The success of modern medicine has made some people behave in a reckless manner, risking their own life and the lives of others, in the false belief and mistaken hope that medicine can save them from any of the consequences of their risky behaviour.
The coronavirus outbreak is an example. The USA has repatriated US citizens from the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship quarantined since 3 February in Yokohama port near Tokyo off the coast of Japan. As the number of cases of COVID-19 on the cruise ship rose to 542, with 3,700 quarantined on board, it seems that adequate procedures have not been followed on the Diamond Princes and now two UK nationals have caught the disease in spite of self-isolation. The UK is now considering repatratiating UK nationals from the Diamond Princess. If the owners of the Diamond Princess have not thrown everything into ensuring proper procedures, they may find that they will have ‘the book’ thrown at them. The USA had prepared for such a scenario but it seems that people have still to learn the lesson that modern medicine cannot compensate for risky and stupid behaviour.
This careless attitude can be seen in every risky sport and adventure. There is an unspoken belief that the rescue services and the doctors will save them in the event of a disaster. A broken leg with an open wound in the 19th century, before there were antibiotics, would have resulted in an amputation at best and death at worse. The careless use of antibiotics in various parts of the world has led to antibiotic resistance with its detrimental effect upon all globally.
The current HIV outbreak in Glasgow suggests a return to risky needle-sharing behaviour by some with HIV, possibly in the belief that modern medicine will intervene if their risky behaviour spreads the HIV virus to someone else. More than 30 years after the emergence of HIV in the UK, community education has not coped with risky behaviour. The ‘risk-reduction’ strategy, which I publicly criticised in Preventing Aids in the Highlands, March 1993, did not address human stupidity, the false beliefs of risk-takers, nor the ‘enjoy life while you can’ attitude of the ungodly who do not believe that they must give account of themselves to God. These same attitudes will ensure that coronavirus will spread as a global pandemic. Personal responsibility is at a premium in western society.
Quarantine is having its effects upon mental health and one may expect people to break their self-isolation as surely as there are those spreading HIV in Glasgow.
To add to the sum of human misery, there are crooks trying to capitalise on the panic and there are reports of a swine fever being added to the mix, to say nothing of the inevitable profiteering that will take place, the price paid for not being prepared.
It is time for cool heads and a return to personal responsibility. Christianity teaches human responsibility along with divine salvation. It is not either/or but both-and. The decline in Christianity in the UK has gone hand-in-glove with the decline in personal responsibility. The UK will be forced to listen to God’s voice in providence if it will not listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Possibly the coronavirus will teach people more responsibility. If so, its benefits will carry over into many other areas of life. However, it is more likely to be a temporary phenomenon, just as the control of HIV has been temporary and sexually-transmitted diseases continue at epidemic levels. What is needed is the change of heart that Jesus taught:
This is why Jesus said: “Marvel not that I said, You must be born again.”John 3:7.
2 Mar 2020: the fear of being seen to be stupid ensures the spread of the coronavirus. Imagine a newly infected person who has no symptoms. He/she travels elsewhere and does not want to appear over-reactionary or ‘stupid’ by self-isolating. Such behaviour in a new area may appear to be ‘overkill’. So they carry on as usual and then they infect others. Only when the outbreak is recognised locally does their behaviour change and they phone NHS 111 or tell their social circle and self-isolate. However, the damage has been done and they have already infected other people, who behave in the same manner. In this way the infection gains a foothold in a new community. It happens all the time with colds and seasonal flu. The very fact that the BBC website addresses the question ‘Should I self-isolate?’ shows that people will not do so if they imagine that they are viewed as ‘over-reacting’. The fact that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s being rejected for a handshake by her interior minister on Monday is considered to be news illustrates that the embarrassment of changed behaviour at an early stage, the very stage that could restrain and contain infection, is enough to ensure that the epidemic will become pandemic. The fear of shame is mankind’s most powerful motivator and it is poorly understood by psychologists or else modern medicine would have addressed it long ago. As usual, Christian theologians who have studied human behaviour for much longer than modern medicine are ahead of the field.
2 Mar 2020: stupidity manifests itself everywhere. How could Highland Hospice authorise 13 payments totalling £575,000 during a 90-minute phone-call from fraudsters? Who was given the authority to allow such transactions far less actually authorise them? It reminds me of the stupidity of the Outer Isles Council who lost money in the BCCI scandal and the Royal Bank of Scotland who never did due diligence in buying Dutch bank ABN-Amro and then used cash to buy it, thereby creating its cash-flow crisis that collapsed RBS and the UK economy. When will modern governance (a new word to the BBC, used by Adam Fleming about the discussions between the Brexit negotiations with the EU, but used since before 2000 in the medical profession) incorporate human stupidity into the recruitment process? The UK banks have begun to monitor unusual transactions on behalf of its customers and they are developing Confirmation of Payee (CoP), a new account-name-checking service that is being introduced across the UK Banking Industry to help to combat fraud and ensure money is transferred to legitimate bank accounts.
5 Mar 2020: the benefits from coronavirus.
10 Mar 2020: is this a ‘responsible’ attitude? Read about the reality of coronavirus in Italy and the medical assessment of coronavirus in the UK from an Accident and Emergency doctor and of the UK response to flights from Italy, Europe’s epicentre, over the weekend. Today, airlines such as British Airways and Ryanair have cancelled flights to Italy till early April, while only two days ago people were walking off flights from Milan without any protective measures in place. The British man who was in the French Alps flew home to the UK without symptoms, but he had already infected those who were still in the French Alps. So one can infect others before symptoms become apparent. I assume that the Government does not expect these healthy air travellers to become too ill even if they are infected and infective, in the belief that this will build ‘herd immunity’ among those travellers who are relatively healthy. However, they should have been given advice to stay away from the vulnerable and elderly, but many of them were given no advice at all.
The Italian experience: “They [patients] have nothing like the problems caused by seasonal flu. They can’t breathe, they need oxygen.” “With our actions, we influence the life and death of a few dozen people. With your actions, you could influence many more.”Dr Daniele Macchini: Italian doctor in the centre of the epidemic
The main danger from COVID-19 is the viral pneumonitis that prevents oxygen transfer from the lungs to the blood. So anything that prevents respiratory tract infection helps. Daily Vitamin D reduces the risk of respiratory tract infection, especially in those who are Vit-D deficient. This is the lesson from a meta-analysis reported in the British Medical Journal in 2017 BMJ 15 Feb 2017. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE Guideline) recommends daily Vitamin D and encourages the food industry to improve the availability of Vitamin D supplementation. Vitamin D is produced in the skin in the sunshine, so those living in the northern half of Britain tend to be Vitamin D deficient. 25 mcg supplement tablets of Vitamin D3 daily are recommended, sometimes described as 1000 iu (international units). My own additional advice is that as soon as you experience a sore throat, gargle with a little Listerine antiseptic mouthwash (there are various flavours), as far down your throat as you can manage, to kill off any viruses on the surface-lining of your mouth and throat. People are advised to clean their hands and surfaces to remove the virus, but why not clean the inside of one’s mouth and the surface of a sore throat when it develops? When the alcohol Listerine antiseptic kills the viruses, they burst open and their contents burst out and irritate your throat making it feel like burning in your throat – this means that the Listerine has worked and done its job. It has disrupted the viruses. Don’t swallow the Listerine; spit it out. No burning sensation means that there was nothing to kill. You don’t need to use much Listerine; just enough to gargle in your throat and then swill it round your mouth also to clear out any virus there, and spit it all out. The virus irritates the lining of the throat to make you cough and tear the natural protective lining of your throat so that it can invade into the body tissues through the tear. Kill it off before it succeds in making you cough. Coronavirus is a danger to the elderly because of their reduced lung capacity to withstand an insult – so one should try to catch the virus when it is at the sore throat stage, if possible. This practical advice goes beyond self-isolation and hygienic measures, which are already well-publicised. I have heard no public intimations how to boost immunity far less on how to deal with a sore throat, not even to stop smoking [link added 7 Jan 2021]. Even a former Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, in an interview with the BBC about her sore throat for which she was not tested, but which she assumed was due to coronavirus, gave no advice on what to do about a sore throat! [20 Nov 2020: she was interviewed again on BBC Newsnight tonight and confessed that she was now reluctant to speak publicly about Covid because the debate has become so toxic.] Just because antibiotics cannot help with a viral sore throat is no reason why one cannot use antiseptics in one’s throat in the same manner as one uses them on one’s hands and on other surfaces. It simply needs a little lateral thinking and I have demonstrated its effectiveness to myself times without number, although Johnson & Johnson necessarily make no claim for Listerine’s utility in this regard. Possibly you can experiment for yourself and join the club. It is a pity that I have to declare an interest and to explain that I am a retired medical doctor before some people will believe me. Unbelief is man’s natural state and leads to many problems, as rape and abuse victims have experienced and the #MeToo movement has demonstrated. My tweet on managing sore throat has been viewed by many people but after almost 48 hours (16 Mar 2020) not one person thought it was worth retweeting for the benefit of others, in spite of a spate of retweeting fake coronavirus ‘advice’. Possibly readers do not like advertising a Christian blogpost. If so, their prejudicial attitude overcomes their charity. They need to learn benevolent Christianity and would benefit from it themselves. [28 Apr 2020: most of the world now knows about Donald Trump’s blundered way of putting across this advice, focussing on his ill-chosen use of the word ‘inject’ instead of extracting what is useful in his suggestion. If he had used the word ‘gargle’ instead of ‘inject’ a useful contribution would have been offered. The world’s media has been so busy excoriating him for his blunder that they missed the relevance of its proper application. Slowly, the UK is accepting the utility of face coverings such as scarves or bandanas, in public defiance of the proud intellectuals who are hidebound to their academic models. The Scottish Goverment has at last recommended wearing face coverings in specific public circumstances where it is difficult to maintain social distancing, such as on public transport or food shops. It has taken mainstream media a long time to draw attention to immunity but here is an article at the popular level by the BBC.] [19 Sep 2020: the New England Journal of Medicine is supportive of face masks; see details below at 19 Sep 2020.]
12 Mar 2020: Boris Johnson’s daily briefing: “We are considering the question of banning major public events such as sporting fixtures. The scientific advice as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks is that banning such events will have little effect on the spread.” This has been interpreted as declaring “in favour of herd immunity” [2 May 2020 BMJ, p. 157; published online on 27 Apr 2020: “and nothing that has happened since shows serious intent to prevent the cull which that implies.”]
13 Mar 2020: another complication of coronavirus is myocarditis. We have no knowledge of the long-term effects of this. People recovered from rheumatic fever in the past, but decades later some people developed rheumatic heart disease with heart valve damage and heart failure. So the scientific strategy of actively promoting ‘herd immunity’ is very suspect – it will be better to have the vaccine when one is developed and becomes available in due course. Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief science adviser, said he hoped the government’s approach to tackling the virus would create a “herd immunity in the UK”. Those countries with poor health services will demonstrate only too forcefully if herd immunity works, while the economic chaos created in the rest of the world will demonstrate which scientific models have worked. This global trial will test the various socio-economic models around the world.
14 Mar 2020: some details about the progress of the disease in the body if it is not arrested.
16 Mar 2020: the effect of self-isolation. Offers of help for those self-isolating. The public advice is that masks are no use generally, but this advice is to secure supplies for healthcare workers. Masks will protect you if someone unexpectedly coughs or sneezes on you, but a scarf or bandana over your face will do the same, is cheaper and less ‘in your face’! It will remind you not to touch your face, which is a frequent, normal, spontaneous and unconscious habit; here are some hints how to restrain the habit. The UK is now implementing the lengthy crack-down at its own pace but probably too slow. Now that the EU ‘open-border’ policy with its sacrosanct doctrine of the ‘free movement of people’ has come unstuck, Spain and Germany have closed their borders. To try to maintain control, the EU is attempting to act in concert and close its own borders, only days after Donald Trump was criticised for closing the USA borders.
17 Mar 2020: the blame game and conspiracy theories.
23 Mar 2020: selfish crowds ignore government advice to the extent that curfews are being considered. The UK has a generation who have not experienced ‘the war spirit’ and need to be educated. This is some justification for that scientific advice which suggested that the public will not tolerate quarantine measures for long. The health secretary Matt Hancock said he did not know why some people were ignoring the government’s advice. So we have a health secretary who does not know, and we have a sector of the public who do not know. It seems that some people don’t know how to take advice. It appears that there is a lot of education needed all round. It is only when panic sets in that some people will act, usually to blame others and to demand that they should be at the front of the queue for help. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed anger and disbelief at the response to the Government line. Some pubs remained open and people are blocking the 111 emergency number asking about ‘sick notes’ which they can get from the website. It is testimony to the poor state of education in our society.
The science says that each infected person passes it on to 2.5 others every five days, so after 30 days one person will have infected 406 other people. However, if social distancing and social isolating cut down this rate to passing on to 1.25 others, after 30 days one person will have infected only 15 others, which is a 95% reduction! This shows the dramatic effect of social distancing in cutting down the rate of infection.
24 Mar 2020: 2,700 passengers were allowed to disbark the Ruby Princess cruise ship at Sydney without any precautions and they scattered in all directions including flights back to the UK. They were not told that many other passengers had the coronavirus and one passenger has since died. How can medicine deal with such stupidity? It is called ‘denial‘.
30 Mar 2020: former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC’s Nick Watt that the Government’s strategy had been to develop herd immunity but it was changed to “suppression” halfway through. The fact and reasons may be disputed, but it is good that it has been abandoned.
3 Apr 2020: the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for Scotland, Dr Catherine Calderwood was asked today in the daily press briefing about the use of Vit D. She acknowledged that she did not know about its applicability to the coronavirus pandemic and said that the usual advice was to take Vit D from October to March when there was less sunlight. The NICE Guidelines, see above, suggest that the elderly in particular should take it all year round in Scotland’s northern climes with reduced sun exposure and those who are “housebound or confined indoors for long periods”.
3 Apr 2020: on BBC Newsnight 31/3/2020 Professor Nirmal Kumar, an ENT consultant and President of ENT UK, sees a new presentation of young fit people with sudden loss of smell and associated loss of taste. He recommended that these symptoms would improve containment of coronavirus if these young fit people were told to self-isolate. However, today’s UK daily press briefing quoted the experts: “it does not contribute to the affinity of the diagnosis.” So what? It does contribute to the advice to self-isolate and this response smacks of scientific hubris.
3 Apr 2020: the link from the Health Protection Scotland PDF to the NHS video for the proper ‘donning and doffing’ is not available on YouTube although it is available on Vimeo. The summary details of the emergency Coronavirus Act 2020 on the Scottish website gives details “as applicable to England”.
8 Apr 2020: my proposals for research and why face masks might be beneficial. Now confirmed by studies: see 2 Sep 2020 below.
10 Apr 2020: scammers have succeeded in extracting almost £2 million from UK businesses by pretending to have face masks, coronavirus tests and sanitizer available for sale. The scammers have targeted businesses, hospitals and care homes seeking to buy in bulk.
13 Apr 2020: a good news story about early preparation. EDF Energy prepared Sizewell B power station for the coronavirus pandemic lockdown over two months ago in Jan 2020 before there was one coronavirus case in the UK. It sent one half its staff home to be safe and it built up essential stocks of commodities and spares so it can continue till 2021 if there was no restocking from overseas. Some people were far-seeing enough to see the storm coming, so UK electrictity will continue through the pandemic, essential during the lockdown.
23 Apr 2020: the Scottish Government has published today a 26-page document outlining its first draft on how to establish “a new normal” for personal and public life until the threat of COVID-19 subsides. It states on page 5:
“We are clear that an assumption that there is a proportion or section of the population that it is safe or acceptable to allow to be infected forms no part of the Scottish Government’s policy or approach.”Coronavirus (COVID-19): framework for decision making Scottish Government 23rd April 2020
This is a direct contradiction of the early UK policy to allow herd immunity to develop, and long may it continue.
2 Sep 2020: at last, someone has done the studies to show that wearing a mask will help you. It may not prevent you catching the disease but the course of the disease will be greatly reduced. Those wearing masks catch a smaller dose of virus – the technical terms are the inoculum or ‘the viral load’ – so your infection will be milder and I suggested this long ago in The BMJ here. My letter to The BMJ gives 1. a suggestion to explain asymptomatic infection, 2. a possible route of ‘natural’ coronavirus inoculation 3. a possible benefit of face masks, 4. how herd immunity may have developed and 5. suggestions for research. Could ‘ocular inoculation’ show us the way forward in other diseases?
19 Sep 2020: the NEJM confirms my theory on facial masks. TheNew England Journal of Medicine on 8 Sep 2020 suggests that facial masking leads to milder COVID-19; see my comments above. Also, American Anthony Fauci, lead member of the Trump administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force is taking 6000 iu of Vit D daily.
1 Dec 2020: Slowly, oh slowly, the public health message is beginning to speak about Vitamin D.
22 Dec 2020: finally, someone has decided to investigate whether masks help in singing in public worship. It shows the priorities in our secular age. Non-compliant customers in pubs were more of a priority than law-abiding attendees at public worship. It reminds us that law-abiding Christians are less of a headache for law-enforcement agencies than the law-breaking population, but there is little acknowledgement of this in public life.
25 Dec 2020: Ivermectin is discussed here and this link shows a passionate academic promotion of its success before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on 8 Dec 2020. A longer and fuller version of the video is here. Dr Kory asked the Hearing to request the US NIH to review the data urgently. He said that Ivermectin prevents Covid-19 as well as treats it. Why are politicians so slow to act? If I had complications from Covid-19 I would want dexamethasone and Ivermectin. I am already on Vit A, Vit C, Vit D, gargle when needed, and the other usual precautions. Updated at 16 Jan 2021 below – the US NIH has changed its opposition to Ivermectin.
11 Jan 2020: I have added zinc to my daily supplements. At last, some trials on mouthwash as a rinse and gargle, see my comments at 20 Mar 2020 above, which, additionally, creates aerosolisation into the nasopharynx, are showing benefit. It claims 40% of positive Covid-19 cases have mouth ulcers (really?) and that low zinc levels are associated with loss of smell, a feature reported in Covid-19. The penny drops with Dr Campbell who repeats all the common sense points I made in March 2020 last year. I repeatedly contacted Dr John Campbell to no effect. Slowly, slowly – Boyd’s conjecture. The interviewee even mentioned Listerine.
16 Jan 2021: America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) upgraded its recommendation and changed its opposition to Ivermectin so that Ivermectin is a therapeutic option for use in COVID-19. Ivermectin, see 25 Dec 2020 above, is “one of the world’s safest, cheapest and most widely available drugs”, used to treat river blindness and other parasitic diseases among millions, for which its discoverers were given the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine. It is given to animals to cure them of parasites in the UK, and it is a treatment for scabies, but it is not yet recommended by officialdom for humans in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic threatening to overwhelm the NHS in the UK! I suspect that officialdom is afraid that people will not take up the vaccines already purchased for administration. The Director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine more or less banned Ivermectin for animals being repurposed for human use as early as Apr 2020 and the same attitude may prevail in the UK. There seems to be a lockdown on the sale of Ivermectin in addition to the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. This is not medicine but politics.
16 Jan 2021: it took the Wikipedia censor five minutes to decide that the FLCCC Alliance Press Release was an “unreliable source”! Just as quickly, Wikipedia posted its ‘Notice’ about its “sanctions”. I do not know how Wikipedia assesses the competence of its censors. Far from it being an “unreliable source” it is the very source (from the FLCCC) upon which the NIH changed its recommendation from disapproval to equivocal on the use of Ivermectin. It is now time for GPs in Britain to be able to prescribe it on the NHS in order to contribute to treating COVID-19. Update: see my comments in 7 and 9 Oct 2021 below where journalistic credentials are questioned.
16 Jan 2021: here is a good 11 minute video interviewing the leading proponent of Ivermectin in USA, Dr Pierre Kory of the FLCCC Alliance who explains that 26 of 27 trials in his paper are controlled trials and not the poor studies that are too often quoted. He explains the credentials of the world specialists in FLCCC Alliance, which are well worth hearing.
19 Jan 2021: my “Critique of the US NIH Statement on Ivermectin for COVID-19”:
I have analysed the US NIH statement on Ivermectin. It states: “Some clinical studies showed no benefits or worsening of disease after ivermectin use,11-14)” If you analyse these references 11-14 they do not show ‘worsening of disease after Ivermectin.” The abstracts of each study conclude:
Study 11 in Bangladesh showed the opposite: “There were no severe adverse drug events recorded in the study. A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19.”
Study 12 in Lahore showed no difference: ” Statistically there was no significant difference between case group who were given ivermectin along with symptomatic treatment and control group who were only given symptomatic treatment without ivermectin, being asymptomatic on day 7 at follow up. p-value (0.500).”
Study 13 in Bangladesh was a conjoint regime: “The Ivermectin-Doxycycline combination showed a trend toward superiority to the Hydroxychloroquine-Azithromycin combination therapy”, but there is no statement of harm.
Study 14 in Peru: “Our study reported no beneficial effects of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, azithromycin” and the increased risks were associated with the non Ivermectin patients!
I conclude that the NIH statement is not accurate. Whereas “Some clinical studies showed no benefits or worsening of disease”, none of Studies 11-14 showed ‘worsening of disease after ivermectin use.” This NIH statement has not been substantiated and the references do not support it and, indeed, contradict it.
The NIH commented on the incomplete nature of the trials but did not comment on what the best trials actually showed. While complaining about confounding in these mediocre trials, the NIH was itself guilty of confounding by not distinguishing the best trials from the mediocre. There were no relevant trials cited from American or European centres. The testimony of those working in such centres in the USA was not mentioned as a factor in the NIH’s consideration. I get the distinct sense that common sense has abandoned the regulators just as the constraints of academia has affected so many other disciplines in life.
It seems that “eye-witness” testimony counts for nothing to those “living in ivory towers”. It reminds us that in this age of fake news that “truth has fallen in the streets” and few people are able to determine where truth lies. Double-blind RCTs are valuable and powerful, but they are not the only source of truth. They confirm truth but there are other ways of confirming truth.
“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.”Martin Luther King, quoting “The Battle-Field” by William Cullen Bryant
It reminds me of the Scottish firemen who would not rescue a woman trapped in a mine-shaft because their equipment had not passed a health and safety check for that particular situation, and those residents advised to stay in their burning flats in Grenfell Tower, London, because these were ‘the regulations’.
19 Jan 2021: the FLCCC Alliance’s critique of the US NIH Statement, see 16 Jan 2021 above, is extensive and concludes: “we are disappointed by the Panel’s hesitancy to make a recommendation in support of ivermectin, one of the safest, low-cost, and widely available drugs in the history of medicine.” It asks the question: “Why does the Panel’s opinion diverge from these other expert meta-analyses?” Indeed! Why, oh why?
19 Jan 2021: the FLCCC Alliance’s paper showing the utility of ivermectin in prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19.
20 Jan 2021: The British media is beginning to pick up on Ivermectin. The Financial Times of London reports on the University of Liverpool Andrew Hill’s meta-analysis of the data. Dr Hill is “encouraged by the findings” on Ivermectin. You need to register with the FT website but you can read a summary here and in The Week, a weekly British publication which summarises the main articles in the world’s media. Hill writes: “Ivermectin should be validated in larger, appropriately controlled randomized trials before the results are sufficient for review by regulatory authorities.” It is correct to have randomized controlled trials (RCTs) but in the context and peculiarities of a deadly global pandemic it does not preclude prophylactic use of Ivermectin and its use in early stage COVID-19. There are plenty of patients worldwide on which to carry out RCTs. The FLCCC Alliance has already drawn attention to “multiple, large “natural experiments” … within South American countries.” There is more than one way to skin a cat and to prove the efficacy of Ivermectin.
28 Jan 2021: Ivermectin is not available on an NHS Prescription in Scotland.
11 Feb 2021: good results suggested by Tocilizumab.
3 Mar 2021: Dr John Campbell discusses Ivermectin with Dr Tess Lawrie.
16 Mar 2021: a discussion at the popular level of Ivermectin – 14 Randomised Control Trials and country-case studies. The claim by Dr Tess Lawrie that this could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
14/5/2021: Even The Times of London is beginning to believe the Wuhan lab leak theory.
27 May 2021: Dr. Peter McCullough, a top American medical doctor with multiple publications in peer-reviewed medical journals, has been the world’s most prominent and vocal advocate for early outpatient treatment of COVID-19 infection in order to prevent hospitalization and death. Here he gives a summary of the absence of Institutional regimes for treating Covid-19 during 2020. The “chilling effect” on doctors from a falsified publication in The Lancet about hydroxychloroquine led to a series of reactions upon treatment and doctors’ licences. “There was an enormous effort to suppress early treatment [of Covid-19].” “Ivermectin became the next drug”, which he also commends in a multi-sequenced treatment regime, quoting Dr Pierre Kory and the FLCCC mentioned above. He favourably quotes the research analysis by Dr Andrew Hill and Dr Tess Lawrie also mentioned above. He claims that there was “a global suppression” of the early treatment of Covid-19 during 2020. Slowly the world will learn the truth.
15 Jun 2021: the pharmaceutical firm Merk, whose patent for Ivermectin ran out in 1996, has patented a modification of Ivermectin. Watch this space.
16 Sep 2021: the real reasons why Ivermectin is being held back by Australia for Covid-19. From its own Department of Health: 1. its perceived public health risk: that is, it might prevent people taking vaccines. 2. unreliable social media dosages, but why tell medical doctors that they cannot prescribe it properly! 3. the 3-4-fold increase in prescriptions of Ivermectin in Australia is thought to be because of unapproved usage for Covid-19. Australia is running out of Ivermectin! Why not buy some more? So the Australian Government Department of Health concludes: “prescribing of oral ivermectin for indications that are not approved is now limited to certain specialists.”
23 Sep 2021: Canadian doctors are concerned about Canadian handling of the pandemic. Although their Open Letter raises significant concerns, it makes the comment: “the inventor of the PCR test, Kary Mullis, stated many times that “PCR tests cannot be used to detect viruses”. It is now admitted that the PCR cannot tell the difference between a common cold, the flu, or any virus or variant. Also, the PCR cannot differentiate between live and dead matter meaning whether something is infectious or not.” For those who do not understand this, PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction whose usefulness is its ability to increase the amount of DNA or RNA in a sample to make it easier to test it, which is helping to detect and identify DNA in murder cases and archaeological samples. It tests for specific DNA or RNA code, not for living viruses. RNA and DNA are not ‘alive’ and detecting RNA does not tell you if the material came from a living or dead coronavirus and a PCR would test positive for both. It would test positive for an asymptomatic or presymptomatic carrier of SARS-CoV-2 virus, who has the capacity to spread the virus but who may not be ill themselves. “A PCR test might find the virus it was looking for. This results in a PCR positive, but a crucial question remains: is this virus active, i.e. infectious, or virulent? The PCR alone cannot answer this question.” It is disconcerting if the PCR test is not specific to SARS-CoV-2 but has a cross-over with other viruses as this Open Letter suggests. “Some PCR manufacturers tell us there is “cross contamination” and “non-specific” interference with a list of viruses and other [sic] in their instructions manuals” although this might simply be a clause to cover themselves legal. This website says that the UK PCR test is specific to SARS-CoV-2 but the quoted letter above is about Canada. This summary shows the different approaches by different tests and countries but the general medical claim is that the PCR tests are designed to specifically detect SARS-CoV-2, so the Canadian Open Letter’s claim seems not to be accurate and no reference is supplied for the claim “it is now admitted”. False negatives can be caused by sequence variants in the RNA code of the sample so that the PCR does not detect it or because the patient did not carry much virus in their nose if the sample swab was used only there. If the PCR tests are as specific as we are told they are, then false positives should be very rare.
7 Oct 2021: the BBC now feels qualified to pronounce its judgment in the Ivermectin debate. The BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 6:47 a.m. discussed Ivermectin and asserted “It doesn’t really work against COVID. An Australian study has confirmed this” (see above at 16 Sep 2021). The report turns to anti-vaxers and claims that their disinformation has three objectives 1. to undermine the seriousness of Covid, 2. to damage the consensus and confidence people have in vaccines and 3. to make people distrust doctors. The “false cures”, implying Ivermectin is one such, have all of these purposes. One contributor claims that it requires a “fact-free leap of faith”, drawing upon a religious concept. How does the BBC chose whom to interview and what are its qualifications to do so? One funeral director claims that he was coached by the BBC what answers to give and even to put on excessive masking for their report, which he had never had to wear in practice. Similarly, Wikipedia took down information within five minutes (see 16 Jan 2021 above). What qualifications do these censors have? It is the same topic as the cancel culture of social media platforms, of some academic platforms and the woke agenda. The BBC followed up its Radio 4 report with a poor-quality “reality check” on the BBC website.
9 Oct 2021: Dr John Campbell has picked up and debunked the BBC’s debunking of Ivermectin, just as he debunked Australia’s opinion (see above at 16 Sep 2021). The BBC “used to be a really good organisation” and thinks its “so-called reality check … brings us back to reality”. He correctly questions the credentials of journalists deciding these matters and critiques the basis of the BBC report as “invalid inductive thinking”. Dr Campbell has been reading meta-analyses for about 30 years. He finishes his video with real meta-analysis on Ivermectin, which should interest intelligent observers.
14 Oct 2021: muscles have blood vessels in them. Here is confirmation that the administration of intra-muscular Covid-19 vaccine is not safe if it is administered accidentally into a blood vessel. It is positively dangerous – leading to the clumping of platelets and the formation of blood clots. Dr John Campbell: “I now consider it to be completely unethical” to administer the Covid-19 vaccine without checking first that the needle is not in a vein. It has now “crossed over from ignorance into negligence”. He has reported this to the Government which has done nothing so far. All doctors and nurses in Denmark have been advised to adopted this advice and to revert to what was once standard practice in the UK – to “aspirate before vaccinate”. This was my practice during my medical practice, so that I was astonished to see media clips demonstrating the first vaccines being administered, and the vaccinator did not aspirate. When you go for a vaccine, make sure that the doctor or nurse pulls back the plunger (aspirates) before injecting the vaccine to see that no blood comes into the syringe – if it does, the tip of the needle is in a blood vessel and the injection should not be given there, but a new site in the muscle should be tried. Dr Campbell made no suggestion why young males might be affected more – possibly they have larger blood vessels that are easier to hit than skinny fellows. 3 Dec 2021: this is becoming more evident. 22 Feb 2022: Australian Government advice contradicts this.
16 Oct 2021: the calamitous state of Australian politics.
18 Oct 2021: the BBC has admitted its mistakes in another context, in the alleged chemical attack in 2018 in Douma, Syria. It takes a long time for the truth to emerge and even longer for people to admit it, and sometimes it never happens in one’s lifetime. The Bible teaches that God will expose everything at the Day of Judgment, but this will be too late for some. People need to seek divine forgiveness now, before it is too late, as Jesus taught.
22 Jan 2022: Neil Oliver criticises “the fear train” of politicians and media during the coronavirus pandemic.
2 Feb 2022: a BBC “health and disinformation reporter” does not report accurately. After the ONS corrected misreading of its statistics on COVID-19 deaths, she wrote an article beginning “It has become a weapon of the cruel and heartless to dismiss the deaths of the people we love.” Into this article she introduced Dr John Campbell and wrongly claimed she had contacted him before writing her piece, but she had not. This adds to the growing evidence of the supercilious attitudes of the mainstream media and we should not be surprised that the public have lost faith with the mainstream media. The only good point to arise from this is that people are being forced to learn the need for critical thinking and that they can no longer rely upon information from authority figures. Jesus Christ taught critical thinking long ago.
7 Feb 2022: the British Medical Journal has been Factchecked by Facebook! An informative and humorous debunking of Facebook that called the BMJ a news blog! Here is the BMJ’s response. The BMJ article even refers to the Thought Police.
11 Feb 2022: an interesting video on ‘timing’ one’s exposure to the omicron coronavirus variant.
22 Feb 2022: The Australian Government’s “Guidance on Myocarditis and Pericarditis after mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines” [my emphasis]. It looks like my unanswered question to medics, medical journal authors, Astra-Zeneca and the Scottish Government is coming home to roost.
3Mar 2022: Israeli study shows strong evidence for the benefit of Vitamin D. Low levels of Vitamin D pre-dispose to increased COVID-19 disease severity and mortality. Why are Governments not talking about this, nor the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer? Those with darker skin produce less Vitamin D.
6 Mar 2022: “70% less likely to die” on Ivermectin compared to Remdesivir: International Journal of Infectitious Diseases, Vol. 116. Who will pay for a large trial when there is no money to be made with Ivermectin? Research is clinician-led as pharmaceutical companies can make no money from it. A citywide prophylactic study showed significant benefit even from low dose Ivermectin 0.2mg/kg/day before catching COVID-19. Why is this not in the newspapers? 14 Mar 2022: Correction or update? Dr John Campbell chides the IJID for not updating its online journal and the abstract about Remdesivir mentioned above has been withdrawn, but not from the website where can still be viewed, but the citywide prophylactic study still stands and is repeated in Campbell’s updated video. If the above links fail, some are repeated in Campbell’s update: clinician-led; a very small dose of Ivermectin is effective; summary of the benefits. This ‘quick footwork’ appears to be ‘real-time’ censorship of published data.
26 Mar 2022: Neil Oliver describes Ivermectin as “the drug that must not be named” and asks why is Ivermectin dangerous to even talk about? The professor of microbiology says of one of the safest medications prescribed worldwide that it is not safe and can cause harm! The obfuscation is astonishing to behold.
26 Mar 2022: an opinion-piece in the British Medical Journal 16/3/2022 reports on the illusion of Evidence-based Medicine. It has a sub-heading: “Evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia, argue these authors.” Here is Dr John Campbell’s academic discussion of the BMJ article. In brief, university funding and big corporations are corrupting medical research and medical trials.
31 Mar 2022: good news from Africa: a lot of immunity created by omicron COVID-19. “Omicron is a gift from God – the vaccine that Africa failed to make.” The money for new vaccines could be better spent on a malaria vaccine.
17 May 2022: North Korea has finally succumbed to COVID-19 but it has to rely on basic health advice. The BBC and other media outlets have been shocked by the advice to gargle with salt water, but there is no comment on the lack of such basic advice in the west during the pandemic.