That Explains It

Information came to me from two different sources related to COVID-19 that I hadn’t known before. It is this: It is illegal for the FDA to approve an emergency vaccine for a disease that is treatable. Similar rules apply in other countries.

There was a push—from national and worldwide governmental organizations, from the WHO, from the CDC, from NIH, from pharmaceuticals, you decide who to blame—to use a vaccine to fight this pandemic. In order to get emergency approval, they needed to deny that treatments were working.

That explains why they claimed hydroxychloroquine, zinc, various vitamins, and other treatments would not work. A number of such treatments that were working very well from the beginning—in outpatients at the onset of symptoms. For reasons that seemed mysterious, doctors would send patients home to monitor their symptoms until they worsened enough for hospitalization. (A friend’s husband was still told this just a couple of weeks ago.) Then they would get the treatments that should have been given earlier, and at that point they weren’t shown to be effective.

I’ve been watching this prejudice against treatments that work for a year now, scratching my head. Why would they purposely allow people to die rather than use what was working? I’m still puzzled by the inhumanity of that, but at least this detail about emergency vaccines not approved for a treatable disease is an explanation.

I first heard this from an interview Tom Woods did with Ivor Cummins.  Then I heard it from a doctor in Idaho, a qualified immunologist and virologist, Dr. Ryan Cole. I’ll go through some of what these two said, and then add a third doctor with a related concern.

 

Dr. Ivor Cummins with Tom Woods

Ivor Cummins
image from his website

Ivor Cummins is a biochemical engineer who has been working on health issues like cardiovascular disease for years. He has spent this past year charting data related to COVID-19, which has made him somewhat controversial, or heroic, just because the data isn’t what people are being told. Tom Woods asked him about treatments. He said he has mostly stayed out of that debate because it’s so political. But he did relate the basics. Studies were done badly—it appeared purposely. Some were withdrawn, such as the Lancet report, which was, he said,

in the shortest retraction time ever post-publishing. And that’s because they got their data from a shady outfit that ceased to exist pretty quickly. So there was an awful lot of anti-HCQ stuff, which makes me very suspect.

He didn’t go further on HCQ. But ivermectin? That’s a positive. Ivermectin hasn’t really been on my radar, but it is getting more attention recently. It’s an anti-parasitic, often used for dogs, cats, horses, and other animals. And it has been used in humans for decades, safely. It’s also cheap.

Anyway, back to Dr. Cummins. He said this of ivermectin, and then gives what he thinks is the reason it's still unknown:

Ivermectin, though, seems to have very strong data. And even the WHO a few months ago gave it a nod, and in the US, courts allowed treatment. So I don’t think they could walk away from the strength of data on ivermectin. And yet still we hear nothing.

One of the reasons—and it’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s just business reality—for a vaccine to get emergency approval, one of the crucial considerations or caveats is there can be no alternative treatment available.

And I think that was one of the major drivers for the kind of propaganda campaigns against everything that would have helped, what everyone in the business and influence knew: if there’s a credible treatment that comes out, it may stop the emergency authorization. And there was so much money and intent built up in the vaccines—including the passports, which were planned since 2017 in the EU. They have a road for vaccine passports for 2021.

So these are things that are long wanted by the most influential bodies in the world. And they’re not going to see them canceled or stymied by a nuisance effective treatment coming up. It’s just not going to happen.

I hadn’t known that about the vaccine passport plan from 2017 either.

Tom Woods, on his libertarian podcast, talks about COVID-19 almost daily, bringing in experts and guests on various aspects. So that’s a good source. He passed along a chart in his newsletter the other day, comparing Texas and Mississippi, both of which “opened up” a couple of months ago, alongside several other states that haven’t opened up yet. It has been long enough for any sudden rise to occur. Both of those open states are doing better than those that haven’t yet opened up.

New confirmed cases of Covid-1 in TX, MI, NY, NJ, and MS.
Source: Financial Times analysis of data from the Johns Hopkins CSSE.

Woods has a collection of charts you can get for free, at ChartsTheyForgot.com.

 

Dr. Ryan Cole

Just days after I heard Cummins on Tom Woods’ podcast, a friend passed along a video of Dr. Ryan Cole, giving a presentation in Idaho. He’s the CEO and Medical Director of Cole Diagnostics, and knows immunology and virology.

The first near half of the presentation was on Vitamin D, which bears some coverage—another day. But, about today’s thesis:

Is there a treatment for outpatient COVID?... Unfortunately, the three-letter government federal agencies have practiced therapeutic nihilism. Apathy. Complete apathy….

When, in the history of medicine, have we said to someone, “Well, gosh, you have pneumonia. But once you’re sick enough to be hospitalized in the ICU, we’ll give you an antibiotic for your pneumonia”? Insanity. Insanity.

We as physicians have collectively lost our medical minds. Just saying, “Well, gosh, you have an illness that we know is killing people around the world; why don’t you go home and just see how you do?” Insanity.

The earlier you treat, the more complications you can decrease down the road.

And you know what—there’s a treatment. Unfortunately, if there’s a treatment for a disease, the federal government cannot approve a vaccine. By law. By rule. So the NIH, who is involved in approving medications, they control the patent on the vaccine with Moderna. If the fox is not guarding the henhouse there, I don’t know who is.

That also is insanity, to have the government in bed with a private company, vending a product that they want to give to everybody. And so, when they look at the potential “therapeutics”… Conflict of interest. Federal government in bed with the vaccine company. Absolute conflict. They don’t want a therapy to work, because then they can vend their vaccine.

There have been treatments. Many. He went through several. He avoided argument on hydroxychloroquine, but he did say, “I took it for 10 months. I’ve swabbed thousands of sick people. I never got COVID. So that’s my story on that one.” He went through several others, when they’re best used as opposed to when they’ve been used:

·       Remdesivir: Six months ago the World Health Organization said, “Stop using Remdesivir. It does not add survival rate to anybody.” $3000 a pop. What are our hospitals still doing? Giving Remdesivir. When does Remdesivir work? The first 2-3 days of disease when the virus is replicating. By the time you are hospitalized, you are in a hyperimmune phase of a disease. Your immune system is what the hospital is trying to tune down. Remdesivir, again; it’s like peeing on a forest fire. It does nothing at that point, because the virus is already maximally replicated. Remdesivir—expensive, of benefit to the pharmaceutical companies and their back pocket; no benefit to your health.

·       Convalescent plasma: When does it work? The first 2-3 days of disease, when the virus is replicating. Do people get that outpatient? No, they don’t. They only get it in the hospital, when it’s not effective.

·       Monoclonal antibodies: When do those work. The first couple of days of disease, when the virus is replicating. By the time you’re in hospital, when the virus has reached maximal replication, does it work? No, it doesn’t.

·       Steroids: Do steroids work? To a degree they do, once you’re at an inflammatory stage in the hospital, yes.

Only that last one seemed to be given appropriately.

Dr. Ryan Cole at a Capitol Clarity presentation in Idaho
screenshot from here

Then Dr. Cole spent more time on the one he thinks is giving the best results: ivermectin, again:

We’re in farm country, horse country. You know, you give it to your dogs, your cats, your horses. It’s an antiparasitic. But it’s a molecule. It doesn’t read the textbook and say, “I can only kill parasites.” It’s a molecule. And, fascinatingly, it works against viruses too. Not just SARS-coronavirus, but a bunch of other viruses as well.

During the Q&A at the end, he was asked whether it was good for other things, and he added this:

It’s effective against dengue virus to a degree. Partially effective against Ebola virus. It’s effective against all coronaviruses. It’s effective against certain mechanisms of certain viral families. Yes, it is. West Nile included, which hits Idaho.

He said that in August of last year, it was found to kill coronavirus 99.9 % in petri dish studies. Yet the NIH recommended against it. They did some testing on monkey cells instead of human lung cells, and used too high a dose. “They fudged the data, unfortunately.” But it works.

The rest of the world went ahead and tried it:

So, what did the rest of the world do while we said, “Everybody go home and let your lips turn blue and come to the hospital”? The rest of the world said, “Well, let’s try it.” So what did the rest of the world do? A lot of trials.

Four billion people on the planet have taken this medication since the 1980s. This medication won the Nobel Prize for the discoverer. It is that safe. It is on the world’s safest and most essential drugs list. Four billion people have taken it, with only one or two deaths out of four billion, and those people had a genetic disorder. Super super super safe. We’ve given it to people at 30-40 times recommended dose, no adverse effect. In the world studies—and again, therapeutic nihilism here, we’re finally just starting to do some studies.

So what’s happening here in the US?

Some brave doctors in Texas, in Florida, in Wisconsin have been using it in their hospitals. They have decreased their death rates by 70-90% in their hospitals. 70-90%. In Houston, one hospital was using it; now all the hospitals in Houston are using it, because they saw what the one brave doctor was doing.

There’s this mixed prejudice about trials needing to be done by American doctors before the FDA will approve. And yet they approved the Pfizer vaccine with studies done overseas instead of here.

So it’s absolutely hypocritical of our three-letter agencies to be approving certain things that were done overseas and then not approving things that were done overseas. Placebo-controlled trials—there were 15,000 patients in meta-analysis. It has decreased the deathrate. No matter what your therapy is, ivermectin, if that is added to the mix, it decreases the deathrate by 75%, if given early by 86%.

But wait, there’s more:

100% percent of the world trials have shown benefit. Decreases acquisition. Prophylactically. I’ve been on it for two months now. In Argentina, in a hospital trial, it prevented 100% of acquisition in healthcare workers. 800 doctors and nurses were given it during their big outbreak. Of the 800, zero got COVID. Placebo group: 57% got COVID, that were not on ivermectin.

Scandinavian studies. Prevented acquisition by 88%.

And:

Multiple mechanisms of action of this molecule? Don’t have time. Long medical lecture. But it’s fun to know. The beauty of it—it can cover all the variants, because of its mechanisms. All the variants. Unlike, “Oh, we’re going to have to give you a new formulation of this vaccine or that vaccine or that vaccine.” No. The mechanisms of the action of this molecule against this virus don’t stop.

He can’t say enough good about ivermectin:

You can prophylax. You can treat. And not only that, down the road, if you have long-term symptoms, ivermectin can tune those down as well. It is a phenomenal medication. And it’s an immune modulator, not just a viral killer.

Add to that, the low cost of this treatment:

How much does it cost? Two cents. In India an entire province, 200 million people—COVID’s gone. They put little blister packs together for two cents, gave it out to their entire population. They’re at their grocery stores. They’re at their theaters. They’re walking around. They’re living normal life. Wherever it has been given in the world, they’re back to normal life.

In the US it’s compounded for about $2-5 per dose. You can get a full course of treatment for under $30 and decrease the deathrate by 75-86%.

Here’s the kicker, which agrees with what I said in February: 

Of the half million deaths we have in North America, we would have 375,000 less deaths. There is blood on the hands of bureaucrats in Washington, who have suppressed this life-saving medication. Blood on the hands of those individuals.

He mentions, by the way, that masks don’t work. The particle size is too small to be affected by a mask.

He spends some time talking about the vaccines. He’s not anti-vax. He’s used vaccines for himself and his children. But this one, he’s wary of:

By definition, a vaccine, historically, is giving a protein or an antigen or a part of the pathogen and/or a whole killed pathogen. Injecting a sequence of mRNA [messenger ribonucleic acid] into a human being is a medical device. Historically, what we’re doing right now does not fall under the definition of a vaccine.

They shifted the verbiage in some of the federal register back in October so they could approve this. So it was a sleight-of-hand to change the verbiage. What we have right now is an experimental biological gene therapy immune modulatory injection. We are injecting people with a synthetic sequence of nucleic acid. We have never done this on a large scale in human history. MRNA trials in mammals have led to odd cancers. MRNA trials on mammals have led to autoimmune diseases. Not right away. Six, nine, twelve months later.

They’ve created demand with the scarcity, so people want it. But,

The long-term safety data is not there. 50% of healthcare providers are absolutely not getting this injection. And that’s the reason….

Do the shots decrease severity of disease and hospitalization? Well, they seem to be. But they don’t fall under the definition of creating pure immunity and preventing transmission. If you’re immune after an injection, why in the world would you still have to mask and social distance?

Here's his main safety concern:

My biggest concern, honestly, is antibody-dependent enhancement reaction. You get a shot, you’re fine…. But, if you get a coronavirus shot—historically: SARS, MERS, animal coronaviruses—you get a shot, when you’re exposed to a wild type variant of the virus six, nine, twelve months later, the immune system can go haywire. In the SARS vaccine trials in the ferrets and the monkeys 100%—100%—of the animals, when exposed to wild type virus ended up with immune reaction.

I’ll quote one more doctor on that in a minute. But I wanted to add Dr. Cole’s three-fold recommendation concerning this virus:

1.       Pro hormone/Vitamin D: critical to every Idahoan’s immune health. That should be public health number 1, every fall and winter for every year for the next hundred years. Absolutely. [Worth hearing the first ten minutes of his presentation for details on Vitamin D.]

2.       There is an early prevention and treatment for COVID: ivermectin. [He suggested online pharmacies, such as MyFreeDoctor.com, if your doctor won’t prescribe it. Or share with your doctor the information from the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care website.] https://covid19criticalcare.com/

3.       Your body, your choice. In my opinion the vaccine is unproven, and long-term safety is not there.

Dr. Hooman Noorchashm

This third video was an interview on Tucker Carlson. Dr. Noorchashm is pro-vaccine, and particularly pro-this vaccine. He thinks it’s practically a medical miracle. But—and it’s a big but—he doesn’t like the way they’re pushing it. It makes no sense to vaccinate people who have a natural immunity.

Some people are having reactions, and that should be telling us something:

The signal is almost deafening. The people who are having complications and adverse events are people who have been currently or recently previously infected. I don’t think we can ignore this. There are some very, very strong anecdotal cases that are coming through, and I’m happy to talk to you about these. But I believe that we can’t trade safety for efficacy.

So, in other words, yes, this vaccine is going to be one of the most effective vaccines we’ve ever made. But if you take that efficacy and say, you know what, we’re going to sacrifice the lives of X number of Americans who are unsuspecting and trusting, I think you’re doing a real disservice. I think it’s a problem.

So there’s this disease, from which 99.5% survive—and most of the deaths are elderly with co-morbidities. You prevent people from getting treatments that are available, safe, and cheap—and censor information about them and threaten doctors who offer them. And you get people vaccinated, which is going to kill a certain number.

The people pushing this vaccine have already sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people—preventable deaths—so they could sell this vaccine. And the vaccine doesn’t necessarily cause immunity or completely prevent transmission, like an actual vaccine would. And people are at risk from it.

Harm to fetuses during pregnancy is already an issue. Harm to people who get the shot when they already have immunity is an issue. Harm to people who react to substances in it is an issue. By the way, it contains polyethylene glycol—antifreeze, to keep the vaccine from freezing in storage or transport—which 70% of people are allergic to. Some have only relatively minor reactions. Some could suffer anaphylaxis or death.

Do you want a government entity—or pressure from private businesses, for that matter—to be deciding you’re expendable? The people who prevented so many people, now dead, from getting prevention and treatment?

The vaccine passport topic is something we’ll need to cover another day. But anybody thinking that’s a good idea ought to have this information in hand first.

Censorship Is Deadlier than the Virus

It has been a couple of months since I updated my COVID graphs. My purpose in doing my own data collection is to see the data in a form I find useful—which I haven’t much found elsewhere.

Today I’ll share the latest local data. Then we need to take an honest look at the dishonest reporting and what that has wrought.

 

Data Report

Texas Deaths

This first graph is the 7-day rolling average of daily deaths due to COVID-19 in the state of Texas.

I’m using two sources of data here, but it’s a bit hard on the graph to see the comparison. They are supposedly the same source. Around October 10^th, the Houston Chronicle stopped doing daily updates. I thought that would be altogether, so I went to the source they said they used, which is the Harris County Public Health data. The Chronicle has continued to show daily updates, almost every day, except that about three days a week there are repeats, followed the next day by a cumulative big number. Fortunately, doing 7-day rolling averages evens that out.

Last month the Harris County site decided to redo their page. Up until yesterday I was able to choose between old and new landing pages, so I could continue getting the data I want. Yesterday they stopped that. Getting the number of deaths, so I could compare that to the day before and get the average, was suddenly much more difficult. They’re emphasizing new cases and number of vaccinations; I’m looking at new daily deaths and info on my zip code.

Texas Daily Deaths, 7-day Rolling Average. I collect the data daily from here.

You can see that there was a surge of deaths in August, which receded through early November. Since then there has been a steady rise, equaling the summer surge, for a longer time.

 

Harris County Deaths

Harris County is 13.9% of the population of the state of Texas. And it’s an urban area, meaning dense population. So it would seem logical to expect at least 13.9% of daily deaths to be in Harris County. That would mean 43 deaths per day. But we’ve averaged 15 per day or below since early October.

I don’t think Harris County is doing anything particularly novel. And our county judge continues to label us as “in the red zone,” on a scale that has never moved since it was first installed.

I don’t have a way to find out where all those excess Texas deaths are coming from. With my limited skills, maneuvering around the data sources I have at hand, the only way I see would be to update county data from all 254 counties every day and run my own rolling averages. Anyway, you can see that we’re not in a dangerous upsurge. I’m suspicious that the state numbers are not accurate.

Harris County Deaths, 7-day Rolling Average. I collect the data daily from here.

My Zip Code

I pretty much ignore case numbers except for my zip code. I figure that’s a size and location I can envision, to know whether the numbers are somewhere near accurate.

In a population of 37,146, we have had 2621 total cases, about 7% of the population (my guess is that’s low, but who knows). We have 292 active cases. The number of new daily cases has been going up sort of spikey lately. But the active cases daily have been going down—consistently. We haven’t had a daily increase in the 7-day rolling average for 16 days. We last had a death on January 21^st. The one before that was December 22^nd. You can see on the graph—those below zero days mean fewer active cases than the day before. That means those getting well equals the dark line plus the light line (subtract a negative number means you add it, you remember from middle school math, right?)

New and active cases in my zip code, data from here

 

The Misinformation

There are a great many things related to this illness that suddenly changed after the election, coincidentally. Steve Deace listed several a few weeks ago. Cities suddenly opening up from lockdown, sending kids back to school—even as they claimed a new more contagious strain was spreading even more rapidly. So it appears the messaging changes are related to the apparent outcome of the election.

Of these, one is that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is now recommended as an early treatment to avoid hospitalization.

This was the news I wrote about March 19, 2020; I had heard it from other sources the day before, and wrote about it the same day President Trump mentioned it in his daily briefing.

Here in America it appeared that the treatment was shunned because the President had mentioned it, but there was worldwide prejudice against it. I don’t fully understand why, but my best guess is that it was too easy, and maybe too cheap, a solution to the dangerous pandemic. And, while the illness was real, so was the political use of it to gain power over people. The longer the people remained scared and helpless, the better for the power mongers.

Back during the summer, when we had our surge, and up until recently, you could get censored on social media for mentioning the possible efficacy of HCQ. At the very least, you’d get a Facebook warning label and/or a notice of where to go for “accurate” (i.e., approved) information on COVID-19. Doctors who talked about it had their videos removed or were deplatformed so that they couldn’t get the message out about their actual clinical experiences and numbers. Some got fired. Because we were supposed to “follow the science,” we were told. Very frustrating.

So, when the American Journal of Medicine recommends HCQ in their January issue, we’re supposed to forget all that censoring we went through.

Treatment algorithm for COVID-19-like and confirmed COVID-19 illness 
in ambulatory patients at home in self-quarantine.
Figure 1 from "Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early
Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-10) Infection"
in American Journal of Medicine, January 1, 2021.

How Many Lives Were Lost Needlessly?

What I’d like to know is, how many lives could have been saved using this protocol they now recommend? It’s essentially the protocol doctors recommended last April—because it was successful in virtually 100% of patients treated this way in the early stages.

The drug had used safely for eight decades, and was known for nearly two decades to help with coronaviruses. It seems like a perfect drug to try during such a desperate time. There was that Lancet study that the news media used as an excuse for labeling it as “dangerous,” a study that was pulled within a week, because it was shown to be so flawed. And there was another supposed study that refused to use HCQ until people were hospitalized with severe symptoms—too late for the protocol to be effective—and they were given toxic-level high doses of HCQ and without it being combined with zinc, azithromycin, or anything that was part of the successful protocol. Then, when patients died, they blamed the HCQ for killing them. Why would actual doctors or scientists do that to real human beings placed in their care?

What if everyone had listened to those doctors who used the successful protocol early? Those deaths in the surge might not have happened.

I don’t know whether anyone is doing an actual study to estimate lives lost needlessly because of prejudice against this protocol. But let me do what I think might be a reasonable bit of math.

Looking at the protocol chart, those under 50 and healthy have remained very unlikely to die—roughly 1/10,000, or 0.01%. Those over 50 with 1 or more comorbidities have brought the overall death rate up to 0.1%. That’s ten times higher than for the younger and healthier. But that’s still only 1/1000. Even among those very elderly (I’ve known some), they got pretty sick, but with appropriate treatment they got through it about like they would a bad flu. Nevertheless, the highest percentage of deaths are in the 80+ range with multiple comorbidities.

Some of those doing using protocol early on were dealing with nursing homes—where they were having near 100% success. Zero deaths. I don’t think we can go that far in our estimate, because some people of that age and fragility are going to pass away regardless of treatment. But we might be able to estimate that we could save 90% of them.

If you think that’s too high, we might say 75% of them.

Let’s say that every person who became symptomatic from April on was given this protocol, and it saved 75% of those who died but didn’t have to.

The total US count of deaths from COVID-19 today is 486,992. Some might not have recognized their symptoms until they were severe, and they would have to do the additional hospital protocols. And some would still have died. But many others—those told to stay home and watch their symptoms, take cold medicine, and come to the hospital when their breathing got hard—they could have been treated quickly and easily, the way we treat with Tamiflu for the flu, and been on their way to recovery instead of on their way to death.

So, 75% of 486,992 is 365,224. That’s an estimate of how many lives could have been saved—if the information on what could save them hadn’t been censored, or the medicine banned from being used. Your loved one who died might be among them. It wasn’t “Trump’s fault for mishandling the pandemic.” It was the media’s fault. It was the power mongers’ fault.

Also, we could have returned to our relatively normal lives possibly 8 or 9 months ago. If your business has been closed, or curtailed, or you’ve lost your job, or your kids have had a very spotty education for two consecutive semesters—that’s their fault as well.

Does it really do any good to place blame? Yes. I think it ought to be done. To prevent them from having power over us ever again.

They’re not done controlling. And they’re not done misinforming.

 

The Mixed Information

One of the most difficult things has been getting accurate information. Even my charts—I make them myself by collecting data every day, but I’m dependent on what the county and state say the numbers are. I don’t know whether they’ve overcounted COVID deaths. I don’t know whether they’ve far overcounted or undercounted cases.

There are some things that strike me as ridiculous and make me trust the “experts” even less. Here are a few:

A story from the UK in the Evening Standard says, “Vaccinated Brits told not to hug kids amid fears millions will ignore Covid rules once they have jab.” So, you should get the vaccine, but that won’t mean you can feel free to hug your kids. What? You’re living in the same household all along. You get the vaccine. But you still should social distance—from your children? Was anyone social distancing in their houses, with children, when not ill? What are you, some sort of monster?

Various stories mention that the vaccine won’t mean you can go back to normal. You might still get it. Or you might carry in on you or something. So, keep staying home, keep wearing a mask, keep being scared. Then why get the vaccine at all?

If you’ve already had the disease, you still need to get the vaccine. Why? For that matter, if you’ve already had the disease, you can still get it and spread it—even though that’s not normally how viruses and the immune system work, and the number of people who have been known to have gotten the virus twice is extraordinarily small.

There are many cases where the vaccine itself has harmed people, or killed them. Why should a person at very low risk of death from the illness get a vaccine that could do them more harm than the illness? Because you never know? But you never know about that vaccine either. Pressure to be vaccinated or be prevented from working, or doing business, or traveling seems to be just another power monger thing, if a person isn’t allowed to weigh the risks and make a decision for themselves.

Suddenly now it’s OK to go back to school, and teachers don’t really need the vaccine first. Except the teachers’ unions say, no, too dangerous.

We don’t have enough vaccines for everyone right away, so we prioritize healthcare workers, the vulnerable—and Guantanamo prisoners—before the general public can get it.

I think Dr. Fauci intends to drive me crazy. Early on—don’t wear a mask. Later—wear a mask. Why the change? [paraphase] “Oh, we lied about masks not being useful, because we were afraid the general population would stupidly buy them all up, leaving shortages for healthcare workers.” The expert didn’t foresee that people forced to sit at home during a “two weeks to lower the curve” shutdown emergency were too stupid to just make millions of masks on their own? Or that businesses could retool to provide them?

We should wear masks when we are inside and can’t socially distance. But we must wear them in addition to social distancing. Because?

And outside. On a bike. Or running, hiking, kayaking, even if alone. Even though outdoor spreading is very rare. And meeting for church shouldn’t be allowed, even in cars in a parking lot, outdoors, with masks. Because?

I lost all faith in Dr. Fauci—this is from some time ago, and I don’t have a date or citation, just a memory—when he was trying to advise about having sex for those who are dating during COVID. No clothes and exchange of bodily fluids, no problem. But wear a mask, and don’t kiss. And social distance. I think he’s not clear on the procreative process, nor on the spread of disease.

What have we learned from COVID-19? Do not trust the experts. Do not trust anyone that censors the free exchange of information. Such people are willing to let you and your loved ones die for the sake of their power. And they’re willing to zap the living out of any life you have left. It’s what tyrants do.

 

The COVID Collection

I’ve been writing about the pandemic since the shutdown in March 2020. Some posts are about how the response has affected our civilization, rather than just about the data. Many are about the government overreach. At first it was all consuming, almost every piece for two or three months. I still collect the data daily, but I write only occasionally now on COVID. Today I’m just compiling them, as a sort of history of this past year.

·         “Just Some Personal Stories” November 19, 2020. 

·         “Remembering Freedom and Finding Truth” October. 26, 2020. 

·         “Time for a COVID Update” October 5, 2020. 

·         “What If Conspiracy Isn’t a Theory?” July 30, 2020. 

·         “The Neverending Convention, Part I” July 21, 2020. 

·         “Politics Is Viral” July 9, 2020. 

·         “Data, Debates, and Dystopia” June 11, 2020. 

·         “Coercive vs. Cautious Response” May 28, 2020. 

·         “Breaking Out” May 21, 2020. 

·         “Coming to Be at Peace” May 11, 2020. 

·         “Civil Disobedience—Under What Circumstances?” May 7, 2020. 

·         “Seeing Miracles” May 4, 2020. 

·         “Math and More Questions” April 30, 2020. 

·         “Open to Hope” April 27, 2020. 

·         “Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?” April 23, 2020. 

·         “Federalism Works—Even in a Crisis” April 20, 2020. 

·         “Tyranny's Body Count Rises” April 16, 2020. 

·         “Unrighteous Dominion” April 13, 2020. 

·         “Worldwide Unity” April 9, 2020. 

·         “Encouraging Words” April 6, 2020. 

·         “The Classic Trio: Emotion, Logic, Action” March 30, 2020. 

·         “Innovation” March 26, 2020. 

·         “Crisis Legislation” March 23, 2020. 

·         “Look to Literature” March 19, 2020. 

·         “From Home” March 16, 2020.  

What If Conspiracy Isn’t a Theory?

We rational people are inclined to dismiss conspiracy theories. But what does that do for us when we come up against an actual conspiracy?

I don’t know, exactly. I’m just asking questions. Because I have lots of questions.

America's Frontline Doctors
screenshot from here

I’ve seen multiple videos this week of doctors, on the front lines, treating patients who come in with COVID-19 and testing positive. These doctors are having overwhelming—near 100%—success using the generic anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), typically in combination with zinc (the mineral, taken as a supplement) and Z-pak (azithromycin, an antibiotic, in a convenient dosage-divided package called a Z-pak). Here’s a starting list:

·         America’s Frontline Doctors video, that was taken down from YouTube, made available on The BlazeTV.

·         America’s Frontline Doctors video, redone, made available on their website. 

·         Dr. Simone Gold, one of the Frontline Doctors, talks with Glenn Beck.

·         Texas State Senator Bob Hall holds a townhall with doctors. 

HCQ has been used, safely, for around 80 years, for malaria as well as lupus and a couple of other conditions. While no drug is entirely without side effects, this one has few. One is listed as coronary problems. However, in standard dosages and usages, it is possible that no one has seen that side effect in many decades. In many countries HCQ is sold over-the-counter, so people can have some on hand in case they travel to places with malaria, as a preventative. It is inexpensive and widely available.

Back in 2005, studies showed chloroquine, a derivative of quinine, of which HCQ is a refined type, was found to be beneficial in treating SARS-type viruses. The current coronavirus, COVID-19, is a SARS-type virus (official name SARS-CoV-2), with something like 78% similarity to the last major SARS outbreak. It would seem obvious, then, that HCQ would be a first go-to drug for finding ways to treat the novel coronavirus we’re facing this year. And it was. Korea, Japan, and many African countries used it right away.

This chart shows the results of controlling the virus in countries that used HCQ early, as compared to countries that didn’t.

Comparison of countries using HCQ early to
those who did not. Image found here.

 

Oddly, in many major countries, there has been tremendous prejudice against using HCQ for COVID-19. To those of us in the US, it looked like yet another backlash against President Trump, because he mentioned it as a possible solution to the virus on March 19^th in his daily pandemic briefing.

But that doesn’t explain the huge backlash to the drug in many other countries. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. Why is there this prejudice against a drug that has been known to be safe, has been found to be effective against this virus, and could provide a solution that would allow the panic over the spread of the virus to recede so we could get back to something like normal life?

My first awareness of the drug came the day before President Trump’s mention on March 19^th. The announcement I heard came out of a lab in France. This was one week into the shutdown of businesses here in Houston—which we were told would be only two to three weeks to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system (but are still hanging over us). Great news!I thought. I hope we learn more. The next day President Trump mentioned it, among other possibilities, and this sounded hopeful too.

Soon after, I heard an interview with a New York doctor, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who had had 100% success with, at that time, nearly 700 patients. He treated them early, as outpatients, using the combination of HCQ, zinc, and Z-pak. Zero deaths. None ever even needed hospitalization or ventilator.

I also heard a report from Dr. Robin Armstrong, in the Galveston area, a doctor I knew of, who had had dozens of nursing home residents test positive for the disease. They treated with HCQ (he didn’t mention the combination with zinc and Z-pak), and they had no deaths or hospitalizations. That’s with the most high-risk population. Backlash came against him because he is active in the Republican Party, and that supposedly made him lie for Trump’s sake? Even though any journalist could follow up with that nursing home and get corroboration.

In late May a study was published in The Lancet, supposedly debunking any and all reports of success with HCQ. That was big news, because it was a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. However, it wasn’t what it purported to be. In fact, the data could not be corroborated, and turned out to be simply a fraud, an embarrassment to major journals such as The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. Three of the four doctors signed onto the study withdrew their names, completely discrediting the report. The Lancet’s editor answered that the journal is prepared to examine methodology, but isn’t equipped to investigate the possibility that entire articles and associated data are fabricated; that kind of deception is unfortunately too easy to do.

The media narrative is still that HCQ has been discredited.

There’s a Dr. Didier Raoult, in France, who began showing HCQ’s effectiveness against the coronavirus as early as February. He reported in late May that he was finding HCQ with Z-pak helpful in the vast majority of over 1000 cases. He has so far treated over 4,000 using this protocol. It was his work that got the attention of the WHO to start a study, and yet they didn’t study what he reported.

The WHO study was first halted in late May, when The Lancet published its report. But, with its retraction, the WHO picked up again June 3^rd, studying HCQ, Remdesivir, and two other drugs. In this study HCQ was withheld until patients were hospitalized, possibly on ventilators, and likely to die. At this point HCQ was given—not in the trio combination, usually not in combination with either zinc or Z-pak. And HCQ was given in high doses, possibly harmful doses, in fact four times the amount India was using in their HCQ study. And then the WHO reported the shocking news that, while using HCQ to treat, a third of patients had died, and they recommended against its use entirely.

Well, of course. You didn’t give it at the right time. You didn’t give it in a safe dosage. And you didn’t give it in the combination shown to be working.

Imagine, if you had the regular flu, which kills large numbers of people annually. Instead of taking Tamiflu at the outset, you have that withheld until you are in the hospital with pneumonia or whatever other symptoms people get when the flu kills them. And at that point you are given Tamiflu in very large, possibly toxic, doses. That is essentially what the WHO did, rather than study whether HCQ in combination could become the Tamiflu for COVID-19. Why did they do that?

The WHO is a worldwide organization. Trump Derangement Syndrome doesn’t explain this worldwide patient-killing study. Nor does it explain the prejudice against HCQ in France—from which I first heard the success story—and other countries.

Dr. Rob Elens, a general practitioner in The Netherlands, began using HCQ + zinc with his patients and had them fully recovering within four days—much faster than the 15-21 days for patients without the treatment. Then the government threatened to remove his medical license if he didn’t stop using the treatment.  Dr. Elens was censored in a similar way to Drs. Ericksen and Massihi, from California. Their videos get scrubbed, and no one is allowed to reference them on social media.

As we saw this week, with the doctors in Washington, DC, that continues to happen. One of the main ideas in the Frontline Doctors’ video was that HCQ could be used as a preventative. It could be a way for schools to reopen; at-risk teachers or students with underlying conditions could take a low preventative dose. Front-line caregivers have been doing that.

Wednesday night Glenn Beck interviewed one of the Frontline Doctors, Dr. Simone Gold.  She mentioned that, in France, where HCQ had been considered safe and sold over-the-counter for decades, they announced a change in status on January 2020, making it available by prescription only. So I looked into that. It was true.

From a two-part story from Life Site on Dr. Raoult and hydroxychloroquine, there’s this:

When Raoult announced “game over” for the Chinese coronavirus on February 25, it came to public attention that hydroxychloroquine, a safer and better tolerated derivate of chloroquine which is itself a pharmaceutical drug derived from quinine, was no longer available over-the-counter in France since January 13, following a regulation published by delegation for Health Minister Agnès Buzyn by the General Director of Health, Jérôme Salomon.

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), known as “Plaquénil” in France, was developed in Germany roughly at the same time as chloroquine in the 1930s and has been efficiently used as an anti-malaria drug since then until resistant forms of malaria appeared. It is currently used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Doctors have more than 80 years experience with prescribing this cheap molecule that was never considered to be a dangerous medication—until the beginning of this year.

The surprising inscription of HCQ on the list of poisonous substances, only dispensable with a prescription, only weeks before the coronavirus was identified as having entered into France, led many to wonder whether the move had been deliberate in this context.

It was underscored in particular that Buzyn’s husband, Yves Lévy, until recently head of the INSERM (National Institute for health and medical research) was a member of the French delegation present at the opening of the Wuhan P4 “high security” laboratory that conducts research on dangerous viruses, and that he also had a personal axe to grind against Didier Raoult who was one of the first to complain about a conflict of interests when Buzyn was named Health Minister and became supervisor of the INSERM—and of her own husband. These accusations were brushed aside by the mainstream press.

The timing does seem suspicious. With further looking I learned that France had actually made the status change to HCQ some months earlier, in late 2019, and just hadn’t made a formal announcement until January. But I can’t find an explanation for the change in status in the first place.

A drug being sold over-the-counter is considered safe under recommended use and dosage. That doesn’t mean that such drugs aren’t poisonous in the wrong amounts. In fact, most are. The one time I had to contact poison control was when my toddler got into a bathroom medicine cabinet (where she had previously been unable to reach) and got into some Sudafed, a decongestant. They looked like little red candies. And I had to use Ipecac to get the poison out. Another common poison is the very safe acetaminophen, brand name Tylenol. It’s one of the most common accidental and purposeful poisons.

The fact that it can be consumed in poisonous amounts does not mean it isn’t considered safe for over-the-counter sales. What evidence was used to push for the change in France? And why then? Why just before it’s needed worldwide, when it had been used safely for eight decades?

I’m sure there’s an explanation. But I don’t think it’s science based.

Here in the US, HCQ has been by prescription all along, although considered quite safe. Using it in an off-label manner should be a decision between patient and doctor. But it has gotten so that doctors are pressured not to prescribe it, pharmacists are pressured to inquire as the to purpose and not dispense it for the coronavirus, and some states have outlawed its use in treating the coronavirus. Ohio’s State Board of Pharmacy made a rule earlier this week banning the use HCQ for coronavirus, but at Governor Mike DeWine’s insistence they backtracked today and called for more data before enforcing such a rule. 

Is this apparent conspiracy against HCQ because of money? Maybe in part. Remdesivir, for example, is new and could be lucrative if found helpful, so there’s no surprise it was favored—including by Dr. Fauci, who was invested in its producer.

But I don’t think that explains it enough. Why the uproar over something that could help people, is cheap to try, and has been shown not only to not cause harm but to bring relief? And why the outcry over other remedies as well that might be useful immediately? Unless there’s a desire to keep the pandemic going, the economies of the world shut down, and society controlled—until a vaccine is developed that can be further used to enforce control?

Because I have other big questions. This is the first outbreak in which it became almost immediate policy, in countries around the world, to quarantine the healthy, rather than the sick and vulnerable. How did that become such a widespread policy, when it was in contrast to world experience and history?

It turns out that there has been planning going on for quite some time. A pandemic respiratory virus was thought to be inevitable.

Bill Gates talked about the possibility in 2018. Coincidentally, he has invested heavily in vaccines, providing them for different purposes worldwide. Some of his vaccines have been shown to cause significant vaccine injuries, often to the poor and underprivileged he has provided them to, such as India. Gates, a financial supporter of the WHO, wants to connect vaccination with basic freedoms. He has suggested that people who forego an eventual vaccination for COVID-19 should not be allowed to travel or attend school, meetings, or work. And he favors a digital ID to verify and track such data on citizens.

Coincidentally, he sent out a tweet on December 19, 2019, saying, “What’s next for our foundation? I’m particularly excited about what the next year could mean for one of the best buys in global health: vaccines.”

In September 2019 Gates participated in a “pandemic exercise,” called Event201, which was specific about response to a coronavirus outbreak—one month before it appears to have begun in Wuhan.

In 2018 a video called “A Simulation for a Global FluPandemic,” was made by The Institute for Disease Modeling, posted courtesy of the Gates Foundation, showing a flu virus originating in China and spreading across the globe, killing millions—eerily similar to what has actually happened. 

In 2017, just as the Trump administration was beginning, Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke at a conference, predicting that sometime during this administration’s term there was a high likelihood of an infectious disease outbreak. He was pushing for funding in preparation. 

Oddly, fiction appears predictive. A movie called Dead Plague (I haven’t seen it) mentions use of hydroxychloroquine. HCQ had been tried on SARS in 2005, so a good researcher probably found that for the script. The movie Contagion (very popular lately on Netflix, but I haven’t watched it either) is about a coronavirus, and it shows lockdowns, facemasks, handwashing—essentially preparing the public’s expectations for our current reality.

There’s a 2010 document, put out by the Rockefeller Foundation, called Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development, with a chapter called “Lockstep,” describing a response to a global pandemic. It’s written as though it were describing a past event, but is actually predictive. Here’s a quote:

The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains.

Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers

The report goes on to describe a future even after the pandemic has been quelled:

Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty—and their privacy—to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability.

In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests.

Is this the actual plan, laid out a decade ago? I’d be inclined to believe it was a type of war gaming—playing out scenarios in order to come up with various plans. Except that so much has actually happened. And we don’t have a good explanation for why so many governments imposed control over citizens in otherwise free countries—in unprecedented ways.

I’m not an investigative journalist. I’m just a blogger, trying to piece together an understanding from what I read and hear and see. But from where I’m sitting right now, my best guess is that there is an actual conspiracy, on a large scale, attempting to take away freedoms from free people and impose tyrannical control over them.

I don’t know whether it’s organized. As “Marty” said in the movie Sneakers, in reference to organized crime, “It’s not that organized.” That doesn’t mean there isn’t something that attracts power mongers to act in concert toward an end that freedom lovers must resist with all our might.

If you want to do more of your own research, you can add these resources, in addition to what I’ve linked within my post:

·         Dr. Risch on Laura Ingraham’s show 

·         Sharyl Atkisson report on hydroxychloroquine from May 18, 2020

·         “How a False Hydroxychloroquine Narrative was Created” 

·         “Israel announces antibody that neutralizescoronavirus, even amongst infected” 

·         California doctor, Dr. George Fareed, suggests prophylactic (preventative): 

·         Two-part story I mentioned above, about Dr. Raoult, of France: “The “strange” fight by world-leading infectious disease doctor to continue “spectacular” results saving covid-infected patients”

o   part I 

o   part II 

·         I hesitate to recommend this, because it reads like a long and involved conspiracy theory, but I did find the citations at the end, and some of the information, quite useful: “Stop World Control”