The stakes against purported “misinformation” get even more controversial as the Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors released a
trialsitenews.com
The stakes against purported “misinformation” get even more controversial as the Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors released a statement declaring that physicians and other health care professionals involved in the dissemination of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation via social media platforms, online and in the media, face grave potential actions, including the loss of medical license.
What follows is a direct statement from the FSMB:
“Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients. They must share factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven information for the betterment of public health. Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to erode public trust in the medical profession further, and puts all patients at risk.”
For more information about how state medical boards and the FSMB respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit FSMB’s webpage dedicated to providing resources and knowledge to states and the public about COVID-19.
What is Misinformation?
As TrialSite has found, the quest to determine what is, in fact, misinformation may vary depending on the interests behind the interpretation. For example, TrialSite has been censored by social media for simply reporting on ivermectin studies or reporting when a nation, such as Slovakia, accepted the use of ivermectin in that country. That was deemed “misinformation” by Facebook and YouTube even though it was 100% factual. Consequently, this latest news serves as a cautionary tale to physicians and health care professionals that the prospect for intensifying censorship activity is a real and tangible threat to doctors and health care professionals. TrialSite suggests physicians, for example, retain attorneys to ensure that whatever they are declaring can be defended.
About the Federation of State Medical Boards
The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) is a national non-profit organization representing the medical boards within the United States and its territories that license and discipline allopathic and osteopathic physicians and, in some jurisdictions, other health care professionals. The FSMB serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research, and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best practices. The FSMB serves the public through Docinfo.org, a free physician search tool that provides background information on the more than 1 million doctors in the United States. To learn more about the FSMB, visit http://www.fsmb.org and follow the FSMB on Twitter (@theFSMB).
Oh give us a break. Several people here are rabidly anti-vax, such as Wyttenbach. They repeated post vile lies and outrageous nonsense. They are Death Cult fanatics, who want to kill millions of people to enhance their own power.
They are in league with the people at Fox News and GOP politicians such as Ron "Death" DeSantis (#deathsantis). Their only purpose is to enhance their political power, by frightening ignorant voters. In the U.S. alone, they have already slaughtered more civilians than the Japanese militaristic Death Cult fanatics did in 1945. Tojo and the Emperor Hirohito stood by and did nothing while hundreds of thousands of people were killed in bombing raids and atomic bomb attacks, even though they knew they were sure to lose in the end. Here in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people have died in the service of twisted, sick, filthy right-wing ideology, and tens of thousands more are doomed.
In what way is W going to gain power? As for politicians, I agree they have a lust for power, on both sides of the isle. What has killed millions is Covid, why? No early intervention. Go home and infect your family. Great advise!
I believe it is better long-term protection, but not as good during the 12 weeks after dose 1 and before dose 2. However, I think it was the right decision from a public health perspective, because it allowed a higher percent of the total population to be vaccinated when the vaccine was still in short supply. I hope the UK now has enough vaccine to meet demand. I hope the demand is still high.
In Japan, there has been a serious shortage of vaccine. I think it is now moderating, because they have now reached 29% one-dose, 40% two-doses. (https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations) Total cases have spiked for some reason. I don't know why. Perhaps the Delta variant? The spike is still spiking, but fortunately deaths remain low. This is because most of the elderly population has been vaccinated.
There is a strange situation causing a limiting factor to the number of vaccinations per day. A Japanese doctor I know who lives in Tokyo was recently paid a ton of money to go to Hokkaido for a day or two to administer vaccinations. Apparently, you have to be a doctor, nurse or dentist to give shots in Japan. This I did not know. They are scrambling around trying to find 11,000 more doctors and nurses to give the shots.
In the U.S., a broader class of trained people can give vaccinations. At the CVS drugstore they include "pharmacists, pharmacy interns and trained pharmacy technicians, as well as other qualified health care professionals depending on each state’s specific regulations." They all hold "an active CPR certification (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation)."
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The Olympics hasn't help, 3000 athletes some vaccinated some not all walking thru airports. It looks like it will get worse before enough vaccinations are giving. Early treatment! We need a two pronged attack to end this, or lock up 7 billion people for 30days. This has to end!
If you think those who cannot determine Vitamin D is good for you are jackasses we will not agree. I am mildly sympathetic with it. I am strongly of the view that people with modern lifestyles and diet should be supplementing - we do not get enough sunlight. That is what the guidance says, because of skeletal risks.
I can see why all of the other evidence looks impressive. If however you consider only the RCTs it looks not impressive. Vit D has a decent chance of changing COVID since it affects (as shown by that RCT you referenced) immune response. How it does that is not clear - and given that large qty of Vit D did not provide magical reduction in symptoms it is pretty clearly not a magic bullet.
No-one should be viewing Vit D as protection at this stage - sure it might be protective - a bit - in v high doses. If the hospitalisation times had been different in that RCT I'd be a lot more positive, but the only signiifcant positive results from it was the tested markers, not clinical outcomes.
Your (smaller) study did not show any effect except for the markers.
Vitamin D is interesting, because there is a lot we do not know about its physiological effect and the natural levels can vary a lot. unfortunately we can't use observational studies to determine what natural level is best because high levels correlate too well with good diet and more time in the sun - all of which change risk factors for health in other ways.
I note BTW that the COVIT trial https://covid-19.cochrane.org/studies/crs-13307389 should give more evidence eventually (looks like they did not have a high enough COVID rate to recruit - or else had trouble getting money).
Re CDC and NIH. I don't think you can blame doctors for the US health system. You have a system in which quality of treatment depends on wealth or job. That pushes you way down the league table, because outstanding treatment for the few does not help averages, but Ok treatment for all does.
That is a political decision - and determined by politicians and the insurance industry.
By metrics of quality for those with good access to treatment it is very good (though more expensive than most other systems). Again, the dominance of insurance with limite dregulation means that is bound to happen - the pressures to offer more and more expensive treatment of limited utility are inexorable.
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Thomas, really, you are kidding? vitamin D takes 4 to 7days for the liver to convert it to it's active form calcitriol. Of coarse it didn't show any affect. The study was setup to fail! There have been a few of those. Now your excuse for Fauci and the boys is industry spin. Blame the politicians!
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Biogen reportedly withdrew a paper it had submitted to the medical journal JAMA after the publication requested edits before publication. It’s standard for a…
www.biospace.com
Biogen reportedly withdrew a paper it had submitted to the medical journal JAMA after the publication requested edits before publication. It’s standard for a technical journal to request edits, but it is the nature of the edits—and in this case, the nature of the study— that raises questions.
The study analyzed data from the clinical trials of Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, which was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 7. The controversy revolves around whether the drug demonstrated clear clinical benefit. The agency also shifted its approval from a clinical benefit endpoint to a surrogate biomarker endpoint utilizing an accelerated approval process. The advisory committee had voted not to recommend the study and wasn’t given the option of considering an accelerated approval process at the time. The approval resulted in three of the adcom members resigning in protest.
The agency’s acting commissioner, Janet Woodcock, has requested the independent Office of the Inspector General to investigate how the FDA and Biogen representatives interacted before the approval. Also, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform announced plans to investigate the approval and pricing of Aduhelm. There are concerns that with the $56,000 price tag, and most of the millions of potential patients for the drug on Medicare, it could bankrupt the program.
At least six affiliates of Blue Cross and Blue Shield likely won’t cover the drug. The affiliates are in Florida, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. They have indicated in postings online that they will not cover the drug because they consider it “investigational” or “experimental” or because “a clinical benefit has not been established.”
It’s common for biopharma companies to publish peer-reviewed clinical trial data ahead of FDA approval. Biogen, in the case of Aduhelm, has yet to do so although they have presented data at conferences, including this week at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) being held this week in Denver, Colo. and virtually.
Axios asked Biogen about the JAMA submission, and the company’s response was, “JAMA did not reject the publication. Biogen withdrew the publication from JAMA and decided to pursue other publication opportunities.”
In a follow-up statement, Biogen said, “To protect the integrity of the scientific review process, Biogen does not comment on publication deliberations with journals and their editors.”
Scott Emerson, a University of Washington biostatistician and member of the FDA advisory committee that voted against approval of the drug, stated last month, “I suspect [Biogen] is reluctant to have the full data undergo the greater scrutiny that the peer review process would provide.”
A JAMA spokesperson told Axios, “Our policy is that we can neither confirm nor deny that a manuscript is or has been under consideration.”
Biogen and its development partner Eisai presented four posters regarding Aduhelm clinical trials at AAIC this week. One of the posters presented item-level data from the EMERGE Phase III trial, meaning that it was looking at data on individual domains that made up the trial’s pre-specified endpoints of cognition, function, and behavior. Two additional posters described subgroup analyses of the amyloid PET substudies from EMERGE and ENGAGE and considerations of real-world management of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA) from EMERGE and ENGAGE in patients on the high-dose (10 mg/kg) of aducanumab.
It is unknown if the data presented was part of the study submitted to JAMA although it is possible.
In the face of the controversy and slow uptake of the drug, the company has launched an educational marketing campaign targeting the consumer although it has brought controversy as well. Biogen also issued an open letter to the Alzheimer’s disease community from Alfred Sandrock Jr., M.D., Ph.D., the company’s head of Research and Development, which is an attempt to push back against negative media attention.
The website has a six-question survey for patients, but critics argue that the questions about forgetfulness are very general and the site, regardless of answers to the questions, recommends people consult with their physicians.
Adriane Fugh-Berman, a pharmacology professor at Georgetown University Medical Center, wrote an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun, stating, “It’s particularly egregious because they are trying to convince people with either normal memories or normal age-related decline that they are ill and they need a drug
A Dresden, Germany-based scholar, Karla J. Lehman, recently published “Suspected Cardiovascular Side Effects of Two COVID-19 Vaccines,” looking into
trialsitenews.com
A Dresden, Germany-based scholar, Karla J. Lehman, recently published “Suspected Cardiovascular Side Effects of Two COVID-19 Vaccines,” looking into reported side effects associated with a couple of COVID-19 vaccines. The German writer first reminds all that the level of side effects reported in various national or regional databases related to the COVID-19 vaccines are unprecedented but accepted due to 1) the overall risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as 2) the identified need early on to vaccinate the elderly, a high-risk cohort. Although there are mounting reports of adverse events and deaths of a cardiac and cardiovascular nature, such egregious side effects aren’t recognized except for thrombotic/embolic side effects and cases of myopericarditis. However, the author suggests a mechanism of action implicates downregulation of ACE2 by non-neutralized spike proteins, leading to cardiovascular consequences. What follows is a summary of the total number of reported adverse events and fatalities in Europe, along with chronicled cardiovascular-based adverse events throughout the continent.
Data Source
The data for this study was sourced from the EudraVigilance web reports affiliated with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as well as data gleaned from the German Paul Ehrlich-Institut (PEI).
Alarming Numbers
The German author was careful with the word chosen to describe the concern from the total number of adverse events and reported deaths associated with two COVID-19 vaccines—alarming. The author uncovered many reported cardiovascular reactions in the European report, “many of which were life-threatening.” Lehman went on the record that cardiac and heart circulatory triggered deaths represented about 33% of all Comirnaty vaccine-related deaths, that is, the deaths from the Pfizer-BioNTech.
Number Two Concern
Next in line of reports concerning adverse events were vascular thrombotic/embolic side effects, often associated with dire conditions. These particular side effects appear characteristic for spike-producing vaccines and don’t appear as substance-specific.
The scholar recommends additional inquiry into what’s behind the 3.5 times more frequent cases of sinus vein thrombosis along with some different frequent cases of thrombotic/embolic events post-vaccination with Vaxzeria (AstraZeneca/Oxford) in Europe.
Conclusion
While the author does articulate that the hypothesis of her study can be confirmed, she shares that the cardiovascular side effects associated with both the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines in Europe need to be better communicated.
Lead Research/Investigator
Karla J. Lehman
Call to Action: Several limitations of this study indicate challenges with the current reporting system, such as the individual reporting and the particular procedure involved, or for that matter, the lack of detailed specific patient information and complete lack of an appropriate comparison population. Consequently, more research should perhaps follow this report.
Thomas, I want to explain to you my and only my concerns with anything coming from the CDC and the NIH. 40 years ago when St. Fauci joined the band, the united states had the #1ranked healthcare system in the world. Under Fauci the United States as of today ranks #37 and for the last 20 years ranks last in the industrial world of medical quality. these are the experts you demand I listen to or maybe the jackasses in the UK who can't determine vitamin d is good for you! I will continue to read both sides of any augment and comment on the good and the bad. That is how people debate, you on the other hand wish to suppress vaccine concerns.
FM1 - I'm glad you are not anti-vax - but you will notice that some here are. W, for example, thinks that I, as a healthy 60 year-old, should not be vaccinated because the vaccine risks are higher than the COVID risks. This is wrong by several orders of magnitude. He has repeatedly posted arguments re the probabilities that he must know are wrong, as I've explained. He also has some idea about vaccines being pushed by corrupt governments which I do not understand but sounds like anti-vax conspiracy theory.
RB - well - he never says what he means - but he is posting stuff from not credible sources, claiming it is credible, that says mRNA vaccines are too dangerous to use contrary to what everyone else thinks and on very poor evidence. That sounds anti-vax to me.
There is lots of room for different opinion over exactly what is the risk balance, but those two, with zany unevidenced theories, go way over to the anti-vaxx silliness where they do not bother to balance risks because their only message is don't take vaccines (unless you are ill and old).
And people who deliberately post indefensible stuff, do not try to defend it when the obvious critiques are made, then just repost it as though repetition makes it true should expect to be called out.
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Thomas, I don't think either are anti vax, as a matter of fact W has many times advocated for older adults to be vaccinated. Maybe his remarks to you is because he knows you are supplementing vitamin D, Robert is in a different situation being down under and a slow vac rollout but I have yet to see him say don't vaccinate. I have questions as they do, and we realize that to end this pandemic a two pronged attack is needed, early treatment and vacs, while you continue with your vac only approach. Your way isn't working!
Worth pointing out - the US is planning to bribe people $100 just to get vaccinated - because of the anti-vaxxer success - more than twice as much as the cost of the vaccine.
Or, put in more normal terms, wealthy countries pay a fair amount (much less than the US uses to bribe people to get vaccinated), whereas poor countries get it much cheaper as is absolutely necessary if we are to control COVID variant spread.
I think actually it is only a weird person, or an anti-vaxxer, who would see $46:30 as "paying through the nose" for a vaccine that would protect them from COVID. I guess an anti-vaxxer would not want a vaccine at any cost?
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Take your anti vax crap and XXXXXX no one here is anti vax yet you continue to push your Huxley CRAP!!!
Pfizer is raising the price of its covid-19 vaccine in Europe by over 25% under a newly negotiated contract with the European Union, according to a report from the Financial Times. Competitor Moderna is also hiking the price of its vaccine in Europe by roughly 10%.
Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine is already expected to generate the most revenue of any drug in a single year—about $33.5 billion for 2021 alone, according to the pharmaceutical company’s own estimates. But the company says it’s providing poorer countries the vaccine at a highly discounted price.
Pfizer previously charged the European Union €15.50 per dose for its vaccine ($18.40), which is based on new mRNA technology. The company will now charge €19.50 ($23.15) for 2.1 billion doses that will be delivered through the year 2023, according to the Financial Times.
Moderna previously charged the EU $22.60 per dose but will now get $25.50 per dose. That new price is actually lower than first anticipated, according to the Financial Times, because the EU adjusted its initial order to get more doses.
There’s no word yet on whether the next potential round of negotiations between the U.S. and Pfizer will see the company raise prices. Both Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment early Monday morning.
While most drug companies like Pfizer and Moderna are selling their covid-19 vaccines at a profit—even China’s Sinovac vaccine is being sold to make money— the UK’s AstraZeneca vaccine is being sold at cost. But AstraZeneca has suffered from poor press after a few dozen people around the world died from blood clots believed to be related to the British vaccine. As it turns out, Pfizer’s blood clot risk is “similar” to AstraZeneca according to a new study and your risk from dying of covid-19 is much higher than dying from any vaccine.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are being provided free-of-charge to residents of the EU by the government, just as vaccines are free to everyone in the U.S., but governments around the world are still handing over a lot of cash for the privilege of getting the pandemic under control.
Curiously, it seems like the folks at Moderna are getting a reputation for being assholes, perhaps due to inexperience. The company was founded in 2010 and its covid-19 vaccine is its first commercial product.
From the Financial Times:
One official said staff working for Moderna were especially “preposterous and arrogant” in their dealings with the commission, highlighting a lack of previous experience in government affairs.
Pfizer, on the other hand, has been around the block a few times and told investors that things are going exceedingly well for the company on an earnings call last week. And the covid-19 vaccine is a big part of that financial success.
“The Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine contributed $7.8 billion in global revenues during the second quarter, and we continue to sign agreements with governments around the world,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said last week.
But Bourla was careful to note that Pfizer is providing the vaccine at discounted rates for poorer countries.
“We anticipate that a significant amount of our remaining 2021 vaccine manufacturing capacity will be delivered to middle- and low-income countries where we price in line with income levels or at a not-for-profit price,” Bourla said.
In fact, we are on track to deliver on our commitment to provide this year more than one billion doses, or approximately 40% of our total production, to middle- and low-income countries, and another one billion in 2022,” Boula continued.
Only wealthy countries will have to pay through the nose.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year. During that…
www.biorxiv.org
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year. During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern1. As a result, vaccination of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) convalescent individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines produces high levels of plasma neutralizing activity against all variants tested1, 2. Here, we examine memory B cell evolution 5 months after vaccination with either Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) mRNA vaccines in a cohort of SARS-CoV-2 naïve individuals. Between prime and boost, memory B cells produce antibodies that evolve increased neutralizing activity, but there is no further increase in potency or breadth thereafter. Instead, memory B cells that emerge 5 months after vaccination of naïve individuals express antibodies that are equivalent to those that dominate the initial response. We conclude that memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination. These results suggest that boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines would produce a quantitative increase in plasma neutralizing activity but not the qualitative advantage against variants obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.
Back in 1633 there was a guy named Galileo Galilei who was deemed a nut job by the Catholic Church because of his heretical belief the Earth revolved around the
starkmanapproved.com
Back in 1633 there was a guy named Galileo Galilei who was deemed a nut job by the Catholic Church because of his heretical belief the Earth revolved around the sun. Galileo was sentenced to house arrest and ordered never again to teach his heresy. Centuries later the Church apologized, and Albert Einstein declared Galileo, “the father of modern science.”
In 1846 a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis was fired and declared a nut job for his preposterous advocation that hand washing was one of the most important tools in public health, particularly for surgeons. Semmelweis took so much abuse from the medical establishment that he wound up in an asylum.
In the early 40s a cardiologist named Bernard Lown was expelled from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine because he protested medical segregation by altering blood-bottle labels that denoted donors’ race. Decades later Lown invented the defibrillator, which has saved countless lives. In 1973, he founded The Lown Institute, a think tank focused on ground-breaking research to improve the quality of U.S. healthcare.
Some of the greatest minds since the world was flat were scientists and doctors persecuted and shunned because they saw or interpreted things differently. That’s why they are heralded as visionaries. Widely held beliefs often are proven wrong, and on Wall Street the rare few with 20/20 vision profit handsomely. The CEO of Enron graced the covers of business magazines and was heralded by the folks at McKinsey as a business genius until a trader who specialized betting against conventional wisdom studied the company’s regulatory filings and determined it was a fraud. Harry Markopolos, a financial analyst repeatedly warned the SEC that famed investor Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but he too was deemed a nut job.
Jeff Bezos at the turn of the century was uniformly doubted by analysts and the media who said Amazon could never be profitable. Investors who ignored the naysayers likely aren’t reading this commentary.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who prior to Covid was among the most respected in his field, is a modern-day doctor who the medical establishment, the government, and the media want silenced. His views are very controversial, and I don’t have the scientific or medical expertise to evaluate them. But I know quite a bit about one of the hospitals where McCullough trained and one of the cardiologists who trained him.
His name is Joel Kahn, and he was a public champion of my critical reporting about Michigan’s Beaumont Health when it wasn’t yet widely known how extensive cost-cutting had irreparably harmed the company’s flagship hospital. McCullough did his fellowship under Kahn when they both worked at Beaumont. Kahn, who has a considerable national following promoting the merits of a plant-based diet and other heart-healthy lifestyle measures, has supported and advocated McCullough’s views. LinkedIn has censored several of Kahn’s posts highlighting what he says are alarmingly high deaths and other serious complications from COVID vaccines. Kahn admirably doesn’t delete highly critical comments on posts that escape LinkedIn’s censors, including personal attacks calling him a “quack” and advocating the hashtag #canceljoelkahn.
McCullough and Kahn have put themselves at great financial and professional risk. McCullough’s previous employer, a hospital whose foundation established a scholarship in his name, last week sued him for more than $1 million, alleging that McCullough has repeatedly misrepresented to the media he still works there and that it has been harmed by the association. McCullough’s lawyer issued a statement saying the lawsuit was a “politically motivated attempt to silence Dr. McCullough.” The Federation of State Licensing Boards last week issued a warning that physicians who post COVID misinformation on social media could lose their medical licenses, so more punishment could be in the offing.
It’s understandable why McCullough’s former employer, which filed its lawsuit on the same day it announced it was requiring all its employees to be vaccinated, no longer wants anything to do with him. McCullough maintains the COVID vaccine doesn’t protect against the Delta variant and isn’t necessary for people under age 50. He’s also very critical of health authorities for focusing on how best to stop the spread of COVID rather than how best to treat it. A rebuttal to some of McCullough’s positions can be found here.
The corporate media, which is so sycophantic to the Biden Administration that CNN anchor Brian Stelter shamelessly asked press secretary Jen Psaki how reporters could do a better job covering the president, has its own agenda wanting McCullough destroyed. The corporate media is fueling the narrative that the unvaccinated are moronic Trump supporters who watch FOX news, when in fact a significant percentage are Blacks and Hispanics. McCullough has made regular appearances on FOX, including on Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, so discrediting McCullough serves the double purpose of also discrediting FOX, which attracts a considerably bigger audience than the other cable networks.
On paper at least, it’s hard to dismiss McCullough as a quack. According to a bio posted on the US Cardiology Review, he is recognized internationally as a leading authority on chronic kidney disease as a cardiovascular risk state, having published more than 1,000 papers and garnered more than 500 citations in the National Library of Medicine. He also is a founder of the Cardio Renal Society of America, an alliance of cardiologists and nephrologists focused on cardiorenal syndromes. He was previously co-editor of Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine and served as Chair of the National Kidney Foundations’ Kidney Early Evaluation Program, among the largest screening efforts for chronic diseases. Notably, McCullough was a significant philanthropic donor to his former employer. (I wonder whether the hospital will return those funds.)
Kahn has previously sounded alarms that proved prescient. In 2019, he posted a commentary on Medium predicting that interventional cardiologists wouldn’t curtail their lucrative stent procedures despite a massive study documenting they weren’t beneficial for patients who were stable. The influential Journal of the American Medicine two weeks ago published a paper confirming Kahn’s prediction was spot on. Inserting stents are among the most profitable hospital procedures.
My familiarity with Kahn began a year ago last April when I began writing a series of very critical stories for Deadline Detroit about Beaumont and its management, particularly CEO John Fox. Underscoring the degree Beaumont doctors feared Fox, most were afraid to sign a petition protesting his leadership. However, when given the opportunity to respond to an anonymous survey, it was revealed that a majority of doctors had little confidence in Fox and his deputies, particularly those working at the company’s once nationally respected flagship hospital.
Kahn showed courage. Despite having an affiliation with Beaumont, he tweeted my articles and linked to them on social media, giving them a certain validity. Deadline Detroit, an independent online publication, wasn’t known for healthcare reporting and many local residents were suspicious of my reporting because other local outlets ignored it. Kahn’s support allowed my articles to gain traction and without it I’m not sure they would have achieved impact or recognition. I ultimately garnered an award for my coverage.
Courage possibly is in the DNA of Beaumont’s once nationally respected cardiology department. One Harvard-trained cardiologist sent multiple letters to Beaumont’s directors and trustees calling for Fox’s firing and pretty much called him a liar. The co-heads of the cardiology department wrote a letter to the chair of the hospital network warning him they had “serious concerns” about the company Beaumont was outsourcing its anesthesia services to. The warnings weren’t heeded and within three weeks of the outsourcing company taking over, a patient undergoing a routine colonoscopy died from intubation complications and another landed in the ICU because of a pain medication overdose. The outsourcing company, NorthStar Anesthesia, is owned by a holding company whose previous CEO was Jeffrey Zients, who is overseeing the president’s pandemic response.
McCullough, Kahn, and other physicians who are increasingly sticking their necks out and daring to challenge the CDC’s COVID and vaccination data, may all be badly mistaken. However, what history abundantly teaches is that censorship, however noble the original motivation, is never isolated to the original cause. Some governments have already used their “fake news” laws to combat vaccine misinformation for other political purposes.
The U.S. healthcare system is compromised and corrupt, and most doctors today are employees of healthcare networks or companies controlled by private equity. There are some physicians willing to speak out about how the corporatization of healthcare is harming patient safety while driving up prices. Rest assured, if McCullough and Kahn are silenced, so will others whose views the government and medical establishment doesn’t like. The corporate media can be counted on to abet the efforts or turn a blind eye to them, much like they did with my Beaumont reporting.
I, too, have experienced personal and unfounded attacks from powerful healthcare executives. Beaumont’s CEO called me a “psycho,” a “mudslinging machine,” and alleged that I had secret Russian connections. (My response can be found here.) Fox, who has made more than $20 million since being named CEO in 2016 and stands to make tens of millions more if he can successfully merge Beaumont into Spectrum Health, is representative of many MBA suits running U.S. hospitals.
The Biden Administration, the CDC, and Dr. Fauci don’t have the pandemic under control. The real issue isn’t contrarian doctors like McCollough and Kahn, but America’s very poor leadership and the corporate media’s failure to hold the president accountable. Biden promised to end COVID and for those with short memories, here was his plan.
We hear time and time again that one inexpensive COVID-19 treatment or another should not be used because there is not enough evidence for it. In
trialsitenews.com
We hear time and time again that one inexpensive COVID-19 treatment or another should not be used because there is not enough evidence for it. In hindsight, these arguments did not deserve serious consideration. For those who demand “evidence” behind a working treatment for a pandemic disease, no evidence would ever be enough.
Medical practice is like engineering in that both use science. I could make an analogy between the COVID-19 early antiviral treatment and airplanes 100 years ago. Opponents to airplanes would have had many more arguments against them than the opponents of ivermectin today. They would have made a long list of deadly airplane accidents, something that opponents of ivermectin for COVID-19 cannot do. They would have argued that the combustion engine is for cars, not for planes.
Most importantly, they would have shown the paucity of academic papers in favor of airplanes. A meta-analysis of published studies would find out that a typical aircraft design was not flyable, and sometimes led to the death of the test pilot. Such meta-analysis would not have to cherry pick studies as Cochrane under new management has done. The aircraft opponents would have paraded an endless column of putative experts who have never seen an airplane and would testify that airplanes are impossible, ineffective, and unsafe. They would have had much more evidence to justify their position than the modern opponents of ivermectin. They would have also been backed by the influential railway and shipbuilding industries.
Back then, one would respond to them by saying that those who knew how to design, manufacture, or fly an aircraft had already designed, manufactured, or flew them. That those who whine are sore losers, unable to do so. That an airplane comprises an engine and wings, but also other parts, and should be built correctly and flied competently. That prospect of aircraft should have been evaluated not by averaging the results from all published designs but by the results of the best one.
Most importantly, one would say that those who think that airplanes are not sufficiently useful or safe were free not use them but should not stand in the way of those who wanted to build and use them. The most important difference today is that the opponents of ivermectin can prevent its use, and even to cause incorrect use. They do so by improperly influencing scientific journals, medical societies, and using the Big Tech monopoly to control the information flow between doctors and from doctors to patients.
Back to the COVID-19 treatment—the FDA, CDC, NIH, medical boards, and so on should be told that if they do not know the evidence, that does not mean that the evidence does not exist. That not all medical evidence is published in peer-reviewed journals. That a pharmaceutical company asking for approval for a new drug must provide evidence of its safety and efficacy to the FDA, but doctors prescribing an already approved drug do not. That proving that a new drug which is 10% more efficient than old one (but would be priced 10x the old one) requires RCT, but a treatment that increases the odds by 3–6 times does not. Further, such RCT would likely be unethical. That when a doctor sees that a certain drug combination saves from hospitalization 80% of the patients who otherwise would have been hospitalized, it is sufficient evidence for that doctor. Independent description of this effect by five doctors is reliable scientific evidence. The effectiveness of HCQ for COVID-19 was affirmed by thousands of doctors.
Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite. Clinical experience and trials
trialsitenews.com
Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.
Clinical experience and trials from across the world indicate that existing drugs used “off-label” can be highly effective against hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But this happy finding does not fit with the official script and therefore meets unprecedented resistance and suppression from authorities, depriving patients of treatment worldwide and probably ceding considerable ground to the pandemic. Besides suggesting a malign de facto alliance of corporate interests with government “perception management” initiatives, this is a clear indictment of the top-down structure of medical decision-making.
A Curious Fixation
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, health authorities focussed in on the prospect of a vaccine as the solution. And in view of recent medical history, it is quite reasonable to look to vaccination as an important means against a viral disease. But the exclusive focus on vaccines brings along a presumption, one without any obvious basis, that antiviral drugs would not play a role, at least not in the near term—even though antivirals are an established tool in the medical toolkit, and this virus was after all “novel,” unknown in its treatment characteristics. An obvious advantage of antivirals in a pandemic is that they can be given to infected patients to stop or slow viral replication, reducing or halting transmission, rather than waiting weeks for immunity to develop. They can also be used prophylactically, to prevent infection in the first place. So they have theoretical potential at least equal to vaccines for satisfying public health goals. While from early on in the pandemic scientists in the employ of big drug companies were quietly investigating patentable antivirals against SARS COV-2, the public message was wholly about mass vaccination.
Given that vaccine development was at the time expected to take years, and given the logisitical and social challenges facing any rollout of vaccine to the entire world’s population, it is more than slightly peculiar to the lay inquirer, in retrospect, that the priority was not the reverse of what it was. Why not first look for drugs—starting with already existing ones, of course, since they have a safety record and might be off-patent and hence much cheaper and in any case are already available—that would disable the virus directly, stopping (to whatever extent) infection and transmission, and meanwhile begin work on a vaccine in case it is needed? Part of this may have come from historical experience with antivirals as compared with the brilliant successes of vaccines in some well-known instances. Understandably, it did not occur to people that as viral diseases go this one might be exceptionally treatable with therapeutic interventions. It was assumed that it would be like the flu: symptomatic treatment at home until more serious symptoms develop.
If vaccines alone are assumed to be medicine’s solution to the pandemic, then the way to apply the tool of vaccination can only follow the model of polio and measles universal (ideally) innoculation in quest of either eradication or “herd immunity”2—rather than the model of vaccination against flu, say. With flu there is a yearly recommendation, especially for the vulnerable, no push for herd immunity and no expectation of eradication. Sometimes the antiviral tamiflu is also used (though on the whole is not very good). A quite natural “multi-pronged approach” in principle. But for COVID the eradication/herd-immunity model of vaccination was promoted without question, despite the prospect of non-vaccine preventive or curative therapies quietly envisioned by drugmakers. The public message was quite a dismal one: “It may take years to get a vaccine; until then we must put up with restrictions and repeated surges in death counts.” While doctors were forced to develop therapeutic strategies for hospitalized patients, there was no public mention of the possibility of looking into early drug interventions that might in the meantime lighten the load on hospitals as well as saving lives. Also never communicated by authorities, curiously to the lay observer, was the need for people at particularly high risk to lower that risk through diet and exercize, though even a somewhat high body mass index was clearly a risk-factor. Suggestions that supplemental vitamin D might be protective were ridiculed by officials: “You cannot ‘boost your immune system’!” Yet vitamin D turned out to be quite important in relation to COVID- 19, as explained below. We were unequivocally assured that we could do nothing but endure restrictions and wait years (it was thought then) for a vaccine. It is all more than a bit peculiar to the informed, thinking layperson.
The Advocates of Early Treatment and their Battles with Censorship
The political Right reacted against pandemic restrictions in line with their reflexive critique of government. At one point it was reported that a French doctor seemingly cured some COVID patients with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which is used against the malaria virus. Reported on Fox News, this excited the Right, and the drug was touted by Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and others. Could COVID-19 be a curable disease, rendering the hated lockdowns and so on unnecessary? Some studies took place that were of questionable value; one was even retracted by the top journal Lancet; in any event the upshot was a general tone in press reports that the drug was found to be useless. But some doctors of independent spirit (to be discussed shortly) who actually pursued early treatment of COVID-19 continued to include it in their protocols, at least for a time. In any case HCQ continued to be touted in right-wing circles, the upshot being a politically polarized standoff symbolized by this drug. Right-wing support appears to have strongly politicized the early treatment question, stigmatizing in many peoples minds any and all suggestions about outpatient therapeutic drugs. For example, when Dr. Pierre Kory spoke before Congress urging a change of government policy on the use of ivermectin—which also suffered the stigma of having been mentioned by Trump—for COVID, Democratic politicians attacked him for pushing unscientific right-wing notions, even though his politics are left/progressive. Advocates of therapeutic drugs were casually tossed in the same basket as deniers and doubters of human-caused climate change. In their defense, the legislators were not hearing anything to the contrary from the major public health agencies.
Dr. Kory, a pulmonologist, in the Spring of 2020 promoted steroid treatment for COVID-19 late-stage respiratory disease. Along with Jeffrey P. Kanne, he had recognized characteristics of an “organizing pneumonia” meaning it is purely inflammatory rather than infectious, in this case a reaction to viral debris left over from the infection. At the time this went against published academic guidelines. But because it provided undeniable relief in a desperate situation, steroid treatment became standard.
Inspired by the work of Dr. Paul Marik, Kory became a student of treatment for COVID-19 at all stages and involved in its promotion; Drs. Marik, Kory, Eric Osgood, Joseph Varon, Hector Carvallo and others formed Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). In the course of time they found particular success with ivermectin (best known as an anti-parasitic, but recognized also for antiviral properties), which became a centerpiece of their treatment protocols. Despite assiduous efforts they were largely unable to influence public health agencies to approve/recommend prophylaxis or early-stage treatment with existing substances. Moreover, they played a continuing cat- and-mouse game with social media censorship; some probable and possible reasons for this are discussed below.
Dr. Peter McCullough and several colleagues independently worked out a complex early (non-hospital) treatment protocol and wrote it up in an article which was published in American Journal of Medicine. It is a short article, remarkably easy to understand, and with a nice protocol flow-chart. These doctors are less focussed on ivermectin than FLCCC but do include it among an assortment of other substances. Naturally one would want to publicize such success against a deadly pandemic disease as widely as possible and without delay. McCullough made a video explaining the paper and it was taken down by YouTube.
Dr. Tess Lawrie, founder of Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy which advises agencies auch as the World Health Organization and the British National Health Service, watched Pierre Kory’s impassioned testimony before Congress (which was afterward taken down by YouTube and later restored) and was moved to conduct, on her own time, a systematic review and meta-analysis—a procedure to quantitatively assess cumulative results—of the studies so far on ivermectin for COVID-19. She then brought in colleagues to review her work. Finding a strong signal of efficacy, she organized the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development group, or BIRD. They lobbied the British government to approve and recommend this safe3 and apparently effective drug to help combat the pandemic. As discussed below they faced unusual obstacles but finally achieved publication of their meta-analysis in a major journal. Many organizations allied with BIRD and FLCCC were formed around the world. Their efforts met adamant resistance from authorities. This resistance, as we shall see, had no basis in science, ethics, or risk-benefit analysis.
Paucity of hospitals, and limited hospital capacity, spurred independent and creative doctoring. In March and April of 2020, Spain was experiencing a massive COVID problem, with hospitals overwhelmed to the point that many patients could not be admitted. During this time, doctors in the town of Yepes, in the state of Toledo, treated 84 nursing home patients with suspected COVID at two different facilities with various antihistamines, going by studies showing evidence of antiviral as well as anti- inflammatory properties (note: the evidence acted upon was preliminary and not confirmed in large rigorous trials). Ivermectin was not used. Some symptomatic patients also received the antibiotic azithromycin which is believed or suspected to be anti- inflammatory. All patients later tested positive for COVID antibodies. No patients died or required ventilation, whereas going by statistics for cohort populations in nearby areas, the doctors estimate that without the treatment 25 would have died.
In South Africa, Dr. Shankara Chetty, who practices in an area where hospitals are not easily accessed, reports that he developed treatments with available drugs such as steroids, antihistamines, and blood thinners, managing to keep patients from requiring hospital treatment; he made only minimal use of ivermectin which was largely unavailable. Some colleagues to whom hospitals were more available switched to his protocol from the standard approach and found that their patients no longer went on ventilators. He claims also that none of his patients developed the so-called “long-haul” or post-COVID chronic or recurring disease that has proven a fairly common problem with the conventional approach (do nothing until hypoxia sets in).
In Zimbabwe, where hospitals were similarly unavailable, Dr. Jackie Stone had a brief run-in with the law for prescribing unauthorized substances, but was vindicated when ivermectin began to be adopted locally for treatment of COVID. Later the government formally approved the drug for this purpose.
In spite of the concerted lobbying efforts of doctors and medical data analysts, public health agencies (PHA’s) consistently declined to recommend ivermectin (or any early treatment) despite a long record of safety and strong signals of efficacy in the studies—and this in a deadly pandemic! (See section below for particular instances.) The vast majority of doctors followed PHA guidance, which meant that the standard of care was home care, no medical intervention, prior to either a low reading (low 90’s or below) on one’s home pulse oximeter or, if this device is not to hand, shortness of breath—then a trip to the emergency room. As for ivermectin the official view was that it “needs more study, needs large [involving thousands of subjects] randomized controlled trials [RCT’s]”; under examination this amounts to a formal excuse for a preconceived ruling, indicating some ulterior motive. For one thing, even one comparatively small study can provide strong evidence if the effect-signal is large, wherewith the likelihood of this being due to chance, if the study is well-conducted, can be fairly to quite small. Large randomized controlled studies are not the only kind of evidence on which decisions can be based; if they were, the practice of medicine would be seriously hamstrung. It is reasonable and ethical to administer something on weak or preliminary evidence of efficacy if the risk (here negligible) is low enough and/or the disease serious enough.
With ivermectin there was by the end of 2020 an accumulation of a few dozen RTC’s with consistently positive results; this is already statistically powerful, and is not necessarily less compelling in ruling out chance than one large study. The meta-analysis of Lawrie et al found a reduction in risk of death averaging 62% in patients with mild to severe disease, and a reduction in risk of infection, when used prophylactially, of 86%4, reflecting the importance of early administration. One of the prophylactic studies in which a higher dose was given achieved an efficacy of 91%; this is a sign of dose- dependency which is an important indicator of genuine efficacy.
A paper by Kory and four co-authors published in American Journal of Therapeutics gathered an impressive array of evidence for the effectiveness of ivermectin, including observational controlled trials (OTC’s), RTC’s, and epidemiological evidence such as comparison of cities that used it with those that did not. One reported trial by Dr. Hector Carvallo in Argentina enrolled 1195 health care workers in an OCT, with 788 given ivermectin prophylactically and 407 in a control group. Over a 3-month period there were zero infections in the intervention group whereas 58% of the control group became ill with COVID. A similar study in India gave ivermectin prophylactically to health care workers and infections were reduced by 83% compared with the control group. In view of these findings, the suggestion that large RTC’s are further needed to justify an immediate rollout to help control a pandemic, given the high degree of safety of the drug, hardly merits comment. In any case, only governments and well-heeled philanthropies will fund large, expensive studies on off-patent drugs with no expectation of profit; moreover, such studies take months to complete during which suffering and death will continue.
From the standpoint of treating a patient, “more studies are needed” is not what is uppermost in the mind if a drug has so far shown efficacy and is well-tolerated. One factor in the official claim that ivermectin for use against COVID is “understudied” may have to do with how the concerns of Ivory Tower medical science differ from the concerns of day-to-day doctoring. Even so it is hard to conceive how an unbiased thought-process would deem the evidence here, given the safety of the drug, inadequate to recommend its use. It is as if the seriousness of the illness and the likelihood of death along with safety—even whether there is a downside at all—are simply left out of consideration. As an example of how this normally plays out consider that in June 2021 an Alzheimer’s drug is approved by the FDA despite shaky evidence of efficacy and serious side-effects (brain swelling, etc.); compare this with the official treatment of ivermectin in a pandemic, i.e., where need is also great. Demands for a certain level of proof of efficacy before recommendation regardless of conditioning factors are reminiscient of the formalistic dogmas of medieval Scholasticism, the epitome of unscientific thinking. It is either a pretext/cover-story for corrupt or ulteriorly-motivated action, or a collapse in institutional competence, or a combination.
The drug fluvoxamine, widely used against obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, got airtime on CBS 60 minutes as seemingly quite promising for early treatment, but there was little if any follow-up in the main media. Briefly interviewed on the program was Steve Kirsch, a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepeneur. He had established an early-treatment fund to make up for the fact that the government had at that point put money exclusively into vaccine research. He took note that epidemiological studies had associated the use of psychiatric drugs called SSRI’s such as fluvoxamine with resistance against certain diseases. So he funded a study of fluvoxamine for COVID that found its way into the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and which showed very high efficacy—yet the journal appended an admonition against its use for this purpose with no substantive explanation. It appears that the preventive effect of fluvoxamine is much stronger if administered early. However, it also appears to be useful at the opposite end of the disease process, the inflammatory phase (when the body is hyper-reacting to the presence of spike protein debris), as well as post-recovery chronic disorders or “long-haul syndrome.” According to the FLCCC protocols, its anti- inflammatory properties are useful for long-haul patients with neurological symptoms (e.g., “brain fog”), due to the fact that it can cross the blood-brain barrier. Kirsch offered a million dollars to anyone who can point to a scientific justification for the policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the World Heatth Organization (WHO) toward fluvoxamine for COVID, and another million ditto for ivermectin. He kept his money.
Dr. Mobeen Syed, a physician and popular medical educator, argues in his videos for a balanced approach to COVID, promoting vaccines and also the FLCCC protocols. But balance is apparently not deemed allowable; he is subjected to what he calls “book- burning” censorship by the social media giants and is forced to seek alternative platforms.
Another advocate of the two-pronged approach is Dr. John Campbell, a health analyst and educator with a large (1,000,000+) viewership on YouTube. At one point he informs viewers of something “spooky” that happened to him. Excited by his discussions about ivermectin with Dr. Lawrie, whom he greatly admires, he put up one of these videos on Facebook to gain it extra attention. It was flagged by Facebook as “partially false.” Flummoxed by this, Campbell inquired as to who the author was and the reason or reasons given. The author stayed anonymous, and the reason turned out to be that it was asserted in the video that the drug is safe, having a long safety record, whereas the safety of ivermectin when used for COVID had not been tested. Campbell commented that this goes against basic principles of toxicology. If the thought is that the condition of having COVID could somehow elicit an unknown toxic property this is baseless speculation; moreover there is no sign of this in months of studies and clinical practice.
In historical context this “fact-checking” procedure by Facebook is clearly part of a broader propaganda initiative that is not about promoting scientific truth. Serious scientific discussions of ivermectin and other repurposed drugs for COVID continued to be deplatformed helter-skelter from Twitter and other social media, blocking dissemination of knowledge that might well save lives and relieve people of debilitating conditions. YouTube adopted an explicit policy that any claims made for ivermectin (or hydroxychloriquine) as effective against COVID would be taken down, although this seemed to be selectively enforced.
How Conservative Media Framed the Opposition
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson picked up the early-treatment hot potato by interviewing Dr. McCullough. Carlson found shocking and disturbing what was being said by this distinguished, highly published doctor: the suppression of information on life-saving and suffering-preventing early-treatment options as if to enforce public belief in the official dogma of vaccines as the sole solution, no matter the consequences! McCullough had testified before the Texas legislature.
On this issue the Right is correct in blaming government, but it is mere tendentious rhetoric to blame “the Left,” as Carlson and his “team” sometimes do. The Left, liberals, and many Republicans are all in for some degree of chastening due to being culpable at least for a certain naiveté on this, but it seems to me that no political outlook is particularly to blame due to the unanimity of offical information and the ease with which dissenting views can be tossed in the box of “right-wing conspiracy theories.” Again, a heavy political stigma is unthinkingly attached to any and all suggestions about early treatment, and the designated authorities are silent about it. There is nothing about leftist or liberal thinking in particular that leads to uncritical acceptance of mainstream narratives. But it is true that Democrats and progressives have thoroughly missed the boat on this (Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald have at least pointed to the problematic nature of censorship of scientific discussions). And Democratic politicians in particular can be taken to account for pressuring tech companies to censor more and more information that does not fit with the official storyline (”vaccines alone can save humanity”).
Fox News itself is not, however, an innocent bystander when it comes to official message enforcement. Journalist Ivory Hecker ran afoul of her employer Fox in seeking to pursue with integrity the story of clinical successes with treatment of COVID. She interviewed Dr. Joseph Varon, head of critical care at a Houston hospital and a founding member of FLCCC, and Fox barred her from mentioning HCQ (which he had used for a time) or other therapeutic substances. Journalists flocked to Varon because of his strikingly anomalous success with COVID patients, but they were all barred by editors from including information about the actual therapeutics used by Varon to achieve these exceptional results!
Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, when government goes awry the Right gets something right. But the Right may be inclined to minimize or overlook the evidence that certain aspects of the pandemic policy, which it in some ways rightly criticizes, are products of the corruption of agencies and politicians by oligarchic capitalism. They are less inclined than the Left to talk about the possible role of neoliberal ideology (the unfettered pursuit of private profit is the fountain of all good things) and its propaganda imperatives—here working in concert with the fixation on universal vaccination and its specific propaganda imperatives among which seems to be suppression of any hopeful news about effective therapeutics. Rather than the terms “neoliberal” or “corporate,” the Right is likely to use the term “globalist” suggesting a transnational governmental or quasi-governmental power-structure.
Whatever the limitations of the rightist viewpoint, Carlson provides a valuable counter-perspective to the groupthink in single-minded pursuit of universal vaccination regardless of collateral damage due to suppression of alternative treatments. He held an enlightening interview with evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, whose DarkHorse podcasts helped to publicize the achievements in preventive/early treatment. In the interview Weinstein placed blame (for what might be called the mass-vaccination exclusivist narrative and its ethically bereft propaganda requirements) squarely on corruption/capturing of the PHA’s. Weinstein believes that a rapid, global rollout of early interventions is necessary to prevent the evolving virus from becoming a permanent condition of human life. If I understand correctly his thinking is that since a vaccinated person can harbor virus in the respiratory tract—these vaccines are not “sterilizing”—and therefore can transmit, a vaccinated community can be a incubation pool with vast numbers of virus in circulation along with a “selection pressure” favoring variants that evade the specific immune response provided by vaccination. This view comports roughly with that of vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche, who thinks mass innoculation with this type of vaccine during a pandemic is a formula for disaster driven by natural selection. A more mainstream view touts the vaccines as potentially “containing” the virus, short of extinction, enough to allow a return to normal life. This predicts the same eventual state of affairs as Weinstein though it is evaluated differently. But the scenario of a lingering, low level, tolerable pandemic spotlights the serious limitations of a non- sterilizing vaccine, and favors antiviral drugs all the more as then needed for a mop-up operation.
It is greatly in the interest of the Left and liberals to get out from behind on this issue. So far the Right is set to come out looking like a shining beacon of truth if this monumental scandal is ever blown open. On the other hand, as noted below, the Left has great opportunity here in that there is the potential for a general public discrediting of the neoliberal global order—which has recently become troublingly entrenched due partly to revolutions in electronic consumer gadgets, in this author’s opinion.
Carlson’s second, more lengthy interview with Weinstein highlights common ground between Right and Left on a matter of great concern. Indeed it might turn out that the severe political polarization of America at present may be more postural than real when it comes to the need to address at least one urgent problem besetting our institutions; though suggested solutions may vary, consensus appears to be entirely reachable insofar as the nature of the problem, glaringly exposed by the pandemic response, is clear to both sides.
The Complicity of Medical Journals and the Failure of Science Journalism
Mainstream journalism’s go-to study on ivermectin for COVID is one reported in JAMA, but this highlights the failure—or rather the disappearance—of effective science journalism of which there are other historical indications as well. It is absurd to ignore the entire evidence-base apart from this one deeply flawed study, in which, among other things, there was not a high enough rate of disease progression to show any statistically significant difference. In any case, if one study is an outlier among many (here as seeming to show a small effect at most) it should be discounted or given less weight, since this can be an indication of bias or confounding factors. Dr. Lawrie notes that whereas there is normally a publication bias toward positive results, in the case of ivermectin the bias seems to be the reverse: negative results receive publicity despite flaws in the studies while many high-quality studies with positive results languish in preprint.
There seems to be a dogma among the journalistic profession that when reporting on scientific matters one must acknowledge that one “does not know anything,” cannot come to any judgments, but can only defer to the words of experts. This is incorrect. Specialties can benefit from an outside perspective. For example, Dr. Barry Marshall’s discovery that the bacterium H. Pylori caused stomach ulcers was not accepted for over a decade due to a groupthink in the field that might have been pointed out by an inquiring journalist or a philosopher of science. I know of one instance in which a philosopher foresaw a revolution in genetics by studying the evidence with an unbiased eye.5
Both Tess Lawrie and Pierre Kory had the unsettling experience of having their papers on ivermectin scuttled at the last minute after having satisfied every step of peer- review, Lawrie (along with Dr. Andrew Bryant and five other co-authors) with Lancet Respiratory and Kory et al. with Frontiers in Pharmacology. The latter instance was part of a sorry episode in which a team of four guest-editors of the journal put quite a bit of unpaid work into organizing a special-topic edition on repurposed drugs for COVID-19, overseeing the peer-review process, but in the end the issue was scuttled. All four guest editors resigned in protest; their letter of resignation can be accessed here.6 On the other hand, the British journal Pharmacy editorialized that it is “incomprehensible” that ivermectin is not being rolled out all over the world; apparently they did not get the memo, so to speak. The contrast is striking to say the least. Kory et al. later succeeded with American Journal of Therapeutics, as did the meta-analysis of Bryant, Lawrie, et al.
Public Health Agencies Abandon Science and Foster Disease Worldwide
For whatever reason doctors seem generally inclined to adhere strictly to “guidelines” from agencies such as FDA, CDC, and NIH as though from fear of repercussions, particularly when it comes to COVID-19, a more-or-less new disease. This is understandable but it should not lead to closing off information (say, from other doctors’ experiences) that for whatever reason does not flow through these agencies or goes against their edicts. It may feel slightly outside of one’s specialty to consider the possibility that the health agencies, of all things, might, like other government agencies, be corrupted or steered awry by the interests of powerful corporations, or even by ideological or social agendas. We should not allow the aura of independent science surrounding these agencies to unduly reassure us.
Pierre Kory’s lobbying of Congress managed to get NIH to go neutral—neither recommend nor not recommend—on ivermectin. Is neutrality an ethically defensible position given the strength of the evidence, the safety record, and the obvious urgency of need?
Dr. Campbell pointed out in one of his popular pandemic update videos that FDA made a false statement in its public release warning against taking unprescribed ivermectin. They stated that it is “not an antiviral” despite the fact that it is officially recognized for use against dengue, zika, and other viruses. FDA also highlighted lleged dangers of the drug, claiming it can damage the liver, though people who have looked into this have only found two documented cases of associated hepatic disease in 3.7 billion doses given, and these may be attributable to the remains of parasites targeted by the drug. These statements indicate either incompetence or a crude effort at manipulation.
The WHO came to a recommendation on ivermectin: “for clinical trials only.” In a video discussion with Dr. Campbell, Tess Lawrie analyzed the way this was arrived at. It seems they cherry-picked studies, then undertook dubious procedures to make the evidence look questionable (see footnote 11). Even so their result came out positive for ivermectin, but they recommended against it anyway! Campbell remarked on their “…flawed meta-analysis. Here they’ve found high levels of efficacy for ivermectin and they’ve recommended against ivermectin. Am I missing something? Can you help me out here?”7 Dr. Mobeen Syed was similarly disconcerted, in his own interview with Lawrie, by the stark cognitive dissonance entailed in the WHO recommendation. FLCCC published a white paper on their website about WHO’s procedure. But the problem is evident even to the layperson: The argument given by officials comes down to the claim that only some magic degree of proof of efficacy would under any circumstance justify and rationalize use, which is arbitrary dogma removed from clinical reality.
Another tale of intransigence on the part of health authorities concerns vitamin D. A study in Spain found that administration of the active form of the vitamin, calcifediol, to hospitalized COVID patients reduced deaths by 60% and critical care admissions by 80%. Other studies have shown a relationship between seriousness of COVID disease and vitamin D deficiency (which is very common). Moreover, there is strong background science supporting an immuno-modulatory role for vitamin D, and it appears to reduce markers of inflammation. This is important because the more serious and lethal (late- stage) consequences of infection with the virus are all about inflammation, i.e., immune- system overreaction and dysfunction in response to viral debris. British MP David Davis, who has a science background, cogently argued in session that the studies so far are sufficient to demand action to make vitamin D serological evaluation and treatment standard for COVID patients. Little happened in this direction though there was a change in Irish policy. Arguments that the studies are preliminary and not peer-reviewed, that they need to be repeated, larger, etc. are specious given that there is no downside to the therapy, which may have other benefits, and that there is a high degree of need given the dismal propect of dying on a ventilator. The Spanish Journal of Geriatrics and Gerontology published a strong statement to this effect, writing: “Given the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic, the benefit–risk ratio of [vitamin D] supplementation calls for immediate action even before results of ongoing large-scale randomized trials become available.” In any case a large-scale study did appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism showing a significant benefit of high blood levels of vitamin D on rates of hospitalization; still, not a peep out of the PHA’s. Part of the explanation might be reaction against a history of overclaiming on the part of supplement makers, but this is hardly scientific reasoning.
Campbell, who is strongly in favor of universal vaccination, finds Lawrie’s meta- analysis of ivermectin trials compelling. He repeatedly informs his audience how he reached out to British authorities to try to persuade them to approve and promote, or at least to study, this drug for COVID-19, but received only “deafening silence” (same for vitamin D). He makes his own view clear: While some people promote exclusively therapeutics, and others promote exclusively vaccines, he supports a mix of both. Eminently sensible. Unfortunately, the reason for the “deafening silence” is almost certainly that the authorities view the two-pronged approach as in danger of goring the sacred cow, namely the perception on the part of the public that vaccines are their sole salvation from the dreaded disease. This is because “vaccine hesitancy” is deemed Public Health Enemy Number 1, and anything that might play into it, say by reducing the level of fear with the promise of a cure, must be squelched. You cannot have the public believing there is an alternative to vaccines. But what about the suffering and death that might be prevented during the span of time that is in any case going to elapse before the entire public is immunized? Apparently this is viewed as an unavoidable sacrifice!
Another insidious factor here cannot be ruled out: the instinct of institutional self- protection. Suppose ivermectin or fluvoxamine or both—or better, the FLCCC protoccols as a whole—were rolled out rapidly and maximally, and that this resulted in the pandemic being fairly quickly brought fully under control. This appears entirely possible in light of the evidence so far. If this happened, after all that had transpired to that point, it would be a catastrophe for those authorities responsible for the implicit doctrine that already existing drugs were of no avail and that humanity could only wait for a global rollout of fast-tracked vaccines while enduring lockdowns and months of tragic news. FLCCC and other groups have made sure that they cannot plead ignorance. This is comparable to officials in Washington in the later days of the Vietnam War deeming that any halt to the now clearly pointless bombing and killing would unacceptably undercut the “credibility” of American military power.
India suffered terribly with COVID in April and May of 2021. After a time, under lobbying and word-spreading by FLCCC and others, Indian health agencies began including ivermectin in their recommendations for early-stage treatment. WHO responded to these moves by tweeting a message reinforcing its baseless position that ivermectin should not be recommended for COVID. In the tweet it referenced information supplied by Merck drug company, which has a large financial interest in preventing ivermectin from being rolled out more broadly and possibly proving its utility against the pandemic (more below). This action resulted in a lawsuit by the Indian Bar Association. The lawsuit cites the multiple failings and missteps of WHO since the start of the pandemic, stating that “…the world is waking up to your absurd, arbitrary, and fallacious approach…” A highly informative and stimulating discussion of these developments is found at this link8; among other things, Dr. Lawrie here presents a very interesting basic vision of a global health organization that would replace the now hopelessly captured and ineffectual WHO. Watching this discussion, one gets the sense that the neoliberal order may be currently faltering in the shoals of pandemic. Here we have the corporate/financial oligarchy, with its interest in the global vaccination industry, running squarely in conflict with medical science and the furtherance of public health. We see that during the disastrous COVID wave in India, while ivermectin was struggling for official recognition, demand surged among the wealthier classes for remdesivir at $3000 per dose and providing minimal benefit at best. Could systemic corruption be more evident? If there is a general discrediting and replacement of the corporate/neoliberal international order, these extraordinary developments at the intersection of health science, law, and policy in India could serve to epitomize the problem.
From late April 2021, the national health guidelines in India included ivermectin for early treatment, and individual states pursued their own specific policies. In Delhi from May 12 to June 13 hospitalization rates and ICU rates for COVID declined dramatically.9 Similar results were seen in the states of Goa and Uttarakhand which gave ivermectin that official push that doctors seem to require. There were no rapid upswings in vaccination rates in prior weeks that could explain these declines. Taken individually they could be due to natural waning of the disease, reductions in vulnerable populations, or more transmission-reducing behaviors. However, the same pattern occurred in Mexico, Slovakia, and Zimbabwe following implementation of treatment with ivermectin. In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which did not institute an ivermectin protocol, the COVID problem continued to escalate.
Whether or not ivermectin has been as successful in India, Mexico, and elsewhere as its advocates claim, the influential health agencies clearly discounted and/or ignored a critical fact: the value of a widely-available drug, even if it were only somewhat effective, for poor rural areas that lack hospitals and where vaccination faces major obstacles.
The conclusion can only be that modern applied medical science has taken on a top-down authority structure that has proven, in this instance, a catastrophic failure. The alternative is horizontal dissemination of knowledge driven by clinical experience, and the full freedom of doctors to exercize independent judgment. In the present case we have a stark illustration of these two options. On the one hand what predominates globally is a rigid top-down edict of “no treatment outside of the hospital”; on the other hand a global community of doctors, facilitated by the Internet, is cooperatively working out successful treatments from prophylaxis to post-viral syndrome.
So when Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media companies make decisions about which medical experts and topics the public should and should not be exposed to, they can only turn to these PHA’s that have given up scientific integrity in favor of pushing a narrative.
The Role of Hospitals in Enforcing Pandemic Capitalism and the Mass Vaccination Groupthink
Hospitals in the west and in Australia have been especially, even downright weirdly (which is to say, crying out for explanation), intransigent when it came to any use on COVID patients of the safe, apparently effective drug ivermectin. White-knuckle- generating lawsuits have been brought by loved ones of gravely ill patients to try to force hospitals to allow doctors to administer it (while it works better if given earlier, ivermectin appears to have efficacy at all stages of disease, and is said to be effective against “long-haul COVID” as well). In several cases the plaintiffs won, ivermectin was given, and the patient recovered. Sometimes the plaintiffs won but the hospitals refused to comply with court orders! A compelling account of this phenomenon occurs in an article by award-winning New York Times author Michael Capuzzo.10 Legal liability has been cited as a reason; this seems dubious inasmuch as NIH does not give a negative recommendation; also a court order should provide legal cover, one would think. Similarly of note are reports of large pharmacies such as CVS refusing to fill prescriptions for ivermectin under orders from corporate leadership. These reported behaviors call out for investigation by journalists, legislators, and/or prosecutors.
Direct Corruption of Health Policy
Efforts to expand the use of ivermectin encounter an obstacle also in misinformation about its efficacy put out by the moneyed interests, in particular Merck drug company, the original producers of ivermectin, and the Gates Foundation (which owns stock in Merck). Merck has an obvious motive here; it is working on its own patentable antiviral against SARS COV-2. Going by the history of antivirals, the chances that it will have combined safety and efficacy comparable to ivermectin are slim. The chance of its being far more costly, of course, is 100%—and this on top of the unrecouped capital input from the American taxpayer of reportedly 1.2 billion. Moreover, it is said that its molecular structure and mechanism of action indicate that it verges on being repackaged ivermectin, and at least one expert says it lacks some of the additional mechanisms of action that make ivermectin useful against COVID. David Kessler, chief science advisor to the Biden Adminstration’s COVID policy, said in connection with this initiative, “We need this [new antiviral drug] to close out the pandemic.” So now that profit stands to be made, the two-pronged approach is all of a sudden not only acceptable to discuss, but necessary! But why should the American public spend billions on an antiviral that might some day end the pandemic when there already is one that is proven to be effective and safe and is readily available? We are contemplating a corruption of our governing institutions by the interest of profit that should astound even the most cynical.
Let us suppose it turns out that there are serious limitations and problems with worldwide universal vaccination—now projected to take years if it is doable at all—such as the problem of emerging variants, waves of complacency, a concerning safety record (see below), and public reluctance and resistance in various forms. To the extent that mass vaccination fails or falls short this will represent another boon for industry: a perfect opportunity to introduce a new, patented, expensive antiviral. One can expect the big health agencies to continue to fully cooperate in serving the interests of profit. The main media will likely continue to blindly believe that their role is confined to uncritical reportage on “the science” as defined by designated authorities.
Vaccine Safety In Context
Risk versus benefit considerations about medical interventions take on a particular hue in the setting of public emergencies and when a public health issue is in play. It can cease to be solely about the health of the individual patient. An intervention might have a fairly high risk-to-benefit ratio for a particular person, thus be contraindicated, but considerations may override this about a risk to others from no intervention. Consequently, when small risks of death and serious illness appeared to be associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, authorities came out with apparently contradictory statements: “no causality is demonstrated” and “the benefit outweighs the risk” [note: not the “possible risk”] where the latter is a blanket judgment intended to overrule individual assessments excepting certain rare conditions that preclude vaccination. Here there is no tailoring of the recommendation to particular “cohort” groups, such as infants, the elderly, those with co-morbidities, etc. as is normally done. It is every individual’s social responsibility regardless. Even where a definite bulge in risk of heart disease is seen in a certain young age cohort with one type of vaccine, the recommendation is not adjusted (this evoked considerable consternation on the part of the admirably even-tempered Dr. Mobeen). It is as if risk to individuals is something never to be acknowledged in any form, the ends being thought to justify the means.
But if something else is available that prevents or clears infection and therefore prevents transmission, the social responsibility rationale for immunization is undermined. Again, an effective antiviral is at least as protective of the public as a vaccine. Suppose there were advances in hospital treatments that eliminated almost all deaths; this by itself could undercut the case for mass vaccination considering its cost and risks. This is not to say that vaccines would not play a role.
If effective therapies are in hand, the issue becomes a comparison between the safety and effectiveness of one option versus another; this has implications for public policy as well as for the individual. Ivermectin, e.g., raises little or no safety concern; fluvoxamine too is widely used without serious side-effects but might have some psychological effects in normal people that are not desired—though little more so, perhaps, than the general presumption that one does not want to take a drug unless there is a reason for it. Both are said to be at their best when used prophylactically. Note that this means preventing the establishment of infection, whereas a heightened level of immunity does not necessarily prevent a person from being a vehicle of transmission. Again, a prophylactic antiviral is better than a vaccine in this respect. Another distinct advantage in the case of ivermectin is that due to its mechanisms of action it almost certainly is equally effective against all potential variants of the virus. If cheap and readily available drugs are effective—and there is plenty of reason to think they are, especially given the considerable number of them and how they might be combined in various ways—this should have an impact on any rational risk-benefit assessment.
Conspicuously missing from the main media is the fact that COVID vaccinations have racked up substantial numbers of temporally associated deaths and serious illness in the “pharmaco-vigilance” reporting systems (VAERS in the US, the Yellow Card system in Britain, and others) in a short time compared to other vaccines and drugs historically. In fact the numbers are quite startling in this context; the numbers of adverse events being allowed is unprecedented. “Correlation does not prove causation” (in individual instances) is the mantra, but an unexpected or unusual quantity of temporal associations should be enough (and normally is) to trigger the precautionary principle. A drug company cannot seek approval by arguing, “There is no definitive proof it is unsafe.” Again, there is a blanket assessement of risk by authorities conditioned by a perceived circumstance of emergency, resulting in a need for “messaging” (propaganda), the journalistic preoccupation of the moment. As happens with wars, it is deemed too dangerous to the program for the public to hear the whole truth.
In June 2021, Dr. Tess Lawrie sent a letter to the British Medicines and Health- Care Products Regulatory Agency in which she analysed the reports accumulated so far in their Yellow Card system. Her analysis of the various categories of reported disorders tended to direct the light of suspicion toward vaccination as not only temporally associated but causative. For example, the categories included autoimmune disorders and the reactivation of viruses latent in the body, both typical (though rare) side-effects of vaccines. Also, it is well-known that the vaccines are associated with certain rare clotting events, most famously cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, but also portal vein (feeding into the liver) thrombosis. She claimed that the kinds of disorders recorded suggest that such clots are occurring not only there but “in almost every vein and artery, including large vessels like the aorta, and in every organ including other parts of the brain, lungs, heart, spleen, kidneys, ovaries and liver.” She avers that the data is consistent with the hypothesis, supported by studies, that spike protein expression induced by vaccination can produce toxic effects, clotting in particular, throughout the body. She concludes that there is “more than enough evidence … to declare the COVID-19 vaccines unsafe for use in humans.” She deems her findings “information that should lead to cessation of the vaccination roll out while a full investigation is conducted.” Particularly concerning numbers occur in the neurological category. Shortly after this open letter is circulated her Twitter account is suspended.
The doctors at FLCCC began to talk about “post-vaccine syndrome” which is thought to have patho-physiological characteristics in common with so-called “long-haul COVID,” meaning recurring or chronic debilitating symptoms lasting months after infection, and thus to call for similar treatment. Post-vaccine syndrome has been discussed on Dr. Mobeen’s educational videos with a few different physician- interviewees. According to doctors associated with FLCCC the syndrome is treatable, which would mitigate this as a reason not to get vaccinated. But the phrase “post-vaccine syndrome” is not likely to be found in the main newspapers anytime soon.
In short, a much higher level of risk is being assumed by the public than is normally deemed acceptable, for the sake of a public benefit that might well be attainable by other means.
Comparing the Options
The meta-analysis paper of Bryant, Lawrie et al states that “Developing new medications can take years; therefore, identifying existing drugs that can be re-purposed against covid-19 and that already have a strong safety profile through decades of use could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.” This is couched in the appropriately cautious language of science. It was as true in March 2020 as a year later, but the official giddy entrancement with novel pharmaceutical technologies seems to have left this truth out of the picture. The question lurking behind this entire issue is this: Suppose that as soon as the efficacy of repurposed drugs had come to light this knowledge had, along with the drugs themselves, been disseminated and put to use swiftly and globally as one might deem natural in a pandemic. Suppose public agencies facilitated rather than impeded the process. Could this have quelled the emergency in a comparatively short time? Might it have brought the pandemic effectively to an end, rendering mass vaccination unnecessary (whether or not vaccines were to play some role)? These questions are not to be tolerated in the public aquare.
Even if the vaccines had no safety concerns, the suppression of knowledge that might save untold numbers of lives worldwide during the years-long roll-out process is morally egregious. A vaccine bias may have been understandable at first, but policy should have shifted to a new emphasis as soon as the efficacy of early therapeutic treatment had come to light (which was before successful vaccines were announced). If there had been full and timely recognition and dissemination of advances in treatment,
this might have undermined the argument that vaccines needed to be fast-tracked under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) rather than awaiting the normal study process; after all, the serious problem of public acceptance would not be helped by talking about a shortened testing regime.
If the many pro-early treatment doctors have ascertained anything in over a year of experience it is that it is possible to keep a large majority of COVID patients out of the hospital. If this is true, then the officially sanctioned protocol of no treatment until life- threatening hypoxia sets in will go down as an historic failing of the medical establishment. “Do nothing” is particularly asinine advice considering that ordinary mouthwash (or that specially designed for this purpose) can reduce viral load which is a critical factor in infectiousness and progression to serious disease. On a charitable view the medical institutions on the whole have shown fatal intransigence and inertia in the face of the pandemic. One would prefer not to think there has been a deliberate policy of sustaining a real-life horror show to motivate compliance with mass vaccination. Groupthink, the influence of conformity on perceptions; these are powerful forces, but they do not explain why a particular commonly held view gets established.
Conclusion and Closing Questions
In retrospect, the exclusive fixation from the beginning on mass vaccination as the solution to the pandemic was a monumental mistake. Were it possible to step back from the historical biases of science, the proper procedure when this “novel” coronavirus appeared would have been as follows: (1) Explore treatments with already existing, available interventions for all stages of the disease, especially its beginnings so as to prevent serious disease and hospitalization. (2) Depending on the success of (1), seek to develop new therapeutic interventions; meanwhile begin research into a vaccine should it prove necessary. (3) To the extent that these efforts look inauspicious in the short term, develop vaccines on a fast track with the possibility of rolling them out under EUA.
Among the unfortunate consequences of the misguided fixation on vaccines was that official policy from all quarters was engaged in countering vaguely defined “COVID misinformation” to the extent of pushing aside (can we say inadvertently?) the concern to save lives and minimize suffering. Continuation of the policy despite growing evidence of the efficacy of therapeutic interventions required deeming truth an enemy.
Setting aside the obvious motive stemming from the extreme profitability of mass vaccination, why has there been such implicit unanimity among medical professionals in positions of authority that the public should not place any hope in early or preventive treatment apart from vaccines? Why indeed was a vaccine presumed without discussion to be the best or the primary response to the pandemic when in fact a safe, effective antiviral would have several practical advantages as noted above? It is not unheard of for scientific milieus to get stuck in mistaken assumptions. Eighteenth-century astronomers were convinced it was unscientific nonsense to believe in rocks falling from the sky. In the 20th Century, the theory that the earth’s crust consisted of separate moving plates was firmly resisted for about three decades. It was some time before the scientific community accepted the evidence that H. Pylori caused stomach ulcers. Are we looking at this sort of thing? Did pressure from the corporate oligarchy actually shape the scientific creed de jour?
Kory speaks of the “disinformation playbook,” as laid out by the Union of Concerned Scientists, being followed item by item on the subject of ivermectin. Does
“more studies are needed” belong with the doubt-instilling11 fake science resisting tobacco legislation and denying climate change? The method may be the same, but the reasons are more complex and obscure. A proximal reason is clearly the official policy of universal vaccination as fast as possible, deemed to require unconstrained “perception management” as it is officially known. But a role cannot be excluded for a goal of indoctrination in neoliberal ideology and/or of a propaganda initiative to boost public compliance with vaccination in general.
We are assiduously trained today that conspiracy theories are only for kooky and irrational people, which entails the idiotic claim that conspiracies (or those of a certain type) never occur. What better moment to carry out a high-level conspiracy, or perhaps more accurately, broadly concerted action, in a misguided effort to control public perceptions and behavior? Unanswered questions remain.
1. This is intended to designate a species of “disaster capitalism” as described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine; no presumption is made as to whether Klein would agree with anything said here.
2. An unfortunate ambiguity has recently beset this phrase. It is traditionally used to mean a desirable endpoint achieved through vaccination perhaps combined with infection-acquired immunity, but now it is often used to refer to a public strategy involving no or minimal “lockdown” restrictions in order to rapidly spread immunity-boosting infections. This strategy needs a different name.
3. It is not recommended for people with a weak blood-brain barrier, such as infants and those with certain genetic conditions.
5. David Ray Griffin in his Religion and Scientific Naturalism pointed to evidence being ignored by scientists which indicated changes to the genome during the life of an individual, an idea supposedly long outmoded by Darwin; sure enough, epigenetics was discovered some time later.
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11. See Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Publishing, May 31, 2011
ScienceBasedMedicine is an interesting blog that champions a very hard-edged "sceince-based" medical approach. I tend to agree with it, but I don't always like its style - it wages war on various alternative treatments that admittedly have no evidence of efficacy but nevertheless are popular.
I tend to be a bit more generous - and allow that if people find that doing a handstand on alternate Tuesdays, as prescribed by a reverse-gravitic-therapy guru, helps their back pain we should not interfere.
SBM has just published a story (anecdote really) about a woman who was nearly killed by licensed Naturopaths, and a cocktail of GRAS vitamins and other substances. It was not, directly, the vitamins that nearly killed her. Nevertheless they contributed to difficulties in treatment.
As well, pointing out perhaps an under-appreciated danger of dietary supplements, they say
In sum, this patient spent two weeks in the hospital and nearly died after a naturopathic vitamin infusion which, as far as we can tell, had no medical rationale whatsoever but nevertheless was prescribed for her monthly. Her case was complicated by her voracious consumption of “anti-aging” supplements, which her physicians had to consider as a possible source of her symptoms. As I’ve argued before on SBM, naturopaths should not be licensed to practice “naturopathic medicine” and the deceptively named Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act needs to repealed and replaced with an effective regulatory framework that protects the public rather than lines the pockets of dietary supplement companies.
I appreciate this patient’s agreeing to have her case published and I am glad she is doing better. I hope she is both filing a complaint against this naturopath (or naturopaths) with the state as well as suing them for malpractice, if there is indeed such a thing in a practice that appears to have no standard of care.
Why is this not entirely OT for this thread? it can be difficult for some here to understand why "the authorities" do not jump on a cocktail of all the possibly-might-help are-not-likely-to-do-harm medicines as prophylaxis or therapy for COVID. After all, we think, it can't do any harm and if there is even 10% chance of it working we should take the stuff.
I find myself going down that road too. But, there are strong reasons not to recommend unevidenced cocktails:
Claims that A+B wonder treatment will be adequate prophylaxis may cause risky behaviour (lack of vaccination, lack of social distancing)
Although the cocktail elements, individually, seem pretty safe, we do not have strong evidence on the short or long-term safety issues associated with the combination. For example, Vitamin D, in large doses (say 4000IUD), appears safe, but no-one has conducted phase III safety trials to look for low level problems - if it were a vaccine it would not get regulatory approval. And two drugs that individually are safe may in combination have unexpected side effects.
People tend to think of naturally occurring chemicals, that we take in as part of a normal diet, as being safe. That is not necessarily true, and certainly not true when they are taken in unusually high dose.
It is important to realise here that the risks of such things are low. But on this thread there are enormous complaints about, and interest in, 1 in 1,000,000 risks from vaccines. These are more like 1 in 1000 risks.
The above perspective is why when you talk to most (not all) doctors they will be very cautious about unproven off-label treatments. Those who are sensible will discuss them with you, may with care agree to some of them on the grounds that in your specific case there really seems to be little harm and the small chance of good is real. That cannot be done on a country-wide regulatory basis. Individual patients can afford to neglect or ignore an uncertain possible 1 in 1000 risk. A conscientious doctor cannot, and will eventually see it kill one of their patients, after which they will become a meticulous follower of primum non nocere.
The neutral stance on regulatory approval for ivermectin is an example here, where to give it regulatory approval would be completely wrong.
Should ivermectin turn out to be of some small positive help in treating COVID it will then be approved, and the lack of approval now might seem to be a mistake. But, of course, it is not a mistake, it is the right decision based on current evidence, and what honest regulators would be obliged to do.
90% of this thread will disagree with the above: they should still understand its rationale and why regulators are not out to kill population because they are getting kick-backs from drug companies.
The same applies to remdesivir. When it was first agreed I thought the evidence was sketchy. But, it was just enough (and better than HCQ or ivermectin because of lack of negative evidence, good expectations (plausible anti-viral action), some very sketchy information from a positive RCT). Many here will say that RCT was fudged and I agree that is possible - it - was quite low quality - drug companies will do what they can within the law (and occasionally without the law) to make their drugs test well. In an emergency situation that will lead to imperfect decisions.
Have a look at the NICE (UK) guidelines on COVID treatment. With rationale. Remdesivir still has conditional approval for some severe COVID cases. Azithromycin is not recommended. Colchicine is recommnded only in research context. Vitamin D has some approval (not much) for all cases: And I agree that the UK guidelines are pretty minimal - increasing that to 1000 IU/day for anyone over 65 not otherwise contraindicated would not be stupid.
Adults (including women who are pregnant or breastfeeding), young people and children over 4 years should consider taking a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms (400 units; also called international units [IU]) of vitamin D between October and early March because people do not make enough vitamin D from sunlight in these months.
Adults, young people and children over 4 years should consider taking a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms (400 units) of vitamin D throughout the year:
if they have little or no sunshine exposure including because they:
are not often outdoors, for example, if they are frail, housebound or living in a care home
usually wear clothes that cover up most of their skin when outdoors
are spending most of their time indoors because of the COVID‑19 pandemic
if they have dark skin, for example, if they are of African, African-Caribbean or south Asian family origin, because they may not make enough vitamin D from sunlight.
Babies from birth to 1 year should have a daily supplement containing 8.5 micrograms (340 units) to 10 micrograms (400 units) of vitamin D throughout the year if they are:
breastfed
formula-fed and are having less than 500 ml of infant formula a day (because infant formula is already fortified with vitamin D).
Children aged 1 year to 4 years should have a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms (400 units) of vitamin D throughout the year.
Some people have a medical condition that means they cannot take vitamin D or should take a different amount from the general population.
1.2 Do not offer a vitamin D supplement to people solely to prevent COVID‑19, except as part of a clinical trial.
1.3 Do not offer a vitamin D supplement to people solely to treat COVID‑19, except as part of a clinical trial.
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Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite. By: ErinKate Stair, MD, MPH The
trialsitenews.com
Note that views expressed in this opinion article are the writer’s personal views and not necessarily those of TrialSite.
By: ErinKate Stair, MD, MPH
The White House’s war on COVID-19 “misinformation” took a major hit last week when Ben Wakana, Deputy Director of Strategic Communications & Engagement of the White House COVID-19 Response Team, lambasted the liberal-friendly New York Times and Washington Post for their tweets about COVID-19 transmission for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated. The New York Times tweeted that an internal CDC report said that the Delta variant “may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated,” to which Wakana retweeted and wrote (in ALL CAPS, MIND YOU), “Vaccinated people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people and if you fail to include that context you’re doing it wrong.” The Washington Post tweeted, “Vaccinated people made up three-quarters of those infected in a massive Massachusetts covid-19 outbreak, pivotal CDC study finds,” to which Wakana retweeted and wrote, “Completely irresponsible…virtually all hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among the unvaccinated. Unreal to not put that in context.” Such a public scolding of reliable, mainstream allies, at least when it comes to the war against “misinformation” and pushing the White House messaging on COVID-19 vaccines, feels like a whole lotta dissension in the ranks. CNN also launched a conflicting zinger that led to a barrage of confusion in the Twitter comments when they wrote, “Vaccination alone won’t stop the rise of variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their protection, researchers warned. They said people need to wear masks and take other preventative steps until almost everyone is vaccinated.” Um…, what? One can almost feel the sweat sliding down the backs of fact-checkers as their fingers quiver above keyboards, while the “Disinformation Dozen” surely had a field day of I-told-you-so.
This particular COVID-19 messaging massacre started several days ago, when the CDC did an abrupt “about-facemask” and announced that fully vaccinated people should now wear masks indoors in areas with high viral transmission. Now in America, discussing face masks should come with its own trigger warning, but abrupt changes in recommendations only add to the volatility. In mid-May, the agency announced that fully vaccinated people did not have to wear masks indoors or outdoors (in most settings) because real-world data showed the vaccines were effective against the variants and reduced transmission. In February of 2021, the CDC recommended that everyone continue to wear a well-fitted mask or even two masks, which predictably played into the hands of mask doubters who flooded the internet with jokes about wearing three, ten, “why stop at two?” face masks. I remember thinking that it seemed painfully out-of-touch to try to sell two masks, when you couldn’t get a bunch of people to even wear one. Health professionals hoped that May’s easing of restrictions for the fully vaccinated would encourage hesitant folks to get the shot. Messaging was positive, hopeful, and altruistic: Get vaccinated, so you can go back to doing the things you love; take the shot to help protect your loved ones and stop the spread; get vaccinated so we can get back to pre-pandemic times. For a short while, the messages seemed to work. Vaccination rates picked up, although they slowed again in early June.
The CDC’s latest change in mask guidelines was rooted in data that shows the Delta variant is highly contagious and can be transmitted by both the unvaccinated and the vaccinated. A COVID-19 outbreak investigation in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, revealed that 469 people, with a median age of 40, were diagnosed with COVID-19. 74% of them were fully vaccinated, and of those, 79% reported having symptoms, including cough, headache, sore throat, muscle aches, and fever. Five cases were hospitalized, four being fully vaccinated and one unvaccinated. Two of the fully-vaccinated, hospitalized cases had underlying conditions, and the 1 unvaccinated case had multiple underlying conditions. An unexpected finding was that specimens from the unvaccinated and vaccinated cases revealed similar viral loads. The good news is that no one died.
The media reported this investigation in myriad ways, sparking controversy, confusion, and episodes like the White House COVID-19 official attacking the New York Times and Washington Post. Experts took to social media with varying takes on the outbreak and subsequent change in mask guidelines. Some calmly stated that Delta was a gamechanger. Others, with a palpable desperation in their words, insisted that the vaccines were preventing serious illness and death and therefore working as expected, even though this is somewhat misleading for those who know that the primary endpoint of the vaccine trials was prevention of symptomatic COVID-19, and a secondary, albeit critical, endpoint was the prevention of severe illness and death. Fully vaccinated people were confused by what the news meant for their ability to spread COVID-19 to their loved ones, their risk of developing Long COVID after experiencing even mild breakthrough symptoms, and they were also irritated that after only 2 months, face masks were back. As someone said to me, “How the heck is that a success story?” Those dead set against the vaccine used the news to propagate the myth that the vaccines are useless, which, of course, is not the case. Currently, the unvaccinated are bearing the brunt of hospitalizations and deaths, though the prospect of playing cat-and-mouse with new variants puts into question the quest for herd immunity. But in general, and understandably so, there was a universal grumbling from people who are frustrated with mixed signals and playing Hokey Pokey with their face masks.
I think a lot of this turmoil could be avoided if people were better at communicating uncertainty, a should-be obvious central theme of a pandemic caused by a new virus. If uncertain answers are the honest ones, then don’t replace them with specific ones, whether it’s to build confidence, for ease of policy implementation, or external or ego-fueled pressure to be an omniscient expert, because people will feel played when the specific answers are undone by the uncertain ones. Just like a salesperson shouldn’t blame the customers for his/her inability to sell stuff, don’t blame the people for their anger. Don’t blame them for their confusion. Don’t blame them for their lack of trust. Don’t blame Joe Schmoe when he throws his mask in the garbage after you tell him he has to “sometimes” wear it again, after 2 months of not wearing it, and give him a hot spots map so he can figure out the areas with “high viral transmission.” This is a case where you should, indeed, blame the messenger.
We report the first local transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in mainland China. All 167 infections could be traced back to the first index case.…
www.medrxiv.org
Summary
We report the first local transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in mainland China. All 167 infections could be traced back to the first index case. Daily sequential PCR testing of the quarantined subjects indicated that the viral loads of Delta infections, when they first become PCR+, were on average ∼1000 times greater compared to A/B lineage infections during initial epidemic wave in China in early 2020, suggesting potentially faster viral replication and greater infectiousness of Delta during early infection. We performed high-quality sequencing on samples from 126 individuals. Reliable epidemiological data meant that, for 111 transmission events, the donor and recipient cases were known. The estimated transmission bottleneck size was 1-3 virions with most minor intra-host single nucleotide variants (iSNVs) failing to transmit to the recipients. However, transmission heterogeneity of SARS-CoV-2 was also observed. The transmission of minor iSNVs resulted in at least 4 of the 30 substitutions identified in the outbreak, highlighting the contribution of intra-host variants to population level viral diversity during rapid spread. Disease control activities, such as the frequency of population testing, quarantine during pre-symptomatic infection, and level of virus genomic surveillance should be adjusted in order to account for the increasing prevalence of the Delta variant worldwide.
During the global spread of the COVID-19, genetic variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have emerged. Some variants have increased transmissibility or could exhibit an increased propensity for escape from host immunity, and therefore pose an increased risk to global public health1–3. An emerging genetic lineage, B.1.617, has gained global attention and has been dominant in the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in India since March 2021. One descendent lineage, B.1.617.2, which carries spike protein mutations L452R, T478K and P681R, accounts for ∼28% sequenced cases in India and has rapidly replaced other lineages to become dominant in multiple regions and countries (https://outbreak.info/)4. Lineage B.1.617.2 has been labeled a variant of concern (VOC) and given the name Delta (https://www.who.int/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-variants). Data on the virological profile of the Delta VOC is urgently needed.
On May 21, 2021 the first local infection of the Delta variant in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China was identified. As of the early epidemic in China in January 20205, a suite of comprehensive interventions have been implemented to limit transmission, including population screening, active contact tracing, and centralized quarantine/isolation. However, in contrast to the limited level of onward transmission observed in Guangdong in early 20205, successive generations of virus transmission were observed in the 2021 outbreak of the Delta variant in the region. Here, we investigated epidemiological and genetic data from the well-traced outbreak in Guangdong in order to characterize the virological and transmission profiles of the Delta variant. We discuss how intervention strategies may need to be adjusted to cope with the virological properties of this emerging variant.
We both agree obesity is a bad problem in the US. However looking at the figures it is 61% as bad in Germany. So saying "we don't have an obesity problem" is surely wrong?
I mean the UK has 77% as much obesity as the US. we have an obesity porblem too - a bit less bad then the US, a bit worse than Germany.
Yes you have problems but I don't think your media promotes obesity like here in the US. What's worse is our CDC and NIH remain silent while this is promoted
