The amount of doctors I've spoken to, that won't even entertain the idea that masks don't work, shows how we got here and what a difficult fight we all have.
there is a reason that there is an entire "medical writer" subspecialty that deals in nothing but "dumbing down science and drug data so that MD's can understand it."
very few have even rudimentary grasps of stats, data reading/handling, study design, or even base science.
it's easy to see, if one looks back 100 years, what quacks doctors of the time were.
what gets forgotten is that at the time, they were viewed as "authorities" just as they are now.
the odd conceit is that they somehow "really are authorities now" and will not be laughed at as quacks by those 50 years in the future.
Tell me about it! I try to discuss stats with them and their eyes glaze over. Discuss studies and they get confused. Discuss lab origins and they get angry.
Thing is, most of them are so dumbed down they will be replaced by AI in a few years and they don't even realise it.
Jerry Pournelle is your Somebody, the discoverer of Iron Law of Bureaucracy 🙂
🗨 In any bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals that bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and eventually are eliminated entirely.
--
Also quite fits, the last of Robert Conquest’s 3 laws of politics ↓↓
🗨 The behaviour of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
No problem. The techies working for Google. Except now it's Tesla that is the status symbol. Well, it was, before Musk turned to the dark side...now maybe not ;-)
Also I think it is education and historical practice of misusing math. This I've seen for decades: in the life sciences in general, they don't understand the mathematics behind statistics. Very consistently. My theory is this arose from the inability to actually do mathematically valid studies on real people - Hitler tried it but in most societies it's frowned upon. Being used to ad-hoc, invalid math abuse becomes habit. What I've noticed is that even when the opportunity to use math properly, the idea seems offensive to many - the get very defensive, even hostile. I think that is part of the culture that is instilled by their education.
The problem is that the doctors have been told that they are the best, the brightest, most altruistic, hardest working, everything for their entire professional lives.
Some of what they do IS beautiful and noble and hard but they are just humans. Any group that stands on a pedestal long enough needs to be hanged. That's it. Bottom line is that humans don't do well in an established elite. The elite must always be refreshed because it is always becoming the Establishment.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and traitors but we must grasp the paradox that today's treason was patriotism not so long ago. Forms continue long after the animating spirit is gone.
Absolutely agree. Excellent reminders here!! Thank you !! So it’s all a tedious tautology, an absurdity, that yet once again exposes the fallacy of the existence of ‘civilised people’ ..
Doctors have been 'dumbed-down' for decades as pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers, and corporate medicine have dictated the medical standard of care. COVID is just the grossest example where doctors have been censured, if not completely disqualified from practice, for failing to push vaccines, ventilators, Remdesivir, and Paxlovid.
It shouldn't come as a shock to see doctors outwardly 'brown-nosing' the establishment with pro-mask and vaccine tweets. They know who pays their bills.
Hundreds of thousands died in this country alone due to what was objectively medical malpractice but which will never result in a successful lawsuit because professional negligence cannot be established legally.
That is so funny. I told my doctor a while back that I wanted to get off the water pill and get on Losartan (ACE-2 inhib) for protection against COVID and gave him the literature. I also told him that testing for cholesterol after someone has participated in heavy exercise will throw their cholesterol numbers off (Inflammation). Monday I told him that one of the doctors in his practice prescribed Paxlovid almost 2 weeks out from initial symptoms for COVID when it is only to be prescribed 5 days out. Then he asked me if I wanted to be in an asthma study for new medication. I just about fell off my chair. WHAT about me makes him think I want to be the guinea pig for any pharmaceutical company? We have gotten into fairly pointed conversations about the relationship between pharma reps (that I practically trip over every time I go to the doc ) and the doctor almost every time I am in for the past 3 years. I had a few words for him and told him about NAC. Honestly I think they are too busy to be well informed. Sad.
You cannot be serious. I think they shut down because they don't want you (or anyone) to harm their ego or cv dogmas. Or maybe I am just assuming that you think they don't know what you're talking about, and if so sorry 'bout that. I'm just a reader here.
Totally agree, I'm willing to bet I know more about covid and the clot shot than my so called doctor. They have the rules given to them by the "system " and they're to chicken shit to deviate.
Agreed, but part of the party line is "It attaches to ACE2 receptors OMG!" Nor is furin cleavage a completely unique or new thing. I just want to know that you don't mean they have not heard these terms or something. That would be like not knowing about D2 receptors or COMT polymorphisms. That's all I mean to clarify and I suppose I may be acting a bit obtuse by it all. Sometimes I like a little too much clarity (for my own personal understanding-others may have gotten it just fine!). Now, I have personally noticed that people DO seem to react with blank expression or discomfort with mention of nAChR's and certainly CRISPR tech and chimeric "therapeutics", because those things are out of the realm of most real-world clinical practice. Anyway, thank you for your patience as I sift things through!
Aside from some specialties, like surgery, they are toast. The AI systems ALREADY tested show superior diagnostic skills compared to 99+% of general practitioners.
And I think I know how they will get it in. Create a shortage of GP doctors by shooting them up every 3 months with experimental injections like British Columbia Canada is doing. If they refuse then they lose their license.
Now I have some issues with an AI diagnosing problems but I have huge issues with who controls what meds get prescribed and that would be whoever controls the AI which will probably be the state medical boards (USA) and their equivalent college of physicians & surgeons (Canada).
Yes, AI GP services already proved to be much more superior years ago. They don't need to create a shortage in the way you describe though. Well not in the UK anyway. Here they are doing it to themselves. They stop seeing patients face to face, create a part-time working culture (which means they spend most the time just catching up), try not to work on mondays and fridays (so they have a long weekend but again means a lot of catching up mid-week) and then claim burn-out. They then leave creating a shortage and more work for the remaining GPs who will actually get burn out through lack of GPs.
Then the solution, AI, will be brought in to relieve them and they will lap it up, not realising they are signing their resignation letter for a few years down the line.
Truth is, doctors are simply sophisticated mechanics, just working on different machines. In my experience, most do not stay abreast of current literature. They read the absolute minimum needed to function, and rely on drug and medical supply salesmen to keep them up on current trends. And as has been pointed out, the guy who graduated dead last in his medical school class is called "Doctor."
so true. if docs did their homework, none would force a vaccine on you. None would ever take one themselves or have their wife and children jabbed. But the ones I know ran to the jab place and proudly showed it on their iphones. These are all docs I won't go to if I can avoid it.
I've had this exact exchange happen with two pediatricians so far:
I expressed concern about the amount of aluminum babies are exposed to in the vaccines on the CDC's standard childhood schedule. I get a knee jerk "There's no aluminum in vaccines anymore." "No," I correct them. "You're thinking of mercury. There is most definitely aluminum in most vaccines."
They know not even the most basic information about the vaccines they push.
I am a doctor in northern New Jersey in a surgical subspecialty I have a bio chemistry background but for the last 20 years I function in a private office and there’s a lot of truth to what you say. 
The difference is cars dont talk back to you and unburden themselves with every random problem and tangential irrelevant story about their personal lives. I am grateful for my job and career. I am an eye doc and did extremely well in school. I grew up in a religion jewish home and was encouraged to nurture deep skepticism for political authority dogma and propaganda. I never got any covid shots and paid a price. I fought back against masking. I try to be conservative, transparent and circumspect in the way i practice. But if you are in a customer service job dealing w the general public then u understand that sometimes people can be very difficult. I trained up in and around NYC at big city hospitals and i got excellent training. I saw all kinds of people, diseases , in all sorts of different circumstances. People who dont practice medicine dont appreciate how neurotic, needy , ignorant, petty people can be. I almost never let the difficult patients ruffle me. Im a professional . But honestly it wears one down. Especially also given the fact that doctors work under so many mandates and rules now . We arent really independent professionals anymore.
Im grateful everyday for those like you who I've found on substack here and other places. There are so many of us who want to uphold the oath we took to first do no harm. Dr Simone Gold is one and the Front line critical care alliance is another. All the docs and scientists on that new panel Gov de santis convened are with us. Dr Peter Mccoullough and Malone, and Kory , Bhattachyra ... the truth will win in the end
Im a doc myself and u are spot on. I have a biochem degree and ive identified as a libertarian since i was a teen. Im 55 now. Even though I was trained as a scientist I’ve spent the last 20 years in a surgical subspecialty being basically a technician. I think I’m very good at what I do and I try to be ethical and transparent. A lot of the other doctors in my community work for large corporations, large hospital systems. I am in a private practice. A lot of the doctors don’t have science background. One of my colleagues has a degree in government from Harvard University. A lot of doctors are very status conscious, they are not heroes they shy away from confrontation, they make higher than average incomes and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. When Covid came along and the masks went on most of them just put their heads down and went along the whole program. It was absolutely heartbreaking
Corporate medicine is the enemy here. There's a reason Obamacare tried so hard to eliminate private practice. People, and doctors are people, are easier to control if they are worried about losing a paycheck if they don't toe their employer's approved line.
When I got out of the hospital 18 months ago after my COVID bout, the (corporate employed) pulmonologist kept telling me at my followups I still needed to get the shot. He first tried to tell me it was an "added level of protection" but wouldn't give me a more detailed answer when I pressed him about the mechanics of how the immune response would work in that case. It was very clear he was uncomfortable and I could read between the lines from his anxiety that he was giving me this advice because he was told he had to do so, not because he actually believed it. So I asked him point blank and he smiled and said, "Yes, it's the position of Methodist Hospital that you should get the vaccine." That's all he would say. I actually felt sorry for the guy.
"Corporate medicine is the enemy here" - It is ONE of the enemies. Look at the countries with socialized medicine and how they went along with the mass injections. In some ways having a single controlling entity paying them makes socialized medicine easier to subvert.
I could see the "follow the government line" two years ago with two of my docs. I questioned one about ivermectin, and he gave me a story about one patient who used ivermectin and still died. The other told my wife, jabbed and one booster, who had covid and recovered, that the jabs were the reason she didn't die. That seems to be the fallback narrative now...that the vaccines won't keep you from getting it, but will relieve the symptoms. I am surprised that they don't simply have some cards printed up to hand out with the current CDC narrative de jour.
It's a lovely narrative because you can't in a particular case (one person) know how it would have turned out without the drug. There can be no control with which to compare with only one patient.
This has been generalized - no matter how tragic the last 3 years have been, it can be argued it could have been worse if we'd not done all the crazy stuff. But we do have some controls (though small). And we seen from the controls that outcomes for places without the crazy stuff have been better. So clinging to this "it would have been much worse" view defies logic and reason, but it seems too readily accepted by too many people. A true pragmatist would look at the outcomes and see that what we did clearly did not work - we're still talking about COVID scares 3 years after we first heard of it. But logic and reason are no longer allowed...labeled misinformation and denial.
It's a narrative impossible to prove. Everyone has different, reactions to covid . Everyone has different immune systems. You can get the shot,you can still die. But your death could've been much worse without the shit shot!
Same here, got covid "Delta " in December 21. Came down with pneumonia and collapsed lung from coughing too hard. Upon releasing me from the hospital he pressed me to get the vax in 3 months. I just laughed and told him I had natural immunity now. He just kind of nodded and smiled!
He must of forgot about that pesky natural immunity stuff… ya know, the stuff we learned about in school? Oh well, I’m a nurse, not a biologist… 🤷🏽♀️🙄🙄🙄
I have been fired as a patient by a number of doctors. I have complete distain for the lot since I diagnosed myself with SLE. Someone finally did the correct test. Up until then I was simply a hypochondriac.
And they will circle the wagons to fight you if you formally complain about their professional incompetence. The AMA, too, has become little more than a leftist political tool.
I was a member of the AMA for two or three years after I finished my residency in 1999 2000 2001 and I dumped my membership and never had anything to do with those people ever again. Because I realize that all they are is a lobbying group and completely corrupted by left and progressive politics. And now they’re pushing this Woke bullshit
Hate and jealousy , resentment is at the heart of the entirw leftist and progressive worldview. Its all just a form of marxism. Marxism Is not so much even a doctrine as It is a mob like cult of Jealousy and hate thats been dressed up in the garb of a legitimate intellectual movement of philosophy.
Never have understood how one can be "fired" by someone they are paying. The more appropriate terminology is that your doctor quit on you. You are the boss and paying the bills, not them.
Well, not sure it matters. But if you say so. The doctors basically said they would see me anymore, if I continued to question their expertise. Tgat sounds a lot like being let go. So I am sticking with the word “fired”. Please don’t turn me into the word police : )
Not meant as word police and apologies if it came off that way. Just pointing out the nature of the relationship, you hired them not the other way around. I'd like to fire my boss sometimes but I've found out that doesn't work!
If doctors think they "fire" patients then it shows they misunderstand the relationship. Which is actually the heart of the who problem in all honesty. The white robes, the diploma on the wall, you call them "doctor" while they call you "Bob", making you wait for them while sitting there with no pants on, etc. It's designed to appear that they are a priesthood and you are the grateful peon thankful for their time. It hides what it actually is, i.e. you hiring them to consult on your healthcare.
Anyways, sorry for the rant, one of my pet peeves.
I call my doctor and dentist by their first name. I think it does help to equalize the relationship. A while back I realized I am an adult who can decide what will and will not be done to me at the doctor's office. It was the day a dermatologist in the Florida Keys asked me who the doctor was (him or me) and then proceeded to do what I asked him not to. You either have control of yourself or you yield it. No complaining afterward. Most things are not an emergency. Go home and do your homework and then go back and respectfully ask questions. Just like you would treat any other consultant. Be your own best advocate.
The dominant practice is symptom control. Finding a doc who will be able (and allowed) to look for actual causes is hard. The industry guidelines and mandates do not favor inquiry. Got a cholesterol number we don't lie? We've got a drug that will put it where we want it - don't ask why it suddenly changed, just mask it.
That is so true for a lot of things they treat. Asthma, cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure... just treating the symptom. There is no money in treating the cause and finding a cure. Lots of times your body is reacting to something else and the treated thing is the reaction.
About cholesterol - if you exercise vigorously before getting tested your numbers will look bad. Your body releases cholesterol to deal with the inflammation associated with the strenuous exercise. My doctor did not know that. Now he does. In my town where every other person is doing the freaking Ironman they need to know!
Interesting fact about exercise. I did not know that. Not sure how to work around that - stay on the couch? seems like a bad idea.
I did have the experience several years ago when I hired my "primary care physician" (after being berated numerous times for being old and not having one). He is a pretty good guy, in his 50s, tennis player. I am physically active, always have been. Over the years it's taken a toll on joints. started weight training to compensate for bad knees (works). started doing upper body training to fill the time between leg exercises. This has worked great for my knees, as well as increased my upper body muscle mass - and I have put on weight compared to the skinny me of my 30s.
At my first visit, the doc read my weight and height and noted that according to the "guidelines" I was obese. As I took off my shirt, his PA (30-ish female) noted that I was not fat. I noted that the more I exercise, the more weight I retain, so should I stop exercising to lose weight? We all laughed.
An interesting factoid - my doctor tells me if husband does not have heart disease in his family and because he is not old (he doesn't) that even if his cholesterol ratio was not too great, he could skip meds. Which is a good thing because he won't take them. Before they took my blood this week I did not do any strenuous exercise. I rode my ebike and walked the neighborhood. No lifting or running or anything that makes me achy. We shall see if my numbers are good. Not that I will be taking statins. Ever.
My husband is like you. His BMI also puts him in the obese catergory. So ridiculous. He is a rock. He does not lift, but he exercises a LOT. If you look at him he looks maybe slightly to thin. He just does not gain weight. But obese. It is ridiculous. I have come around to thinking that if I don't look good or feel comfortable in my clothes something must be done. I tossed the scale. I think they made the categories to make people take medicines. I am 5'10" and when I was young I struggled to keep my weight around 123. Underweight. Too hungry to be happy. I think it hosed my metabolism. Now I weigh I think between 155-160. Just right for me.
You keep exercising. It will keep you alive and happy. Screw the chart.
I really think the weight training preserves joints. They are protected by strong muscles. Smart you!
several months ago, I went to my gp & a few months later to an urgent care pa & had to tell them what I had (excema flare up & sinus congestion) and what meds I need for it. they both ended up giving me asthma medicine..... 😵💫 so I got in to the dermatologist finally & she gave me the right meds for both! she's from Canada, part of the "brain drain" from Canada as she calls it.
I hav a friend from college , met him in 1987 known him for years now, US citizen, who is now a prof in Philo at a canadian univ in ontario. we talk about this all the time. The canadian health care system is a disaster, its amazing that it has survived this long. I think its deficiencies have been masked by canadians access to the US more market driven system, but as the US system collpased into socialism , the problems wth canada will be more exposed , hopefully people will demand an opening up , a liberalization in the old classic sense to more free market medical care
I am one of those medical writers. I am a scientist who worked as a researcher until a couple years ago. I switched career tracks because a) it’s hard to work at the bench when your kids are constantly being sent home and as a medical writer I could work from home, b) medical research is a joke. It’s much more a career game than a pursuit of knowledge. In fact, the most successful scientists are the best BS artists, c) medical writers are paid much better and have far greater job security.
In any case, from both my experience as a researcher at a medical university and as a medical writer I can confirm that doctors are not trained to think. They’re great memorizers who know how to match up sets of symptoms with various pharmaceutical or surgical interventions. So yes, they do need a lot of spoon feeding.
yes good memorizers, One of my colleagues has a degree from harvard in government. He was a good memorizer. He has bought into every liberal fallacy and trope in history. He took all 4 shots plus then ew bivalent booster. most of the docs around here northern NJ crawled over eachtother to be guinea pigs and they even got their teen sons and daughter to get it. I never got any covid jabs, had covid in Aug 21, have natural immunity and T cells, neither of my teen sons got any of those shots. I was persecuted for deferring the vax, lost privileges at a hospital. Other docs called me names, threatened to stop sending me patients. They were all wrong about everything and I and many other knew this at the time back in the summer and Fall of 2020 when the shot was being tested.
Have you ever read the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis? The story had some wonderful commentary on the tension between real science and practical life
I remember in my undergrad days that the life science majors were generally focused on memorizing stuff. In deed I noticed that most traditional education relied very much on rote learning - the goal is to get students to remember things and regurgitate them on tests. Having a poor memory and low patience threshold, that's not me. Through all my schooling up to graduate studies this was a disadvantage in most classes. My lack of memory skills forced me to get good at figuring things out. Classes that graded on accomplishment - getting stuff done - versus testing, I scored well. Testing was always a weakness. I was not one of those 4.0 undergrads.
In the real world I learned that innovation requires figuring stuff out. When trying to do what hasn't been done before, rote learning is of little value. In my post-graduate studies, I became entangled with medical imaging (MRI and CT), so have had some experience with the medical culture. Though I think that part of the field is far more open to new ideas than most of the medical community. Radiology and diagnostics may attract the few MDs who still want to think ;-)
I've noted before on the sloppiness of medical research, especially misuse of math. Some of it is necessity: used to be frowned upon to do large scale experiments on humans, well, prior to 2020 at least. It's multi-parts ignorance due to deficiencies in teaching the math and science, and arrogance and a big part politics of funding.
There is so much in the medical literature that is nonsense, but looks like legitimate results because medical scientists abuse statistics so badly. P-hacking is practically part of the training.
Interesting! I worked for a company who connected EHR’s or RHIO’s back in the day. The doctors hated the electronic medical records and prompting of prescription drugs in the script writing software. Maybe because it interfered with their key ability of memorized facts.
my dad was an aerospace engineer. He was a smart guy, a critical thinker. He graduated from cooper union in the 1950s with high honors and worked on aircraft guidances systems he even worked for nasa for a while. He used to say that engineers styled themselves as independant professionals but in reality most of them were dependent on these huge companies with giant gov / military contracts for their livelihoods. I wanted to be a research scientist, I have a biochem background. I ended up as an ophthalmologist, most docs nowadays are employees of large companies / medical systems. They are not independent, they follow protocols and procedures that have been developed by others. They are completely dependent on medicare. and other gov boondoggles . I 've managed to stay independent but thhis last 3 years has been heartbreaking
Doctors are like car mechanics. They can diagnose issues faster than I can most of the time, and you need them to "fix things" you cannot fix at home. But don't expect the car mechanic to understand the fully physics of the engine, or how his diagnostics tool works. Similar, the doctor doesn't know the biochemical workings of his drugs or how a virus exactly spreads.
And last, just as the car mechanic gets training from the car manufacturer, the doctor gets told what is true/right by the medical community. He or she doesn't really deviate from these told doctrines.
There is a alot of truth to that. But there are many medical doctors esp in the past 100 years who were also powerful intellectuals, critical thinkers, scientists. Im 55 , jewish and i was trained by a generation of docs now mostly in their 80s older , retired and dead who were very smart , some brilliant independent, dedicated professionals. The group that founded mt sinai hosp in Nyc where i trainer war such a group. But sadly ,politics has wormed its way into the medical establishment . Government destroys all it touches
Interesting analogy and I see the parallel, mostly. There are different kinds of mechanics. Most mechanics will "diagnose" by plugging in the scanner, reading the code, and replacing whatever the book says to replace. Replacing parts is analogous to prescribing drugs: when the first attempt fails to solve the problem, they swap more parts (prescribe more drugs). Often it can take several trips to the shop to get the problem correctly fixed. Likewise with typical docs: they try different drugs until the symptoms go away and sometimes takes several trips to make the symptoms go away for good.
There are a few mechanics that can actually figure things out. They go beyond the code reader and book and try to figure out what's really going on. Instead of swapping parts until the problem goes away, they think it through, find the actual cause of the problem (symptom) and usually fix it for good. Sadly it seems there are fewer and fewer doctors like this. Seems most simply push pills and shots until something happens.
Of course humans don't have on-board diagnostics (or do we?) with ODB3 interfaces.
When the individual patient doesn't fit the guidelines, it seems too often the docs toss their hands in the air and punt. Well, we tried all the drugs I have for this and it didn't work, sorry. Even worse sometimes is when it seems to work, but really only masks the underlying cause. Which doesn't go away.
One of the interesting things I read up on recently is how liver function affects cholesterol numbers. Consistently studies show that your liver is the source of most of what shows up as cholesterol, and that lifestyle choices such as diet have less impact. This is contrary to what "everybody knows" for sure. Most docs use statin drugs to get cholesterol numbers "where we want it" and may in fact be masking liver function problems. Which undetected tend to get worse, leading to liver failure. Which often does prevent the patient who dies from liver failure from developing heart disease.
true! however, car mechanics always say, if you do this instead of what the manufacturer requires, it voids your warranty. drs do the same by not trying different things, sticking with expensive drugs that they just got a free dinner from it's drug rep, drugs, that cause worse problems that the original problem.
Great analogy and I passed it along to someone that fixes their own car that I had a discussion with about the effectiveness of masks today because I read this post. Full circle!
Another factor may be weaponized peer pressure. Here in CA, a physician can lose their license for "misinformation" for admitting anything which the medical board has deemed suppressed or recommending or endorsing anything in deviation from the approved guidelines. Any physician that deviates from the state approved narrative risks license revocation. Few docs are in a position to risk that.
yes thats exactly what it is , groupthink and peer pressure. noone is immune. Back 50+ yrs ago , most docs were in private practice so they were less susceptible but now most docs work for big companies
I think also there has been a real shift in the culture, too. Even back 50 years ago, "private practice" did not mean independent for most docs I think. They needed access to hospitals, clinics, and other professionals for referrals. The kind of pressures and intolerance we see today are reflective of a general trend in our society that has become more blatant in the last decade or two (or three?).
You’re absolutely right. And I think and many others agree that this trend has been fueled by the Centralization of power in large bureaucratic and political agencies like the NIH and the CDC. We have had a bureaucratization And politicization of medical care and medical research and what we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome
I have had such better luck with Naturopaths and even Chiropractors. They've fought these "MD" types for so many years that they've had to keep up in order to prove their mettle. I stopped going to MD's about 4 decades ago.
I'm fit and healthy and my docs give me nutritional advice and check blood and vitals far more often than the MD's ever did. They understand the holistic body. And that's probably the best part of this.
Specialists in the MD space only know their specialty. If they are a "hammer doctor" all they see are nails. My alternative docs ask how I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what else is going on, and most importantly, what do I think is going on with my body.
We all have to take personal responsibility for our own well being. If a doctor tells me something that doesn't sound or feel right, I go find another expert in that field.
Here is some more ammo, like you would really need any more. Maybe you saw it already. Too bad no control arm. I think we can spitball an outcome.
Thanks for another great summary! Gotta keep the pressure on.
I am frustrated by the lack of intellectual curiosity demonstrated by my peeps the last few years. People can't seem to rationalize two thoughts in their head anymore. We don't have to look back 100 years as thee Wayback machine planted us there......
Thank you and yes I did see this I have a fairly substantial group of people now that I share all the stuff with. A lot of my medical colleagues know that masks don’t work but they’re simply afraid to defy the mob.
For months people in my office were asking me when did they think we could stop wearing masks. I was walking around with no mask since February 2022, but there was still a “law”. Or a governors executive order in New Jersey that said we had to wear masks in medical offices, so my staff members would ask me when can they stop wearing the masks. I would say you can stop wearing the mask right now all you have to do is take it off. But nobody took them off. Because we are a nation of fucking cowardly sheep. I would say to people, if everybody followed all the rules and laws all the time we would still have slavery in the United States because slavery was protected by laws
I wonder about that. A couple of the guys I know from college became MDs. They weren't so arrogant and egotistical before med school. It may be a learned behavior.
You should have seen the reaction from the MDs in the room when a colleague of mine referred to the MD as "the easy way to get the title Doctor". He went on to explain it's not like an earned doctorate in other fields where one must do some original work in addition to proving they can suffer through course work and jump through hoops. An MD, he said, is an award for showing up and surviving med school. The rant was triggered by an MD insisting he be addressed as "Doctor" in a forum where most participants had (at least one) earned doctorate in something like physics, math or engineering.
If they can't understand or appreciate something as simple as this (given the amount of data that exists on this), then what else in medicine is being used as treatment or is done with just as little evidence behind it? That's what is worrying me now.
It’s not that they can’t appreciate it or don’t understand it. It’s just that if the state of New Jersey or any other state imposes a mask mandate legally on healthcare facilities and they don’t obey the doctors can lose their licenses, have their offices shut down or have very negative publicity or attention brought down on them through social media. And their reputations will suffer
Most doctors are not heroes most doctors are not brave. Most of us ( im an MD) I have spent years getting to where we are, we have higher than average incomes and we have mortgages and college tuitions and car payments just like everybody else. And we are human beings fearful of peer pressure just like everybody else
I lost my hospital privileges at a major northern New Jersey hospital because I deferred taking that vaccine. And I was positively persecuted by many many doctors in my community who told me I was being selfish and reckless. One female doctor actually called me a coward and questioned my manhood
All of these people were wrong and I told them they were wrong at the time I told them all that they would regret the things that they were saying.
I ultimately found another hospital that gave me a religious exemption
And I don’t regret my decision. In fact every day that goes by I feel happier and more validated that I never took the shot, and I spoke out against it from the beginning
I was never against the Covid vaccination per say I was against coercion and mandates
From the beginning it was absolutely clear that this Covid shot would not prevent infection spread and transmission. It was not a neutralizing or sterilizing agent and was not developed for that purpose
So there was never any reason or justification to mandate it or force anybody to get it
I appreciate that many physicians such as yourself submit to the coercion for good reasons. I myself (not an MD but do have too many credentials) submitted to the two-shot plus booster because of similar pressures, and wore masks on airplanes when mandated. Because my the way I make my living required it. So I get that.
Your experience though seems to indicate quite a few (too many) members of your profession not only do not understand the actual science, the are also intolerant of those who ask the wrong questions. Any rational person SHOULD ask for the risk/benefit balance of any medical treatment. It sounds like any of your peers simply would not allow such consideration.
Of course the irony is that it takes courage and strength to go against peer pressure and ask the questions. What I'm wondering is if any of those people now regret their mistakes, or have the doubled down on the denial of evidence and dug int deeper?
I never took any of those shots and i was vocal in my opposition to masking and shot mandates. Not a single one of my colleagues or doctors in the community that directly challenged me or heard the things that I had to say has called me or contacted me to tell me that they were sorry or to apologize or to tell me that I changed their minds or to thank me for exposing them to this information. Not a single one
Not a single member of the medical executive committee at the hospital where I previously had privileges has contacted me to tell me that they were sorry for kicking me off the staff based on fear ignorance and corruption
So no so far I see no signs of regret
That’s why I say I’ve lost all respect for these people. We seem to be in a post shame society in addition to a post truth society. Where everybody lies about everything all the time and nobody has any remorse or regret about anything
Yet I am supposed to have remorse over the actions of people who died 150 years before I was born and bear no relationship to me except for having similarly pale skin. Welcome to the 21st century.
I know its absolutely crazy. These people in this movement almost destroyed western civilization and have no insight self-awareness or remorse and yet they want you and me to feel sorry for some thing that our great great grandfathers did supposedly because they had pale skin. They also believe that “whiteness“ is some kind of detached spiritual quantity like some kind of invisible force from Star Wars that imbues the world with racism and is responsible for all the bad things that happen. Talk about superstitious tinfoil hat bullshit conspiracy theories!!!
And yet somehow we are the ones called names when we say things like hey maybe the federal government of the United States shouldn’t be quite as big as it is right now…
I appreciate your comment, but my attention then turns to a similar point--those in positions of authority need to have a better understanding of the underlying research. People on these medical boards should understand and should know better and therefore be completely conversant on this topic to defend it, but they don't stick to their guns. Cf. Fauci saying one thing in February 2020 and then completing changing tactics.
I understand that in some sense it is easier in engineering where you can have a safety multiplier on calculations to make sure the bridge will hold a specific load, whereas medicine is not so clean-cut or simple in that sense. There are so many factors involved that it is very complicated. But that is why this research is so important--it simplifies the factors down to manageable numbers, and yet even then the studies are ignored or are deemed "not enough." It frustrates me to no end. When you have as many studies as Gato listed above clearly showing no statistical association but the practice continues, I just get so frustrated.
And also keep in mind that Unless you’re a pediatrician, as an adult doctor the best bulk of your patients are elderly people who are on Medicare. For a typical practicing doctor in United States half or more of their income comes from one federal agency program. My opinion is that Medicare and any federal involvement in healthcare is completely immoral and unconstitutional. But here we are!
With a massive failed bankrupt federal welfare medical program for old people. And everybody is dependent on it. And no doctors want to do anything to jeopardize their revenue stream. They’re afraid
You are not dealing with rational people at this point. A lot of doctors leaders in the medical community or partisan liberal Democrats and equate vaccine hesitancy and mask skepticism to being a Trump supporter. A lot of doctors that I’ve known for years are completely clueless about this stuff. And a lot of them are just not interested in making waves or drawing any kind of attention to themselves. They’re complete cowards. And on some level a lot of them know it
As someone who grew up in a very religious Jewish home I can tell you that the dynamic is the same kind of thing as what happened did Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia when secret police would come to your neighbors house in the middle of the night and take you away. For your survival the best thing for you to do is just not look and not say anything
I'm not sure the problem is understanding. These entities have become political bodies. The COVID response was based on politics, not research. The reason Fauci and so many others changed their story was not because the research results changed, it was because the politics required it.
Lotta doc haters on this stack! Love it! I would say, stereotypes exist for a reason. search for the British skit "neurosurgeon vs rocket scientist" if you haven't seen it. However, there are many docs who work hard and do the best they can with what they have to work with and most folks I see have already done a great job screwing themselves up. Many docs read a lot. I do that is how I have ended up on this stack. Our health system is great at acute/emergent care but not so great with chronic disease. That is because the patients need to do that part. Eat well, be active, vigorous exercise, don't smoke, limit meth use don't beg for antibiotics and pain pills etc. I had a couple other careers before medicine so maybe an advantage for me. Otherwise, follow the money and if you see where it is going turn the other direction and go for a nice long run.
Not haters, but skeptics. Skepticism is well founded, and essential to protect your personal health IMO. Many industry practices, and far too many physicians and health care professionals give good reason to distrust. My skepticism comes from personal experience, as well as history of performance, attitudes, practices and outcomes.
Perhaps one of the most hazardous attitudes encountered is blaming the patient. This is common, and in many cases wrong. Sure, there are patients who are a pain, who don't follow direction, and who engage in unhealthy habits. But there is also a lot of very bad advice being dispensed under the label of healthy lifestyle choices that turn out not to be healthy. There is also a widespread use of "lifestyle choices" as an excuse not to seek underlying causes that are, in many cases, not lifestyle.
Compounding this the pattern of sticking with bad advice despite overwhelming evidence that it is harmful. The 2020-on experience is hardly surprising given the record of the industry.
Do you continue to advise the "low sodium" diet? This has been shown to be helpful for a very small number of patients with specific conditions, and harmful to the vast majority of humans. Yet it remains in the "guidelines" and preached day in and day out. It continues to be public policy. There are many examples of the "eat right" being bad advice...occasionally the medical industry even admits this and changes the advice (remember when carbs were good? When we were told the egg yoke contained the important good stuff and the white was useless? I do).
Another example is statin drugs. The actual science (evidence) shows that for certain patients with established vascular plaque, statins slow the progression of accumulation. For patients in which accumulation has started. No one has yet figured out why some people will accumulate plaque and others will not. The common use of statins does not follow from the actual scientific evidence. Statins are used simply to achieve a target number in the blood test. Hit the number and don't ask any questions. And don't discuss the risk of statin drugs with the patient.
In the same pattern as with COVID non immunizing vaccines, the risks of statins is seldom discussed with the patient. There are many. One of which is using the drug to mask a symptom of an underlying problem, such as liver malfunction.
We see the same with other conditions blamed on the patient. Blamethe patent, no need to dig further. Ignoring things like weight gain as signals, and missing the underlying causes. When we can blame the patient, why look for physiological causes?
Ultimately the most obvious source of distrust is the common disdain one gets from docs when asking questions. It's hard to trust someone who responds to reasonable questions with disdain and dismissal.
To be clear, most of the MDs I've met do sincerely strive to help people. I have met MDs who are independent thinkers and don't subscribe or succumb to pressures to not think, not dig, not understand. It seems the system places much pressure to conform to directives and not ask too many questions, and that is the main root of my distrust.
Unfortunately, I am required to be a skeptic as well. I have a number of rules which have served me well in my practice. Number 4 is always trust the patient. Number 5 is always trust the patient. I can’t give good advice without good information. And most of time time it is advice. As I have mentioned before most of the problems people have they can address themselves. Sometimes reassurance is needed sometimes tests. Rarely, medicine.
Agree with your concern about bad advice comment and the 2020 experience. I have dumped all of my admin duties for 90 er docs because I could not speak the corporate lines anymore. Just a plain old er doc now. I get outside a lot and work out enough. I encourage the same.
Love salt, and eggs and they go well together. Butter is a favorite with heavy cream. Especially with new potatoes, shallots, garlic, white wine, some broth, cheddar cheese and a little saffron. Won’t take a statin or a blood pressure med.
I fight vigorously against health care metrics and things like the devil Press Ganey.
But, unfortunately sometimes I do need to blame the patient. The US is a complete outlier in the world for obesity and all of the chronic conditions that come with it. I always say I may not have the answers but I will give you the best I have and sometimes I am not right.
In the middle of the night I had to wade through pages of google to find the cat and find TIOK as well! I am glad I did! Keep questioning your docs, if they don’t know the answer so be it. If they don’t like the question move on!
That article is the best I’ve seen not only explaining the lack of efficacy but that masks actually cause greater harm than good...and it’s not even close!
Not taking it could have saved your life… we are burying too many friends of friends and family members close to us… clots…. Heart attacks… SAD… (had 2 of those in my small neighborhood so far)… even a 12 yo with a brain aneurysm… pericarditis… even an aggressive form of ALS… and darn… I have never seen so much AFib in my entire life… 😳😳😳
its disgusting and heartbreaking. these people and institutions faced what for many of them was the only real major moral test of their lives and the FAILED! Thomas sowell wrote about how the Germans fell into totalitarianism. He said that the germans were up until 1932, the most advanced tolerant open accomplished society on earth. So it they , the Germans coudl fall into Nazism, what chance do WE have? At least back then, there was a world wide depression and hyperinflation. Now what do we have, an election year and a virus that is 99.9 survivable!? what chance do we have? indeed!
Wear a mask if you want, but I will think to myself it is a clown world in which you live. However, if you get in my face about it, I'm not going to be gracious or feel any sympathy for you. Your ignorance at this point is completely willful and/or neurotic. The information has been out there since the CDC's own meta study released in May 2020 about the inefficacy of masks wrt influenza.
Indeed. And the studies in the past showing that masks don't even work in surgery (so how in the world can they possibly work anywhere else?) exposes the fundamental keystone lie that props all the other lies up.
I was in my GP's office on Monday. Not one mask in the joint. In fact in the beginning mine wore the mask, but took it off when he saw I was unmasked. People in my state are not all down with the masking. Really feel for the people in the maskmanic states.
In my professional opinion, wearing masks is very beneficial. I never work without one. It provides very high levels of protection. For professional bank robbers like me, masks are essential.
What I love is how our bank has a sign about removing sunglasses and hats before entering the building but during Covid they threw all of that out because everyone was masked.
Long time ago when I worked at a store next to a bank - people we knew, saw often - one of my coworkers donned a gorilla mask on Halloween and wandered into the bank as a joke. Turns out that people who work in banks didn't find that funny.
Now you're more likely to be judged suspiciously if you're NOT wearing a mask in a bank.
PS: At the bank last week, most bank employees - front desk, security guard, a couple (or three, if you count the lady in her office) of bank people - were wearing masks.
It seems most public facing employees are remaining masked at high rates. Grocery clerks, baristas, restaurant staffs, department stores...I don’t get it, and I live in Florida. I would say customers in grocery stores are about 10% masked but employees seem to be over 50% at least. I’m tired of it and avoid or ignore masked employees for open facers.
It makes me viscerally uneasy to see people in masks. It feels like we’re living in a dystopian movie and people have now grown bird beaks. I have felt this way since 2020. I find it highly disturbing. 
I'll bet in many of those cases, there's at least social pressure from coworkers if not an actual edict (not sure that's legal anymore) but it could be more like, "Nice job you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it."
I’m in Southern California. I’d guess 15% of employees in retail wear masks. I always avoid them if at possible. I want them to be without anything to do.
Only Trader Joe's in WA seems to have a high employee mask rate for grocery stores.
I heard several years ago Trader Joe's employees (maybe easily brainwashed?) we're donating their hard earned hourly wages of $14 to $17 dollars per hour to Bill Gates- apparently Gates was asking for money. . .one of the richest men in the US was being given money by hourly employees!? 🤣
Hey, the best way to rob a bank is to work there! Stickup men do hard time; the executives at Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, etc stole much more and did no time.
One question to ask mask pushers and adherents: we were never advised to do this at anytime ever until now. So, are they ("experts," those advising) lying now or were they negligent then? It has to be one or the other.
We have compiled studies on masks and efficacy to make available for clients that are still wearing these...and then we have a conversation about how, not only are they NOT protecting you now, but the were NEVER protecting. That didn't change. This ENTIRE time, your mask was NOT protective. At all.
This approach has been pretty effective for us. It's interesting to watch someone come to this realization and then take their mask off around others for the first time.
We own a structural integration studio (pilates, Redcord, kettlebell, Rolfing, meditation. Vibrational sound therapy, infrared light, etc). Are you in Atlanta? Come on! 😉
Yes! I’ve seen the headlines every year for a good decade screeching the panic porn of raging “seasonal” flu. Hospitals and icus are filled most winters. But was I ever asked to wear a mask to live outside my house? 2018 was a particularly bad year. I paid no attention to the flu as I do every year. My immune system at 74 is working great because I work at staying healthy. I’m attending a small (6) group lunch at a local restaurant that is very big but usually has only a couple of tables occupied. A friend is wearing her mask. Sit with us and take her lunch home. She had coffee with some of us yesterday and sipped it through a straw poked under the mask she held out a bit with her fingers. She is so afraid she barely goes anywhere. It’s sad.
I am almost 72. I live in a county that had a total 12 deaths, supposedly from covid, listed for most of 2020. Then it started to rise with the jab roll out. Most in this county never wore masks. Those that I saw and still see with masks on, to look in their eyes I see fear. They need to get groceries so, they put on their masks in the parking lot (if they weren't already wearing them in the car) and they scuttle through the isles to pick up what they need. I don't know if they can be reached. By this time, with the number of boosters they've gotten, I suspect that they really are having health problems but can not see that the shots were the cause and are still getting "covid" which self-reinforces the idea that if not for the shots it would be so much worse.
I live 7 miles south of the Cheddar Border. Masking past the first summer wasn’t universal in the Wisconsin border town I live near. I used to shop there. Also gas is sooooooo much cheaper. 👍🏻 My state?pfttttt. Gone.
"The Science (tm) changes as scientists learn more."
There's just enough truth in that to satisfy the midwits. Don't think of these as rational arguments in which facts or logical consistency matter. Think of them as cult beliefs (with a bit of pseudoscientific window-dressing). It's not that the cult leader was lying or negligent before. Rather, he has received a new revelation. It is not for us to question it.
But if you ask them, "Where did you learn the new data? What studies? How do they differ from previous studies?" they have no answer. They just huff and glare at you, or tell you that you "wouldn't understand" or are "just trying to be a contrarian."
Or the one I get all the time: "What makes you think you're smarter than the experts?"
Genuinely, the idea of looking at the evidence and coming to their own conclusion seems alien to them. They just want an answer from someone they perceive as smarter or more capable. Although I suspect that's not quite how it works. Rather, they arrive at their own answer, but for emotional reasons they can't defend; then they look for an "expert" to affirm it, so they can invoke authority instead of having to defend it.
Definition of expert: Has brief case and is more than 20 miles from home.
In reality, you may be smarter than the "expert" if you have been studying the data and viewing/listening to the range of opinions out there on the topic. The person who is not inquisitive, so allocates his thinking to others (experts), can not conceive that you being non-credentialed could possibly know anything. Yet, in every field we see the major breakthroughs in knowledge are most often made by amateurs, who have an uphill battle against the credentialed experts defending their turf.
"I'm not. I'm following experts, too. I'm just trusting the experts who make a better argument than your experts."
When you tell them that you're following experts, just not THEIR experts, they'll have no intelligent comeback.
To paraphrase Jeff Childers from today's Coffee & Covid, "they can’t say you didn’t listen to “the experts"...they can’t even accuse you of cherry-picking your experts. If they open THAT Pandora’s box, who knows what else might leap out? People might start to wonder whether EVERYBODY cherry-picks their experts (of course they do; even the ones who tell you, "what makes you think you're smarter than my experts?").
I think the whole thing is a waste of time, but I started a meeting recently (about 25 people) by thanking everyone that they have changed their own car engine filter recently so that my truck runs better.
Even more: the fact that we were never advised to do this at anytime ever until now makes (or rather, it SHOULD make) the burden of proof for utility that much higher. That is: "if it saves even one life" cannot be the standard...the change has to provide clear, obvious benefit, or else it should never be implemented.
Then we remind them that there's also a precedent of welding shut the doors to apartments to keep people apart. Ten of them died when they couldn't get out.
For Christians the worst betrayal is the "masking as loving thy neighbor." It's just like the example of the alcoholic above. It's not loving to gratify self-delusion. Love is about the good of the other, which is sometimes totally opposed to his sense of emotional validation.
I had a neighboring priest from a Melkite Greek church, invite me to a Mary Magdalene service. I love the stories of Mary Magdalene and told him I’d love to attend but that I could not wear a mask. He told me to attend anyway. The service was packed with mask wearing parishioners. I believe I was the only one not wearing one. This was 2021. Not one person said a thing to me, nor did I receive dirty looks when I went up to take the blessing of communion (not the bread).
This priest also told me in another conversation, that most who have not lived in a Communist country, had no idea what was taking place, but he did, because he was raised in one.
I argued with my priest/pastor also, not just about the mask but about the forcibly shut churches and, after they reopened, the roped off pews and placement markers on the floors to keep people 6 feet away from each other. I kept saying over and over, "Christians aren't supposed to be terrified of illness or even death, and we're certainly not supposed to be terrified of each other. Christians are supposed to run toward each other in time of crisis, not away from each other." I even added that our greatest saints had risked their lives to attend personally on the sick and dying. Finally my pastor said, "We've had this conversation before," which I knew meant "Shut up" and that he was never going to listen.
But no, unlike some here, I didn't leave the Church because our bishops were a bunch of sniveling cowards and/or toadies to the power brokers. I believe in my Catholic faith because it's proved itself to be true even if those in charge of keeping the Faith have lost their faith. And I do believe that Christ Himself is still there in the tabernacle in church and comes to us every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass -- despite the failures of His servants. It's an old saying that one proof of the Divine origin of the Church is that she's survived her clergy.
Oh, I'm with you Phoebe. I haven't left the church but I won't be giving any money to the Bishops (no annual appeal money, no CCHD). These men folded like cheap suits in the face of true State tyranny and have lost my respect. I appreciate that my priest made the Sacraments as accessible as possible during Covid despite the strictures. I have found myself in the place of Peter asking "to whom else should we go?" This is not to say that the Church isn't in need of serious self-reflection. And never again should we be forced to cover the Imago Dei of the human face.
This is so true and was a huge struggle in our churches over the last three years. But they have no problem being downright hateful to those of us against masking or the vaccine. So, it was also a remarkable double standard.
It drove me away from my Catholic Church. Our archdiocese were strict adherents to the branch covidian cult. I was a person that rarely missed mass, now I haven’t been in 2 years after twice having the priest interrupt his homily to mask shame someone. All of it is completely against everything taught in the Bible. It is literally bearing witness to a false idol-the government.
Same. I can't list all the ways this sham revealed the corruption in our Diocese, including in the Catholic school my son attends. Honestly, we found a non-denominational Christian church that fought to stay open and has become a beacon for freedom seeking people in our town. They have horrible modern music in an ugly building, but I'd rather be preached to by people with real faith, who weren't so fearful they let themselves be pawns in this horrible episode in human history.
But St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of life. The Eucharist is the center of the Church - of a parish.
At Mass, it matters not that we get a good homily, or that the choir sings well, but that when we attend Mass we enter into Calvary. Heaven touches earth on the altar. It is the Holy Mass, and we must re-learn what it is to enter into that deep mystery and to remember that we receive the most handsome parting gift of all: The body, blood, soul and divinity that is Jesus Christ.
So you may have good pastors with good sermons in your non-denom, but consider that you have traded the Holy Eucharist for it.
Here in San Francisco, the only church that I know of that opened up within a month of March 2020 was an Assembly of God Church. City government tried harassing the pastor but he stood his ground. I know about this because a friend of mine goes to the church. I've gone a couple of times but the music drives me crazy (it's not particularly modern but it's just too much for me). I haven't gone to Mass at my Catholic parish church since they shut down because they were requiring people to sign a release in case they get Covid. I did check it out a few weeks ago----no requirement at this point but everyone was masked except me. I have gone to the church near UCSF (at one time it was a Newman Center) but only for Easter. I'm so disgusted with the Catholic Church for not standing up to this. But Grace Cathedral (Episcopal) was even worse. They required people to be vaccinated.
I am sorry to hear that, Jim. I am a Catholic who, too, endured officious Catholic parish karens at the front door - and priest karens. We looked around and found Catholic parishes where priests were attempting to do end runs - God bless them. They were between a rock and hard place. If they disobeyed they risked forced retirement, possibly without pensions. Further, their flock would then be without the services of a good, solid priest. Two priests we know who did everything to do end runs ended up forcibly retired. Yet bishops in other dioceses were more lenient - and looked away. It all came down to the individual bishops. Such is life.
But if we are well and deeply taught our Catholic faith, we know our faith is not in people or things. There will always be karens, cowardly bishops, and trendy priests. No matter. Our faith is in Jesus - and in our Church we believe that our personal relationship with Jesus is so deep that we insist we receive him body, blood, soul and divinity on our tongues and into our bodies as food for our hungry souls. That is the teaching of the Holy Eucharist, backed by John 6. Further, we have the sacrament of Reconciliation.
These sacraments require a priest - be he saint or sinner. Consider that a skilled surgeon may be a despicable, miserable person, but in the operating room s/he has a gift and heals with a scalpel: A doctor of the body. Priests are doctors of the soul. Not perfect, but essential. We must look beyond the sinners and find the Christ in them - and each other. A tall order, but God gives us grace.
You might find this very objective anti-COVID video from Fr. Peter Heers, an Orthodox priest who is in the minority on this issue, interesting: https://youtu.be/q5D7qbKzoaA
Jim - don't let these people keep you away from Jesus in the Eucharist. Don't give them that. Jesus deeply desires to be present with us - go back to Him in the Sacrament. Consume him and allow him to heal you. I truly understand your disappointment. I do. I struggle with it too. But let the grace of the Sacraments pour over you like a fount of mercy. I will pray for you and all of those here who share our disillusionment.
Sometimes all I can do whilst out running errands is to not rip the mask off some maskidiot’s face and scream at them how pathetic they are. But I’ve grown more in control of my reactions over the past three ridiculous years. Why even bother anymore? They’re hopeless and fearful. Poor dears.
Yep, outside, on their bikes, in their cars....insane. Also there are children in my town that continue to wear them even though the school no longer requires them. :(
I make sure to put on a confused look when they talk and make them repeat. I often explain that I can't understand what they're saying because of the useless, dirty mask.
Exactly, some masked cashier was trying to say something to me a few weeks ago at Home Depot, I told her I found or understand a word she was saying with that thing over her face.
I don't have to "put on" a confused face most of the time. I really can't understand what most of the maskers are saying. I'm a little hard of hearing anyway, and with the consonants muffled and no way for me to lip-read, half the time the maskers seem to be humming at me instead of talking. I try to explain this to the maskers, but most of them don't seem to believe me or don't care. Even a (former) friend who's about the only person I know personally who's still wearing a mask just gets angry and stalks away when I tell him I can't understand what he's saying.
The bit where you say they don't care hits home. More people seem to be acting like machines rather than humans these days. Bureaucrats were always rather machine-like, of course, but now that tendency has spread to many others. It makes me want to punch walls.
Agreed. I was in Costco a month ago and a 20-something woman had a masked barely-2 year old in the cart. My own cart swerved towards her before I got a grip. The adults I just think “you’re an idiot” and dismiss them. But when I see a family where no one is masked but a middle schooler (ALWAYS a boy), or masking their toddlers, I want to jump ugly. That’s just child abuse - putting it on a child or enabling the mental illness of the young/pre teen.
Curiously, even here in Faucistan (home of NIH), almost nobody wears masks. For that matter, nobody's talking about Covid at all. The county government's still pushing shots and boosters, but even that's become fairly halfhearted and pro-forma; it seems more like a bureaucracy running on autopilot rather than real conviction.
My sense is that last winter really undermined the hysteria. Pretty much everyone here was jabbed, but everyone got it anyway, or at least everyone knows someone who did. So they have direct experience falsifying the "winter of death" nonsense. Nobody's admitting that it was all rubbish. They might, if pressed, handwave about the jabs preventing infections from becoming serious. But mostly they just don't want to talk about it.
Even the local Karenwaffe has moved on. Couple of days ago, they trying to start a campaign to ban sugary snacks in local stores, to save us all from Diabetes 2. They'll always find some reason to be hysterical and controlling. But they seem to have figured out -- or at least intuited -- that Covid doesn't work for that purpose anymore.
Last fall I went to the medical freedom rally in Washington DC. I made the mistake of booking a hotel in Washington DC that was at the time still enforcing mask mandates, when right across the river in Virginia there were no mask mandates. I walked into this hotel in Washington not knowing about the mask mandate. I walked in without a mask and I was besieged by security guards and hotel staff. I got into an argument refused to wear the mask and they asked me to leave or they said they would call the police so I asked for a refund which they gave me and then I went across the river and booked a hotel in Virginia. No masks!
When people here were agitating for vax passports, they claimed it would actually benefit the local economy. People would emerge from their houses, and come here from other jurisdictions, because they'd know it was "safe" here. This would more than make up for the loss of unjabbed customers driven out to neighboring counties. Or at least that was the just-so story. Nobody ever put any real numbers behind it, of course, and nobody really believed it or cared if it was true. It was just a handwave.
County officials fortunately had a better grasp of reality. They made all sorts of noises about supporting vax passports, so that the ones up for re-election could get the neurotics to vote for them. But they dragged it out for a while and then quietly let it die. (Due credit to the small but vocal opposition led by Bethany Mandel and others, though, who made clear that they WOULD be held accountable for the damage if they tried to implement it.)
When Covid started I was worried and a little scared for like a month. Then I realized that Covid is not dangerous to like 99% of the population. And I personally was never a risk of Covid. When the masks went on I knew we were in trouble. Because masks don’t stop viruses I never did. But I went along with it as best I could for about a year and then the vaccines came out, and then they started talking about mandating vaccines. That’s when I became a Active dissident. By April 21 , I was hearing rumblings of people being coerced or forced into taking an experimental shot for which there was no good long-term safety data for some thing that was 99.9% survival for most people.. I’m 55 years old, raised in a very religious Jewish home, and my Nazi bullshit meter exploded ! Then I got Covid in August 21 and recovered uneventfully. I was dropped from The staff of a local hospital, kicked off three different airlines, physically assaulted in a bank, escorted out of several different places for not wearing my mask. I was persecuted by other physicians and people in my community, called names like irresponsible and reckless and a coward. And all all all of these people were completely wrong all the time and I knew it and I kept telling them they were. But their Brains were BROKEN by fear and propaganda.
When I would confront people with facts and truth and reason and try to get them to be courageous I would see their eyes glaze over like they were hypnotized,
“SO YOU DONT BELIEVE THE SCIENCE”
They would chant. Remember that movie invasion of the body snatchers when one of the aliens would find someone who is still a human being and they would point their fingers at them and scream?!
That’s how I felt. It’s been like living in an insane asylum
I’ve lost all faith and respect in people around me including my medical colleagues. And there’s nothing special about this country anymore it’s a failed bankrupt banana republic
Maybe there will be some justice soon. But it won’t matter because we’re about to have a massive sovereign debt dollar crash and crisis that’s going to make the great depression look like a bar mitzvah party
Lots of brain drain from NY and CA to more red states.
Left Upstate NY for Texas 25 years ago and so glad I did. Most of my family has by now fled NY to Florida. Still end up having similar issues in big cities, my mistake was Houston rather than a normal suburb. Austin, Dallas, San Antonio similar issues to NY really.
So far the State governors at least have your back for sanity when the fed and local governments go completely off the rails. NY you get more of the same, repeat next seasonal flu crisis.
Federal government complete waste of money, needs to be defense only, States can do the rest. No Fed employee wants to hear that / votes for that. Corrupt system truly.
Worse: Montgomery County, MD. Bedroom suburb for Feds and the Fed-adjacent, especially in "public health" -- home to NIH, USHS, FDA, and a quick subway ride downtown to HHS and the rest of the swamp.
People around here are deeply invested in the Cult of the Government Expert -- it's literally their livelihood. Even if they don't work in the public health field, they recognize the threat of lèse-majesté to their interests as a class.
At this point, "Experts agree," in a headline could be replaced with, "Buckle up, buttercup, we are getting ready to haze you with some garbage that doesn't even qualify as pseudoscience."
DR. TED NOEL [wearing a blue surgical mask]: So without further ado let's cut to the chase and take a look at an ordinary surgical mask. And I'm using a vape. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] As you can see, that vape which has aerosols the same size as covid-19 or larger [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] goes through and around a surgical mask.
[cut]
[wearing a cup mask] Now if we take a cup mask and have a good look at it, here we go. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Notice it goes right through the mask easily and goes in every direction. The aerosol is not affected by the mask in any material form.
[cut]
Now we look at surgical mask with a foam strip to protect above and keep my glasses from fogging. [now wearing the surgical mask with foam strip] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Lo and behold, the aerosols go all around it. It has no effect on me spreading aerosols to you.
[cut]
[in a blue cloth mask] Now a cloth mask I borrowed from my wife. Once again, here we go, boom! Straight through and around. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the mask and the sides of the mask] It has no effect on the spread of aerosols. They go everywhere.
[cut]
[shows package containing Guard mask] And then I went and bought a Guard mask with a high efficiency filter material. That one? Here we go, watch for it. [now wearing in mask] Through and around. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] It had no effect on the vape aerosol which, remember, is the same size or larger.
[cut]
Now I don't have an N95 mask, I have these shop respirators where they could put all kinds of things in them [pointing to filters] but they're like an N95 because when you breathe out everything goes out through a valve. [puts on mask] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Guess what? It might protect me from you, it sure isn't going to protect you from me. Let's look at that again. Boom! [puts on mask] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Any mask with a button on it has a valve that lets everything go from you to your neighbor. It has no effect on anything.
[cut]
I think you can get the picture now. There is absolutely nothing that any of these masks do to protect you from me. And the fact is that unless I have a mask which is fully sealed and where I breathe through the filter material both directions, and I have a really high quality filter, nothing is going to protect in either direction. Because just the same way that the vape went out, around, and through, it will come in, around and through. Aerosols will not be stopped by man.
You don't need a big study. All you need is this [holds up vape] because the aerosol here is actually larger in molecular size than the aerosol from your breath. And because your breath has a smaller tighter aerosol, just because it can't be seen ordinarily, that aerosol will go everywhere. It gets through easier, it gets around easier.
Masks. Guard masks. Cloth masks. What are they good for? Oh, here's what they're good for. If I'm going to cough, they make it so I don't have to do this [coughs into a stack of what appears to be Kleenex] and catch the aerosol. Or here [indicates behind his shoulder]. Or pull out a handkerchief and do it.
I don't know where yiu live, but they still play The Steve Miller Band and Journey over the grocery music system here in Sacramento. I have heard the same songs for the last 40 years, we've been in this weird Time Warp for decades.
They play those where I work as well. The worst thing is when one is of the age cohort who grew up with those songs being popular, one has literally listened to the same music in public for 40 years. My older and younger colleagues don't get my animosity towards the music. The older ones didn't listen to it on a loop in school or on the bus, or with their peers, the younger ones think it is cute to like 70's and 80's pop music.
Why can't I belong to a generation where the music one listened to as a kid is never heard anymore? Neither older people are made to regularly listen to 'Mairsey Doats' or 'Mr Sandman', nor are younger cohorts forced to listen to 90's Boy Bands. But me?...Oh no, here's Bohemian Rhaspsody for your listening torture, <again>.
And don't even get me started about people who cannot function with out some kind of constant soundtrack going on. As I age, I find the dependence on a constant stream of canned familiar music to be somewhat insidious.
The Dark Horse podcast had a good take on this the other day. The public health authorities are much like a young man who takes a girl to a scary movie on a date so she will curl up to him looking for protection.
I'm glad they finally came around on masks. I was so disappointed watching them through 2020 talking about how "comfortable" their home made masks were. Smart people fall for the dumbest crap.
They're wrong sometimes, but they own up to it. Also they gave me all the ammo I needed to keep that needle out of my kid's arms. I was personally not anti-mask initially, either... Until it became clear that they did not work, and by wearing one I was helping to spread fear. Then, despite being one of the only ones in my blue area to not wear one, I could not do it any more. It made me feel like a p*ssy, and I cannot stand that feeling.
Very timely. I live in very red county in the south where masking was a thing on a very limited basis. Even then, the vast majority rejected them and local schools never bought into it. Virtually no one wears them now.
Regardless, I am still confronted by the occasional person in a local store doing the double-mask and even the glove thing which still leaves me somewhat speechless. It's worse at places like Costco but still only about five percent.
My personal struggle is at the local gym with a woman and her daughter who come once a week and insist on wearing a big black N95 mask while exercising. Visual evidence suggests that these people share a similar world view but of course polling data does no exist.
I ran a 6 mile footrace race this July in Santa Cruz California with thousands of my best friends.
I'd say 15% of the people in thebstart corrals, outside, were wearing masks, including my elderly mother, who threatened to wash out my mouth with soap after I told her the masks proponents and Dr Fauci were frauds.
I find adressing such people as "comrade" solves all the issues with pronoun-proliferation. Comrade easy to spell, easy to say, is the same in many languages, does not upset any grammar, and is well-known and friendly.
It also drives the point home that the pronoun-poco locos are fascists, without them being able to protest without confirming it.
Nothing matters until Congress forces testimony from CDC to present evidence provoking that masks have utility in slowing or stopping the spread. They might ask others to show that masks aren't effective and require the CDC to agree or disagree showing their work. Congress must then require the CDC to issue guidance on masking.
The mounting legal cases and forced testimony will trickle out, but they must happen. We can't rest until every lie is exposed publicly through media.
Of course, lies were exposed--through a series of moving goalposts and redefining words related to the "pandemic" (there's one!) and the Vaccine (there's another one.) I could go on all day, unfortunately.
The amount of doctors I've spoken to, that won't even entertain the idea that masks don't work, shows how we got here and what a difficult fight we all have.
there is a reason that there is an entire "medical writer" subspecialty that deals in nothing but "dumbing down science and drug data so that MD's can understand it."
very few have even rudimentary grasps of stats, data reading/handling, study design, or even base science.
it's easy to see, if one looks back 100 years, what quacks doctors of the time were.
what gets forgotten is that at the time, they were viewed as "authorities" just as they are now.
the odd conceit is that they somehow "really are authorities now" and will not be laughed at as quacks by those 50 years in the future.
Tell me about it! I try to discuss stats with them and their eyes glaze over. Discuss studies and they get confused. Discuss lab origins and they get angry.
Thing is, most of them are so dumbed down they will be replaced by AI in a few years and they don't even realise it.
the only reason that is not already going on wholesale is guild protection.
i suspect that they and their agencies know this/see it coming. it's why they have become so assertive/protective of credentials.
experts are already mostly outperformed by expert systems in this field
It also confirms Somebody’s Law that over time, an organization’s mission changes to focus exclusively on keeping the organization in power.
Jerry Pournelle is your Somebody, the discoverer of Iron Law of Bureaucracy 🙂
🗨 In any bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals that bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and eventually are eliminated entirely.
--
Also quite fits, the last of Robert Conquest’s 3 laws of politics ↓↓
🗨 The behaviour of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
This is also true of non-bureaucracies, too (think of a church, for example).
Which is what you said. 🤪
AI, guild protection?
You guys are forgetting the real victims here--car salesmen. Who is gonna buy all those BMWs if AI takes over all GP functions??
No problem. The techies working for Google. Except now it's Tesla that is the status symbol. Well, it was, before Musk turned to the dark side...now maybe not ;-)
Doctors will worry about being replaced when AI golfers become common. And even robots won't dress like that.
Ha! Good one!
Also I think it is education and historical practice of misusing math. This I've seen for decades: in the life sciences in general, they don't understand the mathematics behind statistics. Very consistently. My theory is this arose from the inability to actually do mathematically valid studies on real people - Hitler tried it but in most societies it's frowned upon. Being used to ad-hoc, invalid math abuse becomes habit. What I've noticed is that even when the opportunity to use math properly, the idea seems offensive to many - the get very defensive, even hostile. I think that is part of the culture that is instilled by their education.
The problem is that the doctors have been told that they are the best, the brightest, most altruistic, hardest working, everything for their entire professional lives.
Some of what they do IS beautiful and noble and hard but they are just humans. Any group that stands on a pedestal long enough needs to be hanged. That's it. Bottom line is that humans don't do well in an established elite. The elite must always be refreshed because it is always becoming the Establishment.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and traitors but we must grasp the paradox that today's treason was patriotism not so long ago. Forms continue long after the animating spirit is gone.
Absolutely agree. Excellent reminders here!! Thank you !! So it’s all a tedious tautology, an absurdity, that yet once again exposes the fallacy of the existence of ‘civilised people’ ..
I was told, while sitting in a huge group of fresh intakes in med school, "You people are the cream of society"
I knew then something was well off.
I looked around and there was about six people also looking around. The rest were in raptures.
Those six people were friends for years.
most are lost to woke though.
the ones who became doctors anyway.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb has a view on this. His Black Swan book is insightful
And Taleb fell hook line and sinker for the Plandemic nonsense.
https://tomsmith585.medium.com/face-masks-may-be-necessary-and-sufficient-to-stop-covid-19-f4f5a295deb#:~:text=Taleb%20argues%20that%20mask-wearing%20doesn’t%20just%20reduce%20the,larger%20percentage%20—%20perhaps%20as%20large%20as%2095%25.
Doctors have been 'dumbed-down' for decades as pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers, and corporate medicine have dictated the medical standard of care. COVID is just the grossest example where doctors have been censured, if not completely disqualified from practice, for failing to push vaccines, ventilators, Remdesivir, and Paxlovid.
It shouldn't come as a shock to see doctors outwardly 'brown-nosing' the establishment with pro-mask and vaccine tweets. They know who pays their bills.
Hundreds of thousands died in this country alone due to what was objectively medical malpractice but which will never result in a successful lawsuit because professional negligence cannot be established legally.
Oh, I instantly shut down conversation when I mention ACE-2 receptors and the furin cleavage site.
That is so funny. I told my doctor a while back that I wanted to get off the water pill and get on Losartan (ACE-2 inhib) for protection against COVID and gave him the literature. I also told him that testing for cholesterol after someone has participated in heavy exercise will throw their cholesterol numbers off (Inflammation). Monday I told him that one of the doctors in his practice prescribed Paxlovid almost 2 weeks out from initial symptoms for COVID when it is only to be prescribed 5 days out. Then he asked me if I wanted to be in an asthma study for new medication. I just about fell off my chair. WHAT about me makes him think I want to be the guinea pig for any pharmaceutical company? We have gotten into fairly pointed conversations about the relationship between pharma reps (that I practically trip over every time I go to the doc ) and the doctor almost every time I am in for the past 3 years. I had a few words for him and told him about NAC. Honestly I think they are too busy to be well informed. Sad.
When I say "furin cleavage" somebody thinks I'm being dirty.
Especially when I'm in a Sunday School discussion.
Probably because they don’t understand it. It would embarrassing and demeaning to admit they have no clue.
I have fun with that one too!!
Hahaha I bet!
You cannot be serious. I think they shut down because they don't want you (or anyone) to harm their ego or cv dogmas. Or maybe I am just assuming that you think they don't know what you're talking about, and if so sorry 'bout that. I'm just a reader here.
Jamie, I think they truly don't know details of the virus or the vax. They just parrot the party-line.
Totally agree, I'm willing to bet I know more about covid and the clot shot than my so called doctor. They have the rules given to them by the "system " and they're to chicken shit to deviate.
Agreed, but part of the party line is "It attaches to ACE2 receptors OMG!" Nor is furin cleavage a completely unique or new thing. I just want to know that you don't mean they have not heard these terms or something. That would be like not knowing about D2 receptors or COMT polymorphisms. That's all I mean to clarify and I suppose I may be acting a bit obtuse by it all. Sometimes I like a little too much clarity (for my own personal understanding-others may have gotten it just fine!). Now, I have personally noticed that people DO seem to react with blank expression or discomfort with mention of nAChR's and certainly CRISPR tech and chimeric "therapeutics", because those things are out of the realm of most real-world clinical practice. Anyway, thank you for your patience as I sift things through!
Aside from some specialties, like surgery, they are toast. The AI systems ALREADY tested show superior diagnostic skills compared to 99+% of general practitioners.
And I think I know how they will get it in. Create a shortage of GP doctors by shooting them up every 3 months with experimental injections like British Columbia Canada is doing. If they refuse then they lose their license.
www.jccf.ca/justice-centre-expresses-concern-about-british-columbias-bill-36
Now I have some issues with an AI diagnosing problems but I have huge issues with who controls what meds get prescribed and that would be whoever controls the AI which will probably be the state medical boards (USA) and their equivalent college of physicians & surgeons (Canada).
Yes, AI GP services already proved to be much more superior years ago. They don't need to create a shortage in the way you describe though. Well not in the UK anyway. Here they are doing it to themselves. They stop seeing patients face to face, create a part-time working culture (which means they spend most the time just catching up), try not to work on mondays and fridays (so they have a long weekend but again means a lot of catching up mid-week) and then claim burn-out. They then leave creating a shortage and more work for the remaining GPs who will actually get burn out through lack of GPs.
Then the solution, AI, will be brought in to relieve them and they will lap it up, not realising they are signing their resignation letter for a few years down the line.
🎯
Compared to a GP in a 10 minute slot, yes.
The movie Idiocracy is unseating the Simpsons in prognostication. I don't know whether to be laughing or crying
don't try and get a Spanish acquaintance to watch it though, the Spanish dub is horribly unfunny.
I couldn't believe how bad it was, as one of my favourite movies
Truth is, doctors are simply sophisticated mechanics, just working on different machines. In my experience, most do not stay abreast of current literature. They read the absolute minimum needed to function, and rely on drug and medical supply salesmen to keep them up on current trends. And as has been pointed out, the guy who graduated dead last in his medical school class is called "Doctor."
so true. if docs did their homework, none would force a vaccine on you. None would ever take one themselves or have their wife and children jabbed. But the ones I know ran to the jab place and proudly showed it on their iphones. These are all docs I won't go to if I can avoid it.
I've had this exact exchange happen with two pediatricians so far:
I expressed concern about the amount of aluminum babies are exposed to in the vaccines on the CDC's standard childhood schedule. I get a knee jerk "There's no aluminum in vaccines anymore." "No," I correct them. "You're thinking of mercury. There is most definitely aluminum in most vaccines."
They know not even the most basic information about the vaccines they push.
I am a doctor in northern New Jersey in a surgical subspecialty I have a bio chemistry background but for the last 20 years I function in a private office and there’s a lot of truth to what you say. 
The difference is cars dont talk back to you and unburden themselves with every random problem and tangential irrelevant story about their personal lives. I am grateful for my job and career. I am an eye doc and did extremely well in school. I grew up in a religion jewish home and was encouraged to nurture deep skepticism for political authority dogma and propaganda. I never got any covid shots and paid a price. I fought back against masking. I try to be conservative, transparent and circumspect in the way i practice. But if you are in a customer service job dealing w the general public then u understand that sometimes people can be very difficult. I trained up in and around NYC at big city hospitals and i got excellent training. I saw all kinds of people, diseases , in all sorts of different circumstances. People who dont practice medicine dont appreciate how neurotic, needy , ignorant, petty people can be. I almost never let the difficult patients ruffle me. Im a professional . But honestly it wears one down. Especially also given the fact that doctors work under so many mandates and rules now . We arent really independent professionals anymore.
The fact you are here on this substack says a whole bunch! 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Im grateful everyday for those like you who I've found on substack here and other places. There are so many of us who want to uphold the oath we took to first do no harm. Dr Simone Gold is one and the Front line critical care alliance is another. All the docs and scientists on that new panel Gov de santis convened are with us. Dr Peter Mccoullough and Malone, and Kory , Bhattachyra ... the truth will win in the end
Bless you for fighting back against the craziness. I had hoped more doctors and providers would stand up against the mandates.
Im a doc myself and u are spot on. I have a biochem degree and ive identified as a libertarian since i was a teen. Im 55 now. Even though I was trained as a scientist I’ve spent the last 20 years in a surgical subspecialty being basically a technician. I think I’m very good at what I do and I try to be ethical and transparent. A lot of the other doctors in my community work for large corporations, large hospital systems. I am in a private practice. A lot of the doctors don’t have science background. One of my colleagues has a degree in government from Harvard University. A lot of doctors are very status conscious, they are not heroes they shy away from confrontation, they make higher than average incomes and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. When Covid came along and the masks went on most of them just put their heads down and went along the whole program. It was absolutely heartbreaking
Corporate medicine is the enemy here. There's a reason Obamacare tried so hard to eliminate private practice. People, and doctors are people, are easier to control if they are worried about losing a paycheck if they don't toe their employer's approved line.
When I got out of the hospital 18 months ago after my COVID bout, the (corporate employed) pulmonologist kept telling me at my followups I still needed to get the shot. He first tried to tell me it was an "added level of protection" but wouldn't give me a more detailed answer when I pressed him about the mechanics of how the immune response would work in that case. It was very clear he was uncomfortable and I could read between the lines from his anxiety that he was giving me this advice because he was told he had to do so, not because he actually believed it. So I asked him point blank and he smiled and said, "Yes, it's the position of Methodist Hospital that you should get the vaccine." That's all he would say. I actually felt sorry for the guy.
"Corporate medicine is the enemy here" - It is ONE of the enemies. Look at the countries with socialized medicine and how they went along with the mass injections. In some ways having a single controlling entity paying them makes socialized medicine easier to subvert.
single point of corruption vs multiple points of corruption.
I could see the "follow the government line" two years ago with two of my docs. I questioned one about ivermectin, and he gave me a story about one patient who used ivermectin and still died. The other told my wife, jabbed and one booster, who had covid and recovered, that the jabs were the reason she didn't die. That seems to be the fallback narrative now...that the vaccines won't keep you from getting it, but will relieve the symptoms. I am surprised that they don't simply have some cards printed up to hand out with the current CDC narrative de jour.
It's a lovely narrative because you can't in a particular case (one person) know how it would have turned out without the drug. There can be no control with which to compare with only one patient.
This has been generalized - no matter how tragic the last 3 years have been, it can be argued it could have been worse if we'd not done all the crazy stuff. But we do have some controls (though small). And we seen from the controls that outcomes for places without the crazy stuff have been better. So clinging to this "it would have been much worse" view defies logic and reason, but it seems too readily accepted by too many people. A true pragmatist would look at the outcomes and see that what we did clearly did not work - we're still talking about COVID scares 3 years after we first heard of it. But logic and reason are no longer allowed...labeled misinformation and denial.
It's a narrative impossible to prove. Everyone has different, reactions to covid . Everyone has different immune systems. You can get the shot,you can still die. But your death could've been much worse without the shit shot!
Exactly. Those darn individual humans again, what a pain in the arse!
Same here, got covid "Delta " in December 21. Came down with pneumonia and collapsed lung from coughing too hard. Upon releasing me from the hospital he pressed me to get the vax in 3 months. I just laughed and told him I had natural immunity now. He just kind of nodded and smiled!
He must of forgot about that pesky natural immunity stuff… ya know, the stuff we learned about in school? Oh well, I’m a nurse, not a biologist… 🤷🏽♀️🙄🙄🙄
u made the right choice
I have been fired as a patient by a number of doctors. I have complete distain for the lot since I diagnosed myself with SLE. Someone finally did the correct test. Up until then I was simply a hypochondriac.
The medical Establishment in the United States is deeply broken
And they will circle the wagons to fight you if you formally complain about their professional incompetence. The AMA, too, has become little more than a leftist political tool.
I was a member of the AMA for two or three years after I finished my residency in 1999 2000 2001 and I dumped my membership and never had anything to do with those people ever again. Because I realize that all they are is a lobbying group and completely corrupted by left and progressive politics. And now they’re pushing this Woke bullshit
They truly hate people smarter than they are!
Hate and jealousy , resentment is at the heart of the entirw leftist and progressive worldview. Its all just a form of marxism. Marxism Is not so much even a doctrine as It is a mob like cult of Jealousy and hate thats been dressed up in the garb of a legitimate intellectual movement of philosophy.
So true!
thanks for reading and responding and engaging with me
If I did that, I'd have to hate a lot of people!
Never have understood how one can be "fired" by someone they are paying. The more appropriate terminology is that your doctor quit on you. You are the boss and paying the bills, not them.
Truth. But finding doctors who understand the relationship is difficult.
Well, not sure it matters. But if you say so. The doctors basically said they would see me anymore, if I continued to question their expertise. Tgat sounds a lot like being let go. So I am sticking with the word “fired”. Please don’t turn me into the word police : )
Not meant as word police and apologies if it came off that way. Just pointing out the nature of the relationship, you hired them not the other way around. I'd like to fire my boss sometimes but I've found out that doesn't work!
If doctors think they "fire" patients then it shows they misunderstand the relationship. Which is actually the heart of the who problem in all honesty. The white robes, the diploma on the wall, you call them "doctor" while they call you "Bob", making you wait for them while sitting there with no pants on, etc. It's designed to appear that they are a priesthood and you are the grateful peon thankful for their time. It hides what it actually is, i.e. you hiring them to consult on your healthcare.
Anyways, sorry for the rant, one of my pet peeves.
I call my doctor and dentist by their first name. I think it does help to equalize the relationship. A while back I realized I am an adult who can decide what will and will not be done to me at the doctor's office. It was the day a dermatologist in the Florida Keys asked me who the doctor was (him or me) and then proceeded to do what I asked him not to. You either have control of yourself or you yield it. No complaining afterward. Most things are not an emergency. Go home and do your homework and then go back and respectfully ask questions. Just like you would treat any other consultant. Be your own best advocate.
I believe the words you're looking for are "denied care".
The dominant practice is symptom control. Finding a doc who will be able (and allowed) to look for actual causes is hard. The industry guidelines and mandates do not favor inquiry. Got a cholesterol number we don't lie? We've got a drug that will put it where we want it - don't ask why it suddenly changed, just mask it.
That is so true for a lot of things they treat. Asthma, cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure... just treating the symptom. There is no money in treating the cause and finding a cure. Lots of times your body is reacting to something else and the treated thing is the reaction.
About cholesterol - if you exercise vigorously before getting tested your numbers will look bad. Your body releases cholesterol to deal with the inflammation associated with the strenuous exercise. My doctor did not know that. Now he does. In my town where every other person is doing the freaking Ironman they need to know!
Interesting fact about exercise. I did not know that. Not sure how to work around that - stay on the couch? seems like a bad idea.
I did have the experience several years ago when I hired my "primary care physician" (after being berated numerous times for being old and not having one). He is a pretty good guy, in his 50s, tennis player. I am physically active, always have been. Over the years it's taken a toll on joints. started weight training to compensate for bad knees (works). started doing upper body training to fill the time between leg exercises. This has worked great for my knees, as well as increased my upper body muscle mass - and I have put on weight compared to the skinny me of my 30s.
At my first visit, the doc read my weight and height and noted that according to the "guidelines" I was obese. As I took off my shirt, his PA (30-ish female) noted that I was not fat. I noted that the more I exercise, the more weight I retain, so should I stop exercising to lose weight? We all laughed.
An interesting factoid - my doctor tells me if husband does not have heart disease in his family and because he is not old (he doesn't) that even if his cholesterol ratio was not too great, he could skip meds. Which is a good thing because he won't take them. Before they took my blood this week I did not do any strenuous exercise. I rode my ebike and walked the neighborhood. No lifting or running or anything that makes me achy. We shall see if my numbers are good. Not that I will be taking statins. Ever.
My husband is like you. His BMI also puts him in the obese catergory. So ridiculous. He is a rock. He does not lift, but he exercises a LOT. If you look at him he looks maybe slightly to thin. He just does not gain weight. But obese. It is ridiculous. I have come around to thinking that if I don't look good or feel comfortable in my clothes something must be done. I tossed the scale. I think they made the categories to make people take medicines. I am 5'10" and when I was young I struggled to keep my weight around 123. Underweight. Too hungry to be happy. I think it hosed my metabolism. Now I weigh I think between 155-160. Just right for me.
You keep exercising. It will keep you alive and happy. Screw the chart.
I really think the weight training preserves joints. They are protected by strong muscles. Smart you!
several months ago, I went to my gp & a few months later to an urgent care pa & had to tell them what I had (excema flare up & sinus congestion) and what meds I need for it. they both ended up giving me asthma medicine..... 😵💫 so I got in to the dermatologist finally & she gave me the right meds for both! she's from Canada, part of the "brain drain" from Canada as she calls it.
I hav a friend from college , met him in 1987 known him for years now, US citizen, who is now a prof in Philo at a canadian univ in ontario. we talk about this all the time. The canadian health care system is a disaster, its amazing that it has survived this long. I think its deficiencies have been masked by canadians access to the US more market driven system, but as the US system collpased into socialism , the problems wth canada will be more exposed , hopefully people will demand an opening up , a liberalization in the old classic sense to more free market medical care
I am one of those medical writers. I am a scientist who worked as a researcher until a couple years ago. I switched career tracks because a) it’s hard to work at the bench when your kids are constantly being sent home and as a medical writer I could work from home, b) medical research is a joke. It’s much more a career game than a pursuit of knowledge. In fact, the most successful scientists are the best BS artists, c) medical writers are paid much better and have far greater job security.
In any case, from both my experience as a researcher at a medical university and as a medical writer I can confirm that doctors are not trained to think. They’re great memorizers who know how to match up sets of symptoms with various pharmaceutical or surgical interventions. So yes, they do need a lot of spoon feeding.
yes good memorizers, One of my colleagues has a degree from harvard in government. He was a good memorizer. He has bought into every liberal fallacy and trope in history. He took all 4 shots plus then ew bivalent booster. most of the docs around here northern NJ crawled over eachtother to be guinea pigs and they even got their teen sons and daughter to get it. I never got any covid jabs, had covid in Aug 21, have natural immunity and T cells, neither of my teen sons got any of those shots. I was persecuted for deferring the vax, lost privileges at a hospital. Other docs called me names, threatened to stop sending me patients. They were all wrong about everything and I and many other knew this at the time back in the summer and Fall of 2020 when the shot was being tested.
Have you ever read the novel Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis? The story had some wonderful commentary on the tension between real science and practical life
I haven't read that, but I will certainly put it on my reading list
I remember in my undergrad days that the life science majors were generally focused on memorizing stuff. In deed I noticed that most traditional education relied very much on rote learning - the goal is to get students to remember things and regurgitate them on tests. Having a poor memory and low patience threshold, that's not me. Through all my schooling up to graduate studies this was a disadvantage in most classes. My lack of memory skills forced me to get good at figuring things out. Classes that graded on accomplishment - getting stuff done - versus testing, I scored well. Testing was always a weakness. I was not one of those 4.0 undergrads.
In the real world I learned that innovation requires figuring stuff out. When trying to do what hasn't been done before, rote learning is of little value. In my post-graduate studies, I became entangled with medical imaging (MRI and CT), so have had some experience with the medical culture. Though I think that part of the field is far more open to new ideas than most of the medical community. Radiology and diagnostics may attract the few MDs who still want to think ;-)
I've noted before on the sloppiness of medical research, especially misuse of math. Some of it is necessity: used to be frowned upon to do large scale experiments on humans, well, prior to 2020 at least. It's multi-parts ignorance due to deficiencies in teaching the math and science, and arrogance and a big part politics of funding.
There is so much in the medical literature that is nonsense, but looks like legitimate results because medical scientists abuse statistics so badly. P-hacking is practically part of the training.
Interesting! I worked for a company who connected EHR’s or RHIO’s back in the day. The doctors hated the electronic medical records and prompting of prescription drugs in the script writing software. Maybe because it interfered with their key ability of memorized facts.
my dad was an aerospace engineer. He was a smart guy, a critical thinker. He graduated from cooper union in the 1950s with high honors and worked on aircraft guidances systems he even worked for nasa for a while. He used to say that engineers styled themselves as independant professionals but in reality most of them were dependent on these huge companies with giant gov / military contracts for their livelihoods. I wanted to be a research scientist, I have a biochem background. I ended up as an ophthalmologist, most docs nowadays are employees of large companies / medical systems. They are not independent, they follow protocols and procedures that have been developed by others. They are completely dependent on medicare. and other gov boondoggles . I 've managed to stay independent but thhis last 3 years has been heartbreaking
Doctors are like car mechanics. They can diagnose issues faster than I can most of the time, and you need them to "fix things" you cannot fix at home. But don't expect the car mechanic to understand the fully physics of the engine, or how his diagnostics tool works. Similar, the doctor doesn't know the biochemical workings of his drugs or how a virus exactly spreads.
And last, just as the car mechanic gets training from the car manufacturer, the doctor gets told what is true/right by the medical community. He or she doesn't really deviate from these told doctrines.
So always do your own research.
There is a alot of truth to that. But there are many medical doctors esp in the past 100 years who were also powerful intellectuals, critical thinkers, scientists. Im 55 , jewish and i was trained by a generation of docs now mostly in their 80s older , retired and dead who were very smart , some brilliant independent, dedicated professionals. The group that founded mt sinai hosp in Nyc where i trainer war such a group. But sadly ,politics has wormed its way into the medical establishment . Government destroys all it touches
Interesting analogy and I see the parallel, mostly. There are different kinds of mechanics. Most mechanics will "diagnose" by plugging in the scanner, reading the code, and replacing whatever the book says to replace. Replacing parts is analogous to prescribing drugs: when the first attempt fails to solve the problem, they swap more parts (prescribe more drugs). Often it can take several trips to the shop to get the problem correctly fixed. Likewise with typical docs: they try different drugs until the symptoms go away and sometimes takes several trips to make the symptoms go away for good.
There are a few mechanics that can actually figure things out. They go beyond the code reader and book and try to figure out what's really going on. Instead of swapping parts until the problem goes away, they think it through, find the actual cause of the problem (symptom) and usually fix it for good. Sadly it seems there are fewer and fewer doctors like this. Seems most simply push pills and shots until something happens.
Of course humans don't have on-board diagnostics (or do we?) with ODB3 interfaces.
When the individual patient doesn't fit the guidelines, it seems too often the docs toss their hands in the air and punt. Well, we tried all the drugs I have for this and it didn't work, sorry. Even worse sometimes is when it seems to work, but really only masks the underlying cause. Which doesn't go away.
One of the interesting things I read up on recently is how liver function affects cholesterol numbers. Consistently studies show that your liver is the source of most of what shows up as cholesterol, and that lifestyle choices such as diet have less impact. This is contrary to what "everybody knows" for sure. Most docs use statin drugs to get cholesterol numbers "where we want it" and may in fact be masking liver function problems. Which undetected tend to get worse, leading to liver failure. Which often does prevent the patient who dies from liver failure from developing heart disease.
true! however, car mechanics always say, if you do this instead of what the manufacturer requires, it voids your warranty. drs do the same by not trying different things, sticking with expensive drugs that they just got a free dinner from it's drug rep, drugs, that cause worse problems that the original problem.
Great analogy and I passed it along to someone that fixes their own car that I had a discussion with about the effectiveness of masks today because I read this post. Full circle!
This!
Nothing but hubris. That is the real killer, after fear. People so sure and smug…
Yes
most of the physicians who I work with know that masks are useless and don't wear them unless forced.
Another factor may be weaponized peer pressure. Here in CA, a physician can lose their license for "misinformation" for admitting anything which the medical board has deemed suppressed or recommending or endorsing anything in deviation from the approved guidelines. Any physician that deviates from the state approved narrative risks license revocation. Few docs are in a position to risk that.
yes thats exactly what it is , groupthink and peer pressure. noone is immune. Back 50+ yrs ago , most docs were in private practice so they were less susceptible but now most docs work for big companies
I think also there has been a real shift in the culture, too. Even back 50 years ago, "private practice" did not mean independent for most docs I think. They needed access to hospitals, clinics, and other professionals for referrals. The kind of pressures and intolerance we see today are reflective of a general trend in our society that has become more blatant in the last decade or two (or three?).
You’re absolutely right. And I think and many others agree that this trend has been fueled by the Centralization of power in large bureaucratic and political agencies like the NIH and the CDC. We have had a bureaucratization And politicization of medical care and medical research and what we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome
Could apply to most science journalism. Rife with moronic puns that elicit a whimsical response. Science as a circus.
Yup. And March 2020 the Clowns took over control...
I have had such better luck with Naturopaths and even Chiropractors. They've fought these "MD" types for so many years that they've had to keep up in order to prove their mettle. I stopped going to MD's about 4 decades ago.
I'm fit and healthy and my docs give me nutritional advice and check blood and vitals far more often than the MD's ever did. They understand the holistic body. And that's probably the best part of this.
Specialists in the MD space only know their specialty. If they are a "hammer doctor" all they see are nails. My alternative docs ask how I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what else is going on, and most importantly, what do I think is going on with my body.
We all have to take personal responsibility for our own well being. If a doctor tells me something that doesn't sound or feel right, I go find another expert in that field.
Because. You know. I'm a grownup!
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1966
Here is some more ammo, like you would really need any more. Maybe you saw it already. Too bad no control arm. I think we can spitball an outcome.
Thanks for another great summary! Gotta keep the pressure on.
I am frustrated by the lack of intellectual curiosity demonstrated by my peeps the last few years. People can't seem to rationalize two thoughts in their head anymore. We don't have to look back 100 years as thee Wayback machine planted us there......
Thank you and yes I did see this I have a fairly substantial group of people now that I share all the stuff with. A lot of my medical colleagues know that masks don’t work but they’re simply afraid to defy the mob.
For months people in my office were asking me when did they think we could stop wearing masks. I was walking around with no mask since February 2022, but there was still a “law”. Or a governors executive order in New Jersey that said we had to wear masks in medical offices, so my staff members would ask me when can they stop wearing the masks. I would say you can stop wearing the mask right now all you have to do is take it off. But nobody took them off. Because we are a nation of fucking cowardly sheep. I would say to people, if everybody followed all the rules and laws all the time we would still have slavery in the United States because slavery was protected by laws
Because the profession attracts ego maniacs who strive for the title, not knowledge.
I wonder about that. A couple of the guys I know from college became MDs. They weren't so arrogant and egotistical before med school. It may be a learned behavior.
You should have seen the reaction from the MDs in the room when a colleague of mine referred to the MD as "the easy way to get the title Doctor". He went on to explain it's not like an earned doctorate in other fields where one must do some original work in addition to proving they can suffer through course work and jump through hoops. An MD, he said, is an award for showing up and surviving med school. The rant was triggered by an MD insisting he be addressed as "Doctor" in a forum where most participants had (at least one) earned doctorate in something like physics, math or engineering.
Ouch. Truth hurts.
If they can't understand or appreciate something as simple as this (given the amount of data that exists on this), then what else in medicine is being used as treatment or is done with just as little evidence behind it? That's what is worrying me now.
It’s not that they can’t appreciate it or don’t understand it. It’s just that if the state of New Jersey or any other state imposes a mask mandate legally on healthcare facilities and they don’t obey the doctors can lose their licenses, have their offices shut down or have very negative publicity or attention brought down on them through social media. And their reputations will suffer
Most doctors are not heroes most doctors are not brave. Most of us ( im an MD) I have spent years getting to where we are, we have higher than average incomes and we have mortgages and college tuitions and car payments just like everybody else. And we are human beings fearful of peer pressure just like everybody else
I lost my hospital privileges at a major northern New Jersey hospital because I deferred taking that vaccine. And I was positively persecuted by many many doctors in my community who told me I was being selfish and reckless. One female doctor actually called me a coward and questioned my manhood
All of these people were wrong and I told them they were wrong at the time I told them all that they would regret the things that they were saying.
I ultimately found another hospital that gave me a religious exemption
And I don’t regret my decision. In fact every day that goes by I feel happier and more validated that I never took the shot, and I spoke out against it from the beginning
I was never against the Covid vaccination per say I was against coercion and mandates
From the beginning it was absolutely clear that this Covid shot would not prevent infection spread and transmission. It was not a neutralizing or sterilizing agent and was not developed for that purpose
So there was never any reason or justification to mandate it or force anybody to get it
I appreciate that many physicians such as yourself submit to the coercion for good reasons. I myself (not an MD but do have too many credentials) submitted to the two-shot plus booster because of similar pressures, and wore masks on airplanes when mandated. Because my the way I make my living required it. So I get that.
Your experience though seems to indicate quite a few (too many) members of your profession not only do not understand the actual science, the are also intolerant of those who ask the wrong questions. Any rational person SHOULD ask for the risk/benefit balance of any medical treatment. It sounds like any of your peers simply would not allow such consideration.
Of course the irony is that it takes courage and strength to go against peer pressure and ask the questions. What I'm wondering is if any of those people now regret their mistakes, or have the doubled down on the denial of evidence and dug int deeper?
I never took any of those shots and i was vocal in my opposition to masking and shot mandates. Not a single one of my colleagues or doctors in the community that directly challenged me or heard the things that I had to say has called me or contacted me to tell me that they were sorry or to apologize or to tell me that I changed their minds or to thank me for exposing them to this information. Not a single one
Not a single member of the medical executive committee at the hospital where I previously had privileges has contacted me to tell me that they were sorry for kicking me off the staff based on fear ignorance and corruption
So no so far I see no signs of regret
That’s why I say I’ve lost all respect for these people. We seem to be in a post shame society in addition to a post truth society. Where everybody lies about everything all the time and nobody has any remorse or regret about anything
Yet I am supposed to have remorse over the actions of people who died 150 years before I was born and bear no relationship to me except for having similarly pale skin. Welcome to the 21st century.
I know its absolutely crazy. These people in this movement almost destroyed western civilization and have no insight self-awareness or remorse and yet they want you and me to feel sorry for some thing that our great great grandfathers did supposedly because they had pale skin. They also believe that “whiteness“ is some kind of detached spiritual quantity like some kind of invisible force from Star Wars that imbues the world with racism and is responsible for all the bad things that happen. Talk about superstitious tinfoil hat bullshit conspiracy theories!!!
And yet somehow we are the ones called names when we say things like hey maybe the federal government of the United States shouldn’t be quite as big as it is right now…
I appreciate your comment, but my attention then turns to a similar point--those in positions of authority need to have a better understanding of the underlying research. People on these medical boards should understand and should know better and therefore be completely conversant on this topic to defend it, but they don't stick to their guns. Cf. Fauci saying one thing in February 2020 and then completing changing tactics.
I understand that in some sense it is easier in engineering where you can have a safety multiplier on calculations to make sure the bridge will hold a specific load, whereas medicine is not so clean-cut or simple in that sense. There are so many factors involved that it is very complicated. But that is why this research is so important--it simplifies the factors down to manageable numbers, and yet even then the studies are ignored or are deemed "not enough." It frustrates me to no end. When you have as many studies as Gato listed above clearly showing no statistical association but the practice continues, I just get so frustrated.
And also keep in mind that Unless you’re a pediatrician, as an adult doctor the best bulk of your patients are elderly people who are on Medicare. For a typical practicing doctor in United States half or more of their income comes from one federal agency program. My opinion is that Medicare and any federal involvement in healthcare is completely immoral and unconstitutional. But here we are!
With a massive failed bankrupt federal welfare medical program for old people. And everybody is dependent on it. And no doctors want to do anything to jeopardize their revenue stream. They’re afraid
You are not dealing with rational people at this point. A lot of doctors leaders in the medical community or partisan liberal Democrats and equate vaccine hesitancy and mask skepticism to being a Trump supporter. A lot of doctors that I’ve known for years are completely clueless about this stuff. And a lot of them are just not interested in making waves or drawing any kind of attention to themselves. They’re complete cowards. And on some level a lot of them know it
As someone who grew up in a very religious Jewish home I can tell you that the dynamic is the same kind of thing as what happened did Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia when secret police would come to your neighbors house in the middle of the night and take you away. For your survival the best thing for you to do is just not look and not say anything
I'm not sure the problem is understanding. These entities have become political bodies. The COVID response was based on politics, not research. The reason Fauci and so many others changed their story was not because the research results changed, it was because the politics required it.
https://www.aier.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/
Lotta doc haters on this stack! Love it! I would say, stereotypes exist for a reason. search for the British skit "neurosurgeon vs rocket scientist" if you haven't seen it. However, there are many docs who work hard and do the best they can with what they have to work with and most folks I see have already done a great job screwing themselves up. Many docs read a lot. I do that is how I have ended up on this stack. Our health system is great at acute/emergent care but not so great with chronic disease. That is because the patients need to do that part. Eat well, be active, vigorous exercise, don't smoke, limit meth use don't beg for antibiotics and pain pills etc. I had a couple other careers before medicine so maybe an advantage for me. Otherwise, follow the money and if you see where it is going turn the other direction and go for a nice long run.
Not haters, but skeptics. Skepticism is well founded, and essential to protect your personal health IMO. Many industry practices, and far too many physicians and health care professionals give good reason to distrust. My skepticism comes from personal experience, as well as history of performance, attitudes, practices and outcomes.
Perhaps one of the most hazardous attitudes encountered is blaming the patient. This is common, and in many cases wrong. Sure, there are patients who are a pain, who don't follow direction, and who engage in unhealthy habits. But there is also a lot of very bad advice being dispensed under the label of healthy lifestyle choices that turn out not to be healthy. There is also a widespread use of "lifestyle choices" as an excuse not to seek underlying causes that are, in many cases, not lifestyle.
Compounding this the pattern of sticking with bad advice despite overwhelming evidence that it is harmful. The 2020-on experience is hardly surprising given the record of the industry.
Do you continue to advise the "low sodium" diet? This has been shown to be helpful for a very small number of patients with specific conditions, and harmful to the vast majority of humans. Yet it remains in the "guidelines" and preached day in and day out. It continues to be public policy. There are many examples of the "eat right" being bad advice...occasionally the medical industry even admits this and changes the advice (remember when carbs were good? When we were told the egg yoke contained the important good stuff and the white was useless? I do).
Another example is statin drugs. The actual science (evidence) shows that for certain patients with established vascular plaque, statins slow the progression of accumulation. For patients in which accumulation has started. No one has yet figured out why some people will accumulate plaque and others will not. The common use of statins does not follow from the actual scientific evidence. Statins are used simply to achieve a target number in the blood test. Hit the number and don't ask any questions. And don't discuss the risk of statin drugs with the patient.
In the same pattern as with COVID non immunizing vaccines, the risks of statins is seldom discussed with the patient. There are many. One of which is using the drug to mask a symptom of an underlying problem, such as liver malfunction.
We see the same with other conditions blamed on the patient. Blamethe patent, no need to dig further. Ignoring things like weight gain as signals, and missing the underlying causes. When we can blame the patient, why look for physiological causes?
Ultimately the most obvious source of distrust is the common disdain one gets from docs when asking questions. It's hard to trust someone who responds to reasonable questions with disdain and dismissal.
To be clear, most of the MDs I've met do sincerely strive to help people. I have met MDs who are independent thinkers and don't subscribe or succumb to pressures to not think, not dig, not understand. It seems the system places much pressure to conform to directives and not ask too many questions, and that is the main root of my distrust.
A thoughtful reply, thank you!
Unfortunately, I am required to be a skeptic as well. I have a number of rules which have served me well in my practice. Number 4 is always trust the patient. Number 5 is always trust the patient. I can’t give good advice without good information. And most of time time it is advice. As I have mentioned before most of the problems people have they can address themselves. Sometimes reassurance is needed sometimes tests. Rarely, medicine.
Agree with your concern about bad advice comment and the 2020 experience. I have dumped all of my admin duties for 90 er docs because I could not speak the corporate lines anymore. Just a plain old er doc now. I get outside a lot and work out enough. I encourage the same.
Love salt, and eggs and they go well together. Butter is a favorite with heavy cream. Especially with new potatoes, shallots, garlic, white wine, some broth, cheddar cheese and a little saffron. Won’t take a statin or a blood pressure med.
I fight vigorously against health care metrics and things like the devil Press Ganey.
But, unfortunately sometimes I do need to blame the patient. The US is a complete outlier in the world for obesity and all of the chronic conditions that come with it. I always say I may not have the answers but I will give you the best I have and sometimes I am not right.
In the middle of the night I had to wade through pages of google to find the cat and find TIOK as well! I am glad I did! Keep questioning your docs, if they don’t know the answer so be it. If they don’t like the question move on!
That article is the best I’ve seen not only explaining the lack of efficacy but that masks actually cause greater harm than good...and it’s not even close!
Not taking it could have saved your life… we are burying too many friends of friends and family members close to us… clots…. Heart attacks… SAD… (had 2 of those in my small neighborhood so far)… even a 12 yo with a brain aneurysm… pericarditis… even an aggressive form of ALS… and darn… I have never seen so much AFib in my entire life… 😳😳😳
It is concerning isn't it.
its disgusting and heartbreaking. these people and institutions faced what for many of them was the only real major moral test of their lives and the FAILED! Thomas sowell wrote about how the Germans fell into totalitarianism. He said that the germans were up until 1932, the most advanced tolerant open accomplished society on earth. So it they , the Germans coudl fall into Nazism, what chance do WE have? At least back then, there was a world wide depression and hyperinflation. Now what do we have, an election year and a virus that is 99.9 survivable!? what chance do we have? indeed!
Wear a mask if you want, but I will think to myself it is a clown world in which you live. However, if you get in my face about it, I'm not going to be gracious or feel any sympathy for you. Your ignorance at this point is completely willful and/or neurotic. The information has been out there since the CDC's own meta study released in May 2020 about the inefficacy of masks wrt influenza.
Indeed. And the studies in the past showing that masks don't even work in surgery (so how in the world can they possibly work anywhere else?) exposes the fundamental keystone lie that props all the other lies up.
They are gone from reality, wave bye-bye.
I was in my GP's office on Monday. Not one mask in the joint. In fact in the beginning mine wore the mask, but took it off when he saw I was unmasked. People in my state are not all down with the masking. Really feel for the people in the maskmanic states.
In my professional opinion, wearing masks is very beneficial. I never work without one. It provides very high levels of protection. For professional bank robbers like me, masks are essential.
What I love is how our bank has a sign about removing sunglasses and hats before entering the building but during Covid they threw all of that out because everyone was masked.
It would be a fun study to look at the success rate of your fellow bank robbers before and after mask mandates.
Long time ago when I worked at a store next to a bank - people we knew, saw often - one of my coworkers donned a gorilla mask on Halloween and wandered into the bank as a joke. Turns out that people who work in banks didn't find that funny.
Now you're more likely to be judged suspiciously if you're NOT wearing a mask in a bank.
PS: At the bank last week, most bank employees - front desk, security guard, a couple (or three, if you count the lady in her office) of bank people - were wearing masks.
It seems most public facing employees are remaining masked at high rates. Grocery clerks, baristas, restaurant staffs, department stores...I don’t get it, and I live in Florida. I would say customers in grocery stores are about 10% masked but employees seem to be over 50% at least. I’m tired of it and avoid or ignore masked employees for open facers.
It makes me viscerally uneasy to see people in masks. It feels like we’re living in a dystopian movie and people have now grown bird beaks. I have felt this way since 2020. I find it highly disturbing. 
I feel very naughty every time I see someone in a face diaper anymore… it makes me want to go sit EXTREMELY CLOSE to them and cough suspiciously… 😇😇😇
Same
They are already traumatized to be wearing one...just sayin'
LOL
Yes Yes yes! Damn yes!
Same here. It is utterly dystopian indeed.
I'll bet in many of those cases, there's at least social pressure from coworkers if not an actual edict (not sure that's legal anymore) but it could be more like, "Nice job you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it."
No mask mandates allowed here thanks to Desantis.
Not sure it was ever legal 🤔
*nods* I think you're right it never was but I was a little loose with my phrasing.
I’m in Southern California. I’d guess 15% of employees in retail wear masks. I always avoid them if at possible. I want them to be without anything to do.
Don't want to stress them out by having to deal with my face.
A lot depends on where you are in Florida.
Only Trader Joe's in WA seems to have a high employee mask rate for grocery stores.
I heard several years ago Trader Joe's employees (maybe easily brainwashed?) we're donating their hard earned hourly wages of $14 to $17 dollars per hour to Bill Gates- apparently Gates was asking for money. . .one of the richest men in the US was being given money by hourly employees!? 🤣
I’ve found them a mixed bag. Some likeminded, some totally brainwashed.
Weird feeling to go to the bank and the employees have masks
Hey, the best way to rob a bank is to work there! Stickup men do hard time; the executives at Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, etc stole much more and did no time.
Sigh.
Hilarious!
What is the best type of mask for your profession? Asking for a friend.
https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/cowboy-head-bandit-mask-bandana-sketch-engraving-vector-25553703
😂😈
Pretty much I go disguised as a Gen Z wokester, with all the accouterments discussed by Bill Maher in this clip: https://youtube.com/shorts/xw0rkzY8mRc?feature=share
HAHA! Your comment was a reminder to read the entire statement, not just the first sentence!!
you know, they made it a lot easier on folks like you !
That is awesome 👏🏻
Many of the people I work with can now use chewing tobacco at work which makes them much more pleasant! A great mask benefit!
ZING!
I wonder if panty hose on the face would garner the same reaction going into a bank… hmmm 🤔
As long as you have your N-95 mask over it, you should be fine.
Lol 😂
One question to ask mask pushers and adherents: we were never advised to do this at anytime ever until now. So, are they ("experts," those advising) lying now or were they negligent then? It has to be one or the other.
We have compiled studies on masks and efficacy to make available for clients that are still wearing these...and then we have a conversation about how, not only are they NOT protecting you now, but the were NEVER protecting. That didn't change. This ENTIRE time, your mask was NOT protective. At all.
This approach has been pretty effective for us. It's interesting to watch someone come to this realization and then take their mask off around others for the first time.
Really? What kind of workplace are you able to share such incredible nuggets of truth in? Can I come work for you? 😁😁😁
We own a structural integration studio (pilates, Redcord, kettlebell, Rolfing, meditation. Vibrational sound therapy, infrared light, etc). Are you in Atlanta? Come on! 😉
Just looked Rolfing up… Interesting! My daughter just graduated with her massage therapy degree. Doing the fascia instead of muscles?! Hmmm 🤔
Darn, all the way in North Alabama! Your studio sounds interesting in a good way! 💖
Rolfing? I’ll have to look that one up… 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
https://www.aier.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/ this was incredible
Yes! I’ve seen the headlines every year for a good decade screeching the panic porn of raging “seasonal” flu. Hospitals and icus are filled most winters. But was I ever asked to wear a mask to live outside my house? 2018 was a particularly bad year. I paid no attention to the flu as I do every year. My immune system at 74 is working great because I work at staying healthy. I’m attending a small (6) group lunch at a local restaurant that is very big but usually has only a couple of tables occupied. A friend is wearing her mask. Sit with us and take her lunch home. She had coffee with some of us yesterday and sipped it through a straw poked under the mask she held out a bit with her fingers. She is so afraid she barely goes anywhere. It’s sad.
I am almost 72. I live in a county that had a total 12 deaths, supposedly from covid, listed for most of 2020. Then it started to rise with the jab roll out. Most in this county never wore masks. Those that I saw and still see with masks on, to look in their eyes I see fear. They need to get groceries so, they put on their masks in the parking lot (if they weren't already wearing them in the car) and they scuttle through the isles to pick up what they need. I don't know if they can be reached. By this time, with the number of boosters they've gotten, I suspect that they really are having health problems but can not see that the shots were the cause and are still getting "covid" which self-reinforces the idea that if not for the shots it would be so much worse.
Which country?
County not country. I live in Wisconsin
I live 7 miles south of the Cheddar Border. Masking past the first summer wasn’t universal in the Wisconsin border town I live near. I used to shop there. Also gas is sooooooo much cheaper. 👍🏻 My state?pfttttt. Gone.
Jeez!
Very sad indeed.
"The Science (tm) changes as scientists learn more."
There's just enough truth in that to satisfy the midwits. Don't think of these as rational arguments in which facts or logical consistency matter. Think of them as cult beliefs (with a bit of pseudoscientific window-dressing). It's not that the cult leader was lying or negligent before. Rather, he has received a new revelation. It is not for us to question it.
But if you ask them, "Where did you learn the new data? What studies? How do they differ from previous studies?" they have no answer. They just huff and glare at you, or tell you that you "wouldn't understand" or are "just trying to be a contrarian."
Or the one I get all the time: "What makes you think you're smarter than the experts?"
Genuinely, the idea of looking at the evidence and coming to their own conclusion seems alien to them. They just want an answer from someone they perceive as smarter or more capable. Although I suspect that's not quite how it works. Rather, they arrive at their own answer, but for emotional reasons they can't defend; then they look for an "expert" to affirm it, so they can invoke authority instead of having to defend it.
Definition of expert: Has brief case and is more than 20 miles from home.
In reality, you may be smarter than the "expert" if you have been studying the data and viewing/listening to the range of opinions out there on the topic. The person who is not inquisitive, so allocates his thinking to others (experts), can not conceive that you being non-credentialed could possibly know anything. Yet, in every field we see the major breakthroughs in knowledge are most often made by amateurs, who have an uphill battle against the credentialed experts defending their turf.
"I'm not. I'm following experts, too. I'm just trusting the experts who make a better argument than your experts."
When you tell them that you're following experts, just not THEIR experts, they'll have no intelligent comeback.
To paraphrase Jeff Childers from today's Coffee & Covid, "they can’t say you didn’t listen to “the experts"...they can’t even accuse you of cherry-picking your experts. If they open THAT Pandora’s box, who knows what else might leap out? People might start to wonder whether EVERYBODY cherry-picks their experts (of course they do; even the ones who tell you, "what makes you think you're smarter than my experts?").
And 51 intelligence "experts " all agree the Hunter Biden laptop story has all the classic earmarks of RUSSIA DISINFORMATION!
Ugh… 🤨
I think the whole thing is a waste of time, but I started a meeting recently (about 25 people) by thanking everyone that they have changed their own car engine filter recently so that my truck runs better.
😂🤣
Even more: the fact that we were never advised to do this at anytime ever until now makes (or rather, it SHOULD make) the burden of proof for utility that much higher. That is: "if it saves even one life" cannot be the standard...the change has to provide clear, obvious benefit, or else it should never be implemented.
They likely will point to Asia as the precedent, where mask wearing, especially on days with heavy pollution, is common.
Then we remind them that there's also a precedent of welding shut the doors to apartments to keep people apart. Ten of them died when they couldn't get out.
*BigGov spin* "Fewer people infected with COVID."
For Christians the worst betrayal is the "masking as loving thy neighbor." It's just like the example of the alcoholic above. It's not loving to gratify self-delusion. Love is about the good of the other, which is sometimes totally opposed to his sense of emotional validation.
As a Christian, masking is literally "bearing false witness." I argued this point over and over with my priest.
And for the true believers in masks, it is worshipping a false idol as well.
So true. And the vax is the true Sacrament of the Covid religion.
My (Eastern Orthodox) priest still wears a mask to administer the literal body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. Utterly blasphemous.
I had a neighboring priest from a Melkite Greek church, invite me to a Mary Magdalene service. I love the stories of Mary Magdalene and told him I’d love to attend but that I could not wear a mask. He told me to attend anyway. The service was packed with mask wearing parishioners. I believe I was the only one not wearing one. This was 2021. Not one person said a thing to me, nor did I receive dirty looks when I went up to take the blessing of communion (not the bread).
This priest also told me in another conversation, that most who have not lived in a Communist country, had no idea what was taking place, but he did, because he was raised in one.
I argued with my priest/pastor also, not just about the mask but about the forcibly shut churches and, after they reopened, the roped off pews and placement markers on the floors to keep people 6 feet away from each other. I kept saying over and over, "Christians aren't supposed to be terrified of illness or even death, and we're certainly not supposed to be terrified of each other. Christians are supposed to run toward each other in time of crisis, not away from each other." I even added that our greatest saints had risked their lives to attend personally on the sick and dying. Finally my pastor said, "We've had this conversation before," which I knew meant "Shut up" and that he was never going to listen.
But no, unlike some here, I didn't leave the Church because our bishops were a bunch of sniveling cowards and/or toadies to the power brokers. I believe in my Catholic faith because it's proved itself to be true even if those in charge of keeping the Faith have lost their faith. And I do believe that Christ Himself is still there in the tabernacle in church and comes to us every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass -- despite the failures of His servants. It's an old saying that one proof of the Divine origin of the Church is that she's survived her clergy.
Oh, I'm with you Phoebe. I haven't left the church but I won't be giving any money to the Bishops (no annual appeal money, no CCHD). These men folded like cheap suits in the face of true State tyranny and have lost my respect. I appreciate that my priest made the Sacraments as accessible as possible during Covid despite the strictures. I have found myself in the place of Peter asking "to whom else should we go?" This is not to say that the Church isn't in need of serious self-reflection. And never again should we be forced to cover the Imago Dei of the human face.
This is so true and was a huge struggle in our churches over the last three years. But they have no problem being downright hateful to those of us against masking or the vaccine. So, it was also a remarkable double standard.
It drove me away from my Catholic Church. Our archdiocese were strict adherents to the branch covidian cult. I was a person that rarely missed mass, now I haven’t been in 2 years after twice having the priest interrupt his homily to mask shame someone. All of it is completely against everything taught in the Bible. It is literally bearing witness to a false idol-the government.
Same. I can't list all the ways this sham revealed the corruption in our Diocese, including in the Catholic school my son attends. Honestly, we found a non-denominational Christian church that fought to stay open and has become a beacon for freedom seeking people in our town. They have horrible modern music in an ugly building, but I'd rather be preached to by people with real faith, who weren't so fearful they let themselves be pawns in this horrible episode in human history.
I get it. I really get what you are saying.
But St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of life. The Eucharist is the center of the Church - of a parish.
At Mass, it matters not that we get a good homily, or that the choir sings well, but that when we attend Mass we enter into Calvary. Heaven touches earth on the altar. It is the Holy Mass, and we must re-learn what it is to enter into that deep mystery and to remember that we receive the most handsome parting gift of all: The body, blood, soul and divinity that is Jesus Christ.
So you may have good pastors with good sermons in your non-denom, but consider that you have traded the Holy Eucharist for it.
Here in San Francisco, the only church that I know of that opened up within a month of March 2020 was an Assembly of God Church. City government tried harassing the pastor but he stood his ground. I know about this because a friend of mine goes to the church. I've gone a couple of times but the music drives me crazy (it's not particularly modern but it's just too much for me). I haven't gone to Mass at my Catholic parish church since they shut down because they were requiring people to sign a release in case they get Covid. I did check it out a few weeks ago----no requirement at this point but everyone was masked except me. I have gone to the church near UCSF (at one time it was a Newman Center) but only for Easter. I'm so disgusted with the Catholic Church for not standing up to this. But Grace Cathedral (Episcopal) was even worse. They required people to be vaccinated.
I am sorry to hear that, Jim. I am a Catholic who, too, endured officious Catholic parish karens at the front door - and priest karens. We looked around and found Catholic parishes where priests were attempting to do end runs - God bless them. They were between a rock and hard place. If they disobeyed they risked forced retirement, possibly without pensions. Further, their flock would then be without the services of a good, solid priest. Two priests we know who did everything to do end runs ended up forcibly retired. Yet bishops in other dioceses were more lenient - and looked away. It all came down to the individual bishops. Such is life.
But if we are well and deeply taught our Catholic faith, we know our faith is not in people or things. There will always be karens, cowardly bishops, and trendy priests. No matter. Our faith is in Jesus - and in our Church we believe that our personal relationship with Jesus is so deep that we insist we receive him body, blood, soul and divinity on our tongues and into our bodies as food for our hungry souls. That is the teaching of the Holy Eucharist, backed by John 6. Further, we have the sacrament of Reconciliation.
These sacraments require a priest - be he saint or sinner. Consider that a skilled surgeon may be a despicable, miserable person, but in the operating room s/he has a gift and heals with a scalpel: A doctor of the body. Priests are doctors of the soul. Not perfect, but essential. We must look beyond the sinners and find the Christ in them - and each other. A tall order, but God gives us grace.
You might find this very objective anti-COVID video from Fr. Peter Heers, an Orthodox priest who is in the minority on this issue, interesting: https://youtu.be/q5D7qbKzoaA
Thanks for that, a true man of god.
Jim - don't let these people keep you away from Jesus in the Eucharist. Don't give them that. Jesus deeply desires to be present with us - go back to Him in the Sacrament. Consume him and allow him to heal you. I truly understand your disappointment. I do. I struggle with it too. But let the grace of the Sacraments pour over you like a fount of mercy. I will pray for you and all of those here who share our disillusionment.
BINGO. It is enabling their delusions, and the opposite of love.
Sometimes all I can do whilst out running errands is to not rip the mask off some maskidiot’s face and scream at them how pathetic they are. But I’ve grown more in control of my reactions over the past three ridiculous years. Why even bother anymore? They’re hopeless and fearful. Poor dears.
I call them maskoids. Children are masklings. Following behind mother maskoids.
So very sad. I pity them more than anything.
So do I. Sometimes I give the mothers stink eye with side eye to the poor little victims. And sigh loudly.
Same. Thankfully my stink eye is hard to ignore
Yep, outside, on their bikes, in their cars....insane. Also there are children in my town that continue to wear them even though the school no longer requires them. :(
I make sure to put on a confused look when they talk and make them repeat. I often explain that I can't understand what they're saying because of the useless, dirty mask.
Exactly, some masked cashier was trying to say something to me a few weeks ago at Home Depot, I told her I found or understand a word she was saying with that thing over her face.
I don't have to "put on" a confused face most of the time. I really can't understand what most of the maskers are saying. I'm a little hard of hearing anyway, and with the consonants muffled and no way for me to lip-read, half the time the maskers seem to be humming at me instead of talking. I try to explain this to the maskers, but most of them don't seem to believe me or don't care. Even a (former) friend who's about the only person I know personally who's still wearing a mask just gets angry and stalks away when I tell him I can't understand what he's saying.
The bit where you say they don't care hits home. More people seem to be acting like machines rather than humans these days. Bureaucrats were always rather machine-like, of course, but now that tendency has spread to many others. It makes me want to punch walls.
Agreed. I was in Costco a month ago and a 20-something woman had a masked barely-2 year old in the cart. My own cart swerved towards her before I got a grip. The adults I just think “you’re an idiot” and dismiss them. But when I see a family where no one is masked but a middle schooler (ALWAYS a boy), or masking their toddlers, I want to jump ugly. That’s just child abuse - putting it on a child or enabling the mental illness of the young/pre teen.
Bless their hearts 🙂
Curiously, even here in Faucistan (home of NIH), almost nobody wears masks. For that matter, nobody's talking about Covid at all. The county government's still pushing shots and boosters, but even that's become fairly halfhearted and pro-forma; it seems more like a bureaucracy running on autopilot rather than real conviction.
My sense is that last winter really undermined the hysteria. Pretty much everyone here was jabbed, but everyone got it anyway, or at least everyone knows someone who did. So they have direct experience falsifying the "winter of death" nonsense. Nobody's admitting that it was all rubbish. They might, if pressed, handwave about the jabs preventing infections from becoming serious. But mostly they just don't want to talk about it.
Even the local Karenwaffe has moved on. Couple of days ago, they trying to start a campaign to ban sugary snacks in local stores, to save us all from Diabetes 2. They'll always find some reason to be hysterical and controlling. But they seem to have figured out -- or at least intuited -- that Covid doesn't work for that purpose anymore.
Last fall I went to the medical freedom rally in Washington DC. I made the mistake of booking a hotel in Washington DC that was at the time still enforcing mask mandates, when right across the river in Virginia there were no mask mandates. I walked into this hotel in Washington not knowing about the mask mandate. I walked in without a mask and I was besieged by security guards and hotel staff. I got into an argument refused to wear the mask and they asked me to leave or they said they would call the police so I asked for a refund which they gave me and then I went across the river and booked a hotel in Virginia. No masks!
When people here were agitating for vax passports, they claimed it would actually benefit the local economy. People would emerge from their houses, and come here from other jurisdictions, because they'd know it was "safe" here. This would more than make up for the loss of unjabbed customers driven out to neighboring counties. Or at least that was the just-so story. Nobody ever put any real numbers behind it, of course, and nobody really believed it or cared if it was true. It was just a handwave.
County officials fortunately had a better grasp of reality. They made all sorts of noises about supporting vax passports, so that the ones up for re-election could get the neurotics to vote for them. But they dragged it out for a while and then quietly let it die. (Due credit to the small but vocal opposition led by Bethany Mandel and others, though, who made clear that they WOULD be held accountable for the damage if they tried to implement it.)
When Covid started I was worried and a little scared for like a month. Then I realized that Covid is not dangerous to like 99% of the population. And I personally was never a risk of Covid. When the masks went on I knew we were in trouble. Because masks don’t stop viruses I never did. But I went along with it as best I could for about a year and then the vaccines came out, and then they started talking about mandating vaccines. That’s when I became a Active dissident. By April 21 , I was hearing rumblings of people being coerced or forced into taking an experimental shot for which there was no good long-term safety data for some thing that was 99.9% survival for most people.. I’m 55 years old, raised in a very religious Jewish home, and my Nazi bullshit meter exploded ! Then I got Covid in August 21 and recovered uneventfully. I was dropped from The staff of a local hospital, kicked off three different airlines, physically assaulted in a bank, escorted out of several different places for not wearing my mask. I was persecuted by other physicians and people in my community, called names like irresponsible and reckless and a coward. And all all all of these people were completely wrong all the time and I knew it and I kept telling them they were. But their Brains were BROKEN by fear and propaganda.
When I would confront people with facts and truth and reason and try to get them to be courageous I would see their eyes glaze over like they were hypnotized,
“SO YOU DONT BELIEVE THE SCIENCE”
They would chant. Remember that movie invasion of the body snatchers when one of the aliens would find someone who is still a human being and they would point their fingers at them and scream?!
That’s how I felt. It’s been like living in an insane asylum
I’ve lost all faith and respect in people around me including my medical colleagues. And there’s nothing special about this country anymore it’s a failed bankrupt banana republic
Maybe there will be some justice soon. But it won’t matter because we’re about to have a massive sovereign debt dollar crash and crisis that’s going to make the great depression look like a bar mitzvah party
Lots of brain drain from NY and CA to more red states.
Left Upstate NY for Texas 25 years ago and so glad I did. Most of my family has by now fled NY to Florida. Still end up having similar issues in big cities, my mistake was Houston rather than a normal suburb. Austin, Dallas, San Antonio similar issues to NY really.
So far the State governors at least have your back for sanity when the fed and local governments go completely off the rails. NY you get more of the same, repeat next seasonal flu crisis.
Federal government complete waste of money, needs to be defense only, States can do the rest. No Fed employee wants to hear that / votes for that. Corrupt system truly.
“Karenwaffe! That is brilliant! 😂
“Karenwaffe ” too funny.
Are you the metro Atlanta area too ?
Worse: Montgomery County, MD. Bedroom suburb for Feds and the Fed-adjacent, especially in "public health" -- home to NIH, USHS, FDA, and a quick subway ride downtown to HHS and the rest of the swamp.
People around here are deeply invested in the Cult of the Government Expert -- it's literally their livelihood. Even if they don't work in the public health field, they recognize the threat of lèse-majesté to their interests as a class.
At this point, "Experts agree," in a headline could be replaced with, "Buckle up, buttercup, we are getting ready to haze you with some garbage that doesn't even qualify as pseudoscience."
Boom! Dr. Ted Noel Demonstrates That Aerosol Will Not Be Stopped by Man
Mask Demo (Quick and Dirty Version)
from Doctor Ted with Careful Consideration for Our Common Concerns
https://rumble.com/v14uuti-mask-demo-quick-and-dirty-version.html
Published May 15, 2022
TRANSCRIPT - EXCERPT
1:10
DR. TED NOEL [wearing a blue surgical mask]: So without further ado let's cut to the chase and take a look at an ordinary surgical mask. And I'm using a vape. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] As you can see, that vape which has aerosols the same size as covid-19 or larger [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] goes through and around a surgical mask.
[cut]
[wearing a cup mask] Now if we take a cup mask and have a good look at it, here we go. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Notice it goes right through the mask easily and goes in every direction. The aerosol is not affected by the mask in any material form.
[cut]
Now we look at surgical mask with a foam strip to protect above and keep my glasses from fogging. [now wearing the surgical mask with foam strip] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Lo and behold, the aerosols go all around it. It has no effect on me spreading aerosols to you.
[cut]
[in a blue cloth mask] Now a cloth mask I borrowed from my wife. Once again, here we go, boom! Straight through and around. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the mask and the sides of the mask] It has no effect on the spread of aerosols. They go everywhere.
[cut]
[shows package containing Guard mask] And then I went and bought a Guard mask with a high efficiency filter material. That one? Here we go, watch for it. [now wearing in mask] Through and around. [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] It had no effect on the vape aerosol which, remember, is the same size or larger.
[cut]
Now I don't have an N95 mask, I have these shop respirators where they could put all kinds of things in them [pointing to filters] but they're like an N95 because when you breathe out everything goes out through a valve. [puts on mask] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Guess what? It might protect me from you, it sure isn't going to protect you from me. Let's look at that again. Boom! [puts on mask] [exhales, clouds of white smoke come out of the sides of the mask] Any mask with a button on it has a valve that lets everything go from you to your neighbor. It has no effect on anything.
[cut]
I think you can get the picture now. There is absolutely nothing that any of these masks do to protect you from me. And the fact is that unless I have a mask which is fully sealed and where I breathe through the filter material both directions, and I have a really high quality filter, nothing is going to protect in either direction. Because just the same way that the vape went out, around, and through, it will come in, around and through. Aerosols will not be stopped by man.
You don't need a big study. All you need is this [holds up vape] because the aerosol here is actually larger in molecular size than the aerosol from your breath. And because your breath has a smaller tighter aerosol, just because it can't be seen ordinarily, that aerosol will go everywhere. It gets through easier, it gets around easier.
Masks. Guard masks. Cloth masks. What are they good for? Oh, here's what they're good for. If I'm going to cough, they make it so I don't have to do this [coughs into a stack of what appears to be Kleenex] and catch the aerosol. Or here [indicates behind his shoulder]. Or pull out a handkerchief and do it.
They don't work.
Remember, I am a doctor. I do not play one on TV.
5:17
[END OF EXCERPT]
# # #
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
Dr. Ted Noel's podcast is
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-doctorted-podcast-90466748/episode/episode-35-covidiots-on-parade-105554337/
Excellent thanks
Wow, thanks for sharing.
Excellent, thanks!
No offense to EGM, but I really didn't think I'd be reading yet another article about this after 3 years.
I feel like I'm in a fucking time loop.
I don't know where yiu live, but they still play The Steve Miller Band and Journey over the grocery music system here in Sacramento. I have heard the same songs for the last 40 years, we've been in this weird Time Warp for decades.
"The Steve Miller Band and Journey" vs. Lizzo and Cardi B...
Yeah, I think that's a time loop we're better off in.
If I knew I had to hear The Joker 200 more times while buying coffee and steaks before I shuffle off my mortal coil, I might pull the rip cord early
They play those where I work as well. The worst thing is when one is of the age cohort who grew up with those songs being popular, one has literally listened to the same music in public for 40 years. My older and younger colleagues don't get my animosity towards the music. The older ones didn't listen to it on a loop in school or on the bus, or with their peers, the younger ones think it is cute to like 70's and 80's pop music.
Why can't I belong to a generation where the music one listened to as a kid is never heard anymore? Neither older people are made to regularly listen to 'Mairsey Doats' or 'Mr Sandman', nor are younger cohorts forced to listen to 90's Boy Bands. But me?...Oh no, here's Bohemian Rhaspsody for your listening torture, <again>.
And don't even get me started about people who cannot function with out some kind of constant soundtrack going on. As I age, I find the dependence on a constant stream of canned familiar music to be somewhat insidious.
I'm not alone!!!!
Same
No one cared who I was until I put on the mask
The Dark Horse podcast had a good take on this the other day. The public health authorities are much like a young man who takes a girl to a scary movie on a date so she will curl up to him looking for protection.
I'm glad they finally came around on masks. I was so disappointed watching them through 2020 talking about how "comfortable" their home made masks were. Smart people fall for the dumbest crap.
They're wrong sometimes, but they own up to it. Also they gave me all the ammo I needed to keep that needle out of my kid's arms. I was personally not anti-mask initially, either... Until it became clear that they did not work, and by wearing one I was helping to spread fear. Then, despite being one of the only ones in my blue area to not wear one, I could not do it any more. It made me feel like a p*ssy, and I cannot stand that feeling.
Oooooh. So true!
Very timely. I live in very red county in the south where masking was a thing on a very limited basis. Even then, the vast majority rejected them and local schools never bought into it. Virtually no one wears them now.
Regardless, I am still confronted by the occasional person in a local store doing the double-mask and even the glove thing which still leaves me somewhat speechless. It's worse at places like Costco but still only about five percent.
My personal struggle is at the local gym with a woman and her daughter who come once a week and insist on wearing a big black N95 mask while exercising. Visual evidence suggests that these people share a similar world view but of course polling data does no exist.
I ran a 6 mile footrace race this July in Santa Cruz California with thousands of my best friends.
I'd say 15% of the people in thebstart corrals, outside, were wearing masks, including my elderly mother, who threatened to wash out my mouth with soap after I told her the masks proponents and Dr Fauci were frauds.
Human nature, some people need a talisman.
The lady in that first pic - a literal mask “influencer” making 💰💰💰 on them
If we have to remask at work, I’m getting one like the chick in the first photo and plastering my organization’s logo all over it.
And adding Darth Vader inhale-exhale sound effects.
Please! I would buy you a coffee just to see the pictures. 😂
In the big picture, we've normalized mental illness.
Afraid you could catch a disease? I must wear a mask.
Unsure of your gender? I must make sure I use your correct pronouns and accept your daily chosen gender.
Yep. Decide to identify as a “furry”? Here’s a litter box. That is mental illness all around.
I find adressing such people as "comrade" solves all the issues with pronoun-proliferation. Comrade easy to spell, easy to say, is the same in many languages, does not upset any grammar, and is well-known and friendly.
It also drives the point home that the pronoun-poco locos are fascists, without them being able to protest without confirming it.
Nothing matters until Congress forces testimony from CDC to present evidence provoking that masks have utility in slowing or stopping the spread. They might ask others to show that masks aren't effective and require the CDC to agree or disagree showing their work. Congress must then require the CDC to issue guidance on masking.
Yes!
The mounting legal cases and forced testimony will trickle out, but they must happen. We can't rest until every lie is exposed publicly through media.
Of course, lies were exposed--through a series of moving goalposts and redefining words related to the "pandemic" (there's one!) and the Vaccine (there's another one.) I could go on all day, unfortunately.