RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/veterans-admin-unwise-laser-eye-surgery-policy

The Department of Veterans Affairs is the federal government’s second-largest department. As of 2021, it operated approximately 1,600 health-care facilities, 144 medical centers, and 1,232 outpatient sites, of varying complexity. The VA has long been plagued by a wide spectrum of problems, including long delays in scheduling appointments, substandard care, and years of trying to get a $10 billion electronic system to work effectively.

As a veteran myself (I have never received medical care through the VA, though I did numerous medical school clinical rotations at a VA hospital), I know that veterans deserve better. And yet, the VA seems to be committed to a change in policy that would further degrade the quality of their care—specifically, by allowing underqualified practitioners to perform laser eye surgery.

Last September, the VA modified its eye-care guidelines for treatment from community providers by letting optometrists, who are neither medical doctors nor surgeons, perform some surgical procedures. Without soliciting input from the public or medical community, it removed language from the Community Care guideline, which had ensured that “only ophthalmologists can perform invasive procedures, including injections, lasers and eye surgery.” This change would permit optometrists to perform surgical procedures such as laser trabeculoplasty—an operation on the eye to treat glaucoma—rather than restricting them to ophthalmologists (who are highly trained, experienced, qualified surgeons), as had been the policy. The change would be felt immediately in a small number of states that already allow optometrists to perform laser surgery. But the VA is considering a broader policy change that would make it possible for optometrists in all VA facilities to perform these procedures.

The differences in the amount of training and the scope of competence between optometrists and ophthalmologists are vast. Ophthalmologists log over 17,000 hours of clinical experience in general medicine, surgery, and emergency management during medical school and specialized postgraduate training.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/30/60-billion-in-covid-fraud-try-4-trillion/

As auditors and congressional investigators try to figure out just how much federal COVID relief went to fraudsters, they are missing the trillions of dollars in fraud committed by the federal government itself in a war that we had no chance of winning.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office reported that fraudsters took in about $60 billion in unemployment checks. That’s on top of the tens of billions in fraudulent claims made through the Paycheck Protection Program, the tens of billions handed out through a Small Business Administration program, and on and on.

This Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold a hearing “to investigate rampant waste of taxpayer dollars in COVID relief programs.”

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the committee, said “we owe it to Americans to identify how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

That’s all well and good. But what we really need is an investigation into how the war against COVID wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, imposed massive disruptions, handicapped millions of students, and probably didn’t save many, if any, lives.

That sort of investigation, if done honestly, would likely conclude that we would have been better off if we’d done nothing at all beyond asking people to wash their hands and stay home if they’re sick.

Shocking? Impossible to believe? Let’s review the evidence.

Start with the fact that since COVID-19 first landed on U.S. shores three years ago, 1.1 million have died from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Even now, deaths are averaging around 4,000 per week.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/anti-lockdown-great-barrington-declaration-vindicated-but-much-too-late

Though little noted by the public, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022, was an enormously important day in the history of the pandemic. Prior to that day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommended that anyone who came in contact with a covid positive patient quarantine for a time. For unvaccinated exposed kids, the old guidance counselled either quarantine or negative tests to return to school.  

The new guidance eliminated the recommendation for testing people with no symptoms and eliminated the distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in testing recommendations. The reasoning for the CDC’s shift was explicit. In describing that rationale, Greta Massetti of the CDC said, “this guidance … helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives. We know that COVID-19 is here to stay.”

The CDC’s shift represented a fundamental change in the underlying philosophy of pandemic management. Ever since March 2020 and the infamous “two weeks to slow the spread,” the CDC’s goal — not achieved — had been to reduce or eliminate the spread of the virus. The new guidance accepted the obvious fact that the containment strategy had imposed enormous collateral harm to children, small business owners, and the working class and had not protected the vulnerable against the virus. After years of zoom school, close-contact quarantines, and missed assignments, the lockdown on American kids’ education essentially ended on Aug. 11.

In its place, the CDC adopted a more pragmatic approach more in line with how it had managed the 2009 swine flu pandemic. There is a more than thousand fold higher risk of severe disease outcomes from COVID-19 for infected elderly patients than there is for children who are very rarely hospitalized or die if infected. So not unreasonably, the CDC maintained recommendations aimed at reducing disease spread in nursing homes, such as good ventilation and vigilant testing.  

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-great-resignation-collapsing-health-system/

In an increasing number of countries all over the world chaos and despair is rising. People are more frequently ill and dying at higher rates than the past 50 years. At the same time health systems are deteriorating. We need to rethink humanness of health systems versus cold technological solutions.  

More than a seasonal problem

The pandemic measures have accelerated public health systems to the brink of collapse. In many Western countries these systems are facing severe problems, an inferno of pressures, including staff shortages from pandemic burnout, underpaid salaries, discrimination and a cost-of-living crisis, with many health professionals leaving the workforce while the demand for care from the community is rising. 

The often-used explanation for the current situation in healthcare, a tripledemic after two lockdowns resulting from a surge in winter viruses (RSV, Flu and Covid-19), does not hold. Current data do not represent an outlier season. 

Political ideology and catastrophic leadership costs healthy years of lives 

The health system in the UK is collapsing because of a decade or more of underinvestment in the National Health Service and other public services. The indicators for the health service are all red. Increased ambulance times and people waiting for a hospital bed, stranded outside overflowing hospitals, have spiked since December 2022. The overstretched system, with the longest delays on record for millions of treatments for cancer and operations, has left patients in pain, people enduring unnecessary suffering, and has led to 300-500 people a week dying avoidably because of the unsolved current crisis. The roots lie in political choices made, not cold weather or a seasonal flu.

https://johnhabelesmd.substack.com/p/why-arent-worldwide-excess-deaths?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The Pfizer-Gate Scandal: Mortality Rates reveal a Shocking Truth as 2 Million Excess Deaths are recorded across USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & Europe

It is a true scandal that the the indubitably large excess deaths figures – most likely due to the acute and chronic toxicities of the vaccines – are not being seriously investigated by they authorities that allowed their introduction

The true cause must be revealed by determined officials analysis of all possible factors – the independent analyses all converge on the vaccines as the main plausible cause so far …

https://expose-news.com/2023/01/22/pfizergate-2million-excess-deaths/

https://expose-news.com/2023/01/22/pfizergate-2million-excess-deaths/

https://www.frontpagemag.com/covid-mess-something-very-dark-is-happening/

A co-worker of mine here in California told me about a friend of his, Dave, who never got the COVID shot but, in late December 2021, got COVID. In his early 50s, remarkably fit, with no comorbidities, and with Christmas just a couple of days away, he figured he could ride out the virus at home.

But he only got worse, ending up with symptoms so severe that his wife, fearful for his health, insisted that he go to the hospital after Christmas. With his lungs failing, Dave was put on a ventilator. But once the machine took over his lung function, his lungs atrophied to a point where, without a major medical intervention, he was in big trouble.   

Doctors recommended extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a procedure that temporarily removes the blood from the body, oxygenates it, removes the carbon dioxide, then pumps the blood back through the body.  

But there was one caveat. To get the procedure, both he and his wife would have to get COVID shots – no exceptions. With what the couple was learning about vaccine injuries and the low efficacy of shots and boosters, they felt the risks far outweighed the benefits. Besides, he already had COVID. Natural immunity. Right?   

The hospital didn’t budge. No shot, no procedure. With his life in their hands, this quickly morphed into a nightmare. But the couple didn’t budge, either. At first.  

With time running out, they searched for the rare hospital that had an expensive ECMO machine that would perform the procedure without forcing them to get the shot. No luck. The best they could find was one that only required him, not her, to get it.  

So after months of avoiding it, Dave reluctantly, grudgingly, frustratingly agreed to get the shot. That’s when the nightmare plunged into medical hell. 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/01/14/the-damar-hamlin-story-continues-n1661818

It’s encouraging to see that Buffalo Bill’s safety Damar Hamlin is on the road to recovery. One wonders if he will be cleared to resume his career. And if so, one can imagine in a lightsome way a scenario in which he intercepts a pass and rambles for a touchdown while opposing players dive out of the way, desperate to avoid tackling or even touching him. Seriously, though, one wishes only the best for him as he contemplates his future.

His collapse on the field was the most significant and harrowing event of the current NFL season, eclipsing every partisan concern regarding the rivalry of playoff-bound teams vying for an appearance in the Super Bowl. Injuries are expected in so violent a sport, but not the imminent death of a player. I suspect that events of this nature are bound to happen again. As J.D. Rucker writes in The Liberty Daily, “Unfortunately, this isn’t the first and it’s not going to be the last. People suddenly collapsing, especially athletes and others who are engaged in physical activity, are becoming more common than they were just a couple of months ago, and it was really bad back then.”

There has been much controversy regarding the cause of Hamlin’s sudden seizure. Some commentators put it down to commotio cardis, which occurs when a blow to the chest disrupts the heart’s electrical activity — the favored explanation of those who are determined to avoid the elephant in the room. The fact that the blow is usually extremely hard and precisely targeted is dismissed from consideration. Others see the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, the presumably invisible elephant, as the source of cardiac arrest, especially as patently vaccinated young athletes are succumbing in disturbing numbers to myocarditis — in baseball and in rugby, as well as in football — and even in non-contact sports like soccer. The phenomenon is not in doubt.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/stanford-failed-academic-freedom-test
Thanks to Dr. John Abeles at https://johnhabelesmd.substack.com/p/academic-freedom-under-attack?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did.”

We live in an age when a high public health bureaucrat can, without irony, announce to the world that if you criticize him, you are not simply criticizing a man. You are criticizing “the science” itself. The irony in this idea of “science” as a set of sacred doctrines and beliefs is that the Age of Enlightenment, which gave us our modern definitions of scientific methodology, was a reaction against a religious clerisy that claimed for itself the sole ability to distinguish truth from untruth. The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth.

The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did. Top universities, like Stanford, where I have been both student and professor since 1986, are supposed to protect against such orthodoxies, creating a safe space for scientists to think and to test their ideas. Sadly, Stanford has failed in this crucial aspect of its mission, as I can attest from personal experience.

I should note here that my Stanford roots go way back. I earned two degrees in economics there in 1990. In the ’90s, I earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics. I’ve been a fully tenured professor at Stanford’s world-renowned medical school for nearly 15 years, happily teaching and researching many topics, including infectious disease epidemiology and health policy. If you had asked me in March 2020 whether Stanford had an academic freedom problem in medicine or the sciences, I would have scoffed at the idea. Stanford’s motto (in German) is “the winds of freedom blow,” and I would have told you at the time that Stanford lives up to that motto. I was naive then, but not now.

Academic freedom matters most in the edge cases when a faculty member or student is pursuing an idea that others at the university find inconvenient or objectionable. If Stanford cannot protect academic freedom in these cases, it cannot protect academic freedom at all.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/with_all_the_evidence_of_mrna_vaccine_injury_why_arent_more_doctors_speaking_out.html

I listened to an interesting interview recently with Dr. Aseem Malhotra by Bret Weinstein of The Darkhorse Podcast  on Dec. 31, 2022. 

The beginning of the interview focused on Dr. Malhotra, a British cardiologist, telling his story of how he went from being a COVID-19 vaccine advocate to someone who was questioning the mRNA jabs, at least partially brought on by the death of his own father.  His father was also a physician and had been in favor of the shots, which Dr. Malhotra said in a recent tweet “…should likely never have been approved and certainly not without informed consent.” 

It was a very touching story, and it was very clear that Dr. Malhotra cared deeply for his father.  Any loss of this type — unnecessary and wasteful — is tragic, and anyone with an ounce of compassion can’t help but empathize.

But there were some troubling aspects of the interview.  One in particular was that Dr. Malhotra had been onboard with the mRNA jabs, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many people he recommended take the shots.  How many people may have suffered an adverse affect or worse because of his advice?  

 Very early on, I was skeptical of these new treatments.  I graduated college with a B.S. in Biology more than 25 years ago, but my career is in finance (long story)…so I understood enough about the scientific process that I was doubtful of their proclaimed “safety.”  Long term safety at that point (and still now) literally could not have been known.  It was far too early.

I researched them and quickly found people like Dr. Simone Gold (America’s Frontline Doctors) and Dr. Peter McCullough…individuals who were willing to risk their careers and reputations to get the message out that maybe we needed to slow down and learn more about the new vaccines. 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/breathing-trouble

There’s an old story about a guy who jumped into a thorn bush: He wanted to collect berries, but he failed to consider the adverse effects of the plan. Something similar happened with face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic: Masks were promoted, and often mandated, as necessary safeguards for reducing the chance of infection, while their possible adverse effects were brushed aside. While the science on the benefits of masking is still inconclusive, the latest research now shows that the prolonged use of face masks—especially those with tighter fits like the N95s—could harm wearers by exposing them to dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide.

The risks appear to be especially pronounced for young people. As part of a team of scientists, one of the authors of this article conducted a randomized study of the effects of masking on healthy school aged children in Germany. The results of this research, published in September 2022 in the peer reviewed journal Environmental Research, concluded that wearing masks raised the carbon dioxide (CO₂) “content in inhaled air quickly to a very high level in healthy children in a seated resting position that might be hazardous to children’s health.”

These results should not have come as a surprise. It has long been suspected that mask-wearing poses risks. In Germany, for instance, workers required to wear an N95/FFP2 respirator must get a certificate verifying their ability to do so, and even with said certificate, those workers are mandated to take a 30-minute break every 90 minutes.

Only in the 19th century, with the development of germ theory, did masks begin being used as health devices. Then in the early 20th century, masks gained a foothold in hospitals, usually worn by doctors and nurses. The “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918-20 was perhaps the first case of masks being worn by the general public, but we only have scattered photographic pictures of masked people and don’t know how frequently they were worn.