We Won’t Get Fooled Again sounds much tamer now than it once did. It was an anthem for the left in 1972 but in this context its not clear who’s anthem it might be. The message of the WHO song is we will get fooled again – see the RxISK We Will Get Fooled Again.
Conspiracies and Cock-ups covered some current views about what is going on in the health domain. It left out one important angle – we’ve seen it all before. MRNA is the new SSRI.
Common to both SSRI and mRNA stories are Contract Research Organizations (CROs) who run the trials, often inventing patients who don’t exist or data on patients who do exist and sequestering trial data.
In both narratives, medical writing companies have ghostwritten the trials, academics have been willing to have their names on papers whose data they have seen nothing of and regulators have been willing to approve treatments on the back of negative studies and to turn a blind eye to publications claiming a treatment worked well when the regulator and company have agreed it is negative.
Very few of those fulminating against vaccines now seem to realise this.
Rebranding
To be marketed as antidepressants, the SSRIs had to be rebranded. These drugs are primarily anxiolytic. Owing to a benzodiazepine dependence crisis, it was impossible to market a new anxiolytic in the late 1980s. As a result, the SSRIs were redesignated as antidepressants. SSRIs are less effective than older antidepressants and completely ineffective for severe depressive disorders such as melancholia.
Good marketing, hinging on our wish to be fooled again, overcame these facts and has obscured the fact that the people primarily treated with these new revolutionary drugs were the people treated with the old revolutionary benzodiazepines. It was obvious in 1990 how things would play out – more people are now dependent on SSRIs than ever were on benzodiazepines.
The mRNA Covid vaccines have also been rebranded. They are relatively ineffective in terms of blocking infection with and transmission of the Covid virus. They did not meet the old definition of a vaccine that held up to January 2021, which was a fragment of a dead bacterium, or an attenuated or live virus, designed to produce immunity. The new definition covers a strand of genetic material used by the body to produce an antigenic substance such as a spike protein – a gene therapy.
Effective or Fooled by Surrogates?
Ordinarily, an antibody response to a viral protein from a virus would be taken as a surrogate marker of immunity.
Changes on depression rating scale scores are surrogate markers of antidepressant efficacy.
SSRI depression rating scale scores do not correlate with effectiveness, with lives saved, or suicidal events, or recovery where recovery means a return to function without having to stay on treatment.
In the case of mRNA vaccines, the production of antibodies does not appear to function as a marker for immunity, as it does in the case of a measles vaccine for instance.
There may be an effect of mRNA agents in that pneumonias seem less likely, with people less likely to die in intensive care units, or people less likely to have coughs and be PCR tested, but these may yet turn out to be a treatment effect rather than a vaccine effect or even a placebo effect.
Wash in – Wash out
In SSRI trials, companies required patients to stop taking pre-existing medication prior to starting on blinded treatments. After abruptly stopping dependence producing medicines, patients entered an up to 2-week period designated as wash-out or run-in, prior to starting active or placebo preparations.
There was a high rate of suicidal events and completed suicides during this two-week period. In breach of regulations, companies designated these events as placebo events and added them to the suicidal events happening on placebo in the trials – in a bid to hide the problems active treatment was causing.
In SSRI trials, there was a 30 day follow up after the treatment phase ended. In some instances, during this period, patients on placebo were put on an SSRI and went on to a suicidal event that was designated as a placebo event.
In Covid vaccine trials, events such as infection with Covid or serious adverse events that happened in the period after a first vaccine right up to 5 or 7 weeks later were not attributed to the vaccine. Patients with Covid or dying from Covid or from vaccines, after the first dose of a vaccine have been routinely referred to as unvaccinated.
There are thousands of deaths now reported in the two weeks after the first dose of vaccine and again after the second dose. On an Intention to Treat basis, in trials these should be counted as vaccinated but aren’t and patients admitted to hospital are viewed as unvaccinated.
The superficial rationale for coding suicides and suicidal events as placebo is that people were not on the trial drug at the time. The superficial rationale for counting deaths post vaccine as unvaccinated is that patients have not at that point developed full immunity and so are unvaccinated.
Disease not drug
Early in a public crisis about SSRIs causing suicide, Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac, ran an it’s-the-disease-not-the-drug defence.
This defence can be particularly successful when both the disease and drug cause overlapping symptoms such as suicidality, apathy,and sexual dysfunction.
From the start of the Covid pandemic, articles stressed that Covid could cause neurological problems, along with thromboses, cardiac issues and other problems.
These were all highly likely to be reproduced with vaccines that make Spike proteins. Early studies of vaccine related problems have argued that neurological problems, thromboses, cardiac and other problems occur on vaccines but at a lesser frequency than happen in the untreated illness. The general argument has been that whatever has happened you post vaccine, things would have been worse had you not been vaccinated.
Misinformation or Science
When convincing reports of SSRIs causing suicide emerged, companies asked the scientific and lay media whether they were going to believe the anecdotes or the science. Companies and regulators said these are sad cases, but while the earth might appear flat, the science shows it’s not.
RCTs were the supposed science in the SSRI case. It turned out that, behind a ghostwriting of publications and sequestration of trial data, these RCTs showed an excess of suicides and suicidal events on active treatment compared to placebo.
The company argument then became one of claiming that this increase was not statistically significant for any one SSRI in one trial and therefore there was no evidence for a problem. This claim later also turned out to be untrue.
Companies went on to say there is no evidence that SSRIs have any side effects at all. Unless something is shown to happen to a statistically significant extent in one RCT then we have no real evidence to think the drugs cause a problem.
In the case of the vaccines, all evidence of harms is designated as misinformation as these have not been proven to happen to a statistically significant extent in RCTs.
Since then, tens of thousands of reports of deaths, and of neurological, cardiac and other problems have poured into Pfizer, FDA, CDC and their equivalents in other countries, many from doctors making a link to the vaccine. The response from companies and regulators is to say that ‘reports’ like these are expected. There is no evidence of new effects – such as someone turning blue and growing feathers – and so there is nothing to action.
Company use of the term ‘reports’ insinuates they may be from anti-vaxxers or more generally unreliable and of course people cannot be tracked down to establish what if anything actually happened them.
In the case of someone turning blue, or something else new, as in vaccine enhancement of the risk or severity of a Covid infection, there are reports of vaccine enhancement but companies have decided they do not have enough detail as to whether this could be happening or not.
Blood on Your Hands
Those mentioning the harms of vaccines are typically accused of causing deaths.
This is the same as the treatment visited on people raising the harms of SSRIs or other drugs. The precursors of what would now be called social media trolls routinely made wildly over the top statements claiming anyone who was raising harms as an issue would have blood on their hands.
This plays into a widely held wish particularly on the Left – that medicines are sacraments, which can only do good and cannot harm.
Health is the religion of progressives; progressives who want to believe we are moving toward life saving medicines. Many have lost the ability to comprehend the idea that, while done with good intentions, medicine and surgery necessarily involve poisoning and mutilation. It is a problem if either we or our doctors forget this.
In the case of vaccines a host of doctors, often anonymously portray themselves as Morally Injured by the unvaccinated – seeing these as people take up beds in hospital through a wilful refusal to get vaccinated – denying treatment to deserving others in the process.
Intercurrent Disorders
In all clinical trials, there are adverse events. Where these involve death, hospitalization or a life-threatening event, companies are obliged to file narratives laying out what has happened.
In their SSRI trials, companies discovered a loophole in the mid-1990s. If a patient was deemed to have an intercurrent illness, raising the possibility that this pre-existing illness should have excluded the patient from recruitment to the trial, no narrative had to be compiled. In Study 329, a study of paroxetine versus placebo in teenage depression, all drop-outs for intercurrent illness happened on paroxetine and were likely adverse reactions to paroxetine.
In similar fashion, in trials of later vaccines, such as the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer, some patients with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) or other problems developing after vaccination were designated as intercurrent illness and discounted from the reckoning on this basis.
In the Covid vaccine trials, adverse reactions, particularly neurological reactions have been coded as anxiety states or functional neurological disorder, both of which imply pre-existing conditions. As pre-existing, these events have not been viewed as vaccine-related even when they manifest themselves for the first time shortly after vaccine administration.
In AstraZeneca’s Phase III trial of its Covid vaccine, the published study stated;
“Deaths that were adjudicated as not related to Covid-19 were treated as intercurrent events and therefore censored at the date of death.”
There are vast number of Covid deaths that occur in the first two weeks after the first dose of vaccine. In trials these events are all likely to have been coded as not related to Covid-19 and from the Astra-Zeneca statement above appear likely to have simply vanished. What we don’t know is the proportion of those deaths that happened on vaccine compared to placebo but at present it looks like close to all of them represent vaccine harms.
Concomitants
Recent vaccine trials have compared active treatment with treatments designated as placebo but which in fact often contain elements such as the adjuvants that have been part of the vaccine. It is possible, and seems highly likely, that these adjuvants, especially if there are other proteins in the mix, may have caused reactions masking some of the adverse effects of the active vaccine.
In SSRI trials, people on placebo got serotonin reuptake inhibiting antihistamines, which produce many of SSRI side effects on vision, bowels, and sex, to agitation and suicidality.
The mRNA agents contain mRNA fragments which at present are linked to a multiplicity of effects with death as a common denominator.
Dependence
SSRIs were known from healthy volunteer trials to cause dependence prior to their launch. Within three years of paroxetine’s launch in Britain there were more reports of dependence on it than from all benzodiazepines combined in the previous twenty years.
This prior knowledge made it possible to design trials to conceal this problem. It has taken thirty years for establishment medical bodies to concede that SSRIs can cause dependence.
In the case of mRNA agents, it appears that antibody production wanes over time and may switch in some individuals from predominantly neutralizing antibodies to enhancing antibodies – that is putting people at more risk of contracting an infection than not.
The descent into sequential booster doses of vaccines points to an increasing dependence.
In contrast to vaccine induced antibodies, which belong to the IgG group, the immunity that comes from infection involves IgA and IgG antibodies along with T-cell immunity and is more secure and less likely to put people at increased risk of further infection. Infection makes people more resilient where vaccination, it appears, may compromise resilience.
Similarly, treatment with antidepressants may compromise resilience. In treatment trials, those treated with and recovering on placebo are less likely to relapse in the future than those treated with either antidepressants or psychotherapy. In the case of antidepressants, withdrawal produces a relapse enhancing effect, at least in so far as reinstating treatment is a marker for this.
Finally, there appears to be an overlap between Long SSRI Syndrome – protracted withdrawal syndrome – and Long Covid Syndrome. Rather than investigate the physiological basis for either of these conditions, it seems more convenient for everyone except those injured to view these problems as ‘functional’ which translates as psychogenic or hysterical.
Special Populations
With both SSRIs and mRNAs there have been vigorous efforts to treat pregnant women and children.
In the case of the SSRIs, it was known early on that these drugs caused miscarriages, along with birth defects and behavioural defects like autistic spectrum disorder but this has not stopped physicians and the media from encouraging women against their better instincts to take these drugs in pregnancy.
There is a similarly strong push to get pregnant women vaccinated without evidence to show that this is safe.
In the case of children, 45 of 45 trials of antidepressants in depressed minors have been negative with a clear elevation of suicide risk and risks of other adverse behavioural consequences. Yet there has been an increasingly strong current pulling children toward these drugs so that they are now the second most commonly taken drugs by teenage girls.
There is a comparable push to vaccinate children despite widespread agreement children have little to gain from being vaccinated and run considerable risks.
Real World Data 1
The trials of SSRIs show more suicidal events on treatment than on placebo. In response to these findings, companies turned to Real World Data, arguing that national suicide rates have shown a fall since the introduction of SSRIs proving these drugs don’t cause suicide.
In the case of the vaccines, the lack of lives saved in RCTs and possible harms caused by treatment is countered by claims that Real World Evidence shows the vaccine working well with an overwhelming proportion of those dying in ICUs being unvaccinated. It is now increasingly recognized however that there is a difference between dying with Covid and dying from Covid.
In the case of the SSRIs, it is easy to demonstrate that suicide rates were falling before SSRIs came on stream and this seems linked to a fall in autopsy rates and rise in deaths of undetermined cause.
In the case of Covid and its vaccines, getting data on all cause mortality broken out by age and sex is important and all deaths from 1 minute after a first shot should count as vaccinated in contrast to the current counting all vaccine deaths in some instances up to 21 days after a second shot as unvaccinated.
There appear to have been instructions not to do autopsies in the case of those dying shortly after vaccination. We await good explanations that reconcile the apparent clinical trial and real-world evidence for vaccines.
Real World Data 2
With SSRI treatment the problem of patients becoming suicidal on treatment appeared in clinics after the drugs were launched. These clinical cases showed challenge, dechallenge, and rechallenge effects, dose response effects, a response to antidotes, and convincing clinical narratives that made it certain that these drugs could cause people to become suicidal.
The challenge then was to reconcile this clear evidence of a treatment induced problem with RCT evidence that appeared to argue against this possibility. Investigating this issue brought to light the fact that there was an increase in suicidal events in controlled trials of the SSRIs that was not apparent owing to a sequestration of the clinical trial data and ghostwriting of the medical literature.
There now appear to be a very high number of convincing neurological and other adverse events post vaccine that at first blush appear at odds with the clinical trial literature. One of the scientific tasks ahead will be to reconcile the apparent discrepancies.
This task is urgent because patients with convincing problems are at present being ridiculed and told their problem is in their mind because their doctors appear to assume that, if a problem did not appear in published clinical trials, it cannot be caused by the treatment in question.
A clinical condition, now called post SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), illustrates the issues. Sexual effects happen close to universally after a first SSRI pill but were missed in the clinical trials of these drugs, because the focus on a primary therapeutic endpoint means that problems happening more frequently can be missed. PSSD was in fact reported before the SSRIs launched but still the publication of a ghostwritten literature reporting the results of clinical trials that make no mention of these possibilities mean patients are ridiculed and some commit suicide because of the ridicule.
RCTs focus on a primary endpoint, such as whether this drug has an effect on mood. The focus is so extreme that something that happens to everyone 30 mins after their first pill can be missed – the genitals of takers become numb or irritable. This should be unmissable but was missed.
This numbing not just of genitals but also of reactivity and emotions is a core effect of these drugs, through which they produce any effects they produce on mood.
Similarly, mRNA trials have had an intense focus on whether these agents produce immunity, which appears at best rather minimal. What we know is they produce Spike proteins. The RCT focus was on whether there is evidence of immunity rather than on Spike protein production and what these proteins might do. People it seems have been able to drop dead on the day they received the vaccine without the link to the vaccine being noticed.
Stratagems
In the case of the SSRIs the stratagems used to hide problems included expressing the problem in terms of patient exposure years rather than in terms of patients exposed. This made it possible to keep some people doing well on SSRIs on treatment for extended periods of time, which diluted the problem being caused by treatment.
Other approaches involved unusual coding of adverse events such as suicidality, which has been coded under a range of headings from emotional lability to nausea or burns.
Another stratagem is to break what might be one effect into 6 or more such as agitation, akathisia, anxiety, hyperactivity, nervousness, restlessness or tension.
Or grouping behavioural events with common neurological events like headache or dizziness which make the behavioural events disappear.
A more recently developed strategy seen in both vaccine and drug trials is to use an adverse event tracker app which only allows participants to endorse pre-populated items. In this way companies can exclude things they know might be happening but don’t want the world to know about.
Stigma
If a person with AIDs says they are not taking their Triple Therapy people recoil, as they do if a person with epilepsy says they are not taking anticonvulsants.
Many women can sense the relief settling over a group when they indicate that they are taking an SSRI – this defines them as competent, sensible, and not liable to an hysterical outburst.
The unvaccinated are now treated as lepers even though their likely natural immunity is better for them and others than vaccine induced cover which wanes.
Natural immunity is the counterpart of the resilience that stems from recovering from a nervous or depressive episode without treatment – it reduces the risk of relapse in the longer run. Taking a technology, however, is increasingly seen as the way to contain the original sin of being human.
Placebo or Oedipal effects
The SSRIs barely beat placebo in trials, and likely don’t beat placebo in real-world terms. The availability of SSRIs acted like a placebo for doctors encouraging them to undertake the difficult task of transitioning patients out of the benzodiazepine frying pan.
Psychotropics whether benzodiazepines, SSRIs, or other agents have placebo effects on doctors – relieving them of the stress of wondering what do with the difficult situations many people find themselves in.
Another word for this placebo effect is the Oedipal effect. The Oedipal effect makes things that have been prophesied more likely to happen. The antipsychotics had an obvious Oedipal effect in this sense. They are not a cure for schizophrenia or psychoses but branded as antipsychotics, we were willing to take risks to let people out of hospital, or not to admit them. This was good for some – not because of the drug effect but because they re-engaged with life, which was good. It was terrible for others because these drugs can be disabling. And it was somewhat grim for others when all that was on offer outside hospital were drugs.
In just the same way, the vaccines allow people to take risks and treat people at home. The mantra that however bad your condition was it would have been worse if you were unvaccinated gives healthcare staff loads of room for manoeuvre.
In contrast, those who are unvaccinated are seen as high risk and sent to hospital which is all too often a ticket to a worse outcome.
Primitive
The RNA system is clearly primitive and manipulating it is liable to reveal unexpected effects.
Serotonin is one of the most primitive chemical messengers. It plays an important part in embryonic and fetal development and serotonergic agents are linked to a range of birth defects.
At the launch of sertraline in the early 1990s, while chairing a Pfizer symposium, I made this point and suggested our job was to keep a hawk eye out for things we had never seen before as they were pretty well certain to happen. We now have never seen before sexual problems, vision problems, a range of behavioural abnormalities and during withdrawal in particular a huge range of sensory changes involving touch, hearing, smell, vision, proprioception and others.
These changes reveal how little we know about sensory systems. There are few neurological tests for detecting sensory dysfunction and, as a result, patient reports tend to get viewed as subjective.
There are, however, demonstrable sensory system abnormalities following both vaccines and SSRIs that can be detected on corneal confocal microscopy or testing for small fibre neuropathy, or with Tilt Table Tests.
The increasing specialism of clinicians likely shapes their clinical response to both SSRIs and vaccines. Very few clinicians now have a toxicological mindset – a way of seeing things that welcomes abnormalities across organ systems as good evidence of toxicity. Instead, visual effects are not asked about by anyone other than an ophthalmologist – with other effects only of interest to the relevant specialist.
Effects outside the expertise of a clinician are liable to be viewed as irrelevant. Specialists have become partialists in their efforts to map domain effects onto a known disease and, getting only a partial fit. They often opt instead viewing the problem as functional, which translates into psychogenic or conversion disorder.
Anti-Vaxx Playbook
When the suicide inducing effects of Prozac emerged in 1990, Eli Lilly branded reports of this problem as anecdotal, stressing the disease caused problems not the treatment and blaming the fuss on Scientology.
So relentless was the focus on Scientologists that it became close to impossible for anyone to liaise with anyone who had any Scientology connections or even to think Prozac might cause problems without being branded as a Scientologist.
Anti-Vaxxers are the new Scientologists , liaison with whom will cause an instant loss of credibility.
Locating all our problems in 1990 in a fringe cult, leaving the rest of society to proceed with business as normal, did not seem such a hazardous thing to do. Now however we are extraordinarily polarized. The seeds of this polarization can be seen in the Prozac story. The most extreme polarization now centres on health issues, with people dividing into bioliberals and bioconservatives.
The middle ground has vanished. It is not possible to establish a middle ground even for those who are pro-vaccine but who have been injured by the vaccine.
Social media may play a role in this. Once looked on as likely to support a diversity of views, they now appear more a tool for censorship than enlightenment.
Social media have regulated information into acceptable and misinformation. The acceptable is the information emerging from an algorithm – RCTs – gamed so that only prepopulated questions are answered and only statistically significant findings are regarded as existing. This is called Evidence Based Medicine.
Evidence originally meant what is evident or palpable to a person’s senses. Evidence now refers to a body of material designed to persuade people not to believe the evidence of their senses.
The result is we take opioids and stimulants in defiance of what used to be the common sense view that you can get hooked to these drugs.
Passports
One of the features of the pandemic has been that those who have been injured after a first vaccine dose have been required to get a second dose in order to be able to travel, go to restaurants or just hang on to their job, with this looking likely to extend to booster doses in due course.
This has its parallel for people on antidepressants, a significant proportion of whom become dependent on these drugs, can have horrific problems trying to get off them, and if they do get off have no wish to go back on them. This reluctance is not just because of the dependence problems but because the drug can obliterate the possibility of making love, compromise vision, increase risks of strokes or haemorrhages, thin bones, increase risks of dementia, cause chronic urinary tract problems and interact with many other treatments a person may be on or may be likely to need.
The withdrawal process can produce crippling Brain Fog, bizarre neurological symptoms, and toxic stress hormone surges, all of which can make working close to impossible. Job loss because of these problems, and an inability to return immediately to work, may mean a person has to resort to Disability payments. The Disability assessors however are unlikely to recognise withdrawal and most people are better advised to state that Depression is their condition – which leads Disability assessors to refuse payments unless the person is willing to take a treatment for their illness (an antidepressant).
There is no antidepressant or other drug licensed to treat dependence or PWS. CBT and other therapies are ineffective for drug induced problems. The only known cure is time, ideally supplemented by a graded return to work programme. But this is not on offer.
In practice people with antidepressant dependence risk ending up in the same position as someone with a prior adverse effect on a vaccine who is faced with a booster.
Clinical Science
Patients are the data in clinical science. Every other set of figures is an abstraction from the full dataset that is a person. These abstractions may enable us to establish how a treatment causes a problem but deciding if a treatment causes a problem happens in a clinical interview.
As with a journalist attempting to establish a contemporary story or a historian tackling past events, the answers, as in any good science, are provisional – subject that is to the emergence of further details. The provisional answer gets stronger if people with different biases review the story and agree that the best way to explain an effect is by invoking the action of a poison or illness inducing agent that despite the best of intentions has caused a problem.
Doctors have lost a feel for a clinical science that would let them establish whether a drug or vaccine is causing a problem or not.
Paradoxically, companies when attempting to establish a hazard of treatment take an Evident Based Medicine approach – see False Friends – and include the results in the label of their drugs under an Other Reports heading. This section of the label comes long after the Evidence based Medicine sections and most doctors and others assume this refers to reports of problems to the company from Anti-Vaxxers or Scientologists, but in fact are reports the company has investigated and can find no other way to explain other than the effect of their drugs.
Hazards of Technology
All technologies embody an algorithm. The earliest rating scales were primarily checklists to remind people of things that might be included in a clinical interview. They were aids to help a clinician do the interview they wanted to do, ensuring certain key features are considered.
These tools with the scores that go with them have now developed an objective sheen and in many places clinicians are instructed to replace a free-floating clinical interview with rating scales. Adhering to these checklists helps standardize exchanges, which from an industry point of view means services offer quality, where quality is defined as reproducing the original event every time.
The problem is the items on the checklist can arise in many different ways and simply adhering to the list gives people little or no feel as to what is actually happening. These algorithms produce a score for which a medicine increasingly appears the answer. Pharmaceutical companies therefore have generated an increasing number of scales knowing that far from these scales helping doctors and patients get the interview they want, the scales will ensure the interview reflects what companies want.
This dynamic applies to technologies from rating scales to bone scanners or blood lipid levels. Their use may help us and our doctor to help us to live the lives we want to live or may entrain us to the lives someone else wants us to live,
Medical Future
As doctors tune out from what patients say, other than their answers to predetermined questions, their patients become invisible. Once a patient becomes invisible, their doctor does too. Managers do not see a doctor grappling with a poison out of which we hope to bring good, or a mild form of an illness from which we hope to bring immunity. They see someone delivering goods they have been told are extraordinarily effective and problem free and wonder if the job could not be done by less expensive healthcare personnel.
By endorsing this vision, doctors risk doing themselves out of a job – other than as middle managers who, rather than helping people take risks to live the lives they want to live, aim at managing the risks that patients and healthcare staff pose to a health services company.
What has been lost in recent decades has been a grasp of the importance of discretion. Clinical practice is increasingly driven by guidelines which are bringing the practice of medicine closer and closer to a mandated approach to every issue not just in respect of vaccines. This guideline-based approach is driving an ever-increasing consumption of medicines.
This applies on a public health level as well as in office practice.
Life Expectancy and Polypharmacy
Life expectancies in the United States were falling before Covid. While poverty and inequality are clearly factors that affect life expectancy, polypharmacy is also.
In 1980, few of us were on more than one drug at a time, and that treatment was usually limited in duration – a course of antibiotics for example. Around 1980, medicine discovered risk and the idea of treating risks as opposed to focusing on disease. This greatly multiplied the number of medicines people took to reduce risks from blood pressure, sugar or lipids, thinning bones, reduced airway peak flow rates, and a huge variety of behavioural risks.
As a result, 40% of people over 45 are now on three medicines per day and 40% of people over 65 are on five or more medicines. These mean figures conceal the numbers who are on anything from five to fifteen different medicines.
Around 2000, the notion of polypharmacy was coined with suggestions people should be on no more than three medicines per day or at most five medicines per day. Since 2010 there has been evidence that reducing medication burden from 10 or more medicines toward five or less increases life expectancy, reduces hospitalization rates and improves quality of life.
When the Covid pandemic began there was a focus on finding medicines that might treat the infection. With Joan-Ramon Laporte, I submitted a proposal to all major medical journals that it might be more important to Reduce Medication Burdens, especially in older adults who in care home are routinely on a large number of medicines including psychotropic drugs. No journal was willing even to review the proposal. Three epidemiological studies since have picked out medication burden as one of the most important factors in mortality in Covid.
In addition to falling life expectancies, reproduction rates in the US and other countries have fallen beneath replacement rates. It is likely that polypharmacy contributes to this, with SSRIs in particular reducing libido and inhibiting sexual function, along with increasing miscarriage rates and increasing birth defect rates.
With little room for maneuver in respect of replacement rates, we could do with knowing just what effect the new Covid vaccines might have on fertility and pregnancy, but we are told that even raising this and other questions is to spread misinformation.
With 15% of the population taking SSRI related drugs, which they are unable to stop, we have a public health crisis. In the case of vaccines, are we creating another pandemic – of over-treatment.
SSRI | mRNA | |
---|---|---|
Ghostwritten Articles | Y | Y |
Lack of Access to Trial Data | Y | Y |
Surrogate Outcomes | Y | Y |
Creative Coding of Harms | Y | Y |
Patient Exposure Years to Hide Harms | Y | Y |
Not Collecting Harms | Y | Y |
Simpson's Paradox to Hide Harms | Y | Y |
Autopsies not Done - Hiding Harms | Y | Y |
Harms Categorized as Misinformation | Y | Y |
Disease not Treatment Blamed | Y | Y |
Approval based on Negative Trials | Y | Possibly |
Early Phase Treatment Harms added to Placebo | Y | Y |
Placebo Patients given Active Treatment | Y | Y |
Dodgy Real World Data used to Hide Harms | Y | Y |
Cause Dependence | Y | Y |
Loss of Job for Stopping Treatment | Often | Y |
Life Expectancy Falling | Y | Y |
Rebranded to Antidepressants and Vaccines | Y | Y |
Stigmatization of the Untreated | Y | Y |
Progressive Media Vilify mention of Harms | Y | Y |
Progressive Media Glorify Treatment Efficacy | Y | Y |
Harms Invented by | Scientologists | Anti-Vaxxers |
To be continued
mary H says
Thank you for such a detailed (and lengthy!) post, covering so many aspects of the two topics uppermost in the minds of most of your readers at present.
When I follow the trials and tribulations encountered by the Covid vaccine damaged, some major questions spring to mind:- HOW is it that they have covered so much ground in so little time? WHEN will we, SSRI sufferers and their supporters get our heads firmly above the parapet and FIGHT in the way that they do?
Here in the UK, moves are afoot to shock the BBC into a realisation that this group – under their banner of “Truth Be Told” – are not likely to disappear any time soon. They are having a whole month of Awareness Meetings up and down the country. On Saturday January 21st., they meet at London’s Portland Place. A very large following is expected – complete with the addition of two prominent personalities, both of which have been ruffling many feathers of late. My fount of information tells me that there will be a large screen on which will appear a video from him as he’s too weak to travel as far as London now. He, Adam by name, previously mentioned in comments by Annie and a member of our prescribed medication withdrawal group, has done so much to raise the awareness of the suffering that he and others have endured.
I wish them every possible success on Saturday. It would be great to see their demonstration mentioned on the BBC News Channel – but maybe that is taking my wishes a little too far at present!
mary H says
https://www.rebelnews.com/caught_him_rebel_news_pummels_pfizer_ceo_with_questions_at_world_economic_forum
That’s the way to do it!
In comparison, I guess we’re all rather timid – maybe we need to up our game and face those in power head-on.
annie says
Tit-for-Tat…
Prof Norman Fenton
@profnfenton
More photos from todays’ event in support of vaxx injured/bereaved outside the BBC IN London
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1616873580213534722
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1616803610674827264
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1616797160741167108
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1616792069011345408
annie says
BBC ignores vaccine rally on its doorstep; Matt Le Tissier’s powerful address
By Kathy Gyngell
January 23, 2023
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/bbc-ignores-vaccine-rally-on-its-doorstep-matt-le-tissiers-powerful-address/
YET another Central London mass demonstration on behalf of the vaccine-injured and another non-report of it by the mass media, even though this one took place at the very portals of the BBC on Friday. Despite the ever mounting evidence, the still near-universal silence on the subject of vaccine injury and vaccine-related excess deaths is mind-blowing. How far are these so called journalists’ heads stuck in the sand? How can the BBC still call itself a news-gathering organisation and keep a straight face? How it could remain so studiously blind to something that was taking place on its very doorstep, beggars belief, as remarked here by Jules Serkin.
annie says
WSJ and STAT, ‘slightly’ different offerings…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr
@RobertKennedyJr
·
11h
Thanks @WSJ for taking vaccine makers + federal agencies to task for pushing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters without having any data to demonstrate that they are either safe or effective.
WSJ Slams Vaccine Makers, Federal Agencies for Pushing Boosters, as FDA Concedes Data Are ‘Complicated’
The Wall Street Journal Sunday took vaccine makers and federal agencies to task for pushing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters without having any data to demonstrate that they are either safe or effective.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it is eyeing changes to the booster program.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/wsj-covid-booster-fda/
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Sunday took vaccine makers and federal agencies to task for pushing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters without having any data to demonstrate that they are either safe or effective.
In an op-ed, Allysia Finley, a WSJ editorial board member, said people shouldn’t be surprised by the “deceptive advertising” touting the boosters on radio stations across the country, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Federal agencies took the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy,” she wrote.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted a briefing document indicating it wants to change the COVID-19 vaccine protocols by simplifying the composition of the vaccines, the immunization schedule and decisions about how the vaccines are updated.
The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss the future of COVID-19 vaccine regimens, and will be asked to vote on whether they recommend parts of the FDA’s plan.
Edward Dowd
@EdwardDowd
The Deceptive Campaign for Bivalent Covid Boosters
Studies show they fail to live up to their promise, but vaccine makers and experts keep pushing them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-deceptive-campaign-for-bivalent-covid-boosters-cdc-fda-biden-vaccines-moderna-pfizer-wuhan-imprinting-11674400955
Matthew Herper’s Version
FDA scientists propose an annual Covid shot matched to current strains
By Matthew Herper
Jan. 23, 2023
https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/23/fda-scientists-propose-an-annual-covid-shot-matched-to-current-strains/
One of the key questions about the new proposal on Covid vaccines is what degree of evidence is required for the new boosters. The Covid vaccines manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson were all originally tested in large clinical trials where patients were randomized to receive either the vaccines or a placebo. All of these studies showed dramatic efficacy against the original strain.
Giving booster shots increased this immunity, both against the original strain and against newer ones.
What has been less clear is whether updating the booster to match the current Omicron strain as well as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 granted added protection. The FDA’s scientists present a wealth of studies showing that the new boosters increase antibody levels for people who were previously vaccinated with the original vaccine.
They also present observational studies, in which researchers collect data from the real world and try to control for variables that might change the study result, that suggest the new boosters are protective.
Loaded…
annie says
“- part-man, part-ostrich -”
“a large grey mammal with tusks and trunk” …
Edward Dowd
@EdwardDowd
·
The “problem” can no longer be hidden…now the ridiculous spin shall unfold
Massive spike in excess deaths sparks calls for an ‘urgent investigation’: NHS crisis is blamed for nearly 3,000 more Brits than usual dying each week
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11671587/Massive-spike-excess-deaths-sparks-calls-urgent-investigation.html
“ – part-man, part-ostrich -”
Excess deaths highest since pandemic second wave – and less than 5 per cent are from Covid
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/excess-deaths-highest-since-pandemic-second-wave-and-less-than-5-per-cent-are-from-covid/
Breaking the silence: do mRNA vaccine harms outweigh benefits?
Julie Sladden
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/breaking-the-silence-do-mrna-vaccine-harms-outweigh-benefits/
JAB VICTIMS REVEAL THEIR HORROR, SOME WITH TEARS, MOST WITH ANGER…
…but mainstream’s conveyor belt of misinformation continues its untold damage despite Truth Be Told’s protest to raise awareness
By Mark Sharman
https://uncut.substack.com/p/jab-victims-reveal-their-horror-some?utm_campaign=post
The Sunday Times (January 22) ran a headline ‘Conspiracy Britain. How the cranks crashed into the mainstream’, under which were pictures of Andrew Bridgen and Dr Aseem Malhotra, the London cardiologist who has been campaigning for Covid jabs to be suspended until independent analysis can be studied.
Just when will journalists stop playing bit parts in the Government propaganda theatre and start looking for the truth?
Why are the intelligentsia so stupid about vaccine injuries?
By Niall McCrae
January 25, 2023
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-are-the-intelligentsia-so-stupid-about-vaccine-injuries/
EDUCATED stupidity is what failed us. Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, now admits that his previous stance of promoting the Covid-19 vaccine was wrong, and that the ‘anti-vaxxers’ have been proved right. In his latest video, Adams opines that the decision on whether to take the shot was best made by ignoring doctors and experts.
Adams sees an inverse correlation between intelligence and an objective understanding of Covid-19 and climate change. Truth is found not at Davos, scene of the World Economic Forum’s annual conferences attended by the high and mighty, but in Walmart. Indeed, an alternative ‘Dumb Davos’ (by which he meant a gathering of people with no letters before or after their names) would be more enlightening than listening to the arrogant, self-serving class who regard themselves as the ‘elite’.
What to follow – rules or reality? One meaning of ‘observe’ is to adhere to ritualistic practice, as demonstrated by the religiously devout, and also by followers of political ideology. There is no need to think but act dutifully. The other meaning of the verb is to watch what is happening, in a focused rather than passing manner. This is the endeavour of scientists, artists, satirists and (at least in principle) journalists. It is what you would expect of intelligent people, but the Covid-19 regime has shown an incredible observational deficit.
The last three years have shown that a large grey mammal with tusks and trunk can stand incongruously in the room, and intellectual eyes and ears cannot see it. The authorities’ radical response to a purported coronavirus pandemic should have raised questions about the inevitable harm and dubious rational of lockdown, about the dehumanising and ecological damaging mask mandates, and about the experimental injections administered to most of the global populace. But the intelligentsia saw no problem with the draconian regime; indeed, many wanted harsher restrictions. The medical profession uncritically accepted the official narrative, denigrating any practitioner who spoke out.
At a rally outside the BBC headquarters last Saturday, a series of vaccine-injured people told the audience of their dual battle with debilitating symptoms and with unsympathetic doctors who deny the obvious cause. Of course, this event was not reported by the public broadcaster. Instead, the Sunday newspapers continued the campaign against dissidents. In the Sunday Times, in response to Tory MP Andrew Bridgen coming out as a vaccine critic, Josh Glancy warned of a rise of conspiracy theorists peddling dangerous disinformation.
In logical absurdity, people who took the vaccine and suffered as a result are smeared as ‘anti-vaxxers’, a weaponised term prepared in advance of the mass vaccination programme. Other absurdities abound, such as the vaccinated reacting to a subsequent illness and positive Covid-19 test as a sign that the vaccine is working (because without it, they would have needed hospital treatment). Highly intelligent people seem to have lost their critical marbles.
During a silent march from the BBC to Downing Street on Saturday, in respect for the dead and injured, the comments of shoppers ranged from supportive sentiment to bemusement and insults (‘nutters’, I heard). It is quite startling how many people have been so indoctrinated by Covid-19 that they cannot begin to empathise with unfortunate victims of the vaccine. Claims of injury, to them, are heresy.
Two months ago, a poll in the US found that Democrat voters were less likely than Republicans to have experienced adverse effects from the vaccine.
‘More Democrats (83 per cent) than Republicans (65 per cent) or those not affiliated with either major party (58 per cent) have gotten the Covid-19 vaccine. While 80 per cent of Democrats believe Covid-19 vaccines are at least somewhat effective at preventing infection with the virus, only 40 per cent of Republicans and 45 per cent of the unaffiliated share that confidence. Similarly, only 43 per cent are at least somewhat concerned that Covid-19 vaccines may have major side effects, compared with 74 per cent of Republicans and 56 per cent of the unaffiliated.’
An important factor here is the politicisation of Covid-19 in American society. Linked to this is the generally higher education level of Democrats, who perceive their Republican opponents as callous, stupid and anti-science. A Democrat voter may have a strong suggestive effect from the shot, perceiving any bodily abnormality not as an adverse reaction but a sign that the vaccine is working. They may also have more political investment in their unquestioning compliance. By contrast, a Republican voter coerced by occupational mandate may be more likely to complain.
Or were more potent doses administered in red states? It sounds too sinister to believe, but there seems to be little doubt that vaccine strength varied. Mike Yeadon, former chief scientist at Pfizer, has highlighted the concentration of reported serious adverse events in about a tenth of the batches.
As pharmaceutical products are normally produced in a tightly controlled process, Yeadon suggested deliberate differentiation (though the vaccine industry is not without a history of contamination). Yeadon is not alone in voicing concerns about differences in quality. Leaked documents from the European Medicines Agency showed that regulators had serious concerns, finding low quantities of intact mRNA in commercial preparation.
Whatever the reason for polarisation in vaccine outcomes, we cannot rely on scientific expertise or authority for answers. As Scott Adams realises, the more intelligent the person, the more miseducated into conformity. ‘Anti-vaxxer’, intended as a slur, has become a badge of honour for the awakened.
annie says
Great to see the similarities spelled out and, coincidentally, Brook Jackson, the high doyenne of Vaccine Clinical Trials, gives us :
Brook Jackson Retweeted
A Midwestern Doctor
@MidwesternDoc
·
16h
As years go by the same misconduct in our medical system keep getting worse. What happened with the HPV vaccine a decade ago was an atrocity that got swept under the rug that predicted exactly what is now transpiring with the COVID-19 vaccines.
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/what-happens-to-vaccine-clinical
Similarly, there were major concerns with safety, efficacy, and research fraud, which should have never allowed the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant (Prozac) to enter the market. Bush senior (who had previously served on the board of Prozac’s manufacturer) played a key role in forcing it through the approval process (the FDA did not want to approve it).
Once it was approved (many other competitors quickly jumped into the market with equally dubious clinical trial data), the FDA received a deluge of reports of severe side effects from SSRI users, including violent acts of suicide or homicide. The FDA then did everything it could to bury this information (e.g., forbidding their own reviewer to release a report that was critical of giving SSRIs to children, and authoring its own inaccurate meta-analysis which erroneously argued that there were no safety concerns with the SSRIs).
Eventually, after two decades of protest against the FDA, which included a congressional hearing, the agency capitulated by issuing a black box warning (used for medications known to carry serious safety risks) on the SSRIs, which has since been mostly ignored. As that represents the closest documented case precedent we have to what is happening now with the COVID-19 vaccines, I tried to document what the FDA did then here (it is also covered in more detail in this book).
Dr Clare Craig (not one of her impersonators) Retweeted
Bernie’s Tweets
@BernieSpofforth
·
7h
WEF – now why would the CEO of OFCOM be attending the Davos conference? Ofcom is the UK’s communications regulator, the censorship police, who have ensured for the past 3 years that only the official Covid and climate change narratives are communicated to the public.
https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1615251462392811520
A Midwestern Doctor
THE FORGOTTEN SIDE OF MEDICINE
https://substack.com/profile/76762071-a-midwestern-doctor
Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos was GSK’s chief executive Sir Andrew Witty.
https://pharmaphorum.com/news/eu-unimpressed-mays-brexit-plans-witty-commends-edge/
Asked by the BBC for his reaction, Witty welcomed the clarity brought by the speech.
“It really codified what many of us had been anticipating since the referendum result, particularly around the single market,” he said.
GSK is the UK’s biggest big pharma company, and Witty has been vocal in supporting the country since the Brexit vote last June.
Commenting on the warnings to Europe in May’s speech he said:
“I think what we have today is the government’s willingness to put a bit of ‘edge’ into the negotiating dynamic. I think that makes a lot of sense – trade negotiations are negotiations, and you have to be pretty tough to get what you want.”
Sir Andrew Witty was named president, UnitedHealth Group, in November 2019, in addition to his role as chief executive officer of Optum. As UnitedHealth Group president, Sir Andrew is responsible for enterprise business strategy formulation, enterprise business development and partnerships, and oversight of enterprise research and development and clinical capacities. Witty was named executive vice president, UnitedHealth Group, and chief executive officer, Optum, in March 2018. He is also a member of the Office of the Chief Executive and previously served as a UnitedHealth Group company director. From 2008 to 2017, Witty was chief executive officer and a director of the leading pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He joined GSK in 1985, and prior to being named CEO, served as president of GSK Europe. Witty is former chancellor of the University of Nottingham, a British public research university, and serves on the Singapore Prime Minister’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council. He is an advisor to 8VC and Hatteras Venture Partners, as well as to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Witty was knighted in 2012 for services to the U.K. economy. In 2017, he was named an Honorary Citizen by Singapore for his contributions to the country’s growth and development. Witty recently took a leave of absence from his current role as president, UnitedHealth Group and CEO of Optum to co-lead the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 vaccine program.
Andrew Witty – the forgotten side of medicine…
Patrick D Hahn says
Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna all are publicly traded companies. They have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits. They cannot do anything else. The shareholders wouldn’t let them.
The mRNA shots were emergency approved on the basis of an absolutely ridiculous endpoint, covid infection of any severity but we’re not going to count covid infections occurring in the first four weeks after the first dose of the Pfizer shot, or six weeks in the case of the Moderna product. They didn’t demonstrate any reduction in deaths, serious adverse events, hospitalizations, intubations, transmission, or any other clinically relevant endpoint.
The trials were supposed to involve tens of thousands of participants and go on for two full years, and they were cut off after something like seven percent of participants made it to the six-month mark. They don’t want us to know what happens after that. The only conclusion that makes any sense is that they didn’t want us to know how harmful and ineffective these shots really are.
Johanna says
Time for all of us to learn the difference between that “surrogate marker” of vaccine effectiveness (antibody levels in blood samples) and the real-world results (who catches Covid and who does not). The two don’t always match up. To put it mildly.
Last week, members of the FDA’s Vaccine Advisory Committee learned that Moderna had hid important data from them last year, when they voted 19-2 in favor of its new bivalent booster shot. They were offered loads of data about those antibody levels.
However, an initial study of the real-world results showed that 2.5% of those who got the new “Omicron-specific” booster went on to get infected with Covid – compared to 2.4% of those who got an old-style booster. Among those with no prior Covid infections (for whom you might expect vaccination to do the most good) the news was in fact worse: 3.2% of those who got the new-improved booster got Covid, compared to 1.9% for the old shot.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/health/moderna-bivalent-transparency/index.html
This confirmed the results of a small study released just a month after approval, which had shown essentially no difference between the new bivalent booster and the old version in terms of preventing infection. (The initial approval, of course, was based on impressive antibody levels in eight mice who got the shots. Eight. Whole. Mice.)
None of these studies took an adequate look at safety. Yet even a small risk from truly rare side effects should not be tolerated, unless the vaccine provides strong protection against a serious risk of disease. In this case, the protection is pretty much zero—and as we’re all aware, it doesn’t prevent us spreading the virus to others. Finally, now that 90% of us have prior infections, prior vaccinations or both, the risk of another Covid infection is dwindling. For relatively healthy folks under 65, it may be downright trivial.
Yet so far the U.S. government has paid out $5 billion for bivalent boosters and given them out to 48.2 million people aged six months and up. We’re told these are life-saving medicines that can keep our hospitals and our economy from collapsing, and maybe even “prevent Long Covid.” This verges on Faith-Based Medicine IMHO.
annie says
Senator Ron Johnson
@SenRonJohnson
It’s time to start facing reality. The COVID-19 vaccines were not as safe or effective as we hoped and prayed they would be. And the COVID cartel still won’t admit they were wrong.
https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/1614301616764780544
Movie plot from Hollywood
GatesGate 2/2
The artwork in Michael’s room is of a Sea Urchin
https://twitter.com/SpartaJustice/status/1613809880225271808
Again
https://twitter.com/rycunni/status/1615108590183882771
or for those who don’t know their sea urchins, a hot-air balloon…
susanne says
Messing about with statins. The upper range for prescribing statins for older people used to be 70/75 …There is a recently a massive jump in the recommended use by NICE in both lower as well as upper age groups.
People who suffer most severe side effects from statins have been older individuals They have not been recommended for people under 39/40 yrs old
. It’s uncontroversial that young men are at high risk of experiencing severe cardiac side effects from vaccines . Is there a connection with the upgraded guidelines and the possible masking of side effects of vaccines by prescribing statins for both vulnerable groups?
In updated guidance on lipid modification, NICE recommends that preventative treatment for cardiovascular disease (CVD) should be halved from a 20 per cent risk of developing the disease over 10 years to a 10 per cent risk.
GPs should offer atorvastatin 20mg for the primary prevention of CVD to people who have a 10 per cent or greater risk of developing CVD within the next 10 years.
The risk of developing CVD should be estimated using the QRISK2 assessment tool.
The new recommendations mean that an additional 4.5 million people could be eligible for statins, helping to prevent up to 28,000 heart attacks and 16,000 strokes each year.
People should be prioritised for assessment from an estimation of their CVD risk, based on factors already documented in electronic medical records. Those aged over 40 should be reviewed on an ongoing assessment of cardiovascular risk dependent on their CVD risk estimation.
In order to assess CVD risk for primary prevention, GPs should use the QRISK2 risk calculator for patients up to and including 84 years of age.
The QRISK2 algorithm calculates the risk of having a heart attack or stroke over the next decade, based on factors such as smoking and diabetes status, ethnicity and social background.
“Doctors have been giving statins to ‘well people’ since NICE first produced guidance on this in 2006. We are now recommending the threshold is reduced further. The overwhelming body of evidence supports their use, even in people at low risk of cardiovascular disease. The effectiveness of these medicines is now well proven and their cost has fallen.
“The weight of evidence clearly shows statins are safe and clinically and cost effective for use in people with a 10 per cent risk of CVD over 10 years.
………. But you can do the QRISK2 risk assessment yourself. It can be done online or via an app so it doesn’t need to be done by the GP.”
Statins Could Benefit Millions of Young Adults with High Cholesterol, Study Suggests
November 9, 2021
A new mathematical modeling study led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggests that statins would provide lifetime health benefits for young adults with less elevated levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, preventing or delaying many heart attacks and strokes, and would be cost-effective, particularly for young adult men.
Time to Relax the 40-Year Age Threshold for Pharmacologic Cholesterol Lowering
An editorial comment )accompanying the new paper suggests that guidelines should consider how many years of life a patient may lose from unhealthy LDL levels and that treatment should be considered for adults with high LDL regardless of age.
The study, led by Columbia’s Andrew Moran, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, and Ciaran Kohli-Lynch, PhD, research scientist, was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology
The study by Moran and colleagues examined the prevalence of elevated LDL cholesterol in the U.S. population and compared lifestyle and pharmacologic approaches to cholesterol-lowering in young adults aged 18 to 39 years.
They used a computer simulation model to assess the lifetime health effects and cost-effectiveness of initiating cholesterol-lowering treatment in a cohort of U.S. young adults—via statins or intensive programs that promote lifestyle changes—at LDL cholesterol thresholds lower than those recommended by ACC/AHA guidelines. The model synthesized evidence on the LDL cholesterol-lowering effects, side effects such as statin-induced diabetes, treatment costs, and health care costs associated with the intervention.
The researchers found that about 26.3 million (27%) of U.S. young adults have an LDL cholesterol level of 130 mg/dL or greater. (LDL between 130 and 160 mg/dL is considered borderline high; above 160 mg/dL is considered high).
The study predicted that cholesterol-lowering treatment could prevent three cardiovascular disease events for every 1,000 young adults initiated on lifetime treatment.
Statin therapy for young adult men with LDL cholesterol ≥130 mg/dL would cost $31,000 per quality-adjusted life year gained, while statin therapy for young adult women with LDL cholesterol ≥130 mg/dL would cost $106,000 per quality-adjusted life year gained. The American Heart Association considers treatments that cost less than $50,000 per quality-adjusted life year as “highly cost-effective,” while treatments costing less than $150,000 per quality-adjusted life year are “intermediately cost-effective.”
Statin therapy was found to be more cost-effective than intensive lifestyle intervention for young adult cholesterol-lowering at all LDL cholesterol levels considered, because lifestyle modification lowers cholesterol only modestly compared with statins, and lifestyle interventions can be costly to deliver on an individual basis.
But in recent years, cardiovascular disease rates have plateaued without improvement and 850,000 U.S. adults died from heart attacks and strokes in 2020.
“Targeting elevated risk factors early, in young adulthood, is a new approach that has the potential to once more improve cardiovascular health in the United States and abroad,” Moran says.
I am wondering if the massive increase in recommended use of statins has any connection with the fact that vaccines are causing cardiac symptoms and deaths I have no specialist medical knowledge it just seems ‘interesting ‘
susanne says
The deranged war criminal Tony Blair has delusions of world domination
Tony Blair: ‘Slew of New Injectables and Vaccines’ Give WEF the Opportunity to ‘Change The World’
January 19, 2023 Baxter Dmitry News, US 7 Comments
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has boasted about the elite’s “opportunity to change the world” by taking advantage of a “slew of new injectables.”
According to Blair, who many believe is next in line to replace Klaus Schwab as head of the WEF, “There is an ongoing challenge – an opportunity – and I think that is not just about Covid. It’s about the fact that we are going to have a whole slew of new vaccines, injectables, that are going to deal with some of the worst diseases in the world.”
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The globalist former prime minister also praised Big Pharma for how quickly they created Covid-19 vaccines, but claimed that in future vaccines must be regulated and rolled out even faster.
According to Blair, national digital ID systems must be put in place to track and monitor every citizen and ensure they are fully vaccinated and boosted with the “slew of vaccines and injectables” which will be rolled out even faster than during Operation Warp Speed.
annie says
Evidence of vaccine deaths is ever stronger yet officials look the other way
By Dr Rafael Bornstein
January 20, 2023
We are grateful to Dr Rafael Bornstein for sending us a translation of his recently published analysis of excess deaths, ‘Excess Mortality and Covid Vaccines. An Urgent Institutional Academic Investigation’ published just before Christmas in La Gaceta de la Iberosfera, a Spanish digital newspaper which the Spanish readers amongst you can find here. Prior to this article he had already warned about the correlation between vaccination campaigns in 41 countries and excess mortality registered in weeks 10 -35 of 2022. Here he sets out new evidence that further reinforces this association.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/evidence-of-vaccine-deaths-becomes-stronger-by-the-day-yet-officials-look-the-other-way/
The need for research is urgent.Although it should have been done with the clinical trials promoted by the manufacturers, there is now no alternative but to decree a moratorium on Covid-19 vaccines to allow for retrospective analysis and meticulous re-evaluation.
If we continue to ignore these safety signals, we are failing to do our due diligence to protect patients. We have a collective duty to restore the principles of medical ethics in our practice and clinical research – primum non nocere – to protect the most vulnerable groups from unwanted harm, especially children less than 12 years of age who are already being vaccinated in our country.
In the absence of long-term adverse effects data, the Covid-19 mRNA vaccination should be paused while a comprehensive safety investigation is carried out, definitive toxicology, genotoxicity and teratogenicity results are obtained, and it is firmly and unequivocally established that the benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh the risks.
An urgent institutional academic investigation is needed.
annie says
Beeb on the Backfoot…
with Openshaw…
Prof Norman Fenton
@profnfenton
·
7h
1. Just look at the extent to which the .@BBCNews will go to ensure that even the slightest hint of talk about vaxx injuries has to be suppressed. A ‘fact check’ filled with its own biased nonsense
https://bbc.co.uk/contact/complaint/bbcnewschanneljanuary2023
The News Channel asked Professor Peter Openshaw from Imperial College London, who is a member of the UK Vaccine Network, to clarify what Dr Malhotra had said for the benefit of viewers later on that morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications/
Blame Game Begins as MHRA Passes the Buck: “All the Covid Vaccine Authorisation Decisions Were Taken by the Government Minister”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/01/19/blame-game-begins-as-mhra-passes-the-buck-all-the-covid-vaccine-authorisation-decisions-were-taken-by-the-government-minister/
Since then the Covid vaccine narrative has continued to take a pounding as more clinicians around the world speak up, the research evidence about cardiac, neurological and immunosuppression problems continues to pile up, and the 1,000 per week excess deaths have still not been explained.
MHRA might have been criticised by Baroness Cumberlege for being “unresponsive and defensive”, but its staff aren’t all deaf, blind or stupid. They knew.
So my inference is that the blame game has started.
Peter Openshaw Retweeted
Trisha Greenhalgh
@trishgreenhalgh
Once more for those at the back: vaccination reduces the chance of getting covid AND dramatically reduces the severity if you do catch it. It doesn’t mean you’ll never get covid again. 1/2
https://twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1614609706076585985
Stephanie de Garay
@shdegaray73
·
Jan 16
Replying to
@trishgreenhalgh
You need to stay up to date on the latest “story” the FDA is telling the public.
Younger, healthy people don’t need another Covid booster, vaccine expert says
Protecting against Covid infection with the current mRNA technology is unrealistic, a vaccine expert said in a paper published in a major medical journal.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/younger-healthy-people-dont-need-another-covid-booster-vaccine-expert-rcna65324
Hot Gun, Cold Gun
the FBI say ‘Well, the gun wouldn’t have gone off if the trigger hadn’t been pulled.’
So much noise and shooting about Statins and Blood Pressure Pills…
annie says
Change of Heart…
Undercover journalist nabs Pfizer R & D Director
Daily Mail removes article published 3 hours ago
It was the second leader story – I read it…
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
James O’Keefe
@JamesOKeefeIII
VIDEO NOW BLOWING UP THE INTERNET; Pfizer director on camera saying they are “mutating” COVID-19 Virus to increase infectiousness. UNREAL!
“That is Not What We Say to the Public” … “People Won’t Like That’ … ‘Don’t Tell Anyone”
https://twitter.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1618501055972773888
Removed from Daily Mail
Appeared 3 hrs ago
‘Why don’t we just mutate it ourselves?’: ‘Director of research at Pfizer’ reveals in undercover footage firm is exploring …
Project Veritas released a new video that …
Daily Mail · 3h
Andrew Bridgen
@ABridgen
If you’re interested this a screenshot the now deleted
@MailOnline story.
https://twitter.com/ABridgen/status/1618567136615739392
Telegraph NZ picks up the story
UNDERCOVER BOMBSHELL: PFIZER DIRECTOR SAYS COMPANY IS CONSIDERING MUTATING COVID VIRUS TO CASH IN ON VARIANT JABS
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/news/undercover-bombshell-pfizer-director-says-company-is-considering-mutating-covid-virus-to-cash-in-on-variant-jabs/
Director, Worldwide R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning at Pfizer (New York, New York, United States)
Jun 2021 – Current
https://www.signalhire.com/profiles/jordon-walker%27s-email/130969661
Verification…
All very Cloak and Dagger, but rwmalone sums it up nicely and it is worth watching the video just for that…
annie says
Senator Ron Johnson
@SenRonJohnson
Federal health agencies have been captured by Big Pharma and grossly derelict in their duties throughout the pandemic. It’s time for Congress to thoroughly investigate vaccine manufacturers and the entire COVID vaccine approval process.
Sen. Johnson Calls For Congress to Investigate Vaccine Manufacturers and Covid Vax Approval Process in Response to Project Veritas’ Exposé on Pfizer
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/sen-johnson-calls-congress-investigate-vaccine-manufacturers-covid-vax-approval-process-response-project-veritas-expose-pfizer/
Part Two
‘Skirmish’ in restaurant…
Robert W Malone, MD
@RWMaloneMD
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Badda boom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5n7RRKgDog
Warning: May contain ‘Nuts’ …
Dee Doherty says
Just to also thank you for a great post!
annie says
Glass Onion
(Daniel Craig brings on his Southern accent, à la Kevin Spacey in House of Cards)
Gates descripts his script…
Pfizer Date Night…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr
@RobertKennedyJr
Bill Gates just admitted mRNA jabs don’t stop infection, don’t block transmission, don’t block mutants, don’t last, don’t work at all — after he sold stock in his vaccine ventures . Thanks, Suckers!
Bill Gates — After Reaping Huge Profits Selling BioNTech Shares — Trashes Effectiveness of COVID Vaccines
Bill Gates, long recognized as one of the world’s foremost proponents of vaccines, raised some eyebrows at a recent talk in Australia when he admitted there are “problems” with current COVID-19 vaccines.
Video: Lowy Institute – Glass Onion…
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-gates-profits-biontech-effectiveness-covid-vaccines/
Rubio Sends Letter to Pfizer CEO on Alleged Gain-of-Function Research
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?id=49178C21-9535-41E1-B484-DA62705568DA
Robert W Malone, MD
@RWMaloneMD
Pfizer – Date night…
https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1619231312375844868
Robert F. Kennedy Jr
@RobertKennedyJr
FDA advisers unanimously voted to replace original Pfizer + Moderna primary series COVID vaccines with the bivalent boosters designed to target Omicron variants, despite concerns about insufficient clinical trial data to support safety and efficacy.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-advisers-bivalent-vaccine/
https://twitter.com/AlbertBourla
Candid, on Camera…