Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Yesterday, our Unifier-in-Chief told us we should be angry with our unvaccinated neighbors for putting vaccinated people at risk, even though (he said) the vaccines make you very safe. All the same, he's trying to get employers to fire their unvaccinated employees because they're a threat to the vaccinated employees. Good luck with the testing option when there's a shortage of health care workers.  If the vaccines reduce symptoms enough to keep people out of hospitals--by all accounts, they do--then the unvaccinated aren't a threat. "But the vaccines don't provide perfect protection!" the vaccine evangelists cry. Of course, everything else they do, like driving , eating and riding a bike , is completely free of any hazard--right? I'll bite, though: let's take a look at the odds of having a breakthrough hospitalization or death. I have data for Indiana, but you can play along with data from your area. Odds of Breakthrough Hospitalization According

A number of stories on ivermectin, both for and against, have turned out to be false or at least unverifiable.  An Oklahoma hospital wasn't flooded with any patients with complications from ivermectin, Mississippi's poison control center was not inundated with calls from people who'd overdosed on ivermectin, and the "spike" in calls to Kentucky's poison control center consisted of 13 calls . Yes, the first retraction begins, "One Oklahoma hospital denies..." but it can't be that hard for professional journalists to identify which rural hospital had multiple shooting victims AND an ER full of ivermectin overdoses. Even in Indianapolis, multiple shooting victims make the news. It's tempting to blame the gullibility on people who've never set foot in flyover country (except for Chicago), but Kentucky's governor is going on about the " horse dewormer craze " and the Oklahoma TV station that ran the horse-meds-at-the-OK-Corra

Ivermectin has been in the news lately with headlines like "Man ODs on Horse Dewormer" and "Hospitals Full of Ivermectin Patients." If this is the only perspective you've heard, let me tell you why people DIY their own health.  DIY Health Years ago, a commenter at Dr. Davis's Track your Plaque blog recalled when he was diagnosed with diabetes. He researched the illness, found that doctors and veterinarians had completely different views, and he wondered how humans and animals could be so different. He concluded that the veterinarians had it right. For a while, he thought about seeing a veterinarian for his diabetes, but finally decided to take care of it himself. He's not the only one taking care of his own illness. I'm part of online communities whose members have had to either fix their own health problems or watch them get worse. Dietary guidelines for all Americans include "healthy whole grains," even though too many Americans are overw

It started with hard-core cynics. Then came the rednecks , then blue collar people, and now the middle class is joining in. I'm talking about people who realize most of those making public health decisions not only have no idea what they're doing, but they don't realize they have no idea.  "This product is an ear loop mask, this product is not a respirator and will not provide any protections against COVID-19 (coronavirus) and other viruses or contaminants."  Some of their magical thinking would be funny if people weren't suffering:  From Portland, Oregon : "We’re seeing the number of people hospitalized going up at rates we’ve never seen before,” said Peter Graven, Ph.D., lead data scientist in OHSU’s Business Intelligence unit. “ We had hoped to see the new statewide masking mandate make a difference in flattening the rate of infection, but we’re not seeing that yet.” I noticed that people in the building trades, who probably wear masks for work or k

What do you get when you cross a wave of illness with an exodus of nurses and caregivers? We may be about to find out. The experience in Israel, where they vaccinated early and widely, shows the Pfizer vaccine starts petering out around six months. A Japanese preprint study says that with a few common mutations, the delta variant could escape the Pfizer vaccine neutralizing antibodies. And now, several hospitals are mandating vaccination and Biden is requiring nursing home employees to be vaccinated. I'm not in the health care industry, but from what I've heard, a lot of nursing homes would have to shut their doors in the face of such a requirement . Alex Berenson, on the other hand, thinks the hospital mandates, at least, will go bye-bye if nurses sit tight. Let's hope so.  Vaccine Mandates The FDA's approval of the Pfizer vaccine is likely to increase the mandates--which seems to be the only purpose of the approval. The acting commissioner of the FDA was their "

It's been a tough year and a half for most of us, but I've been taking advantage of the things available to us in 2021. DIY health, LED lights and modern home improvement tools have improved my life this year.  The main thing has been DIY health. As many readers know, trying to get necessary labs from doctors can make you feel like Oliver Twist: "Please, sir, may I have some proper health care?" Being more irreverent and more of a do-it-yourselfer, I've ordered my own labs (allowed here in freewheelin' Indiana), researched my own care, and experimented with hormones ordered online. I've also been a member of Dr. Davis's Inner Circle group and found it invaluable. The L. reuteri/B. coagulans yogurt in particular has been helpful. It has been a bumpy ride, but my last thyroid panel came back normal. Normal--on no medications! My free T3 and free T4 are in the middle of the reference range. TSH is above program ideal at 2.4, but I'm not tired, I'

Will someone alert New Zealand's prime minister that the Babylon Bee isn't a guide to public policy? "New Zealand Announces it's Locking Down the Entire Country...Over One Covid Case. " The elipses suggest that even CNN thinks they've lost the plot. A month ago, the Babylon Bee wrote , "...officials in Canada say they are dealing with an apocalyptic surge of "literally infinity percent" after COVID cases increased from zero to one this week. “Our nation may never recover from this,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau." New Zealand is going for zero COVID. The New York Post says , "[Prime Minister] Ardern announced that all New Zealand will be in the toughest, level-four lockdown for at least three days from Wednesday, with schools, offices and businesses closed and only essential services operational. The biggest city, Auckland — where the unidentified 58-year-old man tested positive — would have a longer, seven-day lockdown, as would