Health & Fitness

09/01/20

Is Australia’s next stage of living with COVID the ‘bubble’ concept?

Many health experts say creating a small, select group of friends or family to socialise with in-person could be key to a more sustainable lockdown period, should the need arise. While plans for reopening Victoria remain unclear, the Andrews government is considering the concept of a social 'bubble'.

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The Bachelor’s Roxi avoids carbs and sugar to stay in shape

SPOILER ALERT: Bachelor top 2 revealed, but who will take Locky’s heart?

First randomised trial backs safety of common heart drugs in COVID-19 patients

Study tracks human milk nutrients in infant microbiome

A surprising opportunity for telehealth in shaping the future of medicine

Resource sharing affects mortality worldwide

The act of giving and receiving increases well-being: the recipient benefits directly from the gift, and the giver benefits indirectly through emotional satisfaction. A new study now suggests that those who share more also live longer. In their analysis, researchers found a strong linear relationship between a society's generosity and the average life expectancy of its members. The researcher conclude that people are living longer in societies whose members support each other with resources.

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Scientists identify promising new ALS drug candidates

Face shield or face mask to stop the spread of COVID-19?

If CDC guidelines aren't enough to convince you that face shields alone shouldn't be used to stop the spread of COVID-19, then maybe a new visualization study will. Researchers simulated coughing and sneezing from a mannequin's mouth using a laser light to visualize droplets expelled. They tested a plastic face shield and found that they block the initial forward motion of the exhaled jet, however, aerosolized droplets are able to move around the visor with relative ease.

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Blood pressure-lowering is even more beneficial than previously thought

First treatment identified for fainting

Elderly people protected against respiratory infections by BCG vaccine

Brain estrogen is key to brain protection when oxygen is low

Brain protein linked to seizures, abnormal social behaviors

Shedding light on split-second decision making

Scientists show how brain flexibility emerges in infants

Cognitive flexibility, which refers to the brain's ability to switch between mental processes in response to external stimuli and different task demands, seems to begin developing during the first two years of life, which is much earlier than previously thought. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging techniques to show the emergence of a functional flexible brain during early infancy.

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Brainstem protein mediates exercise-based stress relief

Sitting all day long? Sorry, but you need to exercise more

It’s spring! Time to learn how to detox the right way

The Fauci Files

At 79 years old, Dr. Anthony Fauci — who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 — has yet to come out with the “Big One” — a vaccine or infectious disease treatment that will allow him to retire with a victory under his belt.

He failed to create a successful vaccine for AIDS, SARS, MERS and Ebola. A COVID-19 vaccine is essentially his last chance to go out in a blaze of glory. As evidenced by his history, he will stop at nothing to protect Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and Gilead’s antiviral Remdesivir.

He even threw tried and true pandemic protocols out the window when COVID-19 hit, turning into an unquestioning spokesman for draconian liberty-stripping measures instead. To echo a question asked by Dr. Sal Martingano in his article,¹ “Dr. Fauci: ‘Expert’ or Co-Conspirator,” why are we not questioning this so-called expert?

Fauci ‘Has Been Wrong About Everything’

The risk we take when listening to Fauci is that, so far, he’s been wrong about most things. In a July 14, 2020, “Opposing View” editorial in USA Today, White House adviser Peter Navarro, director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, stated that Fauci “has been wrong about everything that I have interacted with him on.”² According to Navarro, Fauci’s errors in judgment include:³

• Opposing the ban on incoming flights from China in late January 2020.

• Telling the American people the novel virus outbreak was nothing to worry about well into February.

• Flip-flopping on the use of masks — first mocking people for wearing them, and then insisting they should. In fact, mid-July, he suddenly urged governments to “be as forceful as possible” on mask rules.⁴

• Claiming there was only anecdotal evidence supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine, when the scientific grounds for it go as far back as 2005, when the study,⁵ “Chloroquine Is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread,” was published in the Virology Journal.

Fauci should have been well aware of this publication. According to that study,⁶ “Chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage,” the study authors said. In other words, the drug worked both for prevention and treatment.

As noted by Navarro, more recent research found hydroxychloroquine reduced the mortality rate among COVID-19 patients by 50% when used early.

Interestingly, in a March 24, 2020, interview⁷ with Chris Stigall, Fauci did say that — were he to speak strictly as a doctor treating patients — he would certainly prescribe chloroquine to COVID-19 patients, particularly if there were no other options.

Then, in August, he flipped back to insisting hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work,⁸ even though by that time, there were several studies demonstrating its effectiveness against COVID-19 specifically.

So, it appears Fauci has had a hard time making up his mind on this issue as well, on the one hand dismissing the drug as either untested or ineffective against COVID-19, and on the other admitting it would be wise to use, seeing how the options are so limited.

Navarro continues:⁹

“Now Fauci says a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can open. So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is: only with skepticism and caution.”

Fauci Has Done Nothing to Help Unite the Country

While Fauci claims to be exasperated by how political the pandemic has become,¹⁰ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out in an August 2, 2020, Instagram post¹¹ that Fauci himself is, at least in part, part of the problem, as his double standards on hydroxychloroquine have done much to polarize and divide the nation:

“Fauci insists he will not approve HCQ for COVID until its efficacy is proven in ‘randomized, double blind placebo studies.’ To date, Dr. Fauci has never advocated such studies for any of the 72 vaccine doses added to the mandatory childhood schedule since he took over NIAID in 1984. Nor is he requiring them for the COVID vaccines currently racing for approval.

Why should chloroquine be the only remedy required to cross this high hurdle? HCQ is less in need of randomized placebo studies than any of these vaccines since its safety is well established after 60 years of use and decades on WHO’s listed of ‘essential medicines.’

Fauci’s peculiar hostility towards HCQ is consistent with his half century bias favoring vaccines and patent medicines. Dr. Fauci’s double standards create confusion, mistrust and polarization.”

In a June 10, 2020, article,¹² Global Research also questioned Fauci’s many attempts to disparage the drug for no apparently valid reason; even promoting the fake (and ultimately retracted) Lancet study that claimed to show hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. At the end of the day, who benefits? Well, certainly it benefits the drug and vaccine industries, which seems to be where Fauci’s loyalties lie.

Fauci’s Bias Is Hard to Miss

While Fauci is not named on the patents of either Moderna’s vaccine or Remdesivir, the NIH does have a 50% stake in Moderna’s vaccine,¹³ and the recognition that would come with a successful vaccine launch would certainly include Fauci.

He also has lots to lose — if nothing else, his pride — if Remdesivir doesn’t become a blockbuster, as his NIAID is sponsoring the clinical trials.¹⁴ The NIAID also supported the original research into Remdesivir, when it was aimed at treating Ebola.¹⁵

His bias here is clear for anyone to see. April 29, 2020, he stated¹⁶ Remdesivir "has a clear-cut and significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery." How good is that? Patients on the drug recovered in 11 days, on average, compared to 15 days among those receiving a placebo. Overall, the improvement rate for the drug was 31%.

Meanwhile, research¹⁷ now shows hydroxychloroquine reduced mortality by 50% when given early, and many doctors anecdotally claim survival rates close to 100%. This still isn’t good enough for Fauci, who continues insisting hydroxychloroquine is a bust.¹⁸

His stance on these two drugs certainly doesn’t make sense based on the data alone. But it does make sense if he wants (or has been instructed) to protect the profits of Remdesivir.

As director of NIAID, which has been part of Remdesivir’s development from the start, why wouldn’t he want to see it become a moneymaker for the agency he dedicated his career to? It also makes sense when you consider his primary job is to raise funds for biodefense research, primarily vaccines but also diagnostics and drug therapies.^19,²⁰

Fauci Doubts Safety of Russian Vaccine

Early in August 2020, Russia announced they would begin vaccinating citizens with its own COVID-19 vaccine, despite not finishing large-scale human trials.²¹ The announcement drew skepticism from American infectious disease specialists, including Fauci, who said he has “serious doubts” that Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine is actually safe and effective.²²

He’s probably right on that point. It’s hard to imagine you can prove safety and effectiveness in a mere two months of trials. But the fast-tracked vaccine efforts of the U.S. and EU are hardly bound to be significantly better, considering the many shortcuts that are being taken.

Fauci Ignores Two Decades of Failed Coronavirus Vaccines

Despite being in a position to know better, Fauci conveniently ignores the many failed attempts to create other coronavirus vaccines over the past two decades, including vaccines against SARS and MERS. A paper²³ by Eriko Padron-Regalado, “Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2: Lessons From Other Coronavirus Strains” reviews some of these past experiences. As noted in the Conservative Review:²⁴

“Since their emergence in 2003 and 2012 respectively, no safe and efficacious human vaccines for either SARS-Cov1 or MERS have been developed.

Moreover, experimental non-human (animal model) evaluations of four SARS-Cov1 candidate vaccine types, revealed that despite conferring some protection against infection with SARS-Cov1, each also caused serious lung injury, caused by an overreaction of the immune system, upon viral challenge.²⁵

Identical ‘hypersensitive-type’ lung injury occurred²⁶ when mice were administered a candidate MERS-Cov vaccine, then challenged with infectious virus, negating the ostensible benefit achieved by their development of promising … ‘antibodies’ … which might have provided immunity to MERS-Cov.

These disappointing experimental observations must serve as a cautionary tale for SARS-Cov2 vaccination programs to control epidemic COVID-19 disease.”

NIAID Safety Controversies and Ethics Violations

When recently asked for a rebuttal to criticism of his leadership during the pandemic, Fauci replied, “I think you can trust me,” citing his long record of service in government medicine. However, that long service record is fraught with ethics and safety lapses.

For example, in 2005, NPR reported²⁷ the NIH tested novel AIDS drugs on hundreds of HIV-positive children in state foster care during the late 1980s and90s without assigning patient advocates to monitor the children’s health, as is required by law in most states.

Fauci was appointed director of the NIAID in 1984. The AIDS research was part of his research portfolio, and the AIDS research division reported directly to him, so these violations occurred on his watch.²⁸ In 2008, two NIH biomedical ethicists published a paper on the controversial practice of using wards of the state as guinea pigs, noting:²⁹

"Enrolling wards of the state in research raises two major concerns: the possibility that an unfair share of the burdens of research might fall on wards, and the need to ensure interests of individual wards are accounted for ... Having special protections only for some categories is misguided. Furthermore, some of the existing protections ought to be strengthened."

Under Fauci, the NIAID became the largest funder of HIV/AIDS in the world.³⁰ Despite that, numerous articles over the years have discussed how AIDS activists have been less than satisfied with Fauci and the NIAID.^31,^32,³³ A 1986 article stated:³⁴

“If Fauci were less intent on amassing power within the federal health bureaucracy … he would have left AIDS treatment research with the NCI, where it began, relying on that institute's proven expertise in organizing large, multisite clinical trials for cancer therapies."

A July 23, 2020, article in Just the News lists several other safety and ethics problems that Fauci has been involved in through the years, including conflict of interest violations in vaccine research.³⁵

Just the News also interviewed NIAID chief of ethics and regulatory compliance Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, whom the NIAID was forced to reinstate in 2005 after it was determined that Fishbein had been wrongly fired in retaliation for raising concerns about lack of safety in some of the agency’s research:³⁶

“Fishbein said … Fauci failed to take responsibility for the managers and researchers working below him when signs of trouble emerged, allowing problems to persist until others intervened. ‘Fauci is all about Fauci,’ Fishbein said. ‘He loves being the headline. It’s his ego.’”

Fauci’s Connections to Wuhan Lab

By now, you probably also know that the NIAID funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As reported by Newsweek:³⁷

“In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.”

This money was not given directly, but rather funneled to the Wuhan lab via the EcoHealth Alliance. According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal,³⁸ the NIH is now insisting EcoHealth Alliance submit all information and materials from the Wuhan lab before it’s allowed to resume funding.

Fauci is a longtime proponent of dangerous gain-of-function research. In 2003, he wrote an article³⁹ published in the journal Nature on how “the world needs new and creative ways to counter bioterrorism.”

“We will pursue innovative approaches for modulating innate immunity to induce and enhance protection against many biological pathogens, as well as simple and rapid molecularly based diagnostics to detect, characterize and quantify infectious threats,” Fauci wrote.

“These are lofty goals that may take many years to accomplish — but we must aspire to them. Third, we must enormously strengthen our interactions with the private sector, including biotechnology companies and large pharmaceutical corporations.

Many biodefence-related products that we are pursuing do not provide sufficient incentives for industry — the potential profit margin for companies is tenuous, and there is no guarantee that products would be used.

Therefore, we will seek non-traditional collaborations with industry, for example guaranteeing that products will be purchased if companies sign up … so that we can quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments …”

With that, there can be little question about which team Fauci is on. He’s on the side of drug and vaccine makers, and has been for decades. There’s no money to be made by either the agency or its private collaborators from natural products such as vitamin D, vitamin C, quercetin or its drug equivalent, hydroxychloroquine. All of these are dirt-cheap and off patent.

Prediction Track Record = Null

Fauci’s predictions for COVID-19 mortality have also turned out to be as inaccurate as all of his previous predictions. In 1987, he predicted heterosexual infection of HIV/AIDS would rise to 10% by 1991. It never rose above 4%.

He predicted the bird flu would result in 2 million to 7 million deaths. In the end, the avian H5N1 flu killed 440 worldwide. He sought billions of dollars to combat the threat of Zika, a virus that fizzled without making much of an impact anywhere.⁴⁰

When you look at his track record, you realize he’s predicted “nightmare” scenarios for decades, none of which have materialized. Considering how rarely Fauci has ever been right, maybe it’s time to do as Navarro suggested: Listen with skepticism and caution.

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Curve Flat, Still in Lockdown, Billions Wasted on Ventilators

While the U.S. is still in the midst of various stages of lockdown, data indicate that COVID-19-like illness (CLI) is on the decline. Both indicators that track COVID-19-like illness and the percentage of laboratory tests that are positive for SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — have decreased nationally since mid-July, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).¹

It appears the curve has effectively been flattened, with indicators that track COVID-19-like illness decreasing in all regions the week ending August 15, 2020, and the percentage of positive laboratory tests for SARS-CoV-2 decreasing or remaining the same in nine out of 10 regions. Hospitalization rates and mortality attributed to COVID-19 also declined during the same period.²

Meanwhile, the initial virus panic involved the invocation of the Federal Defense Production Act, which included directing $3 billion to companies like General Electric, Philips and Ford to manufacture tens of thousands of ventilators.³ Now, those ventilators are sitting unused.

Ventilator Glut Highlights Misled Virus Response

“The U.S. has too many ventilators,” The Washington Post wrote on August 18, 2020⁴ — an about-face from media headlines posted just months earlier, which talked of ventilator shortages and a “desperate need for ventilators.”^5,⁶

While the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has distributed 15,057 ventilators, 95,713 are sitting unused in a federal stockpile. The vast majority — 94,352 — were part of contracts for ventilators that were signed as a result of COVID-19. For comparison, 10,000 ventilators made up the federal stockpile in April 2020.⁷

“In the fog of war against the virus, we were trying to do our best to protect the health and safety of the American people,” Peter Navarro, White House trade adviser and Defense Production Act policy coordinator, told The Washington Post. “In this particular chess game, the best move was to make sure we had too many ventilators rather than too few.”⁸

While some states overestimated their ventilator needs and requested more than they ended up needing, problems with production delayed delivery. By the time many of the ventilators were produced, hospitals had already begun to turn to over methods of treatment for COVID-19 patients, who often fared worse when placed on mechanical ventilation.

In a rant on Twitter, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson pointed out the irony, too, of flip-flopped media headlines driving hysteria — first to the tune of ventilator shortages and now complaining that the U.S. “forced” manufacturers to build too many ventilators, which are now being wasted:⁹

“… @washingtonpost ran a big story on the $3 billion the US wasted, I mean invested, in 95,000 never-been-used ventilators (what’s $3,000,000,000 between friends?). Look at that headline, though: “The U.S. forced major manufacturers to build ventilators…”

Forced! FORCED, I tell ya. Now why on earth would the feds have felt forced to use wartime laws to force General Motors to make ventilators? Oh, I dunno, maybe because @Washingtonpost @nytimes were screaming at the top of their non-ventilated lungs about them … And how WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE WITHOUT THEM …”

Ventilators Overused, Linked to Worse COVID-19 Outcomes

A February 2020 study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine stated, “Mechanical ventilation is the main supportive treatment for critically ill patients” infected with novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19).¹⁰ In March, the American Hospital Association suggested that up to 960,000 Americans may need ventilator support due to COVID-19.¹¹

To keep up with demand, doctors had suggested rigging ventilators to treat multiple patients, and an emergency ventilator mask was even created by modifying a snorkeling mask already on the market.

As it turned out, not only were such efforts rarely necessary, but the mathematical models that predicted hospitals would be overrun by COVID-19 patients were “astronomically wrong,” according to epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University.¹²

Although a handful of U.S. hospitals did become stressed, no health systems were overrun. “Conversely,” he said, “the health care system was severely damaged in many places because of the [lockdown] measures taken,” while lockdown measures have also significantly increased the number of people at risk of starvation while leading to financial crisis, unrest and civil strife.¹³

Meanwhile, it quickly became apparent that mechanical ventilators may cause more harm than good in a significant number of COVID-19 patients. In a JAMA study that included 5,700 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the New York City area between March 1, 2020, and April 4, 2020, mortality rates for those who received mechanical ventilation ranged from 76.4% to 97.2%, depending on age.¹⁴

Similarly, in a study of 24 COVID-19 patients admitted to Seattle-area ICUs, 75% received mechanical ventilation and, overall, half the patients died between one and 18 days after being admitted.¹⁵

Speaking with STAT, Dr. Scott Weingart, a critical care physician in New York and host of the “EMCrit” podcast, even said automatically putting patients on mechanical ventilators “is really bad,” adding “… I think these patients do much, much worse on the ventilator … I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients.”¹⁶

Less-Invasive Treatments Often Work Better

There’s the assumption that severely ill COVID-19 patients will live, or at least have a chance at living, if placed on a ventilator, but without it they will die. “The reality is far different,” Dr. Muriel Gillick of Harvard Medical School told STAT news in April 2020.¹⁷

As with many invasive medical interventions, there are risks inherent to mechanical ventilation, including impairment to the lung’s air sacs from high levels of oxygen and lung damage caused by the high pressure used by the machines. Long-term sedation from the intubation is another risk, one that’s difficult for some patients, especially the elderly, to bounce back from.

Gillick noted, “We need to ask, are we using ventilators in a way that makes sense for other diseases but not for this one? Instead of asking how do we ration a scarce resource [ventilators], we should be asking how do we best treat this disease?”¹⁸

It’s since been revealed that less-invasive high-flow nasal cannulas and use of prone positioning show promise for treating COVID-19, without the risks of mechanical ventilation. Doctors at the University of Chicago (UChicago) Medicine reported “truly remarkable” results using high-flow nasal cannulas in lieu of ventilators.¹⁹

They’ve dubbed their approach “prevent the vent,” which involves using mechanical ventilation only as a last resort. Dr. Thomas Spiegel, medical director of UChicago Medicine’s emergency department, said, “The proning and the high-flow nasal cannulas combined have brought patient oxygen levels from around 40% to 80% and 90%, so it’s been fascinating and wonderful to see … Avoiding intubation is key.”²⁰

The approach has caught on, and the percentage of hospitalized COVID-19 patients put on mechanical ventilation has decreased.²¹ Still, some of the companies that signed government contracts, such as Philips, are continuing to churn out more ventilators to add to the government stockpile, with deliveries expected through the end of 2020.²²

“The company [Philips] is building 43,000 ventilators for the stockpile by the end of 2020 at a price of about $647 million,” The Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, “At Ford’s Midwest manufacturing hub, where production lines famously pump out an F-150 truck every 60 seconds, a factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, now boasts another distinction: churning out a ventilator once per minute.”²³

Did Lockdowns Cause More Harm Than Good?

Berenson expects similar contradictions to surface soon regarding lockdowns, which were long heralded by the press but may soon go the way of ventilators: “LOCKDOWNS ARE USELESS? Why were we not told? SOMEONE IS TO BLAME AND THAT SOMEONE IS DEFINITELY NOT US,” he Tweeted.²⁴

Berenson was being sarcastic, but Dr. Gilbert Berdine, an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, used data on daily mortality rates for COVID-19 to track the course of the pandemic in Sweden, New York, Illinois and Texas, which each used different pandemic responses, and has suggested that lockdowns may turn out to be “the greatest policy error of this generation.”²⁵

Sweden, which did not implement widespread required lockdowns, hit a peak of 11.38 COVID-19 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020, and again on April 15, but deaths have declined since. Now, cases and deaths are very low, and it appears herd immunity has been achieved, leading to the end of the COVID-19 epidemic there “for all practical purposes.”²⁶

In Illinois, meanwhile, a strict lockdown was also implemented and daily mortality rates increased more slowly, reaching a peak of more than 15 deaths per day per million on May 17, 2020.

However, mortality rates have also been slower to decline and death rates have remained higher than in other areas. While the lockdowns appear to have succeeded in flattening the curve and slowing transmission among healthy populations, they may also have lengthened the time that young people could transmit the virus to the elderly.

“The lockdown appears to have made more deaths from COVID-19 in Illinois than would have occurred without it,” according to Berdine.²⁷ “Almost certainly herd immunity has not been achieved and will not be achieved until the schools and economy are reopened.”

The billions wasted on unused ventilators, combined with the emerging evidence that the pandemic lockdowns may have backfired, echo the plague of curiosities and misinformation that have followed the pandemic from the start.

Media Continue to Fan the Flames

Toward that end, even as COVID-19 death rates for some groups have fallen to almost 0%,²⁸ dire warnings from mainstream media about an ominous “second wave” continue to push doomsday predictions.

The fact is, more than a dozen scientists said the herd immunity threshold (HIT) for COVID-19, at which point its spread slows down or stops, is likely 50% or lower, with some experts saying it could be as low as 10% to 20%.²⁹ This means COVID-19 could potentially fizzle out or even disappear, without any vaccine.

“If we can actually reach herd immunity after 40 percent or less of the population is infected, far fewer people will die than the early forecasts, even without lockdowns,” Berenson wrote. “And if the best-case estimates of 20 percent or less are correct, we may be closer to the end than the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic.”³⁰

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