Volume 77, no. 3 March 2021
The wokeness mob’s attempt to cancel six popular children’s books by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) might push us toward a tipping point and an awakening. The motive is ostensibly to wipe out a virus of racism lurking in a few cartoons. These conceivably might be micro- (or nano or pico) aggressions.
An affiliate of the Southern Poverty Law Center declared the books racist, but Tucker Carlson says they were targeted precisely because they are not. Rather, they take a “race-neutral” approach. The Plain-Belly and the Star-Belly Sneetches’ ultimate “acceptance” of each other “doesn’t address the idea that historical narratives impact present-day power structures,” writes program associate Gabriel Smith (https://tinyurl.com/334sjhvp).
Ironically, Geisel was a leftist whose progressive views suffused his writings. “Generations of progressive activists may not trace their political views to their early exposure to Dr. Seuss, but without doubt this shy…genius played a role in sensitizing them to abuses of power,” writes Peter Dreier (tinyurl.com/yzne5aa7). Geisel was one of the earliest to fight anti-Semitism and racism.
Objections to implanting progressive or woke views into vulnerable children would be “fascist”—but they must be guarded against positive views of Western culture or American history.
The wokeness virus threatens to become incorporated into our cultural genome. Will persons born white be constantly trying to atone for “white privilege”? Will white physicians constantly have to document efforts to eradicate racial injustice in medicine (see JAMA 8/4/20)—originally perpetrated by the AMA?
Dr. Nathan Davis, considered AMA’s father, excluded women and blacks from the house of delegates. His bust has been removed from public view, and his name from an award, writes CEO James Madara (tinyurl.com/c7cnr3bf). Just recently, however, AMA honored Thomas Huxley (JAMA 8/18/20), though he once said that “no rational man…believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior of the white man” (Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, New York, Appleton, 1871, p 20). But Edward Livingstone, M.D., “who is White,” had to resign as JAMA deputy editor over a February 2021 podcast in which he questioned the concept of systemic racism and said, “Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist.” Editor-in-chief Howard Bauchner, M.D., called the podcast “offensive” and “hurtful” (https://tinyurl.com/wr4ewrty).
In the wokeness culture, sticks, stones, and broken bones might be tolerated, but not words that might give offense—or those who use them. We must bid “goodbye to cultural icons, large and small—goodbye to all vestiges of the past, replete with their ‘bigoted’ value systems,” writes Ben Shapiro, so that individuals can “self-create” (tinyurl.com/4268zxtb).
What Is a Human Being?
Disconnected from cultural moorings, atomized individuals will not be liberated, but treated as vectors of literal or metaphorical viruses, who must be sufficiently vaccinated and tracked. Living a somewhat normal daily life is fast becoming a privilege. Will handing out electronic permission slips become a new function of physicians, asks Pat Conrad, M.D. (tinyurl.com/yrj7x5fc). Will medical boards or insurers require constant logging of a patient’s COVID status and documentation of vaccination counseling, as with controlled-substances data bases or smoking cessation? Will every communication be screened for subversive content?
Engineered Language
Viral memes, like the genetically modified COVID-19 products, are engineered. Merriam-Webster altered the definition of “vaccine” for the occasion. On Feb 5, 2021, the definition was: “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms, that is administered to produce or artificially to increase immunity to a particular disease.” As of Feb 6, a “vaccine” is: “a preparation that is administered…to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious disease…. (b) a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein).” Vaccines are generally viewed as long-established and safe, though they are biologic agents, subject to a less stringent regulatory regime than drugs. The COVID products are novel, bioengineered, genetically modified biologic agents. They are vaccines only by a socially modified definition. As with vaccines, their manufacturers are immune from product liability.
Is There a Freedom (or Logic) Virus?
There are signs of resistance. When an Israeli airline forced a father and an 18-month-old off a flight because the child would not wear a mask, all the other passengers deplaned also in solidarity (tinyurl.com/rrssf7p6). Mask-burning rallies in many Idaho cities trigger woke activists (tinyurl.com/rwnpb2ps). With Lockdown 3.0 descending on Britain, “only dissent can save us now,” writes Irish science journalist Peter Andrews (tinyurl.com/nsnmx3yw). “It is time to draw a line in the sand.” Physicians, such as Dr. Mark Trozzi of Canada, are “surrendering personal income and security” to speak out (tinyurl.com/2zczz9eh).
Fortunately, Yertle the Turtle and Horton Hears a Who! are still acceptable. The small can bring down the mighty—if Jo-Jo, the “smallest of all” the Whos, speaks out to save the entire community. What if doctors and patients spoke out together?
Transmission of Respiratory Viruses
In an articled censored from ResearchGate but preserved elsewhere, Dennis G. Rancourt states that the seasonal pattern of excess respiratory-disease mortality can be explained quantitatively on the sole basis of absolute humidity. Influenza’s basic reproduction number (R0) varies between humid-summer values of just larger than 1 and dry-winter values typically as large as 4.
He also argues that masks cannot work because the minimal infective dose may be as low as one virion (tinyurl.com/wk7z75vc).
Profit before Science
Massive advertising revenues, reprint deals, and payoffs to the editors create near-complete corporate control of the only physician information source, writes Robert Yoho, M.D., in his 2020 book Butchered by Healthcare (tinyurl.com/mvandtw7). The “big five” most respected medical journals, Lancet, JAMA, BMJ, NEJM, and Annals of Internal Medicine, are all contaminated with this commercial bias, he states.
A single positive trial may be reprinted in hundreds of different venues. Unfavorable reports are frequently concealed, e.g., the Australian studies that suggested Tamiflu™ was worthless.
The Annals lost more than $1 million in revenue when it published a study about drug advertising harms.
Profit margins at scientific publishing companies average a sensational 35%. Other successful publishers average 10%.
Vaccine Morbidity & Mortality
Typical narrative by nursing home worker: “Patient received COVID-19 vaccine 10 A.M. By 6 P.M. developed fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, and labored breathing. Next morning at 7 A.M. found dead in bed.”
Personal anecdote: Ben Stein reports “wild” side effects for 5 days, including “extremely irrational thinking” after Moderna booster. “Beware,” he said (https://tinyurl.com/jardy5xs).
Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been paused in Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland because of blood clots, pending investigation (tinyurl.com/cnrypn53). This vaccine uses a nonreplicating chimpanzee adenovirus with instructions for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein inserted into its DNA (https://tinyurl.com/3z8nz6cb).
German nursing homes: COVID-19 deaths were many-fold higher in the 2 months after vaccinations began on Dec 28 than in the entire prior year (https://tinyurl.com/5cek9uv7).
VAERS reports 1,637 deaths post-COVID vaccination as of Mar 8, about 90 times the rate reported after influenza vaccine (tinyurl.com/t4yc3sys). Temporal distribution of deaths, most in the first 72 hours after the COVID jab, fails to falsify the null hypothesis of no causality (https://tinyurl.com/29cu59zr).
Deaths from disease are assumed to outweigh those from the jab. But controversial Israeli data suggests the jab may be 35 times deadlier than the disease in the elderly (tinyurl.com/94exnhbs).
“It came burning hot in my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me to his house he would sell me for a slave.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, quoting John Bunyan
ACTION OF THE MONTH
If you offer early treatment for COVID-19 by protocol similar to the McCullough or Zelenko methods, please add your name to a list we are compiling to help patients at bit.ly/covidearlytx.
Vaccine Marketing
Authorities want every person in the world to be vaccinated, and “the sale of the century” is on. In Joe Biden’s first public address to the nation as President, he promised to double the number of daily jabs from 1 to 2 million, as part of our “war footing” to defeat enemy #1, the virus. We must all also wear a mask for 100 days. Then, we could look forward to a July 4 celebration of “independence from the virus”—in a small group.
The five selling techniques described by “Off-Guardian” editor Kit Knightly are: (1) Bribery. Everyone getting jabbed is the only way “back to normal.” (2) Celebrity endorsements. Biden said that he and Vice-President Harris and the first lady and first gentleman had all been vaccinated on camera. Queen Elizabeth also took her shots. (3) Forced scarcity. People feel so lucky to get their dose. “If they were really running out of vaccines, the papers wouldn’t be advertising them.” (4) Fake “popularity.” The oldest trick for cultivating popularity is to pretend that it already exists; hence the dubious poll that claims that “94%” of Britons have taken or plan to take the jab. (5) Inevitability. Vaccine passports to daily life are said to be coming. Maybe. But “from a purely logistical point of view, making people think there are going to be vaccine passports is much, much easier (and cheaper) than actually introducing them.” If enough people refuse to take part, the program will never work, he states.
Knightly’s “not un-positive” takeaway is that the sales effort has an air of desperation, and that the resistance to the “new normal” is a lot more widespread than the establishment ever expected it to be (https://tinyurl.com/7vyzarwy).
Are worries about vaccine passports just “conspiracy theories”? Watch Israel (tinyurl.com/3f5ayxs3). Even Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had to cancel his visit because he is not fully vaccinated (tinyurl.com/4w4kt9v7).
Israel’s “green pass” leapfrogged China in implementing digital vaccine certificates. Biden is under pressure from airlines to be a “leader” on vaccine credentials. The real leader is the Commons Project, which released its CommonPass digital “health passport” in October 2020 for a trial run. The Commons Project was started in 2018, backed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Economic Forum (https://tinyurl.com/y8tv5yhh).
N.Y. Senate Bill 416 authorizes the quarantine of individuals or groups who “potentially pose a threat to public health,” including forced testing and vaccinations (tinyurl.com/8ts72ex4).
N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already restricted travel so that it is difficult or impossible for New Yorkers to travel out of state, writes Dr. Lawrence Huntoon. If one leaves the state, one is required to stay housebound for 14 days upon return. Local health officials have been on television, strongly encouraging people to report on their neighbors if they are violating a state mandate.
AAPS Calendar
Sep 29-Oct 2, 2021. 78th Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA
Separate but Equal?
U.S. District Court Judge Paul G. Gardephe denied a motion for preliminary injunction to end mandatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 testing for children to attend N.Y. schools. Plaintiffs in Aviles v. de Blasio complain that children whose parents who do not consent to in-school testing can have access only to remote learning. Nasal swab PCR tests, allowed under an “emergency use authorization” (EUA), are considered experimental and require informed consent. The judge seems to have adopted the legal fiction from Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate is equal,” i.e. that in-person instruction is equal to “remote learning,” writes attorney Mary Holland (tinyurl.com/4k84s83y).
Iowa Physicians May Prescribe HCQ for COVID
On Mar 29, 2020, the Iowa boards of medicine, pharmacy, physician assistants, nursing, and dentistry issued a joint statement on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), to prevent its prescription for COVID-19. This statement was issued without any formal board action and was transmitted to all licensees via email. There appeared to be a veiled threat of disciplinary action for licensees who prescribe or fill HCQ prescriptions. On Jul 8, Sen. David Hartsuch, M.D., filed a petition with the boards asking them to rescind their statement. Despite multiple board meetings, the matter was not formally considered for 2 months. A revised statement essentially granted his petition on Sep 11. However, the boards only posted the statement on their website, and have still not informed licensees of the change in policy by direct correspondence such as email. “The boards were created by the Iowa Legislature solely to determine the qualification of licensees, and certainly not to limit the availability of life-saving treatment to our citizens,” writes Dr. Hartsuch. “I would ask the legislature to investigate this malfeasance… and take appropriate remedial action.”
Sovereign Immunity for Pfizer
While the Pfizer product is rolling out in much of Latin America, the company has still not reached an agreement with Brazil or Argentina. According to a report on Gravitas on WIONews, Pfizer demanded that the nations pledge sovereign assets—bank reserves, military bases, and embassy buildings—as collateral to indemnify Pfizer in case of litigation, even for negligence or fraud. While bullying poor countries behind closed doors, in public Pfizer poses as a messiah to the poor. CEO Albert Bourla claims that from the beginning Pfizer and BioNTech have been “firmly committed to working toward equitable and affordable access of COVID-19 vaccines for people around the world” (https://tinyurl.com/vb8awk5d).
Facebook v. Scientific Debate
About two dozen states have introduced bills that would permit lawsuits against Facebook (tinyurl.com/et2usahp). According to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, social media giants have increasingly engaged in censorship under the guise of preventing the spread of misinformation––“vetting and stigmatizing the content of reputable publishers” while “increasingly adding phony fact checks and removing articles flagged by left-leaning users without explanation” (tinyurl.com/56×88598). One example was labeling a WSJ opinion piece by Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary as “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Dr. Makary had projected that the U.S. could reach herd immunity by April. This view could dampen enthusiasm for vaccine uptake and virus-related restrictions. Facebook linked the label to the third-party “fact-checking” website Health Feedback, a member of the World Health Organization’s “Vaccine Safety Net.”
As alleged in a lawsuit filed last August (Children’s Health Defense v. Facebook, Case 3:20-cv-05787, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Francisco Division), CEO Mark Zuckerberg is working with the government to suppress unwanted critiques of government officials and policies:
The framers were familiar with the English struggle and enacted the First Amendment to establish and preserve the right of the People to full information about the doings or misdoings of their government…. This case mirrors the framers’ concerns. The government cannot accomplish indirectly what the Constitution forbids it to do directly [emphasis added] (tinyurl.com/7ywxu8wx).
AAPS Files Appeal in Case against ABMS
After court-mandated mediation that was unable to resolve the issues, the case that AAPS filed in 2013 against the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) will finally be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Case No. 20-3072). AAPS brought this action to end ABMS’s antitrust law violations and deceptive trade practices concerning its controversial “maintenance of certification” (ABMS MOC®) product. AAPS alleged that ABMS has conspired with specialty board organizations, health insurers, and hospitals to compel physicians to purchase and spend unjustified time and money on its proprietary product. ABMS misleadingly denigrates physicians who decline to participate in its program, by falsely implying that such physicians are of inferior quality (https://tinyurl.com/jdjwf2w).
Board-certifying organizations are revenue-driven entities, AAPS writes, despite their “non-profit” (tax-exempt) status. Executives’ self-enrichment results in part from ABMS’s restraint of trade and deceptive trade practices. ABMS’s collusive practices exclude physicians who don’t buy their product from the market and reduce patients’ access to needed services.
Tip of the Month: Beware of scams. Amidst hard times, scams are getting more diabolical. Fake phone calls can spoof legitimate phone numbers to appear on your caller ID. Scams can pretend to be your local power company threatening to shut off service, or a government office demanding that you pay money. A recent sophisticated scam in New York involved someone pretending to be from the state medical board, declaring that a physician’s license had been suspended and demanding a refundable bond of $15,600 in order to reinstate the license. Skilled scam artists practice until they are very believable. Never, ever, pay money to anyone based merely on a surprise phone call or an email without first confirming in multiple ways that it is not a scam. Asking for a phone number so that you can return the call at a more convenient time is a good approach, and be sure to check independently whether the number is legitimate before calling it back.
Correspondence
Words. Some version of “vaccine passports” or “immunity passports,” first being tried in Israel, are being considered in various countries—and in New York State. An academic “disinformation expert,” Renee DiResta, worried that such an idea “might frighten
people into believing that the government is forcing an intervention on you,” according to a NY Times article (https://tinyurl.com/225vuut3). Isn’t it? She is aghast that California parents opposed removal of vaccine exemptions as “tyrannical government intrusion.” How dare they! The real disinformation is to equate insisting on informed consent with being “anti-vaccination.” Proponents of mandates view those who hold fast to individual freedom as “selfish nationalists” who, not acting for the globalist good, need to be punished by severely restricting where they can go. Chinese communists have perfected this approach with their “social credit score.” The late Madeleine Pelner Cosman, a medical lawyer, asked: “Who Owns Your Body?” (https://tinyurl.com/5f7urvjx). In communist China, clearly the government owns every citizen’s body.
We must insist that words be used correctly, and that true disinformation and those who distribute it be fully exposed.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Risk Reduction. The relative risk vs. absolute risk phenomenon is what pharmaceutical companies regularly use to deceive people legally, because both calculations are true. They use relative risk for “efficacy,” and absolute for “safety.” It is a huge issue. The only truthful “efficacy” statistic is the actual/absolute risk reduction figure (ARR), which, in the case of the two mRNA vaccines is 0.8%, a figure that would sink any vaccine if there were any honest investigative journalism. The ARR is needed to calculate the number needed to vaccinate (NNTV), the number who must be inoculated to benefit one person. To prevent a single case of COVID-19, 176–1370 people would need to get an mRNA jab.
Bose Ravenel, M.D., Winston-Salem, NC
Need to Save Lives Now. It is our responsibility as physicians not to wait for perfect evidence when making life-and-death decisions. Given the safety profile of vitamin D, the 40% prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the U.S., and the fact that this season will likely be the deadliest phase of the pandemic to date, we need to act now. Identifying and eradicating vitamin D deficiency with early and aggressive supplementation in COVID-19 has the potential to save thousands of lives and should be one of our highest public health priorities (tinyurl.com/j4vfb23c).
Richard Carmona, M.D., M.P.H. 17th U.S. Surgeon General
Mask Benefit vs. Harm. Let’s follow the science. In a new study, D.G. Rancourt, author of more than 100 research papers in leading peer-reviewed journals, found the adjusted risk of death from COVID-19 to be 0.002%, five times less than the risk of dying from a car accident, and any risk reduction from face masks is too small to be detected using usual and established statistical criteria. But prolonged mask wearing causes significant harm and disability to healthy individuals (tinyurl.com/4k4tv3yj).
Marilyn Singleton, M.D., Redondo Beach, CA
“Great Reset” Agenda. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its master planner, calls for the “building of trust” in the massive public relations campaign for the Great Reset (AAPS News, November 2020). He has striven to hide his own family background, which, according to investigative reporter Johnny Vedmore, included participation in Nazi and South African atomic-bomb programs and eugenics-influenced population control programs (https://tinyurl.com/sntawkws). Vedmore asks: “Is Klaus Schwab trying to create the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or is he trying to create the Fourth Reich?”
Willie Soon, Ph.D., Salem, MA
Mask History. On Nov 9, 1918, San Francisco jails had standing room only as 1,000 were arrested for defying the mask mandate—apparently no social distancing required. Even Mayor Davie of Oakland was jailed. Those who couldn’t pay the $5 fine were jailed for 48 hours. In 1919, the U.S. Navy surgeon general wrote, “No evidence was presented which would justify compelling persons at large to wear masks during an epidemic.” In February 2020, Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted that people should stop buying masks, as they were not effective in preventing the public from catching coronavirus.
Twila Brase, R.N., P.H.N., cchfreedom.org
CQ in Africa. Once the most important therapeutic drug in the control of malaria, the use of chloroquine (CQ) had been compromised by the appearance of resistance in the deadliest strain, Plasmodium falciparum. At the end of last century, several countries of Africa followed a recommendation of WHO and officially discontinued the use of CQ, replacing it with artemisinin. But the resistance of P. falciparum to CQ rapidly declined, and its sensitivity to CQ re-emerged. An accurate analysis of household use of CQ in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that its consumption does not reflect the national policies of the African countries, as it continues to be used at high rates. Might this be related to the relatively low impact of COVID-19 (tinyurl.com/x6ux7wwe)?
Jeremy Snavely, Tucson, AZ
