Hidden options in health care - Part 5
Logical reasons to “hesitate”
I had a long conversation with a dear old friend recently and, in reference to covid and my personal experiences, she shared her observation that so much came down to fear: fear of something bad happening if you got covid, fear of something bad happening if you got the jab. I see that.. and I also see something else. On the side of “fear” of adverse reactions to the vaccine is an avalanche of logical reasons to proceed with caution:
Rapid product development timeline - As mentioned elsewhere, I do not work in health care, but in financial services - another highly regulated industry that can have a profound, irreparable impact on people’s lives. One of the things I have done quite a lot of is lead product development teams. These are multi-million-dollar projects to build new software or web sites or new “customer experiences”. Sometimes the initiative is a pet project of the CEO, or meets an urgent business need, and in those cases, there is a very specific frequency of near-panic that inevitably envelops at least a few of the people involved. Simply put, there is tremendous pressure to cut corners and under-emphasize product shortcomings and risks, in order to deliver on leadership’s aggressive goals. This is human nature, and it was pointed out early in covid in reference to the covid jabs, including by some high profile Team blue folks, before the “orange guy” even got involved. Harris on vaccine: 'I would not trust Donald Trump' Politics aside, accelerated product timelines create risk. Always and forever, the end. As with any risk, mitigating plans can be put in place, in this context an example would be post-vax safety monitoring. But as any regulator or corporate leader who has worked in a regulated space can tell you, some mitigations are more effective than others and some amount of risk will always remain.
Profit motive and unethical behavior - Remember the guys who took advantage of the early pandemic days, stockpiling hand sanitizer and reselling it at higher prices, only to be caught and called out by the US media? Coronavirus price-gouging: Men hoarding hand sanitizer urged to stop What if large corporations took a similar approach, lured by the unique profit-making opportunity covid was creating? If corporations, in this case pharmaceutical companies, were to color outside the lines, how would we know? Before covid, it was broadly known, publicly available information that Pfizer had paid out historically large penalty fines, for ahem - fraudulent marketing. Seems like that could be relevant to the situation at hand. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement-its-history On the oversight side, there are countless examples of products allowed by the US FDA, but not in Europe.. as well as products approved by the FDA and later proven to cause harm. I am not saying one could assume, at the outset of covid lockdowns, that Pfizer and the FDA were absolutely up to no good, but what I am saying is that those of you who assumed they absolutely never would or could do anything over the line.. you did not do your homework. As the required financial services disclosure says, “past performance is no guarantee of future results”, but it certainly is a meaningful point of reference.
Non-comprehensive covid strategy - it does not take a health care expert to see that there are multiple aspects to managing covid, along a continuum, as a patient’s illness evolves: 1) prevention, 2) at-home treatment and 3) hospital treatment. It struck me as odd that early on, there was little to no public health messaging or communications from family doctors about (2) at-home treatment. But then again, it reminds me of my experience visiting an acute care clinic, where they told me to “come back if I can’t breathe” and all of my experiences described in the rest of this Hidden Options essay series.
Traditional health care revolves around treating symptoms, once things have gotten to a certain point (funny how you qualify to be seen depending on the severity of your illness - if you are not in serious distress, you are not worthy of “care”..?). From a public health perspective, at least, it would seem that with all the focus on hospital bed shortages, someone would develop an at home treatment strategy, to stop the flow of people coming to hospitals? Where was this??? India sent at home treatment kits to people’s homes, yet in the US we could not even provide advice on what to take when infected with covid at home? (Note: the FLCCC About The FLCCC - FLCCC | Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance eventually stepped in to fill this void - this was a new organization, founded by bold doctors who went against the medical establishment to save lives and took devastating hits to their careers in return). It’s almost as if the conspicuously neglected at-home treatment group is a pipeline for the next patient phase: hospital treatment - which just happens to be very profitable. Which kinds of coincidences do you believe in? Whatever the reason, at-home treatment was not a priority in the US covid strategy, and that’s not the kind of “oversight” we needed.
What about public health messaging around (1) prevention - beyond simply avoiding each other, masking our faces and washing our hands? Where were the messages about nutrition, exercise, stress management, maintaining human connections, supplements, etc? Here is an example of reasonable, informative public health messaging, in El Salvador El Salvador New Covid-19 Ad Campaign - YouTube , to remind you that such an approach is of course, possible.
As for (3) hospital treatment, I was shocked when, in summer 2020, I read that inhaled steroids had just been approved for covid treatment in hospitals. When my daughter had asthma, inhaled treatments were used without question or hesitation, as standard treatments. Albuterol, budesonide - safe and effective enough to use on babies and toddlers. But for three months of the pandemic that brought the world to a halt, noone thought to try them for covid, a respiratory illness??? It is hard now to find the article I had in mind to link, but what I did find on the topic is more telling. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/08/asthma-medicine-not-proven-as-covid-19-cure/ Even a person with full Pollyanna faith in the health care system would have to wonder how such obvious tactics like general health tips for prevention, at home treatment protocols and use of standard respiratory treatments in hospitals fell through the cracks, despite having the full attention of resources from local, state and federal authorities, to politicians, leaders, the medical community, to hospitals, doctors, and regulators.
Irresponsible tracking and representation of data - the US data grouping people and health outcomes by vax status counts vaxed people as unvaccinated until Day 15 after vaccination. In the UK, people in this category were tracked separately, to allow for independent tracking since this group is unique in not yet having full “benefits” of vaccination and also being a high risk cohort for potential immediate adverse effects. Vaccinations in the UK | Coronavirus in the UK US health regulators knew, based on vax trial data, that deaths in the vaccinated group tended to occur in the first two weeks post vaccination, making it noteworthy that they would set up the data in this way. What’s more, did you know that the alleged “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, cited by the CDC beginning in July 2021, added up data starting in January and concluded that most people who were hospitalized from Jan-July were unvaccinated, when nearly EVERYONE was unvaccinated until April? If this were an update to corporate leadership, misuse of data on this basic level would be viewed as a glaring, egregious error, and the originator of such shoddy analysis would lose all credibility. CDC also repeatedly misstated and then corrected stats related to child mortality and covid. CDC reports fewer COVID-19 pediatric deaths after data correction | Reuters
Suppression of alternatives - Because of my experience with things like isoquercetin being a superior alternative to anti-histamines, and turmeric being a healthier alternative to steriods, I read everything I could on a daily basis to see what potential alternative treatments might be emerging. Here is a partial list that I was tracking:
Mullein - for respiratory issues w covid
Zinc - prevention and treatment
Aspirin - to address blood clotting
Andographis Paniculata - herb used for covid in Thailand
CD24 - protein used in Israel for covid
Adenosine
Magnesium chloride
Hydrogen peroxide -nebulized, treatment
Alpha lipoic acid - with other supplements
Melatonin - with other supplements
Vitamin D - for prevention and to reduce hospitalization
Black cumin / nigella sativa - for covid prevention and treatment
Budesonide (inhaled steroids) - to treat respiratory covid symptoms
Tundrex (probiotic) - to reduce spike proteins post covid
Artemesia / wormwood - prevention and treatment
Ozone - treatment
Nasal spray - prevention and early treatment
Mouthwash - prevention and early treatment
Glutathione / NAC - immune system strengthening before and during covid
CBD - treatment
Ketamine - treatment
Naltrexone - treatment
Quercetin / onions - prevention and treatment
Turmeric (SignPath pharma) - treatment
Vitamin C - prevention and treatment
Vitamin A - prevention and treatment
Omega 3’s - prevention and treatment
Anti-coagulants - for clotting
Ivermectin - prevention and treatment
Hydroxychloroquine - prevention and early treatment
Monoclonal antibodies - treatment
Fermented foods / kefir - prevention
Fluvoxamine - treatment
Elderberry - treatment
Nitric oxide - treatment
We all saw what happened with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Testimony-Kory-2020-12-08.pdf
with the FDA going so far as to shame people for using “horse de-wormer” - when ivermectin is actually a long-established, award-winning, low cost drug used for humans (and animals). What was a regulatory agency doing spending money to discourage use of a truly “safe and effective” drug? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/fda-horse-message-ivermectin-covid-coronavirus Then again, why would the pandemic be the moment to overturn the long-established pattern of mainstream medicine overlooking and disparaging alternative treatments? When it comes down to it, they are the competition.
Insufficient safety testing - I cannot believe the resistance that I got when I stated early on, including from a recently retired public health official who I considered a friend, that two months is not enough time to assess safety of a newly developed product. I don’t even know what to say here. Just because (most) people did not drop dead immediately after receiving the jab in trials does not say anything about the long-term impacts to health. Given that this was the first use of mRNA vaccines in humans on a large scale, The Long History of mRNA Vaccines | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health anyone claiming long-term safety from any number of months’ data is expressing their hopes, not “science”. The absence (or suppression) of proof of immediate harm is not the same as proof of the absence of harm. This is, btw, one of the most-used gaslighting lines in medicine.. “there is no evidence to prove product X does Y”. I kinda figured more people would be onto this, by now. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Ok, so… you tell me.. is it fear and hesitation, derivations of human error and weakness, that led people to decline the covid vax? Or is it, in retrospect, distressing that - for a product developed under high pressure, in pursuit of record-breaking profits, by a company previously fined for fraud, when public health strategy was incomplete and irrational, regulators were monkeying around with data, and aggressive govt-funded campaigns mocked alternatives - you summarily went all-in on a risky product? What role did mandates play in your decision? Did government, media and public health act in your best interest?
On many a muted, unnaturally still pandemic day, I could not help but think that we could be living in the worst, unfunniest episode of the Darwin awards. Or, as many others have said, experiencing the longest, most unsatisfying “I told you so” of our lifetimes. The good news is that most of the recognized negative vax effects to date are impacting a very small percentage of those who took the jabs. Still, I am haunted by this quote, which mirrors the dystopian aura that has lingered, unwelcome and unyielding, these past three years.. “May the odds be….. ever in your favor”!
Talk about "doing your homework"! Damn! Point #3 is encyclopedic. I can't even imagine what our collective response to Covid would have been if everyone were as thorough as you!
The effects of the jab are impacting a huge number of people. Not a small percentage. The numbers provided by the government are a fraud. As always.