RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/covid/2023/05/the-curious-tale-of-hydroxychloroquine/

The discipline of medicine has changed. Its traditional cohesion and leadership have fractured into multiple disconnected specialty groups, allowing powerful commercial and political forces to increase control over both structure and function of medical practice. The COVID era burst through boundaries long taken for granted.

A major driver of opinion about COVID has been the World Health Organisation (WHO). Its Health Emergencies Programme in its proposed form, designed to strengthen disease-specific systems and capacities, including for vaccines, pharmaceuticals and other public health interventions, may be a serious threat to independent local health systems. Given it is an unelected body responsive to powerful lobbies, and a with a performance short of wide approval in its overarching role in the recent pandemic, there is reason to tread carefully.

I have practised as a physician in Australia for half a century. I recall when we knew (and revered) the name of the President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, while living in fear of their Chief Examiner as we sought qualification! They were great men and women and were the exemplars for ethical practice. Today they only occasionally question imperfect narratives or challenge the ethics of prevailing medical practice, risking being part of the problem rather than a solution.

Recently I was invited to speak at a symposium “Medicine at the Crossroads in the COVID Era”. I sought a topic that illustrates contemporary challenges to Western medicine. Few topics could be more relevant than threats to the doctor-patient relationship, and to science-based medicine seen in the COVID-19 pandemic. So I chose “The curious tale of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)” as a metaphor for the distortion COVID imposed on clinical practise, driven by misinformation aimed at supporting a flawed narrative originating from the highest sources of medical influence.

I am a clinical immunologist. I have a special interest in chronic inflammatory disease and the immunology of the airway. Among the valuable drugs in my clinical practice was HCQ, for which I wrote approximately 20,000 prescriptions without any observed major side effect.  It proved to be a safe and effective medication that blocked antigen-promoting pathogenic immune responses in patients with autoimmune or hypersensitivity diseases.

COVID made HCQ a household name. No medication attracted more brutal and remorseless assault. It was subjected to derision and negativity by medical professionals and the public alike. HCQ presents the dilemma that embodies the extremes of the narrative and science of COVID. In this context and over the last three years, popular narrative and science have gone down quite different paths.

https://kffhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/doctors-having-to-ration-cancer-drugs-amid-shortages/

ABC News reports on impacts ongoing drug supply shortages are having on cancer treatments, with some doctors having to decide which of their patients to treat. Also, Pfizer said an experimental combination of antibiotics is effective at treating some drug-resistant bacterial infections.

ABC News: Cancer Drug Shortage Is Forcing Doctors To Decide Which Patients Get Treatment  Just six weeks ago, Greg DeStefano began a new chemotherapy combination. The 50-year-old, from Northbrook, Illinois, had recently been diagnosed with his fourth round of cancer and doctors were hopeful the medication would treat the tumors growing in his neck. DeStefano was responding well, but then, in late May, he got a call from his doctor and was told one of the three drugs he was receiving — carboplatin — was under a global shortage and because of the way the hospital had to prioritize treatments, he wouldn’t be qualified to receive it anymore. (Kekatos, 6/2)

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2023/06/02/trump-needs-a-reality-check-on-the-mrna-jabs-n1700155

President Donald Trump returned to Iowa on Thursday after canceling a rally due to weather in the first-in-the-nation caucus state earlier in May. He met with smaller groups of Iowa voters in a few events canvassing the state. A voter told him at one stop, “We have lost people because you supported the jab.” Then she appears to ask him what he would do differently. Given all we know about the clot shots now, Trump’s response was astonishing.

“Well, you know, everyone wanted a vaccine at that time. And I was able to do something that nobody else could have done, getting it done very, very rapidly,” Trump responded. “But I never was for mandates, so I thought the mandates were terrible. And you know, there’s a big portion of the country that thinks it was a great thing.”

Oh, where to begin? First, the portion of the country that thinks the jabs were a great thing will never vote for President Trump. They are on the side of the aisle with Trump’s new best buddy Andrew Cuomo and still wear masks outdoors. A Rasmussen poll noted in January that almost half of Americans believed the shots were causing unexplained deaths, and more than one in four believed they knew some that had died due to the jab.

At the time, 60% of Republicans believed there was a reason to be concerned about the safety of the mRNA shots. Additional studies have been reported since then that implicate the mRNA shots, specifically the spike protein they generate, to a whole host of medical problems from acute onset blindness to impairing the immune system’s ability to fight COVID-19 infections in the future after repeated vaccinations. Evidence about the shot’s role in causing myocarditis in young men continues to accumulate. And honest providers will tell you that they don’t know the long-term prognosis for young Americans who suffered from heart-related adverse events.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/23/mask-mandates-unmasked/

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “There’s no reason for you to be walking around with a mask.” But the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) soon changed his stance. Although not 100 percent effective, Fauci said, wearing masks is “a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”

Masks should be worn, he said, even by those who were vaccinated, although they did not need to wear a mask outside. On another occasion, Fauci recommended people wear two face masks. The NIAID boss gave little if any indication that face masks could cause health problems.

“Circumstantial evidence exists that extended mask use may be related to current observations of stillbirths and to reduced verbal motor and overall cognitive performance in children born during the pandemic.” That is the contention of “Possible toxicity of chronic carbon dioxide exposure associated with face mask use, particularly in pregnant women, children and adolescents,” a recent study out of Germany. The paper highlights “the toxicological aspects of wearing a mask for special user groups resulting from a low-level CO2 exposure.”

During the COVID pandemic in 2020, 77 percent of nations introduced mask requirements, and 58 percent of people around the world “have been confronted with a mask obligation.” In many countries, “children in schools in particular are/have been heavily exposed to the mandatory wearing of masks for long periods.” As it happens, that is not good for the children.

“Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2, while wearing masks more than five minutes bears a possible chronic exposure to carbon dioxide of 1.41% to 3.2% of the inhaled air,” the authors observe. “U.S. Navy toxicity experts set the exposure limits for submarines carrying a female crew to 0.8% CO2 based on animal studies which indicated an increased risk for stillbirths.” 

In addition, “data exists on the exposure of chronic 0.3% CO2 in adolescent mammals causing neuron destruction, which includes less activity, increased anxiety and impaired learning and memory. There is also data indicating testicular toxicity in adolescents at CO2 inhalation concentrations above 0.5%.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/drug-shortages-price-controls-government-fda-white-house-cancer-treatments-b2d08ba4

Politicians like to grouse about high drug prices. Well, now we’re seeing what happens when drug prices are too low: Shortages of essential medicines, which are a portent of what’s to come with the Inflation Reduction Act’s price controls.

Drug shortages aren’t new, but the number in short supply has grown as generic prices have fallen. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists lists 301 drugs in short supply, up from 202 five years ago. These include many local anesthetics, basic hospital drugs, chemotherapy drugs and liquid albuterol for lung ailments.

The American Cancer Society warned this month that “first-line treatments for a number of cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer and leukemia often experienced by pediatric cancer patients,” are facing shortages that “could lead to delays in treatment that could result in worse outcomes.” Healthcare providers say they’re having to limit access to some drugs to the sickest patients. They can substitute therapeutic alternatives when possible, but this increases risk of medication errors and inferior results. What’s going on?

Headlines have focused on shortages of the ADHD drug Adderall and new weight-loss treatments, which owe to increased demand. But most drugs in short supply are older generics that are off-patent and complicated to make. Manufacturers have stopped producing them because profit margins are too thin, resulting in one or two suppliers.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-harm-caused-by-masks

Evidence continues to mount that mask mandates were perhaps the worst public-health intervention in modern American history. While concluding that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” in preventing the spread of viruses, a recent Cochrane review also emphasized that “more attention should be paid to describing and quantifying the harms” that may come from wearing masks. A new study from Germany does just that, and it suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers may have substantial ill-effects on their health—and, in the case of pregnant women, their unborn children’s.

Mask-wearers breathe in greater amounts of air that should have been expelled from their bodies and released out into the open. “[A] significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies,” write the German authors. “Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2,” they observe, while chronic exposure at CO2 levels of 0.3 percent is “toxic.” How much CO2 do mask-wearers breathe in? The authors write that “masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”

In other words, while eight times the normal level of carbon dioxide is toxic, research suggests that mask-wearers (specifically those who wear masks for more than 5 minutes at a time) are breathing in 35 to 80 times normal levels.

The German study, a scoping review of existing research, aimed “to investigate the toxicological effects of face masks in terms of CO2 rebreathing on developing life, specifically for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.” The latter two groups, of course, have been among those most frequently subjected to mask mandates in schools, despite Covid’s low levels of risk for them and the evidence that masks don’t work.

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.