The Ashes of COVID Part 4: Profits over People and Science

“What, in the tradition of bourgeois democracy, used to be the right to health became, seemingly without anyone noticing, a juridical-religious obligation that must be fulfilled at any cost.”

-Giorgio Agamben

For many decades our healthcare system has focused on profits over science and human life.  The illusion weaved by doctors and other players in our system that all our tests and procedures and drugs help people is erased by the harsh reality on the ground: as we spend more to satisfy our medical appetite fed to us by a system seeking to profit from our fear, we are sicker and living shorter.  Just read No More Tears, the recent indictment of both Johnson & Johnson and the FDA, and you will learn that millions died at the hands of that one drug company due to its volitional introduction of profitable drugs that it knew caused massive harm, drugs dispensed with vigor by the country’s compliant doctors.

Much of our medical landscape is littered by inaccurate diagnoses that are aimed at making as many people sick as possible (pre-diabetes and expanded diabetes definitions, rigorous blood pressure guidelines, hyperlipidemia, osteopenia, cognitive decline, chronic kidney disease, and a litany of fabricated psychiatric illnesses) by expanding inclusion into the sick pool. Lower a few numeric thresholds that define illness, manufacture a few pre-diseases, associate normal human behavior with diagnoses (as physician Nortin Hader has said, age itself is a disease now), and alas the medical industrial complex can count on more visits, drugs, and tests willingly prescribed by its compliant non-thinking army of doctors.  We are the sickest nation on the planet not only because we have placed unwarranted trust in doctors and medical organizations, but also because we have largely exchanged self-care for over-testing and over-treatment.  We have become a society whose definition of medical care is to allow doctors to measure and  “fix” our errant numbers even as we die sooner, are sicker, and are less willing to engage in healthy lifestyles.

But COVID made all this worse, normalizing top-down “expert” declarations that not only manufactured the true nature of the virus and thus paralyzed people with fear, but also demanded treatments and subservience that deviated sharply from science, from democratic safeguards, and from a focus on humanity.  COVID forced us into submission to a medical gospel whose goal largely hinged on generating profits.  During those 2-3 miserable years we not only had drugs and rituals tossed down our throats often against our wills, but we simultaneously prevented science from telling us what actually worked and what didn’t.  We subscribed to a religiously inspired expert-preached dogma that allowed no critique, no discussion, no studies, no glimpse across the oceans to examine those faring better than us.  Scripted by the CDC, Anthony Fauci, academic doctors, and self-serving politicians, our COVID policy utilized entirely manufactured strategies that conscientious scientists quickly learned were harmful and ineffective, while censoring any ideas or data that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented us from discarding our democratic rights and the very soul of our lives to hide from a virus.  And thus the question is: why did these “experts” all conspire to generate a nearly unanimous gospel that veered far away from science; why did almost all doctors in this nation, all media, all Democratic politicians (even to this day) zealously execute the gospel’s dictates even as our nation plunged into the worse COVID outcomes in the world; and why did so many of those “experts” earn millions of dollars during COVID, as the wealth gap in this nation widened even further?

Is it excessive cynicism or even conspiratorial thinking to associate the huge profits engendered by the likes of Anthony Fauci, the media, the drug companies, hospitals, and so many other players in our Medical Industrial Complex during COVID to the ineffective and dogmatically preached gospel that these same players imprinted upon our entire society?  Or is it a truth to which we must reckon ourselves?  We had treatments for COVID before the virus hit our shores, treatments we should have understood from the Italian and Chinese data and yet we shunned them.  Through data and observation, we knew who we should protect (frail elders) and who should be allowed to continue living normal lives (mostly everyone else, especially young people), and we ignored all of that and painted the pandemic as universally deadly, requiring ubiquitous quarantines and forced medicalization.  As time elapsed, as Europe sanctioned many studies to determine best policies, as Scandinavia realized that lock-downs and forced ritualistic posturing only made things worse, we found out even more, that kids could safely go back to school (Europe allowed that to happen in the Fall of 2020, Scandinavia even earlier), that masks were ineffective, that simple medical treatments mitigated the most deadly effects of COVID especially in the elderly, and that isolation of the young and the old was perhaps deadlier than the virus itself.  And yet in this country, led by a self-interested pharmaceutically connected tyrant who discarded every dictate of science in his quest to control the conversation, we not only endorsed no studies, but we turned away from the data that emerged elsewhere, censoring any who dared suggest that other approaches would lead to better results at a lower cost.

When one of my more liberal friends was appalled the other day because Trump was using the office of the Presidency to earn money, amass power, and threaten democratic safeguards, I reminded her about Anthony Fauci, who used a crisis and a heavy dose of fearmongering to accomplish the same outcome much more effectively.  Fauci shut off our democracy, erased all avenues of scientific discourse, censored data and studies, and refused to endorse effective treatment even as he demanded strict adherence to religious rituals that science had already debunked.  He convinced doctors and Democrats to follow him unquestioningly, which they are still doing today.  And at the same time, he amassed huge profits, as did his friends, as did so many doctors and media magnates who demanded unflinching support for the Fauci plan, as did his allies in Big Pharma.

This is what we knew from day one that should have guided our policies:

·       COVID was primarily harmful to elders and those suffering from significant chronic illness.  99% of deaths in Italy occurred in those over 80, and kids and young adults were largely immune from untoward effects.

·       COVID killed through three mechanisms.  First, massive waves of inflammation.  Second, the inducement of a hypercoagulable storm causing 70% of infected elders to develop blood clots.  Third, superimposed bacterial pneumonia which, like flu, needed to be treated with antibiotics quickly lest it become lethal.  Treating those complications was fairly straightforward: elders with COVID must receive blood thinners, steroids, and antibiotics largely from day one.

·       Masks, which never worked for flu, would not likely work for COVID

·       COVID spread through the air, not through touch.  It didn’t live on surfaces.

Within a few months European research juxtaposed without our own experiences expanded our knowledge base:

·       Masks clearly did not prevent spread or protect the wearer; COVID proliferated despite mandatory masking, often hitting the most vulnerable populations whose only protection was feckless face coverings.

·       Kids and young adults could safely return to school.  Far fewer youths died from COVID than from mild respiratory bugs (300 total in the US during 2020 out of 90 million youths) and going to school, based mostly on French research, did not increase COVID in the community or place teachers at risk.

·       The triple-drug treatment—blood thinners, prednisone, and antibiotics—seemed to be very effective for elders, while other drugs like ivermectin when given in conjunction with these could add to their efficacy.

·       Personal protection equipment, previously heralded as the only way to protect health care workers, was useless because COVID did not live on surfaces.

·       Isolating kids and elders was deadly and must be avoided.

·       Anti-viral treatments were not effective and caused other lethal effects

·       Hospitalization and intubation seemed to increase the likelihood of dying.

·       Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities must be protected by testing everyone who walked in the door, not by engaging in rituals like masking.

None of this knowledge changed the religious liturgy of Fauci, the CDC, CNN, our doctors, and our politicians.  As we locked up society; as we deprived people of employment, school, joy, communality, and seminal moments in their life; as we removed all democratic freedoms; as we mandated rituals that science had already discredited; as we censored all doctors and scientists who spoke against Fauci’s deadly strategy; as the media continue to scare us into blind submission; we achieved the highest COVID and non-COVID death rate in the world.  We were dead last, and for that we continued the same course, continued to praise the CDC and Fauci, continued to demand compliance from our doctors and populace.  Some states, like California and Minnesota, tried to pass laws taking away medical licenses from any doctors who questioned CDC mandates, or who used treatments not authorized by the CDC.  Democrats passed other mandates, including vaccinating young people for a virus that didn’t injure them and who were never studied for potential harms, and refused to acknowledge any science and data that deviated from the Fauci playbook, even as they claimed to be the guardians of science.

Our COIVD leaders massacred us, they robbed us of choice and democratic guarantees, they harmed kids and elders, and they refused to allow doctors to treat the ill in ways that had been proven to help.  Why?  What could be their reasoning, and why did the public simply fall in line with such destructive advice?

Sadly, it comes down to money.  That’s not cynical, that’s not conspiratorial, that’s simply the only way to explain what transpired and who profited from the errant course our nation followed (and continues to follow).  When I treated my patients the proper way, with the three-drug regimen, the public health officers patrolling our facilities told me to cease and desist; I was told that I had to follow the CDC dictates demanding no treatment and persistent isolation.  I had to concoct clever strategies to continue treating my patients without incurring sanction from the medical establishment. (“I’m not using these blood thinners for COVID; it’s for something else.”)  To treat my patients for a treatable illness that it seemed the CDC and public health officials did not want to treat.  You can’t imagine how frustrating and paralyzing this was, especially since so many friends and colleagues chided me for daring to question the great and powerful Fauci.  This was before I almost lost my license for simply stating that masks were not preventing outbreaks in my long-term care facilities, this is when I was in the trenches every day trying to keep my patients alive and healthy.  But somehow, despite the fact I was succeeding, with the help of our nurse practitioners and nurses, I was viewed as a deviant misinformer, as anti-science.

And then I realized what was going on.  These people—from drug-company executives now running the CDC and FDA, to Anthony Fauci and his minion of drug-company-loyal academic doctors, to a media largely financed by drug companies, to doctors who believe everything they are fed and also feared recriminations for veering from the Fauci gospel, to the drug companies themselves who paid far more for advertising during COVID than for research and development—needed a lot of COVID deaths.  They could not tolerate any treatment that prevented death.  To hold power and to effectuate their ultimate profit-generating endpoint, COVID must be horrific, it must be untreatable, it must lead to a complete shut-down of society and censorship of any alternative opinions, it be deadly.

It must do all that or else the profitable mRNA vaccines and anti-viral treatments being developed would not be approved through emergency authorization.  To achieve rapid FDA approval with minimal research during a medical crisis required there to be no viable treatments for the virus.  That’s how it works.  And thus, to treat COVID effectively, to allow some people to live their lives without fear or containment, to acknowledge that we don’t need masks or medical mandates or violation of our democratic rights, all of that would have negated the need for emergency vaccine and anti-viral medicines that were to be forced into everyone’s bodies.  Those doctors and scientists and media goons and medical agencies must label any effective treatment as anti-science misinformation and censor any people, any research, that validated the treatment.  They must allow the deaths to continue for the vaccine and anti-virals to be approved, and they must keep the nation fearful and imprisoned for them to simply comply with this deception.

In the end, it all came down to profits, to greed, to a form of lethal chicanery orchestrated by the medical industrial complex.  This is the formula utilized by our medical system for decades as a way of capturing people’s allegiance and convincing them to test and drug themselves to death, and during COVID it crashed upon us like a nuclear missile, incinerating us in the name of cure, preaching to us in the name of science, deceiving us in the name of truth.  Fauci led us down this dark road, one that in his world was lined by gold.

And for his perfidy, for his callous declarations and dogmatism that led to hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths, he has been lionized. As have the CDC, academic doctors, regular doctors, and politicians who were his willing henchmen.  COVID sanctified profits over people and science by erasing reality and replacing it with religious idolatry.  And in this task it brilliantly succeeded, so much so that the fictive dictates invented by these people, and our continued faith in  harmful, ineffective, and costly pharmaceuticals—from COVID boosters to Paxlovid—has not abated, still generating billions in profits as it causes harm and even death.  COVID allowed the vilest of our pseudo-scientists to claim the mantle of science as they erased real science and replaced it with profit-generating duplicity.  Every COVID test taken, every mask worn, every bit of finger pointing at those now villainized doctors and scientists who (if listened to) would have saved us from this catastrophe, every prescription of Paxlovid eagerly scripted by thoughtless doctors on a tight leash, every attempt to isolate the elders and scare the kids, every bit of that is designed to generate more money for the fiends who we still hold up as the guardians of science, to scare us into submission, to create a narrative that shoved facts and data under the rug of self-promotion.

In this way, COVID has expanded the medical industrial complex from a powerful juggernaut of medical deception, into an untouchable instrument of religious obeyance.  Science is gone, as is any concern for people and truth.  We are now, because of COVID, willing prisoners to a profit-generating dogma that we have come to accept despite its utter failure in keeping us healthy and alive.

No wonder Joe Biden, who is deep in the pockets of Big Pharma, appointed as his COVID tsar none other than Scott Gottlieb, the former CEO of Pfizer, former director of the FDA (a Trump appointee), and a man who now would run COVID policy in accordance with Pfizer’s needs.  No wonder Biden withdrew money from universities that didn’t mandate COVID vaccines, fired anyone he could in the federal workforce or even who contracted with federal agencies who refused to get a COVID vaccine, bought up billions of dollars of Paxlovid despite no evidence of efficacy, continued to rely on masks and shut-downs to curb COVID despite copious science that debunked these strategies, and tried to pass a bill defrocking any doctors who dared to question the CDC.  Even before Biden, Congress—both Democrats and Republicans with the endorsement of then President Trump—passed a law to protect vaccine manufacturer from any liability even as they relied on tiny vaccine studies (that did not include any young people) and didn’t endorse any further studies.  How could the people of this country not push back against such obvious and lethal self-interest?  How could our populace, our media, our leaders, our doctors not have been appalled by COVID’s assault on science and free speech instituted by both parties?  Where was the outrage?

The fact that we simply allowed this to occur, the fact that so many American still worship Fauci and the CDC despite their clear use of the pandemic to pad their pockets and increase their power and lead us to the worst outcome in the entire world, the fact that we seem not to care about real science or our democratic freedoms, portends a poor future in the medical realm.  We had been on a dangerous path of profit and doctor-worship for decades, but now that path has been lined with constructed credibility.  We now endorse the religion of science and the lies of our experts, shunning real scientific discourse and discovery and burying inconvenient facts.  We died and suffered at their hands, with cures and strategies available that would have prevented such carnage, and now we vault them up as heroes, still wearing our masks, getting our boosters, taking Paxlovid, and testing ourselves for a virus that now kills less people than the common cold.  We still isolate our elders and scare our kids.  We continue to enable this now innocuous virus to generate profit and power among the medical elite.

Will we ever learn our lessons from COVID, or will COVID be the final turning point that transforms our medical lives into a self-serving fiction dictated by drug companies and their accomplices, trading your blind compliance for their profits?  What will it take for us to persecute those who lied to us and deprived us of our lives and of viable treatments, to address a medical education system that produces non-thinking doctors who are mere drones for drug companies, to demand that we have rights and choices that cannot be taken away by politicians who seek to control us for power and profit?

COVID showed us everything wrong with our system and should have been the lynchpin to reform.  Instead, it merely empowered a monstrous medical system that has been sucking money and health away from us for the profits of a few.  Is it too late?  Have we so normalized “expert” derived religiously inspired health care such that all of us are now its inevitable victims?  Is the medical religion so appealing, so effective in  allying the fear draped upon us from the medical establishment, so hypnotizing that it has clouded us from reality?  We must keep fighting, we must open eyes to what really happened during COVID and the path we should have taken, or else our future will be quite glim indeed.