Just the (Fact) Checks

Here's the second of a two-fer for July.

The D.C. turmoil just keeps rollin' along, but there are plenty of other orgs and people keeping us informed about all that.

Woooo… what a world. The summer scorches along, and I had no idea of the ‘big’ concert-related anniversaries I could share with y’all until I looked at my Here’s Where I Was calendar. There are also a plethora of Open Tabs, a new feature, Dear MissInfo, that segues to a very, very important Fact Check essay-report on a disturbing, high-level meeting about vaccines that occurred a few weeks ago, and A Photograph is sprinkled throughout because, well, pretty pictures, that’s why.

Onward.

Here's Where I Was

On July 3^rd 1976 I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at Musicfest, invited by Journey’s road manager Bubba (mentioned in the part one July post) to see the band open for Elvin Bishop. I’ve written previously about how I met Bubba and Journey at the Waukegan Ice Arena for the first time but had never been able to find a record of the show Bubba invited me to in Milwaukee a few days later. Found it. For those Journey fans out there, little historical tidbit is that it was Elvin who took eventual Journey founder Neal Schon around to jam with other Bay Area players, because Neal wasn’t old enough to get into clubs. 

Proceeding yearly, on July 10^th 1977, I was backstage at Soldier Field, Chicago, for a massive outdoor show headlined by Ted Nugent, with Journey and other bands on the bill (an aside: while his music was occasionally killer, Nugent was an asshole even back then).

The show was notable for multiple reasons. Many who were there, and recorded history focuses on this, remember it for the thousands of empty one-gallon water containers that the crowd used to create a replica of a giant popcorn popper. But for Journey historians, it’s noted for the introduction of (short lived) singer Robert Fleischman.

While the tour was for Journey’s third album, Next (my sentimental fave), Fleischman had been brought in and was working on songs for what would be Journey’s next breakout album, Infinity. I met him at the hotel where the band stayed the day before their concert at a small, local Illinois college — really — a few days before the Soldier Field gig.

At the Chicago show he came onstage and did a few songs, none of which I can remember except for an early version of Wheel in the Sky. I wasn’t privy to everything that was happening and, therefore, didn’t realize that the other ‘new’ guy I had recently met, Steve Perry, was already working on new songs with Neal, and Perry was literally watching Fleischman from the wings that day.

Fleischman was out very soon after. He’s had a successful after-Journey life, so don’t feel too bad for him.

Ah, and now we come to July 8^th 1978, at Chicago’s Soldier Field, this time Journey is second to headliner the Rolling Stones. This is one of the gigs that I have stories about but don’t share them as willingly as others because, um, well for now we’ll stick with just because. They include being in the trailer for an embarrassing but revealing moment between Herbie and the president of Columbia Records, meeting Mick and Keith, and later coming across info that explained a few things that happened during that meet. Ah, rock and roll.

And a fave among my faves, the July 4^th 1979 Day on the Green (DOG) at Oakland Coliseum. This was one of many that featured Journey, a unique, historic series of Bill Graham gigs with which I am proud to have had a part to play.

A Photograph

Open Tabs

"I was just thinking..."
"I know, you just said that."
Which is how a future conversation could go with someone who has lost the ability to speak but could soon gain the ability to speak by thinking. Yeah.

The creation of Astroturf was a game changer. Not so much anymore, but an artificial turf manufacturing lobby is willing to take you to court if you even think about saying bad things about it (sounds like someone we all know...), and they need to be SLAPP'd.

I had my first cup of coffee when I was thirteen, sitting at the counter of a small restaurant on 63rd street that my friend Jim Fitzgibbon and I walked past every morning on our way to school. A cup was thirty-five cents. He stopped coming, I didn't, and I'm still a java fiend. Lucky me, because it turns out coffee is a life extender.

This one's disturbing on several levels, and not surprising that it's from Texas, and I'll refrain from any lead-in to this piece about Antiabortion advocates look for men to report their partners’ abortions

And since we're doing serious, here's a piece on something I've been wondering about: what does the science say about transgender athletes (turns out it ain't so simple...)

Let's get tech-geeky! A bazillion people create, move, use, copy, cry at, laugh at them everyday, without a thought about where the heck did JPEGs come from?

A few issues ago I had a piece about Republican foot draggers who had yet to mount a wall plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who put themselves on the front lines of the January 6th riot inside and outside of the Capitol building. Enough already, let's go to court about it.

Okay, okay, we know that too much of a good thing can turn out not to be a good thing, but damn, gummy-associated health problems?!? Shoot.

Alright, I'll see your gummy problem and raise you a tale about doing magic mushrooms for mental health.

Another Photograph

Introducing — Dear MissInfo

Over-scheduled lifestyles, family responsibilities, work, and endless opportunities for online engagement result in readers absorbing content in small snippets that often include only the most general of summations or descriptions, leaving many readers confused or unclear about the important elements of a story. Because so many consumers often only skim the news, whether in print or online, Dear MissInfo provides succinct content (including phonetic pronunciation descriptions) in a light colloquial style, explanations of important news but without the subjective or controversial bias — perceived or actual — that might otherwise color a reader’s understanding…or beliefs.

Dear MissInfo, what is thimerosal?  Pronounced: thigh-MARE-eh-sahl

A few weeks after a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a 17-member panel with members newly appointed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the ACIP recommended against children receiving flu vaccines containing thimerosal, a chemical additive used in some vaccines as a preservative. MissInfo wants you to have a better understanding about thimerosal and, as always, provides this information without bias.

What is thimerosal? Let’s begin with what it isn’t: thimerosal, used in a small percentage of vaccines (~4% of vaccines worldwide) is NOT mercury.

The chemical name for mercury is elemental mercury. It’s the stuff in thermometers, blood pressure instruments, certain electronics, used in industrial processes, is a byproduct of burning coal, and contained in ‘old’ dental fillings. Quicksilver is mercury in a shiny, liquid form. Mercury is a toxicant, and methylmercury (high toxicity) is a form found in the ocean (the kind of mercury that accumulates in some fish, and then in the fish eaters) created via an interaction with other chemicals which migrate to oceans through drainage and runoff.

Thimerosal is a vaccine preservative and bacterial anti-contaminant. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly first created it under the name Merthiolate. Its base chemical is ethylmercury, shown by years of research and testing to be easily purged from the body and, with no known negative effects, to be safe at the levels used in vaccines. Thimerosal was removed from almost all vaccines in 1999 and is now only contained in multi-dose flu vaccines, with very, very small amounts — ‘trace’ amounts — found in TDVax, tetanus and diphtheria vaccines for those seven years old and above. 

Its American removal in 1999 was not due to findings of harmful toxicity or adverse effects, but rather because of the perception of concern. It is still use in other parts of the world.

MissInfo thanks you for your time and wishes you good health through modern medicine, science, and an acceptance of reality.

When Deniers and Skeptics Get Together

While our health care systems are sometimes less than ideal, our trust in our doctors needs to remain steadfast, especially in this time of false idols praise and the increasing pervasiveness of science mistrust.

Okay. So why all the hubbub?

Because in these times you can’t convince everyone that facts, research, and science are real.

Because the people with the momentum in powerful places right now have agendas that have little to do with the realities of medicine, science, and research.

And because I care about us.

Hence, I’m sharing what I’ve read on how the RFK Jr.-led committee decision on thimerosal and about the ACIP’s inaccurate findings. You probably don’t have the kind of time to dig into it that I do, or more likely aren’t aware of the inaccuracies voiced during the Committee’s meetings, because while the recommendations received the majority of media notice, the inaccuracies that generated the recommendations…not so much.

Regular readers of Story and Pictures are aware of my longtime, ongoing interest in confronting medical, health, and vaccine misinformation, and will not be surprised at the length of this piece. For you newer readers, you may find this piece longer than expected, but that’s because it’s important.

What happened with the ACIP is, to me, indicative of incidents happening across a a plethora of federal-related programs, departments, and agendas, and of the intellectual hubris of people who have no business taking care of anyone or any organization, especially those that influence the health of the United States' population.

The Evidence Collective, self-described as “health influencers uniting to share science with all,” monitored the ACIP’s two days of discussions and presentations.  The Collective explains that it “is a group of trusted health communicators who unite to deliver clear, evidence-based information directly on social platforms and other communities, meeting people where[ever] they are with empathy and speed….When health topics become complicated, this multidisciplinary team collaborates across disciplines and platforms to help the public understand the full picture, enabling them to spot falsehoods early and respond quickly to emerging health issues…Their vision is to empower the general public with timely, evidence-based information [that enables people] to lead healthy lives and thrive by translating science into plain language, and address public concerns and confusion.”

What they do is what I do, although I do it on a much smaller, general scale, and have nowhere near the acumen, qualified expertise, and intellectual power. But I know this matters, which is why I read these sort of documents until life charges me an excess baggage fee for the bags under my eyes.

I follow Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE), a Substack by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina—“a public health enthusiast with a passion for making science accessible, [with] a Master’s in Public Health and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics.” I’ve mentioned her and included information from her Substack before. Everyone should follow Dr. Jetelina. It’s that simple; click on the link and follow her. It’s through YLE that I discovered The Evidence Collective.

I included almost the entirety of the Collective’s description of itself not just to explain what it does but to point out how troubling it is (at least to me) that we need such an organization: because so much of what’s being said, listened to, and reported on currently is not just off the mark, it’s downright dangerous and is coming from people who we’re supposed to believe know what they’re talking about.

The Collective monitored and then composed fact check summaries for each of the ACIP’s two meetings. Presentations, votes, and recommendations were made to and by the ACIP’s new members, all recently appointed en masse by Kennedy. What follows are my selected extracts and very brief summaries from and based upon The Evidence Collective’s fact checks:

• The newly appointed committee chair, Martin Kulldorff, was appointed “despite typically requiring at least one year of committee service before chairing”. (Kulldorff is controversial, on the record voicing out-of-the-mainstream-science views on vaccines; he’s a former professor at Harvard Medical School who also worked as an epidemiologist at Mass General Brigham.
• Kulldorff incorrectly claimed there is an “equal recommendation” for MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vs MMRV (varicella is chicken pox) for the first dose.
• “Kulldorff recycled anti-vaccine talking points about birth dose hepatitis B vaccination.”
• On “members’ challenges to methodology,” Kulldorff asked about the “gold standard double blind controls” for COVID-19 boosters. The fact check emphasized that “It’s unethical to run randomized placebo-controlled trials of updated COVID-19 vaccines because that would mean withholding known protection from participants.” (emphasis is mine)
• This one’s a little technical: Committee member “Retsef Levi said vaccines 'randomly seed the entire body with spike protein that persists everywhere,’ which may require novel methods to assess safety.” The fact check notes that vaccines overwhelmingly remain confined to the injection site. A small portion entering the circulation goes primarily to the liver for degradation… “It is not at all clear why, even if Levi’s misperceptions were accurate, they would require novel methods to assess safety.”
• Levi also pointed out “that most people who are hospitalized are vaccinated and that vaccination may make them more vulnerable.” There is no credible evidence to support that a vaccination makes someone more susceptible to infections, or a coherent theoretical basis for it.
• ACIP member Robert Malone shared many “scientific falsehoods,” including ‘claims of certain vaccine lots that cause more adverse events.’ The ‘lots’ as used in this manner are the manufactured batches of vaccines; like so many other manufactured items, vaccines are made in lots, batches that are manufactured and shipped together (my explanation). Malone is referring to an anti-vax theory that “has been specifically examined and debunked by German and other regulatory agencies.”
• Member Cody Meisner, M.D., “notes [that] persistent imaging abnormalities…following vaccine myocarditis may indicate scar tissue formation, potential arrhythmia risk, and raise subclinical myocarditis concerns.” Fact check writes that “COVID-19 vaccination reduces myocarditis risk from SARS-CoV-2 infection,” that SARS-CoV-2 is a greater myocarditis risk than the vaccine, and that “rates of vaccine-associated have dropped to almost non-existent.” (Myocarditis is an inflammatory condition that affects heart muscle)
• Levi “is concerned that the use of RSV monoclonal antibody use or vaccination may increase susceptibility to other respiratory infections,” to which fact check responds “there is no basis for such an assumption.” (emphasis mine). What that statement conveys to me is that there is nothing anywhere, except in vaccine misinformation, that shows or demonstrates that increase susceptibility.

Day two of the ACIP meeting:

• A presentation “included a firehose of cherry-picked data without any context and [a clear] anti-vaccine bias,” and, apparently being changed from an earlier version, “previously contained citation that did not exist, suggesting the use of AI.”

There are many other instances and examples of the misinformation, bias, and flat out falsehoods of the two day meeting. I am skipping ahead, not because the additional specifics shouldn’t be addressed, but because I know that you, dear reader, may have had enough. So, I’m jumping to the Evidence Collective’s summary of the thimerosal presentation:

• This presentation raised concerns about thimerosal that conflict entirely with current scientific consensus and attempted to revive an issue that was resolved decades ago. The presentation relied primarily on mechanistic data (e.g. studies in cell culture) exploring precisely how thimerosal can be toxic in a petri dish, while omitting key epidemiological evidence, and selectively cited outdated studies from before key advances in thimerosal toxicology research (i.e., the knowledge that ethylmercury posed a much lower toxicity risk than methylmercury).

The Evidence Collective addressed 50 falsehoods from the two-day session, falsehoods about an aspect of our lives that has brought us to this moment, where certain people now have the power to implement misguided, poorly reasoned, wrong, dangerous ideas and beliefs that could sicken or permanently alter the health of innocent people. We have a country full of hard working, knowledgeable, caring health professionals, and while our health care systems are sometimes less than ideal, our trust in our doctors needs to remain steadfast, especially in this time of false idols praise and the increasing pervasiveness of science mistrust.

My personal praise and thanks goes to every scientist, technologist, and doctor I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and to The Evidence Collective, and ‘my’ local epidemiologist, Dr. Katelyn Jetelina.

To End, a Special In the Woods Photograph

I take our dog to an almost 70 acre publicly accessible field, which is bordered by a bit of forest on one side that also includes a nature-friendly, challenging disc golf course. Someone, or multiple someones, occasionally creates natural art pieces of tree limbs and other woodland detritus, and after a couple of decades roaming around, I've seen a lot of, um, stuff.

But this, as shown below, made me smile for several reasons. Maybe you'll smile too. It's the kind of thing that can happen when you remind yourself to look around. I'm appreciative of whoever went to this amount of effort to make us smile.

The white staff leaning against the tree is mine, as a walking assist and just-in-case wildlife deterrent (think coyote. really).

It starts just slightly above the center of the photo, on the limb.

Thanks for your time here, it's always appreciated. As always, tell your friends about it.

MWH