Saturday, April 30, 2022

How the Board smeared me without being subject to libel/ Miami Herald Feb 8, 2022

Excerpted from the Miami Herald/syndicated story, the phraseology is intended to leave the impression I "am or may be" a substance abuser.

“The information received by the Board demonstrates that Dr. Nass is or may be unable to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to her patients by reason of mental illness, alcohol intemperance, excessive use of drugs, narcotics, or as a result of a mental or physical condition interfering with the competent practice of medicine,” the evaluation order states. 

The complaints against Nass include how the board was told she engaged in “public dissemination of ‘misinformation’” about COVID-19 and vaccinations “via a video interview and on her website,” the board said about the October 26, 2021 complaint. It lists several comments Nass made that were subject to the board’s investigation. Roughly 10 days later, the board got another complaint about Nass “spreading COVID and COVID vaccination misinformation on Twitter,” it said. 

Nass called “disinformation and misinformation” a “fuzzy concept” that the board hasn’t defined for her, she said. “There’s no law that says doctors can’t express their educated opinion on any subject.” Other grounds for her suspension include how Nass treated COVID-19 patients with Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, according to the board. The board noted that Ivermectin isn’t Food and Drug Administration “authorized or approved” as a treatment for COVID-19 in the suspension order.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article257335847.html#storylink=cpy

FDA Approved Remdesivir for 28 day old babies. What you need to know about this drug.

Remdesivir is an IV drug.  Therefore, for the past 2 years it was almost exclusively used in hospitalized patients, not outpatients.

Royalties go to Gilead, but a portion go the the NIAID, Tony Fauci’s agency and US Army, which assisted with its development. I originally omitted the fact (appreciate the reminder) that Ralph Baric, UNC professor and the US' premier coronavirus scientist, is not only a creator of ACE-2 humanized mice and chimeric SARS coronaviruses.  He is also an inventor of Remdesivir and worked with the Moderna COVID vaccine beginning in December 2019 through NIAID, even before anyone knew there would be a pandemic.  

Nearly everyone who is hospitalized in the US with COVID receives Remdesivir, because

a) hospitals get a financial bonus from the government for using it, and

b) it is the top treatment recommended by the NIH Guidelines

The Guidelines were created by a group that originally had 16 members with current or past financial ties to Gilead.  The members of the guidelines group were handpicked by the 3 co-chairs. Clifford Lane, one of the co-chairs, is a Fauci deputy. 

Remdesivir received an early EUA (May 1, 2020) and then a very early license (October 22, 2020) despite a paucity of evidence that it actually was helpful in the hospital setting.  A variety of problems can arise secondary its use, including liver inflammation, renal insufficiency and renal failure.  Here is a list of articles revealing its kidney toxicity:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33340409/

WHO recommended against the drug on November 20, 2020.  

Few if any other countries used it for COVID apart from the US.  A large European trial in adults found no benefit.  The investigators felt 3 deaths were due to remdesivir (0.7% of subjects who received it.)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00485-0/fulltext


However, on April 22, 2022 the WHO recommended the drug for a new use: early outpatient therapy in patients at high risk of a poor COVID outcome:

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-recommends-against-the-use-of-remdesivir-in-covid-19-patients


Monoclonal antibodies are only effective at the beginning of illness, as they fight the virus.  After about ten days, there is no more live virus and then a later phase of the disease occurs, due to an overactive immune response.  Antiviral drugs do not work during the second stage, but immune modulators do. Steroids and ivermectin are effective therapies at this stage.

Outpatient infusion centers were set up to provide monoclonal antibodies to patients at the start of COVID to those who were at high risk of a bad outcome.  But now the centers are shuttered as none of them work against current COVID variants.  Outpatient infusions will now be available for remdesivir, which is an antiviral drug, as a replacement.

So a new way to use remdesivir has been developed:  early, when it might actually work.  WHO says it does.  Was WHO bought off or will it actually have a positive impact?  Who knows yet?

The vast majority of COVID patients are not hospitalized until they are in the second stage of illness, which is when remdesivir, HCQ and other antivirals are not very effective, since there is no more live virus.  (HCQ has some immunomodulatory actions which may explain its mild benefit at this late stage.)

The US government, which has made a series of ineffective and harmful recommendations regarding the response to COVID, has just added another harmful recommendation to the list.

The FDA just licensed Remdesivir for children as young as one month old. Both hospitalized children and outpatients may receive it.  The drug might work in outpatients, but the vast majority of children have a very low risk of dying from COVID. If 7 deaths per thousand result from the drug, as the European investigators thought in the study of adults cited above, it is possible it will harm or kill more children than it saves.

Shouldn’t the FDA have waited longer to see what early outpatient treatment did for older ages?  Or studied a much larger group of children? Very little has been published on children and remdesivir.  FDA said very little about the approval.

When we look at the press release issued by Gilead, we learn the approval was based on an open label, single arm trial in 53 children, 3 of whom died (6% of these children died).  72% had an adverse event, and 21% had a serious adverse event. 

https://investors.gilead.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vekluryr-remdesivir-first-and-only-approved-treatment-pediatric

I heard that some nurses refer to the drug as "Run, death is near."  

Based on the paucity of information FDA released with its Remdesivir approval, it appears that FDA knows very little about the drug’s benefit in children, and our children will be the guinea pigs.  If we let them.

Friday, April 29, 2022

The scientist who ushered Pfizer's COVID vaccines through the regulatory process is retiring. Announced today.

This follows the loss of the CFO's of Moderna and Pfizer (there replacements were both announced in April) and the loss late in 2021 of two of FDA's top vaccine regulators, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause.

Kathrin Jansen
Kathrin Jansen (Pfizer)

Kathrin Jansen, the leader of Pfizer's vaccine R&D group, has decided to retire, the company's Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten said in a LinkedIn post. The company plans to conduct a search for her replacement and will name a successor afterward, he said.

There are so many song titles these stories bring to mind.

Take the Money and Run

The Times They Are A Changin'

and, while not a propos to Ms. Jansen's situation, it is a jingle that goes through my head often:  Won't Get Fooled Again

Yesterday, I felt really honored when 3 major alternative media reprinted my article on the same day! Here is what I have been up to.

Dr. Mercola, Patrick Wood's Technocracy News and the Epoch Times all republished my article on the same day!  This one:

COVID persists, but the COVID vaccine narrative has taken on so much water, the powers that be have stopped bailing, and are going to let these vaccines slowly sink. But what do they have in store for us next?

It has over 40,000 reads on Substack.  Google tells me it has only 895 views on this site, but I am not sure I believe them.  

To let you know what else I have been up to, I am on CHD TV every Friday on its Roundtable at 2:30pm EDT.  I also pop up on other CHD shows from time to time.

Last week I spoke at a Freedom rally in Augusta, Maine.  

I will be a speaker at the Scandinavian Freedom's Northern Light conference the weekend of May 13 in Malmo, Sweden.  I just found out tonight that you can attend online.  However I will be there in person.

I was on Dan Astin-Gregory's podcast the other day. I went into great detail regarding the failures of drug/vaccine regulation and why they occur, which you may find of interest.  I suggested ways to improve things in future. I also veered off into the food supply, education, and how people are coming together to improve things, locally.

My Medical Board hearing has been scheduled for September.

First the Medical Board, now Twitter throws their worst punishment at me--both did it because I corrected mis/disinformation

I thought all you could lose was your followers.  I had 15,000 followers.  But I also lost everyone I was following.  Guess I am done with the little bird for good--it will take too much time to recover everyone I followed.

No wonder everyone I read is moving to Substack, where so far there is no censorship.  A platform that allows free speech!  Why do we let it slide that so many others don't?

No wonder the system let Elon buy Twitter before it lost all its value.  No wonder @Jack was just fine with the deal.  Now censorship is one thing, but losing billions is something else again, right @Jack?

But I am okay with this.  Like @Jack, I believe in Karma.  What goes around comes around.  I don't need to punish anyone.  Karma will take care of it for me.  Meditate on what is coming, Mr. Dorsey.


Wednesday, April 27, 2022

The Telegraph discusses the Denmark announcement: suspending vaccinations

Excerpts from the Telegraph below.  The last sentence is the important one.  It is an admision that the masks, the distancing and the vaccines don't work. Denmark actually scrapped its other restrictions on February 1, but now it is scrapping vaccinations too, at least until the fall.

Denmark becomes first country to suspend Covid vaccinations as virus is brought under control

The government will no longer issue vaccination invitations after May 15 – although a booster programme may resume later in the year 
...Tyra Grove Krause, director of infection preparedness at Denmark’s infectious diseases agency SSI, had previously dismissed the effect of even severe restrictions.

The country had lifted its social restrictions in September 2021 before a wave of Omicron infections swept over it two months later, forcing its museums, cinemas, theatres, and concert venues to close ahead of Christmas. 

The government intensified its immunisation campaign as a result, but by February had resolved to lift restrictions again.

Experts supported the government’s decision, saying overwhelmed hospitals trumped personal health as a concern for Danes.

“With omicron, it is impossible to stop the spread of infection,” Grove Krause said.


Denmark suspends national Covid-19 vaccination programme till fall, and then what? / The Local

covid vaccination in denmark

A Danish health worker prepares a Covid-19 vaccination in Aalborg in January 2021. The country suspended its general Covid vaccination programme on April 26th 2022. Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position.”

“Therefore we are winding down the mass vaccination program against Covid-19,” said Bolette Søborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases.

Around 81 percent of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6 percent have also received a booster.

While invitations for vaccinations would no longer be issued after May 15th, health officials anticipate that vaccinations would resume after the summer.

“We plan to reopen the vaccination programme in the autumn. This will be preceded by a thorough professional assessment of who and when to vaccinate and with which vaccines,” Søborg said.  As a wave of the Omicron variant hit the country last November, Denmark intensified its immunisation campaign, accelerating access to booster shots and offering a fourth dose from mid-January to the most vulnerable.

Fauci: US 'out of the pandemic phase'/ Beckers Hospital Review

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/fauci-us-out-of-the-pandemic-phase.html

"We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase," Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a televised interview April 26. 

The nation's top infectious disease expert made the statement on PBS' NewsHour in response to host Judy Woodruff's question on how close the U.S. is to moving out of COVID-19's pandemic stage.

"We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase," Dr. Fauci responded. "Namely, we don't have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.

"So, if you're saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country, we are. What we hope to do, I don't believe — and I have spoken about this widely — we're not going to eradicate this virus. If we can keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people — and I don't know how often that would have to be, Judy.

"That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low. But, right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country. Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world, infection that spreads rapidly among people."

Dr. Fauci's remarks coincided with those from Ashish Jha, MD, the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator, on April 26. In his first appearance at a White House news briefing since he assumed the role, Dr. Jha said the relatively low number of new deaths — around 300 a day — was "still too high," but noted hospitalizations are at their lowest point in the pandemic. Those figures amid rising COVID-19 case counts suggested a promising turning point, he said.

Dr. Jha also said that ensuring no one in America gets COVID-19 is not the goal.

"That's not even a policy goal," he said. "The goal of our policy should be: obviously minimize infections whenever possible, but to make sure people don't get seriously ill."

Read transcripts featuring remarks in full from Dr. Fauci here and from Dr. Jha here

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Thanks Elon! Locked and suspended Twitter account for telling the truth

My main account is @NassMeryl, which is blocked.  It has not gotten any additional followers for weeks, with the dial stopped at 14.9 thousand.  This account was locked yesterday as I disagreed with a paid ad for vaccinating children fom DHHS.

60% of US has now been infected (and 3/4 of all children) /Stat; 70% of England has been infected according to the ONS.

Nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with Omicron or another coronavirus variant, data released Tuesday show.

The new findings, which go through February 2022, highlight just how widely the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the country. On Tuesday, the virus even reached into the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris reporting that she had tested positive. She has shown no symptoms, a spokesperson said, and would work outside the White House, at her official residence, until she tested negative.

Before the Omicron variant took off in the United States in December, the portion of the population that had been infected was about 1 in 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The updated figures come from a study that has been measuring the so-called seroprevalence of the coronavirus at various points throughout the pandemic. The study relies on testing blood samples from participants for particular antibodies that are generated only by an infection; they are different from the antibodies that Covid-19 vaccines elicit. This is the first time that the population seroprevalence is over 50%.

“We do believe there is a lot of protection in the community both from vaccination as well as from boosting and from prior infection,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a call with reporters. “That said, we cannot underscore enough, those who have detectable antibodies from infection, we still encourage them to get vaccinated.”

Walensky said cases and hospitalizations were trending upward in upstate New York and the Northeast. But hospitalizations haven’t increased as much as in previous waves, she said, and the need for oxygen or ICU admission has also been lower, all of which she attributed to a larger amount or protection in the larger community, both from disease and from vaccination.

In counties that do have high levels of Covid-19, she said, the CDC recommends people wear masks in public indoor settings to avoid infection and to spare the health system from further strain. Asked about masks on public transportation, she repeated the CDC’s recommendation that people still wear masks on planes, trains, buses, and subways, and the agency’s “disappointment” at a Florida judge’s ruling last week that overturned a national mandate to wear them.

These “sero-surveys” can help provide better estimates for the percentage of the population that has contracted the virus. Official infection numbers are always going to be an undercount, for several reasons. Some people don’t have any symptoms or have such mild cases they never seek testing; these types of infections only became more common as people got vaccinated. Increasingly, people have relied on at-home tests, which do not get tallied in official counts. Some people also do not have easy access to testing.

“We know that the reported cases are just the tip of the iceberg,” Kristie Clarke, co-lead for CDC’s Covid-19 Epidemiology & Surveillance Taskforce Seroprevalence Team, said on the press call. Research to be published soon estimates there are three infections for every reported case, especially during periods like the Omicron surge.

The researchers found vast differences in cumulative infection rates by age group, with rates decreasing among older groups. From December 2021 to February 2022, the seroprevalence among children 11 and younger increased from 44.2% to 75.2%. It grew from 45.6% to 74.2% among those ages 12 to 17.

Among adults 18 to 49, seroprevalence increased from 36.5% to 63.7% over the time period, and from 28.8% to 49.8% among people 50 to 64. Among people 65 and older, seroprevalence rose from 19.1% to 33.2%.

The varying rates reflect how much contact people in different age groups have with others, as well as the continued precautions older people are taking against Covid-19.

The data do not include seroprevalence by race and ethnicity.

For children too young to be vaccinated, “the best way to protect them is to make sure that they are surrounded by people who are taking preventive measures, like staying up to date with their vaccines,” Clarke said. And for children who have had Covid and are 5 or older, “as a pediatrician and a parent, I would absolutely continue to endorse that the children get vaccinated even if they have been previously infected.”

The research team cautioned that the updated findings might in fact also underestimate the total number of SARS-2 infections, in part because infections that happen after vaccination — what are called breakthrough infections — might generate low levels of the antibodies the tests look for.

The high level of population immunity in the United States should help the country better weather future infection waves. While people who’ve been infected or vaccinated can get Covid-19 — particularly if they are months out from their last case or shot, and as the virus keeps evolving — they probably still have protection against severe outcomes.

CDC officials emphasized that compared to infection, vaccination provides a much safer way to build protection against Covid-19. They recommend that even people who have been infected get vaccinated.

Clarke also warned people not to rely on immunity after infection.

“Having infection-induced antibodies does not necessarily mean you are protected against future infection,” she said. “We still do not know how long infection-induced immunity will last, and we cannot know from the study again whether all the people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies continue to have protection from their prior infection.”

Booster Fatigue

 From Jennifer Margulis' Substack

Booster Fatigue

They're right, we're tired

“I’m very concerned about booster fatigue,” Dr. Beth Bell, a clinical professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, told a reporter at the Associated Press this week. 

Dr. Bell, who’s also an adviser to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is worried that the mixed messaging from the CDC and the need for another COVID shot every four to six months may undermine public confidence in the vaccine program.

At the same time, the Associated Press reports, Moderna and Pfizer are testing combination vaccines, and they hope to offer a two-in-one COVID vaccine to the public this fall.

Me, I love mixed messages! 

I think it makes perfect sense to say that something works really well but it doesn’t! That the recipe has made such truly delicious and nutritious food but we’ve also got to change it!

COVID vaccines don’t stop the spread

According to a recent peer-reviewed study in the British Medical Journal: “Vaccination was associated with a smaller reduction in transmission of the delta variant than of the alpha variant, and the effects of vaccination decreased over time.”

According to an article in The Lancet by Carlos Franco-Paredes, M.D., who works in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Center: “…the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people.”

It’s just so crystal clear when we’re told we’re protected but we’re not.

Don’t you agree?

Stat helps lay the ground for the end of the mRNA COVID shots

 I was unable to obliterate the embedded ads below (although my methods had appeared to work, the ads came back) so I have shortened this.  The gist of the article is that the PTB are getting us ready for the demise of the vaccines.  When they get Paul Offit to speak against boosters you know the tide has turned.--Meryl

Experts fear U.S. may default to annual Covid boosters without sufficient data

Anumber of vaccine experts are concerned the United States may be sleepwalking into a policy of recommending annual Covid-19 vaccine boosters — without having generated the evidence to show they are actually needed.

Already, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized second boosters — or fourth doses — for people aged 50 and older, even though neither that agency nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has explicitly urged people to get them. Based on recent meetings of panels that advise the FDA and the CDC, many vaccine experts assume another booster will be recommended in the fall in anticipation of a possible surge in Covid activity during the cold and flu season next winter.

Meanwhile, several vaccine manufacturers have said annual boosters will be needed and are working on combined flu and Covid vaccines that could be deployed every autumn.

The developments have some experts warning that the U.S. may be headed toward a policy of annual boosters as a sort of default position, not one arrived at by careful scrutiny of the evidence on how well vaccine protection is holding up...

Sunday, April 24, 2022

As with Covid treatment, the intolerance of different views risks stifling scientific advances/ WSJ

 

  • OPINION 
  •  COMMENTARY
  • California’s Medical ‘Misinformation’ Crusade Could Cost Lives

    As with Covid treatment, the intolerance of different views risks stifling scientific advances.


    A medical transporter moves a patient into a Covid-19 unit at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., February 2021.

    PHOTO: JAE C. HONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Early in the pandemic, Covid patients with very low oxygen levels were put on ventilators, the standard of care for severe respiratory diseases. But some doctors noticed that severely ill patients responded better to noninvasive ventilation such as high-flow nasal tubes. They shared their findings with other physicians, and gentler oxygen support became the norm. That change in treatment has saved tens of thousands of lives.

    OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
    WSJ Opinion Potomac WatchJoe Biden's Airplane Mask Mandate Doesn't Fly

    But it would have been illegal under a new bill that Democratic lawmakers have proposed in California. The legislation would require the state Medical Board to take action against doctors found to be spreading “misinformation” related to the “nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”

    What is “misinformation”? It’s not clearly defined, but the bill would instruct the board to consider whether a doctor’s order or opinion deviates from the “standard of care” (i.e., recommendations by government bodies or treatments that are widely used by healthcare practitioners) and is “contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus.”

    So doctors who prescribe or recommend treatments that haven’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for Covid-19—for example, the antidepressant fluvoxamine, which has shown strong results in trials—could be disciplined and even lose their medical licenses no matter if they have scientific evidence to support them. Same for doctors who disagree with masking and vaccines for children.

    “The bill would put physicians’ licenses at risk if they say the vaccines are anything other than safe and effective,” says Teryn Clarke, a neurologist in Newport Beach, Calif. “But all medicines and medical procedures carry a risk of adverse events, and patients deserve to know what those potential risks are.”

    Much of what was learned early in the pandemic was from doctors sharing their clinical experiences and knowledge. Patients receiving oxygen did better when placed in a prone position, for instance, and the steroid dexamethasone could tamp down the “cytokine storm” in severely ill patients. Early in the pandemic some doctors hypothesized that the virus could spread through aerosols, and therefore 6 feet of distance wouldn’t necessarily prevent infection. This outlier view could have been deemed misinformation under California’s law. It is now conventional wisdom.

    California’s bill would punish doctors for discussing disfavored ideas, making it almost certainly unconstitutional. Some liberal public-health experts say that makes the Constitution the problem. “Vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic underscores how reverence for freedom of speech in the US intensifies our vulnerability to public health threats,” Stanford’s Michelle Mello recently wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    Ms. Mello laments “the Supreme Court’s attachment to a particular conception of free speech rights,” which limits the government’s ability to impose speech restrictions. She suggests that state medical boards can “suspend the licenses of physicians whose statements constitute unprofessional conduct,” which could include “misinformation” as they define it.

    A couple of doctors in a recent JAMA commentary float some First Amendment workarounds. They say it may be constitutional merely to “threaten disciplinary action by licensing boards against health professionals whose speech to patients conveys incorrect science or substandard medicine.”

    That’s essentially what Illinois is doing. The state’s Department of Financial and Professional Regulation warned in November that doctors could face disciplinary action for failing to “conform with evidence-based medicine and standards of care” when treating Covid patients. It also encouraged doctors to report their peers for “misinformation.”

    The Federation of State Medical Boards last summer warned that physicians who spread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine risk “disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.” So doctors in other states could also be disciplined for, say, suggesting children don’t need to be vaccinated.

    The intolerance of different viewpoints that is infecting the medical profession may itself be a public-health threat. Emails obtained by the American Institute for Economic Research showed how the National Institutes of Health’s Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci tried to discredit the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed the lockdown consensus. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” Dr. Collins told the Washington Post. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.”

    What’s actually dangerous is silencing debate on critical public-health issues. Mainstream science is often wrong, as vaccine expert Paul Offit explains in his book “Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far.” Dr. Offit details how many conventional medical recommendations, like finishing a course of antibiotics or giving Tylenol to reduce a child’s fever, aren’t supported by science and can do more harm than good. Many recommendations have changed over time as scientists learn more and do more studies.

    As Dr. Clarke says: “Dissent and discussion are intrinsic to the evolution of scientific and medical knowledge. To limit that will certainly hamper our progress in understanding and combating this virus.”

    Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.