The Approaching Storm

The Worst Consequences of COVID-19 May be Yet to Come

The ominous seeds planted during the days of COVID-19 continue to germinate and blossom. I fear the worst of the crop has yet to even break the surface, but we need to be prepared to deal with it.

One tragic consequence is already undeniably here. A July 31, 2024 article in JAMA outlined the catastrophic loss of confidence in physicians and hospitals since April of 2020. Trust fell from 71.5% to 40.1%! That is far from the only, or even the most troubling, article.

A January 2023 review article in The Milbank Quarterly investigated 50 years of trust in the healthcare institutions and actors. In a combined model of review of published papers and targeted interviews, the authors surveyed the state of trust in the healthcare institutions and professionals by patients as well as the professionals themselves. As the endpoint was at the very start of the COVID-19 Disaster, it gives an insight into a situation in which trust was recognized as a critical component but was already a concern at that time.

Interestingly enough, the July 2024 article makes the association between decline of trust and the introduction of the mRNA COVID agents. Those who had the most distrust of physicians also had the most distrust of these agents. Which came first?The authors also state those with more distrust of both were more likely to be rural, have less education, be non-white and female and live in Red States. Sense a bias here?

The authors place the blame on the usual trope of “misinformation”. To support this, they reference two articles, one on “misinformation” in social media and another (a JAMA article, by the way) on “misinformation” from 52 physicians. What was this “misinformation” from those physicians? Well, they spell it out:

Major themes identified included (1) disputing vaccine safety and effectiveness, (2) promoting medical treatments lacking scientific evidence and/or US Food and Drug Administration approval, (3) disputing mask-wearing effectiveness, and (4) other (unsubstantiated claims, eg, virus origin, government lies, and other conspiracy theories).

Have the claims of “vaccine safety and effectiveness” changed from what was originally stated (“Get the jab and you won’t get COVID!” “An epidemic of the unvaccinated!”)? Of course they have changed! Have other treatments, even simple treatments such as increasing Vitamin D levels and nasal lavage with povidone, been shown to be effective? Do any of you personally know people who, once they were allowed access to Ivermectin, recovered from COVID? I do! Some were in my own family!

Have other studies shown that the types of masks touted were completely ineffective? YES! How about the origin of the virus? Does anybody say with certainty it came from animals in the “wet market”? Well, not the FBI or CIA! Has the government lied to you about anything to do with COVID? One only has to look at the emails of David Morens, Fauci’s deputy, and Francis Collins, his boss, to wonder!

It does indeed seem as though the differences between “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory” and truth are about 6 months….

Perhaps the public now has access to REAL information and is concerned about what they have found. Perhaps the revelation of the millions of dollars directed to the Wuhan lab though the USAID program caused a bit of concern.

Even before COVID, the Public Relations Firm used by the American Board of Internal Medicine (“ABIM”, the same organization that “decertified” physicians critical of their stance on COVID) had ties with some interesting organizations. Fast forward to the “COVID Time”. The ABIM reportedly used Weber Shandwick, the same firm as Pfizer and Moderna. Does that seem problematic?

In short, an alternative to blaming the mistrust of physicians and medicine on “misinformation” just could be the fact that they are indeed untrustworthy…. To remedy the situation two things are necessary:

· Stop lying.

· Admit to, and atone for, the past lies.

This is not just conjecture. We have a glaring example of what happened when medicine served the state and not the patient within the living memory of at least some people, and in the corpus of academic study for the rest of us. There are two streams of thought on how to use that example. I am, of course, talking about what happened to German and Austrian Medicine in the 1930’s and 1940’s, what those countries and people did to extricate themselves from a similar complete loss of trust and how successful they were in the effort.

One camp states there is absolutely no similarity and to even suggest it is somehow unethical and unjust. The other takes the opposite view and states that not to learn from the experience dishonors the past victims. Both these hyperlinks will bring you to sites where the actual sources can be downloaded at no cost. I strongly urge you to do this! The essays are long but filled with important observations. It is important that you make up your own mind and not take my word for it.

My own view definitely is with the camp that shows the similarity, but my personal biases are impossible to avoid. Members of my own extended family were murdered in a death camp in the 1940’s. I studied in Vienna, still love the city and our friends there. I have seen the effects of trying to come to grips, individually and corporately, of such evil times. I have also seen the risks when such evil is not addressed, as the next generation of my extended family in the Dalmatian coast of the former Yugoslavia suffered the same hatred, violence and murder.

On balance, German and Austrian medicine only fully recovered when that generation of physicians died. Hopefully, we will be spared that ordeal. As it stands, many people, including myself, have misgivings about organized medicine, academic medicine and even the ethics of some physicians as individuals. Unfortunately, those misgivings are not limited to COVID. Everything in medicine seems to be captured by politics or in the service of Big Pharma. And they are not my politics or view of Big Pharma.

With the new administration we may be able to end the revolving door between official regulators and the industry they regulate. This individual is not the only such individual, just the latest in a long line. We can question why, when other countries age restrict the delivery of mRNA agents or otherwise limit the recommendation of their use, our own FDA recommends EVERYONE 6 months or older receive these agents.

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. The amount of money spent on such advertising is staggering. It is more than a BILLION dollars a month! The companies must be making much more than that to justify the expenditure. Even more disturbing is the affect of such sums of money on the objectivity of the news reports from the organizations that receive the money.

Last night, I watched multiple ads on the Fox News Channel for Fanapt®, a drug for Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. One of the precautions, stated sort of matter-of-factly, was a risk for “heart rhythm problems”:

• Fanapt® may change your heart rhythm (meaning there is more time between heartbeats). Heart rhythm changes have occurred in patients taking Fanapt® and are a risk factor for serious, even life-threatening medical issues. You should tell your healthcare provider if you have or have had heart problems. Contact your healthcare provider right away if you feel faint or have unpleasant feelings of irregular or forceful heartbeats as any of these feelings could be a sign of a rare, but serious side effect that could be fatal. You should not use Fanapt® with other drugs that are known to cause these same heart rhythm issues.

This “heart rhythm problem” is torsade de pointes (it sounds so much more ominous when the French is used). Remarkably, this is the SAME “heart rhythm problem” that some medical sources used to discourage hydroxychloroquine as a dangerous drug when used to treat COVID.

Even though hydroxychloroquine has been given over a billion times in the last 60 years and in doses much higher than recommended for COVID, it was NOT included in the list of the top 20 drugs to cause this published in 2003! I would wager that none of the readers of this essay, even the physicians, would have guessed that Erythromycin made the list (albeit in a small number related to total number of doses).

Could it be that if hydroxychloroquine had been accepted as a treatment, the Emergency Use Authorizations for the mRNA agents would have been in jeopardy? In a word, yes.

I realize the public may find it hard to believe that ulterior motives could be at play in the publication of medical information. I originally did too. A hint of suspicion arose with the publication by Baffy, et al, (slightly pre-COVID) of possible conflicts of interest in the medical publishing field. For me, all doubts were removed by the conduct of medical publishers in the months following. One of my own publications suffered a series of rejections from multiple journals on somewhat vague grounds until it ultimately was published.

Sixty percent of English language journal articles are published by members of the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (IASTMP)This includes the majority of the most influential publishers of medical journals. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) was formed in 1997 to “promote integrity in scholarly research and its publication”. In 2017, the Code of Conduct for Editors was replaced with Core Practices. The reason is explained on their website:

• COPE reviewed the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Editors and consolidated them into one, much shorter, document entitled ‘Core Practices’. The choice of the name is deliberate. The phrase “Code of Conduct” was misinterpreted as being quasi legal, which is inappropriate given COPE’s role as a membership organisation with no statutory or regulatory powers. COPE’s intention is to advise on what the expectations are of core practices for all journals, editors and publishers to work towards, with the aim of building a set of professional practices, not just for members of COPE. (Emphasis added)

• COPE’s role is to assist editors of scholarly journals and publishers/owners - as well as other parties, such as universities and research institutions – and funders, albeit less directly - in their endeavour to preserve and promote the integrity of the scholarly record through policies and practices that reflect the current best principles of transparency, as well as integrity. COPE’s new recommendations, the core practices, are intended to reflect these aims, in a practical way.

Do you find anything unusual about the wording of this reason?

Recently, a class action lawsuit was filed against six major publishers for allegedly violating antitrust law. The outcome of this lawsuit is not yet known, but a number of articles either refused publication or retracted have been published in journals outside of the IASTMP in an effort to break their control on information.

So, if medicine is searching how to restore integrity and trust, I have one suggestion:

Start being trustworthy.

I haven’t even touched on how to handle possible guilt and anger from believing sources that were once impeachable and now either suffering the consequences personally or seeing a child or loved one damaged by that belief. Eventually, the cognitive dissonance and pluralistic ignorance surrounding The Great COVID Disaster will dissolve and the truth will prevail. We should plan on how best to handle that.