RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/the_truth_regarding_health_care.html

There are truths regarding health care in America that need broadcasting.  Some truths are intimidating and discouraging, with no need for us to be reminded, such as the crazy costs of hospitalization, testing, procedures, and pharmaceuticals.  Another such truth is that along with ridiculously expensive medical care has come incredible success in the battle against the morbidity and mortality of disease.  But the truth about how we got here is worth reviewing.  It is the result of a unique, accidental confluence of circumstance.  Unfortunately, it is unsustainable in its current form.

Many of the residents of our country act as if cost should not be a factor in the delivery of health care.  They feel as if medical care is a right and not having a socialized, government-sponsored system of delivery is akin to slavery.  On the other hand, corporations successfully weave among the patient, the doctor, the current government-sponsored health care systems, and their fellow capitalist insurance companies, managing to make a good profit while driving up cost. 

How did we get to the point where it was conceivable to produce pharmaceutical agents that cost six figures a dose?  When did we conclude that it is cost-appropriate to pay doctors and facilities to transplant a pair of lungs, a kidney, a liver, or a heart?  Most telling for the future, what would we be willing to sacrifice to make things sensible?

Our way-out-in-left-field costs have their origins in a simple-to-understand source.  After World War II, the federal government froze wages in its concern for runaway wage inflation, knowing that businesses desired to employ the best of the huge returning workforce and pay them accordingly.  With no means to attract new workers through better wages, companies created benefits packages along with employment that included costs shared in health care.  (A harbor company in San Diego with the now familiar name of “Kaiser” was among the first.)

Health care insurance companies created from this new market accumulated monies with each employee paycheck.  Health care at the time was rudimentary and did not have much to offer sick patients.  As a result, prospective patients did not have the same desire to go to the doctor that we have today.  As money built up in the system, doctors and hospitals began to realize better, more predictable finances, and the costs of treatment options were barely considered, because insurance companies were more than willing to pay.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/stop-cruelly-manipulating-children-panel-slams-gender-transitioning-treatment-for-kids/?utm_

A new study discredits the theory that injecting children with cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers decreases suicide rates.

A new study published June 13 debunks the theory that injecting gender-confused children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones decreases suicide rates. In fact, the study, done by Jay Greene, senior research fellow at the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, found the exact opposite:

In the past several years, the suicide rate among those aged 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision.

Greene made various recommendations based on his findings, including raising the minimum age at which cross-sex treatments can be given as well as mandating that school administrators and health professionals receive parental approval before providing health services to children.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation held a panel discussion of the study at which Greene was joined by Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center at the Heritage Foundation; and Virginia Gentles, director of the Education Freedom Center at the Independent Women’s Forum.

“It’s time to stop cruelly manipulating children with cult-like slogans,” Gentles said. She argued that, in recent years, “trans activists have ushered in a new era that cuts parents out of critical decision-making regarding their children.” Left-wing LGBT groups such as GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and PFLAG seek to help children transition without consulting their parents, she said, creating a “gender-support plan” for the child.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/major-transgender-org-to-recommend-lowering-age-for-hormone-treatment-surgeries/

A transgender health organization will release new guidelines lowering its recommended age to receive gender-transition treatments.

Hormone treatments may begin at age 14, about two years younger than previously recommended, according to new guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The group is expected to publish the new guidance in a medical journal sometime this year, and gave the Associated Press an advance copy of the recommendations.

In addition, some surgeries may be conducted at ages 15 or 17, about a year younger than previously recommended.

Dr. Eli Coleman, head of WPATH’s standards of care, consent of the parents and the maturity of the person who wants to transition should also be taken into account before making a decision to transition.

“Certainly there are adolescents that do not have the emotional or cognitive maturity to make an informed decision,” Coleman told the AP.

The news comes amid rising national debate on gender-transition procedures for minors, including attempts in several states to pass laws barring minors from undergoing gender-transition procedures. President Biden is set to sign an executive order on Wednesday in an attempt to counter such legislation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-zombie-war-against-covid/

The last remaining restrictions on normal life are a national embarrassment.

This week, New York City finally made masks optional for children ages two to four in preschools or daycare facilities. They did so despite the fact that the ongoing requirement was clearly meant to be yet another inducement to get more people vaccinated for Covid, a disease that barely affects young children, and one they don’t spread as much as adults do. The vaccine-makers have had trouble showing worthwhile results in the youngest children, and in the meantime, many young children have acquired some immunity by getting sick with, and recovering from, Covid. New York City has finally given up on masks everywhere but on public transit.

The World Health Organization had never recommended masks for children below five years of age. The European Centers for Disease Control noted in its recommendations that young children have trouble wearing masks effectively, often drool into them, can easily become alienated from masked caregivers, and can suffer adverse social and developmental consequences from wearing them. Europeans trusted the science, and their children did roughly as well as Americans did. Better, in fact, because their school closures and disruptions were significantly less severe.

But in America, progressives trusted the science!, which is a very different thing. Mostly it’s about fear and neuroticism as a lifestyle choice, though occasionally it’s about using your child’s face as an anti–Ron DeSantis yard sign.

Not a single elected official in New York City or Los Angeles has ever even attempted to demonstrate with data that the policy of masking two-year-olds was achieving a public-health goal for the city that other people in their states, or in Europe, were foolishly forgoing. They don’t have to do this, because when you are trusting the science!, you don’t have to think or reflect on what you’re telling others to do.

https://www.city-journal.org/the-damage-of-covid-lockdowns

Did the Covid lockdowns save lives? Statistics can help answer the question.

In April, free-market economists Phil Kerpen, Stephen Moore, and Casey B. Mulligan published a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-19.” Their report considered three variables for all 50 states and Washington, D.C.: health outcomes (measured by adjusted mortality), economic performance throughout the pandemic (measured by unemployment and GDP), and the pandemic effect on education (measured by the percentage of cumulative in-person instruction). The authors investigated the relationships among the three variables using simple linear regression, a tool to summarize and study relationships between two continuous variables. This method yields a correlation coefficient that rates both the strength and the direction of the relationship between the two variables.

The results: locked-down economies did not have better health outcomes, open schools were slightly negatively correlated with health outcomes, and the lockdown of schools and economies were highly correlated.

Since the underlying data are available, I ran my own analysis, and the results were largely the same. Indeed, the relationship between health outcomes and economic effects was statistically insignificant. So, too, was the relationship between health outcomes and open schools. Thus, one cannot conclude that economic lockdowns or school closures were associated with saving lives during the pandemic. A significant relationship existed between states that locked down the economy and closed schools, which means that governments that were willing to lock down businesses also sent students home. Ultimately, whether a state or district locked down the economy or closed down schools hardly predicted the health of those that live there.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/06/is-public-input-on-science-and-technology-policy-worthwhile/

In the throes of a pandemic that won’t quit, many Americans are anxious, but not only about COVID-19; they’re also fearful about vaccines, chemicals, and even (non-existent) “chemtrails,” to name just a few. Inexplicably, even after more than a million U.S. deaths from COVID-19, the U.S. population remains under-vaccinated and under-boosted. While California has gotten more than 70% of its population fully vaccinated, a large number of states – including Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, Indiana – have barely reached 50%, in spite of exhortations by political leaders and medical professionals.

According to Naval War College professor Tom Nichols, we’re witnessing the “death of expertise”: “a Google-driven, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.” 

The pandemic has brought armchair epidemiologists and infectious disease experts out in droves, and especially with policies in flux, this is not a trivial problem. It confounds policymakers and regulators who feel compelled to seek non-expert input on decisions, wasting time and taxpayers’ money, and making them increasingly reluctant to contravene even uninformed, misguided vox populi.

Science is not democratic. The citizenry does not get to vote on whether a whale is a mammal or a fish, or on the boiling point of water; legislatures cannot repeal the laws of nature, although legislators in Indiana once tried to redefine the mathematical constant pi.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-white-house-keeps-stoking-covid-fears-ashish-jha-kids-flu-schooling-11654459689?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Dr. Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford and a founding fellow at the Academy for Science and Freedom.

“I’ve been a huge advocate of keeping schools fully open to in person education since October of 2020,” Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, tweeted last week. “Still am.” So why is Dr. Jha engaged in scare-mongering about the danger of Covid to children?

In a May 30 tweet, Dr. Jha asserted that Covid is “a far greater threat to kids than the flu is.” He linked to an article by Harvard Medical School instructor Jeremy Faust, which claims that Covid killed more than 600 children in 2021, whereas the flu kills “an average” of only 120 children annually. But Dr. Faust’s data are severely skewed, for three reasons.

First, while flu is seldom tested, everyone admitted to a hospital for any reason gets a Covid test. Between October 2018 and September 2019, 1.4 million flu tests were reported to public-health and clinical labs. As of May 31, 2022, there had been 897 million PCR tests for Covid.

Second, evidence from audits of death certificates found that 35% of all pediatric deaths in 2020 “had co-occurring diagnosis codes that could not be plausibly categorized as either a chain-of-event or significant contributing condition,” according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Put another way, in at least 35% of pediatric “Covid deaths,” Covid couldn’t have been the cause.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bill-seeks-to-muzzle-doctors-who-tell-the-truth-about-covid_4447941.html

If these new proposed bills pass, your doctors could have their licenses taken away, simply by speaking the truth about the COVID fiasco. To appease bureaucrats, they would have to censor their thoughts about lockdowns and vaccines, and even avoid advising you about effective treatments.

Story at-a-glance
A California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with. California Assembly Bill 2098 designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license
Misinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation by the state
Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health
California has also introduced six other bills seeking to enshrine tyranny into law, including bills to criminalize “amplification of harmful content,” create a centralized vaccination registry, strip funding from law enforcement that refuses to follow public health orders, mandate COVID jabs for school children, authorize minors to consent to vaccination, and require school districts to conduct routine COVID testing
If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO

One of the most stunning parts of this pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors who try to set the record straight.