Archive for February, 2021

The Shaky Science Behind the “Deadly New Strains” of Sars-Cov-2

https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/the-shaky-science-behind-the-deadly-new-strains-of-sars-cov-2/  9-Minute Video Here

The Shaky Science Behind the “Deadly New Strains” of Sars-Cov-2

Feb. 18, 2021

by Rosemary Frei
Off-Guardian

ACCORDING TO WHAT WE HEAR FROM OFFICIALS AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, THE NEW VARIANTS ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE BEINGS SINCE OSAMA BIN LADEN.

Everyone needs to stay safe from these invisible but murderously mighty microbes by shunning contact with the unwashed, unmasked and unvaccinated.

But is that drastic approach — which is accompanied by severe curtailment of civil liberties and constitutional rights — warranted?

It turns out that the case for the variants’ contagiousness and dangerousness centres largely on the theoretical effects of just one change said to stem from a mutation in the virus’s genes.

And, as I’ll show in this article, that case is very shaky.

I also have an accompanying nine-minute ‘explainer’ video (Highly recommend. Please see link at top of page)

That one change is known as N501Y — scientific shorthand for the substitution of one protein building block (amino acid) for another at position 501 in the part of the virus called the spike protein.

Specifically, position 501 lies in the portion of the spike protein that’s responsible for the intimate coupling between the virus and cells that lets the virus slip inside and multiply.

[Note that any such amino-acid switcheroo is correctly called a change, not a mutation. Mutations occur only in genes. For some reason many scientists and scribes who ought to know better are mistakenly calling N501Y and other amino-acid changes ‘mutations.’ ]

A very preliminary study published Dec. 22, 2020, suggested that N501Y also is present in the South African variant named 501Y.V2. And another very preliminary study, published January 12, 2021, asserted it was also present in the new strain emerging from the Brazilian jungle, dubbed P.1.

On top of that, the South African variant is being reported as evading immunity and B.1.1.7 sharing this escape route. And scientists are depicting new variants with N501Y on board as spreading very fast. Some say they make herd immunity impossible, so every single person on earth has to be vaccinated. The models also suggest B.1.1.7 is up to 91% deadlier than the regular novel coronavirus.

(Yet so far it seems the main basis for officials saying it’s more deadly is shown in the minutes of the Jan. 21, 2021 meeting of an influential UK committee called New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group [NERVTAG ]. There, they cite modeling papers which haven’t yet been published – which means that until they’re published there’s no way to check their work.)

THREE NON-PEER-REVIEWED THEORETICAL-MODELING PAPERS WHICH CATAPULTED VARIANTS INTO THE SPOTLIGHT

Public-health officials, politicians and the mainstream media around the world turned their collective headlights on the variants right after the publication of three theoretical-modeling papers on B.1.1.7, a variant originating in the U.K. The first was a Technical Briefing by Public Health England published Dec. 21 (it’s the first of an ongoing series of reports on the variant authored by people working at the agency and at other institutions), the second a paper published Dec. 23 by a mathematical-modeling group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the third a theoretical-modeling manuscript posted Dec. 31 by a large group of UK scientists.

None of the three papers was checked over for accuracy by objective observers – a process called ‘peer review.’ Nonetheless, all three were portrayed as solid science by many scientists, politicians, public-health officials and the press.

(I reached out for comment to Public Health England, as well as to the first author of the second paper Nicholas Davies, and to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The only reply I received was from a media-relations person at Public Health England; she told me no one was available for an interview.)

(Neil Ferguson was a co-author of the first and third papers. The UK government has relied on Ferguson’s mathematical modeling for many years. This is despite his work turning out to be highly inaccurate time after time. He  also supposedly stepped down from his government-advisory role last May after being caught secretly meeting with his married lover during a time when it was illegal to make contact with anyone outside of one’s household, thanks in large part to his modelling. But he was quickly restored to positions of influence. In an article and accompanying video coming out next week, I describe the connections and conflicts of interest surrounding Ferguson and the modeling papers’ other authors.)

WHAT EFFECT IS N501Y SAID TO HAVE?

In N501Y, the amino acid that’s swapped out at position 501 in the spike protein is asparagine; by scientific convention it’s represented by the letter ‘N.’ The amino acid that’s swapped in in its place is tyrosine, and it’s represented by the letter ‘Y.’ Hence ‘N501Y.’

Position 501 in the amino-acid sequence sits in the part of the spike protein that protrudes from the surface of the virus. Specifically, it’s said to lie in the region of the spike protein that latches or ‘binds’ to the mechanism that is the gatekeeper for whether the virus can enter the cell. That gate-keeping mechanism is known as the ‘ACE2 receptor.’

This region of the spike protein – known as the ‘receptor binding domain’ (RBD) — binds to the gate keeping mechanism, the ACE2 receptor. When the RBD and the ACE2 receptor bind, the cell membrane, which is the circular barrier between the area outside the cell and the cell contents, opens up and allows the virus to enter.

N501Y is posited to make the spike protein bind tighter to the ACE2 receptor. Influential theoreticians have performed mathematical modeling based on this hypothesis. This modeling suggests that this tighter binding allows the virus to enter more easily, and that therefore this makes the virus more transmissible.

Yet as far as I’ve been able to find, there is still no concrete, direct proof of this. And note that epidemiological data cannot be used to definitively detect the effect of an amino-acid in a virus. Only experiments involving direct observation of the virus’s interaction with the body can determine that.

The main evidence that the top three theoretical-models cite as proof of stronger bonding between the N501Y form of the novel coronavirus and the RBD is from just three scientific manuscripts, and these describe experiments with the virus in mice or petri dishes, not observation of whether in fact the variants are truly more contagious or more deadly.

DETAILS OF THE THREE PAPERS THAT UNDERPIN THE ASSERTION THAT N501Y BOLSTERS CONTAGIOUSNESS

One of those three papers was published Sept. 25, 2020, in Science. It describe experiments involving involving six rounds of division of the virus in mice.

The researchers found a large amount of the virus in the mice lungs right from the first round of division. Based on this, they pronounced the virus to have “enhanced infectivity.” However, they didn’t actually test whether the virus is  more transmissible/contagious – that is, whether it moves from mouse to mouse more easily.

They performed ‘deep sequencing’ and reported that they found the N501Y change in the ‘mouse-adapted’ virus. Next they did ‘structural remodeling’ on it and wrote that this analysis…

suggested that the N501Y substitution in the RBD of SARS-CoV[-2] S protein increased the binding affinity of the protein to mouse ACE2.

All of this is very different than direct observations of the variant virus’s behaviour in mice or humans.

The second paper was posted on bioRχiv on Dec. 21, 2020. It describes an “engineered decoy receptor for SARS-CoV-2.” The complicated series of molecular-biological manoeuvers in vitro were performed that is hard to follow and understand – there is no ‘Methods’ section laying out the details and sequence of what they did; rather, the researchers’ approach to their experiments is scattered across all sections of the paper including in the accompanying Supplementary Material. This is many steps removed from real-life situations. The authors conclude from their manoeuvers that laboratory-mutated novel coronavirus with the N501Y mutation seems to bind more tightly to their ‘engineered decoy’ form of the RBD receptor than the RBD receptor that normally occurs in nature.  (The idea, it seems, is that this ‘engineered decoy’ could be injected into people with the goal of getting the new variant to bind to it rather than to cells, thereby stopping it from gaining entry into cells and reproducing.)

bioRχiv is an online-only journal. (It’s pronounced ‘bioarchive’; that’s because the Greek letter χ is pronounced ‘kai.’ I presume the letter χ is used in the journal’s title because the χ2 [‘chi-square’] test is a widely used form of statistical analysis in scientific papers.) The journal has the tagline ‘The Preprint Server for Biology.’ ‘Preprint’ means non-peer-reviewed. bioRχiv focuses entirely on Covid-19-papers and is sponsored by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It has a sister publication medRχiv that also focuses on Covid-19,

The Initiative is the creation of Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Facebook has been among the very active censors of information including scientific papers that diverge from the official narrative about Covid.

The third paper  was posted on the website of the online journal bioRχiv on June 17, 2020, and then in Cell on Sept. 3, 2020.

Like the other two papers, it is extremely removed from direct observation of the virus’s behaviour in live animals or humans. In fact, the third paper doesn’t even use human or animal cells. It involves a ‘yeast-surface-display platform’ as a basis for performing ‘deep mutational scanning’ of the novel coronavirus’s RBD. That ‘platform’ is an artificial structure the paper’s authors constructed for measuring binding between antibodies and various RBD regions containing an array of mutations.

According to this paper, the N501Y amino-acid change results in stronger binding of the virus to the RBD.

However, the papers’ authors state in the last section of their paper that:

It is important to remember that our maps define biochemical phenotypes of the RBD, not how these phenotypes relate to viral fitness. There are many complexities in the relationship between biochemical phenotypes of yeast-displayed RBD and viral fitness.

Translation: “Just because our biochemistry experiments showed that the presence of N501Y or other changes in the RBD seems to make the RBD bind tighter to the ACE2 receptor, we don’t know whether any of these changes make the virus more ‘fit’/transmissible.”

And note also that one of the authors of the third paper, Allison Greaney, is quoted as saying in an August 2020 article from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center where she and several of the other authors work, that:

The virus already has a ‘good enough’ ability to bind to ACE2. There’s no reason to believe that going beyond that level will make it more pathogenic or transmissible…[b]ut the RBD may be able to tolerate a number of mutations.

As another note, the third paper was first published in bioRχiv and then published three months later in the peer-reviewed journal Cell. In Cell the paper is labelled ‘Elsevier-Sponsored Documents’ (see image below) (Elsevier is the publishing empire that owns Cell, among hundreds of other journals). I couldn’t find anything online about what ‘Sponsored’ means, nor about what or who sponsored this particular paper; and I couldn’t find any other papers with this designation. So I emailed Cell’s PR manager John Caputo on the evening of Jan. 18 and followed up by leaving him a voicemail message on Jan. 19. I haven’t heard back from him.

‘Deep Mutational Scanning of SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain Reveals Constraints on Folding and ACE2 Binding’ (Tyler N. Starr et al.)

A BRIEF WORD ABOUT ANOTHER AMINO-ACID CHANGE IN B.1.1.7

I’ll quickly turn to another of the key changes said to be present in B.1.1.7. This change, the deletion of three amino acids was described in a paper published on the website of medRχiv on November 13, 2020. (Earlier in this article I mention that medRχiv is a creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.)

The mutation purportedly makes B.1.1.7 invisible to one of the three key functions of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. That function is detection of the gene that has the genetic code for one of the two main spike proteins on the outer surface of the novel coronavirus.

However, that conclusion is based on only sequencing of the virus in a mere six people who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. On top of that, the paper was not subjected to scrutiny by other scientists (a process known as ‘peer review’) before it was published.

In addition, the Covid diagnoses of those six people were themselves determined by PCR. And PCR has been shown to have a very high rate of false positives — that is, to very frequently give a positive result in people who in fact do not harbour the novel coronavirus at all.

The authors of that paper themselves conclude that:

this result should be interpreted with caution. As a limited number of samples with the S-negative profile [i.e., tests that were positive for two of the three portions of the PCR test but not for the third, S-gene, portion] were sequenced, we could not exclude the presence of other S mutations associated with this profile…. Moreover we could not determine whether the deletion affected the primer or other probe-binding region as their coordinates were not available.

It’s a good bet that similar sleights of hand are behind the new wave of papers and headlines focusing on the amino-acid change dubbed E484K.

WHAT’S THE LESSON FROM ALL THIS?

That the pronouncements about the dire danger posed by the new variants aren’t based on solid science.

They appear to be aimed more at scaring the public into submitting to harsher and longer restrictions than helping to create truly evidence-based policies.

So follow the golden rules. Read the primary scientific-paper sources. Analyze them and think for yourself. Don’t let your reasoning be swept away by the 24-7, fear-filled news cycle.

Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, was a freelance medical writer and journalist for 22 years and now is an independent investigative journalist. You can watch her June 15 interview on The Corbett Report, read her other Off-Guardian articles follow her on Twitter and read her website here.

Category:

Activism, research, Testing, Viruses

2007 Blast From the Past: “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t”

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html

Credit…Jon Gilbert Fox for The New York Times

By Gina Kolata

Dr. Brooke Herndon, an internist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, could not stop coughing. For two weeks starting in mid-April last year, she coughed, seemingly nonstop, followed by another week when she coughed sporadically, annoying, she said, everyone who worked with her.

Before long, Dr. Kathryn Kirkland, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth, had a chilling thought: Could she be seeing the start of a whooping cough epidemic? By late April, other health care workers at the hospital were coughing, and severe, intractable coughing is a whooping cough hallmark. And if it was whooping cough, the epidemic had to be contained immediately because the disease could be deadly to babies in the hospital and could lead to pneumonia in the frail and vulnerable adult patients there.

It was the start of a bizarre episode at the medical center: the story of the epidemic that wasn’t.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Testing fiascos are part and parcel of the CDC’s MO.

For more:

Category:

Activism, Testing, Viruses

10 Top Causes of Symptoms in Chronic Lyme Disease

https://www.prohealth.com/library/ten-common-causes-of-symptoms-in-chronic-lyme-disease-8558

10 Top Causes Of Symptoms In Chronic Lyme Disease

By Connie Strasheim • ProHealth.com • September 22, 2020

(Please see link above for full article.  Excerpts below)

1) Mold toxicity

Real Time labs is among the most accurate of labs for mold testing. Effective mold toxin binders include the medication cholestyramine and activated charcoal.

2) Parasitic Infections

Parasitic infections are often not detectable on conventional lab tests, and may not even show up in sophisticated stool tests; therefore, using multiple forms of testing to detect parasites, such as electrodermal screening tools such as the Zyto or muscle testing, is important, along with lab testing with reputable labs such as Doctors’ Data.

3) Hormone and Neurotransmitter Imbalances

Replenishing the body’s stores of these chemicals can therefore profoundly support the healing process and Lyme doctors will commonly prescribe bio-identical hormones such as pregnenolone, DHEA and thyroid hormone to their patients, along with amino acids such as L-tyrosine, GABA and 5-HTP, which the body uses to make neurotransmitters. To make these amino acids work in the body, supplemental co-factors such as P5P, SAMe, and methyl B-12 are also sometimes important.

4) Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies

Common deficiencies include magnesium, Vitamins D, C and B-vitamins; zinc and iron—among others. Supplementation with these nutrients can help to support the body during healing. (For more information on common nutritional deficiencies in Lyme disease and supplements that support the body, I encourage you to check out my 2012 book Beyond Lyme Disease).

5) Inflammation

Reducing inflammation involves mitigating all of its causes, such as removing pathogens and toxins from the body, and downregulating the immune response with nutrients and tools such as low-dose immunotherapy. High-quality, natural anti-inflammatory substances such as curcumin may also be helpful for supporting the body’s inflammatory response.

6) Mitochondrial Dysfunction

Supporting the mitochondria with supplements such as L-carnitine and CO Q-10 can help to mitigate fatigue and other symptoms related to mitochondrial dysfunction.

7) Emotional Trauma

Many studies have proven that trauma suppresses immune function and when prolonged, can open the door to chronic health challenges.

8) A Poor Diet

Removing allergenic foods and consuming fresh, organic “real” food, such as non-GMO, antibiotic, pesticide, and hormone-free meats, poultry, eggs, and other proteins; non-starchy veggies and low-glycemic fruits, along with healthy fats such as olive and coconut oil, can help to alleviate symptoms caused by food.

9) Poor Gastrointestinal Function

Supplementing with GI nutrients such as hydrochloric acid, digestive enzymes and probiotics may help to support gastrointestinal function in those with Lyme.

10) Environmental Toxicity

Sauna therapy, rebounding, coffee enemas, liver cleanses, and taking toxin binders such as zeolite, chlorella, EDTA, activated charcoal—among others, are just a few ways to remove toxins from the body.  Ideally, you’ll want to work with a practitioner who can test your body for toxins and prescribe a regimen in conjunction with Lyme disease treatment based on your needs. The same holds for the other causes of symptoms described here.

This article was first published on ProHealth.com on April 26, 2016 and was updated on September 22, 2020.

Connie Strasheim is the author of multiple wellness books, including three on Lyme disease. She is also a medical copywriter, editor and healing prayer minister. Her passion is to help people with complex chronic illnesses find freedom from disease and soul-spirit sickness using whole body medicine and prayer, and she collaborates with some of the world’s best integrative doctors to do this. In addition to Lyme disease, Connie’s books focus on cancer, nutrition, detoxification and spiritual healing. You can learn more about her work at: ConnieStrasheim.

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**Comment**

Not mentioned is Lyme itself, and the many other potential players.  While parasites apart from Lyme is mentioned, dealing with the infections is paramount.  Of course these infections are indirectly affected by the things listed in the helpful article, but never underestimate the infection(s) themselves.  Good, effective, savvy treatment is required.

For more:

Category:

Anaplasmosis, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, Mold, Mycoplasma, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Could You Be Co-infected With Bartonella?

https://globallymealliance.org/could-you-be-co-infected-with-bartonella/

by Jennifer Crystal

I was bitten by a tick in summer 1997 while working at a camp in the woods of Maine. It would be another eight years, however, until I figured out that the rash I developed that summer was a result of a tick bite, and that my subsequent hypoglycemia, crushing fatigue, joint and muscle aches, and fever were caused by the tick-borne diseases Lyme, babesiosis, and ehrlichiosis. That fall of 1997, during my sophomore year of college, I fell ill with the aforementioned symptoms. I missed class. I couldn’t exercise. I could hardly walk to the dining hall.

Because of frequent low blood sugar reactions, I gained a lot of weight very quickly. I felt ashamed of my sudden, noticeable size change. Though I frequently sought care for my flu-like symptoms—often being told I was just run down or stressed—I did not consider that the weight gain might be related to my other symptoms. Medical practitioners didn’t, either; some just told me to go on a diet.

Part of my shame was about deep reddish-purple marks that developed on my chest and in my groin. I assumed these were stretch marks from my skin expanding to accommodate my weight.

Had I shown them to a Lyme Literate Medical Doctor (LLMD), they might have said that instead of stretch marks, lines on my skin possibly could have been striae caused by Bartonella henselae.

As noted on the GLA website, bartonellosis is a bacterial disease starting with a red mark that can become swollen and discolored or even look like “stretchmarks” or striations. Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes (especially under ears), often with conjunctivitis, heart or spleen problems, bone lesions, hepatitis, other eye problems and encephalitis (causing seizures and coma). There is indirect clinical evidence that this is a group of “Bartonella-like organisms” that can co-infect a Lyme patient. Identification of these organisms awaits further scientific study.

Many people with Bartonella henselae also experience pain in the soles of their feet. According to the National Institutes of Health, “This is associated with trauma to blood vessels in the soles of the feet with walking.” Furthermore, “Anemia can occur from Bartonella scavenging nutrients from red blood cells.”

At the time I developed striae, I was also experiencing pain on the soles of my feet when I ran (which I did when I was feeling up to it, as my symptoms waxed and waned). I thought the pain was from heel spurs, or simply because I needed new sneakers.

How easily we explain away symptoms, not realizing they could be related to actual illness.

Though my initial blood test for Bartonella henselae was negative, my LLMD always suspected I might have had it, because of the symptoms I described. The antibiotics he prescribed treated Lyme, ehrlichiosis, and bartonellosis, so our bases were covered regardless. I have not experienced striae or heel pain in years.

Not all patients know about bartonella, and not all doctors, even LLMDs, think to test for it. This oversight could be detrimental to patients, as they might not be receiving the right treatment, or enough of it. If you have other tick-borne illnesses and have not been tested for bartonella, it’s a good idea to ask your LLMD about it. If you have any of the symptoms I’ve described, consider whether bartonella could be the cause.

To read more blogs click here.

jennifer crystal_2

Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.

Jennifer Crystal is a writer and educator in Boston. Her memoir about her medical journey is on submission. Contact her at lymewarriorjennifercrystal@gmail.com.

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**Comment**

This article brings up some great points and reminds me of things I’ve forgotten in our own journey.

The hypoglycemia mentioned can be severe. My husband required food be immediately available. It seemed his body was on hyperdrive and he couldn’t consume enough calories. We had nuts and nut bars stashed everywhere – especially in the car because frightening hypoglycemic episodes would happen while he was driving, making him shake and feel like passing out. (I will add checking your thyroid is a good idea as most patients are typically deficient in thyroid hormones)

The pain in the feet can be severe as well and feel as if someone beat you with a mallet. We also noticed pain in the ankles and wrists – so bad you could drop whatever you were holding due to severe, stabbing pain that felt like a nerve impingement. Going down the stairs and walking is risky because the ankles feel like caving

Bartonella, although not mentioned here, can cause some pretty frightening psychological issues as well. My husband suffered with anxiety would come on like the wind leaving him visibly shaking – afraid for no logical reason. Used to meeting and speaking in front of hundreds of people he would have to periodically cancel meetings as his body rebelled against all logic and common sense. There’s no talking a person out of this. It just is. I had heart involvement that would wake me in the middle of the night with a heart flopping in my chest like a fish flops on the dock after you pull it out of the water. I would lay there and ponder why I was awake and feeling the way I did. This pondering, going through the triage of symptoms can cause an anxiety of its own – as your body seemingly is not communicating with your brain and has gone rogue.

Mainstream doctors haven’t a clue. If I had a dollar for every patient who told me a doctor said their symptoms were due to “anxiety or stress” I’d be a millionaire. These wild, rogue symptoms cause anxiety because they are so unbelievably frightening, but they are the problem and they need to be addressed.

This lack of bodily control is maddening and can be one of the most frustrating aspects of this illness. You become afraid to go anywhere or do anything as your body has a mind of its own. A prisoner in your own home.

For more: https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/category/bartonella-treatment/ In my experience, Bartonella is one of the most tenacious coinfections, yet it is completely ignored by mainstream medicine.

Bartonella is also very common in pets and many other bugs, including spiders and mites. Veterinarians are particularly at risk.

Category:

Bartonella

The Problem with CDC Death Statistics

Recently, there’s been interest in the fact Lyme/MSIDS is horribly underreported, and with how deaths are recorded. This subject has resulted bill S.677A currently in the Assembly requiring coroners, pathologists, and medical examiners to report promptly to the local or superintending health department whether a deceased person at the time of death was afflicted with Lyme or any other tick-borne disease.

We’ve been told ad nauseam by our public ‘authorities’ that Lyme doesn’t kill people, yet it clearly does. A Wisconsin Lyme advocate keeps a memorial on her website of deaths linked to tick-borne illness. And, there’s a lot of them!

What is written on death certificates is very important as it directly affects how a disease is perceived.  A disease causing many deaths will be taken more seriously and will have more research funding allotted for it. We are seeing this play out with COVID-19 and the fact hospitals were paid to count deaths as COVID, even when there were confounding issues and many times COVID wasn’t even the direct cause. Then there’s the issue of faulty PCR testing for COVID which is positive for nearly everyone, which further casts doubt on the validity of COVID mortality statistics.  Yet, these inflated numbers are being used daily to drive a message that COVID is extremely deadly, despite the fact experts continue to say the mortality rate for COVID is nearly the same as the seasonal flu.

While all deaths are important, the CDC has inflated COVID deaths but has a long history of deflating Lyme/MSIDS deaths.

Recently, there’s been a call for an investigation into the CDC’s COVID ‘data disaster’:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2021/02/15/data-disaster-call-for-a-cdc-investigation-free-online-event-feb-17-2021/  If you missed it but still want to view it, go here.

The following article sheds light on cause of death reporting:

https://healthimpactnews.com/2018/death-certificate-clerk-reveals-how-cause-of-death-reporting-is-subjective-and-cdc-statistics-not-reliable-when-making-public-health-decisions/

Death Certificate Clerk Reveals How Cause of Death Reporting is Subjective and CDC Statistics are Not Reliable When Making Public Health Decisions

This is a closeup view of the Death certificate

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Feb. 20, 2018

In our recently published article on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) we referenced how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) list 130 official ways for an infant to die according to official categories of death, but adverse reactions to vaccines is not one of them.

Joy Fritz is a Death Certificate Clerk, and she recently published some of her observations in the field of death recording on Facebook.

Joy relates how she and her husband were concerned about the severity of the flu season as was being reported in the media, and that she “started reading the FDA package inserts for different flu immunization options to get informed on which immunizations might be safest for our <1 year old and 6 year old.”

She states that she wanted to make an informed decision for her family, and that

“What I ultimately wanted to compare was the risk of death.”

She learned that public records on influenza deaths stated that there were no deaths related to adverse reactions to flu medications or flu shots.

However, being in the field of death recording, she dug deeper, and has presented her research and experience to the public.

She writes:

Our current system for capturing mortality rates can and does provide a mostly uninvestigated and inaccurate picture of what causes a death. The process for creating and registering causes of death for public records is a complicated, convoluted, politicized, completely open to both ignorance and the manipulations of personal, professional, and governmental interests.

I’m the one creating these statistics and I offer you this: If you take one thing away from this, take away a healthier skepticism about even the most accepted mainstream, nationally reported, CDC or other ‘scientific’ statistics.

A Humbling Exposé into the Creation of Mortality Rates and its Impact on Our Public Health Beliefs and Choices

by Joy Fritz
Facebook

I work with doctors, coroners and the local county registrars everyday to create death records. It’s what I do for a living and wanted to share my thoughts on the mortality rates being thrown around on main stream and social media regarding the influenza epidemic. Please note: This information I am sharing is not limited to influenza reporting, but rather, serves as a case study of how the mortality rate recording system (mal)functions at large.

I am sorry to say that death rates are NOT as simple nor as valid as every news broadcaster with perfectly-trained vocal delivery makes them sound, and they are absolutely not the infallible pillar of medical history as the CDC purports.

Our current system for capturing mortality rates can and does provide a mostly uninvestigated and inaccurate picture of what causes a death. The process for creating and registering causes of death for public records is a complicated, convoluted, politicized, completely open to both ignorance and the manipulations of personal, professional, and governmental interests.

I have come to realize how greatly this reality becomes a public health issue during this past flu season when every major media outlet is providing us with live updates on the accruing death toll. Seeing these reports caused me concern for my family.

My husband and I discussed what preventative treatment we might consider. I started reading the FDA package inserts for different flu immunization options to get informed on which immunizations might be safest for our <1 year old and 6 year old. What I ultimately wanted to compare was the risk of death.

My kids getting sick is just part of life, other people getting sick is just part of life, lowering the risk of death to my family and the people around me is what I cared about when it came specifically to the seasonal flu.

I started researching mortality rates to find the line item in the CDC reports for deaths due to influenza vs adverse reaction to influenza medications and immunizations.

I found influenza rates, no problem.

Flu medications and shots? No deaths reported. Awesome. What a simple decision to make.

But, being in the mortuary industry and curious how they get these reports, I looked at the last full report for 2014 and dug deeper and found that they simply code and reorganize the data that they receive from death records. The death records that I am typing up and registering everyday.

So my head started exploding. And I felt, and still feel, sick. I have realized that without knowing it, I knew exactly how influenza deaths are recorded, and I know exactly why there is no line item in the CDC’s mortality rates for adverse reactions to common medical treatments.

Before I continue, please know that I will not be explaining all the ins and outs of my job, nor the incredibly rare reality that medication complications and adverse reactions do get captured (usually in box 112 of the death record, not as the primary underlying cause).

Those exceptions are made possible by exceptional, and likely, very principled people, choosing individually to go above and beyond the call of protocol, whether that be the family that is aware of the impact of the legal documentation that occurs after death and stays level-headed and involved mere hours after the death of their loved one, or an insanely humble and honest doctor, in conjunction with the coroner medical-legal officer that trusts and cooperates with the honest doctor and vigilant family to think outside the box of their standard procedures.

Almost 5 years and nearly 5,000 death certificates later, I can say with confidence that that kind of post-death communication concoction is at a statistical percentage point that even the CDC would consider insignificant.

So, in the spirit of very uncomfortable truthfulness I will share a snapshot of the core issues embedded in the daily procedures of creating the death statistics that we so desperately need to make prudent health decisions for ourselves and our families. I will also include some examples of how these core issues would manifest into faulty statistical analysis at the level of our public health and lead to the miscalculation of the benefits and risks surrounding our individual medical choices.

Core Issue A: Doctors that provide causes have not all been trained the same way, and therefore do not provide standardized responses.

This may at first glance seem minor, as it always has to me, but this directly affects the cause that the doctor lists on the death certificate.

Some doctors prefer providing the underlying cause of death as something that has happened immediately in the last days or weeks before death such as pneumonia or influenza, and leave out the more chronic illnesses. Other doctors decide they will provide the more long-standing health conditions as the cause of death such as diabetes, asthma and congenital abnormality while leaving out the more immediate illnesses.

Some doctors include both the short term and long term diagnoses. This has to do with many factors such as in what capacity the doctor saw the patient -hospital vs hospice care for example- or the immediate availability of the complete medical record within the time frame being impressed by the mortuary due to upcoming funeral or cremation services. Or, simply due to the way the doctor personally prioritizes information.

Again, way too many factors to go into here, but the basic issue of the lack of standardization in cause of death diagnosis and reporting remains.

In this case the same patient can have all these conditions: influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, asthma and congenital abnormality on his/her medical record simultaneously and any one of those conditions listed are correct and valid and could be entered as a stand alone cause and be registered by me and the local and state registrars offices without a query.

It’s the doctor’s preference and his medical opinion – yet the national attention given, medical research dollars, and yearly health choices we all make are swayed by which ever cause this particular doctor, with his/her own particular training and personality decides to jot down on the worksheet and send back to me to enter into the official record.

CORE ISSUE B: What most people don’t know is that doctors are not allowed to attest to anything that is not a strictly NATURAL cause of death.

Falls, medication complications or overdoses, causes with the word ‘injury’ in it, anything that is considered an unnatural or external cause is outside the realm of their jurisdiction as far as the death record is concerned.

The Coroner would need to be contacted and agree to certify or co-certify a death record that has an unnatural or external cause listed.

This is a whole other, very complicated reporting issue that I will not get into in this post.

I will say, however, from perspective of a mortuary representative, that everyone involved (doctor, coroner, registrar and myself) understands that the delay caused by any coroner involvement is highly dreaded and avoided if at all possible due to the amplified grief it can cause the family if they do not want an autopsy or investigation done or have to suffer a delay in services and or an upset in their own personal closure process.

However, the majority of doctors are aware of their own limitation to certify only natural causes of death. And usually in the interest of serving the grieving family, will provide the simplest natural cause that they know will quickly pass the approval of the local registrar’s office, fulfill their duty as a signing physician, and enable the grieving family to move forward with their scheduled burial or cremation services.

It should be noted here that doctors are under an additional pressure since they have a limited time set out by their State Health and Safety Codes to provide causes of death to a funeral home.

In California it is within 15 hours of death, although that is rarely achieved. Delays of more than a few days after death would risk them getting their license reported to the the state medical board for lack of compliance.

What works about this system? The system is created in such a way that naturally occurring infectious disease (such as influenza) CAN and is being reported and recorded in national mortality rates. However, the lack of standardization in the way doctors report it creates an unreliable number to set as the threshold for what constitutes an epidemic.

What does NOT work about this system? It does not report on the true consequential timeline of the patient’s medical treatment, including unnatural and external complications and errors in their medical care and is therefore woefully inadequate to make ANY medical claims or recommendations.

The first example to illustrate the impact of this issue is as follows:

I read a post from a nurse the other day that shared her story of being hospitalized due to complications of the flu. Even though she had gotten the flu shot every year, she had only gotten influenza this year. Five days after experiencing flu symptoms she went into her medical provider and was prescribed Tamiflu.

She went through her course of medication. Her flu symptoms eased but she started getting a tightness in the chest, which further worsened until she needed to be hospitalized for pneumonia and a close call with sepsis.

The conclusion of her post -and her medical opinion as a nurse – was that this year’s flu was very dangerous and anyone less healthy than her could have easily died with her symptoms, so she urged everyone to please get the flu shot to prevent the flu from spreading.

The saddest part about reading her story was discovering that she must not have read the Tamiflu manufacturer’s insert, which states that:

“No influenza vaccine interaction study has been conducted” and “Efficacy of TAMIFLU in patients who begin treatment after 40 hours of symptoms has not been established” and furthermore, “Events reported more frequently in subjects receiving TAMIFLU compared to subjects receiving placebo in prophylaxis studies, and more commonly than in treatment studies, were aches and pains, rhinorrhea, dyspepsia and upper respiratory tract infections.”(emphasis added)

This would lead to an alternate, very feasible medical conclusion that her hospitalization and pneumonia was the result of using a medication that has not been tested on a population of her vaccination status and symptoms duration, which also has the adverse reaction of a URTI.

But what if it wasn’t her? What if someone less healthy than herself with her exact symptoms and medication course HAD died?

Her medical opinion, and many other medical care providers opinion would have been that it was influenza that had caused the death, instead of the complications of the medication.

In the medical provider’s mind, the likelihood of influenza causing the death is greater than the medication causing the death because of mortality rates – but they are the ones creating the mortality rates – so what is considered reasonable likelihood is being created in a closed loop. A regurgitating cycle.

So, whether the attending physician at the hospital was aware of this medical misstep by the other medical provider or not, in this case the hospital physician could simply put ‘Influenza’ on the causes of death worksheet and send it back to me. Influenza would be entered in the death record and be reported in the state and then national database as such with no question from me or the government registrars.

What this has created, then, is a serious public health reporting conundrum. Death due to complications of improperly prescribed medication are NOT being calculated into the national reporting agencies in a real-time setting.

Neither would they be communicated in real-time to the public. Instead the public would simply hear of the rising influenza death toll and run for more medication (and likely not be reading the manufacturer’s insert either to verify if they truly are a good candidate for that medication).

In this medication example, as you can imagine, even IF they realize that the medication was prescribed erroneously, it would not be in the professional best interest of the medical provider or medical facility to report this prescription error and it’s possibly fatal complications to the family or public health officials.

I have many friends and family in the medical industry and it is easily admitted that legal and personal liability is a factor in the considerations of proper reporting.

However, if and when this possibly fatal prescription misstep was ever reported it would be in some very passive EMR analysis many months or years later, with no urgency or real-time public health warning. The ability for government to cross-check and minutely examine nearly 3 million decedent medical records of varying electronic availability – annually – it’s just not there.

This failed mechanism in the mortality rate ‘generator,’ if you will, is the same for the hotly debated adverse vaccine reactions. This is the reason you see horrible adverse vaccine reactions and deaths being claimed by parents on social media, but no item line for them in national statistics.

It is not because they don’t exist or don’t happen. The real-time data reporting system of death recording is not set up to calculate these deaths.

For the families that become aware of the adverse reactions in time to request investigation (<24 hours after death), and are able to request any relevant pathological specimens to be procured before the burial or cremation of their loved one, would then need to have the time and resources to go through the lengthy reporting and court procedures through VAERS.

A very few families do, and if they can establish enough scientific evidence (like pathology reports), find and produce enough experts and professional support, they MIGHT eventually get the causes of death amended and compensation for their loss paid out by the allotted government fund. And after 5, 10, 15 or 20 years, this passive data capture system might accrue enough statistical information to be reported back to the medical community so that they adjust their recommendations.

So, just like in the medication example, any death due to an adverse reaction to the flu shot or for ANY regularly scheduled wellness immunization, would similarly not be captured in the standard process of death recording.

As before, the doctor can still provide either influenza or any other natural occurring immune response as the only cause of death. He would send it to me and I would enter it in, get the state to approve it, and ‘Viola!’ – a thoroughly inaccurate mortality rate reporting.

In Conclusion

One of the most difficult realities for me to recognize in examining the mortality rate reporting system that I am a part of, is that the medical community itself is suffering from the ignorance that this kind of circular mortality rate generating system creates. Doctors and coroners are limited by the already existing mortality rates to gauge the likelihood of what caused death.

That kind of system can only regurgitate the same causes of death over and over again by forcing its reporters to use the same types of ‘acceptable’ death diagnoses as what ALREADY exists.

And these are the statistics the medical community uses to educate themselves and provide informed consent to the patient on what the most prudent option is for medical care to safeguard health and prevent death.

And, yes, I will take the opportunity here to say that we can logically apply this critical analysis of the lack of proper data capture to those reluctant to vaccinate or use medications.

There is no current national data capture system that records the morbidity or mortality rates of those who chose less medical intervention or choose to not vaccinate themselves or their kids. We don’t know what their life expectancy, quality of life or mortality rate is in our modern day, with the advancements in hygiene, technology and post-disease-diagnosis medical care availability being considered. It could absolutely be worse, statistically, but we wouldn’t know.

For nationally reported statistics we are left then with bad data on one side, and no control group data on the other. Hardly the recipe for safe or settled scientifically guided medical care.

Now where does that leave you and me? Our highly subjective yet somehow infallible weaponry of mortality rates – whether from national statistics or the social media horror stories – has us and all our friends and family swinging the manic flag of ‘People are dying!’

This flu season for example, some of our friends are saying ‘People are dying from flu! Get vaccinated! Take medication!’ or other friends are saying ‘People are dying from adverse reactions to medications/shots! Don’t get vaccinated! Drink elderberry!’

And we are all running for the nearest remedies that we are sure will help us – why? Because of statistics – OR because we don’t see statistics reflecting our lived reality, so we do the best we can to discern our health without statistics.

But I’m the one creating these statistics and I offer you this: If you take one thing away from this, take away a healthier skepticism about even the most accepted mainstream, nationally reported, CDC or other ‘scientific’ statistics.

Humans who had no concept of their national impact made them. The numbers are not hard – they are very, very fluid. And conversely, have a healthier skepticism about all the alternative remedies we welcome as hopeful scientific-ish options. There is no unbiased, century long, data capture system set up for these choices either.

As a parent, the most painful part of taking a step back and looking at all this, is having to humbly admit – I don’t know what the right thing to do is.

I don’t have the unbiased data I need to make the safest decision for my children.

I don’t know what the right thing to do is for myself, or for my husband.

I don’t know what side of the fence to stand on in the vaccination and mainstream medicine battlefield, and I don’t want to stand on a side: I just want the unbiased, uncorrupted and standardized data needed to accurately assess the benefits vs. the ultimate risks for my family’s health.

In the face of this fallible data capture system, my own resolution that I am willing to publicly recommend – no matter what medical choices you decide is best – would be for us all to become self reporters. Keep a health journal for each family member complete with dates and times and severity of symptoms of illness and track dates and dosages of any medical treatment administered.

Track degree of fevers, severity of migraines, frequency of ear infections, changes of behavior, hospitalizations, medications dosages and immunization combinations etc.

Think critically and ask questions when you see inconsistencies in any health recommendations offered to you or your family. Request and encourage a satisfactory discussion of benefits and risks with your medical provider.

Download and thoroughly read the manufacturers insert provided on the FDA’s website for any medication or immunization you are considering and verify that you are a good candidate for that medication.

If you decide to use that medical treatment, record any minor reactions in the health journal and immediately report any somewhat severe reactions to your medical provider and ask for that information to be added to your electronic medical record so that it might inform any future medical provider on your individual contraindications you may have in other medication courses.

Remember that each of us is liable for our own health choices, you cannot expect a medical provider to be a perfect assessor of what’s best for you.

Follow up and make sure proper reporting was done on the medical provider’s part to the appropriate national databases, or report it yourself.

MedWatch reports for medications and VAERS reports for vaccines.

This recommendation is less for you and more for others and for the sake of having the appropriate authorities informed so they can eventually take medical treatments off the market and create the demand for safer ones.

Those kind of databases can only function well for the populations they serve if they are being used by everyone.

My Final Thought: Yes, people are dying. Everyday. I do their death records every flu season or surfing season.

And try as hard as we do – and no matter how absolutely shredded inside I am especially when I do an infant or child’s death certificate- we will never eradicate death.

We CAN work to slowly eradicate and reform bad systems and misinformation. And even though there is no immediate gratification in it, we will probably save more lives when we work intelligently, truthfully and ethically towards a better future. And that usually starts with a lot of humility and admitting that change is needed.

If anyone has ideas, would like to share their thoughts or their own expertise for consideration, or somehow otherwise contribute to unifying this polarized health battlefield, feel free to add a comment.

Original Source.

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**Comment**

Once again, you can’t count something you aren’t tracking.  If it doesn’t have a code, it doesn’t exist in the eyes of our public ‘authorities.’  It becomes circular reasoning – or an infinity loop containing only the data they perceive as important.

I agree with the author – be skeptical about anything coming from the CDC.  They tell you what they want you to know.

The reason autopsies aren’t performed on Lyme/MSIDS patients is because we’ve been told nobody’s dying from it, yet autopsies are precisely what we need.

Category:

Activism, Lyme