20-22 people linked to health related vaping problems:

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There is a very well written post made on an Australian Vape Advocacy FB page that pretty much applies to the media In the USA as well - it could be easily edited to suit (by someone who is more of a wordsmith than I)
I will quote the full post here and provide a link at the bottom for anyone who would like to either just share it or edit it and share it.

The Truth You Have Been Denied, Exposing
Misinformation and Revealing the Facts

Dear Australian Media Organisations,

I would like to address the deluge of misinformation being published by the Australian media in recent weeks regarding the outbreak of lung disease across the United States, which has been falsely associated with the vaping of flavoured e-liquids.

In the interests of transparency and openness and to abrogate potential claims of conflict on my part, I pre-empt the following statement by declaring I am involved in the vaping industry. Notwithstanding, as I am sure any reasonable person will see having read my statement, its intent is not for the purpose of promoting vaping, but to highlight the shameful and willful misrepresentation of the facts by those we should be able to rely upon to present the full truth and not the contrived nonsense that has been reported over the last several weeks across numerous media platforms.

The Australian media, in particular, 7 News’ unsubstantiated, nonsensical recitation of carefully selected quotes and statistics ensuring their biased narrative that e-cigarettes are dangerous is, in its entirety, the most blatant example of confirmation bias I have ever witnessed from a ‘professional’ news body.

One can only surmise the personal beliefs of the editors and journalists, or misguided decisions to only present misinformation promoted by relevant corporate influencers and the current stance of the Australian Government, or simply the old adage that bad news sells, are the catalysts for this false reporting. 7 News, along with other news bodies to a lesser extent, have abandoned their journalistic integrity by their blatant disregard of the Journalist Code of Ethics.
‘Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply.’

No reasonable person would find the above opening statement from the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics ambiguous in any way, so why would 7 News choose to treat their reporting on vaping and e-cigarettes with such flagrant contempt of the principles of the Code of Ethics.
This is all the more concerning when within days of the first reports being published, which blamed vaping for the outbreak of lung disease and deaths within the United States and lead to the worldwide media frenzy, that we witnessed the ‘actual’ facts emerging. Information substantiated by referenced doctors, scientists, law enforcement agencies and numerous government health agencies, confirmed a link between illegal, black market THC vape ‘cartridges’ and the slew of hospital admissions and deaths throughout the Mid-West of the United States. Further information relating to an investigation into the source of this outbreak resulted the arrest of two brothers in Wisconsin, with a raid on their homes resulting in the seizure of 31,200 illegal THC cartridges, 1,616 ounces (~45.8kg) of extracted THC liquid, large volumes of cash, firearms and unprocessed marijuana, and uncovered a significant manufacturing and distribution syndicate capable of producing 3000-5000 THC vape cartridges per day.

Further investigation by federal and state agencies involving testing of a large number of THC cartridges obtained from patients affected by the outbreak, tested positive for Vitamin E Acetate, also known as Tocopherol Acetate, a thickening agent recently adopted by legal and illegal producers in the THC extraction industry. Evidence suggests Tocopherol Acetate began being added to the THC solution to increase its thickness thus allowing manufacturers to dilute their product, and therefore increase profits, without a noticeable decrease in viscosity, as a high viscosity is used as an indicator in determining the potency and quality of the THC solution. So far, all 21 cases of hospitalisation in California originally associated with vaping, along with 24 out of 27 cases in Wisconsin, have been confirmed to be associated with the use of THC cartridges. Significantly, nicotine which has played the role of patsy throughout this entire journalistic debacle was not detected during this testing.

Despite the presence of Tocopherol Acetate within these THC cartridges being publicly known for over two weeks, 7 News and other media entities continue their rhetoric that vaping as a whole is responsible for this lung disease. The widely available facts are Tocopherol Acetate is an oil, somewhat akin to grease, hence its usage as a thickening agent and its molecular structure means it has a far higher vaporisation point than traditional e-cigarette ingredients. It must be heated well above the boiling point of water in order to vaporise. Furthermore, once the vaporised Tocopherol Acetate begins to cool, it returns to its original state, leaving what is essentially of a coat of grease on the inside of your lungs, undoubtedly reducing lung function and resulting in breathing difficulties.

Regardless of the compelling evidence brought forward over the past two weeks showing the use of illegal THC cartridges were behind the recent epidemic, one must surely consider some of the glaring inconsistencies within the initial, prematurely drawn conclusion that ‘flavoured’ e-cigarettes were to be held responsible. With vaping and e-cigarettes now a worldwide phenomenon, used heavily throughout the vast majority of Europe, Australia, Asia and the United Kingdom, why would this epidemic be limited to the United States, with reported cases emanating from an epicentre in the mid-western states of Montana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota? Why are we not seeing similar epidemics in Europe, the United Kingdom, or even Australia, which all contain comparable numbers of e-cigarette users per capita as the USA?

Furthermore, 2011 is widely considered to be the year that vaping achieved widespread adoption throughout the world, and flavoured e-liquids have been readily available since, so why now? If flavoured e-liquids were responsible for the lung disease and hospitalisations we are now witnessing, there undoubtedly would have been reported cases prior to the current epidemic, and these cases would have undoubtedly grown exponentially over the past 9 years, with reports suggesting regular e-cigarette users have grown from 5 million in 2011 to an estimated 45 million in 2019. Surely the complete absence of reported cases from outside the USA, and the reports over the last 4-5 weeks is strongly indicative that a localised issue is responsible for the outbreak, rather than an inherent health safety flaw within the devices and e-liquid itself.

While the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics is not a legally binding regulatory authority, it is nevertheless a creed all ‘reputable’ journalists claim to adhere to, in addition to the often used catch-cry ‘the public deserve to know the truth’ in defending their often unscrupulous methods of reporting is well recorded. So why then has 7 News completely disregarded and chosen not to report the verified information and facts above regarding this serious matter, and continued to report misinformation?

In direct contradiction of these edicts, it would appear 7 News has decided to distort the truth by suppressing relevant, publicly available facts and, in doing so, patently mislead the general public. Could this simply be a case of journalistic incompetence and laziness or, as I suspect, something far more sinister in the form of big-brother influences based on falsehoods, for the protection of corporate dollars? Regardless of the reasoning, I challenge 7 News to uphold the most intrinsic value of professional journalism and report all of the facts by retracting the sensationalised misinformation you have published thus far and present unbiased, relevant and current information moving forward.

I sincerely hope you, along with the various other news agencies within Australia, reflect on the code of ethics you are trusted to uphold by the Australian public.

The original can be found on Vape4life facebook page
The post url is
https://www.facebook.com/quit4you/posts/2407278462893867

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First off, wonderful share and wonderful article!!!

I don’t know about Australia TV but here in the U.S. the commercials funding the news networks are primarily pharma. Same old shit as usual, “got blemishes? Eat this pill! Give us your money! Oh and it might kill you…”. If one of these sponsors drop a network it makes national news. That’s how much money is involved. Of course selling hysteria makes viewership skyrocket. Win, Win! Truth be damned! There may be more money dispersed in the 95% of holders but that money is not concentrated enough to be disposable. The 5% rule. That is the state of affairs, world wide. Anti trust laws have all but been abandoned here in the U.S. over the last 50 years. Government and corporate identity have become one. With the advent of PC, social engineering went into high gear.

This could be it. We may simply be here now. End game.

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Here come the “show trials” in the US (initiated within the FDA, and helping to explain CDC’s dis-credible intellectual and ethical dishonesty - just like where it comes to issues surrounding pharmaceutical Opioid meds - of literally becoming an agitprop disinformation ministry). Scum Squad now deployed (with gusto).

FDA officials said investigators from its Office of Criminal Investigations have been pursuing a parallel investigation since shortly after the illnesses were first reported this summer. That office conducts criminal investigations of illegal activities involving FDA-regulated products, arresting those responsible and bringing them before the Justice Department for prosecution.

Read about the appalling lengths that the US Feds have (and do) go through to wage war on physicians:

https://books.google.com/books?id=9Au2t9ZOtnAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

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Some semi-rational treatment here (now that Raging Bullshit Pols have already decimated the farm):

(September 17, 2019): Experts remain perplexed about what is causing the nationwide outbreak of mysterious vaping-related lung disease that has affected hundreds and killed at least six people. And even the nature of the disease itself is confounding clinicians and public health officials. The only certainty, they say, is that people should not be vaping anything until they figure it out.

The sigh of relief was almost audible after news emerged in early September of a named culprit: vitamin E acetate. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration soon dampened that enthusiasm, noting that not all tested samples even contain the oily substance. In fact, no candidate substances have consistently turned up across samples so far.

And then there is the question of what people are actually vaping: although most cases involve pods containing THC (the active ingredient in cannabis), not all of them do. Vaping-product manufacturers have sought to distinguish their goods from counterfeits acquired on the street and to blame the latter, but investigators have not yet confirmed the provenance of many of the products involved in the disease. In a good chunk of cases, patients say the one they vaped contained only nicotine. Although it is possible patients do not want to admit to THC use in states where it is not decriminalized, there is no evidence they are lying.

Mired in all of this mystery are the hundreds of occurrences of a puzzling and sometimes lethal respiratory illness whose only commonalities are that stricken patients recently vaped and they are all in the U.S. or its territories. Even the name of the condition remains a matter of debate. All of this confusion “is the strangest part,” says Sean J. Callahan, a pulmonologist at the University of Utah. Callahan, who has treated several patients with the mystery illness, says, “The heterogeneity just makes it really tough” to find a common cause. …

… In its first burst, the outbreak seemed to fit with a pattern of distribution among a group of high schoolers: most of those affected were in their late teens and male. As case numbers mounted, however, the age range has expanded. And despite a battery of tests performed in both patients and product samples, the disease remains a deep mystery. Because some tissue samples from patients have turned up immune cells full of fats, or lipids, a diagnosis of lipoid pneumonia has gained favor among physicians, especially because vitamin E acetate, the only candidate put forward, is a lipid. But Callahan thinks that conclusion is questionable.

Patients with lipoid pneumonia, he says, usually present at an outpatient clinic visit, not at the hospital. They tend to be older and to have accidentally inhaled something oily, such as a mineral oil. On clinical images, the substance in their lungs “looks like fat,” Callahan says, but “that’s not the case with our patients. They’re coming in super-duper sick, acting like they almost have infectious pneumonia, with high inflammatory markers in their blood. They’re just really sick.” If he had to give it a name in the absence of a vaping link, he says he would call it a pneumonitis, or inflammatory lung condition. But Callahan favors a designation he says the CDC has floated: vaping-associated lung injury, or VALI. What he does know, he adds, is that “this is not reminiscent of classic lipoid pneumonia.”

In a case series published on September 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine, which described 53 patients in Illinois and Wisconsin, 100 percent of patients had abnormal lung imaging, one in two showed signs of liver problems, and almost a third had a fever. More baffling, the majority of patients had gastrointestinal symptoms, including nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Callahan says no one knows why.

Source:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hunt-for-cause-of-vaping-illness-suggests-multiple-mechanisms-of-damage/

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Seems to me that with some ~11 Million people Vaping daily in the US, plenty of cases that (might, or might not) have occurred in absence of any Vaping activities would arise - pneumonias of unknown etiology (viral, fungal, etc.) that are not at all easy to definitively test for (and thus definitively diagnose). This is the common everyday uncertainty and imprecision of the state of pulmonary medicine. (As previously opined), I think that a lot of epidemiological “stretching” and “twisting” has been performed - driven by fashionable moral (as opposed to technical) social-political crusade agendas, raising the (normal, expected) “diagnostic noise floor” up in attempts to try to prop-up some kind of convincing “malady” or “maladies” causatively unique to Vaping (in general). No wonder then, that the white-coat “experts” remain (understandably) “confused”. :thinking:

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Thanks for the links @woftam :grinning:

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Two things about that article that piqued my interest, is that all the cases happened in the US only and they came at short bursts each time. Curious.

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they also happened in both the UK and Australia… it was around the same time…
I even have 8 people here now in my state in the hospitals here close to where I live…

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I stand corrected then. Thank you @anon84779643

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naw… I just wanted to let ya know its more than the USA, @delltrapp :wink:
You are good… but it is all happening at once… so you are right on that…

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Washington Post (September 18, 2019):
“The Health 202: Vaping illnesses sparked the e-cig crackdown. But marijuana is likely to blame”

Nearly all of the 380 patients with lung illness reported using a marijuana oil called THC in their vape pens. … So which industry is taking heat for the illnesses and deaths? It’s not the marijuana industry. It’s the makers of e-cigarettes and makers of alternatives to tobacco products, including Juul, Altria, Reynolds and Philip Morris. … The crop of illnesses gave officials a seemingly opportune moment to announce a broad crackdown. … Like the feds, state officials are also going after flavored e-cigarettes.

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I keep seeing the media reporting 530 patients. The CDC officially reduced from 480. I’m starting to feel like I’m in a scene from the Manchurian Candidate.

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You are. Since I became aware in politics with the sale of the Vietnam conflict to the American public, I have seen countless propaganda campaigns by the gooberment falsely representing fact to sell their agenda.

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Published on September 24, 2019:

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“‘Hundreds’ of new vaping illnesses have been reported in the last week, CDC says”

“identification of the cause or causes for the outbreak may take substantial time and continuing effort.”

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“Consumers should avoid e-cigarettes as doctors struggle to identify cause of vaping illness, CDC official tells Congress”

While most patients reported using THC, the compound in marijuana that produces a high, many patients also used nicotine-based e-cigarettes. Some used nicotine alone.

CDC remains entirely non-forthcoming surrounding the actual number of Nicotine (only) related “cases”.

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“California health officials tell everyone to stop vaping right now”

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Dr Michael Seigel (September 23, 2019):

“CDC Investigation into Respiratory Disease Outbreak Has Contributed Absolutely Nothing to the Public’s Knowledge So Far”

In distinct contrast to most of its investigations, it appears that the CDC has lost sight of the purpose of this particular investigation. It appears that the driving purpose of the investigation is to do everything possible to demonize electronic cigarettes, holding out as long as possible to continue to invoke legally sold, nicotine-containing e-liquids as being responsible for the outbreak, even in the face of contradicting information. …

… Both the epidemiological and clinical evidence point strongly to the likelihood that what is causing most (if not all) of the cases to become so sick is that the lungs simply cannot handle being doused with oil. Since virtually all nicotine-containing e-liquids are water/alcohol-based, not oil-based, this is not a problem with the overwhelming majority of traditional electronic cigarettes. …

… The CDC has been reluctant to tell the public that the majority of cases are associated not with vaping e-cigarettes, but with vaping marijuana. Where the agency has mentioned that “many” cases report vaping marijuana, it has immediately undermined that connection by stressing that no single cause has been identified for all cases, something that almost never happens in an outbreak investigation …

From: https://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/

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I have read and watched a shit load of “interpretations” of CDC recommendations over the past couple days watching committee hearings and such. I heard nothing accurate. Here is what I found from the CDC. Note the recommendations. Not what is being used in propaganda:

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html

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CDC is very purposely being speciously vague (buying time, while building-up public/legislative hysteria):

All reported cases have a history of e-cigarette product use or vaping.

Some stats provided for other aspects - save for what is of primary importance:

Some have reported the use of e-cigarette products containing only nicotine.

This is their standard game. In 2016, CDC pulled a shameful travesty in publishing so-called “guidelines for Opioid medication prescribing”. (Years) later, after tremendous damage and harm to many thousands of users and several million pain patients, and after their garbage data and methods have been exposed and rightly roundly criticized, CDC still essentially triples-down on their deliberate lies and very distorted agitprop. These festooned clowns are pompous, ass-covering moral-nanny glory-hogs consumed with themselves and their careers, and have been shown to not give a rat’s ass about anything close to facts (or human life). I have followed their carnage throughout. This is the same powerful juggernaut now coming for Nicotine. :exploding_head:

Folks who hope that a few (or many) “commoners” such as ourselves emoting (no matter how vehemently) on social-media or signing “petitions” of dubious import make a difference against such bellicose armadas of artificially manufactured consent only need to look at recent history. (In the US), CDC/FDA/HCPs have thoroughly screwed ~20 Million chronic pain patients, while at the same time being the ongoing driving force for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths caused by poisonous illicit counterfeits (without any end in sight). Their agitprop/legislative machinery is already well lubricated, and steadily bulldozing ~10 Million Vapers will be an even easier-still target. In fact, they are arguably already “over the hump”, rolling with ever-gathering inertia - out to “save your soul” while emptying your pocketbook, all the while “whistling while they work”. :thinking:

D_NBb2rXYAE8yBM.jpg1200×923

From the (airhead) US Surgeon General’s Boss (Admiral Brett P. Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health):
https://twitter.com/HHS_ASH/status/1149334372488818690

Get ready for a never ending steady stream of pseudo-psychiatric garbage about Nicotine “addiction”. That’s the moral-nanny brand icing on their counter-factual pseudo-science bullshit cake already well on its way in baking to a solid mass of disinformation. “It’s about the children, and summarily infantilized adults”.
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One cannot help but muse about how these weenie-toad rat-fink jive-turkeys might look “after the blast”:

After%20The%20Blast
After The Blast.jpg850×850 656 KB

:nerd_face:

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My point is that in the “hearings” that I watched the cherry picked “experts” claimed the CDC considered smoking no safer than vaping. These claims are obviously in opposition to what the CDC published. More lies, that’s all. Lies, layered on lies, layered on more lies.

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You mean the other way around (vaping no safer than smoking) ?

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Interesting turn of events…hmmm. :thinking:


And WTH is this?
"The companies said they would focus on the launch of their own cigarette alternative in the U.S., a heat-not-burn device called IQOS. Unlike Juul, IQOS has been reviewed and authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. "

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