According to statistics, though women make up almost half of the U.S. workforce, they represent only 27 percent of STEM workers. While women are gaining ground in these fields, there are still significant barriers to entry.
Social and Cultural Factors
Women have long been stereotyped as not being as good at math, science, and technology as men. These stereotypes are taught early in life through entertainment, family attitudes, peer groups, and even the clothing that is marketed to young children. These stereotypes encourage women to opt out of STEM courses early in their academic careers and those who stay in often face biases from instructors.
These social factors can be combated by educating teachers and administrators about these biases, exposing young children to female role models in STEM fields, and teaching parents how to avoid passing these gender biases on to their children.
The Wage Gap
Across all industries, women earn about 82 cents for every $1 a man makes. Part of this difference is accounted for by women typically working in lower-paying fields, such as retail and customer service. However, even in STEM careers, women tend to make less than their male peers.
One way to overcome the wage gap is to be the boss. Starting your own STEM business allows you to determine your earning power and puts you in a position to ensure your employees receive fair wages without gender bias. Organizing your business as a limited liability company protects your personal assets, increases flexibility, reduces paperwork, and has tax advantages.
Lack of Confidence
Many women in STEM expect colleagues to undervalue their skills, education, and experience. This can cause them to lack confidence and avoid speaking up, volunteering for projects, or pursuing opportunities. One way to build your confidence is to complete a professional development course.
For example, if you work in project management, you can use Scrum to help STEM teams collaborate and communicate when working on major projects. However, if you’re new to Scrum (which is a framework that allows individuals and teams to work together collaboratively to solve complex problems), then you may want some training to get you familiar with the processes. An Agile Scrum Master course online teaches strategies and tactics that can help you better utilize the platform and boost your confidence. You can validate your skills by taking an assessment at the end of the course.
Access to Mentors
Because there are relatively few women working in STEM fields, it can be difficult for women to find other women to act as mentors. You can overcome this problem by expanding your idea of who can be a mentor.
A mentor can be a professor, a person you met on social media, a friend who is also pursuing a STEM career, or someone you met at an industry event. You can expand your network by joining professional organizations, getting involved with STEM-related organizations on your college campus, going to industry events, and seeking out local and national organizations that support women in STEM fields.
Understanding Your Worth
There is a culture surrounding salary in the U.S. that discourages people from talking about how much money they make. As a result, many people, particularly women, do not know what their skills are worth. You can overcome this issue by doing your research before you go into a salary negotiation. Talk to peers and mentors. Use the internet. Don’t go to the negotiating table without data to back up your expectations.
STEM fields are not easy career paths for women because of these obstacles. However, taking steps, such as completing a professional development course, can make breaking down barriers easier.
Marissa Perez is the co-founder and head marketing writer at Business Pop. She has spent the last 10 years honing her marketing skills, and now she wants to share her knowledge with those who have decided to take on entrepreneurship.
“In a normal year, the Kentucky Poison Control Center might receive one call from someone who has taken ivermectin, a drug commonly used to treat parasites in livestock. But amid increasing misinformation about the drug’s ability to both treat and prevent COVID-19, that number has increased to six this year.”
This alarming news was published in Spectrum News – formerly known as Time Warner Cable – on August 24, 2021, and should be a lesson to every American.
The lesson is not about Ivermectin being poisonous because it isn’t, but about the pervasiveness of a type of new internet propaganda termed “informational flooding.”
In an even more “alarming” report, NPR wrote, “Minnesota’s Poison Control System is dealing with the same problem. According to the department, only one Ivermectin exposure case [telephone call] was reported in July, but in August, the figure jumped to nine.”
Are you kidding me? Nine telephone calls are enough to make the news? We have 2,213 deaths on August 26 from COVID-19, but these nine telephone calls are enough to make the headlines?
We have a media blackout on how India used cheap Ivermectin to obliterate the Delta variant while we struggle unsuccessfully to sell the public on problematic yet profitable vaccines.
The CDC coordinates all 55 poison control centers across the nation, and they are closely aligned with the FDA, which we now know is captured by Big Pharma. more on this later.
Suddenly we see hundreds of articles on so-called “Ivermectin poisoning.” Indeed, we see more ARTICLES published than there were TELEPHONE CALLS in August on Ivermectin to poison control centers in the ENTIRE NATION.
NPR reports that during the period January 1 to August 31, there were 1,143 Ivermectin telephone calls to poison control centers which works out to 143 calls per month.
TheMississippi State Department of Health was careful to clarify that although telephone calls to poison control had increased, the vast majority of callers had only mild symptoms, and there were “no hospitalizations due to Ivermectin toxicity.”
If you are still left wondering whether there might have been a tiny grain of truth in these articles, consider what was reported in Utah. This alarmist article is entitled, “The Utah Poison Control Center has seen a bump in calls about Ivermectin – which is not recommended for treating COVID-19.”
However, inside the article, you will notice the false alarm. The Medical Director of Utah poison control is quoted as admitting that it was only “some small increase” in Ivermectin phone calls, and no one required hospitalization.
Yet for Utah alone, I counted at least twenty Ivermectin poison control articles, and for the nation, the count was well into the hundreds.
At least one publication made the leap from exaggeration to fabrication. Rolling Stone Magazine published an interview with an Oklahoma osteopathic physician, Dr. Jason McElyea, who claimed that Northeastern Hospital System’s emergency departments were overrun with so many Ivermectin overdoses that gunshot victims were having difficulty getting treatment. Dr. McElyea stated,
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshots victims were having a hard time getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.”
Multiple networks repeated the story, and it went viral.
Rolling Stone was forced to publish a retraction of sorts, a correction to their report, wherein they stated the truth of the matter was the opposite. Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah informed them that Dr. Jason McElyea, although affiliated with them, had not worked in the Sallisaw location in the last two months.
Furthermore, in a statement issued September 5, 2021, Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah reported that no patients had been treated for Ivermectin overdose. Indeed no patients were treated for any complications of taking Ivermectin – and no gunshot wound patients or otherwise had been turned away from seeking emergency care.
However, you can do your own research. For example, google the news on Ivermectin poisoning articles, and you will find almost all of them were published within the last few weeks. Nothing before then.
Then have a look at the graphs above. Notice the steady increase in google searches on Ivermectin over the past 90 days. Notice these searches originated in ALL 50 STATES. This chart reflects truth and accurately portrays the broad interest of the public.
Contrast this with the abrupt onset of interest in this so-called “Ivermectin poisoning.” Does it make sense that only two states have enough searches to register this supposed national problem? Again, this reflects manufactured publicity, a fabricated story. If there were a real problem, one would see corroborating search interest nationally, not only in two isolated spots.
For example, when a physician from Tamil Nadu accused Uttar Pradesh of faking their numbers for political reasons, Juan Chamie, the Cambridge-based data analyst, looked at geographically localized google searches. The interest in oxygen tanks precisely reflected the number of COVID cases the data indicated. Very few searched for oxygen tanks in Uttar Pradesh, where there were few infections. Yet, at the height of their surge, the interest in Tamil Nadu tanks was off the charts and proportional to their COVID hospitalizations. Confirmation.
Here we see the hundreds of articles on Ivermectin poisoning exceeding the relatively tiny number of telephone calls. Moreover, the searches confirmed this was not a genuine problem; it was due to the technique of informational flooding, well known to experts in the science of internet propaganda.
Informational flooding is where the purveyor of the propaganda attempts to out-compete other accessible information to gain the consumers’ attention. It is aptly described in this Harvard article entitled, “Fear, Friction, and Flooding: Methods of Online Information Control.”
NPR writes this, “Poison control centers are seeing a dramatic surge in calls from people who are self-medicating with ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug for animals…”
On the contrary, Ivermectin is used every day for scabies and is not confined to animals any more than penicillin is purely an animal antibiotic.
We are asked to believe that six telephone calls to poison control about Ivermectin are somehow newsworthy, yet over 100,000 calls to poison control on Tylenol each year are not. Moreover, no one dies of Ivermectin in a typical year, yet Tylenol accounts for 56,000 annual emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and almost 500 deaths.
The fact that Ivermectin is so much SAFER than over-the-counter Tylenol should make you wonder exactly why these articles made the news. The reason is simple. Pfizer and Merck are getting ready to launch expensive new anti-viral pills that can provide early outpatient treatment for COVID-19 and perhaps even be used preventatively. Yet Ivermectin remains effective, cheap, and safe and thus poses a HUGE threat to their profits.
Let’s say that if Ivermectin costs a few dollars a pill, these new medicines will be one hundred to one thousand times pricier. Merck’s Molnupiravir has already been funded to the tune of 1.2 billion by the US government – translated, it means we – our tax dollars – have paid Merck for it already.
By ignoring cheap repurposed drug early outpatient treatments, we have already paid with our lives, in addition to whatever money it has cost us to entice Big Media to publish these hundreds of “hit pieces.”
We know early outpatient treatment works for COVID-19, just as early treatment works against cancer, diabetes, glaucoma, hepatitis, and most other diseases. Yet our FDA and NIH, in their infinite wisdom, have asked us to do nothing for early outpatient treatment against COVID-19. Instead, however, we have repurposed drugs that help enormously. This science was published in the peer-reviewed literature by Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist, and Dr. Harvey Risch, an editor for “The International Journal of Cancer.”
Merck, more than anyone, knows Ivermectin to be safe as they developed this drug and used it in over three billion doses IN HUMANS in the Mectizan Program to eradicate River Blindness.
Yet Merck was among the first to cast stones against it. Merck was among the most vocal to denounce their drug regardless of the blood that would inevitably land on their hands. Merck sold us out for precisely 1.2 billion pieces of silver.
What is the evidence that Ivermectin is effective in COVID-19, you might ask?
Plenty.
Let us begin with basic science. In the laboratory, after Ivermectin was given to a cell culture teaming with COVID-19 infection, it killed virtually all the virus within 48 hours. There was a 5000 fold reduction in viral load, which translates to a 99.98% pathogen eradication. However, when I wrote my book on cancer, I realized that many drugs that work in the lab may not always work in live patients.
So you want to ALSO review clinical studies in people. For example, Remdesivir, a favorite of Big Pharma, a failure against Hepatitis and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus, worked in a test tube against Ebola. Still, when they tested it in people, it was a dud – just as many died in the placebo group as the Remdesivir group – about 53%.
So they tested it against COVID-19. A small study with 541 patients getting Remdesivir versus 521 on placebo showed no statistical difference in death and a 24% rate of serious adverse events in Remdesivir; however, against all odds, the FDA approved the drug for emergency use against COVID-19.
To add insult to injury, the WHO later completed another study in which Remdesivir failed miserably and failed to reduce death in COVID. Dr. Ilan Schwartz made it clear, “This puts the issue to rest — there is certainly no mortality benefit (from Remdesivir).”
Yet, the FDA did not revoke their Emergency Use Authorization for some strange reason, and they have maintained Remdesivir as their “go-to” drug. You can bet the majority of our 648,000 Americans who died from COVID-19 first received a dose of Remdesivir – at an average of $3,100 a pop – because it was on the protocol. We cannot expect a small thing, like the drug doesn’t work, to subtract from our FDA’s absolute prerogative to decide what is best for us – and what drugs we should purchase with our hard-earned health care dollars.
The story on Ivermectin, thankfully, is quite the opposite of Remdesivir’s abject failure. Ivermectin has been a resounding success. It not only worked in the lab, it spectacularly reduced death in the living, and it worked early in the disease and late in the disease, often rescuing patients from ventilators and the jaws of death. It even performed before the infection began by effectively preventing it and nicely stopping viral transmission. And it was safe without serious adverse effects. In short, God Himself could not have given us a better tool to eradicate this disease.
We now have 63 and counting studies involving some 26,000 patients showing up to a 96% reduction in death associated with Ivermectin.
We have many peer-reviewed medical journal publications showing significant reductions in mortality associated with Ivermectin use. The meta-analyses are considered the highest form of medical evidence and even outweigh the randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled trial. Thus, the meta-analysis is regarded as the holy grail of medical research. We have two influential such publications authored by Drs. Tess Lawrie and Andrew Hill, British W.H.O. consultants. Both strongly show Ivermectin reduces death in COVID-19.
Dr. Pierre Kory and his group, the FLCCC, have recently published another comprehensive review, which updates the Ivermectin data to current as of August 29, 2021. This incorporates all the relevant evidence and is best described as the “the totality of the evidence for Ivermectin in COVID-19.”
We have real-world experience from numerous countries, including Mexico, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and India that adopted Ivermectin and saw their COVID cases evaporate.
We saw the real-world experiences of Drs. George Fareed and Brian Tyson from California’s Imperial Valley in saving 99.9 % of their 6,000 patients using a cocktail that included Ivermectin.
Beyond all the scientific evidence, we have plain common sense. Ralph Lorigo is an attorney who has won numerous court orders for Ivermectin for dying COVID patients on ventilators. In nearly every case, after the Ivermectin, they rapidly improved. Most recovered and went home. Many were able to go off the ventilator within 24 hours of the Ivermectin dose.
If Ivermectin did not work, as our trusted agencies continue to advise us, why would this occur? Why would these patients so consistently respond to a drug they advise against? Are Lorigo’s cases just lucky, or might the obvious be true? Always use common sense when the government tells you the science is “too complicated” for you to understand or that all their paid experts agree it doesn’t work. Perhaps the question you should ask is not whether Ivermectin works but how much they are paying their experts.
We have watched the movement on Ivermectin proceed with steadily increasing global attention on google searches – in sharp contrast to the concocted ad hoc PR campaign hastily crafted in August by Big Pharma on these laughable poison control stories.
When will the next expensive, toxic and ineffective drug be forced upon us? We should be on high alert that more propaganda is coming our way. If we haven’t seen enough horse and cow articles or enough “Public Service Messages” to get the vaccine, soon we may hear that some fancy new pill that claims to do what Ivermectin already does is finally “approved” by the FDA.
Soon we may be allowed to take a medicine that may work against COVID-19. But unless it contains Ivermectin in some form, don’t count on it being effective – or safe.
And don’t believe they will ever approve Ivermectin. Over the last two months, the large pharmacy chains have started to refuse to fill valid physician prescriptions. Although they continue dispensing it for scabies, many refuse to fill it for anything else. The drug is not dangerous as no one with scabies is calling the hotline.
It is more than 100 times safer than Tylenol, judging by telephone calls to poison control. And it is almost as cheap. And its effectiveness against COVID-19 is without parallel. For example, on August 30, 2021, in India in the State of Uttar Pradesh, there were only 23 new cases of COVID-19 out of a population of 240 million people. That is about one case per ten million.
On the same day, in the United States, we saw 280,403 cases or about one new case per thousand people. The difference between one per ten million and one per thousand is 10,000. Here in the United States, we are ten thousand times MORE LIKELY to get sick with the Delta variant. Uttar Pradesh WIDELY USES IVERMECTIN. The US does not.
The United States demonizes it in their media, pressures their pharmacists to NOT dispense it, and threatens doctors who do.
Regulatory Capture is the reason why, says Dr. Pierre Kory. See Mark 14:35 and 16:00.
https://youtu.be/0GAIA8Ml328
It boils down to plain old corruption. It is when the prison guard is paid to look the other way when someone is being knifed, or a drug deal is being made. It is when Big Tobacco sends a US Senator to the Cayman Islands to go snorkeling in exchange for voting against a law taxing cigarettes. It is when ten out of eleven physician panel members vote against approving a $56,000 a year questionably effective and toxic Alzheimer’s drug, yet the drug gets FDA approved anyway.
It is when a cheap repurposed drug that could end the pandemic – if widely used as prevention in all contacts – gets thrown under the bus to pave the way for Molnupiravir. It is when two Senate Hearings on early outpatient treatment are ignored to promote profit at the cost of 648 thousand American lives.
We may not be able to do much about poisonous informational flooding, but we can all recognize it when it occurs by the sheer number of copycat stories. We can usually see who or what is behind it and boycott those groups UNLESS it is our own government agency, in which case we need to vote for some different people who will reform it. Like Henry Waxman reformed Big Tobacco, someone needs to reform our agencies before we lose more American lives.
Until we end the Regulatory Capture of the US Food and Drug Administration and its Big Brother, Centers for Disease Control, we can continue to expect more of the same: expensive, dangerous, and marginally effective drug approvals. And a smokescreen on anything cheap that actually works.
Dr. Justus R. Hope, writer’s pseudonym, graduated summa cum laude from Wabash College where he was named a Lilly Scholar. He attended Baylor College of Medicine where he was awarded the M.D. degree. He completed a residency in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at The University of California Irvine Medical Center. He is board-certified and has taught at The University of California Davis Medical Center in the departments of Family Practice and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. He has practiced medicine for over 35 years and maintains a private practice in Northern California.
If your faith forbids sterilization, or your respect for human rights forbids involuntary sterilization, then you need to consider the risk of infertility from COVID jabs.
We do NOT know that the COVID jab will cause infertility. But we also do not and cannot know that it doesn’t. There simply has not been enough time to see.
Despite the uncertainty, thousands of our youth are being forced to choose between taking the jab or putting their educational plans or careers on hold. How much risk can we ethically take, or coerce others to accept—whether the risk is of infertility, miscarriage, disability, chronic disease, or death?
The ethical and legal issues of a mandate are outlined in a letter to colleges and universities from the William J. Olson law firm in Vienna, VA. The letter also requests a commitment to assume financial liability for death, disability, or illness of students being required to take the COVID-19 inoculation. While manufacturers are immune from product liability, those who coerce students or employees to receive it might not be.
Investigations that might inform us about the reproductive risks have not been done (or reported). More than 700 post-injection miscarriages have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Where are the pathological examinations of the placentas? Were there spike-proteins in the blood vessels, and inflammation that cut off oxygen or nutrients to the baby? We don’t know. An NEJM article that concluded there were no safety signals had no information on the placentas.
Was there damage to the reproductive organs of the nearly 7,000 persons who died post injection? The first (only?) autopsy report, of an 86-year-old man, published in June, did not address this.
College students are probably delaying marriage and family until educational or career goals are achieved. So, they might not discover infertility for years. But there are early warnings from fertility clinics about failed in-vitro fertilization with previously successful donors.
Once injected, the genetically engineered materials cannot be removed. We do not know how long the mRNA or the spike proteins it codes for will remain in the tissues.
Risks and benefits need be considered for different age groups. Persons past reproductive years have a higher risk of disease; younger persons seldom get seriously ill with COVID. A one-size-fits-all mandate is without justification.
Those deciding whether to accept the shots, and their spiritual, parental, and career advisors, have a heavy responsibility with a potential impact on all future generations.
If you or someone you love is hoping to have a baby, special caution is needed about any type of medical treatment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not giving clear advice. CDC head Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing that the “CDC recommends that pregnant people receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” citing a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). A few days later a CDC spokesperson said the CDC’s guidance for pregnant people had not changed from its March recommendation, which is that “pregnant people are eligible and can receive a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Authors of the NEJM study stated: “Preliminary findings did not show obvious safety signals among pregnant persons who received mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.” In a letter to the editor-in-chief, Hooman Noorchashm, M.D., Ph.D., writes that while 35,691 is a large number of patients, “safety for a majority does NOT guarantee safety in minority subsets of persons at risk and it certainly CANNOT obviate duty to identifiable minority subsets of persons, who are or may be at risk of serious injury or death.”
Dr. Noorchashm is primarily concerned about persons who have recently had COVID-19 or might currently have an asymptomatic infection.
The question is especially urgent as some 200 colleges and universities are demanding that students, including women in their prime child-bearing years, be vaccinated before they are allowed to set foot on campus.
Dozens of miscarriages after a COVID vaccination have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which captures only a small fraction of events. It has not been shown that the vaccination caused the miscarriage.
Many tissues of the body have receptors for the “spike” on SARS-CoV2 virus. Studies of placentas from mothers who gave birth after having COVID show that spike protein is localized in the placental villi, the interface between mother and fetus. Will the spike protein that the body manufactures after receiving the Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J product attach to the placenta and provoke an auto-immune reaction, jeopardizing present and future pregnancies? We do not know.
Results of animal reproductive toxicity studies have not been reported, and it is far too early to see long-term effects on human fertility, either male or female.
As a friend noted, “I am beginning to see the vast difference in understanding, between us and people in public /professional sectors in light of the unfolding of irrational lawmaking, unashamed speeches, propaganda and “speak” which is morphing people and their minds from the irrational, mindless, depraved, and deranged to the evil psychological influence with hurtling speed. The rule of law from sound mind is beyond diseased.”
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?
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.”
What will you do if you get COVID while waiting in line for the vaccine, or even after?
If you are in Mexico City, you will be treated with ivermectin. As of Dec 29, this long-established drug has been used in COVID-positive patients, and soon thereafter death rates started to plummet, as the graphic shows. By Jan 22, about 50,000 doses had been delivered.
Mexico City is following the example of the state of Chiapas, which saw cases drop by two-thirds after it started using ivermectin on Aug 1, as Dr. Pierre Kory told the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Dec 8.
It is too soon to see whether vaccinations decrease the rate of COVID hospitalizations or deaths. In the U.S., these are still rising, and the official policy on early treatment is still therapeutic nihilism. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) did update its long-standing recommendation against ivermectin to “neutral.” It considers the evidence from 39 trials, all favorable, to be insufficient.
We are already seeing adverse side effects from the vaccine. Some 151 deaths shortly following (but not necessarily caused by) the vaccine have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). A nurse who cares for nursing home residents describes deterioration in his patients’ mobility and cognition after their second dose.
Between Dec 14 and Dec 18, about 272,001 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were administered and 3,150 “Health Impact Events” were recorded (1.1%). The CDC’s definition of Health Impact Events is “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.” It is not known how serious or long-lasting the events were. When people receive the vaccine, they will receive information on signing up for the V-safe program.
It is not known whether the vaccine would prevent or ameliorate the disease if taken after exposure. It is also not known whether vaccinated persons can transmit disease, according to the Robert Koch Institute. Vaccinated persons can be treated if they get COVID.
Head-to-head comparisons between long-term results of early treatment versus vaccination are not being done.
For some vulnerable populations, such as prison inmates, it is too late for vaccination. In one Arizona prison, more than half the inmates tested positive for COVID-19 in early December. AAPS has a asked Arizona governor Doug Ducey to facilitate making ivermectin available in prisons and other high-risk settings.
Doctors and public health authorities are still pushing flu shots, fearing a “twindemic,” but should you pause for thought?
Some quip that COVID-19 is a great killer, having wiped a out deaths from influenza, heart disease, and cancer. Deaths that are somehow “associated with” COVID, as with a positive PCR test within a certain time period, are attributed to COVID without definitive proof. They might, however, result from COVID-caused blood clots.
Death rates from influenza have declined to close to zero, as the graphic below shows—the “flu season that wasn’t.” Does coronavirus “shut the flu out”?
Might the flu shot provide some cross-protection from COVID, while you are awaiting your COVID shot? It may provide some protection against some other diseases. But one study found a 65 percent increased risk of non-flu acute respiratory illness within 14 days of receiving the flu vaccine, due to rhinovirus, enterovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and coronaviruses. A randomized placebo-controlled trial in children showed that flu shots increased fivefold the risk of acute respiratory infections caused by a group of noninfluenza viruses, including coronaviruses.
In a study of Department of Defense personnel, influenza vaccination had a protective effect against some respiratory viruses—but a 36 percent increased risk of coronavirus.
While correlation does not prove causality, it can provide clues. In Europe, the rate of COVID-19 deaths per million increased with influenza vaccination rates, as the second figure shows. In nursing homes, where nearly half the COVID-19 deaths have occurred, influenza vaccination is likely to be nearly universal, making a comparison between vaccinated and nonvaccinated persons impossible.
Is vaccination your only shield against influenza (except possibly for early Tamiflu)? There is evidence that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) might help patients with severe influenza, but appropriate research has not been done—perhaps because of $69 billion in annual vaccine profits.
Influenza vaccine may help, or it may hurt your chances, but there is plenty of evidence that early treatment of COVID does help, and the worldwide death toll from denying early treatment has passed 1.2 million according to some scientists’ estimate.
