A totalitarian state is ruled by the narrative: A personal account of how we see this manifest in medicine in the US

Advising DeSantis, my talk for the WHO, a new oped, a new podcast episode released and AB-2098 Dies!

I have a number of updates that can be tied together with a common theme, which is the US government’s control of the scientific narrative. I am seeing the downstream effects of government corruption (which includes spending a lot of $ recklessly & senselessly on things the govt claims promotes “health”, still many of these having to do with Covid) on my patients, particularly those who are poor with disabilities. I hear more and more stories about how they are unable to pay their co-pays to get things like physical therapy and the medical care they need (I am a PM&R physician and many of you know I see some severely disabled patients). My family and patients are my primary duties- this is why I start with this example.

This morning, on my way to clinic, I was listening to the (excellent) new American Thought Leaders interview with my friend, Aaron Kheriaty. Aaron astutely pointed out that totalitarianism starts with a government controlling which questions you are and aren’t allowed to ask (think social medial censorship by the government and Missouri v Biden) and comes into full effect with people forgetting they even have questions. My substack title is a modification of Jordan Peterson’s saying “At totalitarian state is ruled by The Lie.” Instead of “The Lie”, in American medicine right now, I feel we are on course to being ruled by “the narrative”, which is a whole litany of lies and half truths that disturbingly many physicians and scientists just seem to go just along with or even believe... to the detriment of their patients and our society. And, of course, suppressing the dissidents and counternarrative is how the government increases power and spending and this may be done not just with direct censorship of scientific discourse but through control of the narrative in the the media (NYT is perhaps the best example, though there are so many…) allowing the unnecessary spending, more accurately called corruption to go on unchecked.

Many readers here are aware even our top medical journals have become complicit in the censorship industrial complex, committed to publishing articles with certain government- and pharma-approved messages, while “not taking chances” on publishing studies with more robust methodology that come to “unacceptable” conclusions. I have discussed this previously on this substack and demonstrated this with regards to mask science with researchers such as Ambarish Chandra, Vinay Prasad, Alyson Haslam and Sebastián González, with one new paper published with Vinay and Sebastian just this last week. I am working on multiple articles right now with Zack Stieber, most recently this, about how this censorship/covering up occurred with the reporting of the post-vaccination myocarditis safety signal by my research group as well.

Recent evidence of US government corruption

Today, the Biden administration announced they would donate $600 million of our taxpayer $ to “free” covid tests for Americans. This is without evidence that non-targeted testing (which is not used to guide treatment) will improve any health outcomes. The sensitivity of covid rapid tests dropped during omicron and disease severity in general is decreasing so Scandinavia dropped population based testing in the Spring of 2022 because tax dollars should not be wasted on unproven “health” measures. Show us the data! (Here is an article I wrote for Newsweek with Ram Duriseti, from Stanford, discussing this in early 2022. Vinay Prasad and I have a forthcoming article relating to rapid testing evidence.. hopefully to be published soon).

Then you have the CDC throwing at least $1.2 billion away, buying covid vaccines for children, which will not be used given the total quantity is over 4x in excess of what was used in children last year. (How do they get away with this?… purchased even before the ACIP meeting where the recommendations were made…)

And these vaccines are not being recommended (or even offered in many cases) by the rest of the world outside of North America for non high risk groups under 65. The US govt is basically engaging in flagrant corporatism and doing it in the name of “equity” according to their rationale for recommending a new vaccine dose for all >6 months (I could not believe they said this at the ACIP meeting… how is failing to perform a proper risk benefit analysis “equitable”?).

All the while, the US media makes it seem like the US is correct in deviating from the rest of the world, spending all of this $$$ on new monovalent vaccines. These vaccines are not free, despite what the CDC Director said yesterday, and cost $120-130 per dose. The new vaccines are totally untested in children, the Pfizer vaccine being tested on 10 mice and the Moderna vaccine was tested for antibody levels among 50 adult humans, one of which had a medically attended adverse reaction related to the vaccine and they still have not disclosed what that reaction was nor the FDA or CDC ask them to (why). Marty Makary and I outline more details about the corruption and lack of vaccine trial data here in our op-ed published last Friday.

Also, in spite of what the CDC tells you, the clinical effectiveness of these vaccines is not proven and, even the data the CDC extrapolated from the bivalent booster was only from observational studies with a high likelihood of being misleading if not worthless because of healthy vaccinee bias as well as other potential biases. Not to mention - why does the CDC continue to not give us data on what % of hospitalizations and deaths by age group are incidental? Once Denmark realized 65-75% of “covid” deaths for the entire population were incidental in 2022 they stopped testing everyone and they stopped offering the covid vaccine to non-high risk children that summer, saying ever recommending even one dose had been “a mistake” - it is smarter (and safer) to use $ on things that improve health or improve peoples’ lives!

Healthy Vaccinee Bias Lecture for WHO

I gave a lecture about healthy vaccinee bias in covid and influenza vaccine observational studies at at a WHO conference last week. Take a listen if you want to get a true sense of the limitations in the data the CDC is relying on to make their recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines for all and why the rest of the world is making much more restrictive recommendations, targeting high risk groups (though the data there are also non-existent).

The link to the recording of my talk is here starting at 44 minutes. The whole conference was very good, though a bit technical in parts.

I love how dystopian and David Lynch-esque this picture ended up being… appropriate when you listen to the entire talk. Don’t take it personally, beautiful Miss Meza!

Please specifically pay attention to what we uncovered about Israeli research of the first pfizer booster, which Ram Duriseti, Vinay Prasad and I were able to get published in the New England Journal of Medicine and how it relates to studies coming out of the US.

Sensibly Curious about Vaccines- New Podcast Episode

Related, in our 3rd podcast together, Christine Stabell Benn and I discuss the differences in COVID and influenza vaccine recommendations between the US and Denmark, along with the underlying data used to make the recommendations and new concerns about the covid vaccines’ non-specific effects on the immune system. Podcast on YouTube here and Vaccine Curious on Apple and on Spotify.

CDC is already flagging our episode, in their not-so-subtle way telling you not to trust them, not us. They fear open scientific discourse as totalitarian (maybe totalitarian wannabe?) states do. Because the truth is the thing that can defeat totalitarianism and government corruption. If Christine and I say something wrong, we want to know. If the CDC is wrong, they don’t want to hear about it = anti-science, anti-human, power-grabbing.

Advising DeSantis

This last Wednesday, I was asked again to participate in a roundtable advising Governor DeSantis, this time about the new Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Also present at the meeting were Joe Ladapo, MD, PhD Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD from Stanford and Patrick Whelan, MD, PhD, a pediatrician from UCLA. That was 4 MD, PhDs in one meeting.. yet how quickly people write us off, apparently because were are on the “wrong” political side. This is always so funny to me how quickly people label me as an “extreme right winger” but never ask my views on different issues. I have been vocal about problems with and dangers of bipartisan politics in the US since I was 18 and there is no way I am basing my own scientific views on what one or the other US political party thinks… it’s patently absurd and dangerous for a physician or scientist to do so. I will tell you what I think and the evidence for or against the issue at hand; republican vs democrat opinions or sides do not matter one iota to me.

We had a very productive discussion about what the European recommendations are for the new monovalent XBB Covid vaccine. Europe, Australia, UK- all focusing on those over 65 and high risk. I brought up the fact we only have mouse antibody data from Pfizer so far and data from 50 humans from Moderna - over 2 weeks and 1/50 had an unsolicited adverse reaction requiring medical attention— deemed by the investigators to be related to the vaccine

Governor DeSantis asked me: “Is 2% a normal rate of adverse reactions requiring medical attention caused by a vaccine”? I had to laugh. Of course it’s not normal for a vaccine. He also asked what it was and I had to say Moderna did not disclose that information.

As many know, the meeting ended with Dr. Ladapo recommending against the vaccine for anyone under 65. I fought back a little against this during the meeting. Some people under 65, especially if severely immune compromised, are much higher risk for severe COVID-19 than healthy people in their upper 60’s, especially if they have recent natural immunity. I said 65 was an arbitrary cutoff and that, honestly it was hard to make a recommendation anyone get this vaccine with the data we have.

I also mentioned my husband is a bone marrow transplant physician at a certain University of California and that I just wish we had more data to allow truly informed consent for his patients… (of course they did not include that statement of mine in the coverage since the articles are so biased against Dr. Ladapo and DeSantis, they wouldn’t want to paint the meeting as the nuanced discussion it was). As an aside, as I have told my husband, Moderna was tested (for antibody production) against the new sub variant, FL.151, which may become dominant, while Pfizer was not.

The thing about working with DeSantis and Ladapo is I genuinely feel my scientific interpretations and honest opinions are valued and I am unafraid to give them. I also really respect the way Governor DeSantis is seeking scientific input from 3 Scandinavians, who come from countries that did well compared to the other high incomes nations during the pandemic, these include Martin Kulldorf from Sweden, Christine Stabell Benn from Denmark and myself moved from Denmark to the US in 2015, a dual national.

And of course Florida is not the international outlier in not recommending the new vaccine to <65 year olds (at least for the non-high risk) but the US CDC is. So why does the US media treat DeSantis and Florida like they are the extremists? (yes, I know the answer and it’s found in the intro of this post)

Here was some media coverage of the meeting that quoted me & Jay correctly though the article is clearly biased in tone against DeSantis and Ladapo.

The Death of AB-2098, the California Physician Censorship Law

First, some anti-totalitarianism good news is AB-2098 which was a California law signed by Governor Newsom which would require physicians to repeat/recite scripted speech according to government consensus about COVID-19 to their patients or risk losing their medical license is being repealed after we (Høeg vs Newsom with New Civil Liberties Alliance with Jenin Younes and Laura Powell, attorneys), were awarded preliminary injunction in early 2023. Aaron Kheriaty, Ram Duriseti, Pete Mazolewski and Azadeh Khatibi were co-plaintiffs. This is a reminder of the value of the US constitution, our legal system and that individuals can make a difference.

Video of the week

The below video is a powerful example of a citizen scientist making a difference by speaking up. What a moving (and concerning) testimony by Microbiology Professor Phillip Buckhaults before the South Carolina Senate about his lab’s findings (replicating Kevin McKernan’s) that there an are unexpectedly a large number of DNA fragments in the Pfizer vaccines that, because they were packaged in lipid nanoparticles, could theoretically integrate into the human genome (to do things like say turn off tumor suppressor genes) and that THE FDA IS NOT RESPONDING TO HIS CONCERNS…. His entire testimony is a must watch! He is an incredible speaker. (Curious if anyone is doing the research he suggests to see if there is evidence of integration into the genome)