Claim: The Covid Vaccines contain graphene and will enable people to track you.

There’s so much to unpack in just this one sentence. Just looking at it sounds alarm bells and shouts “conspiracy madness”. People have claimed and denied that the vaccines contain graphene and that they pose a risk to our health since their release. The vaccines, not the graphene. Articles have been published disputing the statement above as complete rubbish. False, they all yell, and yet, look at the following.

In 2022, the European Parliament were asked to respond to the claim of graphene in vaccines. The basic gist of the request went as follows.

A recent investigation by Dr Ricardo Delgado Martin and the technical report by Dr Pablo Campra ‘Detection of graphene in COVID vaccines by micro-Raman spectroscopy’ claim that the COVID-19 vaccines contain graphene. As reported by CORDIS in 2018, a team of researchers has proven that graphene is able to convert electronic signals into signals in the terahertz range, with trillions of cycles per second. The silicon-based electronic components we use today generate clock speeds in the GHz range, where 1 GHz is equal to 1 000 million cycles per second. The scientists showed that graphene can convert signals with these frequencies into signals with frequencies that are thousands of times higher than those created by silicon. Graphene is therefore able to absorb radiation, meaning that, if contained in a vaccine, it would be highly toxic and harmful to human health.

For those who’d like to see the widely disputed research that claimed to have found graphene in the Pfizer vaccine, you can follow this link to read the paper on Research Gate.

So how would anyone set about proving or disproving this claim? Of course, we turn to published peer-reviewed data and research, as well as referencing claims made by the manufacturer, ingredient lists and any other sources we can find. Right off the bat, you can see how using information provided by a party involved in the claim to invalidate it is equivalent to quoting the Bible to prove God’s existence.

Here is an example of how typical fact checking works, provided by Health Feedback disputing the above claim making use of the usual sources. And that, dear reader, is exactly the point at which the wheels come off for the fact checker.

Accepting published research and current medical opinion as gospel. The latter is shaped by the former and disagreeing with it can, in normal times have dire consequences for scientists and medical professionals. In the heat of the pandemic, disputing anything relating to the official Covid narrative was terminal.

In 2023, published scientific research relating to certain topics, notably anything vaccine, Covid or pandemic related, is often selling you a narrative, and it isn’t simply the pharma companies trying to convince you of the safety of their products, it includes scientists who wish to prove the exact opposite. Both camps frequently produce research that is designed to promote a particular viewpoint, rather than further the pursuit of science.

Research, that on closer inspection, is shown for what it is. Data manipulated to achieve a desired outcome with control groups that can, at best, be described as compromised. Again, there are sinners on both sides of the aisle. The problem then, is where does this leave the fact checker, who usually has neither the resources or the knowledge to assess the validity of the papers and research they use to validate or invalidate a claim.

This is a complex and nuanced situation and it is easy to make the wrong call, which is essentially what every fact checker does. Based on what are assumed to be facts, we dispute a claim as false. Been there, got the T-Shirt.

Most fact checkers choose to observe or conform to the status quo. Events transpiring in real time that conflict with published lore are usually ignored. The issue is further complicated by the fact that it is often the institutions with a vested interest in maintaining a narrative that perform the checking. This clear conflict of interest should be sufficient reason for most to dismiss their opinions of of hand.

The net effect, in most instances, is to bury, or at least attempt to bury, claims that may in fact have a basis in truth.

Pandemic fact checking, particularly where it relates to the virus, public health and the vaccines, can in many instances rather be referred to as establishment propaganda. Want an example? Did you know there is an association that regulates members who provide fact checking? Bet you didn’t. Called the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), they offer an extensive database of their members responses to pandemic claims.

Their Coronavirus page, from where you can access their database for the pandemic, boasts the following: 17000 fact checks in 110 countries in 40 languages. I decided to put the system to the test and entered the following text into their search box.

Vaccines do not prevent transmission

This was the response my search returned. The italics and emphasis below are added by the author to highlight just how wonderfully, when it chooses, science can dazzle with bullshit.

[Begin extract] Fact-checked by: Vistinomer

2021/04/19 | North Macedonia

FALSE: A Facebook post claims that vaccines do not protect, do not prevent coronavirus transmission and are experimental.

Explanation: Contrary to claims in the post, according to the World Health Organization, vaccination is a simple, safe, and effective way to protect people from harmful diseases before they come in contact with them. It is also incorrect to claim that vaccines do not prevent transmission. The well-established German epidemiological institute “Robert Koch” announced ten days ago that people vaccinated against the coronavirus are no longer transmitters of the virus. It is also incorrect to claim that vaccines are experimental. For vaccines that are approved by both the WHO and the national regulations of each country separately, their experimental phase is over and they are completely safe to use. [End extract]

You can see how quoting the World Health Organization to validate a claim about public health brings us back nicely to the Bible analogy. We knew, and have known, since the early release of the vaccines that they didn’t in fact prevent transmission. It was one of the primary reasons Medika petitioned aggressively against mandates. As far as “experimental status”, the vaccines definitely qualify.

Safety checking and trials were woefully inadequate, lacking proper controls and pushed through to accommodate panicking governments across the globe who sacrificed safety in exchange for expediency. mRNA is still in evaluation technology in the real world of medicine, and yes, you were unofficially “experimented” on. That is what happens when you participate in the largest global clinical trial ever undertaken.

So can we no longer trust the fact checker or were they acting in good faith on fraudulent information offered by the WHO, the Robert Koch Institute, governments and the vaccine companies? Was this real science or rushed science with flawed conclusions? All of the above or none or some? We don’t know, but time has allowed us to see through the lie. Not much use if you took the vaccine based on similar advice, only to discover later, you’d been misled.

Pity the Patient

It’s possibly the worst time in our societies history to be classified as a patient, and at some point in your life, that will apply to you, if it doesn’t yet. Over the course of the pandemic we were all considered patients, and in may aspects, we had the option of choice as far as treatments were concerned either removed, mandated or prescribed.

For those of us who tried to exercise critical thought and make informed choices with regards Covid treatments and vaccinations, we found ourselves mired in a pool of misinformation, fact-checking and the draconian public narrative. Nothing has changed. We still face this problem as we gradually emerge from three years of often self-inflicted viral misery, with society now fragmented by vaccine status and two very differing opinions on science.

So, dear patient, just where do you turn for help and advice. The truth is, I cannot tell you and anyone suggesting they have discovered the font of truth in 2023 should be avoided at all costs. Your best hope is to revert to good old fashioned critical thinking and apply it to as much information as you can find on a particular topic.

Oh, and if they’re trying to sell you something – RUN.

The post Fact Checking Vaccine Claims With Flawed Science: True appeared first on Medika Life.

We attended the digital funeral today of an innocent victim, slaughtered in a horrific drive-by shooting. That victim was of course Ivermectin, a wonder drug that has over the last two decades saved countless lives. The vehicle involved was the pandemic and the vehicle’s occupants, none other than individuals from within the medical and wellness sectors.

To understand why people sworn to protect their patients at all costs would cross over to the dark side, we need to highlight facts that have surfaced over the last few months. Understanding motive will I hope also enable those who remain skeptical to accept the truth about Ivermectin.

It is not a treatment or prophylactic for Covid-19 or the SARS-CoV2 virus. It never was.

A small, as yet unvalidated possibility exists that it may offer some benefit to late-stage Covid-19 patients, but that remains inconclusive pending further research. Proving Ivermectin’s efficacy in early-stage Covid or as prophylactic poses very real, and some would argue, insurmountable methodological challenges.

All Ivermectin ever claimed to be, was an anti-parasitic drug. It is as much a victim of the intricate web of deceit and deception spun by certain individuals, as the intended targets, who consume it in the mistaken belief it offers salvation.

Let’s begin by examining how that web has begun to unravel and then we’ll take a closer look at those who engineered the deception and why.

The Preprint

Most of the scientific and medical community speaking up on behalf of Ivermectin used the following pre-print as validation for the efficacy of the drug as a Covid-19 treatment. The paper was called Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic and the first of four versions was made available to the public on the 13th of November, 2020.

The preprint was published on researchsquare.com and if you click on the link above you will see that the preprint has been removed and an investigation initiated into the content and contributing authors. Why is explained below.

ReasearchSquare posts the following text in red font above the preprints it publishes as fair warning that the content is not peer-reviewed and should not be considered as anything more than an unverified opinion.

This is a preprint, a preliminary version of a manuscript that has not completed peer review at a journal. Research Square does not conduct peer review prior to posting preprints. The posting of a preprint on this server should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its validity or suitability for dissemination as established information or for guiding clinical practice.

Despite this, the preprint was seized upon, Google scholar showing 43 citations. In case you’re not familiar with publication terms, in scientific journals, a citation is a reference from a published article to a published paper (note, not a preprint) intended to provide confirmation or reference for content.

In short, 43 papers that have done exactly what the warning above suggests shouldn’t be done. Why this warning exists and preprints are broadly unreferenced in the scientific community became apparent as peer review set about validating the integrity of the data in the preprint and claims of plagiarism that had been leveled against the authors.

Examining the Data

Much like forensic auditors check for cooked books, forensic data analysts exist to sniff out anything fishy in sets of data. Nick Browne was tasked with examining the data used in the preprint to validate claims made relating to the efficacy of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19. You can read a full breakdown of his analysis here if the summation below is insufficient.

The data file for the research was made available as a locked Excel spreadsheet, rather than an SPSS 21 file, the tool the preprint authors purported they had used for their analysis. Browne was forced to pay for access to the file and then had to manually guess at the password (1234) before gaining access to the Excel data. From there, things rapidly progressed from bad to worse.

Many of the patients who died appear to be duplicates. According to the original data, there were ‘four’ patients with the initials NME, NEM, and NES (twice), who were all males aged 51 years old, all suffered from diarrhoea(sic), had the same blood hemoglobin levels, were all diagnosed on the 22nd of May, and all died on the 29th of May 2020. They also all share identical values in at least four other data columns.

At least a further ten deceased patients also display evidence of being duplicated. Duplicates make up around half of the recorded deaths. Much of the patient data is identical, but minor changes exist, proving that a simple copy and paste error cannot be the cause of the duplicates.

In no particular order, and again, please refer to the linked report for specifics, Browne also identified issues with;

• Formatting
• Numbers containing non-numeric characters
• Confusion around date formats
• Repeated or cloned sequences of data
• Apparent failures of randomization
• Descriptive statistics that did not match the preprint
• Table results that do not match the preprint
• Other issues included age distribution, trailing digits of numerical variables, study entry and exit dates, and last, but not least, the lack of the SPSS file.

In summation, Browne arrived at the following conclusion;

In view of the problems described in the preceding sections, most notably the repeated sequences of identical numbers corresponding to apparently “cloned” patients, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Excel file provided by the authors does not faithfully represent the results of the study, and indeed has probably been extensively manipulated by hand.

We aren’t limited by Browne’s proclivity for professional restraint so we’ll call it as he saw it. The data provided for the preprint are a largely concocted fairy tale, an ambitious con designed to mislead. Manipulation of the data was not accidental but rather intentional, engineered to support very specific predetermined outcomes, for reasons we will examine below.

Plagiarism

Lead-authored by Dr. Ahmed Elgazzar, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Behna, the preprint claimed to represent the results of a multi-center, 600-patient study evaluating the use of ivermectin in preventing and treating COVID-19.

The author’s claims centered around the following;

• Ivermectin significantly reduced both the number of deaths and the length of patient’s hospital stay compared to standard Egyptian treatment protocols
• Ivermectin exhibited a substantial effect in preventing the onset of the disease in the first place, in other words, it acted as a prophylactic against the virus.

The article by Jack Lawrence we will reference with regards to the above can be read in full here, and again, we have provided a summation of his findings below. There are numerous instances in the preprint of text being lifted directly from an original source and not credited. In a schoolboy fashion, the authors have tried to obfuscate the plagiarism by changing a few words in each extract.

Plagiarized Elgazzar et al 2020

“This novel virus infection has incapacitated the world’s medical services framework as well as the political and financial relations [2. As another section in human life opens

up [3, the world is by all accounts divided into two sections pre-and post-COVID19 time.”

Original Heidary & Reza Gharebaghi 2020

“This novel virus has paralyzed not only the world’s health care system but also the political and economic relations [13]. As a new chapter in human life opens up [14], the world seems to be divided into two parts pre- and post-COVID19 era.”

Note: Elgazzar even used the same sources

https://www.nature.com/articles/s414290200336-z

A schoolboy could be chastised and excused for similar behavior, but there can be no excuse offered by the preprint author, Elgazzar, who would be intimately familiar with protocols surrounding scientific publications. The preprint is littered with further examples of plagiarism and Larence uncovered further unethical actions pertaining to the study.

While the disclosures above may shock some, they pale in comparison to what is to follow, namely acknowledging the extent of duplicity and malintent by members of the medical community across the globe. Doctors, scientists, pharmacists, alternate health practitioners, and individuals from the wellness sector have teamed up to exploit vulnerable patients for financial gain in the midst of a pandemic.

That is the only logical and unavoidable conclusion that can be drawn from the Ivermectin fiasco and avoiding confronting this unpleasant reality prevents us from protecting vulnerable patient populations.

Acknowledging the Grift

Medika first became aware of Ivermectin and its ability to kill the SARS-CoV2 virus in a paper in Nature, released in mid-2020. We published an article, highlighting the results, achieved in vitro, and suggested, like others, that immediate trials should be undertaken to see if the effects could be replicated in vivo.

The pandemic was gaining momentum and there would be no shortage of willing trial candidates. The problems though were obvious at the outset. Ivermectin had successfully killed the test tube sample in a laboratory, but achieving similar dosage levels in human subjects was highly inadvisable and patently unachievable without endangering the patient’s health.

Conducting broad-scale trials at tolerable dosages should have been a priority for either the FDA or a recognized European health authority. No one stepped up to conclusively prove or disprove the potential of Ivermectin as a Covid treatment. The lack of credible trials was potentially driven by an industry-wide skepticism of the drug’s ability to impact viruses (it is an anti-parasitic) and although this rationale made sense to scientific circles, the public was unable to make the connect.

A potential ‘treatment void’ had been unintentionally created for Ivermectin and it was into this void, as is so often their want, that the grifters stepped, seizing an opportunity to co-opt the pandemic for profit on a global scale.

Plumbing the dark depths of deception

India was one of the countries that fully embraced the grift. Provincial authorities distributed Ivermectin as a Covid treatment to residents and other countries, notably South American populations, followed suit.

Proving the efficacy of a treatment is often far simpler than disproving its efficacy and the grifters took full advantage, distributing their ‘Covid treatment’ via the global digital conspiracy network surrounding the pandemic. They assured the public that the drug was being intentionally withheld and the rest is history. Across the internet, both the public and many from within the medical community bought into the Ivermectin lie.

A lie that was cemented in many minds as fact by anecdotal evidence, falsified data and manipulated trials like the one conducted by Elgazzar and his colleagues. It is far easier to believe a convenient lie than face an unpleasant truth.

Doctors (the term is used loosely) have taken advantage of a vulnerable patient population to sell them drugs and in case you think this deplorable behavior was limited to non-western countries, the evidence suggests the west drove the trend. This is not simply supposition but fact.

In the US, rapidly formed organizations like America’s Frontline Doctors, a despicable congruence of dishonest doctors, pharmacists, and marketing individuals set about creating the ultimate pill mill for not only Ivermectin but the other darling of Covid conspiracies, hydroxychloroquine. You can read more on that here, including comments from exploited patients, shown below the article.

This pattern of profiting by deception from the sale of Ivermectin and other Covid cures continues unabated. We have unintentionally created the environment where large sums of money can be made from misleading the public in the midst of a pandemic. The fact the public’s health may be forfeit is irrelevant to the quacks and charlatans claiming to be healers.

These individuals are doctors, nurses, pharmacists, caregivers, and individuals of science. The lie could not exist without their duplicity and in many instances, the lie exists at their instigation. It is a hard truth to face and one we look away from. We need to openly acknowledge this and develop effective methods to prevent future occurrences.

Ivermectin’s lasting legacy should not be as the drug that failed to treat Covid and fooled the world. It should be seen as the drug that taught the world about a bitter pill, one we need to swallow now, lest we repeat history.

The post Ivermectin is Dead and Buried Despite NIH Website Misstep and Twitter Buzz appeared first on Medika Life.

Doctors should no longer prescribe daily doses of aspiring to pre-CVD patients because of the increased risk of bleeding, a risk that increases with age.

We’ve known for a long time that aspirin reduces risk for those who’ve already experienced a heart attack or stroke, and logic and research supported the idea that administering aspirin to a patient prior to a cardiac event would reduce the likelihood and/or severity of CVD or stroke.

Simply put, aspirin works by thinning your blood (an anticoagulant), making the blood less likely to form clots and thinner blood requires less effort to circulate, so the heart doesn’t have to pump as hard. Benefits were seen to extend not only to CVD but also to the incidence of strokes.

Now, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts, has just released an updated draft recommendation that says most adults should not take aspirin to prevent first heart attacks or strokes.

The newly updated guidance recommends that adults in their 40s and 50s only take aspirin as a preventive measure if their doctors determine they are at higher risk for heart disease and that aspirin may lower the risk without significant risk of bleeding. Previous guidance didn’t address anyone younger than 50.

People ages 60 or older are now advised not to start taking aspirin to prevent first heart attacks or strokes.

So what has changed?

The timing of the new advisory couldn’t have been worse. It follows on the heels of an Israeli study and this study that points to the efficacy of aspirin for treating severe Covid and mounting evidence that a daily dose of aspirin may reduce the risk of infection from the virus.

The new advisory is seen by many as an attempt to smear aspirin as a cheap and effective treatment for Covid, forcing people instead to opt for more costly treatment options. They cite the recent examples of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine to support the pattern, but mistakenly so, as data shows neither drug to be effective.

Aspirin does however appear to reduce the risk of severe Covid for some patients.

Conspiracies, baseless or otherwise, aside, the new advisory is still under review, pending input from providers. We have known for many years that aspirin poses a risk for bleeding in some individuals and that this risk increases for the elderly. Every doctor that prescribes aspirin takes these risk factors into consideration when treating a patient.

Aspirin remains one of the safest and well-tolerated drugs we have at our disposal. Poll any doctor over the age of 40 and you’ll find many drink an aspirin each day, that’s how entrenched the belief in the drug has become and it is available without prescription in almost every country on the planet as an over-the-counter (OTC) medicine.

So how should you as a patient, respond to the latest advice? If you do fall into the new categories (60+) defined as high risk, discuss your medication regimen with your doctor. Patients should be aware that these advisories apply to patients that have not yet experienced CVD or suffered a stroke.

Doctors recommend daily low-dose aspirin for many patients who already have had a heart attack or stroke and the task force guidance does not change that advice.

If you’re self-medicating with aspirin, there are a few things you should consider.

• Don’t simply start using aspirin because you’ve reached a certain age and if you’re over 70, definitely don’t take aspirin unless advised by your doctor.
• If you’re a candidate for CVD, in other words, if you smoke and drink heavily, if you have elevated blood pressure, high BMI, or suffer from obesity and have a family history of CVD, aspirin may benefit you, but again, a doctor is best placed to advise you.
• Aspirin will thin your blood, but won’t address the contributing factors that result in CVD. It won’t drop your blood pressure, lower your cholesterol or help you lose weight. Eventually, these factors will negate any positive effect aspirin may have on your heart.
• You may, inadvertently be compromising your health if you are over 50 and risk ulcers and bleeding. Your doctor is best qualified to properly assess this risk.

Dr. Erin Michos, an associate director of preventive cardiology at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease, who isn’t part of the task force, had this to say about widely known recommendations that endorsed daily aspirin use for decades;

“We’ve gotten a lot better with other medical therapies, and the aspirin recommendations were developed during trials conducted before statins were widely used and smoking was more widespread. The incremental benefit of aspirin in contemporary medicine does not provide as strong of a benefit for primary prevention as it once would.”

There is no magic medication for negating your risk of heart disease and stroke, and aspirin, although beneficial, won’t make you bulletproof. You will need a multifaceted approach that includes a healthy diet and regular exercise, and yes, perhaps an aspirin a day. Talk to your doctor.

The post Aspirin. Your Heart’s Best Friend, or Maybe Not appeared first on Medika Life.

The study, recently published in The BMJ, showed that the incidence of mortality from COVID-19 amongst those considered fully vaccinated increased with age, deprivation, being male, and for those with Indian and Pakistani ethnicity.

The study identified the following at-risk groups (HR indicates Hazard Ratio);

• Down’s syndrome (HR 12.7)
• Kidney transplantation (HR 8.1)
• Sickle cell disease (HR 7.7)
• Chemotherapy (HR 4.3)
• Care home residency (HR 4.1)
• HIV/AIDS (HR 3.3)
• Liver cirrhosis (HR 3.0)
• Neurological conditions (HR 2.6)
• Recent bone marrow transplantation or a solid organ transplantation ever (HR 2.5)
• Dementia (HR 2.2)
• Parkinson’s disease (HR 2.2)

Details of the study

The mean age of people in the cohort was 52 years and the data were drawn from 2031 COVID-19 deaths and 1929 COVID-related hospital admissions, of which 81 deaths (4%) and 71 admissions (3.7%) occurred 14 or more days after the second vaccine dose.

Researchers used the QCovid tool to analyze outcomes in adults aged 19 and over between December 8 last year and June 15 of this year. National linked datasets from general practice were used, national immunization, and SARS-CoV-2 testing, death registry, and hospital episode data, in order to analyze a sample of more than 6.9m vaccinated adults. Of those, 74.1% had received two vaccine doses.

According to Julia Hippisley-Cox, professor of clinical epidemiology and general practice at the University of Oxford, who co-authored the paper;

“The UK was the first place to implement a vaccination program and has some of the best clinical research data in the world. We have developed this new tool using the QResearch database, to help the NHS identify which patients are at the highest risk of serious outcomes despite vaccination, for targeted intervention. This new tool can also inform discussions between doctors and patients about the level of risk, to aid shared decision making.”

The study results are provided to allow individuals to assess their own personal risk more accurately and should not, in any way, be considered suggestive of any inefficacy of the vaccines themselves. The Covid-19 vaccines continue to offer a high level of protection against severe Covid.

If, however, you suffer from any of the listed conditions above, you need to be aware that your risk profile may remain elevated and that you will still need to exercise care with regards to exposing yourself to the virus.

The post These Vaccinated Groups are Still at Risk of Severe Covid, UK Study Finds appeared first on Medika Life.

Even as a clinician, my Breast Cancer Medicaid status has drastically altered my healthcare delivery and outcome, and I am not the only one.

On January 7th of this year, I had a 3D Mammogram to rule out breast cancer based on its strong history on my mother’s side.

On January 14th, I received a very apprehensive call from my nurse practitioner giving me the diagnosis of Invasive Lobular Carcinoma of the right breast. She was trite and not forthcoming with me concerning my questions regarding the diagnosis. Normally, this provider was exceedingly kind and communicated openly. I had no idea what transpired to change her attitude.

During this short, life-changing conversation, something from my provider’s tone resonated within my spirit that the common human experience with illness and disease that I was about to encounter would include an unexpected dark component.

I realize now, that the tone and hesitancy in her voice most likely conveyed her own understanding that my insurance status would compromise/complicate my outcome.

Subsequently, I have witnessed the passive, but very present, veiled negligence of the medical field to initiate timely treatment for a life-threatening illness in a Medicaid patient.

This is to a depth I had never seen as a medical professional, nor as a patient, and is illuminated in the story of the reprehensible mismanagement of my own health and life by my breast cancer providers.

Incomprehensible Delays In Treatment

Since January of this year, I’ve stood both stage-side and center stage in my experience with the struggle to have my practitioners determine exact diagnosis, proper (or lack thereof) staging, and have endured extreme delays in care, follow up appointments, and in receiving adequate and reliable test results, including the imperative-to-treatment Oncotype.

My initial appointment dates for follow-up procedures and cancer care after diagnosis were not in a timeframe supporting health and timely intervention.

Weeks went by between appointments and most diagnostics, which prevented the swift interventions needed and expected for the concentrated care and attention that newly (or any) diagnosed breast cancer patients require.

After searching for alternative care, I consulted with the breast oncology team at MD Anderson on March 9th to gain a clearer picture of my risk and staging before actually being diagnosed “enough” to decide on a double mastectomy. This was because subsequent recent results showed I had bilateral breast cancer much larger and more involved than originally suspected.

Due to the life-threatening bumbling and delays of my Austin providers explained later in this story, my surgery date was not scheduled until March 23rd, which was 74 days after the original January 14th date of confirmation of breast cancer.

Prior to having the double mastectomy on March 23rd, I investigated what the longest period recommended was between cancer diagnosis and the beginning date of treatment. It is a standard two weeks. If a woman must or chooses to wait any longer, the most time that can pass from diagnosis to beginning of treatment without survival rates greatly declining is 31 days.

This was a concern I had voiced with my providers consistently, but one that did not seem to facilitate any corrective action.

In speaking to many women I know personally who have undergone diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, I have been informed that not one can parallel their experiences to mine as their treatments were scheduled immediately and their procedures and test results were timely.

None of those women had Medicaid for insurance coverage.

Why do I share all of this?

It is because the tragic reality of my negative experiences, and that of many others on Medicaid, is directly tied to my insurance coverage.

The Real Story: The Alarming and Life-threatening Gaps In (Cancer) Care for The Poor

Just after diagnosis, I began my cancer care as a MAP patient with the Cancer Care Collaborative at Ascension Seton hospital here in Austin, Texas.

If I had to have remained a patient there, I would be looking at a very grim outcome void of any real hope. I stood in shock after walking into the CCC office for the first time, seeing several minority women who were obviously ill, laying or hunched over the chairs. Not a one had their head up. I felt the air of hopelessness and resolution to sickness and death. I wanted out of there, immediately.

This was the place that local providers (my soon-to-be MBCC provider also) worked pro bono.

I soon learned one major source of that hopelessness. It was at the end of my appointment for that day when I went to schedule my next appointment and discovered that my next available appointment would not be for 2 more weeks and would not be with the same provider I saw that day.

Immediately, I felt unimportant and at risk for getting lost in the system. Having to stay in that position with a breast cancer diagnosis that I was informed was “most likely worse than initially thought” would have dramatically reduced my initiative and hope to live. This fateful concession is what I saw in the patients sprawled helplessly in the waiting room of the CCC.

Continuity of care is a foundational principle in healthcare. The lack of it leaves any patient, especially an oncology patient, feeling extremely disconnected, anxious, and forgotten. The truth of the matter is that vital information is missed when several providers work separately on a case and cares are not synergetic. This places the health and life of a cancer patient in danger, as there is no one regular provider to remember a particular patient’s needs and particular situation. Just reading the chart does not suffice, for any medical need, let alone that of a cancer patient.

In contrast to many women at the CCC, who waiver in the gap between Medicaid and MAP eligibility, I was approved for Medicaid. This coverage placed me just one step up from the other reality, from a completely invisible status to the status of “Medicaid recipient.”

I knew I would receive better care than that offered to the CCC patients, but I was genuinely concerned that such a serious diagnosis as breast cancer would be under-treated due to my Medicaid status.

I did not anticipate, even as an experienced nurse, how profoundly that fear would come to fruition.

The Dark Veil of “Healthcare Delivery” to The Poor

Much of the medical community leaves poor patients to infer the un-importance of their health and lives from the subpar care taken in their cases, such as the following:

• a common lack of ordered diagnostics that are normally appropriate for a diagnosis
• dangerous delays in the ordering of any diagnostics
• the nonexistence of the introduction of alternative treatments and preventative medicine to patients (ie: natural, effectual alternatives/additions to chemo, radiation for cancer care such as European Mistletoe, CBD with terpenes or just the suggestion of a keto (friendly) diet
• the pervasive lack of the followup and relaying of test results
• lack of appropriate and effective medications to manage conditions such as pain, insomnia and especially mental health diagnoses.
• dismissal of symptoms by providers resulting in chronic and irreversible conditions in patients (this now seems to a common problem for many patients)
• lack of timely referrals, if a patient is even referred out for specialty care
• the pervasive occurrence of any specialty appointments to yield any appropriate care at all, regardless of diagnosis/symptoms

My personal experiences shadow these instances:

A) Post-surgically, as I wrestled with severe pain from the double mastectomy, I was told by my plastic surgeon’s nurse, that Tylenol and a very small handful of 5mg oxycodone to last weeks, were sufficient for the pain that I was experiencing. In one of the telephone conversations I had with her, she labeled me an “outlier,” in reference to this unrelieved, incomprehensible pain that was causing severe insomnia and upper body immobility for me.

This situation then and now has prevented the natural and necessary process of rest and recovery for me.

I have since learned from several women in my community who have regular private insurance, who also underwent mastectomies, that they alternatively were given appropriate post-mastectomy pain medications such as Hydrocodone and even Dilaudid to manage their post-mastectomy pain.

B) Severe and persistent insomnia plagued me from the date of my surgery. I addressed this problem for four months before getting a referral. None of the medications I was given to “relieve” the insomnia in between were first action medications for insomnia and did not work at all. After I waited almost two more weeks for this referral (still not sleeping) I was told by the new provider I saw that I needed yet another referral to actually get to the MD who ordered effective medication for insomnia.

This was another month’s wait, without more than 20 hours, at best, of sleep, per week.

C) After surgery for breast cancer, medical protocol includes the formation of a treatment plan based on the final results of surgery, risk assessment assays, and lab results.

The Oncotype result must be in hand post-surgically, as it determines the risk factors for metastasis and recurrence of breast cancer, indicating whether chemotherapy, radiation, and hormone therapy are appropriate, or if all three are required.

By May 5th, I still had no Oncotype result and still did not have a confirmed treatment method, after surgery.

Three separate times from the original diagnosis and biopsies in early January 2021 to my surgical follow-up appointment end of March 2021, this test was “ordered,” but never done.

My breast surgeon first discovered in April that the original biopsy tissue taken by another practitioner in January was “insufficient” for processing. This important information was obviously lost in transition and not previously sought after by any of my providers, which certainly raises an eyebrow, as this information is imperative to understanding a patient’s risk of disease recurrence and the benefit of chemotherapy/radiation.

Most concerning is that the breast surgeon “forgot” to order the Oncotype from her own biopsies in February and again from the post-surgical mastectomy tissue retrieved from surgery on March 23rd. The test was neglected a third time, as outlined further in this story.

Before and after surgery, appointments with the breast cancer surgeon left me wondering after each visit what it was in her eyes, and in the hesitant way she slowly and carefully worded things, that I was not being told. She appeared to lack confidence in much of what she relayed to me regarding my original biopsies and scans. Although deemed the best breast surgeon here in Austin, I just could not shake the uneasiness in the air and the unsure nature of my changing diagnoses in our conversations.

I have conceded that my cancer care providers are indeed grossly aware of and understand that the delays in diagnosis, staging and surgery scheduling I have experienced are not normal occurrences and cannot remotely be defined as “best practice.” They know I knew to expect better as a medical professional.

However, I was continually assured that I was getting the “best care possible,” despite the staggered visit conversations containing an ever-present air of disregard, mystery, and even one of concealment.

I have long cared for Medicaid patients in all my nursing specialties. I have been a Medicaid patient before now on and off in my 30-year medical career, second to being a single mom most of my adult life.

I know how poorly Medicaid patients are treated, but this experience opened my eyes to something about the medical field that has changed my perception of care and treatment in healthcare across the board.

I have seen for the first time the concrete evidence of purposeful, pervading medical neglect, particularly in the field of oncology, towards patients with no or lesser insurance. I have witnessed and experienced for myself the total and willful lack of concern for life, my life, as opposed to others who have money and adequate insurance.

Every confusing interaction with my providers indirectly left me feeling worthless and invisible. I knew, they knew, that as a Medicaid patient, I was not getting appropriate care. Treating patients so poorly that the patients themselves resolve that they are not worth the same life-saving treatment that others receive is inconceivable.

This is how and why poor people die from the same diseases and conditions that non-poor people recover from exponentially more often than those with low incomes.

How The Poor are Socially Treated

I had a double mastectomy with 14 right side lymph nodes removed and the left side sentinel node removed in late March.

I rightfully had the expectation to receive compassion in my care, as every patient should expect, especially after major surgery.

This was not my experience.

My breast surgeon did not come to see me in the hospital after the initial procedure. She did not explain postoperatively in any detail at all what she saw in surgery. I was scheduled to leave the hospital 23 hours after surgery, with 4 drains and incomprehensible pain…pain that 5 mg Oxycodone, 300mg Gabapentin, and 1000mg Tylenol alternately do NOT manage. I forced the issue of staying three nights as I knew that was the very least amount of hospital time I could have and go home in any condition not threatening my wellbeing.

The caseworker who saw me just after my surgery encouraged the longer hospital stay until she discovered I was a Medicaid recipient. She then returned to my room and informed me if I stayed a third night, I would “have to pay for it myself.” She was no longer smiling and never came back to check on me after that statement.

Her services had been requested to help me navigate resources and counseling for the amount of personal stress I was going home to. My youngest son was admitted to drug rehab with a coinciding total mental breakdown occurring just two days prior to my surgery and I would be returning home after the mastectomy to care for my 4-year-old grandson with special needs.

I was left to manage these issues and the recovery alone.

The plastic surgeon came on my second day stay, gruff and annoyed. He also focused on informing me I was going to have to pay for the third-night stay. Following this statement, without any other information or report from his work in surgery, he turned on his heels and began walking out the door. Just as he did, he turned his head back at me and dryly stated, “Well, I think you’ll like where we’re going with this…” as if I should be excited about having to re-create my chest? Since he had informed me of nothing else regarding my care, I am only concluding that was the reference he was making.

I was stunned, insulted, and deeply hurt. I no longer cared if I ever got breasts again.

I had consistently been asking about the results of the surgery and lymph node removal from the moment I regained clarity from anesthesia.

The nurses could not tell me anything, and finally, I was informed that my two-week follow-up with the breast surgeon would give me my answers.

Apparently, I was to accept waiting another two weeks before getting any answers to my cancer status.

Upon asking about my results at the two-week post-op visit, specifically the Oncotype, my breast surgeon stared blankly at me, turned from me to her computer, and stated she would “order it immediately.”

Having lost all faith in my Austin breast team, I began preparing to transfer some of my care to MD Anderson in Houston. When requesting my records for the MDA team evaluation two weeks later, it was discovered again that the Oncotype was indeed not ordered.

To clarify for anyone who does not understand the importance of this testing, an Oncotype determines with great precision, a person’s risk of breast cancer recurrence and so is vital to treatment planning post-surgically. The lack of this test post-procedurally results in further delays in treatment for cancer, which further risks a patient’s life. I needed to know whether or not chemotherapy, radiation, and/or hormone therapy were the appropriate courses of action.

Now, four weeks post-op I had no idea what my treatment is and no idea what my risk of further disease is. This has been torment from start to finish. My staging was changed four times from January to mid-March. My prospective treatment plans were therefore changed four times and, although I received a “surgically-free of cancer” report, my visit to the associated oncologist in the same group as my breast surgeon squashed that hope with repeated vague sentences including, “Well, we can’t see everything, so we don’t really know the risk.”

A competent practitioner whose professional goal is to see all patients benefit from valid treatment options would recommend additional testing be performed (like CEA and Signatera Assay) after chemotherapy, if indicated, or after surgery to check for residual cancer DNA in the blood. These test results would further enhance proper treatment planning after adjuvant treatment methods, most often, chemotherapy.

However, the oncologist was not forthcoming with information on this life-saving diagnostic testing until I mentioned it. She hesitated, stumbled over her explanation of the tests, and seemed extremely uncomfortable. She ended the sentence with, “I’ll have to see if this testing is favorable to you and if the insurance will cover it.”

There is NO cancer patient for whom CEA and Signatera assays are not favorable.

These options should be offered to all cancer patients, regardless of insurance status, and are offered, per my research, to many other cancer patients. These diagnostics give cancer patients their cancer status (metastasis, risk of recurrence, previously undetected cancer) with almost 100% accuracy.

My providers know I am a veteran nurse, yet my years of experience and knowledge are not respected or recognized and are even contested many times because I am a patient on Medicaid.

I am eligible for Medicaid today due to having to stop my nursing career, leaving the workforce entirely, to raise my special needs grandson.

A shameful, pervasive neglect of the poor

If I were not a medical professional, I believe I would not be in any place of health right now (and I struggle daily with the ongoing effects of chemo, awaiting radiation) because I have had to fight for everything I have had done and my medical knowledge led this.

The blank stares greeting me every time over the last few months when addressing my concerns over the delays in diagnosis and treatment as a cause for my concern for metastasis, still haunt me.

With my eyes further opened to the grim reality of the outright malpractice and medical neglect shown to patients who are not wealthy or do not have “good” insurance or the ability to self-pay, I am forced to accept, indeed, that the lives of anyone who does not have either are unimportant to many providers and are not considered worthy of many providers’ time.

This truth is one I have long fought against in my own career as I advocated for my own patients, but the depth of the apathy and disregard for my life and the lives that sit in those seats at the Cancer Care Collaborative is outright criminal and inhumane.

Life itself, humanity, is not valuable second to wealth, education, or social status. We are valuable as human beings because we are so greatly valued by our Creator.

We are valued by our loved ones who do not want us to die untimely deaths or due to another’s negligence and apathy. No one wants to die or have a loved one die because medical providers do not value the patient’s life because they are a Medicaid recipient or have no insurance.

Is There A True Resolution?

What is the resolve to this profoundly serious mindset in the medical community…not just in Oncology, but in all areas of the medical field?

Can you teach another human being who does not hold value for every life that all life is valuable? Should doctors, on the very premise of their calling and job description, value one set of lives over another?

Where did the alternate idea of providing more and advanced care to fully insured/wealthy originate? Providers do not make much from Medicaid, so most recipients of Medicaid will not be a priority to these providers at all.

Does the lure or lack of exorbitant money-making really taint providers’ decisions and treatment of patients?

Corporate America mandated in the very late 80’s that patients no longer be noted as “patients,” but “clients.” This swept in a permanent era making the medical field a for-profit “business” rather than a public servant.

Despite the many years I worked to respect and advocate for my poor patients, I am still flabbergasted at the permeating negative attitude in healthcare toward the poor.

As a nurse, I have had many patients on Medicaid who were war veterans, college professors, travelling dance instructors, former nurses, scientists, teachers, and many other professions as well as many others with no profession. They were all valuable lives.

The only solution I advocate for that will change the profit-driven, discrimination-based lack of care in the American healthcare field is nationalized healthcare, a system in which all human beings are treated equally, which would eliminate insurance companies making the decisions for medical diagnosis and treatment. I would not ask my car insurance salesman to dictate my automobile repair, as he is not a mechanic.

I experienced nationalized healthcare in England as a child when my family lived there in the 1970s. We had no problems obtaining care nor did we have to wait for care.

The privatization of our American healthcare system has created and fostered much illness, both acute and chronic, lack of access to medications, treatment modalities, and procedures based on patient income.

If lucrative money-making is at the helm and priority of providers’ decisions, and not the preservation of health and life, then, at one time or another, every person who seeks healthcare will have their health and life compromised as we are all numbers, specifically if we are poor, but when the combination of money, Big Pharma and profit is the driver…none of our lives are really safe.

The post How My Breast Cancer Providers Have Compromised My Life appeared first on Medika Life.

If you don’t have your hand raised at this point, you need to get out more. The incidence of the aforementioned individual is high, so much so that we’ve coined a collective term for them, CovIdiots. Not only is the term disingenuous, but it is also very misleading. Intelligence is not prophylaxis for gullibility, in fact, quite the opposite.

Buy the lie

Bernie Madoff would be the first to tell you that intelligent people are often the easiest to convince of something, for a number of reasons.

Vanity, a tendency to trust, and a mistaken belief in their own abilities to filter truth from bullshit, leave intelligent people wide open for exploitative individuals. Financial cons are most often exacted on wealthy, well-educated individuals who are always, with hindsight, blamed for not having known better.

Lower intellect is usually linked to lower-income and nothing ferments distrust like poverty. Grow up knowing the whole world is out to screw you and you are, by default, suspicious of everything. Poor individuals are more susceptible to the “establishment or world-order” types of conspiracy misinformation.

Surely not the doctors too?

Doctors are just regular people that have spent an insane amount of time studying up how the body works. That’s regular doctors. Specialists and surgeons require double the amount of studying. Very very specific studying, particular to their chosen specialty, as the field of medicine is huge.

Take virology, epidemiology, and pharmacology. Three very distinct branches of medicine and ones which the average doctor will only glance at for a few weeks during their training. Their knowledge of these topics, broadly speaking, is only marginally better than that of the general public.

The published word

Presented with a preprint for a large clinical trial on Ivermectin, published in a scientific journal, most doctors would take the information contained in the trial at face value. Doctors are not forensic data analysts and are therefore unable to properly validate the data provided without considerable time and effort. They rely on experts (peers) to do the fact-checking for them.

This dependence is riddled with problems, mostly stemming from a lack of peer review, Open Access models, and the predatory pay to publish platforms preferred by many publications. Often little or no review is applied to published papers and a stringent code of ethics applicable to preprints is largely ignored.

Simply put, much of what is published today within the scientific community, can not be taken at face value.

If the scientific publication industry was akin to a cancer patient, doctors would be urgently calling for chemo to attempt to save an almost terminal case.

Many doctors, along with broad swathes of the public, do not recognize this trend, are not aware of it, or simply turn a blind eye.

The fire and smoke logic trap

Can’t have a fire starting without a little smoke and in pandemic central 2021, that smoke represents misinformation. Our world is filled with it. This flawed logic is mistakenly applied to justify the ‘genuineness’ of claims made relating to vaccines and so-called Covid treatments.

The truth is there can be smoke without the presence of fire, particularly when that smoke has been intentionally created to suggest the presence of non-existent flames. In fact, con artists are all too aware of this human flaw we use to justify something and use it against us with spectacular success.

Let’s say, by way of example that a toothpaste manufacturer wanted to clear a large stock of an older brand of toothpaste from its catalog. An article, not so innocently released to a large gossip rag with an established social media presence would suggest the brand was out of stock in stores across the US. An unnamed company official would intonate that people were mistakenly using it to combat the SARS-CoV2 virus.

You can see the Twitter stream now, can’t you? Betty Blogger from Saskatchewan would be first up.

Our family has been using this toothpaste for years. None of us have caught Covid yet and it’s all over town. Now we know why.

A few days later, as the story spreads across social media, the company would release an official media statement, categorically denying their toothpaste has any effect on the virus. The rest is marketing history.

Think before you point that finger

You might not have fallen for the misinformation in the pandemic sphere. In this case, you’re vaccinated, you still wear your mask in public spaces and you respect your health and the safety of others. Well done, give yourself a pat on the back as you’re one of the lucky ones.

CovIdiots, and I do actually despise that term, haven’t been that fortunate.

There may be areas of your life that don’t relate to the virus, where you too, are guilty of being a XyzIdiot. There are very few of us that don’t harbor beliefs or thoughts based on misinformation. These don’t have to be virus-related but can apply to any part of your life and you may have bought the lie, hook, line, and sinker. Want a great place to start looking, think politics.

CovIdiots don’t deserve your ridicule or you’re holier than thou condescension. There, but for the grace of God, goes you. It has nothing to do with brain capacity or the lack thereof, being gullible or not. It is simply a question of buying into a story based on our politics, trust, education, and life experience.

Pretty certain we all do that, each day.

The post You Don’t Need to be an Idiot to be a CovIdiot appeared first on Medika Life.

Ask a room full of people any of the above and a lot of hands would go up. They would, of course, all be wrong. The reasons are relatively simple and straightforward, the logic undeniable and yet millions of Americans still pursue these drugs, in some instances forfeiting their lives in the process.

To understand why the evidence for the success of these drugs as a treatment for Covid isn’t compelling, we need to establish a few facts first. For instance, take the following question. Just how much risk is there of Covid killing you? It seems like a simple question to answer, but in truth, it is anything but.

Case Fatality Rates, CMR, and IFR

The probability that someone dies from a disease doesn’t just depend on the disease itself, but also on the treatment they receive, and on the patient’s own ability to recover from it. This makes interpreting data complex and very nuanced.

Catching SARS-CoV2 and developing Covid isn’t a death sentence, not for most of the people who contract it. Global figures based on PCR testing reflect over 222 million cases to date. Of these cases, 4.5 million have proved fatal. The press will tell you this works out roughly at a risk ratio of around 2%, commonly referred to as the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), where the number of deaths is divided by the number of cases. The press is wrong.

Not to be confused with the Crude Mortality Rate (CMR), CFR is far from perfect in determining your personal risk from Covid. There are a few problems using CFR, the most obvious being the reported number of infected in a population. Cases could underreport infections as not everyone is tested and some patients present as asymptomatic (no symptoms).

CFR can decrease or increase over time, as responses change; and that it can vary by location and by the characteristics of the infected population, such as age, or sex. For instance, older populations would expect to see a higher CFR from COVID-19 than younger ones. For similar reasons, the Crude Mortality Rate or CMR is also not a reliable indicator.

So if neither the CFR nor CMR are a good indicator for risk, where do we turn. The scientific community (not the press and media) uses another measure called the Infection Mortality Rate, or IMR. This is the number of deaths from a disease divided by the total number of cases. If 10 people die of the disease, and 500 actually have it, then the IFR is [10 / 500], or 2%.

Confused?

To work out the IFR, we need two numbers: the total number of cases and the total number of deaths, but some of you may already have figured out that we don’t know the true number of cases and probably never will. We cannot test everyone and many are, as discussed earlier, asymptomatic, so researchers will use a ‘best guess’ in their calculation. Far from ideal, but we have no other method.

Despite what some press and media reports imply, the CFR is not the same as, or, even similar to the IFR. If the CFR is 2% then in reality the IFR for Covid will be far lower. For the purposes of this piece, let’s assume it to be 1%. For every 100 confirmed Covid cases, 1 patient will die.

And that is where the rub lies for treatments of the infection, particularly treatments that rely on early-stage administration. Drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and treatments like monoclonal antibody infusions. It is only possible to tell if these drugs work in a clinical setting.

Pepsi® is the miracle cure

If all the 100 infected patients were to self-administer Pepsi® at home, 99 would statistically survive and 1 patient would die. People would sing the praises of Pepsi® and stores would be looted as a naive population stockpiled Pepsi®, just in case. The unfortunate patient who died would have had to stop drinking Pepsi®. Being intubated has its drawbacks.

The press and general public would of course be able to extrapolate these data and expand them to reach the following conclusions. Pepsi® is effective against Covid, offering you up to 99% protection. It isn’t an effective treatment in the late stages of the disease, so make sure you order your Pepsi® early from Americas’ Frontline Doctors (AFLDS). Sound familiar?

Obviously the above is an analogy, please don’t rush out and buy Pepsi® in the mistaken belief it will help your body combat Covid. The point is that exactly the same principle applies to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. If 99 out of 100 people were going to survive no matter what, then arguably you could ascribe their recovery to literally anything, including Pepsi®, Coke, Dr. Pepper’s, or tap water.

There are however mouth-watering sums of money to be made out of a gullible public that has in large part lost confidence in the system. A public that is in many ways its own worst enemy, spreading news of miracle cures online and belittling science and themselves in the process.

If you are one of the true believers, I hope you’re still reading and I’d recommend reading the above again. Let it really sink in.

Clearly, this problem isn’t merely limited to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. It affects all early-stage treatments and there are carefully controlled situations where the real efficacy of the treatments can be assessed and monitored, but these are also fraught with pitfalls.

Is there any way of proving that drugs or treatments do help?

Yes and no. Speak to almost any frontline doctor that’s been embedded in the Covid wards since the start of the pandemic and they’ll tell you the following. HCQ and ivermectin make no difference to the mortality rate of patients in their wards.

This, you can correctly argue, could simply be because the patient is too far gone by the time they are admitted for the drugs to have any effect. True, but in that case, please refer to the preceding argument.

Ideally, patients would need to be identified in the early stages of infection, treated with the drugs, and then have the viral load in their systems monitored. This method assumes that we have established viral loads across all patient populations and variants. We cannot identify deviations from the disease’s natural progression without these control data.

Sadly, a trial of this nature would be unable to correctly identify if the treatments actually ‘cure’ the patient or if they simply speed up the patient’s natural ability to recover. Something, let’s remind ourselves, 99 out of 100 were going to do in any case. Again, this problem isn’t mutually exclusive to ivermectin and HCQ, it affects the assessment of all Covid treatments.

To be able to confirm without a doubt that a treatment is effective against the onset of death from Covid, the treatment would need to prove effective in reducing mortality in admitted patients. That is the gold standard and doctors will tell you, it doesn’t apply to either ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

Sorry.

Vaccines however do work. That 1% can be reduced to 0.05% if you simply get vaccinated. That’s a proven fact.

The post The Simple Truth Ivermectin and HCQ Supporters Fail to Acknowledge appeared first on Medika Life.

Like McGuyver, the Covid virus can find its way through air ducts and tight spaces, infecting people in adjacent rooms, as hotels used for quarantining people have discovered. The poliovirus is capable of a similar feat and it has to do with the size of the airborne particles. They’re small, really small, and can stay aloft for hours in the right conditions.

It turns out that one of our best defenses against infection from airborne particles is a very simple one. Fresh air and its ability to vent through a building or vehicle or any confined space. Clear the contaminated air and replace it with untainted air, preferably good old-fashioned outdoor fresh air. Our societies, however, have other plans.

I’ve been sweating out the pandemic in the Philippines, quite literally. The country is poor and the government has been understandably paranoid about the virus gaining a foothold here in the tropical climate. With a population of over 120 million, most in rural locations spread over more than 700 islands, the consequences would be devastating.

The result has been an extended and ongoing Extended General Quarantine across the islands. Children here haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since March of 2020. Masks and face shields are mandated, you cannot leave home without them and to add another layer of well-intentioned protection, plastic has been introduced almost everywhere.

Every building, every public transport vehicle, and every shop or bank features screens constructed out of thick plastic, separating either staff or members of the public from each other. The result is the creation of isolated small hotboxes surrounded by a plastic shield that proves impenetrable to even a determined hurricane.

The normal circulation of air stands no chance.

The result is obvious. Have an infected person breathing in these spaces and the virus has multiple targets to focus on. It’s a little like shooting stranded ducks in a gallery. Without a free flow of fresh air to expel it, the SARS-CoV2 virus can take its time selecting new hosts.

All of this matters, as one of our most effective tools to combatting transmission, maybe the simplest of all. Cracking a window. In fact, there’s now a valid reason to open all of them, particularly in close-quarter environments like classrooms.

This is one of the reasons densely populated cities like Manila (the Philippines capital) are suffering under the brunt of the Delta variant whilst the rural areas in the country remain mostly untouched by the pandemic. The ability of fresh air to move freely.

If your weather permits and even if it really doesnt, make sure you have windows open. The introduction of fresh outdoor air is most definitely one of our most potent weapons in the fight to reduce transmission. Air conditioners don’t offer any protection. Recycled air is often simply recycling the virus as most air filtration units are not designed to catch particles as small as the SARS-CoV virus.

This is true in most buildings, and even in hospitals. Equipment designed to filter out such small particles remains very expensive and has never previously been considered a priority. Poor air quality and circulation is a notorious cause of illness in large buildings, we even have a name for it, sick building syndrome.

Add the virus to the mix and you can see why opening a window, although not environmentally friendly in an air-conditioned environment, may be your best health move.

The post Blocking Airflow During a Pandemic Helps the Covid Virus Spread. Open Your Windows appeared first on Medika Life.

In particular, organizations like America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), known for spreading their unscientific rhetoric attacking both treatments for Covid and questioning the efficacy of Covid vaccines. Their unproven ‘Covid treatments’, focusing on Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and other drugs have undoubtedly led to people dying from Covid.

That’s all about to change as long overdue legislation is being rolled out across the medical industry. Legislation that is focused on holding medical professionals accountable for their views. It’s never been okay to offer advice that jeopardizes the lives of patients you’ve taken an oath to protect.

New legislation now means that medical boards can respond in a meaningful way to complaints, even stripping these questionable practitioners of their licenses to practice. It’s long overdue and the industry as a whole will welcome the steps taken to protect the public against misinformation.

The process however relies on the public being made aware of their rights and their recourse to filing complaints against practitioners who do not honor medicine’s primary directive.

primum non nocere — first do no harm

Equally important to this process is making the public aware of scientific evidence-based medical opinion that is both trustworthy and easily accessed. Part of this process involves educating patients against potential risks and AFLDS poses a potentially life-threatening risk to the patients it claims to help.

To be clear, there are no approved “treatments’ for Covid aside from the vaccines which massively reduce the risk of developing life-threatening Covid. To place your trust in any ‘treatment regimes’ is to place your life at risk.

Who is AFLDS?

Essentially set up by a group of doctors, including Dr. Stella Immanuelle and Simone Gold, who can only be described as quacks, the group rose to prominence in mid-2020, feeding off the fear of the Covid pandemic to “sell” their Covid treatments to trusting and unsuspecting members of the public.

Their founder, Dr. Simone Gold, who is currently under investigation for her role in the January 6 insurrection in the Capitol, where she was captured on film, is outspoken and controversial. She frequents popular conspiracy channels and has been instrumental in spreading false and misleading information about Covid vaccines.

To understand why this group of medical professionals would want to create distrust in the public mind, you need to understand how they profit from the disinformation they spread. AFLDS is nothing more than a glorified multi-channel direct selling scheme. The fact that their patients’ lives may be forfeit has not given them pause.

Patients are offered an online consultation for $90 and can then request prescriptions, for amongst others, Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and whatever other concoction of vitamins and drugs are available. These prescriptions are then filled by online pharmacies like Ravkoo, which partners with AFLDS to enable this ‘pill mill’.

Aside from the dangers posed to patients who follow AFLDS’s ‘Covid treatment regime’, AFLDS’ sales practices simply enable the irresponsible and unjustified prescription of many drugs that lead to addiction and pharmaceutical abuse.

AFLDS’ marketing campaign appeals to the conservative right-wing elements who have bought into the conspiracy theories surround both covid and the vaccines. It is the same group of unvaccinated people now stricken with the Delta variant, who currently occupy over 95% of the bed space in hospitals.

AFLDS has been selling them snake oil rather than vaccines. Many of these patients will die as a result.

Medika Life receives daily feedback from patients about the articles we’ve run on this group, many confirming the illegitimacy of AFLDS. The comment below is taken from a recent article we published highlighting AFLDS’ practices.

Quacks! I booked & paid for a doctor consultation on 08/03/2021. THEY NEVER CALLED ME, billed me $90.00 & have not returned my multiple emails to them. THEY ARE A SCAM!

Aside from the financial losses suffered by many of their patients, the health risk they pose to the general public is where the real concern lies. The welcome change in legislation will now ensure AFLDS’ future is short-lived and that participating professionals are sanctioned to the full extent of the law.

If you need to report a medical professional in your area, you need to contact the particular State licensing authority where the doctor involved practices. The link below will provide you with contact details for your particular state and you can also check the current status of the doctor you are reporting.

Most medical boards post validated complaints publically to allow other patients to respond. Boards will also make note of doctors under investigation. You can use the following link to check a doctor’s credentials and ensure you are reporting them to the correct medical board.

The post America’s Frontline Doctors Face Long Overdue Medical and Legal Censure appeared first on Medika Life.

A cluster of 22 patients in the Dallas-area hospitals included two patients who were resistant to all three major classes of antifungal medications has just been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both those patients died.

Candida Auris proves fatal to one in three people it infects in patients who are at risk. The reasons are relatively simple. The fungus is completely resistant to any medication we have, effectively making it a superbug. More worryingly, the cases in Dallas suggest person-to-person transmission rather than infection from surfaces.

Unbelievably, Dallas health officials and the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council have decided to play coy, not naming the two hospitals involved. A spokesman for the Hospital Council, Chris Wilson, made the following statement to Dallas News;

“We’ve been contacted multiple times by the media, and I’m afraid we have no information on this,” Wilson said Thursday.

The CDC has also failed to name the hospitals involved, effectively placing patients in harm’s way. Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, could not be reached for comment.

The fungus, Candida Auris, is a harmful form of yeast that is considered dangerous to hospital and nursing home patients with serious medical problems. It is most deadly when it enters the bloodstream, heart, or brain. and outbreaks in healthcare facilities have been spurred when the fungus spread through patient contact or on contaminated surfaces.

Dr. Floyd Wormley Jr., the associate provost for research and dean of graduate studies at Texas Christian University, said the superbug primarily affects people who are severely immunocompromised. A healthy person with the fungus has “nothing to worry about” but could be a carrier, potentially infecting others at risk.

Wormley said he was worried to see that the fungus had spread in hospitals where people might be immunocompromised or elderly. It can be difficult to eradicate once it spreads, he said.

“If I was in an intensive-care unit and I saw this, I would be concerned and want to decontaminate,” he said. “No hospital wants it there. Definitely. But for the public, if you are immunocompetent, young and healthy, I would not be concerned.”

If you need to be hospitalized in the Dallas Forth Worth area and you’re at risk from the fungus, then patients should be afforded the option of avoiding the two hospitals involved in the outbreak. The current media blackout from officials makes no sense in terms of protecting patients.

How serious is it? According to the CDC’s Dr. Meghan Lyman;

“This is really the first time we’ve started seeing clustering of resistance” in which patients seemed to be getting the infections from each other.”

Clearly an issue of concern to the general public and patients requiring hospitalization in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

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