I have mixed feelings about Abp Vigano, but I think you should have learned by now that statements like “…everything from COVID vaccines to election results in 2020 should, I think, give anyone pause about his rational capacity” might not age well. Remember when the Wuhan wet market, Russiagate and Hunter Biden’s laptop= Russian disinfo …
I have mixed feelings about Abp Vigano, but I think you should have learned by now that statements like “…everything from COVID vaccines to election results in 2020 should, I think, give anyone pause about his rational capacity” might not age well. Remember when the Wuhan wet market, Russiagate and Hunter Biden’s laptop= Russian disinfo were the approved opinions? Legit lawsuits are being filed re Covid jab harms, and if you don’t find shenanigans around the 2020 election dodgy, I don’t know what else to tell you.
Here's the issue: Abp. Viganò wasn't taking a measured or thoughtful approach on any of those things. He consistently came in hot with extreme and inflammatory statements. The fact that some of his rants turned out to have a grain (and only a grain) of truth in them doesn't mean that he's been vindicated. The adage about broken clocks being right twice a day applies here.
I have beliefs about Covid and the 2020 election that seem to differ from other people in the section of the comments, but this thread isn't about arguing those. I like your comment that how he was talking about these topics is as important as what he may have said
I gave up on the idea that some theories are too insane to possibly be true when the CIA admitted to doing mind control experiments on US children (using drugs). And then again when I saw the BBC documentary on the healthy US foster children, with no medical representative, being forced into taking AIDS drugs to see what the side effects were, funding approved by Dr. Fauci.
Sometimes you have enough evidence to come to a conclusion for or against, sometimes you don't, but they can't be falsified for sounding weird.
If your concern is with media bias and propaganda, that's one thing. Many people, when talking about time 2020 election, refer to outright fraud and changing vote tallies, of which not one shred of credible evidence has been presented.
It is established that government agencies conspired with social media platforms to repress certain points of view and to promote others; I don’t see how that doesn’t constitute election interference.
The credible evidence that government agencies conspired with social media platforms to repress certain points of view and to promote others should disturb you, if you care about integrity, honesty and truth.
No, there’s nothing dishonest, etc., about it. For as long as there have been government and media, the government has engaged with the media to assert its point of view. The government - any government - gets to contact the media and tell the media that it thinks there’s something wrong or dangerous on this or that platform. What in the world is wrong with that?
As far as I'm aware, the most the government ever did was ask that something be taken down under a platform's terms of service. In the old days, the government would ask a newspaper for a retraction. That has happened on a practically daily basis, always. That's not censorship.
"the most the government ever did was ask that something be taken down...." I invite you to read the District and Circuit Court decisions in Missouri v. Biden.
Well written. There are many of us who have done a lot of research into Covid, the vaccines, the lockdowns, the forced immunizations, and the aftermath, as well as allegations of irregularities in the 2020 election, from both sides of the opinion spectrum.
I want to be able to think as clearly as possible when forming my beliefs about such important issues, and like just about everyone, I would prefer to stick toward my own natural inclinations in beliefs and opinions. In my mind, that necessarily means stepping over the fence to try to overcome my own bias.
Like you said, it won’t age well. The truth usually lies somewhere in between sides, and none of us can see it clearly, but I am disappointed in what I perceive to be close minded thinking on the part of The Pillar. I have too much respect for them not to be disappointed.
I should clarify here. I have a problem with the statement from the post, “everything from COVID vaccines to election results in 2020 should, I think, give anyone pause about his rational capacity,” not the coverage here, nor the charges against Vigano. I have long thought he was out of control.
I certainly know that there was an 83% miscarriage rate for pregnant women in the covid vaccine trials. I worked in a public school and pregnant teachers were encouraged not to get the vaccine until after they had delivered, so someone was certainly trying to keep that misccarriage information from the general public.
I read about a peer reviewed, published study that put the miscarriage rate at 14%. Quite impressive, given that the typical rate is 20%. But if 3/4 of your study participants are in the third trimester, de facto incapable of a miscarriage, you can get impressive numbers.
I tried to look into this, and it seems as if both sides were trying to manipulate the numbers in a way that made the truth unclear. But basing anything on this one study is still treating the vaccine as an unknown quantity when it isn't. If American mothers in 2021/22 had miscarried at an 80% rate, don't you think people would have noticed?
This is anecdotal, which I know isn't data, but almost every woman I know including me, who had at least one Covid vaccine dose, had something very strange and completely unexpected happen to them with regards to their cycle. First we were told that we were making it up (this is a common experience for women in health care, unfortunately), then we were told that it was real but it was fine and normal, actually, and then finally we were told that maybe something was wrong after all but who can even tell, anymore, it was so long ago.
I did conceive in 2021 after that and had a healthy pregnancy and delivery, but those months of charting make absolutely no sense at all. I still don't know why, and it's annoying to have it swept under the rug, but as I alluded to above, it's not new with regards to attitudes about women's health. Even so, pre-2020 I was not especially inclined to skepticism regarding public health and not at all for vaccines. I assumed "mistakes" were a matter of benign neglect and blind spots, and not willful and deliberate, and now I feel very stupid and naive for having ever believed that. I'm still not sure what I think, except that quackery isn't apparently just a fringe thing but well and alive in the mainstream, too.
There was a group of Orthodox Rabbis that noticed the trend in cycle problems that Penguin Mom mentioned, consulted with a bunch of research-level physicians, and banned the vaccine in their congregations because they expected it to cause miscarriages and fertility problems. There's a strong link between cycle problems and miscarriages. For obvious reasons: both cycles and fetal care are driven by the same hormones and other physical conditions.
We live in a society where women shout their abortions and hide their pregnancies from everyone but their husband for the first trimester. Also in a society where doctors routinely tell women they are making up their problems (one friend of mine was told her thyroid and immunodificiency symptoms were psychological, I could list more). Also in a society were doctors treat nearly every cycle problem with birth control, because they don't actually care to make the system function properly. The effect of the vaccine is generally not permanent, and it wouldn't be happening to all women for the same 3-12 months. Women who got the vaccine later in pregnancy were considerably less likely to miscarry (and after 4.5 months it's called a stillbirth). Women who got it before they were pregnant were considerably less likely to conceive until they recovered. So it's not like 80% of women were miscarrying all at once. 80% of women who got vaccinated in their third trimester lost the baby. So no, I don't think people would notice.
Side note: Orthodox Rabbis have an enviable pool of data for this particular problem. They have ritual purity requirements regarding women's cycles, so they get told about them, for their entire congregation. They also only allow birth control in very limited circumstances, so they have a lot of data about what right looks like, and also the connections between healthy cycles, miscarriage, fertility, and such. The women are also more likely to be pregnant, as sexually active, fertile women tend to get pregnant once every 2-3 years if there are no efforts to prevent it.
I was in medical residency during the early pandemic, and they were all recommended to get the vaccine as soon as it came out. It's only anecdote, not data, but none of them miscarried, none of them have had fertility issues
Did this anecdotal data include questions about who was on birth control and who was sexually active, and who was in their first trimester when they got the vaccine?
Anecdote can be somewhat useful if it contains sufficient context. This does not.
I was responding to someone who said that pregnant teachers were encouraged to not get the shot. So I was responding with anecdote to anecdote.
But if you want data, there was a Dutch study that came out in 2024 using 2021 and 2022 data. For women who got vaccinated between 2-20 weeks gestation there was no increase in miscarriage rate. For women vaccinated before pregnancy, they found a decreased miscarriage rate
I would have to see the study. There are an awful lot of moronic studies that have been peer reviewed and published. Makes me wish a statistician's approval was required. For example, if one were to take the average miscarriage rate of a pregnancy for all 20 weeks of possible miscarriage, and compare that overall miscarriage rate of women in the Dutch study, the data would be quite skewed if the women were vaccinated later in pregnancy. This is because 95% of miscarriages occur in the first trimester, the earlier you go, the more vulnerable the child. It's almost as bad as including third trimester women, though not quite. So including women in the study who've already gotten through 3 months of pregnancy before they are vaccinated will skew things (kind of analogous to the Monty Hall problem). One could hypothetically adjust for this, but there is no guarantee that the researchers actually did, and I don't know if there is enough data on week by week miscarriage rates to do that, or enough participants in the study for it to be statistically valid at that level of resolution.
I don't want to be dragged into this, so although I can question some of the actual claims made by others in this this thread, all I will say is - why it is a retired Italian prelate's business to make thundering claims about U.S. political minutiae in the first place? Would anyone find it normal if an American bishop gave the world his passionate thoughts on Italian politics? (Yes, Vigano spent several years in the U.S., but many American prelates have spent substantial time in Italy.)
When someone declares himself general oracle to the world with no credentials and acts like a fool about it, anyone has the right to judge whether this is the proper business of a bishop.
To what “dodgy shenanigans” around the 2020 election do you refer?
The loser of that election, Donald Trump, had every opportunity to challenge the election results in court at the appropriate time. And he did. And he lost those challenges - all of them. Joe Biden got 36 more electoral votes than he needed to become president. He got 7 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. If that were the result of a “dodgy shenanigan,” that’s one heck of a “dodgy shenanigan”!
If you aren’t able to accept the simple, objective truth that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair and that the rightful winner of that election was lawfully sworn in as president thereafter, then “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
There’s not enough space here, but you could start with the coordinated effort to suppress Hunter Biden’s laptop and frame it as “Russian disinfo,” when its authenticity has been validated. That and “Russiagate” (also disproven, and not just by conservatives) should give you pause for consideration. Thank you.
The Pillar didn’t say “voter fraud” and neither did I; as with cat skinning, there’s more than one way to interfere with fair and free elections. Thank you, I appreciate having civil conversations about controversial topics.
If I recall correctly Trump filed 72 separate challenges. It is not insignificant that all were dismissed on procedural grounds rather than decided on the merits. Make of that what you will. That is to say nothing of Murthy v. Biden currently pending before the SC.
Yes. Today's nearly universal agreement on anything is in no way guaranteed to last. Tomorrow's disagreement also may evaporate with another change in the Weltanschauung.
I agree about the shenanigans, and I'm glad those who did the shenanigans are, for the my most part, being prosecuted and some have even pled guilty already
It is a rare swing and a miss on the Pillar's part. I'm sure they would be the first to concede politics and science are a bit outside their ken but they still have the best batting average in the industry.
Agreed; that’s why I was put off by the way they framed that criticism of Abp Vigano. Nobody gets it right all the time, with my name at the top of that list.
I have mixed feelings about Abp Vigano, but I think you should have learned by now that statements like “…everything from COVID vaccines to election results in 2020 should, I think, give anyone pause about his rational capacity” might not age well. Remember when the Wuhan wet market, Russiagate and Hunter Biden’s laptop= Russian disinfo were the approved opinions? Legit lawsuits are being filed re Covid jab harms, and if you don’t find shenanigans around the 2020 election dodgy, I don’t know what else to tell you.
Here's the issue: Abp. Viganò wasn't taking a measured or thoughtful approach on any of those things. He consistently came in hot with extreme and inflammatory statements. The fact that some of his rants turned out to have a grain (and only a grain) of truth in them doesn't mean that he's been vindicated. The adage about broken clocks being right twice a day applies here.
I have beliefs about Covid and the 2020 election that seem to differ from other people in the section of the comments, but this thread isn't about arguing those. I like your comment that how he was talking about these topics is as important as what he may have said
I honestly don't know what I believe about those things anymore other than that there are some theories so insane I know not to believe them.
I gave up on the idea that some theories are too insane to possibly be true when the CIA admitted to doing mind control experiments on US children (using drugs). And then again when I saw the BBC documentary on the healthy US foster children, with no medical representative, being forced into taking AIDS drugs to see what the side effects were, funding approved by Dr. Fauci.
Sometimes you have enough evidence to come to a conclusion for or against, sometimes you don't, but they can't be falsified for sounding weird.
Should he be condemned theologically or canonically because of his tone of voice?
These comments were about his US political speech, not his attacks on the Vatican II council or Pope Francis.
What did he say that only had a “grain” of truth?
You figure it out.
" if you don’t find shenanigans around the 2020 election dodgy, I don’t know what else to tell you."
That's how I feel about the folks who insist there is anything there, so I don't know what else to tell you.
Please explain the concerted effort to suppress Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell.” That alone was election interference.
If your concern is with media bias and propaganda, that's one thing. Many people, when talking about time 2020 election, refer to outright fraud and changing vote tallies, of which not one shred of credible evidence has been presented.
It is established that government agencies conspired with social media platforms to repress certain points of view and to promote others; I don’t see how that doesn’t constitute election interference.
You seem to be completely missing my point. I am talking about the accusations of vote fraud and fake tallies, of which there is no credible evidence.
The credible evidence that government agencies conspired with social media platforms to repress certain points of view and to promote others should disturb you, if you care about integrity, honesty and truth.
No, there’s nothing dishonest, etc., about it. For as long as there have been government and media, the government has engaged with the media to assert its point of view. The government - any government - gets to contact the media and tell the media that it thinks there’s something wrong or dangerous on this or that platform. What in the world is wrong with that?
I would agree with you if the public were informed of the government’s effort to tip the scales of public opinion.
And as long as disfavored speech is not censored.
But that’s not what is happening here.
What's the censorship? Please describe.
As far as I'm aware, the most the government ever did was ask that something be taken down under a platform's terms of service. In the old days, the government would ask a newspaper for a retraction. That has happened on a practically daily basis, always. That's not censorship.
I'm afraid we are too far apart for this discussion to be productive.
"the most the government ever did was ask that something be taken down...." I invite you to read the District and Circuit Court decisions in Missouri v. Biden.
District Court:
https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/uploads/missouri-v-biden-ruling.pdf
Circuit Court:
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pdf
Well written. There are many of us who have done a lot of research into Covid, the vaccines, the lockdowns, the forced immunizations, and the aftermath, as well as allegations of irregularities in the 2020 election, from both sides of the opinion spectrum.
I want to be able to think as clearly as possible when forming my beliefs about such important issues, and like just about everyone, I would prefer to stick toward my own natural inclinations in beliefs and opinions. In my mind, that necessarily means stepping over the fence to try to overcome my own bias.
Like you said, it won’t age well. The truth usually lies somewhere in between sides, and none of us can see it clearly, but I am disappointed in what I perceive to be close minded thinking on the part of The Pillar. I have too much respect for them not to be disappointed.
I should clarify here. I have a problem with the statement from the post, “everything from COVID vaccines to election results in 2020 should, I think, give anyone pause about his rational capacity,” not the coverage here, nor the charges against Vigano. I have long thought he was out of control.
Thank you for clarifying; I was only referring to the Pillar’s framing of the issue.
I certainly know that there was an 83% miscarriage rate for pregnant women in the covid vaccine trials. I worked in a public school and pregnant teachers were encouraged not to get the vaccine until after they had delivered, so someone was certainly trying to keep that misccarriage information from the general public.
I read about a peer reviewed, published study that put the miscarriage rate at 14%. Quite impressive, given that the typical rate is 20%. But if 3/4 of your study participants are in the third trimester, de facto incapable of a miscarriage, you can get impressive numbers.
I tried to look into this, and it seems as if both sides were trying to manipulate the numbers in a way that made the truth unclear. But basing anything on this one study is still treating the vaccine as an unknown quantity when it isn't. If American mothers in 2021/22 had miscarried at an 80% rate, don't you think people would have noticed?
This is anecdotal, which I know isn't data, but almost every woman I know including me, who had at least one Covid vaccine dose, had something very strange and completely unexpected happen to them with regards to their cycle. First we were told that we were making it up (this is a common experience for women in health care, unfortunately), then we were told that it was real but it was fine and normal, actually, and then finally we were told that maybe something was wrong after all but who can even tell, anymore, it was so long ago.
I did conceive in 2021 after that and had a healthy pregnancy and delivery, but those months of charting make absolutely no sense at all. I still don't know why, and it's annoying to have it swept under the rug, but as I alluded to above, it's not new with regards to attitudes about women's health. Even so, pre-2020 I was not especially inclined to skepticism regarding public health and not at all for vaccines. I assumed "mistakes" were a matter of benign neglect and blind spots, and not willful and deliberate, and now I feel very stupid and naive for having ever believed that. I'm still not sure what I think, except that quackery isn't apparently just a fringe thing but well and alive in the mainstream, too.
There was a group of Orthodox Rabbis that noticed the trend in cycle problems that Penguin Mom mentioned, consulted with a bunch of research-level physicians, and banned the vaccine in their congregations because they expected it to cause miscarriages and fertility problems. There's a strong link between cycle problems and miscarriages. For obvious reasons: both cycles and fetal care are driven by the same hormones and other physical conditions.
We live in a society where women shout their abortions and hide their pregnancies from everyone but their husband for the first trimester. Also in a society where doctors routinely tell women they are making up their problems (one friend of mine was told her thyroid and immunodificiency symptoms were psychological, I could list more). Also in a society were doctors treat nearly every cycle problem with birth control, because they don't actually care to make the system function properly. The effect of the vaccine is generally not permanent, and it wouldn't be happening to all women for the same 3-12 months. Women who got the vaccine later in pregnancy were considerably less likely to miscarry (and after 4.5 months it's called a stillbirth). Women who got it before they were pregnant were considerably less likely to conceive until they recovered. So it's not like 80% of women were miscarrying all at once. 80% of women who got vaccinated in their third trimester lost the baby. So no, I don't think people would notice.
Side note: Orthodox Rabbis have an enviable pool of data for this particular problem. They have ritual purity requirements regarding women's cycles, so they get told about them, for their entire congregation. They also only allow birth control in very limited circumstances, so they have a lot of data about what right looks like, and also the connections between healthy cycles, miscarriage, fertility, and such. The women are also more likely to be pregnant, as sexually active, fertile women tend to get pregnant once every 2-3 years if there are no efforts to prevent it.
I was in medical residency during the early pandemic, and they were all recommended to get the vaccine as soon as it came out. It's only anecdote, not data, but none of them miscarried, none of them have had fertility issues
Did this anecdotal data include questions about who was on birth control and who was sexually active, and who was in their first trimester when they got the vaccine?
Anecdote can be somewhat useful if it contains sufficient context. This does not.
I was responding to someone who said that pregnant teachers were encouraged to not get the shot. So I was responding with anecdote to anecdote.
But if you want data, there was a Dutch study that came out in 2024 using 2021 and 2022 data. For women who got vaccinated between 2-20 weeks gestation there was no increase in miscarriage rate. For women vaccinated before pregnancy, they found a decreased miscarriage rate
Ah, my apologies, I got the comments mixed up.
I would have to see the study. There are an awful lot of moronic studies that have been peer reviewed and published. Makes me wish a statistician's approval was required. For example, if one were to take the average miscarriage rate of a pregnancy for all 20 weeks of possible miscarriage, and compare that overall miscarriage rate of women in the Dutch study, the data would be quite skewed if the women were vaccinated later in pregnancy. This is because 95% of miscarriages occur in the first trimester, the earlier you go, the more vulnerable the child. It's almost as bad as including third trimester women, though not quite. So including women in the study who've already gotten through 3 months of pregnancy before they are vaccinated will skew things (kind of analogous to the Monty Hall problem). One could hypothetically adjust for this, but there is no guarantee that the researchers actually did, and I don't know if there is enough data on week by week miscarriage rates to do that, or enough participants in the study for it to be statistically valid at that level of resolution.
I don't want to be dragged into this, so although I can question some of the actual claims made by others in this this thread, all I will say is - why it is a retired Italian prelate's business to make thundering claims about U.S. political minutiae in the first place? Would anyone find it normal if an American bishop gave the world his passionate thoughts on Italian politics? (Yes, Vigano spent several years in the U.S., but many American prelates have spent substantial time in Italy.)
// why it is a retired Italian prelate's business to make thundering claims about U.S. political minutiae in the first place? //
His "business"? Who determines what he must and must not think and say about anything?
When someone declares himself general oracle to the world with no credentials and acts like a fool about it, anyone has the right to judge whether this is the proper business of a bishop.
To what “dodgy shenanigans” around the 2020 election do you refer?
The loser of that election, Donald Trump, had every opportunity to challenge the election results in court at the appropriate time. And he did. And he lost those challenges - all of them. Joe Biden got 36 more electoral votes than he needed to become president. He got 7 million more popular votes than Donald Trump. If that were the result of a “dodgy shenanigan,” that’s one heck of a “dodgy shenanigan”!
If you aren’t able to accept the simple, objective truth that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair and that the rightful winner of that election was lawfully sworn in as president thereafter, then “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
// If you aren’t able to accept the simple, objective truth that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair //
Very few things in life are simple and objective truths. We are born, live, and die in uncertainty.
There’s not enough space here, but you could start with the coordinated effort to suppress Hunter Biden’s laptop and frame it as “Russian disinfo,” when its authenticity has been validated. That and “Russiagate” (also disproven, and not just by conservatives) should give you pause for consideration. Thank you.
Again, none of that had anything to do with actual vote fraud.
The Pillar didn’t say “voter fraud” and neither did I; as with cat skinning, there’s more than one way to interfere with fair and free elections. Thank you, I appreciate having civil conversations about controversial topics.
If I recall correctly Trump filed 72 separate challenges. It is not insignificant that all were dismissed on procedural grounds rather than decided on the merits. Make of that what you will. That is to say nothing of Murthy v. Biden currently pending before the SC.
Yes. Today's nearly universal agreement on anything is in no way guaranteed to last. Tomorrow's disagreement also may evaporate with another change in the Weltanschauung.
I agree about the shenanigans, and I'm glad those who did the shenanigans are, for the my most part, being prosecuted and some have even pled guilty already
It is a rare swing and a miss on the Pillar's part. I'm sure they would be the first to concede politics and science are a bit outside their ken but they still have the best batting average in the industry.
Agreed; that’s why I was put off by the way they framed that criticism of Abp Vigano. Nobody gets it right all the time, with my name at the top of that list.