I went down to the Arizona state capitol Thursday, May 25 and Friday, May 26 and listened to legislative hearings on the statewide response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arizona had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 deaths in the country; no one disputes that. But why so many deaths? Well, let the disputes begin. Public health officials in this state, and many citizens who left comments on the Arizona Republic newspaper website, are saying it’s because not enough people got vaccinated. And Governor Ducey didn’t lock the state down tight enough or long enough. On the other hand, many of us who were in the trenches the last three years actually treating people firmly believe more than half of the people who died would not have if they had received early treatment. In other words, stop the virus from replicating with anti-virals early while the COVID virus is still multiplying. By the time people got to the hospital, the virus was done replicating and COVID was now a disease of an over-active immune system – the cytokine storm and subsequent organ damage. It’s much harder at those stages to save the patient. But the powers that be forcibly denied every safe early treatment/anti-viral protocol, and instead used unproven emergency use (EUA) authorized drugs (mRNA gene therapies/vaccines and Remdesivir) and people died.
Some doctors who were expected to show did not for fear of reprisals. I’m guessing some people didn’t show because of the Memorial Day holiday and it’s graduation time.
But Dr. Peter McCullough was there both days and, whoa, he is impressive. The man is a walking encyclopedia of medical studies. He can tell you who authored it, when, what it said, which authors had conflicts of interest, and who paid for it. His memory recall is truly amazing to see in action. If people would actually listen to this man for, say, 30 minutes and still believe he is spreading “misinformation,” then they simply have an agenda.
The day when you could quote any study as fact is long gone – these days, you have to know how the study came about. The ethical pay-to-publish problem with scientific journals is not new, but it got even worse during the pandemic. Maybe reporters haven’t caught on yet. I just read an article that 300 COVID-19 papers were withdrawn for not meeting scientific standards. McCullough presented many well-documented outcomes regarding the mishandling of the COVID pandemic.
Dr. Pierre Kory pointed out there were 95 studies that showed that ivermectin worked. Still the mainstream said ivermectin didn’t work – they ignored every one of those 95 studies and focused on the few that had a vested interest in showing such an inexpensive, off-patent drug didn’t work. When you conduct a study on ivermectin and wait until day 14 to use it, of course it will look ineffective because you waited too long to use it. Ditto for hydroxychloroquine.
One of my favorite things about this hearing came when Kory brought up “The Disinformation Playbook – How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety.” This playbook, or set of strategies, was developed by the tobacco industry to distort the truth about the dangers of their products. The same playbook has been used since, and especially during COVID.
Some doctors who were expected to show did not for fear of reprisals. I’m guessing some people didn’t show because of the Memorial Day holiday and it’s graduation time.
But Dr. Peter McCullough was there both days and, whoa, he is impressive. The man is a walking encyclopedia of medical studies. He can tell you who authored it, when, what it said, which authors had conflicts of interest, and who paid for it. His memory recall is truly amazing to see in action. If people would actually listen to this man for, say, 30 minutes and still believe he is spreading “misinformation,” then they simply have an agenda.
The day when you could quote any study as fact is long gone – these days, you have to know how the study came about. The ethical pay-to-publish problem with scientific journals is not new, but it got even worse during the pandemic. Maybe reporters haven’t caught on yet. I just read an article that 300 COVID-19 papers were withdrawn for not meeting scientific standards. McCullough presented many well-documented outcomes regarding the mishandling of the COVID pandemic.
Dr. Pierre Kory pointed out there were 95 studies that showed that ivermectin worked. Still the mainstream said ivermectin didn’t work – they ignored every one of those 95 studies and focused on the few that had a vested interest in showing such an inexpensive, off-patent drug didn’t work. When you conduct a study on ivermectin and wait until day 14 to use it, of course it will look ineffective because you waited too long to use it. Ditto for hydroxychloroquine.
One of my favorite things about this hearing came when Kory brought up “The Disinformation Playbook – How Business Interests Deceive, Misinform, and Buy Influence at the Expense of Public Health and Safety.” This playbook, or set of strategies, was developed by the tobacco industry to distort the truth about the dangers of their products. The same playbook has been used since, and especially during COVID.
Kory’s source is the Union of Concerned Scientists. You can see more on their website:
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook
Two people from the audience testified before the committee as to their personal experience of losing loved ones during COVID. I was impressed with how intently Dr. McCullough listened to their experiences. I was left thinking how broken the medical system is, and the hospital system too.
I wish the legislators would have taken a deeper dive into what went wrong and why. I would have liked to see more information about what to do when there is another pandemic. How could the governor tell pharmacists to not fill prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine? How could pharmacists refuse to fill ivermectin prescriptions, when their ethical guidelines/rules are to not fill a prescription only if it’s obviously incorrect for something like a huge amount of a narcotic at a dangerous dose; ivermectin was an off-label use of a drug safer than Tylenol. We no longer have an “emergency,” so why are health departments continuing to recommend unlicensed drugs that were approved only for an emergency?
How can restaurants mandate that you show you are vaccinated or you cannot eat there? How is it that the businesses can mandate employees get an EAU vaccine that hasn’t been fully tested? Why did we close schools for so long when there was so little risk to children? Why are we giving this shot to children when they are at minimal risk for severe illness or death from COVID, especially now? Why did we give this shot to pregnant women? Why did we do what has never been done in public health before – lock down the healthy and the unhealthy?
Where are the safety studies? Why did Pfizer want to hide their trial data for 75 years? Why were so many studies rigged? Is America going to forfeit its control as a sovereign nation and take orders next time from the World Health Organization? And most of all, from my point of view, would we again deny people life-saving early treatment?
If you asked me what will come of this, I don’t know. I usually stay far, far away from politics. The Arizona Chapter of Children’s Health Defense was a co-sponsor of the event. President of the Arizona Chapter, Ursula Conway, tells me this hearing was a first in a series envisioned by Sen. Janae Shamp. The focus of the next hearing is expected to be on children – the impact of vaccine mandates and school closures. That will likely happen when the legislature starts up again next January.
I read the local newspaper coverage of the hearing and saw a lot of ink spilled on the supposed “misinformation” that came forth during the hearing. Really? I was there for all two days. (You can watch Day One here, and Day Two here.) Things that were deemed “misinformation” two years ago are now acceptable to talk about – the virus may have leaked out of a lab, the vaccines did not stop transmission, it was not a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
It seems local reporters are still in that place of lock-step censorship all mainstream media were in two years ago, blindly repeating the Fauci/CDC script even though the CDC since said it did a poor job, and both Fauci and CDC Director Michelle Walensky are no longer in their COVID-era jobs. According to the CDC script, if you questioned anything, you needed to be censored because, by George, we know what we’re doing and the science is settled! Wrong. So many times in medicine have we had to change what we thought we knew. Science is rarely settled. And it is healthy to debate it.
The good news is that the information landscape is starting to change. A few quick examples:
- In March, Newsweek magazine printed an opinion piece from Scott Atlas, part of the Trump White House pandemic response task force, discussing his skepticism about plans to mandate masks, lock down the country, and close schools. Subsequent studies essentially proved him right; those edicts were largely ineffective and sometimes downright detrimental.
- The Wall Street Journal recently published a full page article on vaccine injuries. Yes, they are real.
- A week or so ago, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country … Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private … They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans … Decisions produced by those who indulge no criticism are rarely as good as those produced after robust and uncensored debate.”
Let there be open-minded debate and neutral reporting of it.
Dr. Linda Wright
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