Did Politics Kill Our Loved Ones?
The Lantern Vol. 36
Most of us are a product of the movies and media we are all exposed to. Sometimes we have to do some hard research in order to find the real truths in our world over what seems to be the reality of our day.
Decades ago as a Catholic I was confronted with various conflicting advice from priests and bishops and I realized I had to go to the source. How could God be both right and wrong and how could His church teach two sides of the same story? There could only be one truth if there is one God. I could no longer trust “Catholic” books written by various authors no matter what their credentials. I had to go to the source which was usually Vatican archives and libraries. The original documents were written by the Gospel writers, Church Fathers, popes, and now saints.
Movies did teach me one thing, sometimes those crazy ideas we watch are taken from actual events. Sometimes fact is presented as fiction, in order to get out ideas that won’t be easily accepted.
During the past year, the Coronavirus presented some of the same conflicting stories. One night, after a report was released on Coronavirus treatments, two news outlets reported opposite opinions of the same report.
This caused me to do a lot of research because I just wanted to know the truth. I got the original article and rather than read news outlets' comments on this article, I went to medical journals to get a summation.
Just the other day, I watched an interesting video which brought up a sore subject. Not only a sore subject, but one I realized was a dealy one. On the internet, we can easily find one video to defame the first video and so on and so on. Character assassination has always been the first salvo to discourage people from accepting difficult situations and revelations. IF you cannot stop a story make people question the person so hopefully, they do not look into their statements. What I decided to do was listen to the argument and see if I could verify it or prove it false.
In the early part of 2020, a niece and I had a discussion on the aspects of using Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of the Coronavirus. From what I could read there were conflicting reports of whether it was helpful or harmful. Many on the internet seemed to put down this treatment particularly because the current president supported it. From what I read, the information and science were not sufficient to be definitive, but time would tell. There was definitely hope in many studies.
What I did see was an unbalanced adverse reaction to using a drug that is over the counter in many countries. This drug has been used safely and effectively for decades yet like aspirin it can be harmful to certain people. But why such a reaction, was it that bad to take or just bad politics?
Now in retrospect, I have to wonder if we have killed tens of thousands of people to help someone get elected. The Coronavirus and the associated deaths became a rallying cry to millions of Americans on why we needed a change. Why would I think such a thing?
Shortly after my niece and I held our discussion on hydroxychloroquine the FDA recommended its use be stopped. An article in the Lancet Medical Journal reported it was not the way to go and was more harmful than good. The Lancet is pretty much like the bible when it comes to medical reporting. If you get in the Lancet you have jumped a lot of hurdles. The New England Journal of medicine quickly jumped on board after seeing the Lancet article and the discussion and study of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus seemed to fade into the sunset.
Yet, shortly after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended its usage be stopped a team at Henry Ford Health System in southeast Michigan finished a study that showed surprisingly good results with the drug.
How did people respond to this study? One article said, “ However, many experts are arguing that another change of heart on hydroxychloroquine would be detrimental to the FDA's credibility and the public's trust in the agency.”
So the argument became, even if this study is right and can save lives, it is better to let people die by the thousands so we retain trust in the FDA. Wow!
Now that the election is over a New Jersey Health system is touting the benefits of guess what? Hydroxychloroquine!
I decided to do a little research on some of the articles dismissing this treatment and found some surprising results. I found a Snopes article was that was commenting on hydroxychloroquine. Snopes is a source I have used to debunk many of the emails that are circulated. This site proposes to research answers on various internet subjects. The information Snopes used did not seem correct, so I checked their source. When looking into the use of the drug, my source was from drugs.com a simple resource on the internet, their source was CNN. I would have thought they would use a more reliable direct source as I have learned to do. The Snopes article did post this source, a 2005 article discussing how hydroxychloroquine seemed to hold great promise against coronaviruses in cell cultures.
Why am I making such a fuss now that we have a vaccine? I had a few friends and who got the virus. Because of all the negative information they were not administered hydroxychloroquine when they entered the hospitals. When they asked for hydroxychloroquine they were told the drug was not part of the treatment. In all the cases they had some pull and got the drugs administered. They said they felt better the next day and have recovered. They are convinced it had an effect.
Is this why I question the motivations of people, because of a few personal stories?
No, after I watched a recent video something else came to light. I never saw that the Lancet had retracted their article. Yes, the bible was wrong, and with that retraction also came the retraction of the other articles which were all based on the Lancet. So a promising drug with proven good effects in several studies was discarded and set aside because of an unsubstantiated article, placed in a very prestigious paper, at the perfect time. A drug that is so harmless it was available over the counter in many countries.
On a side note, if you look up countries where Malaria is prevalent and this drug is commonly used, they have single-digit death rates per million from the virus. Interestingly, there was no follow up on what happened or how the article got published, or an investigation into the researchers.
Based on several studies, this treatment could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. So I ask, did we sacrifice thousands to keep a virus on the front page of the news?
The first article I linked above from New Jersey is fairly recent, yet above the article ran (and at this time still runs) an outdated link completely discrediting hydroxychloroquine, likely based on the previously false Lancet article. That is how the internet works. We pay people to run our side of the story based on links and results. This older link pointed out that all the internet tech companies from Facebook to Twitter banned stories touting this drug and this was misinformation spread by the then-president.
Do we understand what this means? If today, Hydroxychloroquine and any other drug were found to definitely help people, it is discredited immediately on the internet.
We all know people react differently to this virus and medications. If Hydroxychloroquine helped in 13 percent of all cases (Ford Study) that's almost 56,000 people we could have saved with a common drug.
Like a bad movie I have to wonder, did politics kill hundreds of thousands of people?
Was a readily available drug blacklisted so that Big Pharma could make billions on a new vaccine? Did politics so pollute our medical institutions that social media was used to stop and destroy research in a viable remedy?
What I do know is people need to get to the sources and find their own information. When you see an article, read it and research it, and don’t read another article that says it was wrong, or just tries to discredit it, do your own research.
In a recent article one doctor who is actively complaining about how we approach this was discredited for taking part in the Capital protests. Well, If they believe we needlessly or deliberately allowed thousands to die, I am proud they were there. If this is the case maybe we all should have been.
Last year, in many places, we stopped administering a well-known drug that for many people was incredibly safe. Americans take tens of billions of pills each year, aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen all of which can have an adverse reaction with certain people. We take them because we feel they can help, we are not sure, but it is worth the risk.
A year later we are being sold an experimental vaccine that was “fast-tracked” and telling 99.9 percent of the population who are not likely to die, to take it.
Health care facilities and many doctors are still wondering why we are not looking into what we already had, that was proven safe for the majority of the public. Something that is literally saving some of their patients. Therefore, I must ask, did politics kill our loved ones and not the Coronavirus?
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