Covid Jabs Mess With Your Blood

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Figure 1. These photos are at 40x magnification. At the left side, (a) shows the blood condition of the patient before the inoculation. The right side image, (b) shows the same person’s blood one month after the first dose of Pfizer mRNA “vaccine”. Particles can be seen among the red blood cells which are strongly conglobated around the exogenous particles; the agglomeration is believed to reflect a reduction in zeta potential adversely affecting the normal colloidal distribution of erythrocytes as seen at the left. The red blood cells at the right (b) are no longer spherical and are clumping as in coagulation and clotting.

Source:  Dark-Field Microscopic Analysis on the Blood of 1,006 Symptomatic Persons After Anti-COVID mRNA Injections from Pfizer/BioNtech or Moderna,  International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research in August 2022.

Report on study from Jennifer Margulis and Joe Wang at Epoch Times Peer-Reviewed: 94 Percent of Vaccinated Patients With Subsequent Health Issues Have Abnormal Blood, Italian Microscopy Finds.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Physicians in Italy studied the blood of patients who had been injected with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and found foreign matter long after vaccination, a new study shows.

The three doctors, all of whom are surgeons—Franco Giovannini, M.D., Riccardo Benzi Cipelli, M.D., and Giampaolo Pisano, M.D.—examined freshly drawn blood of more than a thousand patients using direct observation under microscopes to see what was happening in the blood.

For this study, the Italian doctors used optical microscopy, that is, regular light microscopes, to examine the blood. Blood cells are easily visible under a microscope. Their shape, type, and how and if they are aggregated—clumped together—can help the skilled physician better understand the patient’s health.

In their 60-page peer-reviewed study, the Italian researchers reported case studies from their observations. Although they could not explain what they observed, they noted in the study that what they saw was so strange that they felt the need to alert the medical community.

Unlike electron microscopy, light microscopy provides a direct image of what is under the lens. With light microscopy, scientists can either use a bright white background behind the cells, with the light shining from behind the slide, or they can use a dark background.

Abnormal Blood

Of the 1006 patients, 426 were men and 580 were women. One hundred and forty-one received only one dose of an mRNA vaccine, 453 got two doses, and 412 received three doses in total. The patients ranged in age from 15 to 85. The average age of the patients was 49. All 1,006 patients were seeking healthcare because they were not feeling well: presenting with a wide variety of health issues.

On average, the patients whose blood was examined had been vaccinated about one month prior.

Of the 1,006 patients, after vaccination, only about 5 percent—just 58 people—had blood that looked normal.

The doctors were able to examine the blood of 12 of the patients before they had received any vaccines. At that time, previous to being vaccinated, all 12 patients presented with normal, healthy blood, according to the researchers.

The authors did not reveal how many people were vaccinated in total, so the percentage of vaccinated people who developed abnormal blood is unknown. This is a shortcoming of their research. What is known, however, is that 94 percent of the patients surveyed in this study, who developed subsequent symptoms, had abnormal blood.

Each of the patients was being reviewed for symptoms, a wide range of which had arisen since their vaccinations.

The images are dramatic. Side-by-side pictures of a patient’s blood before and after vaccination show stark differences. Before vaccination, the red blood cells are separate from each other and are round, while the blood drawn after vaccination shows red blood cells that are deformed, and that cluster in coagulation around visible foreign matter that was not present before.

Foreign Material Aggregated in the Blood

This foreign material seemed to collect itself into structures, sometimes forming crystals and other times forming long tubes or fibers.

The foreign-body structures in the patients’ blood, which had not been there before vaccination, certainly look unusual in the photos included in the study.

The large shapes seemed to the doctors to have aggregated in the blood, and they observed shapes that suggest the way graphene can self-assemble into structures.

Graphene is a form of carbon that occurs when the atoms are arranged in hexagons, making a flat crystal, like a sheet. In this form, though the carbon is not a metal, it behaves chemically like a metallic compound.

The two shapes they noticed in the blood stream were crystal-like chunks and tube-like lengths. While the researchers could not confirm that what they saw was graphene, they pointed out that graphene can aggregate into shapes similar to those the doctors observed.

Is It Graphene?

Graphene has been used in nasal-delivery flu vaccinations, and is being developed for use in other medicines. However, it is not listed as an ingredient in any of the mRNA vaccines.

The Italian doctors did not chemically test for graphene. They only speculated that graphene may be a component of the structures. Graphene can self-assemble tiny nano-structures, making it useful for carbon nanotubes and carbon fiber. However, as the authors mentioned, graphene self-assembling into structures in the bloodstream could provide something for blood to clot on, potentially causing large-scale blood clots.

These speculations raise more questions than answers, as neither graphene nor other metallic compounds were supposed to have been used in the vaccines. So why did over 950 people experiencing post-vaccination health issues present with foreign material in their blood?

This is not the only study to find blood abnormalities post-mRNA vaccination.

In a previously published study in the same journal, a Korean team also showed that mRNA-vaccinated blood contained metallic objects that should not have been there. The Korean scientists analyzed samples of centrifuged blood from eight people who had received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines against two people who did not receive any COVID-19 vaccines.

The team of three South Korean medical doctors, Young Mi Lee, Sunyoung Park, and Ki-Yeob Jeon, explained that: “The preponderance of evidence suggests that the foreign materials found in the COVID-19 vaccine recipients … were injected into their bodies when they received one or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.”

According to this study: “From the 8 COVID-19 vaccine recipients: 6 plasma samples contained a multilayered disc of unidentified composition; 3 samples contained beaded coil-like materials; 1 plasma sample contained a fibrous bundle of similar appearing beaded foreign material; and a different group of 3 samples had crystal-like formations of foreign material. The various shapes and sizes of foreign materials in the centrifuged plasmas of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals closely resembled the shapes and sizes of foreign materials previously observed directly in the vaccines themselves.”

The Italian study, which analyzed over 10 times as many blood samples, appears to confirm the findings from Korea. However, it is difficult to extrapolate from their findings. It would be easier to confirm that the vaccines were indeed the cause of the blood abnormalities if the Italian researchers had also analyzed the blood of a control group of patients presenting with similar unusual symptoms (or lack thereof) who had not been previously vaccinated.

Clotting Problems

Clotting problems are one of the hallmark complications seen after COVID-19 vaccination.

As the subject pool was of people who had been recently vaccinated and subsequently had health problems arise, this new science suggests that these structures in the blood and the abnormal clotting behavior of the blood cells could be a major part of why clinical doctors are seeing so many unusual health issues consequent to mRNA vaccination.

Indeed, large clots have even been found in the bodies of the deceased since the vaccine program started. An embalmer in Alabama noticed that large clots of a sort he had never seen in his 20-year career started to become commonplace once the vaccine program started, according to a non-profit Alabama news agency.

Richard Hirschmann told 1819 News that he has collected pictures of over a hundred cases of these blood clots. Hirschmann also alerted local labs and has been working with a radiologist, Phillip Triantos, M.D., to better understand why and how patients are presenting with large-scale slow-forming blood clots.

Other doctors, including Ryan Cole, M.D., a dermatopathologist (which is a doctor who uses a microscope to examine samples of skin, hair, and nails to diagnose diseases) and founder of the Idaho-based company, Cole Diagnostics, have also seen large blood clots becoming an emerging phenomenon since widespread vaccination campaigns started, according to 1819 News.

Microscopes in Medicine

It used to be common for medical doctors to have microscopes in their offices and to examine their patients’ blood (and other bodily fluids) themselves, according to Barron Lerner, M.D., author of “The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics.”

While medical doctors today, with some exceptions, almost always send tests off to outside laboratories for analysis, Barron Lerner described how senior physicians used to feel it was their duty to teach their younger colleagues and medical students how to do testing themselves: Gram stains to test for bacterial infections, urine analysis under the microscope, and centrifuging blood to check for anemia and other issues.

Akin to medical doctors of past eras, the Italian team of doctors who published these new findings explained that they have looked at the blood of patients over their entire careers, including after every other sort of vaccination. But they have never seen foreign bodies of this sort before.

Post-market surveillance of medical devices, new medications, and vaccinations is of the utmost importance to ensure safety. These unusual and widespread findings of abnormalities in the blood post-mRNA vaccination should be of global concern. If 94 percent of patients with adverse health problems have occlusions in their blood that were not present before they were vaccinated, these scientists may have uncovered an unanticipated and dangerous side effect of mRNA vaccines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope for Trudeau’s Exit

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The conventional wisdom that Poilievre cannot win a national election is wearing thin. PHOTO BY JACQUES BOISSINOT /THE CANADIAN PRESS

The end of Trudeau’s regime in Canada can’t happen soon enough, but hope is on the horizon.  Joe Oliver writes at National Post Canada Liberals risk drowning in the Poilievre wave.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

As the Conservative leadership campaign approaches what now seems certain to be Pierre Poilievre’s coronation, progressives are unnerved by the huge crowds of all ages he is attracting across the country, which point to an expanding Conservative base. Predictably, the Laurentian elite and their media loyalists have dissolved into full-blown derangement syndrome, while providing cover for Liberal missteps.

Intriguingly, they are less protective of an increasingly unpopular prime minister.

The conventional wisdom that Poilievre cannot win a national election is wearing thin. Inflation, which people intuitively understand was created and exacerbated by government profligacy, is the public’s top concern. There is also widespread frustration with the government’s maddening incompetence and multiple ministerial missteps: Omar Alghabra for the airport debacles, Marco Mendicino, for misleading Parliament about the Emergencies Act, Karina Gould for mind-boggling passport delays, Mélanie Joly for an official inexplicably attending a Russian diplomatic party, Ahmed Hussen and Pablo Rodriguez for the Marouf scandal, Chrystia Freeland for favouring out-of-control spending over growth.

The prime minister’s charisma has faded with his team’s eroding credibility. Moreover, even die-hard Liberals are disillusioned by his own divisive tactics, hypocritical virtue-signalling, inability to deliver on priorities, tarnished brand abroad and, perhaps most important for them, 50 per cent disapproval rating.

The government is notoriously selective about treating people differently depending on their race, ethnic group, gender identity, sexual preference, age or country of origin.

The most obvious case in point is that despite Laith Marouf’s appallingly bigoted and anti-semitic comments he was paid half a million public dollars to provide anti-racism advice. The absence of even elementary due diligence is inexcusable. Worse, it took over a month for the responsible minister to act and even longer for the prime minister to comment, no doubt in part because he did not want to own up to his ministry’s incompetence but perhaps also because Marouf hypocritically presented himself as a supposed ally in its core mission.

Had a racial minority or Aboriginal person been called a bag of feces or threatened with a bullet to the head the PM would quite rightly have expressed outrage, likely in minutes. He was appropriately quick off the mark when Chrystia Freeland was subject to unacceptable verbal harassment. Which makes the delayed reaction from the government and many in the media in the Marouf case even more disconcerting. The Jewish community is understandably disheartened by the blatant double standard. As a matter of basic decency, not to mention fundamental philosophical principle, governments should treat people equally and not discriminate based on twisted notions about identity or victimhood politics.

Pierre Poilievre clearly understands the widespread and growing anger about the disdain, condescension and snobbery a progressive elite have for working and lower middle-class Canadians. He empathizes with resentment about nanny-state intrusions, the politicization of science and the often bizarre ideas of left-wing ideologues, woke capitalists and “expert” academics. He agrees with people who rail against a government that allows faceless bureaucrats to infringe on their agency, curtail their freedom and damage their standard of living with heavy taxes and burdensome regulations.

Critics are torn between claiming Pierre Poilievre has no policies and denouncing these non-policies as extreme. He is decried as a populist because he seeks public support (as if the Liberal default position on just about everything is not to swing with public opinion). The “Trump North” label has failed to stick because he has been consistently pro-choice, supports gay marriage and favours immigration.

Liberals loath Pierre Poilievre because they fear he will dismantle excessive government intervention in society and the economy, reverse tax-and-spend policies, encourage natural resource development, defend free speech and genuine diversity of opinion, decry woke-ism, defund the CBC and undercut elite influence.

But it is Pierre Poilievre, not Justin Trudeau, who reflects mainstream Canadian thinking about fundamental issues. He believes profoundly in personal freedom and is proud of our history.

In contrast, Trudeau has called Canada systemically racist and guilty of genocide. He proclaimed it the world’s first “post-national” state and declared “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.” His far-left thinking manifests itself in a profligate government that creates more problems than it solves.

Trudeau’s cultish climate obsession has wrought enormous harm to jobs, growth, national unity and the economic prospects of Indigenous peoples. Yet it has not achieved a single national GHG target or impacted global warming even minutely — something that actually could be achieved if Canadian LNG replaced coal in energy-hungry Asia and Europe.

I expect Pierre Poilievre will reach out to his leadership rivals and their supporters the way Stephen Harper did as prime minister. He can easily do that without compromising conservative principles, policy priorities or authenticity. It would be the magnanimous and smart thing to do. He will then speak directly to Canadians about how he will represent their values and interests and pursue his vision for a prosperous, proud and fair country for everyone. No wonder Liberals are worried.

 

 

Natural Immunity Superior to Jabs

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Natural Immunity Offered More Protection Against Omicron Than 3 Vaccine Doses, New England Journal of Medicine Study Finds is a report at FEE.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Natural Immunity vs Vaccination

While it’s true that immunization wanes, new scientific research from The New England Journal of Medicine suggests natural immunity lasts longer than immunity acquired from vaccines.

The study, a case–control analysis based on data from Qatar collected from December 23, 2021 through February 21, 2022, involved millions of people, including 1,306,862 who received at least two doses of the Pfizer vaccine (BNT162b2) and 893,671 people who received at least two doses of the Moderna vaccine (mRNA-1273), as well unvaccinated individuals.

The results of the study are a mixed bag for the vaccines.

The best news is that “any form of previous immunity, whether induced by previous infection or vaccination, is associated with strong and durable protection against Covid-19–related hospitalization and death.” (In other words, both vaccines and natural immunity reduce the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid.)

Also good news is that both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines “enhanced protection among persons who had had a previous infection.”

“The combination of prior, full vaccination and prior infection was maximally protective,” researchers said in a summary of the study’s findings released last month by the Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom. “Individuals with prior infection and three doses of either mRNA vaccine were, overall, nearly 80 percent protected from symptomatic infection during the omicron wave.”

But the study also found that two doses of vaccines offered “negligible” protection against Omicron infection.

“A key finding was that a history of vaccination with the standard two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine, but no history of prior infection, brought no significant protection against symptomatic omicron infection,” researchers said.

In regards to the Pfizer vaccine, three shots offered considerably more protection. But the protection was still lower than natural immunity, which offered stronger and more sustained protection from infection than vaccination. (Researchers noted that “people with a prior-variant infection were moderately protected from omicron with little decline in protection even a year after their prior infection.”)

The findings are not unlike those out of Israel published last year, which found that natural immunity offered more robust protection against the Delta variant than vaccines.

“The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” Science reported in August 2021 in a piece exploring the Israel findings.

More than a dozen other studies also found that natural immunity offered powerful protection against Covid, equal to or stronger than vaccination.

‘The Foundation of All Rights’

Even absent these findings, vaccine mandates were dubious from the beginning. The morality of violating bodily autonomy through government coercion is a serious and dangerous matter. In light of these findings, however, vaccine mandates also appear nonsensical.

While many institutions now consider Covid infection a form of immunization—including the NCAA, which in January changed its policy to accommodate athletes who’d had Covid—many have not. Thousands of soldiers have been discharged because of their vaccination status. Healthcare workers continue to face vaccination mandates in many places.

It’s time for all institutions—especially governments—to recognize vaccination choices should remain with individuals. The idea that freedom over one’s own body is the most basic and essential freedom is one embraced not just by libertarians like Ron Paul but by international leaders like Natalia Kanem, a physician who leads the United Nations Population Fund.

“Bodily autonomy is the foundation on which all rights exist,” Kanem bluntly states.

See Also Omicron the Liberator

 

 

 

Update: Governmental/Media Censorship Enterprise

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Missouri AG Eric Schmitt reports at his website: Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General Ask Court to Compel Department of Justice to Produce Communications Between Top Officials and Social Media Companies.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

“We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done. The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies. That’s why, yesterday, we asked the Court to compel the Department of Justice to produce those records. We’re just getting started – stay tuned.”

The communications already provided by the Department of Justice to the plaintiff states show, as the joint statement points out, a vast “Censorship Enterprise” across a multitude of federal agencies. In response to Missouri and Louisiana’s interrogatories, defendants identified 45 federal officials at DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all of which are contained in either DHS or HHS) that communicate with social media platforms about “misinformation” and censorship. The joint statement points out, “But in those responses, Defendants did not provide information about any federal officials at other federal agencies of whom they are aware who engage in such communications with social-media platforms about misinformation and censorship, though Plaintiffs had specifically asked for this highly relevant information. Defendants’ document production, however, reveals that such officials at other federal agencies exist—for example, their emails include extensive copying of officials at the Census Bureau, and they also include communications involving the Departments of Treasury and State.”

Beyond the Department of Justice’s production, “Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials—including senior officials at the FDA, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House—have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants. YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by Defendants.”

The joint statement continues, “The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession.”

This “Censorship Enterprise” is proven by the Department of Justice’s productions thus far, but the full extent of federal officials’ collusion with social media companies on censorship is unknown until the Department of Justice produces further communications requested by Missouri and Louisiana.

Summary from Townhall:

Here’s some of the smoking-gun communications proving the Biden administration was actively working with big tech companies to stifle or censor free expression on a range of issues, including an email from Facebook to Biden’s surgeon general about a meeting between the two entities during which White House expectations regarding Facebook’s policies on “misinformation” were discussed.

The litigation process uncovered specific and explicit information about how Facebook was censoring content posted to its platform, apparently at the Biden administration’s request, based on so-called third party fact checkers who are known to be biased and beholden to Democrat interests. Facebook also explained that it was taking strict action to suppress content on its platform labeled as merely “lacking context” as if it were rated to be entirely false.

It wasn’t just Facebook colluding with the Biden administration, either. Twitter scheduled meetings with White House officials to discuss “vaccine misinformation.”

Meanwhile, both Twitter and Facebook emails with Biden administration officials show the two entities colluding directly in a relationship where “claims” flagged by big tech companies would face “debunking” in regular meetings with the CDC’s “experts.” That is, what the Biden administration decided was harmful “misinformation” would then presumably be squashed by big tech companies at the expense of free speech on their platforms.

In addition to speech related to COVID, the Biden administration pursued a proactive relationship with big tech companies whenever scandal hit, such as the embarrassingly botched rollout of the allegedly discontinued Disinformation Governance Board.

Additional communications showed the White House asking Instagram to remove fake accounts impersonating Dr. Fauci and the Treasury Department’s deputy secretary asking Meta for a meeting “to discuss potential influence operations on social media.”

As Schmitt explained, the documents his litigation with Landry have already uncovered are just the beginning of their probe into what the Biden administration has been doing when it comes to using its position of power to get big tech companies to censor Americans’ speech.

 

Judge Assigns Mar-a-Lago Docs to Special Master

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Townhall reports Judge Orders Special Master Review of Documents Seized from Mar-a-Lago.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a U.S. District judge from the Southern District of Florida, delivered some bad news to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday, by ordering that a special master be appointed to review the documents seized from the FBI during last month’s raid of Mar-a-Lago. This means that the DOJ must stop their own review. The DOJ revealed last week that they already reviewed documents which would be subject to such oversight by any special master. 

The special master is to “review the seized property, manage assertions of privilege and make recommendations thereon, and evaluate claims for return of property.”

“The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney- client and/or executive privilege,” the order stated. “Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”

As Matt highlighted last week, the DOJ had tried to argue against such a request, as a matter of national security. In response, Trump’s attorneys, as Sarah covered, called the DOJ’s request an “extraordinary document” and argued the government “twists the framework of responding to a motion for a Special Master into an all-encompassing challenge to any judicial consideration, presently or in the future, of any aspect of its unprecedented behavior in this investigation.”

The reveal of records seized by the FBI drew much attention and heavy criticism, as Larry O’Connor and Mike Davis, a former law clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, highlighted.

Fox News was among the first outlets to report on Judge Cannon’s order. The Hill included a copy of the order in its coverage. 

Judge Cannon was nominated by then President Donald Trump in May 2020 and confirmed by the Senate in November 2020. She’s asked the DOJ and attorneys for Trump to submit a joint filing by Friday with a list of proposed candidates to serve as the special master.

 

Unaccounted Excess US Deaths in the Time of Covid

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Eyal Shahar writes at Brownstone Institute The Mystery of Unaccounted Excess Deaths in the US.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

By April 2022, the number of reported Covid deaths (993,739) had accounted for almost all of the CDC estimate of excess deaths (about 1,080,000). The official narrative will tell you that most of the difference is missing Covid deaths – people who died from Covid but were not diagnosed.

That’s a simpleminded summary.

First, flu returned last winter (Figure 1) and its share in excess mortality is unknown. A comparison of Covid deaths with excess deaths must be truncated in September 2021, before the beginning of the flu wave.

Second, Covid deaths might have been missed early on, but it is absurd to assume that they continued to be missed throughout the pandemic. On the contrary, liberal coding rules, financial incentives, extensive testing, and a Covid-oriented mindset must have led to overcounting of Covid-related deaths.

Third, lockdowns, social isolation, fear-mongering, and disruption of normal life took their toll, too. There is no doubt that those baseless interventions have cost (and will cost) lives. So the question is not whether they contributed to excess mortality, but how much? What percentage of the excess mortality in the US is due to panic reaction and official fear-mongering? How many excess deaths are not accounted for by Covid?

Sources of data

Three sources of data were used to check the robustness of the main results (qualitatively), and to obtain a range of estimates: 1) CDC excess death file (weekly estimates), from which it is also possible to compute weekly Covid deaths. 2) CDC Covid death file (cumulative by each day), from which weekly deaths can be computed. 3) Our World in Data (OWID) website, from which Covid deaths and estimated excess deaths can be computed between various dates.

Cutoff dates for selected periods were dictated by weekly end-dates in the CDC excess death file. Available OWID dates were within two days.

Unaccounted excess deaths

Figure 2 shows data from an 18-month period – April 2020 through September 2021 – terminating the observations before the return of the flu. Counts of Covid deaths are shown from the three sources, and estimates of excess deaths from two. The difference between excess deaths and Covid deaths is unaccounted excess deaths.

Overall, the share of unaccounted excess deaths over the 18-month period was 6-9% (CDC) or 16% (OWID). This summary, however, is hiding important variation over time.

Three consecutive periods

Review of weekly estimates revealed two periods with a significant percentage of unaccounted excess deaths (April-December, 2020 and June-September, 2021), separated by a five-month period (January – May, 2021) in which the opposite was observed: the number of Covid deaths exceeded the estimate of excess deaths. It was seen in 20 of 21 weeks of that period.

The data for each of the three periods is shown next.

First period
In the first nine months of the pandemic, the share of unaccounted excess deaths ranged from 11% to 27% of all excess deaths, depending on the source of data (Table). The OWID estimate is higher than CDC-based estimates due to a lower count of Covid deaths and a higher estimate of excess deaths (as seen in the entire period.) Notice, again, that the count of deaths in the Covid file is closer to the OWID than to the excess death file.

Interim period
At the beginning of 2021, the pattern was reversed. The number of Covid deaths exceeded the estimate of excess deaths, indicating overcounting of Covid deaths (Table). A so-called Covid death that did not contribute to excess mortality was not caused by Covid. It was death “with Covid,” or sometimes death “with a positive PCR.”

Other than data error, the only alternative explanation to overcounting is overestimation of the “normal” number of deaths (by both sources), resulting in underestimation of excess deaths. There was no drastic change, however, in the CDC estimates of weekly expected deaths, which gradually declined from about 61,000 at the beginning of January to about 55,000 by the end of May.

Misattribution of deaths to Covid during that five-month period was substantial: One-quarter to one-third of reported Covid deaths would have happened regardless of a Covid diagnosis.

Direct evidence of misattribution requires selecting a large sample of death certificates from different times, retrieving the associated medical records, and reclassifying Covid deaths by a panel of experts. Don’t count on the CDC to initiate a study that might shatter the official narrative.

Last period
The results for the last period are striking (Figure 5). Not only do we observe, again, unaccounted excess deaths, but their share is substantially higher than in the first part of the pandemic. Unaccounted excess deaths make up 26% to 43% of the excess mortality in these four months, as compared with 11% to 27% in the first nine months. The average number of unaccounted excess deaths per month was doubled (CDC data) or increased by almost 50% (OWID).

What has accounted for these 47,000 to 82,000 excess deaths?

The last period contained the rising part of the Delta wave (as of July). Were some Covid deaths of vaccinated people not attributed to Covid (because the vaccines were promised to be 95% effective)? Did some of those deaths result from the continued effects of panic and fear-mongering? Were some of them vaccine fatalities?

Estimates of unaccounted excess deaths (April 2020 – September 2021)

The first table (Figure 2) showed 6-16% unaccounted excess deaths over an 18-month period. That computation assumed that no death was misattributed to Covid, which is nonsense, of course – on both theoretical grounds and empirical evidence. We just saw substantial overcounting in the first five months of 2021.

A conservative estimate of misattribution over the 18-month period would allow for just 10%. That is, 90% of reported Covid deaths were true Covid deaths. The remainder belong to the category of unaccounted excess deaths. A realistic estimate might be 15%.

On these two assumptions, unaccounted deaths make up 15% to almost 30% of the excess mortality (Figure 6). The average of the six estimates is 21%.

Were these unavoidable pandemic deaths?

The CDC and other officials will call these deaths “indirect pandemic deaths.” They are not. Most of these deaths would not have happened if the Covid pandemic were handled like a previous flu pandemic – without fear-mongering, without lockdown, without symbolic masks, and without disruption of normal life. One journalist attributed them to “circumstances of the crisis.” Who created these circumstances?

The mystery of unaccounted excess deaths in the US is solved, at least in part. Many of them are accounted for by poorly justified interventions and relentless impositions on normal human activity.

At least 115,000 deaths belong in that category and the true number might be twice as high.

Postscript 2022 Excess Death Statistics

Jesse Santiano, M.D. brings the analysis up to date and adds an element in his article Excess deaths continue in 2022.  Excerpts in italics.

I went to the CDC Wonder website to see if excess deaths are still present in 2022. February 2022 is still incomplete, so I compared only the month of January for each year from 2018 to 2022. Using the same month from 2018 to 2022 removes the seasonal variations in deaths.

2018 and 2019 are the pre-pandemic years and serve as a baseline trend. 2020 is the start of COVID-19, but in January 2020, it was just beginning, and there were only a tiny amount of COVID-19 deaths.

CDC: Coronavirus Disease 2019 Case Surveillance — United States, January 22–May 30, 2020

Since the shots were started in December 2020 (see appendix at the bottom), January 2021 will reflect the excess deaths from (a) COVID-19, (b) its injections for 18 and older, and (c) the effects of the lockdowns like suicides and domestic violence.

January 2022 reflects the excess deaths from the five years and older. Those are primarily due to the COVID injections since the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant is the Omicron which is much less deadly than previous variants.

I grouped the ages into 10-year groups for simplicity. The years 2018 to 2022 have different features, which are discussed below. The table below is presented and repeated in the lower part of the page. The excess deaths (in red) for 2022 are in the right-most column.

What the table means

2018, 2019, and 2020
The number of deaths for all age groups in 2019 is lower than in 2018. There is a downward trend in mortality based on United Nations projections, as shown by the graph from macrotrends.net below.

A slight increase in deaths in January 2020 is expected, and this is due to population growth. According to the CDC, the rise in fatalities secondary to COVID-19 started in March 2020. (See CDC graph above)

2021
January 2021 shows the deaths from all causes, including COVID-19 and its shots. The age groups 18 and above who started to have the COVID injections in December 2020 will have more deaths in January 2021 than in January 2020.

In contrast, the <1 year to 14 years old who started late in getting the COVID shots (October 29, 2021, for 5-11 years old) have a lower number of deaths in 2021.

2022
The all-cause deaths in 2022 will include deaths from the less lethal Omicron variant and booster shots. The expected number of mortalities should be known for baseline comparison to know if there are excess deaths. The 

In summary, this article shows that in January 2022, the death rates continue to exceed the expected number of deaths. If my assumptions and calculations are accurate, we may be witnessing the lasting effects of experimental gene therapy shots.

 

 

Science Discredited by “Scientists”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Toby Young writes at Spectator How science became politicized. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

New rules from a leading journal do not bode well

Here’s a paradox. Over the past two-and-a-half years, a cadre of senior politicians and their “expert” advisors across the world have successfully promoted a series of controversial public policies by claiming they’re based on “the science” rather than a particular moral or ideological vision. I’m thinking of lockdowns and net zero in particular. Yet at the same time, this group has engaged in behavior that has undermined public confidence in science.

Why appeal to the authority of science to win support for a series of politically contentious policies — and then diminish its authority?

Take Anthony Fauci, for instance, who recently announced he’s stepping down as chief medical advisor to Joe Biden. Even though he once claimed to “represent science” in the eyes of the American people:

♦ he misled them about the likely duration of the lockdowns (“fifteen days to slow the spread”),
♦ overstated the efficacy of the Covid vaccines when they were first rolled out,
♦ refused to countenance the possibility that Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology
♦ it later emerged that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, under his leadership, had given a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, which helped fund “gain-of-function” research at the Chinese lab,
♦  and he conspired with other prominent scientists, such as Francis Collins, to besmirch the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (“There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises,” Collins told Fauci in an email).

A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal concluded: “His legacy will be that millions of Americans will never trust government health experts in the same way again.”

Another case in point is a recent editorial in Nature Human Behaviour, one of several journals in the Nature Research stable, the world’s pre-eminent publisher of scientific research. “Although academic freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded,” it begins, and then proceeds to set out rules that future academic papers will have to comply with in addition to meeting all the usual standards for publication, e.g. peer review. It says the journal won’t publish articles that might cause “potential harms” (even “inadvertently”) to individuals or groups that are most vulnerable to “racism, sexism, ableism or homophobia.” “Academic content that undermines the dignity or rights of specific groups; assumes that a human group is superior or inferior over another simply because of a social characteristic; includes hate speech or denigrating images; or promotes privileged, exclusionary perspectives raises ethics concerns that may require revisions or supersede the value of publication,” it says.

It should be obvious that far from being politically neutral, these rules embody a particular ideology and in future the truthfulness of a scientific finding will be subordinate to this perspective.

To see this, you just need to do a simple thought experiment, as Bo Winegard has done in Quillette. Imagine, he says, if this editorial had been written by political conservatives who announced that “any research promoting (even ‘inadvertently’) promiscuous sex, the breakdown of the nuclear family, agnosticism and atheism, or the decline of the nation state, would be suppressed or rejected lest it inflict unspecified ‘harm’ on vaguely defined groups or individuals.” Those progressive scientists applauding Nature Human Behaviour would throw up their arms in horror and point out – correctly — that these rules are at odds with one of the foundational principles of science, which is to pursue the truth, wherever it may lead.

 

This editorial is a disaster from the point of view of closet ideologues who want to appeal to the authority of science to promote lockdowns and net zero, including, I suspect, its authors. After all, the reason rhetorical phrases like “the science” are supposed to win round those who are skeptical about these policies — conservatives, for the most part — is that they invoke a popular conception of scientists as politically neutral, disinterested “experts” who are basing their guidance on reason and evidence, uncontaminated by value judgments.

Yet here is a group of senior scientific gatekeepers announcing that the only knowledge that will count as “scientific” is that which promotes their agenda.

It’s as if they’re saying that scientific research unconstrained by this progressive straitjacket, i.e. science as conventionally understood, will yield results that are incompatible with their radical egalitarian agenda and so ought to be suppressed. In other words, “the science” is actually at odds with their political views.

How to explain this own goal? As I say, it’s a head-scratcher.

 

Alarmist Climate Consensus Collapses

Posted on by Ron Clutz

‘There is No Climate Emergency’ (1,107 Signatories and Counting)

The World Climate Declaration (Global Climate Intelligence Group) follows:

    • There is no climate emergency Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
    • Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.
    • Warming is far slower than predicted. The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
    • Climate policy relies on inadequate models Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.
    • CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
    • Global warming has not increased natural disasters There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.
    • Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.

Our advice to the European leaders is that Science should strive for a significantly better understanding of the Climate System, while Politics should focus on minimizing potential climate damage by priortizing adapation strategies based on proven and affordable technologies

COP27 is several months ahead. The world is recommitting itself to fossil fuels, while only government largesse keeps the wind/solar/battery gravy train going. Global Climate Intelligence Group’s World Climate Declaration stands as a beacon light to a wholly different approach of free-market adaptation, not government mitigation.

See also CLINTEL Declaration Essay

 

Long Covid: Myth and Grift

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Michael Fumento investigates The Myth — and Grift — of Long COVID in his American Spectator article.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Validating people’s fears is a lucrative business.

The would-be monkeypoxalypse isn’t panning out as some would like — no deaths have been reported outside of Africa — and apparently 99 percent of U.S. victims are gay men having sex with gay men.

And, while acute COVID-19 is still spinning off variants and Health and Human Services (HHS) has just extended the public health emergency, people are just plumb tired of hearing about it. But moving in to fill the clickbait quota is the so-called “long COVID” or “long-haul COVID.”

“Do I have Long COVID? As many as 23 million Americans want to know,
as more than 200 symptoms emerge.”

So begins a recent article in Fortune magazine. “It gets stranger,” the piece continues. “Among the 200-plus symptoms identified so far are ear numbness, a sensation of ‘brain on fire,’ erectile dysfunction, irregular menstrual periods, constipation, peeling skin, and double vision.” This is according to a study published a year ago in the British medical journal the Lancet, widely considered the world’s most prestigious medical journal. And, oh yes, “The study identified symptoms involving 10 major organ systems—and the body only has 11.”

If you haven’t recently suffered at least a dozen of these symptoms, it’s bad news for you. You’re dead.

We all know the expression “If it sounds too good to be true ….” Why is there no corollary that says, “If it sounds too bad …”? Do you have to be a genius’ genius, say Albert Einstein level, to recognize that over 200 symptoms in almost all major organ systems have no relationship, that this is just a constellation of symptoms — which has now grown so large that it cannot possibly count as a constellation anymore?

It’s essentially anything bad.  The “search for causes and cures” for “long COVID” will never end, any more than we will ever find Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

Oh, and this is really important. Official definitions aside, in order to have “long COVID,”
there’s absolutely no need to ever have had acute COVID.

Obviously, some people who contract COVID do have long-term symptoms, as with the flu or other diseases that usually resolve fairly quickly but sometimes have lingering problems.

Yet, as I noted in my first “long COVID” article in The American Spectator last September:

The largest study so far of “long-haulers,” published by researchers at University College London in July, comprised nearly 4,000 subjects from over 56 countries. Participants were over the age of 18 and suffered from symptoms lasting at least 28 days. The researchers acknowledged merely in passing that in the study a mere 27% or 1020 of these “COVID long-haulers” had evidence of exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That’s whether antigen [during infection] or antibody [post-infection]. The only connection to COVID was the attestation of the sufferers. They “felt” they had COVID, regardless of evidence.

So about three-fourths of the participants don’t fit any of the above definitions. Yet that is the study that Fortune cites.

An August 2021 study of 3,151 British “long haulers” in Pragmatic and Observational Research found that only 17.2 percent were “test-confirmed positive.” A further 12 percent said they were told they had acute COVID, but no test was performed. And over 70 percent admitted it was merely self-diagnosis. An influential and scary article in the Atlantic reported some two-thirds of “long-hauler” patients had negative coronavirus antibody tests without making the obvious inference. An advocacy group study released in May 2020 by the curiously named “Patient-Led Research Collaborative” found that only “[a]bout a quarter of respondents (23.1%) tested positive for COVID-19” but “[i]n our analysis, we included all responses regardless of testing status.”

And the game continues. No, not just with the popular clickbait media. With the vaunted “published, peer-reviewed” medical journals that have names most people don’t even understand, like Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology. A May 2022 issue reports on a selected cohort of 100 “non-hospitalized COVID-19 ‘long haulers.’” Yet these included “50 laboratory-negative” people. Again, they didn’t just not test positive but rather had tested negative. But this time it was made clear they were included because they were negative!

They didn’t read the WHO, CDC, Mayo Clinic, etc., definitions?

Clearly they had. And rejected them. You see, “it has been advocated that a positive test for COVID-19 should not be a perquisite for diagnosis” (emphasis mine). As I noted in my original article, like so many faux diseases before it, such as the CDC-recognized “myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS),” so-called “long COVID” has been co-opted by advocacy groups whose main purpose is to engage in what’s called “beating up the numbers.” That is, making them seem greater. This has been going on since AIDS, when beginning around 1984 AIDS was converted from a disease overwhelmingly afflicting male homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers to “An Equal Opportunity Destroyer.”

The difference between AIDS and “long COVID” is that, at the time, you could play games regarding how people contracted the disease, but the definition of AIDS in the U.S. and Europe was quite fixed and absolutely required a positive HIV test. But if we do what “long COVID” advocates want and eliminate the need for a positive COVID test, then, given that absolutely everyone not only has had some of the ever-growing list of 200-plus symptoms but probably still does, we can literally say that everyone is suffering “long COVID.” Of course, that would be going a bit far, as when I saw extrapolations of AIDS cases to a point where people claimed more Americans would die of AIDS than there were Americans. So instead, we see the numbers pumped up to something that’s just on the edge of reason. Or maybe a bit beyond. The Atlantic tells us the U.S. has “at least 56 million long-COVID patients.” Or, as it says, “one for every six Americans.” Do we really believe that?

Disease advocacy groups, of which “long COVID” had at least 50 as of February of last year, have various motives. An obvious one is that more attention means more funding.

Removal of stigma is not universal, but special treatment is. And indeed, in a joint statement last year, HHS and the Department of Justice ruled that “long COVID can be a disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act, thereby protecting alleged sufferers from “discrimination.” With allegedly over 200 symptoms, pretty much whatever you say your problem is can be protected. The range is broad enough to include demanding more time to take tests. Want a better chance at acing that exam? Claim to have “long COVID.” It does, however, require an “individualized assessment,” which is presumably as easy as calling up a list of alleged symptoms or, actually, just claiming virtually any symptoms.

Advocates also want to make a special exception for alleged sufferers to collect social security disability payments more quickly. As it stands, you don’t need a “long COVID” diagnosis to qualify if your symptoms are among those covered. But there’s a waiting period, and they want that shortened just for those who claim to have “long COVID.”

All that said, the Annals authors’ own data make the case that there’s no such thing as “long COVID.” Table 2 has three separate breakdowns. It kindly separates those who tested positive from those who tested negative, and then breaks them down further into neurologic and other symptoms upon first visit and then upon follow-up. And lo! — it turns out that time and again the ones who tested negative (and, even by the woke standards of the authors, are thereby more likely to never have had acute COVID) are worse off.

So, if nothing else, when you see an article in the popular media cite official or authoritative definitions of “long COVID” and then proceed to discuss what it may be, don’t let them mislead you into thinking they’re going by those definitions. Essentially, they’re going by whatever they think will keep you reading or by what they feel is the “right thing to do.”

But why would there be a difference between the positive and negative groups with the negatives worse off? Because those who actually have had COVID may be suffering extended symptoms from their disease. May. But those who never had COVID, but are convinced they have, are more likely to have psychological problems, and psychological problems are notoriously difficult to treat. Especially if ignored in favor of something else.

That’s why you haven’t seen terminology in this article such as “alleged sufferers.” Because if you think you’re sick, you’re sick. It’s just that, if you had negative tests for acute COVID, you almost certainly don’t have “long COVID.”

Mind, just as “long haulers” who test negative are different from those who test positive, “long haulers” generally have very little overlap with sufferers of acute COVID. While acute COVID is highly contagious and therefore virtually everyone is susceptible to contracting it (some people repeatedly), those who develop severe symptoms fit a very tight profile. Overwhelmingly they are older, with a plurality of deaths over age 80, and have several preconditions or comorbidities such as diabetes and untreated hypertension. According to the CDC, in the U.S. among acute COVID patients, non-Hispanic American blacks are slightly more likely to be diagnosed with the disease, almost three times as likely to be hospitalized, and are twice as likely to have died, compared with non-Hispanic whites.

But “long-haulers,” according to an appendix in the 2021 University College study, “belong to the middle and upper-middle income brackets, with 51.0% of participants in the USA earning more than $85,000/year and 22.5% earning more than $150,000/year.” They are overwhelmingly white and female. In fact, the demographics match pretty well to those diagnosed with the above-mentioned phantom illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), for which coincidentally there’s also no cure. The Veterans’ Department says: “[R]esearch suggests that women are 4X more likely to get [ME/CFS] than men. Statistics also show that people between ages 40 and 59 are most affected by the disorder.”

Mostly, as with so many other “syndromes,” these people suffer from depression. My interpretation? No, theirs. In the Annals study, the majority of the COVID-negative patients actually claimed depression as looming large among their symptoms, both upon initial visit and follow-up. Meanwhile, this being a journal of neurology, any symptom they list, such as shortness of breath, can be associated with depression and/or anxiety.

Even the mainstream media have observed the “long COVID” link to depression, as a Google search quickly shows. But they consistently put the cart before the horse. That is, they blame depression on “long COVID” rather than “long COVID” on depression. A typical headline: “How Long Haul COVID Takes a Toll on Your Mental Health.”

And, sadly, the worst thing you can do with depressives is to patronize them. You should tell them that they are suffering from depression and that it is a very real and serious disease (successful suicide has a 100 percent mortality rate), and then you should refer them to an expert who may be able to treat them.

You do not attribute their illness to something that doesn’t exist. That’s not only uncompassionate, it’s downright cruel. Yet, it’s also a great way to sell them snake oil to cure them.

But how many researchers have dared publish the clear reality? Precious few. Or at least few have succeeded; we have no idea what’s been rejected. It’s treated the same as was the case that said AIDS victims are overwhelmingly gay males and drug abusers, as the data clearly showed. I lost two jobs over that and was unemployable for two years. Likewise, did you know that monkeypox victims are 99 percent male and gay before you read it here?

A commentary last year in America’s most prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), actually launched a preemptive strike against those who believe “long COVID” to be “likely to have a non-physiological origin.” The opinion piece, titled “Confronting Our Next National Health Disaster — Long-Haul Covid,” declares the authors to be aghast that “[s]ome commentators have characterized it as a mental illness.”

In late 2020, the godfather of America’s acute COVID hysteria, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, declared “long COVID” to be “quite real and quite extensive.” That’s the same Fauci who apparently got promoted to that position shortly after essentially kick-starting the “AIDS democratization” campaign in 1983 with an article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), saying that there was evidence of casual transmission. This was long after it had been made clear it was a difficult-to-transmit disease of bodily fluids.

It’s also hardly insubstantial that Congress is paying bounties for discussing the will o’ the wisp, providing “$1.15 billion in funding over four years” for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research. And if you think you’re going to get a grant by labeling it as something other than what the former head of NIH, the current acting director, Fauci, the NEJM, and the medical establishment in general has, hopefully you’re living in a state where smoking those mushrooms is legal.

Over a billion bucks is dedicated to the RECOVER program, under which, as of February,
66 hospitals and health systems had launched post-COVID clinics.

So it’s a massive gravy train. There’s much money in spotting Nessie and Bigfoot, less than nothing in denying their existence. In fact, the few who have published in medical journals suggesting it’s not a real disease have been pounded.  There is precedent for this intimidation. My experience with AIDS, for example. Lost jobs, long-term unemployment, books banned.

But there’s also precedent with others and other diseases. About four years ago, Reuters ran a remarkable article called “Online activists are silencing us, scientists say,” regarding ME/CFS. It noted that researchers seeking answers to actual causes of the syndrome and bona fide treatments said they were abandoning the field because of bullying. “Of more than 20 leading research groups who were publishing treatment studies in high-quality journals 10 years ago,” one scientist said, “only one or two continue to do so.” Their sin was in positing psychological rather than organic explanations and, therefore, appropriate treatments. The campaign to have evidence-backed treatments discredited was “doing a terrible disservice to sufferers from this condition,” said another. He concluded, “Patients are the losers here.”

What Ronald E. Gots wrote of an alleged syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), in 1995 in the Journal of Toxicology holds equally true for “long COVID.” It’s “a dangerous diagnosis,” says the executive director of the Environmental Sensitivities Research Institute in Rockville, Maryland, a clearinghouse for scientific data. He continues:

[T]he diagnosis of MCS begins a downward spiral of fruitless treatments, culminating in withdrawal from society and condemning the sufferer to a life of misery and disability. This is a phenomenon in which the diagnosis is far more disabling than the symptoms.

It’s wickedly cruel! We need to really care about these people, not pretend that we do. We need to tell them they need help, that they quite possibly can be helped, but that, even if they tested positive for COVID, what they have is probably not COVID-related, and, if they tested negative, it almost certainly is not.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for an advocacy group or even the medical journal industry — and indeed it is an industry — to take that position. All the money, fame, and fortune are pointing in a different direction.