Despite widespread publicity, the 2002 landmark study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women is completely unknown to most women.
New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine discovered that only 29 percent of the women surveyed knew anything about the study two years later. Additionally, only 40 percent of the women were able to identify possible risks and benefits linked to hormone therapy.
Hormone therapy is used to ease your symptoms of menopause, but has also been widely prescribed for preventive purposes, based in part on earlier observational studies that had suggested it could help protect women against heart disease, weak bones, and dementia.
In July 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) abruptly ended its combination of estrogen and progestin therapy study, as their data discovered higher rates of breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots in the population taking the hormones, compared to those taking placebos.
Later, in April 2004, WHI also halted the portion of the study for estrogen-only therapy, after finding the hormone did not offer any protective heart disease prevention, but rather increased your risk of stroke and blood clots.
The WHI findings triggered enormous changes in the use of hormone therapy, and prescriptions had dropped 38 percent by 2003.
Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, said their latest survey indicates there's a huge problem in communicating crucial health information to patients effectively, which in turn is indicative of an even larger problem – ensuring that people can make informed decisions about their medical care.
Australians are pretty familiar with the effects of climate change. But a new book says pollution has also impacted our downstairs areas in pretty serious ways.
If you’ve become a bit more of a hygiene freak since COVID began, you’re not alone. But have you ever wondered how long you should keep your undies? The answer might surprise you.
Sickle cell disease is the most prevalent inherited blood disorder in the world, affecting 70,000 to 100,000 Americans. However, it is considered an orphan disease, meaning it impacts less than 200,000 people nationally, and is therefore underrepresented in therapeutic research.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3tXLpHX
Eating just one cup of leafy green vegetables every day could boost muscle function, according to new research. The study found that people who consumed a nitrate-rich diet, predominantly from vegetables, had significantly better muscle function of their lower limbs.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3fdgUtg
Metal foams are durable, and their small pores and large surface areas suggest they could effectively filter out microbes. Researchers have transformed copper nanowires into metal foams that could be used in facemasks and air filtration systems.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3vRXwrP
Researchers used neutron scattering to investigate the interactions between telaprevir, a drug used to treat hepatitis C viral infection, and the SARS-CoV-2 main protease, the enzyme responsible for enabling the virus to reproduce. Unforeseen changes in the electric charges were discovered in the drug binding site of the protease enzyme that were not predicted by prevailing computer simulations. The research provides key insights for advancing drug design and drug repurposing efforts to treat COVID-19.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3vYauEo
People who received a flu shot last flu season were significantly less likely to test positive for a COVID-19 infection when the pandemic hit, according to a new study. And those who did test positive for COVID-19 had fewer complications if they received their flu shot.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3sjXvuz
Vaccinating health care workers resulted in an immediate and notable reduction of positive COVID-19 cases among employees, reducing the number of required isolations and quarantines by more than 90 percent, according to a new study.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2PtBGtC
A new study is the first to identify how human brains grow much larger, with three times as many neurons, compared with chimpanzee and gorilla brains. The study identified a key molecular switch that can make ape brain organoids grow more like human organoids, and vice versa.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3rrLDFD
Capturing the structure of large molecular complexes with variable shape is an extremely difficult task. Scientists now have been able to do it - thanks to a new approach regarding an important protein machine.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2QCalGs
Feelings of shame and stigmatisation at the idea of contracting COVID-19 are linked to lower compliance of social distancing and the likelihood of reporting infection to authorities and potential contacts in Italy, South Korea and the USA.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3vXhfGf
Scientists have demonstrated how to image samples of heavy elements as small as a single nanogram. The new approach will help scientists advance new technologies for medical imaging and cancer therapies.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3chabg0
As noted by Russel Brand in a recent video commentary (above), some of the same drug companies now responsible for developing and manufacturing fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccines were also responsible for creating the opioid crisis in the U.S., which has killed as many Americans as have died from COVID-19.
Most have also been convicted of other unethical and criminal activities over the years, any of which puts their ethical fitness into question. Not surprisingly, opioid addiction and overdose deaths skyrocketed during 2020 lockdowns and, now, COVID-19 vaccines are taking their toll as well.
Johnson & Johnson Found Partly Liable for Opioid Crisis
In 2019, Johnson & Johnson was found partially liable for the “human and financial costs” of the opioid epidemic in the U.S. and was ordered to pay $572 million to the state of Oklahoma. While the company denied any wrongdoing, “data revealed during the trial proved a culture of downplaying the risks of opioids to customers and physicians,” Cassiobury Court reported, adding:1
“Sales representatives were trained to tell doctors that the risk of addiction was 2.6% or less if the drugs were prescribed by a doctor and, most shockingly, doctors were specifically targeted as ‘key customers’ if they had a history of prescribing a high amount of opioids.”
In “Capitalism Gone Wrong: How Big Pharma Created America’s Opioid Carnage,” published in The Guardian July 24, 2019, Chris McGreal, author of “American Overdose, the Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts,” wrote:2
“Oklahoma’s attorney general accused the company of a ‘cunning, cynical and deceitful scheme’ to ramp up narcotic painkiller sales as one of a web of firms that created the biggest drug epidemic in American history as profits surged. The companies worked in step to change medical culture and practice by influencing doctors, researchers, federal regulators and politicians.”
Curiously, as noted by Brand, Johnson & Johnson’s stock price rose by 5% immediately following that verdict. What this means, he suggests, is that we’ve created systems that encourage malpractice. Profit motives override all other concerns, including lethal effects.
Importantly, Johnson & Johnson made false claims about the safety of its opioid, going so far as to manipulate scientific papers to support its assertion that the risk of addiction was less than 2.6%.3 As Brand points out, when companies engage in unethical behavior, especially the falsification and manipulation of science, they create distrust and cynicism.
This should be obvious, and it’s nobody’s fault but their own. We can point to these very specific examples and say, “Look here. They manipulated and falsified science to make money. When they were caught, all they had to do was pay a manageable fine, which they recouped through a rise in stock price.”
If it happened once (and believe me, it’s happened more than once), it can happen again. And if it can happen at all, why couldn’t this unethical behavior occur when creating what is expected to be a phenomenally profitable pandemic vaccine? We’re told we must not question the safety or effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, yet the histories of the makers are such that not questioning everything they do would be naïve in the extreme.
Johnson & Johnson has also been involved in a long list of product safety and contamination issues, marketing and safety violations, government contract violations and foreign corrupt practices resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. You can find their rap sheet on the Corporate Research Project’s website.4
Pfizer’s Long History of Unethical Behavior
Another COVID-19 vaccine maker, Pfizer, has been sued in multiple venues over unethical behavior,5 including unethical drug testing and illegal marketing practices.
In 2014, it was ordered to pay $75 million to settle charges relating to its testing of a new broad spectrum antibiotic on critically ill Nigerian children. As reported by the Independent6 at the time, Pfizer sent a team of doctors into Nigeria in the midst of a meningitis epidemic.
For two weeks, the team set up “within meters” of a medical station run by Doctors Without Borders and began dispensing the experimental drug, Trovan. Of the 200 children picked, half got the experimental drug and the other half the already licensed antibiotic Rocephin. Eleven of the children treated by the Pfizer team died, and many others suffered side effects such as brain damage and organ failure.
Pfizer denied wrongdoing. According to the company, only five of the children given Trovan died, compared to six who received Rocephin, so their drug was not to blame. The problem was they apparently never told the parents that their children were being given an experimental drug.
What’s more, while Pfizer produced a permission letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, the letter turned out to have been backdated. The ethics committee itself wasn’t set up until a year after the trial had already taken place.
In his 2010 paper,7 “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR,” Robert G. Evans, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor at Vancouver School of Economics, described Pfizer as “a ‘habitual offender,’ persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results.” Between 2002 and 2010 alone, Pfizer and its subsidiaries were fined $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards.
Such sums did nothing to deter bad behavior. In 2011, Pfizer agreed to pay $14.5 million to settle federal charges of illegal marketing,8 and in 2014 they settled federal charges relating to improper marketing of the kidney transplant drug Rapamune to the tune of $35 million.9
A March 10, 2021, article11 by KHN also highlights persistent, long-standing problems at Pfizer’s vaccine plant in Kansas, which is slated to start producing COVID-19 vaccines:
“The McPherson, Kansas, facility, which FDA inspectors wrote is the nation’s largest manufacturer of sterile injectable controlled substances, has a long, troubled history. Nearly a decade’s worth of FDA inspection reports, recalls and reprimands reviewed by KHN show the facility as a repeat offender.
FDA investigators have repeatedly noted in reports that the plant has failed to control quality and contamination or fully investigate after production failures.
The 1970s-era manufacturing site has had persistent mold concerns over the years and been the focus of at least four intense FDA inspections since Pfizer took over its operations in late 2015, when it acquired Hospira.”
The plant is going to be a fill-and-finish site for the Pfizer vaccine. The question is whether the site has really cleaned up its act, or whether contamination might become an issue.
"The facility’s record of recalls and field alerts include vials of medication that contained glass and cardboard particles and, as one customer complained, a ‘small insect or speck of dust,'" KHN reports.
“A 2017 FDA warning letter … said the contaminants such as cardboard and glass found in vials posed a ‘severe risk of harm to patients’ and indicated that the facility’s process for manufacturing sterile injectable products was ‘out of control.’”
AstraZeneca’s Extensive Rap Sheet
Then there’s AstraZeneca, whose director of research for the drug Seroquel, Wayne MacFadden, confessed to entering into multiple sexual affairs for the sole purpose of obtaining information and favors that might benefit the company.12
Aside from that eyebrow-raising scandal, AstraZeneca has been brought into the halls of justice more than once. Below is but a sampling of its criminal history. Even more can be found on the Corporate Research Project’s “AstraZeneca: Corporate Rap Sheet” page:13
In 2003, AstraZeneca was fined $355 million to settle Medicare fraud charges relating to its marketing of the cancer drug Zoladex.14,15 Among the many charges they pleaded guilty to was that they had encouraged doctors to illegally request Medicare reimbursements. Four years later, in 2007, the company was ordered to pay another $12.9 million in damages for its overcharging Medicare and private insurance for Zoladex16
In 2005, the European Commission fined AstraZeneca 60 million euros for misusing the patent system to delay market entry of competing generics17,18
In 2010, AstraZeneca was fined $520 million for off-label drug marketing19
Also in 2010, the company agreed to pay $198 million to settle more than 25,000 lawsuits filed by patients harmed by three of its psychiatric drugs20
In 2016, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined the company $4.3 million for improperly influencing and rewarding prescribers to use their products, in other words, bribery21
AstraZeneca’s Vaccine Is For-Profit After All
Now, AstraZeneca has made a big deal about its vow not to profit from its COVID-19 vaccine. Adrian Hill, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute and the co-developer of the AstraZeneca vaccine, has gone on record saying “I personally don’t believe that in a time of pandemic there should be exclusive licenses.”22 As reported by KHN:23
“Oxford University surprised and pleased advocates of overhauling the vaccine business in April by promising to donate the rights to its promising coronavirus vaccine to any drugmaker. The idea was to provide medicines preventing or treating COVID-19 at a low cost or free of charge, the British university said …
‘We actually thought they were going to do that,’ James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that works to expand access to medical technology, said of Oxford’s pledge. ‘Why wouldn’t people agree to let everyone have access to the best vaccines possible?’”
The fantasy didn’t last long. A few weeks later, Oxford University caved to the urgings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and signed an exclusive contract with AstraZeneca. According to an article in The Nation,24 “Gates himself describes his foundation as intimately involved in the partnership between AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.”
This vaccine deal gives AstraZeneca “sole rights and no guarantee of low prices,” KHN writes.25 Indeed, the not-for-profit vow expires once the pandemic is over, and AstraZeneca itself appears to have a say when it comes to declaring the end date. It could be as early as July 1, 2021, according to a company memo obtained by the Financial Times.26
As explained by investigative journalist Whitney Webb in a recent Corbett Report interview,27 the actual patents and royalties for the AstraZeneca vaccine are held by a private company called Vaccitech, which has been quite open about the future profit potential with its shareholders, noting that the COVID-19 vaccine will most likely become an annual vaccine that is updated each season. Oxford University itself also stands to make millions from the deal. According to KHN:28
“Other companies working on coronavirus vaccines have followed the same line, collecting billions in government grants, hoarding patents, revealing as little as possible about their deals — and planning to charge up to $37 a dose for potentially hundreds of millions of shots.”
All of this tells you that the same greed that drove these drug companies into criminal acts before is still at play today, and they have repeatedly proven that profit potential wins over harm potential every time.
Leaked Data Warns of mRNA Instability
A recent feature investigation29 by journalist Serena Tinari published in The BMJ reviews the content of leaked — possibly hacked — documents showing the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had concerns about early batches of the Pfizer vaccine having lower than expected levels of intact mRNA:
“EMA scientists tasked with ensuring manufacturing quality — the chemistry, manufacturing, and control aspects of Pfizer’s submission to the EMA — worried about ‘truncated and modified mRNA species present in the finished product.’
Among the many files leaked to The BMJ, an email dated 23 November [2020] by a high ranking EMA official outlined a raft of issues. In short, commercial manufacturing was not producing vaccines to the specifications expected, and regulators were unsure of the implications. EMA responded by filing two ‘major objections’ with Pfizer, along with a host of other questions it wanted addressed.
The email identified ‘a significant difference in % RNA integrity/truncated species’ between the clinical batches and proposed commercial batches — from around 78% to 55%. The root cause was unknown and the impact of this loss of RNA integrity on safety and efficacy of the vaccine was ‘yet to be defined,’ the email said.”
Considering the delivery of intact mRNA is of crucial importance for the efficacy of this vaccine, the suspicion is that the lower levels might render the vaccine ineffective.
One problem is that while the EMA has authorized Pfizer’s vaccine and issued a public assessment stating the quality is “considered to be sufficiently consistent and acceptable,” it’s not clear if and how the agency’s concerns about inadequate mRNA levels were actually corrected.
The EMA has explained away the issue by stating that some of the leaked information was “partially doctored” by essentially cutting and pasting data from different users into valid emails.
“But the documents offer the broader medical community a chance to reflect on the complexities of quality assurance for novel mRNA vaccines,” Tinari writes, “which include everything from the quantification and integrity of mRNA and carrier lipids to measuring the distribution of particle sizes and encapsulation efficiency.”
It’s well-recognized that RNA instability is of the utmost importance when it comes to this kind of technology, as even minor degradation anywhere along the RNA strand can slow the translation performance and result in the incomplete expression of the target antigen (in this case the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein).
One problem is there’s no regulatory guidance for mRNA based “vaccines.” Yet another problem is that the data currently available is so scant that regulators probably wouldn’t be able to make an appropriate assessment about the percentage of intact mRNA required for efficacy.
Lipid Nanoparticles Are Highly Inflammatory
mRNA fragility and instability is the reason why Pfizer and Moderna use a lipid nanoparticle delivery system, which brings a whole separate set of problems. Scientist and researcher Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., believes the nanoparticle allows the mRNA to escape the normal degradation by enzymes that normally remove mRNA, thereby allowing it to persist in your tissues for a long time, continuing to produce spike proteins all the while.
As previously suspected, research30 posted March 4, 2021, on the preprint server bioRxiv now warns that the lipid nanoparticle component of these mRNA vaccines is in fact “highly inflammatory” and may be responsible for many of the side effects being reported. According to the authors:
“Vaccines based on mRNA-containing lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are a promising new platform used by two leading vaccines … Clinical trials and ongoing vaccinations present with very high protection levels and varying degrees of side effects. However, the nature of the reported side effects remains poorly defined.
Here we present evidence that LNPs used in many preclinical studies are highly inflammatory in mice.
Intradermal injection of these LNPs led to rapid and robust inflammatory responses, characterized by massive neutrophil infiltration, activation of diverse inflammatory pathways, and production of various inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. The same dose of LNP delivered intranasally led to similar inflammatory responses in the lung and resulted in a high mortality rate …
Their potent adjuvant activity and reported superiority comparing to other adjuvants in supporting the induction of adaptive immune responses could stem from their inflammatory nature. Furthermore, the preclinical LNPs are similar to the ones used for human vaccines, which could also explain the observed side effects in humans using this platform.”
Can You Trust Big Pharma to Safeguard Your Health?
Considering their long histories of unethical, illegal and criminal behaviors, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are hardly beacons of hope for mankind when it comes to COVID-19 — or any other pandemic, for that matter.
Sadly, the rapidly escalating reports of serious side effects and deaths from these injections, and the companies’ dismissal of these events as coincidental or insignificant further prove that profit is still the primary driver. If they can make a buck by ignoring a problem, they will.
Global lockdowns were ostensibly initiated to protect the general public and “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 infections. Yet, experts agree that this policy may well have been one of the biggest public health mistakes ever made.1
Public health is a system designed to promote health, prevent disease and encourage healthy behaviors. The goal is to encourage proper medical care and healthy efforts through the implementation of policies and programs.
In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health2 in 2009, the authors offered evidence that public health policies have a significant effect on health, citing changes in seat belt laws, workplace health and safety and public tobacco use that have significantly affected health outcomes.
The health of communities is highly influenced by these policies, which governments use to help prevent obesity, control infectious disease, provide clean air and water and more. Yet, in the past year, it has become apparent that public health policies have moved away from evidence-based decision-making and are being driven by another agenda.
Experts Call Lockdowns the Biggest Health Mistake Ever Made
In an interview with Daily Clout, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya declared that the COVID-19 lockdowns may well be remembered as the “single worst public health mistake” in the last 100 years.3 The full interview is found inside the Daily Clout membership area. Bhattacharya also emailed a journalist from Newsweek about his interview, reiterating his statements:4
“I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.
At the same time, they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed. In the U.S., they have — at best — protected the "non-essential" class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle-down epidemiology.”
During the interview, Bhattacharya indicated that his belief and subsequent work on the Great Barrington Declaration5 was a product of two basic facts.6
"One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger ... and that's a really important fact because we know who is most vulnerable, it's people that are older.
So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let's protect the vulnerable. The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live."
He goes further into the explanation in an open letter published November 25, 2020, on the website.7 The Great Barrington Declaration calls for “focused protection” and finding a middle ground between locking down an entire economy and just “letting it rip.”
Although naysayers encourage the public to remain fearful, wear masks and seek a vaccine, it’s telling that thus far, the declaration has collected over 41,500 signatures from medical practitioners and over 13,500 signatures from medical and public health scientists.8
In addition, the declaration is open for public signatures and has collected over 758,500 from concerned citizens from around the world. The website allows you to read and sign the declaration, answers many frequently asked questions, shares the science behind the recommendations and explains how the declaration was written.
Analysis Shows Lockdowns Increased Public Health Damage
In 2019, before the pandemic, the World Health Organization published a document on nonpharmaceutical public health measures to mitigate the impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza, another potentially deadly respiratory illness. They clearly state, “there is a very low overall quality of evidence that workplace measures and closures reduce influenza transmission.”9
In the past months, scientists have learned more about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and many teams have analyzed the impact that lockdowns may or may not have had on the spread of the virus and the economy in several countries.
A paper published by the University of Bristol, U.K., in June 2020, found that the distribution of infections was on the decline, even before the U.K. had instituted lockdowns.10 The paper does not take into account the expected “second-wave" in the fall, but it is apparent from their analysis that infection rates were on the decline during the summer months well before fall.
A second paper,11 also published by U.K. scientists, found that closing schools and prohibiting mass gatherings may have helped to lower the incidence. However, stay-at-home orders and mask-wearing in public “was not associated with any independent additional impact.”
In New Zealand, communities were under a level 4 lockdown, which cost the country at least $10 billion.12 Using empirical data and comparing the numbers against areas in the U.S. that were practicing only social distancing at the time, one analysis found that lockdowns did not reduce the number of deaths and the ineffectiveness triggered large economic losses with little benefit for New Zealand.
In an analysis13 of nonpharmaceutical interventions, including business closures and mandatory stay-at-home orders in 10 countries, researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect” in countries using more restrictive policies as compared to those with less restrictive policies.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Doesn’t Support Lockdowns
In a paper14 by psychologist Oliver Robinson, Ph.D., from the University of Greenwich, London, he found less restrictive nonpharmaceutical measures had a similar effect as lockdowns.
Psychological research also suggested lockdowns could exacerbate stressors, and were strong predictors of becoming sick when exposed to a respiratory virus. Additionally, “the extremely high financial cost of lockdowns may have negative implications for overall population health in terms of diminished resources for other health issues.”15
This has only been the tip of the iceberg in the cost-benefit evaluation researchers have completed in the past months analyzing the overall impact lockdowns have had on society. In August 2020, researchers from the U.K.16 looked at the cost of the lockdown to the country.
They evaluated quality-adjusted life years, COVID-19 mortality and comorbidity rates and an economic cost as a percentage of loss against the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). What they found was the average age at death and life expectancy loss for non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 deaths differed by less than two years.
Their results suggested “that the costs of continuing severe restrictions are so great relative to likely benefits in lives saved that a rapid easing in restrictions is now warranted.”17
In Israel, researchers estimated18 the lockdown would save an average of 274 lives in the country as compared to testing, tracing and isolating those who are sick. The analysis also estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was an average of $45,104,156 to prevent one death.
The lockdowns and policy changes have also affected treatment for other health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.19 This public health policy has come at a high cost, which society will be paying for years in treating physical and mental health conditions.
Should the Government Outlaw Sugar, Tobacco and Alcohol?
Of course, it does sound funny to describe a cost-benefit analysis, which ultimately places a price on life and death. Even so, it is difficult to accurately ascertain the number of deaths that can legitimately be attributed to COVID-19, since the public numbers are skewed.
According to a peer-reviewed study20,21 in October 2020 by the Public Health Policy Initiative of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, the CDC has inflated the mortality statistics by 1,670%.
The report offers a sobering reality check of the true mortality numbers that can be attributed to COVID-19 infection. Although some self-appointed internet “fact” checkers claim this study is mistaken, the numbers speak for themselves. For example, on page 20, there's a graph that compares the fatalities based on the CDC’s current illegal reporting guidelines against the fatality count had they continued using guidelines that have been in use for the past 17 years.
Using the inflated statistical guidelines, the CDC reported 161,392 deaths from COVID-19 by August 23, 2020. However, using the traditional guidelines the CDC has used for the past 17 years, that number was just 6% of the total, equaling 9,684. Using the older guidelines, the CDC22 also reported the leading causes of death in 2019, including 659,041 from heart disease, 599,601 from cancer and 87,647 from diabetes.
It is apparent from these numbers, whether you compare the leading causes of death in 2019 to the inflated numbers from the CDC, or to those using the traditional guidelines, heart disease, cancer and diabetes still cause significantly more deaths than COVID-19.
These conditions have been associated with the use of sugar, tobacco and alcohol. This now begs the question, with the high number of deaths from these chronic conditions, should the government outlaw sugar, tobacco and alcohol use to protect public health?
‘Mass Delusional Psychosis’ May Be the Root of Public Fear
Just one year ago, you likely would have rebelled against being told you had to stay at home, forgo meeting with friends and give up eating at restaurants. But within the past 12 months, those limitations have become commonplace, and many have accepted the mandates as part of their daily lives.
The mask mandates, inaccurate reporting of deaths and COVID “cases” and the media attention on all things COVID-19 with the expressed negligence covering rising suicide rates and opioid overdoses,23,24 have led to what Florida journalist S.G. Cheah characterizes as mass insanity caused by “delusional fear of COVID-19.”25
Cheah refers to lectures and articles by a psychiatrist and medical-legal expert Dr. Mark McDonald26 is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist who believes "the true public health crisis lies in the widespread fear which morphed and evolved into a form of mass delusional psychosis." Cheah continues:
"Even when the statistics point to the extremely low fatality rate among children and young adults (measuring 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at 25),27 the young and the healthy are still terrorized by the chokehold of irrational fear when faced with the coronavirus."
Armed with this knowledge, you are better able to make decisions about your safety and the safety of your family. Moving forward it's important to remember to protect those who are at the highest risk of severe disease and death, including nursing home residents, hospitalized patients, people over 70 and those living in crowded institutions such as homeless shelters and prisons.
In these cases, infectious control strategies are warranted. Yet, as has been demonstrated by research evidence and the knowledge of tens of thousands of medical experts who have signed the Great Barrington Declaration,28 the rest of the population can and should go back to normal.
Unfortunately, masks have become a signal of virtue, with the idea that wearing them will help to protect yourself and the surrounding population. This is not a virtuous action and is perpetuated by fear. Fear is never helpful and never virtuous.
Consider sharing information from independent journalists, scientific evidence and the Great Barrington Declaration as a means of helping others to reduce their fear and panic over an infectious process that has not claimed nearly as many lives as the public has been led to believe.
