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If you wanted the perfect illustration of how to “dig yourself a hole” Healthcare and the Covid pandemic provided it. In what history will record as a concerted and unprecedented effort, governments, scientists, doctors and the healthcare industry globally, indulged in a public campaign to combat the SARS-COV2, commencing in early 2020. This campaign still persists.
The Covid pandemic has been the first true global outbreak our modern society has endured. Our responses to contain it were neither swift, nor effective, perhaps reflecting a fundamental flaws in our preemptive planning and a lack of cohesion a united global health federation would have offered. Governments faltered, floundered and then did what anyone does when they see the ship sinking. They panicked.
What followed was a textbook example of how not to deal with a pandemic that cannot be contained. The public was cajoled, coerced, forced, frequently misled, and perhaps even lied to, often intentionally so. Current Covid policy suggests we have learned nothing in the past three years or have chosen to blithely ignore our missteps.
Many claim that it is easy to be critical of our pandemic strategy utilizing the perfect science of hindsight, that we were in uncharted waters and that “we didn’t know”.
These arguments are of course condescending, an easy out for the cold, harsh reality of how science and politics cohabited to produce the pandemic from hell. Many voices sounded caution in our response, many voices urged restraint, and more still, questioned the wisdom of advice issued by our bastions of health, the WHO, the CDC, the FDA and other global health infrastructures. These voices of dissent, without exception, were silenced in favor of an official global narrative.
You were either on board with this Covid policy or you were sidelined, silenced or discredited. An unprecedented global health dictatorship was born, impervious to logic, medical safety and long established ethical precedents for public health and patient safety. At the end of the day, pandemic policy, not science or common sense, dictated our miserable management of the pandemic.
Dealing with the the distribution of information on a global scale in an internet enabled world is an art form, a science on it’s own, that is in its infancy. Poorly understood and even more poorly applied, the act of sharing accurate, trustworthy and believable information on a global scale suffers from what some would suggest is an insurmountable obstacle. Humanity and its proclivity toward tribes.
Push information publicly to promote an agenda and you are assured of two things. Large swathes of the public will buy into your narrative. Large swathes of the public will not.
And so it was with Covid, and still is, with one exception. There is migration occurring in the tribes, an exodus from the Village of Blind Obedience to the Village of Skepticism, and it is growing daily. It is a migration that governments and healthcare willfully ignore and should this trend continue, it will, once and forever, sever any remaining trust the general public still holds for healthcare.
The migration is driven by one simple thing. Facts, the lack of, or their emergence. To underscore this point allow me to provide an example, one I recently wrote on, relating to advice provided globally on the risks posed by the Covid inoculations to nursing mothers. the following advice is offered by the CDC website. Emphasis added by author.
“CDC recommends COVID-19 vaccines for everyone ages 6 months and older, including people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future and getting boosters, if eligible.”
The fact that zero data existed (verified on the same page) to support the CDC opinion on the safety of nursing infants to the Covid inoculations didn’t stop the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) or the WHO from offering identical advice. This advice persists even now despite mounting evidence of harm to nursing infants. So to facts then, and willfully ignoring them in pursuit of a plan.
The Covid agenda ignored the most basic of human rights, the premise of self autonomy, that we are in charge of our own health and that we enjoy that very human luxury of choice. The public have been subjected to mandates, coerced, pressured, shamed and manipulated like sheep, herded with intent into a pen for the largest clinical trial in the history of humanity. A trial which remains ongoing, possibly fueled by the flawed logic of “in for a penny, in for a pound”.
I cannot speak to the specifics of the global agenda on Covid. I can freely speculate about profit, mismanagement, political gain, economics and even indulge in wild conspiracy theories, but it is a pursuit without point. What really matters now is where this gross mismanagement of information has led us and how, if at all, the situation can be remedied.
For generations, doctors have been revered as people of science, these learned folk that would cure us of our myriad afflictions. Many patients would feel better simply from sitting in front of their doctor and describing their symptoms. A simple combination of trust and lack of public knowledge has served the industry admirably for centuries. Doctors shared that rarified air enjoyed by those we place on pedestals. For many, technology and the free flow of information have shattered this illusion. It was and is, in many ways, simply an illusion.
Doctors are fallible and the scope of knowledge required to discern a medical condition, given the breadth of our expanding understanding of human anatomy, is beyond the scope of an individual person, justifying the existence of specialized doctors. The odds of a correct diagnosis for your condition are staggeringly low and are dependent on the skill, empathy, level of education and interest (yes, interest) your doctor takes in your case. Sadly, your insurance status and financial standing also affect outcomes.
Even doctors resort to Google to access literature, not only to assist them forming a diagnosis, but for information on health policy and practice.
A sound approach, assuming the information you obtain from “trusted sources” reflects advice based on solid science and is ethically in the best interest of the practitioner/patient relationship. Needless to say, doctors require scientific and medical fact to safely treat their patients. In 2020 the internet was inundated by “medical information” relating to the SARS-COV2 virus and the associated disease we called Covid. Medical information and opinion (most of it of questionable origin) was the order of the day, rather than medical fact.
We were in the dark, facing an unknow enemy and much of what transpired in 2020 was trial and error, best guesses from a completely overwhelmed medical industry, horrendously equipped and fielding practitioners who were as terrified as their patients. Many medical staff resorted to the quickest pandemic updates they could find, turning to “trusted” outlets such as CNN and other mainstream media.
In the age of Internet Information Dissemination, we had just committed the cardinal sin, one that would single handedly destroy the credibility of treatments, of doctors, scientists and once revered healthcare institutions among large segments of our society.
We ignored fact in favor of assumption and then, to compound our error, we lied.
IID sounds like some IED (Improvised Explosive Device) but in many ways, it is far more deadly. It is a tool that if wielded incorrectly, irresponsibly and with impunity can result in disaster, and even death. We see the devastating impact of this so clearly in America’s fragmented political system, overwhelmed by those who abuse their digital privilege and responsibility.
To avoid having information appropriated and misinterpreted in our digital age, a simple, yet difficult to adhere to, mantra must be followed faithfully.
Tell the truth, share only verifiable fact and acknowledge when you simply “don’t know”.
Share information that doesn’t adhere to the above, that is disseminated for the purposes of furthering an agenda, that draws erroneous conclusions and manipulates fact, and you are faced with the current debacle healthcare grapples with. The erosion of trust, coupled with any loss of goodwill your predecessors may have built up.
As an analogy, it’s like Apple bringing out a new phone that does none of what it’s marketing suggests. The company would suffer irreparable damage to its reputation and destroy hard won trust with its customer base. This is the predicament healthcare now faces. Their phone isn’t holding up to the marketing they’ve published.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but it turns out their phone (the vaccine) isn’t actually even a phone (an inoculation). The Covid “vaccines” are not a multi-dose treatment regime for at risk patients. They form the backbone of the worlds largest and ongoing clinical trial, one that patients have in most instances been coopted into joining. You bought the phone based on a misleading pamphlet.
Unlike Apple however, Governments keep changing their sales ploy, seemingly blissfully unaware of the indelible footprint left by their previous pitches. The accepted and favored Covid narrative is unwinding in real time as facts emerge to conflict with “expert opinion” and questionable manipulation, interpretation and presentation of data to support the narrative.
Unfortunately for healthcare, this event is occurring in the public arena and everyone is able to participate in its demise. The naysayers are circling, waiting to claim their pound of flesh and the justification is self-evident. No one likes being told what to do, no one likes their freedom compromised and least of all, no one enjoys being forced to participate in clinical experimentation, no matter the scale.
Healthcare is one of the most lucrative industries we have created and therein lies the problem. It is infinitely complex in it’s subject matter, continuously evolves and it is subject to huge financial and political influences, most of which are self-serving and rarely align with the interests of public health or the patient. Healthcare also uses a multi-layered approach to risk management by spreading accountability where possible. The WHO will assign their policies to SAGE documents, while SAGE will reference the CDC or FDA, who in turn will reference the WHO for the identical policies.
Medical-speak protects the industry and practitioners by erring on the side of caution and avoiding offering specific advice. Medical literature is overwhelmed with non-committal safe terms such as “may lead to”, “unlikely to”, “more likely” and my all time favorite, “when in doubt consult your doctor” Unfortunately, in times of crises, such as global pandemics, these factors all conspire to produce an industry that is incapable of producing clear, concise and honest medical advice to the planet’s denizens. There is a thoughtful piece on the subject from Medika’s editor regarding the CDC and their communication calamities that I recommend reading.
In short, the medical and healthcare professions are their own worst enemies when it comes to engaging the general public. Add the internet to the mix, and the results are calamitous, particularly when the industry attempts to promote an agenda by publishing questionable information.
After three years and billions spent on marketing, many members of the public still do not understand that the so called Covid “vaccines” do not offer any protection against infection from the SARS-COV2 virus. To have portrayed the treatments as inoculations rather than treatments would have been truthful, rather than trying to profit falsely from the established reputation of vaccines, now all but ruined.
Truth bears up under scrutiny, fictions do not, well intentioned or otherwise. Lie in the digital world and you will be found out.
Truth is the only way forward for the industry to regain trust and rebuild its relationship with the general public. Sadly, for this to occur, healthcare would need to free itself from the shackles imposed by political, pharmaceutical and other corporate interests seeking to benefit or enrich themselves at the expense of public health. Currently healthcare communication considers manipulation and marketing as being mutually inclusive. Neither are conducive to re-establishing trust. Manipulation reeks of an agenda and is easily exposed, while marketing suggests you are trying to sell something.
Healthcare exists to serve the patient and its sole communicative duty is to inform, factually, truthfully and accurately. That is all.
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