RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-vaccines-neglected-side-effects-neuropathy-nih-fda-cdc-transparency-react19-8afa87b1?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Brianne Dressen was an energetic mom, an avid hiker and a preschool teacher—until she got a Covid vaccine.

Ms. Dressen, 42, was among the first Americans to be vaccinated. She volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s trial, and she received her first dose on Nov. 4, 2020, at a clinic in West Jordan, Utah. “I am pro-science and pro-vaccine,” Ms. Dressen says. “I was more than glad to participate in the scientific process.”

But even highly beneficial vaccines can have rare serious side effects. Minutes after the shot, Ms. Dressen’s arm began to tingle, her vision grew blurry, and sounds became muffled. The clinic suggested she see a neurologist, who directed her to the emergency room. The ER couldn’t figure out what was wrong and sent her home.

Her condition steadily deteriorated over the next 2½ weeks. She experienced extreme nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, painful vibrating sensations, pins and needles in her arms and face, numbness, tremors, brain fog, heart palpitations and fever. Physicians were mystified. They diagnosed her with a “silent migraine” and “anxiety due to the Covid vaccine” after a hospital stay. She was provided occupational and physical therapy but spent weeks in bed, unable to tolerate sound, light or even her children’s touch.

In the ensuing months, she faced not only debilitating symptoms but also bureaucratic indifference—though government officials tried to be helpful at first. On Jan. 11, 2021, her husband, Brian, a U.S. Army chemist, contacted Avindra Nath, intramural clinical director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Dr. Nath responded immediately that he would discuss her condition with other National Institutes of Health neurologists. He asked for blood and spinal-fluid samples for analysis, and he ominously mentioned that “the current political climate is another aspect that we need to keep an eye on.”

Dr. Nath didn’t elaborate, but by now the politics of the Covid vaccines are familiar. Bitter disputes over mandates fed skepticism of the shots and claims, often false and outlandish, about their dangers. At the same time, public-health authorities, anxious to promote vaccination, played down risks that were real if rare, leaving patients like Ms. Dressen in limbo

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/top-us-non-profit-hospitals-and-ceos

OpenTheBooks.com auditors investigated America’s healthcare system and found so-called “non-profit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting sicker and poorer.

Topline

The 20 largest non-profit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021 from $200.6 billion in 2018. The year 2021 is the latest year available for cross-comparison purposes.

Those hospital systems received congressional Covid bailouts of $23 billion and only two providers partially paid their Covid bailout back.

Meanwhile, hospital executives racked up Wall Street-sized compensation packages which frequently exceeded $10 million per year. For example, the CEO at Ascension Healthcare based in St. Louis, Missouri made $13 million in 2021 – with three-year pay exceeding $22 million.

Furthermore, American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022. While “comparable country averages” rebounded from a Covid-related drop in 2021, the U.S. continued declining in life expectancy.

Yet, the cost of health care is still astronomically high, as the average family paid $22,463 in health insurance premiums in 2022. That does not include out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles, which can be thousands more.

This has led to medical debt for about 100 million Americans.

In 2020, the Trump administration issued, and the Biden administration finalized (January 2021) a healthcare transparency rule – to spur market competition and inform patients.

Yet, two years after the rule took effect, an independent audit found that nearly three-quarters of hospitals in the country were not complying— flouting the mandate that prices be posted clearly and comprehensively.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/08/a-much-better-and-more-trusted-cdc/

“The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director,” proclaimed Dr. Rochelle Walensky last week. The CDC boss is stepping down from the job, which she took “with the goal of leaving behind the dark days of the pandemic and moving CDC—and public health—forward into a much better and more trusted place.”

Before they place more trust in an allegedly better CDC, embattled Americans might review events that took place on Walensky’s watch, including the sudden departure of a key CDC figure. 

In April 2021, the CDC reassigned Dr. Nancy Messonnier, longtime director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). In a May 7, 2021, White House briefing, Walensky suddenly announced that Messonnier would be stepping down. 

“Dr. Messonnier has been a true hero,” Walensky told reporters. “And through her career, in terms of public health, she’s been a steward of public health for the nation. Over this pandemic and through a many-decade career, she’s made significant contributions, and she leaves behind a strong, strong force of leadership and courage in all that she’s done.”

Walensky did not explain why, exactly, Messonnier was leaving the CDC and did not detail any of the “significant contributions” the NCIRD director had made. That invites a review of what the “true hero” Messonnier managed to accomplish in those “dark days of the pandemic.”

In November 2020, Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board called for Messonnier to take a central role in briefings on the pandemic as a way to elevate science and restore public trust in the Centers for Disease Control. The chosen messenger got right to it. 

In a CDC telebriefing on January 17, 2020, Messonnier mentioned “the outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan City, China, which has been identified as being caused by a novel coronavirus.” It was “a serious situation,” and the CDC official cautioned about travel to and from Wuhan. 

In a January 24 briefing, Messonnier said “we expect to find more cases of novel coronavirus in the United States associated with the ongoing and expanding outbreak in Wuhan, China.”  Sarah Owermohle of Politico wanted to know “what kind of dialogue are you guys are having with Chinese health authorities, and “if there is any inkling” of the origin of the novel virus.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/new-scientific-study-undercuts-rationale-for-gender-affirming-care/?utm_source=

The data do not clearly support hormonal and surgical interventions meant to ‘transition’ children. Instead, they point to many possible harms.

The United States has become the world’s most adamant promoter of what is called “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents who identify as being other than their sex. This approach ranges from “social affirmation” (the use of preferred pronouns, for example) and “medical affirmation” such as puberty blocking to radical “surgical affirmation,” meaning mastectomies, facial feminization or masculinization, cosmetic procedures, and, in a few cases, even genital removal and refashioning.

Beginning to “transition” kids while they are still immature remains intensely controversial. But the increasingly woke medical establishment claims that the gender-affirming approach is “settled science” and the only efficacious approach to treating these children. “Protecting Transgender Health and Challenging Science Denialism in Policy,” a recent column published in the New England Journal of Medicine, denigrated legislative efforts to restrict medical and surgical affirmation as “science denialism”:

A virulent brand of science denialism is emerging in the U.S. legal system, as states enact bans on gender-affirming health care. Misused clinical research and disinformation have provided legal cover for bans on essential treatments for transgender and gender-expansive (TGE) people.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/04/the-wages-of-woke-are-death/

Going woke means more than, as the saying says, going broke. It also means the ultimate loss of life. The grip of wokeness on our society will eventually kill Americans.

Let’s begin with health care. Medical school students, whose learning should be focused on the healing arts, are being taught social justice ideology. Apparently white supremacy, oppression and structural racism must be addressed by America’s doctors-to-be, as well as the sin of being white.

Diversity, equity and inclusion studies are being required at some schools, which of course crowds out time used in the past to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be a good doctor. Politics have no place in medical schools, but there they are.

At the same time, some schools, as many as 40, are dropping standardized testing for diversity’s sake, reports the Daily Caller. The Medical College Admission Test, which “determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study,” does not serve the purposes of the social justice mafia. Now there are other legitimate academic avenues to medical school outside the MCAT. But as we’ve seen in other institutions of higher learning, standards designed to demonstrate and ensure competence are being killed off.

Given these facts, it’s a certainty that many of this country’s doctors of tomorrow and beyond will not have the competence needed to keep patients alive and well. Americans will die or suffer unnecessarily because wokeness demanded that the medical community marginalize them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joseph-ladapo-bucks-the-covid-vaccine-orthodoxy-politico-sensitivity-analysis-myocarditis-43201b8b?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_171&cx_artPos=5&mod=WTRN#cxrecs_s

Justice Clarence Thomas isn’t the only black conservative target of a recent media drive-by. Last week Politico published a hit piece on Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who has long resisted the left’s Covid orthodoxies.

The story, by Arek Sarkissian, claims that Dr. Ladapo “personally altered” a state study last year to show that mRNA vaccines posed a significantly higher cardiac health risk for young men “than had been established by the broader medical community.” In reality, he simply reviewed a study conducted by lower-level staff before publication.

Nowhere in Politico’s piece will you find an explanation of what’s supposed to be wrong with Dr. Ladapo’s edits. It merely quotes people who denounce it, such as Matt Hitchings, an assistant biostatistics professor at the University of Florida, who asserts without elaboration: “I think it’s a lie.” Politico does include a link to the pre-published study, which indicates Dr. Ladapo’s edits and shows how Mr. Sarkissian is making a Matterhorn out of a molehill.

Dr. Ladapo’s study found a doubled risk of cardiac death for men 18 to 39 in the 28 days after vaccination. His offense appears to be that he removed a “sensitivity analysis” in the draft study that showed a statistically insignificant increase in cardiac mortality among young men after the second dose.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/what_happened_in_hospitals_during_covid.html

Hospitals should be places you can trust to provide comfort and healing when you’re most vulnerable. But that trust may have been shattered by brutal Covid protocols that critics claim turned many hospitals into hellscapes of systematic medical murder.

The victims’ stories have been muffled by the mainstream media, but they’re starting to break through. For one thing, lawsuits against three hospitals have been filed in California by 14 bereaved families who claim their loved ones were killed by a deadly protocol. Meanwhile, activist organizations like Protocol Kills, the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation, and American Frontline Nurses are collecting and documenting stories from bereaved families about what happened to their loved ones when they entered a hospital hoping for healing and, instead, were led to bizarre and tortured deaths.

I find it heartbreaking to read their stories, which share a haunting similarity, a feeling of being trapped in a highly organized nightmare. The ritual progresses in predictable stages: first, the patient is isolated from family, who are unable to advocate for their loved one or monitor what’s happening. Next, the patient is diagnosed with Covid-19 or Covid pneumonia, even if they came to the hospital because of a broken arm. Then, they’re bullied into getting remdesivir, a highly toxic drug which killed 53 percent of Ebola patients who had the misfortune to take it. Next, according to the California lawsuit, “They are placed on a BiPap machine at a high rate, making it difficult for them to breathe. Their hands are often tied down so they can’t take the BiPap machine off their face.”

I know this is getting unbearably painful to read, but stay with me to the bitter end to memorialize the victims’ suffering.  As the patients writhe in agony, psychiatrists are brought in to diagnose them with agitation and sedate them. Now, shot up with remdesivir, sedated with drugs that make it tough to breathe against the BiPap ventilator, and strapped down in restraints, the victims are denied food and sometimes even water.  Should they try to summon help, they may find the hospital played a vicious trick on them, placing their phone and call button for the nurse out of reach. In the final stages, they are intubated and slowly die alone, left to rot into a skeletal corpse with bed sores. Is this America?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/23/the-dangerous-fad-of-transgenderism/

Fads aren’t always harmful things. Hula hoops, goldfish swallowing, and flagpole sitting have come and gone and generally were not toxic. In the 1970s, various eating disorders were the rage. But they were treated as physical disorders and serious mental health problems. Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Emily Deans observed, “Eating disorders in adolescents are strongly predicted by the earlier presence of depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety.” Her treatment recommendations included, “A personalized approach, based on treating underlying depression, anxiety, nutritional deficiencies, and teaching that our bodies deserve to be nourished with proper, whole foods can be surprisingly effective.”

But today, bulimia and anorexia are passé and have been replaced by gender dysphoria, which is being used as a political cudgel by many with a nefarious agenda. In fact, the organized nature of the movement has left many parents in a horrible position. For example, in Washington State, SB 5599 was just passed, which allows the state to legally take children away from their parents if they don’t consent to their child’s gender transition surgeries. Washington State Senator Marko Liias issued a statement that summed up the new law. “Under current law, if a child who has run away from home goes to a licensed shelter, that shelter is required to notify the parents unless a compelling reason applies. The bill allows certified shelters to contact the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) in lieu of parents in certain additional instances, such as when a youth is seeking reproductive health services or gender-affirming care.”

But what is the depth of the problem?

A staggering 99.4 percent of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ advocacy group. The 0.6 percent of the adult population who are gender dysphoric—a condition that causes extreme distress—certainly deserve empathy and respect.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/the-spike

Those raising evidence-based concerns about the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines are often labeled purveyors of misinformation, and derided as anti-scientific conspiracy theorists and paranoid kooks. Or worse. Bill Kristol tweeted in late 2021 that, “there is blood on the hands in 2021 of the unvaccinated and especially their enablers and encouragers who know better.” However, there are a number of prominent scientists, doctors, and independent researchers who are wary of both COVID infection and the vaccines.

Many of these figures are worried about one particular piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: the spike protein, which allows the virus to enter your cells, and which was chosen to be the featured element used in the Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, and AstraZeneca vaccines. The available evidence shows that COVID, especially in light of new forms of treatment, is not as acutely deadly as once feared, and while mortality attributable to the COVID vaccines has not been definitively characterized, it is likely relatively rare. But some scientists are concerned by the potential effects of repeated exposure to the spike protein, and therefore the advisability of further boosters that contain it, given that we are going to be frequently reexposed to the circulating virus. Those voicing these concerns, however, have been subjected to censorship, ostracization, and damaging attacks on their reputations.

Take, for example, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein. On his DarkHorse podcast on June 21, 2021, Weinstein sat down with mRNA pioneer Dr. Robert Malone (COVID-vaccinated) and Silicon Valley inventor turned COVID investigator Steve Kirsch (COVID-vaccinated) to discuss the potential dangers of the vaccines rapidly being distributed around the country and across the world. The focus? The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is produced when the mRNA from the vaccines enters your cells.

https://www.thepostemail.com/2023/04/20/looking-for-answers-to-the-autism-epidemic-in-all-the-wrong-places/

According to the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest statistics, in 2020 one in 36 children (approximately four percent of boys and one percent of girls) was estimated to have autism spectrum disorder, estimates that are significantly higher than those in all previous years. White children are about 19 percent more likely than black children and 65 percent more likely than Hispanic children to be diagnosed with autism.

Experts offer various reasons for the general increase in this condition:

The role that being an older parent plays not only in the incidence of autism but also Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities.
Genes.
“Something” in the environment.
The increasing number of vaccines given to infants and children, which today routinely number 16.

What is consistently omitted, however, is the role that ultrasound exams during pregnancy may and probably do play not only in this seeming black/white disparity, but in the rapidly escalating incidence of the condition. More about that below.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Autism is a neurological disorder that affects the normal development of the brain, causing self-defeating behaviors and an inability to form social relationships. It usually appears before the age of three. Most scientists believe that autism is strongly influenced by genetics but allow that environmental factors may also play a role.

To be diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, a child must have deficits in three areas:

Communication (most children can’t make eye contact; others can’t speak).
Social skills (typified by disinterest in both people and surroundings).
Typically “normal” behavior (many autistic children have tics, repetitive behavior, inappropriate affects, et al).

Those diagnosed on the autistic spectrum range from high-functioning, self-sufficient people, even geniuses, to those who need lifelong supportive help.