Displaying posts categorized under

MEDICINE AND HEALTH

Half of Illegal Immigrants in NYC Are Not Vaccinated for Polio, Health Commissioner Warns Madeline Leesman

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/04/18/immigrants-polio-vaxx-n2622053

Half of illegal immigrants pouring into New York City are not vaccinated against poliovirus, the city’s health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan, said.

This month, Vasan sent an eight-page letter to doctors outlining the health risk migrants living in the city pose to residents. In the letter, Vasan pointed out that the migrants come from countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis, chickenpox and other illnesses (via the New York Post): 

“More than 50,000 people have come to New York City (NYC) in the past year shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. As more people arrive and many make NYC their home, the scale and scope of need continues to grow,” Vasan said in an eight-page letter, dated April 11, sent to physicians and other health care providers. A copy was obtained by The Post.  

“I am writing now to underscore how critical it is that health care providers take a wide range of considerations into account when working with people who are seeking asylum … The scope of this letter represents the scale of the need. It is incumbent upon us as a welcoming city to comprehensively evaluate and meet these needs.”

[…]

“Vaccination rates for certain diseases are low in some of the most common countries of origin, with rates hovering around 50% for polio as an example,” the commissioner said.

Biden’s Open Borders Bringing Diseases to Your Neighborhood Betsy McCaughey

https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2023/04/19/bidens-open-borders-bringing-diseases-to-your-neighborhood-n2622113

Ready for another pandemic? New York City’s health commissioner announced last week that the influx of migrants from the southern border — more than 50,000 to New York City alone in the past year — is delivering contagious diseases, including tuberculosis and polio, to our neighborhoods.

The same disease threats are also endangering other migrant destinations, including California, Texas and Florida.

In a letter to physicians and health care administrators citywide, Commissioner Ashwan Vasan explained that “many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB.”

TB, short for tuberculosis, is a bacterial infection. It is treatable with antibiotics, but it generally takes six to nine months of medication to recover. Not a walk in the park.

TB spreads through the air, like flu or a cold. Stand next to someone with TB for a long subway ride or sit next to them every day at school and you can catch it.

New York City’s TB rate, at 6.1 cases per 100,000, is more than double the national rate. Close to 9 out of 10 (88%) of these TB cases are people born outside the United States. Every neighborhood in the city has had at least one case.

Vasan’s letter called on New York to pull out all the stops providing health care, food and legal services to migrants. Not a word about protecting the people who already live here.

Open borders import disease. Immigrants who lawfully apply for a visa must undergo health screenings and show they are vaccinated, and refugees are screened for TB before entering the U.S. Not so for those wading across the Rio Grande.

Lessons Lost to History: the Tragically Unheeded 2008 Warning of Biolab Threat By Ben Bartee

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/04/14/lessons-lost-to-history-the-tragically-unheeded-2008-warning-of-biolab-threat-n1687401

We ignore prescient warnings in the present at the peril of our future selves.

This one comes from a decade and a half ago, a full twelve years before the course of world history was literally changed forever for the worse by forced lockdowns, masking, and medical mandates unimaginable prior to 2020.

Via Scientific American, 2008:

In an opinion that echoes those of several public health scientists, Keith Rhodes, the Government Accountability Office’s chief technologist, told a congressional hearing in October 2007 that “we are at greater risk today” than before of an infectious disease epidemic because of the great increase in biolaboratories and the absence of oversight they receive.

Nevertheless, Michael Kurilla, NIAID’s director of extramural research, says that “we’re much better off” having spent $41 billion on bioterror research since 2002.

The study’s author, John Dudley Miller, offered his unheeded warning in the context of the anthrax score of the aughts.

Note how often these biomedical security state threads lead back to, and intertwine with, the post-9/11 War on Terror waged by the Bush Administration and continued by its predecessor.

In many ways, this is all one continuous, ever-evolving permanent emergency. The referent objects and threats (real or manufactured) change, but all of the unending crises that we are subjected serve to justify increased national security powers in some form.

The overarching message I wish to convey when discussing AI developers or virologists tinkering with forces beyond their control in a lab is: these people do not know what they are doing.

America’s Censorship Regime Goes on Trial by Jenin Younes

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-censorship-regime-goes-on-trial-missouri-biden

Missouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’

Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had each other.

Then, on April 19, 2021, 16-year-old Junior—who had no previous health problems—received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Five days later, the young athlete collapsed while running. By the time the elder Ramirez arrived at the hospital, having been told he could not ride in the ambulance with his son, Junior was dead.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of Junior’s death was an “enlarged heart.” Upon receiving the news, Ramirez lost all desire to go on living. But after the initial shock subsided, Ramirez decided to travel and speak about Junior’s fate, in hopes that he could help other families avoid similar tragedies.

That plan proved more difficult than Ramirez anticipated. In September 2021, GoFundMe removed an account he had opened to raise money for a trip to the nation’s capital to share his son’s story. “The content of your fundraiser falls under our ‘Prohibited Conduct’ section,” the company’s email explained. Ramirez lost the donations he had thus far received. Two months later, Twitter took down a photograph Ramirez had posted depicting him standing beside Junior’s open casket, along with the caption “My good byes to my Baby Boy” followed by three brokenheart emojis. Even a father’s simple expression of grief was apparently forbidden by the social media platform’s government-supported censorship regime.

How Fashionable to Prescribe the Cruellest Cuts Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2023/04/how-fashionable-to-prescribe-the-cruellest-cuts/

Suppose I decided one fine day to self-identify as a non-binary pineapple. Je suis un ananas. Mes pronoms sont Ze, Zir, Zirs et Zirself. I forgot to mention, a French pineapple.

You might understandably think I’m mentally unbalanced. But, being a kindly sort of person, you might humour me. If your young son or daughter came home from school one day claiming that they were pineapples, you would not humour them for long. Maybe five minutes, before you told them not to be silly and to go wash their hands before having something to eat and drink.

Children are suggestible but I found both as a child and as a parent that a sharp dismissive grounding retort, particularly from a dad, was usually enough to dispel unfounded anxieties and delusions. Before you knew it, little Johnny or Jill was playing happily if young or preoccupied with juvenile pursuits if older. What you don’t do is to indulge fantasies beyond a playful and indulgent few minutes. What you certainly don’t do is to affirm fantasies; unless it’s Santa Claus. Unfortunately our society, or an influential segment of it, including the political class, sees virtue in affirming dangerous and debilitating fantasies in children and teenagers.

When a child or teenager believes they have been assigned the wrong biological sex; that really they are a male with female anatomy or a female with male anatomy, then they are living a fantasy. That must be our assumption. There is a gulf of genetic difference between males and females going way beyond surface appearances. If the fantasy persists, the only reasonable conclusion is that the youngster concerned is mentally troubled and in need of professional help; help which is squarely aimed at ridding the affected youngster of their delusion and bringing them back to reality. That isn’t the prevailing zeitgeist among officialdom.

UNC Doctors Slam ‘Hurtful’ Surgeon Who Denounced Affirmative Action In Medical Schools By: Kenny Xu

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/10/unc-doctors-slam-hurtful-surgeon-who-denounced-affirmative-action-in-medical-schools/

Dr. John Calhoon was smeared as ‘racist’ after he emphasized merit as the primary indicator of success in the surgery profession.

As it turns out, it is nearly impossible today not to trigger woke health care.

In January 2023, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), a society of the leading heart surgeons in the nation, held a conference where the outgoing president, Dr. John Calhoon, emphasized merit as the primary indicator of success in the profession.

“Affirmative action is not equal opportunity,” he wrote in a PowerPoint presentation. The “best metric is whether someone does good.”

He also wrote that “defining people by color, gender, religion only tends to ingrain bias and discrimination.” 

This is of course true. Studies by Harvard University professor James Dobbin found that most diversity trainings and workshops have little to no effect on the perceptions of colleagues toward one another. They may even be counterproductive, with some studies reporting greater animosity toward other races out of annoyance at the heavy-handed nature of courses. 

Immediately, medical news outlets called Calhoon a racist, white privileged, and other monikers of derision, but they weren’t the only ones. The Society for Thoracic Surgeons condemned Calhoon’s slide in a statement, describing his talking points as “inconsistent with STS’s core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Mind guards at some surgery clinics also issued their own internal responses, and my organization Color Us United has found a particularly egregious one.

China Controls Your Meds Beijing’s chokehold on our medication supply chain. by Betsy McCaughey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/china-controls-your-meds/

Democrats and Republicans battered TikTok’s CEO at a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday — for good reason. The Chinese app poses a national security risk, accumulating troves of data on its American users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s slithery comment that “I don’t think spying is the right way to describe it,” only heightened concerns.

Too bad another Chinese threat — bigger and more immediate — isn’t getting the same attention. China has a chokehold on our medication supply chain. Beijing controls many — in some cases, all — active ingredients for the remedies in our medicine chests, the drugs used in emergency rooms and even antibiotics administered to soldiers on the battlefield.

The med bottles in your cabinet don’t say “Made in China,” but nearly all are, including 97% of U.S. antibiotics, by some estimates.

In a tense situation, Beijing could simply cut off shipments of antibiotics, cancer drugs and other meds, forcing the U.S. to cede to its demands. Our survival hinges on their goodwill. Terrifying.

China cornered the market for drug ingredients fast. Until the mid-1990s, the West and Japan produced 90% of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients. By 2017, China was producing 40%. Now almost all drug pipelines start in China. Even India, the other drug producing giant, relies on China for 70% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters warns that foreign dependence is “an unacceptable national security risk.” But talk is cheap.

Timing is Everything… Thomas Buckley

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/04/timing-is-everything/

When it comes to all things COVID, it seems as if the worm is turning.

The past few weeks have seen the release of a “gold standard” report essentially saying the mask mandates did nothing, a pair of government agencies now say the “lab leak” hypothesis is most likely the correct COVID origin story, the “Twitter Files” are forcing society to look at the reality of government-induced censorship, and the legacy media is actually starting to run stories that maybe – just maybe – the whole lockdown thing may have been a teensy bit misguided.

In other words, everything that got people banned from social media and polite society last year is no longer misdisconspirafomation but are reasonable arguments that should be discussed rationally.

And that is very good; at least it’s a start.

But the past three years have taught those paying attention to look beyond public pronouncements and to ask “why the change?” and “why now?”

Why the change is relatively simple and a bit heartening: lies cannot live forever, especially when those being lied to stop believing.  Homer Simpson made an excellent point when he said “It takes two to lie – one to lie and one to listen.” 

But the “why now?” is more complicated and, as everything else is today, politically motivated.

Let’s End The Era Of COVID Tyranny

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/31/lets-end-the-era-of-covid-tyranny/

America and the rest of the world have suffered under big government’s smothering hand during the three-year COVID “emergency,” which has been used to silence critics and force obedience to nonsensical medical edicts. It’s time to reclaim our ancient liberties and live free again.

And here’s a good start: A Republican-led bill to declare an official end to the COVID emergency passed the Senate for a third time Wednesday, this time by a 68-23 majority. While President Joe Biden “strongly” opposes the measure, a White House source told Associated Press, he’ll sign it anyway.

Why? Rising public anger over the COVID lies, lockdowns, closed schools, mandatory masking and vax edicts has become a serious political issue for Democrats. In a Rasmussen poll taken last week, 59% agreed with the statement: “The experts in charge of the government’s COVID-19 policy ‘were wrong about almost everything?’ ”

After more than a million U.S. COVID deaths, Biden and other elected Democrats just want to walk away.

The Senate’s move to end our government-caused COVID nightmare came after a long series of revelations about the deep damage that the federal response to COVID inflicted on us.

A piece by the Brownstone Institute’s Justin Hart summed up the lengthening list of governmental, bureaucratic and corporate incompetence, duplicity and outright misconduct:

Medical errors increased in hospitals due to the constraints on health care resources and mandates. Millions of cancer screenings were missed, potentially causing a future surge in late-stage cancer cases. HIV testing was disrupted, leading to delayed diagnoses and treatment. Additionally, the pressure to report Covid deaths led to inaccurate death counts, prompting more fear and furthering egregious policies.

How a false hydroxychloroquine narrative was created, and more- Meryl Nass

https://johnhabelesmd.substack.com/p/how-a-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

An exposé of the shameful history of suppression of HCQ use in Covid , a very useful antiviral and anti-inflammatory drug – also a zinc ionophore – that could have saved millions of hospitalisations and deaths .

“……..It is remarkable that a large series of events taking place over the past months produced a unified message about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and produced similar policies about the drug in the US, Canada, Australia, NZ and western Europe.  The message is that generic, inexpensive hydroxychloroquine (costing only $1.00 to produce a full course) is dangerous and should not be used to treat a potentially fatal disease, Covid-19, for which there are no (other) reliable treatments. 

Hydroxychloroquine has been used safely for 65 years in many millions of patients.  And so the message was crafted that the drug is safe for its other uses, but dangerous when used for Covid-19.  It doesn’t make sense, but it seems to have worked.

In the US, “Never Trump” morphed into “Never Hydroxychloroquine,” and the result for the pandemic is “Never Over.”  But while anti-Trump spin is what characterized suppression strategies in the US, the frauds perpetrated about hydroxychloroquine and the pandemic include most western countries.

Why do I say “Never Over”?  I am expanding on this claim with a), b), c) on August 30. Later in the paper additional evidence is provided.

a) Because if people were treated with HCQ at the onset of their illness, over 99% would quickly resolve the infection, avoiding progression to the late stage disease characterized by cytokine storm, thrombophilia and organ failure. Despite claims to the contrary, this treatment is very safe.  (Yet outpatient treatment is banned in many US states.) UPDATE Jan 15: The CDC forgot to rewrite its guidance on malaria and hydroxychloroquine during Covid.  CDC says hydroxychloroquine “can be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers…”  Only “when it is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred.“