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Big Tech, the Death of Medicine, Censorship, and Pregnancy Loss; or, How Covid Ruins Everything
I just got a YouTube notification that a physician I follow, Suneel Dhand, who posted a new video titled “Dr. Peter Doshi Capitol Hill video REMOVED by YouTube.” I had watched the referenced video featuring Dr. Doshi, in which he pointed out the inconsistencies in the arguments used for the current push for vaccine and mask mandates.
Dr. Dhand had shown Dr. Doshi’s video in the context of his own video raising similar concerns. Dr. Dhand is by no means “antivaxx,” but favors a multifaceted approach towards treating and preventing Covid that does not coincide with the one-size-fits-all vaccine or nothing. Dhand has also been a strong proponent of ongoing discussions in the name of scientific rigor, that there is no “settled science.”
To blindly follow what a few people are saying would fly in the face of the most basic of scientific and medical reasoning. However, YouTube removed his video stating it violated community standards. He appealed its removal and received word that they would not budge from their position.
This is one of many videos that has been struck for not following the party line. YouTube is censoring scientists and physicians acting in good faith. I fully understand that YouTube as a private company can do whatever it wants. It does fall under the umbrella of big tech companies that are using their social media presence to censor free speech, and it now extends to censoring genuine scientific debate. Do these companies fall under the heading of monopolies? Do we have any ground to stand on to step in and demand they uphold freedom of speech?
Debate and discussion have been foundational to science and medicine since they became fields of study. It is how these fields grow and develop, through constant reexamination. Instead, we’re seeing science shut down in favor of a narrative that has been chosen by a few. The doctors raising questions about Covid treatments, vaccines, and masking are being silenced regardless of their political bent.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a self-avowed Progressive, has come out loudly against the label of “misinformation” for anything that doesn’t support the vaccine or nothing position. In fact, after listening to Prasad speak in his videos, one starts to wonder if he really is as progressive as he claims. I’m heartened to see physicians speaking out against censorship and trying to uphold the critical thinking that has been a hallmark of medicine for centuries. I am heartened because my own experience with the physicians I work with has been so disheartening.
When Covid first hit, my hospital, like so many others, shut down elective surgeries and minimized inpatient hospitalization in an effort to stop the spread and keep beds open for the flux of Covid patients that must be on the horizon. My service, cardiothoracic surgery, only did elective cases for lung cancer patients and those with critical heart disease. We went from having 30+ patients on our list at any given time to three or four. The five of us advanced practice providers (PAs and NPs) were repurposed temporarily, and I was sent to manage patients in the Covid ICU alongside our colleagues in critical care and pulmonology. This was a brief sojourn of a few weeks, and we were back to our normal service.
Months later, no longer consistently caring for Covid patients, I asked a few of my colleagues in critical care if they had read any of the literature about Ivermectin, which had just come out as a possible cheap and safe treatment. I was told, “the CDC doesn’t endorse it, so we won’t consider it.” Only one critical care physician had taken the time to read the available literature. I was shocked that the physicians I worked so closely with and trusted would choose to not even read the studies to decide for themselves.
As the months went on, it became increasingly clear that the majority of doctors I work with are not reviewing the literature themselves, but rather going along with whatever the CDC and their colleges/associations say. My favorite doctor, a strong conservative normally suspicious of anything that smacks of collectivism or socialism, told me during surgery one day that I just needed to get the vaccine because “everyone is going to mandate it, and you won’t be able to go anywhere or do anything without being vaccinated, so you might as well get it.” He said this in July after the vaccine mandate was announced at hospitals across my state. I have not gotten the vaccine because I have had Covid, and natural immunity is a thing, despite what the CDC says. I have seen healthy doctors in their thirties lining up to get their Pfizer vaccines and subsequent boosters, despite the fact that Covid has a less than 1% mortality rate for that demographic. I’ve also seen doctors who had native infection roll their sleeves up to get the vaccine afterward.
While we are being beaten over the head to get everyone and their dog vaccinated, only a small group of physicians are talking about risk stratification and mitigation. When the delta strain took over, the headlines in my in-basket from medical email blasts read “Delta variant more likely to kill those under the age of 50” and “Covid deaths amongst young people highlight need to get vaccinated.” Not working in the Covid ICU consistently anymore, I was unsure about these claims. But I started hearing rumblings about the risk factors these young people had that made them susceptible to death from Covid.
I was sitting in the critical care NP office one day when one of my friends in critical care came in to call one of the large tertiary hospitals, trying to see if they would accept the transfer for a 35-year-old woman who was in the Covid ICU maxed out on her ventilator settings and getting worse. “Hi, I’ve got a 35-year-old lady with Covid. She completely maxed out on the vent, and her sats are continuing to drop and she’s increasingly difficult to oxygenate. I was wondering if you guys would be open to putting her on ECMO? She’s pretty healthy, just has diabetes and hypertension … her BMI? 45.”
Ah, there it is. My coworkers and I had noted that the young patients with Covid we were putting on ECMO in a last-ditch effort to save their lives were all very overweight. Not just overweight, but morbidly obese. A five-foot, six-inch woman would have to weigh 250 lbs to reach a BMI of 40. When I surveyed nurses and NPs in the Covid units, they all said the young people that are dying from Covid all have BMIs over 40, and often also have diabetes and hypertension, or other comorbidities.
No one is talking about this. One’s weight, blood sugar, and blood pressure are all things that can be controlled and modified. A study also showed that 97% of those who died from Covid were deficient in vitamin D. Again, something that can be addressed. But no one will talk about these things. Instead, we have vaccine mandates and a singular focus on the vaccines, even though you can still catch and spread Covid after being vaccinated.
The blind following of whatever the CDC says, the abandonment of critical thinking, and the lack of a multifaceted approach to treatment and prevention have almost destroyed my faith in the medical community. In fact, I’m almost to the point of wanting to leave. I’m not blind to the dangers of Covid, not in the least. I experienced a stillbirth in February at 33 weeks gestation. It was caused by a combination of tight nuchal cord and clot in 50% of the placenta leading to placental insufficiency. I was worked up for clotting disorders after I delivered my son, and have none. We do know, however, that Covid has a significant embolic aspect to it. At the time, I read one study that showed an increase in clots in the placentas and umbilical cords of women that had Covid during pregnancy. Even though we know this, OB/GYNs are not treating Covid-positive pregnant women with full or even partial anticoagulation. Of course, I’ll never know, but I wonder if my son would be alive today if my Covid infection had been treated differently.
Next week, Mustangman and I fly back to Portland to spend the first holiday with his family since we moved cross-country. We wanted to get together with our good friends while we’re there. The first question they asked was if we were vaccinated. I told them that Mustangman is, and I had Covid. They will only get together with us if we can find a place that has outdoor heated dining because of my unvaccinated status. They do not believe that natural immunity is a thing when it comes to Covid. We are unsure if we will be able to see our friends. Covid ruins everything.
Published in General
Deliberate deception could be presenting an incomplete fact picture, or selective editing such as Project Veritas was accused so they cured that by not editing at all.
I have had a serious problem with the way Covid has been handled, exactly as you described above. It’s like telling people that test positive for the flu to go home and only come back for Tamiflu when they can’t breathe.
If we had more time, we would love to come up to Seattle. Our trip this time is going to be pretty brief.
VC, it is wonderful to see you again! We have missed you and your posts!
I am really sorry to hear your news – may you be comforted.
And may you, in the right time and way, reap countless blessings!
While very happy to ‘see’ you here again, VC, I am deeply saddened by the loss of your child in February. There are so few adequate words so I will simply wish you and MustangMan comfort and peace in your grief.
I was with you until that last phrase.
I’m simply saying that people can do bad things for good motives. I think that’s hard to dispute. The things they do are still bad.
VC, I am so sorry for the devastating loss and disappointment that you have faced recently. I can’t imagine going through all of it without deep sorrow and loss.
I don’t know you well, although I feel a tiny kinship with you: you were the first person to send me a PM several years ago to tell me that one of my very first posts had been promoted to the Main Feed. I was ecstatic! I didn’t even know what that meant! At any rate, I’ll always remember you for that.
So I feel a little connection to you and your grief. It must be tempting to try to do something to resolve all the questions and confusion, and make it all go away. (If I’ve misread you, please forgive me.) But if this makes sense, I want to encourage you to be kind to yourselves, you and MustangMan. The loss of your child, the frightening results of Covid vaccinations, the confusion about your own health, and your friends–all of that will become clearer gradually. Right now I hope that you will put your energy into comforting and into loving each other. Give time the chance to bring healing.
Heartbreakingly sad. And (I believe) something that will–one day–be viewed as monstrous. We’ve now had something like 642 days of “fifteen days to slow the spread” (that is, about 42 iterations of the original). And so very little of that time has actually been directed towards what we should do to protect those who are–through no fault of their own–exceptionally vulnerable, and those who–for whatever reason–have volunteered for comorbidities whose consequences they could avert through rational choices. Sometimes, admittedly, it’s hard for both the physicians and the sufferers to know which is which. But it really does seem as if there’s not been much effort made by the “scientists” to discern the differences or even to try very hard to investigate how to protect those who are most at risk from this disease.
It is good to see you back and to have this post.
Covid does seem to ruin everything, while, ironically, also clarifying everything. By that I mean that the fear of this disease has brought out the worst in us, but those people who have stood up to the fear and who have spoken out, and especially people in healthcare–people like you–have shown us what the best looks like. I heard a talk by David Martin in which he encouraged his audience to live free amongst the fearful such that people will look at you as Estelle Reiner looked at Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, and will think to themselves “I want what she’s having!”
For over 100 years, many physicians have lived inside a carefully constructed thought ghetto where they abide by any of a number of things about which they were carefully brainwashed by the “medical standards” of Rockefeller Medicine.
The Rockefeller Institute(RI) has set up a group of standards and guidelines that have shoved medical care away from common sense, natural cures, the development of diagnostic abilities, and the substitution of pill popping and surgery from less intrusive remedies.
This began circa 1915. At that point, cancer became an health malady that was treated with radiation and then chemo. It should not amaze anyone that since the Rockefeller fortune involved vast acquisition of oil and other fuels, then petrochemical-based medicines replaced other strategies for treating cancer and other ailments.
Prior to this stage in the med game, some throat and jaw cancers were successfully being treated by the careful, deliberate infecting of the cancerous part of the patient’s neck or jaw by Erysipelas. Med books from the turn of The 20th Century show a profoundly serious tumor in the “before” picture, and a remarkably normal throat or jaw in the recovered patient after the Erysipelas treatment.
It was not surprising that last year, one happy story emerging out of COVID-hysterical news reports involved a cancer patient whose cancer went into remission during his COVID crisis. He had run a fever for several days. Researchers in the 1980’s had stumbled into the reality that those of us who suffer an infection like the flu, and run a temp of over 101 for several days, do not end up as cancer patients inside a 4 or 5 year window after experiencing that illness.
But Rockefeller Medicine has insisted we avoid the flu, & insert toxic materials from flu vaxxes into our bodies. By doing this, we then, should the vaccines offer protection from influenza, become more likely to have cancer. It’s a double whammy – we avoid running a fever, which eliminates cancer cells, and then use our bodies as receptacles for toxins, which are known to cause cancer.
Another effect of Rockefeller Institute health standards is this: Many doctors are now terrified of vitamins. The media has also been induced by the powers of the RI to portray vitamins as pointless, their distributors as snake oil salesmen. I remember one Sixty Minutes expose on the “known facets” of the Vitamin Conspiracy Forces. Included in the segment was the idea that 60 Minutes producers had paid labs to examine contents of vitamin bottles. Lo and behold, individual capsules were shorting consumers of advertised amounts of the vitamin by as much as 70%. Critics of the program wrote in to say the assay methods used were the wrong ones, and 60 Minutes should retract their statements.
The following week, 60 Minutes discussed the world of food flavorings, where extracts of beavers’ anal glands were not only used as substitute for real vanilla but praised by Sixty Mins to the high heavens1
That’s the problem- we keep doing the same things over and over again, and then are miffed at why they keep failing. Masking doesn’t really work. Lockdowns didn’t work and were ruinous to society. The vaccine or nothing narrative is not really helpful. There are things that can be done to help those at risk. There are also some things that can be done prophylactically to help decrease the severity of disease. None of these things are being talked about. There’s also been zero campaign to discuss reduction of modifiable risks. Like treatment and prevention of most diseases, there should be a layered approach that goes beyond “get the vaccine and wear a mask.” That’s not the whole story.
Exactly.
For example: When Monsanto presented to the EPA its Lethal Dose study on RoundUp’s glyphosate exposure risks to dogs, the researchers in charge of this one clinical study did not slant the findings or exclude data. (The theory being if it was sfe for dogs, it would be safe for humans as well.)
The study itself was totally truthful.
But where deception came in involves the reality that RoundUp was not being sold as a food additive in dog food, but as an aerosal sprayed herbicide which was far more likely to hit the respiratory system of a family pet than get into their alimentary system where gastric juices and acids would be deployed to eliminate the harm from the glyphosate.
Both the EPA panel that went on to approve RoundUp for over the counter use and the US Congress have members that are extremely busy and are not properly advised on whether a study’s design presents meaningful results or not.
Industry knows this and takes advantage of this.
So industry uses this sort of trick all the time.
Perhaps a quibble, but I have yet to find anything about political censorship noble.
But if Joe was (supposedly) elected because of covid scaring people into voting for a change, or whatever?
Zero campaign? Where have you been? Doctors have been harping about obesity (and the associated hypertension & diabetes not to mention sleep apnea) for years but the general public prefers Doritos & 24 oz soft drinks. More talking about it isn’t going to help. The problem has been known for well over 30 years-now called the dreaded “metabolic syndrome” (aka I ate too much for 20+ years and now I am fat, hypertensive and diabetic-previously known colloquially among MDs as diaobesitension). Additionally, obese people do not want to hear about it- you are fat shaming! More importantly, 110+MILLION Americans are not going to lose enough weight in the near term to significantly affect their risks from COVID .
Not all vaccination reluctance is unfounded. Of course this can be chalked up as antidotal, but we are all individuals who’s first charge looking after our personal situations.
It’s a longish story, but my was a father regular recipient of the annual flu shot per the recommendations of “health inc” for those over 60, and after a decade or so, and being in his late 60, he had a reaction to the flu shot (uncontrolled bleeding) which did not become apparent until ~2 weeks post injection. It took over a month of tests to determined, he was producing platelets, but his immune system was scooping then all up. Eventually he was back to normal, but no connection was made to the shot.
The next year again he received the annual flu shot, and before the end of the day he was hyperglycemic and could not see due to the changing density index in his eyes effected his vision to the point he could not drive. This got everyone’s attention immediately, and again it was determined he was producing insulin, but his immune system was being indiscriminate not differentiating invader vs whatever was handy and started removing all his insulin.
The shot was clearly the instigator, and his Federal health unit (where he was getting the shots) dutifully documented the events and the ho hum response back was they are aware of these issues, but do not make them “that public” because it will not serve its mission to get as many folks as vaccinated as they want.
Moral of the story, to the CDC you individually do not count, and the amorphous many need to be lead to the promised land thru the CDC’s superior intelligence and benevolence.
I have long believed that many of our Federal agencies are more concerned with 1st “their budget”, 2nd “not being found guilty of visible incompetence”, and 3rd “whatever their assigned mission is currently defined as relevant to securing priority 1”.
Given that I share a very large fraction of my father’s DNA has me always on the alert with any vaccine, however so far I have had no adverse reactions and continue to submit to getting vaccination shots. However as I get older and my immune system gets to it’s end of life, the decisions carry more weight.
I created what I thought was an illustrative meme of that kind of situation:
Thank you for this, @CarolJoy. My husband and I have disagreed on the risks of using Roundup and this is a very interesting detail.
Not a quibble, merely a misunderstanding. It is not the censorship that is noble, but rather the motive that prompts some people to resort to censorship. “Noble” modifies “motives” in the bolded text.
No doubt, but we have been seriously let down by public health officials, who should have been ignoring the fat-shaming complainers and the processed food industry and telling people loud and clear that changes need to be made. Commercials, billboards, whatever. Instead they let the emergency go to waste.
This is interesting, @Caryn. I would not have gotten the vaccine if I was still of childbearing age. I am three months shy of 65, at the higher end of a healthy BMI, have been double vaccinated. But to be honest, I am ready to get Covid and get it over with. I feel I will be better protected afterwards (if I survive, of course :-) ). Many young friends of ours of childbearing age have refused the vaccine and I support them. (Maybe my attitude is due to my childhood and early adulthood in the South American tropics and experience with very severe flu.)
@vicrylcontessa, I am very sorry for the loss of your child. Thank you for sharing with us. It is a privilege to share the knowledge and to grieve with you, although from afar.
Yes, doctors have been talking about obesity in general, but not in the context of the risk it poses for Covid. There’s also been no national campaign telling people that obesity, diabetes, low vit D, and hypertension are big risk factors for mortality and morbidity when it comes to Covid. I think the reason for this is exactly as you stated- people are afraid to be labeled a “fat shammer.” But as Ben Shapiro likes to say, facts don’t care about your feelings. I fully understand how difficult it is to lose weight and watch your diet. But it doesn’t do anyone any good to say “you just keep doing you, boo. If you get Covid there’s a greater chance you’ll die from it, but you do you.
The medical profession has lost so much credibility over the past 20 months- it has largely exposed itself as consisting mostly of relatively smart individuals who know how to memorize and follow orders, but who do not know how to learn. As you observed, this is not science. It is more resembling a cult than anything else. The continued insistence on these ridiculous masks is proof of that.
But, as I wrote on these pages this morning… Truth exists, and it will be discovered by those who actually seek it. And it will eventually emerge.
Maybe a healthy distrust of the medical profession is what’s necessary to drive some much needed reform.
As for your friends… I’m sorry to hear it. But… I would say that life is too short for friends like that, and maybe it is, but I imagine you do not see it that way. What I’ve discovered is that there are plenty of people willing to live life normally (we’ve been doing it for over a year!), and every day, more and more people catch on.
As I tell my wife: this too shall pass.
Perhaps not, but we could stop pretending that this thing has ever presented the same risk for everyone, and that these “one size fits all” sledgehammer “solutions” have ever been anywhere close to appropriate.
When you live on lies, people stop trusting anything at all that you say. And rightly so. Any medical professional who still thinks it is appropriate to mask children (or anyone, for that matter) should not be in business. It is as simple as that. You don’t openly lie to your clients and expect to be taken seriously ever again.
Two notes from the UK (courtesy of Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic site):
Why Have We Doctors Been Silent? and does the stats show that the vaccines actually increase your chances of getting Covid? Mike Hearn, formerly of Google, takes a look at raw data from the NHS and shows that the vaxxed are twice as likely to come down with the disease and that the statistics are massaged to show otherwise.
My PA still hasn’t gotten the vaccine.
Wasn’t there some concern early on that people who got the vaccine and then got covid, might have bigger problems than if they didn’t get the vax? So the idea that vaccinated people are having problems when they still get covid, may not be a surprise.
And if this were really a national emergency, for which 100% (even babies) need to be vaccinated, or else apparently the intention is that everyone will lose their jobs and not be able to provide for their families, Why is the border deliberately left open, and new-comers are not vaccinated, but instead are whisked off in the middle of the night to communities all over the US to seed local populations?
This isn’t the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. This is coordinated at the top of the current administration.