Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Kev's avatar

Although the Covid debacle tremendously accelerated all twenty of your observations, these forces have been stealthily gaining steam for decades. Twenty years ago I stopped reading JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) and NEJM (the New England Journal of Medicine) because I noticed that the number of Pharma ads kept increasing, the number of articles devoted to promoting pharma drugs kept increasing, and the number of "researchers" who were paid consultants of pharma kept increasing. I was a physician at the time (have since retired) and told colleagues what I was noticing and was of course ridiculed as a paranoid kook. Then around ten years ago I was at an international conference of business entrepreneurs and a bunch of us were talking about having properties abroad. At that time I said I had looked at other countries and thought the USA was still the best, but the one thing that was worrying me that someday we might ALL be forced to get any vaccines they wanted distributed. I did not come up with this out of the blue. I had already experienced hospital pressure when my daughters were born to get the Hepatitis B vaccine which I had extensively researched and concluded was entirely unnecessary with a risk/benefit ratio > 1. Then years later I received threats from my kids' pediatricians when I refused the Guardasil vaccine which I had also extensively researched and concluded that it's risk/benefit ratio was much higher than 1. Also around that time my hospital mandated the flu shot even though the published efficacy of the flu vaccine that year was only 6%, not 60, 6%! And the 6% number was likely an overestimate. I have since done much more study on the subject and now realize that my understanding was incomplete and that an enormous amount of what the "mainstream" believes about vaccine efficacy and safety is based mostly on poorly designed, cherry-picked, seriously biased studies, all of which are MASSIVELY influenced by conflict of interest. Not to mention censorship and ridiculing of any studies and researchers which conclude differently. We may have reached the point of no return where the majority of health care practitioners, pharma employees and investors, biotech startups, hospitals, media companies, and public health regulators have salaries which depend directly or indirectly on pharma profits. Half the population is blissfully unaware of any of this and believe that people like us on substack are the loonies.

Expand full comment
Ocala Mike's avatar

I think you missed a big one. The demise of science -- real science -- and the erosion of public trust in our healthcare institutions. Science flew out the window when scientists like Fauci made recommendations that were so absurd, it was obvious they weren’t based in science. Masking is the most obvious example.

While these absurd anti-science recommendations were being made, it seemed the entire scientific community nodded their heads in agreement.

Public trust in our expert class has been destroyed -- and rightfully so -- but it's the destruction of trust in our governmental agencies (CDC, WHO, etc.) that is most dangerous. Because the next time a real public health crisis happens, the public will undoubtedly ignore their advice.

Expand full comment
9 more comments...

No posts