As social media has grown in importance and become a go-to source for information, there have been persistent calls from lawmakers and regulators for owners and managers to be responsible for tagging the misinformation that has often been spread on their platforms and moderating it.  Does this ask exceed our abilities to monitor and engage and corral dangerous deniers?

Long before one of the world’s wealthiest people slapped down $44B to buy Twitter, the public was in the grip of a misinformation pandemic. Whether on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or any of several platforms, communication and public discourse have been partisan, ideologically informed and slanted.  During the pandemic, when this “Tower of Babel” was combined with inaccurate, non-authoritative and often conflicting pronouncements from those in authority, the public’s trust in elected officials, health authorities, drug companies and public institutions was broadly undermined.  By the time Elon Musk got to Twitter, in terms of trust, the horse had long fled the stable.

During the COVID-era, social media discourse has already enabled our nation to self-divide into tribes.  Whatever Musk’s intentions are, we are already in the midst of a perfect storm of “trust deregulation.”

TRUST TAKES YEARS TO EARN – IT’S LOST IN A MOMENT

Trust in institutions, it turns out, is short-lived and can be fragile.

Despite the great success of COVID vaccines, which are medical miracles, public health officials’ overstatement of their benefits contributed to reduced trust. Designed to protect and guard against viral transmission, vaccines were not all they were promised to be. Their protection turns out to be individual, not societal, and they guard against disease severity, like the flu shot, but not transmission.

As variants come onto the stage, we are encouraged to get another booster shot.  But the variant that now reigns supreme has no vaccine. It’s the “I don’t give a damn” adaptation. When the scientific story changed, it became hard to maintain confidence in the system.

Public health officials aren’t alone; there is a documented, dramatic trust decline in government and science, in addition to public health. Institutional trust diminishes as anxiety resulting from emotional (and social) isolation rises. Many blame social media for ratcheting that anxiety, as it’s often difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. But while Twitter is accountable for much chaos, it’s not responsible for the drop in consumer confidence in institutions.

Trust is personal, earned through consistent action over time. How institutions and companies — embodied by their CEOs, marketers, and communicators — engage transparently and honestly defines the quality of relationships and earns them trust.

While trust must be carefully earned, it can more easily be squandered. Public health institutions proved this.

The CDC needed to improve when it came to consumer mobilization. Masks work. Social distancing was effective. Vaccines and booster shots reduce disease severity. But are people continuing to wear masks, take precautions or get boosted? The Centers for Disease Control failed to establish itself as the go-to source for information and direction, and no longer enjoys the level of public trust it once did.

THE ERA OF VERIFY, THEN TRUST

And that takes us back to Twitter. While many point the finger at Twitter and other social platforms like Facebook as primary culprits in the mess we face, the causes of the current distrust go deeper. Poor communication and indecisive action from those in authority, a willingness to exploit crises for political and personal gain, coupled with news networks and media platforms that long ago moved from reporting facts to reflecting the tribal beliefs of their audiences’ ideological alignment contribute mightily to the loss of objective truth and the normalization of passing misinformation.

If quashing misinformation is to have any positive impact, consumers need to have a well-regarded, apolitical home base they can trust, which does not currently exist. How can Twitter alone be held accountable without this beacon of accuracy being seen as a go-to source?

Whether we advertise or not on this platform, there are right now 450 million monthly active users on Twitter!  Most do not register what Elon Musk says or represents.  If the billionaire throws his hands up and shuts off the lights, who wins the final round of this debate?

Many pundits sound Twitter’s death knell. Some are couching it as retribution for being a home for misinformation – or worse, hate.  But, if Twitter – with its global town square positive aspects still intact — collapses, does anyone win?

Without a trusted, objective source, it becomes critically important for consumers of information to adopt a more skeptical mindset to review information carefully to determine its value and truth.  And that means verifying the accuracy of information before sharing our trust.

MOVING FORWARD TO BUILD TRUST

Platforms like Twitter have a responsibility to their users, including protecting them from fiction that could lead to dangerous decisions regarding their health. Whether Elon Musk can be appealed to or not to reverse this decision to step back on quashing misinformation, regulators, corporate leaders and communicators must be reminded that creating and maintaining trust with the public is a micro-building community activity that happens house-by-house, person-to-person, and eye-to-eye.

We must recognize that Twitter is a microcosm reflecting people’s diversity, beliefs, and opinions. If Twitter fails, the plurality of opinion it has revealed over time doesn’t go away.  To build trust with that broad, diverse crowd of users, communicators need to make their cases with facts, convincingly, with authority and evidence, over and over.  It isn’t going to be simple to navigate these chaotic waters, but when it comes to combatting misinformation, we are all in the same boat.

The post Twitter’s Decision to Stand-down on COVID Misinformation Highlights a New Symptom — “Trust Deregulation” appeared first on Medika Life.

We are unwittingly aiding and abetting our greatest common enemy: disease.

Our advancement as a species has been driven by our ability to cooperate at a global level. In our best moments, this quality has allowed us to build societies and economies, preserve world order and improve life for billions of people, especially children. Strong public health programs and scientific achievement lie at the heart of our capacity to meet our most pressing health challenges, providing us with the policy guidance and coordination to overcome disease outbreaks with increasingly sophisticated tools.

Yet, the best public health plan paired with the most innovative medical discoveries cannot overcome our human tendency to complicate how we fight disease threats. Instead of banding together and fostering collaboration, we inadvertently fuel outbreaks. Among the barriers that we put in place to confront disease threats effectively, four issues routinely arise.

First, we blame and stigmatize the source of an outbreak. Viral diseases can happen anywhere, at any time. Spillover events — when viruses transfer from animals to humans — are as likely to occur among species in Asia or Africa as they are in the Americas. But in our efforts to provide an explanation for natural phenomena, it is far easier to assign blame on the failures of a foreign government or community, which dramatically hinders a global, coordinated response.

Few Americans supporting restrictions against China for serving as the source of the coronavirus are aware that the tables were turned a century ago: evidence suggests that the deadliest pandemic in modern history, which infected half a billion people and killed 50 million worldwide, may have originated from a pig farm in southwestern Kansas. The 1918 Influenza Pandemic, as it’s now known, was not linked to the United States because of strict news embargo during World War I; it was called the Spanish Flu only because neutral Spain did not follow the news blackout practiced by countries fighting in the war. With nationalism on the rise again, spurred on by social media, partisan politics and 24/7 news cycles, the impact of isolating and penalizing countries for naturally occurring disease outbreaks can cost lives and economic stability.

Second, we apply inconsistent standards for monitoring, reporting and countering disease threats. When countries know that they will be penalized for reporting outbreaks, what is their incentive to be transparent? And even when governments play by the rules and apply the best practices for reporting disease outbreaks — as South Africa did with the detection of the Omicron variant in November — they are subject to unfair and counterproductive penalties.

The development and application of a disease surveillance and reporting protocol that is used effectively by all countries can speed response to outbreaks before they have a chance to reach pandemic proportions. This is not to say there’s been an absence of such protocols; the WHO and national health agencies have coordinated through the decades to address novel disease strains, frequently blunting the potential for a virus to reach its worst-case impact. However, as the conditions for novel pathogens to emerge, it’s time for new approaches to be considered.

We are witnessing the loss of wildlife habitats, increased proximity of humans and animal disease hosts, accelerated global travel and climate change, each of which play a role in disease transmission. Covid-19’s lessons should produce a universal system that prioritizes timely, accurate disease surveillance and rewards reporting transparency.

Third, when we prioritize vaccines and treatments for wealthy countries and place greater value on profits instead of a collective response to a pandemic, it is an expression of 21st century Apartheid. Both the Sars-Cov-2 and Influenza viruses have a powerful ability to mutate, developing new variants that take advantage of weaknesses in our global immunity levels. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. famously noted that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, the same applies to epidemiology in our world today: a novel viral threat in a remote corner of the world is a danger everywhere.

Our inability to provide equitable protection for communities beyond our national borders is another form of injustice, plain and simple.

Human advancement is reliant upon our ability to overcome our inherent tribalism. This runs counter to millions of years of evolution. We’re hard-wired to focus on our community’s interests first. The problem is that Covid-19 may likely be a dress rehearsal for worse pandemics in the near future and our failure to overcome tendencies to prioritize vaccination in some regions over others could foreshadow harsher outcomes ahead.

Despite some initial shortcomings, the COVAX facility and initiatives taken by individual vaccine manufacturers could provide a blueprint for rapidly scaling vaccine production and distribution to reach rich and poor countries alike. These are important steps in the right direction.

Fourth, pandemics thrive on chaos. And for the past 24 months, we have inadvertently fostered a haphazard response at the local, national and global levels through a pattern of fumbled communications on public health guidance. All too frequently, the U.S. and other nations have undermined confidence in vaccines and medical science, health agencies and government policy by failing to deliver clear messaging that communities, businesses and everyday people can understand.

Miscommunication has plagued pandemic responses throughout the past 100 years, but the inability for national government health agencies — most particularly the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — to anticipate messaging issues may prove to be a principal driver for the erosion of trust that citizens have in their leaders.

There is no shortage of excuses for why miscommunication during the pandemic has been so rampant. Nonetheless, global health leaders and the communications advisors supporting them must take a hard look at how to improve communications practices moving forward.

We need to see consistent application of a simple standard for health communications: ensure guidance is grounded in science; make sure it is so simple that school children understand it; and think about how guidance can be followed in the real world, outside of policymaker echo chambers. Then, run every possible scenario past a merciless band of reviewers whose job is to think about how health guidance could be misunderstood or ignored and fix issues before anything is publicly communicated.

These four issues are nothing new. Like so many other problems coming to a boiling point during Covid-19, they have been recurring challenges in past efforts to respond to pandemic threats. Yet global public health leaders, policymakers and communicators have an opportunity and an obligation to minimize the impact of stigma, haphazard disease mitigation standards, nationalism and miscommunication on pandemic response. Covid-19 has been a horrific reminder of the importance of collaboration, transparency and clarity. Our generation may not be given the same latitude during the next pandemic. We need to show we can apply the lessons now.

The post Aiding and Abetting a Virus appeared first on Medika Life.

I am sick and tired of the pandemic. Many others share the sentiment based on several high-profile recent news stories, albeit for different reasons. Neil Young has recently had his music pulled from Spotify, given the platform’s refusal to screen its content for COVID-19 misinformation effectively. Meanwhile, truckers in Canada have protested what is becoming a nationwide vaccine mandate by trekking across Canada in a convoy while blockading a border crossing and Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

What we all need is for the pandemic to end. Progress has been made in understanding the pandemic, the virus, and how to treat the disease, speaking as a physician and medical researcher. However, relying solely on the medicine is not enough when considering a resolution, as we can all appreciate as we feel the fallout from a COVID-heavy winter despite a vaccine being available for the past year.

I have become more involved in understanding why we are still here in recent weeks. On attending conferences oriented on pandemic-related global health inequity while keeping up with research and international news, it is evident that we are stuck because of global deficiencies in working together. While many can attest to this emotionally, whether perhaps feeling heartfelt frustration against anti-vaxxers or feeling like one’s concerns about vaccines are not being heard or effectively addressed, the issue involves multiple systems.

While many Western countries have made pledges of helping developing nations fight the pandemic by offering vaccines, the reality is that not enough of these doses have made their way to where they are needed. If we take a quick look at Our World in Data, the difference in vaccination rates among African nations and places like Canada is striking.

While this is likely partly due to supply and shipping issues, some are due to inefficiency. At a conference I attended, one of the physicians discussed how Canada delivered several million doses to Africa very close to their expiration date. While African countries have effective vaccine rollout programs, few of these doses could reach arms because of the short deadline.

Naturally, we cannot blame governments and be done with it. Individuals have responsibility for the situation as well. Individuals who knowingly spread COVID-19 misinformation, regardless of the reason, are responsible for a significant proportion of the suffering and death of this pandemic. Individuals who seek to challenge misinformation, such as myself, who disrespectfully address or ignore reasonable safety concerns also hold some responsibility. While some arguments posed by opponents of the COVID-19 vaccines or pandemic measures are not based on reality, it is valid for your average neighbour to want to be sure they are not going to have an anaphylactic reaction when they get the shot. Calling individuals with valid concerns names would certainly not make me want to consider another person’s viewpoints. Insults are generally not appropriate and do not accomplish much, regardless.

Back to the headlines, was Neil Young right? I argue that he was because the only adequate response to adversity, whether hate or a platform’s unwillingness to challenge harmful rhetoric because of its financial profit, is to stand up and hold parties accountable for action and inaction.

This being said, there is a right and a wrong way to challenge what we identify as needing to be improved. In honour of Black History month, we could all take a lesson from the late Martin Luther King Jr. in that “we must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The world may feel more divided than ever, but it does not have to be that way. Every one of us has the ability to shine light into our dealings with others. It may not be received well by all. It does not make it any less valuable.

The post Was Neil Young Right? Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation Two Years In appeared first on Medika Life.

Like an annoying foot fungus that just refuses to die, these quacks, armchair experts, so-called health gurus, and, yes, even doctors (interject a sad sigh at this point) have continued to issue dire warnings about the end of humanity.

We aren’t going to all perish from Covid of course (they will all tell you it actually doesn’t exist) but from the vaccines and evil Orwellian plots hatched by mad scientists and power-hungry politicians hell-bent on re-ordering the world. It is mass genocide or at best genetic re-engineering of the species, according to their siren song.

Clearly pissed that their Netflix subscriptions have lapsed, these individuals have taken it on themselves to weave their own tales of fantasy and fiction. Each new ‘series’ has its own plotline, villains, and heroes, and of course, is set in their version of a dystopian world. The same place most of us currently consider home.

The pitfall of calling tomorrow

If you’re trying to establish yourself as a seer of the future, you’re best suited to picking your predictions for a time that postdates your demise. The turn of the century, remember the impending global meltdown, and 2012 with those pesky Mayans and their calenders, just two classics that spring to mind.

Unless you’re onto a sure thing, outliving your predictions generally tends to be awkward and it’s been no different for our intrepid group of Covid naysayers and end-of-world scriptwriters. One by one, their predictions have come to naught. Nada. Nothing. Their predictions have exposed them for the true fraudsters and charlatans they really are.

Hindsight really is a bitch and in this instance, a highly effective antifungal. Rember the foot fungus analogy?

So just how have these con artists been proven wanting by the passage of time? We investigated a few of our older friends that we fact-checked months ago. It’s interesting to note how in many instances the original claims (ain’t digital history a bitch) made by many of these individuals have been subtly refined over time to accommodate for that annoying little thing called being horribly wrong.

Geert Van Den Bossche

You can read our original article on Van den Bossche here. In a simplified nutshell, Van Den Bossche’s pitch was based on selling us his version of a vaccine (the grift) after convincing us that mainstream vaccines (the competition) were going to cause a mutated virus that would end humanity. So, nearly a year later, or eighteen months on, in the case of trial candidates, where are we?

Aside from racking up an impressive amount of internet traffic from gullible and trusting souls seeking an explanation for their pandemic-induced misery, Van Den Bossche’s theory has so far proven completely unfounded. Despite having half the human population (that’s how many are now vaccinated) as incubators, Van Den Bosch’s killer virus appears to have gone golfing.

Perhaps he’d be better placed if he joined it.

Reiner Fuellmich

The punchline to possibly the worst legal joke ever constructed, Fuellmich propelled himself into popular conspiracy culture in early 2021. His rise was meteoric and his fanbase legion. We called bullshit early and have paid the price ever since, receiving literally thousands of comments and emails wishing us well (not really).

Fuellmich wanted, and we assume still does until the next best thing comes along, to sue the world for the SARS-CoV2 virus, claiming it didn’t really exist, Covid, according to Fuellmich wasn’t dangerous and lockdowns and mask had somehow managed to elevate themselves from effective countermeasures against a viral pandemic to crimes against humanity.

Not even the unfortunate Geneva Convention could escape Fuellmichs manic ambitions as he invoked ludicrously inappropriate responses to what he claimed were atrocities against humanity. You can see, of course, how people would lap this stuff up and why he’s developed such a devout following. People want a scapegoat to pin their misery on and who better than the large faceless behemoth we call modern society and all its appendages.

Eight months later and our intrepid attorney has made zero forward progress, mired as he is in the conspiracy circuit, his followers proving that the worshippers really do define the cult. Associate yourself with the chaff and the swine will feed.

Time has already eroded this deluded German’s fairytale and the lasting legacy of Fuellmich will undoubtedly be as the world’s most audacious and ambitious legal fraudster of all time. He really has raised the bar (pun intended).

America’s Frontline Doctors

I’ve included these grifters as a simple example of training wheels. They are by no means in the class of Fuellmich or Van Den Bossche, as their motives and narrative are simplistic and as transparent as daylight, but it doesn’t make them any less dangerous and as doctors, sworn to uphold the best interest of their patients, their actions are reprehensible.

Essentially, the group is a collection of morally bankrupt doctors who have clubbed together to fleece the public during the pandemic by selling them unproven treatments.

They aren’t alone and there are other similar groups that operate, but this group is perhaps most prominent on social media, thanks to its more than dubious membership, which includes the January 6 revolutionary, Dr. Simone Gold, currently under FBI investigation.

Their claims are simplistic – Buy Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin from us online. It works to cure Covid and the government and the media don’t want you to know about it. They have partnered with an equally unethical pharmaceutical supplier called Ravkoo Pharmacy and the two parties grift their merry way through the pandemic, fleecing gullible and vulnerable patients online.

Sadly, many bought into their lies, but time has exposed just how dodgy their business model is, false claims aside. You can read the reviews here from dissatisfied customers who lose their money and never receive anything.

In terms of their actual claims about these drugs treating Covid we now know beyond a reasonable doubt, they don’t help. Here’s the latest on Ivermectin and how we’ve been fooled into thinking the drug has benefits against Covid.

How have vaccine fairy tales faired?

Elon Musk is advertising for vaccinated astronauts with cellphones to man his Mars mission. Apparently, the vaccines boost reception.

Complete nonsense of course, but believed by many. People have, over the course of the pandemic proven themselves more than capable of believing in pretty much anything, no matter how ‘out there’ it sounds, and much of what floats about in the conspiracy ecosphere really is ‘out there’. Way out. The fact that much of this nonsense has been amplified by seemingly sane medical professionals doesn’t help.

In no particular order, here are some of the insane theories that have proven to be completely unfounded over time. Keep in mind we’ve just vaccinated half the world’s population.

• the vaccines will magnetize your body (this actually sounds useful)
• the vaccines contain trackers that allow the government to monitor your movement
• The vaccines interact with 5G cell towers
• We are all going to turn into genetically modified lizards
• The vaccine will render all women sterile (arguably not a bad thing if you consider the stupidity above)

My most recent favorite comes from a doctor, Ben Marble, whose license to practice was revoked in one state in 2012 and he has now resumed his less than illustrious career in Florida (where else).

Where to start. Aside from the fact Twitter clearly isn’t policing anti-vax posts aggressively enough, a simple observation. “All Americans” would, I assume include almost every race-based classification of humanity that exists on the planet. Ergo, everyone will die. It’s this kind of stupidity that almost beggars belief. Who would set about wiping out the entire human species? Doesnt really leave you with anyone to exploit, does it?

Does Marble think the virus does a nationality check first, weighs its intended victim, and then checks for skin color? Do you hear that knocking at the door doctor? It’s the men with the white coats and they’ve got a cozy, padded 3 x 3 waiting just for you.

Not one, in other words, NONE of the ridiculous claims made over the vaccines have come to fruition, despite them being administered in billions, and yet, people still choose to believe they pose a risk to us. People still choose to believe the virus does not pose a threat.

I’ll leave you with a very succinct line I saw recently on a Twitter profile.

𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗’𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚊 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚟𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘…

Apparently, hindsight is equally useless.

The post Calling Tomorrow. Has Time Proven Covid Quacks and Conspiracy Theorists Right or Wrong? 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.

Multiple news outlets covered a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak in vaccinated people as detailed in the July 30 CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 

Many of the headlines from well-respected media sources are inflammatory and scary. They are also misleading and miss a crucial point that every reader needs to know. 

Here is the background. The CDC reported case data regarding a Covid outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. In July 2021, 469 people contracted Covid-19 linked to summer camps and large public gatherings.

Surging cases of the more contagious SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant are fueling the rise in infections.

Here are some of the headlines:

1. CNBC: CDC study shows 74% of people infected in Massachusetts Covid outbreak were fully vaccinated
2. Reuters: Most COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts outbreak among vaccinated, says CDC
3. Salon: In a Massachusetts COVID outbreak, many of the infected were vaccinated: CDC study

The Washington Post used this headline on Twitter

The takeaway from these headlines gives the reader a false impression. Some may assume this CDC report indicates Covid-19 vaccines do not work. Others may decide getting vaccinated is not worth it. 

To understand the importance of this local Covid-19 outbreak, we need to read beyond the headline and do some very basic math. 

The CDC reported 469 Covid-19 infections. 74% of the cases occurred in vaccinated individuals (347 people). 

Only five people had to be hospitalized. Four of the five people hospitalized were vaccinated and two of those individuals had underlying medical conditions. 

This data shows that only 1.15% of fully vaccinated individuals infected during this outbreak needed to be hospitalized. Zero people died. 

ZERO deaths. 

The headlines failed to mention how effectively the vaccines prevented severe disease, hospitalization, and death. Hospital admissions rates of 1.1% and zero deaths demonstrate the importance of getting vaccinated against this deadly virus.

The misleading headlines imply a lack of vaccine efficacy. The headlines should have highlighted how vaccines saved lives in Massachusetts. 

The Massachusetts outbreak is eye-opening because it shows the US is moving into a new phase of the pandemic. The more contagious Delta variant is now the dominant Covid-19 strain in the US. In this outbreak, 89% of the infected people had the Delta variant.

The CDC reports 75% of current US cases are from the Delta variant, with models predicting this number to rise. This variant spreads more easily from one person to another.

The CDC highlights that the Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, seasonal flu, and smallpox.

The two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are over 90% effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalizations. The Massachusetts outbreak data supports these findings.

Updated CDC data shows lower rates of disease, hospitalization, and death in vaccinated people. 

The Massachusetts data also reminds us that fully vaccinated individuals may still catch Covid-19 and transmit the virus to others. The CDC highlights that “people fully vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to transmit it to others.”

As long as community vaccination rates remain low, the Delta variant will continue to spread. Unvaccinated people are at extremely high risk of Covid-19. Some will have mild symptoms, while others will develop severe disease, require hospitalization and end up in an ICU on a ventilator. Others will develop Long Covid. 

Some people will die. 

Vaccinated people are at lower risk for catching the Delta variant, but breakthrough infections will occur. The Massachuset’s data showed that vaccinated people with symptomatic breakthrough infections have a high viral load and can transmit the virus to others. 

The scientific understanding of Covid-19 is changing fast. New variants and rising rates in different communities mean that guidelines and recommendations will likely continue to evolve and change.

Journalists and science writers are responsible for reporting the data accurately to help readers access actionable, reliable, and validated medical information to help protect themselves and others.

The post Irresponsible Headlines on Massachusetts Outbreak Mislead the Public and Cause Harm appeared first on Medika Life.

It’s hard to explain exactly why these individuals, people like Christiane Northrup and Michael Yeadon, choose to cast away careers of reasonable repute for the world of conspiracy and anti-establishment propaganda. There are distinct financial gains for many to be made from engaging with this fringe, popularity, notoriety, and an opportunity to finger your nose at the establishment.

Perhaps Cahill feels she was worked over by the system, ignored, passed over for promotion, or simply sidelined. Perhaps her ambitions could not be matched by the environment she found herself in? Whatever the reason, she didn’t just jump off the sane scientist ledge, she literally leaped and has spiraled downwards ever since in a free fall of alternate health mumbo jumbo, pseudoscience, and pure fabrication. 

This article will examine the collapse of her career and her statements that led to it. We’ll provide proper context and expose the complete fabrications she has engineered in her efforts to discredit the pandemic and expose the public to heightened risk.

Who is Dolores Cahill?

According to a yet to be updated webpage on Researchgate Cahill is a Professor of Translational Science, School of Medicine & Principal Investigator at the Conway Institute, University College of Dublin. On March the 18th of this year, the Irish Times published an article confirming that Cahill had been relieved of her teaching position. 

Another article, shortly on the heels of the 1st one announced a few days later that Cahill had also resigned as leader of the Irish Freedom Party, no doubt ousted by party loyalists to the party with no taste for Cahill’s conspiracy theories and medical misinformation.

In June of 2020, Cahill was asked to resign from a high-profile EU scientific committee. In an hour-long interview with a popular alt-right activist on May 10th in the same year, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, she promised to “debunk the narrative” of the pandemic. The European Commission said the claims made by Cahill, a professor of translational medicine in UCD, could cause “significant harm” if taken literally.

Her credentials are impeccable. She was widely recognized as a renowned expert in high-throughput proteomics technology development and automation, high content protein arrays, and their biomedical applications, including in biomarker discovery and diagnostics. Cahill pioneered this research area at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics in Berlin, Germany, and she holds several international patents in this field with research, biomedicine, and diagnostic applications.

So where did it all go so horribly wrong?

The beginning of the end for Dolores Cahill

In 2017 there was already evidence that Dolores Cahill was having problems. A scientific journal retracted a study in which she was listed as a co-author. The 2016 paper was retracted after receiving criticism from outside researchers who raised concerns about its methodology and data.

The paper shares multiple authors with another paper that linked the vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV) to behavioral problems in mice. Last year, a journal removed the study; later that year, the authors published a revised version in another journal. The retracted paper focused on the antibodies present in a form of lupus. The can read more on the topic here.

A statement made by Cahill in February of 2020 starts to give one a clearer indication of why her research may have been deemed, suspect. She has an agenda. She has an anti-vaccine agenda. In here own words, she claimed;

I Entered Politics Because The Schools Mandated Vaccines For Children — 3 Feb 2021

Dolores Cahill

It’s all been a pretty steep downhill ride for the professor, since she chose to go public with a number of misleading Covid revelations she continued to repeat in 2020, including that the vaccines were going make everyone ill and that there was no pandemic. We had all been lied to and simple treatment like hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was going to save us if only the government would allow us access. Sorry Ms. Cahill, but on all scores, wrong. Fantastically wrong. 

On HCQ more than enough research exists to show it may only assist a small fraction of people, and then only marginally. It’s no miracle cure and it sure as hell isn’t a prophylactic. On the question of no pandemic, I’d recommend dropping Ms. Cahill in the middle of New Dehli and then watch her try and peddle her bullshit to hundreds of thousands of infected Indians. On the vaccine score, according to Cahill, millions should have died by now from these “dangerous vaccines” yet, strangely this hasn’t happened.

The truth is, for whatever the reasons, that Dolores Cahill is deluded. She may very well believe the untruths she is sprouting and may not even be motivated by grift, but her associations with anti-vaxxers across the globe and her rapid adoption into their ranks as one of their own, clearly shows where her loyalties lie. Loyalties that are most certainly no longer with evidence-based science. 

Evidence Cahill’s use of Del Bigtree, the conspiracy king of Youtube, to get her message out. This is a pattern we see repeated across the anti-vaxx clan hood, where individuals like Bigtree and Robert F. Kennedy, Jnr. offer up their platforms to promote views that resonate and reinforce their own warped views of medicine and health, 

Cahill is clearly willing to go to any lengths to endorse her own views on vaccines and is not averse to exposing the public to risk. She should be considered untrustworthy, a danger to public health and we strongly advise anyone against listening to her advice. History tends to be far more forgiving, than the scientific community. a fact Ms. Cahill would do well to remember.

The post Prof Dolores Cahill is the Latest Quack to Commit Career Suicide appeared first on Medika Life.

Here is an interview with a lawyer named Reiner Fuellmich showing what a full-blown hyperventilating fact-free attack looks like (please note: despite the introduction, the main body of the interview is all in English)

Going through his arguments is like shoveling the Augean Stables. But I’m no Hercules so I’ll focus on a very small but critical part of his argument, where Fuellmich tries to cast doubt on the polymerase chain reaction or PCR test. This is key because PCR is used to diagnose and track the COVID-19 disease and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes it.

What is Fuellmich saying?

Thanks to Robert Turner, we have a transcript of Fuellmich’s statements from that interview complaining about the PCR test:

[4:15] It [the PCR test] cannot be relied upon as it cannot distinguish between live and dead matter, meaning whatever tests positive to could very well be the fragments or remnants of your body’s own immune system’s fight against the common flu or the cold and it cannot tell whether a virus, and you need a whole virus, not just a fragment, whether a virus has entered your cells and is replicating because that’s the only way for you to become contagious.

[5:38]…you have to put this into a machine and then magnify it. This is called cycles of amplification, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and everyone agrees in the meantime that anything beyond 24 is unscientific. Apart from the fact, these tests cannot tell you anything about infection because they can’t distinguish between live and dead matter, but, if, if you go beyond 24 cycles, if you go for example to 34 cycles of application then you end up with at least 97% false positives, that’s what Mike Yeadon, former vice president of Pfizer told us.

Here I’ll focus on quickly laying down the facts to correct Fuellmich’s claims, and show where he is misleading people.

If you are interested in more in-depth primers on PCR, I have a couple posts here and here that I wrote for a friend who joined me in the lab doing biological research (including lots of PCRs).

Let’s break down Fuellmich’s comments piece by piece.

…It [the PCR test] cannot be relied upon as it cannot distinguish between live and dead matter…

Fuellmich tries to dismiss a test while displaying ignorance of what it does. First, a PCR test does not distinguish between living and dead. Second, being alive or dead has nothing to do with diagnosing COVID-19.

A PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, detects the presence of a defined genetic sequence by specifically amplifying it. That is the entire purpose of a PCR.

That genetic sequence can be encoded in DNA or RNA. In humans, our genetic information is permanently encoded in DNA, and transiently encoded in RNA. In some viruses like the one causing COVID-19, the genetic information is permanently encoded in RNA.

To detect RNA, such as that within the SARS-CoV-2 virus, an additional step transforms the RNA to DNA. This step is abbreviated RT (for reverse transcription). So, the test to detect COVID-19 is actually called an RT-PCR test.

The goal of PCR is to amplify, and therefore detect, specific genetic information encoded in either DNA or RNA.

PCR can, for example, detect the presence of a genetic sequence in tissue from a live person and one who has been dead for hundreds or even thousands of years. So, living and dead are irrelevant to the argument of PCR’s effectiveness.

Furthermore, being alive or dead has nothing to do with diagnosing COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 does not even qualify as a living organism in many people’s opinions.

…whatever tests positive to could very well be the fragments or remnants of your body’s own immune system’s fight against the common flu or the cold…

Fuellmich displays complete ignorance of testing and biology in this statement. The RT-PCR test amplifies virus-specific genetic information. The RT-PCR test does not have anything to do with the patient’s immune system. The RT-PCR test does not detect anything specific to the patient at all.

Furthermore, testing has shown the RT-PCR test is so specific that it can distinguish the SARS-CoV-2 virus from other viruses including other coronaviruses.

The “common flu” is caused by several influenza viruses which are very different from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Genetically and biologically, influenza and coronaviruses are very distinct classes and species. There is no possibility for the RT-PCR test to confuse the two.

The cold is caused by several human viruses including rhinovirus, several coronaviruses, influenza viruses, and others. Some of these belong to at least the same class of virus as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the cold and COVID-19 viruses are all very different species. The RT-PCR test will not confuse any of them with SARS-CoV-2.

There are a couple recent coronaviruses which are much closer genetically to SARS-CoV-2, but testing has shown that the RT-PCR tests are able to distinguish between them. The one most closely related to the current pandemic virus is SARS-CoV, and one a little more distantly related is called MERS-CoV.

…it [PCR] cannot tell whether a virus, and you need a whole virus, not just a fragment, whether a virus has entered your cells and is replicating because that’s the only way for you to become contagious…

This statement is partially true, but is irrelevant to the logic and process of diagnosis, and irrelevant to the logic and process of public health.

The part of Fuellmich’s statement which is true is that the RT-PCR cannot distinguish between an intact virus, and free-floating viral RNA (perhaps what he calls “fragments”).

A clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 includes RT-PCR data as an important factor, but also uses clinical (symptoms) and exposure (who contacted whom) information as well. A clinical diagnosis requires multiple sources of information to increase confidence because treatments carry risks.

Public health does not try to make clinical diagnoses, but requires just enough data to suggest the spread of a virus. A positive RT-PCR result, whether the virus is intact or not, suggests that a transmission event (spreading from one person to another) has occurred. This spreading must be stopped quickly, and health officials must limit contact even before they have full clinical data.

…you have to put this into a machine and then magnify it. This is called cycles of amplification, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and everyone agrees in the meantime that anything beyond 24 is unscientific…

Again, a small part of this statement is true. During the RT-PCR test for COVID-19, the patient sample is put into what we call a thermal cycler, a machine which automatically heats and cools the sample according to a program in order to amplify (or make many copies of) a specific DNA sequence.

The detectability of the genetic sequence depends on how much DNA is there to begin with. If there is a lot of genetic material in the original sample, fewer cycles are required to detect its presence. If very small amounts of genetic material are present in the sample, more cycles are required. There is nothing about the magic number of 24 as being “unscientific”. The mere statement itself is unscientific, as it betrays a complete lack of understanding of the RT-PCR test.

RT-PCR tests routinely go into 40 or 50 cycles to amplify very small amounts of genetic material. Here is a graph of a typical RT-PCR to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus, showing specifically that higher cycle numbers detect smaller amounts of RNA.

… if you go for example to 34 cycles of application then you end up with at least 97% false positives, that’s what Mike Yeadon, former vice president of Pfizer told us…

Again, there is a tiny kernel of truth in this statement, but which is highly distorted. In the RT-PCR test, the genetic sequence is detected when DNA is amplified enough for a fluorescent signal to be detected. The number of cycles required to obtain a detectable signal is called the Ct, or cycle threshold number. A very high Ct number is associated with false positives. However, the number Fuellmich gives, 24 and 34, are ludicrously low and incorrect.

Here is one of many papers which explains the Ct value, and some typical values of cutoffs for acceptable values:https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https%3A//www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/main/2020/09/cycle-threshold-values-sars-cov2-pcr.pdf%3Fla%3Den&embedded=true

This paper suggests a Ct cutoff of 40. Far higher than 24 cycles or 34 cycles Fuellmich cites as being “unscientific”.

There are many causes of false positive RT-PCR results, of which the RT-PCR’s Ct is only one:

Causes of False Positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR Results

Contamination during

• Sampling (eg, an infected worker or surfaces; aerosolization of virus during collection)
• Extraction (eg, aerosolization in containment hood)
• PCR amplification
• Production of Lab Reagents (eg, manufacturers of the positive control may have contaminated other reagents produced in the same facility; contamination of other consumables)
• Contamination of the equipment by high viral titer specimens (eg, sample carryover)
• Cross-reaction with other viruses (eg, other coronaviruses)
• Sample mix-ups
• Software problems
• Data entry or transmission errors
• Miscommunicating results
• Variations in parameters around the LOD and definition of an indeterminate result
• Assuming that an indeterminate result is a positive
• Non-specific reactions

LOD, limit of detection; RT-PCR, reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction.

(Table by Braunstein et al, 2021)

Conclusion

Fuellmich is engaging in a poorly-informed and dangerous campaign against public health measures such as vaccination, testing, and distancing. Even a cursory examination of RT-PCR shows how ignorant Fuellmich is of the process and capabilities of this important test.

Editors Note: For a complete dissection of Fuellmich’s Fiction, refer to this article

The post Getting the Story Straight on PCR… appeared first on Medika Life.

In late March of 2021, I wrote an article that highlighted the problems with Vanden Bossche’s theories (there are numerous) about the runaway evolution of the coronavirus if we continue with widespread vaccination. My article debunked numerous points, for instance, an immunology faux-pas he made that would make a first-year immunology student cringe in shame(he shows a dendritic cell activating an NK cell via antigen presentation) and more. You can read said article here.

This article won’t deal with his erroneous claims, we’ve done that already, but rather seek to examine how a literal nobody in the world of science has managed to propel himself to stardom (albeit notorious) in the space of a few weeks on the back of a clearly flawed paper, intentionally withheld from the peer review process for obvious reasons. Vanden Bossche isn’t out to save the world, he’s out to fleece it. Academia doesn’t pay enough.

Vanden Bossche, the marketing monster

In a self-marketing feat that would have left the likes of Apple and Samsung spinning their wheels in his dust, Geert Vanden Bossche has managed to create an iconic brand literally overnight. He portrays the image of a gentle, yet friendly and always reasonable scatterbrained professor. His hair is always a little unkept, a tip of the hat to his rebellious, but carefully controlled nature and his meticulously managed public persona just yells “trust me, I’m a doctor”.

And people apparently do, buying into both his image and his version of science. By the millions. Americans love him and well they should, given their established proclivity for drama, conspiracy, and anti-establishment propaganda. Canada follows hotly on their heels. Vanden Bossche has human nature on his side and is well aware of it. Everything he does, the language he uses, and the way he presents both himself and his theories, suggest he is all too well aware.

If he’d published his paper, created a furor, and then disappeared back into the academic obscurity from whence he came, we may even have credited him with possibly believing in the work he had published, flawed though it is. BUT HE HAS’NT. and that speaks volumes. It raises serious questions about the man, his motivation, and his plans for book deals, speaking appearances, and perhaps, dare he dream it, a movie offer. I can see the title now, “The Virologist that broke American Healthcare”.

Remember, just in case you’re tempted to confuse Vanden Bossche with a world-class microbiologist/virologist, he is actually board certified in Veterinary Virology, Microbiology, and Animal Hygiene, hasn’t published a research paper since 1995, and appears to have forgotten the basic activation mechanisms for an NK cell. But he’s not letting these minor obstacles stand in his way.

geertvandenbossche.org

Lo and behold, what should pop out of the digital ether this March but none other than Geert Vanden Bossche. His domain, geertvandenbossche.com was registered on the 14th of March 2021. Suddenly, and very coincidentally, his sudden interest to develop a website coincided with the release of his controversial “paper”. What follows is nothing short of spectacular and his epically flawed “scientific” dissection of mass vaccination pales in comparison.

From Zero to Anti-Hero in the blink of an eye. Vanden Bossche has managed to propel his previously non-existent website from total obscurity, 0 out 30 million websites to an Alexa ranking globally of 454,315. Even more impressive is the time scale. In less than two months, he now boasts being the 129,013 most read website in the US and in Canada, that figure shoots up to 32,015. Apparently, the only people who are bigger suckers than the Americans for a good Covid conspiracy are the Canadians.

To put the achievement below into proper context, he has skipped right past 29 646 000 other websites to achieve his current ranking, such is the volume of traffic he currently enjoys, traffic that mostly originates from Northern America.

Want to know where his traffic specifically comes from? Available statistics show Google sending him 31% of his traffic and Twitter accounts for 14.3%. Where do his visitors primarily go after spending an average of 1 minute 27 seconds on the site? Youtube, of course, 21.2% of his visitors head straight for his videos. The rest of his traffic, which equates to millions of views daily, isn’t available, isn’t analyzable, that how recent his success has been. Most platforms need at least three months of data to generate figures.

We have a pretty good idea where the other traffic is coming from though, having run a few backlink checks on his domain. Almost every single anti-vaxx website, alternate health website, covid conspiracy website, and even radical, Republican funded qanon styled sites have adopted Vanden Bossche, propelling him overnight to international digital stardom and enabling (which is their actual goal) the dissemination of his divisive articles and videos to a large audience. They believe they’re using Vanden Bossche to further their own agendas.

I suspect exactly the opposite is true. I think, and I’m not alone in this assumption, that Vanden Bossche has an ulterior motive and its financial. As we’ve already stated, he is intelligent and driven, but not by an altruistic desire to save his fellow man from the impending vaccine catastrophe he has prophesized.

Rather, it is to sell the world an alternative vaccine, designed and developed by none other than Vanden Bossche himself.

If you think this is a ridiculous proposition, we suggest your read up on the disgraced Andrew Wakefield, the king of the vaccine con and arguably the founder of the anti-vaxx movement. Ironic that both mens’ attempts to enrich themselves have led to a slavelike following of individuals apparently devoid of independent thought. In fact, Wakefield may very well have provided a blueprint for Vanden Bossche’s scam, the two appear similar.

The Fool-Proof Con

Vanden Bossche has created the ultimate medical con, one that is sufficiently complex to prevent his victims (the general public) from understanding it and they are therefore dependant on accepting his individual and professional credentials which on the surface appear beyond reproach. Vanden Bossche maintains an air of absolute conviction and professional dependability throughout, selling himself and by association, his ideas.

It would have been possible for him to explain his concept in far simpler terms, but it’s noticeable that these simpler phrases are retained for the shock statements, the warnings, and the “dire consequences”. The paper he created was never intended for professional dissemination and would have been ripped to pieces by his colleagues. It was designed entirely for you, dear reader. for the general public, to flummox and confuse, and judging by the interest he has generated, it’s been a spectacular success.

When it comes to this kind of work, never trust the man, trust the science. And science has proven him to be an incontrovertible fake.

Time is fleeting

And Vanden Bossche has a limited supply of it. In another six -12 months, the glaring flaws in his arguments are going to become apparent as the world does not succumb to his predicted supervirus. Also, his new conspiracy fans are a fickle mob, driven by whatever is trending on social media. In two months’ time, he’s going to be old news and it may very well be this aspect that has prompted America to do almost nothing to counteract his wild claims.

The statistics shown above indicate just how mistaken the American approach to Vanden Bossch has been. Since early April and probably well into June, he will continue to spread disinformation and distrust in the vaccines at an unprecedented rate, encouraging millions to reconsider getting vaccinated and contributing to the American failure to reach herd level immunization. Of course, Vanden Bossche can’t be credited with single-handedly contributing to America’s vaccine hesitancy.

There has been a continuous and sustained attack on vaccines almost since the idea for rapid vaccine development was first floated in early 2020. What we do know is that Vanden Bossche offer s a unique opportunity to study this model of medical quackery that is driven by greed and personal enrichment. His website and strategy show just how vulnerable international medical strategies can be to a concerted and well-supported propaganda attack.

America is about to discover just how much money they are going to have to fork out to try and undo the impact of one, Geert Vanden Bossche. Money that could have spent on healthcare, saving lives. Ensuring a mother from a disadvantaged community received enough pre-delivery care to save her and her child. Somehow, I doubt Vanden Bossche has trouble falling asleep at night. He just doesn’t seem the type.

Whoever is tasking with holding these quacks and con-artists accountable in a post-pandemic society (people will demand it), may not view him as kindly. He has blood on his hands and his words and advice continue to claim lives.

The post How Geert Vanden Bossche is Destroying American Herd Immunity appeared first on Medika Life.

In terms of context, our publication, Medika Life, deals on a daily basis with medical con artists, quacks, and dishonest individuals seeking to exploit the health concerns of a very vulnerable sector of our population. We apply a label to these individuals, that of Predatory Health Practitioner (PHP). These individuals prey on the weak, the vulnerable, and the uneducated for the purposes of self-enrichment. They are a global phenomenon but in the US they have embedded themselves within the Republican Party.

It is an impossibility in modern medicine to separate politics and healthcare. The two are intrinsically linked, bound by staggering sums of money, kickbacks, favors, and good old-fashioned sell-outs orchestrated by skilled lobbyists, who in turn, are bankrolled by large medical conglomerates.

The predatory practitioners we’ll meet below have taken this system and given it a digital upgrade. While commercialism of their quackery matters, there are also other factors at play, influenced by alliances they have formed. Links to QAnon, white supremacist groups, and conspiracy theorists offer a window into a depraved world where any and every tool is fair game in a propaganda war with ambitious designs.

Destabilizing established medical practice, depriving racial minorities of access to care through medical misinformation and fear, furthering their political careers, creating a platform of supporters from whom they can draw funding, and other twisted agendas all meld together under the unified blanket of the radicalized Republican.

We write about these quacks and con artists at length, exposing them one at a time and it has become glaringly obvious that their base of operations resides firmly within the GOP. The graphic below reads like a rogues gallery of Republican radicals and PHP’s. They are now so embedded as to appear a part of the GOP and they’re feted by the party loyalists like long-lost war heroes.

Here then the shocking truth of what really lies behind Covid misinformation in America and how these propaganda tools are being used to frighten racial minorities away from healthcare.

The Health&Freedom conference poster that speaks volumes

Take a really close look. Do you see the connection and the propaganda? It’s glaringly obvious, linking the concept of health to freedom and creating the perception that somehow healthcare is under threat in America. Don’t trust “the man” and don’t trust his medicine. Notice the choice of colors? Remind you of anyone? While we cannot disagree that personal freedoms are under attack, that’s old news. They’ve been under attack since they were handed out to us. Attaching these attacks to healthcare, however, is a recent tactic. One that’s taken center stage during the pandemic.

We’ll show how the Predatory Health elements, QAnon, White supremacists, and conspiracy theorists are now managing a Republican sanctioned attack on American healthcare. Strange bedfellows that have found comfort in their twisted views of society. You can argue till you’re blue in the face but the poster above spells it out more clearly than any article or confession ever could.

If you are a contributing member to the Republican party you are in effect funding racism, medical misinformation, and contributing to the attempted destruction of the American healthcare system by elements that have taken over your party and are eroding it from the inside out.

These are the same people who stormed your Capitol building. They are insurrectionists, con artists, and die-hard racists intent on dismantling healthcare, democracy, and any other form of rational democratic governance in America. The last item on the itinerary for their meeting was a public mask-burning event. You, as a GOP member, are aware of these elements unless you’ve been living in a cave, and by choosing to look away, you allow them to continue with their agendas, to grow, and to thrive.

Let’s examine a few of the faces on this poster.

Dr. Simone Gold — Political Affiliation, Republican

Photographed in the Capitol building among other insurrectionists, she is part of a countrywide network of quacks and a pharmacy chain, Ravkoo Pharmacy, trying to profit from the pandemic by selling unproven medication to people who they’ve frightened off the vaccine, She is a despicable example of an educated person who takes advantage of a vulnerable community, using her knowledge to incite fear and then profit by selling her “remedy”. You can read our damning expose of her scam here.

Dr. Christiane Northrup — Political Affiliation, Republican

Once feted by Oprah Winfrey, this doyen of women’s health has sunken into the slippery quagmire of conspiracies and medical misinformation, adopting causes like the dangers of 5G, criticizing vaccine safety, and sowing distrust in peoples minds with regards to the pandemic, vaccines and the dangers of the coronavirus. She is featured on Medika’s Quack Scale and you can read our detailed list of the medical misinformation she sells online.

Andrew Wakefield — Political Affiliation, Republican

We’ve avoided the use of the term doctor here, as this individual was stripped of his medical credentials by the British General Medical Council for manipulating data in a now famed fake paper on vaccines and their supposed link to autism. In addition, it was shown how he performed unsanctioned medical procedures on children and sought to profit by providing his own alternative vaccine, in the place of the MMR vaccine he was attempting to discredit. He’s a firm favorite now in Republican circles, meeting with Trump and other high-ranking members in the party. Shamed and disgraced in his home country, he’s now found a new home and continues to spread health misinformation. You can read our article on his disgraced past and form your own opinion.

Mike Lindell— Political Affiliation, Republican

This slick con artist and CEO of MyPillow was another favorite under the Trump term, invited into the inner sanctum of the Whitehouse where he attempted to sell his covid quackery to the President. Medika published an article in December of 2020, examing Lindell’s involvement with the fake covid cure, Oleandrin, he tried to sell to the Whitehouse. His recent ban on Twitter for promoting election fraud lies has led him to attempt to set up his own social media platform.

Lin Wood — Political Affiliation, Republican

Wood has continued to push numerous baseless conspiracy theories that the presidential election was fraudulent, which led Twitter to suspend his account. The State Bar of Georgia investigated two complaints filed against him and ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and he is the current subject of investigation for alleged voter fraud. His links to QAnon are evident and on public display.

Sidney Powell — Political Affiliation, Republican

Powell was banned by Twitter on January 8, 2021, for promoting the QAnon voter fraud conspiracy theory in the 2020 US elections. She has promoted personalities and slogans associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Powell alleges that a secret international cabal involving communists, “globalists”, George Soros, Hugo Chávez, the Clinton Foundation, the CIA, and thousands of Democratic and Republican officials — including Trump ally and Georgia governor Brian Kemp — used voting machines to transfer millions of votes away from Trump to Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Her unsubstantiated claims rapidly became an embarrassment to Trump’s legal defense (among which she numbered) and Rudy Giuliani and issued a November 22 statement that Powell was “practicing law on her own” and was not (or was no longer) a part of the Trump legal team. The President however still kept in contact with her. In the meanwhile, she’s received a $100,000 bill From Wisconsin, as the Governor demands legal fees over her election lawsuit.

Richard Bartlett — Political Affiliation, Republican

Most famously known for going public with budesonide (an inhaled steroid) as a cure for Covid in July of 2020, this doctor made various unfounded and unverified claims relating to the efficacy of the steroid in treating and curing patients with Covid. Hi suggestion to part of Japan, Singapore, and Asia had avoided deaths because of their use of budesonide was without basis and although this steroid may offer some relief to patients with covid it is a very far cry from a cure. As far as his claims to treating patients, at the point he went public, he’d treated two patients with budesonide, via remote health platforms. They were using other medications and suffered from additional medical conditions. Hardly what you’d call a clinical trial or hard evidence. Bartlett also suggested that a vaccine isn’t needed if inhaled budesonide is being widely used. After advancing the baseless claim about Taiwan’s wide adoption of the steroid, he stated:

“Taiwan, 24 million people, they don’t need to wait for a vaccine — they don’t have a problem that you should vaccinate 24 million people for.”

We could go through almost every name that appears on this poster and their stories would echo with an all-too-familiar ring. Voices tainted with conspiracy, racist bias, misinformation, and dystopian views promoted with the single intent of destabilizing America and its healthcare platform. We have identified some of the key motivators that drive these individuals.

• Financial self-enrichment and personal aggrandizement are key drivers for many of the individuals featured above. There are huge sums of money to be made and instant stardom awaits among a growing fan base.
• Racial agendas focused on restoring white supremacy to America. This is achieved by actively discrediting coronavirus vaccines and suggesting the virus carries no risk. The most at-risk populations suffer the most. There is sufficient data to show the success of their strategy among African-American and Hispanic communities and to encourage them to further action.
• Political gain, within the rapidly expanding base of support enjoyed by these groups, with aspirations for higher office and the associated perks.

Don’t make the mistake of dismissing these individuals as crazy kooks and conspiracy head cases and hope they’ll fade quietly away. They’ve struck a chord with a significant number of Americans who claim allegiance to the Republican party. They are intelligent, willful, and manipulative and these three traits combined with an intent to do harm to achieve their own goals make them extremely dangerous.

Does this mean the Republican party is essentially a racist institute populated by white supremacists and QAnon collaborators? No, Not yet, but left untended, the disease will consume the patient.

Alternatively, the larger portion of the GOP can begin a much-needed purge of the insidious cancer that is festering in its bosom, but I would encourage urgency as you don’t have much time left. The clock is ticking and you’re no longer just risking your own party’s stability by not acting. but the future of America as a whole. That fragile balance of opinion that has served democracy so well for generations, an evenly balanced two-party system, is under threat. We’ve provided you with the poster, now it’s up to you.

The post How Republican Radicals Are Weaponizing Healthcare in America appeared first on Medika Life.