RUTHFULLY YOURS

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In so many words—and data—CDC has quietly admitted that all of the indignities of the Covid-19 pandemic management have failed: the masks, the distancing, the lockdowns, the closures, especially the vaccines, all of it failed to control the pandemic.  It’s not like we didn’t know that all this was going to fail, because we said so as events unfolded early on in 2020, that the public health management of this respiratory virus was almost completely opposite to principles that had been well established through the influenza period, in 2006.  The spread of a new virus with replication factor R0 of about 3, with more than one million cases across the country by April 2020, with no potentially virus-sterilizing vaccine in sight for at least several months, almost certainly made this infection eventually endemic and universal.

Covid-19 starts as an annoying, intense, uncomfortable flu-like illness, and for most people, ends uneventfully two-three weeks later.  Thus, management of the Covid-19 pandemic should not have relied upon counts of cases or infections, but on numbers of deaths, numbers of people hospitalized or with serious long-term outcomes of the infection, and of serious health, economic and psychological damages caused by the actions and policies made in response to the pandemic, in that order of decreasing priorities.  Even though numbers of Covid cases correlate with these severe manifestations, that is not a justification for case numbers to be used as the actionable measure, because Covid-19 infection mortality is estimated to range below 0.1% in the mean across all ages, and post-infection immunity provides a public good in protecting people from severe reinfection outcomes for the great majority who do not get serious “long-Covid” on first infection.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/17/sweden-has-been-vindicated-on-covid/

Almost as quickly as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world in 2020, governments began locking down. These measures, we were told, might have been insanely authoritarian and historically unprecedented, but politicians were just ‘following the science’. We simply had to give up our freedoms in order to save lives. And yet, in Sweden, ‘the science’ looked very different. The nation refused to go into full lockdown, insisting this would be better for health in the long-run. It made itself a global pariah in the process.

So, four years on from the first lockdowns across the West, has Sweden’s more liberal approach been proven wrong or vindicated? Swedish epidemiologist and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff, one of the co-authors of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, joined Brendan O’Neill on the latest episode of his podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show, to discuss how Sweden fared. They also discussed censorship and the lockdown on dissent during the pandemic. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full episode here.

Brendan O’Neill: Were you taken aback by how difficult it became to criticise lockdowns during the pandemic and have a reasoned, scientific discussion?

Martin Kulldorff: I was shocked. I never imagined that someone like me, a scientist stating what used to be basic principles of public health, would suddenly be at the centre of a political whirlwind. The interesting thing for me, though, was that I had two different experiences simultaneously during the pandemic. On the one hand, I was mostly writing and advising in the US, where I live. But at the same time, I was deeply involved in the Swedish debate. I was published in Swedish newspapers, defending Sweden’s approach to the pandemic. In the US and UK, I was a fringe voice opposing the establishment. But in Sweden, I was actually defending the establishment position of not closing everything down.

Of course, not everyone in Sweden was happy with the government’s strategy. There was a group of 22 scientists who publicly opposed the no-lockdown approach in 2020. In effect, they wanted Sweden to copy China, the US and the rest of the world and shut society down. So they published critical articles in Sweden’s major newspapers, making arguments that I completely disagreed with and responded to. And even though I thought they were wrong, I’m glad they wrote those pieces. There were obviously plenty of people in Sweden who agreed with them and were asking why we were doing things differently. People wanted to know why we weren’t locking down like everywhere else.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/kidneys-dont-see-color

On March 16, 2024, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a 62-year-old man suffering from end-stage kidney disease. The groundbreaking operation was, among much else, a refutation of the STEM diversity crusade, which threatens the medical progress that lay behind the landmark procedure.

Transplant recipient Richard Slayman had endured the usual debilitating effects of kidney failure for years. Healthy kidneys filter toxins and excess fluids from blood and excrete those waste products as urine. When kidneys fail, if no donated human kidney is available to replace them, patients spend hours a week hooked up to a dialysis machine that filters their blood mechanically. Slayman had already spent seven years on dialysis before receiving a human kidney in 2018. That transplanted kidney itself faltered, however, and by 2023, Slayman was back on dialysis. This time, though, he required biweekly visits to the hospital to keep his blood vessels open. He developed congestive heart failure. And he rejoined the more than 100,000 Americans waiting, often futilely and fatally, for a human kidney.

If Slayman’s new pig kidney continues to function, the capacity to transplant animal organs successfully into humans (a process known as xenotransplantation) will be as significant as curing cancer, says nephrologist Stanley Goldfarb. Getting to this point required 125 years of scientific creativity and an ever more complex understanding of molecular biology. None of that development had anything to do with racial identity.

Slayman’s genetically modified pig kidney represents a return of sorts to the origins of transplant science. When surgeons started contemplating organ transplants in the early twentieth century, they initially focused on organs from other mammals, since harvesting human organs was considered problematic at best. The French surgeon Alexis Carrel began a series of transplant experiments on dogs after discovering how to connect arteries to arteries and how to widen narrowed vessels—prerequisites to organ transplantation. For the next several decades, surgeons in France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S. transplanted goat, sheep, and monkey kidneys into dying human patients, but the organs (and patients) quickly failed. It would take the evolution of another branch of medical science—immunology—to understand why.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/birx-busted/

It Wasn’t Fauci: How the Deep State Really Played Trump, a short documentary now making the rounds, aims to prove that, in 2020, President Trump was not in command of the nation. The “fourth branch” of government, the administrative or “deep state,” took control and basically shut down the country, leaving disaster on every hand. One of the major players, Dr. Deborah Birx, has managed to escape notice.

Birx graduated from Houghton College and earned her medical degree at the Penn State. From 1980 to 1994 she served the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of colonel, and served a stint at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Birx’s bio showed no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry but she worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Fauci contended that AIDS was caused by HIV, a claim disputed by Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley,  Charles A. Thomas, and other leading medical scientists in “The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.” Instead of debating these scientists, all more qualified than himself, Fauci branded them “AIDS denialists,” sought to block their media appearances, and in some cases deprived them of funding. See professor Duesberg’s Inventing the AIDS Virus, a virtual post-grad course in virology and exposure of Fauci. Deborah Birx was his faithful disciple.

From 2005-2014, Dr. Birx served as director of the CDC’s Division of Global HIV/AIDS (DGHA) In that role, Birx led the implementation of CDC’s PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) programs around the world. As the documentary points out, that was Birx’s ticket to the Covid task force, where her mantra was “silent asymptomatic spread,” endless repeated, with several variations.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/so_the_cdc_knew_all_along_about_those_780_000_side_effects_to_its_covid_vaccine_as_it_was_assuring_us_it_was_safe.html

Does anyone in “public service” ever get busted for lying to the public?

It would seem not, based on a report that the Centers for Disease Control covered up 780,000 reports of significant side effects, such as seizures, tinnitius, and facial paralysis, from the COVID vaccine it was foisting onto the often hesitant public, oilily assuring that it was “safe and effective,” and anyone questioning that was an “anti-vaxxer.”

According to Epoch Times, as seen on The Jewish Voice:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released previously hidden reports of facial paralysis and other adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.

The 780,000 reports were received shortly after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out and show that people experienced a wide range of post-vaccination problems, including heart inflammation, miscarriages, and seizures.

“Loss of consciousness and seizure immediately following injection. Went to ER by ambulance,” one person reported.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-study-pours-cold-water-on-the-medias-maternal-mortality-hyperventilating/

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we compare the results of a recent study on maternal mortality with the available media reporting on the topic, look at an absurd headline from The Independent, and cover more media misses.

New Study Upends Prevailing Narratives on U.S. Maternal Mortality

Dr. Ingrid Skop, an ob-gyn and vice president and director of medical affairs for the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, regularly has women in her office who have read news reports on the so-called maternal health-care crisis in the U.S., which is said to have the highest rate of maternal mortality of any high-income country.

“What I tell [them] is that we have had troubles with our data, and we’ve put some systems in place that have helped to detect more deaths. When it looks like the rates are rising, it is probably because we are doing a better job of detecting as opposed to actually having more deaths,” she said, adding “the good news is the death that you’re worried about, a catastrophic event at the time of birth, those rates are improving dramatically.”

“You do not need to be afraid of childbirth,” she said.

So she wasn’t surprised by a new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology last month that found the national U.S. maternal mortality rate is much lower than has been reported by the CDC, which has reported a rate of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births.

The new study instead finds a rate of 10.4 deaths per 100,000 births and also shows a rate that remained largely stable between 1999 and 2021.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mass-general-brighams-misguided-drug-policy

A self-described libertarian friend once described to me the feeling she had when it was time to leave the hospital with her newborn baby. She remembered looking at the nurse and thinking, “You’re just going to let me take this thing home? I have no idea what I’m doing.” Even those of us who are very skeptical of government intervention know instinctively that a lot can go wrong with an infant. They might not be eating enough. They might catch a virus. They might be injured by a well-meaning toddler.

The constant attention required of new parents is hard enough when you’re sober. Now imagine trying to do it when you’re high—or suffering withdrawal. Surely, if any parent needs a nurse or doctor to check up on them before taking a baby home, it is parents using drugs. But a new policy enacted at Mass General Brigham in Boston last week will discourage medical professionals from reporting mothers who test positive for illegal substances to the state’s child welfare agency.

Why would the hospital system adopt such a policy? You guessed it: to avoid perpetuating “systemic racism.” Representatives of the Mass General Brigham administration’s “United Against Racism” initiative found that “Black pregnant people are more likely to be drug tested and to be reported to child welfare systems than white pregnant people.” As a result, the hospital will “update policies that automatically trigger mandatory filings with child welfare agencies when a pregnant individual is engaged in treatment for substance use disorder, absent any other concerns for potential abuse or neglect.”

Let’s start from the top. Racial disparities are not prima facie evidence of racism. Black children are three times as likely to die from maltreatment as white children, so it is not unreasonable to assume that they are at higher risk. It’s also not unreasonable to assume that black mothers would get reported to child protective services more often than white mothers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-wokeness-in-medicine/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

Last year, I wrote for the magazine about the “rampant politicization of health care.” Thanks to greater government involvement in medicine, the ties between academia and the practice of medicine, and other pressures (with George Floyd’s death serving as a special catalyst), medical-school curricula, professional medical associations, and other aspects of the field increasingly reflect and transmit left-wing ideology. Take a look at some med-school curricula:

The Harvard Medical School course “Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development” promises that “clinical exposure and education will focus on serving gender and sexual minority people across the lifespan, from infants to older adults.” An Indiana University Medical School “Sex and Gender Primer” for first-year students stresses that sex and gender “fall along a continuum, rather than being binary constructs,” and provides instruction on the use of “inclusive terminology.” A June 2020 letter from medical-school faculty at the University of California, San Diego, referred to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and committed to creating “a curriculum which addresses the part we play in righting these systemic injustices” and using “these tragic events to strengthen our resolve.” One survey found that 39 of America’s 50 most prestigious medical schools contained some element of mandatory critical-race-theory training in their curricula.

Unfortunately, more examples of this general trend abound. In City Journal, Ian Kingsbury, director of research at Do No Harm (which specializes in documenting and fighting the politicization in medicine), describes one: The New England Journal of Medicine is denying that there could be any biological basis for the greater risk black women have for preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy complication involving high blood pressure.

The higher risk must, instead, be the fault of “the stress imposed by structural and individual racism.” It correctly observes that black females born in the U.S. are likelier to have preeclampsia than black women born elsewhere, and that those in the latter group who have lived here ten years or more are likelier to have it than those who have lived here for fewer years. But these differences have plausible explanations. They’re just not one that the newly politicized medical field wants to hear: genetics and behavior.