Cancer, Covid and Conspiracies By Mrs Vera West

When there is a disaster forced upon the public, the establishment goes into damage control. Thus, the world Economic Forum has removed posts that said that you will own nothing and be happy. That is said to be a Right-wing conspiracy, even though it is true. Then we have the British Medical Journal which recently published a paper which had the object of showing that those who objected to the Covid vax were unhinged conspiracy theorists, accepting things like the idea that the elites are lizard people, but no mention of demonic possession. This consisted of a survey of 1,494 people who responded; 209 of those were unvaccinated, 112 preferred alternative rather than conventional medicine and 62 had flat earth or reptilian beliefs. So, while there were a statistically significant number of unvaxxed who believed in the reptile theory of the elites, it was not even 50 percent. And the survey is of doubtful meaning because among the vaxxed population which was not sampled as a control, limiting the study, we might also find acceptance of conspiracies. What about the grand conspiracies of feminism, that all men are rapists, that there is a glass ceiling for women, said with a straight face by a female prime minister such as Julia Gillard?

 https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/increased-cancer-rates-caused-by

“Do you believe Santa is an anagram of Satan and brings corruption and greed during Christmas? (Well it is an anagram of Santa, so can’t argue with that one!) Do you think Santa is a giant lie that was started by the Illuminati for mind control? (Are they saying we should believe in Santa?) If so, then according to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), you are likely to have questioned the origin of Covid and whether or not to take part in the biggest medical trial in history.

The article, published a few days ago is called “Everything causes cancer? Beliefs and attitudes towards cancer prevention among anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, and reptilian conspiracists: online cross sectional survey”. With cancer on the rise, the authors wanted to see what people with certain beliefs believed about cancer and whether they adhered to cancer prevention recommendations.

According to the article, between 30%-50% of cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes and prevention strategies. These include maintaining a healthy weight, partaking in physical activity, eating fruits and vegetables, limiting consumption of alcohol and red and processed meat, avoiding excess sun exposure and active and passive smoking and participating in vaccination programmes against human papillomavirus and hepatitis.

However, misinformation can lead to increased disease because people refuse to adopt effective preventative health measures. Misinformation can also lead to delays in seeking treatment.

The authors say conspiracy beliefs are the extreme results of misinformation and lump together a whole load of conspiracy theories. As well as the Santa related theories described above, they include flat earthers, reptiles controlling the world, chem-trails and of course those who question the origin of Covid and the vaccines.

In total, there were 1,494 who responded to the survey. 209 of those were unvaccinated, 112 preferred alternative rather than conventional medicine and 62 reported flat earth or reptilian beliefs.

So already we can see that a large chunk of the unvaccinated group didn’t believe in flat earth theories or shapeshifting lizards. Nor did they prefer alternative medicine, they just questioned the Covid vaccines. But don’t say that bit out loud, they want everyone to think that the unvaccinated are crazy.

Next, they looked at the percentage of vaccinated and unvaccinated who believed in actual things that caused cancer and mythical things that caused cancer. More vaccinated believed in actual causes and more unvaccinated believed in mythical causes.

They did the same thing with people who preferred conventional medicine versus alternative medicine and non-conspiracy theorists versus flat earther or reptilian conspiracy believers with the same predictable results.

But what were these mythical causes of cancer? The most endorsed causes included eating foods that contains additives or sweeteners, feeling stressed and eating genetically modified food. I have written previously about whether sweeteners causes cancer, so is this really a mythical list?

Maybe they should have added another potential cause of turbo cancers?

It seems that both unvaccinated and vaccinated believe, in similar percentages, that smoking, being overweight, low physical activity and low fruit or veg intake cause cancer. Not so crazy after all then.

And almost 50% of both unvaccinated and vaccinated agreed that “it seems like everything causes cancer”.

Overall, this was a nonsense study which is an embarrassment to the BMJ. Another example of trying to stigmatise the unvaccinated, trying to compare their sensible, sceptical views with flat earthers.

The best analogy I could find was from Professor Norman Fenton who said:

An analogy to this might be a bunch of French football [soccer] fans decide that “France deserved to win the 2022 World Cup” is the only acceptable view to have about the recent competition. They knew it is a myth to believe that “any team other than France is the best football nation in the world”.

So they sample a bunch of football fans and discover the earth-shattering result that Argentinians were disproportionately represented among those who believe the myth. Hence they conclude that Argentinians (who they always believed were ignorant about football) really are more ignorant about football than non-Argentinians.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj-2022-072561

Abstract

Objective To evaluate, using an online non-probability sample, the beliefs about and attitudes towards cancer prevention of people professing vaccination scepticism or conspiracy theories.

Design Cross sectional survey.

Setting Data collected mainly from ForoCoches (a well known Spanish forum) and other platforms, including Reddit (English), 4Chan (English), HispaChan (Spanish), and a Spanish language website for cancer prevention (mejorsincancer.org) from January to March 2022.

Participants Among 1494 responders, 209 were unvaccinated against covid-19, 112 preferred alternative rather than conventional medicine, and 62 reported flat earth or reptilian beliefs.

Main outcome measures Cancer beliefs assessed using the Cancer Awareness Measure (CAM) and Cancer Awareness Measure Mythical Causes Scale (CAM-MYCS) (both validated tools).

Results Awareness of the actual causes of cancer was greater (median CAM score 63.6%) than that of mythical causes (41.7%). The most endorsed mythical causes of cancer were eating food containing additives or sweeteners, feeling stressed, and eating genetically modified food. Awareness of the actual and mythical causes of cancer among the unvaccinated, alternative medicine, and conspiracy groups was lower than among their counterparts. A median of 54.5% of the actual causes was accurately identified among each of the unvaccinated, alternative medicine, and conspiracy groups, and a median of 63.6% was identified in each of the three corresponding counterparts (P=0.13, 0.04, and 0.003, respectively). For mythical causes, medians of 25.0%, 16.7%, and 16.7% were accurately identified in the unvaccinated, alternative medicine, and conspiracy groups, respectively; a median of 41.7% was identified in each of the three corresponding counterparts (P<0.001 in adjusted models for all comparisons). In total, 673 (45.0%) participants agreed with the statement “It seems like everything causes cancer.” No significant differences were observed among the unvaccinated (44.0%), conspiracist (41.9%), or alternative medicine groups (35.7%), compared with their counterparts (45.2%, 45.7%, and 45.8%, respectively).

Conclusions Almost half of the participants agreed that “It seems like everything causes cancer,” which highlights the difficulty that society encounters in differentiating actual and mythical causes owing to mass information. People who believed in conspiracies, rejected the covid-19 vaccine, or preferred alternative medicine were more likely to endorse the mythical causes of cancer than their counterparts but were less likely to endorse the actual causes of cancer. These results suggest a direct connection between digital misinformation and consequent erroneous health decisions, which may represent a further preventable fraction of cancer.”