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Stopping the Tyranny of Medical Mandates

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Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America We the People
Patrick Henry painted oil portait by George Bagby Matthews
A portrait of Patrick Henry

In Patrick Henry’s June 4, 1788 speech, “A Wrong Step Now and the Republic Will Be Lost Forever” he pleaded for less power to the federal government and the preservation of states’ and individual rights as a condition for ratification of the Constitution. We got our Bill of Rights, including freedom of religion, speech, assembly and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. We also have the right to be secure in our “persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” And we cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Despite the Constitution’s admonitions, fear and anxiety have led to an increase in federal powers. The Great Depression gave birth to some 70 new agencies and programs. The mother of all programs was the Social Security Act, constitutionally justified under the Congress’ Constitutional taxing power. We have been so irrational as to deem it constitutional to place American citizens in internment camps with no due process.

COVID-19 is the latest justification for government overreach in the name of public health. There is little reason for confidence given the CDC’s faulty COVID-19 tests, the conflicting information on the usefulness of wearing masks, and censoring of effective treatments that were not on the infallible Dr. Fauci’s personal favorite list. (Note: the World Health Organization recommended against the use of his favored drug, remdesivir). Adding to the erosion of trust is the change in definition of a COVID-19 “case.” Prior to the vaccination rollout, any positive COVID-19 test—with or without symptoms—was a “case.” Now, a positive test in a vaccinated person is only considered a “case” if the patient was hospitalized or died.

The federal health bureaucracy is encouraging businesses and local governments to mandate vaccines, despite the growing list of adverse effects, their modest effectiveness against the predominant Delta variant, and the imminent need for booster shots. According to data gathered from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, as of August 23, 2021, there have been 13,068 deaths, 154,142 hospitalizations, 5,617 cases of anaphylaxis, 4,681 cases of Bell’s Palsy, 1,607 miscarriages, 4,861 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis, 13,812 life-threatening reactions, and 17,228 permanently disabled, among other issues. On one hand, it is arguable that this is a pittance given that 360,634,287 doses of Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson/Janssen (J&J) vaccines have been given. On the other hand, a 2011 Harvard studyconcluded that only 1 per cent of adverse events are reported to the government system.  

Other drugs have been removed for less. The 1976 H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine was rapidly developed over fears that the flu would overtake the nation as did the 1918 Spanish Flu. The vaccinations were halted after 45 million doses and 450 cases of Guillain Barré Syndrome (ascending paralysis). As it turned out, millions did not die.

We all remember the limb deformities at birth caused by the 1956 over-the-counter anti-nausea drug, thalidomide. It took four years to make the connection. Another hidden dragon was diethystilbesterol (DES). Believed to reduce miscarriages, DES was given to pregnant women for 30 years. In 1971, after it was discovered that DES could cause genital abnormalities and vaginal cancer, the FDA withdrew approval for pregnant women. It took 5 years to discover that the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx may cause heart disease.One report estimated that some 140,000 people suffered from coronary artery disease because of Vioxx. 

We do not know all the risks of the current COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States. Yet the vaccines are given in drive-through parking lots with little to no discussion. 

Moderna’s, Pfizer’s, and J & J’s fact sheets warn that the “vaccine may not protect all recipients.” The Moderna and Pfizer fact sheets give special mention to myocarditis and pericarditis reported “during mass vaccination outside of clinical trials.” J&J specifically notes the large vein blood clots. Additionally, all the fact sheets note that “additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Moderna [Pfizer, J&J] COVID-19 Vaccine.” It appears that we are nonconsenting participants in the final phase of the vaccine trials.

Given that no one knows the risks, how can physicians (much less the “provider” in the drive-through window) give the patients the information needed to decide whether the potential benefit of taking the drug is worth the risk?

Drunk with power and preying on our fears, the federal government is having corporations do its bidding. Mandates unsupported by medical science could be the greatest threat to our lives and liberty. 

Take heart. The spirit of Patrick Henry is alive. A professor—using the science—won a medical exemption from vaccination because his antibodies from a prior COVID-19 infection are longer lasting that those of a vaccine. Airline pilots are suing for a restraining order against mandates until “the science/medicine is more fully developed and better understood.” Teachers, health care workers, first responders are demanding choice.

Since the establishment of our republic, we have taken some very wrong steps. Let’s not let the COVID-19 response become another one.

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Media & Press, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

The Graveyard of COVID-19 Missed Information

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The British social hierarchy of the Middle Ages and beyond was divided into “three estates of the realm”: the king, the clergy, and the commoners. More modern times brought the fourth estate, the non-establishment, independent journalists. Our founders knew that for a successful democratic republic, the press had to be a watchdog. Journalists now have become morticians who embalm and bury stories at the bidding of their puppet masters. 

In many cases, the government with its media accomplices quietly plucked from the public square information that is not to their liking, irrespective of its factual accuracy. COVID-19 has brought the practice out of the shadows. With our health at stake, it is imperative that all sides of the science are available. Let the people decide. 

Welcome to the cemetery. The PCR test used to diagnose an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was found to have as high as 97 percent of false positives for infectiousness because the test was so sensitive that it measured dead viruses that could not cause disease. Even the inscrutable Dr. Fauci agreed with that assessment.  After the distribution of the vaccines that were going to bring us back to the old normal, the CDC set strict rules for testing of vaccine “breakthrough” cases. It wanted “only specimens” that were collected with a PCR test that was much less sensitive. Was this done to make the vaccines look more effective?

It’s unlikely anyone saw that the CDC will soon abandon the PCR test. What a coincidence that a consortium backed by Bill Gates bought out Mologic, a company with a yet-to-be-approved COVID test. 

Then there’s a CDC analysis of infections and mask-wearing. “In the 14 days before illness onset, 71 percent of case-patients and 74 percent of control participants reported always using cloth face coverings or other mask types when in public.” Only 4 percent of the case-patients “never” wore a mask. The explanation was that the masked case-patients frequented restaurants and got infected when they removed their masks to eat.

The mainstream reporting of COVID-19 deaths is sensationalism at its worst. The newscasts implied any infected person would surely be on death’s door at some point. Again, the CDC’s own analysis of COVID hospitalizations showed that the risk of death while hospitalized was 0.3% for patients with no comorbidities. The analysis showed that the strongest risk factors were obesity, diabetes with a complication, and anxiety disorders. Yet we did not hear that we should lose weight and exercise. (How unfortunate that the gyms were closed.) Our mental health was tested by lockdowns and lack of socialization. 

Even French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier was ghosted when he posited that mass vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the pandemic was creating variants. His science appears to have been borne out. The CDC reported an outbreak in Massachusetts where 90 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections were identified as the Delta variant. Moreover, 74 percent of the infected were fully vaccinated. There are similar findings in the United Kingdom and Israel. In another instance, 75 to 80 percent of recently infected staff members at two University of California San Francisco hospitals were fully vaccinated. 

The most devastating missed information is the effectiveness of early treatment of COVID-19. Since February 2020, clinicians had successfully treated patients early in the disease process with hydroxychloroquine. A campaign to discredit these successes followed. When Dr. Fauci’s pet drug, Remdesivir was found to be ineffective, the media buried the study. Despite studies showing its benefit, ivermectin was given the hydroxychloroquine smear treatment. Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are fully FDA-approved, have a long record of safety, and remain on the World Health Organization list of essential medicines. What’s the problem? They are very inexpensive and generic.

With early treatment sidelined, the experimental vaccines became the panacea. But why are we expected to ignore the RNA vaccines’ role in encouraging variants and serious side effects such as heart inflammation, paralysis, and death? Could money be a motivator? Pfizer reports that will have $33.5 billion in Covid-19 vaccine sales in 2021, with even more revenue anticipated from the booster shots. Was the drug and health product manufacturers’ $171 million to lobbyists in the last 6 months intended to ensure the government’s cooperation? Are the pharmaceutical companies the Fifth Estate?

The politicians’ hypocrisy says it all. In their personal lives, Nancy Pelosi and her nephew, California’s Governor Newsom flout their own directives, with mask-less haircuts, fancy dinners, and children’s summer camps, to name a few. More galling is the “let them eat cake” attitude in their political lives. Newsom demands that all state workers—except the powerful prison guard union—get vaccinated or submit to continuous COVID tests. Pelosi commands her subjects, aka congresspersons to don masks subject to fines and arrest for noncompliance. But her majesty removes her mask for a photo op. How can anyone trust anything these soulless grifters have to say?

Do some digging. The truth is out there. 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Medicare, Op-eds, What's New

There’s More to Death Than Covid-19

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Breathless headlines featuring ‘the Virus” are beginning to fade into a chronic undercurrent of fear thy neighbor for he might be bearing the gift of Covid. What you won’t see in the headlines are stories about a more pervasive and ultimately more lethal virus: a growing disregard for others and devaluation of life. Rampant homicides are disheartening enough, but more shocking is the shifting morality in medicine. 

News headlines gave the impression that the newly instituted Covid rules were designed to save lives, yet we soon learned the lockdowns, masking, school closures did more harm than good. Meanwhile—in plain sight—government-sanctioned sacrifice of the elderly was taking place. In 5 “progressive” states, Covid-positive patients were discharged from hospital isolation units and returned to their nursing homes where they comingled with uninfected residents. Of course, many more residents became ill. It didn’t make the headlines that half of Covid deaths were in nursing homes and 80 percent of deaths were in those over 65. This might have encouraged more policies that protected our elders and allowed the younger folks to carry on with their lives. To date, the news has not reported any apologies to the families of the victims of government and medical incompetence.

In 2020, many hospitals in the United States considered guidelines that would allow doctors to withhold CPR from Covid patients, ignoring the patient’s wishes. Our neighbor to the north, Quebec had actually issued such an order lasting from April to September 2020. Bless the paramedics on the front lines who complained and had the order lifted.

Age-related rationing is alive and well. The ethics advisor to 78-year-old President Biden, Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, author of the utilitarian “Complete Lives System” of  medical care, chose age 75 as his personal benchmark for ending life. This is so wrong. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Whether mentally sharp or in declining health, older people give texture and context to our lives. Reflecting on older folks reminds us that in their lifetime innovations have gone from puttering around in a car to rocketing to the moon. And Dick Tracy’s comic book two-way wrist radio is now a commonly worn Apple watch. 

The behavior of bureaucrats and the medical establishment during the Covid “crisis” laid bare the dismissive treatment of elders. And an uncomfortable question hangs in the air: was the nursing home debacle a conscious attempt to cull the herd? After all, Medicare chews up 15 percent of the federal budget and 25 percent of Medicare dollars are spent in the last year of the patient’s life. According to the 2019 Medicare Trustees report, the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be depleted in 2026—a short 5 years away. 

If this form of population control sounds un-American, remember that our country seriously engaged in eugenics, marked by 75 years of Supreme Court-approved forced sterilization. The abortion industry has devolved from a time when a woman was mortified to have an abortion to where clinics are advertised on highway billboards. The quest for clean air has gone from encouraging recycling and renewable energy to suggesting that human depopulation is the only way to save the planet. 

Human concern in medicine has taken a back seat to marginal scientific ethics and perhaps, secret agendas. We have become numb to the experiments using fresh aborted fetal tissue to create “humanized mice” that sprout various human organs. This slow walk to the edge of medical ethics has allowed science to go in grotesquely anti-human directions. Jointly with Chinese government funding, United States researchers created viable embryos that are a mix of human and monkey cells (a “chimera”). With funding from the Chan Zuckerberg [Mr. Facebook] Initiative, researchers tinkered with male rats so they could deliver live babies via Cesarian section. 

Sadly, physicians have become willing participants in the government’s borderline coercion by not informing themselves about early treatments for Covid or the side effects of the experimental vaccine. Federal and state governments are bribing, cajoling, and subjecting us to door-to-door pressure to take an injection of a product that could be killing us in numbers not seen before. Serious reactions include miscarriages, Bell’s palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, blood clotting disorders (including brain clots), and anaphylaxis. Bizarrely, the White House is challenging colleges to vaccinate its entire campus, despite sometimes fatal heart inflammation after vaccinations in young adults (who have infinitesimal risk of significant Covid illness). 

It appears we are guinea pigs in a grand experiment. The elderly were the casualties of Phase I. As the post-vaccine bodies pile up, the Nuremberg Code’s principle is being ignored: The experiment must be stopped if continuation would result in injury and death.

It’s not too late. Physicians must remember their Oath of Hippocrates and speak up and act for the benefit of their patients even in the face of conflicting government dictates. 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

COVID-19: Speaking Up in Black and White

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These days more and more apparently intelligent people seem to upspeak. That’s the irritating “Valley Girl” inflection where every sentence sounds like a question. Don’t these people trust their own thoughts and words? 

Perhaps upspeakers’ brains are fried after being fed a steady diet of DEI, ESG, and BIPOC. For the uninitiated, these initials stand for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, a corporate stock/investment rating based on Environmental awareness, Social justice and (right-minded) Governance to enhance the lives of “Black, Indigenous, People of Color.” “Privilege” gets the full word. White people must “check their privilege at the door” and shut up under the current era of Stalinesque cancel culture.

Black American slaves used to have some version of Simon Legree as their master. Now the woke white liberals have assumed that role. Even President Biden views BIPOCs as helpless morons whom only the government can rescue.

Of course, little BIPOCs are the perfect unsuspecting targets. Despite parental objections, new school curricula include Marxist inspired critical race theory that teaches children to hate others based on skin color. Instead of learning the 3 Rs, kindergarteners are encouraged to explore their gender identity and question the family structure. The latest data show that only 35 percent of 4th graders are proficient in reading and 41 percent are proficient in math. Instead of learning the necessary skills to race to the top of the ladder of success, they have the tools to win the victim triathlon. The prize: dependency on government resources.

COVID-19 added a new ingredient to the melting pot. Brown-skinned Americans fare more poorly with COVID than whites. Some reasons are sociological, such as crowded living conditions, working in service jobs that cannot be done from home, and inconsistent access to health care. Some reasons may be physiological. Studies have shown racial differences in the body’s ACE-2 receptors. These receptors help control inflammation, especially in cells lining the blood vessels. These are the sites where the “spike” protein of the SARS-Co-V-2 virus (that causes COVID-19) enter and infect healthy cells throughout the body. Notably, there may be more ACE-2 receptors in patients with hypertension, diabetes and coronary artery disease—conditions plaguing black Americans. Moreover, people with brown skin have lower levels of Vitamin D, a factor in the risk of contracting a SARS-Co-V-2 infection and the severity of COVID-19. 

Knowing the higher risk, the DEI folks should have launched an education campaign informing BIPOCs about non-prescription supplements like quercetin, zinc, and vitamin D, as well as prophylaxis or early treatment with inexpensive medications (hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and fluvoxamine, among others) that can significantly reduce symptoms and prevent hospitalizations and deaths.

Instead, the public health gurus waited for vaccines. The guise of “vaccine equity” drew attention away from legitimate concerns about the shots. Despite the increased susceptibility to COVID-19, black Americans remain skeptical of the shot. Folks still remembered the instances where the underserved were “helped” by the government. The 1932 Tuskegee syphilis study denied a group of black men treatment for 40 years. Without informed consent, an experimental measles vaccine was administered to babies starting in 1987. After too many African and Haitian children deaths to ignore, the program was halted.

Able to read, BIPOCs learned about the serious side effects that include sometimes fatal blood clots, facial paralysis, possible menstrual problems, heart inflammation, among others. They wondered why the less effective Johnson & Johnson vaccine was sent to underserved neighborhoods. They wondered why the government had to offer $116 million in prizes, trucks, and customized firearms to encourage people to get the shot. They wondered why the government was going door to door to find BIPOCs to whom to give shots. 

In order to swoop in to the rescue, the government-pharmaceutical complex could not allow the 34 million Americans who have had documented COVID-19 or a SARS-CoV-2 infection to depend on their natural immunity. Like a virus escaping from a lab or jumping from a pangolin to infect humans, the government control expanded from BIPOCs to privileged white folks.

What are we to do about the tension between addressing real health disparities and recognizing that racial disparities are used as a cover for manipulating society? Together we rip off the mask of benevolence. As ethical physicians, we pledge to treat all individuals with dignity and respect. We will explain the risks and benefits of their options and let patients decide. As active citizens, we demand prophylaxis, treatments of our choice, and the freedom to choose to receive or decline the shot. We take advantage of the law. A number of courts have been on the patient’s side.

Save yourself. Be bold. Speak up. 

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The Covid-19 Craziness Proves That Einstein Was Right

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One of Albert Einstein’s many aphorisms, “three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed,” is particularly apt in the Covid era.

Our government’s duty is to warn the public of a possible pandemic and recommend precautions. However, the initial Covid tactic was to strike fear into our hearts and minds. The constant display of Covid “cases” on the nightly news suggested certain death awaited those who ventured out of their homes.  

During the Diamond Princess cruise ship’s outbreak in early February 2020, we had a real world demonstration of the behavior of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Trapped in a floating Petri dish, the crew performed their duties and passengers were quarantined in their rooms. With a ventilation system without special high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, only 17 percent of the 3,711 occupants became infected with SARS-CoV-2—only half of whom had symptoms. Because 80 percent of those infected were in cabins that didn’t have a previous confirmed case, the likely mode of infection was transmission of aerosols (in contrast to large droplets that quickly fall to the ground) through the ventilation system. Locking people in proved counterproductive.

We also learned from the Diamond Princess episode that the median age of symptomatic folks was 68 years—50 percent of whom had underlying medical conditions, and the deaths were in those over 70 years of age.

Despite this real world clinical experience, the CDC and Dr. Fauci advised state governments to quarantine every living human being in the country. The lessons of the Diamond Princess faded from the news while a never-ending campaign of fear persisted. Only the well-informed realized the news was presented through agenda-colored glasses.

It’s not smart to keep people indoors when by May 2020 we knew 66 percent of New York’s new cases were in folks who stayed home. Scientific consensus was leaning toward emerging evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was spread by tiny aerosols, which could be reduced by good ventilation. 

After more than  a year, the CDC finally acknowleded real world evidence and “the science,” and announced that “less than 10 percent” of transmission occurred outdoors. Data shows the actual outdoor transmission is somewhere between 0.1 and 1 percent. While technically true, one wonders whether the CDC used purposefully misleading wording to cover its tracks after mask recommendations for children outdoors at summer camp and mandates for seafaring commercial fisherman.

Fear fuels stupidity. By June 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) had announced that asymptomatic transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is “very rare.” And study after study after study have shown that cloth masks do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and other similar viruses. When political pundits see unmasked people as a threat and a fully vaccinated physician Covid expert found it “psychologically hard” to dine unmasked with a vaccinated friend, masking has become not “following the science” but an obsession. 

Greed knows no bounds. Hospitals are charging up to $1419 for a $50 test. Designer drugs are the new cash cow. Regeneron’s stock price was up more than 60 percent in 2020. Who would have thought Covid would be justification for a manufacturer to release TV ads for drugs that are not fully FDA approved? Regeneron’s ads instill fear, then present their drug as the solution. Covid diagnosis? Oh my! Isolate and call the doctor to get monoclonal antibodies (at $1,250 per dose). 

Wall Street predicts that in 2021 Pfizer and Moderna will generate $32 billion in Covid-19 vaccine revenue. Thanks to vaccines, Moderna’s stock soared 700 percent in 2020. And Pfizer plans for vaccines to be a long-term business plan by roping children into the vaccine corral. 

Was the drug and health product manufacturers’ $92 million to lobbyists in the last 3 months intended to ensure the federal government’s cooperation? 

Patients and physicians have a choice. Despite the vaccine über alles narrative, only 60 percent of Dr. Fauci’s staff have taken “the shot.” The NIH’s Covid-19 Treatment Guidelines are not mandates. Patients can opt for early treatment at a cost of $10 to $125 per entire course with effective repurposed generic drugssupported by real-time worldwide evidence. Sadly, as Kaiser Health News noted, despite being a “godsend” to reduce death and hospitalizations, “drug companies have no incentive to spend millions to test new uses for cheap, off-patent drugs.” 

The people are not stupid, merely ill-informed. Media outlets were increasing ratings at the expense of the truth, the drug companies were rolling in dough, researchers were letting politics guide their outcomes, and social media was censoring experts who disagreed with the wizards at WHO, NIH, and CDC, and medical journals funded by big Pharma. 

Could we have avoided lockdowns with repurposed drugs, improved air circulation, and HEPA filters? Could we have saved millions of lives lost not only to Covid-19 but from suicide, overdoses, violence, and cancer? 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Op-eds, What's New

“Reimagining” Mice and Men

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While everyone is preoccupied with mask-shaming and vaccine-cheerleading, scientists are engaged in critical research with a more lasting effect on our lives. For 100 years scientists have dreamed of creating and developing life outside of a womb. In March 2021 that dream came true. Scientists grew naturally conceived mouse embryos in tiny beakers for six days—the equivalent of the full first trimester of gestation. At this point the embryos had an identifiable body shape and organs. This miracle of modern science, posted in a YouTube video, garnered a mere 9,400 views.

In 2016, scientists developed the “right cocktail of growth factors and nourishment” and were able to incubate human embryos in a dish. The embryos attached to the dish “as if it were a uterus, sprouting a few placental cells.” The researchers halted the experiment due to the 4,000-member International Society for Stem Cell Research’s (ISSCR) 14-day rule. The ISSCR arrived at this limit based on the point in time at which the nervous system begins to develop.

Two separate research groups have now created their versions of synthetic embryos, called “human blastoids” from embryonic stem cells and “iblastoids” using reprogrammed adult skin stem cells. A real blastocyst is a human embryo around five or six days after fertilization that is growing. Normally, a blastocyst would implant in the wall of the uterus at around 7 or 8 days and the placenta would start to form. These advances prompted the ISSCR to rewrite its own yet to be revealed new guidelines allowing synthetic embryos to develop beyond the current 14-day limit.

As Dr. Frankensteinian as this sounds, researchers explain that the stem cell-produced embryos can be used to study congenital conditions, and the effects of drugs, toxins, and viruses on early development without using human embryos and perhaps create organs for transplants. Kind of like the good that would come from Dr. Fauci’s unethical “gain of function” research on coronaviruses (making them more deadly and transmissible). Look where that got us. 

We have truly entered the brave new world, grappling with the morality of life and death in the age of medical technology. Devaluing life is now commonplace. Abortion on demand is available on the day of birth. Freshly obtained aborted fetal tissue is being used to create “humanized mice” (on the taxpayers’ dime, no less). Not surprisingly, COVID-19 is the justification. Moreover, there is evidence that upstanding organizations and suppliers are making profits from the illegal sale of human fetuses.

In the United States, thousands of children are trafficked every year for sex or labor. This doesn’t make front page news or leave a lasting imprint on our consciousness—unlike the ever present COVID-19 statistics. 

On the other end of life’s spectrum, government COVID-19 policies regarding nursing home residents cemented what victims already knew: our society treats elders like jetsam—the debris that is thrown overboard to lighten a ship’s load. Former Obama advisor and member of Biden’s COVID-19 team, Ezekiel Emanuel, is on board. His “Complete Lives System” posits that medical care should be rationed based on one’s “instrumental value” to society. Babies, those over 60 years of age, and the disabled are out of luck. “When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while the better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable.” One more nail in the coffin of our humanity. With doctors like this who needs the Grim Reaper. 

However, the unwanted cast-offs may be more difficult to replace with better models. Our reproductive abilities appear to be on the decline. The global fertility rate, sperm counts, and the quality of sperm are declining and reported miscarriages increased at about 1 percent per year from 1970 to 2000.

Enter the robobabies. We could eliminate the need for mothers. We could ensure that only the right kind of embryos develop. Newspeak paves the way. The United Nations’ European Union and U.S. delegationshave neutered mother and father to “parents” and declared that “various forms of family exist.” 

Crazy? Social Justice Warriors are “reimagining” the evolution of our society. Why not reimagine humans?

Who would have imagined a pediatrician governor supporting infanticide? Who would have imagined that social media in America, the bastion of free speech, would crush politically unpopular speech and diversity of thought? Who would have imagined that physicians who offered early treatment of COVID-19 would be treated like drug dealers? Who would have imagined that the media-government complex would silence the reasoned opinions of renowned epidemiologists, virologists, and clinicians who raised questions about the response to COVID-19? Who would have imagined that 1984 would cease being fiction?

COVID-19 watchdogs have showcased their faux humanity, incessantly preaching that it is our moral duty to wear a mask and submit our bodies to an experimental drug. As science is catching up to longstanding utopian political agendas, our real moral duty is to reflect on playing God with life and death.

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The New Wasteland: COVID-19’s Shameful Legacy

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Discarded surgical masks strewn along the sidewalk aptly represent COVID-19’s lasting legacy. The federal medical bureaucracy’s response to the pandemic has resulted in a wasteland of lost economic and educational opportunities, psychologically damaged children, terminally lonely nursing home residents, and lives lost to suicide, illicit drug overdoses, and missed diagnoses. 

Thanks to the lockdowns, 140,104 businesses were temporarily closed and 97,966 were permanently closed by September 2020 according to a Yelp survey. Significantly, more than half of these were local small businesses—and small businesses employ nearly half of all American workers. Predictably, the workers who were most affected were not the professionals pulling in a paycheck while working from home. They were the working-class folks whose jobs the bureaucrats considered non-essential.

The disruption of children’s education and socialization will haunt us for years to come in terms of earning potential and mental health. The central planners punished children for months although the mortality in children from COVID-19 is roughly equivalent to that of influenza year to year. Moreover, CDC data shows that attending school or child care was not associated with having positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. 

So why were children barred from attending school? To protect Grandma. Even if children were found to be transmitters of disease—they haven’t been, a sensible alternative to depriving all students of a proper education and social life would have been to ask children whether elders lived in their homes. If so, that group could have been provided with educational accommodations. But the way of bureaucracy is all or none with no room for individual considerations.

Typical of blanket decrees, the most vulnerable fared the worst. Thirty percent of parents from low-income homes reported that their children never logged on to the computer for virtual schooling. And almost half of special needs children received no support. Worse yet, insurance claims for pediatric mental health visits as well as teen overdoses doubled in March and April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.  

Adults fell prey to the dangers of lockdowns. There was an increase in alcohol sales, use of prescription anti-anxiety medications, and domestic violence, Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationreported a 24 percent increase in traffic deaths in 2020. Almost two-thirds of the seriously or fatally injured tested positive for alcohol, marijuana, or opioids. According to the CDC, the 12 months ending May 2020 had the highest number of U.S. overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period (more than 81,000). This increase was mainly due to illicitly obtained fentanyl. 

Anyone who isn’t hidden away in an ivory tower could predict that isolated people deprived indefinitely of their livelihoods, recreational outlets, and family relationships would sink into depression. The CDC reportedin late June, that 40 percent of U.S. adults surveyed were struggling with mental health or substance abuse. And 11% say they seriously considered suicide. These unintended consequences were foreseeable yet Americans were subjected to social isolation in the face of no evidence that lockdowns were a useful COVID mitigation strategy. Ironically, according to CDC data, “masking”, a symbol of our isolation, has made no difference in COVID infections.

With the media’s help, the public health gurus waged a campaign of fear to keep us in line while we waited for Dr. Fauci’s solution: vaccines. One of the medical bureaucracy’s biggest (intentional) missteps was the failure to support early treatment of COVID. They told us to stay home until we couldn’t breathe. Of course, at that point the virus has overwhelmed the body. The scientific elite maligned study after study and thousands of clinical successes with early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in favor of unproven high priced drugs. Despite the CDC and FDA previously acknowledging the 60-year safety record of hydroxychloroquine, it miraculously became harmful in 2020. 

It is as if the medical bureaucrats are making up the ever-changing rules as they go along. They claimed they were “following the science.” Why haven’t we heard from these politically driven experts as hundreds of illegal migrants are released into the United States without COVID tests while U.S. citizens are being fined for not wearing useless masks?

Shameless non-clinician bureaucrats have stolen our lives, stolen the smiles from children’s faces, and bullied a segment of the population into paralyzing fear. Those hiding behind masks (including our precious children) no longer see people as people, but as 170-pound nests of germs and certain death.

Dr. Fauci remains the highest paid federal government employee, and Dr. Birx has moved on to her private air purifier consulting job. Meanwhile, we are left in the wasteland with their legacy: boarded up shops; needless lost lives; and the death of common sense, scientific discourse, and medical freedom that we may never regain. And why?

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, Uncategorized, What's New

Using COVID Fear to Divide and Rule

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In the 1960s anti-war activists adopted songs like the Eve of Destruction and For What It’s Worth as their anthems. Disenchanted youth feared that the world was on the verge of collapse; we were nearing the end of days. Concurrently, the civil rights activists were singing the hopeful “We Shall Overcome.” (Black folks singing an upbeat and emboldening song written by a white guy would be frowned upon today.) Both groups were buoyed by the blessing of free speech. Their voices were heard. Attempts at silencing them only made their voices louder and more widespread. Even people on the sidelines began to pay attention. 

The war ended, civil rights moved forward, and life went on. People wanted not to sing the same note, but harmony. Even Rodney King, whose 1991 beating was a lightning rod for riots against police brutality pleaded, “can we all get along?” Yes, we can. People have no appetite for or energy to waste on hating for sport. We have the freedom and sensibility to disagree and work toward peaceful coexistence—when we are free from government propaganda and media manipulation.

However, the political class thrives on discord. Since circa 360 B.C., the “divide and rule” concept was on the books. Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father knew that with division comes weakness. The Greek rulers were able to keep the various cultural and ethnic groups in check by keeping them in a constant state of conflict. The factions are so busy bickering and jockeying for favored status that they fail to see their government’s main objective is to stay in power, not to empower the populace. 

Enter pandemic, stage left. Politicians have used COVID not as an enemy, but an ally. After driving us to be preoccupied with our fear of COVID, the government is working its magic. Mask up and lock down! Why? Where’s the data? Don’t ask. Just comply. Now instead of the ancient emperors installing local overlords, the powerful have frightened people into spying on neighbors to root out maskless faces and those who dare cultivate their friendships.

Mixed messages keep us off guard. Amidst calls for national unity, a Public Broadcasting (paid with our tax dollars) Service attorney suggests locking up Trump voters and putting their children in re-education camps. And America’s sweetheart and former national news anchor, Katie Couric, recommended deprogramming Trump supporters.

Teachers’ unions keep their members out of classrooms while children are not getting sick from COVID, but are becoming emotionally unglued. According to the CDC, beginning in April 2020, children’s mental health visits to the emergency room increased by 24 percent in ages 5 to 11 and 31 percent in ages 12 to 17.

The same people calling for removing Washington and Lincoln’s names from schools because they were not “woke” enough are witnesses to the black and brown students falling behind their white counterparts due to long-distance learning. 

The triple-masked Dr. Anthony “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Fauci continues to recommend that we do nothing for early symptoms of COVID-19, even though by now we understand the process of how COVID-19 makes people sick. For months, physicians have been speaking out about their success with early treatment of COVID with inexpensive, readily accessible existing medications based on science. Their recommendations have been largely ignored in favor of big pharma’s expensive drugs and vaccines. Waiting months for completion of mass vaccination does not help those who are currently ill. Worse yet, some have accused these doctors of experimenting on patients. However, our Hippocratic Oath compels us to treat patients with available, safe medicines rather than sit idly by and watch them die. (I would argue it is safer to repurpose drugs that have been around for 50 years than use a vaccine that has only been tested for several months.) 

Vigorous open debate—not re-education camps—is the answer to dealing with difficult issues. A difference of opinion does not merit name-calling or having scientific senate testimony removed from public view by YouTube as “misinformation.” 

Fomenting societal conflict as a means of control used to be done in secret. With complicit media, in plain sight the power brokers have used COVID their advantage. Physicians are added to the list of divided tribes: Fauci’s good soldiers versus the medical-political exiles (AKA resourceful thinkers without conflicts of interest or financial ties to big pharma).

Like the 60s song says, “It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the man come and take you away.” 

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Op-eds, What's New

COVID-19: Black Americans Need Action, Not Navel-gazing

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On Martin Luther King, Jr.’s holiday, I’m reminded that Rev. King was not only a thinker but a man of action. 

While today’s social justice omphaloskeptics are pondering white privilege, Marxist critical race theory, and “the intersectionality of health equity,” COVID-19 is busy killing black and brown Americans.

Black Americans continue to get infected and die from COVID-19 at rates more than 1.5 times their share of the population. Hispanic and Native Americans face similar disparities. Black Americans are twice as likely to be hospitalized as whites. Moreover, when admitted to the hospital, people from racial and ethnic minority groups were in worse shape than their white counterparts. Consequently, they were more likely to die. 

No need to worry, President-elect Biden has promised a racial disparities task force in response to COVID. Gee, 35 years ago, the Health and Human Services’ seminal Heckler Report on health disparities found that minorities had a lower life expectancy and a higher death rate from heart disease and diabetes, among other things. Just what we need: another task force to ruminate about disparities.

It is well known that black Americans have persistently higher rates of hypertension compared to whites. Indeed, 75 percent of black people in the United States develop high blood pressure by the age 55 compared to 55 percent of white men and 40 percent of white women. To make matters worse, fewer black than white Americans have their blood pressure controlled. Additionally, black American adults are 60 percent more likely than non-Hispanic white adults to have diabetes as well as more complications, such as amputations and kidney failure. 

Early in the COVID journey, clinicians found that hypertension and obesity were key predictors of COVID mortality. Not surprisingly, black patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes compared with all other racial and ethnic groups combined. And the obesehospitalized patients were more likely to die. Further, people with darker skin—63 percent of Hispanic people and 82 percent of black people have low vitamin D levels. And vitamin D may lessen the severity of COVID disease.

In one study, compared with other racial groups, black people were less likely to have been tested for COVID prior to being seen at the hospital. The researchers noted that the key advantage to earlier diagnosis is the decrease in community spread. The study fails to acknowledge that early diagnosis would lead to early treatment. Why? The party line is that there is no early treatment. Not true. Early treatment works.

Given the severity of the COVID illness in black Americans, one gets the feeling that withholding treatment is a familiar tune. In the disgraceful 40-year Tuskegee experiment, treatment was withheld from black men so scientists could learn the natural history of the disease. The control group continued to receive placebos, despite the fact that penicillin became the recommended treatment for syphilis several years into the experiment. Praise the Lord for randomized controlled studies.

Do Dr. Fauci and his pharma cronies care about black folks? (He didn’t seem to care about the AIDS patients). He exhorts about the need for controlled studies and dismisses vast clinical experience. But as Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC noted, “waiting for more data is often an implicit decision not to act, or to act on the basis of past practice rather than on the best available evidence.” 

Nations with plenty of black and brown folks, such as Cuba, India, Algeria, and Costa Rica are achieving lower overall death rates with early treatment with hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug with an over 50-year safety record. Other countries are using ivermectin, a safe antiparasitic used to treat scabies. Perhaps because these drugs are inexpensive as compared to the new expensive potential wonder drugs and the cost of ICU care, poorer countries were eager to try something that worked, rather than wait for a piece of pie in the sky. 

Repurposing of FDA-approved drugs that have been used safely on millions of patients is not new. Amazingly, a combination of an antibiotic (doxycycline), a diabetes drug (metformin), a treatment for intestinal worms (mebendazole), and the cholesterol-lowering statin, Lipitor was found to extend the survival of people with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer! The authors of the innovative study noted that “it is well recognized that high-cost randomized controlled trials may not be an economically viable option for studying patent-expired off-label drugs. In some cases, randomized trials could also be considered as ethically controversial.” Money talks, helping patients walks.

While hand-wringing over the tragic COVID patient deaths, the “chosen ones” silence discussion about preventive and early treatment. Senate hearings on the subject were ignored, even mocked. There’s no need for early treatment with safe medications because the (experimental) vaccine has arrived.Meanwhile people continue to needlessly die.

Let’s not repeat Tuskegee. When there is a low risk and reasonable likelihood of helping, let the patient and doctor choose between doing nothing or actively treating. Positive clinical results and the morality of life and death matter more than crowing about scientific purity.

COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Censorship Kills

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Election irregularities, Chinese spies seducing a congressman, and the shocking revelation that “Dr.” Jill Biden was not a real doctor briefly let us turn our attention away from COVID-19. Unfortunately, COVID is still here and has made it to Antarctica. COVID continues to directly or indirectly hasten deaths. Along with the arrival of two much anticipated vaccines is a new active variant. The effects of both remain to be seen.

For months we’ve heard that COVID is not like the flu. It is a different animal. It may leave the infected person with long term aftereffects. Given the potential problems, the FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS and the alphabet health agencies should be advocating for early pharmacological treatment and prevention. Instead, we are told to wash our hands, wear masks—which may or may not help—and to stay away from one another. Indeed, as California’s Health and Human Services Secretary admitted, the state’s order banning outdoor dining and closing playgrounds was “not a comment on the relative safety” of the activity but a tactic for keeping people at home. 

Stay home — although 66 percent of new coronavirus hospitalizations in New York were in people who had not routinely left their homes. Stay inside — although there are studies echoing observations during the 1918 flu pandemic finding that people who went outside had better outcomes. A recent Spanish studyshowed that 80 percent of patients with COVID had low levels of vitamin D. Another study found that people with adequate vitamin D levels had a 51 percent lower risk of dying from COVID. People at risk for vitamin D deficiency include those who have dark skin, are elderly or overweight, or stay indoors. Interestingly, these groups are particularly hit hard by COVID.

Simply put, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Any risk of taking proper doses of vitamins and minerals is dwarfed by the risks associated with COVID. Useful vitamins and minerals include zinc (inhibits viral replication), vitamin D3 and vitamin C, and quercetin (to help drive zinc into the cells). Additionally, melatonin, a hormone found naturally in the body that regulates our sleep cycle, also has significant anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and mitochondrial protective effects.

What are we to do if we get ill from COVID? While the numinous Dr. Fauci says we urgently need early treatments, existing effective treatments are largely ignored, discouraged, or even prohibited. The party line recommends doing nothing for symptoms of fever, coughing, or breathing problems other than rest, stay home, drink fluids, and monitor. The threshold for calling the doctor is appalling: coughing up blood, trouble breathing, chest pain, confusion, severe drowsiness, or “a blue tint to your lips or face.” Wait until you turn blue?! 

I have a better idea. Don’t just curl up in bed. Call the doctor right away and request pharmacological treatment, backed by evidence. Sadly, most potential patients are unaware of early treatment because Facebook, Twitter, and Google, the de facto arm of government communication, block the information or permanently delete the accounts of physicians who advocate for safe, effective treatments. 

They argue that the use of well-known medications is “off-label,” that is, prescribing a drug for a different condition or dose than the FDA had approved. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 20 percent of all prescriptions in the United States are for off-label use. This is often done when the “doctor has seen evidence that a certain drug works well for an off-label use.” For example, using a diuretic to treat acne or a chemotherapy agent as a preferred alternative to surgery for an ectopic pregnancy. Billions of doses of [censored] and [censored] have been safely used for over 50 years. Repurposing anti-parasitics as antivirals certainly is not out of the realm of medical innovation.

Sitting at my Apple computer that could have been built by Uighurs in Communist re-education camps, I received another email from someone lamenting that he was blocked from social media. No, it wasn’t for child porn (like the former political consultant right-hand man of congressperson Barbara Lee), but for advocating early treatment of COVID-19. These “cancelled” physicians are not receiving $37 million innovation grants, but are saving patients’ lives for a few dollars a treatment. 

The COVID horse is out of the barn. We need to tame it. Let’s start by educating patients, influencers, and policymakers about early treatment with [censored] and preventive measures such as [censored] and the proven uselessness, arbitrariness, and social and economic costs of [censored] that serve to make “poor people poorer” and erode trust in public health officials.

We silently watched as a shameless Nancy Pelosi played games with COVID financial relief legislation hoping to influence an election. Physicians and patients must not stand on the sidelines while political vultures feast on the carcasses of terminally lonely and depressed, drug overdosed, or financially ruined Americans.

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