Even a peep of news about a new flu pandemic is enough to set scientists clucking about eggs.

They worried about them in 2005, and in 2009, and they’re worrying now. That’s because millions of fertilized hen eggs are still the main ingredient in making vaccines that, hopefully, will protect people against the outbreak of a new flu strain.

“It’s almost comical to be using a 1940s technology for a 21^st-century pandemic,” said Rick Bright, who led the Health and Human Services Department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) during the Trump administration.

It’s not so funny, he said, when the currently stockpiled formulation against the H5N1 bird flu virus requires two shots and a whopping 90 micrograms of antigen, yet provides just middling immunity. “For the U.S. alone, it would take hens laying 900,000 eggs every single day for nine months,” Bright said.

And that’s only if the chickens don’t get infected.

The spread of an avian flu virus has decimated flocks of birds (and killed barn cats and other mammals). Cattle in at least nine states and at least three people in the U.S. have been infected, enough to bring public health attention once again to the potential for a global pandemic.

As of May 30, the only confirmed human cases of infection were dairy workers in Texas and Michigan, who experienced eye irritation. Two quickly recovered, while the third developed respiratory symptoms and was being treated with an antiviral drug at home. The virus’s spread into multiple species over a vast geographic area, however, raises the threat that further mutations could create a virus that spreads from human to human through airborne transmission.

If they do, prevention starts with the egg.

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To make raw material for an influenza vaccine, virus is grown in millions of fertilized eggs. Sometimes it doesn’t grow well, or it mutates to a degree that the vaccine product stimulates antibodies that don’t neutralize the virus — or the wild virus mutates to an extent that the vaccine doesn’t work against it. And there’s always the frightening prospect that wild birds could carry the virus into the henhouses needed in vaccine production.

“Once those roosters and hens go down, you have no vaccine,” Bright said.

Since 2009, when an H1N1 swine flu pandemic swept around the world before vaccine production could get off the ground, researchers and governments have been looking for alternatives. Billions of dollars have been invested into vaccines produced in mammalian and insect cell lines that don’t pose the same risks as egg-based shots.

“Everyone knows the cell-based vaccines are better, more immunogenic, and offer better production,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security. “But they are handicapped because of the clout of egg-based manufacturing.”

The companies that make the cell-based influenza vaccines, CSL Seqirus and Sanofi, also have billions invested in egg-based production lines that they aren’t eager to replace. And it’s hard to blame them, said Nicole Lurie, HHS’ assistant secretary for preparedness and response under President Barack Obama who is now an executive director of CEPI, the global epidemic-fighting nonprofit.

“Most vaccine companies that responded to an epidemic — Ebola, Zika, covid — ended up losing a lot of money on it,” Lurie said.

Exceptions were the mRNA vaccines created for covid, although even Pfizer and Moderna have had to destroy hundreds of millions of doses of unwanted vaccine as public interest waned.

Pfizer and Moderna are testing seasonal influenza vaccines made with mRNA, and the government is soliciting bids for mRNA pandemic flu vaccines, said David Boucher, director of infectious disease preparedness at HHS’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

Bright, whose agency invested a billion dollars in a cell-based flu vaccine factory in Holly Springs, North Carolina, said there’s “no way in hell we can fight an H5N1 pandemic with an egg-based vaccine.” But for now, there’s little choice.

BARDA has stockpiled hundreds of thousands of doses of an H5N1-strain vaccine that stimulates the creation of antibodies that appear to neutralize the virus now circulating. It could produce millions more doses of the vaccine within weeks and up to 100 million doses in five months, Boucher told KFF Health News.

But the vaccines currently in the national stockpile are not a perfect match for the strain in question. Even with two shots containing six times as much vaccine substance as typical flu shots, the stockpiled vaccines were only partly effective against strains of the virus that circulated when those vaccines were made, Adalja said.

However, BARDA is currently supporting two clinical trials with a candidate vaccine virus that “is a good match for what we’ve found in cows,” Boucher said.

Flu vaccine makers are just starting to prepare this fall’s shots but, eventually, the federal government could request production be switched to a pandemic-targeted strain.

“We don’t have the capacity to do both,” Adalja said.

For now, ASPR has a stockpile of bulk pandemic vaccine and has identified manufacturing sites where 4.8 million doses could be bottled and finished without stopping production of seasonal flu vaccine, ASPR chief Dawn O’Connell said on May 22. U.S. officials began trying to diversify away from egg-based vaccines in 2005, when avian flu first gripped the world, and with added vigor after the 2009 fiasco. But “with the resources we have available, we get the best bang for our buck and best value to U.S. taxpayers when we leverage the seasonal infrastructure, and that’s still mostly egg-based,” Boucher said.

Flu vaccine companies “have a system that works well right now to accomplish their objectives in manufacturing the seasonal vaccine,” he said. And without a financial incentive, “we are going to be here with eggs for a while, I think.”

Arthur Allen: aallen@kff.org, @ArthurAllen202

The post The Chicken and Egg Problem of Fighting Another Flu Pandemic appeared first on Medika Life.

The majority of patients suffering from coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension or heart failure, and life-saving health services live in highly populated urban areas. But imagine having to drive five hours to see a physician, knowing there is a high likelihood that the doctor will not be there when you arrive.

That scenario is a frequent reality among American Indian and Alaska Native patients living in one of the 574 Federally recognized tribal areas in the U.S. Many of these reservations represent the most medically underserved areas in the country, where the quality of healthcare varies widely and significant physician shortages are chronic issues, eroding the level of trust and participation that patients have in their available health resources.

As part of a new podcast series exploring innovative technologies, partnerships and processes that could lead to breakthroughs in public health, I recently spoke with Rear Admiral (ret.) Jim Galloway, MD, a former Assistant U.S. Surgeon General to two presidents and currently the Chief Medical Officer of Native Arc, a Native American, woman-owned public benefit company developing novel, sustainable partnerships to reduce critical physician shortages and improve healthcare in Indigenous tribal areas.

From his decades of experience working as a cardiologist in some of the largest tribal areas in the southwest and across the nation, Dr. Galloway has witnessed the discrepancies in care provided to Indigenous populations, where congressional studies have found health provider vacancy rates approaching 50 percent in some areas, an issue that adversely affects the availability of services, waiting times and quality of care that patients experience.  

The pandemic underscored the state of health available to Indigenous populations relative to patients in the rest of the country. While New York City received headlines for its COVID-19 infection rate, the Navajo Nation—which covers parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico—surpassed New York and New Jersey combined in mid-2020 for the number of cases it endured.

The result of the pandemic and years of neglect is an erosion of trust between patients and health providers. In certain specialized services, such as obstetrics, the impact of this loss of services and confidence is connected to disproportionately higher rates of mortality. For example, American Indian and Alaska Native women are twice as likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than White women and less likely to trust physicians.

To reverse this trend, Native Arc and its partner company, Arc Health, have developed and expanded a novel partnership model that fills physician vacancies with high-quality, mission-driven doctors and academic fellows from among the country’s leading medical institutions in a model to enhance tribal, Indian health and academic collaborations that improve health care services and facilities.

Medical staff take a collaborative approach to addressing health challenges unique to Indigenous tribal communities, weaving together the latest medical practices with a deep understanding of the cultural issues and social determinants impacting patient health in these areas.

The results of this partnership model are remarkable: A decline in physician vacancies, greater collaboration between tribal, Indian health systems and academic centers to drive improved quality, increased services and educational support, as well as improved professional development among doctors and other medical staff. Importantly, the academic institutions and incoming providers also better understand the culture and underlying socioeconomic issues that can be applied to understanding patient health in underserved areas.

One of the program’s most impressive outcomes points to the heart of its potential as a sustainable force for good: Many physicians and providers serving at these sites choose to stay on as full-time physicians for Indigenous tribal areas. These numbers are additive to the number of residents and students from academic institutions who return to serve tribal communities.

That’s a powerful testament and offers a possible path forward for improving the state of healthcare within tribal and rural populations, both in the U.S. and around the world. The more we can replicate partnership programs that place mission-driven physicians and fellows in areas of need and build meaningful collaborations between tribal and Indian health systems, the more likely physicians are to stay in those communities. This model also increases the opportunities to leverage the expertise, connections, and resources of both the physicians and academic centers to deliver long-term improvements to patient care.

Listen to the full podcast here to get the full picture of Native Arc’s innovative approach and Dr. Galloway’s powerful insights from his decades of service.

The post Reversing the Doctor Drain appeared first on Medika Life.

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.

Particularly now, when it looks increasing likely that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their GOF research (US funded) on coronaviruses led to this pandemic. Even the ex-CDC Director has come out in favor of the lab leak theory. So, is this a good idea?

Can I Get a NO? A Loud, Resounding, Absolute NO.

Not in any rational, sane world that is intent on survival of the species, can we permit the continuance of this kind of research in its current form. Especially in the kinds of laboratories we currently use, where apparently, upgrading the walls to Swiss cheese would offer better protection than is currently available. Especially in the hands of scientists, politicians, media and a pharmaceutical industry all of whom have just schooled us on how to manipulate the human race.

How many millions more may pay with their lives for the greed, avarice or incompetence of the few? We haven’t yet held these individuals to account for the 2019 pandemic and here we are again, back on the roundabout, hell bent on laying the groundwork for a second one.

And that is really where the problem lies. It isn’t the science that’s flawed. GOF is a really useful tool, but like the most deadly assault rifle, it can be used for protection or for mass extinction. It depends on the hand that wields it and science has been coopted by individuals and companies that look only to profit and the pursuits of their political masters. In the process, we die, by the millions.

To depress you even further, we cannot walk this back. Not ever. The gene-manipulating genie is out of the bottle and there’s no putting it back. This type of research will still continue, even if it is outlawed at the highest levels. The potential rewards, which are huge, far outweigh the risks. The only solution is to manage it, somehow.

How Do We Fix This?

Elon, so glad you stopped by, as you, or a group of individuals (we understand not everyone can buy the bluebird of happiness on a whim) may very well hold the key to our continued existence, and no, I am not suggesting relocating Pfizer, Moderna and the rest of their motley crew doing pathogen research to Mars, although I’d probably chip in myself for the rocket fuel for that trip.

We know that the current logistical management for GOF needs to be better. Unfortunately, we cannot contain the viruses we work on safely within a facility without them escaping; even our highest levels of security, BSL4 labs, are breached. Every year, incidents occur across the globe, and we may even have the next potential pandemic underway as I write, that is how frequently it happens.

Logic dictates we either stop the practice (not happening) or take steps to ensure we don’t kill the entire global population, unintentionally, or otherwise. To do this, it is critical we remove the danger from populated areas.

We need to establish a global research facility, one of a kind, independently monitored and audited, that is as far removed from proximity to humanity as possible. The middle of the desert springs to mind, a dedicated center for viral research where, in the event of a breach, only the unfortunate scientists pay the price for their carelessness.

To overcome the strain of lengthy periods of isolation, a facility constructed for these purposes could be expanded to include schooling and retail therapy, allowing scientists to pursue their passions and research in a semblance of normality. Most of the pioneers and researchers engaged in Gain of Function are driven by the science, they are passionate and focused, and again, it is their work that is co-opted, rarely the individual.

Quarantines would apply to all personnel leaving the facility, requiring a five-day plus furlough in a Trump Hotel built five miles away. Driverless Teslas, repurposed for deliveries, would alleviate the need for contact with the outside world, and Elon, you could use this as a dry run for Mars.

Humor aside though, the idea has merit and may very well offer a way out of our current predicament. The only other viable alternative is to temporarily halt all research until we are able to fully automate facilities handling dangerous viruses. By that, I mean no human interaction at all. Experiments could be performed remotely, utilizing robotics. We are technically capable of this, but it would be incredibly expensive (I wonder who has a few billion in pandemic profits lying around), restricting who would be able to utilize this kind of technology.

Great Kindness or Greed? We All Hope the Former

Humans are capable of great kindness and innovation, but the danger with this type of research always defaults to the involvement of the human element. We are prone to making mistakes, ask all the unfortunate and very dead researchers working with these pathogens when they escape. Realistically, if safety is our paramount concern, and it should be, our only viable option is to remove GOF research from its proximity to our populations. Back to option 1.

This discussion is unfolding right now, preempted by the letter I referred to above. Perhaps the logic here was to get their case heard before all the wheels come off. When evidence surfaces, and it will, to corroborate the lab leak theory for the SARS virus, all bets will be off. The backlash will be spectacular and science, unfortunately will pay the price. Science we desperately need to cure the ills that have been ailing us for generations.

Villagers and their torches aren’t particular about what they set fire to, and in this instance, they have good cause and science will burn.

Any solution that removes the risk of exposure to pathogens from accidental spillage, cannot obviously account for nefarious intentions, sadly something the industry is rife with. Another thorn in the side of ethical science that needs to be overcome and security at this remote facility would need to be ironclad.

GOF Can Result in Life-Saving Drugs or Danger

We’d like to spark a proper conversation on this subject, involving people who have the resources (Elon, you still here?) to implement solutions that are in the interest of both science and public safety. The two parties must find a way to safely coexist.

It is also worth mentioning that gain of function is far more than what the public perceives it to be. The technology is critical to developing new drugs, new cancer treatments and many other practical uses that do not focus on weaponizing pathogens. Making a virus more deadly may utilize Gain of Function technology, but it represents only a fraction of the industry’s use of the technology.

If you have thoughts on the matter or would like to publish something relating to this, please feel free to reach out to Medika Life via DMs on Twitter. You’ll find us hugely receptive.

The post Elon Musk, Can You Save Us From Covid 2.0? appeared first on Medika Life.

There are more than one hundred ways an RNA molecule can be chemically modified after it is synthesized. The functions of many of these modifications, collectively referred to as the epitranscriptome, are largely unknown.

Here’s the problem with medicine and our genome. We are toddlers, tinkering with a system we barely understand. In much the same way as anyone capable of reading can consume a book on calculus, comprehending what actually stands in the book is another endeavor entirely. We’ve opened the book on the human genome and with our basic comprehension and reading skills we now feel we are qualified to fiddle around with the building blocks of life.

Nothing could be more irresponsible.

Our limited knowledge, coupled with a voracious appetite for exploration and profit, has opened Pandora’s box, and there is no putting the genie back. The pandemic, origins aside, was the key to propelling mRNA technology into the world. Tech that companies like Moderna and others had invested billions of dollars in developing. In point of fact, Moderna’s entire business structure, worth billions, was built on the hopes of mRNA succeeding.

Until the pandemic struck, things looked bleak for both Moderna and mRNA. the treatment had encountered numerous hurdles, no the least of which was the CDC, who restricted the use of untested mRNA technology in trials to end of life patients. If you’re at deaths door, risk becomes irrelevant. Delivery mechanisms (a substance to carry the mRNA into the cell) were another aspect no one in the industry had been able to resolve. Yet, suddenly in 2020, miraculously, a working mRNA Covid treatment was developed in record time.

Not just one, but two, a product from Moderna and another from Pfizer/Biontech. Now call me skeptical, but I have a really hard time believing in miracles, no matter how much money you throw at something. It turns out the miracles came at a heavy price, and unfortunately there does not seem to be a ceiling to this price, as more and more patients report an ever increasing number of side effects from the mRNA vaccines.

As icing on the cake, late last year Moderna conveniently announced an mRNA treatment for heart conditions, the irony of which cannot have been lost on hundreds of thousands of people who’ve suffered heart damage from the first round of mRNA “approved” treatments. You cannot make this up and watching the narrative unfold over the last three years has been nothing short of jaw dropping.

mRNA, in this authors opinion, holds massive promise, possibly 20 years down the line, as a tool to effectively combat diseases like cancer on a genetic level. Why 20 years? Well it is going to take us that long to truly grasp the far reaching implications of tampering with our bodies internal clock. Twenty years of cautious science, uncovering dependencies between systems and how all the dots connect. Right now, we can barely crawl, and yet we are attempting to run. It is costing people their lives.

Altering the human genetic code

Strictly speaking, mRNA vaccines, if they adhere to their licensing protocols, cannot interact with human DNA. DNA based Covid vaccines can, so if you’re worried about having your DNA changed, vaccines from Janssen and others are of far more concern. mRNA cannot alter DNA as far as we know and based on our current understanding of cellular traffic. If you have time and the inclination, an article I wrote in 2021 explains the flow of traffic inside a human cell and like any traffic system, there are rules. RNA affecting DNA is a no-no.

That being said, there are very few hard and fast rules in nature that aren’t, on occasion, broken. Spillage occurs, much like a drunk driver who accidentally ends-up driving against oncoming traffic. So can mRNA do this? It is possible. However unlikely, the contamination of DNA cannot be ruled out. If your goal was to alter our DNA, you would rather opt for a DNA-based vaccine.

mRNA can however effect changes within our bodies on a cellular level, and in many ways, this poses far more risk than DNA manipulation. How? Well, take for instance the Covid vaccines, designed to interact with our ACE2 receptors, receptors that the SARS-COV2 virus targets. It turns out that certain organs within our bodies are more susceptible to having these receptors activated. The testes are a perfect example and reduced semen motility after inoculation with Pfizer BNT162b2 has now been clinically proven as a side effect.

What we don’t know about mRNA therapy

Rather than espousing the risks carried by an unproven medical technology at a cellular and genetic level, I’ve opted for listing a few of the unknowns. Possible effects and interactions with mRNA, other medicines and more. It’s possibly worth mentioning at this point that I believe the technology has huge potential, both for medical advances against disease and for exploitation.

Lets start with mRNA and HIV therapies. This group was not represented in the mRNA Covid clinical trials and we have no idea of the potential interactions between the two therapies or how mRNA will impact HIV in the host. There is prior knowledge of the flu vaccine, for example, waking up HIV and exposing it to the immune system; but it has been unclear whether that was only happening in flu-specific T cells, a known place where HIV hides. Now new evidence suggests mRNA has the ability to wake latent HIV.

mRNA and it’s effects on nursing mothers and infants was completely ignored in the original trials, despite this group being an established part of a vaccine cohort in trials. We know now that mothers can pass the spike protein through their breast milk to the nursing infant.

A growing body of evidence now suggests that there is in fact a large degree of risk to nursing infants from the mRNA vaccine, risk that in some instances results in cardiac related damage or death and new research just published in Jama now recommends mothers do not breastfeed for two days after receiving the mRNA vaccines. This is what they discovered.

Of 11 lactating individuals enrolled, trace amounts of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were detected in 7 breast milk samples from 5 different participants at various times up to 45 hours postvaccination.

Sadly, too late for most mothers, many coerced into the vaccine. We have no idea what the long term medical implications are for the infant, and yet, President Biden and the CDC website still suggests vaccinating 6 month old children, effectively doubling their exposure.

The impact of mRNA on a fetus is also largely unknown, yet we still recommend pregnant mothers be vaccinated, showing no regard for the safety of the fetus. Some emerging data suggests a dramatic increase in stillbirths and miscarriages, where causality is ascribed to lockdowns and lack of access to proper medical care, while an overwhelming spate of recently published research suggest no short term dangers exist to the fetus.

Again, none of this research was done prior to the mRNA being administered in 2020, it is all post 2021. Did we simply get lucky, telling pregnant women there was no risk, when in point of fact, we had no idea? Time will tell.

The untested impact of mRNA on Cancers. Cancer patients were underrepresented in the original Covid trials. While some may argue that as most of Moderna’s work done on mRNA leading up to the so called Covid “vaccine” was based around developing cancer treatments, mRNA poses no risk to this group, the opposite may in fact be true. Cancer cells are responsive to mRNA therapy. What we don’t know is if mRNA therapy intended for a different target, say Covid, will awaken dormant cancel cells.

• New research shows patients with hematologic (cancers of the blood) malignancies appear less likely than those with solid tumors to have detectable immune responses and this extends to patients undergoing chemo.
• This paper in Nature on Cytokine release syndrome in a patient with colorectal cancer after vaccination with BNT162b2

Children as young as six months are the latest guinea pigs in the global clinical trial underway for mRNA technology. Ethically and morally inexcusable and sanctioned by the FDA, CDC and President Biden, you are told it is safe to inject your children with the Covid “vaccines” when in point of fact, we have absolutely no idea about the long term impacts and the trials used to justify the treatments in children are nothing short of laughable and will serve as an embarrassment to science and medicine for generations to come.

Adverse events, and the unknown. With a list of Serious Adverse Events (SAE’s) as long as your arm, all the Covid vaccines, including and especially those utilizing mRNA, came with risks, most of which were down played. Damage to your heart, Myocarditis and Pericarditis (for which Moderna conveniently had another mRNA therapy in the pipeline, released recently), blood clotting, Bells Palsy, the list goes on and on. While we are rapidly discovering the many unknown short term side effects for some of mRNA therapy, we still have no idea of the long term SAE’s. Two questions arise.

Are these effects, both immediate and long term, the result of the mRNA based delivery or the actual spike protein generated by the treatment. Only time and honest research will answer this question satisfactorily and it is one that must be put to bed as new flu shots, cancer treatments and more are rolled out on the back of mRNA technology. All regard for long term, established safety protocols have been thrown out the window.

Unintended consequences and the complex interactions of cellular based medicines on an organism as complex as the human body cannot be calculated, accounted for or anticipated, at least not yet. We have gaps in our knowledge on a biological level and only a minimal understanding of the toys we are tinkering with. if we have no qualms enforcing this on pregnant women, that in itself should give us pause for thought.

The risks for cancer patients in remission is another topic of debate, after recent reports that mRNA has triggered latent cancer cells to resume growth.

What we are discovering about mRNA Covid Therapies, post treatment

A recent study from Cleveland Clinic highlighted a fear that has been raised by a few medical outliers who chose to speak out against the “vaccination regimen” at risk of professional ridicule. Focusing on the bivalent vaccine, it reported a worrying trend. With every successive booster, the patients risk of contracting Covid actually increased.

The risk of COVID-19 varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19 (graph below)

You can view the full results of the Cleveland Clinic study by following this link. Now while there may be certain problems with this study pertaining to their cohort, their findings are substantiated by findings from two other studies.

Breasts Cancers seem to be on the upswing. Evidence continues to emerge about axillary lymphadenopathy following COVID-19 vaccination and it is now a recommendation that women undergo a breast screening, post vaccination. It is known that the Pfizer vaccine can cause swelling of lymph nodes, often suggestive of breast cancer. However, any enlargement of lymph nodes can potentially indicate cancer, so this symptom should not be ignored.

This creates an ideal environment for misdiagnosis. Ensure your doctors and health providers know you’ve been recently vaccinated, but make sure you a properly screened and that the swellings are not merely dismissed out of hand because of your recent vaccination.

People with gastrointestinal conditions (GI) should be carefully monitored after vaccination for Covid 19, according to a paper published on PubMed entitled Gastrointestinal Complications of COVID-19 Vaccines. Their patient experienced post-vaccination acute diverticulitis and colon micro-perforation following a Moderna booster dose.

Sperm motility in men should be monitored in patients who have received multiple boosters and want to start a family. There appears to be a direct correlation in the reduction of sperm motility and the number of mRNA vaccines administered to a patient. Whilst recovery takes between 10 and 14 days after a second does, research does not exist for third, fourth or fifth doses. You can read the paper, entitled Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors here.

Of course, this above mentioned list of issues is in no way comprehensive, that would require nothing short of a book, but rather is provided to highlight certain ongoing issues.

Getting to the heart of mRNA’s problems

Sudden Death and the hashtag #DiedSuddenly follow you wherever you go on Twitter and other social media platforms. Cardiac related issues experienced by healthy teenagers and young adults are on the increase and many prove fatal. These incidents are matched by the number of videos of people of all ages dropping from an apparent stroke, most performing the same macabre contortions before collapsing to a mostly unknown fate.

To exacerbate mRNA’s headaches, it is being forcibly administered to patients without their consent in hospitals where the patient undergoes surgery. Some hospitals still refuse life saving medical interventions like organ transplants if the patient is not “vaccinated”. A global spike in excess deaths, up by hundreds of percentage points in some countries over the last two years also demands an explanation and vaccines are seen as the most likely culprit.

It would seem that even if mRNA survives it’s rocky introduction to humanity with no further serious long term adverse events, its reputation will have been seriously damaged, perhaps even irreparably. A little ironic justice metered out for the damage it has inflicted on the reputation of actual vaccines.

A spate of Happy Coincidences

If you believe in them. Personally, I don’t, but actually separating fact from fiction around mRNA’s sudden meteoric rise to fame is rapidly becoming an improbable task, as the tangled web surrounding it continues to become more complex. Rather than trying to unpick it, I’ve opted for listing a few interesting, and often overlooked, facts surrounding mRNA in the last three years and earlier.

1. The National Institute for Health (NIH) and Moderna developed the Moderna vaccine in partnership, with patent rights, US Patent Application No. 62/972,886 entitled 2019-nCoV Vaccine filed in June of 2020, residing with the NIH.
2. NIH, alongside the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious disease (NAIAD) and Moderna have researched coronaviruses, like MERS and SARS, for several years, and signed a contract in December of 2019 that stated “mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates [are] developed and jointly owned” by the two parties.
3. Since 2015, the National Institute for Health (NIH) and the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious disease (NIAID), knowingly provided funding to a specific group of American scientists and their institutions and businesses to perform Gain of Function (GOF) research, despite a moratorium.
4. The publicly stated intent of these scientists, working under the auspices of Peter Daszak, Ph.D and EcoHealth Alliance, Inc was to develop a more infectious version of the coronavirus and to achieve their ends they chose a Chinese scientist working out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
5. EcoHealth Alliance is a non-profit group that has received millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funding to genetically manipulate coronaviruses with scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
6. During this period, Dr Anthony Fauci was director of NAIAD and Dr. Francis Collins director of the NIH. Jointly they controlled about 10 billion dollars of funding annually, placing them in a position to control and distort the public Covid narrative.
7. The same Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance interfered on numerous occasions with investigations into the origin of the SARS-COV2 virus, creating a narrative contrary to a manufactured laboratory origin for the virus. For those with time and intent, the full list of EcoHealth Alliance emails released under Freedom of Information, can be found here.
8. Dr Fauci, in September of 2022 and only days away from retirement, as a parting gift to EcoHealth Alliance from the NAIAD, awarded a $653,392 grant to the company to analyze “the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.” This despite the company’s failure to produce records pertaining to Wuhan and their involvement in the GOF research undertaken there on their behalf.

In closing, I have no compunctions about leaving you with my impressions of the duplicity of pharma, governments and regulatory bodies foisting unproven medical technology down our throats and sadly, there is no defense that can be raised by any of the parties involved that would excuse their actions.

Hindsight is offered in part to offer comfort to the those who are now being held accountable. It’s easy, they claim, to criticize now, after the facts. That, of course, is complete and utter nonsense. Anyone with a grain of common sense able to follow something to its logical conclusion knew months into the pandemic that we were being manipulated, cajoled, coerced and prepared for amass vaccination campaign. Everyone with an inkling of medical training knew that mRNA was a potential horror story waiting to unfold, and yet, here we are, two years later, recommending we now “get the kids”.

It is the betrayal by science, the community in general and the professionals who undertook oaths to protect their patients that is perhaps the most saddening part of the pandemic shambles. It is this betrayal that will impact medicine for generations to come. “Trust me, I’m a doctor,” the punchline to a pandemic joke coming soon to a stand-up venue near you.

Part 4 of the Covid Files. When is a vaccine not a vaccine?

The post The Covid Global Clinical Trials for mRNA. Thank You for Participating appeared first on Medika Life.

During six weeks, we will examine all the aspects surrounding the last three years and the draconian and, at times, absurd manipulation of the media to convey a narrative that, it turns out, had little to do with your health and well-being. We’ll examine the demise of critical science, which some would argue is already long gone, but the pandemic brought it home. Covid shots and tech (mRNA) will be placed under a critical microscope and the origins of the virus that brought the world to a standstill will be discussed.

Make no mistake; if you’ve been jabbed against Covid, then you’ve been coerced into participating in the largest global medical trial ever undertaken. Good science weighs risk/benefit alongside risk/risk – the risk of the disease alongside the risk of the treatment.

Medika Life stands for objective science and exchange – proper critical science undertaken with the goal of improving lives. By that, I refer to sound critical science undertaken to improve lives, science that is open to criticism and uncensored peer review. Cautious science, designed to protect and save lives – to do no harm. A path that science currently, under the duress of politics and profit, has forsaken. Sometimes, science cannot be – should not be – rushed.

Take vaccines as an example, life-saving routine treatments critical to the safety of our children and treatments we would administer with little thought to safety. During the last two years, the “labeled” Covid vaccines have damaged the credibility of what vaccines are in many people’s minds – therapies that prevent disease and its transmission. Credibility that had taken generations to build. Ironic if you consider that the Covid products were nothing more than the equivalent of the flu jab and never a vaccine.

Each article in the coming weeks will examine a range of issues based on real hard data and facts, including the validity of the treatments (vaccines), mRNA technology, lockdowns and masks, virus origins, the actual reality of Long Covid – is it the result of long-term damage from the virus, reaction to the virus combined with the vaccine or another clinical pathway. What of people who have survived the so-called “Sudden Death” syndrome and more?

Read Medika Life and enjoy access to the most comprehensive analysis of our post-Covid lives. For more than two years, Medika has questioned numerous aspects of the pandemic, including mandates and the “vaccination” of children and healthy adults.

Facts have emerged subsequently to support these views and we’d like to provide you with an authoritative range of articles to refer to that are properly referenced and contain actual facts. Our goal is to get people thinking. Questioning is not a crime. It leads to new ideas and innovations.

Here is a list of reading to look out for. The links to these pieces will be activated as they are published and you are welcome to reach out to us with questions and suggestions.

• Welcome to The Covid Rabbit Hole: A dystopian maze filled with deception and misdirection.
• The Covid Global Clinical Trials for mRNA. Thank you for Participating.
• When is a vaccine not a vaccine?
• On the Origin of Covid, with apologies to Darwin
• Covid’s Elephant in the Room
• Sudden Death, Pure Bloods, Myocarditis and more.
• Lockdowns and Mandates, Politics, Medicine and Orwell.
• The Demise of Freedom of the Press and Censorship.
• Is Long Covid a real thing?
• Learning to trust again in a post-Covid society?

The post The Covid Files: A Series Separating Pandemic Fact from Fiction appeared first on Medika Life.

Among those with the most significant risk are older Americans with chronic conditions. From the earliest stages of the pandemic until now, COVID hospitalizations have been six times higher and deaths 12 times higher for people with underlying medical (i.e., non-communicable diseases – NCDs) conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or chronic lung disease. Currently, 81% of COVID deaths occur in people over age 65. The number of deaths among people over age 65 is 97 times higher than that among people ages 18-29. It’s a dangerous situation that we can overcome if we prepare before the next pandemic wave.

COVID + Diabetes = Serious Risk

For example, consider the brutal truth about one of the deadliest comorbidities in COVID at-risk communities: diabetes.

• Diabetes disproportionately affects racial/ethnic minority populations. Compared with white adults, the risk of having a diabetes diagnosis is 77% higher among African Americans, 66% higher among Latinos/Hispanics, and 18% higher among Asian Americans
• Diabetes prevalence is approximately 17% higher in rural areas than in urban areas, with studies showing that rural adults were more likely to report a diagnosis of diabetes than urban counterparts
• Some 33% of adults aged 65 or older have pre- or Type 2 diabetes. This age group is more at risk of developing diabetes-related complications like low blood sugar, kidney failure, and heart disease than younger people.

The scale of this patient challenge is immense. Approximately 84 million adults — more than 1 in 3 Americans — have prediabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 90% of people with prediabetes do not know they have it; neither do they know that if left unchecked, it may lead to Type 2 diabetes.

Though its symptoms are subtle, prediabetes is insidious, and as with elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol, it can quickly become deadly. Add another pandemic into the mix, and we know where our subsequent waves of hospitalizations and deaths will come from: seniors, people of color, and rural Americans. We are not prepared, but if we recognize the risk and mobilize health professionals now, we will save lives later.

Further complicating our ability to address this threat is our disregard for prediabetes. For many people, prediabetes means, “Whew! I don’t have diabetes.” But prediabetes requires critical intervention and requires patients to change their behavior. Public health leaders must organize payers, patient groups, and providers – especially pharmacists and long-term care pharmacists – and that must happen before the next pandemic hits. We must get smarter and faster and not wait until the coffins pile up.

Primary Care Has A Change of Address

While this pressing public health threat becomes more urgent, our front-line defense, primary care, undergoes retreat in some cases and fundamentally changes to a retail pharmacy setting in others. These changes may presage increased access to care for some. Conversely, it could allow older patients to fall through the cracks in the face of the growing threat of non-communicable illnesses such as diabetes.

Historically, primary care providers diagnosed, treated, and engaged these consumers. Can walk-in services alleviate people’s ongoing care burden and be ready for the next pandemic?  Corporate and clinical leaders of the mega-chains and community retail pharmacies retail must rally these sites to be front-line communicators regarding non-communicable illnesses, especially prediabetes. Pharmacies are no longer just locations where you can grab a jab – an immunization, vaccine, or booster. Pharmacists will need greater input and support as we go forward and face emerging pandemics.

The ability to walk into a CVS MinuteClinic, Walgreen Health Corner, or Walmart Health for primary care is a win for access to manage pressing health needs. But will ongoing, long-term preventive care — featuring a plan for wellness care instead of sick care — be addressed at these sites? People “shop around” for medical convenience and not necessarily for provider relationships, another reason retail clinics need to be part of the preventive care solution.

Today, fewer and fewer people have a long-term family physician who tracks their needs and feels responsible for their longevity. The single-practitioner office is now being absorbed into larger practice groups and private practices are vanishing. Without the diagnostic oversight a trusted healthcare provider offers, we are missing an essential link between urgent and specialty care,  prevention and illness,  and prediabetes and diabetes.

Weathering the Storm

It is a perfect storm. Poorer diet, higher sugar intake, and increasingly sedentary lifestyle lead to prediabetes, which isn’t straightforward to diagnose and is often not taken seriously by patients. And, as we have seen, the essential player in defense against the condition — the primary care physician — is beginning to step off the stage.

To meet the challenges posed by diabetes/prediabetes epidemic, the lack of primary care patient support, and the persistent threats posed by COVID and other pandemics which will emerge, we need to consider the following actions:

1. Easy-Access Diagnostics Technologies – Retail pharmacies must ally with point-of-care and home-testing companies such as Babson Diagnostics and ixlayer. Consumers at risk must be empowered to take greater responsibility for their well-being. Give people with NCDs easily accessible tools to be full partners in preventive care.

• Find a Digital Connection – Netflix pings us about movies and TV shows that might attract our interest. Political parties use texts and email to rally the faithful. It’s time health insurance companies and the CDC find creative ways to enter the game using AI and digital health to establish closer relationships with consumers, helping people with diabetes to become aware of and purchase products to address their healthy lifestyle needs. Keeping people alive and well is a mutual interest of insurers and the CDC.
• Deputize Pharmacists:Pharmacists were always able to do much more than give shots, and now primary care nurses and assistants have found a home in retail pharmacies.  CDC and physician associations need to recognize that seniors and people with diabetes increasingly see pharmacy as a go-to for questions, easily accessible solutions, and vaccinations.  The American Pharmacists Association is raising the bar on public health resources.

• Start Talking to People: There is “no one-size fits all” effective way to communicate about COVID-19. The 65+ community faces different risks than the 15-and-under crowd.  People with diabetes and heart disease face heightened risks from COVID.  People of color are often at particular risk for these illnesses, compounded by COVID. The CDC needs to address people’s specific needs and risks better. People are tired of hearing about COVID. They are less worn out from hearing about what matters to their particular interests.

CDC is the target of many critiques right now. More than 80 years ago, British Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the New Statesman: “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”  For people in science, failure does not mean the end – it’s the rocket fuel of future success. The CDC will learn from the COVID chapter and return ready for the next viral confrontation.  Our lives depend on its success.

The post Taking On Prediabetes Could be America’s Best Defense Against COVID-19 appeared first on Medika Life.

There are many reasons for the failure to convince people to take sensible preventive measures. Still, a significant cause of COVID’s blow to the authorities’ credibility is that the time is over for the one-size-fits-all messages that characterized successful public health campaigns of the past. They have been notably ineffective at a time when anyone with an edgy opinion and a Twitter account is a tribal influencer. With just 240 characters, a naysayer can completely counter science when their audience unleashes a cascade of likes and retweets.

Stop Shadowboxing

The government, especially The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the scientific community can overcome the damage to their credibility by going small.  Focusing on specific targets and “micro-communicating,” officials and scientists can speak directly to those with the most to lose: their lives. These are the audiences with real skin in the game.

From the earliest stages of the pandemic until now, COVID hospitalizations have been six times higher and deaths 12 times higher for people with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or chronic lung disease. Currently, 81% of COVID deaths occur in people over age 65. The number of deaths among people over age 65 is 97 times higher than that among people ages 18-29.

Broad messaging now flies over most people’s heads. It’s certainly doesn’t speak to patients who are BIPOC, seniors and rural Americans, patients who are struggling the most to access this nation’s health system and who are also the most at risk during viral fall-out. Their lives are on the line as we learn from communication missteps and prepare for the next pandemic.

For example, consider the brutal truth about one of the deadliest comorbidities in the COVID at-risk community: people with diabetes.

• Diabetes disproportionately affects racial/ethnic minority populations. Compared with white adults, the risk of having a diabetes diagnosis is 77% higher among African Americans, 66% higher among Latinos/Hispanics, and 18% higher among Asian Americans
• Diabetes prevalence is approximately 17% higher in rural areas than in urban areas, with studies showing that rural adults were more likely to report a diagnosis of diabetes than urban counterparts
• Some 33% of adults aged 65 or older have prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes. This age group is more at risk of developing diabetes-related complications like low blood sugar, kidney failure, and heart disease than younger people.

The CDC and other players must aggressively engage in conversations with these most vulnerable audiences. They must learn to target their messages and hone their digital marketing savvy to reach them and the patient coalitions that tap into other groups’ grassroots reach.

Part of the Problem is that Primary Care May Have Thrown in the Towel

The pressing public health threat of COVID took place just as our front-line medical defense force — primary care —was in retreat. Primary care is morphing before our eyes into a pharmacy convenience-store service plug-in. And while the ability to walk into a CVS MinuteClinic, Walgreen DR Walk-In, or Walmart Care Clinic for primary care is in many cases a win for access to care, it presents a challenge for communicators.

Today, fewer and fewer people have a long-term family physician who tracks their needs and feels responsible for their longevity. The single-practitioner office is now being absorbed into larger practice groups and private practices are vanishing. Without that relationship with a trusted healthcare provider, patients are missing out on the immediacy of personalized advice.

The CDC and other public health authorities must consider that a key communications ally has changed locations, and the forwarding address might be community-based retail pharmacies.

Communicators Need to Change their Game to Win in this Ring

A learned medical advisor — whether an in-person physician advocate or one powered by smart technology — who knows our name and what’s happening with us over time still matters. It is the best defense against diabetes and other chronic conditions and the threat posed by deadly viruses when coupled with those preexisting conditions. Even in the changing medical landscape still struggling to overcome COVID-19 and the unresolved challenges of racism that result in illness and death, there must always be a place for that relationship. Otherwise, the ticking time bomb of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions will morph into an overwhelming public health crisis when the next pandemic hits.

CDC must now think smarter and partner with major patient-centered not-for-profit groups such as the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, and American Heart Association so that they can take on the primary conversation role with their communities. 

And they must forge even stronger ties with the retail community and long-term care senior pharmacy networks to fill the communications role once played by family physicians, a vital link in conveying the importance of information on public health imperatives, especially those related to combatting viral epidemics.

Down But Not Out – CDC Knows the Ropes

CDC must use the time we have now to train for the next round. Unfortunately, there will be another fight against a viral opponent soon enough, though we can’t predict when. But like any determined fighter would, our public health players must head train and spar with proven communication players to perfect how and to whom they communicate their scientific data and life-saving guidance. What’s at stake is a world title for our survival.

The post CDC Lost Round One – But the Public Health Match Continues appeared first on Medika Life.

The Omicron variant is circling the globe already. Almost as soon as it was announced governments enacted international bans on travel to try and curb the spread. This makes little sense as previous attempts to contain and or eliminate the virus have been abject failures, and there is even less willpower to carry on with these types of measures now that vaccines are here and widely available.

The past two years have heard an almost constant refrain of “follow the science” and we’ll get out of this, but where is the science on banning travel?

The WHO is clearly against closing borders based on the available evidence.

Travel bans at this stage of the pandemic, where there is vast inequity of vaccine availability from rich to poor countries, little appetite for restrictions in much of the developed world where vaccine access is ubiquitous, and research showing massive disruption to lives and livelihood caused by travel bans (with little or no benefit in reducing the spread of the virus) just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Unless you’re a politician.

If you’re a politician in the West signing off on travel bans, you are a BOLD person of ACTION. Taking the hard but necessary steps to keep your constituents safe by banning travel from scary places.

More bullshit safety theater to make the West feel good while imposing do-nothing restrictions that will crush the lives and livelihoods of people half a world away we’re too cheap and short-sighted to offer meaningful help. Like actually getting shots in arms in Africa instead of coddling ourselves with booster shots.

The things that work to limit the spread remain unchanged:

1. Wash your hands
2. Wear a mask indoors (fit it properly over nose and mouth)
3. Social distancing

The post Why Are We Still Doing Travel Bans? appeared first on Medika Life.

For many, it is not only a celebration of our nation’s independence, but it is also a celebration of independence from COVID. All across the country, so many are acting like the pandemic is over. In fact, nearly one-third of Americans think the pandemic is over, according to a recent Gallup poll. During a recent trip to Tennessee, my hotel had open buffet breakfast once again. Again, what a difference a year makes.

The thing is this: the virus is not done with us. There continue to be hotspots all across the country, most notably in Missouri, where the Delta variant has caused a dramatic uptick in cases.

Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told CNN’s Don Lemon:

When you have such a low level of vaccination superimposed upon a variant that has a high degree of efficiency of spread, what you’re going to see among under-vaccinated regions — be they states, cities or counties — you’re going to see these individual types of blips. It’s almost like it’s going to be two Americas. You’re going to have areas where the vaccine rate is high, where there’s more than 70% of the population has received at least one dose. When you compare that with areas where you might have 35% of the people vaccinated, you clearly have a high risk of seeing these spikes in those selected areas.

And that’s what we are seeing.

Truly, the only way we can truly gain independence from this virus is to get vaccinated. It is as simple as that. The vaccines are extremely safe, and they are extremely effective. I have taken the vaccine myself (the Pfizer mRNA vaccine), and I vaccinated every member of my familiy that was eligible. In my hospital, we have neglible numbers of COVID patients, because a substantial proportion of our local population has been vaccinated. And, of those patients who did end up needing hospitalization for COVID, 98% of them were unvaccinated. Vaccination works.

We need to get over this pandemic. We are all tired, especially those of us on the front lines. To a person, everyone whom I ask answers the same: we are not mentally equipped for another surge of COVID. We will break. My heart bleeds for my colleagues across the country who are dealing with local surges of COVID. Please.

Get the vaccine. It is the only way out of this pandemic. And it is the only way we can finally be free and independent from this virus.

The post Independence From COVID Will Only Come With Vaccination appeared first on Medika Life.