Michael Abrahams | COVID-19 and corruption of science

When plans for widespread COVID-19 vaccination were announced, an experienced vaccinologist sounded a warning. He said the vaccines were “excellent weapons”, but stated that mass vaccination (vaccinating young and old, healthy and unhealthy, persons who had caught COVID-19 and those who had not) in the “heat” of a pandemic, with the vaccines available, would not achieve the goal of herd immunity, but instead lead to a phenomenon known as ‘immune escape’, the evolution of highly transmissible variants which would be poorly responsive to the vaccines and our immune systems. He was right.

The United Kingdom, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, with about 76 per cent of its population fully vaxxed, has not achieved herd immunity. Instead, on July 15, the UK logged the highest number of new cases they have seen since the start of the pandemic, as the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 continue to fly below the radar of the vaccines and ‘escape’. Many of us are unaware of the vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche and his predictions, as he, like several other scientists and physicians who expressed concerns about the vaccines, was heavily censored and marginalised.

Science is a field where it has been the norm for contending views to be entertained and freely debated in public spaces. But the push for COVID-19 vaccination has changed that. Instead, science regarding the jabs has morphed into a scenario where vaccination is the new religion and the vaccines the new gods, while blasphemous, dissenting voices are rebuked and dismissed from the pews.

Censorship has been taken to ridiculously dizzying heights, as even honest observations and statements of fact are kicked to the kerb.

For example, the association of COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual cycle disruption is well documented. However, when I took to Twitter and tweeted, informing women that they “may experience abnormal menstrual bleeding” after vaccination, I was temporarily barred by the site and told I was spreading “misinformation that could cause harm”.

Similarly, natural immunity, the protection provided by your immune system following an infection, has been found by many studies to be of value; in several instances being even more potent than the vaccines with some variants. However, this information has been downplayed by major health authorities and several governments. In fact, Instagram banned #naturalimmunity.

SMEAR CAMPAIGN

Then there is the bastardisation of, and smear campaign against, the drug Ivermectin and the doctors who prescribe it. Over the past four decades, billions of doses of the drug have been dispensed to humans, mainly for certain parasitic infestations. Since the pandemic, there have been no effective, widely available and affordable antiviral drugs for use in COVID-19 patients while they isolate. At least 56 studies have found Ivermectin to be of some value in the treatment of patients with COVID-19, particularly in the early stages of the infection. On the other hand, about 23 per cent of studies of the drug show no statistically significant improvement, but they have not found harm from the pharmaceutical either.

However, the powers that be have been dismissive, and in some cases, even hostile toward the drug. Ivermectin is also used to treat animals, including horses, and has been branded a ‘horse dewormer’ by its detractors. Interestingly, penicillin is an antibiotic used in humans and animals, but we do not hear it being referred to as an ‘animal antibiotic’.

Warnings, threats, and even punishments have been meted out to physicians in several countries on the basis of ‘safety concerns’ regarding Ivermectin, which is laughable. Why? The drug has such a good safety record, it is on the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines, and its original manufacturer, Merck Pharmaceuticals, published a study confirming its safety at 10 times the recommended dose. On perusal of the literature, you will find less than 100 deaths attributed to Ivermectin when prescribed in appropriate doses, this after approximately four billion doses have been consumed. On the other hand, after the administration of about 12 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, over 29,000 deaths have been reported by the vaccine-adverse events reporting system. Do the math.

There appears to be more questions than rational answers. Research during the pandemic has found that regular exercise decreases the risk of severe morbidity should you contract COVID-19, and that being overweight or obese, or vitamin D-deficient, increases it. So why aren’t health authorities emphasizing these facts? And why are they not promoting the principle of early treatment, an intervention that has saved many lives? The vaccines are significantly less efficacious against the present dominant subvariants, severe morbidity and mortality rates from COVID-19 in very young children are extremely low, and the risks of vaccine injury still persist. So why is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending vaccinating children as young as six months old?

LOT OF MONEY

The elephant in the room is money. There is a lot of money to be made from these vaccines. For example, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer made nearly $37 billion from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, and is expecting a boost from its COVID-19 pill, Paxlovid. The company’s overall revenues of $81.3 billion last year was more than the GDP of most countries.

Whenever there is a lot of money to be made, greed, dishonesty and corruption are inevitable; and when politics is added to the mix, the toxicity increases exponentially. In an opinion piece titled ‘The illusion of evidence-based medicine’, published in the British Medical Journal on March 16, its authors, Dr Jon Jureidini and Prof Leemon McHenry, declare that among other things, evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests.

When these factors are considered, the actions of the ‘authorities’ all make sense. Are the vaccines useful tools in the fight against COVID-19? Absolutely. They have saved the lives of many, especially those with comorbidities that would have placed them at risk of severe disability and death from COVID-19. But too many of those charged with overseeing the management of our health have been less than fully transparent. Their agenda appears to be more about getting needles into arms than about what is in our best interest, while claiming to ‘follow the science’. Now, as a physician, who do I trust to guide me?

Michael Abrahams is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, social commentator and human-rights advocate. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @mikeyabrahams.