Roger Hunter | Not spreading any misinformation on COVID-19 - Drs Andrew Manning, Michael Abrahams, Garth Rattray and Professor Peter Figueroa in the wrong lane

To all my highly esteemed colleagues who have publicly chided me for “misinformation”, I greet you well.

As of December 30, 2020, COVID-19 is among our top five killers and so will remain unless Government is successful in significantly reducing one of our five unchecked global pandemics: stroke, cancer, heart attack, violence, and motor vehicle accidents. Around 15,000 Jamaicans die of heart attack, stroke, and cancer each year yet there are no free at-point-of-use heart attack interventional angiogram suite in any of our public hospitals.

It is not a case where thousands have died from COVID-19 in Jamaica, and in case you were wondering, Jamaicans are no more disciplined than Europeans or North Americans. Over 3,500 Jamaicans have died from COVID-19 in cold countries. Jamaicans and non-Jamaicans need to be allowed home to heal in the sun and not be shunned. Jamaicans are 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 in North America and Europe than in Jamaica despite hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans contracting the perennially mutating winter coronavirus. Our case-fatality rate is less than 0.5 per cent – among the lowest in the world.

VIRAL POWERHOUSE

The Global Virology Network (GVN) and the Department of Homeland Security point to year-round-humidity, sunlight, and heat offering greater protection against COVID-19.

Jamaica is one of the 59 sites for GVN, partly set up by Bob Gallo, co-discoverer of HIV (HTLV 3). Jamaica is teeming with viruses, including HTLV 1, which causes a lethal blood cancer and a spastic quadriparesis. This resulted in significant academic funding in Jamaica, producing many professors, unlike coronaviruses, which still do not wreak havoc in Jamaica. Coronavirus produces an overwhelming preponderance of deaths in advanced rich, cold countries.

Poor year-round-hot countries have not been devastated. Jamaica applied the identical methods as rich, cold countries – lockdown, social distancing, wearing face masks, sanitising, working from home, and virtual learning (sadly for thousands of children, no learning) – but got different results. How so? The heat above 26C degrees, UV-sunlight, and humidity incapacitate winter viruses like the Sars-Cov2, making them much less deadly, though we contract it. This is the main reason why the winter tourist season is so strong, and, thankfully, hotels are well booked up at the moment though many smaller hotels continue to suffer under hysteria-filled measures.

HYSTERIA

Jamaica’s COVID-19 death-rate/population is one of the lowest: 290 /2.7 million = 0.0001074074. If we multiply this number by the USA population of approximately 327,000,000, we get 35,122 dead Americans. This is the low death burden America would have if they had our death/population, and with Haiti’s 234 COVID19-deaths, the equivalent USA population death burden would be 6,900. The USA would never fast-track a vaccine with this low death rate and burden nor would they shut their economy and schools.

Hysteria exemplified in the death of the unborn term baby in the mother’s womb on the ship in Falmouth; the mother who never received timely CPR who drowned in Portland saving her nine-year-old daughter; the ICU nurses crying over the death of their patients who died of blood poisoning from a ruptured bowel waiting on untimely COVID results (protocol-mediated deaths); the many doctors who shut their offices for fear of coronavirus; the many patients who shun doctors for fear of catching corona; the helpers not allowed to enter households or in some cases leave their quarters because their real homes are in COVID-19 hotspots’ the lack of humanity on the suggestion that one has COVID-19 or holding back the sneeze for fear of being thrown from a taxi (‘Bless you.’ is now ‘Kill you.’); people jumping out of moving buses from the sudden death of a passenger from epilepsy; the son stabbing the father to death; the mob killing of a laid-off-chef who went berserk, cutting the throat of two children, etc. No mention in any of my esteemed colleagues’ articles of these hysteria-induced incidents.

Hysteria is an uncontrollable outburst of fear typified by irrationality, in other words, a psychoneurosis. In one of Garth Rattray’s paid columns, the worst he had ever felt was the actual moment he was told he had coronavirus. How is it that a 0.125 microns particle can land inside your nose, despite wearing face shield, masks, crowd-avoidance, and social distancing? Contrary to Dr Rattray’s assertion, SARS-COV2 can be spread as a sole-viral particle. According to the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, “control methods” have all failed.

DR LI WENLIANG IS ETERNAL

The WHO did not alert the world early to the crisis in Wuhan while non-public-,health doctors were dying warning of this terrible outbreak. The WHO, echoed by our CMO, stated that once you are asymptomatic, you cannot pass on the SARS-COV2, going against infectious disease principles.

It was an ophthalmologist, Li Wenliang, who messaged, during the cold. “A new coronavirus infection has been confirmed, and its type is being identified. Inform all...to be on guard,” Li Wenliang shared in a chat group with his former medical school classmates on December 30, 2019, according to Caixin, a Beijing-based media group. Li Wenliang was demonised. He was reprimanded by authorities for “severely disturbing social order”. His messages about an SARS-like infection conveyed an urgency that undercut the official efforts to downplay the epidemic and its risk to the public (sounds familiar - recall Donald Trump and Bob Woodward’s interviews). At the time, Wuhan’s health bureau said there was no evidence of spread among humans.

Medical doctors have a duty to alert the public to an outbreak, be it Chik-V or coronavirus. Coronavirus mutates as winter viruses always do, and vaccines touted will not be effective against the new strains arising spontaneously all over the world.

The better “vaccine” against coronavirus and its “familiar” mutants are exercise; improved metabolic health; controlling hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol; plenty sunshine and heat; avoiding the AC; and cultivating positive thoughts and banishing evil ones.

STAY IN LANE

Stop hysteria and return children to school. More teachers must be employed to make up for the devastating blow to education 2020. Be careful of vaccines, for strains, which, by virtue of nature, mutate. There is no such thing as a “British Strain”. The virus will naturally mutate wherever it exists. Focus on our killers - cancer, stroke, heart attack, violence, and motor vehicle accident-raging pandemics. Let’s spend our little bit a money wisely.

I couldn’t help but freeze when the nice lady from the road-safety-unit prayed that I don’t catch corona because it’s wicked, not that over 400 Jamaicans dying in road accidents in 2020 was more befitting of a prayer.

Roger Hunter, FRCS, is consultant neurosurgeon, principal consultant and medical strategist, former link surgeon for the Hyperacute Stroke Unit, Royal London Hospital. He is also founding member of the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management, London, and presenter at the Royal Society of Medicine (London); Send feedback to rhunter96@yahoo.com.