Tom's Blog on Life and Livingness
Mice given aluminum hydroxide at Bexsero-equivalent mg/kg doses exhibited motor neuron death, brain inflammation, neuronal aluminum accumulation, and neurodegenerative changes.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jonfleetwood/p/menb-vaccine-aluminum-doses-overlap
Vaccinated Koreans suffered a dose-dependent rise in the common cold, infections, pneumonia, and tuberculosis — up to +559%. BILL GATES spent over $100 MILLION on mRNA.
A paper has just been published examining COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death in younger individuals. It has been widely shared because it appears reassuring. The conclusion: no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of sudden cardiac death in healthy young adults.
At face value, that sounds like the end of the discussion. For me, it is the beginning. When a study gives a clean answer to a complex biological problem, it is worth going back into the data to see what has been simplified.
When I looked at the baseline characteristics, one detail immediately stood out. Individuals who had a recent COVID-19 infection within 90 days were more than twice as likely to be in the group that died compared to those who survived.
This is not a subtle difference. This is a strong signal. And yet, it is not the headline.
Instead, it is adjusted for, controlled, and moved into the background so that the primary question — whether vaccination alone is associated with sudden death — can be answered. But that approach assumes something I do not believe reflects reality.
Abdel-Qadir, Husam, et al. “Association between COVID-19 vaccination and sudden death in apparently healthy younger individuals: A population-based case-control study.” PLoS medicine 23.3 (2026): e1004924.
The study treats vaccination and infection as separate variables. Statistically, that is standard. Biologically, it is incomplete.
We are no longer dealing with a population that has experienced a single exposure. We are dealing with individuals who have been immune primed through vaccination or prior infection, and then repeatedly exposed to the virus. The relevant question is not whether vaccination or infection independently increases risk. It is what happens when they occur in sequence.
This is what I have been describing for some time as a “COVID storm.” A subgroup of individuals who have experienced immune priming followed by further infection. In that context, the immune response may not behave in a predictable or balanced way. It may become dysregulated. In the heart, this could manifest as inflammation, altered metabolic function, or electrical instability — and in some individuals, that may translate into clinically significant events.
There is another signal in the study that reinforces this concern. Individuals who received only one dose of vaccination appear less “protected” than those who received multiple doses. That is not a straightforward biological gradient. It is a divergence. And divergence usually means the groups are not the same.
Some individuals continue with further doses. Others stop. In clinical medicine, when someone stops after an initial exposure, it is rarely random. It often reflects intolerance, early symptoms, or a different underlying physiology.
What I would have wanted to see in this study is simple. Of the individuals who had a recent infection and then died, what proportion were vaccinated? How many doses had they received? What was the time interval between their last exposure and infection?
That is where the answer is likely to be found. If there is a higher-risk subgroup, it will not sit neatly in “vaccinated” or “unvaccinated.” It will sit in the interaction between exposure and response over time.
We are seeing rising patterns across multiple cardiovascular conditions since 2020 — arrhythmias, heart failure, thrombotic disease, inflammatory cardiac conditions. This is not confined to one diagnosis.
To dismiss these patterns without fully interrogating the underlying mechanisms is not good enough. This is not about ideology. It is not about being pro or anti any intervention. It is about understanding risk properly.
I often think about how long it took for the link between smoking and disease to be fully accepted. There were studies that created doubt, arguments about confounding, calls for more data. For decades, uncertainty was enough to delay clarity.
That does not mean the conclusions today are wrong. But it does mean we should be cautious about assuming we already have the full picture.
The conclusion of this study may well be correct in its narrow framing. Vaccination alone may not increase the risk of sudden cardiac death in healthy young individuals. But that is not the full question.
The more important question is this: what is the risk in individuals who are immune primed and then experience a recent infection?
Until that is answered, we are simplifying a complex biological system into variables that are easier to analyse — but not necessarily accurate to reality.
This has never been about proving that one factor is responsible. It has always been about recognising that we may be dealing with a new pattern of disease — one that emerges not from a single exposure, but from the interaction of exposures over time.
If we continue to analyse these events in isolation, we will miss it. And if we miss it, we cannot manage it.
That is the risk we should be paying attention to.
https://open.substack.com/pub/philipmcmillan/p/the-covid-vax-signal-they-didnt-follow
In 1991, a 44-year-old pitcher with a stress fracture in his lower back, a throbbing heel, and a body that felt every one of his 27 major-league seasons stepped to the mound on four days’ rest—because it was Arlington Appreciation Night, and he refused to disappoint the fans who had stuck with him.
Nolan Ryan didn’t expect to finish the game.
He had told his pitching coach, Tom House, and manager Bobby Valentine before the start: “My back hurts, my heel hurts, I’ve been pounding Advil all day. I don’t feel good. I feel old today. Watch me closely.”
Valentine alerted the umpires that an early pitching change was likely. Someone was already warming up in the bullpen.
Then Ryan threw his first pitch.
Ninety-four miles per hour.
The second pitch: ninety-five.
Batters who weren’t even born when Ryan made his major-league debut with the New York Mets in 1966 started swinging helplessly at fastballs they never saw coming. Major leaguers looked like Little Leaguers. By the second inning, his curveball was dropping off the table like a trapdoor opening beneath their feet. He struck out the side on called strikes—pitches so perfect the batters didn’t even bother arguing. They just turned and walked back to the dugout in silent disbelief.
The Texas Rangers infielders jogged off the field, exchanged glances, and grinned. They could feel it. Something special was happening.
By the sixth inning, Arlington Stadium was filling beyond capacity. The official attendance was 33,439, but it felt like 50,000. Word had spread throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area. People abandoned their Wednesday night plans and rushed to the ballpark. History was unfolding in real time.
Nolan Ryan—the man who could barely stand upright three hours earlier—was throwing a no-hitter against the best-hitting team in baseball.
The ninth inning arrived. Future Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar stepped to the plate. Two decades earlier, Roberto’s father Sandy had been Ryan’s teammate with the California Angels. Little Roberto used to shag fly balls and play catch with Nolan before games.
Now, twenty years later, that same kid stood between Ryan and immortality.
The count went to 2-2. Ryan wound up and fired a fastball.
Alomar swung.
Missed.
Strike three.
Nolan Ryan had just thrown the seventh no-hitter of his career—three more than anyone in baseball history. At 44 years and 90 days old, he became the oldest pitcher ever to accomplish the feat.
The final line: seven innings of hitless baseball, 16 strikeouts, 122 pitches thrown. He did it on four days’ rest, with a stress fracture in his lower back, against a Toronto lineup that would go on to win the AL East.
When reporters crowded around his locker afterward, Ryan didn’t talk about records or statistics. His answer was simple and genuine: “It was the most rewarding no-hitter of them all because it came in front of my fans on Arlington Appreciation Night. My career is complete now. I got one for the fans in Arlington.”
Nolan Ryan pitched for 27 seasons in the major leagues. Seven different presidents occupied the White House during his career. He struck out players from four different decades—everyone from Roger Maris in the 1960s to Mark McGwire in the 1990s.
He retired with 5,714 career strikeouts (a record that still stands), 324 wins, and those seven no-hitters. Twenty-three years later, no one has come remotely close to any of those marks.
Modern baseball is obsessed with pitch counts and load management. Teams monitor every throw with sophisticated tracking technology. Innings are carefully restricted. Young arms are bubble-wrapped and protected.
Nolan Ryan threw nearly 5,000 innings over two decades before that seventh no-hitter.
He never got the memo.
There will never be another Nolan Ryan.
And on that May night in Arlington, when a broken-down 44-year-old refused to accept what his body was telling him, we witnessed something we’ll never see again.
Sometimes the greatest performances come when you have every reason to fail—and choose greatness anyway.
On May 16, 1963, Gordon Cooper was alone in Faith 7, orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour in a capsule so small he could barely turn around.
He had been in space for more than thirty-four hours.
Then the alarms began.
First a faulty sensor falsely indicated the spacecraft was tumbling out of control. Cooper calmly switched it off. Then came the real emergency: a short circuit knocked out the entire automatic attitude-control system—the system that kept the capsule properly oriented for reentry. Without it, the spacecraft could not be aligned for the precise angle needed to survive the plunge back into the atmosphere.
Too shallow, and it would skip off the air like a stone across water, back into orbit. Too steep, and it would burn up like a meteor. The window was narrow. Every computer that was supposed to make that calculation was dead.
On the ground, Mission Control watched the telemetry go dark. They could see the problem. They could not fix it.
Cooper did not panic.
He uncapped a grease pencil and drew reference lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon against the stars. He had spent months memorizing star patterns as part of backup navigation training. Now he used them. He aligned the capsule manually by eye, matching the horizon marks to known constellations.
He timed the reentry burn with his wristwatch.
When the moment arrived—calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars—he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shuddered. The sky turned to plasma. For several minutes, radio blackout swallowed him whole. No voice from Earth could reach him. No data came back.
Then the parachutes deployed.
Faith 7 splashed down in the Pacific, four miles from the recovery ship USS Kearsarge—the most accurate splashdown of the entire Mercury program.
A man with a grease pencil, a wristwatch, and starlight had outperformed every automated system NASA had built.
We often speak of technology as the hero of spaceflight. And it frequently is.
But Gordon Cooper’s flight is a reminder that behind every machine, there must still be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under crushing pressure, and decide what to do when everything else fails.
The final backup was never the software.
It was him.
Avivo Village in Minneapolis is an innovative shelter designed to provide people experiencing homelessness with a safer and more stable place to stay. Instead of large dorm-style spaces typical of many shelters, it offers small, private, lockable rooms inside a warehouse, giving residents greater dignity, security, and personal space.
Beyond providing warmth and safety during harsh winters, the community also connects residents with essential services such as mental health care, addiction treatment, and housing support. By combining shelter with comprehensive assistance, Avivo Village aims to help people move beyond temporary emergency housing and toward long-term stability.
It’s good to be a Ukrainian oligarch during wartime.
John Leake Mar 23, 2026
Bentley Kiev was recognized as the third-place winner in the 2025 European Scorecard Awards for top-performing retailers, according to a March 2026 announcement by Bentley’s Regional Director for Europe, Richard Leopold.
The ranking refers to top retailer sales within the European region, with the average Bentley selling for roughly $400,000.
The announcement of the “Best of the Best” retailer awards highlighted Bentley Padova (1st) and Bentley Rotterdam (2nd) and Kiev (3rd).
The announcement reminded me of the the observation by Peter Thomas Bauer, a Hungarian-born British development economist:
Foreign aid is a mechanism by which poor people in rich countries are taxed to support the lifestyles of rich people in poor countries. The aid primarily serves three Ms—: munitions, monuments, and Mercedes for leaders and cronies.
Dear Reader,
There is an old saying on Wall Street: “In a crisis, all correlations go to one.”
Most people hear that and nod politely. Few understand what it actually means for their savings.
Here is what it means. In normal times, your stocks move one way, your bonds another, your real estate another. They don’t march in step. That gap between them is what people call “diversification.” It is the whole idea behind the modern portfolio — spread your risk across different assets, and when one falls, the others hold you up.
It sounds smart. It even works right up until the moment it doesn’t.
Economists measure how closely two assets move together using a number called correlation. It runs from -1 to +1. A correlation of +1 means two assets move in perfect lockstep — if one goes up 5%, the other goes up 5%. A correlation of -1 means they move in perfect opposition. A correlation of zero means they’re independent of each other.
In the real world, nothing is that clean. But here is a useful example. Think about an oil company like ExxonMobil and a consumer staples company like Procter & Gamble — the people who make Tide detergent and Gillette razors. Their correlation is somewhere around 0.3.
What does that mean in plain English?
It means they mostly do their own thing. When oil prices surge and ExxonMobil climbs, Procter & Gamble may not move much at all. After all, people buy soap and razors no matter what crude oil costs. Some weeks they move together, some weeks they don’t. The connection is loose and unreliable. That looseness is exactly what makes owning both of them safer than owning just one.
A correlation of 0.3 is what diversification is built on. It’s what your advisor is betting on when he tells you your portfolio is “balanced.”
The problem is that 0.3 is a peacetime number.
The Moment the Safety Net Disappears
When real fear (not a little dip) hits a market, something ugly happens. All those “different” assets start moving the same way. Down.
In calm times, the average correlation between two stocks is about 0.3. Low enough that owning both gives you some protection. In a full panic, that number jumps to 0.7 or higher. Bonds, commodities, and real estate all start falling in step with stocks, too.
Your carefully built portfolio, the one your advisor told you was “diversified,” starts sinking like a single ship.
Why does this happen?
Because the big players aren’t selling by choice, they’re selling because they have to.
Hedge funds get margin calls. Banks hit their risk limits. Mutual funds face a wave of redemptions — people pulling money out all at once. These institutions don’t get to sell what they want. They sell what they can. And what they can sell is whatever is large and liquid enough to find a buyer — the biggest stocks, bond ETFs, and yes, even gold and long-term Treasuries.
This is what traders call the “dash for cash.” In that phase, no one cares about long-term value. They want dollars. Safe, liquid, boring dollars. And to get them, they dump everything else.
Even Your “Safe” Stuff Can Drop First
Many investors think they are protected because they own gold or government bonds. In the first leg of a panic, that comfort is a lie.
In 2008, gold fell more than 30% at one point. Not because gold was bad. Because big players needed cash, and gold was one of the few things that still had buyers. In March 2020, stocks fell. Corporate bonds fell. Gold fell. Even many government bonds fell. All at once. All for the same reason.
The system wasn’t broken. It was working exactly as a leveraged market works. When you owe money right now, you don’t think about what an asset is worth in five years. You think about what it will sell for in the next five minutes.
This is the part that surprises people. Safe havens aren’t safe on Day One. They are safe across the full arc of a crisis — after the forced selling stops and the real story takes over.
Take gold. Yes, it can get hit hard in the initial panic. But once the dust settles and central banks start cutting rates and printing money — which they always do — gold tends to shine. It finished 2008 up about 10% for the full year, even after that terrifying mid-year drop. It surged after the dot-com bust. It ran hard after the Great Recession.
The pattern is clear: gold gets sold first, then bought hard.
What Has Actually Worked
If everything falls together in a crisis, what actually holds up in the worst of it?
Two things: cash and short-term Treasury bills.
Not long-term bonds, as those can fall sharply when interest rates spike. Not money market funds that own risky debt. Plain cash and T-bills: the kind of money that is there, that is safe, and that no one is forced to sell.
T-bills have almost no interest-rate risk. The U.S. government backs them. You can turn them into cash fast. During recent bouts of market chaos, when stocks and long bonds both fell, T-bills barely moved.
Think of it this way:
T-bills help you survive the crash. Gold helps you survive the money printing that comes after.
Both have a role. Neither one alone is enough.
What to Do Now
We have a war. We are seeing rising tensions across the Middle East. And we have a stock market that, as of this writing, is still priced for a world where none of that matters much.
That gap between what is happening and what markets are pricing won’t last forever. It never does.
Here are the moves worth making now, while you still can:
Build a real cash buffer. Several months of living costs, in actual cash or T-bills, not in some “safe” fund that quietly owns risky long-term bonds. This is what keeps you from becoming a forced seller.
Shorten your bond exposure. If you hold bonds, lean toward short maturities. Long-term bonds can fall just as hard as stocks when rates spike. We have seen it happen.
Split your money into two buckets. Survival money — cash, T-bills, maybe some physical gold. And risk money — stocks, real estate, longer bonds, anything that can swing around. Know which is which. Keep them separate in your head and in your accounts.
Hold gold as insurance, not as a trade. A modest, steady slice of gold isn’t a bet on the next headline. It’s long-term protection against what almost always follows a major crisis: governments printing money to fix the mess they made.
Ask the brutal question. If all your risky assets dropped 30 to 40% at the same time, would you be ruined? If the answer is yes or even maybe, cut your positions now while markets are still open and buyers still exist.
Avoid leverage. The “dash for cash” is driven by people who borrowed too much. Don’t be one of them. Margin debt turns a bad drawdown into a wipe-out.
Wrap Up
To be sure, I don’t want you to panic. I’m merely trying to imitate the great Wayne Gretzky by skating to where the puck will be, so to speak, in six months. Then, I think the ripples, waves, and tsunamis from this incursion into Iran will be upon us, rather than some abstract thought experiment.
When that next wave hits, most people will be shocked to learn their “diversified” portfolio was the same trade all along.
But not you. You already know better. The question is whether you act on it.
All the best,
Sean Ring
for The Daily Reckoning
feedback@dailyreckoning.com