By Rob Pell
Josephine County Eagle (6/15/2021, p. 1)
Since the coronavirus pandemic was declared by government officials in early 2020, lawmakers have been persuaded to build the global pandemic response around a single class of experimental vaccines. These products are generating billions of dollars in liability-free profits for drug companies and their partners, while the mainstream media bombard us with messaging that vaccines, masks and distancing are humanity’s only hopes for surviving COVID-19.
The spin is reaching new levels every day with many essential facts about the experimental vaccines’ risks and failures getting lost in the hype. Also lost have been facts about other effective therapeutics. The federal government is now spending 3 billion of our tax dollars on an ad campaign to get us to roll up our sleeves, but before committing to any course of prevention or treatment please make your own informed, level-headed assessment of your options.
What is COVID-19 and What are its Origins?
Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV). Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, cough, chest congestion and fever. In more severe cases, infection can go deeper in the lungs causing pneumonia and even death. COVID-19 is the disease caused by a newer coronavirus strain (SARS-CoV-2) discovered (or possibly created in a lab) in late 2019.
In early 2020 the story being circulated by health officials and mainstream news media was that this new virus had its origins in an outdoor food market located in Wuhan City, Hubei Province in China. However, back in March of 2020 I wrote an article published in a local newspaper that questioned the outdoor-market theory.
Facts are that the U.S. has been a world leader in manufacturing bioweapons (with many unfortunate security breaches and mishaps along the way) for at least 60 years. While international collaboration on things like vaccines and cures for disease is a worthy goal, collaboration on an escaped bioweapon is an embarrassment with international implications. There is now strong evidence that appears to show that the U.S. National Institutes of Health collaborated with and helped fund the labs in China working on coronavirus experiments. No group or country wants to admit it was responsible for the creation of the novel coronavirus that led to the COVID-19 illness that has spread across the globe.
At this point, however, discussions of the origins of COVID-19 have rightly taken a backseat to focusing on the damage it and the worldwide lockdowns have done to our physical health, mental health and the economy.
Initial Government Action for COVID-19 Patients was Disastrous
At the early stages of the pandemic, it may not have been obvious that the elderly were at significantly higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than other age groups. Very quickly, however, after Democratic governors in New York, New Jersey, and California mandated that stable elderly COVID patients be moved from hospitals back into nursing homes to free up hospital beds, nursing home deaths exploded. Tens of thousands of deaths in those facilities quickly followed. That strategy was a major blunder. Soon thereafter, then-President Trump, as he later admitted, intentionally downplayed COVID risks, so there were plenty of major mistakes from both sides of the aisle. It became a perfect storm very quickly.
What Action Should Doctors and Health Officials have Taken?
So, what treatments were offered to the hundreds of thousands of people diagnosed with COVID-19 who had mild symptoms and reached out to their doctors or went to hospitals seeking help? Essentially, nothing. Patients were told to go back home, isolate, rest, drink fluids and monitor themselves. They were given basically no help or treatment of any kind unless their symptoms became severe enough for hospitalization. The general public was essentially led to believe there was nothing that could help them. In many cases, when they returned to hospitals weeks later in worse shape, it was too late.
What could they have been told to try while at home? How about ivermectin? Ivermectin is a drug that has been used to treat parasitic infections in animals and humans and costs about $2 per dose. Amazingly, thousands of COVID patients worldwide were treated successfully with ivermectin, yet these treatments received nearly no mainstream media coverage.
In December 2020, Dr. Pierre Kory, a former professor of medicine at St Luke’s Medical Center in Wisconsin, testified before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee about ivermectin. He presented data from 18 randomized controlled trials that included over 2,100 patients demonstrating that ivermectin produces faster viral clearance, faster time to hospital discharge, faster time to clinical recovery and a 75% reduction in mortality rates. Ivermectin can also be used prophylactically.
Incredibly, in three recent cases, hospitals in New York refused to administer ivermectin to hospitalized patients on ventilators who were rapidly declining, despite the fact that the patients’ own doctors had written a valid prescription for it. In each case New York State Supreme Court justices sided with the patients, ordered the ivermectin administered, and all made near miraculous recoveries after receiving it.
Ivermectin and other therapeutics have proven to work well for thousands with COVID-19. Nonetheless mainstream medical and most mainstream media continue to suppress information about it. Had the public been told about ivermectin or one of the many other protocols, hundreds of thousands of lives likely would have been saved. And if the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Fox News don’t cover it, there’s virtually no chance a significant number of independent news media in small towns across the country will report it either.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko achieved worldwide prominence for successfully treating hundreds of COVID-19 patients with the drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is in a class of medications frequently used worldwide for decades to safely prevent and treat malaria. Combined with zinc, Zelenko found that mortality dropped eight-fold with use of those two substances when administered early to COVID-19 patients and has been nominated for a Nobel prize for his work. He found that treatment with HCQ and zinc within the first five days reduces death rates by 85%. Hundreds of doctors and researchers largely agree with his findings.
“Basically, the main element of this treatment approach is zinc,” he said in an interview. It stops the virus from replicating or copying its genetic material, essentially reducing the amount of virus. “However, zinc doesn’t get into the cell of the viruses. They need a way to get the zinc into the cell, and that’s the role of HCQ in the outpatient setting.”
For patients who can’t gain access to HCQ, Zelenko recommends using zinc with quercetin (found in most good health food stores) instead. HCQ typically costs about $3-5 per dose. The well-publicized studies that appeared to show HCQ unsafe and ineffective used four to six times what would be considered a safe does and was administered very late in the disease progression when many of the recipients were already on ventilators. Zelenko found that early intervention (within five days of diagnosis) was critical in preventing disease progression.
There are also combinations of natural dietary supplements that have been embraced by thousands of naturally oriented MDs and scientists that are proven to significantly reduce incidence and severity of viral respiratory infections. With this reality in mind, Dr. Adrian Gombart, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the Oregon State University College of Science, in collaboration with scientists worldwide, recently said public health officials should issue a clear set of nutritional guidelines to help prevent people from getting COVID-19. Protocols including vitamins D and C, with zinc, iodine and quercetin have been recommended. A recent meta-analysis of 25 studies with over 10,000 participants showed that if your vitamin D levels are low, which is true for many people in the winter, taking extra D reduces your chances of catching cold (also a coronavirus) and flu by 50%. For some reason most public health officials and news media have been nearly completely silent on these protocols as well.
A Major Avoidable Risk Factor
A study of COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York City found that moderately obese COVID-19 victims (about 30 or more pounds overweight for an average 5-foot-8 person) were four times more likely to require hospitalization than the non-obese. In fact, obesity was a more significant risk factor driving hospitalizations than high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, pulmonary disease or kidney disease. After advanced age, it was the biggest factor driving hospitalizations, and this was true across all genders, races and ages. This is extremely significant because the U.S. now has the highest rate of obesity of any industrialized nation. This major risk factor is largely controllable without spending a penny, and it’s getting next to no media coverage. Some states are now offering $100 cash incentives to get vaccinated. Instead, why not offer those incentives to lose weight and improve your diet, which would help prevent COVID complications and improve health in myriad other ways?
The Long-Awaited Vaccine
When deciding anything in life, responsible adults will always weigh the upside gain vs. any potential downside risks. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do with COVID vaccine decisions because much of the data is unavailable or has been suppressed, and a large portion of the data that is available has not been widely publicized.
The first question to assess: Do you really need the vaccine? One factor to consider would be whether catching COVID-19 is likely to kill you. According to the CDC, COVID-19 survival rates for different age groups are as follows:
- 99.997% for 0-19 years
- 99.98% for 20-49 years
- 99.5% for 50-69 years
- 94.6% for 70-plus years
Please note that the overwhelming percentage of people who have experienced severe cases or have died from COVID-19 were not offered ivermectin or any of the other proven therapeutics. Could this be because they haven’t been publicized? Further, I think it would be safe to conclude that the complication or mortality rate for anyone in these age groups who chooses to eat a nutrient-rich diet (or uses supplements) would be significantly lower, particularly for those with a healthy weight.
Unanswered Questions About the Vaccine
At this time no one knows how long the vaccine will work. They’ve looked at the side effects after doses one and two. But if protection wanes significantly and more boosters are needed, what will side effects from doses three or four look like this year or next? This is unknowable at this time.
The vaccine trials were not designed to tell us about its ability to prevent transmission. That would require testing volunteers twice a week for long periods of time – a strategy that is “operationally untenable,” according to the chief medical officer at vaccine-maker Moderna. Yet this is extremely important as it could affect whether vaccinated people should continue to wear masks. Traditional vaccines that expose the body to a live or attenuated sample of the actual pathogen prevent infection, illness and transmission, making mask wearing unnecessary.
We all know the vaccine trials included vaccinated and placebo groups. If the vaccinated group has more reports of health problems than the placebo group, those would be investigated as possible side effects. However, thousands in the control groups have now been given the vaccine, so the control group has been largely contaminated. This will cause the long-term side effect profile to be nearly identical for both sides since both have now been vaccinated.
What about VAERS?
Why hasn’t available data about side effects been widely distributed by mainstream media? The VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Reporting System) was established 1990. According to the Department of Health and Human Services it is “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines.” VAERS is co-managed by the CDC and the FDA. It is the only centralized post-marketing database for vaccines, and there is significant information there about the COVID vaccines.
In 2010, the CDC paid Harvard University $1 million to study VAERS for ideas to improve it. One conclusion Harvard reported was that on average, only 1% of vaccine side effects are reported. Dr. David Kessler, former FDA commissioner, has restated that conclusion many times. In other words, whatever is stated by VAERS is almost certainly a gross understatement of true totals.
Deficient as it may be, VAERS is what we have. According to the CDC, VAERS presently shows that there have been over 15,000 serious injuries and 4,500 deaths in the U.S. from the COVID vaccines. The European COVID vaccine reporting system shows about twice as many deaths so far. This much is certain: With over $4 billion paid out so far by the federally administered Vaccine Injury Program, vaccines in general obviously pose a well-documented risk – and the COVID-19 vaccine is no exception.
In addition, very recently there have been thousands of women reporting menstrual irregularities after receiving the vaccine. Blood clotting abnormalities have also been in the news recently. However, these are not confined to the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines as we have been led to believe but have occurred in significant numbers with Pfizer and Moderna products too. In early January it was reported that Dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old M.D. from Miami, Florida, died 16 days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. He had no underlying medical conditions before his untimely death. Within two days of receiving the experimental vaccine his platelet count (clotting factor) went to zero, and he eventually died of a hemorrhagic stroke. This was months before the J&J vaccine became available. The cause of death identified the vaccine as an “association” but amazingly not a cause.
Some Final Thoughts About the Vaccines
There is not one credible scientific study published in the medical literature demonstrating that high fevers, chills, headache, joint and muscle aches, disabling fatigue and other symptoms following vaccination are signs that the body is successfully producing induced immunity.
Recently, eight members of the New York Yankees and TV personality Bill Maher all tested positive after being fully vaccinated. They were discovered to be asymptomatic COVID carriers after they were tested as a mandatory requirement of their jobs. What about the tens of millions of vaccinated who never get tested? They could inadvertently be exposing countless others to COVID -19 because the vaccine was created to minimize severity of symptoms for the user, not to eliminate infection or transmission.
Most Americans would be surprised to learn that as of May 1, 2021, according to its official website, the CDC will inexplicably no longer keep track of any COVID vaccine “breakthrough” cases – cases where fully vaccinated patients contract the disease – unless they are serious enough to cause hospitalization or death. This will make it nearly impossible to accurately assess vaccine efficacy.
Many OB-GYNs locally and across the country are now recommending the COVID vaccine to their pregnant patients. If you are pregnant, I would strongly urge you to ask to see scientific documentation that the vaccine is safe for your unborn baby. Ask to see the manufacturer’s trial data about the rate of miscarriages for pregnant women who received the vaccine. Ask to see data about the health of newborns and toddlers who received the vaccine in utero. Please ask to see anything in writing that shows this advice is more than conjecture.
Resist the Mob Mentality
There is no reason to be a passive victim of COVID-19. For most of us the chances of dying from it are minuscule fractions of a percent. If you do catch it, when recovered you will likely have durable robust immunity to re-infection, immunity that’s based not only in antibodies (easily measured) but also in T-cells (not as easily measured).
But frankly, it seems to me that any data that doesn’t support the narrative that billion-dollar vaccines are necessary for society to be safe from the threat of COVID-19 has been intentionally “overlooked.” Beyond (or before) the vaccine, we all have multiple options to improve our health, strengthen our immune systems, minimize our chance of catching COVID-19 and use treatment options to prevent severe complications. For the elderly who may be frail, the obese, or anyone with significant underlying health conditions, it may be advisable to add isolation or the vaccine to your strategy. For the overwhelming majority of the rest of us, there is no reason to meekly succumb to peer pressure, mob mentality, government coercion, or a $3 billion pro-vaccine ad campaign. Those have no place in making intelligent and healthy personal medical decisions.
For further information about COVID-19 specifically and vaccines in general, I highly recommend America’s Frontline Doctors (www.americasfrontlinedoctoro…) and the NVIC – National Vaccine Information Center (www.nvic.org/).
Rob Pell is the author of the book “Wellness Uprising” and has owned Sunshine Natural Foods in downtown Grants Pass for 26 years. He is happy to speak about holistic wellness strategies to groups of 20 or more in the Grants Pass area. Rob is not a licensed healthcare practitioner.