How a Free Society Deals with Pandemics, According to Legendary Epidemiologist and Smallpox Eradicator Donald Henderson

 And yet here we are living in times when the state is controlling our movements, shuttering businesses, defining who and what is essential, dangerously disrupting supply chains, forcibly closing schools and churches, and restricting travel. A shelter-in-place order is something of a liberal nightmare, the worst-possible use of coercive power against individual rights, and the results have been catastrophic.

It’s my view that we have been ill-prepared to deal with this onslaught. We have a very thin record of writings that make the case that freedom, market forces, and private governance are better than government quarantines and closures in dealing with pandemics. So where do we turn for better arguments and a better case?

Part of the problem is that as economists, historians, and political philosophers people are telling us to stay in our lane and not comment on medical matters. In general that is good advice. But there is a problem. The computer scientists and theoretical physicists who dreamed up this lock down haven’t really had serious medical training either and they sure haven’t stayed in their lane. They certainly have cared very little for the economic implications of their plans.

Where do we turn for competent commentary on the medical aspects of quarantine and lockdowns? Where is our credentialled and experienced expert who can provide weighty evidence that this is the wrong course?

Let me introduce you to Donald A. Henderson (1928-2016). He was the twentieth-century’s most acclaimed disease eradicator. 

Positive, life-saving news from the trenches that’s going unreported by those fearful of ending the lockdown.

Ever since President Trump expressed optimism about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, the mere mention of that drug can elicit instantaneous, strident, and finger-wagging condemnation by the mainstream media and all those who are pulling for the pandemic to lay waste to the economy and pave the way for a fundamental progressive transformation of America. Despite its use by health-care providers across the country and around the world to successfully treat COVID-19, you will be mocked as either a fool or a snake oil salesman if you approvingly utter the word “hydroxychloroquine” or even express hope that it can be used to save lives. The word is simply not to be tolerated in polite, progressive society.

Well, it appears that the list of forbidden words is about to get longer. The new additions include “corticosteroids” and “Methylprednisolone.”

What do these widely available and relatively inexpensive drugs with known safety profiles have in common with hydroxychloroquine? Leading physicians are using them in addition to hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat COVID-19. And they are doing so without waiting two or three years for the results of randomized clinical trials.

Cancer and heart patients dying because of government-imposed shut downs

Although canceling procedures such as elective hernia repairs and knee replacements is relatively straightforward, for many interventions the line between urgent and nonurgent can be drawn only in retrospect. As Brian Kolski, director of the structural heart disease program at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California, told me, “A lot of procedures deemed ‘elective’ are not necessarily elective.” Two patients in his practice whose transthoracic aortic valvular replacements were postponed, for example, died while waiting. “These patients can’t wait 2 months,” Kolski said. “Some of them can’t wait 2 weeks.” Rather than a broad moratorium on elective procedures, Kolski believes we need a more granular approach. “What has been the actual toll on some of these patients?” he asked.

If these death were classified as caused by the Wuhan flu, they would be right ... in a mordant way.

WILL THE SHUTDOWN CAUSE MORE DEATHS THAN IT SAVES?

We are in the midst of a health care disaster in the U.S. and other developed nations. This is not due primarily to the Wuhan virus, but rather to the fact that “non-essential” medical treatment has been canceled. In England, concern is growing that the deferral of “non-essential” health care could ultimately be more damaging than the Wuhan virus.

Questions that are not being asked:

How many people are going to die because they are not being treated for their illnesses because the medical system is essentially shut down except for the treatment of the Wuhan flu.

Dr. Birx: ‘We’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality’

Believe it or not, the coronavirus epidemic does not stop deaths from other causes. ,,,Many of us have been concerned that they have been conflating deaths due to coronavirus with deaths of those who have coronavirus but ultimately succumb to other illnesses. In their quest to continue this degree of fascism, plus in the motivation of some hospitals to get more federal relief funds, there is every incentive to code as many deaths as possible as related to COVID-19.

Yesterday, Dr. Deborah Birx finally let the secret out during the daily press conference in response to a reporter’s question. “I think in this country, we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality,” said Dr. Birx, ....

“There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney problem. Some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.”

“The intent is if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,” concluded Birx.

Does it make sense that during this crisis the number of heart attack deaths should plummet? But that's what the "statistics" show.

Heart attack and stroke teams, always poised to rush in and save lives, are mostly idle. ... almost half of the respondents reported that they are seeing a 40 percent to 60 percent reduction in admissions for heart attacks; about 20 percent reported more than a 60 percent reduction.

...

“Studies suggest that recent respiratory infections can double the risk of a heart attack or stroke,” observes Krumholz. “The risk seems to begin soon after the respiratory infection develops, so any rise in heart attacks or strokes should be evident by now.”

Well, what if I told you that this is actually happening, but these cases are being recorded as COVID-19 deaths, not as heart attacks, simply because the patient died with the virus?

“In fact, no field of biotechnology has promised more and delivered less in the way of treatments than embryonic stem cells.”

Remember when the pro-abortion lobby promised us that stem cells from aborted babies would cure every disease known to man?

Ever notice that the “it’s compassionate to provide less care” thing sure seemed to pick up as soon as ObamaCare passed.

Have you noticed that it's becoming good medicine to let people die?   From NPR.    That the number of tests for things like breast and prostate cancer are being reduced?   When the government is in charge of your health care, death is cheaper.

"Give her a pain pill" Obama said

Life Expectancy In U.S. Drops For First Time In Decades, Report Finds

So the news out of the federal government Thursday is disturbing: The overall U.S. death rate has increased for the first time in a decade, according to an analysis of the latest data. And that led to a drop in overall life expectancy for the first time since 1993, particularly among people younger than 65.

"This is a big deal," says Philip Morgan, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who was not involved in the new analysis.

"There's not a better indicator of well-being than life expectancy," he says. "The fact that it's leveling off in the U.S. is a striking finding."

Now, there's a chance that the latest data, from 2015, could be just a one-time blip. In fact, a preliminary analysis from the first two quarters of 2016 suggests that may be the case, says Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the new report.

Anderson says government analysts are awaiting more data before reaching any definitive conclusions.

"We'll have to see what happens in the second half of 2016," he says.

Still, he believes the data from 2015 are worth paying attention to. Over that year, the overall death rate increased from 724.6 per 100,000 people to 733.1 per 100,000.

While that's not a lot, it was enough to cause the overall life expectancy to fall slightly. That's only happened a few times in the past 50 years. The dip in 1993, for example, was due to high death rates from AIDS, flu, homicide and accidental deaths that year.

On average, the overall life expectancy, for someone born in 2015, fell from 78.9 years to 78.8 years. The life expectancy for the average American man fell two-tenths of a year — from 76.5 to 76.3. For women, it dropped one-tenth — from 81.3 to 81.2 years.

"It's remarkable," Morgan says. "There are lots of things about this that are unexpected."

Most notably, the overall death rate for Americans increased because mortality from heart disease and stroke increased after declining for years. Deaths were also up from Alzheimer's disease, respiratory disease, kidney disease and diabetes. More Americans also died from unintentional injuries and suicide. In all, the decline was driven by increases in deaths from eight of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S.

"When you see increases in so many of the leading causes of death, it's difficult to pinpoint one particular cause as the culprit," Anderson says.

The obesity epidemic could be playing a role in the increase in deaths from heart disease, strokes, diabetes and possibly Alzheimer's. It could also be that doctors have reached the limit of what they can do to fight heart disease with current treatments.

The epidemic of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin abuse is probably fueling the increase in unintentional injuries, Arun Hendi, a demographer at Duke University, wrote in an email. The rise in drug abuse and suicide could be due to economic factors causing despair.

"Clearly, that could be related to the economic circumstances that many Americans have experienced in the last eight years, or so, since the recession," says Irma Elo, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

They laughed at Sarah Palin when she mentioned "Death Panels." It looks like ObamaCare is working as designed.

Dr. Feelgood's Tonic: The Cinton is Getting Needled with "B-12 As Needed"

It turns out that Hillary is getting B-12 ...what?

Bardack listed Clinton’s current medications as Armorthyroid, Coumadin dosed as directed, Levaquin (for a total of ten days), Clarinex, and B-12 as needed. Hillary's Physician’s Detailed Letter Of Clinton's Condition

This cute little script for "B-12 as needed," written by Hillary's very private doctor, makes me nostalgic for the old days in New York City in the 70s. In those days you recovered from the abuse of “Vitamin C”ocaine with a shot of Vitamin B-12 (with extras) from the man we always knew as Dr. Feelgood.

Dr. Feelgood was the man you'd see if you had used too much "Creative Push." He'd also give you the shot if you were just fagged out either from 36-hours of work or 36-hours of the bathhouses. My gay pals at The Cosmodemonic Magazine Company had a standing office appointment with our Dr. Feelgood every Monday morning at 10.  He was a very popular doctor and he was always ready, for money, to stuff his ethics in a garbage can and make house calls with a portable pharmacy that not only contained the cure for cocaine but cocaine as well. As a doctor he could get pharmaceutical grade cocaine. He was a very general practitioner and extremely popular.

You either know or have heard of this Dr. Feelgood... or the whole tribe of Dr. Feelgoods that is spread out from NYC to Hollywood and Frisco. The Dr. Feelgood's of our age are so necessary for the staffs of those who are 'powering through' there have even been songs about them.

But then again, I wasn’t in the Chelsea Clinton shooting gallery apartment where the falling candidate was carted to be “reset” instead of the Secret Service mandated visit to the much more public emergency room. So, do I really know what happened in there and what Clinton was given to perk her up besides lots of water? Not at all. I wonder if she had to be manhandled into the building once the handicap/black ambulence van ditched they NYPD escort. I wonder if anyone on the street or adjoining stores saw that? Real reporters would have followed up but there are no real reporters. They have been hunted to extinction.

So do I know she took a shot in the butt from her traveling dealer doctor? No. But I know junkies and I know that once the needle goes in it never comes out. Don’t take my word for it. Check out JFK, another Democratic Saint who needed a little “creative push” from the original Dr. Feelgood:

Read the whole thing.

Ideas For Reporters Struggling To Cover Planned Parenthood

Mollie Hemingway notices that the MSM isn't reporting on Planned Parenthood's harvesting and sale of aborted baby fetal body parts much.  She contrasts the coverage this story is getting with the saturation coverage of the Confederate flag, a story that began with murders in a Charleston church but quickly morphed into an attack story on all things Southern including children's toys.  

Going with the assumption that reporters and editors may just be having trouble coming up with story ideas, she makes the following helpful suggestions.  

• We’ve heard about serial murderer/abortionist Kermit Gosnell keeping trophies of his victims, abortion clinics dumping babies in the trash, and now Deborah Nucatola working to do “a little better than break even” in the sales of intact baby organs. What’s the standard procedure for disposal of the unborn children killed in abortion? Are there abortion clinic standards for this? Does it vary state by state? Do states even have regulations? Does Planned Parenthood have uniform regulations? If not, why not? If so, how are they enforced?

• How much money does Planned Parenthood receive via sales of baby organs? Do they keep records? Are those records trustworthy? How do we know? How significant are these funds to the abortion portion of Planned Parenthood’s operation? How does compensation for the children’s lungs, livers, hearts and brains vary by state, if they do vary?

Medical Science Doesn’t Support Official Rhetoric On Ebola

In early September, President Obama assured West Africans in a video address that the first defense against the spread of Ebola was to get the facts on the disease’s transmission right. The problem now facing the United States is that the president, with the support of healthcare officials, may have played loose with the science “facts,” luring many Americans—including healthcare workers at the Dallas Health Presbyterian Hospital initially at the center of the country’s Ebola threat, as well as the latest Ebola victim from New York City—into a false sense of security and increasing risks to themselves and to everyone who crossed their paths.

The science of Ebola has not been—and can’t be—fully congruent with the official Ebola rhetoric, which has suggested that key terms such as “symptoms,” “bodily fluids,” “contagion,” and “contact” are more fixed facts of science than they necessarily are. After the apparent facility with which Ebola was transmitted to nurses attending the Liberian-American Ebola patient in Dallas, many Americans have understandably lost confidence in official Ebola pronouncements ...

Read the whole thing.   Is this politics, stupidity, arrogance, incompetence, or hate?  As applied to the Obama administration , they are not mutually exclusive.


For example, just when are Ebola patients infectious?

Healthcare officials and media pundits have played “symptoms” as, again, tightly defined on-off switches: “When you have the identified symptom [at some ill-defined fever], you have Ebola and are contagious. When you don’t have the symptom, you can’t be contagious, even if you have been infected.” The New York Times reported the New York doctor checked his temperature twice a day, and when he showed a fever, he checked himself into the hospital where he was put in isolation. The doctor did what he should have, according to Doctors Without Borders in a comment to the New York Times: “Self-quarantine is neither warranted nor recommended when a person is not displaying Ebola-like symptoms.”

This suggests the doctor was only infectious when he identified his symptoms, at the time he took his temperature. Was it not possible for him to become infectious before he took his temperature, and was mingling with people on the streets of the city? Even if he had identified his symptom at the exact time he became infectious, could he have not been infectious a minute or an hour earlier? Contrary to official pronouncements, infectiousness and symptoms do not necessarily and always occur simultaneously. The long history of medical science, and common sense, suggest that some unknown count of victims are likely to be infectious some unknown amount of time before the symptoms are detected, because the active progression of the disease brings on the fever, not the other way around. This means Americans have good reason to be guarded when hearing absolute medical pronouncements on when people are infectious.

And about that 21 day observation period:

 The media continues to parrot official announcements that exposed people can be declared clear of the disease if after 21 days (the “maximum incubation period for the disease to develop,” according to the New York Times editors, and most other officials commenting on the issue), they do not show the elusive “symptoms”—as if science can, and does, pinpoint a clear demarcation in time after which exposed people can be, with virtual certainty, deemed clear of the disease, or are no longer able to transmit it to others. The process of science generally can identify (imperfectly) how likely people’s contagiousness varies with time from exposure. Typically, studies can identify something of a bell-shaped curve for the distribution of the days that people can show symptoms following their infection. In the case of Ebola, the CDC has determined that from the day of infection to ten or so days it, the count of people who exhibit symptoms rises with each passing day. The count of people exhibiting symptoms declines afterwards, perhaps approaching but never reaching zero. (That is, the “bell curve” for the distribution of when people exhibit symptoms may have a long right tail.)

According to a study from Drexel University, possibly12 percent of infected victims never show the fever symptom during the currently recommended 21-day quarantine period.

Scientists generally make a judgment call, picking a time period when contagiousness reaches an acceptably low level (medically and, sometimes, politically). This means that once the required time period has been reached, there is still likely to be some prospect, however remote, that a “small” but “acceptable” percentage of the infected people can still be symptomatic.

State Department plans to bring foreign Ebola patients to U.S.

Does Obama believe that we don't have enough Ebola here?

Who To Blame When You Get Ebola: A CDC Guide For Healthcare Workers

From the Happy Hospitalist:

 

Atlanta, GA -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new flowchart guidelines Monday to help healthcare workers understand who they could blame once they contract Ebola in the hospital setting. The new recommendations follow declarations by Dr Thomas Friedman, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that nurse Nina Pham in a Dallas, Texas hospital contracted Ebola due to 'protocol breach' while caring for the now deceased Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan.

Nurses are used to getting blamed for everything. In fact, most nursing programs teach nurses how to take one for the team when bad things happen. Getting blamed for spreading Ebola is naturally accepted by most nurses as business as usual.

"After speaking with representatives from the American Nurses Association, everyone agreed blaming nurses for spreading Ebola was just the easiest thing to do," said Jason Fenster, a CDC spokesman who blamed his nurse last year for undercooked eggs while hospitalized for an undisclosed infection contracted at a CDC laboratory.

Following the release of these CDC guidelines, officials at the Dallas, Texas hospital confirmed they are probably going to blame three or four nurses for spreading Ebola while taking care of Mr. Duncan, including one on maternity leave for the last six weeks.

"I've been in the hospital CEO business for 30 years. Whenever bad things happen in a hospital setting, we can count on at least one nurse to take the fall. In fact, I'm so confident that a nurse is always at fault, we built an entire section into our hospital rules and regulations titled 'How To Blame a Nurse For Anything Bad That Could Lead To A Lawsuit," said Jed Brainer, CEO of Texas Presbyterian Hospital.

A spokesman at the CDC, who wished to remain anonymous, says guidelines to be released next week for non-healthcare workers and pets who contract Ebola will likely blame nurses as well.

Go kill yourself

It all starts with a discussion of what you see as your personal preference. Then some reasons why it should be a general preference. Then it’s published as a thumb sucker in a publication read by movers and shakers. Denial, of course, that it’s a policy prescription designed for the general public. And heaven forbid that it should become government policy. But for Zeke Emanuel, famed atheist, and architect of ObamaCare, Soylent Green is not a dystopian movie but a really neat Final Solution to the financial problems of government funded health care.  Death Panels will be known as SeniorCare brought to you by those lovable Liberals who are looking out for you.

Bud Norman has some further thoughts. (read the whole thing)

A recurring theme in the spate of dystopian futurist movies popular in our youth was that someday the government would start killing off all the old people. The notion provided a memorable scene in “Soylent Green” where Edward G. Robinson shuffled off to the local suicide center where the aged were treated to soothing music and images as they ceased to be a burden, and the entire plot of “Logan’s Run” was based on a society that maintained its perfectly organized order by offing anyone over the age of 30. In the late ’60s and early ’70s audiences found this plausible, with the younger and hipper movie-goers smugly assuming it was just the sort of thing that President Richard Nixon and his right-wing buddies would love to do, but it’s not been until the era of hope and change and the left-wing ascendancy that we’ve started to worry about it.

Our worries were heightened by the once-venerable Atlantic Monthly’s recent publication of an article by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel in which he expresses his desire to die at age 75 and urges the rest of us to do the same. This morbid advice would ordinarily be easy to ignore, but Emanuel is the brother of former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has served as a special advisor to the Obama White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and is currently a fellow at the Obama White House-affiliated Center for American Progress.

DRUDGE on Sebelius

Sebelius event in Pittsburgh turns into debacle...

Senator calls for resignation...
Two People Attend 'Obamacare and You!' Event...

Thousands of doctors fired by UNITED HEALTHCARE...

CARSON: 'Obamacare Worst Thing That Has Happened In This Nation Since Slavery'...

Race, Medicine, and Political Correctness

If a drug is found that's effective on black patients, but not on whites, (or vice versa) should it be approved?  You may be surprised by the answer.

But let us return to Dr. Zuger’s comments, made in the context of reviewing a book about a cardiac drug called BiDil, which was approved in the United States in 2005 specifically for black patients (although it can be prescribed off-label for anyone). Due to the lack of evidence of efficacy in early clinical trials, the drug, which is actually a combination of two proven cardiac medicines (the vasodilators hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate), had been rejected by the FDA nine years previously for approval for patients of all races. But because analysis of the data in various subgroups revealed a suggestion of benefit to black patients, another trial was performed on 1,050 self-identified black patients with severe heart failure who had already been treated with—but had not responded to—the best available therapy.

The results were so striking—43 percent reduction in mortality and 39 percent decrease in hospital visits among patients who received BiDil—

Find out what happened, and what some people thought about it.

ObamaCare sticker shock. State run media beginning to notice.

Who could have seen this coming?

Michael Yount of Charlotte, N.C., is one such unhappy customer. He and his wife, retired and in their late 50s, have been buying their own health insurance from Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) in North Carolina, paying about $380 a month with an $11,000 deductible. BCBS is offering them a new plan for three times the cost, $1,124.50 a month, still with an $11,000 deductible.

Want your top political issues explained? Get customized DC Decoder updates.

“We are an insurance company’s dream,” Mr. Yount tells the Monitor. “We pay our bills, we hardly ever get sick, no prescription drugs. And now this.”

Reluctantly, he says, they plan to drop out of formal health insurance, pay the penalty, and “self-insure.”

“No question, there’s risk there,” Yount says. “The question is, how much are you willing to pay someone else to mitigate that risk?”

He also understands that the law is meant to help those who have not been able to buy insurance because of preexisting conditions. But he objects to how it’s being done.

“If the only way to get it to them is forcibly taking it from everybody else, how is that any better?” Yount says. “I’m struggling with what is the greater evil and injustice. I don’t think it’s any more right to take it from one person forcibly. It’s coercion.”

Just keep repeating: "law of the land."

UK "End of free NHS care for migrants under new bill"

Foreigners will have to prove that they are entitled to be in the country before they are given access to GPs and hospitals, while foreign students will have to make a “contribution” to the health service.

The measure will form the centrepiece of tough new legislation designed to reduce numbers entering the country and put pressure on illegal immigrants to leave.

A senior government source said it was an attempt to target “people who have no right to be here”.

What a novel idea: you have to be a citizen before you can collect citizen benefits!

Sarah Murnaghan lung transplant case: Sebelius ordered to make exception on transplant

Just die, sorry about it says Sebelius, the one woman Death Panel. ObamaCare will decide that your life is not worth it.

The judge’s action may have taken some of the immediate heat off Sebelius and the Obama administration. Yet it opened up a host of other questions about organ donation policy and hot-button health care politics.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson wrote in a temporary restraining order that by refusing to set aside the existing rule for children, Sebelius had failed “to protect the very few children nationally who are subject to it.” He added that the evidence showed that the rule “discriminates against children and serves no purpose, is arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”

Bending the cost of medical care down: die without treatment.

Michael Douglas: oral sex caused my cancer

Too much information.