Deafening Silence…..

 

“No matter how cynical you are, you are still naive.”

That quote is attributed to Bret Weinstein of the Dark Horse podcast. What does it have to do with anything? I’ll get to that.

 

We are still in the midst of the COVID19 Pandemic, it’s been 14 months and in Ontario the lockdown continues. It should be clear to everyone that governments at ALL levels have royally fucked up the management of the Pandemic. And worse still, it probably won’t affect the federal election coming, but may affect the next provincial election. One should never underestimate the stupidity of the voting public. We’ll see.

 

To date, any physical contact with my family (other than my wife) is still a no-no, and for me that may continue for some time. My struggles with Multiple Myeloma are ongoing. Currently I’m in the midst of treatment with a monoclonal antibody and two other drugs. That protocol is slated to become a monthly event soon (Biweekly now). As I tend to say, I have bad days and worse days, and I’m resigned to that.  

 

Even though I have been vaccinated twice with the Pfizer mRNA-Vaccine, its effectiveness for me, and most people with blood cancers is in the range of maybe 40% unless one is on treatment, which I am, then less so, according to the most recent small sample-size data. 

My doctor’s contend that’s better than nothing, and I agree. So effectively I’m depending on everyone else to be vaccinated, and I will still need to be very careful once things open up. However, there is a therapeutic drug that has shown excellent and amazing prophylactic (preventative) and clinical results for COVID19 but has been ignored and suppressed by the “gods of medicine,” the government, and the media for a variety of reasons. Of course I would rather be able to control my own future than rely on everyone else.

 

The drug is IVERMECTIN. I first heard about this drug many months ago from a good friend but I never bothered to really check it out. Recently (June 1/21) I watched a podcast - The Dark Horse (Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying) - that I subscribe to.

 
 

I’ve been watching that podcast since I saw this interview on Bill Maher’s HBO show in January.

That broadcast brought up the lab leak hypothesis for the origin of COVID19, which I’ve always believed and I’m even more convinced now. Of course that idea has also been suppressed by the “gods of medicine,” the government, and the media. However, today, that theory is gaining more and more credence even by Dr. Fauci himself. 

 

The Dark Horse podcast of June 1, 2021 has Dr. Pierre Kory talking about IVERMECTIN. Yes, its long, but a very compelling story. 

 

Kory presented his work to the US Senate on Dec. 8/20 and it became a YouTube video, but interestingly YouTube subsequently removed it because it also goes against “gods of medicine,” the government, and the media. But the video is here and here is the PDF of the testimony to the US Senate.



Here is the link to Dr. Kory’s group FLCCC (Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance).

 

So here we are, an apparently effective prevention and treatment for COVID19, used around the world, see Dr. Kory’s groups' website above. In fact, IVERMECTIN has been used in the United States and in some cases even demanded by court order in lawsuits by advocates for critically ill patients with stunning results.

Its almost impossible to believe that this story has been ignored, but it has, and that has got to change. The cynicism one must accept that this drug is being ignored because it could affect the Emergency Use Authorization for the vaccines, or that it may affect revenues for the vaccine developers is beyond belief. How naive can we be? 

Happy to be a guinea pig....

Guinea pigs come in assorted colours 

In the midst of the ongoing human tragedy that is the Pandemic, the pugnacious people at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) proffered some useless advice recently. Calling someone a guinea pig, a test animal, is an insult if guinea pigs can get insulted; its speciesism, a new micro-aggression.  Here is the tweet:

Why some pasty-faced vegan vermin decided to tweet this to out at this time is perplexing. Maybe it was meant as a bit of comic relief from the daily onslaught of COVID/Vaccine news, but I think they were serious.

 

All PETA people must be vegan, and of the most extreme kind. I wonder if they eschew fossil fuels, like oil, gas? Surely they must know they are animal by-products. How can they live with themselves knowing this?





A good friend and I have an inside joke about guinea pigs. I feel like one during my ongoing treatment for relapsed Myeloma, and all of us who look forward to being vaccinated against the current scourge, will be part of a monstrous clinical trial, Phase 4 actually, for the cutting edge anti-COVID vaccine technology that has just been developed. Not only that, we are all guinea pigs now as a result of the Pandemic. How will the virus affect us? Will the variants nullify the effectiveness of the vaccines? What are the lockdowns doing to the economy, our mental health, and on and on?

Many of my social media “friends” are upset that the vaccines are unproven over long time periods. They seem to ignore the fact that there is a perceived emergency and putting an end to it ASAP is the goal. They also forget that modern medicine is just statistics over time, and doctors are really just practicing.

 

But I’m happy to be a guinea pig; grateful actually, in every sense. 

The drug protocol I’m being subjected to did not exist that long ago, so I’m going to be part of the ongoing data collection as will we all be in the current COVID Challenge.

 

Guinea pigs of course are docile mammals that share much human biochemistry, so we subject them to novel treatments and drugs trying to infer how these might affect people. Cruel, maybe, insulting, to our furry friends, well, that depends on the situation. In the life of a guinea pig, lab life might be considered very good, until your number comes up. 



 

Shortly after I was diagnosed with Myeloma, and against my physician’s advise, I searched through Google to find all the relevant data on Myeloma. What were the chances of survival? How long do I have? How does it kill? You know, given the tools, anyone would do that. It was not encouraging. Average life span after diagnosis was 29 months. So from my diagnosis in September 2018, it would mean February 2021 was it for me. The end should be right about now, or soon. But I’ve never thought of myself as average, and I have a reasonably healthy lifestyle. I partake in few of the so-called common vices; I’ve always been a chicken that way. Oops, sorry PETA. So I gave myself something more than average duration. Since I ended the initial treatment regime called CyBorD back in July 2020, my disease progression, as they call it, has been more or less stable. No major blood anomalies but some increase seen of the cancer is visible in bone marrow on MRI. So my doctor said lets catch it in the bud. Let me hasten to add that over the last couple of years there has been lots and lots of pain, huge amounts of fatigue, many constraints, no picnic, but here I Am. In some ways the Pandemic has had a positive impact. My wife (my wonderful helpmate) and I have been isolated for almost a year, that means that my very compromised immune system has been spared even a sniffle. We're very thankful for all the electronic devices we rely on for family contact. Of course there are outdoor "visits" when the weather allows, but.... 


 

So in January 2021, I’ve begun a new and promising treatment. It’s so new that an average survival time has not yet been determined, but so far on average it’s in excess of 32 months and counting. Doesn’t seem very long does it? One thing about cancer, it changes your point of view on everything.

 

 

 

Unwarranted Premature Ejaculations!

 

In my last post four months ago, I predicted a second wave to the COVID19 Pandemic. I think most people will agree that the second wave has surpassed the first wave in intensity. Its reminiscent of the Spanish Flu 100 years ago, when the second wave was worse than the first.

We are ten months in to the COVID19 Pandemic now. Schools in Ontario are closed again. A provincial "stay-at-home" lockdown order was issued today for at least the next month. 

And yet as summer became fall and case numbers rose, many people prematurely called it a "CASEDEMIC," and for good reason. Testing ability all around the world had ramped up. In Ontario the graph below shows how testing has increased since April 2020. More tests equals more cases discovered. 

That did not translate to more hospitalizations and/or deaths at first. That gave rise to a host of video posts,  blogs and social media rants, claiming the Pandemic was over, here and in Europe and Asia. Hardly; the virus was just getting comfortable. It became particularly serious for our neighbours to the South. Cases spread through States that were relatively unscathed in the first wave, hospitalizations spiked and so did deaths. That also happened in Ontario and all of Canada. At the time of this post, the Americans had almost twenty-four million cases and almost 400,000 deaths attributed/related to COVID19. Things were not nearly as bad in Canada, but bad enough to stress our always stressed medical system as the lockdown in Ontario demonstrates.

Of course there is still considerable debate about the effectiveness of lockdowns. It may be too early to tell, but their effect so far has NOT been exemplary. For example, the Government of Ontario promised an "iron ring" around long term care (LTC) homes after the first wave. The result has been a dismal failure, nothing new for government, but a tragedy for thousands of families. Around 80% of the deaths from COVID19 have been in LTC homes. Here is the data for Ontario. That is about the worst in the world, and most of it can be blamed on government. Of course the socialists in our Parliaments and Legislatures blame the profit motive, but of course it is not that simple.

We all know the news was not all bad. Unlike what happened with the Spanish Flu, a third wave in the developed world is unlikely. As 2020 finally came to an end, several effective vaccines had been approved and were being administered by many nations around the world. Once again the private sector has rescued humanity. Yes, governments helped, but mostly by getting out of the way, and allowing quick approvals without jeopardizing on safety. That model could have lasting benefits for the future of medicine. We can hope.

The vaccines themselves are unique because two of them - the ones that use mRNA, demonstrate new medical tools that may revolutionize the way vaccines are made in the future. This is an unforeseen benefit of the COVID Pandemic. The use of RNA as a therapy will also have a positive effect on other areas of medicine.

Once we get vaccinations going, hopefully with lots of private involvement (pharmacies), we could be seeing the end of the Pandemic by late summer.