Why Aren’t People Getting That Next COVID Shot?

Why Aren’t People Getting That Next COVID Shot?

Why aren’t people getting that next COVID Shot? Seems like a valid question. One people should want an answer to or to try to figure out. Others may not want the question asked for what it might potentially reveal. Let’s dig into some statistics first and then get into some red flags 🚩. As of Jan 16, 2023:

• There have been more than 13.107 billion COVID Vaccines administered 1.64x the world’s current population of 8.011 billion.
• 2.537 billion people worldwide are completely unvaccinated for COVI, which is 31.67%.
• In highly vaccinated countries, all that have 50% or more of their population taking at least 1 COVID Shot, 1.394 billion are unvaccinated (21.64%).
• 37.24% of the world is either COVID unvaccinated or has not completed their primary series to be fully vaccinated. 27.47% of the highly vaccinated countries are unvaccinated or have not completed their primary series.

🚩 Red flag #1 is that 445 million + people worldwide have had 1 shot, but chose not to get fully vaccinated. One might say, well maybe people in certain countries were unable to get that 2nd dose. This is why I separated out the highly vaccinated countries from ones that may not have great access to the vaccines. In those highly vaccinated countries, which makes up 80.4% of the world’s population, 375 million + chose to get 1 shot and within a matter of weeks decided they would not get their 2nd shot to become fully vaccinated. This in spite of surely knowing they needed 2, with most vaccine options, to be fully vaccinated in order to keep their jobs, go out, live, and not be pariahs, etc. In the United States it was certainly made clear. Despite that, at this point 39 million + people in the USA have had 1 shot and are not fully vaccinated, more than 2 years after the COVID Vaccination process began.

We should all be asking why, deliberating about why, and trying to find out why. It’s kind of important. Any one who says it isn’t, probably has an inkling the answer might be bad news for their opinions. Those types of persons seem to care more about their beliefs than people, reason, or truth, so let’s not cater to them.

🚩 Red flag #2. 78.36% of highly vaccinated countries’ populations have taken 1 shot. 72.53% are fully vaccinated. But only 53.43%, of countries that I found reporting on (13 countries, straight average of countries not population adjusted), have taken 3 shots or more. Only 34.88% of those in the United States have taken 3 or more shots and their vaccination process starting in December of 2020. This is more than 2 years now. If they’re so safe and effective wouldn’t people be clamoring to take another dose?

Even if you waited a year from the date of 1/17/22, or earlier, if that was within time period when you became fully vaccinated, 212.83 million people in the USA should have had a booster by now, as it was recommended you get one every year (possibly more in a year at this point).₁ Of course, people do die so how much could that affect things? Well in 2021, the deadliest year in the U.S. ever, 3.4 million people died.₂ Even if all those people died in between getting 1 COVID Shot and their 2nd COVID Shot that would leave 10s of millions of Americans that should have had a COVID Booster by now. More than 90 million. What’s the deal?

🚩 Red flag #3. More Flu Vaccines have been distributed this season (2022-2023) than people who have taken the 3rd shot for COVID. I say distributed because that’s how the CDC keeps stats on Flu Vaccines. It seems as the vast majority get used. Distribution occurs gradually from before Flu Season into Flu Season. 170.71 million Flu Vaccines have been distributed in the United States this Flu Season.₃ 116 million + people have taken at least 1 COVID Booster (3 shots or more) in the U.S..₄ 54 million + more Flu Vaccines have been distributed for a much less serious disease than people who have taken at least 1 COVID Booster for a much more dangerous illness. See anything wrong here? Shouldn’t it be the reverse?

In the mindsets of people the Flu Vaccine isn’t terribly effective. In a poll published 2022, 41% of people don’t think Flu Shots work very well.₅ The point being if someone thought effectiveness is the main reason more are getting Flu Shots than COVID Shots now, that might not add up as a large portion of the population already doesn’t believe Flu Shots are effective, but keep getting them (Flu Vaccines distributed are down slightly from this point last year from 173.34 million to 170.71 million).

Some people argue people don’t know about the COVID Boosters. Perhaps the few people living in the woods where the Unabomber lived are unaware, but the rest of us in the United States are under a constant barrage regarding COVID Vaccines that being commercials, the news, social media, our health agencies and government, our doctors, etc. etc.. This seems like a pretty irrational reason for the low uptake.

Laziness is sometimes used as the excuse. Perhaps you could say that regarding a COVID Booster, even though people keep getting their Flu Vaccines yearly. Problem is, were 39 million + Americans too lazy to get fully vaccinated? They were capable enough of getting 1 shot. They surely knew they needed 2nd shot, at least for Moderna and Pfizer, in order to get full immunity, full living rights, or to keep their jobs. Not really buying this argument either.

“Misinformation” is also claimed to be a reason for COVID Vaccine uptake decreases. Let’s face it, there is some real misinformation and disinformation going around on both sides of the debate. Problem is some things labeled misinformation aren’t actually pieces of misinformation. But I digress. This is quite possibly part of the factor. Yet we still have the same problem as the laziness argument. 39 million Americans got 1 dose of an mRNA Vaccine and in a matter of a few weeks tops, the time period you’re supposed to wait to get the 2nd shot, changed their minds about wanting to be fully vaccinated. This is early on in the vaccination process when there were less rumors floating around. So what they heard the “misinformation” in that short time period between 1st and 2nd shot? Not likely. This can’t really reasonably explain a large portion of that 39 million.

That brings us to side effects as a possible reason. In that same poll mentioned above, 39% are concerned about the Flu Vaccine’s side effects. Could this be partly due to the loud conversation around the COVID Vaccine’s side effects? That seems plausible. It also seems plausible that COVID Vaccine Injuries are a large part as to why people are not getting that next COVID Vaccine, which is occurring all over the world and not just the USA. They are the reason people I know are not getting more, I can say that. There are almost 1.5 million adverse events and 33,591 deaths on VAERS reported due to the COVID Vaccines (surely an under reporting, even the NIH would say so).₆ Perhaps these people not getting another shot should be surveyed so we know why they stopped getting more COVID Vaccines? Could give us some very useful insight. Is that too reasonable and logical to ask for?

You can see screenshots of the chart of highly vaccinated countries here with a link to the full spreadsheet of the data below (just click the images to make bigger and scroll through.)₇

Tell me what else you think it could be. Is there anything else that makes rational sense besides too many injuries?

CITATIONS

1. Number of people in United States fully vaccinated by date. — https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
2. 3.4 million deaths in USA in 2021 — https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/health/#:~:text=COVID%2D19%20%26%20Health-,Preliminary%20data%20shows%20that%203.4%20million%20people%20died%20in%202021,accounted%20for%2050%25%20of%20deaths.&text=Centers%20for%20Disease%20Control%20and%20Prevention.
3. Flu Vaccine weekly distrubtion for last 3 Flu Seasons — https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/dashboard/vaccination-doses-distributed.html
4. Number in USA that have taken at least 1 COVID Booster — https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/states-ranked-by-booster-rates.html
5. Flu Vaccine Poll — https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/04/fewer-americans-plan-to-get-a-flu-shot-this-season-2022.html
6. VAERS Statistics — https://openvaers.com/
7. Highly vaccinated countries COVID Vaccine spreadsheet (Shots 1-5 data + Bivalent booster) — https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s5X2EvHSxCk8FptDwsZkwqVhatXkHRhsDDY8-GwToyI/edit?usp=sharing

Long COVID: Exaggerated or Understated

Long COVID: Exaggerated or Understated

This editorial is in response to “The Exaggeration of Long Covid” – by Marty Makary, MD, MPH which was in the Wall Street Journal recently. I’ve broken down his article because it’s an interesting opinion piece where people will go, yes I agree with that, and then one second later think, this guy is the Michael Jordan of medical gaslighting.

“Lingering symptoms after a respiratory infection are common. Most cases are too mild to worry about.”

And we’re off! I’ve had several respiratory infections in my life prior to COVID, which is by the way really a vascular disease Dr. Marty. Just FYI! You should know this after 3 years as a doctor who has Long COVID patients. I’ve never had any significant or long standing lingering symptoms the way I have with COVID after a respiratory infection. Even in the more mild cases of Long Haul COVID, which mine is not, there can be a lingering for months and months of one or several symptoms that lowers quality of life, at least for that time period (and maybe causes damage that will be a problem in the future). The bigger point being, something is wrong. We shouldn’t just say, “oh well it happens so let’s pretend there isn’t something wrong to fix.” It’s not good that it’s happening (for that long). Nobody wants to be half speed or worse for weeks, months, or years. He says lingering symptoms after a respiratory infection are common, any source for that? Does anyone who has had both really buying what he is trying to sell?

“Long Covid is real. I have reliable patients who describe lingering symptoms after Covid infection. But public-health officials have massively exaggerated long Covid to scare low-risk Americans as our government gives more than $1 billion to a long Covid medical-industrial complex.”

At least he admits it’s a real condition, for the sake of his patient. Saying, “after COVID infection” indicates he’s not considering the possibility it’s COVID persistence. When I saw this article originally I thought, I bet he doesn’t believe in Chronic Lyme, so maybe he’s one of those types, but I digress. There certainly is a medical industrial complex. The government is intimately tied in with large private medical organizations. Public health organizations will do whatever they can to get more funding. Perhaps they did exaggerate. What can we put past these people at this point? But sometimes even when you think you’re exaggerating something, you’re not actually doing it. What a paradox! That’s always a possibility because the COVID data is not perfect, to put it mildly. We will go into some more data later to see how much we want to be concerned with Long Haul COVID.

What’s a low risk American exactly? I get there are people at lower risk, but to pretend there isn’t a reasonable risk for anyone is naive. Plus, we have minimal concept of the long term damage COVID or Long COVID may cause. Not all is known yet, that’s for sure, so “experts” need to stop pretending it is in order to make some point they want to make.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that 20% of Covid infections can result in long Covid. But a U.K. study found that only 3% of Covid patients had residual symptoms lasting 12 weeks. What explains the disparity? It’s often normal to experience mild fatigue or weakness for weeks after being sick and inactive and not eating well. Calling these cases long Covid is the medicalization of ordinary life.”

He wants to trust a government statistical agency to prove a government health agency wrong? Here’s the thing though. While a government might want to inflate Long COVID numbers, they also might want to minimize the number of COVID Long Haulers to save in the wallets. Let’s go through the studies he’s talking about because some corrections need to be made.

The UK study he is talking about can be found here.₁ Problem 1 in the first line! “Experimental estimates of the prevalence of symptoms that remain 12-weeks after coronavirus (COVID-19) infection (commonly referred to as “long COVID”) range from 3.0% based on tracking specific symptoms, to 11.7% based on self-classification of long COVID, using data to 1 August 2021.” He didn’t mention that the prevalence could be as high as 11.7% in this study. Tsk tsk.

Problem #2! Here are the results of the study “among study participants with COVID-19, 9.4% reported any of 12 symptoms four to eight weeks after infection (based on responses from 15,061 participants), while 5.0% reported symptoms at 12 to 16 weeks (out of 12,611 participants) (Figure 1). These percentages were statistically significantly higher than in the control group, suggesting that the prevalence of symptoms following COVID-19 infection is greater than the background prevalence of these symptoms in the population at any given time. The difference in prevalence remained statistically significant at 20 to 24 weeks.” Ut oh spaghettio!

Here it says the study is saying among those with COVID, 9.4% had 1 of 12 symptoms, even though there are 200+ Long COVID symptoms, 4 to 8 weeks after infection making at least 9.4% of COVID participants COVID Long Haulers. This is statistically significantly higher than the control group, which may be filled with, or at least have a spattering of, people who had COVID and don’t know it. 71% of those said their symptoms had a negative impact on their day-to-day activities. 20% saying their ability to undertake such activities had been “limited a lot.” Let’s say one agrees with this 3% figure. That’s still millions in the United States that have had or have Long COVID (even based on reported COVID cases, there are much more in reality than the reported cases), Not exactly a tiny number. At 9.4% we are going over 10 million and these are low estimates. When millions are affected the people in their lives are also affected compounding things, the economy is affected, their place of work is affected, their kids are affected, and the healthcare system is overburdened. It’s not just a problem for the individual with Long Haul COVID. It’s a problem on a much larger scale.

Is it often normal to experience residual symptoms for weeks after being sick and less active though? You don’t atrophy that much in a few weeks. There’s a big difference between atrophy and what Long Haul COVID does to you. I would know I had Chronic Lyme for years with limited activity because I had severe PEM due to Bartonella (a Lyme Coinfection). Even after all those years of limited activity I didn’t have even close to the muscle weakness, etc. that I did in just a few weeks into Long Haul COVID (after recovering from Lyme & Coinfections I was able to go right back to playing basketball, golf, and working out without noticing much atrophy even after 10 years). It’s not the same. It’s often used as a gaslighting excuse quite frankly. Just like, “oh you’re getting old” is used way too often instead of taking a problem seriously, finding the root, and solving the problem, but that would be hard work. It would also open one up to possible scrutiny so why not take the easy way out. Treat symptoms and say it’s normal. Nothing is ordinary about Long Haul COVID. Ignoring these cases to pretend it’s ho hum typical, is medical gaslighting. If you don’t have it, you probably don’t get it. And by the way, as COVID Long Haulers we will get sick if we eat poorly, so we don’t. What a strange thing to throw in there as an excuse for why we feel poorly.

“Two studies published this month put long Covid in perspective. The first, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a spectrum of wellness indicators in 1,000 people who recovered from symptomatic Covid or another respiratory infection. It found that 40% of patients who had tested positive for Covid “reported persistently poor physical, mental, or social well-being at 3-month follow-up.” For Covid-negative patients who had other upper-respiratory infections, the figure was 54%. Covid patients did better than non-Covid patients. While there are certainly unique hallmark conditions of Covid, such as loss of smell, any respiratory infection—flu, RSV, other cold viruses—can knock you down for a while.”

Let’s not pretend Long COVID is easy to put in to perspective, as most chronic illnesses are hard to put into perspective. Even ones that have already been around for decades. AGAIN, COVID is a vascular disease more than anything. It’s concerning when I have to correct a doctor on this, but he’s clearly trying very hard to minimize Long COVID. Respiratory disease sounds less concerning than vascular disease.

Where to even start with this first paper?₂ I feel like I could just post the entire thing in quotation marks as a referendum for the doc saying “The first, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a spectrum of wellness indicators in 1,000 people who recovered from symptomatic Covid or another respiratory infection. It found that 40% of patients who had tested positive for Covid “reported persistently poor physical, mental, or social well-being at 3-month follow-up.” For Covid-negative patients who had other upper-respiratory infections, the figure was 54%. Covid patients did better than non-Covid patients.” This is not what it says! Dr. Malarky is off misstating things again. You’re an MD and MPH, you shouldn’t be reading studies this wrong. What the hell?!

The study is not comparing COVID vs “other respiratory” infections specifically. It’s comparing symptomatic subjects with similar symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 who have positive COVID tests vs. those that had negative COVID tests. This is from the Design, Setting, and Participants: “Participants were enrolled from December 11, 2020 to September 10, 2021, and comprised adults with acute symptoms suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of receipt of a SARS-CoV-2 test approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.” Problems I can see right off the bat are issues with the timing of the test, if it’s administered properly, the location of the virus in the person, viral load, accuracy of test to begin with, possibly mutated variants, etc..

Also, in the study they say, “those with the most severe disease may have been unable or unwilling to participate; it is possible that those too ill to participate were at higher risk of experiencing long-term symptoms after COVID-19. It is also possible that those with cognitive impairment may have been less likely to enroll. Second, it is unclear what heterogeneous acute condition (eg, bacterial pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus, or streptococcal pharyngitis) participants with symptomatic illness who tested negative may have been experiencing at the time of enrollment, making it difficult to hypothesize whether COVID-19-negative participants would be expected to have more or less severe patient-reported outcomes across time. … Fourth, COVID-19 tests may yield false-negative or false-positive results.”

So here’s what the study really says, of those with symptomatic COVID who had positive tests 40% had symptoms still at 3 months after initially falling ill and so did 54% of what seemed like symptomatic COVID patients with negative tests as well. Pretty easily explained by many things including (some already have been listed): those that actually tested positive for COVID would be more likely to receive or seek treatment than those that did not thus bringing down the percentage.

Another head scratcher, is the doc saying those “non-COVID” patients did worse than the COVID patients. Here’s another inconvenient portion of the study the doctor chose to ignore or didn’t read at all, “a higher proportion of participants in the COVID-19 positive group continued to report moderate to severe impairments in well-being at follow-up (at 3 months).” The 40% had a higher amount of severe impairments. Maybe they had higher viral load that the tests more easily picked up. Higher viral load worse disease? You can see all the variables and issues that arise when you really analyze a study and think things out.

I’m sitting here are my computer just dumbfounded at people that should know better. Can’t trust anything right now it seems. It’s embarrassing how this doctor is trying to distort things to fit his narrative. Something that is happening everywhere you look this day in age. Tribalism over reality at it’s finest. I hate it! It’s a poison! Always read the studies yourself because they’re easily distorted. Verify, verify, verify, as best you can anyways.

“The Brookings report determined that 2 million to 4 million people in the U.S. are working less or not at all because of their illness. … In lost wages, that could add up to at least $170 billion per year, the report suggests.”₃ This piece came out in August of 2022. The estimates seem on the lower end based on other estimates I have seen. On top of this estimate, there are probably millions more that a trying to tough it out just because their circumstances indicate they have to or they can’t feed their kids, don’t have money for treatment, or can’t keep their homes. Inflation is not exactly helping them to take the time off they might need. Saying the Flu, RSV, and other viruses can knock you down for a while is a tremendous minimization of the situation with Long Haul COVID. Do millions reduce their work or drop out of the workforce “permanently” after a typical seasonal flu? No. There aren’t enough sick days that you can take when you have Long Haul COVID, They’re not the same. They shouldn’t be compared as if they are. Plus, I don’t know if I mentioned this but those a respiratory viruses and COVID is more vascular. Get Long COVID yourself doc and then come talk to me and the millions other suffering about how it’s so similar.

One thing I would like studied, that I haven’t seen so much, is a severity of symptoms breakdown for COVID Long Haulers. What I’m envisioning is 5-10 different groups of COVID Long Haulers, so we can get an idea of what percentage of COVID Long Haulers fit into what severity level. Not all Long Haul COVID is created equal. Someone suffering mightly for 3 years straight is different than someone that had a little fatigue for a few months. This would be good to know.

“The second study, in Lancet Regional Health, looked for long Covid in 5,086 children 11 to 17 and found that symptoms present during infection rapidly declined over time. The researchers found that among children who tested positive and negative for Covid “prevalence patterns of poor well-being, fatigue and Long COVID”—defined by its symptoms without the need for a past diagnosis of the disease—“were broadly similar.” (The study also found that loneliness in children increased steadily in the year after Covid illness.)”

We can agree that children do handle COVID better in general (as one would expect): get less Long Haul COVID, get less serious complications with COVID, at least that’s how it seems now, but even with asymptomatic infections there can be damage, such as the 54% of cruise ship asymptomatic cases that had lung damage.₄ “The analysis of the positive cases from the cruise ship Diamond Princess revealed that 73% were asymptomatic, of whom 54% had lung opacities on CT, usually showing a prevalence of ground glass opacity (GGO) over consolidation. A comparable prevalence of abnormal chest x-ray in asymptomatic and minimally symptomatic patients was reported by a radiologic center in the first Italian COVID-19 epicenter.”

You can look at the study the doctor quotes yourself here to check if he is misstating things greatly again.₅ It might be a safe assumption at this point.

What will getting COVID over and over mean for the future of these kids? They’re in an environment at school where it’s unavoidable. Chalk it up to another thing we can’t really know until more time passes.

“The National Institutes for Health has been intensely focused on studying long Covid, spending nearly $1.2 billion on the condition. To date, the return on investment has been zero for the people suffering with it. But it’s been terrific for MRI centers, lab testing companies and hospitals that set up long Covid clinics. I’ve talked to the staff at some of these clinics and it’s unclear what they are actually offering to people beyond a myriad of tests.”

Ah the beloved NIH. Everyone’s favorite at the moment. Good time to probably leave suddenly if you’re one of the top dawgs at the organization. They have had quite the influx of cash, minus much help for COVID Long Haulers. I would say no one has been as helpful for Long Haul COVID as other actual long haulers. Speaking of MRIs, did you see this study Dr. Marty McFly?₆ Here’s a tidbit from it, “We identified significant longitudinal effects when comparing the two groups, including (1) a greater reduction in grey matter thickness and tissue contrast in the orbitofrontal cortex and parahippocampal gyrus; (2) greater changes in markers of tissue damage in regions that are functionally connected to the primary olfactory cortex; and (3) a greater reduction in global brain size in the SARS-CoV-2 cases.” Ehh, all respiratory diseases do this! Had this with the Flu! Fuhgeddaboudit! Never mind the gut biome dysbiosis being found, other organ damage, and vascular and neurological problems in COVID Long Haulers.

Should COVID Long Haul sufferers not be investigating what is going on in their bodies? These Long COVID clinics do offer some help to patients, depends what clinic you go to. The one I went to was just helpful for testing and finding specialists. The help is generally pretty minimal from what I’ve seen and heard. Testing is definitely a large part of it, and rightfully so. We agree, COVID Long Haulers aren’t getting sufficient help in terms of solutions. You downplaying the problem in a disingenuous ways is the opposite of helpful.

“An Annals of Internal Medicine study ran an exhaustive battery of tests on 48 people with long Covid and 50 people without. The researchers found no biochemical or physiologic abnormalities in people with long Covid. “Levels of plasma inflammatory markers, levels of biomarkers for cardiac and central nervous system injury, and presence of select autoantibodies were similar between groups,” they concluded. The only medical factor that predicted long Covid was pre-existing anxiety, associated with a 2.8 times increased risk of developing long Covid.”

All aboard the it’s all in your head train! Next stop, Dr. M&M’s vacant space in his skull. I kid. I’m sure there is something in there. We should do a brain scan to check. Wait, what did I say about brain scans earlier? Oh yeah, those with Long Haul COVID have some scary stuff occurring in their heads. Losing grey matter and shrinking brains, ahhh no big deal! Let’s focus on the pre-existing anxiety that very well could have existed due to a physical, chemical, or gut problem that was never solved by a gaslighting doctor and than got exacerbated by Long Haul COVID. Imagine that non-fiction story occuring! Hmm. Don’t worry though, your Bilirubin was within this wide range though, so you’re perfectly healthy. I guess doing a test for micro clotting would just be silly!

First things first, “Table 3. Selected Symptoms, Physical Findings, Questionnaires, and Cognitive Testing Results.”₇ I’ll post it below. There’s a stark contrast between the control group and the COVID-19 cohort group in symptomatology which matters much more than whatever the far from infallible and not exactly comprehensive testing might say. The lower the p-value, the greater the statistical significance.

Here is part of the study Dr. Makary cherry picked, “To address the possibility that persistent activation of the immune system might play a role in the pathogenesis of PASC, plasma samples from a subgroup of participants were selected for inflammatory biomarker analysis. Because recent vaccination could affect plasma levels of inflammatory biomarkers and confound the interpretation of results, we selected samples from a subgroup of 48 participants with PASC, 52 without PASC, and 50 control participants who had not received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine before blood sample collection. No significant differences were detected between groups in plasma levels of macrophage inflammatory protein-1β, interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, programmed cell death ligand-1, interferon γ–induced protein 10, interleukin-2 receptor α, interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, interleukin-8, RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted), and CD40.”

From what I’ve been told by a few doctors is the typical testing for cytokines, autoantibodies, chronic pathogens, and other things is not good. On top of that, the majority of the time COVID Long Haulers who have done Dr. Bruce Patterson’s cytokine and chemokine panels have found levels that were off, myself included. Why is that directly going against what is said in this study? Maybe the sensitivity of the testing, maybe the timing of the test (about half the COVID-19 Cohort were enrolled before I was at my illest which is significant because my case is not uncommon amongst long haulers and I got sick originally in the initial wave in March 2020), maybe the severity of the illness in those seeking taking test (no one super sick wants to volunteer for a study that doesn’t offer solutions), perhaps they’re not looking at the right auto antibodies (like CellTrend is), etc. Things I’ve seen COVID Long Haulers complain were off in their tests at least eventually were cytokines, chemokines, electrolytes, iron, ferritin, cholesterol, blood glucose, various autoantibodies, blood micro clotting, table tilt test indicating POTS, lung abnormalities, brain scan abnormalities, mast cell activation syndrome, small fiber neuropathy (most LHers have this based on polls), etc. Many people have to get highly specialized or unusual testing performed to find their more significant issues if they can find them at all via tests.

Long Hauler test results seem very dependent on the time you get the actual testing done (as Long Haul COVID is a roller coaster of up and down with shifting problems). For instance, I was positive for Anti-Cardiolipin as a COVID Long Hauler, then I wasn’t when I was going through a better period, and then I was again positive later on. I’ve heard this happening in similar occasions, such as long haulers with ANA. This is what partly makes testing very complicated for a COVID Long Hauler. Plus, many of us start out with mild symptoms that crescendo over time. For instance, my worst period was probably 8 months in when I had severe neurological problems. Test me a week before that and it probably wouldn’t show, and I wouldn’t have brought it up as a symptom to my doctor. Trying to simplify something that’s not possible to really simplify in order to fit your narrative is not a good look. You as a doctor should understand what I’m saying, whereas someone else outside of the chronic illness or medical realm might have an excuse. You’re either being dishonest on purpose or you don’t really understand what you should. Not great choices for you Dr. Mark Makary.

“The NIH hasn’t invested nearly as much in studying masks, natural immunity, vaccine complications, boosters in children or even vitamin D, which was found last month to lower Covid mortality—a study that tragically came two years too late. The most stunning absence of Covid research is in children. After imposing tremendous restrictions on tens of millions of healthy children for nearly two years, no government study or public-health official can tell us how many otherwise healthy children have died of Covid, or even if any have. Dedicating research dollars to magnify Covid complications while ignoring other pressing Covid research questions continues the politicization of the disease.”

The doc and I can agree some, some, not a lot. Maybe we don’t have order that brain scan for him. The NIH has not invested enough in certain things. Better than investing though would be accomplishments, answers, and solutions. Why invest a lot in studying masks when the CDC will just say don’t wear masks, wear masks, don’t wear masks, wear masks, over and over? Why invest much in natural immunity when they have a vaccine to push? Why invest in finding vaccine adverse events when they ain’t tryin’ to hear that? Alternative, low cost, and non-big pharma options don’t help make the right people a lot of cash. Crony capitalism at the expense of the majority’s health if I ever do say, and I do say so. It’s never been more evident. Ever facet with power is too intertwined and in bed with the other.

There are COVID death numbers for children/teenagers. For instance, there have been 1,378 reported 0-17 year olds that have lost their lives to COVID in the United States.₈ Children get Long Haul COVID too. About 5-10% of the time studies say.₉ Continuing reinfections sure may be a problem. This is not a one or the other situation. All of these things need to be studied, including and especially, Long Haul COVID.

“Last month Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf tweeted that “preliminary epidemiological findings point to the distinct possibility of the bivalent vaccines and antivirals reducing risk of long Covid.” If Pfizer tweeted that, it could be fined for making a claim beyond an FDA-authorized indication. Mr. Califf’s Twitter thread included no data. The bivalent vaccine was authorized by the FDA without a vote of its scientific expert advisory committee.

White House Covid coordinator Ashish Jha declared last month that the science supporting the bivalent vaccine is “crystal clear.” In fact, it was authorized based on data from eight mice. To date, there has been no randomized trial data on the bivalent vaccine. Its authorization was reamed through by regulators over the objections of experts like Paul Offit, who argued that it should be evaluated as a new medication.”

Doctor is on a roll. New nickname is Dr. BLT. Until he strikes up the gaslighting, completely misstating studies band again. The FDA & Pfizer really have their game on point. It reminds me of Apple sitting down their corporate tax lawyer helping them find all the tax loopholes and then Apple and their execs donating money to political campaigns.

Crystal clear science here sounds like a crystal that is full of inclusions. “Trust the science” they proclaimed, even when there wasn’t really any. Should make you raise an eyebrow. If I wrote this stuff down for a book the publisher would say it’s too ridiculous of fiction to publish. Thank you Paul Offit for being the rational one in the room, at times.

There is data I came across saying the the vaccine, prior to the bivalent shot, could reduce Long Haul COVID by 15%.₁₀ Of course, the vaccine could cause a very similar Long Haul COVID like syndrome, for lack of a better word, so is that 15% really 15% in the grand scheme of things? I suppose that only about 33% taking at least 3 COVID Vaccine Shots and about 12% taking the COVID Bivalent Boosters in the USA represents how many people are taking note of the nonsense they are told and the injuries. (about 80% of the USA have had 1 shot, about 39 million have had 1 shot and not 2, hmm).₁₁&₁₂ Whatever the reason, the vast majority are not getting COVID Boosters suggesting something is majorly wrong.

“The NIH’s fear-mongering around long Covid has also been used to argue for keeping Covid restrictions in place. In November, the Biden administration issued a report on long Covid stating that mask mandates and vaccination “protect people from infection or reinfection and possible Long COVID,” despite no scientific evidence to support the claim.”

Yes, it does seem the NIH, which I felt a while ago, are trying to “influence” people into getting the vaccine. The public health organizations didn’t catch on to Long Haul COVID until later in 2020. Then they seemingly used it as a football even later than that. The harshest of the restrictions had mainly passed by the time they were really speaking up about the condition in a concerning way. Where exactly are there mask mandates at this point? Heck even medical facilities are dropping vaccine mandates as they won’t have enough workers otherwise. The COVID Vaccines, as they exist now, are dead. Numbers will only to go down more by shot 4 or 5. Restrictions don’t seem like the reasoning as restrictions have dwindled. Vaccine uptake seems like the only thing left they might try to pump up by talking about Long Haul COVID. That doesn’t mean though that Long Haul COVID isn’t a massive problem.

I’m of the mind that people should be wearing masks (good ones and properly). It’s wishful thinking to think we will go back to mask wearing at this point. The CDC and NIH are largely to blame for that. Here is a study showing a reduction in testing positive based on type of mask worn.₁₃ 83% reduction for those that wear a N/95 or KN95 properly. If Biden doesn’t like the messaging on masks, he should probably fire the CDC Director he appointed. Just an idea.

“Given the broad reach of population immunity to Covid today and the less severe nature of the illness, long Covid is less common and less severe than it was in 2020 or 2021. In my experience treating thousands of patients over two decades, people are forgiving if you are honest with them. If public-health officials want to regain the public trust, they should show more humility when it comes to Covid, including long Covid.”

This is far more complex than what he’s saying. What a shocker, I know! Yes, there is more immunity now amongst the population, but at the same time we have variant after variant that’s mutating to evade immunity. The sickest and oldest probably perished or got severely ill in 2020, which would skew COVID severity numbers in upcoming years. COVID does seem to be less severe, so I’ll give him that, but it’s a big problem still. It’s still mutating, it’s way more infectious now, most aren’t taking precuastions, and there are a parade of variants in 2022, unlike in 2020. There are more approved and unapproved treatment options, which potentially help with a reduction in severity and Long Haul COVID, unlike in 2020. Just stating some of the variables and complexities in analyzing this stuff that Doctor Ms doesn’t delve into.

It’s great to be honest, but doc you’re not honest. Let’s get real. You just hoped nobody would look deeper into the studies you quoted to make your point. You were wrong. What you were stating that the studies said was way off base. You’re overcorrecting. A common problem in 2022. Minimizing Long Haul COVID because you see it being misused by health officials to manipulate people into doing something they want them to do (get the vaccine) is wrong. They may be trying to scare people, but that doesn’t mean Long Haul COVID should unfairly diminished by you at the same time. It’s not an either or situation always. I don’t understand why people don’t get that! It’s not COVID bad, COVID Vaccines automatically good or vice versa. It’s not always the government grabbing on to something to influence people thus therefore whatever they’re talking about must really be a minor problem or completely fake. Dr. Makary seems to be falling into the typical my side vs your side battle in these discussions. It’s not that simple.

We have a problem. We have “two” sides (in reality there are many many many more than two sides, but for sake of argument let’s go with two). Neither of which care about anything other than proving what they already believe, instead of caring more about trying to analyze reality fairly, obtain better/good data, and the people suffering partially because of everyone’s thin skinned pridefully protecting your opinion at all cost dishonest arguments. This is a pandemic with various serious health concerns, yet the BS has never been more pronounced! All of you disengous people on both sides, not just Dr. Makary, should be ashamed.

“Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay.”

Devin Russell is not a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine nor an author, but will gladly review any studies for any professors or MDs at Johns Hopkins that struggle at interpreting them.

CITATIONS:

1. UK Long Haul Study (used by Dr. Makary) – https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/technicalarticleupdatedestimatesoftheprevalenceofpostacutesymptomsamongpeoplewithcoronaviruscovid19intheuk/26april2020to1august2021
   
2. American Medical Association Study (used by Dr. Makary, comparing COVID positive patients vs. COVID negative patients) – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2799116
   
3. 2-4 Million Out of Work With Long Haul COVID – https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/long-covid-keeping-4-million-people-out-of-work-rcna44807
   
4. Asymptomatic COVID Led to Lung Damage in 54% – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7462877/
   
5. COVID Study on Younger Individuals (used by Dr. Makary) – https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00250-2/fulltext
   
6. Long Haul COVID Brain Changes Study – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5
   
7. Annals of Internal Medicine Study Using Various Tests to try to Find COVID Long Haul Differences – https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-4905#f1-M214905 & https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/suppl/10.7326/M21-4905/suppl_file/M21-4905_Supplement_2.pdf
   
8. USA COVID Deaths By Age – https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
   
9. Children in USA Get Long Haul COVID 5-10% of Time – https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-study-estimates-many-children-will-get-long-covid-rcna39528
   
10. COVID Vaccination Study Showing 15% Reduction in Long Haul COVID – https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/vaccines-lower-risk-long-covid-15-death-34-data-show#:~:text=%22Vaccination%20against%20the%20virus%20that,%2C%22%20the%20study%20authors%20wrote.
    
11. CDC Vaccination Data – https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-people-booster-percent-pop5
    
12. Only 12% Have Taken Bivalent Booster in USA – https://www.wrtv.com/lifestyle/health/low-covid-19-bivalent-booster-rates-among-hoosiers
    
13. COVID Mask Study – https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm

When Athletes & The Famous Get Long Haul COVID

When Athletes & The Famous Get Long Haul COVID

This list includes 139 athletes, famous, and prominent people who have contracted Long Haul COVID. (Updated 2/2/23 – 12:50am). If you know of anyone else that should be added to this list, please email me at covidcastaways@gmail.com. Below you can find snapshots of the list as well as a link to the complete list.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oz8Vvg3G6D4b2RS1SrG6AJb3J4ghArxsSthh7N330ao/edit?usp=sharing

Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty: A Bad or Good…

Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty: A Bad or Good Idea?

Emily Oster, a Brown University Economist, who writes for The Atlantic, recently wrote a piece entitled “LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY.”₁ Based on the all caps of the title, she was very excited with the idea of amnesty. This article has gone viral since it was published. Let’s go piece by piece (as seen in blue) to break down what amnesty might make sense and what doesn’t because it’s never as simple as one or the other.

“We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.  Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.””

• AMNESTY GRANTED — The general sentiment of what Emily is trying to say so far is fair. Not everything we understand now, was known back when the pandemic started. For those that were once ignorant, as we all were at one point with this novel virus, but learned over time and had flexible opinions as the pandemic continued. The problem is not everyone learns or changes their incorrect opinions, sometimes even when they know they should.
  
  
• Regarding masks, one thing that complicated matters was that the higher ups didn’t want the general public to make a rush on masks, like the people banking at Bailey Building and Loan at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. They wanted to make sure health care workers had enough, which is fair. Problem is the US Surgeon General at the time, Dr. Jerome Adams, told the public to “stop buying masks!” He said “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”₂ The CDC said around this same time, which is in early 2020, that healthy people in the US shouldn’t wear masks because they won’t protect them from the novel coronavirus.
  
  
• The natural question here from a tenth decent journalist would be, why do the medical workers need masks if you don’t think they work? … “This is a psychological thing,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told CNN. “The coronavirus is coming, and we feel rather helpless. By getting masks and wearing them, we move the locus of control somewhat to ourselves.”₃ Dr. Anthony Fauci also said on 60 Minutes on 3/8/2020 that, “when you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better ….”₄ How did we go from masks won’t help much or at all to wear masks outside? To being forced to wear a mask to go to a restaurant? To then you’re a murderer if you don’t wear a mask? I don’t think it was science that facilitated a drastic 180 change in a few months.
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — Further investigation needed as to why we were lied to about masks and what harm that may have caused. Also, as to why the USA wouldn’t have adequate stockpiles of the necessities for a pandemic that health officials predicted would occur at some point. Why are you “planning for” pandemics in advance if you’re never ready for them and handle them horribly? The all over the map messaging on masks doesn’t get a pass. It wasn’t based on science and it wasn’t based on ignorance. It was based on something else. Public health agencies should not one second say, masks don’t help the general public. Then in the next say, you should wear them even outside, and not expect blowback, resistance, and confusion. If they do work, which there are studies to say they do, then our public health officials lied to us, our media quoted psychologists saying it’s just a psychological benefit, and people were harmed or died because of it.₅ Everyone that’s supposed to be for the people, failed the people. If masks don’t work well, then people were made to wear masks for no reason, wasting money and causing division, hurting quality of life. It’s either a lie or gross incompetence. Pick one. Neither deserves amnesty.
  

“I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID. We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.

Some of these choices turned out better than others. To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming.  But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.”

• It’s a good thing to be analyzing the past to learn and improve from it (oddly later on in her article Emily will make the plea to not dwell on history). There were certainly tough choices that had to be made with limited to no data without the benefit of more time to find the data out. This is where I somewhat agree with Emily, but it depends what we are talking about specifically. Each individual incidence needs to be analyzed. She seems very data driven from what I see, which is great, as long as you understand the limitations of the data and also understand that there can be lies, damned lies, and statistics.
  
  
• Emily’s article gets interesting in this paragraph. Children getting back to school during the pandemic is Emily’s thing. She has two children of her own. She fought hard for this in the United States, and was an authority on the matter. I’ve read about some of her biases on this issue as well, such as ignoring certain data in favor of her view. Maybe she just loves the data her opinions want her to love. I’m in the middle on this issue. There are good points on each side to be had, even now, while she suggests it was only reasonable to believe schools should be closed if you lacked the info in 2020.
  
  
• AMNESTY GRANTED — Reasonable people can disagree on whether schools should be open or not, and many other things related to the pandemic. If you’re trying to fairly discuss the topic, you are granted amnesty. If you are not arguing the topic fairly, you don’t get the amnesty though. That brings us to some criticisms of Emily.
  
  
• One article discussing school reponings, and Emily Oster, states “”Back in early May (2020), for example, Oster concluded that “infection among kids is simply very unlikely. It’s not that they are infected and don’t know it, it seems like they are just not infected very often.” But this ignored some conspicuous caveats to those early studies—for example, kids were rarely tested in the spring (as tests were in short supply), and children were stuck at home, with far less opportunity for exposure.”₆ I guess you can be data driven and intellectually dishonest at the same time, who knew? This goes back to “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” If you don’t analyze data any deeper than the surface than you can make illogical conclusions, or even worse, you can understand the flaws in the data and ignore them to march on with your narrative. The fact that one might know things so well means they can also manipulate things well to an audience that’s less educated on the topic and doesn’t have the data available to them like the manipulator does. Emily had decided in May of 2020 that school’s should repon because her kids were driving her nuts, I mean because she felt kids don’t get infected with Covid typically. This of course was not true. I’m not sure why she assumed there weren’t asymptomatic cases, but in May of 2020 if you’re saying infection among kids is unlikely, you probably have to do a lot of assuming and mental gymnastics to be so sure of yourself at that point. The Mayo Clinic stated on 10/21/22, “Children represent about 19% of all reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since the pandemic began. While children are as likely to get COVID-19 as adults, kids are less likely to become severely ill.”₇
  
  
• This piece continues, “In late July (2020), when a study came out that suggested children with COVID-19 have a higher viral load than adults, Oster quickly wrote a piece saying it would be a “very big leap” to apply these findings to school reopening discussions. Instead, she urged focus on a large South Korea contact tracing study, which suggested younger children transmitted the virus in their households at a lower rate than other groups. A month later, the leaders for that South Korea study said it wasn’t really clear who infected whom in the households, and called for further research. Even today (written in October of 2020), how effectively children transmit the virus to others remains one of the fuzziest, and most pressing, questions.”
  
  
• Susie Flaherty of The Harvard Gazette wrote on October 14, 2021 that, “”There had been the question about whether the high viral load in children correlated with the live virus. We’ve been able to provide a definitive answer that these high viral loads are infectious,” says Lael Yonker, pediatric pulmonologist at MGH and co-first author with Julie Boucau, senior research scientist at MGH and the Ragon Institute. Reassuringly, they also found that viral load had no correlation to severity of disease in the kids themselves, but concerns remain for them and those around them: “Children can carry the virus and infect other people,” says Yonker. Students and teachers have returned to classrooms, but many questions remain about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children. Most children are asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic when they develop COVID-19, giving the misconception that children are less infectious. Studying the virologic features of SARS-CoV-2 in children with COVID-19, and how SARS-CoV-2 infection differs between children and adults, is an essential component for establishing effective public health policies, not only to ensure safety within the school but also for controlling the pandemic, says Yonker. As COVID-19 variants continue to emerge, infected children are potential “reservoirs” for the evolution of new variants as well as potential spreaders of current variants, she says. “Kids with COVID-19, even if asymptomatic, are infectious and can harbor SARS-CoV-2 variants. Variants could potentially impact both the severity of the disease and the efficacy of vaccines, as we are seeing with the Delta variant. When we cultured the live virus, we found a wide variety of genetic variants,” adds Yonker. “New variants have the potential to be more contagious and also make kids sicker.” Yonker emphasizes that the group’s findings reinforce the importance of masking for children: “The implications of this study show that masking and other public health measures are needed for everyone — children, adolescents, and adults — to get us out of this pandemic.” The viral loads of kids in the hospital were no different from those found in hospitalized adults, according to the study. Evidence cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that when compared to adults, children “likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx, similar secondary infection rates, and can spread the virus to others.””₈ Again, Emily Oster was wrong in the assumption that she made. She also was quick to defend her position rather than waiting to find out if the high viral load meant transmissibility. She was marching on.
  
  
• More from this piece, “In a Wall Street Journal article published last week (October 2020) on school reopenings, Oster told the reporter that her data “suggests the risks to kids from going to school are small.” Oster worked on creating data for COVID-19 school transmission. Rebekah Jones was doing the same at a larger scale. “Oster approached Jones’s team in August about potentially collaborating, and they offered Oster full and free access to their data. “But she basically decided to just pick what data she wanted, not what’s available,” says Jones. “It’s offensive to researchers, when you see something so unabashedly unscientific, and when the opportunity to do something scientific was there.” Jones added, “You can’t just have one point in a state and claim you have a grasp on what is occurring for a wide spectrum of school types and incomes, but that is literally what she does.” Oster says she thinks Jones’s tracker is a “great project,” and it’s “really valuable to have such a comprehensive view,” but that her goal was to also study individual school rates. COVID Monitor, however, does track school rate data.” … “… following a viral Atlantic piece Oster published earlier this month, with the controversial headline “Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders.” Her argument, that schools are minor sources of transmission, hinged primarily on her own dataset, though she also pointed to reopenings in places like Florida, Georgia, and Texas. There were no caveats about why those states’ data might be interpreted with caution, and no mention of their rising caseloads.” Emily Oster seems to be entirely driven by what she is trying to prove, instead of analyzing fairly. Coming to a conclusion first and not allowing her opinions to change based on proper analyzation of new data. By the way, asymptomatic cases can even cause damage.₉
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — Emily Oster did not seem to fairly analyze school reopenings. No Amnesty Soup for you! Clamoring for schools to open so early into the pandemic is odd. Emily put education over health from the beginning, and never strayed. You have to wonder if she wrote “LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY” in order to help get amnesty for herself. Of course, she acts as if opening schools is a consensus belief, so I’m not sure. She may believe her push for opening schools is seen as 100% positive. Another percentage though is 9.8%. The percentage of kids that get Long Haul Covid in the United States (and I’ve read 12-15% in the UK). If there is actually a consensus, which I highly doubt, they’re ignoring hundreds of thousands of children suffering with this horrific illness.₁₀ It’s naive to think we would know about the long term health problems for kids in 2020. Covid Long Haulers are not getting adequate help now, in almost 2023. Some have been sick more than 3 years.
  

“Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.”

• It was known early on that J&J was less efficacious. It was mainly taken by people, and pushed by some doctors, because it was, at the time, known to be one and done. Plus it was not a new type of technology used on a mass scale for the first time (like mRNA). Efficacy had nothing to do with it. The efficacies of the 3 main vaccine brands in the USA were known by 2/2/2021 at least, before most of the US population had received 1 shot. At that point only 31.57 million were vaccinated, which is less than 10% of the population.¹² The mRNA Covid Vaccines were utilized WAY more than J&J despite all this. For example, by April 1, 2021 out of 153 million + doses given, 150 million + were Moderna or Pfizer.¹³ This seems like a cupcake slash softball slash Barney example to bring up, that doesn’t even really make sense, as I explained. Many of the damning examples of pandemic malfiecense seem conspicuously left out of her piece. Guess they wouldn’t help her point. his seems to be a recurring theme for her.
  
  
• What’s even more odd about this part is the link she references has no mention of J&J at all. But she was right in that only time would tell us that J&J wasn’t particularly safe and needed to be severely restricted. I’m SURE she was alluding to that when she meant the mRNA vaccines won out, as data would say they cause less adverse events per shot than J&J according to a VAERS analyzation.₁₄
  
  
• AMNESTY GRANTED — To the doctors that suggested their patients take J&J over Moderna or Pfizer Vaccines. They wouldn’t have known early on that they would be more dangerous, plus they figured one and done might be a better option and an easier option for patients, and trusted in the old technology over the unknowns of the new.
  

“Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.”

• Does she mean Dr. Fauci, Dr. Walensky, and President Biden whom have all made claims that if you get the Covid Vaccines you won’t get Covid?₁₅ That was a lie by the way, wildly irresponsible, and not in the earnest for the good of society. Oh she meant Trump. What he said was bad as well. He deserves all the heat he got and gets for that, but she ignored the false claims our public health officials told us to our faces. Scientists! That’s worse than a bloviating Trump. She seems to be ignoring all the censorship taking place as well. That’s bad. Misinformation was called misinformation that wasn’t misinformation. That was bad. I say was as if this stuff has stopped happening, it has not. I’m not sure how she comes to the point of most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society. It sounds like a major assumption to me. Shouldn’t we try to figure out if that is true first before it gets declared so amnesty can rain on everyone? From where I’m standing it seems like there were many things that weren’t done with good intentions for the good of society. Mass censorship is never a good thing for society, as we are finding out the hard way. There’s really no reason to blindly believe all the errors were made with the good of society in mind.
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — We will not simply deem all errors were made by people working in earnest for the good of society without finding out if that’s actually true first. Furthermore, gross negligence still needs accountability regardless of that. Horrible take by Emily.
  

“Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.”

• She’s right that people do scoreboard watch a lot, rub it in when they are right, and sometimes people were just right for the wrong reasons. Hindsight is 20/20. This isn’t productive really, unless to point out the flaws in the decision making process. It does also cause people to double down. The people that are wrong, need to admit they’re wrong though, or we can’t work to fix the problems. They rarely seem to admit they’re wrong. No one wants to eat their pride these days. No one wants to readily admit things they can get in trouble for and ostracized for, besides the gloaters rubbing it in their faces. 
  
• Here’s where she is wrong overall. Getting something wrong can be a moral failing. It depends why you got it wrong and how you got it wrong. If you’re not formulating an opinion on something with fairness, especially a serious health issue like Covid and the Covid Vaccines, then you are failing morally. You’re protecting your feelings based opinions over what’s right or at least trying to figure out what’s right.
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — You can get things wrong due to a moral failing. People these days are such ideological and party fools that they defend their side and their opinions at all costs. They put these feelings based opinions above all else, even including the health of others, or themselves. There is no place for that when dealing with major public health issues, but at the same time it seems to be pervasive in public health discussions.
  

“We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.”

• The willful purveyors of misinformation on all sides, or just the ones the powers that be deemed willful purveyors of misinformation? There is a big difference. If you’re now saying, the willful purveyors of actual misinformation should not get amnesty, then what’s the point of this piece? Now you’re just coming off a willfully ignorant person that isn’t aware of the amount of actual misinformation that has been told to the general public left and right without the defense of, we did things because we didn’t know all the info but had to act. Toxic forgiveness (can’t take credit for this term) is not a good trait Em.
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — Amnesty denied to the willful purveyors of misinformation and disinformation. Even Emily agrees on this one! She just seems blissfully unaware of how many people are purveying bad information with bad intent or bad rationale. Mrs. Oster didn’t need the rhetoric thrown at her for her ideas, but we don’t need to just “move on” and ignore how, why, and with what intent decisions were made and the public was informed. People who misled purposefully, should be held accountable. The Pandemic is causing many problems we still need to solve by the way. I know President Biden said it was over on 60 Minutes recently, but it is not. 
  
• Notice she brought up another softball, blueberry muffin example, closed beaches? How about when they told us you can’t get Covid if you get the Covid Vaccine, which seems to be turning out much more harmful than what we were told? Is that not a great example?
  

“Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.”

• We do really need to adapt our education system to the current times. This could be a good time to reanalyze how things are done in that department. Health matters though. In fact it matters more than literally everything, so it’s odd to me she seems to want to gloss over that so cavalierly. Maybe she’s never heard of Long Haul Covid. Someone send her a Tweet to let her know about it.
  

“Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.”

• Earth to Emily! She seems to be missing some important points here. She is indeed very fond of all vaccines, including the Covid Vaccines according to her Twitter Account. Routine childhood vaccinations are not only down because of “neglected healthcare.” They’re down as a result of the Covid Vaccines as well, and not simply because of the poor messaging, which is kind of fluffy say nothing pretend to say something statement. Michelle Day, M.D., a pediatrician at Henry Ford Health says, “I’ve also seen hesitancy and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines and that has trickled into hesitancy and misinformation about other vaccines that we’ve been routinely offering for decades.”₁₆ Let me help Dr. Day out, some misinformation, but some information too. Let’s not stop for a second to wonder why only 33.2% of people in the United States have had a COVID-19 Booster (at least 3 shots) while Flu Vaccine numbers stay steady (as of 2021). Perhaps something more is going on. I know my many injured family and friends would have an opinion as to why the booster rates are so low (they’re not getting another shot that’s for sure). These injuries are causing some people to not have their kids get vaccinated. They’re starting to question vaccine safety for the first time ever. They wonder if the government, media, and social media, who censor injuries and while telling us reality is something different than reality, have done the same in the past with other vaccines. If maybe the vaccine injury reporting system and compensation program is meant to look like something helpful, but was set up to undermine the injured.
  
  
• You can’t bring the rates back up without addressing the Covid Vaccine Injuries, or just waiting for this generation to die off so the next one can be ignorant to what happened during this pandemic. Let’s just ignore the lies, ignore the injuries, and give everyone amnesty and push mandates. Genius! If you think that’s going to fly after this, you’re not paying attention lady. How could you be so tone deaf? It doesn’t start with amnesty. It starts with building back all the trust that was eroded during this pandemic and people being held accountable. Making another authoritarian move to force mandates is the opposite of what they should do.
  
  

“The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.“

• One reasonable person might argue, allowing the atrocities and lies from the past to go unpunished provides no deterrent for them to happen again and again. I’m sure you tell others to not dwell on history, even when those people may be consumed with something that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. This just happened and is still happening! No one has been held accountable. Not a single person that we know. Nothing has been fixed. We will not dwell on it when it’s dealt with swiftly and justly, not a second sooner.
  
  
• AMNESTY DENIED — Let’s hold people accountable first while we work to move forward. Not punishing those that deserve it only emboldens them more, or people in the future in those positions to do it again or do worse. Not all the mistakes were tough calls with little information. That’s utter rubbish. That’s an absurd belief if you haven’t been in a coma the last 3 years.
  

Here are some real examples, not the My Little Pony examples Emily provided, of things that happened or were said during the pandemic that don’t deserve amnesty (this list is VERY abbreviated).

1.     United States President Joe Biden stated the COVID-19 Pandemic was over. (9/18/22)
2.     Biden falsely stated that “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” and “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit, and you’re not going to die.” (11/1/2021)
3.     United States President Donald Trump pretended COVID wasn’t too serious and then used ‘the whole Monoclonal Antibody supply on the east coast’ for himself when he contracted COVID. Never forget, Herman Cain died after getting COVID at one of Trump’s ill advised maskless rallies.
4.     Trump also “encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach (disinfectant) into the human body as a means of fighting COVID.” Something he could have said privately and not publicly, or not at all.
5.     The World Health Organization (WHO) took 1.5-2 years to admit that COVID-19 is airborne. Not for good reasons it seems.
6.     Zoe Kleinman, of the BBC, wrote an article shamelessly boasting of her contribution to censorship on Facebook of the Covid Vaccine Injured. What a sweetheart!
7.     Brandy Zadrozny, who writes for NBC News, wrote an article entitled, “COVID vaccines for children are coming. So is misinformation” in which she gaslighted a paralyzed little girl, Maddie de Garay, who was injured by the Covid Vaccine in the Pfizer Trials. She cares about her feelings on vaccines more than the health of this girl, or anyone else. What else am I supposed to believe?
8.     Speaking of Maddie de Garay, Pfizer to this day has not corrected her vaccine injury listed in the trials. It’s listed as a stomach ache, when she’s paralyzed and using a feeding tube. Amnesty? I don’t think so.
9.     Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a journalist for The New Yorker, purposely left out most important detail of Heidi Ferrer’s suicide, her Covid Vaccine Injury, in an article he wrote. He was told this piece of information by her late husband, but decided to pass on publishing it. His piece was not at a loss for words, just like this piece isn’t.
10.     The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) originally stated the Covid-19 Spike Protein produced by mRNA vaccines didn’t last long in the body. In the “middle of the night” on July 22-23, 2022, they simply erased that on the website page it was on. No correction announcement.
11.    Dr. Brix said in July of 2022, “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines …” Amnesty is not deserved for people that lie to us, even if they don’t actually know. History is full of this and many times it works out horribly (cigarettes, DDT, etc.). At the same time, this is difficult. People like Dr. Brix won’t speak up if they don’t think they have some rope. It might make it difficult to learn everything that’s happened if people stay silent. Whistleblowers needed.
12.    Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a face mask or stay 6 feet away from others in most settings, whether outdoors or indoors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in updated public health guidance” in May of 2021. This didn’t make sense at all, as less than half of the population were fully vaccinated at this point. It just seemed like a carrot being held out to try to coerce people to get vaccinated.
13.    Facebook lifts ban on posts claiming COVID-19 was man-made. Social network says policy comes ‘in light of ongoing investigations into the origin’ of virus. This is the least of the censorship going on from all the main social media companies: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Twitter. They all deserve what’s coming to them.
14.    The Bivalent, current, COVID Vaccine was only tested on 8 mice before released to the public. … There’s no way causing the body to create two different spike proteins could cause more problems so we don’t need to retest the vax. It’s super duper safe, remember? What a racket these people have …
15.    Dr. Fauci says “If you’re vaccinated, you don’t have a risk and that’s the reason why we say it’s simple as black and white, you’re vaccinated you’re safe, and you’re unvaccinated, you’re at risk. Simple as that.” As seen on MSNBC while talking about the Covid Vaccines. Posted on YouTube on 6/22/21.
16.    Paxlovid effectiveness has been called into question recently, as well as the frequency of viral rebound, as well as the frequency of certain side effects. Pfizer’s Trial viral rebound numbers of 1-2% and bad taste in mouth side effect of 5.6% seem VASTLY off in the real world. Fauci, Walensky, and Biden have all had rebound. Can the regulators ask some questions?
17.    Biden saying “this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated” to try to pit people against each other and shame people into getting vaccinated. Dr. Walenksy said the same.
18.    Moderna’s former CEO, who recently left, Stephane Bancel received a “golden parachute” of nearly $1 billion. Yes you read that right and it’s not a typo! His parting reward was $926.5 million. He knew when to get out.
19.    Whistleblower for Pfizer Trials. … Ehhh, big deallllll.
20.    Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the CDC said, “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
21.    Handling of the elderly when sick with Covid, namely sending them back to the nursing homes from hospitals to recover where they infected many others. Many of whom later died. A few Governors did this, one being Governor Cuomo of New York, without any accountability or liability, yet. His aides also tried to hide the death toll. No one has been punished to my knowledge.
22.   The FDA wanted 75 years, or until 2097, to release 450,000 pages of Pfizer COVID Vaccine Safety Data. A judge said you have 8 months. Of course that seems more than fair as the FDA took less than 4 months to review the documents and approve the Pfizer COVID Vaccine. Seems suspicious that our government health agencies want to keep information from the public and for so long.
23.   The CDC had to be sued after refusing to release V Safe Vaccine Injury Data. What the heck could be the possibly be the justification for that?
    

Not everyone was in the dark when they said what they said or did what they did, or at least had to be (some want to be in the dark, but that’s not excusable either). To pretend no one knew anything thus it’s ok, is to say don’t investigate what people knew, when they knew it, and what lies they told us for what reasons. If one made decisions or declarations in a very ideological opinionated unfair agenda driven way, do they really deserve amnesty? Applying a blanket amnesty to the totality of the situation believing they didn’t know so you can’t penalize the ignorance, the people in power did the best they could, the people in power were as honest as they could reasonably be, and did everything purely with the best interest of the people is more like a wish and a prayer than reality.

AMNESTY DENIED — The ludicrous notion of blanket amnesty has been struck down with the full rigor of all of the Covid Castaways Staff, which is just me. It wasn’t all just lack of knowledge and people doing their honest best. This seems obvious to me and many others, but Emily seems agenda driven. When COVID Long Haulers and the COVID Vaccine Injuries are embraced and not ignored, then we can move forward … anddd with a couple “heads on some sticks” anddd cash anddd major reform anddd an end to crony capitalism anddd government transparency anddd media not bought and paid for anddd the government not instructing social media what to censor … AMNESTY DENIED Emily!

Sources:

1. “LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY” by Emily Oster — https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=2022-10-31T22%3A05%3A18&utm_medium=social
   
2. US Suregon Genral Says No Masks — https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/face-masks-coronavirus-surgeon-general-trnd/index.html
   
3. Masks Only Help Psychologically — https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-mask-hysteria-us-trnd/index.html
   
4. Dr. Fauci on 60 Minutes — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRa6t_e7dgI
   
5. CDC Mask Study — https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
   
6. Artcle on Emily Oster & School Reponings — https://prospect.org/coronavirus/why-reopening-schools-has-become-the-most-fraught-debate-of-the-pandemic/
   
7. COVID-19 in Babies & Children — https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-in-babies-and-children/art-20484405#:~:text=Children%20represent%20about%2019%25%20of,likely%20to%20become%20severely%20ill.
   
8. Harvard Gazette, High Viral Load of COVID-19 in Children — https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/10/study-confirms-kids-as-spreaders-of-covid-19-and-emerging-variants/
   
9. Asymptomatic Damage from COVID-19 — https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2020/08/17/covid-19-can-cause-heart-damageeven-if-you-are-asymptomatic/?sh=2ee62bd76cef
   
10. 9.8% Children in USA get Long Haul Covid — https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-study-estimates-many-children-will-get-long-covid-rcna39528
    
11. COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacis — https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/02/comparing-the-covid-19-vaccines-developed-by-pfizer-moderna-and-johnson-johnson/
    
12. COVID-19 Doses by Manufacturer in USA by Date — https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-doses-by-manufacturer
    
13. VAERS COVID-19 Vaccine Report Comparison Between Brands — https://covidcastaways.org/moderna-vs-pfizer-vaers/
    
14. List of Alarming Things That Have Happened During the Pandemic — https://covidcastaways.org/never-forget-the-covid-19-pandemic/
    
15. Never Forget: The Covid-19 Pandemic — https://covidcastaways.org/never-forget-the-covid-19-pandemic/
    
16. Vaccination Rates Down — https://www.henryford.com/blog/2022/08/childhood-vaccination-rates-down

How Did We Get Here? (GW)

How Did We Get Here?

Guest Writer: Steve Johnson, Covid Vaccine Injured.

How did we get into such a state where it became a moral judgement whether you took the Covid Vaccine or not? I cannot imagine going up to my colleague or neighbor to ask if they got the vaccine and what kind. Yet, in 2021 it was okay to do so. I will admit I used to be one of those people.

This may not be the best analogy, and it is a clumsy comparison, but in 2006 I was in Munich, Germany. We had an excellent guide who took us on a tour of the concentration camp Dachau. Of course, it was incredibly moving and heartbreaking. I asked the guide, how do you think this could happen in a country with so many well educated people, world class universities, etc.. He said something I thought was profound. He asked me, “how many of us truly are heroes? How many of us are really willing to stick our necks out or fight against injustice? Most want to be safe, protect their livelihood, raise their children. They are okay to turn a blind eye if they are not affected.” I think, to a degree, we are living through the same mentality right now. Again, I am not at all minimizing what happened in World War II. It was perhaps the worst atrocity to happen to a group of people in all of humanity.

At the same time, we are living in a period of misinformation and propaganda. The media is only sharing one side of the story. Governments are repressing information. The medical establishment mostly follows a certain narrative. I know there are certain ripples of protest, but let’s be honest, it is far from becoming mainstream yet. However, I do see small signs of hope. Whenever I mention my vaccine injury, people seem much more open. I cannot tell you the number that have shared their own personal story or know someone who was affected by the Covid Vaccines. I do think the tide is slowly starting to turn.

As always, most will just want to live their life, pick up their kids from daycare, and watch the football game. I can’t blame them. I was that person, but cannot be that person any longer.

Apheresis Survey

Apheresis Survey

On my Facebook Group, Long Covid Apheresis Community USA, I recently conducted a small survey. Tom Bunker helped me create the it. We have 27 responses, with 3 people having taken the survey twice. Below please find the data & responses to this survey.

Some of the highlights include:

• 21 people have done H.E.L.P. Apheresis, 3 EBOO, 2 EBO2, 2 InusPheresis, & 1 LDL Apheresis.
• 18.5% got much better from their Apheresis Treatment, 33.3% got a little better, 22.2% stayed the same, 11.1% got a little worse, 7.4% got much worse, 1 said better for 10 week and then symptoms returned, and 1 said lungs much better (less breathing problems), but now suffering severe MCAS.
• 37% 1-10% better after their Apheresis Treatments, 18.5% 11-20% better, 7.4% 21-30% better, 3.7% 31-40% better, 3.7% 41-50% better, 3.7% 71-80% better, 7.4% 81-90% better, and 18.5% felt worse.
• Gains were long lasting in 51.9%.

As you can see that from these 24 people that have taken the survey, most have seen a benefit from their Apheresis Treatments, but some do feel worse. From the cases I am privy to, those that feel worse have for a “short term,” typically.

One major issue I foresee with the benefits sticking, or not, is that reinfection is such a common thing, in spite of what the testing says. One could make major headway with Apheresis, only to be reinfected. This makes me nervous with any place you have to fly back from while the Covid Infection Rate is high, rules are more lax, and the variant is highly infectious (like Ba.5 is). Additionally, each Apheresis has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, H.E.L.P. Apheresis is tremendous at helping people who have clotting. If you have additional problems, it may work much better in conjunction with another treatment. Also, one can do a treatment that is doing something good, but it’s too strong at that moment or causes a herx-like reaction, so you feel worse. The Lymies know all about that. Timing, reinfection, and what issues you suffer from all matter a lot.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Comments from Survey Takers:

• Felt after first and third EBO2 I got reinfected. After 3rd for a few days felt much better, until Covid probably hit me again (felt it in my chest, etc.). After 4th EBO2, felt a moderate improvement. 300-400 CCs of mostly inflammatory proteins came out of me into the container. Was slightly yellowish, which may indicate some infection. My body always loves Ozone.
• Significantly lower ALT.
• No new infection since EBOO. Pleurisy pain is ongoing, Post Exertional Malaise worsened, Headaches worsened, shortness of breath only improved with beta blockers, hair loss is ongoing, headaches worsened, GI issues worsened but are currently stable.
• Have better circulation and a little less brain fog and a little more concentration.
• Symptoms went worse with every Apherese. HBOT made it even worse. After the 3 treatments I decided to do a break. But then i got reinfected. Now it’s worse than before the treatments.
• Fatigue and energy worsened some compared to when I finished my first round of 5 help sessions last year.
• Caught Omicron Feb. 2022, full body rash not experienced with Wuhan infection. Passed in 6 days, felt more tired. Back to pre-Omicron level of long haul IMO. Felt HELP apheresis worked, it just took time to see results. Also do not think it cleared virus, just improved me.
• Most significant improvement is that I need less sleep and feel more rested.
• Did 6 complete HELP apheresis, 2 failed due to problems with needle etc. Last treatment was 2 weeks ago, have had a few days I felt a little bit better, especially less chest pain but also very bad days when I was bed bound due to PEM. It’s too early to tell if there are more days when I feel a little bit better, still hoping for a delayed response.
• Rest and no pills would have been the best.
• My muscle pains eased slightly for like a week or so. Then came back. So overall the apheresis had nil impact on my health and was an expensive mistake.
• Overall I’ve seen very minimal improvements to my health over time, and I am still having major difficulties due to daily symptoms. I don’t know that anything other than bed rest has had any major impact on symptom improvement. Without sounding overly dramatic, I still cannot exercise, work, or even just exist anywhere near my previous ability.
• The HA removed toxins and molds from my blood which brought me back to pre covid health. It put the Lyme and Mold tox symptoms (what was causing Long haul covid) into remission for 10 weeks. The use of a newly purchased sauna released all the toxins in my body again and the ‘LHC’ returned. Since starting on the mold toxicity protocol in January I have no symptoms of mold tox (or LHC). Help apheresis was a learning tool for me and nothing more. The mold protocol has achieved better longer lasting results then the HA treatments. Total waste of money.
• I got Inuspheresis to help overall immunity. However, I was dealing with very aggressive giardia parasite and the symptoms came back strongly after inuspheresis as I hadn’t killed it properly. Then i had to take immuno suppressive drugs to kill it then epstein barr flare got so much worse. So because of this inuspheresis has been hard to monitor. I was having nerve pain in my face before it though which has gone.
• No improvements yet after 8 HELP apheresis sessions but hoping to do 5 more before returning home. Heart palpitations and MCAS flares are worse and more frequent since starting the apheresis. Also started clopidogrel and eliquis around the same time as apheresis, and taking extra alprazolam on treatment days. This is after the first two apheresis attempts were unsuccessful- the first one because of because Silke pulled giant clots out of my veins and said it would clog the machine if she were to hook me up (hence on blood thinners now) and the second one because my veins weren’t cooperating (hence taking extra alprazolam on treatment days now).
• Many symptoms were reduced or disappeared from doing the HELP Apheresis treatment, while others stayed the same. The symptoms that remain unchanged seem to me to be typical virus symptoms (fever, flu like feeling, swollen lymph nodes etc.). To me this indicates that we are dealing with a combination of persistent virus (or reactivated virus), autoantibodies and blood clots, and treating all three is important.
• After third apheresis it was like a flip off a switch and majority of symptoms disappeared. So I was tempted to go for a walk which I did. After first walk I felt amazing. So I went for another and crashed hard. I was hoping the last, fourth apheresis, would take me back to where I was after third one but that did not happen. So I regret doing the walk now but perhaps it would just happen later as I only had for Apheresis. I might try more sessions when I have funds and time from work.
• I think, HELP apheresis triggered my now severe MCAS, because the treatment is very exhausting for the body. Though my chest pain has almost gone. I think you have to be very careful if you suffer from fatigue.
• Big relapse after Help apheresis. I was feeling a little bit better each month and was back to about 75%, and after 2 treatments am now feeling like i did 9 months ago, when i was at my lowest, so probably to 45/50%. Supposedly its thé treatment making me tired, waiting and resting to see. Will fill out another survey in 3 weeks to inform.

Fluvoxamine & Tollovid Updates + Vedicinals 9

Fluvoxamine & Tollovid Updates + Vedicinals 9

Let’s get right into it.

Fluvoxamine – I’ve been on Fluvoxamine for almost 17 months now. Originally, I worked my way up slowly to 100mg (50mg/50mg) per day. I’m now on a dose of 50 mg (25mg/25mg) per day. At 100mg, I felt it was causing some neurological side effects, namely heart pounding, even though it was helping me immensely at the same time. At 50mg, I do not notice that so much. It’s still very helpful for my neck pain/inflammation and my brain inflammation/fog. At one point 50mg would not have been sufficient, but at this point, 2 years & 7 months into this, it is. Very happy I decided to take this. It’s prevented me a lot of grief, cognitive dysfunction, and probably neurological weakness along the way. I’ll be even happier when I can slowly wean off. I’ve tried a few times, but was not ready (head would inflame and cognitive dysfunction would come on).

Tollovid – For 4.5 months I’ve been taking Tollovid Max on and off, mostly on. It’s been largely taken by me at the full dose (3 4x a day). Throughout this period I’ve experimented with taking different doses, and not taking it at all. The last week or so I’ve been taking 3 2x a day, which is working well for me. There is a noticeable difference in brain power and energy when I’m on it, as opposed to when I’m off it for a few days. It’s been helpful for my Long Haul Covid as well as my Acute Cvoid when I was likely reinfected by BA.5, more than 2 months ago. It’s hard to say how long I will need to be on it. Reinfection really makes it difficult to judge. No noticeable side effects (other than stool discoloration), but I will keep my eye on things as some have discussed potential liver issues. They are unconfirmed, and were later resolved in the cases I’ve heard of. Again I think it can be hard to judge what’s causing what sometimes as reinfection and vaccination are such a large influences.

Vedicinals 9 – Just started Vedicinals 9 about a week ago. The Backstreet Boys Rock Your Body song comes to mind because … it rocked my body. At first, maybe for half a day, I noticed an energy boost from 25 ml. Then I took the 2nd dose, ughhh. Neuro, chest, weakness, and GI all flared or increased. Brain cognition was horrible. I tried to endure at the full dose 50 ml (25ml/25ml) per day, but after 2 days of that misery, I had to stop. It was hard to function at all. Next I took a 2 day rest before I decided to try half the dose (12.5mg/12.5mg) per day. That went better, but the side effects were still too much after 2 days of that. After I take a break I will likely try 1/4 the dose of the total typical daily dose. It feels like a herxheimer reaction to me, but I’m trying to get an answer on that. May have to incorporate some form of detoxing. Good news is that the side effects wear off mostly in a few days. I’ve experienced something that I felt was somewhat similar when I took very strong, concentrated herbs for Lyme and coinfections. Byron White Formulas, A-BIo in particular, gave me an outstanding, even worse than this, herx from just 1 drop. In theory, it’s a good thing, but you want a herx to be bearable and not overloading. Before I restart Vedicinals 9, I’m going to reach out to the company and ask them some more questions: regarding my reaction, some questionable ingredients, etc.

More updates to come in the future as long as Monkeypox or Polio doesn’t kill me!

Lesson Time: Theranos

Lesson Time: Theranos

The story of Theranos is an amazing one, and a good parallel to some things occurring today. It’s filled with lessons. These types of stories people should always remember, as they are not that rare (Enron, Bernie Madoff, and many other frauds committed by large companies and others). I hear many people say these days: how could you fool that many people, it’s been years we would know by now, trust the, there are too many people involved for them not to know or say anything, etc. etc. Theranos was a startup biotech health company formed in 2003 that claimed to use blood from a finger prick, as opposed to a blood draw from a vein, to perform hundreds of blood tests (1). Elizabeth Holmes was the CEO of that company. It operated for 13 years, until the masses caught on that it was all a fraud (2).

The first person schmoozed by Elizabeth Holmes was her Stanford Professor, who actually quit his job to work at Theranos. He called Elizabeth a genius (3). By 2006 the company had raised $40 million from investors, including almost $6 from Rupert Murdoch. His net worth is currently $21.7 billion and he’s the 71st richest person on Earth. She was great at schmoozing. Elizabeth then brought George Schultz, former Secretary of State, in to recruit these high level people to be on the board of Theranos (not limited to):

• Henry Kissinger: former Secretary of State
• Jim Mattis: 4 star general, former head of U.S. Central Command who later became Defense Secretary
• Bill Frisk: former U.S. Senator
• Sam Nunn: former U.S. Senator

They believed what they were told by Elizabeth and the company (4). So did investor Larry Ellison, net worth $97 billion, making him the 10th wealthiest person on Earth. Theranos used Larry Ellison when refusing to share financials with investors, by using his stature to say, why are you asking for the financials, you’re not brighter than Larry Ellison. Who are you (5)?

After raising money, the company began to add new scientists, such as Erika Cheung, who was originally star struck by Elizabeth Holmes the first time she met her (3). Erika, and her fellow scientists, would come to realize in time how secretive it was at the lab. The more Erika Cheung learned, the more she wondered why Theranos higher ups were being so secretive (6). Almost every day she told the upper brass the blood testing device was not working right. She would send emails to colleagues complaining of all this, until one day the COO of Theranos, Sunny Balwani, responded to them. He had not been CCed or BCCed in these emails. Erika found that concerning, but she also noticed things the scientists said in the lab privately with one another would be reiterated to them as well. She felt as if they were being treated as if they could potentially be traitors (7).

Still, not many were really the wiser to what was occuring at Theranos. Holmes at the time was lobbying to change the law so anyone can get easy access testing in Arizona, as the company had secured a deal to be present in Walgreens. She was doing press conferences with the Arizona Governor, Doug Ducey. Everyone just kept on assuming it was legitimate (8). What was really going on behind the curtain was that Theranos would collect the blood at Walgreens and send it to a lab in Palo Alto, CA because their blood testing device was so unreliable. In the lab they used modified 3rd party machines and diluted the blood. There were many instances they knew they made a mistake and they would not let the scientists tell patients to get a redraw because they didn’t want people to know the errors that were occurring (9).

Erika got pushback from everyone in the company as she went higher and higher up. They told her it wasn’t the technology’s fault. Elizabeth said so much as well. The fault was due to the employees and not the technology, she stated. Sunny said to Erika you need to decide if you want to work here and test patient samples without question. Erika quit. She started working there in 2013 and quit in 2014. How many scientists and people kept working for Theranos, even though they knew what they were doing was wrong and the company was lying (10)?

Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani fooled most everyone, including Walgreens, and the fooling would continue. Rupert Murdock invested another $100 million, The Walton Family, of which Rob, Jim, and Alice collectively have $212 billion in wealth, invested $150 million, and the DeVos Family, worth $5.4 billion, invested $100 million. This all brought Elizabeth’s net worth to $4.5 billion at the time and Theranos’ valuation to $9 billion at the time (11).

By summer of 2014 Holmes was everywhere. She was featured on the front page of Inc., Forbes, Fortune, and Bloomberg magazine. In 2015, she met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2015 Clinton Global initiative where he interviewed her. She also received praise from now current U.S. President Joe Biden, saying Theranos’ laboratory was “the laboratory of there future” after being brought in and shown a fake laboratory. You read that right, they set up a fake laboratory and fooled Joe Biden. She was fooling everyone, including the best, brightest, and wealthiest left and right.

As this was going on, the company had a problem. People were beginning to speak up. Erika felt like she was crazy until she was aware other people were talking about Theranos issues (12). Sunny wrote texts to Elizabeth saying, I’ve worked this down to 5 people. “We will nail this mother f*****. (13)” After this takes place, Erika realizes a private investigator is tailing her all over town. One day a guy jumps out of the tinted window SUV and hands her a letter addressed to her at friend’s place, where she has been living. She was just staying there temporarily, no one could have known that address. The letter accuses her of defamation and discussing trade secrets. It threatens a lawsuit against her and David Boies, a high powered prominent lawyer working for Theranos, had signed it.

It goes from bad to worse for Theranos as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) proceeds to launch an attack. Holmes quickly gets on TV and says she’s shocked by the allegations in the WSJ article. She keeps lying, at least somewhat believing her own nonsense. She calls the WSJ Journalist a sexiest bully, and she plays the victim. She threatened the journalist and WSJ with litigation. Sunny also threatened the doctors that spoke to this journalist on record and tried to get them to recant. Holmes and Sunny were actually the real bullies (14).

Eventually, it didn’t end well for Holmes. She gets banned from running a lab for 2 years, but she says the company will not fold. She was wrong. Theranos eventually dissolve in 2018. Holmes and Sunny were indicted on wire fraud. Holmes is found guilty, even though she tried to blame many others at the trial, of 4 counts of defrauding investors. Holmes will be sentenced later in 2022. Sunny is awaiting trial.

One more insane detail about the Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes saga is that apparently she was using a fake deep voice the entire time. In a 2005 interview she’s heard using her normal voice briefly, until she remembers to use her fake deep voice. The lengths people will go to lie for their own greed and fame is astounding (15). Watch the American Greed episode on Theranos & Elizabeth Holmes if you need to see it to believe it.

IMPORTANT LESSONS:

• (1) When you hear something that’s too good to be true, it probably is.
• (2) Theranos fooled most everyone for 13 years and kept their fraudulence under wraps. The company was well known. It just proves you can fool many a long time until it’s reported widely by the media, or until the masses catch on and accept the change.
• (3) Don’t look at people as idols, especially scientists. This will muddy your ability to critically think as you will become enamored with someone or a technology or just an idea and be swallowed into the lie instead of realizing it.
• (4) Don’t blindly believe what you’re told. Researching fairly and honestly is important. How many people blindly believed Elizabeth Holmes for more than a decade without doing their due diligence to the best of their ability?
• (5) Always a big red flag is when authority is brought up instead of information, reasoning, etc. Don’t stand for it. Talk about ideas, facts, data, well reasoned opinion and make the person you’re arguing with do the same.
• (6) Trust your instincts. If there is a veil of secrecy around something and it doesn’t make sense as to why, there is probably something wrong.
• (7) If you’re being treated in an intimidating way to get you from speaking the truth, do something about it. It’s not always easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.
• (8) Don’t assume something is legitimate because smart people believe it. In this situation they were lies to and blindly believe the narrative, fooled by a con, causing more people to be fooled by association.
• (9) Big red flag, when profits and valuation matter more than the patients. You can’t do that in the health industry when someone’s health is at risk, but it’s not exactly uncommon. One reason why you can’t blabber “trust the science” so confidently because there are ulterior motivations for people and corporations.
• (10) Being a good foot soldier and never questioning anything, not what I’m about, nor Erika. Good for her! Why should she just shut up and continue to do what’s wrong (and really evil)? Unfortunately, most do not stand up to what’s wrong, and even for Erika, it took her a long time. … Lies will lead to the questioning of everything. An unintended consequence of our current times not yet fully realized I have no doubt.
• (11) This notion that you can’t fool a lot of people once an idea, belief, and groupthink takes hold is nonsensical. It’s easier than one would think. Elizabeth Holmes fooled billionaires left and right, the press, all her investors, prominent people like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, etc. etc.. Everyone was enamored with her and her technology. Too blinded by the lights to see the truth.
• (12) It takes a while for people to speak up, and it takes a lot for them to do it. They risk a lot. Erika lost her job, got threatened, etc. She had to go against the grain, where the grain thought Elizabeth Holmes was amazing and her company Theranos has amazing technology. These people will even question themselves as if reality isn’t reality, like Erika did, because they feel so alone and on an island, while everyone else, or at least the majority, plus the media, believes something else that the mainstream believes is reality.
• (13) When someone who is lying feels threatened, they will come after you. Which is partly why so many are scared to speak up with the lies and wrong things they see.
• (14) Liars sometimes have convinced themselves of the lie they’re spouting. Sometimes they will also name call when backed into a corner, instead of discussing the facts or accusations. This is a red flag as well. Those who can’t enter into the conversation are probably hiding something or know they’re wrong. The ones pretending there is bullying by others are often the bullying/censoring types. We see a lot of bullying and censorship going on this day in age.
• (15) Many people and corporations will do whatever they can to obtain fame and profit. Always remember that, and don’t underestimate it.