Image by Dave Mazzucchelli — relationship is either a 1 or a 0
Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic we heard about different methods of conducting scientific research on humans but have you really learned anything?
During this entire debacle we have been bombarded with science speak revolving loosely around the epidemiology of COVID-19. This was largely centered on two broad areas: outcome and treatment. On the outcome side we were pounded with he horrors of contracting COVID-19: loss of taste, loss of smell, high fevers, hospitalization, ventilation, and death. The media frenzy convinced people that SARS-CoV-2 and its attendant COVID-19 were going to be the end of life as we knew it. Others, somewhere, also told us about a thing called “Long COVID” — I still haven’t seen a case definition of “Long COVID” or any data that tracks it. The media whipped us into such a frenzy of fear that we did nonsensical things like putting useless masks on ourselves and worst of all our children or masking as we sit on an airplane nine-inches from a perfect stranger in a cabin with recirculating air blowing in our faces for hours at a time. But oddly enough those same rules for contributing to the greater societal good disappeared once we were inside a football stadium.
While people argued endlessly about symptoms and the scourge of a flu-like illness they were duped into ignoring the actual rate of infection and the actual rate of the only outcome that matters — death. We accepted all of this not because of the science (a “1”) but because of the greater societal good (a “0”).
A person contracting COVID-19 either recovered or died; life or death, a “1” which is measurable, or a “0” which is not measurable. As it turns out the proportion of those who died as a function of those who contracted COVID-19 actually improved over two plus years and most likely it improved independently of the much touted vaccine.
And about that COVID-19 thing — amazingly many people became convinced that there was a thing called “asymptomatic COVID”. For the first time in history we were told that there was a disease that didn’t cause symptoms. But how was it diagnosed? How did we come to ignore the reality of “sick or not sick”; a “1” or a “0”? How did we become convinced that we should fear the theoretical? It happened using a test that was known to produce false positives even if it was conducted properly AND THEN by telling laboratories to conducted that same test improperly in order to increase the number of false positive results.
The line between 1 and 0 was erased and it was replaced with “1”, “0”, or “likely to be 1”. Worse yet the CDC changed how mortality would be recored so that those who died WITH COVID-19 were listed as having died FROM COVID-19. One and Zero had been completely blurred so that “0” was now “1”. THAT ladies and gentlemen, is not science but it is political control through manufactured fear. Thank you Rochelle Walensky.
We were also told that early treatments well known to be highly effective at shortening the course of the illness and decreasing hospitalizations and deaths couldn’t be used because they had not been subjected to the long term Double Blind, Randomized Control Study with results published in peer reviewed literature.
The double blind, randomized control study has long been regarded as the gold standard of scientific evidence that a treatment worked or didn’t work. Lets look at this kind of study a bit more deeply.
What does double blinded mean? Very simply it means that the person conducting the study or the study’s participants have no idea who is getting a treatment and who is getting a placebo. Why? Why go to that effort? We do that so that person conducting the study can’t bias its results in some way and those who are participants can’t pretend that their condition is improved even though they may know that they have been given a placebo or claim that a treatment had no effect.
Think about this for a moment and ask yourself this question: How does a person fake a fever? Or a hospitalization? or death? While it is possible for the person conducting the test to alter its results it is impossible for the participant to fake the outcome when that outcome is easily measured or irrefutably observed.
And that brings us to early treatment of COVID-19.
“Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”
This is the conclusion of a review of 15 published studies on the efficacy of Ivermectin in the early treatment of COVID-19 AND as a prophylactic treatment — yep; Ivermectin was shown to prevent COVID-19. This article was published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, a high quality journal in which each public article is submitted to peer review prior to publication.
This study is a “1”.
But someone wanted it to be a “0” or a least cast serious doubt on its “1-ness” and so the Editor of that journal issued an unprecedented statement:
”The Editor of the American Journal of Therapeutics hereby issues an EXPRESSION OF CONCERN for Bryant A, Lawrie TA, Dowswell T, Fordham EJ, Mitchell S, Hill SR, Tham TC. Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines. Am J Ther. 2021;28(4): e434-e460.” (emphasis added)
With this statement the “1” was erased but it wasn’t made a “0”. Making it a “0” would have meant that the authors to be blunt, had lied about the data. But that didn’t happen instead the Editor continued:
”The decision is based on the evaluation of allegations of inaccurate data collection and/or reporting in at least 2 primary sources of the meta-analysis performed by Mr. Andrew Bryant and his collaborators.1,2 These allegations were first made AFTER the publication of this article.” (emphasis added)
Allegations were made, the study was sullied, the vaccine had cleared a barrier. Ivermectin was not a viable treatment and, therefore, the novel mRNA genetic therapy could legally proceed.
Who made that allegation and what was the basis for it? We have no idea because the Editor kept that information anonymous and outside of the journal peer review process which the Bryant article had already passed.
Bryant’s meta-analysis was published in August of 2021. Imagine how many hospitalizations and deaths would have been prevented had the world embraced Bryant’s work instead of embracing an anonymous detractor’s analysis of two studies carefully examined by Bryant and the peer reviewers of his article.
Back to the demand that the use of Ivermectin, hydroxychlorquine, chloroquine, budesonide, iv Vitamin C, and a host of other treatments be prevented because they hadn’t been submitted to peer reviewed, randomized, double blind controlled studies. When all that was needed was documentation of treatment and outcome— a treatment either prevented hospitalization and/or death (a “1”) or it didn’t (a “0”).
It really is that simple.
Aspirin either ends your headache or it doesn’t.
I have said this before and it bears repeating here. Our public health agencies rather than informing us and teaching us, became vehicles of the pharmaceutical industry and political interests in a massive disinformation scheme — and in the process we became dumber. When was the last time you wondered if there were double blind, randomized, controlled studies on WD-40?
“I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism.” 1Timothy 5:21
Union, KY
16 March 2022