RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-deadly-were-the-covid-lockdowns-excess-deaths-alcohol-heart-disease-accidents-life-youth-11673440091?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Covid-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it. During the first two years of the pandemic, “excess deaths”—the death toll above the historical trend—markedly exceeded the number of deaths attributed to Covid. In a paper we just published in Inquiry, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that “non-Covid excess deaths” totaled nearly 100,000 a year in 2020 and 2021.

Even these numbers likely overestimate deaths from Covid and underestimate those from other causes. Covid testing has become ubiquitous in hospitals, and the official count of “Covid deaths” includes people who tested positive but died of other causes. On the other side, some Covid deaths early in the pandemic weren’t diagnosed as such. We adjusted for the latter effect but not the former.

What are non-Covid excess deaths? During the pandemic, deaths from accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide all soared, as did deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. From April 2020 through December 2021, deaths from Covid averaged 350,000 a year for Americans 65 and older, 100,000 a year for those 45 to 64, and 20,000 a year for those 18 to 44. That produced excess deaths for these age groups of 16%, 19% and 11% respectively. (The percentages reflect the lower base death rate for younger age groups as well as the raw numbers.)

Photo: WSJ

Non-Covid excess deaths are distributed more evenly among these age groups, 35,000 among the elderly, 33,000 among the middle-aged and 29,000 among young adults. As a percentage, however, that’s a huge increase for young adults. While deaths from hypertension, heart disease and diabetes dominate non-Covid excess deaths for senior citizens, the other causes—accidents, overdoses, alcoholism and homicide—skew younger, poorer and with a disproportionate effect on minorities. It also bears mention that these young-adult deaths, running 27% above historical trends, take far more years of life than the excess deaths for older age cohorts.

The CDC data show the rate of non-Covid excess deaths in the first half of 2022 was even higher than 2020 or 2021. These deaths therefore likely already exceed 250,000, disproportionately among young adults. We are witnessing multiple healthcare emergencies, but resources and attention are still directed toward Covid.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/01/11/covid-who-was-right-n1660596

It’s now been three years since COVID hit. 

At the start of the pandemic, “experts” shouted: “Stay home!” “Close schools!” “Wash your hands!” “Disinfect countertops!” 

Clearly, disinfecting countertops and washing hands made no difference. What about closing schools and lockdowns?

The media trashed Gov. Ron DeSantis when he lifted Florida’s lockdown. “Acting irresponsibly!” roared MSNBC’s Dr. Vin Gupta. Reporters praised New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s lockdowns.

On CNN, Andrew’s brother Chris gushed, “I am wowed by what you did!” By contrast, he said, Florida was “in such dire straits.”

But actually, adjusted for population, Florida and New York had about the same number of deaths. Given that Florida has more old people, Florida did better than New York. Much of the media just reports what it wants to believe.

My new video this week covers which states and countries handled COVID well and which didn’t.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-are-the-next-covid-treatments-vaccine-booster-shots-doctors-pandemic-paxlovid-treatment-fda-antibodies-11673203403?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The worst of the Covid pandemic is over, but danger persists as new virus variants spread that may evade current vaccines and antibody treatments. Yet the Biden Administration is foot-dragging on treatment development and approvals needed to save lives.

The Administration wants Americans to get bivalent booster shots that target the BA.4/5 variants. While these Omicron descendants predominated over the summer and early fall, they have been overtaken in much of the U.S. by new variants that dodge antibodies from boosters, prior infection and monoclonal treatments.

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The Administration’s response has been to implore doctors to prescribe the antiviral Paxlovid. But many patients at highest risk for Covid can’t take the Pfizer drug because they have medical conditions or take drugs that could cause life-threatening interactions. One study found that half of hospitalized patients who die from Covid have a contraindication with Paxlovid. Some patients can temporarily stop taking other medications, but many can’t or would need to be weaned off them. Doctors could be sued if they prescribe Paxlovid to patients with contraindications who later have complications.

The FDA has authorized convalescent plasma for the immuno-compromised, but it is rarely administered because the National Institutes of Health’s clinical guidelines say there’s “insufficient evidence” to recommend it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/where_are_the_intellectually_curious_doctors.html

Good medicine is asking questions and forming a differential diagnosis, ruling out possibilities based on science, not on politics.

Medicine, like most sciences, entails thinking and hypothesis creation to explain the myriad complexities of the healthy and diseased human body.

Hypotheses are tested and refined, with new information or insights nudging or abruptly shifting current knowledge in a new direction.

For examples, bloodletting with leeches is no longer standard medical practice for most ailments as it was up until the late 19th century. More recently, Vioxx was considered a safer painkiller, until it was found to cause heart attacks and strokes, similar to another “safe and effective” product introduced about two years ago. Oxycontin was marketed as a nonaddictive pain killer until it devasted hundreds of thousands of lives and families and was shown to be otherwise.

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Physicians, upon medical school graduation, recite the Hippocratic Oath. Quoting from the revised version (simply because the language is easier to understand), physicians swear, “I will not be ashamed to say, ‘I know not’” and “Above all, I must not play at God.”

Saying “I don’t know” is what drives the pursuit of new or alternate hypotheses. Physicians of a few hundred years ago saw their bloodletting patients die and didn’t know why, so they devised better treatments by asking questions and not playing God.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/01/08/lgbtq-propaganda-study-children-given-irreversible-puberty-blockers-continue-treatment-into-adulthood-n1659772

A cohort study recently published in The Lancet, the bible of the biomedical establishment, found that children administered puberty blockers (euphemistically termed “gender-affirming hormones”) kept up with “therapy” into adulthood.

Via The Lancet:

720 people were included, of whom 220 (31%) were assigned male at birth and 500 (69%) were assigned female at birth…

Most participants who started gender-affirming hormones in adolescence continued this treatment into adulthood. The continuation of treatment is reassuring considering the worries that people who started treatment in adolescence might discontinue gender-affirming treatment.

Of course, corporate state propaganda outlets and the study’s authors (which demonstrates the bias built into the study) spin these findings as proof that they are necessary. Why, the argument goes, should these irreversible drugs be considered harmful for children when most of the children given to them end up using them in adulthood?

Via NPR:

Marianne van der Loos, a physician at Amsterdam UMC’s Center for Expertise on Gender Dysphoria, is the paper’s lead author.

“I think it’s an important finding because we see that most of these people continue to use gender-affirming hormones,” van der Loos tells NPR.

But really what this study shows is that in-group social pressure and inertia exist, which should already have been obvious.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/the_architecture_of_corruption_why_elon_musk_is_justified_to_call_for_the_prosecution_of_dr_anthony_fauci.html

Recently, Elon Musk tweeted out that his preferred pronouns are “prosecute/Fauci.”

Of course, the usual suspects in the media were clutching their pearls, screaming that Musk was putting the sainted Dr. Fauci at risk, while their daily attacks against conservatives (and even moderates) continue unabated.

I’ve been on the Fauci beat for about a decade. He was the primary focus of my first book, PLAGUE: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth About Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases, co-authored with Dr. Judy Mikovits (a government scientist with twenty years of experience).

Over the past eight years, I’ve concentrated on telling whistleblower stories, and publishing exposès of Google, Facebook, Big Science and Big Tech. People often know the names of my whistleblowers, such as Zach Vorhies of Google, Ryan Hartwig of Facebook, or the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine for the isolation of the HIV virus, Dr. Luc Montagnier, but they don’t know me.

Most recently, I collaborated with Dr. Paul Alexander, who is the former Senior Pandemic Advisor to the COVID-19 Task Force. Together, we wrote PRESIDENTIAL TAKEDOWN: How Anthony Fauci, the CDC, NIH, and the WHO Conspired to Overthrow President Trump. 

It is a stunning condemnation.

To build my case, let me introduce you to Dr. Alexander. He is of Middle Eastern and North African heritage, was born and raised in Trinidad, and emigrated to Canada as a young man. He is one of the world’s leading experts in evidence-based-medicine. 

Dr. Alexander worked directly with Dr. Fauci, prepping him for his Congressional appearances using what are called “murder boards.” He would hit Fauci with such questions as “tell us about the $3.7 million dollars your agency provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for gain of function research on coronaviruses prior to the pandemic.” Forewarned is forearmed, and Dr. Fauci wasn’t about to allow himself to be unarmed in any debate.

However, anyone who has followed Dr. Fauci’s career won’t be surprised to learn that he carefully and effectively evaded answering such questions in private just as he did in his heated confrontations with Sen. Rand Paul.

And yet, there is a deeper story than the public presentations of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Most importantly, the public deserves to know what happened behind the scenes of public health over the decades and the role Dr. Fauci played in those developments. This is the real cause for concern, because there is no doubt that Dr. Fauci is one of the most powerful men in the federal government.

Why did the scientific establishment mostly move in lockstep with Dr. Fauci?

https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-leaves-broken-agency-his-successor-opinion-1770215

After 54 years at the NIH,December 31 marks ( Dr. Anthony Fauci’s last day in office as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). While many were angered by his changing and conflicting recommendations, I am not. They are mere symptoms of a much larger and deeper problem. Dr. Fauci’s agency failed to promptly fund key research during the pandemic. That research would have abruptly ended many of the COVID controversies that divided our country.

In a study of NIH funding published in The BMJ, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I found that in the first year of the pandemic, it took the NIH an average of five months to give money to researchers after they were awarded a COVID grant. This should be unacceptable during a health emergency.

Consider the question of how COVID spread—was it airborne or spread on surfaces? (Remember all those people wiping down their groceries?) It lingered as an open question without good research for months, as Fauci spent hundreds of hours on television opining on the matter. Finally, on August 17, 2021—a year and a half after COVID lockdowns began—Dr. Fauci’s agency released results of a study showing the disease was airborne. Thanks for that. The announcement on the NIAID website, titled “NIH Hamster Study Evaluates Airborne and Fomite Transmission of SARS-CoV-2” came 18 months too late.

Imagine if, in February 2020, Dr. Fauci had marshaled his $6 billion budget, vast laboratory facilities, and teams of experts to conduct a definitive lab experiment to establish that COVID was airborne. On this question and many others throughout the pandemic, our problem was not that the science changed—it’s that it wasn’t done.

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

By the time reporter David Zweig got to the 10th floor conference room at Twitter Headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco, the story of the Twitter Files was already international news. Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Leighton Woodhouse, Abigail Shrier, Lee Fang and I had revealed evidence of hidden blacklists of Twitter users; the way Twitter acted as a kind of FBI subsidiary; and how company executives rewrote the platform’s policies on the fly to accommodate political bias and pressure.

What we had yet to crack was the story of Covid.

David has spent three years reporting on Covid—specifically the underlying science, or lack thereof, behind many of our nation’s policies. For years he had noticed and criticized a bias not only in the mainstream media’s coverage of the pandemic, but also in the way it was presented on platforms like Twitter. 

We couldn’t think of anyone better to tackle this story. — BW

I had always thought a primary job of the press was to be skeptical of power—especially the power of the government. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I and so many others found that the legacy media had shown itself to largely operate as a messaging platform for our public health institutions. Those institutions operated in near total lockstep, in part by purging internal dissidents and discrediting outside experts.

Twitter became an essential alternative. It was a place where those with public health expertise and perspectives at odds with official policy could air their views—and where curious citizens could find such information. This often included other countries’ responses to Covid that differed dramatically from our own.

But it quickly became clear that Twitter also seemed to promote content that reinforced the establishment narrative, and to suppress views and even scientific evidence that ran to the contrary. 

Was I imagining things? Was the pattern I and others witnessed proof of purposeful intent? An algorithm gone rogue? Or something else? In other words: When it came to Covid, and the information shared on a service used by hundreds of millions of people, what exactly was being amplified? And what was being banned or censored?

So when The Free Press asked if I would go to Twitter to peek behind the curtain, I took the first flight out of New York. 

Here’s what I found.

The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/health/study-shows-chances-contracting-covid-increase-each-vaccine-dose

A recently published study from the Cleveland Clinic has questioned COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and posited that additional doses may in fact increase one’s likeliness of contracting the disease.

Conducted between September and December of this year, the clinic examined 51,000 of its employees to test the “bivalent” vaccine, created to protect against the original COVID-19 strain and its Omicron variants. It also sought to determine the effectiveness of subsequent vaccine doses. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The survey ultimately discovered an association between higher risk of COVID-19 and those individuals who had previously received a greater number of vaccine doses. The study further determined that the bivalent vaccines were only 30% effective in preventing infection against different variants of the Omicron strain of the virus.

“The association of increased risk of COVID-19 with higher numbers of prior vaccine doses in our study, was unexpected,” the study reads. “A simplistic explanation might be that those who received more doses were more likely to be individuals at higher risk of COVID-19. A small proportion of individuals may have fit this description. However, the majority of subjects in this study were generally young individuals and all were eligible to have received at least 3 doses of vaccine by the study start date, and which they had every opportunity to do.”

https://www.city-journal.org/ignore-the-tripledemic-hype

Winter is back, and so are warnings from “experts” for Americans to don masks. A resurgence of influenza (flu) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—respiratory illnesses that took a holiday during the Covid-19 pandemic, when various measures limited person-to-person contact and spread of disease—is allegedly combining with new Covid cases into a so-called tripledemic, leading academics and public-health officials to advise masking. An advisory from the New York City health commissioner instructs that “everyone . . . should wear a mask” at all times when indoors and when in a crowded outdoor setting. While the advisory says that “higher-quality masks, such as KN95 and KF94 masks and N95 respirators, can offer an additional layer of protection,” it does not otherwise distinguish between types of masks or discourage cloth masks. And Los Angeles County is, again, encouraging people to wear masks in indoor public spaces.

Can mask mandates be far behind? Let’s hope not. The need for masks is far from clear, and mandates could be counterproductive.

Despite the hype, these three viral diseases are not surging simultaneously. RSV cases and hospitalization rates rose and peaked far earlier this year than normal but have been declining for the past month. Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths had been down for months, only rising recently to relatively low levels. And the flu season—which typically runs from October to April, peaking in February—is, like RSV, happening much earlier than usual.

While this flu season currently appears severe, it may not be out of the ordinary. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates of the flu burden so far show at least 15 million flu illnesses, 150,000 flu hospitalizations, and 9,300 flu deaths. To put that in context, in the ten full flu seasons between 2010–2011 and 2019–2020, flu illnesses ranged from 9 million to 41 million, flu hospitalizations ranged from 140,000 to 710,000, and flu deaths ranged from 12,000 to 52,000. Unless the season takes a severe turn, this year’s influenza metrics should fall within normal ranges.