RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/07/medicines-tricky-operation-grafting-systemic-racism-onto-hard-science/

A few years ago, concepts such as “white supremacy,” “systemic racism,” and “structural intersectionality” were not the standard fare of prestigious medical journals. But a February special issue of Health Affairs, the Washington, D.C.-based peer-reviewed journal, analyzes racial health disparities not through biology, behavior, or culture, but through the lens of  “whiteness,” along with concepts such as power, systems of oppression, state-sanctioned violence, and critical race praxis—a sampling of terms that appear in the issue.

The Health Affairs special issue reflects the effort of “antiracist” scholars to transform concepts still considered speculative and controversial—and some say unprovable—into scientific fact. It  is being advanced by other high-profile publications as well, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Scientific American, which last year published articles entitled “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past” and “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy.”

But this scientific aspiration faces major challenges. Science demands verification, testability, and replicability, whereas race is a social construct that can be difficult to separate from factors like class or culture, and explaining the data often remains dependent on academic theories about systemic racism. The articles in Health Affairs indicate that elevating the concept of systemic racism from moral certitude to scientific fact will require developing new tools and methods.

https://nypost.com/2022/05/05/we-still-need-to-learn-the-right-lessons-from-americas-disastrous-covid-response/

More than a century ago, Mark Twain identified two fundamental problems that would prove relevant to the COVID pandemic. “How easy it is to make people believe a lie,” he wrote, “and how hard it is to undo that work again!”

No convincing evidence existed at the pandemic’s start that lockdowns, school closures and mask mandates would protect people against the virus, but it was remarkably easy to make the public believe these policies were “the science.”

Undoing this deception is essential to avoid further hardship and future fiascos, but it will be exceptionally hard to do. The problem is that so many people want to keep believing the falsehood.

Adults meekly surrendered their most basic liberties, cheered on leaders who devastated the economy and imposed two years of cruel and unnecessary deprivations on their children. They don’t want to admit these sacrifices were in vain.

They’re engaging in what social psychologists call “effort justification,” which has been observed in studies of painful initiation rituals for fraternities and other groups. Once people endure the pain, they convince themselves that it must have been worthwhile even when their reward is actually worthless.

If one brief bad experience can transform people’s thinking, imagine the impact of the pandemic’s ceaseless misery. It’s been a two-year-long version of Hell Week, especially in America’s blue states, with Anthony Fauci and Democratic governors playing the role of fraternity presidents humiliating the pledges.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fda-limits-use-of-johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine/

The Food and Drug Administration limited its emergency authorization of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine because of the risk of blood clots, the agency said on Thursday.

The risk of “rare and potentially life-threatening blood clots” following use of the vaccine “warrants limiting the authorized use of the vaccine,” the FDA said in a statement.

“The FDA has determined that the reporting rate of [blood clots] is 3.23 per million doses of vaccine administered and the reporting rate of TTS deaths is 0.48 per million doses of vaccine administered,” the agency said.

However, the agency determined that the benefits of the vaccine “outweigh the known and potential risks” for adults who either cannot receive Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or who refuse to take any Covid vaccine except Johnson & Johnson’s. This means that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is authorized only for individuals who cannot receive an mRNA vaccine or refuse to do so.

“Today’s action demonstrates the robustness of our safety surveillance systems and our commitment to ensuring that science and data guide our decisions,” Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. Marks added that the FDA “will continue to monitor the safety” of all Covid vaccines authorized in the U.S.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/04/the-u-s-should-not-be-funding-the-who-follies/

The two-years-plus of the COVID-19 pandemic should be a wakeup call that there is something very wrong – irreparable, even – at the chronically inept World Health Organization (WHO). Two recent transgressions show that the bureaucrats there are not getting any smarter.

The first is almost inconceivable. Medicago, a Canadian company, developed a COVID-19 vaccine synthesized in the Nicotiniana plant, a relative of tobacco. In clinical testing, it showed efficacy against all variants studied prior to the emergence of Omicron of 71%, and for the Delta variant specifically of 75%.

Health Canada approved the vaccine for domestic use in February, but its distribution around the world encountered a bizarre obstacle: the WHO said it would not even consider approving the vaccine for wider use because of the manufacturer’s ties to U.S.-Swiss tobacco company behemoth Philip Morris International, which owns a roughly one-third equity stake in Medicago. 

Although wealthy countries currently have plenty of COVID-19 vaccines available, the WHO authorization of the Medicago vaccine, Covifenz, is critical, because only then can the vaccine be part of the WHO’s own COVAX global vaccine program for low- and middle-income countries.  It would be especially advantageous to the countries lacking sophisticated medical infrastructure, because, unlike many of the other COVID-19 vaccines, Covifenz doesn’t require stringent (cold) storage conditions.

It remains to be seen whether a work-around, such as Philip Morris divesting itself from partial ownership of Medicago, can be found, or whether the WHO’s intransigence will prolong misery and death in the very countries that its COVAX program is supposed to benefit.

The second recent WHO blunder is that the (deservedly) much-vilified architect of Sweden’s disastrous, irresponsible pandemic management plan, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, is now at – wait for it! – the WHO.

These missteps shouldn’t come as a surprise; after all, the WHO is a component of the relentlessly incompetent and politicized United Nations. There are so many examples of U.N. self-inflicted wounds, perhaps most notable its abject inability to respond effectively to Russia’s barbaric, genocidal invasion of Ukraine. But there are so many more; for example, the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti – the first in the country’s history – caused by a sewage leak from a base of U.N. peacekeepers who were there to help after an earthquake earlier in the year. The waste fouled Haiti’s principal river, sickened hundreds of thousands and led to at least 10,000 deaths. (And the U.N. has failed to make good on its commitments to provide compensation.)

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/28/in-new-documentary-inventor-of-mrna-tech-reiterates-safety-concerns-that-got-him-banned/

In a recent documentary about Robert Malone on the Epoch Times’s “Headwind” series, the inventor of mRNA technology slams the current major use of his own invention as unsafe, despite attempts by major communications platforms to shut him down.

Malone, a widely cited research scientist who is also a medical doctor, has also been ostracized by some scientists and government agencies since criticizing the widespread use of his own vaccine technology and calling out government agencies for not following proper safety protocols. Major tech companies such as Google and Twitter banned his interviews from their platforms and punish websites that publish his comments.

“I believe that a large fraction of the population accepted the vaccine under coercive conditions and were not provided full informed consent,” Malone told The Federalist in an interview about the documentary. “I suspect that [without coercion] a much smaller fraction of the population would have accepted multiple vaccine doses. Furthermore, if early treatment had been made available, public health outcomes would have been better.”

The Covid-19 injections mandated by many governments and employers are “the largest experiment performed on human beings in the history of the world,” Malone tells journalist Jakobien Huisman in the Epoch Times documentary exploring both his professional career and his electrifying effect on public debate since appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” That viral podcast interview led to massive corporate pressure against Rogan, who agreed to modify his guest list as a result.

Malone believes the new kind of vaccine technology used in the Covid injections, which he helped create, is unsafe. He comes to that conclusion, he says in the documentary, due to the speed at which it was approved, regulatory safety protocols that were not followed, and a lack of rigorously verified data before the medical treatments were forced on millions worldwide.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/26/anthony-fauci-is-unhealthy-for-america/

The Biden administration’s chief medical adviser made last year what C.S. Lewis might have called a “lunatic, liar, or lord” statement when he essentially claimed to be the embodiment of science. (Hint: he’s a bit of the first, all of the second, but wants to be the third.) Five days ago, this man went even further, declaring that the executive branch should be free to act outside of boundaries put in place to prevent an all-powerful presidency.

He’s a menace. We’d all be better off if he were a Washington Nationals batboy rather than a powerful government functionary and influential media darling.

Anthony Fauci – we won’t grant him the honor of the title of “Dr.” because he’s far more bureaucrat than healer – who heads the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases is not science, even though in June 2021 he said his critics, of whom there are many but not enough, are “really criticizing science because I represent science.”

But he does have the mindset of an authoritarian.

During a CNN interview Thursday, Fauci expressed surprise and disappointment over federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s ruling that overturned Washington’s planes, trains, and public transportation mask mandate.

“Those types of things really are the purview of the” Centers for Disease Control, he said. “This is a public health issue.

“We are concerned” – said the man who also issued a “now is the time to do what you’re told” threat – “about courts getting involved in things that are unequivocally public health decisions. I mean, this is a CDC issue; it should not be a court issue.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/patients-beware-washington-is-pushing-woke-health-care/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The sooner Americans recognize that Washington is introducing the disease of ideology into health care, the sooner we can cure it.

There’s a new front in the woke campaign to control our national institutions: health care. Largely out of sight of the American people, the federal government is pushing to fundamentally corrupt the principles and practice of medicine. Physicians and patients alike are set to suffer from woke health care. In many cases, they already are.

Every American needs to know what Washington is doing. It’s using taxpayer money and unaccountable regulation to embed “critical race theory” and “anti-racism” into every level of health care. The secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently made this clear when he declared that “health equity pervades everything” his department does. In making this declaration, he was following the lead of the president he serves. It sounds nice. But ensuring health equity requires taking a divisive and discriminatory approach to treating patients and providing care.

Which is exactly what’s happening. Since the start of this year, Washington has effectively bribed physicians to embrace discrimination on a day-to-day basis by offering higher Medicare- reimbursement rates to physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” That’s code for recasting everything that happens at the doctor’s office in light of race, including patients’ access to care and specific treatments. Ninety-three percent of primary-care physicians accept Medicare.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/19/haul-newsom-and-other-blue-state-officials-to-congress-for-hearings/

What is happening to the people of Shanghai is an atrocity. China’s zero-COVID policy has literally imprisoned millions in their own homes in that nation’s most populous city. Police beatings have been reported, as have cases of extreme hunger, and “​​constant mental anguish and anxiety.” Don’t think that could never happen in America. We, too, have tyrants in government. And every one of them should be compelled to sweat under the hot lights of a congressional investigative hearing.

Maybe then they would not be so eager to put Americans under house arrest again.

We now have two reports confirming what so many of us already knew: lockdowns were a colossal mistake. The first analysis, a meta-study of dozens of other studies, found that “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,” and “​​should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” The second discovered that the states with the most laissez-faire pandemic policies fared better than the COVID police states.

The public officials, both elected and unelected, who in essence caged their states, counties and cities, knew better. It was clear early on, and shown later, that few were at serious risk of death from COVID-19. Yet entire populations were told to stay inside and businesses were forced to close. Policymakers treated us all as if were at equal risk of death.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/keep-politics-out-of-the-doctors-office-racism-woke-ideology-crt-critical-race-theory-medical-care-minorities-systemic-racism-covid-19-regulation-11650308028?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Healthcare is being infected by the radical ideology that has corrupted education and public safety. But while critical race theory and crime waves have been in the news, the public is largely unaware of medicine’s turn toward division and discrimination. Americans deserve to know that their health and well-being are at risk.

At the heart of this is the claim that healthcare is systemically racist—that most physicians are biased and deliver worse care to minorities. Health disparities do exist among racial groups, but physician bias isn’t the cause. The psychological test at the root of this narrative, the 1998 Implicit Association Test, has been widely discredited, and I know from long experience as a medical educator and practitioner that physicians address the needs of each patient, regardless of skin color. Moreover, attacking physicians is dangerous. It degrades minority trust in healthcare while undermining health outcomes for everyone.

Consider what’s happening in medical research. The National Library of Medicine database shows more than 2,700 recent papers on “racism and medicine,” which generally purport to show physician bias leading to racial disparities in health outcomes. Yet the most commonly cited studies are shoddily designed, ignore such critical factors as pre-existing conditions, or reach predetermined and sensationalized conclusions that aren’t supported by reported results. These papers in turn are used to source even more shoddy research. This is a corruption of medical science in service to political ideology.

Prominent medical journals are complicit in the crusade against medical professionals. The New England Journal of Medicine touts its “commitment to understanding and combating racism as a public health and human rights crisis,” while Health Affairs is implementing a strategy to “dismantle racism and increase racial equity” in healthcare. They publish piece after piece calling, explicitly or implicitly, for a fundamental change in the medical profession. They’re also bringing race and other nonacademic factors into the peer-review process, threatening the scientific analysis on which physician practice and patient health depend.

Medical schools increasingly are preparing physicians for social activism at the expense of medical science. Such student groups as White Coats for Black Lives demand that administrators reframe curriculum around reparations for slavery, decarceration of prisoners, and other topics with no bearing on training doctors to care for individual patients. Medical schools and residencies are lowering admissions standards. The result will be fewer talented physicians providing high-quality care to fewer patients.

Physicians are being pushed to discriminate. Hospitals, state health authorities and the federal government have all authorized race-based formulas for rationing Covid treatments. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston (Harvard’s teaching hospital) is moving toward “preferential care based on race” across the board. And the Biden administration is offering higher Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals and physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” To fight their supposed bias, physicians are being bribed into discriminating by race.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/the_doctor_who_exposed_faucis_fallacies_and_got_harassed_and_fired_from_hhs_for_telling_the_truth.html

Dr. Paul Elias Alexander was a well credentialed, internationally known epidemiologist invited by Trump administration officials to be part of the COVID 19 response team at the White House in April of 2020. He packed up his family, leaving a secure and prominent position in Canada to move to Washington, DC.  

But then he criticized the public health mandates by Drs. Fauci, Collins, and Birx and showed them research that proved they were wrong about lockdowns, school closings, masking, and social distancing.

Following that, he was silenced, harassed and then fired. 

The Trump White House staff and leadership knew what was happening but did nothing to stop the Fauci and NIH/CDC-led deep state malefactors.

I was enraged reading Dr. Alexander’s personal account, excerpted below, telling of the DC savagery.  I knew he had left McMaster University in Ontario where he was part of the GRADE Working Group, an international consortium of medical researchers promoting reliable, evidence based medical research (EBM).  Doctor Alexander has been a stand-up man advocating good medical science his whole career. The details of this truthful doctor’s mistreatment in DC were shocking and maddening.
Excerpts below tell the story of Dr. Alexander in DC via his essay.  I will provide excerpts and ellipses to get you through the 3000-plus word essay.  Read the whole essay at this link