Volume 76, no. 9 September 2020
Chinese Communist ruler Xi Jinping told the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the new coronavirus is a “devil” and that China is confident of winning the battle against it (tinyurl.com/y4dhwxkq). Also, “the epidemic is a demon and we cannot let this demon hide” (tinyurl.com/yxbplwnx).
Weapons against demons in human history have included talismans, taboos, rituals, incantations—and human sacrifice.
In modern times, there is pervasive dread of many demon-like things that are “invisible, odorless, and tasteless,” which may have “no safe dose.” The list includes ionizing radiation, atmospheric carbon dioxide (at concentration >350 ppm), and various chemicals even at a ppb level (1 ppb = 50 drops in an Olympic-sized swimming pool or 660,000 gallons of water). The coronavirus could lurk in any human being, who might be unwittingly contaminating the air or surfaces even though apparently healthy.
Non-material demons also coming to the fore during the COVID crisis include racism, capitalism, militarism, ableism, and economic inequality. The root causes of these “struggles” are the same as the root causes of the climate crisis (https://tinyurl.com/y3jptzyh). The solution is a Green New Deal now—and a global technocracy that can monitor and control all human behavior that unleashes any of these demons.
No, things cannot go back to the way they were even if we immunize the whole world with a perfect vaccine, according to Dr. Tedros, head of WHO. The goal is not defeating a virus, but re-ordering society. “The Covid-19 pandemic has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change.” Bill Gates agrees that the lesson of the coronavirus is that the rest of us will have to sacrifice even more to save the earth from warming. What the pandemic and climate change have in common, suggests Tucker Carlson, is that both are pretexts for mass social control—unsolvable crises they can use to bypass self-government and enforce obedience (tinyurl.com/y2eeye9q).
Gates notes that despite automobile traffic being cut by 50% in April and air traffic virtually halted for months, CO2 emissions will be down only 8%, and we need zero emissions to avert a climate-change-induced public health catastrophe worse than COVID-19 (https://tinyurl.com/yybnxmcb).
Though still concerned, as of Feb 28, about the “burning edge of climate change” (tinyurl.com/y5dxsd5g), the AMA’s principal focus has shifted to the “urgent threat to public health” caused by “racism in its systemic, structural, institutional, and interpersonal forms.” At the virtual Jun 25 Special Meeting of the House of Delegates, delegates pledged to confront systemic racism and police brutality, and members of the Board of Trustees were videotaped solemnly reciting the statement, as if it were a new Oath of Hippocrates, Pledge of Allegiance, or Nicene Creed. “Racially motivated violence” was condemned; burning and vandalizing private and public property, brutal violence against police, and escalating crime were not mentioned. The AMA Center for Health Equity was established, and the first Chief Health Equity Officer hired (tinyurl.com/y5dtsbk6).
“What exists today as the infrastructure for scientific discovery and medicine reflects structural racism,” writes Clyde Yancy, M.D. (JAMA 8/4/20). Does “white” science need to be purged, like “Jewish science” under Hitler? “History, per se, defines culture and culture defines behavior.” Yancy in a pullout quote states that “all physicians…should engage with Black Lives Matter because atonement matters.”
The Cultural Marxism Demon
SARS-CoV-2 is running its course. A National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper shows that once a region reaches 25 total COVID deaths, the growth rate in deaths per day falls to approximately zero within a month—no matter what nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as lockdowns and mask mandates a country imposes (tinyurl.com/yy3tw8qd).
But the continued fear response is fueling the exponential growth phase of cultural Marxism, which over decades has been inoculated into all our institutions. “We need to be scared together, to agree on what we’re terrified about.” Governments can be forced to act, pressed by fears. “Ideas that used to be seen as leftwing seem more reasonable to more people…. It’s an opening,” reports Christine Rosen (Commentary, July/August 2020).
The revolutionary guard is making great progress in portraying the remnant of Western Civilization and its foundational principles as a demon (“white supremacy”). Diagnoses of heresy or racism have no false positives; there is no cure; and permanent quarantine if not “cancellation” is called for.
Is this sapping of our national spirit one cause of our capitulation to “coronadoom” tyranny? In 1957, the deadlier Asian flu did not shut the country down. The late arrival of a scarce, 60% effective vaccine had no appreciable effect. Also absent back then were “mass media, social media, and the incurable virus of evidence-free panic propagation to induce an epidemic of fear and paranoia,” writes Daniel Horowitz (tinyurl.com/yyu5jo3u). Also in 1957, shutdowns would have been intolerable because nothing resembling today’s Everything Bailouts would have been remotely conceivable, writes David Stockman (tinyurl.com/y3esnnz3).
What will it take to cast out the demons of fear and loathing of our history and our culture?
From the Archives
With the help of a librarian, Edmund Fordham found and posted on Twitter (https://tinyurl.com/yyeolwz2) articles from the Medical Record 1918;94;25:1081-1082 and 1920;97:235, on the use of quinine to treat influenza: “Intravenous injection will prevent or astoundingly diminish the later progressive pneumonias and the corresponding high mortality…. When it is evidenced that spontaneous recovery is becoming doubtful the intravenous injection of quinine is given at once.”
The adult dose was 15–22 gr, in a 10% solution, injected slowly over two to 20 minutes. The biceps muscles were an alternate route. The treatment was said to be equally effective at all ages; patients from age 4 to 63 were treated.
In December 2018, cases were “too few to permit of scientific certainty.” By February 1920, “a large number of cases had been injected.”
“The earlier the injection is made the better, and to do otherwise is only to run a risk…. But one injection is required to cause the disappearance of the influenza symptoms…. The absence of a specific action upon the secondary pneumonia emphasizes the importance of early injection.”
Vaccine Updates
Virus interference: A phenomenon known for more than 60 years may explain why children who received trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine had a 4.4 times higher risk of virologically confirmed non-influenza infections over the next 9 months (https://tinyurl.com/we57qtd).
Costs: “If a COVID-19 vaccine yields a price of, say, $500 a course, vaccinating the entire population would bring a company over $150 billion, almost all of it profit” (https://tinyurl.com/yyxemhce). BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority), is giving Moderna up to $483 million for late-stage development of its vaccine.
Timeline: The goal is to shorten the usual 10–15 year timeline to 1–1.5 years with new vaccine platforms (JAMA 8/4/20).
Safety: Comprehensive, real-time monitoring will be needed during rollout, to look, for example, for more severe disease in vaccinated individuals who develop breakthrough infections, as have occurred with other coronavirus vaccines (JAMA 8/4/20).
Treatment Updates
Ivermectin plus carragenin (IVER.CAR protocol) reportedly was 100% effective used in prophylaxis by health workers, in a study in Argentina (https://tinyurl.com/y3svxzxx).
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ): 93 studies and counting, 55 peer-reviewed, are now summarized at c19study.com. Studies of pre- or post-exposure prophylaxis or early treatment show favorable results; results of late treatment are mixed.
Remdesivir may now be prescribed under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Among other concerns, adverse events are to be reported via a passive system (JAMA 7/28/20).
“Je mehr Feinde, je mehr Ehre” [the more enemies, the greater honor]
Martin Luther
Prepare to Disconnect
Although tightly coupled systems have greatly increased our efficiency, over-connectedness has hazards—as when mountain climbers are unintentionally linked to a group of falling climbers they didn’t even know. Networks like the electric grid and just-in-time supply chains have no backup. Tiny errors can cascade into far-flung chaos. With most information flowing through a few mega-channels, data giants now have unprecedented power to squelch or amplify viewpoints of their choosing—and harmful content, such as Antifa riot plans, can be spread with passionate intensity (https://tinyurl.com/y2oc4mhv).
ACTION OF THE MONTH
Physicians and their patients should ask colleagues and their present or prospective physicians whether, and how, they would treat COVID-19 outside the hospital.
Doctors Bypass Censorship
America’s Frontline Doctors (AAPS News, August 2020)were quickly censored from social media, and mass media seldom discusses HCQ. A second wave of frontline doctors are speaking up: “Do We Believe What Our Own Eyes Are Seeing…or…What the Bureaucrats Tell Us We Are Seeing?” (tinyurl.com/y69wevkx—with links to preserved videos).
Of particular interest is Dr. Robin Armstrong telling how frail patients in his nursing home were managed successfully with HCQ, zinc, and azithromycin (https://tinyurl.com/y27qlvpx).
One would think that apparently successful treatments of a deadly disease would be a major media story. But if the disease is COVID-19, Orwellian suppression by both government and media regulators ensues.
Dr. Richard Bartlett of Texas, who reported successful treatment of a dozen or so patients with inhaled budesonide, with zinc and clarithromycin, was attacked by his hospital, Midland Memorial, and his website thecovidsilverbullet.com disappeared. When Matt Stringer, a correspondent for Texas Scorecard, shared a local news story about Dr. Bartlett, Facebook removed his post and suggested sharing a link with WHO.
Stringer also reports that Dr. Ivette Lozano of Dallas was under a 30-day Facebook ban because she posts reports of successful treatment with HCQ. State Sen. Bob Hall intervened on Dr. Lozano’s behalf to keep the State Pharmacy Board from preventing her usage of HCQ (https://tinyurl.com/yxvt9gtu).
Defining Truth
Social media is not a platform for competing ideas that can be evaluated, critiqued, or disregarded by all. As Facebook says on its website: “We’re committed to fighting the spread of misinformation…. We work with independent, third-party fact-checking organizations who are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) [of the Poynter Institute] to identify, review and take action on this content.” Harried subcontractors can label it “false” or “partly false” or flag it for removal. They are experts on everything, even population trends in polar bears.
AAPS Asks 6th Circuit to Force Release of HCQ
In a brief filed Sep 1 in AAPS v. FDA, (see AAPS News, June 2020), AAPS writes that the FDA cares more about its power over the 60 million hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) pills it is hoarding and wasting in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) than about the 100,000 lives that early or prophylactic treatment of COVID-19 might save. Defendants write that “the injunction plaintiff seeks would irreversibly overturn the status quo, by compelling the government to disburse the hydroxychloroquine in the Stockpile—a step that, once taken, cannot be undone.” AAPS writes that “it is the loss of life that ‘cannot be undone,’ while pills in a stockpile can be easily replenished by Defendants.”
The FDA has tacitly conceded many AAPS assertions, including that “HCQ has been approved as safe by the FDA and used safely since 1955, and the CDC officially declares HCQ to be safe today,” that “foreign countries have kept their mortality rates far lower—sometimes 90% lower—than the United States’ rate, by encouraging use of HCQ,” and that “treating COVID-19, like treating the flu, requires taking medication as early as possible in the exposure to or progression of the disease.”
Defendants’ arguments are legalistic, e.g. that AAPS lacks standing to sue. AAPS writes: “In this time-sensitive matter affecting 100,000 lives, Defendants’ reliance on hyper-technical procedural objections are misplaced and unjustified. During the ten days that Defendants took to file their mostly non-substantive opposition brief, roughly another 10,000 Americans died without timely access to HCQ” (https://tinyurl.com/y6zoobys).
UC Sued over Flu Vaccine Mandate
On Jul 31, 2020, former University of California System President Janet Napolitano issued an Executive Order mandating the influenza vaccine for all students, faculty, and employees by Nov 1, 2020, as a condition of continued employment or school enrollment. In Kiel v. Regents of the University of California, filed in the Superior Court for the County of Alameda (tinyurl.com/y69wrl5c), plaintiffs ask the court to void the EO and enjoin enforcement. The stated rationale for vaccinating the entire 510,000-member UC community is to free up hospital beds in case there is a bad flu season, and in case there is a bad COVID-19 second wave, and in case there is a future shortage of hospital beds.
“That is a large number of ‘ifs’ for which to sacrifice the personal freedom and bodily integrity rights” of all these people…. No court in…this country has ever approved such a broad adult vaccine mandate for such a collateral, speculative purpose.”
Observational studies suggest that vaccine interference could increase COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. “It is unethical to force all UC community members to be injected with the flu vaccine until there are placebo controlled clinical trials that prove the flu vaccine will not cause increased COVID-19 cases.” The mandate would turn the entire UC community into “involuntary participants in a de facto large clinical trial.”
Jacobson, the 1905 precedent on vaccine mandates, stated: “If a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health…or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the Constitution.”
Tip of the Month: Hospital layoffs, some involving physicians, have been a pandemic of their own as the industry is estimated to lose $323 billion this year. Even if not laid off, physicians employed by hospitals and networks suffer sharp declines in income when their contracts are tied to revenue or productivity. Rather than seek preventive medication for COVID-19, such as hydroxychloroquine, which could have kept hospitals running with elective procedures, hospitals went along with the statewide shutdowns and the treat-COVID-with-ventilators approach. Hospitals should never have allowed the shutdowns of elective procedures to occur. Too bad employment contracts do not require hospitals to stay open for elective procedures during a pandemic. Physicians could try to write in that requirement before signing such a contract, or at least revise provisions that put the loss on employed physicians when a hospital does not fully operate.
Some States Rescind HCQ Restrictions
FDA officials and persons close to the Administration are pointing fingers at states for difficulties in prescribing HCQ. States that have eased restrictions include Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, Oregon and Texas. For updated information, see https://tinyurl.com/y7oc65gn or https://tinyurl.com/y68d5nyo.
Revolution, Act 1?
Vladimir Lenin said, “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.”
For decades, the surface has appeared undisturbed, but the sappers were at work, sowing divisiveness and discontent. There are many banners: Antifa, the clenched fist, the LGBTQXX rainbow flag, the UN emblem, the Islamic crescent. The only one that is burned is the flag for the “indivisible” one nation under God. Christian and Jewish symbols are defaced or disallowed. A statue of Frederick Douglass is torn down; those of the notorious racist Karl Marx are undisturbed.
Americans do not believe that black lives don’t matter. But what the well-funded, well-organized BLM wants, according to its New York leader Hawk Newsome, is violent revolution, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down the system and replace it”—with Marxism.
Act 2, if it comes, will restore order. “The throwaway radicals now in the streets will not be needed anymore” (see WND’s Whistleblower, June 2020, “Cancel America”).
With COVID, we see that government can assume virtually unlimited power in an emergency that it alone defines. It can destroy your church, your business, your family, even the great city of New York, with public support, to “protect public heath.”
For now, leftist governments are allowing rioters to terrorize cities. About 250 people marched through a suburb of Portland, Oregon, wheeling a guillotine. Some rioters demanded that people offer them refuge in their homes. Many “participants in the march,” said the Portland Police Department, carried hardened shields, armor, and gas masks. At least one “participant” targeted the police air support aircraft with a green laser. Individuals wearing “press” insignia reportedly threw rocks at police. About 50 officers were called from other precincts to manage what was called a “protest response” (tinyurl.com/y5jmzdmd).
What is your diagnosis, Doctor?
Correspondence
Free Speech Imperiled in New York. If you speak out against Gov. Cuomo’s restrictive mandates and you own a business that requires state licensure, watch out. According to the Aug 25 Wall St J, the East Village bar Lucky had its liquor license pulled after the owner started a petition “to reverse the state’s new mandate that bars must serve food with any alcohol purchase.” When the Village Line bar in the Buffalo area mocked Cuomo with its menu items, it too had its liquor license suddenly pulled.
If the governor does not like your “free speech,” retaliation will come quickly and severely. If you are traveling into New York State, you will have to leave the U.S. Constitution at the state line.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Will the Nightmare Continue Forever? Australia and New Zealand are enforcing “Level 4” restrictions because of a minor increase in the number of “cases” compared with other nations. In some areas residents are not allowed to travel more than three miles from their homes and only one person from a household is allowed to leave at any given time. Citizens violating these rules are subject to $10,000 fines or arrest. New Zealand quarantine camps are now fully under the control of the military, and all citizens who test positive or are suspected to have COVID can be separated from their families and placed in the camps, which are hotels converted into prisons. In states like New York, there are low-key programs to set up COVID checkpoints stopping and checking vehicles coming into the state. Virginia is planning mandatory COVID vaccination. Some are calling for hard lockdowns in the U.S.; Federal Reserve member Neel Kashkari recently asserted that Americans are saving more, and thus “they can afford it.” Globalists intend for this to be the “new normal.”
Debi Carey, Lexington, KY
Who Will Do COVID Contact Tracing? Ohio has “partnered” with Partners in Health (PIH) to scale up contact tracing. The stated goal of PIH is to “change and increase the influence of the public health system to eliminate health care inequities.” Chelsea Clinton sits on its board, and funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society, and drug companies. It states that contact tracing may be needed “for years.”
Kristine M. Severyn, Ph.D., R.Ph., tinyurl.com/yyb5et5f
Positive Tests Are NOT Cases. We simply cannot continue to use the wrong language. The number of “cases,” which most of these are not, scares people.
William Briggs, Ph.D., wmbriggs.com/post/32316
Achieving Compliance. A Yale study called “Persuasive Messages for COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake” will research whether guilt, self-interest, or anger is the most effective way to convince people to get a COVID vaccine. It will measure how confident the propaganda makes people feel about a vaccine, whether it makes participants want to persuade others to take the vaccine, whether it produces fear in the unvaccinated, and how much social judgment it will cast on those who choose to remain unvaccinated.
Simon Black, https://tinyurl.com/y2lfyjvn
Life Imitating Art. A 2003 episode of The Dead Zone titled “Plague” featured a viral pandemic caused by a coronavirus, with characters suffering “high fever and respiratory stress.” The cure that saved the world was—chloroquine. The fictitious government of 2003 or Big Tech companies did not suppress the truth, and gave the drug to everybody instead of suppressing it. There was no “cancel culture” or “Great Reset” agenda at that time.
Ileana Johnson, Ed.D., https://tinyurl.com/y6dpo4w8
Inhumane. The untold morbidity of COVID restrictions is overwhelming, as I hear of a mother whose son with a broken neck is in the hospital alone; cancer patients are forced to undergo chemotherapy and adverse reactions alone; a sobbing isolated elderly person placing a hand on a window only wanting touch from a family member or friend. How many more children are stolen and trafficked, unrecognizable in a mask? Officials are pushing for contact tracing, which would increase the number of people being removed from their homes.
Vicki Wooll, M.D., M.P.H., Eagle, ID
Face Freedom. The Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom has launched FaceFreedom.org with referenced facts and videos about masks and mask mandates. Potential harms include self-contamination from touching the mask, then eyes; irritant dermatitis or worsening acne; headache and/or breathing difficulty; and “mask mouth” (e.g. cavities, receding gums).
Twila Brase, R.N., P.H.N., St. Paul, MN
Triage. A friend reports that the system just let her 78-year-old husband die. Paramedics took him to the ER once, where he was given medications for pneumonia and sent home. When he worsened a few days later, paramedics said they would not come because the hospital would not admit him. His wife called and called, but no physician would come to the phone. Reportedly, hospitals in Arizona are running risk assessment analytics to calculate whether a patient has good enough odds for recovery.
Barbara Duck, ducknet.net
