through the fall and winter? I've mentioned the two reasons I can think of.
If you duck up using duck, duck, go COVID-19, doctor, and clinical trial, you'll find the first
webpage, a YouTube video. A hospital in Spain did a double blind study with patients who came in with
COVID symptoms. All 76 got normal hospital treatment for COVID, but 50 of them also got vitamin D3.
It's admittedly a small study, but the score 7.6% death rate without the D3, and 0% death rate with
D3 means it deserves to be repeated all around the world. If you duck up radio lab podcast and invisible
allies, you'll find the radio lab episode of the same name. This episode suggests that vitamin D3
helped the homeless population, whether the COVID outbreak. How few homeless came down with COVID-19
symptoms is notable. So here's my thoughts about this, and there's certainly been a lot of discussion
about the role of vitamin D3 in less of the effects of COVID-19. The host, we haven't actually
mentioned his name. I think Cole Goe is the name he uses. Apologies for not mentioning it before,
but he refers to a YouTube video from Dr. John Campbell, who I've been following throughout the
pandemic personally, who is a medical professional. More on the nursing side than the being a doctor,
I think he has a PhD perhaps in the teaching side of medicine. Anyway, he's been on an excellent
source of information. He is very keen on the idea that vitamin D3 is something we should all be
taking. Unfortunately, the Spanish clinical trial that's mentioned in the video and elsewhere still
seems to be too small to give enough confidence in its results. I was looking at this, other trials
have so far approved, inconclusive. However, there's no damage to taking a recommended dose of
vitamin D3. The NHS, the National Health Service in the UK has been recommending taking vitamin D3
supplements for elderly and immunocompromised people that I'm struggling with. There's been free
access to supplies during the winter. I imagine those are coming back again. I've certainly been
taking vitamin D3 myself. Anthony Fauci, who's the government epidemiologist, I'm not sure
what his official title is, but certainly the guy that everybody goes through in the states,
he says he takes vitamin D supplement himself. The general conclusion seems to be
without a huge amount of evidence yet, but it seems to be that supplement should be taken,
but this is in addition to vaccination and certainly not, as some people are saying,
instead of vaccination. The argument that homeless people have avoided COVID-19 due to
high vitamin D3 levels is unsupported. It certainly heard this point being made, but when you look,
there seems to be very little evidence that that's in fact the case, and there's a reference
in the list below this section of the notes to support that. So, to you then, Andrew?
Yeah, well, I echo what you said there, that it's the idea is that you take vitamin D3 in
addition to vaccination, not instead of. But my point of view, whether or not vitamin D3 helps
protect against COVID-19, I'll be honest here, this is where my knowledge of biology just
slows me up. I've read some of the studies. I can see this, understand the statistics, and the
statistics aren't all that significant, and the ones I looked at, but I don't really understand
the biological reasons why we need it. But I do know being an astronomer, that there's a clear reason
why we end up being vitamin D3 deficient at high latitudes. Dave and I both live just short of 56
degrees north. He's in the far east of Scotland, Ed and Bram and Glasgow, but we're at pretty much
the same latitude. In winter, a lot of people here will suffer from vitamin D deficiencies because
we just don't get enough sunlight. The days are short, sun doesn't get very high, and it's cold,
so we wrap up having very little skin exposed. As a result, we are generally deficient in this
vitamin in this country. Now in Scandinavia, it's not so bad because they actually, I think, through
diet of fish, oily fish, get more vitamin D3 than what we do through the diets we typically have
in the UK and especially Scotland. We've been constantly told for years that we need to do
something about this, either change your diet or take vitamin supplements to avoid the fact.
And I think Dave, you can correct me, but there are medical conditions like rickets, for example,
that are seen as a result of this, so it's not a trivial thing. I mean, less, less, these days diets
are better than they were 100 years ago, but it's still, in this modern day and age, the case that
people are diagnosed with rickets as a result of this. Nevertheless, people in the west of Scotland,
in particular, are famous for their terrible diets, they ignore this advice. And I really don't see
that advising them to date with them in D3 to protect them against COVID is really going to
change that when they're already facing high levels of this heart disease through bad diet and
other things. So I just, even if this was true, and it doesn't seem clear up to me either way,
whether it's true or not, the vitamin D3 protecting against COVID, I don't think it would be good
public health policy. You'd have your work cut out to get that advice across to the public here.
Maybe it's different else, but it definitely is different in other countries, Scandinavia,
Scandinavian ones, for example. Now, the point here is made that viruses recede during
summer months, and that's an arguably true, plenty of evidence for that. And there's two suggestions
in this podcast, sorry, in the show that three, three, four, one, four, us to why this is.
One is vitamin D3, the other one is come, we'll come to later, but to do with temperature.
But the most obvious explanation for why virus transmission increases in the winter is that people
spend most of their time indoors in badly ventilated spaces at home, in the office, at school,
and with Advent Central heating, this got worse actually in society because when you had
cold fires with all the problems they bring, they did suck air through the house. A modern
centrally heated home double glazed is quite well sealed, there's not drafts, there's not much
air flow through the house, that or office building or school, and that is why I think you see increased
viral transmission in winter. That from everything I've read is, if not the main cause, certainly
should be up there in consideration. That isn't mentioned here. And the next step we can look at is
is it true actually that COVID-19 waves only took place during the winter, did they take a break
during summer, and the evidence is to the contrary. The first COVID-19 wave did not take hold in many
western countries until the spring, we were March April when the worst of it hit. So we grew
the transmission rates were increasing through spring and early summer. They did decline during summer,
but you could argue, yes, that was due to summer, you could also argue that was because of the lockdown
measures that were taken. The most recent wave that we've been through, where there's certainly
this country being next very little in the way of lockdown restrictions took place during the summer
months. In the UK, the last peak was in July and in US and France, it occurred in August, and extended
into September in many other countries. This is not usual for a respiratory or a flu virus to peak
during summer months like that. If you want to verify this data for yourself, there's many places
you can do it, but one place that collects data for you across many countries that I'd recommend is
our world and data, and there's a link to that in the human world. So 0.5 then is about body
temperature and COVID-19, and that's from seven minutes, 53 to 10 minutes, one second, and we'll
listen to the audio now. If you duck up coronavirus 2003 and BMR, you'll find a web page where a medical
professional points out the importance of staying warm to fight COVID. This knowledge is from
2003 and a previous COVID outbreak. We learn from history that we don't learn from history,
but medical professionals should be required to answer for this information from 2003.
When I was a kid, if you came in wet from winter weather, your mom would say something like,
get out of those wet clothes before you catch your death of cold. After this, some people calling
themselves scientists said, you don't get a cold from being cold, you get a cold from a virus.
Unfortunately, we've built a society on this misinformation. Though there's some truth to this,
those who paid attention knew that being cold for a length of time could lead to catching the flu.
Now there is evidence that many, if not all viruses, replicate faster if your body temperature is
reduced by five degrees or so. Spiking a fever is probably a way for your body to fight off a virus.
Some people assert that a fever, if it's less than 104 degrees Fahrenheit, should be encouraged.
How do people get their temperature down by five degrees? The group of people in Texas who got
COVID together worked in a meat packing plant. Cold extremities? Probably.
Another method to reduce the temperature of people's extremities is to take them to a hospital.
Most of us have had the experience of being cold in a hospital room.
There's valid scientific reason for this. The air is kept cold around beds made with stainless
steel to keep condensation from forming and to keep bacteria from growing on parts of the bed.
While this is important, it's also important for the patient's body temperature to be maintained.
One solution would be to supply each bed with an electric blanket.
So living on to my response to this, I think there's little evidence that being cold in the
sense being used here has any effect on susceptibility to viruses or to other agents, bacteria, whatever.
Anomaly experience has shown an effective significant lowering of body temperature.
That's where the temperature is reduced by plunging into icy water or something for a period.
That changes the core temperature quite significantly. But being out on a cold day tends not to do that
unless you're in minus 30 type temperatures and you're out for a very long time without proper
clothing or whatever. So I don't mind the question from reading around about this subject,
which I didn't know a great deal about in the first instance. But there was very little in the
way of significant effect on the immune system in humans when following this one through.
The medical professional cited in the notes for episode 341 for was actually responding to a
Hong Kong report into the original SARS virus, which is referenced here. And the opinion reported
in this response, which effectively a comment was that cold might be a factor in the worsening
of the disease. But I believe that this is an opinion, certainly no clinical trial associated with it.
And I just make the point that the term, the other previous COVID or the other COVID was mentioned
in the notes. And there wasn't no other COVID, the previous virus was called SARS.
Final point was about hospitals, experience of hospitals in the UK and in other parts of
Europe and parts of Asia in my case is that these places are kept very warm, sometimes uncomfortably so.
But yeah, that's certainly my experience, what it's like in the states I have no idea.
Andrew, I certainly agree with you. I was spent seven hours waiting around at the hospital.
Nothing serious wasn't me that was ill, but I had spent seven hours waiting in a hospital a few
days ago. And I can watch the fact that the air, although there was ventilation system, it felt
did feel too hot, you know, it was kept warm. And perhaps for the patient comfort,
I was a visitor and therefore fully clothed, but I certainly couldn't sit with a jacket on,
I had to at least take the jacket off and even then I still felt too warm.
And now, this particular area is the one I've been most difficult, because my biological
understanding is rather limited. So as the urge to do by the host of 3, 4, 1, 4, 1, 4, 1, 4,
I went and did some web searches and evidence that I found in this not very scientific research
in the web, was all kinds of studies that showed that there was suspicion that there was something
going on here with body temperature, but it was not clear cut. And I apologise for some not
stuck record. The conclusion I came to is it's very hard to isolate one factor in virus transmission
from the others, that yes, cold may be a factor, but it's hard to isolate it and pull it away from
other factors like ventilation in the room, for example, that I actually quite like the
reference to the common sense, you know, your mum, your granny, your grandmother,
telling you, oh, you'll catch your death of a cold outside if you don't put on your jacket.
In Scotland, this is certainly a thing, cultural thing, and it's easy to understand why in winter
in past generations, because modern generations, this is not such a big thing, but in past
generations, before you had central heating, say if you were going to school, you're a child
going to school, and you had to walk, because we didn't have cars, like I'm talking, you know,
in mid to early 20th century, you walk to school, class goes a very wet city, you get soaked when
you wait school in winter, and then you get to the school and the heating wouldn't necessarily
be all that great at school, and so, you know, and so you wouldn't dry out, you'd be wet all day
along, you know, so it would be, for anything else, very unpleasant thing. Nowadays, the heat that
sent everything, including schools central, heated, you'd dry out much faster. So the argument
in past generations was not just that, you know, you catch your death of a cold, but if you got wet,
you stayed wet, and you wouldn't dry out, it's very hard to dry yourself out. If you've ever been
camping, you'll know from first-hand experience how unpleasant that can be. Whether it leads to
increased final transmission? I just, you know, the jury is old. I suspect there is something there,
but my jury is old, I should say, it's not clear cut from my red.
No, that's a very good point, and it was a lot different back in the day. I was sent to my kids
recently that, as a, as a youngster in the 1960s, it was the norm that boys wore shorts
until they reached a certain age, regardless of the weather, and walking home from school
when there was a sleep storm or something in shorts was the most horrendous thing. Never made me
ill, but boy, did it end up with some sore skin on my knees as a consequence of it? I could feel it now,
it was horrendous, so yeah. Yep, I had to do exactly the same for the first five years of school
in the 1970s, so yeah, so I know exactly what you're talking about, very unpleasant.
So, okay, moving on then to the last point, which is 0.6 trust, I've called it, these are my
titles, by the way, trust issues and conspiracy theories, and it's from 1002 in the audio to
1202, which I think is pretty much the end of the audio, and so we'll just listen to that now.
My government, probably yours, wants everybody vaccinated, but they don't trust the vaccines enough
to hold big pharma accountable for the damage the vaccines cause. The unvaccinated who already
have antibodies for COVID are on their list, but if they already have antibodies, what use is the
vaccine to them? It's an important question because there may be reasons governments want people
vaccinated other than health. If they are ignoring vitamin D3 and body temperature and concentrating
on experimental vaccines, then public health is clearly not the issue. I think we need ambulance
chaser lawyers for the COVID crisis. If someone has an ambulance chaser lawyer send a registered
letter to a hospital or a nursing home detailing the importance of vitamin D3 and body temperature
to fight COVID viruses, they will have to give patients vitamin D3 and keep them warm.
Just a few institutions as targets are all that will be necessary because the rates of serious
infections will show the efficacy of this treatment. Once this information goes public,
the ambulance chasers will be able to drain money from any institution that ignores this,
possibly including governments. If you've already had COVID and don't want to get an experimental
vaccine, you should get an antibody test. If you already have the antibodies for COVID,
public health cannot be a reason for getting this experimental vaccine. An ambulance chaser lawyer
can then drain money from whoever compels you to get the vaccine and then fires you for not getting it.
If a company or school system or hospital compels their employees to get the vaccines,
even though the drug companies are given immunity by governments, the company that requires
vaccination should be held responsible for harmful side effects and death.
So my response to this is to say that ever since vaccines were invented, they have been
extremely vital to prevent the spread of diseases and the list of diseases and the vaccines
is long and getting longer. I've listed things like smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, etc.
But as I was growing up in the 1950s, where everyone was frightened of polio and diphtheria,
a fact that even I as a child of about five or six was aware of,
then these were issues that were in everybody's mind. I've made reference to an article on the
history of virus experiences and vaccination. And so from that point of view, and this is not really
a scientific point, but it's a sort of a social one. It's unbelievable to me that anyone in 2021
wished to ignore or attempt to undermine the science of vaccination without really good cause,
and I don't see one. So I'd say that the COVID-19 vaccine is not experimental.
The vaccine technology has moved forward tremendously in recent years to the level that targeted
vaccines can be made much faster than ever before. Several of the current vaccines use messenger RNA,
or also called mRNA, to make human cells generate the virus proteins, which then stimulate
the immune system. And it vaccines like the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines do this. So it
effectively, it's a technique of rather than giving viruses, because they say dead viruses,
but it's debatable where viruses are alive ever, but that's a long debate. But denatured in some
form viruses, which contain all of the proteins, etc., which trigger the immune system,
that's been one way of dealing with it, but in the past. But now we have the technology to
get the cells of the human body to make the substances which are going to trigger, they call
epitopes, by the way, which are going to trigger the immune system. So there are other vaccines
which use harmless viruses, which have been modified to cause human cells to generate these
proteins. And that includes the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been popular in the UK, and the Johnson
and Johnson, which is also used in the states and in quite a lot of Europe, I think. These vaccines
can be developed a lot faster than previously, because the technology is such that it can happen.
The full range of normal, critical, clinical trials is being run at a high speed in order to reach
the required level of confidence as rapidly as possible. So I think I would maintain that it's not
experimental. Things have been sped up considerably compared to previous times when the whole
whole virus has been given to people, but that's just part of the way things have changed, I think.
All vaccines have some risk associated with them, but these are almost always minimal.
The NHS staff, in my experience, check for any allergies when you're receiving a vaccination,
you're asked to remain nearby for 10 minutes in case you might have some allergic reaction
following the vaccination. There is a very rare blood clotting problem that's been reported
in relation to the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, but this is currently under investigation,
and it is very, very rare, though the cause is not currently known. The risk of getting COVID-19
is much higher than any vaccine side effects, especially if you're older than 50 or have
comorbidities, i.e. other illnesses, heart-conditioned diabetes, overweight, those sorts of things.
It's advised that people have had COVID-19 and who have antibodies to the virus be vaccinated,
to ensure that they have a safe level of immunity. So on the face of it seems that if you've
had the disease and recovered, you will have antibodies, and therefore why would you need a vaccine.
It's possible that the so-called natural immunity that you get as a consequence of this
is not as effective as that provided by the vaccines. This would depend on factors like which variant
you caught and what's around now and whether the illness was asymptomatic, therefore quite mild,
and so forth. Maybe it was mild because your immune system dealt with it very fast,
or maybe it was mild because you hardly got any of the virus, just enough to sort of tickle
your immune system and not enough to go into a raging attack on the virus proteins and stuff.
So as mentioned before, there are some indications that maintaining vitamin D3
helps support the immune system. There are similar indications that zinc also has effects.
I haven't cited any of the signs on this, but I believe that there's been a bit more done on
the zinc level with more positive results, but they're not a cure for COVID-19.
They're the things that help your immune system fight it rather than anything else,
and as I say, the evidence is still minimal. It's important to emphasise that these measures
are not a substitute for the vaccine. So Andrew, over to you.
Well, I have to say that again, I'm sort of open my comfort zone here, and actually I've learned
quite a lot from what Dave has just said and what we discussed before recording this.
So I'm going to confine myself to one, I feel like biologically related point,
and the rest are actually to do with the argument and the measures we take in society.
Now, this first point is one that I think I could provide some quite solid references to,
and actually have a friend who's a scientist that's worked on vaccines and immunology
and outside of big pharma companies, he funded his own company more recently. So he's checked,
I've consulted him in this to check my understanding, my basic understanding is right.
So the first thing is that lacking antibodies does not necessarily mean a lack of immunity.
A paper published in the journal Nature presented evidence that long-lived immunity can
arise from something called T cells, and that such immunity can even apply across different
coronaviruses. In fact, they found evidence that people who had the original SARS, 17 years ago,
the SARS-CoVU1 that we mentioned before, had some level immunity against the current
coronavirus. Now, there are similarities between the two, but they really are quite different.
So this was a bit of a surprise finding. That paper was published last year, so it may be that
there's been a small update since then. There's a link to it in the journals.
Separately to that, it's also known that antibodies wane over time from infection, and specific
to SARS-CoV2, researchers at Oxford University and hospitals around Oxford found that
the number level of antibodies fall by a half in 90 days. Now, for both reasons, the implications
would be that an antibody test in itself would not be definitive on immunity, so you can just
take an antibody test to determine whether you've got immunity to COVID or not. It's not as simple as
that. Now, some countries are indeed considering immunity passports, showing that you have had
the virus in addition to vaccine passports. However, it is much easier to show and hold public records
on whether a person has had a vaccine or not than it is on whether they have immunity for reasons
I've just described, or even simply that they have had the virus and recovered with possibly some
natural immunity, although as Dave said, there's a question mark over that. Now, the reason that
this is difficult is because we didn't test so much at the beginning of the pandemic, because we
didn't have the resources to do so, and still it's been done inconsistently across countries even
just now. So, basing natural immunity evidence on testing and people reporting themselves that
they've had the virus and recovered, they might have had another coronavirus where they might have
had something completely unrelated and mistaken it for COVID, because COVID symptoms are really quite
vague, including very mild infections. I think it would be quite hard to put that into practice
administratively. In fact, it's much easier to just do vaccine passports. So, the reason that
vaccine passports are being done, whether you agree with them or not, and I think there's an
interesting debate to be had there. It's not necessarily clear cut. I think it should be something
that's discussed, but vaccine passports are administratively easier to do, which is why they're
being done, I think. Now, previous points in episode 3, 4, 1, 4 argued that measures to prevent COVID-19
transmission are either only partially effective or being overlooked entirely, such as vitamin D3 and
body temperature arguments, but the argument here and this part and this point that we're looking at
jumps and it makes an assertion that governments and big pharma with some sort of media
cooperation are encouraged just to get the vaccination for some ulterior motive. Now, if taken
at phase value, the previous points outlined in 3, 4, 1, 4 are consistent with this, but they don't
justify that conclusion. That's why I call it an assertion. It doesn't follow from anything
that's been said before. It's something we're being asked to believe at this point and take on
board. Now, keeping an open mind, you have to ask, what is the motive for getting us vaccinated
by these big pharma companies? It seems to be, if I explicitly stated that it's big pharma that
are driving this vaccination campaign and governments are too afraid for some reason to do anything
about it. Well, the fact that big pharma has been mentioned suggests to me that one motive that
is implied is profit. But why leave this vague? It's kind of left open. I think it's worth
I think it's worth making the motive clear. If you're calling people in power to account, whether
there are governments or big companies, I think you need to really be clear as to what their motive
might be and present evidence for it, but it's kind of left hanging, which I find a bit puzzling
in this argument. Now, finally, I'd like to quote from something we just heard the host of the
show read out, but I want for emphasis to be clear on to read out again. So begin quote,
the company that requires vaccination should be held responsible for harmful side effects and death
end quote. Companies and governments should certainly be held to account for any harm that they do.
But no evidence has been presented of a vaccine causing harm here as Davis discussed. Huge
numbers of people now have been given vaccines in many countries. I mean, I don't know the exact
number of top of my head, but it must be in the hundreds of millions, if not getting towards
a billion now, of people in the world have now been given vaccines to some degree or another.
If there was harm being done, there should be evidence of it. Even if harm was a fraction of
a percent, that still equates to a huge number of people. It would be difficult to hide.
If governments were somehow covering this up in such an enormous scale, it would require
an amazing level of competence. I don't know about you, but certainly the level of competence
or other incompetence I see from my governments, the Scottish Government and the UK Government,
the ones I know best, it would be just incredible that they could pull that off. But let's say that
I'm wrong. Let's play devil's advocate against myself. Let's say that the governments have with
the big farmer companies managed to hide this from us. Well, I've got another problem in that.
How is it that all the people I know have had the vaccine, and that is pretty much every adult
that I know? How come not one of them have told me of anything beyond a minor side effect? I think
one of them had some through-like symptoms and had take to bed for a day, and that was the worst,
and after that was fine. If there is bad effects of the virus, I just, I can't see it first hand,
I can't see it second hand or third hand yet. If these effects are to come some point in the future,
well, I question what you should do with it then, particularly, definitely. But why should we be
going up to find ambulance chasing lawyers now for what reason? Is it that this might,
this evidence might emerge in the future? That seems backwards to me. So I'm very skeptical,
indeed, on this very point. Great. There's a number of references relating to all of this.
Just bring your attention to one that does cover the subject of
viruses and immunology, which is from this week in virology, episode 802, with a well-ported,
well-renowned immunologist called Shane Crottie, who did a really good analysis of the immunological aspects
of dealing with this particular virus and disease. He talks a lot about the T cells and other
immune cells, B cells and so forth. It's not a subject that I find myself that knowledgeable about,
I really like to learn more about it. I'm trying to, but it's a lot more complicated than it was
when I was a biology undergraduate. But you might find that that sort of thing, and also John Campbell's
episodes on YouTube helped to fill in some of the gaps that you might have in the area of how
the human body deals with viruses and antibodies and long-term immunity, et cetera, et cetera.
Plus also the fact that it's worth bearing in mind that this is still an area that's
being investigated, so new discoveries will come along as time progresses, because it's not
that science knows everything, and that's the end of the story, and it's all going away.
But it's an ongoing process, so you might find that some useful information there.
So, those are the points that we intended to cover, and we want to draw some conclusions
and at the end of it. I've just got a couple of things to say, and I'll hand over to Andrew.
I feel that episode 3414 is in general misleading. I'm not sure that it's actually setting out
to be misleading, but it ends up being that way. It purports to be applying critical thinking to
various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in reality is propagating what can only be called
vague anecdotes, best, and possibly even misinformation that worst. Possibly in all innocence,
but as I say, it's possible that this is a well-meaning effort, but I believe that this sort of thing
should not be done without plentiful references to facts in the form of peer-reviewed scientific
papers and items from properly qualified expert sources, and that's what we've tried to do
in this response to it. So, part of the episode 3414, which has been separated out
in this critique as .6, contains some examples of what can only really be called conspiracy theories.
The theory that in a pandemic government, the pushing vaccination for some nefarious purpose
makes no sense to me, at least, neither does calling the vaccine's experimental,
no attempt to make a support such a case because there is nothing to support it.
It's a particular example of the failure of critical thinking and even plain common sense,
I would say. So, that's my conclusion, Andrew.
Yeah, I would actually go with all of that. I,
because something you said, I'm happy to believe that
Google who hosted the show was saying something he genuinely believed, which I disagree with in many
points. I actually thought the show was well presented and some thought had gone into a structure,
and I would say rhetorically, it was actually quite good, but it is not logically sound.
There's two ways, do you need to make an argument? There's the logic, you've got to see things,
provide facts, step through, you've also got to persuade, which is what rhetoric is about,
which can be an emotional appeal, and I think that an argument that is rhetorically strong,
but logically weak is generally going to appeal to people who already maybe hold some of those
views. It's quite hard to shift people from one camp and to another, a nudge is a better word.
So, it's not logically sound. The argument is very much geared to persuade, and the reasoning
doesn't, in my mind, stack up for the reasons we've gone through, and the evidence base is really
not there. I think many of Dave's points, in particular, are pointed to premises from which
well, there was a lack of a premise to start with. Regarding critical thinking, I think that,
you know, critical thinking is vital, and it most certainly involves questioning orthodoxy,
and by that, I mean, widely accepted thinking. In fact, Coleman said that things people accept
without even thinking about them. That's orthodoxy. And yes, orthodoxy is often transmitted by structures
and institutions around us. Some for bad reasons, some for good reasons, just democratic institutions
will do it. And we trust, we want to trust institutions so we can get on with our life so that
they will look after us and keep our hospitals ticking over and our roads paved and our trains
running on time, all that kind of stuff. But it's absolutely crucial to plan that critical thinking
to those who wield power, and that certainly includes governments and corporation amongst others.
But true critical thinking isn't just concerned with holding those in power to account,
it should be applied to all arguments, you know, to a scientist, for example, would apply
critical thinking to nature, you know, when it isn't just about criticising power. This episode
I think takes critical thinking as meaning questioning the orthodoxy that's present around us
and those in power, which I think is a bit of a limited way to view it. To my mind, the true
test of a critical thinker, and I'm quite open to challenge on this point, is that they welcome
criticism and will use it to improve their thinking. Great. Thank you very much, Andrew.
So we'll call it an end at that particular point. Thank you for listening and
thanks very much to Andrew for his contribution to this whole process. I was really going to do this
show myself and Andrew in discussion offer to come and join in and it's made the whole thing
a lot better than the original sort of. Hopefully you found it useful and please come back
with comments and shows of your own if you wish to engage in further discussion.
Okay then, bye. Bye bye.
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