Archive for the ‘research’ Category

Teaching Physical Therapists When and How to Suspect Lyme Disease

https://www.lymedisease.org/shea-physical-therapists-lyme/

Teaching physical therapists when and how to suspect Lyme disease

Jennifer Shea

By Jennifer Shea, PT, ATC-R

I practiced physical therapy for many years prior to becoming ill with Lyme disease and babesiosis. My education included a course in clinical pathology and a unit on infectious disease.

Less than one page in my medical textbooks was devoted to Lyme disease. The text described an acute flu-like illness experienced by individuals following a tick bite.

Key diagnostic features included a bull’s eye rash, facial nerve palsy and a swollen knee. Treatment consisted of a short course of doxycycline. It all seemed pretty straight forward. It wasn’t until I contracted the disease myself that I began to understand its elusive nature.

Unrecognized Lyme disease?

Reflecting back on my career, I recall several patients whom I treated that likely had Lyme disease and/or co-infections. I failed to recognize it at the time.

One patient had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. As I examined her, she couldn’t tolerate even the lightest touch due to skin sensitivity. She reported profound weakness, fatigue, muscle twitching, and wandering joint pain.

In an effort to improve her strength and endurance, I developed a treatment plan involving gentle aquatic exercise. The water would provide resistance she could tolerate, and the buoyancy could be used to our advantage. She appeared to do well at our first session but chose not to return. She explained that despite the gentleness of the intervention, she experienced overwhelming fatigue and malaise after any type of exercise.

Another patient came to the clinic with a diagnosis of neck pain. Patients can often associate the onset of symptoms with a precipitating event, but this patient’s pain came on gradually and without apparent cause. X-ray and MRI results were normal except for mild age-related changes. The location of her pain shifted randomly, moving from the upper to the lower neck region appearing on the right one day and the left another.

Typically, patients experience symptoms that improve or worsen in a predictable pattern associated with posture, repeated movements, or activities, but this patient’s symptoms fit no such pattern. She experienced numbness and tingling that migrated. During several treatment sessions, she complained of intense headaches and felt generally unwell due to a virus she recently caught that she “just couldn’t shake.” Whenever she appeared to improve in response to treatment, she would regress for reasons unknown.

Horowitz symptom questionnaire

I’ll never know if those patients had Lyme disease. At the time, I didn’t know enough about the disease to consider it as a possible underlying cause for their symptoms.

Today I am alert to its varied manifestations and have the benefit of using a tool called the Horowitz Multiple Systemic Infectious Diseases Syndrome Questionnaire to help sort things out.

The Horotwitz questionnaire has been shown to be a valid, efficient, and low-cost screening tool to assist practitioners in deciding if additional testing is needed to distinguish between Lyme disease and other illnesses. The results of a 2017 study showed that this questionnaire accurately differentiated those with Lyme disease from healthy individuals. It can be used by medical practitioners or laypersons.

According to the CDC, some 476,000 individuals in the United States are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease annually. According to MyLymeData, most patients see more than four physicians prior to being diagnosed, and 36% do not receive a diagnosis before at least six years of illness.

It’s reasonable to assume that many individuals with Lyme disease who have not yet been diagnosed seek physical therapy services to address the manifestations of the infection. Given that early treatment is associated with better outcomes, raising awareness among health care professionals is imperative.

It’s also important to make people aware of the limitations of diagnostic testing and that they have a choice when seeking treatment. They can choose to be treated under the guidelines set forth by the Infectious Diseases Society of America or those established by the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.

Early diagnosis is critical

To that end, I wrote an article that was recently published in Physical Therapy Journal to guide physical therapists in the recognition and referral of individuals with suspected Lyme disease. I hope that by educating physical therapists about the disease, many individuals will be diagnosed sooner than they might be otherwise.

Click here to read the article in Physical Therapy Journal.

Click here for the Horowitz Questionnaire: MSIDS-QUESTIONNAIRE-FINALR

Jennifer Shea, PT, ATC-R is a retired adjunct faculty member of Springfield College in Massachusetts.

References

Shea J. Physical therapist recognition and referral of individuals with suspected Lyme disease. Physical therapy. 2021;101(8). doi:10.1093/ptj/pzab128

Horowitz RI. Horowitz Lyme Questionnaire. CanGetBetter. Accessed February 12, 2021. https://cangetbetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/MSIDS-QUESTIONNAIRE-FINALR.pdf

Citera M, Freeman PR, Horowitz RI. Empirical validation of the Horowitz multiple systemic infectious disease syndrome questionnaire for suspected Lyme disease. Int J  Gen Med. 2017;10:249-273. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S140224

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**Comment**

While treatment wasn’t the focus of this article, please understand it would be very unwise to “choose” IDSA Lyme treatment, as you will be given an insufficient course of doxycycline. This abysmal, monotherapy has shown to fail in nearly every antibiotic study ever done for the simple reasons that Lyme is a persistent, stealthy pathogen, and it rarely comes alone. 

Far wiser, is to locate a Lyme literate doctor specifically trained in tick-borne illness who appreciates and understands the complexities of treating this monster. These doctors diagnose and treat clinically based upon symptoms, not an antiquated, faulty test that misses anywhere from 50-90% of cases.

If you are new to this game, please read the sordid back-story and why there is polarization within the medical community on nearly every aspect of the illness. 

WARNING: Regarding tick-borne illness, all you will get from mainstream medicine is heartache, abuse, and poverty.

Category:

Activism, Lyme, research, Testing, Treatment

New Book on Human Experimentation & Biological & Chemical Weapons

https://www.activistpost.com/2021/09/u-s-indifferent-to-human-experimentation-and-biological-and-chemical-weapons-new-book-points-to-a-monstrous-agenda

U.S. Indifferent to Human Experimentation and Biological and Chemical Weapons — New Book Points to a Monstrous Agenda

September 1, 2021

Excerpts from article:

At the Breaking Point of History: How Decades of U.S. Duplicity Enabled the Pandemic by Activist Post contributor Janet Phelan details the US government’s indifference to the welfare of individuals and to its legal obligations under national and international accords prohibiting human experimentation and biological and chemical weapons. (The book is available at TrineDay and elsewhere.)

Ms. Phelan recently said,

“We are embroiled in a pandemic which has collapsed economies, caused death by starvation, and has resulted in severe new restrictions on civil rights in the US and elsewhere. Yet many medical professionals and researchers are questioning the genesis of Covid-19. Was it bioengineered? Was it deliberately released? They’re also questioning the numbers alleged to have died from it, pointing to dictates from the CDC to list deaths not directly caused by the virus as virus-caused deaths.”

Janet Phelan is an investigative reporter. Her articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Bernardino County Sentinel, Orange Coast Magazine, New Eastern Outlook, and elsewhere. She currently writes for Activist Post and has previously published an intelligence expose, Exile, and two books of poetry.

TrineDay is a small publishing house that arose as a response to the consistent refusal of the corporate press to publish many interesting, well-researched and well-written books with but one key “defect”: a challenge to official history that would tend to rock the boat of America’s corporate “culture.” TrineDay believes in our Constitution and our common right of Free Speech.

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**Comment**

Hopefully Lyme/MSIDS patients are aware of the sordid backstory of tick-borne illness. This backstory that reads like a rap sheet is actually quite similar to the COVID debacle we find ourselves living through, with many of the same bioweaponization aspects, key players, and institutions that have severe conflicts of interest and have no business determining public health policy.

A year ago the House passed a measure to probe into our government’s tick experimentation, and bioweaponry.

It is known from previous interviews that researchers dumped infected ticks from airplanes.  Investigative journalist Kris Newby reported in her book, “Bitten,” that Willy Burgdorfer, the “discoverer” of Borrelia burgdorferi – the causative agent of Lyme disease, worked at the Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana, and for 13 years he was the military’s go-to expert for mass-producing disease agents inside ticks.  According to the book, A CIA/military project code named “Operation Mongoose” involved giving false identifies to agents in order to protect the U.S. government. They wore uniforms of a sham airline run by the CIA and dumped boxes of infected ticks out of the airplane. One agent’s son came down with a mysterious illness that caused brain inflammation that could have caused permanent brain damage if a resident with previous work in tropical medicine hadn’t recognized it and knew how to treat it.  When the agent asked the commander if there was a connection between his work and his son’s illness, the commander told him to burn all the clothing he took to Cuba.  “Burn everything.”

It is far more likely that the tick and disease proliferation we are seeing today is due to our own government’s work and the massive amount of infected ticks being dropped from airplanes, than the scapegoated reason of “climate change.”  These ticks were force-fed numerous pathogens – sometimes numerous ones simultaneously.  Burgdorfer also sent ticks to others for bioweaponry projects – one of which was to a researcher doing studies on radiation-induced mutations of various ticks and microbes.

We need look no further than our own government’s nefarious research to understand the mess we are in today.

Category:

Activism, Inflammation, Lyme, research, Ticks, vaccines, Viruses

Why Are We Suddenly Rejecting Science By Forcing Vaccines on Absolutely Everyone? Asks The Hill’s Kim Iverson

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/kim-iverson-rejecting-science-natural-immunity-forcing-vaccines

Why Are ‘We Suddenly Rejecting Science by Forcing Vaccines on Absolutely Everyone’? Asks The Hill’s Kim Iverson

Political commentator Kim Iverson says conventional science has always favored natural immunity when it comes to longer lasting and stronger protection against infection — so why are we now “suddenly rejecting science by forcing vaccines on absolutely everyone?”
Political commentator Kim Iverson points out on The Hill’s “Rising,” these new findings aren’t really 'bombshell' at all.

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A bombshell new study shows natural immunity to COVID provides 13 times more protection against the Delta variant versus vaccination alone.

But as political commentator Kim Iverson points out on The Hill’s “Rising,” these new findings aren’t really “bombshell” at all.

Conventional science, she says, has always shown that past infection provides “robust immunity” against future reinfections.

“Why suddenly, after over 100 years of recognizing previous infection as a robust form of immunity,” Iverson asks, “are we suddenly rejecting science by forcing vaccines on absolutely everyone?”

In the largest real-world observational study, conducted in Israel — one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world — scientists followed 700,000 people, splitting them into three groups: vaccinated people who received two doses of the Pfizer jab, unvaccinated people who recovered from COVID, and individuals who both recovered from the virus and received one dose the Pfizer vaccine.

The study found natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization.

“The researchers hypothesize that it’s because of B and T cell memory,” Iverson explained. “And the fact that people who recovered from the virus are exposed to the entire virus, not just the spike protein that the vaccines expose the body to.”

The study is yet to be peer-reviewed, she said, but the findings are consistent with other studies and public health data.

“For some strange, politicized reason,” said Iverson, “this scientific fact has been hotly debated in the U.S.”

For example, she explains:

“In the incidence of chickenpox, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends vaccination for those who haven’t had a previous infection. On their website, under the heading, ‘Who needs a chickenpox vaccine?’ the CDC says: ‘People 13 years of age and older who have never had chickenpox or received chickenpox vaccine should get two doses, at least 28 days apart.’

“Same thing for the measles, and even polio, if they are not combined with other vaccines. Even during the smallpox outbreak, when vaccines became mandated, the certificate of immunity clearly gives clearance for those who had previously recovered from smallpox.”

So, Iverson asks, why are world health officials ignoring the science of natural immunity?

“Are public health officials just caving to the demands of a frightened public?” Iverson wondered. “Are they caving to the desires of greedy Big Pharma?”

Iverson said:

“In the European Union, where some countries have implemented vaccine passports, people can obtain one by either showing proof of vaccination, testing negative for the virus within 72 hours, or through proof of recovery from previous infection.

“This is based on sound science. So, what is it that is causing this sudden rejection of widely accepted science here in the United States?

“We currently have colleges, corporations, Big Tech, politicians and U.S. public health officials, all openly excluding natural immunity as a basis for medical exemption.

“When recovered patients raise an eyebrow over policies mandating  they be vaccinated, their education, their livelihoods and their ability to participate in society are threatened.”

For example, Jeanna Norris, a supervisory administrative associate and fiscal officer at Michigan State University, who has natural immunity after recovering from the virus, sued the school over its vaccine mandate.

A judge, however, ruled against Norris on Tuesday, arguing that:

“… because Plaintiff does not have a constitutionally protected property interest in her employment position at MSU, and is not being denied any constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, nor is employment a fundamental right under the United States Constitution, this matter will receive rational basis scrutiny…

“And for Plaintiff to win under this standard of review, Plaintiff must show that MSU’s vaccine mandate is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest, i.e., the health and safety of the public. Plaintiff is unlikely to win under rational basis review. Therefore, at this stage, Plaintiff has not shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.”

Todd Zywicki, a George Mason University law professor, recently filed a similar lawsuit against his employer requesting a medical exemption from the school’s vaccine mandate.

Zywicki argued that because he has natural immunity, “there’s no justification for a coercive violation of my bodily autonomy.” The university caved to the suit, awarding Zywicki the exemption last month.

As Iverson points out, the new data on natural immunity raises a “huge ethical question” about the demand to vaccinate the world, regardless of their previous infection status.

She said:

“The CDC estimates that over a third of all Americans have recovered from COVID. That means if the vaccines can even help us reach herd immunity, we only need 50% vaccinated to get us to a combined 80%.

“Currently the U.S. is reporting just over 55% fully vaccinated, but it would be interesting to know how many of those were previously infected in order to give us a true picture of how close we are to this believed threshold for herd immunity.

“This would be important data for us to know in order for us to find out if herd immunity is even possible with this virus.”

Luckily, countries like Israel are keeping good records, said Iverson.

“They have not politicized the virus,” she said. “They’re able to give better insights into what’s working and what isn’t.”

Iverson said she hopes this latest study showing natural immunity is the best protection will “finally change our current line of thinking.”

She makes clear no one is advocating for people to go out and get COVID. But the reality, she says, is that millions of people already had the virus, and many more will.

“The people who have recovered have robust immunity,” Iverson said. “That should be accepted, even studied by our society, as it always has, rather than shunned.”

Watch the “Rising” segment here:

Category:

research, vaccines, Viruses

Donor Derived Ehrlichiosis Following Organ Transplantation

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab667/6331335?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Donor-derived ehrlichiosis: two clusters following solid organ transplantation

Aditi Saha, Charles Browning, Raja Dandamudi, Kevin Barton, Kevin Graepel, Madeline Cullity, Wala Abusalah, Du Christine, Carla Rossi, Naomi Drexler … Show more
Author Notes
Clinical Infectious Diseases, ciab667, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab667
Published: 30 July 2021

Abstract

Ehrlichiosis has been infrequently described as transmissible through organ transplantation. Two donor derived clusters of ehrlichiosis are described here. During the summer of 2020, two cases of ehrlichiosis were reported to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for investigation. Additional transplant centers were contacted to investigate similar illness in other recipients and samples were sent to CDC. Two kidney recipients from a common donor developed fatal ehrlichiosis-induced hemophagocytic lymphocytic histiocytosis (HLH). Two kidney recipients and a liver recipient from another common donor developed ehrlichiosis. All three were successfully treated.

Clinicians should consider donor-derived ehrlichiosis when evaluating recipients with fever early after transplantation after more common causes are ruled out, especially if the donor has epidemiological risk factors for infection. Suspected cases should be reported to the organ procurement organization (OPO) and the OPTN for further investigation by public health authorities.

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For more:

Category:

Ehrlichiosis, research, Transmission

Lies, Damned Lies, & Vaccine Statistics

https://drrollergator.substack.com/p/damned-lies-and-vaccine-statistics

Lies, Damned Lies, and Vaccine Statistics

Hyper-vigilant vaccination advocates are pushing dangerous misinformation about vaccine efficacy
     

Excerpts from article:

In the last few weeks I have seen evidence of articles more widely shared to correct some of the early misconceptions The Lancet correspondence was concerned about. However a more insidious form of misunderstanding and misinformation lingers, and is pervasive.

Twitter avatar for @DrTomFriedenDr. Tom Frieden @DrTomFrieden

It’s actually pretty simple math. If you get Covid and you’ve been vaccinated, you’re about 100 times less likely to die.

July 27th 2021

3,351 Retweets

Tom is no ordinary doctor. He is the former Director of the Center for Disease Control under President Barack Obama. He is also propagating dangerous misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. It will cause people to misunderstand the real world results which can cause more people to die, and exacerbate the pandemic.

Dr. Tom is wrong. About as wrong you can get. The real world data has shown that the death rate among the vaccinated, if infected with COVID, can be 3 to 5.7 times higher1 than the death rate of the unvaccinated.

The former Director of the CDC is making what I call an Acceptable Catastrophic Error. This is the kind of error one is allowed to make when they are perceived to have the correct opinion.  Arguments and statistics used towards the goal of getting every single person vaccinated for COVID are given far less scrutiny and are accepted as true more readily, than any arguments or statistics that might be perceived as counterproductive towards that goal.

When the former Director of the CDC, or anyone else for that matter, says someone who is infected with COVID is 100 times less likely to die if they have been vaccinated, it does not matter how far off that number is. It will be readily forgiven no matter how inaccurate. It is the goal of universal vaccination, not truth, that appears to be most important.

There are a lot of acceptable catastrophic errors.

(See link for article)

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**UPDATE, Sept. 8, 2021**

One of Bill Gates’ favorite books is, “How to Lie With Statistics.”

A guide to playing number games, which is exactly what is occurring in the world of COVID madness.

**Comment**

Very astutely written article.  This man thoroughly goes through the math and proves much of what we are being told is fatally flawed and dangerously misused.

Important quote:

When “former Director of the CDC” Dr. Tom and others use the non-infection efficacy numbers to discuss the vaccines, they are, intentionally or not, misleading the public. It is something that should end immediately.

With the exception of infection rates, the efficacy numbers convey no useful information to citizens about their risks once they have been vaccinated. Instead, it may cause the vaccinated to place themselves and others at greater risk if they operate on this misinformation.

When you are finally counting things and dividing things counted which matter, such as how many infected people went on to die in each group, no remnant of the 90% numbers remain. In the graph above6, there is no information available to suggest the death rate per infection is any different in the vaccinated group compared to the unvaccinated group. You can see why by revisiting the number infected and the number who died in each group

When looking at infection/case fatality rate in 45-64 year olds, the number actually lean towards a higher death rate among the “vaccinated.”

The author then goes on to warn that if you blame death after “vaccination” on the vaccine, you would be committing “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy, which simply means just because B happened after A does not mean B was caused by A.  Pro-mass-vaccination advocates quickly point out this reasoning flaw to those blaming vaccines; however, the same error is committed daily by the pro-mass-vaccination crowd without any pressure to check their reasoning.

The author also states that data has not supported any observations that the “vaccine” gave people with break-through infections less severe cases.  This false idea has been repeated often.

The author states that not only is the death rate among the vaccinated and infected higher but it’s also higher for death and hospitalization than the unvaccinated and infected.  Israeli data shows these results ‘plain as day.’

For more:

In a July 1, 2021, commentary in The Lancet Microbe,3 Piero Olliaro, Els Torreele and Michel Vaillant also argue for the use of absolute risk reduction when discussing vaccine efficacy with the public. They too went through the calculations, coming up with the following:

  • Pfizer/BioNTech — Relative risk reduction: 95%. Absolute risk reduction: 0.84%
  • Moderna — Relative risk reduction: 94%. Absolute risk reduction: 1.2%
  • Gamaleya (Sputnic V) — Relative risk reduction: 91%. Absolute risk reduction: 0.93%
  • Johnson & Johnson — Relative risk reduction: 67%. Absolute risk reduction: 1.2%
  • AstraZeneca/Oxford — Relative risk reduction: 67%. Absolute risk reduction: 1.3%
These injections are abysmal at protecting you AND they do not provide immunity.  Dr. Bhakdi also refuses the narrative that they reduce severity of symptoms as was pointed out in the article.

Bhakdi states:

“They showed absolutely zero [benefit in the clinical trials],” he says. “This is the ridiculousness. People don’t understand that they’re being fooled and have been fooled all along.

Category:

Activism, research, vaccines, Viruses