I recently came upon an eight-minute video called The Oath – Q & A, in which six practitioners (1 DC, 2 DOs, 3 MDs) responded to five questions about the response to the covid pandemic and what we need to do to heal. They recount their growing doubts about the information coming from the CDC and other agencies as they watched the censorship of “wonderful, supersmart doctors,” saw retractions of elite journal articles due to “data integrity issues,” learned about whistleblowers who reported Pfizer and corporate fraud, and about rigged trials.  One doctor gradually realized that the agencies that are supposed to protect public health “don’t have our interests in mind…they’re captured….”

When asked the question “How have people been harmed,” the doctors commented on the high numbers of people with anxiety, fear, and depression—exceeding even the numbers being treated for covid. The isolation and the unremitting television and media messages about covid numbers and deaths were a major hazard to well-being and health. And government policies fed the fear.

As early as March 2020, Stanford professor of medicine and of epidemiology John Ioannidis questioned the school closures, lockdowns, and social distancing measures that were being introduced without reliable data.¹ By October 2020, he had data to show that the infection fatality rate globally was 0.15%-0.20%–that is, 15-20 deaths out of 10,000 infected people; and the elderly had the highest risk.²

Early in October 2020, three of the world’s leading epidemiologists, knowledgeable about infectious disease and public health—Dr. Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University), Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Oxford University), and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University Medical School)—drafted and signed “The Great Barrington Declaration.”³ The declaration says:

As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection….

We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19…..

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.³

It was the strategy that Sweden and, later, Florida used.

Instead of considering this approach, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and others at the US National Institutes of Health worked with media to discredit the proposal⁴ and censor any debate. Freedom of Information Act requests have brought government’s pressure on media to light. Drs. Kulldorff and Bhattacharya are among the plaintiffs in the Missouri et al v. Biden et al censorship lawsuit that gained a preliminary injunction on July 4, 2023; the government has appealed.^5,6

Meanwhile, renowned clinician-researchers, like Paul Marik, MD, and Peter McCullough, MD, were using already approved drugs off-label and nutrients to keep people out of the hospital and prevent deaths (see Townsend e-Letter, August 12, 2020). Imagine the effect on people’s fear if they knew that safe, effective early treatment was available—that hospitalization wasn’t the only option.

Many doctors followed the early treatment protocols recommended by the pioneering clinician-researchers, but many others did not—which leads to the third and fourth questions in The Oath – Q & A: Why aren’t more doctors speaking out? and How can we fix the broken system?

The doctors in the video have independent practices; they are not part of a hospital or insurance system. As one doctor explains in The Oath, hospitals and clinics are run by lawyers who want to avoid lawsuits and accountants who are looking only at the bottom line. This corporate system puts tremendous pressure on practitioners to conform. As an anonymous doctor wrote to Steve Kirsch:

You ask why doctors are silent. The electronic medical records (EMRs) are a ball and chain to physicians. We are tracked through them. When I wrote a prescription for Ivermectin for a patient, with informed consent (she was vaccinated), I received 5 letters threatening my medical license, my hospital privileges, and my insurance contracts. I would not have received 5 letters if I killed someone in negligence in malpractice. If I have my license pulled, I will no longer be able to help my patients.⁷

In addition to threatening job loss, the system provides monetary incentives to encourage conformity. Medicare and Medicaid gave hospitals “enhanced payment” for using new, more expensive, emergency use authorized (EUA) drugs, such as remdesivir, to treat covid.⁸ No such payments were given for repurposed drugs, which had known safety data.

Insurance companies had individual incentive programs for providers and for clinics to encourage vaccination with the EUA covid injections. Kentucky Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid, for example, paid providers $50 per patient per covid vaccine dose in 2021 and 2022; there was also a bonus system for practices that vaccinated 50% or more of the insurer’s patients.⁹ These injections are unlike any vaccines before. They use new technology, and we are still slowly learning about the long-term effects.

The covid pandemic unveiled how broken the system has become under the combined weight of Pharma-friendly government, media, medical systems, and financial incentives.

“How do we heal?” the doctors were asked. On an individual level, they say we need to take personal charge of our health: eat real food, spend time outdoors. And turn off the news. And doctors and patients need to fight for the doctor-patient relationship and for privacy. If we don’t, one doctor said, doctors might as well be replaced by artificial intelligence.

In a June 2023 interview, Kat Lindley, DO, co-founder of Global Health Project (which produced the video), said, “We need more doctors to start questioning the system. The system is corrupt.”¹⁰

She also said consumers need to force the change by leaving the practitioners that unquestioningly follow the CDC.

State legislation can help support the doctor-patient relationship and individualized care. Florida, for example, passed a law that forbids medical certification boards from punishing doctors for exercising free speech.¹¹ Ohio has legislation protecting access to off-label prescription drug use before the state senate; the bill protects prescribers and pharmacists from disciplinary actions when providing patients who give informed consent with off-label medication.¹²

Practitioners have neither the time nor energy to lobby state lawmakers, but they can band together when a local system threatens informed consent and patient rights. And they can let patients know about the many pressures that are destroying the doctor-patient relationship. Every state has consumer activists who are willing to work with sympathetic legislators and lobby for change.

The doctor-patient relationship, informed consent, and individual care are worth fighting for.  What philosopher Jacob Needleman wrote in his 1985 book, The Way of the Physician, is still true today: “With all the science in the world, the actual treatment of illness remained a matter of human relationship, without which the science was not only powerless but even destructive.”

In This Issue

Before the advent of pharmaceutical medicine, people relied on natural substances to cure their ills. Peloids, the therapeutic use of mud, are one such treatment. In this issue, Sussanna Czeranko, ND, presents the history and science of this “earth cure,” which has been used for pain treatment, gynecology, topical skin treatment, mobility improvement, sports injuries, detoxification, and to enhance immunity.

Dr. Czeranko was curator of the Rare Books Collection at Portland, Oregon’s National College of Natural Medicine (now National University of Natural Medicine). She also oversaw a twelve-book series known as The Hevert Collection: In Their Own Words, which was published by NUNM Press.  This series restores the best of the early literature from the Benedict Lust Journals for the naturopathic profession. Her knowledge and scholarship are evident in this issue’s article, which was first published in Townsend Letter (February/March 2017).

References

1. Ioannidis JPA. A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data. Stat. March 17, 2020. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
2. Ioannidis JPA. Global perspective of COVID-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic. Eur J Clin Invest.  2020 Dec;50(12):e13423.
3.  https://gbdeclaration.org/
4. Prasad V. At a time when the US needed covid dialogue between scientists, Francis Collins moved to shut it down.  STAT. December 23, 2021. https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-needed-covid-19-dialogue-between-scientists-francis-collins-moved-to-shut-it-down/
5. State of Missouri, et al versus Joseph R. Biden, Jr. et al. Memorandum Ruling on Request for Preliminary Injunction. https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/missouri-v-biden-ruling.pdf?sfvrsn=dd807c2_2
6. New Civil Liberties Alliance. NCLA Asks Fifth Circuit to Affirm Injunction Against Government Social Media Censorship. August 7, 2023. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/08/07/2720069/0/en/NCLA-Asks-Fifth-Circuit-to-Affirm-Injunction-Against-Government-Social-Media-Censorship.html
7. Kirsch S. Why doctors aren’t speaking out. September 9, 2022. https://kirschsubstack.com/p/why-doctors-arent-speaking-out
8. New COVID-19 Add-On Payment. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/covid-19/new-covid-19-treatments-add-payment-nctap (Accessed August 25, 2023).
9. Malone RW. Vaccine Provider Incentive Program: from Anthem/Blue Cross/Blue Shield COVID-19. August 14, 2023. https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/vaccine-provider-incentive-program
10. The Highwire. Physicians Try to Heal the Doctor-Patient Relationship. June 8, 2023. https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/physicians-try-to-heal-the-doctor-patient-relationship/
11. Childers J. Special People. Coffee and Covid. August 12, 2023. https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/special-people-saturday-august-12
12. HB 73: Enact Dave and Angie Patient and Health Provider Protection Act. https://legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/135/hb73

Published September 9, 2023